"he CARMELITES (THEIR OBJECT AND WORK:) ' — V A LECTURE I)KI.I\ KRED BY THE REV. JAMES MURPHY IK THE acai«^:m[c hall of the jesu ON - The nth Jitly 1875 MONTREAL Printed at Le Franc- Parleur^s, 22, St. Oabriel Street 1875 L ^i)^ 1^1^ THE CAEMELITES (THFIR OBJECT AND WORK} A LECTURE DELIVERED BY THE REV. JAMES MURPHY IN THE ACADEMIC HALL OF THE JESU ON The 11th July 1875 MONTREAL Printed at Le Franc-Parleur's, 22, St. Gabriel Street 1875 i* ' J • J ■ V * . ' 'I I I THE CARMELITES Ladies and Gentlemen, One of the chief cliaracteristics of the Roman Catholic Church is the complotencss of her organization. She in maJS' for the un- iverse ; and therefore is her power tittiut^ly universal. There" is jio huma'i creature who does not find in her institutions, n.)t only ii place for existence but a place for self-perfection. She is t'le church of the rich and of the poor ; of the learned and of the illi- terate ; of the weak who can only totter and of the stroiiiij who can do battle ; of the unendowed who are di;;iwn to the earth and of the gifted whoso aspirations soar hi^L^hor than the stars. She has witliin her borders a place for the peasant whose vision is limited by the fencijs of his native fields, and for the Plato whose eye contemplates the dinuasions of a universe ; for the narrow little soul of the H -brew who can be tempted to serve God only by the milk and honey of the Promised Land, and for the broad, great soul of Francis Xavier who follows his Lord for love and loyalty, and not through fear of punishment or liope of pay. As in the scheme of nature there is a purpose for the ivy as well as for the oak. for the owl that blinks at an oil-lamp and for the eagle that liazes on the sun, so in the scheme of the chnv(;h there is a perfec- tion for the timorous heart of the loving St. Peter and for the heroic heart of the magnificent St. Paul. But in one especial direction is it, that the universality of the Church's sympathies becomes especially remarkable. In the many strange sects which have been the product of Protestantism a most peculiar characteristic, common to them all, is the smallness of the sphere they allot to the action of woman. In this respect the Reformation was a direct return to the Paganism of Greece and the Mahommed mism of Arabia. Forgetful that if the active saviours of the race were generally men, they were sometimes women too ; that if, in the early Church, there were deacons there were also deaconesses, Protestantism except in those sickly imita- tions of our discipline by which she tries to round-off and rouge the wrinkles of her dying years, has never been able to assign to female energy any sphere of operation beyond the narrow limits of family and home. Kven when the unerrin": instincts of Protestant Ladies have led them forth on errands of cliarity (and (( tales qiium sint utinam nostrceessent, ») Protestantism itself has manifested neither tendency nor capacity to organize the efforts of individuals into the sustained and systematic movements of communities ; and the Protes- ^^^^ rri A tant Lady who, with proper training and as a member of a body^ mit^ht have had })L'iii'ficial influence throuL'h many ajrew and thrctu^h many hinds, has, in her isuhition and uninstruetedness never been able to do umch more tha,n to make soups for the siek or to distribute flannels in the winter time. To do even that is of course most ex- cellent. But compared with what women mi^ht do ; compared with what they are fitted and therefore destined to do ; compared with what they actually accomplish in that Church which knowing their destiny su^fiplie.s opportunities i'or its fulfilment, all that, in so far as its power to perfect the agent is concerned, is contemptibly little. It engenders indeed kindly love of the neighbour. But love of the neighbour be it ever so kindly, is not the highest law ; and the soft, somewhat sentimental virtues by which it is attended are though the most enticing not the most elevating, possibly the most beautifuUyhu- man, but certainly not *he most nobly divine. For the great female heart, capable of such lofty self-devotion and of such mightily ennobling influence on all within its range ; endowed not seldom with such splendid aspirations after a solitude that no world can shake and a purity that no world can stain ; drawn oflen so mys- teriously and yet withal so naturally rather to communion with the angels than to companionship with men ; — for such as these to be merely occasional hawkers of patent medicines and occasional distributers of small alms, and then to fall back upon the usual worldly routine of weary social ceremony and laborious self-ador- noment, all that is a lot much more heart-piercing than it was for Robert Burns to be a guager of beer-barrels or for the great soul of Shakspeare to make itself motly as an actor of plays. And yet is all that the highest thing to which Protestantism invites and encou- rages woman. The noblest female hearts wasted on follies ; the most splendid female souls sacrificed to trivialities ; in so far as religion is concerned no avenue of escape from the dreadful destiny of spiritual littleness — such is one part and an unspeakably bitter part of the wretched outcome of the Reformation. For women who are heroic Protestantism has no career. In the Roman Catholic Church all is difierent. Among us there is no female aspiration, however lofty, which has not offered it a way that leads to its object and a guidance which makes the attainment of the object secure. Outside our Church, there is nothing more beautiful, and nothing more desirable than loyalty and permanency in wedded love. Against such loyalty and sucfi permanency the most rooted qualities of our nature — its need of change and its failure under familiarity — eternally war ; and so, for mere human capacity, unassisted specially from on high, that love stronger than death, 5 Love that is faithful and flxod as fate Proof against years and troubles and tears, • i-, except by the huppiast conjunction of temper jincl fitnesp, almost an impossibility. But this, outside the (Jhureh so rare, inside the Church is secured ])y a special sacrament, whose graces, if not neglected, neutralize the action both of time and human chanire- fulness, rendering it easy and a nuitter of course for the ^rey hairs and passionless bodies of three score and ten, to feel lor one another, fresh and warm as ever, the briu;ht poetic affection of their marriage day. And, for all those whose desires lie not in the region of wedded blessedness, no matter what the line on which they are at- tracted, the Roman Catholic Church has not only places but orga- nized and methodized functions ever ready. We have only to turn over the titles of the various Orders and sisterhoods of reli