iWM^' 
 
 FROM 
 
 D. P. MURPHY, Jr. 
 
 PRINTER & PUBLISHER, 
 
 The Chuich Stationer, 
 
 31 Barclay St.. N. Y. 
 
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ESSAYS, 
 
 LECTURES, ADDRESSES, SERMONS, 
 
 AND 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS AND DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 INCLUDING A- DISCUSSION ON EDUCATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. JOHN J. TIGHE, 
 
 OF BOONTON, N. J. 
 
 SACRED HEART PROTECTORY PRINT, 
 ARLINGTON, N. J. 
 
lOAN STAC^. 
 
 NIHIL OBSTAT 
 
 ^ VENANTIUS M. WIGGER. D.D., 
 
 Episcopus Novarcensis. 
 
 ►^VENANTIUS M. WiGGER, D.D., 
 
 Episcopus Novarcensis. 
 
 + Michael Augustinus Corrigan, D.D., 
 
 Episcopus Neo~Eboracensis. 
 
 THE REASON FOR PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS. 
 
 *' Much is said in our days of social assimilation with those who dwell in this 
 great country. Assimilation must be spontaneous , gradual, for the common good 
 of all parts composing the social body. It must be neither violent nor opposed. You 
 must distinguish well the civil from the religious assimilation ; because, if in the 
 civil assimilation we must go to others, in the religious one we must wait for others- 
 to come to us. In regard to religious sentiment and matters of faith, and in regard 
 to truly Catholic morals and every observance of the Catholic religion, we must hold 
 firm. It is better to be well educated to an honest life than to be simply instructed. 
 
 " Nay, for us Catholics, education, in a moral sense, that is not Catholic, is im- 
 possible. This is the supreme reason for parochial schools, namely, of those schools 
 of ours which, besides teaching all that is useful to the domestic and civil interest ^ 
 perfect it by means of moral and religious education. Schools without any religion 
 cannot be approved of, because harmful to the individual, the family, and the State, 
 Hence it is that Catholics respect the civil institutions, have their own rights and 
 their own schools, and deserve that public opinion should be favorable to them, and 
 justly hope for the co-operation of all honest people. The loyalty of men and their 
 sense of justice, we have reason to hope, will not allow them to consider such 
 schools as anti-American, as they are in full accord with all which a free and civil 
 State can demand.'" — Most Rev. Francis Satolli, in his first address in the 
 English tongue, at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Compare with pages 249 and 250 of this book. 
 
 Copyright, 1893, by 
 JOHN J. TIGHE. 
 

 TO THE 
 
 CATHOLIC LAITY, 
 
 VARIOUS PARISHES WHEREIN I HAVE PERFORMED EITHER 
 OCCASIONAL OR REGULAR DUTIES, 
 
 IN TOKEN OF KINDNESS RECEIVED; 
 
 AND TO THE 
 
 RKV: XHADOEUS HOGAN, 
 
 OF TRENTON, N. J., 
 IN MEMORY OF ANCIENT FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ARE, WITH PRESUMED PERMISSION, INSCRIBED. 
 
 016 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 24, line 8, for " solidity " read " stolidity." 
 
 " 25, " 25, ** " speculating " read " peculating." 
 
 " 45, " 12, " " commands" read "commends." 
 
 45, " 32, " " deci-ees " read " decries." 
 
 63, " 23, " " beautiful " read " bountiful." 
 
 " 88, " 25, " " congenial " read " congenital." 
 
 " 111, " 38, " "the" read "their." 
 
 " 193, " 24, " "impai-ts "read "imports." 
 
 " 329, " 25, " " unctuated " read " uncreated." 
 
 " 338, *' 5, " " sun-dried " read " sin-dried." 
 
 " 350, " 7, " " Well-greased " read " Well-greaved." 
 
 " 368, " 32, « " banner-breathing " read " banners breath- 
 ing." 
 
 " 410, « 15, " "fearless" read "peerless." 
 
 " 429, " 7, " " BoabdiUa " read " Bobadilla." 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Of the fact that " of making many books there is no end " we are 
 fully conscious. Neither do we fondly seek to persuade ourselves 
 that the present production is just the desideratum to fill " a long- 
 felt want." Honored usage has prescribed that a book-maker 
 furnish some apology for the innocuous vanity of appearing in print. 
 When the enraptured eye of Dickens first rested on his fascinating 
 effusions arrayed in the decoration of type, he attempted the novel 
 performance of reading them, while standing upon his head; which 
 freak Edmund Burke would doubtless define as an effort " to live 
 in an inverted order." "We shall, probably, never be the sport of 
 such strange " ups and downs." 
 
 The palmary reason for this book, perhaps, is that many who heard 
 discussed some of the topics herein treated, especially that of Educa- 
 tion, expressed the desire, with great sincerity and cordiality, as it 
 appeared to us, to have them recorded in more permanent form. 
 This was, possibly, an unwarranted conceit, which the writer, with 
 due diffidence, now undei-takes to gratify. Whether others, more 
 disinterested, will ratify the favorable and indulgent judgment of 
 friends and well-wishers, may be early, but we hope not painfully, 
 made' manifest. ConcuiTent endorsement would, it is puerile to 
 conceal, carry satisfaction both to our friends and to us; but even 
 the reversal of opinions which, in all likelihood, had taken on the 
 rose-colored tint of partiality, will be met with equanimity of mind 
 and an obliged sense of con-ection. We believe, however, with an- 
 other, that affected haughtiness and affected humility are alike des- 
 picable in a preface, and hence we trust not to be convicted of 
 overweening pretension in considering that some few, at least, of 
 these firstlings of our creation will repay the reader's examination. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 If the high-priests of literature judge otherwise, let it be so. They 
 know best. Of the blemishes that bristle throughout the composi- 
 tion, it may be some extenuation to say, that, besides being written 
 in the interludes of engrossing duties, the first draught of each pro- 
 duction is, in nearly every case, the one now printed. 
 
 With reference to the essay on Education, it is to be remarked 
 that it was written, at least as to substance, some time before the 
 " School Question " had passed into the field of public controversy. 
 As that " question " assumed various phases, new considerations, or 
 criticisms, were subjoined. A brief review of the present status of 
 the subject, as the writer sees it, was subsequently added. It was 
 intended that these pages should have long since seen the light, but 
 pressure of circumstances prevented the consummation of our pur- 
 pose, now only reaHzed through the intervention and friendly offices 
 of the publisher. 
 
 The few sermons, submitted with much misgiving, are inserted as 
 appellants for approval. If, like the bird from the ark, they return 
 with the green leaf of promise, they shall be followed, by the close 
 of the current year, by their congeners; if they bring no message- 
 word of welcome, then shall the rest continue to repose where they 
 now peacefully lie, in the literary lumber-room of the writer. The 
 selections were made more for local interest than for intrinsic merit. 
 
 The contents of the book are very heterogeneous in character. It 
 is so designed that they may serve for desultory and occasional read- 
 ing. The miscellaneous nature of the subjects precluded even the 
 pretence to unity or concatenation. 
 
 If the book shall serve any worthy cause, kindle any lofty aim, 
 inspire any new hope, help any groping mind, soothe any troubled 
 soul, or even beguile any weary hour, the writer will not have built 
 in vain. In this fond expectation he deferentially submits it to the 
 critic's care, to whom he says, in the words of an inspired penman, 
 
 "He that judgeth let him write a book." 
 BooNTON, N. J., April 1st, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 -The Crusades, and their Effects on Modern Civilization, 
 
 I- 
 
 n. — The Indian Question, 
 
 HI. — Prehistoric America — Indians and Aztecs, 
 
 rV. MORMONISM AND THE GoVERNTlENT, 
 
 V. — Politics and Parties, .... 
 
 VI. — Sabbatarianism and Amusements, 
 Vn. — Progress and the Catholic Church, 
 Vm. — How Famous Men Died, .... 
 IX. — Education — The State vs. The Individual, 
 X, — A EoMAN Catholic on the School Question, 
 XI. — Education in New Jersey — A Controversy, 
 Xn. — Friendship, .... 
 
 Xm. — Recollections of College Life, 
 XIV. — Filial Affection, 
 XV. — Robert Elsmere, 
 XVI. — George Bancroft's New History, 
 XVn. — Historical Se:etch of St. Patrick, 
 
 23 
 
 29 
 
 35 
 
 41 
 
 46 
 
 49 
 
 119 
 
 125 
 
 254 
 
 265 
 
 272 
 
 295 
 
 299 
 
 305 
 
 311 
 
 315 
 
 LECTURES. 
 
 I. — The Harmony of Religion, 325 
 
 n. — The Church — A Kingdom of Peace and a Kingdom of 
 
 War, 337 
 
 m. — Ireland — Past and Present, 359 
 
 rV. — Christian Charity, 396 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 V. — Life and Character of Columbus, .... 409 
 VI. — Mission and Progress of the Church in the United 
 
 States, 431 
 
 Vn.— The Song of Salvation, 465 
 
 ADDEESSES. 
 
 I. — Address to Young Men, 491 
 
 n. — Address at the Dedication of Chapel and Academy, 499 
 
 HI. — Address to Young Ladies on Graduation Day, . . 504 
 IV. — Address at Flag-Eaising, July 4, 1892, . . .512 
 
 V. — Catholic Education, . 520 
 
 VI. — Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Eefuge of the 
 
 Sisters of Peace, 528 
 
 desceiptive and miscellaneous. 
 
 I. — Storm in the Eockies — Mountain of the Holy Cross, 539 
 
 II. — Battle of the In\'isible Powers, .... 542 
 
 in. — An Excursion to the West, 550 
 
 IV. — Sketch of Eev. J. J. Curran, . .... 580 
 
 V. — Story of the Sea, ....... 585 
 
 VI.— Sketch of Eev. M. J. Tallon, . . . . . 590 
 
 seemons. 
 
 I. — The Eternal Priesthood of Jesus Christ, . . 597 
 
 n.— Mortal Sin, 618 
 
 m. — The Priesthood, 632 
 
 IV. — Faith as the Falchion in the Spiritual Struggle, . 643 
 
 v.— Lying, 652 
 
 VI. — "The Teacher of the Nations," .... 663 
 
 VII. — Month's Mind of the Eev. James H. Corrigan, . 673 
 
 Vin.— The Blessed Eucharist, ...... 6S2 
 
 IX. — St. Francis of Assisi, 693 
 
 X.— Mary, Our Mother, 702 
 
 XI. — First Sunday of Lent, 709 
 
ESSAYS 
 
THE CRUSADES AND THEIR EFFECT OH^ MODERN 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 The salient history of mankind is a history of heroes. The blind 
 bard of Smyrna chanted in undying song the glories of the Greeks ; 
 and until the annals of the ages shall have become a shrivelled 
 scroll, the recollection of Eoman valor will Hve in the memory of 
 man. As long as the human soul has the power to admire, the 
 sublime and heroic will call forth its admii-ation. 
 
 We extol the doers no less than we do their deeds. The soldier 
 who in strenuous struggle has saved his native soil, is hailed with 
 loud acclaim, and his brow begii-t with laurels ; and the sage who 
 breasts financial storm and guides the ship of state beyond the mael- 
 strom of national discredit, is honored with his countrymen's un- 
 stinted gratitude. 
 
 What, now, is the loadstone that attracts our admiration for such 
 men ? What talismanic touch is that which thrills the soul at the re- 
 cital of grand exploits ? Not all that is accounted great can lay claim 
 to our heartfelt admiration. The mind's work is praised, not so much 
 when it gleams with the fascinating fire of genius, as when it beto- 
 kens devotion to duty. The man who meets injustice with the eagle 
 eye of scorn, and who, unyielding as the monarch of the primeval 
 forest, assumes his station on the ancient battle-line of right and 
 wrong, is truly marked a hero. In high purpose and strength of 
 soul, then, is to be sought the source of our admiration for all that 
 is great in human action. Truth and goodness are the qualities of 
 genuine heroism, and these have had no nobler exemplification than 
 in the spirit of Christian Chivalry. 
 
 Here, indeed, was an ideal of manhood that embraced in one con- 
 ception the noblest traits of human character : justice and courtesy ; 
 
2 
 
 modesty and genius; sincerity and grace; compassion and fidelity ; — 
 and all brightened with generous sentiments, and lofty imaginations, 
 and crowned with invincible valor and heroic faith. Similar charac- 
 teristics have been elsewhere found, but, as compared to the fair 
 features of Chivalry, they are but semblances devoid of substance 
 that wither at a scrutiny. 
 
 Courage was not first born when the fire of Chivalry began to glow. 
 What could be more fearless than the struggle of the three hundred 
 at Thermopylae against a countless host? And yet the valor of 
 pagan days was only the energy of desperation. Keligious fervor 
 flamed in many a soul before the medieval period. Look at the 
 crouching reverence of the old Norsemen that bowed before the fire- 
 flame as a deadly demon. Their poets worshipped the lightning as 
 a God ; while the bolt that cleft the cloud was the all-rending ham- 
 mer hurled from heaven to smite the sons of earth. And yet these 
 men were valorous ; but theirs was a valor that deemed it crime 
 not to die in battle. Behold the enthusiasm of Oriental fancy that 
 saw in Mahomet, a prophet inspired of God, and drew millions of 
 men under Arabian suns, and across Arabian deserts, to worship in 
 the mosques of Mecca at the bidding of an impostor, or, at least, a 
 day-dreamer. Such was the ardor of fanaticism ; and with such a 
 fervor. Christian Chivalry has no affiliation. No ; Christian Chivahry 
 is inseparable from Christian Charity ; they are twin flowers on the 
 stem of faith. 
 
 When, hundreds of years ago, the light of Christianity rent the 
 gloom that enwrapt the nations, the spirit of Chiistian Chivalry be- 
 gan to live. For years it had to lie latent through peace and perse- 
 cution, until in God's good time the occasion came that was to em- 
 body it in an all-powerful institution. That occasion was the downfall 
 of the Roman Empire. 
 
 When the proud Roman eagles, pierced by the deadly darts of 
 Gothic arrows, had fallen lifeless to the earth, the profession of arms 
 became the pastime of nations. The sceptre fell shattered from the 
 puerile grasp of Augustulus, but only that the mace might be borne 
 by a race of warriors. When men ruled who had adored Odin, the 
 god of tiger strife, and who had sighed for the putative paradise 
 where the braves sij^ped hydromel from the skulls of foes, it is no 
 marvel that Europe was overspread with forests of long spears and 
 
3 
 
 lances. When Attila had scourged fair Italy, and Radagasius rav- 
 aged Gaul, it was soon in no man's power to forbear a blow in self- 
 defence. War had unchained the dragon of destruction. 
 
 In this juncture, the Church rallied to the rescue of the menaced 
 nations, and with heaven-given resources fulfilled the requirements 
 of the age. She was the noble knight who slew the hydra-headed 
 monster. Here was the advent of Christian Chivalry. It was the 
 spontaneous outcome of Christian Charity directed to the exigencies 
 of the period. In her old capacity of pacificator, the Church inter- 
 posed to teach the unlettered Northmen that real valor is moral ex- 
 cellence and the valor of piety and benevolence, not of stoicism, and 
 want of feeling. Some men are brave for vainglory, and some for 
 the love of lucre. The fury of instinct will impel one man to face 
 peiil ; and the courage that is the growth of ignorance, will make 
 another crave danger as a boon. The Christian warrior, however, 
 was a man of reason, of resolution and self-sacrifice. He learned to 
 temper victory with tenderness, and, arming for battle only that 
 peace might prevail, he fought not as a hireling for gain, but for the 
 immortaUty that belongs to righteous action. Such was the ideal 
 that enamored the heart of the savage, enraptured his soul, and 
 made him thenceforth feel that heroism is found, not only in the 
 fiery furnace of war, but more nobly in the paths of peace. Thus 
 did the Church meet the needs of trpng time. 
 
 Behold, in the transformation of the barbarian, the matchless 
 power of Christian faith and Christian Charity. The wild son of the 
 northern wilderness is now the choicest soldier of Chivalry, — " the 
 elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all 
 the world, *This was a man.' " One element was hke the lightning 
 that leaps from the storm-cloud, and darting downward through 
 the gleaming tempest, blasts whatever bears its blow ; for even so, 
 did the savages, out-pouring from the rugged hills, blast all Europe : 
 another element was as the gentle warmth of the sun in spring-time, 
 that quickens the sluggish pulsations of Nature, dresses the forest in 
 its foliage, and makes the wilderness blossom as the rose ; for such 
 was the action of the faith on the lethargic Northman. Can it, then, 
 be said that Europe owes to Gothic customs her spirit of Chivalry 
 rather than to the power that rendered those customs conformable 
 to the genias of Christianity ? 
 
4 
 
 "Wiseacres have claimed that that noble spirit had its origin in the 
 bosom of feudalism, but feudalism had only the germ of barbarism. 
 No ; Chivalry came from the action of the Chui-ch in reforming the 
 war-like classes, and the war-like classes were the feudal. It was 
 precisely designed as a check on the rapacity of the feudal lords, 
 and, contrary to a wide belief, it was never wholly aristocratic. The 
 untitled classes formed its recruits no less than did the nobility. For 
 this reason it grew to be a powerful institution, whose aim was to 
 resist oppression as well as to maintain concord. If to-day the 
 soldiers of chivalry drew the long lance against a foe, to-morrow they 
 walked in meek procession beneath banners of penitence and peace. 
 Finally, the exigency came to test their valor and their worth. All 
 Christendom called upon them to deliver from desecration the 
 sepulchre of the world's Redeemer. Mark, now, the response in the 
 resistless motion of the great army of Christian warriors, as the 
 ecstatic watchword of "God wills it," is echoed afar on every wind. 
 On they march, by long and weary stages, to far-famed Palestine. 
 Look at the steel-clad Knights, their glancing morions, and the long 
 lines of glittering spears as they reflect the rays of the noon-day sun. 
 They enter the land of the olive and the palm-tree where the air is 
 filled with a balm-like fragrance far around. With prayerful step 
 they approach the city of a once chosen people, and looking up at its 
 towering battlements and pointed pinnacles, they seem to behold in 
 the dim distance the golden gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. And 
 now the Crescent and the Cross crash in deadly conflict. The 
 scimiter of the Saracen swings aloft, but to be dashed to earth. The 
 Mussulman and his myrmidons are smitten with dismay, and 
 Christian valor has won the land of Palestine^ 
 
 The Crusades were the acme and culmination of Chivalry as an 
 organic institution, but the spirit by which they were inspired is 
 more enduring than that which gives "the strength whereby the 
 patriot girds himself to die; the unconquerable power which fills the 
 freeman battling on his hills." 
 
 Despite the carping criticism of those who, like Chesterfield, look 
 upon the Crusades as a hairbrained scheme, it is undeniable that 
 they were fruitful in grand results. The age needed lofty thoughts 
 and deeds of heroism, and the Crusades gave scope to all the energies 
 of generous knighthood. A mighty tempest of elevating emotions 
 
swept over the face of Europe, and recalled men from the grossness of 
 sensuality to a life of piety and virtue. Every lofty ideal helps to 
 lift up humanity. And what nobler ideal could be presented to the 
 mind of man than that embodied in the cause of the Crusades. The 
 Crusades were not merely a contest for supremacy between the East 
 and the West ; but were essentially and primarily an exhibition of 
 Christian valor and heroism in defence of the most cherished, most 
 sacred and most august memories and sentiments that find lodgment 
 in the human heart, the sentiment of religion and the idea of God. 
 
 In the spirit of calm and philosophical inquiry let us look into the 
 character, and sift the underlying motives of that great movement of 
 the twelfth century, known to history as the Crusades. Viewed in a 
 broad and comprehensive light the Crusades are the pivotal point 
 upon which all modern history turns, and may justly be regarded as 
 the dividing line between the present civiUzations of the world and 
 those which rose and flourished under the influence of Oriental skies 
 or beneath the cold but classic shades of Graeco-Koman antiquity. 
 
 In the study of history it is an idle and puerile task to estimate 
 great and potent movements, profound in their origin, and wide- 
 reaching in their consequences, in detached and isolated sections, or 
 from some narrowed and solitary reasoning, looking only at some 
 brilliant event that catches the fancy, or some pernicious tendency or 
 result repellant to the judgment, without duly considering the tout- 
 ensemble of the passage of events, following the stream in all its 
 windings, accounting for the rationale of every fact, and from this 
 broad and elevated standpoint, pronouncing judgment upon the 
 whole. Such judgment alone deserves a place in enlightened and 
 impartial history. It has been the misfortune of the middle ages to 
 be criticised by less just and generous standards. 
 
 The dream of medieval kings and Pontiffs, from the days of Charle- 
 magne, and from the time of Gregory the Great, was the federation 
 of the world under the banners of the Cross. The Crusades were but 
 the development and embodiment of this sublime idea. After all, 
 ideas govern the world. Ideas alone are intelligible, for by ideas all 
 things are made intelligible. Ideas alone are worth estimation in 
 studying the progress of humanity through the great movements 
 along the stream of time. The leading idea of the Crusades was the 
 fusion of all the parts of Christendom under one general head. It 
 
6 
 
 was the blending of all the Catholic nations in one common brother- 
 hood of faith. 
 
 It was simply an outward though violent expression of that princi- 
 ple of unity which is inseparable from the character of the Catholic 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 In every age of Christianity new exigencies arise, and with that 
 divine fecundity with which she is blessed, the Church always devises 
 new means to meet them. Before the onward march of her impregna- 
 ble unity every obstacle must go down, and whether Gothic violence 
 or Islamitic madness blocked the way, neither could oppose an 
 effectual barrier to the dominion of an institution to which God had 
 given the government of the world. But when the Moslem drew the 
 scimiter, the Christian drew the sword, but drew it in self-defence. 
 Hence Popes themselves preached Crusades, and hence arose those 
 renowned military orders to defend the rights and preserve the lands 
 which valorous Christians wrested from the followers of Allah and 
 his prophet. 
 
 Let it be remembered, the question was not merely which religion 
 should claim the sovereignty of the Saviour's tomb ; but it was, 
 which form of worship and which civilization should hold the sover- 
 eignty of the world, which in a Christian sense was symbolized by 
 the tomb of the Redeemer. 
 
 Splenetic calumniators of the Christian name, like the pompous 
 historian of the " Decline and Fall of Rome," have, we know, bitterly 
 assailed the justice of the Crusades, and, with great dexterity of 
 dialectics, have sought to establish the position that the Holy Wars 
 were as unnecessary as they were calamitous ; and yet, even suc'h 
 manifestly prejudiced critics as he, are constrained to confess that 
 the Crusaders themselves were entirely persuaded of the lawfulness 
 and the merits of their heroic and hazardous undertaking. 
 
 The formidable followers of Islam had, in the short space of a 
 quarter of a century, raised the crescent all over the East, from the 
 Euphrates and beyond, "Westward to the Euxine Sea; the Greek em- 
 pire tottered on the brink of destruction; their victorious arms bore 
 down all to the very gates of Constantinople; the Christian Churches 
 in the East were groaning under their iron-heeled oppression; under 
 a frenzied thirst for conquest and a fanatical feeling for propagand- 
 ism, they vehemently pushed their claim of universal empire; in fine, 
 
the whole of Western Europe was threatened with destruction, and 
 the inhabitants profoundly agitated with real and urgent apprehen- 
 sions of the loss of property, liberty, and religion. 
 
 Nor was this the only justification for the followers of the Prince 
 of Peace to unsheathe the sword. 
 
 In addition to a lively and generous feeling of sympathy towards 
 their oppressed and persecuted brethren in the distant land of Pales- 
 tine, they religiously considered that they had an indefeasible right 
 to the sacred land which had been sealed and sanctified by the blood 
 of their suffering Saviour; and by consequence it appeared to be not 
 only their right, but their duty, to deliver the holy sepulchre from the 
 profanations, and their pilgrims from the persecution of Moslem vio- 
 lence and fanaticism. The antagonism between the Crescent and the 
 Cross was irrepressible and irreconcilable ; it could be quenched by 
 blood alone; and so nice was the equivalence of the two powers, that 
 it could be settled only by a deadly and protracted struggle. 
 
 Such was the inevitable condition which confronted the Catholic 
 nations of Europe when Peter the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in 
 Picardy, returned from a pilgrimage to Palestine, to fire all men with 
 the flame of enthusiasm burning in a breast incensed with indigna- 
 tion at the indignities suffered by himself, and oppressed with shame 
 at the wrongs inflicted on his co-religionists on the very site where 
 the Redeemer of the world shed His blood for the peace and unity, 
 no less than for the salvation of the human race. The vast scheme 
 of union between the East and the West had been comprehended in 
 the plans of Gregory the Great, and even contemplated in the visions 
 of some before his day ; but to Urban the Second belongs the im- 
 mortal glory of attempting the execution of the work embraced in 
 the designs of his predecessors. In the pubHc marts of Clermont he 
 ascended the rostrum, and by the energy of his eloquence and the 
 cogency of his argument, he moved the mighty multitudes to the 
 acme of an enthusiasm unexampled in the annals of history, as they 
 cried aloud with tears of joy upon their cheeks, "God wills it." 
 " Yes," answered the venerable Pontiff, his voice husky with emotion, 
 and his eyes kindling with the ardor of his own enthusiasm, " Yes, 
 God wills it, and let this memorable word be your battle-cry. Take 
 this cross, the symbol of your salvation, and wear it upon your 
 breasts as the pledge of your irrevocable engagement to your holy 
 
8 
 
 cause." One question, and one only, presented itself to the minds of 
 all : should Mahomet be permitted to ravage the face of Europe, or 
 should he be encountered on the shores of Asia and the soil of the 
 Western world be preserved from the contamination of his unconse- 
 crated footsteps? This was the problem that engaged every mind 
 with eagerness, and the Crusades were the response and the solution. 
 But how was it to be accomplished ? What seemingly insurmounta- 
 ble obstacles blocked the path and choked every field of human en- 
 deavor ? Civil dissensions rent the Frankish and German Empires ; 
 most of the principalities of Southern Europe were debilitated by 
 foreign invasions and domestic strife; states and territories were dis- 
 membered and disunited, and even on the hitherto quiet field of re- 
 ligion the seeds of deadly discord were sown and the roots of heresy 
 implanted. 
 
 Let short-sighted mortals who see in the Crusades no more than a 
 violent outburst of fanaticism, or, at best, a colossal scheme of con- 
 quest devised in folly and conducted to disaster, reflect on the 
 prodigy presented to the world in the immortal movement of the 
 twelfth and following century. Yerily, the hand of God was here. 
 For in the face of the towering obstacles that opposed their path; in 
 the face of difficulties almost irremovable, what power could succeed 
 in calling together a countless host from every nation and from every 
 part of Continental Europe, uniting them as one man, with one pur- 
 pose, one idea, one rallying cry, — the rescue of the Redeemer's tomb, — 
 and leading them on to certain death or joyful victory — what power 
 could do this but the power of God ? 
 
 To behold nothing in this great drama of modern Jiistory, but the 
 blind enthusiasm of a few war-like nations ; to see nothing in those 
 holy wars but a foolhardy enterprise for fame or for emolument, is 
 to divest their history of their dominai;it idea, and discard, in the plan 
 of Providence, one of the most striking and impressive developments 
 of the progress of Christianity. There is, in the course of events, an 
 invisible chain linking causes and consequences together by a skein 
 so fine as to escape the scrutiny of superficial investigation. God's 
 work is done in divers ways, and various are the instruments of His 
 designs. In the present life we can often perceive only the dim re- 
 flections of deep and hidden causes operating, by the divine influ- 
 ence, to effect some vast and general plan whose drift and scope are 
 
9 
 
 buried beneath a labyrinth of incidental phenomena, or circum- 
 stantial occurrences. We merely gaze on the shell when we should 
 seek for the kernel ; and in examining passing phenomena we lose 
 sight of great and permanent realities. But even in their visible and 
 tangible results the Crusades were entitled to be crowned with the 
 guerdon of success both as regards the spirit that animated them, 
 and the immense influence which they exercised. They were the ex- 
 pression of a sublime idea, for nothing but a lofty and grand idea 
 could inspire the enthusiasm of success in the face of almost insur- 
 mountable obstacles. A religious idea was necessary to excite, to 
 move, to support men in so arduous an enterprise. The divine 
 breath of religion alone is endowed with the power to inspire men 
 with superhuman energy; to sustain them amidst defeat, disaster, and 
 death; to unite them, when discordant and disunited, with one aim^ 
 one thought, one common sentiment, one living flame of enthusiasm^ 
 which enabled them to brave all perils, to defy all dangers, to spurn 
 every impediment, and press forward, with a holy and impetuous 
 resolution, to rush to glory or the grave. And what was this idea in 
 its concrete and tangible form? It was, in a secondary sense, the 
 defence of their homes and civilization against a common foe, inso- 
 lent, pitiless, and unsparing; but essentially, and chiefly, it was their 
 sacred and solemn duty of defending the tomb of Christ from defile- 
 ment and profanation, and recovering a lawful dominion over the 
 holy land sanctified by the blood-marked footprints of a crucified 
 God. 
 
 O ! what a torrent of emotions, in the days of fervid faith, swept 
 through the souls of men at the mention of the tomb of their Saviour, 
 and the holy land of His birth. It was to them, in truth, the cradle 
 of Christianity ; the city of the Son of God ; the dwelling-place of 
 the King of Ages and the Prince of Glory, and the age-long, conse- 
 crated spot where the chosen people of Israel had listened with rap- 
 ture and with awe to the voice of the God of their fathers, and the 
 God of their children. It was the glorious land of promise, plente- 
 ously flowing with milk and honey ; redolent with the aroma of 
 spikenard and cinnamon ; beautified with the cedars of Lebanon, the 
 cypress of Basan and Carmel, the roses of Sharon, and the lilies 
 of Jehosaphat ; sanctified by the smoke of sacrifice, and glorified by 
 the white light of the Shekinah, illuminating the holy temple which 
 
10 
 
 was the marvel of J the world and the glory of the people. Well 
 might they cry, — " Jerusalem, may my right hand perish if ever I 
 forget thee." For that name was invested with a divine and hidden 
 power, which, like the voice of the Creator calling order out of chaos, 
 and sending light through the vast regions of the universe, shot 
 forth sparks of light and life to illumine every corner of the world. 
 It has well been said, that there has never been a great idea which 
 was not born in the Holy Land before its diffusion through the 
 world. All the great miracles of history took their origin in the land 
 of Palestine. Priests there offered sacrifice ; prophets there fore- 
 told the judgments of God and the destinies of man ; kings there 
 ruled by divine right ; and, if ever in the world, it was there the 
 theocratic form of government, with royal splendor and divine puis- 
 sance, asserted its ascendency and maintained undisputed sway. 
 There, too, on the authority of tradition, reposed the bones of the 
 great ancestor of the race ; and there the sons of Noah and many 
 succeeding generations mingled their ashes with the common dust. 
 There the odors of the holocaust ascended daily to the heavens, and 
 there, upon the altar raised above the ashes of the first-bom of the 
 race, so long crimsoned with the blood of brutes and men, was con- 
 summated the great sacrifice of Calvary and the Son of the eternal 
 God slain for the redemption of mankind. No wonder, that at one 
 time or another, nearly all the nations of the eaiih had laid claim to 
 the Holy Land. What marvel if at the sound of these sacred names, 
 every chord of affection was awakened, all the fountains of feeling 
 were profoundly stirred, and millions of men marched, unmurmur- 
 ingly, nay, joyously, into the mouth of inevitable destruction. They 
 freely offered their blood to the Son of God, who had so freely laid 
 down His life for their salvation. They cheerfully took up His cross, 
 and entered upon their perilous engagement with an unfaltering 
 trust in God, and a serene confidence in the invulnerability of arms 
 blessed by the God of battles. His gracious providence would watch 
 over them upon the way ; His power would smooth the difficulties 
 that beset their path ; His favoring smiles would warm their zeal, 
 and give zest to their endeavors ; His undoubted assistance would 
 impart strength to their efforts, and crown their holy enterprise with 
 the coveted garland of success. Kivers might not open a dry way 
 for their passage ; citadels and ramparts might not fall down at the 
 
11 
 
 blare of their trumpets ; the sun might not be arrested in his course 
 in the heavens, to lend victory to their banners ; but the God of Is- 
 rael would still be with them ; the pillar of Jehovah's cloud would 
 shield them on their journey ; the column of fire would be a lamp 
 unto their feet and the justice of their cause would triumph when 
 the arm of God was raised for the destruction of the enemies of the 
 Cross, and the blasphemers of the Christian name. 
 
 Thus prompted by the spirit of a divine enthusiasm, by belief in 
 the merit and justice of their cause, by the hope of a heavenly recom- 
 pense and the assurance of aid from the Almighty Euler of the na- 
 tions, they made ready for the fray in the name of the Lord God of 
 hosts. 
 
 Burgher and peasant sold their lands and parted from their child- 
 hood's home without a sigh ; serfs attached to the servitude of the 
 glebe begged and obtained their freedom for the fight ; artisans laid 
 aside the instruments of their industry ; nobles relinquished their 
 baronial halls and manors, their castles and their lands ; princes 
 alienated their provinces, and kings, in some instances, descended 
 from thrones of luxury and power, and detached themselves from 
 the fascinating glamour of the court ; men, in fine, of talent and au- 
 thority, men in every walk of life, turned aside from their customary 
 pursuits, to grasp their trusty sword, to raise the gonfalon of the 
 Crucified, and to rise in multitudinous numbers, and, as it were, to 
 loose Europe from its foundations and hurl it with headlong force 
 against the walls of Asia. On they came, countless as the stars of 
 heaven, or the sands upon the shore ; on, past the confines of France 
 and LoiTaine ; along the shores of the Khine and the Danube, the 
 Dniester and the Elbe ; over the Carpathian Mountains and the 
 Transylvania Alps ; through wild and desolate regions covered with 
 moor and morass, fen and bog, and virgin forest, intersected by un- 
 fordable streams, beethng crags, and abysmal defiles, and choked 
 by nature's almost impassable barriers, and through the highways of 
 civilization into parts where man had not yet dared to claim domin- 
 ion over the earth, they unflinchingly pressed on, undaunted and un- 
 dismayed, till they stood on the banks of the Bosphorus, beheld the 
 glint of laughing waters on the bosom of the Black Sea, and saw the 
 sun light up with the fire of Oriental splendor the mosques and tem- 
 ples of Constantinople. Still on they strove across waters to the 
 
12 
 
 shores of Asiatic Turkey, till worn and weary they crossed the plains 
 of Sharon and the mountains of Judea, and rested their enraptured 
 eyes upon the burnished battlements and golden gates of the holy 
 city of Jerusalem. What a sublime spectacle those legions were, as, 
 buoyed up by the romantic character of their design, enkindled by 
 the ardor of a quenchless enthusiasm, and flushed with the hope of 
 speedy and decisive victory, they ranged around the frowning walls 
 before them, under the royal banner and oriflamme of France, and the 
 pennants and bannerets of Germany, with gleaming shield and glitter- 
 ing lance, and brazen-pointed spear, and good sword in their hands, 
 ready to dare and die for the cause that bore them from their homes^ 
 their country and firesides. 
 In sooth they were 
 
 " A glorious company, the flower of men, 
 To serve as model for a mighty world, 
 And be the fair beginning of a time." 
 
 The Crusades, in one sense, were not a success. But success 
 is not the end of life. Success is not even the test of merit, for 
 "heaven is made for those who fail"; and, if this be true, as true it 
 must be for failure in a noble cause, the vast pyramids of bones in 
 the valley of Nice and on the fields of Palestine are merely the mon- 
 uments of martyrs who exchanged the wreath of eairthly victory for 
 the crown of heavenly recompense. 
 
 Nor yet were the Crusades a failure. The seed cast into the 
 ground is hidden for a time, from sight ; and its virtue cannot be 
 measured till it brings forth finiit in proper season. The full fruit 
 of their own planting the Crusaders did not behold ; and what their 
 sowing would bring forth they themselves but jejunely suspected. 
 The human mind seldom seizes all the ramifications of an idea, and 
 still less the complete consequences of a deed. In simple form and 
 tangible shape the idea of the heroes who went forth to battle was 
 the rescue of the Redeemer's tomb; but that attempt, though mainly 
 abortive, was to change the whole current of history, and " be the 
 fair beginning of a time." They aimed only at the deliverance of a 
 sepulchre ; they were the saviours of civilization, the deliverers of 
 the world. Posterity thrusts its sickle into the harvest gleaned by 
 the heroes of medieval days. They builded wiser than they knew, 
 
13 
 
 no doubt, but their merit was the integrity of their intentions, the 
 consummate courage of their lives, the sublime heroism of their 
 deaths. They placed a mighty stake, and, in one sense, they lost; but 
 their loss was the gain of future generations. Pinched by the frosts 
 of an Alpine winter ; scorched by the bui-ning rays of a Syrian sun ; 
 consumed by intolerable thirst ; spent by fatigue, exhausted by 
 hunger, and ravaged by disease, the ghastly companion of want, 
 they perished like the leaves of the forest, and mingled their bones 
 with the dust ; but from their nameless tombs sprang forth the 
 bright light of a new creation ; and upon the ash-formed mound of 
 our ancestors arose the monuments of present progress and modern 
 civilization. We know what they could not foretell, the lasting re- 
 sults and permanent progress that outhved their endeavors, and 
 sprang from their enterprise. At this distant day we can measure 
 their work. 
 
 In the material order, even, the results of the Crusades were more 
 than commensurable with their feaiiul cost in life and treasure. 
 
 Our rude forefathers did not compare with the polished Orientals, 
 who rejoiced in the possession of the hoary, age-crowned civiliza- 
 tion of the world. To this ancient civilization, the Crusades opened 
 the eyes of the West, and, while dazzled with the pleasing prospect, 
 the almost semi-barbaric tribes of Europe were introduced to the 
 cultivation and refinement of the East. They beheld with wonder- 
 ment the superior polish and refinement of Cairo, Alexandria, and 
 Constantinople ; and they saw with amazement the learning and 
 philosophy of the Orient. Their admiration was excited, their emu- 
 lation aroused, and these, as mostly tney do, gave birth to imitation. 
 The most notable progress was in trade, and manufactures, and in 
 the arts and sciences, inspired, on the one hand, by the spirit of in- 
 dustry, or the calls of necessity ; and on the other, by the greed of 
 gain, or the longings of luxury. Gorgeous Tyrian dyes were im- 
 ported into France to deck the robes, and costly gems and pearls to 
 adorn the persons of royalty. From Egypt, and from Greece, silks 
 and sorghums found their way to Western Europe, and the sweet 
 spices and juicy gums of Arabia and Palestine became merchant- 
 able commodities in the markets of Lyons and of Frankfort. From 
 the astute Arabs, the rudiments of medicine and mathematics were 
 derived by the adventurous pilgrims of the Cross ; while on their 
 
u 
 
 weary march they listened in thoughtful mood to the apothegms of 
 Aristotle, or cheered their lonely hours by hearing the songs of 
 Homer chanted in the poet's native tongue. History here took a 
 new turn, for the course of civilization, which so long seemed declin- 
 ing, like an erratic comet on its downward track, began to move in 
 ascending lines again, and that progression of the race which had so 
 long ebbed began to flow with accelerated motion towards the set- 
 ting sun. At that very hour might Berkeley's prophecy have been 
 written : 
 
 " Westward the course of Empire takes its way; 
 
 The four first acts already past, 
 The fifth shall close the drama of the day ; 
 
 Time's noblest off-spring is the last." 
 
 In the social and political order, the results were not less striking, 
 and still more beneficial. 
 
 The great mass of mankind, under the hard j^oke of feudalism, 
 were chained to the soil, without the enjoyment of property or the 
 hope of freedom ; every prospect of remunerative industry, every 
 avenue of advancement or improvement, was choked by the insolence 
 and greed of rapacious lords and barons ; the seeds of barbarism, 
 still sprouting in the human breast, devoted many victims to their 
 own hcentiousness, and urged them to act in defiance of order and 
 of law ; in fine, outside the higher nobles and the clergy, who, de- 
 spite the spirit of individuality characteristic of their ages, alone 
 occupied the status of men, society seemed hopelessly discordant 
 and disrupted, if not on the verge of chaos, or walking in the shadow 
 of an approaching cataclysm. Among the chief causes that under- 
 mined the great fabric of Gothic tyranny and violence the Crusades 
 were pre-eminent. The boundless estates of the arrogant barons 
 were dissipated and divided ; their insupportable indigence extorted 
 from them charters of freedom for the down-trodden peasantry; and 
 many of the most iniquitous among them were utterly extinguished 
 in the Holy Wars. The state of feudal vassals was thus improved ; 
 and the institution of feudality itself was shaken from turret to 
 foundation-stone. The human mind, developed by travel and obser- 
 vation, began to assert its ascendency over mere brute force ; might 
 gave place to right ; the cruel ordeal, the deadly duel, and the relics 
 of barbarism and superstition fell into merited disgrace ; individu- 
 
15 
 
 ality received a new, but conservative, impulse ; popular liberty ob- 
 tained a fresh footing and a nobler aim ; the reign of law was firmly 
 established ; commerce was created ; fleets and navies commenced 
 to float upon the seas ; and to society, in every vein and artery, was 
 imparted a new and powerful propulsion, which cai-ried Europe to 
 the maturity of its development, and gave the benefit of life and 
 form to the civilization of to-day. 
 
 Nor was this all. A spirit of fraternity sprang up among the 
 nations engaged in a common cause, and united them in one brother- 
 hood of faith, and one fatherhood in God. Everywhere faith blos- 
 somed forth hke flowers after a long winter, or like the verdure of 
 the forest; and everywhere the most heroic deeds, the most mag- 
 nanimous virtues, bloomed on the once sterile soil of dust-prone 
 humanity, and lent to the age a lustre not inferior to the days of 
 pristine Christianity. The idle and degenerate found release from 
 crime in the activity of occupation ; the gay and frivolous had to 
 relinquish their puerile pursuits in the task of recuperating their 
 fortunes ; the tyrannous and despotic tempered their arrogance in 
 the new-bom necessity of dependence ; and in the work of general 
 purification, laxity of morals was restrained; faith, fickle and languid, 
 was refreshed ; charity, cold and feeble, was revived, and the whole 
 face of society enkindled with animation, never before beheld, by the 
 divine breath of religion, renovating by the power, and regenerating 
 by the genius of the all-pervading spirit of the Crusades. 
 
 And, lastly, the wild energy of reason, lashing with blind fury 
 against the foundations of religion, was impotently spent upon the 
 strong ramparts of piety and devotion ; the untamed ardor of the 
 intellect, expending itself in profitless discussion and the subtleties 
 of sophistry, more dangerous to civilization than the fierce onslaughts 
 of barbarism, was cooled and checked, and the mind in its drifting 
 vagaries was solidly anchored to the immovable moorings of authority, 
 discipline, and religion. In the imperative needs of the hour, in the 
 acknowledged necessity of mutual sympathy and support unattaina- 
 ble under the sway of any temporal sovereign, the Papacy was exalted 
 to its lofty position at the head of affairs, and the dominion of the 
 world, in the sovereignty of the Pontiff of Rome, was decreed by the 
 international polity of the time, and the pacification of Europe 
 entrusted to hands which alone could adjust the balance of power. 
 
16 
 
 and secure to succeeding ages the liberties, rights, and all the treas- 
 ures of civilization which were the legitimate, though unforeseen, con- 
 sequences of one of the bloodiest dramas in the whole history of the 
 world during the ages of faith. 
 
 To defend everything in a rude age, when society was still unformed 
 and the action of religion incomplete and hampered by a variety of 
 opposing forces, would be as injudicious as it is unphilosophical. 
 But, although the base and the benevolent, the rude and the refined, 
 the natural and the supernatural, were very strangely and inhar- 
 moniously blended in those days, we have still much to learn from 
 the middle ages — much to curb the insolence of modern manners, 
 the selfishness of modern society, and the pride of modern life. Not 
 in the splendor and the glory of the proud civilization of ancient 
 Kome and Greece; not in the intellectual ages of antiquity, whether 
 in the schools of Alexandria or in the groves of Academus; not in the 
 elegance and refinement of the post-medieval centuries shall we find 
 those lessons most needful in our cold and calculating age: — no; but 
 in those illustrious and beautiful virtues of simplicity, faith, reverence, 
 and honor of the age of the Crusades, we shall find the true tonic for 
 the mad infidelities of the present time, and we likewise shall behold 
 the prodigies wrought by Christianity in taking hold of nations in the 
 period of their barbarous infancy, nursing them through the help- 
 lessness of childhood, subduing their wild, unruly youth, and at 
 length developing in them the full dignity and immortal beauty of 
 Christian manhood. We seek not to extenuate the faults, neither do 
 we blind ourselves to the virtues of those days when Faith, watered 
 by the spirit of penance and warmed by the sunshine of primitive 
 fervor, began her silent march through the dark groves and forests 
 of France and Germany. In this age do we meet the fullest develop- 
 ment of the Cliristian life, as such, that has yet been seen upon the 
 earth. In this age do we behold the most docile faith, because it was 
 the faith of a pious-minded but untaught people, and therefore, for 
 that very reason, more ductile in the moulding hand of the Church. 
 In this age do we also find the purest and the simplest faith, because 
 the Humanists had not yet come to pollute the Christian atmosphere 
 of Europe vdth the miasma of Pagan philosophy and the lascivious 
 literature of Greece, nor to exalt the teachings of Aristotle above the 
 simplicity of the Gospel; and the renaissance had not yet appeared to 
 
17 
 
 debauch the mind with the grovelling tendencies of Greek thought, 
 nor to corrupt the imagination by the study of Greek models. 
 
 Look at the men of the middle ages. In them we read the annals 
 of those ages ; for men make history, and their lives tell the tale of 
 the times in which they flourished. In those men we discover an 
 omnipresent and ever-abiding faith which ruled their lives and guided 
 the whole tenor of their conduct. They dwelt in an atmosphere of 
 religion, and the reaUzation of the spiritual world was to them as 
 lively as the existence of the sensible world was actual. "What a 
 magnificent faith was that which moved multitudes to precipitate 
 themselves, like a mighty mountain avalanche, upon the shores of 
 Asia to rescue the Redeemer's tomb, when destruction seemed the 
 foreordained penalty! And what sublime heroism they evinced! 
 Well might Tasso chant the praises of a Godfrey or a Tancred. 
 When the Holy City was captured by the Christians, and to the vic- 
 torious hero, De Bouillon, was offered the kingly crown as the just 
 meed of his valor, should the student of history be info;rmed of his 
 answer : " Never shall I wear a crown of gold where my Redeemer 
 carried a crown of thorns." And when overtaken by disaster almost 
 irreparable, when discomfited by repulse and loss sufficient to appall 
 the stoutest breast that ever shield defended, the doughty champion 
 of the Cross, Tancred, the unterrified, exclaimed : " Never shall I 
 relinquish Palestine while forty knights remain." When shall their 
 laurels fade ? When shall their memory die ? When shall their 
 chivalry cease to call forth our admiration ? Brave they were, and 
 tender ; —for the brave are always so ; knights without fear or reproach, 
 whose like we may see no more in the council or in the camp. On 
 the eve of battle they prepared for the fight, whetting their trusty 
 sword with one hand, and with the other leaning on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, whom they embraced with ardor at the altar where His blood, 
 mystically flowing, shrived them from faults, and sanctified their 
 souls. Men they were who knew no fear, but withal strong and sim- 
 ple souls ; and simplicity was the foundation of their greatness. 
 Alas ! that such simplicity should be laughed down at the present 
 day, and have almost disappeared from the land. 
 
 Of medieval chivalry, the beau-ideal was Louis IX. of France, 
 who had but three words inscribed upon his heart, Dieu, France, ef 
 Marguerite. With his latest breath he entreats his son and successor 
 2 
 
18 
 
 to the throne to compassionate the poor and to preserve the liberties 
 of his people. In his exquisite devotion to Marguerite he was the 
 true type of the Chivalry of his age, which embalmed the character 
 of woman with an atmosphere of reverence, surrounded her with a 
 halo of homage and respect which the boasted refinement of the pres- 
 ent is unable to imitate and incompetent to understand. To rehabil- 
 itate and elevate woman, so much degraded by the coarseness of 
 Paganism ; to look upon her as the help-mate of the sterner sex ; to 
 regard her as a ministering spirit, who by her purity, her tenderness, 
 and her devotion, was destined to ennoble, to soften, and to spiritu- 
 alize the hard and rough-hewn nature of man, — this was the aim and 
 spirit of Chivalry, and it was an impulse born of Christianity and the 
 refining influence of the Gospel of a tender Jesus. 
 
 In forming an estimate of the men of medieval times, superficial 
 observers, in condemning their immanity of manners, overlook the 
 fact that nineteen centuries of Christian civilization were required to 
 beget that tone of toleration, that mildness of opinion, and that 
 gentility of feeling which we justly prize and perhaps unduly vaunt 
 to-day. At the same time they unthinkingly or perversely ascribe to 
 the intolerance of the Catholic Church the ferocity of temper that 
 characterized the military spirit of medieval times ; forgetting, or 
 neglecting, to consider that the Church laid her hand upon a barbar- 
 ous people whom, by degrees, her divine power transformed, purified, 
 and softened beyond all expectation of those who realize the imper- 
 ishable savagery of the human heart. 
 
 But the middle ages were mightily maligned. The men of those 
 days were rough and rugged characters, but for all that they were 
 great men of sublime and heroic mould. Greatness and worth are 
 always born of conflict. Let our path be rose-strewn, and soft south- 
 ern gales always blowing, and mankind would be a mass of Sybarites 
 dissolved in sloth and effeminacy. Nor were the most doughty war- 
 riors wanting in the fine feelings of the present order of civilization. 
 
 The training of the Knights was a stern and tedious task. They 
 were duly informed in everything concerning the methods of war- 
 fare then in vogue ; but even still more rigorously in the art of gen- 
 tle manners, in the practice of politeness, and in the manifestation 
 of those courtesies which spring from the lessons of Christian Char- 
 ity, as flowers from their native soil. They were severely taught to 
 
19 
 
 respect age, experience, rank, and superiority ; to reverence weak- 
 ness, to compassionate suffering, misfortune, and distress ; and the 
 "Knight who failed in these indispensable qualities of his honored 
 order was a reproach to his profession, and affixed to his name the 
 stigma of indelible disgrace. The profession of arms was warranted 
 by the stern necessities of the times, and in some sense sanctified 
 by the true knight of Chivalry ; for he swore to discharge with 
 religious loyalty the duties of his calling ; he laid his sword upon 
 the altar to seal the ceremony, and he was invested with the insignia 
 of his office in the name of the Almighty and his tutelary angel. 
 
 The immense influence of such an institution in impressing prin- 
 ciples of truth, justice, honor, and humanity upon all who pledged 
 fealty thereto, and in refining the temper and lending grace and 
 urbanity to the manners of those who, in lofty aspiration, upheld 
 the banners of Chivahy, was powerfully experienced by men whose 
 recent rescue from the grossness of barbarism left them much in 
 need of some generous ideal to elevate their sentiments and feelings. 
 Such an ideal was found in Christian Chivalry. The intensity of 
 private hatred was diminished, for none would draw the sword save 
 for justice and necessity ; and the harshness and asperity of national 
 antipathy, were softened and toned down, for religion and patriotism 
 were at one in proclaiming mankind brethren in Christ, and exciting 
 all to spirited emulation in defending their common heritage of 
 Christianity from the incursions of idolatry and paganism. Hence- 
 forth it was no longer the bloody battle in the forest glade, or the 
 wanton slaughter of innocent and helpless victims on the roadside ; 
 nor yet was it the salacious spectacle which Roman depravity fed to 
 prurient tastes ; but it was the gay joust and tournament gi'aced by 
 the presence of high-born dames who crowned the victor for his 
 skill, and rewarded him by favoring smiles for his dexterity and 
 courage. But woe betide the unhappy Knight who suffered a wound 
 upon his honor, or fixed a stain upon his sword by any unchivalrous 
 conduct, or false, dishonorable deed. 
 
 The Crusades gave to Chivalry an enlarged and wide-extended 
 sphere, as it did a noble and exalted aspect. To men athirst for ad- 
 venture and for glory, and tired of the monotony of the Gothic tour- 
 nament which lacked the spicy element of reality ; to men to whom 
 religion and military renown were almost the only forces that influ- 
 
20 
 
 enced their minds or wrought upon their iancj, the Crusades opened 
 a romantic prospect of fame and immortaUty, fired them with an 
 ardent enthusiasm ; and when the bugle call was sounded to rally 
 the Christian hosts against the myrmidons of Mahomet, it met with 
 a response whose generosity is unexampled in the annals of time. 
 Prom that time forward, religion and the profession of arms were 
 solemnly married in the rise of the famous military orders, which, 
 long after the great excursions to Palestine, preserved their religious 
 character, and maintained their usefulness in protecting the helpless 
 and the weak, avenging the wrongs of injustice and oppression, and 
 defending the Church against the implacable enemies who sought 
 the destruction of civilization in the common ruin of religion. When 
 might was recognized as right ; when rapacity ruled everywhere ; 
 when passions held predominant sway over the dictates of reason, 
 the proud knights of Chivalry composing the military orders dis- 
 played a uniform character and conduct remarkable for spotless honor 
 and untarnished virtue ; distinguished for superhuman bravery in 
 the field, and unruffled gentleness at the fireside ; noted for pure, 
 exalted, and refined reverence for woman, undying devotion to rehg- 
 ion, and ardent attachment to simple-minded faith, which combined 
 to produce the fairest soldier of Chivalry, and the hero whose sub- 
 limity of demeanor would shed lustre upon any age. 
 
 '* Chivalry," it has been beautifully said by a recent writer, " was a 
 fair tree whose roots were charity and humility ; whose boughs were 
 valor and fidelity, purity, and devotion, and whose beautiful crown 
 and flower was honor ; — honor that peerless sentiment, which was 
 not so much virtue itself, as the crown and perfection of all virtue ; 
 the perfume of their combined excellence, and the splendor of their 
 beauty." 
 
 Where this sentiment held sway, we can easily understand the 
 great reverence for woman, who in the best days of Chivalry might 
 walk the land, through the length and breadth thereof, unattended 
 and unmolested, secure in her person and her virtue, like the fair 
 maid of Erin in the golden age of Malachy, of whom the poet sweetly 
 
 sings : 
 
 " Kich and rare were the gems she wore, 
 And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore ; 
 But oh ! her beauty was far beyond 
 Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand. 
 
21 
 
 " On she went, and her maiden smile 
 In safety lighted her round the Green Isle ; 
 And blest forever is she who relied 
 Upon Erin's honor and Erin's pride." 
 
 " But the age of Chivalry has gone," says Burke ; " that of sophisters, 
 economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe 
 is extinguished forever." Yet why should it be gone, " that generous 
 loyalty to rank and sex, that dignified obedience, which kept alive, 
 even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom " ? Why 
 should it be gone, " the unbought grace of life, the nurse of manly 
 sentiment and heroic entei-prise " ? Why should it be gone, " that 
 sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain 
 like a wound ; which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity ; 
 which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost 
 half its evil by losing half its grossness " ? 
 
 The spirit of faith is a living spirit, and it produces works that 
 never pass away. Chivalry is the child of Faith, and the daughter 
 of Keligion. We possess the faith whence sprang the lofty virtues, 
 the tender sentiments, and the exalted feelings of the men of Chiv- 
 alry ; and shall that faith be found less fruitful now ? Is the 
 human heai-t less tender, the soul less susceptible, the mind of man 
 less noble, than in the days of yore ? Has religion lost its power to 
 refine, to ennoble, to elevate ? Is honor dead ? Piety, has it per- 
 ished? Candor, faith, fidelity, magnanimity, integi'ity, loyalty, and 
 generosity — have they gone ? No ; it cannot be. Since these flowers of 
 Chivalry bloomed upon the land, we have seen much of the vile and nox- 
 ious cockle spring up to choke the tender shoots of virtue in the soiL 
 We have had a boasted Reformation, but where is the reconstruction ? 
 Where is the social and spiritual advance ? Where is the real refine- 
 ment and the urbanity of bearing, the gentleness of manners, the 
 keen sense of honor, that adorned and exalted the ages of the past ? 
 Material prosperity now claims the meed of praise. The rush of the 
 snorting engine, the clatter of the mill-wheel, the sound of the gong 
 and the hammer, have occupied the field, where once the bugle 
 blast resounded, commanding Christian hosts to gather and " charge 
 with all their Chivalr}^" We would not alter time's arrangements if 
 Yre could, and we could not, if we would. Those days, we would not 
 
22 
 
 call them back. No ; but the divine enthusiasm, the generous ideals, 
 the high-toned honor, and the exalted sentiment that crowned and 
 immortalized them, we fain would behold gracing the land and gar- 
 nishing it with glory resplendent as of old. Most of what we hold 
 to-day, of wise and high and good, has come down to us from those 
 immortal ages. The organization of labor in unions of self-defense, 
 representative government, limited or constitutional monarchy, home 
 rule, municipal corporations, trial by jury, international law, pacific 
 arbitration, and other institutions of like importance to society are 
 the heritage bequeathed to posterity by the genius of the middle 
 ages. But a far richer legacy than all was the shining example of an 
 indestructible faith, crowned by peerless and incomparable charity. 
 
 Let us turn our thoughts from the hard realities of the present 
 workaday world to the high ideals of those days. Let us withdraw 
 from the greedy throng that surround us now, to live once more in 
 the company of the noble dead. Let us seek the modern gentleman 
 in the successor of the chevalier of Chivalry, in whom courtesy and 
 valor, honor and simplicity, faith and freedom, grace, goodness, and 
 bright genius shall combine to produce for the admiration of forth- 
 coming ages the genuine, true-born gentleman. 
 
11. 
 
 THE IJSTDIAlSr QUESTIOJST. 
 
 The mode of treatment prescribed by our government for the 
 welfare of the Indian is a thing not bom of yesterday. It is a legacy 
 bequeathed to us by the Plymouth Pilgrims ; and, true to their 
 example, their descendants have adhered to it for now more than two 
 hundred years. What their policy was is known but too well. They 
 who fled the chastisement of the sectarian rod in England scourged 
 theu' fellow-refugees with scorpions in America. It is easy to fancy, 
 then, how the poor savage writhed beneath the faUing stroke of the 
 puritanical lash. A lapse of time brought about a change of rulers, 
 and upon the ruins of the colonial estabUshment the great fabric of 
 our Union was erected ; but that change carried no spark of reviv- 
 ing hope to the redman's broken spirit. 
 
 When, hardly more than a century ago, the oppressed inhabitants 
 of this land resolved to cast off the shackles that bound them to the 
 earth, and to stand disenthralled among the nations, a race of suffer- 
 ing fellow-creatures begged the right to labor and to live! But 
 even this pitiful boon the hberty-loving people of these States de- 
 nied to the ill-starred children of the forest. More than this ; the 
 government set its eye upon the Indian's land, and that glance proved 
 fatal to the Aborigine, He was himself no expert in tracing out 
 the sinuosities of legal lore ; and when he could not be wheedled 
 out of his land by the present of a few trinkets and other gew- 
 gaws, he was soon ousted from it by a complication of the niceties 
 and finely-turned points of American law. He was asked to sur- 
 render that which by right of priority should be his hereditary pos- 
 session forever ; and upon his refusal, the government made haste 
 to legislate him to land sufficiently remote from the land of his an- 
 cestors. And so the unhappy savage was constrained to turn his 
 
24 
 
 back on the Eastern sun, and seek a new home on the bleak, sterile 
 prairie, or in the gloomy and forbidding wood. Never could he 
 enter again his luxuriant garden home, for the flaming sword of the 
 grim-visaged paleface flashed menacingly athwart the entrance. 
 Scattered, like broken herds of deer, exiles from scenes endeared to 
 them by every tender association and tradition, a whole nation of 
 Nature's noblemen wander aimlessly along, sad, dejected, trampled 
 children of despair. With Spartan solidity and stoicism they yield 
 to the unjust sentence pronounced against them by the whites, and 
 stifle that soul-burning emotion it begets, but whose presence they 
 would scorn to betray. They retired beyond the waters of the Miss- 
 issippi in quest of a new home. Here they hoped to remain undis- 
 turbed, for the United States government had upon solemn oath guar- 
 anteed to them this abode for all time. " Go," said the government to 
 the redman, " go beyond the Mississippi ; there your white brother 
 shall not molest you ; there you shall live in peace whilst grass grows 
 or water runs." We all know how punctiliously this promise has 
 been kept. Treaty after treaty was made by the government, and, 
 like that of Limerick, broken ere the ink wherewith it was written 
 had dried. The industrious Cherokees, who had begun to build 
 schools and churches, had established a newspaper, and evfen set 
 about the formation of a republic, were, despite their protest and 
 the decision of a Supreme Court, forced, for a paltry consideration, 
 to abandon all, whilst their republic was abolished by an act of 
 legislature. The Creeks fared still harder. They were requested to 
 cede back all the lands secured to them by treaty some years before ; 
 and for refusing compliance, they, on the shallow pretext that 
 the settlers' lives were in danger, were slain to the last man by an 
 organized military force under General Andrew Jackson ! What 
 wonder if their surviving kinsmen vowed perpetual hate against the 
 oppressor ? if the midnight sky shone scarlet, high above the cabin 
 of the paleface? if, when the fierce eyeballs glared from the 
 thicket, in the flash of an instant thereafter, the planter's life-blood 
 tinged the swarded green! And now before their feverish im- 
 aginations they see arise the ghosts of their buried ancestors, who^ 
 in dread spectral array, come on to taunt them for having suffered 
 the spoliation of the hallowed bones of sagamores and seers. Then, 
 at last, in a spirit bom of the resistance of utter despair, they, hke 
 
25 
 
 a tiger at bay, spring wildly, impetuously, upon the unrelenting foe,, 
 resolving to be avenged, or to die in the endeavor. The onset lasta 
 but a moment. It is a vain effort. The death-dealing machinery* 
 of civihzed warfare is too potent for the uncouth weapons of savage 
 handicraft. The redman approaches, then pauses, reels, and falls, 
 crushed to the eaiih. And many in the land cry out, " Well done ! 
 The brutal savage deserves to be annihilated^ He is unsusceptible 
 of civihzed influences." If time's effacing fingers would blot from 
 history's page the dark record of their wrongs, then indeed might 
 we complain if they still refused to be civilized. Let them who 
 condemn the clouted savage because he presumed to defend with 
 his dying breath his home and his fireside, go offer some atonement 
 for all the injustice heaped upon him ; — let them, who preach of 
 " man's inhumanity to man," go administer the Lethean chahce to 
 the bitter memories of the redman's past, and then, perchance, he 
 may believe them sincere in their protestations to elevate his man- 
 hood. But the worst remains to be told. 
 
 In the year 1870 there was organized, under the auspices of some 
 worthy ministers, the present Indian peace-policy of the government. 
 Without any design to impugn the n|otives of these men, it must be 
 said that a sadder travesty of what constitutes law could not well 
 be imagined. Then, indeed, if not before, was the redman's cup of 
 misery filled to the brim. For suddenly there came trooping down 
 upon him a mighty legion of official land-grabbers, a vast horde of 
 pilfering, speculating agents who clung to him with the tenacity of a 
 parasite to its bleeding victim. The only complaint of these men 
 was of the irregularity of the government in making appropriations 
 to help them carry out their humane policy of peace. They made a 
 solitude and called it peace, and this was the peace they gave the 
 Indian, — the peace of a cold and sHent grave. They came to teach 
 him habits of improvidence and prodigality, to create for him a 
 thousand superfluous wants which they did not tell him how to 
 satisfy. Then, too, came a lawless squad of whiskey-sellers to- 
 " steal away his brain," no less than to relieve him of his money. 
 Unlike Falstaff's men, who were food for powder, these men made 
 the Indian food for whiskey. On every side the white man, to 
 whom he looks for example, as a being wiser than himself, tenders 
 him his fire-water ; so that now, after a distribution of the annui- 
 
26 
 
 ties, every Indian, man, woman, and child, that is capable of lifting 
 a jug to its head is seen wallowing in beastly drunkenness. 
 ^ It is but a few months ago that one of the most sickening phases 
 of this benign policy was displayed. A whole band of Indians were 
 exiled from the home of their childhood and manhood ; and, for 
 murmuring at what they deemed a grievous wrong, they, after a 
 heroic march of 1,000 miles across arid, trackless plains, were confined 
 within the barriers of a prison when the thermometer stood twenty 
 degrees below zero, with no fire and no clothing to keep the blood 
 from congealing in their veins. Dying here of cold, hunger, and 
 malaria, they at last determined to make one bold, headlong break 
 for life and liberty. But the foe was quickly in pursuit. The men 
 themselves, supple as they were, might easily have escaped, but they 
 chose to encumber themselves with their wives, and the young chil- 
 dren whom they carried through the baptism of fire. Ah ! yes ; 
 these barbarians have hearts that throb sympathetically with love of 
 kindred and of friends. The young braves, the flower of the band, 
 form themselves into a rear-guard for the protection of fleeing kin- 
 dred and aged parents. This, in a savage, may be sentimental attach- 
 ment, but it is the basis of the family, of the State, of the highest 
 civilization. And yet these heroes must perish ! They are called on 
 to suiTender, but called in vain. The redman thought of the horrors 
 of the past, and he chose to die rather than be handed over, body 
 and bones, to the tender mercies of his agents. With the blades of 
 their knives they cast up intrenchments in the frozen earth. These 
 becoming untenable, they retire into a deep ravine, and await an 
 attack. One detachment of soldiery is deployed to skirmish. An- 
 other mounts the bluffs, whilst a third covers the entrance to the 
 gully. At the signal given, a volley of leaden rain is poured down 
 the mouth of the ravine. In an instant the smoke vanishes, and 
 everything is still. All that remains of that once noble, band are a 
 few old women, who, in mute agony, sit on the cold ground, and 
 gaze on the lifeless forms before them ! 
 
 Such are the legitimate fruits of the vacillating and temporizing 
 policy of the government. Surely they are terribly eloquent in ex- 
 posing the manifold abuses and defects of the system. This policy 
 is one of shame and mollification to every right-thinking man, Ke- 
 ports are cooked up to order, but the shortcomings of those agency 
 
27 
 
 people are so palpable that no one is deceived. One power could 
 save the Indian from the fate to which he has been doomed, but the 
 bigotry and fanaticism of those who direct the present policy have 
 practically precluded the possibility of its helping him. 
 
 *' Of all the sad words of tongue or pen. 
 The saddest are these, It might have been." 
 
 And yet we must say that the fate of the Indian might have been 
 otherwise if he had had the good fortune to be intrusted to Catholic 
 keeping. That the Catholic Church can civilize the savages is amply 
 attested wherever she exercised control over them. Her fostering 
 influence obtained for them every blessing of civilization in Canada. 
 Nor was this less the case in South America, where the model Re- 
 public of the world was founded by the Jesuits. Even in these 
 States, wherever the priests had free scope to labor, the savage for- 
 sook his nomadic and predatory life, washed ofl* his paint, and 
 donned the costumes of civilization. There was one, too, among 
 those priests who seemed more of heaven than eaxth. , Like a beacon 
 pointing out the path of the mariner amid the mists and darkness of 
 the stoi-m-troubled night to a hav^n of security, so was he, as an 
 angel of light, guiding on the groping savage through the obscurity 
 of pagan ignorance, and indicating the true way that led to that 
 place of tranquillity and rest, the all-embracing knowledge of the one 
 true God. His life was gentle, and his people loved him; for, deep- 
 traced on the redman's heart, and deep-rooted in his memory, is the 
 fond recollection of the noble, heroic, and self-denying Father De 
 Smet. 
 
 Filled with memories of such men as he, the poor savage to-day 
 demands that priests of the Catholic Church, — "those," says he, 
 "who wear the black gowns," be sent to instruct him. Yes; they 
 want representatives of that Church which they have learned to 
 honor and to love. But even this concession to the rights of con- 
 science a professedly tolerant government has the injustice, in a 
 great measure, to refuse. Of some forty agencies to which it is en- 
 tiiled, the Catholic ministry has but eight. And what it now costs 
 the government, in the way of teaching, nearly $40,000 per annum, 
 could, as our missionaries have proved, be accomplished through 
 Catholic management for about $16,000. And though it be admitted 
 
28 
 
 that an Indian under Catholic restraint is infinitely better than a 
 Protestant savage slinging a tomahawk, yet we know full well that, 
 when it can be done. Catholic chaplains will not be permitted to 
 come into the agencies lest, by their frugality, they should lessen the 
 official pickings and illicit perquisites of those same well-fed agents, 
 who have reduced the redman to a state, beggarly, beyond all powers 
 of description. 
 
 Thus the great problem now stands. Our able politicians are 
 either too engrossed with questions of party, or of personal concern, 
 to give any heed to the subject, or else they have not sufficient 
 grasp of mind to solve it. And so the overwhelming work of de- 
 struction goes daily on. With a besom of fire, the redman is being 
 swept from the face of the earth. To-day a leading general of the 
 nation cries out: " Let them be shot down like dogs." And a first- 
 rank newspaper, re-echoing the same brutal sentiment, cries : 
 " Moral suasion is no longer of avail, physical force must be em- 
 ployed." As snow melts from the mountain, so are they fading away 
 from the summit of their glory. As stars drop from their seat in the 
 firmament, so are they falling from the seat they once held in the 
 human family, and passing into the darkness of oblivion. Soon they 
 shall live in our memory alone. And all this is because of the fla- 
 grant injustice of that people w^ho incessantly prate about liberty, and 
 yet refuse to recognize the principle of " Live and let live." " I 
 tremble for my country when I think that God is just," said Thomas 
 Jefferson in reference to this subject. And Wendell Phillips says 
 that at the judgment-seat no nation will lift up such accusing hands 
 against our people as the race of American Indians. 
 
 The time is not far remote when the direful work wiU have been 
 accomplished. The redman's home is now " voiceless, lampless, and 
 hung with mourning." His vital spark is growing yet more faint, 
 and every rude blast is fiercer than ever. It pursues him more hotly 
 still; and it will continue to chase him on, until the last luckless 
 savage shall go down to his dismal doom, " like a lonely bark founder- 
 ing in the waters, and perish without a pitying eye to weep his fall, 
 or a friendly hand to record his struggle." 
 
III. 
 
 PREHISTORIC AMERICA— INDIANS AND AZTECS. 
 
 So much has been written upon American antiquities that it 
 would be a vain presumption on the part of the writer to attempt 
 to shed any new light upon a subject which, however dark, has been 
 very persistently and successfully explored. 
 
 I purpose to confine my remarks to the ethnological side of the 
 question, as indicated by the title of the article. 
 
 Of the existence of a prehistoric civilization of no meanly ad- 
 vanced order in our country there offers ample evidence. The 
 homes of the cliff-dwellers in Colorado, so familiar to the tourist's 
 eye, are proof of consummate skill in the science and aii of archi- 
 tectural construction. 
 
 Upon lofty, almost inaccessible ledges of mountain rock, these 
 curious and interesting fabrications stand in bold defiance of the 
 ravages of time. Side by side with the dwelling is the tower, with 
 its triple enclosure or window, to serve the purpose, probably, of 
 observation or attack. These buildings, towers and houses both, 
 are mai-vels of masonry, both in the evenness and strength of the 
 jointure of the parts, and in the solidit}" and symmetry of the whole. 
 "What hands were those that deftly put together these puzzling 
 monuments of a bygone time? Who were those chased and hunted 
 creatures who probably made their last stand against the desolating 
 encroachments of a hostile race in these mountain eyries, and finally 
 "passed away to leave no trace," save of their unique skill and 
 handicraft, so manifestly displayed in their habitations ? That they 
 are to be referred to a period prior to the Indians is incontestable ; 
 and that they were subjugated and subdued by our copper-colored 
 friends is markedly probable. 
 
 Among certain tribes of Indians, too, there is' found evidence, 
 
30 
 
 mostly fragmentary, of no inconsiderable skill and handicraft in par- 
 ticular trades and arts. The ability to temper copper to the con- 
 sistency and hardness of steel is well known and effectually baffles 
 the attempts of Yankee genius at imitation. The manifold specimens 
 of pottery, stone implements, adzes, iron tools and numismatic 
 articles in abundance are doubtless the appanage of a higher order 
 of civilization than that of the redmen of the forest ; yet even these 
 have furnished proof of moderate capacity in the production of 
 objects of utility and beauty, as wicker-work, embroidery, and 
 various sorts of finger-craft, conspicuous in personal ornaments, 
 calumets, wampum, and like trappings of the barbaric or semi- 
 civilized condition. It is beside our aim to speculate or theorize on 
 these discoveries, for we have in mind rather the consideration of 
 social and racial characteristics. The subject is too broad to be more 
 than sketched or hinted at in a newspaper article. 
 
 As the race of redmen declines, our interest in regard to it in- 
 creases. It may be that it is the consciousness of guilt that makes 
 us look upon the decline of a race, with a sad and melancholy in- 
 terest, whose extermination is of our own procuring, instead, as we 
 delude ourselves, of being the work of manifest destiny. 
 
 The Dacotahs and the Alonguins, as we are told by historians, 
 were the chief tribes inhabiting the country between the Rockies 
 and the Atlantic coast about the time of the settlement of New 
 Jersey in 16*20. 
 
 We know how they have been scattered and dispersed ; how deci- 
 mated and destroyed ; how hunted and killed ; hoAV deteriorated and 
 degenerated ; but still essentially the same since those far-off days. 
 
 Yes ; I am sure he is the same old Indian to-day that he was from 
 time immemorial. 
 
 Remarkable for their powers of endurance ; patient of hunger and 
 thirst ; insensible to hardship and fatigue ; agile, active and strong, 
 they seem admirably adapted to live the nomadic life of the forest. 
 They are not, as has been so commonly represented, grave and taci- 
 turn in private intercourse, but in councils and on solemn occasions 
 it is deemed decorous to assume an air of apathetic gravity and give 
 no indication of feeling. I do believe that if the Indian had had as 
 much education, and, consequently,- as many ideas as the white man, 
 he would be not less noted for loquacity. 
 
31 
 
 They are addicted, as a rule, to unconquerable indolence, and, 
 seemingly, to irremovable dirt. A friend of mine wlio resides at 
 Belleville, N. J., relates the following as his own experience : 
 
 Some years ago he established a large grocery store in St. Paul, 
 Minnesota. Requiring help in the business, he saw a big strapping 
 buck one day' among a party of Indians who were wont to trade at 
 the store ; he proposed to hire the Hercules at a liberal stipend, and 
 the offer was accepted, and the contract at once concluded. But one 
 day, to the astonishment of his employer, the Indian threw a sack of 
 flour he carried upon the floor, and declared his intention to give up 
 his work. " Don't I treat you well," said the grocer ; " isn't your 
 pay enough ? " " Yes," he said, " pay all right, money heap good, 
 but ugh ! me no squaw ; good-by, me no squaw." The poor fellow 
 was both willing to work and anxious to secure ihe money; but his 
 sensitive soul could not stand the taunts and scoffs of the Indians 
 who daily visited the store for the purchase of goods and the ex- 
 change of furs, and who hurled at the unfortunate wight the soul- 
 stinging epithet, squaw. 
 
 It is undisputed that the Indians are eminently pious, in their own 
 way of worship, or at least were so before their corruption by the 
 more pretentious whites. They all believed in the existence of a 
 Deity, on monotheistic principles, and this Supreme Existence was 
 to them the all-wise, benevolent, and powerful God. Strange to tell, 
 they rarely or never invoked him in prayer, but an irreverent men- 
 tion of his name they regarded as a most shocking blasphemy ; a 
 good lesson for many Christians distinguished for their vile pro- 
 fanity. Some, like the Manichseans, pinned their faith to a prin- 
 ciple of evil, to whom they sacrificed, as did many of old, to Moloch. 
 Their belief in a future state is so weU known as hardly to require 
 notice, except as it affords additional proof that, aside from revela- 
 tion, men's notions of paradise are formed by the sensible images 
 and objects by which they are surrounded, of the earth, earthy ; and 
 as the Mohammedan places his future felicity in sensual delights and 
 carnal pleasures, so the Indian would have the inhabitants of the 
 New Jerusalem to occupy themselves in one everlasting buffalo 
 hunt. As with many barbaric races, among the Indians also, to the 
 functions of the priesthood was conjoined the practice of surgery 
 and medicine. 
 
32 
 
 The individual, therefore, whose office it was to placate the Deity 
 was considered competent to cure a cold, or replace a dislocated 
 shin-bone. For such a multiplicity of functions, a great versatility 
 of talent, I am sure, was required. 
 
 In respect of government, it is conceded that they had hardly any- 
 thing deserving the name. The chief, chosen by a sort of tacit con- 
 sent, had no authority, outside of war contingencies. Sometimes, 
 however, they elected civil chiefs who could exercise advisory, but 
 not mandatory powers. His office was hereditary, but not according 
 to primogeniture. Might was right. Law they had none ; but some 
 customs obtained a sort of binding force. The doctrine of " an eye 
 for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," met with cordial approval and 
 practical enforcement. While divorce was at the option of the 
 husband, by a prevarication or inconsistency of justice, the adultery 
 of the wife was duly punished by taking off her olfactory organ. 
 To prevent her "nosing round," I suppose. 
 
 Their courage was invincible, though it is not to be measured by 
 our standards. It was not so much personal, as clannish, and the 
 boldest warrior was often easily cowed if isolated from his friends. 
 
 The rights of property were but dimly discerned. There was 
 generally no " meum " and " tuum," for property was held in 
 common — in most tribes. 
 
 Whence did the redman come ? We have heard and read many 
 theories about his origin, but it is likely we shall always remain in 
 the dark. He may have crossed Behring's Strait, or, like Topsy in 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin, he may have simply " growed." Who can tell ? 
 Are they the dusky children of Ishmael ? If the banished Hagar did 
 not " see her boy die," his remote offspring doubtless soon will be 
 no more. Are they some of the lost tribes? This last is the 
 Mormon theory, who make capital use of it in preaching to the 
 Indian the glorious gospel of liberation which the latter-day 
 saints are commissioned to carry to the dispersed house of Israel. 
 They hold that the emancipation and restoration of the Indian is 
 their own peculiar mission, and it is in them, and by them and their 
 gospel, that the final salvation and conversion of the Jews, of whom 
 the Indians form a quota, is to receive its accomplishment. 
 
 Regarding their thievish propensities, a near relative of the writer, 
 
33 
 
 who dwelt for some time in the Pi-Ute Country, tells a story of their 
 singular dexterity and adroitness in appropriating other people's 
 property. He fell asleep in his blanket on the open plain with a 
 brace of revolvers by his side, to find on his awakening that during 
 somnolence he had been rolled out of the blanket, and both blanket 
 and revolvers stolen. It might seem a pretty strong draft on our 
 creduhty to gulp down the narration, did we not know as a matter 
 of fact that the thieving Bedouins resort to the practice of fanning 
 the unconscious victim to deepen sleep, tickling him on the side to 
 cause him to roll over, and then purloining the goods which for 
 safety he slept upon. 
 
 As we have just hinted at the interesting question concerning the 
 identity of the American Indians with the children of Israel, it is 
 not less pertinent to refer to the very prevalent opinion which looks 
 upon the Ancient Aztecs as of Shemitic or Hebraic origin. And if 
 similarity of feature is any indication of racial unity, the Aztecs have 
 a much stronger claim than the Indians to be so regarded. 
 
 Those of our readers old enough to call to mind the appearance 
 of the Aztec children some years ago exhibited in New York City, 
 and of the more aged couple recently produced by Bamum, could 
 not fail to be struck at the startling evidence of Hebrew paternity, 
 in physiognomy, physiology, and habit. And this fact sustains the 
 opinions of the most astute ethnologists, that the people who inhab- 
 ited the cities of the Central American continent, now known only 
 by their monumental ruins, came originally from the other conti- 
 nent. We have here strong confirmation of the Scriptural teaching 
 concerning the unity of the human race, and its derivation from one 
 common parent. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Mitchel found Greek characters upon the idols dis- 
 covered in Central America, and Dr. Correy says : " There is no doubt 
 that the people who once dwelt in these cities — the ancient Aztec 
 — were composed of Phenicians, Greeks, Egyptians and Asiatics." 
 
 Furthermore, those interesting specimens who seem to have 
 sprung, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a bygone time, appear as if 
 they had arisen from the dead to convince the nineteenth century 
 that, long anterior to the discovery of Columbus, this continent was 
 peopled by a race, civilized, refined, and intelligent ; for although 
 3 
 
34 
 
 these gifts and faculties are not found in the persons now before us, 
 we behold in them the physiognomy of that race whose features are 
 delineated in the sculptures which modern investigation has brought 
 to light, and these are the features of a people who have left behind 
 them more than sufficient traces to show that, although now their 
 grandeur is all but blotted out, they had once attained to no despic- 
 able degree of art, refinement, and civilization. 
 
IV. 
 
 MORMONISM AND THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In the Forum for November, 1888, George Ticknor Curtis 
 writes an article anent the much- vexed Mormon problem, which 
 abounds in strong sense, and is conspicuous for its thorough grasp 
 of the whole range of the subject. 
 
 We have not had, at any time, so enlightened and dispassionate a 
 view of this threadbare topic from any man of importance, nor one 
 which so completely commends itself to us as being in exact accord 
 with our own personal observation and experience. 
 
 The pest of polygamy has provoked the fiercest denunciations 
 from men of all shades of religious belief and every political profes- 
 sion ; but from the nature of the case, it must always receive its 
 sternest condemnation from the Cathohc Church, which, of all insti- 
 tutions at the present day, alone has just notions of the marriage 
 contract, and, perforce, of those vices which, however haJlowed by 
 the name of religion or justified by a mistaken conscience, are yet 
 counter to the proper adjustment of the sexual relations, and even 
 perniciously destructive of the very citadel of society — marriage as 
 it should be. 
 
 For all that, every Catholic is a lover of truth and justice, and 
 quite partial to fair play ; and while he is in hearty agreement with 
 Cardinal Gibbons when he puts Mormonism, or rather polygamy, in 
 the pillory as the great plague-spot of our American civilization, he 
 yet believes in the force of that old adage which would accord to a 
 certain sable celebrity that which of right belongs to him. 
 
 When the question of suppressing polygamy first took firm root in 
 the American mind, and the extermination of the evil was resolved 
 upon with a fiery zeal, which well could have been tempered a little 
 with the dew of discretion, a lot of judicial Hotspurs were assigned 
 
36 
 
 to the territory, who set about the execution of their commission 
 with an almost brutal energy and resolution, which was but murder- 
 ing justice with the sword of law. 
 
 All Catholics ma^ not incline to agree with us in these remarks, 
 or may seem to think we talk with too tolerant a voice of a flagrant 
 evil which cannot be too soon suppressed. Of course, no sincere 
 and honest man can give tolerance to pernicious error, but we think 
 it becomes Catholics to view with criticaJ eye the methods that are 
 employed to see if they answer the demands of justice, and whether 
 also they may not be a kind of boomerang some day to shoot back 
 upon ourselves. 
 
 In the first place, we submit that it is small matter for marvel that 
 the Mormon mind was slow to be convinced of the sincere purpose 
 and propriety of conduct of those who came to teach them the ways 
 of virtue, and drive them into dungeons if they would not swallow, 
 without a qualm, the governmental nostrum for morality, and at the 
 same time sought to introduce, and did introduce among the citizens 
 of Deseret, an institution which we, without being grossly offensive 
 to the refinement of our readers, may not name. It was the old and 
 just retort, "Physician, heal thyself." Of the truth of the charges 
 against these legalized and official reformers, we have had ample and 
 unimpeachable evidence, supplemented by the testimony of one who, 
 for fifteen years, had labored amongst them, and who is now a prelate 
 of the Catholic Church. He spoke to me of the integrity and probity 
 of the Mormon people ; of their spirit of toleration and good will 
 towards Catholics ; of their comparative freedom from vice, setting 
 aside their polygamous practices. Their thrift and industry were 
 everywhere apparent. They possessed the magic art of " making the 
 wilderness to blossom as the rose." At no time had they had living 
 in polygamy a portion of their number exceeding ten per cent. 
 Although, as Artemus Ward said, "their religion is singular, and 
 their wives are plural," the plurality, except in a few cases, never 
 passed beyond two or three. 
 
 These few points I mention merely to furnish a clue to the amount 
 of exaggeration put in print upon the subject. 
 
 But let us look at the principles by which the government seeks to 
 justify the suppression of this people's practices, and see if they are 
 not a little dangerous and menacing to the liberty of Catholics. 
 
37 
 
 Be it remembered that the Mormons held to polygamy as a religi- 
 ous doctrine, and one of the revealed tenets of their peculiar faith. 
 It matters not, for the present pui-pose, whether they are hugging a 
 delusion, or whether they are truly the " Latter-day Saints." Their 
 sincerity in many instances did not admit of doubt. Agreeably to 
 their belief that polygamy was enjoined on them by conscience in- 
 formed by the revealed law, they at once contested the constitution- 
 ality of the law, whereby the government sought to kill what it 
 regarded as morally monstrous, on the alleged interference of such 
 enactment with the liberty of the individual conscience, and its, to 
 them, obvious opposition to the words and tenor of the law of the 
 country. " O bediendum est Deo potius quam hominibus," said they. 
 With the fallacious character of this claim, we have now and here no 
 concern. Enough that it was made, and made, as we beUeve, in sober 
 earnestness and subjective truth. "Fudge and faddle," says the 
 government; " your morality is vice, and your reUgion rhodomontade. 
 And what do we care for your conscience ? And at all events, we are 
 the keepers and custodians of that conscience." 
 
 " Come to me," says the Mormon; " come in the spirit of the gospel, 
 and point out the eiTor I have embraced, and I will at once reject it." 
 And so the grave and hoary-headed senators from the land of steady 
 habits and exploded Puritanism undertook the mighty task, and in 
 their lofty speeches rummaged the Inspired Word from Genesis to 
 St. Paul, to show the world what warrant they had for the scotching 
 of Mormonism with the weapon of Scriptural sanction. And thus the 
 government makes itself the censor of morals and the teacher of 
 religion. To show that Monnonism was against revealed religion, 
 they were compelled, in a measure, to define religion, and this was 
 an undoubted violation of the spirit of the civil constitution. 
 
 There are many of the doctrines of Catholicity as much opposed, 
 in the opinion of these statesmen, to the law of the gospel and the 
 law of the land as is Mormon polygamy. 
 
 The effort of the sagacious New England senators to convict Mor- 
 monism of immorality from an appeal to Scripture was foredoomed 
 to merited failure. As expositors of revelation they were not a signal 
 success. However skilled in secular science and familiar with the 
 sinuous ways of politics, they proved but sorry novices at their new 
 employment. And then the attempt to belabor Mormonism with 
 
38 
 
 such weighty weapons in untried hands was doomed to be abortive, 
 from the superior skill in that method of argument of those against 
 whom it was invoked. To bear the Bible to Salt Lake was but " to 
 carry coals to Newcastle," or bricks to Haverstraw. Like Timothy, 
 the Mormon had been versed in Scripture and biblical lore of every 
 kind from his youth. He could roll it off in reams at any random 
 call. He challenged controversy, he courted polemics in any Script- 
 ural field with the complacent assurance of a combatant conscious of 
 success. Nor could he be persuaded that the senatorial toga carried 
 with it any authority to interpret Holy Writ in a sense antagonistic 
 to his own understanding of the Sacred Volume. And he demanded 
 from the government, as a religious teacher, those credentials and 
 that commission of authority which no government on earth can give. 
 
 Just here I beg to be permitted to indulge a hypothesis, and pro- 
 pound a question which was put to me, and answered, as I shall pres- 
 ently give answer, by a discreet and erudite Prelate in the West. It 
 is this : — 
 
 If, to-morrow, the legislative power of the nation should conceive 
 it expedient to proscribe Catholicity, or any portion of it, because of 
 its putative hostility to the American spirit and the established order 
 of affairs in this free country ; and if the legislators are allowed to 
 consider it within their competence to appeal to Holy Writ, and upon 
 their deductions therefrom found proscriptive legislation, what is 
 there to prevent them from successfully adopting these same lines to 
 compass a purpose which would be a cause of joy to many of them, 
 and of hard calamity to us ? Nothing. 
 
 Finding it impossible to condemn polygamy out of the mouth of 
 the Old Law, all at variance as to the meaning of the New, and com- 
 pelled to submit to the Mormons' defiant taunt that they could not 
 establish its contrariety to the law of nature, these sapient law-makers 
 found themselves self -impaled upon the horns of a most disastrous 
 dilemma; for to surrender this line of argument was to confess defeat, 
 and displease a puritanical constituency (and oh ! the irony of fate, 
 many of the Puritans have become Mormons), and to follow it out 
 was to fail in attaining what was wanted. 
 
 In 1879, after many years' connivance, or at least toleration, of 
 polygamy, the aid of the Supreme Court was invoked, which, declar- 
 ing marriage to be a purely civil contract, defined it to be of the 
 
39 
 
 essence of the contract, that the consent should pass between two 
 persons, and two persons only, in a simultaneous union, and therefore 
 within the sphere of the state to punish polygamy, or multiplex mar- 
 riage of the simultaneous character, as a crime against the law. 
 
 It should be observed that, while Catholics are in hearty agreement 
 with the learned judge who rendered this decision as to his conclu- 
 sion, they do not, and cannot, concede that assumed premise which 
 characterizes marriage as a purely civil contract. And if the state, 
 regarding marriage as a civil relation only, may prescribe its con- 
 ditions, its limitations, and its very nature, which in truth is the logi- 
 cal sequence of such presumption, it fails me utterly to conceive why 
 Catholics, while chiming in with the common anti-Mormon cry, view 
 as a remote, or even impossible contingency, the interference of the 
 state with their own sacred institutions of Christian mamage. 
 
 It is foreign to my purpose to pursue this discussion fiu'ther. I 
 have no other aim than to open some debate upon the question. I 
 acutely realize that this is a large topic, closely akin to many cognate 
 subjects. It involves the difficult subject of toleration; of liberty of 
 conscience; of freedom of worship; of state interference with estab- 
 lished forms of religion. Is it the office of the state to determine 
 when a man is a fanatic and the dupe of a disordered imagination, 
 and when he is not ? When his religion is true, and when it is false ? 
 How shall it attain its design — by an appeal to Sacred Writ, or to 
 the common conscience, which ? 
 
 It may be said the state cannot tolerate crime, or that which would 
 subvert its own existence and the existence of society. True, but in 
 the concrete, men will not concur as to what is criminal and thus in- 
 imical to society, and what is the contrary. If we cannot show that 
 polygamy is in conflict with the fiiist and evident principles of the 
 natural law, as, indeed, we cannot, I respectfully beg to be informed 
 how some can howl for its suppression, not as a matter of social 
 policy, but as if it stood in the same category with murder, theft, and 
 robbery. To a reasonable man, who says and thinks he has the Word 
 of God as the sanction of his practices, I must show that he is wrong 
 before I cast the stone of condemnation on his head. If he is not 
 reasonable I should convince the world of the fact, that he may be 
 confined as too dangerous to roam at large. 
 
 I am daily becoming more convinced that there is hardly a ques- 
 
40 
 
 tion of morality wliicli can be definitely detei*mined without the aid 
 and intervention of that supreme authority to whom was given the 
 commission to teach all things. For what the natural law leaves 
 undetermined, and what revelation will not decide because of the 
 perversity or incapacity of the human heart in understanding, the 
 Catholic Church makes plain as the noon-day sun. 
 
 To those who have enough interest in this matter to follow it 
 another interesting step, I would commend the reading of Judge 
 Curtis' article in the Forum, in which he animadverts with some 
 severity upon the iniquitous workings of the Edmunds law of '82, 
 and which, for obvious reasons, I would wish to here transcribe. 
 
 I would fain not be misunderstood in what I have said about 
 polygamy. I am not defending it, nor those who practice it, but I 
 am disposed to question the legitimacy of the methods, and even of 
 some of the principles employed for its suppression among Mormons. 
 Nor can I agree with Rev. Joseph Rickaby, S. J., when he makes it 
 to appear that the case against polygamy by the law of nature is 
 almost as strong as that against polyandry. 
 
 Uhi tu Caius, ego Caia, " where thou art master, I am mistress,'^ 
 which the Roman bride said to her bridegroom, expresses, indeed, 
 the true standing of the woman in the home and family. But to 
 establish this prerogative for the wife beyond cavil or doubt, and to 
 withdraw her from the dominion of man's unruly passions, is accom- 
 plished, not so much by the law of nature, as by the light of revela- 
 tion explained and enforced by the Catholic Church. 
 
 It did not surprise me, therefore, to hear an intelligent Mormon 
 challenge the agnostic IngersoU, in the Mormon temple at Salt Lake, 
 to make good the assertion that polygamy was in conflict with the 
 natural law ; a challenge, I am s«ire, which " slippery Bob," with his 
 usual adroitness, prudently evaded. 
 
 Concerning the confiscation of the Mormon church property by the 
 government, I shall speak in another article, when I come to deal 
 with their checkered history and fanatical religion. 
 
Y. 
 
 POLITICS AND PARTIES. 
 
 The proximate approach of an election of transcendent importance 
 is what inspires the crude reflections which we have to offer on the 
 subject which we have selected. 
 
 It is a common fallacy, advanced in support of apathy and indo- 
 lence, that a man may stand indifferent to political transactions with- 
 out lesion to his conscience or deviation from his duty. To refute & 
 conclusion so obviously erroneous and untenable will perhaps appear 
 as the " threshing of old straw." And yet it may not be wholly void 
 of profit. 
 
 If patriotism is a virtue, no man can well afford to discount it as a 
 bagatelle. And how can any man pride himself on his patriotism 
 who carries himself with cold apathy and supine negligence in respect 
 of the pubUc politics of his time and country ? For on the princi- 
 ples, methods, and conduct of poHtics the common weal is safely 
 grounded, or surely wrecked and stranded. To deny it were to " bay 
 the moon." 
 
 Man is the factor of which society is the product. Man is the unit; 
 society the composite. As there is no society without men, so neither 
 can men exist without society. They wither, perish, die. For as 
 the vine clings to the oak, so does man on society, but in much closer 
 relation than that announced by our analogy. The very essence of 
 personality, it is true, implies segregation. Every man is what he is^ 
 is what he holds within the four fleshy walls of his person, whether 
 he mix with the multitude, or sit soKtary like Alexander Selkirk on 
 the island of Juan Fernandez. Individuality is not absorped in society. 
 A brass wall of demarcation impassably defined hedges round the 
 identity of each, and holds the myriad from tramping him down. 
 Yet independence is not inconsistent with dependence, and indepen- 
 
42 
 
 dence destroys not sociality. We live in others as well as in our- 
 selves, "for no man liveth or dieth unto himself." As Dr. Johnson 
 has it, " man is a clubbable animal/' 
 
 Society has no existence without government, for, " if all were the 
 Tiody, where would the head be," and if all head, where would the 
 members have place ? To rule, and be ruled; to govern, and be gov- 
 erned; to command, and be obeyed, is of the essence of society; and 
 any aggregation of men without this distinction of parts, and variety of 
 functions, call it association, call it intercourse, call it what you please, it 
 is not society. Now, society must not only exist, but it must exist well 
 and vigorously. It must not vegetate, but live. The blood must not 
 merely fill the veins, but must also pulsate in the proper channels. 
 And of such society as this, the support and foundation is good gov- 
 ernment ; on the skill and competence of the pilot depends the 
 safety of the ship ; the hand at the helm is the one that guides it into 
 port. 
 
 But the stream is not purer than its source; light is not more radiant 
 than the sun. 
 
 But government is guided by men, men are guided by principles, 
 and do not, and cannot, rise above the principles of which they 
 make, profession. A man may be better than his conduct, but never 
 better than his principles. An occasional obliquity bespeaks not 
 total depravity. And what is politics but the reduction of principles 
 to their practical application in the science and art of government ? 
 Obviously, therefore, it is a matter of pith and moment to the well- 
 being of society whether men deport themselves with listless indiffer- 
 ence, or with active concern in the transactions of the political arena. 
 And this on a double score, to wit : with respect to principles and 
 with respect to men. For, aside from the man in whom the princi- 
 ple is to find its embodiment and concretion, the principle is only an 
 airy abstraction of no more potency in effect than the crack of an 
 unloaded pop-gun. 
 
 Every citizen, therefore, having present to mind the consciousness 
 of his duty and the will to discharge it, is in thoughts, and feelings, 
 and attitude keenly alive to the political affairs of his country. It is 
 his constant aim to secure the adoption of such principles as are 
 sound and wholesome in the operations and plans of government, as 
 it is his uniform effort to choose, or have chosen, men of such char- 
 
43 
 
 acter and capacity as shall put in living practice the principles that 
 meet his approval. And this is a moral duty which he cannot elude 
 without lesion to his conscience, and which he cannot forego without 
 endangering his country. 
 
 How is he to meet the emergency ? Much depends on the methods 
 in vogue and the systems of government that obtain in his case. 
 
 In our own favored republic, the whole machinery of government 
 turns on the pivot of party. It were perhaps more desirable to dis- 
 cover some method less subject than party to the wiles and intrigues 
 of clap-trap mouthers and unscrupulous demagogues, who, as Frank- 
 lin would say, in all their professions of disinterested love for their 
 countrymen, have only a personal axe to grind, and an iU-concealed 
 greed to bring grist to their own miUs. But no social philosopher, 
 no man skilled in state-craft, no man, as Horace has it "juris legum- 
 que peritus," has yet been able to evolve from his labors any method 
 of sufficient adaptability to supplant the party system in the opera- 
 tions of a free and democratic government. 
 
 Consonantly, therefore, to this admitted premise, whoever would 
 wish to make his influence felt in the conduct of public affairs has 
 no other road open to the attainment of his end than that which lies 
 through the affihations of party. Willy nilly, if he has no wish to 
 count as a cipher in the body politic, he must don the habiliments 
 of party and become, according to the wisdom of his choice, demo- 
 crat or republican; granger or prohibitionist ; laborite, socialist, or 
 native American. This contention is iiTesistible. 
 
 But to belong to a party does not make man a partisan any more 
 than to stand in a stable would make him a horse. The question 
 presents itself, however, to what extent is he bound by the claims of 
 party in the exercise of his franchise ? It is, as Horace Greeley used 
 to remark, a mighty interesting question, and this the more so that 
 many brand any desertion of party as the most truculent treason. 
 He is looked on in the unenviable light of a political Judas, and per- 
 haps they may think it were better he had never been born. But is 
 a man to be the abject slave of party? Dare he call his soul his 
 own ? Does a party pre-empt its adherents so as to own them body 
 and bones ? That it has certain claims on them is not to be gain- 
 said ; but what is the scope of the claims ? 
 
 Man, to fulfill the duties of citizenship, is constrained to connect 
 
44 
 
 himself with some form of party, and hence the first and most para- 
 mount duty is that of selection or choice. It is perfuming the violet 
 to say that this choice will be, as it ought to be, the result of his de- 
 liberate judgment and conscientious conviction. It will be made in 
 the light of conscience and common sense. 
 
 Viewed according to abstract considerations, this choice will be 
 made according to a man's notions of the propriety and the perfec- 
 tions of the principles professed by the party, as they have reference 
 to good government, and the security and prosperity of the country 
 under their application. 
 
 The choice once made, does it claim the obligation of fealty and 
 adhesion to the party pitched upon by the citizen ? Assuredly, for 
 the obligation of consistency is incumbent on every man, and how 
 can a man, without self-stultification, turn lightly aside from the 
 rational result of his investigation, and recede from the judicial stand 
 that he took when he fettered himself with the gyves of his party ? 
 
 And yet there is no implication in all this that a man is to be for- 
 ever trammelled by a judgment made at some period past. 
 
 There is nothing permanent under the sun. The times change, 
 and we, not to be odd, change with them. Political parties are no 
 honored exception. Principles, they tell us, do not change, but 
 parties change their principles, correct and amend them. The doc- 
 trine sworn by yesterday is discarded on the morrow. Besides, 
 princijDles remaining the same, the personnel of the party may alter. 
 The river goes on forever, but men may and do come and go. They 
 not only come and go, but often when they stay it is only to grow 
 worse. The rolling stone gathers no moss, but the resting stone may 
 lie so long as to be but little else than moss. Thus men may abide 
 in power so long as to be infected with the dry-rot of corruption 
 and malfeasance. 
 
 These things being so, who that has sound sense under his cap 
 will advance the doctrine that a man is bound to stick by his party ? 
 He is bound to stick by his conscience; he is bound to cleave to his 
 religion. What if he has made choice of this party ? Perhaps the 
 party has changed and perchance has forsaken its principles. Maybe 
 it so long fattened on the public crib, so long rioted in the pap of the 
 people, that its insufferable insolence needs rebuke, and its sordid 
 and mercenary conduct correction. New exigencies may have arisen 
 
45 
 
 and a new set of principles, represented by a new party, may be re- 
 quired to meet them. 
 
 Is a man then to be restrained from transferring his allegiance 
 from one party to another whether temporarily or ^permanently as 
 the occasion requires, because at one time he thought it prudent to 
 call himself a democrat or a republican, or even a mugwump ? 
 
 It may be hardly necessary to obsei've that these remarks are 
 wholly impersonal and abstract in their nature, for they are not 
 the frothings of a professional politician. 
 
 Though the writer has his preference for party, and will always 
 have it, agreeably to his convictions, on the line indicated in this 
 article, he commands none in particular, but believes it, in the pres- 
 ent arrangement and constitution of politics, the perspicuous duty of 
 every man possessed of the right to cast the weight of his suffrage 
 and all his political fortune on the side of some particular party, so 
 long as it meets the approval of his reason and conscience. AVhich 
 that party shall be, let his deliberations determine, but let it be al- 
 ways remembered that the ethical element cannot be sifted out of 
 the question. The free, honest, and intelligent use of the ballot is 
 the basis of good government, and good government is indispensable 
 to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Whoever, then, 
 loves himself, loves his country, loves the welfare of society ; who- 
 ever loves the means whereby the blessings of civil liberty, social 
 order, and national prosperity are perpetuated and preserved ; who- 
 ever deems it a desideratum that fit candidates should be selected for 
 the suffrage of their fellow-citizens, not for the votes they can com- 
 mand, but for capacity and moral worth ; whoever wishes that our 
 legislative halls should not become the receptacle of ruffianism, im- 
 morality, infamous venality ; whoever, in fine, desires to breathe the 
 air and the genial sunshine of a free, independent, and enviable 
 citizenship in a republican society, will not stand off in solitary pride 
 or frigid sense of self-superiority that decrees all politics as of satanic 
 institution, but will awake from his slumbers, buckle on his armor, 
 and with the conviction that moral force still rules the world, in gov- 
 ernment and out of it, and the holy resolution that he shall always 
 do what he can to maintain the supremacy thereof, will take his 
 place in the primary where men are set up to stand or be knocked 
 down on the judgment-day of election, when he will proudly go to 
 the polls and put his ballot where it will do the most good. 
 
VI. 
 SABBATARIANISM AND AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 The New York Sun, in a carefully considered article, punctures 
 with the keen lancet of its logic the pharisaical pretensions of those 
 self-righteous Sabbatarians who would fain push back the hand on 
 the dial of progress a moiety of a century or two until it struck the 
 rigid notch of effete and antiquated Puritanism. With one incisive 
 stroke the Sun cuts off their curious claim to a distinctively Ameri- 
 can Sabbath. It would appear as if these sour-faced ministers 
 regarded Cotton Mather, instead of Christ our Lord, as the insti- 
 tutor of the Christian Sunday. This need not excite our great 
 astonishment when we reflect that, with the Bible only as their yard- 
 stick of belief, they have utterly no warrant for the consecration of 
 Sunday, preferably to any other day, to the worship of our Lord 
 and Saviour. 
 
 The harsh and repressive measures which they would invoke for 
 the extinction of all Sunday recreation, whether innocent or other- 
 wise, are in strict accordance with the rules of the old Calvinistic 
 creeds. 
 
 These men sadly misconceive the spirit of the gospel, as at the 
 same time they degrade our human nature, which, in their opinion, 
 must be fettered and stripped of all its freedom before it can 
 attempt to pay any homage to its Maker. 
 
 The essence of divine worship does not consist in a slavish sub- 
 serviency which would escheat us of the use of those physical facul- 
 ties which God's bounty has bestowed upon us. There is no sort of 
 religious frost in the Sunday air to congeal the blood within our 
 bodies, and no bale in the Sunday sunshine to put upon us the uncon- 
 genial restraint of keeping within doors, " cribbed, cabined and con- 
 fined," with nothing to do but chant hymns with a sad and pensive 
 
47 
 
 but holy monotony all the day long. " To him who in the love of 
 nature holds communion with her visible forms she speaks a various 
 language"; and she talks to him on Sunday with the same sweet 
 voice that awakes music in a soul attuned to nature's harmonies, as 
 on any other of God's good days. Shall the cant, then, of these 
 hypochondriacal gentlemen deprive us of our innocent Sunday 
 amusement ? Ai'e we, forsooth, in deference to them, to forego our 
 outdoor recreation, the bright skies, the green fields, and the glad 
 sunshine ? May heaven f oref end ! 
 
 " Some people," says Tom Hood, " think they are pious, and they 
 are only bilious." The advocates of such strait-laced observ- 
 ance of the Sunday are simply hypochondriacs. Their minds are 
 dazed with the most splenetic vapors, the result, not so much, per- 
 haps, of Calvinistic theology, as of melancholia. Melancholia is an 
 uncanny affliction. We heard once of a poor victim, who, after 
 ringing the round of every mad conceit that ever toi-mented a crazy 
 brain, at last fancied himself a teapot. The ministers we are de- 
 scribing are theological teapots. Now they are in the throes of 
 ebullition, but they will soon simmer down, and, like boiled coffee, 
 settle down on their own grounds. They would proscribe laughter 
 even, I believe, but the world will only laugh at them the more. 
 
 As for us, give us the cheerful, happy man. He is the true 
 Christian. Solomon tried mirth, and it was mad ; wine, and it was 
 folly ; but it was so because he disregarded the right measure of 
 enjoyment. Extremes are always dangerous ; but, for our part, we 
 dread the drawling hypocrite more than we do the voluptuary. 
 Yes, give us the man who likes to amuse himself, as well as see 
 others amused, every day in the week. We abhor the man who has 
 no Sunday laugh. 
 
 " Let me have men about me that are fat ; 
 Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights ; 
 Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 
 He thinks too much : such men are dangerous." 
 
 Thus spake the bard of Julius Csesar, and Caesar, in the mind of 
 Shakespeare, was a man of wisdom. 
 
 And if Csesar lived to-day he would order off to a warmer cHmate 
 beyond the antipodes the cloud-covered, cold, and calculating crea- 
 
48 
 
 tures, who, through an ostentatious show of mock morality, or 
 because of some heart-eating canker in their soul, plod along with 
 noses on the pavement, shunning all amusement themselves and 
 frowning it down in others. 
 
 Show us the man, who, no matter how lofty his station in life, 
 can unbend betimes, and let loose the strings of his heart in a vein 
 of jollity, and we will show you one *' whose word is his bond," 
 " whose oaths are oracles," and who, no matter how scantily he is 
 provisioned with the dross of earthly gold, has always a penny for 
 the poor and an odd trifle to bestow 
 
 "For sweet charity's sake." 
 
 It is a fixed principle in man's nature that, if he would be happy, 
 he must secure a little relaxation from the drudgery of his daily 
 toil and everyday duties. The " demnition grind " will soon pulverize 
 the hardest nature. Amusements are the spice of life ; oases in the 
 desert of existence ; flowing fountains of public and individual 
 good. And, therefore, those misanthropic divines who would elim- 
 inate those springs of felicity and rational enjoyment from our 
 social code are only making a task and burden of religion and 
 estranging thousands who elsewise had given it their adherence. 
 Music, dancing, and acting, as we know, have been employed as 
 auxiliary to religion, and the latter, which had its origin in the 
 Church, notably in the old miracle plays, was long its most power- 
 ful auxiliary. These things are not profane ; only their perversion 
 is condemnable. 
 
YII. 
 PROGRESS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 Chapter I. — I:nteoductioi^. 
 
 Some recent phases of political affairs have attracted the attention 
 of many who aspire to mould, if not to lead, thought and opinion to 
 the attitude of the Catholic Church towards questions with which 
 progress, society, and civilization have a vital and necessary concern. 
 The thinkers and the speakers of tbe class in question have set foiih 
 a variety of views upon the subject. Some have animadverted, with 
 unmeasured severity, upon what they chose to designate the med- 
 dlesome, intolerant, and unprogressive character of the Church, that 
 rests upon the rock of Peter, and these condemn and repudiate her 
 as an antiquated fossil, devoid of value, except it be to call foiih 
 curiosity ; as a clog on the wheels of progress, an unwieldy weight 
 upon the spring of all material movement, and a dead-wall that 
 cumbers the onward course of enlightened civilization. To these 
 she is the monster that manacles the human mind, the implacable 
 foe of freedom, the vampire that sucks the blood of individuality, 
 the enemy of enterprise, industry, thought, and action, who casts 
 her gyves on genius, fetters intellect and annihilates advancement, 
 whether social, moral, or material. A second camp of critics affect 
 to draw a broad but evident distinction between the divine and the 
 human element in her constitution, between the individuals that 
 compose her and her organic structure, as a complete institution 
 and society, and while professing to respect the latter, wage a 
 bitter war against what they are pleased to regard as the unwar- 
 ranted interference of ecclesiasticism in affairs outside the sphere of 
 its competence. With these we have no contention, not because of 
 our concurrence with their strictures, but because it is not to our 
 4 
 
50 
 
 present purpose. We seek neither to defend nor to explain or 
 justify the conduct of individual churchmen, but only to uphold the 
 Catholic Church as the parent of all true progress, and the foster- 
 mother of civilization. 
 
 Of the comprehensive character of the implied thesis, we are fully 
 conscious. It is broad and deep and fundamental. It involves 
 volumes of philosophy, and it lifts the veil from the vast vision of 
 centuries of history. He who would address himself to the task of 
 making a full exposition of the question should scan with eagle eye 
 the compass of the earth, and behold the " clean oblation " offered 
 up from the rising to the setting of the sun. He should, to make 
 complete comparisons, gild his modern mind with an ancient Grecian 
 glory, and should recall to a sort of actual existence the renown of 
 Rome. The sublime splendor of the past must shine by the side of 
 the brightness of the present. The treasures of ancient art must 
 reveal their beauty ; classic literature its learning ; pagan philosophy 
 its wisdom and its power; olden science its sweep and skill; aU these, 
 in fine, are called up for the comparison with the light and life and 
 civilization which have been carried upon the wings of the Gospel of 
 Christianity through the globe. Nor is this all. The investigator 
 must foUow step by step the march of mediaeval progress. The 
 lamp of historic truth must be made to dispel the fictitious darkness 
 that surrounds the ages of Faith. Charlemagne must come forth in 
 his regal majesty, and stand somewhat in advance of Constantine. 
 Pepin and Louis and Charles are to have a place in the mental pic- 
 ture, whose foreground reveals the figures of Alfred and Edward. 
 The schools and churches that adorned the valley and the hiUtop, 
 must be seen in the panorama, and with them the monasteries and 
 universities and hospitals, which shed the light of their learning and 
 the warmth of their hospitality on the millions who sought their in- 
 struction or their shelter. Oh, those were the much-maligned middle 
 ages ! It was then the fire of faith burned brightly at every fane, 
 the wayside cross stood on every highway, and the mellow notes of 
 the Angelus bell sounded from every steeple. It was then princes 
 and people knelt down together in undistinguished station at the 
 Virgin's shrine, or before the altar of the Great Adorable. But we 
 digress. 
 
 More yet remains to be explored, considered, and compared. The 
 
51 
 
 exponent of this all-embracing thesis must tread the tropic's sandy 
 plains, and climb the snow- crowned summits, where the opalescent 
 crystals seem to kiss the sun. The jungles of Africa, the heart of 
 the dark continent, the sun-seared wastes of Arabia, the frigid 
 steppes of Siberia, the populous centres of Europe, and the sublime 
 solitudes of America, must all be conjured up by the wand of im- 
 agination, to bear witness to the wonderful work of the Church in 
 promoting progress in the world. 
 
 Even if we had the ability, we should despair of rendering even 
 partial justice to such a subject within the compass of a newspaper 
 article or two. We hope to simplify the treatment so far as consist- 
 ency with clearness will permit. 
 
 And, first, what are we to understand by the oft-quoted, but not 
 widely understood, term progress ? It is obvious to all who think 
 that the Church cannot set herself up in contradiction of a progress 
 whose aim is purely moral and religious. That would be to deny 
 and contradict herself. Her mission primarily and directly is to 
 lead souls to God, to inculcate moral and religious truth, to spread 
 justice, charity, benevolence, and virtue of every sort, and thus in- 
 directly to ameliorate the material condition of humanity. We take 
 it, then, that those who ascribe to her an attitude of hostility to 
 progress are, for the most part, not concerned with her dogmas and 
 her tenets as a religious institution ; but rather with her discipline 
 and public polity as a powerful establishment wielding a weighty in- 
 fluence upon all those conditions and elements which conspire to 
 effect what is called material, intellectual, and social progress. But 
 who does not perceive the fallaciousness of the assumption ? The 
 friend of moral progress, she cannot be the foe of any other. 
 
 Genuine progress, whether intellectual or material, is and must be 
 conjoined to moral development, and it is unphilosophical to sepa- 
 rate them. There may be a moral progress without any great mate- 
 rial advancement. But the converse of this proposition is not true, 
 if the material progress be designed for any duration.* The proof 
 
 * Since writing the above, I came across the following from Card. Man- 
 ning : "As it (material progress) existed before the moral foundation of a 
 higher law and life was laid, so it may, for a time, survive the loss of that 
 higher life. Great economical and material prosperity may be found, at least 
 for a time, when the moral life of a people is declining or even low." 
 
52 
 
 is plain. For as there is no progress without education, so there is 
 no education without morality, and as the Church is the con server 
 and great teacher of morality and religion, so is she the parent of 
 progress. 
 
 The progress, therefore, of which we here speak is that which 
 comprises the widest and most perfect meaning of the term. It is 
 moral, it is intellectual, it is social. It is the harmonious and orderly 
 development of all the faculties of man, as these faculties have rela- 
 tion to the external law, to himself, to society and to God. Of this 
 progress the Catholic Church is not the enemy, but the champion, 
 the friend, the organizer, and the effecter. In demonstration of this 
 doctrine we shall submit two arguments, the first of which, deducible 
 from reason and the very nature of the thing, we shall call the 
 a priori, and the second, based on facts and founded in experience, 
 we may entitle the a posteriori, or experimental. 
 
 We affirm at the outset that that Church cannot be the enemy of 
 progress which, almost exclusively, we may say, possesses, preserves, 
 and teaches the true idea of progress. And this we resolutely main- 
 tain it is the prerogative of the Catholic Church to do. She alone 
 possesses and can teach the proper notion of what progress is, for 
 she alone lays down the law and defines the limits of the perfecti- 
 bility of man, according to the reality of truth. To place an exagger- 
 ated estimate on the powers and capabilities of man is as fatal to 
 human progress as it would be to deny him utterly the possibility of 
 any perfection of his powers. Man regarded as a God is a greater 
 monster than man regarded as a brute. Lifted up to supreme lord- 
 ship of the earth, he is sunk to the status of a slave. Proudly in- 
 vested with the soul and nature of the universe, he is basely stripped 
 of his own. And this is the first false notion of progress which the 
 Church confutes. 
 
 There is but one supreme God, and there can be no more. In 
 the sublime splendor of His uncreated majesty. He reigned alone 
 before all ages, happy in the boundless possession of all perfection. 
 All the perfections are eminently contained in Him, and have been 
 so from eternity. He is infinite in His nature, He is infinite in His 
 attributes. His knowledge. His goodness, His power, all are infinite, 
 and man must hope in vain ever to comprehend this immensity. 
 Such is the teaching of the Church. She tells man that, with all his 
 
53 
 
 acquisitions, and all his exertions, and all the expansion of his 
 powers, he is but a Newton picking up a few pebbles on the strand- 
 Bat there is a new " creed of culture," a new gospel of enlighten- 
 ment, and a new order of progress. Man is no longer the puny 
 pigmy that he was, but has grown in a night, like the prophet's 
 gourd, not to the dimensions of the gourd, but to the gigantic pro- 
 portions of a God. He is no longer a " part of the stupendous 
 whole," but he is the stupendous whole himself. The universe is 
 God, and man is the universe, therefore he is God. Liebnitz thought 
 that it was possible for man to attain perfection, and Condorcet and 
 others of the French school prate of his perfection. But a still more 
 self-asserting creed has come, and Matthew Arnold, and George 
 Eliot, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are its divine apostles. And 
 these new evangelists unravel reams of their elaborated nonsense. 
 They have no God but genius, and mind is the idol they adore. 
 " The true Christianity is a faith in the infinitude of man, mind is 
 the almighty giver, and thought is the universe." Ralph must have 
 thought himself to be the planet Jupiter, and George Eliot is sure 
 she is at least a satellite. But which of them, by taking thought, 
 could add a cubit to their stature ? True enough, they pined for the 
 perfect, they sighed for the ideal, and they wrote, and talked, and 
 raved about fantastic conditions of existence, in which man — with 
 woman too — would be the know-all, and be-all, and end-all of eveiy- 
 thing. Everything, then, would be etherealized and sublimated into 
 mind ; man's legs would be his mind, and his mind would be his 
 legs ; into vapory mind, the universe would vanish ; and one ma- 
 jestic mind would be the all-containing, and the all-contained ; and 
 that mind, we suppose, would be Mr. Emerson, or rather Mr. Emer- 
 son's mind, for he himself no longer would appear. 
 
 The progress of this airy transcendentalism has for its term " nil" 
 Aiming at infinitude, it results in nothing. " The fruit of all its 
 labors is whipped cream," and all its labored abstractions only 
 foment a sort of metaphysical froth. But it is the proper cult, and 
 vast are the crowds that bend before its shrine. Cultured maidens 
 lave in its flowing fountains, and now " prate protoplasm in gilded 
 saloons," and talk theology trite and threadbare. Protestantism has 
 not the inherent power to cope with these theories. That which 
 cannot guide itself can be no guide for others. Its drift and trend. 
 
54 
 
 when not to pure negation, lies in the same direction. Extremes 
 meet, and it is either absokite negation, or universal affirmation ; 
 that is to say, no God at all, or a pantheistic God — a nature God, 
 with man as the centre and soul, the beginning and the end, the 
 Alpha and the Omega of all things. 
 
 Catholicity alone can check all such devagations of the human in- 
 tellect, which are not only incompatible with, but which make prog- 
 ress impossible. Natural religion is not equal to the task, and of 
 itself can give no more than nature-worship, whose ultimate object 
 must be man as the noblest object seen in nature. 
 
 Supernatural religion is, then, necessary, and this comes from the 
 Church, the heavenly channel through which flows down to us the 
 river of revelation in its fidlness. With celestial chart and compass 
 this pilot of paradise points the unerring course our frail life -boat 
 must sail to clear the currents that carry it adrift into dangerous 
 and devouring waters. Yes, she makes manifest to man the real 
 goal of his all-penetrating genius, the object of his hopes, the 
 motive of his actions, and the true term of his desires. She points 
 out to him all the possibilities of his own nature, and of the facul- 
 ties of his soul, and measures for their exercise their true and lawful 
 bounds. She tells him that, though not capable of infinite, he can 
 yet attain, or aspire to, indefinite improvement ; and what she 
 affirms of man, she predicates of society, since society is but a multi- 
 plex individual. She does not, however, unduly circumscribe the 
 sphere of his development, or evolution, if you will ; but for the 
 broadest expansion of his powers, she points him to that realm of 
 beatitude in which the unfettered intellect and the strengthened will 
 will soar to inaccessible heights of glory and brighten to aU 
 eternity. Oh, it is a grand thought ! What hidden possibilities in 
 the soul of man ! They may not, they cannot here be realized, but 
 they will be in the great hereafter. There is a sort of celestial 
 evolution. The improvement and the progress which it begins in 
 this world, the immortal human soul will doubtless continue through 
 endless ages in the next. Its faculties, no doubt, will be subject to a con- 
 stant enlargement ; its capacity for enjoyment will ever be increased; 
 and an ever-growing knowledge and ever-kindling love will be its 
 perpetual possession, that thus it may ever drink new torrents of 
 delight from the fountain of felicity itself. 
 
65 
 
 Again, the Catholic Church must be thought to have the true idea 
 of progress, for she is the only institution upon earth that can effect- 
 ually produce, by reason of its teaching, that harmonious develop- 
 ment of the faculties of man, which we asserted to be essential to 
 true progress. That this is true is not difficult of demonstration. 
 
 " 'Tis education forms the common mind," and apai-t from it no 
 progress is possible. Immorality, vice, and barbarism are the insep- 
 arable attendants of ignorance, "Nil volitum quin proecognitum "; to 
 do right we must first know what it is, and hence even virtue her- 
 self, where she reigns at all, must reign from the throne of the intel- 
 ligence. Education not diffused, but confined to the favored few, 
 can bear no effective sway. The untutored mass will bear down the 
 educated class. In Greece, in the polished days of Pericles, and in 
 Rome, in the golden age of Augustus, no wide extension of even 
 natural vii'tue was attained ; for knowledge was locked up in the 
 schools of the nobles and patricians. Alexander the Great but illus- 
 trated the common view, when, with characteristic promptness, he 
 reprehended his tutor, Aristotle, for publishing the acroamatic parts 
 of science. " In what shall we differ from others," said he, " if the 
 sublime knowledge which we have gained from you be made common 
 to all the world? " The diffusion of knowledge is the mission of the 
 Church. 
 
 But howsoever extensively diffused, that education is void of value, 
 which does not stand on truth. False education is but another name 
 for ignorance, or more correctly, it is more pernicious and baneful, 
 because ignorance is mostly passive, while the other is endowed with 
 the activity to do evil. And that system of education is false which 
 either fails to point out the proper objects of man's faculties, or which 
 trains a single faculty at the expense of the rest, or which neglects to 
 train them all in unison and accordant harmony. No education is 
 worthy of the name which seeks not to construct a temple of human- 
 ity, wherein physical strength, mental culture, and moral beauty shall 
 combine to form the perfect and the full-grown man. " And do you," 
 says the objector, " advance the ridiculous claim that the Catholic 
 Church is the only educator who understands and teaches this?" 
 We shall see. 
 
 Man is a progressive animal, it has been aptly said, and the epithet 
 which qualifies the substantive, nicely differentiates him from all other 
 
56 
 
 animals, which are not susceptible of progress. But, be it remarked^ 
 his is the progress, not of a superior animal but of an intelligent 
 creature. He is a progressive animal, but he is " a man for a' that," 
 and by consequence a being of complex constitution. He is bur- 
 dened with a body, but he bears within the " frail and fickle frame " 
 a spark of divinity which is called a soul. Yes ; a soul which no 
 earthly delights can content or satisfy ; a soul which breathes after 
 purer joys and happiness more lasting than any upon earth ; a soul 
 immortal in her nature, and exalted far above the earth which she 
 looks on as her place of exile, her house of affliction from whence she 
 incessantly sighs for that celestial country where she shall be clothed 
 with the glory of God Himself, and shall shine with the splendor of 
 the stars for all eternity. This soul is made unto the image and like- 
 ness of its Creator, and the delineation or the conformation of that 
 image within itself is the function which the soul commences at crea- 
 tion to continue through the eternal years ; "for those whom He 
 foreknew He predestined to be made conformable to the image of 
 His Son." 
 
 Now, this sovereign soul of ours, conformably to its uncreated 
 type, has been gifted with manifold powers and diverse capacities. 
 But the grandest of its endowments are its gifts* of freedom and 
 intelligence which are rooted in man's will and intellect. I think it no 
 objection to this to say that the angels are not free, for they have no 
 choice to make.* " Man could not be free unless he were intelli- 
 gent," observes St. Thomas; and neither could he be intelligent if he 
 were not free. He could not make a choice if he knew not how to 
 choose, and to what end would he know how to choose if he could 
 not make the choice ? These two faculties then, freedom and intel- 
 ligence, are by nature kin, and any system which does not educate 
 them co-ordinately must do violence to the work of God and make 
 man's progress abnormal and impossible. Now, the Catholic Church 
 is the only institution that recognizes the full force of this irrefraga- 
 ble fact. 
 
 Truth is the formal object of the intellect and of the will, the 
 formal object is good. But man is taught the truth only that he may 
 
 * The angels can choose between doing this and that good. They are con- 
 firmed in grace, and hence cannot but pursue the good, but they may choose 
 among various genera of good acts or thoughts. 
 
57 
 
 embrace the good. And truth and good in God are one. " He alone 
 is good," and all alleged truth which tends not to Him is falsehood 
 and eiTor. 
 
 It is obvious then that that plan of education which prescinds from 
 God is vitiated in its root and its entirety. Professing to teach 
 truth, it inculcates fatal falsehood ; and aiming at producing a man, 
 it generates a monster. As we are given to know the truth only that 
 we may love the good, those who withdraw the good, namely God, 
 from their methods of instruction, are by a single blow beheading 
 both and defeating the very possibility of their own desires if they 
 meant education at all. 
 
 And outside Catholicity, has any other than this false system preva- 
 lence or sway ? No ; we say mournfully, no, there is not. Educate, 
 educate, is the continual and universal cry ; but it is the education 
 that produces the accomplished savage and not the Christian man^ 
 To know nature in all her ways and laws ; to sift the bowels of the 
 earth and dive into the deep recesses of the sea; to measure the path 
 of the sun and number all the stars of the firmament ; to acquire all 
 knowledge save the knowledge of God — this seems the chief and sole 
 aim of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Agreeably to this princii:)le God is relegated to the background 
 and dropped from the curriculum of studies. And what is the fruit? 
 A race of moral monsters endowed with the fearful capacity of evil 
 which comes of misdirected knowledge. A brood of vicious vipers 
 to fester in the bosom of society and prey upon its strength and 
 vitality. Oh ! glorious antichmax of evolution. Man emerges with 
 the help of his accoucher, Darwin, from the ignoble tabernacle of his 
 apehood, but science sends him back to grovel in loathsome caves of 
 saurians and reptiles. She would have him a God, but she made 
 him a worm. 
 
 And is it upon such a rock the security of the state is founded ? 
 Are these the men to stand forth the mighty motors of modem 
 progress ? Men of mind they may be, but they are men who have 
 no morals. Men with heads, no doubt, they are ; but alas ! they 
 have no hearts. But they are the spontaneous outgrowth of the 
 culture which they have received. Their minds were soaked with 
 science of a sort, but their hearts were left as dry as chips. Their 
 intellects were trained and formed to a degree of refinement, but 
 
58 
 
 the will, the pliant, plastic, mobile will, was thought unworthy to be 
 moulded to its model, — nay, was robbed of its object, for it was rob- 
 bed of God. 
 
 This one-sided and truncated system of scientific culture is un- 
 doubtedly the arch-enemy of all true progress, as any false, unsound, 
 or inharmonious development of the human faculties must of neces- 
 sity be. But widely apart from this is the system of the Catholic 
 Church. She has no crude and ill-digested notion of the nature of 
 man, nor of the needs of that nature. Keenly conscious of his end 
 .and destiny, she perceives how hollow and delusive is any progress 
 he attempts, which has not for its ultimate term the attainment of 
 that end. God is the goal which she ever urges man to gain. She 
 does not vilipend the value of human science, but holds it high in 
 her esteem. But no faculty of the soul does she fail to feed with its 
 appropriate food. The mind she illumines with the brightest rays 
 of truth; to the memory she recalls the sweetest recollections; the 
 imagination she makes glow with the loftiest ideals and the grandest 
 fancies ; the heart she fills with the purest and holiest emotions, and 
 the best and most tender of sentiments and affections ; and as the 
 crown and finish of all, to evoke all the possibilities of human char- 
 acter and manhood, she forms the will to virtue, and by the mag- 
 netic attraction of divine grace, she links the soul to God, its first 
 principle, its final end, and its sovereign and only good. 
 
 The Church, therefore, alone produces that perfect and harmoni- 
 ous development of man's powers and faculties which is the founda- 
 tion of real progress. 
 
 Chapter IL— Paet I. 
 
 It is not, however, from the sole consideration of the relation and 
 ■co-ordination of the faculties in themselves that the idea of progress 
 is evolved. These faculties must be rightly ordered in themselves, 
 and every faculty must have its proper play. But they must also be 
 determined rightly to their objects; they must be legitimately exer- 
 cised. Now, these objects are fourfold, viz. : the eternal world, man 
 himself, society, and God; and it is the exercise of the faculties upon 
 
59 
 
 these several objects that begets the various genera of progress, which 
 are commonly known as material, intellectual, social, and moral or 
 religious. 
 
 Now, the Catholic Church alone prescribes the mode, determines 
 the bounds, and marks out the measure according to which the hu- 
 man faculties must be brought to bear upon their objects, and so 
 perfected as to call forth the supreme possibilities of progress in its 
 manifold variety. And this direction is necessary, not only to give 
 progress its highest impetus and broadest scope, but to impart to it 
 any impulsion whatever. A faculty without an object is, indeed, a 
 power without a purpose; but a faculty which fails to strike its ob- 
 ject, or stiike as it should, serves no better end than a missile which 
 misses the intended mark. 
 
 The claim we here set up for Catholicity we shall seek to estabhsh 
 from a consideration of the genesis of the several sorts of progress; 
 wherefore it shall appear how Catholicity determines and directs 
 man in the exercise of his faculties upon their objects as he pursues 
 his progressive course, and thus shall shine forth that exclusive part 
 which Catholicity plays in the production of aU progress properly 
 deserving the name. 
 
 After this dry disquisition, we proceed to the discussion of things 
 more interesting, because of a more concrete character, and, perhaps, 
 therefore less confused. We may not hope, so intimately woven is 
 one order of progress with another, to observe that sharp distinction 
 in the arrangement and introduction of topics which our divisions 
 might seem to make desirable, yet we shall do our best. At the 
 risk of repetition, we shall strive to shun obscurity. Material prog- 
 ress first merits our attention, not by reason of importance, but in 
 force of arrangement. 
 
 If we were abruptly required to give a definition of material prog- 
 ress which might be regarded as both accurate and adequate, we 
 feel forced to confess our fears as to our ability to comply with the 
 demand. And if any are amazed at the might of our ignorance, we 
 refer them to the dictum we laid down with respect to the illogical 
 and unphilosophical reasoning which would disjoin things, so natu- 
 rally united as are the different kinds of development called progress. 
 As the human mind, however, is gifted with the power of abstrac- 
 tion, nothing hinders our endeavor to consider material progress as 
 
60 
 
 something by itself, and as if it were the work of man endowed with 
 no more than a machine-like capacity for controlling matter. 
 
 When man brings his faculties to bear upon the matter of the 
 earth, the outcome is a change or alteration which constitutes the 
 principle of material progress. Man is not the God of matter, for 
 he did not call it into creation, and as he cannot create, so neither 
 can he destroy. No particle of matter ever perishes, and this is one 
 of the undisputed facts of science. Wherefore, it follows that all 
 man's efforts and energies as exerted upon matter, have no other 
 effect than that of transformation. " Man may plant, Apollo water, 
 but God gives the increment," and hence, if God smile not on his 
 endeavors, all man's attempt on matter, transformations only though 
 they be, are fruitless, purposeless, and vain. For the very inchoa- 
 tion of material progress, man must call in the co-operation of his 
 Maker. In never losing sight of this fundamental truth and effica- 
 ciously pressing it on man, the Church makes possible the initial 
 step, sows the seed, furnishes the germ of that growth we know as 
 progress. 
 
 To transform is to labor. No change in matter can be effected by 
 man, save by the exertion of his powers. The golden age of which 
 the poet dreamed had no reality, unless it were in Paradise before 
 the Fall. 
 
 " The p^olden age was first, when man, yet new, 
 No rule but uncorrupted reason knew, 
 And with a nature bent, did good pursue. 
 
 No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound, 
 Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound. 
 Nor swords were forged ; but void of care and crime, 
 The soft creation slept away their time." — Ovid. 
 
 Labor was then unnecessary, for the obedient soil yielded forth 
 spontaneously whatever was wanting to minister to man's creature 
 comforts. 
 
 " Out of the fertile ground [God] caused to grow 
 All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste ; 
 And all amid them stood the tree of Life, 
 High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit 
 
 Of vegetable gold 
 
 Southward through Eden went a river large, 
 
61 
 
 Nor changed its course, but thro' the shaggy hill 
 Pass'd underneath engalf d : 
 
 .... Which through the veins 
 Of porous earth, with kindly thirst updrawn, 
 Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill 
 
 Watered the garden 
 
 And from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, 
 
 Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold 
 
 With mazy error under pendant shades 
 
 Ran nectar ; . . . . 
 
 Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms ; 
 
 Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind 
 
 Hung amiable ; 
 
 Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose ; 
 
 .... Umbrageous grots and caves 
 Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine 
 
 Lays forth the purpling grape 
 
 .... Airs, vernal airs, 
 Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 
 The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, 
 Knit with Graces and the Hours in dance, 
 Led on the eternal spring." — Milton. 
 
 This, indeed, was the golden age, if any such there were ; for 
 " Hesperian fables, if true at all, true only here." This was the 
 period of traditional innocence before man felt the " woes of want," 
 the pangs of poveiiy, and the heavy scourge of sin. Oh ! blissful 
 bowers of Eden, home and paradise of peace. Foul was the fiend of 
 darkness, who from us filched thy felicity, robbed us of thy rest, and 
 sent us toil-worn wanderers through a land of blight and bale. Yet 
 even so it was. 
 
 And now man must his "fardels bear"; he must "sweat and 
 groan under his weary burden," nor may he lay it down, till death, 
 which lightens all our loads, shall lift it from his back. Not merely 
 " from early morn till dewy eve," but from morning's rosy manhood 
 tiU the pale starlight of declining days is quenched within the tomb, 
 must he maintain "the struggle for existence." It is not, indeed, 
 the struggle in which the weaker go to the wall, and the helpless are 
 ground out, that the fittest (?) may survive ; but it is no less for that, 
 a hard, heavy, strenuous struggle to wrench from the stubborn soil, 
 or an unwilUng world, the elements of life and subsistence. 
 
62 
 
 Labor, then, is the great law of life, and the prime mover of all 
 progress. Of this pregnant truth, no one has a keener recognition 
 than the Church ; and to lend it full force and effect, none furnishes 
 such powerful and impelling motives. In the world's wisdom, 
 man must labor only because he must live ; in the Church's eye, 
 labor is sanctified as a Christian duty. According to the knowledge 
 of the world, labor is an irksome burden to be avoided if man has 
 to feed upon his wits ; but in the light of Catholic instruction, labor 
 must be embraced as a condition of existence consequent upon 
 original sin. 
 
 She who explains the fount and origin of the obligation, can prop- 
 erly enforce the fulfillment of the duty. The drones of society, 
 society starves or brutalizes in her prisons ; the Church would make 
 them profitable servants by recalling them to a sense of manly self- 
 respect and Christian independence. Idleness she declares to be a 
 sin. " In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread," is the 
 fiat of the Almighty. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 As the Church is the prime mover of material progress, properly 
 understood, so is she the parent of genuine social movement. 
 
 By the social system, I mean those varied and multiform relations 
 which each individual holds to other members of human society. 
 
 Man is born in society ; he is a social being, or as Dr. Johnson 
 puts it facetiously, " man is a clubbable animal," for he does not 
 suffice for himself. He depends on society no less than on God; or 
 to speak more accurately, he depends on God through society and 
 by communion with his fellow-man. " No man liveth unto himself," 
 is true in a social, no less than in a moral sense. 
 
 The social system comprises manifold relations, which, however, 
 for brevity's sake, we shall reduce to a few principal heads. Of 
 these, the first in order is the family relation. 
 
 " It is not good for man to be alone," said the Lord of the 
 creation, and thus by calling woman into being, and giving her to 
 Adam to wife, God Himself became the direct and immediate founder 
 of the family relation. 
 
 Conformably, therefore, to divine ordinance, it comes that, instead 
 of men being consigned to solitary separation, like Alexander Selkirk 
 
63 
 
 on the island of Juan Fernandez, on the one hand; or being congre- 
 gated, on the other, into promiscuous herds, they are divided into 
 small communities, of which the individual head is called the 
 father ; united together by those instincts, those ties of affection, 
 those gentle offices of service, trust, and dependence which flow 
 spontaneously from the conditions of existence incident to the 
 nature and the constitution of family life. Thus the individual i» 
 the basis of the family, and the family the foundation of the state. 
 
 How good, how admirable the providence of God! Rational 
 creatures enter life, not like many of the lower orders of creation, 
 provided with the power of procuring the means of existence, but 
 in a condition of extreme helplessness, unable not only to supply 
 their wants, but even to express them. 
 
 But God has established the parental relation, and provided ua 
 with kind and loving parents, to minister to our infirmities, to furnish 
 us the sustenance we require, and to seek no ampler reward for all 
 their toil and pain than the smile, the joy, the gratitude of their off- 
 spring. Sweet days of childhood, they come not back again ; but 
 what memory is so unmindful of those distant days, or so feeble as 
 to fail in recollection of the melting love, the enduring tenderness, 
 and the fond affection of the parents that bore us into life, afar 
 along its prickly path ! Where shall we again find a nurture so 
 beautiful, and a cai*e so thoughtful and so kind as that which 
 smoothed our pathway under the mantle of a mother's kindness, and 
 under the shelter of a father's hand ? Like the gentle dew from 
 heaven, their love rained blessings on our heads. 
 
 And yet there have been, and are still, those who would tear up 
 by the roots those tender, holy ties ; who would destroy parental au- 
 thority and with it, family life, by placing the education of the 
 young under state control, to the exclusion of those rights which a 
 father inherits from the law of nature, and the law of God. Fare- 
 well, then, to the domestic hearth, the shrine of innocence and love;, 
 farewell to home and all the dear associations that cluster round the 
 sacred name. 
 
 To accomplish this unholy object has been the aim of social phi- 
 losophers and law-givers since the days of Lycurgus in Sparta, who 
 displaced the parent from his rightful position over his child, with 
 no better result than the production of a race distinguished only for 
 
64 
 
 brutality of manners, for selfishness and cruelty, and for the absence 
 of those sentiments and affections which can be fostered so well and 
 so fruitfully under the benignant shade of the parental roof-tree. 
 
 The Catholic Church, however, has always vindicated the rights of 
 the parent to the education and control of his children against all 
 usurpation of the state, while she stringently enjoins on the parents 
 as a j^aramount duty the office of bringing up their offspring as 
 becomes their sacred charge, planting in their youthful minds the 
 tender shoots of viitue, ideas of patriotism and incorruptible citizen- 
 ship, of which the summary is to educate them in the fear and love 
 of God. 
 
 Nor does she fail to enforce those reciprocal obligations of love, 
 obedience, reverence, and respect, which are incumbent on children 
 towards the parents who begot them. Indeed, filial piety and par- 
 ental care are darling objects of the Church's heart, which, both 
 in season and out of season, she inculcates with all the force and 
 power of her God-given mission, as the spiritual mother of mankind. 
 
 Social life without the family is impossible, but the Church 
 sustains the social system, by maintaining the integrity of the 
 family, and thus proves herself the mother of social progress. 
 
 The perpetuity of the family depends upon the sanctity and per- 
 manence of the marriage bond. The destruction of parental author- 
 ity is perhajDS a lesser evil than that which makes the marriage con- 
 tract revocable at the option or caprice of one or both of the persons 
 thereunto concerned ; for the latter monstrous doctrine opens the 
 floodgates of licentiousness, destroys the peace and harmony of 
 households, engenders heartaches, bickerings, nay, even uxoricide, 
 suicide, and various forms of death, and not only saps, but upturns 
 the foundations of society. Such keen observers as Gladstone and 
 Tolstoi are alive to the force of this contention, and are as strong in 
 advocacy of the indissolubility of marriage, and denunciation of 
 divorce, as Catholics themselves can be. 
 
 But where, outside the Catholic Church, shall we find an institu- 
 tion of like power and influence, maintaining, as a doctrine born of 
 heaven, that marriage is a contract raised by Christ to the sublime 
 dignity of a Sacrament, ratified by God in heaven, and unbreakable 
 by any power soever, till the bonds are severed by the leveDing hand 
 of death. 
 
65 
 
 Wild theorists,- called Christian Scientists, and the insane advocates 
 of socialism in its full sense, have sought to overturn the marriage 
 relation, but God has inscribed folly on these mad attempts to dis- 
 turb His divine arrangements for the welfare of mankind. 
 
 In the social system government is a necessary element. Society 
 without government cannot stand, for to govern and be governed is 
 of the essence of association. Nay, there is government among the 
 angels and in heaven itself, 
 
 ' ' For order is heaven's first law, and thus conf est. 
 Some are, and must be, greater than the rest." 
 
 In order to the well-being of communities, and for purposes of just 
 restraint, for maintaining order, peace, and prosperity, goverament 
 is indispensable. The possession of property, the exercise of fre- 
 dom, nay, the preservation of life itself, demands that protection 
 which government is ordained to give. But if there is to be a gov- 
 ernment, then there must of necessity exist the reciprocal conditions 
 of commandment and obedience ; for to govern means to inile, to 
 command, and to command were idle if there existed no obligation 
 to obey. 
 
 Now, it is true that the very palpable advantages which are de- 
 rived from the institution of government are a great incentive to 
 obedience on the part of the governed, as well as those feelings of 
 loyalty and nationality which are so natural to man; but to secure that 
 unshaken allegiance and that universal respect which are essential to 
 the perseverance of government, higher feelings and stronger sanc- 
 tions are required. These sanctions come from God^ 
 
 Obviousl}^, therefore, it belongs to the Church to explain and de- 
 fend these sanctions, for she alone lays down those theories as to the 
 origin of power and authority, which being accordant with divine 
 truth, ai'e capable of securing the just ends of government. 
 
 The seed of pride was sown in the heart of man by the serpent of 
 old time, and from that hour to the present it is a painful thing for 
 man to subject his will to that of his fellow-creatures, unless it be 
 made clear to be his duty. But what is duty ? What is it but what 
 God commands, and it is duty precisely because He has com- 
 manded it. 
 
 When, therefore, it becomes apparent that the authority of the 
 5 
 
government is the authority of God, the subordination of man's will 
 to those invested with such power is no longer painful to his pride 
 and self-sufficiency. 
 
 Behold, then, the important function which the Church plays in 
 the scheme of government in refuting false theories which place the 
 origin of power in social compacts, or in the right of conquest, or 
 in the popular will, and in teaching that it comes direct from God, 
 which gives to society its stability, to governments their authority, 
 and to laws their binding force upon the human conscience. The 
 Church declares that he who resisteth the secular power lawfully 
 constituted, resisteth the ordinance of God, for there is no power 
 but from Him. 
 
 She rests not here, for she knows that the arrogance of man im- 
 pels to tyranny, no less than to insubordination, nay, his arrogance 
 grows proportionately with his opportunities to sway his fellow-men 
 for the gratification of ambition. Those, therefore, who sit in high 
 places are apt sometimes to consider their authority as property that 
 is personal, rather than pertaining to their office, and thus substitute 
 their own will for the will of God, the supreme governor. 
 
 To these despotic rulers the Church teaches the needful lesson 
 that their power is not their own, but the power of God ; that it is a 
 limited, not an absolute power ; that it is a delegated and subordi- 
 nate power which they must exercise with discretion for the good of 
 mankind, and the glory of Him to whom they must one day sur- 
 render it again, for " power is given them from the Most High, who 
 will examine all their works and pass judgment thereupon." 
 
 In the social system every man must depend upon a vast number 
 of his fellow-men, who are in turn dependent on others of their race. 
 
 Now, it might seem as if there were so little coherence in society, 
 so little probity, fidelity, and truth, that the great fabric would fall 
 down by its own instability. Indeed, when we consider the greed 
 and selfishness of men, we are hardly shocked at the theories of men 
 like St. Simon, Fourier, and others of the communistic school, who 
 laid down the dictum that all men are swayed by an enlarged self- 
 love and inordinate ambition. And yet, whence comes it that the 
 commerce of the whole world is sustained by little bits of white 
 paper stamped credit or truth ? Whence comes it, the care of the 
 poor, the relief of the indigent, the support of the sick, the maimed. 
 
67 
 
 and the helpless, are matters of concern to the chief portion of soci- 
 ety ? It comes, you say, of the instinct of preservation, or at least, 
 of the instinct of humanity. Not so. " Man's inhumanity to man 
 makes countless thousands mourn," and the instinct of preservation is 
 not active when dangers seem remote. It comes from the teachings 
 and the influence of the religion of Christ inculcating charity and 
 benevolence, honesty and truth, industry and sobriety, as the only 
 basis of the prosperity of the state, and the preservation of society. 
 
 Hence the futility of the attempts of those enemies of revelation 
 who have sought to found a social system without the aid of religion. 
 God will always mock such empty schemes, and the originators He 
 will cover with confusion. 
 
 The Catholic Church is now, as she has been from the beginning, 
 the only successful opponent of this false and dangerous doctrine ; 
 she is, therefore, the conserver of society, the palladium of govern- 
 ment, the effective promoter of all social progress. 
 
 Part III. 
 
 The chief faculties of man are his intellect and will. They con- 
 stitute the principles of knowledge and volition, and they are his 
 glory and his crown. It was in view of these powers of the human 
 soul, incomparably above all else in the work of God's creation, that 
 the inspired Psalmist was led to declare that God had fashioned 
 man but " Httle below the angels.*' And if they place him but little 
 below the angelic creation, they raise him immeasurably above all 
 irrational existence. " Man," says St. Thomas, " differs from irra- 
 tional creatures in this, that he has the mastery of his acts," which, 
 in plainer phrase, signifies that he is a being of intelligence and 
 freedom. 
 
 The will is the power of choosing between good and evil, " life 
 and death"; or, to speak with more exactitude, since the wiU cannot 
 choose evil for sheer evil's sake, but only under the semblance of 
 good, the will is the faculty of choosing good and rejecting evil. 
 
 As nothing can be the object of our choice, unless it be in some 
 way the object of cognition, man was gifted by God with the 
 light of intelhgence to enable him to work out his pre-established 
 destiny by the employment of the means deemed necessary by the 
 
63 
 
 Creator in His eternal plan. The will, of itself, is a " blind faculty," 
 as the philosophers say, incompetent to grasp the good which it was 
 made for ; and hence, unless the lamp of reason shine before it to 
 guide its way, it must grope helplessly in darkness. How necessary, 
 then, intelligence is to man for the attainment of his ultimate end 
 appears from this, that God has made the observance of His law the 
 means to lead men to the final purpose of their being. Law has 
 been defined the limitation of man's liberty, but I think it is better 
 described as the perfection of that power. But, howsoever it be 
 viewed, it is always manifest that the will of man can neither incline 
 to, nor deflect from, the law, until the latter address itself to man 
 through the light of his intelligence. The power of initiative, there- 
 fore, resides in the intellect ; and in this sense, though the will be 
 the nobler, the intellect is the primary principle in man, and, taken 
 together, they constitute the great motive and moral power of 
 humanity. 
 
 I am not unaware that many metaphysicians and psychologists 
 have evolved a much more minute and elaborate enumeration of the 
 faculties; but not infrequently they have done so, only to beget con- 
 fusion, and mix up, in inextricable medley, feelings, emotions, per- 
 ceptions, volitions, powers, and passions. It is just here that the 
 Catholic Church serves mankind signally in preserving those funda- 
 mental distinctions, and those only, which are consonant with reality 
 and psychological experience, and necessary to enable man to attain 
 that supreme wisdom found only through the right knowledge of 
 himself. Some confounded volitions and emotions, and thence arose 
 a controversy which Catholic philosophy, based on Theistic princi- 
 ples, alone could settle whether faith was a matter of head or heart. 
 The severe intellectualism of Kant would reduce all religion to pure 
 rationalism ; and as extremes always meet, there soon arose a reac- 
 tionary school which made sentiment and feeling the root of morality, 
 religion, and philosophy. At present, however, we are chiefly con- 
 cerned with the intellect: its relation to the other powers of the soul 
 will be seen as we advance ; nor do we think it necessary here to 
 enter upon any discussion as to whether there be a real distinction 
 between the soul and her faculties, or between the faculties them- 
 selves ; for, whether we so consider the case, or whether we regard 
 intellections, emotions, and volitions merely as difl'erent mauifesta- 
 
tions of the same subject, the soul, in operation, it makes nothing 
 against the soundness of a philosophy which ascribes to every opera- 
 tion its right value, and does not confound an act of volition with an 
 act of intelligence, nor, what is worse, with an affection of the emo- 
 tional part of man's nature. As Cardinal Newman says, "We trust 
 not our faculties so much as their acts ; and indeed it is from the 
 inspection and consideration of the acts only, that we have any war- 
 rant for ascribing them to one faculty rather than another." 
 
 As progress has been defined to be the orderly and harmonious 
 development of man in relation to his faculties and their proper exer- 
 cise; so intellectual progress is the development of man's intellectual 
 powers according to the purposes for which God created them; and 
 hence we must have at the outset a clear comprehension of these 
 powers to produce the initial step on the road of progi'ess. 
 
 What is this wonderful intellect of ours which we are so proud to 
 speak about ? It is the instrument of our knowledge ; nay, it is not 
 merely the instrument, it is the cause; in a sense it is the generator 
 and conserv'er of the knowledge which it draws up into its conserva- 
 tories from the garden of the senses. 
 
 Nothing but that which is time has a right to exist ; there is no 
 room for falsehood in this world. Knowledge is the foundation, 
 error the enemy of all progress. But truth alone is knowledge. 
 Ignorance in itself is not error, for en-or lies in the judgment, and is 
 a positive condition or state, while ignorance is the absence of knowl- 
 edge, and is always the point of departure in the eternal quest after 
 truth. It was this reflection that extorted from Eousseau the state- 
 ment that it is not what we do not know, but what we know" errone- 
 ously that brings us to harm. And I think it is our own Josh Bil- 
 Ungs, who was so fond of repeating the quaint apothegm, borrow^ed 
 from Montaigne, that it is better not to know so many things, than 
 to know so many things that are not so. Indeed, " where ignorance 
 is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." 
 
 And well, indeed, it were, if on the first day the conscious creature 
 turned in upon himself to explore the wonderful workings of his 
 mind, he saw them according to the reality of truth, and not by the 
 unsteady and delusive light of a false philosophy. Perhaps it was 
 in punishment of his pride and self-sufficiency, that man's strenuous 
 strivings to attain the all-important knowledge of himself, so often 
 
70 
 
 ended in puerility of principles discovered, with a long chain of fatal 
 and calamitous consequences. 
 
 Be this as it may, it was only when man turned his thoughts from 
 the external world around him to the world of mind within him, that 
 he plunged into the seething waters of wildest error and vain imag- 
 inings. In the history of philosophy the shores of thought are strewn 
 with the mental wrecks of the boldest explorers. 
 
 "The proper study of mankind is man"; and the day that man 
 first began to reflect, to study himself, "Agere intus," to read within, 
 philosophy was born. On that day was sown the seed of progress in 
 humanity, though the cost in error was incalculable. By the law of 
 psychological analysis illumined by the light of human history we 
 discover that every element of progress and civilization has its origin 
 in the intellect of man. Human nature is everywhere the same. Its 
 primary manifestation is in the individual ; but as the species is but 
 an individual of larger growth, its larger manifestation is found in 
 the species, and the history of the species is the history of develop- 
 ment, of progress, and of civilization. 
 
 How essential, then, to progress is it, that man should have a cor- 
 rect knowledge of himself, and, perforce, of his intellectual powers 
 and all his cognitive faculties. Catholic philosophy alone, guided by 
 the wisdom from above, has been able to correct the aberrations and 
 safely direct the investigations of the human mind in the delicate 
 and difficult pursuit of the knowledge begotten by reflection on the 
 operations and laws of the understanding. Such philosophy alone, I 
 say, can do this, for it is divine, and intellectually, as well as morally, 
 " to err is human." The radical defect with all purely human phi- 
 losophy, from the days of Philo, Plato, and Aristotle to our own time, 
 has been the utter discrediting of grace and the influence of the 
 supernatural in the investigations of the human mind, especially 
 when fixing its intuitions upon itself. Here precisely comes the cry 
 of the great Augustine, " Lord ! that I may know Thee ; that I may 
 know myself." 
 
 This may be theism, if you will ; but let it not be forgotten that 
 genuine philosophy is twin sister to theism ; or rather, they are 
 united by inseparable marriage. But we need not urge this point 
 now. 
 
 When the human intellect began the work of self -interrogation, 
 
71 
 
 the first question which presented itself from the background of 
 consciousness, was, can I know an^-thing ? How do I know ? How 
 do I know that I know? Is my knowledge real? How am I to 
 attain knowledge ? "When the German professor said to his class in 
 college, " Think the wall. Now think that which thinks the wall," he 
 struck the root of all philosophy. But Catholic philosophy, which is 
 but one echo of that Voice of which Nature is the other, has always 
 rendered right replies to these profound problems of the mind. 
 
 Can we know anything ? No, says Herbert Spencer, at least inf er- 
 enti-ally ; for by his singular doctrine of " transfigured realism," he 
 leads us into the desei-t-land of hopeless doubt concerning the reality 
 of our knowledge, since upon his fanciful and fantastical hypothesis 
 our knowledge is not actual but representative, and rejoices only in 
 a hazy correspondence with the objective realities around us. 
 
 Can we know anything ? No, says the whole school of " Rela- 
 tivists," who would frame for our guidance a philosophy which prac- 
 tically denies that we can know things as they are. 
 
 Can we know anything ? No, says Descartes, for my senses are 
 the medium of my knowledge, and they are unreliable, and can and 
 have deceived me. And how could he know anything who doubted 
 the validity of his faculties, the force of necessary truths, and such 
 self-evident axioms as the capability of the human mind to acquire 
 knowledge. His methodic doubt was a delusion ; there was no 
 *' method in his madness." In the grave of universal doubt, he 
 buried himself beyond rescue, and beyond resurrection. He can- 
 not say so much even as his historic, "I think, therefore I am." 
 How does he know he thinks, if he must doubt the fact ? " My 
 own existence," he replies, " cannot be the subject of my doubt.'* 
 Then neither can he doubt his faculties, for they are bound up with 
 his existence, and the same evidence supports both. I may exist, 
 but what is that to me, in view of my knowledge, if I do not know 
 that I exist ? And if I know that I exist, I know that what I know, 
 on the present point, I do know ; which is tantamount to saying 
 that my faculties are trustworthy, and veracious, and do not deceive. 
 Self -existence is asserted in the very act of doubting, and the fact is 
 irresistibl}' brought home to every sane and conscious individual. 
 But Descartes killed the goose that laid the golden eg;g, and com- 
 mitted philosophic suicide ; for his destructive principles pulled 
 
72 
 
 down the whole fabric of human thought beyond the possibility of 
 repair with any materials furnished from the debris of universal 
 doubt. Man may, and does, start from ignorance as the beginning- 
 of investigation, and from the contemplation of self and the expe- 
 rience of his intellectual acts, can discover that he is a being endowed 
 with an interior light called intelligence ; but when he proclaims 
 the incompetency of his faculties to find truth, or, at least, suspects 
 their value, how can he, with any show of consistency, invoke the 
 testimony of these discredited witnesses in corroboration of his 
 dictum, "I think, therefore I am." 
 
 It seems we cannot know anything. For all along the corridor of 
 the ages stand the sceptics, some of whom made their doubt a 
 dogma ; while others, with a timidity natural to such minds, were 
 afraid to say even that they doubted. 
 
 Modern agnosticism (a term, by the way, lately introduced into 
 our dictionaries) had a precursor in Bishop Huet, who said of the 
 two schools of doubters, " They know nothing, and we know noth- 
 ing, though we feel uncertain of our nescience." Verily, 
 
 * ' So little do we know what we're about in 
 This world, that I doubt if doubt itself be doubting." 
 
 It seems we cannot know anything, at least with certitude ; for 
 traditionalism is, say some, the only criterion of certitude, and that 
 criterion is a frail reed to lean upon, for it is palpably fallacious. 
 De Lammenais gave fresh currency to this doctrine. He taught 
 that a few primary truths were received direct from God by the 
 first man, and being preserved for our instruction in the mental 
 storehouse of humanity, were set forth and elucidated by the voice 
 of universal testimony, or by what we call common sense. 
 
 All such hair-brained theories rest on the ludicrous assumption, 
 that human faculties have not the natural power of intelligence, but 
 must, whether by the revelation of primary truths, or by the con- 
 tinued concurrence, or rather, positive interposition, of divine in- 
 fluence, have, as Occasionalism teaches, their work directly done by 
 God Himself. These absurd hypotheses impugn the autonomy of 
 human reason, deny the reality of second causes, and pave the way 
 for Pantheism of the fiercest form. Some of these alleged " doctors 
 in Israel " spurn the notion of a miracle, and yet make human life 
 
73 
 
 a perpetual miracle. They exaggerate the possibility of providen- 
 tial interference to that degree that we could never be quite sure of 
 anything without the active influence of divine intervention^ 
 Too proud to stoop to the simplicity of the teachings of experience ; 
 too arrogant and self-sufficient to be said by the teachings of the 
 wise, and rejecting the obvious principle of causality, many fall 
 back on Providence for everything. I heard of a poor man, who, 
 with more piety than prudence, knelt down in the dust and prayed 
 Providence to send him a shovel when some benevolent stranger 
 had caused a ton of coal to be delivered at his gate. Nicholas 
 de Cusa, who should have known better, wrote a brace of books 
 to demonstrate the impotence and incapacity of reason in its striv- 
 ings after truth and the absolute need of divine intuitions. Many, 
 with confidence, appealed to Scripture for the sanction of their 
 views ; but it were well if they had heeded the Pauline admonition, 
 " not to be wiser than it behooveth to be wise," " but to be wise unto 
 sobriety." But, as Augustine says, " great are the delusions of the 
 great." 
 
 Divine providence is a fact and factor, both in physical and meta- 
 physical science in all legitimate excursions of the human intellect,, 
 and it cannot be ignored without putting a period to aU philosophy. 
 But as it cannot be set aside too lightly, so neither can it be invoked 
 for every triviality, and without any shred of reason. Extremes 
 always meet, and if, like Bayle, some outraged God, and man when 
 they banished human reason out of sight in constructing the edifice 
 of faith within the soul ; so, in like manner, others went to the 
 absurd and conceited pitch of toplofty folly in asserting the absolute 
 sovereignty and infallibility of reason, and the supremacy of philos- 
 ophy over truths sent straight from the serene heights of heaven. 
 
 " O ! Star-eyed science, hast thou wandered there 
 To waft us home the message of despair ? '* 
 
 Far be it from our minds to attempt to pluck one laurel from the 
 bright-crowned brow of philosophy. She is the mistress of the mind, 
 and, after theology, the queen of all the sciences. They all depend 
 on her for their principles and for their method. 
 
 Unless they shone by her reflected light, they would languish in 
 the darkness of uncertainty. Physical and moral science, the indus- 
 
74 
 
 trial arts, political economy, social rights and duties, law, order, his- 
 tory, and, in one sense, faith itself, the best gift of God to man, rest 
 on reason, and the immovable pillars of philosophy, as on their 
 indestructible foundation. The question of objective realities ; of 
 the good, the true, and the just ; of the laws and destiny of the 
 human soul ; of the origin of the state and the nature of society ; 
 of the connection between human causes and events, and the rela- 
 tion of human hberty to the providential action of the Creator ; and 
 lastly, of the motives of credibility which justify a rational assent to 
 truths beyond the range of reason — all these inquiries, the bases of 
 the foregoing sciences, are the undisputed province of philosophy. 
 Here stands philosophy, serene and majestic, without a rival and 
 without a peer. But when, unmindful of her lawful sphere, philos- 
 ophy would measure what is measureless, and reduce the standard 
 of religion and the science of God to the airy conceits of her shallow 
 understanding, her proud pretences must provoke contempt from 
 the wise and pity from clients of religion. There is a dim mysterious 
 twilight in the regions of revealed truth which the most profound 
 philosophy can never penetrate ; and they who, like Cousin, proudly 
 proclaim philosophy to be in all things " the light of lights and the 
 authority of authorities," are serving neither religion nor philosophy. 
 
 Despite, however, the validity of argument which assigns to faith 
 and reason their respective spheres, each revolving in its orbit with- 
 out hindrance to the other, and supporting each other by a sort of 
 mutual attraction, we suppose the conflict between error and truth 
 must be eternal. And as there will be the proud to plant the banner 
 of reason on heights it should never occupy, so there will be those 
 who will trail its gonfalon in the dust as a worthless ensign to 
 humanity. It were idle to recount the errors on the one aide or the 
 other. But for me, I prefer the sin by excess to that by defect. 
 
 Some attack all first and necessary truths, and tell us there is no 
 absolute principle, except that nothing is absolute; and destitute of 
 foundation, reason crumbles to nothing. 
 
 Huxley hews down the props of physical science, his own passion- 
 ate pursuit, and cuts the ground from under his feet, when he calls 
 in question our certainty for the constancy of natural laws in the 
 past, while granting it in respect of the present. The deadly 
 destruction of Huxley in the domain of physical science is more 
 
75 
 
 than duplicated by others in the metaphysical world. Blind instinct, 
 fatalism, and invincible necessity on the one hand; innate ideas, 
 divinely infused knowledge, a pretended clairvoyance of intellect, 
 and a groundless traditionalism on the other, are some of the " base- 
 less fabrics " the mind of man has constructed when surveying the 
 vast boundaries of its own dim interior. Some make God do all for 
 us; others would have Him do nothing; and thus a kind of perpetual 
 Pelagianism, in the intellectual order, has been one of the most for- 
 bidding features of philosophy. Some, perhaps, builded wiser than 
 they knew; others building as they thought, did not foresee the 
 colossal ruin wi'ought by their mistaken labor. When Descartes 
 made all truth rest on the divine free will, so that had God chosen, 
 necessary tiTiths would not be true at all, he did not take account of 
 the fact that he stabbed all truth to the heart, wiped out at one fell 
 blow all distinction between error and falsehood, and rendered in- 
 capable of demonstration the dearest of all truths to us, that God 
 cannot use His omnipotence to make us the ludibrium of divine decep- 
 tion. He, perchance, did not see how his theory of innate ideas 
 denied to our mind the power of forming its own conceptions, 
 forbade us to pass from the sensible to the supersensible, from 
 sensation to thought, made all our certitude cbme from God, and 
 our very idea of God a divine infusion or communication; thus 
 planting himself in the centre of a vicious circle in proving reason 
 from God, and God again from reason. No wonder that the " Eagle 
 of Meaux " declared that he foresaw a tremendous conflict between 
 the Church and science, under the name of Caiiesian philosoj)hy. 
 Had Descartes reflected that we do not pass from ideas as the direct 
 gift of God, to their application to the realities within and without, 
 but from facts and sensations to ideas and principles, from the con- 
 crete to the abstract, from the known to the unknown, from the finite 
 to the infinite, from the created to the uncreated, and God, he had 
 spared the world a world of delusion. 
 
 From vain hypotheses and idle speculation of false teachers, let 
 us turn to the pure running rivers of rational philosophy, fed by the 
 crj^stal springs of Catholic truth. 
 
 One of the manifest differences of man from the brute, and one of 
 the proofs of the spirituality of the soul, is the power of reflection. 
 When the mind enters introspectively upon itself to discover its own 
 
76 
 
 laws, and reduce tliem to system, it performs the wonderftd feat of 
 reflecting. Philosophic knowledge is natural knowledge, " rendering 
 reflexly to itself an account of itself." " The day on which man first 
 reflected, w^as the day on which philosophy was born; for philosophy 
 is reflection on a magnificent scale." And that day was the day on 
 which the mind gave an account to itself of itself and its workings. 
 Not more marvelous than necessary, is that power which makes the 
 thoughts of the mind the subject of its thought. To give an account 
 to ourselves is something of wonderful import and meaning. And 
 what does it signify, to account to ourselves for anything ? It means 
 that we can analyze and decompose it, run it into its elements, and by 
 the beautiful alchemy of thought, transform it into ideas which we 
 can compare and test, and pronounce on their validity or invalidity, 
 their truth or their falsehood. The human mind reflects. It in- 
 tellects, if I may thus speak, itself. It reads within itself — Igere 
 intus — and thus it beholds itself within itself, and thence it learns 
 what it is to think. It sifts all its windings, dives into its inmost 
 depths, beholds the wonderful mechanism of thought, the springs of 
 knowledge, and by the instrument of dialectics it transmutes all its 
 gleanings into elementary conceptions, atoms of thought, as it were, 
 and thence reconstrifcting it, evolves the laws that govern its own 
 operations. Is the mind capable of this achievement ? Yes ; for 
 Catholic philosophy teaches that man can attain to the knowledge 
 of the truth, and this he could not do unless he could reflect. AVhen 
 do I know anything ? Not when I possess some ideas concerning 
 it, for ideas are but the germs of knowledge ; but when I know that 
 my ideas are true, or when I know that I do know. This knowledge 
 is but partial still, for I want besides to ascertain the sources of my 
 knowledge ; to take apart the mechanism of my mind ; survey the 
 processes of thought ; discover the strange and magical manner in 
 which the material objects without me, are, so to say, refined and 
 sublimated that they may be brought into contact with the spiritual 
 principle of intelligence within me. 
 
 These are vital and fundamental questions ; they are the founda- 
 tions of philosophical knowledge ; they find their solution in •the 
 penetrating power and all-searching wisdom of Catholic scholastic 
 philosophy, whose invincible champion is the '* Angel of the Schools." 
 And this is the philosophy of common sense, the philosophy of 
 
77 
 
 humanity, founded on the nature and constitution of man, and the 
 essences and realities of all objective existence. 
 
 That it cannot create an intellect of its own, nor diminish the 
 glory of the one God has given us, scholastic philosophy most cheer- 
 fully concedes ; that it cannot even know an intellect which has not 
 in some way spontaneously manifested itself, it promptly recognizes; 
 and hence it aims not at synthetizing a philosophical system, which, 
 
 " As imagination bodies forth 
 The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing, 
 A local habitation and a name,", 
 
 BO would be no more than a fairy fabric of the same gauzy propor- 
 tions ; but on the contrary, it seeks only to reduce to harmonious 
 dialectical order, and to refine, elevate, and carry to their highest 
 activity and progress the faculties and principles of the common 
 knowledge of mankind. 
 
 On this imperishable basis. Catholic philosophy takes her stand. 
 Conscious of her power and dignit}^ she assumes to teach; and 
 beginning with the most elementary principles, she traverses the 
 boundless domain of human knowledge, nor stops in her steady and 
 progressive flight, till, like the eagle who soars athwart the very eye 
 of the sun, she fixes her clear gaze on the awful verities of God. On 
 the threshold of investigation she has assurance of her power, for 
 the voice of unerring truth declares, in reference to the reasonable 
 defensibility of our most vital, consoling, and necessary truths, that, 
 "Reason can with c'fertainty establish the existence of God, the 
 spiritual nature of the soul, and the freedom of the human will " 
 (Sacred Cong. IndeXy June 11, 1855). 
 
 The path that leads to these serene heights of science is thorny 
 and rough, but her steps never falter, and her eye never tires. Crags 
 of error, fastnesses of falsehood, shadows of obscurity bedim and 
 block the way; but she scales every obstacle, breaks down every bar- 
 rier, dissipates the shadows and the darkness, till she stands, like 
 the triumphant traveller upon the mountain-top, in the radiant sun- 
 shine of the heavens. 
 
 Pass with her along the journey ; mark the several steps she 
 takes ; see how prudently she walks ; observe the false guides and 
 
78 
 
 enemies she eludes, as she treads along her way, pondering and un- 
 folding worlds of mind and worlds of matter to the greedy gaze of 
 humanity. 
 
 God, she teaches, in the first place has gifted man with the mar- 
 vellous faculty of intelligence, because he was made for knowledge, 
 for love, and for service. The powers of that intellect are subject 
 to limitations and to laws, it is true, but these lessen not its native 
 force, nor dim its fire ; for it rejoices in the inherent capacity of at- 
 taining knowledge by its own creative capacity, the capacity of form- 
 ing its own conceptions. 
 
 Refuting false theories of innate ideas, and infused knowledge in 
 the natural order, she explains to man the true nature and origin of 
 his conceptions and the method of their foundation. She unfolds 
 to him a world without and a world within, and explains how an ad- 
 mirable union between both is effected. 
 
 She explodes the misty bubble of idealism, and proclaims the 
 reality of objective existences. She points to the wonderful power 
 of sense-perception, and shows how sensible images, true to what 
 they represent, are received by the sentient creature. She unravels 
 the intricate, and, as it were, actinic process by which the mind 
 passes from sensation to the subtlety of thought, and photographs 
 upon the receptive brain a picture, an image of the nature of object- 
 ive entities, by means of which we understand them. She explains 
 the act of apprehension by which we grasp the first notion of an 
 object, and give birth to our ideas. She teaches the true value of 
 those ideas, and their actual coiTespondence with the nature of those 
 external realities they represent. She develops the mental process, 
 and passes from mere apprehension to the transcendently grand act 
 of judgment, the crowning act of intelligence. At the door of judg- 
 ment she stops a moment to post the caveat " beware," and says, 
 though sense-perception and intellectual apprehension always tell 
 the truth, error sometimes insidiously enters the mind through the 
 gates of judgment. 
 
 As " judgment is that act of the intellect by which the mind joins 
 or separates two terms through affirmation or negation "; so the same 
 philosophy tells us how from one judgment we proceed to another, 
 and thus by the aid of comparison, reach the formation of a third, 
 which proceeding is entitled to the honorable appellation of reasoning. 
 
79 
 
 She stops not even here. We have not two intellects, one direct 
 and one reflex, but one ; and she indicates how this same intellect 
 can turn in upon itself, and account to itself for all the foregoing" 
 operations, and survey its own wide-extended interior by the marvel- 
 lous process of reflection. Thus the mind can think thought, or 
 think itself, or that which thinks thought. 
 
 Nor is this all. She likewise shows how in thinking itself, the 
 mind thinks everything. 
 
 It has been well said that man is a microcosm, or a miniature 
 universe. Man is, in a sense, whatever is ; or as St. Thomas says, 
 " anima est quoddammodo omnia"; the soul is, in a measure, all 
 things. 
 
 It is no groundless analogy that certain philosophers seek between 
 the human composite and the outer world. The human system is 
 justly compared to the earth that we inhabit ; for as the globe is 
 composed of three parts of water and one pai*t of land, so man is 
 composed one-fourth of solids and three-fourths of liquids. The 
 solids represent the bone and the muscle, and the fluid is the blood 
 that rushes through the veins and arteries of the system. We thus 
 behold a striking similarity established by the Creator between the 
 human system and the earth wherein we live. Thus man sums up 
 in the elements of his being the several constituents of the cosmos ; 
 for as our own world is constituted, so we may suppose the vast and 
 circling systems, that make the universe, to be. As Pascal has ob- 
 served, man is neither an angel nor a brute. His animal natui*e unites 
 him to the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and his mind 
 bears him up to the lofty regions of spiritual existence. Hence, 
 while connected with the material universe through the medium of 
 his body, he is raised far above it by the forces of his mind, which 
 gives him the knowledge and the ownership of all. In naming the 
 human creature, God called him man, meaning, in the language of 
 the past, to think. 
 
 By means of his intelligence, he obtains a knowledge of the world, 
 and by the superintendence of the same intelligence, directing his 
 liberty and will, he transforms and changes that world in accordance 
 with his pleasure or necessity. He measures his path across the 
 trackless seas upon voyages of discovery ; he levels mountains, fells 
 forests, reads the buried secrets of the under-world, and performs 
 
80 
 
 those prodigies of progress whicli we call civilization. He measures 
 space and creates mathematics ; breaks down barriers, and calls it 
 industry ; studies the course of the stars, and names it science ; per- 
 ceives notions of equality and justice, and founds the state; beholds 
 and imitates the beautiful, and gives birth to art ; and behind all 
 this, above all this, he sees an unseen and omnipotent power, and 
 bows down in mute acknowledgment and recognition of religion. 
 His mind thinks all this, and thus, thinking itself, it thinks every- 
 1;hing. In a word, be impresses on the external world, in some de- 
 gree, his owm personality; exalts it, as it were, into his own immortal 
 image, and communicates to the gross forms outside himself, a por- 
 tion of his own dignity and worth. 
 
 But here lies his danger. This is the maelstrom in which the great 
 minds of antiquity were engulfed. The passage from the conscious- 
 ness of mental power to Pantheism is not so remote to the mind that 
 sails the sea of speculative science for the discovery of truth. Man 
 was made for truth, it is true, but he makes not truth himself ; he 
 seeks, he finds, he discovers it. But the finder is easily deluded into 
 the belief that he is the maker. Catholic philosophy lays down the 
 necessary limitations. It teaches man the extent of his powers. It 
 neither exaggerates nor disparages them. It suffers thought to rush 
 with lightning speed be^'ond the boundaries of the visible world, but 
 "from the visible things that are," it calls on man to consider a 
 power greater than himself or nature, — the God who enlighteneth 
 all. Chained to the limits of a concrete existence, man sees every- 
 thing under sensible images and mundane forms which his judgment 
 often pronounces on erroneously, and bears him far beside the truth; 
 and in his quest for the precious pearl, he will often, unless the star 
 of Catholic truth guide his course, fail to find that which is the cause 
 and the model of all perfections discernible in the world, and in him- 
 self. God is no more separated from the world than He is con- 
 founded with it. 
 
 "Thou art, O God, the life and light 
 Of all this wondrous world we see ; 
 Its glow by day, its smile by night 
 Are but reflections caught from Thee." 
 " The earth is crammed with heaven 
 And every common bush afire with God." 
 
81 
 
 It is the grandeur and glory of faith to recognize God in that 
 Tvhich does not visibly contain Him, but only reflects Him as a 
 shadow. 
 
 But who is to teach man these things ? Who is to guide his intel- 
 lect that it may not go astray ? Who can lead the way but the pilot 
 who knows it, because in possession of the truth and nothing but the 
 truth? 
 
 Without truth no intellectual progress is possible, because truth is 
 the object, the life of the intellect. Every presentation of truth is 
 the perfection of the intellect ; every denial of tnith is the destiiic- 
 tion of the intellect, in so far as it can destroy. We conclude, with 
 every confidence, therefore, that the Catholic Chiu'ch alone can pro- 
 duce real progress of the intellect; for she, and she alone, rejoices in 
 that gift of infallible guidance which corrects the errors and directs 
 the researches of the human mind as it ranges over the profound 
 and wide-extended fields of philosophical speculation and inquiry. 
 
 Part IY. 
 
 The moral progress of the world is likewise due to Catholicity. 
 
 The will, it has been stated, is the great moral power of humanity. 
 But what is meant by morals ? 
 
 The word, derivatively, comes from the Latin mos, custom, and 
 signifies those invariable canons of conduct which men observe in 
 the operations of life. 
 
 It is obvious that a custom, as such, does not make a thing right 
 in the moral sense, but something else is implied ; to wit, a conform- 
 ity of those customs with the natural law, which is the fundamental 
 rule of morals. Custom may suffice as sole arbiter of actions which 
 may be regarded as indifferent in themselves, and in this respect the 
 rhetoiician says that custom is the law of language. ^'Mos est norma 
 loquendV But since there are no indifferent actions in the individual, 
 every action performed by man is said to be right or wrong, accord- 
 ing as it squares with or deflects from the eternal law graven by God 
 on the heai-ts and minds of His creatures. As, however, the actions 
 of men in general are suppDsed to be ruled by right reason and com- 
 mon sense, which is nothing else than a participation of the eternal 
 reason in creatures, we can argue, from the customs of mankind, that 
 6 
 
82 
 
 certain actions are right or wrong, moral or immoral, as they possess, 
 or lack, the sanction which the usage of mankind confers upon them. 
 The science of morals is, therefore, nothing else than a knowledge of 
 those laws which regulate human acts by the customs of humanity. 
 
 Man is a man because he has control of his actions. He is a free 
 agent, competent to act, or not to act, as he may elect. And this is 
 the consequence of his nature, for it is rooted in his liberty and intel- 
 ligence. And yet sciolistic Necessarians have impugned this truth 
 and denied to man the glorious prerogative of free will, which Catho- 
 lic moralists have always steadfastly maintained. John Stuart Mill 
 and others of his school have practically repudiated the self-acting 
 power of the will in attributing so much to influence and association, as 
 to make our conduct the outcome of congenital disposition, character, 
 circumstances, and environments which are wholly beyond volitional 
 control. That we are the creatures of circumstances in so far as we 
 have to take the world as we find it, is manifestly true; but that cir- 
 cumstances, be they ever so ineluctable, can govern and control the 
 exercise of our free will to the extent of making us necessary rather 
 than free agents, is palpably absurd. The will of man is an imma- 
 nent faculty, subject to no coercion or external influence. All human 
 acts, properly so called, are free or voluntary, and so far as they befit 
 man with respect to the end of his creation, they are moral acts. 
 
 The will, therefore, is the chief factor in morals, and this Catholic 
 philosophy has always insisted upon and triumphantly confuted the 
 hair-brained advocates of necessarianism. Nor is this all. The ethics 
 of Catholic teachers clear away those excrescences which others have 
 enwrapped around the faculty of freedom so as to obscure its nature 
 and its functions. By the will we do not mean feelings, sensations, 
 and emotions which many mix with volition. It is a native, original 
 principle and distinct faculty of the soul. Physical sensibility 
 announces to us what is painful or pleasurable ; conscience teUs us 
 what is right or wrong; passions and emotions indicate our feelings; 
 reason declares what is true or false ; but it is the wiU, and the will 
 alone, which can make a choice, can select an object, perform an 
 action, or do the contrary. And yet, sooth to say, outside of Catho- 
 lic philosophy the most conflicting opinions obtain, and the most pre- 
 posterous doctrines are advanced with oracular authority upon the 
 functions of the faculties and the nature of the powers of the soul. 
 
83 
 
 The simple little child who learns from the catechism, that as in God 
 there are three persons, so are there three powers in the human soul, 
 will, memory, and understanding, has made itself master of a better 
 knowledge of psychology than those astute metaphysicians who map 
 the mind of man as the pretending explorer writes the geography of 
 a country whereon he has never set his foot. I have urged this point 
 with some insistence, for the fact that man's will is self-acting, as a 
 second cause, of course, and is, in this sense, autonomous, or a law 
 unto itself, is the essential condition of responsibility, or as the theo- 
 logians say, of imputability of actions. In this we strike the root of 
 all morality, for actions are neither good nor bad, from the moral 
 view, nor are men any longer responsible for their deeds, if those 
 deeds proceed from a principle in the soul neither free nor voluntary 
 in its exercise. 
 
 And just here, perhaps, it is not inept to advert to those who up- 
 hold what may be called an independent morality, ascribing to- 
 human reason a soi*t of absolute autonomy, as if independently of 
 all external authority reason pould decide every question of right or 
 wrong and determine every matter of morality. This is simply the 
 deification of the human intellect, and it is the sole refuge both of 
 dogmatic atheists, if there be any, and practical unbelievers. Reason 
 is not the supreme legislator. Reason is not the final arbiter of 
 morals which can explain all duties and impose obligations upon 
 itself, apart from all extrinsic authority. 
 
 Ethics, it is true, begin with human nature, and declare that cer- 
 tain acts are consonant with right reason, and, therefore, becoming 
 to man as man. But whence is derived the obligation ? The idea 
 of duty may be and is evolved from reason ; but it is not the office 
 of reason to create binding force. It is the will, and the will alone, 
 guided, of course, by reason, that can impose precepts, decree obli- 
 gations, or, in one word, make a law. But whose will has such 
 authority ? Whose will gives to law its inviolable sanctions ? Not 
 the will of man, of itself alone, for what right has an equal to com- 
 mand an equal ? It is, therefore, the will of the Supreme Legislator, 
 whose will is absolutely autonomous and independent, that can make 
 obhgation for mankind and give law to rational creatures. 
 
 The eternal law of God embraces the whole of creation from the 
 lowest to the highest being therein, and, in its physical aspect, it 
 
84 
 
 begets effects, while on its moral side it creates obligation. This 
 Law is the remote rule of morals^ and it is as immutable and infal- 
 lible as God Himself. Under one aspect, it is the good Providence 
 of God, reaching powerfully from end to end, and disposing all 
 things sweetly according to the destinies unto them appointed. In 
 another view, it is God's sovereign justice decreeing rewards for 
 good, inflicting punishments for evil, giving sanction to authority, 
 exacting subjection and obedience, revealing the nature and springs 
 of duty, and, in general, "justifying the w^ays of God to man." 
 
 Now, the natural law is but the participation of the same eternal 
 law in man. It is a reflection of the divine light shining in the soul 
 of man and enabling him to see those moral distinctions between 
 right and wrong which are antecedent even to divine commands as 
 made known by the light of revelation, because founded in the 
 eternal fitness of things. Right reason is, therefore, only the voice, 
 or the interpreter, of the Eternal Law, and this law aside, it has no 
 inherent power to compel duty, or enforce obligation. The man 
 that acts against reason is entitled to the appellation of fool, for he 
 has made a "sinner of his judgment"; but who could convict him 
 of criminality for thus behaving, if he transgressed no higher law 
 than that of human reason ? Theologians, as St. Thomas tells us, 
 consider sin as an offence against God, and philosophers regard it 
 as an offence against reason, because what offends reason offends 
 God. But relegate Grod to the background, and reason may con- 
 demn man's folly, but can neither punish nor prevent his crime. 
 How fatuous and illusory is the aim of those teachers who seek to 
 divorce morality from religion, and propound a system of ethics in 
 which, not only the idea of God and of man's duties towards Him, 
 but even the mention of the Deity's name shall be completely blotted 
 out. And yet, outside the Catholic Church, such is the notion of 
 education that sways the most cultured and enlightened minds. Of 
 this, we have lately had a striking instance in the conduct of those 
 men, who, envious of the success of the Catholic priests in teaching 
 the Indians of the West, exerted every nerve, in their hatred of 
 Catholicity, to secure the suppression of all denominational instruc- 
 tion in the Indian schools, even seeking to exclude the name of God 
 Himself from the studies of the pupils. 
 
 In exercising the practical judgment of tlie understanding to de- 
 
85 
 
 termine what is right or wrong in the particular case, right reason is 
 called conscience. There is such a thing as an erroneous conscience, 
 but how eiToneous are the judgments concerning conscience outside 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 This is the rock on which the brightest minds have foundered. 
 Even that Titanic intellect, Dr. Newman, made a mighty slip, when, 
 defining conscience, he declared that it was always emotional. Con- 
 science is a rule of conduct, and it is the condition of responsibility, 
 and hence it must reside in the reason and not in the emotional 
 part of man. Conscience is not feeling, it is not sentiment, it is not 
 emotion ; it is simply the practical judgment which every man pro- 
 nounces concerning the morality of his conduct at the particular 
 moment of its performance. Some men make emotions the arbi- 
 trators of morals, as if blind, unreasoning things could compose a 
 court of judicature. 
 
 When conscience proclaims a deed to be good, certain emotions 
 of the soul, no doubt, instantly present themselves and unmistak- 
 ably announce their existence. The contemplation of virtue and of 
 vice must necessarily arouse the sensibility of every man not mor- 
 ally dead, in a manner corresponding to the character of the subject 
 of his contemplation. But the sentiments or feelings thus evoked 
 are not the primitive judgment of the mind upon the morality of 
 man's voluntary actions ; but, as Cousin says, they are but a 
 powerful echo. They have been aptly described as the ministers of 
 conscience. At one time they are as angels of light and sweetness, 
 imparting to the soul a lofty elevation, and gladdening the heart 
 with an exhilarating enthusiasm when the will takes complacency in 
 vii-tue, goodness, and benevolence ; and, again, they are like aveng- 
 ing furies, tormenting and punishing the rebellious and obdurate 
 will when it forsakes the path of righteousness for the seductive, 
 but deceptive, ways of vice. And yet these feeUngs are not con- 
 science, but its concomitants or consequences. Conscience lies far 
 deeper than these things, for it is founded in the very laws of our 
 moral constitution. 
 
 On the threshold of every ethical investigation the question 
 occurs, is there any real distinction between good and evil ? Nearly 
 all the ancient moralists of Greece and Rome agreed as to this dis- 
 tinction, yet they much disagreed as to what this distinction was in 
 
86 
 
 itself, and how man came by it. And although men should concur, 
 in the abstract, that such distinction exists, they would still expend 
 much logomachy in determining the difference in the concrete case. 
 This is the case to-day beyond the pale of Catholic philosophy. .1 
 have met men in these States who soberly and gravely maintained 
 that lying was no sin in business ; that bribery was no crime in poli- 
 tics ; that dishonesty was no wrong between employer and em- 
 ployed ; that polygamy was rooted in the law of nature ; and that 
 it was lawful to shed the blood of those who differed from you in 
 religion. Of course it may be argued that these men are excep- 
 tions, and only perverted their reason by their cupidity, their preju- 
 dice, or their passion. But this is all I claim, and it is enough to 
 show how hard it is to find all men in agreement on the most ele- 
 mentary distinctions between good and evil. 
 
 Nevertheless, all men have a conscience, for. if a man has no con- 
 science, he has no reason, for what is conscience but reason ? 
 
 Moral principles, in the primary order, are prior to experience ; 
 they are, as it were, constitutional principles of the human mind ; and 
 the human soul, by the very principles of its moral constitution, indi- 
 cates that there is an indehble and eternal distinction between good 
 and evil which holds for all minds and all ages. But the question 
 of practical duty must be determined by each man for himself by 
 the faculty of conscience ; which, though it has a manifold affinity 
 with the intellect, inasmuch as it judges and discerns, yet in ethical 
 inquiry it superadds something to the understanding which concerns 
 itself with truth, or the quid est ; conscience occupies itself, not with 
 the quid est, but with the quid oportet, or the question of duty. But 
 this question is settled only by reference to external authority, or 
 the eternal law of God. 
 
 Conscience, therefore, reveals a law to us with authoritative and 
 binding obligations. Whenever a question is raised in the mind as 
 to the moral quality of an action, conscience discovers either that 
 the act is conformable to reason and law, and therefore permissible 
 or commanded ; or that it offends the law and is, therefore, con- 
 demnable ; or that it is indifferent in itself, which, however, in the 
 case of immediate action, loses its indifferent character and is resolv- 
 able into one or other of the preceding cases. 
 
 What, then, does conscience do when we learn its voice, interpret 
 
87 
 
 its dicta for ourselves ? It declares simply what our duty is ; what 
 we ought to do or ought not to do in the given case. Its nature 
 and its function is to indicate a law demanding rigorously our 
 obedience. Nor is this all. It speaks not merely in the indicative 
 mood, like reason ; nor in the optative, like the wiU ; it talks with 
 an imperative voice and proclaims what must be done under pain of 
 violating reason, or under penalty of sin. " Its words are bonds ; 
 its oaths are oracles"; its rules are obligations, and it sits upon its 
 throne like a king, ruling the vast realms of morals by the govern- 
 ment of mind. " Its smiles are rewards ; its frowns are reproofs. 
 It rests on its own prerogatives, and it wears the crown and wields 
 the sceptre whether its claims are acknowledged or denied.*' ^ 
 
 "Eight reason," says Cicero (whereby we understand conscience), 
 "is itself a law congenial to the feelings of our nature, diffused 
 among all men, uniform, eternal, calling us imperiously to our duty 
 and peremptorily prohibiting every violation of it. Nor does it 
 speak one language at Athens and another at Eome ; but addresses 
 itself to all nations and ages, deriving its authority from the com- 
 mon Sovereign of the universe." A wonderful testimony from the 
 prince of pagan orators ; but a higher authority than he has said : 
 *' They who have no law are a law unto themselves ; who have the 
 law written in their hearts." 
 
 This conscience, then, is placed within us by the hand of God 
 Himself, nor is there one *'who feels not this divinity within his 
 bosom." It is placed there as the pilot of the soul, to be its guide, 
 its guard, its governor in revealing principles, subdmng passions, 
 and prescribing right for human actions. It is the supreme judica- 
 tory of the mind, where decisions are imperative even when eiTone- 
 ous, and whose judgments are answerable to no tribunal but that of 
 the immutable law for which it must ever seek, and the God whose 
 august will finds in the law its embodiment and exj)ression. To this 
 law it is and always must be subject; for as the mind does not make 
 the truth which falls beneath its cognizance, so neither does con- 
 science create the law which it proclaims to man. The sun shines in 
 the heavens, although no human eye beholds it. The difference 
 between right and wrong is not a figment of the fancy, but is written 
 on the fibres of the soul, implanted in the radical constitution of the 
 mind; and conscience is but the finger of reason tracing out this dis- 
 
88 
 
 tinction and ever pointing up to the light that issues from the sun of 
 the Eternal Law. But as the physical eye may "become deranged so 
 that it no longer beholds the light ; so the moral eye is blurred and 
 blinded so as not to see the law. The gusts of passion, the swell of 
 pride, the distemper of a perverse heart, blind the eyes of the under- 
 standing to the light pf trath, and erase from conscience the clearest 
 lines of duty. And yet amid ail this haze and obscurity the index 
 of conscience points to the law ; amid all this din and clamour of 
 turbulent passion and unholy strife the voice of conscience ever cries 
 out for the reign of reason and authority. While other philosophic 
 systems ignore these truths, the ethics of Catholicity incessantly pro- 
 ^claim them trumpet-tongaed. Nor does Catholic teaching desist at 
 this point. It shows how conscience must connect the idea of law 
 with God Himself. The law-revealer in the heart proclaims the Law- 
 giver of creation, for % law without a law-giver is almost an unthink- 
 able abstraction. The sense of fear tells of One who will inevitably 
 j)unisli ; and the sense of responsibility points to One to whom we 
 must render an account. The great Cardinal Newman, whose recent 
 demise we deplore, develops these ideas with great beauty and j)re- 
 cision, when he speaks of the apprehension of God through the 
 medium of the conscience, showing how conscience involves the 
 recognition of a living object towards whom it is directed, and that, 
 too, without previous experience or analogical reasoning. Whether 
 or not it be so, as the Cardinal states, that the dictates of conscience 
 seem to be congenial, and even co-natural with the initial action of 
 the mind, one thing is certain, that apart from that system of Catho- 
 lic ethics which is founded on divine truth and the written Word of 
 God, and aided in practical morality by divine light and grace, per- 
 fect notions of morality are with difficulty attainable, and man's 
 moral progress all but impossible. 
 
 But the ethics of the Catholic Church are not limited by the regu- 
 lation of conscience. Man must know not only the distinctions 
 between right and wrong, but he must also know the true end of his 
 existence, and how it is attainable. 
 
 Every creature has its pre-established end and destiny. To act 
 for that end is characteristic of a rational creature. Some creatures 
 pursue their end of necessity ; others by choice or free will. The 
 end is attained by means, and the means chosen must be conducive 
 
89 
 
 or adapted to the end. Every human act is performed for a pur- 
 pose, and with rational creatures that purpose can be no other than 
 the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is the end of man, and yet, 
 though all men seek happiness in the abstract, not all place their 
 happiness in the genuine springs thereof, but more frequently in 
 goods that lead to infelicity and disquietude. 
 
 **0 happiness, how far we flee 
 Thine own sweet paths in search of thee." 
 
 Such is the perversion of the normal operations of man's will that he 
 may well be compared to sheep who have gone astray, and to fools 
 upon whom the light of understanding shines not, and the sun of 
 justice has not risen. 
 
 The desire of perfect happiness is the outgrowth of man's nature, 
 and hence it must be one day satisfied, for God does not implant a 
 faculty without an object, and it would be a vain desire if essentially 
 incapable of satisfaction. Such happiness this world can never give, 
 for in this valley of tears where floods of grief and joy swell and 
 flow by turns happiness has not its home. All indeed is vanity and 
 affliction of spirit, as the wise man says, in this under world, and 
 only in the realm of the King in His beauty shall we find a felicity 
 in which joy is made perfect, and humanity crowned with glory. 
 
 But some will say this constant quest for happiness urges men on 
 the way to progress, and progress leads to civilization. Yes ; but 
 civilization, culture, refinement. — these are not the end of man, says 
 Catholic philosophy, and all progress which leads not to the true end 
 of life, which is to know the hfe that never ends, is the progress of 
 perdition. Although, even in the natural order, the object of perfect 
 happiness is God, still men, without the aid of grace, could not attain 
 the object of their hopes. And man can never rest satisfied till his 
 mind contemplates the height, and length, and breadth of truth, and 
 bathe in the pure springs of all essential, intellectual, and moral 
 beauty which are discovered in the Eternal Fountain of felicity itself. 
 
 But how shall we attain this glorious consummation? 
 
 Virtue, says the Catholic philosopher, is the only royal road to 
 happiness. But what is virtue? "Aye! there's the rub." All are 
 captivated by her reported charms, and yet all do not recognize her 
 face. 
 
90 
 
 " Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, 
 As to be hated, needs but to be seen." 
 
 Yet ail do not seize the fair lineaments of virtue, though it is so 
 amiable as to be loveworthy for its own sweet sake. 
 
 Virtue, says the philosopher, is an acquired habit impelling the 
 faculties of the mind to the performance of deeds or acts agreeable 
 to right reason and human nature. Virtue is, then, a habit, and yet 
 some men are esteemed virtuous if they perform a few shining deeds 
 of patriotism or benevolence. No man, says the i)roverb, has wisdom 
 enough to last him always, and hence the habit of moral virtue must 
 be firmly fixed in the soul or rooted in the will, for the general con- 
 duct of life, and the government of the passions. Plato felicitously 
 compared the rational soul in man to a charioteer driving two re- 
 fractory horses, one of which needs the goad, and the other the 
 rein. The horses represent different classes of the passions, one of 
 which must be restrained by temperance, and the other encouraged 
 by fortitude. But even where the passions are rendered subject to 
 the control of reason, and the soul securely established in habits of 
 moral virtue, it is to be remembered that the object of felicity is not 
 to be found in virtue as its ultimate term, for God alone is the final 
 end, as He is the first cause, of man. This contention is of para- 
 mount importance, for there exists a class of philosophers who set 
 up a standard of natural morality, consisting of deeds of charity, 
 benevolence, and good-will to men, as man's highest perfection, ir- 
 respective of the nobler end preordained for him by his Creator. 
 
 Socrates placed all virtue in knowledge, as do many of our 
 modern teachers, and ignorance alone is vice in their fallacious 
 estimation. Virtue is not knowledge, nor is ignorance, when in- 
 culpable, vice. " The evil which I will not, that I do," says the 
 Apostle. " It is better to feel compunction than to know its defini- 
 tion," says A Kempis. And again, " What doth it profit me to dis- 
 pute learnedly about the Trinity, if I have not humility, and so am 
 displeasing to the Trinity ? " 
 
 True virtue, therefore, consists in the acquisition of those habits 
 which befit a man's rational nature, because they make him pleasing 
 in the eyes of his Creator, and are referable to his ultimate end 
 and everlasting destiny. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that Catholic philosophy is alone conducive 
 
91 
 
 to true moral progress, because the whole problem of ethics is con- 
 cerned with the explanation of duty, and correct ideas of duty, such 
 philosophy alone can give, which explains, unerringly, the true 
 nature of right and obligation ; the constitution of the moral faculty 
 in man, his will ; the character of the human conscience, and its cor- 
 relation with the Eternal Law ; the nature and the destiny of man ; 
 the means of happiness, and the object of felicity ; in fine, all those 
 relations, arising from a complexity of human acts and habits, which 
 constitute the perfection of our common nature, and which, properly 
 defined and understood, consistently and uniformly acted out in the 
 programme of life, make moral progress possible, because, as the 
 needle points direct to the pole, so do they advance humanity along 
 the only road of improvement, whose ultimate term, find last and 
 only-desired end, is God. 
 
 The Catholic Church, therefore, as we have seen, by an a priori 
 argument, is the parent of material, social, intellectual, and moral 
 progress, and by consequence of progress in the general understand- 
 ing of the term. 
 
 Chapter IIL 
 
 We have now arrived at the second part of this essay, in which 
 we shall consider a simple question of fact, and that fact is, briefly 
 and succinctly stated, has the Catholic Church promoted the prog- 
 ress of the race during the last nineteen centuries, or has she im- 
 peded it? Every fact is demonstrable by evidence, and the facts 
 that concern the human race are recorded in the annals of humanity. 
 "We therefore interrogate the voice of history. We appeal to history 
 as the sole and sufficient arbiter of the momentous question at issue, 
 not indeed for our own conviction, but for the triumphant refutation 
 of the enemies of religion and the foes of God. As this ai'gument 
 is founded on experience, we call it the a posteriori, or experimental. 
 
 When the light of Christianity dawned upon mankind, the world 
 was overcast with profound moral gloom. Gross ignorance upon 
 all subjects affecting man's final destiny permeated the minds of 
 the masses, and the multitude wandered in the darkness of the most 
 degrading superstitions. In the firmament of truth shone no soli- 
 
92 
 
 tary star, and, save the few straggling rays of primitive revelation, 
 the light of true religion had faded utterly away ; or, like the sun- 
 like enlargement of the moon's disc, when the planet approaches 
 the horizon, the delusive radiance of a false philosophy was re- 
 garded as the bright sun of divine truth. 
 
 The empire of vice was universal. Temples consecrated to pros- 
 titution and incest were erected in the centres of culture and refine- 
 ment, and the most polished cities of the ancient world were those 
 most delivered to the enslavement of vice and devoted to the deca- 
 dence wrought by effeminacy, sensuality, and the brutal indulg- 
 ence of the passions. Barbarous in their domestic habits, corrupt " 
 and venal in public life, and governed by pride and selfishness in 
 every pursuit they followed, patriotism languished, and parental 
 affection expired in the breast of a people who esteemed only the 
 amusements of the amphitheatre, the intrigues of office, the con- 
 tentions of the forum, and the excitement of war with the coveted 
 glory of military triumph. The deification of the passions was 
 supplemented by the apotheosis of emperors, and man-worship 
 succeeded to the Avorship of the gods. A religion which was 
 as destructive of human happiness as it was revolting to the laws 
 of nature enthralled the intellect, polluted the imagination, har- 
 dened the heart and closed its chambers to all the finer feelings of 
 tenderness, pity, and compassion. The blood of infants and of 
 virgins flowed in copious streams upon altars before graven deities, 
 and sacrifice in propitiation of the gods was not duly consummated 
 unless the altar-stone was whetted by the blood of some helpless 
 human victim. A few favored individuals, like Plato, Seneca, and 
 Socrates, in force of superior reason, were enabled to cling to the 
 great truth of immortality and bestow glowing encomiums on virtue; 
 but even Plato made profession of never speaking openly of the 
 true God through fear of exposing so great a truth to derision ; 
 while Cicero declared that no one paid attention to the instructions 
 of the moral philosophers because none of these teachers was as 
 moral and principled as his reason required ; none viewed his les- 
 sons as the rule of his life, but rather as the display of his wisdom ; 
 none restrained himself and observed his own maxims, but yielded 
 to the indulgence of his lusts.* 
 
 *Tusc. Lib. III. 
 
93 
 
 Nor was the case much improved among those whom God had 
 made the depositaries and conservators of His truth, till the day of 
 final revelation in the person of His divine Son should have an-ived, 
 and the Enlightener of the World should have dispelled the dai-kness 
 upon the earth, — He, whom Plato styled the great Teacher, for whose 
 coming it behooved them patiently to wait, till He should come and 
 " teach them their duties towards the gods and men." Although the 
 Jewish people had positive traditions regarding the great Deliverer 
 of the race, and although they had clung with invincible constancy 
 to their ancient faith despite Egyptian persecution^ Babylonian cap- 
 tivity, and the oppressive exactions of Roman domination, they were 
 finally divided into contending factions, whose political disputes were 
 aggravated by the rancor of religious differences. One party, the 
 conservatives, ostentatiously upheld the letter of the Mosaic jurispru- 
 dence, and the customs and traditions of their forefathers, but were 
 strangely insensible to the inward sense and living spirit of the law, 
 which they perverted and distorted, by way of strict intei-pretation, 
 to their own selfish ends, their proud, intolerant, and exclusive spirit, 
 and their narrow and contracted views. These were the Pharisees, 
 condemned by Christ Himself with unsparing severity. 
 
 The other pai-ty were the Sadducees. This was the movement, or 
 progressive party, who, like all radical reformers, lapsed themselves 
 into violent irregularities, while attempting to improve existing con- 
 ditions. They believed in a liberal interpretation of the law, had 
 but meagre respect for the old traditions, and appealed for support 
 to the people as against the aggressions of the ruling classes. Dis- 
 tinguished by latitudinarianism in morals, epicureanism in philosophy, 
 and rationalism in religion, they believed that the true God could 
 be adored only on Mt. Gerizim, and that worship accorded to the 
 Deity elsewhere they despised and held in sovereign contempt 
 Aiming at the spirit of the law, they sought to vilipend the letter, 
 and according to their free methods of thought, they imparted a 
 merely human interpretation to the inspired Word, denied the im- 
 mortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and practically 
 fell away from the faith which had been revered and believed for 
 centuries. Distracted by internal commotions, jealous and mis- 
 trustful of each other, hopelessly divided in politics and rehgion, and 
 goaded to desperation by the constantly renewed exactions of their 
 
94 
 
 Roman conquerors, both parties repined over the departure of the 
 nation's former glory, but were too enfeebled bj long oppression 
 and too divided by strife to raise a hand to save the Jewish state ; 
 though they, finally, in the energy of desperation, made the futile 
 attempt to regain their liberty, which culminated in the horrible 
 disaster of the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, 
 begun by Vespasian and completed by Titus. 
 
 Such was the lamentable degeneracy of the world, when He came 
 upon the scene, who though He said His " kingdom was not of the 
 world," also declared that He would "found His charch upon a 
 rock," and that '* the gates of hell should not prevail against it." 
 
 At first an imperceptible streak of light, rising mildly amid the en- 
 circling gloom, its effulgence soon overspread the tenebrous earth, 
 " the nations beheld it from afar, and the gentiles walked in the 
 brightness of its rising." Though the powers of darkness were ar- 
 rayed against it ; though men shut their eyes to its dazzling beams ; 
 though every human agency sought its extinction, the star which rose 
 in solitary grandeur and shone upon the path of the expectant shep- 
 herds, was destined to shoot its luminous rays into every corner of 
 the earth for the guidance and enlightenment of mankind. 
 
 In the bosom of society, as it flourished under paganism, was 
 found no principle of social regeneration. The efforts of wise rulers 
 like Trojan and Marcus Aurelius to stem the tide of corruption, were 
 signally abortive and deficient in results. Nature can never rise 
 above nature. A thing is bettered only by that which is better than 
 itself. A supernatural principle was needed to purify morals, to re- 
 strain the impetuosity of passion, to allay the fires of concupiscence, 
 and reduce the hearts of men to the laws of obedience and self-denial. 
 A supernatural light was required to illumine the darkness of the 
 intellect, to enlighten the understanding, and point men the path to 
 peace, to order, to virtue, to a higher life than that indicated by the 
 gropings of a debauched and grovelling reason. 
 
 The first triumph of the Catholic Church of Christ was over the 
 reason and intellect of man. She elevated that reason to a higher 
 order. Christianity, indeed, confers no new faculty upon the under- 
 standing, but it widens its scope and range by presenting to its 
 grasp the truths of an order otherwise beyond its ken, as well as 
 by enlarging its comprehension of truths within the natural order. 
 
95 
 
 and thus it contributes to the perfection of the intellect, because, as 
 the mind was made for truth, every presentation of truth must con- 
 duce to the perfection of the mind. Even as to those truths which, as 
 the Vatican Council declares, men may know by the unassisted light 
 of reason, how" confused were the brightest minds among the an- 
 cient sages, and how impotently did they strive to solve those prob- 
 lems of life and destiny which the glimmerings of reason but faintly 
 unfolded. Who among them did not ask, as Pilate did: What is 
 truth ? Wlio among them did not anticipate by many centuries the 
 poet's plaint ? 
 
 " What mark does truth, what bright distinction bear ? 
 How do we know that what we know is true ? 
 How shall we falsehood fly, and truth pursue ? " 
 
 But to see the good is little good unless we pursue the good. 
 
 Video meliara, prdboque ; deteriora sequor. 
 
 And the pagan writer here only tersely expresses the deplorable im- 
 potency of human natui-e to do the good which is congruent with it, 
 when struggling after that which, by its native powers, is practically 
 unattainable. 
 
 The liberation of the human will from the tyranny of passion, and 
 its emancipation through the glorious and unfettered liberty of the 
 Gospel, was the consequence of the teachings of the Chui'ch of 
 Clirist. The Church took man as a moral unit, and by her disclos- 
 ure of the truth in its beauty and fullness, by the sacramental action 
 of her treasures of ledeeming grace and love, transformed and ele- 
 vated, while it roundly developed the whole man. No system of 
 human ethics could accomplish this marvellous transformation. 
 Steeped, as he was, in sensuality and ignorance, neither Platonic 
 lore nor Socratic wisdom could lift man out of the abysmal depths 
 into which the primal Fall, and his own constantly accelerating 
 crimes, had plunged him. In the Christian religion alone man could 
 find that light which, first emerging from the primitive revelation, 
 was crystallized in the doctrines of a divine Kedeemer, and which 
 beaming forth more brightly with the course of ages, has regenerated 
 society, altered the whole system of human life, and been the cause 
 of all the subsequent progress of mankind. 
 
9? 
 
 It is surprisingly difficult for the mind of man to transcend pres- 
 ent conditions and environments. We judge of things as they 
 affect our senses, and especially our sense of sight, and no profound 
 philosophy is required to inform us that ideas generated by visual 
 experience are more tangible and impressive than those produced 
 by the action of the other senses ; as, perhaps, for similar reasons, 
 the knowledge born of experience seems more substantial than that 
 which reposes on authority. Here arises the obstruction to passing 
 just judgment on bygone ages, and upon the causes and events 
 which distinguished them, as well as the actors concerned in the 
 doings of far-off times. We make the fatal error of estimating 
 things past by present lights, without attempting to transiDoi-t our- 
 selves, in thought at least, to other times and places. It seems to 
 us that had we lived in the days of Lycurgus, we would have dined 
 on something more savory than Sj^artan broth, and had we been at 
 the Council of Salamanca we would have shown the Genoese Navi- 
 gator a direct route to a new world. But much as we pride our- 
 selves on our present superiority, there is no valid reason to suppose 
 that had we flourished at other periods, our ideas, our manners, or 
 our lives would have been essentially different from those of them 
 by whom we were surrounded ; there is every reason to assume the 
 contrary. 
 
 In like manner, after centuries of civilization and enlightenment; 
 after ages of effort on the part of Christianity to relume and reform 
 the earth, it is no easy task for us to understand the dark depravity 
 of that period at which the light of the Gospel first dawned upon a 
 bewildered world. One thing alone can teach us the true idea of 
 the moral obliquity of pagan times, and that is, that despite the in- 
 nate love of truth that burns in the breast of man; despite the 
 horoic lives of the early Christians; despite the convincing proofs 
 that accompanied the introduction of the Christian religion and at- 
 tested the divinity of its doctrines: it nevertheless encountered the 
 most unrelenting opposition and its followers the most truculent per- 
 secution that hatred could conceive or malignity execute. But the 
 Church of God rose triumphantly over all assaults, because she was 
 upheld of God. With the advent of Constantine, Christianity be- 
 came a ruling power in the world, and with the supremacy of Chris- 
 tianity the crisis between the ancient and the modern world was 
 
97 
 
 bridged over and tlie era of progress and civilization began its irre- 
 sistible march. The Church passed her hand over the chaotic ele- 
 ments, with heavenly skill and organizing force, and there came 
 forth the beauty of a divine transfiguration. A new principle of life 
 had sprung into being, vivifying the earth by its wondrous power 
 and producing Hfe differing from all preceding forms of existence. 
 This principle was the energizing spirit of Christianity, introducing 
 by its action upon discordant and repellant elements a new or a 
 second creation, just as the Spirit of God brooding over the formless 
 void called into being a first creation. The rapid diffusion of her 
 doctrines; the courageous resistance of her adherents to all forms of 
 persecution; the sublime purity of her principles, preserved from 
 age to age, without corruption or deviation, attracted to her the at- 
 tention of mankind as the most remarkable historical occuiTence in 
 the whole course of human annals, and proclaimed her to be futura 
 mistress of states, government, science, and civilization. 
 
 Modern civilization is not the continuation of pagan civilization, 
 but is the creation of the Catholic Church. Its component elements 
 are twofold, moral and material ; and wliile the first was absolutely 
 created, the second was incalculably promoted by the action of the 
 Church. The features of moral civihzation, as Cardinal Manning 
 has pointed out, are : 1, The Christian household created by the sac- 
 rament of Christian marriage ; 2, the Christian people formed by 
 Christian education ; 3, the Christian State elevated by the higher 
 law of Christian morals. 
 
 Of Christian man*iage and Christian education full treatment has 
 been made in other pages ; here it is necessary to refer to the Chiistian 
 State 
 
 The Christian State is simply the temporal sovereignty " elevated 
 by the higher law of Christian morals " to a plane of Christian action. 
 Like the social authority, in all times and conditions, its power lies 
 within tlie temporal order ; its rule lies over the ordering of those 
 things which concern natural right and the natural end of man, and 
 pertain to the tranquillity and stability of society ; but at the same 
 time it does not lose sight of man's supematui'al end, and its purpose 
 is to so order man's civil relations that it may facilitate the attainment 
 of the ultimate end of man. Thus, it does not rest on the i^rinciple 
 laid down by Aristotle, that the State exists for itself. It recognizes 
 7 
 
98 
 
 that its authority springs from God's appointment, to whom it is 
 accountable in its rulers, since it is, as the Apostle says, " the minister 
 to man for good." The Christian State is that which dwells in 
 amity and concord with the spiritual power, in no wise encroach- 
 ing upon the Church's jurisdiction, impairing her free action, or 
 impeding the exercise of her rights ; but, on the contrary, harmo- 
 nizing, on all conceivable lines within its proper sj)here, with the 
 Church in its action and influence upon society. Under the Christian 
 State the two powers are united, and yet they are distinct ; they are 
 in one sense co-ordinate, but in another subordinate ; one human, 
 the other superhuman ; one natural, the other supernatural. Where 
 the Christian State exists, the laws, authority, and institutions of the 
 Church are both recognized and respected ; and that ideal relation 
 designed by God and aptly likened to the union of Christian 
 marriage, is fostered and promoted between Church and State. This 
 was the lofty ideal contemplated by Gregory the Great before the 
 close of his remarkable Pontificate, and was also entertained by 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 Such was the Christian State created by the Church. It had no 
 existence in the pagan era. Under the pagan constitution of the 
 State the civil and religious functions were exercised by the same 
 authority and centered in the same person. Thus the State was not re- 
 ligious, but was religion. Keligious unity, when maintained and sup- 
 ported by political institutions, is an appreciable benefit to man and 
 society ; but this benefit becomes a bane when the State itself usurps 
 the office and authority of religion. Liberty of conscience is then 
 proscribed, and the Church is subordinated to the State, and often 
 reduced to complete subjection. By consequence, the national religion 
 becomes the only true religion, and all others are banished as 
 pernicious and impious. The distinction of the two powers, entirely 
 consistent with their co-operation, and which is the only true con- 
 dition of social life, unknown to Paganism and first promulgated by 
 the Gospel, was never realized except through the influence of 
 Christianity, or the Catholic Church. 
 
 Outside of Catholicity real civil liberty had never had existence, 
 and civil liberty is the foundation of the State. Under the pagan State 
 individualism was a negative factor in society, but the Catholic 
 Church always opposed the encroachments of the civil authority 
 
99 
 
 upon the right of the individual, and to her influence, running 
 through the social economy of the Middle Ages, is modern society 
 indebted for her civilization and freedom. Civil and political liberty 
 are founded upon the fundamental truth of man's equality with 
 man, and the fact that man as man has no authority over man, except 
 what has been delegated to him, whether mediately or immediately, 
 by God. But the Church, while maintaining the distinction of 
 the two powers, exercised her right to establish the absolute 
 condition of Christian truth in its relation with the civil and political 
 power. Obedience to legitimate authority was enjoined by her as 
 of divine law, but the exactions and tyrannies of princes she con- 
 demned with tireless and courageous voice. She fought with 
 indomitable perseverance against the revival of pagan materialism, 
 the corruptions of the renaissance, and the despotism of kings and 
 governments. She rallied to the rescue of society when it was 
 menaced by the tyranny of the feudal system, by political anarchy, 
 by universal serfage, by the prevalence of might, and when without 
 her timely interposition civil liberty would have expired. But for 
 the tireless energy of her sovereign inilers, her Gregorys, her Innocents, 
 her Bonifaces, and her JuHans, the hard-won fruits of her victory 
 over Paganism would have been annulled by the triumphant restora- 
 tion of Csesarism and State absolutism in the countries but recently 
 converted to the light of Christianity by the influence of her teachings. 
 Strange to tell, it was the German sovereigns, so much distiaguished 
 for their rugged individuality and so readily converted by the 
 Church, who were concerned with . transplanting into Europe the 
 laws, customs, and morals of the East. 
 
 The Church planted, by the sanctions of religion, the civil author- 
 ity upon h. rock ; but at the same time justified resistance to civil 
 power under certain circumstances, and upheld, for the consolation 
 of mankind, the cheering doctrine that unjust authority was no 
 authority at all. 
 
 Her most unsparing blows were levelled at the institution of 
 slavery. The institution of slavery is inimical to the permanent 
 progress of every State ; but such is the consecration of vested 
 Tights that they are relinquished with supreme reluctance and often 
 with the utmost violence. This was eminently so with slavery, and 
 those who reproach the Church with her tardiness in securing the 
 
100 
 
 manumission of slaves should look back on the civil war in the 
 United States and count in blood the cost of Lincoln's proclama- 
 tion of emancipation. All the philosophers of antiquity, Zeno and 
 Epicurus, Epictetus and Plato, considered slavery as inherent in the 
 very nature of civil society, and even Aristotle is at pains to justify 
 its existence and necessity. The Catholic Church sealed the doom 
 of slavery. She embraced the poor slave to her bosom, and elevated 
 him to her highest dignities. " There is neither bond nor free, for 
 all are one in Christ Jesus." This was the solution of the problem, 
 and were it not for the example of the Church in liberating her own 
 slaves and the powerful influence of her voice in counselling others to 
 do the same, the curse of slavery would still afflict, perhaps, the 
 whole civilized world, and the misery now weighing like a nightmare 
 upon the Oriental nations would also harass the most enlightened 
 countries of the west. No power on earth could have accomplished 
 the abolition of slavery, save the power of her who could proclaim 
 with divine accent, that £ill men were equal before God, and there- 
 fore equal to one another ; that all were children of a common 
 Father, and all were therefore brothers. 
 
 Besides the liberation of man, the exaltation of woman was due to 
 the teaching and influence of the Church. The recognition of the 
 Virgin Mary as the Mother of God was the rational motive for re- 
 storing the female sex to the position of dignity and honor so long 
 withheld. Mary was the model of her sex and the mirror of true 
 womanhood, but she also was a vessel of virginity and a paragon of 
 purity. Woman, hitherto in disgrace, should henceforth be honored, 
 because God Himself had honored her. No longer the slave of 
 man's lust and passions, she was to be esteemed as his helpmeet and 
 honored as his equal. Paganism had subjected her to a degrading 
 inferiority, and had regarded her as the minister to man's unholy 
 passion. The written page would blush to record the unmention- 
 able atrocities of which helpless woman was the victim in the pre- 
 Christian era. Juvenal in his famous satires lets some light on the 
 scene, and no pencil could paint with too dark a coloring the indig- 
 nities put upon the sex at periods when the immortal Plato wrote 
 his Republic to urge the foundation of a State in which not only a 
 community of goods, but a community of wives should obtain and 
 no man should be embarrassed with the knowledge of his paternity 
 
101 
 
 Under the benign influence of the teachings of the Church, woman 
 became the object of man's respect, reverence, and love. Her 
 whom he had formerly looked upon as a vessel of vileness, became a 
 " vessel of honor," to borrow a sacred expression ; and she whom he 
 had treated with contempt and coldness he regarded with tender- 
 ness and veneration. 
 
 The same refinement of feeling and gentleness of manners ex- 
 tended through the whole structure of society when the Church 
 came to inculcate the meekness and docility of the Gospel as the 
 true standard of human conduct. Even in ages now esteemed as 
 but semi-civilized, the urbanity of manners, the mildness and lenity 
 of public officials, the offices of courtesy and kindness among aU 
 grades of society, would serve as a salutary lesson to the hauteur, the 
 superciliousness, and the hollow, civilized mockeries of social forms 
 in the present much-vaunted progress of society. 
 
 The miraculous nature, as it may be styled, of the social trans- 
 formation may be duly appreciated by reflecting on the character of 
 those peoples who were the subject of this prodigious change. They 
 were the barbarians of the North. 
 
 With the disappearance of the Roman Empire in 486, the Church, 
 the true civilizer, brought the torch of faith, the light of civil liberty, to 
 the barbaric hordes of the North, or rather they came to her in the 
 first instance to behold the light. 
 
 The fortifications of the Roman frontier opposed no effectual bar- 
 rier to the assault of the barbarians as they poured out of their rug- 
 ged fastnesses from the dark forests of Germany to plunder, de- 
 spoil, and lay waste the civilization of centuries. They conquered 
 Rome, indeed, but were in turn conquered by the power of Chris- 
 tian faith and love. Only to the eye of faith is revealed the secret of 
 this immortal triumph of the Church over the untamed and unmit- 
 igable ferocity of nations who swept down upon works of the 
 ancient world, as the typhoon riots upon the sandy plains, or as the 
 tornado convulses the sea. The finger of God was here. The only 
 explanation is found in the doctrine, the miracles, and the grace of 
 Jesus Christ. In the progress of civilization the designs of Provi- 
 dence are always manifest to the mind of the pious believer, both in 
 the particular and in the general phenomena of history. Under the 
 good Providence of God, the Church was the saviour of society and 
 
102 
 
 the preserver of the old civilization which she linked to the new, and 
 thus gave possibility and actuality to the great march of humanity. 
 If the irruption of the wild hordes of Northern Europe had not been 
 stayed in its impetuous course ; if there had been no Leo to check 
 the " Scourge of God," as Attila was styled, no imagination could 
 picture the " splendid desolation " that would have overtaken all the 
 grandeur of human achievement from the dawn to the decline of 
 Rome's imperial power. Every monument of antiquity would have 
 perished ; every throne would have crumbled into dust; every ves- 
 tige of civilization would have vanished, and left the world in Cim- 
 merian gloom which no light could ever penetrate. 
 
 With patient toil the Church gathered up the fragments of ancient 
 learning which remained after the deluge of barbarism had subsided^ 
 and securely sheltered them in her archives for the delight and in- 
 struction of posterity. Vandalism could no longer touch them. For 
 more than five centuries, as Hallam says, learning was confined to 
 her bosom, and she " kept it flowing in the worst of seasons, a slen- 
 der but living stream." The ancient literature of Greece and Rome 
 were rescued by her from the general shipwreck; she set them, like 
 jewels that sparkle when unbosomed from the earth, in the diadem 
 of Christian philosophy and theology; made them reflect the glory of 
 religion, and shine with a lustre which " paled the ineffectual fire " of 
 paganism's most golden period. Hers was the hand that drew forth, 
 from the Hterary lumber-room of dust-crowned ages, the orations of 
 Cicero, the comedies of Plautus, the histories of Herodotus and Xeno- 
 phon, and the works of Lucretius, Quinctillian, and Tertullian. She 
 founded libraries all over Europe, and her monks and anchorites dis- 
 solved their days in the pleasure of study and reading, and, like the 
 temple of Apollo, their cells and sylvan grottoes became the haunt of- 
 the Muses and the sanctuary of literary splendor. " The medicine 
 of the mind," as books w^ere esteemed, she administered to every 
 class, and by skillful industry and research she amassed the choicest 
 productions of every clime. Nicholas V. laid the foundations of the 
 incomparable library of the Vatican, and Sixtas IV. was no less 
 celebrated for his protection of the arts and sciences and his munifi- 
 cent patronage of education. It was the patient hand of the monk 
 and the taste of distinguished Pontiffs, and the culture of the biil- 
 liant galaxy who always clustered around the Pontifical chair, as 
 
103 
 
 planets around the sun, that conspired to keep alive the flame of 
 learning when its pursuit was arduous, when manuscripts were im- 
 portant articles of commerce, and when the restoration of letters was 
 environed with difficulties and the very ability to read no common 
 acquirement. Gregory the Great, on the testimony of the Protestant 
 historian Voigt, enforced on bishops the important duty of protect- 
 ing letters, fostering arts and founding schools, and long before the 
 Reformation and the invention of typography, the Catholic clergy 
 were the chief, if not the sole, guardians of the wants of public in- 
 struction. From the days of Charlemagne to those of Charles the 
 Fifth, the Church was the arbiter of hterary taste, the sponsor of edu- 
 cation, the patron of science, art, and philosophy. She is the historic 
 mother of all the great universities, from Bologna, Salamanca, Paris, 
 Louvain to Cambridge and Oxford — Oxford with its twenty thousand 
 scholars who formed a fighting army in the Middle Ages. " Catholic 
 Italy supplied," as Hallam remarks, " the fire at which other nations 
 lighted their torches." The courts of Italy were superior in literary 
 and artistic attainments to those of London, Stockholm, or Copen- 
 hagen. Italy was the fountain-head of science for centuries. Her 
 renown among the nations had culminated before the Augsburg 
 Confession was dreamed of in the hterary magnificence of the golden 
 age of Leo X., whose impartial biographer declares that even 
 " among the predecessors of Leo, the philosopher may contemplate 
 with approbation the eloquence and courage of Leo I.; the benefi- 
 cence, candor, and pastoral attention of Gregory the I. ; the various 
 acquirements of Sylvester EC.; the industry, acuteness, and learning 
 of Innocent the IV. and of Pius 11. ; and of the munificence and love 
 of Hterature so strikingly displayed in the character of Nicholas V.'^ 
 Monks of the Catholic Church were the fathers of English literature, 
 and their sacred songs were chanted by the choristers of the monas- 
 tery long before a Chaucer told his tales, or a ShakesjDeare " held the 
 mirror up to nature." 
 
 This is the Church which contributed, nay, made, the progress 4)f 
 civilization by the men of renown whom she gave to the world. In 
 the march of events we are prone to ascribe too large a share to in- 
 dividuals as to the importance of their parts in the drama of history; 
 but while recognizing the action of that higher and invisible power 
 which rules all things, we are not to become oblivious to the fact that 
 
104 
 
 God works through human agencies, and men are but instruments to 
 accomplish His sovereign will. The man of destiny is no historical 
 fiction, but a philosophical reality. This is the Church, then, which, 
 in the designs of God, raised up for the admiration and instruction 
 of men such geniuses as Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, 
 Koger Bacon, St. Bernard, St. Ignatius, St. Augustine ; such orators 
 as Chrysostom, Bossuet, Massillon, Lacordaire ; such writers as St. 
 Jerome, a Kempis, Fenelon, Lingard, a Lapide, Rhorbacker, Manning, 
 Hergenrother, Wiseman, and Newman; such johilosophers as Male- 
 branche, Balmez, Von Schlegel, Gioberti, and Des Cartes; such poets 
 as Tasso, Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch, Racine, Corneille, Pope, Southey, 
 and Moore; such astronomers as Secchi; such linguists as Mezzo- 
 fante; and such rulers as Charlemagne, St. Louis, Alfred and Edward 
 of England, King Stephen of Hungary, and Bodolph of Hapsburg. 
 
 It is the testimony of Edmund Burke that France produced more 
 remarkable men than all the Protestant universities of Europe ; of 
 Gibbon that one Benedictine monastery published more scientific 
 works than all the educational establishments of post-Reformation 
 days ; and of Hutchinson, in the house of Parliament, that Catholicism 
 was at one time the religion of the most numerous, the religion of the 
 most enlightened nations in Europe, and the religion of the most 
 famous characters who have ever honored the name of man. Col. 
 Mitchell, in his life of Wallenstein, declares that " religion and civiliza- 
 tion can never repay the debt they owe to the Pontiffs and to the 
 Chui'ch of Rome, who, for so long a period, made the most noble 
 efforts to advance mankind upon the path of progress." To that 
 Church modern Europe is indebted for its knowledge, its civilization, 
 its laws, and its acquaintance with the fine arts of music, painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture. 
 
 If in any department of intellect the Romans evinced the stfength 
 of their acumen, it was in the matter of the perfection of their laws, 
 which to this day form a comprehensive system of practical equity 
 ajid universal jurisprudence, both for States and individuals. Nearly 
 all cases coming under the conventional or customary law of nations, 
 will find some precedent in the jus gentium of the Romans, and 
 nearly every case affecting individuals has its exemplar in the 
 Roman civil law. But when the great fabric which valor and policy 
 had founded upon the seven hills of Rome, through general political 
 
105 
 
 corruption and the decline of knowledge, and virtue began to 
 crumble, all respect for the supremacy of the law commenced to 
 fade likewise, and when the barbarous hordes of the North had by 
 their martial energy and irresistible force imposed their yoke upon 
 the ancient possessors of the Empire, they would also have engrafted 
 the wild and lawless individualism upon the conquered, but for the 
 moulding, restraining, and civilizing hand of the Church. In some 
 respects the Roman law, at least the jus gentium, was contracted and 
 illiberal in the character of its provisions, owing to the influence of 
 the pagan mythology ; but the doctrines of Catholicity, universal in 
 their application and benign in their intent, gave a broader exten- 
 sion and a milder character to the old Roman jurisprudence. Most 
 of the modem international law, sa»e such as wholly new exigencies 
 created, has been deduced from the canon law of the Church and 
 the Roman civil law. The Church helped to revive the study of the 
 Roman law, and under Gregory IX. the canon law was reduced to a 
 code which the Church employed in public and private controversies. 
 When the Church, which had constituted a sort of bridge spanning 
 the chaotic gulf which separated declining antiquity from modern 
 civilization, had fully formed and consolidated the Christian govern- 
 ment of the nations, and all recognized one sovereign, spiritual 
 head, the authority of the Roman Pontiff was frequently invoked to 
 arbitrate difficulties between different nations. The Pope thus be- 
 came the great pacificator of Europe at a time, a crucial period of 
 history, when without such supreme intervention, all the aii, science, 
 learning, law, and government which had been built up upon the 
 ruins of the ancient world, would have disappeared in the social 
 convulsions and political revolutions of the new order, whose 
 orgasm would be unchecked by any paramount authority. It was 
 thus that European nations escaped in many instances the abso- 
 lutism of kings and emperors, and often were the people compelled 
 to take refuge under the crook of the Chiurch, for it is not easy to 
 conceive, a^ Burke has justly observed, a government as mild as 
 those of the Church sovereignties. International polity for many 
 centuries recognized the Papal supremacy, at least in its pacificatory 
 office, tiU pagan policy was once more revived when Henry VIII. 
 cast off the authority of the Church, and united the civil and the 
 spiritual functions in his own royal person. 
 
106 
 
 Happily for England, as nearly all commentators on her constitu- 
 tion show, the political principles of Catholic ages she preserved in 
 her government and public institutions. Her sturdy yeomanry 
 objected to the royal Csesarism which overspread Europe after the 
 renaissance had attempted to resurrect pagan forms and pagan 
 customs, with pagan literature, and though unable to undo the 
 unholy usurpation of the king, they sought to temper his authority 
 and resist his despotism by parliaments and commons. They held 
 tenaciously to the principles of Magna Charta, which Stephen Lang 
 ton. Catholic Archbishop, had extorted from a reluctant tyrant ; and 
 the old laws and traditions ; the ancient legislation, dating back to 
 the days of Alfred ; representative and constitutional government, 
 coming down from Catholic tim6<6 — all were held fast by the people 
 as a priceless heirloom derived from a religion which they no longer 
 acknowledged or confessed. Similarly, the Church was mainly re- 
 sponsible for whatever of free government existed in the continental 
 nations after the great revolution of the sixteenth century. Spanish 
 liberty, tiU overthrown by the absolutism of Philip II ; free insti- 
 tutions in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland ; civil liberty in West- 
 phalia and the Rhenish countries and the enlightened constitution 
 of St. Stephen of Hungary, were all imbued with the spirit and 
 formed on the models suggested by the teachings of Catholic phi- 
 losophers and publicists, guided by the doctrines of that Church 
 which is the mother of civil liberty, because inspired by the Spirit 
 of divine truth. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 
 
 Nor was the Church less concerned with the preservation and de- 
 velopment of the fine arts — those refinements of civilization which 
 satisfy the spiritual cravings of man s nature, elevate the mind, and 
 soothe the heart. Her system of divine worship was admirably cal- 
 culated to unfold the beauty and the power of these agencies in 
 captivating the heart and intellect. 
 
 Music caught new and diviner inspiration from her heavenly fire. 
 Her temples resounded night and day with the strains of sacred 
 song, and her daily invocation to her children was to praise the Lord 
 with the psaltery and harp, as Israel did of old. Her musical com- 
 positions have never been equalled, and never will be surpassed. 
 The majestic organ, with its mighty volume, sounding the voice of 
 
107 
 
 God, was first heard in a Benedictine monastery. The solemn, 
 plaintive chant which moves the soul to tears, was arranged by Pope 
 Gregory, and those Ughter, but still solemn strains, ^\^hich ai*e so 
 admirably adapted to express pathos and feeling, are named after a 
 Cecilia. 
 
 At the solemn midnight Mass the deep-toned organ sounded 
 through the monastery aisles, accompanied by the chant of the 
 monks, as in meek procession they passed from sanctuary to vesti- 
 bule and back again to affar. Thus on the wings of music, the most 
 spiritual and spiritualizing of the arts, the Church sought to raise 
 the heart to God. 
 
 Painting was, like music, her own creation, for but little survived 
 from pagan times to stand as models to the modern artist. But like 
 Prometheus, the Chiistian painter caught his fire from heaven. Soli- 
 tude is the nurse of genius; and in the stillness of his monastery 
 cell, the pensive monk called forth the wondrous creations of the 
 mind, and with form and color clad them and made them breathe 
 and live. One order alone, the Dominican, produced names that are 
 immortal. The great paintings of the past which have won the en- 
 during praise of generations, are monuments to the inspiring genius 
 of Catholicity. How sublime in composition and expression ; in 
 coloring, how unspeakably rich and natui-al are the works of the im- 
 mortal CathoUc masters ! What genius for relief and perspective ; 
 what marvellous blending and hai-monizing of tints ; what glorious 
 translation of nature to the realm of art exhibited in their frescoes 
 and paintings ! What a scene of confused action, violent motion, 
 fearful expression in Tintoretti's " Massacre of the Innocents," in 
 Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment." Scenes, indeed, executed with 
 superhuman power, and almost too tragic for human contemplation. 
 
 Look on the " Magdalen " of Titian — and look unmoved, if you can. 
 It is a representation, not so much of body as of soul. Standing in 
 her grot, with one hand laid upon her breast, her eyes raised to 
 heaven in an agony of penitence, what tearful anguish in the plead- 
 ing countenance, lighted with the slight smile which seems to betoken 
 the approach of comfort and of hope ; and the " Crucifixion," by the 
 same hand, how it moves the inmost soul and opens aU of pity's un- 
 locked fount. The mother, fainting and falling when the " sword 
 of sorrow " had at length pierced through her soul, and John and 
 
103 
 
 Magdalen gazing on their suffering Master with devoted love and 
 passionate grief. 
 
 Then, in his admirable " Annunciation " and still more beautiful 
 " Assumption," what artistic grouping and arrangement, what com- 
 posed sublimity of expression, conjoined with reverential awe and 
 tenderness. In the latter masterpiece is the Virgin, standing upon 
 a cloud, robed with celestial light and borne upward with hosts of 
 attending angels, while beneath are lingering the adoring train of 
 the Apostles. With arms extended and glowing, upraised counten- 
 ance, the Virgin Mother ascends, radiant and glorious, io the throne 
 beyond the stars. 
 
 And the incomparable creations of Correggio, Paul Veronese, 
 Leonardi da Vinci, poet, mathematician, painter ; Guido Reni, 
 Giulio Bomano, Raefaelli, Fra Bartolomaeo, Murillo, Velasquez, 
 Rubens, and many others, are not these chefs-d'oeuvre the result of 
 that heavenly flame of piety and genius lighted upon the altar of 
 Catholic inspiration. Catholic thought, and Catholic feeling? 
 Assuredly it was not from Pagan sources they drew their lofty and 
 godlike ideals of art. 
 
 The divine seed of knowledge, from which spiritual life grows, 
 was dead under Paganism's baneful reign. Art was then the hand- 
 maid of the baser passions. The flame of worship, which ascended 
 to the blue heavens above, arose from altars dedicated to Bacchus, 
 to Venus and Apollo. Down in the depths of the tombs, in the 
 bowels of the earth, the children of the cross sang in happy unison 
 a new song to the Creator, and sent forth with unwearied repetition 
 the salutation to the Virgin Mary. Then Christian aii began to live. 
 It is natural to man to express his feelings, not only by the voice, 
 but by the hand as weU. On the rock walls of the catacombs were 
 carved in rude outline figures expressive of the feelings of the 
 Christian heart. A heart, symbolizing love ; an anchor, implying 
 steadfastness and hope ; a peacock, signifying omniscience and im- 
 mortality ; a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit ; a palm with the 
 chalics, meaning victory over death and destruction — such were the 
 rude beginnings of Christian art in the halls of the dead, where seven 
 millions slept in Christ, of whom two hundred thousand won the 
 martyr's crown. 
 
 For centuries, with varying fortunes. Catholic art forged ahead, 
 
109 
 
 till at length the mighty genius of Angelo and the exquisite felicity 
 of Raphael produced those prodigies of the pencil which are among 
 the most stupendous creations of art and genius united that history 
 has recorded, or the world can boast. Since the pen of inspiration 
 wrote the description of the bii-th of light, nothing ever conve^^ed to 
 the mind of man such an adequate idea of the process of creation 
 and transfused such awful sublimity into the living images which 
 shall appear before the affrighted eyes of the sinner on the final 
 Judgment Day, as the hand of Raphael in the one case and that of 
 Angelo in the other. In the first the Eternal Father moves through 
 chaos, laden, as it is, with dense, black clouds, broken by occasional 
 flashes of lurid light. His head is turned aside. His arms are ex- 
 tended. His limbs in violent motion, as He sepai-ates light from 
 darkness, reduces chaos into order. His whole form instinct with the 
 stupendous effort of creation. Again, He moves with tranquil 
 majesty through a transparent atmosphere above the new-formed 
 globe, separating with His finger the diy land from the sea. Now, 
 He rises above the earth, and wielding the sun in one hand and the 
 moon in the other. He fixes them in the firmament of heaven, as far 
 apart as day is from night. Finally, He walks the earth, with arms 
 outstretched in benediction, and obediently- to the tread of His foot- 
 steps, the multitudinous animal creation springs into existence. 
 Conception can mount no higher. Execution equals the lofty theme 
 and befits the Almighty Actor. 
 
 And the terrible grandeur of the " Last Judgment." In the centre 
 of a semicircle formed of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, spec- 
 tators of the awful scene, stands the Judge of heaven and earth. In 
 form, colossal; in limbs, titanic; in expression and attitude terribly 
 subUme; with hands uplifted in repulsion, the energy of avenging 
 justice upon His frowning brow; the inclination of forwai'd motion 
 given to His body to depict the intensity of His action; His ]ips 
 seem to utter the frightful malediction: Depart from Me, ye cursed, 
 into everlasting fire. The doomed reprobate plunge downward in 
 a common torrent, and the angels hurl thunderbolts upon them. 
 With cowering head, shrinking muscles, swollen eyes, and crouching 
 forms, the unhappy victims of divine vengeance betray that terror 
 and dismay which will overtake them when in the evil day they shall 
 call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them and hide 
 
110 
 
 them from the wrath of the Omnipotent. The other features of this 
 deathless fresco we need not dwell uj)on, nor do we possess the 
 power to describe the overmastering sublimity of the i)icture as a 
 whole; a work which has made imperishable the fame of this gifted 
 son of Catholic genius. If, when observed only through the medium 
 of steel engravings, these works are capable of producing the most 
 profound emotions of which the heart is susceptible, what must be 
 the eif ect of the originals upon the favored beholder ? 
 
 The Catholic Church has also been the zealous promoter of archi- 
 tecture She built the great basilicas, cathedrals, and churches of 
 the world. When they sought to construct temples of worship 
 worthy of the Almighty in a city upon the ridges of the Apennines 
 overlooking the sea, Romanesque architecture began to flourish 
 under Theodoric. Her abbeys, convents, and colleges were remark- 
 able for beauty of proportion, splendor of external finish, marvellous 
 richness of interior decoration. Thus her monasteries became 
 centres of the highest culture, and villages grew into walled towns. 
 The palace of Charlemagne, now but little more than a splendid 
 memory, and the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, once the great mon- 
 arch's chapel, were the offspring of Catholic inspiration, and the 
 Cathedral at Hildesheim was planned by Bishop Bern ward in the 
 eleventh century. Gothic architecture was not possible until the 
 Northern sons of the forest had felt the religious influence and ob- 
 served the models of the Church in Italy. The cathedrals of May- 
 ence, Strasburg, Worms, Spires, Milan, Florence, York, and West- 
 minster were inspired by Catholic genius and built by Catholic 
 hands. The graceful, pointed Gothic arch, supported by the fluted 
 column, crowned with capitals exquisitely carved, sometimes made 
 wholly of marble, and sometimes encrusted with that material and 
 inlaid with foliage and branchwork, upon which the sunlight played 
 with magical effect and indescribable charm, originated in the de- 
 vout mind of the Catholic architect, who sought to transfer to the 
 purposes of religion something of the form and beauty of nature. 
 Fantastic and irregular this Gothic architecture arose at first, but 
 when, polished and refined by the mellowing spirit of Christian- 
 ity, it came forth in its full-orbed splendor, how inspiring, how im- 
 posing and magnificent. 
 
 The wealth of interior ornament in the Catholic churches of the 
 
Ill 
 
 Middle Ages was of surpassing splendor and richness. The costly 
 candelabra; the bejeweled vestments, radiant as the rainbow; the 
 glittering mosaics of painstaking workmanship ; the baptismal font 
 with its curious carvings and s^'mbolic devices; its representations 
 of the four rivers of Paradise and the heavenly Jerusalem ; the 
 -chests for precious relics, adorned with paintings and ornamented 
 with gold; the ivory shrines and cricifixes; the engraved and illum- 
 inated gospels, psalters, and missals filled with miniatures colored 
 and gilded with elaborate elegance and finish, which all together 
 demonstrate the high degree of perfection which these minor ai-ts 
 had attained long anterior to the time that English Dissenters held 
 in horror stained-glass and organs, that John Knox, as Carlyle says, 
 smashed crucifixes in France, and that Luther hurled his inkstand at 
 ihe genius of evil. 
 
 Colonization has done more for the progress and civilization of the 
 world than, perhaps, any single civilizing agency. The Catholic 
 nations have been the great colonizers of the world. Spain, Portu- 
 gal, and France sent t'leir colonists to the farthest parts of the 
 earth. The spirit of enterprise was always blended with the spirit 
 of faith, and a Xavier did as much for China and Japan in the 
 sixteenth century as a Stanley did for Africa in the nineteenth. 
 The earhest encroachments upon the Western wilderness were made 
 "by Catholic missionaries, who tracked our rivers and scaled our 
 mountains when travelling was daring and difficult compared with 
 the safe and economical transportation wrought by the progress of 
 improvement. The names of Marquette, Lasalle, Champlain, Jaques 
 Cartier, De Smet, Da Leon, and a hundred more, are indelibly 
 written on the broad surface of the Western continent. The sound 
 of axes followed the voice of the missionary, and the pioneers of 
 material improvement traced their path by the footsteps of the 
 heralds of the Gospel. Were some pen dippdd in the hues of truth 
 to paint the real adventures of the pioneers of civilization, when 
 our rivers were first navigated by little arks as incompetent to ascend 
 the turbulent stream as to sail the Atlantic, we should do honor to 
 the heroic courage and devotion of men who cast into our soil the 
 seminal principles of reHgion and progress. 
 
 To what dangers were they not exposed ! To what inclemencies 
 from the season, and to what perils from the savage and inhospitable 
 
112 
 
 surroundings ! Compelled not infrequently to sleep without shelter ; 
 to wade through morasses or through snows ; to climb lofty cliffs 
 and descend through dismal gorges ; to carry life in their hands — 
 nay, hold it up as a target — daily, hourly expecting captivity, torture, 
 and lingering death, they esteemed all as dross provided they might 
 gain souls to God and seal the continent for Christ, even at the cost 
 of the effusion of their blood. They were the servants of posterity 
 and the benefactors of succeeding generations. They sowed in tears 
 and blood, and we reap their sheaves rejoicing. They came to gladden 
 the new world with the light of the Gospel, even while they sunk 
 under the weight of their unmerited woe. Through scenes of gloom 
 and misery, they opened here an asylum for liberty of conscience at 
 the same time that they cut through the wilderness a path for sub- 
 sequent progress. In the history of mankind how many pages are 
 devoted to extol the exploits of those who devastated fields, laid waste 
 countries, sacked cities, and overthrew empires. The world rings 
 with the fame of an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Caesar. But instructed 
 by the experience of the past, which teaches us the true value of vic- 
 tories wrought in blood, all genuine lovers of the race will hold in 
 honor and precious remembrance the fame of men who, as they built 
 churches and planted colonies, laid broad and deep the foundations 
 of our enduring greatness and national prosperity. 
 
 Among them all was one band of men whose names history will 
 enroll in her brightest pages and entwine with the laurels of lenown. 
 They were the intrepid sons of St. Ignatius. Men of culture and 
 refinement, famed for science and sanctity ; the best educators in the 
 world, desirous of no distinction save that of influence over the 
 souls of men, kindled with an enthusiasm that defied all danger 
 and endured every toil, they passed from the cities of Continental 
 Europe to Japan, China, Abyssinia, and to Patagonia, where they 
 founded the model republic of the world. To every corner of our 
 country they penetrated with the same intrepidity and undaunted 
 devotion. Along the course of the Arkansas, the muddy Missouri, 
 and the mighty Mississippi ; in the smiling valleys of the Genesee 
 and the Mohawk ; upon the granite hills of New Hampshire and in 
 the pine forests of Maine ; through the labyrinthine windings of the 
 Colorado, the Green River and the Bed, and to the far-off golden 
 slope of the Pacific, from Vancouver to San Lucas, and from San 
 
113 
 
 liucas to the Gulf, they spread the light of Christianity, upheld the 
 emblem of man's salvation, and carried the banners of the cross in 
 peaceful but glorious triumph from pole to pole. Landing upon our 
 shores they boldly plunged into the unknown and unexplored interior 
 to summon the savage native to forsake his idolatry and bow down 
 in meek submission to the cross ; and, erecting rude altars in the 
 deep forest glade, the Holy Mass was said, and the first tinkle of the 
 Mass-bell, floating like a wave of heavenly melody upon the morning 
 air, announced the consecration of our country to the Lord and King 
 of mankind. And whether they walked under smiling skies or faced 
 the frowning storm ; whether in bland and balmy valleys or on 
 cloud-capped and wind-swept mountains, they toiled their weary 
 round, they had but one aim, one hope, one cause for which to do 
 and dare and die — to exalt the name of Chiist and bring to all flesh 
 the light of God's salvation. 
 
 They are gone from the land of the living, but their memory is 
 immortal, for the good can never die. Side by side in the rugged 
 edge of battle they fell, but their fame shall endure. The chains 
 that rankled on the feet of God's forsaken children they struck 
 loose, and the rock-ribbed fastnesses of error they broke down. 
 They disarmed prejudice, they silenced opposition, and the sheen of 
 their swords will flash light uj)on this continent while a Christian 
 treads its soil. Like Moses in the arid desert, they smote the rocky 
 hearts of men, and the waters of salvation gushed freely forth ; like 
 the angel at the pool of Bethsaida, they stin-ed all the fountains of 
 human feeling and gave heahng to the sin-sick multitude. Now 
 they rest from their labors, for their works have followed them. 
 They fought the good fight ; they kept the faith ; they have gone to 
 their reward and won the incorruptible crown of the Christian 
 conqueror. Inebriated by the fullness of God's house they hunger 
 not, neither do they thirst any more ; because the Lamb shall rule 
 and shall lead them unto fountains of living waters, and God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes. The road that leads to the 
 Infinite's abode is steep ; but it is starry, too. They climbed the 
 steeps bravely, and now the stars flash upon their brows. The 
 white light of heaven, shooting from the unclouded splendor of the 
 Lamb, shines upon them. They stand not in need of the sun for a 
 light by day, nor of the moon for a light by night, for the glory of 
 8 
 
114 
 
 God's countenance is unto them a light that sparkles with fadeless 
 splendor evermore. 
 
 Nor was the Church at any period of her history insensible to the 
 advantages of material prosperity. She exalted the spiritual above 
 the temporal, as was but just, but she fostered industry and enter- 
 prise, always upheld the dignity of toil, and taught that labor should 
 not be robbed of its reward. The arts and sciences she encouraged; 
 inventive genius she esteemed; and commerce, the handmaid of 
 civilization, she did more to promote by her missionary efforts than 
 all the States and Governments of Europe. The words of Cardinal 
 Pecci, now the illustrious reigning Pontiff, explains her attitude 
 towards that material progress which her calumniators have plausibly 
 endeavored to show as incompatible with her rule and domination. 
 The effete and fallacious argument which vaunts the material superi- 
 ority of Protestant nations it is unnecessary to consider, for no man 
 can show anything in Catholic truth or Catholic teaching inconsistent 
 with the highest material advancement. On the contrary, she teaches 
 in the words of Leo XIII. : 
 
 " How grand and full of majesty doth man appear when he arrests 
 the thunderbolt, summons the electric flash, and how powerful 
 when he takes possession of the force of steam ! Is there not in 
 man, when he does these things, some spark of creative power? 
 The Church views these things with joy." 
 
 Under the shield and protection of the Church the manufacturing 
 and mercantile interests flourished with surprising vigor, in the 
 Repubhcs of Genoa, Florence, and Venice, and in most of the 
 cities and towns of Southern Europe, when the northern part was 
 oppressed by feudalism and distressed by idleness, stagnation, and 
 poverty. In France it was under the Catholic St. Louis, and in 
 Spain it was in the Catholic city of Barcelona, that trades-unions, or 
 trade- corporations, as they were called, took their origin, which, so 
 far as can be known, does not antedate the thirteenth century. 
 These unions had corporate powers, clearly defined and established 
 rights, and often wielded great influence in the State. They were 
 blessed and encouraged by the Church, which always recognized the 
 just claims of labor and the respectability of the artisan's employ- 
 ment. The principle of legitimate association upon which they 
 were founded the Church always justified, even as she does to-day 
 
115 
 
 with regard to the Knights of Labor, and to her patronage and 
 assistance they have often been indebted for their emancipation 
 from grinding task-masters, who, enriched by the fruits of their 
 toil, only mocked their dependence and derided their poverty. The 
 Church knows that an empty stomach is a poor civilizer. 
 
 The progress of poverty is to-day, as it was in the Middle Ages 
 under feudalism, a grave problem. As to the existence of poverty, 
 Henry George is right. If we adopt the Malthusian doctrine, that 
 population increases in geometrical proportion, while the means of 
 subsistence advances only in arithmetical ratio, the moral and 
 physical checks indicated by the author of the theory, will be of 
 small efficacy in the salvation of society. Every war would be a 
 blessing in disguise, and in point of fact we should live in perpetual 
 warfare. The only moral check that would have any real influence 
 in averting an issue so calamitous, was the celibacy of the clergy ; 
 the prevention of ill-advised and improvident marriages by the 
 watchfulness of pastors over their flocks, and the diminution of ille- 
 gitimate births by the restraints of reason and conscience upon the 
 empire of the passions. On the principle inculcated by our Lord 
 Himself, that if we seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, 
 all the rest shall be added unto us, the Church always insisted that the 
 moral and Christian virtues, chastity, charity, probity, and prudence, 
 as much as genius and science, belonged to the wealth and temporal 
 prosperity of a nation. To the poor plebeian she taught resignation, 
 self-denial, frugality, order, and economy ; the rich man she called 
 upon to moderate his avidity, to stimulate his charity and give alms 
 of his bounty to the needy. Disinclination to toil ; immorality and 
 ignorance ; improvidence and intemperance ; the pride of profes- 
 sional employments, for which but few were qualified, and the desire 
 to forsake the humbler avocations which the many must pursue ; the 
 unrestricted accumulation and concentration of commercial capital ; 
 the foundation of new feudal systems, whose barons would be bank- 
 ers and whose manufactories often multiply the poor instead of 
 relieving poverty ; agrarian monopoly, and the greed, cupidity, and 
 injustice of the lords of the soil, together with bad legislation, the 
 imperfection of public charitable institutions, and the neglect of 
 religion in education, politics, morals, and social institutions,— these 
 are among the chief causes of the social misery of mankind, and to 
 
116 
 
 overcome, or at least to neutralize the disastrous effects of habits, 
 tendencies, dispositions, and conditions which are a prolific spring of 
 poverty and suffering in every land, the Church devoted her vast 
 influence, her mighty energies, and her constant zeal. Poverty, 
 radical and extensive, is the outcome of a great historical fact, the 
 existence of slavery in all countries which had not embraced the 
 teachings and spirit of Christianity. Under the influence of the 
 Church a change was wrought in favor of the masses, but the trans- 
 formation was necessarily by slow and successive degrees. Even yet, 
 though the formal institution is abolished in Christian lands, the 
 old idea that men were but chattels is often evinced in the harsh 
 and tyrannical relations which subsist between employer and em- 
 ployed. But the great work of elevating the working classes, in so 
 far as it has been wrought, is the Church's achievement and the 
 Church's glory. Those Christians who have separated from the 
 Church of Eome, before the emancipation of labor and the destruc- 
 tion of feudalism in the West, like the Greek and Eastern Churches, 
 have done nothing, made no solitary step towards the liberation of 
 the great army of toilers. Indeed, that emancipation was impossible 
 without the progress of civil liberty as a factor in forming the public 
 mind ; — that liberty which Alexander III. affirmed to be the birth- 
 right of all men, and which the whole discipline of the Church was 
 designed to secure and perpetuate. Everything which contributed 
 to the pursuits of peace, to public happiness and prosperity, the 
 Church defended and protected. Martin V. proclaimed the authority 
 of temporal rulers against the anarchical and seditious ; Urban V. 
 asserted the right of property, the justice of commerce and of con- 
 tracts, the order of justice in compensation, restitution and self- 
 defense, the authority of judicial oaths and of public power ; Leo X. 
 affirmed the right and justice of war ; Alexander VII. maintained 
 the legislative power of civil government; and Alexander YIII., 
 Innocent X., Gregory XITE., and Urban VIII. defended free will and 
 asserted the existence of the moral law, for nations and individuals. 
 But material success is not the sole criterion of progress and civil- 
 ization, for such success the heathens had abundantly. 
 
 " All maDkind are students. How to live 
 And how to die forms the great lesson still." 
 
117 
 
 The enterprise of mankind is not to be limited to the acquisition 
 of wealth and the building of monuments of temporal grandeur. 
 Higher and nobler objects rise in the horizon. True progress makes 
 for heaven and God. Upon the great tide of time men drift along 
 with no chart or compass to guide their course save that which 
 religion and virtue can bestow. Before the soul of man opens 
 immeasurable fields, endless as time and wide as God's creation, 
 stretching onward thi'ough the untold rounds and cycles of eternity. 
 Each day, each hour, the thousand incidents of life leave their deep- 
 drawn traces on the soul for good or ill. " Unheeded all the currents 
 of our lives are bound in shallows and in miseries." Sick of vice, 
 and yet an enemy to virtue ; disgusted with pleasure, and yet its 
 constant votary ; regretful of the past, yet reckless of the present 
 and hopeless of the future — despair usurps the place of enjoyment, 
 and the heart makes itself a heaven in the chase of folly and the 
 pursuit of those transitory goods which yield no permanent satisfac- 
 tion, and work, as in the case of those empires and kingdoms of which 
 history records the mournful story, ruin for the individual and 
 calamity for the nation. The power of religion alone can give true 
 progress to society. Under the influence of religion the possibilities 
 of human advancement border on the* illimitable. 
 
 The human mind has ever been prone to fancy that the world is 
 yet to be the theatre of great events, in which the wonderful perfec- 
 tions of God's providence directing the deeds of men will be 
 displayed as it has never yet been permitted man to behold them. 
 Tradition has dehghted to discourse and poetry to sing of a golden 
 age in the beginning of the world's history, and both have looked 
 forward to the time when all things shall be restored to their primal 
 unity and perfection. Science and philosophy of to-day have with 
 their materializing tendencies sought to pour contempt upon these 
 high expectations, which, however remotely realizable, are, we think> 
 among the best aspirations of the human heart. Though perfection, 
 be not attainable, to aspire to it is a perfection itself. Who shall 
 place limits to the future ? Who shall say what secrets nature may 
 yet unfold ? Who shall tell us what the hidden principles of divine 
 grace and goodness may yet do for mankind ? 
 
 It required the genius of a Newton to discover the true theory of 
 the heavens ; but how many of the secrets of Nature are yet unex- 
 
118 
 
 plored ! We are yet only in the vestibule of Nature, and have not 
 found the key to the inner sanctuary of her being. As with nature, 
 so with grace and the supernatural powers of divinity. We know 
 not how much may be accomplished for mankind. Though God no 
 longer dwells visibly among the sons of men, He has left behind a 
 train of light like that which illumines the earth in the darkest hour 
 of the tempest. Upon the higher elevations and prominent peaks 
 of Christian contemplation, rising far above the clouds and shadows 
 of a gross, material world, we can discover a kindling light issuing 
 from the Eternal luminary, and flooding the world with its beneficent 
 radiance. God's work will go on in His Church till all things be 
 perfected unto the fullness of the day of Christ Jesus. That Church 
 stood by at the birth of civilization, nursed it in its infancy, and will 
 follow its manifold courses through all succeeding ages, for " Age 
 cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety." 
 
YIII. 
 HOW FAMOUS MEN DIED. 
 
 The new school of Cliristian Science, as its votaries have baj^tized 
 it, professes to have discovered, if not a remedy against death, at 
 least a method for the removal of the dread which has always accom- 
 panied the destroyer's advent. If, as they allege, the}^ are competent 
 to mend a broken leg without the intervention of a surgeon, it would 
 seem not much more hazardous for them not only to annihilate the 
 fear of death, but to destroy all possibility of the dissolution of this 
 " frail and fickle frame" of ours, and even indefinitely to prolong the 
 term of human existence. Ponce de Leon's fountain of perpetual 
 youth has at last been discovered in the metaphysical mazes of New 
 England philosophy ! But, " as for our single selves we had as lief " 
 credit them with the capacity to accomplish the one as to do the 
 other. We fear that death must always continue to be, as it has 
 been, the dread and awful archer and the king of terrors to the ma- 
 jority of men, and that nothing. can temper the rigor of his wrath, 
 but the protecting aegis of a life of virtue and sinlessness. 
 
 In view, however, of the frequent reflections that must occur to 
 every man as to the precise nature of what his feehngs shall be in 
 that supremity of danger, it may be interesting and instructive to 
 observe what has been the conduct of great minds, in the world's 
 history, when brought into contact with what shall be the inevitable 
 doom of all. I shall devote some labor and research to the ascertain- 
 ment of the facts, which, as they appear to my mind, are of the 
 most obvious interest. Having inspected the death-beds of these 
 celebrities, and seen the manner of their death, we can then examine, 
 if we choose, the tenor and common conduct of their lives, and thence 
 we shall be able to infer some conclusions as to how the method of 
 their lives influenced the manner of their death ; which deductions, 
 
120 
 
 doubtless, shall be salutary and profitable to ourselves. Each can 
 frame his own reflections. 
 
 Engaged one evening, some time ago, in perusing a page of the 
 Bible wherein it is recorded that Lamech slew by chance, as it is- 
 supposed, the unhappy fratricide Cain, I said within myself, this is 
 surely a conspicuous instance of the punishment of heaven. But on 
 learning that Lamech unmercifully beat to death the stripling by 
 whom he was led into error, I was fain to think that both divine and 
 poetic justice required that Lamech should encounter some un- 
 timely and violent taking off, and I was relieved to learn that, like 
 the rest of the patriarchs, he simply "died," as do ordinary 
 mortals. 
 
 I have made mention of this ej)isode of Lamech's history merely 
 to show that it is not to be expected, as many believe, that a bad 
 man must die a violent death. Indeed, I have been powerfully 
 struck at witnessing the apparent calm and composure with which 
 I have seen some godless unbelievers die, contrasted with the alarm, 
 reluctance, and fright of many whom I had no ray of reason to think 
 otherwise than as just and upright Christians. Perhaps, in the one 
 case, it was the torpidity and apathy of despair, and in the other the 
 anxiety of the Christian respecting futurity. 
 
 It chanced to be the writer's own experience to stand more than 
 once, face to face, with the dread destroyer, and he is frank enough 
 to say that his feelings were far from calm and comfortable, to say 
 nothing of his terror and dismay. But this may only argue his un- 
 fitness, from a Christian point of view, to meet his end with equa- 
 nimity. 
 
 It might savor too much of egotism to detail the circumstances, 
 and, besides, they may be of limited interest ; and therefore we shall 
 pass to the consideration of the cases which we purpose to examine. 
 
 Sacred Writ furnishes us with many instances of death, sublime, 
 heroic, awful, terrible, serene, and tranquil. Some, like Abraham, and 
 Jacob, and Moses, " decaying, died at a good old age ; and having 
 lived a long time, and being full of days, were gathered to their 
 people." 
 
 The peaceful end of the patriarchs was probably the reward of 
 their virtues. But there is a touch of pathos in the demise of Moses 
 on Phasga's height, whence he could look over the land of Ephraim 
 
121 
 
 and Juda and the plain of Jericho, and the city of palm-trees, as far 
 as Segor, but could not pass into the promised land. Nahab and 
 Abiu, for offering strange fire, were burnt by fire from heaven. 
 The subhme death of Samson is in striking contrast with the fear- 
 ful fate of Saul ; and the courage and heroism of the one with the 
 cowardice of the other. Achitophel and Judas, the one through 
 envy, and the other through remorse, came to the same suicidal end. 
 The proud Assyrian Sennacherib, who perished by jbhe parricidal 
 hands of his own offspring, met an awful doom, but less horrible, 
 perhaps, than that of Jezebel. Ezechias shrank from going to the 
 " gates of the grave," and rejoiced at the retrogression of the sun- 
 dial. 
 
 These references might be multiplied indefinitely, but as they do 
 not, for the most part, record the sentiments of the subjects in the 
 presence of death, they are not very apposite to our purpose, which 
 is not so much to find how men came to their death as how they 
 bore themselves in the final moments of their lives. 
 
 The most shining example, of course, of fortitude, courage, and 
 resignation, is presented in the death of our Saviour. His last words 
 are such as should be in the mouth of every dying Christian who is 
 possessed of speech. But here we are subjecting to scnitiny the 
 conduct of heterogeneous classes of men, whether Jew or Gentile, 
 Christain or Pagan. 
 
 It is a pity that Homer's end is not better known ; and we are 
 compelled to submit to the same dearih of information as to Shakes- 
 peare. Julius Caesar's stinging rebuke to Brutus was the only ex- 
 hibition of his feehng when he felt his fatal wounds. Mirabeau, ac- 
 cording to De Lamartine, uttered as his last words, " Sprinkle me 
 with perfume, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon 
 eternal sleep." " If he had beheved in God he might have died a 
 martyr," says Lamartine. Voltaire, according to some, died in abject 
 terror and distress, and in the grip with death the smile of mockery 
 and raillery faded from the arch-scoffer's lips. The conclusion of 
 Paine's life was of a similar character, if we are to credit Fr. 
 Fenwick. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's impassioned appeal for another hour of life is 
 indeed well known. The Emperor Adrian, when dying, made the 
 remarkable address to his soul which Alexander Pope has f eHcitously 
 
122 
 
 translated. It is said tliat Boscommon, at the moment of expiring, 
 sang with much force and energy, so as to show his oA^n devotion, 
 two stanzas of his own Dies Irw. Klopstock, Disraeh tells us, had 
 in his Messiah made the death of Mary, sister of Lazarus, a picture 
 of the death of the just ; and on his own death-bed was found 
 repeating some of the verses on Mary, " thus exhorting himself to 
 die by the accents of his own harp." Harvey, the discoverer of the 
 circulation of the blood, kept feeling the state of his pulse until the 
 final moment ; and Haller, another physician, also observing his 
 pulse in the final critical moment, turned to a brother physician, and 
 saying, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat," instantly expired. 
 
 Henry the VIII., according to some, died in the anguish of 
 despair. Still another account puts into his mouth the most edify- 
 ing sentiments of devotion. The melancholy death of Henry's 
 minister, however, is a matter of well-ascertained history, and has 
 been touchingly presented by Shakespeare's master hand. "Father 
 Abbot, I am come to lay my bones among you. Master Kyngston, I 
 pray you have me commended to the King ; had I but served God 
 as diligently as I have served him. He would not now have given 
 me over in my gray hairs." 
 
 The heroic fortitude of Sarsfield, whose " ruling passion strong 
 in death " was patriotism, is history. Catching his heart's blood in 
 his hand, he cried aloud, " Would that this had been shed for 
 Ireland." This conduct of Sarsfield brings to mind the alleged de- 
 spairing act of Julian the Apostate, who is said to have tossed his 
 blood towards heaven, uttering at the same time the remorseful cry, 
 " O Galilean, thou hast conquered." 
 
 There is a long list of those who fell by their own hand, since the 
 day that Saul's armor-bearer refused to slay him. Decius immo- 
 lated himself upon the altar of his country. 
 
 Socrates, with calm intrepidity, drained the fatal hemlock. Cato 
 thrust the poniard at his heart, but he was probably guilty of levities 
 of a softer nature than that of the steel with which he let life run 
 out of his body. Lucretia has won great renown in the opinion of 
 many. 
 
 But it is time to pass to the Christian side of the subject, and 
 gaze on the bed of death which is smoothed by the hand of religion. 
 
 Addison sent for his stepson, the young Earl of Warwick, in order 
 
123 
 
 that the youtli might behold how a Christian could die in peace. 
 Gregory the Great, about to yield up his life, declared, "I have 
 loved justice and hated iniquity ; therefore do I die in exile." 
 O'Connell, the tribune and liberator, evinced at once his patriotism 
 and religion, by his solemn exclamation, '' My body to Ireland, my 
 heart to Rome, and my soul to God." Pius IX., of immortal mem- 
 ory, said, on the approach of his physician, " Dear doctor, it is over 
 now." And when, having received the sacraments, the prayers of 
 the dying were being said, and Cardinal Bilio in tears hesitated to 
 speak the last farewell, the great Pontiff himself ejaculated, " In 
 Domum domini ibimus," *' We shall go into the house of the Lord "; 
 and then repeated the words the Cardinal could not utter, "Go 
 forth, Christian soul." And shortly after, imparting his benediction 
 to those present, he expired. 
 
 Venerable Bede, who labored for God in all he wrote and did, 
 died while actually singing the praises of his Maker. 
 
 He was engaged during his last illness in making an Anglo- 
 Saxon translation of the gospel of St. John. The account of his 
 death by his disciple, Cuthbei-t, is too interesting to be omitted here : 
 
 " He passed the remainder of the day in prayer and conversation ; 
 in the evening, when his scribe again interrupted him, saying, 
 * Master dear, there is yet one sentence not written. ' Bede told 
 him to write quickly, and he dictated a few words, when the youth 
 exclaimed : *It is now done.' *Thou hast well said,' answered 
 Bede, ' it is done. Support my head with thy hands, for I desire 
 to sit facing the holy place where I was wont to pray. There let me 
 invoke my heavenly Father.' And thus, on the floor of his cell, 
 chanting the Gloria Palri, he had just strength enough to proceed to 
 the end of the phrase when he breathed out his soul with his last 
 words, Spiritui Sando, on his lips." 
 
 That great prodigy of learning. Sir James Mcintosh, lay dying in 
 the city of London. The attendants, watching his last moments, 
 saw his lips move, and bending near to catch the last sounds, heard, 
 " Jesus, love ! " " Jesus, love ! the same thing." These were the last 
 words that he ever spoke. 
 
 How touching and edifying the deaths of St. Jerome and St. 
 Benedict.* 
 
 * The other day the whole Christian world was profoundly stirred by the 
 
124 
 
 We will close with another instance. It is that of a Christian 
 youth of our own time, who was stricken by a fatal malady. He was 
 the sole support of an aged widowed mother, who stood bathed in 
 tears beside the bedside of her dying child, and saw the vampire^ 
 death, suck life's honey from the lips. But as the end approached, 
 the filmy eye lighted up, the shadowy hands were raised and 
 clasped, and turning to the disconsolate mother, the lips were parted 
 and the feeble voice cried out exultantly, — its last cry on earth, 
 " Mother, give thanks to God." 
 
 If we ponder the examples thus cited almost at random, we 
 shall not fail to discover that as the Christian religion alone can 
 teach us how to Uve, so it alone can teach us how to die. For 
 neither rank nor fortune, strength nor beauty, power nor pelf, nor 
 all those fond expectations that we build upon them, can oppose any 
 effectual barrier to the ravages of death, nor supply us with the 
 courage, fortitude, and magnanimity of mind required to sustain us 
 in the hour of final separation. 
 
 announcement of the death of one of the greatest characters of this or any 
 other age, the illustrious Cardinal Newman. It is reported that just before he 
 lapsed into insensibility he uttered the remarkable words, '-' I hear the music 
 of heaven. All is sunshine." 
 
IX. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Chapter I. — The State versus the Individual. 
 
 I DISCOVER two powerful, if not predominant, passions ever playing 
 within the hearts of men. and they are often found to stand in 
 deadly conflict. The one is the pride of power, and the other the 
 love of liberty. The first is rooted in that egotism and selfishness 
 which are the fruit of sin; the second is fixed in the effect of God's 
 creative act sowing imp^ishably in human nature the seeds of free- 
 dom. It is not easy to say which is the stronger feeling of the two. 
 
 If we analyze this thii-st for power, we find its well-spring far 
 down in the human heai-t, in that passion for superiority which, 
 though too often based on pride and arrogance, seems almost natural 
 to man. It assumes endless forms, but in principle it is one. It is 
 sometimes called ambition, and is deemed the spui* of noble minds. 
 It moves the intrepid explorer to turn aside from the haunts of civil- 
 ization, to pursue his paths across trackless seas and oceans, to pene- 
 trate the dim interior of the hitherto untrodden forest, and traverse 
 the arid and burning desert that, at length possessed of the object 
 of his tireless search, he can exclaim Eureka, and hand down his 
 name to an admiring posterity as the first to claim a continent, track 
 a river, measure a mountain, or circumnavigate the globe. The same 
 burning energy spui's on the pale student, sitting over his midnight 
 oil, wasting his substance and turning his blood into thought, that 
 future generations may link his name with the discovery of a 
 sidereal system, the invention of a mechanical device, or the produc- 
 tion of some masterpiece of music, of painting, or of literature. 
 And what is the impelling motive ? Not unfrequently it is not the 
 love of these achievements for their own sake, nor for a better rea- 
 son, but it is the passion to excel, to outstrip one's fellow-men. 
 
126 
 
 This love of superiority never manifests itself witli more intensity 
 than when exercised by man over man himself. If it is flattering 
 to man to outshine his fellows in things external to them, it is 
 doubly pleasing to control his fellow-creatures in those internal pos- 
 sessions which distinguish man as man — his freedom and intelli- 
 gence. Just here it is that pride of opinion and arrogance of mind 
 come into operation, and give birth to that intolerance which has 
 piled burning fagots on the son of science and nailed true reformers 
 to the stake. Here, too, appears the most overmastering passion of 
 them all — the desire of one man's will to dominate the will of those 
 who were made to walk the earth as freely as himself. Under the 
 unchecked sallies of this fierce desire for ascendency, men are some- 
 times capable of the most illiberal sentiments, and the most selfish 
 and base-minded conduct towards those whom circumstances make 
 the victims of their imperious sway. To compass the object of their 
 vaulting ambition principle, honor, conscience are sunk out of sight, 
 and even pity, compassion, and the most common instincts of 
 humanity, are trampled down like the dust of earth. Thwarted of 
 their aim, they are transformed into fiends and tyrants, who, like a 
 Nero, a Pisistratus, sport with the lives of men and gloat in their de- 
 struction. Foiled by those they fear, they pine with envy and, con- 
 sumed with jealousy, they employ every covert, but despicable, art 
 to effect the removal or the ruin of their rivals, for if "Love be 
 strong as death, jealousy is hard as hell." 
 
 As it happens with individuals, so also does it come to pass with 
 society. Human history, from its opening to its latest page, affords 
 confirmation of this fact. Each class and cast loves to aggrandize 
 its power and extend its authority. So sweet is power, so strong 
 the passion to rule. 
 
 As, however, society cannot exist without the governing and the 
 governed classes, the history of humanity is an almost unbroken 
 record of a struggle between those who, set by fortune, force, or 
 choice, above the rest, sought to extend their dominion, and those 
 who, placed beneath the yoke of subjection, have striven, often, alas ! 
 in vain, to preserve their rights and defend their libei-ties against 
 the encroachments of usurpation and oppression. From the out- 
 come of this struggle have arisen, for the most part, the different 
 forms of government which have appeared among the sons of men. 
 
127 
 
 To grasp the full comprehension of this strange outcome of an 
 age-long strife, we have only to trace the progress of humanity 
 under the operation of government, not so much according to ab- 
 stract theories, as in the light of facts, or according to historical de- 
 velopment. Government is both a right and a fact; I view it here 
 as a fact, but shall say something later about the right. 
 
 The oldest system of government known to man is the patriarchal, 
 which had its foundation in the authority of the parent over the 
 child. The father was the head of the family; the head of the 
 eldest family was the chief of the tribe, and the chief of the oldest 
 tribe was the head of the nation. At first all governments were 
 tribal. The tribal form is seen in the wandering hordes of Arabia, 
 the clans and Septs of Ireland and England, the castes of India, and 
 the gentes of Rome. No alien had any part in the religious or polit- 
 ical rights of the people, unless he were adopted into the tribe. 
 Blood and kinship were the basis of all political privileges, and 
 where these had no actual existence, they were, as men gi-ew more 
 tolerant of strangers, established by the fiction of legal adoption. 
 Under this primitive system, both the religious and political control 
 was vested in one and the same individual, the patriarchal head of 
 the Sept or tribe. Under such system, it is obvious, the education of 
 youth was, if not the function, at least the (alleged) right of the tribal 
 chief, because the whole office of government devolved upon the 
 supreme head of society. All such forms of government are bar- 
 baric and chiefly despotic, for where power and authority are re- 
 garded as a private right, and not a public trust, absolutism and 
 despotism will ultimately prevail. This springs from the pride of 
 powder before alluded to, and universal as humanity. Men are not 
 angels, but children of clay, and apart from the grace and light of 
 Christianity, they differ but little from the creeping things around 
 them. They have no right but might; no power but force; no law 
 but selfishness and personal gratification. 
 
 Such being the fact, it can be readily inferred that where govern- 
 ment is clannish, the land is constantly alive with broils and feuds. 
 The arbitrary will of the despotic ruler is opposed by his oppressed 
 subjects, and various expedients are resorted to to temper his 
 authority and restrain his power. 
 
 The first evidence of this appears in the rise of an aristocracy, like 
 
128 
 
 the Koman patricians, or the lords of feudalism, comprising the 
 heads of the principal families, and forming a sort of Senate to 
 share the concerns of government with the Sovereign. The remedy 
 was always ineffectual while authority was held to be a personal 
 right, exercised generally neither for nor by the people. Aristocracy 
 was in no way remedial of the evils of monarchy, where both ruled, 
 each by its own sweet will. In those dim days there was no voice 
 to teach (the Church excepted), and no power to enforce the modern 
 maxim, that public office was a public trust. 
 
 Under the Jewish 'dispensation there was, doubtless, more even 
 and exact justice administered than elsewhere obtained; but, then, 
 the Jews lived under a theocracy, and repeated revelations were 
 necessary to preserve society from disintegration. 
 
 Moses gave to his people a system of laws, both civil and religious, 
 but under his economy there existed no political constitution in a 
 strict sense. He did not alter or diminish the power of the patri- 
 archs, but rather confirmed their authority. If he and his successors 
 assumed the chief control of affairs, it was by divine appointment so 
 ordered, and such manner of government was designed for the ex- 
 traordinary emergency of the long and memorable journey of the 
 Jews to the promised land. Hence Moses did not abolish the tribal 
 or patriarchal system. Nay, more; he adopted, when purged of 
 their grossness and idolatry, the laws and customs which immemo- 
 rial usage had sanctioned among the early forefathers of the Jew- 
 ish people. Upon the conclusion of their pilgrimage, the old style 
 of government was continued, and where the various tribes had set- 
 tled upon their allotted lands, it was to repose or to struggle on a field 
 where the feeble arm of the patriarchal chieftain was exerted to 
 maintain a due equipoise between liberty and authority. 
 
 As it was in the tents of Abraham in the land of Mamre, so was it 
 in Palestine; the father of the family, or the chief of the tribe, was 
 the ruler, and his authority was transmitted by heredity to succeed- 
 ing generations. 
 
 If in this economy there was no supreme or central power either 
 to maintain unity or to excite jealousy, nevertheless the elders of 
 the community ruled with despotic sway, and dispensed at the city 
 gates such justice as seemed accommodated to the people whom they 
 governed. As they felt no check upon their authority, save when in 
 
120 
 
 matters of profound legal difficulty, the arbitration of the priests 
 was invoked; it is readily conceivable that a conflict of interests was 
 inevitable, and freedom and power came into frequent and violent 
 collision. Moreover, people long accustomed to the independence 
 of nomadic life are always averse to the exercise of strong central 
 authority, nay, to authority of any kind. Only when attacked by 
 such superior numbers as to threaten the extinction or subjugation 
 of several tribes, might a leader or dictator be chosen whose wisdom 
 and prowess appointed him to the post of danger, but whose author- 
 ity lapsed with the emergency that called him forth. 
 
 Even when God raised up judges to rule Israel, the people, tired 
 of the yoke, rejected Samuel to constitute a king who imposed upon 
 them a harsher and more unbearable burden. And when we con- 
 sider, that of all who ruled over God's chosen people during six 
 hundred years, only three were proved to be just and God-fearing 
 men, the struggle of the people to maintain their political and social 
 rights must have been as bitter as it was protracted. If such be the 
 <;ase under theocracy, when theocracy meant much more than the 
 divine right of kings in the Middle Ages, and stood for a fact and 
 not a fiction, what chapter of history is long enough to contain a 
 record of the contentions born of the attempt, on the one hand, to 
 uphold, on the other to suppress, popular liberty among peoples not 
 favored like the Jews with the direct and often visible assistance and 
 counsel of Jehovah ? 
 
 The patriarchal system, as I have said, was a despotic system, for 
 -even if he had the absolute right to govern his own child, he had no 
 authority to govern the children of other fathers than himself, and 
 his power, besides, was claimed as a natural personal absolute right, 
 which is the essence of tj'ranny and usui-pation. 
 
 With the advent of civilization came a change. Under Clisthenes 
 in Athens, about 510 b.c, so far as I am able to discover, the first 
 seeds of civilization were planted. This Athenian statesman intro- 
 duced several important changes into the constitution, the most 
 momentous of which was, that, consequent upon the division of the 
 people into ten tribes instead of four, politically ascribed to the soil, 
 all political rights became territorial instead of personal. But what 
 change is this ? Was not government before this era founded upon 
 landed property? Yes, but under the patriarchal system, as in the 
 9 
 
130 
 
 later feudal, the right of dominion was vested solely in the patriarch 
 or suzerain. The chieftain of the tribe was sole proprietor, in most 
 cases, and the minor chiefs held from him and under him. Pro- 
 prietary rights were vested in the owner, but the owner and the 
 ruler were one and the same individual. Owning the soil, he 
 claimed, by consequence, the right to govern as subjects all who 
 occupied it. Between the landlord and his tenant-subjects, there- 
 fore, the struggle was permanent. 
 
 But the change wrought by Clisthenes, which was the base of 
 Grecian liberty, attained fuller development under the Roman 
 Republic. 
 
 The father still continued to rule as father, and within the family 
 sphere was supreme, but could govern none but his own offspring. 
 The State stepped in to limit his authority, and with the State came 
 the civil order or civihzation. The State was the organic people, at- 
 tached to the soil, and expressing its will through the senate, or in 
 pure or qualified democracies, through popular assemblies, like the 
 Roman comitia or the Grecian popular assemblies. No one not 
 attached to the soil, or, to speak more correctly, not comprehended 
 within the boundaries of the State, could be invested with the pre- 
 rogatives of citizenship, or could possess pohtical rights. In this 
 theory, the land claimed the man, not the man the land, and his civil 
 rights came not by favor of any patriarchal proprietor, but from the 
 fact that every son of the soil, so to say, was a citizen of the State. 
 
 On the day that the State was founded civilization was born, for 
 civilization means progress, and progress is impossible under the 
 despotisms that spring from systems in which pohtical liberty is con- 
 ditioned upon the arbitrary will of the individual, whether governor 
 only, or both proprietor and governor. 
 
 After all, the right to govern is not founded upon the right of 
 property, unless where dominion is absolute, and it is absolute in 
 God alone. The monarchical and aristocratical forms of government 
 are, no doubt, the historical outcome of the old patriarchal system in 
 which the governor was both governor and ruler. Because they were 
 supreme lords, they claimed to be supreme sovereigns. This, a 
 false development of the right of property, and the natural propen- 
 sity of men to aggrandize power and authority, especially when, as 
 lords of the soil, their opportunities for such dilatation are so ample, 
 
131 
 
 easily gives rise to extreme theories on the side of those who deplore 
 the evil, and see no remedy save in the extinction of all individual 
 ownership in the land itself. But this is digressive. 
 
 With the foundation of the State, however, the liberty of the in- 
 dividual was not imperishably secured. Then, in fact, the fight for 
 freedom fairly began. "Was the patriarch a usurper, the State could 
 be a more intolerable tyrant. Was the ancient chieftain of the clan 
 a selfish sovereign, the State could be an unconscionable despot. 
 The reason seems to reside in this, that a wrong is more readily per- 
 petrated where many are concerned, for then no one appears person- 
 ally accountable. 
 
 Wherefore, although the State was founded for the protection" and 
 perpetuation of the liberties of the people, the time came when it 
 sought to abridge, if not destroy, what it was ordained to foster and 
 facilitate. 
 
 In recognition of this fact, history shows how in different ages the 
 populace strove to stem the tide of supremacy, and alter the form 
 of government as seemed best calculated to preserve individual 
 Uberty. 
 
 Feeling at one time the need of a powerful hand to guide the des- 
 tinies of the nation, or lead it on to coveted victory, they proclaimed 
 a dictator, like a Sulla or Marius, and again groaning under the 
 encroachments of a despot, they conspired for the downfall of a 
 Caesar. 
 
 Like the Jews of old, they called aloud for kings to reign over 
 them, and, oppressed by the exactions of royalty, they raised the 
 banners of revolution, and hurled age-long dynasties from gilded 
 thrones and asserted the majesty of democracy. 
 
 To meet the countless difficulties that environ the exercise of 
 power, the people devised at one time a limited or constitutional 
 monarchy, at another an aristocracy, and, again, a democracy, or 
 some one of the mixed forms of government which appeared best 
 adapted to their wants or more congenial to their wishes and desires. 
 But ever and always we discover a struggle between those invested 
 with power on the one side, and those who are subject to it on the 
 other. 
 
 Daring the past century, perhaps more than ever, this contest has 
 been the characteristic of every national movement, and immense 
 
Vd2 
 
 social changes have occurred which have convulsed Europe to its 
 centre, and j)ulled down the oldest dynasties and most time-conse- 
 crated aristocracies the world has ever seen. 
 
 What principle lies back of all this unrest and agitation ; this 
 levelling and upbuilding ; this change and reformation ? What, but 
 the unquenchable aspiration of the people for self-government and 
 popular rights ? It manifests itself in the efforts of Poland, Bulgaria, 
 Ireland, and Cuba, to secure for themselves the right of self-govern- 
 ment and local independence. 
 
 There are, it seems to me, two great opposing forces in this world 
 waging an endless war, and they are despotism and democracy. 
 Most generally, it may be, it is extreme parties that are engaged in 
 the battle — anarchists and tyrants — and very often democratic 
 government is identified with the excesses of the mob and the hor- 
 rors of the revolution. More commonly, however, the desolating 
 social upheavals that, like the waves of the sea, sweep over the face 
 of society, spring from the tyi'anny of the power-holders, who love 
 to have their fellow-men fall down and worship them, either as 
 monarch, king, or kaiser. 
 
 God, I fain would think, has given power to the proletariat for the 
 preservation of the race, for had He by divine right invested it irrev- 
 ocably in the few, society could never stand without a reconstruc- 
 tion of human nature, or a larger latitude for heavenly grace. 
 
 When people are ground down by the arbitrary power of irrespon- 
 sible rulers and the popular will and popular rights are long sup- 
 pressed, the outbreak from such enslavement is nearly always 
 vehement and violent. By the irate populace old landmarks are 
 swept away, ancient institutions are levelled to the dust, social order 
 is demolished, even religion is imperilled and discarded ; for men, 
 demoralized and obdurated by oppression, lose respect for religion 
 and morality, and oftentimes make forfeit of their faith in that over- 
 ruling Providence, whose goodness, bounty, and justice seem incon- 
 sistent with the existence of the evils that fill the cup of life with 
 unmingled bitterness. We are always ready to condemn the great 
 army of the discontented as the enemies of peace and order ; but 
 let us remember how history's pages gleam with the record of the 
 burning wrongs endured by the masses of mankind, and how often 
 the piercing cry for popular liberty was quenched in human blood. 
 
133 
 
 Disgusted with the sickly scene of painted courtiers and knee- 
 crooking flatterers ; grown weary of the glamour of regal dignity ; 
 exasperated at the sight of those who, while " they toil not, neither 
 do they spin," are yet able, " void of care, to loll supine in state," 
 although they who are "neither of coward spirit nor unwilling 
 hand " must pine in poverty and misery ; the plebeian classes often 
 yield to the fiercest passions which beget the darkest deeds of des- 
 peration and despair. But I am talking of extremes. 
 
 In the ordinary case, though, this popular disquietude only marks 
 the deathless aspiration of the people for the air of libeiiy and the 
 sunshine of freedom. It is the old struggle of individual freedom 
 against State supremacy or absolutism. It was fought before the 
 field of Marathon was glorified, and before Roman valor had shed 
 undying renown upon the plains of Philippi or the immortal attempt 
 of the Gracchi had been made to restore the ancient constitution 
 and protect the liberty of the citizen against the centralizing tenden- 
 cies of the ruling classes. That aspiration and that spirit obtained 
 new impetus in the ^liddle Ages, and it flames forth with redoubled 
 ardor at the present day. Before it all obstacles must go down. 
 Nothing can withstand its progress. It has the handwriting of God 
 upon it, and no human agency can blot it out. Sometimes when 
 tyranny and absolutism hold sway it breaks out with volcanic violence ; 
 again it works silently but surely, effecting a quiet transition from bar- 
 barism to civilization, from personal to territorial rights, from absolute 
 to constitutional monarchy, or from monarchy and aristocracy to the 
 incomparable majesty and dignity of pure and unfettered democracy. 
 
 From the very dawn of human history to the present hour we 
 behold this eternal battle between the rulers and the ruled. What 
 does it signify ? If it has meaning at all, it implies a truth, God- 
 given and God-guarded, that the development of popular power and 
 popular rights is according to the natural law, and that God Himself 
 wishes no limits set on human freedom outside those necessary for 
 the coherence and stability of the permanent existence of society. 
 I say this is the law of nature, and if so it must not, it cannot,, 
 be ignored. It may at times be guilty of excesses, but it is not an 
 unmitigated evil m itself, and in civilized communities virtue, intel- 
 ligence, and patriotism will always prescribe its limits and hold it 
 within just bounds. 
 
134 
 
 It is a natural law, and, like all the laws of nature, it cannot be 
 stemmed or stayed. Tyrants may oppose its progress, but in the 
 end they will bite the dust. Those who raise a hand in sign of its 
 destruction will go the way of the Stuarts, the Bourbons, the Haps- 
 burgs, and all that senseless idolatry of man- worship which, whether 
 in a Roman Caesar, or a Corsican upstart, or Victorian queen, 
 cumbers the progress of humanity and the development of the 
 race. 
 
 In the United States of America this law has found its grandest 
 realization. Here we have no aristocracy and no oligarchy, and the 
 free and untitled sons of the soil are both the bulwark and the basis 
 of the State. The State and the individual are in our favored land 
 each in its own sphere supreme. Rational and constitutional libei-ty 
 is the pride and glory of America. Here it is chargeable with few 
 excesses. It has never pulled down, but has always built up ; it has 
 never been stained by the blood-red seal of anarchy ; it has never 
 taught the philosophy of despair ; it has always steered a safe and 
 steady course. It is bound to win in the end, because it is the wiU 
 of the people, and in its rightful acceptation the will of the people 
 is the will of God. 
 
 The tottering thrones of royalty may stand up against its march ; 
 monarchs may league for its destruction ; the State may frown it 
 down and seek to fetter it with the bands of centralization ; but all 
 these obstacles are a mere feather on the torrent's tide, for what 
 God and nature have ordained, man in vain must seek to destroy. 
 
 Society to-day demands free government. The demand is as 
 reasonable as it is imperative. Nothing can resist it. Education 
 has made it necessary. An educated people must and shall be free. 
 To educate the people, then, and then oppose the consequences, is 
 to light a fire with powder and extinguish it with straw. 
 
 Nay, more, popular rights, free government, individual liberty, 
 are the legitimate consoi-ts of Christianity. " Render unto Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
 Christianity proclaims man's freedom, not only in the moral, but also 
 in the political order, and this freedom knows no limitations, but an 
 infringement of the rights of others. In the days o*f their swaddling- 
 clothes, monarchs were the protectors of the infant commonwealths, 
 but when the Republic became a man, it put away the things of a 
 
135 
 
 child. Now it is only a man, but having passed the days of its non- 
 age, it is as well a freeman. 
 
 Where does the Catholic Church stand, on the side of State 
 supremacy, or on the side of individual freedom ? She stands, im- 
 movable as a rock, where God has planted her, on the side of ra- 
 tional and constitutional liberty, and she will never stand on other 
 ground, whether the ruler be a king, an emperor, an autocrat, or 
 President. She can flourish under all, but her sympathies are with 
 the people as against all encroachments by the powers that govern. 
 She has done more for popular liberty than all the institutions on 
 earth combined, than all the statesmen that ever lived, than 
 all the leaders and reformers the world ever saw. Where she was 
 absent, blind servility, passive obedience, abject slavery, the attend- 
 ants of ignorance and barbarism, found their home. Between ab- 
 solutism and revolution she has always taken her stand ; and con- 
 sidering that all government is based upon a tacit agreement between 
 the people and those chosen to be theii' rulers, she has even sanc- 
 tioned resistance to tyranny within certain limits as the right of the 
 oppressed. This is her position, and such it always will be. She is 
 truly conservative. Her policy and her teaching are as distant from 
 absolutism as from the wild and frenzied doctrines of revolution, 
 anarchy, and chaos. 
 
 Protestants claimed the Reformation as a source of personal 
 liberty, but the Reformation preached the principle of passive 
 obedience and the divine right of kings. The great theologians of 
 the Church taught, like Thomas Jefferson, that government derives 
 its powers from the consent of the governed. If history teaches any 
 lesson it is this : that where the Church has been driven out, servi- 
 tude has stepped in, and wherever she has flourished liberty and 
 civilization have found an unshaken footing and unimpeded prog- 
 ress. Individuals may have erred, but the Church is not respon- 
 sible for them. It was not the Catholic, but the Protestant Church 
 which impei-illed the ancient constitution of England ; who taught 
 that the queen was sacred, and held that the despotic will of an 
 Elizabeth, a James, or a Charles was the will of God. The Catholic 
 did not sanction the axiom. Quod placet principi habet vigorem legis. 
 Her conduct at no stage of history has furnished ground for 
 the stale charge that ultramontanism and absolutism are inseparable. 
 
136 
 
 In one word, her teaching is that of her greatest theologian, St 
 Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 " A king," he says, " who is unfaithful to his duty, forfeits his 
 claim to obedience. It is not rebellion to oppose him, for he is him- 
 self a rebel, whom the nation has a right to put down. But it is 
 better to abridge his power, that he may be unable to abuse it. For 
 this purpose the whole nation ought to have a share in governing it- 
 self. The constitution ought to combine a limited and elective 
 monarchy with an aristocracy of merit and such admixture of democ- 
 racy as shall admit all classes to ofl&ce by popular election. No 
 government has a right to levy taxes beyond the limit determined by 
 the people. All political authority is derived from popular suffrage, 
 and all laws must be made by the people or their representatives. 
 There is no security for us as long as we depend on the will of 
 another man." 
 
 It has been rightly said that Christianity in the secular order is 
 republican. It upholds the doctrine of popular liberty. It 
 proclaims the supremacy of the people, invests them with the 
 root of power and authority, makes them the foundation of 
 the State, and opposes Csesarism, imperialism, despotism, and all 
 methods of government which do not harmonize with their ex- 
 pressed will, or seeks unjustly to abridge their rights and liberties. 
 
 I have said that popular liberty has found in these United States 
 its grandest realization. But the old spirit of Csesarism is not dead. 
 The forces of centralization are still at work, and in this country they 
 are nowhere more displayed than when asserted to abridge parental 
 rights and control absolutely the work of education. 
 
 Chapter II.— Parental Rights. 
 
 Education supposes authority. Education is the development of 
 the faculties, and the direction of the destiny of man, and no one 
 may assume this function without the right, and there is no right 
 without authority. 
 
 This authority has, from the very morning-time of civilization, 
 been usurped by the State to the prejudice of the parent and the 
 injury of society. In most governments, both ancient and modern. 
 
137 
 
 socialistic principles of the most advanced order have been upheld 
 and applied to the work of education ; and whether parents were 
 agreeable or not, their children were compelled to attend schools es- 
 tablished by the State, even when they could not do so without 
 lesion to their consciences, or "when they deemed such schools as 
 patently perversive of their faith or morals. All such governments, 
 of course, either explicitly or constructively, act upon the axiom of 
 Danton, the French revolutionist: " Liberi eraat respublicae, priusquam 
 erant parentum" '. children belong to the State before they belong 
 to their parents. 
 
 Democracy, taken not in a party, but in a broad sense, means the 
 minimum of government. To preserve the libertj^ of the individual 
 and maintain the authority of the State, each in its fullness and per- 
 fection, is the true end of democracy. Under a democratic consti- 
 tution, therefore, the State has no right to restrict the liberty of the 
 individual beyond those limits necessary for its own preservation 
 and continued existence. Upon this principle the State has no right 
 to concern itself with the education of children, save in so far as 
 such interference is essential to the common weal, and vital, I may 
 say, to the very existence of society. Obviously, then, the State has 
 some competence in the matter, and there are some rights not out- 
 side her just province in respect of education. To deny it were " to 
 bay the moon." To attempt to frustrate it were vain and futile. 
 We cannot recede twenty centuries, nor even one. The State, then, 
 has the right to see that her subjects are worthy citizens and compe- 
 tent voters. This, of necessity, implies a certain measure of educa- 
 tipn and intelligence. These truths are axiomatic, but are frequently 
 forgotten, and when not forgotten, are persistently ignored. And I 
 consider that Catholics, whose narrowness of view did not enable 
 them to perceive them, have, so far from helping, seriously crippled 
 the cause for which in all honesty and earnestness they have so long 
 contended. 
 
 Let us, in all sincerity of purpose, consider the question: to 
 whom does the right to educate belong ? I take it here as an ab- 
 stract question, without special reference to any particular govern- 
 ment, though later on I shall view the subject in relation to democ- 
 racy, as here in our United States it is our privilege to dwell under 
 the greatest democracy that has yet flourished in the world. 
 
138 
 
 To disarm prejudice and forestall all captiousness, let me publish 
 in brief the platform of principles on which I stand: 
 
 I am a Catholic, and I do not blush to own it. I am a Catholic, 
 and to be one is my glory and my pride. I am a CathoHc, and I 
 love my religion and my Church, and believing, as I do, with all the 
 powers of my soul, in the divine authority and unerring judgment 
 of that Church in all that falls within the domain of faith and 
 morals, I distinctly repudiate and positively abjure whatever maybe 
 in conflict with the teachings of her infallible voice. Besides, if no 
 other reason impelled me, the fact that the temper of the American 
 people is so abhorrent to hypocrisy, and so intolerant of paltry 
 minimizing, would constrain me to utter the whole truth, and noth- 
 ing but the truth, as I hold fast to it in the hope of my salvation. 
 If the American mind loves anything, it is honesty and fearlessness 
 of opinion ; if the American people hate any coward, it is the pusil- 
 lanimous temporizer who has not the courage of his convictions. 
 
 But I am also an American. I love my country and I glory in 
 her institutions. I hail her constitution as the palladium of human 
 liberty, and the most perfect work that ever came from the hand of 
 man. I know that professions of ultra-patriotism are sometimes de- 
 servedly suspected, but I must say, at least, that second only to the 
 love i bear my God, is the love I cherish for the land where I first 
 beheld the living light, and that land I love the more because the 
 starry flag of freedom flutters in the heavens above it. Yes; I am 
 an American, and I have no sympathy and but little tolerance for 
 those who, of whatever nationality they may be, seeking shelter and 
 firesides upon our soil, either refuse to harmonize with our ideas, 
 adopt our customs, learn our language, or will not in any right sense 
 fall in with our spirit, conform to our genius, or sail along the broad, 
 expansive current of our American life. Such nonconformists 
 should have remained chained to their idols in the lands from which 
 they came. I assert ihe homogeneity of every nation as the very 
 work of nature and of God. Those who oppose it are marplots of 
 creation and deserve contempt from men. Those who do not like 
 us, neither should they live with us. They are amongst us, but not 
 of us, and they should seek a more congenial clime. 
 
 As a lover of American liberty and American institutions, it is 
 alien to m}' purpose to wage war upon the public schools. I freely 
 
139 
 
 and even gladly hail them, in one sense, as a boon. The experience 
 of the people of England, who through apathy, as Cardinal Man- 
 ning thinks, suffered millions of their children to grow up like the 
 weeds of the forest without the simplest rudiments of training or 
 cultivation, a menace to society, a disgrace to the nation, and a curse 
 to themselves, should not be lost on us. The most strenuous op- 
 ponents of State education cannot blink the fact, that the spontane- 
 ous enterprise of individuals can never succeed in making educa- 
 tion, as it should be, universal. This negligence and apathy on the 
 part of parents will always render some intervention by the State in 
 educational affairs a matter of necessity, and may even fully justify 
 the establishment of a public school system by civil authority; setting 
 aside consideration of the vast number of poor childi'en whom pri- 
 vate charity is either unwilling or inadequate to assist, and for 
 whom, consequently, public provision must be made by the lawfully 
 constituted governmental powers. 
 
 Recognizing this, I should be long hesitant to impugn the right 
 of the government to found a public school system in any country 
 in which all the children, without exception, were not fully and en- 
 tirely provided for by the zeal and liberality, the enterprise and ex- 
 ertions of the individual citizens of such country. And this is im- 
 possible. 
 
 This work, however, would be supplementary, not primary, on the 
 part of the State, and would not, by any means, demonstrate the 
 native, original, and underived right of the State to assume of itself, 
 and to itself, the right and duty of the education of its citizens, or 
 future citizens in its children. 
 
 Thus much said to clear the ground, all liability of misunderstand- 
 ing is, perhaps, removed. 
 
 To whom does the right to educate belong ? 
 
 Manifestly, there are but three parties who can have any concern in 
 the work of education, and these are the parent, the Church, and the 
 State. We shall consider the rights and duties of each, both in 
 themselves and relatively to one another. 
 
 Nature, says the philosopher, is the first and best of teachers. She 
 is our instructress in the subject of our p:|;'esent investigations. 
 
 The first cry uttered by the new-bom babe on its entrance into 
 life is one of helplessness and dependence, and the first articulate 
 
140 
 
 speech it pronounces is addressed to its natural proteckor as it learns 
 to lisp father, mother. Here nature's instincts talk ; here the voice 
 of nature speaks — speaks in tones, though weak and tender, yet im- 
 perious and inexorable. Where does it pillow its tiny head for 
 shelter but on the bosom of its mother, and where does it repose with 
 satisfied security but in the strong arms of its father ? From every 
 other breast it instinctively turns away, and from every other em^ 
 brace it timidly shrinks back in fear which long familiarity alone 
 can dissipate. No caress can soothe, no touch can calm, no hand 
 can heal, no embrace can warm, no voice can call the new-come visit- 
 ant to earth like those of the fond authors of its being, after the God 
 who gave them their sacred holy charge in the person of their 
 child. 
 
 And what does all this tell ? It tells of a law that is all-pervading, 
 irresistible, and inviolable. It proclaims the laws of nature, extending 
 through the boundless realms of creation, from the scintillating atoms 
 of star-dust in the pathway of the planets and the myriad forms of 
 matter in the vast recesses of the deep, to the nobler intellectual and 
 rational existences that overspread the earth, and the seraphic intel- 
 ligences that glow with celestial brightness hard by the throne of 
 God. 
 
 In obedience to this law, the bright sun flings his golden showers 
 upon the ripening grain ; the moon sheds her silvery light athwart 
 the mantle of the night ; the stars sparkle with a splendor that 
 atones for the moon's dechne ; the planets circle in ceaseless harmony 
 in their appointed orbits ; the sea slumbers in the mighty cave hol- 
 lowed by the Creator's hand ; and the earth pours forth her teeming 
 fruits in rich profusion and in proper season for the use and nourish- 
 ment of 'man. 
 
 This omnipresent law rises higher, and transcending the physical 
 domain, it reigns with equal rigor in the rational and moral realms, 
 and regulates and governs the countless multitudes of creatures, 
 whose reason makes them cognizant of its existence in the pursuit of 
 their appointed ends. This is the law which has its seat in the di- 
 vine wisdom, its force in the divine power, and its harmony in the 
 whole universe. Shining in the far-off ocean of eternity, its light 
 reaches to the uttermost bounds of time, and being the eternal and 
 unchangeable law in God, it exists in rational creatures by participa- 
 
141 
 
 tion. This law is above all laws ; it is the foundation of all laws, 
 whether written or unwritten ; it is antecedent to all states, prior to 
 all constitutions, and before all decrees of human legislators. It was 
 published before the pandects of Justinian, before the statutes of 
 Solon, or the laws of Lycurgus, and it had been fixed in the human 
 heai-t by the finger of the Almighty even before the Decalogue was 
 delivered upon the flaming mountain, amid the thunder and the 
 lightnings of the Lord God of Hosts. And this law is inviolable. 
 It cannot be contravened ; it cannot be contemned ; it cannot be set 
 aside by any enactment of human legislation ; and whosoever will de- 
 spise it must pay those sure and certain penalties which nature al- 
 ways inflicts upon those who invade her holy sanctuary. 
 
 The law of nature confers upon the parent the right to control the 
 education of his child. This is not merely a right ; it is also a duty ; 
 for right and duty are correlative terms. It is the bounden duty of 
 the parent to feed, clothe, and educate the children whom Providence 
 entrusts to their cai-e. 
 
 By the fact of generation, or procreation, they voluntarily assume 
 this duty, and assume it so completely that they may not lay it down. 
 The fact of generation begets the first obligation oh the parent to 
 provide aU that is essential for the well-being of his child's existence, 
 both in the physical and the spiritual order. The parent is respon- 
 sible for the child's existence in this world. He is, in one sense, its 
 creator ; its creator in the order of secondaiy causes. To whom 
 would the child look for sustenance but to him who gave it being 
 after God? 
 
 Upon parents, therefore, before either Church or State, is incum- 
 bent the duty and the obligation of the education of their children ; 
 in this sense, that if the Church and State never existed parents 
 could not suffer their offspring to grow up in deprivation of things 
 essential to temporal felicity, nor in ignorance of truths necessary to 
 their eternal happiness and the end of their creation. For if the 
 parent would not be bound to this duty, could anybody else be 
 named upon whom that duty would devolve ? Assuredly not. 
 
 The first and the chief, as it is the highest and holiest obligation 
 of parents, is the education of their children ; and it is an obligation 
 which they cannot evade, ignore, or despise. Nay, they are invested 
 with the God-given right of forcing or constraining their children. 
 
142 
 
 when necessary, to learn what is needful for the fulfillment of their 
 duties in life, especially as these concern the God who made them ; 
 of compelling- them to attend schools appointed for such instruction, 
 and of inflicting upon them adequate and proper punishment for 
 disobedience and neglect in complying with their parents' commands 
 in this important matter. It ensues, by logical necessity, that 
 parents have the right of absolutely excluding all others from the 
 work of moulding their children by education ; all, besides, who 
 would impede or interfere with their own labors in the training of 
 theu' offspring, either by the employment of some distasteful 
 method, the inculcation of doubtful or pernicious doctrine, or the 
 mediation of objectionable tutors, or hj any other means seeming 
 dangerous or unreasonable to the parents of the children ; for on 
 any other supposition the parents' rights would be vain and illusory. 
 
 The parental right of education, as founded in the law of nature, 
 is inalienable. It cannot be abdicated or abjured. It cannot be 
 transferred, though it may be deputed to be exercised by others, 
 but only as the agents and representatives of the parents, who still 
 retain the scope of supervision, and the authority delegated is 
 cancelled at recall. 
 
 Parents may provide education themselves directly, together with 
 the Church, and dependently upon it, or they may delegate this duty 
 to others, even under certain circumstances to the public schools ; 
 provided, however, they have clear certainty that such schools are 
 noxious neither to faith nor morals, for they are, before all else, bound 
 by the most stringent obligations to ground their children in the 
 true religion and in sound morality, and to employ the utmost 
 vigilance that those children be widely separated from the danger of 
 corruption to either. If, however, sage experience and. ripe investi- 
 gation declare that the State or common schools are not of such 
 character, or if they are of even doubtful expediency as educators, 
 parents would not be excused from culpability by the law of God in 
 sending their offspring thereunto, even if the civil authorities mulcted 
 them by fines, or punished them by imprisonment for failure to com- 
 ply with the demands made by the State through compulsory educa- 
 tion laws, or other means of constraint. 
 
 That children belong to their parents, and that, by the law of 
 nature, parents have the right of guardianship and control over their 
 
143 
 
 offspring, is clearly recognized and cogently defended by the ablest 
 and most respected writers on jurisprudence, and by all eminent 
 authorities, whether in canon or civil law. For although they vindi- 
 cate for a sovereign State the broadest rights regardmg laws of 
 personal capacity and duty, as they are called, clsiiming for a State 
 over its own citizens complete and irresistible jurisdiction with respect 
 to the qualities of citizenship, minority, and majority (thus fixing 
 the time when the child is civilly emancipated from its parents), 
 legitimacy and illegitimacy, propei-ty, contracts, idiocy, lunacy, and, 
 alas ! we know, even marriage and divorce ; although asserting f uU 
 and sovereign power over so many personal conditions and capacities, 
 no respectable authority ventured so far as to set up the novel and 
 commtmistic theory that it was not the parents of the children, but 
 the State, who was engaged by the law of nature to feed, clothe, 
 and educate them. 
 
 Sir William Blackstone affirms, that the last duty of parents to their 
 children is that of giving them an education suitable to their station 
 in life ; a duty pointed out by reason, and of far the greatest 
 impoi-tance of any. " For," says he, " it is not easy to imagine or 
 allow that a parent has conferred any considerable benefit upon his 
 child by bringing him into the world, if he afterwards entirely 
 neglect his culture and education, and suffers him to grow up like a 
 mere beast, to lead a life useless to others and shameful to him- 
 self." 
 
 Dr. Wayland, a powerful name among American scholars, 
 declares that " the duty of both parents is generally to educate or 
 bring up their children in such manner as they believe will be most 
 advantageous for their future happiness, both temporal and eternal." 
 The parent *' is bound to inform himself of the peculiar habits and 
 reflect upon the probable future situation of his child, and deliber- 
 ately to consider what sort of education will most conduce to his 
 future happiness and welfare. The duties of a parent are established 
 by God, and God requires us not to violate them." Chancellor 
 Kent says : " The duties of parents to their children, as being their 
 natural guardians, consist in maintaining and educating them during 
 their season of infancy and youth." All the canonists of the Church 
 have affirmed unanimously the same doctrine, and of these one so 
 eminent as Bouvier saj^s : " The principal obligation of parents 
 
144 
 
 towards their children are their maintenance, their protection, and 
 their education." 
 
 The Church herself has invariably proclaimed and vindicated the 
 parental right. When it was surrei)titiously sought to take forcibly 
 the infants of Jewish and Mohammedan parents to be baptized and 
 educated in the Catholic Church, the furious zealots who attempted 
 it were reprimanded for their bigotry, and the great Thomas Aquinas 
 sounded the solemn warning by his affirmation that their conduct 
 was repugnant to natural justice, nature having made the child the 
 property of the parent, the author of its being, to whom alone it 
 belonged ; and the child should remain under the control and 
 custody of its parents until it became sui juris, possessed of the use 
 of reason, and then it was led into the Church, not by force or 
 coercion, but by persuasion and conviction. 
 
 But to whomsoever parents may confide the education of their 
 children, the inherent and inalienable duty imposed upon them by 
 the law of nature, demands that the most substantial and most essen- 
 tial part of the training shall be done by themselves. They are the 
 natural educators of their children. They are divinely-appointed 
 pedagogues. They are heaven's own teachers, and they carry their 
 credentials from the very hand of God. In their room no one can 
 adequately stand. That smiling train of virtues, which casts a halo 
 about the brow of childhood, and imparts to it an unspeakable grace 
 and charm, can be instilled into the heart by those alone whom na- 
 ture has qualified for the exalted task, and whom God Himself has 
 gifted with talents which ai-t cannot supply and cannot successfully 
 imitate. 
 
 To form them for their sublime function, nature has made elabo- 
 rate preparation, and equipped them with a splendid outfit. They 
 have been invested with an authority which is all but sacred, and 
 which the child learns to recognize and respect with the first dawn- 
 ing of intelligence. Into the very fibres of their being, and the very 
 marrow of their hearts, the Creator has infused that parental in- 
 stinct of love and affection whose bonds are as unbreakable as 
 adamant, as enduring as the decrees that issue from the councils of 
 eteraity. It seems to have pleased the all-wise and beneficent Author 
 of our being to have provided parents who are formed for a re- 
 sponsibility so high as the rearing of children, and upon whom, 
 
145 
 
 without exaggeration, it may be said so many souls depend for 
 their salvation, because they are the real guides of their destiny, 
 with a warm, intense, and absorbing affection for those committed 
 to their especial care. Therefore, they stand to them in the place 
 of God; they are clothed, as a certain holy father has said, with the 
 power and authority and the love of God, and are a kind of second- 
 ary providence to their children. Ah ! what greater honor can 
 human beings claim than to bring up sons and daughters to the God 
 who gave them this vicarious office ? And how should they not fur- 
 nish themsel ves for their lofty mission ? 
 
 The elements of all that is gi-eat and good are entrusted to the 
 moulding hand of maternal skill, and awful responsibiUties are im- 
 plied in the sacred trust. But the promise of the blessing is award- 
 ed to loving fidelity. O ! mother, why has God thus gifted you 
 with such undying love for the offspring of your womb ? Truly, 
 
 "There is none. 
 In all this cold and hollow world, no fount. 
 Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within 
 A mother's heart." 
 
 And, heaven be praised, most mothers are sensible of their solemn 
 duty. Who has not seen the accomplished and fine-wrotght lady, 
 who has surrendered early affluence, aU accustomed comforts, the 
 pleasures of society, the indulgence of refined taste, and become a 
 menial, as well as a mother to her children, and entered into all the 
 arduous labors of the nursery, the perplexing and harassing details of 
 minute daily economy, and the innumerable pangs and Jieartaches 
 of bearing and rearing children, not with sullen submission, but 
 with cheei-ful, joyful, active interest, and sweet and ever-present 
 sympathy ? 
 
 How noble and how sacred the love of woman, when strengthened 
 by the bonds of duty and the ties of nature ! Who would not be a 
 mother, to reign in her imperial realm ? Other subjects are ruled by 
 the sceptre ; hers are controlled by the eye and held by the magnet- 
 ism of the heart. Elsewhere is heard the sound of arms ; by her 
 fireside the voice of peace. Elsewhere men are ruled by the rod of 
 iron ; with her, by the wand of affection and the mace of love. Is 
 there a sacred spot on earth hallowed by angels' footsteps, and 
 10 
 
146 
 
 guarded by seraphs* care ? It is by the child's httle cradle, at the 
 silent and pensive hour of eve, when the mother folds its tiny hands 
 in slumber, and kneeling down, so hushed and still, lifts her tender, 
 loving gaze to heaven, imploring future blessings on its head. Hark 
 to the angels' whisper ; see the light of God overhead ! Show me 
 the hand that sways empires, and you will show me the mother's 
 hand. Show me the throne that rules all other thrones, and you 
 will show me the mother's throne in the nursery. If there be any- 
 thing in this weary world, that, before all else, comes near the 
 '* unsearchable riches of God," it is the fountain of a mother's love, 
 a mother's care, ever springing up, like a well of living water, in the 
 arid desert of human life To smooth the couch of her suffering off- 
 spring ; to lull him to his slumber ; to fan his fevered brow, and 
 wipe his tear-dimmed eye ; to catch his faintest whisper, and heed 
 his oft-poured plaints ; to hear his wayward cries, and stand by, 
 through the toils of the day and the sorrows of the night, with 
 patient, vigilant, and never-wearied love, this is the divine duty 
 which is inseparably associated with the functions of the mother. 
 And what can kind sympathy say, what can feeble friendship do to 
 assuage the cold and wintry grief of that bleeding breast, when 
 death has blurred the glossy tincture of the skin, and sucked away 
 life's honey from the lips of affection's fondest darling? AVith 
 stricken heart and aching brow she sits by beauty's bed with air 
 distraught, and wild and wandering gaze ; or with burning tears of 
 heart- wrung, hopeless anguish, she lays her first born in the cold and 
 
 silent tomb. 
 
 "The very first 
 * Of human life must spring from woman's breast, 
 Your first small words be taught you from her lips, 
 Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs 
 Full often breathed out in a woman's hearing. " 
 
 I thank God for my mother; I thank Him ten thousand times, for 
 of her I can say, as Bishop Hall of his : " Never have any lips read to 
 me such feeling lectures of piety, neither have I known any soul that 
 more accurately practised them than her own." 
 
 To qualify parents entirely for their laborious duty, God has 
 not only implanted in their breasts this ineradicable love of progeny, 
 but He has also filled the hearts of children with all those tender 
 
147 
 
 sentiments and feelings which flow from filiation. The reciprocal 
 love begotten by paternity is, perhajDS, stronger in the heart of the 
 child than in that of the person who claims its fatherhood. All will 
 not concur in this. 
 
 That their childish affections might have full play, their Maker 
 has created them ardent and impressionable, given them quick in- 
 tuitions, lively perceptions, and a swift sense of recognition for 
 favors received. 
 
 They are confiding, kind and tender, and instinctively tenacious of 
 remembrance as to the faces of their friends. But father and mother 
 are to them the first and best of friends. Identity of blood seems 
 to generate a cordial correspondence of the instincts and affections, 
 which distance even, will not dim, and supreme depravity alone can 
 disturb. Even when the corroding touch of time, which sometimes 
 severs friendship's strongest links, has had the chance to tarnish the 
 filial relation with the rust of cold susi)icion, or neglect, or distemper, 
 the filial instinct is not dead, but dormant; and so soon as the first 
 fire of reawakened love flames forth, the bonds are welded together 
 again, perhaps never to be strained or parted. No matter if a man 
 has crimsoned his career with crime ; no matter how callous and 
 soul-hardened he may have become; no matter if he has been cruel, 
 ungrateful, and unkind to them that brought him into being, still 
 nature will return, and some day when he least looks for it, the glow 
 of gratitude, so long slumbering, will light up the breast that had 
 been' sealed against the feehngs which fihal affection and consan- 
 guineous relationship inspire. But with the very young — the 
 children — there is no time, as yet, for "fond love to grow cool." 
 Their artless innocence, their childish glee, their merry laughter, 
 their frank, cordial, and winning ways, their care-free brow, their 
 lily-like purity, their love, their reverence, and docility — all pro- 
 claim, with nature's own sweet voice, that childhood is the season of 
 culture, the time " To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind," and 
 the family roof -tree is the school which God has given unto children. 
 
 Yes; if there is a spot of hving green in the cheerless desolation 
 of this fallen world, it is in the garden of the family, from whose 
 gushing fountain the clear and crystal waters of the great, run- 
 ning river of society, take their course, — their course for devastation 
 or regeneration in the world. Fathers and mothers, you are the 
 
148 
 
 units of the family, and the family is the unit of society. You are 
 the artificers of the social fabric, and as you build it, it shall stand 
 or fall. It is your high and responsible province to instillinto the 
 minds of children the earliest of their sentiments, to form the first 
 of their impressions, and to be the pattern on whose example their 
 eye of observation rests, — rests earliest in the morning, constantly 
 through the day, latest at the night. Let me tell you, more than human 
 acquisitions, more than worldly wisdom, is required to fulfill your 
 heaven-given duty, and discharge your holy trust. Remember, the 
 family is the school of Christ. Has He not made it His? Did He 
 not go down to Nazareth and stay subject to His parents for the 
 best part of His life? In that humble home among the hills, were 
 not His own parents His teachers by His own choice, preferably to 
 the greatest doctors in Israel, and the learned in the law ? 
 
 Not only has God given to parents an indelible and indestructible 
 affection for their young, but He has, moreover, sanctified the mar- 
 riage relation, raised it to the lofty plane of the supernatural, that 
 they might adequately perform the duties of their station. Thus 
 marriage has become a holy mystery, " a great sacrament," an in- 
 dissoluble and a supernatural contract, ratified by God in heaven, 
 in the presence of the holy angels. Verily, '* matches are made 
 in heaven" Its end is likewise supernatural. Its object is not 
 merely, as Mr. Macqueary thinks, to raise up citizens for the State, 
 but for that "home eternal in the heavens; that house not made by 
 hands." "We have not here a lasting city, but look forward to* that 
 which is to come." We are only a distant colony, spending our pro- 
 bation and preparing for our entrance into a celestial empire where 
 an abundant welcome shall await us through the tender mercy of 
 Him who placed us in the land of exile, so far from our native 
 country, our true and only home. 
 
 The family was instituted by God Himself at the creation, for the 
 extension of the race, but the family bond was sanctified, and mar- 
 riage invested with the transcendent dignity of a sacrament, by the 
 hand of Jesus Christ, for the perpetuation of our divine Redeemer's 
 kingdom. The end must be sought by rightly appointed means. 
 As the end of marriage is supernatural, in that its design is to build 
 up God's everlasting kingdom, and " purify unto Christ a holy and 
 acceptable people," to its reception are annexed those supernatural 
 
149 
 
 helps and graces which habihtate parents for the close and intimate 
 share that falls within th^ir competence in this heavenly employ- 
 ment. And well may they heed how they acquit themselves of this 
 sublime function. Let them beware of that parental inconsistency 
 displayed by those who ai-e "wiser in their generation than the 
 children of Hght"; that inconsistency which "busies itself about 
 many things," but neglects "the one thing necessary"; that incon- 
 sistency which studies much, and plans often, and labors long to lay 
 up a perishable inheritance for those who are coming into life, but 
 is so self-deluded as to fail to look forward in prospect to a heritage 
 which should be the object of supreme concern and unvarying en- 
 deavor, because treasured in a kingdom where " no moth doth con- 
 sume, no rust devour, and no thief doth ever enter to steal away." 
 Blinded parents, they are cruelly deceived and , cheated in the end. 
 They pursue their favorite phantoms, castle-building for their 
 children in the vales of dreamland, " giving to airy nothing a local 
 habitation and a name," frittering their time away in " dropping 
 buckets into empty wells, and growing old in drawing nothing up." 
 But stern will be their awaking, and rude and rough the shock. Is 
 this parental love ? 
 
 The highest love of which one creature is capable towards another, 
 is that benevolent regard which has respect to the eternal and lasting 
 good of one's fellow-being. The human child is burdened with a 
 body, but within that frail body and clay tenement there dwells a 
 vital spark from heaven called a soul : — a soul fashioned in a godly 
 mould, and destined for an immortal existence in realms of ever- 
 lastiug light. There is the golden goal of its existence ; the true 
 term of its desires ; the object of its sovereign felicity. In the whole 
 range of visible creation it beholds nothing equal to itself in dignity 
 and worth ; nothing that can make it blessed and happy ; nothing 
 that can satisfy its quenchless aspirations for a beauty that never 
 fades, a felicity that never cloys, and a joy that never dies, but like 
 a flower of amaranthine bloom, preserves the perfume of its im- 
 mortal essence untouched by the effacing fingers of decay. This im- 
 perishable soul, the pearl beyond price, this jasper gem of paradise, 
 has been committed to parental care. And natural affection which 
 takes not so high a range ; which strains every nerve to secure cor- 
 poreal wants, and leaves the spiritual unprovided ; which has much 
 
150 
 
 concern for time, and but little for eternity, is a bane but not a bless- 
 ing ; a curse but not a comfort to the unhappy victims of its mis- 
 directed and calamitous control. Genuine affection is concerned 
 with man, not so much as to his animal as to his rational and im- 
 mortal part, and since true love is not operose but active — kindling 
 into deeds — it excites to unremitting efforts to discover what will 
 promote, and remove what will retard the welfare of the object of its 
 exercise, as an inhabitant of eternity and a child of God. 
 
 Of this exalted love a true Christian alone is capable. Can a 
 woman be a mother, 'then, and not a Christian? Can she have chil- 
 dren, and while pampering their bodies, which must wither, neglect 
 the souls, which will live for ages, and will never die? Can she 
 bring up children and not train them for virtue and for God ? If 
 she can, then she '* hath not the care of her own," and is worse than 
 a pagan. If she can, she is not a mother, but a monster ; she is the 
 handmaid of the Evil One, and she calls up sons, but they are the 
 spawn of perdition and the inheritors of hell. 
 
 But if she is, as I fondly trust, a Christian mother, she will confer 
 upon her offspring the inestimable boon of a Christian education. 
 She will train them when young, in the way they should go, that 
 when they are old, they may not depart therefrom. By example, no 
 less than precept, she will guide their footsteps in the road of recti- 
 tude, and along the paths that lead to peace. She will talk to them 
 of heaven and the glory that awaits them there. She will converse 
 with them of God and of His holiness, His beauty, and His truth. 
 The annals of salvation she will open to their fresh, receptive minds, 
 and will declare unto them the short and simple story of Him who 
 came to heal, to help, and to save. Her tears will save where her 
 teachings fail, and should they stray from the way she walks to lead 
 them, she will call them back to peace and to conscience by her 
 prayers with them and for them. 
 
 This is education in its elevated sense. This is instruction unto 
 life, for to be well-informed is not always to be well-educated. A 
 man may be a scholar and yet lose his soul. " Better is the humble 
 rustic that feareth God than the proud philosopher who, neglecting 
 himself, considereth the course of the heavens." 
 
 And where is this education to be imparted? By whom shall it 
 be taught ? By the State ? Has the State the instincts, the feelings, 
 
151 
 
 the love of tlie parent ? The State never made her lap the pillow of 
 infancy, and soothed the babe to his rosy rest. Will the State pray 
 for them ? The State says no prayers, the State sheds no tears, the 
 State has no heart ; nay, the State has no soul, for it is a great 
 corporation, and corporations have, as we are told, no souls. 
 Alas ! the State hardly knows a God ; or at least whether it does or 
 not, is a question of dispute among the doctors. How, then, can it 
 talk of God, how can it teach religion ? Religion is not its office, 
 anyway ; soul-saving is not its function ; it regards -man's body, 
 but cannot chain his soul, and, after all, it seems far better that it 
 should limit its jurisdiction to the planet we now dwell upon. In 
 State schools, then, shall this education be given ? They are what 
 the State makes them, secular, singular, never soul- satisfying. The 
 stream is not purer than its source, and light is not brighter than 
 the sun. A million negatives make no affirmative. God absent is 
 never God present, and irreligion cannot make religion. Granted, 
 however, that the State has constructed a system that approaches 
 perfection ; granted that the State can- and does teach religion ; 
 granted that the State having annihilated the impossible, has con- 
 trived h religion so colorless, so innocent of creeds, that all might 
 regard it available without compounding with conscience, or palter- 
 ing with principle : still the State lacks adequate authority, is in- 
 competent to fill the place of the parent, or supply the unpurchas- 
 able influence and inimitable character of the home. 
 
 Home is the school of nature and the gymnasium of God. The 
 influence of a gracious home begins with the birth, and ends only 
 with the death of the pupils it prepares for the arena of life. Man 
 may live to the age of Mathusala, but he will never outgrow the 
 lights and shadows of his early home. The influence of the home 
 outreaches, overlies, and undergirds all other influence whatsoever. 
 It is no torture to truth to take man for what his home may be. 
 
 Home! it is a hallowed name. May its memory flourish im- 
 mortally. Expunge that word from the vocabulary, and civilization 
 crumbles into chaos. Uproot that word from the language, and life 
 loses all of its savor; there is no longer any sanctuary for the soul; 
 existence robbed of its sweetness is crowned with calamity and 
 death, or oblivion, a much-desired deliverer. Home ! it has an an- 
 gelic sound like music's witching melody when attuned to heaven's 
 
152 
 
 own harmon3% Home ! why, heaven were far less sweet if, when this 
 our exile ended, we could not hail it as our home. And if there is 
 aught of heaven on earth, that spot is surely home. Our childhood's 
 home ! how happy ! Long years have ebbed and flowed since we 
 stood upon the threshold of its door. 
 
 " A wiser head we have, we know, 
 Thau when we loitered there, 
 But in our wisdom there is woe, 
 And in our knowledge care." 
 
 Yes; the years have come and gone; some gliding by on joy's fairy 
 footsteps; some plodding past with the snail-like speed of grief; 
 but out of the tempest of our sorrows, and through the rainbow of 
 our joys, luminous as the star of morning, shone the radiant recol- 
 lection of peace and happiness, untasted since the time we stood be- 
 neath the sheltering shadow of that dear old home. 
 
 '* There blend the ties that strengthen 
 
 Our hearts in hours of grief, 
 The silver links that lengthen 
 
 Joy's visits when most brief; 
 There eyes in all their splendor 
 
 Are vocal to the heart. 
 And glances, gay and tender. 
 
 Fresh eloquence impart: 
 Then, dost thou sigh for pleasure, 
 
 Oh ! do not widely roam. 
 But seek the hidden treasure 
 * At home ! dear home ! " 
 
 And thus memory pictures now the past. May God always keep 
 that memory green. May the remembrance of home abide with us 
 until the final sigh shall call us to another and a better. The vision 
 of that old home is spread before us now. Around the latticed 
 porch the morning-glory twines, and amid the woodbine cups the 
 honey-makers hum their sibilant song. The fragrant odor of the 
 flowering trees still scents the vernal air, and the warm breezes 
 bring showering blossoms down perfuming the soil with sweetness. 
 The purling of the garden-bordering brook is heard pouring music 
 on the pebbles, and in the pastures sound the tinkling bells, as the 
 lowing cattle come to share their evening meal. Near the cottage 
 
153 
 
 door stands the cradle where slumbering innocence lies in dreamless 
 repose, and upon that maternal brow bent over it is seen the glow 
 of pure affection, and in those earnest, watchful eyes, the soft and 
 tender light of holy love — love stronger far than death which it 
 would dare to brave for the Httle life within that crib before the 
 door. 
 
 Tell me, ye worldly-wise — sages, philosophers, and statesmen, 
 whose fine-spun theories are formed for the regeneration of human- 
 ity and the amelioration of the race, are ye minded to efface the in- 
 fluence of home and blot it out forever ? Do you dream, in the in- 
 finite bounds of your own silliness, that you can make the State, the 
 father, the family, and the home ? Can the leopard change his 
 spots and the blackamoor grow white ? Nothing gives what it has 
 not got, and the State is but the State and nothing more. The 
 devil, ages ago, marshalled all his forces in a flank movement against 
 the home, and now you rally to his aid. To this end you invade 
 the sanctuaiy of the home with meddlesome marriage laws, and 
 corrupting divorct laws, and unjust, unnatural laws which assail the 
 sanctity of the home, stab parental influence, and break the back- 
 bone of parental authority, by removing parents from the education 
 and control of those children, concerning whom God will demand, 
 not from you, but from them, a rigorous account upon the judgment 
 day. 
 
 But, alas ! and again alas ! the individual daily languishes, and 
 the State grows. The tendency of the times is rather to degrade 
 than elevate mankind, for the State assumes to educate, and the 
 State has no title and no fitness for the task. And what is the re- 
 sult "i A stinted intellectual growth at best, but for the most part 
 morally deficient, deformed, and disastrous. 
 
 Strange to say, we seem to have boxed the compass of human 
 thought on this subject, and on many others, too, and we are rapidly 
 receding to the deadly centralization which preceded Christianity. 
 The attempt of the State to arrogate to itself the whole scope and 
 direction of education, is both pagan and revolutionary. In free 
 America we profess to hold in abhorrence all doctrines and all move- 
 ments tainted with centralizing tendencies. We consider our 
 liberties in jeopardy and oiu* social Hfe threatened with destruction 
 where Csesarism shows its hydra-head, and we resent, as positive 
 
154 
 
 impertinence, all efforts of tliat ancient paternalism which seeks to 
 swallow up the individual in the omnipotent power of the State. 
 We are not State-socialists, but political individualists. We do not 
 want the State to build our railroads, nor to confiscate the public 
 domain to replenish the coffers of gigantic corporations. We do 
 not ask the State to establish and conduct our banks, develop our 
 agriculture, dig our mines, navigate our steamboats, run our mills, 
 factories, and foundries, or, in fact, concern itself with doing any- 
 thing which belongs to private enterprise and the industry of in- 
 dividuals Every man who understands the nature and appreciates 
 the benefits of free democratic institutions, is unalterably o^Dposed 
 to that concentrating spirit which generally characterizes supreme 
 powers, and which, unresisted and unchecked, crushes out that 
 "unbought energy" and native, self-reliant strength which alone 
 can make a nation great, and flourishes only where the State has 
 never stamped her iron heel upon the neck of individual action. 
 That nation is great whose people make it great. And people make 
 it great only when they are free — free to put forth the powers, to 
 exert their genius, and gather the fruit of their own labors, un- 
 helped, or at least untrammelled, by the action of governmental 
 machinery. State monopolies, or State establishments of any kind. 
 This individualism is a consequence of that equality of conditions 
 which is the essence of democracy. This individualism is not ego- 
 tism, nor is it a proud isolation which scorns aid from others; but it 
 is the natural outcome of the spirit of liberty, for when all are free 
 and equal, none will tolerate any interference which hampers or im- 
 pairs what may be called the self-acting autonomy of the people, 
 whether it be known as tyranny or paternalism. Nor is this individ- 
 ualism inconsistent with strong government and the due assertion of 
 authority. Contrarily, it favors power in its lawful sphere, for it 
 knows it cannot exist without adequate protection, since none 
 suffices for itself; but it is extremely cautious of yielding any un- 
 necessary power to others, and if that power is conceded, it is care- 
 ful to define the scope and limit its exercise by written constitutions, 
 which are held to be the paramount law, unchangeable by any 
 power soever but that which called such constitutions into being. 
 
 Now, it is an unaccountable inconsistency on the part of any 
 people to resist with all their might all drift towards centralization 
 
155 
 
 in matters of minor importance, and hold themselves apathetic and 
 indifferent when those centralizing influences extend to the affairs of 
 incomparably greater moment. The spiritual transcends the tem- 
 poral by an immeasurable degree. "What signifies land naturaliza- 
 tion, or State subsidies to " Alliance" farmers, or governmental con- 
 trol of telegi'aphs and railroads, or even the regulation of the rela- 
 tions between capital and labor by the Government, when compared 
 with the moulding of minds and hearts, the shaping of destinies 
 that are eternal by a power that has no commission to teach, and no 
 competency if it had ? And yet those who with might and main op- 
 pose the former influence are silent as the tomb when the latter ex- 
 ert their chiQing and benumbing effects upon the rising generations. 
 Of all forms of education. State education is the worst. If there be 
 anything the State is not fitted to do, it is to educate. What is State 
 socialism but the absorption of the individual ? And how can the 
 individual be more effectually absorbed than when the State takes 
 complete control of his intellect, the royal faculty of understanding, 
 the chiefest and noblest of man's powers. Is not this centralization, 
 socialism, Csesarism, tyranny, and desj^otism ? Is it not the reasser- 
 tion of the old pagan idea which made, not the State for man, but 
 man for the State, which makes the State a God, and man a worm ? 
 But even under pagan rule, the State did not always and every- 
 where claim control of education. The sagacity of some of the 
 ancient law-givers was sufficient to discern parental rights and 
 honest enough to uphold them. Under the Roman Republic the 
 parent's right was respected. In ancient Athens, where the lamp of 
 learning shone with an immortal flame, the education of children 
 was not wrested from those whom nature charged with the office. 
 It was under the Lycurgan legislation, especially, that children were 
 considered as bom in the arms of the State. The parents were held 
 to belong exclusively and solely to the State, to whoss glory he 
 dedicated all the power of his being. Since, therefore, "partus 
 sequitur ventrem" the child was subject to public supervision from 
 the hour of his birth. By the process of the wine-bath, and by 
 other tests, his vigor was determined, and, if weak or deformed, he 
 was doomed to perish. If found free from bodily defects he was 
 suffered to live, and at the early age of seven was taken from parent- 
 al care, thenceforth to undergo the rigid disciphne and education 
 
156 
 
 « 
 
 thought necessary to qualify him for citizenship in the Spartan 
 State. His whole life long he remained a child — the child of the 
 State. Thus he lived and died for the State. 
 
 By the Lycurgan system, family ties were severed, domestic en- 
 joyments were unknown, and all the sweet comforts of the home 
 were untasted ; for the State dragged the child from the arms of its 
 mother to make it serve a master, who knew no pity and no remorse, 
 through the dreadful hardships of discipline and subordination re- 
 quired to make a lion-hearted warrior. 
 
 With less severity, but with equal authority, the Koman Empire 
 intervened and dispossessed the parent in faf or of the State. At 
 the time of his death, 44 b.c, Csesar had concentrated all power in 
 his own person. His successor, Octavianus, inaugurated the em- 
 pire, and being himself an ambitious patron of letters, he contributed 
 much to bring the whole business of education under the supervision 
 of the State. Public schools were founded and supported by the 
 State ; and by the time of Claudius, w^hen the last remnants of the 
 old republican constitution had disappeared, and tyranny and des- 
 potism were at their height, the parent had almost ceased to have 
 any voice in the education of his children. So complete was the ac- 
 tion of the State in controlling education that Christians were com- 
 pelled to entrust their children to pagan masters in pagan schools, 
 however obnoxious to them, if they wished to secure for their off- 
 spring any secular education at all. 
 
 The case to-day in our boasted Republic is precisely parallel. 
 The old pagan system is revived, and French revolutionary claims 
 are renewed in America. The absolutism and Csesarism of the past 
 are duplicated in the State supremacy of the present The children 
 arc the children of the State, and hence must be taught by the State. 
 All parental objections are overridden and crushed out by compul- 
 sory education laws, not for special cases of neglect, or physical or 
 moral inaptitude, but for all cases, all classes, all conditions. In the 
 State of Ohio, not long ago, Eev. Dr. Quigley was mulcted in a heavy 
 fine for non-compliance with compulsory laws. Spartan severity rules 
 the world again, and Lycurgan legislation is restored. It is the 
 renaissance of pagan education. Its fiercest champions flourish in 
 Germany, and this country is fast imitating its Teutonic teacher. 
 This system is anti-parental, anti-Christian, anti-republican. It 
 
157 
 
 strikes at the root of democratic institutions. It is an invasion of 
 natural right, personal libeiiy, freedom of conscience. It is moral 
 and political injustice. It violates the law of nature, the law of God, 
 and the written constitution of our country. Parents, it takes away 
 your God-given rights in the education of your offspring, and in so 
 iar reduces you to the condition of the Helots and serfs of ancient 
 Sparta. Eeraember, you cannot abdicate those rights, you may not 
 shirk your duty. You are responsible for the souls of your children. 
 You are bound in strictest conscience to give your children an edu- 
 cation which shall be such in truth and reahty. No State can take 
 your place. You are the natural educators of your children. At 
 whatever cost or sacrifice, you must resist aU encroachments upon 
 your inalienable prerogatives. Yours is a sacred trust from Al- 
 mighty God Himself. Your children are your own because God has 
 given them to you. He wiU require them at your hands again. 
 TeiTible will be the penalty if you forswear your duty. Those 
 children were not made for time, but for eternity. Christ gave to 
 education a supernatural end and destiny. He would build an ever- 
 lasting kingdom never to pass away. You are the almpners of His 
 bounty, His agents in the glorious design. It is for you to say 
 whether your children shall be for Christ or whether they shall be 
 against their Creator, their Eedeemer, and their God. " Train them 
 up in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not 
 depart therefrom." An education without religion will sink them 
 into the deepest depths of perdition. God has fitted you for your 
 work. For your sake, and for the fulfiUment of your trust. He 
 thundered forth the fiat : " Honor thy father and thy mother." He 
 has made nature your minister. Helpless little children, they cry 
 with outstretched hands to you their natural guardians and pro- 
 tectors. Can you endure to see those souls, the images of Christ 
 Jesus, placed in jeopardy ? Can you steel your hearts against those 
 plaintive cries ? Can you suffer a cold-hearted stranger to snatch 
 them from your arms, a soulless and a godless state to be their 
 f oster-mothei' ? Who can feel for them like you ? Who can care for 
 them as you ? Yours are the anxious days and the sleepless nights, 
 the weary round of pain and toil, the penalty which nature imposes 
 upon you for the boon she gave in blessing you with offspring. See 
 that little cherub reclining in the cradle, with the unspent energies 
 
158 
 
 of manhood still wrapt up within its tiny breast. Will it be your 
 joy and your crown through life ? In storm and in sunshine, in ad- 
 versity and prosperity, will it cling to you? Will it smooth the 
 pathway of your declining years, spread for you a table in the 
 wilderness, sweeten the cup of existence, be the staff upon which you 
 shall fondly lean when bowed down by years and toil ? Much de- 
 pends upon the laws of retribution as applied in your own case. 
 When a young Indian chief was engaged in fighting the enemies of 
 his own nation, he was dismayed, on lifting his tomahawk, to find he 
 was about to cleft the brain of his own father, who traitorously de- 
 serted to the enemy. " Father," said the j^outh, " you once gave me 
 life ; I now give life to you." If parents give life unto their children 
 by the discharge of their duty in conferring upon them the unpur- 
 chasable blessings of a Christian education, that life will return to 
 them sevenfold in the unspeakable consolation of beholding them 
 grow up full of grace and wisdom in the sight of God. And the 
 bread they have cast upon the waters will return after many days. 
 And though they sowed in tears, they will gather their sheaves re- 
 joicing. And their children, and their children's children, wiU rise 
 up and call them blessed. And all that come after them will hold 
 their memory in honor and benediction. And the nation shall see 
 its sons and daughters everywhere distinguished for all the civic 
 virtues, loyal, brave, and patriotic. Honesty and integrity shall then 
 grace the age, and corruption and venality shall bow their heads in 
 shame. Intelligence and virtue, supported on the indestructible 
 basis of religion, shall stand, a wall of fire, around the broad domain 
 of the Republic, and from the storm-swept shores of Maine to the 
 ice-clad chffs of Alaska it shall be acknowledged and confessed that 
 national greatness and national glory are conditioned upon the ob- 
 servance of just laws, which respect the liberties of man, give to 
 parents those rights which nature gave them, and " render unto Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 
 
 Chapter III. — The Office of the Church in Education. 
 
 If the dignity of the subject were considered, it would seem more 
 consonant with proper order to speak first of the relations of the 
 
159 
 
 State to education, and leave the functions of the Church upon this 
 head to be determined afterwards. But preferably to such ai-range- 
 ment, the Church holds our attention before we touch upon the 
 rights and duties of the State in the grave subject we have pre- 
 sumed to talk about. And this for two reasons : First, because it 
 falls within the province of the Church as the spiritual and higher 
 authority, to determine her own functions and faculties in the work 
 of teaching, and thus, indirectly, the scope and power of the State 
 as regards education. Secondly, because those specific and prac- 
 tical questions concerning public schools, the nature of education 
 when imparted by the State, and questions of conscience involved 
 in the subject, are better weighed and studied in the light which 
 flows from a consideration of the nature and constitution of the 
 Church's teaching office in the world. 
 
 The Church estabhshed by Jesus Christ before His admirable 
 ascension into heaven, is a divine institution, whose nature, consti- 
 tution, scope, and authority are all designed to carry on and com- 
 plete the work of the Incarnation of the eternal Son of God. That 
 Church may properly be defined as an everlasting fabric in the form 
 of an external and visible society, complete, independent, and distinct, 
 though not necessarily separate, from every other society on earth, 
 whose end is to provide all men with means adequate and necessary 
 to salvation. 
 
 The Church of God is therefore a perfect organization, divinely 
 instituted, and embracing within herself all means commensurate 
 with the attainment of her pre-established end and destiny. In 
 every society, whatsoever its form, there must exist supreme author- 
 ity, for this is essential to unity of aim and action, to the preserva- 
 tion of order, to the well-being of the individual members and the 
 happiness of all, that all may conspire in harmony for the fulfillment 
 of the purpose for which such society has had its being. Supremacy 
 of some sort is of the essence of moral government, as much as the 
 law of gravitation is essential to the existence of the physical universe. 
 Every army has its leader ; every kingdom has its king ; every 
 sheep-fold has its shepherd ; and every society has its head, who 
 personifies its authority. 
 
 The authority inherent in the constitution of any society, derives, 
 in great extent, if not altogether, its character from the end and 
 
160 
 
 object sought to be attained. .Here holds good, in a translated sense, 
 the axiom of Aristotle adopted by the school-men, for, what I may 
 call, its paradoxical propriety : "The end is the beginning"; for as 
 in niorals, the end is first to be considered, and all things directed 
 thereunto, so in the constitution of societies, the power and authority 
 conferred upon them are conformable to the end of their establish- 
 ment. This lies in the nature of things. For the power of society 
 is only a means to an end, and the principle is patent that the end 
 determines the means. 
 
 Now, the Church is a supernatural society. Her mission is the 
 mission of Christ Himself, to train citizens for heaven, and to lift 
 humanity to God. But how? Not by physical force, or violence, 
 nor by any other agency antagonistic to free will and intelligence. 
 Not like Mahomet, issuing from his mountain fastnesses, and com- 
 manding acceptance of his Koran by fire and sword, did the humble 
 Galilean spread the messige of salvation through the world. No ; 
 but by the unaided majesty of truth, established by His miracles, 
 and embodied in His life, did He seek to conquer a stubborn and 
 perverse world and reduce it to submission to His saving sway. He 
 came as a teacher, and His school was the world. He taught the 
 multitudes from the ship. He taught from the mountain top. He 
 taught by the silvery sands upon the margin of the lake, He taught 
 in the temple. He taught in the harvest fields, and He taught with tire- 
 less persistency, whenever and wherever He found a company, nay, 
 even an individual io lend Him a hearing — yes, even when His stiff- 
 necked and deluded hearers, stung by His searching rebuke,or abashed 
 at His denunciation, sought to drown His voice in clamor, or took 
 stones to cast upon Him, He was not deterred from announcing 
 to them the character of their crime, and the punishment of their 
 folly. But He was not a teacher unto death, but unto life eternal. 
 Blessed, indeed, were they who heard His word and kept it. The 
 faithful few both heard and kept all He had taught them. There 
 was one characteristic about His teaching which widely separated it 
 from all the teachings of the great men gone before Him. Because 
 of the force, the simx^hcity, and the beauty of His precepts some 
 called Him Elias, some Jeremias, or one of the prophets come to life 
 again. But what a shower of benedictions burst from His soul upon 
 them, when on that day, by the coast of Cesarea Philippi, they recog- 
 nized and greeted Him as the Son of the eternal God. 
 
161 
 
 This, then, was the distinctive ti*uth He had to deliver, that He 
 was the Son of God, come to redeem a fallen and degenerate world. 
 For this, some put Him to shameful death ; but for this, millions 
 will worship till time shall pass awaj. Christ, then, did not teach as 
 a philosopher, but He taught as one having authority, whom to hear 
 was to be bound to obey. He taught with authority, for He taught 
 that He was the Son of God, and He taught as the Son of God. He 
 was " the way, the truth, and the hf e." He was the light that en- 
 lighteneth aU who come into the world. 
 
 But mankind He was not to teach always in His own royal per- 
 son. The time of the leave-taking from His little household came. 
 They would hear His voice no more ; for as teacher. He taught by 
 the Hving voice. *' I go to my God and to your God, to my Father 
 and your Father," He said to them. " I go to prepare a place for 
 you," was meet consolation for the great sorrow of that ^Darting. " It 
 is expedient for you that I go ; for if I go not, the Praraclete wiU 
 not come. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, shall come. He shall 
 teach you all truth." 
 
 This truth, then. He left as an all-sufficing legacy to His disciples. 
 By His invincible power they were to regenerate and renovate the 
 world. To the primal Church at Pentecost He sent the gift of 
 preaching the saving truths they had learned from His own sacred 
 lips. The world-wide commission was conferred some time before. 
 The words wherein He conveyed to them the plenitude of spiritual 
 jurisdiction, whereby He constituted them the governors and inalers 
 of His Church, were authoritative and conclusive to every unbiased 
 understanding. " As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you. 
 Go, therefore, teach ye all nations ; teaching them to observe 
 whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all 
 days, even to the consummation of the world." 
 
 Henceforth they were as second Christs. They were invested 
 with Christ's authority, for the completion of Christ's work. They 
 were fired with His fervor, His holy enthusiasm. His everlasting 
 love. They were the teachers of the world in the faith of the divine 
 Founder of the Church. That faith comes to mankind, as to them, 
 by hearing. "Fides ex audifu." They had the promise of infallible 
 assistance ; they could not err, they could not fail, they could not 
 change the truth of Christ into a lie. They formed the teaching 
 11 
 
162 
 
 Churcb, divinely sustained, divinely guided to declare the truth 
 unto all, even as it is in Christ Jesus. This was their tremendous 
 function. 
 
 And that office they took up with loyal devotion and a sense of 
 consecration which no men ever felt before and never will again. 
 The words that fell from the lips of divine Wisdom they would 
 make known from the housetops, and they would go and preach the 
 Gospel to every creature. With Peter they could cry : " Non 
 possumus quae vidimus et audivimus non loqui" — we cannot but 
 speak what we have heard and seen. 
 
 Thus, aflame with a quenchless enthusiasm for the cause of Christ, 
 they bore His sacred banners to the ends of the earth. His divine 
 doctrine they unfolded to the astonished gaze of pagan philosophy in 
 the vales of Thessaly and the groves of ancient Greece ; and, in tha 
 face of imperial edicts of proscription, they published it in the 
 streets of the Roman capital and in the very courts of the Caesars. 
 With no panoply but that of truth, no shield but that of faith, no 
 armor but the sword of the Spirit and the helmet of salvation, the 
 intrepid heralds of the Gospel went forth upon their heaven- 
 appointed mission, and this little knot of men, this army of Gideon, 
 in spite of numerical inferiority and the wiles of the enemy, marched 
 on in battle for their King, and though they fell full often by the way, 
 they died in the arms of victory. They preached Christ, and Him 
 crucified, and when they were commanded that they should not teach 
 in His name nor fill Jerusalem with His doctrine, they answered they 
 should obey God rather than men, and only proclaimed the more 
 that they were witnesses of the truth and of the Holy Ghost, whom 
 God hath given to all that obey Him. And though they were 
 scourged and threatened with death, they went from the presence 
 of the Sanhedrim rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to 
 suffer reproach for the name of Jesus ; and every day they ceased 
 not, in the temple and from house to house, to teach and preach 
 Christ Jesus. The Apostles, therefore, were the first teachers and 
 preachers — teachers who were not afraid to die for their doctrines, 
 because from Christ, their own Master, Instructor, and Preceptor, 
 they derived their teaching authority. 
 
 Now, whatever authority Christ conferred upon the Church, that 
 authority she manifestly still retains. For the Church was founded, 
 
163 
 
 not as a corporation in flux and change, but as a stable and permanent 
 society, whose end and the reason of whose being should continue 
 to be the same until the " wreck of matter and the crush of worlds " 
 should close the drama of the ages, and time be swallowed in 
 eternity. 
 
 The divine Founder of Christianity established a Church as a 
 means of propagating His religion and procuring man's salvation, 
 and for the attainment of that end He conferred upon that Church 
 a twofold power, the power of orders and the power of jurisdiction. 
 The first was for the perpetuation of His rulers ; the second for the 
 perpetuation of His inile. The latter alone concerns us here — the 
 power of jurisdiction. 
 
 By jurisdiction, in its ecclesiastical comprehension, is signified 
 that whole empire of authority which Christ created for the rule 
 and government of His Church. "All power is given to Me in 
 heaven and on earth." " As the Father hath sent Me, I also send 
 you. The power that I possess and the authority that is mine I 
 bestow on you for the completion and fulfillment of that work for 
 which I came from the depths of celestial glory and dwelt upon this 
 earth." 
 
 Upon the Apostolical Church Christ conferred spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion. All power for all things, to all nations, during all times. Be- 
 hold the fourfold universal ! The Church, moreover, is a complete 
 and sovereign society, supreme and independent of all civil powers. 
 Her jurisdiction, therefore, is likewise sovereign and independent. 
 It comprises all those functions, and embraces all that scope, 
 demanded by the constitution of a perfect society for its being and 
 existence ; and since action is according to the nature of the being — 
 actio sequitur esse — the same character and extent of jui'isdiction is 
 required, that the society may efficiently and actively produce its 
 work upon the world. 
 
 Such jurisdiction, it is evident, is both integral and comprehensive. 
 It has all the constituents of ample power ; it is full and complete ; 
 it is the plenitude of power ; it is judicial, legislative, and executive. 
 It impHes power to punish and to pardon ; to make laws and to 
 enforce them ; to define dogmas and condemn errors ; to teach 
 truth and to proscribe falsehood. 
 
 It is with the moral, and not the coercive, aspect of the Church's 
 
164 
 
 jurisdiction that we are now engaged. This obviates all contention 
 with Protestants and those who, denying the sovereign power of the 
 Church, limit her authority to the teaching of the Gospel. This 
 phase of her jurisdiction only shall engage our attention. 
 
 The Church, then, draws from the legacy left her by Jesus Christ 
 her authority to teach all nations. She holds in her hands the key 
 which unlocks the gates of truth to all generations of mankind. The 
 perception of all those spiritual realities which fertilize the world, 
 and the opening of those channels of divine benediction which 
 enkindle heavenly fire in the bosom of humanity ; the unfolding of 
 those vivifying truths which burn out carnality, purify man's sordid 
 affections, and transmute his frail and darkened image into the 
 angelic likeness of holiness and love, are all involved in the immortal 
 message she has been commissioned to deliver unto men. She is 
 the very oracle of God. She speaks the truth of God. The power 
 of God is in her hands, and the word of God is upon her lips. She 
 is the light of the world, the sun of the universe — a beacon on the 
 shores of time, whose rays flash light across the eternal deep that 
 roUs into the everlasting ocean of divinity. There is no royal road 
 to bliss but through her borders ; no truth but from her sacred 
 mouth ; no life but from her holy spirit. Those who enter not by 
 her gates are homeless wanderers ; who hear not her voice are as 
 sheep gone * astray ; who behold not her light dwell in darkness. 
 Without that light the soul languishes ; the spirit in man is dead ; 
 the immortal is extinguished in the gloom of unfathomable, inex- 
 pressible desolation and immeasurable bitterness and woe. Dark 
 indeed is the destiny of him who fails to find her by his own fault. 
 God has, therefore, placed her as a city on a mountain, whence all 
 who hate not light may see her radiant form. He has made her 
 voice to thunder, like the Archangel's everlasting trumpet calling the 
 dead to rise from the four quarters of the globe, that all may hear 
 her tones when she proclaims the thrilling message of salvation. 
 And they who will not hear, or who, hearing, will not heed, had bet- 
 ter never been born, for on the reckoning day then- names shall be 
 forever blotted from the book of life. '* He that heareth you heareth 
 Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me and Him that sent me." 
 God cannot be mocked, and they who niock His voice wiU one day 
 call upon Him, and He will not hear ; and they shall seek Him in 
 
165 
 
 the morning and shall not find Him, because they have hated instruc- 
 tion and have not received the fear of the Lord. 
 
 If Jesus Christ commissioned His Church to teach to men their 
 destiny, He has commanded men to hear, that they may secure 
 salvation. The " magisterium," or teaching power of the Church, is 
 and must be authoritative, to which obedience and subjection are 
 necessarily due, whenever she prescribes any doctrine to the belief 
 of her children. Her authority once allowed, mankind is bound to 
 listen and obey, even if the reasons are not fully manifest, and, 
 although the nature of the doctrine, at least intrinsically, sui-passes 
 the comprehension of the mind, or even seem repugnant to man*s 
 finite intelligence. God would cease to be God if He could not 
 make revelations of truths beyond the limits of man's shallow under- 
 standing, for who can know the depths of His unsearchable riches ? 
 
 With the teachings of private authority the case is obviously 
 otherwise. Human reason is only human reason, and man is no 
 more than man. Conviction is the measure of the authority of 
 reason. Neither Plato nor Pliny, Socrates nor Solon, has any 
 authority to compel belief, and much less to prescribe the practice 
 such belief implies, except in so far as their reasons require the 
 assent of prudent and enlightened judgment. Their authority is 
 proportional to their proof — "tantum vales, quantum probas," says 
 the philosopher. 
 
 But the Church is a divine teacher. Her credentials have been 
 handed her from high heaven itself. She carries conviction, not 
 because all she speaks is under all aspects pervious to reason, but 
 for the higher motive that what she utters is of God. There can be 
 no shuffling, doubt, or hesitancy here ; God speaks : — it must be so. 
 
 Nor is the sun*ender of the judgment which the Church exacts 
 imprudent or unreasonable. Her service is a reasonable service. 
 She demands not blind obedience ; no slavish subserviency of the 
 intellect. Her authority alone can be questioned. But when the 
 motives of credibility have been passed through the crucible of 
 criticism, and her divine commission corroborated, obedience and 
 acceptance of what she demands is a rigid duty. It is manifestly 
 prudent, it is supremely reasonable to believe all that God has re- 
 vealed, even when the doctrines baffle and confound the proudest ef- 
 forts of the human understanding. And if it be entirely consistent with 
 
166 
 
 the dignity of reason to believe what God declares to us Himself, it is 
 equally compatible with rational intelligence to submit itself un- 
 questioningly to the dictates of an authority which God Himself 
 established, and which for its complete equipment He endowed with 
 the faculty of inerrancy, or infallibility. It is not only prudent to 
 submit the human judgment to such authority, but it is likewise 
 necessary to the life of reason, which is lost in a labyrinth, without a 
 loadstar or a guide-post, when it rejects the care and companionship 
 of authority. Dr. Briggs, the erudite professor, who at present has 
 hurled a bombshell into the Presbyterian camp, fully appreciates all 
 this when his perspicacity carries him so far as to regard the 
 *' Church " with reason and the Bible as the rule of faith for true 
 and orthodox believers ; but Dr. Briggs and many more of his 
 peculiar mentality, in the long run, make, like Thomas Paine, their 
 own mind their Church ; unlike Catholics, who have no room to 
 doubt that the Church's teaching power is exercised by prescribing 
 and commanding, and is a part of her divine jurisdiction, which 
 must be unhesitatingly obeyed, when once her power is recognized. 
 
 The memorable words of the great Vatican Council are here in 
 point : 
 
 *'We teach and declare that this power of jurisdiction of the 
 Roman Pontiff is immediate ; therefore pastors of whatever dignity 
 and rite, and the faithful, both individually and collectively, are 
 bound by the duty of true obedience, under hierarchical subjection, 
 not only in matters pertaining to faith and morals, but likewise in 
 those relating to discipline ; so that, thus maintaining the j)rinciple 
 of unity in the profession of the same faith and communion with 
 the same see, there may be but one flock, and one Supreme 
 Shepherd." 
 
 From this paraphrased citation, it follows, by inexorable logic, 
 that the teaching authority of the Church springs spontaneously 
 from the power of jurisdiction, or the world-wide commission which 
 was given to its first founders in the persons of the Apostles ; that 
 its scope embraces directly all truths pertaining to faith and morals, 
 all doctrine contained in that divine deposit once delivered to the 
 Saints, and from which they draw the science of salvation ; that all 
 profane or secular truths which bear any relation to religion fall in- 
 directly under the range of this spiritual authority ; that all men 
 
167 
 
 from the peasant to the philosopher, the serf to the king, who have 
 been baptized, and all unbaptized, inasmuch as they wish to see sal- 
 vation — all individuals, all families, all governments — are subject to 
 its soul-subduing influence, even though culpably beyond its reach; 
 that, although Church and State should act in concert and corre- 
 spondence, mutually assisting each other to attain its proper end, and 
 although they are not in the relation of subordination and depend- 
 ence, as each is sovereign in its own sphere ; yet they are not in all 
 respects co-ordinate, for as the things of soul sui-pass the things of 
 sense, the spiritual, the temporal, the Church may lawfully claim the 
 hegemony over the State, because it is her proper function to define 
 her own jurisdiction and thus establish the exact relationship of the 
 one to the other, and regulate temporal affairs by indirect interpo- 
 sition, inasmuch as they may be connected with spiritual ; that the 
 Church is entitled to a voice in the affairs of education, as her 
 Christ-given mission is "to teach all nations"; that, although the 
 education of children, in the natural order, is both the ofl&ce and the 
 duty of the parent, it appertains to the Church, as a divine right, to 
 instruct in the ways of heaven and the knowledge of God, those 
 children who belong to her, because, elevated by her to the super- 
 natural order, when she conferred upon them the saving sacrament 
 of Baptism ; that, in fine, as the Church is the very gate of heaven 
 and the poi-t of salvation, the only means appointed unto men to 
 attain their supernatural destiny, the star whose light, like that 
 which shone upon the shepherd's path in distant Jadea, is to con- 
 duct them to the Bethlehem beyond the everlasting skies, she alone 
 is endowed with that wisdom, and empowered by that authority, 
 which enable her to triumph over the minds, and direct the souls of 
 men ; which gives to her pronouncements, both when uttered as 
 definitive and infallible judgments, and when declared as disciplinary 
 regulations, a force that must not be resisted, and an imperativeness 
 that must be obeyed ; which quahf}' her to sift the chaff from the 
 wheat, to detect the false and discern the true ; which confer upon 
 her a divine competence, as the spouse of Christ, to fulfill her 
 heavenly mission, to furnish mankind through every age and in 
 every clime with that code of morality, that spirit of discipline, that 
 sweet attractiveness of worship, and that unchallengeable quality of 
 instruction, that heaven-approved character of education, which. 
 
' 168 
 
 grounded upon the precepts and maxims of religion, enlighten men 
 to see the sublime destiny marked out for them beyond the present 
 life, stimulates and animates them, on beholding the emptiness of 
 worldly happiness, to shim the bitterness of actual disappointment 
 which follows false and unfounded expectations ; and, instead of 
 building ideal monuments of renown or bliss in this fallen and de^ 
 graded world, to press forward with holy emulation towards the sov- 
 ereign good, and inscribe their names in the annals of heaven and 
 write their deeds in the register of God. 
 
 A principal, if not the most important office of the Church in the 
 world, is to educate the sons of men. This is plainly deducible from 
 several heads ; namely, from her commission to teach, which is 
 divine ; from the destiny of man, which is supernatural ; from the 
 nature of education, which is religious. 
 
 From the character of her commission, she draws authorization to 
 teach the faith, that all may be baptized, and to enjoin observance 
 of all that Christ commanded that all may practice morals. No 
 human being is excepted, for every man, inasmuch as he is man, has 
 a soul to save, a God to serve, and a heaven to gain. All religious 
 education is, therefore, directly under her control, and since religion 
 is, pre-eminently, the most essential part of education, every kind of 
 education lies indirectly under the supervision of the Church. The 
 Church has to feed the flock of Christ. And she is no hii*eling shep- 
 herd. She would lay down her life to save her sheep. She, there- 
 fore, calls them all by name to follow her, and, while she seeks to 
 lead them into rich and verdant pastures, where they may quietly 
 graze beneath the shepherd's eye, she vigilantly watches lest they 
 may wander into foreign fields where the deadly nightshade pol- 
 lutes the air and the baneful upas grows and distils its poison on 
 the grass. She has to teach truth, but she must also root up error. 
 She must guard the flock from food that yields not life, but death. 
 Now, doctrine is the food of the soul. Dogma is the spring of de- 
 votion, the source of rational service due to the Deity. Truth is 
 life; falsehood is death. Truth has many. sides, but it has no false 
 side. Its aspects are many, but in essence it is one. Bui, error has 
 a thousand sides, and every side a face, and every face a thousand 
 forms. The chameleon cannot change its colors as often as false- 
 hood's protean form will change its look. It sometimes takes on the 
 
169 
 
 likeness of truth. But it is only a semblance — a base imitation. As 
 hypocrisy is said to be the homage which vice pays to virtue, so 
 falsehood may be regarded as the reverence paid to truth by apish 
 error. But the difference is often difficult to detect. Error i» 
 shadowy, elusive, successful in deceit. Only an eye gifted with the 
 faculty of divine light, which can perceive the great realities of our 
 earthly abode and the existence of that heavenly kingdom which the 
 world denies and disapproves, can discern the false from the true, 
 the specious from the real, the things of darkness from the things 
 of light. The teacher who is guided by the holy spirit of truth, the 
 Church, which is the pillar and the ground of truth, has capability 
 to confound falsehood, to tear off the mask of hypocrisy, to put 
 brazen error to the blush, and to exhibit to the eyes of men the 
 naked majesty of truth, arrayed in the splendor of her beauty and 
 the glory of her surpassing excellence. 
 
 The Church knows that the best punishment for eiTor is detection 
 and refutation. Under whatever phase it is presented, her divine 
 prescience penetrates its many-folded veils, it pulls down its visor 
 and shows its hideous visage to its intended victims. The Church 
 admonishes her children to be vigilant and alert lest they be en- 
 snared by the astuteness of an enemy which has warred against the 
 works of Jesu3 Christ for nigh two thousand years. Doctrines are 
 developed in these days of feeble, languid faith, by the busy brains 
 of mountebanks and false teachers upon social and educational ques- 
 tions, especially, which, though at first sight manifestly erroneous, 
 because upheld by a great show of argument and all the subtleties- 
 of sophistry, are indubitably liable to suspicion, and hence to be re- 
 garded as dangerous in the dissemination. She, therefore, prohibits 
 their pubHcation until their truth be clearly established, or their 
 falsehood be shown, by the impossibility of their reconcilement vdth 
 the revelations and traditions of faith, and her infallible voice has 
 spoken definitively and authoritatively upon the subject. And he 
 that will not hear that voice shall be ranked, says Christ, with the 
 heathen and the publican. 
 
 Many profane or secular truths are so intimatety related to re-^ 
 ligion as to fall by consequence under the inspection of the teaching 
 authority of the Church. She is compelled to take cognizance of, 
 and pronounce judgment upon, them for the guidance of the faith-^ 
 
170 
 
 f ul. The erroneous conclusions of natural science, and the unproved 
 theories of social philosophers, are often arrayed against the obvious 
 declarations of Holy Writ and the unbroken traditions of Christian- 
 ity, and are confidently cited as confirmation of the spurious char- 
 acter of the one and the fabulous origin of the other. To lay bare 
 the hollow pretensions of these enthusiastic visionaries, whose arro- 
 gance is often but proof of ignorance, the Church of Christ has 
 found it necessary from the earHest days of the Christian religion. 
 Philosophical systems she has often to reject, because of their im- 
 pinging upon some truth of faith which was assailed either explicitly 
 or implicitly by their falsity. Thus, doctrines denying the unity of 
 the human race, and systems of evolution which reduce the image 
 of God to the likeness of a brutish beast, by evolving not body 
 alone, but soul of man as well, from a Simian ancestry, have to be 
 sealed by her disapprobation. At one time she points out the per- 
 nicious tendency of Cartesian principles in uprooting necessary 
 truths; at another she confutes the cold and sceptical philosophy of 
 Kant in destroying the principle of certitude, and with it the certi- 
 tude of man's salvation. Certain customs at variance with natural 
 ethics, as the practice of the ordeal in the Middle Ages, that of duel- 
 ling in later times, and the doctrine, long since maintained and re- 
 cently revived by Felix Adler in the cultured city of Boston, that 
 suicide is justifiable when the conditions of existence seem almost 
 insupportable, have likewise to be stigmatized by her as opposed to 
 the light of reason and revealed truth. Social theories and bio- 
 logical doctrines most frequently demand denunciation. Platonic 
 conceptions of human society are not so current as formerly, but 
 they are not unknown at this day; and social reformers plan the re- 
 construction of the race upon a community of goods which em- 
 braces, not alone lands and chattels, but men and women as well. 
 The Oneida community and the Mormon settlements are cases in 
 point in our own country. The degrading materialism which now 
 permeates all classes and professions, but, with regret I say it, more 
 conspicuously the medical profession; which glorifies the age as one 
 of pre-eminent achievement and the most illustrious in the history 
 of humanity, simply because it prefers ducats to doctrines, and the 
 clatter of the mill-wheel to the sound of the church-bell; which lifts 
 not its glance beyond the grave, seeks for a soul with lancet and 
 
171 
 
 scalpel, and failing to find the vital principle, meanly fancies that man 
 is doomed to perish like the dog, — this debasing philosophy, the gos- 
 pel of despair, the meet companion of atheism and rationalism, must 
 always in the future, as it has in the past, call forth the condemna- 
 tion of God's oracle upon itself and its purblind professors. In like 
 manner those apostles of enlightenment, who substitute knowledge 
 for virtue, arithmetic for theology, the State school for God's temple, 
 and think that national glory is permanently secured beyond the 
 reach of injury, if only district schools be established, and all the 
 children of the land be compelled to enter them and be re-created 
 in the image and likeness of the State, must be told by the same in- 
 spired and heaven-sent authority that instruction of itself cannot 
 generate morality; that knowledge is power only when properly di- 
 rected; that algebraic formulas and mathematical calculations have, 
 as such, no uplifting force, and that any system of education which 
 abolishes religion and casts out God from its curriculum, must ulti- 
 mately become a national calamity, involve in irreparable ruin the 
 whole fabric of society, and carry down every soul within the em- 
 pire of its influence to desolation. 
 
 If by virtue of her commission to teach the nations, the Church 
 has an undoubted voice in education, she surely has no function 
 more unmistakably her peculiar province than that of founding and 
 conducting schools. For it is in the school that education must 
 principally be imparted. It is true, home ought to be the best, as 
 it is the first, school for children. Lugubrious experience often 
 proclaims the contrary. But wherever, or whatever, the school may 
 be, the Church must always claim the guidance of the religious edu- 
 cation^of the children. She must see that they are trained for 
 heaven. Nor does this infringe parental rights. By the law of 
 nature, and inasmuch as their children are their own, their training 
 and their education belong of right to their parents. But the law 
 of nature does not clash with the institution and the ordinance of 
 Christ. God's works are always harmonious. By the law of nature, 
 parents are peremptorily constrained to give to their offspring such 
 education as befits the ends of their creation, to become woiihy 
 candidates for paradise. Those children can read no title clear to a 
 celestial inheritance, save what is grounded on a supernatural charter. 
 The boon of eternal beatitude is no natural birthright. It is no 
 
172 
 
 heirloom inherited from ancestry. It is derived from the gratuitous 
 goodness of the Creator, and it is sealed by the Saviour's ruby blood. 
 All who would possess it must be grafted on the stock of Christ that 
 they may shine with Him in glory. They must be members of His 
 mystical body, children of His Church by the regeneration wrought 
 in Baptism. Parents are, therefore, obligated, both by natural and 
 divine injunction, to make their children Christians, or members of 
 the Catholic Church, the ark of salvation, to make their election sure, 
 and secure for the children whom God has committed to their 
 custody the high destiny whereunto they have been appointed. Ac- 
 cording to nature, then, the child is the parents'; according to grace, 
 he belongs to the Church, because he belongs to Christ. The two 
 rights involved are not mutually exclusive, but reciprocally confirm- 
 ative. The Church does not impede, but confirms the parental 
 right ; does not hinder, but facilitates its due exercise and proper 
 application. 
 
 This explanation is deemed not inapposite, for a leading Catholic 
 who, some years now past, advocated in a distinguished Protestant 
 presence the reconstruction of the school system on the basis of the 
 full assertion of parental authority, and the rejection of all State 
 pretensions, was asked if, in the event of the State's retirement, he 
 would not hand the children over to the control of the priests, 
 answered with emphasis, " No ; I would give them to the control of 
 their parents, to whom God has given them." 
 
 The Church, then, asserts her right to found Christian schools, 
 and her claims cannot be disallowed, for they are a clear corollary 
 of her right to teach. In her divine constitution and heavenly 
 charter, obtained directly from the hands of Christ, her warrant and 
 sanction for such authority are inscribed in indelible letters of God's 
 purest gold. For nigh two thousand years she has, in the face of 
 opposition and in the teeth of furious persecution, exercised, and 
 claimed the right to exercise, this office. And she can never yield it 
 up. It is inalienable. No power can wrest it from her, though 
 force and violence may obstruct and hamper it. It is inviolable. 
 The sanctuary may be invaded ; the altar may be torn down ; the 
 walls of the material edifice may be razed to the ground ; and, 
 touched by the torch of the incendiary of Hell, the sacred temple, 
 consumed in conflagration, may be converted into a murky mass of 
 
173 
 
 rubble ; but upon that ponderous pile of smoking ruins the Christ- 
 sent teacher will still take his stand to hold the lamp of Christian 
 learning before the eyes of men ; and if the fury of fanaticism or 
 the hatred of Christ's name should drive him thence, he will, as he 
 so often did before in the dark days of tribulation, find for his 
 unwearied foot some other resting-place, and, whether in the gloom 
 of the forest glade or the glare of the mountain-top, or in the 
 sheltering shadow of the cavernous rock, will unceasingly pursue 
 his mission of pouring on the minds of the rising generations those 
 beneficent lessons of Christian knowledge and instruction which, 
 when the world and all its mundane glamour have perished in ever- 
 lasting oblivion, will cause those whose minds were thus illumined 
 to shine like stars for all eternity. 
 
 With what zealous care the Church has always guarded her rights 
 in education, and with what indomitable zeal and untiling industry 
 she has founded, fostered, and supported schools in every land and 
 every age, shall more extensively be shown in later pages, when her 
 connection with the progress of the world comes under considera- 
 tion. For the present we speak only of the principles involved. 
 
 In all the pubhc schools founded by the Church, and in all those 
 designed for her special service, as seminaries, colleges, and acade- 
 mies for the training of her servants in the sanctuary, the Church 
 has dii-ect control in everything, according to the-Christian theoiy of 
 the relations that should subsist between the civil and the ecclesias- 
 tical powers. Such institutions are her personal property. The 
 schools which are by her established are in no sense subject to the 
 State, for the State has, and can have, no rights — super sacris — over 
 sacred things. All lofty argument about cherishing national senti- 
 ment and fostering national unity are the boldest rhodomontade, 
 when urged to make the State supreme, and can never destroy the 
 rights of the Church to educate her children and conduct them upon 
 the way that leads to eternal life. If the Church has the right to teach, 
 she has the right to found schools. If she has the right to found 
 schools, she has the right to supervise and control them ; and if not, 
 she has no right to teach at aU, and all her claims are visionary, her 
 mission is a failure, and she herself is the most monstrous imposi- 
 tion" that has appeared in the annals of mankind. But more than 
 this : from all that has been said concerning the connection between 
 
174 
 
 secular and religious teachings, it is undoubted that even in secular 
 truths and teachings not regarded as religious, in a narrow sense, 
 the Church has an indirect right of supervision and inspection ; for, 
 were this not the case, how could she guard her flock from noxious, 
 baneful food ? How could she shield them from the shafts of error 
 so often aimed at their destruction ? The countless perils to which 
 the lambs of Christ are exposed in these days, and the panther-like 
 passion and rage of infidelity against a meek and inoffensive Church, 
 so pertinently personified by Dryden's helpless but immortal Hind, 
 recall to mind his well-known description of her sorrows and 
 persecutions : 
 
 " A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged. 
 Without unspotted, innocent within, 
 She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. 
 Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds, 
 And Scythian shafts, and many-winged wounds 
 Aimed at her heart ; was often forced to fly, 
 And doomed to death, tliough fated not to die." 
 
 And the ancient virulence has not lost its sting. Arrows, barbed 
 with gall and bitterness, are pointed at her heart to-day with measure- 
 less malignity. The persistency of odium against God and against 
 His Church has thrice the energy and sedulity of a hero's uncalcu- 
 lating devotion to a glorious cause. But, for the most part, the 
 assaults of her enemies are covert and insidious. They employ the 
 ambuscade, the pitfall, and the lurking hole. Satan dons the domino. 
 Guile and imposition, and all the blazonry of humbug, surround his 
 seductive overtures. He sometimes throws down the gauge of bat- 
 tle in defiant, open challenge, as when his emissary, Jules Ferry, 
 spoke his malevolence by proclaiming a fight between the " glorious 
 revolution " and the syllabus, and calling to his aid all who were of his 
 dark mind to wrest the youth of France from those who, adhering to 
 the syllabus, were accounted enemies of the " glorious revolution "; but 
 not infrequently, perhaps most generally, the Prince of Darkness 
 advances by flank movement and circuitous approach. He presents 
 doctrines varnished and veneered to look like the truth. He is a 
 specious liar and unctuous hypocrite. Under pretence of teaching 
 secular knowledge he pours the poison of infidelity into fresh, 
 
175 
 
 receptive minds and unsuspecting hearts. He proffers liberal 
 stipends, and sets hire against zeal. He inveigles many to do his 
 work for his magnanimous wage. He employs books, schools, and 
 pedagogues to extend his influence and advance his empire. He is 
 a polished and indefatigable propagandist. He is a schoolmaster who 
 is always abroad. He wants the schools, he wants the books, he 
 wants the teachers, because he wants the children. 
 
 He fears no power on earth but one — the holy Catholic Chui'ch of 
 Jesus Christ. He stands in sublime dread of her, because the 
 power of Chi-ist is in her hand. She is, he knows, invincible and 
 unconquerable, like Him of whom it is written : *• Behold the Lion 
 of the fold of Jiidah hath conquered. With a strong bite he has 
 broken the iron bars of Hell, and hath trampled death to destruc- 
 tion." And never wiU she surrender her schools ; never will she 
 give over those children whom Jesus died to win, whose souls £ire 
 washed in the libation of the Saviour's blood, whom He called 
 around His sacred knee and touched upon their innocent heads, and 
 blessed and likened unto His heavenly kingdom — never will the 
 Bride of Christ, the loving mother of those helpless little ones, 
 devote them to measureless misery, and consign them to a fate so 
 foul and destiny so dark as that of those who are cut off from 
 Christ forever, to be oppressed with everlasting night, 
 
 ** Unseen, untold, unwelcome.'* 
 
 But how can she hinder this sad calamity if she cannot control the 
 education of her children ? 
 
 To her, then, belongs the right, not only to found schools, but also 
 to supervise and inspect them. Whenever any question of faith or 
 morals is presented, her control is direct and immediate, because it 
 is her peculiar province and unique mission to teach all truth con- 
 nected with the science of salvation. She must always exercise a 
 jealous care that faith and morals be neither corrupted nor dis- 
 carded. Hers is the tireless task of watch and ward, that her charge 
 be always anchored in the faith, that they be not " tossed about by 
 every wind of doctrine," or be engulfed in the deep, soundless sea 
 of error. 
 
 The supervision of schools involves necessarily the inspection and 
 approbation of books, and authorization of teachers. Otherwise such 
 
176 
 
 fiuperintendence would be futile and illusory. It would be nominal, 
 not actual. Books are the vehicles of doctrine. Tliey are among 
 the chief instruments of education, and the erroneous teachings they 
 impart cannot always be eradicated by the efforts of the teacher. 
 The writer, when a child, saw it stated in a text-book that Catholics 
 thought the Pope impeccable, and it took repeated declarations to 
 persuade him that such was not the fact. The printed word makes 
 ' a lasting impression on the youthful mind, especially when supple- 
 mented by cuts and illustrations; and aU will feel the force of this 
 assertion, who, in the maturity of manhood, will make the effort to 
 «ee how vividly and correctly they can recall the first lessons and 
 pictures of the little primer used in childhood. 
 
 But if the book is the prime factor in education, the teacher is 
 that factor indefinitely multiplied. His influence is unbounded. 
 The child thinks in him, acts through him — the child is what he 
 makes it. He moulds the pupil according to his own sweet will. 
 Fear is a powerful motive to the incitement of action, even in the 
 matured and full-grown mind; but it is all but omnipotent in its sway 
 over the green and tender understanding of the very young. And 
 the pupil fears its teacher. Eespect for his authority is allied to 
 fear in their minds. He can thus give such bias to their thoughts, 
 such bent to their actions, as may seem suitable to his own turn 
 and purpose. And if he be an evil-minded man; a person of de- 
 praved morals and vicious habits; a being without honesty, void of 
 integrity, or still worse, destitute of all religion — perhaps a scoffer 
 and derider of the Christian name; if so, what human arithmetic 
 can calculate the detriment — the multitudinous loss — he wiU entail 
 upon the unscreened and defenseless victims of his malevolent 
 mastery and diabolical control? 
 
 It is no matter for marvel that the Church is scrupulously careful 
 in her selection of tutors for her children; that she jirefers, as far as 
 feasible, to secure the services of religious who take the tenderest 
 conscience and most exalted sense of duty to their life-work in the 
 class-room; and that she has always vigorously and insistently as- 
 serted her claim to control the teachers who were to shape the des- 
 tinies of her children, not for time alone, but for eternity. 
 
 The Church, therefore, strenuously affirms her jurisdiction over 
 all her schools in all that concerns their establishment, equipment, 
 
177 
 
 management, and practical operation. Without her canonical com- 
 mission, no teacher is empowered to impart religious education. 
 No books may be used, even on secular subjects, which are danger- 
 ous to faith or morals. With her functions in the realm of educa- 
 tion, no State can interfere without transcending its authority and 
 exceeding the legitimate limits of the secular sphere. It is masterly 
 impertinence for the State to ordain the methods of instruction, 
 prescribe the character of text-books, or dictate the personnel of 
 teachers in schools belonging to the Church. The requisitions of 
 the State carry no title to be observed or respected, because her 
 mandates are unsanctioned and unchartered. Expediency, policy, 
 necessity, or the acceptability of existing conditions, whose alterna- 
 tive would be productive of greater hardship and difficulty, may 
 dispose the Church to yield to the State certain concessions in the 
 domain of education. Such allowance may be eminently prudent, 
 and in certain circumstances such indulgence may beget results ex- 
 tremely favorable, not alone to order, peace, and harmony, but to 
 religion as well. And it is worthy of remembrance that, when the un- 
 conditioned authority of the Church on the score of schools is af- 
 firmed, we are chiefly concerned with right, rather than fact; with 
 the order of ideal excellence, rather than that of stern reality. Of 
 course, where faith or morals are in jeopardy, or wherever they are 
 directly and immediately involved, there is no question of conven- 
 ience or adaptation. E\^l cannot be good; nor good, evil. Truth 
 has no liberality towards error. Truth is, in so far, an aggressive 
 bigot. There is no alliance between light and darkness. The 
 Church can make no sacrifice of truth, and she will make no 
 compromise with error. The pillar and ground of truth is fixed 
 upon immovable foundations. The work of Jesus Christ and the 
 words of Jesus Christ are the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever. 
 
 It is to be concluded, then, that the Church is charged with the 
 supreme control of her own educational establishments, both in re- 
 spect of their religious character and in relation to their material 
 management. No secular authority has the right to strip her of her 
 temporal possessions, and much less to rob her of her eternal pre- 
 rogatives. To deny her the control of schools, is to deprive her of 
 the control of scholars, and all her subjects are but scholars for 
 12 
 
178 
 
 eternity. To wrest from her the power of moulding minds is to ex- 
 clude her from the work of curing souls. 
 
 But her jurisdiction, on its negative or prohibitory side, is not 
 conterminable with her own schools. It has no bounds but the 
 whole arena of education, because education is, in the main, relig- 
 ious, and because, even in matters non-religious, or secular, the 
 moral aspect is never absent, and the connection of the two orders 
 of truth, the natural and the supernatural, is so near and so many- 
 sided, that the Church must maintain a constant and searching 
 scrutiny to prevent a conflict; or, to speak more correctly, to hinder 
 any encroachment by the temporal upon the spiritual. Not, indeed, 
 that these two orders are by nature hostile; not that they must 
 stand in contradiction. Both streams flow from the same infinite 
 Fountain. The book of Nature and the book of Kevelation are 
 written by the same Almighty hand. The finger-marks of God are 
 found on every page, and the seal of supreme Wisdom stamped 
 upon each mighty volume. Truth cannot belie truth. God makes 
 no mistakes. His memory is not short. What He spoke by the 
 atoms of star-dust, the grains of sand, the drops of water, the buds, 
 the flowers, the groves, the dells, the streams, and the living things 
 that move within the deep, or walk upon the shore, He could not 
 contradict, when He spake through the mouths of messengers, or by 
 His own sacred voice to the intelligent creatures fashioned to His 
 likeness by His own beneficent hand. The central attribute of man's 
 nature is a receptivity for truth. The pivotal purpose of his exist- 
 ence is to know the truth. God has decreed it to be so. He cannot 
 frustrate His own providential plans and make a ludibrium of man, 
 by casting confusion and inexplicable contradiction upon diverse parts 
 of His own divine economy. 
 
 The natural and the supernatural are not made for strife, nor even 
 rivalry. They are entirely congruent. But in the secular order 
 much is published and professed under the fair name of truth, and 
 with the baseless boast of science, which, so far from deserving such 
 distinction, is, and must be, characterized as rank error and absolute 
 falsehood. The Church is holden of the duty of guarding her sub- 
 jects against the dangerous delusions which spring, even from the 
 contemplation of error, like waters from their native fountain. She 
 is, likewise, charged with the employment of preserving the spiritual 
 
179 
 
 and the temporal in their proper relations, and it is her part and 
 faculty to cai-e that religion be not subordinated to thin^^s inferior 
 to it by their nature, as the moon is inferior to the sun, to use an 
 old comparison; or, at least, so co-ordinated with such secondary 
 subjects that instruction and education would be, if the term be al- 
 lowable, bisected and divided into two educational forces, mutually 
 independent and possibly conflicting. Upon the Church, then, it is: 
 incumbent to exert every effort that she may be iuUj informed as to» 
 whether secular instruction, when, where, or by whom given, be of 
 such character as to depreciate, or to contradict the higher spiritual 
 realities, to assail faith or morals, or to endanger the salvation of the 
 souls whom God committed to her hands. The whole empire of 
 knowledge is so interpenetrated by religion and so grouted with the 
 amalgam of morality that the attempt to build a social structure, or 
 even an individual character, without these consolidating and mor- 
 tising materials, would be no more possible than to construct an im- 
 movable pyramid upon the shifting sand, or to fasten together the 
 tilings of a mighty temple Avith cement as volatile as ether or as 
 yielding as air. 
 
 Besides, the mission of the Chui'ch, as the mother of mankind, is 
 to conduct all men towards their eternal destiny. That destiny lies 
 far beyond the shadowy boundaries of time, in a realm of supernal 
 light. The present life is only the blush of promise ; that other 
 life to come is the real fruition and fulfillment. Here is the seed 
 and the planting ; there the harvest and fruit. Those things a man 
 shall sow, the same he shall also reap. If he sow in sin, he shall 
 reap in sorrow ; but if he sow in grace he shall reap in glory. And 
 this grace is necessary : necessary as rain to the thirsty soil, as dew 
 to the fragile flower. All grace is born of the blood of Christ. The 
 sweet passion-flower planted in the sap of that blood shall bear the 
 perennial bloom of pax'adise. The hearts washed in that erubescent 
 lymph shall glow like opal in the damask sunlight of eternity. This 
 is eternal life, to know the Father, and Jesus Christ whom He has 
 sent. 
 
 But how will Christ be known to them who never hear His holy 
 name, or hear it only to profane ? And if they know not Christ, 
 how shall they fulfill their immortal destiny ? How will they attain 
 their supernatural end who are not taught to know that end ? How 
 
180 
 
 will they attain that end who spurn the needful means, and possess 
 not the pass-key to the treasures of God's redeeming grace and 
 love ? And what effect can teaching have which makes God a myth, 
 the supernatural a sham, and religion a re vilement? The modern 
 secular schools laugh to scorn the faith our fathers often sealed by 
 the surrender of their blood. Grace is but a gossamer shadow of 
 some unreality which haunts the pious fancy of the credulous, but 
 has, in point of fact, no objective existence. Life to them is an 
 unsolved and insoluble problem ; ease and opulence, or the knowl- 
 edge that puffeth up, are its best benisons, and the grave is indeed 
 its goal. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'* 
 
 " O ! if earth be all, and heaven nothing, 
 What thrice-mocked fools are we ! " 
 
 To protect her subjects from these disserviceable doctrines, more 
 deadly than hellebore, the Church claims the right to rule the 
 whole realm of human knowledge, and her competence to pronounce 
 judgment upon the character of the mental pabulum offered to her 
 flock. She alone can tell the medicament of truth from the aconite 
 of falsehood ; and, pouring the soothing cordial of the Gospel doc- 
 trine into the heart of man, she provides an antidote for all the bane 
 which error distills upon the human soul. But for this, examination, 
 inspection, supervision is necessary. Books must not be beyond her 
 gaze, and teachers, too, should carry her credentials. She, the 
 Church of God, is commissioned to teach. She gives commission 
 to others to do the same. It must be understood that abstract 
 rights are here in question, and such rights in operation might make 
 a practical wrong, or beget a giant evil. 
 
 The nature of knowledge, however, which is nothing if not relig- 
 ious, proves incontestably her claim to regulate the work of educa- 
 tion. But is education religious ? The unbeliever will freely grant 
 the Church's right to teach religion, if any such thing there be, but 
 he asks the reason for mixing religion with instruction. Are mathe- 
 matics divine dogmas? Is grace an algebraic formula? Are con- 
 cepts creeds, and is philosophy a potpourri of theology? Are 
 divine inspiration and heavenly revelation necessary for writing and 
 reading? These are things the secularist does not, or will not, 
 understand. He thinks, or feigns to think, that a clever cipherer is 
 
181 
 
 a good moralist, and an intelligent grammarian an honest man ; and 
 when convinced that such is not the fact, he grudgingly allows the 
 need of some moral instruction, some kind of ethical training, which 
 he reduces to a few formulas to regulate outward demeanor, to pre- 
 scribe affability of behavior, kindliness of disposition, patriotic 
 sentiment, and the observance of the golden rule ; but at the same 
 time he waxes furious at the bare suggestion of religion ; asserts 
 that the State must have schools without creeds and sectarian limita- 
 tions ; and boastfully proclaims his catholicity of sentiment and 
 liberality of view by scoring bigotry sans mercy : 
 
 " For forms of faith let zealous bigots fight, 
 He can't be wrong whose heart is in the right,*' 
 
 is the glorious gospel of toleration which he preaches with the zeal 
 of a dervish or a demon. 
 
 Let us analyze the nature of education, and we may, perhaps, 
 discover the hollo wness of these liberal sentiments ; as, at the same 
 time, we shall learn how futile and fallacious is the attempt to teach 
 morality without religion. 
 
 That all children who come into the world have an undeniable 
 right to an education, and that this education must, in the main, be 
 derived from the teachings of others, will be allowed by all who 
 have not unlearned the habit of chopping logic or " cutting blocks 
 with a razor." The uninstructed child will grow up Hke the brute, 
 a creature of animal instincts, animal feelings, and animal passions. 
 If the wild Indian had not had some sort of teaching, he would not 
 
 be the man whose 
 
 " Untutored mind 
 Sees God in the cloud and hears Him in the wind." 
 
 For, no matter how long their sojourn in this valley of time, if left 
 in their native ignorance, or if dependent upon those native forces 
 which vaporous philosophers declare will carry men by a sort of 
 innate impulse to the ultimate term, or the very apex, of the perfec- 
 tion of their being, those unhappy members of the species who 
 should be doomed to grow up destitute of all instruction would be 
 always found in the deplorable condition described by the poet : 
 
 " O ! souls in whom no heavenly fire is found ; 
 Fat minds, and ever grovelling on the ground." 
 
182 
 
 What is this instruction ? What" is education ? This has been very 
 fully, we think, explained in a former paper, but, for clearness' sake, 
 let it be extended here. 
 
 Education means the leading out of something. The leading out 
 of what? Undoubtedly, something within man, because we speak 
 of man. And what is within the man ? Under the four fleshy 
 -^yalls of his person, what is hidden, what enclosed ? Diogenes went, 
 with lantern in hand, in search, not of an honest man, but, as the 
 best Greek readers tell us, in search of the man. And justly so ; for, 
 if he found the man, he would lay hold of a man at once honest, 
 virtuous, just, prudent, wise ; in a word, " the elements so mixed in 
 him," that, 
 
 " Nature might stand up and say to all tlie world, 
 This is a man ! " 
 
 Now, to educate the man, is to make the man. Man is created by 
 God, but he is made by his educators. To educate him is to draw 
 out his manhood ; 'tis to make him live. I am inclined to think we 
 do not live nowadays in any proper sense. We fret and fume, we 
 buzz and bustle, and talk and work, at high, explosive pressure ; but 
 do we live truly ? Is our life true life ? I trust I may not be cor- 
 rected to exactness, when I say I think we do not truly live, because 
 we do not rightly educate. Ours is a hasty and conceited age — a 
 riotous civilization. We live outside ourselves. In the traffic of the 
 mart ; in the broad and garish day ; amidst the pressing, jostling 
 crowds ; under hard and strenuous strife, we post along, seeking 
 to get the whip-hand of some one else, and wearing out our little 
 souls, but yet we do not live. Life is from within. Introspection 
 alone can find out what it is to live. " With desolation is the land 
 inade desolate, because there is no one who thinks in his heart." 
 What is it to live ? Sir Thomas Browne says : "Every man lives so 
 long as he acts his nature, or in some way makes good the faculties 
 of himself." I gratefully accept his definition, and I say every man 
 is educated when his nature is led out, and when his teachers in 
 some way make good the faculties within the man. To Hve is to 
 make good one's faculties ; to make good one's faculties is to 
 educate ; and thus to educate is to live. And as man lives truly as 
 man, he is educated truly as man. 
 
183 
 
 I take some pleasure in boiTowing confirmation of this educational 
 theory from the definition of "Webster, who says, "Education is 
 properly to draw forth, and implies not so much the communication 
 of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of 
 principles, and the regulation of the heart." The Rev. O. L. Bar- 
 stow, a Protestant minister of high repute, in language of great 
 power and pregnancy, draws out the same doctrine in his article 
 *' The Religious Factor in Education." 
 
 " Education," he says, " is nothing less than the development of 
 all the potencies that have been lodged in man. It concerns itself 
 with the full contents of his being, and with all his possibilities. 
 The claims of education are precisely the claims of manhood. If 
 the idea of manhood be low, the product of training will be meagre 
 and inadequate. The claims of religion upon education are pre- 
 cisely the claims of a complete manhood. If a man is worth educat- 
 ing at all, he is worth educating roundly as a man. If the capacity 
 of religion belongs to his manhood, it is a crime against that man- 
 hood to ignore its rights and cripple its possibilities." 
 
 . In its genuine sense, education is the development of all the facul- 
 ties of man. It is the growth of the whole man, and the drawing 
 out of his " full contents." The tree grows only when its root and 
 branches, its bark and trunk, are all permeated by the sap beneath 
 and invigorated by the air around it. And man grows when all the 
 parts of his being Jiave their proper play, and every faculty its 
 legitimate action. 
 
 Man is a compound of body and soul, of which God is the cause. 
 He has, therefore, a triple life and a threefold education. The body 
 or material part demands its nutriment and exercise and calls for 
 physical education. The unused member dwarfs and decays and 
 the inactive joint soon stiffens. The soul, or intellectual part, calls for 
 training and for culture, or its faculties will be dulled and blunted, as 
 the neglected tool is rusted — the used key is always bright. Nor is this 
 all. Soul and body together depend on God, get their being from God, 
 and lean for their life on God, both in the natural and supernatural 
 order. According to his nature, man is a religious being, because 
 he is born into the world with an intellect to know and a will to 
 worship his Creator. In a word, he was made by God and for God, 
 and even if he were not raised to the supernatural state by the grace of 
 
184 
 
 Baptism, he would still, in force of his very nature, be the child of 
 religion. The bond of religion is rooted in God's creative act. The 
 Maker has the right to the thing made, and God, as absolute Cre- 
 ator, has absolute dominion. God, moreover, is not only the Maker, 
 but He is the model of His creation. He is the prototype of all 
 things, as in the vast profundity of His divine mind are contained 
 the archetypal ideas of His wondrous works. But in a stricter 
 sense, He is the prototype of His intelligent creatures, in that they 
 are fashioned to His own image. Man, in his immortal part, the 
 soul, is the living image of his God. The chief end of man is, con- 
 sequently, to have formed or developed in him the likeness of his 
 Maker, because " like likes like," and God is the great type of moral 
 perfection. It follows, then, that the faculties of man's soul must 
 be drawn out according to the divine pattern of which they are but 
 the reflection. This is explication by religion. Besides, all things 
 tend toward their final causes. God is the final cause of man. All 
 things have their pre-established end, and that end must be always 
 sought by them. God is the end of men. All things act according 
 to their nature and capacities; but man's nature, capacities, and 
 faculties were made for God, and hence must make for God. 
 
 It is as evident as light, then, that well-ordered education always 
 makes account of the end appointed unto human nature, or the 
 whole man. The faculties which man possesses — his will, his memory, 
 his intelligence, his bodily vigor and strength — are but the means 
 with which he has been gifted for the attainment of his end. And 
 as the means must be disposed and ordered to the end, the whole 
 quantity and quality of his training will take form, color, and 
 direction from his destiny. Such being the case, it is inevitable 
 that man's instruction must be chiefly moral, and religion must form 
 the foundation of the whole edifice of character and life, and be the 
 root and crown of manhood. Those alone deserve the name of ed- 
 ucators wKo not only draw out the faculties, but draw up the man 
 to God, and thus prepare their pupils to place their names, when the 
 sunset shadows of this mortal course are falling around them, upon 
 the scroll of immoiiality; for life is lived in vain to him who does 
 
 not see that 
 
 " Every human path leads on to God ; 
 He holds myriad finer threads than gold, 
 And strong as holy wishes, drawing us, 
 With delicate tension, upward to Himself." 
 
185 
 
 All education, then, is but ill-considered trifling, or still worse, a. 
 monstrous and deadly delusion, if it is not built on the basis of 
 morahty and religion and lead not up to God. Such irreligious 
 training is not only futile, but deeply detrimental, both to the in- 
 dividual and society. To the individual ; for, as this life is but a 
 preparation for the higher life to come, man's highest good upon 
 this earth is to fit himself for that future felicity granted to those 
 alone whose godly deeds and righteous lives have ripened them for 
 a reward whose richness has no measure but the inexhaustible 
 treasures of God. To compass this magnificent meed and recom- 
 pense, God has given to man this present time. His next best gift 
 after grace, as the period of proof, of trial and initiation. The 
 value of time is eternity. The deeds of time and the flood of influ- 
 ences that flow out of time, run down to the shores of eternity. Every 
 hour of time has a voice that will echo through the long, hoary ages- 
 of eternity. Man may well 
 
 " Count that day lost, whose setting sun 
 Beholds no virtuous action done." 
 
 All his powers, all his faculties, all his gifts of soul and sense, 
 must be employed in preparing for eternity. If not so used, they 
 are abused; if not so employed, they are destroyed — destroyed for- 
 ever. And 
 
 " Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, 
 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 
 That capability and God-like reason 
 
 To rust in us unused." , 
 
 Since, then, man's high destiny is manifest; since he must pro- 
 cure his end or perish everlastingly; and since he can dispose him- 
 self for the ultimate term of his existence, a life of bliss unending 
 only by the performance of virtuous deeds, moral actions, and re- 
 ligious practices in this present transitory abode; it surely is not 
 traveUing outside the record to maintain that education, whatever 
 else it may embrace, must chiefly tend to the development of the 
 moral side of man's nature, for if it be otherwise ordained, the 
 supreme good of the individual is disregarded and his destiny de- 
 feated. 
 
 But if the individual good demands a moral education for the 
 
186 
 
 'Citizen of the State, the welfare of society makes the education still 
 more imperative for the good of the community. And how could it 
 be otherwise ? No individual liveth to himself. He is an integral 
 part of society. The body is in full sympathy with all the members. 
 The diseased part communicates contagion to the whole. The influ- 
 ence of each, for good or ill, circulates through the currents that 
 carry life or death to all. 
 
 And on what is founded the security of the State ? On what de- 
 pends the coherence and stability of society ? Not, indeed, on the 
 wisdom of its governors, though they may aid to avert invading 
 evils. Not on the force of public authority, for human passions often 
 become but superheated by an attempt at suppression from without. 
 Not in the supremacy of law, when law itself is ignored and de- 
 spised. Ah! no; law can never make men honest or virtuous; it 
 can only make them uncomfortable when they are criminal. Ex- 
 ternal power can never move or touch the heart. Unless men are 
 thoroughly imbued with sound morals, patriotism will languish, and 
 authorit}^ can never uphold its sway when it is not rooted in the respect 
 and the affections of a people. Unless men are trained and formed 
 to virtue, social order will yield to chaos and anarchy, and peace, 
 prosperity, and their attendant blessings will take wings; the very 
 pillars of society will calamitously fall, and the social structure be 
 rent into fragments from centre to circumference. This is the 
 record of the ages — the history of humanity from the foundation of 
 government till this present day. Witness the decline of the vast 
 Oriental kingdoms, whose pomp and splendor once dazzled the won- 
 dering world. The Assyrian, the Persian, and the Babylonian em- 
 pires, where are they ? Upon the very spot where stately courtiers 
 glided round the gilded throne, where the minstrel song resounded 
 on the breezes of the night, and the ruby wine was quaffed by 
 the luxurious lips of royal revellers, the plaintive screech-owl 
 hoots and the wild jackal roars unscared. Where is now the great 
 Roman commonwealth, whose victorious eagles spread their gilded 
 wings both under the rising and the setting sun, and whose power- 
 ful arms were unchecked in their resistless march, save by the 
 boundaries of the habitable world ? The culture and refinement of 
 ancient Hellas; the literature and learning of Augustan Rome; the 
 magnificence and courage of celebrated Carthage, are no more. 
 
187 
 
 Fuit Illium. They lost the land when they lost their virtue. Opu- 
 lence brought indolence; conquest, corruption; and corruption was 
 but the shadow of the coming death. Among the medieval and the 
 modern nations, decay cuts its progress by the same insidious 
 course. The Frankish and the French monarchies went down be- 
 fore an irate and furious populace, when the extravagance and 
 vice of kings had goaded their subjects to exasperation. What pre- 
 cipitated the horrors of the French Eevolution but the inflammatory 
 appeals of bloody-minded infidels ? What wrested the sceptre from 
 the Stuarts, and consigned its fair representative to lay her lovely 
 head on the block, but the brutal betrayal and perfidy of men whose 
 lust for lucre, and women whose spirit of envy and jealousy had not 
 been tempered by the cooling dew of religion. What has brought 
 so many powerful and wealthy nations into impoverishment and 
 misery but the scourge of God upon them for the sin of infidelity ? 
 When the measure of their crimes w^as filled up, He opened His 
 cup of strong mixture, and poured out the vials of His wrath upon 
 them. "For righteoasness exalteth a people, but sin maketh a 
 nation miserable." 
 
 If, then, history has any lesson to convey to the teachers of these 
 times, it is, that man's passions will break forth with volcanic vio- 
 lence and paroxysmal fury, when not restrained by the strong hand 
 of religion. Without God there can be no commonwealth. Moral 
 power is required to hold in check the turbulent desires of the 
 masses; moral instruction to soothe and calm their hearts; moral 
 support to sustain them under the frosty winds of adversity; moral 
 and religious training to render them fit to rule and be ruled, and 
 thus make possible and practicable the order, the harmony, and the 
 security upon which, not alone the good, but the existence of soci- 
 ety, vitally and necessarily depends. 
 
 But here we are met with a formidable difficulty. To my think- 
 ing it is at the bottom of the question. It is radical and funda- 
 mental and it must be fully met. This difficulty originated in that 
 spirit of liberalism which is one of the prominent features of the 
 times; a liberalism, which, logically taken to its lengths, would sac- 
 rifice God upon the altar of humanity, and spirit the Creator out of 
 His own universe. This liberalism is, of course, kin with rationalism, 
 materialism, and scepticism of manifold kinds; but it must be allowed 
 
188 
 
 that it is often championed by men of amiable mould and praiseworthy 
 purpose, who hail the tolerance of the times as a certain indication 
 of that generosity of feeling- and spirit of fraternity which will open 
 up the arcadian avenues of life and be the shining mark of the new 
 era soon to dawn upon humanity. Greater breadth of view, in- 
 creased liberality of sentiment, and a wider catholicity of feeling, 
 are to be, they tell us, the characteristics of the coming age. Nar- 
 rowness and bigotry are to be forever banished, and under the 
 softening and fusing influence of this new-found alchemy, all creeds, 
 all classes, all conditions, can join hands and march together in one 
 benign brotherhood, 
 
 .... "The parliament of man, 
 The federation of the World." 
 
 But to attain "a consummation so devoutly to be wished," the 
 apostles of the new order, with far-reaching sagacity, perceive 
 the necessity of uniformity of ideas, and uniformity of ideas de- 
 mands an education which shall, in -all respects, be homologous and 
 uniform. 
 
 Setting out from this benevolent standpoint, these teachers tell us 
 that religious strife and contention have been the curse of human- 
 ity; that in their nature, these differences of creed are wholly irrec- 
 oncilable; that we must hope in vain to see men of different minds 
 agreed upon the subject of the worship due to their Creator; that 
 for these reasons formal religion can never be incorporated in edu- 
 cation that is common and general; and, therefore, it is for the be- 
 hoof of all to devise a method by which education may be given 
 without trenching upon the religious convictions of any believer 
 whatsoever. This is the grave problem they have put their minds 
 to solve. And behold with what facility ! Simply, to teach morality 
 without religion. The rights of conscience, say they, must be re- 
 spected. Catholics and others have a just grievance, — nay, they are 
 subject to intolerable tyranny — when they are compelled to send 
 their children to schools where religious doctrines are inculcated 
 in which they not only do not believe, but which they regard as im- 
 perilling their salvation. They have every right to protest against 
 such course by the State, or by anybody else, and to attempt to 
 make them submit is the very essence of tyranny and persecution. 
 
189 
 
 Creed and conscience are entitled to respect. 
 
 Bat, at the same time, morality must be taught. "We want not so 
 much wise as virtuous citizens. The passion for knowledge is no 
 proof of the possession of virtue. Integrity of mind, no doubt, 
 conduces to integrity of life, but does not constitute it. Sad 
 experience plainly shows that trained talent is only a more powerful 
 tool in the hands of the forger, the peculator, and the swindler. 
 Knowledge is power for evil no less than good. Mere intellectual 
 education has produced but a state of unrest, discontent, and self- 
 seeking, which everywhere have begotten incurable social disorders, 
 and upset the peace of society. High culture has given birth to 
 lofty aspirations and exaggerated ambitions, which, being foiled of 
 their purpose, consigned those who cherished such extravagant 
 fancies, to direst despondency, and often to despei^te deeds. In 
 fine, they say it is folly to entertain the belief that intellectual pur- 
 suits can efficiently restrain the passions of men, or that mind- 
 culture alone can yield good citizenship, and give us that kind of 
 men which make a commonwealth great, and afford assurance of its 
 
 enduring glory. 
 
 " God give us men ! 
 Men whom the lust of office cannot buy — 
 Men whom tne spoils of dffice cannot ^1 ; — 
 Tall men, sun-crowned." 
 
 So they cry, these broad-minded philanthropists. Amen, we say, out 
 of the fullness of the heart. But how shall it be accomplished ? 
 By teaching morality without religion. Nothing can be simpler. 
 God, they tell us, is not shut up in creeds, nor in any farrago of 
 theology. He is not found in mumbling dogmatism, nor in incensed 
 shrines ; not in sciilptured forms nor mythological heavens; not in 
 saint worship nor the idolatry of images; not in cold formalism, nor 
 those exclusive, arbitrary doctrines which speak of fire and blood 
 and hell. No, He is everywhere — in the glow-worm and in the star ; 
 in the fruits and in the flowers; in the groves and the lakes and the 
 valleys of every land, and He is in our flesh and blood and life, 
 because '' in Him we live and move and have our being." All true 
 study, then, leads up to Him, and no system of education can be con- 
 sidered godless, unless, perchance, it makes positive denial of His 
 existence. 
 
190 
 
 Let us, then, fashion a morality independent of all dogmatism — 
 one that will not clash with any creed. The fundamental principles 
 of morals are as easily reducible to code as the principles of mathe- 
 matics are to systems. These principles are certain, evident, admit- 
 ted by all. Catholics may have some peculiar views about the 
 sanctions of the law, the intrinsic authority of conscience, future 
 reward and punishment, and some other immaterial points; but, so 
 long as we make our moral teaching purely secular, they can have no 
 cause for complaint, unless they are willing to be set down as im- 
 placables. We will be just and fair as far as we go, and if they 
 will not stand upon the common ground of our generous platform, 
 the fault is not ours, but their own. This is specious, but it is inane 
 and nonsensical. 
 
 Can morality be taught without religion? What is morality, 
 what is religion ? What is the relation that exists between them ? 
 The Rev. J. M. Savage holds that " they are separable in fact and in 
 thought, and, therefore, that they may be in teaching." Let us touch 
 the root of this question. 
 
 God created man a free, or voluntary agent. Before His new- 
 made creature God placed the power of good and evil, life and 
 death. Man in his unf alien state was t]je happy master of godly 
 gifts and graces, now hardly appraisable save by the sense of loss, 
 then designed to assist his perseverance in the probity, innocence, 
 and justice of his appearance upon the stage of life, till he should 
 be confirmed forever in glory. His ignoble fall, fast following his 
 creation, " brought death into the world, and all our woe." Stripped 
 of his original justice, darkened in the faculties of his understand- 
 ing, weakened in the powers of his will, and strangely prone to 
 evil, he walked the world a frail and tarnished image. Thus the 
 creature was accursed by his Creator, but the very terms of his curee 
 contained the promise of a restoration through the sublime sacrifice 
 of a Redeemer-God. 
 
 What did this redemption imply? It implied, indeed, a real 
 restoration, since it conferred a new title to a lost inheritance, ard 
 released man from the payment of the penalty imposed for dis- 
 obedience to the Deity. It was a full pardon, but not a plenaiy 
 reconstitution or replacement upon the original footing. This was 
 a consequence of the infinitude of man's offense. And the dark 
 
191 
 
 shadow, the black and gloomy eclipse of that primal Fall, rests over us 
 unto this day, and leaves us, though with a supernatural destiny 
 intact, still weakened and wounded in oiu' natural powers, in the 
 integrity of our manhood. 
 
 Even on the supposition of his having a natural destiny, that 
 destiny would be more than difficult of attainment to man in his 
 state of helpless deprivation. Had God so willed, it is at least 
 thinkable that He might have left man to toil and struggle on for 
 some appointed period, upon whose expiration He might allow Hi& 
 creature to enter upon some condition of natural happiness, which, 
 though far removed from glory, would, at least, suffice for the exi- 
 gencies of a negative bliss. But would man, could man, ever reach 
 even that penurious beatitude ? Under the declension of his natural 
 powers, enfeebled in all his faculties, groaning under the galling 
 tyranny of his passions, would he not droop and languish, and fall 
 by the way ? How could he 
 
 *' Stem a stream with sand. 
 And fetter flame with flaxen brand ? " 
 
 When the storm of temptation raged around him, where could he 
 flee for covert? When the fire of concupiscence broke in with 
 scorching fury through aU the avenues of sense upon the soul, what 
 waters, divinely flowing, would extinguish the consuming flame? 
 But the speculation is inconsequent, for man has no natural destiny. 
 
 Man was made for God. He was in the first moment of creation 
 elevated by his Maker to a supernatural state, a destiny far beyond 
 the iirgencies and requirements of his nature. This destiny was 
 not his due, nor was its attainment co-natural with his powers. Man 
 cannot exceed the capacities of his nature ; he can do no more than 
 nature qualifies him to do; and if, as it seems probable, he could 
 not reach a state of natural happiness by the exertion of his facul- 
 ties, destitute of all external assistance, it goes for the saying that 
 his unaided powers, nay, all the strivings and longings of his nature, 
 though unremittent as the flow of time, could never carry him to 
 the serene heights of a supernatural existence in the happy mansions 
 of immortality. 
 
 Accordingly, it was so ordered by his divine Benefactor that man 
 should never be entirely excluded, even though he fell, from some 
 
192 
 
 faint glimpse or prospect of his predestined bliss; while, at the same 
 time, his gracious Maker deigned to hold out to His ungrateful 
 servant the precious promise of such helps and graces as, in the 
 divine economy, were required to uplift man's fallen estate, and 
 once more entitle him to the enjoyment of a supernatural state in 
 glory. This promise would one day be realized in the Redemption 
 to be wrought for man through the mighty mercy of the Son of 
 God. In fine, God made a revelation to His creature. He spoke to 
 man by His own sacred voice. He prescribed the plan of pardon, 
 and pointed out the means of man's salvation. For one dispensa- 
 tion it was the observance of the law, and hope in the fulfillment 
 of the promise ; for the newer and fuller economy, it was the 
 observance of the law perfected, and the participation of the fruits 
 of the fulfillment, that gave man the j)ledge of everlasting life, and 
 the power of one realizing the unspeakable blessedness of his super- 
 natural destiny. 
 
 To attain that supernatural destiny, is, then, man's chief concern 
 in this present life; for what will it profit him to gain the whole 
 world, to which he must soon bid a final farewell, if he lose that soul 
 which can never perish or decay ? 
 
 " The soul of origin divine, 
 
 God's glorious image freed from clay, 
 In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine 
 A star of day. 
 
 ** The sun is but a spark of fire, 
 A transient meteor in the sky, 
 The soul, immortal as its sire, 
 Shall never die." 
 
 Besides, man's greatest good in this life is to prepare himself for 
 the possession of eternal good; the chief end of life is to know the 
 life that never ends. This end man must attain or be blotted out 
 forever. But how ? Manifestly, by his own free acts; man is still 
 a voluntary agent, and the Fall, though it disfigured, did not de- 
 prive him of his freedom. All his acts must, therefore, tend towards 
 his final end, and to direct them to that end is precisely the province 
 of morality. 
 
 Some fain would think that there is no necessary or intrinsic con- 
 
193 
 
 nection between morality and religion, and that there exist many 
 common and fundamental moral truths which can properly and 
 effectively be taught without reference to religion. (I will consider 
 the relations of morality to supernatural religion later on.) If they 
 mean natural religion, their contention is utterly absurd, for natural 
 religion implies such knowledge and service as spring from the un- 
 aided powers of reason, and establish some relation between man 
 and his Maker, and thus lead up to God. Now, morality is, in es- 
 sence, identical with such natural religion. For the principal con- 
 cern of morality, as stated before, is to investigate man's final end, 
 and to point out the course of conduct and tenor of life which are 
 necessary to attain it. But man's final end is God. Whence it fol- 
 lows that morality can never banish God from its domain, unless it 
 change its nature and its functions, and become other than it now 
 is. And, in point of fact, to this pass must ultimately come all those, 
 who, following the guidance of the German philosophers, seek to 
 dissever morality from religion and the objective realities to which it 
 is essentially related. 
 
 It is true, morality lies within the subject. Man's free acts, and 
 his free acts alone, are moral acts. And, as in the individual, no 
 acts are indifferent, every act is a moral act or its contrary, for free- 
 dom is the condition of accountability. From the idea of freedom, 
 merely, the notion of morality does not integrally spring. Free- 
 dom is the root principle, no doubt; but morality imparts an ad- 
 ditional relation; something must be superadded. 
 
 If we decompose into its constituents the idea of morality, and 
 brush off all the meshes and cobwebs of sophistry by which it has 
 been overlaid, remembering always that the ultimate tendency of 
 our actions must be kept in view, and that our conduct is registered 
 in heaven, it will be made manifest that truth, justice, benevolence, 
 goodness, and morality are built upon a basis other than those slip- 
 pery and deciduous foundations upon which superficial, or preju- 
 diced, moral philosophers have attempted to lay down the lines of 
 duty and fix the standard of ethics. 
 
 A moral agent is one capable of actions that have a moral quality, 
 but what constitutes that quality ? If there is, as cei-tainly there 
 must be, a moral standard and rule of right, what is that standard 
 and that rule ? 
 13 
 
194 
 
 Upon subjecting to analysis the character of any action regarded 
 as virtuous, just, or moral, we shall not fail to find that, over and 
 above the freedom and intelligence by which the will of the moral 
 agent is enabled to make choice, preference, rejection, resolution, 
 wish, desire, and all the shades and degrees of volition, which fall 
 under the empire of the will, three principal factors are at once rec- 
 ognized, and these three are : The will itself; the law to which it 
 bends, or against which it rebels; and God, the law-giver, to whom 
 the law obviously points, and whose sanctions make the law of obli- 
 gation unto men. 
 
 The will, then, may be termed, for it really is, the moral * faculty 
 in man. Nothing can be morally commendable, or morally repre- 
 hensible, which does not proceed from a free and voluntary prin- 
 ciple, which principle is the will. The will is the seat of virtue and 
 the throne of vice. " Omne peccatum est voluntarium," says the theo- 
 logical maxim. AH ' responsibility must, consequently, come within 
 the sphere of the will, and responsibility is as wide as the will. 
 There is nothing meritorious in intellectual acts, as such, and they 
 become imputable only because the intellect lies under the impera- 
 tive power of the will. For the same reason every wish and thought 
 and desire and concupiscence is criminal, or the contrary, because 
 they all fall under the dominion of the optative faculty. Some acts, 
 at least in the abstract, may be considered as indifferent, as to walk, 
 or sit, or run; to prefer pleasure to pain, a prosperous life to an in- 
 digent one, or solitude to society. But it will be seen, upon reflec- 
 tion, that these several actions are informed by some motive, and 
 derive all their merit or their demerit from the intention that im- 
 pelled their performance. Newton could ascribe no credit to him- 
 self for discovering the fluxionary calculus, or the law of gravita- 
 tion; Stephenson, none, for his useful inventions; Harvey, none, for 
 his theory of the circulation of the blood; Columbus, none, for his 
 discovery of a continent, — beyond the meritorious character of the 
 motives by which their minds were swayed in their operations. In 
 short, the end before their view, it was, that gave moral form and 
 character to their illustrious achievements. What was this end ? If 
 it were vainglory, or selfish interest, their deeds, like those of the 
 
 * This is a term of convenience. I know there is no special moral sense in 
 man, apart from his will and intellect. 
 
195 
 
 ancient pagans, merited only transient recompense, and the reward 
 received was limited to this life ; but, if for some supernatural 
 motive, they put forth their powers and expended their talents, then 
 was their reward in glory. "For whether we eat, or whether we 
 drink, we must do all to the honor and glory of God." But what is 
 it to honor and glorify God ? It is to observe His law; "If any 
 man love Me, he will keep My commandments," is true of the natural 
 as well as of the divina positive law. 
 
 Law, then, is the rule of action for the will. This law is both 
 independent of, and superior to, the will of the free agent. It is not 
 only superior to the wih, but binding upon it, and binding upon all 
 beings who enjoy the faculty of freedom. It does not imply any 
 limitation, but rather the perfection of liberty. What is this law ? 
 What is it but the law of right reason ? and reason, as a rule of 
 action, is conscience, the practical judgment made by every man 
 upon the morality of his acts. This conscience speaks with such 
 authority, that it can " make cowards of us all " when we ignore its 
 dictates or spurn its commands. And yet it is only a voice, a herald, 
 an interpreter, a rule of a rule. It is, indeed, an ultimate fact in the 
 human mind in reference to morals; but it represents an ultimate fact 
 in the divine mind, the eternal law of God. Reason, tracing up the 
 law to its fountain-head, is led to connect it with a divine law, and 
 this divine law, in turn, with the will of a Supreme Law-giver, who 
 is God. The moral law, therefore, uneiringly points to God. God 
 is the fount of all obligation, the soui'ce of all authority, the final 
 object of the mind's contemplation in its search for the rule of right. 
 It seems phin, then, what constitutes the moral quality in the human 
 act. It is the conformity of the will with the eternal law in the 
 divine Nature. It is the free will, enlightened by reasgn, com- 
 manded by conscience, conforming its conduct to the last and final 
 law of human action, the eternal law of God. Thus we have : Free 
 will; free will working according to rule; rule related to God — and 
 the product is righteousness, virtue, morality. This, then, is morality. 
 But it is also natural religion, if, in a strict sense,* there be such 
 religion. If so, moraUty cannot be taught without teaching natural 
 religion. 
 
 *Isay "strict sense," because, as Card. Newman says, there seems to be 
 no time or place when reason was left without any external aid. 
 
196 
 
 It may be objected that we make morality depend upon the arbi- 
 trary will of God. Are we not, by the dictates of morality, to do 
 right ? and right is right, not because God wills it, but because it is 
 right. 
 
 Natural reason, says Suarez (de Legibus), indicates what is in 
 itself good or bad." 
 
 Are not, then, as Mr. Lilly affirms, " the great fundamental truths 
 of ethics necessary, like the great fundamental truths of mathe- 
 matics " ? Hence, " they do not proceed from the arbitrary will of 
 God. They are unchangeable even by the fiat of the Omnipotent." 
 If we grant the whole, as we may, there is stiU no argument for the 
 separability of religion from morality. 
 
 We are confronting a deep problem — the question of the founda- 
 tions of morality. We are penetrating, as it were, the very inbeing 
 of the Infinite, and measuring the intrinsicality of the divine essence, 
 and soaring through those subtle airs that encircle the throne of 
 God. 
 
 There is but one God, the supreme, necessary, self-existent, and 
 eternal Being. In Himself He contains the plenitude of all perfec- 
 tion. He is the great First Truth, the Supreme Fact, the Cause un- 
 caused, and the first Beginning and the last End of all that is or can 
 be. All His attributes are identical with Himself, because He is one 
 pure and simple Act. His existence and His essence are one and 
 the same, because His essence is to be. " I am who am." His own 
 life is His law, and He is subject to no other. The will by which He 
 binds His creatures to certain lines of action which are right and 
 proper for them, according to their natures, is a law for those 
 creatures ; but strictly speaking, the will which impels God to love 
 truth, justice, goodness, right, is not a law for God, since He does 
 not impose law upon Himself, but acts consonantly to the require- 
 ments of His nature. Right, then, is right, not because He wills it, 
 but He wills it because it is right, and He must will it because it 
 is right. It is in the eternal fitness of things that it should be 
 so, and to reverse this order, and make moral distinctions depend, 
 as some do, on the arbitrary will of God, is to unsettle the founda- 
 tions of morality. 
 
 Viewed, then, in its metaphysical foundations, morality is not 
 founded upon the free will of God, for God cannot make justice in- 
 
197 
 
 justice, nor right wrong, any more than He can make two and two 
 five, or the two sides of an isosceles triangle less than the third side; 
 and in this sense it is true that moral distinctions are antecedent to 
 the divine will. But if there is any law for rational creatures, they 
 are constrained to keep the moral order; if there be any such thing 
 as moral government in the world, the divine ordinance and divine 
 will must be a factor in the universe of God. It follows, then, that, 
 prescinding from the will of God, we may have an initial, funda- 
 mental morality, in which the essential relation of things find place ; 
 but if we seek for formal morahty, which binds the will and the 
 conscience of man, we must have recourse to the will of God. We 
 do not found right on the simple will of God, but on His will in 
 agreement with His reason. His nature. His holiness; and sanctity is 
 an attribute as essential to God as His own nature and constitution. 
 From what has been said, it is an obvious sequence that God cannot 
 be eHminated from any system of morality. If He wills all that His 
 nature requires. He must will all truth, all justice, all right, all 
 morality. If we set aside the divine will in these things, we shall 
 have a natural morality without any sanction, any binding force 
 but the reason and the intellect of man. This is the assertion of 
 Kant's autonomy of reason. It is making man his own law-giver. It 
 is establishing all distinctions between right and wrong upon the 
 flimsy foundation of man's own speculative ideas, without reference 
 to any external authority or standard, and without regard to the con- 
 sequences of conduct, beyond the reproach of reason when we do 
 amiss, and the approval of reason when we do aright. And what is 
 this but the deification of the human intellect ? It is precisely the 
 position assumed lately by the arch-infidel, Ingersoll, when he 
 rejected God, and, with God, the idea of aU reward and punish- 
 ment, outside of those dispensed by the authority of reason. Man 
 must do right for right's sake; he must do right for reason's sake; 
 but he must also do right for God's sake, because God wills the 
 right, and the obedience man renders must have respect to his 
 Maker. Man is not God. Reason is not the law, but the herald of 
 the law. Reason cannot give law to reason, and without law there 
 can be no obligation and no sin. " If there were no law there would 
 be no sin," says the Apostle. What terror would it bring to the 
 evil-doer to teU him that by his disorderly deeds he has outraged 
 
198 
 
 Ms reason ? What restraint upon the ebullitions of his passion, to 
 say that he has made himself a fool ? He will probably reply, that, 
 if he chooses so to do, it is his own business. On the supposition 
 that God had imposed no law upon rational creatures, there would, 
 indeed, be no sin ; but God could not withhold His command 
 when once He had created. He had to bind His crea,tures to act 
 out the natures which He gave them; and this the pagan philoso- 
 phers recognized implicitly, when they deemed it the part of 
 prudence, naturae convenienter vivere, to live conformably to nature. 
 If, therefore, we believe at all in the existence of a moral law, this 
 law must point to God as the Law-giver ; and when the law is viewed 
 as thus appointed by the Creator, it takes definite form and wears a 
 majestic aspect. He that contradicts his reason may render himself 
 a fool, but he that violates the law of God strikes at the throne of the 
 universe. Nay, when God is thus connected with the law, it con- 
 strains us to acknowledge that we owe to Him supreme love and 
 obedience, and opens to us a new and higher class of duties, which 
 reason, as the ultimate legislator, never could enforce. Upon the 
 acknowledgment of "God as the moral Governor of the world, our 
 morality goes down deeper, mounts higher, and teaches us to have 
 respect in all our actions to that Almighty Power who alone can 
 vindicate the majesty of violated law. If, then, we cannot success- 
 fully teach morality without reference to the sanctions, obligations, 
 and existence of the law, so neither can we teach it without reference 
 to God, and such reference is to teach religion. 
 
 Again, God is the model of His creation. When He created man 
 it was upon the pattern of His own essence, which, in a finite degree, 
 is imitable outside of God. Man is thus a faint transcript of the 
 Deity. Man was fashioned according to the archetype in the divine 
 mind. He must reflect the archetype. Now, although the arbitrary 
 will of God did not establish the essential relations of things, these 
 relations are, nevertheless, the object of divine volition, for God 
 must will whatever His nature requires. And as man's nature is a 
 copy, imperfect though it be, of the divine Nature, God could 
 not create man to act in contradiction of man's nature, any more 
 than Infinite Wisdom could make truth contradict itself. Neither 
 could He create man without giving to his nature certain needs and 
 exigencies. But God must will that man act conformably to his 
 
199 
 
 iLuman nature, or according to the reason which is in him, which 
 must conform to the divine reason which is in God. Hence the 
 very needs of man's nature have respect to the will of God in all 
 man's human or moral acts, and this of necessity implies religion, 
 which denotes man's relation to God. To suppose God quiescent 
 or indifferent to the acts of His creatures would be the acme of 
 folly. 
 
 God is the source of aU power, all life, aU reality. " By Him all 
 things were made, and without Him was made nothing that was 
 made." There is nothing which He has not created; nothing which 
 He does not conserve; nothing which does or can take place with- 
 out His concurrence. " Nothing," says St. Augustine, " occurs by 
 chance. God overrules aU." God, then, must concur in every 
 human act, whether it be good or evil. But it would be a libel 
 upon His essential sanctity to consider Him indifferent as to the 
 character of the act to which He lends His concurrence. " Good 
 and evil," says the wise man, " are from God." But infinite Holi- 
 ness cannot will the evil, though God concurs in the physical act. 
 God had design and purpose in creating free* and rational exist- 
 ences. That design was His external glory. The end of man is the 
 glory of God. All moral acts, then, in that they make the perfec- 
 tion of man, must tend to the glory of his Maker. God must, indeed, 
 will the co-operation He gives to His creatures, but He must also 
 wiU to bind them to certain lines of action, which are so consistent 
 with their freedom, as they are conducive to the great ends prede- 
 termined in the sweet dispositions of His sovereign will, acting out 
 the demands of the divine JNature. How absurd, then, to talk of 
 teaching morality without reference to God, or to teach morality 
 without religion ! 
 
 Morality is that science which teaches man what befits him as 
 man. And man is a rational creature. Now, what becomes a 
 rational creature so much as to seek the attainment of its ultimate 
 end ? In everything it does, the end is first in the order of inten- 
 tion, and all the means must be chosen appropriately to the end. 
 This principle is so deep- set in rational intelligence that men act 
 upon it almost without reflection, for the end and the means are cor- 
 relative terms. Now, God, who is the ultimate end of man, teaches 
 us by the Hght of reason that He wishes the observance of the moral 
 
200 
 
 order by us as the necessary condition of the obtainment of our end. 
 And He that appoints the end, can also appoint the means or condi- 
 tions. It is the will of God, then, in the last resort, by which the 
 will of man must be determined to the observance of the natural 
 order, and which obhges him to the practice of that morality which 
 reason discovers in the necessary and fundamental relations of 
 things. 
 
 Moreover, if it is the province of moralit/ to teach man what be- 
 comes man as man, its chief concern is to teach man his duty. The 
 reality of God and the responsibility of man are truths of mighty 
 meaning to mankind. The doctrine of a real, living, personal God 
 is the world's great tonic. It has power to heal, to help, and to 
 save. Now, if there is a God at all, man has undoubtedly some 
 duties towards Him of prayer and praise. And if the moralist as- 
 sumes to point out man's duties, he surely may not contemn those 
 grave and consequential duties which relate to Him who holds in 
 His hands the threads of human destiny; duties upon whose proper 
 discharge depends the eternal and supreme happiness or misery of 
 every mortal man. And this is to teach religion. 
 
 Again, whence does the moral law derive its sanctions? Not from 
 the ordinance of reason, for reason cannot be both master and sub- 
 ject. Not from the authority of the human teacher; he is but a 
 man. The conception of perfect obligation perforce involves the 
 notion of a superior who obliges, just as it supposes one that is 
 obliged. Nay, more; it imports such strenuous binding force that 
 if the action enjoined be omitted, or if that forbidden be done, 
 man's destiny will, in so far, be frustrated, and he will be guilty of 
 rebellion or insubordination against his superior. And where is the 
 superior to impose such obligation upon the whole human race ? 
 Who can be named but Him who is the Euler and Governor of all ? 
 
 Our modern moral philosopher prates much about man's perfecti- 
 bility. Perfection is unquestionably man's goal. Some one has 
 said: "We are made by God, but we are not yet finished." The 
 house is not built because it is begun. But we shall not attain to 
 the perfection of our being until we are in possession of our end. 
 The intellect and the will, our great capacities for knowledge and 
 love, tend towards the end as to the goal of perfection. If, then, 
 man attains his perfection by tending towards his final end, and by 
 
201 
 
 avoiding all that opposes its attainment, or, what is tantamount lo 
 that, by keeping the moral law; it is preposterous to suppose that 
 man's chief perfection is independent of the Supreme Being, who is 
 the Primal Fount and Efficient Cause of all perfection. God is our 
 ultimate end; for, as St. Thomas says, " A man's desires can be sat- 
 isfied by none but God alone; since from the visible things of cre- 
 ation, he is moved to search into their cause; nor is that desire sat- 
 isfied, till he comes to the First Cause, which is God " (St. Thorn. 
 Quodl. de Virtute, Art. 10). 
 
 Some German philosophers seem passionately fond of separating 
 morality and religion, being either inspired by the hatred of religion 
 or misled in their investigations to turn aside from the order of ob- 
 jective reality, and to seek and derive all moral laws from within 
 the subject solely. In their systems God disappears as the supreme 
 principle of right, and is relegated outside the realm of morals. 
 Others, like Kant, make practical reason the fount of obligation, and 
 as if by way of compensation for the absence of divine sanction for 
 the moral law, admit God as a necessary postulate in making vii-tue 
 consentaneous with its reward. But, at the same time, he holds 
 that morality, per se, does not depend upon God; and, therefore, in 
 discussing morals in the natural order, it is unnecessary to define 
 man's duties towards the Deity — in fine, he proclaims the independ- 
 ence of morality from rehgion. 
 
 The celebrated Cousin, in his great work, the " History of Philos- 
 ophy," makes his philosophical morality, or natural religion, a prod- 
 uct of the human mind. Philosophy is the last and highest effort 
 of thought, and thought's complete development. It embraces all, 
 rules all, — art, science, the State, industry, and religion. God, then, 
 and religion, is not the base, but the apex of morality. Religion 
 does not make morality, but morality makes religion. ** Above my 
 VTJll," he says elsewhere, " there is no cause to be sought. The 
 principle of causality expires before the cause in the will ; the will 
 causes, it is not itseK caused" (1st Ser., Vol. 1, p. 342). If, then, 
 God, the Governor, is not connected with the human will, the will 
 lies wholly outside the field of moral agency and responsibil- 
 ity. 
 
 But if religion is not the foundation of morality, then morality 
 can stand without it, and can be separated from religion. In this 
 
202 
 
 case, religion is only an ornament, a help, the reciprocal, or the 
 product of reason. 
 
 These men affect not to deny to morality a real and absolute 
 foundation; but this foundation is no other than impersonal reason; 
 reason peculiar to no man in particular, and the same in all men; 
 reason which shines forth in man, but which excels man in dignity 
 and authority. Keason is thus the revelation, not only of abstract, 
 theoretical truths, but also of moral laws, and true obligation arises 
 from quadrating our actions with the precepts which reason imposes. 
 
 Others, again, seek the sanctions of morality in the order of the 
 universe, which reason teaches has to be observed. This order 
 points to God, for every work of order is the effect of an intelligent 
 cause. This order is an expression of the order in the divine mind, 
 but it begets obligation without considering it as conserved by the 
 mind or sanctioned by the will of God. Thus morality does not de- 
 pend on God. 
 
 All these thinkers admit some absolute standard of right, but all 
 err in this, that they seek it outside of God. If there is any such 
 absolute standard, it is not, and cannot be, man, nor anything in 
 man, unless man himself be an absolute being. If it is impersonal 
 reason, it supposes a subject, a reasoner, and this reasoner must be 
 either God or man. If it is God, then morality depends upon Him. 
 If it be man, then man must be absolute. If, in fine, it be the 
 order of the universe, that order, without mind or wiU, is an airy 
 abstraction. 
 
 The rights of God in respect to man's moral agency and account- 
 ability are founded on the fact of creation. God has absolute 
 dominion over all. Man did not create himself. His existence, his 
 origin, all suppose the contingent character of his being, and con- 
 tingency supposes a First and Necessary Cause, who is God. Moral 
 order springs from an end, a purpose. And the moral government 
 which rules the universe can only come from the purpose of an in- 
 finite good, namely, God. None of man's relations, duties, obliga- 
 tions, thoughts, or speculations can antecede this infinite Being, 
 " Who is all things unto us and we are unto Him." Morality, then, 
 cannot be sei^arated from God ; cannot be independent of God, or 
 of religion. Without God there is for man no final end, no law, no 
 right, no duty, no obligation, and no morality. 
 
203 
 
 Now, we humbly conceive that we have demonstrably proved that 
 it is impossible to teach even natural morality, as Cousin terms it, 
 without reference to religion and to God. Even the necessary and 
 fundamental truths of morality, which are true independently of the 
 will of God, have respect to God, and their sanctions and obligations 
 flow from the divine will. Some pagan philosophers acknowledged 
 the obligation of law, but they stopped short at the point of the 
 principle to which the law should have led them. Morality can 
 never reach its full organic growth unless it have God for its vital 
 power. When men seek to exclude God we have philanthropy with- 
 out charity, urbanity without piety, morality, so-called, without 
 religion, and pharisaic cant, which is ever straining at gnats and con- 
 stantly swallowing camels. Ah ! if the hearts of men were only filled 
 with the pure flame of the love of God as the aim and end of their 
 actions, the Apostolic injunction, — whether we eat or drink, to do all 
 for God, — would be no arduous duty. If the love of God were the 
 motive of their deeds, every office would become exalted; every duty 
 would be sanctified; the meanest work would be ennobled; the sacri- 
 fice of the heart would not be cold upon the altar of devotion ; the 
 poor would be like unto the rich, and the servant would kiss the 
 cheek of his master. ^ 
 
 Conscience leads every man to see that he is under the law of the 
 God who made him and who made the universe. Because he per- 
 ceives that he is the child of law, he feels the consciousness of guilt 
 when he becomes a transgressor. To men who are shut out from 
 the light of revelation, the law in the heart is the arbiter; for " those 
 who have no written law are a law unto themselves." But the his- 
 tory of man evinces that there are times when the interior monitor 
 wanders in the dark; when the mind is so perplexed and bewildered, 
 that it fails to distinguish between the path of rectitude and the 
 road to ruin, between the voice of virtue and duty and the voice of 
 selfish interest, unruly passion, and the impetuous sallies of a corrupt 
 and fallen nature, No wonder that the pagan sages sometimes ex- 
 pressed their longing for a supernatural revelation. At the door of 
 death Socrates said : " Now it is time to depart ; for me to die, for 
 you to live; but which for greater good, God only knows." The 
 heart naturally cries for God. Even Moses meekly pleaded : " O 
 Lord, show me Thy face, and I shall be saved." And we beheve the 
 
204 
 
 deepest conscience in the breast of the heathen cried aloud for some 
 star to guide them, some bright light to illumine their solitary way. 
 Without that light the deepest intellects were wildly groping in the 
 dark. We might well put into the mouth of paganism's proudest 
 sages, the feeling language of the great Cardinal : 
 
 " Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. 
 
 Lead Thou me on ! 
 The night is dark, and I am far from home, 
 
 Lead Thou me on ! 
 Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 
 
 But how vain the efforts of man without the aid of revelation ! Look 
 at the history of those men, those peoples, who, destitute of that 
 supernatural light, remained for thousands of years either ignorant, 
 or doubtful, concerning the principal truths of the moral order. For, 
 as St. Thomas teaches, such conditions are required that men by 
 their natural powers could not attain to the possession of such knowl- 
 edge with anything like certitude, and even if reason were powerful 
 enough to teach all with certainty these moral truths, still it could 
 not, when left to its unassislj^d lights, explain just how God was to 
 be worshipped ; whether sin could be forgiven ; what was the char- 
 acter of the future life ; was death only a sempiternal sleep ; what 
 sanctions belonged to the law of nature, and many additional mys- 
 teries bound up with the great problem of life. Nor could the ig- 
 norant learn these things from the wise. To say no more, their 
 teaching lacked the authority which purity of life alone can confer. 
 Their most shining virtues were tinctured by the grossest vices, and 
 their most perfect worship by the most debasing superstitions. The 
 Germans had so corrupted their conceptions of the law of nature, 
 that, as St. Thomas declares in his Summa, quoting from Caesar 
 De Bello Gal. (7. 2. q. 94), they regarded robbery as lawful, and had 
 lost the distinction between " meum et tuum." Among the Greeks 
 and the Romans the most extravagant fancies ruled the minds of the 
 most sagacious. One conceived it to be the end of life to follow his 
 passions. Temples consecrated to prostitution flung open their 
 doors in the shining light of day, and abominable vices were deified 
 and reverenced as gods. Ignorant of their true destiny, and stran- 
 
205 
 
 gers to every virtue, some considered a future life would consist in a 
 transmigration of souls, or in the voluptuous enjoyments of a carnal 
 paradise. Virtue, indeed, they professed to respect, but how seldom 
 were able to practice ! Philosophers, they called themselves, or 
 lovers of wisdom, but even Socrates declared that there was no 
 wisdom among them. Anaxagoras thought that all things were en- 
 veloped in darkness, and Democritus imagined that truth was buried 
 so deep in the well that no man could possibly find it. Plato wrote 
 of the immortality of the soul, but shed no light upon the subject. 
 " Some," says Cicero, " thought there were gods ; others denied their 
 existence; and still others confessed themselves doubtful." Although 
 they had reached a point of civilization conspicuous in the annals 
 of ages; though distinguished in the pursuits of literature, and versed, 
 with a skill unsurpassed, in all the arts and the sciences; though they 
 have left behind monuments of greatness that mock the fingers of 
 decay, and patterns of excellence in culture that shall serve as 
 masterly models to countless generations : yet, with the star of 
 reason only to guide them, they hopelessly drifted in darkness; they 
 spent their lives in the pursuit of pleasures that shamed their high- 
 flown philosophy ; they embraced vice as a bridegroom, and blushed 
 not to own the alliance ; and, drinking iniquity like water, holding 
 carnival with crime and coiTuption, they speedily rushed into ruin, 
 and like the sun, going out from view amidst the tempest's clouds 
 and darkness, ere it has reached its meridian splendor, they disappear- 
 ed from the horizon of the living world, and, unlike the luminary of 
 day, which sinks to rise again, were blotted out forever. Such is the 
 fruitlessness of the attempt to practice morality without religion. 
 They had the light of reason, but what availed it to them ? What 
 far-sighted sagacity, what a high reach of intelligence they exhibited 
 in war, politics, and literature, and all that crowns human achieve- 
 ments with glory in the eyes of the world, but what pitiful weakness 
 in governing their passions, and ruling their lives by the star-eyed 
 philosophy they professed to call from the skies. " Their doctrine," 
 says Cicero, " they made an ostentation of science, and not a law for 
 their lives." But, perhaps, they followed their lights. Would we, 
 who bask in the sunshine of revelation, have done any better if we 
 had been in their place ? It is more than doubtful. To some it 
 seems strange that for so many thousands of years God shut up His 
 
206 
 
 truth in one little corner of the world ; that He deigned to show 
 His face at capricious intervals to a few favorite tribes among all the 
 peoples of the earth. It seems strange to them that God, who took 
 such pains in creating man, and creating him especially with an 
 almost infinite capacity to know, and an insatiable longing to possess 
 the truth, should not have given him a wider and fuller grasp of that 
 knowledge which alone could make existence a boon. It is beyond 
 our scope to touch on the penalties of sin, any more than has 
 hitherto been done. But we know the stab of the sword of sin 
 pierced mankind to the core ; that earth herself " felt the wound, 
 and trembling through all her parts, gave signs of woe." And yet 
 we know, for the Apostle tells us so, they were not inexcusable, 
 because from the invisible things He created they would not recog- 
 nize the Creator. "Professing themselves to be wise they became 
 fools," and *' they changed the likeness of the incorruptible God 
 into the corruptible likeness of birds and beasts, and nearly every 
 creeping thing upon the earth." In fine, they professed to practice 
 morality without natural religion, and, says Chrysostom, " they were 
 given over to the devil to that degree, that when their teachers 
 uttered anything false or corrupt, they believed and applauded 
 th^pm ; but when anything true chanced to be spoken, it was met 
 with doubt and denial." 
 
 If, then, as the history of the world shows, men vainly seek for 
 morality and virtue by the dim and uncertain liglits of nature; and 
 if, supposing them acquainted with the theory, they could not re- 
 duce it to practice, it is evident they stand in need of assistance far 
 more powerful than any that nature afforded. We may, then, affirm 
 that to know, as well as to practice, the truths of morality, super- 
 natural help was essential. It is true, as the Vatican Council de- 
 clares, that man's rational powers can carry him to a knowledge of 
 the existence of God. It is true, as Cardinal Newman pronounces 
 upon historical inference, that all the elements of a religious system, 
 including conscience, the presentiment of a future life and judgment, 
 the relations between moral conduct and happiness, remorse and 
 apprehension of evil following the transgression of conscience, were 
 by no means impossible to Heathen Philosophy (University Ser- 
 mons, p 23); but so unsteady, uncertain, and vague were the in- 
 ward lights of the mind; so inefficient the sanctions of laws discov- 
 
207 
 
 ered by observing the pbenomena of consciousness; so strong the 
 inclinations of the flesh to weigh down all the higher inspirations of 
 nature; so weak the incentive duty without some word of command 
 from the Law-giver — without, in fine, some clear token of a Hving, 
 personal God, that life seemed to them a perplexing and wearisome 
 chase after some ignis fatuus, some ghostly phantom, which, as if 
 under the spell of a magician's wand, eluded the grasp whenever it 
 seemed close to reach. There is no occasion to marvel, then, that 
 the Pagan Stoic, as he committed suicide, complained that he had 
 worshipped virtue, and had found it but an empty name. Without 
 those peculiar lights and gifts — blessings of which revelation is the 
 bearer to mankind, — men have always plunged into various forms 
 of error; superstition ruled theii- minds; either the egotism of self, 
 or the emptiness of creatures, formed the object of their worship, 
 and except where some faint traces of primitive revelation lingered 
 among them, they were the prey of every idle fancy, every vague 
 fear, every vice and error, that the human mind can imagine, or the 
 heart of man embrace. And, if here and there some superior intel- 
 lects among them could divinely talk of the splendor of truth, the 
 beauty of vii'tue, and the excellence of philosophic composure under 
 trials and disappointments; upon mankind in the gross, their doc- 
 trines made no impression, for their lives belied their teachings; 
 nor could the mass of men attain to the knowledge of the moral law 
 in its esseutial fullness, for we know it to be impossible, apai*t from 
 divine revelation, for all men to acquire knowledge of all tniths of 
 the moral law; and assuredly it is impoiiant that all should be 
 known and practiced. It seems clear, then, that supernatural revela- 
 tion is indispensable to mankind for the proper observance of the 
 moral order, and if so, it is impossible to teach morality without in- 
 culcating religion. And cut o5f from the light thus divinely com- 
 municated unto men, we behold men all at variance as to the most 
 simple and obvious obligations. If, however, as Mr. Savage says, 
 "these truths are certain, evident, and admitted by all," whence 
 came it that the lofty genius and penetrating mind of the heathen 
 sages could not agree upon either their meaning or their applica- 
 tion ? " In what does virtue consist, what is its essence and attri- 
 butes ? " they cried in vain. " What is duty, what is right, who can 
 show us any good ? " they asked despairingly. 
 
208 
 
 Some regarded virtue as a fine, subtle quality, mentally grasped 
 by intuition, but too intangible to be capable of definition. Some 
 deemed it utility, which, in modern phrase, signifies no more than to 
 " look out for number one." It is the essence of egotism and selfish- 
 ness, and supposes as true the theory of Hobbes, that man, whether 
 savage or civilized, lives in perpetual warfare with the rest of his 
 brethren. Others placed virtue in its highest form, in the exercise 
 of benevolence, which was only another name for ostentation and 
 vanity. Some thought virtue consisted solely in justice, and defined 
 it in similar terms, as the constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique 
 tribuendi,—th.e invariable disposition of the will to render to every 
 man his own. They could not see, that, though benevolence is 
 virtue, virtue is more than benevolence; more than utility;- more 
 than compassion or pity; more than sentiment or emotion; and 
 more even than justice, which, however, is an essential and basic 
 element. 
 
 Freedom and law are the fundamental franchises of the human 
 mind and will. The first makes our actions those of a voluntary 
 agent, and the relations of those actions to law, make them those 
 of a just, lawful, meritorious, moral agent. Analyze our actions 
 as we may, if they are to take on the quality of virtue, we can- 
 not do away with a rule of action, outside, above, superior to the 
 mind, independent of it, though having absolute authority over it. 
 There is an eternal fitness in virtue. The seemliness and propriety 
 of our conduct arises not from the fact that it is congruent with our 
 will or our thought; but from its relation to the will and thought of 
 Him who alone can wake the conscience, kindle love, vitalize virtue, 
 and present to mankind a pattern, which, to imitate, is to cultivate 
 morality. Apart from Him, the loftiest pretensions of human virtue 
 are a chimera and a sham; apart from Him, all man's efforts droop 
 and pine, like a poor flower that never sees the light, and a sickly 
 herb that never feels the sun. Man must always act, not from an in- 
 terior motive originating and terminating either in himself or in his 
 fellow-men, but from the high principle of regard to the Beneficent 
 Being who made him; that Being against whom His creatures have 
 no rights, but only duties. Even justice without God cannot be 
 justice. Justice, says Justinian, gives to every man his due. But 
 what we owe to our fellow-beings is of God's ordaining. Morality, 
 
209 
 
 some tell us, concerns this life, and is justice and right towards our 
 fellow-men. But why have men any duties towards their fellow- 
 men ? I am as good as my neighbor. Man is the equal of man. 
 And if man has duties towards his fellows, it is because those duties 
 have been imposed by a higher and superior will — the will of God. 
 Now, although the natural sense of right and justice, which, in 
 greater or less degree, is created by the conscience within us, may 
 enlighten us on many points in reference to our duty, it never can 
 adequately explain, and still less enforce, the fulfillment of these 
 duties which it is incumbent on us to discharge towards society. 
 Tor this the voice of God or supernatural revelation is necessary. 
 If the deepest thinkers have not been able to agree upon the defi- 
 nition of viiiue, or have considered it so elementary as to be incapa- 
 ble of definition; if the great sages of antiquity, who worshipped 
 only an unknown God, felt their hearts fail within them lest they 
 might be following a shadow, how can modern wiseacres construct 
 a system of morahty that shall be independent of religion ? A code 
 of morality fashioned without religion is a moral impossibility and 
 & metaphysical absurdity. And yet they say it is a matter of as 
 much facility to devise such a code as it is to frame a system of 
 mathematics. But even numbers which do not include essential 
 Unity, and God the prime Factor, have no basis of enumeration. 
 All the efforts of man to estabhsh such a code have invariably ended 
 in failui'e; or if, perchance, owing to the straggling rays of revela- 
 tion which came down to them, men have been able to incorporate 
 some truth in their systems, they at best presented us with an im- 
 perfect and mutilated exhibition of the moral law. Such is the 
 goodness of God, that even when men had shattered their moral 
 constitution by sin, and had turned away from Him to embrace 
 graven images. He did not wholly desert them, but left them some 
 faint glimmerings of light by which they might find their way back 
 to Him who is the Light of the world. For this reason it may well be 
 doubted, as Card. Newman intimates, whether in strict meaning, or 
 historically, there be any such thing as natural rehgion. No religion, 
 as he says, was ever yet formed by unaided reason. There has never 
 been a time or country in which reason was entirely bereft of aid, 
 and the revelations made to the first and earliest recipients concern- 
 ing the nature of God and the duty of man, shot rays of hght into 
 14 
 
210 
 
 those places which elsewise had remained buried in profound 
 obscurity upon the most fragmentary truths of the moral govern- 
 ance of the world. 
 
 But on the hypothesis of man's elevation to a supernatural state, 
 how could man qualify himself for the attainment of the happiness 
 consequent upon his high destiny without the aid of supernatural 
 revelation? Nothing that he could do, no morality that he could 
 practice, could befit him for such state. It exceeded all the capaci- 
 ties as it did the requirements of his nature. Without the light of 
 revelation he could not even know of its existence, and he could not 
 tend towards an end of which he was wholly ignorant. There can 
 be no desire of the unknown. And as it is the office of morality to 
 show to man the end of his existence, and to so direct his free acts 
 that they may all conduce to the acquisition of the end, it is, in the 
 nature of the case, impossible for man to work out his supernatural 
 destiny without the aid of revelation By revelation God speaks to 
 man. He unfolds to His creatures the divine economy of salvation. 
 His truth. His goodness. His holiness. His beauty are laid bare to 
 man. The whole programme of man's duties is drawn out in obvious 
 characters, so that he who runs may read. The small, still voice in 
 the heart swells into the loud thunders of Sinai. Light flashes on 
 the Gentiles and glory on God's people. Their ideas of duty, of 
 destiny, and God are brightened and illumined. Finally, through 
 the full manifestation of the Godhead in a being of our species, 
 the pattern of God's own Son, the exemplar of all virtue and 
 morality, is set before us; and the unparalleled life of Him who trod 
 the hills and valleys of Judea nineteen centuries ago casts a spell 
 upon our hearts, and we seem to see, to hear, to feel, and touch 
 Him who alone has authority to lead and skill to guide us, "always 
 -sensibly present, as it were, by voice, look, and gesture," to encourage 
 us upon our journey, or to reprove us for our delay. And we can 
 have no other morality than that which He has declared unto us. 
 Men to-day, as they always did, will want to burn incense to Baal. 
 They will want to worship Him in their own way, but He will 
 answer, "My ways are not your ways." They that want to worship 
 Him must not worship Him against His will. They that want to 
 light a sacred fire must not burn the house of God. Man can never 
 build morality by uprooting the foundations of religion. 
 
211 
 
 But if morality cannot be taught without revelation, it cannot be 
 taught without the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. 
 For this she has a divine guidance, not only in matters revealed, 
 but also in those opposed to revelation. Nor could she other- 
 wise discharge her commission as the teacher of the nations. 
 She must have authority and capacity to proscribe doctrines at 
 variance with the Word of God (Card. Manning, Prv. Petri , Sev. 
 m., p. 66, seq.). She is not only the teacher, but the witness 
 and judge of revelation. There is no superior, nor even co-or'dinate 
 witness to amend, revise, or alter in any way the judgment which 
 she pronounces. To any one who seeks to interfere with her she 
 can say: "Who ai-t thou, that thou judgest another man's serv- 
 ant ? To his own master he standeth or falleth." Those teachers 
 who aim at the complete secularization of education are inspired by 
 the same spirit that animated the sixteenth century reformers, or 
 they are the unblushing advocates of infidelity. The rejection of 
 the authority of the Church by those who uphold the sovereignty 
 of private judgment, is the lawful fruit of the reformation; and 
 most of those who to-day want to secularize instruction, desu*e to do 
 so just because the Church would have education religious. And 
 religious it must remain. There can be no compromise, no half- 
 way measures, here. It was to impart a religious education that she 
 always claimed and exercised the right to found Christian schools 
 for the instruction of her children. Her zeal in this holy cause is 
 unexampled in history. Long before the contest between the Em- 
 pire and Papacy had paralyzed her efforts and narrowed her field of 
 operation, she was the teacher of both nations and individuals She 
 was the educator of the world. Kings bowed before her, and mon- 
 archs received the law from her hands. Neither Canterbury nor Con- 
 stantinople, neither Mecca nor Moscow, spoke with a voice like that 
 of Rome. Long before the Reformers sought to rend the seamless 
 coat of Christ, she dispensed the blessings of learning throughout 
 the world. Her divine organization gave her the right to teach; 
 and she knew that the right gave her a title to the means, and made 
 it her essential faculty to found schools for the dissemination of 
 knowledge. Of the great universities that sprang up in Italy, 
 Spain, France, Germany, and the British Isles, she was the foundress 
 and promoter. Her fostering care gave rise to those far-famed in- 
 
212 
 
 stitutions of learning whose renown is imperishable. Naples, York, 
 Paris, Cambridge, Bologna, Oxford, Padua, Salamanca, Perugia, 
 Valladolid, Saragossa, Seville, and Rheims, were the product of her 
 divine genius and invincible love of learning. It is true, her hands 
 were sometimes upheld by the civil authority, but that was in days 
 when secular rulers had not grown ashamed of their faith, nor jeal- 
 ous of Peter's supremacy. Dr. Bouquillon, the eminent theolo- 
 gian, thinks Charlemagne would suffer surprise if he were told he 
 had not the right to found schools. But it is worth remember- 
 ing that the emperors were accustomed to act, not only by the 
 solicitation, but even by the command of the Church. The chief 
 purpose of Charlemagne in founding schools was the formation of a 
 learned and efficient body of the clergy (Alzog. Ch. Hist., Vol. 11., p. 
 173). And thus the sixth Council of Paris requested the Emperor 
 Louis to found three public schools in his empire, " that the labor of 
 his father may not, by their neglect, come to be in vain, that the 
 holy Church of God may gain honor and the Emperor an eternal 
 memory." In council and synod, notably those of Valence, May- 
 ence, Paris, Orleans, Rome (826), Toledo, Lateran III. (1179), and 
 Trent, the Church lifted her voice to invoke Bishops and Princes to 
 provide for the support of schools, " that on all sides public schools 
 may be constituted for both kinds of erudition, both divine and 
 human." The custom of paying Rome- Scot, or Peter's pence, had 
 its origin in the effort to establish foreign schools at Rome. All cast 
 their glances towards the city on the seven hills as the seat of learn- 
 ing and the source of piety. And in virtue of her sanction and en- 
 couragement, the State seemed to vie with the Church in the ex- 
 tension of educational facilities, as would seem to be the case in 
 view of the prodigious activity of Eugene 11. and Lothaire I. in 
 founding and fostering schools. If any modern educator thinks 
 that free public schools were not founded till the Pilgrim Fathers or 
 Horace Mann engaged in the enterprise, let him look at the history 
 of the Catholic Church from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. He 
 will behold her great religious orders, Benedictines, Dominicans, 
 Franciscans, and finally, the noblest of them all, the Jesuits, going 
 forth to dispel ignorance, to hold aloft the lamp of learning and en- 
 lighten them that sat in darkness. The synod of Aries (800) decreed 
 that parish priests should have schools in towns and villages where 
 
213 
 
 the little children might learn the letters from them, without requir- 
 ing any remuneration other than might be offered voluntarily by the 
 parents. The Emperor Lothaire ordained that eight public schools 
 should be founded, in the chief cities of Italy, " in order that oppor- 
 tunity may be given to all, and that there may be no excuse drawn 
 from poverty or the difficulty of repairing to remote places."* 
 Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, established primary schools through- 
 out the chief towns of his diocese, as early as the year 821, and his 
 example was followed by many others in the Carlovingian Empire. 
 Upon every hillside and in every valley arose, like bright stars of 
 the morning, temples of profane and sacred knowledge to flash light 
 on the so-called " Dark Ages." Episcopal schools, cathedi'al schools, 
 parochial catechetical schools, Palatine schools, parochial grammar 
 schools, high schools, and academies, like those of Fulda, St. Gall, 
 Milan, Tours, and others; colleges and universities, where from the 
 simplest rudiments of knowledge to the seven liberal arts, defined by 
 John of Salisbury as the Trimum, comprising grammar, logic, and 
 rhetoric, and the Quadr^ium, comprehending music, arithmetic, 
 geometry, and astronomy, and yet to the higher branches of the- 
 ology, medicine, civil and canon law, and the oriental languages, 
 with Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic included, were established, and the 
 scholar conducted through a course which often extended, rftt 
 reckoning his primary education, over a period of twenty years, 
 subsequently reduced, as Card. Newman says, to ten (Office and 
 Work of Universities, p. 328). But it was upon primary education 
 her weightiest cares were bestowed. To train them to piety and 
 virtue from their tenderest years, was the absorbing purpose of her 
 life. She knew how small a part of education is the attainment of 
 knowledge, and that not he who knows much, but he who knows 
 rightly, can be called truly educated. Never did her love for them 
 grow cold, nor her affectionate regard decline. Sinite parvulos 
 vsnire ad me, was spoken in the gracious school of Christ. And the 
 Church called the little children to her side, that, from the earliest 
 intimations of reason, she might pour into their fresh, receptive 
 hearts those lessons of divine wisdom which alone could fit them for 
 the felicity of a life, where all who enter must become even as 
 little children. "Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot 
 
 ♦Mores Catholici, Vol. I., B. II., p. 891. 
 
214 
 
 enter the kingdom of heaven." Therefore it was that she withdrew 
 them from the turmoil and noise of the world into her monastery 
 schools, where, retired from the distractions and temptations that 
 surround the lives of those unsheltered from the seductions and 
 vanities of mundane employments, she might prepare them for the 
 joys of eternity. Her discipline was mild, gentle, yet effective; her 
 watchfulness was constant and untiring; her influence was irresist- 
 ible in training them for the discharge of those duties which quali- 
 fied them to serve their country and their God. Ah ! those were 
 happy days. Happy days in those medieval schools, where the 
 young student went forth for his matutinal exercise, as the dawn 
 streaked the morning sky, to listen to the carol of half-awakened birds 
 in the green groves he wandered through, to behold the reflection 
 of the great Creator in the crijason blush of sunrise, and to leai*n 
 the beauty and splendor of the Maker from the glorious works of 
 His creation. Thus all their education talked to them of God. Their 
 earliest impressions and germinal ideas were all directed to their 
 God. The teachers of those times were deeply imbued with the im- 
 portance of the child's earliest training. A celebrated woman once 
 said, *'If I were to have the direction of a man's life who would live 
 to the age of sixty, give me the first ten, and I can vouch for the 
 otler fifty." The Church knows full well the force of the statement, 
 and at every period of her history, she has considered it her highest, 
 her paramount duty to provide for the teaching of the young. 
 " Train up the child in the way he should go when he is young, and 
 when he is old he will not depart therefrom." Never did the tutors 
 of the ages of Faith think of separating religion from the instruction 
 of the child. Said Alcuin to Charlemagne: ''I apply myself to 
 minister to some under the roof of St. Martin the honey of the holy 
 Scriptures. Others I endeavor to inebriate with the old wine of an- 
 cient learning; others I begin to nourish with the apples of gram- 
 matic subtlety. Some I try to illuminate in the science of the stars, 
 as if of the painted canopy of some great house. 1 am made many 
 things to many persons, that I may edify as many as possible to the 
 honor of the holy Church of God, and to the advantage of your im- 
 perial kingdom" (Mores Catholici, Vol. I., B. HI., p. 290). There 
 we have it all in a word — the good Christian and the good citizen. 
 Nor can a man be loyal to his king who is not loyal to his God. 
 Beligion and patriotism are inseparable. 
 
215 
 
 "The child is father to the man." The children that now prattle 
 around our knees will soon crowd us from the scene and assume our 
 plaee. If it is important that peace and prosperity should pervade 
 the land; if it is important that harmony, serenity, and love should 
 bless their homes and firesides; if it is important that they should 
 grow up as men of well-poised character, meek and patient, able 
 under all circumstances to rule well the kingdom of their souls; if it 
 is important that virtue should adorn their lives, and morality shine 
 forth in their actions ; that their manners and tempers should be 
 gentle as twilight of summer, sweet as the breath of spring, and 
 grateful as the voice of a melody; if, in fine, it is important that 
 their social life should be a s.mctuary of peace, their domestic life a 
 dwelling-place of love, and that their existence here below should be 
 but a preparation for the better life to come; then, indeed, it is im- 
 poi-tant that their early education should be judiciously conducted 
 under the influence of example and precept; it is important that 
 their moral nature should be developed by actual exercise, for the 
 love of right doing is cultivated by right-doing; it is important that 
 the first and the last lesson in nursery and school-room should be to 
 reduce religion to a living principle of action, a rooted habit in the 
 youthful mind; then it is important that parents and teachers should 
 unremittingly seek to instil the doctrines of faith deep in the fibres 
 of theii' souls, and, whatever else may be taught, to educate them in 
 the knowledge and service of the God of their salvation. 
 
 " And such is man — a soil which breeds 
 Or sweetest flowers, or vilest weeds ; 
 Flowers lovely as the morning's light, 
 Weeds deadly as an aconite ; 
 Just as his heart is trained to bear 
 The poisoned weed or floweret fair." 
 
 Ah ! who understands this better than that Holy Mother who has 
 educated the children of the nations ! For this reason, she has, at 
 great cost and p lins, and in some countries, against fearful odds, 
 builded and maintained those elementary, or primary, schools in 
 which Catholic children might, from their very earliest years, be in- 
 structed in those doctrines and exercised in those practices of 
 religion, which, whatever betide them in this world, alone can yield 
 any security of salvation in the next. With this end in view, Pius 
 
216 
 
 IX., of immortal memory, emphatically declared that in such schools, 
 " above all, the children of the people ought to be carefully taught 
 from their tender years the mysteries and precepts of our holy re- 
 ligion, and trained with diligence to piety, good morals, religion, and 
 civilization. In such schools religious teaching ought to have so 
 leading a place in all that concerns education and instruction, that 
 whatever else the children may learn should appear subsidiary to it. 
 The young, therefore, are exposed to the greatest perils whenever, in 
 the schools, education is not closely united with religious teaching. 
 Wherefore, since primary schools are established chiefly to give the 
 people a religious education, and to lead them to piety and Christian 
 morality, they have justly attracted to themselves, in a greater degree 
 than other educational institutions, all the care, solicitude, and 
 vigilance of the Church." From these luminous words, uttered by 
 a sovereign Pontiff of the Church, the following propositions are 
 evidently taken to have all the force of axioms : First, that education 
 is primarily and chiefly religious; secondly, that every other phase 
 of education must be subordinate to the religious element; thirdly, 
 that education begins with the child's tenderest years, and that 
 these years are of supreme importance; fourthly, that children from 
 their earliest years must be trained to piety, virtue, and religion; 
 fifthly, that the chief end of primary schools is to give people a re- 
 ligious education; and sixthly, that for these several reasons the 
 primary schools have called forth the care, solicitude, and vigilance 
 of the Church of Christ. 
 
 If the above propositions admit neither of doubt nor denial, for sure- 
 ly no Catholic will so far sin against his judgment as to challenge them, 
 it may not be irrelevant to ask what becomes of those accommodating 
 systems which make of religion only the tattered tail of the educa- 
 tional kite? Pius IX. says religion holds the chief place; the ac- 
 commodating genius of the hour says religion holds the second. 
 Vulgar comparisons are not to our taste, but is not this that peculiar 
 inversion of cause and effect which demands that the tail should 
 wag the dog ? It seems we have gone woefully wrong-headed since 
 the day our fathers, in spite of their poverty and fogyism, planted 
 the school under the shadow of the spire, and thought to marry re- 
 ligion with the education of the young. Undoubtedly, we are dwell- 
 ing in the focal point of all that is great and wise and good. The 
 
217 
 
 broken beams of knowledge which shed such a dim twilight on our 
 forefathers are now poured in full glory upon us. It is midsummer 
 madness to deny it. Have not some of our " doctors in Israel " 
 shaken loose from " the mouldering relics of the past," and improved 
 upon the antiquated methods of those old-scliool pedagogues, who 
 had the weakness or temerity to handicap secular instruction with 
 all that cumbersome millinery which the Pope calls " the mysteries 
 and precepts of our holy rehgion " ? Perhaps we are straining at 
 metaphor. Let us, then, shun all indirection of language. 
 
 It has been said by some of our teachers that religion is, indeed, 
 a part of primary school education, but certain contingencies con- 
 strain Catholics to seek an adjustment in secular States, on a basis 
 which we firmly believe to be ruinous to the religion of the children. 
 They affect to think this a financial question. The almighty dollar 
 is harassing them, and their circle of vision appears to be ckcum- 
 Bcribed by a golden rim. " We are hard pressed in some coun- 
 tries," they say, " and poverty is the portion of Catholics." To pay 
 taxes for Government schools, and, concurrently with that, suppoi-t 
 those educational establishments which our private enterprise and 
 zeal for religion have founded, is a burden that crushes us to the 
 earth. We cannot carry the load; it wiU break our holy Roman 
 Catholis backs. Besides, look at the magnanimity of the State ! The 
 State constructs commodious buildings for educational purposes 
 (with our money, of course), and, throwing open the doors thereof, 
 she invites us all with wide-extended arms to come to her embrace, 
 saying : " Come to me, all ye that labor under the load of Catholic 
 ignorance, and I will enlighten you* at bottom prices.'" Let us 
 close with this generous proposal, and make a convention with the 
 civil authority. To stand aloof in the face of such a cordial invita- 
 tion to the governmental *' agape," is to place ourselves under the ban 
 of suspicion. We shall be deemed a fractious and unpatriotic 
 element. We shall be considered as morbid misanthropists, warring 
 against the progress of humanity; as contumacious and refractory 
 citizens, bhndly wedded to exploded traditions and hide-bound cus- 
 toms, out of tune and out of touch with that breadth and unity of view 
 which makes the new era, or, perhaps, irreconcilably hostile to the 
 spirit and institutions of the glorious age in which we live. We are 
 all members of humanity ; we are all friends, and as " Ta philon 
 
218 
 
 koina,'* as Euripides says, we will all use the common schools which 
 the Government gives, or, what is the same thing, we will make our 
 schools common by giving them to the Government. We have 
 nothing to lose and everything to gain. "Ah! there's the rub." 
 Have we nothing to lose ? What have we to gain ? Let us examine 
 in all candor, for, as the poet says, 
 
 *"Tis not enough taste, judgment, learning join, 
 In all you speak let truth and candor shine." 
 
 In all candor let us examine this position and see where its logic 
 halts and its glaring inconsistency appears. 
 
 Now, there can be no variance of opinion as to the moral and 
 political injustice of legislation which taxes one class of citizens 
 twice as much as it does another, or which taxes a large class for 
 institutions whose benefits they may not share. Every man who 
 pays taxes ought to reap the benefit of those taxes. Nor can there 
 be any question of the impecuniosity of Catholics in general, nor 
 of the grievousness of the burden which they have to bear in build- 
 ing and supporting their own schools, while they are forced to pay 
 into the common treasury for the education of others. Neither is 
 it a great crime to glorify the age in which our own lot is cast, nor 
 the institutions under which we live. We should not be obstruction- 
 ists nor malcontents. We ought to fall in with the common current 
 of events as we find them; harmonize with the aims and hopes of 
 our country; reverence her laws and institutions, and accept them 
 with unselfish devotion and patriotic loyalty, provided we have not 
 to antagonize our conviction of religion, to make sacrifice of prin- 
 ciple, to yield anything that invades the holy sanctuary of conscience 
 and allegiance to our God. It follows, then, that however loyal and 
 patriotic we might wish to be held by our fellow-citizens, we cannot, 
 either to suit them or to relieve ourselves, give up the rehgious edu- 
 cation of our children. And we are to train them, not to State 
 morality, but to the morality of Christ. We must train them, not in 
 the precepts and mysteries of statecraft, but in " the precepts and 
 mysteries of our holy religion." "May the goddess of common 
 sense light upon your dull perception," says the ultra-loyal and ultra - 
 progressive " accommodationist"; "we are not yielding anything. 
 We are only cutting loose from the moorings of the Middlfe Ages. 
 
219 
 
 We were not living then, but we are living now. We are confront- 
 ing a condition and not a theory." Is- that a fact ? 
 
 We raise no questions here at all relative to the rights of the 
 State in the matter of controlling, supervising, or imparting educa- 
 tion. Such discussion will come in its place But we are disputing 
 the right of any " doctor in Israel " to make accommodations with the 
 State, which, to use an expressive but pertinent phrase, " side-track " 
 religion for a few paltry dollars, or for the high prerogative of being 
 considered a doughty defender of public school education, or a 
 patriot deep-dyed in the wool. 
 
 In the first place, are we confronting a condition and not a theory ? 
 Catholicity is not a theory, for a theor}^ is but a supposition, and 
 may be true or false. Even if it signify, as it sometimes does, a 
 body of doctrines already demonstrated, Catholicity is more than 
 a theory. Cathohcity is a fact, and that fact is the Church of Christ, 
 her teachings, her grace, her sacraments, her means of salvation, her 
 members. Theory, in its true sense, says Sir William Hamilton, is 
 opposed to practice; and Catholicity is eminently practical. "Hold 
 on," says the accommodation advocate, '' you fail to apprehend the 
 case; Catholicity is not involved. We are merely seeking to adapt 
 ourselves to external circumstances, and since we cannot make the 
 circumstances as we wish, we are honestly endeavoring to conform 
 to the conditions they impose. But we are, in all this, yielding not 
 one jot or tittle of principle." How is this ? Let us look into the 
 subject closely, for it is the point that is up for discussion. Here 
 is the condition we are confronting: 
 
 We are groaning under the burden we have so long borne, of sup- 
 porting our own schools. We must seek State subvention in some 
 way. States nowadays are purely secular, and wiU not aid or recog- 
 nize religion in any manner. Such, at least, is the character of our 
 State in force of her written constitution. Now, we want to pass 
 over our own schools to the control and management of the State 
 (very generous of poor Catholics), and the State will take them and 
 carry aU the expense of conducting them, on condition that we pass 
 our religion out of sight during the hours of secular instruction. 
 What difference does it make when religion be taught, if only it 
 be taught ? Yes— if it be taught ? 
 
 Now, apart from the difficulties that wiU doubtless arise in special 
 
220 
 
 localities from bigotry and prejudice, this " plan " is open to the 
 gravest objections and is full of fatal defects. It makes religion sub- 
 sidiary to secular knowledge, and the Charch and conscience pro- 
 claim just the converse. It tacitly implies that religion and morality 
 are separable, at least for five or six hours of the day, when they 
 may be glued together again. It supposes that religion is like a suit 
 of clothes, to be put on or off at the pleasure of the user. It implies 
 that religion has so little to do with education that all the great 
 branches of school learning, history, geography, composition, and 
 others, can be imparted without the slightest reference to the sub- 
 ject of religion, and is, therefore, a virtual denial of the principle 
 that education is, as Pius IX. said, primarily and chiefly religious. 
 It counteracts one of the most essential elements of religion, its sym- 
 bolic aspect, because, in most places, under the working of the 
 "bobtail" system, all religious emblems, such as pictures, statues, 
 crucifixes, shall be veiled and thrust out of sight. It shuts out all 
 those pious exercises, such as prayers, blessings, oral aspirations, 
 which Catholic children are wont to make at the opening and close 
 of class recitation, or when the solemn stroke of the clock announces 
 the flight of time, and thus falsifies the maxim that practice makes 
 perfect. It tends to weaken the hold which religion has uj^on the 
 children's minds, because they will soon learn to regard as of minor 
 importance that which is communicated to them " out of hours." It 
 makes the work of religious education all but impossible, because it 
 brings the children to school so much earlier that laggards will not 
 be on time to get the benefit of the catechetical instruction; and it 
 holds them " after hours," when they are worn out with the tasks of 
 the day, and it vainly calls their attention when their thoughts are 
 longingly turned towards home. It exposes the teacher to possible 
 insult and degradation, who, though ia some respects sacred by 
 reason of his or her religious profession, may be cast out by some 
 arbitrary school board, at the instance, perhaps, of some drunken, 
 pig-headed parent, or some child who has been taught to despise the 
 garb he appears in. It weakens the influence of the Catholic clergy, 
 in that it withdraws them more from their children, through whom, 
 for the most part, they have to reach the hearts of the parents. It 
 makes no account of the power of association which, in children, is 
 all but omnipotent. There is no influence, not even that of the 
 
• 221 
 
 parent, which produces a more lasting effect upon the feelings and 
 habits of the young than the mutual workings of their own minds 
 and actions upon one another. 
 
 It tends to swell and exaggerate the importance of the State, and 
 to facilitate its centralizing propensities by multiplying its functions, 
 and placing in its hands an engine of power, which may become all 
 but absolute. 
 
 It helps to create the impression, already gaining ground in some 
 quarters, that education is, as Cousin taught, a positive and not a 
 natural right, which, like the right of suffrage, may be conferred 
 only by the State, and exercised only by the permission of the 
 secular authority. 
 
 It admits, in effect, that the State has, or can have, no religion, a 
 proposition expressly condemned by Leo XTTT. in his encyclical on 
 the constitution of States; for it compacts with the State to banish 
 religion during secular hours. 
 
 It implicitly adopts the piinciple that it is beyond the power of 
 the State to make any appropriations for *' sectarian purposes," 
 which means that the State cannot foster religion by grant or endow- 
 ment, and implies that Catholicity is sectarian. 
 
 It makes the School Board sui)reme in prescribing programmes of 
 study, and thus lays Catholics open to the risk of having obnoxious 
 text-books put into the hands of their children.* 
 
 It implies that a good Catholic cannot be a good citizen unless he 
 be educated under State supervision, for it argues that a prime ad- 
 vantage accruing to the State from the operation of the plan, is that 
 the State draws under its direction multitudes of Catholics, who 
 otherwise must keep aloof from it. 
 
 It is impractical as a general plan, for the majority of school 
 boards will never be brought to consent, that all the teachers must 
 be Catholic in the schools i-un under the system, if system it may 
 be called. 
 
 If such be the case, it does not obviate the danger of Protestant 
 bias or Agnostic tendencies on the part of the teachers, for all 
 classes of teachers are, " and ought to be," eligible candidates for 
 place in the schools of a State which has no religion. 
 
 * There may be exceptions here and there, but, in general, the supremacy of 
 school boards would have to be allowed. 
 
222 
 
 It lacks the assurance of permanence and stability, for it is liable 
 to be overthrown at the option or caprice of the first meeting of 
 local magnates, who may take it upon them to do so. 
 
 Again, the " bobtail " plan tacitly admits it to be the express 
 function of the State to educite. Tims, to say the least, it confounds 
 education with mere instruction, and it likewise trenches upon 
 parental authority. It makes Catholics, in the eyes of the rest of 
 the people, pensioners upon the bounties of the State ; leads their 
 non-religionists to think that they are merely scrambling for the 
 loaves and the fishes, and not for the bread of life. All latent bigotry 
 it stirs up against them; for, as the teachers are garbed as religious, 
 it will be suspected they find too much favor with the civil author- 
 ities. Nor will it be bigotry onty, but jealousy and hostility, as that 
 feeling grows among the narrow-minded, sedulously fomented and 
 fostered by the sscts and their ministers, that the Catholic Church is 
 aiming at nothing short of the absolute control of the whole educa- 
 tional system. It takes the work of education from the serene and 
 unclouded atmosphere of religion, where it now peacefully rests, and 
 transfers it, root and branch, to the murky region of pot-house 
 politics, and wresting it from those faithful hands which have 
 hitherto guided it, it carries it into all fluctuations, corruptions, and 
 contentions of hostile political parties. Of course, it may be an- 
 swered, that even if any adjustment were had upon a denomination- 
 al plan, which left us free to teach religion as much and as often as 
 we had the desire, we would still have to submit to the contingencies 
 of political mutation. I answer, that all may be. But for the doubt- 
 ful and tenuous advantage to be derived from the " bobtail " plan, 
 " the game is, by no means, worth the candle." 
 
 But the one all-sufficing objection to the system is, it wipes out 
 the true idea of Catholic education, for it makes it well-nigh im- 
 possible to give that education, where Pius IX. said it should be 
 given, in the primary schools. There is not an hour of the day, not 
 a quarter of an hour of the day, in which the Catholic teacher finds, 
 not only occasion, but necessity, to illustrate some truth of faith, 
 some principle of religion, some rule of conduct, which has its bear- 
 ing in eternity. But the religious atmosphere of the school cannot 
 enter even by the chinks in the walls. To let it in would be 
 hypocrisy and deceit. How dare the teacher talk of God, when the 
 
223 
 
 State, which pays his wages, has no God? If the child should say 
 to the teacher, " Who made the stars, Mr. Principal ? " the preceptor 
 might reply, " Never mind now; I'll tell you that at 3 o'clock this 
 afternoon, if I don't forget it." There used to be an idea (I sup- 
 pose it is exploded long ago) that the mind cannot put itself right 
 about at any instant another gives command. There used to be an 
 idea that the heai-t could not be di'iven, but had to be di-awn to 
 virtue, 
 
 ** As if a breeze were there 
 Sweeping her lowest depths." 
 
 The old-fashioned habit of contemplating the great truths of 
 revelation and the destiny of the soul in all our studies and labors, 
 is now obsolete. People used to think that not merely " some time," 
 but "all time" belonged to God, and that constant vigilance was 
 necessary to bring their heai-ts into the right state towards their 
 Maker; and, perhaps, even now it will be found upon experience 
 that, after six hours of secular study, a little too much of the world 
 will be clinging to their minds to be shaken off at a moment's 
 notice. Correct " habitual " feelings are the result of a life of faith. 
 No faint efforts, made at intervals, will accomplish the great work 
 God has given educators to do. 
 
 " There is a life above 
 Unmeasured by the flight of years, 
 And all that life is love." 
 
 It is no light or flippant task to mould an immortal mind to the 
 principles of rectitude and morality, established by the great Legis- 
 lator of the world. " It is not all of life to live." Within the child 
 is a " still, small voice," that incessantly cries for God. If it is not 
 listened to in time, it will echo loud and shrill through eternity. Woe 
 to that man who shall deprive that voice of its melody. Nothing that 
 he can do can rectify the evil. Therefore, " in the morning sow the 
 seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand." Learning is an 
 empty shade. Knowledge is of small account. "Wisdom is the 
 principal thing; therefore get wisdom." And where shall she be 
 found, cries holy Job ? " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom," and, therefore, hath it been said : " Train up the child in 
 
224 
 
 the way he should go when he is young, and when he is old he will 
 not depart from it." 
 
 For this reason, the Mother of Wisdom, the Catholic Church of 
 Christ, has made primary education the object of her care, solicitude, 
 and vigilance. We believe that the agencies selected by the Creating 
 Mind to move the human, are better for their purpose than any of 
 human invention; and there is no reason to doubt that when Jesus 
 established His Church, the little, unsuspecting, laughter-ioviug chil- 
 dren were all held in remembrance by their sympathetic Saviour, 
 and by Him were committed as an inviolable trust to His holy 
 Spouse. She will never lay down her charge. No man shall wrest 
 it from her. The powers of this world may seek to arrogate it to 
 themselves, but it is a heritage of which no man can deprive her. 
 
 " Strong as the rock of the ocean that stems 
 A thousand wild waves on the shore," 
 
 she will stand against all assaults, whether they come from the rock- 
 ribbed fastnesses cf error without, or from the weakness of her 
 followers within, and will proclaim to the world that education has a 
 supernatural end; that education without religion does not form, but 
 deform the world; that the apotheosis of naturalism is the destruction 
 of society; that those States which banish God and religion from 
 the minds of the rising generations are but preparing their own 
 downfall; that the works of Jesus Christ, and the words of Jesus 
 Christ, which constituted her the teacher of the nations, can never 
 pass away, and that she will continue, as she h:is continued for 1,900 
 years, to instil into the minds of all her children, but with more 
 solicitude the young, those lessons of wisdom which not all the 
 thunders of a Tully or Demosthenes can teach — that wisdom which 
 alone can teach mankind to breast the storms and resist the tempta- 
 tions of the world, and can lift the soul from the vanities and allure- 
 ments of a perishable and fallen life to the contemplation of a nobler 
 one beyond the skies. Even so shall parents reap the delightful 
 fruits of her labors, in the affection, obedience, and piety of their 
 children; so shall the State reap them in the virtue, enlightenment, 
 and patriotism of its citizens; so shall the Church militant reap them 
 herself in faithful, zealous, and God-fearing sons and daughters; and 
 finally, so shall the Church triumphant reap them in the multiplica- 
 
225 
 
 tion of those blessed spirits who, in the Mngdom of God, shine as 
 stars for eternity, and day and night 
 
 And 
 
 " Circle His throne rejoicing." 
 
 " How sweet to woo and win her favors here ! 
 Beneath the shadow of heaven-gifted souls 
 To dwell, and drink the life-bestowing stream 
 Bubbling from Truth's eternal fountains ! " 
 
 Note.— We think it a waste of time and language to discuss here what is 
 called the " Sunday-School Experiment." To attempt to teach children the 
 requisites of a religious education in a brief hour once a week would be com- 
 ical if it were not criminal. We might as well consider a man religious who 
 takes off his hat on Sunday and makes a distant bow to the Almighty as to 
 suppose that a half -hour or an hour's instruction on Sunday is sufficient to 
 make those children Catholics. 
 
 Chapter IY. — Rights and Duties of the State regard- 
 ing Education.* 
 
 In discussing the rights of different powers over education, it is 
 justly assumed that all essential terms take their commonly accepted 
 meaning. No need, perhaps, to state this. But, considering that 
 in the controversy raging, as we write, between skilful combatants, 
 variance of opinion arises from the use of similar terms in disparate 
 senses, it is the part of prudence to define explicitly the terminology 
 here employed, essaying, as we are, to touch the most vexed part of 
 the discussion. 
 
 As to the word right, it is taken to signify a morally inviolable fac- 
 ulty of doing, demanding, receiving, or requiring something. f 
 Eight is a quaUty of persons; they only can be the subject of rights. 
 This does not mean that right and duty always co-exist in the same 
 subject. Infants have rights. They have not duties, for, being in- 
 
 * Two things are to be borae in mind in reading this article : First, the 
 writer believes in the necessity of public school education, and is not waging 
 war upon the public schools ; Second, that our contention is solely for the 
 union of religion and education. 
 
 f Zigliara, Mor. Phil., P.I., L.I., C.I., A.I. Tongeorgi, De juris et offlciis. 
 15 
 
226 
 
 capable of reasoning, they can have no knowledge of duty. Right 
 is a relative term, whose correlative is duty. If there is no duty, 
 there is no right. This does not mean that right springs from 
 dut}^, for both come from law; but it means that if right any- 
 where exists, there exists a duty to respect that right. We speak 
 of course, of human rights, for man has no rights against God, but 
 only duties towards Him. 
 
 The question has been raised whether right comes before duty, or 
 duty before right. Inviolability is the essential characteristic of 
 right. And my right is inviolable, because others are bound to 
 respect it. Logically, then, duty may be taken as prior to right, but 
 not ontologically, nor causally. There was no obligation to respect 
 the right before the right existed, and there was no right without 
 the obligations which make it inviolable. *' if by the dictate of 
 reason I owe you reverence, obedience, love, and other such duties, 
 you can, according to reason, exact all these from me. But my duty 
 does not spring from your right, nor your right from my duty; for, 
 correctly speaking, both arise simultaneously from the law of eternal 
 order made known to us by the light of reason." * And, as St. 
 Thomas says, "the law is not, properly speaking, the right itself; it 
 is the measure of right "; t and it is the measure of duty. Again, as 
 Zigliara observes, " Right and duty are correlative terms, and cor- 
 relatives do not cause each other, but flow from a common 
 fountain." J 
 
 As to the various kinds of right, the distinctions to be noted here 
 are : 1st, direct and indirect; 2d, absolute and hypothetical; 3d, 
 perfect and imperfect; 4th, alienable and inalienable. It may be 
 observed that a natural right may also be an acquired right, but not 
 every acquired right is natural. Thus, by nature, parents have the 
 right of educating their children, but the right is acquired by the 
 fact of paternity; and a man may acquire the rights of citizenship 
 by the enactments of positive law. The fact on which right is founded 
 is termed the title to the right. 
 
 In reference to the word education, the preceding pages of this 
 discussion fully expose the sense in which it is used here. To 
 educate is to unfold the full contents of the man. Education is the 
 
 * Taparelli, Saggio di diretto naturale, N. 347. 
 
 f Q. Q. Quaest. LVII., Art. I. 1:Lib. III., P. 3, C. 2, Art. 3. 
 
227 
 
 orderly and harmonious development of all the faculties of man, as 
 these faculties refer to a fourfold object, man himself, the extemcJ 
 world, society, and God. Man's education is thus four-sided. 
 
 Since, however, this quadruple development must not only be 
 commenced, but must chiefly be attended to in the season of child- 
 hood, education most properly refers to the training and teaching of 
 children. 
 
 That such is the legitimate use of the word education, we might 
 show from a host of citations. But it is unnecessary. Let it be taken 
 for granted that we are all agreed upon the definition, for, as 
 Cardinal Newman says, if we rightly define, we shall soon cease to 
 dispute. 
 
 It follows, then, that education is not the mere communication of 
 truth. Education goes far beyond mere instruction, or any mere 
 communication of knowledge. Education implies the imparting of 
 knowledge, but not all communication of knowledge is education. 
 " Knowledge puffeth up," says the Apostle, but humility is the char- 
 acteristic of the scholar and the educated man. Knowledge forms 
 the mind; education, the heart and the character. Knowledge trains 
 a part; education trains the whole, and as the whole is greater than 
 the part, so is education greater than instruction. Instruction may 
 help to make an intellectual man; education makes him a moral and 
 religious being. Instruction, as such, prescinds from man's final 
 end; education always makes account of man's end and destiny. 
 Instruction, as such, lies in the secular order; education appertains 
 to the spiritual. The first may fit a man for the life of the world; 
 the second prepares him for heaven and for God. 
 
 Every man may have naturally the right to communicate truth; 
 not every man has the right to educate. Education implies not 
 merely the power of precept, but also the power of efficacious com- 
 mand. The right to make rules is one thing; Ihe power to enforce 
 them is another. The right to educate and the authority to educate 
 are distinct in conception, but they are inseparable in practice. No 
 man has the right to educate, unless he have also the authority 
 directly or indirectly. Every man has the right to spread the light, 
 but no man has a right to turn it upon eyes unwilling to receive 
 it. Every man may have the right of instructing the ignorant, but 
 not every man has authority to make them receive his instruction. 
 
228 
 
 Nor is this any confusion of right and the exercise of right. The 
 physician has the right to practice medicine, but he has no authority 
 to make people swallow his physic. To suppose that he had, would 
 be to confound his right with its exercise. But the educator has the 
 right not only to teach his doctrines, but also to enforce their ac- 
 ceptance, or he is not in the true sense an educator. To educate is 
 to unfold the full contents of the man. Among man's faculties, his 
 will is pre-eminent. To educate the will is to mould, to train, to 
 direct, to govern it. Education, then, is government, and govern- 
 ment supposes authority. 
 
 It follows, then, education is not the same as the exercise of works 
 of mercy, nor of fraternal correction. I have not only the right, 
 but also the duty to correct my brother if he " offend against me," 
 but if he will not hear me, and those I appeal to aid in the correc- 
 tion, I must invoke the authority of the Church to compel his obe- 
 dience, and if he reject this authority, he is become " as the heathen 
 and the publican." * But my own unsupported authority is unequal 
 to commanding my neighbor's correction, and this is precisely the 
 difference between fraternal and paternal correction. 
 
 Individuals, as such, or every physical person, suitably competent, 
 has doubtless the right to communicate knowledge. But this right 
 is founded on fact, viz., the consent of others to receive such com- 
 munication. Before the existence of such fact, the right is vague, 
 indeterminate, abstract, hypothetical ; after the fact exists, the right 
 becomes defined, concrete, actual. To have no actual right is to 
 have no right ; just as to have no clothes is to go naked. Properly 
 speaking, the right hardly existed at all antecedently to the will of 
 him who seeks the knowledge imparted, but was conferred upon the 
 instructor by the one seeking instruction ; or, if it existed, it was 
 only inchoate, incomplete, and imj)erfect. This is not confounding 
 right with the exercise of right; but the contrary doctrine, that every 
 man has the right to educate, is confounding the capacity or ability 
 to do a thing with the right of doing the same. If I have the right 
 to do a thing, I have the right to do it, and there's an end of it. If I 
 have the right to educate, I have the right to educate, irrespective 
 of consent, for I have the authority to compel consent. And for this 
 reason we may as well put out of consideration the right of individ- 
 
 * Matt, xviii. 17. 
 
229 
 
 uals to educate, for their rights are secondary, derived, delegated. 
 They have as much right as they have authority, and they have as 
 much authority as they have received — from those who have both 
 right and authority, the parents of children. 
 
 If no individual, as such, has this authority, neither has any col- 
 lection of individuals, as such, the authority. For no one gives 
 what he has not to give. It is quite true, that there is no more right 
 or authority in an association of individuals, than in the persons sep- 
 arately who compose the association. Each brings into the associ- 
 ation just what he had and no more. It may not be validly objected, 
 that no individual has the right to inflict capital punishment, yet 
 such right exists in society. It need hardly be remarked, that so- 
 ciety is not a voluntary association, or aggregation of individuals. 
 If Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau are right in their theory as to the 
 origin of civil society, then the State is a mere aggregation, and so- 
 ciety would have no more authoiity than that of the individuals who 
 composed it, and no man, and ng number of men, would have the 
 right to take life, save in self defense. If, on the other hand, in so- 
 ciety, properly constituted, there exists an element of power, not in 
 the individuals composing it, it arises from the fact that society is 
 more than an association of persons. 
 
 That argument is, therefore, illogical which affirms that as the in- 
 dividual, the collection of individuals, or an association, so also the 
 State has competency over education. This we declare, not to deny 
 to the State all jurisdiction over the education of its citizens, but 
 to show that, if it possesses any such rights at all, they flow, not 
 from the principle of association, but from the organic constitution 
 of society, and from something vital to its very existence. If, as 
 seems to us, every association, as such, has not the right to educate, 
 Dr. BouquiUon's contention that the State, like every society, has 
 such right, is urged to no purpose. What rights, in this respect,, 
 pertain to the State, belong to it not because it is an association, but 
 because it is more than an association can ever be. 
 
 What, then, is the State? 
 
 To answer adequately this question, it is needful to recall the Mo- 
 saic account of creation. Agreeably to the Biblical narrative, man 
 was created, not as an individual merely, but as the head of the race, 
 the father of the family, the first factor of the civil order. Natural 
 
230 
 
 society, from which civil government derives its origin, had its root 
 in the primal parent of the race. The crown of creation and the 
 noblest work of the Creator, man did not suffice for himself; " it was 
 not good for him to be alone." God, therefore, drew forth from 
 Adam's side, while he slept, her who was to be his consoii and 
 helper in the propagation and extension of the race. 
 
 The family, then, was an essential part of the divine plan, and 
 upon the institution of marriage the security and permanency of the 
 family was founded. The family was the incipient or embryonic 
 State, and civil government was established by God, no less than 
 marriage, religion, and society itself, for government is essential to 
 society. 
 
 If the human race were a mere collection of individuals, without 
 any organic solidarity, unconnected in origin, and independent as to 
 life and development, the order of civil government would have been 
 unnecessary; but as man was born a social animal, as Aristotle ob- 
 serves,* was to live in intercourse with his kind, depend on God 
 through society and attain his final perfection by means of such 
 communication, the authority of government formed a necessary 
 part of the providential plan in the economy of the world. This ju- 
 risdiction was originally vested in Adam as the father of the family 
 and the head of the race. 
 
 Aristotle traces the origin of the State to the family, as the unit of 
 society. The State, he affirms, is founded in nature, and man is by 
 nature a social animal; for he who, not by the fault of fortune, 
 but by the impulse of nature, lives outside of society; he who cannot 
 contract association with others, or does not stand in need of com- 
 munion with his fellows, forms no part of society, and is either a 
 beast or a god, of whom Homer says, 
 
 " Cui neque curia, nee lex est, neque Yesta, Laresque." f 
 
 Accordingly, with the progress of time, and as the exigencies of 
 the race demanded, and the family grew into the patriarchal tribe, 
 the divine authority of government was more clearly drawn out by 
 the Author of human society when He conferred upon it the ^' right 
 of the sword." The power of capital punishment was conferred by 
 
 * De re Politica, Lib. I., cap, 1. f De re Politica, Lib. I., cap. 1. 
 
231 
 
 God on tlie State for its own preservation, for, as Vattel remarks, 
 self-preservation is the first law with nations, as with individuals. 
 Thus life is protected by taking away life which invades it. 
 
 Under the earliest ordinances of society, when all were closely 
 united by common belief, common hopes, and recency of common 
 origin, civil government and religion, or Church and State, were con- 
 joined in perfect and harmonious alliance. This was a divine or 
 theocratic constitution of society, exemplified under the Mosaic dis- 
 pensation and imitated throughout heathendom, for the pagan ruler 
 was both emperor and pontiff. 
 
 When, however, the patriarchal system, once exercised by Adam, 
 Noah, and Abraham, disappeared, or was disused by all but barba- 
 rians, the political nation sprang into being and the civil order put 
 on its perfection. Marriage, divine worship, the exercise of supreme 
 authority by the civil power, and the union of Church and State in 
 the same governing authority, were the essential features of the 
 theocratic stage of society. The new civil order was the harbinger 
 of a change. While the religious and civil orders were to run on 
 parallel lines, never conflicting, never Ijindering, but helping each 
 the other, both acting in concert and correspondence, but with due 
 subordination, for the well-being of society; it seemed, nevertheless, 
 more consonant with the development of the race that the two 
 powers should be no longer vested in the same subject. The re- 
 ligious and the civil powers are distinct as to laws, ends, and au- 
 thority, and should be so a^ to their different spheres of action, 
 neither impeding nor excluding the other. To this view Christ Him- 
 self gave concurrence, when in answer to the demand of tribute to 
 Csesar, He replied: "Eender unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's 
 and to God the things that are God's." 
 
 But alas ! many pagan States rejected the new religion, and the 
 political philosopher who traces the history of the race cannot fail 
 to note how the Unes of divergence between the two orders, which, 
 though distinguishable, are not disparate, have grown wider and 
 wider apart. The civil power has for centuries sought to aggrandize 
 itself at the expense of the ecclesiastical, not only by sequestrating 
 the Church's property, but by sacrilegiously invading her sanctuary. 
 Witness the long contest of the Papacy and the Empire; the great 
 revolt of the sixteenth century; the arrogance of Napoleon the Great; 
 
232 
 
 the occupation of Victor Emmanuel; and behold it still more in the 
 atheism and infidelity of the modern European Governments, the 
 secularization of education, and the persistent attempt to expunge 
 from the whole civil order the last vestige of the supernatural, com- 
 bined with the rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church. It 
 is a sad reflection, that at this day there is hardly a civilized nation 
 which professes to be guided by the teaching authority of that 
 Church to which was given the commission to teach the nations. 
 
 But whether the State be pagan or Christian, its rights, in the 
 natural order, are the same. The heathen prince acquires no new 
 authority in the civil order when he enters the door of the church, 
 nor does he forfeit his right to rule, if like Julian, the Emperor, he 
 abjures the Christian religion. The rights of the State depend on 
 the end and constitution of the State and extend to the domain of 
 temporals only, though such restriction does not imply the State has 
 no concern with the morality of the Gospel and the action of super- 
 natural grace. 
 
 Justice is the foundation of the State ; for, as Aristotle has it, the 
 judgment {i. e., justice) of society constitutes the civil order.* And 
 Yattel says: Justice is of strict obligation with nations. 
 
 The State, consequently, exists for the maintenance of justice, the 
 preservation of natural rights, the conservation of order, the protec- 
 tion of property and those external goods which are necessary for 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Its jurisdiction lies 
 wholly in the temporal order, and it cannot fetter the minds nor con- 
 trol the consciences of men. 
 
 But the State is, nevertheless, a power — a sovereignty, if you will, 
 and it holds from God, but not in the sense in which we speak of 
 the divine rights of kings. It speaks to all; it commands and can 
 enforce obedience in its own sphere. As a sovereignty, it is by its 
 nature a free and independent society, or political organization. It 
 may determine the form of its internal constitution; may establish, 
 alter, or even abolish its municipal government; may pass from a 
 pure democracy to a monarqhy, a despotism, or a mixed govern- 
 ment. As a body politic, it has affairs and interests peculiar to it- 
 self and for which it is responsible; it is a moral person, capable of 
 
 * Justicia civilis res est. Nam judicium societatis civiles ordo est. Arist., 
 De re Politica, Lib. I., cap. I. 
 
2.3 
 
 deliberation and resolution, susceptible of right and obligations. 
 From its nature it has efficacious public authority to order and con- 
 trol what is done by its individual members, as far as their actions 
 affect the end and object for which the State has its being. This po- 
 litical authority, whether vested in one or many, is the sovereignty of 
 the State. A sovereign State may be defined: A people organized 
 into a body pohtic, fixed to definite soil, and exercising the rights of 
 self-government. 
 
 Now occurs the question whether it is the right and office of the 
 State to educate ? If the State exist at all, it must have some func- 
 tions. Is education one of them ? If we adhere to our definition, 
 and take education to mean the unfolding of the full contents of the 
 man, then we unreservedly answer, that it is not the business of the 
 State to educate. It is not the office of the State to teach religion, 
 and religion is the chief part of education. The logic of this is in- 
 exorable. Modern republics now vaunt themselves on their emanci- 
 pation of all religious control, and could not consistently teach to 
 the rising generations what has been repudiated as useless, if not 
 injurious, to society. 
 
 It may be answered that the State has the right to procure what 
 is necessary for the temporal welfare, and education is above all 
 things necessary.* To this it may reasonably be replied, in the 
 words of Aristotle, that not everything that is necessary to the 
 State is directly procurable by the State. This principle the great 
 Stagirite admitted, though he held the State to be prior to the 
 family, prior to the individual, as the whole is prior to its parts. 
 
 Even were that peculiar theory adopted which makes the State 
 the sole end of the State, men would strenuously object to have the 
 State interfere in their domestic concerns; to make sumptuary laws; 
 to paralyze individual industry by assuming control of arts, trades, 
 manufactures, and all the means of transportation and communica- 
 tion; to tell us what we shall eat, how we shall dress, or to re-en- 
 force the old curfew law fixing the hour of retirement at night; to 
 usurp, in a word, all those functions which private individuals now 
 perform for themselves far more efficiently than the State; to de- 
 stroy what Card. Manning calls the " unbought energy " of the peo- 
 ple, and arrogate to itself all the enlightenment and intelligence of the 
 
 * Dr. Bouquillon, " The Right to Educate: To whom does it belong ? " 
 
234 
 
 comm unity. We have had a sample of State supremacy in Elinois, 
 where the obnoxious Edwards law was enforced, till nobly fought 
 down by the distinguished Bishop of Peoria. We have seen it in 
 the Bennett law of Wisconsin, strenuously opposed by Catholics 
 and Lutherans alike. 
 
 In this land of America exists a large class to-day who want to ex- 
 alt State authority into the absolute. Is this country Europeaniz- 
 ing? Are we to introduce here the old-world despotisms? Shall 
 we have an American Csesar ? General Grant gave great impetus 
 to the movement in favor of strong government, and it may well be 
 believed that his defeat in securing a nomination for a third term 
 was a barrier against the introduction of imperialism in government 
 on the shores of the new world. General Grant took advanced 
 ground on the school question, when he spoke of the sanctity of the 
 school funds at Des Moines, Iowa, and it is a notable fact, that those 
 Catholic ecclesiastics who are seeking to extend the rights and 
 powers of the State, are members of the Republican party. We 
 seem to forget that the government is the servant, and not the 
 master of the people; that the State exists for the people and by the 
 people; that the people were not made for the State, but the State 
 for the people; that our government is no more than a corporate 
 agency to execute the will of the people, to administer justice, secure 
 property and personal rights, and play in general the role of police 
 officer. In the people, under God, resides the sovereignty of the 
 nation, and the right of the State and the duty of the State is to dis- 
 charge the functions assigned to it within the sphere of its delegated 
 authority. But the State nowadays, after the example of all despot- 
 isms, takes upon itself to control the education of its subjects in all 
 respects, and claims the children as belonging to herself. She is 
 like a great feudal lord, and by assuming parental rights, as if 
 parents were unqualified for the duties which God placed upon 
 them, the State verges daily towards that paternalism which the 
 fathers of the country washed away in the blood of the Revolution. 
 
 But if the State has not the right to educate, in the sense in which 
 we use the word, has not the State the right to impart secular in- 
 struction to its subjects ? We distinguish: That she has a special 
 and direct right to do so, we have not been able to establish, though 
 we have diligently searched the pages of many great writers on the 
 
235 
 
 subject, and perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the affirma- 
 tive are the words of Mgr. Sauve, quoted by Dr. Bouquillon: "Ma 
 these est done celle-ci: Le pouvoir civil a ete investi par Dieu du 
 droit de procurer le bien commun temporel, et par la meme de 
 f avoriser et d'ouvrir au besion des ecoles qui contribuent a ce bien." * 
 Mgr. Sauve observes: "the opposite thesis which refuses to the State 
 all right to teach does not appear to us probable." t 
 
 But after a careful examination of the whole chapter on the 
 Liberty of Education, we fail to find that he anywhere makes a 
 claim for a direct, special, and proper right to teach on the part of 
 tbe State. In the passage above quoted, he affiims that the State has 
 been endowed by God with the right to favor and to open schools, 
 but does not assign to it the function of schoolmaster. And aU the 
 authorities cited by Mgr. Sauve, and quoted by Dr. Bouquillon, can 
 be quoted only to the same effect, as may be seen by a reference to 
 the originals. Thus, for example, Hammerstein: "The State and 
 the Church have, both, the right to found schools, and to each be- 
 longs the direction of the schools founded by itself." t Thus, too, 
 Cavignis; thus Costa-Rosetti, and thus Cardinal Zigliara, are cited 
 to prove the right of the State to establish schools. Card. Zigliara 
 speaks of the State's right and duty to found schools, for the pro- 
 viding better opportunities (media aptiora, he calls them), for the in- 
 tellectual and moral education of the young. But not one of these 
 authors appears to claim for the State the direct, special, and proper 
 right to teach or educate. 
 
 If the State has such nght, whence does it emanate ? Not from, 
 the natural law; for in force of it, education is the province of 
 parents. Not from the divine law, for by its disposition the Church 
 is the teacher of nations. Whence then ? From the end and nature 
 of society, or the State, which is established to procure the temporal 
 common good. But for this the State need not herself be the edu- 
 cator. It is a grave question whether the temporal common good is 
 not better procured when the State leaves education to others. 
 Card. Manning thinks so, when he shows how State monopoly de- 
 stroys individual effort, and how people appreciate far more highly 
 what costs them sacrifice and self-denial. 
 
 * " Questions Religieuses et Sociales," par Mgr. H. Sauve, p. 271. 
 f Ibid., p. 271; Hammerstein, De Ecclesia et Statu, p. 146. 
 
236 
 
 But has the State no rights in respect of education ? Yes; and 
 those rights are manifold. 
 
 Granted that the end of the State is to procure the temporal com- 
 mon good; in attaining that good the State has to respect natural law 
 and the natural rights of man. And parental control of education is 
 a natural, inalienable, and inviolable right. Moral or mental incom- 
 petency is only apparent exertion, for their control ceases to exist. 
 The State, therefore, cannot compel the parent to send his child to a 
 school which, as a parent, he disapproves in conscience. The father 
 can say: "Who art thou, that thou judgest another man's servant? 
 to his own master he standeth or falleth." 
 
 But the State has the right, and the duty as well, to supplement 
 the family. Hence she can and she ought to provide agencies or 
 means that parents may the better secure the education of their 
 children. This she can accomplish by founding and endowing 
 schools, as the wants and necessities of parents demand such educa- 
 tional establishments; but she can do so only when her subventions 
 and endowments conduce to the public weal, which is not the case if 
 education be sufficiently provided for by private enterprise. For on 
 this hypothesis, the founding of State schools could only effect an 
 unnecessary burden of taxation, or eventuate in crushing out the 
 private schools which were first planted Such a result is not un- 
 looked for in England, where the " Board Schools," supposed to supple- 
 ment the voluntary schools, are, by partial and discriminating distribu- 
 tion of educational funds, pushingthe voluntary institutions to the wall. 
 
 The State can also supplement the family by undertaking the ed- 
 ucation of fatherless and friendless children, and children of those 
 parents who are so poor or so incompetent as to be unable to satisfy 
 their duty towards their offspring, especially if those who have next 
 right after the parents are wanting in the emergency. 
 
 The State has likewise the right to protect itself against ignorance 
 and the vices that commonly are adjuncts of illiteracy; she has the 
 right to see that her citizens do not grow up as barbarians, but as 
 intelligent and competent voters with sufficient information to en- 
 able them to discharge the duties of citizenship; she has the right 
 to guard against the degeneracy and decay which are sure to ensue 
 where society is long subject to the blighting effects of an unschooled 
 population. 
 
237 
 
 The State has the right, under just or pressing necessity, to em- 
 ploy constraint even, to carry into her schools those whose ignorance 
 would menace society; but the State has not the right of so educat- 
 ing children as to compel parents to send them to those schools 
 precisely which it establishes; nor to resei-ve to itself the sole right 
 of teaching and founding schools; nor to exact a minimum of educa- 
 tion and prescribe the quantity and quaUty of the subject matter, 
 which, if omitted, would savor of negligence, in schools not of its 
 own founding. Cousin thought the obligation of imposing element- 
 ary instruction upon all was as much the province of the legislative 
 power as the enforcing militaiy service; and if for reasons of public 
 good, she can enjoin the latter, afortioH, she can command the other 
 as a utility of a higher order. Though it be conceded that the State 
 can compel parents to give their children such instruction as they 
 absolutely need lest they become a burden to society; still we can 
 reject the contention which claims for the State j)ower to exact from 
 every child such instruction, and such only, as the State deems ele- 
 mentary, which often extends to things superfluous, frivolous, and 
 even detrimental. In some places a study of Greek mythology was 
 enumerated among the necessaries of a school training. The fact is, 
 the education fetich has hoodooed the people. In Scotland, a few 
 years ago, dancing formed a regular part of the curriculum, and 
 whist, chess, and backgammon ought to follow to round out the 
 course. At a meeting of the Schoolmasters' Club, held in Boston, 
 February 15, 1890, it was declared tliat the manual school was 
 not high enough; it should be a college. Schools to-day are 
 organized, not as children's improvement, but as teachers' mutual 
 admiration societies; they exist not for the benefit of scholars, but 
 for that of teachers. The academic course at the Chicago Manual 
 Training School is the same as that at an English high-school. With 
 Latin, Greek, and French as elective studies. Drawing is followed 
 five hours per week; shop work ten hours per week; — not for the 
 purpose of making artisans and tradesmen, but for producing cul- 
 tui'ed men who are to do the hard thinking of life. It must be 
 assumed they are to think with blocks, saws, and chisels. Those 
 who take any interest in sanitary reform do well to protest against 
 overburdened courses of study, and demand time for healthful ex- 
 ercises to take the place of mere memory work, which Dr. Eice de- 
 
238 
 
 Clares to be the capital defect of every public school he visited in 
 the last six months. 
 
 We know, of course, that the man who could devise a system to 
 suit everybody went to heaven long ago ; but it is patent to all ob- 
 servers that the friends of the public school system are in a fair way 
 to crush it by weighting it down with extra burdens. They were 
 about to pension teachers at Albany. Akeady text-books are free; 
 ham sandwiches should follow for the lunch hour, and toboggan 
 slides and merry-go-rounds for the recess. It is high time to call a 
 halt here. It is time to determine the limits of public benefaction 
 in the domain of education. Free education just now enjoys great 
 cry. For the poor, and for the thousands and thousands of children 
 of the land, who, without State aid, would grow up in brutal igno- 
 rance, the public schools are a boon above price. But there is no 
 popular demand for unlimited extension of the common school system ; 
 extension which is vigorously pushed by men like Chancellor Mc- 
 Cracken, of New York, and the vast army of educators and politi- 
 cians, who are the beneficiaries of the system. Let it be remembered 
 that common schools were first founded in this country for the bene- 
 fit of the i)oor, and not for the periwigged professors, who draw 
 from the common treasury a square yard of salary for each pound of 
 mental pabulum bestowed upon their pupils. These are the men 
 who are incessantly urging the legislators to found a national univer- 
 sity, not so much to form the national character, as they terra it, as 
 to favor the forces of centralization which are daily operating in the 
 body politic, and to provide unstinted emolument and high honors 
 for themselves, as the high-priests of literature and learning in the 
 nation. This innovation upon our pre-established policy and usage 
 is the boldest yet promulgated by our pedagogues, and it is the 
 more dangerous to constitutional liberty, in that it takes shelter 
 under the pretext of forming the national character by uniformity 
 of ideas wrought by educational processes 
 
 If man was made for the State, and not the State for man, then 
 man should be educated in the image and likeness of the State. 
 Aristotle seems to incline to this view, for he says : " Since the end 
 of all society is one and the same, it is necessary that education and 
 discipline be the same; and the procuration of this education must 
 
239 
 
 be public and not private." * For this reason, he lauds the Lace- 
 daemonians, who sought to estabhsh the unnatural system of absolute 
 uniformity in education. Frindelenberg affirms that the State has 
 the right to exert her powers in education, so that the minds and 
 wills of all be imbued with common sentiments and common moral 
 ideas, and it is in the nature of the case that the State should be the 
 educator. 
 
 We believe in the solidarity of nations, through their governments, 
 and we hold to a certain soHdai'ity of the whole human race. Inter- 
 national law has advanced to the dignity of a science, and the assim- 
 ilation of nations with one another on account of their interde- 
 pendence and community of interests grows apace with the advance 
 of the centuries. But the dream of Gregory the Great will, doubt- 
 less, never be realized, for it is improbable that absolute unity of 
 faith will ever prevail, despite the well-meant efforts of evangehcal 
 alliances; and without such principle of unification, social and com- 
 mercial intercourse, treaties, concordats, even unity of language and 
 education, cannot break down geographical barriers and efface those 
 distinctions which clime and distance always must beget, or effect 
 anything more than that friendly relationship and familiarity of 
 intercourse which is founded upon considerations of commercial 
 policy and the preservation of peace among the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 It is, no doubt, true that the Author of human society has ordain- 
 ed that a cei-tain conformity of ideas should exist, not only among 
 the members of one nation, but among aU the members of the race. 
 Biit national unity is sufficiently conserved by having parents teach 
 their children ideas of patriotism, incorruptible citizenship, and the 
 faithful performance of all civic duties. In point of fact, parents are 
 wont to do this. An Englishman will educate his child as an 
 Englishman; a Frenchman, his as a Frenchman; an American, his 
 as an American. But if a Bohemian in Chicago, or a German in 
 Milwaukee, elects to have his child taught in the language which his 
 parents before him learned, and which alone, perhaps, they speak, 
 what right has the State to interfere ? As a matter of fact, the 
 German language is now taught in the public schools, or in many of 
 
 *Arist., De re Politica, Lib. VIII., Cap. I., De educatione puerorum. 
 
240 
 
 them, but there is no outcry against this " un-American " and " anti- 
 Republican " proceeding. 
 
 It is regrettable that this cry of Americanism comes, for the most 
 part, from Catholics — and Catholic ecclesiastics at that. They tell 
 us that parochial schools are nurseries of sedition, and every little 
 Catholic child educated by the mild-mannered and peace-loving 
 religious is a Benedict Arnold in embryo. Has not a great voice 
 out of the Northwest proclaimed the alarming truth — defenders, 
 get your guns — ^that Catholic schools are unpatriotic and un- 
 American? It must be so; it is treason to deny it. 
 
 It is woi4)hy of record for the honor and good sense of Protest- 
 ants, that as a body they have never been guilty of the wanton 
 brutality of trumpeting forth such malevolent and extravagant 
 rhodomontade. This degrading employment was a task coveted by 
 none, it seems, but those of our own household. " He that hath not 
 the care of his own, is worse than an infidel." 
 
 It is both profitable and interesting to compare the utterances of 
 Protestant clergymen and laymen on the subject with those of 
 men who live by the sanctuary and have been ordained, to spread, 
 not discord, but the gospel of peace among men. 
 
 Says President Elliot of Harvard : " The public schools are de- 
 fective, barren in moral results, and from a secular standpoint, 
 are far below the schools of Germany." 
 
 In the North American Review for December, 1880, Richard Grant 
 White declares, in discussing the "Public School Failure": "If 
 the public school were what it was set up to be, its fruits would 
 by this time be manifest. After fifty years of common schooling, 
 our large towns swarm with idle and vicious lads and young men 
 who have no visible means of support. Crime and vice have in- 
 creased, pari passu, almost with the development of the public school 
 system. Filial respect and parental love have both diminished." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Hodge, professor in Princeton Seminary a few years 
 ago : " ShaU not all of us, who really believe in God, thank Him that 
 He has preserved the Roman Catholic Church in this country true 
 to that theory of education on which our fathers first founded the 
 public schools of the land, and which has been so madly per- 
 verted ? " 
 
 Rev. J. Minot Savage, of Boston : "If I were a Catholic, as I am 
 
241 
 
 a Protestant, I would regard it as intolerable tyranny to be com- 
 pelled to support or send my children to schools which I could not 
 use in conscience." 
 
 " The public school is a fetich to the public mind," says a New York 
 lawyer of high standing in the Episcopal Chui'ch, whom I am not at 
 liberty to quote. 
 
 I might multiply these references unendingly, but it will amuse 
 and astonish us to note some singular utterances of the Catholic 
 clergy. 
 
 "The public schools are the most cherished institutions in o\ir 
 land."— P. Eock. 
 
 • "Blessed be the hillsides and valleys they adorn. Withered be 
 the hand raised in sign of their destniction. They are the schools 
 of the rich and the respectable. Parochial schools are not equal to 
 them," etc. — The great Voice of St. Paul, not to Philippians, but to 
 the Mississippians, and the trans-Missourians. 
 
 " The public schools are the best in the land." — Small voice which 
 chronicles sayings in the Northwest. But of this enough. The edu- 
 cation fetich will cease to unbalance the mind so soon as it is dis- 
 covered that it is only a lump of metal, a brazen image, or a piece 
 
 of clay. 
 
 The dearest idol I have known, 
 
 Whate'er that idol be, 
 Help me to tear it from Thy throne 
 
 And worship only Thee. 
 
 At present education, or rather instruction, is the one predomi- 
 nant and all-controlling influence of society. Our social policy, from 
 top to bottom, inclines to instruction. " The gates of Castle Garden 
 open inward," said President Harrison, and those who tremble when 
 contemplating the immigration problem, are lulled to security by 
 the siren voice of the educational enchantress. If any sociologist 
 or statesman is asked how we are to assimilate the swarms of for- 
 eigners yearly dumped upon our shores, he answers with confident 
 complacency : " Educate them ; public school them," and presto ! 
 they are full-fledged American citizens, each man with a ballot in 
 his hand and a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. Bat there is 
 no magical virtue in the process to re-create men. If men and 
 women could be made better by instruction, then our people ought 
 16 
 
242 
 
 to be tlie most moral and law-abiding in the world, for as a great 
 American statesman once said, "they are the most * common 
 schooled ' people on earth." American reformers expect " by pour- 
 ing fresh instruction on the mind " to lift up the fallen creature of 
 the slums, the savage Sioux of the West, and his dark-skinned 
 brother at the South, as well as the ignorant emigrant from Europe, 
 just as the angel lifted Habacuc, by the hair of the head, to a con- 
 dition of ideal manhood and to a full conception of all the duties 
 and dignities of American citizenship. The moral part of man is 
 seldom attended to, or such attention is deemed superfluous, if he 
 be crammed with blocks of knowledge. 
 
 The statistics of crime with us show that morality and instruction 
 are wholly different principles. The offences most frequent are 
 those committed by men of average education. The percentage of 
 prisoners who do not read and write is very small. There is abso- 
 lutely nothing in the power of arithmetic, or physiology, or even in a 
 course of pedagogics to restrain man's animal passions, or to prevent 
 his forging a check when the occasion tempts him to the crime. There 
 is no salvation in the spelling-book. But it is almost blasphemy to 
 utter a word in criticism of the innumerable devices for gorging the 
 people with knowledge. Knowledge is power, it is true ; but it is 
 often power to go to the devil. In some way, however, common 
 schoohng is regarded as a panacea for all the ills that man is heir to, 
 and to purify the purlieus of our cities and rescue the forlorn emi- 
 grant, it is only necessary to cram the subject with knowledge^ 
 Cram him till you suffocate him, if you like, and you will either kill 
 or cure him. 
 
 The end of all education is the formation of character and the shap- 
 ing of destiny, not for time, but for eternity. Training in morals 
 must come first. Physical science, intellectual training, and even 
 aesthetic culture, can effect nothing more than the production of a 
 class of men who, while remarkable for acuteness of intellect, are 
 far more distinguished, like those of ancient Sparta, for moral dis- 
 order, immanity of manners, and cruelty of heart. 
 
 But we do not deny the necessity of public education if under- 
 stood with its proper limitations. The State should in every way 
 foster and promote, as well as facilitate, the training of her future 
 citizens. The State should supplement the family by compelling 
 
243 
 
 negligent parents to satisfy their obligations in regard to the edu- 
 cation or instruction of their children. But the State must not 
 trench upon the rights of others ; compel children to go to certain 
 schools and no others, even against the manifest wish of parents ; 
 reserve to herself exclusively the right of estabhshing schools, and 
 take upon herself the functions of teaching and educating altogether. 
 We deny the right of direct or equal concurrence of the State with 
 the parent in the training of the child, unless we admit Danton's 
 theory that the children belong to the State ; or Stahl's, that edu- 
 cation flows from parental and State rights conjointly ; and we 
 deny whatever illation comes from such supposed right. It is, per- 
 haps, opportune to remark here that Mgr. SatolH, in his address to 
 the Archbishops, did not, as some incline to think, proclaim the 
 direct right of the State over education. " Absolutely and univers- 
 ally speaking," he says, " there is no repugnance in their (the pupils) 
 learning the first elements and the higher branches of the arts and 
 natural sciences in public schools controlled by the State, whose 
 ofl&ce it is to provide and protect everything by which its citizens are 
 formed to moral goodness. The State should protect religion, but 
 who wiU thence infer that she must teach religion ?" Those who care 
 to pursue the subject farther, should read Mgr. De Concilio's 
 pamphlet on State Supremacy in Education, or that of Fr, Conway, 
 S. J., on the same subject. 
 
 How stands the question now ? It has been agitated by learned 
 men, sometimes with acrimony, but always with ardor, for the last 
 two years, and we seem far off from a settlement, as yet. Even the 
 Pope's decision will not finally adjudicate it. It wiU settle dissension 
 on the poHcy which CathoHcs are to pursue towards the State and 
 public education, but it will scarcely alter the attitude of Protestants 
 and others, effect any change in the present methods and theories 
 of State education, or pull down the great god secularism which aU 
 Americans are now worshipping with undeviating devotion. 
 
 When public schools were first formed, several courses were 
 open for adoption : First, to omit religious teaching in its denomi- 
 national forms ; secondly, to exclude religion altogether, and pro- 
 scribe it absolutely ; and finally, to adopt a temporizing course by 
 imparting to the schools a non-sectarian character, which, though 
 deceiving many, has satisfied but few. Under the last system, Prot- 
 
244 
 
 estantism was smuggled into the school room, till the vast numbers 
 who rejected its tenets, rose in rebellion, and the educators fell back 
 on the principle of excluding religion altogether, and as a natural 
 result, we are growing up a nation of infidels. Distinctive religious 
 lines are being rapidly effaced. Dogma, even such as Protestants 
 have, is on the decline. Membership in Protestant Churches is con- 
 stantly decreasing, and from a Protestant pulpit in the city of New 
 York, a minister dolefully inquires whether Protestantism is a fail- 
 ure. And no wonder. "When a child is not impressed at school 
 with the idea of the importance of religion, but is taught the rather 
 that it makes no difference what religion a man professes, or that 
 Buddha, Mahomet, and Christ are equally objects of reverence, 
 how long is he to be expected to hold fast the faith of his fore- 
 fathers ? 
 
 "But all are agreed that the State cannot recognize religion." 
 " The State has nothing to do with religion except to protect every 
 citizen in the exercise of his religious liberty." Granted; that is 
 recognizing religion. The State now not only recognizes religion, 
 but protects and favors religious institutions. She exempts them 
 from taxation; she admits recognition of religion in denominational 
 institutions which obtain State aid, such as asylums, hospitals, pro- 
 tectories, refuges, and other establishments where a distinctive form 
 of religion is taught by teachers paid by the Government, and the 
 same principle is countenanced by the Federal authority in the In- 
 dian schools, where the Protestant or Catholic religion is taught. 
 
 " The State cannot recognize religion." What folly ! How are 
 Catholics caught with such chaff ? The State recognizes religion in 
 a thousand ways. The common law is inseparably connected with 
 the ethics of Christianity. The oaths of public servants, from the 
 President to the pound-keeper; the prayers of our Senatorial and 
 Congressional chaplains; Thanksgiving proclamations; our treaties, 
 our laws, our customs, our traditions, all presuppose religion in that 
 they affirm a God. 
 
 The State cannot discriminate against any religion, nor can it pro- 
 scribe any. The State invades individual or parental rights when it 
 aDows or orders the teacher to impose his religion, or the religion of 
 a school board upon the pupils in opposition to the will of 
 the parents of the child. The State invades the rights of in- 
 
245 
 
 dividuals when it makes secularism the religion of the school. But 
 the State protects a most holy and sacred right when it ordains that 
 no teacher's religion, no school committee's religion, no quantum 
 sufficit religion, and no secularistic non-religion be made compulsory 
 on children who do not want, and will not have, such religion. 
 
 It is, however, the silliest twaddle to maintain that in virtue of our 
 conditions we cannot admit religion in the public schools. There is 
 absolutely nothing in the Federal Constitution against such admis- 
 sion, but much in favor of it. At all events, education is not a matter 
 of national, but of State supervision, and each State has it within its 
 province to make such readjustment of the school system as will ad- 
 mit religion within the doors of our educational establishments. Let 
 Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, Hebrews, and those of the Pres- 
 byterian family, who, like the late Dr. Hodge, believe in the neces- 
 sity of religion in education, join hands, and they can move together 
 like an irresistible phalanx. The secularist and the indifferentist 
 have not all rights; they have held the field long enough. 
 
 But whether a union so desirable shall ever be effected or not, 
 the Catholic will always peacefully and manfully assert his rights. 
 Even where he admits compromise, he believes that the issue is only 
 postponed. Religion is the only salvation of society, and it must 
 sooner or later be taught in the schools, or else our social fabric will 
 calamitously fall. The Catholic position will ultimately be found to 
 be coiTect. 
 
 " But Catholics are unpatriotic." " Catholics want to control the 
 whole school system." Fudge ! Such talk is the delirium of in- 
 sanity, or the envenomed froth of bigotry. " But any concession of 
 funds to Catholics is State recognition of denominational religion." 
 Granted; what of it? I have shown that such recognition of re- 
 ligion is not unconstitutional. " Congress shall make no law respect- 
 ing the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof." Exactly. Catholics want no religious establishment by 
 the State — no established Church like the Anglican — and ask only 
 the free exercise of their own religion. They solicit not a penny 
 from the State for the support of their religion. They have a right 
 to one of two things: either to State aid for the work they now per- 
 form for the State, or exemption from taxation for the education of 
 children in schools they cannot enjoy. Like true Americans they 
 
246 
 
 believe in the time-honored principle — no taxation without represen- 
 tation. The future war-cry of Catholics should be : Exempt us from 
 school taxation. 
 
 We believe that the time is fast coming when religion wiU and 
 must be taught in the schools. What religion ? whose rehgion ? If 
 all religions, how ? These are practical difficulties, but they are not 
 insoluble. They have found answers elsewhere, and they will be 
 answered here. We say, as Cardinal Manning said of England: 
 
 " If this is to remain a Christian land, then our schools must be 
 Christian, and when they cease to be Christian schools, there may be 
 Christians in America, but the traditions of the American people will 
 
 exist no longer We are debtors above aU men and to all men, 
 
 to preserve inviolate, at all costs and at all privations, Vie unbroken 
 and unimpaired tradition of Christian education in the whole circle 
 of our colleges and schools, from the majestic and venerable colleges 
 of Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, and Fordham, to the pri- 
 mary schools of our humble missions in the green villages and in 
 the busy towns of America." 
 
 But are Catholics themselves agreed in their demands ? Alas ! it 
 would seem not. A celebrated governor, whose name is as wide as 
 the nation, once said in my presence : " I really have not been able 
 to find out exactly what the demands of Catholics imply." 
 
 WeU, our differences are more apparent than real. All allow the 
 necessity of a combined religious and secular education, but differ 
 as to the mode of attaining the combination. 
 
 Two questions are to be distinguished in the discussion; one spec- 
 ulative, the other practical. The first is a question of abstract right; 
 the other a question of administrative policy. The first asks whether 
 the State has a right to educate, and was doubtless carried into the 
 field of public controversy by those who sought to pave the way for 
 an accommodation with the State. For the particular end in view 
 the discussion was unnecessary, for in our conditions aU allow^ed 
 that public education was as necessary as it was beneficent. We 
 have already touched it sufficiently. 
 
 As to the practical question, many held that such accommodation 
 as that introduced at Faribault was a surrender of the Catholic po- 
 sition, and its supporters could in nowise render it defensible, save 
 by providing for the religious education of the children affected by 
 
247 
 
 tlie arrangement. Archbishop Ireland, the founder of the "plan/' 
 held that it involved no new departure, and left all Catholic prin- 
 ciples intact. The Pope tolerated the arrangement in the two cases 
 specified, and most people imagined that would end the matter. The 
 decision of Rome, as its very terms indicate, was rendered agreeably 
 to the representation that the people of Faribault and Stillwater 
 were not equal to the burden of maintaining parochial schools. On 
 this principle, that is, financial inability, the permission would have 
 been granted to any community. But the end was not yet. 
 
 "With the advent of the Papal Delegate upon our shores, it became 
 manifest that what was at first inaugurated as a special or excep- 
 tional arrangement for particular cases, had the unqualified and en- 
 ergetic support of a powerful propaganda for its extension and gen- 
 eralization. It was soon discovered that there was a complete 
 change of front on the part of many who were once ardent and un- 
 compromising champions of a positively Catholic school, without one 
 jot or tittle of concession in anything that the term Catholic educa- 
 tion imphes. The leading Church dignitary of the land, it was sus- 
 pected, was in hearty sympathy with the new departure ; yet, when 
 ruling the Vicariate of North Carolina, he declared repeatedly for pa- 
 rochial schools, and in an article in Public Opinion he gave utter- 
 ance to such uncompromising speech as this: 
 
 " The catechetical instructions given once a week in our ^unday- 
 schools, though productive of beneficial results, are insufficient to 
 supply the rehgious wants of our children. It is important that 
 they should breathe every day a healthy religious atmosphere in 
 schools in which not only is their mind enlightened, but the seeds of 
 faith, piety, and sound morality are nourished and invigorated." 
 These words have a ring about them like an emanation from 
 Pius IX. 
 
 The Rector of the Catholic University, in the North American Re- 
 view, in 1885, uttered the following ultramontane sentiments : 
 
 " Doubtless, most of the Bishops of the country believe that the 
 present system which taxes for the support of schools, which they 
 cannot conscientiously use, is unjust — is taxation without representa- 
 tion — and probably may hold that a denominational system like that 
 in Canada or England, would be more advisable and practicable in 
 this country also. But there are some, and the present writer is among 
 
248 
 
 them, who, seeing that government aid is apt to lead to dictation and 
 interference, would rather continue forever to bear the unfairness 
 and the hardships of the present system than to purchase State aid 
 at the cost of any danger to the thoroughly Christian character and 
 perfect rehgious freedom of our schools." 
 
 The same illustrious prelate beat his retreat to the music of the 
 following: 
 
 " I had no thought of denying the legitimate rights of the State 
 when I said, that in order to avoid government dictation and inter- 
 ference, it seemed better to do without State aid Govern- 
 ment interference and dictation are dangerous only when likely to 
 
 be used in hostility to the Church The anti-religious State 
 
 does not in any way represent the American commonwealth." Yet, 
 in the above quotation, he is speaking of the American commomvealth. 
 
 Such, too, has been the changed attitude of others. 
 
 Whether Mgr. SatoUi had in mind when he came to this country 
 the purpose of advancing the "liberal movement," as it has been 
 denominated, has been doubted, but few were prepared for the 
 radical and sweeping revelations made at the conference of the Arch- 
 bishops in New York. 
 
 The outcome of the meeting has not yet been made fully mani- 
 fest. Of the fourteen propositions submitted by Mgr. Satolli, some, 
 it would appear, were rejected, while others were accepted. One 
 thing, however, seemed evident, the disagreement of the majority of 
 the Archbishops with the plan of Mgr. Ireland. For that system, or 
 plan — though Willis West denies that it is a " plan," and affirms em- 
 phatically that if it were a plan, he, as a Protestant, would oppose it 
 tooth and nail — for that system, such as it is, Archbishop Ireland, its 
 sponsor, was the only voter. It is likewise asserted on reliable au- 
 thority, that of all present but one voted for Mgr. Satolli's proposi- 
 tions. Archbishop Ireland; the rest. Card. Gibbons as presiding 
 officer excepted, with singular unanimity rejected them, or what is 
 the same thing in effect, voted not to receive them. 
 
 Of the address of Archbishop Satolli, it is not within our province 
 to speak, beyond adverting to the consolatory fact — consolatory to 
 those who believe in an unadulterated and unmutilated religious ed- 
 ucation for their children — that both the Papal Delegate in his ad- 
 dress and the Archbishops in their resolutions have enunciated and 
 
249 
 
 reaffirmed the teachings of the Councils of Baltimore. " For the 
 rest," says the Delegate, *' the provisions of the Council of Baltimore 
 are yet in force, and in a general way, will remain so, to- wit: 
 
 *' Not only out of our pastoral love do we exhort Catholic parents, 
 but we command them by all the authority we possess, to procure a 
 truly Christian and Catholic education for the beloved offspring 
 given them of God, born again in Baptism unto Christ and destined 
 for Heaven, to shield and secure them throughout childhood and 
 youth from the dangers of a merely worldly education, and, there- 
 fore, to send them to the parochial or other truly Catholic schools." 
 
 That the resolutions of the Archbishops are in perfect touch and 
 accordant harmony with the decrees of Baltimore, is obvious from a 
 cursory comparison. The Archbishops say: 
 
 " Besolved, To promote the erection of CathoHc schools, so that 
 there may be accommodation in them, if possible, for all our Catho- 
 lic children, according to the decrees of the Third Plenary Council 
 of Baltimore and the decisions of the Holy See." 
 
 And the Council of Baltimore in decree 199, page 104, ordains as 
 follows: 
 
 " We enact and decree : 
 
 " {a) That attached to each and every church, where such does not 
 exist, within two years from the promulgation of this Council, a 
 parochial school shall be erected and perpetually maintained, unless 
 the Bishop on account of grave difficulties should judge it necessary 
 to defer the erection. 
 
 " ih) That the priest, who by his grave neglect, prevents within 
 that time the erection or the support of such school, or who, after 
 repeated admonitions from the Bishop, does n9t provide for the 
 erection and support of such school attached to his church, deserves 
 to be removed from that church." 
 
 From these utterances, reaffirmed by both Delegate and Arch- 
 bishops, it seems clear that any accommodation contemplated with 
 the State cannot be regarded as a subversion of the decrees of Balti- 
 more, nor as a system running pari passu with the system enjoined 
 by the Plenary Council; nor a system whose adoption depends 
 merely on the option of Catholic parents, so that with equal freedom 
 they may choose between a parochial or a public school. On such 
 supposition the decrees of Baltimore would be inane and absurd. 
 
250 
 
 We take it, then, that the spirit and tenor of Mgr. SatoUi's address 
 are not mihtant against the spirit and purpose of our legislation for 
 the last forty years, but express, as the primary aim of the Holy 
 Father, the urgency of providing religious instruction for the great 
 number of Catholic children now attending the public schools in 
 the United States. But it by no means follows that the Apostolic 
 Delegate considers it a matter of indifference whether Catholic 
 parents use parochial or public schools for their children. True, he 
 says, that, abstractly speaking, there is no repugnance in learning 
 arts and sciences in the schools of the State. The most unflinching 
 opponent of State interference in education would not claim such 
 abstract repugnance. I may not have the right to express certain 
 opinions, but it does not follow that others do wrong when they 
 read what I have expressed. True, he says, confessors should not, 
 with little prudence, repel those children who, in force of circum- 
 stances, attend public schools, but should, on the contrary, show 
 more love for them. This is only an expression of the spirit of 
 Christ, who left the ninety and nine in the desert and sought out the 
 one that was lost. 
 
 But it is to be remarked, that he declares the one thing necessary, 
 beyond all doubt, is moral and religious instruction according to 
 Catholic principles; that the Catholic Church shrinks from those 
 features of the public schools which are opposed to the truth of 
 Christianity and to morality; that the public schools bear within 
 themselves approximate danger to faith and morals; that these 
 schools often work the ruin of youth, because a purely secular edu- 
 cation, which excludes all religion, is given to the pupils; because 
 teachers are indiscriminately chosen from every sect and no law pro- 
 hibits them from instilling error or the germs of vice in tender 
 minds, and because of the promiscuous mingling of pupils of dif- 
 ferent sexes in the same classes and the same rooms. 
 
 In order, therefore, that any accommodation with the municipal 
 authorities may be considered as available, these objectionable feat- 
 urea must be removed, else neither priest, bishop, nor parent can 
 entertain the thought of selecting for children the educational ad- 
 vantages offered by the State. The distinguished Delegate thinks 
 they are removable, at least in given localities. Per se, they are 
 everywhere removable, but as a matter of practice the excision is 
 
251 
 
 difficult in many places, and impossible in others. In many schools 
 of which the writer has personal knowledge, the teachers are avowed 
 infidels, and scruple not, even in the presence of their pupils, to scoff 
 at God and Christianity. The public school, as managed in many 
 other places, while professedly Christian, or non-sectarian, is either a 
 propaganda for Protestantism, or the open enemy of the Catholic 
 Church. Wm. P. Thompson, of Cleveland, Ohio, characterized the 
 efforts of those who sought to introduce religion into the schools, as 
 an attempt to prostitute the free institutions of the land to the uses 
 of the convent and the monastery. 
 
 But even if most of the objectionable features are removed, and 
 the proximate danger to faith and morals be rendered securely 
 remote, the one great distinguishing feature of our common school 
 education, its purely secular character, will remain so long as public 
 sentiment and opinion and mistaken theories of the religious liberty 
 guaranteed by the Constitution remain what they now are. To 
 legitimize, therefore, any arrangement by which the public school 
 may, tuta conscientia, be resorted to by Catholics, the moral and relig- 
 ious education insisted by the Church must be provided for elsewhere. 
 Hence both parents and pastors are urgently admonished of the duty 
 of devising means, appointing times, and employing agencies for the 
 imparting of instruction in faith and morals to those children who are 
 in daily attendance at the public schools. The Mgr. points several 
 plans by whose operation such religious instruction would be facili- 
 tated through the intervention and favorable disposition of the secular 
 authorities. It is not for us to criticise these plans, but it is lawful 
 and decorous to remark that such benignant disposition on the part 
 of school boards will be extremely difficult of attainment in places 
 where Protestantism or infidelity are in the ascendency. A forcible 
 and pertinent illustration of this fact, is the repudiation of Arch- 
 bishop Ireland in the house of his friends. 
 
 But given such a case as this : In the community of N. exists a 
 parochial school, in nowise inferior in similar grades to the pubhc 
 school of the same place. This parish school is wholly adequate to 
 the wants of the people, of whatever rank or station, is free and ac- 
 cessible to all. Two queries follow : First, is the mere desire of the 
 people to rid themselves of the task of maintaining the school, 
 though able to do so, sufficient reason for making an accommodation 
 
252 
 
 with the local government looking to the use of the public school, 
 and adopting the doubtful expedient of religious instruction at 
 home, or throwing the burden of such instruction on an overworked 
 parish priest ? We hope not; but some opine that Mgr. SatoUi's 
 document would justify such course. 
 
 Secondly, where no such accommodation exists, or is not con- 
 sidered because of the existence of the parish school, are individuals 
 at liberty to send their children, according to their option, or ca- 
 price, to the parochial school or to the public school, the conditions 
 of the schools being the same ? Again, we hope not, and we believe 
 not. Some, like Dr. McGlynn, think the force of Mgr. Satolli's ad- 
 dress is to sweep all parochial schools out of existence, and such, 
 indeed, its effect would unquestionably be, if there existed no obli- 
 gation on the part of parents to send their children to the parish 
 school, in the circumstances above described. But the document 
 of the Papal Representative has no such force, and no such mean- 
 ing. Why should we build schools at all, if parents are not bound 
 to support and maintain them ? It is not; so much money as chil- 
 dren that make a school, though both are necessary. But according 
 to Mgr. Satolli's scheme, it stiU lies, and will continue to lie, within 
 the competence of each Bishop, to decide whether parochial schools 
 are to be maintained, and how they are to be conducted in his par- 
 ticular diocese, and this, so far as the majority of the Bishops are 
 concerned, gives the quietus to the Faribault Plan in their respective 
 dioceses, for they have decided that Catholic schools can and shall 
 be built, and can and shall be operated according to those views 
 which have been approved and tried with distinguished success for 
 half a century in this country. 
 
 We are of those who think it to be the mind of the Holy Father, 
 while holding intact the great principle of Catholic education, to 
 provide for the religious teaching of the great number of children 
 who now attend the public schools. Nothing but a perverted and 
 distorted interpretation of Mgr. Satolli's declarations can make them 
 destructive of the principle, or the policy for which Catholics have 
 contended for so many years in this land; which Councils, Synods, 
 and Conferences have proclaimed; which Popes have ratified and 
 commended, and which the great body of the hierarchy, including 
 Archbishops, Bishops, and simple priests, have inculcated with 
 
253 
 
 singular unanimity of opinion for more than half a century — the ab- 
 solute necessity of parochial schools to save the young generation to 
 country. Church, and God. At present we seem to be at the part- 
 ing of the ways. We are groping in the dark, and we need more 
 light from the Vatican. When that voice which speaks as neither 
 Canterbury nor Constantinople speaks, decisively and definitely, all 
 will listen and all will obey; and we confidently hope, as we earnestly 
 pray, that the inspired utterance of the Archbishops and the united 
 hopes of ten-twelfths of the Bishops of the country will be 
 thundered back to us in the Veedict of the Vatican. 
 
A ROMAN CATHOLIC ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 
 
 (From the Boonton Bulletin.) 
 
 The writer has been asked to set forth the Koman Catholic view of 
 the educational question and he yields cheerful compliance, for the 
 reason that his experience all over the United States has taught him 
 what monumental misconception prevails upon the subject amongst 
 many not of the Catholic communion. To explain this view in a 
 single newspaper article is about as easy as to jump over a hole in 
 two jumps, or " to make bricks without straw." But a very con- 
 densed statement may be given, or we may recur to the subject 
 again. 
 
 The question has two aspects, — the one religious, the other polit- 
 ical. We shall briefly touch on both. The writer is profoundly sen- 
 sible of the difficulties that environ the elucidation of the educational 
 problem. As to the religious side of the subject, he prefers to state 
 the case in the words of a brilliant essayist and Protestant divine of 
 high distinction, the Rev. J. Minot Savage, of Boston. This may 
 serve to disarm prejudice and exclude carping criticism. As we 
 quote from memory, we cannot give Dr. Savage's ipsissima verba, but 
 we can give his gist and substance. Dr. Savage is fair-minded 
 enough to say: " We must give Catholics the credit of sincerity. 
 When they tell us they cannot, for conscientious reasons, accept the 
 education imparted in the public schools, we are bound to believe 
 them. We have no proof that they are lying. All the facts are in 
 favor of their honesty and sincerity. If I were a Catholic, as I am 
 a Protestant, I would regard it as the most intolerable tyranny to be 
 compelled to pay taxes in support of a system which I believed not 
 only hostile to, but subversive of, the religion I deemed indispensable 
 to the eternal salvation of my children." 
 
 These are strong words, and they are true. Now, Dr. Savagejis 
 not the enemy, but the fast friend of the public school system. He 
 
255 
 
 would not destroy, but perfect it. He would, as he thinks, make it 
 of universal acceptability by the excision of all objectionable feat- 
 ures, for he considers that the system is in danger so long as a 
 single objection can be urged against it on the score of conscience. 
 And hence, he proceeds: "Let us be just, let us be fair. Let us 
 carefully remove everything from the system that intrenches upon 
 the Roman Catholic conscience, or upon any other conscience. 
 Then we shall make the public school impregnable to all assault." 
 
 " It matters not whether public school education be made such as 
 to satisfy either Presbyterians, or Episcopalians, or Methodists, or 
 Jews, or Catholics. The question is, is it fair, is it just, does it re- 
 spect the conscience of every one ? If so, it is unassailable from 
 any quarter." Thus far it is well. Amen ! we say with all our heart. 
 But how shall it be done ? Ay ! there's the rub. Dr. Savage thinks 
 it very easy — nothing simpler. "We have merely to teach morality 
 without teaching religion. 
 
 At this point we fear we stand where Telemachus stood with Mi- 
 nerva — at the parting of the roads — and we have to dissolve partner- 
 ship with our lai'ge-minded Minerva, Dr. Savage, 
 
 Dr. Savage proposes a theoretical and practical impossibility, 
 from the Catholic standpoint. We are not arguing that Catholics 
 are right. That is not the point up for discussion. The question is, 
 are their views entitled to respect ? Dr. Savage, like every honest 
 man, thinks they are. So are the views of Protestants of all denom- 
 inations, the views of Jews, and even of infidels, in a purely secular 
 State. But what right has the Doctor to impose secularism upon the 
 Catholic, any more than the Catholic has to impose Catholicity upon 
 the secularist or the Protestant ? He begs the question, for, while 
 he admits the public school system, as it is, violates the sanctuary of 
 the conscience, he assumes that his amended system does not do so, 
 despite the assertion of the Catholic to the contrary. The amend- 
 ment itself is on trial, and the Catholic wiU have none of it. The 
 Doctor respects conscience. 
 
 Besides, the Catholic has " a reason for the faith that is in him." 
 He knows that the attempt to teach morality without religion is a 
 palpable absurdity. If we are to build a temple of education, we 
 are not to bum down the house of God. Without God there can be 
 no commonwealth, no state, no education, and no morality. The thun- 
 
256 
 
 ders of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount were quite superfluous, 
 if morality could be taught efficiently without the light of revelation. 
 As a matter of fact, no people ever yet established anything but a 
 truncated and mutilated code of morality without the aid of revela- 
 tion. Dr. McCosh and Cardihal Newman, the one a Protestant, the 
 other a Catholic, are agreed upon this point. But revelation is re- 
 ligion, and if morality cannot be taught without revelation, so neither 
 can it be taught without religion. 
 
 Now, the Catholic believes (I don't ask if he be right, but only if his 
 belief is entitled to respect ?), that, as there is but " one Lord, one 
 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," so there can be but one 
 true religion. And he believes that he is in possession of that true 
 religion, the " deposit of faith once delivered to the saints." He 
 believes, moreover, that he has to profess and practice it ; to incul- 
 cate it into the minds of his children, as he hopes himself for sal- 
 vation. For this reason, he regards the primary instruction of his 
 children, as he hopes himself for salvation. For this reason, he re- 
 gards the primary instruction of his children as essentially religious. 
 All other teaching is subsidiary to the religious element. With the 
 Catholic it is axiomatic, that knowledge, as such merely, is an empty 
 shade ; that learning, as such, is of small account ; the principal 
 thing is wisdom, and the " fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- 
 dom." Not, indeed, the wisdom of the world, but "the wisdom 
 which maketh wise unto salvation." To know nature in all her ways 
 and laws ; to sift the bowels of the earth, and dive into the recesses 
 of the sea ; to measure the path of the sun in the firmament ; to 
 trace the comet in his fiery track, and count th^ courses of the 
 stars ; to know how to construct shining monuments of material 
 prosperity which shall defy the tooth of time and mock the fingers 
 of decay ; to know, in fine, all knowledge, sa\e the knowledge of 
 God, seems, in Catholic eyes, to be the principal trend and aim of 
 modern education. 
 
 For this reason, he builds his own schools, and though for the 
 most part poor, he makes the sacrifices necessary to support them, 
 even though he is compelled to pay into the public treasury for the 
 maintenance of a system, whose fruits he cannot enjoy. This is 
 hard, this is burdensome, and if conviction did not bear him along, 
 he could never endure it. Sacrifice is the test of sincerity. Is the 
 
257 
 
 Oatholic sincere? Ask what it costs to educate 40,000 Catholic 
 children in the parochial schools of New Jersey. 
 
 Is the Catholic right ? Well, if to educate is to unfold the full 
 contents of the man, and if man is a religious being, how eliminate 
 religion from any curriculum of education? If morality is that 
 science which teaches man his duty towards his fellow-man, surely 
 it cannot exclude in its teachings the solemn sanctions of the religion 
 of Christ, which lend force and vitality to all the social virtues, — 
 charity, chastity, justice, truth, integrity. If there is a God, man 
 surely has some duties towards Him. And why has any man duties 
 towards his fellow-men, except because he has duties towards his 
 God? What is duty, anyhow? What is it, but what God com- 
 manded ; and it is duty precisely because He has commanded /it. If, 
 then, education is to teach man morality, it must teach man his duty 
 towards God, and that is to teach religion. 
 
 Is the Catholic right ? Well, a good many non-Catholics think so. 
 I am glad to see such men as the Protestant Bishop of Derry, and 
 Rabbi Silverman, in New York, urging cogently the necessity of re- 
 ligion in the State. I am glad they stand up against secularism. 
 Nothing was farther from the staunch old Puritan mind than the 
 attempt to impart education without religion. The Puritan, as well 
 as the Catholic, stood up against a creedless and a Christless Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 Is the Catholic right ? The late Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, was a 
 Presbyterian of unsuspected orthodoxy, and just before he died 
 ('twas like the nt)te of the dying swan), he said : '* Shall not aU of 
 US, who reaUy beHeve in God, thank Him that He has presei-ved the 
 Eoman Catholic Church in this country, true to that theory of edu- 
 cation upon which our fathers first founded the public schools, and 
 which has been so strangely pei'verted ? " 
 
 The Catholic is not opposed to public education. He has no 
 quarrel with the public school system as a system. As a citizen and 
 tax-payer, he is like every other citizen, free to criticise its shortcom- 
 ings, if he pleases. But he believes in education. He believes it 
 should be universal, and embrace every child in the land. He holds, 
 for certain classes and cases, education should be compulsory. He 
 believes it should be warmly and generously supported by aU who 
 are free to enjoy its benefits and fruits. But he does not believe 
 17 
 
258 
 
 that any educational system should invade the claims of conscience ; 
 he does not believe a man should be taxed for what can yield him 
 absolutely no return ; he does not believe that education can, might, 
 could, would, or should be taught without religion ; and finally, he 
 does not believe that it was ever held in contemplation by the 
 Fathers of the Republic, when founding our common rights and 
 liberties, thai freedom of religion should be synonymous with freedom 
 from religion. 
 
 Democracy or Republicanism taken, not in a party, but a broad 
 sense, means the minimum of government. The only principle, 
 therefore, on which free, public education by the State can be justi- 
 fied in a Democracy, is the necessity for producing intelligent citi- 
 zens and competent voters. A vote is, in its nature, a recognition 
 of man's liberty, intelligence, and responsibility. It implies that man 
 is not an isolated being, but a social unit, and a factor in political 
 society. The ballot is the outward embodiment of the principle so 
 tersely set forth in the Declaration of Independence, of man's equal- 
 ity with man. It gives to man an efficacious voice in assertion of 
 the maxim that " government derives its just power from the consent 
 of the governed." It supposes man to be a free, rational, self-gov- 
 erning creature, endowed with the same natural rights as his fellow- 
 creatures, and uncontrolled by them, except in so far as he consents 
 to subjection. Popular suffrage is, consequently, not only an 
 acknowledgment of man's natural rights, but also a means of ex- 
 citing his intelligence, awakening his individual activity, arousing 
 his interest in all that concerns the common weal, by affording him 
 exercise of those faculties which constitute the nobilitj^ of his man- 
 hood and make him the peer of his fellows. Every voter is a ruler, 
 because every vote is a voice. Here applies the aphoristic declaration, 
 so dear to every American heart, that ours is " a government of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people." 
 
 The Constitution of the United States, one of the finest works of 
 human intelligence, is the outcome of the political wisdom of ages. 
 But, after all, it adds nothing either to the nature of man, or to his 
 natural rights; it only affirms them more forcibly than they were as- 
 serted before; or to use the poet's idea, it declares with emphasis, 
 
 ** What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 
 
259 
 
 It is, perhaps, worthy of note in passing, that Pope Zachary, cen- 
 turies ago, affirmed the pohtical maxim of Thomas Jefferson con- 
 cerning the equal rights of men to Hfe, Hbei-tj, and the pursuit of 
 happiness. It may seem curious to the modern sciolist to find that 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor of the thirteenth century, laid 
 down such maxims as the following: "The constitution (of the 
 State) ought to combine a limited and elective monarchy, and such 
 admixture of democracy as shall admit all classes to office by pop- 
 ular election. The whole nation ought to have a share in governing 
 itself. No government has a right to levy taxes beyond the hmit de- 
 termined by the people. All political authority is derived from pop- 
 ular suffrage, and all laws must be made by the people or then* rep- 
 resentatives. There is no security for us, so long as we depend on 
 the will of another man." But to return. 
 
 If it be undeniable that under a Rei^ubhc self-preseiTation is the 
 raison d'etre of free education by the State, that she may thus keep 
 alive the principle of continuous existence, and exercise her right and 
 correlative duty of safe-guarding society against anarchy and despot- 
 ism, twin daughters of ignorance, it follows, " as the night the day," 
 that State interference in the direct domain of education must be a 
 matter of manifest necessity. I say necessity, as distinguished from 
 utihty; for as Aristotle and others have observed, not everything 
 that is useful to the weU-being of the State, may be directly pro- 
 curable by the State. It is not the function of the State to meddle 
 in domestic concerns of families, nor to trench in any way upon nat- 
 ural rights, however useful it might be to do so. It is the business 
 of the State to conserve public ordei', and promote the peace and 
 happiness of society by all lawful means within its sphere. But the 
 State cannot dictate to the individual what he shall eat or read ; 
 when he shall sleep or rise; how he shall marry or whom he 
 shaU wed. It is the proud boast of the American that no minion 
 of the law shall cross his threshold except by his permission, 
 so long as he commits no breach of public peace. Nor is ed- 
 ucation an essential function of State, but one based upon ne- 
 cessity, and that necessity is founded upon fact. The fact furnishes 
 the title to the right. But what is that fact ? Undoubtedly it is the 
 neglect of those who are primarily charged with the duty of edu- 
 cating children — namely, their parents. I need not cite from Black- 
 
260 
 
 stone, Kent, Wayland, or legists and publicists, to show that educa- 
 tion is a parental right. In default of the parent, the State steps in, 
 in loco parentis, as the lawyers say. 
 
 From these premises it follows that although the State may sup- 
 plement, it cannot supplant the parent, nor strip him of his rights in 
 the education of his children. It logically follows, both from the 
 principle of parental precedence, and from the accepted axiom of 
 democracy, that a democratic State should not assume to do what 
 may more properly and effectually be done by individual enterprise, 
 because that would be increasing the functions of government and 
 imposing taxes without necessity; and I have shown that the fact of 
 necessity is the justification of the State's activity in the province of 
 education. Whenever private zeal has undertaken the work of edu- 
 cation, the functions of the State should be limited to inspection, su- 
 pervision, or the encouragement of individual effort. This may be 
 done by grant of funds, or by some system of taxation; such sub- 
 vention to be given in a secular State, not for religious teaching, but 
 for secular results only. In that case, the State, like any other em- 
 ployer, would pay wages for work properly done. 
 
 But as to the fact of necessity, does it ever exist? In other 
 words, do parents perform their duty to their children in all cases, 
 as they are bound by natural and divine law ? I am sorry to say 
 they do not, and so long as a single chUd in the community would 
 grow up without an elementary education, I, for my part, would jus- 
 tify a public school for his instruction, and would gladly pay taxes to 
 support it. Voluntary effort, as experience shows, in every country, 
 and especially in England before the founding of the "Board 
 Schools," is insu£&cient to educate the children of the whole nation, 
 to say nothing of the children of poor and indigent parents, for 
 whom public provision must be made. The State has, besides, the 
 right and duty to protect itself from the vice, corruption, and igno- 
 rance of its future citizens, and to see that they are trained as compe- 
 tent and intelligent voters. 
 
 But if free education by the State has for its end and aim the 
 qualification of the voter for his task of continuing the work of gov- 
 ernment by the generation of intelligent citizens, it is evident that 
 this end should mark the limitations of the education to be given by 
 the State. It is clear that it is not the business of the State to pro- 
 
261 
 
 duce skilled mechanics, nor finished artists, nor professional experts, 
 nor cultured gentlemen, nor ready-made statesmen. This would be- 
 get unequal taxation, and unequal taxation is un-American in principle. 
 Witness the College of the City of New York, which costs nearly 
 $300,000 annually to educate the children of wealthy Hebrews. 
 Neither should public schools be devised for the purpose of provid- 
 ing lucrative places for learned professors at the common expense. 
 Schools are not for the benefit of teachers, but primarily and essen- 
 tially for the benefit of scholars. In a word, common schools should 
 be what they were originally designed to be, elementary and not 
 academical. If the child is to become an intelligent citizen and 
 voter, he should undeniably be furnished the ordinary means of 
 communication with his fellow-men. The child should be taught 
 reading, vnriting, arithmetic, grammar, geography, free-hand draw- 
 ing, the history of his country, and some knowledge of the laws and 
 constitution under which he lives. There may be room for discus- 
 sion as to details, but the above should mark the general limit of 
 free public education. 
 
 Moreover, in a secular State the government should neither favor 
 nor proscribe any reUgion, but should hold itself with equal poise 
 towards all. This does not mean that religion should be excluded^ ioit 
 the State does not maintain its neutrality towards religion when it 
 wipes out religion. But when I say the State should favor no re- 
 Ugion, it is not to be inferred that I look on #ie Government of the 
 United States as pagan, or that the above principle holds for a 
 Christian State or a Christian people. 
 
 Let us go back to first principles. We are not State socialists, 
 but political individualists. We don't want the State to establish 
 our banks, build our railroads, dig our mines, develop our agricul- 
 ture, or do anything that private enterprise and the " unbought 
 energy " of the people can do without let or hindrance from the 
 State. There is a large party in this country, who, alas ! care noth- 
 ing for religion, but they do care for a simplification of the function 
 of government; they do care for the principles of pure democracy, 
 and they do incessantly battle against everything that has a tendency 
 to the centralization of power, or wears an aspect of the absolutism 
 and Csesarism of past ages. 
 
 In the United States the district school, it is needless to say, had 
 
262 
 
 its birth in Massachusetts, with the foundation of the first settle- 
 ments, and that the school system has advanced far in excess of our 
 growth in other respects, cannot be gainsaid by any one who has 
 given attentive consideration to the subject. The reason is not far 
 to seek. Two factors are chiefly concerned in this abnormal devel- 
 opment, and they are the politicians and the pedagogues. For the 
 latter class I have profound respect. They are the most enlightened 
 body in the land to-day. They are doing an admirable work, but 
 they aspire too high. 1 do not question their sincerity, but I ^vould 
 respectfully remind them that we live under a democracy, whose 
 cardinal principle is that the least government is the best govern- 
 ment. I am exceedingly prone to doubt whether there be any pop- 
 ular demand back of all this amplification and extension of free ed- 
 ucation by the public, which taxes the many for the benefit of the 
 few. The plan has been perfected by the teachers and sedulously 
 fostered by the politicians, who fail not to perceive the immense 
 patronage afforded by the system. The method of the teachers is 
 that of Horace Mann, the real founder of the system — organized 
 agitation — and the scheme is pushed with tireless assiduity by the 
 pedagogues in their local associations, with a National Bureau, of 
 centralizing tendencies, at Washington, whose aim it is to force the 
 educational work all along the lines, supported by pecuniary assist- 
 ance from the National Government. Now, against public education, 
 within specified limits#and for certain classes, I have not the most 
 distant objection to offer. But it is worthy of remembrance by 
 every American voter, that, according to the spirit of our Constitu- 
 tion, taxes can be levied only for those things which are vital to the 
 well-being of the State. Why should Smith be taxed that Jones' 
 boy may learn " how concepts are formed," or " what is the differ- 
 ence between illusion and hallucination," or "how to classify the 
 emotions," or " what was Shelley's personal appearance," any more 
 than he should be taxed that Jones, Jr., might learn to ride a bicycle 
 or play baccarat ? I'm sure I don't know. Not so long ago it was pro- 
 posed by a sagacious member of a Chicago school board to have a 
 lady appointed to take charge of the children's wraps and clothing, 
 lest the scholars might catch the influenza; and somebody down in 
 Gotham opined that pupils should be furnished with tickets on the 
 elevated railroad, and of course, free lunches and Thanksgiving 
 turkeys would follow, as a necessary consequence. But of this enough. 
 
263 
 
 I am painfully conscious that it is a delicate thing for a Catholic 
 to offer any criticism on the public schools. Some sinister design is 
 suspected. Any one else is free to handle the subject as he chooses, 
 but when the CathoHc ventures to explain his views, one word of 
 censure is construed as of a piece with the attempt to pull down the 
 American flag. Let me state, then, what Cathohcs don't want. 
 
 They do not want to control the public school system of the coun- 
 trj, but rather to be relieved from it, in so far as it works injustice 
 upon them. 
 
 They do not want to urge any war upon the public schools, nor in 
 establishing their own are they influenced by any spirit of hostility 
 to them. 
 
 The Catholic don't seek any union of Church and State. 
 
 The Catholic don't want his religion made the religion of the State. 
 
 The Catholic does not want any privileges or exemptions above 
 his fellow-citizens, and he claims nothing for himself which he will 
 not freely and fully accord to all who differ from him in opinion or 
 religion; and he believes that as soon as the American people see 
 this he will get his rights, for he has an abiding faith in the fairness 
 and justice of the sons of this Eepublic. 
 
 The Catholic has no objection that the public school system be 
 maintained without any infringement of the rights of others not en- 
 joying it. He claims nothing for the support of his religion ; he solicits 
 no pecuniary aid for the benefit of his Church. While he seeks those 
 rights which, before God and civil law, he beheves he is entitled 
 to, he recognizes the rights of others. He stands not before the 
 pubUc with the debasing purpose of demanding rights for himself 
 on condition that wrong be done to others. He simply thinks he 
 ought to be partaker with all in the common rights of all, and he 
 prefers that wrong be done himself than that he do wrong to others. 
 
 I believe that the monopoly enjoyed by the public schools is in 
 contravention of law. I respectfully submit that it falls within the 
 purview of our legislation, that all free schools, where all children, 
 without distinction of creed, color, or condition, are admitted and 
 instructed in the primary branches of knowledge, which are willing 
 to submit to governmental supervision and control, are public schools 
 in the right meaning of the phrase. 
 
 Be this as it may, one thing the Catholic believes with an unalter- 
 
261 
 
 able conviction : that the schools of any country, whose institutions 
 are worth preserving, should be nurseries of sound morahty, as well 
 as of literary knowledge; that they should in some way inculcate 
 those lessons of Christian virtue, which are conservative of social 
 order and public happiness, because they derive their sanction from 
 the divine authority and teachings of the Founder of Christianity. 
 Horace Mann, the father of the school system as it is, regarded the 
 man as insane who would build education upon infidelity. It is not 
 from the broken cisterns of human wisdom, but from the living 
 fountains of true knowledge, we are to expect to draw those blessed 
 truths which improve the heart while they enlighten the under- 
 standing, and which, like so many celestial stars, cluster around the 
 great truth of immortaHty. 
 
 Now, although the State, by enlightened and liberal legislation, 
 has provided an ample treasury — a treasury to which we contribute 
 — for the support of public schools under the jurisdiction of her 
 laws, and though every child in the community is rightfully entitled 
 to a full, proportional pairticipation, we find ourselves obliged, from 
 motives of conscience, to decline the enjoyment of those educational 
 facilities extended to us by the laws, or the construction of the laws 
 under which we live, and are thus compelled to make those frequent 
 appeals to the benevolence of our people for the support of our own 
 schools. And while we patiently submit to this double burden, we 
 hope some day to see a more eligible and equitable school system 
 established. A solution has been found in Canada, in England, and 
 in Germany. Are statesmen of America wanting in sagacity ? I 
 hope not, I believe not. This is a Christian land, and our system of 
 common school education should recognize the principle that re- 
 ligion, which is the only basis of happiness and civilization, should 
 not be excluded from the schools established in a Christian country. 
 Though I thank God that I was born in the country of Washington, 
 Hancock, and Jefferson, I look with dismay upon the decline of re- 
 ligion in education ; and when I behold a school erected for edu- 
 cation and rehgion, I gaze upon it with gratitude and reverence as a 
 genuine triumph of intellect, a monument of public spiiit and intel- 
 ligence, and an evidence of devotion on the part of its promoters to 
 those pursuits which give to mind its ascendency over matter, and 
 to the institutions of free men their stability and perpetuity. 
 
XL 
 
 EDUCATIOlsr IN NEW JERSEY. 
 
 42 Barclay St., New York. 
 Editor Freeman's Journal: 
 
 There has been a newspaper discussion in a neighboring town, 
 which, as an old reader of the Journal, I feel ought to be transferred 
 to your columns. Father Tighe's statement of the school question 
 was attacked by a Methodist clergyman, and the attack was rebuked 
 by both the editor and Father Tighe. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 T. D. Egan. 
 
 The anti-Catholic attack is as follows : 
 
 " Some one essayed to give us last week a favorable showing of 
 Koman Catholic educational purposes through your columns. Allow 
 me to ask how it comes about that in a land where it held undis- 
 puted possession for nineteen and three-quarter centuries — the land 
 of cardinals, priests, and cathedrals, and where the Pope himself sits in 
 state — ^that seventeen millions, of a population of twenty -five millions, 
 are found to be absolutely unable to read or write? And I wonder 
 why it is that Mexico and the western parts of South America, that 
 have for so many centuries been under the domination of Romish 
 propaganda, are in such a deplorable condition at this very hour ? 
 
 " How comes it about that where Rome's sway is most complete, 
 there we have as abject a civilization as can be met with on the 
 globe? 
 
 " If she advocates anything superior here, in this grand common- 
 wealth, to what she does in Italy, is it not because she is compelled 
 to do so by virtue of the pressure that our grand common school 
 system brings to bear upon her ? 
 
 " How is it that in some of our New England States, where our 
 
266 
 
 Roman Catholic friends are in sufficient numbers as to control the 
 policy of the school boards, that their own ecclesiastics have had 
 text-books printed, in which history is outraged by the lies which 
 they seek to foist upon the rising generation ? 
 
 " When Romanists have convinced us that they are the friends of 
 truth, of liberty, and of education, it will be time enough to trust 
 them. Till then, every lover of all that is sacred to humanity, will 
 do well to distrust whatever proceeds from Rome." 
 
 The editor's comment on the above is as follows : 
 
 " If the questions in the above had been asked of us, we would 
 have answered that we didn't know. 
 
 "The things that we don't know, far exceed in number the things 
 "we do know. Now, there is the matter of school meeting. At 
 almost any other kind of meeting or show, the citizen will go in, 
 take a seat, and take in whatever is going on. But when it is school 
 meeting, he stays near the door. The only other school district in 
 which we have had any experience is the Powerville district. There 
 we used to sit on two or three of the children's desks nearest the 
 door, and by the Hght of four or five pipes, and one or two lanterns, 
 keep the taxes down. 
 
 " But we never understood why the citizen objected to going in 
 and taking a seat. Has any one ever explained that matter ? 
 
 " These questions which the reverend gentleman asks, we have 
 often heard asked before, in church. The answers to them, as we 
 before remarked, are among the many things unknown to us. But 
 we have an idea that poverty and ignorance in this and other coun- 
 tries is largely due to the fact that the laborer's wages are ' kept from 
 him over night,' and sometimes over six nights, sometimes over 
 fourteen, sometimes over thirty. But in the ' Word of God,' which 
 Protestants and Catholics both pretend to teach, we are told not to 
 keep them over one night. Yet have we never been in a church, 
 Protestant or Catholic, where the credit system or the laws of inter- 
 est were considered. 
 
 " As to why Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Spanish America are poor 
 and in ignorance, we cannot positively state. But we have a notion 
 that when the Protestant Britisher traded their insides out of them 
 freely, they had something to do with it. That country from which 
 
267 
 
 we hear the fewest complaints as to poverty and ignorance, where 
 wealth is most evenly divided, and where contentment most pre- 
 vails, whose influence, and the influence and teachings of whose 
 citizens did, and has done most to make us what we are, that coun- 
 try, we believe, is not accused by Protestants of being very Roman 
 Catholic. Neither, we beheve, is she accused by Romanists of being 
 very Protestant." 
 
 FATHER TIGHe's ANSWER. 
 
 Father Tighe handled his opponent in this fashion : 
 " Preferably to concluding my article on education this week, I 
 claim the indulgence of some comments on the fallacies of a writer 
 who commenced his criticism without waiting to take my statement 
 in its entirety. That seems very ungracious. It is not more conso- 
 nant with the exigencies of politeness than with the demands of dia- 
 lectics, to hear a man out before making a demurrer to his affirma- 
 tions. My friend is deficient in this knowledge. Nor is this all. 
 His composition is wanting in repose and dignity. His arguments 
 are inept and iiTelevant. His grammar stumbles, and his logic sad- 
 ly limps. In fine, he lacks Ihe tone, the temper, and the talent to 
 conduct a controversy. 
 
 " I did not ' essay ' to do anything. I did it. More properly, I 
 let distinguished Protestants make the showing for me. Dr. Mc- 
 Cosh, Dr. Hodge, and Dr. Savage are, to say the least, a middling 
 counterpoise to an obscure, rural minister. Let him level his strict- 
 ures, not at me, but them. Had I thrown down the gauge of con- 
 troversy, some champion of intolerance might have a pretext to call 
 me to account; but as I did not, my critic's ill-judged interference 
 was not less impertinent than gratuitous and offensive. And 
 offensive he meant to be. The horn of the bigot and the fang of 
 the fanatic, stick between and through his lines. My purpose was 
 not polemical, but irenical; not aggressive, but explanatory; not con- 
 troversial, but conciliatory. He fumes like a furnace; bellows like a 
 bull; roars like a lion. The name Roman Catholic makes him bristle 
 like a boar at the sound of a gun. But the day of intolerance is 
 dead, and the man who undertakes to wield that weapon in free 
 America, makes a sinner of his judgment, and a cipher of his char- 
 acter for common sense. 
 
268 
 
 "My critic's arguments I blow aside like eider-down, and so 
 puerile are they, that I notice them only to caution the unwary. 
 
 " Let me say at the outset, my critic did not even touch the point 
 of my discussion. I raised two questions : Was the Catholic right 
 in his contention that religion and education were inseparable ? Was 
 the conscience of the Catholic entitled to respect ? Behold the an- 
 swer : Certain countries abound in affluence, and they are Protest- 
 ant; certain others groan under the burden of poverty, and they are 
 Catholic. Therefore — what ? * He that slays fat oxen should him- 
 self be fat,' as Dr. Johnson says. If the premises were true, the 
 legitimate conclusion would be that in some countries Protestants 
 are fairly ' fixed ' as to life's creature comforts, and in others Cath- 
 olics go supperless to bed. A golden opportunity for their more 
 wealthy neighbors to lay up crowns ' where no rust doth consume,* 
 by the exercise of the divine virtue of charity. But I believe that 
 He, * who had not on earth whereon to lay His head,' has said, * The 
 poor ye shall always have with you.' I think He said by the mouth 
 of the Evangelist, * Go, ye rich, and howl in your miseries which are 
 coming upon you.' I do not condemn riches, rightly used. But I 
 am making it plain that money is no test of orthodoxy. Ducats are 
 not doctrines. The road to heaven is steep, and it is starry too, but 
 it is not paved with dollars. Dives went to Sheol and Lazarus was 
 lifted into Abraham's bosom. Christ was the founder of the true 
 religion, and He plied a plane to win His bread. He was a king. 
 Was His throne of sapphires ? Were His ministers minions of 
 wealth ? He was naked and hungry, bleeding and pierced, contemn- 
 ed in life and adored in death. He died as a felon. Do we come 
 the nearer to Christ, the more we live like LucuUus ? 
 
 " * But Catholic countries are illiterate,' says the critic. You say 
 so; but granted for the sake of argument, what inference do you 
 draw? No student of history is ignorant of the fact that the most 
 highly civilized nations have often been the most corrupt. The pas- 
 sion for knowledge is no proof of the possession of virtue. Integrity 
 of mind may conduce to integrity of life, but does not constitute it. 
 Knowledge is only an edged tool in the hands of the swindler, the 
 peculator, and the forger. Education prevents crime when it is true 
 education. A people may be very ignorant, and yet be very religious. 
 The science of faith is a science of simplicity, and it is as much the 
 
269 
 
 property of the peasant, as it is the possession of the philosopher. 
 Learning is not a proof of the true religion, nor is ignorance an 
 argument for the false. 
 
 " ' But Catholic countries are not civilized/ You say so. What 
 is civilization? It is not merely bonds of steel and rails of iron, and 
 telephones, and telegraphs, and ' id omne genus.' It is the harmo- 
 nious and orderly development of all the faculties of man. It is ma- 
 terial, it is moral, it is intellectual, it is religious. Material prosper- 
 ity is not, therefore, civilization, any more than a part is the whole, 
 and the least part at that. There is a lamentable confusion of ideas 
 in your mind, Mr. Critic. It is one of the most pitiful phenomena 
 in the world of letters, to see an idle declaim er playing at logic. 
 
 " Now for your alleged facts. * Facts are stubborn debaters,' when 
 they are facts; but when not, they are clumsy defamers. 
 
 " 1st. Rome held sway ' nineteen and three-quarter centuries.* 
 Indeed ? you travel outside the record just a moiety of a century. 
 But that's a peppercorn to a man who wants to torture truth. You 
 reject, I suppose, the Gregorian Calendar, because it was devised by 
 a Catholic Pope. The present year, then, is 1992. That leaves me 
 139 years old, and if you contrast the Gregorian reckoning with 
 your own, I make no doubt at all you will find you were born before 
 your grandfather. Cut off, I pray you, another bagatelle of three 
 centuries before the Church emerged from the gloom of the Cata- 
 combs to gaze on the splendor of the Cross of Constantine. 
 
 " 2d. But ' seventeen of the twenty-five millions in Italy cannot 
 read or write.' Italy's population was 30,947,306 on January 1, 1890, 
 and 49 per cent, of males, and 63 per cent, of females, can both read 
 and write. You are muddled in your mathematics. 
 
 "3d. ' Where the Pope sits in state.' Nay; since the occupation 
 of Victor Emmanuel, in 1870, the Pope held no temporal sway. 
 The Popes were always lovers of learning, patrons of art, promoters 
 of literature. Did you ever hear of the golden age of Leo X. ? Did 
 you ever read Roscoe, or Hallam, or Macaulay, or Maitland, or Butt, 
 all Protestant historians and critics ? 
 
 " Johnson says the true criterion of civilization is found in the 
 provision made for the poor. Were not the first hospitals, asylums, 
 hospices, and free schools established in Italy under Papal super- 
 vision? Ruskin deems art the salient characteristic of civilization. 
 
270 
 
 Well, whither do American painters, sculptors, architects, bend their 
 steps when they want to study those masterly models of artistic 
 skill, which are among the finest creations of the human mind ? I 
 have heard they went to Italy and Spain, countries so much the ob- 
 ject of your ill-concealed contempt. Strange that Catholics should 
 be reproached when they possess culture and refinement, and con- 
 demned when they happen to be without them. 
 
 " I wonder if you heard of the land where * a Baphael painted and 
 a Veda sung ' ? The land of Correggio, Angelo, da Vinci, Ariosto, 
 Tasso, Dante, and a host of poets, painters, statesmen, and orators. 
 
 " 4th. You wonder ' why Mexico and some parts of South America 
 are in such a deplorable condition.' I don't. It certainly is not 
 chargeable to Catholicity, but rather to the defect of it. When a man 
 forsakes the Catholic religion, and gives his adhesion to atheistical 
 conventicles, I am never amazed at any degree of depravity he may 
 exhibit in his hfe and conduct. There are good Protestants, but 
 there are no good recreant Catholics. I am not aware, though, that 
 their condition is so very deplorable. Some very wealthy individuals 
 are found in all these countries. Patricio Milmo, an Irishman 
 ' Mexicanized/ is worth thirty millions. Eugene Kelly and ex-Mayor 
 Grace, of New York, draw millions annually from these countries. 
 But what has material prosperity got to do with the truth of reHgion, 
 anyway ? That is your supreme sophism. 
 
 "'The Romish Propaganda.' — You employ an insulting term, and 
 you do it designedly. No educated Protestant speaks of the 
 * Romish,' but the Roman Propaganda. 
 
 " 5th. ' How comes it that where Rome's sway is most complete, 
 we have the most abject civilization on the face of the globe ? ' You 
 state what is calumniously false. France is the * eldest daughter of 
 the Church,' and she gives fashions to the world and language to 
 the courts of Europe. Belgium is Catholic to the core, and her 
 people are the most industrious and prosperous in Europe. Austria 
 is absolutely Catholic, and will you dare compare her with Tartary, 
 or Thibet, or those countries on the Congo, or the Nile, which Speke, 
 Burton, Livingstone, and Stanley have found ? 
 
 " Let me be a questioner a little. How comes it that Bavaria, a 
 Catholic country, has a larger percentage of those able to read and 
 write, than any country in the world, not excepting Uncle Sam's 
 
271 
 
 dominions ? How comes it that Saxony, Prussia, Denmark, and the 
 Netherlands, which are Protestant, are the most corrupt in Europe ? 
 How comes it that the condition of the industrial classes in the mer- 
 cantile centres of England, is about as low as low can be, in a civil- 
 ized country ? Why did the miner in Cornwall, when asked if he 
 did not know God, reply that he did not work in his mine ? Why 
 are there 100,000 children in New Jersey not attending school, 
 
 though of school age ? Why , but I will stop, because that is 
 
 my critic's style of argument, and it is as baseless as the ' fabric of 
 a vision/ It is the capsheaf of folly to say these things are so, be- 
 cause Protestantism reigns in one place, or Catholicity rules in an- 
 other. Did you ever hear of a * non causa pro causa,' or ' post hoc 
 ergo propter hoc ' argument ? That is your fallacy. Here it is : 
 
 " England is prosperous, but England is Protestant. Therefore, 
 Protestantism is divine. Or, Spain is poor ; but Spain is Catholic. 
 Therefore, the Pope is Antichrist. Shades of Aristotle, save us ! 
 Let me give you an * argumentum ad absurdum.' 
 
 " The blind bard of Smyrna chanted in undying song the glories of 
 the Greeks, and until the annals of the ages shall have become a 
 shrivelled scroll, the recollection of Koman grandeur will live in the 
 memory of man. Greece and Rome attained a standard of excel- 
 lence in civilization to this day unsurpassed, and these countries 
 were Pagan. Is Paganism divine ? Your logic says yes. 
 
 "6th. *If she advocates anjijhing superior here.' Stay, friend, 
 the Catholic Church advocates the same thing all over the world, — 
 the indefeasible right of every child that comes into the" world, to an 
 education, and for a Christian child a Christian education. * Pressure ' 
 has nothing to do with it. By the inherent force of her own divine 
 constitution she must act thus, and not otherwise. 
 
 " 7th. * Text-books have been printed by Catholics in New Eng- 
 land, outraging history, and were foisted upon the rising generation.* 
 For shame, friend ! You must know it was the Catholics of New 
 England who complained of the text-books * foisted' upon them. 
 This is a strange inversion, or perversion, of facts. 
 
 " 8th. ' When Romanists ' — another offensive epithet — ' have con- 
 vinced us,' etc. Did I say a harsh word about Protestants ? Did I 
 attack the pubHc school system ? Did I assail the honor and integ- 
 rity of our common manhood ? Heaven forfend ! The vilest crimi- 
 
272 
 
 nal that stands in the prisoner's dock is entitled to the presumption 
 of innocence until he is proven guilty. But in your baleful eye a 
 Catholic is lower than such criminal. The Catholic is guilty till he 
 proves to you his innocence. He is not the friend of truth ; hence 
 he is a liar. He is not the friend of liberty ; hence he is a tyrant, 
 or disturber of social order. He is not the friend of education ; 
 hence he is the advocate of ignorance. 
 
 " Who are you, that the Catholic need apologize to you for his 
 existence in this Republic ? The CathoHc lives under the protection 
 of the starry flag, and will you exclude him from the rights of citi- 
 zenship ? Are you the keeper of his conscience ? Dare you brand 
 him as a traitor, by calling him the enemy of liberty ? We are here ; 
 we need no apology for our presence. We came here ; we came 
 first, and by the blessing of God, we came to stay. Catholics dis- 
 covered the country. Catholics have helped to people and develop 
 it; Catholics have thrice shed their blood in defence of it. The 
 rain-swept bivouacs, the blood-stained quarter-decks, the gory battle- 
 fields, all the way from Lexington and Yorktown, to Shiloh, Gettys- 
 burg, and Malvern Hill, the clash and clangor of the Old Continent- 
 als, and the wild war-cry of the boys in blue, aye, and the tender 
 touch of the delicate, white hand of the Catholic Sister of Charity, 
 stanching the life-blood as it gushed from many a hero's heart, 
 • — are all there, to tell the American people, to the latest posterity, 
 of the undying devotion of the sons and daughters of the Catholic 
 Church to the work of the perpetuity of the Union and the cause 
 of constitutional liberty in this land. 
 
 " I have heard that the man who has so grievously aspersed the 
 Catholic name, has taken his departure from this city. With un- 
 affected cordiality, I congratulate my neighbors. Bigotry is a blight 
 on any place, and a curse to any community. Hence ! thou who 
 comest ' with the testament of bleeding war ' within thy hand ! " 
 
xn. 
 
 FKIENDSHIP. 
 
 A CORRESPONDENT puts to US the questioii, whether we do not think 
 "the story of Jonathan and David of equal beauty and pathos with 
 that of Joseph and his brethren. 
 
 We do think that the former story is of equal and even of greater 
 beauty, in its kind, than that of Joseph. And yet it is hard to com- 
 pare, with much success, objects of an entirely different species. 
 One rose we compare to another rose, or even with any other flower, 
 as, for example, with the French marigold, or the mignonette, for 
 where there is no resemblance as to shape, form, or color, there may 
 1)6 as to odor, and, at all events, all the objects fall within the same 
 species. But we could not, with anything like propriety, compare a 
 rose to a tree, a mountain, or to a goldbug. 
 
 What obtains in the physical world, is true also of the moral 
 order. The beauty of the two subjects in question is of a moral 
 character, but at the same time of a totally different genus; for, 
 whereas there can be traced certain points of resemblance, there still 
 remains an essential difference which does not allow of that pro- 
 pinquity, so to speak, which is necessary for a complete comparison, 
 since all must allow that friendship and fiUal piety are virtues mani- 
 festly distinct in kind. 
 
 Taking them as merely human virtues, they rest, in the first place, 
 upon different foundations; the one on connection by kin; the other 
 on connection by esteem, interest, and the various other titles of 
 friendship. Filial duty is of obligation; friendship is of free choice. 
 Filial love is natural to man; friendship is not, in any strict sense, or 
 there would not be so many misanthropes in the world. We can 
 conceive a man to be without friends; we can hardly think of one 
 who is a parent-hater, or, if such a one exists, he is a monstrosity. 
 18 
 
274 
 
 Still, the two virtues, friendship and filial piety, have a certain 
 agreement, inasmuch as they denote the affections of the heart for 
 objects outside itself. In the one case, these objects are related to 
 the heart by a sort of natural affinity begotten by blood; in the 
 other there is no special predilection of the affections until reason 
 has selected and approved the object upon which those affections 
 are to be centred. And, therefore, it would appear that friendship 
 is the more rational; filial affection, the more instinctive. Thence, 
 it seems, that if we regard the virtues intellectually, friendship is 
 more noble than filial affection, just as reason reigns superior to in- 
 stinct. And yet, we behold, with less horror, the violation and be- 
 trayal of friendship than recreancy to filial duty. The one may be a 
 sin against gratitude, trust, benevolence, and the like; but the other 
 is a sin against nature. 
 
 But it may be said, if friendship be the nobler virtue, how is its 
 violation less grievous than that of filial piety ? I answer, that one 
 of the defects of comparison in the case of dissimilar things, is that 
 they cannot be compared so as to predicate attributes of them, 
 sufficiently common and comprehensive to require no modification. 
 If we affirm a quality as appertaining, in a superior degree, to an 
 object under a certain consideration, it may be wholly wanting 
 under another aspect; or it may be over-balanced by other qualities 
 not the subject of immediate inquiry. And thus, if we take these 
 two virtues of which we are speaking, in a full and adequate view, 
 or in their totality, we should hesitate to say that friendship, al- 
 though indeed a noble virtue, is nobler than one directly implanted 
 by God in the human breast; for though instinctive, it is also 
 rational, especially so soon as the child has attained the expedite 
 use of reason. 
 
 To conclude this portion of the subject, I may say that I think the 
 two stories, that of Joseph and his brethren, and that of Jonathan and 
 David, equally beautiful in many respects; and if we take them in 
 their different classes or species, I would not hesitate to say that the 
 latter is the more beautiful, for it is undoubtedly one of the most 
 perfect instances of human friendship that has been given to 
 record. 
 
 Let us recall the story in the chaste language of Sacred Writ: 
 
 " And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking to 
 
275 
 
 Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and 
 Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 
 
 " And David and Jonathan made a covenant, for he loved him as 
 his own soul. 
 
 " And Jonathan stripped off the coat with which he was clothed, 
 and gave it to David, and the rest of his garments, even to his 
 sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle." 
 
 And then what tender solicitude, and what self-denying devotion 
 on the part of Jonathan to shield his friend from the shafts of Saul's 
 furj'. How touching the meeting of the two, when David issued 
 from his covert in the field, in response to the signal of the arrows 
 which Jonathan had hurled from his bow. 
 
 " And when the boy was gone, David rose out of his place, which 
 was now towards the south, and faUing on his face on the ground, 
 he adored thrice; and kissing one another, they wept together, but 
 David more. 
 
 "And Jonathan swore again to David because he loved him; for 
 he loved him as his own soul." 
 
 On the subject of friendship, so many beautiful things have been 
 said by so many clever writers, that I can hardly hope to shun the 
 hackneyed road of commonplace suggestion and remark. Despite 
 this, however, I shall attempt to be creative, but I shall strive also to 
 pluck a few flowers that bloom on unfrequented fields. 
 
 A friend, then, is one after one's own heart; nay, is of one heaii; 
 and mind with myself; not that he must think and feel as I do; or 
 that his views of life and manners, men, and things must chime ac- 
 cordantly with mine, as if they proceeded from one common source 
 and principle. Nor yet that he may not be at variance with me in 
 our interchange of ideas, and may not at times positively disagree 
 with my own most cherished thoughts and honored ideals; for true 
 friendship not infrequently demands this very opposition. But ad- 
 mitting the most extensive latitude for intellectual dissent, and for 
 divergence of natual endowments and moral qualities, so much so, 
 that my friend and I are, in these respects, the very antipodes of 
 our mutual selves; yet there still remains that magnetic and almost 
 indefinable tahsmanic touch of sympathy, of unison, of harmony, of 
 sentiment and feeling, blending, uniting, even fusing together what 
 was before disjoined and separated. I do not say that this loadstone 
 
276 
 
 of attraction is altogether indefinable, for that would make friendship 
 unreasoning and unreasonable; friendship is founded on reason. 
 That would make friendship nothing more than milk-and-water senti- 
 ment; and friendship, though it must be seasoned and sweetened 
 with the salt of sentiment, is yet more than the finest feeling, for it 
 dwells in the mind, no less than in the heai-t. What I have labored, 
 perhaps somewhat clumsily, to make manifest, is, that reason is the 
 prime factor in the formation of friendship, but not to the exclusion 
 of other elements. 
 
 This reflection gives us the clue to the next point of discussion, 
 that is to say, to the titles of friendship, or the qualities upon which 
 it is founded. 
 
 On this subject, master minds having almost exhausted them- 
 selves, little remains for a common scribe to dilate upon. But as 
 " fools msh in where mortals fear to tread," I may be pardoned 
 for venturing my sorry wherry upon a sea, profound, vast, and 
 abysmal. 
 
 The first quality, then, which we discover as characteristic of 
 friendship, is mutuality, or reciprocity. There are many instances, I 
 know, of actions denominated friendly, from which this attribute 
 seems to be excluded. But in this case, friendship's language is 
 misapplied, and the term is a misnomer. I may make a man my 
 beneficiary without making him my friend; so far from attaining 
 such result, the benefactions I bestow upon him may convert him 
 into an enemy. Hence some cynical philosopher and bilious sage 
 has observed that, if you want to make a man hostile to your- inter- 
 ests, do him a favor. Of the extent of truth in this assertion, I need 
 not speak to a person of sagacity. And thank heaven for the integ- 
 rity of human nature, that still abides with us, this is not the normal 
 condition of the heart; we may benefit some people without count- 
 ing them as enemies. All I contend for is, that personal favors, 
 benefits, and the like, are not a necessary part of friendship, at 
 least in the formative stage of its existence. 
 
 These may, and generally do, exhibit themselves at some point, as 
 tokens or symbols of affection, but they are not the virtue itself, 
 any more than the sign is the thing signified. 
 
 One more remark, before I point out the quahties which reason 
 requires in true friendship. I must eliminate, root and branch, the 
 
277 
 
 element of selfishness from friendship. And this in opposition to 
 the dogmatic dicta of many moralists and critics. 
 Who does not remember Moore's lines ? 
 
 '* What is friendship, but a name, 
 A charm that lulls to sleep ; 
 A shade that follows wealth or fame. 
 But leaves the wretch to weep." 
 
 And Bacon's pessimistic assertion ? " That there is very little friend- 
 ship in the world, and least of all among equals." Some other blue- 
 devil misanthrope averred, that all friendship was founded on selfish- 
 ness, and that every man who sought to ingratiate himself into your 
 favor had, in the language of Ben. Franklin, " some axe to grind." 
 
 I think it is Montaigne who said, that hypocrisy was the homage 
 which vice paid to virtue. And as there is such a thing as true 
 friendship, so there will always be found a spurious article to claim 
 recognition as the genuine; for, " as to the value of other things, " 
 says Cicero, " most men differ; concerning friendship, all have the 
 same opinion." 
 
 Thus much affirmed to clear the way, we may now examine, with 
 the light of reason, those fair features which constitute the charm of 
 the beautiful virtue of friendship. It is the office of reason to do 
 this, for it requires the power of intellectual penetration to detect 
 the qualities in question; a nice discriminating judgment and exact 
 analysis and comparison of ideas to determine their value ; and last- 
 ly, the selection of the character in whom the qualities reside as the 
 term and object of our friendship. 
 
 The one indispensable quality of friendship is esteem, regard, and 
 mutual appreciation. Without it, no lasting friendship can subsist. 
 Now, I esteem a man for what he is worth; for his qualities of head 
 and heart, manner and bearing being only secondary considerations 
 in the commonality of cases. As no two minds, like no two faces, 
 are fac-similes, man will differ as to the objects of their appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 One man admires talent, genius, lively disposition, sallies of wit, 
 exuberant fancy; another seeks only for a kind, sympathetic nature, 
 to pour balm into his soul. But these are only partial judgments, 
 and he who, by some contracted notion, seeks to gauge the merits 
 
278 
 
 of bis frienS from so selfish and narrow a standpoint, is ordinarily 
 doomed to disappointment. 
 
 It is on tlie whole man our critical eye should rest; preserving the 
 right proportion between his different classes of qualities, due prom- 
 inence being given to the moral ones, which must outshine the rest. 
 
 When I have learned to justly esteem a person, then I am in a 
 position to become his friend, and not before. If he has many good 
 qualities, these will not all show themselves at once, or upon a super- 
 ficial acquaintance, but will require some time and observation to 
 elicit them; so that knowledge will serve to increase and strengthen 
 the links of unison between the friends. 
 
 This, of course, is not always the case, for friends, like lovers, are 
 artful enough to turn out their angel side at the outset; to make, so 
 to speak, their best bow, and thus pass for what they are not, and, 
 perhaps, never can be. Disgust and contempt are born of discovery, 
 for, as has been said, pretensions deceive but only the pretenders. 
 Addison deftly touches this trait of concealment in his essay on 
 Friendship : " A man often contracts a friendship with one whom, 
 perhaps, he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when 
 on a sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, he never 
 discovered or suspected upon his first entering into an intimacy with 
 him." There are some persons, who, in certain periods of their 
 lives, are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others, as odious and de- 
 testable. Martial has given a very pretty picture of one of this 
 species in the following epigram : 
 
 " In all thy humors, whether giave or mellow, 
 Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow ; 
 Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, 
 There is no living with thee or without thee." 
 
 With true friends there is no such dissembling. Frankness, open- 
 ness, and artless and unaffected simplicity and confidence and trust 
 are not only salient, but striking and essential characteristics of that 
 condition of relationship between individulals which must precede 
 the formation and continue through the duration of true friendship. 
 How can I be the friend of a man who seems to hide himself from 
 me; who is on his guard all the time lest he should betray himself 
 to me by act or speech; who appears to think me ever on the alert 
 
279 
 
 to hold up the lantern to his defects, and set his faults upon the 
 candlestick ? 
 
 So soon, however, as we find one, in whom, by reason of his own 
 artless non-concealment and ingenuous demeanor, we are able to dis- 
 cover those traits of character which merit our esteem; and when 
 circumstances are such as to favor and facilitate acquaintance; and 
 when, besides, there is that nameless attraction which draws us to- 
 wards each other, then we naturally desire to cultivate the friend- 
 ship of such a one. It is obvious, though, that among Christian 
 people there can be but little esteem which is not founded upon 
 moral qualities. What boots it that a man be wise or witty; that he 
 be affable and accomplished; that he be brimful of good-nature, and 
 overflowing with the " milk of human kindness," if, at the same time, 
 he be wanting in that very thing, which, being absent, mars his man- 
 hood and unmakes his majesty as the noblest work of God ? 
 
 So much for the titles upon which friendship rests; and now for 
 those attributes which adorn and beautify, as they consecrate and 
 ennoble, the magnificent virtue of true friendship. 
 
 Confidence is the first quality to which I direct my attention. 
 
 It has been said there are no secrets between friends. With this 
 view I cannot fully concur; for, as George Macdonald has said, " in 
 every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar Kfe, 
 into which God alone can enter." But if it be taken in the proper 
 sense, it is not only a truth, but a truism, to say that there should be 
 no secrets as between genuine friends. For this refers, of course, 
 not to those affairs of conscience which men do not wish to commu- 
 nicate to any but God, or their confessor, but to such matters as 
 may be disclosed with discretion to an undoubted and approved 
 friend, to the end that he assist, enlighten, counsel, or lend sympathy 
 and comfort when these are needful. And few, indeed, are the af- 
 fairs of life, the concerns of individuals, which may not be thus di- 
 vulged to one sufficiently tried to merit the appellation of friend. If 
 I cannot so far confide in my putative friends as to trust them with 
 important secrets when necessary, why should I select ttem for an 
 office which I deem them disqualified to perform ? And this confi- 
 dence exactly accords with that definition of a friend, which, of all I 
 know, is the best: — that he is my second self. For if he is of one 
 heart and mind with me, how can he be so regarded upon whom, in 
 
280 
 
 my mistrust, I shut the door of intimacy with reference to what 
 passes within my own soul ? 
 
 This confidence, moreover, is the necessary outgrowth of that 
 judgment of reason by which I select one man of a thousand per- 
 haps, to be my friend; and if I do not extend it, the omission 
 simply proves that I have a very puny faith in the correctness of my 
 own judgment. If I judge a man to have the necessary learning, 
 ability, goodness, affection, and all the other qualities which I seek 
 in a friend; and if I have chosen him to be such just because of 
 these things, do I not make a sinner of my judgment and a cipher 
 of my character for common sense, when I hesitate to make avail- 
 able those endowments, on account of whose possession I first se- 
 lected my friend, not more for admiration and esteem of the things 
 themselves, than for the belief that they might advantage me in cer- 
 tain emergencies ? I must, therefore, confide in my friend, and if I 
 do not, he may be an acquaintance, a companion, a fellow; but he is 
 not in any true sense a friend. A friend is a counsellor; how can 
 he counsel me who has not my confidence ? A friend is a sympa- 
 thizer; how can he sympathize with my affliction, or soften my sor- 
 row by " pouring on it the balm of kindred sorrow," who knows 
 not what griefs may vex my soul? I confide, then, in my friend; 
 I trust in his fidelity; I have faith in his integrity; I confidently 
 count on his sympathy, and I believe that he possesses all that 
 abihty, that benevolence, and that personal interest, that desire 
 to help me, and that promptitude to do so, which I pronounced 
 him possessed of when I called him by the sacred name of 
 friend. 
 
 Albeit, I say: be slow to give any man thy complete confidence 
 till time has tried him. If it be no irreverence to apply here the 
 words of Sacred Writ, "Let a man prove himself." To know any 
 man, you must eat the traditional peck of salt with him; you must 
 have a considerable personal experience with him. But it is not al~ 
 ways necessary that it be personal, for his reputation is to be re- 
 garded, and* the authority on which it rests. Nor is long acquaint- 
 ance always necessary; for some may betray more of their character 
 and show more genuine friendship in a year than others in the 
 course of a lifetime. Yet the rule obtains: Give your confidence 
 cautiously; or better, prudently, and prudence does not signify nar- 
 
281 
 
 row-minded caution. To quote the well-known advice of Polonius 
 to his son : 
 
 " The friends thou hast and their adoption tried. 
 Grapple them to thy heart with hooks of steel; 
 But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
 Of every new-hatched, unfledged comrade." 
 
 Another quality I shall briefly consider, and that is constancy. 
 
 I allude not now to those summer friends, as they are called, who 
 flit about a man, like gnats in a sunbeam, so long as the sunshine of 
 success smiles upon him, and basely desert a friend when a crisis 
 comes upon him, even though they would feelingly resent any im- 
 putation of the kind; and yet, sooth to say, are made of such fickle 
 and vacillating stuff that they can form no fixed, unvarying friend- 
 ships. They are with you to-day; to-moiTow they are vanished like 
 smoke. Then they repent themselves, and court your company and 
 your friendship, only to make a fresh rupture, and thus it is to the 
 end of the chapter. This is often the result of the innate weakness 
 of their will and the vagaries of their intellect. They lack that solid 
 poise which betokens a well-balanced and orderly mind. Or it is 
 due to irascibility and impulsiveness of nature and disposition. 
 They are ruffled and huffed and slighted at the most trivial and 
 often imaginary things; and without an iota of compunction they 
 will, for a mere bagatelle, ruthlessly snap asunder the bonds of 
 friendship, which, having endured for years, gave promise of long 
 life and permanence. These are often the best-natured people in 
 the world, but far from desirable friends. They are often haughty, 
 imperious, overbearing, and exacting; they will not meet you on 
 terms of equality; and when they do bestow the outward marks of 
 friendship, it is with a condescending and patronizing air, which 
 plainly says, " You ought to feel honored, sir." And then they like 
 to play the coquette, to show you that, Hke the Siren, they, too, 
 " can break all hearts like chinaware." And thus they '' run their 
 fickle round," till at length, wearied by satiety, they find that they 
 have the fate of the coquette, having become every man's acquaint- 
 ance, but the friend of none. 
 
 Fidelity is another mark of true friendship. 
 
 It might appear that this is little different from constancy, and, 
 
282 
 
 perhaps, I could embrace it under tbat head; but in the meaning I 
 here attach to it, it is something widely apart from the other. By 
 fidelity I understand, not so much constancy in friendship, as faith- 
 fulness in fulfilling its trusts and obligations. In its primary mean- 
 ing it, of course, excludes all treachery, all betrayal, all falseness; 
 and this ought to go without saying. The faithful friend is one who, 
 in all circumstances, come calm, come storm, will never flinch in dis- 
 charging the duty of a friend. The time-honored adage, " a friend 
 in need is a friend indeed," finds in him its literal exemplification. 
 He prefers to be a kindly thorn in my side, than to be my echo ; and 
 he is not " a mute dog afraid to bark " when there is danger. He 
 sees my faults, and he fain would correct them, unconscious of giv- 
 ing offence. He thinks not with Cassius, " a friendly eye would 
 never see such faults," but with Brutus, '* a flatterer's would not, 
 though they were as high as huge Olympus." The world may play 
 me false; but he is true as steel. Ever jealous of my honor, he is a 
 shield against the biting breath of slander, and no tongue may de- 
 fame me with impunity when he stands by to bear a blow in my de- 
 fense. 
 
 Though all things should seem against me; thoagh the chill wind 
 of misfortune should drive me forth a wanderer and an outcast; 
 though shame, disgrace, and infamy come upon me, while he de- 
 plores and weeps my fall, he is my friend still. When the proud 
 man's contumely and the scorn of the world pursue me, he compas- 
 sionates my misery, and he follows me to the tomb when I am cast 
 into it as an unclean and loathsome thing. 
 
 And the faithful friend is the soul of sincerity. No suspicions 
 ever haunt his mind; no jealousies corrode his heart, for if they did 
 he would not be found faithful. There is no bond which jealousy 
 will not break, " for if love be strong as death, jealousy is hard as 
 hell." The worm of envy never enters his breast, for if it did he 
 would betray his trust. And yet he wants no monopoly of my af- 
 fections, nor does the green-eyed monster seize him if I seek to 
 make other friends, knowing that this is no infringement of his 
 right, no detraction of his own esteem. And how many useful and 
 honorable friendships have been strangled at birth, and blasted, as 
 the bud by the frost, by the killing ice of envy, jealousy, suspicion, 
 and all that base-bom brood. 
 
283 
 
 I might say more about the vices incident to friendship, but, per- 
 haps, I have mounted " the airy stilts of abstraction " long enough, 
 and this analysis is now sufficiently minute. A word more in an- 
 other direction. 
 
 It is a great advantage to any man to possess a few good and tried 
 friends. None of us can hve solely in himself. Thank God, no man 
 can so far gratify his egotism. Man was made for society; and, for 
 my part, whenever I have met a character who seemed utterly with- 
 out bent or incUnation for companionship, I have been irresistibly 
 persuaded that he was a fellow with a very vicious head, a selfish 
 heart, and gross, distempered feelings. He is a good man to be 
 watched, nay, shunned — hahet foenum in cornu, as the poet says: 
 " He has hay on his horns." 
 
 The first thing that God found fault with (if I may be licensed 
 this expression) after He pronounced His creation good, was the 
 loneliness of man. We have within us a craving for sympathy and 
 association. As Cicero says, " They seem to take away the sun from 
 the world, who withdraw friendship from life; for we have received 
 nothing better from the immortal gods, and nothing more delight- 
 ful." Whoever has not read Cicero's admirable treatise on friend- 
 ship, should supply the neglect at his first convenience. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock, who has lately had a deal of fame anent his 
 list of one hundred books, affirms that those who have written in 
 praise of books, can find nothing better to say of them than to com- 
 pare them to friends. And Bacon tells us that it is a mere solitude 
 to want true friends, without which the world is a wilderness. " In 
 conversation with a friend, a man tosseth his thoughts more easily; 
 he marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when 
 they are turned into words; and, finally, he waxeth wiser than him- 
 self, and that more by an hour's discourse than by a day's medita- 
 tion." 
 
 " The most open discourse and unreserved instruction," says Addi- 
 son, " is that which passes between two persons who are familiar and 
 intimate friends." The same elegant essayist, quoting from Tully, 
 says, " This pagan was the first who observed that friendship im- 
 proves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and 
 the dividing of our grief." 
 
 These advantages, or fruits of friendship, as they are called by Sir 
 
284 
 
 Francis Bacon, are, according to Addison, easily multiplied by call- 
 ing into play all those characteristics which we have described as 
 proper to real friendship 
 
 A man should be chary in his choice of friends. "Have many 
 well-wishers," says the son of Sirach, "but very few friends." 
 " Discover not thy heart to every one," says A Kempis, citing EccL. 
 viii., " but treat thy affairs with a man that is wise and feareth 
 God." And again : " We must have charity for all, but familiarity 
 is not expedient." Besides, if we have too many friends, we cannot 
 treat all with that consideration which we should, and our affections 
 likewise are too much divided. 
 
 Unsuspecting and confiding natures are prone to give their friend- 
 ship to any chance acquaintance, and often are they left to repent 
 their indiscretion and deplore their folly. As for myself, though 
 owning to a wide-extended circle of acquaintance, I count my friends 
 upon the fingers of my hand. And I am not sorry that the case is 
 thus, for I feel, with Seneca, that the more I go into society, the less 
 I return a man. I think, with Bacon, that *' little do men perceive 
 what solitude is, and how far it extendeth, for a crowd is not com- 
 pany, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling 
 cymbal where there is no love." 
 
 Upon the wisdom of our choice of friends, depends much of our 
 moral character and temporal felicity. If they are not better than 
 v/e, they will, of a surety, drag us down to their own level. A thing 
 is made better only by that which is better than the thing itself. 
 Gold grows not in value when loaded with lead or sheeted with 
 silver. Cicero says in his essay on friendship : " It is congruous 
 that a man be good himself first, and then he can choose for a friend 
 one like unto himself." 
 
 But to my mind it were more advisable that he seek a man better- 
 than himself; for if our friends are better than ourselves, they will 
 help to lift us up to their lofty nobility. Like Sir John Lubbock, I 
 disagree with the rhapsodical Emerson, who says that men must 
 always descend in order to meet. No; they may meet, and yet pre- 
 serve each his individuality, and all its peculiar properties, provided 
 the ice of indifference, and the frost of selfishness, which stand like 
 the frozen pillars of the North, between the souls of men in this, 
 cold, calculating age, are melted by the glowing fire of true friendship. 
 
285 
 
 The older we grow, the more fioical and fastidious we become in 
 forming friendships. Some writer, whom I do not recall, thus des- 
 cants on this idea : " As we advance in years, we shrink from new- 
 acquaintance. Old friends, or if new, nice ones; intelligent society 
 with a human bent in it; more perfect freedom of speech and action; 
 — these alone make social life, to mature persons, worth living. All 
 the rest is strained pretension and uncomfortable politeness." A 
 young man once sought an introduction to a noted woman of letters 
 in the city of London. She is not now of much importance, being 
 dead and forgotten. She was then, however, a shining star in the 
 firmament of the literary world. And as all literary people of dis- 
 tinction had great attractions for the young man, he expressed a wish, 
 through a common friend, to meet her. Imagine his surprise when 
 his friend wrote : *' My dear feUow, she will have nothing to do 
 with you. She says she knows a great deal too many people 
 already." 
 
 At the time I first heard this, I thought the lady's conduct rather 
 rude, or certainly uncivil, but I have since learned to envy the 
 woman's moral courage. How delightful it would be if we dared to 
 have that noble truth printed on our cards, and when folks call upon 
 us whom we do not care to know, to send them this : " Mr. So and 
 So's compliments, but he knows a great many people alveady." 
 
 While I express and applaud this sentiment in the abstract, I free- 
 ly concede its exercise could properly be carried out only with the 
 nicest caution and discrimination. 
 
 As, on the one hand, we should be careful in selecting our friends; 
 so, on the other, we should charge ourselves with earnest solicitude 
 in retaining them. It ought, therefore, to be something more than 
 a venial offence that would move us to part with an old and service- 
 able friend. " Old wine, old books, old friends," sings the poet, and 
 with all my heart I subscribe to the sentiment. We should leani 
 that all men are not made in the same mould ; and " how," says A 
 Kempis, " can we expect to have another to our liking, if we can- 
 not make ourselves such as we would wish." We should endeavor 
 to be patient in supporting others' defects and infirmities of what 
 kind soever, because we have also many things which others must 
 bear with. To close out all ground for complaint, we ought to 
 be punctiliously exact in performing the offices which friendships 
 
286 
 
 demand, and this the more so where special favors lay claim to 
 our gratitude, for, 
 
 " Kindness neglected makes friendship suspected." 
 
 Nor should we be too rigorous in the requirements we impose upon 
 others. 
 
 A sunny serenity of soul, urbanity of behavior, equanimity of 
 mind, generosity of judgment, a quick and lively manifestation of 
 sympathy, these are some of the useful and necessary requisites, not 
 only for forming, but for indissolubly cementing a friendship whicb 
 we have set our heart upon perpetuating beyond the possibility of 
 rupture or decay. It is with a good friend, as it is with childish 
 innocence, as it is with a mother's love ; its full value is never known 
 until it is lost to us entirely. 
 
 " Death," says Lubbock, " cannot sever friends. Friends, though 
 absent, are still present ; though in poverty, they are rich ; though 
 weak, yet in the enjoyment of health ; and what is still more diffi- 
 cult to assert, though dead, they are still alive." 
 
 ' * Even the grave is a bond of union, 
 Spirit and spirit best hold communion. 
 Seen through faith by the inward eye, 
 It is after death they are truly nigh." 
 
 — J. C. Mangan. 
 
 " To me, indeed," says Ruskin, " Scipio still lives, and will always 
 live, for I love the virtue of that man, and that worth is not yet ex- 
 tinguished." " And," says Lubbock, in concluding his lecture, " if 
 we choose our friends for what they are, and not for what they have, 
 and if we deserve so great a blessing, then they will be always with 
 us, preserved in absence, and even after death, in the amber of 
 memory." 
 
 Thus far I have said nothing of the Christian side of friendship ; 
 in fact, almost all that has been predicated of the subject might 
 fittingly be affirmed of an association of affectionate people who 
 unite themselves on purely natural grounds and motives. The real 
 reason is, I do not deem it necessary. I am quite sure that any 
 Christian, who is not such merely in name, or one particularly who 
 makes some profession of piety, is fully conscious of those Christian 
 
287 
 
 qualities and virtues which should be superadded to those of which 
 mention has been made, and description given in limning the fair 
 features of true friendship. Under this aspect, though, I ought to 
 make one allusion. It has come to mind from the perusal of the 
 preface to that delightful little book, " The Will of God : How to 
 detect it in our actions." It is, that, as friends, we should have a 
 lively concern and active interest in the spiritual progress of each 
 other. This will often entail the delicate duty of fraternal correc- 
 tion, and a candid and fearless exposure of friends' respective faults 
 to each other. Perhaps I cannot do better than to transcribe, 
 paraphrastically, the writer's sentiments : 
 
 " Outside the walls of a rehgious house, one rarely meets with any 
 who are much concerned with our spiritual progress. Provided we 
 are what is usually called ' good,' our most intimate worldly friends 
 are perfectly satisfied. How seldom is it our happiness in the busy 
 paths of life, to find that * pearl beyond price,' the brother in Christ, 
 who, for the great love of God, will tell us kindly of our faults. 
 There are many enough to ridicule them and to mimic them ; plenty 
 to assail them in our absence with unpitying scorn and unqualified 
 censure ; and there are even some who find a malignant gratification 
 in trampling rudely on those weaknesses of character to which we 
 are most sensitive. Self-love and wounded feelings too often pre- 
 vent us profiting by hard lessons of instruction such as these. But 
 what an ineffable blessing it is to meet a real friend, who at much 
 self-sacrifice, and it may be at the risk of grave offence, tries with a 
 firm but gentle hand to remove the dross that renders the pure 
 gold of honest purpose unworthy of the favor of heaven." 
 
 As the concluding portion of this paper, I desire to introduce a 
 few notable instances of friendship : 
 
 Charles Lamb, in his essay of Elia, makes one curious and clever, 
 but instructive statement in respect of imperfect sympathies. He 
 critically excepts therein to that sentiment of the auther of " Religio 
 Medici," when he asserted, " I am of a constitution so general that 
 \t consorts and sympathizes with all things." 
 
 " For myself," says Lamb, " I confess that I do feel the differences 
 of mankind to an unhealthy excess. I cannot look with an indiffer- 
 ent eye upon things or persons. I can feel for all, but I cannot 
 towards all equally. I cannot like all people alike." And Lamb is 
 
288 
 
 right. For if we could not have special predilections, we could have 
 no friendship. If we were restricted to that general and indefinite 
 sympathy for mankind, spoken of, we could love none in particular. 
 We are bound to love all men, it is true, for this is the law of Christ; 
 but nowhere has the Saviour enjoined the precept in the rigid or 
 exclusive sense which would debar us from contracting special 
 alliances with chosen souls. Nay ; so far from it, the gentle, the all- 
 loving Redeemer had His own chosen friends. The Sacred Record, 
 so far as I remember, furnishes us with but two instances of the 
 God-man's weeping, and one of these was by the grave of His dead 
 friend Lazarus. Jesus wept at the sight of human suffering. He 
 wept because Mary and Martha, His beloved handmaidens and 
 friends, wept at the loss of their only brother Lazarus. He wept 
 because He was the sweetness of the incarnation of self-forgetful 
 compassion, which thought of the wounds and bruises of other 
 hearts, and how He might heal them. And He wept for all ; but 
 His holiest tears, I think, were shed for the sake of friends. And 
 many a time, no doubt, when worn and weary by the toilsome labors 
 of the day, did He seek refreshment and repose in the house of 
 His much-prized friends Martha and Mary, preferably to sharing 
 the hospitality of the high-born ones of earth. When He retired 
 into the gray twilight of the garden, in that sad and solemn hour 
 when His soul was sorrowful even unto death, even then He found 
 some consolation in choosing for His company those friends whom 
 He loved the best of all. It was Peter, and James and John, and 
 only these of all His followers, whose happy privilege it was to see 
 Him radiant with glory at the Transfiguration on Mt. Thabor. 
 
 There was an instance still more noteworthy, when He manifested 
 a special fondness and attachment for one above all the rest. " Now, 
 there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus 
 loved." There was then in the fraternity of Apostles one whom it was 
 not irreverent nor miscalled to consider the especial favorite of Jesus. 
 Yes; this Jesus, whose mind was filled with the magnitude of His 
 mission, the greatness of His sublime undertaking for the salvation 
 of the whole world; who, at the very moment to which the text al- 
 ludes, was oppressed with sad anticipations of the defections of His 
 dearest friends; this friend of man — weak, fallen man — in all ages, 
 conditions, and countries, had leaning upon His bosom one whom 
 
289 
 
 He loved as the apple of His own eye. What an affection was that 
 which subsisted between the Master and the youngest of His dis- 
 ciples, John ! 
 
 I have no wish to sermonize, dear reader, but I may ask you to 
 cast an eye upon that sublime scene in the coenacle of Jerusalem. 
 It is the eve of our dear Lord's bitter passion and death. He sits 
 surrounded by the twelve of His own choice. He felt and He knew 
 that they followed Him tliither, more from motives of interest than 
 affection. They came, many of them, for the loaves and fishes. 
 They eagerly awaited the imaginary honors and distinctions, which, 
 it was believed, He would bestow upon them in that kingdom of 
 which, as they fondly thought, he was about to come into possession. 
 Well might he tell them, as He told the multitudes, to labor not for 
 the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth to everlasting 
 life. He knew they would forsake Him in the hour of the triumph 
 of His enemies; that one would betray Him; another deny Him; 
 that all would desert Him as soon as their expectations were 
 damped by disappointment; and that even that beloved disciple, 
 who leaned upon His bosom, whom He pressed to the tendrils of 
 His heart, would yield to timidity and base-born human respect, 
 and coldly leave Him to His fate. Perhaps it was compunction that 
 brought him to the foot of the Cross to take his stand by the side of 
 the Virgin mother, whose life was crowned with sorrow. 
 
 And yet, despite it all, Jesus' love for His little family burns with 
 undiminished ardor, especially for His bosom-friend and follower, 
 John; and He pours forth to His heavenly Father that touching and 
 affectionate prayer for the unity and protection of His flock: " Holy 
 Father, keep them in Thy name." 
 
 In the life of Jesus we find the highest perfection, in which were 
 admirably blended the special and general affections. We discover 
 in our Lord a breadth and scope of affection which embraced the 
 whole of humanity, not excepting the enemies who nailed Him to 
 the Cross ; and yet this same boundless affection was so flexible 
 that it was capable of contracting itself to the compass of a single 
 individual, whom He loved more than all. And tbis conduct of 
 our Redeemer is an amply conclusive answer to those who, with 
 an air of philosophic superiority, rail against pariicular friend- 
 ships as something decidedly to be reprobated and condemned; for 
 19 
 
290 
 
 as in the heart of Jesus, so in every well-regulated human heart all 
 the affections, general and particular, are so nicely balanced, and so 
 properly preserved, that by due harmony and subordination they 
 must contribute to the good both of society and the individual man. 
 
 It has been said (and I refer to the matter with some delicacy) 
 that such friendships ought not to exist between lay people and 
 those who make profession of religion. Not, indeed, that they are 
 wrong in themselves, but that they may tend to the detriment of one 
 or both concerned. I answer, so may anything, however good, be 
 perverted. And surely Martha and Mary were lay people, and Jesus 
 was a religious. So that, while I concede that such friendships 
 ought to be entered upon after due deliberation, and with nice 
 discretion, yet I hold that they are not only wholesome, but even 
 holy and fruitful in good results. 
 
 We have many examples among those whom we now honor as 
 saints to give force to our assertion. But first let me refer to one 
 who, though not a saint, was, when living, as beloved as he was ad- 
 mired, and who, though dead, has left a memory which abides in 
 benediction. I mean the celebrated J. K. L , Bishop of Kildare and 
 Leighlin. I make no doubt most of my readers have heard of his 
 famous friendship for " Marianna," to whom he wrote such exquis- 
 itely beautiful epistles. I have read, and to some extent studied, the 
 life of this master-mind, this transcendent genius. I have not been 
 able sufficiently to admire him as bishop, statesman, publicist, and 
 scholar. Whether as the great tribune thundering against lawless- 
 ness and crime, as the fervid pulpit orator pleading the cause of the 
 poor and the oppressed; or as the majestic statesman, bending with 
 consummate tact and ability the minds of others to his own saga- 
 cious counsels, — no matter in which of these aspects we fix our scru- 
 tiny upon him, in none does he shine foi-th a truer, nobler, grander 
 character than he discovers himself to be in penning those letters of 
 unaffected friendship, which, up to the day of his lamented death, 
 he continued to write to " Marianna " and a few chosen friends. 
 
 I shall make no allusion to the old story of Damon and Pythias, 
 which is so well known as to be proverbial. 
 
 The friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher is quite noteworthy. 
 
 These two literary celebrities had but one mind and one wish for 
 each other's fame and reputation, and so concertedly did they blend 
 
291 
 
 their labors, that, it is said, critics cannot distinguish the productions 
 of the one from those of the other ; and I believe it has been said 
 that biographers are unable to write the life of one, without 
 running into the life of the other. Their lives were as those of 
 brothers. 
 
 Montaigne's affection for Charron is noticed with admiration by 
 many authors. Montaigne allowed his friend to many into his 
 family, and Charron, in gratitude, willed his whole fortune to Mon- 
 taigne's sister after he had been married to her. 
 
 The pathetic hues of Halleck on the death of his friend Drake, 
 are known to every reader of American literature : 
 
 " Green be the turf above thee, 
 
 Friend of my better days ; 
 None knew thee but to love thee, 
 
 Nor named thee but to praise. 
 Tears fell when thou wert dying. 
 
 From eyes unused to weep ; 
 And long where thou art lying, 
 
 Will tears the cold turf steep." 
 
 Tennyson's matchless monument of poesy, built in memory of his 
 dead friend, Arthur Hallam, will endure for ages, as a living testi- 
 monial to their mutual love and friendship. 
 
 Those who have read Gerald Griffin's " Invasion," need not be 
 reminded of the beautiful tale of friendship told therein, which is 
 one of the most fascinating effusions on the same subject anywhere 
 to be found. 
 
 The sad and melancholy, but singularly faithful and tender friend- 
 ship of the Kev. Father Meehan for the iU-starred son of genius, 
 James Clarence Mangan, is full of pathos and exquisite sentiment. 
 This good priest it was, " who," as John Mitchell says, " had always 
 appreciated him as a poet, loved him as a man, and yearned over 
 him as a soul in the jaws of perdition," who stood by his bedside in 
 the last hours of that wild, weird, tumultuous life, to smooth his 
 pathway to the tomb, and anxiously and affectionately to carry the 
 final consolations of religion to this rarely-gifted creature ere he 
 passed to the voiceless valley of the far-away land. Ah ! that he had 
 been true to that promise long before made to another anxious 
 
292 
 
 friend, the story of that strange death-in-life might not read like the 
 record of a ghoul : 
 
 " Fare thee well ! we now know each the other ; 
 
 Each has struck the other's inmost chords. 
 Fare thee well ! my friend and more than brother, 
 And may scorn pursue me if I smother 
 
 In my soul thy words 1 " 
 
 The last shining of that meteoric star, as it descended below the 
 horizon of the world, was rendered faint and fitful by the clouds 
 and shadows of a dark and desolate life ; but let us hope that in the 
 brightness of divine mercy it rose radiantly in the land of spirits. 
 
 I shall finish these citations by a reference to the deathless and 
 immortal friendship that existed between the great St. Bernard and 
 the pious Ermengarde, Countess of Brittany. Oh ! what a chaste 
 and saintly union between these interior souls, which the Holy Spirit 
 of God alone could inspire. A woman of great force of character, 
 of great talents and accomplishments, much sought and flattered by 
 the gay courtiers of her age, she passed her time amid a host of 
 worldly engagements, her affections divided between the school of 
 Satan and the school of Christ, till she found, in her friendship 
 with St. Bernard, the means of mounting to the sublime heights of 
 sanctity. And what a spirit of fatherly care and pastoral tenderness 
 breathes through every line of those beautiful and affectionate 
 epistles, which he wrote to her from the silent cell of his cloister, or 
 upon the course of his toilsome journeys. 
 
 Oh ! Blessed Bernard, glorious champion of the Cross, I seem to 
 behold thee now, raising thy powerful voice amid the chorus of the 
 awakening nations, bearing aloft the banner of the Crucified, and 
 bidding kings and princes rise from their jewelled thrones, and cast- 
 ing aside purple robes and glittering sceptres, make their way over 
 sea and mountain to far-off Palestine. Grand and incomparable 
 leader, art thou calling the nations to arise to the rescue of the 
 sepulchre of the Saviour. But greater still doth thy greatness shine, 
 when, after long communings with thy God, thou sittest, pen in 
 hand, to pour out the wealth of thy affection, and the spiritual ten- 
 derness of thy soul upon her to whom thou wert so closely united in 
 the bonds of Christ. 
 
"Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, salutes his beloved daughter in Jesus 
 Christ, Ermengarde, formerly Countess of Brittany, now a servant 
 of God ; and assures her that he entertains towards her every feeling 
 of pure and Christian affection. 
 
 " Why cannot I make my mind as visible to you as this paper, that 
 you may read in my heart the sentiments of love with which the 
 Lord inspires me, and the zeal He gives me for your soul. You 
 would discover there what no tongue could express. I am with you 
 in spirit, though absent in body. It is true that I cannot show you my 
 heart ; but if I cannot manifest it to you entirely, you may still, if 
 you will, understand it ; you have only to dive into your own to 
 find mine, and attribute to me as much love for you as you find 
 there for me. Humility and modesty will not allow you to believe 
 that you love me better than I do you ; and you must think, on the 
 contrary, that the same God who inclines you to love me, and to be 
 guided by my advice, gives me an equal ardor to respond to this 
 affection, and a tender interest in your service. Understand, then, 
 how you have kept near me ever since my departure ; for myself, I 
 may say with truth, that I did not leave you when I left you, and 
 that I find you wherever I am." 
 
 Is there anything in the history of the human heart, so touching, 
 so charming, so divine ? Oh ! that every shepherd of souls might be 
 able to show the same sweet tenderness and deathless affection 
 for the members of the flock of Christ committed to his care and 
 control. 
 
 I shall close this protracted paper with some pearls of wisdom 
 from the wise. 
 
 "I cherish good hopes, and believe that I am loved by my 
 friends," said Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 " Friend is a word of royal tone, 
 Friend is a poem all alone," 
 
 says the Persian poet. 
 And Pope sings : 
 
 Heaven forming each on other to depend, 
 
 A master, or a servant, or a friend. 
 
 Bids each on other for assistance call. 
 
 Till one man's weakness grows the strength of aU.' 
 
294 
 
 And Sydney declares : " Nothing is more terrible to the guilty 
 heart than the eye of a respected friend." 
 Confucius lays down the following : 
 
 " No one should have a friend that is not equal to himself, 
 They halve one's cares, and double one's joys." 
 
 " They are wealth to the poor, strength to the weak, and health to 
 the sick." " Whether near or at a distance, they neither suspect 
 nor doubt one." 
 
 He speaketh best, who speaketh last; hence let the son of Sirach 
 prescribe our parting advice : 
 
 " If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty 
 to credit him." 
 
 " Some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in 
 the day of trouble." 
 
 ** Take heed of thy friends. A faithful friend is a strong defence; 
 and he that hath found such a one, hath found a treasure. Nothing 
 doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable." 
 
 " A faithful friend is the medicine of life, and they that fear the 
 Lord shall find him." 
 
 ** Whoso feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship aright, for as 
 he is, so shall his neighbor be." 
 
 *' Change not thy friend for any good, by no means; nor a faith- 
 ful brother for the gold of Ophir." 
 
 *' Love thy friend and be faithful to him, for as a man hath 
 destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy neighbor." 
 
XIII. 
 
 AN OLD STUDENT'S RECOLLECTION OF SETON 
 
 HALL. 
 
 Among the Catholic Colleges of our country, Seton Hall stands in 
 no secondary station. Three decades of years have not departed 
 since its foundation, and yet it can claim no slender share in lasting, 
 good results. Wisdom characterized the choice of Ai'chbishop 
 Bayley and Bishop McQuaid, when, after deciding to remove from 
 Madison, where the college was originally located, they selected the 
 present site, every inch of which is imaged in the minds of "Alma 
 Mater's " sons, with scenes that constitute an ever-cherished charm, 
 whereon remembrance loves to linger, in recalling college life. 
 
 Of the friendships there formed the link is yet unlocked. The 
 faces that we knew still better than our books, are unforgotten. 
 The spots where, as trembling truants, we sequestered our forms 
 from the lynx-eyed vigilance of the patient Prefect, seem still to 
 afford us the succor of their secret shade. The winding paths 
 through the wild-woods; the broad, oft-travelled turnpike; the neat 
 village nestling in the valley; the mountains beyond, hfting aloft 
 their green-tufted tops, all are as fresh and fair as the gold-gleaming 
 vistas that tantalized our youthful vision, and fed the hungry hope of 
 boyish expectation. 
 
 True it is, this is more or less the experience of every college-bred 
 man ; and we must affirm that he is but a poor product of her 
 fostering care, who treasures not even a lingering affection for the 
 mother who nursed him in the cradle of science, and slaked his 
 thirst for information from the copious cup of knowledge. All this 
 is true as it is trite, and yet we scruple not to say that few feel 
 fonder or stronger regard for their old college home, than the 
 students of Setonia. 
 
296 
 
 Every year improvements have occurred in the various depart- 
 ments of the institution, securing, thereby, greater usefulness and 
 perfection. Those who saw Seton Hall in 1865, wo aid not recognize 
 the superb stone structure that rose upon the ruins of the marble 
 building. Even within the past ten years various improvements 
 have occurred, which add most happily to the efficiency of the edu- 
 cational department, and increase the comfort of the inmates. He 
 who sat in the study-hall eight years ago, and fumbled with the 
 heavy-hinged covers of the old-style desks, would now be delighted 
 to plmt his person in a commodious arm-chair, before a neat and 
 well-appointed escritoire. 
 
 Among the most recent changes, we may notice the flagged walks 
 before the college property, on both sides of South Orange Avenue, 
 now no longer, as of old, a mass of mud, but a macadamized road 
 with a line of horse-cars; the well-formed, romantic paths that turn 
 through the college woods, now beginning to look like a park; gas- 
 light introduced on the pla^'-ground; new, solid flooring for the ball 
 alleys; and, instead of the venerable pump of many memories, a 
 bronze fountain that rises under a graceful pavilion. 
 
 It would be an unpardonable omission on our part, were we to fail 
 to notice the work thus far accomplished in the Ecclesiastical Sem- 
 inary. The seminary has ever been the object of devoted care for 
 the Bishops of the diocese, and the officers of Seton Hall ; and it is 
 meet that it should be so. Let us rejoice that our seminary is equal 
 to its mission. Men of marked ability have graced its professorial 
 chairs. Need we recall the names of Archbishop Corrigan, Eev. Dr. 
 Brann, Rev. J. de Concilio, Rev. W. J. Wiseman, and Dr. Smith? 
 Out of its doors have gone forth devoted laborers into the dioceses 
 of Newark and Trenton. Evei^ church, and chapel, and school, by 
 them erected, is another monument to mark the efficiency and 
 success of Seton Hall Seminary. And these same men were invalua- 
 ble auxiliaries in the task of educating and disciplining the young 
 collegians. It was a test school for the practice of patience, and the 
 cultivation of meek deportment 
 
 Of the professors who have been honored with positions in the in- 
 stitution, I need pronounce no eulogium. There was one,* however, 
 perhaps best known of all, at least to students and educators. He 
 grew gray in the service, and passed away as unobserved as he had 
 
297 
 
 lived. He was " a helluo librorum," and the lore of antiquity seem- 
 ed all garnered into the storehouse of his memory. His quaint say- 
 ings and old saws were a never-failing fund of delight; and the 
 geniality of his temper, not less than the genius of his mind, led 
 captive the student heart. History tells of the old man, who, when 
 dying, prayed the Lord to keep his memory green; we had almost 
 said the prayer was supererogatory in the case of the late lamented 
 Professor Blume. 
 
 " Suaviter in modo fortiter in re," has been the strong yet mild 
 motto of this institution; and, from all that observation has elicited, 
 we can, we think, correctly conclude that it is yet a potent principle 
 of government from which the faculty have deemed it unwise to 
 depart. 
 
 Thus we have briefly described the place where we passed away 
 so many pleasant hours of our earlier life. We should like, did 
 space permit, to recall some reminiscence of the best known of our 
 contemporaries; but perhaps the topic would be of limited interest, 
 since they were unknown both to those who went before, and those 
 who followed us. Yet our heart thrills when we summon up the 
 scenes of the trials and triumphs of those days. With eye of im- 
 agination, we behold the plodding, patient industry of our close 
 competitor for the coveted prize; let us hope that we gazed upon 
 him then with a look as unjaundiced by jealousy as it is now. With 
 palpitating heart we awaited the eventful night upon which our 
 friends should witness our debut upon the boards in the " cork " 
 character, or yet in the more heavy and pretentious role of untried 
 tragedy. 
 
 And we ponder, too, on Hallow Eve, when we danced like Der- 
 vishes before the crackling bonfire, and delivered our mock speeches, 
 Ijpth in the classics barbarized and the vernacular "stumpified." 
 But most of all, we seem to stand spectators of the hard-fought 
 fight between the Alerts and their friendly foes, the Rose-Hills. 
 Victory is ours, we think, and, with three-times-three, we make the 
 welkin ring; then, with happy hearts, we hasten to the refectory, to 
 feast our friends, to sing our songs, and to exhibit our maiden ef- 
 forts at speechifying, and thus to show our visitors that we are no 
 less formidable at the festive board than when on the diamond, we 
 might wish to wield the willow. 
 
298 
 
 It is scenes like these, hardly less than the remembrance of our 
 excellent moral and intellectual training, that endear to our memory 
 the recollection of our " Alma Mater." We are proud of her pros- 
 pects, and we fondly pray that no cloud of ill-fortune will ever cast 
 one speck of shade upon the lustre of Setonia's untarnished fame. 
 " May she live long and prosper." 
 
xiy. 
 
 FILIAL AFFECTION. 
 
 It has been my fortune, good or ill, to have seen, in a moderately 
 short life, no inconsiderable share of what we in religion, for lieu, 
 perhaps, of a better designation, are wont to call " the world." This 
 is not due, — at least I hope I should not be so vain as to think it 
 due — to any superior capacity for observation ; but to the fact that 
 I occupied a somewhat enlarged sphere of observation, the result of 
 early rambling, of mingling with the world for many years before 
 God put it in my soul to become a soldier, though a poor one, in 
 His holy Sanctuary. Now, what I say is this: that I have never yet met 
 a member of the human family, no matter how obdurated by vice, 
 or sunk in sin, or crimsoned in crime; no matter how long the peiiod 
 of his absence from the parental roof -tree; no matter what or how 
 bitter the recollection of his early life at home; no matter what pre- 
 Tious or present conditions might be — I have never met one, I say, 
 of whom I could affirm, that in that man's soul every spark of fihal 
 affection was dead. It is too true, iudeed, that in several instances 
 some of these of whom I speak, had acted with fiendish cruelty to- 
 wards those who " in groans and travails " had brought them into 
 life, and had shown " how sharper than a serpent's tooth, is an un- 
 grateful child." But for all that, there came moments upon them 
 when the heart was touched and the spirit softened, when the foun- 
 tains of feeling were unlocked, and then, out of their callous, sin- 
 dried souls, there gushed forth floods of tears to bedew the long- 
 buried, but deathless memory, of parents neglected, despised, for- 
 gotten. If I may be permitted to intrude my personal experience 
 upon my readers, I have to say, that, among the foibles and follies 
 of my youth, there is hardly one that I more deeply deplore, and 
 that comes home to me at this distant day with fresher and more 
 
300 
 
 poignant regret, than my having once abandoned my good parents, 
 and left them for an entire year in ignorance as to whether I were 
 living or dead. And yet, despite my deliberate dereliction of duty 
 (what contradictions in the character of man !), well do I remember, 
 as I trudged along the roads of Western New York, or as I sat in 
 solitude upon the ship's prow, upon the broad Atlantic, how I often 
 lifted my gaze towards the stars at midnight, and then would come 
 upon me such a rush of remorseful memories, as I thought of my 
 perfidious ingratitude, that I cried till it seemed as if my spirit were 
 riven and my heart would break. Ah ! I think there is no more 
 galling recollection in the history of any man than the reproach 
 which memory frequently flings before him, who has been wanting 
 in duty to his parents. Apropos of this, some may remember read- 
 ing the pathetic story of Mrs. Sigourney, the American authoress, 
 related by herself, concerning her keen and ever-abiding pain for a. 
 slight waywardness towards her mother, who, when her daughter, 
 smitten by contrition for her unkindness, sought the sick bedside to 
 beg forgiveness, was already dead. " And old as I am now," says 
 she, " 1 would give worlds, were they mine to give, could my mother 
 have but lived to tell me that she forgave my childish ingratitude. 
 But I cannot call her back; and when I stand by her grave, and 
 whenever I think of her manifold kindness, the memory of that 
 reproachful look she gave me will bite like a serpent and sting like 
 an adder." 
 
 I have adduced these personal narratives in corroboration of my 
 first assertion as to the universality of the feeling of filial affection. 
 The reason is not far to seek. 
 
 Man is not more nor less than his nature ; he cannot stifle his 
 nature, as he can his conscience. Nature will assert herself some 
 time or other. Parental love and filial affection are natural to man, 
 for they are graven, by the God of nature, on the human heart. 
 For a time these feelings may seem dead or dormant ; but it is only 
 a temporary sleep. It is the law of nature. And hence, as we know, 
 this sentiment can find a lodgment, not only in the Christian, but 
 also in the pagan breast. Nay, as a sentiment in the rational, it be- 
 comes a lively instinct in the irrational creation. Natural history is 
 replete with examples. We hear, it is true, more about the love of 
 the old for the young, as, for example, when the pelican is said to- 
 
301 
 
 pour out its heart's blood to give life to its little ones; but instances 
 of reciprocal love on the part of the yoang, are not a rarity. Storks, 
 crows, and ravens cover their parent bii'ds with their wings, and 
 bear them on their backs, when they are rendered helpless. Even 
 the fierce and greedy lionling will tear the flesh of his prey and give 
 it to his mother. 
 
 Filial affection is a natural virtue apart from Christian motives, 
 and hence it was not unknown to the pagans. I think it is Addison, 
 who, in one of his essays in the Spectator, refers to a custom, once 
 extant in China, of razing to the ground, and covering with salt, 
 symbolical of purification, the foundations of a city, one of whose 
 inhabitants had been guilty of any cruelty to his parents. At the 
 burning of Troy, ^Eneas, as we learn from Homer, bore forth from 
 the burning walls of the city his aged father upon his shoulders. 
 To which incident Shakesi^eare aptly alluded in his play of Julius 
 Caesar, when Cassius vaunts himself upon his feat of bearing Caesar 
 from the Tiber : 
 
 " And as ^neas, our great ancestor, 
 Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulders 
 The old Anchises bear, so, from the waves of Tiber, 
 Did I the tired Caesar." 
 
 — Julius C^sar, Act i, Scene ii. 
 
 Siculus tells of a father who had three putative sons, and who 
 itoew that only one of them was his real son. "When dying, he 
 decreed that his property should belong to that child whom the 
 world might acknowledge as his lawful son. The three sons pre- 
 sented themselves at court, and each claimed the property. The 
 judge sought to settle the case after the faoliion of Solomon. He 
 ordered that the body of the father should be attached to a tree, 
 and the sons, provided with bow and arrow, were to shoot at the 
 body of their father, with the stipulation that he who pierced the 
 heart, or came nearest thereunto, should be the exclusive heir. The 
 £rst and the second son fired at the unnatural object and missed. But 
 when the third was invited to test his skill, he exclaimed in hor- 
 ror, " How can I aim at my father's heaii, and pierce that body 
 which gave me life ? I do not want the inheritance ; and I prefer 
 to die a beggar than to cover myself with shame and infamy." 
 
302 
 
 Many other instances of wliicli I have a confused knowledge, 
 could be cited from profane history, had I but time to make the 
 research ; but I choose, rather, to refer to those which are better 
 known and more important, because recorded for us in Sacred 
 Writ. 
 
 At the outset we have in Genesis the history of Joseph and his 
 brethren. And how utterly at variance is the conduct of the young 
 ruler with that of many modern sons after they had been elevated 
 to places of power and affluence. I love to peruse this story of 
 Jacob ; for I think it is one of the most pathetic in the whole Bible, 
 "With what touching, ^loving pathos does Joseph ask upon his sec- 
 ond interview with his brothers : "Is the old man, your father, in 
 health, of whom you told me ? Is he yet living ?"...." And he 
 made haste because his heart was moved, and tears gushed out, and 
 going into his chamber, he wept." And then his message to his 
 long-lost father. " You shall tell my father of aU my glory. Make 
 haste, and bring him to me." In addition to this, we are edified by 
 his care and solicitude in providing for the necessities of his father 
 after his coming into Egypt ; his attendance upon him in sickness ; 
 his invocation of Israel's blessing for his two sons ; and finally his 
 gieat grief at his demise, and his exactitude in carrying out his father's 
 instructions concerning the interment in the chosen sepulchre.* 
 
 A scarcely less conspicuous instance of filial devotion is presented 
 to us in the case of the younger Tobias. He felt it to be his joyous 
 duty at all times to care for his poor, blind father. At the bidding 
 of the Angel, he anoints with the gall of the fish his father's sightless 
 eyes, and well does he heed the injunctions of his dying parent. 
 Hence it was that he lived to the green old age of ninety, and his 
 people buried him with joy, as one whom they knew to be in favor 
 with God. 
 
 "We might multiply, almost indefinitely, examples from the inspired 
 volume, but the conduct of Him, who is our example and model in 
 all things, is itself sufficient to teach us what great store He set by 
 the virtue of filial subjection. Three years He de'emed ample for the 
 sublime office of founding His new economy, establishing His apos- 
 tolic college, and building His indestructible church ; but thirty 
 years He required to impart to us the living lesson of subjection 
 
 * Gen. xlvii.-xlviii. 
 
303 
 
 and obedience to His parents and to our own. He came, not to 
 annul the law, but to perfect it ; and for that reason He considered 
 it essential to ratify the ancient precept of the decalogue, " Honor 
 thy father and thy mother," by furnishing us the example in His 
 own royal person. "He began to practice before He began to 
 teach." "He went down to Nazareth and was subject to them." 
 
 And here I may observe, that, as far as the recollection of my 
 reading serves me, I have almost always found that men of genius 
 have cherished an abiding love and devotion towards their parents, 
 and especially for the mother who gave them life. The gospel of 
 Christianity, of course, admits no distinction between the love due 
 to the father, and that which is the right of the mother. They have, 
 before God, equal claims upon the affection of their children. And 
 yet, I make no doubt that natural inclination, or better, perhaps, 
 natural instinct, often leans in favor of the mother ; which, for my 
 part, I dare not condemn when it is exercised without prejudice to 
 the prerogatives of the other parent. If, as physiologists affirm, a 
 man really derives more of his nature from his mother than he does 
 from his father, we need not wonder at the predilection for the 
 mother. The illustrious Father Tom Burke seems to incline to my 
 opinion, for when Mr. Froude taunted him on his Anglo-Norman 
 ancestry, as indicated in the name Burke, he replied : " It is true 
 that my name Burke is a Norman name, but it is a name that has 
 come down to me through seven hundred years, from ancestors who 
 knew how to bleed and die for Ireland. But thank God that a man 
 gets more of his nature from his mother than from his father. My 
 mother was an O'Donoghue, of Connemara, as Irish as Brian Borr- 
 hoimme, as proud as Lucifer, and as Catholic as St. Peter." 
 
 The gentle poet Cowper had a great love for his mother, and, if 
 memory serves me, it was he who penned that tender poem, whose 
 opening lines, as well as I can recall, run thus : 
 
 " Dear Mother, when I heard that thou wert dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? " 
 
 Koger Brooke Tawney, or Taney, as some have it, after the pro- 
 digious labors of the day in the Supreme Court, was wont to visit the 
 grave of his mother, regularly, to pray for her eternal repose, and 
 hold communion with her soul. 
 
 Horace Greeley, and, I think, Ben. Franklin, Napoleon, and our own 
 
304: 
 
 Washington, had a like love and veneration for their parents. I 
 need not refer to the case of Dr. Brownson, but I may allow myself 
 the liberty of quoting the following, concerning Washington: 
 
 " Immediately after the organization of the present government, 
 General Washington repaired to Fredericksburg to pay his humble 
 duty to his mother, preparatory to his departure for New York. 
 The son feelingly remarked the ravages which a torturing disease had 
 made upon the aged frame of his mother, and thus addressed her : 
 
 " ' The people, madam, have been pleased, with flattering unan- 
 imity, to elect me to the chief magistracy of the United States, but 
 before I can assume the functions of my office, I have come to bid 
 you an affectionate farewell. So soon as the public business, which 
 must necessarily be encountered in arranging a new government, is 
 dispatched, I shall hasten to Virginia, and — ' here the matron inter- 
 rupted him: — 'You will see me no more. My great age, and the 
 disease fast approaching my vitals, warn me I shall not be long of 
 this world. I trust in God, I am somewhat prepared for a better. 
 But go, George, fulfill the high destiny which heaven appears to 
 assign you. Go, my son, and that heaven and your mother's bless- 
 ing will be with you always.* 
 
 "■ The President was deeply affected. His head rested upon the 
 shoulder of the aged parent, whose arm, feebly, but fondly, en- 
 circled his neck. That brow upon which fame had wreathed the 
 purest laurel virtue ever gave to created man, relaxed from its lofty 
 bearing; that look that could have awed a Roman Senate in its 
 Fabrician day, was bent in filial tenderness upon the time-worn 
 features of that venerable matron. The great man wept. A thousand 
 recollections crowded upon his mind, as memory, retracing scenes 
 long past, carried him back to the maternal mansion, and the days of 
 his youth; and then there the centre of attraction was his mother, whose 
 care, instruction, and discipline had prepared him to reach the top- 
 most height of laudable ambition; yet how were his glories forgotten, 
 while he gazed upon her, wasted by time and malady, from whom 
 he must soon part, to meet no more." No comment need be made. 
 
 Suffer me to close this desultory essay, with one more citation, 
 which is, to my mind, one of the most beautiful and touching I 
 have, I think, ever had brought to my notice. I cannot, of course, 
 authenticate it, nor do I recall its source; but I have no good reason 
 
305 
 
 for supposing that it was not an actual occurrence at a lime prolific 
 of wonderful and brave deeds. 
 
 "I remember," says the writer, " once seeing an Irishman during 
 the war, shot, for being found across the lines. They brought him 
 into camp, and when asked why he was beyond the lines, he said : 
 * Well, sirs, I was only going to see my dying mother for a bit, and 
 I couldn't get a leave of absence. That's all there is to it.' * But 
 you are a deserter.' * No, I am not. I would have gone to see my 
 mother, past the mouth of a belching cannon. No; I am not a 
 deseiier.' But the court-martial thought differently, and the poor 
 fellow was sentenced to be shot. When he was brought to the 
 place where he was to meet his doom, his coffin was ready, and lay 
 on the ground beside him. 
 
 " Turning to it, he gave a look of scorn, and said, * You black 
 thing ! when you hold me, you'll have a brave heart to bury, for 
 I'm not afraid to die for my mother.' * Kneel,' said the captain of 
 a squad of twenty-four men, that stood in front with twelve loaded 
 and twelve unloaded muskets. * Kneel, and be blindfolded.' *I 
 only kneel to God,' said the plucky Irishman, * and I shall not be 
 blindfolded. I'll face death with my eyes open.' Then the guards 
 forced him to submit to the tying of the handkerchief over his eyes, 
 and stepped back to let the men fire. 
 
 " 'Never,' shouted the prisoner; and as the muskets were levelled, 
 he brushed aside the bandage with his arms, and the next instant he 
 lay, a corpse, on the ground." 
 
 When we see children faithful to the command of the Creator 
 and to the dictates of reason and nature respecting their parents, we 
 are instinctively delighted. 
 
 When we behold them, with alacrity and thrilling joy, seeking to 
 gladden their declining days; to sustain their feeble and tottering 
 steps; to soothe them on the couch of pain, and watch, with un- 
 wearied care, their sleepless nights; to gild, with the gold of a pui-e 
 and unmixed filial affection, their pathway to the place of peace, 
 beyond the boundaries of this fallen world, we must exclaim, how 
 beautiful is such love ! — and surely long life, unbroken felicity, and 
 heavenly recompense are the merited attendants of the noble and 
 virtuous conduct of those children who lovingly fulfill the divine 
 precept — Honor thy father and thy mother. 
 20 
 
XY. 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Apropos of the wide currency of Kobert Elsmere, we have been 
 persuaded that a word upon the work may not be inopportune. 
 
 The optimism of those who would frown down our fears on the 
 score of this novel, we should like, but are unable to share. The 
 book, in our opinion, is most pernicious. Its danger lies in its se- 
 ductive charm. It is intended to accomplish a fell purpose. The 
 authoress wears no mask, but at the outset reveals her "plan of 
 campaign." Her diction is admirable. It is chaste, terse, and 
 vigorous; and, more than all, free and natural. Fire, pathos, re- 
 pose, energy, are alike expressed with marvellous felicity of lan- 
 guage, according to the exigencies of the occasion. 
 
 Despite all this, to the enlightened Christian it is pouring perfume 
 on the violet to say that she has carved out a very poor case for 
 social and philosophical Theism as against Christianity. But to the 
 less informed, whose range of vision may not see beyond the amia- 
 bility, sincerity, and self-denying devotion of Elsmere, whose vir- 
 tues were the fruit of his own gospel, the challenge to Christianity 
 might seem more successful. Elsmere died for his idea, but so 
 have myriads of fanatics from the beginniug until now. But what 
 was it all woiih ? In what was he better, more useful, or success- 
 ful, as drudge in London, tlian as Kector of MureweU ? 
 
 Of the plot, we pronounce nothing — there is really none. 
 
 Eespecting the numerous characters introduced, it is of little ac- 
 count to speak; except that many of them make more for Christian- 
 ity than against it. Langham, the morbid misanthrope; the cold, 
 heartless recluse; the pessimistic day-dreamer, is an odd and weird 
 character; but, to be sure, before he reached that pitch of pessim- 
 ism, he began to cut loose from the old moorings, to strip off the 
 
#* 
 
 307 
 
 "ancient formulae "; to pull down the old framework of historical en- 
 vironment which surrounded the story of Jesus. The infidel process 
 is ever the same. Koger Wendover, too, must have gone through 
 the same destructive and levelling operation, ere he began to look 
 upon all religion as mockery and all worship as fanatical enthusiasm. 
 Both the squire and Langham are the ultimate product of the ration- 
 alism which Grey uttered on his death-bed, when he said: "There 
 is nothing certain but God — but what the intellect can grasp." 
 Strange anachronism and contradiction; for then God is not certain; 
 since to grasp God is above the mind of any man. Nor would Els- 
 mere, had he lived, have stopped with his religion of humanity. He 
 would end in the scepticism, cynicism, and blank negation of his two 
 mentors, who, the lay-preacher " Grey aside, were Langham and 
 Wendover. 
 
 But what is the ideal which the author gives us to enrapture the 
 mind, to captivate the heart, to fire the imagination, and to rouse all 
 the faculties into action ? It is a nude idea. It is an unthinkable 
 abstraction. 
 
 The religion of humanity is now the correct cult The dignity of 
 human nature is now preached as the modern idolatry, and it has 
 come at last to this, as a critic once said of Dr. Channing, that we 
 make God a very little man, and man a great god. Such has been 
 the course of all our soidisant reformers, of whatever time or clime. 
 They proclaim the infallible voice of the people as the voice of God, 
 forgetting that no one can give what he has not got, and that no 
 numbers of fallible factors can give an infallible product. If Brown, 
 Jones, and Robinson are individually liable to err, they are con- 
 jointly exposed to the same proneness to errancy. But one formid- 
 able obstacle impedes the reformer's way. It is the religion of 
 Christ, and its incompatible character with the religion of human- 
 ity, as it is prated of and preached about. For Christ is both human 
 and divine. Christ is God, and His teachings and revelations are 
 the words of God. Therefore, to preach the humanitarian gospel it 
 is necessary to overthrow the religion of Christ, and to eliminate the 
 divine element from Christianity. And this it is, precisely, Mrs. 
 Ward set her hero to do before she put him to the task of slaving 
 out his life for the strays and waifs of humanit3\ And what does 
 she give us ? A Christless Christianity, or a contradiction in terms. 
 
308 
 
 A religion of the feelings, the passions, the instincts, the emotions, 
 and all that congeries of blind and violent forces inherent in man's 
 unruly and sentimental nature. She then coats all this with a thin 
 veneering of pathos and sentiment, which is falsely esteemed re- 
 ligion. At best, it is but natural benevolence. And upon what is it 
 all based ? What is its foundation and strong support ? What its 
 motive and directing power ? Why, ye shades of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, it is a figment of the fancy; it is a naked idea; and upon the 
 altar of this idea, Elsmere immolates himself; an uncomx^laining vic- 
 tim for poor, ignorant, suffering humanity. Nay, it is not even an 
 idea; it is a faint memory, a reminiscence, the recollection of a man 
 — a great man, but only a man, and nothing more — the mere man, 
 Jesus. 
 
 Now, either God made a revelation, or He did not. If the latter, 
 then by what right does Elsmere assume to set up a church or 
 found a religion of any kind ? There is no right without authority, 
 and where is his authority ? Nor is it any more to the purpose to 
 fall back upon the " this-do-in-remembrance-of-me " theory; for 
 Jesus, as man, and man only, had no more authority than Elsmere. 
 
 But if God did make a revelation, it cannot be a matter of in- 
 difference to Him or to us whether we reject or follow it. And if 
 we are to follow it, we are not free to strip it of its forms, nay, to 
 expunge its very essence, and to set up, as the idol of our worship, 
 the fantastic creations of a madcap fancy. That revelation presents 
 Christ to us as God, the eternal Son of God, consubstantial with the 
 Father and equal to Him in all things. Yes; Christ is God, or He 
 is the prince of impostors. Oh, why did the author so flippantly 
 pass by the inevitable alternative, which she mentioned only to scoff 
 at, but not to refute ? Pertransivit benefaciendo, He went about doing 
 good, binding up the broken heart, comforting the fatherless and 
 the widow, healing the sick and consoling the poor, the outcast, and 
 the despised, — but all the time He went as God. He proclaimed 
 Himself to be God, and He proved Himself to be God. If we are 
 to toil for humanity, if we are to follow in His footsteps, to cHng to 
 His memory — and sweet and precious memory it is — we must re- 
 member Him, not as man merely, but as the God He called and 
 knew Himself to be. Nor can we labor to any effect by other means, 
 for there is no other name under heaven whereby we may be saved. 
 
309 
 
 Elsmere died a slave to duty. What is duty ? Wliat is it but 
 what God commands; and it is duty because He has commanded it; 
 and He has commanded us to hear the teachings of His beloved Son, 
 not only when the Son tells us to give the cup of cold water in His 
 name, but also when He allows it to be made known that He is the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God. Yes, Mrs. Ward: either Jesus 
 Christ, the Son of the Hving and true God, or a monumental mounte- 
 bank and blatant impostor; either Christianity or nothing, as you 
 say youi'self, without showing any sanction for your sickly substi- 
 tute. 
 
 The great mistake of Mrs. Ward lies in her taking for granted 
 that man has a natural destiny. Man has no natural destiny. When 
 God fii*st fashioned man. He destined him for a supernatui'al end, 
 and this end man could neither know nor attain aside from reve- 
 lation. Therefore, in rejecting revelation for absolute Theism, Mrs. 
 Ward can find no higher destiny for man than nature and the re- 
 ligion of humanity can suggest. But O, " if eai*th be all and heaven 
 nothing, what thrice-mocked fools are we." 
 
 Without the knowledge of this supernatural ead, no social problem 
 is soluble. For humanity we toil in vain. We can never gain the 
 goal, and the fruit of all our labor is whipped cream. 
 
 Besides, Elsmere originates his own religion; it is, therefore, 
 human, natural; and how can it direct men to a supematui-al end 
 above the realm of reason and the reach of nature ? No being can 
 outwork its capacity. The means must be adequate to the attain- 
 ment of the end. And all his means are maps, and charts, and 
 fairy tales, and Dickens, and Shakespeare, and reading-rooms and 
 clubs, and a poor, disfigured, human Christ, — an impostor and a 
 cheat, — a ludibrium and a mockery — an airy abstraction, — a cipher, 
 a nonentity. But where is gi'ace and the God that worketh in us? 
 
 The novel has many other faults which might be noticed. 
 
 We hate the didactic novel. It is an aesthetic heresy. From an 
 aesthetic point of view it is incongruous to load a didactic essay on 
 religion with a strange jumble of love intrigues and plottings. The 
 primary end of the novel is to please and move; it appeals to the 
 emotions, the imagination, and the fancy; and, though written in 
 prose, it is really a poem. But the essay, and especially the religious 
 essay, has a far different purpose. Its aim is to convince; it appeals 
 
310 
 
 to tlie mind and the intellect, and has nothing in common with the 
 novel. 
 
 But because it is a novel, therein lies the danger; and because it 
 preaches the religion of humanitarianism, so flattering to the senti- 
 mental side of our nature, it is highly dangerous. 
 
 In one word, the book should not cumber a table in the drawing- 
 room of any Christian family. 
 
XVI. 
 GEORGE BANCROFT'S NEW HISTORY. 
 
 Among the most illustrious of living Americans, the venerable his- 
 torian, George Bancroft, stands in no secondary station. His fame 
 is secure forever. The old-time taunt of transatlantic scholars that 
 America has nothing called history, has received its refutation; and 
 even if it had not, no European scoffer shaU ever again dare to 
 hazard the assertion that the new world of Columbus cannot claim 
 even one genuine historian. But the work of Bancroft as it has con- 
 futed the calumnies of the past, will prove to the future that 
 America has not only a history of which she may be proud, but like- 
 wise a historian justly competent to chronicle the history of his 
 country and enshrine her deeds in the pages of a work that shall last 
 for all time. 
 
 The History of the United States is an evidence of the might of 
 genius allied to the power of industry and research. It is more: it 
 is a glorious triumph of truth over all the arts of error and of false- 
 hood. It unmasks misrepresentation, removes prejudice and big- 
 otry, and shows fortlf to America and to the world, the just claim of 
 Catholics to be considered as the champions, as well as the earliest 
 promoters, of civil and rehgious liberty in this country. 
 
 George Bancroft has always commanded the esteem and admira- 
 tion of Catholic scholars. They have admired his genius and praised 
 his impartiality. His polished diction, his plain but stately phrase, 
 his grasp of facts, and his penetrating philosophy, leavening and 
 vivifying the whole into one magnificent mosaic of historic handi- 
 craft — all have won him a reno\vn which none respect and applaud 
 more than the Catholics of the United States. And if they have 
 nothing but admiration for his transcendent gifts of genius, they 
 
312 
 
 have equally nothing but love for his sterling qualities as a man and 
 as a historian. 
 
 Tnith, candor, and sincerity are necessary for him who would 
 record the history of any people or of any time. Concurring, as we 
 do, and must, with Cicero, that history is but the witness of truth, 
 we must hold it as an unassailable position, that no man, destitute 
 of the qualities just indicated, though he be a giant in genius and a 
 prodigy of learning, is qualified or worthy to wield a pen or display 
 his powers in the domain of historic record and research. History 
 is not fiction; it has no relation to romance, and Macaulay's capital 
 sin consisted in ignoring this fact. Nor is it yet a mere narration 
 of facts which, without correlation, comparison, and the explication 
 of causality and effect, are, in themselves, void of vigor and life, in- 
 terest and instruction. The excellence of Bancroft, which puts him 
 on an eminence far above the average of American historians, shines 
 forth in this, that he furnishes us the facts in the clearness of reality 
 and truth, at the same time that he shows their causes and relations, 
 with marvellous lucidity, and yet invests his narration with a 
 singular charm of language and of diction. 
 
 And all this is possible, only because of his adherence to truth. 
 Catholics felt a just pride in him, for as the witness of the truth, he 
 was of necessity their champion. As the personification of impar- 
 tiality, he could not but uphold their claims and render the testi- 
 mony of justice to the honorable part they bore in the building of 
 the great Eepublic. But lo ! Such is Bancroft as he was ; Bancroft 
 as he is, we cannot fathom. Once we idolized him as our friend ; 
 now it seems we must forget him as our foe. But " whence this 
 altered shape"? What metamorphosis is here? Is the life of 
 George Bancroft designed to supply another instance of the power 
 of prejudice to ultimately prevail over a mind naturally inclined to 
 truth ? Can it be that maturity of years has only warped the judg- 
 ment, and the light of larger experience but blinded the intellectual 
 eyes of a massive mind ? 
 
 How this may be, we cannot tell ; but one thing is certain : — that 
 a change has come, whatever the agency by which it has been 
 wrought. And this change counts most against Catholics. 
 
 Mr. Bancroft's work, the History of the United States, upon 
 which is founded the historian's claim to fame, has had desei-vedly 
 
313 
 
 an unprecedented sale, both at home and abroad. More than 
 twenty-five editions have been put forth from the press, and the 
 work has been translated into many European languages. 
 
 To meet the growing demand for so popular a book, Mr. Bancroft 
 issued a recent edition wherein the ten volumes of the old edition 
 are compressed into six, with a view, Ave suppose, to cheapness and 
 portability. To accomplish this result with sufficient satisfaction, it 
 was found necessary to omit much of the matter in the early editions, 
 and most prominent of all, because most obvious, in the process of 
 expurgation, is the striking out of all marginal notes and reference 
 to authorities. 
 
 It is insufferably hard upon Catholics that most of the alterations 
 should concern them, and that, too, most disagreeably and unfavor- 
 ably. We miss the eloquent tribute to Lord Calvert and his little 
 colony in Maryland, that graced the pages of the earlier works. We 
 are no longer told that " Calvert deserves to be ranked among the 
 most wise and benevolent law-givers of all ages ; that he was the 
 first to place the establishment of popular institutions with the en- 
 joyment of liberty of conscience ; that the Asylum of the Papists 
 was the spot, where, in a remote corner of the world, on the banks 
 of rivers, which, as yet, had hardly been explored, the mild forbear- 
 ance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the 
 State ; that there the early star of religious liberty appeared as the 
 harbinger of day ; that there the Roman Catholics, who were 
 persecuted by the laws of England, were sure to find a peaceful 
 asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake ; and that there, too, 
 Protestants were sheltered from Protestant intolerance." These 
 generous words are withheld from the new edition. 
 
 Gone, too, in great part, is the testimony of praise and admiration 
 for the sublime heroism and self-sacrifice of the first Catholic mis- 
 sionaries in America. Mr. Bancroft has always seemed, not merely 
 a willing witness, but a warm and enthusiastic lover and admirer of 
 the deathless deeds of men who renounced all and dared everything, 
 whether toil or privation, the fury of the beasts of the forest, or the 
 more savage violence of savage men, that they might claim our 
 country for Christ, and gain a virgin continent to God. The stake, 
 the scalping-knife, the deadly darts of poisoned arrows, had no ter- 
 rors for these soldiers of the Cross. For death itself in any form 
 they had no dread, but regarded it as their deliverer and rewarder. 
 
314 
 
 They shall be ranked among the noblest heroes that history can 
 ever name. Their memory is immortal, as their life was sublime, 
 and their end crowned with glory. No man has extolled their 
 exploits with a more glowing pen or more ardent praise, than 
 he whom we were wont to regard as the first of living historians, 
 — the erudite, the accomplished, and the chivalrous Bancroft. But 
 why does he suppress now that praise which once he gave with- 
 out stint ? Why does he entomb in the grave of silence the names 
 and deeds and memories which he himself, of all men, seemed 
 most eager to make, by the magic of his mind, and the power 
 of his pen, breathe, and act, and live forever in the memory of 
 men? Is he to be the robber of that renown which he indeed 
 did not give, but which he robed with brighter lustre, and 
 clothed with more gorgeous glory ? Is silence now to be con- 
 strued with contempt? Is suppression the same thing as rejection, 
 and is omission to be accounted repudiation ? We do not know. 
 One thing has the color of suspicion. Mr. Bancroft has expunged 
 from his new editions all his annotations and citations of authority 
 which appeared in his former publications. If he has changed his 
 views with respect to Catholics and the pai-t they have played in the 
 history of this country, we are all attention to know the fact. But 
 we have the right to know the groundwork of this change. We 
 have a right to know on what evidence it rests. If he has unveiled 
 any new data from the archives of the past, let him give them to 
 the light, so that " he who runs may read." But we believe he has 
 not ; we are sure he cannot. Are we to reject the fruit of forty 
 years' expeiience and assiduous study for the hasty doings of a day ? 
 Are we to spurn the labors of a strong and vigorous mind for the 
 outcome of faculties worn by age and enfeebled by long and inces- 
 sant toil ? Does George Bancroft condemn himself out of his own 
 mouth ? Speak, Mr. Bancroft, and tell us what these suppressions 
 mean ? To us they are inexplicable ; we fail to comprehend them. 
 We have always looked upon you as a lover of justice, and the 
 prince of impartial historians. We cannot harbor the harsh reflec- 
 tion that you purpose misrepresenting that religion which so long 
 you. have defended by your fidelity to truth, and of which some of 
 your own children are honored members and devoted adherents. 
 
 We caution Catholics to eschew the new editions of Mr. Bancroft's 
 history and, if possible, to procure one pubhshed prior to 1875. 
 
XYII. 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ST. PATRICK.^ 
 
 The precise period of the introduction of Cliristianity into Ire- 
 land is very problematical. To St. Patrick indisputably belongs the 
 revered and honored title of Apostle of Ireland, forasmuch as the 
 conversion of the nation as a whole is the work of his heaven-in- 
 spired and directed labors. But whether, anterior to the time of 
 the great Apostle, the light of the Gospel and the blessed message 
 of salvation had, to any extent, Ughted up the ancient Isle, is, and has 
 been, the cause of no inconsiderable controversy among the learned. 
 That some straggling rays of the genial sun of Christianity had 
 penetrated, even considerably before Patrick's time, the pagan dark- 
 ness which enshrouded the land of our forefathers, is generally con- 
 ceded. The obscurity which envelopes this subject need occasion 
 no surprise when we reflect that a similar condition of doubt and 
 perplexity affects the ecclesiastical history of Spain and Gaul and 
 Britain. Much more, then, is this to be expected in relation to a 
 country which was the Ultima Thule, the uttermost point of the 
 then civilized world; a country over whose green fields the proud 
 Roman eagles had never soared, and into which had never pen- 
 etrated the arms of the Roman Empire; an Empire, which, as St. 
 Leo tells us, had been raised up by God for the purpose of con- 
 tributing to the more easy diffusion of the light of the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 TertuUian informs us that the name of Christ reigned, even in his 
 time, in places inhabited by Britons, and until then, unexplored by 
 the Romans. Eusebius carries us yet farther back; and Nicepho- 
 rus, in his account of the missionary labors of the Apostles, says that 
 
 * The facts herein recorded are taken chiefly from Dr. Lanigan's celebrated 
 work, now, unhappily, out of print. 
 
316 
 
 some of them had proceeded beyond the ocean to the Islands, which 
 are called British. The learned Stillingfleet labors hard to show that 
 St. Paul preached in Britain; and others, quoted by Usher, pretend 
 that St. James the Elder announced the Christian faith in Ireland; 
 while one Aristobulus, the brother of St. Barnabas, with twelve com- 
 panions, preached to the Irish people in the Apostolic age. 
 
 It is, however, no sin of historical scepticism for us to regard 
 these allegations as fabulous and erroneous; for every student of 
 Irish history is conversant with the important and significant fact 
 that the early annalists and writers of the Irish people utterly ignore 
 these traditions, and put forward no claim for their country to the 
 honor of ever having been visited by the Apostles or their immedi- 
 *ate disciples. 
 
 Descending from the days of the Apostles, we find mention of the 
 renowned St. Cataldus, Bishop of Tarentum, as teacher of the 
 school of Lismore in Italy; of St. Firminus, Bishop of Amiens, who 
 suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian; of St. Eliphius 
 and his brother, Eucharius, and their three sisters, who were mar- 
 tyred in the days of Julian the Apostate, at Toul; all of whom it is 
 asserted were from Ireland. But enough of this conjectural and 
 suspicious history. 
 
 It is universally admitted that there were Christian congi-egations 
 in Ireland before Palladius had been commissioned, by Pope Celes- 
 tine, in 431, to preach to the Irish people; and in lieu of other evi- 
 dence, the testimony of St. Prosper should suffice, who says that 
 Palladius was sent to the Scots believing in Christ, or, to the Scots 
 who were living in Ireland; and it is well known that Scotia Major, 
 or Scotland proper, was then the most common name for Ireland. 
 But how, or by whom, the Christian faith was first introduced into 
 Ireland, it is impossible to determine. The only point I would here 
 make is, that if Palladius was sent ad Scotos in Christum credentes, 
 then there were some Christians in an Ireland afterwards so famed 
 for its faith even before the advent of Palladius, and therefore be- 
 fore St. Patrick had, as a missioner, set foot upon her emerald 
 shores. 
 
 The person first chosen for the great work of converting Ireland 
 to Christianity was Palladius, a deacon of the Roman Church, who 
 had already acquired distinction by his exertions to deliver Britain 
 
317 
 
 from the infection of the Pelagian heresy. " Ad Scotos in Christum 
 credentes ordinatus a Papa Celestino Palladius piimo Episcopus 
 mittetur." Subsequent to his consecration, he embarked for Ireland 
 with some missionaries, and landed probably where Wexford now 
 stands, in the territory of which Nathi, the son of Garchon, was 
 then sovereign. His early operations were crowned with success. 
 He erected three chui'ches, in one of which he deposited the Sacred 
 Books, and the rehcs of SS. Peter and Paul, and baptized many in 
 Christ. But the marked success of his labors alarmed the sticklers 
 for polytheism, and he was denounced to the king as a dangerous 
 innovator, and by reason of this opposition he was constrained to 
 quit the country, leaving behind some faithful followers to continue 
 to propagate the Gospel. 
 
 The work thus courageously, if not auspiciously, begun, was to 
 find its crown and consummation in the person and labors of one 
 whom God raised up for so sublime and grand a destiny. That 
 man was St. Patrick. That man was he whose name to-day is re- 
 vered and honored by 30,000,000 of the Celtic race diffused through 
 every quarter of the habitable globe, and who breathe blessings 
 upon his name, invoke his aid, and reverence him as their spiritual 
 father in Christ Jesus long since released from his labors, triumphant 
 with Chi'ist, reigning with the Saints in glory, and still looking 
 with earnest interest and fond affection upon the hopes and aspira- 
 tions, the career and destiny of those multitudinous children whom 
 he begot into salvation by the zeal of his Apostolate on earth. 
 
 Not to dwell further on unlearned conjectui*es or wild corollaries, 
 it is enough to say that there is absolutely no authority for the as- 
 sertion of Dr. Ledwich that the first preachers of Christianity in 
 Ireland were Britons, rather than persons from Gaul, Spain, or any 
 other country that carried on a trade with Ireland. That a foreign 
 trade existed between Ireland and other countries as far back as 
 the time of Tacitus, the great Koman historian, is clear from the fact 
 of his telling us that the harbors of Ireland were better known to 
 commercial people than those of Great Britain. "Melius aditus 
 portusque per commercia et negotiationes cogniti." (Vita Juli Agric.) 
 It is well known that communication was maintained between Spain 
 and Ireland after the Milesian colony had come from GaUcia, Spain, 
 and it appears, from certain remains of antiquity, that it was some- 
 
318 
 
 times visited by traders from Carthage and even remoter parts of 
 Africa, as well, probably, from more eastern countries. In these 
 predatory excursions upon the coast of Britain, the Irish may have 
 carried away some Christian slaves, or even priests, who did not 
 neglect the opportunity of teaching their masters. 
 
 The great work of the general conversion of the people of Ireland 
 was reserved by Almighty God for the ministry of St. Patrick, ac- 
 cording to the Irish adage, that not to Palladius, but to Patrick, did 
 God grant the conversion of Ireland. And yet, despite this adage, 
 and the unanimous testimony of the traditions of the country, the 
 universal consent of all ancient writers who have touched upon the 
 subject, together with the extraordinary reputation enjoyed by the 
 celebrated Saint throughout all Christendom, to Dr. Ledwich, author 
 of the work entitled " The Antiquities of Ireland," it remains to usher 
 into the world the audacious paradox, as Dr. Lanigan calls it, which 
 makes St. Patrick a myth, contests the fact of his existence, and 
 thus perpetrates a daring outrage on learning and truth. The argu- 
 ments put forward by this bold, historical buccaneer, are not worth the 
 pains of inquiring into, for they are of very small consequence; and 
 to a man not only miserably deficient in understanding, but blinded 
 by bigotry, and petrified by prejudice, it was indeed impossible to 
 tell the truth, and whether he makes St. Patrick a real or ideal person- 
 age, will not seriously alter the established facts of universal history. 
 Against this pitiful historian, it is more than enough to put the 
 testimony of St. Prosper, Bede, Usher, Jocelin, and all others, to 
 show that his name is mentioned, and his feast fixed for the 17th of 
 March in all the breviaries and martyrologies of the time, together 
 with the fact that many memoirs have been written and examined by 
 the numerous critics, who, with indefatigable industry, collected and 
 arranged a multitude of proofs upon the subject, and never enter- 
 tained a doubt of our Saint's existence; which belief finds irrefrag- 
 able confirmation in the number of places distinguished by his 
 name, and the various churches erected in his honor, in Ireland, 
 Scotland, Britain, and other parts of Europe. 
 
 The existence of St. Patrick was denied for the purpose of show- 
 ing that the Church of Ireland, in its commencement, had no con- 
 nection with the Church of Home, and for the same reason, his acts 
 have been condemned as forgeries. For the existence of the Saint, 
 
319 
 
 authorities the most unequivocal can be produced, both foreign and 
 domestic, which the most sceptical cannot deny to be convincing; and 
 for the unity between the Church of Ireland and that of the Church 
 of Rome, it is shown that the doctrine and the discipline of Jesus 
 Christ has run on in an uninterrupted coiu'se of ages without any 
 substantial deviation from the rules and practices of the Catholic 
 Church which acknowledges the See of Rome and the Pope as its 
 visible head. 
 
 Having said this much of the existence of St. Patrick, let us now 
 inquire what was the land of his birth. There is a celebrated distich 
 about the poet Homer which only faintly lingers in my memory, but 
 it runs something like this: 
 
 " Full seven cities claimed a Homer dead, 
 Through which the living poet begged his bread." 
 
 Perhaps it was so with Patrick, — but however this may be, it would 
 be a waste of time to examine all the opinions set afloat concerning 
 our Saint's nationality, such as his having been born in Cornwall, in 
 Pembrokeshire, in Wales, in Italy, or still strangest of all, in Ireland 
 itself. 
 
 The prevalent opinion, since the time of Usher and Colgan, has 
 been that he was bom at Kilpatrick in N. Britain, not far from 
 the Dun, or Dumbarton, or as Butler has it in his lives of the 
 Saints, near the city of Glasgow, on the river Clyde, in Scotland. 
 
 But Usher well knew that there was another opinion stated by O'Sul- 
 livan, and Dempter, and David Rothe, which his partiality for South 
 Britain would not permit him to discuss, and it is founded upon the 
 impregnable testimony of St. Patrick's own confession, his letter to 
 the prince Coroticus; the hymn or metrical sketch of his life by 
 Fiech; and the life of St. Patrick by Probus, who was chief lectui'er 
 in the school of Slane, and was burned to death in the tower of that 
 place about 950. 
 
 It is curious to note on what slender grounds is founded the 
 opinion to which the great authority of Usher gives such a color of 
 plausibility. One of the commentators or scholiasts of Fiech's met- 
 rical sketch says, as Fiech himself in reality does, that St. Patrick 
 was born at Nemthur; and having probably heard or read that the 
 Saint was bom in Bi'itain, and not reflecting that there was another 
 
320 
 
 Britain distinct from Great Britain, he, in his easy ignorance, casts 
 about for some British town to correspond, and finally lights on Al- 
 cluit, which was the Nemthur in question, now called Dumbarton, in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Again, it might have occuiTed that the name Kilpatrick gave rise 
 to the vulgar opinion that it must have been the birthplace of the 
 Saint; to which may be added a strange fable relative to the origin 
 of St. Patrick's well in the Church of Kilpatrick. When an infant 
 he was brought to be baptized; no water being convenient, the 
 priest made with the child's hand the sign of the cross upon the 
 ground. Forthwith sprang up a fountain, with the water of which 
 he first washed his own eyes, and obtained the blessing of sight, 
 having hitherto been blind. He then baptized the infant from the 
 same fountain. Then we have a rock in the Clyde still called St. Pat- 
 rick's stone. 
 
 To destroy the pretensions of the Scotch, it may be no more than 
 necessary to state, that there is not, and never was, any such town as 
 Nemthyir in Britain. It is not to be found in a best British map illus- 
 trated by Usher himself, nor upon any of the ancient atlases of the 
 country. Even Colgan, who seeks to trace up Usher's assertion by 
 a copious citation of authorities, fails to make out its existence. 
 
 Colgan himself acknoAvledges that there was an ancient tradition 
 among the inhabitants of Armoric Britain, that St. Patrick was born 
 in their country. He quotes Probus to this purpose, but singularly 
 enough, omits this pregnant passage from St. Patrick's own con- 
 fession: "My father was Calpornius, a deacon, a son of Potitus a 
 priest of the town Bonaven Taberniae. We had near the town a 
 small villa Enon where I became a captive." 
 
 Now it is needless to say that no British writer will ever succeed in 
 making out that Bonaven Taberniae was located anywhere north of 
 the Strait of Dover. So far from that, Bonaven Taberniae was in 
 Armoric Gaul, being the same town as Boulogne sur Mer in Picardy, 
 in Northwest France, and not far from the present city of Calais. 
 This town was known to the ancient Romans, and was by them Lat- 
 inized into Bononia. The word is derived from bon, mouth, and aven, 
 river. St. Patrick added Taberniae, lest it might be confounded with 
 a city in Italy of the same name, now called Boulogne, — for it was in 
 the district of Tiberniae, written also Tarvenna,Tavernia, or Tanabama. 
 
321 
 
 As to the term Nemthur, mentioned by Probus, it undoubtedly 
 marked a province in Armoric Gaul; and this is a corruption of 
 Neustria, written also Neptua, or Neptricium, which comprised the 
 extensive tract between the Meuse and the Loire, and consequently 
 the territory of Boulogne. St. Patrick was, therefore, a French- 
 man. Gaul, for a gift, gave Patrick to Ireland, and Ireland gave Co- 
 lambanis to Gaul. 
 
 St. Patrick was a man of very respectable parentage, and belonged 
 to that class of persons who were alone entitled to hold civil offices ; 
 a privilege which, in the Roman Empire, was annexed to estated 
 men. Indeed, the name itself, Patricius, signifies one of noble or 
 patrician birth. He tells us that he sold his nobility to serve God. 
 
 His father was very probably of Roman origin, as the name Cal- 
 purnos is indicative of Roman extraction. His mother was doubtless 
 a native of some country in Gaul, and was called Couches or Con- 
 chessa, the daughter of Ocbasius. She was thought by some to be 
 a daughter or niece of St. Martin of Tours, but this is a conjecture 
 which lacks likelihood from the fact that no such relationship is 
 mentioned by the best authorities on the subject. Still more un- 
 founded are the ludicrous stories of St. Patrick's sisters, who are 
 said to have been with him in Ireland, and their numerous children. 
 As to the date of our Saint's birth, chronology is aU chaos and con- 
 fusion. The nearest approach to truth is, that as he was consecrated 
 in 432, when about forty-five years of age, we may assign his birth 
 to 387. This leads to the time of his Irish captivity, which occurred 
 when he was about sixteen, or in 403. 
 
 About this time Nial of the Nine Hostages, King of Ireland, hav- 
 ing ravaged the coasts of South Britain, began to plunder the mari- 
 time districts of Gaul, and during this expedition of the Celts, Pat- 
 rick was taken into captivity. 
 
 Upon his entry into Ireland, he was compelled to serve four 
 brothers, three of whom sold their interest in him to the fourth, 
 named Melcho, or Meliac, who dwelt in what is now the County 
 Antrim. His occupation was to tend sheep, which allowed him 
 ample time for the practice of his prayers ; for as he teUs us him- 
 self, having been heedless of religion as a boy, and finding himself 
 in a miserable state of slavery, God opened his eyes and brought 
 him to a sense of his duty and sorrow for his former transgressions ; 
 21 
 
322 
 
 and thus it was that, in his own words, whether on the bleak moun- 
 tains of Antrim, or in the depths of the forests amidst snow, frost, 
 or rain, he used to rise before daylight to offer his orisons to God. 
 
 From this servitude he was released at the age of twenty-two, 
 being directed by a vision to a vessel about to sail from the South of 
 Ireland, and having disembarked upon Gaelic ground, he found 
 himself once more among the friends of his youth on his own 
 beloved soil. 
 
 Of St. Patrick's eventful career from the time of his return home, 
 — his second captivity, — his visit to Great Britain, — his journey to 
 Rome, — his studies at Lerens, — it would be too tedious and prolix a 
 task to commit to circumstantial narration. It was while dwelling 
 with his own people that God favored him with the vision which 
 probably determined his mission, and which he thus himself relates: 
 " I saw in a nocturnal vision, a man coming as if from Ireland, 
 whose name was Victoricius, with innumerable letters, one of which 
 he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it I found it con- 
 tained these words: 'The voice of the Irish.' And while reading, I 
 thought I heard at the same time the voice of persons from near the 
 wood Foclut, which is near the Western Sea. And they cried 
 out as if with one voice : * We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and 
 walk stiU amongst us.' " It was doubtless fifteen years after this, or 
 in 432, that he was consecrated Bishop in his own country and ap- 
 pointed by Pope Celestine to be the successor of Palladius in Ire- 
 land. He set out for Ireland the same year and landed likely some- 
 where in Leinster. He labored with unfaltering fidelity and signal 
 success for the Irish people from that day to the day of his death, 
 which occurred in 465 of the Christian era, and in the seventy- 
 eighth year of his age. He died at Gaul, and tradition has it that 
 he is buried in Down, according to the old couplet : 
 
 " In Down three Saints one grave do fill, 
 Patrick, Bridget, and Columbkille." 
 
LECTURES 
 
I. 
 
 THE HARMONY OF RELIGION * 
 
 DELIVEEED AT ST. BRIDGET'S CHURCH, JERSEY CITY. 
 
 The music of that mighty Voice, which, from the silent depths of 
 eternity, called order out of chaos, commanded light to shine upon the 
 rayless gloom, and bade worlds of beauty bud forth from the formless 
 void, still finds responsive echo in the human soul. The harmony of 
 heaven alone can thrill the vibrant, tuneful chords within the human 
 heart, and all earth-bom sound is but discord, unless attuned by 
 angel hands and matched to melody like the glad refrain unnum- 
 bered voices sang upon the blessed night that gave our Saviour 
 birth. 
 
 As all things are continued in existence by the principle from 
 which they sprang, so, also, as the needle seeks the pole, do they 
 tend back to the primal cause of their origin. Upon this principle 
 the harmony of the universe depends. Man marks no exception. 
 And thus the human soul, with striving and with longing, seeks to 
 work its way to the first Fountain of its being; looking, from morning's 
 rosy manhood till the pale starlight of dechning days is quenched 
 within the tomb, for the Light that fadeth never; listening with eager 
 ear for some vagrant strain of those seraphic sounds which broke 
 upon the shores of far-off time, when " the morning stars sang to- 
 gether, and the sons of God made joyful melody.'* 
 
 The poet's pathos voiced the common aspiration, when in the 
 magnificent temple of mystic song, he tuned his lyre to his own im- 
 passioned longing: 
 
 * From the New York Freeman*8 Journal. 
 
326 
 
 " There calleth me ever a marvellous horn, 
 
 Come away I Come away ! 
 Is it earthly music faring astray, 
 
 Or is it air- born ? 
 Oh 1 whether it be a spirit-wile 
 
 Or forest voice, 
 It biddeth my aching spirit rejoice, 
 
 Yet sorrow the while, 
 
 " In the greenwood glade, o'er the gladdening bowl, 
 Night, noontide, and morn, 
 The summoning call of that marvellous horn 
 Tones home to my soul. 
 ^ In vain have I sought it, east and west, 
 
 But I darkly feel, 
 That so soon as its music shall cease to peal, 
 I go to my rest." 
 
 But is it only the sound of the Siren's call, like that of the Maid of 
 Lurlei Fells, who sits upon the ocean rocks, her foam-flecked golden 
 hair streaming down the wind, as with harp in hand, she strikes the 
 chords and sings her soul-bewitching melody ? Is it the madness of 
 the moth for the star, the hopeless love of the fading violet for the 
 beamy smile of spring ? Is it " the baseless fabric of a vision," like 
 Irmo's phantom cloud, long wooed in vain by the love-lorn Thes- 
 salian prince ? Is man only a day-dreamer, and life one long illu- 
 sion ? Pale evening sees the wreath of morning faded, the enamel- 
 led years are shorn of their lustre, and the gray twflight shadows 
 follow on the noon of life, but the " lost chord " beats not in the 
 symphonious cithern of the soul, and the modulations of that mar- 
 vellous melody trembles into silence, its dying cadence into a calm, 
 voiceless, wordless, unsyUabled: 
 
 •* I heard it once one little while and then no more ; 
 'Twas paradise on earth the while, and then no more." 
 
 Ah ! what is this vague unrest and ardent longing, but what Schiller 
 calls the homesickness of the soul, passionately yearning, as with 
 strong crying and tears, for the winged Ideal, the realm of rosy joy 
 and love, glowing in the distance, where fragrant airs are blowing, 
 and where music far sweeter than the melody of ApoUo's lute, 
 
327 
 
 carolled by celestial choirs, make the harmony of heaven and the 
 golden peace of God. 
 
 But the Eternal Harmonist is not heard as man Hstens to man. 
 Who can find Him, hold Him, or utter Him ? Man stands in His 
 presence; is clothed with His light; is the object of His thought and 
 love. And yet He is awful, illimitably great and glorious. Phi- 
 losophy and science, even worship and song, are awed and abashed 
 in His ineffable presence. Still, He is not far away.* Non longe est 
 ab unoque nostrum (Act. xviii.). His breath is upon our cheek, like 
 the blush of dawn upon the cheek of day. The spiritual man be- 
 nolds His Spirit with the eye of purified faith, and worships Him 
 with the enthusiasm which only eternal love and beauty can evoke. 
 Man is a spark of the eternal Fire, He pines for the perfect; he 
 sighs for the ideal; he burns to behold the Infinite Beauty. Man 
 has an immortal part. It is the immortal that can commune with 
 the Immortal; it is the spirit that can conceive the Spirit. *'For 
 the Spirit reacheth all things, yea, the deep things of God " (1 Cor. 
 V. 2). 
 
 And when the raptures of mystic devotion transport the soul to 
 that inner sphere, just on the hither side of the tabernacle of holi- 
 ness and beauty, 'tis then that 
 
 " Earth is crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God." 
 
 All Nature's harmonies peal forth the psalmody of God. There is a 
 "music of the Spheres." Every atom of dust is a revelation of 
 God's power; every grain of wheat a token of His goodness; every 
 flower a hint of His surpassing beauty. The enchanted soul would 
 break its prison-bars and dwell in its idealized home, the kingdom 
 of the Spirit. She would drink from the crystal streams, where purest 
 pearls and sands of gold begem the shining shore. She looks out 
 upon the fields, the vines, and the flowers, with clairvoyant gaze, and 
 calls from them analogies and meanings oracular of truth and beauty. 
 In the relucent air she sees the sheen of Tabor and the glory of 
 Sinai, and hovering around her Moses and Elias and all the star-em- 
 blazoned hosts. The Unseen finds a realization. To the " inward 
 eye " the Invisible seemeth all but visible. In the midst of this 
 harsh, irksome world, there is a sweet hidden world, where prayer 
 
328 
 
 brings peace and faith finds reward. In the longed-for Elysium, 
 earth's change and grief and toil are turned into the reality of bliss- 
 ful rest, and the cruel wounds of this sad, outward life find healing 
 and the balm of consolation. The love-illumined mind discerns the 
 glory of its God in the resplendent beams of Nature; happy to hear 
 the music of His voice in the mobile elements, to see His movement 
 in the rolling storm. His majesty in the lurid lightning; glad to be- 
 hold His beauty in the breezy twilight of the evening-time; charmed 
 to listen to His whispers in the events of life and history. The 
 music that strikes not the unsympathetic ear, the celestial harmony 
 of spirit melting into spirit, fills the wild expanse of Nature, and in 
 the over-arching calmness of the infinite blue above the soul longs 
 to soar and be at rest. Earth fades from sight. The ear with 
 sounds seraphic rings. A new world is born in the heart — a world 
 that robes the Past in the hues of fancy, and gilds the Futui'e with 
 the iris-bow of hope. It is the bridal of the earth and sky— the 
 Epithalamium of the constellated spheres. 
 
 ** I saw two clouds at morning, 
 Tinged by the rising sun, 
 And in the dawn they floated on. 
 And mingled into one." 
 
 Now, Nature sings of God because her harmonies are born of 
 heaven. She makes no music peculiarly her own. Nature is a vast 
 and wondrous organ " symphonious of ten thousand harps," but the 
 foot of the Omnipotent is on her pedals; His almighty breath fills 
 her resounding pipes; His all-moving fingers sweep her countless 
 keys, and, trembling at His touch, she peals forth with trumpet- 
 tongue, a trillion tones of thunder. 
 
 " Each individual soul that lives 
 And feels and bends reflective on itself," 
 
 is conscious that from the mighty instrument of Nature no music, 
 nor one syllable of sound can come, save that called forth by the in- 
 finite genius of that puissant Artist, 
 
 ** Who rules the spheres and makes the worlds rejoice." 
 
 " The kingdom of God is within us" (Luke xviii. 21), and hence the 
 music of the heart intones our Maker's melodies, and so exalts the 
 
329 
 
 mind in ecstasy of contemplation that it fain would conceive how the 
 magic hand of the Almighty Master and divine Musician hath 
 builded, and how hath played, that majestic Organ whence the har- 
 mony of heaven sounds through the vaulted arches of the 
 Universe, and fills the corridors of Time with the eternal anthems of 
 God's glory. The Universe in one stately temple of matchless 
 beauty and divine proportion, in which an incessant and harmonious 
 hymn of homage goes up in glad, responsive chorus to the great Cre- 
 ator, from all the starry hosts and all the myriad forms of life that 
 people the wide-spread pavilion of the world. How harmonious, 
 how divine, are the appointments of the Cathedral of Creation, in 
 design and execution, in artistic beauty of arrangement -With refer- 
 ence to the final end ! Rising to the conception of the principle of 
 order, the great First Cause, who so sweetly and so strongly disposed 
 all things unto their appointed ends, and referring all things back to 
 Him, agreeably to the laws impressed upon them, the mind, as far 
 as the limited may grasp the illimitable, perceives the order, the 
 beauty, and the harmony of the whole. Oh ! my soul, rouse all 
 thy powers, and bring to bear thy most recollected thoughts, that, 
 hke the Royal Prophet, thou mayest cry: In the morning, Lord, I 
 shall stand before Thee, and I shall see. Pause then, O my soul, 
 and consider the wonderful works of God. 
 
 Let us exalt our thoughts, in fancy, far beyond the mui'ky atmos- 
 phere of all terrene existence, and, traversing the lane of beams that 
 leads to the vestibule of unctuated light, we shall rest at length under 
 the radiant archway of the Lifinite's abode, to survey with enrapt- 
 ured vision the realm of eternal life. Behold the Lord of Life, as 
 the Prophet hath described Him, sitting on His sublime and elevated 
 thi'one, and stretching forth His hand with omnipotent sway over 
 all the boundless possibilities of being. Behold Him whom the 
 Stagirite declared to be the Primal Centre of aU being, whose 
 life is essential activity, — the Prime Mover, setting all things in mo- 
 tion, and drawing them by the threads of destiny back unto Him- 
 self. In the journeys of His eternity, the great First Cause sent 
 forth a mighty movement through every pulse and artery of Time, 
 and the chain of causation extended to all created forms. From the 
 primary impulse of almighty power were imparted life and being to 
 all grades of existent things; and from the exercise of the divine ac- 
 
330 
 
 tivity resulted the outward expression of that harmony which is the 
 unchangeable characteristic of divinity, and that beauty and fra- 
 grance of creation which are the breath of the immortal bloom of its 
 Creator. From God all things proceed; upon Him they depend; to 
 Him they will return. In the expressive language of the poet and 
 philosopher: 
 
 " Ere the radiant Sun 
 
 Sprang from the East, or, 'mid the vault of night, 
 
 The moon suspended her serener lamp; 
 
 Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorned the globe. 
 
 Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore; 
 
 There lived the Eternal One: then deep retired 
 
 In His un fathomed essence, viewed the forms, 
 
 The forms eternal of created things: 
 
 The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp, 
 
 The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, 
 
 And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first 
 
 Of days, on them His love divine He fixed, 
 
 His admiration, till in time complete, 
 
 What He admired and loved, His vital smile 
 
 Unfolded into being. Hence the breath 
 
 Of life in forming each organic frame; 
 
 Hence the green earth, and wild resounding waves, 
 
 The clear, autumnal skies, and vernal showers. 
 
 And all the fair variety of things." 
 
 " To him who in the love of JNature holds communion with her 
 visible forms, she speaks a various language"; but in every mood 
 and voice she proclaims the perfection and the order of the provi- 
 dential plan by which the several agencies of Nature are arranged 
 in harmony, agreeably to the will of Him who created all things in 
 number and weight and measure (Wis. xi. 21). Law and order reg- 
 ulate the whole of the stupendous structure. The love of order is 
 natural to man. 
 
 The feeblest mind cannot fail to perceive manifest marks of those 
 tendencies called laws, which maintain the constancy of Nature, and 
 beget that beauteous harmony which pervades the world. Where 
 the child of folly sees caprice, or like the ancient stoics, an accidental 
 medley of atoms circling through the realms of space, the child of 
 Nature beholds the celestial music of ten thousand instrumental 
 ■causes, and the melodious orchestra of Nature chiming forth the 
 
331 
 
 universal chorus of creation. Every wayward breeze, every falling 
 shower, every gossamer shadow, and every thi-ead of light, is ruled 
 by the propensity of law, and that transplendent unity which links 
 aU the parts together, in the golden chain of gradation, is designed 
 by the same Hand that paints the lily and gilds the summer cloud. 
 
 In force of these all-pervading laws, the primordial elements were 
 combined and hai'monized ; the subtile forces of electricity and 
 magnetism were embosomed in the frame of matter, and by skillful 
 combination, shapeless substance took radiant form, and bodies of 
 amazing magnitude were sent revolving down the aisles of space, all 
 endowed with the same tendencies of their first elements, suspended 
 by the influence of an Almighty magnet, and all held together by an 
 indefinable attraction, which is " The golden reins of Him who guides 
 the purposes of Heaven to their goal." 
 
 How magnificent the order and harmony of the heavens ! See 
 the solemn procession of the planets, and the shining cavalcade of 
 stars, as they tread the cerulean concave, never deflecting from their 
 track, never breaking the order of their primeval march. The sun 
 riseth in his place with peerless majesty, and darts his burning 
 beams through the golden window of the east, and when his diurnal 
 round is done, he retires with unspent splendor behind the unroUed 
 curtain of the night. How beautiful the succession of the seasons, 
 and the revolution of the years, with their characteristic of Spring- 
 time bud and promise, genial growth of Summer, fruitful harvest in 
 the Fall ; ending in the gloomy desolation of Winter, when Nature 
 takes repose and prepares for the renewal of her annual crops and 
 beauteous flower for the sustenance and delight of man. Nor does 
 the system of rotation end with the circling seasons. 
 
 There is admirable rotation in the process by which rude matter 
 is received into vegetable composition ; whence it enters into animal 
 forms, finally to be resolved to earth again. The sea seemeth station- 
 ary in its busy bed, as it rolls its resistless tide against the shore ; 
 but there is a beautiful circuition by which the water evaporated 
 from the main rises to refresh the air, descends to earth to gush forth 
 in fruitful springs and streams, and, fertilizing the land upon its 
 passage, flows back again to mingle with the billows of the ocean. 
 With what nice recurvity do plants pump up the moisture needed 
 for their growth, and when their blooming-time is past, they sink 
 
332 
 
 into the soil that gave them birth. The earth bares her brown 
 bosom to receive the sun's kindling beams as he mounts from the 
 horizon to the zenith, and to equalize the temperature, she irradiates 
 the heat again to congeal the moisture into dew for the sake of her 
 refreshment. Nature abounds with arcs of beauty, lines of light, 
 circles of harmony. In her alembic the elements are mixed with 
 marvellous proportion. Chemistry reveals the law of definite pro- 
 portions, and the basic elements coalesce conformably to numerical 
 rule. Music is not the only harmony in nature. Acoustics, as a 
 science, rests upon recognized relations between sound and numbers, 
 and the melodious combinations that enchant the ear, are reducible 
 to the laws of mathematics. The prismatic colors of the rainbow 
 are subject to endless coml)ination, and as every color has its com- 
 plementary, the blending makes the perfect beam, and gives room to 
 unnumbered others in Nature and in Art.. The beautiful crystalline 
 formations, seen in the snowflakes and dazzling gems of the mineral 
 world, have their fixed angles, sides, and proportions. The science 
 of optics is based on the relations between angles and numbers. 
 The law of gravitation is itself expressed in numbers. The heavenly 
 bodies have their regular curvatures, and their shapes and motions 
 are defined with precision in number, weight, and measure. Crystal 
 jewels, rude matter, plants, satellites, and suns, every department of 
 Nature, shows forth the laws of numerical and symmetrical order. 
 The size and volume of the earth, and its laws of gravity are adapted 
 to the life upon it. The world is placed in such position that lunar 
 influence may not overflow the tides ; the planets are poised with 
 such exactitude, that relative distance has reference to size and 
 weight, and these to gravitation ; and all are fixed within the solar 
 system, so that the central sun gives light and heat, that the organ- 
 isms upon the earth may not perish. 
 
 In organic life there is a nice adjustment of the constituents of 
 the body, all coming and departing at appointed periods, so that in 
 seven years the animal frame renews itself like the eagle. The 
 human body is a chemical laboratory, in which, by beautiful 
 and wonderful process, matter is sublimated into blood, and 
 blood into brain and nervous force, so closely akin to spiritual sub- 
 stance. 
 
 The animal substance is thus linked to the intellectual and spirit- 
 
333 
 
 uaJ, and man, the crowning work of creation, thus comprises in his 
 person the vegetable, mineral, and animal kingdoms. From the 
 most perfect vital types of the vegetable creation we ascend to the 
 least of the animal kingdom, which again rises through endless forms 
 and varieties to the highest in instinct and sagacity. But the law 
 of creation stops not here. Between the highest animal organism 
 and the lowest intelligence there supervenes a great chasm. The 
 point of contact can be found in man. From the lower animal Ufe 
 we advance to humanity. Man's highly finished organism unites 
 the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and these, in turn, are linked 
 by his soul to the realms of spiritual reality, even to the invisible 
 choirs of angelic intelligence. 
 
 All angels, all men, to a C3i*tain degree all creations, are individ- 
 ualities from the pinnacle of creation to the lowermost extremities 
 thereof, united in a wonderful way to the divine Mediator, the 
 Saviour and Kedeemer of mankind, partaking of His purpose. His 
 mind, His will, and His affections, raise to God a canticle of praise 
 and hymn of adoration, a song of glory in beautiful and accordant 
 hai'mony with that which rose up silently in the bosom of the In- 
 finite, when, in the day of His eternity, He uttered His infinite 
 Word, breathed forth His holy spirit and loved and recognized 
 Himself as the God of glory who was the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever. Man is, therefore, the bond of all creation. 
 
 The aspirations of the soul and the utterances of Nature combine 
 with one united voice to teach man dependence on his Maker, and 
 communion with his God. The acknowledgment of this dependence 
 constitutes religion, and its external expression makes worship. 
 Man must worship his Creator. The noblest work of God, and the 
 crown of creation, he beholds all creatures by which he is sur- 
 rounded, caUing upon him to praise and glorify his God. 
 
 In Nature's mirror he sees the face of God. In Nature's voice he 
 hears the voice of God. By the fact of creation he belongs to God. 
 All his faculties, his powers, his energies, are the property of God. 
 He was created, and he is sustained by God. God surrounded him 
 with loving-kindness, showers benisons upon his head, soothes all his 
 soiTows. He rests in the divine arms, leans on the heart of God. 
 The end of man is the glory of God. 
 
 The laws of gratitude demand return for service freely rendered. 
 
334 
 
 What restitution can man make unto his Maker ? Quid retrihuam 
 Domino pro omnibus quae retribuet mihi ? He can make tribute of his 
 powers and confession of his praise. Man possesses mind and heart, 
 and to these is added speech that both may find their adequate ex- 
 pression. The mind he yields by faith, the heart by love; and in 
 the employment of speech to voice his faith and love, he surrenders 
 up to God those faculties which constitute his manhood, and sum- 
 mons the mute and silent voices of creation to pour forth prayer and 
 praise to that beneficent Being who made all things for man, but 
 man himself for God. 
 
 Man is Nature's lord and sovereign. The earth is his palace and 
 dwelhng-place. Her fruits yield him support; her flowers, fragrance; 
 her shining stores, abundance. The winds may not stay him, nor 
 the sea. The mountains move and whirl at his command. His feet 
 are iron; his hands are steel; his breath is steam, and his brain is 
 lightning. At his nod art lifts her angelic features, and like a bright 
 child of morning, sends her beautiful creations over all the earth; 
 science pushes back her multi-colored mantle, seizes upon the ele- 
 ments, draws the lightning from the skies and harnesses it to the car 
 of progress to be the messenger of man ; literature throws open her 
 iron-bolted vaults and opens her exhaustless treasures to the mind; 
 commerce spreads her snowy wings, and with the ensign of freedom 
 at her peak, scours the seas, and empties her boundless acquisitions 
 into the lap of his prosperity. 
 
 But as he is the lord, so is he the interpreter and prophet of Na- 
 ture. Earth is the spacious temple wherein his prayers ascend, and 
 the altar upon which he makes offering of all he is and has, to God. 
 Man is the mystic prophet to explain the sweet symbolism of Na- 
 ture. Nature's order sj^eaks to him of purpose; her harmony of 
 praise. The first object-lesson which she teaches, is that she was not 
 made to administer to man's material wants so much as to enable 
 him to serve and praise his Maker. Nature leads to religion. 
 
 To this sublime end, the Church of Christ, which teaches man the 
 duties of religion, employs Nature to assist her, and reproduces Na- 
 ture's symbolic teachings in her splendid ritual. All things she con- 
 secrates to God's sacred service, and by this dedication she gives 
 voice and meaning to the imperfect praise of inanimate and inartic- 
 ulate creation. 
 
335 
 
 And as she invokes the aid of Nature, so does she make Art trib- 
 utary to her service. It is the function of Art to reproduce Nature, 
 to give interpretation to her voice. As Nature is the handmaid of 
 religion, Art is truly Art when it is essentially religious. Art and 
 Science are twin flowers in the stem of faith. Eeligion is the soul 
 and inspiration of Art. Christianity is the light of the world. 
 
 The Church, therefore, true to her august mission, has always been 
 the patron of Art. With divine instinct she recognizes the power 
 of the senses upon the heart and character. Her temples of divine 
 worship are exquisitely venerable. The magnificence of fabric; 
 the lofty concave roof; the majestic column and stately pillar; 
 the grand arch and tapering spire; the extensive aisles; the stained 
 and decorated windows, softened by dim religious light; the splen- 
 did altar, the brilliant tapers, the smoked fragrance of incense, and 
 matchless statuary, are powerful aids to piety, and are well calculated 
 to inspire the mind of man with the solemnity and awe which befits 
 the majesty of G-od's holy presence. The incomparable productions 
 of the intellect, the divine gift of oratory, and the angelic gift of 
 song, are all devoted to the same service of the Deity. 
 
 If there is one faculty which more than another gives glory to 
 God, it is the voice of man. If there be any power of soul-subduing 
 influence, it is the power of music. The solemn chant and sublime 
 anthem compose and elevate the restless heart of man. The melo- 
 dious intonations of music by some magnetic efficacy, thrill and en- 
 rapture the soul, and it ascends, like a star, above the horizon, till it 
 rests upon those prominent peaks of prayerful contemplation which 
 rise out of the dark shadows of this under-world, and having taken 
 the boundless excursion, it beholds a kindling light, Hke the fore- 
 glow of an eternal sunburst, and rests in rapture at the very feet of 
 its Creator and its God. 
 
 My dear brethren, you love the beauty of God's house, and place 
 where His glory dwelleth. You are not insensible to the holy duty 
 of prayer and praise towards your Maker, and you seek by every 
 means to embrace the dignity of the divine service in the temple 
 which your loving liberality has raised to the loving God. To sing 
 His songs of everlasting praises, you have introduced here a power- 
 ful instrument of music, a majestic organ, whose resonant tones, ac- 
 companied by your pious chant, shall awake echoes in the halls of 
 
336 
 
 heaven. Praise the Lord, then, with glad, exultant voice. " Praise 
 Him in His holy places. Praise ye Him in the firmament of His 
 power; praise ye Him for His mighty acts; praise ye Him according 
 to the multitude of His greatness; praise Him with the sound of the 
 trumpet; praise Him with psaltery and harp; praise Him with tim- 
 brel and choir; praise Him with strings and organs; praise Him 
 with high-sounding cymbals; praise Him on cymbals of joy. Let 
 every spirit praise the Lord." 
 
11. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST— A KINGDOM OF WAR 
 AND A KINGDOM OF PEACE. 
 
 ANNIVERSARY OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, HOBOKEN, N. J. 
 
 In the history of the world the central figure is our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. In the annals of the ages, no personality of such many- 
 sided splendor shall appear as that of the proscribed Galilean, who 
 founded, not on fear or force, but on the almighty power of love, a 
 kingdom that shall never pass away. That sweet and gentle char- 
 acter compels the admiration and engages the affections of millions 
 of men, who, to-day, would die for Him, as He had for them. 
 Under the scorching Syrian sun and beneath the pale stars of Pales- 
 tine, the meek-souled Master passed along, sowing, in tears and 
 blood, the seeds of that imperishable Kingdom wherein should 
 spring the flowers of life and hope to fallen humanity. " In His life 
 we behold the path, in His death the price, and in His great ascent 
 the proof of immortality." To burst the iron bars of death; to roll 
 back the raging billows of hell; to avert from guilty man the frown 
 of the Creator and ransom the enthralled. He trod the wine-press all 
 alone, and poured His throbbing life into the crimson tide of Cal- 
 vary, that the enfranchised children of God might walk with joy 
 through the uplifted gates of glory. He speaks and all nations bow 
 their heads. The melody of His words is sweeter than the music of 
 Apollo's lute, and His sentiments are rapturous visions of a life 
 where aU is love. There is no lily in the field, and there is no rose 
 in the valley, whose bloom and fragrance are not the breath of His 
 surpassing beauty. There is no flight of fowls to their evening 
 home which is not guided by His care, and there is no solitary spar- 
 row on the house-top that feels not the shelter of His all-holding 
 22 
 
338 
 
 hand. Wherever He treads, flowers spring under His feet; and 
 wherever He stands, sorrow and self-complaint are hushed and 
 silent. All lands echo to His teaching, and He sets men's souls afire 
 as they hear, in wondering awe, the mystical utterances of His 
 mouth, and upon the sun-dried hearts who respond unto His call, 
 the unspeakable peace of God descends like showers on a thirsty 
 soil. And every heart did bound, and every breast did burn, as the 
 fascinating figure of the lowly Jesus of the Galilean lake gently 
 glided through the impatient throngs, and cast His pearls of truth 
 upon the way, and sent forth that voice whose electric tones pierce 
 the deep vault of the centuries, and still echoes from zone to zone, 
 and pole to pole, in reverberating thunders round the world. The 
 multitudes heard and wondered, as from the breezy bosom of the 
 lake, from the shaggy mountain-top, or from the silvery sands upon 
 the shore. He declared the short and simple story of salvation to man- 
 kind. The multitudes heard and wondered, but they did not under- 
 stand, for " He opened His mouth in parables, and uttered things 
 hidden from the foundation of the world." 
 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven," says Jesus Christ, " is like a grain of 
 mustard-seed." And, again, " The Kingdom of Heaven is like to 
 leaven which a woman took and hid in measures of meal." And 
 again, " The kingdom of heaven is like to a householder who went 
 early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard." And again, 
 " The kingdom of heaven is like to a man who sowed good seed in 
 his field." 
 
 The meaning of these parables was but dimly discerned by the 
 hearers of the Word, for much conflict of opinion prevailed as to 
 the nature of the kingdom which the Messias would establish. Ex- 
 cited by dreams of ambition, dazzled by the splendor of prospective 
 empire, some fondly fancied that Jesus was come to subvert the 
 existing dynasties of the earth, and, in their room, to raise an em- 
 pire, universal in extent, unrivalled in its glory, and exalted in its 
 ascendency, beyond all that glowing hope or exuberant imagination 
 could conceive. Impressed by the poverty of His prestige, the mild 
 character of His claims, and the weakness of His following, others 
 deemed Him an idle visionary, who aimed at t'le introduction of an 
 ideal kingdom, whose prosperity depended on its power to captivate 
 the imagination by the novelty of its principles, or to touch the 
 
339 
 
 heart by the purity of its morahty. This last delusion seemed to 
 derive some support from Jesus' own declaration, that His kingdom 
 was not of this world. 
 
 On the day that the noble Nazarene, the victim of hate and fury, 
 stood accused in the judgment hall of Pilate, the Eoman niler thus 
 addressed Him : '' Art Thou the King of the Jews V " And Jesus 
 answered: " My kingdom is not of this world." 
 
 Inheritors of the kingdom, who glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ, 
 need you be reminded that this repty stands yet upon the record to 
 confound those calumniators who represent the religion of Jesus 
 Christ as the contrivance of impostors and the engine of political 
 power; that it stands upon the record to rebuke, with the burning 
 indignation of a bleeding God, the cowardice and subserviency of 
 modern Pilates, and to puU down the shallow pride of princes, who, 
 for the greed of gold, or for the breath of popular applause, can be- 
 tray Jesus Christ and deliver up His Church to the malice of His 
 enemies ? Need I tell you this reply is indelibly stamped upon the 
 record of the inspired page, to comfort and console the Church of 
 God in the dark hours of affliction, persecution, oppression, and 
 apostasy; for whether she enjoy the favors or endure the frowns of 
 civil governments; whether temporal sovereignties pass away and 
 crumble into dust, or whether they be extended in the revolution of 
 events; whether " the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 the great globe itself, and aU which inhabit it, be dissolved, and, like 
 an unsubstantial pageant, faded, leave not a wreck behind"; — 
 whether, in fine, every remnant of human grandeur be blotted out, 
 and sun and moon and stars, shivered into atoms by the thunder- 
 bolts of God, disappear in the darkness of eternal night, the ever- 
 lasting Prince of Peace is not disturbed upon His throne; nor shall 
 the dominion of His followers be destroyed, nor their prerogatives 
 be wrenched from the indestructible foundation of the Prophets 
 and the Apostles, whereon they rest, the chief corner-stone being the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Before the coming of Christ, every religion was, to some extent, 
 incoi-porated with the established government. The system of Pagan- 
 ism was altogether civil, and the day came at length when the office 
 of the priest was identified with that of emperor. The religion of 
 Moses was blended with his civil polity, and without undergoing the 
 
340 
 
 ceremony of religious initiation by the seal of circumcision, no man 
 could be affiliated to the Jewish nation. 
 
 But the religion of our Eedeem.er was linked with the fortunes of 
 no nation, nor was it connected with any special form of govern- 
 ment. That religion was circumscribed by no national boundaries, 
 no conditions of race, for it was suited to every climate, every coun- 
 try, every state of improvement, and adapted to all the ages of the 
 world. That religion, finally, pleads no peculiar privileges, asks for 
 no exemptions, for any rank or order of society, but demands, as a 
 God-given right, liberty to extend its dominion, and sow the good 
 seed of the Gospel over the wide field of the world. In one word, 
 that religion is designed to be universal, indefectible, and immortal. 
 It has its rudiments here, but its perfection hereafter. Its innumer- 
 able subjects are only a distant colony of a great and mighty empire, 
 now planted where their loyalty is in perpetual probation, but one 
 day — the day of the harvest, when wheat and tares shall be plucked 
 and separated — to be translated to the parent country, that blessed 
 clime where the citizens of the kingdom shall behold the King in 
 the realm of His beauty, and shall stand, as the angels stand, in the 
 shining presence of the Prince of Peace, the immoi-tal and invis- 
 ible King of ages, to whom be honor and power and glory and 
 benediction and praise and empire forever and ever. 
 
 The Kingdom of Jesus Christ is a kingdom of peace because it 
 is celestial in its origin, and divine in its destiny. 
 
 In that memorable day when the Lord God of Hosts began to 
 upbuild His kingdom, which should never pass away, the gates of 
 the temple were shut, and the world was reposing in universal 
 peace. His spiritual kingdom, ushered from the skies, is introduced 
 upon the earth, and the states and empires of the world are undis- 
 turbed, for He i3ame not in the dread robes of might and splendor, 
 but in the swaddling bands of weak and helpless infancy. In an 
 humble village of Judea, an inconsiderable province of the Roman 
 Empire, angels, in the stillness of the midnight, announced to poor 
 and humble shepherds the birth of the Prince of Peace by the song 
 of peace and good-will to men on earth. 
 
 If we trace the history of the establishment of this kingdom after 
 the death of its divine Founder, we discover no political pretensions, 
 and no attempt at temporal aggrandizement. The forlorn and 
 
341 
 
 sorrowing disciples courted not the powerful, nor flattered the great 
 of earth for the favors granted to the fawning, nor did they 
 gather under the shadow of darkness to perfect plans to avenge the 
 murder of their beloved Master, and thus by exciting tumult and 
 sedition seek to plant the cross upon the ruins of the empire. These 
 methods, indeed, could not claim even a probabihty of success, but 
 even if they were warranted the apostles would not have chosen 
 them. Christ came not to conquer the world by violence, craft, or 
 servility. Ah ! no ; it was the untaught eloquence of Peter, the 
 persuasive simplicity of John, the steadfastness and devotion of the 
 sons of Zebedee, and the zeal, the learning, and the sympathy of St. 
 Paul, that furnished the powerful arm^ employed to extend the do- 
 minions of the Crucified, to spread the triumphs of the cross, to 
 uptear the citadels of vice and error, to vanquish the lusts and 
 passions as well as the hide-bound prejudices of a proud but en- 
 lightened age and a stubborn and stiff-necked people. The heavenly 
 character of the doctrines which they taught ; the purity and holiness 
 of the lives they lived ; the courage, the fortitude, and the resolution 
 of their conduct in the face of power and arrogance — these were the 
 only weapons relied upon by the first heralds of the Gospel to subdue 
 a hostile and perverse world, and bring it to the feet of their Master, 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven or the Church of Christ was broad 
 enough to embrace the world, the slave at his task, and the emperor 
 on his throne. It compelled not the one to break his fetters, nor the 
 other to cast away his crown. It wrought no change in men's civil 
 relations ; it neither absolved them from allegiance, nor invaded 
 their freedom ; and although the makers of Diana's silver shrines 
 might have cause for complaint, Caesar had no reason for alarm, and 
 no plea to persecute. It asked only for liberty ; it gave peace in re- 
 turn, but, like its heavenly Founder, it encountered the most violent 
 persecutions that the powers of hell could devise. Yet, while the 
 temples of Christ were burning, the sanctuary in the heart was un- 
 touched ; and when His followers were led to the stake. His subjects 
 were multiplied, and Christianity flourished though its sacred rites 
 were suppressed and its altars trodden under the foot of inexorable 
 power. So shall it be unto the end, for this kingdom can never 
 pass away. 
 
342 
 
 This kingdom will endure when the present dynasties, nay, all the 
 states and empires of the world, have decayed and passed down 
 the stream of Time, far beyond all human recollection, " She has 
 seen," as Macaulay says, " the rise of them all," and there is every 
 reason to believe that she shall see their end. AVhere now are all 
 those potent forces once arrayed against her, and bent on her de- 
 struction ? Where is now the haughty Hebrew State, which beheld 
 her growth with jealousy and envy, and which sought in \ain to 
 crush the infant Church ? Where is now that dazzling Roman Em- 
 pire, which overspread the earth, composed of so many mighty 
 nations, in the midst of which Christianity sprung up like a tender 
 shoot among a forest of aged^ and lofty trees, which have since de- 
 cayed and fallen around it, but have left it tall, spreading, and vig- 
 orous, on the very sj^ot of its origin, and of their decline ? They 
 have fallen ! They have fallen, but Christianity has not fallen, be- 
 cause it is founded upon a rock. Where is the long train of perse- 
 cuting emperors who wasted their resources, and exhausted their 
 endeavors in exterminating the meek and humble followers of 
 Christ? And where are those civil powers which assailed the fabric 
 of religion with j5re and sword, with fleets and armies, and with 
 such prodigious slaughter, that the red blood of her martyrs has 
 sprinkled the whole face of the earth ? They have fallen, but the 
 Church has not fallen, because it is built upon a rock. " And Jesus 
 said to His disciples : * Whom do men say that I am ? ' And Peter 
 answered, 'Thoa art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And 
 Jesus said, 'Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, because flesh and 
 blood hath not revealed this to thee, but my Father, who is in 
 heaven.' Fear not, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to 
 give to you a kingdom which can never be destroyed." Ah ! no, 
 my brethren, the handiwork of God can never crumble down. The 
 temple of the Ahnighty can never topple over. The thunders of 
 oppression may roar around it, and the lightnings of persecution 
 strike against it ; and the wild storms of hate and calumny and re- 
 proach may sweep and lash it from turret to foundation-stone, and 
 the hot flames of hell, upspringing from damnation's depths, may 
 seethe and rage around it, but the rock-built holy Catholic Church 
 of God can never fear and never fail, for the words of Jesus Christ 
 and the works of Jesus Christ can never pass away. 
 
343 
 
 Not all who claim to be Christians are members of this kingdom. 
 Not all who believe in the force of the Gospel, yield obedience to 
 the law of the Gospel ; not all who profess the name, carry the yoke 
 of Jesus Christ. 'Tis not enough to have been born and lived a life 
 within the outward pale of Christianity ; to have been baptized in 
 infancy and confirmed in childhood ; to have walked in the shadow 
 of the Sanctuary, borne the sacred vessels of the Altar, and worn 
 the insignia of the Christian profession ; to have been a martyr to 
 self-imposed fasts and flagellations, been addicted to prolix formu- 
 laries of prayer and ceremony, and to have worn the very threshold 
 of the door by fidelity of attendance at the external observances of 
 religion — all these, without puiity of purpose and rectitude of con- 
 science, are insufficient to constitute men true members of the 
 kingdom of the Lord Christ Jesus. Not merely the lips, but the 
 heart as well, and more especially, can pay worthy tribute of praise 
 and devotion to the Lord. An humble and a contrite heart is of 
 more value than the incense of holocausts. 
 
 The first victory which the Gospel gains should be over the em- 
 pire of our hearts ; for not every one that saith " Lord, Lord," shall 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. No ; for when once the Master 
 of the house hath risen up and shut the door, though many standing 
 without will begin to knock, and will say, '* Lord, Lord, open unto 
 us," He will say : " I know you not whence you are." Then will 
 they begin to say : " We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and 
 Thou hast spoken on our streets." But He wiU answer : " I teU you 
 again, I know you not whence you are. Depart from me, ye workers 
 of iniquity. For there will come from the East and from the West, 
 and from the North and from the South, many who wiU sit down at 
 the table in the kingdom of God, and the childi'en of the kingdom 
 shall be cast out into exterior darkness, where they shall eternally 
 bum, eternally weep, and gnash their teeth in despair." 
 
 " My kingdom is not of this world," says our Saviour. But are we 
 not of this world? and when we are summoned, as soon we must be, 
 to leave it, shall we unhappily feel as if we were quitting in exile, a 
 land where aU our hopes and pleasures are centered ? God grant it 
 be not so. God grant we may so understand and heed our Saviour's 
 words, that heaven may prove our native soil, the abode of our 
 friends and our parent country, where an abundant welcome will 
 
344 
 
 be administered to us through the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The kingdom of Christ, my brethren, is not of the world, but it is 
 in the world, and it is here for war. 
 
 The great Captain of salvation Himself assures us that He came 
 to send, not peace, but a sword, upon the earth. The kingdom of 
 heaven is like to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but that 
 same field the enemy has overcast with thorns and tares. As it was 
 from the beginning, so shall there be, until the angel reapers come 
 to glean the harvest on the day of judgment, sowers of wheat and 
 sowers of cockle in the field of Christ's everlasting kingdom. From 
 the day that the serpent of old time sowed the seeds of sin in the 
 human heart, two hostile camps, planting themselves upon the 
 ancient battle-lines, first marked around the very battlements of 
 God, have contended for the possession of the field. On that day 
 began the deadly struggle which has raged with unabated fury for 
 sixty centuries, which is raging still, and not yet closed. Hearken, 
 soldiers of the Saviour, to the tocsin's ringing peals. See the tall 
 plumes bending in the breeze, and the shining armor glittering in. 
 the sun, as the long lines are drawn up in battle-array, terrible in 
 the "pomp and circumstance of war." Hear the clash and clangor 
 of the opposing arms as the ranks rush together in the awful conflict. 
 The ground seems to heave beneath their tread, and the rocks reel 
 around them, and the earth groans under the artillery fire of hell, 
 and from the vivid lightnings of the heavens flash forth the scorch- 
 ing fires of God, while resonant above the roar of the blood-raining 
 storm, is heard the voice of Lucifer calling from the deep, across 
 " multitudinous seas incarnadine " as he marshals his serried ranks 
 against the Lord God of Hosts, and thus addresses them : 
 
 ' ' Princes, potentates, and warriors ! 
 Tlie flower of heaven once yours, now lost, 
 If such astonishment as this can seize 
 Eternal spirits : or have ye chosen this place 
 After the toil of battle to repose your weary virtue 
 For the ease you find to slumber here. 
 As in the vales of Heaven 
 Or in this abject posture have you sworn, 
 To adore the Conqueror who now 
 Beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood 
 
345 
 
 With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon 
 His pursuers, from heaven's gates discern 
 The advantage, and descending tread us down 
 Thus drooping ; or with linked thunderbolts 
 Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf ; 
 Awake ! Arise ! or be forever fallen ! " 
 
 And from that hour, when the first-born of Light, swelling with 
 the idea of his own grandeur, declared war upon the Jehovah of the 
 heavens, how many of the spawn of perdition have sprung up to 
 ravage the field of God's kingdom, to desecrate the divine worship, 
 and desolate the Church of God. 
 
 The ancient mythology pandered to the base and carnal passions 
 of man, but embalmed, as it is, with the perfume of poetry, and ar- 
 rayed in the artistic beauty of the flowers of fancy, the remains of 
 classical antiquity can supply no just conception of the depravity and 
 degradation of those idolatries with which Satan dazzled and fascinat- 
 ed his deluded followers. For confounding God wdth the works of His 
 hands, there w^ere, from the very morning-time of creation, "vain 
 men, who professing themselves to be wise, became fools, and 
 changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and serv^ed the 
 creature, rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever." In vain 
 the Almighty in His anger rained punishments upon them, and sent 
 His prophets to denounce vengeance against their diabolical deeds. 
 The insensate people remained incorrigible; they deserted the ban- 
 ners of the Most High, forsook the God of their fathers, and burned 
 incense to Baal in the city of Jerusalem, in view of the sacred fane 
 which the magnificence of Solomon had dedicated to the Lord God 
 of Israel. 
 
 In every nation the vice-bound votaries of the Evil One bent the 
 knee before abominable idols; mortal men, in overweening pride, 
 arrogated to themselves divine honors, like some of the Assyrian 
 kings and the long line of Koman emperors; and others, grovelling 
 on the ground, " changed the glory of the incorruptible God into 
 the likeness of corifuptible man, and of birds, and of beasts, and 
 creeping things *' To no purpose were the flood-gates of the eternal 
 deep opened to submerge the wicked in a might}' flood; in vain were 
 the devouring fires poured out upon them; in vain did the Lord 
 stand upon the flaming mountain, amid the forked lightnings and the 
 
346 
 
 roaring thunders; the mad multitude danced deliriously around the 
 golden calf, ere the reverberating echoes of His presence had faded 
 away among the hills beyond Sinai. Solomon, the wisest, himself 
 fell into the toils of the idolaters, and many of the Jewish kings 
 called in magicians to offer incense to the sun and to the moon and 
 to the silent stars, and to the twelve signs, and all the varied hosts 
 of heaven. 
 
 Rome, the mistress of the earth, was as noted for idolatries as she 
 was conspicuous for her conquests, and when she had completed the 
 subjugation of the nations her imposing Pantheon contained within 
 its confines gods of gold, and gods of brass, and gods of silver, run- 
 ning into thousands. The Rome of the great Csesars contained a 
 thousand temples, and in every quarter of the seven-hilled city, in 
 the Forum, in the Coliseum, and even on the highways, the smoke 
 of sacrifice ascended; and Diana's silver shrines and sylvan fanes 
 rang loud with the piteous cry of the helpless victim, and the in- 
 censed and garlanded altar was crimsoned with the blood of human 
 holocausts. The lewd votaries of Venus, the brutal bacchanals, and 
 the riotous bands of Epicurean revellers, practiced shameful obscen- 
 ities, as shown in the history of the Lupercalian, Saturnalian, and 
 Elusinian rites. The sages of the Areopagus ventured to inscribe a 
 temple " to the unknown God," but they defaced their worship with 
 the most debasing superstitions; and if some of the Academicians 
 were persuaded of the unity and spirituality of God, they dared not 
 explicitly proclaim the doctrines they believed; while the venerable 
 Socrates, paganism's proudest sage, before he drained the fatal hem- 
 lock, sought by the sacrifice of a bii'd to propitiate the godship of 
 Esculapius. 
 
 Ignoring the unimpeachable testimonies of Nature, they beheld 
 not in the summer breeze, and in the starry sky, and in the songful 
 grove, as those who are a law unto themselves should do, the God 
 " who made the heavens and the earth and all things that are in 
 them." 
 
 "For the groves were God's temples, ere maf learned 
 To hew the shaft and lay the architrave, 
 And spread the roof above them ere he framed 
 The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
 The sound of anthems, in the mountain wood: 
 Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down, 
 
347 
 
 And offered to the Mightiest most solemn thanks 
 And supplications." 
 
 But no; they beheld not in Nature's mirror the face of Nature's God, 
 because they loved darkness rather than light, their intellects were 
 obscured by the mists of sin and ignorance, and they forgot how 
 honorable it is " to publish the Lord's signs, because they are great, 
 and His wonders because they are mighty; to seek His kingdom be- 
 cause it is everlasting, and to magnify His power which extends to 
 all generations." 
 
 " For He who guides the swelling orbs above, 
 ' Spreads every leaf that flutters in the grove; 
 Breathes health and fragrance in each balmy gale, 
 Pours the clear streamlet gliding in the vale; 
 Extends the vast Atlantic's rolling floods, 
 And clothes the forest with its waving woods. 
 Guides the green tendril 'round the shady bower; 
 Shines in the dew and blushes in the flower. 
 The humblest bud that blossoms in the morn, 
 The meanest insect in its bosom born, 
 Live by the flat of that Mighty voice. 
 Which rules th,e spheres and makes the world rejoice." 
 
 Despite the voice of Nature and the volume of revelation, anterior 
 to Christ's coming, as Bossuet says, " idolatry sat brooding over the 
 moral world; the Egyptian fathers of philosophy, and the Grecian 
 inventors of fine arts, and the Roman conquerors of the world, were 
 all notorious for their perversion of divine worship, for the gross 
 error of their beliefs, and for the indignities they offered to the true 
 religion." The fair field of Christ's kingdom was over-sown with 
 cockle, and the whole world was a temple " where everything was 
 God but God Himself." 
 
 To renew the face of the earth and redeem man from the slavery 
 of error and superstition, and restore to him his lost inheritance, 
 Jesus Christ appeared, and man is guilty of his masterpiece of folly 
 in the crucifixion of his Saviour. And still the struggle went on. 
 Not till after ten long and violent persecutions, extending through 
 three blood-written centuries, did the persecuted followers of the 
 Nazarene emerge from the gloomy shelter of the catacombs, and only 
 when the first Christian emperor, Constantine, ascended the impe- 
 
348 
 
 rial throne was the cross planted in the halls of the Caesars, and an- 
 cient Kome crowned with undying dignity as the capital of Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 Nor was the end yet. 
 
 Heresy raised its hydra-head in the kingdom of the Lord, and 
 there came forth those "who spoke not according to the word, be- 
 cause there was no light in them." Some declared that the founder 
 of the kingdom was but human, like the rest of men; others denied 
 the agency of God's providence, and like the olden Sophists affirmed 
 that all things were governed by blind fate or chance, and that the 
 world itself was but an accidental medley of atoms, whirling about 
 by its own motion in the chaotic abyss of illimitable space. But the 
 climax was to come. 
 
 Crazed by the riotous fury of fearful revolution, delirious states- 
 men affected to ignore entirely the existence of a God, and com- 
 pelled the teachers of the nation to inculcate the baleful tenets of in- 
 fidelity into the minds of the rising generations. They abohshed the 
 festivals of Christ's religion; proscribed His worship, and banished 
 or guillotined the ministers of His religion. Pagan mummery was 
 substituted for Catholic ceremony, and the ritual of Satan for the 
 sweet religion of a divine Eedeemer, and the most shocking indig- 
 nities and blasphemies were daily offered to the Majesty of the Most 
 High God. In a paroxysm of frenzy men went so far as to choose a 
 prostitute for the goddess of liberty and the queen of reason. O 
 Reason, what follies are committed in thy name. 
 
 ' * Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars. 
 To lonely, weary, wandering travellers. 
 Is reason to the soul ; and as on high, 
 Those rolling orbs discover but the sky, 
 Not light us there; so reason's glimmering ray 
 Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, 
 But to guide us upward to a better day. 
 And as those nightly tapers disappear 
 When day's bright lord ascends on hemisphere, 
 So, pale grows reason, at religion's sight, 
 So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light," 
 
 To-day the conflict rages on the old battle-ground. It is the 
 everlasting struggle of faith and infidelity. They vainly boast that 
 
349 
 
 the old religion is in the throes of dissolution, and will soon be dead. 
 The seeds of superstition, they tell us, are uprooted from the soil, 
 and the very shadow of religion is fast fading from the land, her 
 name, her nature, withering from the world. Right at our doors 
 madcap anarchists and atheists laugh the Christian God to scorn, 
 and on the free shores of the New Republic, societies and journals 
 advocating, unblushingly, the ruin of religion, flourish in full-blown 
 enormity. There are thirty millions of unbelievers in the United 
 States to-day ; thirty millions of scoffers ; thirty millions of scorners ; 
 thirty millions of blatant blasphemers of the eternal God. Is the 
 enemy gaining ground ? Is the enemy to hold the inheritance, to 
 possess the blood-bought field which Jesus, the holy Christ of God, 
 has purchased for His children ? God forbid. But the sentinels of 
 Israel must stand at the outposts and on the watch-towers of religion, 
 aggressive and alert. Truth's defenders must take to their arms, 
 and rally round the cross. In the cross shall they conquer ; in the 
 cross shall they find salvation. "Let Jonas rejoice in his plant of 
 ivy; let Abraham prepare a feast for angels beneath the tree of Mamre ; 
 let Ishmael moan by his palm-tree in the desert ; let Elias repose near 
 a juniper in the wilderness ; but let it be our glory, as Christians, 
 to dwell under the umbrageous shadow of the cross " 
 
 What shall the issue be on the soil of America ? 
 
 We stand at the doorway of the centuries. Down the long arch- 
 way of the rolling years we behold forty generations of our fathers 
 in the faith ; ai'ound us the heritage they have transmitted to their 
 posterity in Christ, and before us lies the land to be possessed. 
 
 Almighty Father, while we cling 
 
 To our crumbling hold, so soon to fall, 
 
 And be forgotten in the yawning gulf, 
 
 Which whelms all past, all present, and to come, 
 
 Oh, grant us wisdom of the soul 
 
 To gain a changeless heritage. 
 
 But ere we gain the goal we have a work to do. The enemy is 
 abroad sowing cockle in the field. Be not cast down at the sight of 
 the cockle, for the day of the harvest shall come, when a strong and 
 smiting hand shall pluck up the tares, shall bring down the arro- 
 gance of the mighty and make the pride of unbelievers cease. Shall 
 we sleep the sleep of ^indolence and inaction, or shall we rise be- 
 
350 
 
 times and ^o in and possess the land which the God of dominion 
 hath given us in heritage ? " Every place that the sole of your foot 
 shall tread upon shall be yours, from the wilderness of Lebanon, and 
 from the river Euphrates, even to the uttermost seas, shall the coast 
 be yours." Let us gird ourselves for the fray, shod with the prepa- 
 ration of the Gospel, and accoutred with the shield of faith and the 
 well-greased armor of the Almighty, and holding in our good right 
 hand the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. The in- 
 vincible, the unconquerable, and the indestructible God, the victor 
 in ten thousand battles, goes before us and leads the way to victory. 
 Let us not by cowardly irresolution and fatuous disobedience dwarf 
 our inheritance and destroy our hopes. We have an inheritance to 
 gain ; we have a mission to fulfill ; we are not, like the Jews of old, 
 merely the conservators, but we are the teachers of truth unto men. 
 In proportion as our zeal is abundant, is our own knowledge of the 
 truth enlarged, our faith in God strengthened, and our religious 
 life intensified and consolidated. 
 
 Ages ago the tide of humanity divided into counter currents, 
 which to-day form the contending civilizations of the world. One 
 capital cuiTent, rising at Mt. Ararat, took an Eastern course, through 
 China, Japan, and the Moluccas, and stretching one tiny tendril 
 across Arctic snows and ice, it took root in America in the dim 
 mysterious past. That it reached the shores of this continent from 
 China seems to be confirmed by those researches which trace the 
 American Indians to a Mongolian origin. It is a stagnant, unpro- 
 gressive civilization, covered with the moss-crowned immobility of 
 ages which the consecration of centuries has failed to alter or im- 
 prove. The other stream went a Westward way, to the frontiers of 
 Asia, down the Mediterranean, across Italy, Iberia, and Germany, to 
 the British Islands and the Northern peninsula of Euroj)e, gathering 
 up the culture and refinement of centuries on its way, and after 
 great mutations and many almost insuperable obstacles, it still flows 
 on with undiminished vigor, and exhibits in its marvellous progress 
 the wonderful power of Christ's religion in moulding the manners, 
 purifying the morals, and guiding the destinies of men. To its in- 
 fluence every government of modern Europe owes its origin and its 
 stability. It laid the basis of the arts and sciences, the laws and in- 
 stitutions, which opened an unobsti-ucted path to the prosperity and 
 
351 
 
 progress of the great powers which now determine the destiny and 
 hold in their hands the fate of evei-y nation on the continent of 
 Europe. It finally swept across the Atlantic upon voyages of dis- 
 covery ; broke down all opposing barriers over three thousand miles 
 of continent, and now, having traversed the eai-th, it encounters the 
 Oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific, as changeless and 
 unchanged as it was in the dim twilight of history. "What shall be the 
 result when these streams meet and mingle with each other ? Which 
 band of civilization is to encircle the green globe ? Will the world 
 go back to pagan rites, pagan customs, pagan superstitions, or will 
 the grace of the all-conquering Gospel relume the darkness of the 
 East and claim her benighted millions for God ? 
 
 I believe the key to the situation will be found upon American 
 soil I believe that the religion that rules America will nile the 
 world, and I believe that that religion will be the religion of Kome, 
 the religion of Peter, the religion of Jesus Christ. I repeat, we 
 have a mission to fulfill. Against every onslaught of the enemy, we 
 have to hold the field for Christ. Our confines are conterminable 
 with the circumference of the globe. The land will be ours if, like 
 Abraham and Moses and Israel, we raise our tents, and go in and 
 take possession. God helps those who help themselves. Our op- 
 portunities to impress the truth are abundant, and we have the 
 truth to impress. 
 
 Under the old dispensation the peculiar province of God*s chosen 
 people was to conserve the truth till the day of Christ should come. 
 Jesus was promised then, but He is present now, and those who 
 work by Him are in'esistible in power. Belief in the divinity of 
 Christ alone can keep alive the sentiment of religion in the human 
 heart, and when this fades away, so too does all belief in the person- 
 ality of God. The sin of the present age is the sin of Adam — the 
 sin of unbelief. 
 
 To confound God with nature, or to spii'it Him away in the gauzy 
 clouds of sentiment, or the fantastic conceptions of transcendental 
 philosophy, is the tendency of the times, and the idea of that God 
 " in whom we live and move and have our being," who numbers all 
 the hours of our life and holds us in the hollow of His hand, has 
 become but a vague and airy abstraction which no longer guides our 
 knowledge or sustains our life. The pantheism of the past- is be- 
 
852 
 
 come the agnosticism of the present. It infects science; pollutes 
 literature; gives a deadly glitter to philosophy; points the epigram; 
 gives frenzy to the poet's fancy and madness to the painter's magic 
 skill; and entering the field of morals, where Jesus Christ sowed good 
 seed, it severs man from all his spiritual relations; makes man his 
 own actor, the world his theatre, mammon his god, and perdition his 
 portion and inheritance. 
 
 We stand to-day on the old battle-ground. It is the Philistines 
 against the children of Israel. The doctrine of a real, living, per- 
 sonal God is the sole salvation for society; and all believers in the 
 Christian name should join hands against the common enemy, and 
 uphold with all their power and all their strength the blood-bought 
 banners of loyalty to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 The true test of religion is its power of reproduction. We are 
 not merely the custodians of truth; we are its sowers and planters. 
 While we sleep the enemy sows tares. We must stoop down to 
 reach the people; go out to call them in. " The poor shall have the 
 Gospel preached to them." We are not peddlers of theological grain. 
 We are not to scatter truth on people and then let it perchance take 
 root and grow. We are to carefully plant and nourish it in their 
 souls. 
 
 Unfertile piety is a sham — a curse. It is a byword for the scoff- 
 ing and a hissing for the infidel. To abound in fine words, in doc- 
 trines and authorities, but to yield no practical life by which sin- 
 worn wayfarers can quench their spiritual thirsfc, is to cumber the 
 earth and be a rock of offence to everybody. Unless our creeds fer- 
 tilize the world, and our lives furnish meat and drink to mankind, 
 the curse of barrenness will fall upon us as it did upon the withered 
 fig-tree. " My meat and drink is to do the will of Him who sent 
 Me." We must live our truth in our lives. Words preach, but lives 
 teach; words prove, but lives move. The incarnation of religion are 
 the Saints of God. Holiness is the lever that lifts humanity. When 
 truth throbs in the marrow of the heart, it becomes vital and or- 
 ganic. The ancient apologetics are done away. Fruitless contro- 
 versies, barren speculations, and fine, unprofitable preaching can 
 never supply deai-th of spirituality. Every flush of feeling, every 
 flash of intellect, must reflect the faith we hold. When the truth 
 glows, burns, quivers in every fibre of the human frame, then, and 
 
353 
 
 not till then, has it claim to final victory. All can preach, because 
 all can live, and if they cannot scale the dazzling heights where the 
 learned and erudite are wresthng with the deep problems of life and 
 immortality, all can travel in the valleys where grace fertilizes the 
 soil, and where the Saints of God are daily at labor transfoi-ming 
 faith into fact and truth into life. The sons of virtue shall possess 
 the soil. 
 
 We must also put our life into our literature, for literature is but 
 the expression of Hfe. Catholics need not blush for their scholar- 
 ship, but we have to excite greater activity if we want to hold the 
 field. And we are to talk not only in the language of the scholar, 
 but also in common letters — in the alphabet of Christianity. 
 
 Education is the want of the age ; education is the watchword of 
 the century. Since the day that our forefathers came to this land, 
 they placed the school side by side with the church, and if it were a 
 question of the relative importance of school and church, they would 
 say, if you take away either, remove the church, and leave the 
 school to our children. We have not only to keep pace with, but 
 surpass, our separated brethi'en. Remember, it is a race for occu- 
 pation. The question of the hour is: Shall we fortify the field al- 
 ready claimed by the power of the Gospel, and shall we extend our 
 triumphs by the establishment of Christian schools and colleges; or 
 shall we suffer godless learning to snatch from oui- hands the fruits 
 of our hard-bought victory ? 
 
 Christian fathers and mothers, who Hsten to my voice, heai-ken to 
 what I say : 
 
 You have a grave responsibihty to perfonn. We have a glorious 
 inheritance in this land of the free. Our common prosperity is un- 
 exampled, but it is not beyond the reach of injury. If you would 
 advance the renown of your age and make it worthy of remem- 
 brance by those who come after you, educate your children in that 
 good old faifch for which your own fathers suffered persecution, 
 torture, and every form of death. Consider how easily the minds 
 of those who are coming into life are enfeebled and deluded by the 
 unworthy example of those whom they are taught to consider as 
 guiding their conduct, or giving tone to the manners of the age. 
 In such a state of society as ours, there is danger lest the love of 
 frivolous distinctions, the pursuit of vicious pleasures, the tyranny 
 23 
 
354 
 
 of fashion, and the greed of gold, should make our children callous 
 and insensible to the best gifts of Providence, and should ovei-whelm 
 the rising generation. To obviate these evils, the love of intellect- 
 ual pursuits should be encouraged, and, as the passion of knowledge 
 is no proof of the principle of virtue, a Catholic education alone can 
 afford security against the corruptions of the age, and the vices and 
 temptations of the world. Everything contributed by you to the 
 institutions of sound learning, and to promote a correct and pious 
 education, you contribute to the peace, the purity, and the glory of 
 your age. 
 
 And oh ! what a treasure of felicity you have in keeping. Let 
 your thoughts run a few years in prospect, and can you endure to 
 see those whom jou have trained up to fill your places, and whose 
 destiny you now influence, can you endure to see them spoiling the 
 rich inheritance, and then reproaching your memories ? Can you 
 look without remorse, and see them taking their places in society, 
 depraved by your example, lost. — lost by your neglect, to peace, to 
 virtue, and to heaven ? 
 
 Do not think you have discharged your obligation when you have 
 laid up for them a perishable inheritance on earth, and set them up 
 in life. Oh ! no ; God, who watches over the employment of His 
 gifts, demands of you, not only that you dedicate your children to 
 Him, but that you implant in them His fear and love, that you 
 furnish them with the only sure source of happiness, by your re- 
 ligious training, by your lessons of piety, by your example at home 
 and in public, and by your prayers with them and for them. With- 
 out this you may leave them the wealth of the world, and it will 
 only curse them ; you may leave them the rank, the glory, the 
 reputation of their fathers, but it will only render them the decorated 
 victims of the indignation of Heaven. 
 
 And oh ! what magnificent opportunities and what glorious in- 
 centives to education exist in the Eepablic of the New World ; 
 opportunities which, if they be lost, may lose to Catholicity the vast 
 inheritance so far acquired by the piety and zeal of those gone be- 
 fore us. 
 
 In our favored land a system of government has been formed, of 
 singulai- perfection and beauty. It is a system that stimulates the 
 soul to activity ; fills the mind with lofty aspirations ; moves the 
 
355 
 
 liand to develop the resources of the land, and excites the ingenuity 
 and enterprise of those who occupy it. Here it is the hand of a 
 free man that turns forth the fruits of a free soil. 
 
 We have here a banquet of intellectual elevation and personal en- 
 joyment, and we hold aloft the bright beacon of liberty, that Pro- 
 methean torch which flings its scorching rays into the darkest 
 recesses of European dungeons, melting the shackles of tyi-anny, en- 
 couraging the oppressed and the heart-weary, and beckoning them 
 on to life, to liberty, and to freedom. We have reared a glorious 
 structure, which has become the admiration of the nations ; we have 
 thrown open our doors and invited the world to come and sit down 
 at our feast. We have planted a garden, the fruits whereof are 
 sweet to the soul and grateful to the sense ; we have flung open the 
 Arcadian avenues leading thereunto, that the sti'anger may freely 
 enter and partake of the offering. 
 
 To crown all, the political perpetuity of the Union has been sealed 
 by the arbitrament of blood. No rebellious hand shall again be 
 raised in sign of its destruction. And now no more the sound of 
 arms ; no more the tramp of hostile columns, the crash of cannon, 
 the smoke of guns, and the din of fratricidal strife ; no more of silent 
 homes, funereal villages, weeping widows, and wailing oi*phans ; no 
 more of war, O God, no more ; — but give us peace. 
 
 This sentiment found passionate voice in the Capitol at Washing- 
 ton when the war-scarred veterans of battle were returning to their 
 homes, flushed with victory and triumph. Their tattered ensigns 
 fluttered in the breeze ; their perforated flags floated from every line 
 and column as they moved along — the boys from Massachusetts, 
 and the boys from Pennsylvania, and from the Ohio, the Wabash, 
 and the far-off Missouri. On they went, rank to rank, column to 
 column, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, and from a million 
 throats went up the shout, — huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 But are our institutions to continue, or shall they suffer the fate of 
 the Kepublics gone before and be blotted out forever ? Are we to 
 don the robes of poHtical martyrdom, and take our place among the 
 proscribed and fallen nations of the earth ? Are the seeds of decay 
 and death planted within our vitals, awaiting only the blossoming 
 and the fruit ? Are tares springing up among the wheat ? 
 
 History deprecates the inroads of Alaric and Genseric upon the 
 
356 
 
 monumental glory of ancient Rome; but what is the devastation 
 which they wrought compared with the destruction of a vast system 
 erected for the security of human happiness and liberty. 
 
 Patriotism is a part of man's nature at the first dawning of intel- 
 ligence. It is woven in his closest fibres. At home it is his glory 
 and pride; when abroad, a wanderer in exile, it rises before him a 
 spiritual oasis in the desert of despairing thought — an angel whis- 
 pering hope and comfort to the lonely soul. But patriotism without 
 religion cannot survive. Nations, like individuals, must be trained for 
 freedom, for 
 
 " 111 fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 
 
 The children of Abraham, under the direction of their great 
 leader and law-giver, commenced that ever-memorable journey to- 
 wards the land of promise. But, though they had seen the river 
 turned into blood; though the sea had rolled back and they had 
 walked in its midst on dry land; though they had beheld the cloud 
 by day and the pillar of fire by night, and had heard the voice of 
 the Almighty speaking in the thunder, yet, when confidence in the 
 future should have entirely possessed them, at the first temporary 
 inconvenience, they mui'mured and rebelled; they longed for the 
 waters of the Nile and the flesh-pots of Egypt, and desired to return 
 to the land of bondage. How could such vacillating creatures ex- 
 pect to be the founders of a new State ? God, therefore, suffered 
 them to die by the wayside, and raised up a new generation to drive 
 out the Canaanites, and take possession of the land of promise. 
 
 But he who cherishes the faith made manifest in that Revelation 
 which the Creator has made to His creature ; he who takes for his 
 standard the lofty morality which it teaches, cannot fail to be a good 
 Christian and a good citizen; and if apples of gold should be set in 
 pictures of silver, to please the eye, the great truth, that religion 
 and patriotism are one and inseparable, should be written upon the 
 memories of the American people, to be held in everlasting remem- 
 brance. Not in the education of the schools alone, should a man be 
 trained ; a man may be a scholar and yet may be a slave. Re- 
 ligion and morality are the support of good government; they give 
 security and stability to the State and motion to the wheels of civil- 
 ization. 
 
357 
 
 " We should, therefore, move, not like a stream meandering through 
 the meadow, which is turned aside by every trifling obstacle; nor 
 yet like the mountain torrent, which sweeps away everything in its 
 course and leaves a rocky and dusty channel in its track; but like 
 the great ocean itself, that emblem of power, which in the calmest 
 moments still heaves its resistless waters to the shore, and purifies 
 itself by its own operation." So our country, supported by religion, 
 shall not, like the meadow brook, be turned aside from the path of 
 duty by any temporary danger from demagogues or false teachers 
 sowing cockle in the land; nor shall it, like the mountain torrent, 
 rush madly forward in a wild crusade of mistaken libei-ty; but she 
 shall be like the mighty ocean in a calm, rolling a resistless tide, and 
 fertilizing the seeds of Gospel freedom; as that ocean furnishes with 
 water the clouds which spread over the whole heavens, to be dis- 
 tilled in the gentle dew and refreshing, rain which invigorate the 
 earth. 
 
 Cling, then, my brethren, to the old faith, and rally round the old 
 religion. It was a wise maxim of Lord Bacon: " State super mas an- 
 tiquas et ambulate in eis " — Adhere to the old faith, the faith of your 
 fathers, and the faith that has come down to you wet with the blood 
 of martyrs and consecrated by the blood of Jesus Christ. Here you 
 are in a goodly heritage, but before you is the land to be pos- 
 sessed. Every land that the sole of your foot shall tread shall be 
 yours. You are to claim the American continent for Christ. Be 
 earnest, be faithful, be practical, be true, and your standards mil 
 never trail in the dust, and the Church of God will realize her ideal 
 of universal occupation, and as the sun flings his golden showers on 
 every ripening harvest, so shall the grace of the Gospel light up our 
 land and 
 
 " Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
 And like a lane of beams athwart the sea." 
 
 And the long dream of the ages will be fulfilled. And the position 
 of the Catholic Church among the nations and her inheritance of the 
 truth will be everywhere justified and acknowledged. And the 
 Christian of the three thousandth century shall behold his mother 
 extend her sway over eveiy inch of American soil by the indefeasible 
 right of moral occupation. And he shall behold a land blooming 
 
358 
 
 like a Elim and Eden, a paradise of old, where waving palm-trees 
 grow and wells of living water perennially spring. And he shall see 
 a government imbued with Christian faith, and a people devout and 
 reverent before the name of God. And streams of knowledge flash- 
 ing from Christian schools, in the garden of the Lord, in the world's 
 last and greatest civilization. 
 
III. 
 
 IRELAND— PAST AND PEESENT. 
 
 DELIVERED AT ST. MARY'S HALL, EAST ORANGE, N. J. 
 
 The following authorities have been consulted as to facts: Gir- 
 aldus Cambrensis, "Expuguatio et Topographia "; " Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis Eversus," by Dr. Lynch; "Apologia pro Hiberuia," Auctore 
 Stephano Vito, a refutation of Gerald Barry; McGheoghegan and 
 Mitchell's Hist, of Ireland; Moore's Hist, of Ireland; O'Halloran's 
 Hist, of Ireland; Miss Cusack's " Case of Ireland Stated"; " Parnell 
 Movement," by T. P. O'Connor; Lecky's '* Leaders of Public 
 Opinion "; " The Four Masters' Annals," by J. O'Donovan; " Studies 
 on Contemporary Ireland," by the Abbe Pen'aud; Lanigan's Ecclesi- 
 astical History; Lingard's Hist, of England; Greene's Hist, of Eng- 
 land; Sullivan's "New Ireland"; Duffy's "Four Years of Hist."; 
 Mitchell's "Jail Journal"; Todd's "Wars of the Irish and Danes"; 
 O'Curry's " Antiquities," and many others of equal authority. 
 
 In the emerald seas that roll eternally from Albion and Caledonia — 
 
 ' * Caledonia, stern and wild, 
 Meet nurse of a poetic child '* — 
 
 and dimly distant from their rugged shores, stands an island sung in 
 song and famed in story. By the Greeks it was named leme — which, 
 by transposition of letters, becomes Ii*ene, meaning peace — by the 
 Romans it was called Scotia, or Hibemia, and by the Celts them- 
 selves it was called Erin, or Eri.* 
 
 It is the home of the celebrated Celt. It is the fairest patch of 
 earth ever flung by the Creator out of the windows of God's heavens. 
 
 * O'Flaherty and^others give it the ancient name Ogygia. 
 
360 
 
 On the face of the Ahnighty's green footstool there is no land so 
 green. Nowhere is the sky more soft, the air more blithe, the sun 
 more mellow, than the sky that smiles, the air that blows, and the 
 sun that shines upon this verdant, sea-locked isle. For when the 
 day-god, rejoicing in his strength, streams up the valleys, and rolls 
 away the blue haze from the mountain-tops, all nature is aglow with 
 a congenial gladness. ^' hen the early flowers of spring-time show 
 their heads above the humid soil, and the enamelled meads are 
 lighted up with the ineffable radiance of the noontide's golden 
 showers, the bewitching beauty of the landscaj^e precludes all ordi- 
 nary expressions of delight. The heather blooms upon the hillside ; 
 the rose blushes in the valley; the birds tunefully carol in every 
 grove and glen. Nature has blessed the ancient isle. 
 
 Her emerald shores are kissed by the crested waves of the blue 
 Atlantic, and the ceaseless song of the surging ocean makes undying 
 music along her romantic coast and matchless harbors. The rugged 
 and awe-inspiring grandeur of her mountain scenery is unsurpassed; 
 her plains and valleys smile in pastoral beauty; her lordly rivers roll 
 with majestic outflow to the sea; her soil groans with fertility and 
 blooms in plentiful profusion with tree and shrub, plant and flower, 
 and endless variety of vegetation. 
 
 Ah ! would thou wert more strong, at least less fair, 
 
 Home of the lofty, and the moss-clad tower ! 
 To hail whose strand, to breathe whose genial air, 
 
 Is bliss to all who feel of bliss the power 
 To look upon whose mountains in the hour 
 
 When thy sun sinks in glory, and a veil 
 Of purple flows around them, would restore 
 
 The sense of beauty where all else might fail. 
 
 In this favored land, this paradise of earth, this Ultima Thule of 
 the Eomans. there dwelt, in pre-Christian times, a Druidical people, 
 simple, upright, patriarchal. Their religion was an imposing Pan- 
 theism, for their god dwelt in the groves, and they found " books in 
 the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 Each tawny chief might address his followers in sentiments similar 
 to tliose contained in the exiled Duke's philosophy: 
 
 " Now my co- mates and brothers in exile, 
 Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
 
361 
 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
 The season's difference; as the icy fang 
 And churlish ch^ing of the winter's wind 
 Which, when it bites and blows upon my body. 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say. 
 This is no flattery." 
 
 But whatever their sentiments, and whether or not they knew the 
 " penalty of Adam," they dwelt in peace and order. Their govern- 
 ment was tribal, or clannish; propei-ty was held in common, and in 
 laws, language, customs, and literature, they bore strong affinity to 
 the nations of the East, for it was supposed they came from the land 
 of the palm, the citron, and the olive, where the sun, shining in his 
 strength, poui's forth his burning beams through the golden windows 
 of the Orient. 
 
 It is neither to be expected nor desired, that in a discussion of so 
 brief a character as that which now engages attention, anj^ attempt 
 should be made to enter upon vexed questions concerning the origin 
 and the antiquity of the Irish race. The labors of erudite antiqua- 
 rians like O'Curry, Donovan, Connellen, Petrie, and others, have done 
 much to dispel the haze that envelopes the early history of this admit- 
 tedly ancient people; and, doubtless, future research by eminent 
 scholars, whose love of study and whose patriotism shall impel them 
 to the arduous undertaking, will reveal to the world far more than 
 has ever been suspected would be known of the character, customs, 
 civilization, and origin of the interesting race whose country Ptolemy 
 described, Strabo named, and the world-conquering Romans beheld 
 from afar, but never visited. No country in the world, perhaps, offers 
 so vast a field and so rich a treasure to the antiquary. But the his- 
 tory of Ireland remains to be written. 
 
 It is within grounds of plausible probabiHty that the original 
 home of the Irish was among the Aryan and Iranian races of the 
 East. On the high plateau of Irania, after the " language of the 
 whole earth was confounded, and the Lord had scattered the 
 sons of men abroad upon the face of all countries " (Gen. xi. 9), 
 the stream of humanity began to flow, and the sons of Japeth 
 stretched all the way from Persia to the Crimea, and from Judea to 
 
362 
 
 the Pillars of Hercules, and even to the forests of Germany. De- 
 scended from Gomer, the son of Japeth (Gen. x.), they rapidly 
 grew into a powerful people, known to history as the Cimme- 
 rians of remote antiquity, the Cimbri of Caesar and Tacitus, and 
 the Celts of more modern communities. They were a brave, 
 hardy, resolute, energetic race Westward, following the track of 
 the setting sun, they came, a seething wave of the human family, 
 seeking broader acquisitions and athirst of conquest. From Central 
 Asia and Armenia to the forest regions north of the ^gean and the 
 Black Sea, they extended their excursions; and down the Mediter- 
 ranean to Sicily, Candia, and Greece, they spread with marvellous 
 rapidity, and thence to France, Spain, and the islands of the West- 
 ern ocean.* To Erin came one segment of this migratory people, 
 where they rested, and for centuries remained in peaceful and un- 
 disturbed possession of their sea-girt and ocean-guarded home. 
 Here lived and worshipped a primeval people, and the hardy vigor 
 of their manhood still exists in the splendid vitality of the Celtic 
 population of the Western Islands. And it was the worship of the 
 people which doubtless inspired the genius of their church archi- 
 tecture, as it subsequently appeared. For what were the great and 
 lofty vaults of their churches; " the countless delicate columns, 
 spreading, as they rose, into branching bows and forming sweeping 
 arches overhead; the finely-tapered spire, piercing the clouds of 
 heaven and adorned with flowers and foliage cut in stone, and with 
 fantastic statuettes of matchless beauty," but symbols borrowed from 
 the wild oak forests of the country, to which a spiritual significance 
 had been given when the island, through St. Patrick, had been con- 
 secrated to the worship of Almighty God ? f And what was " the 
 mysterious and awe-inspiring light, softened and toned till it wears 
 the guise of another world; and deftly wrought with branch-work of 
 stem and leaf and flower, through which the sunbeams stole with 
 magical effect and indescribable charm," but a feeble attempt to 
 transfer to the purposes of religion something of the majesty and 
 beauty of those grand primeval forest sanctuaries of the ancient 
 Druids ? But this speculation is by the way. 
 
 A brilliant but hostile writer in the North American Review, for 
 
 * Rawlinson, " Origin of Nations." 
 
 f Montalembert's " Monks of Jthe^West." 
 
363 
 
 1841, observes: " Ireland, unfortunately, found no Caesar to subdue, 
 no Agricola to colonize, no Tacitus to describe her. No Roman ever 
 planted a hostile foot upon her shores; and she went on from cen- 
 twry to century in isolated obscurity, with the poor consolation of 
 some after claims to learning and virtue, too often a bjnvord for 
 ridicule and doubt." 
 
 It is possible these claims have evoked ridicule, but it is the ridi- 
 cule of prejudice and ignorance, and it subjects to the scorn of aU 
 enlightened men, not its objects, but its authors. Let us, for a mo- 
 ment, hft the veil from the son'ow-crowned queen of the ocean, that 
 we may trace in her countenance the source of those tears which, 
 like pearls, dew-dipped and ^n-kissed, shine in eyes that sparkle 
 through the mist of grief, and look forward with a hopeful happi- 
 ness founded upon an unshaken trust in God, the ultimate triumph 
 of justice and the restoration of the right. 
 
 The earliest, or Druidical, inhabitants of Ireland were gifted by 
 nature with splendid endowments. Of fine form and physique, com- 
 manding mien and visage, superb stature, keen, active, and intelli- 
 gent, they were worthy descendants of that proud Phoenician stock 
 from which they originally sprang. Tacitus remarks in his life of 
 Julius Agricola, that the harbors of Ireland were better known in 
 the line of commerce to commercial people than those of Britain; 
 and Probus, in his life of St. Patrick, descanting upon the com- 
 mercial activity of the ancient Irish, alludes to the continual mer- 
 cantile intercourse between tlie people of Gaul and those of Ireland; 
 to which circumstance, indeed, is the country indebted for its first 
 acquaintance with its splendid Apostle, St. Patrick. What Caesar 
 remarks in his Commentaries of the Druids of Britain, that they 
 might claim the praise of civilization in comparison with the inhabit- 
 ants of other western nations (De Bello Gallico, p. 76), could not 
 extend, in a depreciatory sense, to the Irish, as the evidence of Taci- 
 tus demonstrates. The people of the green isle had indisputably 
 made appreciable advancement as far back as Caesar's day, and even 
 long before, as the research of O'Donovan shows, concerning the 
 reign of Ollaf FoUa, 900 b.c. 
 
 Like all pastoral people, they rejoiced in the freedom of their 
 simple life. On every side clustered beauties which art could not 
 imitate, and which the hand of the invader had not yet spoiled. In 
 
364 
 
 a mild temperature and under a serene sky, they tilled a grateful and 
 luxuriant soil, which yielded a meet reward to their industry and 
 secured them a competence. Nor were they unskilled in the art of 
 agriculture, or in the mechanical employments, as far as their simple 
 necessities might be supposed to favor invention. To the stubborn 
 portions of the glebe they made application of fertilizers; they cul- 
 tivated corn in abundance ; constructed commodious habitations for 
 shelter; wove their own raiment; fashioned textile fabrics in variety, 
 and manufactured such implements of household service as their 
 needs and exigencies demanded. Even so generous a hater of all 
 things Irish as Giraldus Cambrensis, bears ungrudging testimony to 
 their proficiency in the arts of the times, though, indeed, as he says 
 himself, he " struck a weak-toned lyre " and " used a feeble pen." 
 In the common course of things, as Giraldus observes, mankind pro- 
 gresses from the forest to the field, from the field to the town, and 
 from the town to the social condition of citizens; but at this period 
 of theii* existence, being averse to civil institutions, the Irish had 
 not yet advanced beyond the rusticity of purely bucolic life. They 
 had, however, natural gifts of an order so excellent that they had 
 learned to penetrate into the mysteries of the wonderful art of 
 music, in which they were incomparably more skillful than neigh- 
 boring nations. The measured modulations, the sweet harmony and 
 the gay and lively tones of their music helped to soothe them in 
 sorrow, relieve them in toil, and tranquillize them in trouble and 
 care. 
 
 They were, likewise, a warlike people, and after the gifts of the 
 gods, their greatest glory was in the field, brandishing the battle-axe, 
 wielding the spear, or throwing the dart. This militant disposition, 
 whether inherited from martial ancestors, or acquired from repeated 
 action in self-defense, was often turned to disastrous account among 
 themselves. Thus, one petty chieftain implacably warred against 
 another, and one tribe or faction found fiendish delight in going 
 forth 
 
 ' ' To cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war " 
 
 upon some unhappy, unsuspecting neighbor. It is needless to re- 
 mark that the love of a generous melee is an Irish characteristic 
 still. But "even their failings leaned to virtue's side"; for if his 
 
365 
 
 impetuous nature speedily bore him inito altercation, the Irishman, 
 like Brutus, 
 
 " Carried anger as the flint bears fire ; 
 Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark 
 And straight is cold again." 
 
 Quick to avenge a personal affront, and unsparing in chastise- 
 ment upon a foe, he was magnanimous in victory, and his ready 
 sympathies always ran to the oppressed and the weak. The senti- 
 ment of the modern poet was his own : 
 
 " I know that the world, that the great big world, 
 
 From the peasant up to the king, 
 Has a different tale from the tale I tell, 
 
 And a different song to sing. 
 But for me, and I care not a single fig 
 
 Whether they say I'm wrong or right, 
 My heart will beat, while it beats at all. 
 
 For the under dog in the fight." 
 
 They were strong and ardent in their domestic attachments, but 
 had adopted the custom of fosterage, so graphically described in 
 Gerald Griffin's invasion. An open-handed hospitality was chai-- 
 acteristic of their homes, and no crime in their calendar was 
 deemed more atrocious than the refusal to harbor the harborless 
 and entertain the wayfarer. This commendable trait of character 
 has never been excelled in the conduct of any nation, and could 
 be exercised so lavishly only by a generous and warm-hearted 
 people, who were not oppressed by opulence, as theu' riches con- 
 sisted chiefly in the extent of their pastures and the number of their 
 flocks. A keen and sagacious philosopher has remarked that those 
 lineaments which attest distinctively the national cast of tempera- 
 ment and qualities of disposition, are ineffaceable, despite all out- 
 ward mutation and influence. Be this as it will, the master passion 
 of the Irish heart to-day is of the same turn it took in the nation's 
 infancy, for warmer good-fellowship, more cordial conviviality (I use 
 the term in its best sense), than that of the Irishman is not discover- 
 able under the stars. 
 
 Among aU theu* various predispositions of mind, none, perhaps, 
 was either so strong or so obvious as that which contributed to the 
 
366 
 
 facility of their conversion to the faith of Christianity. A deep re- 
 ligious instinct was ingrained in their character, which moulded 
 and attempered the whole tenor and drift of their lives. They were 
 addicted to idolatry, and Lingard tells us, on the authority of Usher 
 and Ware, that they worshipped under different appellations the 
 same gods almost as the Greeks and the Komans. It is to be pre- 
 sumed, that he means that the gods adored by both represented, 
 under different names, the same ideas of the mind or passions of 
 the heart. It merits observation in passing, that a few fancies and 
 feelings which have given origin to different idolatries, are those 
 which operate on the mind everywhere, such as power, fear, love, 
 lust, and others ; and hence there is always a singular correspond- 
 ence of ideas among separate nations as to the character of their 
 divinities. The 'Scandinavian Thor squares with the Roman thun- 
 derer Jove. Comparative mythology furnishes a chain of corre- 
 spondence which is all but endless.* 
 
 Like all Druids, the oak they regarded with special reverence, 
 and the monarch of the forest was, owing to its firmness and stabil- 
 ity, considered an appropriate emblem of Deity. 
 
 At the solemn midnight hour, as the moon shimmered on the 
 tremulous leaves, and the night-wind moaned through the heavy 
 foliage, they sought the gloomy caverns of the forest ; and in the 
 sublime solitude that enwrapt the sylvan scene, the trembling votary 
 preferred his petition to the invisible Powers above and apprehen- 
 sively awaited the response. 
 
 Whether they gathered beneath the dark shadows of their groves 
 to catch only a dim and distant glimpse of their fire-god through the 
 lonely vista, or whether they reverently viewed the sacred flame 
 ascending from the lofty round-towers, or whether in religious ob- 
 servance they met to listen to the songs of their bards, the chronicles 
 of their scalds, or the incantations of their ministering priests, the 
 Druids, they were always governed, animated, permeated by ideas 
 of the unearthly, the supernatural, the divine. The weii'd music, 
 the deep pathos, the solemn melancholy, the magic genius, and the 
 martial spirit of the bards and Druids, all closely interwoven with 
 religion, had irresistible attractions for the Irish people. 
 
 Such was the Ireland of the olden days, before the day-star of 
 
 * See Max Muller and Keightley, 
 
367 
 
 Christianity had dawned upon the Island. Then, how marvellous 
 the change, unexampled in the annals of histoiy. 
 
 When in the year 432, through her glorious Apostle, St. Patrick, 
 the light of divine revelation was borne to her shores, and the ban- 
 ners of the cross were uj^raised on every hiQtop and in every valley, 
 what an inspiring spectacle was presented to the eyes of men ! Then 
 began the morning-prime of faith and the golden dawn of learning 
 upon the sea-girt isle. God seemed to prepare her a habitation for 
 civilization and religion when the terrible tempest of destruction 
 had gathered around the seven-hilled city of the Ciesars, and the bar- 
 barian hordes had overswept the continental provinces from the 
 Rhine and Danube to the Arno and the Tiber. Safeguarded by her 
 insular situation, Ireland felt not the shock of invasion and the throes 
 of war, and her sheltering shores afforded a secure refuge for the 
 proscribed civilization of Europe. 
 
 And before the grand Apostle closed his weary eyes and fell asleep 
 in Christ, the brightest angelic virtues found a home on eai-th. The 
 sweet incense of prayer from hosts of innocent hearts was daily 
 wafted on the morning air unto the high heavens of God. Like the 
 rivers of paradise, that flow noiselessly, like the sap of ancient 
 mighty trees that grow silently, the dew of divine grace feU upon 
 grateful soil in unseen showers, and forthwith the land was blessed 
 with fruitfuhiess. Then, hearts glowing with devotion evoked a 
 spirit of religion that spread, like the fire of ancient Tara, like 
 lightning through the land. Never before, perhaps, was such a con- 
 cert raised to heaven as that which ascended to God from the 
 banks of the streams, from the sides of the rock, and from the depths 
 of the forest glade, when tlie newly redeemed intoned with glad- 
 some voice the hymn of prayer and gratitude and praise to Him 
 who dwelleth upon high. The words of Montalembeii are applicable 
 here : " The Church of God may have known days more resplendent 
 and more solemn, but I know not if she ever breathed forth a charm 
 more touching and more pure than in the early spring-time of 
 monastic life. Christian vuiue, watered by the spirit of penitence, 
 began to bud everywhere. Everywhere faith seemed to blossom like 
 flowers after a long winter ; everywhere moral life revived and 
 budded like the verdure of the forest," and everywhere, we may 
 add, under the ancient arches of Druidical forests to the melody of 
 
368 
 
 the murmnrmg waters and the singing of the breeze, was celebrated 
 the fresh betrothals, the immortal marriage of the Irish Catholic 
 Church and her spotless Spouse, Jesus Christ. Purity, justice, truth ; 
 chivalry, bravery manhood ; honor, peace, domestic affection ; a 
 deeper reverence for holy things, a love for the beauty of God's 
 house and the place where His glory dwelleth ; ardent devotion to 
 the divine Sacraments and an abiding and inextinguishable conse- 
 cration to the faith of Christ, — these were the bright flowers of 
 virtue which sprang in profusion from the prolific stem of Christian- 
 ity which found such congenial nourishment in the soil of Ireland. 
 The glowing and enthusiastic praise of the Psalmist befits Ireland's 
 spiritual regeneration : " The river of God is filled with water. Thou 
 preparest their corn ; Thou makest it soft with showers ; Thou 
 blessest the springing." As soon as the potent voice of Patrick had 
 broken the spell of superstition that enchained her in its thrall, 
 telling her of the one God in tliree persons, symbolized by the green 
 trefoil that sprouted from her breast, Ireland hurled down her idols, 
 fell at the feet of Jesus Christ, and joyfuUy yielded up to God the 
 fire of her intellect and the strong love of her young and fervent 
 heart. Patrick found Ireland pagan, and in less than a century it 
 had become Christian without the shedding of a di'op of blood. The 
 day-star of faith rose upon her, not in cloud and tempest, but light 
 and gently springing, like the birth of dawn upon a summer's 
 morning. Along the road run by other nations to the goal of faith, 
 the path is often marked by the ruby drops of blood shed by the 
 intrepid heralds of the Gospel, No blotch of blood ensanguined 
 Ireland's path to Christ, for it is strewn and garlanded with flowers 
 of grace and laurels of seraphic love. 
 
 Then it was that the fire of divine faith burned brightly at every 
 fane, and the golden cross gleamed from every steeple. Then the 
 matin song of the monks and anchorites resounded throughout the 
 land, and under banner-breathing penitence and peace, the long 
 procession of religious made their way from shrine to shrine in pious 
 pilgrimage. Then, as if by the touch of a magic wand, arose schools, 
 convents, monasteries, and churches, whither came in flocks the best 
 men of Albion, and Gaul, and Germany, to drink in inspiration, to 
 slake their thirst for information from the copious cup of knowledge 
 which she lifted to their Hps. 
 
Thus Patrick appears among them, " leaning on his staff, and 
 bringing them from Rome and Gaul new songs in a new language, 
 and set to a new melody/' He comes to unveil to them what lies 
 hidden, unknown to themselves, in the depths of their hearts. He 
 comes to tell them, by the power and authority of the Supreme God, 
 why it is that their mountains are so high, their valleys so smiling, 
 their rivers and lakes so teeming with life, theu' fountains so fresh 
 and cool, their sun so temperate and genial in its warmth, and their 
 moon and stars lighted with a soft radiance, and shimmering over 
 the deep obscurity of their groves. He tells them to look into their 
 own consciences, to acknowledge themselves sinners in need of re- 
 demption; and with the immorial shamrock in his hand he explains 
 to them from the hilltop of Tara, pointing to them the heavens, the 
 mystery of the triune God, the God of theu' groves and glades and 
 dells, their rivers and mountains, whose eternal Son, Jesus Christ, 
 shed His blood for theh- reiemption. And they received the faith of 
 Patrick with alacrity and joy. They hugged it to their hearts; it 
 sunk deep into their souls. It entered into their blood, their being, 
 and their life, never to be eradicated, never to be plucked out by any 
 power on earth or hell, as long as grass grows, or water runs, until 
 the last son of the ancient faithful isle, who walks the earth, shall 
 breathe forth his last sigh, and surrender up his individual being 
 into the everlasting arms of the God that made it. 
 
 And is there an Irishman among the living — on the face of the 
 green globe — beneath God's cii'cling sun — who is ashamed of the old 
 faith and religion of his forefathers ? If such there be, let oblivion 
 hide him; let him perish in foul dishonor. He is reprobated by his 
 race and traitorous to his God. 
 
 Let us ascend the highways of history till we stand together be- 
 neath the shadows of the grand old pillar-towers of Ireland. 
 
 "The pillar-towers of Ireland how wondrously they stand 
 By the lakes and rushing rivers, through the valleys of the land; 
 In mystic file throughout the aisle, they lift their heads sublime, 
 These gray old pillar temples, these conquerors of time. 
 
 *' Beside these gray old temples, how perishing and weak 
 The Romans' arch of triumph, and the temple of the Greek, 
 And the gold domes of Byzantium, and the pointed Gothic spires- 
 All are gone, one by one, but the temples of our sires." 
 24 
 
370 
 
 Standing under these " time-conquering " towers, which separate 
 the past from the present, we find ourselves at the spring-head of 
 Ireland's Christianity, and can gain a glimpse of her glorious pris- 
 tine faith and freedom, ere Dane or Norman had dispelled this vision 
 of loveliness and cast his blight upon the land. 
 
 What magnificent achievements were wrought in the three and 
 thirty years of Patrick's missionary toil. His ardent zeal and glow- 
 ing enthusiasm had fired the hearts of his neophytes, and in the 
 space of a few years they became a sanctified race, and the land a 
 sanctified land in which the flowers of every virtue grew, and sent 
 up their refreshing fragrance, like sweet exhalations of the morning 
 to the face of the Lord. But true faith is never inert or exanimate. 
 It is always active and unflagging. It blossoms forth in good 
 works which prove its spirit and vitality. 
 
 The splendid zeal of Patrick's converts soon covered the land with 
 temples to the living God, and their love of learning called forth 
 every facility for the acquirement of knowledge. For three golden 
 centuries the gleaners went forth to gather the harvest of wisdom 
 and holiness which ripened in shining sheaves in every corner of the 
 country. Every city had become a school of knowledge. Colleger 
 and universities multiplied fast and faster. The schoolmaster was 
 abroad — abroad in the fulness of power and honor. The scholar 
 had put his armor on, and ignorance fled at his approach. Battalions 
 of students mustered on the green shores of Erin from the lands be- 
 yond the waters. They came in concourses and congresses. They 
 spoke every language; were garbed in every costume; their multi- 
 tudinous voices drowned the city's din, echoed in every valley, re- 
 sounded in every glen. They came from every land— the Frank 
 from the Rhine; the Italian from the Tiber; the Gaul from the 
 Garonne; the Pict and the Scot " from Severn and from Clyde "; the 
 Saxon and the Dane came to the shores of Innisfail, to gild their 
 minds with the glory of ancient Greece; to gather up the learning 
 of Rome of old renown; to hear the tongue of Tacitus and speech 
 of Sophocles; to drink in the lore of antiquity from the mouths of 
 Irish masters, in Irish asylums of learning, upon the green soil of 
 despised old Ireland. 
 
 Europe is now a theatre of strife. War has unchained the dragon 
 of destruction. Barbarian hordes, like a swarm of locusts, darken 
 
371 
 
 the air of civilization, and impending ruin hangs over the culture 
 and refinement of ages. White-winged peace had almost fled the 
 earth, but her feet found a resting-place in Ireland. For three cen- 
 turies the gentle goddess held undisputed sway and spread her shel- 
 tering wings over the green isle. Here alone the light of learning 
 shone, and the sun of sanctity shed her genial beams. " The nations 
 beheld it from afar, and the gentiles walked in the brightness of its 
 rising." Hence, they came to worship at her shrines, to study in 
 her seminaries, to matriculate at her colleges, to enrich themselves 
 from the storehouses of her erudition, and in the eloquent language 
 of a gifted son of Irish genius, " to carry back with them to their 
 homes beyond the seas and across the mountains, the fame of her 
 learning, the renown of her sanctity, the story of the nobility of her 
 men and the purity and truth and beauty of her women; and to 
 proclaim to the world in a voice which comes floating down to us 
 on the breezes of undying history, that in those far-off, halcyon days, 
 Ireland was in God's very truth an ' Island of Saints and of Sages.' " * 
 
 Nor is this all. Evangelized and regenerated, Ireland bears the 
 blessings of Christianity to other lands. When her own schools and 
 chui'ches had begun to flourish Hke the *' green bay-tree planted by 
 the running waters," her scholars commenced to issue forth and pass 
 over Europe like the following waves of the sea. These were the 
 days when Columba went to lona, Columbanus to Gaul and Germany, 
 GaUus and Fridolin to Switzerland, and Killian to Franconia. Verily, 
 " He that is mighty hath done great things for her, and holy is His 
 name." 
 
 From this pleasing picture just presented, we now turn to one of 
 the most thrilling tragedies ever seen in the gory annals of any age. 
 Never in the silence of the blue heavens did the cold moon, as she 
 trod her silvery path to the sea, look down upon so sad a scene, 
 and never did the rosy clouds in the deep tenderness of twilight 
 shed their dying radiance upon a field so crimson as the ensanguined 
 soil of Ireland. 
 
 "Oh, Ireland, ancient Ireland, 
 Till now thy life has been all glad and gay — 
 Bid it awake and look on grief to-day. 
 
 * See Butler's Lives ; Alzog's Church Hist., passim; T. Burke's Lectures.. 
 
372 
 
 No shade had come between thee and the sun • 
 Like some long childish dream thy life has run. 
 But now the stream has reached a deep, dark sea, 
 And sorrow, dim, but crowned, is waiting thee." 
 
 What lack the valleys and the mountains, 
 
 That once were green and gay ? 
 What lack the babbling fountains ? • 
 
 Their voice is sad to day. 
 What lack the tender flowers ? 
 
 A shadow is on the sun. 
 What lack the merry hours ? 
 
 Their course is clearly run." 
 
 " Ood'% world is bathed in beauty, 
 God's world is steeped in light ; 
 It is the self-same glory. 
 
 Which makes the day so bright, . 
 Which thrills the earth with music 
 And hangs the stars in night. 
 
 "Man's world is bleak and bitter. 
 
 Wherever he has trod. 
 He spoils the tender beauty 
 
 That blossoms on the sod, 
 And blasts the loving heavens, 
 
 Of the great good world of God." * 
 
 It is beside our purpose to chant the threnody of Ireland's 
 tears. We would not hold up to view the blood-stained banner of 
 Erin. We would fain forbear to speak of deeds wrought with steel 
 and writ in iron. We hke not to dwell on memories that burn and 
 thoughts that bleed. We would not tear those gaping wounds 
 afresh, else it might move 
 
 " The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." 
 
 Nor do we speak of dynasties defunct, of kings and governments 
 and parliaments that are passed away, for our strength is not in 
 kings, but in the Lord God of hosts. We tell no tale of faded 
 glories, vanished victories, and departed splendor, because doom 
 and folly hang like the pall of everlasting night upon the people, 
 
 * Adelaide Proctor. 
 
373 
 
 who nurse idle memories of former grandeur, who live only in the 
 
 melancholj^ glories of the past, and who, with sorrow on their brow, 
 
 like the cloud upon the mountain, with moistened eye and drooping 
 
 head, stand 4 
 
 " Niobe among the nations." 
 
 The Irish can never be like the Jews of old who, with air dis- 
 traught, sat down by Babylon's wailing waters to hang their harps 
 upon the willow boughs, and weeping, cried, " How can we sing our 
 songs in a strange land.*' The great law of change is wiitten in 
 letters of fire upon all the sons of men ; and among them all we can 
 find nothing lasting but an immortal spirit and the handwriting of 
 God graven upon it. It is something very sad and grand to walk 
 along the shores of the past and gaze upon the wrecks of nations, 
 stranded by the buffets of the waves in Time's tempestuous ocean. 
 But it is also pleasing to see, how, over the ruins and wrecks of the 
 rolling years, the ocean of humanity keeps flowing on in endless 
 motion evermore. The component elements of a nation may change, 
 but the spirit of the nature is immortal. And it is of this immortal, 
 unquenchable, and indestructible spiiit of the Irish race we are to 
 sound the praise. We ask you to see how the old spirit which 
 burned and flushed in Celtic breasts stiU lives despite all efforts 
 at strangulation. We ask you to see it battling its way amid a 
 thousand conflicts, yet always coming forth, if sometimes vanquished, 
 never crushed or conquered. We ask you to behold it after seven 
 centuries, as we hope to behold the green old flag of Erin rising among 
 the nations like the sunburst of the morning, — to behold it rising 
 Phoenix-like from its own ashes, — rising above flood and fire and 
 famine — rising above the din and roar and rumble of intei'nal feud 
 and foreign strife, — not in feebleness or decrepitude, but young, 
 healthy, and vigorous as of yore ; the same indomitable and im- 
 perishable spirit ; superior to calamities, undaunted by disaster, — 
 rising over all, — and spreading over seas and continents and oceans 
 the Cross of Christ, its pillar of cloud by the day, and the sunburst 
 of old Erin, its pillar of fire by night, spreading everywhere, and 
 absorbing, transmuting the nations on its way into the glory of its 
 own immortal likeness. 
 
 It is the golden age of Ireland, and we stand on the shores of the 
 sacred Isle. The ocean that sun-ounds us eternally sings the song 
 
374 
 
 of freedom. The green-robed hills are gladdened and give back the 
 echo of the song. The archoUam, or native bard, tunes his lyre, and 
 sings : " O Erin, thy granaries are full, thy children are happy, thy 
 daughters are virtuous, thy sons are brave, thy old me^are wise, thy 
 rulers are just, and thy homes are in peace." But if thy days were 
 bright, O Erin, dark shall be thy nights. The tocsin of war is 
 sounded. The clouds of desolation and death rest on the nations of 
 Europe, and wars and rumors of wars sound from afar as the harsh 
 noise of rolling thunder. Behold ! we hear, as it were, the voice of 
 the destroying angel rushing through the heavens, and crying, " Woe 
 to the Irish race." On they come — the bloodthirsty Viking ; ^le 
 children of Ask and Embla, worshipers of Thor, the thunder-god ; 
 and Odin, the god of tiger strife ; and Frigga, the lust-god, — they 
 come, the truculent, fierce, implacable warriors who drank hydromel 
 from the skulls of their foes in the halls of their Walhalla, — they 
 come, like scorpions of affliction, like scourges of Almighty God, — 
 and for two hundred and fourteen years they drink the blood of 
 Ireland's children along the unhappy shores of Erin. Dark and 
 dismal was the day these vampires and sleuth-hounds laid their 
 gory hands upon the white throat of helpless Ireland. Long and 
 dreary and starless was the night of desolation that intervened from 
 the hour that, under the black raven plumes of Odin, Dane and 
 Northmen landed at Limerick and Cork and Waterford, until on 
 that blessed Good-Friday of 1014, the last savage invader was con- 
 quered by Brian Borrhoimme on the glorious field of Clontarf, and 
 hurled headlong into the devouring sea. But the end is not yet. 
 Only a century and a half of peace, and the nations again cry havoc, 
 an.d let slip the dogs of war upon the unhappy land of our fore- 
 fathers. William the Conqueror has subdued the Saxon, and the 
 Norman arms are triumphant. Henry the Second, the first of the 
 Plantagenets, has succeeded to the English throne. A woman, a false, 
 faithless woman, stirs up dissensions among the Irish princes. To 
 the shame of Irish mothers be it said, a perfidious Irish woman was 
 the greatest curse of the Irish race ; but to their glory be it told 
 that she is the only woman of the kind who figures in the national 
 history of Ireland. She was the wife of O'Rourke, prince of 
 Breffiri, who eloped with the King of Leinster while her husband 
 was abroad on a pilgrimage of devotion. His return to his deserted 
 
375 
 
 home, and liis despair, have been embalmed in song by the illus- 
 trious Thomas Moore. 
 
 But to the everlasting honor of Erin, this unfaithful wife and her 
 guilty paran^^our, McMur chard, were banished from the virtuous soil 
 of Ireland. McMurchard invoked the aid of Henry to reinstate him 
 in his kingdom, and from that hour the war began. In 1169, 
 Strongbow and his group of needy adventurers landed on the south- 
 east coast; from that hour the history of Ireland is written in tears 
 and blood; from that hour the war began which raged for 700 
 years, and which is not yet closed. 
 
 Ah ! how the heart sickens, and the head swims, and the eyes 
 grow moist and dim at the multiplied horrors of this long night of 
 centuries, during which a tortured nation writhed beneath the 
 merciless lash of a foreign foe, and stood forth in the eyes of men 
 covered with stripes and bathed in blood. The battle-axe and jave- 
 lin of the Viking cleft many and many an Irish skull, but the lance 
 and spear of the Norman and bayonet of the Englishman pierced 
 Ireland to the heart. Ireland is become an haceldama, or field of 
 blood. Henry this, or Henry that, it is all the same. Elizabeth, 
 CromweU, Stuart, changes not the case nor makes the carnage cease. 
 Ireland, weeping, helpless Ireland, sees her sons sacrificed; her old 
 men slain; her priests mangled, drawn, and quartered; her infants 
 hfted on the points of bayonets, and her virgins murdered in wanton 
 ferocity and cold blood. Cromwell — may heaven forgive Thomas 
 Carlyle the sin of canonizing this monster — after shamelessly break- 
 ing his sworn oath to give quarter to the vanquished army, not only 
 put every man to the sword, but commanded his brutal soldiers to 
 transfix upon their bayonets the three hundred babes and virgins, 
 who clung to the Cross of Christ in Wexford town as to a sanctuary 
 of safety, a pillar of protection. 
 
 * ' They knelt around the Cross divine, 
 
 The matron and the maid ; 
 They bowed before Redemption's shrine, 
 
 And fervently they prayed. 
 Three hundred fair and helpless ones, 
 
 Whose crime was this alone — 
 Their valiant husbands, sires, and sons. 
 
 Had battled for their own. 
 
376 
 
 " Had battled bravely, but in vain, 
 
 The Saxon won the fight, 
 And Irish corpses strewed the plain. 
 
 Where valor slept with might. 
 And now that man of demon guilt 
 
 To fated Wexford flew, 
 The red blood streaming on his hilt 
 
 Of hearts to Ireland true. 
 
 ' ' He found there the young, the old, 
 
 The maiden and the wife — 
 Their guardians brave in death were cold, 
 
 Who dared for them the strife. 
 They prayed for mercy, God on high, 
 
 Before Thy cross they prayed, 
 Yet ruthless Cromwell bade them die 
 
 To glut the Saxon blade. 
 
 ' * Three hundred fell — the stifled prayer 
 
 Was quenched in woman's blood; 
 Nor youth nor age could move to spare 
 
 From slaughter's crimson flood. 
 But nations keep a stern account 
 
 Of deeds that tyrants do, 
 And guiltless blood to heaven will mount, 
 
 And heaven avenge it, too 1 " 
 
 Yes, war everywhere. War swept the land with the burning" 
 besom of destruction, and like a tempest scattered devastation in its 
 path. War spattered the blood of the Irish people tiU, like the 
 Egyptian plague of old, it turned the streams into blood. War, with 
 its fiery chariot, overran all the landmarks of civilization, and with 
 its iron hoofs trampled down towns, villages, cities, schools, uni- 
 versities, homes, and firesides. But the cHmax had not come. 
 
 What is man without a home — without a piece of property that he 
 can call his own ? Accursed is the man without a family roof-tree 
 and a stranger to domestic joy. But the confiscation code came 
 forth. No Irishman and the son of no Irishman — unless he forsook 
 the faith of his fathers — could call one inch of the land his own 
 where he first saw the living light. No Irishman could possess as 
 much of the green sod as would make a grave for his poor, famished 
 body. No Irishman shall own a horse above the value of £5. No 
 
377 
 
 Irishman shall obtain indemnity for any improvements made by him 
 upon the land, but the crowbar brigade shall evict him at the whim 
 of the landlord, and eviction shall mean ruin, starvation, and death. 
 No papist employer shall engage more than two apprentices, lest 
 Irish industry be unduly fostered. Elizabeth confiscated 600,000 
 and James I. 2,000,000 acres of Irish soil, to rob the Irish owner and 
 put the whole country in possession of the Crown.* In 1663, 1666, 
 and 1732, an Irishman was forbidden to export a pound of beef or a 
 card of wool, lest the English trade should suiffer any rivalry. f Four 
 hundred thousand acres were portioned out in one month in 1609 
 to English proprietors, without one farthing of compensation to the 
 rightful owners. 
 
 Again steps forth the law to strike down personal liberty and en- 
 thrall and enslave the nation. Children are torn from the arms of 
 their parents and transported as slaves to the Barbadoes, and to 
 America, to leave the heart-broken father and mother at home, to 
 sink in childless misery into the grave. There they could bury their 
 grief. 
 
 "O, mighty Judge! O, just judgment!" Shylock's pound of 
 flesh is venial cupidity compared to the demands of the English 
 "Jew." 
 
 Step forth once again, ye lenient laws — from the gi*ist-mill of wise 
 and merciful legislation, come forth, — Draconian in severity, Ne- 
 ronian in atrocity — and quench the light of Ireland's intellect. No 
 Irishman shall dare to show his love for learning by securing an ed- 
 ucation for himself or his children. He must skulk from the light of 
 day and flee from his native land, if he be guilt}' of the monstrous 
 treason of seeking to improve the talents which the God of truth 
 and knowledge has given him. Till the time of George m. Cath- 
 olics were inhibited by dire penalties from erecting schools. Pain- 
 ful and ludicrous, but true as life, was the distich about the Hedge 
 Schoolmaster: 
 
 *' Billy Byrne was a man of a very great big knowledge, 
 And behind a quickset hedge in a bog he kept his college. " 
 
 What wonder that Edmund Burke declared that the whole code of 
 legislation was a despotism, so well organized to oppress the people 
 
 * See Statutes of Elizabeth, James, William, etc. 
 f See Lecky's "Leaders of Public Opinion." 
 
378 
 
 and disfigure even human nature itself, that nothing equal to it was 
 ever invented by consummate hypocrisy or diabolical intent.* No 
 Irishman could enter any of the learned professions, or become 
 lawyer, doctor, clergyman, or even scrivener. No Irishman could 
 hold any civil office, or any trust of power or emolument. No Irish- 
 man, even long centuries before the abolition of O'Connell's forty- 
 shilling freeholders — sad blunder of the great Emancipator— could 
 exercise the right of franchise, or have any elective voice in the con- 
 cerns of government. In a word, no Irishman could be a citizen of 
 his own country, but only an alien, an outcast, a pariah on his native 
 soil. For foi-ty-seven years after Catholics had become eligible to 
 office, and political disabilities had been removed, not one was 
 elected to the corporation of the city of Dublin, in a community of 
 which nineteen-twentieths were adherents of the proscribed religion.f 
 This discrimination, it should be remembered, was exercised against 
 a people of whom Wellington declared : " We must acknowledge, 
 that without the blood of the Irish Catholics and without their cour- 
 age, we could not have won our brilliant victories."^ 
 
 Nor was that all. Coercion is henceforth conversion. Come forth 
 again, ye laws; invade the conscience and uproot the morals of the 
 lawless, ignorant, and cave-dwelling Irish, as James Anthony Froude 
 affectionately called them. Indeed, there is no such thing as an 
 Irish conscience; that 
 
 ' * Divinity dwells not within their breasts. " 
 
 There is but one religion, the religion of the State, the religion of 
 King Harry, of good Queen Bess. There is but one form of wor- 
 ship, the worship of the Anglican establishment, whose grinding, 
 tithe-exacting enormities the government had determined to uphold 
 at all hazards. The land swarmed with a licentious soldiery, whose 
 libertinism and debauchery transcended the corruptions of Tyre or 
 ^ Gomorrah, who ruthlessly invaded the sanctuary of the family, and 
 dedicated their days and nights to Venus rather than to virtue. To 
 facilitate this mighty moral perversion, troops of salacious soldiers 
 were quartered upon the already famishing people, and every Irish 
 house was compelled to own an EngUsh master, whose lubricity and 
 
 * See Burke's Speeches. f See Lecky's ** Leaders of Public Opinion." 
 
 t See Hansard, D. 729. 
 
379 
 
 stupration blenched from neither the flower of youth nor the feeble- 
 ness of age. Laws were enacted to overturn the methods of heredi- 
 tament and succession (not repealed till after the American revolu- 
 tion;, to put a premium on apostasy, make the son betray his father, 
 the daughter her mother, and the brother his sister. And if the for- 
 eign landlord, whose brutality often was a disgrace to the basest 
 period of barbarism, raised his homicidal hand and imbrued it in the 
 blood of an Irish peasant, he was not amenable to any Irish tribunal, 
 and no EngHsh judicatory would convict him. The great engine of 
 English legislation was invoked to grind into impalpable powder the 
 last remnant of the Irish race, and to stamp out forever the mind, 
 the soul, the manhood, the nationality of the Irish people. To im- 
 poverish, barbarize, and exterminate, this was the laudable aim of 
 every government of the English that held power in Ireland, whether 
 Tudors, Stuarts, Cromwellian Saints, Puritans, the House of Orange, 
 or the House of Hanover. This irrefragable fact challenges impeach- 
 ment. A distinguished commoner like Mr. Bright, moved by the 
 sense of shame and justice, exclaims: " It is impossible when travel- 
 ling through Ireland, not to feel that enormous crimes have been 
 committed by the various governments to which the country has 
 been subjected." * 
 
 Then comes Cromwell — Cromwell, whose name and memory have 
 passed into a proverbial curse, — and then with vengeance began im- 
 prisonment, transplantation, expatriation, exile. When the Protector 
 began his sanguinary campaign in Ireland, those whom he could 
 not butcher he transported as slaves to plantations, to undergo the 
 horrors of English penal servitude. 
 
 If there is anything dear to the heart of man, it is unfettered liberty. 
 
 ** O ! Liberty, the prisoner's pleasing dream, 
 The poet's muse, his passion and his theme, 
 Homeric song from thy free touch acquires 
 Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires 
 Place where Winter breathes his keenest air, 
 And I will sing if liberty be there; 
 And I will sing at Liberty's dear feet, 
 In Af ric's torrid clime or India's fiercest heat. " 
 
 The thrall of bondage sits like a collar of fire upon the neck of 
 * See " Speeches on Questions of Public Interest," 2 vols. London, 1866. 
 
380 
 
 freedom, and the yoke of subjection is more bitter to the heart than 
 the apples of Sodom to the lips. God raised up a great Deliverer to 
 lead His people out of the land of captivity and the house of bond- 
 age, and sent His angels to strike the shackles from the limbs of 
 Peter when in prison. Picture the unutterable sufferings, the 
 dejection, deep and dismal, of the victim condemned to incarceration 
 in the dungeon locked by tyranny. Hateful Darkness spreads her 
 wings and overshadows him with her sable paJl. The sparkling 
 hues of tree and plant and flower gleam not for him, and the radiant 
 beauty of leafy bower and shaded dell are excluded from his sight. 
 The music of the flowing fountain and purling stream awake no 
 echoes in his soul, and the warm winds come and go, and the grate- 
 ful odors of the balsam-dropping Spring and fragrant Summer are 
 borne on the breeze, but they cannot penetrate the sodden vapors of 
 bis chill abode. Funeral-paced and slow, the melancholy hours drag 
 along, like dirges for the dead, unspoken and unsyllabled. The 
 heart-eating canker of cheerless solitude wrings the inmost soul with 
 anguish. No sounds are heard but the cold clanking of the chains ; 
 no voice of cheer, of comfort, or of gladness ; no kind words from 
 the friends of yore, and — have they left him to pine in oblivion and 
 to die? 
 
 And the spectral vision of the past comes before the hag-ridden 
 fancy to recall the burning memory of freedom now no more. Who 
 can think the awful thoughts that fire that fevered brain, and the 
 sensations that course through the hot current of the feelings. Per- 
 haps, serpent-fanged Despair strikes his venomous tooth into the 
 marrow of the heart, and icy disappointment congeals the blood 
 which flowed like lightning through the veins. Perhaps, like Judas, 
 he deplores the day that he was born, and curses the sun, the light, 
 the cradling air, which once he wooed and revelled in. It may be 
 so ; but who has no shred of sympathy for one so sore-distressed ; 
 no drop of balm for one so broken-hearted ; no tear to shed upon 
 the graves of buried hopes and liberty thus lost? The English 
 government, which inflicted, and still inflicts, the atrocities of prison- 
 life upon the Irish victim of its malevolence, has not one spark of 
 pity or compassion for those subject to the unmitigated horrors of 
 her gaols — gaols in which no distinction was ever made between the 
 common convict and the political prisoner, but rather bore with 
 
381 
 
 heavier severity upon the latter, and set all considerations of human- 
 ity at defiance.* 
 
 Cromwell raised the cry, " To hell or to Connaught with the Irish," 
 and with characteristic wit, which even adversity could not cloud, 
 they said they would much j)refer to choose Connaught and give 
 Cromwell undisputed control of the sulphurous kingdom. Under 
 pain of death no Iiishman could cross the pale, or come within three 
 miles of the lordly Shamon. 
 
 Thus, they turn their backs upon the green meads and flowery 
 vales of the South to face the rigors of the rugged, storm-swept 
 North. Without any show of legality, the plan of plantation, begun 
 years before by " perfidious Albion," was established definitely in 
 1609, and consummated by the Pretender in 1649, after he had 
 hatched his clever conspiracy against his royal master Charles, and 
 set out like Alexander, " new worlds to conquer." f 
 
 Follow them, in spirit, over the bleak, bare hills of Connemara, as 
 over fen and brake and bog, they plod their weary way. Behold 
 this sad Hegira of the Irish race, as they pass along seeking no 
 Mecca of future hopes, but rather groping blindly on the gloomy 
 path which dark destiny marked out for them, in dreary, hopeless 
 desolation. 
 
 Time was when the Irish peasant had plenty ; when he tickled the 
 land with a hoe and it laughed with a harvest ; when he might say 
 with the poet : 
 
 "Then was I a tree, 
 Whose boughs did bend with fruit ; but in one night, 
 A storm, a robbery, call it what you will, 
 Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves. 
 And left me bare to weather." X 
 
 Yes, the day came when the heel of hate was stamped upon his 
 breast ; when purple tyrants robbed him of his paternal acres and 
 cast him out to die ; when the " horrid, hideous notes of woe, sadder 
 than owl-songs on the midnight blast," resounded in his ears, and 
 
 * See John Mitchell's " Jail Journal." Also " Pamell Movement," by T. P. 
 O'Connor. 
 
 f See Miss Cusack's " Case of Ireland "; Abbe McGheoghegan's "History of 
 Ireland "; Green's " History of England." 
 
 X Shaks. , Cymbeline. 
 
382 
 
 when the forebodings of his awful doom made him feel like him 
 who said : 
 
 " From the full meridian of my glory 
 
 I haste now to my setting ; I shall fall 
 
 Like a bright exhalation in the evening, 
 
 And no man see me more." * 
 
 But follow the despondent and broken-hearted peasantry to the 
 Golgotha of the Irish race, and behold the wreck of a country's 
 hopes as the stubborn and unconquerable flame of famine creeps 
 through the veins of the nation and drinks all the streams of life. 
 See them, — the impoverished people — as faint and weary they re- 
 cline upon the cold earth, and stare, in mute and speechless agony, 
 at the green sod which soon opens to receive them into its bosom, 
 where "no man shall see them more." Famine, grim and gaunt, 
 stalks through the land, and death walks by his side. Did he speak ? 
 What did famished man say ? 
 
 "On the ground 
 Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, and oft 
 Cursed his creation, death as oft accused 
 Of tardy execution." 
 
 He cannot stand erect, nor lift his eyes towards the heavens of 
 God. The air around is stifling and suffocating with the odors of 
 putrescent vegetation. " The air is full of farewells to the dying 
 and mournings for the dead." To the famine was superadded the 
 hon'ors of the plague. The fire of fever consumes what famine 
 spares, as the great beast described by Daniel trampled unto death 
 what escaped its devouring jaws. Death stood at the door of every 
 hovel, and felled the wayfarer by the roadside. He fastened his icy 
 fang upon the aged sire and upon the prattling babe that sought 
 for sustenance, which it could not find, in the dried-up life-currents 
 of its starving mother's breast. Mounds of the dead are piled 
 on the highway waiting for burial that may never come. The father 
 buries his little child in haste in a sh^low grave, over which no 
 funeral prayers are said, and no mother's tears are shed. Stark and 
 cold the mother was found on the roadside, under the blue canopy 
 of heaven, with her dead babe upon her breast. Now, by the sol- 
 
 *Shaks., Hen. VIII. 
 
383 
 
 emn lake of silvery silence, they make their bed of rest; in the voice- 
 less valley where they lie the hum of earth's distracting cares will 
 n^ver come; the gentle zephyrs will sigh, and the wild-bird will sing 
 in mournful music about their final resting-place; and when the first 
 sunbeams of each returning Spring pierces the dewy mold wherein 
 they lie, the pale snowdrop and the blue violet will bloom above 
 their grass-grown graves. 
 
 During one decade of years, from 1841 to 1851, over 250,000 per- 
 ished of the deadly fever, but how many of the forlorn creatures 
 who crawled out of sight to die behind the hedges or in the ditch, 
 and how many more perished of hunger in these dismal years, will 
 never be revealed till the books of eternity are opened and the mul- 
 titudinous dead shall come to life again.* 
 
 And be it observed, that during all these deadly years of famine, 
 blight, and jfestilence, cereals and grain, beef and bacon and mutton 
 were being exported in shiploads to feed the pampered plutocrats of 
 England, while thousands and tens of thousands died at home, in 
 the poorhouse, the workhouse, and under the cold, clear sky of God. 
 How great must be the extent of a calamity which has endured with 
 unabated rigor for many centuries, may be approximately reckoned, 
 when it is remembered that during fifty years of Queen Victoria's 
 reign alone, from 1837 to 1887, 1,225,000 died of famine; 3,568,000 
 were evicted, and 4,185,000 were sent into voluntary or involuntary 
 exile. * From 1841 to 1851, 282,000 houses were destroyed by the 
 ** Crowbar Brigade," and the wretched inhabitants cast forth into the 
 pitiless world, often in the dead hour of night, with hardly a rag to 
 their backs, and not a sixpence in their hands to buy a meal for the 
 morrow. The shocking brutalities of these evicting landlords, men 
 who like Clauricarde and Leitrim were devoid not only of pity and 
 compunction, but of the common instincts of humanity, are matter 
 of too frequent record to need repetition here.f 
 
 And after all these years of bhght and bale, of war, famine, and 
 
 * T. P. O'Connor's " Paragll Movement"; Sullivan's "New Ireland"; 
 Gavan Duffy's "Four Years'*; McGheoghegan and Mitchell's "Hist, of Ire- 
 land." 
 
 f For full accounts see Sullivan's "New Ireland "; Miss Cusack's "Case 
 Stated"; G^van Duffy's "Four Years": T. D. McGee's "Hist, of Ireland"; 
 Mitchell's "Hist, of Ireland "; Census for Ireland for 1851, etc. 
 
384 
 
 pestilence, what do we behold ? In the rayless night of Ireland we 
 see no star of hope. A stupor and stolidity settled upon the people, 
 and they seemed like men who, " weary with disasters and tugged 
 with foi-tune," had yielded to Mistress Melancholy and plunged into 
 irrecoverable despair. Like Milton's angel, the spiritless, despond- 
 ent peasant might say: 
 
 " So farewell hope; and with hope farewell fear, 
 Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost." 
 
 If we turn towards the individual, we see in his faltering countenance 
 no solitary gleam of hope; if we transfer our gaze to society, we see 
 no sign of hope. The grand old Irish Church, which kept aHve the 
 lamp of faith in storm and persecution, the foster-mother of science 
 and sanctity, of piety and learning, droops and pines— she is all but 
 dead. The seers and the sages, the minstrels and the bards, the 
 scalds, the ollahams, and the wise men of old, are gone — they are 
 dead. Poets, philosophers, chieftains, princes — aU are gone. That 
 old Celtic race, which, like an irresistible torrent, swept down from 
 the crest of the Asiatic Continent, built kingdoms on its march, and 
 having traversed the earth, again rolled back its impetuous tide to 
 the Caspian and Euxine Sea — that race which once overawed all 
 Europe — that race which never crouched before the foe and never 
 bowed the knee to Dane, Saxon, Norman, or Eoman, has disappeared; 
 one shattered remnant alone remains upon the hills of Connaught, 
 but within them lives the old, undying, Celtic spirit of resistance, 
 unshaken as the pyramids of Egypt, immovable as the pillar of 
 Trojan on the eternal soil of Rome, unconquerable as the eternal 
 hills of God. 
 
 During these gloomy periods of disaster it was, that the everlast- 
 ing exodus of the Irish people began, which has flowed on with an 
 almost regularly ascending ratio, until within the last few decades. 
 It was a heartrending scene that was witnessed by many a moistened 
 eye, as band after band of these refugees began to wend their way 
 towards the black emigrant ship which was to carry them to other 
 scenes and other climes. 'Tis sweet to place our hand in memory's 
 and stroll down by the shores of the past, to recall the old familiar 
 faces, companions of our morning-time, when life was all one sun- 
 bright holiday and earth was half divine. The memory of departed 
 
385 
 
 joy may temper present sorrow, and the future is hallowed by the 
 lingering halo of the past. But it is hard to say fareweU forever; to 
 leave behind forevermore the scenes of youth — the brooks, the 
 meads, the flowers, the lowly thatched cottage, the church where 
 some were wont to worship, and many., too. were wed. No wonder 
 that old man, whose silvery locks and pinched countenance told of 
 toil and pain at home, yet reverently stooped to kiss the door-siU, as 
 he passed out forever.* 
 
 ** Home, kindred, friends, and country — ^these 
 
 Are ties with which we never part; 
 From clime to clime, o'er land and seas, 
 
 We bear them with us in our heart: 
 But 'tis hard to feel resigned, 
 When these must all be left behind." 
 
 The love of country is the darling affection of the human heart. 
 Dark and cold as the chambers of the tomb is the soul of him who 
 feels not his heart throb and his pulses thriU when the sacred 
 memories of home and childhood crowd back upon the mind to 
 retrospection given. What can bid the dear emotions start, and the 
 unbidden tear gather in the eye, like the fond recollection of the 
 past. God pity the man, and God pity the people, whom hard 
 necessity, cruel fate, or brutal tyranny drives far away from the spot 
 where he was born, passed the sunny days of childhood and ripened 
 into manhood's sterner reign, and sends him forth a broben-hearted 
 refugee, a sad, dejected child of despair, upon unfriendly and in- 
 hospitable shores. 
 
 Hard and bitter is the fate of the involuntary exile ! In silent 
 sadness he broods over his unhappy fate, and his son*ow is all but 
 inconsolable. The hueless heaven up to which he looks curtains out 
 from view the kingly glory of the sun, and the melancholy earth 
 shades the rosy hours in wide-extended gloom. The upbroken 
 dreams of boyhood's span, the hope deferred that maketh the 
 heart sick, the inhumanity of man to man, the curse of oppression 
 and the blight of wrong, come down like dismal night upon the ex- 
 ile's feelings and turn this bright world, so redolent of bloom, into a 
 lazar-house of tears and mourning. 
 
 * Incident told of an eviction: T. P. O'Connor's "Pamell Movement." 
 25 
 
386 
 
 " Weep not the brave dead, 
 
 Weep rather the living, 
 On them lies the curse 
 
 Of a doom unforgiving. 
 Each dark cloud that rolls 
 
 Shall the miseries they nurse 
 Like molten, hot lead 
 
 Burn into their souls 
 A grief long and sore." * 
 
 Euntes ibant etfiehant. Going forth, they wept as they went, be- 
 cause they went in sorrow — sorrow so deep that the angels of God 
 looked down in pity and traced their footsteps by their tears, f We 
 can well conceive how piercing was the heart-breaking cry of the 
 aged father, bowed with years and grief, and of the kind and loving 
 Irish mother, when, for the last time on earth, perhaps, they grasped 
 the hand of son or daughter, and with a voice broken with emotion, 
 they gasped rather than uttered those good old Saxon words — Good- 
 bye ! God bless you ! The poet has, with truly pathetic feeling, 
 painted the emotion of the emigrant upon bidding adieu to his 
 native shore : 
 
 " Adieu ! the snowy sail 
 Swells her bosom to the gale, 
 And our bark from Innisfail 
 Bounds away. 
 
 *' While we gaze upon thy shore. 
 That we never shall see more, 
 And the blinding tears flow o'er, 
 
 We pray : , 
 
 " Mavourneen, be thou long, 
 In peace the queen of song, 
 In battle proud and strong 
 As the sea. 
 
 "Be saints thine offspring still — 
 True heroes guard each hill. 
 And harps by every rill, 
 Sound free ! 
 
 * J. C. Mangan. f Rt. Rev. Geo. Conroy's Lectures. 
 
387 
 
 •' Though glowing breasts may be 
 In soft vales beyond the sea, 
 Yet ever, Gra Machree, 
 Shall I waU. 
 
 *• For the heart of love I leave, 
 In the dewy hours of eve, 
 On the stormy shores to grieve, 
 Innisfail ! 
 
 " But mem'ry o'er the deep. 
 On her dewy wing shall sweep. 
 When at midnight hour I weep 
 O'er thy wrongs. 
 
 " And bring me, steeped in tears. 
 The dead flowers of other years. 
 And waft unto mine ears 
 Home's songs. 
 
 " Tho' round her Indian bowers 
 The hand of nature showers 
 The brightest blooming flowers 
 Of our sphere ; 
 
 " Yet, not the richest rose, 
 In an alien clime that blows. 
 Like the brier at home that grows. 
 Is dear. 
 
 " When I slumber in the gloom 
 Of a nameless, foreign tomb. 
 By the distant ocean's boom, 
 Innisfail ! 
 
 ' ' Around thy em'rald shore, 
 May the clasping sea adore. 
 And each wave in thunder roar. 
 All hail ! 
 
 '• And when the final sigh 
 Shall bear my soul on high. 
 And on chainless wing I fly 
 Thro' the_blue ; 
 
 " Earth's latest thought shall be. 
 As I soar above the sea — 
 Green Erin, dear, to thee, 
 Adieu!" 
 
388 
 
 Into every land tliey went, the best and bravest of Ireland's sons, 
 to win that bread which a landed oligarchy and an oppressive govern- 
 ment denied to them at home. When the Irish asked for bread, the 
 English gave them, not stones, indeed, but powder. " Trust in God 
 and keep your powder dry " was a mot of Cromwell's which must 
 have been inspired by anticipated conflict with the " wild Irish," as 
 €ven the author of the " Fairie Queen " loved to style the victims of 
 '" base, brutal, and bloody " England. 
 
 But wherever they went, they won, not bread, but battles. On the 
 sunny shores of Spain they upheld the banners of glorious victory, 
 and proved the invincible valor of Irish arms. The great battle of 
 Bannockburn, by which the Scots established their independence, 
 under the immortal Bruce, was won largely by the aid of the Irish, 
 as the " Father of English Poetry " testifies : 
 
 ■" To Albion, Scots, we ne'er would yield — 
 The Irish bowmen swept the field." 
 
 It was for the fair flag of France, however, and the good old mon- 
 arch Louis XV., that the Irish poured out their best blood and won 
 imperishable renown. During the wars of the Spanish succession 
 Marshal Saxe won his spurs. When the French were pitted against 
 the English, Dutch, and Austrians at Tournay, Saxe was in command. 
 Animated by the presence of Louis, the French, who had besieged 
 the city, prepared to meet the bloody Duke of Cumberland, who, 
 with 50,000 allies, came to raise the siege and rout the French. 
 They met upon the slopes of Fontenoy. The battle raged with vary- 
 ing fortune through the day. Thrice the English veterans assaulted 
 Fontenoy, and thrice they were repulsed. At length, as the shadows 
 of evening thickened, the English, goaded on to desperation, formed 
 a wedge-like column, six thousand strong, and marched through the 
 town right into the very centre of the French lines. On they came, 
 like a wall of adamant, with incredible gallantry, but unshaken, un- 
 dismayed. In vain did the French oppose them. ** Bomb-shell, and 
 grape, and round-shot tore, still on they marched and fired." They 
 bore down all before them. They scaled the bodies of the dying 
 and the dead. In vain Louis orders up his household cavalry ; 
 they go down, like chaff before the wind, and are swept away in a 
 flame of living fire. The fortune of the day is almost decided, 
 
389 
 
 and decided against the French. King Louis turns his rein to seek 
 safety in flight, and Saxe calls out : " Not yet, my Lord, the Irish 
 troops remain." Then, with a wild, heroic shout, the Irish Brigade 
 comes up, and with headlong impetuosity dashes upon their Saxon 
 foes. The onset is for a moment. Old Albion's lines begin to reel 
 and stagger, — like a hot blast from hell the Irish musketry mows 
 them down ; — they waver, shake, and tremble ; break, scatter, turn, 
 and fly. The smoke clears away, and the blood-red sun looks down 
 in angry splendor upon the field of death. 
 
 No nation under heaven has been subject to such vicissitudes of 
 fortune as the Irish ; but despite all that fate could do, or oppression 
 accomplish, her virtue only shone with greater splendor and her 
 faith rose triumphant over every assault and remained to her, a con- 
 solation and a hope in her darkest hour, without shadow of change 
 or alteration. She could always turn her eyes towards a sad, but 
 honorable and glorious past. The glory of her faith was never tar- 
 nished; a faith which no poison could pollute, no power pervert, and 
 neither menace nor cajolement, threat nor flattery, ever cause to 
 waver ; a faith which was her solace in every tribulation, for though 
 sorrow had fallen upon her as upon the daughter of Sion, yet, mute 
 and chained, and captive as she was, she could still find place in her 
 heart for the roses of bright joy in the possession of that abiding, 
 indestructible religion which had been planted ineradicably in her 
 heart by him who, as he was the first to preach the Gospel of peace 
 upon her mountains, so shall he always pray that God may never 
 suffer him to lose the dear-loved people whose salvation was first 
 entrusted to Saint Patrick's hands. Yes, her lot has been the hard 
 one of the down-trodden and oppressed ; her mantle has for cen- 
 turies been woven with the tangled threads of misery and woe ; her 
 robes have too often been reddened into scarlet by the heart's blood 
 of her children, and even now the rainbow of hope but dimly shines 
 in the sky of her future. But, although 
 
 *' Decay's effacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers"; 
 
 although the red hand of ruin applied the fagot, the torch, and the 
 battle-axe to all the monuments which religion and civilization had 
 reared throughout the land ; although few circumstances in the 
 
390 
 
 annals of any nation can compare with the debasement and degrada- 
 tion to which the people were reduced by the long night of misrule 
 and tyranny ; although her fine art, her learning, her architecture, 
 had progressively declined under the never-ebbing flood of invasion, 
 till some Irish emigre in the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 might, like Caius Marius in the past upon the ruins of ancient Carth- 
 age, take his stand upon the mouldering columns of his country's 
 former grandeur, and view, with tear-dimmed eyes, their " splendid 
 desolation"; — still Irish hope was indestructible and Irish faith was 
 imperishable as the God whose throne is fixed in the eternities. If 
 virtue in distress and vice in triumph, as some one says, incUnes 
 men to irreligion, adversity only gave new glory to the Irish faith, 
 and in the darkest, dre£iriest hours of his nation's calamity, the 
 Irishman's love for the religion of his forefathers only flamed forth 
 more ardently, his practice of the domestic virtues continued 
 undiminished, and like flowers shaded from the storm, they bloomed 
 under his lowly roof-tree ; his undying love for his native land was 
 never cooled, but waxed the warmer, nor was his hope destroyed 
 that her banners would one day be crowned with the shining signet 
 of success, that the psean of emancipation would be told by every 
 tongue, as her embattled hosts marched on to victory, sustained 
 by the righteousness of a holy cause and supported by the all-con- 
 quering arm of the God of battles. 
 
 We have stood by at the burial and mourned over the grave; let 
 us rejoice in the resurrection of the Irish race. Yes; the old race 
 was practically dead, but she has come forth again a thing of life 
 and beauty, that still preserves a vital power unconscious of decay. 
 It is still the same old time-conquering, death-defying race. The 
 eloquent words of one of her own sons are, though spoken of him- 
 self, much befitting the checkered but changeless disposition and 
 history of this gallant people: 
 
 " Friends and fellow-countrymen : The dead leaves of the Fall re- 
 produce themselves in the blossoms of the Spring. The eagle casts his 
 feathers but to renew them for a bolder flight in the eye of the sun. 
 By means of death itself the tomb is peopled with youth in shining 
 robes, and the mortal puts on immortality. All seeming change — all 
 stiQ the same. With such feelings I am here this day. As though 
 no night had intervened; as though no cheiished hopes had fallen 
 
391 
 
 to the eaxtb like withered leaves across my path; as though no sea 
 had borne me from the garden-fields of my earlier life to the forest 
 solitudes in which my summer days grew dark; as though no star 
 had fallen from the heaven up to which I looked; as though my 
 home had not become a vacant place, voiceless, lampless, and hung 
 with mourning; as though no calamity had come upon me, bowed 
 
 my head and chafed my spirit — I am here this day The same, 
 
 friends, as when, ten summers since, I stood among the people of 
 my native country, beside my native river, in the shadow of my 
 native mountains — still the same, as when, joining in the surging 
 chorus of th§ awakening nations, I invoked the gallant jealousy and 
 love of the young Democracy to arms, and from arms to liberty ! 
 Still the same as when I stood upon the summit of a gray mountain 
 in my native south, and from thence, looking down, I beheld the 
 glittering waves of com as they rose and fell in the valley, and the 
 rock crowned with the chapel, and the cathedral, and the tall tower 
 of ancient days in the blue haze beyond me, and I called upon the 
 people there, with companions dear to me, though absent now, to 
 strike one blow for the land which gave such abundant promises for 
 the future, and recollections so impressive and inspiring of the past. 
 What I was then, I am now," 
 
 Yes, the elasticity of the Celtic spirit has enabled it to surmount 
 every sorrow and subdue every grief; the versatility and the inborn 
 brightness of the Celtic mind has coped successfully with every 
 calamity and defeated all disaster; the amiable charm of the Celtic 
 character has captivated its own captors, and the sterling goodness 
 of the Celtic heart has melted down mountains of social prejudice 
 and racial hatred the world over; and these several qualities com- 
 bined, have contributed to the conservation of the Celtic race, so 
 that it has become a phenomenon among the nations. Once again 
 the ancient nation lifts her shining brow above the ocean of her 
 tears and sorrows, and no human agency can efface the super- 
 scription of success which the Almighty has sealed upon her fore- 
 head. She impressed the nations in the past, in the heyday of her 
 glory, with the geniality of her temper, no less than with the genius 
 of her mind, and what shall hinder the exertion of her matchless 
 power again? Yes; she was dead, lifeless; dead to art, science, 
 trade, commerce, education, religious liberty, civilization. She was 
 
prone in the dust — prostrated by war, famine, plagues, treachery, 
 and oppression; but she has put by the cerements of the tomb, the 
 bandages of death, and come forth to life, reanimated, reawakened, 
 and recalled to a new, a shining, and a glorious resurrection. We 
 beheld her, like Proserpine, banished from the light of day to the 
 Plutonian shores of national obHvion; we saw her, like Eachel, 
 mourning those who were not; and, like Niobe, over her slain chil- 
 dren, weeping herself to stone; we gazed on her, like a modem 
 Prometheus, chained to the cold rock of slavery, and the vultures of 
 tyranny festering in her flesh; and we found her, "like (Edipus, in 
 the tragedy of Sophocles, her light turned into a dark cloud, her 
 eyes plucked out, and her eyeballs dripping with blood, as, turned 
 out from among the nations, she cried in wail and lamentation : 
 
 ** ' Alas ! alas ! Ah ! me, unfortunate ! 
 Whither in the world am I going ? 
 Ah ! me, oppressed with night, 
 Unseen, untold, unwelcome ! ' " 
 
 But the continental wars came; and the American Revolution 
 came; and the spirit of '98 came; and Grattan's glorious volunteers 
 came; and the British Lion roared in vain, as he heard the crashing 
 blows struck to break the clanking chains upon the fettered limbs of 
 Erin. 
 
 Then God raised up a great Deliverer, of strong and smiting hand, 
 to rend asunder the remaining gyves, and gain unfettered liberty. 
 A man he was of giant genius and mighty mind, whom W. E. Glad- 
 stone pronounced to be the greatest popular leader the world ever 
 saw. A man of his time and people, who, like another Moses, led his 
 people out of bondage into the promised land of liberty, and who, if 
 he found his nation dead and buried, put forth his good right hand 
 and rolled away the stone from the door of her sepulchre. A man 
 who broke his imperial heai*t with love for his native land. A man 
 who thundered forth his claims for justice with an impassioned elo- 
 quence that shook the British throne. A man who, with no weapon 
 but that of truth, and no sword but that of right, struck with one 
 blow the shackles of religious thralldom from the minds and hearts 
 of 7,000,000 of Irishmen, and restored to them, by the genius of eman- 
 cipation in 1827, the right to worship God according to the teachings 
 
393 
 
 of their faitb and the dictates of their consciences. And this man 
 the whole Irish race will, to the latest posterity and the last stroke of 
 time, revere and bless as the greatest benefactor of his people, in 
 the person of the illustrious and incomparable Liberator, Daniel 
 O'ConneU. 
 
 What then? Was the Irish race dead? Was it compressed 
 within a little comer of its native country ? Was it sent to Con- 
 naught, or to hell? Behold, it lives again ! Its ramifications over- 
 spread the earth, and its expansibility is invariably extending. Was 
 it divided, decimated, subjugated ? To-day it is united in the bonds 
 of amity and concord; its political factions, owning different leader- 
 ship, have one common aim; and what has not transpired, with such 
 absolute unanimity, since the Council of Cashel, in 1172, divided 
 them, bishops, priests, and people are at one — one in hope, one in 
 faith, one in political aspiration, one in confidence for the future. 
 Was the Irish race deprived of home and country ? To-day it has a 
 home in every land. To-day there is an Ireland in America; New 
 England has become New Ireland; the Boston of the Winthrops and 
 the Mathers is become the Boston of the O'Donohues and the 
 O'Briens. There is an Ireland in Canada, another in Australia, 
 another in South Africa, and there still remains the proud and pro- 
 lific mother of them all, to send forih new^ colonies and scatter the 
 seeds of Irish manhood over all the earth. Was the race denied the 
 right to educate herself ? Was it sought to enslave her in the bonds 
 of ignorance, to blight her conscience, to corrupt her morals ? Iiish 
 purity is still proverbial; Irish conscience is still a synonjra of honor 
 and fidelity; Irish intellect* is barred from no field of desirable en- 
 deavor, but is a passport to power, to prefennent, nay to distinction 
 and to glory, from zone to zone and from pole to pole, in the wide 
 circuit of the world. 
 
 So much for the past; what shall the future be ? Shall the old 
 land renew her strength like the eagle, and like the giant go rejoicing 
 on her course ? Has she reached the meridian of her glory, and 
 does her sun now haste towards its setting ? Must her horoscope be 
 cast, with the shades of stellar and solar eclipse around her, \)y with 
 the heavenly luminaries in a blaze of glory ? The signs of the ftmes, 
 as we read them on this side of the Atlantic, are brighter and more 
 favorable than ever since 
 
394 
 
 " The fatal chain was o'er them cast 
 And they were men no more." 
 
 But the present Home Kule bill does not meet the expectations of 
 the Irish people. It falls short in the character of nearly all of its pro- 
 visions. It is a monstrous delusion. It makes the Irish Parlia- 
 ment a puppet of the Queen and her agents in Ireland. The Glad- 
 stonian Local Government biU is not even a middling counterpoise to 
 Home Kule, and what it gives with one hand it takes away with the 
 other. It has been epigrammatically said, that it is more remarkable 
 for the powers which it does not give, than for those which it gives 
 to the new Parliament. Its fiscal functions are shamefully limited; 
 it has no control over the militia or the constabulary; it is in no true 
 sense independent or autonomous, but is gagged and bound to the 
 British juggernaut so securely that it must go down to death. Will 
 this grudging, scanty, and ill-furnished scheme obtain the support, 
 or even countenance, of the Eedmondites, and those who look on 
 Ireland as a nation ? Shall it be smashed upon its passage ? These 
 are momentous questions, and perhaps fraught with peril to Ireland. 
 Gladstone and John Morley, it has been said, are the only genuine 
 friends of Irish Home Rule in the English Liberal party. And if 
 John Eedmond refuses his support to the present measure — what 
 then ? We wait and hope. If the " old man eloquent," who for 
 seven years, through good and evil report, despite the opposition of 
 foes and the cowardly desertion of friends, has remained the staunch 
 and steadfast friend of Ireland — if he should terminate his mortal 
 career before the issue is determined, wiU the cup of Ireland's hope 
 be dashed from her lips just when the long-deferred day of fulfil- 
 ment seemed at hand ? 
 
 Ah ! who wiU take away the hope of Ireland ? Dum spiro, spero. 
 Hope is the sheet-anchor of the soul; hope is God's morning star; 
 hope is the only heaven of an oppressed people upon this dreary 
 earth. May we, then, not hope; — hope soon to see a rift in the 
 clouds, and a gleam of the old sunburst smiling in the sky some 
 bright summer's morning; hope to see her sons awake in justice, 
 power, *and truth, and stand a wall of fire around the much-loved 
 isle; hope to see the light of liberty dawning, as the aurora of her 
 resurrection gilds the gloom around her; hope to hear the sacred 
 song of freedom re-echoing among her ancient hills; hope to see a 
 
395 
 
 genuine Parliament take its seat in College Green, where Irish laws 
 shall be made by Irish intellects, for the benefit of Irishmen; when 
 bounding along on the billows of national prosperity and independ- 
 ence, the dying injunction of her martyr hero shall be heeded, and 
 the people of Ireland shall salute, with eyes of rapture, the spirit of 
 Emancipation, as she walks around the sea-begirdled shores of 
 Ireland. 
 
ly. 
 
 LECTURE ON CHARITY. 
 
 FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ST. VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY, 
 ST. JAMES' CHURCH, NEWARK, N. J. 
 
 I AM come here to-niglit to plead the cause of Christian charity. 
 And what is charity ? 
 
 " It is not the gift that ostentation bestows, 
 Nor the tear that from sentiment languidly flows, 
 Nor the cushion that's spread for a purple-robed guest. 
 Nor the bidding the wealthy and proud to a feast. 
 
 " But ask of the Gospel — its pages have said 
 It is love to the creatures your Maker has made ; 
 And if in the heart the good tree taketh root 
 It will shed o'er the life its most beautiful fruit. 
 
 " 'Tis the little 'address ' in the wiping a tear ; 
 'Tis the whisper of hope in the desolate ear ; 
 'Tis the smile of encouragement given to one 
 Whom malign degradation has marked for its own, 
 
 " 'Tis the answer that turns away anger and wrath ; 
 ^Tis the hand that strews roses in misery's path ; 
 'Tis the foot that treads softly the chamber of pain ; 
 'Tis the gift that the giver expects not again. 
 
 " 'Tis the word that is said in an absent one's praise, 
 Or to save from dishonor, distrust, or disgrace ; 
 'Tis the thought that would wound never uttered in jest, 
 The apology urged, the fault frankly confessed. 
 
 " 'Tis the hiding what others would not wish revealed ; 
 'Tis a friend's secret error forever concealed, 
 And in every transaction that's open to view 
 'Tis to act as you'd wish others acted to you." 
 
397 
 
 Charity, therefore, my friends, is simply the love of Christ reign- 
 ing in the human heart, and moving it to deeds of mercy and be- 
 nevolence. Charity is the spirit of religion actively pervading the 
 human race, to assuage misery, to relieve distress, and to link to- 
 gether, by its golden bonds, the whole family of mankind in one 
 common brotherhood of sympathy and affection. Charity is identical 
 with benevolence and love, and it is the term constantly employed 
 in Holy Writ to signify all the good affections which we ought to 
 bear to one another. And true charity is an active principle. It is 
 not limited to that indolent good-nature which bears malice towards 
 none, but is of no particular service to any. It consists not in those 
 barren and purely speculative ideas of general benevolence. Nor is 
 charity a solitary viriue, but rather the crown and splendor and 
 flower of them all. It is a living well-spring, or fountain of the 
 heart, from which gush forth, like so many native streams, the bright 
 virtues of generosity, forbearance, patience, candor, liberality, pity, 
 tenderness, and sweet compassion. Charity warms our esteem and 
 complacency for our friends ; it inspires us towards our enemies 
 with forgiveness and humanity. It dictates gentleness of temper, 
 and forms affability of manners. It prompts corresponding sym- 
 pathies with those who rejoice, and similar feelings with those who 
 weep. It breathes universal candor and liberaUty of sentiment. It 
 teaches us to slight and despise no man. It rests not on those 
 fine speculations which float through the mind and leave the heart 
 untouched and cold. 
 
 It is the reconciler of differences, the intercessor for offenders, the 
 protector of the oppressed, and the comforier of the afflicted. It is 
 loyalty in the subject, moderation in the ruler, equity in the judge, 
 public spirit in the citizen, and fidehty in the friend. In children it 
 is reverence and obedience ; in parents it is care and affection. In 
 fine, charity is the soul of social life. It is the sun that enhvens and 
 cheers the abodes of men. " It is like the dew of Hermon," says the 
 Psalmist, " and the dew that descendeth on the mountains of Sion, 
 where the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore " 
 (Ps. cxxxiii. 3). 
 
 Such charity as this, the Apostle says, is the " end of the com- 
 mandment," " the fulfiUing of the law," and " the bond of perfection." 
 It is assumed by our Blessed Lord Himself to be the characteristic 
 
398 
 
 mark of His disciples, and in that magnificent eulogium which St. 
 Paul pronounces on this virtue in the Epistle to the Corinthians, he 
 expressly declares that it is greater than faith or hope. " Now remain 
 these three — faith, hope, and charity ; but the greatest of these is 
 charity." 
 
 If, however, charity be greater than faith, it is closely connected 
 with, and founded upon, that fundamental virtue. The religion of 
 Christ is the true spring of benevolence, and he that crowns his life 
 with Christian charity, acts from faith, and upon the high principle 
 of regard to the God who hath made him, to the Saviour who re- 
 deemed him, and who not only enjoined love, but has enforced it by 
 the example of laying down His life through love of mankind. He 
 acts with the spirit of a follower of the Son of God, and, regardless 
 of men, or of human recompense, he is carried along by the lofty 
 impulse of doing for his fellow-creatures what he would wish to do 
 to that divine Person who hath said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
 me." With him, charity is not merely a moral virtue, but a 
 Christian grace, and it acquires worth and dignity by extending its 
 branches into heaven like a great and lofty tree of Paradise, while 
 shedding its influence upon the eai*th. This charity is but part of 
 the amiable and compassionate spirit of the great Author of Christi- 
 anity ; of that spirit which shone in all His actions, which breathed 
 in all His discourses, and which was expressed with striking energy, 
 when, with such gracious benignity and tenderness. He declared the 
 merciful intention of His mission to all the countless tribes of afflic- 
 tion. " Come to Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
 will refresh you." 
 
 Our eternal Father loves mankind, and desires that we should do 
 so likewise. To man it is not given to be good, otherwise than by 
 imitating his Creator in this generous love in procuring the felicity 
 of his fellow-creatures by such service as is within his power. In 
 this love is comprised all human merit, and it forms an essential 
 part of the love we owe to God, as we see from several subHme pas- 
 sages of the Sacred Writings. 
 
 " Then shall the King say to them that shaU be on His right hand : 
 * Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for 
 you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you 
 
399 
 
 gave me to eat ; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink ; I was a 
 stranger, and you took me in ; naked, and you clothed me ; sick, 
 and you visited me ; I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then 
 shall the just answer Him, saying : ' Lord, when did we see Thee 
 hungry and fed Thee ? thirsty, and gave Thee drink ? And when 
 did we see Thee a stranger and took Thee in ; or naked, and 
 clothed Thee ; or when did we see Thee sick and in prison, and came 
 to Thee ? ' And the King answering, shall say to them : ' Amen, I 
 say to you, as long as you did it to one of these the least of My 
 brethren, you did it unto Me ' " (Matt. xxv. 34-45). 
 
 Our love rises in proportion to our esteem for humanity. Let me, 
 therefore, present to view an elevated type of manhood on which to 
 model your own — a man of surpassing excellence worthy of your es- 
 teem and veneration. He is the Model Man, strong and merciful in 
 a supreme degree; His marvellous patience in suffering sweetens our 
 own cup of woe; His doctrines are simple utterances about a Father- 
 hood which embosoms all the children of men, and a brotherhood 
 which makes all the races of the world one great family; the sinful, 
 the sorrow-stricken, the ignorant, the unwise, the pubUcans and har- 
 lots, the very dregs and refuse of humanity. He draws around Him ; 
 the fountains of righteousness He drinks as they flow from heaven ; 
 His love invites all to rest and reward ; His presence is the presence 
 of all that is good; His memory is a benediction to all; babes and 
 children He calls to Him, but the wise and self-righteous He puts 
 away; His meekness and patience in suffering are like an everlast- 
 ing rock which we may hold by when tossed in the tempest of life ; 
 His poverty has sanctified the home of the poor; His love of healing 
 fills the earth with innumerable works of benevolence and sym- 
 pathy, and fills with wonderful hope the bedside of the sick and dy- 
 ing; the perfume of His faith and devotion has spread through the 
 world, and He is enshrined in the core of our philosophy, in the 
 heart of our exuberant love; He is the irreconcilable enemy of op- 
 pression, injustice, and hypocrisy; He is the philanthropist who 
 pardons all save the impenitent; He makes Himself the brother of 
 the poor, and condemns not the prosperous, if they remember they 
 are the brethren of the indigent; He esteems not men according to 
 their wisdom or their wealth, but according to the motives of their 
 hearts. His long uncut hair, in which the mountain zephyr plays; 
 
400 
 
 His trailing garments of seamless white, whose touch the diseased 
 and sinful longed for; His beautiful feet, washed with precious oint- 
 ment and wiped with woman's hair; His self -immersed air, absent 
 eyes, and brightened forehead, which show that His spirit is far, far 
 away, point Him out as the philosopher and philanthropist without 
 a blemish, as the full manifestation of God in a being of our species, 
 as the sweet Jesus— the Man-God of Nazareth who still lives in our 
 hearts. Who can look on this Man and not be a lover of His kind ? 
 
 But he who forms of his fellow-men a mean, ignoble, and dis- 
 torted type— a mere caricature of humanity; he who is pleased to 
 regard the human race as composed of cunning, crafty, selfish ani- 
 mals, who have no aim in life but to eat and drink and thrive, at 
 whatever cost to others; he who, with cloud-covered mind and 
 cynical heart can see nothing good and grand in art, science, civil- 
 ization, in the pursuit of justice, in the unquenchable quest for the 
 good, the true, the beautiful, the divine, ah ! what motive can he 
 have for loving and respecting his fellow-man, to say nothing of self- 
 sacrifice in the interest of humanity ? 
 
 But these are only individuals, for, thank God, there is some com- 
 passion, wherever there are human hearts. But organized and 
 effective charity is a Christian institution. The policy of Kome 
 pushed the weaker to the wall, and stern and pitiless was the great 
 god Jupiter. There was an altar to Pity in Athens, but it was an altar 
 where the sorrow-stricken might weep in helplessness and despair. 
 
 The power and force of the Gospel is not developed by mere an- 
 nouncement, but must realize itself in those institutions which 
 spring from the fecund bosom of the Catholic Church. In vain has 
 science disputed the unity of our origin, but with even greater fu- 
 tility has it challenged the common character of our destiny. The 
 brotherhood of man is a part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who was 
 primogenitus inter fratres — the first-bom among brothers. And the 
 Catholic Church says all men are brothers; says it so loud that the 
 Australian Bushman, and the South Sea Islander, and the African 
 negro, and the American Indian, shake off their shackles and cry out 
 as they rise from the dust, "We, too, are men." Behold the fruit of 
 the charity of the Church of Christ. Some call it philanthropy; 
 some call it philosophy: — I call it a bit of the wreck of Eden floating 
 in the stormy waters of the world, and the name is charity. 
 
401 
 
 This charity is divine, this charity is heaven-bom. 
 'Twas a beautiful summer evening in the garden of Paradise, and 
 the stars lit up the heavens with a calm and glowing splendor, and 
 the bright, majestic moon cast her rays of matchless beauty over the 
 tree and flower, while in placid loveliness each plant was slumber- 
 ing. The birds which all the livelong day had carolled some chosen 
 lay, had gone to balmy rest, and no sound broke the stillness or 
 solemnity of the scene; all was tranquil as when the morning stars 
 sang together over the newly-made creation, and the sons of God 
 made joyful melody. " Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firma- 
 ment 
 
 " With living sapphires: Hesperus that led 
 The starry host, rode brightest till the moon, 
 Riding in cloudless majesty, at length 
 Apparent queen, unveiled her fearless light, 
 And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." 
 
 In a bower of surpassing elegance, on a couch of blooming roses, of 
 richest fragrance, near a calm, pellucid lake, lay a new-born babe of 
 bewitching beauty and heavenly loveliness. The sweet infant 
 opened its mild, blue eyes and closed them in an innocent smile and 
 in quiet slumber. Soon the babe awoke, and the weak and piteous 
 cry came forth from its tender heart. But Mercy heard its cries for 
 help, and lovingly kissed away its tears, and pressed it fondly to her 
 heart, and nourished it as the mother nourisheth her first-bom. And 
 the Angel of the Lord approached the footstool of Mercy. She 
 kissed the beauteous babe and called it Charity, and blessed it, say- 
 ing: "It is well for suffering humanity that this child is bom into 
 the world, for manifold are the miseries the messenger of heaven 
 shall be called upon to relieve." 
 
 Let us lift the veil to-night from one of the old familiar scenes 
 that daily meet our gaze in the crowded cities of the land, even at 
 our very doors. 
 
 It is a bitter cold night in drear December. Other nights have 
 been as dark and cold ; and ever hence, as long as the earth lasts, 
 they will intersperse the record of time with pictures of gloom 
 and misery, such as He alone can see whose eye measures forward 
 and backward the circling eternities. But it is a desolate night for 
 those who have no shelter but the air ; for those in whose grim 
 26 
 
402 
 
 abodes, in a thousand lanes and alleys of the great city, joy and 
 comfort never enter. A ten-ible night it is for the children of want, 
 whose forced mission of beggary, suggested by misfortune and per- 
 secution more than idleness or crime, brings them only the mouldy 
 crusts of charity, the rebuffs of humanity, the jeers of the witling, 
 the insults of beings who fancied themselves human, only because 
 they walked upright and were garbed in human habiliments. 
 
 In the great cities of New York and Brooklyn, girt round by sea and 
 river ; mighty marts of trade and commerce, through which the in- 
 dustry of the nation comes like life-blood through the heart ; — in 
 these cities, richer than Tyre and Sidon, and fast striving to become 
 as iniquitous ; — in these cities, so Christian, if one might judge of 
 the numberless church-spires ; so philanthropic, if one might count 
 their hospitals and asylums, and almshouses >where smoking soup is 
 dis]3ensed to the vagrant throng, but where also, too often, the 
 worthy are cast among the abandoned and criminal, because they 
 are sick and faint with the burden and wear of poverty, and can no 
 longer on this fair God's earth, so beautiful and abundant, earn by 
 toil, or win by craft, shelter against the pitiless elements, or bread to 
 appease their hunger ; yes, here where poverty is lamented as a 
 crime, and suffering, which might compete with martyrdom, wins 
 the badge of vagrancy, and is sentenced by grave judges, 
 whose faces blossom like a summer vintage, to hells called peniten- 
 tiaries, there to herd with the outcasts of brothels ; yes, here I say 
 where the heart is not callous and jaded by contact with falsehood, 
 injustice, and wrong, may fill its cup with grief, pity, and indignation, 
 how many are the children of want, of pain, of sickness, sorrow, and 
 misery, whose crushed souls strive to bear up their burden virtuously, 
 but find no word of comfort or cheer from the hard world around 
 them, and are driven at last, by madness or despair, to embrace vice, 
 crime, or death. 
 
 Pause, for a moment, pause ye, about whose hearth the fire blazes 
 cheerily to-night, whose larder and cupboard groan with delicacies, 
 whose homes are filled with peace and plenty, pause and look in 
 upon the abodes of wretches, who are wretches only, in all their 
 filth and abandonment, because pitiless circumstances, neither fore- 
 seen nor controllable, have made them so, and from which they 
 found in their distress, no brotherhood to release them. Let us look. 
 
403 
 
 And God help us, what a sight is this ! Come, man or woman ; 
 come, child of plenty and affluence ; come from your comfortable 
 homes ; come, thou sleek and sanctimonious Christian, professing to 
 be full of the love of Christ, come for the sake of Christ who walked 
 and dwelt among the poor, who had no stately palace, neither He 
 nor His disciples in days when disciples were not afraid of death for 
 men's sake in the love of Christ ; come for the sake of Christ who 
 lived and died for the poor, look in upon the home of misery, see 
 how the >vidow and her fatherless children live, or drag out an ex- 
 istence in the midst of the beautiful, rich, and proud city. 
 
 Peer into that dismal room where the fitful firelight casts its 
 ghostly shadows athwart the gloom. The flame sputtering from the 
 solitary stick seems endowed with a human consciousness and burns 
 so feebly that the poor widow may have Hght a little longer to com- 
 plete her task. It is midnight: still there is the form, wasted and 
 worn like a skeleton, bending over the flickering fire, and her hands 
 move as with painful labor. Heaven grant us hard hearts that we 
 may see all before we startle her with a gush of pity. She is putting 
 the last stitches to a garment, for the making of which, she will on 
 the mon-ow claim the miserable dole of six pence. Reflect on it, ye 
 who, dissatisfied with competence, are rushing foi-th to dig more 
 plentiful gold from the distant sands. Think of it, proud million- 
 aire, in the midst of thy feverish thirst for gold, — gold to which 
 thou wilt cling in agony on the bed of death, when its yellow light 
 will stream balef ully on thy glassy eye, and the dark waters roll 
 upon thee, and freeze thee stiff and stark. Think of the widow 
 bending over that waning fire, that when to-morrow comes she may 
 get bread for flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. 
 
 Look around that room ! Where is the carpet to stay the chill 
 from breaking through the creviced floor ? Ah ! there is none ; and 
 through the doors and windows the death-damp oozes in, and the 
 cold night-rain and wind whistles fiercely against the broken pane, 
 and pierces that fragile, toil-spent, shivering form. And the bed 
 where the little ones sleep — by the side of which, ere they were 
 kissed by a fond yet desolate mother for the last time ere they slept, 
 they knelt down and raised their innocent hands to God, and uttered 
 the sweet prayer which her own lips had taught, — and which, God 
 grant, they never may forget,— this bed, what is it but a couch of 
 
404 
 
 straw in a cold and cheerless room, with thin and battered coverlets 
 to shield those shrinking little forms from the inclemency of the 
 bleak and stormy night. Lulled to sleep by want and pain, they 
 sleep the sleep of innocence. Ay, perchance they dream, — dream of 
 days when they had plenty ; when they played merrily with other 
 children, who now shun them and taunt them because they are 
 poor. Yes ; they dream that they are wandering pleasantly through 
 the green fields, feeding themselves with berries, as do the birds of 
 heaven ; and on the wayside they meet an angel who gives them 
 bread and meat, and blesses their childish glee and innocent mirth. 
 Yes ; they dream of meat because they went hungry to bed, and 
 true to instinct, nature pictures in their dormant vision those com- 
 forts which still the cravings of the body, and without which the 
 Boul faints and trembles and fails. And 
 
 " With fingers weary and worn, 
 With eyelids heavy and red," 
 
 the lone widow sits hard by their couch, plying her needle and 
 mingling in her brain thoughts of the sleeping children, and mem 
 cries of the dead. Painful thoughts, holy memories. Does not her 
 vision, even amid this woe, pierce backward through the past ; 
 through years when she was happy in the life and love of kind 
 parents ; when competence h^d not been swept away by sickness, 
 misfortune, and death ; when her children, now pale and drooping, 
 were as summer flowers, laughing in the gladdening sunshine,, when 
 her life was all joy and beatitude, the day full of sweet realities, and 
 the night of sweeter dreams. Nay ; does not her vision go back to 
 the days of girlhood, when life seemed all one sun-bright holiday, 
 when the sky of the future was to her imagination but the golden 
 glow of ecstatic promises; when she mirrored in anticipation the 
 delights of womanhood and motherhood; — delights, as those of 
 paradise, to the young and trusting heart, as was Eden to the sinless 
 Eve, — nor ever dreamed a shadow or a cloud could obscure their 
 radiance, or cast heavy drops of bitterness in her joy-brimming cup. 
 Ah ! yes; and now still more bitter than all, her tear-dimmed eye 
 brings her back to the day she left a father's house, where every secret 
 wish was gratified, where she knew the sweets of plenty and basked 
 in the sunshine of a mother's love; to a day far back in early life, when 
 
405 
 
 before an incensed and garlanded altar, amid the odor of orange- 
 blossoms, and in the glare of glittering lights, when all was bright 
 and joyful, she in an unguarded moment placed her hopes of 
 earthly felicity on the broken promises of a perjured husband, and 
 reaped a bitter recompense for unchanging love, when she put her 
 fair white hand in the hand of one who lifted to his lips the bane 
 of hell — and fell. Know ye not the gloomy habitation of the drunk- 
 ard — the abode wherein intemperance has raised his mournful ban- 
 ner ? Are not those children ragged, hungered, unhappy, and 
 illiterate, because their father fell? Ah! if these words should 
 reach the ear of the swollen-eyed, intemperate husband and unfeel- 
 ing father, God gi-ant that, for his own sake, and that of his heart- 
 broken wife and famished children, he may, through the influence 
 of remorse, become a reformed man, new-made, by reflecting on the 
 desolation of the past, and contemplating the eventful future. 
 
 And now the last stitch is taken, she lays by her work, and, softly 
 approaching the nest where nestle the flowers of her heart, she 
 bends and imprints a soft kiss on each brow, and the invisible, all- 
 seeing Eye above, beholds a tear sparkhng as it falls on each little 
 cheek, and hears the deep, inaudible prayer, " Our Father who art in 
 heaven," rising like an incense from the widow's heart. And though 
 they, widow and children, bear all the garments they have on their 
 backs; though they sleep on bare and prickly straw, and have no 
 meal for the morrow in their cupboard; though the children sleep 
 and dream the dreams of the famishing; though all is still as lips 
 touched by death, saving the whistling wind, the beating of the 
 sleet, and the quick throbbing of the widow's full heart; still she 
 does not despair, for she knows that she is overshadowed by the 
 warm wings of the angels, and the love of God lies balmy, like the 
 fragrance of a summer morning, around her heart, and in gentle ac- 
 quiescence to her Maker's will, she says: 
 
 *' What'll it matter by and by, 
 
 Whether my path in life was bright, 
 Whether it wound through dark or light. 
 Under a grey or a golden sky, 
 When I look back out it * 
 By and by." 
 
 Christianity has done a blessed and beautiful work in subduing 
 the heart, and teaching it to bear up and not break under suffering; 
 
406 
 
 to face misfortune, poverty, oppression, and death even without 
 shrinking from the task. The loftiest virtue and heroism displayed 
 on this earth is the heroism of the poor, who live through lives of 
 suffering and sorrow, and for all their martyrdom ask no crown but 
 the approving peace of God. But the type of sufferer of whom 
 I have spoken is a Christian, and she has no thought of relief in 
 death, nor in escaping from the toil that makes her pale and pinched 
 and wan. She is a Christian, and she lives on and hopes on for the 
 sake of the children, who lie sleeping there on their pallet of straw, 
 and who, did she forsake them, would be inmates of some cell, the 
 inheritors of the pauper's brand, or still worse, driven among the 
 victims of vice and crime to learn the arts of brutes and fiends. 
 She is a Christian, that meek and uncomplaining widow, and she re- 
 members the saying of Him who is life and strength to all who trust 
 in Him : " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
 heaven." 
 
 Now, this is no fancy sketch drawn from a glowing and sym- 
 pathetic imagination, but it is a stern reality, and it is to relieve just 
 such misery that the sons of St. Vincent de Paul, who pursue their 
 labors so silently among you here, are ready to leave the comforts of 
 their fireside, to brave the inclement blasts of winter, to seek out the 
 cabins and the garrets of the poor and pour the balm of consolation 
 into their woe-burdened souls. 
 
 While the grates in the palaces of Fifth Avenue blaze and crackle 
 with the ruddy coals, and music awakens the gay dance and song, 
 and luxury sates itself with every delicacy, there is unutterable woe 
 in yonder garret and cellar; the woe of hunger, pain, and breaking 
 hearts, which will breed, along with virtue and heroism, much de- 
 spair, crime, and madness. What wonder that murder and suicides 
 occur ? What wonder if the age puts on the garb of vice and aban- 
 dons itself to the Evil One ? Will not the starving wretch clutch his 
 neighbor's loaf ? In the delirium of want will he not cry — even as 
 the famished everywhere, cry out: "Bread or Blood." Oh! think 
 not, regenerator of society, that there can be harmony or peace in 
 the spirit, while the body is tortured by keen pain. Kemember that 
 Christ taught first to clothe and feed the poor. How can they feel 
 that the earth is bountiful, and that God's love is over all, who are 
 shut out from earth's bounties, and denied that human sympathy 
 
407 
 
 and love which seems the truest expression on earth of the love of 
 God? 
 
 I plead not for the idle, who may have work and can work, if they 
 will, to earn bread; I plead not for masked beggars, who shamefully 
 follow a vocation to which they are not driven by want; but I do 
 plead for hundreds who are beggars in all but the act of beggary, to 
 which sensitive souls do not, thank God, easily bend. They are the 
 most terribly suffering and pitiable of the poor. They have, some 
 of them, seen better days, and been reduced from affluence to poverty 
 by misfortune; many, by that fatality which seems to pursue those 
 who strive the hardest to see how mu^ they can bear; many, by sick- 
 ness; some, by sin, but comparatively few by acts which God would 
 severely condemn. 
 
 Health and employment must be society's salvation for the 
 poor; they are better than provisional alms. Give them these, and 
 the prisons and penitentiaries will be almost tenantless, and crime 
 and wretchedness will be in great part swept away. Oh ! that an 
 Astor, a Stewart, or a Vanderbilt, whose hoarded millions spent in 
 workhouses and baths and libraries for the poor would have reared 
 them a monument grander than the triumphal arch of the pyramids, 
 had closed theii* accounts with God by decreeing their millions to the 
 alleviation of their brothers, God's children on earth. 
 • Poverty is the parent of crime. Do not doubt it, philanthropist 
 and legislator. " The destruction of the poor is their poverty," says 
 the Wise Man. It is the source whence spring nine-tenths of the 
 physical and moral maladies that afflict mankind and curse our 
 earth. Search the records of jails and prisons; trace the history of 
 those who have been banned and branded, and see how, step by 
 step, they were driven to the verge of the abyss — Poverty ! It has 
 made thieves, robbers, prostitutes, and murderers. It has made 
 anarchists and atheists and distui'bers of social order. It has con- 
 vulsed nations and cast down thrones. Grim and terrible it has 
 glared upon society, spreading blight everywhere in its path. 
 
 I repeat, poverty is the cause of crime; though, I freely allow, 
 crime often causes poverty. But it is the office of benevolence to 
 discover what can best promote the improvement of all classes of 
 the community. Much is said of the unworthiness and ill-desert of 
 the poor. Those who are too scrupulous to do good without a 
 
408 
 
 charter of recommendation, may still find abundant exercise for 
 their charities in the children of want and infirmity, of whom it can- 
 not be said that vice and idleness brought them low. The deserv- 
 ing are least rarely objects of charity. 
 
 Still, we believe th^re is much to do, in the hope of reformation, 
 among those whose poverty is the reward of their vices. The truth 
 still remains, they are our suffering fellow-beings. In the instruc- 
 tions of our Saviour, we are not told, if thy brother hunger and is 
 worthy, feed him; if he thirst, and is deserving, give to him drink. 
 We find no rule of duty measured wholly by the worth of the ob- 
 ject; but many founded on dur knowledge, our abilities, and our 
 common brotherhood in Christ our Lord, who spent His life in 
 ministering to the poor, and of whose mission of " peace on earth," 
 it was heralded as one of the unequivocal signs that the poor should 
 have the Gospel preached to them. 
 
V. 
 
 HAIL, COLUMBUS, HAPPY MAN ! * 
 
 * * Thy fame rings down the corridor of centuries, and grows brighter with 
 
 the flight of time." 
 
 America honored itself in glorifying the memory' of Christopher 
 Columbus ! 
 
 From the sacred walls of La Eabida to the eastern confines of the 
 Pacific, from Manitoba to Cape Horn, the millions enjoying the fruit- 
 age of the discovery, paid loving tribute to the patience, persever- 
 ance, unwavering faith, and mai'vellous genius of the Genoese navi- 
 gator. 
 
 The passage of four hundred years has but increased the fame of 
 Columbus. His discovery of the New World is justly reckoned an 
 epoch in the world's history second only to the birth of Christianity. 
 It marks the inception of modem history. With it was born a new 
 and grander civilization. From it sprung the greatest repubHc on 
 earth, the Mecca of the oppressed of all lands. 
 
 When one reflects on the vicissitudes in the career of Columbus, 
 the marvellous faith and religious fervor of the man shine resplen- 
 dent. Scoffed at and rejected by his native city, its people now de- 
 Ught to honor him. In Portugal, place and person derided his 
 schemes, yet he lived to witness the court's regret. In all his 
 troublous days, the Church and its ministers were his comforters and 
 supporters. Whether battHng against mutinous crews, overcoming 
 envy and treachery, struggling amid Atlantic storms, or when igno- 
 miniously bound in chains, his trust in God was as strong and fer- 
 vent as when he raised the standard of the cross on the tropic shores 
 of Guanahani, or when exhibiting trophies of the discovery in the 
 court at Barcelona. 
 
 * From the Omaha Recorder. 
 
410 
 
 It was eminently fitting that the Catholics of Omaha should honor 
 the memory of Columbus. They did not seek to make the celebra- 
 tion exclusive, or draw the line on creeds. On the contrary, weeks 
 before, the chairman of the managing committee notified Mayor 
 Bemis of their purpose, expressing a willingness to take any part 
 that might be assigned in a public demonstration. His Honor 
 probably did not think the occasion worthy of an effort. It was not 
 even brought ofl&cially to the attention of the city council. After a 
 careful survey of the city, the mayor failed to discover any signs of 
 preparation, and so informed the committee. Therefore, the duty 
 of sustaining the patriotism of Omaha by publicly honoring the 
 memory of Columbus, fell to the Catholics. That they performed 
 the duty well does not admit of doubt. The Columbian festal 
 season was ushered in very properly with masses in all the churches 
 on the 12th, followed in the afternoon with a parade of the school 
 children and delightful patriotic exercises in Exposition Hall. On 
 the 21st, the various church societies and most of the school children 
 united in a grand parade, with flags and banners unfurled, keeping 
 step to martial music and enlivening drum corps. The day was an 
 ideal one for a parade. The mist and frost of an October morning 
 vanished long before noon, and at 2 p.m., when the organizations 
 began to assemble, the sun smiled approval in genial rays. 
 
 The parade on last Friday was one of the finest ever seen in this 
 city. It was distinctively a Catholic celebration, and was participated 
 in by only the Catholic residents of the city, the Catholic societies, 
 and the pupils of the parochial schools and colleges. The day was 
 perfect, and all nature smiled upon the undertaking in a manner to 
 gladden the hearts of the participants. 
 
 Promptly at 2 o'clock the grand marshal of the day, William M. 
 Bushman, assisted by Dr. W. J. McCrann, Patrick Ford, P. M. 
 Mullen, Wm. Maher, John Dougherty, and P. A. O'Keefe, as aides, 
 started the column from Ninth and Harney Streets, and the parade, 
 fully 6,000 strong, moved away without hitch or hindrance. The 
 line of march was past St. Philomena's cathedral, from the steps of 
 which the parade was reviewed by Et Kev. Bishop Scannell, Father 
 Tighe, of New Jersey, Vicar-General Choka, and Rev. Colaneri, of 
 Omaha. There was music — music by the bands, and music by the 
 fife and drum corps, but none sweeter than the chimes of St. Phi- 
 
411 
 
 lomena's bells, which ring only on state occasions. Every detail was 
 carried out to the letter, and the thousands who witnessed the pa- 
 rade from the points of vantage along the line of march, pronounced 
 it the finest that was ever seen in this city. 
 
 The Ancient Order of Hibernians, headed by ^Ir. S. J. Flynn, as 
 marshal, and Messrs. P. J. Keilley and E. J. Dee, as aides, headed 
 the procession, and presented a fine appearance. They wore the re- 
 galia of the order, together with the handsome souvenir badges 
 made by the Poor Clare Sisters, and marched with the bearing of 
 soldiers, keeping time to the strains of inspiring music. 
 
 Next came the parishes, under the leadership of Mr. Thomas 
 Swift. They composed a large part of the parade, but some of the 
 parishes did not turn out the full number. 
 
 The pupils of the Catholic schools, who immediately followed, 
 were under the marshalship of Hon. Thos. JjOwtj. They made an 
 especially fine appearance, as every little tot was resplendent in red, 
 white, and blue. The boys who were large enough went on foot, 
 while the smaller ones and the girls rode in wagons, carry-alls, and 
 tally-ho coaches. 
 
 Following came the C. M. B. A., the Y. M. I., and the German, 
 Bohemian, Polish, and Italian societies, who were represented in 
 large numbers. Five divisions of Creighton University students 
 followed, and attracted a large amount of public attention, as they 
 marched with the bearing of so many soldiers, keeping time to the 
 strains of martial music. 
 
 AT EXPOSITION HALL.* 
 
 The lecture by Bev. Father Tighe in the evening was a fitting 
 close to the ceremonies. Long before the leader of the united choirs 
 lifted his baton for the first notes of "America," every seat in Expo- 
 sition Hall was occupied and standing room in demand. Close to 
 4,000 people were crowded into the building, and a more joyous, 
 enthusiastic throng never roused the echoes there with hearty cheers. 
 The fact that the duty of celebrating Columbus Day in Omaha was 
 left to Catholics, formed a text for Father Tighe's address. He ex- 
 pressed amazement that Catholics should be alone in honoring the 
 discoverer of America. He had travelled from New Jersey to 
 
 * Friday, October 13. 
 
412 
 
 Omaha, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, and in all that vast ter- 
 ritory Omaha was the only city in which the people, regardless of 
 religious differences, did not unite in doing honor to the memory of 
 Columbus. 
 
 From the first sentence to the close of the address, Father Tighe 
 was in happy accord with his audience, and almost every sentence 
 was vigorously applauded. 
 
 THE CHOSEN AGENT OF GOD. COLUMBUS THE CHRIST-BEARER TO THE WEST.* 
 
 St. Philomena's cathedral was thronged from chancel to vestibule 
 with people, many of whom were non-Catholics, who were present to 
 listen to Father Tighe, of New Jersey. The pulpit was handsomely 
 draped with the American flag. We are pleased to give our readers. 
 a verbatim report of the masterful lecture on Columbus delivered on 
 the occasion by the eloquent clergyman. 
 
 Father Tighe spoke as follows : 
 
 In the sepulchral chapel of the great cathedral of Granada, in 
 tombs composed of delicate alabaster and adorned with devices of 
 heraldic emblazonry, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic sovereigns 
 of Spain, clad in simple regal costume, sleep side by side, in the at- 
 titude of the long and happy union that glorified their reign and 
 beautified their lives. 
 
 Looking through the " dark backward and abyss of time," these 
 sad relics of departed majesty connect us with a period which, in 
 view of Spain's decadence, seems more like some abstract dream of 
 romance than a chapter of authentic history. For then Spain, the 
 mistress of the seas, was near the zenith of her power. Then she 
 spread her wings over a wide sweep of empire and extended the 
 glory of her name even to the antipodes ; then her flag was first un- 
 furled in Italy and Africa, to the awe and wonder of Europe ; then, 
 in fine, it was that a new world, fertile, boundless, richer than the 
 dreams of avarice, was cast into her lap — discovered just when the 
 old was becoming too confined for the awakened intellect and enter- 
 prise of mankind. 
 
 The epoch which introduced the dual sovereignty of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella was one pregnant with gigantic consequences to the 
 world. The close of the fifteenth century was one of those peculiar 
 
 * Cathedral, Monday, October 15. 
 
413 
 
 climacterics when signal revolutions take place both in the social and 
 political conditions of mankind. The thrones of England, France, 
 and Spain were filled by three extraordinary men, justly styled by 
 Bacon, the Magi of Kings ; men who understood one another at a 
 word, and among whom a community of interests and many coin- 
 cidences of character cemented a good understanding. 
 
 It was, besides, an epoch of expanding intelligence ; paper, giving 
 wings to the printed words, had emancipated knowledge and opened 
 mines of learning hitherto confined to the court or the cloister. 
 
 The astrolabe, forerunner of the quadrant, and the needle, had, 
 with magnetic power, drawn the creeping commerce from the 
 coward shores, and the numerous fleets returned freighted with the 
 germs of peace, wealth, and civilization ; the establishment of mail 
 posts led to an easy and constant interchange of ideas, and inter- 
 national intercourse developed a diplomacy which, uniting Europe 
 into one family, laid the balance of power which still exists and so 
 much contributes to the preservation of peace throughout the civil- 
 ized world. 
 
 Such was the character of the age when a child of destiny ap- 
 peared upon the theatre of events, whose illustrious achievements 
 were to enhance beyond belief the renown of his age, and shed un- 
 dying glory on his name. 
 
 The life of Christopher Columbus is one magnificent tragedy; the 
 plot, — the discovery of a world ; the moral, — the vanity of human 
 wishes, a good man struggling against undeserved misfortune, and 
 sinking into his grave under the cold ingratitude of those whom he 
 exalted and enriched by his genius, his courage, and his immoiial 
 enterprise. 
 
 This unparalleled drama opened with a splendid conception, not the 
 child of accident, but of long-cherished and matured design ; the 
 progress is impeded by delays and difficulties, until the spurns of 
 patient merit are succeeded by the glory of the triumph. Once 
 again the scenes are shifted, and from their odious coverts crawl 
 foi-th envy, defamation, persecution ; and the hero, sore of heart, 
 and chilled by the frosts of repeated disappointments, pines in 
 gloom and misery, till death, a welcome deliverer, lets down the 
 curtain on one of the grandest and most mournful careers recorded 
 in human history. 
 
414 
 
 Let us glance at some of the most striking incidents in the event- 
 f til life of this incomparable man. 
 
 Let us spread the wings of fancy and skim in thought the breezy 
 surface of the blue Atlantic till we reach the mouth of the mighty 
 Mediterranean. As the first flush of dawn tinges the sky, and sows 
 the sea with orient pearls, we discern the outlines of the European 
 and African coasts, with their bold projecting headlands and lofty 
 mountains, peak confronting peak, like the fabled giants of antiquity 
 marching up to battle. 
 
 Midway between the pillars of Hercules, the glorious sun, 
 
 '• Like God's own head," 
 
 rises from the calm waters and 
 
 " Springs exultant on his grand career," 
 
 lighting with his beacon fires the mountains of two continents. 
 Along the Spanish coast range the green vineyards with cosy, pleas- 
 ant cottages scattered among them, rising in lovely terraces far up 
 the distant hills ; while on the African side the bald, bleak moun- 
 tains frown grimly down, without a tuft of green to relieve the 
 aspect of sterility from the dark-fronted cliffs beetling over the sea 
 to the sharp peaks covered with eternal snow, but all standing oat 
 with matchless sublimity of grouping. Lo ! there stands Gibraltar, 
 its summit like burnished gold, impregnable as time itself, rising 
 1,500 feet above the sea, as it stood when washed by the waves of 
 the deluge, nay, for centuries oblivious in the dim mysterious past. 
 It has looked down on empires lost and won ; has felt the shock 
 of navies in the throes of battle, and has been scathed by the light- 
 ning of heaven ; but, like that 
 
 *• Tideless sea 
 Which, changeless, rolls eternally '* 
 
 beside its base, it stands itself unchangeable. 
 
 On our left, as we move on, rise the snow-capped mountains of 
 Granada, recalling memories of Moorish and Christian valor in con- 
 flict on those lofty slopes; and on the right, stretches far away the 
 sandy coast of Africa, telling its mournful story to the sea, sending 
 its wail of lamentation across the waters, and, like Rachel for her 
 children, weeping uncomforted, because they are no more. 
 
415 
 
 Oiir good ship cleaves the same waters which long ago washed the 
 thi-ones of Egypt, with her pyramids; Carthage, with her Hannibal; 
 Granada, with her chieftains; Rome, with her mailed heroes; Greece, 
 with her poets; Judea, with her holy city; while all around us, on 
 the soft air, breathes the spirit of the classic world and the conse- 
 crated memories of the past. 
 
 The mellow sky of the MediteiTanean is bending over us with its 
 sparkling stars; the moon's silver sheen is spread upon the spacious 
 deep, and the melody of the murmuring waters and soft sighing of 
 the land-born breeze, are like spectral voices of the far-off olden 
 time. We are sailing the same sea where had sailed the Rubicon 
 Caesar; Hannibal, with his invincible legions; Agricola, with his col- 
 onists; Peter the Hermit, with his bold crusaders; Paul, with his 
 new faith; the young Corsican on his way to a new throne; and the 
 most intrepid navigator of any age upon his bold path to a new con- 
 tinent. 
 
 We now gain a glimpse of the land of the orange grove and myrtle 
 bower; the land where the olive springs from the bare mountain-side, 
 and the vine shoots spontaneous in rich festoons from the generous 
 soil; the land where the flowers wreathe with chaplets fair the falling 
 columns and decaying towers; Italy, whose fostering care draws noble 
 life from senseless marble and makes dull canvas speak; whose magic 
 tone infused in music, constrains the soul with passionate tears to 
 own the power of melody; Italy, the land of heroes, and the birth- 
 place of him whose monument is a hemisphere, whose fame is 
 eternal. 
 
 C. Edwards Lester, U. S. Consul to Genoa in 1847, was the first 
 American to fix the spot of the great navigator's bii'th. In the fall 
 of that year, he and the Count of Syracuse started in the American 
 war-ship Princeton for the Western Riviera of Genoa, one of the 
 most beautiful shores of the world, and embarked at the town of 
 Cogoleto, eighteen miles from the city. The san, for some time 
 buried behind a bank of clouds, burst forih with singular splendor, 
 and flung a flood of golden light over shore and mountain, sea and 
 city. Radiant among' the verdant hills nestled the birthplace of the 
 great hero, and, as the brave American tars caught sight of the scene 
 of the famous navigator's childhood, their feelings gushed forth with 
 powerful emotion, evinced in the ready tribute of their tears. There 
 
416 
 
 lay Gogol eto, white and peaceful in the mountains, far up whose 
 sides the hanging gardens and vineyards spread their verdurous 
 mantle, and far above shone the heaven-kissing peaks, glistening 
 like gold beneath the sapphired heavens. A strong, substantial 
 structure, tlu'ee stories high, forming an irregular pile without any 
 pretension to architecture, and covered with the dust and shadows of 
 five centuries, was pointed out as the childhood home of Christopher 
 Columbus. All stand silent and uncovered before this monument of 
 departed greatness, for they feel like men who stand on consecrated 
 ground. Their inspection finished, the boat rolls out upon the water 
 amid the loud swelling shouts and cheers of the villagers, and the gal- 
 lant old commander cries: " Give the grand discoverer a gun for every 
 State in the Union." As the giant gun on the bow pours forth its 
 thundering salvos, the reverberations seem to shake the distant moun- 
 tains, and as the dying echoes play among the hills, each peal, each 
 sound, is like a voice, articulate with speech, and calling out from 
 peak to peak and vale to vale, Columbus ! Columbus ! Columbus ! 
 
 Just as the sun is declining to his Alpine home, the beautiful 
 steamer enters the harbor of Genoa, and her return is greeted by 
 shouts of welcome from the thousands of spectators gathered along 
 the wharf and shore. The twilight scene is strangely beautiful. The 
 shining orb of day sinks to sleep beyond the hills, and leaves behind 
 his golden splendor, flooding the glacier peaks, the blue sea, the 
 marble city, and the purple heavens. The chiming of the city towers 
 send their vesper melody down to the bay, and warbling up the 
 hills and from their awakened tops, the convent bells tone back from 
 their guardian cypresses, half sad, half soothingly, as if each dirge- 
 like sound were a requiem for Columbus; and from the distant beach 
 each roUing wave boomed back, Columbus ! 
 
 Every American's view of Genoa must be one of deep, absorbing, 
 and tender interest; produced not by the mingled wildness and soft- 
 ness of the surrounding landscape; not by its luxurious climate and 
 gorgeous palaces; not by the treasures of art with which it regales 
 the fancy and gratifies the taste; but by the thrilling recollection 
 that it is nigh the home and birthplace of the illustrious discoverer 
 of our native hemisphere; of him to whom America owes every- 
 thing, her civilization, her religion, her liberties, her illimitable hopes, 
 and to whom the family of mankind owe more than to any other 
 
417 
 
 mortal descendant of our common parents. And even if the old 
 house were gone and left no wreck behind, would he not have gath- 
 ered from the spot where it stood, some flower, or leaf, or pebble, as 
 a precious memorial of the place ? Nay, would it not be enough to 
 have breathed the same air which he first inhaled; to have beheld 
 the sea which nursed and matured him for his fearless march 
 through the unknown deep; to have seen those mountains, the 
 neighboring Alps and bordering Apennines, with whose spii'its he 
 was wont to commune; to have set foot in that consecrated land of 
 heroes, at whose redundant fountains of light his youthful lamp was 
 fed; to have been suiTounded by those stiri'ing associations whicli 
 inspired him with the lofty but not unholy ambition of being great 
 and good; which, perhaps, first swelled his glowing bosom with the 
 mighty, the God- like aspiration, to give to mankind a new world ? 
 
 Columbus loved the sea from boyhood, with that fond attachment, 
 that irresistible yearning, which was born of the foresight success. 
 Married to a sailor's daughter, he had learned amid the storms of 
 Iceland and the rock-bound coasts of Africa, that practical seaman- 
 ship, that capacity for observation of the elements, that witchcraft of 
 knowledge which appeared all but su^^erhuman, not only to super- 
 stitious sailors, but also to some of the most enlightened of his 
 time. 
 
 An excellent cartographer, he at first supported himself by making" 
 charts, though sometimes engaged in commercial enterprise. 
 
 A vague idea, fed by popular credulity and learned speculation, 
 based chiefly upon some poetical aspirations of the revived classics, 
 was then generally prevalent, that a path of glory opened by the 
 west to Asia, to far Cathay, the land of Prester John — a region of 
 spice and pearls, barbaric pomp and gold. 
 
 The prophetic eye of Columbus pierced through the twilight 
 which broke upon the long night of ages ; the train of his innate 
 impulses was fired, and when he had carefully satisfied his mind, 
 conjecture became conviction to which he adhered, despite all dis- 
 couragement, with indomitable perseverance and impliable tenacity. 
 
 How much of the instinct of the seer glowed in his own bosom he 
 
 alone could tell ; but in his character and his conduct he displayed 
 
 such sanguine expectations of success that it seemed as if some 
 
 partial revelation had been vouchsafed to him of the splendid results 
 
 27 
 
418 
 
 which must of necessity follow the attempt to realize the divine im- 
 pulses which had blazed up in his own soul like fire. 
 
 Columbus was a man of two ideas, — one, the discovery of lands ; 
 the other, the conversion of their inhabitants to the religion of 
 Christ. In view of the bitterness with which the character of Co- 
 lumbus is assailed by the illiberal and narrow-minded, just when the 
 civilized world is preparing to do honor to his memory by commem- 
 orating, with due festivity, his high achievements, it is, perhaps, no 
 more than due to his fame as one of the greatest benefactors of 
 humanity to emphasize the pious spirit that ruled the man and 
 impaired a religious halo to his fearless enterprise. 
 
 " Among Catholics the spirit of evangelization has always gone hand 
 in hand with that of discovery ; and the expression of Champlain, 
 that * the salvation of a soul is worth more than the conquest of an 
 empire,' is but the echo of the mind of the Church in every age. 
 This same spirit has been felicitously alluded to by George Bancroft 
 when he says : 'The religious zeal of the French bore the cross to 
 the banks of the St. Mary, and the confines of Lake Superior, and 
 looked wistfully towards the houses of the Sioux in the valley of the 
 Mississippi five years before the New England Eliot had addressed 
 the tribes that dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor.' " This is the 
 spirit of the Church in every age, and it jvas especially so when Co- 
 lumbus appeared before the chivalry of the Spanish court. " That he 
 should have been zealous for the conversion of the lands he might 
 discover, was to be expected from the spirit of the times in which he 
 lived; such motives were of the very atmosphere he breathed." We 
 see it in his personal piety ; in the name of his flagship, Santa 
 Maria ; in the devotions daily held on board ; in the manner in 
 which he took possession of the lands discovered ; in the names he 
 gave to them ; in the language which he employed, considering him- 
 self as a messenger of the Gospel, making the prophecies of the Old 
 Testament relating to the conversion of the Gentile applicable to 
 himself, and constantly proclaiming, whether standing as a beggar 
 at a convent gate, explaining his scheme of discovery to learned doc- 
 tors and cosmographers, or pleading for countenance and sujDport 
 l)efore kings and sovereigns, that he " was an ambassador of the 
 Most High, chosen by His infinite goodness to announce the proposed 
 discovery of the Indies to the most potent princes of Christendom, 
 
419 
 
 that he might labor unceasingly for the propagation of the 
 faith." 
 
 Mystical and religious, he considered himself an humble instru- 
 ment in the hands of Providence to carry as the dove (which his 
 name, Columbus, signifies), the olive branch of the Gospel to be- 
 nighted worlds. This and his own honor were the pivots of his 
 mind, and the religious sentiment, as Irving says, " mingled with 
 his meditations," and imparted a celestial character to his claims. 
 "Standing in the hand of heaven he read his contemplated dis- 
 covery foretold in Holy Writ, and foreshadowed in the mystic reve- 
 lations of the prophets." The ends of the earth were to be brought 
 together ; all nations, all tongues, all languages, were to be united 
 under the banners of the crucified Kedeemer; the Church's dream of 
 universal occupation was to be realized at last, and every valley 
 was to be filled, every mountain laid low ; the rough ways made 
 plain, and the crooked ways straight, that all flesh might see the 
 light of God's salvation. 
 
 Such was to be the glorious consummation of his unexampled 
 undertaking, which would carry the banners of the Gospel into the 
 unexplored regions of the earth, bring the light of the true faith to 
 them that sat in darkness and walked in the shadow of death, and 
 gather all the countless tribes of men into one Christian empire 
 under the dominion of the Church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The seer-like certainty of his convictions ; the simplicity and art- 
 lessness of his declarations ; the imposing importance of his enter- 
 prise, and the glowing enthusiasm of liis thoughts and ideas lent 
 force and weight to his words, and dignity and loftiness to his whole 
 demeanor. He treated with kings as one who could control empires; 
 he conferred with sovereigns as one on a plane of equality; and after 
 long delays and grievous disappointments, when his plans were re- 
 jected at Lisbon, he departed in disgust, the wide world before him. 
 
 Indeed, the intensity of his behef that he was the chosen agent of 
 the Almighty to carry the purposes of heaven to their goal, bore him 
 up against all misfortune, and no disappointment could dampen, no 
 opposition could check the ardor of his pursuit towards his coveted 
 aim. Yet, though regarding his impulse to discovery as divinely 
 implanted ; though considering his mind as illumined by the mar- 
 vellous brightness of heaven ; though deeming all who yielded him 
 
420 
 
 service as informed by supernatural intimations, — and all for the 
 fulfillment of Scripture concerning his stupendous discovery; never- 
 theless, all that was secondary to the cherished project which had so 
 long laid aside of his heart, — the recovery and the restoration of the 
 sepulchre of the world's Redeemer. This idea it was that dominated, 
 nay, transfigured, the whole man ; this it was that filled him with 
 the spirit of the old crusaders, that made a knight-errant for the 
 right and true in the world ; and a like doughty cavalier ready to 
 take the sword against the Moslem ; this, in fine, is the purpose he 
 meditated as far back as 1474, when he conceived his route to the 
 Indies ; which he clung to with the ardent hope of a lover all 
 through life, and for whose realization he sought to make provision 
 on his death-bed by charging his posterity to turn to account the 
 prospective gains of his enterprise to the delivery of the Redeemer's 
 tomb from the sacrilegious control of the Saracen. 
 
 As from the trend of imperfectly unknown shores and tides, from 
 the mysterious indication of vague, untracked wilds, he could de- 
 duce a glorious certainty of hitherto undreamed continents; so, as 
 an ardent spiritual discoverer, did he see with an inextinguishable 
 faith the hitherto undreamed heights of spiritual glory which must 
 be surely won by the path of exploration which God commissioned 
 him, as he conceived, to point out to mankind. 
 
 Such were the lofty and disinterested motives that impelled him 
 first to conceive, and then to carry into execution, his magnificent 
 but hazardous undertaking. 
 
 Columbus, however, was not merely a religious enthusiast, incited 
 to great exploits by the blind ardor and passionate rapture of a 
 frenzied zealot or deluded day-dreamer. His high hopes and ex- 
 pectations were not founded upon air-built phantoms, but upon the 
 rational conclusions of the thoughtful investigator and practical 
 man of science. All his ideas and all his plans show unmistakably 
 that his discovery was the outcome of the workings of his mind 
 upon the geographic and scientific problems of his age, aided by the 
 information furnished by seafaring men and the product of personal 
 experience. His conclusions once fixed, he never wavered, never 
 doubted, never hesitated, but spoke with the confident assurance of an 
 astronomer, w^ho, from mathematical calculation, points out a conjunc- 
 tion of the heavenly bodies thousands of years before the event occurs. 
 
421 
 
 Long years of patient study lent confirmation, " strong as Holy 
 Writ," to his pre-established convictions and carefully formed 
 theories. He neglected no opportunity to increase his information, 
 and spared neither toil nor time to enhance his knowledge on every 
 point that bore upon his pet project of discovery. He made liimself 
 familiar with the cosmography of the ancients, as well as with the 
 science of his own day. The theories of Ptolemy, the descriptions 
 of Strabo, and the voyages of Marco Polo, he conned and studied 
 the best portion of a lifetime. Plato's opinions regarding the im- 
 aginary island of Atalantis; Aristotle's statement concerning the 
 existence of Antilla, a great island in mid-ocean, discovered by the 
 ancient Cai-thaginians; all legendary Spanish lore about the island 
 of Seven Cities, so called because seven bishops who fled from Spain 
 at the period of the Moorish conquest had built cities thereupon; 
 and every point of knowledge bearing on these theories, he was in- 
 timately conversant with; all these suppositions he passed through 
 the crucible of criticism, and set the value of his cool judgment and 
 ripe scholarship upon their Hkelihood or improbabihty. 
 
 Besides rendering himself fully acquainted with the geographical 
 and historical science attainable in his day, with the writings of the 
 Fathers of the Church, and the pages of the inspired volume; he in- 
 terrogated the heavens and the stars, and sought out astronomical 
 data to strengthen his own theories and corroborate his opinions. 
 What was that theory, whose verification immortalized his name 
 and disclosed a new hemisphere to the wondering world ? 
 
 The investigations of Columbus led him to infer that the earth 
 was a circumnavigable sphere, composed of land and water, of 
 which at least one -third had never been discovered by mankind. 
 This supposition being accordant with the truth, he rightly reasoned 
 that by a direct course to the west, he must, of necessity, arrive 
 ultimately at the eastern extremity of the Asiatic continent. He felt 
 a serene security in the truth of this theory, and knew that nothing 
 but the hand of accident or the designs *of Providence could defeat 
 his plans; but wafted along by the propitious breezes of heaven he 
 was persuaded he must find land west of the Canaries or the Azores, 
 then the most westerly terminus of maritime enterprise. 
 
 He was furtheimore confirmed in his opinions by speculations 
 based upon a study of the maps of Ptolemy and Marinus of Tyre. 
 
422 
 
 These maps were in many respects misleading and delusive. Car- 
 tography in our day is based upon facts previously ascertained ta 
 be correct; but in earlier times the facts of locality relating to the 
 known world were duly described; but conjecture and imagin- 
 ation helped largely in aiding scholars to trace what they conceived 
 to be the unexplored regions of the earth. Ptolemy traced the 
 countries about the Mediterranean with a comparative degree of cor- 
 rectness; but beyond the limit of familiar frontiers, and the visited 
 portions of the earth, he fancifully represented impenetrable 
 swamps, vast tracts of deserts, and an outlying sea of dark and 
 sultry waters. He recognized, however, the sphericity of the earth, 
 and marked off its circumference in degrees, whose total sum was 
 just 3,300 miles short of actual distance as determined later. 
 
 Paolo Toscanelli, a celebrated Florentine scientist, with whom 
 Columbus maintained correspondence, calculated that it was but 
 4,000 miles from Lisbon to Cathay (Manze), and held the feasibility 
 of aiTiving at the western frontier of Asia by sailing a westerly 
 course. 
 
 Toscanelli's figures computed the earth's circumference at about 
 25,120 miles, a little in excess of the truth.* He stretched the coast 
 of Asia all the way round to California, and considered, conse- 
 quently, that the ocean which lay between and washed the shores of 
 Europe could be traversed by a fearless navigator like Columbus. 
 
 Columbus rejected Toscanelli's figures and built his calculations 
 rather upon those of Ptolemy as more correct, though he held his 
 own theory regarding the width of the Atlantic and the distance to 
 the Indies. His deductions led him to suppose that, assuming the 
 circumference of the earth as 21,700 miles nearly, he would have to 
 sail not more than 2,500 miles to reach the island of Zipanga, or 
 Japan, off the eastern coast of Asia. Tbe coast of Asia was by him 
 extended to the 70th degree of longitude, about the centre of the 
 Island of Hispaniola.f All who admitted the sphericity of the earth 
 believed that a westerly course from Spain must conduct the mariner 
 to the eastei'n coast of Asia; but it never entered the wildest dream 
 of imagination that a whole continent, almost equal in extent to the 
 
 * The writer knows all authorities are not agreed upon these figures. 
 f What is now the 97° of longitude west of Greenwich, corresponding to the 
 meridian, say, of Lincoln, Neb. 
 
423 
 
 old, lay between these distant shores. Had Columbus believed that 
 the real distance from the Canaries to Japan was 12,000 miles, he in 
 all human reckoning would never have undertaken such a voyage. 
 His two eiTors, therefore, are, in some sense, responsible for his 
 great discovery, — one was the imaginary extent of the eastern con- 
 tinent, suggested by Toscanelli and increased by Columbus; the 
 other, the limitation of the earth's circumference to 23,500 miles; 
 both contributing to render feasible the great scheme of evangeliza- 
 tion of the inhabitants of the East, and the enrichment of the Span- 
 ish treasury from the fabulous resources of the Indies, which occu- 
 pied the mind of the intrepid navigator and inspired him to com- 
 mence a voyage without parallel in the history of the human race. 
 
 Nor do these errors of judgment, by no means surprising in the 
 infancy of geographical science, detract in any degree from the 
 real merit of his mighty discovery. 
 
 His marvellous voyage was undertaken hardly more in a religious 
 than scientific spirit; he had a scientific theory to demonstrate, — the 
 sphericity of the earth, — and he hoped to prove it practically by 
 sailing round the globe. He believed, with Eoger Bacon and Tos- 
 canelli, that the earth was globular in form, and this faith which was 
 in him he would establish to the confusion of the incredulous by 
 going from Spain to Cathay and returning by the Mediterranean. 
 Mark Twain sneeringly observes that Columbus had not much labor 
 to perform in the discovery of America; he had but to sail straight 
 ahead and would bump against it. The thing was to find a man 
 who had the genius to conceive, the skill to plan, the courage and 
 the indomitable perseverance to effect such discovery. It has been 
 acutely observed by Mr. Bellamy, and it is a just and elegant reflec- 
 tion, that the undertaking of Columbus was the more meritorious in 
 that he did not sail to find a new continent, but to prove, in support 
 of a preconceived scientific hypothesis, the rotundity of the earth, by 
 a perilous and trackless voyage across the circumference. No one 
 before his day dared to demonstrate a scientific theory by sailing- 
 upon an unknown and unexplored sea of darkness. This, together 
 with his lofty religious aims, constitutes the glory of Columbus, and 
 has set upon his brow a wreath of fame, the noblest ever given to 
 mortal man; that has placed him upon a pinnacle of greatness 
 among those immortal and illustrious geniuses who are not bom to 
 
424 
 
 die. " His idea," as Irving observes, " was the conception of his own 
 genius; quickened by the impulses of his time, and aided by those 
 scattered gleams of knowledge which fell ineffectually upon ordinary 
 minds." 
 
 Among these gleams of knowledge w^ere those indications of land 
 to the west, which were borne by the waves towards the European 
 shores. Trunks of pines of gigantic dimensions; reeds of immense 
 size like those supposed to flourish in India; branches of trees un- 
 known to the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere; strangely 
 shaped boats which were doubtless Indian canoes; curiously carved 
 wooden figures, wrought without aid of iron tool or instrument; and 
 more startling and convincing than all, the bodies of men not belong- 
 ing to the Caucasian family of the race, — all were eagerly seized upon 
 by the active and prying mind of Columbus as proof of his long-cher- 
 ished theory; and thus, with a rational hypothesis, supported by 
 science and strengthened by facts, which careful analysis had sifted 
 from popular rumors and fanciful traditions, he set out with that 
 exultation of spirit and hopefulness of heart, which to the end of his 
 life marked the character of this extraordinary, supermortal man, 
 to wrest from an unwilling world aid and assistance for an experi- 
 ment, which before its achievement was deemed mid-summer mad- 
 ness, but which, when accomplished, was hailed less human than di- 
 vine. Such is the history of man. And to their eternal honor be it 
 told, were it not for the friendly offices and practical sympathy of a 
 Catholic priest, a Catholic archbishop, and a Catholic queen, Colum- 
 bus, instead of giving to Leon and Castile a new world, might have 
 faded away in hopeless obscurity, and died in grief and dejection, 
 had he passed, unnoticed and unwelcomed, the convent gate of La 
 Rabida, 
 
 There is a Franciscan convent at St. Maria de Rabida — it stands to 
 this day, and should be carted stone by stone to the Columbian Ex- 
 position; an unknown stranger presents himself at its portals to beg, 
 for sweet charity's sake, a cup of water and a crust of bread for 
 his little boy. That stranger is ChristojDher Columbus. Juan Perez 
 de Marchena — ^honor to his name and calling — ^had been confessor 
 to Queen Isabella; he became, no doubt, by the agency of Provi- 
 dence, a second father to the boy and a patron to the parent. The 
 prior's attention is arrested by the stately port and intelligent de- 
 
425 
 
 meanor of Columbus. He listens to his absorbing history; learns his 
 wonderful plans, and not unskilled himself in science, he grasps the 
 importance of Columbus' mission, and prepares to second with the 
 ardor of convictioii the navigator's effoiis to realize the hopes a»d 
 dreams of a checkered lifetime. Furnished by the influential prior 
 with commendatory letters of an urgent and flattering character, he 
 repairs to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella to plead his cause be- 
 fore the Catholic sovereigns of Spain. Their majesties are inter- 
 ested; their curiosity is piqued; their love of glory is aroused; but 
 the magnitude of the enterprise staggers, while its nature and possi- 
 bilities confound them and outreach their understanding. Columbus 
 is referred to a council of divines at Salamanca, who were commis- 
 sioned to consider his claims and pronounce judgment upon the 
 cause he advocated. The beautiful convent where the conclave met 
 still stands, having escaped the ravages of the French and corrosions 
 of time. The traveller may still tread through spacious halls where 
 the arguments of Columbus were rebutted by the teachings of Au- 
 gustine and Lactantius, and the texts of Holy Writ. Some, to their 
 credit and foresight, supported him with enthusiasm ; others thought 
 him a reckless adventurer or a simple visionary; and the great man 
 was silenced by the majority, who pronounced his plan vain, imprac- 
 ticable, and unworthy of support. Columbus returned to court re- 
 jected, but not cast down. His earnest self-confidence, his enthusi- 
 astic devotion to his idea, obtained the respect of Isabella, whom Ir- 
 ving has justly styled one of the purest and most beautiful characters 
 known to history. She holds out encouragement to the petitioner; 
 there was sympathy in their kindred minds; she bids him bide his 
 time, and meantime provides him with a home and maintenance. 
 After seven long and weary years of oft-repeated pleading, — years of 
 promises, ending in chilling disappointment, years of hope deferred, — 
 Columbus is crossing the bridge at Pinos, retiring forever, sore and 
 sick at heart, when once more he is recalled. The faithful prior had 
 come to plead in person with the gentle Isabella in behalf of his de- 
 spondent friend. The appeal is answered with success. Noble 
 woman; her name is inseparably intertwined with the glory of Amer- 
 ica. ** I will undertake the enterprise for mine own crown of Castile," 
 she cries, " and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.'* 
 Columbus prepares for the voyage, when the soitows and disap- 
 
426 
 
 pointments of fifty-seven years of life had already laid their burden 
 upon his shoulders. After much delay and difficulty in securing 
 crews, he embarked in three wretched caravels upon his dangerous 
 eKploit. What a fearful launching into the unknown deep that was, 
 we, in these days of easy navigation, fail to understand. Sailing oat 
 upon a dim and soundless sea which no man had ever traversed, 
 whence naught but tempest-tossed fragments had ever come to 
 civilized shores, the desponding crew might well bid the living world 
 farewell And as they left the lessening shore, till their sails seemed 
 but a dot upon the horizon to those who stood upon the strand and 
 waved in vain the tell-tale hand, many a heart felt heavy, many an 
 eye grew dim. 
 
 You know the story of that adventurous voyage, which began on 
 Friday, the 3d day of August, and ended on Friday, the 12th of 
 October, 1492. 
 
 The bright sun rose cheerily and before the piping blast the little 
 caravels rode gaily over the summer seas, and doubtless many a 
 mariner, with heart of hope, blessed in prayer the blue ocean, the 
 bright sky and God's all-favoring air. 
 
 Still out they sail upon the watery waste, past unknown tides and 
 
 seas where 
 
 " So lonely 'tis that God Himself 
 Scarce seemed there to be. " 
 
 The very winds that waft them from home appear to bar their re- 
 turn again. Their faithful guide, the needle, declines its wonted 
 task ; clouds take on the shape of headlands ; and the mirage of the 
 deep mocks their land-sick fancy, and blasts while it excites their 
 hopes. On the very verge of discovery they rise in mutiny, clamor 
 to go back, and threaten the sore-tried admiral with a grave within 
 the deep, should he withhold compliance. Columbus staked his life 
 upon the cast; failure is dishonor worse than death ; he soothes, he 
 threatens, he coaxes, and one day of trial is granted. One day, but 
 for the commander what agony and suspense ! Through the long, 
 lonely hours he stands upon the prow, keeping the night-watch, and 
 communing with the stars and with God. Sleep has forsaken his 
 eyes, and rest, his weary limbs ; but still there he stands, sweeping 
 the horizon with his eagle glance, straining his tired eyes towards the 
 west, till at last they catch the faint flicker of a light — 'tis land. O ! 
 
427 
 
 blessed light ! O happy land ! To him alone was reserved the first 
 sight of this new world — the eternal monument of his renown. 
 
 The great mystery was unlocked ; the silent ocean yielded up her 
 secret to the mind of man; and he, the despised and disheartened 
 discoverer whose life was in jeopardy biit an hour before, was 
 worshipped as a demi-god by his mutinous and rebellious followers, 
 who now beheld in him a being of princely dignity, the dispenser of 
 fame and fortune, and falling at his feet 
 
 " They blessed the wondrous man." 
 
 It was, perhaps, worth all the trials and disappointments of the 
 past, — that joyful moment of hope proudly realized ; of faith made 
 perfect in vision; and as the rising sun reveals the verdant land just 
 beyond the crystal waters, the little band, attired in festal dress, em- 
 barked upon the shore with their swords unsheathed, and their cross- 
 emblazoned banners fluttering in the breeze. I seem to see them 
 now, those pioneers of civilization in the new world ; see them as 
 they first alight upon the virgin soil, stooping down in reverence to 
 kiss the sod and thank the great Creator. I see them, and seem to 
 hear the voice of the high admiral, calm, sweet, grateful, and reso- 
 nant, as he pours forth his prayer of gratitude and praise : 
 
 " Lord God, Eternal and Omnipotent, who by Thy sacred word 
 has created the sky and the earth and the sea, we bless and glorify 
 Thy name and praise Thy majesty. How honored are we. Thy 
 humble servants, that through us Thy name may be knawn and Thy 
 Gospel preached in this the uttermost part of the earth." 
 
 Thus did the first discoverers seal this continent for Christ ; thus 
 the first act of the first men who trod our soil was an act dedicating 
 and consecrating it to the service of God ; and as they ai'ose from 
 bended knees they took possession of the land in the name of Isa- 
 bella, the Catholic Queen of Spain, and named it San Salvador, after 
 Christ our Saviour. 
 
 The policy of Columbus was marked by lenity and mildness ; he 
 displayed good faith, humanity, and justice in his transactions ; he 
 sought to conciliate the natives, and respected their women and their 
 chiefs, by whom his kindness was never forgotten, as shown in the 
 touching and beautiful fidelity which marked their friendship to- 
 wards him. 
 
428 
 
 But alas ! for this elysium of the sea ; this arcadian land of eter- 
 nal spring. Alas ! for these simple, virtuous people, these kind and 
 hospitable men, these groups of beautiful women, who came foiih 
 from the palm groves like dancing Dryads from the woods, with ever 
 smiling faces and melodious songs from morning until evening to 
 welcome these heavenly visitors. Their dreams of new-found bliss 
 were of short duration. But it is ever so ; the simplicity of barbaric 
 life meets extinction rather than elevation before the march of civil- 
 ization. 
 
 Columbus, however, returned to Europe without a blot upon his 
 name, a reproach upon his conscience, or a single drop of blood 
 upon his hands. His homeward journey is harassed by a hurricane. 
 Dark clouds overcast the sky; fields of fleecy scud pass in whirling 
 eddies overhead, — through many dark days there is no cessation of 
 the elemental strife ; — of 
 
 " The eloquent storm pouring forth its wild voice 
 Upon the night, grand, sublime, and terrible ; 
 And the electric blazon of the clouds, 
 And the vibrations of the frightened sea, 
 As mast and shroud answer to the thunder-shock." 
 
 His thoughts at this trying moment are set forth with the sim- 
 plicity of greatness in his journal ; they turn fondly back to 
 his two boys at Cordova, and his feelings are more concerned with 
 the salvation of his unfortunate crew than with his own loss of fame 
 and glory. " 
 
 At length he reaches Spain, and lands like a spirit from the dead, 
 among whom he was long since numbered. 
 
 His progress is a glorious triumph; his sovereigns seat him in 
 their presence; his lofty bearing marks him as a hero; his gray 
 hairs tell of trials and perils; his name is the theme of every tongue; 
 cities, towns, and villages empty themselves that every inhabitant 
 may cry : " 'Tis he, Columbus ! " But short the glory of Columbus. 
 One short month was the honeymoon of his fame. Such is the in- 
 stability of human praise; such the ingratitude of man. 
 
 The closing years of this great man's life form, as I indicated, a 
 thrilling tragedy. The sorrows of his youth were but the presage 
 of the grief that clouded his declining days. 
 
 On the second voyage he becomes the butt of calumny and the 
 
429 
 
 mark of detraction. " Absent, envied, and a foreigner," as he said 
 himself, he falls a victim to petty spite, and the evil geniuses who, 
 wanton in official insolence, effect his recall. Shame and persecu- 
 tion; the desertion of his own trusted followers, and the broken 
 pledges of his sovereign, Ferdinand, are the only recompense of his 
 great discovery. 
 
 By the order of the arrogant minion who supplanted him, Boab- 
 dilla, he is carried back to Europe a prisoner, and though old and 
 venerable, in chains and fetters. With a disdainful indignation, he 
 refuses to have this badge of sei'vitude and humiliation removed; 
 he would let the world behold his disgrace, and even after they were 
 stricken from his limbs by the outraged sense of public justice, he 
 preserved them as memorials of the reward his services received, 
 and they *' were hung in his chamber, buried in his grave." 
 
 The tender-souled Isabella, his friend to the last, soothes his 
 wounded spirit; and he that could brook disgrace and endure im- 
 prisonment falls subdued in tears at her feet. 
 
 The great admiral departs on his last and most disastrous voyage; 
 and after suffering all the miseries of destitution, sickness, mutiny, 
 and shipwreck, he returns buffeted and worn out, broken in mind 
 and body, to find himself forgotten and un welcomed by all. To 
 add the last drop of agony to his sorrow-brimming cup, he finds his 
 generous patroness, his only friend in the wide world, the gracious 
 Isabella, on her death-bed. Forgotten by his king, and left in his 
 old age "naked to his enemies," he pleaded in vain, that having 
 slaved for his sovereigns as if to gain paradise, he was a homeless 
 beggar after his unselfish service of twenty years. Left in an ob- 
 scure home to die in poverty and loneliness; forgotten and forsaken 
 by all, he never learned the gi*eatness of his discovery, while the 
 new world which he had brought to light was named to perpetuate 
 the honor, not of himself, but of another. 
 
 His death occurred at Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506, in the 
 seventieth year of his age. His last hours were calm, peaceful, and 
 happy, and he that discovered one world here upon eai-th, looked 
 hopefully forward to the discovery of another, 
 
 " Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 
 
 But even his bones have been denied that rest (the last prayer of 
 Shakespeai-e). They were removed to Seville, thence to San 
 
430 
 
 Domingo, and finally, in 1795, to Havana, where they were but 
 little noticed or honored; so that he who was forlorn and friendless 
 in life, seems hardly less so in death. 
 
 Columbus seemed ever the sport of accident, by which in our ig- 
 norance, I suppose, we understand the mysterious workings of 
 Providence. Like Moses, he never beheld the land of promise to 
 which he had guided others. The vision of glory he beheld from 
 afar seemed ever to vanish like a poet's dream, or like some ignis 
 fatuus which tantalized, while it beckoned him on. 
 
 Had he not changed his course on his first voyage on the 7th of 
 October, to "W.S.W., he would have made the Floridas, and given 
 North America to the Spanish crown; and had he not on the 12th 
 of November turned E.S.E., he would have carried the banners of 
 Spain into the Gulf of Mexico, and perhaps peopled the continent, 
 not with the Anglo-Saxon, but with the Latin race. 
 
 Four hundred years have gone by since his advent on these 
 shores, and after 400 years the day of the triumph is at hand. His 
 judgment in the justice of posterity is to-day vindicated, and his 
 fame is secure evermore. No man born of woman has ever been 
 accorded the honors which, like a garland of grateful remembrance, 
 are laid upon his tomb to-day. To-day his memory shines forth 
 from the tomb with unclouded brightness, and the glory that 
 seemed to shun his mortal course in life blazes around him with 
 effulgent splendor in the grave. To-day all claims of prior discov- 
 ery are swept aside, neither Dane, nor Norseman, nor Celt, nor any 
 other aspirant whatever, is considered as sharing the laurels or 
 dividing the fame which is the inheritance and crown of Columbus 
 forever. To-day many nations feel honored in claiming him for 
 their own, and here in these United States, more than sixty millions 
 of those whose creed he professed, and whose faith he first planted 
 on the shores of this continent, all rise up with one voice and one 
 accord to hail the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of a new 
 world, and to pass down upon the breezes of undying history to the 
 latest posterity the renown of him whom all future generations will 
 delight to honor, as, on each succeeding centennial of his immortal 
 discovery, they will unite, as we do now, to bless the name and 
 revere the memory of Christopher Columbus, the Christ-bearer to 
 the new-found Western World. 
 
VI 
 
 THE MISSION AND PROGRESS OF THE CATHOLIC 
 CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS, HAR- 
 
 RISOTf, N. J. 
 
 The cross is the symbol of Christianity. Christianity is a fact, and 
 that fact is the Catholic Church. Men come to Christianity through 
 the Church, and not to the Church through Christianity. It is the 
 Church that makes Christian believers, and not believers that make 
 the Church. To know the nature and constitution of the Church is, 
 then, the supreme study of the Christian. 
 
 The history of the Church, with sorrow be it said, is in great part 
 a history of heresy. But " it must needs be that scandals come." 
 In the wide domain of heterodoxy, no novelty is now possible. 
 From Genesis to Revelation every doctrine has been impugned; nay, 
 the entire system of religion has been by turns accepted, contro- 
 verted, denied, and rejected. Upon the stormy shores of sin the 
 waves of passion, the winds of pride, and the fires of feeling have 
 rioted for ages, and the gorgon heresy has raised his hydra-head to 
 battle with the bark upon the waters. But in the midst of the 
 clouds and darkness, clear above the clamor of the storm and the 
 roar of the moral tornado, a voice is heard, clear, sharp, electric, im- 
 perative, as of yore, crying, " Peace ! be still." " Fear not, little 
 flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give unto you a kingdom " 
 " Great God," exclaims the Royal Prophet, " Thou hast put on praise 
 and beauty; Thou hast clothed Thyself with light as with a gar- 
 ment; Thou hast stretched out the heavens as a vast pavilion; Thou 
 hast made the clouds Thy chariot,and Thou walkest on the wings of the 
 wind; Thou hast founded the earth on its own basis, and the deep, 
 
432 
 
 like a garment, is its clothing. The mountains here ascend, there the 
 valleys sink down between the hills to receive the plenteous waters 
 which Thou hast commanded to flow for their refreshment." " The 
 Almighty stood," says Habacuc, " and measured the earth ; He 
 looked and dissolved the nations, for power and strength are in His 
 hands. He touched the trembling hills, and they were instantly 
 wrapped in smoke; the ancient mountains burst in pieces; the rocks 
 melted away like wax, and the pillars of the heavens were forced 
 from their foundations. For the ways of the Lord are in the tem- 
 pest and the whirlwind, and clouds are the dust of His feet. The 
 hills and the lonesome mountains shake under Him; the flower of 
 Lebanon fades away; the beauty of Basan and Carmel perish; the 
 earth, the world, and all that dwell therein, sunk down in the pres- 
 ence of the Lord of Hosts, in the presence of the God of Jacob." 
 " I heard," siys St. John, '•' as it were a universal voice; and it was 
 the voice of every living creature in the heavens, and on earth, 
 and in the sea. And they cried out with one accord, * Glory and 
 honor, and benediction and power and empire to God and to the 
 Lamb, forever and ever.'" Who shall not fear the Lord, and who 
 not magnify Thy name ! And who shall dare to overturn the works 
 which Thy hands have wrought ! 
 
 " Pride makes heresy," says Abelard, " and heresy, which is the 
 spirit of Antichrist, dissolveth Jesus and wageth war upon the Most 
 High God." " By that sin fell the angels; how then, shall man, the 
 image of his Maker, hope to win by it ? " 
 
 It is something severely sad to stand upon the highways of his- 
 tory and scan the figures of the fiery heresiarchs, as, panoplied with 
 the armor of iniquity, they go trooping by in the panorama of the 
 past. Since the Roman legionaries drew their lots therefor, how 
 many madcaps, spawned by heresy, have sought to rend the seamless 
 coat of Christ ? 
 
 In the forefront of the line were those who taught that our Lord's 
 humanity was a phantom, — a chimera. A Christ, burdened with a 
 body, but a Saviour without a human soul, was the absurd fiction of 
 Apollinaris. The arrogance of Arius made Him a God-kin, far in- 
 ferior to His Father. Some, on His Divine, desired to implant a 
 human personality. Others proclaimed for Him a single will, while 
 more confused and denied the duality of His nature. 
 
433 
 
 The votaries of voluptuousness, pilfering tlie phUosopliy of Plato, 
 would found a republic, wliere each citizen would enjoy the privi- 
 lege of inability to point out his father; the fanatical followers of the 
 Persian Magi foully conceived a code of morahty whereby they 
 might marry the mothers that bore them; and finally, to the Albigen- 
 sian heresiarchs belongs the immortal infamy of giving worship to a 
 god wed to a brace of fair women. 
 
 From the corruption of the heart and the vanity of the mind orig- 
 inates this eagerness to propagate new systems, the tendency where- 
 of is to slacken the reins that curb the irregularity of our appetites, 
 and restrain the impetuosity of our passions. Solomon tried mirth, 
 and it was mad; wine, and it was folly; yet he grew dissolute be- 
 fore he glided into idolatry. We lose our innocence before we 
 laugh at our catechism. 
 
 Vanity is one of those foreign ingredients sown in the soil of our 
 nature instead of original justice. It stimulates the purbhnd philos- 
 opher to erect the banners of error upon the ruins of truth. It 
 loves to pursue untrodden paths, and think apart from the multitude ; 
 and it often prefers the notoriety of vice to the obscurity of virtue. 
 *' Vanity," says Montaigne, " is the mother of all the sects and systems." 
 
 Most men pique themselves upon the singularity of their opin- 
 ions, and the freshness and originahty of their views, and even while 
 they disclaim the notion, pride or vanity is the spring of all their 
 performance. Pride impugns the truth of God, and is the prolific 
 parent of heresy. Minds defeated in dissecting a fly, must arraign 
 the ways of Omnipotence, and sound the unfathomable ocean of re- 
 ligion, where the smallest atom that swims on the surface baffles the 
 sharpest scrutiny. 
 
 Of the aberrations of the human intellect in the sphere of religion, 
 the preponderating portion, if not all, are born of the misconception 
 or confusion of two elementary ideas that pervade the universe, — 
 unity and multiplicity. In the one God are three divine persons ; in 
 the human soul, three faculties ; in the individual man, two parts. 
 Every society ^has many members ; every tree bears many branches, 
 every flower is formed of many petals, and every molecule of matter 
 comprises many atoms. 
 
 The confusion of these simple ideas is the misfortune of modern 
 philosophy, or rather the proud pretensions of sciolism. 
 28 
 
434 
 
 With Giordano Bruno and Teutonic thinkers, some expunge 
 the idea of multiplicity, and, teaching that God is the only substance, 
 they fashion the prodigious fabric of Pantheism. Others, placing 
 multiplicity in the foreground, the members before the body, the 
 universe before its Creator, lose the conception of unity entirely, and 
 with it the idea of a living personal God; and these are the founders 
 of the ignoble edifice of atheism. All-God is the God of the one ; 
 no-God is the God of the other. 
 
 Failing to apprehend the unity of God, it is no great matter for 
 marvel that the second school of sciolists misconceive the substantial 
 unity of His Church ; and so far from regarding her as one, treat 
 her as an aggregation of individuals, in her nature and constitution, 
 void of any congenital principle of cohesion and unification. Every 
 spirit that dissolveth the Church, dissolveth Jesus, and is not from 
 God, but Antichrist. 
 
 The Church of God is not a mere aggregation of individuals 
 bound together by the sole considerations of brotherhood, or by 
 pursuit of kindred aims and purposes, or by similarity of sentiment, 
 taste, and feeling. These prevail in some degree, but they are conse- 
 quent and secondary. The Church of Christ is before all else, a 
 living, acting organism, of which the members are the body, Christ 
 Jesus the head, and grace the generative principle of life. Her 
 source of life is in her own centre, and all spiritual life springs from 
 the Holy Spirit energizing and fecundating the vitality of the Church, . 
 as the God-appointed channel of all grace and truth. Upon this 
 irrefragable fact is founded the force of St. Cyprian's axiom, that 
 he cannot have God for his father who has not th*e Church for his 
 mother. God's first creation was the material world by nature; His 
 second creation is the Church in the order of grace. 
 
 The Church is, therefore, prior to all her children; they are from 
 her, not she from them ; they live in her, not she in them ; and she 
 is the fount of spiritual life unto all begotten of her through the 
 Holy Ghost. She calls them unto life; she nourishes them at her 
 own bosom; she feeds them with the bread of life, and the milk of 
 God's children; and she conducts them, when they have attained 
 the full stature of the manhood of Christ, to the mansions of im- 
 mortality. Why expand this thought ? To point the fallacy of those 
 who hold that the Church is composed of many congregations which 
 
435 
 
 may come and go, change and alter, divide and separate, deteriorate 
 and reform without lesion to religion and suicide to the Church. The 
 Church is simply the extension of Christ's Incarnation to every 
 living creature, as the Incarnation in itself was the alliance of the 
 Godhead with our common humanity. Christ came from Mary; 
 the Church came from Christ, and regenerated humanity is born of 
 the Church of God by the divine action of the Holy Ghost in the 
 sacraments, or the channels of salvation. Separation from the 
 Church is consequently fatal to all spiritual life; heresy is religious 
 suicide, and he who divides the Church, or denies her doctrines, 
 dwells in spiritual death. The Church is the Spouse of Christ, and 
 the fruitful mother of all the faithful. 
 
 As Christ loves the Church, so does the Church love her children. 
 From the cradle to the grave, from morning's rosy manhood till the pale 
 starlight of declining days is quenched within the tomb, she guides, 
 she guards, she governs, that she may give them in unsuUied in- 
 tegrity back unto their God. The prayer of Christ is the prayer of 
 the Church : " Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name." 
 
 I have seen a mother watching the slumbers of her infant off- 
 spring. The dying cadence of that murmured song; the breathless 
 stillness which succeeds the music ; the gaze, now fixed in fondness 
 on the child, now turned to heaven imploring future blessings on its 
 head, express to every feeling heart the intenseness of maternal love. 
 I have seen a mother hovering around the couch of her sick child. 
 That instinct of affection, that enduring tenderness and patient love 
 may vie with that inspired charity whose divinest character is that 
 it suffereth long and is kind. That anxious, that troubled, yet 
 watchful eye, who that has beheld it can forget ? I have seen the 
 gladness of a mother's joy. It beamed in smiles on her reviving off- 
 spring, like the cheerful light of day upon exultant Nature. I have 
 seen the anguish of a mother's grief. That self-centred look, that 
 wild and wandering gaze, that wintry smile of one who sat like 
 Rachel weeping for her child and would not be comforted, because 
 it was no more. 
 
 But as the love of Christ transcends aU human love, so does the 
 love of Mother Church surpass the love of all the mothers of man- 
 kind. Learn to love her, for the love of her is the love of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
436 
 
 Love is the seed of grace ; grace is the seed of glory. Now is the 
 time of the seed; the harvest day shall be soon; and when the reap- 
 ers are done, the golden sheaves shall be all gathered in; and all the 
 lovers of Jesus, and the lovers of Mary, and the lovers of Christ's 
 Spouse, shall rest forever in that far-away land, in the realm of the 
 King in His beauty. And every true lover shall bask in the bhss 
 that maketh bright joy for the Angels; and shall pillow his head in 
 the peace which sheddeth sunshine on the Saints, and shall drink of 
 the wine of the new life, and taste of the honey made by the God- 
 hand; and shall sing the songs that awake the sweet melody of Zion's 
 land; and shall repose on the bosom of Jesus, and feel the breath of 
 His cheek and the thrilling touch of his welcome kiss, and shall 
 " stand by the side of the Good Shepherd, and hear the soft call of 
 His voice on that day when the flock shall be told for the last time, 
 and the number made full for eternity." 
 
 Now as love is the seed of grace, so love is the law of life; for 
 love is life, and life is love; but love and life both proceed from 
 unity. We live, and move, and have our being in God; for God is 
 life, and God is love, and God is unity. The world at creation's 
 dawn drew its being from unity, the creative act of unity; unity is 
 its final cause, its term and destination; as the rays of light out- 
 spreading from the sun, and refining the vapors of the air, ascend 
 through the ethereal element to seek repose in the bosom of the 
 luminary that gave them birth. 
 
 The essence of the Christian life is charity, for charity is the 
 golden bond of union. Love is union; hatred is death. When the 
 unfettered mind shall soar beyond the starry pavements of paradise, 
 faith shall be dissolved in vision; when hope shall have attained its 
 object, it shall expire in the arms of joy; but charity shall flame for- 
 ever, shooting in the white light of heaven from the unclouded splen- 
 dor of the Lamb, for charity is God. 
 
 By the natural order of God's providence, it is decreed that union 
 with the Church shall be the indispensable condition, as it is the 
 fountain spring of grace and spiritual life, for the Church of God is 
 one, — she is the living link of unity. She is one, as if she belonged 
 to one clime or country, and not many; as if she dwelt in one house, 
 worshipped at one shrine; as if she spoke with one mouth, and pos- 
 sessed one heart, one soul, one mind, one head, the Lord Christ 
 
437 
 
 Jesus. And that unity we shall in vain pursue outside her conse- 
 crated pale. Where in this wide world, where under the shining 
 sun of God, shall the eye of man behold it but in the bosom of 
 Christ's Spouse ? 
 
 Consider them all; in fancy's magic mirror behold all the schools 
 of philosophies that flourished since time began to flow; review all 
 the sects, the schisms, and conventicles that ever wore the garb of 
 God's religion, and let reason make reply, to which of them all be- 
 longs the illustrious, heavenly title — ^Unity. History, reason, revela- 
 tion, the voice of ages and the voice of God, reply in tones of thun- 
 der — To the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ. Her vast and impos- 
 ing structure, planted on the God-founded rock of Peter, touching 
 the four comers of the globe, facing the rising and the setting sun, 
 and looking to the North and to the South, to the East and to the 
 West, rises in majestic proportion and imperial beauty, and her 
 Apostolic dome, rearing its head to the stars of God, joins her multi- 
 tudinous parts together in a firm and indissoluble union; and like a 
 city seated on a mountain, she reveals herself to the eyes of all man- 
 kind as the one true Church of the eternal God. 
 
 She is the ladder of Jacob, reaching from the surface of the eai-th 
 even to the highest heavens, Jesus Christ Himself leaning on the 
 top, and the angel ministers of grace ascending and descending with 
 vials of peace and mercy to mankind. And this glorious counter- 
 sign no other association may dare to claim, for it is the signet of 
 the Saviour. No work of human policy can wear the badge of the 
 brotherhood of Christ. And never shall she surrender that royal 
 standard of the cross. As an ensign she will unfurl it in every 
 breeze that blows; she will let it float from Peter's pilot-house for- 
 ever, and as its divine folds spread out over every land and every sea, 
 to the admiration of her friends and the consternation of her ene- 
 mies, she will point to the indestructible foundation of ancient faith, 
 consolidated by the inseparable bonds of fraternal and charitable 
 union, whereon she rests, and exclaim to the whole world and all 
 that dwell therein, " Undivided and indivisible, indefectible and im- 
 perishable, peerless and alone, — I, like God, am one ! " 
 
 The Church is a living organism, invisible in her principle of life, 
 but visible in her external organization, in her outward body. Plants 
 grow, but their vital principle is unseen by human eyes. Man lives. 
 
438 
 
 but sees not his soul. The Church lives, but the vital germ that op- 
 erates throughout the organism is not visible to the scrutiny of the 
 senses, for she lives by the life of the Holy Ghost, who abides with 
 her forever. But as she is endowed with an interior, so is she with 
 an exterior, or visible unity. She has, consequently, one centre of 
 authority, one visible Ruler, one Supreme Head. Unity is vital and 
 necessary to the Church, and the visible Ruler is necessary to unity. 
 Peter is the successor of Christ, the primal fount of unity. The Pope 
 is the successor of Peter, the Supreme Head of the Church and the 
 Father of all the faithful. Peter holds from Christ; the Pope holds 
 from Peter, and all the faithful, priests, bishops, are in communion 
 with the Church and with Christ through the Pope. Ubi Fetrus, ibi 
 EccUsia. Where is Peter, there is the Church. No Pope, no Church; 
 no Church, no Christ; no Christ, no salvation. 
 
 This doctrine does not exclude from salvation those who, 
 through no fault of their own, are outside the external or visible 
 communion of the Church. In virtue of good faith, they are at- 
 tached to the soul of the Church, and thus within the reach of God's 
 redeeming grace. No man is condemned, guiltless before God. 
 
 From the time of the Reformation down to our own, it has been 
 the aim and spirit of the secular arm to overturn the Pope's su- 
 premacy, and pull down the Papal constitution of the Church. But 
 " in vain doth the heathen rage and imagine vain things. He that 
 dwelleth in the highest heavens shall laugh at their empty schemes, 
 and turn their councils to their own confusion, for it is written: Be- 
 hold, the Lion of the fold of Judah hath conquered, with a strong 
 bite he hath broken th^ iron bars of the gates of hell and trampled 
 death to destruction." Still they decry the arrogance of the Roman 
 court under the insane delusion that it seeks to demolish the secular 
 authority. It is the story of the age-long strife. It is renewed with 
 increased vigor in these latter days. It is the House of Humbert 
 against the Patrimony of Peter. The Quirinal is overshadowed by 
 the vault of the Vatican. 4 
 
 Tear down the tiara and every civil crown will crumble to dust ; 
 crush out the Pope if you can and every republic will perish. 
 
 We seek not to defend upon all sides the conduct of every Pope 
 that sat in the chair of Christ, and we dare not deny in the teeth of 
 history that some sought to handle the sword of Paul, no less than 
 
439 
 
 the keys of Peter. But exceptions give force to tlie rule ; and take 
 them all in all, from Peter to Leo, they stand forth in the great 
 temple of time, matchless and unique, mighty men of God— leaders 
 and lovers of the whole human race, the salt of the earth, and the 
 light of the world. 
 
 Granted, then, that ambition on the side of churchmen contrib- 
 uted to turn the tide; granted, that human passions poured forth 
 iheir volcanic fires to cloud the bright sky of religion; grant aU that 
 is claimed, the fact is not to be falsified that the Reformation was 
 bom of ignorance, suckled in sin, and fostered in the lap of red- 
 handed rebellion against the rightful authority of Eome. 
 
 The Church, therefore, is now, as she has been from the days of 
 Christ, the unalterable foe of ignorance, and the unwearied advocate 
 of education. She' loves the Hght, because she is from above, de- 
 scending, like God's morning star, from the eternal light that shines 
 in the bosom of the Godhead. 
 
 Man is not bom a man, but he comes forth a child, and while he 
 remains in childhood we treat him as a child. As it is with the 
 stages of man, so it is with the courses of civilization. The Church 
 must work upon the world as she finds it. She would make it 
 .better, brighter, holier, and more happy; but if her efforts art to be 
 stamped with success she is compelled to conquer it according as it 
 comes. And she makes herself all to all, to gain all to Christ. AU 
 despotic and absolute governments look with suspicion on the ad- 
 vancement of the people, and are jealous to distraction of liberty 
 and education. Tyrants tremble before the tribunal of truth; des- 
 pots shrink at the sound of Hberty; oppressors cringe in the blazing 
 light of the watch-fires of intelligence. 
 
 It is sweet to rest under the crook of the Church, for the govern- 
 ment of the Church is the government of God, stooping down to lift 
 up the lowly, to lead on the blind, to rescue the strayed, the fallen, 
 and the lost. The Church tells her children to beware of the world, 
 and yet, as Christ with His Apostles, she would not take them out of 
 the world, but get them to live worthily therein. Since she came 
 forth from the silence of the catacombs to plant the cross upon the 
 capitol of the Csesars, her children have never been more in contact 
 with the secular side of life, and never more exposed to the wither- 
 ing influence of infidelity and irreligion. The proper education of 
 
440 
 
 her children must now be the paramount purpose of her existence, 
 not even secondary to saving souls, for the one of necessity implies 
 the other. The tendency of the present time runs towards insub- 
 ordination, under the false name of independence. The principle of 
 private judgment in the domain of dogma has shaken the founda- 
 tions of authority. Men to-day, more than ever, are imbued with 
 the critical spirit, and wish to subject all things, even divine truth, 
 to the measure of a shallow understanding. Too proud to submit to 
 the simplicity of the Gospel; too puffed up with the empty conceits 
 of a false philosophy, and too skilled in the sophistries of an arro- 
 gant and self-sufficient science, they are not to be allured to religion 
 by the simple announcement of precepts and mysteries beyond the 
 finite ken, but must be reasoned into the knowledge of religion. 
 They must be taught to unlearn the false, and then to learn the true. 
 The simplicity of belief in the truths of religion, as it existed in 
 former ages, will no longer do ; the knowledge of understanding 
 must be conjoined. This is as it should be, for, as St. Anselm ob- 
 serves: " We should be guilty of criminal negligence if, after having 
 believed, we did not seek to know the reason of our believing. Now- 
 adays it is difficult for the teachers of truth to command obedience 
 and respect, unless they are well furnished with proper weapons 
 from the arsenal of reason and the armories of science and philos- 
 ophy. ' Now, if ever in the history of man, his reason is active, 
 aggressive, and alert; and now, if ever, men feel the force of Augus- 
 tine's axiom that we cannot believe, unless we believe rationally. It 
 is a healthy tendency. Religion presupposes man to be a rational 
 creature, for revelation rests on reason, and the Church always 
 flourishes with most vigor in an atmosphere of light and intelligence. 
 A secular newspaper recently expressed its astonishment at the 
 freedom of discussion allowed in the Church, as evidenced in some 
 late unhappy controversies. What folly ! — as if Catholics held their 
 faith by closing their eyes, and shutting out science and learning. 
 The Popes were always the patrons of science and literature, twin 
 flowers of Christian civilization. Theology shines best by the light 
 of history; science is the handmaid of sanctity; knowledge is the 
 fulcrum of religion. 
 
 The Church, therefore, in the present as in the past, holds, as a 
 paramount necessity, that all her children should be instructed to 
 
441 
 
 the highest limit of their capacity, and, more especially, in all that 
 pertains to the groundwork of faith — that faith which is the science 
 of salvation. She demands from them the docility of children, but 
 she desires to develop in them the ripeness of understanding that 
 reflects the minds of men. Only by the unifying process of educa- 
 tion can she mould her multitudinous members, composed as they 
 are of so many nationalities, with such multiform tendencies, preju- 
 dices, antipathies, and temperaments, into one, that they may be 
 one in her, as she is one in Christ, and as Christ is one in the 
 heavenly Father. 
 
 But where shall all these investigations and inquiries end ? Are 
 there no limits to the boundless excursions of the reasoning faculty 
 of man ? Are men to reason themselves out of religion, like Anax- 
 agoras of old, who said : " As to the gods, I know not if they exist " ? 
 Have we fallen upon evil times ? God forfend ! I, for one, have a 
 better opinion of my time and country. I would fain believe that 
 religion must daily strengthen its hold upon the mind, and the 
 better faith is understood, the more will its teachings be respected 
 and observed. Knowledge is the foundation of love. The Catholic 
 Church has never commanded more respect throughout the world 
 than to-day, and never have the prerogatives and the influence of 
 the Sovereign Pontiff been more appreciated than at this present 
 hour, when temporal princes are invoking his mediation in inter- 
 national disputes, though it seems not without a color of probability 
 that the august head of the Church may be an exile from the prov- 
 idential see of Rome, or that the venerable Pontiff's chains may soon 
 be clanking in the halls of the Vatican. 
 
 But to place her hand upon the coveted prize of ascendency, the 
 Church must adapt herself to the exigencies of the times, and must, 
 in her external economy, so direct her course as to mould the mate- 
 rials, which she meets in her progressive march, into her own image 
 and likeness. What, then, do I say ? Is this novelty of doctrine ? 
 Nay, not so. The Church is unchangeable in herself, in her doc- 
 trines, and in her truth; for truth is one, truth is God, and is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever. " There is," it has been well 
 said, "a progression not in religion, but hy religion." But the 
 Church has* to fashion the civil, social, and political orders according 
 to her mind and sfenius. The secular spirit, and the secular order. 
 
442 
 
 lias always been at war with the supernatural constitution of the 
 Church, More or less, it shall be ever thus. 
 
 Men forget this, who cherish halcyon views of accommodations 
 and modi vivendi in which all friction and antagonism must forever 
 cease. Men forget this, who think the Church must not form the 
 world, but be formed by the world. New prophets have arisen to 
 tell us that the old order is passing away, and that we are to face a 
 new society, in which the unity of Christianity shall be broken into 
 a thousand fragments by national divisions and national churches. 
 They affirm that the Church must reconcile itself with American 
 progress, and never dream that American progress must reconcile 
 itself with the Church, and that it is as absurd to speak of Ameri- 
 canizing the Church as of Germanizing it. They would circum- 
 scribe what God has made universal. But the cry of Americanism 
 is as fallacious and heretical as the cry of Gallicanism, which the 
 universality of Christ's Gospel cast out from the beginning, as na- 
 tionalism foreign to the breadth and comprehensiveness of Christ's all- 
 redeeming love. We can no more Americanize the Church than we 
 can denationalize America. The Church knows no Jew, no Latin, 
 no Teuton, no Greek, no American, no Saxon, for the elevation of 
 all national types to the higher and uniform type in Christ Jesus, 
 means the effacement of all national divisions in the religion founded 
 by the Son of God, whose kingdom was not of this world. Some 
 look upon the Church as a vast organization composed of many na- 
 tionalities, held together, like the great empires of the world, formed 
 of many kingdoms, by checks and balances, powers and forces, in 
 which nations shall play their several parts. But no matter what the 
 government the Catholic lives under, he regards not the civil author- 
 ity as the basis of his Catholicity, but holds his Catholicity as the 
 basis of his citizenship. All Catholics have the same motives for 
 civil allegiance and respect for civil authority; all have the same 
 rule of conscience; all have the same example and command of a 
 divine Kedeemer to obey the rulers who have been set over them, 
 duly invested with authority. But, because we are Catholics, we 
 are none the less Americans, and the Catholic Church may in- 
 deed rejoice that, as she has probably never found a civil order in 
 which the natural rights of man are more respected,* so she has 
 never found one more concordant with her own constitution and 
 
443 
 
 more apposite to her mission of saving souls than that which she has 
 found in that glorious republic whose flag waves over the heads of 
 free and unfettered men. From the day that she came forth, armed 
 of God, she has had to confront institutions inimical to her mission, 
 and governments at variance with the purpose of her existence upon 
 earth. 
 
 The Pharisees destroyed the spirit of the Mosaic economy and 
 strangely perverted the law; the Sadducees denied the doctrine of 
 future immortality, and in conduct and belief they resembled the 
 Epicurean herd, whose only thought was, "Let us eat and drink." 
 They dreamed that a Messiah was to come as a temporal deliverer 
 to subvert the odious supremacy of Rome, and on the ruins of the 
 empire to establish a throne, to exalt the nation to such a height of 
 glory and dominion as David and Solomon had never seen in the 
 ecstasies of prophetic vision. National pride, aspirations of ambi- 
 tion, tenacity of ancient tradition, so tragically exemplified in the 
 blood, famine, pestilence, crumbling walls and sinking ruins of the 
 consecrated temple of Jerusalem, all made stubborn resistance to the 
 reign of the new religion. Nor were obstacles of less consequence 
 to be surmounted in Republican Rome. The religion of paganism 
 everywhere prevailed. No war was proclaimed without the sanction 
 of auguries and the solemnities of sacrifice; the sacred fire bui-ned 
 on the altar of Vesta; the mystic ancile was still regarded as. the 
 palladium of Rome ; and the sybiUine books were consulted as the 
 oracles of truth. Household gods presided over the domestic hearth, 
 and Pontiff and Flamen were men of venerable years and powerful 
 influence. Poetry had besides covered the naked deformity of a 
 fabulous mythology with her glittering mantle; and painting, her 
 sister art, had adorned the temples of the gods with the embodied 
 ideas of divinity and beauty; tradition had handed down the ancient 
 belief through long lines of ancestors for 700 years, virtuous and re- 
 nowned; and certainly the rehgion of the ancient Romans was well 
 calculated to overpower the imagination, to conciliate the passions, 
 and to blind the eyes of the understanding to the holy light of truth. 
 Gods, moreover, were founders of the cities; Terminus marked the 
 boundaries; the land was the property of the patricians; social des- 
 potism prevailed; man was a cipher, for State absolutism held un- 
 disputed ground in the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization. 
 
444 
 
 When the Apostles were summoned before the Sanhedrim to 
 answer for proclaiming salvation in Christ, one of the wise men 
 in the conclave made this memorable utterance to his country- 
 men: " Ye men of Israel, take heed what you intend to do as touch- 
 ing these men; for if their counsel be the work of men it will 
 come to naught; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it." 
 Had Gamaliel, the preceptor of St. Paul, who remitted to the 
 decision of time the question of the divine origin of Christianity, but 
 lived for 30 years longer, he would have seen it promulgated, not 
 only through India and Greece and Asia Minor; not only in the 
 imperial city, and the household of great Csesar, but in climes where 
 the Roman eagle never spread his pinions, and where the Macedo- 
 nian lion never roared or left the traces of his footsteps. Had he 
 seen the last days of the last Apostle he would have seen the Jewish 
 worship banished from the ancient temple and a Christian church 
 on Mt. Zion within sight of the magnificent monuments of nature 
 which had witnessed the death and ignominy of its divine founder. 
 He had seen the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Roman 
 world, in spite of popular hostility and governmental policy, reduced 
 to the obedience of a religion that received into its bosom the im- 
 perial acolyte, grasping in its unarmed hand the sceptre of dominion, 
 and setting its sandalled foot upon the war-surrounded throne of the 
 Csesars. Thus did Rome rest in the embrace of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The civil history of Rome is a dazzling record of events, the most 
 stupendous and brilliant actions, together with an exertion of enter- 
 prise and power limited only by the impotence of nature, and the 
 contracted boundaries of the worlds of discovery. Of all this political 
 grandeur nearly every vestige is blotted out; a few faint memorials 
 are all that remain. Her vast empire is apportioned among her 
 former vassals; her provinces are the kingdoms of barbarian princes; 
 the forum that rang with the highest efforts of human eloquence is a 
 deserted common; the palaces of the Caesars are but a pile of rubbish; 
 the eternal city survives chiefly in its ruins; so that Pius Antoninus 
 might take his stand on the capital of Trajan's column, and like 
 Caius Marius on the ruins of Carthage, view with saddened eyes their 
 splendid desolation. 
 
 The raving bacchanal, the sensual devotee of Venus, all went 
 down to dust before the splendor of the cross, because there was to 
 be but one fold of Christ. 
 
445 
 
 Cicero, in a wild burst of eloquence, looked forward to the day 
 when he should join the divine assembly of the spirits of the illus- 
 trious and beloved who had gone before him. The common people 
 were invited hopefully to lift their vision to those Elysian fields so 
 rapturously pictured by the proudest of the poets, as a boui'ne where 
 the atmosphere was purer, and the fields far fairer; where a brighter 
 sun and brighter stars illuminated a scene of perpetual enjoyment 
 and undisturbed repose. Public opinion, at whose frown even viii:ue 
 shrinks and before whom brazen-fronted vice flies dismayed, vented 
 all the venom of its voice against Christianity and affixed the stigma 
 of indelible disgrace upon the act of its profession. The father 
 dragged his own child before the Praetor for cherishing sentiments 
 of favor for the proscribed religion; and, like another Bnitus, sacri- 
 ficed his life upon the altar of paganism's perjured priesthood, for 
 the imaginary welfare of his country. 
 
 And yet, in an enlightened period, when the horizon of the 
 literary world was still ablaze with the departing glories of the 
 Augustan era; when the schools of pagan philosophy were more 
 patronized than ever; when the cultivation of the aii:s and the study 
 of the sciences were so widely prevalent in Egypt, Greece, and 
 Italy, twelve fishermen, members of an ignorant and despised com- 
 munity, who had never frequented the groves of Academus, nor 
 trodden the gardens of the Lyceum; twelve men robed in pilgrims' 
 weeds, and armed with pilgrims' staffs, came to preach at Athens 
 and Rome a strange doctrine of severity; and in the face of long- 
 seated prejudice of opinion; in the face of reproach and calumny; 
 in the face of absolute exposure to contempt, infamy, and death, to 
 set up the hated standard of a new and unpopular religion. When 
 Socrates, though aided by his Daemon, could throw no light on the 
 destiny of man; when Plato could conceive no definite idea of 
 divinity; when Aristotle, Zeno, and all the sects were lost in a 
 labyrinth, without a clue, and without a sign, these unlettered 
 vagrants stood forth undismayed and unwearied, as the chosen 
 vessels of divine illumination, " to justify the ways of God to man," 
 to unfold the schemes of divine Providence, the unsearchable mys- 
 teries of the Omnipotent, and the resplendent glories of God's re- 
 deeming love. 
 
 What power but that which called the stars together, when they 
 
446 
 
 obeyed with trembling, saying, Lo ! here we are ; which to the sea 
 hath said, " Thus far shalt thou go and no farther," and it broke its 
 sweUing waves upon the shore ; which fixed the sun in the firma- 
 ment of heaven, and poured its flood of radiance upon the yet un- 
 peopled regions of the earth; what power, in fine, but the power of 
 the Most High God, could, by mere force of persuasion, establish a 
 religion which, after the lapse of 1,900 years, still remains the com- 
 fort of the ignorant and the delight of the learned; the consolation 
 of the sorrowing and the joy of the fortunate; which has survived 
 the attacks of its enemies and the defection of its friends, through 
 periods of alternate luxury and barbarism, through changes and 
 revolutions, through the decay of dynasties and the fall of empires, 
 itself alone unshaken and untouched; through the discoveries of 
 science, and the improvements of the arts, and the vagaries of the 
 human mind — itself alone incapable of change, alteration, or im- 
 provement. 
 
 Is not this renovation of the face of the earth; this restoration of 
 the moral and intellectual world; this resuscitation from the death 
 of pagan ignorance to the life of Christian liberty, light, and love, as 
 sublime a revelation of power as that which was seen when the 
 Saviour stood by the sepulchre at Bethany and Lazarus came forth 
 at His call from the gloomy cerements of the grave ? 
 
 Not in the ebullition of an insane enthusiasm, like Mahomet, rush- 
 ing forth with impetuous force and overpowering might from his 
 native peninsula, offering to the conquered idolater no terms but 
 Mohammedanism or death, and to the captive Christian, no option 
 but the Koran or the sword; not murdering recusants with iron- 
 heeled atrocity, razing cities to foundations, and ravaging countries 
 with fire and sword, till not a blade of grass grew, and the hillocks 
 no longer smiled with the beauty of the vine, and the fields no 
 longer curled with the ears of corn; no; but by the power of the 
 Holy Cross of Jesus Christ; by the aid of the omnipotent arm of God; 
 by the tears, by the sighs, and by the sweat of a suffering Saviour; by 
 the grace out-gushing in plenteous streams from the side of a cru- 
 cified Redeemer, and fertilizing the whole world with the good seed 
 of the Gospel, the religion of Christ was destined to triumph over 
 paganism and idolatry, and like a beautiful vine, to stretch its ten- 
 drils to the remotest comers of the earth, that there might be one 
 
447 
 
 « 
 
 sheepfold and one Shepherd who laid down His life that every 
 valley might be filled, the crooked ways made straight, and the rough 
 ways plain, and all flesh might see the salvation of God. 
 
 But if state supremacy in Rome was hostile to the Church, the in- 
 dividualism of barbarism was a still more insuperable barrier to the 
 march of her heavenly progress. Here were turbulent passions to 
 subdue, an exaggerated notion of personal liberty to counteract, a 
 haughty and imperious aristocracy to temper and tone down, and a 
 degraded peasantry to elevate to the Christian conception of true 
 manhood. The rapacity and arrogance of feudal barons and the 
 condition of a cringing clergy did not improve the facilities for con- 
 version. 
 
 Nearly all the modern civilizations, as the ancient before them, 
 have stood towards the CathoHc Church in the relation of opposition. 
 Open or covert, hostility marked the attitude of the medieval civil 
 powers, which, in the current century, has been translated into posi- 
 tive aggression and defiance. Both the social and the political stand- 
 ards, under most civilizations, have run counter to the unity and 
 authority of the Church; but under the starry banner of the great- 
 est, and perchance the last great republic of the world, the Catholic 
 Church shall doubtless behold her mightiest triumphs and most glo- 
 rious conquests for the faith of Jesus Christ. Here she finds a social 
 condition, founded upon legal equality and natural right, upon 
 which she can build unimpeded the supernatural structure of re- 
 ligion. Here she finds a political order, which, though not in active 
 alliance with religion, places no embargo upon it, but leaves it free 
 and untrammelled. Here she finds a field providentially prepared 
 for her divine action upon mankind, favorable to her growth, and 
 congenial to her spirit and constitution. 
 
 In Europe, at the commencement of the seventeenth centur}', ab- 
 solutism triumphed everywhere, and erected upon the scanty lib- 
 erties of the medieval period a temple of t}Tanny, in which, although 
 the light of hterature and the splendor shone with exceeding brill- 
 iancy, especially under the French monarchies, nevertheless correct 
 ideas of popular liberty were never more confounded and contemned. 
 But lo ! even while these priceless principles of natural right and jus- 
 tice were scorned in the continental countries, in England, France, 
 Spain, and Italy, on the hither side of the Atlantic, amid the pri- 
 
448 
 
 r 
 meval forests and the untrodden wilds of the New World, the most 
 advanced theories of human right and human freedom were pro- 
 claimed, defended, and accepted, with enthusiastic ardor by an ob- 
 scure and despised Democracy, as the new j)ohtical creed of a people 
 destined by God to transcend the bounds of more than imperial 
 power and greatness. Yes; proclaimed here upon the ocean-washed 
 shores of the New World, a liberty which was not unrestrained 
 license, or rampant individualism; a liberty which was not unfriendly 
 to peace and right and justice; a liberty which could brook the re- 
 straints of law and was not inconsistent with authority; a liberty, in 
 fine, whose end and aim was unity and authority; a liberty for 
 just and popular government; a moral, civil, federal, constitutional 
 liberty, which all would cheerfully defend with their " lives, their 
 fortunes, and their sacred honor," as the palladium of a lofty, gener- 
 ous, and high-minded people. 
 
 This liberty is the corner-stone of American civilization, for it 
 combines two principles which are usually in conflict in most com- 
 monwealths — the spirit of freedom and the spirit of religion. By 
 the founders of our Republic the time-consecrated institutions of 
 the Old World were put aside; the barriers of aristocratic society 
 were broken down ; the ancient modes of government were discarded, 
 and the laws and institutions of effete monarchism were relegated to 
 the background, and a new order established, in some essential re- 
 spects dissimilar to any which had hitherto appeared in the world. 
 In the moral order our great law-givers asserted the rights of con- 
 science and the claims of liberty as consistent with the supremacy of 
 the divine and natural law, but in the political order they proclaimed 
 the maxim of personal independence, which was at the same time 
 jealous and tenacious of authority. 
 
 Civil liberty gives admirable scope to the exercise of man's ra- 
 tional faculties, and the largest independence compatible with social 
 security and order is more favorable to rehgion than the most pow- 
 erful despotism exerted in behalf of tfte Church. The Church knows 
 that she has nothing to hope for from kings and emperors, for whose 
 alliance she has always paid a perilous price. She is, therefore, con- 
 tented with the measure of freedom which she enjoys under the 
 American commonwealth, for she knows that the empire of reUgion 
 is never more safeguarded than when, upheld by no other arm than 
 
449 
 
 the arm of God, it reigns with loving liberty in the hearts and con- 
 sciences of her children. The Church lives and works by grace; 
 grace supposes nature, and nature supposes civil, social, and polit- 
 ical liberty for its exercise and development. Hence, of this liberty 
 the Chui'ch has been the historical expounder and defender. 
 
 The great principles of natural right, of justice, equity, equality, 
 and personal freedom, were not born of the incomparable brains 
 which guided the destinies of the infant Eepublic, but were incor- 
 porated into the Constitution of the country by men who had 
 adopted the teachings of the wisest of mankind, — teachings which 
 had been enforced with all the acumen of penetrating genius and 
 intellect, by the theologians and social philosophers of the Catholic 
 Church at every period of her history. An examination of the 
 Federal Constitution, and a comparison of its fundamental provi- 
 sions with the doctrines of the Church, will evince the fact that this 
 wonderful concordance could arise only from principles flowing from 
 one common fountain, and as the Church was piior to the Republic, 
 that fountain was the inexhaustible treasure of her divine teachings. 
 
 The State has always been rated by the Church a Christian insti- 
 tution established for the common good, but to her it is a matter of 
 indifference whether the government be regal or plebeian, feudal or 
 federative, democratic or monarchical, so long as its management be 
 conducted in accordance with those principles of right and justice 
 which take their origin in the law of God. 
 
 And, thank God, these are the principles which our governmental 
 founders made the basis and the groundwork of the States of this 
 Republic. Here the individual is not sunk in the supremacy of the 
 State, as in the Roman Empire; and here the State does not lose its 
 identity in the exaggerated importance of the individual, as in the 
 barbaric principalities. Here are no despotic monarchies to steal 
 away the souls of enslaved subjects; and here are no privileged 
 classes, no purse-proud aristocracies to grind the face of God's poor, 
 a,nd to turn the lip of scorn and the malignant eye of pride upon 
 creatures fashioned by the hand of the same God, from the same 
 common clay. Here is no paternal patronizing government sus- 
 tained by the fawns and cringes of the courtly sycophant; but here 
 is a popular and acknowledged sovereignty rooted in the hearts and 
 Affections of an admiring people. Here are none doomed to degrad- 
 29 
 
450 
 
 ing servitude; but here all are blessed with the ennobling light of 
 liberty. 
 
 Under the starry banner of the great American Republic the 
 Church has, consequently, a field for zealous endeavor which has 
 never been presented to her since the days of her foundation, and 
 for this reason the Sovereign Pontiff turns his eyes towards the 
 Western world with tender interest and hopeful expectation. Her 
 marvellous growth and development, from being half a century ago 
 numerically the weakest community professing the Christian religion, 
 to the most powerful and flourishing at the present hour, compris- 
 ing one Apostolic Delegate, one Cardinal, fourteen Archbishops, 
 seventy-three Bishops, nearly ten thousand priests, and ten millions 
 of faithful members, gives wonderful promise for the future, and 
 bids fair to predestine her to become the grandest and most exten- 
 sive portion of God's kingdom upon this earth. Here the Chui'ch's 
 growth is as inevitable as the flow of time. Here she can lift her 
 heavenly voice to the listening ears of men who are concerned with 
 maintaining those inalienable rights which, God-given and God- 
 guarded, are the prerogatives of freemen; to the ears of men who 
 are not phantoms, or ciphers, but recognized factors in the body 
 politic. Here, too, it is in her power to repel those ancient calum- 
 nies of ignorance and tyranny which from age to age have been 
 alleged against her; and here she can show to the world that she 
 loves nothing better than light, and fears naught but darkness. 
 
 The service of the Church is a reasonable service. Blind, un- 
 reasoning obedience forms no part of her theology. She always fur- 
 nishes the motives for the obedience and subjection she demands, 
 for with her the rights of nature and the just rights of man have 
 ever been supremely paramount. 
 
 Then what prevents that Americans should be attracted towards a 
 Church which, as she first gave to the world, so has she always de- 
 fended those precious principles on which the superb structure of 
 American liberty was founded ? Identity of principles should beget 
 similarity of thought and action. The relation between the civil 
 order, as founded in the Constitution, and the moral order, as sup- 
 ported by the Church, is one of harmony and adaptation. Why may 
 not those bonds be more closely cemented ? Why not look hope- 
 fully forward to the day when men shall behold a far more perfect 
 
451 
 
 unison and equivalence between Church and State, and a more per- 
 fect order of Christian progress than any the centuries have wit- 
 nessed ? The greatest CathoUc intellect that has yet appeared upon 
 this continent believes it to be the mission of the Church to recon- 
 cile liberty with authority; and Ai'chbishop Ryan deems it to be, to 
 combine unity with multiplicity, which, in the moral order, is the 
 same as that of the Republic in the civil: E pluribus unum. But 
 whichever formula be correct, where shall be found that unity and 
 authority without which liberty is a delusion, and multiplicity a 
 name, which is essential to all government, and to maintain which 
 Americans poured out life and treasure with eagerness and joy — 
 where shall men find its exemplification and fulfilment, without im- 
 pairment of individual liberty, and without negation of civil author- 
 ity, outside of the Catholic Church ? 
 
 Independence inclines men to be self-willed and self-opinionated. 
 Freedom of thought, like freedom of action, is peculiar to de- 
 mocracy. The consciousness of equality begets insubordination, but 
 at the same time it seeks unity, simplicity, and impartiality in the 
 powers that govern society. Political views are easily transferred 
 to the realm of religion, and as men look for unity in the political 
 order, so are they led to seek it in religion; and it is easier for them 
 to conceive that there should be no religion at aU than that there 
 should be many, or, as with us, one for each day of the year. 
 
 Hence, though it unfortunately happens that men in democracies 
 are little favorable to reUgion, yet as soon as, by the action of gSce, 
 they obtain sufficient interior illuminatior^o dispose them towards 
 religion at all, they feel a powerful propensity towards the Catholic 
 Church, and though awed by her doctrines, are charmed by her 
 discipline, authority, and her grand and matchless unity. 
 
 Again, the Church is no alien on these shores. Her history here 
 runs parallel with the civil history of the nation. She wants not to 
 Americanize herself, but she wants all her children to be Americans. 
 The vast majority of Catholics are now all American in thought and 
 purpose, in hope and aspiration. In the vanguard of civilization stands 
 America to-day. She is in the forefront of the fight. She is the civil 
 mistress of the world. She courts war with nobody, and there is none 
 for her to fear. Her progress is ever onward; her face is towards 
 the morning star. She is endowed with all the elements of success. 
 
452 
 
 She has French activity, British endarance, Italian intellect, Spanish 
 chivalry, Irish bravery, German pertinacity, and the unique gift of 
 genius and enterprise characteristic of New England. She hates 
 despotism; she abhors Csesarism; she dreads centralization. So 
 does the Church, for these governments are deadly foes of both 
 Church and State, religion and society. 
 
 The Church must flourish, for she is untrammelled here. She has 
 no party affiUations. Her fortunes are not linked with any govern- 
 ment or any party. Such entanglements were forced upon her in 
 the past. History has recorded the result. She wants no more of 
 such alliances. Catholicity, with Catholics, is no test of pohtical pre- 
 ferment. CathoHcity has no recommendation but its truth, no 
 claims but its merits, no demands but " a free field and no favor." 
 Despotism militates against the Church ; the Church for religion's 
 sake, and humanity's sake, takes her stand as the unalterable foe of 
 despotism. When she struck the shackles from the limbs of the 
 nations, then, and then only, men revelled in the sunshine of free- 
 dom, glowed with renewed hopefulness and life. 
 
 The Church is not committed to any nationality. The national 
 spirit is repugnant to her heart, inimical to her genius, destructive 
 of her unity, the principle of her growth. No nationality, then, is 
 needed here, but that which is the nationality of Americans. Men 
 are not, indeed, to forget the instincts of the heart, and cease to love 
 the spot of their birth. But they are to learn the highest patriotism 
 for xbe land of their adoption. " Not that I love Caesar less, but 
 that I love Rome more.^ All must submit to the process of as- 
 similation and absorption. It is manifest destiny; it is eternal fit- 
 ness in the law of national development. Each day carries on the 
 work of unification. The American population comprises the best 
 constituents of the European nationalities, all rapidly amalgamating 
 into one homogeneous people, distinguished by a lofty spirit of inde- 
 pendence and an invincible love of hberty. 
 
 We have two characters to maintain — that of citizen and that of 
 Catholic. The one involves the services which we owe to society, in- 
 cluding the functions of public servants and the duties • of the 
 governed towards the laws; the other takes cognizance of those re- 
 ligious obligations imposed by God, and referred to man's final end 
 and future destiny. These two are distinct, as to laws, government. 
 
453 
 
 and authority. " Render unto Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and 
 to God the things that are God's." 
 
 They are, in their nature, separate, and, to use the old comparison, 
 like two parallel lines, which, by the smallest inclination, lose their 
 identity. The two orders are in concert and correspondence ; not in 
 subordination or dependence, rendering reciprocal support like the 
 State and Federal govemnents under our Constitution. 
 
 The civil ruler has the right to command, but as his authority is 
 purely temporal, it cannot, without sacrilegious usurpation, extend 
 to the domain of the spiritual. 
 
 But Christ gave His Church authority over all her children. Men 
 may be born kings or emperors, but they are not born Christians, 
 nor do they become such until they are incorporated into the unity 
 of the Church by the sacrament of Baptism. Over them she claims 
 authority, but such authority only as Christ gave to her as the 
 spiritual mother of mankind when He said: " AJl power is given to 
 Me." 
 
 To the domain of temporals that does not extend, save so far as 
 temporals are necessary for the independence of the Sovereign 
 Pontiff and the support of religion. In matters temporal, the Church 
 always recognized the civil jurisdiction even over herself, and Jesus 
 Christ Himself wrought a miracle to pay tribute to a 'heathen 
 emperor. The Church commands obedience to the civil power, for 
 he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And 
 were the Pope (I make the allusion with all reverence) to command 
 resistance to the civil authority lawfully constituted, Catholics would 
 say, we respect the keys but not the sword of Peter. When a 
 pusillanimous king laid his crown and kingdom at the feet of the 
 Pontiff, it was a Catholic, Archbishop Langton, and Cathohc barons 
 who rose up to resist the man, who, unmindful of the nature and 
 sanctity of his office, abused the Papal prerogatives. If some sought 
 to depose sovereigns, it is satisfactory to remember that this doc- 
 trine was repudiated by Pius the VII. in his letter to the Irish 
 bishops in 1791. 
 
 " Who is here so base that will not love his country ? If any, 
 'speak; for him have I offended." Therefore, we must identify our- 
 selves with our country ; reverence its laws and institutions, and ac- 
 cept them with loyalty of mind and heart, so long as they do not in- 
 
454 
 
 fringe our liberties or invade our conscience. We should have a 
 pride in the grandeur and glory of the American commonwealth, 
 and should cherish its fame and honor with unfaltering devotion. 
 The rising generations have the future in their hands, and in pro- 
 portion as they understand the civil order, and the genius of the 
 country, in the same proportion can they benefit religion. There 
 are stout hearts, luxuriant genius, fiery activity, ardent zeal, among 
 them. They need care and guidance. They are, many of them, 
 drifting into indifference, often the fruit of unkindness and neglect. 
 Give them scope and encouragement. Don't chide their inexperience, 
 and pluck the flower of hope from their young hearts — hearts as yet 
 sympathetic with naught but what is beautiful and real around 
 them; do not frown upon those upturned faces — faces as yet unpro- 
 faned and fresh from the mint of nature. Teach them obedience, 
 teach them loyalty, teach them patriotism and devotion to their 
 country. Here they have to live, and here they have to thrive. This 
 country is their country; its laws, its liberties, and its glory are their 
 birthright and inheritance forever. 
 
 Catholics do not always command that respect and confidence 
 which they should. Why so ? Because they have been pusillan- 
 imous and faint-hearted. Because they have not always lived up to 
 the teachings of their holy faith. Because they do not always re- 
 spect themselves. As the world helps those who help themselves, so 
 it respects those who respect themselves. Why should Catholics al- 
 ways be hewers of wood and drawers of water ? Fire of intellect is 
 not wanting to them, neither strength of arm. If they are not un- 
 disputed masters of more of the broad acres of this Kepublic, it is 
 because the sense of acquisition has not been properly developed, 
 and they have been deficient in thrift, economy, and industry. Are 
 Catholic electors purer than those of other religions ? Have they 
 never tampered with the sacredness of the ballot ? When 
 
 ' ' Infamous venality grown bold 
 Writes on its bosom, * To be let or sold,' " 
 
 have Catholics always spurned the damning bribe ? Rum has been 
 classed with Romanism and Rebellion. Have Catholics, in theii* in- 
 dividual capacity, given no ground for the charge ? We abhor fa- 
 naticism, and we have no sympathy with those who indulge an in- 
 
455 
 
 discriminating denunciation of traffickers in liquor; but we do affirm 
 that if the greed of gold lead a man into a phase of business which, 
 however it enriches him, impoverishes and demoralizes thousands, 
 better to live in rags, to die in penury and loneliness, and be buried 
 in potter's field, than to finger wealth which comes to its possessor 
 laden with the curses of broken-hearted widowhood, and wet with 
 the scalding tears of famished, homeless orphans. 
 
 The Catholic Church is the hope of America. The spirit of true 
 Americanism is the spirit of Catholicity, which is as broad as hu- 
 manity, as comprehensive as the race, and for this reason the Church 
 is, and will be, a great fact and factor in American civiHzation. The 
 influence of the hierarchy grows apace. The Bishop is a civil ad- 
 ministrator, as well as a spiritual ruler, and he holds in his hands 
 the title-deeds of property aggregating hundreds of miUions. The 
 effects of his office extend even outside the pale of his own com- 
 munion to those who are arrayed against the Church in force of po- 
 litical prejudice or social policy. The incomparable disciphne of the 
 Cathohc Church; her stability, even as a temporal institution; her 
 order, her government, and her conservative policy amidst change, 
 friction, and agitation in the social order, are every day exercising a 
 salutary, if unseen, influence upon the character of the American 
 people. 
 
 The most ardent admirers of the Republic have regarded with ap- 
 prehension the complex and conflicting elements, the party jeal- 
 ousies, the sectional divisions, and the religious differences which 
 abound in the bosom of the commonwealth; and very recently the 
 cry of alarm has been raised in consequence of occurrences which 
 are the natui-al outcome of the vast varieties of character, so distinct 
 in form and feature, and often so antagonistic in thought and senti- 
 ment, which have their home in America. 
 
 Should the spirit of sectionalism ever succeed in estranging the 
 people of the North from the people of the South, or those of the 
 East from those in the West, Americans might deplore what Daniel 
 Webster deprecated, and might " see the sun shining upon the broken 
 and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; upon States 
 discordant, dissevered, and belligerent, and upon land drenched, it 
 might be, in fraternal blood." Should the spirit of liberty overleap 
 its proper bounds, and common rights and privileges give birth to 
 
456 
 
 insubordination and defiance of authority, Americans might say fare- 
 well to that peace, that protection and prosperity which now they 
 prize as the apple of their eye and the tendrils of their heart. Should 
 the spirit of religious rancor, engendered by the blind bigotry of sec- 
 tarianism, ever exercise potency or sway, extermination would be 
 the calamitous result, and what is now religion would become revo- 
 lution, chaos, anarchy, and disorder. 
 
 That equality which is the birthright of every citizen; that liberty 
 of opinion and freedom of expression which men enjoy in every- 
 thing; that independence of character which marks the very tread 
 and visage of those born upon American soil, is both a blessing and 
 a bane. It is, indeed, a glorious inheritance, and would always be 
 as beneficial in its effects, as it is divine in its origin, were it not for 
 the corruption of human nature and force of human passion. But, 
 alas! man is still a child of clay; his virtues are tinctured with the 
 sUme of which he is compounded; his wisdom runs to folly, his 
 liberty to licentiousness, and he who was fashioned in the sweet 
 similitude of God, walks the ways of sin and follows on his toilsome 
 journey, a frail and darkened image. 
 
 But is there "no balm in Gilead," "no divine physician " here ? 
 Where is the remedy ? Not in the exercise of parental authority 
 over those who brook no restraint. Not in the operation of law, 
 when the law itself is ignored. Not in the process of enlightenment, 
 for those who choose to follow the darkness. Not in the institutions 
 of democracy; there liberty runs riot. Not in the abridgment of 
 liberty — God forbid. 
 
 Some power is required to tame the unruly ardor of the passions, 
 to teach the laws of duty and the love of country, to fuse incongru- 
 ous and discordant elements into a harmonious whole — to do this 
 some power is demanded of higher origin and more harmonizing in- 
 fluence than police regulations, or the arm of the civil code. 
 
 That power is the Catholic Church. She can defend our land, 
 our liberty, and oar civilization against these ripening dangers. To 
 the zeal and wisdom of the divinely chosen ministers of God a 
 scheme has been unfolded and a mission assigned. The clergy of that 
 Church, " the heirs of the first pilgrims of the Cross," have come 
 to seek their inheritance. They have come to glean the harvest of 
 the New World, and claim the continent for Christ. The record of 
 
457 
 
 the services they have rendered; the example they have given; the 
 Gospel which they preach; the loyalty and devotion which they ex- 
 hibited — these constitute the claims which they set foiih to de- 
 mand a hearing, and taking neither gold nor silver, seeking 
 neither power nor emolument, they come as the harbingers of 
 peace and unity, to bring the boon of authority and liberty, the bul- 
 warks and basis of the State, by teaching to every man that wisdom 
 which maketh wise unto salvation. They come to mould the minds 
 and hearts of men to the laws of heaven and humanity; to blend all 
 into one brotherhood, and mould all, under the influence of the 
 Church's heavenly hand, to the highest character of citizenship and 
 Christian manhood. They come to shed upon all the gladdening 
 rays of God's holy Gospel, and succor and support man's fallen and 
 degraded nature. They come to draw from the precious legacy left 
 them by the Lord Jesus Christ, that code of morals, that spirit of 
 discipline, those unchangeable canons of conduct which alone can 
 restrain the impetuous ardor of the passions, curb the sallies of per- 
 verse inclinations, check the social disorders that afflict society, and 
 captivate the heart of the savage as well as the mind of the philoso- 
 pher. They come to teach the exercise of prayer, the practice of 
 morality, the value of purity, the sanctity of marriage, brotherly 
 love and tolerant charity, and the laws of obedience and responsi- 
 bility for governors and governed. Enlightened by the sad experi- 
 ence of the Church in Europe, they look upon the emancipation of 
 the Church from State control which obtains in this land, as a sure 
 indication of the permanent progress of both Church and State. And 
 they know that, as far as the laws of God allow, the outward economy 
 of religion must be engrafted upon the national character, and must, 
 as far as possible, reflect the laws and institutions of the land, and 
 not oppose them. 
 
 It is one of the extraordinary attributes of the Catholic Church 
 that it is adapted to all governments. Across the ocean both re- 
 publics and monarchies recognized her rule and professed her creed, 
 and here, too, the day will come when the great democracy of the 
 New "World will admit her merits and her influence. They come, 
 likewise, to proclaim her peerless and impregnable unity. That 
 unity it is that has enabled her to be the largest community that 
 lays claim to the Christian name; that has extended her glorious 
 
458 
 
 empire over both hemispheres of the world; that has produced her 
 marvellous and irresistible march along the centuries; that has car- 
 ried her triumphantly through sorrow and oppression, enduring the 
 cross and despising shame, like the thorn-crowned King who rules 
 her destinies. It is this unity which empowers her priesthood to 
 preach with authority the good seed of the Gospel; which calls 
 millions from idolatry and ignorance into the light of the one true 
 faith; which creates the unshaken allegiance of her followers to the 
 rock of Peter; which, by its vivifying spirit, has enabled her to sur- 
 mount all persecution, to cast aside the bandages of mourning, to 
 shine in the full-orbed splendor of her mission, and to come forth in 
 this new hemisphere, arrayed in majesty and beauty, the one, uni- 
 versal, incorruptible Church of the God of glory and His eternal 
 Son, Jesus Christ. 
 
 That Church seeks no government support, and no national en- 
 dowment. Government assistance means government dependence, 
 and such dependence is the ruin of rehgion. The Catholic hierarchy 
 in the United States love their liberty, rejoice in their independence, 
 and know the power which their present status gives them for ad- 
 vancing the interests of religion and benefiting society. As the 
 ambassadors of God they follow on their saintly way, beacon lights 
 of sanctity and civilization, approved of earth and registered in 
 heaven. 
 
 " To guard the rehgion of this young Kepublic from annihilation; 
 to curb the turbulent passions of a fierce and impetuous, but proud 
 and enlightened democracy; to reduce to harmony and order the 
 discordant and conflicting elements of the greatest and most exten- 
 sive country of free government that the sun ever shone upon; to 
 crystallize the sympathies, the sentiments, the hopes and thoughts of 
 the whole American people into one incomparable and magnificent 
 temple of morality and religion " — ^this is the mission of the Catholic 
 Church in America. 
 
 That Church has manifold claims upon the American Republic. 
 She furnished the fathers with the true principles of civil and relig- 
 ious liberty. Their proclamation of individual freedom was but 
 the echo of Pope Alexander the Third's words, when, in the twelfth 
 century, he declared that nature had made no slaves, and that all 
 men had equal rights to life and liberty. Thus it was that here on 
 
459 
 
 the virgin soil of America the star of constitutional liberty rose as 
 the harbinger of the new day, though as it first gleamed above the 
 horizon its chaste light was colored by the mists and exhalations of 
 the morning. / 
 
 The Constitution of the United States is a Catholic document. 
 It embodies the great Magna Charta wrested from the tyrant John 
 by Archbishop Langton on the plains of Runnymede, the right of 
 representation to justify taxation taught by Pope Zachary years ago. 
 
 Nothing came from Europe but a free people bearing the seeds of 
 Uberty which they had gathered from the granaries of the Catholic 
 Church. Like the perpetual fire in the Sanctuary of the prophet 
 of sorrows, the light of faith and the fire of freedom burned in the 
 land of Calvert, but from its feeble flame the torch of constitutional 
 liberty was lighted, which now floods every corner of our land with 
 its benign radiance and genial glow. 
 
 But as they were the heralds of religion, so the Catholic clergy 
 were the pioneers of civilization in this land. Bishop Lynch, of 
 Charleston, some years ago startled the world by the announcement 
 that there was a pre-Columbian history of our continent in the ar- 
 chives of the Catholic Church. America, called Great Lreland, was 
 discovered by St. Brendan in the sixth century. It may be that 
 New England bishops can claim sees from Bishops John and Eric, 
 who in the middle ages built churches, shed their blood, and 
 founded the Catholic Repubhc of America before a Puritan set foot 
 on Plymouth Rock, and before a Plantagenet or a Tudor wielded the 
 sceptre of an Alfred or an Ethelred. In 1494 Father Boyle, twelve 
 priests, and 150 Catholics planted the Cross of Christ on these 
 shores. From those days onward they came to gladden the New 
 World with the light of the Gospel, even while they perished hke 
 the leaves in Vallombrosa's vale. There was one of them, who, at 
 the caU of duty, left his order to rule the nascent American Church, 
 the illustrious Archbishop CarroU, of Baltimore. His word was as a 
 two-edged sword cutting keen and trenchant Hke a Damascus blade. 
 Many stole his arrows, but few could bend his bow. With an eye 
 blazing like crushed diamonds, a wiU imperious as the mountain 
 storm, an intellect burning with the volcanic fire of intelligence, a 
 heart broad as humanity, comprehensive as the race, and a hand 
 moved by destiny and upheld by God, he planted the tree of the 
 
460 
 
 Cross of Jesus Christ so deeply in the soil of this continent that it 
 shall stand forever, until the last throb of the pulse of time, as the 
 symbol of God's sovereignty over the confederation of these States, 
 as the seal of Christ's redemption, against all the assaults of hell, to 
 the whole American people. 
 
 Shall we be less courageous than our predecessors? Shall we, 
 through supine neglect, or cowardice, permit the prize to be borne 
 from our grasp ? Behold, the time speeds quickly, the last days are 
 at hand. We are the spiritual husbandmen of Jesus Christ; the 
 heart of America is our field of labor; Christianity is our cause and 
 Grod is our commander. The . harvest is ripe and heavy, but the 
 gleaners go not forth to gather the golden grain. Shall we not put 
 our hand to the plow, and shall we forbear our toil ? No, while the 
 doorstones serve for pulpits, and while our tongues are unwrenched 
 from our mouths, we must not cease to proclaim the glad tidings of 
 salvation, to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and to hurl the 
 damnation of God upon the head of him who seeks to uproot relig- 
 ion on the soil of the Eepublic. A new age is upon us, not of perse- 
 cution, but of trial. The Church is about to be sifted, the wheat 
 from the chaff ; the first to be gathered into the garners of God, 
 the second to make fuel for fire. Now it is to be proved who are 
 Christ's and who are not; and who vnll follow with their Christ to 
 Calvary, and who, saving their lives, shall yet lose them. A few cen- 
 turies may witness more than we now dream. What a privilege it 
 wiU be to live when Catholicity shall be received as the religion of 
 this Republic, and when all shall be actuated by the same principles 
 of faith that governed Christ and His Apostles ! I behold before 
 my mental eye visions of peace and happiness which the Catholic 
 Church is to convert into blessed realities. But no, they are not 
 dreams or visions, but realities as surely to be experienced in full- 
 ness, as the towering oak is to grow when I see the acorn planted, 
 or the man, when I behold a child. 
 
 We have here a grand and beautiful country. So extensive a 
 State has never, perhaps, been endowed with institutions so favorable 
 to the common good, to all the arts of peace, to national growth and 
 prosperity. The Egyptian civilization was carried into Greece, and 
 Grecian civilization was, in turn, transferred to Bome, and by her 
 conquering arms was bome to the banks of the blue Danube, to Gaul 
 
461 
 
 and Britain, when Caesar descried the white cHffs of Albion, and 
 sought to add the laurels of the western island to his famous con- 
 quests. Rome had a noble destiny; the destiny of Britain was 
 grander still; but the splendor and magnificence of the mission of 
 the United States will cast into the deepest shade the achievements 
 of the nations of antiquity, and ecHpse the glory of every other mod- 
 em people. 
 
 The supremacy of the people, under God, is here everywhere 
 maintained. The laws and institutions of the land are upheld with 
 patriotic loyalty and devotion, and though European despots had pre- 
 dicted the early decline of the RepubHc, now, after more than a cen- 
 tury of national existence, checkered by the ravages of two deadly 
 conflicts, the institutions of democracy give no sign of decay, and 
 flourish in their original vigor and integrity. European nations, al- 
 most without exception, long for change; the thin edge of the wedge 
 of democracy has akeady entered England; other states seem to stand 
 on the verge of a volcano; some may soon labor in the thi'oes of revo- 
 lution; discontent, unrest, and hungry expectation may disturb the 
 minds of the masses, and give cause for general alarm ; but here we 
 are at peace, and enjoy all the rights of liberty under the undisputed 
 ;reign of law. Our form of government engages the admiration, and 
 our Constitution the adhesion of an inteUigent and freedom-loving 
 people. Our vessels' keels cleave every wave, our sails are furled in 
 countless foreign harbors, our enterprise is borne to every clime. 
 Every man here has the ownership of himself. He is free to enjoy 
 the results of his labors, to declare the convictions of his mind, to 
 share in the making cf the laws, and in selecting the rulers of the 
 nation. And we are a God-fearing people. Religion is neither pro- 
 scribed nor supported by the government, but fixed in the enlight- 
 ened convictions and graven on the receptive hearts of a people 
 who, with the first illustrious President of the Republic, believe that, 
 aside from morality and religion, the foundations of a State are laid 
 on yielding sand, which is constantly overrun by the waves of social 
 convulsion, or the blood-red waters of revolution, anarchy, and ruin. 
 Our progress is without parallel or precedent. 
 
 Not long ago, our vast territory beyond the Mississippi was an im- 
 mense waste, where the rank vegetation grew unbidden, and the 
 prairie wolf roamed unscared. Not a single mark of civilization of 
 
462 
 
 our modem type anywhere appeared, nor a monument erected by the 
 skill and contrivance of the hand of man. 
 
 Bat the destinies of a nation are not guided by the star of blind 
 fate, nor the hand of accident, but by the unerring and controlling 
 government of the all-ruling providence of God, and under His pro- 
 tecting care we can trace the path of our country's progress, and 
 follow the steps by which God has conducted her to the lofty sum- 
 mits of her grandeur and her glory. 
 
 Soon, very soon, indeed, the memorable quarter-centennial year, 
 the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of this Republic, 
 will be here and gone; and when it has become an epoch of the past, 
 our beloved country will have entered on a still brighter period of 
 her ever-onward and glorious march. Long and earnestly has this 
 time been looked for; fondly has it been anticipated; and when it 
 shall have come, grandly will it be celebrated. 
 
 Were it permitted the indomitable Genoese traveller, who in his 
 fancied passage to far Cathay, discovered to mankind another 
 world, to be present at the festivities and rejoicings of the year 1893, 
 how smilingly would he behold the thrifty and prosperous nation 
 spring up as if by magic in the land in which he planted the Cross of 
 Christ four hundred years ago. Would not the immortal Washing- 
 ton and his compatriots, if looking on the scene, see in it an almost 
 perfect realization of their hopes and dreams, when struggling to es- 
 tabUsh the Hberties of their country ? 
 
 America's progress, during the last one hundred years, in all the 
 arts and sciences, in the cause of human freedom, in civilization, and 
 in Christianity itself, is the marvel of the world, and must be an ob- 
 ject of admiration, not alone to those who glory in the title of " civis 
 Americanus," but to every enlightened mind who has acquaintance 
 with her history. 
 
 The colossal world-exhibition, to be inaugurated and perfected in 
 the great city of Chicago, in commemoration of this progress, as well 
 as of the discovery of the continent, is a project worthy of the Amer- 
 ican people, and will, we make no doubt, be so conducted as to pre- 
 sent another proof of the genius and enterprise which they possess. 
 The tact and energy of those who conceived it will not suffer it to 
 fail, but will can-y it to a successful and glorious issue. The good 
 results thence to come are •beyond all present computation. And 
 how magnificent the sight in the city of Chicago ! 
 
463 
 
 In the vast and imposing buildings which will be constructed, we 
 shall see displayed in endless variety, not only all the products and 
 manufactures of America, all the monuments of Yankee genius and 
 American mind, but those likewise of every nation on the face of the 
 green globe. Machinery so complicated and useful, so wondrously 
 constructed as to dim by comparison the triumphs of human skill in 
 ages past; works of art whose grandeur will baffle all powers of de- 
 scription ; there will be seen, in rich and varied profusion, all the 
 productions of nature, side by side with all the inventions of highly 
 cultivated art. 
 
 "Will not the contemplation of this display be a powerful incentive 
 to renewed endeavor, and will it not teach new lessons of enterprise 
 and industry ? Will it not stimulate the already proverbial activity 
 of the American people, and give a fresh impulse to every field of en- 
 deavor among the awakening and semi-civilized nations of the East, 
 who now owe a mighty debt to the emulation evoked among them 
 by commercial contact with the people of this country ? Will it not 
 conduce to the establishment of that harmonious and fraternal feel- 
 ing, the dream of optimistic philosophers, which, it is expected, must 
 one day exist among the nations of the earth ? Let us at least in- 
 dulge that hope. 
 
 Let us rejoice in the forthcoming celebration of the discovery of 
 this land. Let us rejoice that an international exhibition will be 
 held; for we, who are Catholics, who glory in the triumph of our 
 holy Mother, may feel a pardonable pride in the part she has played 
 in the marveUous history of this country. To us it must always be 
 an inexpressible satisfaction to remember that the comer-stone of 
 the great fabric of American freedom was quarried, cut, and placed 
 securely in its place by Lord Baltimore and his little colony of 
 Catholics, when they proclaimed, defended, and first reduced to 
 living practice the sacred and priceless principles of civil and re- 
 ligious liberty. To them, in great measure, belongs the honor of 
 paving the way to make the Republic the highway of freedom, the 
 home of manly independence, the asylum within whose wide-em- 
 bracing walls the down-trodden and oppressed of every clime have 
 found shelter and security from the persecutions of fanaticism and 
 intolerance. 
 
 Remembering her glorious history upon the shores of the New 
 
464 
 
 World, so closely blended with the civil history of the nation, the 
 American people will discern that she is not the enemy, but the true 
 friend of progress, and the most powerful ally of civilization in the 
 Western world; that she is the soul and inspiration of art, and the 
 foster-mother of light and liberty. 
 
 No international exhibition can be held in this or any other land 
 in which the splendors of the Catholic Church will not shine like the 
 stars in the firraambnt. 
 
 But all is not happiness and prosperity in this favored land of 
 ours; all is not liberty of conscience in this liberty-loving land of 
 ours. 
 
 The American people, it is trne, are, in the main, virtuous, and 
 they are generally generous and just; and they sometimes suffer 
 their judgment to be beclouded by the mists of bigotry and intoler- 
 ance. It is true that America, as a nation, has never flagrantly 
 violated the holy principles of religious freedom; and yet, there are 
 those upon her soil who regard us with suspicion and distrust, and 
 who are aiming to deprive the Cathohc Church of her sacred pre- 
 rogatives, and her children of those inalienable rights to which they 
 have established their claim by their unswerving fidelity to her laws, 
 and their gallant services in her defense when the implacable foe 
 threatened ruthlessly to destroy her. 
 
 Be it ours to remove this unfounded prejudice from the minds of 
 our fellow-citizens, to extirpate it from the land and banish it for- 
 ever. Let us perform those duties which are incumbent on us as 
 electors in tbe State and as members of the Church, with God-fear- 
 ing diligence, and we shall contribute not a little to the accomplish- 
 ment of this end, so '^idevoutly to be wished." Let us endeavor to 
 let our light so shine before men, that, being overpowered by the 
 influence oi onr example, the rectitude of our conduct, and the 
 purity of our Ivos, they may soon perceive their false conception of 
 our tenets n ■. I principles; and, having cast aside all bigotry and 
 prejudice, t la come to regard us with feelings of fellowship 
 
 and love, an ; inaUy be led into the companionship of that faithful 
 flock whic I'lit one fold and one Shepherd. 
 
VII. 
 THE SONG OF SALVATION. 
 
 OPENING OF AN ORGAN, ST. MARY'S CHURCH, HOBOKEN, N. J. 
 
 "O Lord God, Almighty King, Thou hast made heaven and 
 earth and all things that are under the cope of heaven." God is 
 the primeval Author of all things. " He spoke and they were made; 
 He commanded and they were created." At the formation of the 
 universe His Spirit brooded over the chaotic deep. His voice rang 
 through the vast and yawning void, thrilling every pulse and artery 
 of time, and commanding order from tumultuous Babel, and the 
 song of heavenly harmony evoked by the fiat of the great Creator's 
 call will sound through the radiant archways of the world till time 
 \shall be no more. The sun which He has made to cheer our sight by 
 day will shine for cycles yet to come; through hoary ages the silent 
 stars will shimmer in the vault of night; the lordly rivers will roll 
 with perennial motion from their sources to the sea; the swift revo- 
 lution of events and the changes of the seasons will proceed in their 
 perpetual round till the world shall, at length, decay with age, and a 
 new heaven and a new earth shall then succeed. But amid these 
 wonderful changes of the visible creation, God in His glory shall ever 
 shine with undiminished light in one uninterrupted permanence of 
 eternity. " Li the beginning, O Lord ! Thou didst found the earth, 
 and the heavens are the work of Thy hands They shall perish, but 
 Thou shalt remain; they shall grow old as a garment, and as a 
 vesture Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. But 
 Thou Thyself art the self-same, and Thy years shall not fail." 
 
 God alone is eternal and imchangeable. There is nothing per- 
 manent under the sun. Change is the condition of finite existence. 
 The bud opens to let out the rose; the acorn shoots into the oak; 
 30 
 
466 
 
 the seed springeth up into the flower; the smiling babe becomes 
 the chattering child, and the child expands into the thoughtful man. 
 
 Development is the law of life; progress is the fruit of humanity. 
 Development is growth, and growth is a vital act. Human growth 
 is along the lines of humanity. It corresponds with nature and its 
 environments. On one side it is in the limited and finite order, in 
 that it is mutable, variable, and progressive. On the other it is in 
 the uncreated and eternal order, in that it depends for continuous 
 existence upon the unchangeable life of an eternal principle in whom 
 all things live and move and have their being. 
 
 To live is to correspond with our environments; to correspond 
 with our environments is to use them, to subdue them, to make 
 them subservient to the necessities of our being. When man first 
 issued from his Maker's hand, he was clothed with the control of his 
 faculties and dominion of the earth. " The earth He gave to the 
 children of men." Man is, therefore, the maker of his destiny; he 
 holds his hfe in his hands. 
 
 The moment the new-bom child awakes to the consciousness of 
 existence, he finds himself in a world whose laws and forces seem to 
 be in contradiction to his nature. How grand, how majestical is 
 man ! How weak, how impotent ! Under one respect the Darwin- 
 ian hypothesis has foundation in fact; life is a struggle for exist- 
 ence. Man has not the strength of the lion; the fleetness of the 
 deer; the endurance of the dromedary. Time was, some think,, 
 when he lived a painful and laborious life, making his home in 
 caves, clothing himself in skins, or, may be, as an aboriginal savage, 
 he squatted in morasses, lurking for bestial or human prey, and 
 glaring fiercely under his fleece of hair which reached to his loins 
 and hung about him like a matted cloak. 
 
 But as a^means of self -protection, he possesses liberty and intelli- 
 gence. By the well-directed exercise of his Ood-given powers, he 
 acquires a knowledge and mastery of the world around him, and by 
 the exercise of his liberty he changes, modifies, and reconstructs it 
 for his use and benefit. 
 
 By the labor of his hands he arrests the growth of deserts; fells 
 opposing forests; levels obstructing mountains; fills yawning 
 chasms; builds pathways over streams; constructs habitations for 
 shelter; provides raiment for the body, and effects those prodigious 
 
467 
 
 transformations which claim the praise of civilization. He measures 
 the space in which he moves; counts the objects which pass before 
 his vision; observes the action and the properties of bodies; resolves 
 matter into its first elements, and creates the physical and mathe- 
 matical sciences. He wrests her secrets from the womb of Nature; 
 pierces the gloomy caverns of the under world; breaks down the 
 barriers that oppose his progress; draws the lightning from the 
 clouds; converts the raindrops into the awful energy of steaming 
 vapor; alters air with dynamic force; summons all the powers and 
 energies of Nature to execute his bidding; and then scrutinizing the 
 principles and laws that govern his industry, he generates the noble 
 science of political economy. ^ 
 
 In the exercise of his intelligence he observes the social character 
 of his nature, sees that he maintains relations with his fellows, and 
 besides the useful and the necessary, he perceives the ideas of right 
 and justice, property and government, and constitutes the State for 
 the enforcement of legal rights and duties, that the peaceable exer- 
 cise of liberty and reciprocal equality may be maintained. Nor is 
 this all. 
 
 When an enchanting landscape, mountains of lofty and harmoni- 
 ous proportions, grateful and intoxicating odors, brilliant and varie- 
 gated colors, melodious and rhythmical sounds strike his senses and 
 appeal to his imagination, he forms the notion of the beautiful, com- 
 mences aesthetic culture, and builds from the world of Nature a 
 world of art, in which he seeks to reflect the hidden glories of 
 divinity itself. 
 
 Nay, if endowed with a soul attuned to Nature's harmonies, he 
 finds the nectar on which his spirit feeds in the petals and volutes 
 of the flower, in the umbrageous stillness of grots and caves, in 
 the purling of silvery streams, in the bright orbs that shine in the 
 firmament, in the vermilion-tinted sky, in the salvos of the rolling 
 thunder, in the blue haze of distant mountains, in the bright verdure 
 of the valleys, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the bleating of 
 the flocks, in the lowing of the kine, in the glow-worm's twinkling 
 light, in the pearly dewdrops, in the pattering of the rain, in the 
 driving sleet, in the rainbow's dazzling hues — in all the myriad 
 sights and sounds that cheer, elevate, purify, and ennoble the great 
 high heart of humanity. 
 
468 
 
 He finds it in the sighing of the breeze, the moaning of the night- 
 wind, the rushing of the tempest; in the surges that lash the rock- 
 bound shore, the repining of the forests, in the night-fowl that com- 
 plain to the moon, in the tenderness of twilight, in the fair and 
 beauteous cheek of dawn, in the diamond light of day, in the color 
 of the rose, the perfume of the violet, in the sweet-scented breath of 
 May, in the brown and russet vesture of October, and the ermined 
 and crystalline robes of Winter. He beholds it in the noble figure of 
 man — the flash of his genius, the fire of his intellect, the strength of 
 his arm, the skill and cunning of his hand, his courage, his intrepid- 
 ity, his valor, and his enterprise. He beholds it in the graceful 
 form of woman, the glory of her carriage, the majesty of her move- 
 ment, the lustre of her eye, the damask tint upon her cheek; in her 
 patience, her endurance, her tenderness, in the all-conquering power 
 of her devotion, her faith, her hope, and her love. He beholds it in 
 lofty aspirations, superhuman motives, sublime impulses, valorous 
 and chivalrous deeds, self-sacrifice, self-renunciation, and aU that 
 makes for the grandeur, nobility, and dignity of humankind and the 
 glory and honor of the race. 
 
 Such are the phenomena on which the soulful child of Nature 
 feeds, like the fabled god on Ambrosia; these manifold forms, 
 sounds, colors, odors, sentiments, feelings, aspirations, furnish him 
 with sensations of exquisite pleasure, lofty inspiration, inexpressible 
 delight; yes, they delight, but do not satisfy the soul; for how can 
 the dewdrop quench the sun, or the brooklet overflow the sea ? 
 
 In the very constitution of humanity are revealed the cravings of 
 a higher nature ; the deathless aspiration of a soul which no terrene 
 delights can satiate; an impulse, a tendency to a boundless, pure 
 happiness which time-born things may indicate, but never can be- 
 stow. When the soulful child of song tunes his lyre to duplicate by 
 expression the delights his sensibility receives from the spirit of 
 beauty about him, it is because his enthusiastic aspirations discern in 
 the distance something unattainable under heaven's dome. Perennial 
 and immortal in the heart of man burns an unquenchable thirst 
 which can be allayed only in the crystal springs of Paradise. Like 
 a flash of light in the darkness of the tempest, amid the storm and 
 gloom of this lower sphere man gains a glimpse of the glories be- 
 yond the bounda^'ies of a fallen world, and so incessantly sighs for 
 
469 
 
 the gold-bright light of God, and frantically struggles to grasp the 
 infinite, supernal loveliness whose entrancing joys gush forth, in 
 saHent streams, from the fountain of felicity itself. This is the 
 hope which springs eternal in the human breast. Whenever paint- 
 ing, poetry, sculpture, music, song, and those beauties which are in- 
 trinsic to the essence of the nobler arts, passionately and uncontrol- 
 lably stir the finer feelings and emotions of the heart, then the soul 
 is transported beyond itself. As the flush of dawn heralds the 
 glory of the day, the human beauty is a hint or a reflection of the 
 divine, and with a cry of wild, impatient longing, sad because un- 
 satisfied, joyful because expectant, the soul stretches out the intense 
 energy of its efforts to picture, to conceive, nay to grasp, at once 
 and eternally, the balmy bliss, of which, on earth, we catch but faint 
 and transient gleams. This divine Ideal, it is, that imparts to art 
 the power of touching and moving the human heart. It is the ani- 
 mating soul which makes exanimate existences instinct with an in- 
 corporate life and beauty, and robes, with an ethereal and refined 
 loveliness, the material things of time. 
 
 By the influence of music, more than by any other power, per- 
 haps, the soul obtains the vision of that supernal essence it longs so 
 much to see. It feels, under music's magic spell, itself upborne to 
 the rosy atmosphere where beauty dwells full-orbed, unclouded and 
 divine. We seem to feel that from an earthly instrument come 
 cadences that fall from earthly harps in heaven. 
 
 " Seated one day at the organ,'' 
 
 I was weary and ill at ease, 
 And my fingers wandered idly 
 
 Over the noisy keys. 
 I know not what I was playing, 
 
 Or what I was dreaming then. 
 But I struck one chord of music 
 
 Like the sound of a grand Amen! " 
 
 Man was made for heaven. All things tend according to the im- 
 pulse of their first creation. Bodies gravitate towards the centre of 
 the earth; the soul aspires above. Man's impatience will not rest. 
 He longs to place his finger upon the primal Spring of being; to 
 seize the motive power that rolls the suns and lights the stars; to 
 bathe, at once, in dreams of seraphs ; " to become twin brother 
 
470 
 
 with the angels"; to feel the flashing of their wings, to clasp them 
 in his embrace; to sing the songs the angels sing, — to mount, strong, 
 radiant, glorious, into the ethereal essence of supernal Beauty. In 
 the effort to reach out his arms to the realms of rosy joy, his im- 
 agination bodies forth forms and sounds which reflect beauty even 
 more than the beauty of nature or of art. It is the soul picture of 
 the Creator. "Without it art is folly, nature is chaos. Its hues are 
 all of heaven, and religion alone can limn its features. Chained to 
 the concrete conditions of sense, man sees but multitudinous forms 
 of an outward world, but in the sunlight of religion he discerns the 
 cause of all the forms, forces, and perfections of the creation around 
 him. Beyond the world of art, of industry, of nature, and of fancy 
 man must conceive a God. A world without God is an incompre- 
 hensible enigma; a God without a world is to man a myth. 
 
 " Thou art, O God! the life and light 
 Of all this wondrous world we see, 
 Its glow by day, its smile by night, 
 Are but reflections caught from Thee." 
 
 When the pious pilgrim goes forth at eventide of Summer to gaze 
 upon the lovely features of the landscape, will not instructive 
 thought flash athwart the beautiful expanse to God: 
 
 " Beautiful world shining around me, 
 Manifold, million-hued wonders confoimd me; 
 From earth, sea and starry sky, meadows and mountains 
 Eagerly gushes life's magical fountains. 
 Thou quick-teeming world though scoffers may blame thee, 
 I adore and worship the God who hath framed thee." 
 
 When as a bridegroom in his bridal chamber man goeth to com- 
 mune with nature "in the cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour, 
 to meditation due and sacred song," he finds 
 
 *' A tongue in every flame 
 And hears a voice in every wave." 
 
 " There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore; 
 There is a society where none intrudes 
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 
 
471 
 
 I love not man the less, but nature more. 
 
 From these our interviews in which I steal 
 
 From all I may be, or have been before. 
 
 To mingle with the universe and feel 
 
 What I can ne'er express and cannot all conceal." 
 
 There is a sweetness in the morning air upon the mountain-top, 
 when the sun bathes with light the roseate sky, and 
 
 " The mom her sunlit steps .... 
 
 Adorning sows the hills with Orient pearls." 
 "I love upon the mountain-top to watch the sun 
 
 Spring from the ocean-bed, with joyous leap, 
 
 And start exultant in his grand career." 
 
 We behold Him who formeth the mountains, created the winds, 
 and walketh upon the high places of the earth, not only when the 
 torrents leap, and the whirlwinds roar; when abyss calls unto abyss 
 in the voice of many waters ; but also when the zephyr softly mur- 
 murs, and the streamlet whispers low, — 
 
 " Combined with the gentle minstrelsy of the grove. 
 The song of birds, — the distant waterfall, 
 The leafy whisper of the wood, the hum 
 Of insect life, — rude sounds! but yet they come 
 In likeness of vibrations musical. 
 And thus the poetry of common things 
 Awakes a spiritual verdure in the heart 
 And sends up the dew of thought to God." 
 
 The slightest reverberation of the air is like the archangel's voice 
 •calling, not to the dome 
 
 " Where crumbling arch and column 
 
 Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, 
 But to that Fane, most Catholic and solemn, 
 
 Which God hath planned. 
 To that Cathedral, boundless as our wonder, 
 
 Whose quenchless lamps, the sun and moon and sky, 
 Its choir the winds and waves, — its organ thunder. 
 
 Its vault the sky." 
 
 Pause and admire the sapphired heavens, smiling with the love of 
 its Creator, and listen to the heavenly music when the " vocal gales 
 
• 472 
 
 blow soft to liim whose spirit in their freshness moves." To wander 
 through the leafy wood when the *' early pipe of half-awakened 
 birds " sounds vibrative upon the ear, is to feel that each warbling 
 note is a summons to the vanishing silence of the night and the 
 motion of the morning to join hands in prayer and salutation to the 
 Lord of light and life. But when gurgling rill, roaring torrent, 
 sighing breeze, rushing wind, feathered vocalists, and the whole 
 choir of creation blend their voices in melodious concord, how soul- 
 filling is the burst of harmony, as the atmosphere's loud-swelling 
 organ peals forth its invocation and calls all the sons of men to the 
 worship of their Maker. 
 
 " Ah ! me, what hand can touch the string so fine ? 
 
 Who up the lofty diapason roll 
 Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, 
 
 Then let them down again into the soul ? 
 They breathed in tender musings through the heart ; 
 As when seraphic hands a hymn impart : 
 Wild, warbling nature all, above the reach of art." 
 
 The perception of God in the natural world, but distinct from His 
 works, is the foundation of natural rehgion. But natural reHgion, 
 in the abstract, cannot satisfy the soul. 'Tis not enough to con- 
 template forms of beauty; to listen to sounds of music, — man must 
 find expression for the feelings and emotions of his soul. He must 
 hold converse with his Creator and pay worship to his God. It is 
 of the essence of fruitful ideas to find their realization. The rites of 
 reHgion and the symbols of worship are the development of the re- 
 ligious sentiment. Man has senses no less than soul; and his whole 
 being belongs to God. Worship is to natural religion what the 
 State is to primitive society; the world of industry to the world of 
 nature what art is to beauty. The world of worship is superior to 
 the ordinary world, in that its distinctive purpose is to unite man to 
 God by vivid images, expressive symbols, attractive forms, pregnant 
 ceremonies. 
 
 No worship finds favor with God but that which springs from the 
 heart. " These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is 
 far from Me." The prayer of the contrite heart yields more 
 pleasure to God than the incense of smokiug holocausts. But while 
 the prayer of the pure heart alone pierces to the throne inaccessible, 
 
473 
 
 the external splendor of divine worship is not inconsistent with the 
 ordinances of the Almighty. 
 
 Every heart feels the sensations that affect the soul when some 
 object strikes the senses pleasantly or powerfully; how majesty and 
 grandeur inspire awe and reverence; how music influences the whole 
 frame of man. 
 
 " Oh, there's a holy calm profound 
 
 In awe like this 
 
 *Tis a solemn voice from heaven, 
 And the soul, listening to the sound. 
 Lies mute and still." 
 
 For such reasons did Jehovah pay particular attention to the ex- 
 terior dignity and ceremonial part of the Jewish worship, whose 
 pomp and magnificence exceed those of all other religions, and from 
 aU nations did people come to witness the grandeur of the temple 
 and the splendid solemnity of the service. 
 
 The Catholic Church, sensible of the glorious God she adores, sur- 
 rounds the homage she pays to Him with all possible solemnity and 
 neglects nothing in the regulation of His service which adds dignity 
 to her august worship and infuses into the breasts of His children 
 the fear and love of their Creator. Every candid mind will ac- 
 knowledge something captivating in the liturgy and symbolism of 
 the Church. Said a Protestant to me not long since : " I was never 
 more surprised and pleased than when your predecessor explained 
 to me the beautiful significance of the mural decorations in the 
 Church." Even unbelievers have been singularly struck at witness- 
 ing the grandeur of the ceremonial of the Mass, and were constrained 
 to confess that it excited within their bosoms sentiments of devotion 
 and reverence of which they deemed themselves incapable. How 
 impressive and how solemn it is in the large cathedi'al when con- 
 ducted with all the solemnity that the magnificence of her ritual, 
 the richness of her ornaments, the splendor of her vestments, and 
 the brilliancy of her golden vessels, gleaming with the lustre of the 
 myriad lights about the altar, impart to the service of the Church I 
 Strangely constituted must that man be who derives no elevation of 
 soul from the imposing spectacle of CathoHc service on a great 
 festival like Corpus Christi. 
 
 The absurd rigorists in rehgion who would banish these aids to 
 
474 
 
 piety and worship as unmeaning or useless pageantry, have never 
 learned to appreciate the magical effect of external observances upon 
 the minds of men. The eye is an open avenue to the heart, as 
 teachers of history have long since discovered. " Never did I wit- 
 ness," says a Protestant in Rome, " the ceremony of procession, the 
 long line of priests in sacred robes, the crowds which precede and 
 follow them in religious silence, the multitude prostrate upon the 
 ground. Never did I hear the grave and pathetic music of the 
 solemn chant and sublime anthem without the strongest sensations 
 of devotion, and without the tribute of a tear." "Suppress the 
 sensible symbols of religion, and the rest becomes a metaphysical 
 galhmatia, as varied as the variety of men's imaginations." 
 
 The Church of Christ is not of the world, but it is in the world, 
 and it has a human as well as a divine element. The Church is com- 
 posed of men and she operates on men, and, to some extent, she is 
 limited to the conditions of human existence. If men were angels, 
 and the Church an altogether invisible and supersensible agency, she 
 would make all her communications of truth in a manner adapted to 
 such modes of existence. But men are corporeal beings, and depend 
 for their knowledge entirely on their senses, which are the windows 
 of the soul, for, as the philosopher affirms, nothing exists in the in- 
 tellect which did not first exist in the senses. Man is a compound of 
 body and soul, and acts according to his nature, which philosophy 
 again expresses by saying that action follows the nature or being of 
 a thing {dctw sequitur esse). 
 
 The Church, therefore, is not purely spiritual, because man is not 
 pure spirit; nor wholly intellectual, for man has a heart; nor alto- 
 gether rational, for man has feeling, emotion, and imagination.* But 
 what men feel, that they do and must express. Voiceless love is 
 lifeless love. " Behold, my beloved speaketh to me." Love has a 
 language. Ceremony is the language of religious love. " Ceremony 
 is bom of love, respect, reverence, adoration." f St. Teresa would 
 die for a single ceremony of the Church. True worship is both in- 
 ternal and external, and proceeding from the integral man, heart, 
 mind, soul, and senses all concerned, it elevates the whole man, 
 through the symbols of art and nature, towards the divine Ideal he 
 longs to see, enjoy, adore. By this adoration the soul undergoes a 
 
 * J. L. Spaulding, Essays and Lectures. f Ibid. 
 
475 
 
 Bpiritual transfiguration. " Its face doth shine as the sun," and its 
 "garments become white as snow." It enjoys a foretaste of the su- 
 preme fehcity, and all but seizes that inexhaustible treasure of bliss 
 which glows in the bosom of divinity. It " pants and longs to come 
 thither," where its joy shall be always full; where it will be always 
 fresh; where it will be always present; where no pain, no grief, no 
 solicitude, nor any evil can approach; where naught but the sound 
 of gladness shall be heard, and naught but what delights shall be 
 ever seen; where joyful canticles of praise shall forever chsirm the 
 ear, and the light of God Himself shall be an unfailing source of joy 
 and transport to the soul, and where the burning throne and the ef- 
 fulgence of the Lamb thereupon, shall inspire new flames of seraphic 
 love and fresh ecstasies of joy within the heart, through the per- 
 petual duration of the heavenly kingdom. 
 
 But God's kingdom upon earth, whose coming was heralded by the 
 songs of angels, will continue in this world to sing the praises of that 
 God, whose glories she shall chant forever, in the city of redeemed hu- 
 manity, with the childi'en of Israel and the daughters of Zion, in the 
 land of the light, in the everlasting realms of the King of Heaven 
 and earth. Her existence here below is but a preparation of that 
 which is to come, and with an ecstatic prescience of her glorified con- 
 dition in the mansions of immortality, she continues to admonish her 
 children in hymns and spiritual canticles, to prepai'e for the glories 
 that are to be amid the sweet songs and perennial joys of Paradise. 
 The bride of Christ will take the cithara of David to soothe the 
 troubled spirit of man's unruly passion, and solace the sadness of the 
 human heart by the grateful melody of her sacred songs. With the 
 royal prophet she calls upon " aU nations, all people, all tribes and 
 tongues " ; she calls upon " sun, moon, and stars, wind and tempest, 
 frost and dew, to praise the Lord because His mercies are great and 
 endureth forever." " Let them sing to Him a new song whose praise 
 is in the Church of His saints. Let them sing to Him in chorus; let 
 them chant to Him with timbrel and psaltery. Sing ye to the Lord; 
 sing to our God upon the harp. Who covereth the heavens with 
 clouds and prepareth rain for the earth. Who causeth the grass to 
 grow upon the mountains, and herbs for the service of men. Who 
 giveth to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens who call to 
 Him. Praise* the Lord, O Jerusalem ! Praise thy God, O Zion ! 
 
476 
 
 Because He hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates. He hath blessed 
 thy children within thee. He hath placed peace in thy borders and 
 filled thee with the fat of corn. Praise ye the Lord in His holy 
 places ! Praise ye Him in the firmament of His power ! Praise ye 
 Him in His mighty acts ! Praise Him for the multitude of His 
 mercies ! Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet ! Praise Him 
 with psaltery and harp ! Praise Him with timbrel and choir; praise 
 Him with strings and organs; praise Him on high-sounding cymbals. 
 Let every spirit praise the Lord ! Amen ! Alleluia ! " 
 
 The Church recognizes the power of the senses over the heart and 
 character, and she knows that of all the senses, that of hearing has 
 most potency upon the soul of man. " Faith itself comes by hear- 
 ing." Hearing is the most spiritual of all the senses. To this sense 
 the musician is indebted for the wonderful effects he produces over 
 the mind and heart of man. " Let me make the songs of a people," 
 says the philosopher, " and I care not who makes their laws." 
 
 That harmonious correspondence of sounds, which, though not 
 especially directed to the intelligence, has yet the power of exciting 
 so many lively feelings and emotions in the soul, is addressed to the 
 heart by the medium of hearing, the delicate vibrations of the sound 
 playing upon the tympanum of the ear, and sending the spiritual 
 breath of music through every chord and fibre of the soul. 
 
 The influence which music bears upon the moral and intellectual 
 life of man is sufficient to entitle it to the attention of all lovers of 
 the true, the good, and the beautiful. So strong is the tendency of 
 music to elevate and ennoble the heart and mind, that an acquaint- 
 ance with the science has always been associated, not only with cul- 
 ture and refinement, but even with honor and virtue. It is not 
 strange, then, that so much has been said of music, or that it should 
 have been so highly cherished by all people, even the rudest and 
 most unrefined. Hard it is, indeed, to imagine a person for whom 
 music has no charms, and into whose soul its power cannot penetrate. 
 Of such an individual we instinctively recall the words of the prince 
 
 of poets: 
 
 " The man that has not music in himself, 
 And is not moved by concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; 
 His spirits are as dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus. 
 Let no such man be trusted." 
 
477 • 
 
 Classed among the fine arts, and holding, perhaps, the highest 
 place among them, music is woiihy of a rank in the curriculum of 
 every educational establishment. The student, thus educated, can 
 find sweet pleasure in the strains of Nature's melody, and discover 
 beauty where other eyes are blind, and other eai's are deaf. To him 
 
 "There's music in the sighing of the reed, 
 There's music in the gushing of the rill: 
 There's music in all things, if men had ears, 
 The earth is but a music of the spheres." 
 
 To him 
 
 " There's not the smallest orb which he beholdeth, 
 But in his motion like an angel sings; 
 Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
 , But whilst the muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 
 
 All peoples have sought to give voice to the feelings of their soul 
 by the sound of song, and to lighten the burden of their sorrow by 
 the language of melody. The sad heart is healed by the magic 
 breath of music. Indeed, if this divine art were susceptible of no 
 higher influence than to take the sting out of adversity, and furnish 
 the dejected and disappointed with sweet solace when overburdened 
 with grief, men would stiU have sufficient motive to cultivate this 
 charming woe-beguiler, and give thanks to gracious heaven for 
 blessing them with such compensation for the ills that beset life's 
 thorny pathway. Dark and irremediable is the despair that over- 
 hangs a people when the " cold chain of silence " is thrown around 
 their songs. When God threatened dire vengeance upon the people 
 of Israel, He said that He would make* them orphans, and would 
 leave Jerusalem a widow; but the cup of their misery was filled up 
 when He seemed to paralyze their faculty of speech, and render 
 mute and dumb the breath of melody that inspired the life of the 
 nation. In the dark days of their captivity they hung their silent 
 harps upon the willow boughs, and sat down by the sad waters, pour- 
 ing forth the despairing plaint: "How can we sing our songs in a 
 strange land ? " 
 
 The music of a nation is an index to the national character. The 
 weird, minor music of Ireland pathetically symbolizes the fallen con- 
 
• 478 
 
 dition of her ancient glory. Beautifully does the bard typify the 
 nation's grief, in his touching address to the much-loved harp, 
 whose strains he once gave " to light, freedom, and song ": 
 
 " Sing, sad harp, O, sing to me, 
 
 Some song of ancient days, 
 "Whose sounds, in this sad memory, 
 
 Long-buried dreams shall raise. 
 Sing some lay of vanished fame, 
 
 Whose light once round us shone, 
 Of noble pride now turned to shame, 
 
 And hopes forever gone. 
 Sing, sad harp, thus sing to me 
 
 Alike our doom is cast; 
 Both lost to all but memory. 
 
 We live but in the past. 
 
 " How mournfully the midnight air 
 
 Among thy chords doth sigh, 
 As if it sought some echo there 
 
 Of voices long gone by. 
 Of chieftains, now forgot, who seemed 
 
 The foremost then in fame, 
 Of bards who once immortal deemed, 
 
 Now sleep without a name. 
 In vain, sad harp, the midnight air 
 
 Among thy chords doth sigh. 
 In vain it seeks an echo there 
 
 Of voices long gone by. 
 
 " Oh ! couldst thou call the spirits round. 
 
 Who once in bower and hall 
 Sat listening to thy magic sound, 
 
 Now^ute and mouldering all: 
 But no: they would but wake to weep 
 
 Their children's slavery; — 
 Then leave them in their peaceful sleep; — 
 
 The dead at least are free. 
 Hush, hush, sad harp, that dreary tone, 
 
 That knell of Freedom's day : 
 In listening to its deathlike moan, 
 
 Let me, too, die away." 
 
 How magical the effect of music in awakening the domestic affec- 
 tions and stirring all those tender impulses of the heart, which by 
 
479 
 
 their unhindered play surround the family circle with a celestial 
 halo, and make man's earthly home as beautiful as heaven. 
 
 ' * Domestic happiness, thou only bliss 
 Of Paradise that has survived the fall ! 
 Though few now taste the unimpaired and pure, 
 Or tasting long enjoy thee ! too infirm, 
 Or too incautious to preserve thy sweets. 
 Unmixed with drops of bitter, which neglect 
 Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup." 
 
 But when these infelicities have by their sullying breath marred 
 the untarnished purity of earlier marital joys, what can chaiTQ away 
 the genius of discord like the mighty spell of music ? What can 
 comfort the sad-heai*ted and cheer the toil-worn like the sweet 
 strains of some ancient, well-known melody ? What can cement the 
 bonds of social love, soothe the aching heart, enliven the weary mind, 
 aye, soften and refine the harshest and most rugged nature like the 
 talismanic touch of song ? 
 
 On the field of battle, where death roams wide in his withering 
 power; where the cannon peals like crashing thunder; where the 
 lightning gleam of the death-fire flashes all along the lines; where 
 shot and shell fall like tempestuous hail upon war-worn battalions, 
 and comrades pillow their heads upon the gory ground, what can 
 lift the drooping energies and fire the sinking soul with renewed 
 hope and spirit like the sound of the bugle blast ? The drum beats to 
 the charge and summons the disheartened troops to rally once again 
 to meet the advancing host; and with kindling eye, and lip of pride, 
 and stem and stately tread, and flushed brow defiant of death, the 
 intrepid veterans press on, as the inspiring notes of the martial 
 music fall upon their ears; press on, as their staggering souls are 
 strengthened and their drooping energies revived by the soul-kin- 
 dling melody, to perform prodigies of valor, to pierce the severed 
 hosts before them, and then 
 
 •* Contention, like a horse. 
 Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose, 
 And bears down all before him." 
 
 What power can'* create a soul under the ribs of death "like 
 music's thrilling touch? It lays its faiiy wand upon the corpse-like 
 
480 
 
 past and breathes and acts in the living present. Tell me you who have 
 long been separated from the scenes of your boyhood's dreams and 
 duties, what uncontrollable thrill, what wild, soul-bursting emotion 
 is that which fills every chamber of the soul at the sound of the old 
 familiar song which you sang with the free-hearted and careless joy 
 that dwells alone in the paradise of early years, when the earth is 
 all beautiful, and the world is all fair, because the heart is all in- 
 nocent and pure. Ah ! 
 
 " That strain again; it had a dying fall: 
 Oh ! it came o'er my ear like the sweet South, 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing and giving odor." 
 
 Let the philosophers say what they will, we would live life over. 
 " Sweet as remembered kisses after death " are the " days that are 
 no more." But music bids them live again! The woodland glades, 
 and the shady dells where boyish footsteps roamed, grow green 
 again, and the waving trees and rippling streams that lulled our 
 roving eyes to slumber, once more sigh and gurgle in dreams of the 
 former time, as we seem to hear the music of the Sunday chimes 
 and the loved sound of the village bell in those native shades, from 
 which with tears and sighs we parted long, O ! so long ago !_ 
 
 ** Good heaven what sorrow gloomed that parting day, 
 That called them from their native walks away. 
 When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 
 Hung round the bowers and fondly looked their last; 
 And took a long farewell, and wished in vain, 
 For seats like these beyond the Western main. 
 And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
 Returned and wept, and still returned to weep." 
 
 The scene has changed since then; other times are come; new 
 faces gathered round; new friends are found; but the sweet-voiced 
 tone of music bids the old ones live again. The old song is again 
 sung; — the song heard from the ploughman in the fields; from the 
 smithy at his toil; from the dairy-maid milking her cow; — aye ! 
 from the mother who bore us at her breast in the budding-time of 
 childhood ; and the low-roofed cottage rises before the vision once 
 more, and the hedgerows, and the flower-beds are in bloom again. 
 
481 
 
 and the cliiirchyard where our father's bones are laid, and where we 
 doubtless dreamed our own would mingle with the dust, all come 
 from the halls of death and rise from obUvion by the power of 
 music's necromancy. 
 
 ** Sweet notes, they tell of former peace, 
 Of all that looked so rapturous then; — 
 Now, — withered, lost ! — Oh ! pray thee cease, 
 I cannot bear these sounds again." 
 
 Aptly the same poet, the true child of song, Thos. Moore, sings: 
 
 " When through life unblest we rove. 
 
 Losing all that made life dear, 
 Should some notes, we used to love 
 
 In days of boyhood, meet our ear; — 
 Oh ! how welcome breathes the strain, 
 
 Wakening thoughts that long have slept, 
 Kindling former smiles again, 
 
 In faded eyes that long have wept. 
 
 " Like the gale that sighs along 
 
 Beds of Oriental flowers, 
 Is the grateful breath of song, 
 
 That once was heard in happier hours. 
 Filled with balm the gale sighs on, 
 
 Tho' the flowers are sunk in death, — 
 So when pleasure's dream is gone, 
 
 Its memory lives in music's breath. 
 
 " Music ! oh, how faint, how weak, 
 
 Language fades before thy spell, 
 Why should feeling ever speak 
 
 When thou canst breathe her soul so well ? 
 Friendship's balmy words may feign, — 
 
 Love's are even more false than they; 
 Oh ! 'tis only music's strain 
 
 Can sweetly soothe, and not betray." 
 
 Such is the omnipotent power of music, that we may allow the 
 poet's fancy to be not far removed from truth, when he said that 
 
 " Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews, 
 Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones. 
 Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans 
 Forsake unsounded depths to dance on sands.** 
 
 31 
 
482 
 
 Nor that beautiful sentiment from the author of the " Fair Penitent ": 
 
 " E'en rage itself is cheered with music; 
 It wakes a glad remembrance of our youth, 
 Calls back past joys, and warms us into transport." 
 
 In the temples of the living God, when the mind is distracted by 
 the memory of earthly things, or oppressed by the weight of indo- 
 lence or tepidity, how powerful, how efficacious are the choir and the 
 organ in fixing attention, elevating aspiration, and exciting devotion. 
 Are not the sounds which proceed from the chantry a faint echo of 
 the homage which the Almighty receives in perfection from the shin- 
 ing seraphim who sing the old, eternal song beside the sapphire 
 throne ? " And I beheld," says St. John, " and lo ! a lamb stood upon 
 Mt. Sion, and with him an hundred and forty-four thousand having 
 his name, and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. 
 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the noise of many waters, and 
 as the voice of great thunder; and the voice which I heard was as 
 the voice of harpers, harping upon their harps. And they sang as 
 it were a new canticle, and no man could say the canticle 
 but those hundred and forty-four thousand, who were pur- 
 chased from the earth. And I beheld, and I heard the voice 
 of many angels round about the throne, and the living crea- 
 tures, and the ancients, and the number of them was thousands of 
 thousands. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the 
 earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
 are in them: I heard all saying: ' To Him that sitteth on the throne 
 and to the Lamb, benediction and honor and power and glory, for- 
 ever and ever.' And the four living creatures said Amen. And the 
 four and twenty Ancients fell down upon their faces and adored 
 Him that liveth forever and ever." 
 
 Music is the language of heaven, and melody is the joy of the re- 
 deemed children of God, No marvel, therefore, that the Church, 
 God's kingdom upon earth, should make music tributary to the wor- 
 ship she renders to the Almighty. 
 
 " The songs that flowed on Zion's hill 
 Are chanted in God's temple still, 
 And to the eye of faith unfold 
 The glories of His house of old." 
 
483 
 
 From the dawn of Christianity, music had a share in her impres- 
 sive ritual, and for many centuries it remained almost the exclusive 
 property of the Church, at least, regarded as a fine aii; and what- 
 ever beauty or grandeur glows in the great masterpieces of later 
 times, they owe their inspiration and charm to the influence of the 
 Church. Her Ambroses, her Gregorys, her Augustines, assiduously 
 cultivated the art of music, and employed it when spreading the good 
 tidings of the Gospel, as an efficacious means of winning souls to 
 God. But as music, like every^ other ai-t, may be perverted, she al- 
 ways strenuously set her face against that sensual and degi'ading 
 music, which, departing from the simplicity of Gregorian or Pales- 
 tinian composition, has a tendency to lower rather than elevate the 
 Boul. The finest productions of the human mind, the most soul-fill- 
 ing and inspiring, are the work of the genius of the children of the 
 Catholic Church. Who can listen unmoved to the music of the 
 Masses, to the plaintive strains of her Stabat Mater, or the thrilling, 
 awe-inspiring tones of her Dies Ii'ae thundering from the majestic 
 organ in the startled ears of men the righteous rigor of God's judg- 
 ment, when 
 
 " Thftt awful day, that day of ire, 
 Shall wrap the Universe in fire. 
 Foretold by seer and prophet's lyre." 
 
 ** It rose, that chanted, mournful strain. 
 Like some lone spirit's o'er the plain ; 
 'Twas musical, but sadly sweet, 
 Such as when winds and harpstrings meet 
 And take a long, unmeasured tone, ' 
 
 To mortal minstrelsy unknown." 
 
 Listen to the music of her bells: 
 
 " Those evening bells, those evening bells. 
 How many a tale their music tells 
 Of youth and home and that sweet time. 
 When last I heard their soothing chime. 
 
 "Those joyous hours are passed away, 
 And many a heart that then was gay. 
 Within the tomb now darkly dwells. 
 And hears no more those evening bells. 
 
484 
 
 " And so 'twill be wheii I am gone, 
 That pealing chime will still ring on, 
 And other bards will walk these dells, 
 And sing your praise, sweet evening bells." 
 
 Is there any sound more solemn than that of the church bell ? 
 How its tones vibrate through the chords of the soul ! Tossed about 
 upon the sea, the sailor boy hears in fancy the sound of his village 
 bell; and if, after j^ears of travel, he returns to his native shore, to^ 
 find the old faces gone and the loved voices silenced in the tomb, they 
 all spring from the lonely couch of death, and once more are seen the- 
 pious worshippers wending their way along the paths and across the 
 fields, to kneel in their accustomed places, when the brazen-tongued 
 monitor announces the beginning of the Holy Mass. 
 
 When from the horizon sunset's glorious hues are gradually fading, 
 and Hesperus shines forth within the heavens as if it were the lamp 
 of Nature's sanctuary, how impressively tolls the Angelus bell at the 
 twilight hour, as unseen choirs, floating on viewless wings, blend 
 their voices in chanting the Doxology. 
 
 *•' Sitting all alone, Sunday afternoon, 
 With a quiet light through my pleasant room. 
 How the silence speaks! What a world it tells. 
 Or perhaps it is the music of the bells. 
 
 "Yes, yes, 'tis the bells! List, list, how they ring. 
 And the mellow tones rise, as the brazen tongues sing; 
 Some of them loud, and some of them low. 
 Wide-mouthed and iron-throats, hear how they go. 
 The air is all music, and far in the sky, 
 The echoes all fainting and tremulous die. 
 Sitting all alone, silence in the air. 
 Listening to my heart, little silence there; 
 Only in whispers are voices heard there, — 
 Sometimes 'tis passion, sometimes 'tis prayer. 
 Methinks that the heart is a belfry of chimes, 
 Kung by good angels, or bad ones betimes. 
 
 " For mournful music floats, then soothing, tender notes, 
 Again a tinkling air, like laughter of a fairy. 
 Then sobbing tones. 
 Like broken moans; 
 A minor strain 
 Like Autumn rain; 
 
485 
 
 One bell sounds a knell, 
 Then silence. 
 Sitting all alone, listening to the din, 
 Church bells on the air, heart bells within." 
 
 If there is anything that adds solemnity to the sacred services of 
 religion, it is the voice of the deep-toned, resonant organ, speaking, 
 as it were, the thunders of Jehovah to His people. 
 
 " Over his keys the musing organist, 
 Beginning doubtfully, and far away, 
 First lets his fingers wander as they list. 
 And builds a bridge from dreamland for his lay, 
 Then as the touch of his loved instrument 
 Brings hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
 First guessed by faint auroral flashes sent 
 Along the wavering vista of his dream." 
 
 Yes, the organ is like the voice of God speaking in the majesty of 
 its power, — the power of that omnific word which " spake and there 
 was Hght," which called the stars together and they obeyed with 
 trembling; which was heard amid the thunders and lightnings of 
 Sinai, and which, as it once poised the foundations of the earth, 
 hung the firmament with stars, and imparted motion to the machinery 
 of universal nature: so shall it continue to govern and direct all 
 things to their appointed ends, till the consummation of the ages 
 shall be fulfilled, humanity redeemed to God, and the reign of Christ 
 Jesus be established forevermore in the four-square city of the 
 heavenly Jerusalem, where the sound of joy and rapture shall in- 
 cessantly ring from battlement to battlement and from jasper wall 
 to jasper wall. 
 
 That reign which was first announced by the song of salvation 
 sung by celestial choirs as it broke upon the Shepherd's ears upon 
 the hills of Bethlehem; which comprehends the vast expanse of im- 
 mensity; which embraces every intelligence and every grade of 
 being; which reaches back to the throne of the Omnipotent when 
 the sons of God first broke forth in joyful melody; which extends 
 forward through all the circling infinities — that reign wiU never end, 
 but will only put on the bloom and freshness of perpetual youth 
 when the crowned millions of the blessed shall assemble around the 
 throne of the Last Judgment and the blast of the archangel's trum- 
 
' 486 
 
 pet shall sound thro ugh the wide universe the startling tidings that 
 time shall be no more. 
 
 Till that day be at hand the dominions of the Son of God shall 
 gain new acquisitions and constant enlargement, and every rising 
 sun that gilds the heavens shall behold some new trophy laid at the 
 feet of Him who died amid the gloom and desolation of Calvary. 
 Nations now groping through the darkness of a moral midnight, 
 and struggling for the coming dawn, shall bask in the sunlight of 
 the Gospel, which shall flash its lustre on their minds and illumine 
 the path of humanity's progress. The seeds of that everlasting 
 kingdom which were sown upon the hillsides of Judea shall bear 
 fruit in every land, and shall grow like the cedars of Lebanon and 
 the tall pines of Hermon, till the tree of Christianity spread its 
 branching boughs over all the earth and all the generations of men 
 be gathered together in one faith and one hope of eternal life and 
 glory. 
 
 Then shall the glory of the Gospel shame the pride of earthly 
 life and power, and the empire of wickedness shall dissolve before 
 its searching and consuming rays. And the subjects of Christ's 
 kingdom shall flourish as the hly in the beauty of holiness and truth, 
 and shall become multitudinous as the stars of heaven or the sands 
 upon the seashore. And the blood-stained banners of the Crucified 
 shall be upborne by invincible Christian legions and shall bear down 
 with irresistible force upon the dominions of the Evil One, to hasten 
 the triumph of that day when the strongholds of unbelief shall 
 crumble under the chariot-wheels of God's faithful army, and " all 
 shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest." And all the 
 nations of the earth shall sing the song of the Messiah's victory and 
 shall proclaim with jubilation that the Lion of the Fold of Judah 
 hath conquered fore verm ore. And the Bride of Christ, the Church 
 of the everlasting God, shall praise the Lord of Life " with hymns 
 and spiritual canticles," and shall celebrate " with psaltery and harp, 
 with timbrel and choir, with cymbal and organ " the final accom- 
 plishment of redemption and crowning triumph of God's elect in the 
 realms of eternal joy. Shining in the majesty of her moral empire 
 over human kind, and clothed with resplendent garments of celestial 
 beauty, she shall march on with ever-increasing power and ever- 
 
487 
 
 glowing splendor " until the bursting echoes of a world redeemed, 
 borne off upon the gale and brought up upon the breeze, shaU re- 
 vive the recollection and realize the burden of the hymn of Beth- 
 lehem; for the shoutings of the last harvest shall be the song that 
 sowed the seed, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace 
 to men of good wilL" 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 
 
 DELIVERED AT ST. PETER'S CHURCH, JERSEY CITY. 
 
 I HAVE the honor to speak to you to-night. You are in the bloom 
 of youth, and the flower of manhood. You are at a most interest- 
 ing, and, I may add, a most critical period of your life; — at what I 
 may call the cross-roads of your career. The education of Tele- 
 machus was confided to the goddess of Wisdom, Minerva, and the 
 goddess, under the guise of an old man, led the youth from land to 
 land in search of his father, teaching him meanwhile the divinest 
 precepts. At length they reached a place where the roads met; 
 then, telling Telemachus that he must now choose which road he 
 should follow, and suddenly dropping the garb of the old man, the 
 goddess, clothed in the perfect beauty with which she sprang full- 
 armed from the brow of Jove, stood for a moment before the en- 
 tranced and dazzled gaze of the youth, and then vanished forever 
 from his view. 
 
 This myth, my friends, can teach you a salutary lesson. Let that 
 junction of the roads serve as the crisis of your lives, and that crisis, 
 I think, has come, when most of you are beginning, or about to 
 begin, your life-work in the world. Listen to me, then, while in 
 Christian love, I say a few things of interest to you. 
 
 Let me, first of all, impress upon you the needs of an education 
 to fit you for the post of Hfe you occupy. Cherish not the vain de- 
 lusion that has blighted in the bud so many careers full of rosy 
 promise, that education was ended with school-days, or the conclu- 
 sion of college life. Every day and every hour of life should carry 
 to the harbor of the mind some new argosy freighted with the 
 golden fleece of new-found knowledge. The great men of the world 
 
492 
 
 are self-taught; and among the galaxies of genius that shed light 
 upon both hemispheres, few, indeed, have been illumined by the lore 
 of college halls, or academies of learning. Every man is the architect 
 of his own fortune, and practical scholarship, which alone can win 
 the guerdon of success, must be the fruit of living, personal experi- 
 ence. 
 
 While the difficulties of educ^.tion are great, and its wants in- 
 numerable, certain rules are readily at hand which may be an infal- 
 lible guide to all in work which none may decline. 
 
 Variety of character is as great as that of countenance, and suc- 
 cessful education consists in the adaptation of suitable influences to 
 mould such character and appropriate knowledge to direct it. Study, 
 then, study deeply and exhaustively your own character, and find 
 the influences that are beneficial; select your life-work and seek un- 
 tiringly the knowledge that befits you to fulfill it. 
 
 Nothing can be accomplished without adherence to principles that 
 shall be uncompromising; principles that will not bend, and cannot 
 be contravened. Such principles are based on truth. Truth, then, 
 must be the goal of every aspiration. Truth is the philosopher's 
 stone you seek. Truth is the only alchemy that transmutes with 
 the gold-bright light of heaven, the rayless night of human life. 
 Truth cannot be belied, beheaded, or crucified; she is unconquerable 
 as the hills; the eternal years of God are hers. She glistens like the 
 dewdrop; she glows like a star; she sparkles as a fountain; she 
 rushes like a river; she sings like an angel, and charms like a song 
 from far-off spheres, where seraphs make divinely vocal the green 
 hills and verdurous valleys of the land of sempiternal light. Learn 
 to know the truth; hug it to your hearts; press it into the fibres of 
 your being; wreathe it around your life; it alone has power to heal, 
 to help, and to save. "The truth shall make you free "; free with 
 the freedom wherewith Christ has made you free. 
 
 Education must be true. Though physical and intellectual edu- 
 cation are needful, moral education must hold the first place, for the 
 body, on which depend the former, will wilt and wither and mingle 
 with the dust; but moral uplifting is required, that whenever this 
 frail tenement shall sink and become a brother to the clod, the soul 
 may be ready for reception in that " house eternal in the heavens, 
 that home not made by hands." When the heart and the head are 
 
493 
 
 alike calling for instruction, let the heart have the first lesson, that it 
 may the better guide and steady the giddiness of the head. 
 
 The principles of benevolence, integrity, and humility, — that 
 humility which has much to learn and is not incompatible with in- 
 dependence and manly self-respect, — should be ever kept in view, 
 and every effort should be made to raise the character to that stand- 
 ard. I told you you were made for truth; therefore, you must be 
 humble, for humility is truth. Shun pride. Pride is the fume of 
 mean and selfish hearts. Pride is the vice of fools, and the cap- 
 sheaf of their folly. " Pride goeth before a fall." " Every man that 
 humbleth himself shall be exalted, and that exalteth himself shall be 
 humbled." Said the proud king of Babylon in his heart: "I will 
 exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will lift myself above the 
 heights of the clouds; I will sit on the mountain of the covenant on 
 the side of the north, and I will be like unto the Most High God." 
 Yain and impious, O Lucifer, thy boast. Thy pride shall be low- 
 ered into heU. Thou shalt be pulled down from thy towering great- 
 ness. The name of Babylon shall be blotted out. Under thee the 
 moth shall be strewn, and the worms shall be thy covering. 
 
 A spotless hly, by the streamlet's side, bathed its snowy petals in 
 the morning dew, and laughed with joy when courted by the sum- 
 mer's sun. Turning her glorious eyes upon her radiant form, she 
 cried: "How beautiful am I above all I see around me. Peerless 
 and unrivalled, I shall bloom alone. The cold and silent dew I shall 
 expel from my embrace, and the red-faced sun I shall not suffer to 
 touch my virgin brow." Poor, foolish lily; thou shalt perish of thy 
 pride. For the dew thou sipped at morning, and the sun thou 
 kissed at noon, were the nectar of* thy life, and now that these are 
 gone, pale lily, thou shalt languish, thy beauty shall fade fast, and 
 the number of thy days is cast, for thou art doomed to die. 
 
 Man is such a foolish flower. Glowing with the beauty which 
 God's grace engrafts upon his soul, he swells with pride against his 
 Maker, and in an instant he falls from his estate — falls 
 
 " Like the angels, from Heaven to Hell." 
 
 Fix you principles, then, my friends, for principles make character, 
 character makes life, and life makes the measure of being and beati- 
 tude. The true end of life is to know the life that never ends. You 
 
494 
 
 must make your own heaven, or dig your own hell. But when we 
 reflect that the natural tendency of our steps is perverse, to a marvel; 
 — that the very goodness we boast, is often the result of accident 
 rather than right purpose; that self-complacency and the world's 
 opinion are often the foundation of our most applauded actions, then 
 unwavering principle becomes the only hope, the bower-anchor of 
 the soul to hold it for virtue, peace, and heaven. Without principle 
 conscience will be dead, or if alive, its life will be but languid, and 
 its voice hushed. The sway of passion; the bias of prejudice; the 
 electric fire of excitement, or the power of evil influence, will be so 
 many refluent currents carrying the soul down the stream that leads 
 to shipwreck and disaster. Even in life's springtime, when the 
 heart is still fresh and kind, forgotten will be the fervency of a 
 father's benediction and the unutterable yearnings of a mother's 
 love. There is no security for the rectitude of conduct, to one who 
 has no fixed principle — no unvarying standard, no touchstone of 
 truth and duty. 
 
 Duty, do I say ? What is duty ? W^hat is it but what God has 
 commanded, and it is duty because He has commanded it. And 
 what has He commanded ? To be true to our nature, and to our- 
 selves, to our fellows, to our God. Duty, then, is God's will work- 
 ing in our lives. Duty is in being that which God has made us to 
 be, — sharers of His divine Sonship, bearers of His image, wearers 
 of His crown. 
 
 The idea of duty is inherent in our being — part of our own nature. 
 From that idea we can never entirely escape, since we can never 
 wholly unmake ourselves. That idea is in us and about us, above 
 us and below; it follows us from the cradle to the tomb, aye, and 
 even beyond the star-emblazoned battlements above, where duty is 
 discharged in love supreme and everlasting. 
 
 Duty is the law of life, the spring of action, the end of man and 
 the measure of reward. Duty makes the man; shapes the saint, 
 carves out the hero, and glorifies humanity. 
 
 Cultivate true gentility of heart; let the heart be right, and the 
 conduct cannot be far wrong. There is a gentility that is only skin- 
 deep; fair and smooth without, but within all full of moral mildew. 
 It is an affection of pre-eminence, begotten of imbecility and 
 self-conceit, and falsely christened gentility. It mistakes the shell 
 
495 
 
 for the kernel; the shadow for the substance; the semblance for the 
 reality. It is a parlor plant, reared in a. scented atmosphere, watered 
 with maidens' tears, and sunned in virgins' smiles. Trained under 
 chosen tutors, it swells and tumefies till it fancies itself made of 
 porcelain pottery, while the rest of mankind is made of the common 
 clay. It is the mere bodying forth of a principle — the outgrowth of 
 a spirit which says to one's brother: "Stand by, for I am better 
 than thou." 
 
 I do not decry true gentiHty, founded on grace of spiiit and ele- 
 gance of manners, and proceeding from right motives; nor do I 
 deny the utility and necessity of distinctions in society. I am no 
 iconoclast, no leveller, no apostle of absolute equahty. But while we 
 pay due attention, and concede aU allowaftice to the claims of those 
 gradations and differences which are inherent in the constitution of 
 society, it is well to call to mind the time when all arbitrary and 
 accidental distinctions shall cease and be forgotten, when we shall 
 dwell in a society where honor shall be theirs to whom the honor 
 belongs. 
 
 • Young gentlemen, you have escaped from your nonage, and many 
 of you are soon to go out from the guidance you found under the 
 mantle of a mother's kindness, and under the shelter of a father's 
 hand. When you leave the paternal roof you shall find yourself in 
 a peculiar, and perhaps a painful situation. Like a cloud-break in 
 a summer sky, the world will burst upon you with cyclonic sudden- 
 ness and fury. It is a deceptive guide. It dazzles, it captivates, it 
 charms; it cannot make you happy. You cannot gather grapes of 
 thorns, nor figs of thistles. But beware ! the world is a specious 
 liar, and an arrant hypocrite. Its goods contain not the worth they 
 show; bright and beautiful to the eye, they, like dead sea fruit, 
 turn to ashes on the lips. Every rose holds its hidden thorn; every 
 sweet its bitter; every honey-bee its sting. You are young; you are 
 ardent; you are sanguine and impressionable; you are the kind of 
 which dupes and gudgeons are made. You have been long at school; 
 or have hved in comparative retirement and had little intercourse 
 with others. You are unpracticed in the ways of the world. Future 
 character and destiny will depend on first impressions and earliest 
 influences. Some of the most distinguished men of Church and 
 State stood once, like you, at the cross-roads of life, and the type of 
 
496 
 
 their character was formed by causes which were silent and un- 
 observed. No human arithmetic can calculate the responsibility 
 that rests upon you at the present period of your journey. 
 
 Young men, ahoy ! the rapids are below you. Steer steady, pull 
 a strong oar, bend down to the work, or the life-boat of your soul, 
 like a saiUess ship upon the vast sea of God's grace, will be dashed 
 to fragments upon the merciless rocks and quicksands of tempta- 
 tion. " He that loveth danger shall perish therein." Shun tempta- 
 tions lest they lead you into folly; folly into crime; crime into ruin, 
 destruction, irrecoverable, unchangeable, eternal. 
 
 Fear not if Christ be with you, for Christ is light and life and 
 hope to them that fear Him. If Christ be for us, who shall stand 
 against us ? God and on& make a majority. Christ is the power of 
 God unto salvation. High above the lashings of the tempest, and 
 the roar of the storm, comes the voice of Him who calleth through 
 the long lapse of ages, shriU, sharp, electric, as of yore, saying to the 
 winds and the waves — Peace ! be stiU ! 
 
 Be sober and watch. Inscribe sobriety and temperance upon 
 your banners, and you shall march the highway of success. I hate 
 fanaticism and hypocrisy, but I look on the wine-cup as the goblet 
 of hell filled with the potion of perdition. It has wrecked more 
 lives, blighted more homes, broken more hearts, "than wars or 
 women have." 
 
 The Angel of Night looked down upon the silent streets of a 
 great city. By the wayside in a narrow, desolate alley, lay the 
 wreck of a human being, once bearing the image of God, now de- 
 graded and lost, stamped with the impress of a demon. Bending 
 over him stood the baleful spirit who had been his tempter, and 
 who now rejoiced in the anticipation of his final triumph. With 
 wild exultation he exclaimed: "The work is done. A star of the 
 first magnitude is fallen; but Lucifer, son of the morning, fell, and 
 he, too, has fallen. What an angel he might have made; he would 
 have added lustre to the white-robed host, but he wiU never join 
 them now — aha ! aha ! Well do I remember when I first gave him 
 the bright wine-cup and bade him drink and be merry. I told him 
 it would gladden his heart, give color to his cheeks, elasticity to his 
 steps, and vivacity and inspiration to his genius. His father bid 
 him beware, — his mother prayed for him; but I drew him on faster 
 
497 
 
 and faster into that vortex where he must inevitably sink. Ah ! 
 how I rejoiced when the day came that I guided his trembhng pen 
 as he wrote, * Mother, my mother, cease to pray for me, for thy 
 doomed accursed child.' How quickly she faded away like a snow 
 wreath, and even while she passed to the pearly gates of God's holy 
 city, the consciousness of his own dark destiny came over him like a 
 sea, and he groaned in wretchedness unutterable. 'There is no 
 change for me,' he said. ' I weary myself looking forward to ages 
 yet to come and with tasking this immortal mind to conceive of an 
 eternity. I see no end; no gleam of hope; my thoughts, unsatisfied, 
 return upon themselves, and oh ! must this be forever ? ' " 
 
 The Angel of Death passed upon the night wind. The silver 
 cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, the pitcher was shat- 
 tered at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern. The 
 demon again stood by his victim, and as he wove for him a winding- 
 sheet of drifting snow, his laugh of exultation rose out upon the 
 storm :— " Aha ! he is mine forever and forever." 
 
 Young men, I charge you, fling away ambition. By ambition I 
 do not mean the laudable desire to accomphsh something note- 
 worthy in the walks of life, nor the effort to leave behind a name 
 that shall be held in reverence for shining service to humanity. But 
 I mean that vain and vaulting ambition, that selfish and sordid seek- 
 ing for applause which is bought so often at the expense of others, 
 and which does not hesitate to ruin and destroy that it may rule and 
 reign. The hard conditions of life to-day, the closeness of com- 
 petition in every art and trade, the spirit of over-reaching and ex- 
 celling that obtains, intensify the struggle, and too often call forth 
 those baser faculties of craft, deceit, and dupHcity, which govern so 
 many of the sons of Adam. 
 
 Much has been said of the spirit of enterprise that is abroad 
 through our land, and in the opinion of many it is the chief glory of 
 the age. It is loudly hailed by them as convincing proof that the 
 world is in full march towards the high end of its existence. But 
 this universal motion; this incessant agitation; this independence of 
 thought and casting of ancient opinions and authority; in fine, this 
 determination to know, and this enlargement of mind which affects 
 that we must understand all things for ourselves, and no longer jog 
 round in the same dull circle that our fathers did,— all this is hailed 
 32 
 
498 
 
 as the harbinger of a new and glorious era in the history of 
 humanity. I hope it may be so, but I have my fears. Against the 
 spirit of enterprise, when rightly directed and controlled, I have no 
 demurrance to make, but only praise to bestow. It is the natural 
 activity of man and ought not to be suppressed. But there is in 
 man a principle of permanence as well as progress. The mind can- 
 not throw itself forward till it has some vantage ground, some stand- 
 point from which to make the effort. No man can leap without a 
 foothold. Where no chance is allowed for the mind to survey and 
 collect its forces and gather new strength, serious evils must follow of 
 necessity. Keason runs riot when it loses the ballast of authority. 
 The result is constant change, but we cannot live in constant motion 
 — we need rest as well as exercise. 
 
 But the spirit of enterprise of which I speak seems to be passing 
 by rapid transition into a mere passion for change — a morbid craving 
 for novelty. Its effect has been to divert men's attention from those 
 social, moral, and religious principles which constitute the true 
 ground of happiness, and to direct it towards outward circumstances 
 and to turn all their powers and energies towards the attainment of 
 those things which win distinction in this world. There is a rush 
 for fortune and for fame; a growing contempt for the old, and a 
 strange thirsting for the new; for distinction, now it seems, is found 
 in things unheard, unseen before, and men seek to falsify the sage 
 who fancied there was nothing new beneath the sun. Ah ! but what 
 is fame ? Is it a name written on a monument ? 
 
 The battle-men come with sandals of iron and mark their path- 
 way with fire and slaughter, and when the work of carnage is done, 
 they chisel their own names on lofty pillars, fondly dreaming such 
 trophies to be fame. But the ages slowly creep upon the conqueror's 
 heel, and the grass grows upon his tomb, and like surges that 
 shriek to the storm, the waves of time beat upon the granite shaft 
 and it crumbles to the dust, and the names of the world's proudest 
 heroes fade from the memory of man. 
 
 Make for yourselves a fame that shall flourish forever; write your 
 names in the Book of Life, and see that your deeds are cherished in 
 the all-retaining memory of God. 
 
II. 
 
 ADDRESS ON THE DAY OF THE DEDICATION OF A 
 CHAPEL AND ACADEMY. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF ST. ALOYSIUS ACADEMY, 
 JERSEY CITY, N. J. 
 
 A VERY simple but agreeable function falls to my part in the ser- 
 vice of this day. I am here, most joyfully, at the call of those re- 
 ligious who rule the admirable institution in which we are assembled 
 to give voice to the gratitude that fills their souls upon this hallowed 
 <iay — gratitude, the expression of which is more gracefuUy left to 
 •others than uttered by themselves. 
 
 While, however, the chief part of my performance is to tender the 
 profound thanks of the good Sisters to those numerous benefactors 
 whose golden generosity has enabled them to raise this beautiful 
 tabernacle to the God of hosts, I stiU believe I shall not ti'espass upon 
 the limits of your patience, nor the bounds of propriety by some 
 passing reference to those thoughts which naturally suggest them- 
 selves upon this interesting occasion. 
 
 What special significance has the dedication of a chapel in an in- 
 stitution of learning, such as that presided over by those holy women 
 who have devoted the undivided loyalty of their hearts and the 
 unabated vigor of their intellects to the education of the children of 
 this city ? It means, my friends, the triumph and vindication of 
 true Christian training over that spurious system which relegates 
 religion to the background and eliminates the idea of God from the 
 curriculum of study. It means the solemn nuptials, the inseparable 
 marriage of religion and culture, and it proclaims the God-sent 
 truth that education, in its rightful acceptation, can have no place in 
 any system of training which is not moulded by the hand of re- 
 ligion and guided by the Spirit of God. 
 
600 
 
 The Spirit of God and the spirit of the age are too often found, 
 alas ! to stand in opposition and in deadly conflict. The spirit of 
 the present age, with regret be it told, is, in many respects, foreign 
 to the spirit of the Gospel. To measure the pathway of the sun in 
 the heavens; to trace the courses of the stars; to read the secrets of 
 the sea and explore the wonders of the under world; to construct 
 shining monuments of material prosperity, which shall defy the 
 tooth of time and mock the inroads of decay, this, my friends, is the 
 ruling ambition of the age and the dominant tendency of the times 
 in which we flourish. Governed by this gross desire, and ab- 
 sorbed by these material pursuits, the sons of men have closed their 
 eyes to those nobler aims and lofty spiritual concerns which alone 
 are worthy the consideration of creatures whom God has gifted 
 with the royal faculty of understanding, the heaven-born light of 
 intelligence. Thus plunging downward in their mad career they 
 find, too late, alas ! like that abandoned genius whose mind was a 
 garden of mental luxuriance and moral desolation, and who was 
 himself the most sorrowful example of the condition he so feelingly 
 described, that 
 
 " The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain, 
 The shore to which their shivered sail can never stretch again." 
 
 • 
 When morality is derived from knowledge and instruction; when the 
 Gospel no longer sheds its gladdening and enlivening rays on the 
 creations of the mind; when art seeks no inspiration from the genius 
 of religion, and science wanders in a sombre sphere where the star 
 of revelation never shines; when men erase the name of God from 
 the page of history, and strive, though impotently, to blot out His 
 finger-marks upon the fair face of nature, what result shall reason, 
 fear and wisdom apprehend, but the downfall of all human hopes, 
 the blighting of those blessings upon which is founded the only fe- 
 licity that can enhance the value of life and dignify the nobility of 
 living upon earth. 
 
 As a perpetual protest against those deluded teachers who would 
 exclude religion from the schoolroom and banish God far from the 
 realm of human learning, this chapel has been erected and this day 
 dedicated to the God of our fathers and the God of our children. 
 
 The pious educators of our youth, who with infinite pains and 
 
501 
 
 labor have reared this noble academy, to promote the interests of 
 a higher education, a broader and deeper culture for the rising gen- 
 eration, are not insensible to the fact, that whatever we glory in 
 to-day, whether in refined taste, elevated morals, or luminous intel- 
 ligence, springs from the garden of Christianity, as flowers from their 
 native soil. 
 
 Christianity, my friends, is the light of the world. Like the sun 
 of morning falling on some mighty city, and gilding roof and battle- 
 ment and spire with its burning rays, but deepening by contrast the 
 obscure alley and the dark dens of vice and profligacy; even so has 
 Ohristianity shed its brilliant beams on the citadels of virtuous civ- 
 ilization, and cast into the gloomy shades of contempt and abhor- 
 rence whatever of foul or base has defiled the temple of human his- 
 toiy. All that is now cheering to the eye or attractive to the taste 
 owes its origin and its advancement to the benign influence of Chris- 
 tianity. Such has been its presaging brightness; the twilight of its 
 opening day; but what then shall it be and what appearance will our 
 world put on when it has reached its f uU-orbed splendor ? The past 
 is the best guarantee for the future ; and how many of those wondrous 
 temples of the mind upon which we plume ourselves so much, do we 
 owe to an influence, of which in this age of pre-eminent achievement, 
 we little suspect, or even dream ? Literatui'e has, childlike, sat at 
 her feet and learned her noblest lessons. Literature was ever the 
 disciple of Christianity. Every truth that enriches her broad do- 
 main, every principle of philosophy which is not the effusion of 
 some dream-sick fancy, she has caught from the reflected rays of 
 revelation; and all those finer feehngs and ennobling sentiments, 
 that, like so many blessed stars, cluster round the great central truth 
 of immortality, are the boon which Christianity has bestowed upon 
 her handmaiden and her daughter. Art and science have borrowed 
 their brightest hues from the genial glow of faith's holy fire, and 
 never did the sculptor's chisel draw life and beauty from the cold 
 and deathless marble, save when religion warmed his heart and hand, 
 and never did the painter make the silent canvas speak, but when he 
 dipped his pencil in the glowing tints of heaven. In the cradle of 
 Christianity charity and benevolence had their birth,and she is the pro- 
 lific parent of every idea that enlightened humanity, and every prin- 
 vciple that has yielded service to the race. Rectitude of conduct, integ- 
 
502 
 
 rity of life, nobility of character, the high ideal, the lofty aspiration, 
 the purifying and ennobling sentiment, and all that sweetens the cup 
 of human existence and scatters flowers on the path of life, are born 
 of her genius and moulded by her influence. 
 
 Behold, then, why here in this institution of learning, the sanc- 
 tuary and the altar stand out in bold relief by the side of the class- 
 room and the study hall. When the matin chimes announce the 
 dawning of the day, the students shall come here to prefer their silent 
 prayer in invoking the favoring smiles of Providence upon their labors, 
 and when their tasks are done, here they shall assemble to chant their 
 Maker's praise, and thank Him for the successes, wherewith He has 
 crowned their toil. God is with them here; He reigns among them 
 by that wisdom, and rules them by that light, which cometh from 
 above. Here the star of religion shines upon them, and they cannot 
 go astray; for unto them a path shall be opened, and a way where- 
 in to walk, and it shall be called a straight way so that fools shall 
 not err therein. 
 
 I congratulate the Sisters of Charity upon the consummation of 
 their work. This is a joyous day for them, or rather a red-letter day 
 in a calendar of glory. I bid them joy to-day. They have toiled 
 long and wearily; they have persevered most patiently, and they 
 have crowned their arduous labors with the bright garland of suc- 
 cess. The material edifice is finished; the mental fabric will soon 
 begin to rise in beautiful proportions and grandeur of outline. In 
 this nursery of education shall be trained many fresh young hearts, 
 to virtue and to heaven; and as the plant receives form and character 
 from the skies above and the air around, so shall they go forth from 
 the religious atmosphere of this house, girded with the armor of 
 proof, bearing a two-edged sword, with one edge to put to flight the 
 temptations of prosperity, and with the other to meet and conquer 
 the trials of sorrow and affliction. 
 
 I felicitate the Sisters, then, as the true conservators of Christian 
 education. I honor them as the glory of their sex, the queens of so- 
 ciety in every work of piety and benevolence, but I tell them that 
 they do a still grander service to humanity in keeping alive and act- 
 ive that system of instruction which God alone can inspire and Cath- 
 olicity maintain. "I thank God," says the celebrated Dr. Hodge,, 
 
503 
 
 of Princeton, " that He has preserved the Roman Catholic Church in 
 America to-day true to that theory of education, upon which our 
 fathers founded the public schools of the nation, and which has 
 been so madly perverted." Yes, Dr. Hodge ; and why should it be 
 otherwise? Who can teach by divine authority but the Catholic 
 Church? 
 
III. 
 
 ADDRESS TO YOUNG LADIES OJST GRADUA- 
 TIONS" DAY. 
 
 DELIVERED AT JACOBS' THEATRE, HOBOKEIS^, N. J. 
 
 Young Ladies : 
 
 It would task the imagination to conceive a position more honor- 
 able than that which falls to you on this felicitous occasion. Your 
 fellings at this hour are those of rapture and delight. I almost 
 envy you your joy. You have parted with the past, and your eyes 
 are towards the future. Your dreams and expectations are big with 
 hope and buoyant with rosy promise. You are young — ^you are just 
 entering the happy morning of life, and with exultant hearts are 
 looking forward to the career that lies before you. You are felici- 
 tating yourselves upon a period of past successful toil. And you 
 do weU. You have undergone your probation, have met the final 
 ordeal of your academic course, and acquitted yourselves with credit 
 to the Sisters and honor to the institution whose children you are. 
 The crowns you have received, the prizes you have won, the medals 
 you have taken — all bespeak your assiduity and your acquirements, 
 and give you the right henceforth to be numbered among the 
 scholars of the land. 
 
 You ought to be — I am sure you are — I see it in your glowing 
 faces — supremely proud and happy. 
 
 All here present are your friends. Those who love you as the 
 apple of their eye, as the tendrils of their hearts — those who love 
 you with all the fidelity of home and the ties of kindred, are here to 
 enhance, if possible, the gladness of this occasion. 
 
 Here, too, are those faithful Sisters, — consecrated to their task, — 
 who have given the undivided loyalty of their hearts, and the undi- 
 
505 
 
 vided vigor of their intellects, to the work of education, — ^here are they 
 who have watched over your advancement with tireless concern, 
 with tender solicitude and anxious care; here they are to show their 
 fidehty to the end. 
 
 All are to give you honor, to felicitate you, to tender you their 
 fervent congratulations, and to indulge the pleasing hope that the 
 successes which crown your academic course are only an earnest, a 
 foreglow, of the greater triumphs that await you in the broader 
 fields of activity, in the great arena of life, upon which you are so 
 soon to enter. 
 
 I predict, I asseverate, you will not soon forget this night. 
 
 Other triumphs, I hope, will await you — future efforts, I trust, 
 will be crowned with the shining signet of success — you will become 
 happy, prosperous, and honored; or though, God forfend, adverse 
 fortune will greet you as you descend through the vaUey of the 
 years; yet whether you tread the thorny paths of adversity or walk 
 the smiling fields of prosperity, whether in joy and exultation, in 
 sadness and depression, the memories of this night will steal back 
 upon you — the trials and triumphs of the old days will rise in the 
 path of recollection, and with them, perhaps, may also come a feel- 
 ing — how shall I describe it — " a feeling of sadness and longing 
 
 *' That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only, 
 As the mist resembles rain." 
 
 Yes; a feeling of regret, which, as another poet expresses it: 
 
 ** Ne'er tell me of glory serenely adorning 
 
 The close of our days, the calm even of life; 
 Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness of morning, 
 Its smiles and its tears are worth evening's best light." 
 
 But, alas ! there is no beautiful alchemy of thought, no power of 
 necromancy, whereby we can live life over. 
 
 " There are gains for all our losses, 
 There are joys for all our pains; 
 But when youth the dream departs 
 It takes something from our hearts, 
 And it never comes again." 
 
506 
 
 And so, dear friends, do what you will, the past can live for you no 
 more. The faces that you know even better than your books, may 
 never be forgotten; of the friendships formed, within your quiet 
 Convent walls, the golden links may never be unlocked; the gold- 
 gleaming vistas that rose before your youthful vision, and fed the 
 hungry hope of girlish expectation, may often recur amid the varied 
 scenes of life, but none of these things can ever bring back the 
 quiet, peaceful days that close for you amid the smiling approbation 
 and the hearty plaudits of your friends on this memorable night. 
 Yes; the radiant sun will shine, the showers of spring and summer 
 will fall, the storms and snows of winter will ride upon the air, but 
 the tender grace of the days that are dead will never come back to 
 you. 
 
 I am not here to preach to you upon this joyful day; I am not 
 here to sadden your thoughts with gloomy retrospections of the 
 past, when your hearts should be aglow with rosy anticipations of 
 the future. 
 
 And yet I should ignobly fail in my duty to you, with whom I 
 have maintained such pleasant relations, did I not seek to impress 
 upon you the obvious and necessary lesson, that time is passing on. 
 
 Oh ! then let me impress upon you the value of time. " Carpe 
 diem,'^ says the pagan poet. Seize the fleeting moment. It, and it 
 alone, is yours. Wander oft in fancy amid the wrecks and monu- 
 ments of time; read the epitaphs of the hours and learn the moral. 
 
 *' We take no note of time, 
 But from its loss — to give it then 
 A tongue were wise in man." 
 
 Each moment is a warning orator. Each hour is a preacher divine 
 in power. Oh ! the value of time ! What is value ? It is the pur- 
 chasing power of anything. It is its fitness to be exchanged for 
 something desirable to have. And what can you exchange for time ? 
 Eternity, my friends. Tempus praeteritum nunquam revertiturf — 
 " Time past never returns." It is with time as with childish inno- 
 cence; it is with time as it is with a mother's love. Its full value is 
 never known until it is gone — gone forever. 
 
 The time is come when no gentle hand is applied to the shoulder 
 of eYery sluggard, and the stern words uttered in his ear, " Awake, 
 
507 
 
 thou that deepest. " The world is rolling on with the velocity of a 
 declining body near the close of its career, and those who would aid 
 the moral and spiritual renovation of mankind must be wide 
 awake. And who have more to do with it than women ? To the 
 progress of this reform they already owe their privileges, their dig- 
 nity, their elevation. Look at the slavery and degradation in which 
 they are held when the light of the Gospel does not shine, and see 
 if you have not sufficient motive to labor for the promotion of 
 Chiistianity and its attendant blessings. It is the hand of woman 
 that brings up heroes. It is in the nursery that the Christian and 
 the gentleman, no less than the warrior and the statesman, are fos- 
 tered and developed. The moulding hand of maternal skill is 
 charged with fearful responsibility. But the promise of the bless- 
 ing is given to fidehty. " He that goeth forth and weepeth, bear- 
 ing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his 
 sheaves with him." 
 
 It will fall out to you, no doubt, to take some share in the work. 
 For this are you graduated to-day; for this have you provided your- 
 selves with moral and mental equipment during long and toilsome, 
 and I hope fruitful, years. I would fain think you equal to the task. 
 
 My own sentiments (otherwise I should not think it a duty and 
 privilege to address you) do not coincide with those who seek to 
 trace a broad distinction between the sexes on the score of mental 
 force; who brand with imbecility of mind, and an original inferiority 
 of intellect, the members of the gentler sex. But whether this be 
 so or not, it will be the special province of your sex to be the at- 
 tractive centre of the domestic circle. There will be your sphere 
 of usefulness and interest. The graces, virtues, and accomplish- 
 ments which you labored so assiduously to acquire, these will be the 
 ornaments of your character, these your weapons of defense, these 
 the magician's wand to dispel the cheerless desolation of the desert 
 world around you. And I know you will be true to your sex. 
 Who can suffer and endure hke you? Who, when the specious 
 suitor changes into the unfeeling husband, can take her lot witli un- 
 repining patience, and meet the world with smiles of seeming cheer- 
 fulness, having learned the art 
 
 " To bleed in secret, and yet bear the smart." 
 
508 
 
 Whose mild influence controls the follies, and whose tenderness, at 
 the risk of personal blame, can shield the faults of the wayward 
 brother ? When sickness strikes him down, what eyes are dim with 
 weeping, what cheeks pale with watching ? What hand administers 
 the cordial, and smooths the pillows ? What form glides round the 
 bed with the quiet care of a mortal, yet ministering spirit ? Whose 
 tear soothes dejection? Whose smile calms the ruffled temper? 
 Whose patience bears all infirmities ? Every man, unless he be 
 born in a desert island, will answer, woman's. Let man take his 
 claimed supremacy, and take it as his hereditary and inalienable 
 right. Let him have for birthright and dower, sovereignty in sci- 
 ence, pre-eminence in philosophy, in learning, arts, and arms. Let him 
 wear the ermine, the lawn, the helmet unchallenged, and wield, un- 
 rivalled, the sword, the pencil, and the pen. Let him be supreme 
 in camp, and cabinet, and council; — to woman still belongs a goodly 
 guerdon of which no power can deprive her. 
 
 To acquire over the unruly temper of man, a mighty influence for 
 good; to manifest a faith that never fails, and a patience that never 
 tires; to exhibit a devotedness that can sacrifice, and a courage that 
 can suffer, to be true when all are false, and firm when all is hope- 
 less; to watch with an eye that never sleeps, and care, that never 
 changes the dear objects of your regard; to think, to act, to suffer, 
 to sacrifice, to live, to die for them, — these shall be your triumphs; 
 for these lofty ends have you received the priceless blessing of a 
 Christian education. 
 
 And now you go forth for the fulfillment of your mission. You 
 are yet untried, but I pray you may prove true. Oh ! be sure to 
 begin aright. Lay your plans in wisdom and prudence, and you 
 will carry them to success; or, if you do not command, what is bet- 
 ter, you will deserve the guerdon and the crown. 
 
 Let the lamp of experience, the experience of those who have 
 gone before you, shine before your feet. The mariner who would 
 guide his bark aright, does not despise the wrecks of former adven- 
 tures. He shapes his course by the shoals, the quicksands, and the 
 rocks, no less than by the compass and the beacon. If the heart is 
 steadfast to the haven of peace and joy, skill and caution will be 
 employed. 
 
 You go forth to-day with gladness and rejoicing, but I sorrow for 
 
509 
 
 your going. You go forth with buoyancy and hope, and yet my 
 heart bleeds for you, for you go out into a cold and unfeeling world. 
 Yes, you go into a land of deceit, where the true is outweighed by 
 the seeming; where all is hollow mockery and stark sham; shame- 
 less pretence and haughty arrogance, — a cruel world where the 
 weaker often goes to the wall, where unrequited merit pines and 
 starves, while brazen mediocrity, proud-fronted imbecility bears 
 away the coveted prize. Your tender sex will be no shield; your 
 personal charms or your acquired qualities no defense. 
 
 Unless the star of religion guide your course you must wander in 
 the dark; unless the light of faith lead you on, you will go astray; 
 unless the memories of this hallowed hour abide with you to teU 
 you the right and true, you must miserably fail. God grant it be 
 not so. You will remember the teachings of your youth. You will 
 cherish the counsels of the wise. You will seek the support of re- 
 ligion and the guidance of God. 
 
 Let me give you a few words of counsel and I have done. 
 
 Be kind. Oh ! there is so little kindness in the world. Woman 
 is weak, but she has the power of making the world happy by her 
 kindness. Most of us are unhappy because the world is unkind. 
 "Be kind, not by impulse, but by deliberation ; but be kind always. 
 God is everywhere: He is in the darksome foliage of the grove; He 
 is in the sigh of the summer zephyr; He is in the purling of the 
 silvery stream; He is in the fibres of the soul; but most of all He is 
 in our thoughts. In the temple of your mind let none but kind 
 thoughts dweU. Be kind in speech. Kind words are the music 
 of God's world; they are the solace of weary hours, the sunshine of 
 existence. Do always kindly deeds. Kindness is the pouring out 
 of self on others; it is the spirit of the meek and humble Jesus." 
 
 Kindness is a little thing, but little things make life. " And is not 
 the grass of the fields better than the cedars of Lebanon; it feeds 
 more; it rests the eye better. Kindness is the turf of the spiritual 
 world, where the sheep of Christ feed quietly beneath the Shepherd's 
 eye." 
 
 Be contented with your lot. Do not repine. Rise like true 
 heroines, superior to your circumstances and surroundings, and lift 
 your heads towards the heavens of God. The home of happiness is 
 in the heart, not in the great big world without. 
 
510 
 
 " Honor and fame from no conditions rise; 
 Act well your part, — there all the honor lies." 
 
 Learn to love labor. Labor is the great law of life. It is espe- 
 cially so for women. " Man's work is from sun to sun, but woman's 
 work is never done." Idleness is the door of temptation. An idle 
 brain is the Devil's workshop. " Ora et labora " was the motto of 
 the Monks of Subraco, and the poet says : 
 
 " Live for something, be not idle, 
 Look about thee for employ. 
 Let not down to useless dreaming, 
 Labor is the sweetest joy." 
 
 Shun vanity. It is an easy, but a dangerous vice. It turns the 
 head, warps the mind, dwarfs the intellect, and beggars the purse. 
 Few of us are strong enough to be praised. I think it was Seneca 
 who said, " Praise is the spur of noble minds," but Seneca was a 
 pagan. Human praise is often the flatterer's foil; the praise of God 
 is sufficient. 
 
 " Be just and fear not. Let all the ends thou aim at be thy 
 country's, thy God's, and truth's." 
 
 Shun prejudice; it is the enemy of truth, and the perjurer of 
 peace. Men are governed more by prejudice than by reason. 
 Beware of prejudices; they are like rats; men's minds are like 
 traps; prejudices creep easily in, but with difficulty get out. Bias 
 in anything is a hateful vice. 
 
 Be generous in your judgments, and remember the axiom of the 
 poet : 
 
 " 'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning join. 
 In all you speak let truth and candor shine." 
 
 Shun temptation. The best remedy against temptation is to keep 
 out of the reach of its guns. As often as the pitcher goes to the 
 well, it is broken at last 
 
 Be honest. Honesty is the best policy; not because it pays, but 
 because it is honest. An honest man is the noblest work of God; 
 but an honest woman, who shall speak her praise ? Do not be a 
 slave to what anybody is going to say about you. Live lying 
 slanders down. Hold up your head and be independent of them. 
 
511 
 
 What are words? only words; they fly through the air, they make a 
 sound, but they break not any bones. 
 
 And lastly, be truthful. Shun equivocation. Be open as the day. 
 Hate deceit; despise dissimulation. God abominateth the lying 
 tongue. 
 
 And finally, cherish, my dear young friends, cherish and hold fast 
 those Christian principles which your kind teachers have, aU these 
 years, labored to instill into your minds; rather let your right hand 
 wither, and your tongue grow dumb, than that you should ever prove 
 false or recreant to the hnes of duty stamped upon your young 
 hearts, and graven upon your character by those good Sisters who 
 displayed for you more than a mother's love and care in the solemn 
 and laborious task of your training and education, to whom you owe 
 a debt of gratitude that time cannot efface, nor treasure ever repay. 
 
 The future is before you. The book thereof is sealed. By the 
 hand of man it cannot be broken. It is well that we are ignorant 
 here. A foreknowledge of our soitows might palsy our resolutions 
 and our hopes; a surety of our blessings might cast us back upon 
 our indolence. But let us form high resolves to-day. Let us task 
 our God-given talents to the utmost; let us be bold and daring in 
 adventure; let us be heroic on the field of battle; vahant, yet 
 humble, warriors, for our strength is of God. In prosperity moder- 
 ate your exultation; in adversity learn to rejoice in this — that your 
 treasure is in that celestial city, where no thief can ever enter. If 
 the Angel of Death should hasten you away, may it be only to tread 
 those heavenly couits, whose bright walls and floors are made of 
 precious stones and the purest gold; and the effulgence of the burn- 
 ing throne, and He that sitteth thereupon, is the light thereof. 
 
RAISING OF THE FLAG ON ST. MARY'S SCHOOL, 
 HOBOKEN, N. J., JULY 4, 1892, 
 
 Fellow-Citizens : 
 
 Upon this day, the anniversary of that memorable day which gave 
 to these United States a place among the nations of the earth, it is 
 becoming that the people should come together to unite in thanks- 
 giving and praise to the Almighty Ruler of empires, not alone for 
 those peculiar and special temporal blessings which we are per- 
 mitted to enjoy, but also for the spiritual advantages vouchsafed to 
 us in the unrestrained exercise of conscience, and in the practice of 
 that religion to which we shall adhere while breath abides in our 
 bodies, as the hope of our country and the pledge of our salvation. 
 
 The rejoicings in which we participate upon this glad occasion 
 present to the world a sublime spectacle; a spectacle laden with 
 glorious and inspiring emotions. It is not the voice of the deep- 
 mouthed cannon that we hear; not merely the merry chiming of the 
 bells that ushered in the dawn of day; but every reverberation that 
 shakes the solid earth; every peal that rings musically forth; every 
 shout that swells upward to the welkin in the heavens, is but a unit 
 in the great paean of liberty, gushing forth in spontaneous triumph 
 from the hearts of a happy and united people in this jubilee of 
 freemen. 
 
 Rejoice, then, to-day, I sa}^ rejoice. 
 
 " Go ring the hells and fire the guns 
 And fling your starry banners out, 
 Shout Freedom till your lisping ones 
 Give back the cradle shout." 
 
 Let the cannon speak to the mountain; the mountain to the vale, 
 and as their voices leap from hill-top to hill-top the response to every 
 
513 
 
 echo shall be Liberty. Let the bells ring out the merry peal, chim- 
 ing with sweet music the anthem of liberty. Let bonfires blaze over all 
 the land; fling the starry banner to the breeze; call the people forth, 
 that old age and youth, manhood and maidenhood may unite in one 
 wide chorus — our God, our freedom, and our native land. 
 
 As we look abroad on our fail* laud, how the heart bounds with 
 honest exultation. How the soul swells with patriotic pride ! Need 
 we point to the innumerable avenues to individual happiness and 
 national glory that present themselves to view ? To the sweet vale, 
 redolent of nature's perfumes, where the glistening plough turns 
 the fertile furrow, and the farmer reaj^s the fruits of the eai*th for 
 his own uses, free from the exacting tithe, or the yet more exacting 
 tyrant ? To the mountain-side, where the towering patriarchs of 
 the forest fall before the oft-plied axe of the woodman ; to the co- 
 pious waterfaUs, where well-clad, educated Industry turns its happy 
 eyes from the loom to the skies, thanking the Giver of all good for 
 the rich blessings daily conferred? Need we point to our great 
 and growing commerce which spangles every sea with the stars of 
 our glorious Union, commanding the respect of the whole world and 
 convejdng a beacon of hope to millions yet in bondage ? To our 
 vast territory, stretching from ocean to ocean, embracing every 
 cUme, and yielding every product essential to the comfoi-t or the 
 luxuiy of man ? To our advancement in art, science, literature, and 
 in all those elements which contribute to the refinement, happiness, 
 and virtue of a people, and the power and grandeur of a nation ? 
 Need we point to that most supreme of earthly blessings which we 
 here enjoy in a measure far beyond all other peoples, perfect 
 libeiiy in affairs of civil polity and untrammelled freedom in wor- 
 shipping our Creator according to the desires of our heart and the 
 dictates of our consciences ? 
 
 Do we look into the well-spring of our inheritance to assure our- 
 selves that it is still pure at the source, that the crystal springs from 
 which we diink will not cease to flow, the waters of our national 
 fountains become turbid and distasteful? If the blessings we enjoy 
 to-day are the fruit of our peculiar institutions, with those blessings 
 comes down to us the solemn duty of guarding and protecting the 
 spiings of our happiness and the sources of our national glorj^ The 
 history of republics teaches us a prolific lesson; and the history of 
 33 
 
514 
 
 nations assures us that none are so adamantine as to be impervious 
 to decay. Man, with all the weakness of mortality' about him, is not 
 more the creature of impulse and adventitious circumstances, than is 
 a nation. Nations are not immortal, and their systems are as sus- 
 ceptible of political change and as liable to disease, derangement, 
 and death, as the human system to changes of temperature and clime. 
 Under a despotism it is not the duty nor the privilege of the 
 people to raise their voice in the conduct of government; but under 
 our system the people constitute the governing power; and if that 
 power is recreant to itself, if it fail to perform its work, and trusts to 
 corrupt and mercenary hands the guidance of its affairs, what result 
 can reason apprehend but annihilation, national death, and the 
 overthrow of liberal institutions ? O ! let it never come to this. Give 
 not to the future so dark a destiny. Compel not the historian of 
 coming time to weep, as looking backward through the dim vista of 
 intervening ages, he writes in letters of blood the record of our na- 
 tional shame. For, believe me, my countrymen, when the glorious 
 structure of American manhood has passed away; when our admirable 
 system shall be blotted out, and the hope that our example has en- 
 kindled in the hearts of growing millions is overwhelmed, the dirge 
 of civil libei*ty will be sounded, the death pang of freedom will be over, 
 
 "Her name, her nature, withered from the world." 
 
 Where, then, shall be found a time or place to relume the ex- 
 tinguished lamp of liberty ? Where, then, will be the hope and 
 refuge of ttie oppressed ? With the example of our recreancy be- 
 fore them, will the generations of the future give up, as our fore- 
 fathers gave up, their wealth, their blood, tlieir lives, in the work of 
 garnering another harvest of political freedom and independence ? 
 No; at every step the insulted wisdom of our sages would cry to 
 them from their silent tombs, " Withhold your labors " 
 
 Think how precious to the world is the success of our experiment 
 in popular government; how fruitful of promise to mankind; and if 
 it fail, how humiliating to our boasted intelligence wiU be its down- 
 fall. 
 
 With us lies the responsibility of carrying our experiment to a 
 successful issue. We are not without weapons for the work. The 
 sword and buckler are in our keeping. The sword we are to use is 
 
515 
 
 the right of suffrage, and the weapon we are to wield is the bail3a<!;, 
 " which executes a freeman's will as lightning does the will of G^d-'" 
 Intelligence is the whetstone of our sword, the polisher of our araaior - 
 and if, with the intelligence that we possess, we make wisdom mndL 
 morality our allies, no power, earth-born or hell-sprung, can suc««ss- 
 full}^ obstruct the irresistible march of civil and religious freedom,, 
 or thwart the destiny which God seems to have marked out fcMr the 
 American people in conducting them to the lofty summit of their 
 present greatness and national renown 
 
 But there are dangers before us; there are enemies marslialled 
 against us, and we must prepare for the defense. 
 
 Observe the careful mariner, who with his stout ship traverses the' 
 trackless ocean. The fair winds of heaven waft him pleasantly om 
 his way. All is bright and prosperous; no clouds above, no storms 
 around; and with his hand upon the wheel, the bulky vessel,, her 
 wide wings spread aloft, bounds over the waves, as yielding as. anj 
 infant to its master's will. But the skillful sailor knows that storms; 
 may come, and in the prosperity of the present he forgets B!ot the 
 prospective dangei-s of the future. The hour of tranquillity Iieem>- 
 ploys in fortifying his ship against the whirlwinds that lurk ub the 
 broad atmosphere. Every rope is set; all hands are on the aleiii; 
 and with an eye ever watchful against impending danger, he scans; 
 the wide encu'cling horizon. A speck appears in the far distance. 
 It is a cloud upon the weather quarter. But he waits not for the 
 storm to burst upon him ; but at the first gleam of danger his yai'ds: 
 are manned, his sails are clewed up, his hatches battened down,, and 
 with stout and trusty hands upon the helm, he looks defiance in the 
 face of the approaching tumult. Nearer, nearer, comes the speck; 
 wider still it gi'ows, till it pervades all visible space and blackens the 
 whole heavens. The skies above and around are enveloped in inky- 
 drapery, and the forked lightnings shoot, hissing, from the clouds to 
 the ocean. On comes the storm; on comes the humcane; and like 
 a rushing demon, sweeps howling through the cordage. The goodL 
 ship reels before the shock; she bows to the tempest, and quivers ift 
 every timber, like a frightened steed. But lo ! she rights again ; the 
 tornado has swept by; the sun breaks through the fire-fringed clouds; 
 the danger's past, and with sails slowly spread to the new-bora 
 breeze, the mariner speeds safely to his destination. 
 
516 
 
 And thus when we hear the mutterings of a storm in our social or 
 political atmosphere, we are to hold ourselves in readiness to avert 
 those dangers which may doom us to inevitable destruction. It is an 
 unqualified truth, that a pure democracy harbors within itself the 
 seeds of its own downfall; and unless they are eradicated, the 
 structure of political and social liberty is liable to degenerate into 
 radical lawlessness and irreligion, or by gradual and imperceptible 
 transition become merged into absolute monarchy or deplorable des- 
 potism. But if we are to guard against these ripening dangers, we 
 must hold fast those principles of virtue and integrity which alone 
 can make a people great; hold aloft the shield of liberty as an segis 
 to petrify all who dare look upon it with the eye of an opponent, and 
 around the castle of individual and national character build a wall 
 of moral strength, invulnerable as the shield of Jupiter, imperishable 
 as time itself. Then shall we train up a plant of wholesome and vig- 
 orous growth. Then shall the land be in truth a refuge for the heart- 
 sick and the weary, and here shall be heard a sweet voice whisper- 
 ing hope in the ears of the oppressed, telling them of happier climes, 
 and breathing into their toi-pid souls a dream of comfort for the 
 
 future : 
 
 " It comes like soft music from a far land, 
 Wafted from the West; braving the rude storms ^ 
 
 Of ocean, riding the tempest, it comes; 
 And mingling with the zephyrs of the clime, 
 Floats far and wide in a rich harmony. 
 The eager passions listen as it moves, 
 And every ear drinks up the heavenly strain; 
 Till drunk with a strange ecstasy, each soul 
 Puts on the lofty armor of a God 
 And shouts for liberty." 
 
 But what is the future of our country to be ? There exist now 
 doleful prophets, who see in the complex and conflicting elements of 
 our national life the seeds of decay and dissolution. Is this, the 
 most glorious fabric ever erected by the hand of man for the secu- 
 rity of human rights, and the shelter of human freedom, to share the 
 fate of those republics which live only as a memory of bygcme 
 greatness ? 
 
 Kome, the world-conquering empire, whose sun-eyed eagles 
 spread their pinions under every quarter of the heavens; whose 
 
517 
 
 royal standards spoke allegiance to the nations of the world, was 
 pulled down from her towering grandeur; the sceptre of dominion 
 dropped from her nerveless grasp; and though venerable in her 
 antiquity, proud in her desolation, and still beautiful in her ruins, 
 she has for nigh on a score of centuries presented to the eyes of 
 mankind the inglorious spectacle of the pomp of civilization and the 
 pride of imperial power, when cast down by coiTuption and debil- 
 itated by crime and folly. 
 
 Greece, land of the mighty, where valor found a glorious death or 
 laurelled victoiy; Eden of the classic world, where Plato's godlike 
 lore was taught and Sappho's songs were sung; where the chisel 
 gave form and beauty to the dull rock and made it breathe and 
 live; where Olympia's towers resounded with the Oi*phean lyre, and 
 'mid " shady grots and alleys gi'een " the Muses sent up their vocal 
 strains to salute the skies; Greece, the nurse of arms and the mother 
 of science, is fallen. She has become the sepulchre of the mighty 
 dead, whose smouldering ashes spread as dust upon fields of van- 
 ished glory. Her degenerate sons now kiss the servile chain, and 
 like the bright glow that lights the pariing day, her splendor has 
 departed. Her arts are no more; her shrines are laid low, and 
 through her forsaken halls and fallen temples and o'er her ruined 
 walls stalks desolation, brandishing on high the besom of his wrath. 
 
 How shall it fare with us ? It may be that our experience shall 
 but add to the lessons of history, and that the disastei-s predicted 
 by the prophets of the old-world despotisms shall one day overtake 
 us. It may be that the mournful story of past republics shall be 
 ^vritten upon the broken and shattered ruins of our social fabric. 
 It may be that the sun of our national glory shall go down in blood, 
 shining sullenly upon the " dishonored fragments of a once glorious 
 Union"; that violence and turbulence shall rend asunder the bonds 
 which now unite us, and scatter them in wild confusion through the 
 world. It may be that the smUing fields of oiu' prosperity and the 
 green valleys of our contentment, where Columbia's sons now re- 
 pose in security and peace, may be devastated by the tornadoes of 
 anarchy, or blighted by the chilling frosts of despotism. It may be 
 so, my countrymen; it may be that the light of our nation's grandeur 
 shall sink in shame and dishonor, if religious rancor or sectional 
 animosity should estrange a portion of the people from this now 
 
518 
 
 ^'lorious and inseparable Union; if infamous venality or political 
 intrigue should sap the foundations of j)atriotism and dry up the 
 springs of loyalty; if unlimited prosperity should open the flood- 
 gates of corruption, and material advancement, the only goal of our 
 ambition, should blind us to the need of moral and intellectual cul- 
 tivation; if wealth should make us aristocratic and debauched, like 
 the effete nobility of Europe; if power should make us arrogant 
 and tyrannous; fanaticism, intolerant; pride, and the gross pur- 
 suits of a vaulting ambition, insensible of the great Almighty source 
 from whom our blessings flow. 
 
 But I hold no such dolorous views of my country's hopes and 
 prospects. I cast no such dismal horoscope of my country's future, 
 for I hold that sin and vice alone can make a people weak, wicked- 
 ness make them old, ungodliness infirm and tottering; but in the 
 fear of the Lord there is the strength, the power, the beauty of 
 perpetual youth. 
 
 Upon us rests a grave responsibility. Upon us and upon those 
 who follow us — upon the young especially — the good man's hope 
 and the patriot s trust, — upon those parents and teachers to whom 
 the education of youth is entrusted, rests with fearful weight this 
 responsibility. 
 
 My friends, what can I say to you — what can I say but repeat the 
 warning which I gave to you on the day, when in a large and dis- 
 tinguished presence, we laid the corner-stone of the magnificent 
 structure within whose walls we are gathered here to-day. Educate 
 your children in the faith of Jesus Christ. 
 
 We raise here to-day the flag of our imperishable Union. The 
 emblem of liberty that we lift aloft is one of the most beautiful 
 ensigns that floats over the earth. That old flag stands for what, 
 after God, is dearest in life to us, our firesides and our native land. 
 That flag has been defended with a valor and heroism unsurpassed 
 in the annals of time, and many a hero has poured out his heart's 
 iblood to save it from dishonor. 
 
 During the attacks on Fort Moultrie the flagstaff was struck by 
 the enemy's shot and fell outside the walls of the fort. Would it 
 be left to trail in the dust, to be trampled in dishonor? Who 
 would rescue the old flag, when to do so was to rush into the 
 jaws of death ? There was one brave heart who feared not death 
 
519 
 
 when the honor of the flag was at stake. Tlie gallant and intrepid 
 Sergeant Jasper, amid a volley of leaden rain, leaped over the breast- 
 works and picking up the ensign fastened to a sponge staff, once 
 more replaced it on the fort, while from his admiring comrades went 
 forth a wild heroic cheer, thrice repeated — Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! 
 
 How often has the sight of that flag brought hope and courage to 
 the soldier whose drooping spirits sunk from the onset, as lifting 
 his weary, battle-blurred eyes he beheld the glorious ensign fluttering 
 against the distant horizon, and inspired with renewed valor, he hurled 
 himself against the foe, resolved to conquer or die in the endeavor. 
 
 Dear to the heart of every son of Liberty are the folds of that 
 flag — that flag which to-day waves in unchallenged victory over land 
 and sea. May it ever wave over our country's citadels in unsullied 
 glory, and remain a shielding banner to all the down-trodden sons 
 of men; and whether its tattered folds ai*e dimly seen through the 
 clouds of war, or beautiful stripes streaming peacefully over the 
 dome of our national capitol, may it be the joy and pride of the 
 American people. " First raised in the cause of right and liberty, 
 may it forever spread out its streaming blazonry to the battle, the 
 sunshine, or the storm," May vii-tue, valor, freedom, peace, dwell 
 upon the earth wherever it may wave. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest menace to free institutions in the land to- 
 day, and the one thing which more than all else saps the sources of 
 genuine patriotism, is unreasoning adherence to party. 
 
 Party ties, here and elsewhere, when they become so absorbing as 
 to blind the people to the interests of our common country^ must be 
 modified; a spirit of genuine nationahty must predominate over 
 sectional prejudice; our public affairs must be entrusted to wise, 
 capable, and patriotic hands, that thus we may look forward with 
 confidence to the future; that our children and our children's chil- 
 dren may eat of the fruit planted by the men of '76; and the nations 
 of the earth unite at last with us, as one homogeneous people, with 
 one flag, one country, one God and Father of all, and multitudinous 
 voices over all the earth, joining in the annual tribute of our joy, oui- 
 cheers for liberty, shall signalize the fourth day of July as that which 
 drew aside the bolts of tyranny from the crystal gates of civil and 
 religious freedom, never by God's good mercy to be closed tiU all 
 the nations of the earth shall be dissolved in the final wreck of 
 matter and the crush of worlc's. 
 
y. 
 
 CATHOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF ST. MARY'S SCHOOL, 
 HOBOKEN, N. J.* 
 
 Rt. Rev. Bishop, Rt. Rev. Monseigneur, Mr. Governor, Catholics of 
 Hudson County: 
 
 I give you greeting here to-day. I feel a joy in the occasion 
 which calls this vast assemblage here which no words of mine can 
 tell. In the history of this parish this is a red-letter day in a calen- 
 dar of glory. In the cause of Christ and for the glory of the God 
 we all adore, you have during long and weary years expended freely 
 of your toil and treasure to upbuild the institutions of religion in 
 this fair city; but suffer me to burn it indelibly upon your minds, 
 that never, since by pious and reverent hands the cross of Christ 
 was planted and the altar of the living God erected in your com- 
 munity, have you set your hand and your heart to a work of more 
 transcendent import than that begun at this hallowed and gracious 
 hour in the laying of the corner-stone of the magnificent school 
 which, under God's blessing, will soon crown the noble site we stand 
 upon to-day. I, therefore, rise with glad alacrity in this dis- 
 tinguished presence, favored as we are by the attendance of the 
 Governor of the State, the Chief Magistrate of the city, and the 
 companion of my youth, the Congressional Representative of this dis- 
 trict, to unfold to you the solemn significance of the ceremony per- 
 formed before this great concourse of interested witnesses upon this 
 memorable day. 
 
 Here upon this sacred spot — here undor the shadow of God's 
 sanctuary — here in a land renowned for its love of learning — in a 
 
 * From the Hohoken News. 
 
621 
 
 land where literature flourishes like the green bay-tree planted b}' 
 the running waters — in a land where art lifts her heavenly featiu'es 
 and science stands revealed in aU her native charms — in a land 
 where genius is honored and rewarded; where merit is the passport 
 to success, and intellect the only aristocracy — in the land of Clay, 
 Calhoun, and "Webster; Bryant, Lo well, and Longfellow ; Prescott, 
 Bancroft, and Brownson; Hecker, Ives, and Spaulding — in this 
 favored land which, though but of yesterday, compared w^th trans- 
 atlantic nations, has, by the magic power of mind and genius, cre- 
 ated within a centui*y a national literature destined to imperishable 
 fame, — we are met to-day to contribute what we can to the institu- 
 tions of sound learning, in the hopeful expectation that we are help- 
 ing to promote the renown and glory of our age and scatter bless- 
 ings in the pathway of posterity. 
 
 If any man ask what is the necessity for the building of this 
 school, when schools abound on every side, free, commodious, and 
 accessible to all, how shaU we give answer ? Have we not in this 
 land of ours a banquet of intellectual enjoyment, and do we not in- 
 vite all to come and feast at the table ? Have we not planted a 
 garden of mental luxuriance, flung wide open the gates at the en- 
 trance, and bid all come in and partake of the fruits of our plant- 
 ing ? Have we not here a public school system of recognized merit 
 and admitted perfections, whose doors are unbarred to every child 
 that may come, without distinction of rank, sex, color, or creed ? A 
 school open to every child that walks the face of our broad land and 
 lives under the protection of our liberal, enlightened, and beneficent 
 laws ? To these things no man can make truthful denial. 
 
 "Wherefore, then, do the Catholics of this country, who go heaii; 
 and hand with their fellow-citizens, and whose loyalty to the laws 
 and adhesion to the Constitution have long since been placed beyond 
 the pale of reproach, separate or divide from their countr^Tnen on 
 this question of education; and though, for the most part, not 
 abundantly endowed with the jDOSsessions of this world, incur sucli 
 heavy expense, make so many exertions to build, furnish, and main- 
 tain schools other than those provided by the government for sow- 
 ing the seminal principles of knowledge and patriotism in the minds 
 of the up-growing generations ? Apart from sufficiency of motive 
 such conduct is foUy and madness. Whence, then, the cause ? 
 
522 
 
 It is, ladies and gentlemen, because of their undying devotion to 
 duty, their unshaken allegiance to principle, and their burning de- 
 sire and unwearied endeavor to confer upon their children and their 
 children's children the unbought and unpurchasable blessings of a 
 Christian education. When the salvation of souls is the stake, they 
 count not the cost nor reckon the labor. 
 
 It is because of this imperious consideration that the Catholics of 
 this country, enlightened by the experience of the past and planning 
 for the future, build their own schools rather than make tributary 
 to their advantage those institutions which, with commendable 
 liberality and praiseworthy public spirit, the government has 
 founded to advance the cause of common education. Because of 
 this Catholics build their schools, and not because they have no wish 
 to fraternize with their brethren; not because they have no concern 
 to harmonize with the spirit and genius of democracy; not because 
 they cherish views and harbor sentiments alien or antagonistic to 
 the established policy and traditional customs of this free land 
 which sheltered them from despotism and oppression, — not because 
 they do not love their country. No; God forbid ! 
 
 We are Catholics, and to be such, we can say, with St. Augustine, 
 is our glory and our pride. But who is here so vile that will not 
 love his country ? We are Catholics, but we are Americans in every 
 cord and fibre of our frames; and every hope of our hearts, after 
 the hope of heaven's light and God's salvation, is a hope for her 
 I)rosperity and a prayer for her perpetuity. This land, these laws, 
 these libei-ties, are they not ours to uphold, ours to enjoy, ours to 
 transmit to succeeding generations ? 
 
 We build our schools, then, because we love, first our God and 
 then our country, and would perpetuate her institutions till time 
 shall be no more; and while we unreservedly surrender to our 
 native land the loyalty of our hearts, the fire of our intellects, and 
 the strength and service of our arms, we are but the more concerned 
 for her welfare, because we believe, and we know, and we maintain, 
 that it is written in the eternal and inviolable decrees of God, that 
 society cannot stand which is not built upon the indestructible bul- 
 wark of religion. Nor do we stand alone in our opinion. 
 
 Let me give you a name to conjure with — a name unspeakably 
 dear to every American heart, nay, to' every child of freedom wher- 
 
523 
 
 ever God's sun shines down on this green globe. There is a man 
 whose memory is immortal — at the sound of whose name your souls 
 thrill and your hearts gladden with delight. As the ivy clings to 
 the oak by which it has been Hf ted from the eai-th, and only increases 
 its adhesion as the monarch of the forest grows venerable with frosts 
 of years; so has the lapse of time but served to strengthen your 
 affection for the memory of a man who put forth his good right 
 hand to raise his country from the prostrate condition in which he 
 found her; to i^lace her upon a pedestal of glory, where, under the 
 guidance of God's providence she shall continue to shine; to exalt 
 her to au acme of greatness where she shall endure with unfading 
 power and splendor till the heavens are gathered like a scroll and 
 time expires in the arms of eternity — and that immortal man was 
 Washington. Hearken to the lesson from his lips and heed it well : 
 " Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be 
 maintained without religion, because morality and religion are the 
 props of society and the pillai's of the State." 
 
 These, ladies and gentlemen, are the words which tlie CathoHc 
 Church has uttered for 1,900 years — has proclaimed from the capitol 
 of the Caesars and the courts of Charlemagne ; from the ancient Roman 
 forum, in the groves of Academus and in the silent forests of Gaul 
 and Germany; from the rock-bound coasts of Maine to the ice-clad 
 cliffs of Alaska, and which she will continue to proclaim, in tones 
 that touch and thrill, till the last man that Christ died to save has been 
 gathered to the bliss of heaven or consigned to the shades of eternal 
 death. To proclaim this heaven-sent doctrine she sent her teachers 
 into every land and clime. Every corner of the eaiih echoed to the 
 tread of theii' footsteps, every spot to the sound of their voice. 
 Bearing the royal charter of her commission, they went forth, hold- 
 ing aloft the plummet of progress and the cross of Christ, and un- 
 folding, not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the 
 power and grace of Jesus Christ, to all men, at all times, and in every 
 clime, the need of Redemption in the Lord; and cai-rying to all the 
 light of God's salvation. Their deeds are not graved on monu- 
 ments of brass, or cut in shining shafts of marble, but they are 
 treasured in the record of eternal life, and shall shine with the 
 splendor of the stars through the everlasting years of God. 
 
 Catholics build schools, because Catholics love learning. Who are 
 
524 
 
 greater lovers of learning than you, my friends, who, for the most 
 part, are descendants of a people — I mean the ancient and un- 
 conquerable Celtic race — whose religion and education were banned 
 for five bloody centuries; — you whose fathers came from a land where 
 to be a scholar was to be a criminal. It may still linger in the rec- 
 ollection of the oldest here, who came from the emerald land be- 
 yond the seas, that you were once an enslaved and prostrate people 
 — a people without home, property, or education — a people excluded 
 from the bench, the bar, and the legislature, — a people whose com- 
 plaints were scorned, whose grievances were mocked, whose burn- 
 ing aspirations after liberty were silenced by chains and slavery, 
 and whose life and manhood were ground into dust and stifled in 
 the gloom and silence of the grave. Yes; you were once persecuted 
 and hounded unto death; your blood was poured out like water 
 from the fountain; but under the unsparing plough of persecution 
 that blood has germinated with such marvellous rapidity that from 
 being a handful of slaves you have become a nation of freemen, 
 while the glorious tree of Celtic Christianity has spread its branch- 
 ing boughs over all the earth for the admiration and amelioration of 
 mankind. Ah ! yes, methinks I see them now, those down-trodden 
 but invincible lovers of libeii;y — see them lifting their bowed heads 
 and looking out from the dreary wilderness of their woe and behold- 
 ing, as it gleamed in grandeur on the far-off Western horizon, the 
 golden star of long-lost liberty hopefully beaming across the blue 
 Atlantic, upon whose inviting bosom they launched their tiny barks, 
 to be wafted b}' God's favoring breezes to the shelter of these 
 shores. Yes; I imagine I behold them now, shaking the shackles of 
 oppression from their limbs, and emerging, like men risen from the 
 dead, from the gloomy dungeon of age-long despair — coming out 
 from the death-like hold of a voracious despotism; coming out from 
 the greedy grasp of an absorbing aristocracy; coming out from the 
 galling tyranny of men who forced, as far as could be done, their 
 own religion and worship upon them, and denied to them the liberty 
 of acting according to their consciences — coming across the deep, 
 blue sea — coming to this land of liberty, and as they first set foot upon 
 its blessed shores, " wildly grasping with uplifted hands the standard 
 of freedom, its basis resting on their gladdened hearts and its star- 
 spangled top glittering in the sunlit heavens," as looking back with 
 
525 
 
 love to the land of their bii*th, their eyes dimmed with emotion, they 
 rushed forward to join the surging chorus of the young and brave 
 democracy which bid them welcome in the home of the free. 
 
 And why came they to these far-off shores ? Because they were 
 willing to submit to every privation, but privation of freedom of 
 conscience they could not endure. Because they were prepared to 
 suffer any hardship, but the hardship which deprived them and 
 their children of education and doomed them to imbruting and de- 
 grading ignorance, was too intolerable for the most ignoble slave to 
 undergo. Submission was dishonorable, resistance ineffectual, and 
 flight the only remedy or hope. And thus they forsook the fond 
 endearments of their native land; they bade farewell to all the as- 
 sociations entwined about theii* hearts, to place themselves under 
 the divine protection, and trusting confidently to the future, to visit 
 a strange and unknown land to seek those lights of manhood de- 
 nied to them at home. But the God of their fathers was with them, 
 and His gi'acious guidance and assistance sustained them in their 
 enterprise, and in the peaceful security of their new abode in the 
 Western world they poured forth grateful aspirations and songs of 
 joy to Him who, as He protects the weak and the needy, so watched 
 their destinies and iniled their lives. 
 
 Long years have rolled by since their advent here; much vicissi- 
 tude, and sometimes inhospitable treatment, was their portion, but 
 they bore themselves with foi-titude and patience, so that we to-day 
 may well recall with pride their glorious history, and pay the tribute 
 of our reverence to their memory, and fortunate shall we be if we 
 seek to illumine the character of our age by the illustrious example 
 of lofty faith, splendid endurance, and lion-like courage, which 
 marked the conduct of those Catholics jvho are gone before us in 
 this Western Hemisphere. 
 
 Who loves learning more than the members of that old Church, 
 which, through the long night of barbarism, was the patron and pre- 
 server of literature and the custodian of civilization in the w^orld ? 
 She loves learning and she loves the light, because, like God's morn- 
 ing star, she descends from the bosom of uncreated Light. Like a 
 Pharos in the tempest-tossed and sunless ocean of time, she casts her 
 burning beams of truth athwart the wide-spread gloom, and, like 
 a vapor that disappears at the first burst of sunlight, darkness flies 
 
526 
 
 at her approach, and light, genial, radiant, and vivifying, is diffused 
 over the darksome sea of life. She rolled back the never-ebbing 
 flood of time; she penetrated the dim and misty veil of the past till 
 she stood by the tombs of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs; she groped 
 through the age-crowned ruins of Rome, and wandered through the 
 broken temples of ancient Greece; she has gone down into the Cat- 
 acombs to speak to the voiceless dead; she snatched a lamp from the 
 table of industry to fling a wizard beam upon arts and languages 
 long forgotten, and in every century, and in every clime, upon every 
 sea and shore, she evoked the genius of intelligence and wove a gar- 
 land, fair and beautiful, for the brow of civilization, from flowers 
 culled from every field of information. 
 
 The same love of learning is her passionate pursuit in America. 
 Her numerous buildings and educational establishments, scattered 
 over the face of this broad land, attest the liberality of her religion 
 and the piety of her people. Visit the lowest valleys; ascend to 
 the wildest heights ; go to the far-off Pacific and view the moss- 
 crowned remains of those structures erected by the fiery zeal of the 
 Friars of San Francisco, and the very stones will tell you of bygone 
 times, when from countless choirs the voice of intelligent praise as- 
 cended to the Most High God, in temples and shrines raised up by 
 the devotion of these hardy pioneers. What spirit impelled them 
 but the love of truth and conscience; the same spirit as that which 
 came down at Pentecost ; the spirit which, when religion had all but 
 vanished, when her altars were overturned, and the storm of perse- 
 cution gathered thick and fast around her, enabled her followers to 
 stand fast in the Thermopylae of their faith — to stand up for liberty 
 of conscience — to stand for right and truth and justice— to stand up 
 to defend the land from the ^blight of irreligion, to spread the good 
 seed of the Gospel, and to seal by the baptism of their blood this 
 continent for Christ. 
 
 This is the spirit which calls us here to-day. This is the spirit 
 which impels us to bear an almost insuppoi-table burden in maintain- 
 ing our own schools. We want schools, and we want scholars, but 
 we want religious schools. We don't want a Christless Christianity. 
 W^e don't want the blight and bale of infidelity and atheism. We 
 want our country to endure, and we know that without God there 
 can be no commonwealth. 
 
527 
 
 We wage no war upon the public schools. We are not hostile to 
 education. We hold that it should be universal and adequate to 
 the needs of the community. It is no difficult demonstration to show 
 that it was not Horace Mann, nor the pious Pilgiims of Massachu- 
 setts, but the Catholic Church, which first founded common free 
 schools for the people. 
 
 But the secular public school we find to be defective. Morality, 
 says Washington, cannot be maintained without religion, and until 
 reUgion, in some way satisfactory to the consciences of all, is taught 
 under our common school system, the first end of education will be 
 ignored, and the greatest desideratum of the human heart, the 
 moulding and directing influence of religion, will remain unprovided 
 for. Till the dawn of that better and more enlightened day, Cath- 
 olics, we hope, will, as they are doing upon this spot to-day, build 
 their schools and have the benevolence and generosity to maintain 
 them. 
 
 And when these walls, which rise here in stately beauty and ma- 
 jestic proportion, are worn and time-honored, the youth of this city 
 will still come to this temple of knowledge to meditate upon the les- 
 sons of the past and gird themselves for the battles of the future; 
 and may they always find here the teachings of patriotism and in- 
 corruptible citizenship, and examples of wisdom and piety to study 
 and to emulate. Thus shall they grow up ornaments to society, up- 
 holders of religion, useful and intelligent citizens of the State. Thus 
 shall they bless God that they were born in the land where those 
 celestial maidens, science and religion, may embrace and dwell in 
 peace together. Thus shall coming generations gaze with pride and 
 reverence on the triumphs of intellect wrought by their forefathers, 
 and shall characterize the work we do to-day as blessed of God and 
 man, and a shining evidence of devotion on the part of Catholics 
 to the cause of Christian education. 
 
VI. 
 
 LAYING OP THE CORNER-STONE OF THE REFUGE 
 OF THE SISTERS OF PEACE. 
 
 JERSEY CITY, N. J. 
 
 Rt. Rev. MoNSEiaNEUR, Rev, Fathers, Dear Friends : 
 
 We are assembled here to-day to lay the foundations of a work 
 which confers honor upon humanity, benefit upon this community — 
 a work that is approved of man and blessed of God. In the pres- 
 ence of this large and sympathetic audience gathered here, we lay 
 the corner-stone of an asylum and refuge for the orphan children of 
 this great city — orphans who will be tended with more than a 
 mother's tender care by these Sisters, who have 
 
 " For sweet charity's sake " 
 
 devoted the unreserved service of their lives to the God-like work of 
 rescuing the strays and waifs of humanity, not merely from squalor 
 and starvation, but perhaps from a career of crime, and from that 
 dismal doom to which the children of want and misery are exposed 
 in every land. 
 
 Charity, my friends, is God's darling virtue, and it is one of the 
 most striking and potent proofs of the divinity of His Church. Her 
 numerous institutions of benevolence — her hospitals, her reforma- 
 tories, her refuges and asylums, and her countless works of charity, 
 which spring from her fecund bosom, like flowers from their native 
 soil, proclaim her to be inspired with the divine spirit of Him who 
 came to teach mankind the unfathomable love upon which depended 
 " the whole law and the prophets." 
 
 In the name of the sweet charity of Christ I speak to you to-day. 
 
529 
 
 for an object which appeals to you with a power and energy which 
 no words of mine can intensify. I speak not in the hypocritical ac- 
 cents of the false philanthropy which George Eliot, and Mrs. Hum- 
 phrey Ward, and professors of the new creed of culture have adopt- 
 ed as the gospel of humanity; but according to the principle that 
 we must love our fellow-man for God's sake, and for the image of 
 God within him. But the empty pretensions of modern philanthropy 
 must be disallowed, for in place of the fraternal charity inculcated 
 by our divine Redeemer, it substitutes the shadowy semblance, the 
 miserable subterfuge of human interests and human sympathies, 
 which, like the friendship painted by the poet, 
 
 " Is but a name, 
 A charm that lulls to sleep; 
 A shade that follows wealth and fame, 
 And leaves the wretch to weep." 
 
 Such philanthropy is devoid of supernatural principle. It has for 
 its basis a magnificent egotism. With disgusting ostentation and 
 lofty patronage, which pains much more than it relieves, it evolves 
 fine-spun theories and projects great schemes for the succor of the 
 indigent and the distressed, even while it flings the starving wretcli 
 from the door, to die in the gloom of the workhouse or under the 
 cold stars of heaven. " It is better to go to heaven in rags than to 
 hell in embroidery," and like Lazarus, who was gathered into Abra- 
 ham's bosom, while Dives was buried in hell, so shall many of the 
 outcasts of society be exalted into glory when the canting and self- 
 sufficient philanthropist has entered the everlasting shades of Sheol. 
 The root of this philanthropy is self. Unlike to them " who do good 
 by stealth and blush to find it fame," vainglory is commonly the 
 motive that inspires its professors; or, at best, it is that pernicious 
 maxim which proclaims, as the supreme law, the greatest good of 
 the greatest number. Such philanthropy is no more than an un- 
 reasoning cult of man-worship, and it is the embodiment of insin- 
 cerity, Pharisaism, tyranny, and selfishness. It puts man in the 
 place of God, or, what is equally the capsheaf of folly, it confounds 
 God with His creation, and that practically denies His existence. 
 
 The end of man is the glory of God. No other end of man's cre- 
 ation would be worthy of an all- wise and infinite God; nor can an}' 
 34 
 
530 
 
 religion find favor in His sight which will not excite men to imitate 
 and practice the divine benevolence, the divine bounty, the divine 
 generosity. All creation invites us to that love which becomes us as 
 the children of God. God is our sole and sovereign good. His 
 beneficence is illustrated by the luxuriant vale, the waving harvest, 
 and the fertilizing stream. The expanseless ocean, the starry sky, 
 the earth pouring forth her teeming fruits in proper seasons, are all 
 faint reflections of infinite goodness and beauty and tokens of God's 
 love. He draws us to Himself by " the chords of Adam " and the 
 bonds of love. And as He loves us, so does He desire that we love 
 our fellow-man. 
 
 The imperative necessity of Christian charity was repeatedly en- 
 forced by His own blessed lips, and when death was about to sepa- 
 rate Him from the dear disciples of His love. He left them as an im- 
 perishable legacy, as the badge of brotherhood and affiliation in His 
 Church, the precept of fraternal charity, which embodied the prac- 
 tice of benevolence, the relief of the poor, the needy, the outcast, 
 the sorrow-stricken, and afflicted sons of humanity. Wherefore, He 
 said to them in the most touching and pathetic language that the 
 tender and paternal solicitude of His divine heart could inspire : " A 
 little while I am with you; little children, love one another. A new 
 commandment I give to you, that you love one another. By this 
 shall aU men know that you are My disciples, that you have love for 
 one another." 
 
 But what gave power to His precept, point to His persuasion, and 
 force to His commands, was the sweet attractiveness of His own 
 illustrious example, the incomparable charity and boundless com- 
 passion of His own divine heart. For conjoined with the beneficent 
 purpose of securing our redemption, He descended from His throne 
 of glory upon this earth to cast a halo of peace and happiness 
 around the squalid lives of the wretched and miserable; to cheer the 
 sad and broken-hearted; to raise the fallen and the erring, and to 
 spread the light of heavenly sunshine along the rugged path of 
 them who drooped and pined under the cold world's scorn and 
 neglect, the proud man's contumely, and the supercilious contempt 
 of creatures fashioned by the hand of the same God out of the same 
 common clay. And as if to allure us to obedience to His behests, 
 behold He holds out to us the rich promise of magnanimous re- 
 
531 
 
 wards, and emphatically affirms that on the final judgment day, 
 when all mankind shall stand before His throne of judgment, each 
 to receive sentence according to the deeds done in the flesh, those 
 words of celestial consolation, " Come, ye blessed of My Father, pos- 
 sess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," 
 shall be spoken to those who showed mercy to Himself in the person 
 of the poor. "Amen, I say unto you; inasmuch as you have done 
 it unto one of the least, my little ones, you have also done it unto Me." 
 
 In His name, then, do I appeal to you to-day — in the name of 
 Him who is still the healer, the consoler, and the comforter of man- 
 kind — of Him who is still the good Samaritan to lift up the fallen, 
 and the good Shepherd who layeth down His life for the sheep; 
 who leaveth the ninety and nine in the desert to seek out the soli- 
 tary one that was lost. In fine, I plead in the name of Him who 
 styles Himself, and loves to be styled, the Father of the poor, the 
 Protector of the widow, and the dread and implacable Avenger of 
 the wronged orphan's teai's. 
 
 God can " command the very stones to be made bread." The 
 birds of the air and the lilies of the field are fed and clothed by the 
 unseen Arm above and the earth beneath them. '* Who provideth 
 food for the raven, when its little ones cry to God wandering about 
 because they have no meat ? " He can cause the earth to shoot 
 forth her fostering fruits at the tread of the pauper's footsteps, and 
 the green blades of com to ripen at the touch of the orphan's 
 finger. The poverty of His children He can turn to boundless 
 affluence if He gathers them under the shadow of His sheltering 
 wings. But those whom He so loves. He entrusts to the care of 
 others. His own divine Son had not whereon to lay His head, nor 
 the wherewithal to feed His mouth. The night wept her dews upon 
 His sacred head, and His locks were hoar with the mists of the 
 moraing. In the grey twilight of the garden the cold wind 
 whistled upon His shrinking, shivering form. He entered the world 
 as He left it, poor and humble and despised. His cradle was a 
 manger. His house a stall for cattle; His robes were swaddling- 
 clothes in infancy and faded purple raiment in manhood, and His 
 grave was the tomb of a stranger. 
 
 According to the dispositions of God's providence, man, to a large 
 extent, is dependent upon the charity of his fellow-man. It is His 
 
532 
 
 desire that the school of poverty should be the nursery of virtue, and 
 He therefore makes the maintenance of the poor a charge upon the 
 charity of the rich, and those more signally blessed with the good 
 gifts of God. The owners, therefore, of what St. Paul calls the sub- 
 stance of this world, are bound before God " to give alms of their 
 bounty, and do the deeds of charity and mercy." 
 
 I am not of those who idly declaim against the possession of 
 wealth, and, indeed, I hold but a poor opinion of the man whom 
 opportunity, economy, and industry will not carry along the road, 
 not to luxury and affluence, but at least to competence. Deeply to 
 be deplored, indeed, is that shiftless and improvident spirit which 
 has led many of our Irish Catholics, scattered over the broad acres 
 of this continent, to penury and want and rags, aye, and to greater 
 miseries of vice and degradation, too, when to-day they might be no 
 longer hewers of wood and drawers of water, but masters of that 
 elevation and refinement which wealth alone can procure. Riches in 
 themselves are an essential good, and if rightly used are productive 
 of manifold blessings, moral and material, to mankind. 
 
 But the fortunate possessors of this world's goods should " make 
 to themselves friends of the mammon of iniquity that God may re- 
 ceive them in the evil day into everlasting dwellings." "For alms," 
 says Tobias, " delivereth from death; and the same is that which 
 purgeth away sin, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting." 
 God will confer supernatural blessings in abundance upon those who 
 pour out their substance in providing for the homeless, the father- 
 less, the unfortunate, and the poor. " He that giveth to the poor 
 lendeth to the Lord, and He will repay him." Give a cup of cold 
 water for Christ's sake, and take the kingdom of heaven. The hand 
 of the giver is blessed in return for the blessings he bestows on 
 others. And oh ! my friends, 
 
 "It is a little thing 
 ^ To give a cup of water; yet its draught 
 
 Of cool refreshment, drained hy fevered lips, 
 May send a shock of pleasure to the soul 
 More exquisite than when nectareous'juice 
 Renews the life of joy in happier hours. 
 'Tis a little thing to speak some common word 
 Of comfort, which had almost lost its use, 
 Yet, on the ear of him who thought to die 
 Unmoumed, 'twill fall like choicest music." 
 
533 
 
 There are men in existence (but, thank heaven ! for humanity's 
 sake they are few) whose hearts have been hardened by contact with 
 an unfeeling world where the weaker goes to the wall, and whose 
 sympathies have been stifled by the carking cares of flesh and blood, 
 and the griping greed of avarice and selfishness. In the cold cyn- 
 icism of heathenism, tenderness was treated with contempt, and 
 Roman sternness and Spartan severity are proverbial. The religion 
 of Christ sowed the seed of a new principle and a new impulse in 
 the human heart, — the impulse of charity, as embodied in the precept 
 of a loving Jesus. " By this shall all men know that you are My 
 disciples, if you have love for one another." 
 
 But I am encouraged to ask your charity to-day because I know 
 that I address my appeal to kind and sympathetic hearts. You are 
 Christians, sensible of the obligations which your very means impose 
 upon you ; you are followers of a mild and merciful, as well as a 
 good and generous Jesus. And your charity I crave in suppoi-t of 
 a work which engages the loving labors of those who have " left all 
 things" to follow in the footsteps of the Master; of those whom it 
 is your inestimable privilege to have here spending their energies, 
 with uncalculating devotion and with no hope of earthly recom- 
 pense, for the poor outcast waifs of this community. Sisters of 
 Peace they truly are, and angels of mercy, too. Aye, apostles of 
 Charity — exercising a charity which has come straight from the 
 open side of Jesus Christ upon the cross; a chai'ity which is watered 
 by the tears of a suffering Saviour and washed to heavenly bright- 
 ness by the red blood of a bleeding God; a charity which is doubly 
 ennobled by its purpose and by its performers. These women are moral 
 heroines, who illustrate by their lives the Gospel of Christianity and 
 glorify by their deeds the Church of God. . They hold the luminous 
 lamp of charity so high, that, like a beacon of beatitude, it may shine 
 upon the eyes of all, that others may " behold it from afar and walk 
 in the brightness of its rising." They come to arouse the world from 
 its sleep of death to a life of zeal and piety, and for that world they 
 toil like galley-slaves only to conquer it for Christ. Night and day, as 
 angels of light and sweetness, they seek out their God-appointed task, 
 cooling the parched lip, moistening the burning brow, and pouring 
 balm into the bruised and bleeding heart. Like the foster-father 
 of Ephraim, they bear their precious burden of infant humanity 
 
534 
 
 upon their shoulders, clasp it to their breasts, shelter it against the 
 unpi tying storm, and fondly place it in the little crib of the found- 
 ling asylum, where it is rocked to slumber by the more than motherly 
 touch of their gentle, loving hands. A Caesar or a Hannibal comes 
 to conquer with sword and shield; but they come by the power of 
 the Most High, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and vice and misery 
 flee before them like chaff before the autumn gale. As long, my 
 friends, as the heart of humanity throbs with the admiration of 
 great deeds, as long as what is high and noble has a claim upon the 
 souls of men, so long shall these queens of creation be held in honor 
 and benediction; so long shall their cry for help reach the chambers 
 of our soul in tones that touch and thrill; so long shall the majestic 
 story of their lives never grow old, the frost of centuries will not 
 conceal its charm, for it will remain to console and to refresh, like 
 the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, never to pass away till 
 the heavens are folded up and time itself expires in the arms of 
 eternity. 
 
 " Who gives himself with his alms feeds three: 
 Himself, his hungering brother, and Me. " 
 
 And how appealing is the object of their charity. Some seem to 
 be such favorites of fortune that they appear to be sent into a world 
 made for their special benefit. As they grow up they are sur- 
 rounded with softness and security. When they fall, they fall upon 
 down; when they walk, they are supported by the arms of affection. 
 All they have to do is to pluck life's rosebuds before they wither and 
 gather life's flowers before they fade. Others seem ill-starred from 
 their cradle. Want and misery watch their ushering into life, sor- 
 row beclouds their days, -and grief attends them to the grave. But 
 of all forms of human misery, what can equal the orphan's woe ? 
 Every stream of joylessness pours its bitterness into the cup that is 
 lifted to its little lips. Every joy and every hope it buries in its 
 parents' tomb. It knows not a father's kindness nor a mother's 
 melting love. It is the very personification of weakness, helpless- 
 ness, and misery. No one to tend them, no one to rescue them 
 from ruin and vice, no one to care for them but the pitying angels 
 above, and the angels of mercy whom God sent to guard them on 
 earth. How many on this bleak day within sound of the bells that 
 
535 
 
 thrill the church steeples with music and call God's people to prayer, 
 are gnawed by hunger and crouch in cheerless hovels, abandoned 
 to hopelessness and despair ? 
 
 To you, good Christian hearts, they appeal with " strong crying 
 and tears " to-day. " Take this child, nurse it, and I will give thee 
 thy wages." As Pharaoh's daughter spake to the mother of Moses, 
 so God speaks to you. " Take these httle waifs, take them from 
 cold, misery, and starvation; take them from a heartless and 
 careless world; take them from temptation, sin, and eternal death, 
 and I will crown the charity with eternal recompense and glory 
 that shall never fade." Blessed, thrice blessed, is that man for 
 whom the orphan's hands are Hfted up in prayer. When you, 
 my friends, are seated at your firesides in the calm and quiet 
 enjoyment of your own happy homes, God grant that then the 
 grateful prayers of sorrow's children may be wafted by the gentle 
 breezes of heaven to the throne of the High and Mighty One. And 
 when the last moments of your transitory existence are at hand; 
 when all mundane magnificence is passing forever from your view; 
 when your dreams and hopes are of a better and a fairer land, may 
 the charity of the deed you do to-day in helping to raise this shelter 
 for the homeless and friendless, inscribe your names in golden letters 
 upon the Book of Life, and secure you the unspeakable joy and un- 
 broken felicity promised to those who have fed the hungry, clothed 
 the naked, healed the sick, sheltered the houseless, and given drink 
 to the thirsty. 
 
 And may the blessing of God and the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ descend in loving mercy upon you this day; upon you and 
 upon your families, your children, your friends, your absent 
 brethren. May the angel of white-winged peace alight upon your 
 domestic altar; may prosperity smile upon all your undertakings 
 and success sweeten all your labors; may fraternal charity link all 
 your hearts together in the benign brotherhood of love; may faith 
 and hope give inspiration to your thoughts, light to your under- 
 standings, and the fire of holy zeal to your hearts, till these few 
 fleeting years be past, the trials of life be over, and you behold the 
 glad sunrise of that eternal morn which dies no more in God's fair 
 paradise. 
 
DESCRIPTIVE AND 
 
 MISCELLAKEOUS. 
 
STORM IN THE ROCKIES.— MOUNTAIN OF THE 
 HOLY CROSS. 
 
 SoMi; summers since I climbed the rock-built breasts of earth that 
 make the mighty mountains of the West. Amid beetling cliffs and 
 frowning crags I heard the swift autumnal gale rush round the 
 eternal rocks in a wail of lamentation, and the. distant cataract's roar 
 resound through shaggy woods in solemn dirge, like the voice of 
 Eolus upcoming from the deadly shades of Orcus' gloom. 
 
 Ketreating along an Alpine avenue of green and glorious pros- 
 pect, the everlasting snows shimmered above my head like belts of 
 silver light, while the forest flowers were springing spontaneously at 
 my feet till the greensward lost its verdure with violets, and moun- 
 tain-roses, red as the blush of dawn, and on the hillsides the 
 vagrant vines empurpled with laughing clusters of wild grapes lifted 
 their ruby lips to kiss the borders of the wintry snow. Strange 
 union of Spring and Winter, — of frost-bound sterihty and luxuriant 
 vegetation. In far prospect rose the blue hills, range on range, and 
 spur on spur, at every imaginary angle, to bathe their cent ury-fun*o wed 
 brows in the sunshine; and the lengthening shadows of the day's 
 decline softened the singular beauties that clustered about me into 
 a sober sadness, as they rose erect in the majesty of silent repose, in 
 the naked sublimity of soHtary grandeur. 
 
 But how wide and sharp the contrast between the placid beauty 
 that decked the unbroken solitude with its sweetest gems, and glad- 
 dened the monarch hills where the keen-eyed eagle builds and 
 reigns, and the scene of hoar austerity and rugged desolation that 
 soon environed me. Wending my way along as chance dictated, I 
 was suddenly encompassed by sheer perpendicular walls mounting 
 a thousand feet in air, and buried in the dim and shallow yastneas 
 
540 
 
 of the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas. The heavens appeared shut 
 down upon my head, and I was left alone with nature and with 
 God. No voice spake in the solemn silence, no sound stirred that 
 native stillness that cast its thrall upon my spirit, save the flow of 
 the torrent as it dashed along to leave those inhospitable wilds. 
 Affrighted fancy ran riot in my brain and conjured shapes and 
 forms, grewsome, dismal, and fantastic. The heavens had previously 
 been clear as a sheet of crystal, or the white marble of Carrara. 
 The sun had shone in the pure blue vault with singular lustre, but 
 now was covered with a pall of portentous blackness. The storm- 
 king was riding on the ambient air, his chariot drawn by the ele- 
 mental Furies. The mad lightning tears the darkness with trident 
 tongues of fire, and the first glaring flash was followed by a ponder- 
 ous peal that seemed to shake the foundations of the mountains, and 
 was long reverberated through the clefts and caverns of the Royal 
 Gorge. I saw it shoot along the ragged heights, not less broken or 
 abrupt than its own fiery track. I saw the lurid gleam dispel for an 
 instant the inky blackness, and reveal the shining summits and 
 glowing pinnacles of the precipices, standing like si)ectral sentinels 
 in the front of some gigantic army. Under a circular canopy of 
 crimson cloud I seemed to see the Wind-God sitting on his nebulous 
 throne, not in tranquil majesty, but in the puissance of his venge- 
 ance, with a righteous indignation blazing on his countenance. 
 In uplifted hand he held a sheaf of thunder-bolts, flaming 
 with the lurid lightning which he hurled with crushing energy 
 against the adamantine mountains. Ah ! never was my mind so 
 forcibly impressed with the Creator's might and omnipotence. 
 Every flower is a hint of His beauty. His beneficence is illustrated 
 by the luxuriant vale, the waving harvest, and the fertilizing stream; 
 but, here, rock piled on rock, mountain poised on mountain, the 
 rugged inaccessible heights, the resistless torrent, and the tempest's 
 terrible rush and roar, — all bespoke, with trumpet tongue, that Power 
 that moulds and arranges matter as He will. How vast, how magnifi- 
 cent is nature ! How insignificant is the material part of him, that lit- 
 tle being, for whom nevei-theless all has been created. How striking is 
 the inference that the soul, the spiritual essence, is the nobler part, 
 as it should be the chief care of man. Font nuhilia Phoebus ! The 
 storm soon subsided, and amid the alternate mist and sunshine a 
 
541 
 
 radiant rainbow began to gild the gloom and spread his arch with 
 all its glorious and transj^arent hues across the fleecy whiteness of 
 the snow-capped crags. The sun poured forth his heavenly dyes 
 with ineffable tenderness and beauty, as if nature dipped her pencil 
 in celestial colors, and drew it across the sky with a hand as gentle 
 and as delicate as Love's. The mountains now flung darkness from 
 them like a discarded mantle floating in many a careless fold and 
 break of shadow, and bowed theii' mist-crowned heads in parting 
 salutation to the lord of light ere he sank to slumber on the pillow 
 of night. Emerging from the gloom of the gorge I stood in silence 
 to pay my homage on this lofty Altar of Nature and of God, when 
 lo ! as the seal and wanant of my worship, there breaks upon my 
 vision, my first view of the Mountain of the Holy Cross. 
 
 On the crest of this continent it stands to tell the ages that the 
 country of Columbus is the heritage of Christ; — ^the blood-bought 
 patrimony of Him who, ere He died upon the tree of the Cross, 
 had said, " If I be lifted up, I will draw all with Me." 
 
II. 
 
 BATTLE OF THE INVISIBLE POWERS. 
 
 The sixtli chapter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, in graphic and 
 vivid language, depicts the nature of the spiritual struggle which 
 every soldier who follows the standard of Jesus Christ is called upon 
 to wage war before he can claim the incorruptible crown of the 
 Christian conqueror. The Apostle, in his usual grandeur of expres- 
 sion and sublimity of thought, at one and the same time indicates 
 the character of the contest and the conditions of the victory. The 
 valiant soldier of Christ must be strengthened in the Lord and in 
 the might of His power; he must put on the armor of God, which 
 signifies that he is to stand firm and immovable against the shock 
 and onset of the enemy, having his loins girt about with truth; hav- 
 ing on the breastplate of justice, and his feet shod with the prepa- 
 ration of the Gospel of peace; in all things taking the shield of faith 
 wherewith he may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the 
 most wicked one; taking on the helmet of salvation sCnd holding in 
 his good right hand the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of 
 God. 
 
 By this noble and figurative speech the Apostle plainly shows 
 what the Old Testament so frequently declares, that life is indeed a 
 warfare, with the warrior mailed. The Captain of our salvation Him- 
 self apprizes us that He came not to send peace, bvit the sword upon 
 the earth. He, the King of mankird, has raised His royal standard 
 before the eyes of the universe; for nineteen centuries it has floated 
 over the world; He invites all men to follow, and He promises an 
 immortal crown as the price of the victory. Thus "the root of 
 Jesse has become an ensign unto all ihe people." The royal road of 
 the cross is not strewn with the roses of rest and the flowers of tran- 
 quillity; it lies not through the pleasant, smiling fields of prosperit}^ 
 
543 
 
 but it is made rough and sharp and rugged with the briars of afflic- 
 tion, the thorns of adversity, and its stones are splotched with the 
 ensanguined feet of those who have struggled and fought along its 
 weary way. As we lift our eyes we behold in fancy's mirror the 
 long and innumerable train of the souls of the just made perfect 
 who have passed along this dolorous way, and who, through many 
 tribulations, have worked their way into the kingdom of God. 
 Moses doffed his shoes at Horeb's burning bush only to plod it bare- 
 foot till he climbed up to God from Phasga's solitary height. Abra- 
 ham and Isaac and Jacob, the seers, the sages, and the patriarchs; 
 valiant Joshua and holy Samuel; Solomon the wise, Samson the 
 strong, David the inspired, Jeremias the sorrowful, Ezechiel the 
 eagle-eyed, Isaac the rapt and subHme, Judith the valiant, Esther 
 the beautiful, Job the afflicted, kings, rulers, and sovereigns, and 
 subjects have trodden with pierced hearts and bleeding feet through 
 the same gateway of sorrow and suffering. Behold, likewise, the 
 long procession of ermined virgins, pale-faced confessors, red-robed 
 martyrs, and shining apostles whom Christ redeemed unto God by 
 His blood, wending its way over the same rugged steeps, toiling 
 along the same prickly paths, scaling the mountain of son*ow, till 
 finally they sat down in the verdant valleys of that far-away land 
 where there is no darkness and no death; where there is no twilight 
 gloom; where not merely gems of night engirdle silver moons, but 
 where in placid grandeur and matchless splendor the eternal sun of 
 noon beams down its genial, kindly light through the bright and 
 perennial day of eternity. 
 
 And now they rest from their labors; for their works have fol- 
 lowed them. Inebriated with the torrent of delights that flow from 
 the fullness of God's house, they hunger not, nor thirst, any more. 
 Under their own vine and fig-tree they take surcease from toil upon 
 the green turf of Paradise, beneath the sweet and sheltering crook 
 of the good Shepherd who unbarred unto them the gates of His 
 heavenly fold. Pain, sorrow, and affliction have lost their sting. No 
 more they know the voices of want, the pangs of povei*ty, and the 
 gloom of exile. Friendless, alone, and forsaken, poor and outcast 
 and despised, they breasted the rough current of earthly strife 
 through many aching years; now in the happy mansions of the 
 blessed, they are glorified with its brightness of immortality ; in 
 
544 
 
 those serene and tranquil regions the white light of heaven, shooting 
 from the unclouded splendor of the Lamb, shines upon them; they 
 wear the crowns woven by angel hands; they sing the songs that 
 angels sing; they hear the songs of God make joyful melody; they 
 are exalted, as the cedars of Lebanon; they breathe the balmy, in- 
 cense-laden air of the celestial country; they are counted among 
 the children of God, and among the Saints is their happy lot for 
 eternity. 
 
 Such, indeed, is the glory of their triumph. But they suffered 
 before they entered into glory; their sufferings were short, but of 
 their glory there shall be no end. They struggled before they bore 
 away the victory; they stood strong in the strife; they fought the 
 good fight; they kept the faith, and thus they finished their course 
 in honor and everlasting renown. 
 
 We are equally the sons of God, called to the same combat; en- 
 gaged in the same strife; fighting for the same crown; and hoping 
 for the same reward in the same heavenly kingdom. We are equally 
 the soldiers of Jesus Christ. " Facere et pati romanum est," ex- 
 claimed the loyal subject of proud, imperial Rome: — To act and to 
 suffer is the duty of the Boman citizen; but with greater force and 
 truth than could be spoken by any pagan mouth, it is the province 
 of the Christian citizen of the kingdom of God, to act and suffer for 
 the sake of Christ, with invincible constancy and firmness, as long as 
 life shall last. Nor does death, the arbiter of most contests, close 
 the struggle. The age-long enemy of our salvation defies even 
 death to wrest from him his victim. Lucifer, the genius of evil and 
 prince of darkness, during life's hot warfare, raises his sable stand- 
 ard in ojoposition to the ensign of Jesus Christ. Like unto the 
 Philistines, who came forth against the children of Israel, he pitches 
 his camp in view of the camp of Christ, and sounds hell's bugle- 
 blast to rally his myrmidons against the followers of the Nazarene. 
 For, as the Apostle tells us, " Our wrestling is not against flesh and 
 blood merely, but against principalities and powers, against the 
 rulers of this world of darkness, and against the spirits of the 
 wickedness in high places." But the end is not yet; for, as it is 
 a spiritual struggle, it is carried on beyond this fierce kingdom of 
 war, into the world where spirits in dread spectral array are mar- 
 shalled against spirits, and hard by the very throne of God, in open 
 
545 
 
 view of all the heavenly hosts, the undaunted cohorts of Satan seek 
 to exert their empire, and snatch the trembling, fluttering soul from 
 the everlasting arms of its Creator. 
 
 It is upon this last terrible onset, this struggle unto death, that we 
 would invite our readers to cast an earnest eye. The idea of this 
 struggle is not unwai'ranted by Scripture, and is even hinted at in 
 the Epistle just cited; but in order to form a more lively and vivid 
 conception of the scene, so fraught with moment to us all, we do not 
 consider it amiss to invoke the ^DOwers of imagination to properly 
 portray the picture. 
 
 No sooner shall the soul cast off the corruptible clog of the body, 
 whose gravity now binds it to the earth, than the disembodied spirit 
 shall soar far beyond its present sphere. With the eagle eye of 
 fancy we shall follow on its course. Far beyond the confines of the 
 solar system, and the extreme Hmit of the orbit of the most eccentric 
 comet, the soul is impelled by an invisible and irresistible power. 
 Having traversed the wide domain of space, there breaks upon its 
 vision a plain of such amazing magnitude, that no mortal faculties 
 can comprehend its vastness, and from its outer bounds there rises a 
 circle of mountains whose summits pierce the gauzy clouds of that 
 ethereal region. The soft and silky grass, like velvet to the touch, 
 robes the plain in its emerald mantle, and from its green bosom, 
 flowers of unearthly beauty upspring in plenteous profusion, fling 
 their fragrance on the warm and balmy air. The palm, the olive, 
 and the graceful vine bloom in abundance, and their bending boughs, 
 pendant with fruits and blossoms, overshadow the crystal streams 
 that flow in soft murmurs by their feet. In the blue haze beyond 
 are beheld the glistening outlines of a great and gorgeous cit3\ Tyre 
 and Babylon are as hamlets in comparison therewith. It is older than 
 Memphis of immemorial time, happier than joyous Nineveh; Rome, 
 or Athens, or hundred-gated Thebes, in all their glory, fade into in- 
 significance by the side of its matchless beauty and dazzling splen- 
 dor. Golden glows from sublime sunsets shed richest radiance on 
 its domes and towers, and tip with sapphire fire its tuiTets, steeples, 
 and minarets. 
 
 As the soul is gazing on this spectacle, there suddenly breaks forth 
 a wild burst of music, which floats downward upon the breeze; it is 
 grand, sublime, and majestic, as if it embodied in its strains the 
 • 35 
 
546 
 
 mighty contest of unseen and invisible powers. The city gates fling 
 wide open, and an innumerable multitude of glorious beings pour 
 out like the waves of the sea upon the plains. The banners of the 
 cross, the ensigns of salvation, burn like fire all along those living 
 lines. Column after column, rank after rank, they march along, till 
 that wide-extended plain is covered with an interminable sea of life. 
 Now they take their stand at the bidding of their commander, and 
 flanked along the hillsides of the unbounded valley, the vast as- 
 semblage turns its glances upon the soul with a tender and troubled 
 regard. In the hush of expectation, a sound, as the blast of a 
 mighty trumpet, rings out of a pillar of inscrutable cloud, which casts 
 its shadows upon the scene. It is the voice of the angel of illumin- 
 ation, come to enlighten that soul upon the glorious works of God. 
 Touching its eyes, the scales of darkness fall away, and an all-pene- 
 trating power of vision and conception is communicated. As far as 
 the immensity of space extends it can behold suns, worlds, systems, 
 comets, planets, satellites, revolving, wheel within wheel, system 
 within system, in solemn and ceaseless harmony, about the throne of 
 the Almighty; and awestruck, it listens to the angel's voice, "Raise 
 thine eyes, O child of Adam, and behold the wondrous works of God. 
 See now those countless spheres, tenanted by troops of living 
 creatures, all differing in intellectual and corporeal life. See the se- 
 cret workings and hidden springs of those eternal laws which govern 
 the economy of nature, the harmony of the universe, and which 
 so bewilder thy proudest speculations and thy self-sufficient philos- 
 ophy. See how the previsions of Omnipotence are realized in the 
 dispositions of providence; how temporary pain contributes to last- 
 ing happiness, and partial evil is overcome by universal good ; how 
 disease and calamity and death are not the offspring of fatuity or 
 chance, but are wrought by the power that regulates every molecule 
 of matter, every alteration of the elements, whether in reproduction 
 or decay, for the fulfillment of God's designs, and the common good 
 of all. Behold how great are the works of God, and perceive the 
 ways of divine wisdom. See, in all those numberless worlds, how 
 the prescience of Omnipotence provides for every gratification condu- 
 cive to the felicity of the inhabitants of this favored clime. In yon- 
 der realms they enjoy rest from their past toils, and there is none 
 who is debarred from the full exercise of the pleasures of his con- 
 
547 • 
 
 dition. Look out on yonder fair landscapes; more glorious than 
 time-bom earth can show; listen to those strains of music, sweeter 
 and more seraphic than man's ear hath ever heard; and amongst the 
 green groves and verdant bowers of everlasting spring, see those 
 bands of ancient friends holding sweet intercourse with one another. 
 The light of memory the Eternal quenches not in the minds of His 
 children. Behold, now, how the commands of God are not an arbi- 
 trary exercise of authority, but the result of that merciful foreknowl- 
 edge which ordains all things for its glory and man's final good; how 
 sinful deeds infallibly beget misery and sorrow; how virtue is the 
 father of happiness in the present life, as in that which is now past. 
 See the regions of the blessed, in which all the innocent gratifica- 
 tions of the sense are excelled only by higher intellectual enjoyments; 
 and look down upon the dungeons of the damned, where ' no order 
 but everlasting horror dwelleth.' Behold all this, and see therein 
 the power and majesty and glory of that Being whom in life thou 
 hast despised; but after life cometh death, and after death, the judg- 
 ment." 
 
 Then is the soul made to stand before the pillar of cloud, which 
 in a twinkling is rolled back, and at once is discovered a sublime 
 and elevated throne, round which a halo of glory spreads its gold 
 and emerald light. Upon that thf one sits the Ancient of Days in the 
 might of his power; he is clothed down to the feet with a garment 
 of light, and his feet are as if bunied in a furnace, his voice like the 
 sound of a multitude of waters, and his countenance like the sun 
 shining in its strength. And from out that throne the vivid light- 
 nings shoot, the living thunders roar, and voices unnumbered sur- 
 round it; and the seven candelabra, the lamps of the house of God, 
 bum beside it in unquenchable splendor evermore. 
 
 In front of the throne is a vast lake of molten glass, transparent 
 as crystal, and below its surface, writhing in its smouldenng depths, 
 or wandering amongst the crags and caverns of the gloomy rocks, 
 are the crowds of fallen angels, awaiting the issue of the judgment. 
 In obedience to the voice upon the throne, the arch-fiend rises from 
 the molten sea, and envelope^ in smoke and lurid lightning, he 
 stands eager, restless, ready to spring with tiger-like ferocity upon 
 his victim. In his lineaments appears a dusky grandeur, and his 
 face and mobile features are ever changing with the varied and con- 
 
548 
 
 tending emotions of hatred, fear, scorn, malice, and defiance. In 
 language such as only the hate of hell can inspire, he accuses the 
 soul, standing there, lonely and friendless, of crimes long forgotten, 
 and sins unshriven and unrepented of. He denounces it as a false 
 friend, a faithless husband, the defiler of innocence, the utterer of 
 slander, the enemy of mankind, and a traitor to God. Then shall 
 the sealed book of the law of God be opened by the recording angel 
 and the long catalogue of sins shall be arrayed in evidence against 
 the soul; and as each dark deed and every open or secret sin of 
 thought, word, and act, is passed over, the affrighted soul shall sink 
 deeper in the molten sea of glass, till its choking and convulsive sobs 
 of anguished despair shall awaken echoes through the halls of the 
 living and the chambers of the dead. The powers and principalities 
 of the kingdom of night shall exult with demon glee; a commotion 
 of joy shall run through those realms of fire; those fiendish eyes shall 
 be lit with baleful flashes of light; and those serried hosts of the 
 Satanic empire shall make a final assault upon the citadel of God to 
 seize the soul and bear it away in triumph to perdition. The angelic 
 faces and the immortal countenances of the Saints shall be over- 
 shadowed with sorrow and darkened with grief; but the Omnipotent 
 Judge upon the tlirone will sit serene, passionless, and immovable. 
 
 Oh ! shall we not ask ourselves what fate shall overtake our poor 
 souls in that hour of terror and dismay ? Shall it be our dismal 
 doom to be borne off by the legionaries of hell to the land of ever- 
 lasting misery, or shall we be exalted with the elect in the kingdoms 
 of glory ? On which side shall we stand ? On the side of Jesus 
 Christ, or on the side of Lucifer ? What we are now, we shall be 
 then. As the tree falls, so shall it lie. If now we are arrayed under 
 the sinister ensign of Satan, to Satan shall we then belong. But if 
 now we are true soldiers of the Cross of Christ, if now we fight 
 under the blood-stained banner of Him who gave up His life to 
 conquer death and hell, then shall we rise, victorious and triumph- 
 ant, to share with Him the glories of His conquest. 
 
 And when the awful accusations of the enemies of our salvation 
 shall be poured out against us, the voice of the Angel of Mercy shall 
 be commanded to speak in our regard, if aught can be alleged 
 against the judgment of reprobation. And the angel of sweet mercy 
 falling down before the throne, shall with pleading accents say, " O 
 Lord God, inscrutable and omniscient. Thou knowest all that may 
 
549 
 
 be said, but for the reproof and instruction of Thy creatures, Thou 
 veilest Thy eternal glory to sit in judgment on this poor child of 
 clay. Much that has been accused against him is, alas! too true; 
 nay, perhaps not one tittle of the charges can fall to the ground. 
 But, O God, Thou knowest the strength of temptation; the wealniess 
 of the spirit, and the willingness of the flesh; and Thou hast wit- 
 nessed the long and unavailing struggles, the pangs of remorse, the 
 tears of contrition, the yearnings after virtue, the unbreathed aspira- 
 tions, the untold sighs, the earnest prayers of this benighted, erring 
 soul. Yet, if even these avail not to arrest the awful judgment, be- 
 hold he died hoping in Thy unbounded mercy; confiding with an 
 unfaltering trust in the merits of Thy precious blood, which can 
 wash away his every sin, and though they be as scarlet, make them 
 white as snow, and though as red as crimson, make them pure as wool." 
 
 His plea for mercy thus ended, the recording angel shall extend 
 his hand and lift the soul out of that glassy sea, and lead it to the 
 foot of the great throne. And the Ancient of Days shall rise, and his 
 right hand upon the sealed book of the Law and the Gospel, his 
 voice like the sound of many waters shall be heard unto the utter- 
 most parts of his celestial empire : " Father, deliver this soul from 
 the dai'kness of the pit and the devouring jaws of hell; my blood 
 hath paid the price of ransom." 
 
 Then shall a blaze of glory shine out upon the scene; the halls of 
 heaven shall ring; the demon fiends, with yells of horror and 
 chagi-in, shall descend through the lake of liquid fire, and the 
 thunder of their despairing groans shall reverberate through the 
 caverns of hell. But the murmur of joy and triumph shall go forth 
 from the angelic host; solemnly, sweetly, musically, it shall swell, — 
 the eternal diapason of praise and benediction to God and to the 
 Lamb forever and forever. 
 
 And the poor penitent soul, its tears of gratitude falling fast, shall 
 look with speechless joy upon the lineaments of her Deliverer, who 
 was Himself a '' Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," now re- 
 deemed from the dishonor of the grave, and now beaming with 
 glory. And from His own hand it shall receive the crown of ever- 
 lasting amaranth, and the music of many voices shall resound upon 
 its ear, sweetly, lovingly bidding it an eternal welcome to that happy 
 land, where is no more sin and no more death, neither sorrow nor 
 crying any more forever. 
 
III. 
 
 AN EXCURSION TO THE WEST. 
 
 DELIVEEED AT EOSEVILLE EINK, NEWAEK, N. J. 
 
 Some time ago, impressed by the consciousness of failing health, 
 and guided by the counsel of Esculapian oracles, I, in secret ses- 
 sion with myself, unanimously voted to try travel as a means of 
 vitalizing energies which, like the candle flickering in the socket, 
 seemed on the point of extinction. The medical man's dictum har- 
 monized with my own judgment and chimed with my desires, and 
 I hastily concluded to launch out for a constitutional airing into 
 some terra incognita, some land in the hazy far-away. I was told to 
 go by easy stages, and my first impulse was to walk, but then I re- 
 membered the arduous task of Susannah, whose renown and hero- 
 ism were heralded to posterity in that pathetic ditty which we used 
 to sing in childhood: 
 
 '* "When she walks she lifts her foot, 
 And then — she puts it down again." 
 
 Be this as it may, one thing was just as clear to me as cod-liver 
 oil (of which I had taken haK a hogshead) — go I must for my con- 
 stitutional, or I should say my " By-legal " airing, for, in the lan- 
 guage of some undiscovered wit, my constitution was all gone, and 
 I was living on the by-laws. 
 
 It being securely settled that, like a well-regulated family on the 
 first of May, I had to move somewhere; I grabbed my gripsack, and 
 forthwith my friends filled it with an unstinted stock of the best- 
 assorted — advice, and many other mementoes worth about ten cents 
 per gross. Reader, did you ever travel ? Then you know the value 
 of advice. 
 
551 
 
 Now, I aver that advice is a prime commodity to have; for as 
 one of the most sublime satisfactions that a duped and soul-stung 
 sinner can encompass on this side of the moon, is to sting some 
 other milksop, more unsophisticated than himself, so you can evoke 
 a world of amusement from the process of seeking out some unsus- 
 pecting dolt, and pulverizing him with the sledge-hammer slugs of 
 your advice. I was surfeited, soaked, saturated with advice. I was 
 advised to the verge of imbecility; advised to go to Halifax, Hong 
 Kong, and other summer resorts " too numerous to mention," and 
 were I to act out all the advice, to go anywhere, would be a harder 
 task, than to make bricks without straw, or jump a hole in two 
 jumps. Therefore, pitching counsel, like physic, to the dogs, in a fit 
 of frenzy, I tossed the advice I had to soak in a mackerel baiTel, 
 • and, boarding the Pullman gravel train, I proudly, heroically, grandly, 
 set sail for the wild and wooded West, " Nor cast one longing, lin- 
 gering look behind." 
 
 When the novelist begins the second chapter, infallible instinct 
 tells him these touching, tearful lines: — "Let us suppose twenty 
 yeai's to have elapsed since the events recorded were enacted." In- 
 spired by this ecstatic examjDle, we shall suppose 1,000 miles to have 
 elapsed upon the wings of time, since we so sadly shook hands with 
 that noble king of nature, the tuneful mosquito that loungeth around 
 New Jersey, and now we find ourselves, if we are not wholly lost, in 
 the cosmopolitan city of Chicago. 
 
 Scholars have grown gray in striving to amve at a knowledge of 
 the origin of this name. Some claim that it is an Indian name. I 
 am sure they are hugging a delusion, for a certain playwright vouch- 
 safed to me the only satisfactory^ solution. He told me that in the 
 early days a company of ballet-dancers swooped down upon the 
 tow;n, being carried thither by a lake schooner. One of the hardy 
 pioneers, who was then being educated at Cowboy University, stand- 
 ing upon the shores of the lake, espied the schooner, and seeing the 
 vast array of womanhood upon the vessel, exclaimed: "Darn my 
 buttons; why, here's a whole ' She-cargo.' " I think this precludes 
 all further discussion on the subject. 
 
 Now, my friends, before I touch upon any Western topic, I must 
 exhort you to enlarge your ideas; let your imagination swell, and 
 your mind expand, because everything relating to the West is great. 
 
552 
 
 glorious, and gigantic. A certain preacher once desired to convey 
 to his hearers a conception of the stupendous. And so, from the 
 bonded warehouse of his imagination, he loaded ten trucks with 
 this continental comparison: "Suppose, my friends, that all the 
 rocks and stones in this wide world were all welded into one great, 
 mighty stone. Suppose that all the seas and rivers on the earth 
 poured their waters into one to form one great almighty sea. Sup- 
 pose that all the men that ever lived were amalgamated into one 
 great, almighty man. And now, my friends, suppose that great 
 almighty man were to pick up that great almighty stone and cast it 
 into that great almighty sea, great gosh ! what an almighty splash it 
 would make ! " Permit me, then, to magnify your mental measure- 
 ments of the wondrous West, by asking you to conceive about half 
 of the monstrous mud-baU that we inhabit, as flattened out into an 
 unperipherous prairie pancake, and toasted on the great gridiron of 
 occidental creation. 
 
 Chicago, the worst burnt spot upon this colossal pancake, is the 
 first morsel that melts in the tourist's mouth. 
 
 To my, perhaps, distorted vision, Chicago is like the big boy who 
 had outgrown his trousers, and, for the sake of compensation, had 
 donned his daddy's great-coat. Hence the " City of the Lake " pre- 
 sents a curious combination of meanness and magnificence, of 
 finished elegance and elegant incompleteness, The majestic mantle 
 of New York, which she fain would wear upon her not unshapely 
 shoulders, fits her with unbecoming amplitude. Her palaces are 
 princely in their beauty and proportions; her shanties are sublime 
 in their unsightliness. Her private dwellings are in great part 
 travesties on human habitations; her public buildings are certainly 
 superb. The Post-office, Board of Trade, hotels, and depots are 
 monsters of brick and marble, and they are masterpieces of grace 
 and massiveness in point of architecture. 
 
 It would appear that the average family has a horror of wash-day 
 at home, so numerous are the laundries; and the myriads of eating- 
 houses gently convey the hint that the only cooks employed at home 
 are persistent purveyors of the toothsome, savory, and historic hash. 
 The women, so Dame Rumor vouches, are veritable Patagonians; 
 and like true specimens of the genus plantigrade, they cover with 
 one foot more inches of the earth than any other living thing that 
 
553 
 
 walks. The boulevards are built immensely wide for their per- 
 ambulations. The men have, by some fatuity, one idea imbedded in 
 their craniotomy, and that idea is that the world is stupendous, but 
 alas ! the world, to them, is circumscribed by the suburbs of Chicago. 
 I saw two objects in Chicago, which at any time I would jog a thou- 
 sand miles to witness, and these were the panorama of the battle of 
 Gettysburg and that of the battle of Shiloh. If that most excellent 
 artist, J. L Sullivan, Esq., ever gazed upon these graphic illustra- 
 tions of the hideousness and horrors of war, it fails me completely 
 to conceive how the redoubtable champion of the clenched digits 
 can still glory in a thirst for human gore. 
 
 Whilst viewing the panorama of Shiloh I heard General Prentiss 
 refute an oft-told tale of calumny affecting General Grant. It has 
 been long alleged that General Grant was, upon the occasion of that 
 memorable conflict, seen to betray an exuberance of spirits scarcely 
 compatible from the standpoint of a prohibition philosopher, with 
 the gravity with which a gi'eat general should comport himself in 
 such an awful scene of cai'nage. It has been asserted, furthermore, 
 that the general was not always on the field or in positions where his 
 presence was required for the inspiration and direction of his 
 soldiers. To both these allegations General Prentiss, himself an 
 actor on the scene, presents a flat, emphatic, and indignant denial. 
 Such testimony I deem an ample vindication of the memory of a 
 man and soldier, who was the second savior of his country, and 
 whose valor the American people will always admire and bless. 
 
 The Catholic Church in Chicago has grown with astonishing 
 rapidity, and bids fair to rival in wealth, numbers, and social in- 
 fluence, the far older community in the great metropolis of New 
 York. Her clergy are active and alert, and by their indefatigable 
 labors are doing signal service to the cause of religion. They are 
 brainy men; full of zeal and energy; educated and refined; devoted 
 and self-sacrificing, and, with a single eye to the Master's service, 
 their magnificent enterprise and splendid esprit de corps will infal- 
 libly secure for the Church immense acquisitions and unparalleled 
 progress. The Kev. P. A. L. Egan and the Rev. T. F. Galligan are 
 among the most energetic pastors of the city, and when they meet 
 in social converse, at the latter's frugal board, the picture is one in 
 which genius sits smiling on geniality. I am more indebted to them 
 than this page can tell. 
 
554 
 
 The Catholic population of Chicago is now about 550,000. The 
 parochial schools educate over 50,000 children, and in addition there 
 are four colleges and academies, and select schools in great num- 
 ber. The future of the faith is secure in Chicago. Archbishop 
 Feehan and the accomplished and distinguished bishop of Peoria 
 exercise a commanding influence in Illinois, and their united labors 
 have contributed more than any other cause, perhaps, to the consolida- 
 tion and strengthening of Catholicity in that section of the country. 
 
 A.S a parting salutation to Chicago, candor constrains me to de- 
 clare, that, although its climate is "beastly," yet, the great city by 
 the lake is a charming, a killing place — for hogs. The great Fair 
 will, no doubt, render the insolence of the Chicagoan insufferable. 
 The buildings must be seen; they cannot be described. Like Chi- 
 cago herself, they ai*e the biggest things on earth. 
 
 We now turn to the next chapter of this nomadic novel. 
 
 It is now to be supposed that five hundred miles have ambled off 
 to the confines of the rearward since the events before recorded be- 
 came fit matter to be handed down to history. The intervening 
 space I span in silence, because there are but two objects to be seen 
 therein, worthy enough to claim a place in our veracious chronicles. 
 They are Prohibition and the Mississippi. I couple them in the 
 same breath on the principle of associating opposites; and they stand 
 to each other in the relation of contrariety, for, while Prohibition 
 won't " hold water," the Mississippi will. I think that just about 
 the same amount of whiskey enters the mouth of Prohibition, as 
 there is of water emptying out of the mouth of the Mississippi. 
 
 Rapidly traversing the State of Iowa, we soon come to the cozy 
 little city that nestles in the Bluffs, and overlooks the turbid waters 
 of the vast Missouri. 
 
 Omaha is the wonder of the trans-Missouri empire. It is the 
 most extensive manufacturing town along the line of the Missouri, 
 Kansas City excepted, and not fewer than eight railroads have there 
 a ccjnvergence. The value of the manufactures last year was some- 
 thing enormous, and the output of one single establishment, the smelt- 
 ing works of Mr. Nast (in which al5o Mr. Balbach, of Newark, New 
 Jersey, has a large interest), was little short of 30,000,000 of dollars 
 in value. In 1865, Omaha had not one single manufacturing estab- 
 lishment; not a paved street, nor a mile of road for urban transit. 
 
555 
 
 Up to that time tlie post-office was a two-legged institution, wlio car- 
 ried the mail in his hat and passed it around to anxious individuals. 
 The present post-office, which cost $350,000, is inadequate to the 
 wants of the city, and a new and larger edifice is (or will soon be) 
 under constiTiction to meet the demands of a population of 1 60,000. 
 On all sides, lifting aloft then- grimy smokestacks, are to be seen naU 
 factories, oil mills, safe works, breweries, distilleries, foundries, and 
 the largest smelting and refining works in the United States. 
 
 Omaha is the headquarters of the Union Pacific Railroad, and 
 their towering building on Ninth Street contains a small army of 
 officials and clerks to transact their gigantic business. It is besides 
 the headquarters of the Army of the Platte, from which annually are 
 disbursed, according to the pay-roll, above $25u,000. Just outside 
 the city is Fort Omaha, where a regiment of soldiers is garrisoned 
 in all " the glorious cii'cumstance and pomp of ' peace,' " at the ex- 
 pense of Uncle Samuel. Within the palings of the enclosure, upon 
 a wide lawn of velvet green, the stalwart, well-fed soldiers go 
 through their drill exercises, amid the blare of bugles and the sound 
 of cymbals; and thither large concourses of peoj^le repair to see the 
 soldiers execute their military evolutions, and listen to the soul-in- 
 spiring strains of one of the most magnificent bands that ever de- 
 lighted human ear. As I scanned the appearance of those defenders 
 of our nation's honor against the marauding proclivities of our 
 copper-colored and unwashed fellow-citizens, the doomed and luck- 
 less Redskins, and saw them all so red, rubicund, and rosy, hale 
 and hearty, plump and corpulent, I could not but conclude that a 
 soldier's bread and bacon are far less better baked in the fiery fur- 
 nace of war than in the frying-pan of peace. And whilst intellect- 
 ually chewing this cud of thought, a story swept across my memory 
 which tells a tearful tale of the sad extremity to which the gallant 
 followers of the illustrious Lee were reduced in the late unpleasant- 
 ness between the North and South. Riding out of camp one day, 
 Lee observed one of his famished men engaged in the colic-breed- 
 .ing occupation of eating green persimmons. " Hold on there, my 
 man," said Lee, ** don't j'ou know that green persimmons are not fit 
 for food ? " " Pm not eating them for food," responded the hungry 
 soldier. " Pray, what then are you eating them for ? " " I'm eating 
 them," was the reply, "to di-aw my stomach up to fit my rations." 
 
556 
 
 Catholicity flourishes in Omaha like the green bay-tree, and edu- 
 cational institutions under the conduct of Catholics are as excellent 
 as they are numerous. There is a noble college founded and en- 
 dowed by the late Edward Creighton, an Irishman and a Catholic, 
 who amassed a colossal fortune in the West by his enterprise and 
 industry. He donated for the purpose the magnificent sum of 
 $300,000, and the college doors are thrown open, free of admission 
 charges, to all applicants, without distinction of race, creed, or color. 
 Would that there were more Catholics in the country of this man's 
 sterling stamp and golden generosity. His brother, John Creighton, 
 has taken up the work where Edward laid it down, and his benefac- 
 tions to religion have been of princely munificence. But recently 
 he has constructed a hospital, which cost $100,000, out of his own 
 purse; and, all together, the donations given by this family to chari- 
 table and religious uses run into the millions. Other notable and 
 generous Catholics are John Eush, John Code, ex-Congressman 
 McShane, Patrick Ford, Thomas Swift, Franklin Murphy, and the 
 Cuddihee brothers, who conduct the largest beef-packing establish- 
 ment west of the Missouri Biver. 
 
 The records of the Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia for 
 1888-91, contain some interesting data referring to the early history 
 of Catholicity in Omaha. Mr. T. J. Fitzmorris (whose friendship 
 we are happy to claim), the writer, informs us that the first Mass 
 was celebrated by the Rev. W. Edmonds, of the Dubuque diocese, 
 in the court-room of the old State -House, in the summer of 1855. 
 Father Edmonds was the pioneer priest in the Nebraskan Territory. 
 Gov. Cuming assigned lots for the building of a church, but owing 
 to the recall of the priest and other causes the building was deferred 
 until the spring of 1856, and the edifice being completed in August 
 of the same year, it was dedicated to divine service by Rev. Father 
 Scanlan, of St. Joseph, Missouri. When the Vicariate of Kansas and 
 Nebraska was divided in 1859, the Rev. Jas. O'Grorman, of the 
 Trappist Monastery of Dubuque, was appointed Vicar- Apostolic, and 
 having been consecrated in St. Louis, he decided at the urgency of 
 the citizens to fix his episcopal see in the town of Omaha. 
 
 Bishop O'Gorman was succeeded by that amiable and scholarly 
 prelate, Rt. Rev. James O'Connor, who arrived in Omaha in Septem- 
 ber, 1876. At that date the population of the city was but 27,000, 
 
557 
 
 and at the time of his demise it had gi'own to 140,000. When the 
 Bishop assumed charge of his Vicariate it extended as far west as 
 Montana, north as far as the Canadian Hne, and south to the borders 
 of Kansas. This territory has since been divided into six dioceses. 
 The CathoHc population in Omaha had increased from a mere con- 
 tingent to 16,000 before Bishop O'Connor's untimely demise; the 
 value of church property to more than $300,000; and, whereas he 
 found but two churches and one school upon his entrance into the 
 Vicariate, he left at his death eleven churches, many schools and 
 academies, and a Catholic college within the limits of the city. As 
 an instance of his sagacity in temporal affairs, it is said that land 
 purchased by him for $120 per acre is to-day worth $10,000 by the 
 acre. 
 
 A chaste and feeling tribute to the memory of the Bishop is con- 
 tained in the pages of the Records above aUuded to, written by my old 
 friend. Rev. P. F. McCarthy, the present rector of St. Philomena's 
 Cathedi-al in Omaha. To this reverend gentleman I am indebted 
 for the above facts and several valuable hints regarding persons and 
 affairs in Nebraska. 
 
 In the last year Omaha has been distracted by reHgious dissen- 
 sions, often verging to violent manifestation, between Protestants 
 and Catholics. The llame of discord has been fanned by a secret 
 organization, known as the A. P. A., whose virulence and bitterness 
 have never been exceeded in the wildest days of Orangeism. We 
 hope cooler counsel wiU prevail, and all this friction, so injurious to 
 the temporal prosperity of the city, speedily disappear. The tem- 
 perate and conciliating, and no less convincing, speech of the present 
 Bishop, Rt. Rev. R. Scannell, has done much to allay in-itation, dis- 
 sipate prejudice, and restore the reign of good feeling. May it 
 endure. 
 
 In former days, as one travelled over the undulating prairie west 
 of the Missouri, no uncommon occun-ence was the feai'f ul prairie fire. 
 The tall, luxuriant grass, which waved idly before the wind during 
 the daytime, was aU ablaze at night, and as the fire-demon spread his 
 lurid light a most terrific tableau was presented to the gaze. The 
 scene was awe-inspiring beyond aU description. It is as if the fur- 
 naces of heaven were opened, and the whole circle of the horizon 
 blazes like ten thousand cities in conflagration. Lucifer seems 
 
558 
 
 loosened from the igneous deep. As the wild wind forges ahead the 
 furious flames in surging billows of fire, the fantastic fire-fiend roars 
 and shouts, and sweeps the wide-extended plains with the burning 
 besom of destruction. High, and higher still, roll the seething 
 clouds of smoke; upward dart the forked tongues of living flame, 
 and far off on the bosom of the distant clouds is reflected the ther- 
 mal glow of the firelight. It is the Sirocco of the plains. Spark, 
 flash, scintillation, blaze, every form of combustion, is produced by 
 the wildfire. 
 
 There is no sight of such majestic brilliance, and such startling and 
 portentous demonstration, as the night-glows and demoniac glare of 
 a fleet and frisky prairie tire. Dismay and apprehension mark the 
 settlers' faces at the approach of the winged and destructive element. 
 At the first token of invasion the people bustle about to prepare for 
 defense, either by building a counter-fire to rob the voracious fiend 
 of fuel, or by ploughing up the ground around the farmer's home. 
 With the advent of civilization these fires have passed away, for 
 fields of wheat and corn are planted where once the rank vegetation 
 sprouted from the soil. Man is ever the master of the elements. 
 
 The plains west of the Missouri have been the stamping-ground of 
 many strange adventurers, marching towards the coast in quest of 
 fortune. The well-known expression, " Pike's Peak or bust," is said 
 to have originated in Nebraska. Two foolhardy persons, at the time 
 of the great excitement in '49, set out for the Eldorado of their hopes, 
 alone and unattended, having painted on their wagon the above 
 motto. When they reached the camping-ground of the bloodthirsty 
 Sioux, they paid the penalty of their folly with their lives, and were — 
 " busted." Making west of Omaha, one enters the Platte Valley, the 
 overland route for travellers journeying on the nation's highway to- 
 wards the setting sun. The Platte Valley, which extends almost 
 through the centre of the State, has been in frontier days the scene 
 of many- dire and deadly conflicts with the savages. It will be never 
 known how many wayfarers met their doom on this dread itinerary. 
 Many and many a victim went down before the tomahawk of the 
 relentless savage, and many a traveller's bones were left bleaching in 
 the sun, till some friendly hand, in decency for the dead, deposited 
 them under the scanty covering of some hastily constructed mound. 
 But on this vast prairie, to-day, not an Indian appears, and where 
 
559 , 
 
 herds of buffalo roamed in days gone by, and shook the earth with 
 ponderous tread, is heard the sound of the saw, the hammer, and the 
 church bell, the snort of the engine, and the roar of the tearing, 
 thundering train. 
 
 The large caravanseries which used to move from Indiana, Illinois, 
 and the western reserve of Ohio, towards the Pacific Slope, and the 
 Mormons on their way to the Mecca of their hopes, all passed along 
 this route. The " bullwhacker," as he was called, was an institu- 
 tion of the early days in this region. The big, burly bullwhacker, 
 with his prairie schooner and his raw-boned beasts of burden; his 
 fierce beard and unkempt hair; his long whip and cruel goad for 
 prodding the poor oxen, — all this has passed away and the glory 
 thereof departed. Of the bullwhacker, it was said that his oath and 
 his whip were the longest ever known to mortal man. The handle 
 of the whip was about three feet in length, but the lash, of braided 
 rawhide, was seldom less than twenty. This lash was an inch in di- 
 ameter near the handle, and thence it tapered to a point, terminating 
 in a ribbon-shaped thong, humorously called a " j)ersuader," under 
 whose gentle influence the most refractory ox winced, like a baby be- 
 neath the stinging birch. 
 
 The bullwhacker is admittedly the champion swearer of America. 
 He can curse the mate of a Mississippi River steamboat deaf, dumb, 
 and blind, in less time than it takes to wink, and his solemn assever- 
 ation, strengthened by a whole cyclone of oaths, is good to the effect 
 that he can drink more whiskey. 
 
 Gen. Sherman tells this story of the bullwhacker : A film in St. 
 Loufe desired to discourage the continual blasphemy of the bull- 
 whackers in their employ, and issued orders to their train men to 
 discharge any man who should curse the cattle. Besides, wagon- 
 masters were selected more for their piety than for any extensive 
 knowledge of their duties. The first outfit, under the new manage- 
 ment, had not proceeded far before it was fixed fast in the mud. A 
 messenger was dispatched to St. Louis to give the information that 
 the cattle would not puU a pound unless they were cur'sed as usual. 
 Permission to do so was asked and granted, and the caravan pro- 
 ceeded on its way. 
 
 The agricultural advantages of the Platte Valley are on all sides 
 visible; and a very thrifty class of farmers occupy the land. This 
 
560 
 
 region was almost treeless a few years ago, and now many farm- 
 houses are surrounded by large groves of cottonwoods, which are in- 
 digenous to the soil. The rolling lands in the vicinity of the valley 
 fairly groan with fertility in small grain, while the bottom lands, 
 nearer to the water, are better adapted to the cultivation of corn, 
 which matures later in the season. In the spring and summer one 
 of the most enchanting sights that greets the traveller's eye, and 
 fairly captivates the Eastern farmer, is the Valley of the Platte. No 
 stumps or stones are found to impede the progress of the plough. 
 Nay; you may march for weary miles, and with the strictest scrutiny 
 it is impossible for you to pick up a pebble as big as a Boston bean; 
 and the reason is, that the fine black surface soil, so rich and loamy, 
 is undoubtedly the accumulations of ages of vegetable decay. Of 
 this land it is literally and exactly true, that you have only " to 
 tickle it with a hoe and it will laugh with a harvest "; and therefore, 
 fertilizing is here utterly unknown. 
 
 I promised the farmers of the Platte that I would say a good 
 word for them in the East; for being anxious for more company, 
 and desirous, like big-hearted men, to share their prosperity with 
 others, they 'felt sore and keenly sensitive about the discouragement 
 lately given to immigration to Nebraska from high authority upon the 
 subject. Many of them went thither a few years ago with hardly 
 any more capital than brawn and brain and a little dole of dollars; 
 but they rolled up their sleeves above the elbows, broke the virgin 
 soil, built their little sod shanty, set down groves of young trees, 
 and then bade prosperous breezes blow and kindly suns to smile, and 
 to-day every man who had the grit and tenacity to " stick " is, if not 
 in the way of wealth, at least in the position of undisputed inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 I make here a few digressions, which, however, cannot be justly 
 deemed wholly irrelevant to the matter in hand. 
 
 My first collateral observation has reference to a very practical 
 question, which, I make no doubt, many have a strong inclination to 
 hear answered, viz. : " What advice are you prepared to give to 
 those who are disposed to assume the risk of bettering their for- 
 tunes by migrating to the West ? " 
 
 I respond unhesitatingly to those who would propound this query, 
 that, if their prospects here are poor, they could hardly do anything 
 
561 
 
 3nore conformable to wit and wisdom than to settle upon a good 
 farm in the West, provided, however, that they possess the proper 
 qualifications for succeeding in such an enterprise. And what are 
 they, you ask? Well, they are as follows: 1st, some slight knowl- 
 edge of the subject; 2d, resolution and energy, and tenacity to hold 
 on; 3d, a moderate amount of capital wherewith to begin. Again, 
 it may be asked, how much capital is needed for the start ? The 
 answer to this is conditional. It depends upon the locality, the land 
 itself, and the mode of occupation. Some lands are still to be had 
 upon Government titles. They may be obtained by homesteading, 
 timber-claiming, by pre-emption, or by purchase from some vacat- 
 ing settler. The most desirable lands are, however, already pre- 
 empted, or taken upon some other claim. Despite the immense in- 
 flux of settlers, there yet remains considerable land, sufficiently en- 
 ticing to be homesteaded. It may be that it will require irrigation 
 to be productive. Good farms, already highly cultivated, are ob- 
 tainable at from $8 to $25 per acre, and that, too, not fifty miles 
 west of the Missouri River. 
 
 In view of these facts, then, I think it is deeply to be deplored 
 that many of our young men have not long since been influenced by 
 the sound dictum of Horace Greeley: "Young man, go West!" 
 There they would have acquired health, wealth, and happiness. They 
 would inhale the air of free men. They would taste of the horn of 
 plenty. . They would learn to love labor as the sweetest joy, and 
 they would rejoice in that manly spirit of independence, which fills 
 the soul of every child of nature, when he is conscious that he has 
 raised himself, by his own toil and talents, to the proud position of 
 being " monarch of all he surveys," whilst " his right there is none to 
 dispute." How far better such an existence than the soft and en- 
 ervating life of the puny scribe, who plies his plodding pen the 
 whole day long for a pittance that is hardly equal to the great 
 emergency of paying board and purchasing tight trousers How far 
 better an existence in the open air with the fresh, exhilarating breeze 
 fanning health upon the cheek, than the dismal, dark, and dreary 
 life of him who, in the grime and soot and smoke and gas and steam 
 of the factory and the foundry, slaves and drudges the time away, till 
 his vitahty is prematurely sapped, and he lies cast, stranded — a shat- 
 tered wreck — upon the shores of life when he ought but begin the 
 36 
 
562 
 
 voyage. I trust that the gentler sex -will excuse my temerity if I ven- 
 ture to suggest to them that there are some most successful lady farm- 
 ers in the West. And I will go further and say (though disclaiming the 
 least pretence to critical capacity in these matters), that I think that 
 they have all the refinement of manners, grace of deportment, ease, 
 elegance, and good-breeding, of the most aristocratic and blue-nosed 
 Boston belle. I actually saw and shook hands with a buxom, stal- 
 wai-t, rosy, fresh, and picturesque young damsel who harrowed with 
 her own hands 160 acres of her father's land. She was as pretty as 
 a picture, and as realistic as a rose, and she did not seem as if, like 
 some of our Eastern girls, she was fed on baked ^ peanuts and a 
 grasshopper on toast, once in every week. 
 
 The next point I would notice is, that a large portion of the "West 
 is, or was, almost wholly destitute of arboreal vegetation. It is to be 
 here observd that there is a large portion of the earth's surface 
 marked by the absence of trees, and that these sections have gener- 
 ally the same conformation. To prove this I have only to mention 
 the steppes of Asia, the pampas and the llanos of South America, 
 and the prairies and flat lands of the West. Now, all these terms 
 have an identical signification, and denote that nearly all compara- 
 tively level regions of the earth's great land-masses are distinguished 
 by the peculiarities of vegetable growth, and the study of its char- 
 acteristics is a better index of the under surface, and the climatol- 
 ogy of any given locality than the science of geology can possibly 
 be. Now the essential feature of these level tracts is the absence 
 of trees. Thus nearly 90,000,000 square miles of Asia are entirely 
 foreign to arboreal foliage. Most of this region is of a somewhat 
 high altitude. And, as in the case of the Asiatic high plateau, so we 
 in North America have an elevated region, intersected by mountain 
 ranges, and situated towards the western side of the continent. In 
 nearing this mountainous division of the continent, we traverse an 
 immense surface as level, apparently, as a successful politician's 
 head, but gradually, imperceptibly, increasing in height till it 
 touches the base of the Rocky Mountains; there a mile high. Now, 
 this sloping belt has a width of more than five hundred miles, and 
 its length is incommensurable, for it extends north from Mexico to 
 the Arctic Ocean. Now, while this whole broad belt is by no means 
 devoid of the lower forms of vegetation, the absence of trees is 
 
563 
 
 nearly everywhere observable. With the exception of those cotton- 
 woods that border upon the banks of streams and rivers, there is 
 but very scant verdure, and that, principally, comprises bunch-grass, 
 sage-brush, buffalo-grass, and cactus plants. What are the causes 
 for the curious coincidence between the flatness of the earth and the 
 absence of trees ? Many who have devoted study to the subject are 
 led to the conclusion that the lack of foliage in these places is due 
 to several causes, which, in some localities, are concurrent, and in 
 others are separate. These are the character of the soil, the altitude, 
 the temperature, the moisture, and the general characteristics of 
 climate. West of Chicago, to the Mississippi, as far as the Missouri 
 and for some miles beyond, the grassy vegetation has an almost 
 tropical density and rankness; but, except in spots, the surface is 
 comparatively treeless. The reason for this, it is alleged, since moist- 
 ure is sufficiently abundant, is found in the nature of the soil, which 
 being the ooze or residuum of the lakes which once covered this 
 region with their waters, is almost impaJpably fine, and therefore 
 not favorable to arboreal growth. 
 
 When we proceed yet farther to the west the soil is of a coarser 
 character, and then the rich and luxurious grasses disappear, or 
 yield place to the cactus and the scrubby sage-brash, but the trees 
 are still conspicuously absent, or the number found are like the 
 angel's visits, few and far between, and those few are of dwai'fed 
 and stunted dimensions. The cause of this, it is believed, is due 
 to altitude, to the temperature, but, pre-eminently, to the marked 
 deficiency of moisture. Many scientists who are familiar with the 
 circumstances attending the development of the trans-Missouri 
 plains and the high plateau adjoining the base of the Rockies, assert 
 that this vast system is rapidly undergoing most noticeable cHmatic 
 changes. One thing is certain, that whereas a few years ago the 
 rainfall was hardly sufficient to moisten a rose-leaf, it is now 
 nearly heavy enough to dispense with irrigation. And the trees are 
 beginning to flourish. And this they say is the cause of the in- 
 creased rainfall. Others declare that the more copious rains are the 
 cause of the greater growth of trees. But, I suppose that it is a 
 poor rule that will not work in both directions. As the man re- 
 marked, who was told that the first step towards the acquisition of 
 wealth was the possession of a good wife, and who answered that 
 
564 
 
 the first step towards the possession of the wife was the acquisition 
 of wealth. Be all this as it may, one thing seems quite patent, viz., 
 that Providence is adapting the conditions of the climate to meet 
 the requirements of the onward march of civilization and develop- 
 ment of man. 
 
 In Nebraska the Legislature has set apart one day in the early 
 spring, called Arbor day, upon which the inhabitants engage in the 
 hearty, wholesome exercise of tree-planting; and the man who 
 plants the most and best is unequivocally regarded as the largest 
 benefactor of his age and race. 
 
 About 190 miles west of Omaha is Kearney, called after the dash- 
 ing General of that name. This place and Kearney Junction, a few 
 miles west, were at one time great shipping points for Texan cattle. 
 The Texan herders, or cowboys, as they are commonly, if less 
 'euphemistically called, were wont to visit here in large numbers to 
 indulge the pleasant pastime of "painting the town red." The 
 herders were, as a class, rough diamonds, the purpose of whose ex- 
 istence upon this planet would puzzle a philosojjher of the Concord 
 school to point out. They revelled in long, unkempt hair, ferocious 
 beards, broad-brimmed hats, and beautifully fitting cowhide boots. 
 Every man of them who had any self-respect and philanthropic 
 feeling for his species, carried a small arsenal about his belt, and 
 blazoned upon his banner of peace and good-will to men the tender 
 sentiment, " Beer or blood." They are accomplished horsemen, 
 riding usually in the saddle sixteen out of twenty-four hours. They 
 have, despite their paltry peccadilloes, one great and lofty ambition, 
 to wit, to become " a devil of a fellow," and impartial history attests 
 how nobly they have filled the bill. Living violent lives, they died, 
 many of them, violent deaths, with their martial boots upon them, 
 •and went down to the vile dust " unwept, unhonored," etc., except 
 for the tears that were shed by the heartless settlers because they 
 did not sooner shuffle off. It is but just to say that the character- 
 istic cowboy, as a peculiar institution, is rapidly running to seed. 
 The pernicious influences of civilization make the noble creature 
 succumb who was absolutely whiskey proof; and the ruthless laws 
 of the land have laid their iron grasp upon his Colt's revolvers, and 
 now he must perambulate the bleak prairie " a poor unprotected 
 male," at the mercy of every savage, Eastern dude, or London cock- 
 
565 
 
 ney, that, like a vampire, may pounce upon him and seize him for a 
 prey. 
 
 A few hundred miles west of the Missouri there is a decided 
 change in the character of the soil and vegetation, and from the 
 dark, rich loam seen in Illinois, Iowa, and Eastern Nebraska, the 
 surface soil seems pregnant with alkaline ingredients. The countiy 
 is covered up to the base of the Rockies with a short and shrivelled- 
 looking grass which sprouts up in tufts and bunches, and gives to 
 the land an aspect of steriUty and desolation. Yet, they say it is 
 the richest grass that ever grew, and that cattle of all descriptions 
 will forsake all sorts of fodder to browse upon the wholesome and 
 nutritious buffalo-grass. 
 
 It is a singular circumstance, and one which to my mind, at least, 
 plainly points to the finger of God's providence, that, as the buffalo, 
 whose natural food this gi'ass was, disappears from the plains (there 
 now remain but a few in the National Park), so does the grass vanish 
 with him, and give place to other forms of vegetable growth. 
 
 A very curious and interesting feature of the plains of Western 
 Nebraska, and of parts of Colorado and Wyoming Tenitory, is the 
 vast number of populous little cities, inhabited by those cunning 
 creatures, the prairie-dogs. This quaint little quadruped is gen- 
 erally as corpulent as an alderman, and as spry as the famous 
 Kansas City bed-bug that reads the hotel register to discover the 
 number of the boarder's room. They burrow in the ground for 
 habitations, and the excavated earth forms a mound or hillock, 
 whereon the puny puppy perches, with fore-paws uplifted like a 
 kangaroo, and whence he emits a snappish little yelp that sounds 
 somewhat similar to the bark of the pestiferous poodle which the 
 Fifth Avenue belle so proudly patronizes, and which the street-arab 
 fondles with a brick. 
 
 In the same subterraneous hotel, the prairie-dog has, as fellow- 
 lodgers, the burrowing owl and the loathsome rattlesnake. I do not 
 absolutely vouch for the veracity of this assertion, for I saw neither 
 of these genial gentlemen consorting with the dogs, but I have the 
 story upon the most respectable authority. AVhat congruity, or 
 harmony, or fellowship forms the connecting link in this happy 
 family I cannot pretend to say ; and many think that the deluded 
 dog is nourishing vipers in his bosom who accept his hospitality 
 only to devour his four-footed children. 
 
566 
 
 Some reference to the Indian, I suppose, is expected. 
 
 The Eedman's race is run. I am not among those who think that 
 he is not susceptible of civilized influence, but he is now so degraded 
 and besotted that his cure is desperately hopeless. Yes; the "soul- 
 bursting orator " is soon to sleep in sempiternal silence. " Lo ! the 
 poor Indian," says the poet, and low, indeed, he is. " He reads his 
 doom in the setting sun." A cruel fate he knows follows him, and 
 will do so to the end. The white settlers have but little sympathy 
 for this child of misfortune, and with them the only good Indian is 
 the dead Indian. It is surpassingly sad to witness a whole race of 
 God's people undergoing ruthless extermination. What wonder if 
 at times the Kedman makes a break for liberty. 
 
 The recent rising, with its bloody issue at Wounded Knee, is but 
 one small item in this sanguinary drama. The Indians were expect- 
 ing their deliverer. Much speculation has been indulged as to the 
 origin of the Messiah craze, but it was, in my opinion, beside the 
 mark. It is not improbable that it was the result of a lingering 
 tradition received years ago from the Mormons, who, to proJ)itiate the 
 Indians, represented themselves as their deliverers, and told them 
 that the day of emancipation would be in the future, when the su- 
 premacy of Mormonism was assured, and all the world united under 
 the banners of the Messiah, who, as he had come once, so would 
 come again to visit the Western Hemisphere. 
 
 However this may be, the late outbreak had many provocations. 
 An ungenerous soil had not responded to the efforts of labor, and 
 the severity of the season brought untold suffering. Sickness was 
 prevalent and the mortality was depressingly large, and to their sad 
 bereavement constant reference was made in the Indian ceremony 
 of the " ghost dance." Pinched by hunger and saddened by calamity 
 it was no wonder that their minds reverted to the ancient hope of 
 deliverance, which the more restless spirits among them fanned into 
 a flame, which culminated, not in the coming of the Messiah, but in 
 the calamity at Wounded Knee. 
 
 A correspondent gave the following pathetic story at the time of 
 the disaster : 
 
 " A striking picture, and one that appeals to the heart in favor of 
 the Indians, was seen in the church at Pine Eidge, which served as 
 a hospital for the wounded prisoners. The pathetic picture of men, 
 
567 
 
 women, and even girls and infants, stretched upon couches of loose 
 hay and covered with quilts, on both sides of the narrow aisle; the 
 sanctuary covered with sheets and clothing, and the festoons of 
 cedar hanging overhead, while the light, streaming through the 
 stained-glass windows, shed a soft glory on the sad scene, — all this 
 was strange and touching. The sick were tended with unfaihng 
 patience by their own poor people, and the strongest young braves 
 were seen to handle a dying girl with all the delicacy and tenderness 
 of a woman. 
 
 " On the night of the battle came in one young woman Hterally 
 torn to pieces by bullets — breast, shoulder, hips, all injured. Though 
 apparently dying she was a marvel of pluck and endurance. She 
 still wore the sacred robe of the ghost dancers, pitted in several 
 places with leaden missiles and bedaubed with blood. Blood-stained 
 feathers clung to her matted hair, and the ghostly face, with its clear- 
 cut Roman outlines, was smeared with paint. As the doctor bent 
 over her to cut away the dress, she said : * Yes, take away the sacred 
 robe; it is a wortliless thing. They told me it would keep off the 
 bullets of the whites, but it did not.' 
 
 " The endurance of the Indian was wonderful. Men and women, 
 sorely wounded, were seen crawling into the agency after a journey 
 of eleven days in cold and hunger, exposed to the rigor of the biting 
 elements, and fainting from loss of blood. The mind refuses to con- 
 ceive of the horrors of the journey." 
 
 Such is the testimony of an intelligent eye-witness, a young lady, 
 whose intimate acquaintance with the subject entitles her to speak. 
 
 These Indian troubles are a disgrace to the nation, and reflect se- 
 verely on the management of those who have control of the Redman. 
 This Government has a tremendous account to render to posterity 
 for the bad faith, dishonesty, and untruthfulness which it has uni- 
 formly displayed towards the unhappy aborigines. An eminent 
 jurist declared, on the peril of his reputation, that not a single ces- 
 sion of land was made by them which could not be attacked in a 
 court of equity on the ground of fraud and injustice. The Sioux 
 gave up the section of their reservation with extreme reluctance, and 
 only after being coaxed, wheedled, and threatened into making the 
 surrender, for it is a matter of notorious certainty that Sitting Bull 
 or Red Cloud never would have freely and voluntarily yielded. But 
 
568 
 
 fate is relentless. The Indian fades before the white man's sinister 
 and baleful gaze. A few generations hence and the last ill-fated 
 and forlorn member of a once mighty race shall wend his way in 
 sorrow to the shores of the Pacific, and ere he disappears forever in 
 the darkness of oblivion, shall once more turn his despairing and 
 bloodshot eyes over the hunting-grounds of his forefathers. 
 
 Journalism in the West has attained a high degree of perfection. 
 The newspapers in some of the larger cities might almost vie with 
 the great dailies of New York and Philadelphia. Those of Omaha, 
 Denver, and Salt Lake City are admirably conducted, ably written, 
 and are bright, fresh, crisp, and vigorous exponents of the life and 
 thought of the people. Outside the populous centres, however, are 
 found some characteristic specimens of newspaper handicraft. Bill 
 Nye immortalized the Laramie Boomerang, and in that city we spent 
 many pleasant days with the present administrator of the Cheyenne 
 diocese, Father Cummisky. Keport tells of the Rocky Mountain 
 Bugle and the Arizona Howler. Whether they exist, I know not. 
 The editor of the Rocky Mountain Gelt won a prize of $1,000, offered 
 by a syndicate of newspapers for the best appeal in poetry to de- 
 linquent subscribers. Here it is: 
 
 " Lives of poor men oft remind us, 
 Honest men won't stand a chance; 
 The more we work, there grows beliind us 
 Bigger patches on our pants. 
 
 ** On our pants, once new and glossy, 
 Now are stripes of different hue, 
 All because subscribers linger, 
 And won't pay us what is due. 
 
 *' Then let us all be up and doing. 
 Send your mite, however small, 
 Or when the snow of Winter strikes us, 
 We shall have no pants at all." 
 
 Here is a very pathetic piece of obituary anent the demise of a 
 local celebrity named Billy Muckrow: 
 
 " We drop a tear as we record the demise of poor Billy Muckrow. 
 His genial presence and his four-inch smile lent a new grace to the 
 most exclusive saloons in the town. Though he was the last man to go 
 
to bed at night, he was always the first to go on a hunt for horse 
 thieves. And he was a hustler when out with the boys. He never 
 in his Hfe killed a man without a cause; and he never refused to 
 ante up his little pile when he bucked the tiger and lost. * He is gone 
 where the woodbine twineth '; where he tarries till the last trumpet. 
 His departure left a deep gulch in our community, and was a special 
 loss to us. He placed his name upon our books for one year's sub- 
 scription for the Howler, and we offer to his widow the only conso- 
 lation in our power, and assui-e her that the paper shall be dehvered 
 every week on time, with unfailing promptitude and despatch. 
 Terms, — cash in advance." 
 
 Justice is administered in the West with even-handed impartiality. 
 Whenever the regular course of law seems slack-footed, or when xm- 
 usual interest is taken in the criminal, the more swift-dealing pro- 
 cess of the Vigilantes is invoked. There is sometimes a kind of 
 grim mockery of judicial forms in the methods of the Vigilance 
 Committee or the lynchers. 
 
 Early in the fifties, a man had a horse and two donkeys stolen, 
 which he tracked for some distance until he felt able to fasten the 
 guilt upon some Mexican " greaser." The announcement of this 
 news naturallj^ enough demanded drinks all around. "Do you 
 know," said the self-constituted leader, " that shooting these fellows 
 on sight is not just the right way to send them 'cross the liver. Let 
 'em have a fair jury trial, and then string 'em up with the majesty of 
 law. That's the cue." This humane moderation struck a sympa- 
 thetic chord, and the next toast was, " Here's a-hoping that we ketch 
 that greaser." 
 
 A little later they fell foul of a Mexican walking over the hilL 
 " That's the cuss," said the advocate of the law. In a jiffy the Mex- 
 ican was lying upon the broad of his back, bound hand and foot. 
 Happily his Spanish ear did not hear the cry of " String him up, hang 
 the doggoned lubricator, rope the greaser." But he was to be tried 
 b}^ law. A jury was impanelled, and despite refusals to sei-ve, were 
 thrust into a poker room in the rear of a saloon, which did the duty 
 of a court-house. While the jury was deliberating, the noise of the 
 lynching party was heard in a neighboring canon. On their return, 
 the spokesman opened the door of the jury-room and asked the 
 foreman the verdict. " Not guilty," was the answer. " Go back," 
 
570 
 
 yelled the crowd, "you'll have to do better than that." The door 
 was again opened and the verdict demanded. " Guilty," said the 
 foreman. 
 
 "Correct," said the crowd, "you kin now come out. Verdick's 
 correck. We hung him an hour ago." 
 
 Next day the horse was found down the caiion, and the two don- 
 keys behind the saloon. 
 
 A young fellow of twenty was tossed over the range for some 
 petty theft; and as he sprang from the limb with the noose about 
 his neck, he tossed his hands to the gang with sickening levity, and 
 said, " Adios, boys." When the jury viewed his remains the follow- 
 ing day the apologetic verdict was, " Died from hanging around." 
 
 A judge in Montana, having to pronounce a capital sentence upon 
 some unfortunate adjudged guilty of murder, thus gave vent to his 
 sympathy and philosophic sagacity: "After a fair and impartial trial 
 by an enlightened jury, and an eloquent and able defence by your 
 learned and devoted counsel, the Court finds it to be its painful and 
 solemn duty to pronounce upon you the extreme penalty of the law. 
 You are to be hanged by the neck until dead. Yours indeed seems a 
 hard fate. Kesting on the threshold of existence, in the bud and 
 bloom of youth, the world and all its vision of loveliness closes upon 
 you forever, and you go forth to die a bitter death. And yet I do not 
 know that you may so much complain, or that you are destitute of 
 consolation. For it is the profound conviction of most of the 
 learned scientists and philosophers of our age (and in their opinion 
 I concur), that it is a matter of grave doubt whether life be worth 
 living anyhow."* 
 
 I was myself eye-witness of a singular scene. It was an indigna- 
 tion meeting held in Ogden, Utah, whose avowed object was the 
 expulsion of the Chinese from the territory. A noble judge from 
 Idaho came to the meeting in the interest of peace and order, and 
 was proceeding, with judicial argument and vigorous eloquence, to 
 make a plea for the Mongolian race, when, finding that he was 
 vehemently hissed and jeered by the crowd, he suddenly altered 
 the tenor of his discourse, and said: "I mean we should not ex- 
 clude this people except by legal process, but — if we can't do that, 
 
 * My esteemed friend, Rev. English, of Hastings, Neb., is responsible for 
 
 the above. 
 
571 
 
 we must get them out anyhow. ' Peaceably if we can; forcibly if we 
 must.' " I turned away in disgust. 
 
 Leaving Exeter, Nebraska, on a July afternoon, on the admirably 
 equipped Burlington and Missouri road, we traversed, for a hun- 
 dred miles at least, one of the finest farming regions that ever 
 human eye beheld. 
 
 The inky blackness of the night soon passes into that cerulean 
 morning hue which tinges the sky in rarefied regions of the atmos- 
 phere; the sparkhng stars sink out of sight; the lordly sun pours 
 forth his beams and spangles the heavens with his blazing banners, 
 and the faint flush of dawn which broke upon the caliginous cheek 
 of night is succeeded by a blaze of glory. Suddenly all eyes are 
 directed towards a vision of vastness far away, and all exclaim in 
 awestruck accents — The Rocky Mountains! Who that has once 
 beheld them can ever forget his first view of those snow-pointed 
 pinnacles as they pierce the azure canopy above the corruscant 
 clouds ? It takes some time to realize that those great big banks of 
 seeming clouds are not built out of gauzy, gossamer air and sun- 
 shine, but of solid earth and rock, piled up towards the heavens 
 during some antediluvian upheaval of this strange planet of ours. 
 But the illusion is more perfect than any mirage of the deep that 
 ever mocked the land-sick fancy. It is a picture of bewitching per- 
 plexity. Running clear athwart the sky is a shimmering, sinuous 
 thread of light. Its sheen and gUster waver in tremulous streams, 
 which broaden and expand till, like a flash of revelation, it dawns 
 on the beholder that he gazes on the eternally snow-capped sum- 
 mits of the mountains. And we saw this huge handiwork of the 
 Almighty Architect, and we feel now a greater admiration for His 
 omnipotence, and a deeper awe for His majesty than we ever felt 
 before. 
 
 " We climbed the rock-built breasts of earth; 
 
 We saw the snowy mountains rolled, 
 
 Like mighty billows; saw the birth 
 
 Of sudden dawn; beheld the gold 
 
 01 awful sunsets; saw the face of God; 
 
 And named it boundless space." ' 
 
 O Nature ! how grand, how beautiful dost thou appear ! Thy shelv- 
 ing declivities and hills; thy wide-spreading fields; thy awful moun- 
 
672 
 
 tains and precipices either fill the mind with gratitude or with awe. 
 How wildly grand the scenery of the West ! Here a rushing, foam- 
 ing cataract pours its streams along, like the Shoshone tumbling 
 over a declivity of 230 feet; here are bastions, canons, and frowning 
 walls, fretted by the violence of the chafing storms into shapes and 
 forms not wrought by human hands; there are lofty ledges of granite 
 pierced in twain by the corrosion of some century-flowing rivulet, 
 whose slow and silent power impresses not the eye of man. 
 
 " Who that from a mountain height surveys 
 The Nile or Ganges roll his wasteful tide 
 Through mountains, rocks, and deserts, black with shade, 
 And continents of sand, would turn his gaze, 
 And mark the windings of a scanty rill 
 That murmurs at his feet ? " 
 
 Here again the rays of the sun, as they descend upon the summits 
 of the mountains, find their way through the openings in the spurs 
 and ranges, and are so unequally distributed as to produce an effect 
 at once picturesque and magnificent. There rise colossal domes 
 crowned to the base of the summit with pines and cedars, their dark 
 foliage resting in the shade; while in the far distance, but seeming 
 near from its towering height, a mass of rock and snow points up- 
 ward, on which the sun shines in uninterrupted splendor, till its top 
 becomes a very pyramid of frozen light, to crown the awful grandeur 
 of the scene. 
 
 Approaching the delightful city of Denver, the high plateau 
 affords a vantage-ground from which the Colorado range of the 
 Rockies is visible for nearly two hundred miles. Perhaps the view 
 is unsurpassed either in the Eastern or Western Hemisphere. 
 Long's Peak rears its majestic proportions against the azure sky far 
 to the north, and westward Mounts Evans and Rosalie lift their 
 shaggy locks above the other summits of the range. Gray's Peak 
 and James' Peak stand out sublimely among their gigantic brethren 
 in the other direction, and Pike's Peak displays its snow-burdened 
 crest at least eighty or ninety miles to the south. Volumes would 
 be required to delineate, with any justice, the beauty, the grandeur, 
 and the Sublimity of these Titanic monuments of the Almighty's 
 workmanship. Seeing, and seeing only, is appreciation. 
 
573 
 
 There is one of these mountains,, however, which because of its 
 ■sublime significance merits a passing notice. It is the Mountain of 
 the Holy Cross, named doubtless by the pious pilgrims of the Cross 
 who first trod these unbroken wilds. Among the amphitheatre of 
 hills around it, it stands out grand, frowning, majestic, and its neigh- 
 boring peaks bow down before it, as if acknowledging its suprem- 
 acy. A lofty eminence, which seems to forsake the dull and com- 
 mon atmosphere of earth to aspire to a nobler and a purer sky, it 
 inspires the mind with thoughts that soar above sublunary things. 
 Beheld in the splendor of the noonday, or viewed by the softer glow 
 of sunset, its sublime aspect is unchanged. Its feet ai-e hidden in 
 the verdurous hills that stand like eternal sentinels around it. Its 
 craggy head is covered with clouds and mists, tinged by a glare of 
 lurid red and fringed with golden tracery wrought by the em- 
 broidering finger of the sun; its sides, riven and seamed by volcanic 
 or other convulsions, are filled with the virgin snow, and its trans- 
 verse defiles present to the sun's rays an unbroken surface of bur- 
 nished silver, which outlines with sharp precision the form of the 
 Holy Cross. I will let an abler pen describe the glorious symbol, 
 and draw out its pregnant meaning: 
 
 " There it stands, bearing the symbol of man's redemption in bold 
 and heroic characters that dwarf all human graving, and placed 
 upon the pinnacle of the world as a sign of possession forever. 
 
 " The Jesuits went hand in hand with Chevalier Dubois in pro- 
 claiming the Gospel of Christianity through the northern forests. 
 The Puritan brought his Testament to New England; the Spanish 
 banners of victory, on the shores of the Pacific, were upheld by the 
 enthusiastic zeal of the Friars of San Francisco; and the ice-clad 
 cliffs of Alaska resounded to the chanting of the fathers of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul. On every side, the virgin continent was taken in the 
 name of Christ, and with all the eclat of religious conquest. But 
 ages unnumbered before any of them, — centuries obUvious in the 
 mystery of the dim dead past, — the Cross had been planted here. As 
 a prophecy during unmeasured generations, as a sign of fulfillment 
 during nineteen centuries, from always and to eternity, a reminder 
 of our fealty to Heaven, this divine seal has been set upon our 
 proudest eminence. What matters it whether we write God in the 
 Constitution, when here, in sight of all men, is this wondrous testi- 
 
574 
 
 mony to His sovereignty ? Shining grandly out of the pure ethereal 
 blue, high above the din of strife and the turbulence of the storm- 
 tossed clouds, there it stands and says : * Humble thyself, O man. 
 Measure thy works at their true insignificance. Uncover thy head 
 and acknowledge thy weakness. Forget not, that, as high above 
 thy gilded spires gleams the splendor of this living cross, so are 
 My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your 
 thoughts.' " 
 
 Denver is one of the prettiest and most prosperous cities in the 
 United States. Beautiful dwellings succeed one another in endless 
 variety of style and architecture, and with lovely, unfenced lawns 
 surrounding them, vie with one another in grace and attractiveness. 
 Ease, comfort, and opulence are apparent on all sides. Denver is 
 one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and the spirit of 
 the social atmosphere is that of healthy democracy. There exists 
 not that chill, exclusiveness, and ostracism characteristic of many of 
 the pretentious Eastern communities, who wrap themselves up in the 
 mantle of their originality, and, from the lofty perch of ridiculous 
 self-conceit, look down upon all common creatures made of ordinary 
 earth. People's noses don't take an aristocratic turn, soaring sky- 
 ward at an angle of 45 degrees, with a sort of holier-and-better-than- 
 thou expression, which those who do not belong to the supermortal 
 throng are greeted with in the environs of New York, Boston, and 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 The population, too, are cultured and refined. Intellectual pur- 
 suits engage their leisure, and the fine arts find patronage and in- 
 tense appreciation among the educated. In the long twilight of 
 the summer evening, families are seen on the verandas, regaling 
 one another, not with scandal or gossip, but with the latest bit of 
 information on art, science, or literature. 
 
 The climate of Denver is renowned, and physicians in all parts of 
 the United States, and even in Europe, send debilitated patients 
 thither for recuperation. I must confess, that, although some five 
 or six hundred people enter Denver every day, either because they 
 are invalided, or because they think they are, I, for my part, cannot 
 concur in the wisdom of the choice which makes Denver a home, es- 
 pecially for those who have reached the more progressive stages of 
 consumption. The changes of temperature are too abrupt and too 
 
575 
 
 extreme. One may stroll out from his hotel at midday, with the sun 
 resplendent in the heavens, and not a fleck of cloud in any quarter. 
 Suddenly the sky is overcast; the horizon grows as dark as the Sty- 
 gian pit; large, crepuscular, nebulous masses come tumbling down 
 from the snow-burdened mountains in the distance; the big rain 
 pours down upon the earth, and the thermometer sinks with uncom- 
 fortable and chilling rapidity. To me it has never been an occasion 
 of surprise to see an invalid, buoyant with hope and expectation, 
 entering Denver and returning home boxed up for baggage in a 
 shorter space than that which intervenes between the May blossoms 
 and the autumn fruit. 
 
 I am compelled to say adieu to Colorado, without attempting a 
 description of her springs and spas; her gorgeous mountains and 
 her smiling plains; the glories of her Koyal Gorge, and the gran- 
 deur of her Garden of the Gods; her cliff-dwellers and her Indian 
 relics, and her myriads of objects replete with interest to the student 
 of science and nature, just to lift the veil for a single moment, that 
 screens from vulgar view the city of the Latter-Day Saints, and 
 take a passing peep into the mysteries of Mormondom. 
 
 With the history of the rise and progress of this peculiar people, 
 as a sect, most Americans are familiar. Although professedly based 
 on revelation, and founded on the Bible, supplemented by the Book 
 of Mormon as a code of morals, Mormonism, as far as discoverable 
 by me, is a fantastic jumble of Christianity, Judaism, and Masonic 
 rites. Its inner secrets, or what Aristotle would call the esoteric rites 
 and doctrines of the sect, have, in all probabiUty, never been fully di- 
 vulged to outsiders, and a great deal has been written in elucidation 
 of the subject by quill-drivers from the East, who no more pene- 
 trated the charmed interior circle of Deseret than they did the peii- 
 etralia of a Turkish harem. 
 
 The Mormons hold to the existence of God and the divinity of 
 Christ, and they can produce miracles and prophecies with astonish- 
 ing facility. At least, so they say. According to their view, the doc- 
 trines of Christianity were preached by Christ in person, on the 
 American continent, to a race of people called the Nephites. In con- 
 sequence of incessant wars with their dark-skinned neighbors, the 
 Lamanites, the Nephites were utterly exterminated, and the revela- 
 tions of Christ, engi-aved on golden tablets, were interred by Mor- 
 
576 
 
 mon, son of Moroni, and last of the Nephites, in a mountain-side in 
 the interior of New York State. Here they were found (in 1837, I 
 believe) by the scheming, enthusiastic, and fantastical Joseph Smith. 
 
 The revelations, it is claimed, were written in some archaic lan- 
 guage, which the most learned professors of Columbia were incompe- 
 tent to decipher; but by means of a magical stone, called Urim and 
 Thammim, which accompanied them, the translation was effected in 
 the presence of three witnesses, and published to the world as the 
 Book of Mormon. While this book is a supplementary exposition of 
 the Sacred Text, it is held to be of equal authority with it; nay, aside 
 from this new-found key, the Bible is an insoluble enigma. It is 
 worthy of note, that these "original witnesses" all apostatized 
 from the Mormon faith, which, in my opinion, should be enough to 
 shake the convictions of the most iron-clad believer. But no people 
 in recent times ever went through so much vicissitude, and suffered 
 so much of both moral and physical persecution, for the faith that 
 was in them, as the Mormons. Their Hegira from Nauvoo, Blinois, 
 to Council Bluffs, and thence to Salt Lake Valley, in days when such 
 an expedition was fraught with peril and disaster, was an instance 
 of incredible fortitude and patient endurance, united with buoyant 
 hope and confidence, which might well command admiration, even 
 though exhibited for the sake of a delusion. 
 
 The sincerity of the masses can scarcely be doubted by any one 
 who visits the temple in which they hold public service. In response 
 to interrogations by me, I was informed by one who represented 
 himself to me as a nephew of Brigham Young, that he considered 
 the Mormons as divisible into two classes, the knaves and the dupes. 
 The leaders ranked with him as knaves; the multitude were dupes. 
 
 The old tabernacle is an acoustic phenomenon. The old hear-a- 
 pin-drop experience is here literally verified. Though the building 
 has a seating capacity of from six to eight thousand, the slightest 
 whisper is carried with wonderful distinctness into every part of the 
 immense building Such was my personal experience. The temple, 
 or tabernacle, as it is called, in contradistinction to the new temple 
 just finished at a cost of many millions, is built in the form of an ir- 
 regular ellipse, and its concave roof, resembling the longitudinal sec- 
 tion of a great egg-shell, is supported by equidistant pillars, whose 
 spacings serve for doors at frequent intervals. 
 
577 
 
 •The new temple is a marvel. It is hard to say to what style of 
 ^architecture it belongs, but it seems to be a combination of Grecian 
 and Judaic models. There is nothing either beautiful or imposing 
 about the facade, and a few convoluted figures are the only adorn- 
 ment. The walls are at least ten feet thick at the base, and as they 
 rise, with decreasing density, are broken by one set of rectilinear win- 
 dows succeeded by another, almost oval or moniliform. This 
 temple, whose magnitude and material made almost fabulous ex- 
 pense, was built from the tithes of the poor farmers, whose wagons, 
 loaded with the produce of the soil, are seen daily standing before 
 the tithing-office in Church Square. 
 
 Mormon industry is unflagging. They conquered the wilderness 
 and converted it into a flower garden. He that '* holds communion 
 with Nature's visible forms " should feast his eyes on the entrancing 
 beauties of Cashe Valley on a summer's morning late in August. The 
 yellow-tasselled corn is undulating in the valley; the rosy apples, 
 ripe and red, hang blushingly upon the bough; the laughing clusters 
 of the purple grapes depend languidly from the vine; the golden ap- 
 ricots shimmer radiantly through the rustling leaves, and patches of 
 green millet, interrupted by streaks of stubble, which glisten like 
 amber in the sunlight, make a picture of pastoral beauty unsurpassed 
 in Alpine regions, or on the sunny fields of France. 
 
 I have seen the sun go down in grandeur beneath the Atlantic's 
 wave; I have beheld him sink to rest upon the open prairie when 
 Night unrolled her sable mantle, but I have beheld never a sunset 
 more glorious than among the Wasatch mountains which cast their 
 long shadows on the surface of Salt Lake. At first one has no eye 
 but for the general grandeur of the scene, but by degrees the details 
 press themselves upon the attention. The sun casts his pencils of 
 light across the lake in fan-shaped conformation. The light 
 tremulously wavers on the bosom of the water. The face of the 
 mountains is covered with a blue far deeper than that of heaven, 
 and the fantastic distribution of lights and shades assist the imagin- 
 ation to coDJure up all sorts of supermortal shapes and forms. 
 By and by the jagged outlines are warmed into a rich roseate hue, 
 and glow like a wall of living fire. As the sun's disc descends be- 
 hind the towering peaks, the luminary lifts the threads of light 
 from off the lake and they seem to shoot up in iridescent spray to- 
 37 
 
578 
 
 wards the heavens as if to inflame those elevated regions. As he 
 disappears from sight he leaves behind a golden atmosphere; the 
 air is surcharged with color, which slowly, imperceptibly fades away; 
 the violet tint of the mountains deepens and darkens slowly, and 
 softly enfolds a scene of transcendent and overwhelming magnificence. 
 I cannot terminate this subject without the tender of my poor 
 compliments to the Rt. Rev. Laurence Scanlan, to whom I am under 
 deep obligations for many courtesies extended during my stay of 
 two months in Salt Lake City. He is a man who deprecates all 
 complimentary speech, but I trust to his forbearance so far as to 
 say that his labors for the last twenty years among the Mormons 
 have been signally blessed. He is beloved by all classes alike, and 
 no individual influence counts for more than his in the Territory of 
 Utah. He has a noble academy, a college, a large hospital, and 
 other institutions of benevolence and instruction, all of which he 
 erected in a few years, and all of which he has conducted with dis- 
 tinguished success. May he live long and prosper. Some day I 
 may have leisure to revisit him in the most beautiful city of the 
 West. 
 
 THE WEST. 
 
 * ' I love the giant cliffs that skirt 
 
 The bold Atlantic's side. 
 His branching bays and headlands fair, 
 
 And rivers deep and wide. 
 And yet, two thousand miles beyond 
 
 The echo of his wave 
 Are glowing hearths and cheerful homes. 
 
 And spirits true and brave ; 
 Where shines the sun, o'er Ml and dale 
 
 In richest verdure dressed, 
 And spreads as boundless as the sea. 
 
 The bright and glorious West. 
 
 " From stream and lake the fleecy cloud 
 
 Its grateful dew imparts 
 To spreading plains and flowery vales 
 
 With homes for loving hearts ; 
 And there are temples of the sky 
 
 That mock the flight of Time — 
 Dark forest groves that lift their spires 
 
 Majestic and sublime; 
 
579 
 
 And woodland paths, and circling greens 
 
 By fairy footsteps pressed; 
 And giant caves, where love to dwell 
 
 The genii of the West. 
 
 " There sits the monarch of the soil, 
 
 A king upon his throne; 
 There sits the mistress of the hearth, 
 
 Her empire all her own — 
 To all that cluster round their sway, 
 
 A cheering smile to lend. 
 With plenty for their own broad board. 
 
 And plenty for a friend; 
 And gentle words, and glances kind, 
 
 To soothe the wanderer's rest, 
 To bid him see, how frank and free 
 
 The welcome of the West! 
 
 ** Oh, bright and gorgeous are the walls 
 
 That guard the Eastern shore 
 With palace homes and massive piles, 
 
 And halls of classic lore; 
 Where wild ambition, taste, and art. 
 
 And wealth, and power, and gold, 
 Around the fancies of our youth 
 
 Their glittering trappings fold : 
 They bid us grasp our dreams of life. 
 
 With all we hoped for blessed; 
 And yet the homestead of the heart 
 
 Is in the boundless West! " 
 
IV. 
 
 SKETCH OF REV. J. J. CURRAJST. 
 
 My acquaintance with the lamented Father Curran dates from the 
 ^week subsequent to my ordination, when I was assigned to duty by 
 the Rt. Rev. Dr. Wigger, in the Catholic Protectory, Arlington, N. J., 
 of which Father Curran was the Director. I did not consider that my 
 lines were cast in pleasant places in the new field of labor, for I was 
 keenly conscious of the onerous and even, to me, disagreeable char- 
 acter of the office incumbent on me by virtue of my appointment. 
 
 Four years of duty in the management of college boys had 
 brought home to me the well-founded conviction that the task of 
 guiding and controlling the strays and waifs of humanity, gathered 
 from every quarter, under the roof of a reformatory, would prove to 
 be at once most delicate and most difficult. And yet I did not find 
 it so. 
 
 Father Curran's competency for the work of government; his 
 deep insight into the character of youth; his genius for discipline and 
 order; his masterly methods of reproof and correction; his watch- 
 ful eye, his ready hand, his tireless voice, and his enthusiastic zeal 
 and sanguine expectations of success — all contributed to lighten the 
 labors of his co-workers, even so as to turn a task into a pastime. 
 
 With one secret of successful government he was more familiar, 
 and upon it he set more store than do most people invested with the 
 badge of authority. There is a maxim that finds full force and 
 recognition in military administration, and it ordains that an offence 
 shall meet with punishment more speedy and condign when com- 
 mitted under a subaltern than when committed under a superior 
 officer. This was Father Curran's creed of discipline. By its adop- 
 tion he strengthened the arm of authority, and made it felt even 
 more powerfully in his absence than in his presence. Nor did he 
 
581 
 
 fail to trust to his coadjutors a large and confidential share in the 
 management of matters, which might, by many, be reserved for per- 
 sonal control. I know whereof I speak. There is no pain like dis- 
 trust; there is no happiness hke confidence. 
 
 This broadness of view, this magnanimity of mind, characterized 
 aU his relations with his subordinates. It springs only from gener- 
 ous souls with fuU faith in humanity, and it has no lodgment in 
 warped and narrow minds, in distorted and defective understand- 
 ings. 
 
 Father Curran's heart was as large and loving as his head was; 
 clear and capacious. The geniality of his temper was a gleam from 
 the genius of his mind. He was slow to anger and swift to sym- 
 pathize; and the fairest feature of his many-sided character was, in 
 my opinion, his wide compassion for the erring, the strayed, and the 
 degenerate. 
 
 If he was doctus cum libris — ^learned in the books — he had even a 
 riper knowledge of human nature; and, like that Master, whose pro- 
 fessed disciple he was, he could regard with the lenient eyes of pity 
 the foibles and the weaknesses of misguided mortals. And what 
 but the desire to provide a channel for the compassion of his heart, 
 led him so eagerly to take up the task to which his superior had as- 
 signed him of caring and providing for the homeless and wayward 
 children of the Diocese of Newark ? 
 
 With what earnest solicitude and anxious care he devoted himself 
 to his work, so uncongenial in itself, no one knows better, or appre- 
 ciated more warmly, than his ecclesiastical superiors. 
 
 For myself, I regarded with utmost wonder the tireless assiduity 
 with which he performed the dreadful drudgery of answering fuUy 
 and explicitly the thousands of letters received in the year from the 
 soUcitors of the Sacred Heart Union, scattered through the States 
 and Canadas. To every one he returned an exact, aptly-worded, 
 and gracious reply. This kind attention, so affably conveyed, was 
 the magnet of attraction that drew thousands to him and to his 
 work. I am sure that the sad intelligence of his demise will cause 
 many an eye to glisten, and many a heart to grieve, among those 
 who had a share in his labors under the auspices of the Sacred 
 Heart. 
 
 His care for the homeless boys was most tender and paternal; his 
 
582 
 
 love for them affectionate and ardent. For them did he incessantly 
 plan and devise; for them did he expend the best thoughts and 
 energies of his life. It was the aim of his life to help the homeless 
 boys. To lift them up when falling; to soothe- them when failing; 
 to cheer them when succeeding; — this was the goal of his ambition, 
 and it was the object which inspired his waking thoughts by day 
 and disturbed his dreams by night. " I love God and little chil- 
 dren," said Goethe, and if the one love was the index of the other, 
 then, indeed, are many frailties, if he had them, forgiven Father 
 Curran, because " he loved much." 
 
 In the paper he founded — The Catholic Times — he took a pardon- 
 able pride. He had not, indeed, the special training of a journalist, 
 but he had considerable aptitude from nature for success in a jour- 
 nalistic enterprise. He was a terse and vigorous writer, and he 
 dipped his pen in the well of English undefiled. But first and last 
 he was conscientiously exact, and I knew him to spend a fuU week in 
 studying an astronomical problem, to the end that he might render 
 a satisfactory reply to some correspondent in an obscure part of 
 the country. 
 
 From the start the paper was a signal success, and I know that he 
 was strongly averse to surrendering its active control; which, how- 
 ever, he did at the instance of his Bishop, who desired that Father 
 Curran should devote his undivided attention to the work of the 
 Protectory, and to the paper published in the interest of the home- 
 less boys, called The Sacred Heart Union. 
 
 At one time he entertained the project of founding a Sunday- 
 school paper for the Catholic children of the country. Though he 
 knew of the existence of some excellent papers of this character, he 
 considered there was room for more. He was on the point of seek- 
 ing the Bishop's sanction for his undertaking with a view to obtain- 
 ing permission for me to canvass the country to enlist the sympathies 
 of the priesthood in the United States, when I was transferred to 
 another sphere of duty. Why the scheme was finally abandoned, 
 I never fuUy learned. 
 
 Father Curran was variously gifted. He was endowed with more 
 talent than genius; more solidity than brilliancy; more reflection 
 than imagination. His mind was of the analytical order, and his 
 capacity rather critical than creative. His conversation did not flow 
 
583 
 
 with the same freedom as his pen, but it was always impressive and 
 convincing. He possessed, however, a large fund of anecdote, and 
 mirth was, though not predominant, a salient feature of the man. 
 His style was sententious; his speech simple, frank, and free from 
 crafty induction. To diplomacy and dogmatism he was a stranger. 
 
 His manner was warm, cordial, and assuring, and was adorned 
 with the indescribable charm of simplicity. His friendships were 
 stable and enduring, like the evergreen, which braves every blast 
 that blows and still preserves a vital power unconscious of decay. 
 How fondly he was regarded by his own friends and college mates, 
 I have grateful reason to recall. 
 
 Making a visit to Chicago some five years ago, and bearing letters 
 of introduction from Father Curran, I found myself a welcome and 
 honored guest, where elsewise I had been an utter stranger. His 
 letter was a passport of recommendation to the favor of all who 
 knew him. 
 
 I think he never knew what envy was. It has been said of poets 
 and journalists that the praise of their contemporaries is not among 
 their virtues. It was said of Wordsworth that he had no words of 
 eulogy for any of the Lake schools of poets but himself. 
 
 Father Curran was singularly exempt from that 
 
 *' Base envy that at another's fortune pines, 
 And hates the excellence it cannot reach." 
 
 He had warm and generous words of encomium for all his fellow- 
 journalists, and none of that mean depreciation which disgraces the 
 editorial page. 
 
 He was gifted with mechanical ingenuity of no despicable quality, 
 and along this line he directed a large share of his indefatigable in- 
 dustry. Clocks, lathes, and steam engines were as familiar to him 
 as toys to children. He had some knowledge of wood and scroll 
 work, and could, and did, construct various musical instruments. 
 He was an adept in the art of photography; had some acquaintance 
 with medicine and chemistry, and a remedy of his own devising for 
 the cure of hydrophobia was discussed and conceded to have some 
 merits by the medical journals of London and Paris. 
 
 He was a man of multifarious knowledge, and had he concentrated 
 his energies upon some special line of work, I make no doubt he 
 
584 
 
 would have achieved the highest excellence, and won enduring 
 recognition, if not renown. 
 
 He was, likewise, a sound and accurate theologian, and, like the 
 true scholar, he was too naodest to suspect his cleverness. He was 
 not wanting in inflexibility of opinion, for he had the courage of his 
 convictions, but he was not wedded to his views, and he entered 
 upon argument like a man seeking information rather than impart- 
 ing knowledge. 
 
 As a priest he was faithful, zealous, and unfailingly attentive to 
 the manifold duties of his sacred calling. In the early years of his 
 missionary work he was commissioned, owing to the illness of the 
 pastor, to resume the responsible government of the parish of St. 
 John's, Trenton, N. J. He subsequently exercised his sacred func- 
 tions in the parishes of Mt. Hope and Totowa, New Jersey. He 
 finally, after his transfer from the Protectory at Arlington in conse- 
 quence of failing health, he labored, though racked with pain and 
 sickness, with his customary zeal in the Holy Kosary parish at 
 Elizabeth, N. J. 
 
 There death overtook him in the midst of his labors. He met it 
 with the equanimity and Christian fortitude of a true priest of God. 
 He who had shown others how to die, had himself to die at last. I 
 saw him on his sick-bed about ten days before the melancholy end. 
 When our eyes met I beheld him with furtive stroke brush away 
 the silent tear. The action told me all he apprehended. He knew 
 death was at hand. "I will go West, like you, for my health," he 
 said — " that is, if — if God ever allows me to leave here." But he 
 knew it was not to be, and he resigned himself with Christian com- 
 posure to his fate. 
 
 And now he is gone — a friend in all the term implies, a man in 
 all that constitutes true manhood, a priest in all that was pre-emi- 
 nently priestly. He had faults; they were few. He had virtues; 
 they were many. With both he stands before his Maker. It is ours 
 to mourn, and it is ours to mingle our voice with thousands of orphan 
 hands uplifted to Jesus to save His servant for His name's sake. 
 
 To the living we give sympathy; for the dead we prefer our 
 prayer, and on the grave of our departed friend we lay in silent 
 sorrow the flower of loving remembrance, and breathe the sigh of 
 regret. 
 
V. 
 
 STORY OF THE SEA.* 
 
 Some time ago I promised to tell the homeless boys of Arlington 
 some tales about seafaring life, and I must make the promise good. 
 
 How fraught with danger is the career of the sailor, and the perils 
 of the ocean; how vast and how thrilling! The hardy mariner 
 leaves his native shore, and bids adieu to all the loved ones at home, 
 to glide on the surface of the fathomless sea, and, besides Him who 
 guides the mighty waters, and holds in the hollow of His hand the 
 rolling waves, who can tell whether the coral reefs and sparkling 
 gems of the ocean will not be his tomb, and his requiem, the dirge 
 and melancholy music of its roai\ 
 
 The life of the sea-boy, oh ! how perilous it is, and yet how awful 
 and how grand. In the blowing of the angry winds, and in the dread- 
 ful roaring of the tempest, he beholds the wrath of an offended God; 
 and should he survive the havoc of the storm, and see the brilliancy 
 of the sky, and the smooth, glassy surface, tinged by a thousand 
 radiant colors, how joyously he welcomes the glad signs of the Cre- 
 ator's pleasure. 
 
 Tell me, old Ocean, how many millions of toilers lie buried for aye 
 and for aye in thy deep, cold, cheerless bosom ! But at the sound- 
 ing of the last trump thou wilt yield up thy dead, and the countless 
 slumberers that rest within thy caves will throw off unconsciousness 
 and awake to the cheering light of day. And yet, old Ocean, thou 
 hast hushed the familiar tones of friendship, and stilled the throb- 
 bings of many a weary heart forevermore. And the poor, lone 
 widow can shed not one pitying tear on the solitary spot where her 
 loved one lies in the sound slumbers of the sea's great cemeteries. 
 Mother, thou canst not, at the sweet and pensive hour of eve, seat 
 
 * For thel8acred Heart Union. 
 
586 
 
 thyself upon the tomb of thy departed son, and deck the turf that 
 glistens with the dews of heaven. Nor canst thou, sister, plant one 
 flower on the watery grave of thy fond brother. Thou canst not 
 bid the lily blossom thereupon, nor the willow spread its branching 
 boughs in mourning around his lonely dwelling-place. And thou, 
 devoted child, canst not weep the dew of grief above thy father's 
 soundless home, for low he lies, very low, in the deep, deep sea, and 
 cold and dreary is his resting-place ! 
 
 And yet, my dear young boys, what a strange fascination there is 
 about the sea for those who never braved its dangers and never 
 saw its perils. 
 
 How many foolish boys are ready to leave the comforts of the 
 cosy fireside, to turn their backs upon the kind friends at home, 
 and go to risk the dangers of the ocean. 
 
 In my last, I told you of my experience in the "West Indian waters, 
 and now I purpose telling you of something, at once laughable and 
 serious, which occurred just off Cape Hatteras, a point on the Atlan- 
 tic coast, noted, as you may know, for the extreme violence of its 
 storms. 
 
 It was a bright day in October. The ship rode grandly on the 
 swelling waves, and she seemed like a veritable cloud of canvas. 
 Broad out was spread every inch of sail that booms could bear, from 
 main-yards up to royals. Her cock-boats swung at the davits, near 
 peaked quarter and latticed stern, glistening in a new coat of white 
 paint. From truck to deck everything was trim and taut; every- 
 thing bright and shining in the sunshine of a glorious afternoon in 
 the mellow month of October. I sat on the capstan forward, bask- 
 ing idly in the sun, when looking windward, I saw an immense 
 school of porpoises gliding, leaping, down upon us and stretching 
 out as far as the eye could see. On they came, disporting in the water 
 like so many ocean elves, emitting that low and plaintive sound 
 characteristic of this vagrant of the deep. No sooner had tbey 
 passed than the breeze began to lull. In an instant it died away. 
 The sails flapped lazily against the masts, and finally seemed to 
 wind about them, and like the ancient mariner of whom the poet 
 speaks, we found ourselves drifting: 
 
 " As idly as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean." 
 
587 
 
 ** All hands aloft," cried the second mate, his ruddy cheeks now 
 blanched, and a look of apprehension on his sun-tanned face. The 
 storm-king was abroad in all the shining terrors of his wrath. Oh ! 
 can I forget the scene ? The day grew suddenly dark and then grew 
 bright by turns. Cloud-piles were towering up Hke pyramids in the 
 sky, so electric that they seemed pulsating with sulphurous light. 
 A fearful rain-cloud broke above our heads, and when it had blown 
 by, it left us buried for some minutes in a mass of wet, blue vapor. 
 How the rigging rattled, and the shrouds whistled in the wind, 
 while the shouts of the sailors ever and anon rose above the roar of 
 the tempest. The day was declining and the last of twilight had 
 now come. The sea underneath was awfully grand, and a strange, 
 magical illumination seemed to hght up different parts of the ocean, 
 and then all was covered with a pall of impenetrable darkness. I 
 had helped the sailors to furl the sails; had taken in the slack of 
 halyards and tackle till my hands were blistered and my bones 
 ached; and weary, tired, and frightened, I retired at the mate's 
 order to my bunk in a small store-room of the forecastle. The 
 ship plunged and groaned like a thing of life, and the seas ploughed 
 across her deck and swept every unfastened object into the seething 
 waters. I heard the strong voice of the captain, who was lashed to 
 the mizzen-mast, ordering the men to stand by, axe in hands, ready 
 to cut the masts out of the storm-vexed vessel, to save her from cap- 
 sizing. I heard the blasphemous sailors, who of all men, alone on 
 the deep with the angels, ought to be reverent and prayerful, vent 
 their awful oaths upon the ship, the officers, the storm, and on one 
 another. A feeling of fear, nay, of terror, seized me, to which was 
 added the dreadful sickness of the sea, and how I longed at that 
 moment to set foot upon the dry land, which, I believe, T would 
 have devoutly kissed in gratitude. I do not know how others have 
 felt, but " for mine own poor part," I have never realized with such 
 intensity the power of God in creation, as when I found myself 
 alone with Him on the sea. It was then I felt the merest; it was 
 then I felt most helpless; it was then I prayed the best. 
 
 How awful seems that remark of the poet about the sea : 
 
 " So lonely 'twas that God Himself 
 Scarce seemed there to be." 
 
588 
 
 And yet we know that God is everywhere. He is in the starry 
 sky, the songful grove, and He is in the vast solitude of the mighty 
 deep. 
 
 But filled with awe and terror, my brain afire with thoughts of 
 home and friends, I finally sank into a fitful, broken sleep. The 
 ship heaved and swayed, and every now and then I was rudely 
 awakened by being tossed against the partition wall that divided me 
 from the sailors. At length I was hurled headlong from my berth, 
 and I plunged head foremost into — not as I first believed, when my 
 eyes, ears, and mouth were filling with the salty water — the great 
 ocean itself, but into a barrel half filled with brine that once pre- 
 served some splendid mackerel. 
 
 I need not say that I was half suffocated, nor that I received a 
 shock hardly less intense than when I fell into the sea some time 
 before. 
 
 The storm next day subsided, and though the swell continued for 
 nearly forty-eight hours, we had fair sailing for the rest of the trip, 
 and landed at New York profoundly impressed with the violence of 
 a hurricane off Hatteras. 
 
 THE STOKM AT SEA. 
 
 A LEAF FEOM EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Dark was the night, and wild the tempest's roar, 
 The Storm-King rode the air, and from the shore 
 The breakers' baleful sound, the sailors proud 
 Filled with alarm and dread; the crimson cloud, 
 That tipped with fire at eve the sail and shroud, 
 Was ebon black; and from the murky vault 
 The forked lightnings flashed; the sea of salt 
 Phosphoric now sheet'd was with lurid light. 
 Whose lambent tongues fanned ev'ry foaming height; 
 Like sparkling sapphires shone wave crests anon, 
 And fitful fires ran fur'ous, and were gone. 
 Dark! darker still the night, the storm more wild, 
 JTor earth nor heav'n seemed more of Maker mild 
 The creatures. T' frenzy lashed the mighty deep, 
 On billow billow rolled and wave o'erleaped 
 O'er wave. Tumult'ous heaved the angry swell; 
 Winds shrieked like demon hosts outpoured from hell ; 
 Convulsed seemed Nature, and with gaping womb, 
 All life that rode the sea rav'nous t' entomb. 
 
589 
 
 The ship with anguish groans; and shlv'ring mast, 
 And trembling timbers 'pear, as if at last, 
 Wild plunging down th' abysmal, soundless wave. 
 She'd ages dwell where Neptune guards the grave; 
 Else, tempest tossed, by boisterous storm's shock, 
 Be dashed unpit'ing 'gainst the piercing rock. 
 And, ev'ry soul aboard, who lived and thrived, 
 Be called to doom, unhauselled and unshrived. 
 God of the storm; of matter Lord, and mind. 
 The clouds Thy char'ot are; upon the wind 
 Thou walkest; waters sleep Thy hollow hand 
 Within; the rolling tide at Thy command 
 Doth ebb and flow; the storm will rage no more. 
 And giant billows break upon the shore 
 In harmless glee, if Thou, great God, but will, 
 Who calmed the waves, to sea cried, Peace! be still! 
 Hear suppliant sailors, fate compelled to roam. 
 Their bark speed safely towards their happy home. 
 Oh! Thou who rulest ev'ry wind and wave, 
 Stretch forth Thy hand. Omnipotent, to save." 
 
 The rosy dawn gilds glorious coming mom. 
 The rainbow glows with radiant smiles new-bom, 
 Upon the sky like opal gleams the sun; 
 The danger's past, pray'r's victory is won! 
 
VL 
 
 SKETCH OF EEV. M. J. TALLON. 
 
 There is no event more common than that of death. Every day, 
 and every hour in the day, some recruit in the great army of life 
 falls by our side, even as we turn to gaze upon him. Death has 
 other means of conquest than the shock of battle, the assassin's 
 bludgeon, and the storm and tempest of the physical world. There 
 are seeds as well as instruments of death; and they are sown every- 
 where, on hill and plain and valley, and broadcast through the land. 
 There is no clime so rugged, no soil so barren, that even there 
 death's fruitage may not flourish. Death is a harvester that never 
 fails, and he gleans his grain, not only in life's springtime, but also 
 in manhood's summer glory, and in the frosty winter of old age. 
 
 It is a trite but truthful axiom, that common things are held in 
 cheap estimation, and therefore make but slight impression. The 
 sun shines by day, the stars sparkle on the field of night, and the 
 earth pours forth her fruits in proper season; but these majestic op- 
 erations of divine power excite but little astonishment or admiration, 
 because they are so commonplace. Thus it is with death. We sel- 
 dom realize the propinquity of the King of Terrors, for the reason, 
 that in the midst of life we are in death. Death cometh to all, and 
 we behold his presence daily. We see the venerable locks of the 
 aged, the blushing honors of manhood, the ruddy freshness of 
 youth, whose eye is flashing and salient with life, and the tender bud 
 of infancy — all fail and fall before the scythe of the pitiless destroyer, 
 and we, perchance, are unmoved and unconcerned. The rich, the 
 great, the powerful; the poor, the weak, the outcast, and the de- 
 spised, the honored and the unknown, — all alike are gathered over to 
 the silent majority, all sleep in God's acre, all pass into the undis- 
 covered land, and 
 
591 
 
 "Sink like waves upon that shore 
 Where storms shall never rouse them more." 
 
 We take no note of the dread harvest till the sickle's edge cuts some 
 vine or tendril that grew close to our own heart. But when the 
 awful Archer, who loves the shining mark, strikes his arrow into the 
 circle of the loved and dear; when the shadow of his pale wings 
 broods over our own household; when the friend whose presence 
 was a shield to our life and a hope to our heart, glides down the 
 river of Rest, 'tis then we feel death coldly creep about our being, 
 and fasten his clammy coils around our existence, with a tenseness 
 and an energy which we never felt before. 
 
 To a wide circle of friends, by whom he was affectionately cher- 
 ished and esteemed, the death of the subject of this sketch came 
 with crushing effect and keen affliction. To them a Hght was gone 
 
 out: 
 
 " A light that ne'er shall shine again 
 On life's dull stream." 
 
 To them an urn was broken and the flame put out forevermore; 
 and memory's troubled waters to this hour are stirred with sympathy 
 and overflown with unfeigned sorrow. But while they lament a loss 
 that cannot be repaired, they bow in humble acquiescence to the will 
 of the Sovereign Disposer of events, the Ai'biter of life and death. 
 Go, spirit, to thy home ! The eye of faith beholds thee gently lean- 
 ing on the breast of thy Redeemer, and our sighs ai'e changed to 
 raptures, our tears to praise. 
 
 The Rev. M. J. Tallon was bom in Beau Pare, County Meath, Ire- 
 land, on September 12, 1846. His preparatory studies for the priest- 
 hood were made at St. Finnian's College, Navan. After he had com- 
 pleted there, with high honors, the prescribed course of study, he 
 entered the famous Seminary of Maynooth, where he pursued his 
 studies with unremitting diligence and enthusiastic ardor for several 
 years. His health finally yielded to the strain, and he was reluc- 
 tantly obliged to abandon his studies and return to his home. Al- 
 though thus incapacitated for many years from pursuing the cher- 
 ished purpose of his life, he incessantly prayed that God would one 
 day give him the strength to resume his studies and be ordained an 
 anointed of the Lord. 
 
592 
 
 He came to the shores of America in 1870, and finding with the 
 . lapse of time and the change of climate, an improvement in the con- 
 dition of his health, he engaged in the honorable employment of 
 teaching school in Hoboken, and as soon as the assurance of his 
 physical condition justified his life-long expectation, he entered Seton 
 Hall Seminary, where, after a distinguished course of study, he was 
 ordained to the Holy Priesthood, on May 22, 1880. 
 
 His first mission was in St. Mary's parish, Elizabeth, New Jersey. 
 The remarkable fidelity with which he discharged the duties of his 
 calling in his new sphere, is a matter of personal knowledge with the 
 writer. The sick he visited almost daily, and walked, in the most in- 
 clement seasons, to their abode to carry the consolations of religion 
 to the troubled, the despairing, and the down-hearted. "Ah ! " said 
 one of his beneficiaries to me one day, after his departure, " how I 
 miss poor Father Tallon. Every day, as sure as the sun rose, he 
 crossed the threshold of my door, and the moment he came in I 
 forgot that I was ever ill." Having spent himself with labor, his 
 delicate constitution succumbed to the unequal task, and he was sent 
 to St. Anne's Villa, Madison, New Jersey, to recuperate. After a 
 brief respite, his ardent desire for labor being unappeasable, he be- 
 sought his bishop for another appointment, and was transferred to 
 Passaic, New Jersey. A few months of sacerdotal toil in his new 
 field of labor broke him down again, and he was transferred to St. 
 Joseph's hospital, Paterson, New Jersey, where, for four years, his 
 zeal, his piety, and his unflagging attention to the sick, won the ad- 
 miration, respect, and even reverence, of all who were witness to the 
 consummate courage and indomitable energy of a man, who, while 
 he walked daily in the shadow of death, took no thought but to care 
 for the temporal and spiritual welfare of all who fell under his heav- 
 enly influence. There, surrounded by loving friends, and the com- 
 pany of Sisters who shared his labor of soothing sorrow, alleviating 
 pain, binding up the wounds of the sorrow-stricken and the broken-^ 
 heai-ted, he died a most edifying and consoling death on June 14, 
 1890. I know of no priest whose demise was so universally regret- 
 ted, and the general regard for his person and character was point- 
 edly expressed on the day of his funeral, when at least ninety of his 
 brethren were gathered in the sanctuary to pray for the repose of 
 his soul. May he rest in peace. May he walk the serene heights of 
 
593 
 
 Sion's holy hill, with the bright diadem on his head, the white-robed 
 throngs around him, and the approving smiles of his Saviour's face 
 beaming upon him f orevermore. If heavenly recompense is the meet 
 reward of a life of heroic devotion and superhuman unselfishness 
 here below, to him is given that " white stone " which is given to all 
 who in singleness of heart seek to know and walk in the path of 
 duty. The dignity of his nature, the value of life, the importance 
 of the station designed for him in the ordinance of God, were the 
 motives of his conduct, the inspiration of his heroism, the animating 
 and controlling principle of all his deeds. 
 
 His winning sweetness, his amiability of manner, the unfailing 
 serenity of his character showed that celestial peace had spread her 
 soft and silken curtain around his soul, and that his sunshiny 
 temper was the fruit of long communion with the spirits of the 
 blessed. 
 
 He was sagacious in council, invaluable in friendship, and his 
 heai-t was a treasure-house of trust and confidence. His chaiity was 
 patterned on the love of Christ, and was as broad as humanity, as 
 comprehensive as the race. Finding no evil in himself, he saw none 
 in others, and was, apparently, as optimistic by nature as he was by 
 gi-ace. He was just and discriminating, bat truly generous in praise, 
 and was never known to 
 
 " Damn with faint praise, assent with civil, 
 And without sneering, teach others to sneer." 
 
 Moral truth, like the beautiful in nature, has a charm for the^ de- 
 vout and contemplative mind; and from the crystal wells of moral 
 truth, he sought to draw pure draughts of living water. He was a 
 sound and accurate moral theologian, and his opinion upon subjects 
 within the domain of this intricate and perplexing science was often 
 worth more than that of many who think that gray hairs make wis- 
 dom, and that age always brings experience. 
 
 His life was deficient in incident, as the world understands life. 
 He "dwelt among untrodden ways." His lot was cast among the 
 unnoticed and the unknown, and he preferred to chat an hour with 
 a washerwoman than to dwell an age among kings. He had a clear 
 and unclouded brain, a keen native intelligence, a strong fund of 
 homely sense, united to a zeal and industry that never wearied, 
 38 
 
594 
 
 ■which, had his life been crowned with years, might have exalted 
 him to no inconspicuous place among men. But in what would he 
 be better than he is now ? He might have gained the world and lost 
 his own soul. He chose, therefore, to be true to himself, to religion, 
 and to God; to be humble and meek and lowly; to be kind, benig- 
 nant, and charitable ; to cast his lot on the side of a religion which is 
 looked down upon by many of the great of earth, in their fancied 
 superiority and in their self-conceit:— this may be folly with the 
 world, but with God it is the wisdom of salvation. He was a 
 stranger to the world, but he was the friend and familiar of God. 
 " Outwardly," as A Kempis says, " he wanted many things, but in- 
 wardly he was enriched with everything." The good God whose 
 presence was an atmosphere wherein he walked upon this earth is 
 the crown and the reward of a life spent here below in showing 
 mercy to Himself in the person of the poor. When the golden gates 
 of the heavenly city are unbarred to the great arm}'^ of the redeemed, 
 many an exultant spirit shall rush, to greet the saintly priest and 
 confessor, who had been instrumental in securing her salvation and 
 unfading glory. For 
 
 " Where tears were to he dried, or suffering hearts 
 Healed with the dew of peace — where sin was felt 
 Or prayer was breathed, or injuries forgiven, 
 His ready foot was found, his voice was heard, 
 \ Distilling sweetness. Spotless were the robes 
 
 That o'er his actions cast their graceful folds, 
 Adding to the heavenly truths he taught 
 The matchless argument of a pure life, ' 
 
 A name unsullied and a garment white." 
 
SERMONS 
 
THE ETERNAL PRIESTHOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 " On the day before He suffered," says St. Paul, " our Divine Ee- 
 deemer instituted the gi'eat mystery of the Holy Eucharist." When 
 the painful image of His purple passion stood before His mind in 
 all its awful meaning; when the gray twilight of Gethsemani had all 
 but overshadowed Him; when death was soon to separate Him from 
 the dear disciples of His love, it must have given Jesus a melan- 
 choly satisfaction, like the glow of an evening sunset before the 
 storm-swept night comes on, to break bread for the last time with 
 those Apostles who had been the constant companions of His toils 
 from the day they left all things to foUow in the footsteps of the 
 Master. 
 
 His pubHc ministry had yielded Him naught but anxiety and sor- 
 row. It was full of labor and fatigue. Suffering was His substance, 
 and poverty was His portion all His life, and the prickly thorns of 
 privation so incessantly pierced His feet upon their loving journeys, 
 that He may be said to have married sorrow and distress. 
 
 The Master and Maker of Nature, as He was. He must have fondly 
 loved the child of His creation. His all-seeing eyes must have wan- 
 dered often among her beauties, His ears have drunk in her music, 
 and His soul sipped of her poetry; for from her vaiied forms His 
 mind extracted the sweetest similes, and His mouth spoke with 
 finest fluency her lovely and touching language. " Behold the lilies 
 of the field." See the fig-tree and all the trees. 
 
 The dew and the sunshine, the seed-time and the harvest, the 
 flocks and the fields, had a sweet attraction for the gentle sympathy 
 of His soul attuned to Nature's harmonies. He held sweet converse 
 with the silent stars upon the mountain-top; He preached from the 
 shingly shore of Galilee's bright lake, and from the blue ripples of 
 
its breezy surface He spoke His messages to the listening multitude. 
 He was as a bridegroom; nature was His bridal- chamber, but a 
 chamber hung with mourning. Many a time He drew a benediction 
 on His troubled spirit from the calmness of the morning, or the 
 stillness of the evening twilight; and amid the solitude of nature, He 
 sought surcease from sorrow, when His burden seemed too great 
 for Him to bear. 
 
 But darker days stole on apace. Clouds of sombre hue were hover- 
 ing upon the horizon. Heartrending separation darkened the near 
 prospect. Death, with bony fingers, beckoned to the Son of Man 
 from his lonely throne, and his icy lips uttered the solemn warning 
 that the hour was at hand. 
 
 But He has yet one loving duty to fulfill. A short time — a short 
 time only can He tarry with His disciples at the frugal board, and 
 thither He repairs for His final reflection ere He die for love. He 
 would teach them the great duty of thanksgiving, and raise the 
 chalice of benediction to their lips. He would feed them with His 
 own hands, not in bread that perisheth, but in that which endureth 
 unto life everlasting. He would prepare them for their life-work, 
 the salvation of souls, the continuation of His mission on earth. He 
 would appoint them His successors, make them sharers of His Son- 
 ship, partakers of His priesthood, — the priesthood, holy, unspotted, 
 eternal, after the order of Melchizedek. How sublime the scene — 
 in that upper room — that coenacle of Jerusalem. 
 
 It was like the felicitations of a little household, on the eve of a 
 final separation — like the evening song of birds, assembled on the 
 bough of a high tree, each to seek his destined flight at the first 
 beams of dawn. 
 
 What melancholy grandeur in the spectacle of Jesus feasting with 
 His followers just before He mounts the throne of the cross. What 
 a soft and mellow lustre irradiates the brow of the heavenly bride- 
 groom, feeding His children with the fat of corn, the manna of all 
 sweetness, before He passes from the bridal-chamber to the halls of 
 death. 
 
 It was a sad, but short and simple ceremony. With divine com- 
 posure He performed the farewell act, which raised His Apostles 
 to the priesthood, and inaugurated the religion divinely bequeathed 
 to His followers in the power and grace of God's redeeming love. 
 
599 
 
 Look on the figure of the parting Christ. As a fond father about 
 to begin a journey, he calls his weeping, sorrowing sons to receive 
 the inheritance which he acquired for them by his toils and labors, 
 reserved for bestowal, to the final moment. " Take," he says, " my 
 gift in loving remembrance. It is the only heirloom I have to give 
 worthy of my bounty and generosity." That inheritance was the 
 immortal treasure of Himself, His priesthood. His sacraments. His 
 Church, His grace, His salvation. 
 
 Jesus in body, indeed departs; the wealth of His spirit remains. 
 His little band of followers He invests with that spirit, and that 
 spirit He pours out into the ready receptacles of their souls, making 
 Himself flesh of their flesh and blood, life of their life. He incar- 
 nates Himself, He embodies and reproduces Himself in the priests 
 He has ordained, and through them in all their spiritual descend- 
 ants till time shall be no more. He gives to them a pledge of future 
 glory, and in planting the seed of immortality, He imparts immor- 
 tahty before the completion of their earthly work shall ripen them 
 for their reward. In the institution of the Eucharist, He comple- 
 ments His incarnation, for He impresses His character, He imparts 
 His life. He confers His powers upon the new-bom priesthood, that 
 by the force, and spirit, and strength of His commission, they may 
 carry the grace of redemption to every individual soul who shall be 
 grafted by their hands upon the fruitful stock of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Although modern philosophy has not made sufficient account of 
 it, there is a wonderful power of absoi-ption and expansion in the 
 human soul — a soul boundless in her aspirations and in comprehen- 
 sion like a God. How measureless its capacity for knowledge ! how 
 infinite its aptitude for love ! Its spiritual possibilities are likewise 
 incalculable. Will not its intelligence constantly expand, its affec- 
 tions be enlarged, and its powers be magnified, as it glows with new 
 light and new fervor and brightens to all eternity; when "we all be- 
 holding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image 
 from glory to glory, as by the Sj^irit of the Lord " ? 
 
 This transformation continued in the next world must be begun 
 in this. 
 
 The tendency of times, directed by hard materiahsm, is rather 
 towards extroversion than introversion. Man looks without, when 
 he should look within, and the land is desolate because no one 
 
600 
 
 thinks in his heart. Man's operations follow his nature. He is a 
 complete being of body and soul. If the outer works are, as the 
 Apostle speaketh, to be according to God, the secret springs of action 
 rooted in the heart and mind, must be moved by the wisdom and 
 the love of God; for as the spring of the watch governs all the 
 movements of the hands, so does the love of God, and conformity 
 to Christ regulate all the works of life. Against the madness of 
 materialism, the priesthood of Christ is a brass wall of defense, for 
 it is the pattern of perfection, and it holds up, as a beacon of beati- 
 tude to shine before the eyes of all, the model of the interior life, 
 and seeks to delineate on every soul the image of Christ, which is 
 stamped by the hand of divinity upon its own immortal essence : 
 agreeably to the words of the Apostle, " Those whom He foreknew 
 He predestined to make conformable to the image of His Son." 
 
 Nothing short of absorption and assimilation can satisfy the desires 
 of that Jesus, who, though God, became the Son of Man, that we who 
 are men might become the sons of God. That by the fecundity of the 
 priestly power conceded to His ministers, all men might be made con- 
 formable to the similitude of Christ, might lift their heads higher and 
 higher unto heaven, and be brought nearer to God upon this earth, 
 the more to make secure that final felicity and everlasting happi- 
 ness which is our proper inheritance. He lays upon them the obliga- 
 tion of eating His flesh and blood, and of feeding mankind through 
 the ages, from the same heavenly banquet, conveying His divine 
 injunction in the memorable words: "This do in commemoration of 
 Me." Let us who are ordained to be the salt of the earth, and the 
 light of the world, by the efficacy of our ministry in opening the 
 fountains of salvation unto others, be satisfied, before we proclaim 
 ourselves His priests, that every bit of flesh, and every drop of blood 
 within us, is Christ's own property. 
 
 In eating His flesh and drinking His blood, they received the 
 essential elements of His priestly power; and they assimilated them; 
 they grew upon them and they gained a new life, an exalted vitality, 
 which they had not before, and which they were empowered to 
 transmit to all generations of posterity. The features of its char- 
 acter, so to say, were indelibly impressed upon their souls. That 
 spark of divinity which makes humanity God-like, as a coal of 
 heaven's fire, was burned upon them, and purified, and perfected; 
 
601 
 
 like Isaiah, they turned to God with heart, mind, and soul, crying, 
 " Lord, here we are, send us." It was then they were filled with the 
 good odor of Christ; then they received of the royal unction, and 
 were anointed above their fellows in the kingly priesthood; then 
 they became champions of the cross, soldiers of the sanctuary, ser- 
 vitors in the tabernacles of the Most High God. 
 
 By the sacramental offering of the bread and wine, Jesus, the 
 Master, committed to His servants in the ministiy the absolute 
 secret of His life and mission, the bread of His whole being, the 
 word which came out of the mouth of God, the causes for which 
 He cast aside the sparkling splendor of celestial glory, and came 
 into a cold, inhospitable world. 
 
 In the Eucharistic institution they were fired with the fervor of 
 His faith, iUumed by the light of His love, inspired with the 
 spirit of His humble, self-forgetful, urn-emitting service, which the 
 Pentecostal fire was to transform into flaming zeal to bring to all 
 flesh the salvation of God. 
 
 By the fact of His eternal Sonship, His faith included the whole 
 world in Himself, and all in the Father and the Holy Spirit; for the 
 three divine persons leaning down to lift up humanity, constitute 
 that kingdom which the Son of God was sent to establish. " All 
 things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 
 
 In the loyal acceptance of this heavenly charge, they dedicated 
 themselves to that unselfish and impersonal existence which involved 
 the annihilation of all individual interest, all carnal craving, and in- 
 fused a new life in the spirit and power of Jesus Christ. 
 
 It was the holy intoxication of the strong wine of love that carried 
 Jesus on from suffering to suffering till all was consummated on 
 Calvary. They partook of the wine; they ate of the bread; they 
 perpetuated the rite, and they were filled with the intense, ardent 
 enthusiasm of His love — the love for union between God and man. 
 
 His ardent passion for the future of humanity Jesus left to those 
 who took up His work, to love as He loved, to suffer as He suffered, 
 aye, to die, if need be, as He had died. 
 
 In pai-taking of the cup of the new and eternal covenant, they 
 were incorporated into His princely priesthood; they were invested 
 with the golden gloiy of His God-given power; they were called by 
 Him, upon whose brow sat the light of ages and the calmness of the 
 
602 
 
 spheres, to rear unto His majesty and worship a holy, an acceptable, 
 and an everlasting kingdom. It was an outward separation; an in- 
 ward union. It was a personal bequest, a new covenant, a final 
 testament at a most tender parting. It was a symbol and a reality; 
 a sacrament and a sacrifice; a command and a commemoration; a 
 priesthood and a people; — the outward embodiment of the invisible 
 Christ by the mediation of a minister upon the holy altar of the 
 Church of Christianity. Of that Church the Apostles were each and 
 all a vital and a corporate part; but the cementing blood of Christ 
 ran through all, combining all, enlivening all, uniting all in the Head- 
 ship of the one high-priest, the Lord Christ Jesus. 
 
 There is a divine felicity in that sweet similitude of the vine and 
 the branches. " I am the vine, you are the branches." The vine 
 was sown together with its branches in the flesh and blood of Christ 
 upon the soil of the soul of the Apostolic Church, and the heaven- 
 appointed husbandmen, the gardeners of God, go foiih to glean 
 the harvest which the dews of divine grace make full with rosy 
 promise. 
 
 At the feast of the New Passover, on the night of the last supper, 
 Christ perpetuated His whole life-work in the summary of one 
 transcendent act, and forever washed the Christian Church in the 
 oblation of His blood, and fed it with substance of His being. Thus 
 He perpetuated His ministry in those He called to minister to the 
 world; thus He established His eternal priesthood for that ministry 
 of unutterable service which crowns faith and love; that service 
 which has sprung up like the lily, everywhere, — wherever the name 
 of Christ has been spoken and His holy religion set her sandalled 
 foot. On that night He made other priests; His own priesthood 
 was eternal. 
 
 There is such a thing as the evolution, if I may so express it, of 
 divine purpose in the order and history of religion. There is a 
 logical sequence in the divine dispensations; and all the operations 
 of Deity in respect of nature and grace are connected under the 
 economy of Providence. They form a continuous chain, a concat- 
 enated series in the ideas — in the events that govern God's dealings 
 with His creatures. 
 
 The Incarnation is made possible in the Blessed Trinity, and the 
 priesthood is a portion of the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ we be- 
 
603 
 
 hold the logical sequence of Melchizedek. Abel was the prefigura- 
 tion, Moses the prototype, of Christ. The Jewish leader taught stem 
 justice and set up the kingdom of law; Jesus laid down the law of 
 love, and inaugurated the kingdom of grace. The New Testament 
 is the consectary of the Old; and the theology of love the comple- 
 ment of the theology of fear. The eternal priesthood and the eternal 
 sacrifice of Jesus Christ is, by this law of divine development, the 
 outcome of that impulse of ineffable goodness which, in the formless 
 ocean of eternity, led the Triune God to externize the counsels of 
 His wisdom in the subUme declaration, " Let us make man to our 
 image and likeness." 
 
 From the beginning of being, God, in His omniscience, gi-asped 
 all the destinies of men. His unbounded knowledge beheld irn all 
 the fullness of their relations, the causes and the consequences of 
 human sin and salvation. His far-beholding, all-comprehending 
 providence seized all the measure and magnitude of evil; and in the 
 same wide-reaching vision, the opportunities and the occasions, the 
 ways and the means to be employed in His dispensations for the 
 deliverance of man from the calamities that would encompass him. 
 Therefore, the future Christ, both as a personality in God and in 
 the ideal order, as God designed to make Him, existed in the eternal 
 and impenetrable depths as the potential energy of the yet unborn 
 Saviour, who was to appear in the fullness of God's time. He was 
 in the plan of God. He was the light of divine reason and the flame 
 of love shining in the far-off ocean of etemit}'. " In the beginning 
 was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." And He was a priest forever, according to the order of Mel- 
 chizedek, for He was to offer Himself, a pure and unspotted oblation, 
 for the sins of men. 
 
 O Jesus. God of love, we adore Thee with all the powers of our 
 soul, as the great victim immolated for the glory of Thy Father and 
 the redemption of mankind. "Prefigured and foretold from the 
 beginning of ages, accomplished a bloody sacrifice in the fullness of 
 time, renewed every day upon the altar by the hands of the priest, 
 the mystery of Thy immolation will be forever continued in heaven"; 
 that offering which was the most glorious and meritorious act of 
 Th}^ life, will be unceasingly ratified in the presence of all the 
 heavenly hosts, before the throne of Thy Father's majesty through 
 
604 
 
 all the eternal years of God. " I saw," says the Apocalyptic writer, 
 " I saw and beheld a Lamb standing as if slain, who was slain from 
 the foundation of the world." 
 
 It is a dogma of Catholic belief that our blessed Redeemer con- 
 ferred upon His Apostles the power of the priesthood, when He, on 
 that memorable night, solemnly charged them to perpetuate the 
 sacrificial rite in His commemoration. " Do this in commemoration 
 of me." He again invested them with the power of the keys, when 
 He breathed upon them the unction of the Holy Spirit, and said, 
 " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," and s^^bsequently He clothed them 
 with the pastoral office, comprehending the functions of ruling, 
 teaching, and baptizing, whereby they might bring all mankind 
 under the imperial sway of His kingdom, and gather all the sheep, 
 for whom He shed His blood, into the everlasting sheepfold of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 Nothing gives what it has not to bestow, and if Jesus conferred 
 the priesthood upon others, He was a priest Himself. As in Him 
 dwelt the fullness of the Godhead corporally, so did the plenitude 
 of the priestly power; for " being the splendor of His Father's glory 
 and the figure of His substance, He sitteth on the right hand of 
 majesty on high," as far above the angels as the name He has in- 
 herited is above their names. For to which of the angels hath the 
 Father said : " Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee." 
 But to the Son He saith : " Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. 
 A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved 
 justice and hateth iniquity. Therefore, God, thy God, has anointed 
 Thee with the oil of gladness above all Thy fellows. Sit Thou on 
 My right hand till I make Thy enemies Thy footstool." 
 
 In the councils of eternity, and not in the temple of time, there- 
 fore, the Saviour of mankind was named the Christ, for He was to 
 be anointed with the threefold unction of Prophet, Priest, and 
 King. How Jesus was anointed to a higher and holier priesthood 
 than that of Aaron and Leyi, the great Apostle of the Gentiles 
 plainly showeth in his celebrated Epistle to the Hebrews. From 
 the exalted dignity of His place in heaven, at the right hand of God; 
 from the superior excellence of the victim of oblation, and from the 
 transcendent lustre of His unspotted and eternal generation, the 
 priesthood of Jesus is as far above the dignity of Aaron as the 
 
605 
 
 heavens are exalted above the earth. For Jesus, as the Apostle 
 speaketh, is made the surety of a better Testament, estabhshed upon 
 better promises, devoid of fault or blemish like the former, which 
 was the shadow and the semblance, and confirmed upon oath. The 
 Lord hath sworn and He will not repent. " Thou art a priest for- 
 ever, according to the order of Melchizedek." 
 
 In Christ, therefore, we behold, not many priests, but one, who 
 continueth forever, and hath an everlasting priesthood — a priest- 
 hood, high, holy, innocent, and undefiled; — separated from sinners 
 and made higher than the heavens; for He is a priest who needeth 
 not daily to offer sacrifice for "His own sins first, and then for the 
 people, for this He did once in offering Himself. In Him we have 
 such a high-priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of 
 majesty in the heavens; a minister of the Holies and of the true tab- 
 ernacle, pitched not by man, but by the hand of God. 
 
 Wherefore, all priests soever who preceded Christ, only served 
 unto the example and the shadow of heavenly things, as the rosy 
 morning showeth the full noon of day, as the seed the flower, the 
 acorn the future oak, the feeble type the blessed reality. " Every 
 priest," says the Apostle, " is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices." 
 Jesus was a priest, for He offered sacrifice, both in the supper-room 
 and on the cross. He was, by eternal generation, a priest according 
 to the order of Melchizedek, who was without beginning or end of 
 days; for in the Eucharistic sacrifice He made ministry unto God 
 corresponding unto the oblation of Melchizedek, as the antitype an- 
 swers to the prototype, the truth to the shadow, the fruition to the 
 promise. But Christ was a priest, according to the order of Mel- 
 chizedek, not by the ensanguined immolation of Calvary, but by the 
 bloodless sacrifice on Maundy-Thursday at the last supper, and on 
 this sacrifice of mystic oblation depends the whole sacerdotal order. 
 
 What is the priesthood of Jesus Christ ? For to know the priest- 
 hood of Christ is to know our own. 
 
 Some theologians teach that if Adam had not sinned, Christ would 
 still have become incarnate; and if He became incarnate, He would 
 have become a priest, for He would have offered Himself, a holo- 
 caust of love, to His eternal Father: for even on the cross, He offered 
 Himself for sin, only because He willed it. 
 
 Let us dive, as far as reason will permit, into the plans of God, 
 
606 
 
 and view the widely-extended relations of creation and redemp- 
 tion. ^ 
 
 There is but one supreme God; there can be no more. Happy in 
 the contemplations of His own infinite perfections, He reigned, from 
 eternity, in the bliss that beamed from the unclouded splendor of 
 His own essence. In the unconfined bosom of His divinity He pos- 
 sessed the plenitude of all perfection, and the fullness of all being. 
 In the three personalities, rooted in one and the same inimitable and 
 immortal nature, He enjoyed society, companionship, and love. His 
 joy was as the ocean. His happiness like the recesses of the deep be- 
 fore the morning stars praised Him together, or the sons of God 
 made joyful melody. More He needed not, and less He could not 
 have. 
 
 Goodness is an attribute inseparable from the essence of the God- 
 head. By an impulse of divine love. He resolved, in His supreme 
 wisdom, upon man's creation. The communication of His goodness 
 was the lofty design of omnipotence and love. Pursuant to this 
 gracious purpose, the three adorable persons said in the deliberations 
 of eternity, " Let us make man to our own image and likeness, to 
 the likeness of the Triune God shall he conform." What was the 
 impelling motive ? It was nothing distinct from God Himself, for 
 outside of Him nothing did exist. No; it was His own sweet will, 
 moved by the goodness and loving liberality of His heart, and per- 
 suading Him to pour out Himself upon the works of His creation. 
 
 In the logical order, the first and cardinal fact in nature is not 
 creation, but the Incarnation of the Son of God. In the same order, 
 the Incarnation is the final and disposing cause of creation, and it is 
 the sole and sufficient reason why the angels exist, why the heavens 
 have»their being, why the world was made, and why man lives, and 
 lives the life he does in the sphere wherein he has been placed by God. 
 
 In the determinations of time we can name the very day, when, 
 kneeling at her feet, the angel Gabriel, white-robed messenger of 
 God, hailed the lowly maid of Nazareth as full of grace, and pro- 
 claimed the fruit of her womb blessed in the future Redeemer of 
 mankind. But to trace and explore the history of the Incarnation, 
 we must light our way by the luminous torch of faith, and soar on 
 the wings of faith to those sublime heights of contemplation, whence 
 we can study the blessed Trinity, before time began to flow, and be- 
 
607 
 
 fore that melodious morning when the angelic choirs sang the joy- 
 ous canticle of their heavenly birth. 
 
 But, my brethren, I am confounded by our own temerity, and 
 amazed at the audacity of the proposal. I forbear from what must 
 end in futility and terminate in defeat. " Wonderful are Thy ways, 
 O God "; Thy wisdom is high, and I cannot reach it. 
 
 In the narrowness of our comprehension we can but affirm that 
 the three persons of the Blessed Trinity, resolving on creation, de- 
 termined that God, the second person, should assume human nature, 
 and become incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The angels 
 were called from nothing to be messengers of God's behests to men. 
 The world was formed and shaped to be His kingdom, and man was 
 created of soul and body, that the Son of the Most High might have 
 subjects to govern and souls to beautify in Paradise. 
 
 How the gracious designs of God were manned by the sin of man, 
 it falls not within our purpose to explain, since God stooped down 
 from His everlasting throne beyond the stars, to raise man, by a liv- 
 ing personal union, to a higher state of happiness than he enjoyed 
 in the sinless innocence of Eden. The Incarnation is by conse- 
 quence the central dogma of Christianity; the foundation of our 
 faith; the anchor of our hope; the royal road to righteousness; and 
 the only way to salvation, by which all may gain the goal where 
 charity is made perfect, and humanity is crowned with glory. 
 
 As by the unerring laws of gravitation the stars and planets circle 
 round the sun, fixed in their spheres by his magnetic attraction, so 
 do we behold the whole cycle of creation, the vast revolution of hu- 
 man events and causes, revolve around the Incarnation of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the earliest phase of life, whether in the unregenerate» infant, 
 or the barbarian, untaught of God, man with all his marvellous or- 
 ganism is raised but little above the plane of brute creation. He 
 may rise in the scale of humanity by culture and education to 
 heights almost immeasurable. But still he is far from the purpose 
 of creation, and far from the kingdom of God. One thing more was 
 necessary. 
 
 When God had asserted His power over the animal and vegetable 
 kingdoms, and ruled the rational creatures during the period of 
 prepai-ation, the volume of the Old Testament was closed, and the 
 
608 
 
 new dispensation began. He, of whom it was written in the head 
 of the chapter, '* Behold, I come," issued from the vast and silent 
 depths of eternity, and stood forth among the works of His creation, 
 that when He was one day lifted up, He might draw ail things unto 
 Himself. 
 
 Man was no longer to be the creature merely, but was now to be- 
 come the Son of God. Therefore did the second person of the 
 Blessed Trinity assume human flesh; therefore was our Saviour born 
 of the Virgin in Bethlehem's bleak stable ; therefore the Incarnation 
 of Jesus Christ, the alliance of the Godhead with our common 
 humanity, was, in the fullness of time, accomplished, and " the Word 
 was made flesh and dwelt amonst us"; and we saw His glory, the 
 glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace 
 and truth. 
 
 But the development of Sonship in a single individual did not 
 fulfill the sublime purpose of creation, nor realize the perfect plan of 
 redemption. The sanctification of human souls was the motive of 
 the Incarnation; for as Christ died" for the destruction of sin, so is He 
 risen for our justification. The great and final cause of the Incarna- 
 tion was each and every individual soul; it was the development of 
 the Sonship of God in all the members of humanity without excep- 
 tion or distinction. 
 
 Christ was the way. But who was to lead the way ? Christ was 
 the truth. Who was to teach the truth ? Christ was the Hfe. Who 
 was to impart the life ? 
 
 Behold, then, the priesthood of Jesus Christ; His grace. His sac- 
 raments, His bonds of union. His channels of salvation. Behold the 
 operations of the Holy Ghost, inspiring and energizing the priest- 
 hood by His celestial fire, for the completion of the Eternal plan, 
 and thus involving the joint concurrence of the three divine persons 
 in the efiicacious work of the salvation of mankind. 
 
 The mystery of the Trinity is essentially necessary to the idea of 
 God. There is no conception of God but that which regards the 
 threefold determination of the divine essence, as Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost. They constitute three real relations, distinct in person- 
 ality, convergent as to nature. Yet these three ai"e one: the con- 
 ceiver, the conception, and the love inspired. 
 
 Apart from them God could neither love, nor exist, nor know. 
 
609 
 
 What is a being without love ? What a being without life ? And 
 what a being without action ? for what is life but action ? 
 
 The Trinity is necessary to the Incarnation, but the Incarnation is 
 necessary for the priesthood. Christ came from God the Father; 
 He came to heal and to save; the Spirit of love He sent to carry 
 humanity back to the beginning of its being in the bosom of God. 
 
 The Father displays His wisdom in creation, and calls all to the 
 Sonship of His Christ. Then from this eternal seed, Jesus Christ, 
 is evolved a whole full harvest of ever-multiplying Christs, in the 
 grace of His Sonship by adoption. Yes, we are all Christs in a sense, 
 as we are likened unto Him, and, as St. Peter says, made partakers 
 of the divine nature. 
 
 To develop in every man the Sonship of Jesus Christ, is the 
 sublime office of the priesthood. The purpose of Christ's life and 
 ministry was affiliation of human nature with the divine. Human 
 -nature is perfected and sanctified by affiliation. Thousands of years 
 elapsed before the achievement was begun; thousands more shall 
 pass away before its final accomplishment in the individual soul, and 
 it will go on forever by the throne of God from grace to grace, and 
 from glory to glory. All knowledge, all literature, all science, all 
 philosophy, centres here, and here also they end. Christ is not the 
 monopoly of any nation; He is for all men and for all time. He is 
 God and He is man; and He is the model man. Genuine, deep- 
 fouled, pure-minded humanity is found in Him, as light lives in the 
 sun. The unique character of self -surrender to His Father was the 
 salient characteristic of His life. His meat and drink was to do the 
 will of Him who sent Him. He emptied Himself; He abased Him- 
 self, and as self ebbed away, heaven poured into His soul, and the 
 absolute reconciliation of the Father and the Son was accomplished 
 by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in behalf of sin-burdened humanity. 
 
 The priesthood of Christ is then a part of His Incarnation. It is 
 the office which He voluntarily assumed in the vestment of our man- 
 hood for the redemption of the race. He is our Mediator. He is 
 our victim. He is our sacrifice. He is our Melchizedek without 
 beginning or end of days. 
 
 The Old Law, from first to last, was but the foreshadowing of the 
 priesthood of Christ. The idea of sacrifice was taught by God Him- 
 ;self, for it was not inherent in the mind of man. Man is a dependent 
 39 
 
610 
 
 being, and sacrifice demonstrates his dependence. Abel yielded up> 
 the firstlings of his flock, and Cain the first-fruits of his harvest. 
 The Israelites immolated the Paschal Lamb, and sprinkled the door- 
 posts with his blood of expiation. Beneath the tree of Mamre where 
 Abraham broke bread with the angels, he also presented a holocaust 
 to G-od. In the dark days of their captivity, the sorrowful Jews by 
 Babylon's sad waters, offered the blood of bulls and goats to ap- 
 pease the implacability of divine anger. Melchizedek, king of 
 Salem, and prince of peace, made the offering of bread and wine 
 before the tabernacle of the Lord, and under the white light of the 
 Shekinah. The whole world was an altar, whence the smoke of 
 sacrifice ascended to the high heavens of God. Amid the birds and 
 nightingales of Persia, the victim's cry stilled the singing of the 
 choristers. Beneath the wide-spreading branches of the ancient 
 oak, to the melody of the murmuring waters, to the sighing of the 
 trees, the devoted victim laid his head upon the stone while the 
 sacrificial knife was crimsoned with his out-gushing life-blood. 
 Csesar in his commentaries tells how the ancient Gauls shed human 
 blood to satisfy their deities, and fierce Vikings of the North sipped 
 blood from the skulls of vanquished foes in the halls of this Walhalla. 
 The idea expressed by Ovid was wide-spread among all nations. 
 
 " Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris accipe fibras. 
 Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus." 
 
 The innocent for the guilty; life for life; soul for soul, was the 
 fundamental idea and the foundation of all sacrifice. 
 
 Nearly every pagan nation had some clearly-defined tradition re- 
 specting a primeval fall and a subsequent atonement. Both Plato 
 and Aristotle make reference to the subject. Every reader of Eschy- 
 lus knows the tragic story of Prometheus, chained to the adaman- 
 tine rock, his eyes plucked out, his eyeballs dripping with blood,, 
 and crying in wail and lamentation, 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! Ah ! jne unfortunate ! 
 Whither in the world am I going ? 
 Ah ! me oppressed with night, 
 Unseen, untold, unwelcome ! " 
 
 The day of deliverance would come only when a God should bring 
 release, and descend into the darksome depths of Tartarus to redeem 
 
611 
 
 the sufferer by his vicarious sacrifice. On the sandy wastes that 
 border on the Persian Gulf, the devotee knelt in prayer, making 
 BuppHcation to his deity Ormus to send his first-begotten son Mith- 
 ras to make speedy reparation for the miseries wrought by the evil- 
 god Ahiiman. The evil genius of the Egyptians, Typhon, was to 
 sustain defeat at the hands of the sister of Osiris, and bring redemp- 
 tion to the children of Ramises. Socrates is said, according to 
 Plato, to have taught his disciples to await a Saviour who would 
 teach mankind their conduct and behavior towards the gods. The 
 Hindoos lived in expectation of the incarnation of Brahma, when 
 the evil influence of Kaliga would forever be dispelled. 
 
 Still more strongly was the idea of sacrifice taught and cherished 
 among the chosen people of Grod, and the expectation of a future 
 Redeemer impressed upon the mind and imagination of the Jews. 
 Every rite and ceremony touched upon this hope; every law rested 
 on this basis; every custom bore upon this expectation; their whole 
 polity and constitution was framed in reference to this conviction, 
 and every sign and symbol was a type of this glorious and God- given 
 reahzation. The brazen serpent lifted up in the desert before the 
 eyes of all; the emissary goat bearing the burden of the people's 
 crimes; the Paschal Lamb immolated f or pui'poses of expiation; the 
 manna coming down from heaven to save the nation from famishing; 
 the oblations of the priests within and without the temple; and the 
 innumerable holocausts offered everywhere, as well as the figure of 
 the innocent Isaac about to be delivered to death by the hand of his 
 own father, all strikingly typified the great sacrifice to be one day 
 accomplished on the blood-crowned heights of Calvary for the salva- 
 tion of the whole human race. 
 
 Moses authorized sacrifice, and nearly every purification in the 
 Mosaic law was made by blood. 
 
 A sacrifice everywhere existed, so did the priesthood, for the one 
 implies the other. For, what is a priest ? A priest is one set apart 
 to perform the offices of religion, but particularly and chiefly the 
 duty of sacrifice. The priesthood is consequently co-extensive with 
 religion, and there has never been a people without priests. In 
 Mexico, at the period of the conquest, there were four millions ac- 
 cording to Prescott. 
 
 To the priests, as the Vicegerents of God on earth, the primacy 
 
612 
 
 of honor among the castes was assigned by Brahmins. Among the 
 Buddhists they were regarded as the ideal of perfect life, and were 
 supposed, by their hoHness and purity, to be destined to overcome 
 the evil influence of matter, and to prepare mankind for the second 
 incarnation and final beatitude of Nirvana. In the family of Aaron 
 the priesthood was hereditary, and the first-born of the oldest branch 
 of the family, if devoid of blemish, was chosen for the honorable 
 office of High-priest. 
 
 Of all the offices that man can be called upon to assume, the 
 priesthood is the highest and the holiest, and its sacrilegious usurpa- 
 tion was punished by God Himself with signal severity, for the 
 ground opened to engulf Core Dathon and Abiron, who set their 
 unhallowed feet within the dread precincts of the sanctuary. 
 
 In the present economy of salvation, the graces of redemption flow 
 from the great sacrifice of Calvary, through the sacraments instituted 
 by our Saviour. Sacraments are to be administered to men by men, 
 and hence the priesthood is essential to salvation. 
 
 To bring home to every man the fruit of Christ's redemption, the 
 priesthood and the sacramental system, twin flowers on the stem of 
 the Incarnation, were established by our Lord, as the full unfolding 
 of the blossoms on the tree of life. The whole sacramental system 
 is neither more nor less than Christ passing along the road of 
 humanity, teaching, touching, healing, and baptizing the sin-sick 
 multitude. 
 
 The office of the priest merits our attention, and claims admira- 
 tion. For what is the office of the priest ? 
 
 It is to stand by to witness the final agony of the dying, to cheer 
 and console; it is to pour the blessed balm of religious consolation 
 into the trembling breast; it is to feed the sufferer with the "fat of 
 corn," the milk of God's children, and the bread of eternal life; it 
 is to anoint him wifch the oil of fortitude for the strenuous struggle; 
 to cleanse him in the healing bath of the Eedeemer's blood; to give 
 him hope, the bower-anchor of the soul, and an assured confidence 
 in the wideness of God's mercy, and the greatness of God's good- 
 ness; it is, in fine, to take the soul, purified and regenerated, from 
 its tenement of clay, and hand it into the everlasting arms of its 
 Maker. 
 
 It is to die daily to himself;— to hold the flowering rod of Aaron 
 
613 
 
 "with undefiled hands, and walk, like Enoch and Moses, with the 
 Lord; it is to prefer before his Maker, the sacrifice of Christ and 
 Melchizedek with pure heart and purpose; to break the bread of 
 God's word with unstinted liberality to the hungry flock; to wear 
 the threshold of the doors in the homes of the poor, the sick, and the 
 dying, and show himself, in all that a reUgion of love and mercy can 
 dictate, a devoted and self-denying minister of the Master. 
 
 What is a priest ? He is " another Christ." The compassion of 
 Christ he carries in his bosom ; the love of Christ lives in his soul. 
 " Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can floods drown it," 
 and the mantle of this divine charity is burned upon his being on 
 the day of his ordination. On that day he devoted, come weaJ, 
 come woe, the undivided loyalty of his heart, and the undivided 
 service of his whole existence to his God. Christ lived in God, 
 loved in God, taught in God, and suffered in God, that every priest, 
 who is a second Christ, might live, and love, and teach, and suffer in 
 God. 
 
 Christ chose poverty; so must the priest. The foxes had holes, 
 and the birds of the air had shelter, but the Son of Man had not 
 whereon to lay His head. Was His throne of gold and sapphires ? 
 Were His ministers emissaries of wealth? His sceptre was a reed; 
 His crown was made of thorns. He was naked and thirsty; He was 
 bleeding and pierced; a King, scorned in life and adored in death. 
 He died as a felon. And of such is the kingdom of heaven. Such 
 is the legacy He left to His priests; a legacy that calls them to a life 
 of martyrdom. They must scale the mountain of sorrow, and walk, 
 if need be, the dolorous way of death. 
 
 What is the priest ? He is a leader of men. O for a leading 
 hand and a few loving souls to hft humanity to God. The priest is 
 a leader who knows the way, and fears not to walk therein. No 
 peril can daunt, no enemy can terrify, no power earth-born or hell- 
 begotten, can cause him to swerve from the course of his heaven- 
 commanded mission as the guide, the teacher, the saver of souls. He 
 is a sympathizer in suffering, a friend in necessity, and a father in 
 generating souls to God. 
 
 The priest is charged with the interests of the people before God. 
 "The government is on his shoulders." He is an angel, unceasingly 
 ascending and descending the ladder of Jacob, and bearing the 
 
614 
 
 petitions of his people even to the mercy-seat of God. He is a pon- 
 tiff, which signifies a bridge, because he is a mediator between the 
 creature and the Creator: — "A bridge always open for the passing 
 of acts of homage and adoration on the one side, and the transmis- 
 sion of heavenly blessings on the other." He is the dispenser of 
 sacred things; the bearer of all blessings; the giver of good tidings 
 in the Gospel, the agent of the Almighty, and vicegerent of Jesus 
 Christ. He is the leaven of humanity, the annealer of the race. 
 The reflected splendor of divinity, shooting from the unclouded 
 brightness of Christ, environs him. He precedes the poor pilgrim 
 child of Adam like a star in the night to light his way to the shining 
 summits of Paradise, and " as the bird each fond endearment tries, 
 to tempt its new-fledged ojffispring to the skies," so he employs every 
 art and every prayer to win the wayward wanderer back to God. 
 
 The seal of God is on his forehead; the law of God is upon his 
 lips; the power of God is in his hand. The pierced hand of Christ 
 lifted empires off their hinges, and " turned the stream of centuries 
 in their channel," and in the person of His priests He still governs 
 the world. 
 
 The prophet of old raised his hand and the fire came down from 
 heaven for the consumption of the victim; the priest of the New Law 
 pronounces but the words, " This is My Body," and lo ! the angels 
 hover nigh, the heavens bend above us, and the great God of power, 
 and majesty, and glory descends from the throne of eternal empire 
 to take up His dwelling in the lonely tabernacle of our altar. Yes, 
 Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead, the great God of 
 us all, thus stoops to our infirmities; the eternal is swayed by the 
 temporal; the infinite by the finite; the Creator by the creature; God 
 by man. 
 
 Such, Kev. Father Hogan, is the nature of that priesthood of 
 which you are a true representative, nay, an ornament and a light. 
 
 I am not here to indulge in aimless praise or senseless adulation. 
 I speak not my own language, but the language of those whose 
 eminent abilities and lofty station in the Church give weight to their 
 words and power to their praise. This is not the encomium of my 
 mouth, but the well-merited eulogy of the Rt. Rev. Dr. George 
 Conroy, Papal Ablegate to the United States, whose untimely loss we 
 all deplored. This is the sentiment, and this the conviction of many 
 
615 
 
 priests and some bishops whom I have met between the Atlantic sea- 
 board and the Eocky Mountains. This, I am sure, is the sentiment 
 of your own Ordinary, the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Trenton. 
 
 You left the famous Seminary of All-Hallows, wherein you re- 
 ceived your theological training with, as I am told, the brightest 
 honors accorded to any man within its walls during the long space 
 •of a quarter of a century. You left the green hillsides of your 
 native land to pursue your priestly labors in the far-off wilds of 
 Australia; and thence seeking a wider field of usefulness, you came 
 across continents and oceans to the land of liberty and the home of 
 freedom. Here have you labored — labored with unrepining patience 
 in the vineyard of the Master, bearing the heat and burden of the 
 day, during all these years. I am not here to preach your pane- 
 gyric. Nor is it necessary. Camden, Mount Holly, East Newark, 
 and Trenton speak for you to-day. 
 
 To me are personally known your arduous and self-sacrificing 
 labors on the banks of the Passaic. Amid the mephitic odors of 
 miasma, and the fell exhalations of malaria, where hundreds were 
 falling around you — falling to rise no more, — you left the scanty 
 comforts of your study, or arose in the dead of night to seek out 
 the cabins of the poor, the sick, and the dying, and in front of the 
 pitiless storm, in the teeth of the driving sleet, in the face of the 
 cold night rain and wind, to carry consolation to the cheerless and 
 the fatherless, and to aid in all that the sweet religion of a loving 
 Jesus can inspire the sympathetic heart of man to do for his fellow- 
 men. And, sir, your memory is a benediction there to-day. Not 
 long ago the present pastor of that city said to me : " Father 
 Hogan's work still lives." Yes, it lives, and will live on forever, like 
 the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, never to pass away 
 tiU the heavens be shrivelled as a scroll, and earth be swallowed in 
 eternity. 
 
 Of your labors in the parish of the Sacred Heart, why should I 
 gpeak to-day? Let the work proclaim the praise. These walls have 
 words, every stone in this temple has a tongue; the whole parish 
 has a voice to-day. This majestic edifice, topped by the massive 
 dome and golden cross, bears the name of its humble artificer, 
 Father Hogan, up to the very battlements of God. These are strik- 
 ing monuments, because visible to the eye. But there are others 
 
616 
 
 more important, if less obvious, because written upon the hearts and 
 minds of men. They are monuments of truth and goodness and 
 holiness. They are seen in the piety of your people, in the recti- 
 tude of their conduct, in the loyalty and beauty of their unblemished 
 Catholicity. Father Hogan lives in his people. Upon their souls he 
 has stamped his pure character, and his own noble knight-errantry 
 for right and truth in the world. One and all, we give him joy 
 to-day. This is his Silver Jubilee. This is a red-letter day in a 
 calendar of glory. 
 
 Since, then, God in His goodness has vouchsafed to you to see- 
 this day, the 29th of June, 1890, the anniversary of your entrance 
 into the royal ranks of the soldiers of the sanctuary, we extend to- 
 you our glad congratulations, and give testimony to the joy we feel 
 in the prolongation of your priesthood. We are not ignorant that 
 you have little regard for the judgments of men, for you know the 
 standard of the world is not the measure of God. And yet we feel 
 bound to give emphatic voice to the pleasure, the gratification, and 
 the benefit derived from all our relations with you. For myself, 
 what can I say ? What, but that I owe a debt of gratitude which I 
 can never cancel, which time cannot efface, nor treasures repay. Ta 
 me, sir, with whose fortunes you have been so longed concerned,^ 
 you have always been a " guide, philosopher, and friend," — yea, 
 more than a friend: a father. If to-day it is my proud privilege ta 
 stand on this altar, an unworthy, but still a representative of Jesus 
 Christ, I owe it, after God, to you. From you came the counsel, iter 
 inspiration, the direction. I wish, then, to say that I am filled with 
 a profound sense of gratitude and thankfulness; for, whatever my 
 faults, I cannot forget a favor. " Silver and gold I have none, but 
 such as I have, I give to thee." The tribute of my poor prayers, 
 such as they are, shall be yours, yours in the still twilight of the 
 evening, and yours at the dawning of the day. Take them with a 
 benison, take them with my heartfelt good wishes, take them with 
 my lasting regard, for ''I am but a beggar in thanks." 
 
 May no sorrow distract your days, and no grief disturb your 
 nights. May the pillow of peace press your cheeks, and the sun- 
 shine of God's gladness light the way wherein your footsteps lie. 
 May your life be serene as a summer day, and in the end as peace- 
 ful as the close. To-day you tell two decades and a half of the beads 
 
617 
 
 of priestly life; may God grant us to gather when you count a fuU 
 round of that life-telling Rosary. I have only to wish for you a 
 long and happy life — happy in its quiet flow of uninterrupted en- 
 joyment — happy in its disclosures of the providence of God to you — 
 happy in preparing for an eternal Hfe amid the sweet songs and 
 fadeless joys of Paradise. 
 
11. 
 
 MORTAL SIN. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH, JERSEY CITY, N. J. 
 
 "We shall have many good things, if we fear God and avoid 
 evil." 
 
 Man was created for God, for he was created for happiness, and 
 God is happiness. And so, having fashioned man, God placed him 
 in a terrestrial paradise, where was found everything that could 
 gratify the senses and delight the soul, and whence, after a brief so- 
 journ, he should be translated to that heavei^y country which was 
 to be his home and inheritance forever. 
 
 But as felicity in the other world, so happiness in this was condi- 
 tioned upon his fidelity to the light and easy law which God had 
 laid upon him as the test of his obedience and subjection. Had he 
 been faithful and loyal in his allegiance to a merciful as well as a 
 generous Master, no power of word-painting could possibly depict 
 the bright and blissful conditions of existence under which both he 
 and his posterity should pass the probationary period, till they 
 should go hence to dwell amid serener joys and brighter beatitudes 
 in " that house eternal in the heavens, that home not made by human 
 hands." 
 
 Ah ! what delights hath the heavenly Father prepared for the chil- 
 dren of men. How Infinite Wisdom hath exhausted its ingenuity, 
 and divine benevolence poured out its copious blessings to make 
 human creatures happy in their earthly home ! Why, may we not 
 ask, why was that hour of happiness doomed to such short duration, 
 why so transitory and so brief ? What accursed fatality was that 
 which caused the slimy serpent to trail his coils over the golden 
 fruit of that paradise of old ? But even so it was. 
 
619 
 
 " Of all the trees which axe in the garden of paradise," said the 
 Lord God to Adam, *'thou shalt eat; but of the tree of the knowl- 
 edge of good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in what day soever 
 thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die the death." Such was the 
 divine commandment, so easy of fulfillment, given to the father of 
 our race. Seduced by the specious and flattering promises of the 
 tempter, man, unhappy man, fell. He forsook his Maker's law; he 
 contemned His commandments; he rebelled against His ordinance, 
 and the curse of calamity and disaster came upon him like the clouds 
 of everlasting night. " Cursed be the earth in thy work," said the ire- 
 ful God to His unworthy servant. " In the sweat of thy brow shalt 
 thou eat thy bread, thou and thy posterity till time shall be no 
 more." Driven forth, exiled and degraded, he no more shall enter 
 those gladsome bowers; no more shall trace those dells and streams; 
 no more shall seek those grateful shades and hear those plashing 
 fountains play, for the flaming sword, flashing from the angel's 
 hand, shall bar his entrance evermore; but, with disaster dogging 
 his footsteps, with care and calamity on his brow, he shall plod his 
 weary way, till, borne down by grief and affliction, he shall silently 
 sink into the dust whence he first came. " Dust thou art and unto dust 
 shalt thou return." Well may he cry in the words of Jeremias: 
 " Know thou and see what an evil and a bitter thing it is for thee to 
 have abandoned the Lord thy God." "By one man sin entered into 
 the world, and by sin death." 
 
 To consider the cause of this calamity upon our common race; to 
 investigate, as far as it is given to our limited inteUigence to do, the 
 nature and malice of that which entailed upon mankind such death- 
 less woe, shall be the pui-pose of our thoughts this night. God grant 
 that we fully understand what sin is, and then we shall never com- 
 mit it; God grant that we may appreciate its horror, and then we 
 shall recoH from it with loathing. 
 
 And what is sin? I do not know; you do not know; God alone, 
 who can comprehend the greatness and majesty which are assailed 
 by sin, can tell what sin is. But what we do not fully understand, 
 we may venture to describe. 
 
 What is sin ? With St. Thomas, we may define it to be an act of 
 disorder, or the violation of order. And what is order ? For 
 " Order is heaven's first law, and this confest 
 Some are and must be greater than the rest." 
 
620 
 
 Order is the disposition of things according to their right relations. 
 It is the putting things in their proper places, and the holding them 
 by fixed and inviolable law in that position to which of right they 
 belong. 
 
 Now, God is the Author and first cause of all things. He sits 
 eternally on His sublime throne, happy in the contemplation of His 
 adorable perfections, of which no man can deprive Him. He 
 created me and you, and every living and moving creature upon the 
 face of the earth; He gave them their several perfections, set them 
 in their right spheres, in their proper order, and said, " Thus far 
 shalt thou go and no farther." This is the Creator's will. And as 
 all creatures flowed out from Him in the beginning, so their present 
 perfection consists in uniformly tending towards Him, as their final 
 happiness will be in being absorbed in His everlasting glory. Man's 
 perfection, therefore, consists in the harmony of his action and the 
 conformity of his will with the will of the divine Creator. But 
 when man opposes his will to the will of Him who made him; when 
 he seeks to lift himself outside that sphere to which God has 
 assigned him, and break the bond of subordination between himself 
 and his Creator, he creates, as far as in him lies, chaos and con- 
 fusion; he commits sin, and makes a breach of order, for sin is the 
 gospel of disorder. How so? Let St. Thomas tell. "Sin," he 
 says, " is the aversion of the will from God and the conversion of the 
 same to the creature." It is the putting of the creature in the place 
 of God, and a complete subversion of the order which God has 
 evolved from the depths of His divine wisdom, and a substitution 
 therefor of the wild and wayward will of man. 
 
 All things speak the praise and obey the voice of their Creator. 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament an- 
 nounces the works of His hands." The lordly king of day comes 
 forth in regal splendor and warms the heart of earth with his 
 kindling beams. The moon shines silently by her reflected light, 
 and the radiant stars sparkle with undimmed brilliancy upon the 
 brow of night. The sea slumbers in its slimy bed, and breaks not 
 the barriers set for it by God. By the unerring laws of gravitation 
 the great globes swing and turn without discordant jar; the earth is 
 poised on her foundations and the wide gates of the universe turn 
 with noiseless motion on their hinges at the touch of God's strong 
 
621 
 
 finger — but amid this wonderful display of divine order, in this 
 song of universal harmony, one discordant voice, one sibilant sound 
 is heard, hissing forth defiance against the Most High God, and 
 saying, like Lucifer of old — "I will not serve," Thou hast lifted 
 me out of nothing; Thou hast fashioned me with Thine own hand; 
 Thou hast gifted me with the light of intelligence and the faculty of 
 freedom; Thou hast made me Thine own son, and dost wish that I 
 should call Thee Father; but I renounce my true allegiance; I will 
 break the bonds that bind me to Thee; I proclaim my independence 
 of Thee, my Creator and my God; I will not bend the knee; I will 
 not yield to Thee the tribute of service which Thou demandest, but 
 *' I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the 
 mountain of the covenant which is on the side of the North, and 
 I will myself be like unto the Most High God ! " "What infamous 
 audacity ! What inconceivable madness ! And yet this is mortal sin ! 
 
 The order estabhshed by God finds its expression in His divine 
 law. As sin is the negation of order, so is it the violation of law. 
 St. Augustine, therefore, rightly defines sin to be any thought, word, 
 or deed against the law of God. Mortal sin is any grievous and 
 willful transgression of the same will of God, as expressed in His 
 divine or natural law. To constitute a mortal sin the iniemal or 
 the external act must be grave in itself, or, at least, so considered by 
 the conscience, and the act must be performed with full knowledge 
 and consent. 
 
 Mortal sin derives its name from the Latin, Mors, meaning death, 
 because it brings death to the soul by depriving it of its super- 
 natural life, which is the grace of God; and when unrepented of, it 
 carries to the soul everlasting damnation, for " the soul that sinneth 
 shall die the death," says Ezechiel. 
 
 Mortal sin is, therefore, a deplorable evil, destructive in its effects, 
 and dismal in its consequences. It is environed by all the gloomy 
 surroundings of death, for, as Augustine says, the sinner carries a 
 dead soul in a living body. 
 
 The malice of mortal sin is infinite and immeasurable. It is a 
 plain principle of philosophy that the gravity of an offense must be 
 measured not only by the nature of the injury done, but also by the 
 dignity of the offended and the insignificance of the offender. The 
 malice of deadly sin is consequently bej^ond the range of finite com- 
 
622 
 
 prehension. For who is the offended? He is God — God the 
 sovereign Arbiter of life and death, and the Maker of heaven and 
 earth. It is He who sitteth upon the clouds, whose face is as the 
 sun, whose voice is as the thunder and the roaring of many waters, 
 and whose dwelling-place is in the inaccessible heights of glory. It 
 is He whose greatness is incomparable, whose power is illimitable, 
 whose majesty no tongue can tell. He is infinite in Himself, infinite 
 in His attributes, for He knows no bounds. He has no limits, for He 
 reacheth by the stretch of His omnipotent arm to the uttermost 
 parts of the universe, and disposeth all things howsoever He will. 
 All things came out from Him in the beginning, and when the 
 period fixed by Him shall have elapsed, they shall likewise end. 
 Before Him shall one day stand, when He cometh in the might of 
 His power, all the kings and nations of the earth to receive judg- 
 ment according to their deeds. At His fiat the heavens and the 
 earth shall be changed ** as a vesture," and shall disappear from the 
 realms of existence, but He shall reign forever, omnipotent with His 
 elect in glory, and his kingdom shall everlastingly endure. And 
 this great God of power and majesty is the Being offended by 
 the rash and fgolhardy sinner. And who is the offender ? Who is 
 he that lifteth his hands in defiance of the Lord of Hosts ? He is 
 man — man, a plaything of the wind, a vapor of the morning, a 
 shadow on the dial of existence, an atom of dust, a worm of earth, a 
 puny, pitiful creature, extracted from nothing, returning to nothing 
 — a composite of vileness and dust and ashes, for " dust he is and 
 unto dust he shall return." O ! how can that dependent, insignificant 
 creature challenge by mortal enmity the God who made him ? How 
 can he with wanton temerity provoke the anger of the Almighty ? 
 How can he whose life hangs by a hair, whose existence is as 
 evanescent as smoke, rise up, in swelling insolence, to insult his 
 Maker, nay, to strike with the javelin of sin at the heai-t of Him who 
 can crush him with the might of His forefinger, wither him with 
 the hot breath of His almighty anger, and blot him out forever. 
 " For the soul of the wicked shall be blasted as a vine when its 
 grapes are in the flower, and as an olive tree that casteth its flower." 
 
 Consider, my friends, the ingratitude of mortal sin. 
 
 There is one place into whose murky darkness no ray of kindly 
 gratitude can ever enter, and that place is— hell. When we close 
 
623 
 
 our hearts to those feelings and sentiments which betoken an appre- 
 ciative sense of favors received, we Hken ourselves, in some degree, 
 to those unhappy souls who are damned for their ingratitude. It 
 has been truthfully said : 
 
 " Ingratitude in friend or foe, in father, mother, brother, wife, 
 Is far the bitterest drop of woe that mingles in the cup of life." 
 
 And what moral turpitude, what callous insensibility, what cor- 
 roding canker, must have eaten its wormy way into the soul of him 
 in whom the light of gratitude no longer lingers ! Who would not 
 shun that man as a pest and a scorpion in society, and a blot upon 
 humanity, a degradation to our common kind? The dumb and 
 driven beast is not incapable of showing forth his gratitude for the 
 kindnesses he may receive. The very dog will lick the hand that 
 bestows upon it a caress. But man, who is the crowning work of 
 creation and the masterpiece of the Almighty's handicraft; man, who 
 has an intellect to know and a heart to love and feel; man, who has 
 been crowned with dignity and honor, made in the sweet similitude 
 of his Maker, and set " but little below the angels " — he alone can 
 debase himself to that degree of vileness which is characteristic of 
 the ingrate; he can strangle in his breast those impulses of his 
 nature and stifle those feelings which are by God's ovni hand en- 
 twined around the very tendrils of the human heart. 
 
 "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,'* 
 but man's ingratitude to God makes countless angels weep. To be 
 unable to reciprocate a kindness; to cherish no affection towards a 
 benefactor; to have no appreciation of benefits received, is, indeed, 
 the mark of a mean and despicable soul, conjoined to a shallow 
 understanding and a hard and unfeeling heart, but, after all, it is 
 only what may be called a negative ingratitude. But when to this 
 perverse and unnatural disposition, this tendency to thanklessness is 
 added the foul intent to insult the benefactor, to rob him of his 
 rights, to betray his friendship, to scorn his love and to employ the 
 very gifts he gave as instruments to wound and outrageously insult 
 him, then, indeed, is every fine feeling of sensibility dead and every 
 chaste sentiment of honor lost in him who will not stand up to stigma- 
 tize the deed as diabolical and to cover the guilty perpetrator with 
 shame, ignominy, and confusion. Yet such is the ingratitude of 
 
624 
 
 which the sinner is guilty towards his God; for, besides his thank- 
 lessness to a good and generous giver, he employs the gifts gratui- 
 tously bestowed upon him as a means of the most flagitious insult 
 that a perverted mind can plan, or a malignant heart can execute. 
 For sin — mortal sin — is a red-handed rebellion of a subject against 
 his sovereign; of a servant against his master; of a child against his 
 father; of a creature against his God. "Hearken, O! ye heavens, 
 and give ear, O ! earth : I have raised up children and they have 
 despised me." " The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's 
 crib, but my people have not known me and Israel hath not under- 
 stood." Ah ! yes; God has created us and He loves us as the apple 
 of His eye, for creation was itself an act of love, or, as Father Faber 
 has it, an act of kindness on the part of God. He conserves and 
 guards us as His own children every hour of our lives, and we rest 
 under the protecting shadow of His wings both by day and night. 
 Every breath of ours we breathe through Him, and every action of 
 our bodies, every movement of our minds is His free and gracious 
 gift. In the loving liberahty of His ineffable goodness He came 
 down from His throne beyond the stars, clothed Himself in our frail 
 humanity, that He might rive the slave-chains in which sin had 
 bound us, even at the incalculable cost of His sufferings and awful 
 crucifixion. And now that can He say, as Osee hath foretold : " Be- 
 hold the Lion of the Fold of Judah hath conquered; with a strong 
 bite He hath broken the iron bars of the gates of hell, and hath 
 trampled death to destruction"; He likewise says for our encourage- 
 ment: " In my Father's house are many mansions " ; "I go to pre- 
 pare a place for you"; " Be ye faithful unto death, and to you shall 
 be given the crown of eternal life." And thus, as the culmination of 
 it all, does He promise us a heavenly kingdom, where we shall rest 
 forever in the realm of the King in His beauty, imparadised in bliss 
 forevermore. 
 
 And for this overwhelming show of goodness to us shall we re- 
 turn Him only the viper-sting of sin — we whom He has nourished 
 at His own breast and gathered under His wing, " as the hen gather- 
 eth the chickens," and the milk of whose loving-kindness we drink 
 as our daily nourishment ? Shall we make this bounteous Bene- 
 factor no requital other than that of hate, contempt, scorn, outrage, 
 insult, and defiance? Oh! "our offence is rank; it smeUs to 
 
625 
 
 heaven.'* What gratitude is here ! What feeling and what sensi- 
 biHty ! Oh ! what base and shameful ingratitude " to make a mock- 
 ery of Him and crucify again the Son of God ! " " Ah ! " He says, 
 in His bitterness of soul, — "Ah! if Mine enemy hath done this; 
 if he that hated Me had reviled and persecuted Me, I might per- 
 chance have borne it; but you, my friend and my familiar, you 
 have sat down to sup at Mine own table and so often eaten sweet- 
 meats of Mine own dish — this is, indeed, too much; this is more 
 than I can bear; this is enough to break, if it were breakable, the 
 heart of God Himself." 
 
 Consider, once more, mortal sin in its effects and consequences, 
 which will manifest at once its malice and its misery. 
 
 Oh ! the fearful remorse of conscience ! The demon of remorse 
 seizes upon the unhappy sinner, and the voice of an accusing con- 
 science is ever clamoring in the chambers of his soul. He is like the 
 murderer, when, having despatched his victim, he first realizes that 
 the foul deed is done. His hag-ridden fancy conjures up a horde 
 of weird and gruesome phantoms to rack and torture the affrighted 
 mind. Henceforth happiness and he are strangers; his peace of 
 soul has fled. Every echo that he hears puts him in a paroxysm of 
 alarm, and the sound of every footfall reminds him that the Nemesis 
 of justice is hot upon his track. And wherever he turns his eye, his 
 mad and frightened brain and blurred and excited vision can detect 
 nothing but a rope, a gallows, and a felon's doom. It is not far dif- 
 ferent with any other sinner. No sooner is the sin committed than 
 conscience cries out against him, and as he cannot stifle its accusing 
 voice, so neither can he elude the chastisements which divine justice 
 will inflict upon him. He seeks, all in vain, to smother that outcry- 
 ing voice. He would like to skulk from the sight of God, as did 
 Adam among the trees of Paradise, but he feels how futile would be 
 the attempt. He would like to accept the Devil's flattering assur- 
 ance that he will not be found out; but he who robbed him of his 
 virtue cannot steal away his sense. He would like to lull his troubled 
 soul into a sense of security, but, like Banquo's ghost, his conscience 
 will not down. His mind is perplexed and harassed by fears and 
 alarms. He knows he stands on treacherous ground, which may at 
 any moment yield and plunge him into irremediable sorrow, into 
 the prison-house of hell, for, " as birds are taken with the snare and 
 40 
 
fishes taken with the hook, so are sinners taken in the evil time." Ah ! 
 how often doth the demon of despair seize upon him, and while he 
 laments the past, he is incapable of resolution for the future. 
 " Come back, O vanished years ! " he cries, " rich with the dreams I 
 used to dream, when fancy flutteried free, when my heart was as 
 light as the morning's footfall, come back to me again ! Oh ! bring 
 back the bliss and joy, the hopes and passioned aims that fired my 
 soul with the pure flames of youth in the golden years now gone, 
 when Hf e was new and fresh, when roses crowned my pathway and 
 earth seemed half divine. Oh ! I have seen the mighty rivers roll- 
 ing joyously along through plain and wold, where more than Al- 
 pine ridges raised their crested columns above the gleaming snow, 
 and I have seen the winding rivulets coursing through the flowery 
 meads and vales, all tremulous with light, with laughter, and with 
 song. And I have seen the merry maidens trip jubilantly by, as 
 they bore the blushing clusters of the grapes to the wine-press, and 
 I saw the sun-gold on their ringlets and the lovelight in their eyes. 
 I have seen the sweet smiles of nature, and I rejoiced in the varied 
 melodies of her voice; but changed is the spirit of my dream, for the 
 sunlight is gone from my heart, and the angel music no longer 
 whispers through the desolate caverns of my soul. So peace to the 
 memories of the past, the vault in which they lie is shut forever - 
 more, and the sky and the day-beams no longer shine upon them. 
 The Eden-land I sought is vanished — vanished with the bhss it 
 brought in seeking — and now I shall never kneel again at fancy's 
 holy shrine, to sing the songs I sang, or pray the prayers I prayed 
 in the green, glad years now gone ! Peace and innocence of my 
 childhood, thou art gone; divine light of my soul, farewell. * Ah! 
 who will grant me to be according to the months past, according to the 
 days, in which God kept me ? When His lamp shined over my 
 head, and I walked by His light in darkness ? As I was in the days 
 of my youth, when God dwelt secretly in my tabernacle ? ' " 
 
 Consider, now, the loss of the divine grace which sin brings 
 upon the soul. 
 
 The bright sun is beautiful, but it is not without its spots; the 
 flowers that bloom by the wayside are beautiful, but the worm oft 
 lurks within the bud; the blae sky that bends above us is beautiful, 
 but clouds and darkness often rest upon it; and the human coun- 
 
627 
 
 tenance has a beauty all but divine, but it is often shaded by the 
 lines of care and grief. But a soul glistening with the splendor of 
 divine grace is beautiful beyond anything in the lovely creation of 
 God. There is nothing under heaven's dome comparable in beauty 
 and brilliancy to a soul clothed with the garments of God's holy 
 grace. Its sheen and lustre " pale the ineffectual fire " of a seraph's 
 radiant wing. For in the sublime and expressive language of Sacred 
 Writ, a soul in grace is " the spouse of Jesus Christ," " the temple of 
 the Holy Ghost," and "the daughter of the King." "Thou art all 
 fair, O ! my love, and there is no spot in thee." As the beams of 
 the morning sun are reflected in the bosom of some peUucid lake, so 
 the white light of heaven and the transcendent loveliness of God are 
 mirrored in the soul that is adorned with the effulgence of divine 
 grace. By grace we are become the sons of God, servitors in His 
 holy sanctuary, and partakers of His divine nature. By grace we 
 share in the communion of the Saints, and by analogy are like unto 
 those blessed spirits who stand beside the throne, all crowned with 
 glory, robed w4th immortality, and shining like the sun in the sight 
 of God. By grace we are linked with chains of love to the heavenly 
 Bridegroom, we follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, and by 
 Him our names are written in the book of life. 
 
 But oh ! what havoc and desolation is wrought upon the soul by 
 the scathing scourge of sin. All that beauty becomes blighted; 
 eveiy vestige of that supernal loveliness effaced. The favorite child 
 of God is disinherited, and, like exiled Hagar, is driven forth from 
 the bosom of her spouse to dwell in a wilderness of want and deso- 
 lation. The golden links of love are rudely snapped asunder; the 
 friendship of God is forfeited; the beauty of grace is gone; the 
 splendor of good deeds is dimmed, their merit wiped away, and the 
 sinner's name, by angel's tears, is blotted from the Book of Life, for 
 "aU the justices which he has done shall be no more remembered." 
 To that benighted soul the pathetic words of Jeremias are sadly 
 apposite : " How hath the Lord covered with obscurity the daughter 
 of Sion in His wrath ! How hath He cast down from heaven to the 
 earth the glorious one of Israel, and hath not remembered His foot- 
 stool in the day of His anger. The Lord hath cast down headlong, 
 and hath not spared, all that was beautiful in the house of Jacob." 
 
 The punishments and visible chastisements inflicted, both on in- 
 
628 
 
 dividuals and on nations, at every period of the world's history, orr 
 account of sin, are likewise irrefragable proof of its essential malice, 
 when mortal, and of the infinite hatred which God bears towards, 
 actions which grievously outrage His sovereign majesty. I shall not 
 make extended reference to them, for to do so might oppress your 
 minds and harrow your feelings excessively. To the most con- 
 spicuous instances of God's exemplary punishment upon offenders 
 against His justice, I allude with sufficient brevity. 
 
 The angels committed a single sin of thought, and without an 
 instant's warning those bright princes were cast down from their 
 starry thrones in the firmament of God into the noisome dungeon 
 which was prepared in punishment of their pride. Shining with the 
 brilliancy of the sun, they became wanderers on the shores of ever- 
 lasting night, and from being messengers of light, they became 
 fiends of darkness. Because they lifted themselves on high they 
 were made to bite the dust; and because they were swollen and. 
 puffed up with their empty pride, they fell like lightning from heaven 
 into the fathomless depths of the fiery pit. And there shall they 
 abide. And all the tears of fire that they shall shed shall never call 
 forth one sigh of compassion from the heart of a merciful God; and 
 all their pleadings and all their groanings shall never move their 
 Maker to forgiveness, nor appease the wrath of the implacable 
 Avenger. For, sitting upon His throne of eternal justice the Omnip- 
 otent Vindicator shall, through all eternity, hurl down upon them 
 the hot shafts of His avenging ire; His angry breath 'shall burn 
 them forevermore; that fire shall never lose its sting; their worm 
 shall never die; those flames shall not be put out, for "the smoke 
 of the torments of the damned shall ascend forever and forever " ! 
 
 Adam and Eve committed one sin of disobedience, and the gates of 
 heaven were so closed against them that they could be opened only 
 by the death of the Son of God. Cain slew his brother Abel, and he 
 was branded with the black mark of infamy and sent forth a 
 wanderer and fugitive upon the earth, till his wretched life should 
 spend its force and he become " a useless piece of porphyry to be 
 cast into the waste-dumps of hell." Sodom and Gomorrah had 
 crimsoned their career with lecherous crime, and God opened the 
 furnaces of heaven and rained down fire and brimstone on those 
 pestilential cities of the plain, leaving only a sulphurous pool to 
 
629 
 
 mark His vengeance to the end of time. When the crimes of the 
 -children of men had grown intolerable in the divine sight, it re- 
 pented God that He had made man, and sundering the flood-gates 
 of the heavenly deep. He for forty days and forty nights poured 
 down tempestuous torrents upon the earth, till every creature, save 
 the few within the ark, had found a grave in the wide waste of 
 waters. 
 
 Oh ! how terrible are Thy judgments, Lord God of Hosts. Verily, 
 " Thou dost judge justice itself " and dost " search Jerusalem with 
 lamps." How great is Thy hatred of sin when Thou imposest such 
 calamitous chastisements upon it; how fearful the offense which 
 thus rouses to anger a patient and long-suffering God. Spare us, 
 O good Lord I Cut us not off in the midst of our days and grant 
 us yet a little time that we repent and serve Thee, as we doth de- 
 sire and as Thou deservedst. Oh! strike us not down while yet the 
 weight of sin is on our souls, and blast us not "like the vine in 
 flower," lest like unfruitful and unprofitable servants we descend in 
 sorrow into the darksome house of hell. 
 
 Oh ! the misery of sin. Oh ! the frightful curse of sin. Oh ! the 
 pain unutterable and the unspeakable woe of sin. To miss our 
 God-appointed destiny; to baffle the purpose of creation and frus- 
 trate, as in us lies, the beneficent designs of God. Never to set foot 
 upon those shining shores; never to pass the pearly gates of Para- 
 dise, nor to behold the beauties of the inner tabernacle revealed; 
 never to taste the fullness of God's house ; never to driuk of the 
 fountain of felicity; never to enter our own Father's dwelUng, nor 
 be robed with His own royalty; never to have Him clasp us in His 
 fond embrace ; never to feel His kiss upon the cheek, to have Him 
 bind up the bruised heart and wipe away the tear of sorrow from 
 the eye; never to see, to possess, to enjoy our Creator, our Re- 
 deemed, and our God; never, nevermore; but to be thnist out into 
 that exterior and inextinguishable darkness; to be cast down from 
 those celestial heights; to be exiled forever from the face of Jesus 
 who shed His blood for our redemption, and condemned to that 
 abyss of pain and sorrow and distress, to those chambers of the 
 damned " where no order but everlasting horror dwelleth," to the 
 house of deep, dark, irremediable misery and despaii' — oh ! existence 
 ;appalling ! oh ! night that has no day ! oh ! death that knows no life I 
 
630 
 
 Such is the penalty of mortal sin. Need I say more ? Must I still 
 exhort you to do penance, to seek the tribunal of pardon and for- 
 giveness, ere it be too late and the door of God's mercy be slammed 
 against your face forever ? Is any one to-night groaning under the 
 burden of an accusing conscience, or in a state of sin, let me implore 
 him to prostrate himself at Jesus' feet and sue for clemency and 
 grace. Let him cry with the contriteness of the penitent Psalmist : 
 " Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy, and ac- 
 cording to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my in- 
 iquities. Wash me yet more from my iniquity and cleanse me from 
 my sin. Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
 within my bowels. Oh ! cast me not off from Thy face, and Thy 
 holy countenance take not away from me." 
 
 Wherefore rouse ye, my brethren, and " ye that sleep rise from: 
 the dead and Christ will enlighten you." Perhaps this is the only 
 season of grace which God will ever give, and if you embrace 
 it not He will let you alone as " chained to your idols" and "will 
 laugh at your destruction." Be not deceived; God is not mocked. 
 He endureth for a little while, and when the cup of your crime is 
 filled, by one swift and decisive stroke He cuts you off forever. By 
 the love of the living Jesus and the love of your own soul, rise 
 quickly, shake off the habits of sin and be converted to the Lord 
 your God— for, as He is the God of the living, so doth He swear 
 that He wills not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be con- 
 verted and live. 
 
 My brethren, another Lent is on the wane; another, and it may be 
 the last that we shall ever see. Time is on the wing, and though the 
 days are growing long, they stop not in their flight; and who shall 
 say how soon the day-dawn may greet our gaze for the last, last 
 time on earth? "We spend our years like a tale that is told," and 
 like " a swift post we flee away," or " like thread that is cut by the 
 weaver's shuttle," or "like grass that falls before the mower's 
 scythe," we are cut off in our course, and "know our place no 
 more." Oh! then be wise, with the wisdom which maketh wise 
 unto salvation. Now is the time for you "to rise from sleep," to 
 " cast off the old man Adam and put on the new man, Jesus Christ." 
 Now is the time to repent you of the misdeeds of the past, to divest 
 yourselves of the garments of sin and come forth clothed in the 
 
631 
 
 livery and renewed in the spirit of your Saviour, Jesus. 'Tis He 
 that bids you rise from the grave of sin, even as He called Lazarus 
 from the tomb. "He standeth for your judgment now, as you shall 
 stand for His," Do you not know those tender and forgiving ac- 
 cents which calleth you to come ? If to-night " you hear that voice, 
 harden not your hearts," but rise betimes and come quickly to the 
 tribunal of repentance, ere it be too late and the door of God's 
 mercy be slammed against your face forever. " There is more joy 
 before the angels of God in heaven upon one sinner doing penance 
 than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance." 
 
III. 
 
 THE PRIESTHOOD.* 
 
 SILVER JUBILEE OF REV. G, A. VASSALLO. 
 
 All power is from God. He is the author and first cause of all 
 things. He spake and they were made; He commanded and they 
 were created. Eiding upon the wings of the whirlwind He spake 
 to His servant Job : " Where wast thou when I laid the foundations 
 of the earth; when the morning stars praised Me together and the 
 sons of God made joyful melody ? Who shut up the sea within 
 bounds when it broke forth as issuing from the womb; when I made 
 the cloud the garment thereof and wrapt it in mists as in swaddling 
 bands ? Who gave a course to violent showers and a way to noisy 
 thunder, that it might fill the desert and desolate places and bring 
 forth the green grass ? Who is the father of rain and who begot 
 the little drops of dew ? Out of whose womb came the ice, and the 
 frost of heaven, who hath gendered it ? Who can declare the order 
 of the heavens, and the harmony of heaven who can make to sleep ? 
 Who provideth food for the raven when its little ones cry to God, 
 ^ wandering about because they have no meat ? It is I, the Jehovah, 
 the Almighty, the Most High. I am who am, and by Me are all 
 things that are. I am the Creator, the Conserver, the Governor, and 
 the Provider of all." 
 
 "The Almighty stood," says Habacuc, "and measured the earth; 
 He looked and dissolved the nations, for power and strength are in 
 His hands. He touched the trembling hills and they were instantly 
 wrapt in smoke; the ancient mountains burst in pieces; the rocks 
 melted away like wax, and the pillars of the heavens were forced from 
 their foundations. For the ways of the Lord are in the tempest 
 
 * From the Summit (N. J.) Record. 
 
633 
 
 and whirlwind, and clouds are the dust of His feet. The hills 
 and the lonesome mountains shake under the journeys of His 
 eternity; the flower of Lebanon fades away; the beauty of Basan 
 and Carmel perish; the earth, the world, and all that dwell therein 
 sink down in the presence of the Lord of Hosts, in the presence of 
 the God of Jacob." 
 
 How sublime is the language of the inspired writer, and how ex- 
 alted the idea it conveys of the omnipotent power of God. 
 
 But the power of Christ is the power of God, for Christ is God; 
 His works are the works of God, and His life on earth was the life 
 of God. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God." " I and the Father are one," for I, 
 like the Father, was " set up from eternity and of old before the 
 world was made." All the actions and utterances of Christ evince 
 the same divine, God-given power. " He thought it no robbery to 
 be Himself equal to God," for although the uncreated Word which 
 was in the beginning with God, and was God, divested Himself of 
 all the marks of His divinity and took the form of a servant. He 
 still did not abdicate that Godhead which He, as " the splendor of 
 His Father's glory and the figure of His substance," necessarily had 
 before all ages. " There are three who give testimony in heaven," 
 says John, " the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these 
 three are one." " We know," he says again, " that the Son of God 
 is come and this is the true God and eternal life." This, then, is 
 He of whom it is written in the head of the book. Behold I come. 
 This is He in whose person all the Messianic prophecies were palpa- 
 bly verified; whose birth was announced by the angels' song of 
 glory to the shepherds on the hillsides; whose advent, though ob- 
 scure and lowly, brought the kings of the earth to adore Him; at 
 whose baptism the heavens were parted, and the Holy Ghost de- 
 scended upon Him in dove-like form, while from the radiant clouds 
 the eternal Father declares Him to be His beloved Son in whom He 
 is well pleased. This is He who was transfigured at Tabor, when His 
 face did shine as the sun and His garments became white as snow, 
 and when the Father again proclaimed Him to be His Son, and com- 
 manded all to hear Him. This is He who, though He expired in the 
 gloom and shame of Calvary, yet gave forth the most shining tokens 
 of divinity even in the moment of His divine dereliction, for the sun 
 
634 
 
 withdrew his customary light at noonday, the quivering earth was 
 wrapped in darkness, the rocks split asunder, the sheeted dead 
 came forth, and the Centurion and the burly soldiers cried aloud, 
 overwhelmed by nature's groaning testimonies, '' He was indeed the 
 Son of God." This is He who called Himself the Son of God; who 
 solemnly asseverated that He was the uncreated and self-existing 
 Deity when to the doctors He declared : Before Abraham was I am. 
 This is He whose sanctity of life, whose humility of demeanor, 
 whose gentleness of manners, whose benevolence of disposition and 
 tenderness of heart excited the envy of the proud and high-born, 
 but touched the deepest chords of sympathy in the hearts of the 
 poor, the outcast, and the forsaken. This is He who went about as 
 the healer and consoler of the sin-sick multitude, curing the blind- 
 ness, the weakness, and the leprosy of both body and soul. The un- 
 clean spirits confessed His power; the winds and the sea obeyed 
 Him; the dead came forth from the tomb at His command, and He 
 it is to whom everything is subject that exists in heaven, on earth, 
 or in heU; before whom all the tribes of the earth shall stand, for 
 He " will come," as St. John describes Him, " in the clouds of 
 heaven with great power and majesty, and every eye shall see Him," 
 and all shall bow down and adore Him as the immortal King of 
 ages, the sovereign Lord of men and angels, the supreme Judge of 
 every living creature. We can study and adore His glorious at- 
 tributes; we can wonder and bend before His all-compelling 
 presence. We can feel the touch of His blessed nature, the glow of 
 His ineffable light. His peace goeth before us to calm our troubled 
 spmts, and though His visible presence was withdrawn on Olivet, 
 He still rules and guides us in those whom He appointed to per- 
 petuate the union between God and man. 
 
 Now, the power of the priest is the power of Christ, for Christ is 
 the one great High-Priest, and all priests soever who have succeeded 
 Him, are priests inasmuch as they have a participation in His eter- 
 nal priesthood. The priest is a second Christ because the power of 
 Christ is in his hands; the law of Christ upon his lips; the seal of 
 Christ upon his forehead. He has the primacy of Abel, the patri- 
 archate of Noah, the order of Melchizedek, the dignity of Aaron, the 
 authority of Moses, the power of Peter, and the unction of Christ. 
 " All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth," says the Lord 
 
635 
 
 Jesus Christ to His Apostles. " As the Father hath sent Me, I also 
 send you." My power I give to you, my authority I transmit to 
 you, unreservedly and completely, for the fulfillment and perpetua- 
 tion of that eternal priesthood, the offering of that sacrifice to My 
 eternal Father, which was conceived ere time began to flow, accom- 
 plished in My mission upon earth, and wiU be continued before My 
 Father's throne in heaven, through never-ending ages. 
 
 As the heavens are above the earth, so does the power of the 
 priesthood transcend every other phase of power which may be wit- 
 nessed in this world. The prophet of old raised his hand and the 
 fire came down from heaven for the consumption of the holocaust. 
 The priest of the New Law pronounces but the words, This is My 
 Body, and lo ! the heavens bend above us, legions of angels hover 
 nigh, and the great God of power and majesty and glory comes 
 down from His celestial throne of splendor to take up His abode in 
 the silent chambers of the tabernacle of the altar. Think of it, my 
 friends ! In a few moments the old scene will be re-enacted here, in 
 your very presence, for your individual account. Those priestly 
 hands, which, for the past twenty-five years, have offered up the 
 clean oblation to the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of 
 the world, will upon this grace-bringing day offer it once more, and 
 Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead, wiU descend 
 among us here, the Eternal wiU be swayed by the temporal, the In- 
 finite by the finite, God by man. 
 
 The power of creation is incommunicable, since to make something 
 be from nothing, requires an exertion of omnipotence, which belongs 
 to God alone. But here is a power, which, in the order of grace, is 
 even greater. In virtue of this stupendous dignity, St. Chrj^sostom 
 cries out: "Priests possess a power which God has not deigned to 
 grant even to the angels or the archangels." And the author of 
 the " Imitation " declares that '' priests duly ordained in the Church 
 have the power of celebrating and consecrating the body of Christ,'* 
 for " as the ambassadors of Christ, they act in the name of Christ, 
 by the power and authority of Christ, Christ Himself being the 
 principal Actor and invisible "Worker." Take, my brethren, the 
 wings of fancy; ascend into the incandescent of heaven that shines 
 from out the blazing throne of God. Behold the Lord of Life upon 
 His sublime and elevated throne, stretching out His hand with om- 
 
636 
 
 nipotent sway over all the boundless possibilities of being. Survey 
 the celestial choirs and the legions of spotless spirits who execute 
 His bidding, and carry His behests to the uttermost parts of the uni- 
 verse. See the dazzling Cherubim, the shining Seraphim, the Angels, 
 Archangels, Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, all robed with glory, 
 crowned with immortality, and shining like the sun in the sight cf 
 God. No one of those seraphic spirits, who with awestruck adora- 
 tion fall down before the throne, and in the ardor of unutterable 
 love, cry out incessantly, Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! possesses a power 
 like unto that of the priest over the body and blood of Jesus Christ. 
 
 " The angels He maketh spirits and His ministers a flame of fire." 
 They dwell forever in the divine presence, and like " flames of fire " 
 they burn with love for their Creator, and are absorbed in the con- 
 templation of His adorable perfections. But to them it is not given 
 to exercise a power over God Himself. The jurisdiction of the 
 priest lies directly over the body and blood of Jesus Christ, which, 
 by the sacerdotal fiat, are reproduced upon the altar as often as the 
 priests pronounce the words of consecration in the Mass. In this 
 sense the priest has been called the creator of the Creator, since by 
 the exercise of his sacred functions he changes the bread and wine 
 into the body and blood of our divine Lord. This change is not 
 natural, but divine; "not creative," in a strict sense, as Card. Man- 
 ning says, "but of omnipotence." It is according to nature that 
 each substance be distinguished by its own qualities or accidents, 
 which inhere in the substance as in their supportive principle, and 
 therefore live or perish with it. But in the eucharistic change, the 
 accidents of bread and wine remain after these substances have been 
 transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This al- 
 teration is, consequently, above aU the powers of nature, and, hence, 
 a work of omnipotence. 
 
 When Joshua commanded the sun to stand still till victory rested 
 on his banners, God obeyed the voice of man in respect of the 
 things of His creation; but when by the omnific words, This is My 
 Body, the priest summons the Godhead from the heavens, God obeys 
 the authority of man over His own person. And this not once, but 
 daily. The Blessed Virgin Mary, when the power of the Most High 
 overshadowed her, gave a God-man to the world, but gave Him once 
 for all; but the priest reincarnates the same God each time he per- 
 
637 
 
 forms the act of consecration, for the benefit of the individual 
 soul. 
 
 How transcendently sublime is that act of consecration by which 
 *• the ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the mysteries of God " 
 are empowered to effectuate what neither the saints of old, nor the 
 angels of heaven,' nor the mother of God, but Omnipotence alone 
 can do .through the channels God has chosen ! What mind does not 
 feel its pitiful incompetence to understand the bestowal of such a 
 tremendous dignity upon unworthy man? What intellect is not 
 staggered at the bare attempt to grasp the conception of this \'ica- 
 rious exercise of the attributes of divinity, of the perfections of 
 God? To call down the eternal God from His throne of glory; to 
 make omnipotence subservient to the wants of weakness and impo- 
 tence; to clothe the King of Ages and the Lord of Light in the 
 "weak and needy elements" of bread and wine; to enclose immen- 
 sity within the confines of an earthly tabernacle, nay, within the lim- 
 ited compass of the consecrated host; to lay hold of, I may so speak, 
 infinite sanctity and truth; to touch, to taste, to multiply and dis- 
 tribute to the sin-sore sons of men the flesh and blood, the soul, the 
 life, the being of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God; to be the 
 keeper, the custodian, nay, the friend, the familiar and companion 
 of the living Christ Himself — this is expressibly more than the lofti- 
 est intellect, unenlightened by the revealed word of God, could ever 
 have conceived. But eternal Truth has spoken, and we believe and 
 adore. " This is My body." "This is My blood." "This do in 
 commemoration of Me." 
 
 O ! my God, " what is man that Thou shouldst honor him, or the 
 son of man that Thou shouldst dignify him ? " Thou who dwellest 
 in the highest heavens, in regions of inaccessible Ught; who makest 
 the clouds Thy chariot and walkest upon the wings of the wind; who 
 art omnipotent, eternal, omniscient, and dost reach from everlasting 
 unto everlasting — Thou leavest the throne of Thy supernal glory and 
 comest out of those celestial depths which shine with the effulgence 
 of Thy almighty power; Thou passest over an immense interval, an 
 infinite abyss, and dost descend upon this sinful earth, and all to 
 reach my heart; — my heart so cold and insensible of Thy goodness; 
 my heart full of foibles and folUes, of pride and vanity, of vice and 
 misery and sin, " for behold I was conceived in sin, and in iniquity 
 did my mother conceive me." 
 
638 ^ 
 
 To the power of consecration is annexed the power of absolution 
 in completing the fullness of the priesthood. The same divine Sav- 
 iour, who enjoined upon His Apostles the august function of sacri- 
 fice, three days later breathed upon them the Holy Spirit, and com- 
 missioned them to bind or loose the sins of men by the exercise of 
 His own power and authority. Thus, indeed. He made them "fish- 
 ers of men " and " ploughers " and " sowers " and " reapers " to go 
 forth into the wide field of God's kingdom to secure the great har- 
 vest of human souls. 
 
 What a wonderful function it is, my friends, to exercise the power 
 of that Divine Physician, who came, not to call the righteous, but to 
 seek and save the lost, and to say, as Jesus did to Magdalen, " Go 
 in peace, thy sins are forgiven " ! " Which is easier to say. Arise, 
 take up thy bed and walk, or to say, thy sins are forgiven thee ? " 
 Above the gift of miracles, beyond the power of healing the infirm- 
 ities of the body, is that sublime office which heals the malady of 
 the soul; which cures the blindness and leprosy of sin; which takes 
 the tarnished soul of him who has darkened the heavens with the 
 smoke of his uncounted crimes — crimes of lust, impiety, and sensu- 
 ality — those charnel-houses in which we sink — and makes it pure as 
 a chalice of innocence, immaculate as the dawn, fragrant as the flow- 
 ers of paradise, and sweet as the incense-laden air of heaven. 
 
 What is the mission of the priest ? 
 
 True peace, sweet hope and love, all joys of soul and heart, 
 'Twill be thine heaven- appointed mission to impart; 
 And more: the persecuted must thou shield afford, 
 Melt callous hearts with love of God's Incarnate Word; 
 Must miDgle with the lowly, and sustain th' oppressed, 
 Reclaim the erring and give help to the distressed. 
 But most sublime of all, 'twill be thy God-given power, 
 The prodigal to shrive, in his repentant hour; 
 And make of him who was of earth a poor, vile clod, 
 An angel bright, the living image of his God. 
 
 The priest is another Christ. He regenerates the soul to God in 
 the sacrament of Baptism; he nourishes it with the bread of angels 
 and the meat which never perisheth, and if, perchance, it fall away 
 from its only support and stay, the embrace of a loving Jesus, he, 
 like Christ weeping and waiting for the prodigal, mourns its mis- 
 deeds and waits in prayer and hope for its return. 
 
639 
 
 The priest is a man of sympathy. From long contact with the 
 children of folly, he learns the infirmities of our nature and the 
 weakness of the heart and pours out his i^ity upon them, for like 
 Him that made us, " he knows our frame and remembers we are 
 dust." O ! blessed sympathy that soothes sorrow and pours upon 
 it the balm of kindred sorrow. Let all priests fully awaken to this 
 gift of sympathy, which they learn leaning on the bosom of a tender 
 Jesus, and they will convert the world. This sj^npathy gave St. 
 Paul his power. "Who is weak and I am not weak; who is scan- 
 dalized and I do not burn ? " 
 
 The priest goes down to the people. " Feed My lambs; feed My 
 sheep," were the commands of Him who taught and wept and re- 
 buked, but ate and drank and abode with those whom He thus re- 
 buked. The diffusible, incomprehensible i)ower of blessing others 
 belongs to the priest above all men, and he can exercise it only as 
 his Master did, by going about doing good. Absolute self-consecra- 
 tion fits him for this Christlike work. To be meek, gentle, inno- 
 cent, retired, chaste, self-sacrificing; to forsake the gravitating flesh 
 and soar towards the boundless azure of God — these are the quali- 
 ties that give point to his persuasion, authority to his precepts, power 
 to his commands. At that awful, pregnant juncture when he made his 
 everlasting covenant with Christ pleasure, prosperity, honor, safety, 
 comfort, home, relationship, all melted away and were renounced 
 forever. The consecrated oil penetrated the pores of his being and 
 he experienced a divine presence, a divine calling, and a divine de- 
 votedness, which absorbed and transfigured him. Earth faded away 
 before him. The fashion of his countenance was changed. It all 
 seemed a new world. The whole heart was new. The future was 
 new. The heavens were opened to him — but he was still a man. 
 
 Yes, a man with human hopes and human fears and human sym- 
 pathies, and human passions and human temptations, which at the 
 fateful moment of his dedication would have come upon him with 
 crushing, overpowering weight, but for the tide of grace that over- 
 flowed liis soul. Yet this was the experience that brought in re- 
 sponsive touch with human needs and infirmities. To renounce the 
 world is to be conscious of its temptations. To surrender one's all 
 to God is to know the fatal feebleness of self and the lamentable 
 weakness of personal endeavor. The possibilities of character 
 
640 
 
 t 
 always exceed the results of actual achievement. Struggle, earnest, 
 prolonged, deadly struggle, is the essential law of the soul's progress 
 towards perfection. The man who has never labored at the difficult 
 work of self -conquest knows little and cares Httle for the pangs of 
 human weakness. " Ah ! unhappy man that I am, who will deliver 
 me from the body of this death ? " 
 
 This is the wail of Adam's fallen children, and who understands 
 the answer like him, whose divine vocation it is to unlock the mys- 
 teries of the human heart and find for every ill its appropriate 
 remedy ? When the dark shadow of affliction beclouds the soul 
 and shakes its trust and confidence, the God-sent physician brings 
 his heavenly balm, and on the pale-hued stem of resignation en- 
 grafts the flower of hope ? When pain and poverty harrow and vex 
 the life, which impatiently chides the frowns of fortune, who spreads 
 a table in the wilderness of woe and maketh our cup to overflow, 
 like the faithful priest whose heart melts at every misery and grieves 
 over every sorrow ? 
 
 He lives for his people, and he is -willing to die for them. He has 
 no thought but to serve them; no hope, no ambition, but to spend 
 and be spent for them. No disease so loathsome as to repel him 
 from their door; no danger so imminent as to deter him from re- 
 sponding to their call. Whether in the face of the pitiless storm of 
 the winter's night, or under the broiling sun of the summer's sky; 
 whether in peril or security, heat or cold, light or darkness, he is 
 ready, eager to haste to the beside of the sick, that he may hansel 
 the soul for heaven, soothe its last sighs, cheer and enliven its hope 
 of immortality and surrender it into the everlasting arms of that God, 
 who as has made His priests the shepherds of His flock, so will He 
 hold them responsible on the last day for those whose names are 
 blotted from the book of life. Happy, thrice happy, is that shep- 
 herd who can say: "Those whom Thou hast given me I have kejDt 
 and none of them is lost." 
 
 And such a minister of God are we gathered here to honor on 
 this day. A man who has been weighed in the scales of the sanctu- 
 ary, and has not been found wanting. A man who has been no 
 blind leader of his people; no hireling shepherd, no "dumb dog 
 afraid to bark," when the wolf sought to pierce the paddock and 
 fasten upon the fold. A man who, planting himself upon the eternal 
 
641 
 
 battle-line of right and wrong, looked down with the eagle eye of 
 scorn upon injustice and untruth, and who has exhibited to his 
 flock a hfe noble in its knight-errantry for right and truth in the 
 world. 
 
 And why should not the people honor their beloved priest ? Who 
 stands to them in the same hallowed relation ? Neither father, nor 
 mother, nor brother, nor any friend soever can come so close to 
 them. For their sake he left father and mother and home and 
 friends, aye, and country too, and crossing the trackless sea he came 
 here to put his hand to the plough, and turned not to look back 
 again, but for twenty-five years has had the government upon his 
 shoulders, has borne the burden of the day and the heat in the 
 Master's vineyard to lead souls into that kingdom where charity is 
 made perfect and humanity ij crowned with glory. 
 
 I bore some small share of his labors, and I can testify to the zeal 
 and devotion with which he discharged the manifold duties of his 
 sacred calling. I care not to indulge a fulsome adulation, but I am 
 free " to speak what I do know," and it is my pleasant duty to bear wit- 
 ness to his tireless energy and his unflagging endeavors to promote 
 the welfare of his people and guide them by the light of his ex- 
 ample, no less than by the power of precept, to that home eternal in 
 the heavens, that house not made by human hands. 
 
 To-day, sir, twenty-five golden years have rolled their freighted 
 tide into the ocean of the past; years, I make no doubt, like those 
 of every priest, woven with hopes and fears, sharp griefs and beauti- 
 ful joys; but years, I fondly hope, which gleam with merit in the 
 sight of God, and will secure for you the crown of immortality. 
 
 Toil has been yours; perhaps, heaviness of heart; weariness at the 
 sight of sin and human misery, souls fainting, lost, wandering far 
 from the light, the true light which enlighteneth every man that 
 Cometh into the world. But to you, as to every true soldier of the 
 Lord, comes the consolation that one soul rescued from sin and re- 
 deemed unto God is rich in value, immeasurably beyond all the 
 pearls and rubies and sapphires the wide earth contains. 
 
 And sitting here to-day, in the presence of the great Adorable, in 
 the lovely temple ^yhich you and your people have erected to the 
 living God, as with deep emotion you turn back in spirit to the hal- 
 lowed hour when with rapture that filled and thrilled your breast, 
 41 
 
642 
 
 your palms were anointed with the Chrism, which consecrated you 
 to God forever, what heavenly joy does not the memory of that mo- 
 mentous day inspire ! 
 
 I felicitate you upon this anniversary day. I greet you in the 
 name of the people and the priests here assembled, and I trust your 
 life may be as serene as a summer's day, and in the end as peaceful 
 as the close of evening's twilight. I pray that that day, in God's good 
 mercy, may still be far distant. I hope that the same bountiful dis- 
 positions of divine Providence, which so signally blessed the twenty- 
 five years which are closing, may have still brighter benisons to be- 
 stow upon you in the days that are yet to come. May no sorrows 
 becloud your days, and no griefs disturb your nights. May the 
 fervor of the zeal which has been so conspicuously displayed in all 
 these toilsome years, burned upon your soul on the day of your or- 
 dination, never grow cool, but only flame forth more ardently, as it 
 is fed by the fuel of the passing years. May the memory of that 
 hallowed, grace-laden day of twenty-five years ago, always abide 
 with you in sunshine and in storm, whether you tread the smiling 
 fields of success, or walk the stormy road of trial and adversity; and 
 as you journey down the rugged road of life, may its fragrant mem- 
 ory be to you as the hanging honeycomb of Jonathan, to which you 
 can raise your hand, lift it to your lips, and lo ! your f aintness will 
 speedily pass away; may it be to you as the flowering rod of Aaron, 
 whose magic touch will make the wilderness of your affliction blos- 
 som with roses of bright joy, and every desert spot within your 
 heart become an Elim and Eden, where waving palm-trees grow, 
 and wells of living water perennially spring. 
 
 ** And then thy heavenly crown ! thy dazzling throne, 
 The beauteous radiance of the Lamb thereon. 
 What rills of light will bathe thy anointed palms, 
 What rapturous thanksgiving mark thy psalms, 
 And most thy bliss, when every joy shall show 
 Sbme soul thou saved'st here, in toil, below." 
 
lY. 
 
 PAITH AS THE FALCHIOlSr IN THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 STRUGGLE. 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PATEICK'S CHUECH, CHICAGO, ILL. 
 " This is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith."— John v. 4. 
 
 Claiming to be Christians we ought to lead Christian lives. Now, 
 the Chi'istian life is a life of warfare, for as soldiers of Christ it be- 
 comes us to fight for Christ. And what is it to fight for Christ ? It 
 is to enlist under His leadership; it is to fight as He fought; it is to 
 fight in His name. Christ came to destroy the dominion of the 
 devil; to suppress the slavery of sin; to war with a wicked world. 
 Now, with Christ we have common cause; and as He has already 
 conquered, we must now fight in His name, for " there is no other 
 whereby we are saved," Christ Jesus is the victor; faith in His 
 name is now the price of the victory. " This is the victoiy which 
 overcometh the world, our faith." 
 
 In the mind of the Catholic Christian two ideas, faith and victory, 
 are commonly connected, and, as the apt expression of Christian 
 sentiment, the palm branch, sjTnbolical of a victorious struggle, is, 
 in art, representation, placed in the hand of the hero who dies a 
 martyr to his faith. 
 
 What, then, is the relation between faith and spiritual victory? 
 The Sacred Text tells us that faith is the instrument and pledge of 
 success in the strife with the foes of our soul's salvation. If this is 
 so, then faith must certain in itself three reasons: First, that we are 
 bound to fight; second, that faith is that itself which enables us to 
 fight; and last, that faith gives us assurance of victory. Faith effects 
 all this: hence it is the vehicle of victory. 
 
 First, faith, of its nature, demonstrates that we are bound to fight. 
 
644 
 
 The idea of victory implies the notion of a struggle; — that of suffer- 
 ing. Now, man by nature is as prone to pleasure as he is averse to< 
 pain; and hence, before he will strive to conquer, he must feel the 
 necessity of conquering. Faith furnishes the motives. How? We 
 must premise. 
 
 Man is a compound of body and soul, of which God is the cause;, 
 and from this fact it follows that a threefold life is possible to man. 
 First comes the life of the body, — gross and animal, — common ta 
 man and brute; next the life of the soul simply, — one of rank rea- 
 son, the life of an educated savage; and lastly, the life of soul and 
 body acting in harmony with God, the cause, and this is called the 
 life of faith. This is the life of faith, and that it appear, we must 
 ask what faith is. But first, what is it not ? Faith is not reason, 
 though it rests on reason, nor is it rose-colored sentiment. Neither 
 is it the logic of the human heart, for that is entirely too human. 
 No; faith contains two elements: human effort and divine grace. 
 An act of faith is an act of belief, — believing a truth on God*& 
 authority. Now, "believing," says St. Thomas, "is an act of the 
 mind clinging to divine truth by command of the will, moved by 
 grace." Here are the effort of the will, and the action of 
 grace. This grace is necessary; for no being can outwork its:- 
 capacity, and before the mind clings to truths beyond the range of 
 reason, the will must force it to believe. This the will cannot do,, 
 but by the aid of grace, — " without me you can do nothing." The 
 will is free, however, and can resist the gentle current of God'» 
 grace; but when it commands the exercise of faith, it co-operates 
 with grace, and bows down submissively before the Creator in 
 token of its own weakness. Now, this is the highest homage we can 
 pay to God; for the golden gift is an evidence of the generosity of 
 the giver, and by the exercise of faith we surrender up to God those 
 faculties which constitute the nobility of our manhood. Now, it is 
 characteristic of Infinite Goodness to draw all creatures to itself, — to 
 share its goodness with them; and the more fully we submit to its 
 attractive force, the more closely we are drawn to that infinite good. 
 Hence, as faith is the most perfect submission we can make to God, 
 so must it be that bond which above all others binds us to our 
 Maker; and hence, too, must it be our highest good in this life, for 
 that must be our greatest good which, above all else, unites us to 
 
645 
 
 Infinite Goodness. But since the true end of life is to attain the life 
 that never ends, it were like gilding gold to point out, by proof, that 
 this life of faith is the only true life for man to lead in his seeking 
 ^fter immortality. It may not be amiss, though, to say that by faith 
 we mean here faith that is fixed by action, and lit up by love. The 
 eternal fitness of things demands that the Creator love His creature, 
 but no less that creature return His love; and the stronger the love 
 on the creature's part, the greater his perfection. Since, then, this 
 Hfe of faith, illumined by love, is the only true life for us; since it 
 is our greatest good on earth, as binding us to the Supreme Good 
 in heaven, it follows that we must accept it and act it out in prac- 
 tice, or we shall be convicted of the height of folly. 
 
 Now, my friends, as the life of faith is the life man leads in union 
 with his God, so the Christian life of faith is the life man leads in 
 close communion with Christ our Saviour; for Christ is God; His 
 teachings and revelations are the words of God; His life on earth 
 was the life of God. But we live a life in union with Christ when 
 we subject our will to His will, and conform our life to His life. 
 N^ow, Christ's will is that we shall suffer; His own life was a life of 
 struggles and suffering. Hence the Christian life of faith is a life of 
 warfare; and, as we are bound to accept this life to attain our end, 
 we find in the nature of faith convincing proofs that, as Christians, 
 we are bound to fight for the crown of glory. Have we any doubt 
 of Christ's will in our regard? Look at the lesson of His life. 
 Prom His babyhood in Bethlehem to the last sad sigh of His 
 suffering soul on Calvary, His life was one stupendous strug- 
 gle. In that meek, still voice of resignation under suffering. 
 He calls out to us, and His pathetic pleadings say — oh ! how 
 plainly, — "Come, carry the cross of the Man of Sorrows." "If 
 any man will follow Me, let him take up his cross." Faith, — the 
 objective truths of faith, — teaches all this; it teaches that there 
 is no merit without suffering; that we must struggle against 
 the world, and strive to be detached from all that is perish- 
 able and imperfect. It teaches that we must not live the life of 
 flesh and blood, but must rise superior to the senses, and crucify 
 them for the sake of Christ. It tells us to make no concessions to 
 nature, for we are dragged down by the follies of the flesh, and that 
 if we strive not to stem the downward current, our soul is a sailless 
 
646 
 
 sTiip on the vast sea of God's grace. And Mother Church, the organ 
 of that faith, declares her mihtancy, and commands us to go forth 
 girded for the fray, " shod with the preparation of the Gospel,'*" 
 encased in the armor of faith as in a mail-coat of steel, and, like the 
 saintly knights of old, " bearing in our good right hand the sword 
 of the spirit of God." Nor do we believe blindly. " Our service is 
 a reasonable service," for Eternal Truth has said, " Unto you it is 
 given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for Him." The 
 motives of credibility we pass through the crucible of criticism, and, 
 finding an infallible Commander in the Church, we hasten forth 
 to conquer; and the active acceptation of the truth, subjective faith, 
 inspires us with the spirit and strength of God, who never can be 
 conquered. I say, then, faith teaches that we are bound to fight. 
 
 But, if faith is the means of victory, it must enable us to fight. It. 
 does; how ? 
 
 First, faith gives us the right to fight. By sin mankind became 
 subject to Satan, and in that condition, resistance to him would be a 
 real rebellion. The father of the human family fell from divine fa- 
 vor, and so, from the peaceful paths and bright bowers of the gar- 
 den of God he was forced to go forth, exiled and degraded, to walk 
 in a wilderness of woe, where the vigilant sentinels of Satan sat, 
 ever seeking to snatch his soul to destruction. But, if lamentable 
 his lot, man was not driven to despair. God, in His limitless love, 
 said that He should sacrifice His sacred Son, that those who should 
 fix their faith in Him might live unto life eternal. God was the of- 
 fended; He could condone the offense, and prescribe the plan of 
 the pardon. Now, as man by infidelity had fallen, so was it ordered 
 that by fidelity he should rise. Faith in the Kedeemer's advent was, 
 for four thousand years, the sole surety of salvation. At last, un- 
 hailed as a hero. He came as a conqueror; and, in consequence, man 
 was enabled to surmount his own sphere, and begin, of right, the 
 supernatural life so long lost by sin. Faith gave back to the soul 
 the wings clipped off in its fall. But Christ came, too, by His preach- 
 ing and practice to point out that the path of perfection was beset 
 by the thorns of affliction sown by Adam's sin-stained hand; and 
 that as we had still to struggle, faith was still the battle-ground of 
 the fight. I say, then, faith gave us the right to fight. 
 
 Again, faith enables us to fight by showing to us our Leader and 
 
647 
 
 His plans. Christ is the Leader in the spiritual combat, and Christ 
 is God, the infinite and incomprehensible Being. Then, " Who shall 
 declare his generation ? " for " no man hath seen God at any time,'* 
 and so " the fool " — the faithless man — " hath said, * there is no God.' " 
 Now, we must know this God, our Leader, if we are to fight, for 
 who will follow an unknown guide, or one who has no being at all ? 
 
 *' Li the beginning God made two great lights " — one, the lordly- 
 sun, to rule the day; the other, the mild, pale moon, to dispel the 
 darksome nimbus of the night; so, too, He made reason to rule in 
 the bright realms of natural truth, but faith He fashioned as the 
 " pillar of fire," to guide our gropings in the remote regions of su- 
 pernatural research. Hence, to the eagle eye of faith alone is it 
 given to gain a glimpse of God. No being can do more than it is 
 by its nature fitted to do. Then, how could the soul see God who 
 lives the supernatural life, if it were not made, by the magnetism of 
 faith, to rise above its natural existence ? Though in heaven we 
 shall see God as He is, still, even by faith, we cannot fully know Him 
 now; but, as by the naked orb, we cannot see the far-off stars, so 
 neither can we know anything of God, save by faith, the telescope 
 of reason. Faith shows us something of God, for it is an influx of 
 the heavenly light in which -He lives. It is the spai'k of inspiration 
 that makes humanity God-like; and though the science of faith be 
 the science of simplicity, still it is beyond the ken of human genius, 
 or the penetration of the proud philosopher. It is an untaught the- 
 ology, and, save objectively, it is not bound up in books. It is the 
 property of the peasant, as well as of the preacher, and is not the 
 prerogative of the pround and learned, more than of the poor and 
 ignorant; — no; it is the prop of divine direction that sustains every 
 humble soul in the supernatural sphere, and lifts it up to the knowl- 
 edge of its God. 
 
 But, besides, faith presents to us our Leader's plans, for it is 
 through the Son that in these latter days the Father speaks to us, 
 and by faith the Son's revelations are made visible to us, and we 
 know that which we could not understand. The whole scheme of 
 salvation is grounded on God's gospel, and faith is the flambeau that 
 illuminates the living page, so that " He who runs may read." The 
 scheme is truly simple and the plan quite plain. Christ chose pov- 
 erty for His portion, and suffering as His substance; and **in the 
 
648 
 
 resistless eloquence of woe " He commands us to continue His course 
 lest we fail in the fight, whilst He declares that " to him who shall 
 conquer it shall be given to sit with Him on His throne; as He also 
 conquered, and now sits with His Father on His Father's throne." 
 Faith, then, shows to us our Leader's plans. 
 
 Again, faith enables us to fight, by showing to us our enemies and 
 their plans. Faith reveals our enemies, for it teaches that God's en- 
 emies are our enemies, and sin is a great enemy of God. It tells us 
 that we must be in union with Christ; and Christ's example is to 
 hate the world. And we must be of one side or the other. " If you 
 have not the spirit of Christ, you are not of Christ " (Bom. viii. 9). 
 " He that is not with Me is against Me." It threatens us with de- 
 struction if we cleave to the world, for " the world is designed for 
 destruction." It says, " Woe to the world and to you, if you worship 
 the world." It teaches the immortality of the soul, and shows that 
 the stab of the sword of sin, sends it unto death unending. Faith 
 fills our ear with the sweet sound of truth eternal, and its whispering 
 voice warns us to beware of the world, and never to put away our 
 weapons, if we wish to win. Besides, it unhoods the vanity of the 
 world, where all is hollow pretension and stark sham; and it points 
 out the crafty indirection of its plans. By silken phrases the world 
 would wheedle us into its sinful service; but faith finds, under guise 
 of a genuine gem, only a handful of delusive dross. In the genial 
 glow of faith's fire, all the seductive images excited by Satan, fade 
 away as fog in sunshine, before the weighty realities of religion; and 
 pleasure's phantoms are as passing as the first flush of the morning 
 flower, that pales ere day has turned to dusk. The devil is a decoy 
 to lure us to destruction; and the siren of pleasure sings her heart- 
 less songs to soothe us into a seeming security; but faith betrays 
 this blazonry of humbug, and in simulated friends finds foes who de- 
 ceive, only the better to destroy. It is appearances that are decep- 
 tive, and the coin that is counterfeit would never warp our judg- 
 ment, were the true test at hand to dim it by comparison. I say, 
 then, it is faith that shows how spurious are substances of earth; for 
 it is the loadstone that lifts our minds to the contemplation of those 
 invisible goods, which are ''the objects of our hope," and by the 
 side of which all the wealth of this world is a cipher, or a shadowy 
 semblance. 
 
649 
 
 Lastly, faith enables us to fight, for it gives us the needful 
 strength. This strength supposes two requisites : strong determin- 
 ation on our part to do; help from on High to fit us for execution. 
 Now, dear friends, human effort, such is the bent of the will, is in 
 even ratio with the obstacles to be encountered. Faith presents the 
 obstacles in all their towering enormity. By it we see the devil's 
 pertinacity and cleverness confronting our own inconstancy and 
 shortsightedness, and our will is excited to redouble its energy. 
 Again, the example and teachings of the world work to weaken our 
 convictions; but faith, by withdrawing us from that example tends 
 to keep those convictions strong. Faith, then, is the fulcrum upon 
 which lies the lever of determination; for firmness of mind requires 
 just two things : one, a strong conviction of the truth; the other, an 
 unflinching purpose of acting out that conviction. But beyond this 
 faith render^ that conviction and that purpose superhuman, — it 
 gives help from on high; for faith, which, subjectively, is the ac- 
 ceptance of truth on the authority of Him who cannot deceive, is 
 the strongest conviction possible to man; whilst at the same time it 
 teaches that by the powers of nature we can do nothing in the 
 fight, — as we cannot think or choose as we ought, as " by grace we 
 are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, for it is the gift 
 of God"; hence, admitting the necessity for this grace, and in faith 
 disposing ourselves for its incoming, we obtain an infusion of the 
 Spirit of God, we resolve with the unbending purpose of God, w^e 
 strive by the strength of God, and we cry, with the Apostle, " Not 
 now I, but the grace of God that is in me." Faith gives strength 
 to fight. 
 
 Finally, dear Christians, faith gives assurance of the victory. The 
 next best thing to the actual possession of a good, is a firm belief 
 that we shall some day certainly obtain it, — enjoyment by anticipa- 
 tion. Now faith is the foreglow of the sunburst of success; it is 
 the anticipated victory; for as it forces us to fight, as it furnishes 
 the ability required, so it makes success infallibly certain. Besides, 
 Christ, Himself the Conqueror, can perform His promises, because 
 of His omnipotence; and as truth itself He must redeem His 
 pledges; hence declaring that the mourners shall be comforted. He 
 vouchsafes that those who wage war shall win. But, again, 
 from the nature of the battle, victory is by faith assured. Ours is a 
 
650 
 
 contest with sin and Satan. And what is the measure of success in 
 a strife with sin ? It is gauged by our growth in holiness. But 
 faith does not act negatively only, by teaching us to fight, and point- 
 ing out our foes; — it has an active influence in the fray, for it builds 
 up this life of holiness, and just as we rise in sanctity, just so we 
 are strong in suffering. Now sanctity stands on two foundation- 
 stones : communion with the Creator and detachment from the 
 creature. But we have seen that faith is the strongest bond of 
 union with God, as it is the motive for our hatred of the world, and 
 hence it is the inception of the victory here, of which the vision of 
 God hereafter will be the glorious completion, for faith is the soul 
 of sanctity, and sanctity is the standard of success. But, entering 
 on the warfare of a lifetime, one other element is needful to give us 
 emphatic assurance of the coveted triumph — we must know that we 
 will persevere. Perseverance, without prayer, is a closed casket to 
 every Christian. But faith assures us of victory, because the man 
 of faith will pray. Having faith in prayer he will pray for faith. 
 He holds prayer to be faith's handmaid, for by faith he pays his 
 homage to God, and prayer is but asking God to accept our ac- 
 knowledgments when we bend our mind and will before the majesty 
 of truth Eternal. As the summary, then, of all we have said, faith 
 teaches that fight we must; it enables us to fight, and it assures ua 
 of the victory; or, to adopt the bold figure of St. John, it is victory 
 itself : " This is the victory," etc. 
 
 Now what practical conclusion do we derive from all this? 
 Suffering is our lot in life; by faith we must fight to win. What 
 follows ? That we must cherish this faith" and hug it to our hearts. 
 We must stand up bravely for it, if need be, like the saints and 
 martyrs, those first flowers of the Church who sealed it by surrender- 
 ing their lives; and we should strive to stem the havoc of heresy 
 which, in these days, so ravages God's kingdom upon earth. Oh ! 
 for the days of first fervor and primitive purity, when prince and 
 people knelt at one altar, and men's brains were crazed by no 
 jangling controversies concerning creeds. Then bonds of steel and 
 electric wires were not wanted to call men into communion, for they 
 were indissolubly drawn together by the clasp of Christian charity 
 into the benign brotherhood of faith. Yes; we should hate heresy; 
 and in the busy buzz of life, should guard against the errors of the 
 
651 
 
 age whose art it is to sneer at simple faith and pious practices. The 
 cross of Christ, the symbol of our sufferings, and the "^finishing of 
 our faith," we should embrace with fond affection, and never blush 
 to sign our forehead with Christ's seal in profession of our faith. 
 Look at those saintly missionaries who carried God's Gospel through 
 the world; they could suffer for the faith. If their deeds are not 
 blazoned on the page of fame, they are lodged in the aU-retaining 
 memory of God. Impaled by a thousand perils, they trod the 
 tropic's sandy plains, the torch of truth in their right hand, and the 
 plummet of progress in their left; and where spotless snows encircle 
 icy poles they bravely bore the banner of the faith. Such things we 
 are not called upon to do — only to bear a moral battle with the 
 courage of a Christian. This we can do if we are firm in the faith. 
 We shall be firm if we form the habit. Hence it becomes us to 
 make frequent acts of faith, so as to get an increase of God's grace. 
 Above all we should pray for faith. Faith is the gate of Paradise, 
 but prayer is the key of faith. We should, then, pray as our Lord 
 prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail. AU this we should 
 do — what have we done ? We know that to live by the senses is to 
 be as the brute; that to be governed solely by reason is to be as a 
 monster more than a man; but that to live in the light of faith is to 
 live in union with God our Creator. And what is our practice ? 
 
 Have we not acted as if we believed not, or at least as if we 
 doubted, forgetting that there are no half-heai-ted measures with God ? 
 Or is not our faith a dead faith ? The value of virtue is estimated 
 by action, for of what use to be persuaded of a truth if we act it not 
 out in our daily lives ? Let us, then, thank God for the gift of faith, 
 and beg of Him that profound and living faith which in reality can 
 move mountains. In trial and affliction let us look up to the in- 
 visible regions where faith is wont to soar, and comfoi-t will come 
 for certain. Let faith be the guide and ruling influence of our 
 lives, and then we shall learn to suffer, and as we suffer we shall 
 learn to love, and love is the last link in the chain that connects us 
 to our God. Living in that love the Holy Spirit will breathe out 
 upon us blessings, and when the smoke of this earthly strife has 
 scattered far away we shall see our Lord and Maker as He is, no 
 longer through a glass darkly, but full face to face, and shall win 
 the incorruptible crown of the Christian Conqueror. 
 
V. 
 LYING. 
 
 PREACHED IN THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHUECH, 
 CAMDEN, N. J. 
 
 " As long as breath remaineth in me, and the Spirit of God in my nostrils, 
 my lips shall not speak iniquity, neither shall my tongue contrive lying." — 
 Job xxxii. 2. 
 
 We live in a lying age. Deception and deceit stalk abroad 
 through the land, and hardly any man has confidence or credit in 
 the word of his neighbor. To lie is with many men as easy as to 
 speak. In days, unhappily, past the liar was branded as a social 
 pest and shunned as a scorpion, but it frequently happens, in these 
 days of light and progress, that the man who has a talent for tortur- 
 ing the truth is worshipped as a wit, or a genius endowed with a 
 lively fancy. And, alas ! it is too sadly true, that he who begins 
 with tales of his own exaggerated exploits, soon learns to blast with 
 the breath of slander the fair fame of his fellow-man. And the 
 bleeding reputation excites no pity, and the base work of the reviler 
 hardly a cold comment in censure of his conduct. 
 
 What accounting shall we give ourselves for this blunted moral 
 sense as to the value of truth ? Why is sincerity of soul placed at 
 so poor a price ? I can render a single response : It is because we 
 wander away from God, and in this age of feeble faith yet more 
 than ever, for now the lie of lies is rampant which puts God Himself 
 aside by denying His existence and reality. Yes, truly doth the 
 Sacred Text declare: "The wicked are estranged from God, and go 
 away speaking lies " (Ps. Iviii. 3). 
 
 Let us see how this is: 
 
 A He is, as we say, locutio contra mentem, an utterance contrary to 
 
653 
 
 the mind of the speaker; and, therefore, it is something directly op- 
 posed to truth, for truth is speech in conformity with the speaker's 
 mind. If a he is the contradictory of truth, it is an obvious sequence 
 that, in proportion as we embrace falsehood, so do we recede from 
 truth, and as we recede from truth, we depart from God, for God is 
 truth. The converse of this proposition is likewise true; for, if as 
 we cHng to falsehood we cast off God, so as we depart from God do 
 we run foul of falsehood. God is truth, God is sincerity, God is 
 simplicity as clear as crystal, and that God of simplicity and truth 
 has created us, as to our soul, after His own image and likeness, 
 pure and true and simple. But that soul of ours, to be true to the 
 Model which it mirrors, must be simple and candid in its operations 
 and in its nature; — in the operations of the intellect, by which it 
 must have one trend and tendency, and that for truth; in the 
 operations of its will, by which it must have one single bent, and 
 that for God. 
 
 Yes; God is truth, and all things are true, only in so far as they 
 are in act and nature harmonious with the ideas existing in the 
 divine mind of Him who made them. They are true, as they have 
 that being which God gave them, and that being is true because it 
 is conformable to the concept or idea of the infinite intellect. Now, 
 as all things created have by nature a correspondence with the mind 
 of their Maker, which may be called the truth of being, so also is it 
 ordained that an exact correspondence should subsist between the 
 ideas of the human mind and the realities which those ideas repre- 
 sent; and just so far as this correspondence is deficient, in so far 
 will the mind be charged with error, or, at least, be destitute of 
 truth. But if our conceptions, to be true, must be congruent with 
 the things for which they stand; if, for example, my idea of a tree, 
 to be true, must be an exact mental image of a tree, and if, besides, 
 my intellect was made solely for the possession of truth, then it is 
 plainly deducible that my manifestation of those conceptions must 
 be a true manifestation: which means that I must manifest them as 
 they exist in my mind; that I must speak, if I speak at all, what I 
 think, declare what I mean — in one word, I must speak the truth. 
 The only denial to this position is to hold that the mind was made 
 to receive, but not to express truth, which is equivalent to the con- 
 tention that it was not made for truth at all. This the more so, as 
 
654 
 
 those intellects which depend on others for their knowledge could 
 have no guarantee whatever that they could learn the truth. 
 
 This obligation to speak the truth is founded on the very essences 
 of things; it is a logical consequence of what philosophers call the 
 first fact, viz., that our intellects, having the capacity, were destined 
 to know the truth. For how are they to know the truth unless it be 
 presented ? " Faith comes by hearing." And would it be presented, 
 if men were, or could be allowed to lie ? The human mind does not 
 invent truth; it discovers, it finds it; and that by many helps 
 outside itself. To obtain truth there exist two principal ways, and 
 they are, reason and authority, or personal research and the teach- 
 ing of others. How much do we learn of truth by unassisted effort ? 
 Even of that which we think we learn by our own lights, how much 
 rests on the reason and authority of others ? Solomon was true to 
 his wisdom when he said there was nothing new under the sun. If 
 such be the fact, and if men were made for truth, it could never be 
 allowable that men should declare in language the contradictory of 
 the ideas existing in their minds; for on such insane hypothesis the 
 various classes of men would lead one another a fantastic dance 
 through the mazes of error and falsehood. If men could be per- 
 mitted to lie, how could the family and society endure, for their ex- 
 istence and stability depend on the veracity of their members and 
 the trust and confidence founded upon that veracity ? Where would 
 be religion and reverence for God if men could believe in the nude 
 possibility of His errancy or liability to lie ? Would not all tender 
 confidence in Him, in His promises of rewards, and all fear of His 
 threats of punishments, be wiped out utterly and forever ? 
 
 God, by a real necessity of His nature, as He is truth itself, must 
 lay us under the obligation of telling the truth. If our minds are 
 made for truth, then our tongues must speak the truth. If the first 
 assumption be founded in the eternal fitness, so must the second, and 
 God Himself could not otherwise ordain. Even so it is. True, 
 there exists a positive law of God which says, " Thou shalt not bear 
 false witness," but this law is only an affirmation of that eternal and 
 unchangeable law which is fashioned in those divine decrees which 
 have operated in the essentiality of God from the morning-time of 
 eternity. It would be just as true that man could not deflect from 
 the truth, if God had given no command, as it would be had He 
 
655 
 
 given ten thousand. Some things are evil only because forbidden; 
 others are forbidden because they are evil; and to this latter class do 
 lies belong. Here might be made an evident inference. Under no 
 pretext can a lie be justifiable; for what is of its nature evil, no 
 power can authorize to be done. No question of the permission of 
 evil is raised here, because it is beyond the scope of this discussion. 
 If, then, it depends, not so much on the divine commands, as on 
 the nature of things, or on the eternal, necessary law in the mind of 
 God, that falsehood be evil; it flows, likewise, from the nature and 
 constitution of God that the same thing be evil, for there can be no 
 law in the nature of things but that which coincides with the eternal 
 law to which God is obliged by reason of the preservation of His 
 own nature, His own existence, His own being. Self-preservation 
 is the first law of God's nature as well as of our own. Herein lies the 
 mighty malice of falsehood. For is it not an attempted subversion 
 of the eternal order of things; which order is rooted in the very 
 essence of God ? It is, as it were, an attack upon the very nature 
 and the personality of God. The liar seems to tread the border- 
 land of infidelity. And why ? The infidel boldly rejects belief in 
 God's existence, while the liar assails that same existence, at least 
 indirectly, by impeaching an attribute inseparable from the essence 
 of the Godhead, the divine veracity. Yes, a lie is an assault upon 
 the very constitution of God, and the puny liar would uproot the 
 foundations of the eternal Founder, and annihilate, in his intent, 
 the indestinictible God ! Ah ! in this view of the matter are those 
 little fibs, as we indulgently call them, things of minor consequence ? 
 Think of it, ye who strangle truth and clutch at her tender throat, 
 ye strike with your lying lance at the heart of the living God. Ye 
 do more. You would dash from the arms of His eternal Father, 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and quench the light of everlasting 
 love that flames from the Holy Ghost. How so '? Because truth lies 
 in the conformity of the intellect with the object of its knowledge. 
 Hence there must be an exact conformity between the mind of God 
 and the object of His contemplation. This conformity, however, 
 could not exist if God had not a commensurate and adequate object 
 for His infinite intellect. We contemplate the world around us, and 
 that world suffices for the contemplation, because the relation is be- 
 tween the finite and the finite; God may be said to contemplate it, 
 
656 
 
 too, for He knows all things in Himself, but the finite world could 
 offer nothing as a sufficient term of divine contemplation. God, 
 therefore, is Himself the sole adequate object of His knowledge, and 
 it is by the act by which He contemplates Himself — this first, great, 
 essential act of truth — the equation between God and His own in- 
 tellect — ^by this act, I say, is produced the eternal generation of the 
 Son of God, the infinite Word, who was in the beginning with God 
 and was God, and from the love* born of this contemplation of Su- 
 preme Goodness of Its own inexhaustible perfections, springs the 
 Holy Ghost. The eternal generation of the Son of God, with which 
 coheres the procession of the Holy Ghost, is, then, the first great act 
 of truth, the conformity of God with His own intellect. AVhenever, 
 therefore, man embraces falsehood, which is the non-conformity of 
 the mind with its object, he protests, as it were, against the con- 
 formity of God with His intellect, which conformity should be imi- 
 table and imitated by man; he protests against the eternal genera- 
 tion of the Son of God; he protests against the being of the Holy 
 Ghost; he protests against the existence of the Father, who could 
 not exist without the Son and the Holy Ghost, for He must know 
 and love Himself: in brief, he attempts to uptear the eternal ele- 
 ments of the Triune God ! 
 
 From this standpoint there is no room to marvel at the awful 
 denunciations of lying which are printed in the Sacred Page. " Ly- 
 ing lips are an abomination to the Lord" (Prov, xii. 22). "God 
 hateth the lying tongue " (Prov. vi. 17). " He that speaketh lying 
 shall not escape " (Prov. xiv. 5). " All liars shall have their portion 
 in the lake that burns of brimstone and fire" (Apoc. xxi. 8). No 
 wonder that God execrates a liar, since He must defend His own 
 existence. How can we have partnership with the father of lies, 
 when we look at the subject in this light ? Whenever the arch- 
 enemy tempts man to lie, if the tempted will only recall to mind the 
 bearing of falsehood upon the existence and character of God, he 
 will be slow to sear his soul wdth the shameful sin of lying. 
 
 But despite this severe arraignment of the sin of lying, it is not 
 to be inferred that every lie is a mortal sin. That would be to sadly 
 mislead the conscience. I would inculcate one principle : that tak- 
 ing this view of the matter, no lie, however small the matter, is a 
 thing of insignificant moment. And this is a common error of the 
 
657 
 
 day. It is true that many lies, by reason of defect of knowledge, or 
 because of the triviality of the subject-matter, may not exceed a 
 venial sin; but they are venial sins of a dangerous character, which 
 easily conduce to the commission of mortal sins. Yes, tliey are 
 venial sins, but they are still sins, and men have no right to alter 
 their nature by the puerile plea that they are of no consequence at 
 all. It is strange but sadly true that men nowadays will suffer 
 swarms of Ues to escape their lips, and then will " wipe their 
 mouths," in the language of Holy Writ, " and say they have done no 
 evil." Ah ! it is a grave thing to sin by habit; but if a man fall, and 
 then in the sincerity of his soul, recognizing that he has done wrong, 
 laments his error, the evil is but transient, and he is in a fair way to 
 rise again. When, however, having done that which his better sense 
 affirms to be evil, a man forges a false principle to justify his action, 
 and makes sin no longer to be sin, he is doing himself a permanent 
 injury, and rapidly rushing along the road*of eternal min. This is 
 precisely the evil in the sin of lying. People put forth untruths in 
 wholesale quantities, and then try to invent premises whereby they 
 can lull their consciences to sleep, under the damaging delusion that 
 they have wrought no wrong. I allude not to those broad, bare 
 falsehoods which are too deformed to be decorated in the stolen 
 plumes of truth; but refer to that mental maneuvering by which the 
 truth is so cloaked and clouded as to mislead and deceive the list- 
 ener, and by which falsehood is so glossed and garbed with the 
 veneering of truth, that men are led to think it stamped with the 
 seal of that priceless virtue. To these heads may be referred that 
 series of equivocations, quibbles, mental restrictions, innuendoes, ex- 
 aggerations, subtilties, fallacies, and subterfuges, and even smart lit- 
 tle slanders told, sometimes, in a tragicomical way — half jest, half 
 earnest — which form the staple of conversation among men, to re- 
 deem whom, from error and falsehood, Jesus Christ shed His pre- 
 cious blood, and to whom God gave mind and speech, not to make 
 dalliance with devilish deceit, but to declare the praises of Him who 
 is truth, pure, essential, and unalloyed. 
 
 It is told of Epaminondas, the pagan, that he could not be per- 
 suaded to tell a lie, even in jest. Would that many Christians had 
 the courage of this honest heathen How many reputations are 
 filched away by the covert sneer, and the more insidious but men- 
 dacious ajrt of him who 
 42 
 
658 
 
 "Damns with faint praise, assents with civil, 
 And without sneering, teaches others to sneer." 
 
 Eut men say these little transparencies, these white lies, are devoid 
 of harm. No lie is white, but is black as hell. This is a pernicious 
 code of morality. We cannot tamper or trifle with truth. It is too 
 precious to be subject to wanton play; it would be in danger of de- 
 struction. " Common things grow cheap," and if we toy with truth, 
 we vilipend it, soon get for it a disesteem, and shortly cast it aside. 
 Besides, this half truth, this little jugglery of words, is worse than a 
 great whopper, which, being plain and patent, can be met and con- 
 tradicted; but the scarecrow truth, so cunningly devised and decked 
 out, is more difficult to counteract, and hence it can often work out 
 its evil end, undetected and unchallenged. '' As long as breath re- 
 maineth in me, my lips shall not speak iniquity, neither shall my 
 tongue contrive lying." 
 
 I would not enter upon the refinements of a theological treatise on 
 the lawfulness or unlawfulness of those mental restrictions, as they 
 are called, of which so much discussion has been held. Suffice it to 
 say, that I do not think I shall ever^have occasion to use them, and I 
 hope all men never will. On the other hand, it is not contended 
 that it is at all times necessary to speak the truth; but not to declare 
 the truth and to declare falsehood are things widely apart. Silence 
 is often golden. As to mental restrictions, in the broad sense, it 
 would be well for all to adopt the views of Cardinal Newman : " If 
 all killing be not murder, nor all taking from another be not steal- 
 ing, why should all untruths be lies ? I will say freely, that I think 
 it difficult to answer this question; at the same time, / have never 
 acted" But be this as it may, shun all ambiguities of language, and 
 cultivate candor of speech. O ! for the old-time sincerity and plain- 
 ness of discourse, when men spoke as they felt, without counting the 
 cost. It was not customary then to compliment a man to his face, 
 and rend to rags his reputation behind his back. Plain, bluff, hon- 
 est speech had then vogue and fashion. This plain directness of 
 language is the mark of a noble and courageous mind. Be assured, 
 the man who possesses this virtue is endowed with many others, and 
 more especially that of moral courage; while the smooth and oily 
 dissembler is not infrequently found to be infected with many vices, 
 and chiefly is he chargeable with cowardice and want of fidelity. I 
 
659 
 
 ^wrould not have men become boors, to blurt out the blazing facts re- 
 gardless of the pain inflicted. To be truthful, men need not be dis- 
 agreeable. Candor and sincerity are not boorishness and bad breed- 
 ing. Amenities are to be observed in social life and in all inter- 
 course with others. Speech should always be kind and considerate, 
 and nothing is often a safe and salutary subject for conversation. 
 Truth must be tempered with charity. 
 
 On the contrary, men should not by pseudo-politeness polish them- 
 selves out of their conscience. And how often are they guilty of 
 this social sin ! I can tell you, good people, that if you were to 
 make an annual reckoning of all the small lies false politeness oc- 
 casions you, you would be considerably surprised and proportion- 
 ately mortified. If a person presents himself at a home, where his 
 room is more esteemed than his company, the host professes delight 
 &t the visit, and the visitor is pressed to tarry longer than he lists, 
 when in heart the entertainer would wish his guest at the antipodes. 
 If a comer sends up his card, and the occupant of the house gets a 
 chance to hide his head (which a moment before was seen by the in- 
 truder at the window), the visitor is politely informed that the man 
 of the house is "not at home." This is taken to mean, "not at home 
 to such company"; and, of coiu*se, it is so understood, as the lying 
 phiz was seen at the window. If a neighbor says, " May I have one 
 word with you ? " and you conclude the loan would be an unprof- 
 itable one, you prefer not to appear rude to one you so much regard, 
 and you say, " I am really sorry, but I can't oblige you." O ! but 
 you are sui'charged with sorrow. Truly, grief is beautiful, but, alas ! 
 half of it is a beautiful humbug. What hollow mockery, what de- 
 ceit, what hypocrisy, what unblushing falsehood ! Don't let polite- 
 ness be a source of sin. 
 
 How much lying there is in the ordinary transactions of life, where 
 speech hardly comes into play at all, and which we call lying actions. 
 We can lie by action as well as by word. Words are but the signs 
 of ideas, and as men can lie by words, so also can they by any sign 
 by which ideas are manifested. A clerk, or a man of business, who 
 has made a speculation and lost with great abihty " doctors up " his 
 accounts, so that the employer or partner, when he comes to audit 
 the work at the end of the year, misled by the manifestation of facts 
 and figures, congratulates himself upon the sound and prosperous 
 
660 
 
 condition of his business, when alas ! a month hence the bourse is 
 startled with a huge financial explosion, and the labors of a life are-^ 
 in ruin. The criminal never spoke a syllable, but he lied furiously 
 by addition, subtraction, multiplication, and — silence. 
 
 This method of lying is not uncommon among domestics. Hard- 
 worked and ill-requited girls, I would say nothing harsh of them. It 
 is not the women of wealth and fashion, but the wage-working girls, 
 with their dear-bought dimes and dollars, who have built up the 
 churches of this country. But neither shall we say anything untrue 
 in praise of them. Yoiing woman, when you have broken that val- 
 uable bisque ornament, don't glue the pieces together, so that when 
 the mistress of the establishment picks it up, and it falls into frag- 
 ments, she may think she has done the damage herself. When you 
 have done something amiss, own up, and your employer will commend, 
 your candor, even though you have to leave the sei-vice. She can. 
 only say, as one employer said of a discharged domestic : " Well, she 
 may have her faults, but she is a stranger to untruth." 
 
 Finally, men often lie by doing nothing at all, as when failure to 
 act has a positive meaning. Thus in company a man sits down, and 
 assumes an air of gravity, but says nothing at all, or at most, indulges 
 in monosyllabic speech, that palms off his shallow self for a man of 
 learning and wisdom. " Gravity may be a good accompaniment of 
 wisdom, but it is a very poor substitute of the same." If a man can- 
 not gain the good graces of the rich, at least, he will never consort: 
 with the poor, lest he might himself pass for a man of poverty. Or, 
 what is worse infinitely, men will hold silence when they are bound 
 to speak for the honor of God or their neighbor, or adopt a negative 
 attitude with reference to customs, usages, and opinions, not so much 
 to be considered an anti-Catholic, as to have it conjectured that they 
 are not members of Mother Church. This is a sin against faith. 
 " He that denieth Me before men, him will I deny before My Father 
 who is in heaven." 
 
 Thus men in divers ways trample on truth and give it tortuous^ 
 twists which, like the tricks of the Indian fakir, bewilder and daze 
 the beholder. I will not inquire the causes that lead to them— they 
 are many : love of exaggeration, false politeness, vanity, pride, de- 
 sire to create a sensation, theft, avarice, pusillanimity, and many 
 others. I will only observe that where there is a smart statement- 
 
661 
 
 which may be said to have a turn of truth in it, or where a deed 
 is deftly and cleverly done, the sinfulness of the act is often lost 
 sight of in admiration of the adroitness of the actor. The Devil is 
 •adroit; he is an astute actor and he is the father of lies. There is 
 but one safe rule for those to follow who wish to avoid lying, and 
 yet have a fatal fondness for turns and twists of the tongue. It is 
 to remember that falsehood is so like truth that a wise man would 
 well not to trust himself too close to it; and rather than attempting 
 to see how naiTowly he can escape falsehood, he should strive to see 
 how near he can keep to the plain, exact, and hteral truth. The man 
 who adopts the first principle usually ends as a chronic liar and the 
 last stage of his dementia is to believe his own lies, 
 
 " Like one 
 
 Who having unto truth by telling of it, 
 Made such a sinner of his memory 
 To credit his own lie." 
 
 Oh ! if there is any one thing which, more than another, we prize 
 in this life ; if in men's relations with one another there is one thing 
 of surpassing excellence and inestimable value, it is truth. If there 
 is anything that could be done by wayward man to atone for the 
 numerous follies of a misspent life, it would be his absolute refusal 
 to depart one iota from the truth. If there be any one attribute of 
 Ood higher and nobler than the rest, it is integrity and truth. 
 
 In conclusion, then, when it is remembered what was said in the 
 beginning of the nature of falsehood, I think it superfluous to urge 
 you to avoid lying. I know that a He is abhorrent to your soul; but 
 one thing I will ask as the fruit of this talk, which is, that you make 
 it the motto of your lives that duplicity deceives — but deceives your- 
 : selves. In the long run double-dealing will be detected, and the 
 prospects, even of this life, are rudely blighted. Honesty is, indeed, 
 the best policy; but of all dishonest men, who so merits, as he often 
 meets, contempt and reproach as the lily-livered liar ? Be men and 
 women of sincerity and straightforwardness. Be a Cato in integrity. 
 When a case came to trial where the testimony of two was, by law, 
 required, and but one appearing, upon whose integrity the pleader 
 insisted, the stern judge declared that he would not accept the testi- 
 mony of one, though that one were Cato. What a tribute in public 
 
662 
 
 court to the honor of a private citizen ! The law alone could stand 
 against the word of Cato. 
 
 Be honest, then, for the sake of honesty; be truthful for the sake 
 of truth. " Nothing can need a lie." Be sincere and simple as the 
 dove, for He that enjoined the practice knew not guile and abhorred 
 deceit. He came to teach truth, and He invited us to follow Him, 
 because He was the way, the truth, and the life. He is the way, 
 and He is the truth, and He is the life; for the way is to truth, and 
 truth is the life. If we possess the truth we shall possess the life, 
 for this life is the life of the blessed, the happiness of heaven, which 
 is the possession of truth, for it is the possession of God, and God is 
 truth. That truth we shall not possess hereafter if we do not now 
 practice it, for as the life is but the inception of that which is to be, 
 as this is so shall that be also. Truth is a precious gem. If you 
 possess it suffer not the tarnish of deceit to bedim its lustre; if you 
 possess it not, find it quickly, for it is the passport to the palaces of 
 Paradise. To find it and to know it has God given you an intellect,, 
 and implanted in your soul a tireless thirst for truth. Employ well 
 the time God grants you in picking up the pearls of truth which 
 abound not on the highways of worldly action and endeavor, but in 
 the narrow and rugged paths of sanctity and righteousness which 
 lead to our heavenly home. Love that truth as above aU earthly 
 treasures, and never defile your lips with lying or your souls with 
 deceit; and when angel hands shall unbar for you the gates of the 
 everlasting dwellings, that intellect of yours, which loved the living 
 truth, shall see and enjoy the long-sought object of its powers, and 
 as the eternal God shaU rise from His throne of truth to greet it 
 with the kiss of heavenly welcome, the ecstatic soul shall cry, " Into- 
 Thy arms I fly, O Lord God of truth." 
 
YI. 
 
 "THE TEACHER OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE VESPER SERVICE OF THE DEDICATION OF 
 THE SACRED HEART CHURCH, BLOOMFIELD, N. J. 
 
 " All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth." — Matt, xxviii. 18. 
 
 How sublime are the words of our divine Kedeemer ! " All power 
 is given to Me in heaven and on earth," says the Lord Jesus Christ 
 to His Apostles. If, therefore, Jesus could, without arrogance, as- 
 cribe to Himself the possession of all power, whether in heaven or 
 on earth, then He confessedly is God, for to God alone belongs the 
 attribute of omnipotence. God alone can do all things, and " nothing 
 is hard or impossible to Him." 
 
 There is in the very conception of power something that wields 
 an awe-inspiring influence on the human mind. There is a character 
 of sublimity in power which chains the boundless imagination of 
 man, hushes into silence the words he would express and confounds 
 the very thoughts he would conceive. The natural creation, in its 
 manifestations of power, is replete with sublime grandeur. The 
 mighty torrent dashing down the mountain's side; the roaring cat- 
 aract; the tumultuous and loud-sounding sea; the vast volcano, 
 spouting forth its fearful fires; — all show forth a power which pro- 
 duces in the mind of man that elevation of thought and feeling 
 which, being called sublime, is better imagined than portrayed. 
 Violent commotions of the elements strike the imagination with a 
 sense of awful grandeur and omnipotent power. The lurid light- 
 nings which, serpent-tongued, shoot along the sky, and the terrific 
 thunder that shakes the earth, are a display of irresistible force and 
 majestic power. Even the large animals are capable of awakening, 
 by reason of their power and majesty, the emotion of sublimity in 
 
664 
 
 the beholder. Thus the leviathan, the behemoth, and the warhorse 
 are described in the book of Job (chs. xxxix. and xl.). 
 
 " Wilt thou give strength to the horse or clothe his neck with neigh- 
 ing ? Wilt thou lift him up like the locust ? The glory of his nos- 
 trils is terrible. He breaketh up the ground with his foot, he 
 pranceth boldly, and he goeth forth to meet armed men. He de- 
 spiseth fear, and he tumeth not his back to the sword. Above him 
 shall the quiver rattle, and the spear and shield shall glitter. Chaf- 
 ing and raging, he swalloweth the ground, neither doth he make ac- 
 count when the noise of the trumpet soundeth. When he heareth 
 the trumpet he saith : Ha ! ha ! He smelleth the battle afar off, 
 the encouraging of captains and the shouting of the army." 
 
 Now, our conception of power rises in proportion to its vastness, 
 duration, and extent. If, then, the powers of nature awaken in the 
 mind of man so strong a sense of the sublime, how shall not the om- 
 nipotent power of God inspire us ? For God is the God of nature, 
 and there is no power but from God, whether in the moral or the 
 material order. To Him is " benediction and honor and power and 
 glory forever and forever." 
 
 In the beginning He created the heaven and the earth. " Ipse 
 dixit, et facta sunt; Ipse mandavit et creata sunt." He said, "Let 
 there be light," and there was light; "let the earth bring forth her 
 fruits," and it was so. He poised the foundations of the earth; He 
 hung the firmament with stars; He set the suns in their revolving 
 spheres; He made the day and night; He ordered the changes of 
 the seasons, the revolutions of the years, and all the powers and 
 forces and energies of the universe of things. Every atom of dust 
 is a revelation of His power. He made us, and not we ourselves. 
 " Ipse fecit nos, et non ipsi nos." Riding upon the wings of the 
 whirlwind, He spake to His servant Job: "Where wast thou when I 
 laid the foundations of the earth; — when the morning stars praised 
 Me together, and all the sons of God made joyful melody ? Who 
 shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, issuing out of the 
 womb ? When I made a cloud the garment thereof, and wrapped it 
 in a mist as in swaddling bands. Who gave a course to violent 
 showers, or a way to noisy thunder ? That it should fill the desert 
 and desolate place and bring forth the green grass ? Who is the 
 father of rain, or who begot the drops of dew ? Out of whose womb 
 
665 
 
 came the ice, and the frost of heaven who hath gendered it ? Wlio 
 can declare the order of the heavens or who can make the harmony 
 of heaven to sleep ? Who provided food for the raven, when her 
 young ones cry to God, wandering about because they had no 
 meat ? " ** It is I, the Jehovah, the Creator, and first cause of all 
 things." 
 
 But Christ is God; His power is the power of God. Conjui'ed by 
 the High-Priest to declare His identity, Jesus ajB&rmed Himself to 
 be God. His works, His words, His life — all attest His divinity. 
 In describing the most stupendous miracles the record, with sublime 
 simplicity, says: "Jesus said to Lazarus, ' Come forth! ' and he that 
 was dead came forth." To the widow's son: " ' Young man, arise ! ' 
 and he that was dead arose." In healing the most frightful of 
 diseases. He said to the stricken leper: "'Be thou made clean ! ' 
 and immediately his leprosy was cleansed." Tempest-tossed upon 
 the bosom of the deep. His timid disciples cry for help. Jesus says: 
 " * Peace ! be still,' " and the boisterous waters are hushed into a calm. 
 When did public teacher ever compel the admiration of his implac- 
 able foes, that they should say of him, as the Jews of Jesus, " Never 
 has man spake like unto this Man." Where ,was ever the consoler 
 who could say, as this divine Physician did, to all the countless chil- 
 dren of sorrow and affliction: " Come to Me, all ye that labor, and I 
 will replenish you." "I am the resurrection and the life." "He 
 that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." " I 
 am the living bread that came down from heaven." " I am the light 
 of the world." " A.11 power is given to Me in heaven and on earth." 
 
 Yes, Jesus is God; His power is the power of God; His authority 
 is the authority of God. That power is without limitation or re- 
 striction, without measure and without bounds. 
 
 And this power Jesus confers in its plenitude upon His chosen 
 Apostles. "All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth; go- 
 ing, therefore, teach you all nations." Observe the force and efficacy 
 of that word therefore. It is not mere connective, no empty exple- 
 tive; but it has what is called a causal and effective signification. It 
 implies a concession of power and a grant of authority. All power 
 is given to Me; therefore, because of the universality of My power, I 
 send you. My power I give to you; My authority I transmit to you, 
 unimpaired and undiminished, for the great purpose for which I 
 
666 
 
 came down upon this e£irth, — the salvation of men and the glory of 
 My eternal Father. And all this power I confer upon you that you 
 may extend the kingdom of God upon this earth, and realize in 
 your labors the designs which were born from eternity. " As the 
 Father hath sent Me, so I commission you, that the work which I 
 have but begun, you shall carry on to a glorious consummation and 
 fulfillment. Go forth, then, My chosen ones; go forth on your mis- 
 sion of mercy and your work of love; go forth to teach all nations 
 beneath the circling sun; to teach them all things wherewith I have 
 charged you to teach them, and lo ! I am with you all days, even ta 
 the consummation of the world." 
 
 But perchance, some nineteenth century caviller will say to the min- 
 ister of Christ, "Away, thou medieval monk; away, thou fossil of a 
 dead and buried past; hast thou the hardihood, the frigid insolence 
 to arrogantly claim the power of Jesus Christ ? Who art thou ? Art 
 thou the Christ ? Art thou then equal to God ? Away ! thou cant- 
 ing hypocrite and mad mountebank, away ! " To this imaginary 
 foe we may make the meek reply : " Here are the words of the Gos- 
 pel; we have not written them and we cannot blot them out; we 
 can neither diminish their force nor obscure their meaning. * All 
 power is given to Me and I give it to you — to you. My Apostles, and 
 to your successors in the Church of God.' " 
 
 Such, then, is the character of that power with which our divine 
 Eedeemer clothed His Apostles in that indefectible Church, of which 
 He is " the chief corner-stone," and they are the unshaken and un- 
 shakable foundation. That power is pre-eminently greater than 
 any other upon earth. It is, grand, august; it is sublime in its 
 origin, its nature, its scope, and its purpose. It is universal. It is 
 the power of God. " All power is given to Me." " As the Father 
 hath sent Me, I also send you." All power is given to the ministers 
 of the Church of Jesus Christ. And for what ? To teach all things. — 
 And to whom ? To all nations, all tribes, and all peoples, of what- 
 ever race and land, that dwell upon God's footstool. And how long? 
 All days; — until the last beat of the pulse of time; until the heavens, 
 shall be shrivelled like a scroll, and " the final day, the day of ire, 
 shall Avrap the universe in fire "; until the last soul stamped with the 
 image of God shall have been forever gathered to the bliss of 
 heaven, or consigned to the misery of hell ; shall have been 
 
667 
 
 securely saved or hopelessly, irretrievably, and irrevocably lost 
 and damned. 
 
 That Church shall never fail. "I am with you all days." The 
 ark of God will never fall nor totter. Its walls will never crumble ; 
 its foundations never move. It is imperishable and indestructible, 
 for its soul is endowed with the immortality of God. The black 
 beak of envy may hawk and tear at it; the fiery bolts of fanaticism 
 may be hurled against it; the cutting shafts of calumny may be 
 levelled against it; all the minions of malice and the powers of per- 
 secution, come hot from hell, combined or severally, shall never de- 
 stroy, or even disturb the rock-built, Christ-founded, heaven-bom, 
 and hell-defying. Catholic Church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 To His Church, her heavenly founder gave the power to teach all 
 nations. Well has she fulfilled her divine mission, — " In omnem 
 terram exivit sonus eorum; et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum.'* 
 For where is the land into which her voice has not penetrated, and 
 where is the nation that has not felt her benign influence ? By the 
 zeal and devotion of her missionaries, the name of Jesus Chiist has 
 been carried into every quarter of the globe, from the rising to the 
 setting of the sun; and the Cross of Christ gleams in the heavens 
 where Roman eagles never flew, for the kingdom of the Nazarene 
 has been spread far beyond the most extensive empires of antiquity. 
 Nations for ages buried in the obscurity of paganism and the dark- 
 ness of infidelity, and walking "in the valley of the shadow of 
 death," have been lifted by her into light. She showed them the 
 day-star of deliverance, and led them forth, the ransomed children 
 of God, from the slavery of error and superstition, to be sharers in 
 the glorious and unfettered liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Everywhere, wherever the sun shone, or the moon sent down her 
 silvery beams, the Cathohc Church has planted the standard of the 
 cross and preached the Gospel of the crucified Redeemer. None 
 were so low that her humility could not reach, nor so exalted that 
 her authority could not claim. Kings, emperors, potentates, and 
 princes; serfs, slaves, and captives, were alike the object of her un- 
 sleeping solicitude and tireless concern. And her anointed sons, in 
 the discharge of their subhme duty, knew no danger, and feared no 
 peril. "With no shield or buckler but that of faith, no sword but 
 that of the Cross, no armor but the livery of Christ, they went forth 
 
668 
 
 with a divine enthusiasm which the storms of no earthly opposition 
 could ever quench, to conquer, or to die, for Christ. And many in- 
 deed laid down their lives a willing holocaust to God. The green 
 hillsides of Ireland are crimsoned with their blood; shed, not for 
 the propagation, but for the preservation of the faith; the sacred 
 land of Palestine has been yet more sanctified by their deaths; and 
 their bones lie bleaching on many a far-off shore. Into the heart of 
 the dark continent; into the jungles of Africa; undeterred by fam- 
 ine, pestilence, or fever, they went to face the ferocity of savage 
 beasts, or the fury of yet more savage men. On the frigid steppes 
 of Siberia, the burning sands of Arabia, and on the inhospitable 
 mountains of China, their bodies lie entombed by thousands. To 
 America, to the New World of Columbus, they came with the same 
 undying zeal and devotion. Yes, centuries before the glorious Gen- 
 oese navigator had set his foot upon San Salvador, they came from 
 the cold Northland across the wide waste of waters, to Greenland, 
 and, mayhap, to our own New England shores, and the crozier of 
 Eric flashed upon the waters of Narragansett Bay as his followers 
 raised the banners of the cross and claimed the virgin continent for 
 Christ. And many a day before the Puritan, who, forgetting that 
 they fled the whip of persecution in England, scourged his fellow- 
 exiles with scorpions, in America, — had ever thought of tolerance or 
 freedom, they proclaimed the sacred and God-like principles of civil 
 and religious liberty in happy Maryland. 
 
 And where is the comer of our country in which they have not 
 stood ? Through the untrodden solitudes of the West, and to the 
 far-off golden slope of the Pacific, they toiled their weary way to 
 bear the blessing of light and hope to the untutored child of the 
 forest, the mountain, and the prairie. And to secure for him these 
 blessings, they faced unflinchingly the stake, the fagot, the scalping- 
 knif e, and the funeral pyre. Numbers of them sank silently into un- 
 knov^m and nameless graves. The mountain breezes chant their 
 requiem; and our streams and rivers sing the sacred story of their 
 lives. In the temple of fame no tablet is inscribed with the record 
 of their deeds; but their names are graven in letters of God's purest 
 gold, along the walls and corridors of Paradise, and there they shall 
 shine fore verm ore. 
 
 But what is the history of our early American missions but the 
 
669 
 
 history of the Church from the beginning, only crowned with more 
 shining success ? 
 
 Concealed for centuries in the Catacombs, whose dark recesses af- 
 forded her a shelter from the cruel storm of Roman persecution, she 
 at last emerged victorious and triumphant, under the miraculous 
 cross of Constantine. She won the reward of undefiled conflicts. 
 She came forth from the crucible of suffering with her sacred brow 
 begirt with laurels, and a brighter halo of heavenly glory shining 
 lustrously around her divine form. She was all to all, that she might 
 gain all to Christ. She w^as to teach all nations, and even the stiff 
 necks of her own persecutors she bent to the sweet yoke of Jesus 
 Christ. She broke down all opposition; she silenced every foe; she 
 scattered to the winds of heaven the subtleties of pagan sophistry, 
 and she wrought the stupendous miracle of changing the stony- 
 hearted idolater into the meek and humble follower of the meek and 
 humble Jesus. 
 
 But trials of still greater severity were in store for her. The oc- 
 casion came with the downfall of the Roman Empire. 
 
 Out of the storm-ridden clouds of the North was heard the fear- 
 ful sound of the barbarian hordes upon the march; even as the 
 thunder-storm gathers in the sky, blackens the whole heavens, sweeps 
 along the seashore, and hurls itself against the mountain-tops, till it 
 breaks in destructive fury over a devoted city; even so did the 
 mighty host rise like a cloud in the north, and their tramp was as the 
 sound of accumulated thunders. On they came, gathering force 
 upon the way, sweeping ever}i;hing, cinimbling empires and destroy- 
 ing kingdoms, and scattering death around them, till they hurled 
 themselves, with all their concentrated energy and fury, against the 
 walls of proud, imperial Rome. Was the city doomed when doom 
 seemed so inevitable ? No; for as there was a Leo yesterday to stay 
 the hand of war between Spain and Germany, so there was a Leo 
 then, who, with no power but the force of tnith, caused the sword to 
 drop from the nerveless grasp of Attila and his fiery followers. 
 
 Thus has the Church fulfilled her sublime mission to teach all na- 
 tions. Thus has she proved herself to be the divinely-appointed 
 agent of Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind. Her mission 
 is without precedent or parallel in the history of the world. O I 
 grand old Mother Church, I hail thee as the mother of the nations. 
 
670 
 
 and the mistress of the earth. I hail thee with an unbounded ad- 
 miration, for wheresoever I turn my eyes I behold naught that is 
 comparable to thee. The wide earth is thy footstool, the heavens 
 thy canopy, eternity thy goal. I see thee speed, like the eagle, to the 
 uttermost bounds of the earth, and like the sun, great lamp of this 
 green globe, darting thy bright beams of truth on every people, on 
 every land. I see thee, once a little grain of mustard-seed, sown 
 1,900 years ago by the hand of Jesus Christ, now a wide and spread- 
 ing tree, fair and goodly to behold, whose roots are in the earth, 
 whose boughs are in the heavens, and beneath the grateful shade of 
 whose wide-extended branches are gathered together the children of 
 untold generations, in peace and harmony, in tranquillity and rest. 
 
 Christ gave to the Church the commission to teach all nations, but 
 to teach them what ? Not indeed the number of the fixed stars, nor 
 of the green blades of grass upon the globe, nor yet the number of 
 the sands upon the seashores. Not to build railroads, to establish 
 banks, nor to found political associations. Not the arts and sciences 
 of trade, war, commerce, or navigation. And yet it was the com- 
 mission to teach all things 
 
 Is there any restriction here? Yes; there is one: "All things 
 whatsoever I have commanded you." And what have I commanded 
 you ? Everything that pertains to the science of salvation, and the 
 spiritual welfare of mankind. Everything that points the way to 
 eternal life and unveils to the vision of men the beauty and glory of 
 the kingdom of God. The words which fell from My sacred lips 
 you will announce to every nation; and all things which the Holy 
 Ghost shall suggest to you, you shall make known from the house- 
 tops, and shall go and preach the Gospel to every creature. 
 
 And, therefore, the Catholic priest comes not to men as the herald 
 of new-fangled doctrines, nor as the apostle of his own opinions. 
 He comes to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and woe betide him 
 if he preach another. He carries his credentials from the very hand 
 of God, and he speaks as one having authority. The shifting and 
 veering winds of opinion disturb him not, for he has a divine certi- 
 tude for what he teaches, since he can teach nothing which is not 
 contained in the deposit of faith once delivered to the Saints, which 
 is the truth of Christ, the eternal truth of God. 
 
 And this is the truth which Catholics shall hear expounded from 
 
671 
 
 the altars of the churches which their loving liberality has raised to 
 the living God. Oh ! may they dilate theii' hearts to receive it, for 
 it is the truth of God, and when they shall know this truth, this 
 truth shall make them free. The voice of Him who spake as never 
 man spake before, will echo within their churches' walls, through 
 the mouth of an humble minister, with a no less uncertain sound 
 than that whose sweet tones were heard upon the waters of Genes- 
 areth and by the lake of Galilee. Well may Catholics rejoice that 
 they have crowned so many noble sites in our land with temples 
 dedicated to truth. They have built here not houses of their own, 
 but houses of God; they labored not in their own name, but in the 
 name of God, and they constructed not by their own power or au- 
 thority, but by the power and authority of Him to whom was given 
 all power as the God of heaven and earth. For Him is every 
 Catholic church built; to Him is it dedicated; in His honor and 
 glory is it blessed. And in it shall He abide; for it is His sacred 
 dwelling-place. In it shall the veiled God of glory tarry in the 
 tabernacle to bring balm to sin-sore hearts, to heal every affliction, 
 and soothe every sorrow. In it shall the clean oblation, foretold by 
 Malachy of old, be offered up to the Lamb who was slain from the 
 foundation of the world. In it, at the rising of the sun at morning, 
 shall the sweet incense of prayer and adoration ascend to Him who 
 sitteth upon high; and when twihght's close shall come, in it shall 
 resound the sacred Vesper song whose angel echoes awake the halls 
 of heaven. In it flows the blood of the Crucified to wash away the 
 sins of hoary age, and in it the waters of regeneration shall purge 
 the brow of infancy from the primal stain of Adam. In it the co- 
 pious cup of sacred knowledge shall be lifted to the thirsty lips of 
 man; and in it the Holy Ghost Himself shall garnish the soul with 
 that heavenly wisdom whose lambent light shall lead men on through 
 the darkness of this world to that house eternal in the heavens, 
 where the glory of God's countenance shall burn upon them with 
 fadeless splendor fore verm ore. 
 
 There is, then, cause for jubilation to Catholics in this land. Well 
 may they exult in the work which they have so successfully, and 
 with many sacrifices, accomplished. Every temple is a standing 
 testimonial of their zeal and devotion and their love of that holy re- 
 ligion which Jesus established on earth. They have built them a 
 
672 
 
 monument more enduring than brass, — a monument whicli, when 
 they shall have passed away and been forgotten, shall tell to others 
 how they lived and died for God. Their children, and their 
 children's children shall rise up and call them blessed. Those who 
 follow them shall hold their memory in honor and benediction. And 
 every child of error, who, attracted by the lamp of truth that shines 
 in every Holy house, may enter the one, true fold, shall breathe 
 benisons upon them. Oh ! that all might see the light as they have 
 seen it; — that only light which enlighteneth every man that cometh 
 into this world. God grant that all may see it soon. May God 
 speed the coming of that day when jangling controversies about 
 creeds shall no longer disturb men's souls; when all shall kneel 
 down at the selfsame altar to adore the selfsame God; when the 
 false shall give place to the true; when Christ alone shall reign over 
 all and in all; and when all, believing in the same Lord, the same 
 faith, and the same divine sacraments, shall be gathered together 
 into one fold, under one Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. For, 
 
 •* Except the Lord to build the house shall deign, 
 All they that build it, labor but in vain. 
 Except the Lord the city keep from harm, 
 In vain the watchmen wake and give alarm. 
 
 " In vain from rest we haste with early feet, 
 And late return, and bread of sorrow eat; 
 Who feeds the birds that neither sow nor reap, 
 To His beloved giveth in their sleep. 
 
 " If Thou but work in us and strength accord, 
 To will and do of Thy good pleasure, Lord, 
 The setting sun will with its glory gild 
 The crowning capstone of the house we build. 
 
 " And now as fades the daylight's lingering rays, 
 We rest from toil, and sing our evening praise. 
 All through the night Thy vigil o'er us keep, 
 Oh! Thou who giveth Thy beloved sleep." 
 
YII. 
 MONTH'S MIND OF Y. KEY. JAMES H. CORRIGAN. 
 
 PEEACHED AT ST, MARY'S CHURCH, HOBOKEN, N. J. 
 
 ** And Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, by 
 the commandment of the Lord, and He buried him in the valley of the land of 
 Phogor, and no man hath known of his sepulchre until this present day. And 
 the children of Israel mourned for him in the plains of Moab thirty days, and 
 the days of their mourning in which they mourned for Moses were ended." — 
 Deut. xxxiv. 5. 
 
 Such, my brethren, is the simple language which describes the 
 close of the career of one who .was a great pontiff to his people. 
 Having grown gray in the service of the Lord, the great leader's 
 time was come, and at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty, the 
 silver thread was sundered, the golden bowl was broken, and the 
 wine of life was wasted. Full of years and full of honors, Moses 
 dropped from his nerveless grasp the staff he no longer needed, as 
 he walked into the high mountain of the Lord. Thus passed away 
 from the sight, but not from the memory of his people, the greatest 
 prophet ever raised up by God in his divine economy for the re- 
 demption of his people. 
 
 It were a puerile purpose to seek a parallel between the life of the 
 illustrious subject of the inspired text and that of the simple priest 
 of whom fond memory bids us speak to-day. The disproportion- 
 ableness of the themes excludes comparison. But if we concentrate 
 our attention upon the mortuary record of Moses, we shall find 
 therein some poiuts pertinent to our present discourse, and those 
 that shall engage our consideration are, first, that Moses died by the 
 command of God; secondly, that the children of Israel mourned for 
 43 
 
674 
 
 Moses during thirty days; and finally, that at the expiration of that 
 time the days of their mourning were ended. 
 
 Mark, then, that Moses died by God's command. If, therefore, 
 reason and experience did not concur to produce in the mind of 
 man a conviction of death's certainty, we should still have Scriptural 
 warrant to ground belief in our mortality, for what God has com- 
 manded no power can circumvent. Yes, my brethren, there is a 
 Supreme Being who holds in the hollow of His hand all the lines of 
 our existence and measures out to every man the number of his 
 days. In the beginning He first fashioned our frame from the com- 
 mon clay, and when the period by Him appointed shall have elapsed, 
 we shall return to the silent dust whence we came forth. He brings 
 forth in their course the succeeding generations of men, and when 
 the time is come for their entering into light they appear upon the 
 stage of life, and having performed their part. He changes their 
 countenance and sends them away. 
 
 All things are by nature subject to change and decay. The sun 
 that rolls above our heads wiU doubtless shine for centuries unnum- 
 bered and unknown; the stars that stud the diadem of night will 
 sparkle through the circling years; the aged mountains will lift their 
 hoary heads above the clouds in far futurity, and the rivers will run 
 from their sources to the sea for ages yet to come; by the powerful 
 operation of the Kuler of the earth the current of events shall still 
 flow on, and new orders of civilization shall be born and decline; 
 succeeding generations of men will rise and fall, and like the bil- 
 lows of the sea, rolling one upon the other, the waves of human his- 
 tory shall dash against the shores of centuries now uncounted and 
 undreamed — but all must fail at last, all must fade away, and by the 
 command of the Sovereign Disposer of events, who is alone change- 
 less and immutable, all shall grow old as a garment, and as a vest- 
 ure He shall change them and they shall be changed, for heaven and 
 earth shall pass away and time itself shall be swallowed in eternity. 
 
 Thus agreeably to the command of God, there is a limit to our 
 life beyond which it may not be extended, and perhaps long before 
 it reach the average bounds, the thread of existence may be cut 
 asunder by that invisible hand, which is stretched over all the in- 
 habitants of God's widespread creation. But whether long or short, 
 smooth or rugged, the path marked out for us we must walk unto 
 
675 
 
 the end. The veil that shuts the prospect from our sight is woven 
 by the hand of Him that called us into life in the wise purpose of 
 His beneficence; that we may be ready for the issue whensoever or 
 howsoever it comes. Of this truth, the obvious consequence is, that 
 we must wait patiently for the summons that shall call us hence, by 
 a cordial consent to the divine appointments, and by an earnest 
 effort to harmonize our minds to what we cannot prevent nor pro- 
 long, the destiny which Heaven has fixed for all the sons of men. 
 
 To Hve long upon the earth is an almost general desii'e founded upon 
 the shadowy prospect of enjoyment, which, perchance, would never 
 find its realization, and if it did would avail nothing for eternity. We 
 might live so long that existence would be burdensome; we might 
 live to feel the barb of sorrow and calamity pierce our breast, and 
 find distress and misery overtake us; we might live to see our cher- 
 ished hopes blasted, and our fine resolves become fruitless, vain, or 
 even blameful in the sight of God; we might live to survive all that 
 loved us and aU by us beloved, till we stood like a solitary oak, 
 withered with age and bowed by every storm — yes, you might live 
 to see that day that you would look upon death as a seasonable de- 
 liverance from the ills of life, and then, doubtless, you would be con- 
 vinced that the whole tenor of your conduct and the whole drift of 
 your existence should be that of calm submission to Him who has 
 commanded death, who has fixed the day and the hour for our de- 
 parture, and " who knoweth," as the wise man said, " what is best 
 for man in this life; all the days of his vain life which he spendeth 
 as a shadow." 
 
 All men die by God's command. Even the priest must die. 
 Moses was a priest and he died. Yes, the priest must die. . He is 
 no honored exception. He whose office it is to minister to the d}dng, 
 himself must die at last. He who stood by to witness the final 
 agony of so many; to pour the balm of religious consolation into the 
 trembhng soul; to feed it with the fat of corn, the milk of God's 
 children, and the bread of the strong; even he who stands by to usher 
 human souls from the vestibule of time into the vast temple of 
 eternity — even he must die. If the dread Archer loves a shining 
 mark, why should he not pierce the priest ? 
 
 But how shaU it fare with him in the dark day of dissolution ? 
 Shall he be bereft of that support and consolation which he adminis- 
 
676 
 
 tered to others, of those sacraments wherewith he fortified them, or- 
 shall he find some anointed of the Lord at hand to shrive and 
 hansel his soul for a home in heaven ? "Will death be to him as the 
 king of terrors, the frowning Rider upon the grim, pale horse, or 
 will it come as the Angel of Peace, twining the olive branch abc»ut 
 the cypress, and scattering flowers upon the way to the palmy sum- 
 mits of Paradise ? 
 
 Has he died daily to himself ? Has he walked like Enoch and 
 Moses with the Lord; has he, like the royal prophet, long and seri- 
 ously considered the wondrous ways of God, and meditated on His^. 
 law both at the breaking of the morning and the declining of the 
 day; has he held the flowering rod of Aaron with undefiled hands, 
 and worn the threshold of the doors in the homes of the poor, the 
 sick, and the dying; in fine, has he been loyal to the truth, steadfast 
 for the right, and shown himself the uncompromising champion of 
 the Crucified, a devoted and self-denying minister of the Master ? 
 then, indeed, when the summons comes for his removal he can cry 
 with him, who being after God's own heart, always feared and served 
 the Lord, " My heart is ready, O ! my God; my heart is ready." I 
 do not know the manner of our friend's death, nor have any of the 
 circumstances been detailed to me; but if the past be the best guar- 
 antee for the future; if there be any truth in the accepted axiom, 
 that as men live, so shall they die, then am I in sober truth entitled 
 to affirm that Father Corrigan's death was the death of the just, and' 
 his last end was like to theirs. 
 
 Observe, once more, that God has commanded death. Of this,, 
 the natural inference is, that come when or how it will, death can be 
 neither untimely nor unseasonable. Whether in life's spring-time, in 
 manhood's summer glory, or in the frosty winter of old age, the 
 silent Reaper comes to cut us down, he comes to glean the harvest 
 for the Master of the vineyard, and garner up the sheaves for the 
 winnowing of eternity. At all times he is equally the messenger of 
 God. One hundred and twenty years had waned and wasted ere 
 Moses passed from human sight on Phasga's lonely height, and 
 four and forty only when the simple man we mourn was — cut off ! 
 But why do I say cut off ? I revoke that expression. No one is cut 
 off who fulfills the term by God appointed, whether long or short. 
 The true end of life is to know the life that never ends, and this. 
 
677 
 
 Itnowledge is acquired in one day as well as in a thousand years. I 
 'Cannot join that threnody of tears shed for the early lost. The 
 poetic plaint for the youthful dead bewails the broken column and 
 the fallen flowers. It is a wail for those who have gone down to the 
 silent shore in brave and buoyant youth, their ears still musical 
 with prophecy of high achievement. But, Christian mourner, hold 
 up thy head. Be patient and be strong. The column shall yet rise 
 to its destined height in the temple of the New Jerusalem, and the 
 faded bud shall open to disclose the rose, to bloom as an immortal 
 ■essence among the spirits of the blessed. All power is from God. 
 'Tis He that governs the world. He gives life when He listeth, and 
 thus He taketh it away. Has not the Maker the right to dispose of 
 His work in a manner agreeable to His pleasure ? And is not His 
 will most wise ? He has taken away our friend in the morning- 
 time of manhood, and in the flower of his priesthood, but he is a 
 priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, and the Lamb 
 that was slain from the foundation of the world, he shall continue 
 to offer to the eternal Father all through the everlasting years of 
 God. The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away, blessed 
 be the name of the Lord. God has commanded death, hence to die 
 is a duty, for what is duty but what God commands? With glad- 
 ness and with joy, then, should the priest prepare to go when his 
 call shall come, for in death, as in life, he is the teacher of his peo- 
 ple; and, 
 
 " As the bird each fond endearment tries, 
 To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies," 
 
 so shall he lead the way by the shining example of his own death- 
 bed. 
 
 The Israelites, as you have noticed, mourned for Moses, their 
 leader in the Lord, for thirty days. Behold the ancient precedent 
 for our demeanor since our brother's death. This example legiti- 
 mizes and consecrates our sorrow. The Jews were a pensive people 
 and prone to melancholy, as their conduct by Babylon's sad waters 
 plainly shows; but why should they not mourn for Moses? He was 
 their leader, their prophet, and, in some sense, their Saviour. He 
 led them forth from bondage; he smote the rock to slake their 
 ihirst; he invoked the manna of heaven to appease their hunger; he 
 
678 
 
 meekly bore their ingratitude and impatience, and in toil and pri- 
 vation, in suffering and tears, he conducted them upon their peril- 
 ous journey to the promised land, though his aching eyes should 
 never gaze upon its running sweetness. And thus his people and 
 we his fellow-priests mourn the man whose memory we recall to-day. 
 
 My brethren, the priest is a leader. As a star in the night he 
 goes before his people, to lead them from the home of sin's heavy 
 bondage into the promised land of Gospel liberty. The priest is a 
 father, for by spiritual paternity he generates souls to God. How 
 much more a father is he who is a father of fathers, because he 
 procreated priests, soldiers for God's sanctuary, in the seminary 
 and the college over which he presided so fruitfully and so long. 
 Some of us may call him father; we were with him there, and we 
 know now what reason there is to lament. Ah ! the heart knows that 
 it may sorrow. Rachel was not chid when she wept for her children. 
 The stillness commanded is not that of apathy or forced acquiescence; 
 "it is a patient waiting for the promised crown, while bending 
 under the weight of the predicted cross." What law, or what senti- 
 ment, shall restrain us from wearing our chaplet of flowers and 
 twining it lovingly about the memory of the dead? What instincts 
 or feelings shall forbid his little flock in Christ from dropping the 
 tear of silent recollection upon the turf above his tomb ? 
 
 And why should not the people lament their beloved priest ? For 
 their sake he left father and mother, severed every tie of blood and 
 kindred, put his hand to the plough and turned not back again. He 
 lives for them and they in him. Between them and God no one can 
 stand but him. He is the agent of God to regenerate the soul, upon 
 its first entrance into life, in guiding it upon its earthly career, in 
 strengthening and consoling it, when it goes before its God. For 
 his flock he prays, as Christ prayed for His brethren: " Holy Father, 
 keep them in Thy name. And those whom Thou hast given Me I 
 have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition." In 
 all trials and necessities, he is their " guide, philosopher, and friend." 
 Against the stormy wind and tempest he is their stay and support, 
 and in the wilderness of their affliction he seeks to spread their 
 table, and make their cup to overflow. And he is always true. 
 Others may play them false, but he is true as steel. He is true to> 
 them in toils and stripes, if they come; in sunshine and in storm, in 
 
679 
 
 adversity and prosperity; in life and death he has no thought but to 
 serve and to save them. And when he is torn from them by the 
 dividing stroke of death, every fountain of feehng is profoundly 
 stirred, the tempest of emotion oversweeps their souls, and the cry 
 of grief breaks forth in fullness from sorrow-stricken hearts. A 
 friend, yea, more than a friend, a father, has gone out from among 
 them, and now they know his place no more. But is there no balm 
 in Gilead, no physician there ? Yes, my brethren, for afflictions are 
 the same to the soul as the plough to the fallow ground, the prun- 
 ing-knife to the vine, and the furnace to the gold. 
 
 Therefore, I would ask you, finally, to remark, that when the chil- 
 dren of Israel had mourned for Moses thirty days, the time of their 
 mourning was ended. Had they consigned his memory to the Le- 
 thean lake, had they forgotten him? No; but they tempered their 
 sorrow and moderated their grief. Shall we forget our dead — blot 
 out the memory of our priestly dead ? No; for 
 " Even the grave is a bond of union; 
 
 Spirit and spirit best hold communion; 
 
 Seen through faith by the inward eye, 
 
 It is after death they are truly nigh." 
 
 The Angel of Death, as he bore the loved one away, opened the 
 heavens in his flight, and now the eye of faith penetrates and the 
 heart of faith lives in that world of spirits beyond this present king- 
 dom. On prayer and communion, the pinions of the soul, it soars 
 into the radiant and immortal presence of the lost one whom it loves. 
 And now the future and eternity are brought close around us, be- 
 cause our friend is there; there to plead for us, there to pray for us, 
 there to greet and welcome us upon some bright summer's morning, 
 when we shall clasp his hand in the unbroken friendship of eternity. 
 
 Why do I thank him then ? I shall give some reasons. I am not here 
 to pronounce his panegyric, nor to indulge high-sounding praise. 
 De mortuis nil nisi bonum, says the poet; de mortuis nil nisi verum, 
 says your servant. Yet, pardon me a word; let me cast a few poor 
 flowers of fond remembrance on his tomb. 
 
 For seven years I dwelt under the same roof, and for four I had 
 to do with him in an official capacity, he as President and I as Pre- 
 fect, and I think I took some measure of the man. He was a man 
 in some of the finest attributes of manhood. He was " Magnis nat- 
 
680 
 
 urae donis instructus," gifted with a fair share of genius and a large 
 fund of geniality. He had a liberal stock of homely sense, quick in- 
 tuitions, lively perceptions, and a large and wide sympathy with hu- 
 man nature. He never bore resentment, nor cherished the memory 
 of a wrong. He was generous to a fault, and kind to a rarity among men. 
 
 As a priest, he was the personification of the priestly life. His 
 piety was as real as it was unostentatious, and I need not tell the 
 students of Seton Hall how devoutly he said the Holy Mass, and I 
 confess I was always inspired with a sense of awe when he per- 
 formed the sublime act of consecration. He filled the chalice almost 
 to the brim, assigning as his pious reason, that he desired a more 
 copious libation of our Lord's precious blood. 
 
 Though he had no mean expectations from his future in the world, 
 he made no hesitation in choosing his life-work in the sanctuary. His 
 future, and his social status, might have raised him to no inconspic- 
 uous place among his fellows; but in what would he be better than 
 he is now ? But by voluntary preference and choice he became a 
 priest, that he might, for his heavenly Father's sake, let his light 
 shine before men, and be as a lamp unto their feet. And his good old 
 Irish father, and his Irish mother, gave him up without a pang to the 
 lofty life-work to which he consecrated the strength of his arm, the 
 fire of his intellect, and the energies of his being. 
 
 And he was no hireling shepherd of the flock. " The end of man," 
 says Manning, " is the glory of God, and the end of the priest is' the 
 highest glory of God." And no man who knew him can gainsay 
 that this highest glory was the goal of all his aspirations and en- 
 deavors, according to the measure of his powers. The good Shep- 
 herd said of His true followers: " My sheep hear My voice and they 
 follow Me, and I give them life everlasting; and they shall not per- 
 ish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand." Father 
 James Corrigan had the primacy of Abel, the patriarchate of Abra- 
 ham, the government of Noe, the order of Melchizedek, the dignity 
 of Aaron, the authority of Moses, the power of Peter, and the unc- 
 tion of Christ, and he used them well, according to the limited years 
 God granted him, and hence, in that brief space, he attained unto 
 the perfection of Samuel. " He walked in true humility; he loved in 
 simple obedience; he stood in the ways of truth"; he was, in the 
 fullness of the term, a meek and humble follower of the meek and 
 
681 
 
 humble Jesus. He loved the Church, and he loved God's altar. 
 With the prophet he could cry: " How spacious are Thy courts, O 
 Lord. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the place 
 where Thy glory dwelleth. How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord 
 God of hosts; how my soul panteth and longeth to come thither." 
 The wish is now gratified. He is at rest; eternal light shines 
 upon him. But lest, like nearly all the sons of frail humanity, he 
 have to pay the penalty for the faults done in the flesh, we wiU pray 
 for his release from banishment and exile, that he may soon gaze 
 into the meek and holy eyes of Jesus; may put on the bright gar- 
 ments of the glory of salvation; may wear the crown woven by angel 
 hands, and sing the songs that angels sing, and hear the sons of God 
 make joyful melody in the mansions of immortality and peace. 
 
 A little while and we shall see him ; but for the present he is not 
 here. 
 
 " He is gone to the slumber that knows no waking, 
 Till the loud requiem of the world shall swell; 
 Gone where no sound his still repose is breaking, 
 In a lone mansion through long years to dwell." 
 
 Yes, his large and sympathetic heart has ceased to beat; that warm 
 and sensitive soul has fled its earthly habitation, and not more than a 
 month ago the mortal part of him we knew so well was stamped 
 with death's dark signet and his cold and icy seal. Tearfully and 
 sorrowfully, but gently and lovingly, they bore him away. Under- 
 neath the sod, low-lying, doth the body rest. The autumn winds 
 shall scatter leafy mantles on his quiet couch, and when the winter is 
 over and gone, and the flowers appear in our land, the gentle voices 
 of the spring will make music nigh his grassy dell, and the pale snow- 
 drop and lowly violet, true types of his humility, will bloom in fra- 
 grant loveliness above his moss- garlanded grave. 
 
 Yes, there shall live his body, but the soul shall be with G^d. The 
 bright tabernacles of God shall be opened to his eyes, his ears shall 
 with sounds seraphic ring. Death then shall be absorbed in triumph, 
 swallowed up in victory, and neither pain nor sorrow shall afflict him 
 more, for all these former things shall be passed away forever. Such 
 is our blessed hope. " For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
 concerning them that are asleep, that we sorrow not as those who 
 have no hope, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
 so all them who fall asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him on the 
 last day." 
 
VIII. 
 THE BLESSED EUCHARIST. 
 
 THE OCCASION OF THE FORTY HO 
 TION, AT ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, JERSEY CITY. 
 
 " He that eateth Me, the same shall live by Me " — John vi. 
 
 We hear much in these days of the efforts some men are making 
 to get God out of the world, and number Him among the many 
 myths of the human mind. But as long as God is God, and as long 
 as man is man, man can never get away from God, nor, what is the 
 same thing, get God out of the world, by remanding Him to the 
 regions of non-existence. Absolute separation from God is for man 
 damnation, or annihilation. 
 
 God is all in all to man. Man, in all that he has, comes from 
 God; in all that he is, or ever will be, depends on God; he gets hia 
 being from God, leans for his life on God, and can never be wholly 
 weaned away from God. Hence, man's life is a single sigh for God; 
 a wish to be near God, to be with God, and to live by the life of 
 God. This same desire it was, which, misdirected, led Adam into 
 sin, for he longed to be like to God. If man sounds the depths of 
 his own consciousness and hearkens with the ear of the soul to the 
 movements within, he will hear the strivings of a spirit working its 
 way with eager energy up to God. Reason, rightly tested, is but a 
 revelation of the same truth. For a short span man may glut his 
 thirst for good with the poor substitute of sin, but soon the famished 
 soul hungers after God with a heightened hunger. Man's stubborn 
 will may force reason to fancy that he craves not God, but the beat- 
 ings of his hollow heart soon betray the lie on the lip of the intellect. 
 
 Wherefore, it appears that it is not natural for man to be away 
 
from God, apart from God; it is man's normal state to be in close 
 relation with God. Even in the natural order man feels God's touch 
 upon him; God's breath upon his cheek. In the starry sky he sees 
 his Maker's aspect; His movement in the rolling storm; His majesty 
 in the lurid Hghtning. But all this, much though it be, is not yet 
 enough; man longs for plainer tokens of his Creator. He wants, not 
 so much to argue the existence of the sun by looking at its light 
 through a reflecting medium, as to lift his eyes aloft and see the sun 
 itself in all its gorgeous glory. No vague, undefined appearance is 
 enough for man; he longs for the real, sensible presence of his 
 Maker and his God. Like Thomas of old, incredulous creatui-e, he 
 would fix his finger in the nail prints, his hand in the sacred side to 
 identify his God. Nor is this craving for the closer vision of God 
 bom of Christianity; it is coeval with man's creation. The prophets 
 of old cried out, "Show us Thy face, O Lord, and we shall be 
 saved." And Moses meekly pleaded : " O Lord, show me Thy 
 glory." And all the dark errors of the ages — what are they but the 
 sad and solemn story of men struggling to get God at any hazard, 
 and finding only a graven thing, because of their unwillingness to 
 plod that weary way which was pointed out as the only right road 
 to God's dwelling. And thus it was that some bent down before the 
 golden calf and burned incense to Baal, while others built big 
 temples, as in Athens, to the " Unknown God." Li remoter days 
 they found God in fire, as well as in plants and stones, and in these 
 newer times reason reigns a deity for some, and others in worship 
 nod before great Nature's shrine. But, thanks to God, the Author 
 of this void in our souls, man cannot rest content with any shadowy 
 semblance or untruth; he must have close and sensibly present a gen- 
 uine God, or his life will be through all but a dark and dismal death. 
 Man, then, craves the company of God with an undying yearning. 
 But does God contemn this heart-wrung cry of man ? No, He does 
 not; He cannot. No again, for there exists a void in the heart and 
 God must fiU it up, since He Himself is the Author of that vacancy. 
 He does not confer a faculty without an object, nor implant in our 
 nature an impulse for the impossible and unattainable. That would 
 be to make a mockery of man. He made man to seek Him, and 
 shall He not show Himself to man ? Assuredly He shall. Let us 
 then look at the history of God's dealings with man. 
 
684 
 
 In the light of this history we discover God ever giving more 
 knowledge of Himself to man; making plainer and more perfect the 
 plan of union between Himself and man. The louder human cries, 
 the more ready the response. At creation's dawn, when the holy 
 light of heaven Ht up the youthful universe, the father of the human 
 family saw clearly his Creator in the wonderful works of God's 
 creation. But more than this — God spoke to Adam, for when he 
 sinned he heard God's voice and was afraid. To the patriarchs and 
 prophets God, at various times, revealed Himself, and \fy His angel 
 messengers He often made known to man the behests of His divine 
 will. Now He appears as a pillar of fire to guide His groping people 
 on their weary way; and again He is seen in the lustrous light of 
 the Shekinah, as it shone forth from the tabernacle. But is this all ? 
 No, for who can fathom the depth and strength of the limitless love 
 of God for man ? When man forsook the ways of God, God might 
 have silenced his wild wail with a flood of fire. But this He would 
 not do. " Can a woman " — thus God reasons with Himself — " can 
 a woman forget her offspring so as not to have pity on the son of 
 her womb *? And if she should forget, yet will I not forget you. " 
 And so, in answer to that quenchless craving for the visible presence 
 of God, He empties Himself of all His supernal splendor, which we 
 could not see and live, and descends to earth to dwell as a man in 
 the midst of men. It was not enough to show Himself to man by 
 signs and by appearances; not enough to hold sweet converse as 
 from afar with the children of men. No; He must needs strike 
 every human sense with His personal presence. Hence, He clothes 
 Himself with our frail humanity, and He walks forth to be seen by 
 men, to be felt by men. In short. He becomes Himself a man. 
 
 But surely for God to become man is all that even the infinite 
 genius and love of God can suggest to satisfy the hunger of the 
 heart for its Creator's presence. The climax is yet to come. 
 
 Union of the soul with God is the groundwork of the whole 
 scheme of Kedemption. But what was man to do when Christ had 
 gone to dwell with His Father in the Father's kingdom ? Was He 
 to leave His children orphans ? No; that could never be. He might 
 have paid the price of our Kedemption and then left us to apply the 
 fruits in our own way. It is, perhaps, true that our desired union 
 might be cleferred till man could meet his Maker face to face in 
 
685 
 
 glory. But God's love can brook no delay; He longs for present, 
 immediate union. The difference between the old dis]3ensation 
 and the new is, that Jesus was promised in the one and present in 
 the other. Yes, He must be present, for the longing of the soul, the 
 void of the heart, still exists, and God must fill it up by a union 
 with Himself of the closest character. But what else can His yearn- 
 ing tenderness suggest to cement our union and make heaii; melt 
 into heart. He has already revealed Himself to man by creation, 
 and man has forgotten Him; He has spoken to His creatiu'e by His 
 own sacred voice, and that creature would not hearken unto Him; 
 and, finally. He stood face to face with man in the flesh, and man con- 
 demned Him to die on the wood of the cross. But this is not the 
 limit of eternal love, for having loved His own who were in the 
 world. He loved them to the end. 
 
 Behold, then, dear Christians, the last sublime revelation of God 
 to man; this last and most perfect performance in the plan of union, 
 to effect which Jesus came down on earth; this last, this best and 
 most tender testimonial of the burning, living love of God for man. 
 See now how Jesus Christ shows Himself to us by faith, but no 
 longer from afar, for He is just within the reach of the s^iallest 
 child among us all. See now, how the good God gives Himself to 
 us in answer to the creatures' craving cry. Look now, He gives to 
 us the substance of His body to be our food, the essence of His 
 blood to be our drink, that we may be one with Him, even as He 
 and the Father are one; that we may, as it were, cast off our mortal 
 coil and become as gods; and that, finally, we no longer "lead here 
 a poor life," but that we may live by the life of Christ our Lord, for 
 He Himself avers the truth, declaring most solemnly, " He that eat- 
 eth Me, the same shall live by Me." In one word, dear brethren, 
 behold how and for what reasons Jesus Christ instituted the most 
 holy Sacrament of His body and blood. " It was a great thing," ex- 
 claims the Apostle, " it was a great thing that He became our fellow; 
 a greater that He became the price of our salvation; but the great- 
 est of aU to give Himself to us in our food." 
 
 Let us now see how the institution of the most blessed Sacrament 
 is God's most perfect answer to the cry of mankind for the sensible 
 presence of the Creator. 
 
 First of all, it is the most perfect answer, because God chose it 
 
Ood, dear friends, is the all-wise as He is the all-loving Father. 
 Hence on the night of that sublime scene in the coenacle of Jerusa- 
 lem, seeing with the eyes of His mind all the myriads of souls that 
 would exist to the end of time, and knowing to exactness the needs 
 and wishes of every single one among them all; and loving every 
 one with an everlasting love, the great God of love could not but 
 choose for man that which would best and most fully meet the 
 measui-e of man's miseries, and satisfy the longings of his life for 
 the near presence of his God. And what is God's latest answer to 
 man's cry for union with the Author of his being ? It is the insti- 
 tution of the ever-adorable sacrament of love. This is God's 
 chosen answer, and therefore it is the best regarding the condition 
 of man. 
 
 Again, the blessed Eucharist is the most perfect answer, because 
 it is the most loving. And why the most loving ? Because God 
 chose it, and God chooses what is the most loving, because He is the 
 all-loving God. It is true that God loved us before we were born — 
 yea, even from all eternity. It is true, He loved us so ardently as to 
 lift us out of nothing, and give us gifts of soul and sense of beauty and 
 of woi:th. It is again true, He loved us with such burning intensity 
 as to robe Himself in our frail flesh, carry on His blessed and bleed- 
 ing back the cruel cross, and then wash away all our scurvy sins in 
 the laver of His life's blood. But He shall do even greater than this. 
 The climax of His love is not reached here. He could have, had He 
 so willed, pardoned the sinful soul, without showering upon it un- 
 told blessings. This might be the measure of mercy, but it would 
 not be the limit of love. And so. He not only wipes away the stain 
 of sin from the seared soul, but bathes its wounds in the balsam of 
 benediction, and binds it to His tender heart by the unbreakable 
 bonds of grace and love. 
 
 The Blessed Sacrament is the perfect answer of the Creator to the 
 creature's cry for the divine presence, because it produces the high- 
 est union between God and man. Among rational creatures union 
 cannot be forced; it must be free, for a forced union is nothing but 
 disunion. Union must be desired, and the degree of the desire is 
 the measure of the union. In the Holy Eucharist God's great con- 
 descension is proof of His all-consuming desire. If He humbled 
 Himself to such depths as to descend from His abode of bliss and 
 
68T 
 
 assume the flesh of a spotless Virgin, what infinite abasement it was 
 for a God of sanctity to yield Himself to be the meat and drink of 
 our poor, sordid, sin-steeped souls ! Ah ! that we might dive into 
 the depths of that divine desire which leaped to His lips on the night 
 that He so longingly declared: "Desiderio desideravi." And O! 
 that we could feel the yearnings of His spirit when, outstretched 
 upon the cross, and like to die. He cried aloud, Sitio ! For what did 
 He, the God-man, thirst ? For water ? No, my friends; for one 
 thing only did He thirst; His was an unslakable thirst for souls — 
 for union with the souls of men. Need we more proof of His hun- 
 gering desire ? Look at His lowly life in the tabernacle of our 
 temples. Behold what abandonment He bears from the coldness of 
 His children ! The victim of neglect, there He lives the live-long 
 day, and through aU the weary watches of the night, and none so 
 poor to do Him reverence. Scorned by those He loves; grieved to 
 the soul's core by the ingratitude of those enriched with all the 
 wealth of His graces. He yet tarries through the time, suffering, 
 hungering, desiring, and unceasingly yearning for men to come and 
 dwell in the house of the living God. Such is the desire of the 
 Saviour for human souls. But since union is between two, the de- 
 sire of one suffices not. WeU, then, my friends, in the Blessed Sac- 
 rament, despite the indifference of many, our desire for God is 
 deeper and stronger than it was before the advent of our Saviour. 
 In the early days, before Christ's coming, it was only a kind of nat- 
 ural desire, such as men could have with a vague and imperfect 
 knowledge of God. While Jesus walked the earth, the desire was 
 hardly stronger, for outside the handful of believers, His divinity was 
 not even dimly discerned. But when His Godhead shone forth in 
 the resurrection and ascension, then the full tide of our affections 
 swept out towards Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man. Now 
 we know that the sweet " Man of Sorrows" is the Son of God, and 
 our love is more soft and tender, because it is no longer the mingled 
 love and fear of the great unseen God, but it is the earnest, con- 
 fiding outflow of the human heart for a meek and gentle Jesus, who 
 in all things became like us, that we might become like Him, Now 
 that natural desire becomes supernatural, for all selfishness must be 
 eliminated, when we behold what He, in His great mercy and hu- 
 mility, has done for our special account. Shall we not love Him for 
 
688 
 
 His own dear sake, who has done such things for our sake ? How 
 can we be so selfish with an unselfish God ? 
 
 Again, this union is of the most intimate character, because it is a 
 union of divine grace; it is the union of unions. Close, indeed, is 
 the union of thought and feeling, when mind meets mind in exact 
 accord, and heart throbs unto heart in friendship's kindling flame. 
 Close, too, is the union of blood and kinship, and what force shall 
 break the bond that knits the mother to the offspring of her being ? 
 This love is stronger far than death, which it even dares to brave. 
 But stronger and more perfect is the union of Christ Jesus and the 
 sinless soul in the sacrament of love. Each sacrament has its pe- 
 culiar grace, and the peculiar grace of the Blessed Sacrament is the 
 grace of union with God. In other sacraments we get this or that 
 special grace, according to the end for which Christ instituted each 
 particular sacrament, but in the Eucharist we get God Himself, the 
 fountain of all grace, and hence it is the highest possible union be- 
 tween God and man, in one sense, even, above the hypostatic union 
 and the union of the divine maternity, for the first related to our 
 common humanity, and the second to an individual soul. But the 
 Blessed Eucharist is the complement and the fulfihment of all that 
 went before, for, as the Fathers say, it is a sort of Incarnation for 
 each and every one of us. Hence, it is a more perfect union, a more 
 perfect expression of God's answer to man's cry for union with his 
 Maker; for, after all, the final purpose in the plan of salvation, is, not 
 human nature in common, but each and every individual soul. The 
 union of the Blessed Sacrament, then, is a union of gi-ace, but more 
 perfect than all former unions by grace, for it is the grace of actual 
 love. The effect of sanctifying grace is, we know, to make the soul 
 worthy of the love of its Creator; but to be love-worthy and to be 
 actually loved are things widely apart. But the grace of the Holy 
 Eucharist is the grace of actual love; it unites to God, and it unites 
 us to Him by the force of mutual love bursting out into an actual 
 flame. The Blessed Sacrament, then, is a sacrament of love; its 
 union is a union of love, and its union of love is the ver/ climax of 
 closeness between God and man. 
 
 Besides, dear friends, this union of the Blessed Sacrament is God's 
 best answer to man's cry for the positive presence of God, be- 
 cause we are sensible of it to a wonderfid degree. We have a clear 
 
consciousness of it in one sense, although' it Jis a mystery of holy 
 faith. In former days men saw God as He gleamed foi-th in the 
 grandeur of the tempest, in the sigh of the zephyr; they beheld Him as 
 He was revealed in His wonderful works, or as He voiced Himself by 
 the mouth of His messengers. We felt Him from afar, but in no 
 special spot, for He was everywhere. But now we can see Him in 
 the contracted compass of the Sacred Host. So palpable, so tan- 
 gible is He become, that we can say: "Behold now He is right here; 
 see in this Uttle spot is the great God of glory; look, as He descends 
 from on high to take up His home in the Holy Host, myriads of angels 
 environ Him, and now they bow down about the altar in silent ado- 
 ration of the almighty Power that made them." Nor is this all. 
 We can now take upon our tongue the consecrated, God-animated 
 host, and then proclaim the wondrous truth: " See, God dwells within 
 my soul. Yes, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, His humanity. His divinity, 
 the Holy Trinity and the eternal Godhead are now abiding in my 
 breast." Now God is the food of my soul, the principle of my Hfe, 
 my everything and all. Ah ! who can muster terms to tell the union 
 between me and my God ! It is a union that defies description. It 
 is a real, local, sensible union. It is a union of grace, a union of 
 love, a union of life. He is my food and drink. Transimus in id 
 quod comedimus. We become that which we eat. Food becomes 
 our life; it goes to the brain by which we think; to the heart by 
 which we love; to the blood by which we Hve. And Christ Jesas is 
 my food. He is, then, my hfe, not indeed in the carnal sense, as the 
 Jews believed, when they said, " How can this man give us his flesh 
 to eat ? " But in the sense which He Himself averred, when He de- 
 clared to mankind, " He that eateth Me, the same shall live by Me." 
 Now, my friends, we have speculated much, but what shall we 
 point out for practice ? We have seen that man's life is a constant 
 cry for the presence of his God. Do you not feel this^day by day ? 
 
 " There is a mystery in human hearts, 
 And though we be encircled by a host 
 Of those who love us well, and are beloved; 
 To every one of us, from time to time, 
 There comes a sense of utter loneliness. 
 Our dearest friend is stranger to our joy, 
 And cannot realize our bitterness. 
 44 
 
690 
 
 * There is not one who really understands,' 
 Not one to enter unto all I feel; 
 
 Such is the cry of each of us in turn, 
 
 * We wander in a solitary way.' 
 
 No matter what or where our life may be. 
 
 Each heart, mysterious even to itself, 
 
 Must live its inner life of solitude. 
 
 And would you know the reason why this is ? 
 
 It is because the Lord desires our love; 
 
 In every heart He wishes to be first. 
 
 He, therefore, keeps the secret key Himself, 
 
 To open all its chambers, and to bless. 
 
 With perfect sympathy and holy peace, 
 
 Each solitary soul which comes to Him. 
 
 So when we feel this loneliness, it is 
 
 The voice of Jesus saying, * Come to Me '; 
 
 And every time we are not understood, 
 
 It is a call to us to come again; 
 
 For Christ alone can satisfy the soul. 
 
 And those who walk with Him, from day to day, 
 
 Can never have a solitary way. 
 
 And when beneath some heavy cross you faint, 
 
 And say, ' I cannot bear the load alone,' 
 
 You say the truth. Christ made it purposely 
 
 So heavy that you must return to Him. 
 
 The bitter grief, which no one understands, 
 
 Conveys a secret message from the King, 
 
 Entreating you to come to Him again. 
 
 The ' Man of Sorrows ' understands it well, j 
 
 In all points tempted, He can feel with you. 
 
 You cannot come too often, or too near. 
 
 The Son of God is infinite in grace. 
 
 His presence satisfies the longings of the soul, 
 
 And those who walk with Him from day to day, 
 
 Can never have a ' solitary way.' " 
 
 Yes, man craves the company of his Creator, and God has always 
 answered this demand according to the needs of man; and as the 
 last, perfect, and complete response to the longings of mankind, He 
 institutes the sublime Sacrament of the Altar, and gives Himself to 
 us to be our food and life. 
 
 What follows ? Ihe conclusion is quite plain. 
 
691 
 
 Can, you live without God ? If, which God forbid, you think you 
 •can, then go, you have no place in the house of God. If not, how- 
 ever, if you must lean for your life on God, behold here is the foun- 
 tain of life, come and lave in its life-giving waters. Yes, here is 
 the bread of life, the food of angels, that came down from heaven, 
 even as the manna came down to soothe the hunger of the Israel- 
 ites of old. "Ecce panis Angelorum," behold the bread of angels, 
 it disdains not to descend into the mouths of men, and will ye — O ! 
 ye of little faith — why will you not haste to be filled with this God- 
 given food for famished souls ! Behold, here is Jesus Christ sigh- 
 ing and yearning for souls to come to this blessed banquet of 
 supernal love; and shall you spurn the tender invitation? "Come 
 to Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh 
 you." " If to-day you hear that voice harden not your hearts," but 
 come at once and open quickly the door of your souls and let Jesus 
 in to abide with you forever. Repent now your past folly and neg- 
 lect, and Jesus will clasp you to His breast, and the tear of trouble 
 He will wipe from your weeping eyes, and He will bind up all your 
 bruises, and the oil of gladness pour in upon your soul; and when 
 the curtain of death shall close around your last earthly act, and 
 when for the last time your eye feasts on the great God of glory 
 coming to possess your soul in the Viaticum, you will calmly close 
 your eyes in the last sleep of earthly existence, but in the bright 
 morning of eternit}'^ you will awaken to an everlasting life in the 
 bosom of your Father and your God. 
 
 Come, ye whose spirits droop, whose souls are sorrowful and sad, 
 whose pathway is dark and dreary, and whose burden is hard to bear 
 — come, for it is you that the Comforter calls to the banqueting- 
 board, where the great God of love feedeth the poor and the little 
 ones and giveth good things to His children. Is your present life 
 faded, worn and insipid to you ? come and Jesus will take it and 
 give you another lovely in devotion to duty, in sharing the burdens 
 of others and bearing those of your own, in its knight-eiTantry for 
 right and truth in the world. Is it stained with sin ? come and 
 Jesus will give you a clean and a pure life — pure as the falling snow, 
 immaculate as the birth of dawn, and radiant as the light that shines 
 upon the golden shores of Paradise. Is it weak, decrepit, and spent 
 ^ith the carking cares of life ? come, and Jesus will give a new and 
 
692 
 
 fresh life, as if you were bom over, a little child again. Is it racked 
 with pain and suffering, borne down by crosses and wet with tears ? 
 come, oh ! come, and Jesus will give you a perennial life, where is 
 no more pain, nor sorrow, no crying, nor tears, because in that 
 blessed land these former things are passed away forever. " He that 
 eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, and I will 
 raise him up on the last day." 
 
IX. 
 
 ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 DELIVERED AT ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL, HOBOKEN, N. J. 
 
 We celebrate to-day the feast of the patronal saint of the heroic 
 -women who conduct this institution of mercy, the illustrious St. 
 Francis of Assisi; — a man whose followers are multiplied with the 
 advance of centuries; a man whose memory shall never grow old, but 
 shall be held in love and veneration by all who esteem purity of 
 -character, sanctity of life, and exalted devotion to the cause of 
 humanity as long as the record of a sublime life can evoke the ad- 
 miration of mankind. 
 
 God is wonderful in His works, and He is " wonderful in His 
 ;saints." The splendor of His power shines forth in every part of 
 creation, for the same hand that decks the hly with its lustre, gilds 
 the summer cloud with glory. His majesty bursts forth in the rushing 
 tempest, gleams in the lurid lightning, speaks in the rolling thunder; 
 His benignity breathes in the tenderness of twilight, in the rosy 
 •calm of morning-tide and in the genial glow of day. The flowers 
 are redolent of His beauty; the harvests are laden with His bounty; 
 the stars sparkle with His reflected splendor, and earth, air, sea, and 
 ;sky are bathed in His light. 
 
 But God is still more wonderful in His saints; for by the opera- 
 tion of His unseen grace upon their souls; by the magnificence of 
 the miracles which He has wrought at their hands; by the super- 
 human virtues with which He has adorned their character and glori- 
 fied their lives, and by the lofty example which, through His faith- 
 ful servants, He has presented to mankind, He exhibits His power 
 in far more excellent degree, because the moral immeasurably trans- 
 .cends the material creation, and the order of grace the order of 
 
694 
 
 nature. The creation of the universe is the work of God's finger;:, 
 but in creating a saint He exerts the might of His right arm. " To 
 me, O God," says the Psalmist, "Thy friends are exceedingly 
 honorable; their principality is exceedingly strengthened; their 
 numbers surpass the sands of the sea." 
 
 Of one of God's chosen favorites, I am to speak to-day. He was 
 an extraordinary man, called up by God to meet an extraordinary 
 emergency. To carry out the purposes which high heaven had set 
 for him was the ruling, the sole ambition of his life; and with such 
 signal success did he fulfill his mission that he left an impress upon 
 the world as ineffaceable as time itself. 
 
 One period of the world's history is called the " dark ages " by 
 those who are in the dark about them. If with impartiality and 
 candor we examine into the character of those ages, we shall not 
 fail to discover that they were in reality among the most remarkable- 
 in human history; for though in some respects deficient in those 
 shining monuments of material progress which strike the senses 
 rather than the heart, they were nevertheless rendered glorious by 
 their conquests over the corruptions of vice and the sway of evil' 
 passions, and by their singular fidelity to the dictates of humanity 
 and the laws of Christian charity, which are the only lasting founda- 
 tions of the peace and happiness of mankind. 
 
 In this period it was that the great moral hero whose memory we 
 honor stepped forth upon the theatre of events. He was a man 
 with an idea, and an enthusiastic devotion to that idea. The pivotal' 
 purpose of his life was to realize the idea which glowed in his soul' 
 like a flame of heavenly fire. 
 
 The religious sentiment was strongly rooted in the minds of men' 
 when St. Francis stood forth among them, but it was mingled with 
 much selfishness, much grossness, and much triviality. In such a 
 state of society religion readily degenerates into superstition, inane 
 speculation, or mere pomp and external show, which is no better 
 than Pharisaism. Men must be guided by correct principles and 
 sound doctrines, and must by the fire of example be made to burn 
 to behold infinite truth and beauty. " I have come to cast fire upon 
 the earth, and what do I wish but that it be enkindled." Christian- 
 ity's best exponents are the saints of God. Nations and individuals 
 do not live on bread alone — they live on ideas, maxims, deeds, con- 
 
Yerted into spiritual aliment by the grace of God. The order of 
 ideas always precedes the order of events, and hence instruction 
 comes before action. But example is the most powerful preacher. 
 St. Francis essayed, not merely to enhghten the minds of men by 
 furnishing them with pure religious principles, but especially to 
 move their hearts by the incomparable example of a perfect realiza- 
 tion of those principles in his own sanctified life. Like his divine 
 Master, he could say with the force of truth: *' Follow me." The 
 lesson of a life was the need of his age, as it is of all ages. Christ 
 began to practice ere He began to teach. In St. Francis' day, as in 
 our day, faith was dull, hope was faint, charity was cold. Faith had 
 to be re-enkindled, and men made to understand that the rewards 
 in store for the good were grand beyond all conception, and the 
 punishments reserved for the impious terrible beyond description. 
 Hope had to be revived, and men made to feel that the sufferings of 
 Christ upon the cross opened the doors of Paradise to all who choose 
 to follow the strait and rugged path which leads to the fountains 
 of felicity. Charity, dear, precious charity, the apple of God's eye, 
 had to be infused into souls whence it had departed. Frozen hearts 
 had to be melted; tepid hearts warmed; lifeless and unsympathetic 
 hearts revivified and recalled to the sublime life of unselfish service 
 for humanity, to turn thereby the hollow mockery of philanthropy 
 into a glorious and blessed reality. How was it to be done ? By 
 the irrresistible power of personal example and the grace of Al- 
 mighty God. By absolute self-renunciation and complete self-efface- 
 ment; by the faith, the fasts, the night- watchings, the deep sorrow, 
 the continued prayer, the poverty, and the asceticism of that meek 
 Master whom Francis followed and loved with the ardor of an infatu- 
 ated lover and the devotion of a seraph. All the raptures of mystic 
 devotion, the lights of interior illumination, the fires of self-abnega- 
 tion were concentrated in him, as in a focus. He lived in a luminous 
 atmosphere, of which Jesus, his God and his all, was the effulgent 
 and ever-gleaming star. Jesus was with him everywhere — in the 
 groves, the pastures, the hiUs and the lakes of his native land; but 
 more especially in that inner sphere, the kingdom of the heart, 
 where his spirit held constant communion with the Spirit of Eternal 
 Life; and thus beholding God in himself and himself in God, he 
 could indeed cry oat, " My God and my all." He lived in a material 
 
696 
 
 body, it is true; but his leart and mind were ever in a sphere be- 
 yond the dark shadows of this sad, fallen world, the kingdom of 
 God's unspeakable peacj and love. He dwelt in one world, but he 
 lived in another, and v^nile he wrought in the one, he worked for 
 the other. Hence he vi is not solicitous about temporal needs. He 
 was not intent upon what he would eat, or what he would wear, for he 
 reposed on the bosom of the paternal Spirit of God, sharing of food 
 the worldly-minded know not of, and drinking of a fountain which 
 was fed by the very life of God. Even in the material nature around 
 he seemed to behold onlj the spirit of goodness and love. The birds 
 came and perched upon his hand and sweetly sang to him their 
 blithesome lays, and the doves, true types of his own gentleness, 
 cooed round his house the whole day long, and feasted in fearless 
 glee beside his table, and stopped to listen to the accents of his 
 tongue in mute wonderment. The outer world was to him an ever- 
 present providence upon which he could depend for all his human 
 needs. And he gazed upon the fields and flowers, the flocks and 
 the herds with seer-like vision, and gathered from them lessons 
 which the carnal and high-minded could never know. The invisible 
 he made visible in himself while he lived and walked upon the 
 earth, and now that he is invisible and gone, and we would fain be- 
 hold his face once more, but cannot, we are consoled and strength- 
 ened by the story of his life, — nay, enriched by the legacy he has 
 left us of sweet, uncomplaining service for our fellow-men, childlike, 
 simple, steadfast trust in Providence, which is the only solid and 
 substantial world of comfort, hope, and blessing, in this empty world 
 of change and show and vanity. Yet men called him a madman; 
 they would esteem him a crank to-day. It is ever so with a hard, 
 uncaring world; cold, suspicious, and jealous of those who mount 
 above their fellow-mortals, even to do them a godly and necessary- 
 service. Even when he sought the sanction of the Pope for the new 
 order he designed to found, the Supreme Pontiff turned away 
 abruptly, and the commission of cardinals who considered his claims 
 regarded him as a visionary and a day-dreamer, and his scheme of 
 living on nothing but Providence and air, as vain and impracticable. 
 But the supreme necessity of life is frequently misunderstood. Ab- 
 solute self-surrender into the hands of God has not always been 
 comprehended even by the greatest apostles of asceticism. Perfect 
 
697 
 
 security of physical support is not the paramount necessity of Ufe. 
 That necessity is strict conformity to the highest and purest aspira- 
 tions of the spirit within, ruled by the Spirit of God. That is the 
 supreme and all-important secret of true life. The food that a man 
 may eat is of small account, and he that sacrifices his hope, his aim, 
 his high ideal to his bread, may find, when too late, tbat man does 
 not Hve by bread alone. Few, truly faithful in heart and conscience 
 to God, die for want of bread; if Providence permits poverty. Provi- 
 dence provides for it. But many who spend their lives in earning 
 and storing up the wherewithal of this world die in hunger and 
 thirst which no human possessions can ever quench. The Providence 
 that pervades all things vouchsafes to the discerning mind of the 
 man of faith the true means of support, both for body and soul. 
 That means is fuU recognition of, and unfaltering trust in the good- 
 ness, the love, and bounty of the Creator. " Behold the lilies of the 
 field; they sow not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his 
 glory was not arrayed as one of them." That is the audible word that 
 proceeds from the mouth of the living God. That is the philosophy of 
 faith, of spiritual dependence, of self-renunciation. Therein lies the 
 force and meaning of the prayer — " Give us this day our daily 
 bread." Blessed is the man who knows how to pray that prayer and 
 live by it. 
 
 St. Francis was conscious of his vocation. He knew whom he 
 had been called to serve. He knew the wealth and munificence of 
 his heavenly Father, and he knew that faith whose power can re- 
 move mountains. By that faith he would move the world. He 
 would teach men the value of rising above carnal necessity. He 
 would inculcate detachment from the world and from the unsatis- 
 fying things of the world, that men might live with Christ in God. 
 He died daily to himself that he might live to God. He showed 
 forth in his life the beauty of holiness and truth. Religion repre- 
 sented in his life a thing of essential loveliness which brightened 
 and elevated everything wherewith it was associated, touching the 
 deepest chords of the human heart, exalting and refining the mind, 
 and imparting superhuman strength to the moral energies. The 
 mind which, like his, was accustomed to contemplate the Deity in 
 all His works could not fail to become elevated in tone and lofty in 
 purpose; and the heart which was constantly schooled in the lessons 
 
698 
 
 of divine love could not fail to recognize and appreciate whatever 
 was beautiful or inspiring in the moral order. 
 
 St. Francis was born at Assisi, a town of Umbria, in Italy, in 1182. 
 His birthplace, according to some, was a stable and his cradle a 
 bundle of straw. How like the Lord of the universe, who, though a 
 king, had no throne of sapphires, no crown but the crown of thorns, 
 no sceptre but a reed, no robe but a faded purple cloak. Time rolls 
 on. The child becomes a boy; the boy ripens into manhood. The 
 allurements of flesh and blood appeal to his fervid fancy, and he at 
 first enters the giddy round of dissipation, but maintains unsullied 
 his purity of heart. But God sometimes works slowly. The marble 
 block is rough and unsightly until by repeated strokes of the chisel 
 the sculptor gives it divine form and beauty. 
 
 * ' Sculptors of life are we as we stand 
 
 With our soul uncarved before us; 
 Waiting the hour when, at God's command, 
 
 Our life-dream passes o'er us. 
 If we carve it then on the yielding stone. 
 
 With many a sharp incision. 
 Its heavenly beauty shall be our own, 
 
 Our lives that angel vision." 
 
 A few years pass along and St. Francis beholds that " angel vis- 
 ion." Within a sacred fane a pale and emaciated figure kneels be- 
 fore the altar at the noontide hour. His raiment, bound to his body 
 by a leathern girdle, is malformed and grotesque. His hands, up- 
 lifted in supplication, are seamy and rough and give evidence of 
 painful manual toil. He has been making the rounds of the city, 
 begging for his slender sustenance. As he moves along he is made 
 the object of the raillery and mockery of his own brother. " Go ask 
 that man," he says to another scoffer, "to sell you a little of his 
 sweat." " I do not choose to sell my sweat to men; I can sell it bet- 
 ter to God," the Saint replies. 
 
 Upon the road appears a ghastly, gruesome object, a fright to the 
 beholders. 'Tis a man whose lips and face are eaten away by a 
 hideous and repulsive cancer. The observers turn away in disgust, 
 but Francis runs up and embraces the sufferer, and affectionately 
 kisses the cancerous face, which is instantly healed. Devoted ser- 
 vant of the lepers, he washes them, and journeys everywhere beg- 
 
ging, for the sweet charity of Christ, the means to feed and support 
 them. 
 
 The mere sight of the image of his crucified Redeemer made him 
 feel the sufferings of the poor with such intensity, that he stripped 
 himseK to clothe them, and often went supperless to bed to save 
 them from famishing. Touched to the heart's core by the spectacle 
 of the misery and distress about him, he entered the chapel at the 
 hour of midnight, while others slept on *' beds as soft as downy 
 pinions are," and poured forth his tears till his eyes were red with 
 weeping and his sobs and groans echoed far out upon the night. 
 
 No power is greater than that of the Spirit of God acting upon a 
 sympathetic soul. God's works are wonderful and magnificent. He 
 breathed, and man became a living soul. His Spirit brooded over 
 the waters and forthwith they teemed with animation. As it worked 
 in the creation of matter, so does it operate in the conversion of 
 souls. Thundering eloquence and personal magnetism have done 
 but little to convert the world. The grace of God alone can move 
 the soul. When the heart is really touched, it thrills with the vibra- 
 tions of God's holy Spirit. Christ is the power of God unto salva- 
 tion. St. Francis had this power. When he went forth to preach, 
 men bowed their heads; he spoke and their hearts were thiilled by 
 the fire that glowed in the face before them. Their souls burned 
 within them and they were drawn by iiTesistible impulse to follow 
 and to imitate. 
 
 Thus Francis Hved, spending himself for Christ, consumed with 
 compassion for the poor, absorbed with meditation on the sufferings 
 of his Saviour, till he was so signally favored as to have reproduced 
 in his person the words of Christ, his God, to the amazement of the 
 incredulous and the edification of the pious portion of mankind. 
 
 With no abatement to his labors, his health gradually failed, and 
 under the most exquisite torture produced by the stigmata, he sank 
 day by day, constantly thanking God for the pains he was permitted 
 to endure. Just before his death, he dictated his last testament to 
 his religious brethren, and warmly recommends to them the observ- 
 ance of the rule, respect for the Church authorities and the practice 
 of mendicancy as a mode of livelihood. The testament finished, 
 the Saint directed that a song of thanksgiving, of his own com- 
 position, be sun^ to God for His multitudinous mercies. He then 
 
700 
 
 ordered that he be laid upon the ground and covered with an 
 old habit obtained from the guardian of the community. In this 
 humble posture he continued to exhort his disciples to patience and 
 the love of God, and gave his final blessing to all in the following 
 moving words: "Farewell, my children! Remain always in the fear 
 of the Lord./ That temptation and tribulation which are to come, 
 are now at hand, and happy shall they be who shall persevere in the 
 good they have begun. I hasten to go to our Lord, to whose grace 
 I recommend you." Having caused the history of our Lord's pas- 
 sion, from the Gospel of St. John, to be read, he then began to recite 
 the one hundred and forty-first Psalm, "With my voice I have 
 cried unto the Lord." As soon as he had finished the last verse, 
 " Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name; the just 
 wait for me till thou reward me," he yielded up his saintly soul to 
 God on the 4th of October, 1226, the twentieth after his conversion 
 and the forty-first of his age. 
 
 He is gone from the land of the living, but his works remain be- 
 hind, an imperishable monument of his zeal, his self-sacrifice, and 
 his unquenchable love of God. To describe the institutions of 
 mercy which are the legitimate outcome of his labors would be an 
 endless task. In cities and in deserts where his followers have 
 passed along, within the realms of faith and love illumined by the 
 light of his example, they have left behind some memofial to show 
 that the blessed and merciful sons of St. Francis have been there; 
 some monument vital in attesting the subtle action of a loving heart, 
 which to a heedless observer may seem but a broken trophy or a 
 rude wall, but which a great soul would gaze upon with " an eye 
 tear-glazed and a heart on fire." 
 
 It is well authenticated that, at a very early period of his career, 
 St. Francis conceived the purpose of founding his order, whose 
 members, utterly unselfish in life, should be fit heralds of God and 
 mighty helpers of men. The absolute self-renunciation which he 
 inculcated shocked even the rigid standard of virtue in vogue in his 
 day, and surely no man dared to dream or foretell that the seraphic 
 Saint's httle band of Brothers Minor would one day reach to the ends 
 of the earth. Other orders may have had more distinction in theo- 
 logical lore, more renown in ruling the Church, more reverence for 
 their penitential austerities; but "the record of the Franciscans is 
 
701 
 
 chiefly a record of lives and work, like the life and work of their im- 
 mortal founder, of whom a Protestant biographer has gracefully 
 written: *He thought little of himself, even of his own soul to be 
 saved, all his life. The trouble on his mind was how sufficiently to 
 work for God and to help men/ " 
 
 To this head of helping men are to be referred all enterprises of 
 discovery (Christopher Columbus was a member of the Third Order), 
 all development and civilization that has appeared in the world; and 
 in all these, and in many more kindred blessings than the world 
 cares to consider, may be distinguished a powerful and beneficent 
 influence dating back to the days of the seraphic Saint of xissisi. 
 
 For his daughters in Christ I appeal to you this day. The holy 
 work of their founder they carry on among the people of this city. 
 Their hands are seamed with toil, Uke his; their lives are spent in 
 ministering to the same loathsome diseases; their work is equally 
 entitled to our admiration. Workers for God, helpers of men they 
 are; may it be your privilege to have them always among you, as it is 
 your God-appointed duty to give them support and encouragement. 
 
MARY, OUR MOTHER. 
 
 PREACHED AT A SODALITY RECEPTION IN ST. 
 
 CATHEDRAL, NEWARK, N. J., MAY, 1888. 
 
 " Behold my beloved speaketh to me: Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, 
 my beautiful one, and come. For the Winter is now past, and the rain is over 
 and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, and the time of the prun- 
 ing is come; the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth 
 forth her green figs. The vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my 
 love, my beautiful one, and come." — Cant, op Cant. ii. 10. 
 
 The beautiful and impassioned words of the spotless spouse in 
 the Canticles are not misapplied in addressing them to you, my dear 
 young friends, as the apt expression of the emotions that fill your 
 fervid souls on this happy eve of Mary's month. Between the spirit 
 of beauty in Nature and the soul in man there exists a lively sym- 
 pathy and wondrous harmony. Man instinctively seeks the light and 
 loves the beautiful. As the flowers turn towards the sun, so does the 
 eye of man turn towards what is glowing and effulgent. AU things 
 talk to him of God, for the God of Nature is the God of man. And 
 Nature tells of God, both when she wears the sullen frown of 
 "Winter's desolation, and when her rosy face is radiant with the 
 smiles of Spring. As she has her several moods, so she has her va- 
 rious voices, which speak to the heart in varied keys and tones. 
 But never does she charm so tenderly as in the vernal month of May, 
 and never does she wake in the soul sentiments of devotion so tran- 
 quil and so soothing, as when the balmy breath of spring fills each 
 worn and weary spirit with the holy, calm delight of heavenly enjoy- 
 ment. The soul then seems to scale its prison walls of clay, and be 
 transported beyond all of the earth, earthy. 'Tis then she cries in 
 
703 
 
 ecstasy: "I have found him whom my soul loveth. I hold him, and 
 I will not let him go." Then she says in exultant accents: "I am 
 come into my garden, O ! my sister, O ! my spouse : I have gathered 
 my myrrh with my aromatical spices : I have eaten my honeycomb 
 with my honey: I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, 01 
 friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved. My be- 
 loved to me, and I to him who feedeth among the lilies.*' 
 
 There is, young friends, a peculiar propriety in your selection of 
 this opening of the lovely month of May, or Month of Mary, as the 
 time which is to signalize the consecration of your young hearts to 
 the Virgin Mother of God. How hallowed and how gi'acious is the 
 time ! Hill and dale are enamelled with bright flowers, and robed 
 with richest verdure. The birds carol their sweet songs from every 
 bough, and the air is filled with softest melody. All nature is in- 
 stinct with life and joy. In the revolutions of the seasons a kind of 
 monitory voice, which summons us to reflection, is heard speaking 
 to our souls, and every rising sun, as it pursues its path through the 
 heavens, announces some message to encourage us upon our journey, 
 or to reprove us for our delay. When May appears,, and the earth 
 shoots forth her tender green, it is a call to religious duty, for the 
 gentle breath of heaven seems to fan the dying embers of the faith 
 within us with a paternal softness, and withered hopes grow green 
 again. The soul of man, naturally subject to external influence, drinks 
 in the holy inspiration of the season, and it is upborae on the wings 
 of l(^ing contemplation towards the skies, and even Nature herself 
 seems tinged with a supernatural radiance Hke that which issues from 
 the splendor of God's paradise. In the middle ages, on the first 
 morning in May, the peasant and the king repaii-ed together to the 
 forest, the hawthorn bough was cut, and amid great rejoicing the pole 
 was erected and the May-pole dance begun. The ancient Romans 
 dedicated the month to their goddess Flora, and brought their floral 
 tributes and laid them on her altar. The Catholic child of Mary 
 dedicates the month to his " love, his dove, his beautiful one," the 
 immaculate Mother of God, and he brings his votive offeiings to lay 
 them at her feet, as he crowns her in his heart the queen of May and 
 the Queen of queens. 
 
 I give you joy to-night, then, — bright joy, heavenly joy, — to you 
 who are assembled here before our Lady's shrine, to vow to her un- 
 
704 
 
 faltering fealty, as long as life shall last. To you, in truth, 'tis given 
 to say: " Rejoice with me, all ye that love the Lord, for when I was 
 yet a child I was pleasing to the Almighty." As Solomon said of 
 wisdom, so sing you to-night of Mary: " And I preferred her before 
 kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison 
 of her. Neither did I compare her to any precious stones, for all 
 gold in comparison of her is a little sand, and silver in respect of 
 her shaU be counted as clay. I loved her above health and beauty^ 
 and chose to have her instead of light, for her light cannot be put 
 out." " Now all good things came to me, together with her and in- 
 numerable riches, through her hands" (Wis. vi.). 
 
 To animate your zeal, to inflame your love, to enliven your devo- 
 tion in the service of that matchless Mother and incomparable Queen, 
 whose cause you have espoused, under whose banners you are en- 
 listed, and under the powerful protection of whose sweet and 
 venerable name you march to the undefiled victory of God's sacra- 
 mental hosts, we shall lovingly contemplate Mary in her own perfec- 
 tions and in those special relations which she holds to Christian 
 souls, and especially to you, her own children, her joy and her crown. 
 
 Lift your eyes to those everlasting kingdoms where the saints 
 reign with Christ, and partake with Him the glory that breaks forth 
 in sublime splendor from the Godhead. See the omnipotent Lord 
 of Life in those regions of inaccessible light, legions of angelic 
 spirits round about Him, exhibiting to Him incessantly the homage 
 of their love and adoration. There are the apostles, the maityrs, 
 the confessors, aye, and the white-robed virgins, too, the glory of 
 God's countenance shining upon them forevermore. The winter of 
 their affliction is now past; eternal spring smiles upon them. They 
 are absorbed in glory and bathed in the lambent light of eternity. 
 But w^ho is she that " cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as 
 the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array"? 
 " How beautiful art thou, my Love, how beautiful art thou ! Thy 
 eyes are as doves' eyes, thy lips are as scarlet lace, and thy speech is 
 sweet. Thy neck is as the tower of David, which is built with bul- 
 warks; a thousand bucklers hang upon it; all the armor of valiant 
 men. Thy lips are as a dropping honeycomb, honey and milk are 
 under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is as the smell of 
 frankincense. Thou art all fair, O my Love, and there is no spot in 
 
, 705 
 
 thee ! " Who, indeed, is she that standeth near the throne, as once 
 she stood close by the cross, " clothed with the sun, the moon under 
 her feet," and the twelve-starred crown blazing upon her snowy 
 brow ? Who is she but the Mother of the King, more honored by 
 Him than Bethsabee was by Solomon. Who is she that transcends 
 by her majestic brilliance those myriad hosts of light, but the 
 purest, fairest, brightest creature that ever issued from the holy 
 hand of the Creator. She is the woman by excellence — an ex- 
 cellence which surpasses the highest ideal of human imagination. 
 She is the perfect type of loveliness, the mirror of true womanhood, 
 the model of all beauty in the created order. She is the Queen of 
 heaven, and of earth as well — the star of the sea, the hly of the 
 valley, the cedar of Lebanon, the rose without the thorn. She is 
 pure as the crystal dewdrop that rests upon the lily's spotless 
 bosom; fair as the first beam that blushes on the rosy cheek of 
 morn; bright as the white light that sparkles from the eternal 
 throne. She is graceful as the fawn, gentle as the turtle-dove, mild 
 as the breath of spring-time, tender as love, and faithful unto 
 death. Her words are like balsam, dropping on the bleeding heart 
 and making it blossom with the flowers of bright joy. Her tears, 
 faUing Hke pearls from Paradise, enrich the finder beyond all the 
 rubies that rest in the under world. Her voice is like melody that 
 moves o'er the waters, when the pale stars shine upon the placid 
 deep, transpoi-ting the soul beyond the stormy sea of life to a port 
 of rest and salvation. The very thought of her is sweet as the recol- 
 lection of the prayers we poured forth in life's morning-time, when 
 kneeling by our mother's side we first learned to lisj^ the gentle 
 name of Jesus and the tender name of Mary. 
 
 Behold the paragon of perfection to which I point as the object of 
 your love and devotion. Is she not worthy of all that you can give ? 
 She is God's masterpiece, for as St. Bonaventure says, God could have 
 created a more beautiful world, a more magnificent heaven, but He 
 could not create a better mother than the mother of God. The singu- 
 lar privileges which she enjoyed from her Creator entitled her to be 
 styled full of grace, and the talents which she received from God, 
 she improved with such assiduity, by her detachment from terrene 
 affections, by sublime contemplation of eternal truths, by constant 
 prayer and daily intercourse with her divine Son, Jesus, that in re- 
 45 
 
706 . 
 
 ward of her virtues slie has been exalted to the most eminent de- 
 gree of glory, and will, to the end of time, be called blessed by all 
 generations. 
 
 Enrolled in Mary's sodality, you can claim her special protection, 
 but if so, you are under particular obligation to render her excep- 
 tional reverence and devotion. You are bound to study and know 
 her, for knowledge is the foundation of love. 
 
 But what relation, dear children of Mary, does the mother of God 
 bear to you, her clients and servants? She is, first of all, your 
 mother, because she is the mother of Christ, and therefore your 
 mother, in Christ Jesus our Lord. O happy, thrice happy, they who, 
 having God for their Father, make Mary their mother. 
 
 ** OhI mother's love of all most dear! 
 Love that knows only how to bless! 
 The emblem given by God to show 
 His own infinite tenderness. 
 In vain doth music chant thy praise, 
 In vain essay the sister arts, 
 To make thee visible — no eye 
 May know thy beauty, save the heart's; 
 There lives thy portrait, treasure fair 
 Beyond our dreams of Eden's bowers, 
 And tears, fond, reverent tears, are still 
 The worthiest tribute to thy powers." 
 
 My friends, if it is your blessed boon to have the mother of your 
 love still abide with you, pour forth your praise to God for His most 
 gracious gift. " Forget not," as the Wise Man says, *' the groanings 
 of thy mother." Be loyal, be true, be faithful to your mother. 
 Plant no thorn in her pillow and write no wrinkle on her brow. 
 Those pale, withered hands have often soothed the hurt of tears, and 
 dropped balm of love into your aching breast. You may wander 
 weary miles, and live till your hairs are silvered with the frosts of 
 age, but you will never meet an eye so tender, a hand so gentle, a 
 heart so kind as hers. You will never feel another love like that she 
 lavished upon you. She taught your lisping tongue to speak, your 
 tottering feet to walk, your first ideas to sprout, and planted in the 
 virgin soil of your young heart the tender shoots of virtue, and 
 guided your wandering footsteps in the ways of wisdom and the 
 paths of peace. 
 
707 
 
 But if this be the ordinary mother's love, what is the love of 
 Mary ? How can you understand the intense, ardent, yearning love 
 of the Mother of infinite tenderness and pity ? The special predilec- 
 tion which she cherishes for you, her chosen children, is beyond the 
 limits of language to express. 
 
 From the words of St. John we know that Mary is the mother of 
 us all. " When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple standing, 
 whom He loved. He saith to His Mother: 'Woman, behold thy son.' 
 After that He saith to the disciple: * Behold thy Mother.' And from 
 that hour the disciple took her to his own." What a wealth of ten- 
 derness breathes through that expression: " He took her to his own ! " 
 As the representative of the race, St. John spoke for us all. We 
 have God for our Father; Jesus Christ is our Brother, and "from 
 that hour " Mary became our Mother. Mary is our Mother, because 
 she is the Mother of Jesus, and her human is the consequence or 
 the appanage of her divine maternity. The Mother of the Head must 
 be the mother of the members, and we are members of Jesus Christ, 
 as the Apostle affirms, or, in the language of Jesus, " He is the vine 
 and we are the branches." She has been made, says the Abbe Peti- 
 talot, a participant of the fecundity of Christ, to give birth not only 
 to Christ, but to all His members. Hence, as St, Bernard declares, 
 God wishes her to be the dispensatrix of all His favors and all His 
 graces. Her love for us is not less than His, in one sense, for she 
 loves us all in Him. She loves us with a tireless, inextinguishable 
 love. As she surpasses all other mothers in dignity, nobility, and 
 grace, so does her love transcendently excel the love of the dearest 
 and most affectionate mothers upon earth. Her love, like the charity 
 of the Apostle, " is patient; is kind; itsuffereth aU things; endureth 
 all things, and it never falleth away." 
 
 It is fadeless and imperishable; boundless and illimitable; deep as 
 the soundless sea; broad as the universe; strong as death, and 
 abiding as the pillars of Paradise and the throne of God. 
 
 But as Jesus loved John above the others, so does Mary love her 
 children the best of all. When Jesus was lifted up He drew all 
 things with Himself, and even so does Mary draw you by the mag- 
 netic power of special predilection and particular grace. I felicitate 
 you who are thus signally favored. You are enshrined in the core 
 of her heart. She has taken you to her own. She will never, never 
 
708 
 
 forget you. Wherever you go, or whatever you do, Mary will seek 
 to gather you under her wings, and weave about you the love of her 
 motherly heart. Even if you forsake her; if you spurn her from 
 your side; if unmindful of the pledges, and false to the promises, 
 which before this radiant shrine you make her to-night; — even if, 
 which God avert, you crimson your career with crime — if you eat 
 the bread of shame and wear the livery of disgrace, still she will 
 only think of you the more; will call after you entreatingly; will pur- 
 sue you lovingly and tenderly, and will bring back the poor lost 
 sheep of the sheepfold to the shepherd of the flock, that God may 
 call it, like a wanderer, home, and count it among the saved when 
 the tale is told for the last time, and the number made full for 
 eternity. 
 
XL 
 
 FIRST SUIS^DAY OF LENT. 
 
 PEEACHED AT ST. J0H:P * 
 
 "Brethren, we exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain." 
 —2 Cor. vi. 1. 
 
 What man does not experience a feeling of profound sorrow, as 
 lie ascends the highways of history and views the calamities that 
 liave rained down upon the devoted nations since human records 
 first began ? Of the great nations of antiquity, whose praise once 
 filled the world, what scanty vestiges remain. In those oriental 
 •countries, whose splendor and opulence were once the marvel of the 
 human mind, what traces can the antiquary find at this present hour 
 to indicate the extent of bygone glory ? Every remnant almost is 
 Hotted out, and a hoary Sphinx, an aged pyramid, or crumbled and 
 dismantled walls, alone remain to tell the tale of former grandeur 
 and present desolation. Behold, " all the glory of the house of Ich- 
 abod hath departed ! " In the smiling plains and valleys by the 
 Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile, where the waving grain ripened 
 under the vitalizing rays of an eastern sun, the poppy sheds its down, 
 and the deadly nightshade distils its odors over fields neglected and 
 untilled. In the courts of Solomon, the palaces of Baltazar, and 
 in the gay mansions of Memphis, where the rout and revel re- 
 sounded till the stars paled in the midnight sky, where concubine 
 and courtesan assembled to lure the infatuated royal victim by their 
 <jharms, the sound of the timbrel has ceased, the lute and the cithara 
 are silent, and the voice of the minstrel is no more. Where are 
 Tyre and Sidon, those emporiums and granaries of the ancient 
 world? Where are Babylon and Nineve, Borne and Alexandria, 
 those centres of wealth, culture, and power in the golden era of Au- 
 
710 
 
 gustus, the halcyon period of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and amid 
 the riotous luxuriance, the pomp and pearl of the Assyrian and Per- 
 sian monarchies? They are long since numbered among those 
 monuments of man which mark the pigmy character of his works, 
 the fleeting duration of his most cherished and exalted efforts. How 
 many civilizations, since the page of time was first unrolled, have 
 sunk from sight, and lie, superimposed, one upon the other, buried 
 in the dust ! 
 
 " Westward," says Berkeley, " the course of empire takes its way." 
 But as it was with the East, so, perhaps, will it be with the West; 
 and were we gifted with the power of prophecy; could we project 
 ourselves forward, say, into the three thousandth year of the 
 Christian era, we might behold all the marvellous achievements of 
 present material progress, all the results of art and science, and all 
 the monuments of mind, one magnificent mass of ruins, one wide 
 wilderness of desolation, where no sounds would be heard but the 
 roar of the jackal, the hoot of the screech-owl, or the repining of 
 the wind through the moss-clad ruins of forsaken temples and de- 
 serted habitations. 
 
 What means this periodical decline of human grandeur, this ebb 
 and flow of the great tides of civilization ? Why does history record 
 the strange story of so many states and kingdoms, rising from the 
 waves of obscurity, sailing for a time the sea of progress, and in the 
 end engulfed in the waters of oblivion ? Why have mankind wit- 
 nessed so many institutions, springing from the cradle of barbarism, 
 and after a brief, butterfly existence, dying on the bed of luxury and 
 power, suffocated by their own prosperity ? Why has the whole 
 earth been covered with desolation at various epochs of its extraor- 
 dinary history ? Why ? It was because men did not think in their 
 hearts. It was because they received the grace of God in vain. It 
 was because they preferred material prosperity and the things of 
 earth to " the things that are above " and the service of . their God, 
 for "virtue exalteth a people, but sin maketh a nation miserable." 
 It was because they wandered from the ways of truth. It was be- 
 cause they would not recognize the necessity of religion and the 
 force and morality of its precepts, and thus broke loose from the 
 only restraint upon their passions and their vices. They therefore 
 perished in the conceit of their understanding and in the foil}'- 
 
711 
 
 and corruption of their hearts. Nations are but individuals of 
 larger growth : if these are corrupt, so are those; and corruption is 
 the forerunner of fatal disintegration and positive extinction. But 
 contempt for God was the cause of the evil and the source of their 
 misery. 
 
 It was because they insulted the majesty of their Maker, that the 
 authority of their kings, laws, and governments were despised and 
 insulted; and disrespect to rulers was the seed of anarchy and social 
 disorder, and anarchy carried dissolution in its train, and rulers and 
 ruled, kings and people, fell together and vanished forever from 
 human view. Thus it was that calamities came upon them, and the 
 genius of destruction, rushing through the atmosphere of strife, 
 scattered the ashes of chaos over the splendor of former civilization, 
 and overturned empires and kingdoms, and to the war-wasted 
 homes of the millions came the fiend of famine and pestilence to 
 glut the havoc and complete the extermination. What was this but 
 the torrent of God's wrath poured out upon them for their crimes ? 
 What but i^e anger of an enraged God, vindicating the majesty of 
 His outraged laws, and chastising the unfaithfulness and ingratitude 
 of men ? " It is the cup of strong mixture which is in the hand of 
 \ the Lord; it shall be poured out from one end of the world to the 
 other; all the nations of the earth shall drink thereof." Yes, they 
 shall drink, because of their infidelity towards Him, who, after He 
 had released them by prodigies of His mercy from the slavery 
 of sin, was betrayed and dishonored by His unworthy creatures, and 
 His long-forbearing patience was worn out, as when it repented 
 Him to have made man, and He allowed them by their own acts to 
 plunge into an abyss of irrecoverable sorrow, into misery that shall 
 never end. Ah ! if they had only thought in their hearts, they never 
 would have preferred the delusive glitter of earthly kingdoms to the 
 glory of the kingdom of God; never would have let go an inherit- 
 ance of heavenly joy for the fleeting felicity of earthly things, and 
 would have learned " to know and see what an evil and a bitter 
 thing it was for them to have abandoned the Lord their God." 
 
 When Jesus had fasted forty days in the desert, the tempter took 
 Him into a high mountain apart. After fruitless temptations to sin 
 held out by the seductions of Satan, Jesus was shown the kingdoms 
 of the earth and the glory thereof, and temptingly offered to the Son 
 
712 
 
 of God were all the vast dominions outstretched at His feet in ex- 
 change for His service and adoration — "If falling down Thou wilt 
 adore me." Jesus answered by Himself alone. Neither the voice of 
 angels nor the voice of God helped Him. His Father seems to 
 have left Him to the resources of His own unaided will. It was a 
 trying moment. Jesus could, had He desired, have seized the 
 mastery of the whole world. He was not unconscious of His power 
 to command, conquer, and reign. AU were willing to do Him hom- 
 age; earth and heaven were waiting to ratify His choice. He knew 
 that the world, which always worships power, longed for a leader 
 with genius and authority to lead. The ancient kingdom of Israel 
 sighed for its former glory, and eagerly awaited the coming of a 
 king, the splendor of whose temporal sway would outrival the days 
 of Solomon. Christ knew, moreover, that the world would at once 
 recognize Him, if He would only recognize it in His plan of empire. 
 It was a dazzling prospect; a weak soul would have been staggered. 
 But Jesus knew whom He was called to serve. " My kingdom is 
 not of this world." Under the guise of earthly domin*ion. He saw 
 Satan soliciting Him to divide His loyalty to God, and He swelled 
 with anger and was pierced with pain at the bare suggestion of 
 yielding service to any one but His eternal Father, and then, from 
 the unfathomable depths of a divine scorn. He uttered those fiery 
 words of rebuke and repudiation: " Get thee behind Me, Satan; for 
 it is written, * The Lord, thy God, shalt thou adore and Him only 
 shalt thou serve.' " And forthwith the inexpressible presence of His 
 Father's tenderness consoled Him, and the divine grace encircled 
 Him, and the tempter having fled in confusion, the angels came and 
 ministered to Him. 
 
 To console and strengthen us, brethren, in the dark hour of 
 temptation, when the soul is like to fail and sink under the stress 
 which the enemy puts upon it, Jesus also was tempted. He was 
 tempted once, and He conquered; we are tempted many times, and, 
 alas ! many times we fall. But although man's life, as Job says, is a 
 warfare upon earth, the severest trial of virtue is the temptation of 
 worldly dominion. Dazzled by the flattering jirospects which ambi- 
 tion spreads before them, thousands seek and find such ascendency, 
 but to their own perdition ; many others seek for it in vain, and 
 under the chill of disappointment, they pine, despond, and sink from 
 
713 
 
 human sight. When men view the shining crown of success of 
 which they hope to make themselves the masters; when from the 
 *' high mountain " of impetuous desire they behold the gilded allure- 
 ments of the world beckoning them on to lay hold of the coveted 
 prize; when the fair realms of supreme sovereignty are invitingly 
 spread before the eye of aspiration, the choice between the worldly 
 and the spiritual kingdom often trembles in the balance, the eternal 
 distinction between the goods of soul and the goods of sense is for- 
 gotten, and the world-worshipping multitude, instead of spuming 
 the delusions of Satan with Christ's fiery contempt, fall down and 
 adore the Prince of Darkness, and call down eternal ruin upon their 
 souls. "He that is not with Me is against Me, and He that gather- 
 eth not with Me, scattereth," says Jesus Christ. How many, dearest 
 brethren, when the choice is before them ; when the supreme hour is 
 come for them to say whether they are of Christ or of His enemy, seek 
 to divide their loyalty and serve both " God and Mammon " ! How 
 many assume an attitude of deference, adopt a spirit of compromise, 
 yield a tacit submission with reference to the demands of the world, 
 and how many falter and hesitate, when hesitation means irreparable 
 loss and changeless misery ! 
 
 For it must not be supposed that temporal scourges are the sole, 
 or the most rigorous, punishments which God inflicts upon those 
 who thus basely abandon Him. Ah! no, in the armory of His 
 wrath are stored up shafts of vengeance incomparably more terrible. 
 Eternal punishment is the doom of the impenitent. They that serve 
 the world shall share its merited chastisement. " Woe to the world," 
 says Christ, and to you if you worship the world. " Begone, I know 
 ye not whence you are," He shall say on that direful day, when 
 with guilt's shivering conviction upon their souls, they shall crouch 
 and cower and call upon the rocks and the mountains to hide them 
 from the frown of the Judge upon the blazing throne. But " His 
 hand shall be lifted over them," because they " exasperated His 
 Spirit"; and "destruction shall be multiplied among them" be- 
 cause they " served their idols " and " provoked Him with their in- 
 ventions"; and "their seed shall be cast down" and "a flame shall 
 be kindled in their congregation " because " they murmured in their 
 tents and hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord"; and because 
 " they forgot the God who saved them " they shall be cast out into 
 
714 
 
 that " exterior darkness," where they shall eternally weep, eternally 
 burn, and gnash their teeth in despair. 
 
 Your conscience, my brethren, has long ago informed you of these 
 things, and informed you more forcibly than words of mine can do, 
 of the judgments that lie in wait for the wicked when the cup of 
 their crimes shall be filled up and the Lord shall visit them in His 
 anger; but, perhaps, you seek to stupefy that conscience while you 
 hasten on to meet the fearful fate which shall infallibly overtake 
 them that work iniquity and take counsel of the' ungodly. At this 
 particular moment, perhaps, you are blindly, madly rushing on; and 
 you stand on the brink of the precipice of perdition, and it is to un- 
 deceive you of your folly that I raise my voice with stem and solemn 
 warning in this time of repentance and expiation. " Serve ye the Lord 
 with fear and rejoice unto Him with trembling. Embrace disci- 
 pline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the 
 just way. When His wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed 
 are all they that trust in Him." 
 
 All you who are in sin hear now the call to repentance. For the 
 days are short, and the " time must be redeemed " before the day of 
 redemption shall have departed forever. Delay not too long; 
 " procrastination is the thief of time," and if you postpone repent- 
 ance till the end is come, and death stands at the door, how poign- 
 ant will be your regret, how bitter and, alas ! how sadly unavailing 
 will be your sorrow. You who are in sin are the objects of the 
 sleepless vigilance and unwearied solicitude of the Church, your holy 
 mother. Listen to her voice to-day. She weeps strong, saving,, 
 prayerful tears that all those her children who are lying dead upon 
 the cold, dreary bed of worldliness and sin may rise and come to 
 life again. To-day she excites the zeal and charity of her ministers, 
 that, while they call to you with the sweet compassion of a tender 
 Jesus, they may likewise exhibit to your view the naked, the awful 
 truth concerning God's justice when poured out upon iniquity, and 
 thus arouse you from the lethargy and fatal supineness of sin, that 
 you may stand before your conscience and your God with the 
 lamp of eternity in your hands to search the recesses of your hearts 
 and discover the drift of your affections in their bearing on your 
 eternal destiny. Ah ! the Church knows full well the sloth and tor- 
 por of the heart in the affair of salvation; she knows the feebleness 
 
715 
 
 of human resolution and the incompetence of human endeavor; she 
 knows, too, that tepidity and inertness are often the result of 
 thoughtless inattention, and hence at this season of salvation she 
 exerts all her energies and bends all her efforts to the work of your 
 awakening; she furnishes the means of conversion and reconcilia- 
 tion, she selects this time of Lent to caU you with earnest and 
 pathetic voice to the salutary labor of recollection, of fasting and of 
 prayer. With the Psalmist she cries aloud in the name of each of 
 her children: "Turn to me, O Lord! and deliver my soul: O! save 
 me for Thy mercy's sake. For there is no one in death that is mind- 
 ful of Thee, and who shall confess to Thee in hell ? " 
 
 And what happiness it would be for me, my brethren, and what 
 consolation for every minister of Christ, if they might succeed in 
 drawing you away from that vortex of worldly engagements in 
 which you are now plunged — from the cares and the anxieties, 
 the amusements and vanities, the absorbing and deadly customs 
 and fashions of an unwise and self-seeking world, and conducting 
 you to that interior solitude, the kingdom of your soul, where 
 your God reigns alone, where the Hght of divine grace may shine 
 upon you to dissipate your illusions and make you see where, 
 and where alone, your true interests, salvation, eternity, and God 
 may be found and secured. This is the all-compelling purpose 
 which I set before my mind and yours on this first Sunday of Lent. 
 Language I cannot muster sufficiently strong to impress you with a 
 sense of the indispensable necessity of reflecting upon your eternal 
 interests at this hour, nor to arouse you to a realization of the appo- 
 siteness of the present opportunity to discharge so paramount a 
 duty as that which is interwoven with the purpose of your creation, 
 your existence in this world and your joy or misery through the 
 ever-rolling years of God. But who am I that I should wield the 
 thunders of the Almighty and denounce His judgments upon men ? 
 How shall I rebuke the sinner for his misdeeds, when I ought to 
 feel abashed at the remembrance of my own barren and profitless 
 past, and overwhelmed with the burden of my own infirmities ? I 
 address myself to a task that staggers my strength and confounds 
 my incompetency. When Jeremias was commanded to speak in 
 Thy name, O God, Thy judgments to the house of Israel, the holy 
 prophet cried aloud: Ah! ah! ah! I cannot speak. Lord God, for I 
 
716 
 
 am a child. How then shall I rebuke the impious and turn the 
 hard of heart, that, forsaking the error of their ways, they may be 
 converted to their Lord and God? But ''Thou, O Lord, shalt 
 open my lips and my tongue shall declare Thy praise." Not by the 
 persuasive words of human wisdom, but by the omnipotent power of 
 Thy grace do I seek to lift up the fallen, to call in the strayed and 
 gather in them that were lost. Vouchsafe to grant that they may hear 
 my voice, speedily repent, and find mercy and salvation in the sight 
 of their Kedeemer and their God, for there is no God but Thee, O ! 
 God of the living, O ! Joy of the Elect. Purify, I pray Thee, their 
 heaiis and mine; blot out every stain of defilement that sullies our 
 souls; "cleanse us from our iniquities, and we shall be cleansed; 
 wash us and we shall be made whiter than snow.'* This, O God, 
 is the present purpose of our hearts. Ratify it by Thy holy grace. 
 We want to repent and serve Thee better now and all the days of 
 our lives. 
 
 And you, my brethren, be vigilant and watch, for your " adver- 
 sary, like a roaring lion, seeketh whom he may devour " and bear 
 away to that land " where no order but everlasting horror dwelleth," 
 the land of eternal night and death. Now is the day of salvation. 
 These are the days when the Lord God doth visit His people. 
 Know, then, the time of your visitation, lest the curse of destruc- 
 tion descend upon you as once upon Jerusalem, and you be beaten 
 flat to the earth and laid away as sheep in hell. Know, then, the 
 day of repentance and mercy, which is the time to work, for that day 
 may soon come — come as the wind and the lightning — when time 
 for you shall be no more: then shall the summer be ended, the 
 harvest gathered in, and the winter at hand — but your souls shall not 
 be saved.