Whether Governor Dongan returned to England, and again came out to the province after the excitement had abated, or remained concealed in the province or neighborhood, seems not to be clear. It is certain, however, that he was in New York in 1791 [sic]. It need only be added here that the "Charter of Liberties," passed in 1683, under a Catholic governor, was, with all other laws passed by the late general assembly, repealed by the Protestant assembly of New York, in 1691, and a so-called "Bill of Rights" passed, which expressly deprived Catholics of all their political and religiousrights. In 1697 this "Bill of Rights" was repealed by King William, "probably as being too liberal," says Bishop Bayley; and, in 1700, an act was passed which recited that "Whereas, divers Jesuits, priests, and popish missionaries have, of late, come, and for some time have had this province, and others of his majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their wicked and subtle insinuations, industriously labored to debauch, seduce, and withdraw the Indians from their due obedience to his most sacred majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his majesty's priest, etc., remaining in or coming into the province after November 1st, 1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy of the true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to sufferperpetual imprisonment," that, in case of escape and capture, they should sufferdeath, and that harborers of priests should pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and stand three days in the pillory. If it is alleged that the law of 1691 was the result of high party excitement and public alarm, what excuse, it may be asked, is to be alleged for the more illiberal and persecuting law of 1700? It is but justice to James II., to point to the "Charter of Liberties" of 1683, passed with his own approbation, and at his suggestion, and then to the laws of 1691 and 1700, passed under William and Mary, and remark that, though the revolution gave the colonies William and Mary in the place of James, it also gave penal and odious laws, and a deceptive "Bill of Rights," in exchange for a "Charter of Liberties" that gave what its title professed to confer. In Maryland, too, whose Catholic founders proclaimed civil and religious liberty as the basis of their commonwealth, the same scenes, on a more extended scale, were at the same time being enacted; the persecutors in New York were in intimate correspondence with their co-laborers in Maryland and New England.
In 1691, when Governor Dongan saw, from the passage of the "Bill of Rights," that Catholics were excluded from the benefits of government, and subjected to persecution, he returned to England.
While he was governor of New York, in 1685, his brother William, who had, in 1661, been created Baron Dongan and Viscount Claine in the Irish peerage, was advanced to the earldom of Limerick, with remainder, on the failure of direct issue, to Colonel Thomas Dongan. On the breaking out of the revolution and the flight of James II., William, Earl of Limerick, adhered to that monarch, and followed him into France; whereupon his estates were forfeited, and granted to the Earl of Athlone, an adherent of William.This grant was confirmed by an act of the Irish parliament, but with a clause saving the right of Colonel Thomas Dongan. Colonel Dongan, on his return to England, made every effort to recover some portion of his brother's estates. His brother, the Earl of Limerick, died at St. Germain in 1698, whereupon Colonel Dongan was introduced to William III. as successor of the late Earl of Limerick, and the new earl did homage to the king for his earldom, and, according to the feudal custom, kissed the king's hand on succeeding to the rank. He was allowed by the government, about the same time, £2500, in tallies, in part payment for advances made by him for public purposes while governor of New York. His persevering efforts to recover the estates of his deceased brother so far finally succeeded as to induce the passage of an act of parliament for his relief, on the 25th of May, 1702. He subsequently offered himself for service in the American colonies, but it does not appear that he was ever in the service of the crown after his return to England. He died in London, on the 14th day of December, 1715, and was interred in the church-yard of St. Pancras, Middlesex. The inscription on his tombstone reads as follows:
"The Right Honble Thomas Dongan,Earl of Limerick.Died December 14th,aged eighty-one years,1715.Requiescat in Pace. Amen."
In addition to the encomiums passed upon him both by Catholic and Protestant historians, the following, from De Courcy and Shea'sCatholic Church in the United States, is here inserted:
"This able governor was not long enough in office to realize all his plans for the good of the colony, where he had expended, for the public good, most of his private fortune. In this, as in many other points, the Catholic Governor Dongan forms a striking contrast with the mass of colonial rulers, who sought their own profit at the expense of the countries submitted to them. To Dongan, too, New York is indebted for the convocation of the first legislative assembly, the colony having been, till then, ruled and governed at the good pleasure of the governor; and this readiness to admit the people to a share in the government is a fact which the enemies of James II. should not conceal in their estimate of that Catholic monarch."
Mr. Moore gives us the following particulars in his note, cited among the authorities to this article:
"This nobleman died without issue. His estates in America were settled chiefly on three nephews, John, Thomas, and Walter Dongan. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Vaughan Dongan, of the third battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, who died of wounds received in an attack on the British posts on Staten Island, in August, 1777, was son of the last-mentioned gentleman. John Charlton Dongan, another collateral relative of the Earl of Limerick, represented Richmond County in the New York Assembly, from 1786 to 1789. Representatives of this ancient family are still to be found in New York."
[NOTE.—The above article is condensed from a forthcoming work of Mr. R. H. Clarke, to be entitled,Lives of Eminent Catholics of the United States.]
.
Years passed on, and Beethoven continued to reside at Vienna with his two brothers, who had followed him thither, and took the charge of his domestic establishment, so as to leave him entirely at leisure for composition. His reputation had advanced gradually but surely, and he now stood high, if not highest, among living masters. The prediction was beginning to be accomplished.
It was a mild evening in the latter part of September, and a large company was assembled at the charming villa of the Baron Raimond von Wetzlar, situated near Schönbrunn. They had been invited to be present at a musical contest between the celebrated Wolff and Beethoven. The part of Wolff was espoused with great enthusiasm by the baron; that of Beethoven by the Prince de Lichnowsky, and, as in all such matters, partisans swarmed on either side. The popular talk among the music-loving Viennese was, everywhere, discussion of the merits of the rival candidates for fame.
Beethoven was walking in one of the avenues of the illuminated garden, accompanied by his pupil, Ferdinand Ries. The melancholy that marked the composer's temperament seemed, more than ever, to have the ascendency over him.
"I confess to you, Ferdinand," said he, apparently in continuation of some previous conversation, "I regret my engagement with Sonnleithner."
"And yet you have written the opera?"
"I have completed it, but not to my own satisfaction. And I shall object to its being produced first at Vienna."
"Why so? The Viennese are your friends."
"For that very reason I will not appeal to their judgment; I want an impartial one. I distrust my genius for the opera."
"How can that be possible?"
"It is my intimacy with Salieri that has inclined me that way; nature did not suggest it; I can never feel at home there. Ferdinand, I am self-upbraided, and should be, were the applause of a thousand spectators sounding in my ears."
"Nay," said the student, "the artist assumes too much who judges himself."
"But I have not judged myself."
"Who, then, has dared to insinuate a doubt of your success?"
Beethoven hesitated; his impressions, his convictions, would seem superstition to his companion, and he was not prepared to encounter either raillery or ridicule. Just then the host, with a party of the guests, met them, exclaiming that they had been everywhere sought; that the company was all assembled in the saloon, and every thing ready for the exhibition.
"You are bent on making a gladiator of me, dear baron," cried the composer, "in order that I may be mangled and torn to pieces, for the popular amusement, by your favorite Wolff."
"Heaven forbid I should prejudge either combatant!" cried Von Wetzlar. "The lists are open; the prize is not to be awarded by me."
"But your good wishes—your hopes—"
"Oh! as to that, I must frankly own I prefer the good old school to your new-fangled conceits and innovations. But come—the audience waits."
Each in turn, the two rivals played a piece composed by himself, accompanied by select performers. Then each improvised a short piece. The delight of the spectators was called forth in different ways. In the production of Wolff a sustained elevation, clearness, and brilliancy recalled the glories of Mozart's school, and moved the audience to repeated bursts of admiration. In that of Beethoven there was a startling boldness, an impetuous rush of emotions, a frequency of abrupt contrasts—and withal a certain wildness and mystery—that irresistibly enthralled the feelings, while it outraged, at the same time, their sense of musical propriety. There was little applause, but the deep silence, prolonged even after the notes had ceased, told how intensely all had been interested.
The victory remained undecided. There was a clamor of eager voices among the spectators; but no one could collect the suffrages, nor determine which was the successful champion in the contest. The Prince Lichnowsky, however, stood up, and boldly claimed it for his favorite.
"Nay," interrupted Beethoven, advancing, "my dear prince, there has been no contest." He offered his hand to his opponent. "We may still esteem each other, Wolff; we are not rivals. Our style is essentially different; I yield to you the palm of excellence in the qualities that distinguish you."
"You are right, my friend," cried Wolff; "henceforth let there be no more talk of championship between us. I will hold him for my enemy who ventures to compare me with you—you so superior in the path you have chosen. It is a higher path than mine—an original one; I follow contentedly in the course marked out by others."
"But our paths lead to the same goal," replied Beethoven. "We will speed each other with good wishes; and embrace cordially when we meetthereat last."
There was an unusual solemnity in the composer's last words, and it put an end to the discussion. All responded warmly to his sentiment. But amidst the general murmur of approbation, one voice was heard that seemed strangely to startle Beethoven. His face grew pale, then flushed deeply; and the next moment he pressed his way hastily through the crowd, and seized by the arm a retreating figure.
"You shall see me in Vienna," whispered the stranger in his ear.
"Yet a word with you. You shall not escape me thus."
"Auf wiedersehen!" And shaking off the grasp, the stranger disappeared.
No one had observed his entrance; the host knew him not, and though most of the company remarked the composer's singular emotion, none could inform him whither the unbidden guest had gone. Beethoven remained abstracted during the rest of the evening.
The opera ofLeonorewas represented at Prague; it met with but indifferent success. At Vienna, however, it commanded unbounded applause. Several alterations had been made in it; the composer had written a new overture, and thefinaleof the first act; he had suppressed a duo and trio of some importance, and made other improvements and retrenchments. Not small was his triumph at the favorable decision of the Viennese public. A new turn seemed to be given to his mind; he revolved thoughts of future conquests over the same portion of the realm of art; he no longer questioned his own spirit. It was a crisis in the artist's life, and might have resulted in his choice of a different career from that in which he has won undying fame.
Beethoven sat alone in his study; there was a light knock at the door. He replied with a careless "come in," without looking up from his work. He was engaged in revising the last scenes of his opera.
The visitor walked to the table and stood there a few minutes unobserved. Probably the artist mistook him for one of his brothers; but, on looking up, he started with indescribable surprise. The unknown friend of his youth stood beside him.
"So you have kept your word," said the composer, when he had recovered from his first astonishment; "and now, I pray you, sit down, and tell me with whom I have the honor of having formed acquaintance in so remarkable a manner."
"My name is of no importance, as it may or may not prove known to you," replied the stranger. "I am your good genius, if my counsel does you good; if not, I would prefer to take an obscure place among your disappointed friends."
There was a tone of grave rebuke in what his visitor said that perplexed and annoyed the artist. It struck him that there was affectation in this assumption of mystery, and he observed coldly,
"I shall not attempt, of course, to deprive you of yourincognito; but if you assume it for the sake of effect, I would merely give you to understand that I am not prone to listen to anonymous advice."
"Oh! that you would listen," said the stranger, sorrowfully shaking his head, "to the pleadings of your better nature!"
"What do you mean?" demanded Beethoven, starting up.
"Ask your own heart. If that acquit you, I have nothing to say. I leave you, then, to the glories of your new career; to the popular applause—to your triumphs—to your remorse."
The composer was silent a few moments, and appeared agitated. At last he said, "I know not your reasons for this mystery; but whatever they may be, I will honor them. I entreat you to speak frankly. You do not approve my present undertaking?"
"Frankly, I do not. Your genius lies not this way," and he raised some of the leaves of the opera music.
"How know you that?" asked the artist, a little mortified. "You, perhaps, despise the opera?"
"I do not. I love it; I honor it; I honor the noble creations of those great masters who have excelled in it. But you, my friend, are beckoned to a higher and holier path."
"How know you that?" repeated Beethoven, and this time his voice faltered.
"Because I know you; because I know the aspirations of your genius; because I know the misgivings that pursue you in the midst of success; the self-reproach that you suffer to be stifled in the clamor of popular praise. Even now, in the midst of your triumph, you are haunted by the consciousness that you are not fulfilling the true mission of the artist."
His piercing words were winged with truth itself. Beethoven buried his face in his hands.
"Woe to you," cried the unknown, "if you suppress, till they are wholly dead, your once earnest longings after the pure and the good! Woe to you, if, charmed by the syren song of vanity, you close your ears against the cry of a despairing world! Woe to you, if you resign unfulfilled the trust God committed to your hands, to sustain the weak and faltering soul, to give it strength to bear the ills of life, strength to battle against evil, to face the last enemy!"
"You are right—you are right!" exclaimed Beethoven, clasping his hands.
"I once predicted your elevation, your world-wide fame," continued the stranger; "for I saw you sunk in despondency, and knew that your spirit must be aroused to bear up against trial. You now stand on the verge of a more dreadful abyss. You are in danger of making the gratification of your own pride, instead of the fulfilment of Heaven's will, the aim—the goal of your life's efforts."
"Oh! never," cried the artist, with you to guide me."
"We shall meet no more. I watched over you in boyhood; I have now come forth from retirement to give you my last warning; henceforth I shall observe your course in silence. And I shall not go unrewarded. I know too well the noble spirit that burns in your breast. You will—yes, you will fulfil your mission; your glory from this time shall rest on a basis of immortality. You shall be hailed the benefactor of humanity; and the spiritual joy you prepare for others shall return to you in full measure, pressed down and running over!"
The artist's kindling features showed that he responded to the enthusiasm of his visitor; but he answered not.
"And now, farewell. But remember, before you can accomplish this lofty mission, you must be baptized with a baptism of fire. The tones that are to agitate and stir up to revolution the powers of the human soul come not forth from an unruffled breast, but from the depths of a sorely wrung and tried spirit. You must steal the triple flame from heaven, and it will first consume the peace of your own being. Remember this—and droop not when the hour of trial comes! Farewell!"
The stranger crossed his hands over Beethoven's head, as if mentally invoking a blessing—folded him in his embrace, and departed. The artist made no effort to follow him. Deep and bitter were the thoughts that moved within him; and he remained leaning his head on the table, in silent revery, or walking the room with rapid and irregular steps, for many hours. At length the struggle was over; pale but composed, he took up the sheets of his opera and threw them carelessly into his desk. His next work,Christ in the Mount of Olives, attested the high and firm resolve of his mind, sustained by its self-reliance, and independent of popular applause or disapprobation. His great symphonies, which carried the fame of the composer to its highest point, displayed the same triumph of religious principle.
The Last Hours Of Beethoven.
Once more we find Beethoven, in the extreme decline of life. In one of the most obscure and narrow streets of Vienna, on the third floor of a gloomy-looking house, was now the abode of the gifted artist. For many weary and wasting years he had been the prey of a cruel malady, that defied the power of medicine for its cure, and had reduced him to a state of utter helplessness.His ears had long been closed to the music that owed its birth to his genius; it was long since he had heard the sound of a human voice. In the melancholy solitude to which he now condemned himself, he received visits from but few of his friends, and those at rare intervals. Society seemed a burden to him. Yet he persisted in his labors, and continued to compose, notwithstanding his deafness, those undying works which commanded for him the homage of Europe.
Proofs of this feeling, and of the unforgotten affection of those who knew his worth, reached him in his retreat from time to time. Now it was a medal struck at Paris, and bearing his features; now it was a new piano, the gift of some amateurs in London; at another time, some honorary title decreed him by the authorities of Vienna, or a diploma of membership of some distinguished musical society. All these moved him not, for he had quite outlived his taste for the honors of man's bestowing. What could they—what could even the certainty that he had now immortal fame—do to soften the anguish of his malady, from which he looked alone to death as a relief?
"They wrong me who call me stern or misanthropic," said he to his brother, who came in March, 1827, to pay him a visit. "God knoweth how I love my fellow-men! Has not my life been theirs? Have I not struggled with temptation, trial, and suffering from my boyhood till now, for their sakes? And now if I no longer mingle among them, is it not because my cruel infirmity unfits me for their companionship? When my fearful doom of separation from the rest of the human race is forced on my heart, do I not writhe with terrible agony, and wish that my end were come? And why, brother, have I lived, to drag out so wretched an existence? Why have I not succumbed ere now?
"I will tell you, brother. A soft and gentle hand—it was that of art—held me back from the abyss. I could not quit the world before I had produced all—had done all that I was appointed to do. Has not such been the teaching of our holy church? I have learned through her precepts that patience is the handmaid of truth; I will go with her even to the footstool of the eternal."
The servant of the house entered and gave Beethoven a large sealed package directed to himself. He opened it; it contained a magnificent collection of the works of Handel, with a few lines stating that it was a dying bequest to the composer from the Count de N——. He it was who had been the unknown counsellor of Beethoven's youth and manhood; and the arrival of this posthumous present seemed to assure the artist that his own close of life was crowned with the approval of his friend. It was as if asealhad been set on that approbation, and the friendship of two noble spirits. It seemed like the dismissal of Beethoven from further toil.
The old man stooped his face over the papers; tears fell upon them, and he breathed a silent prayer. After a few moments he arose, and said, somewhat wildly, "We have not walked to-day, Carl. Let us go forth. This confined air suffocates me."
The wind was howling violently without; the rain beat in gusts against the windows; it was a bitter night. The brother wrote on a slip of paper, and handed it to Beethoven.
"A storm? Well, I have walked in many a storm, and I like it better than the biting melancholy that preys upon me here in my solitary room. Oh! how I loved the storm once; my spirit danced with joy when the winds blew fiercely, and the tall trees rocked, and the sea lashed itself into a fury. It was all music to me. Alas! there is no music now so loud that I can hear it.
"Do you remember the last time I led the orchestra at Von ——'s? Ah! you were not there; but I heard—yes, by leaning my breast against the instrument. When some one asked me how I heard, I replied, 'J'etntends avec mes entraillies.'"
Disturbed by his nervous restlessness, the aged composer went to the window, and opened it with trembling hands. The wind blew aside his white locks, and cooled his feverish forehead.
"I have one fear," he said, turning to his brother and slightly shuddering, "that haunts me at times—the fear of poverty. Look at this meanly furnished room, that single lamp, my meagre fare; and yet all these cost money, and my little wealth is daily consumed. Think of the misery of an old man, helpless and deaf, without the means of subsistence!"
"Have you not your pension secure?"
"It depends upon the bounty of those who bestowed it; and the favor of princes is capricious. Then again, it was given on condition I remained in the territory of Austria, at the time the king of Westphalia offered me the place of chapel-master at Cassel. Alas! I cannot beat the restriction. I must travel, brother—I must leave this city."
"You-leave Vienna?" exclaimed his brother in utter amazement, looking at the feeble old man whose limbs could scarcely bear him from one street to another. Then, recollecting himself, he wrote down his question.
"Why? Because I am restless and unhappy. I have no peace, Carl! Is it not the chafing of the unchained spirit that pants to be free, and to wander through God's limitless universe? Alas! she is built up in a wall of clay, and not a sound can penetrate her gloomy dungeon."
Overcome by his feelings, the old man bowed his head on his brother's shoulder, and wept bitterly. Carl saw that the delirium that sometimes accompanied his paroxysms of illness had clouded his faculties.
The malady increased. The sufferer's eyes were glazed; he grasped his brother's hand with a tremulous pressure.
"Carl! Carl! I pardon you the evil you did me in childhood. Pray for me, brother!" cried the failing voice of the artist.
His brother supported him to the sofa and called for assistance. In an hour or two, his friend and spiritual adviser, summoned in haste, had administered the last rites of the church, and neighbors and friends had gathered around the dying man. He seemed gradually sinking into insensibility.
Suddenly he revived; a bright smile illumined his whole face; his sunken eyes sparkled.
"I shallhearin heaven!" he murmured softly, and then sang in a low but distinct voice the lines from a hymn of his own:
"Brüder! über'm Sternenzelt,Muss ein lieberVaterwohnen."
"Brüder! über'm Sternenzelt,Muss ein lieberVaterwohnen."
In the last faint tone of the music his gentle spirit passed away.
Thus died Beethoven, a true artist, a good and generous man, a devout Catholic. Simple, frank, loyal to his principles, his life was spent in working out what he conceived his duty; and though his task was wrought in privation, in solitude, and distress, though happiness was not his lot in this world, doth there not remain for him an eternal reward?
The Viennese gave him a magnificent funeral. More than thirty thousand persons attended. The first musicians of the city executed the celebrated funeral march composed by him, and placed in his heroic symphony; the most famous poets and artists were pall-bearers, or carried torches; Hummel, who had come from Weimar expressly to see him, placed a laurel crown upon his tomb. Prague, Berlin, and all the principal cities of Germany, paid honors to his memory, and solemnized with pomp the anniversary of his death. Such was the distinction heaped on the dust of him whose life had been one of suffering, and whose last years had been solitary, because he felt that his infirmities excluded him from human brotherhood.
If sin be captive, grace must find release;From curse of sin the innocent is free.Tomb prison is for sinners that decease;No tomb but throne to guiltless doth agree.Though thralls of sin lie lingering in the grave,Yet faultless corse with soul reward must have.The dazzled eye doth dimmèd light require,And dying sights repose in shrouding shades;But eagles' eyes to brightest light aspire,And living looks delight in lofty glades.Faint-wingèd fowl by ground do faintly fly:Our princely eagle mounts unto the sky.Gem to her worth, spouse to her love ascends;Prince to her throne, queen to her heavenly king;Whose court with solemn pomp on her attends,And choirs of saints with greeting notes do sing.Earth rendereth up her undeservèd prey:Heaven claims the right, and bears the prize away.Southwell.
If sin be captive, grace must find release;From curse of sin the innocent is free.Tomb prison is for sinners that decease;No tomb but throne to guiltless doth agree.Though thralls of sin lie lingering in the grave,Yet faultless corse with soul reward must have.The dazzled eye doth dimmèd light require,And dying sights repose in shrouding shades;But eagles' eyes to brightest light aspire,And living looks delight in lofty glades.Faint-wingèd fowl by ground do faintly fly:Our princely eagle mounts unto the sky.Gem to her worth, spouse to her love ascends;Prince to her throne, queen to her heavenly king;Whose court with solemn pomp on her attends,And choirs of saints with greeting notes do sing.Earth rendereth up her undeservèd prey:Heaven claims the right, and bears the prize away.Southwell.
[Footnote 196]
[Footnote 196:1. History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne. By W. E. H. Lecky. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. 2 vols. 8vo.2. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. By the same. From the London edition. New York: Appleton & Co., 1868. 2 vols. 8vo.]
Two irreconcilable systems of morals have disputed the empire of the earliest times. The one is founded on the fact that God creates man; the other on the assumption that man is himself God, or, at least, a god unto himself. The first system finds its principle in the fact stated in the first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth;" the second finds its principle in the assurance of Satan to Eve, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." The first system is that of the Biblical patriarchs, the synagogue, the Christian church, and all sound philosophy as well as of common sense—is the theological system, which places man in entire dependence on God as principle, medium, and end, and asserts as its basis in us, HUMILITY, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The other system is the gentile or pagan system, or that which prevailed with the Gentiles after their falling away from the patriarchal religion. It assumed, in its practical developments, two forms, the supremacy of the state and the supremacy of the individual; but in both was asserted the supremacy of man—or man as his own lawgiver, teacher, and master, his own beginning, middle, and end, and therefore, either individually or collectively, man's sufficiency for himself. Its principle or basis, then, is PRIDE.
Mr. Lecky adopts, as we have shown in our former article, the pagan, or, more properly, the satanic system of morals, at least as to its principle, though in some few particulars he gives the superiority to Christian morals, particulars in which Christians advanced further than had advanced the best pagan school before the conversion of Rome, but in the same direction, on the same principle, and from the same starting-point. He nowhere accepts the Christian or theological principle, and rejects everywhere, with scorn, Christian asceticism, which, according to him, is based on a false principle—that of appeasing the anger of a malevolent God. He accepts Christianity only so far as reducible to the pagan principle.
The only points in which Christian morals—for Christian dogmas, in his view, have no relation to morals, and are not to be counted—are a progress on pagan morals, are the assertion of the brotherhood of the race and the recognition of the emotional side of human nature. But even these two points, as he understands them, are not peculiar to Christianity. He shows that some of the later Stoics, at least, asserted the brotherhood of the race, or that nothing human is foreign to any one who is a man—that all good offices are due to all men; and whoever has studied Plato at all, knows that Platonism attached at least as much importance, and gave as large a scope to our emotional nature, as does Christianity. Christian morals have, then, really nothing peculiar, and are, in principle, no advance on paganism. The most that can be said is that Christianity gave to the brotherhood of the race more prominence than did paganism, and transformed the Platonic love, which was the love of the beautiful, into the love of humanity.This being all, we may well ask, How was it that Christianity was able to gain the victory over the pagan philosophers, and to convert the city of Rome and the Roman empire?
Mr. Lecky adopts the modern doctrine of progress, and he endeavors to prove from the historical analysis of the several pagan schools of moral philosophy, that the pagan world was gradually approaching the Christian ideal, and that when Christianity appeared at Rome it had all but attained it, so that the change was but slight, and, there being a favorable conjuncture of external circumstances, the change was easily effected. The philosophers of the empire had advanced from primitive fetichism to a pure and sublime monotheism; the mingling of men of all nations and all religions in Rome, consequent on the extension of the empire over the whole civilized world, had liberalized the views, weakened the narrow exclusiveness of former times, and gone far towards the obliteration of the distinction of nations, castes, and classes, and thus had, in a measure, prepared the world for the reception of a universal religion, based on the doctrine of the fraternity of the race and love of humanity.
All this would be very well, if it were true; but it happens to be mainly false. The fact, as well as the idea of progress, in the moral order, is wholly foreign to the pagan world. No pagan nation ever exhibits the least sign of progress in the moral order, either under the relation of doctrine or that of practice. The history of every pagan people is the history of an almost continuous moral deterioration. The purest and best period, under a moral point of view, in the history of the Roman republic, was its earliest, and nothing can exceed the corruption of its morals and manners at its close. We may make the same remark of every non-Catholic nation in modern times. There is a far lower standard of morals reached or aimed at in Protestant nations to-day than was common at the epoch of the Reformation; and the moral corruption of our own country has increased in a greater ratio than have our wealth and numbers. We are hardly the same people that we were even thirty years ago; and the worst of it is, that the pagan system, whether under the ancient Greco-Roman form or under the modern Protestant form, has no recuperative energy, and the nation abandoned to it has no power of self-renovation. Pagan nations may advance, and no doubt, at times, have advanced, in the industrial order, in the mechanic arts, and in the fine arts, but in the moral, intellectual, and spiritual order, never.
Mr. Lecky confines his history almost entirely to the moral doctrines of the philosophers; but even in these he shows no moral melioration in the later from the earlier, no progress towards Christian morals. In relation to specific duties of man to man, and of the citizen to the state, the Christian has, indeed, little fault to find with theDe Officiisof Cicero; but we find even in him no approach to the Christian basis of morals. The Greeks never have any conception of either law or good, in the Christian sense. The[Greek text]was only a rule or principle of harmony; it had its reason in the[Greek text], or the beautiful, and could not bind the conscience. The Latins placed the end, or the reason and motive of the moral law, in thehonestum, the proper, the decent, or decorous. The highest moral act wasvirtus, manliness, and consisted in bravery or courage.The rule was, to be manly; the motive, self-respect. One must not be mean or cowardly, because it was unmanly, and would destroy one's self-respect. We have here pride, not humility; not the slightest approach to the Christian principle of morals, either to the rule or the motive of virtue as understood by the Christian church.
Yet Mr. Lecky tells us the moral doctrines of the philosophers were much superior to the practice of the people. He admits the people were far below the philosophers, and were very corrupt; but we see no evidence that he has any adequate conception of how corrupt they were. What the people were we can learn from the satirists, from the historians, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, especially from theDe Civitate Deiof St. Augustine, and the writings of the early Greek and Latin fathers. Our author acknowledges not only that the philosophers were superior to the people, but also that they were impotent to effect their moral elevation or any moral amelioration of their condition. Nothing more true. How, then, if Christianity was based on the pagan principle of morals, was in the same order with paganism, and differed from it only in certain details, or, as the schoolmen say, certain accidents—how explain the amelioration of morals and manners which uniformly followed whenever and wherever it was received?
If, as the author holds, Christianity was really only a development of the more advanced thought of the pagan empire, why did it not begin with the philosophers, the representatives of that advanced thought? Yet nothing is more certain than that it did not begin with them. The philosophers were the first to resist it, and the last to hold out against it. It spread at first among the people, chiefly among the slaves—that is, among those who knew the least of philosophy, who were least under the influence of the philosophers, and whose morals it is confessed the philosophers did not and could not elevate. This of itself refutes the pretence that Christianity was an offshoot of heathen philosophy. If it had been, and its power lay in the fact that the empire in its progress was prepared for it, its first converts should have been from the ranks of the more advanced classes. But the reverse was the fact. "You see your calling, brethren," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong; and the mean things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that he might destroy the things that are; that no flesh should glory in his sight." [Footnote 197] So said the great teacher of the Gentiles, as if anticipating the objection of modern rationalists. Evidently, then, the pretended preparation of the Roman empire for Christianity must count for nothing, for Christianity gained its first establishments among those whom that preparation, even if it had been made, had not reached.
[Footnote 197: Cor. i. 26.]
We cannot follow step by step the author in the special chapter which he devotes to the conversion of Rome, and the triumph of Christianity in the empire. We have already indicated the grounds on which he explains the marvellous fact.He denies all agency of miracles, will recognize no supernatural aid, and aims to explain it on natural principles or by natural causes alone. Thus far he has certainly failed; but let us try him on his own ground. We grant that the breaking down of the hundred nationalities and fusing so many distinct tribes and races into one people, under one supreme political authority, did in some sense prepare the way for the introduction of a universal religion. But it must be remembered that the fusion was not complete, and that the work of amalgamating and Romanizing the several nations placed by conquest under the authority of Rome was only commenced, when Christianity was first preached in the capital of the empire. Each conquered nation retained as yet its own distinctive religion, and to a great extent its own distinctive civilization. Gaul, Spain, and the East were Roman provinces, but not thoroughly Romanized, and it was not till after Christianity had gained a footing in the empire that provincials out of Italy were admitted to the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship. The law recognized the religion of the state, but it tolerated for every conquered nation its own national religion. There was as yet nothing in the political, social, or religious order of the empire to suggest a universal religion, or that opened the way for the introduction of a catholic as distinguished from a national religion. All the religions recognized and tolerated were national religions. Christianity was always catholic, for all nations, not for any particular nation alone. If, then, at a subsequent period, the boasted universality of the empire favored the diffusion of Christianity, it did not favor its introduction in the beginning. In all other respects there was, as we read history, no evangelical preparation in Rome or the Roman empire. The progress, if progress it may be called, of the Gentiles, had been away from the primitive religion reasserted by Christianity, and in a direction from, not towards, the great doctrines and principles of the Gospel. What of primitive tradition they had retained had become so corrupted, perverted, or travestied as to be hardly recognizable. They had changed, even with the philosophers, the true basis of morals, and the corrupt morals of the people were only the practical development of the principles adopted by even the best of the Gentile philosophers, as rationalism is only the development of principles adopted by the reformers, who detested it, and asserted exclusive supernaturalism. Even the monotheism of some pagan philosophers was not the Christian doctrine of one God, any more than simple theism—the softened name for deism—or even theophilanthropy is Christianity. The Christian God is not only one, but he is the creator of the world, of all things visible and invisible, the moral governor of the universe, and the remunerator of all who seek him. The God of Plato, or of any of the other philosophers, is no creative God, and the immortality of the soul that Plato and his master Socrates defended had hardly any analogy with the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. The Stoics, whom the author places in the front rank of pagan moralists, did not regard God as the creator of the world, and those among them who held that the soul survives the body, believed not in the resurrection of the flesh, nor in future rewards and punishments. Their motive to virtue was their own self-respect, and their study was to prove themselves independent of the flesh and its seductions, indifferent to pleasure or pain, serene and unalterable, through self-discipline, whatever the vicissitudes of life.The philosophers adopted the morality of pride, and aimed to live and act not as men dependent on their Creator, but as independent gods, while the people were sunk in the grossest ignorance and moral corruption, and subject to the most base and abominable superstitions. Such was the pagan empire when Christianity was first preached at Rome, only much worse than we venture to depict it.
Now, to this Roman world, rotten to the core, the Christian preachers proclaimed a religion which arraigned its corruption, which contradicted its cherished ideas on every point, and substituted meekness for cruelty, and humility for pride, as the principle of morals. They had against them all the old superstitions and national religions of the empire, the religion of the state, associated with all its victories, supported by the whole power of the government, and by the habits, usages, traditions, and the whole political, military, social, and religious life of the Roman people. They could not move without stepping on something held sacred, or open their mouths without offending some god or some religious usage; for the national religion was interwoven with the simplest and most ordinary usages of private and social life. If a pagan sneezed, no Christian could be civil enough to say, "Jupiter help you," for that would recognize a false god. Yet the Christian missionaries did succeed in converting Rome and making it the capital of the Christian world, as it was, when they entered it, the capital of the heathen world. You tell me this mighty change was effected, circumstances favoring, by natural and human means!Credat Judaeus Appelles, non ego.
The cause of the success, after the preparation named, which turns out to have been no preparation at all, were, according to the author, principally the zeal, the enthusiasm, and the intolerance or exclusiveness of the Christians, the doctrines of the brotherhood of the race and of a future life, and their appeals to the emotional side of human nature. He does not think the conversion of Rome any thing remarkable. The philosophers had failed to regenerate society in the moral order, the old religions had lost their hold on men's convictions, the old superstitions were losing their terrors, and men felt and sighed for something better than any thing they had. In fact, minds were unsettled, and were ready for something new. This description, not very applicable to Rome at the period in question, is not inapplicable to the Protestant world at the present time. Protestants are no longer satisfied with the results, either dogmatic or moral, of the Reformation, and the thinking portion of them wish for something better than any thing they have; yet not, therefore, can we conclude that they can easily, or by any purely human means, be converted to the Catholic Church; for they have—with individual exceptions, indeed—not lost their confidence in the underlying principle of the Reformation, or opened their minds or hearts to the acknowledgment of the principle, either of Catholic dogma or of Catholic morals. It is not so much that they do not know or misconceive that principle, but they have a deep-rooted repugnance to it, detest it, abhor it, and cannot even hear it named with patience. So was it with the pagan Romans. The whole pagan world was based on a principle which the Christian preacher could not speak without contradicting.The Christian ideal was not only above, but antagonistic to the pagan ideal, and, consequently, the more zealous the Christian missionary, the more offensive he would prove himself. His intolerance or exclusiveness might help him whose faith was strong, yet little heeded in practice; but when faith itself was not only wanting but indignantly rejected, it could only excite anger or derision.
The apostle had nopoint d'appuiin the pagan traditions, and it was only rarely that he could find any thing in heathen authors, poets, or philosophers that he could press into his service. The pagan, no doubt, had natural reason, but it was so darkened by spiritual ignorance, so warped by superstition, and so abnormally developed by false principles, that it was almost impossible to find in it anything on which an argument for the truth could be based. The Gospel was not in the pagan order of thought, and the Christian apologists had to support it by appealing to a line of tradition which the Gentiles had not, or had only as corrupted, perverted, or travestied. The only traditions they could appeal to were those of the Hebrews, and they found it necessary, in some sort, to convert the pagans to Judaism, before they could convince them of the truth of the Gospel. This was any thing but easy to be done; for the Gentiles despised the Jews and their traditions, and the Jews themselves were the most bitter enemies of the Christians, had crucified the founder of Christianity, and rejected the Christian interpretation of their Scriptures.
The doctrine of the brotherhood of the race taught by the church was something more than was taught by the philosophers, in fact, another doctrine; and, though it had something consoling to the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, yet these are precisely the classes with whom old traditions linger the longest, and prejudices are the most inveterate and hardest to be overcome. They are the classes the most opposed to innovations, in the moral or spiritual order. The Protestant reformers proved this, and the peasantry were the last to accept the new gospel they preached, and rarely accepted it at all but through the influence or compulsion of their princes and nobles. We see, also, now, in Protestant countries, that, the peasantry having become Protestant, are far more difficult to convert than persons by birth or education belonging to the upper classes. Yet, it was precisely among the lower classes, or rather the slave class, that the Christian missionary had his greatest success; though the emancipation and equality he preached were spiritual only, not physical or social.
The doctrine of future life the church taught was coupled with two other doctrines hard for pagans to receive. The mere continuance of the spirit after the death of the body was, in some form, no doubt, held by the whole pagan world, a few sceptics excepted; but the resurrection of the body, or that what had once ceased to live would live again, was a thing wholly foreign to the pagan mind. Plato never, to my recollection, once hints it, and could not with his general principles. He held the union of the soul with the body to be a fall, a degradation from its previous state, the loss of its liberty; regarded the body as the enemy of the soul, as its dungeon, and looked upon death as its liberation, as a restoration to its original freedom and joy in the bosom of the divinity. The pagans had, as far as I can discover, no belief in future rewards and punishment in the Christian sense.They believed in malevolent gods, who, if they failed to appease their wrath before dying, would torture them after death in Tartarus; but the idea that a God of love would doom the wicked to hell, as a punishment for their moral offences or sins, was as hard for them to believe as it is for Mr. Lecky himself. Yet Christianity taught it, and brought the whole empire to believe it. Christianity, while it delivered the pagans from the false terrors of superstition, replaced them by what to the pagan mind seemed even a still greater terror.
In what the author says of appeals to the emotional side of our nature, he shows that he has studied paganism with more care and less prejudice than he has Christianity. The emotions, as such, have for the Christian no moral or religious value. The love the Gospel requires is not an emotional love, and Christian morals have little to do with the moral sentiment which Adam Smith asserted, or the benevolence which Hucheson held to be the principle of morality. There is no approach to the Christian principle in the fine-spun sentiment of Bernardine Saint-Pierre, Madame de Staël, or Chateaubriand. Sentimentalism, in any form, is wholly foreign to Christian morals and to Christian piety, and neither has probably a worse or a more dangerous enemy than the sentimentalism so rife in modern society, and which finds its way even into the writings of some Catholics. The sentiment of benevolence may be amobile, but it is never themotiveof Christian virtue. No doubt, one of the great causes of the success of Christianity was the inexhaustible charity of the early Christians, their love for one another, their respect for and tenderness to the poor, the forsaken, the oppressed, the afflicted, the suffering. But that charity had not its origin in our emotional nature, and though it may be attended by sentiment, is itself by no means a sentiment; for its reason and motive was the love of God, especially of God who had assumed our nature, and made himself man for man's sake, and died on the cross for man's redemption. The Christian sees God in every fellow-man who needs his assistance, or to whose wants he can minister. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The Christian finds his Lord, the Beloved of his soul, wherever he finds one for whom Christ died, to whom he can be of service.
This charity, this love, may be mimicked by the sentiment of benevolence, but it does not grow out of it, is not that sentiment developed or intensified; it depends on the great central mystery of Christianity, that of "the Word made flesh," and can never be found where faith in the Incarnation is wanting, and faith is, always and everywhere, an intellectual act, not a sentimental affection. If it were a natural sentiment or emotion, why was it to be found among Christians alone? The heathen had all of nature that Christians have; they even recognized the natural brotherhood of the race, as does the author; how happens it, then, if Christianity is only a development of heathenism, and Christian charity is only a natural sentiment, that you find no trace of it in the pagan world? There is no effect without a cause, and there must have been something operating with Christians that was not to be found in paganism, and which is not included even in nature.
The pagans, like modern Protestants, worshipped success, and regarded success as a mark of the approbation of the gods. Misfortune, ill-luck, failure was a proof of the divine displeasure. Cromwell and his Roundheads interpreted uniformly their victories over the royalists as an indisputable proof of the divine approval of their course.It never occurred to them that the Almighty might be using them to chastise the royalists for their abuse of his favors, or to execute vengeance on a party that had offended him, and that, when he had accomplished his purpose with them, he would break them as a potter's vessel, and cast them away. The heathen looked upon the poor, the needy, the enslaved, the infirm, the helpless, and the suffering, as under the malediction of the gods, and refused to offer them any aid or consolation. They left the poor to struggle and starve. They did not do even so much for them as to shut them up in prisons called poor-houses. They looked with haughty contempt on the poor and needy, and if they sometimes threw them a crust, it was from pride, not charity, without the least kindly sympathies with them. As with modern non-Catholics, poverty, with them, was regarded and treated as a misfortune or as a crime.
Yet the Christians looked upon the poor with love and respect. Poverty, in their eyes, was no misfortune, no crime, but really a blessing, as bringing them nearer to God, and giving to the Christian more abundant in this world's goods an opportunity to do good, and lay up treasures in heaven. The Christian counts what he gives to the poor and needy as so much treasure saved, and placed beyond the reach of thieves and robbers, or any of the vicissitudes of fortune. Whence this difference between the pagan and the Christian, we might say, between the Catholic and non-Catholic? It cannot come from the simple recognition of the natural brotherhood of the race, for the natural ties of race and of kindred fail to call forth a love so strong, so enduring, so self-forgetting as Christian charity. Indeed, Christian charity is decidedly above the forces of nature. The brotherhood that gives rise to it is not the brotherhood in Adam, but the closer brotherhood in Christ; not in generation, but in regeneration. Give, then, as large a part as you will to Christian charity, in the conversion of Rome, you still have offered no proof that the conversion was effected by natural causes, for that charity itself is supernatural, and not in the order of natural causes.
Mr. Lecky wholly fails to adduce any natural causes adequate to the explanation of the conversion of Rome and the triumph of Christianity over paganism. He cannot do it, for this one sufficient reason, that paganism was impotent to reform itself, and yet it had all the natural causes working for it that Christianity had. The Christians had no more of nature than had the pagans, while all the natural advantages, power, wealth, institutions, human learning and science, the laws, habits, customs, and usages of the entire nation, or aggregation of nations, were against them. How, then, not only do by nature what the same nature in paganism could not do, or by nature alone triumph over nature clothed with so many advantages, and presenting so many obstacles? Why should nature be stronger, and so much stronger, in Christians than in Pagans, that a few illiterate fishermen from the lake of Genesareth, belonging by race to the despised nation of the Jews, could change not only the belief, but the moral life of the whole Roman people? Clearly, the Christians could not succeed without a power which paganism had not, and therefore not without a power that nature does not and cannot furnish.