The Deity does not offer himself to sensation, observation, or experience; hence the sensists and perceptionists see in him but a hypothesis, and reject all theology and all metaphysics. They abuse the method of observation by applying it to what is not observable. No object of experiment can be God; nor can any perception reach him in this world, since he can only manifest himself to us ideally; that is to say, by the reflection of thought on itself, under the pure form of an idea; and an idea necessarily supposes an existence. Reason must come to God through the medium of the idea of God: whence an illustrious writer defending religious philosophy adopted the appropriate title of "IDEA OF GOD."
Nowadays, when the series of generations are brought to laugh and dance at the funeral of God and the evaporation of Christ, it is not superfluous to accumulate psychological and social proofs on the existence of a first necessary Cause, on its reality, and on its divine life reverberating in the great labor of creation; on those laws of phenomena which others call the ideas of nature, and we call the Creator. The word must be personified, and substantiated to express something real.
Among these laws I have always found that those regarding the origin of language had great influence on me and are of great help against the atheists. The more we study, the more we are convinced that the languages have a common source. How did man ever discover that ideas could be represented with sounds, or real thought by the medium of words, and then invent symbolical, phonetic, or alphabetic signs to represent both ideas and sounds? Or is the word only the means of expressing our thoughts, or the essential form of them, the indispensable condition necessary to our having them? Can sensation draw anything out of a word but a material sound? How is it that all the human races—Iranic, Semitic, Gallic, or Black—speak, and only men speak? How is it that although there is a common element in all languages, yet such diversity exists among certain groups? The more we study this indispensable complement of creation, this condition of our intellectual development, the more we are led to confess that there are mysteries in the human word as well as in the divine word; and all this reveals the name of God.
When we have proved the reality, we must investigate the essence of God. And here we meet the mystery of unity and trinity, which, considered in itself, explains being; considered outside of itself, explains beings. Because, if we repudiate a supernatural God, we must substitute another in his place—a being of reason and abstraction, or a material god, or a god of pleasure. But these insane hypotheses must be made to explain the existence of the universe. They are either the eternity of matter or emanatism. Life put into matter we know not how; born, we know not how, we have spontaneous productions, or transformations of species, as Lamarck and Darwin maintain; but the learned show that these theories are impossible both as to soul and body. And then no one of these naturalists explains the end of man, nor his most precious gift—liberty.
The God of the Bible alone contains the true explanation of man and the universe. He who, spontaneously putting his omnipotence into activity without material elements, drew the world out of nothing; and this because he is good, and wills the good and the beautiful.
IV.
The most prodigious part of creation is man, destined for eternity; nor could there be in him a tendency without a scope, an end without a means, nor a merit without a recompense. The world is for his use, but he must not forget that eternity is his destiny. For the purpose of proving the material origin of the human intellect philosophers reject all who would give to life a distinct principle, isolated from organism, supposing that life, at least in its rudimental form, could spring from the bosom of organic liquids. Virchow praised the little cell, the only one of the anatomic elements which Milne-Edwards called organical, and which is a nucleus of various forms, surrounded by a protoplasm of organic matter without figure. From the cell are formed the embryos, which gradually become perfect and form animals, until the ape changes into man.
Finally, on interrogating life in its unity, in its harmonies, in its cause and end, in its full and substantial reality, we find that it does not contain in itself a causal unity which is sufficient for it; and the great modern physiologist Bernard says: "The problem of physiology does not consist in pointing out the physico-chemical laws which living beings have in common with inorganic bodies, but in discovering the vital laws which characterize them." By studying mental diseases, and perceiving that atrophy of a certain part of the brain will cause the loss of certain faculties, and that the injection of oxygenated blood will reawaken them, and with similar experiments, it has been attempted to prove the materiality of cogitation, and to show that the soul is a chimera. These are irrational materialistic interpretations of physiological facts, for the cause of the fact is confounded with the conditions of the phenomenon.
This same Virchow, who seemed to have discovered such a powerful argument against spiritualism in his theory of the cell, cannot explain with physics and optics alone the phenomena of vision; becomes confounded before the mystery of life, and declares: "Nothing is like life, but life itself. Nature is twofold. Organic nature is entirely distinct from inorganic. Although formed by the same substance, from atoms of the same nature, organic matter offers us a continued series of phenomena which differ in their nature from the inorganic world. Not because the latter represents dead nature—for nothing dies but what has lived; even inorganic nature possesses its activity, its eternally active labor—but this activity is not life except in a figurative sense." [Footnote 70]
[Footnote 70: "The Atom and the Individual," a discourse pronounced at Berlin in 1866.]
We do not think it superfluous to oppose these reflections, added to those of Alimonda, to the negations of the materialists, which have weight only because they have been often repeated; and we conclude with Alimonda that man is an inexplicable mystery if we do not accept the other mystery of original sin. Hence the conflict between reason and the passions; the inclination to evil and bloodthirstiness; the necessity of wars and prisons.If we admit the intrinsic goodness of man, there is no guilt and there can be no chastisement; society can institute no tribunals, but only hospitals to cure diseases. This has been said in our age; and common sense rejected it. The primitive fall and successive activity show how man progresses indefinitely, according to nature, not according to socialistic utopias. This explains the inequality of the faculties and of labor, and hence of goods, of property, which otherwise would be a theft.
The whole of ancient society attests this degradation; but a Redeemer was promised; he was confusedly expected by all nations; he was clearly predicted by the prophets of Judea, in order to console mankind, that they might believe in him to come, hope in him, and love him by anticipation.
These promises, and the figures which personified them, are deposited in the Bible; that divine history which clears up the origin of humanity and the changes of civilization, and whose witnesses, though apparently contradictory, only make the thesis and the antithesis of a great synthesis, interpreted by an infallible authority. The unity of the human species asserted in that book has been proved by the sciences, even by paleontology, which some pretended to arm against the biblical affirmations; and while the frivolity of the last century thought it had mockingly dissipated truth, we have scientific progress proving the Bible to be wonderfully in accord with the least expected discoveries.
The continual intervention of Providence in the Bible is repugnant to human pride, which would be the centre and creator of all events; yet this providence it is which satisfies, at the same time, the wants of the human heart, gives a legal constitution to society, a sanction to human acts, without which we should only have cutthroats and the gallows.
V.
Thus far we nave presented man in relation to God; let us consider man in relation to Jesus Christ, a theme by far more important, as we can say with the psalmist: "Convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum ejus." [Footnote 71] In this most corrupt world reparation was expected from humanity, but who could fulfil it but the incarnate Word? Greater than all the great ones of the earth, he established his providential kingdom, making it the social centre of men and centuries.
[Footnote 71: "They assembled together against the Lord and his Christ."]
Our first parents aspired to become gods, and their pride was transmitted to their posterity; but behold how God really unites himself to man!
Men felt a secret want of expiation, expressed by their sacrifices and mortifications; and Christ satisfied their desire by uniting in himself the two natures, and by fecundating with holy merits the sufferings of individuals and of nations.
Yet men wish to make a myth of him! And after the encyclopaedists have derided him, now they hypocritically try to crown him with human greatness and beauty, to rob him of his divinity! But how can you explain his influence on the most cultivated nations, lasting so many centuries, and through an incessant war from Simon Magus to Renan? Is not his immeasurable influence over the human race divine? With the light of his doctrine he created the life of intelligence and of conscience. His is no hidden and recondite word, but common and popular; not methodized into a philosophical system, equipped with proofs; not even robed in eloquence.His scope is not to invent, but toreveal—that is, lift the veil which covered primitive truths, and excite to good. He is virtue personified, the model of men, with grace through which charity triumphs over egotism—grace, the most profound and most beautiful word in the dictionary of religion. But here human pride rebels, because Christ taught mysteries.
What, then, are mysteries but our ignorance, and the insufficiency of our reason? Thus the vulgar believe that the sun goes around the earth because the senses show it; thus a silly man would deny the existence of the imponderable fluids because he does not see or touch them, although he feels their effects. Three temples rise in the world: of nature, of reason, and of religion; and in all there are mysteries. There are mysteries in space, atoms, divisibility, forces, life, thought, the cell, sensation, idea, limits: in everything under the form which passes away there is a mystery which remains. If a miracle is humanly conceivable, it ought to be divinely possible.
If you exclude the idea of the supernatural, nothing is left but nature, with the character of necessity which reason denies it; with a series of monstrous and gratuitous affirmations which constitute pantheism.
But some will say, "Yes, there is a God distinct from nature; he is self-conscious and free, but he is immutable: while the supernatural represents him as changeable and arbitrary."
Thus reason those who, led by anthropomorphic illusions, subject the action of God to succession. The acts of man, who is ephemeral and localized, are necessarily successive; and because the results of divine activity are manifested to our eyes in time and space, they seem new and wonderful. But God is not limited by time or space; his act is one, eternal, immanent like his will; everything which proceeds from that act is the act itself, one, eternal, and immanent, and thus the differences between the natural and supernatural disappear.
To defend the idea of the supernatural is not, therefore, to attack science or smother intelligence; but to defend the idea of God, who is the hinge of all science. This, indeed, banishes the supernatural from its domain; but if every reality is not reducible to nature, it is impossible not to admit a higher principle of the laws which nature reveals, and of which nature is not the necessary principle. Christianity pronounces nothing on the science of nature, except that the supernatural is above natural laws; that there is a God, as St. Augustine says, "pater luminum et evigilationis nostrae." [Footnote 72] Is this a mystery? But is not everything which exists an incomprehensible manifestation of the supernatural? Is not the free-will of man an incomprehensible mystery?
[Footnote 72: "The Father of lights and of our awaking."]
But revealed mysteries, much more than dry theorems which restrain reason, are fruitful in meditation, humility, gratitude, and aspiration after a life of bliss: they are light to the intellect, motives for virtue; all have a comprehensible side; they have their wherefore; and this is sufficient for the happiness of individuals, and works efficaciously on the whole of society.
Miracles, which are extraordinary to man, are natural to God, and he uses them to manifest Christ the Redeemer. But the diminishers of great things wish to make Christ a mountebank, or a magician working by natural means like the mesmerizers, in whom they believe rather than in Christ. They deny Christ and offer incense to Hegel, who said that "the universeis a simple negation." Every religious, moral, or political doctrine must stand the test of actualization: the idea must be realized; the thought must become life; and the result is the criterion. But the greatest miracle of Jesus Christ was the establishment of the new kingdom of grace on the ruins of the kingdom of the world; to substitute the eternal edifice of the church for corrupt institutions; instead of proud science, to put the holy word of the apostolate; charity, generous even to martyrdom, in the place of brute force. Martyrdom! this is another word which shocks the free-thinkers who retail cheap heroes, and deafen us with hymns to the martyrs of fatherland, ennobling with this title assassins on the scaffold. Christ is a martyr for humanity; he is a God of order, wisdom, and charity.
But here they stop us again, and pretend that he aimed at an impossible perfection, and was a utopist; and as such, they reject him, although they are admirers of such dreamers as More or Giordano Bruno, Fourier or Saint-Simon.
But is it true that Christ's doctrine cannot be realized? There are precepts and counsels in it; and you, by confounding them, condemn Christianity, as if it commanded all to observe what is counselled only to a few exceptional existences called by God. To observe the counsels special virtue is required, and those monks who deserved so well even of society practised them. Rather than deride and destroy them, they diffused the evangelical counsels which they practised in their own lives—obedience, abstinence, purity; those virtues which would give thatfacilitas imperii—that self-control—which is so hard to keep; that virtue which is the order of love. Those monks peopled the Thebaid, lived in the poverty of St. Francis, in the austerities of St. Bruno, awaited death in caverns, and ate only herbs; others fled the world to pray for it, but the church never gave them pharisaical faces; life, soul, talents, imagination characterized them; the happiness of their existence was increased by the blessing of the church; feasts, music, and sacred rites abounded; social, domestic, and scientific life were nourished by Christian virtue and education; patriotism had its hymns if fortunate; audits, litanies, if unsuccessful; art and poetry became incorporated with worship; admiration for natural beauties was aroused; activity and prudence stimulated and eulogized, progress approved, and civilization encouraged.
Yet the rationalists would give the glory of this civil society of which we boast to man alone, while it is in fact the work of the supernatural gospel. In this we find light, virtue, harmony; that is, power, subjection, and agreement. The gospel establishes a respected and vigilant authority in face of a policy which traffics in opinions. Kings are bound by the same morality as the least subjects. Rulers swear to observe the law of God; that is, never to become tyrants. Power is exercised after the example set by God; and the head of the state is the first-born among brothers. Subjects are children who obey notpropter timorem sed propter conscientiam—not from fear but for conscience' sake; an obedience to God rather than to men. Christianity asserted the true doctrine of equal rights with inequality of rank when it proclaimed that we are all brothers; it broke the chains of the slave; abolished hereditary enmity between nations, and all superiority save that of merit.
To deny that these advantages are derived from Christianity would now be stupidity; but they say that while it formerly worked wonders, there is no longer any necessity for religion, the priest, or Christ: morality has become acclimated; necessary truths are acquired; and so man can progress with laws, tradition, and social organization.
Those who speak in this way do not comprehend the connection between metaphysical and practical truth; do not realize that the most common maxims which we drink in with our mother's milk would become gradually obscured by separation from their source; as the necessary sanction would be wanting to them.
Between the merely honest man and the Christian, there will always be the difference which exists between the bird that can only hop and the full-fledged bird which flies. Let us suppose, even, that the learned of the future will govern themselves better than the philosophers of antiquity; still it is only religion that can say to the multitude, "Hope always and never obtain." If there is no heaven, if gold and pleasure are the only aspirations, why not enjoy them? Let a revolutionist arise and promise them, he will obtain a hearing much more readily than the philosopher who can promise only a doubtful eternity. But then what will become of society? If you preach resignation to the poor without giving them hope, will not hope arise without resignation?
It was the gospel which humanly unfettered the child, woman, and the poor. By it alone were exposed children and orphans gathered together; it founded hospitals and pious retreats for every disease of the body and mind. Vincent of Paul, Girolamo Miani, Calasanctius, and a host of others never ceased in the church; and even the world blesses their name, blesses their work, that of the holy infancy, and that for the education of Chinese children, and for the redemption of captives among the Moors. Entire religious congregations have been founded to save children from death, from penury, and from ignorance; so that at the destruction of these religious orders, we ought to say, as Christ to the mothers of Jerusalem, "Weep not over me, but over your children." We should weep the more when we see their intellects and souls entrusted to state officials who fashion them to suit their masters.
And woman? From what base degradation and turpitude has she been raised by Christianity. But the state law wills that she should be thus addressed: "Thou hast been brought up to purity; to avoid every impure act and look; but henceforth I, the mayor, command thee to give thyself up to the man whom I, the mayor, designate as thy husband." On the other hand, the socialists wish to take her out of the domestic sanctuary to take part in business, in government, in war; she must become a woman of letters, a politician and a heroine. Ah! the heroism of woman consists in fulfilling her domestic duties, in the apostleship of doing good; let her have the heroism of faith and virtue, and she will save the world, as she helped so much to do in the person of Mary over eighteen centuries ago.
"Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God," said Christ; and his chief followers took care of the poor, instructed them, supplied their wants with alms; made them noble with blessings; and, since it is necessary to suffer, the poor were taught to bear their ills with the hope of immortal recompense.But the strong-minded of this age fiercely scream about the rights of the poor; and yet rob spontaneous and virtuous charity of the means of supplying the wants of the poor. The necessity of official aid is created, and thus pride and rancor against the rich are excited, while suffering remains without consolation.
VI.
All these points have their objections and suitable answer well developed in our orator's work. Alimonda examines man in relation to the church and shows how human reason, while it strives to rebel against her, is obliged to bless her, even by the mouth of her most determined enemies, as happened to the prophet Balaam. This church was not established by the power of man or by progressive development; she was born beautiful and perfect, the same in the upper room at Jerusalem as in the Council of Trent; she underwent every species of hostility, violent and puerile, of kings and people, of rogues and editors, and yet always remained whole and alive.
While human institutions regulate man, the church aspires to the government of souls. Although she aimed at so much, she was listened to; she defined what good meant; restricted authority; gave the law of work; and was believed. Even the ancient churches by their very nature were spiritual societies; but they exercised no influence on consciences, little on men's conduct, less even than the schools of philosophy. Later heresies and schisms could not spread or establish themselves, except by force and war, or by allowing every one to be the judge of his own conscience and reason; that is, heresy did not pretend to direct souls. Our church has a perfect and unchangeable order for the government of conscience, an order which does not vary according to opinion. The latter will say with Thierry that the conquered are always right; with Cousin and Thiers, that it is the conqueror who is is always right. Which is one to believe? It will be said that the voice of the people is the voice of God, and that common sense ought to be the rule of our actions. Well, suppose it is; how can we interrogate it? Where is its decision? Where its organ? They will tell us to-day it is "universal suffrage." We shall not dwell on such nonsense: we merely inquire, must I ask its advice in reference to my private actions? I need for these safe, well expressed, and efficacious principles.
The church answers every question; and her answers are always the most generous, the most human, and the most kind to the weak. She has a mixed government—monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic; her aristocrats are poor fishermen. By this she is the type of modern governments which have the representative system. Rationalism wants to substitute revolution for this; takes away from the people the good conditions peculiar to them, acquired by them, legitimate and independent of governments; and makes atheism the lever with which to subvert politics. The apostles of rationalism adore liberty, provided they are her priests and sacrificators; create a new author of civilization—the rabble; oblige kings to divide their authority with the mob; the mob upsets its creatures; kings run away; good men hide; the owners of property, menaced by the dogma of plebeian avidity, oppose the bayonet to the knife of the rabble until these are overcome.
Precisely because the temporal mission of the church is great as the mistress and legislator of nations, precisely because she is authority, the impotent violently, and the powerful foolishly, attack her at a time when men want rights without duties, the husband as well as the citizen, the laborer as well as the legislator.
The church alone has saints; she is universal, perpetual, irreformable: characters which manifest her divine origin and divine actuation.
This divinity of the church is found in Catholicism, not in Protestantism. Catholicity alone has positive unity of faith, love, civilization; that is, light, sacrifice, virtue, which Protestantism lacks. All history and statistics, not systematically false or officially disfigured, which looks further than merely a few years, show that civilization does not progress so well with Protestantism. The Catholic Church had conquered the world and formed modern civilization before the unity of faith and charity was broken; and she would have done more had there been no rupture; and had not the religious wars impeded her power, menaced Europe with a new barbarism, subjected it again to the scourge of armies and conquests, which prevent us even yet from considering our age superior to the most deplorable of past centuries.
VII.
The Catholic Church established her primacy in Rome by three miracles, by conquering Rome when she was mistress of the whole world; by using Rome, her language, civilization, and legislation, to defend Christianity; and by perpetuating the primacy in Rome. Everything that exists has a reason for existence; resurrection is a proof of divinity. Christian Rome, though often driven to agony, has always revived. Exiled kings die in banishment, abandoned and despised; this is a daily spectacle to our age; the popes become more glorious with persecution; a pope in exile at Avignon or in a prison at Savona is as powerful as in the Quirinal palace. If the most powerful emperor, the most iron will of our century, like the acrobat who kicks away the ladder after using it to ascend, robbed the pope who assisted him to rise, insulted and imprisoned him, all Europe—Catholic, Protestant, and schismatic—took arms to restore the pontiff. Thrones crumble, dynasties disappear; but the old man always returns to his seat, from Avignon or Salerno, from Fontainebleau or from Gaeta.
Modern servility may grow indignant to see Henry V. at the feet of Gregory VII.; but it could not see Pius VI. kiss the hand of emperors, as Voltaire did with Catharine or with Frederic of Prussia; in vain will it hope to see Pius IX. at the feet of diplomatists or demagogues; but he will say with St. Augustine,Leo victus est saeviendo; Agnus vicit patiendo. [Footnote 73]
[Footnote 73: The lion was conquered by fury; the lamb triumphed by suffering.]
The church lives immortal, neither in nor above but with the state. Her relation with the state may be either of protection, limitation, or separation. Protected as in the beginning and as she was often under the ancient kings, the church would not be degraded. She had her autonomy in her laws, ordinances, and hierarchy; she was, not the slave or the flatterer of the power under which she lived.
She does not seek limitation or restrictions, but supports them without changing her nature. By degrees, as kings prevailed in modern society, and abridged the power of the people, of the lords and corporations, they became jealous of the authority of the church, restricted her action and obstructed her freedom. Powerful in armies, money, and slaves, kings imposed on the church; she became resigned, sacrificed some minor points in order to guard the chief ones in tact; but notwithstanding all the chains of concordats, she remained sovereign in her freedom.
Separation from the state is like the separation between soul and body; hence the church is opposed to a state that is unchristian.
The church, destined to illuminate the world with her divine light, and not to govern it politically, is by nature conservative. She was so even when the Roman emperors oppressed her; when they went away from Rome, she respected them at Constantinople, until she found it necessary for her defence and for the cause of national freedom to withdraw herself and Italy from imperial control. When she absolved nations from their oaths of allegiance, it was in the name of morality, and not of a political or social idea; to preserve for God what belongs to him, and not to deny to Cesar what belongs to him. [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: By the recent work,Religious and Civil History of the Popes, of Wm. Audisio, published at Rome in 1868, many precious facts have been recalled to my mind. One is that Gregory XVI., while Portugal was divided between Don Pedro and Don Miguel, tried to settle the dispute by recalling the ecclesiastical tradition, to render civil obedience to him who governs in fact:Qui actu ibidem summa rerum potiatur. In this he wished to settle the dispute between the contending parties; for the church seeksqua Christi sunt, qua, ad spiritualem aeternamque populorum felicitatem facilius conducant, ("those things which are of Christ, which conduce to the spiritual and eternal happiness of peoples.") The other in which Pius VII., in the consistory of July 28th, 1817, authorized the oath of allegiance to be taken to the constitution and laws, because this oath did not oblige in reference to laws which kings might make in spiritual matters; laws which are null of themselves, for kings have no right to make them. This decision regarding France was repeated October 2d, 1818, in regard to Bavaria.]
Thus although we may find no constitution which abolishes slavery, no one will deny that it ceased through the influence of Christianity, which modified customs and habits, and these influenced the laws. Thus the time will come when all that is good in modern society will be assured to it; and then the influence of Christianity will be made manifest in purifying and consecrating all that came from its teachings, or from needs which it caused to be felt; so that the so-called liberals will see that it is not necessary to attack Christianity in order to defend the acquisitions of their age, nor will the faithful attack the age as an irreconcilable enemy. Does not everything happen by the will or permission of God? Are not all political changes and social transformations providential facts? If the Christian cannot praise them, he becomes resigned to them; he does not increase the evil by anger; he trusts in God, who can change the stones into children of Abraham; and we, separating ourselves from those whose patriotism consists in denouncing others as enemies of their country, say to the men of good-will of our day:
"O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum)O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem." [Footnote 75]AEneid, lib. I.
"O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum)O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem." [Footnote 75]AEneid, lib. I.
[Footnote 75: "Companions! we have borne evils before this; ye who have suffered worse, remember that God will put an end even to these woes."]
How can you who have learned the watchwords of "Progress," and "Go-ahead," expect hasty "progress" at Rome, so slow in her motions?
Napoleon boasted that he had done in three hours what men formerly took three months to execute. Yes, he ran from Alexandria to Vienna, to Madrid, to Moscow, and—to St. Helena; while Rome remained at her post. Those who do not look superficially admit that she showed splendidly her wisdom in certain circumstances by not closing the way to future wisdom. In the modern exuberance of fungous intelligence, new systems easily sprout up, die in a few years; and the heroes of to-day become the objects of hatred to-morrow.Rome, eternal guardian of truth, cannot make and unmake in haste, take up and lay down, like human societies; but she proceeds slowly and patiently, yet she advances.
Certainly the church will find a new field in which she can co-operate with the state to preserve for humanity, no longer the antique forms or the mere letter given by Catholics alone, but the Christian spirit; a new method of protecting Catholic truth in countries open to every people, and every worship; deprived of the help of force and decrees, she will have no other support but truth; and since this is greater and more secure in Catholicism, it will always succeed in propagating itself. Will not this be the object of the approaching Council? The General Council will not have to destroy what is irremovable, or what derives necessarily from eternal truth; but it will help us worldlings to separate, in principle, the substance from the form, the essence from the application.
Certainly the hate which inspires men in these times against true liberty, makes governments justify and praise every attack against the church, and deprive her of every right, even when they pretend to protect her.
Do these governments want to form national churches? This would be to go back in civilization, which progresses toward union; to deny catholicitv or the universality of the race; to give up souls as well as bodies to the power of kings, as before Christianity; to give the direction of consciences and the judgment of morals to the civil power, which should rule only bodies.
Some would tolerate Catholicity provided there be liberty of conscience and of worship; let there be no temporal power in the church; no religious corporations; and let the secular clergy be raised to the height, as they say, of the age.
What is meant by liberty of conscience has been sufficiently explained by the pamphleteers, and the popes have given solemn decisions on the subject. Conceive a society in which it would be unlawful to expel those who violate its laws or disturb its order! The church simply expels from the communion of prayers and sacrifice those who are obstinate in violating her dogmas. How! You insult our community; refuse to communicate in our rites; you will not accept the pardon which the church always offers you; and yet you pretend to force her to comfort your last moments with sacraments which you repel and deride even then; to force her to bless your corpse, and bury it in the holy ground where repose those with whom you refused to associate during life!
As to temporal goods or the right to possess them, and as for religious corporations—that is, the liberty of community life, of prayer, benevolence, of wearing a peculiar dress, and of worshipping according to your conscience—what could Alimonda say which had not been said by all the independent men of our century?
As to those who assert that the clergy are not educated up to the standard of modern civilization, we need only appeal to those who have any knowledge to see if the ecclesiastics do not rank high in every part of the encyclopedia; nor do we hesitate to say that the most educated man in every village is ordinarily the priest; the priest who is compelled to make a regular course of study, to pass repeated examinations, and assist at conferences.
VII.
It is very strange that at a time when the love of show has become a mania; when kings, ministers, journalists, and myriads of ephemeral heroes are honored with canticles, poems, and ovations; when some button-holes have more decorations than our altars; when there is hardly a name to which pompous titles are not appended, it should be deemed necessary for the benefit of religion to abolish external worship in our churches. Is not our century especially vain of its investigations in matter? Is not the aspiration of the age after physical comfort? Why, then, try to restrict religion to the spiritual, to prevent the erection of temples which would please the senses of that double being—man?
When Constantinople, austerely interpreting the evangelical ordinances, attempted to destroy reverence for holy images, the church fought for the right to cultivate the fine arts; and sustained martyrdom and exile to maintain the privilege of guarding the fine arts in her sanctuaries. When the reform of the sixteenth century called the Catholic Church Babylon, because she asked Michael Angelo and Raphael to immortalize the grandeurs of Christianity, she resisted again—knowing how to distinguish the exceptional life of the voluntary anchorite from the social life of the merely honest man; exacting virtues from all her children, but virtues suitable to their state, to the mystic life of Mary and to the external life of Martha, to the viceroy Joseph and to the shoemaker Crispin.
The same church defends, to-day, love and art from the modern iconoclasts and spurious Puritans.
Discoursing about worship, our author begins by that of Mary, showing it to be a religious principle in accord with reason; a public fact, approved by history; a most tender affection, sanctioned by the heart. It is not long since the chief of the English ritualists, Doctor Pusey, made the most honorable admissions in reference to the Catholic dogmas and ceremonies, excepting, however, the reverence which Catholics have for the Mother of God. Archbishop Manning's [Footnote 76] reply is one of the most beautiful and rational apologies for this worship for which Italy is so remarkable. For all republics were consecrated to her; she was the chosen patroness of our chief cities; her likeness was impressed on our coins and seals; our first poets sang her praises, and their echoes have not yet died; our painters could find no higher or sweeter model; our architects competed in erecting grand temples to her honor; our musicians to compose canticles to her praise; great expeditions were undertaken in her name; colonies were consecrated to her, where now Italian power, but not Italian influence, has ceased. And it is Mary who will save our Italy from humiliations, and from that degradation which seems to be the only aspiration of her intolerant sons. [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 76: Probably a mistake for Dr. Newman.]
[Footnote 77: I may be permitted to refer the reader to the fifty-fourth chapter of myHeretics of Italy, in which the respect due to saints and to Mary is discussed.]
The intolerant repeat that laws, decrees, and social organization are sufficient to regulate civil society.
They are sufficient; but they require science to prepare them and virtue to apply them; both to be invoked from on high. The safety of one's country, the fulfilment of its aspirations, the triumph of justice, must come from heaven. Formerly the Italians marched to battle under the standard of the saints or of the cross; the heroes of Legnano, of Fornovo, and of Curzolari prostrated themselves in prayer before fighting; and the Italians of those times conquered and gave thanks to God for having given to them a beautiful, great, and prosperous country. But now we have popular tumults and the ravings of newspapers.
Our strong-minded heroes consider it degrading to bow before the Author of all things. Yet, passing over all the wise men of antiquity, the most free nation in Europe opens its parliaments with prayer, and obeys the orders of the queen to fast in time of disaster, or feast in time of great success. The President of the United States, no matter what may be his creed, orders a day of thanksgiving to God, and he is obeyed. When the telegraph from America was able to carry a message to Europe on August 17th, 1858, the first words which leaped along the wire were, "Europe and America are united. Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth; to men, good-will." "What grander spectacle can there be than to see a whole people united in the duties imposed by its religion in celebrating great anniversaries? What heroic outbursts, how many noble sacrifices, were expressed in the monologues of holy days! What high thoughts and magnificent conceptions arose in the souls of philosophers and poets! How many generous resolutions were taken! When the observance of the Sunday was neglected, the last spark of poetic fire was extinguished in the souls of our poets. It has been truly said, without religion there is no poetry. We must add, without external worship and feast days there is no religion. In the country, where the people are more susceptible of the religious sentiment, the Sunday still keeps a part of its social influence. The sight of a rustic population united as one family by the voice of its pastor, and prostrated in silence and recollection before the invisible majesty of God, is touching and sublime; is a charm which goes to the heart."
Who speaks in this way? Proud hon. [sic] And Napoleon says, "Do you want something sublime? Recite yourPater noster."
The most sublime prayer is the mass—the culminating point of worship; the perennial expiation of perennial faults. From the mass Alimonda passes to confession; then to communion; and thence to the responsibility of present life. He exhorts all tounderstandandbelieve. This is the creed of the Christian:Credere et intelligere.
VIII.
We have thus far followed the illustrious Alimonda, repeating or developing his arguments. Let us now examine his manner of treating the questions which he discusses.
The classic Greek orators had wonderful simplicity of style, in which the familiarity of their expressions ennobled their sentiments and gave force to their reasoning. The Eastern fathers followed in their footsteps. The Latins ornamented eloquence so as to make it a special art, assigning it a measured cadence, a peculiar intonation of voice, a system of position and gesture. Hence, the Latin fathers studied speech even to affectation, sought after rhetorical figures, yet always more attentive to the practical than to the abstract. The French formed themselves rather according to the Greek models; and the noble simplicity of Bossuet, Massilon, and Fénélon renders them still models for one who would discourse before a polished people.
The Italians, if you except some of the very earliest preachers, preferred to ornament their speeches and indulge in artificial figures. In the ages of bad taste, the worst display of metaphors disgraced the pulpit; whence the custom passed to the bar and parliament, where there have been and still are so many examples of unnatural oratory.Hence, in so great an abundance of literature, we have no good preachers except Legneri. In modern times, the style of the pretentious Turchi has been changed to that of the academic Barbieri; but that style of preaching "whose father is the Gospel, and whose mother is the Bible," is rarely heard in our pulpits. Our very best eloquence, that of the pastorals and homilies of our bishops, is spoiled by too frequent citations, and is often devoid of that sentiment which comes from the heart and goes to it. We do not want to borrow the French style. It is a mistake to steal the language of another nation, either in writing or preaching. Peoples have different dispositions. It would not do to address the Carib in the same way as the Parisian, or the contemporaries of Godfrey as the subjects of Napoleon.
Our author, beside being familiar with the first propagators and defenders of Christianity, is highly educated in the classics, and has always ready phrases, hemistichs, and allusions which display his erudition. His method is prudent, his divisions logical, and the train of ideas well followed up; his language correct, and the clearness and marvellous beauty of his style show him to be a finished orator.
He draws an abundance of materials from the most diverse and recondite sources. He adduces the most recent discoveries of science regarding the essence of the sun, nebula, aerolites, and on the nature of matter. Without mentioning the biblical and legendary portions of his work, there are in it traces of every part of both ancient and modern history: Camoens and Napoleon, Abelard and Renan, Isnard and Jouffroy, Donoso Cortes and Cagliostro, Marie Antoinette and Madame de Swetchine, Ireland and Poland, the discourses of Napoleon III. and of Cavour. The author brings us through the byways of London to the prison of Thomas More, to the solitude of St. Helena, and to the lands where the missionaries are laboring. He quotes even the heroes of romance: "Renzo" and the "Unknown," Renato, Werter, St. Preux, the Elvira of George Sand, Wiseman's Fabiola, and Victor Hugo's Valjean. With the spoils of the Egyptians Alimonda builds a tabernacle to the living God. Who will censure him, since our Holy Father, in a brief of September 20th, 1867, approves his labor?
The nineteenth century can be saved only by means suitable to the nineteenth century; and Simon Stylites or Torquemada, the Crusaders or the Flagellants, would be as much out of place to-day as catapults or the theory of uncreated light. We must fight with modern weapons.
"Clypeos, Danaumque insignia nobis aptemus." [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: "We must use the weapons and dress of the Greeks."AEneid, lib. ii.]
We must study Catholicity in all its bearings, and reconcile divine and human traditions with modern exigencies; authority established on an immovable pedestal, with liberty which is always developing.
Courage! Let us arouse ourselves from lethargy, and not suffer a condition of affairs for which we are responsible. Let us remember, with Bacon, that prosperity was the boon of the Old Testament; adversity, of the New; persuaded, with Donoso Cortes, that "it is our duty, as Catholics, to struggle, and that we should thank God who has chosen us to fight for his church," let us display that energetic will which is so rare among good people. With charity and faith, by association and perseverance, we can conquer hatred and unbelief, the divisions of sects, and the onslaughts of error on the strongholds of Catholic truth.