But it is not the anti-religious journals alone that take this liberty. M. de Mühler himself, the Prussian minister of the public worship, treats the Catholics, who remain faithful to the decrees of the Pope and bishops as rebels to the government. Immediately after the suspension of the council, he took under his protection the professors, even those who were priests, who refused to submit to the decisions of the council and the bishops, and encouraged them in their revolt against ecclesiastical authority. Recently,à proposof the affair of the Bishop of Ermland, he went so far as to submit to the ministry of Prussia, composed exclusively of Protestants, a resolution to ascertain what Catholics should be considered as orthodox, and he ordered a priest named Wollmann, who had been excluded from the fold of the church by major excommunication, to retain his professorship as religious instructor in the Catholic college of Braunsberg. The students, unwilling to receive religious instruction from a fallen priest, left the college.They were thus obliged to give up most of their studies, as there is no other establishment of the kind at Braunsberg. It should also be remarked that the College of Braunsberg was founded by a bishop and sustained by Catholic foundations. In Silesia, another priest named Kaminski, likewise excommunicated, was appointed to a church that he might celebrate the divine service for those who protested against the Council of the Vatican. In a word, every where there is any reason, or even a pretext, the episcopal authority is sacrificed to those who refuse them the obedience solemnly sworn to them, or become unfaithful to the church by calling the episcopal crosier thebâtonof a police officer. On all sides were declarations, more and more threatening, that an end must be made of “Romanism,” that German science should take the place of idolatrous papistry, and the echo of this cry is to be found in the papers that seek their inspiration from the ministerial bureaux.
But in spite of the great power of the Prussian government, the centralists, to their severe mortification, were doubtful about succeeding in fully organizing a persecution against the Catholics unless the other German governments, or at least the most important of them, declare war against the church. The Würtemberg government was so wise as to declare from the first that it would ignore the decisions of the Council of the Vatican as long as no one was influenced by it against the laws and constitution of the kingdom. As this evidently would never be the case, the Würtemberg ministry, if the national liberals who have just begun an outcry in the assembly of representations at Stuttgart do not impose a different policy on them, will consequently remain strictly passivewith respect to the church, as is the case in Belgium, Holland, England, the United States, and every country where genuine liberty prevails. The statesmen who govern those countries do not allow their slumbers to be disturbed by the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, and deem it beneath their dignity to regard them as a pretext to form a kind of Cæsaro-papism.
As we have remarked, the course of the Bavarian government in the ulterior development of this agitation, will be of great importance. The pressure brought to bear on that government by Prussia and all the parties inimical to the church has led to the retirement of Count Bray, whose devotedness to the church is well-known. Nevertheless, the king has not fully decided to create, by an open rupture with the religious authorities, unforeseen complications in his kingdom, already so shaken, and to recompense by moral violence the fidelity of those of his subjects who have shown themselves the most devoted partisans of the dynasty of Wittelsbach. This question, so painful for the majority of Bavarians, will be doubtless decided before this article is published.
Having given a general outline of the present state of affairs, I am led to ask myself what, before the end of the year, will be the stand of the Catholic representatives who are still faithful to the church in the legislative assemblies of Prussia and the German empire. The reports of those deputies to their electors appear to me adapted to strengthen them in their resolution to continue to struggle courageously against the supremacy of the state as well as against revolutionary absolution, and to remain defenders of the church and of all constitutional rights against the false apostles of liberty and anarbitrary ministry. At all events, I imagine these deputies will smile with pity when they hear themselves styled unpatriotic by some parties in imitation of a part of the journals hostile to the church, or even accused of conspiring with foreigners or theInternationale. Some papers, in fact, have not shrunk from the ridicule attached to such foolish accusations. Does not this having to resort to such imputations prove the want of any serious charge against the members of theCentre? They are evidently not credited by those who make use of them, nor is any attempt made to convince others of their truth.
The members of theFraction du Centrefigure, for the most part, among the notabilities of their districts. Many of them have occupied or occupy some public office with honor: and several have, for many years, showed their constant zeal in the old Prussian house of legislation, where they had a seat, and gave their devoted support to the government in the crisis of the year 1848 and the following year, often at the expense of their popularity. They were often known to defend the authorities against the attacks of those who are now endeavoring to excite the government against them.
In support of what I have just stated, it is sufficient to recall the names of those whom the confidence of their colleagues chose as a committee of theFraction du Centrein the German parliament and the Prussian house of representatives. I will mention M. de Savigny, the son of the illustrious jurisconsult so well-known throughout the whole world, who was formerly Prussian minister at Brussels, and latterly the representative of the King of Prussia at the Diet of Frankfort; M. Windthorst, who was president of thehouse of representatives in Hanover, and twice minister of justice in that kingdom; the Baron d’Arétin, the vice-president of the upper house in the kingdom of Bavaria; M. de Mallinkrodt, the counsellor of the Prussian regency; the Prince de Loewenstein; the Count de Landsberg-Velen, a hereditary member of the Prussian house of lords, etc. Perhaps I may be permitted to mention also my brother, a counsellor of the Prussian Court of Cassation, who was one of the most active leaders of the conservative party when the government was the object of the most violent attacks.[76]
He who consecrates his time and strength to the cause of justice and religious liberty, or uses them in the arena of political combat, should not expect to reap any gratitude, but the leaders of theCentreand their friends could not foresee that they would be exposed to the calumnies I have alluded to. The only appreciable grievance uttered against the Hanoverian and Bavarian members of theirFractionis, that the former disapproved of the annexation of their country to Prussia, and the latter used its influence to prevent Bavaria from joining the new German Empire. But these deputies have stated publicly that, these measures having been decided by vote, they were ready not only to fall in with the new order of things, but to endeavor to strengthen it, which cannot be the case if the national liberal party is not opposed, the evident tendency of which is not of anature to fortify the constitution of the empire, being directed against the federative principle, which is the fundamental characteristic of this constitution. No one has a right to suspect the statements and character of these men who merit the esteem of all honorable people for having defended in a purely conservative sense, and by all legal means, the traditions of their ancestors, to which they remain faithful, and which they wish to maintain as long as their duty evidently requires it.
To theFraction du Centrein the German Parliament belongs also M. Kraetzig, the leader of the Catholic department of the ministry of public worship, which has just been dissolved. This division, composed of three counsellors belonging to the Catholic faith, was organized by Frederick WilliamIV.with the benevolent intention of giving the Catholics of Prussia a sort of guarantee for the suitable administration of the funds for public worship: it was not wished that such matters should be decided by a Protestant government without at least listening to the advice of the Catholic functionaries. (The leader of the Catholic department of public worship had only a consultative voice.) The existence of this division was a pledge to the Catholics, being an assurance that their religious interests would never fall into hostile or indifferent hands. If we except the Prince de Hohenzollern, no Catholic ever had a seat in the ministerial council, and especially no Catholic was ever appointed minister of public instruction. The suppression of this division, decreed on the eighth of last July, is the more serious a symptom that it has been applauded by the journals opposed to the church, and with a joy equal to that manifested at the measures taken in Alsace against the brothersdevoted to instruction and against the Catholic press. The party of theCentrewill naturally oppose with all its might the current of opinion which these acts prove to exist in the region of power. Its voice, it is true, will be stifled by the majority, but it will not be raised the less energetically for liberty and justice, with the hope of seeing a better day dawn, and, whatever the event, with the conviction of having fulfilled an obligation of conscience not only toward the church, but to the state.
The hope of soon seeing the clouds disperse that have been accumulating of late around Germany in so unexpected a manner is founded on the political prudence, the experience, and the opinions of the Emperor William. It is not possible for this monarch crowned with laurels, after having established peace with foreign powers through the bravery and fidelity of thewholeGerman nation, to authorize the persecution of millions of Germans on account of their faith, and consent to sacrifice the national peace—the peace which is especially due to his royal brother, whose memory is still blessed by Catholics. There is no doubt but the appeals of the Catholic population will be heard and listened to, as soon as they reach the foot of the throne. The statesman who, in such an unparalleled manner, has been so highly exalted to the very steps of that throne, and whose celebrated name is displayed, without his consent I am persuaded, on the standard of the enemies of the church, cannot be ignorant that, when these troubles shall have assumed more formidable proportions, it will be more difficult to overcome moral resistance than to triumph over physical obstacles, and that measures of policy will be powerless against the former. He will hardly consider it chivalric; with all theenormous material resources of the state at his disposal, to enter into a combat against people who can and will only oppose him passively, as is suitable in the defence of a cause which represents the most powerful interests of humanity.
But perhaps all these hopes are illusory; perhaps we are about to see in our Fatherland the beginning of a sad and fruitless struggle, such as has so exhausted the strength of other countries by giving a free course to the most dangerous passions. In this case the Catholics of Germany should prepare themselves to endure a long succession of contradictions, for their moral courage will be severely tried. They will have to make sacrifices of all kinds for their faith, recalling the precept of the Gospel that commands us not only to render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, but also to God the things that are God’s, whatever may happen, whatever may be the consequence of such a struggle, the church of God, which has always been victorious through patience, will never yield either under assaults of unbelief or the attacks of a false science, that in its pride seems to declare anew:Eritis sicut Deus. Truth is great, and it will prevail:Magna est veritas et prævalebit.
A. Reichensperger.
Cologne, Aug., 1871.
[76]The modesty of the eminent author of this article did not permit him to mention his own name among the most illustrious members of theFraction du Centre. It would be ungrateful not to supply this omission by adding to the valiant champions enumerated above the man whose multiplied labors, marked by his superior intelligence and ardor of feeling, are at once an honor to Germany and the church.—(Note of the Editor.)
The mountain’s sides are green anear,In clouds is lost its snow;And he who climbs that Alpine heightShall earth and heaven know.Lo! like a temple to the skies,For toil, for prayer, for sacrifice,Its green and snowy heights arise.A thousand pilgrims wander upTo yonder blue abode,And some are lost, and some are slain,Or robbed upon the road.Far up the holy hermits dwell,And sounds the monastery bellThe safe and ancient way to tell.And they who mount that highest steepAre tired and sad and poor,But lo! a starry house is there,And angels at the door.Rich joy for poverty and painThey give, that summit to attain:All earth they leave all heaven to gain.
The mountain’s sides are green anear,In clouds is lost its snow;And he who climbs that Alpine heightShall earth and heaven know.Lo! like a temple to the skies,For toil, for prayer, for sacrifice,Its green and snowy heights arise.
A thousand pilgrims wander upTo yonder blue abode,And some are lost, and some are slain,Or robbed upon the road.Far up the holy hermits dwell,And sounds the monastery bellThe safe and ancient way to tell.
And they who mount that highest steepAre tired and sad and poor,But lo! a starry house is there,And angels at the door.Rich joy for poverty and painThey give, that summit to attain:All earth they leave all heaven to gain.
The three primary colors, according to the latest conclusions of science, arered,green, andblue.
Oersted, in one of the chapters of hisSoul in Nature, gives us a little diagram to show how thecomplementaryandcharacteristiccombinations of colors are produced.
Illustration: Color circle
The colors opposite in the figure complete each other in white, hence are called complementary colors—red and green, orange and blue, yellow and violet. These are the harmonious colors.
Two colors, between which there is only one intermediate color, constitute characteristic combinations of color, as Goethe calls them—for instance, red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red—and are the combinations most common in uniforms.
In regard to the symbolism of colors, Oersted gives the following enumeration:
White fitly typifiesinnocence; the purity of snow and summer clouds, and all the analogies of nature, suggesting and completing its significance. Black, which, as the withdrawal of light, denotes loss of life-giving power, as in night, and to which is added in the storm-cloud unwonted gloom and desolation, stands appropriately for the color of mourning. Red is the color of love, from the hue of the blood, to whichis united the idea of the heart, heat, and intensity of life. Yellow denotes falsehood, as indicating the deceitfulness of that which shines, also as the color which, when it departs from purity, soonest becomes disagreeable. Green symbolizes hope, the green of spring in nature giving token of the fruition of summer. “If we consider also,” says Oersted, “the satisfaction with which the eye can rest on it, we should call it the color of trust. Blue,” he adds, “is called the color of fidelity, but since faith, hope, and love are so frequently named together, and the two last each has its symbolical color, we might assume that one of the colors belonged to this noble quality. It is evident that blue, since it indicates distance, vacuity from matter, therefore the immaterial is suitable as a symbol of faith. It is the color of the sky also, and this leads us away from the earthly. Then the repose in blue, and the feeling that of all colors it is the least splendid, with the exception of violet, which, when unmingled with red, really the violet of light, is so feeble, and has in it so little power, that it is not much considered. Goethe says that blue is a ‘stimulating negation.’ We learn from natural science that blue united with violet is reflected back every time that light passes through a less occupied space, namely, a vacuum, hence Goethe’s expression. Violet and blue also indicate darkness, since they are the colors which have the least light in them, and the pigments which they represent are easiest converted into black.
Faith, which looks up out of the blackness and shadow of death into the full-orbed splendor of the sun of righteousness, may not inappropriately take for its symbol the “stimulating negation” of the poet.
Thus do the three primary colors, blue, green, and red, represent the triad of Christian graces, the primary virtues of the Christian life—faith, hope, and charity, or love.
But leaving the poetry of color, we come to the subject of its place and function as it imprints itself on the myriad forms of the organic world. The question has been asked, Are all these tints of nature in the flower and shrub, the gorgeous plumage of the bird, only meant to please the eye of man and to gratify the artistic sense? Is there a deeper, subtler purpose running through all this apparently wanton pageantry, aside from the delight which it affords the mind of man, and looking only to the perfecting and preservation of the organism itself?
A utilitarian age has answered in the affirmative, and the researches of Darwin, Wallace, and others are daily opening new vistas into this interesting field of inquiry.
Darwin was the first to establish the fact that the bright coloring of flowers is for the purpose of attracting insects in order to accomplish their fertilization, and deduces the general rule that all flowers fertilized by the wind are of dull and inconspicuous colors. In the animal kingdom the principle of assimilation guides and modifies coloring in conformity with surrounding nature, and it is, therefore, to a great extent, protective.
The lion inhabiting the desert is of the color of the sands, so as hardly to be distinguished at a short distance. The leopard lives in jungles, and the vertical stripes on its body harmonize admirably with the verticalreeds of its tangled lair, and completely conceal it from view.
In arctic regions, white is the prevailing color, as here reign perpetual snows; therefore, it is that the bear is only foundwhitein this part of the globe.
The curious fact that among birds the female is usually of a dull neutral tint, while the male monopolizes the bright colors, is accounted for on the principle of protective coloring, the female needing the obscurity afforded her by her sober plumage. When there is an exception to this rule, the protection is afforded in some other way. And this leads us to the subject ofbirds’ nests.
Wallace, in a chapter on the theory of birds’ nests, divides them into two classes, those in which the eggs are protected by the shape or position of the nest, and those in which they are left exposed to view. He then gives the following law: “That, when both sexes are of strikingly gay and conspicuous colors, the nest is of the first class, or so as to conceal the sitting bird; while, whenever there is a striking contrast of colors, the male being gay and conspicuous, the female dull and obscure, the nest is open and the sitting bird exposed to view.”
In connection with the subject of protective coloring, the phenomenon ofmimicryis not the least curious. Wallace gives several instances of butterflies, moths, snakes, etc., where the coloring of protected families is imitated by weak and unprotected ones not in any way allied to them. A large and bright-colored butterfly, the heliconidæ of South America, which is protected by a disagreeable quality affecting its taste, thus rendering it secure from insect-eating birds, is imitated by a smaller and eatable family, resembling it so completely as to be quite indistinguishable by itsenemies from the former. Thus it is protected and enabled to perpetuate itself by borrowing the colors of its secure and powerful neighbor.
The elaps among venomous snakes is another instance where protection is afforded through mimicry to a harmless snake that would otherwise be defenceless. The elaps and the species that copy its coloring are found only in tropical America, and are peculiar as being the only snakes marked in the same manner by red, black, and yellow rings.
The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.A New Translation. Edited by theRev.Marcus Dods, M.A. Vols.I.andII.The City of God. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York. 1871.
The Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, are well known and honorably distinguished among publishers for the works of a high class of scientific and literary worth in sacred literature which they are regularly bringing out in the best style of the typographic art. Besides their series of works by the most eminent German Protestant theologians of the orthodox school, some of which are really valuable to the Catholic student, they are issuing a set of translations of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and have now commenced a series of translations fromSt.Augustine which they design to extend to sixteen or eighteen volumes. We cannot sufficiently rejoice in the publication of these patristic works. Nothing can produce an equally powerful impression in favor of the Catholic Church on serious and educated minds with the perusal of numerous and extensive works translated from the early Christian writers. The two volumes before us are, in every sense of the word, superb. The editor has prefaced them by an introduction, whose style reminds us of Macaulay—while its matter is excellent, interesting, and in all respects unexceptionable—in which he gives an account of the nature and the circumstances of the great work ofSt.Augustine, and of the various judgments of eminent scholars upon it. So far as a merely cursory glance can warrant us in judging of the merit of the translation, it appears to us that the extremely difficult task of rendering the Latin accurately into good English has been successfully accomplished. The work itself has been considered by some eminent scholars as one of the great masterpieces of human genius. It is the first great work on the philosophy of history which was ever written. It was the fruit of the latest and most mature period of the great doctor’s life. Its plan embraces a comprehensive defence of Christianity against the objections of the Roman statesmen and philosophers of the fifth century. A vast number of interesting topics are treated in it, so that, apart from the philosophical value which it possesses, it is most interesting and curious as a museum of antiquities from the epoch when paganism was passing away to give place to Christianity. It is to be hoped that Catholics as well as Protestants will patronize the truly noble and useful undertaking of the Messrs. Clark and their literarycollaborateurs,to enrich our English libraries with these splendid patristic translations.
A Life ofSt.Augustine is also promised to accompany the selections from his writings. From this we can scarcely expect as much satisfaction as from the other parts of the undertaking. The theology and opinions of the writer must unavoidably prevent him from understanding and correctly representing a Catholic bishop and doctor, and giving a perfectly complete and correct account of the state of the church during the period in which he lived. No one but a Catholic can achieve this task with success, although a Protestant who is sufficiently learned, accurate, and skilled in the art of composition, may make a perfectly satisfactory translation of Catholic works. It were much to be desired that some competent Catholic scholar would give us a biography ofSt.Augustine so complete and perfect that it would supplant all others, and take rank as the standard history of his life and times.
Light in Darkness.A Treatise on the Obscure Night of the Soul. By theRev.A. F. Hewit, of the Congregation ofSt.Paul. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1871.Pp.160.
This is a very small volume in bulk, and of very modest pretensions, but of great merit, and treats with much truth and justice a very important subject. It belongs to what is calledMystic Theology, and gives us in a small compass the simpler elements of the science of the saints, and cannot fail to interest all those who are entering upon a life of Christian perfection, whether in religion or in the world. The “obscure night of the soul,” asSt.John of the Cross calls it, is experienced in some degree by all whom the Holy Spirit is conducting through purification, not to be effected without pain and sorrow, to the highest and closest union with God possible while we are still in the flesh. It is a deprivationof all sensible sweetness in devotion, a desolation, a deadness of all but the very highest faculties of the soul, in which all is dry and hard, and the soul discerns not a ray of light to relieve the darkness that seems to pervade and envelop her every act, and everything seems listless, prayer demands an effort, and brings no consolation, and meditation is painful and fruitless. This obscure night of the soul, sometimes called passive purgation, is supernatural, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and is intended to try the soul, to test its faith and confidence, to purify it, and enhance its merit by bringing it in the end into joyful union with God.
If carefully distinguished from sadness and melancholy, which may spring from the physical constitution and a variety of natural causes, this inward desolation, in which the soul longs for light, for spiritual life, and to behold the countenance of the Lord, is a great good, and a proof that the Holy Spirit has not left us, but is present within, and is preparing us for the joyful day that will dawn in the soul, and permit us to ascend to the Mount of Vision with the saints. Sensible sweetness, even visions, which are not seldom experienced by one just entering a religious life, are baits to lure us on, or to save us from discouragement, but they cannot create in us a robust and solid piety. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that he receiveth. Far more profitable to the soul is this obscure night in which the Lord hides his face from us, and leaves us desolate, and yet does not leave us, nor cease to love and care for us.
Father Hewit explains the sources and solidity, the certainty, the infallibility, of the science of the saints; shows the principles on which it rests; describes the desolation of the soul due to the discipline to which the Holy Spirit subjects the aspirant to Christian perfection; gives plain and simple directions to distinguish it from naturalsadness or melancholy, and for the behavior of the soul while suffering, and for deriving the greatest possible spiritual benefit from it. He also gives us a criterion by which the operations of the Holy Ghost may be distinguished from visionary illusions sent by Satan to deceive and ruin the soul, which the spiritists make so much of. His remarks on spiritism are just and opportune, are exceedingly valuable, and should be pondered by every Catholic. The ravages of spiritism are fearful.
The work is addressed solely to Catholics, and we think young and inexperienced confessors and directors will find much in it to aid them in their noble but arduous duties of directing souls in the way of perfection. To the class of Christians for whom it is specially intended, it will serve as a valuable and trustworthy guide, and will assist them to profit by the many larger and fuller treatises on the spiritual life whose excellence is unquestionable, and without superseding them. We thank the author for the rich present he has made us.
The Monks of the West, fromSt.Benedict toSt.Bernard.By the Count de Montalembert. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1872. 2 vols.
This is an American reprint of the English translation of Count Montalembert’s great work. The English edition is not only very splendid, but very costly. Mr. Donahoe’s edition is compressed into two volumes, at the reduced price of eight dollars, and is nevertheless very handsomely printed, with type sufficiently large and clear, and in all other respects well brought out. We welcome its appearance as a most fortunate event, and recommend the work most heartily as one which every intelligent Catholic ought to read as a glorious monument of his religion, and every literary man as one of the finest historicaland literary productions of the age.
It is without a question that the Count de Montalembert was one of the greatest and noblest men of this century, whether in or out of the Catholic Church. The present work is the most complete and splendid monument of his genius and piety which he has left to perpetuate his fame. It is no mere compilation of biographies of the common sort, but a history of the great monastic institution in the West, of its stupendous works, and of the civilization of which it was one of the chief organizing powers. It includes some most important and little known chapters in the history of the chief nations of Christendom. Its copious and exact erudition is only equalled by the majestic eloquence of the style in which it is written, and which the translator has well rendered into English. There are a few passages in the introduction in which the author has allowed a certain bitterness of feeling to disturb the ordinarily pure current of his sentiments, and has betrayed some signs of his sympathy with the errors of the party of so-called Liberal Catholics. We do not consider this blemish, however, sufficient to detract seriously from the value and merit of this great work, or to make its perusal in any way dangerous. It is a work thoroughly Catholic, and pervaded with the same spirit of loyalty to the Holy See which the illustrious author has expressed in his dedication of the work to PiusIX.Whatever he said or did in a contrary spirit was a lamentable inconsistency, which we trust God has pardoned, as the Holy Father has done in so tender and magnanimous a manner.
Peters’s Catholic Choir.A Monthly Magazine devoted to Catholic Church Music. New York: J. L. Peters.
The purpose of this publication is to offer in a cheap form selected musical Masses, hymns, and motetsfor the use of our church choirs. The selections, from a purely musical point of view, are as good as publications of this nature generally contain.
The Pictorial Bible and Church History Stories.Abridged. A Compendious Narrative of Sacred History, brought down to the present Time of the Church, and complete in one Volume. By theRev.Henry Formby. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 WarrenSt.1871.
This is a book which deserves to find a place as a text-book in all Catholic schools, and to be put by all Catholic parents into the hands of their children. Even the very little ones will be found capable of comprehending the easy and familiar English of the narrative; nor can too much stress be laid on the importance of thus familiarizing them from the start with the history of God’s dealings with men. For this purpose, the plan of acquainting them with the Bible history simply is far from sufficient. It leaves too great a gap between the past and the present—as if sacred history had virtually come to an end eighteen centuries ago, and since then everything had been merely secular and profane. A well-instructed child needs to have the whole of sacred history, from the creation of the world to the usurpation of Rome by Victor Emanuel, laid before his eyes in a series the connections of which are plain and unbroken. Such a simple historical knowledge will be apt to prove the best safeguard of his faith in a time when there is no longer any great temptation for him to abandon it in favor of misbelief, but when open unbelief in the providence of God is fast becoming his only real enemy. The task which Father Formby has undertaken, of presenting this history in an easy and compendious form, is one which he has very satisfactorily accomplished, and for which there seemed to be a crying need.
We can only hope that American Catholics will make haste to avail themselves of the results of his labors. The book is an attractive one, very fully illustrated by pictures which, if they are not to be called artistic, have at all events the merit of being often suggestive, and the letterpress will be found good reading by older readers as well as by the young ones.
The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States for the Year of our Lord 1872.Calculated for different Parallels of Latitude, and adapted for use throughout the Country. Illuminated cover,12mo,pp.144. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.
There are many good works to be done for our Catholic community, and here is one of them. A little annual at a trifling price, yet, in paper, typographical execution, and illustrations, wonderfully attractive, now finds its way to over seventy thousand Catholic homes, and gives to perhaps a quarter of a million of Catholic readers information, instruction, and entertainment.
The material is new and healthy. It is a commentary on the communion of saints. Catholics are not of one state or country, of one age or century. We are a brotherhood embracing all. The young growing up wish to know of the past glories of the church as the old love to speak of them; and all desire information of the actual life of the church.
God’s hand is not shortened in the nineteenth century. He overlooks the great and wise, and reveals himself to little ones, now as of old. Bernadette Soubirous, whose likeness is given, kneels there, and all cluster round her to hear the wonderful history of Lourdes. The lately martyred Archbishop of Paris will be viewed with interest, and the sketch of him will be imprinted on all minds. The beautiful portraits of Adelaide Procter and Eugénie de Guérin bring to mind the representativewomen of the church in our day, whom to know is to love; and many thousands will here begin to appreciate those two beautiful souls. In the history of the church in America, all will feel that Catholicity is no stranger in the land when we see before us the remains of a cathedral in Greenland, built in the twelfth century; a bishop in Florida in the sixteenth, predecessor of the illustrious Carroll in the last, and the saintly Flaget in our own.
Ireland, the fatherland of so many sons of our Holy Mother, is not forgotten. The ruins of religious houses, caused by hate, and the excellent portrait of the Liberator, O’Connell, show the close union between Catholics of all lands and times.
This little attractive bouquet of Catholic flowers, rich with the aroma of faith, will, by its suggestions, its information, and its creditable appearance alone, keep alive and stimulate the true Catholic feeling; and there can be no better work than to disseminate it widely and more widely in every parish, until it finds its way to every Catholic family in the land.
Life of the Reverend Mother Julia, Foundress and First Superior of the Sisters of Notre Dame, of Namur. Translated from the French. With the History of the Order in the United States. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.
Marie Rose Julia Billiart, the foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame, was born at Cuvilly, in Picardy, in 1751, and died in 1816. The life from which this is translated was first published in 1862, for the use of the Sisters, but will be found also of great interest to the general reader. It is certainly so, or at least should be, in this country, where they are so widely diffused, are doing so much for the cause of Catholic education, and are so well known. Mother Julia was also a saint, and the lives of the servantsof God are always interesting, especially when told in a natural and unaffected way. Her whole life was an extraordinary one, though her congregation was not established till 1803, when she had reached the age of fifty-two; its foundation being, as it were, necessarily delayed by the disturbances in France during the Revolution; but of course the greater part of this memoir is occupied with her last years, which were more abundant than those that preceded in visible service to others, though not perhaps in merit to herself. At her death, the order was firmly established, though not without passing through many trials and difficulties, and had a number of houses in France and Belgium. It was brought to this country in 1840, and to England three years later; it now has seventeen houses there, and twenty in the United States, having the care, in these two countries alone, of more than thirty thousand children. The latter part of the book, as stated in the title, is occupied with its foundation and establishment here; also an interesting account is given of its introduction into England and Guatemala, to which latter place they were sent in 1859.
We have before us a list of the houses of the Sisters in Massachusetts, nine in number, at which nearly seven thousand children are instructed, as well as over a thousand night-scholars; they have also more than five thousand attending Sunday-school. It is very much to be desired and hoped that so useful a body of religious may be everywhere as abundant as in this favored state; and yet there are not enough even there, and probably never will be. The words of our Lord are always verified: “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few.” Still, there will, no doubt, be vocations when they are really asked for.
TheLife of Mother Juliais well and clearly printed, and beautifully bound; and the translation wasmade by an American lady fully qualified for the task.
An excellent portrait of Mother Julia embellishes the book.
The Four Great Evils of the Day.By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1871.Pp.142. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.
The Four Great Evils exposed in these four lectures are the Revolt of the Intellect against God, the Revolt of the Will against God, the Revolt of Society against God, the Spirit of Antichrist. The author shows how the revolt against the Roman Church and the Vicar of Christ results in atheism, immorality, social anarchy, and the disruption of the whole fabric of Christianity, involving the destruction of the human race, and of the world, the Catholic Church excepted, which is preserved by miracle to the end of time. These lectures are very timely, and ought to be read by every reflecting person. The Archbishop of Westminster is equal to the greatest of our modern prelates in his clear insight into Catholic principles, and thorough knowledge of the atheistic and communistic tendencies of Protestantism. Hence the respect, fear, and hatred with which he is regarded by the enemies of the church. One thing especially noticeable in these lectures, and which we have observed with peculiar pleasure, is the exhibition of the intellectual as well as moral degradation of modern infidelity. The superstition and absurdity into which the proud rebellion of the mind against the authority of the church has plunged it is shown by Archbishop Manning, in a different way from that employed by Dr. Newman, but with a force equally irresistible. We recommend all our intelligent readers, and we presume that all our readers are intelligent, who desire to master the true and pure principles ofthe Catholic religion in their relation to the errors and disorders of the day, to obtain and study carefully all the works of the Archbishop of Westminster.
A Critical Greek and English Concordance of the New Testament.Prepared by Charles F. Hudson, under the direction of Horace L. Hastings, editor ofThe Christian; revised and completed by Ezra Abbot, LL.D., Assistant Librarian of Harvard University. Second edition, revised. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.
This handy little volume is evidently the result of a good deal of painstaking and conscientious labor. As the production of several hands, it is a monument of somewhat heterogeneous scholarship. It professes to be “critical”; and critical and scholarly we are sure it is, so far as it is indebted to the contributions of Dr. Ezra Abbot, a gentleman whose minute bibliographical knowledge is only equalled by his rare modesty, and by his readiness to place his learning at the disposal of others. To his careful hand, we take it, is due the collection of various readings as given by Griesbach, Lachmann, and the latest editions of Tischendorf and Tregelles. The student will find in this compilation a mass of information which we do not remember to have seen in so compact a form elsewhere. For the rest, the work will doubtless fulfil the purpose announced by the editor-in-chief, as a “book available to the mere English reader,” and will be welcomed by evangelical ministers of all denominations who may have felt more or less keenly the need of supplementing the defects in their early classical education by some easy artificial helps. How convenient, for example, when we run against the wordγυνή, to find, on the authority of Messrs. Hastings and Hudson, that, in a given number of passages, the majority in fact, it signifieswoman, undoubtedlywoman, whereas in several other given passages,including 1Cor. ix.5, it meanswife—even though there may be some misgivings about the “margin.” Whether or not it be “critical,” under cover of scholarship, to turn a supposed Greek concordance into nothing more nor less than a quiet vindication of the accuracy of the King James Version, we leave it to ordinary unbelievers to determine.
Life of John Bunyan, with Notices of some of his Contemporaries, and Specimens of his Style. By D. A. Harsha, M.A., author of “Life of Philip Doddrige, D.D.,” etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.
Nothing, we suppose, is more likely to strike the ordinary Catholic reader, supposing him even to waste his time over books of the kind, than the great meagreness and poverty of what are known by Protestants as religious lives. Even a non-Catholic, like Mr. Matthew Arnold, has somewhere commented on the superiority of Catholic biographies to Protestant ones, with that air of easy insolence which has made him anything but a pleasing subject for contemplation to the majority of his countrymen and co-religionists.
Mr. Harsha’s life of the allegorizing tinker of Bedford can boast of no advantage in this respect over other efforts of the same general description. It is not, we should say, the fault of the biographer, who seems to have genuine religious instincts, and to be principally hampered by his ignorance of what true spirituality means, and the poverty of the material he works in. These, however, are in his position necessary evils.
This book has other faults for which he is more actively responsible. A man who wonders that Bunyan should have been molested for his religious views under what he, perhaps facetiously, calls the “mild rule of Cromwell” (a characterization that John Evelynwould have been as slow to endorse as any Catholic Irishman of Zedah) and is puzzled to account for his freedom during the reign of the Second James, needs something besides an acquaintance with thePilgrim’s Progressand Bunyan’s sermons to qualify him for the task of a biographer. Perhaps, however, a thorough knowledge of history would be as successful an agent in the work of un-Protestantizing a sincere man as any other merely human one that could be named.
Graduale de Tempore et de Sanctis, juxta Ritum Sacrosanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ cum cantu Pauli V. Pont. Max. jussu reformato cui addita sunt officia postea approbata sub auspiciis Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Pii PP. IX. Curante Sacr. Rituum Congregatione, cum privilegio. Ratisbonæ, Neo-Eboraci et Cincinnatii: Sumptibus, chartis et typis Frederici Pustet.
About the time of the opening of the Œcumenical Council, the firm of F. Pustet were permitted by special indult to publish a revised edition of the Gradual known as the Medicean. A commission was appointed by the Sacred Congregation of Rites to undertake this revision, but the suspension of the Council and the political troubles ensuing prevented the completion of their labors. A dispensation, however, was granted to Mr. Pustet to publish and sell the work, adding the portion yet unrevised as it stands in the original edition. We reserve a fuller notice for some future date, when we hope to lay before our readers a critical essay on the various editions of the Gradual and other books of chant published in Europe and Canada.
The Grand Demonstrationin Baltimore and Washington, D. C., in honor of the XXVth Anniversary of the Election of PiusIX.to the Chair ofSt.Peter, June 17, 18, 19.A.D.1871. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.
It would be scarcely possible to add anything on the general subjectof this handsome brochure—the theme of so many thousand eloquent pens and voices. The celebration in the Province of Baltimore, however, was an exceptional one, as became the oldest See in the United States. Besides the addresses, letters, and resolutions, etc., which we naturally look for in such a publication, it includes encyclical and other letters from His Holiness, and some historical and chronological matter which the reader will find highly useful.
The Martyrs of the Coliseum; or, Historical Records of the Great Amphitheatre of Ancient Rome. By theRev.A. J. O’Reilly, Missionary Apostolic atSt.Mary’s, Capetown. London: Burns, Oates, & Co. 1871. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.
The basis of the narratives of this volume is furnished by the ancientActs of the Martyrs. The story of several of the most illustrious martyrs of the early ages is told by the author, according to history and legend, with some embellishments of imagination, poetry, and fancy. There is also an account of the history of the Coliseum itself, as far as knowledge or probable conjecture can furnish it. The author’s style is warm, exuberant, and brilliant. The volume is instructive and entertaining, and ought to be a favorite, with young people especially.
Manual of Piety, for the use of Seminarians. Second American Edition. Baltimore: Published by John Murphy & Co., 182 Baltimore Street. 1872.
This is a new edition of an excellent and well-known manual for seminarians. It can hardly be too highly commended either as regards matter or form. It contains an immense amount of matter in a very small space, and the type is clear and beautiful.
Mr. Robert Coddingtonhas in press, and will publish about Christmas,The Vicar of Christ; or, Lectures upon the Office and Prerogatives of our Holy Father the Pope, byRev.Thomas S. Preston, pastor ofSt.Ann’s Church, New York, and Chancellor of the Diocese. It will be published uniform in style with the other volumes of Father Preston’s lectures.
The Catholic Publication Society will publish, November 1,Mary, Queen of Scots, and Her Latest English Historian, a narrative of the principal events in the life of Mary Stuart, with some remarks on Mr. Froude’sHistory of England, by James F. Meline. This work will contain not only the thorough criticism of Mr. Froude’sHistory of Englandas far as made in the five articles on the subject inThe Catholic World—articles which have attracted general attention, and put Mr. Froude upon his defence—but also a complete narrative of the life of Mary Stuart, with a review of those volumes of Mr. Froude’s history not noticed in the articles.
Mr. P. Donahoe, Boston, will soon publishTo and from the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Bavaria, from the pen of theRev.George H. Doane, Chancellor of the Diocese of Newark. It will be dedicated to the Rt.Rev.J. R. Bayley, D.D., Bishop of Newark.
Kelly, Piet & Co.announce as in pressThe Martyrs of the Coliseum, byRev.A. J. O’Reilly.
FromCharles Scribner & Co., New York: The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version (A.D.1611), with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter.Vol. I.Part 1. Genesis-Exodus.
FromKay & Brother, Philadelphia: A Collection of Leading Cases in the Law of Elections in the United States, with Notes and References to the latest Authorities. By Frederick C. Brightly.
THE
VOL. XIV., No.81.—DECEMBER, 1871.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, byRev.I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
We have no occasion to dwell on the disastrous events of the war of the second French Empire with Prussia, nor on the still more disastrous results of the feeble efforts of the improvised republic to drive back the German armies from French soil. They are too painful to be dwelt on, and are, probably, as well known to our readers as to ourselves. We may, however, remark that we regard it as a mistake to represent the war as unprovoked by Prussia. The party that declares the war is not always responsible for it. Prussia, by her duplicity, her aggressive spirit, and her menacing attitude to France, gave to the French government ample reason, according to what has long been the usage with European nations, for declaring the war.
We have never been the partisans of Louis Napoleon; but it is only simple justice to say that by his concessions of January, 1870, he had ceased to be the absolute sovereign of France, and had become a constitutional monarch, like the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and the declaration of war against Prussia in July of the same year was not his personal act, but the act of the Liberal ministry and the French people, influenced, not unlikely, by the secret societies that had sworn the Emperor’s destruction. Perhaps, when the facts are better known, it will be clearly seen that the Emperor had really no alternative but war with Prussia, or the loss of the French throne for himself and dynasty. Though unprepared, he chose the war, as offering at least a chance of success, and it is not improbable that the result would have been less disastrous both for him and the nation if he had been loyally sustained by the French people, and had not had a more formidable enemy in his rear than in his front. The influences that compelled him to consent to the declaration of war were unfriendly to him, and both before and after the declaration were, not unlikely, indirectly controlled by that astute but unprincipled diplomatist, Bismarck,at present Chancellor of the new German Empire, and through whose adroitness Germany has been Prussianized.
It now also appears that the disaster of Sedan was far less the fault of the Emperor than of his marshals, who acted without his orders, and without concert with one another. If Marshal MacMahon had fallen back on the capital, as Trochu says he advised, instead of attempting to relieve Metz, and given the nation time to rally and concentrate its forces, it is probable the empire would have been saved, and the Prussians been ultimately defeated and driven beyond the Rhine. Even after the disaster of Sedan, the integrity of French territory might have been saved, and peace obtained on far less onerous terms than those which were finally imposed by the conqueror after the surrender of Paris, but for the Parisian mob of the 4th of September, which compelled the Corps Législatif to pronounce, illegally of course, the escheat of the Emperor and the empire, to proclaim the republic, and to suffer a so-called government of defence to be improvised. The disaster of Sedan was great, but it was a mere bagatelle in comparison with that of the revolution effected by the Parisian mob acting under the direction of the secret societies, whose destructive power and influence were so well and so truthfully set forth by Disraeli in hisLothair, one of the most remarkable books recently published, and which shows that its author fully understands the great questions, movements, and tendencies of modern society. That revolution was the real disaster, and Paris, not Prussia or Germany, has subjugated France. The French, excepting a few lawyers, journalists, literary dreamers, and the workingmen of the cities and towns, who demanded“la république démocratique et sociale,” had no wish for a republic, and were, and are, decidedly anti-republican at heart. The men composing the so-called government of defence were, for the most part, men who had not, and could not inspire it, the confidence of the nation, were men without faith or solid principle, theorists and declaimers, utterly destitute both of civil and military capacity, distrusted, if not detested, by all Frenchmen who retained any sense of religion or any love of country surpassing their love for their own theories. France, perhaps, could have been saved by a loyal support of the empire, and a hearty co-operation with the Imperial government under the Empress-Regent, even after the disaster of Sedan, but not by overthrowing it, and plunging the nation into the revolutionary abyss. The government of defence only hastened the catastrophe by defaming the Imperial government, calumniating it, and publishing every sort of falsehood against it that malice could invent or render plausible, as the event has proved, and all the world is beginning to see and admit.
But for the socialistic revolution, it is now known that, even after the surrender of the Emperor, the Imperial government could have obtained peace without any mutilation of French territory, and on terms, if hard, at least such as could be borne. France would have suffered the mortification of defeat, and would have been compelled to indemnify, as a matter of course, Prussia for the expenses of the war; but she would have suffered no loss of territory, and would have remained, defeated indeed, but not conquered. Europe would have mediated effectually in her favor, for the balance of power requires her preservation; but the European nations could not intervenein favor of a revolution which was a menace to each one of themselves, and Prussia would not and could not treat with a revolutionary committee that had no legal existence and no power to bind the nation.
The insurrection of Paris on the 18th of March, 1871, against the Versailles government, was only the logical continuation of that of the 4th of September against the empire. The same party that made the one made the other. An omnibus would hold nearly all the republicans in France that differ essentially or in principle from the Paris Commune, and its suppression after a fearful struggle is the condemnation of the revolution that overthrew the empire, and also of the government that suppressed it. Its suppression, so absolutely necessary if France or French society is to subsist, was simply the revolution condemning and killing itself. No government can be founded on the revolutionary principle, for that principle is destructive and can found nothing; and hence it is that every revolution is compelled to devour itself; and to be able to reconstruct and maintain political or social order, it must deny its own principle, and as far as possible undo its own work. Yet the Commune is only “scotched, not killed,” and will rear its head again in the first moment a new political crisis comes. A republic of law and order, respecting and maintaining the rights of person and property, such as we regard our own, is at present impracticable in every nation in Europe, with the single exception of Switzerland, for it has no basis in the interior life, the antecedents, the manners, customs, and usages of the people. It was by the aid of non-republican France that the Parisian insurgents were put down. There is in Europe no politicalvia mediapracticable as yet between theabsolutism of Cæsar and the absolutism of the people. Either Cæsar is in the place of God, or the people; and the only religion this nineteenth century tolerates is either monarchical absolutism or popular absolutism; and European society, as we see, only swings like a pendulum from the one to the other, and finds no liberty or chance for free development under either. Its real progress is suspended.
At this moment, France lies prostrate with the iron heel of the conqueror on her neck, and that conqueror, Prussia, a power that never was known to have a noble or generous sentiment, and that has 1806 to avenge. Prussia has not yet relaxed her hold on her prostrate foe, and will not of her own accord, so long as a single sign of life remains. France has now no legal government, no political organization, and, what is the worst, recognizes no power competent to reorganize her society, and reconstitute the state, and has recognized none since the revolution of 1789. Since that worldwide event, she has had no government which she felt herself bound in conscience to obey, or towards which she had any genuine sentiment of loyalty. No government has been able to count on the national support if it became unfortunate, and ceased to gratify the national pride or vanity. The principles of 1789, avowedly accepted as the basis of his government by the Emperor, are destructive of the very sentiment of loyalty, and deny the obligation in conscience of the people to obey authority any longer than it suits their convenience. If a plebiscitum or the popular vote could create a legal government, Louis Napoleon was and is still the legal sovereign of the French people, and, through them, of France. But the nation never had any sentimentof loyalty towards him, and abandons him as it did his greater uncle the moment he becomes unsuccessful. It never felt that it owed him allegiance, and how could it since he professed to hold from it? His government was based on a plebiscitum, and could it bind the nation? It was created by the people, was their creature, and can the creator be loyal to or bound by his own creation? The nation can be bound only by a power above itself and be loyal only to an authority that comes from a source independent of the people.
Louis Napoleon held from 1789, and had the weakness to believe in plebiscitums. He seems never to have understood that universal suffrage can only create an agency, not a government. He was a disciple of the political philosophers of the eighteenth century, who erected revolution into a principle. These philosophers of the eighteenth century made no account of the continuity of the national life, of national habits, customs, and usages, and assumed that the convention might draw up an entirely new constitution according to an abstract and preconceived theory, without regard to the antecedents or past life of the nation, and without any support in the spiritual or supernatural order above the nation, get it adopted by a plurality of votes, and safely rely onl’intérêt bien entendu, or enlightened self-interest, to preserve it and secure its successful practical workings as the fundamental law of the nation. The whole history of France for nearly a century, without any reference to our own experience, refutes the absurd theory of the philosophers, or sophists, rather. A French gentleman, still living, told us, before the recent collapse of the second French Empire, that he had witnessed seventeen revolutions or changes of government in his nativecountry, and he is in a fair way of living to see the number increased at least to a score. No government created by and held from the people can govern the people; and, if reason alone or the calculations of interest were sufficient to sustain a government, no government or political constitution would be necessary. Paper constitutions are worthless, save so far as they express the living constitution of the nation. “Constitutions,” Count de Maistre has well said, “are generated, not made”; and the merit of the American constitution is in the fact that it was born with the American people, not made by them.
France was originally constituted by the king, the nobility, the church, with some feeble remains of the old Roman municipalities, subsequently revived and expanded into thetiers-état. The balance of her original constitution had been disturbed, it is true; the church and the nobility had been greatly enfeebled by the inordinate growth of monarchy on the one hand, and the expansion of the communal power on the other; but these four fundamental elements of her national constitution still subsisted in more or less force down to the Revolution of 1789. That revolution swept away king, church, and nobility, and proclaimed thetiers-étatthe nation, without any political organization or power to reconstitute legal or legitimate government. No nation is competent to constitute itself, for till constituted it is only a mass of individuals, incapable of any legal national act. Since then France has been trying in vain to make something out of nothing, and been continually alternating between the mob and despotism—despotism suppressing the mob, and the mob deposing despotism. She at this moment has no legal government,and the French people recognize no power able to reconstitute the state. Her old monarchical constitution, tempered by the church and her old nobility, and restrained by provincial customs, usages, privileges, and franchises, is swept away, and nothing remains of her political life that can serve as the germ or basis of reorganization, or the re-establishment of authority, competent, legally or morally, to bind the nation, restore order, and protect liberty.
Worse than all else is the fact that 1789 swept away the church as a power in the state, and left the state it wished to constitute without any moral support, or power not dependent on the nation to sustain it. It threw the management of public affairs into the hands of men and parties that had no faith in God, who hated or despised religion, and believed only in themselves and the perfectibility of the species. This was the greatest evil of all. A nation may be politically disorganized, and yet be able to recover and re-establish a legal government, if it retains religion as an organized power, independent of the nation; for it then retains a power that has its source in the supernatural, above the people, and able to bind the national will in conscience, and give consistency and a divine sanction to the national ordinations. The first Napoleon had sense enough to see something of this, and to understand that he could not reorganize disorganized France without calling in religion to his aid; he therefore solicited a concordat from the Holy See, and re-established the church. But he had not sense enough to see and understand that even the church could not aid him if holding from himself, or if subjected in her administration to his own or the national will. Hecommitted the usual mistake of secular sovereigns, that of insisting on keeping the control of the ecclesiastical administration in their respective dominions each in his own hands, of using the church to control his subjects, but allowing her no authority over himself.
Nothing can exceed the short-sightedness of secular sovereigns in seeking to keep religion in their respective dominions subject to their will as an adjunct of the police, rather than an independent power holding from God, and alike supreme over sovereigns and subjects. The present hostility to the church, even in old Catholic nations, is in no small measure owing to the fact that the sovereigns have sought to use her to preach submission, resignation, and patience to their subjects, and to uphold the authority of the government, however forgetful of its duties, tyrannical, or oppressive. They have sought to make her their instrument in governing or, rather, misgoverning their subjects, without the liberty to exercise the power which, as the representative of the divine authority on earth, she holds from God, to remind them of their duty to govern their subjects wisely and justly, to rebuke and place them under interdict, and even to declare their power forfeited when they persistently violate the law of God and oppress the people. They thus render her odious to the lovers of freedom. Hence we see the revolution far more bitter against the church than against the sovereigns, who, having rendered her odious by denying her the freedom and independence which are her right, and without which she can render no service either to power or to liberty, have everywhere abandoned her to the tender mercies of her enemies, in the vain hope of conciliating the revolution and savingtheir own heads. They throw her now as a sop to Cerberus.
The power of religion to sustain authority against the insurrection and rebellion of subjects, and liberty against the tyranny of the prince, is in her being an organic power in the nation, but independent of the national will, holding from God, not from the nation or its sovereign, and free to declare and apply the divine law alike to prince and people. Nationalized, she has no support outside of the nation, no power not derived from it, and can give the nation only what it already has in itself. It must follow, not lead the nation, and share its fate, which it has no power to avert. What can the Russian Church do to restrain the tyranny of the Czar? Or the Church of England to check the progress of the revolution now going on and threatening to sweep away king, nobility, and the church first of all? What can it do before the democracy become omnipotent? Why is it that no Gentile nation has ever shown any recuperative energy, but because Gentilism, as the name implies, is nationalism, and the nation has in it only a national religion, and nothing outside, above, or independent of the national authority? The Gentile religion, deprived of catholicity, had to follow the nation, and to share its corruption and its fate. When the nation fell, it fell with it; and the nation, when it fell, fell for ever, and disappeared from the list of nations. Protestantism in its essential principle is a revolt against catholicity, and the subjection of religion to the national will. It is essentially a revival of nationalism, or Gentilism, and hence a Protestant nation has no recuperative energy, and, were it to fall, its fall would be like that of a Gentile nation, a fall without the power to rise again. So it must be with every nation that has onlya national or a nationalized religion.
Napoleon, who wished the church only as an adjunct of his own power, never understood anything of all this. He saw that the church was more conservative than Protestantism, and in fact so by virtue of her Catholicity, that she had a stronger hold on the French people, and could serve him better than any Protestant sect; but he did not see that the church, sought for a political end, is necessarily powerless even to that end, and that she serves a political end only when she is sought for her own sake, recognized and supported for a religious end, or as the free and independent kingdom of God on earth. Not understanding this, he refused her unrestrained liberty, and sought by his own legislation to subject her in his own dominions to his own will, and to compel her either to support his policy or to feel the full weight of his vengeance. She must support him, wear his livery, do his bidding, hold his enemies to be her enemies, or he would not tolerate her at all. She, as the church of God, could not accept this position and sink into a mere national church, however powerful the nation. She asserted her independence, and her independence alike of him and those he professed to govern. He commanded her to obey him: she refused. He quarrelled with her, dragged her supreme pontiff from his throne, despoiled him of his estates, imprisoned him, was excommunicated, became powerless before his enemies, was defeated, lost his throne, and was sent by his conquerors to fret his life away as a prisoner of England on the barren isle ofSt.Helena, leaving French society hardly less disorganized than he found it.
The Restoration which followed was a return toward legitimacy, andunder it France actually recuperated with a rapidity which seems marvellous to unbelievers. But it humiliated the nation, because it was imposed on it by foreign bayonets, and its work of reparation and expiation necessarily made it unpopular with all who had profited by the plunder and confiscations of the Revolution, or by the wars of the Empire. The spirit of 1789 still possessed a large portion of the population. The Bourbons returned, also, with the old Gallican traditions of the relation of church and state, which had lost the monarchy, and prepared the people for the old revolution. They would have the church, indeed, but they would never recognize her rightful supremacy; and, though giving France really the best government she had had for a long time, they at length fell before the intrigues of a younger branch of the family, supported by the combined factions of the Bonapartists, republicans, and socialists.
The monarchy of July or the Barricades was, notwithstanding the pretences of thejuste milieu, or doctrinaires, a purely revolutionary government, improvised in the interests of disorder, without a shadow of legality, and without anything, in the nation or in religion, on which it could rest; and from the first it was spurned by the legitimists, the old national nobility, by the peasantry, the larger part of the republicans, and supported only by thebourgeoisie, or business classes, and the Bonapartists, the latter of whom hoped to make it a stepping-stone to the restoration of the Napoleonic empire. It had no hold on the nation, no power to reconstitute it on a solid and permanent basis; and so, as a new generation appeared on the stage, it fell without a struggle before the Parisian mob. It was indifferentrather than avowedly hostile to the church, but it gave free scope to the infidel press, warred against the Jesuits, and maintained the infidel university in the monopoly of education. It, however, indirectly served the cause of religion by the little court favor the bishops could obtain, and who, in consequence, retired, and looked after the interests of religion in their respective dioceses, so that when a Parisian mob overthrew the citizen-king in February, 1848, and proclaimed the republic, the church was really more influential in France than she had been since 1682. She had influence enough to displace the party that made the revolution from the control of public affairs, to defeat and crush the reds and communists in the terrible days of June, 1848, to save French society from utter dissolution, and maintain order under a republic proclaimed by the friends of disorder. We are far from being convinced that, if the bishops and clergy had continued to show the energy in supporting the republic that they did in wresting it from the control of the infidels and destructives, they would not have been able to reconstitute French society on a Catholic and a republican basis, to the advantage alike of religion and society.