In Memoriam 
 
 DRJOHNJ.DORAN
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 J0 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 DONALD FITCH
 
 BROTHER AZARIAS' ESSAYS. 
 
 ESSAYS EDUCATIONAL. 
 
 With Preface by His EMINENCE, CARDINAL GIBBONS. 
 
 Cloistral Schools." 
 
 1 The Palatine School." 
 
 " Mediaval University Life." 
 
 " University Colleges, Their Origin and Methods." 
 
 " The Primary School in the Middle Ages." 
 
 " The Simultaneous Method in Teaching." 
 
 " Beginnings of the Normal School." 
 
 " M. Gabriel Compayre^as an Historian of Pedagogy.' 
 
 ESSAYS PHILOSOPHICAL. 
 
 With Preface by the RT. REV. JOHN ). KKANB. 
 
 "Aristotle and the Christian Church." 
 
 "The Nature and Synthetic Principle of Philosophy. 
 
 " Symbolism of the Cosmos." 
 
 " Psychological Aspects of Education." 
 
 " Ethical Aspects of the Papal Encyclical on Labor." 
 
 ESSAYS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 With Preface by the REV. BROTHER JUSTIN. 
 
 "Literature, Its Nature and Influence." 
 
 "The Sonnets and Plays of Shakespeare." 
 
 " Culture of the Spiritual Sense." 
 
 "Religion in Education." 
 
 " Our Catholic School System." 
 
 " Our Colleges." 
 
 " Church and State." J 
 
 Cloth, Price Per Volume, $1.00.
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 BY 
 
 BROTHER AZARIAS 
 
 Of th Brothers of the Christian Schools 
 
 WITH PREFACE BY 
 
 BROTHER JUSTIN 
 
 P. J. KENKDY & SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AMD 1'IIIL-AUELHHIA 
 
 Santa Barbara, California
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, 
 
 BY 
 D. H. McBRIDK & CO.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 HfoO write the preface to a work of miscellaneous 
 character, to give the reader an idea of its 
 contents, it is necessary not only to know the 
 author intimately, but to be also familiar with his 
 standpoint of action. 
 
 Brother Azarias was of good, pure, Irish reli- 
 gious stock. The family might almost be said to 
 be sacerdotal. Love for the altar and reverence 
 for the convent were among its most cherished 
 heirlooms, and the happy effects of these sacred 
 traditions were not without their influence on the 
 character of the children. 
 
 Brother Azarias was highly gifted intellectually. 
 It could not be said of him that he had buried his 
 talent, for he was an industrious and methodical 
 student up to the day of his happy death. 
 
 He entered the Institute of the Brothers of the 
 Christian Schools about the age of fifteen. He 
 was a good, pious, earnest novice, and as the first 
 duty of the novice is to study carefully the rules 
 of the society of which he is about to become a 
 member, he was scrupulously faithful to this as to 
 the other duties of his chosen religious calling. 
 The leading rule, "The Brothers shall look at all 
 
 (5)
 
 6 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 things from the standpoint of faith, and through a 
 spirit of faith they shall adore the orders and the 
 will of God in all things," took root in his young 
 heart and became the guiding principle of his reli- 
 gious life. The deep religious feeling which was 
 inbred in the child grew with his years and was 
 intensified by his meditations and developed by 
 his religious profession. His ideals were high, his 
 inspiration was from above, his aim was God, and 
 his ambition the good of his fellowman. These 
 traits the attentive reader of his works will recog- 
 nize with greater force in proportion as he studies 
 them more carefully. 
 
 " How," asked an eminent prelate, " does Brother 
 Azarias come by his varied and profound knowl- 
 edge?" 
 
 Brother Azarias was gifted with an extraordinary 
 memory, a critical and correct taste and a sound 
 judgment. He was a careful and judicious reader, 
 and as he read he kept his pencil and notebook ever 
 at hand. He read distinguished foreign authors in 
 their own languages, and was thus enabled not only 
 to appreciate them better, but to assimilate some 
 of their excellencies. When he met with a passage 
 that appeared to him beautiful he examined it 
 critically, and if it did not conform to his ideals he 
 at once rejected it. Thus throughout his literary 
 career he labored assiduously and therein lay the 
 secret of his wide and deep knowledge. 
 
 He was of a retiring disposition and as modest 
 as a gentle girl. He was humble and even diffident. 
 He never published an article that had not been
 
 PREFA CE. 7 
 
 previously submitted to well-recognized ability and 
 high authority. The reader is therefore safe in 
 following his guidance. 
 
 It is a pleasure to the teacher of his boyhood 
 to pay this simple and truthful tribute to the 
 memory of his former pupil. 
 
 BROTHER JUSTIN. 
 
 MANHATTAN COLLEGE, 
 August 5, 1896.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MM 
 
 LITERATURE, ITS NATURE AND INFLUENCE 13 
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION 53 
 
 THE SONNETS AND PLAYS OK SHAKESPEARE .... 91 
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 113 
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 173 
 
 WHAT is THE OUTLOOK FOR OUR COLLEGES? ... 195 
 CHURCH AND STATE 337
 
 12ITERATHRE: ITS NATtiRE ANB 
 INFi2tiENGE
 
 LITERATURE: ITS NATURE AND 
 INFLUENCE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Educational Power of Literature. 
 
 'HAT is literature? Not every book that is 
 written may be called literature. An arith- 
 metic, a text-book in geometry, a work treating 
 technically of the sciences is not to be considered 
 literature. Again, the newspaper, varied as are its 
 daily reports and wide as is its range of topics, can- 
 not be set down as literature. What, then, con- 
 stitutes literature? Two things: first, the subject 
 treated of must be such as appeals to our common 
 humanity ; second, the subject must be treated in 
 such a style that the reading of it gives general 
 pleasure. 
 
 Each of these elements supplements the other. 
 The treatment of a subject dealing with human 
 nature, or appealing to what belongs to our human 
 feelings, in itself, without style, without special 
 form of expression corresponding to the subject, 
 corresponding to the personality treating the sub- 
 ject; this would not constitute literature. So, also, 
 mere style, no matter how polished, without some- 
 thing appealing to our human nature, would ex- 
 clude a book so written from the catalogue of 
 
 (13)
 
 14 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 literature. When we take up a play of Shakes- 
 peare, we read therein thoughts that are profound, 
 in a style that is marvelous. We find that this 
 great author "has held the mirror up to nature," 
 and every aspiration of our own soul, and every 
 pulse of our own heart we can find expressed in the 
 marvelous pages of this great poet. 
 
 De Quincy very beautifully draws a distinction 
 between what he calls the literature of knowledge 
 and the literature of power. The distinction is a 
 good one and we may admit it with profit. There 
 are certain books that are purely technical and yet 
 which appeal directly to the intellect and have an 
 influence upon their times, and these books we may 
 call the literature of knowledge. Such a book in 
 the theological line is Butler's "Analogy." Such a 
 book in the philosophical line is Locke's " Essay 
 on the Human Understanding." Such a book in 
 the department of political economy is Adam 
 Smith's "Wealth of Nations." The literature of 
 power is of a different quality. It deals more with 
 the emotions and passions of human nature; it 
 appeals to head and heart alike ; it interprets for us 
 our deepest and most subtle thoughts and aspira- 
 tions. It may move us to tears by its pathos, it 
 may inspire mirth and laughter by its wit or humor, 
 but it invariably appeals to our emotions in one 
 form or other. 
 
 Again, the literature of power, by revealing to 
 us certain secret relations between ourselves and 
 the material world, places us in a spirit of greater 
 harmony and contentment with all that is grand,
 
 LITERA TURE. 15 
 
 noble and beautiful in hill and dale and starry 
 sky, in the flowing river, or the heaving ocean to 
 which the river flows, and our sense of taste be- 
 comes awakened to the perception of the beauty of 
 every sight and every sound in this beautiful world 
 of ours. Again, the literature of power stirs our 
 souls to their very depth and awakens in us spir- 
 itual life, and reveals to us our shortcomings and 
 our foibles, and holds up to us for admiration and 
 imitation the nobility and beauty of virtue, and, 
 that we may loathe it, the deformity of vice. 
 
 From this we may perceive what a great educa- 
 tional element literature becomes, and how far- 
 reaching is its influence. Indeed, literature has 
 been the educator of the most cultured nations. 
 Greece was moulded in the literature of Homer 
 and ^Eschylus and Sophocles. It is, in a special 
 sense, a literary nation. Again, the literature of 
 Greece refined Rome, and the fragments that sur- 
 vived of the literatures of both Greece and Rome 
 have been the educational influences under which 
 the barbarian was first civilized, and by which all 
 mediaeval and modern culture has been propagated. 
 The greatest intellects have been inspired by the 
 literature of Greece and Rome, and, later on, by 
 the Christian literatures of Christian nations. But 
 in the history of civilization, literature has been 
 the one essential element made use of in raising a 
 people from barbarism to culture and refinement. 
 
 By means of literature has the Church estab- 
 lished Christianity and spread her doctrines broad- 
 cast over the world. By means of literature, by
 
 16 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 means of the good book, and the powerful sermon 
 and the far-reaching encyclical of the Holy Father, 
 does the Church continue to instruct and en- 
 lighten peoples and nations. Surely, so powerful 
 an element, an element so widespread in its in- 
 fluence, must needs be worthy of our most careful 
 attention, and, indeed, it were hard to set bounds 
 to the action of a good or a bad book on life and 
 character. 
 
 Mr. W. T. Stead, recently editor of the " Pall 
 Mall Gazette," London, now editor of " The Re- 
 view of Reviews," in speaking of the late James 
 Russell Lowell, tells us how, in his eighteenth 
 year, the reading of that poet's " Extreme Unc- 
 tion" became an epoch in his life and an influenc- 
 ing agency for good, working in him up to the 
 present hour. Yet that poem of Lowell's is very 
 short. It contains only eleven stanzas. It tells 
 the story of a man, having passed his four score 
 years, dying in despair because his life had been 
 one of selfishness. He then felt that God had 
 called him into the world to do a work, and that 
 he had neglected that work ; that every wrong he 
 had witnessed in life was an appeal to him, was the 
 voice of God speaking to him, asking him to add 
 his share of exertion to right that wrong, and he 
 overlooked the wrong and lived for his own self- 
 gratification, and so he dies in despair, and appears 
 before his Maker empty handed, and Stead, on 
 reading that poem, resolved that when his hour 
 should come to render an account of the life that 
 had been given him, of the opportunities to do
 
 LITER A TURE. 17 
 
 good that had been placed at his disposal, he 
 would not be found wanting. 
 
 Thus it is that the reading of a short poem can 
 influence a whole life. Again, it is a matter of his- 
 tory how the reading of a single passage in the 
 New Testament changed the whole life of St. Au- 
 gustine, and you may remember that St. Ignatius 
 was called by God to do a great work through the 
 reading of the " Lives of the Saints." Again, those 
 of you who may have read George Eliot's beautiful 
 novel of "The Mill on the Floss," will remember 
 how the reading of a few passages in the " Imita- 
 tion of Christ " led the heroine, Maggie Tulliver, 
 to perceive new vistas of spiritual life that she had 
 never dreamed of before, and to resolve to realize in 
 hers something of that spiritual life which was all 
 so new and wonderful to her; and, indeed, if you 
 yourselves read thoughtfully the chapter in " The 
 Mill on the Floss," speaking of the " Imitation" 
 that wonderful book, that low sweet voice of hu- 
 manity, coming down to us from the Middle Ages 
 laden with so much truth and so much spiritual 
 beauty you will always take up that masterpiece 
 of Thomas a Kempis with a greater pleasure and 
 read it with more zest than before you had read 
 this beautiful tribute that George Eliot pays to it. 
 
 And so, a young man who lets sink into his 
 heart all the noble grandeur of Wordsworth's "Ode 
 to Duty" will find himself all the better for it and 
 will almost unconsciously seek to raise himself up 
 to the high standard of that noble ode. Such then, 
 young men, is the nature of the subject you are 
 
 E. M. a
 
 18 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 about to take up. You cannot give it too earnest 
 attention. You cannot be too careful in your 
 reading. A single book, sometimes a single pas- 
 sage in a book, is sufficient to mould a character. 
 See to it, then, that the book to which you attach 
 yourselves is such as will be helpful to build up 
 your character, to strengthen your resolves for 
 good, and, at the same time, it be to you a source 
 of culture and refinement. The literature so 
 studied, the book so read, is bound to fulfil its 
 primary work as an educational influence. 
 
 II. 
 
 Catholic Influence In Literature. 
 
 THE Church from the beginning has been the 
 preserver and promoter of literature, and St. Basil, 
 in his address to the young men under his care, 
 seems to me to have best interpreted the attitude 
 of the Church toward profane learning. This great 
 saint and eminent educator, who possessed all the 
 learning that Athens could give in his day, exhorts 
 his students to read the pagan poets, historians, 
 orators, all those authors who can aid the culture 
 of the soul and prepare it for the battle of life. 
 The wisdom thus culled with discrimination he 
 likens to the flower and leaf upon the tree, while 
 he regards truth, pure and simple, as the fruit. 
 Even as the bee draws honey from the flower while 
 all others are content with admiring its beauty and 
 sharing its perfume, so does the wise student know
 
 LITER A TURE. 19 
 
 how to draw lessons for right-doing from the poets, 
 historians, and orators that he reads. St. Basil has 
 an eye only for the good and the true in these 
 authors. Whatever is false or vicious, or panders 
 to passion, he knows how to overlook. He en- 
 forces these precepts with many beautiful illustra- 
 tions, and ends his discourse by showing that what 
 is best in the great philosophers and poets is in 
 accord with the teachings of the gospel. 
 
 This educational tradition continued to be 
 handed down the ages, and so we find that Boethius 
 (475-525) translates Euclid and some of the treat- 
 ises of Aristotle, for the youths of Rome, at the 
 request of his friend Cassiodorus (470-570) ; and 
 Cassiodorus himself, he who had been prime minis- 
 ter in the Roman Court, great statesman and 
 scholar that he was, at the age of ninety sits down 
 to write a grammar for the boys under his charge 
 in the monastery of Viviers. Isidore of Seville 
 (570-636), whom the Council of Toledo pronounced 
 "the glory of the Catholic Church and the most 
 learned man of his age," wrote text-books for his 
 pupils on every subject, in letters, and science, and 
 art, and the trades, from the book of A B C's to a 
 tract on the best manner of shoeing a horse. Bede 
 (673-735) continues the literary tradition, and we 
 find him also writing text-books for his boys, that 
 they might learn the best knowledge in the best 
 manner possible. The educational traditions of 
 Wearmouth and Yarrow were continued by Egbert, 
 Bishop of York, who handed them down to Alcuin. 
 Under the patronage of Charlemagne, Alcuin,
 
 20 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 aided by Clement and other Irish monks, spreads 
 the light throughout France. The educational tra- 
 dition is taken up by the various schools estab- 
 lished wherever Christianity had a foothold. 
 
 It is customary to speak of those early Chris- 
 tian ages as dark ages, but we would make a great 
 mistake if we were to believe that education was 
 not then general and widespread. In every town 
 and hamlet where there was a self-supporting 
 church there was a primary or rural school. In 
 every episcopal palace there was a seminary in 
 which young men were trained for the priesthood. 
 Every monastery had its school for externs in 
 which the children of the neighborhood were edu- 
 cated, and its school for interns in which the 
 youths intending to become religious were prop- 
 erly trained. And we must not forget to make 
 mention of the palace schools in which the sons of 
 the nobility were brought together and educated 
 according to their station in life. Finally, as the 
 tide of education swelled more and more, all these 
 schools were merged into the universities of Eu- 
 rope. These universities were so regulated that 
 the poorest youth could receive in them his educa- 
 tion ; and that they were well patronized is evi- 
 denced from the numbers 'attending them as 
 recorded by historians. Thus, we are told that at 
 one time in the University of Paris, there were not 
 less than thirty thousand students. Oxford fre- 
 quently numbered twenty thousand. 
 
 Now, what is the outcome of all this educa- 
 tional tradition ? What are the permanent forces
 
 LITER A TURE. 21 
 
 in culture and civilization to which it gave rise? 
 In philosophy and theology we have the great 
 works of St. Thomas of Aquin. No more pro- 
 found genius ever wrote, no philosopher ever had 
 as firm a grasp of every subject that he touched 
 upon or treated it more luminously than did St. 
 Thomas in his philosophical and theological treat- 
 ises. In poetry, as the outcome of Catholic educa- 
 tion, we have the " Divine Comedy " of Dante. This 
 is the sublimest poem that human genius ever con- 
 ceived and executed. I notice that your Chateau- 
 briand qualifies the genius of Dante with many 
 limitations. The fact is, Chateaubriand never ap- 
 preciated Dante at his true worth. He was inca- 
 pable of measuring the height and breadth and depth 
 of that sublime genius. Another outcome of this 
 Catholic education and Catholic mediaeval life, is 
 Shakespeare. Carlyle says expressly that Shakes- 
 peare is the flower of Catholicism. He may or he 
 may not have been himself a Catholic. The proba- 
 bility is that he was one, but the whole spirit of his 
 greatest plays is thoroughly Catholic. None but a 
 Catholic can appreciate at its full value the sublime 
 tragedy of " Hamlet." In painting, the Catholic 
 spirit has expressed itself through so many schools 
 and the masterpieces of so many geniuses from Fra 
 Angelico to Murillo and Raphael, that it were im- 
 possible within the time at our disposal, to name 
 the tenth part of these old masters. In architec- 
 ture, we have, as the sublimest expression of these 
 Catholic days, the great Gothic cathedrals of 
 Europe.
 
 22 JESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 And here I must express some surprise at re- 
 marks made by Professor Hamlin. He is reported 
 to have said: "The Middle Ages, unlike the early 
 period of Justinian, have left us no single monu- 
 ment in undisputed preeminence in perfection and 
 glory." I cannot imagine of what the professor 
 must have been thinking when he uttered these 
 words. Every Gothic cathedral is in itself the 
 stone embodiment of mediaeval life. It contains 
 the poetry, the thought, the satire and humor, the 
 aspiration of mediaeval Christendom, in language 
 as clear cut and as expressive as Dante's own im- 
 mortal lines. Again, I would call your attention 
 to another remark of the professor. He is speak- 
 ing of St. Peter's at Rome, and he tells us that that 
 great monument of religion was built at the time 
 when "the foot of the pope was losing its power to 
 tread upon the neck of emperors." True it is, that 
 during the Middle Ages the pope had great power 
 and influence among the nations. He was, in a 
 measure, the arbiter of nations. The Holy See 
 was the tribunal before which kings and emperors 
 laid their disputes to be adjudicated, and whenever 
 a pope placed his foot upon the neck of an em- 
 peror, it was in the cause of the weak against the 
 strong, in the cause of right against might, in the 
 cause of religion against atheism and infidelity. 
 When the pope quarreled with Philip Augustus of 
 France, it was in order to protect the sanctity of 
 the marriage tie, to defend a helpless and injured 
 wife against the brutality of a king who was the 
 slave of a vile passion. When the pope quarreled
 
 LITERATURE. 23 
 
 with the German emperors on the question of in- 
 vestitures, it was in order to protect the Church 
 against simony, to secure her worthy bishops, as 
 opposed to the mere tools and creatures that these 
 emperors would force into her sanctuary. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Literature of the Middle Ages. 
 
 WHAT are the sources whence our modern liter- 
 ature derives its life and sustenance? Looking 
 through the Middle Ages we may discern three 
 distinct literary streams. First, there is the stream 
 of spiritual life and spiritual thought. The Middle 
 Ages were, preeminently, " Ages of Faith." They 
 were not ages in which perfection was attained by 
 society at large. They were ages deficient in many 
 of the comforts and conveniences of life that we 
 enjoy to-day. They were ages in which war was 
 carried on with barbaric cruelty, and men became 
 no less distinguished for their vices than others be- 
 came distinguished for their virtues. These were 
 ages in which great holiness frequently was found 
 side by side with enormous crime, and sometimes 
 the very men who had sinned became repentant 
 and humble and devout children of the Church in 
 later years. Religion presided over the general 
 routine of life. People prayed much. It was a 
 common practice for laymen busily engaged in the 
 affairs of life to devote a certain number of hours 
 daily to the recitation of the Divine Office. Feast
 
 24 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 days were numerous and were observed with all 
 the pomp of religious ceremonial. Men lived, so to 
 speak, in intimate communion with the world be- 
 yond the grave. Heaven and the heavenly hosts, 
 hell and purgatory, were to the people of those 
 days greater realities than the very earth they trod 
 upon. And so we find many sources whence they 
 drew spiritual sustenance. Sermons were preached 
 and listened to with awe and reverence and an 
 attention that only the greatest orators can com- 
 mand to-day. In every language we find hymns in 
 honor of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints. 
 These hymns abounded in England as well as in 
 other countries of Europe, and England, on account 
 of her great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, was 
 known in Catholic days as "Our Lady's Dowry." 
 One of those hymns that were sung by the people 
 speaks the same language that the hymns of Father 
 Faber or of any of our modern poets speak upon 
 the same subject : 
 
 "Blessed be thou, Lady, 
 
 Full of Heaven's bliss, 
 
 Sweet flower of Paradise, 
 
 Mother of milternesse. 
 
 " Blessed be thou, Lady, 
 So fair and so bright, 
 All my hope is upon thee 
 By day and by night." 
 
 So sang one of the Catholic bards in the reign 
 of Henry III. Again, there were spiritual books in 
 those days, teaching the practices and principles of
 
 LIT ERA TURE. 25 
 
 ascetic life. The flower of all these is the one to 
 which I have already alluded, the " Imitation of 
 Christ," written by Thomas a Kempis in the four- 
 teenth century. 
 
 But there were other means of instructing the 
 people besides books. The paintings, the pictured 
 windows, the sculptured statues, the bronze doors, 
 the carvings around the pulpit, were all so many 
 means of conveying some spiritual truth or other, 
 of making known some scene or event in the life of 
 a patron saint. Again, spiritual lessons were con- 
 veyed by means of the miracle plays and morali- 
 ties which were enacted on festivals with great 
 pomp and ceremony. Christmas had its miracle 
 plays in which the events surrounding the birth of 
 our Lord were beautifully represented. Easter had 
 its miracle plays in which the resurrection of our 
 Lord was enacted. Corpus Christi had its miracle 
 plays in which the beautiful scenes surrounding the 
 institution of the Holy Eucharist were reproduced. 
 The great patron saints were celebrated in these 
 miracle plays, but, above all, the passion of our 
 Lord was reverently and devoutly played from the 
 Church door and the Church porch before immense 
 audiences. These miracle plays have now van- 
 ished, the only surviving one being the passion 
 play at Oberammergau. 
 
 You will find in the literatures dealing with the 
 subject a great deal said against these miracle 
 plays. They are represented as rude, vulgar and 
 irreverent. This is all a mistake. No critic ever 
 attended the passion play at Oberammergau that
 
 26 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 did not return from there loud in his admiration of 
 everything connected with that sublime drama. 
 And if this is true of the sole surviving specimen 
 that remains to us, it was no less true of the gen- 
 eral run of the plays that were enacted in those 
 mediaeval days. They were so many object lessons 
 for the people, teaching them more profoundly 
 than any book could do it the depth and meaning 
 of the great events recorded in the Old and New 
 Testament. 
 
 Spiritual food sometimes took the shape of 
 allegory, and so we have long allegorical poems 
 dealing with a variety of spiritual subjects. In 
 some, as in the "Vision of the Piers Plowman," 
 written by William Langland, vice is attacked, and 
 Church abuses are mentioned to be scathingly de- 
 nounced. Of a like order was the " Fable of 
 Reynard the Fox." Another allegorical poem that 
 has come down to us is " The Flower and the 
 .Leaf," a poem, until quite recently, attributed to 
 Chaucer. Herein the flower is made to represent 
 transitory pleasure, and the leaf the enduring 
 goods of virtue. A favorite form of allegory in 
 mediaeval days was that representing the soul of 
 man going on a pilgrimage, in which his vices were 
 represented as so many giants, and his virtues as so 
 many good angels or chivalrous knights, and his 
 dispositions as the hills and the valleys through 
 which he would pass. 
 
 Such an allegory is the "Pilgrimage of Man- 
 hood " by the Cistercian monk, Guillaume de Guill- 
 ville. The fortune of this allegory is worth
 
 LITER A TURE. 27 
 
 recording. It was translated into English verse by 
 John Lydgate, a learned and popular Benedictine 
 monk. There are to-day in the British Museum 
 several manuscript copies of Lydgate's version, but 
 the book has never been published. Later, a prose 
 translation of the poem was made and widely cir- 
 culated thoughout England. That version has 
 been recently published by the "Roxburgh Club." 
 Abridgments of this prose translation were made 
 and widely circulated ; and one of them fell into 
 the hands of an enthusiastic tinker who could 
 barely read and write, and this tinker read the 
 book over and over until its whole meaning en- 
 tered his soul and fired his imagination, and forth- 
 with he undertook to write a similar book in a 
 similar strain without the learning of the original, 
 but in his own homespun English, and the out- 
 come of that effort is John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's 
 Progress." 
 
 Another source of spiritual food was the " Lives 
 of the Saints." There were versions of these in 
 prose and versions in verse. The most celebrated 
 collection in verse is that known as the " Legenda 
 Aurea," or " Golden Legends," of James de Vora- 
 gine, Archbishop of Genoa, which appeared about 
 the year 1290. From this collection was it that 
 Chaucer drew the materials for his " Second Nun's 
 Tale," which is the story of St. Cecelia. 
 
 The second source of intellectual culture is 
 scholastic philosophy and scholastic theology. 
 The philosophy and theology of those days were 
 not dead letters. They were living, active agencies.
 
 28 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Disputation was the order of the day. Men de- 
 lighted in measuring wit and learning with one 
 another. Their intellectual combats lasted days at 
 a time. Their sole measure of intellectual prowess 
 consisted in their ability to carry on a discussion. 
 Even St. Thomas, because he was silent and cared 
 little for these disputations, was looked upon by 
 his companions with contempt and was known as 
 the " Dumb Ox of Sicily." Students were not 
 asked to write compositions in those days ; every- 
 thing was carried on orally. 
 
 Here you may ask me what was the character 
 of the studies carried on in the schools and univer- 
 sities of the Middle Ages. These studies were 
 known as the seven liberal arts and were sub- 
 divided into two parts, the trivium and the quad- 
 rivium. The trivium consisted of grammar, which 
 included literature, rhetoric and logic. The quad- 
 rivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, 
 and astronomy. 
 
 The third source of intellectual food supplied in 
 those days consisted of the secular literature deal- 
 ing with chivalry and knight errantry. These 
 generally took the form of metrical romances. The 
 length of these poems was something to astonish 
 us at present. Take, for example, the " Romance of 
 the Rose," which Chaucer translated into English. 
 We find that it consisted of over twenty-two thou- 
 sand lines. These romances were grouped under 
 three heads. 
 
 There was the Carlovinian cycle, of which 
 Charles the Great was the central figure. In
 
 LITER A TURE. 29 
 
 France, that cycle blossomed into the beautiful 
 " Chanson de Roland." In Italy it blossomed out 
 into the magnificent poem of Ariosto, known as the 
 " Orlando Furioso." Then there was the Alexan- 
 drian cycle of romances in which Alexander the 
 Great figured as the center of a large group of 
 heroic deeds. Finally, there is the Arthurian cycle, 
 in which all the characters revolved around the 
 figure of King Arthur and his Round Table. The 
 Arthurian cycle was afterward made to cluster 
 round the " Legend of the Holy Grail," and it then 
 became a spiritual allegory. Spenser attempted to 
 write a Protestant version of this beautiful Catholic 
 poem in his " Fairie Queene." Tennyson in his 
 " Idylls of the King" has given us a more modern 
 version, in which he had the good sense to retain 
 the Catholic conception of the " Holy Grail." 
 Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, and our own James 
 Russell Lowell, drew inspiration from this inex- 
 haustible mine of poesy. 
 
 Such are the chief sources from which all mod- 
 ern literature is drawn. Such is the soil in which 
 it is rooted. I have given you but the merest out- 
 line of that literature and I have been unable to 
 initiate you into an appreciation of the vast treas- 
 ures of beautiful thought and sentiment that 
 abound in that literature. True, it is the literature 
 of a past age ; it is a literature that suited another 
 people and another order of existence ; it is a liter- 
 ature that would not find a place in our mode of 
 life at the present day. Our thoughts run in other 
 grooves, but still, in its highest and best forms, it
 
 30 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 is well worthy one's study, and can be the source 
 of many a fruitful thought when read with proper 
 care and attention. A literature that can inspire a 
 Dante, a Milton, a Shakespeare, to which we can 
 trace whatever is best in Chaucer and Spenser, in 
 Tasso and Ariosto, in the great authors of every 
 European country ; such a literature is not to be 
 despised. And yet, when we take up Taine's work 
 on English literature and note the flippancy with 
 which he treats everything connected with the 
 Middle Ages, note how he has not a kind word for 
 any author because he happens to belong to these 
 Catholic ages, we must conclude that his preju- 
 dices have clouded his intellect and influenced his 
 critical judgment, and made his book completely 
 worthless as a guide to literature. 
 
 IV. 
 
 School Life in the Middle Ages. 
 
 THE basis of all school life in the Middle Ages 
 was monastic discipline, for the schools began un- 
 der the shadow of the Church or the shadow of the 
 monastery, and so we find a certain uniformity as 
 regards mode of living and as regards study run- 
 ning through all the schools of the Middle Ages. 
 The exhortation that St. Ephraim of Edessa gives 
 to his students in the fourth century is one that 
 has been in other words repeated time and again 
 throughout the Christian schools of the East and 
 the West. In a beautiful poem on science written
 
 L I TERA T URE. 3 1 
 
 in the classic style that he knew so well how to 
 control in his own Syriac tongue, he says : 
 
 " Imbue thyself, O man, with activity of mind, 
 great treasure of wisdom, and renounce idleness, 
 the source of perdition. Apply thyself to books 
 in order to learn wisdom therein, and take not 
 complaisance in thy stomach lest thou soon lose 
 that which thou hast acquired. Possess gold with 
 measure and science without measure, so that, 
 should tribulation overtake thee, thou mayest find 
 comfort in joy. Science is a second light and has 
 far-seeing eyes ; cherish it, child, that it may illu- 
 mine thee, and that those who listen to thee may 
 praise it. Science prepares a crown which it places 
 on the heads of its friends. From the lowest rank, 
 it raises them to the highest honors and makes 
 them sit on the throne of the king. Let books be 
 thy table from which thou wilt be filled and re- 
 freshed; let them be thy bed to procure thee a 
 tranquil sleep." 
 
 Passing from the fourth to the thirteenth cen- 
 tury we come upon Robert of Sorbon, the founder 
 of that celebrated school of theology in Paris 
 known as the " Sorbonne." He was for many years 
 the confessor of the great St. Louis, king of France, 
 learned, pious, anxious for the spread of knowledge 
 in his day. In an old manuscript in the " National 
 Library of Paris," the following advice of his to a 
 scholar has been unearthed : 
 
 " The scholar," he says, " who would profit by 
 his studies, should observe the following six essen- 
 tial rules: First, to devote a certain hour to de- 
 termined reading. Second, to fix his attention on 
 what he has just read, and not to pass it over 
 lightly. 'There is,' says St. Bernard, 'between
 
 32 JSSSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 reading and study, the same difference that exists 
 between a host and a friend, a greeting exchanged 
 on the streets, and an unalterable affection.' 
 Third, to extract daily from his reading some 
 thought, some grain of truth, and to engrave it on 
 his memory with special care. Fourth, to write out 
 an epitome of what one has read, for the words not 
 confined to writing fly like dust before the wind. 
 Fifth, to confer with one's companions in disputa- 
 tion, or, rather, in familiar entertainment. This 
 exercise is even more advantageous than reading, 
 because it has for a result to clear up all doubts, all 
 obscurities that reading may have left upon the 
 mind. Sixth, to pray. That is indeed one of the 
 best means to learn. St. Bernard teaches that read- 
 ing should excite the affections of the soul, and 
 that we should profit by it to raise our hearts to 
 God without interrupting study." 
 
 Again, this learned doctor cautions young men 
 against wasting their time upon trifles. He says : 
 
 " Certain scholars act like fools. They put 
 forth great subtlety in trifles and prove themselves 
 void of intelligence in important things. In order 
 to give the semblance of not having lost their time 
 they form thick volumes of parchment filled with 
 blank intervals in the interior, and cover them ele- 
 gantly in red skin. Then they return to the 
 paternal home with a sack full of a science that can 
 be stolen by robbers, eaten by rats or worms, de- 
 stroyed by fire or water." 
 
 In other words, Robert of Sorbon would have 
 the student stow whatever he learns in his memory 
 primarily, as a more safe place than in his note- 
 book. 
 
 In the same century we come across another 
 learned teacher who has endeared himself to pos-
 
 LITER A TURE. 38 
 
 terity by many titles. Friar Buonvicina da Ripa is 
 one of the most honored names in the city of 
 Milan. He wrote a chronicle of the city which has 
 been lost with the exception of a fragment con- 
 taining its population arrayed according to trades 
 and professions. He is also remembered as having 
 been the first to cause the " Angelus Bell " to be 
 rung in the city and surrounding country of Milan, 
 and this fact is especially noted on the slab record- 
 ing his death, but he was eminent in a special man- 
 ner as a great educator. 
 
 There is extant from his pen a poem upon 
 school life. It is called "Vita Scholastica." It, 
 like the counsels of Robert of Sorbon, is devoted to 
 good advice to the student of that day. It lays 
 down all the rules and all the duties of good living 
 that the author's experience suggests. He says in 
 the prologue : " That the reader may learn wisdom 
 through his studies, let this book give him the 
 following keys," and then he begins to enumerate 
 the many ways in which study and good living may 
 be promoted. This poem is throughout a religious 
 exhortation. The first key that the author names 
 is the fear of God. He then lays stress upon an 
 active, living faith. " The devil," he says, " be- 
 lieves but is wanting in faith." He would have the 
 student so control his thoughts and intentions that 
 whatever he learns shall be for the honor and glory 
 of God. " It is the part of wisdom to be discreet 
 in the use of the tongue. One should never slan- 
 der, never deceive, never be vain, never be boastful, 
 never be flattering, never false, never proud." The 
 E. M. 3
 
 34 ESSATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 poem next dwells on the observation of humility 
 and the avoidance of pride; counsels the student to 
 fly jealousy. It would have him grateful for favors 
 received and forgiving of injuries. Here occurs the 
 oft-told story of Friar Sorbon who was at first a 
 teacher in Paris, and who had a disciple that took 
 special pleasure in sophisms and special pride in his 
 power of logical disputation. The disciple died and 
 his pride and vanity were the cause of his being 
 lost. Appearing to his master he revealed to him 
 his state. Forthwith, the master entered religion, 
 renouncing his frivolities of logical disputation, for, 
 as he expressed it, " Death has no fear of an ergo" 
 In another section of this poem the poet exhorts 
 the student to avoid luxury and excess and be pure 
 and virtuous in his life. He counsels the avoid- 
 ance of gluttony and the being abstemious. He 
 cautions against dainty clothing and too soft a 
 bed, against games of chance, enumerating the 
 different kinds, against frequent balls and dances, 
 against avarice and cupidity, against extravagance 
 in giving, advising that the student know to whom 
 he gives. He advises the student to regulate his 
 senses, to have his thoughts so fixed upon Heaven 
 that his senses may afterwards be worthy of 
 Heaven, being filled with > goodness. He speaks 
 against associating with bad company ; exhorts the 
 student to be charitable towards all, especially 
 toward his companions; tells him what to do, how 
 to act morning and evening, what prayers to say ; 
 advises that the sign of the cross be made when 
 about to eat and drink, and lays stress upon the
 
 LITERATURE. 35 
 
 fact that it should be the student's pride to deserve 
 a name which was then cast upon pious students in 
 a spirit of sarcasm, that of " Christ-worshipper," 
 " Christicola." The poet continues to tell how 
 father and mother should be loved and reverenced, 
 how mass should be heard, how the student should 
 pray to the saints and honor his teacher. Nor are 
 the teachers overlooked in this poem. To be 
 worthy of his position, the first thing the master 
 must do if he would control his pupils is discreetly 
 to control his own defects. He is to avoid all 
 vanity and perfect himself in his studies. Where 
 peace and discipline are joined, there is where 
 studies are properly conducted. Such is the book 
 that Buonvicina da Ripa has handed down from 
 his experience of school life. It is now a rare and 
 valuable book, and I have been able to see only 
 one copy of it in the Mazarin Library in Paris. 
 From that copy I extracted the substance that I 
 have just placed before you. 
 
 From the sixth to the ninth century episcopal 
 and cathedral schools predominated. From the 
 ninth to the twelfth century cloistral schools were 
 the chief sources of education in its higher and 
 better forms. Then schools began to become more 
 secular; teachers imparted instruction with more 
 independence; schools were multiplied; teachers 
 were migratory; students were migratory. Thus 
 we read of Abelard, how he went from school to 
 school to receive the instruction for which his soul 
 thirsted, and how afterward he passed from place 
 to place to impart that instruction to others.
 
 36 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 About the beginning of the thirteenth century we 
 find in Paris a certain number of schools united in 
 a common bond. Thus were there forty colleges 
 grouped around the University of Paris. Of these 
 forty, seven gave a complete course of instruction. 
 The others were merely boarding houses for the 
 students where they were placed under a strict 
 discipline, and the master saw that the students 
 prepared their lessons and occasionally heard them 
 recite. Indeed, this was the beginning of our 
 modern colleges. They began as schools for poor 
 children. They were houses of study opened for 
 the poor under the auspices of religion. This two- 
 fold principle of devotion and poverty left its im- 
 press upon these schools. The principal and his 
 assistants lived upon the mere pittance of three or 
 four sous a week, and were not infrequently obliged 
 to rely on some other means for a living. Children 
 went outside to beg their daily meals. 
 
 Indeed, poverty was the soul of the University 
 of Paris. As a rule, neither masters nor pupils 
 could boast of riches. Crevier, one of the his- 
 torians of the University, tells us: "The Univer- 
 sity, as a body, had little wealth. The faculty and 
 the nations are poor. The colleges had scarcely 
 the wherewith to support 'their bursars. Every- 
 thing bespeaks poverty." There were exceptions 
 among both masters and students. There were 
 foolish students, such as we have seen Robert of 
 Sorbon to complain of, who paid little attention to 
 real study and who lived in state ; and, again, there 
 were masters who extorted money from their
 
 LITER A TURE. 37 
 
 students. The statutes of the universities were 
 very severe against such. A sentiment of the 
 Middle Ages was that learning was too sacred a 
 thing to be bought or sold for lucre. 
 
 The universities were all established upon a 
 religious basis. The first essential for a university 
 was a papal sanction, and, as we have seen in our 
 own day the Catholic university rising under the 
 papal sanction of Pope Leo XIII., even so did the 
 mediaeval universities receive their life and being 
 from the papal charter. Then, each university had 
 its special privileges received both from king and 
 from pope. Indeed, it has been well said that a 
 university without privileges is like a body without 
 a soul. Such was the privilege that rendered all 
 students amenable to the university authorities in- 
 stead of the civil courts. Such was the privilege 
 by which students were protected against the ex- 
 orbitant exactions of the townspeople. The price 
 of lodgings was to be fixed by sworn arbitrators, 
 half of whom were to be appointed by the univer- 
 sity, half by the city. There were frequently 
 strange relations existing between students of the 
 university and the townsfolk, or as it has been gen- 
 erally expressed, " between town and gown." This 
 gave rise to affrays that ended in the plundering of 
 houses and even in bloodshed. It was such a riot 
 that caused thousands of students of the city of 
 Paris to leave in a body for the University of Ox- 
 ford, and in 1389 the historian of the University 
 of Cambridge pictures for us a similar riot. He 
 says:
 
 38 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 "At Corpus Christi, all the books, charters and 
 writings belonging to the society were destroyed. 
 At St. Mary's University, the chest was broken 
 open and the documents which it contained met 
 with a similar fate. The masters and scholars un- 
 der intimidation, surrendered all the charters, 
 emoluments and ordinances, and a grand conflagra- 
 tion ensued in the market place where an ancient 
 beldame was to be seen scattering the ashes in the 
 air as she exclaimed; 'Thus perish the skill of the 
 clerks.' " 
 
 Let this instance suffice for what was of not in- 
 frequent occurrence in every university town in 
 Christendom ; for we must not imagine that stu- 
 dent life was then what it is at the present day. 
 In those days students were, many of them, bare- 
 footed and ill clad and poorly fed. They were for- 
 bidden even the luxury of a bench on which to sit 
 during school hours. They sat on a heap of straw 
 on the floor. Through all seasons they had no fire 
 in their rooms. They seldom ate flesh meat. 
 They rose early. 
 
 Thus, in " Hesperica Famina," that curious 
 book of the eighth century, so curiously written, and 
 brought to light in 1835 by the erudite Cardinal 
 Angelo Mai, we read in the pompous language of 
 the century to which the book belongs, that when 
 the master enters the students' room to awaken 
 them they are supposed to speak as follows: 
 " Why comest thou to deafen us with the thunder 
 of thy words, to trouble the cavern of our ears 
 with thy discourse ? We have passed in vigil and 
 study the time that night drove her plow over the
 
 LITER A TURE. 39 
 
 plains of the heavens. Thou wert then wrapped in 
 sleep. This is why thy lesson finds us sleeping." 
 From this we may know that the students of Tou- 
 louse burned the midnight lamp over their 
 studies. 
 
 Turning to the methods of teaching in those 
 days, the first thing that strikes our notice is the 
 large number of students that assembled around an 
 eminent professor. Frequently it happened that 
 no hall could contain the audience, and the master 
 lectured in the open air in the public market place. 
 This, for example, is the tradition of the place 
 known in Paris as " Place Maubert," Maubert being 
 a contraction of " Maftre Albert," or the learned 
 Dominican " Albert the Great." Such also were the 
 traditions of the "Rue de Fouarre." The students 
 generally rose at prime, that is, with sunrise. The 
 regent then read a first lesson to the pupils. All 
 teaching was done by means of reading from a 
 manuscript and explanation. Pupils listened, took 
 notes in shorthand upon the tablets, first compared 
 these notes among one another, then took them 
 home and transcribed them upon leaves of parch- 
 ment, these parchments being brought back to the 
 professor and corrected by him. The student was 
 not allowed to read from manuscript. All argu- 
 ments and disputations were carried on orally. To 
 give you an idea of the extent to which pupils in 
 those days were obliged to rely upon their memory, 
 I might mention the fact that in 1502 the amount 
 of paper assigned to each pupil for note-taking was 
 three sheets per week.
 
 40 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Disputation was the usual method by which 
 students cleared up their ideas upon the various 
 subjects they were discussing. No degree was 
 given without a previous disputation. They dis- 
 puted a whole month in order to prepare for the 
 bachelor's degree, and after passing their examina- 
 tion they spent another month in disputation in 
 the " Rue de Fouarre." The usual daily regulation 
 consisted, first, of a lesson given by the rector in 
 the morning after rising, then they retired and pre- 
 pared their studies until eleven o'clock, when they 
 dined. At noon they carried on disputations which 
 were known as meridionals. At five there were 
 repetitions of lessons and conferences, during which 
 the scholars recited and answered questions put by 
 the masters. I need scarcely add that though not 
 mentioned, it was the general practice for masters 
 and students to assist at the holy sacrifice of the 
 mass in the morning. 
 
 In the colleges the regulation was varied some- 
 what from this. I have before me the regulation 
 of the " College of St. Barbe," of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. According to this, at four o'clock the stu- 
 dents arose. Generally, a pupil of the philosophy 
 class did the awakening, and lit the candles in 
 the seasons that light was required. At five the 
 regents began the first lesson which lasted one 
 hour, and at six, mass and breakfast, but no recrea- 
 tion. From eight to ten the chief class of the 
 morning was held, then till eleven there were exer- 
 cises in the hall. Eleven, dinner. This lasted an 
 hour and consisted generally of a plate of meat and
 
 LITERATURE. 41 
 
 a plate of vegetables ; the dinner was accompanied 
 by reading and admonitions and prayers for the 
 benefactors. At twelve the students were inter- 
 rogated upon the morning lessons. Then there 
 was an hour's repose during which time there was 
 public reading from some poet or orator. From 
 three to five was the chief class of the afternoon. 
 From five to six the students were exercised in the 
 lessons they had just heard. At six, supper. At 
 seven, another session in which the students were 
 questioned and disputations were carried on. This 
 was followed by benediction of the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, and at nine o'clock the bell for retiring was 
 rung. Masters, and pupils so authorized, could 
 keep a candle burning till eleven o'clock. On 
 Tuesdays and Thursdays pupils had holiday from 
 five in the afternoon, when they were taken to 
 promenade in the public park known as the " Pre"- 
 aux-clercs." 
 
 The regulation of the neighboring College of 
 Montaign was similar as regards the studies. But 
 under Standonck the discipline was more severe. 
 He admitted two classes of scholars, the rich and 
 the poor. The poor boys he subjected to monastic 
 discipline. They waited on the rich boys and did 
 all the menial work of the house. They arose at 
 midnight to recite an office. They were forbidden 
 to speak, except it be to answer questions. The 
 least breach of discipline was followed by a scourg- 
 ing. Their table was of the poorest. They went 
 daily with other indigent to beg at the neighbor- 
 ing Chartreux. Rabelais alludes to them as the
 
 42 *SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 "Montaign sparrow-hawks" " Ces sparviers de 
 Montaign." They never had meat or wine for dinner. 
 Their usual food was stale bread with half an ounce 
 of butter, a plate of vegetables cooked in water, and 
 half a herring or two hard-boiled eggs. Erasmus, 
 who studied in this college, stigmatizes the in- 
 human treatment, the unwholesome food, the bad 
 regimen and discipline to which he attributed his 
 feeble health during the remainder of his life. 1 
 In the schoolroom rich and poor studied together, 
 and the only distinction recognized was that of merit. 
 
 V. 
 
 Books in the Middle Ages. 
 
 As a rule, during the Middle Ages, the scholar 
 had no text-book in pursuing his studies. He 
 listened to the master and took notes. Oc- 
 casionally he would borrow from a more fortunate 
 companion a copy of the text-book used. Alto- 
 gether, we may conclude that text-books were 
 scarce in those days. The schools and the uni- 
 versities had copyists attached to them, and these 
 copyists reproduced the text-books in vogue and 
 sold them at reasonable rates to the students. 
 
 Thus, we find that in a compact made between 
 the university of Vercelli and that of Padua, there 
 is mention made of two copyists who were to fur- 
 nish students with books at prices set by the rector. 
 Our friend, Buonvicina da Ripa, in his chronicle, in 
 1 Colloquies, Dial. Fish and Flesh.
 
 LITER A TURE. 43 
 
 that fragment of it which has survived, tells us that 
 in Milan, in 1288, there were eighty teachers of 
 grammar and elementary schools, and fifty copyists. 
 
 Books were expensive. It took a fortune to 
 purchase an illuminated manuscript. In 1240, 
 there is mention of paying twelve hundred florins, 
 which were equal to at least five hundred dollars of 
 our money, for a copy of the missal ornamented 
 with pictures and gold letters. 
 
 But there were in all the monasteries and 
 schools libraries that were open to professors and 
 students. The council of Paris in 1212 recalls to 
 the religious of that city that the lending of books 
 was a work of mercy. The chapter of Notre Dame 
 opened its library in 1272, especially for the use of 
 poor scholars. Great attention was paid to the 
 library. It was, after the church or chapel in 
 which the Blessed Sacrament was deposited, con- 
 sidered the most sacred part of the monastic edi- 
 fice. Precautions were taken to preserve the books 
 from dampness and ill usage. Generally, the walls 
 of the library were well boarded, sometimes even 
 with precious woods, in order the better to pre- 
 serve the manuscripts. Besides the shelves there 
 were desks or lecterns on which the manuscripts 
 were placed and the more valuable ones were 
 chained, just as in all the churches throughout 
 Christendom the lives of the patron saints which 
 were kept in each Church and the public breviaries 
 for the use of the laity were chained. 
 
 Great precautions were taken in the lending of 
 books, and here I cannot do better than quote the
 
 44 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 regulations laid down for the librarian of the con- 
 vent of St. Victor's in Paris. 
 
 "He was charged," we are told," with all the books 
 of the community. He should have an inventory of 
 them ; he should gather them together, putting each 
 in its proper place, two or three times a year ; he 
 should see that they were not rotting or worm-eaten. 
 The volumes should be so arranged as to make any 
 research made in them prompt and easy. No book 
 should be lent until a deposit was first made; and 
 a stranger should be required to deposit an amount 
 at least equal to that of the book borrowed. In 
 all cases the librarian should take in writing the 
 name of the borrower, the title of the book lent, 
 and the nature of the deposit made. The more 
 precious books in the library should not be lent 
 without the abbot's permission. Books for daily 
 use were placed one side for the convenience of the 
 clerks requiring them. The librarian should place 
 at the disposition of the brothers, not only the 
 books requisite for the celebration of the Divine 
 Office, but also those that were instructing and 
 edifying, such as Bibles, the principal glosses and 
 commentaries upon the Sacred Scriptures, lives of 
 the saints, and homilies. If a religious desired to 
 consult at leisure any of the volumes in the library, 
 he might take it with him, but not until the libra- 
 rian had made a note of it." 
 
 In the Sorbonne library there were regulations 
 still more stringent. For instance, a reader who left 
 a book open after using it was fined ; also, the reader 
 who left a stranger alone in the reading room with- 
 out locking the door after him. 
 
 By degrees the copying of books became more 
 and more a lucrative trade. Their sale increased, 
 and in the fifteenth century we find companies
 
 LITER A TURE. 45 
 
 organized and centers of trade established through- 
 out Europe. 
 
 " Long before the discovery of printing," says 
 Janssen, our eminent Catholic historian of Germany, 
 " the sale of manuscripts had taken in Germany, 
 where the love for reading was widespread, con- 
 siderable proportions and all the aspects of a well- 
 regulated business. 
 
 " In the large centers of commerce, particularly in 
 the free cities of the empire, corporations of copy- 
 ists were formed, working less for the learned than 
 for the general public. Their manuscripts, of which 
 catalogues were already made in due form, were 
 delivered to itinerant merchants who found sale for 
 them chiefly at the annual fairs and at the ' Ker- 
 messes.' One of these merchants, Diepold Lauber, 
 opened a well-furnished shop at Haguenau. The 
 catalogue of his goods is still extant. Therein are 
 mentioned not only the Latin authors, but also the 
 best German poets of the Middle Ages, the lengthy 
 metrical romances, shorter writings in prose, legen- 
 dary tales, lives of the saints, popular works, 
 treatises on medicine for general use, German 
 Bibles in rhyme and formulas of prayers. The 
 variety of this catalogue shows that in the Ger- 
 many of the Middle Ages books were not merely 
 addressed to the rich and the learned." 
 
 This is a point worthy of our serious con- 
 sideration. 
 
 It were well for us to note the fact that there 
 was an abundant supply of popular literature in 
 those early days. Then, as now, the supply was in 
 proportion to the demand. If books were multi- 
 plied and peddled, it is because they were pur- 
 chased ; if purchased, they were read ; if read, the 
 people reading them must have had an education,
 
 46 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 and thus it is that we can convict of ignorance or 
 prejudice those who would speak of the Middle 
 Ages as illiterate. 
 
 Turning to France at the same period we find 
 copyists also supplying books. Indeed, we have 
 the good fortune to come upon Queen Marie of 
 Anjou, the wife of Charles Seventh, in the very act 
 of purchasing schoolbooks for her children. Here 
 is the list. First, an ABC. This book also con- 
 tained the morning and evening prayers in Latin, 
 which prayers were to be learned by heart. Second, 
 the book of the Seven Psalms. This book con- 
 tained what is known as the Seven Penitential 
 Psalms, and these psalms were also to be learned 
 by rote. Third, the Donat. This was a grammar 
 dealing with the eight parts of speech. It was 
 written by Lilius Donatus in the fourth century. 
 Fourth, a book of accidents. Caxton, by the way^ 
 printed an edition of this old book at Westminster. 
 Fifth, a Cato. There were two books under the 
 title of Cato, a large and a small, both of which 
 were used in the Middle Ages. The book here 
 mentioned is the small Cato. Cato, I would 
 remark, is short for chatonnet. Sixth, a Doctrinal. 
 This, like the other two, was also a grammar, 
 extracted from the work of the Roman writer, 
 Priscian, and put into leonine verse by Alexander 
 de Villedieu. For these six volumes the queen 
 paid the handsome sum of six hundred livres tur- 
 nois, and for the grand Cato she paid a similar sum. 
 No doubt these books were more beautifully got 
 up than the usual schoolbook.
 
 LITER A TURE. 47 
 
 As another instance of the manner in which 
 books were prized, I might mention the fact that 
 we find king Louis the Eleventh approaching the 
 faculty of medicine of the Sorbonne for the loan of 
 a rare book that he might have it transcribed, with 
 all the diplomacy and caution with which he might 
 have negotiated for the purchase of a province. 
 The book was in two volumes and was a medical 
 treatise by an eminent Arabian physician called 
 Rheses, and was the only copy known to be extant. 
 The faculty so prized it that they at first refused to 
 lend it to the king. But after much negotiation 
 they yielded to the king's request on condition 
 that he deposit with them twelve marks of silver 
 plate and give a note for one hundred gold ecus 
 indorsed by one of the principal citizens of Paris. 
 He gave the required pledges and received the 
 book. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Scriptorium. 
 
 HAVING examined the care taken of books and 
 the general use made of them, let us now consider 
 the manner in which books were transcribed. 
 Enter the scriptorium. It is a large room with 
 desks arranged to face the wall. The monks all 
 stand up to their work. Strict silence is observed. 
 Anything that would distract them in this im- 
 portant occupation is considered out of place. 
 Some are copyists noted for their expertness and 
 celerity in transcribing; others are revisers whose
 
 48 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 work it is to insure accuracy in the texts; others 
 again are illuminators. Each copyist is supplied 
 every Sunday with the materials requisite to last 
 him during the week. These materials are ink, 
 parchment, pens and the books that he will use 
 either for reading or for copying. But he has 
 other materials constantly upon his desk. There 
 are two square pieces of pumice stone, there are 
 two razors to scrape and polish the parchment, two 
 small horns for ink, chalk, a brush to clear away the 
 dust and scrapings that are gathered, an ordinary 
 bodkin, another of a finer quality, thread, a lead 
 pencil, a ruler, and boards on which to extend the 
 parchment. These constitute the principal instru- 
 ments used in the scriptorium. The director of the 
 scriptorium assigns to each copyist the word and 
 page with which to begin and the word and page 
 with which to end, and once the copyist starts out 
 upon his work he is not permitted to be disturbed 
 or distracted. No one can speak to him. In the 
 monastery of Citeaux each copyist had his own 
 cell. Alcuin thus addresses the copyists of his day 
 in one of his poems: 
 
 " Come along and take your place, you whose 
 function it is to transcribe the Divine laws and the 
 sacred monuments of the wisdom of the fathers. 
 Beware of mingling aught that is frivolous with 
 these wise discourses. Do not let your careless 
 hand commit some error. Seek pure texts with 
 diligence in order that your pen in its rapid flight 
 may move in the right direction. Great is the 
 honor of copying holy books and this work finds 
 its recompense."
 
 LITER A TURE. 49 
 
 We may regard Cassiodorus as the father of the 
 Christian scriptorium. Foreseeing the long night 
 of misery and ignorance that was to follow the 
 invasion of the barbarians, he encourages in a 
 special manner the copying and multiplying of 
 books. We have already seen himself, at the ven- 
 erable age of ninety-three, writing a book on or- 
 thography. And, speaking to his monks on the 
 transcribing of manuscripts, he grows eloquent 
 in his enthusiasm. He says : 
 
 " What a happy invention and what a glorious 
 fatigue is that which permits us to preach to man 
 by the hands as well as by the voice, to substitute 
 the fingers for the tongue, to enter into relations 
 with the rest of the world without going out of our 
 solitude and silence, and to combat with the ink 
 and pen the illicit suggestions of the devil. Each 
 word of Holy Writ transcribed by the studious 
 monk is a wound inflicted on Satan." 
 E. M. 4
 
 REL2IGI0N IN EDUCATION 
 
 (M)
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 
 I. 
 
 eHURCH schools exist because sincere members 
 of every Christian denomination hold religion 
 to be an essential element of education. These 
 Christian members are convinced that they would 
 be guilty of a gross breach of duty were they to 
 neglect this important element in the training of 
 their children. And they are right. Any system 
 of education from which religious training is elim- 
 inated were inadequate and incomplete, and, 
 therefore, an injustice to the child receiving it. 
 Education should develop the whole man. Intellect 
 and heart, body and soul, should all be cultivated 
 and fitted to act, each in its own sphere, with most 
 efficiency. And so, the inculcation of piety, rev- 
 erence and religious doctrine is of more importance 
 than training in athletic sports or mathematical 
 studies. Moreover, other things being equal, that 
 is the best education which gives man, so to speak, 
 the best orientation ; which most clearly defines his 
 relations with society and with his Creator, which 
 imparts the all-important truths concerning his 
 origin and his destiny, and points out the way by 
 which he may best attain the end for which he was 
 created. 
 
 Now it is only religious teaching that can fur- 
 nish man with this information, and it is only in 
 
 (58)
 
 54 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 religious observances that man can best attain the 
 aim and purpose of all life and promote the interests 
 of society. Neither ancient nor modern philoso- 
 pher has found a better solution for the enigma of 
 life than is to be found in religion. Plato could 
 never imagine such a monstrous state of affairs as 
 education without religion. 
 
 "All citizens," says this philosopher, " must be 
 profoundly convinced that the gods are lords and 
 rulers of all that exists, that all events depend upon 
 their word and will, and that mankind is largely in- 
 debted to them." ' 
 
 We Christians are no less convinced that religion 
 is as essential to men to-day as it was in the days of 
 Plato. Nations cannot live without its vitalizing 
 energy. It is the conservative element of states, of 
 literature and of civilization. Indeed, we may affirm, 
 without fear of being gainsaid, that all civilization 
 is rooted in religious worship, has grown out of 
 the practices of religious worship, and has ever been 
 fostered by religious worship. Does not the same 
 word cultus apply to both? Prayer, which is a 
 primary element of all worship, accompanied every 
 important act undertaken by the pagans of old. 
 "The Greeks," we are told, "opened all public 
 assemblies, campaigns, combats and public games, 
 even the theater, with prayer." " 
 
 Christianity has in many respects changed man's 
 point of view. The pagans made trees and flowers 
 the habitations of gods and goddesses and earth- 
 
 1 " De Legg," iv., p. 288, cf. " De Repub.," iv., p. 716. 
 'Hettinger, "Natural Religion," p. 262.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 55 
 
 born spirits. Their conception of nature was 
 pantheistic. Christianity threw a halo of tenderness 
 and poesy of another kind, over the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms of nature. Its Divine Founder 
 wove the lilies of the field and the vines on the hill- 
 side into his. discourses. Christian monks made 
 smiling gardens and flourishing cities out of dense 
 forests and barren deserts. Christian meekness 
 taught men to look upon every creature of God as 
 good. A St. Anthony tames the wild beasts of the 
 desert ; a Francis of Assisi sings a hymn to his 
 brother the Sun, and exhorts all Nature, animate 
 and inanimate, to love and give thanks to God ; a 
 Francis of Sales makes homilies upon the habits of 
 bird and beast and insect ; a Wordsworth recognizes 
 this material universe as a symbol of the higher 
 spiritual world. 
 
 The Christian aspect of the individual is no less 
 distinct from the pagan aspect. In the ancient 
 civilizations the individual was absorbed in the 
 state. The state was the supreme tribunal that 
 decided all doubts and regulated conscience and 
 conduct. Christianity reversed all this. It flashed 
 the white light of revealed truth upon man's nature, 
 lighting up its intricacies, and giving deeper insight 
 into the secret chambers of the human heart ; it 
 taught man his personal dignity and his sense of 
 responsibility ; it showed him the temporal and the 
 eternal in their proper relations ; it brought home 
 to him the infinite price of his soul, and thus led him 
 up to a recognition of individual rights and liberties 
 that were unknown in ancient Greece and Rome.
 
 56 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS, 
 
 We may trace many of our laws and customs to 
 pagan days, but in all that is good in our thinking, 
 in our literature, in our whole education, there is a 
 spirit that was not in the thought, the literature 
 and the education of pagan people. We cannot 
 rid ourselves of it. We cannot ignore it if we 
 would. The enemies of Christianity, in attempting 
 to lay down lines of conduct and establish motives 
 and principles of action to supersede the teachings 
 of the Gospel and the practices of the Church, are 
 forced to assume the very principles they would 
 supersede. The Christian spirit has so entered into 
 the acts and feelings and opinions of life that it is 
 impossible to separate it from the purely natural. 
 Christian sentiment, Christian modes of living, 
 Christian opinion may not always be followed, but 
 they are invariably the ultimate criterion the final 
 tribunal before which action and expression are 
 tried and judged. Speaking of this Christian influ- 
 ence, Mr. Mallock says : 
 
 " Its actual dogmas may be readily put away 
 from us ; not so the effect which these dogmas have 
 worked during the course of centuries. In dis- 
 guised forms they are around us everywhere ; they 
 confront us in every human interest, in every 
 human pleasure. They have beaten themselves 
 into life ; they have eaten their way into it. Like 
 a secret sap, they have flavored every fruit in the 
 garden. They are like a powerful drug, a stimulant 
 that has been injected into our whole system." ' 
 
 Here, let it be remarked, lurks the fallacy of 
 those who would regulate conduct without religion. 
 1 " Is Life Worth Living," p. 97.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 57 
 
 Their ideal of life is still the Christian ideal without 
 the Christian soul the vital principle that made 
 that ideal an actuality. In thought and in external 
 conduct they cannot rid themselves of that ideal. 
 It is bred in the bone ; it is part of themselves. 
 
 II. 
 
 AND so, our modern civilization, look at it how 
 we will, is Christian in its nature and in its essence. 
 It is based upon Christian laws and Christian 
 practices. It is permeated by a Christian spirit. 
 Christian sentiment has molded public opinion 
 and created the public conscience. In the Chris- 
 tian code of ethics do the sanctity of marriage and 
 the rights of property find their firmest support. 
 Even where this Christian spirit is least apparent it 
 is still active. 
 
 John Stuart Mill attempted to minimize the 
 nature and extent of this influence. He considered 
 himself outside its pale, but he could not help 
 recognizing its power in those to whom it was a 
 living presence, while contrasting its possible effi- 
 cacy with what he considers its present lack of 
 efficacy. 
 
 " To what an extent," he says, " doctrines intrin- 
 sically fitted to make the deepest impression upon 
 the mind, may remain in it as dead beliefs, without 
 being ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, 
 the understanding, is exemplified by the manner in 
 which the majority of believers hold the doctrines 
 of Christianity." ' 
 
 1 " On Liberty," p. 79.
 
 58 SSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Mill is here ignoring the purely natural element 
 that enters into human actions. It has not oc- 
 curred to him that men may apparently lead ordi- 
 nary lives and yet the Christian spirit may be 
 operating in them most heroically. He takes no 
 cognizance of the supernatural life, which is with 
 rare exceptions beyond human ken. John Stuart 
 Mill was himself carefully guarded against religious 
 faith of any kind. Read his "Autobiography," and 
 tell me if you know a sadder book in the whole 
 range of letters. Note the gloom that overshadows 
 every page. See how a naturally rich and fertile 
 nature was cramped and crushed into a groove in 
 which half its energies were paralyzed. There 
 hover throughout the book darkness and confusion 
 concerning right and wrong and moral responsi- 
 bility that are appalling. Even Mill, in the very 
 deference he paid to public opinion in his conduct, 
 was unconsciously doing homage to the Christian 
 faith that molded that opinion in England. 
 
 Men may now speculate as to what the actual 
 state of the world would be had Christianity not 
 entered as a disturbing element deflecting human 
 progress from its former course. Such speculations 
 are safe. The work is done. The barbarian who 
 despised Roman civilization "and sought its destruc- 
 tion has been Christianized; his fierce nature has 
 been curbed and tamed ; he has been raised up 
 into a plane of culture and refinement, and im- 
 bued with an ideal of life that no formative 
 influence outside of Christianity could have given 
 him. If there still crops out traces of our
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 59 
 
 heredity from the barbarian, and crime is ram- 
 pant, this is no part of Christianity. It is rather in 
 spite of Christian influence. Were men to live up 
 to the perfection of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 were they to seek first the Kingdom of God and 
 His justice, they would still be possessors of all 
 that is good in our modern civilization without the 
 misery and crime that now fester at its door. Grace 
 does not destroy nature. Human nature at all times 
 and under all circumstances remains prone to evil. 
 
 Civilization, considered in itself, only places 
 more effective weapons in the hands of the criminal. 
 It is a natural good, and as such is subject to the 
 accidents of every natural good ; therefore to evil ; 
 therefore to abuse; therefore to crime. Far from 
 being an antidote to vice and crime, it may pro- 
 mote the one and the other, and civilization not 
 unfrequently does so in creating new and expensive 
 wants, increasing man's capacity for enjoyment, 
 and so feeding selfishness as to render concupis- 
 cence all the more intense for being the more 
 refined. Here lies the fallacy of unscrupulous and 
 hard-headed Bernard Mandeville in his " Fable of 
 the Bees." What is of accident he mistook for the 
 essence of civilization. ' 
 
 Civilization, then, possesses in itself certain 
 elements of disintegration. But in Christianity 
 there is a conservative force that resists all decay. 
 Christian thought, Christian dogma, and Christian 
 morals never grow old, never lose their efficiency 
 
 1 Berkeley refutes several of Mandeville's fallacies in his 
 " Alciphron."
 
 60 JSSSArS 
 
 with the advance of any community in civilized 
 life. John Stuart Mill is not of our opinion. To 
 his mind the world would have got on all the 
 better were there no Christian religion. He has to 
 revert to the Koran to find civic virtue inculcated. 
 He considers the character of Christian morality to 
 be negative rather than positive. It set up, accord- 
 ing to him, " a standard of ethics in which the only 
 worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience." 
 In this patronizing fashion does he summarize his 
 judgment: 
 
 "That mankind owes a great debt to this mo- 
 rality and its early teachers, I should be the last 
 person to deny ; but I do not scruple to say of it, 
 that it is in many important points incomplete and 
 one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings not 
 sanctioned by it had contributed to the formation 
 of European life and character, human affairs would 
 have been in a worse condition than they now are." ' 
 
 Evidently John Stuart Mill never grasped the sub- 
 lime scope and meaning of the Christian religion. 
 Has he never learned that that religion is not 
 concerned with the material side of our civilization? 
 Its mission is chiefly to the spiritual side of man. 
 Its aim is to establish the Kingdom of God in the 
 human soul. It does not attempt to destroy man's 
 natural talents and capacities; it takes these things 
 for granted and seeks to control their use only 
 through his conscience. 
 
 By the side of Mill's inadequate estimate of 
 Christianity, let us place another from one who has 
 cast from him the last shred of religious dogmas. 
 
 l4 'On Liberty," p. 94.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 61 
 
 Mr. Lecky in a more enlightened spirit bears wit- 
 ness to the perennial character of Christianity as a 
 conservative force. 
 
 "There is," he says, "but one example of a re- 
 ligion which is not naturally weakened by civili- 
 zation, and that example is Christianity. . . . 
 But the great characteristic of Christianity, and 
 the great moral proof of its divinity, is that it 
 has been the main source of the moral development 
 of Europe, and that it has discharged this office, 
 not so much by the inculcation of a system of 
 ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and 
 attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral 
 progress of mankind can never cease to be dis- 
 tinctively and intensely Christian, as long as it 
 consists of a gradual approximation to the character 
 of the Christian Founder. There is, indeed, noth- 
 ing more wonderful in the history of the human 
 race than the way in which that ideal has traversed 
 the lapse of ages, acquiring a new strength and 
 beauty with each advance of civilization, and in- 
 fusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of 
 thought and action." * 
 
 This is unstinted praise ; here is at least one 
 chapter of the world's history that Mr. Lecky has 
 not misread. 
 
 Thus is it that even according to the testimony 
 of those who are not of us, our modern civilization 
 has in it a unique element, divine and imperishable 
 in its nature, growing out of its contact with the 
 Christ. That characterizing element is Christianity. 
 Individuals may repudiate it, but as a people we 
 are still proud to call ourselves Christians. We 
 
 1 "Rationalism in Europe," i., pp. 311, 312.
 
 62 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 have not come to that pass at which we are 
 ashamed of the cross in which St. Paul gloried. 
 The teachings and practices of Christianity form an 
 essential part of our education. They are inti- 
 mately blended with our whole personal life. Chris- 
 tian influences must needs preside over every 
 important act from the cradle to the grave. 
 
 So the Church thinks, and she acts accordingly. 
 The new-born infant is consecrated with prayer and 
 ceremonial to a Christian line of conduct when the 
 saving waters of baptism are poured upon its head ; 
 the remains of the Christian are laid in the grave 
 with prayer and ceremonial. At no time in the life 
 of man does the Church relax in her care of him. 
 Least of all is she disposed to leave him to himself 
 at that period when he is most amenable to impres- 
 sion and when she can best lay hold upon his whole 
 nature and mold it in the ideal that is solely hers. 
 Therefore is the Church ever jealous of any attempt 
 on the part of secularism to stand between her and 
 the child she has marked for her own with the sign 
 of salvation through baptismal rites. She knows 
 no compromise; she can entertain no compromise; 
 she has no room for compromise, for she has never 
 had a moment's indecision on the matter of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 III. 
 
 SECULARISM in education has assumed many 
 phases. We shall dwell upon a few of the theories 
 proposed to supersede religious training in the 
 schools. M. Ernest Renan has aired his views 
 upon education. It goes without saying that M.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 63 
 
 Renan excludes what he calls theology as an educa- 
 tional factor. He will have none of it. He asks us 
 to witness the ages that were under the sway of 
 churchmen and theologians, and note the little 
 progress they made in science, forgetting the bar- 
 barous character of his ancestors when they first 
 came under Christian influences, forgetting also the 
 slow process by which a people is reformed, refined, 
 civilized. He would ignore the fact that these 
 ages are an intermediate link between barbarism 
 and our present enlightenment. Were it not for 
 those theological times which M. Renan now looks 
 down upon, even he would to-day be utterly inca- 
 pable of making his fine phrases. Now, M. Renan 
 divides all educational responsibility between the 
 family and the state. He considers the professor 
 competent to instruct in secular knowledge only. 
 The family he regards as the true educator. He asks : 
 
 " This purity and delicacy of conscience, the 
 basis of all morality, this flower of sentiment which 
 will one day be the charm of man, this intellectual 
 refinement sensitive to the most delicate shades of 
 meaning, where may the child and the youth learn 
 these things? Is it in lectures attentively listened 
 to, or in books learned by heart? Not at all, 
 gentlemen; these things are learned in the atmos- 
 phere in which one lives, in the social environment 
 in which one is placed ; they are learned through 
 family life, not otherwise. Instruction is given in 
 class, at the lyceum, in the school ; education is im- 
 parted in the home; the masters here are the 
 mothers, the sisters." ' 
 
 , l "La Reformer" La Part de la Famille et de 1' fetat dans 
 1' Education, p. 316.
 
 64 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 True it is that the state is not competent to 
 form conscience ; no less true is it that the family 
 is the great molder of character. The sanctuary of 
 a good home is a child's safest refuge. There he is 
 wrapped in the panoply of a mother's love and a 
 mother's care. This love and this care are the sun- 
 shine in which his moral nature grows and blossoms 
 into goodness. The child, the youth blessed with 
 a Christian home in which he sees naught but good 
 example and hears naught but edifying words, has 
 indeed much to be thankful for ; it is a boon which 
 the longest life of gratitude can but ill requite. But 
 M. Renan wants neither home nor child Christian. 
 He would establish a religion of beauty, of culture, 
 indeed of anything and everything that is not 
 religion. The refining and educating influence he 
 means is the "eternally-womanly" das Ewige- 
 Weibliche of Goethe. It is a sexual influence. It 
 is a continuous appeal to the gallantry and chivalry 
 of the boy-nature. This and nothing more. Is it 
 sufficient as an educational influence ? Without 
 other safeguard the boy soon outgrows the defer- 
 ence and respect and awe that woman naturally 
 inspires. That is indeed a superficial knowledge of 
 human nature which would reduce the chief factor 
 of a child's education to womanly influence uncon- 
 secrated by religion, unrestrained by the sterner 
 authority of the father, the law, the social custom. 
 
 The child of a Christian home, where some 
 member of the family is competent and willing to 
 give him religious instruction regularly and with 
 method, might attend a purely secular school
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 65 
 
 without losing the Christian spirit. But these con- 
 ditions obtain only in exceptional cases. What has 
 M. Renan to say to the home in which the father 
 is absorbed in making money and the mother is 
 equally absorbed in spending that money in worldly 
 and frivolous amusements, and the children are 
 abandoned to the care of servants? And what has 
 he to say of the home without the mother? And 
 the home in which example and precept are del- 
 eterious to the growth of manly character? And 
 then consider the sunless homes of the poor and 
 the indigent, where the struggle for life is raging 
 with all intensity; consider the home of the work- 
 ingman, where the father is out from early morning 
 to late at night, and the mother is weighed down 
 with the cares and anxieties of a large family and 
 drudging away all day long at household duties 
 never done; to speak of home education and deli- 
 cacy of conscience and growth of character among 
 such families and under such conditions were a 
 mockery. But M. Renan has as happy a facility in 
 ignoring facts as in brushing away whole epochs of 
 history. 
 
 There are others Christian gentlemen at 
 that who would keep religion out of the school 
 while relegating it to the family and the church. 
 The late revered Howard Crosby, in his last pub- 
 lished utterance, says : " Religion is too sacred a 
 thing to be committed for its teaching to the 
 public official. It belongs to the fireside and the 
 church." ' But why should the public official have 
 
 1 Educational Review, May, 1891, p. 445. 
 E. M. 5
 
 66 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Jany voice regarding the teaching of religion ? Why 
 should the state dictate what shall or shall not be 
 taught? Even M. Renan hesitated to give the 
 state any say in the matter of controlling education. 
 However, since the state controls the disbursement 
 of the people's money, collected solely for the pur- 
 pose of carrying on good government, by all means 
 let the state see to it that those who are paid out 
 of the people's money to teach the people's children, 
 be competent to perform their duties, and that the 
 subject-matter taught be such as shall not prevent 
 the child from becoming a good and useful citizen. 
 But let us never lose sight of the fact that 
 the people do not belong to the state, and that 
 the machinery we call the state is the servant of the 
 people, organized to do the will of the people. 
 Were we to witness a paid official of the state 
 strutting about during his brief hour of authority 
 giving out his opinions as the law of the state, 
 identifying the state with himself, we would smile 
 in pity at the spectacle; but were we to witness 
 the pronouncements of this poor egotist accepted 
 seriously by any body of men as bearing the weight 
 and authority of the state, because, forsooth, the 
 man so speaking happens for the moment to be 
 stamped with the official seal of the state, then in- 
 deed were there a sight at which angels might with 
 reason weep. Then might we tremble lest the 
 spirit that gave life and being to our republic were 
 fast receding from the body politic. A great 
 monarch might say, without injury to his dignity, 
 " I am the state ;" but it is blasphemy and political
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 67 
 
 heresy, rank and odious in the nostrils of any intel- 
 ligent citizen, to hear any fellow-citizen of a free 
 state give his personal opinions all the weight and 
 force that attach to the laws of the state. 1 
 
 And here, while defending the state against any 
 usurpation of its power, let us also assert the right 
 of the parent. The parent has no intention of 
 abdicating his right to educate the child. The 
 right is his ; he means to hold it. If he educates 
 his child himself, all well and good. School laws 
 are not made for the parent who educates his own 
 child. If he does not himself educate the child, 
 it is for him to say who shall replace him in this 
 important function. In making this decision the 
 Christian parent is generally guided by the Church. 
 The Church is preeminently a teaching power 
 that teaching power extending chiefly to the for- 
 mation of character and the development of the 
 supernatural man. Her Divine Founder said: "All 
 power is given to Me in heaven and on earth ; 
 going, therefore, teach all nations." The Church 
 holds that, of all periods in the life of man, the 
 period of childhood and youth, when the heart is 
 plastic and character is shaping, and formative in- 
 fluences leave an indelible impress, is the one in 
 which religion can best mold conduct and best give 
 color to thought ; and therefore the Church exhorts 
 and encourages the Christian parent to make many 
 and great sacrifices in order to procure a Christian 
 
 1 A careful reading of the Educational Report of the Com- 
 monwealth of Massachusetts, for 1890, will make evident the 
 meaning of these remarks.
 
 68 ESS ATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 education for his children. It is the natural right 
 of every Christian child to receive this education. 
 It is the natural right and bounden duty of the 
 parent, by the twofold obligation of the natural law 
 and the divine law, to provide his child with this 
 education. And the right being natural it is in- 
 alienable ; being inalienable it is contrary to the 
 fundamental principles of justice to attempt to 
 force upon the child any other form of educa- 
 tion, or to hinder the child in the pursuit of this 
 education, or to impose upon the child a system 
 of education that would in the least tend to with- 
 draw him from the light and sweetness of the 
 faith that is his inheritance. 
 
 "Compulsory education," says the eminent and 
 fair-minded churchman, Cardinal Manning, " with- 
 out free choice in matters of religion and conscience, 
 is, and ever must be, unjust and destructive of the 
 moral life of a people." ' 
 
 It is a breach of the social pact that under- 
 lies all state authority. That pact calls for the 
 protection of rights, not for their violation or 
 usurpation. And so, if the Christian parent would 
 give his child a Christian education, there is no 
 power on earth entitled or privileged to stand 
 between him and the fulfillment of his wish. 
 
 But we are told that the child may learn the 
 truths of his religion in Sunday school, and that re- 
 ligion is too sacred a thing for the schoolroom. Can 
 you imagine an hour or two a week devoted to the 
 most sacred of subjects at all in keeping with the 
 
 1 The Forum, March, 1887, p. 66.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 69 
 
 importance of that subject? Can you imagine a 
 child able to realize the power, the beauty, the 
 holiness of religion from the fact that he is required 
 to give only an hour or two out of the whole seven 
 times twenty-four hours of the week to learn its 
 truths? Again let us quote the same eminent 
 authority whose words will bear more weight with 
 them than any we could utter: 
 
 "The heartless talk," says Cardinal Manning, 
 " about teaching and training children in religion 
 by their parents, and at home, and in the evening 
 when parents are worn out by daily toil, or in one 
 day in seven by Sunday schools, deserves no 
 serious reply. To sincere common sense it an- 
 swers itself." ' " Heartless talk . . . deserves 
 no serious reply." 
 
 Hard words these; but their fitness is all the 
 more apparent the more we study the question. 
 
 The Church, who is, above all, the mother and 
 protectress of the poor, sets her face against any 
 such arrangement, and insists that wherever possible 
 her children especially her poor children shall 
 have a religious training. She makes it binding 
 upon the consciences of Christian parents. They 
 are not free as regards the character of the edu- 
 cation they should provide for their children. 
 Believing, as every Christian parent does, that man 
 is created for a supernatural end, that that end can 
 be attained in a Christian community only through 
 a knowledge of Christian truths and the practice of 
 Christian virtues, naught remains for him but to 
 
 1 " National Education : " The School Rate, p. 28.
 
 70 JESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 see to it that his child has the advantage of this 
 Christian education, given by teachers who can in- 
 culcate these truths and instill the practice of these 
 virtues. The Church alone is competent to pro- 
 nounce upon the teachers and guarantee their 
 accuracy in the matter of faith and morals. Here 
 is how the Christian Church enters as an essential 
 factor into Christian education. 
 
 Religion is sacred, and because it is so sacred a 
 thing it should not be excluded from the school- 
 room. It is not a garment to be donned or doffed 
 at will. It is not something to be folded away 
 carefully as being too precious for daily use. It 
 is rather something to be so woven into the 
 warp and woof of thought and conduct and 
 character, into one's very life, that it becomes 
 a second nature and the guiding principle of all 
 one's actions. Can this be effected by banish- 
 ing religion from the schoolroom? Make religion 
 cease to be one with the child's thoughts and words 
 and acts one with his very nature at a time 
 when the child's inquisitiveness and intellectual 
 activity are at their highest pitch ; cause the child 
 to dispense with all consciousness of the Divine 
 Source of light and truth in hi,s thinking ; eliminate 
 from your text-books in history, in literature, in 
 philosophy, the conception of God's providence, of 
 His ways and workings, and you place the child 
 on the way to forget, or ignore, or mayhap deny 
 that there is such a being as God and that His 
 providence is a reality. The child is frequently 
 more logical than the man. If the thought of God,
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 71 
 
 the sense of God's intimate presence everywhere, 
 the holy name of Jesus be eliminated from the 
 child's consciousness and be forbidden his tongue to 
 utter with reverence in prayer during school hours, 
 why may not these things be eliminated outside of 
 school hours? Why may they not be eliminated 
 altogether? So may the child reason ; so has the 
 child reasoned ; and therefore does the Church seek 
 to impress upon it indelibly the sacred truths of 
 religion in order that they may be to it an ever- 
 present reality. 
 
 Not that religion can be imparted as a knowl- 
 edge of history or grammar is taught. The 
 repetition of the Catechism or the reading of the 
 Gospel is not religion. Religion is something more 
 subtle, more intimate, more all-prevading. It 
 speaks to head and heart. It is an everliving 
 presence in the schoolroom. It is reflected from 
 the pages of one's reading books. It is nourished 
 by the prayers with which one's daily exercises 
 are opened and closed. It controls the affections; 
 it keeps watch over the imagination ; it permits to 
 the mind only useful and holy and innocent 
 thoughts; it enables the soul to resist tempta- 
 tion; it guides the conscience; it inspires a 
 horror for sin and a love for virtue. The re- 
 ligion that could be cast off with times and 
 seasons were no religion. True religion may be 
 likened to the ethereal substance that occupies 
 interstellar space. This substance permeates all 
 bodies. There is no matter so compact that it does 
 not enter, and between the atoms of which it does
 
 72 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 not circulate. Even so should it be with religion. 
 It should form an essential portion of our life. It 
 should be the very atmosphere of our breathing. 
 It should be the soul of our every action. We 
 should live under its influence, act out its precepts, 
 think and speak according to its laws as uncon- 
 sciously as we breathe. It should be so intimate 
 a portion of ourselves that we could not, even if we 
 would, ever get rid thereof. This is religion as the 
 Church understands religion. Therefore does the 
 Church foster the religious spirit in every soul con- 
 fided to her, at all times, under all circumstances, 
 without rest, without break, from the cradle to 
 the grave. Place yourself at this point of view 
 and say if, believing all this, child of yours 
 should receive any other than a religious edu- 
 cation. 
 
 We may have too little religion ; we may be too 
 sparing in giving to prayer and communion with 
 God only a few hasty moments morning and even- 
 ing; we may grudge Him an occasional reverential 
 thought during our waking hours; we may ignore 
 our dependence on Him; we may forget to thank 
 him for the natural blessings of life and health and 
 the supernatural blessing of grace and redemption ; 
 but we can never become too deeply imbued with 
 these and other sentiments that make up the re- 
 ligious spirit. That were an inadequate and an 
 unworthy conception of God that would represent 
 Him as growing weary of our importunity in prayer 
 and aspiration. There is much truth in the words 
 of Ruskin :
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. . 73 
 
 " We treat God with irreverence by banishing 
 Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will 
 on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority 
 or intelligence which cannot be troubled with 
 small things. There is nothing so small but that 
 we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or 
 insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and 
 what is true of the Deity is equally true of His 
 Revelation. We use it most reverently when most 
 habitually ; our insolence is in ever acting without 
 reference to it ; our true honoring of it is in its uni- 
 versal application." ' 
 
 The God of the Christian is an infinite, a per- 
 sonal and a loving God. Surely no father among 
 a Christian people, having at heart the welfare of 
 son or daughter, would allow either to grow to the 
 estate of manhood or womanhood without having 
 ever bent the knee in prayer before that infinite, 
 personal and loving God, or without having learned 
 and become imbued with any of the great funda- 
 mental truths of Christianity. Surely no man 
 understanding human nature, and having at heart 
 the good of society, would advocate that the rising 
 generation should be brought up without any re- 
 ligious form of belief. 
 
 IV. 
 
 EVEN our secularists those of them the most 
 radical while not believing in the intrinsic worth 
 of religion or morality, would still uphold them 
 both to a certain extent, not because they regard 
 them as true, but because they consider them 
 wholesome fictions for the people. Strauss, who 
 
 1 Selections, p. 404.
 
 74 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 had spent a long and laborious life in undermining 
 the religion of Christ, while claiming for individuals 
 the right to accept or reject all forms of belief, rec- 
 ognizes now, and far into the future, the necessity 
 of a church for the majority of mankind. 
 
 " We do not for a moment" he says, " ignore the 
 actual, and still for a long time the prospective, ne- 
 cessity of a church for the majority of mankind ; 
 whether it will remain thus to the end of human 
 affairs, we regard as an open question ; but we re- 
 gard as a prejudice the opinion which deems that 
 every individual must belong to a church, and that 
 he to whom the old no longer suffices must join a 
 new one." ' 
 
 He who believed neither in a church nor in a 
 God, who would dry up the sources of all conso- 
 lation in this life, and shut out every glimpse of 
 hope for the life to come, still considered what 
 from his point of view was a myth and an illusion, 
 a necessity for the well-being of society. And 
 Renan has expressed a similar opinion in regard to 
 morality. While denying its obligations he ac- 
 knowledges its necessity. " Nature," he says, " has 
 need of the virtue of individuals, but this virtue is 
 an absurdity in itself; men are duped into it for 
 the preservation of the race.",* This mode of rea- 
 soning will never do. If religion and morality are 
 merely a delusion and a snare, then had they better 
 not be. You cannot gather grapes from thorns. 
 You cannot sow a lie and reap truth. Think of all 
 that is meant by such statements as these. Can 
 
 l4 'The Old Faith and the New," pp. 116, 117. 
 "'Dialogues Philosophiques," intro., xiv-xvii.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 75 
 
 you imagine a commonwealth erected upon false- 
 hood or deceit entering into the very fabric of the 
 universe? It is all implied in the assumption of 
 Renan and Strauss. Teach a child that religion 
 and morality are in themselves meaningless, though 
 good enough for the preservation of society, and 
 you sow in his heart the seeds of pessimism and 
 self-destruction. 
 
 Then there are those who, believing in religion 
 and morality, still maintain, in all sincerity, that 
 these things may be divorced in the schoolroom. 
 Dr. Crosby, in the article already quoted, says : 
 
 "While I thus oppose the teaching of religion 
 in our public schools, I uphold the teaching of 
 morality there. To say that religion and morality 
 are one is an error. To say that religion is the only 
 true basis of morality is true. But this does not 
 prove that morality cannot be taught without 
 teaching religion." 
 
 It proves nothing else. The distinction between 
 religion and morality is fundamental. But be it 
 remembered that we are now dealing with Christian 
 children, having Christian fathers and mothers who 
 are desirous of making those children thoroughly 
 Christian. Now you cannot mold a Christian soul 
 upon a purely ethical training. In practice you 
 cannot separate religion from morality. A code of 
 ethics will classify one's passions, one's vices, one's 
 virtues, one's moral habits and tendencies, but it is 
 quite unable to show how passion may be overcome 
 or virtue acquired. It is only from the revelation 
 of Christianity that we learn the cause of our innate
 
 76 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 proneness to evil; it is only in the saving truths 
 of Christianity that we find the meaning and the 
 motive of resisting that tendency. Let us not 
 deceive ourselves ; the morality that is taught apart 
 from religious truth and religious sanction is a 
 delusion. 
 
 " It will be difficult," says Professor John Bas- 
 com, with more reason than Dr. Howard Crosby, 
 " it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate 
 vigorous moral influences from the spiritual inspi- 
 ration with which they are associated in the com- 
 munity, and to employ them effectively in this 
 mutilated form." ' 
 
 This follows from man's very nature and con- 
 stitution. Man is not a pure intelligence. He has 
 feeling and impulse as well as reason, and not 
 unfrequently is reason carried away by feeling and 
 impulse. Merely to know the right does not always 
 lead to the doing of it. Action requires more 
 powerful motives than those arising from knowl- 
 edge ; motives, the root of which lie far beyond the 
 domain of reason. 
 
 " We cannot doubt," says Lord Bacon, " that a 
 large part of the moral law is too sublime to be at- 
 tained by the light of nature, though it is still 
 certain that men, even with, the light and law of 
 nature, have some notions of virtue, vice, justice, 
 wrong, good and evil." 5 
 
 Even religion itself, when rationalized and re- 
 duced to a science, may cease to be vitalizing. The 
 light and warmth have then passed out from it; 
 
 1 The Forum, March, 1891, p. 60. 
 
 2 "De Augmentis Scientiarum," 28.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 77 
 
 its controlling influence upon the conscience has 
 ceased ; conduct, no longer guided by the still small 
 voice of conscience, falls back upon reason, or 
 prudence, or the instinct of self-preservation, or, 
 mayhap, runs riot under the lash of passion and 
 animal impulse. In the meantime the individual 
 may be making a thorough study of his religion. 
 He may even have achieved a reputation as a 
 theologian. The history of rationalism is strewn 
 with wrecks of intellectual pride. These men illus- 
 trate the revolt of reason against religion. 
 
 M. Ernest Renan is a case in point. A simple 
 Catholic youth, holding as articles of faith all the 
 truths taught by the Catholic Church, he enters upon 
 a course of studies for the Catholic priesthood. He 
 prays devoutly with his companions of the sem- 
 inaries of Issy and St. Sulpice; he receives the 
 sacraments with them ; he follows all the spiritual 
 exercises with them ; and yet a day comes when he 
 finds that he has lost the faith and is no longer a 
 believer in revealed religion. Whence comes this 
 to be so? The truths of religion are, many of them, 
 distinct from natural truths ; they are above natural 
 truths, and yet they are based upon them. Faith 
 supposes reason. Now, M. Renan has left us an 
 amusing account of himself M. Renan is amusing 
 or nothing and therein we learn that he began by 
 sapping the natural foundations on which super- 
 natural truth rests ; he played fast and loose with 
 philosophic truth, attempted to reconcile the most 
 contradictory assumptions of Kant and Hegel and 
 Schelling ; he repudiated the primary principles of
 
 78 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 his reason, and so undermined its whole basis that 
 it was no wonder to see the superstructure topple 
 over. He, a boy of twenty, with very little strength 
 of intellect, but with an overweening ambition 
 that supplied all other deficiencies, sat in judg- 
 ment upon all things in heaven and upon earth, 
 especially upon the religion which he had pro- 
 fessed and for whose ministry he was preparing 
 himself. From that moment the Christian religion 
 ceased to be for him an active principle. He no 
 longer believed in the truths of Christianity. 
 While conforming to its external practices, the 
 warmth and the life of it had vanished, and his 
 active brain, having nothing else to feed upon, 
 made of his religion a mere intellectual exercise, 
 and finally a marketable commodity, the means by 
 which to create unto himself a name. He placed 
 religious truth on the same footing with natural 
 science, and tested both by the same methods. 
 Naturally, truths that are deductive, based upon 
 authority beyond the scope of reason, vanish into 
 thin air when one attempts to analyze them as 
 one would the ingredients of salt and water. They 
 are effective only when received with reverence, 
 submission, and implicit faith. In this manner did 
 Kenan's faith disappear before his intellectual pride. 
 
 " In a scientific age," says Cardinal Newman, 
 " there will naturally be a parade of what is called 
 natural theology, a widespread profession of the 
 Unitarian creed, an impatience of mystery and a 
 skepticism about miracles." ' 
 
 1 " Idea of a University," p. 226.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 79 
 
 Now, if this intellectual temper is to be looked 
 for under the most favorable auspices, what religious 
 dearth may we not expect to find among young 
 men out of whom all theological habits of thought 
 have been starved, and in whom all spiritual life has 
 become extinct ? The school from which religious 
 dogma and religious practices have been banished 
 is cimply preparing a generation of atheists and 
 agnostics. There is a large grain of truth in the re- 
 mark of Renan, that if humanity was intelligent and 
 nothing else it would be atheistic. And yet this 
 man, whose views I find shadowy, shifting, pano- 
 ramic and unreal, this maker of clever phrases, 
 would promote nothing but intellectual culture, 
 soul culture. 
 
 "They are," he says, "not simple ornaments, 
 they are things no less sacred than religion. . . . 
 Intellectual culture is preeminently holy. ... It 
 is our religion." ' 
 
 Renan holds this culture sacred, because he 
 hopes thereby to make men atheistic. 
 
 No; purely intellectual culture will not take 
 the place of religion. Where men abandon them- 
 selves to the exclusive cultivation of the intellect ; 
 where they permit pursuits of any kind to mo- 
 nopolize their energies to the neglect of the spirit- 
 ual side of their natures, they are doing themselves 
 an injustice. They are ignoring their supernatural 
 destiny. They are making of themselves mere 
 human machines for the performance of certain 
 functions. They are missing the completeness of 
 
 1 " La R^forme," pp. 309, 310.
 
 80 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 life for which they were created. Youth trained 
 on these lines are putting themselves in a fair way 
 to despise that which they have systematically neg- 
 lected. Knowledge is, in itself, good ; it is a great 
 power; but knowledge is not all. With no less 
 truth than aptness has the poet sung: 
 
 " Make knowledge circle with the winds; 
 But let her herald, Reverence, fly 
 Before her to whatever sky 
 Bears seed of men and growth of minds." 
 
 But knowledge exclusively cultivated will lack 
 this reverence. Knowledge is only too prone to 
 puff up the unballasted mind. It supplies food for 
 the intellect, gives it strength and development and 
 aptitude upon definite lines. But the intellect 
 works only according as the will directs. It is a 
 pliant tool in the hands of the will. When the 
 will is good, and operates towards right doing, in- 
 tellectual endowment is, indeed, a blessing; when 
 the will is depraved, a trained intellect becomes all 
 the more mischievous. Reason enlightens the will 
 and enables it to indicate motives ; but religion 
 alone has the life-giving power that nerves and fires 
 the whole life-energies of man for good. This has 
 been the way of humanity in the past, and there is 
 no reason why it should not J be so in the future. 
 Not, then, in intellectual culture may we find the 
 proper substitute for religious training. 
 
 Nor yet in the culture of the aesthetic sense. 
 Love of art in all its chief departments ; enthusiasm 
 for music and poetry and the beautiful in life and 
 conduct are one and all commendable. That the
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 81 
 
 eye and the ear should be cultivated to their high- 
 est capacity, and that a sense of fitness and pro- 
 priety should preside over all we do and all we say, 
 are no less a gain. But that these things should be 
 everything, that they should be the sole barriers 
 erected against vice and crime, the sole motives of 
 life, the sole criterion of conduct is out of the 
 question. Sense of beauty has never been able to 
 stand between human selfishness and the gratifica- 
 tion of any passion. When exclusively cultivated, 
 its tendency is to render men and women rather 
 effeminate and weak before temptation. In no 
 country was art more thoroughly cultivated, or did 
 art enter more intimately into all relations of life, 
 than it did in Greece; but at no time in the history 
 of Greece did men dream of substituting art culture 
 for religious prayer and ceremonial. 
 
 Art is not an end. Every form of art is the ex- 
 pression of some idea ; every idea so expressed has 
 grown out of a people's life. The meaning of all 
 art worthy of the name consists in this, that it is 
 the embodiment of the thought or motive that is 
 calculated to elevate and ennoble one's conception 
 of life, or action, or men, or things. Art is, then, a 
 means making for a higher purpose. A good in its 
 own way, when confined to its proper sphere, it is 
 a source of enjoyment and one of the notes of civi- 
 lization. But art in its highest form of expression 
 has ever received its sublimest inspiration from 
 religion. The altar is the cradle at which music and 
 dance, poetry and the drama, painting and sculpture 
 and architecture have been nurtured and have grown 
 E. M. 6
 
 82 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 in grace and beauty. With the decline of religious 
 influence came the decline of each and all of these 
 arts. Beauty cannot supplant virtue ; it cannot 
 stand on the same footing with virtue. Beauty 
 is a natural gift pure and simple, whereas virtue is 
 based upon man's free will and grows out of man's 
 relations with his Creator. Make the sense of 
 beauty the ideal of life, and you may end in hold- 
 ing with Renan " that beauty is so superior, talent, 
 genius, virtue itself, are naught in its presence " ' 
 a proposition bearing on the face of it its own refu- 
 tation. Not in culture of the aesthetic sense is a 
 substitute for religious training to be found. 
 
 Neither is the substitute to be found in that 
 purely ethical culture which has in these days been 
 made a religion. You cannot make such culture 
 the basis of virtue. Is it virtue to recognize in a 
 vague manner distinctions between right and wrong, 
 or to know what is proper and graceful and becom- 
 ing in conduct? By no means. As we have 
 already seen, virtue is made of sterner stuff. The 
 practice of virtue is based upon the dictates of 
 conscience. Conscience has sanction in its recog- 
 nition of the fact of a Lawgiver to whom every 
 rational being is responsible for his acts. What 
 sanction has the moral sense as'such ? None beyond 
 the constitution of our nature. We are told by the 
 apostles of ethical culture that the supreme law of 
 our being is to live out ourselves in the best and 
 highest sense. But what is best and highest ? If 
 we consult only the tendencies of our poor, feeble, 
 
 *" Souvenir d'Enfance et de Jeunesse," p. 115.
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 83 
 
 erring human nature, whither will they lead us? 
 There are many things forbidden by the laws of 
 Christian morality as injurious to the individual and 
 destructive of society, that are looked upon as good 
 by those who have drifted from the Christian faith. 
 You may, under certain favorable circumstances, 
 cultivate in the child a sense of self-respect that will 
 preserve it from gross breaches of morality, but you 
 are not thereby implanting virtue in its soul. Now 
 the Christian parent, the Christian teacher, and the 
 Christian clergyman, would see the soul of every 
 child a blooming garden abounding in every Chris- 
 tian virtue. This is the source of all real social and 
 personal progress. 
 
 There is no true moral improvement based upon 
 purely ethical culture. Theory is not practice ; 
 knowing is not doing. The world was never ren- 
 ovated the world would never have been reno- 
 vated by the ethical codes of Marcus Aurelius and 
 Epictetus. The morality that enters into men's 
 convictions, that becomes part of their very ex- 
 istence, that influences their lives and braces them 
 up to resist or forbear from wrongdoing under the 
 most trying circumstances, has a higher source than 
 the moral teaching that would make the beautiful 
 in conduct the sole criterion of life. Ethical cul- 
 ture may veneer the surface, but it cannot pene- 
 trate to the depths of the human heart. It may 
 point out the deformity of vice and the beauty of 
 virtue ; it may teach the proper and the becoming ; 
 it may create a sense of pride and honor that sus- 
 tains the soul under certain forms of trial and
 
 84 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 temptation ; under certain circumstances it may de- 
 velop a certain manhood and womanhood of char- 
 acter; with a certain happy combination of traits 
 in the natural disposition of the soul, it may lead 
 to the practice of the natural virtues ; but this is 
 not the supernatural life of the Christian. This 
 is not the ideal life laid down by St. Paul. 
 
 The ideal of secularism considers only the 
 pleasant and the agreeable; the fair and the proper 
 are the secularists' chief objects of life. Virtue, from 
 this point of view, is to be pursued as a matter of 
 good taste, vice is to be avoided as something vul- 
 gar and ungentlemanlike. It is accompanied by a 
 serene self-possession that aims to rise above 
 blundering, a cold self-satisfaction that grows out 
 of insensibility of conscience and a complete ab- 
 sence of the idea of sin. There are no probings of 
 the heart ; there are no self-accusings ; there is no 
 sense of sin ; there is no humility ; there is no spirit 
 of faith, no solicitude for a future life. What has 
 secularism in any of its phases to do with the saving 
 of souls or the fear of hell, or the doctrines of 
 original sin, grace and redemption, or the theological 
 virtues of faith, hope and charity, or with spiritual 
 life, or the reign of the kingdom of God in human 
 hearts? This is a world ignored or denied alto- 
 gether by secularism. It has no place for the lesson 
 that the cross comes before the crown, that men 
 must sorrow before they can rejoice, that pain is 
 frequently to be chosen before pleasure, that the 
 flesh and the spirit are to be mortified, that passions 
 are to be resisted and man must struggle against
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 85 
 
 his inferior nature to the death. Now this doctrine 
 is to-day as hard a doctrine as it was in the days of 
 St. Paul, when men pronounced it a stumbling- 
 block and foolishness. 
 
 The Christian parent and the Christian Church 
 are convinced that it is only by placing the Chris- 
 tian yoke upon the child in its tender years that 
 the child will afterwards grow up to manhood or 
 womanhood finding that yoke agreeable for the 
 Divine Founder of Christianity has assured us that 
 His yoke is sweet and His burden light and will 
 afterwards persevere in holding all these spiritual 
 truths and practices that make the Christian home 
 and the Christian life a heaven upon earth. This 
 is why Christian parents make so many sacrifices 
 to secure their children a Christian education. 
 This is why you find, the world over, men and 
 women religious teachers immolating their lives, 
 their comforts, their homes, their talents, their 
 energies, that they may cause Christian virtues 
 to blossom in the hearts of the little ones 
 confided to them. This is why, in the city of 
 New York alone, we are witnesses, this very 
 year, of not less than fifty-two thousand Catholic 
 children, and in the whole State not less than one 
 hundred and forty thousand, attending our parish 
 schools at great sacrifices for pastors and parents 
 and teachers. The Church will always render to 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but she will con- 
 tinue to guard and protect and defend her own rights 
 and prerogatives in the matter of education. She 
 cannot for a single moment lose sight of the
 
 86 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 supernatural destiny of man and of her mission to 
 guide him from the age of reason toward the 
 attainment of that destiny. 
 
 We know not how forcibly we have presented 
 the plea for church schools ; but we do know that 
 we have sought to give not mere individual impres- 
 sions, but the profound convictions with which 
 Christian parents act when insisting upon giving 
 their children a Christian education. Therefore, 
 sincere Christians, whether Catholic, Lutheran, 
 Baptist or Episcopalian, be they named what they 
 may, can never bring themselves to look on with 
 unconcern at any system of education that is calcu- 
 lated to rob their children of the priceless boon of 
 their Christian inheritance. Prizing their souls 
 more than their bodies, they would rather see them 
 dead than that their souls should be pinched and 
 starved for want of the life-giving food that comes 
 of Christian revelation and a Christian church. 
 Therefore it is that they cannot for a moment tol- 
 erate their children in an atmosphere of secularism 
 from which Christian prayer and Christian prac- 
 tices have been banished. Some friends and ad- 
 mirers of Heraclitus, coming to see him, found him 
 in the kitchen warming himself at the fire. He 
 bade them enter, " for," he "added, " God is also 
 present in this place." ' A noble thought, this of 
 the pagan philosopher, that the presence of God 
 dignifies the lowliest place. Even so thinks the 
 Church. She holds that the presence of God, and 
 the revelation of God, and devotion to God, during 
 
 1 Aristotle, " De Partibus Animalium," lib. I., cap. v., 5.
 
 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 87 
 
 school hours, dignify and ennoble the studies and 
 the very nature of the child. And every Christian 
 parent is content to know that the schoolroom in 
 which his child abides is sanctified by the con- 
 sciousness of our Savior and Redeemer lighting 
 up the knowledge that child is acquiring and nour- 
 ishing his heart with beautiful Christian sentiments 
 the sense of God's presence within him and 
 about him, and the voice of God speaking to his 
 conscience, and thrilling his soul unto a music with 
 which his whole life shall beat in unison.
 
 THE SONNETS ANB PLAYS OF 
 SHAKESPEARE
 
 THE SONNETS AND PLAYS OF 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I. 
 
 tALLAM regrets that Shakespeare's sonnets had 
 ever been written. It is true that some of 
 them do not form edifying reading, and if we are to 
 take them as a personal record, as a revelation of the 
 man himself, he was not so wise for himself. It is 
 true that the sonnets in revealing Shakespeare as a 
 great sinner, also show him in the act of struggling 
 with his passions, and we know of historical evidence 
 that he finally overcame those passions and to this 
 extent was he also wise for himself. 
 
 Some critics would make the Shakespearean son- 
 nets wholly impersonal and allegorical, but modern 
 criticism, in its present stage, is disposed to regard 
 them as revelations. They are primarily a history 
 of his own struggle and reveal to us his wrest- 
 lings with an evil passion that held him enthralled 
 until he finally burst the bonds. Still, I think it 
 possible to read more than a personal history into 
 these sonnets when we understand their proper 
 character and meaning, and first, I would call atten- 
 tion to the construction of the sonnets. Each son- 
 net is not a thing apart. 
 
 Each sonnet is to a certain number of the son- 
 nets what a Spenserian stanza is to a whole canto 
 
 (91)
 
 92 ESSATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 in the " Fairie Queene. " We may therefore divide 
 up the sonnets of Shakespeare into a certain num- 
 ber of series, and first, we will make two great divi- 
 sions of the sonnets. The first division includes the 
 first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets. The sec- 
 ond division includes the remaining twenty-eight. 
 The first division is mainly occupied with a young 
 man, the second is chiefly concerned with a lady. 
 The first series are addressed to Lord Pembroke, a 
 youthful friend of eighteen. They run in cycles of 
 sonnet poems. The first cycle includes the first 
 twenty-seven sonnets, and is mainly devoted to urg- 
 ing the young man to marry. This has been an 
 enigma to critics, but in 1884 certain letters were 
 discovered in the record office of London which 
 show that at the very time of the writing of these 
 sonnets, the Earl and Countess of Pembroke were 
 negotiating a marriage with their son and Bridget 
 de Vere, granddaughter of the great Lord Bur- 
 leigh, and these sonnets were written to encourage 
 the young man to enter into the design of his 
 parents. 
 
 Again, scanning the sonnets, we find that they 
 reflect the spirit and the movements of the times 
 almost in the very language of the times. Here is 
 an instance in point. 
 
 The rebellion of Essex failed in February, 1601. 
 Writing prior to the event, Lord Bacon alluded to 
 "The devices of some that would put out your 
 majesty's lights. " One week after the event Cecil 
 wrote, "As the decline of the sun brings general dark- 
 ness, so her majesty's hurt is our continual night. "
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 93 
 
 Now here is how Shakespeare in one of his sonnets 
 alludes to the event : 
 
 44 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, 
 
 And the sad augurs mark their own presage ; 
 Incertainties now crown themselves assured, 
 And peace proclaims olives of endless age. " l 
 
 Now it is to be remembered that in the conven- 
 tional poetry of the day, Queen Elizabeth was called 
 Cynthia or the moon. In the lines just quoted, the 
 rebellion is named the eclipse, and thus it is that 
 Shakespeare has in his own way expressed what the 
 statesmen of the day expressed in their way. 
 
 There has been much conjecture regarding the 
 dark lady of the last division of the sonnets. 
 Recent research has placed it beyond doubt that the 
 lady alluded to is Mary Fitton, maid of honor to 
 Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 But if Shakespeare had no other purpose than to 
 speak of his friendship for a youth or for his in- 
 trigues with a lady, his sonnets would scarcely have 
 ever seen the light. It was customary in his day to 
 write sonnets dealing with affairs of love and to give 
 these sonnets an allegorical meaning, and so the 
 poet after the fashion of his time, and indeed of all 
 mediaeval love poetry, gave another and a deeper 
 meaning to these sonnets. We know how Dante 
 before him revealed to us the very process by which 
 he allegorized his love poems. We also know that 
 the love sonnets of Petrarcha will bear a spiritual 
 interpretation. 
 
 Now, the love of Shakespeare is certainly of 
 earth, earthly, but in his day nearly everything in 
 
 1 Sonnet 107.
 
 94 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 sonnet form was expressive of Platonic love, Platonic 
 sentiment and Platonic allegory. Shakespeare 
 caught up his spirit and it may safely be asserted 
 that he never would have given his sonnets to the 
 world were they not capable of a philosophical 
 meaning, which redeems their occasional grossness. 
 "Shakespeare," says Richard Simpson, "is al- 
 ways a philosopher but in his sonnets he is a 
 philosopher of love." The key to this higher sense 
 is to be found in the following lines taken from the 
 one hundred and forty-fourth sonnet : 
 
 41 Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
 
 Which like two spirits do suggest me still; 
 The better angel is a man right fair, 
 
 The worser spirit, a woman colored ill." 
 
 The latter series of the sonnets depicts the course 
 of vulgar love through its various moods of degrada- 
 tion and despair. The earlier series expresses the 
 love of friendship and of intellectual beauty. The 
 whole represents the struggle between the spiritual 
 and the carnal man. St. Augustine also found in 
 this world but two loves. " There are in this world," 
 he says, " but two loves. The love of God extend- 
 ing to the contempt of self, and the love of self 
 extending to the contempt of God." But, unlike 
 Augustine, Shakespeare does hot lead the record of 
 his struggle up to a magnificent canticle to God, 
 he does not raise himself up from the beauty that is 
 finite and fleeting to the beauty that is ever ancient 
 and ever new. Unlike Dante and Petrarcha, he 
 does not end his sonnet-cycles with praises of the 
 love of God and the glories of Mary through whom
 
 SHA KESPEA RE. 95 
 
 all womanly love is purified in the words of Goethe, 
 " The eternal Woman that leadeth us up." 
 
 Shakespeare is content with declaring that naught 
 can cool the ardors of love. The first part of 
 Shakespeare's sonnets may be compared to Tenny- 
 son's " In Memoriam." Both deal with friendship, 
 both sing the love of man for man. Shakespeare 
 sings friendship for the living, Tennyson sings friend- 
 ship for the dead. Tennyson, like Shakespeare, 
 while apparently dealing with personal impressions 
 and personal experiences, rises to a meaning that is 
 of universal application. 
 
 The love with which Arthur Hallam inspires 
 Tennyson, is like the loves inspired by Beatrice and 
 Laura, chastening and ennobling. We must confess 
 that in this respect Shakespeare does not rise to the 
 height of Tennyson, or Dante, or Petrarcha, or even 
 of his friend and admirer, Edmund Spenser. With 
 these remarks, we will leave the sonnets of Shakes- 
 peare. 
 
 Turn we now to the nature and character of 
 Shakespeare's genius. 
 
 Character of Shakespeare's Genius. 
 
 Whole libraries of books have been written about 
 that genius. Men and women have viewed it from 
 various standpoints, but, after all has been said, we 
 cannot yet conclude that men have found the full 
 measure of that genius. There are other subjects 
 about which one may easily exaggerate ; the subject 
 of Shakespeare's genius is beyond all power of ex- 
 aggeration. The greatest and the brightest and the 
 best things that one may say concerning it still fall
 
 96 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 short of the reality. This is high praise but it is well 
 merited. The more we consider the subject, the 
 more inadequate do we find words to express its full 
 meaning and bearing and the whole extent of its 
 greatness. 
 
 Consider the healthfulness of Shakespeare's gen- 
 ius. It is the healthfulness of Homer and Chaucer, 
 it is the healthfulness of open air and sunshine and 
 all that is bright and beautiful in nature. Therefore it 
 is that Shakespeare brought to London all the love 
 of nature that he had imbibed in his boyhood days 
 when roaming over the fields and through the woods 
 of Stratford-on-Avon. This love for nature caused 
 him to weave into all his poems and plays reminis- 
 cences of the beautiful country in which he had 
 lived. " Shakespeare's love for the country," says 
 Furnivall, "is one of his most striking characteris- 
 tics." His knowledge of, and the delight in, its 
 flowers and plants, its birds and beasts, horses and 
 dogs, its clouds and sunshine, its pastoral life and 
 fairy love, its sports, its men and maidens, he puts 
 into all his plays. 
 
 Again, consider the healthfulness of his genius in 
 its moral aspect. If he deals with morbid subjects, 
 if he causes fierce tragedy to "rage, he can also play 
 with lighter subjects and he is no less great in the 
 writing of comedy than in the creation of tragedy. 
 If he can move to tears, he is no less capable of mov- 
 ing to laughter. If he deals with what is dark and 
 dismal in life, sometimes in the same play, some- 
 times near the deepest tone of the tragedy, he
 
 SHA KESPEA RE. 97 
 
 indulges in a play of words and overflows with mirth 
 and humor. His is a thoroughly balanced genius. 
 It is the genius that understands human life in its 
 lighter and in its deeper aspects. 
 
 II. 
 
 Consider the thoughtfulness of his genius. By 
 reason of that thoughtfulness, one can always find a 
 deeper meaning back of the most commonplace ex- 
 pression. By reason of that thoughtfulness, he rises 
 above and beyond the mere impersonations of 
 the men and women of the play into a sphere of re- 
 search and questioning and reveals an ideal beyond 
 the realities he would depict. 
 
 " The presence," says Spedding, " of a spirit of 
 active and inquiring thought through every page of 
 his writings, is too evident to require any proof. 
 He has impressed no other of his mental qualities 
 on all his characters. This character colors every 
 one of them." 
 
 Take the very first play that he wrote, his 
 " Love's Labor's Lost." Apparently, it is a play of 
 cross purposes, a pleasant piece of foolery, but it is 
 none the less the most thoughtful contribution to 
 the solution of women's sphere in this world. This 
 play attempts to solve in the sixteenth century what 
 Tennyson's beautiful poem, " The Princess," would 
 solve in the nineteenth century, and therefore it is 
 that, no matter how that play is presented, whether 
 on the bare and unattractive boards as Shakespeare 
 himself had it presented or whether with all the 
 gorgeous scenery of our modern stages, there still 
 remains beyond the mere scenery, beyond the actors 
 E. M. 7
 
 98 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 who speak the words, an ideal world of thought and 
 inquiry and life. Again, as another illustration of 
 this thoughtfulness, let us take that play that em- 
 bodies more philosophy than any other of Shakes- 
 peare's, let us look at " Hamlet " for a moment. 
 Here, the poet takes the story of Saxo Grammati- 
 cus, an old Danish chronicler and a priest, a story 
 filled with great improbabilities, and he reconstructs 
 it and breathes into the dry bones of this old narra- 
 tive, spirit and life, and clothes its personalities with 
 flesh and blood and gives the world the noblest 
 soul study, the most peerless impersonation of 
 thought ever conceived by human brain. The ram- 
 bling story of the Danish monk becomes the master- 
 piece of " Hamlet." 
 
 III. 
 
 Consider the dramatic power of Shakespeare's 
 genius. It matters not what material he would lay 
 hands upon even as we have seen in the case of 
 " Hamlet." He wrought upon it and gave it a living 
 spirit and forthwith it became a thing of life stand- 
 ing apart, an ideal for all time. Not that Shakes- 
 peare was always perfect as a dramatic artist ; he had 
 many shortcomings, he had the artistic failings of 
 his age, but his failings, his imperfections, are those of 
 his age. His grasp of expression, his power of thought, 
 his perfect mastery of words these belong to Shake- 
 speare. They are part of his genius, and in these 
 and in many other respects he rose above his age. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Consider his power of characterization. His 
 power is as extensive as human life itself. Indeed,
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 99 
 
 there is no form of human life that the poet has not 
 represented. High and low, rich and poor, men and 
 women, persons shapely and persons deformed, 
 persons vicious and persons virtuous, and in the 
 mouth of each he has placed the appropriate word 
 that characterizes him for all time. Men in whom 
 thought interferes with action, as " Hamlet;" men 
 whose ambition overleaps its limits and leads them 
 into great crimes, as " Macbeth;" hardened villains like 
 " lago " and " Edmund;" unsexed women like " Lady 
 Macbeth," " Goneril," and " Regan;" and then ideal 
 men full of promise and hope like " Romeo," great 
 like " Brutus;" ideal women, beautiful and admirable 
 in every respect who stand out in the pages of lit- 
 erature the impersonation of all that is lovely in 
 womanhood like "Isabella" and "Rosaline" and 
 " Portia" and " Cymbeline" and " Juliet." 
 
 Youth and old age, men hating and men loving, 
 characters in every position of life, characters repre- 
 senting every mood of life they are all to be found 
 within the pages of Shakespeare. There is no phase 
 of character that remains unrepresented, there is no 
 mood of the soul that is not expressed, there is no 
 degree of passion that is not put into fitting words. 
 The plays of Shakespeare constitute the whole world 
 in miniature. They draw from human nature their 
 very soul and essence. His characters are rounded, 
 complete. 
 
 Note especially the appropriateness of his lan- 
 guage. The words he places in the mouths of 
 the grave diggers are far different from the words 
 he places in the mouth of the courtier, " Polonius."
 
 100 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Even the character of " Caliban " has a language 
 all its own. Critics are wont to find fault with 
 this expression or with that in the language of 
 Shakespeare, but it will be found that the language he 
 uses is invariably suited to the character in whose 
 mouth he places it. If the character is low or vul- 
 gar, it is made to speak in terms in keeping with its 
 want of education. If the character is stately, 
 courteous, the language is found to rise in stateliness 
 and courteousness. If the character is a noble char- 
 acter, speaking out of the fullness of a noble heart, 
 then does the language of Shakespeare rise to its 
 highest pitch of perfection. 
 
 V. 
 
 Consider the religious bearing of his genius. 
 Religion is the very essence of Shakespeare's 
 thought. It permeates that thought as the air or 
 ether permeates things in this world. Books have 
 been written going to show how intimately Shakes- 
 peare knew his Bible and how beautifully and aptly 
 he applied its grandest ideas and sometimes its very 
 expressions. God, conscience, sense of responsi- 
 bility these are all the pride in the characters that 
 Shakespeare has created. Even his villainous char- 
 acters know that they are doing wrong and the wrong- 
 doing recoils on their heads. Religion, we are told, 
 is a fundamental habitude of his mind, and religion, 
 as one of the great facts of the world, is more defi- 
 nitely apprehended by him than either by Goethe or 
 George Eliot. Shakespeare never loses sight of 
 the sense of right and wrong. The evildoers in his
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 101 
 
 plays are wrong and know they are wrong and gen- 
 erally suffer the penalty of their evildoing. He is 
 equally careful throughout his plays to represent 
 virtue amid trial and temptation and suffering, find- 
 ing in the approval of its conscience its highest and 
 noblest reward. 
 
 The Growth of Shakespeare's Genius. 
 
 It is a mistaken notion to think that Shakes- 
 peare's mind did not pass through various stages 
 of growth and development. His mind was subject 
 to the same laws as the mind of every human being. 
 It had its period of immaturity when the poet was ex- 
 ercising, so to speak, his " prentice hand " and acquir- 
 ing that artistic deftness for which he became noted 
 in his more mature productions. Modern critics 
 have sought to divide the period of Shakespeare's 
 literary career into four distinct parts, each having 
 some characteristic that distinguishes it from the 
 others. Let us follow them in this respect. It will 
 help to bring Shakespeare a little nearer. It will 
 prepare us to read his writing with greater profit. 
 
 I. 
 
 And first let us consider the first period of his 
 literary life. It is the springtime when he was at 
 the same time laying the foundations for greater 
 efforts and giving evidence of his superior genius. 
 His first period extends from the year 1588 to the 
 year of 1 594. 
 
 The plays of this period are : " Love's Labor's 
 Lost" (1588), "Comedy of Errors" (1589), "Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream" (1590), "The Two
 
 102 ESSA1"S MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Gentlemen of Verona " (1591), " Romeo and Juliet " 
 (1592), the poem of " Venus and Adonis" (1593), 
 the poem of "Lucrece" (1594), and during this 
 period it was that he wrote the following historical 
 plays: "Richard II." (1593), the three parts of 
 " Henry VI. " (1593-94), and " Richard III. " (1594). 
 This period is distinguished by certain character- 
 istics, some of which are mechanical and belong to 
 the style of composition, others are intellectual and 
 express peculiar traits in the plays. Of the mechan- 
 ical traits, we may mention the following: first, 
 rhymes abound in the early plays. As the poet 
 advances in years, he drops the use of rhyme, and 
 so we find in his first authentic play, " Love's 
 Labor's Lost, " one thousand and twenty-eight 
 rhymes, whereas, in his " Winter's Tale, " which was 
 written in 1611, there is not a single rhyme. An- 
 other mechanical characteristic of the verse is that 
 in his early plays there is a more regular structure 
 of line. The poet is more careful to have the exact 
 number of syllables, whereas, in the later plays, his 
 lines are more irregular. The third characteristic is 
 that in his early plays the large majority of his lines 
 have pauses at the end, whereas, in his later plays 
 the lines run into each other without pause. In 
 "Love's Labor's Lost," for Instance, only one in 
 18.14 lines is without pause, whereas, in "Winters' 
 Tale," every line out of 2.12 lines, is without pause. 
 Another characteristic of the early plays is the fre- 
 quency of puns and conceits. These things were in 
 the air in Shakespeare's day and he at first followed 
 the fashion in using them in abundance. But, as his
 
 SHA KESPEA RE. 103 
 
 mind grew more mature, and as he attained greater 
 mastery over his art, he found other and better 
 things than the mere play upon words to adorn his 
 pages. Again, in the early plays we find the wit and 
 imagery drawn out to a length that fatigues. Also, 
 as a rule, the early plays are furnished with a clown 
 whose presence constitutes no essential portion of 
 the play. Furthermore, in nearly all the early plays 
 we find a scolding or shrewish woman. In his more 
 mature works, the characters are more natural, play 
 their parts with greater ease, and the poet's fertile 
 mind was able to do without the mere stock in trade 
 of the stage plays of his day, but we must not 
 underestimate the earlier productions. Even when 
 the poet copies, he improves. 
 
 Swinburne has well said in allusion to some of 
 these early efforts : 
 
 "What is due to Shakespeare and to him alone 
 is the honor of having embroidered on the naked old 
 canvas of comic action those flowers of elegiac beauty 
 which vivified and diversified the scenes of Plautusas 
 reproduced by the art of Shakespeare." 
 
 In this light and lovely work of the youth of 
 Shakespeare we find for the first time that sweet 
 admixture of farce with fancy, of lyric charm with 
 comic effect, which recurs so often in his later work 
 from the date of " As You Like It, " to the date of 
 " Winter's Tale. " 
 
 Again, when we consider the power, the grasp, 
 with which "Richard III." is treated, we must in- 
 deed marvel at the giant force of this young dramatic 
 Hercules. " Richard III." is a man without a con- 
 science, with all the odds of life against him. He
 
 104 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 spares nothing that comes in the way of his ambi- 
 tious designs. He recognizes no bond of life as too 
 sacred to withold his sacrilegious hand. He mur- 
 ders, he cheats, he lies, he deceives, he plays a hypo- 
 crite, he stoops to the vilest means to attain his 
 purpose, and when, in the high-time of all his crimes, 
 he seems upon the verge of grasping the end of all 
 his ambitions, his crimes turn upon him and over- 
 whelm, bear him away from the object of his ambi- 
 tion. All this is told in the play with consum- 
 mate art. 
 
 II. 
 
 We come to the second period of Shakespeare's 
 literary life. This period dates from 1596 to 1601. It 
 is the period of artistic maturity. There is more 
 mechanical freedom in the structure of his sentences. 
 Every touch of his pen reveals the master hand. The 
 first play of this period is the " Merchant of Venice, " 
 written in 1 596. I will not dwell upon the beauties 
 and the almost perfect language that abound in that 
 play. In the next year, 1597, we find the poet tak- 
 ing up an old play and retouching it, cutting out 
 here, adding there, rewriting some passages, insert- 
 ing one or two additional characters and pro- 
 ducing the play now known as "Taming of the 
 Shrew. " 
 
 During this period the poet's sense of humor 
 asserts itself in that masterpiece, the impersonation 
 of all the roguery and folly of the day : the char- 
 acter of Sir John Falstaff. This character runs 
 through the first and second part of " Henry IV., " 
 and also through the " Merry Wives of Windsor. "
 
 SHA KESPEA RE. 105 
 
 Tradition has it that Queen Elizabeth having 
 witnessed the play of "Henry IV. " made a special 
 request that the play be written representing "Fal- 
 staff " in love, and the story goes that within two 
 weeks Shakespeare prepared " Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, " but in the plays of Shakespeare love is a 
 holy end a sacred thing, and he could not represent 
 the sensual, drinking, vile-mouthed old soldier, as in 
 love. The man was too hardened to love anybody 
 but himself, and so Shakespeare was content to show 
 the virtue of the wives of Windsor at the expense and 
 humiliation of the rascally behavior of Falstaff. To 
 this period also belongs the play of " Henry V., " 
 written in 1599. 
 
 During the second period Shakespeare wrote of 
 love in its lighter mood and gave us the flashing 
 dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing" (1599- 
 1600). "As You Like It," written about 1600, 
 transports the reader to a far-off world where the 
 time fleets carelessly. The bright and pleasant char- 
 acter of " Rosalind " is the central figure of the 
 play, but here for the first time enters a new note. 
 It is a note of sadness which is the result of expe- 
 rience. This note is struck by the melancholy 
 " Jacques, " but again the poet recovers himself and 
 " Twelfth Night, " written the year following, is a 
 play of brightness and happiness without a single 
 note of sadness, but the next play, written 1601- 
 1602, "All 's Well That Ends Well," has a visible 
 note of sadness running through it, and this sad note 
 also runs into the sonnets, many of which were writ- 
 ten during this second period.
 
 106 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 III. 
 
 We have now arrived at the third period or the 
 third stage of Shakespeare's literary development, 
 and we find it a period shrouded in sorrow and dark- 
 ness. It would seem as though some great catas- 
 trophe had for a while enveloped Shakespeare and 
 revolutionized his whole nature and shut out the 
 sunshine of life and revealed to him nothing but the 
 deepest depths of human passion and human woe 
 and human misery and human crime. This period 
 extends from 1601 to 1608, and yet we find that at 
 this very period Shakespeare was a prosperous man 
 who had already attained a position in the literary 
 and social world. He had renovated the fallen for- 
 tunes of his father, he had purchased extensive 
 property in his native town, he was honored by the 
 leading wits and courtiers of London, but, in 1601, 
 as we already found, when speaking of the sonnets, 
 was the rebellion of Essex, and Essex was the friend 
 of Shakespeare, and this rebellion scattered many of 
 Shakespeare's friends. 
 
 Essex perished on the scaffold, Southampton was 
 sent to the Tower, Pembroke was banished from 
 court. Some think that Shakespeare may have been 
 involved in the rebellion of Essex, but we think not. 
 Indeed, a sonnet that we have already quoted speak- 
 ing of the atmosphere being again clear, would seem 
 to indicate that Shakespeare stood without the po- 
 litical intrigues of that day. The play of "Julius 
 Caesar" was written in the eventful year of 1601. It 
 has a political significance. It shows how ill-ad- 
 vised rebellion ends in the defeat and destruction
 
 SHA KESPEA RE. 107 
 
 of those who undertake such, no matter what may 
 be their personal virtues. "Brutus" stands forth 
 among Shakespeare's noblest creations as a man, 
 but even the integrity of a Brutus cannot justify 
 a rebellion without sufficient cause. This play is 
 followed by the great tragedy of " Hamlet. " 
 
 " Hamlet," though written in the year 1602, must 
 have been such a life-study with Shakespeare as 
 " Faust" was with Goethe, and as we cannot pos- 
 sibly conceive of Goethe's life except as having the 
 great work of " Faust " entwined therewith, even so 
 Shakespeare, without the play of " Hamlet," would 
 be an enigma. For years must the poet have been 
 brooding over the materials of this great play. For 
 years must he have been gathering and selecting his 
 best thoughts to put into this great work, and now, 
 when desolation and ruin seem to surround him, and 
 his personal troubles begin to crowd upon him, was 
 the opportune moment to write this philosophic 
 study of life which we call the play of " Hamlet." 
 For the author, as well as for the hero, the times 
 were out of joint and Shakespeare threw the whole 
 force of his genius into one great effort to solve the 
 problem of life and the mysterious movements of 
 moral action, of moral force and moral retribution. 
 
 " Hamlet " is a dark, dark tragedy, speaking to 
 us of murder and adultery and madness, all the out- 
 come of a lustful passion unchecked. To this same 
 period belongs the tragic comedy of " Measure for 
 Measure," in which is finely represented the bare- 
 ness of trust betrayed and plighted troth foresworn. 
 Then came those two powerful tragedies of
 
 108 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 "Othello" and "Macbeth," in which we find the 
 heroes of both trustful and well-meaning, till they 
 listened to the tempter's voice, and then we behold 
 them rapidly rushed to their own ruin, the victims 
 of evil counselors. These are followed by the awful 
 tragedy of "Lear," wherein the wickedness of an 
 old man draws down harrowing miseries upon his 
 own head and upon the heads of those around him. 
 Then come the horrible, sickening tragedies of 
 " Troilus and Cressida," the most revolting play in 
 the whole group, and " Anthony and Cleopatra," in 
 both of which the terrible effects of a lustful passion 
 are exposed in all the nakedness and all the horror 
 of reality. Finally, to this same period belong 
 " Coriolanus " and " Timon," in which ingratitude is 
 principally represented. All these plays reflect the 
 dark and troublous times through which Shakespeare 
 was then passing. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fourth period reveals a better state of affairs. 
 The clouds seem to have passed. The poet has sur- 
 vived the slanders and the ingratitudes of men and 
 has risen above sin and sorrow, into a more peaceful 
 atmosphere. This period extends from 1609 to 
 1613. Then it was that the poet gave us " Per- 
 icles," "The Tempest," " Cymbeline," and the 
 " Winter's Tale." In 1613, he wrote conjointly with 
 Fletcher the play of " Henry VIII." All these 
 plays reflect a spirit of reconciliation after misunder- 
 standings and sufferings, and great wrongs that have 
 been inflicted. They were written in the new home 
 that Shakespeare had made unto himself in Strat-
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 109 
 
 ford-upon-Avon. They breathe afresh the country 
 air and reflect anew the country scenes that he had 
 brought into his earlier plays, and then for three 
 years the poet was silent, resting from his great 
 work, and the words of " Prospero " in the conclud- 
 ing lines of " The Tempest " seem to be the last 
 words that Shakespeare addressed to the world. 
 
 44 Now my charms are all o'erthrown, 
 And what strength I have's my own. . . . 
 And my ending is despair, 
 Unless I be relieved by prayer, 
 Which pierces so, 
 That it assails 
 
 Mercy itself and frees all faults. 
 As you from crimes would pardoned be, 
 Let your indulgence set me free." 
 
 And with this appeal to us for forgiveness of his 
 failings and shortcomings and for prayer to the 
 mercy seat of heaven, did Shakespeare die on his 
 birthday in the year 1616. Thus, were the life and 
 the life-work of this great poet rounded out with a 
 completeness that is seldom to be found in the his- 
 tory of man. He had finished his work. He rested 
 in the evening of life. He died near the place of 
 his birth and he left the world the richer for that 
 last inheritance that he bequeathed it in that book 
 known as " The Works of William Shakespeare."
 
 OF THE SPIRlTdAL 
 SENSE 
 
 (in)
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 I. 
 
 I. /fiifHE human soul is the informing principle 
 of the human body ; it is one and simple 
 a monad without quantity or extension as all 
 spiritual substances are one, simple and unextended ; 
 incomplete in itself inasmuch as it must needs be 
 united to the body in order that it may fully exercise 
 all its functions ; immaterial, and therefore void of in- 
 ertness ; ever active, ever exercising its activity. 
 According to the mode of its action do we speak of 
 it as having this faculty or that corresponding to 
 the function which it performs. But it is still the 
 same soul, one and undivided, that thinks and feels, 
 that wills and moves and is moved. And when we 
 say that it has certain faculties we simply mean that 
 it exercises certain modes of action by placing itself 
 in certain definite relations with certain objects of 
 thought. 1 Faculties of the soul are therefore the 
 
 1 A friend, in reading over the proofsheets, calls my atten- 
 tion to the following passage in St. Thomas, in which the dis- 
 tinction between the soul and its faculties is clearly laid down : 
 Manifestum est quod ipsa essentia animae non est principium 
 immediatum suarum operationum; sed operatur mediantibus 
 principiis accidentalibus. Unde potentiae animae non sunt 
 ipsa essentia animae, sed proprietates ejus. ("De Anima." 
 XII.) The distinction is important. It is only in God that 
 act and essence are one, for God is most pure actuality. But the 
 soul being one and simple, and therefore void of parts, is the 
 principle of all its activities ; whether mediately or immediately, 
 it is outside the scope of this address to discuss. I am 
 merely laying down, in broadest outline, the soul's operations. 
 E. M. 8 (113)
 
 114 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 soul itself viewed in the performance of particular 
 lines of action, and they become more or less de- 
 veloped according to the degree of activity exer- 
 cised in some one or other direction. Now it is the 
 soul analyzing, comparing, inferring, coordinating, 
 passing from known principles to the discovery of 
 unknown truths; viewed in this relation, the soul is 
 called Reason, and, under certain aspects, the 
 Illative Sense. 1 Now it is the soul deciding this 
 to be a good act, and resolving to perform it, or 
 thinking that other to be bad, and avoiding it ; so 
 acting, it is called the Moral Sense. Again it is the 
 soul moved to pity by the pathos of a scene painted 
 on the canvas or described in the poem ; as the 
 subject of this emotion it is called the Esthetic 
 Sense. Finally, it is the soul leaving the noise and 
 distraction of the outside world, entering into itself 
 and realizing its own misery and weakness, and 
 seeking the help and strength which it finds not in 
 itself, where they alone are to be found, in the 
 God from Whom it comes and on Whom it de- 
 pends ; in this highest and noblest action it is called 
 the Spiritual Sense. 8 
 
 1 " This power of judging about truth and error in concrete 
 matters, I call the Illative Sense." . . . "The Illative Sense 
 has its exercise in the starting points as well as in the final re- 
 sults of thought." Cardinal Newman. "Grammar of As- 
 sent," chap. ix. This chapter is an important contribution 
 to the Philosophy of Thought. 
 
 2 This corresponds rather with the irian? of Clement of 
 Alexandria, than with the Sovrintelligenza of Gioberti. On 
 the use of this latter term in the sense of Gioberti, see an 
 article by the author in the International Review for March, 
 1876, on The Nature and Synthetic Principle of Philosophy, 
 pp. 204-206 [republished in "Essays Philosophical," D. H. 
 McBride & Co., Chicago, 1896. ED.].
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 115 
 
 2. The Reason is nourished by intellectual 
 truth ; the Moral Sense is strengthened by the 
 practice of good deeds ; the Esthetic Sense is culti- 
 vated by the correcting and refining of taste for 
 things beautiful and sublime ; the Spiritual Sense is 
 fostered by the spirit of piety and devotion. This 
 fourfold activity of the soul may be said to cover 
 the whole of its operations. Over all, and the root 
 and principle of all, giving life and being, aim and 
 direction, weight and measure and intrinsic worth 
 to all, is the soul's own determining power, which 
 we call the Will. In the harmonious development 
 of all four activities is the complete culture of the 
 soul to be effected. The exclusive exercise of any 
 one is detrimental to the rest. The exclusive 
 exercise of the Reason dwarfs the other functions of 
 the soul. It dries up all taste for art and letters 
 and starves out the spirit of piety and devotion. 
 In the constant development of the Esthetic Sense, 
 one may refine the organs of sense and cultivate the 
 sensibility, but if it is done to the exclusion of 
 rigid reasoning and the emotions of the superior 
 soul, it degenerates into sentimentalism and cor- 
 ruption of heart. So also with exclusive Pietism ; 
 it narrows the range of thought, fosters the spirit 
 of bigotry and dogmatism, and makes man either 
 an extravagant dreamer or an extreme fanatic. 
 Only when goodness and truth walk hand in hand, 
 and the heart grows apace with the intellect, does 
 the soul develop into strong and healthy action. 
 
 3. Again, natural truth is the object of Reason ; 
 natural goodness, the object of the Moral Sense;
 
 116 JSSSATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 natural beauty, whether in the physical, moral, or 
 intellectual order, the object of the Esthetic Sense. 
 Herein I include as a natural truth, knowable by 
 the light of Reason, the fact first and supreme 
 above all other facts, that there is a God. 1 Now, 
 the Spiritual Sense takes in all the truth, goodness 
 and beauty both of the natural and revealed orders, 
 and views them in the light of Faith. The same 
 intellectual light still glows, but added thereto is 
 the splendor of God's countenance. 2 And so the 
 vision of the Spiritual sense passes from the natural 
 up to the plane of the supernatural world. 
 
 II. 
 
 I. Here the Agnostic objects and with the 
 utmost confidence assures us that there is no Super- 
 natural order. He tells you that he has proved 
 Christ a myth, the Gospels clever forgeries and 
 Christianity a huge imposition. He tells you it is 
 all settled beyond controversy; only intellectual 
 babes and sucklings think differently to-day. 3 And 
 in the name of humanity he loves humanity 
 
 1 Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verunr, Creatorem et 
 Dominum nostrum per ea, quae facta sunt, natural! rationis 
 humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse ; anathema sit. 
 " Constitutio Dogmatica de Fide Catholica." Can. II. i. 
 
 8 Signatum est super nos lumen' vultus tui, Domine. Ps. 
 iv. 7. Illuminet vultum suum super nos. Ps. Ixvi. z. 
 
 3 Schrader, in the following words, shows how much is 
 involved in this assertion: " Sed quod horribilius est his jam 
 impuris diebus nostris reservatum fuit, quibus ' spurius qui- 
 dam egressus est vir' contra Dominum Nostrum Jesum 
 Christum castamque sponsam ejus ecclesiam." He is here 
 alluding to Renan. " Infandum scelus, quod consummatum 
 non fuit, nisi negate data opera exclusoque i. ordine super- 
 naturalium, hinc 2. ordine divino; turn 3. illorum discrimine
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 117 
 
 exceedingly well and in the name of truth he 
 reveres truth he begs you to set aside all such 
 silly notions as that there exists a God, or that His 
 Providence directs the affairs of men, or that you 
 have a soul. This is indeed a new dispensation. 
 It is the gospel of negation, and the Agnostic is its 
 missionary. But in the name of whom or of what 
 does he come? Assuredly, not in the name of 
 common sense, for the common sense of the whole 
 world holds with absolute certainty the very op- 
 posite. Not in the name of revelation, for he 
 denies the possibility of a revealed religion. Not 
 in the name of human authority, for he recognizes 
 no authority beyond himself. Not in the name of 
 reason, for in bringing himself to this conviction, 
 he ignores the primary laws of all reason. " It is," 
 says Cardinal Newman, " the highest wisdom to 
 accept truth of whatever kind, wherever it is clearly 
 ascertained to be such, though there be difficulty 
 
 ab ordine humano ; atque 4. tandem ipso everso ordine human- 
 itatis et ejusdem 5. ab ordine brutescentium discrimine negate 
 atque everso. Scilicet negatio copulationis supernaturalis 
 naturalisque ordinis in praesentiarum ad negationem ducit 
 : atqui haec negatio attentatio est 
 
 I. in totum historicum ordinem, qui nunc pendet a Christo 
 
 centre : 
 
 II. in universum ordinem logicum, qui nunc pendet a 
 
 Christo perfectae veritatis doctore : 
 
 III. in universum ordinem ethicum, qui nunc pendet a 
 
 Christo summa morum norma : 
 
 IV. in universum ordinem juridicum, qui nunc pendet a 
 
 Christo Domino supremo legumlatore : 
 
 V. et in ipsum tandem ordinem artis, qui jam pendet a 
 
 Christo divino pulchritudinis exemplari. Videlicet 
 a Christo pendet tota humanitatis dignitas in coelo 
 et in terra ! " dementis Schrader, S. J. " De Trip- 
 lici Ordine Commentarius," pp. 210, an.
 
 118 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 in adjusting it with other known truth." 1 Now 
 here is where the Agnostic errs. He has a favorite 
 theory, a pet notion of his own. It is a mere hy- 
 pothesis that may or may not be true. But he 
 finds difficulty in adjusting it with truths that 
 come home to the highest order of intelligence with 
 an irresistible force. So much the worse for both 
 truth and intellect. His pet conception must 
 stand, and the universally received truths may van- 
 ish into oblivion. Of course, his conclusions cannot 
 be broader than his premises. The elements he 
 drops out in the one will naturally be missing in 
 the other. Eliminating the Supernatural order, as 
 a consequence there remains in the visible process 
 of his reasoning only the natural order. 
 
 2. Withal, the Supernatural order exists. It 
 secretly enters into the Agnostic's reasoning and 
 becomes a disturbing element in his calculations. 
 He may ignore it; he may neglect it; he may deny 
 it ; but he cannot destroy it. In moral, social and 
 historical discussions, it crops out at the most un- 
 expected moments, or awaits him at the end of his 
 speculations and forces him into monstrous para- 
 doxes." And, strange to say, the Agnostic does 
 not perceive how illogical he is. He even becomes 
 aggressive, and boldly asserts that in recognizing 
 this momentous element in human thought and 
 human action, we thereby lose all claim to science. 
 Now, science, as you are taught, is a methodical 
 
 1 " Idea of a University." Lecture on Christianity and 
 Scientific Investigation, p. 462. 
 
 2 For instances, see Mr. Mallock's work, " Is Life Worth 
 Living?" chap. ix.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 119 
 
 treatment of facts according to given principles. 
 By means of what principles and according to what 
 method does the Agnostic arrive at this conclusion? 
 So far as he has a principle at all, it is reducible to 
 this, that what the study of matter does not reveal 
 is a dream, a shadow ; ' there is no reality beyond 
 the phenomena testified to by consciousness and 
 the senses.* That is to say, the Agnostic builds up 
 his materialistic theories upon a principle made ex- 
 pressly to exclude that which he wishes to ignore. 
 Is it just? Is it scientific? And as for method, 
 the Agnostic has none. He holds aloof from all 
 religious thoughts and remains in a state of apathy 
 towards all spiritual issues. He may or may not 
 have a soul ; it is unknowable. There may or may 
 not be a God; He also is unknowable. All such 
 questions he regards with sublime indifference. Is 
 this an attitude worthy of a responsible being? 
 
 3. But the Agnostic will reply that he has no 
 other evidence for the Supernatural than the Super- 
 natural itself, and that he is asked to believe in this 
 unseen world without being able to perceive, or 
 weigh or measure it. True it is that the evidence 
 of the Supernatural is the Supernatural itself. But 
 it is not true that it may not be perceived and esti- 
 mated. Has the Agnostic ever seen material force ? 
 And yet he believes m it and calculates some of its 
 results as displayed in chemical, electric or other 
 material manifestations. Even so may the presence 
 
 1 Leslie Stephen, "Dreams and Realities." 
 1 "The Value of Life;" A reply to Mr. Mallock's work, 
 p. 73.
 
 120 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 of that mysterious power called Grace be detected. 
 It shapes the lives of men in a distinct mould. The 
 light of Faith and the love of God and the peace of 
 heart that dwell in those living under its influence, 
 leaven their every act and word and thought, and 
 give their virtues a tone and character that are 
 lacking in the exercise of the same virtues by the 
 natural man. Donoso Cortes was one of the most 
 brilliant intellects of this age. When a young man 
 he was carried away by the rationalism and super- 
 ficial philosophy of the eighteenth century, and 
 grew cold towards the religion of his childhood and 
 his mother. Proud of his genius, he dreamed only 
 of worldly greatness. " I was," he writes to his 
 friend Montalembert, "possessed of a literary fanati- 
 cism, a fanaticism for expression, a fanaticism for 
 beauty of form." ' But the death of a brother 
 whom he loved dearly, and the intimate acquaint- 
 ance of a good and virtuous friend in whose ex- 
 ample he discerned the action of grace, caused him 
 to enter into himself. His eyes were opened. He 
 recognized the supernatural character of his friend's 
 virtues ; grace began to work in his own soul, and 
 led him to become an edifying Christian and an 
 uncompromising champion of the Church. He 
 thus tells the story of his conversion. 
 
 " During my stay in Paris I lived intimately with 
 
 M , and this man overcame me solely by the life 
 
 he led. I had known righteous and good men, or 
 rather I had known only righteous and good men ; 
 still between the righteousness and goodness of 
 
 ^euvres. Ed. Louis Veuillot. T. I. Int., p. 14.
 
 ; CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 121 
 
 other men and the righteousness and goodness of 
 my friend, I found an immeasurable distance. This 
 difference was not one of degree simply ; it was one 
 of kinds of righteousness in all respects distinct. 
 And upon reflection I clearly saw the difference to 
 be this, that the righteousness of others was natural, 
 whereas that of this man was supernatural or Chris- 
 tian" ' 
 
 And commenting upon his conversion, he adds: 
 
 "As you see, neither talent nor reason had any 
 influence in bringing it about; with my weak talent 
 and my sickly reason, death might have stricken me 
 down before faith would have come to me. The 
 mystery of my conversion is a mystery of tender- 
 ness. I did not love God, and God wished me to 
 love Him; I love Him now, and because I love Him 
 I am converted." 2 
 
 These are beautiful words revealing the beauti- 
 ful simplicity of a great soul. And so, as clearly 
 as in St. Paul and St. Augustine, may we perceive 
 in the good and holy men of our own day, grace 
 abounding. 
 
 4. No; the supernatural world is a reality as 
 real as and in a sense more real than the nat- 
 ural world. He who denies or ignores it, under- 
 stands not himself nor humanity nor the universe 
 in which he finds himself. The human heart knows 
 neither rest nor happiness till it becomes sanctified 
 in this mysterious world. Therefore it is, that an 
 Augustine will cry out from the depths of his own 
 experience : " Lord, Thou hast made us for Thy- 
 self, and our heart is restless till it reposes in 
 
 1 Oeuvres. Ed. Louis Veuillot. T. II., p. 120. 
 1 Ibid., p. 121.
 
 122 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Thee." 1 And with no less conviction does Spi- 
 noza lay it down as a positive truth that the per- 
 fect understanding, which with him is equivalent 
 to the life of the intellect mentis vita is naught 
 else than the apprehension of God and of the 
 attributes and acts which follow from His Divine 
 Nature. 2 Where, then, is the wisdom of denying 
 a fact so palpable to men standing at such oppo- 
 site poles of thought as Spinoza and St. Augus- 
 tine? Those professing such wisdom may indeed 
 be possessed of knowledge varied and practical in 
 things material and of the senses, but concerning 
 things spiritual and of the Supernatural order they 
 live in blind ignorance. It is to be hoped that it is 
 not also willful ignorance. 
 
 III. 
 
 i. Let us draw nearer to this mysterious world 
 of grace, and study the secret of that power by 
 which it subdues the fiercest natures and controls 
 the most brilliant intellects. Not only is the 
 Supernatural a fact, and an insurmountable one, 
 but it contains in itself the reason for the existence 
 of the natural; for whilst it supposes the natural 
 in the order of ideas, in the order of things it 
 exists prior thereto, and regulates the condition of 
 its existence. In the Word were all things created. 
 God spoke and they were. Their ideals dwelt 
 in that eternal Word. From all eternity, through 
 all time, or rather in a perpetual Now for there is 
 
 1 Domine, fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum 
 donee requiescat in te. " Conf." Lib. VII. 
 1 " Ethics." P. IV. App., 4.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 123 
 
 neither past nor future in God 1 God contem- 
 plates those ideals and the reason for their exist- 
 ence in the Word. For the Word is the conception 
 of the Divine Intelligence.* It is God conceiving 
 Himself. And in this Divine Conception the 
 Father recognizes Himself, and the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost, and all other things contained in 
 the Divine Intelligence. Therefore all knowledge, 
 all wisdom, all created things are in the Word and 
 exist by reason of the Word.' 
 
 2. And so, St. John, in the sublime hymn with 
 which he opens his Gospel of love, reveals to us 
 this Word as co-eternal with the Father, the One 
 by Whom all things were made, and the source of 
 their life and their light. He, the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved, and who was privileged to rest his 
 head upon the bosom of the Incarnate Word, drew 
 therefrom the secret of His Divinity and Person- 
 ality, and with the directness and simplicity of 
 genius and inspiration, broke through the clouds in 
 which human thought had enveloped that Divine 
 
 1 Plato expresses this distinction very clearly : "And the 
 terms it tvas r6 r'f/v and it will be rb r'earcu are gener- 
 ated forms of time, which we have wrongly and unawares 
 transferred to an eternal essence." Timaeus. XIV., I. 
 
 * Dicitur autem proprie Verbum in Deo, secundum quod 
 Verbum significat conceptum intellectus. "Summa" S. 
 Thomae. Pars. I., Quaest. XXXIV., Art. I. Id enim quod 
 intellectus in concipiendo format, est Verbum. Intellectus 
 autem ipse, secundum quod est per speciem intelligibilem in 
 actu, consideratur absolute. Ibid, ad 2. 
 
 8 Sic ergo uni soli personae in divinis convenit dici, eo 
 modo quo dicitur Verbum. Eo vere modo quo dicitur res in 
 verbo intellecta, cuilibet personae convenit dici Pater enim 
 intelligendo se, et Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum, et omnia alia 
 quae ejus scientia continentur, concipit Verbum ; ut sic tota 
 Trinitas Verbo dicatur, et etiam oinnis creatura. Ibid, ad 3.
 
 124 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Word, and at once and forever gave full, clear and 
 distinct expression to that which men hitherto had 
 only stammered : 
 
 1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
 
 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 
 
 3. All things were made by Him : and without 
 Him was made nothing that was made. 
 
 4. In Him was Life and the Life was the light 
 of men" 1 
 
 Thus it is that in this Divine Person, the Word, 
 we find the cause and the motive for our existence. 
 Here is the source of our life, our intelligence, our 
 very being. The light of our created reason, by 
 which we are enabled to contemplate this great 
 primary truth, is a spark kindled at the focus of the 
 Uncreated Reason. 
 
 1 St. John, chap. i. The Abbe" Baunard, in his life of the 
 Evangelist, thus sums up the philosophic significance of these 
 sublime words, as against the errors that were then rife : 
 
 To the Word of the Gnostics, created and born in time, 
 the Evangelist opposes the eternity of the word : In the begin- 
 ning -was the Word. 
 
 To the Word of Plato and of the Academy, a superior but 
 purely ideal conception of the human understanding, the 
 Evangelist opposes the reality of the Word and His Divinity : 
 And the Word -was God. 
 
 To the Word of Philo, simple instrument of God in the 
 creative work, the Evangelist opposes the creation by the 
 Word, principle of all that is : Everything -was made by Him. 
 
 To the Dualist system, setting forth two concurring prin- 
 ciples of things, the Evangelist opposes the Word, sole prin- 
 ciple and sole creator of every contingent being: All things 
 were made by Him; and without Him -was made nothing that 
 was made. 
 
 Finally, to Docetism rejecting the reality of the flesh of 
 Christ, the Evangelist opposed the astonishing formula: And 
 the Word -was made flesh. "Life of the Apostle St. John.'' 
 Eng. tr., p. 301.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 125 
 
 3. Nor is this all. The creative act, being one 
 of love as well as of power and intelligence, had 
 for its end none other than God himself. But how 
 raise up the infinitely impotent into participation 
 with the glory of the Infinitely Potent? How give 
 such importance to the infinitely small that it may 
 not be lost in the Infinitely Great? For how 
 immense so ever the finite may be in itself, when 
 compared with the infinite it becomes as nothing. 
 There is no term of comparison ; the ratio of one 
 to the other cannot be expressed. 1 Divine Love, 
 without obligation or necessity, acting with the full 
 freedom of omnipotence, determined the solution 
 of the mystery. The Word in His Divine Infin- 
 itude, touches the finite and takes upon Himself as 
 the most fitting in the whole of Creation 1 our 
 human nature: "And the Word was made flesh, 
 and dwelt amongst us" By this mysterious act, 
 the chasm between the finite creation and the In- 
 finite Creator became bridged over; human nature 
 was raised up into the sphere of the Supernatural, 
 and all created things were made participators in 
 the glory of the Divinity. Man was rendered 
 worthy of his destiny. He might fall from grace 
 and favor before his heavenly Father, but in the 
 Word made flesh in the God-man he has a 
 
 1 This may be made plain by the following algebraic form- 
 ulae, in which f = any finite quantity and the symbol = 
 infinity: ^ = ; =o; that is, the ratios between infinity and 
 finiteness run either into infinity or nothing. 
 
 1 Summa." Pars. III. Quaest. IV., Art. 2, Jesus Christ 
 assumes human nature in His Divine Person, but not in His 
 Divine Nature. Ibid. Quaest II., Art. 2.
 
 126 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 propitiator. And so, the Word also becomes the 
 Redeemer. In the Word, then, dwell grace and 
 hope and salvation for poor, weak, struggling 
 humanity. It is the fountain, ever flowing, never 
 diminishing, of the love and mercy from which man 
 has drawn grace from the beginning. 
 
 "Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
 Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
 We yield all blessing to the name 
 Of Him that made them current coin." l 
 
 4. Here we may rest. We have ascended 
 giddy heights and cannot soar higher. In contem- 
 plating the Word we are contemplating that which 
 is the object of God's own complacency. It is the 
 source of all knowledge and the ideal of all per- 
 fection. It is the light of the world, the life of 
 nations, the clue to epochs. Its Human Manifes- 
 tation is the central fact of history, giving meaning 
 and significancy to all other facts. It is the inspi- 
 ration of whatever is sacred and ennobling in litera- 
 ture. It is the dwelling place for the ideal in art. 
 It is the guide of conscience, the abode of truth, 
 the light that dispelleth all intellectual and moral 
 darkness and bringeth life and warmth, the van- 
 quisher of evil, and the secret spring of all true joy. 
 The splendor of Its glory shines forth in the beau- 
 tiful things of nature, and sheds lustre upon the 
 outpourings of grace as revealed in human actions. 
 Loveliness and beauty and grandeur and sublimity 
 in word and work, in color and figure, are, each in 
 its degree, faint glimmerings of the resplendent 
 
 1 Tennyson. " In Memoriam," XXXVI.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 127 
 
 glory abiding in that Divine Word which is the 
 source and cause of both the natural and Super- 
 natural. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I. It is the wisdom of true philosophy to take 
 man as he is and deal with him accordingly. Now, 
 man is indeed in his essence and nature a rational 
 animal. But this definition of the School says not 
 all. Man is more. He is also a child of grace. No 
 sooner had he been created man than he became the 
 recipient of God's choicest favors. And when, by 
 the Fall, he had forfeited many of his high prerog- 
 atives, he still retained sufficient grace by which 
 he was enabled to repent and be converted. It is 
 within every man's power to attain the high destiny 
 to which he has been called ; but he can do so only 
 by reason of the saving grace that flows from the 
 Word. This is not a law of to-day or yesterday ; it 
 is of all time. " We are plants," says Plato, " not 
 of earth, but of heaven ; and from the same source 
 whence the soul first arose, a Divine Nature, rais- 
 ing aloft our head and root, directs our whole 
 bodily frame." ' We come from God that we may 
 go back to Him. The Word became incarnate for 
 all, merited for all, died for all, redeemed all in 
 order that all might have life everlasting. Ours, 
 and ours alone, will be the fault if we should wan- 
 der away from that noble destiny. 
 
 "Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 Not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing- clouds of glory, do we come, 
 From God ivko is our home."* 
 
 1 "Timaeus." Cap. Ixxi. 
 
 1 Wordsworth. "Ode on Immortality."
 
 128 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 2. Therefore I would have you foster in your- 
 selves primarily and above all the Spiritual Life. 
 It is worthy of your noblest efforts and your most 
 undivided attention. No time should be thought 
 too precious to devote to it, for it deals with the 
 things of eternity ; no thought too sustained or too 
 painful, for its object is the Light of all intelli- 
 gence. In the prayers that you make to Him who 
 is the Life and the Light ; in the sacraments that 
 are administered to you ; in the sermons that you 
 hear and the doctrinal instructions that are given 
 you, do you imbibe the food that will nourish and 
 sustain in you the spiritual life. And for our souls' 
 sake it is to be hoped that we all of us receive 
 abundance of this heavenly manna. This is the 
 one thing necessary. But it is not with the Spir- 
 itual Life that I am now concerned ; it is rather 
 with the Spiritual Sense. They are distinct and 
 are not always- found together. The sentiment of 
 piety and sensible relish for Divine things may be 
 very weak in a nature that is spiritually strong. 
 And also, one may be very weak in the practice of 
 virtue, and still possess this sentiment to a high 
 degree of refinement and cultivation. But I speak 
 of this Spiritual Sense as a faculty of your soul 
 which requires culture as does Reason or any other 
 faculty. And I take it that should you neglect its 
 cultivation there would be lacking something to 
 the complete development of your soul functions. 
 Your studies give an outward tendency to your 
 soul ; they withdraw it from itself. They are there- 
 fore to it a species of distraction. But the soul has
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 129 
 
 an inward life ; and for the proper development of 
 this inward life, it behooves it to enter into itself 
 and cultivate the interior spirit. 
 
 3. This is the function of the Spiritual Sense. 
 Without it our thinking were incomplete. It is an 
 incentive to higher and superior culture. Would 
 you know why it is that the religious life has been 
 at all times a nursery for learning and a fountain 
 head of original thought ? Much is due to the fact 
 that scholars and thinkers have instinctively sought 
 therein a refuge from the noise and whirl of worldl5 
 affairs. But much also is due to the cultivation oi 
 the Spiritual Sense. It enlarged their intellectual 
 horizon. It threw upon things an additional and 
 far-reaching light. It gave those men a favorable 
 vantage ground from which they might survey 
 deeds and doers of deeds with unbiased mind. 
 Sheltered in the sanctuary of religion, away from 
 the storms of political strife and free from the 
 struggles and anxieties, the temptations and dis- 
 tractions that beset their less fortunate brothers 
 battling through the turmoil of life, their souls 
 rested in a peaceful calm beneath this spiritual sky 
 that brought joy and contentment to their hearts, 
 and shed upon them a light which beamed forth 
 from their countenances, even as it enhanced the 
 clearness of their intellectual vision. And so, when 
 they looked out upon the world and the things of the 
 world, they saw more distinctly the needs and wants 
 and shortcomings of humanity, and were the first to 
 apply the remedy. They led the van in arts and 
 letters, in science and education, and in all that 
 E. M. 9
 
 130 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 goes to make up a people's civilization. With no 
 slight reason, then, does Renan speak of monastic 
 institutions as a great school of originality for the 
 human mind. 1 
 
 4. We have nothing to fear from Religion. 
 She is our strength and our support. 
 
 " The splendor of the Divine truths received into 
 the mind, helps the understanding; and far from de- 
 tracting from its dignity, rather adds to its nobility, 
 keenness and stability." 
 
 So speaks His Holiness, Leo XIII., in his noble 
 vindication of Christian philosophy. 2 Such is also 
 the experience of Maine de Biran whom Cousin 
 pronounces the greatest metaphysician that has 
 honored France since Malebranche.' And his tes- 
 timony is all the more valuable because it is the 
 outcome of long and circuitous wanderings through 
 the mazes of philosophic errors, with here and there 
 a glimpse of light, till finally in his mature years, 
 after much groping and great toil, the full splendor 
 of truth burst upon him. He says : 
 
 "Religion alone solves the problems put by philos- 
 ophy. She alone tells us where to find truth, abso- 
 lute reality. Moreover, she shows us that we live 
 in a perpetual illusion when we estimate things by 
 the testimony of the senses, or according to our 
 passions, or even according to" an artificial and con- 
 ventional reason. // is in raising ourselves up to 
 
 1 Mais il est certain qu'en perdant les institutions de la vie 
 monastique 1'esprit humain a perdu une grande e"cole d' 
 originalitd. " Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse," p. 318. 
 
 2 Encyclical " ^Eterni Patris," 1879. 
 
 8 "Nouvelles Considerations sur le Rapport du Physique 
 et du Moral." Ouvrage Posthume de Maine de Biran, Preface 
 de M. Cousin, p. 6.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 131 
 
 God and seeking union with Him by His grace, that 
 we see and appreciate things as they are. Certain it 
 is that the point of view of the senses and passions 
 is not at all that of human reason ; still less is it 
 that of the superior reason, which, strengthened by 
 religion, soars far above all earthly things." 1 
 
 These are not the words of a cloistered monk, 
 nor of a religious teacher. He who penned them 
 had been a materialist in philosophy and a worldling 
 in practical life, and though he had outgrown his 
 materialism, and cast off much of the spirit of the 
 world, still at the time he penned them, he did not 
 acknowledge himself a Christian. They are his in- 
 most convictions wrung from him in self-commun- 
 ion by the spirit of truth. 
 
 V. 
 
 i. But I need not go beyond yourselves for 
 further reason why you should cultivate the 
 Spiritual Sense. You now look out upon the 
 world decked in all the roseate hues that your 
 young imaginations weave; your fancies filled with 
 schemes of ambition ; bent upon achieving success 
 in some one or other walk of life, you are eager, 
 even to impatience, to enter upon your course ; and 
 you may think it a loss of time, a diverting you 
 from your main purpose, to enter seriously upon 
 the cultivation of this Spiritual Sense. On the con- 
 trary, you will find in it a help. The present is 
 only a passing phase of your existence. Youth 
 
 1 Journal Intime. Quoted in A. Nicolas: "Etude sur 
 Maine de Biran." (Paris, 1858.) This monograph is a philo- 
 sophical gem, which deserves to be better known.
 
 132 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 soon fades and strength decays ; and as shock after 
 shock in your struggle through life, demolishes one 
 after another the air castles which you so long and 
 so laboriously constructed, you will more and more 
 feel the necessity of ceasing to lean upon broken 
 reeds and of looking within your soul's interior for 
 an abiding comfort. And if you find there but 
 emptiness, even as you have found hollowness and 
 deceit without, you will grow hardened and cynical. 
 But if, on the other hand, you have learned to 
 commune with yourself and to make your soul's in. 
 terior the guest chamber in which to entertain the 
 Divine Word the Emmanuel dwelling within you 
 in Him you will find renewed strength to fight 
 your battles with the world, to help you in trouble, 
 to soothe you in pain, and to console you in sorrow 
 and affliction. And so, in cultivating the Spiritual 
 Sense you are also educating yourselves up to the 
 larger views of life, and learning the great lesson of 
 patience and forbearance. 
 
 2. And there is another moment a supreme 
 moment when the language of the soul, the senti- 
 ment of piety and relish for Divine things, the 
 habit of sweet communion with your Savior, will 
 be to you a blessing and a comfort. It is when you 
 are prostrate on the pallet of sickness, and life is 
 ebbing fast, and the helpless body seems to be 
 sinking down abysmal depths with the weight of 
 its own inertness. From time to time the soul's 
 flickering flame lights up into a sudden blaze of 
 consciousness and animation, as if wrestling hard to 
 be free. Dear friends and near relatives may be
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 133 
 
 there, hovering around you, ministering to your 
 every want and gratifying your least desire. But 
 in the questioning look with which they watch the 
 face of your physician, and the anxious glances 
 that they cast upon you, and the subdued whisper- 
 ings in which they speak their worst fears, you 
 learn that you are beyond all human aid. Fainter 
 flickers the vital spark and weaker grows the frame, 
 and loving faces look upon you with a more wist- 
 ful look, and loving forms pass before you with a 
 more stealthy tread ; but they are to you as though 
 they were not. Fainter and feebler you become, 
 and the world recedes farther and farther from you, 
 and those you love so dearly seem afar off, and the 
 distance between you and them grows more and 
 more. You feel yourself sinking into unconscious- 
 ness, and you know that your next waking will be 
 in another world, beyond the reach of everything 
 in life around which your heartstrings are twined. 
 The last rites of the Church are administered to 
 you, and as your senses are about shutting out for- 
 ever the sights and sounds of this world, you catch 
 as the faint echo of a far-off voice, the words of the 
 priest, " Go forth, O Christian soul." Happy will 
 you be in that dread hour, if, when you appear 
 before the Divine Searcher of hearts, the pure light 
 of the Word penetrates no corner that you did not 
 already know, and reveals no sin that has not 
 already been repented of and atoned for. Thrice 
 happy will you be when you meet the Divine 
 Presence face to face, if, having cultivated the 
 Spiritual Sense and acquired a relish for Divine
 
 134 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 truths, you find that you are familiar with the 
 language of love and adoration, of praise and 
 thanksgiving, which should be yours for all eter- 
 nity, and that you are not as a stranger in a strange 
 land, but rather as a child welcomed home to his 
 Father's House after a life-long exile. Wise indeed 
 were it that we all of us learn in time this language 
 which must be ours throughout eternity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 i. There are two manuals of instruction and 
 initiation into this mystical language of the soul, 
 which I would especially recommend to you. The 
 one is the Book of the Gospels. You know its con- 
 tents ; but you must never weary of its perusal. 
 You will always find in it something new. It treats 
 of a subject that never grows old. We cannot hear 
 enough of Him, the Meek One, walking among men 
 and doing good wherever he went. Open the book 
 reverently and lovingly, and let the light of His 
 Blessed Face shine out upon you from its inspired 
 pages. Sweetly and simply it traces his footsteps; 
 in loving accents it recounts the words He spoke, 
 the deeds He did, the miracles He wrought. It 
 reveals the God-Man. It tells of His sufferings 
 from the manger in Bethlehem to the cross on 
 Calvary. It tells of His patience and forbearance, 
 of His humility and modesty, of His compassion 
 for sinners and His hatred for hypocrisy. His 
 words are as balm to the bruised, rest to the weary, 
 peace to the restless, joy to the sorrowing, and light 
 to those groping in the dark. They penetrate all
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 135 
 
 hearts because they flow from a heart loving man 
 with an infinite love. Our familiarity with them 
 from our childhood up may lead us to lose sight of 
 their infinite worth. The sublimest hymn that was 
 ever poured forth from the lips of man in prayer 
 and the praise of his Creator is the Our Father. In 
 its grandeur it rises from the lowest depths of man's 
 nothingness to the throne of Infinite Majesty; in its 
 pathos it searches the heart, touches its feebleness 
 and exposes its wants, with the simplicity and 
 tenderness of a child leaning upon a fond and 
 merciful father. It is at once supplication, exhor- 
 tation, instruction, praise and worship. Again, the 
 Sermon on the Mount embodies all that there is of 
 good and perfect in moral thought, moral word, 
 and moral work in the whole life of humanity. 
 And so I might go on enumerating the beauties 
 and sublimities of this marvelous Book and never 
 tire, never get done. Its beauty is untold ; its 
 wisdom is unfathomable. They are the beauty 
 and the wisdom of Him who is the ideal "of all 
 loveliness and the source of all wisdom. 
 
 2. That other book which I would recommend 
 to you has garnered a few of the lessons revealed 
 in these Gospels and bound them together in rich 
 and ripe sheaves of thought. A rare harvesting 
 indeed is this book. It is known in every tongue 
 and its praises have been sung in every note. 
 Next to its original and source it is the most popu- 
 lar book ever written. I speak of " The Imitation 
 of Christ," which Fontenelle without exaggeration 
 well styles the most beautiful book that ever came
 
 136 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 from the hands of man. 1 It has been admired by all 
 classes of thinkers and all shades of creeds. The 
 staunch Tory, Doctor Johnson, loved it and used 
 to speak of it as a good book to receive which the 
 world opened its arms. 3 The infidel Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau wept over it. 8 John Wesley published 
 an edition of it as food for the hungering souls to 
 whom he ministered in the Durham coalpits and on 
 the Devonshire moors. Bossuet called it a book 
 full of unction ; St. Charles Borromeo, the world's 
 consoler; and Sir Thomas More said that the book, 
 if read, would secure the nation's happiness. 
 Surely, a book receiving praise from so many and 
 such diverse sources is worthy of your intimate 
 acquaintance, and it will be to me a great pleasure 
 to introduce to you both the author and the book. 
 The author was Thomas Hamerken of Kempen, 
 commonly known as Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471). 
 We will first consider the man and his times ; after- 
 wards, we will discuss the spirit, the philosophy 
 and the influence of the book. 
 
 VII. 
 
 i. The century in which Thomas Hamerken 
 saw the light, was the transition period between 
 the mediaeval and the modern world. The Cru- 
 sades had done their work; the Gothic Cathedral 
 had been built ; the Miracle Play had ceased to 
 
 1 Le plus beau livre qui soit parti de la main d'un homme, 
 puisque 1'Evangile n'en vient pas. 
 
 1 Boswell's "Johnson," vol. II., p. 143. 
 
 1 Dublin University Magazine^ June, 1869.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 137 
 
 instruct ; Thomas of Aquin had put the finishing 
 hand to Scholastic Philosophy and left it a scien- 
 tific monument worthy of his genius and the age ; 
 Dante had crystallized the faith and science, the 
 fierce hate and the strong love, the poetry, the 
 politics and the theology, the whole spirit of 
 Mediaevalism in his sublime allegory. And now 
 that old order was breaking up, and, in the awaken- 
 ing of the new, much anarchy prevailed. In the 
 general crumbling away of institutions, the human 
 intellect seemed bewildered. A groping and a rest- 
 lessness existed throughout ; there was a yearning 
 of men after they knew not what, for the night was 
 upon them and they were impatient for the com- 
 ing of the dawn. Where were they to seek the light ? 
 The ignorant and the obstinate, without either the 
 requisite knowledge or the necessary patience to 
 discover the laws of nature, sought to wrest from 
 her the secrets of which she is possessed, by the pro- 
 cess of magic, astrology and simulated intercourse 
 with spirits. 1 Hecate was their inspiring genius. 
 
 2. The learned sought the light, on the one 
 hand, through the mists and mazes of the old issue 
 of Nominalism and Realism, which had been re- 
 vived by William of Ockham (d. 1347), and con- 
 tinued by John Buridan (d. after 1350), Albert of 
 Saxony (who taught at Paris about 1350-60), 
 Marsilius of Inghen (d. 1392), and the zealous Peter 
 of Ailly (1350-1425).' In their gropings they 
 
 1 See Gorres. "La Mystique," trad, par M. Ste-Foi, 
 Partie III. " La Mystique Diabolique," t. IV., chap. viii. xiv. 
 
 1 Ueberweg. " History of Philosophy." Eng. tr., vol. 1., 
 p. 465.
 
 138 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 gathered up little more than an abundance of 
 error, aridity and intellectual pride. Others, fol- 
 lowing in the wake of Petrarch and Boccaccio, began 
 to cultivate an exaggerated taste for the ancient 
 classics and to revive the spirit of Paganism. 
 Children were instructed in Greek, 1 and the pedantic 
 quarrels of grammarians divided cities and even 
 whole provinces. 2 Others again, weary of the barren 
 disputations of the Schools, sought the light in 
 union with the Godhead through the dark and un- 
 safe paths of Mysticism. Master Eckhart pro- 
 claimed it their goal and only refuge. He 
 undertook to point out the way, but became lost 
 in the mazes of Neoplatonism and Pantheism. 
 Under his influence, whole nations, impelled by an 
 indefinite yearning for spiritual life, rose up as one 
 man, in universal clamor for mystical union with 
 the Godhead. They became intoxicated with the 
 New Science. He had taught them that the cre- 
 ation of the world and the generation of the Word 
 were one act ; that the soul preexisted in God from 
 all eternity ; that the Light of the Word was in- 
 separable from the light of the soul, and that in 
 union with that Word were to be found perfection 
 and knowledge. 3 
 
 1 Ambroise, de 1'ordre des Camaldules, au commencement 
 de 1400, trouvait dans Mantoue des enfants et des jeunes filles ver- 
 se's dans le grec. Cantu. "Histoire Universelle," t. XII., p. 578. 
 
 1 Les querelles des pedants hargneux inte"ressaient, di- 
 viSaient les villes et les provinces. Ibid., p. 589. 
 
 8 " The light, which is the Son of God, and the shining 
 das Ausscheinen of that light in the creature-world are in- 
 separable. The Birth of the Son and the Creation of the world 
 are one act." Stockl. "Geschichte der Philosophic," 3,
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 139 
 
 3. Although Eckhart tried to hedge in these 
 dangerous tenets with various safeguards and fine- 
 spun distinctions, the people, in their ignorance 
 and enthusiasm, broke loose from all restraint and 
 fell into deplorable disorders. Large numbers 
 formed themselves into societies having as spiritual 
 directors laymen who claimed to be initiated into 
 the secrets of this mystical union with the God- 
 head. This was a condition of things anomalous as 
 it was dangerous. Sometimes, indeed, under this 
 lay direction, the people made real spiritual prog- 
 ress, as did the society known as the Friends of 
 God under the guidance of that mysterious layman 
 who so successfully led the celebrated Tauler into 
 the way of this mystical life. 1 More frequently, 
 they went beyond all control and became mere 
 fanatics, as the Beguines and Begards. 1 Tauler 
 (1300-1361) took the yearning multitude by the 
 hand and led them in the path which he had trod- 
 den. So powerful was his eloquence and so great 
 the influence that he wielded, that even at this day 
 his name is a magic wand capable of stirring the 
 
 6, p. 494. Also 10, p. 495. " The soul, like all things, pre- 
 existed in God . . . Immanent in the Divine Essence, I created 
 the world and myself." Ueberweg. "History of Philos- 
 ophy," vol. I., $ 106, in which Eckhart's teaching is account- 
 ed for at length by Dr. Adolf Lasson. The article in Stockl is 
 far more satisfactory. 
 
 1 See "Life of Tauler," prefixed to his Sermons, edited 
 and translated into French by M. Ch. Ste-Foi. (Paris 1852). 
 Vol. I., p. 7 et seq. 
 
 1 " When the organization was dissolved by Pope John 
 XXII., it numbered more than three hundred thousand in Ger- 
 many alone." Gorres. "La Mystique," t. I., p. 131. They 
 were so called from their institutor, Lambert Begha, who 
 established the organization in 1170.
 
 140 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 hearts of the descendants of the thousands along the 
 Rhine, who clung upon his lips and eagerly fed 
 their hungering souls with the words of life that fell 
 from them. And whilst the rugged earnestness of 
 Tauler pierced their hearts, the gentle suavity of 
 Henry Suso (1300- 1365), the Minnesinger of the 
 love of God, swayed them with no less force and 
 helped to dissipate the atmosphere of false Mysti- 
 cism and erroneous doctrines in which they were 
 
 enveloped. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 i. To this extent had Mysticism become a pas- 
 sion when Gerhard Groote established the Brothers 
 of the Common Life. The mystical spirit entered 
 into their rule of living, but in so new and practical 
 a form that they became known as Brothers of the 
 New Devotion. It pervades the books they wrote; 
 its spirit was in the very atmosphere of their 
 schools. The children attending them became im- 
 bued with it. Amongst those children was Thomas 
 a Kempis. He afterwards became a member of 
 the Order, was ordained priest, and lived to the 
 advanced age of ninety-one years. We read noth- 
 ing eventful in his life. Like the Venerable Beda, 
 from his youth up he had borne the sweet yoke of 
 religion. Like Beda also, it had been a pleasure 
 for him to read and teach and write and transcribe 
 what he found best in sacred and profane literature. 
 And that the intellect might not grow barren in 
 the mechanical exercise of transcribing the thoughts 
 of others, it was made a rule that the Brothers 
 should cull, each for himself and according to his
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 141 
 
 taste, some of the beautiful sayings and maxims of 
 the Fathers and saints, and add thereto pious re- 
 flections. 1 This was a labor of love for Thomas, 
 and in performing it he was sowing and fertilizing 
 the seeds of that special book that was to be the 
 child of his genius. 
 
 2. Another source of inspiration for that book 
 was the beautiful example of his Brothers. His 
 convent was a spiritual garden in which were tended 
 with great care all the virtues of the religious life. 
 He need only remember and record. Not only in 
 his great work, but in the numerous lives of the 
 Brothers that he has left us, he never tires of 
 expressing his appreciation of their devotion, regu- 
 larity and spirit of faith. And they were equally 
 edified by his amiable character and great humility. 
 They held him in honor and esteem, and his influ- 
 ence amongst them was great.* One of the Breth- 
 ren remembers as an event in his life, how he had 
 seen him and spoken with him. " The Brother 
 who wrote ' The Imitation ' is called Thomas. . . . 
 This writer was living in 1454, and I, Brother Her- 
 man, having been sent to the general chapter in 
 that year, spoke to him." 1 Nor was he less ap- 
 preciated outside his convent walls. The Cister- 
 cian monk, Adrien de But, stops the chronicle of 
 political events to say how he edified by his writings, 
 
 1 These collections were called Rapiaria. 
 
 1 " Among the small and peaceful circle of the religious 
 Mystics, no man exercised so important an influence as 
 Thomas Hamerken of Kempen." Gieseler. "Compend. Eccl. 
 History." V., p. 73. 
 
 a Mgr. J. B. Malou. " Recherches sur le veritable auteur 
 de 1'Imitation," p. 82.
 
 142 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 especially his masterpiece, which the good monk 
 not inappropriately styles "a metrical volume." 1 
 And so, his fame has continued to grow broader, 
 ripple after ripple, till it fills the whole world. And 
 yet, he shrank from notoriety ; he loved retirement ; 
 he dreaded gossip.' On, on, through the years of 
 his long life, through the vigor of youth, through 
 the maturity of manhood, through the gathering 
 shadows of old age, he plied his pen and scattered 
 broadcast devout books. Let us approach still 
 nearer. 
 
 3. Figure to yourselves a man of less than 
 medium height, 8 rather stout in body, with fore- 
 head broad, and a strong Flemish cast of features, 
 massive and thoughtful, bespeaking a man of medi- 
 tative habits ; his cheeks tinged slightly brown ; his 
 large and lustrous eyes looking with a grave and 
 far-off look, as though gazing into the world of 
 spiritual life in which his soul dwelt. This is 
 Thomas a Kempis as he appeared to his contem- 
 
 1 Hoc anno frater Thomas de Kempis, de Monte Sanctae 
 Agnetis professor ordinis regularium canonicorum, multos, 
 scriptis suis divulgatis, aedificat; hie vitam Sanctae Lidwigis 
 descripsit et quoddam volumen metrice super illud: qui seqnitur 
 me. " Chroniques relatives a 1'histoire de la Belgique," publiees 
 par M. le Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, t. I. " The Imitation," 
 as written by A Kempis is both metrical and rhythmical. This 
 is the conclusion of Dr. Hirsche after long and careful study 
 of the original MS. Henry Sommalius, in 1599, first divided 
 each chapter into paragraphs, and in the seventeenth century 
 several editors subdivided the paragraphs into versicles. 
 
 1 " Valde devotus, libenter solus, et nunquam otiosus." 
 MS. 11,841, Bibl. de Borgogne, Brussels, printed for the first 
 time in Appendix to " Recherches sur le veritable auteur de 
 1' Imitation," par Mgr. J. B. Malou, 2me Ed., p. 388. 
 
 8 " Hie fuit brevis staturae, sed magnus in virtutibus." 
 Ibid.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 143 
 
 poraries. Still another glimpse of him as he walks 
 and speaks with his Brothers, has been sketched 
 with a loving hand : 
 
 " This good Father, when he was walking abroad 
 with some of the Brotherhood, or with some of 
 his other friends, and suddenly felt an inspiration 
 come upon him namely, when the Bridegroom 
 was willing to communicate with the bride, that 
 is, when Jesus Christ his Beloved, did call to his 
 soul as His elect and beloved spouse was wont 
 to say, ' My beloved brethren, I must now needs 
 leave you,' and so, meekly begging to be ex- 
 cused, he would leave them, saying, 'Indeed it 
 behooves me to go ; there is One expecting me in 
 my cell.' And so they accordingly granted his re- 
 quest, took well his excuse and were much edified 
 thereby." l 
 
 In this reverential manner was his memory cher- 
 ished. We are not surprised to learn that a great 
 many, being attracted by his reputation for science 
 and sanctity, flocked around him, to cultivate his 
 acquaintance and to pursue their studies under 
 his guidance.' 
 
 4. What was the inner life of this attractive 
 soul? What were the trials, the struggles with self, 
 the temptations through which he passed? Surely, 
 he who is both philosopher and poet of the interior 
 life in all its phases, must have traversed the rugged 
 path leading up to perfection with an observant 
 
 1 Opera Omnia Th. de Kempis, ed. Georg Pirckhamer, 
 Nuremberg 1494. fol. XXXV. Kettlewell, " Thomas a Kempis 
 and the Brethren of the Common Life," vol. I., p. 33. Mgr. 
 Malou, " Recherches," p. 84. 
 
 'Hardenberg. MS. "Life of Wessel," a disciple of 
 Thomas a Kempis. Quoted bv Ullman. "Reformatoren vor 
 der Reformation," 2 Bd. S. 73$, Eng. tr., vol. II., p. 271.
 
 144 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 eye for all the dangerous turns and treacherous 
 pitfalls that lurk on the way. Above all, he must 
 have loved much. 
 
 "The passion," says Michelet, "which we meet 
 in this work, is grand as the object which it seeks ; 
 grand as the world which it forsakes." 
 
 And in this love he found strength to overcome 
 every obstacle. In another work he thus lays bare 
 his soul: 
 
 " Sometimes my passions assailed me as a whirl- 
 wind ; but God sent forth his arrows and dissipated 
 them. The attack was often renewed, but God 
 was still my support." * 
 
 And in his great book he occasionally gives us 
 a glimpse of himself. Thus we see him at the be- 
 ginning of his religious career in doubt and great 
 mental anxiety as to whether or no he will persevere. 
 
 " He presently heard within him an answer from 
 God, which said, ' If thou didst know it, what 
 wouldst thou do? Do now, what thou wouldst do 
 then, and thou shall be secure. ' And being here- 
 with comforted and strengthened, he committed 
 himself wholly to the will of God, and his anxious 
 wavering ceased." 4 
 
 In another place * we find him sending up cries 
 for strength and resignation, such as could only come 
 from a heart bleeding and lacerated with wounds 
 inflicted by calumny and humiliation. 4 But it is 
 only a soul that rose above the spites and jealousies 
 
 1 " Soliloquy of the Soul." See chaps, xv., xvi., xvii. 
 
 2 Bk. I., chap, xxv., 2. 
 
 3 Bk. III., chap. xxix. 
 
 4 Charles Butler. Life prefixed to Bishop Challoner's 
 translation of " The Imitation," p. vii.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 145 
 
 of life that could speak the words of comfort and 
 consolation therein to be found. 
 
 " Verily," hath it been beautifully said, " only a 
 breast burning with pity a breast that hath never 
 wounded another breast could have offered that 
 incense to heaven, that dew to earth, which we call 
 'The Imitation"' 
 
 Such was the author. He had learned to re- 
 press every inordinate desire or emotion, until in 
 his old age he was content with solitude and a book. 
 " I have sought rest everywhere," was he wont to 
 say, "but I have found it nowhere except in a little 
 corner with a little book." ' 
 
 IX. 
 
 I. It is interesting to study the literary struc- 
 ture of "The Imitation," and note the traces of 
 authorship running through it. We will glance at 
 it for a moment. First of all and above all, the book 
 is saturated through and through with the Sacred 
 Scriptures. You can scarcely read a sentence that 
 does not recall some passage now in the Old, now in 
 the New Testament. It reflects their pure rays like 
 an unbroken mirror. To transcribe the Bible had 
 been a labor of love for the author. A complete 
 copy of it in his own neat handwriting is still ex- 
 tant. Echoes of beautiful passages from the 
 spiritual writers that went before him reverberate 
 through the pages of this book which is none the 
 less original. The author drew from St. Gregory 
 
 1 William Maccoll in Contemporary Review, September, 
 1866. 
 
 * Charles Butler, loc. cit., p. 8. 
 E. M. 10
 
 146 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 the Great. 1 St. Bernard seems to have been a 
 special favorite.* So was St. Francis of Assisi.* 
 He drew from St. Thomas. 4 He drew from St. 
 Bonaventura. 5 He even drew from the Roman 
 Missal. 6 He also lays the pagan classics under con- 
 tribution. He quotes Aristotle. 7 He quotes Ovid/ 
 He quotes Seneca.' And there are some remarka^ 
 ble coincidences in expression between himself and 
 Dante. 10 He even quotes the popular sayings of 
 his day. 11 In a word, as with the poet, whatever 
 love inspired, no matter the speech in which the 
 voice came, he wrote at her dictation." 
 
 2. In both language and spirit the book exhales 
 the atmosphere of Mysticism in which it was 
 
 I Cf. Gregory, " Cura Pastoralis," and "Imitation," bk. 
 IV., chap. v. 
 
 * Cf. the Hymn "Jesu, dulcis memoria," and bk. II., 
 chaps, vii., viii. 
 
 3 Cf. " Epist." XL., and bk. III., chap. viii. 
 
 4 Cf. Office for Corpus Christi, and bk. IV., chap, ii., I.; 
 also chap, xiii., 2, 17. 
 
 5 Cf. the Hymn " Recordare Sanctae Crucis " and bk. II., 
 chap, xii., 2. The Toulouse Sermons attributed to' St. Bona- 
 ventura, having so many extracts from "The Imitation," are 
 no longer regarded as authentic. See Mgr. Malou. " Recher- 
 ches sur le veritable auteur de 1' Imitation," pp. 198-202. 
 
 6 Cf. Prayer for XVth Sunday after Pentecost, and " Im.," 
 bk. III., chap. lv., 6.; Post. Com. IV. Sunday in Advent, and 
 bk. IV., chap. iv. 
 
 7 Aristotle. "Metaphysics." I., i., in bk. I., chap, ii., i. 
 
 8 Ovid. Lib. XIII. " de Remed. Am." in bk. I., chap, xiii., 5. 
 
 Seneca. " Ep." VII., in bk. I.,"chap. xx., 2. 
 
 10 Cf. Dante. " Inferno." Canto III. and Canto VI., with bk. 
 I., chap. xxiv. 
 
 II Bk. II., chap, ix., i. The expression is: 
 
 " Satis suaviter equitat, 
 Quern gratia Dei portat." 
 
 u lo mi son un che quando 
 
 Amore spira, noto, e in quel modo 
 Ch'ei detta dentro, vo' significando. DANTE.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 147 
 
 conceived and written. Its very terms are the 
 terms of Mysticism and if we would under- 
 stand the book thoroughly we must make 
 tangible to ourselves this mystical state. In the 
 human soul there is and has been at all times a 
 strong and irrepressible yearning after the higher 
 spiritual things of the unseen Universe. It is not 
 given to all to attain its dizziest heights. It may 
 not even be well for all to aim thereat. But it is 
 something to be proud of, to know that our 
 humanity has reached that state in its elect few. 
 And what is the mystical state? It is a striving of 
 the soul after union with the Divinity. It is there- 
 fore a turning away from sin and all that 
 could lead to sin, and a raising up of the 
 soul above all created things, " transcending 
 every ascent of every holy height, and leaving 
 behind all Divine lights and sounds and heavenly 
 discoursings, and passing into that Darkness where 
 He is who is above all things." 1 In this state the 
 soul is passively conscious that she lives and 
 breathes in the Godhead, and asks neither to speak 
 nor think. Her whole happiness is to be. She has 
 found absolute Goodness, absolute Truth, and 
 absolute Beauty ; she knows it and feels it and rests 
 content in the knowledge. She seeks nothing 
 beyond. She has left far behind her all practical 
 and speculative habits. Her faculties are hushed in 
 holy awe at the nearness of the Divine Presence.* 
 
 1 Dionysius Areopagita. " De Mystica Theologia." Cap. 
 i., $ 3, t. I. Col. 999. " Patrol. Graecae. Ed. Migne, t. III. 
 
 1 See Tauler. Sermon for the Sunday after Epiphany ; 
 trad. Ste-Foi. t. I., p. 130.
 
 148 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Memory has ceased to minister to her ; Fancy and 
 imagination walk at a distance and in silence, fear- 
 ing to obtrude themselves upon the Unimagined 
 Infinite; Reason is prostrate and abashed before 
 the Incomprehensible; Understanding remains 
 lulled in adoration before the Unknowable. She is 
 overshadowed by the intense splendor of the Divine 
 Glory, and filled thrilled through and through 
 with the dread Presence ; she is raised above the 
 plane of our common human feelings and sympa- 
 thies into the highest sphere of thought and love 
 and adoration attainable in this life, and is thus 
 given a foretaste of Heaven. In this state the soul 
 apprehends with clearness mysteries that are 
 entirely beyond her ordinary power of conception. 
 Such was the experience of a Francis of Assisi, a 
 Henry Suso, a Tauler, a Loyola, a Teresa of Jesus. 
 But this experience became theirs only after they 
 had passed through much tribulation of spirit, and 
 their souls had been purified ; for it is only to the 
 clean of heart that it is given to become intimately 
 united with God in this manner. Men of proud 
 thought and vain desire have attempted without 
 this purification to attain that state ; but invariably 
 they became lost in illusions, were confounded, and 
 fell into the deepest follies. Therefore it is that 
 this union is safely sought only through the 
 Redeemer. And so we find the books attributed to 
 the Areopagite make the Chalice of the Redeemer 
 the central point of all Christian mysteries ; the 
 Chalice being according to them the symbol of 
 Providence which penetrates and preserves all
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 149 
 
 things. 1 And this symbol passes down the ages, 
 gathering around it feats of chivalry and love and 
 bravery adventure and prowess which are also 
 symbolic and men speak of it as the Holy Grail, 
 which only such as the suffering Tituriel and the 
 pure Galahad are permitted to behold.* What is it 
 all but a beautiful allegory typifying the struggles 
 of the devout soul before it is permitted to com- 
 mune with God in this mystical union ? 
 
 X. 
 
 i. Thomas a Kempis knows no other way by 
 which to lead the Christian soul to the heights of 
 perfection and union with the Divinity than the 
 rugged road trodden by Jesus. The opening 
 words of " The Imitation " strike the keynote with 
 no uncertain tone : 
 
 "He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness"* 
 saith the Lord. Tliese are the words of Christ, by 
 which we are taught to imitate His life and manners, 
 if we would be truly enlightened and be delivered 
 from all blindness of heart. . . . Whosoever would 
 fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, 
 must endeavor to conform his life wholly to the life 
 of Christ."* 
 
 In this manner does the author give us purely and 
 simply, without gloss or comment, the spirituality 
 
 1 Crater igitur cum sit rotundus et apertus, symbolum est 
 generalis providentiae quae principio fineque caret atque omnia 
 continet penetratque. Dion. Areop. "Ep." IX. " Tito Epis- 
 copo," $ III. " Patrol. Graecae." Ed. Migne, t. III. Col. mo. 
 
 1 The symbol of the Chalice is older than Christianity. It 
 was adopted from the Dionysian mysteries of the Greeks and 
 given a Christian meaning. See Gorres. " La Mystique," t. 
 f, p. 78- 
 
 John viii., 12. 
 
 * "Imitation," bk. J., chap, i., a.
 
 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 of the Gospel. He does not flatter human nature. 
 He merely points out the narrow and rugged road 
 to Calvary. The " royal way of the holy Cross " 
 is the only safe way : 
 
 "Go where thou wilt, seek whatsoever thou wilt, 
 thou shalt not find a higher way above, nor a safer 
 way below, than the way of the holy Cross" * 
 
 And here the pious author, in descanting on 
 the merits of the Cross, becomes truly poetical : 
 
 "In the Cross is salvation ; in the Cross is life; in 
 the Cross is protection against our enemies ; in the 
 Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness ; in the 
 Cross is strength and mind ; in the Cross is joy of 
 spirit ; in the Cross is the height of virtue ; in the 
 Cross is the perfection of sanctity. There is no sal- 
 vation of the soul, no hope of everlasting life, but in 
 the Cross. Take up therefore thy Cross and follow 
 Jesus and thou shalt go into life everlasting"* 
 
 Thus it is that in the language of A Kempis 
 the Cross symbolizes all Christian virtue ; and 
 bearing one's trials and troubles with patience and 
 resignation is walking on the royal road of the 
 Cross. It supersedes the symbol of the Chalice. 
 
 2. For the student, " The Imitation " is laden 
 with beautiful lessons. The pious author must 
 have had his own scholars in his mind's eye in pen- 
 ning many a passage. He never tires of recalling 
 to them that there is something better than vain 
 words and dry disputations. 
 
 1 Bk. II., chap. xii. 
 Ibid.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 151 
 
 " Surely great words do not make a man holy and 
 just. . . , l Many words do not satisfy the soul 
 . . . * Meddle not with things too high for thee ; 
 but read such things as may rather yield compunc- 
 tion to thy heart, than occupation to thy head" ' 
 
 He distinguishes between the reading that goes 
 home to the heart, and that which is merely a mat- 
 ter of occupation. The distinction is an important 
 one. It defines the functions of the Spiritual 
 Sense. One to whom I have already introduced 
 you, draws the same line. I give you his words. 
 Notice how closely the philosopher and man of the 
 world, writing four centuries after, coincides with 
 the monk. 
 
 " I am," says Maine de Biran, " as agitated by 
 my books and my own ideas, as when occupied 
 with worldly matters or launched in the vortex of 
 Parisian life. ... I fancy that I am going to dis- 
 cover my moral and intellectual welfare, rest and 
 internal satisfaction of mind, the truth I seek, in 
 every book that I scan and consult ; as though 
 these things were not within me, down in the very 
 depths of my being, where with sustained and pen- 
 etrating glance, I should look for them, instead of 
 gliding rapidly over what others have thought, or 
 even what I myself have thought. . . . My 
 conscience reproaches me with not having thor- 
 oughly sounded the depths of life, with not having 
 cultivated its most earnest parts, and with being 
 too occupied with those amusements that enable 
 one to pass imperceptibly from time to eternity." * 
 
 1 Bk. I., chap, i., 3. 
 
 * Ibid., chap, ii., a. 
 
 * Ibid., chap, xx., i. 
 
 * Journal Intime. Apud Nicolas. Etude sur Maine de 
 Biran, p. 54.
 
 152 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 In good truth, men may go through life, dis- 
 coursing upon the things of life, formulating their 
 views of the diverse subjects that call for definite 
 opinion ; and yet, for want of this introspection, this 
 self-communion, this thoughtfulness of God's pres- 
 ence within them, they may indeed possess many 
 and varied accomplishments, but these are all of 
 the outward man. The inner man is starved to a 
 skeleton. This is why all great thinkers, all the 
 founders of religious orders as well as of schools of 
 philosophy, Pythagoras and Socrates as well as 
 Benedict and Loyola, have laid stress upon the cul- 
 ture of this interior spirit. It is not merely the 
 opinion of a pious author; it is the doctrine of the 
 Gospel, made the wisdom of humanity. 
 
 3. Again, the author lays down the conditions 
 under which study may be pursued with advantage. 
 He shows the greater responsibility attached to 
 human knowledge, and counsels the students to be 
 humble. 
 
 " The more thou knowest, and the better thou 
 under standest, the more strictly shalt thou be judged, 
 unless thy life be also the more holy. Be not there- 
 fore elated in thine own mind because of any art or 
 science, but rather let the knowledge given thee make 
 thee afraid. If thou thinkest that thou under stand- 
 est and knowest much ; yet know that there be many 
 more things which thou knowest not'.' ' 
 
 Bear in mind that the author is not simply in- 
 culcating the modesty and diffidence that belong 
 to every well-educated person, and that may 
 
 1 Bk. I., chap, ii., 3.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 153 
 
 accompany great intellectual pride. He goes deeper, 
 and insists upon true humility. 1 
 
 " If tJiou wilt know and learn anything profit- 
 ably, desire to be unknown and little esteemed. This 
 is the highest and most profitable lesson : truly to 
 know and despise ourselves" '' 
 
 4. The pious author is no less earnest in coun- 
 seling the student to be simple and pure. 
 
 " By two wings a man is lifted up from things 
 earthly, namely, by Simplicity and Purity. Sim- 
 plicity ought to be in our intention ; Purity in our 
 affections. Simplicity doth tend towards God ; Pur- 
 ity doth apprehend and taste him. . . . If thy 
 heart were sincere and upright, then would every 
 creature be unto thce a living mirror, and a book of 
 holy doctrine. There is no creature so small and 
 abject, that it representeth not the goodness of God. 
 If thou wert inwardly good and pure, then wouldst 
 thou be able to see and understand all things well 
 without impediment. A pure heart penetrateth 
 heaven and hell." ' 
 
 Doctrine as beautiful as it is true. Only to the 
 clean of heart is it given to see God in heaven. 
 Only to the clean of heart is it given to recognize 
 the splendor of His glory in the beautiful things 
 that He has created. The poetry and chivalry of 
 the Middle Ages vie with each other in extolling 
 this pearl among the virtues. Percival's purity of 
 heart wins for him the rare privilege of beholding 
 
 1 Cardinal Newman, in one of his most beautiful Dis- 
 courses, shows how modesty accompanied by pride has taken 
 the place of the Christian virtue of humility in the modern 
 world. " Idea of a University." Discourse VIII., $ 9, pp. 
 354-258. 
 
 Bk. I., chap, ii., 3, 4. 
 
 ' Bk. II., chap, iv.,2, 3.
 
 154 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 the Holy Grail. Launcelot fails in his quest be- 
 cause of his sin. Sir Galahad's virgin heart makes 
 him tenfold strong against his foes : 
 
 "My good blade carves the casques of men, 
 
 My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
 My strength is as the strength of ten 
 Because my heart is fure." l 
 
 XI. 
 
 I. The philosophy of "The Imitation " may be 
 summed up in two words. It is a philosophy of Light 
 and a philosophy of Life : the Light of Truth and 
 the Life of Grace. Both the one and the other, A 
 Kempis seeks in their source and fountain head. He 
 does not separate them. It is only in the union of 
 both that man attains his philosophic ideal. Vain 
 words and dry speculations, scholastic wrangling 
 and religious controversy, may furnish food for 
 man's vanity, but they are unable to nourish his 
 soul. And so, the devout author, with Clement of 
 Alexandria, with Augustine and Aquinas, ascends 
 to the Incarnate Word the Divine Logos as 
 the source whence proceeds all truth both natural 
 and revealed, for the criterion and the ideal of 
 human knowledge. Here he finds unity and har- 
 mony. And if human opinions'oppose one another, 
 those alone can be true which are compatible with 
 the revealed and certain dogmas of the Church. 8 
 
 1 Tennyson, "Sir Galahad." 
 
 J Human reason is feeble and may be deceived, but true 
 faith cannot be deceived. All reason and natural search ought 
 to follow faith, not to go before it, nor to break in upon it. 
 Bk. IV., chap, xviii., 4, 5.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 155 
 
 Therefore, he begs the student to hush the clash of 
 systems, and seek above and beyond all system and 
 all caviling the truth pure and simple as it eman- 
 ates from the Godhead. In his day the clashing of 
 scholastic opinion was loud and fierce, and the din 
 of the Schools so filled the air that he steps aside 
 from his usual course of ignoring the issues and 
 contests of the outside world and asks: "What 
 matters it to us about genera and species?" Upon 
 the solution of this problem hinged the endless dis- 
 putations between Nominalism and Realism ever 
 since Roscelin revived the issue nearly four centuries 
 previously. The students adopted one or other ac- 
 cording to their nationality. In the University of 
 Prague the Bohemian students were Realists, 
 whilst those of Germany were Nominalists. And 
 when a crisis occurs in the affairs of that institution, 
 we see twenty-four thousand of the German Nom- 
 inalists abandon its halls and establish a new 
 University in Leipsig.' 
 
 2. Thomas a Kempis has in his book no place 
 for these strifes. In a philosophic poem, which is 
 only less sublime than that with which St. John 
 opens his Gospel, because it is an echo thereof, the 
 devout author lays down the doctrine of truth that 
 runs through his book, even as it has been the 
 actuating principle of his life: 
 
 1 Cantu. " Hist. Univ.," t. XII., p. 293. Some say 40,000. 
 See Lenfant. "Hist, de la Guerre des Hussites," Utrecht. 
 1731, pp. 59, 60, and " Histoire duConcilede Constance," t. I., 
 p. 30, 31. Of course, the immediate cause of the difficulty was 
 the retrenchment of certain privileges of the German professors 
 and students by Wenceslaus at the instigation of John Huss.
 
 156 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 " Happy is he whom Truth by itself doth teach, 
 not by figures and words that pass away, but as it 
 is in itself. Our own opinion and our own sense do 
 often deceive us, and they discern but little. What 
 availeth it to cavil and dispute much about dark and 
 hidden things, for ignorance of which we shall not be 
 reproved at the day of judgment ? It is a great folly 
 to neglect the things that are profitable and necessary, 
 and to choose to dwell upon that which is curious and 
 hurtful. We have eyes and see not. A nd what have 
 we to do with genera and species ? He to whom the 
 Eternal Word speaketh is delivered from many an 
 opinion. From one word are all things, and all 
 things utter one Word ; and this is the Beginning 
 which also speaketh unto us. 1 No man without that 
 Wordunderstandeth or judgeth rightly. He to whom 
 all things are one, he who reduceth all things to one 
 and seeth all things in one, may enjoy a quiet mind, 
 and remain at peace in God. O God, who art Truth 
 itself, make me one with Thee in everlasting love. 
 It wearieth me often to read and hear many things: 
 in Thee is all that I would have and can desire. 
 Let all teachers hold their peace; let all creatures be 
 silent in Thy light; speak Thou alone unto me." a 
 
 Can you imagine a sublimer passage coming 
 from a human hand ? 
 
 3. This is not a system of philosophy. Like 
 Pascal and St. Augustine, A Kempis soars above 
 system, and in the mystical language so well known 
 and understood in his day, he reduces all philosophy 
 to this principle of seeing things in the light ema- 
 nating from the Word. " From one Word are all 
 things, and all things utter one Word. . . . No 
 
 1 Principium, qui et loquor vobis. St, John viii., 25. 
 1 Bk. I., chap. Hi.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 157 
 
 wan without that Word under standeth or judgeth 
 rightly'' In vain would you search heaven or 
 earth for a more elevating, more correct, or more 
 fruitful principle in philosophy. Was the author 
 Realist? Was he Nominalist? He was neither. 
 Not that he was not interested in philosophic dis- 
 cussions ; for did he not take a keen interest in 
 them he never would have penned those sublime 
 pages. But his genius sought greater freedom than 
 it could have found in any system. No sooner is 
 one committed to a school, than one has to pare 
 down, or exaggerate, or suppress altogether truths 
 and facts to tally with the system taught by the 
 school. Neither truth nor fact are the outcome of 
 system or school ; prior to either, both truth and fact 
 existed. Systems and schools in confessing them- 
 selves such, acknowledge by the very fact that they 
 do not deal with truth whole and entire as truth, 
 but with certain aspects of truth seen from a given 
 point of view. They may be good, they may even 
 be necessary, as aids in acquiring truth ; but they 
 are not to be identified with it. They are, so to 
 speak, the scaffoldings by which the edifice of truth 
 may be constructed, and as such are to be laid aside 
 as soon as the structure is completed. In this 
 spirit was it that Thomas a Kempis thought and 
 worked. 
 
 4. Was the author opposed to learning? The 
 many expressions in which he speaks so lightly of 
 purely human knowledge or scholastic disputations, 
 would lead one to think that he was inclined to 
 disparage jill such. Nothing was farther from his
 
 158 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 intention. His whole life was devoted to the work 
 of education. He had formed and sent forth, well 
 equipped, many distinguished pupils and disciples. 1 
 He never lost his taste for books. To transcribe 
 and spread abroad good books both in sacred and 
 profane learning had been his delight. In one of his 
 sermons he exclaims, " Blessed are the hands of 
 such transcribers ! Which of the writings of our 
 ancestors would now be remembered, if there had 
 been no pious hands to transcribe them ? " 2 But as 
 " The Imitation" treats of the finite and the temporal 
 in their relations with the infinite and the eternal, 
 naturally all things purely human, though not in 
 themselves insignificant, suffer by comparison. In 
 this sense does he define his position : " Learning, 
 science scientia is not to be blamed, nor the mere 
 knowledge of anything whatsoever, for that is good 
 in itself and ordained of God; but" he adds, looking 
 at things from his elevated point of view, and in all 
 truth may he say it, " a good conscience and a vir- 
 tuous life are always to be preferred before it" 
 Not the knowledge he condemns, but the pride, the 
 vanity, the worldliness that are sometimes found in 
 
 1 Ullmann says : " He encouraged susceptible youths to 
 the zealous prosecution of their studies, and even to the ac- 
 quisition of a classical education. Seyeral of the most meri- 
 torious restorers of ancient literature went forth from his quiet 
 cell, and he lived to see in his old age his scholars, Rudolph 
 Lange, Count Maurice of Spiegelberg, Louis Dringenberg, 
 Antony Liber, and above all, Rudolph Agricola and Alexander 
 Hegius laboring with success for the revival of the sciences in 
 Germany and the Netherlands. Accordingly Thomas was not 
 without scientific culture himself or the power of inspiring a 
 taste for it in others." " Reformatoren vor der Reformation." 
 Bd. II. loc. cit. Eng. tr., vol. II., p. 135. 
 
 2 Sermon on the text : "Christus scribit in terra."
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 159 
 
 its train. " Because many endeavor rather to get 
 knowledge than to live well, they are often deceived, 
 and reap either none or but little fruit" In like 
 manner, the author places true greatness, not in 
 great intellectual attainments, but rather in great 
 love and humility : " He is truly great that hath 
 great love. He is truly great that is little in himself 
 and that maketh no account of any height of 
 honor -." ' 
 
 XII. 
 
 i. Here we find ourselves at the second word 
 in which the philosophy of " The Imitation " is 
 summed up. It is not only the Light of Truth ; it is 
 also the Life of Grace. This life consists in the 
 practice of the Christian virtues; the practice of the 
 Christian virtues leads up to union with Christ ; and 
 union with Christ is consummated in the Holy 
 Eucharist. Such is the author's philosophy of life, 
 and in its development does his genius especially 
 glow. He is mystical, eloquent, sublime. He 
 soars into the highest regions of truth in which 
 meet both poetry and philosophy. Following in the 
 footsteps of Christ, heeding His words, living in in- 
 timate union with Him, loving Him with a love 
 that counts no sacrifice too great, trampling under 
 foot all things displeasing to Him, bearing one's 
 burden cheerfully for His sake such is the life of 
 the soul as revealed in this wonderful book. And 
 the author lays stress on the all-important truth 
 that this life should primarily be built upon doctrine. 
 
 1 Bk. I., chap. Hi.
 
 160 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Conscience must be instructed and trained to form 
 correct decisions : 
 
 "My words are spirit and life, and not to be 
 weighed by the understanding of -man. . . . Write 
 thou My words in thy heart, and meditate diligently 
 on them, for in time of temptation they will be very 
 needful for thee" . . .' 
 
 Then love steps in and fructifies the soul and 
 makes it bear good actions, actions acceptable and 
 pleasing to God. It is the vital principle energizing 
 the world of Grace. And here the author bursts 
 forth into a canticle of love that finds in every soul 
 a responsive chord : 
 
 " Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough 
 good. . . . Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing 
 more courageous, nothing higher, nothing wider, noth- 
 ing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in heaven 
 and earth ; because Love is born of God, and can rest 
 but in God above all created things" 
 
 But you must read the whole poem to under- 
 stand and taste its great worth. 2 And then, note 
 how this canticle of love is followed by a more 
 practical commentary in the form of a dialogue 
 between Christ and the soul, all written with the 
 most consummate art : 
 
 " CHRIST. My son thou art -not yet a courageous 
 and wise lover. 
 
 SOUL. Wherefore sayest Thou this, O Lord? 
 
 CHRIST. Because for a slight opposition thou 
 givest over thy undertakings, and too eagerly seekest 
 consolation. A courageous lover standeth firm in 
 
 1 Bk. III., chap. Hi., i., 4. Ibid., chap, iv., 3. 
 * Bk. III., chap. v.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 161 
 
 temptation, and giveth no credit to the crafty per- 
 suasions of the enemy. As I please him in prosperity, 
 so in adversity am I not unp leasing to him. A wise 
 lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves 
 him, as the love of the giver" 
 
 2. Forthwith, the loving soul is instructed in 
 the diverse ways of guarding and preserving grace 
 and virtue, of overcoming temptations, of fleeing 
 and contemning the world, of trying to be meek 
 and lowly and forbearing, and of seeking intimate 
 union with the Beloved. The inclinations of 
 nature, the windings and subterfuges of passion, the 
 dangers from within oneself and the troubles and 
 annoyances that come from without, are all treated 
 with a terseness, clearness, simplicity and unction 
 that are not met with outside of the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures from which they are reflected. But the 
 devout soul is especially to seek strength and com- 
 fort and consolation in union with Christ in the 
 Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. It contains 
 food for the hungering, healing for the sick ; it is 
 the fountain at which the weary and parched soul 
 may slake her thirst ; it is the fruition of all life, the 
 goal of all struggle, the crowning of all effort. 
 Hear how beautifully the pious author expresses 
 the soul's great need for this saving food : 
 
 " Whilst I am detained in the prison of this body, I 
 acknowledge myself to stand in need of two things, to 
 wit, food and light. Unto me, then, thus weak and 
 helpless Thou hast given Thy Sacred Body for the 
 nourishment both of my soul and body; and Thy 
 
 1 Ibid., chap. vi. 
 E. M. ii
 
 162 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Word Thou hast set as a light unto my feet. With- 
 out these two I should not be able to live, for the Word 
 of God is the light of my soul, and Thy Sacrament 
 the bread of life. . . . Thanks be unto Thee, O 
 Thou Creator and Redeemer of mankind, who to mani- 
 fest Thy love to the whole world, hast prepared a great 
 supper, wherein Thou hast set before us to be eaten, 
 not the typical lamb, but Thy most Sacred Body and 
 Blood, rejoicing all the faithful with this holy ban- 
 quet, and replenishing them to the full with the cup 
 of salvation in which are all the delights of paradise; 
 and the holy angels do feast with us, but yet with a 
 more happy sweetness" ' 
 
 3. Thus it is that heaven and earth centre in 
 this Sacrament. All the yearnings of the devout 
 soul for union with the Godhead find their consum- 
 mation in the worthy reception of our Lord in this 
 Sacrament of His love. Every act of virtue is an 
 act of preparation for its reception in the future and 
 of thanksgiving for past Communions. And so the 
 Holy Eucharist becomes the central object of all 
 spiritual life. All this is developed with great in- 
 genuity in the fourth book of " The Imitation." 
 There are several editions with this book omitted. 
 Those making the omission little think that they 
 are losing sight of the principle and the motives 
 underlying the other books. .But so it is. They 
 are constructing an arch without a keystone. They 
 are giving us the play of Hamlet with the parts of 
 Hamlet omitted. They are indeed still distribut- 
 ing good and wholesome thoughts; but at the same 
 time they are destroying the unity of the book and 
 
 1 Bk. IV., chap., xi., 4, 5.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 163 
 
 mistaking its philosophy. It is no longer Thomas 
 a Kempis ; it is Thomas a Kempis diluted and 
 seasoned to suit individual palates. 
 
 4. A recent writer equally mistaken as to the 
 importance of the Fourth Book as a clue to the 
 others, imputed to the pious author motives which 
 he would have repudiated, and assigned his book a 
 purpose for which it was never intended. 
 
 " Its quick celebrity," this writer tells us, "is a 
 proof how profoundly ecclesiastical influence had 
 been affected, for its essential intention was to enable 
 the pious to cultivate their devotional feelings with- 
 out the intervention of the clergy. . . . The celeb- 
 rity of this book was rather dependent on a profound 
 distrust everywhere felt in the clergy both as regards 
 morals and intellect." ' 
 
 The assertion is gratuitous. There was nothing 
 in the life or character of the author to warrant the 
 statement. It is contradicted by the work itself. 
 No man speaks more reverently of the functions of 
 the Altar, or holds in greater esteem the dignity 
 of the priesthood than does this same Thomas a 
 Kempis, himself a worthy priest. 
 
 " Great is the dignity of priests, to whom that is 
 given which is not granted to angels; for priests alone, 
 rightly ordained in the Church, have power to cele- 
 brate and consecrate the Body of Christ. . . .'" 
 
 1 Draper. " Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 470. 
 Mr. Lecky calls this work "extremely remarkable." "History 
 of European Morals," vol. I., p. 105. The writer has found 
 it remarkable in its systematic efforts at misreading history and 
 misinterpreting events. 
 
 1 Bk. IV., chap, v., 5.
 
 164 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 And he thus concludes his beautiful eulogy on 
 the priest at the altar : 
 
 " When a priest celebrates, he honors God, he 
 rejoices the angels, he edifies the Church, he helps 
 the living, he obtains rest for the dead, and makes 
 himself partaker of all good things" ' 
 
 Thus it is that Thomas places the priest between 
 God and the people as their mediator through the 
 sacrifice of the Mass. Surely he could establish no 
 stronger bond of union between clergy and laity. 
 Where, then, is the distrust of which this writer 
 speaks? You may search the book from cover to 
 cover and you will seek in vain for a single word 
 tending by any manner of means, directly or in- 
 directly, to promote or widen the estrangement of 
 the clergy from the laity. Another writer, a 
 Protestant, regarded Thomas a Kempis in this 
 same relation, but his conclusion was the very re- 
 verse. He read, as every truth-loving historian 
 must read, that the pious author " recognizes the 
 existing hierarchy and ecclesiastical constitution 
 in their whole extent, together with the priest- 
 hood in its function of mediating between God 
 and man, and ... on every occasion insists 
 upon ecclesiastical obedience as one of the great- 
 est virtues." a This is the whole spirit and inten- 
 tion of A Kempis. And the secret of the celebrity 
 of "The Imitation" goes deeper than the popularity 
 of the hour. Let us consider it for a moment. 
 
 1 Ibid., 6. 
 
 a Ullmann, " Reform, vor der Ref.," loc. cit. Eng. tr., 
 vol. II., p. 156.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 165 
 
 XIII. 
 
 I. How, it may be asked, was the author able 
 to compass within the covers of this slender volume, 
 so much wisdom, such a vast spiritual experience, 
 such beautiful poetry and profound philosophy. 
 And he has done all this with a grasp and terseness 
 of expression to which no translation has ever been 
 able to do justice. It is because Thomas a Kempis 
 is more than a pious monk, picking up the experi- 
 ences of the Saints and Fathers who preceded him ; 
 he is one of the world-authors ; and " The Imitation" 
 is so clearly stamped with the impress of his genius, 
 that wherever men can read they recognize it as a 
 book that comes home to their business and bosoms 
 for all time. Go where you will, you will perceive its 
 silent influence working for good, and upon natures 
 that seem least prepared to be affected by it. Thus 
 we read how a Moorish prince shows a missionary 
 visiting him a Turkish version of the book, and tells 
 him that he prizes it above all others in his posses- 
 sion. 1 That prince may not have been a good 
 Mohammedan in so prizing this little book; 1 but if 
 he read it with sincerity and thoughtfulness he was 
 all the better man for it. The transition from the 
 cold and fixed fatalism, the barren piety and fierce 
 tribe-spirit of the Koran to the life and warmth and 
 soothing words of "The Imitation," must indeed 
 
 1 Avertissement d'une ancienne traductionpublie'e en 1663, 
 prefixed to the edition of Abbe* Jauffret, p. 10. 
 
 1 A book hath been sent down unto thee ; and therefore let 
 there be no doubt in thy breast concerning it. . . . Follow that 
 which hath been sent down unto thee from thy Lord ; and fol- 
 low no guide besides him. " Koran," chap, vii., i.
 
 166 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 have been to him a new revelation that helped to 
 burst the bands and cerements of many a Moham- 
 medan prejudice. 
 
 2. Again, the book has always been a consoler 
 in tribulation. Louis XVI. , when a prisoner, found 
 great comfort in its pages, and read them day and 
 night. La Harpe, in his love and admiration for 
 what in his day was considered elegant literature, 
 thought the book beneath his notice, even as the 
 Humanists before him had regarded St. Paul. But 
 La Harpe comes to grief, and imprisoned in the 
 Luxembourg, meets with it, and, opening it at 
 random, reads : " Ecce adsum ! ecce ego ad te venio 
 quia invocasti me. Lacrymae tuae, et desiderium 
 animae tuae, humiliatio tua et contritio cordis 
 inclinaverunt me et adduxerunt ad te" ' These touch- 
 ing words seemed to come directly out of the mouth 
 of the Consoler Himself. It was like an apparition. 
 He says : " I fell on my face and wept freely." Ever 
 after " The Imitation " was one of La Harpe's most 
 cherished books. 
 
 3. Once more. A woman of superior genius 
 grandly weaves into one of her most powerful 
 novels the great influence which this book wields 
 for good. The heroine is represented with her 
 young soul stifling in the atmosphere of sordid aim 
 and routine existence, her desires unsatisfied, her 
 yearnings finding no outlet ; groping in thickest 
 darkness, impulsive, thoughtless, imprudent, and 
 withal well meaning. Trouble and misfortune have 
 come upon her, and she has not yet learned the 
 
 1 Lib. III., cap. xxi., 6.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 167 
 
 lesson of Christian patience and long-suffering. 
 Her restive soul beats against the cage of circum- 
 stances with hopeless flutter. An accident puts her 
 in possession of a copy of " The Imitation." She 
 reads the book. It thrills her with awe, " as if she 
 had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn 
 music telling of beings whose soul had been astir 
 while hers was in a stupor." It is to her the rev- 
 elation of a new world of thought and spirituality. 
 She realizes that life, even in her confined sphere 
 of action and routine existence, may be ennobled 
 and made worth living. Was this woman tran- 
 scribing a chapter from her own life ? In reading 
 these magnificent pages, we feel that what George 
 Eliot so graphically recorded of Maggie Tulliver, 
 she had found engraven on the heart of Marian 
 Evans.' This is all the more remarkable, as she did 
 not recognize the Divine source of inspiration 
 whence A Kempis drew so copiously. But she too 
 had her soul-hungerings, and found many a pressing 
 question answered by "this voice out of the far-off 
 Middle Ages" much more efficiently than in feed- 
 ing on the husks of Positivism and Agnosticism. 
 And with her experience of the magic book well 
 might she pay it this eloquent tribute : 
 
 " I suppose that is the reason why the small, old- 
 fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence 
 at a bookstall, works miracles to this day, turning 
 bitter waters into sweetness, while expensive sermons 
 and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they 
 were before. It was written down by a hand that 
 
 1 George Eliot is the nom de plume of Marian Evans, suc- 
 cessively Mrs. George Lewes and Mrs. Cross.
 
 168 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 waited for the heart's promptings ; it is the chronicle 
 of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and 
 triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach 
 endurance to those who are treading with bleeding 
 feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a 
 lasting record of human needs and human consol- 
 ation ; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt, 
 and suffered and renounced, in the cloister, per- 
 haps, with serge and gown and tonsured head, with 
 much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of 
 speech different from ours, but under the same 
 silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate 
 desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the 
 same weariness." * 
 
 Not with the same failures, for this good monk 
 sought only God and God was with him ; not with 
 the same weariness, for possessing God in his heart, 
 he was filled with joy and in all gladness of soul he 
 took up his burden and bore it cheerfully. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 I. Here is the secret of the magic influence 
 wielded by " The Imitation." Pick it up when or 
 where we may, open it at any page we will, we 
 always find something to suit our frame of mind. 
 The author's genius has such complete control of 
 the subject, and handles it with so firm a grasp, 
 that in every sentence we find condensed the ex- 
 perience of ages. It is humanity finding in this 
 simple man an adequate mouthpiece for the utter- 
 ance of its spiritual wants and soul yearnings. And 
 his expression is so full and adequate because he 
 
 1 " The Mill on the Floss," bk. IV., chap, iii., p. 272.
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 169 
 
 regarded things in the white light of God's truth, 
 and saw their nature and their worth clearly and 
 distinctly, as divested of the hues and tints flung 
 around them by passion and illusion. He probed 
 the human heart to its lowest depths and its inmost 
 folds ; he searched intentions and motives and found 
 self lurking in the purest ; he explored the windings 
 of human folly and human misery and discovered 
 them to proceed from self-love and self-gratification. 
 But this author does not simply lay bare the sores 
 and wounds of poor, bleeding human nature. 
 He also prescribes the remedy. And none need go 
 away unhelped. For the foot-sore who are weary 
 with treading the sharp stones and piercing thorns 
 on the highways and byways of life ; for the heart 
 aching with pain and dissappointment and crushed 
 with a weight of tribulations ; for the intellect 
 parched with thirsting after the fountain of true 
 knowledge ; for the soul living in aridity and dryness 
 of spirit ; for the sinner immersed in the mire of sin 
 and iniquity, and the saint, earnestly toiling up the 
 hill of perfection for all he prescribes a balm that 
 heals, and to all does he show the road that leads 
 to the Life and the Light. And for this reason 
 have I attempted to give you a glimpse of the 
 treasures contained in his little book, that you may 
 through it in a special manner cultivate the Spirit- 
 ual Sense. 
 
 Sublime truths these, which we have been con- 
 templating. If I knew a nobler or a more elevated 
 doctrine, you should have it. As it is, I have placed
 
 170 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 before you the highest philosophic ideal, that the 
 most fruitful in thought and word and work. You 
 may not grasp its full meaning, or my expression 
 of it may have been inadequate to its sublime con- 
 ception ; be this as it may, I still present it to you 
 with the conviction that it is best for you. I have 
 no heart for the mere negations of criticism or the 
 barrenness of controversy. They may be good in 
 their way ; they are good and necessary in their way, 
 for they help to remove error and prejudice. But 
 they bear within themselves none of the germs of 
 life. And thought is starving and the soul is be- 
 coming chilled for want of the warmth of life and the 
 nourishment of life-giving food in men's teachings. 
 Great intellects, hungering and thirsting, grope in 
 the cold and the dark for spiritual meat and drink 
 with an earnestness and a yearning that are rarely 
 witnessed in the history of thought. Back of the 
 Rationalism and Agnosticism of the day, may we 
 read a strong religious feeling crying out for life and 
 light and warmth. Could those intellects ascend 
 the heights traversed by the great geniuses in 
 whose company we have been could they see 
 things as Plato occasionally saw them, as with still 
 keener vision St. John saw them, and as Clement 
 and Augustine and Aquinas and A Kempis saw 
 them they too would find that rest and that ful- 
 ness of life, that belong to those dwelling in the 
 broad daylight of God's truth.
 
 OtfR GATH0LIG SCHOOL SYSTEM
 
 OUlf CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 1 
 I. 
 
 The Institutions. 
 
 Catholic School System includes all grades 
 ^=^ of instruction from the nursery and the kinder- 
 garten to the university. It comprises orphan 
 asylums and industrial schools, parish schools, con- 
 vents, academies, colleges, seminaries and universi- 
 ties. They all of them have this in common : That 
 while imparting such knowledge as is required for the 
 secular professions, the chief cause of their existence 
 is to educate Catholic children in the doctrines and 
 practices of their faith. No attempt has been made 
 to organize our Catholic institutions into a complete 
 system, a living whole, with unity of plan and pur- 
 pose. They have sprung up according to exigencies 
 of time and place. They have no central control, no 
 general inspection. There is no uniformity in the 
 matter of class books, no uniformity in the matter 
 of class work. They differ in their standing and in 
 their standard of excellence. 
 
 It is difficult to have it otherwise in our private 
 institutions. Liberty of action in using different 
 methods need not interfere with the efficiency of 
 work done. The methods of the Madams of 
 
 1 This essay was read at the Parliament of Religions, Chi- 
 cago, in the summer of 1893. 
 
 (173)
 
 174 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 the Sacred Heart are distinct from those of the 
 Visitandines ; the methods of the Lazarists or 
 Sulpitians are not those of the Benedictines or 
 Augustinians, and these again are distinct from 
 the methods of the Jesuits, even as the members 
 of each order receive a distinct training. But amid 
 all this variety as regards the means, there is unity as 
 regards the end for which our Catholic institutions 
 exist. Keeping in view that end, we shall cast a 
 hasty glance at our schools, throwing out here and 
 there, in all charity, such suggestions as occur. 
 
 II. 
 
 Parochial Schools. 
 
 We shall begin with that portion of our educa- 
 tional system which is dearest to the heart of every 
 Catholic; namely, our parochial schools. These 
 schools have been multiplied and fostered at great 
 sacrifices financial sacrifices on the part of the laity 
 who contributed to their erection and maintenance ; 
 sacrifices of life on the part of religious teachers 
 who not unfrequently spent their energies in rooms 
 low and dingy, overcrowded and ill ventilated ; 
 sacrifices on the part of the clergy who deprived 
 themselves in many ways in order that the parish 
 schools might flourish. The parish school system, 
 be its defects and shortcomings what they may, is 
 indispensable for the preservation of the Catholic 
 religion in the hearts of our Catholic children. It is 
 the nursery of the faith for the rising generation. 
 
 Every Catholic clergyman ministering at the 
 altar of God ; every Catholic layman having at
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STSTEM. 175 
 
 heart the survival, the strengthening and the propa- 
 gation of his faith, desires a parish school in which 
 those boys and girls who are to be the future men 
 and women of their church, shall receive a solid 
 religious training. Our Protestant brethren at- 
 tempted another plan. They sent their children to 
 schools from which all religious creeds were ban- 
 ished, and by their Sunday Schools and religious 
 libraries sought to supply the lack of religious train- 
 ing. Did they succeed ? No, gentlemen ; they did 
 not. Their plan has ended in failure. From Meth- 
 odist and Lutheran, from Baptist and Presbyterian 
 and Episcopalian, the wail has gone forth that the 
 young men and women of the day are abandoning 
 the creeds of their fathers and that their churches 
 are becoming deserted. 
 
 Would matters have been any better a hundred 
 years ago if the early settlers had not maintained 
 strictly denominational schools ? Would Catholicity 
 flourish in the country as it is now flourishing, if 
 there had been no Catholic schools in which children 
 might inhale a Catholic atmosphere, study the 
 Catholic catechism, learn their Catholic prayers, and 
 imbibe for the Church, her sacraments and her 
 clergy that reverence which is the envy and the 
 admiration of the outside world? Certainly not. 
 There may be difference of opinion as to the ways 
 and means by which Catholic education is to be 
 imparted and Catholic schools are to be supported, 
 but there can be none regarding the self-evident 
 truth that if the Church in America is to be perpet- 
 uated in a robust, God-fearing and God-serving
 
 176 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Catholicity, it is only by the establishment of 
 a Catholic school in every Catholic parish. This 
 result is not accomplished, this result cannot be 
 accomplished in neutral schools. 
 
 The Holy Father is most emphatic on the sub- 
 ject, in a recent letter to the bishops of France. 
 
 " It is of the greatest importance," says His Holi- 
 ness, "that the children sprung from Christian 
 marriage should be instructed in the precepts of 
 religion at an early age; and that the studies in 
 which youth is wont to be educated, be combined 
 with religious training. To separate the one from 
 the other is really to wish that youthful minds 
 should remain neutral in their duties to God. This 
 teaching is false, and especially dangerous in the 
 early years of childhood, because it paves the way to 
 Atheism and saps the foundations of religion. Good 
 parents should exercise the greatest care to see that 
 their children, when they first begin to under- 
 stand, learn the truths of religion, and that there 
 be nothing in the schools hurtful to the integrity of 
 faith and morality. It is a precept of both the 
 divine and natural law that they exercise this dili- 
 gence in the education of their offspring ; nor can 
 they for any reason be released from the obligation 
 of this law. 
 
 " Indeed, the Church, the guardian and vindicator 
 of the integrity of the faith, whose duty it is, in vir- 
 tue of the authority conferred on her by God, her 
 founder, to call all people to the knowledge of Chris- 
 tian truth, and likewise diligently to see how the 
 youth subject to her authority are educated, has 
 always openly condemned what are called mixed or 
 neutral schools, and again and again admonished 
 parents in a matter of such great moment to avoid 
 them as much as possible. In obeying the Church 
 in this, parents at the same time serve their own
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 177 
 
 interests and very greatly benefit the state. For if 
 childhood be not formed on religious principles, 
 youth grows up in ignorance of the most important 
 moral factors, which alone can nourish a zeal for 
 virtue in men and restrain their irrational appetites." ' 
 
 Golden words these, words of weight and wisdom 
 far beyond all else that may be said on the subject. 
 It confirms us in holding the Catholic school to be 
 the nursery of the Catholic congregation, the 
 inclosed garden in which are fostered vocations to 
 the priesthood and to religious life ; in a word, the 
 hope and the mainstay of the Church in the future. 
 
 The parochial school has been all this in the 
 past. When we consider the history of Catholic 
 education during the fifty years that have just 
 elapsed, and note the many serious obstacles which 
 our Catholic schools have had to contend with, and 
 at the same time go over the roll call of prominent 
 Catholics who have had their early training in these 
 schools archbishops, bishops, and priests, and re- 
 ligious men and women whose vocation has been 
 fostered in them ; eminent laymen now filling posi- 
 tions of trust and honor, whose consciences were 
 there formed, and who had there learned to be 
 proud of their faith and to practice its teachings to 
 the best of their ability we are compelled to 
 regard these schools, even in their least efficient 
 forms with great respect. In no sense are they 
 failures. In no sense are they to be abandoned or 
 neglected ; rather in the very words of Leo XIII. 
 concerning these schools, "every effort should be 
 
 1 Letters to the French Bishops. 
 E. M 12
 
 178 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 made to multiply Catholic schools and to bring 
 them to perfect equipment." Therefore it is that 
 His Holiness in his latest utterance to the Amer- 
 ican hierarchy from which I have just quoted, 
 solemnly declares that : 
 
 "The decrees which the Baltimore Councils, 
 agreeably to the directions of the Holy See, have 
 enacted concerning parochial schools, and whatever 
 else has been prescribed by the Roman Pontiffs, 
 whether directly or through the sacred congrega- 
 tion, concerning the same matter, be steadfastly 
 observed." ' 
 
 These are truths to which this Catholic Congress 
 unqualifiedly pledges itself, yea, even in the face 
 of the great difficulties to be overcome in maintain- 
 ing and promoting the parochial school. The fact 
 is not for a moment to be lost sight of, that our 
 parish schools, as at present managed, are a great 
 burden upon the people and a great source of solici- 
 tude for the clergy. On account of their limited 
 resources they are restricted in the sphere of their 
 usefulness. Parochial school-teachers are paid but 
 one half or one third of the salaries that they might 
 earn in the public schools. 
 
 The brotherhoods and sisterhoods that are teach- 
 ing orders, are with great difficulty and much econ- 
 omizing scarcely enabled to make ends meet. 
 Out of the pittance that they receive as salary, at 
 least a fourth part goes to the support of the noviti- 
 ates and houses of study of the order to which they 
 belong. Inquire into the extent of that salary ; think 
 
 letters to Cardinal Gibbons, May 31, 1893.
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 170 
 
 of the plain, bare mode of life that these religious 
 lead ; figure out their many privations not physical 
 or mental privations, for these they do not 
 reckon, but privations as regards books, charts, 
 school apparatus and conveniences for study, that it 
 is impossible for them to purchase and that they 
 must go without, unless indeed a thoughtful pastor 
 should supply these deficiencies at his own expense 
 or the expense of his parish and you may form a 
 slight conception of the odds against which they are 
 working, and how heavily handicapped they are in 
 the race for excellence. Withal, an hour spent at 
 the Catholic educational exhibit will convince you 
 that a skillful workman, even with an inferior quality 
 of tools, can produce good results. But, could these 
 privations be lessened, and the burden upon the 
 parishes lightened ; could our religious teachers 
 receive sufficient support to enable them to enter upon 
 their work untrammeled, then indeed might we look 
 for results that would be worthy of the cause. 
 
 Now, the day may not be far distant when Cath- 
 olics in many of our commonwealths shall be given 
 their share of the school funds ; it is an act of equity 
 that cannot be long postponed. When that day 
 comes, as come it shall, it is of the utmost impor- 
 tance that we be prepared. It is essential that our 
 teachers, religious and secular, be possessed of their 
 certificates and diplomas as teachers not from a 
 clerical or a religious body, but from the state and 
 that no man or woman among the younger members 
 of our religious order be permitted to teach without 
 a diploma. These arrangements will bring teachers
 
 180 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 and schools in touch with the state, win the con- 
 fidence of the authorities, and help to remove the 
 prejudices that do not now permit those authorities 
 to do us justice and see anything good come out of 
 Nazareth. It will prepare us for the day when the 
 Christian religion shall be recognized in our public 
 schools, and our Catholic schools will no longer be 
 deprived of ample support because our children in 
 learning to be good Catholics are also learning the 
 truest means of becoming loyal citizens. That 
 day is now dawning. If the Catholic Church in 
 America is to be preserved from the indifferentism 
 which is at the present moment gangrening Catholic 
 Italy, Catholic Spain, and Catholic France, it is 
 only by safeguarding the Catholic child in the 
 parochial school. Indeed every Christian denomi- 
 nation possessed of sufficient vitality to seek to 
 prolong its existence, is now convinced that without 
 further parley it must make the question of Chris- 
 tian education its own, for the very existence of 
 each denomination depends upon the denomina- 
 tional training that the child shall receive in the 
 schoolroom. 
 
 III. 
 
 Convent Schools. 
 
 Next in importance to the parish school for boys 
 and girls, is the convent school in which the 
 daughters of our well-to-do Catholics receive the 
 training that fits them to be the religious teachers or 
 the model wives and mothers of the next genera- 
 tion. The convent school is a choice garden 
 attached to the Lord 's household, in which the
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STSTEM. 181 
 
 sweetest flowers of virtue are tended and fostered 
 by women of piety, zeal and culture. Its influence 
 extends far and wide throughout the land. Among 
 the leading social forces in America to-day, the 
 women whose power for good is most far-reaching 
 are pupils of the convent school. 
 
 The tendency in these latter days is to make 
 woman as independent as she can possibly become. 
 A thousand new avenues of industry are open to 
 her; a thousand recently created occupations now 
 yield her maintenance, and in her efforts to become 
 self-supporting she has proved herself fully compe- 
 tent to discharge every duty and responsibility that 
 she assumed. This state of affairs entails a more 
 practical training in all our schools for girls. Even 
 the woman of wealth and leisure is expected to 
 know more than the last play or the latest fashion in 
 dress, and to do more than merely pass through her 
 rounds of social visits and entertainments. The care 
 and visitation of the poor, attendance at hospitals, 
 the nursing of the sick, and kindred work are classed 
 among her duties and responsibilities. 
 
 Nor does it suffice that she pose as my lady 
 bountiful. If she is to hold her own in the social 
 world, she must read and think and sift the knowl- 
 edge that she has acquired. Moreover, so many 
 fortunes are nowadays carried down the maelstrom 
 of wild speculation, every woman should be prepared 
 to turn her hand to some means of support in case of 
 necessity. The convent school is expected to lay 
 the foundation of all this practical knowledge. Sub- 
 jects that were scarcely ever studied forty years ago
 
 182 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS, 
 
 are now considered of primary importance and find a 
 place upon every curriculum prepared to meet 
 present requirements. 
 
 There are those who insist that there is no 
 convent curriculum prepared to meet present 
 requirements as Vassar or Bryn Maur meet them, 
 and who accordingly object to convent education 
 because it is not abreast of the times. They tell us 
 that the nun has no means of advancing in her 
 studies. They even undertake to trace her life 
 for us, and show her to us entering the novitiate 
 while still a schoolgirl, or soon after her graduation ; 
 thereafter, these people assure us, she is not per- 
 mitted to read any author outside the spiritual 
 works given her for her devotions, and the text-book 
 she makes use of in class, and in consequence she 
 knows only the literature that she had read before 
 entering the order, and is wholly ignorant of the 
 literature that is coloring the thoughts and moulding 
 the minds of the children she assumes to educate. 
 She is represented as a generation behind her age, 
 out of touch with the thoughts and sentiments 
 actuating those with whom she is charged. 
 
 Is not the case grossly exaggerated ? Is the nun 
 really so benighted ? You have not found her so. 
 You have found in the convent in which your daugh- 
 ters and sisters are educated, women of culture, 
 women who have made serious studies, women who 
 are familiar with the chief currents of thought. You 
 cannot conceive ladies who are so devout and con- 
 scientious in so many other respects, lacking all 
 conscience in this important purpose of education,
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STSTEM. 183 
 
 devoting their lives to that work and yet only play- 
 ing at it, imparting a pretense of knowledge for real 
 knowledge, drawing from stagnant pools of anti- 
 quated learning when their duty is to give of the 
 running stream. Were such the case, then indeed 
 would there be an absence of robustness in the edu- 
 cation imparted by the convent. But is it so ? Has 
 the convent graduate to unlearn so very much after 
 she has finished her studies? Thousands of the 
 brightest and cleverest women in the land are pre- 
 pared by word and example to give the lie to any 
 such assertion. Still even were it so and it is not 
 so the convent graduate would bear with her, as 
 the fruit of her convent training, such a treasure of 
 modesty, virtue and womanly graces as were suf- 
 ficient to outweigh any amount of purely brain de- 
 velopment. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Commercial, Technical and Night Schools. 
 
 Passing over our colleges and academies, our 
 seminaries and universities, all of which are achieving 
 fair results under many difficulties, and all of which 
 have their place in our school system, passing over 
 these for the reason that they will be discussed by 
 others at this congress, passing over our training 
 schools and industrial schools, our orphanages and 
 asylums, let us take a rapid glance at some of the 
 educational possibilities by which our present system 
 may be supplemented and improved. 
 
 Why, for instance, may we not have large 
 commercial schools in our principal cities? I am
 
 184 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 aware that there are commercial academies, some of 
 them imparting no small degree of proficiency in the 
 shape of a business training; but there are none 
 conducted on the scale that I would project. In the 
 first place, such a commercial school should be known 
 for its thoroughness. Not only should it give all the 
 instruction that our business colleges now impart, but 
 it should add thereto several courses of a practical 
 character. Chemistry as applied to the industries 
 and manufactures would form a special course, in 
 order that students might understand the ingredients 
 that enter into diverse articles of commerce and 
 test the quality of those articles. The history of the 
 chief industries could be studied to advantage ; so 
 could the staples of various countries and the most 
 favorable conditions under which they are produced. 
 As the school is to be patronized by an intelligent 
 body of young men who are in touch with the prac- 
 tical side of life, the courses of instructions should 
 include those subjects that underlie editorial leaders 
 in the daily papers and agitate the public mind 
 most deeply ; therefore, these young men should 
 have the social and political problems of the day 
 presented to them in a series of clear and popular 
 lectures based upon a careful study of their principles 
 from the Christian point of view. In like manner 
 courses of lectures upon common law, upon history and 
 literature from the same vantage ground would be in 
 place. The certificates and diplomas which would 
 be given by such an institution would be coveted by 
 young men and would be an introduction to be re- 
 spected by the merchants of the community. I
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STSTEM. 185 
 
 throw out the hint as one of the untried possibili- 
 ties that would be a great boon for our Catholic 
 young men. 
 
 Again there is a large class of our Catholic boys 
 who have been obliged to quit school at an early 
 age for the workshop or the factory, and who 
 with riper years and larger experience feel the 
 necessity of making up for early deficiencies. What 
 accommodations have we for this class ? Practically 
 none. Could not Catholic night schools flourish in 
 our large cities ? See what a boon they would be to 
 these young men ; to young women as well. Here 
 their notions might be enlarged and corrected ; here 
 might be supplied that lack of intellectual perspec- 
 tive which usually accompanies an unfinished train- 
 ing, and which is the greatest difficulty to overcome 
 when reasoning with an ignorant person; here 
 ambitious young men and women might be set upon 
 the road of self-improvement. Nor would religious 
 instructions, without being offensively obtrusive, 
 fail to find a place in these night schools. Every- 
 thing would be looked at from the Catholic point of 
 view. The atmosphere of the school would be 
 Catholic ; the beautiful ceremonies of the Church 
 would be explained till their full meaning and 
 import would be understood ; objections to our 
 religion would be cleared up ; Catholic doctrines 
 would be so explained that the young men and 
 women would learn to love and cherish and feel 
 proud of the faith that is in them. Here is a wide 
 field of labor yet untilled. It is painful to witness 
 in large cities, like New York, the active aggressive-
 
 186 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 ness of those who misunderstand and misrepresent 
 our faith. They attract to their soup-houses and 
 night schools herds of our Catholic Italian and 
 Bohemian children, and inoculate them with un- 
 Catholic and anti-Catholic ideas, while little or noth- 
 ing is done to counteract their machinations. This 
 is practical work for our zealous Catholic laity. 
 
 V. 
 
 Reading Circles, Clubs and Summer Schools. 
 
 The more cultured class of Catholic young men 
 and women are now supplementing their school 
 studies by reading circles and literary clubs. These 
 are so many annexes to our educational system, and 
 as such are not to be overlooked. In them reading 
 is no longer carried on in the old desultory way ; it 
 is rather conducted on definite lines mapped out by 
 some competent scholar ; the reader passes from the 
 easy to the difficult, from the agreeable to the 
 severe ; he learns how to carry such a course of 
 reading to its conclusion ; he acquires a habit of 
 sustained thought ; his mind becomes thus sub- 
 jected to wholesome discipline. The members of 
 these circles render mutual aid ; they discuss the 
 topic, the author, the book ; what is an obscure 
 point to one may be comparatively clear to another, 
 and thus by interchange of views is additional light 
 thrown upon the whole subject. The system is 
 admirable in its conception, admirable in its meth- 
 ods, and admirable in its results. 
 
 Of our clubs for Catholic young men, little need 
 be said. They are a necessity. If interest is not
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 187 
 
 taken in our Catholic young men at that critical 
 period in their lives when they are on the eve of 
 manhood, and their passions are strong and they are 
 easily led into mischief, and if they are not supplied 
 with legitimate amusement which shall also be 
 educating, unless their homes are very attractive 
 they are likely to seek amusement in the bar-room, 
 in the billiard room, or in the rooms of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association. Now, it were far 
 better that they enjoy themselves in a rational 
 manner under Catholic auspices, than that they do 
 so under ungodly or Protestant auspices. Their 
 clubs may here and there be a source of annoyance 
 to the pastor ; they may as a body be occasionally 
 guilty of insubordinate or unbecoming conduct ; but 
 be it remembered that these are only mere accidents 
 of such associations and are not to be weighed 
 against the benefits that accrue from them when 
 wisely and prudently managed. 
 
 Another institution that has grown out of our 
 reading circles and that bids fair to become an inti- 
 mate portion of our Catholic system of education is 
 the Catholic Summer School. Almost spontane- 
 ously, before even its projectors had realized its 
 great power and influence as an educational force, 
 this school sprang into existence and received a 
 cordial reception from laity and hierarchy ; and 
 now, on the morn following its second session it has 
 become an object of abiding interest among the 
 Catholics of America. The institution is too young 
 to be understood by all ; it is too great a departure 
 from old lines not to be regarded with the eye of
 
 188 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 suspicion, and court comment, and meet with carp- 
 ings and fault findings. Permit me, in a few words, 
 to define its scope and character. It is not the 
 equivalent of a night school of special studies in 
 which young men and women may make good the 
 deficiencies of an education early neglected; it is 
 not a school of special studies in which within a 
 limited time and by concentrated efforts, proficiency 
 may be made in any one branch ; it does not pretend 
 to give a complete college course. Later on it may 
 grow to any or all of these, but at present it is none 
 of them. 
 
 The primary import of the Catholic Summer 
 School is this: To give from the most authorita- 
 tive sources among our Catholic writers and thinkers 
 the Catholic point of view on all the issues of the day 
 in history, in literature, in philosophy, in political 
 science, upon the economic problems that are agitat- 
 ing the world, upon the relations between science and 
 religion ; to state in the clearest possible terms the 
 principle underlying truth in each and all these sub- 
 jects ; to remove false assumptions and correct false 
 statements; to pursue the calumnies and slanders ut- 
 tered against our creed and our Chu rch to their last lurk- 
 ing place. Our reading Catholics, in the busy round of 
 of their daily occupations, heedlessly snatch out of the 
 secular journals and magazines undigested opinions 
 upon important subjects, opinions hastily written and 
 not infrequently erroneously expressed ; men and 
 events, theories and schemes and projects are dis- 
 cussed upon unsound principles and assumptions 
 which the readers have but scant time to unravel and
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. 189 
 
 rectify ; the poison of these false premises enters 
 into their thinking, corrodes their reasoning, and 
 unconsciously they accept as truth conclusions that 
 are only distortions of truth. It is among the 
 chief purposes of the Summer School to supply 
 antidotes for this poison. And therefore the ablest 
 and best equipped among our Catholic leaders of 
 thought, whether lay or clerical, are brought face to 
 face with a cultured Catholic audience, and give their 
 listeners the fruits of life-long studies in those 
 departments of science or letters in which they have 
 become eminent. They state in single lectures 
 or in courses of lectures such principles and facts and 
 methods as may afterwards be used and applied in 
 one's reading for the detection of error and the dis- 
 covery of truth. To achieve such work is the 
 mission of the Catholic Summer School, and there- 
 fore does it in all propriety, and in all justice, take a 
 place in our Catholic system of education. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Catholic University and Normal Schools. 
 
 Splendid as is the structure of our Catholic 
 School System, it is not yet complete. Additions 
 are to be made. We shall indicate two : 
 
 i. Our Catholic university at Washington is still 
 in the stage of incipiency ; but if true to itself and 
 to Catholic educational traditions, it may become a 
 great educational force. To speak of its technical 
 work were to transcend the scope of this paper ; but 
 in general terms we may state its mission. It is to
 
 190 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 elevate the tone of Catholic thought and Catholic 
 scholarship in America ; to train Catholic pro- 
 fessors who will become specialists of weight and 
 authority in our Catholic colleges, and thus give 
 more thoroughness and efficiency to the instructions 
 imparted in academy and college ; to broaden and 
 deepen the lines of studies pursued in our semi- 
 naries ; to give us the latest word in the domain of 
 science and letters; in original research to go for- 
 ward beyond the known and conquer new kingdoms ; 
 to harmonize the more recently discovered lands of 
 science with revealed religion ; to make profound 
 study of the great living issues whether in philos- 
 ophy, in literature or political science. All this our 
 Catholic university cannot dream of accomplishing 
 for decades to come; but all this it is within its 
 province to achieve, and all this cultured men the 
 world over expect from it in due time. Will they 
 be disappointed ? 
 
 2. As we require a predominating university in 
 order to supply our colleges with efficient teachers, 
 and elevate the tone of collegiate training, even so 
 do we require Catholic normal schools to impart to 
 our teachers of primary instruction a spirit in keep- 
 ing with our traditions and our high ideals as 
 educators. Here I meet with the objection that in 
 every commonwealth there are state normal schools 
 in which our Catholic teachers may be moulded, and 
 that those schools suffice. These schools are 
 admirably conducted ; they are excellent in their 
 way; but do they indeed suffice? By no means. 
 Permit me to tell you why.
 
 OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STSTEM. 191 
 
 These schools these state normal schools 
 prepare teachers, but they do not prepare Catholic 
 teachers. Look into their books upon educational 
 methods ; what method do you find recommended ? 
 Is it the scholastic method of the Jesuit Fathers 
 which won the admiration of Lord Bacon and of 
 nearly every thoughtful man in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries? Is it the method of La Salle 
 which has been likened to the discovery of a new 
 world, and which is practically the method now in 
 vogue in nearly all our schools, public and private ? 
 Not at all. You read much of Locke and Com- 
 enius and much of Lancaster and Bell and Her- 
 bart ; but of our great Catholic educators, these 
 books have naught but words of slight and of condem- 
 nation. Our eminent Catholic educators are as a 
 rule misunderstood and misrepresented in these 
 schools. Is this the spirit in which you would have 
 Catholic teachers trained ? 
 
 Nor is this all. Granted that our Catholic edu- 
 cators are no longer misrepresented, which is not the 
 case ; granted that Catholic times and Catholic 
 methods and traditions receive their full meed of 
 praise, which they are far from receiving now ; 
 granted that the last scale of prejudice has dropped 
 from the eyes of state normal school professors, 
 which is a condition of things far off in the future 
 granted all this, and there remains a still weightier 
 reason for possessing our own normal schools. It is 
 this: The Catholic teacher whose faith, during the 
 whole course of training, has been ignored by its his- 
 torical, literary and religious aspects ; whose mind has
 
 192 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 become imbued directly or indirectly with Prot- 
 estant estimates of men and events ; whose training 
 has been purely negative so far as his religion with 
 all its glories in history, literature and art is 
 concerned such a teacher is no longer fitted to 
 take charge of a Catholic school. He is lacking in 
 religious knowledge, in devotion, and in the robust 
 Catholic spirit. He is timid where his faith is con- 
 cerned. He keeps it under cover. He is afraid to 
 assert his Catholicity lest in so doing he give 
 offense ; he is annoyed when he hears others insist 
 that the Church has been overlooked or misrepre- 
 sented by an enemy. He prefers to converse about 
 any other topic than the noble, saving, life-giving 
 truths of his religion. He is an emasculated Catholic. 
 To this estimate there are many exceptions. 
 
 Think you that the teacher so trained and so 
 tempered is the manner of man to inspire pupils 
 with a sincere love of religion, its doctrines and its 
 practices? Where is the warm Catholic spirit? 
 Where is the glow of piety and zeal for religion that 
 fill the breast of the devoted Catholic master? 
 Where is that delicate sense of appreciation of the 
 spiritual and the supernatural? Where that ideal 
 standard of worth which prizes the salvation of a 
 soul above all other things? It is buried out of sight, 
 lost in the mere mechanical drill through which this 
 product of the state normal school has passed. 
 
 And so, if we could have Catholic teachers worthy 
 of the name, to aid and strengthen the work of our 
 religious teaching orders, let them be trained in 
 Catholic normal schools.
 
 WHAT IS THE OdTLOOK F0R 0dR 
 COLLEGES 
 
 E. M. 13
 
 WHAT IS THE OUTLOOK FOR OUR 
 COLLEGES? 1 
 
 I. 
 
 'LL three of these works are instructive and 
 scholarly productions and amply repay 
 perusal. They are written from a Protestant stand- 
 point, but they are written by fair-minded men 
 who intend to be just. Still, the authors lack that 
 sympathy for the old order of things which colors 
 the page and makes it glow with the old life that 
 reigned in the institutions they describe. Not be- 
 ing familiar with the Church and her teachings, 
 they occasionally misconstrue the habits and 
 practices of mediaeval days. 
 
 The motives imputed are not always the correct 
 ones, nor are the causes assigned either adequate 
 or free from error. Mr. Mullinger, for instance, 
 scarcely gives sufficient reason for the decline of 
 the University of Paris in the fifteenth century 
 when he tells us that it was due to the failure of 
 the " Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle" to 
 
 1 Catholic Quarterly JRevie-w. 
 
 " The University of Cambridge from the Earliest Time to 
 the Royal Injunctions of 1535," By J. B. Mullinger. Cam- 
 bridge University Press, 1873. "A History of Eton College, 
 1440-1875," By H. C. Maxwell Lyte, M.A., London, 1877. 
 " History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland," By James Grant, 
 1876. 
 
 (195)
 
 196 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 establish " the absolute authority of such assemblies 
 over the fiat of the pope himself;" whilst his words 
 would leave the erroneous impression that the 
 shadow of that fiat deterred intellectual expansion. 
 Nor does he understand the asceticism and devo- 
 tion of the monks whose lives and energies were 
 spent in the noble cause of education. In the same 
 sense and with the same reserve may we commend 
 the work of Mr. Maxwell Lyte on Eton College. 
 It is painstaking and full of information which 
 every educator ought to know. Mr. Grant also 
 writes in good faith. His testimony is so strong in 
 favor of general education throughout Scotland, 
 prior to the Reformation, that we cannot refrain 
 from bringing it into evidence. He says: 
 
 "With church schools and burgh schools in all 
 parts of the country, we may be sure that they did 
 something to ' teach the poor for God's sake, and 
 the rich for reason, and nothing to pay except they 
 be profited.' " 
 
 Again, in summing up his researches on this 
 period, he pays the following ungrudging tribute to 
 the Church : 
 
 " The scattered jottings collected in this chapter 
 show our obligation to the ancient Church for hav- 
 ing so diligently promoted our national education 
 an education placed within the reach of all 
 classes." 
 
 Such testimony is deserving of record ; but such 
 testimony is always given by witnesses who place 
 truth above prejudice or bigotry. 
 
 Refreshing and instructive is it to go back to 
 mediaeval school life as these works reveal it. It
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 197 
 
 was a life tempered with few material comforts 
 and made severe by many hardships. The fare 
 was not dainty. That of Oxford was considered 
 superior; and yet when Sir Thomas Moore found 
 himself in reduced circumstances and spoke of 
 retrenching expenses, in his own witty way he 
 made it the extreme limit of poor living: "My 
 counsel is, that we fall not to the lowest fare first ; 
 we will not therefore descend to the Oxford fare." 
 The discipline was strict, and its slightest breach 
 was atoned by severe bodily punishment. " If con- 
 victed of any infringement of the college rules they 
 were soundly birched in the hall of the court." 
 When a vacation was given, every student was 
 obliged to return without fail on the day ap- 
 pointed. " Anybody who failed to return by bed- 
 time that day received a flogging, while any who 
 absented themselves beyond the next day were 
 deprived of their scholarships." It is no surprise 
 to meet among the items for which there was a 
 regular charge, the birch. We are told: "A 
 curious charge of sixpence occurs every term as 
 ' quarterydge in penne and ynke, brome and birch.' " 
 The rooms were damp and uncomfortable. Only 
 in the large halls were fires allowed, and even there 
 very sparingly. Lever, the Master of St. John's 
 Cambridge, in a well-known sermon delivered in 
 1550, tells how the students, being without fire, 
 " are fain to walk or run up and down half an hour, 
 to get a heat in their feet when they go to bed." 
 Even a bench or seat in school was considered a 
 luxury the enjoyment of which students might
 
 198 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 forfeit. A statute of Pope Urban V. bearing date 
 of 1366 forbids the use of either. 
 
 But as an offset to this, we must remember that 
 discipline in the family was also severe. The will 
 of the father was law beyond appeal. The ancient 
 Roman tradition of his power for life or death still 
 lingered around the hearthstone. Children were 
 betrothed as soon as born ; they were placed in 
 monasteries or convents at the tenderest age. The 
 eldest son followed the calling of the father from 
 generation to generation without a thought of 
 change. In every direction the lines were rigidly 
 drawn. Therefore, in spite of all the inconven- 
 iences, and the positive hardships which frequently 
 cost youth their lives, the halls of all these colleges 
 were thronged. Eager youths, and grown-up men 
 still more eager, endured the cold and the hunger, 
 the hardships, and the privations, with cheerful 
 heart and hopeful spirit, for the sake of the educa- 
 tion they received; nay, they prized their educa- 
 tion all the more because of the difficulties under 
 which it was acquired. 
 
 These mediaeval schools have passed into other 
 hands. They have, to a great extent, been diverted 
 from the purposes for which they were founded 
 and endowed. Still, in England especially, they 
 have retained many of the old traditions and even 
 something of the old spirit. 
 
 " Nor is it too much to say," says Cardinal 
 Newman, " that the colleges in the English univer- 
 sities may be considered in matters of fact to be 
 the lineal descendants of heirs of Charlemagne."
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 199 
 
 This fact reveals the sources whence they have 
 drawn whatever power or influence they have 
 wielded. An institution, if it would live and 
 thrive, must imbibe its spirit from the soil in which 
 it is rooted ; its vitality must come from the tradi- 
 tions in which it is planted. They supply the sap 
 that circulates through it, giving it life and being. 
 Now, it devolves on our Catholic colleges to carry 
 out the traditions and intentions of those venerable 
 establishments that are the growth of Catholic 
 piety and Catholic charity. And though our 
 Catholic colleges are only the work of yesterday, 
 still, the principle that inspired their erection is as 
 old as reason, as unchanging as truth, and as last- 
 ing as the Church. It is the same principle out of 
 which grew the beautiful structures of Oxford and 
 Cambridge. Let us not forget the fact. 
 
 The work left undone by those institutions has 
 fallen to our share ; and that is no less a work than 
 the noble and responsible mission of continuing 
 to transmit the boon of Catholic education. We 
 inherit the faith, and with the faith we inherit the 
 duty of spreading it, teaching it, explaining it, and 
 showing in its light the true and the false in the 
 science of the day. To be recreant to this mission 
 were an injustice to generations still unborn. It 
 is important that we note how far we are fulfilling 
 our duty in this respect. With the increase of 
 home comforts and home accommodations our col- 
 leges have kept pace. We have dispensed with 
 the birch; our rooms are heated according to the 
 most approved systems ; our benches and desks
 
 200 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 are comfortable and not unfrequently elegant ; at 
 least in some of our schools the fare is far from 
 being inferior ; in a word, the most poorly 
 equipped among our schools far surpasses those 
 of the Middle Ages both in comfort and conven- 
 ience. The opportunities for education have be- 
 come numerous and easy, and as a consequence its 
 advantages have become to be undervalued. That 
 which is easily procured is cheaply prized. Still, 
 this does not explain altogether the small attend- 
 ance at our best colleges. Back of it are other 
 causes which we propose touching upon in the 
 course of the present article. 
 
 II. 
 
 AND first we will note the fact that incidental 
 drawbacks or occasional checks in the advancement 
 of our educational establishments need not cause 
 any grave misapprehension that their mission is go- 
 ing to be a failure. Ultimately they will become all 
 the more robust for having gone through so many 
 hardships in their younger days. Everything last- 
 ing experiences at one time or other a struggle for 
 its existence. 
 
 The past decade has been- very trying upon our 
 colleges and convents, and high schools. The 
 smaller and weaker ones have been driven to the 
 wall. The larger ones have barely kept themselves 
 afloat, and many of them have been so far tided 
 over upon debts in which they are still threatened 
 to be swamped. These financial embarrassments
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 201 
 
 must needs keep our colleges at a low ebb. Nor 
 are we alone in this respect. Financial embarrass- 
 ment stares the larger and better non-Catholic insti- 
 tutions in the face, and they begin to grow alarmed 
 at their large annual expenses. More is implied 
 than has been expressed in this assertion of a recent 
 writer : " Though the income of the richer Ameri- 
 can colleges is larger than the revenue of the 
 English, many colleges on these shores are much 
 poorer than the poorest of the English." True, 
 money is not the end for which we educate ; but 
 withal money is an essential element in the running 
 and wqrking of our establishments of education. 
 Being so regarded, money is to be procured and 
 managed as an indispensable means. Pere Didon 
 has well said: "If faith is the chief power in the 
 land, money is its head-slave." It is as essential for 
 the well-being of institutions of learning as for that 
 of individuals, families, and even nations. And as 
 our Catholic schools lack endowment, it is only by 
 judicious management of receipts and expenses 
 that they can be sustained and put in condition to 
 do the good for which they have been called into 
 existence. 
 
 But wise and experienced heads find the problem 
 of economic management so difficult that for this 
 and other reasons they forecast a dark future for 
 our colleges. They tell us that the day for board- 
 ing schools is past ; that everywhere these schools 
 are dwindling down; that the tendency among 
 parents is to keep children at home, and that it is 
 only as day schools that our colleges can succeed.
 
 202 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Nor are their forebodings without ground. The 
 land is strewn with the wrecks of what were once 
 flourishing establishments. 
 
 Still, in the face of it all, we entertain bright 
 hopes for the future. We hold that our Catholic 
 colleges have not yet begun their real work. We 
 perceive vast and fertile fields of labor looming up 
 and presenting themselves to their industry ; it rests 
 with them only to take advantage of the favorable 
 season, put their hands to the plough, and cultivate 
 a soil that promises abundant harvests. And let it 
 be said with emphasis, no richer soil exists in the 
 whole domain of humanity than the active brain, 
 the clear intellect, and the open heart of our Amer- 
 ican youth. And we are so hopeful of our colleges 
 for the following reasons : 
 
 In the first place, our Catholic colleges are the 
 cherished objects of the Church. She is always 
 interested in their welfare ; she has ever kept a 
 vigilant eye on them and guarded their rights and 
 privileges against all encroachments of outside in- 
 fluence, be it from governments or individuals. 
 The depositary of supernatural truth, she is anx- 
 ious that the natural truths be so taught that the 
 higher teachings of faith shall work into their 
 texture and give complexion to the whole. She 
 teaches the natural truths that thereby those of 
 faith may be better understood. For this reason 
 is she jealous of her commission as teacher. She 
 transfers it to no sect or coterie. Certainly, not to 
 the state. But she fosters religious teaching bodies, 
 and bestows upon them special favors, and blesses
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 203 
 
 their work with a special blessing, in order that 
 they may the more efficiently carry out her de- 
 signs. 
 
 Now, our Catholic colleges are under the care 
 and management of the clergy or of one or other 
 of the numerous teaching orders that abound. 
 And the Church expects that they shall not only 
 foster vocations for the priesthood and for reli- 
 gious life, but that they shall also strengthen 
 youths to be good and useful citizens in the world. 
 Parents place implicit confidence in their methods, 
 and are no less sanguine in their expectations. 
 They have too near at heart the best interests of 
 their children not to consult those interests on 
 such a vital issue as that of moulding their souls 
 for time and eternity. They know that in placing 
 their children under the protection of men whose 
 lives are devoted to the general good, they are giv- 
 ing them a safe shelter from the snares that beset 
 the tender period of youth. The secular spirit of 
 the age may cry out for state schools and may 
 hold it good in theory that education be divorced 
 from religion, but when it comes to the practice 
 the enlightened parent will rather listen to the ad- 
 vice of Quintilian and choose the school in which 
 the master is most saintly and the discipline sever- 
 est. And the pagan Pliny the Younger was of the 
 same opinion. He tells a Roman mother to send 
 her son to the school in which good discipline, great 
 modesty and purity of morals exist. And, no doubt, 
 both Quintilian and Pliny, in giving this advice, 
 were remembering those golden words of Cicero.
 
 204 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 " All our thoughts, and every emotion of our 
 minds, should be devoted either to the forming of 
 plans for virtuous actions, and such as belong to a 
 good and happy life, or else to the pursuit of 
 science and knowledge." 
 
 For who can impart the habit of correct think- 
 ing and pure desires better than the teacher whose 
 life is devoted to that sole purpose? Here is a 
 standard establishment by pagans. Where is it 
 more likely to be realized than in our Catholic col- 
 leges and Catholic convents? Thus it is that even 
 upon grounds recognized by respectable pagans, 
 we find a raison d'etre for our Catholic colleges. 
 
 Again, the very exigencies of the times require 
 boarding schools to fill what without them would 
 be an embarrassing want ; and if boarding schools, 
 then, in a special manner, Catholic boarding 
 schools. Now as in the remote past is there a 
 demand for public institutions of learning in which 
 youth, away from the distractions of home life, 
 may give themselves more exclusively to study, 
 and acquire the intellectual force and the robust- 
 ness of character which are the outcome of the 
 healthy training of large numbers together, and 
 which issue a complete development of each one's 
 energies. Sometimes it is ,the nature of the par- 
 ent's occupation that necessitates the sending of 
 the child from home; or it is the death of a father 
 or mother or natural guardian ; or the child grows 
 up beyond parental control ; or he is exposed to be 
 ruined by bad companions; or his future sphere of 
 usefulness calls for a more thorough education than
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 205 
 
 he can acquire in his own neighborhood ; each and all 
 of these reasons call for boarding schools in which 
 the youth finds whatever was lacking at his home. 
 
 Moreover, state schools abound and bid fair 
 to increase for some time longer. But state schools 
 are not the schools for our Catholic youth, even 
 though they be taught by Catholic teachers. 
 There is a vast difference between a Catholic school 
 and a school having Catholic teachers. We should 
 not lose sight of the distinction. Later in the 
 course of our remarks we shall lay stress on this ; 
 suffice it to say here that the more attractive and 
 plausible state institutions are made, the greater 
 need is there that Catholic parents keep their chil- 
 dren away from them ; the greater need also is 
 there that in our Catholic academies and colleges 
 the student finds in a higher degree the instruction 
 and education these institutions pretend to give. 
 
 Nor is there any reason why our schools should 
 not be superior to all others. We have a fair field 
 and no other hindrance than wholesome competi- 
 tion. If we cannot hold our own we scarcely 
 deserve to live. Our religious teaching bodies are 
 vowed to education ; their whole lives are spent in 
 that great work ; all their studies are made, all their 
 methods acquired for that sole purpose. They 
 seclude themselves from the world and permit 
 neither ties of family and friends nor external occu- 
 pations to interfere with that object to which they 
 have consecrated their very existence. When such 
 bodies labor in the spirit of their institution they 
 must needs succeed.
 
 206 ESS A rs MISCELLANEOUS:. 
 
 Finally, the very nature of the work done by a 
 well-disciplined college, and the outcome of that 
 work, are such as always make it a desirable resort 
 for a large class of youths. There they are trained 
 into the habit of giving serious attention to duty ; 
 they are taught to be regular and methodical in 
 their daily life ; they acquire a spirit of work and 
 mental application ; they learn to do things with 
 order ; they are compelled to keep at a subject till 
 it is mastered, and in this manner are they learning 
 that lesson which is also the great secret of all suc- 
 cess the lesson of perseverance. But all this 
 cannot be done without discipline. And it is an ad- 
 mitted fact throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land, that only in our Catholic colleges is this 
 discipline made an object of earnest study and 
 solicitude. The disgraceful and frequently sad 
 scenes enacted from time to time in our secular 
 and non-Catholic colleges bespeaks the necessity 
 of firm and judicious discipline. But the tendency 
 of these institutions is to abolish all restraints and 
 exact from their students account neither of studies 
 nor behavior. This is the proper course to pursue 
 with men of mature judgments. But it will never 
 do for youths ranging in years from sixteen to 
 twenty. Their characters are" still unformed, their 
 good habits are not yet confirmed; they are not 
 penetrated with that overmastering sense of duty ; 
 away from the wholesomely restraining influence of 
 their families they do not feel the sense of responsi- 
 bility ; they imagine they may for the moment lose 
 their self-respect without compromising relatives,
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 20T 
 
 and led on by a few reckless spirits they rush head- 
 long into habits of vice and self-indulgence that 
 drag them down to ruin. 
 
 This is no fancy sketch. A prominent public 
 man, in presence of the writer, told off on his 
 fingers' ends youth after youth whom he had 
 known and seen return to their homes from one of 
 our leading universities, blighted wrecks in body 
 and soul from habits of excess, and all sinking 
 into a premature grave. Lines of wholesome 
 restraint must be drawn somewhere. Thoughtful 
 non-Catholic fathers have long ago consulted the 
 best interests of their daughters and sent them to 
 convent schools ; they now feel forced to send their 
 sons to our Catholic colleges, where they are con- 
 vinced that their hearts will be cultivated as well as 
 their intellects. 
 
 But it is objected that the discipline of our 
 colleges is too severe. Now, we should distinguish 
 between discipline and discipline. The discipline 
 that keeps students in a constant purgatory, either 
 by that espionage that seems to dare them to do 
 wrong or those petty persecutions that irritate ; 
 the discipline that sees in human nature nothing 
 but total depravity, that is always suspecting, that 
 knows only coercive measures, such discipline is 
 unworthy of the name and of the manhood of him 
 who exercises it, as it is unjust to those who are 
 its victims. But there is a discipline that works 
 upon the student's finer feelings ; it appeals to his 
 honor ; it speaks to his sense of self-respect ; it 
 stirs up within him a laudable pride ; it regulates
 
 208 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 his ambition and wins his love. It is the discipline 
 that is exercised by the judicious mind, just in its 
 rulings, fair towards all, and prudent in its deal- 
 ings ; that is mild yet firm ; that seeks to bring 
 home to the student the conviction of right doing 
 rather than the makeshift method of doing right 
 then and then only. This is the discipline that 
 begets methodical habits, exactness, and precision 
 in work, promptness in meeting engagements, and 
 close attention to study. This is the discipline 
 that moulds the character into complete manhood. 
 Under such, there need be no apprehension that 
 the student shall be carried into opposite excesses. 
 The student so carried would indulge in excesses 
 still more extravagant if raised without any disci- 
 pline. There are youths with characters so weak 
 that they possess no self-control and the least 
 breath of temptation carries them away ; they are 
 their own greatest enemies, and to be saved at all 
 they must be saved from themselves. Without some 
 restraining influence they are carried straight to 
 destruction. It is certainly a great charity to ex- 
 tend to them a helping hand, to teach them how 
 to control themselves, to weaken their predomi- 
 nant passions and to subject them to a rule and 
 discipline till they come t6 find both rule and 
 discipline no longer a burden. All may not profit 
 by this charity ; but if even a few profit, is not good 
 done? 
 
 And now, seeing that our colleges have still a 
 noble mission, let us throw out a few remarks on 
 the leading lines we should follow in order that
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 209 
 
 v 
 
 they best attain the object of their existence, inci- 
 dentally hinting at such drawbacks and checks as 
 retard our progress. And if, in alluding to short- 
 comings or abuses in the course of this article, we 
 should happen to wound anybody's feelings, we 
 here and now disclaim any such intention. We 
 write without personal motive, solely for the gen- 
 eral good, and in all charity. 
 
 III. 
 
 WE cannot complain about the number of our 
 colleges; there is room enough for all. Nor can 
 we find fault with the custom of giving every little 
 boarding school the misleading title of college. 
 This is one of the outcomes of our liberty in mat- 
 ters pertaining to education. Public opinion and 
 public patronage decide in the long run which is 
 the college in reality, and which in name only. 
 Still even public opinion and public patronage are 
 sometimes deceived as to the relative grades of our 
 institutions of learning, and a mutual understanding 
 on the subject would be a great convenience all 
 around. The smaller boarding schools would find 
 it every way to their advantage were they to fit 
 and announce themselves as preparatory to some 
 one or other of our leading colleges, making use of 
 the text-books and giving the instructions requisite 
 for entrance to their freshman class or course in 
 the humanities. In this manner would both the 
 preparatory school and the college be the gainer. 
 The course in the lower school would be limited to 
 E. M. 14
 
 210 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 the essentials, and these would be acquired in a 
 given time. The student, having passed a satis- 
 factory examination, would pass on to the collegiate 
 course with renewed ardor. 
 
 But to detain him in the elementary school, 
 going over the same ground year after year, or get- 
 ting the merest smattering of things at an expense 
 both of time and money not at all proportionate 
 to the knowledge acquired, is doing him a great in- 
 justice. It is to give him a disgust for all higher 
 studies. For this reason it should never be said of 
 those schools that they retained a boy a day longer 
 than was really for his advantage, through fear of 
 losing his patronage or any other mercenary 
 motive. Any boarding school getting a good 
 name for sending up well prepared youth to our 
 best colleges will not lack patronage. 
 
 But whilst our educational establishments must 
 not be mercenary, neither need they be improvi- 
 dent or extravagant. In order to do all the good 
 it is within the sphere of their mission to do they 
 ought to be self-supporting and therefore managed 
 on a sound financial basis. Some parents are very 
 thoughtless on this point. They do not calculate 
 the large outlays of a college in good standing. 
 They regard it simply in the light of a boarding 
 house. They know one can board for so much a 
 week, and they also know that one needs pay only 
 so much a quarter for tuition in a day school, and 
 putting this and that together they do not see why 
 our colleges should charge so much more. They 
 imagine some deduction ought to be made from
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 211 
 
 the published prices. It does not occur to them 
 that a large household of servants has to be main- 
 tained ; that professors and tutors are salaried; that 
 expensive apparatus for experiment in chemistry 
 and philosophy need to be procured ; that a library 
 has to be increased and preserved; that every year 
 calls for improvements on buildings and premises; 
 that the wear and tear in the furniture of school 
 rooms, dormitories, parlors, have to be made good; 
 that kitchen utensils, delft and table articles need 
 to be renewed, not to speak of bedding, fuel or 
 provisions. When these and many other all-de- 
 vouring means of expending money are considered, 
 what becomes of the stipend paid half yearly for 
 the student? 
 
 Glancing over the advertising columns of our 
 Catholic weeklies we find that the average charge 
 of our leading colleges is three hundred dollars a 
 year. Where there are no endowments every 
 dollar of this amount is required in order to keep 
 those colleges, with their comparatively small num- 
 bers, abreast of the times. But it is the experience 
 of all our colleges that they do not get every dollar 
 of that amount ; that thousands of the income are 
 lost in unpaid debts, and thousands more are 
 canceled on the entrance of students by reductions 
 made on the regular fees. In consequence our in- 
 stitutions are cramped in their action and find 
 themselves reduced to the alternative of narrowing 
 the sphere of their activity or rushing into debt. 
 There is only one remedy for this evil; it is that 
 our schools hold by their published prices and
 
 212 JESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 make no abatement except in extreme cases. It is 
 injurious to our best colleges to place them on a 
 level with cheap boarding schools. It introduces 
 into them a large class of students who are 
 possessed of neither means nor inclination to make 
 the full course, and who, in consequence, keep the 
 upper classes sparsely supplied. There are, and 
 always will be, exceptions to the general rule. 
 There are cases daily arising in college life in which 
 charity and peculiar circumstances call for reduc- 
 tions. And such charity brings a blessing on the 
 whole school. But by all such exceptions no prin- 
 ciple is violated, as would occur, for instance, were 
 a school to make abatement as a matter of barter 
 or with a view of underbidding a rival establish- 
 ment. Such conduct is demoralizing to the insti- 
 tution that would practice it. A parent is unable to 
 pay the full charge ; be it so, is there not a cheaper 
 establishment to which he may with all safety be 
 recommended? After all, provided good is done, 
 it matters little by what instrument it is done. In 
 localities in which provisions are cheap and the soil 
 is fertile and labor plentiful, institutions may be 
 established and such the writer knows to exist 
 that can receive younger boys at a comparatively 
 low rate. In these institutions commercial classes 
 might be formed for those desiring a business edu- 
 cation, whilst those aiming at a professional career 
 might be well-grounded in the rudiments of Latin 
 and Greek and afterwards sent to the colleges. 
 Thus would a good understanding between the two 
 classes of institutions lead to mutual encourage-
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 213 
 
 ment and support. In the course of time, with a 
 network of preparatory schools as so many feeders, 
 the college would be enabled to dispense altogether 
 with its own preparatory department. And this 
 would be a great boon. For where the preparatory 
 department is in immediate contact with the col- 
 lege proper the tendency is to lower its grade, and 
 it is only by great effort that the college can raise 
 itself above the level of the best English public 
 schools, as Eton, Harrow, or Rugby. Under pres- 
 ent arrangements very few of our colleges are 
 prepared to dispense with their preparatory depart- 
 ments. Could the preparatory school be placed in 
 a separate building, at some distance from the 
 college, and under a regime entirely distinct from 
 that of the college, the advantages would be very 
 great. Then would it enjoy the prestige of the 
 college without interfering with its autonomy as a 
 college. The writer remembers such an arrange- 
 ment at Stonyhurst. For this and like improve- 
 ments our colleges require endowment. 
 
 And why not endowment? Among whom has 
 the idea of endowment been better understood in 
 the past than among Catholics ? In every land may 
 be seen monuments of learning that bear witness to 
 the zeal, the piety and the enlightened spirit of 
 Catholics. Let us for the present confine ourselves 
 to those of England. A Catholic king, Henry VI., 
 endowed Eton and King's College, Cambridge; a 
 cardinal of the Catholic Church, Wolsey, erected 
 Christ Church, Oxford ; a Catholic prelate, William 
 of Wykeham, founded New College, Oxford; a
 
 214 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Catholic association or guild established the college 
 of Corpus Christi at Cambridge. Catholic ladies 
 were not less generous. Elizabeth de Burgh en- 
 dowed Clare Hall, Cambridge ; Margaret of Anjou 
 and Elizabeth Woodville founded Queen's College. 
 But the whole list is a long one ; everywhere it tells 
 the same story ; everywhere it speaks of Catholic 
 faith and Catholic piety inspiring acts of the 
 noblest generosity, " that the pearl of science, which 
 they have through study and learning discovered 
 and acquired, may not lie under a bushel, but be 
 extended farther and wider, and when extended 
 give light to them that walk in the dark paths of 
 ignorance." 
 
 Is not the faith that inspired these sentiments 
 and embodied them in such noble works a living 
 faith still? It is both living and active, and the 
 results of its life and activity will be no less striking 
 in the future than they have been in the past. The 
 number of our wealthy Catholics is increasing daily. 
 They have yet to be educated up to the conviction 
 that the endowment of Catholic high schools and 
 Catholic colleges is a necessity both for the preser- 
 vation of the faith of their sons and the intelligent 
 promotion of religious truth only little less urgent 
 than the establishment of parochial schools. With 
 time this conviction will come home to them ; we 
 shall yet see them rival the Girards, the Astors, and 
 the Coopers. 
 
 Last year at the commencement of two of our 
 colleges, before large and respectable audiences, the 
 Right Reverend Bernard J. McQuaid, the zealous
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 215 
 
 Bishop of Rochester, threw out a thought-spark 
 which we would gladly see burn into the business 
 and bosoms of our wealthy Catholics. With an 
 eloquence peculiarly his own, which we cannot at- 
 tempt to reproduce in a hastily sketched article, he 
 called attention to the fact that if our asylums, our 
 hospitals, our schools and convents and colleges 
 exist and flourish, it is not due to the wealth of our 
 wealthy Catholics. They have had no hand or part 
 in the work. Something more precious than their 
 gold has been wrought into these institutions. The 
 talents, the energy, the zeal, the very lives of the 
 religious men and women who sacrificed themselves 
 and denied themselves that these buildings might 
 grace the land, have gone for their erection. Price- 
 less treasures, these; only in heaven can their just 
 value be estimated. Surely, since men and women 
 are found who give their lives that the good may be 
 done, why may not men and women be found who 
 shall give their dollars for the same noble object ? 
 It is an efficacious means for our wealthy Catholics 
 thus to bring a blessing upon themselves and their 
 children for generations. Let us hope that this 
 timely suggestion of the eloquent bishop may yet 
 prove to be the rod of Moses that will strike the 
 Horeb of Catholic wealth and draw therefrom the liv- 
 ing waters of an active faith and an ardent charity. 
 Finally, the good odor of our colleges must, so 
 to speak, be diffused throughout the land. Each 
 institution must cultivate an esprit de corps 
 amongst its members; then will every student feel 
 proud of the school in which he received his educa-
 
 216 ESSA TS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 tion, and sound its praises far and wide. Espe- 
 cially should this be the spirit animating the alumni 
 who have received its benefits in full share even to 
 overflowing. And we must say it is seldom one 
 meets with an ungrateful alumnus. Such a phe- 
 nomenon would reveal more clearly the baseness of 
 his character than any shortcomings of the foster 
 mother that fed him with the milk and the meats 
 of science and letters till he was able to walk forth 
 a man. We would regard him with the same loath- 
 ing with which we would regard a bad son or a 
 treacherous friend. A sinister vein streaks his 
 nature. Voltaire ridiculed and maligned his Jesuit 
 teachers before he spat in the face of our Lord. 
 
 Every student must feel that the college in 
 which he is receiving his education is for him the 
 best. This entirely depends upon the president 
 and faculty. They must work in accord. Any 
 discordant element should be removed. Not that 
 each professor should not have the liberty of his 
 opinion or that the prevalent opinion of the fac- 
 ulty should domineer over that of one or two m a 
 minority ; as if, on matters of opinion and purely 
 speculative, for example, one professor should hold 
 Homer to be a mere eponym and the Iliad to be a 
 series of ballads strung together, and the others, 
 believing him a great poet, should refuse him of 
 the Wolffian theory to air his views before his 
 classes ; or in the face of all recent research and 
 discovery Ninus or Parthollan or Romulus should 
 still be considered a conqueror rather than a myth, 
 and the professor of history be compelled so to
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 217 
 
 regard one and all of them ; or any open question in 
 science or letters. In this freedom of discussion 
 interest is excited and intellect quickened. And 
 wherever professors are well up in their subjects 
 there must needs be differences. But above the 
 clash of opinion should reign the harmony of prin- 
 ciple and purpose, the unity of effort, and the 
 earnestness that brings with it conviction. Each 
 teacher should feel that he was giving out the 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; 
 each pupil should be convinced that his teacher 
 was speaking to him with the authority of one 
 knowing whereof he spoke. Given such a body of 
 men, with a unity of plan and a unity of method 
 in following out that plan and a central thought in- 
 spiring both plan and method, and you have all 
 that is requisite to create a school whose influence 
 must needs be felt. And this influence spreads 
 abroad, reaches the people, and produces confi- 
 dence in the school so governed. Such a school 
 need never resort to the modern system of canvass- 
 ing all over the country. 
 
 This is a system very degrading to our Catholic 
 education. In whatever light it is viewed it looks 
 odious. That the friends of a school should say a 
 gootl word for the school ; that they should recom- 
 mend it on all occasions ; that they should even 
 interest themselves in procuring it pupils, is natural 
 and proper ; as has been seen, it is even desirable. 
 But that men should run around, snapping up all 
 who come in their way, inducing students to leave 
 schools in which they are well cared for and are
 
 218 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 making reasonable progress, by underbidding or 
 sometimes even at the cost of charity and truth, is 
 an act demoralizing as it is unjust. Such men 
 assume a terrible responsiblity. They take on 
 themselves the changing of a student's whole 
 career. Are they going to better it? And if not, 
 why bring about an action so serious in its con- 
 sequences? Should the student be wrecked by 
 vicious or intemperate habits contracted in the 
 school of their suggestion, what an awful account 
 they shall have to render if, for the sake of a few 
 dollars, they have occasioned the removal of that 
 student from a school in which he was doing well. 
 We feel that we have touched on a delicate point, 
 and we would not be misunderstood. There are 
 often sufficient reasons for changing the school ; 
 by all means, in such cases, suggest one better 
 suited for the boy ; suggest the one with which 
 you are connected, or in which you feel greatest 
 interest ; always, however, be careful to leave well 
 enough alone. To this we place no objection. 
 
 If parents choose to send their sons to schools 
 so recommended it is their affair. But does it ever 
 occur to them that an institution resorting to such 
 means must have something radically wrong in 
 its system? If it were well, managed think you it 
 would need all these eloquent appeals and glowing 
 representations? A well equipped and thoroughly 
 organized school cannot hide its light under a 
 bushel. Neither the remoteness of its location, 
 nor difficulty of access, will prevent its being 
 known and frequented. Students seek the school
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 219 
 
 and not the school the students. This is a law to 
 which we recognize no exception. We must add 
 that it is only with a class of simple-minded parents 
 that these methods succeed. Their credulity is 
 exercised. They believe all that is said to them. 
 And so, when certain of these drummers will forget 
 themselves and their cloth and the dictates of 
 Christian charity so far, and stoop so low as to 
 disparage another institution, or even a whole 
 teaching body, it does not open the eyes of the 
 unsuspecting parents. It fails to strike them that 
 the man who can malign his neighbor is not the 
 man to give their child an elevated moral tone. 
 This thing is all wrong. It is disreputable. It 
 destroys our dignity as Christian educators. It 
 makes of our education a species of low barter. 
 We gain nothing and we lose much by its preva- 
 lence. There is room enough for us all, if each of 
 us only keeps his place and works within his 
 proper sphere. Then there will be no clashing of 
 interests, no necessity of resorting to degrading 
 measures in order to fill vacant seats and replenish 
 empty purses. Let us seek before all and above 
 all the Kingdom of God and His justice, and we 
 shall lack in naught else. This is the promise of 
 Truth Himself, and the promise has never been 
 belied. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But the means by which our colleges can best 
 continue the work of the mediaeval school is that 
 they become more Catholic. No fault is to be
 
 220 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 found with our secular instruction. It is thorough 
 as far as it goes. Our students are well grounded, 
 and our alumni hold their own in every calling and 
 profession. But might we not make them more 
 Catholic? Our teachers should feel that theirs is, in 
 the words of His Holiness, Leo XIII., a most holy 
 ministry sanctissimum docendi ministerium and 
 our schools accordingly should be regarded as 
 sanctuaries, which they are in very deed. Every- 
 thing in the Catholic classroom ought to be 
 stamped with the seal of Catholicity. The pro- 
 fessors must be Catholic ; the text-books Catholic ; 
 the very atmosphere Catholic. Everything must 
 speak to the student of the greatness, the honor, 
 the glory of that name till he comes to regard it as 
 his grandest title and noblest heritage. Consist- 
 ency must reign in everything. 
 
 The better to understand what we mean let 
 us enter a Protestant school. Examine the text- 
 books. They all possess a decidedly Protestant 
 coloring. The eloquence of Protestant divines, the 
 inspiration of Protestant poets, and the versions of 
 Protestant historians fill the pages of their literary 
 works ; their histories give such a narration of facts 
 as tends to laud Luther and glorify the Reforma- 
 tion ; their geographies go out of their way to 
 malign Catholic countries and Catholic peoples, 
 and praise all belonging to Protestant countries 
 and Protestant peoples. Listen to their lessons. 
 They are charged with Protestant prejudices. Is 
 the theory of terrestrial gravity explained? The 
 professor of physics goes out of his way to dwell
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 221 
 
 upon the imaginary or implied tortures of Galileo 
 and the wickedness of his persecutors. Are Kep- 
 ler's laws discussed ? The professor of astronomy 
 will step aside to say that Kepler was a conscien- 
 tious Protestant, careful, however, to conceal the 
 fact that the only asylum in which he found refuge 
 from his Protestant persecutors was a Jesuit col- 
 lege. And so on through the whole course. Here 
 is consistency at least. Not only is the school 
 Protestant, but professor and student glory in the 
 fact. They believe in their convictions ; they are 
 proud of them ; and let us say that so far as they 
 are earnest and consistent are they to be recom- 
 mended. 
 
 Our Catholic schools should be equally stanch 
 in their Catholicity. Their text-books should 
 breathe throughout respect for religion and love 
 for the holy Church. Mere colorless text-books, 
 that possess no other merit than that of being 
 silent concerning the nature and the work of that 
 Church, do not suffice ; still less tolerated should be 
 any book reflecting on her doctrine or her children. 
 That would indeed be a terrible farce which would 
 give place in a Catholic school to books hostile to 
 the Catholic religion simply with a view of concili- 
 ating the non-Catholic element in attendance. It 
 were a mockery to call a school Catholic and use 
 books in that school, whether as readers, histories, 
 or literatures, from which passages are hourly read 
 assailing all that is dearest to the Catholic heart ; 
 and this under the pretext of not wounding the 
 susceptibilities of Protestant patrons. It -is all
 
 222" JSSSATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 wrong. It is a scandal. The two or three feeble 
 dilutions of catechetical instructions given each 
 week are only so much sugar coating the poisonous 
 pill, and causing it to be swallowed with all the 
 greater relish. 
 
 Should such a state of things exist or come to 
 exist, of what earthly benefit would our Catholic 
 schools be? How many children would glory in a 
 faith so trampled on ? How many take pride in a 
 creed so slighted? How many feel honored in a 
 name which their teachers seem disposed to sink 
 into oblivion ? It is based on a foolish and a false 
 notion. Every Protestant parent sending his child 
 to a Catholic school expects to find the instruction 
 thoroughly Catholic, and, far from being pleased 
 with the reverse, he becomes shocked to find that 
 even in the Catholic school he meets with men who 
 trim their very principles. Such behavior justly 
 brings contempt upon the men practicing it ; 
 unjustly, also, it places the Church in a false 
 light. 
 
 We do not lose sight of the fact that our mod- 
 ern English literature is in great measure Protes- 
 tant. Nor would we exclude classical Protestant 
 authors from our Catholic youths. The wiser plan 
 is to have the authors read a'nd commented upon 
 in the light of the Catholic doctrine. It prepares 
 young men to be enabled afterwards to discuss 
 them with discrimination. They have learned in 
 the light of truth how to regard whatever is brilliant 
 or fascinating in those authors; tinsel and false 
 ornament and shallow argument and weak asser-
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 223 
 
 tion, the half-told truth and the misrepresented 
 fact, the rhetorical glitter that concealed the hollow 
 and misleading statement, have one and all been 
 laid bare in that light ; having once beheld them as 
 they really are, young men are no longer dazzled by 
 them and henceforth take them for their real 
 worth. In the white light of Catholic truth all 
 human lights are bedimmed or dwindle down to 
 their natural insignificance. 
 
 For this reason Catholics need never dread the 
 light. They are born into the light ; they are 
 created for the light ; they should live in the light. 
 The rays of reason and faith the natural and the 
 supernatural light both proceeding from the 
 same Uncreated Sun, flood every Catholic intellect. 
 Oculists now teach that it is not excess of light but 
 rather a want of it that injures the eyes. Be that 
 as it may it holds true of the intellectual vision 
 that it is the darkness of ignorance or the haze of 
 imperfect knowledge, rather than the full light of 
 truth, that leads it to error. 
 
 Occasionally a lukewarm Catholic will complain 
 of his having had too much religious teaching in 
 his youth, and will lay upon that fact the blame of 
 his present indifference. Such a statement seems 
 to contradict what we have advanced. But it is 
 not true. Coming to examine it for what it is 
 worth we find that perhaps he is not willing to prac- 
 tice the dictates of his religion, and he makes this 
 an excuse for throwing off its wholesome re- 
 straints; or if his mind is unusually active he has 
 become disgusted with the insignificant instructions
 
 224 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 that he received ; he craved for robust logical teach- 
 ing, with a starting- point and a connecting link, and 
 he received only a few crumbs of sentiment and 
 assertion. Disgust followed, and hence his present 
 attitude. Man is created for religious truth ; to live 
 in its light is as natural to his intellect as it is to his 
 lungs to breathe the air. Religion should be the 
 all-pervading, all-inspiring element in his thinking. 
 And, in being such, it perfects both thought and 
 life. Men speak of religion oppressing, embarrass- 
 ing, interfering. We are told that this atmosphere 
 of ours presses upon our bodies with the enormous 
 pressure of fifteen pounds to every square inch of 
 surface. We do not cry out against it ; we do not 
 find it to interfere with motion or action. Nature's 
 laws have fitted us for the burden. We feel op- 
 pressed if it becomes too rarefied, or if we breathe 
 it in an impure state. So it is with religion. 
 Whilst it remains wholesome it imparts vigor and 
 energy. Milton did not find his religious teach- 
 ings to prevent his poetical imagination from 
 soaring into the sublimest regions, and where his 
 poetry is deficient his theological training is also 
 found deficient. Dante did not soar any the 
 less high because of .his thorough religious and 
 scholastic discipline. Copernicus was no less 
 the great astronomer for having been the pious 
 priest. 
 
 Man's religious nature is a sequence of his 
 rational nature. Being intelligent he recognizes 
 a Creator; having a moral sense he recognizes 
 in that Creator a judge to Whom he is accountable ;
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 225 
 
 Who is infinitely holy and infinitely just, the 
 Arbiter of his life and the Discerner of his every 
 thought, word and deed ; in Whom he lives, moves, 
 and has his being ; on Whom he depends, to Whom 
 he looks for light in his doubts, strength in his 
 weakness, assistance in his helplessness ; and, recog- 
 nizing this dependence, he is led to be devout 
 towards that Creator and to offer Him prayer 
 and sacrifice. Passion may weaken in him this 
 religious sense, or worldly affairs may partially sup- 
 press it, or secular habits of thought may for the 
 time lead to forgetfulness of it, but for all that the 
 religious element does not cease to act in his nature. 
 Even Strauss admits that Atheism requires its 
 religion. A consequence of the utmost importance 
 follows from this truth. It is that intellectual de- 
 velopment, as such, far from being incompatible with 
 deep religious belief, aids and confirms it. 
 
 The loftiest intellects in all ages have the deepest 
 religious convictions. It is deficiency of reason or 
 want of thorough, rigid, logical exercise of reason, 
 or tampering with the primary operations of reason, 
 or confounding fancy and imagination with reason, or 
 allowing prejudices, avowed or secret, to interfere 
 with the plain conclusions of reason, that induces 
 habits of superficial thinking. Superficial thought 
 leads to contempt for every issue not easily grasped ; 
 it precludes all seriousness. Thence follows that 
 inert, half paralyzed condition of mind that refuses 
 to probe any question to its foundation, and ends in 
 being content with a shrug of the shoulders and a 
 " Que sais-je?" This is the intellectually death-in-life 
 E. M. 15
 
 226 ZSSATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 state of the skeptic. And this sterility of the mind 
 in its highest operations is soon followed, if it is not 
 already accompanied, by a drying up of all the 
 nobler impulses and emotions of the heart. 
 
 The profound and rational study of our holy 
 religion can alone preserve our Catholic students 
 from this deplorable state. The Little Catechism 
 and its accompanying explanations do not suffice. 
 They are simply the foundation on which to erect 
 something grand and imposing. After the youthful 
 intellect has been well grounded in the Little Cate- 
 chism, a larger and more developed work is placed in 
 his hands, the Catechism of Perseverance or Perry's 
 Instructions, for instance ; this gives rise to fuller 
 explanations of the principles and dogmas of our 
 faith ; in connection with these are discussed the rise 
 and progress of the various heresies, especially those 
 that led to the definitions of faith ; the refutation of 
 these heresies in clear and succinct statements is 
 also given ; after which the history of the Church is 
 outlined ; her various attitudes toward the temporal 
 powers of Europe are explained, her policies defined, 
 and her position in mediaeval and modern times 
 clearly laid down, the student being constantly re- 
 minded that whilst the Church is divine in her origin, 
 divine in her doctrine, divine- in her authority, the in- 
 struments with which she works are weak human 
 mortals. Hence the scandals he reads of, the blun- 
 derings, the short-sighted policies in temporal affairs. 
 But from them all he learns still more clearly the 
 divine nature of an institution that remains untar- 
 nished in her moral code, unchanging in her dogmas
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 227 
 
 in the midst of so much corruption. He learns the 
 historical origin of Protestantism, the value and im- 
 portance of man's free will, the enormity of sin, and 
 the distinction of God 's knowing and God 's willing ; 
 he learns how God must have established a definite 
 church to dispense His graces, and, therefore, why 
 every church bearing the name of Christian cannot 
 be the true one ; he learns how to distinguish and ap- 
 ply the notes of the true Church, and to find them all 
 realized as in the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apos- 
 tolic Church ; he learns the nature and scope of infal- 
 libility, and how to distinguish it from the impecca- 
 bility so falsely attributed in ignorance to the Pope. 
 He is thus enabled to meet the false religious tenets 
 of the day. But this is not enough. The irreligious 
 teachings must be met as well. And this calls for a 
 superior course of religious instruction in our 
 colleges. 
 
 The superior course is placed on a philosophical 
 basis. History and literature and science and art 
 are all converged to this focus, and discussed, and 
 when necessary reconstructed in its light. It draws 
 out the evidences of religion, natural and revealed ; 
 it develops the proofs for the existence of God ; for 
 the immortality and spirituality of the soul; for the 
 necessity of a revealed religion in the present order 
 of things; it explains the inspiration of Holy Writ; 
 it dwells upon the harmony and unity of the Church 
 in her doctrine, her dogma, and her ritual ; it de- 
 fines the relations of faith to science and of reason 
 to faith ; it traces the limits of the human intelli- 
 gence in dealing with religious and theological
 
 228 ESSA TS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 questions; it teaches how to distinguish between 
 facts and theory, speculation and truth, certitude 
 and opinions. All these fundamental issues are dis- 
 cussed with a view to the Atheism, Positivism, and 
 Agnosticism of the day. And those theories are 
 refuted in their principles and premises rather than 
 in their general conclusions or casual statements. 
 Only in this manner are they eradicated root and 
 branch. Due regard is also had to their methods. 
 Scientific method is met with scientific method, and 
 by scientific reasoning ; not with prejudice or 
 presumption, or the mere dogmatism that asserts 
 without knowledge. An ignorant scoffer may be 
 covered with ridicule to some purpose, one's pre- 
 sumption may be snubbed with effect, but ignorance 
 or error, when it is earnest and well meaning, and 
 open to conviction, should be met with fact and 
 solid argument in the same spirit in which it betrays 
 itself. 
 
 Different periods have different intellectual char- 
 acteristics. Controversy in the sixteenth century 
 was violent even to vulgarity; in the seventeenth 
 it expressed itself in ponderous tomes and the cita- 
 tions of overwhelming authority ; in the eighteenth 
 it indulged in flippancy and mocking. In the begin- 
 ning of the present century the superficial spirit was 
 predominant. In consequence we find the magic 
 pen of Chateaubriand charming France into respect 
 and love for the Church and her ceremonies by 
 holding up to her view in beautiful style the poetry 
 of her teachings, her ritual and her sacraments. But 
 the spirit of the present time is deeper. It is more
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 229 
 
 serious, more truth-loving, more earnest in research, 
 more scientific in its methods; it must be treated 
 accordingly. Darwin and Herbert Spencer are not 
 buffoons or charlatans or noisy brawlers like Vol- 
 taire and the Cyclopaedists. If Littre" were not 
 an earnest disciple of Comte do you suppose for 
 a moment that in the last hours of his life our Lord 
 would have admitted him to the grace of His 
 sacrament and a fellowship with His followers? 
 The high intellectual attainments of these men, 
 their respectable social standing, their earnestness, 
 their devotion to science, all deserve the considera- 
 tion due to gentlemen and scholars. They cannot 
 be pooh-poohed, nor can they be passed over in 
 silence. We have the truth with us, and the truth 
 shall prevail. But in order to prevail it must be 
 properly presented. And if our colleges cannot 
 present it properly then indeed are they sad fail- 
 ures ; and, far from carrying out the intentions for 
 which nearly all the colleges and universities in 
 Europe were originally founded and endowed, they 
 become things of stunted growth without the 
 robust energy of secular institutions, and therefore 
 without a raison d'ttre. They are Catholic or 
 nothing. 
 
 There is a painful lack of proper text-books 
 bearing on these burning issues of the day. On the 
 other hand there is badly needed a life of our Lord, 
 written with the view of refuting the dangerous 
 works of Renan and Strauss. Such a life should be 
 written with the loving unction of a Bonaventura, 
 by one more deeply versed in Oriental lore than
 
 230 ESS ATS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Renan himself, and capable of coping with the 
 rationalizing Biblical criticism of Strauss. It should 
 be written in such a spirit as to show the Godhead 
 shining forth in the manhood of our Lord, and 
 encircling his every act with the halo of His divinity. 
 Again we need a work that will take up all the stray 
 beams of truth coursing through the various philo- 
 sophical and social theories and systems of the day, 
 and converge them all into a single focus. Such a 
 work requires the mental grasp of an Aquinas. It 
 would gather up and harmonize all the conclusions 
 and facts of the various sciences in the light of 
 clearly defined and universally admitted principles, 
 and with a method the rigidity of which no scientist 
 could object to ; it would in the light of those prin- 
 ciples show wherein lies the fallacy of this author 
 or that opposed to revelation ; it would reconstruct 
 his theory and place it in harmony with the truths 
 of faith. We have a few attempts of this kind 
 especially on the continent of Europe ; but the 
 weak point with the majority of them is, that 
 instead of going down into the arena of science, and 
 fighting scientists with their own weapons, they 
 plant themselves on the serene heights of religion, 
 and read their opponents lectures on their stupidity, 
 ignorance or malice. Surely, no man is likely to be 
 convinced of the erroneousness of his opinion by 
 being told that he is a blockhead. 
 
 No good can come of this mode of dealing with 
 the issues of the day. All along the line experi- 
 ment must be met by experiment, fact by fact, 
 argument by fact and argument combined. It does
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 231 
 
 not suffice to pick a flaw in this incidental statement 
 or that, to prove the falsity of this side or that, to 
 show the fallacy of this line of argument or that. 
 Such a process is calculated to lead the attention off 
 the main question. It is mere skirmishing. It is 
 caviare to the general. It may construct a brilliant 
 magazine article ; but it cannot make a student's 
 handbook. Mr. Mallock is a free lance who follows 
 this desultory mode. He takes the surface expres- 
 sions of Positivist teachers in letters and science ; he 
 picks flaws in them ; he shows the absurdity of their 
 conclusions ; here and there he exposes a fallacy. 
 In a charming style he seeks to convince his readers 
 that they may judge of the structure of Positiv- 
 ist houses from the specimen of rotten wood and 
 broken brick that he hands around. His book is 
 devoured with relish ; men are so well pleased to find 
 the life studies of eminent scientists and philosophers 
 brought within the reach of their comprehension 
 with little or no effort on their part. Mr. Mallock is 
 hailed as a new light. But no sooner has the first rip- 
 ple of novelty passed away than it is found that Mr. 
 Mallock has inconsistencies in his reasoning, that he 
 sometimes begs the question, and that the correct- 
 ness of his conclusions is due more to the shrewdness 
 of his judgment than the logic of his deductions. He 
 deals with burning questions, not because they press 
 him for an immediate answer, but because he finds 
 amusement in their solution. Whether that solu- 
 tion be a yes or a no, is a matter of small moment 
 to him ; it will interfere neither with the digestion of 
 his dinner nor with the rounds of his pleasures. If
 
 232 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Mr. Mallock desires to do much good, he must first 
 school himself into earnestness. 
 
 The promiscuous reading of such a book as Mr. 
 Mallock's or of stray articles in the reviews, or of an 
 occasional lecture on these living issues, will not 
 suffice. Such reading is without method, without 
 thought, without aim, and it is at the very least 
 worthless, frequently dangerous, for advanced stu- 
 dents. It has value only when carried on under the 
 guidance of an older and more experienced head, 
 who has coordinated, arranged, methodized these 
 promiscuous works, and who, by his explanations, 
 leads the student up to each book, showing what 
 may be expected from the reading of such a book, 
 wherein it makes a point and wherein it fails to re- 
 fute. In this manner only would a student's reading 
 be profitable. 
 
 " Whatever students read in the province of 
 religion," says Cardinal Newman, " they read, and 
 would read from the very nature of the case, under 
 the superintendence and with the explanations of 
 those who are older and more experienced than 
 themselves." 
 
 And when the student has been thus followed 
 up, his religious instruction gaining in robustness and 
 extent as his intellectual faculties quicken, he learns 
 to revere the religion that can suggest to him the 
 complete solution to so many life problems ; he feels 
 proud of it ; he proclaims its beauties and its truths 
 wherever an occasion offers. He is prepared to 
 fight the battle of his faith when he goes out into 
 the world. His education has been in deed as 
 well as in name, thoroughly Catholic* These results
 
 OUR COLLEGES. 233 
 
 have been produced from time to time by our Cath- 
 olic institutions of learning. These results will be 
 more frequent when our Catholic institutions of 
 learning shall have become convinced that neither 
 worldly policy nor worldly expediency can ever sup- 
 plant Catholic principles.
 
 CHdRGH AND STATE 
 
 (235)
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 1 
 I. 
 
 /OCIETY, as we find it, and as far back as history 
 reveals it to us, lives and moves, and has hith- 
 erto lived and moved, under the influence of the 
 two-fold principle of church and state. It is not 
 simply the state, nor is it simply the church, but it 
 is made up of a union of both church and state.* 
 Association for the pursuit of temporal happiness 
 gives rise to the state; association in a community 
 of spiritual goods for the pursuit of eternal happi- 
 ness gives rise to the church. 1 Just as a man is not 
 all body nor all soul, but the intimate union of body 
 and soul, even so is society composed of the inti- 
 mate and inseparable union of a temporal organiza- 
 tion and a spiritual informing principle. For what 
 the soul is to the body, religion is to the state. " No 
 state," says Walter, " can subsist without religion, 
 which fills and interpenetrates every sphere of life 
 with the sense of the obligation of duty. Religion, 
 which respects and maintains every right of high 
 and low, of strong and weak, is the conservative 
 element of society. ... By the strength of charac- 
 ter which she forms, she preserves the youth of 
 nations, and, when they fall away and decay, keeps 
 them from the withering up of mind and heart. 
 
 1 Catholic Quarterly Review. 
 
 1 Brownson's Works, vol. XIII., page 265. 
 
 Cardinal Mazella, " De Ecclesia," p. 449. 
 
 (237)
 
 238 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Religion is the groundwork of family life, and of 
 the purity and piety nurtured therein. . . . She 
 brings rich and poor nearer together, urging upon 
 the rich sympathy and active help to the poor, and 
 instilling into the poor gratitude and consolation. 
 Thus she softens every condition of life, and teaches 
 man that he can be elevated and ennobled by sub- 
 mission. Religion, then, is the true bond which 
 holds the state together, makes it strong, and saves 
 it from degeneracy." 1 Now, religion without a 
 church is a mere abstraction. " The church is the 
 external manifestation, the realization and the ex- 
 pression of the Christian religion in an independent 
 organism."* The early fathers recognized this inti- 
 mate union of church and state. St. Isidor of 
 Pelusium, wrote from his hermitage in Egypt : " The 
 government of the world rests on kinghood and on 
 priesthood ; although the two differ widely for 
 one is as the body, the other as the soul they are 
 nevertheless destined to one end, the well-being of 
 their subjects." 3 And St. John Chrysostom boldly 
 carries out the metaphor of soul and body to its 
 limits: "The church," he says, "is above the state, 
 in the same way the soul is above the body." 4 
 
 II. 
 
 Going back to pagan days we find that philoso- 
 phers never dreamed of separating religion from the 
 
 1 " Naturrecht und Politik," p. 237, Bonn, 1871. 
 
 2 Schema, concerning the Church, prepared by the Fathers 
 of the Vatican Council, apud Hergenrother, " Church and 
 State," vol. I., p. 52. 
 
 8 " Isid. Pelus.," 1., tii., ep. 249. 
 
 * " Horn." 15, in 2 Cor., n. 5 ; " Migne" xi., 509.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 state. Plato strives to impress the citizens of his 
 ideal republic with the necessity of keeping the 
 Divine law if they would preserve the state : " God, 
 as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand the 
 beginning, middle and end of all that is, moves, 
 according to his nature, in a straight line towards the 
 accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows 
 Him, and is a punisher of those who fall short of the 
 Divine law. To that law he who would be happy 
 holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order. 
 . . . Wherefore, seeing human things are thus 
 ordered, . . . every man ought to make up his 
 mind that he will be one of the followers of God. 
 Henceforth all citizens must be profoundly convinced 
 that the gods are lords and rulers of all that exists, 
 that all events depend upon their word and will, and 
 that mankind is largely indebted to them." 1 
 Aristotle, with less unction, though not with less 
 conviction, pronounces worship to be the first of the 
 six leading administrations without which the 
 state cannot subsist, assigns the first rank to the 
 priesthood, would have special edifices dedicated to 
 worship, and the fourth part of the soil and land 
 devoted to purposes of religion.* 
 
 The relations of church and state vary with 
 times and occasions. In the Gentile world the 
 church was absorbed by the state. It was the tool 
 and instrument of the state. The number and 
 nature of the household gods were regulated by the 
 state. The ceremonies connected with the worship 
 
 1 De Legg," IT., p. 288. 
 1 "Politics," viii.,8-12.
 
 240 JSSSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 of them were enjoined by the state. The titular 
 deities of the state were carefully served ; they were 
 to be placated in times of calamity, appealed to for 
 aid in times of war ; their ire was to be appeased in 
 the hour of defeat, or they were to receive public 
 thanksgiving in the hour of victory. Every the least 
 ceremony at all times and under all circumstances 
 was legislated for by the state. The ruler was also 
 the Pontifex Maximus. He united in himself the 
 plenitude of civil and priestly power. In all else 
 was the state equally paramount. The family was 
 absorbed in the state. The individual lived for the 
 state, continued to breathe by favor of the state, and 
 died when the state so decreed. The state was the 
 source whence all things drew the breath of life, and 
 the seat of all wisdom and authority. 
 
 Such was the condition of things when Chris- 
 tianity first dawned upon the world's horizon, and 
 its rays revealed another order of things. It 
 revealed to man a kingdom other than the kingdoms 
 of this world, to which he had a flawless title. It 
 taught him the value of his immortal soul, redeemed 
 by the blood of Christ. It taught him how to pray 
 and how to overcome his passions. How much 
 there was in this teaching we will let Dollinger 
 explain : 
 
 "When," he says, "the attention of a thinking 
 heathen was directed to the new religion spreading 
 in the Roman Empire, the first thing to strike 
 him as extraordinary would be, that a religion of 
 prayer was superseding the religion of ceremonies 
 and invocations of gods ; that it encouraged all, even 
 the humblest and most uneducated to pray, or, in
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 241 
 
 other words, to meditate and exercise the mind in 
 self-scrutiny and contemplation of God. . . . This 
 region of Christian metaphysics was open even to 
 the mind of one who had no intellectual culture 
 before conversion. In this school of prayer he 
 learned what philosophy had declared to be as neces- 
 sary as it was difficult, and only attainable by few 
 to know himself as God knew him. And from that 
 self-knowledge prayer carried him on to self-mastery. 
 If the heathen called upon his gods to gratify his 
 passions ; for the Christian, tranquillity of soul, mod- 
 eration and purifying of the affections were at once 
 the preparation and the fruit of prayer. And thus, 
 prayer became a motive-power of moral renewal and 
 inward civilization, to which nothing else could be 
 compared for efficacy." 1 
 
 Justin Martyr called attention to this benign in- 
 fluence of Christianity in his day : 
 
 " We Christians contribute most to the tran- 
 quility of the state, since we teach that God governs 
 all ; that the evil-doer, the avaricious, the assassin, 
 as well as the virtuous man, are known to Him ; that 
 each one who passes out of this life will receive an 
 eternal reward or an eternal punishment according 
 to his deserts. Now, if all believed these truths, 
 assuredly none would continue a moment longer in 
 sin, but all would restrain themselves and strive to 
 do right, in order finally to obtain the promised 
 reward and to escape punishment. For those who 
 do evil know that they can escape from your laws ; 
 but if they had learnt, and were fully convinced, 
 that nothing, not an action, nor even a thought can 
 remain hidden from God, they would, at least from 
 fear of punishment, strive to do right." * 
 
 1 "The First Age of the Church," vol. II., pp. 216, 217. 
 1 " Apol. I., pro. Christ," xii. 
 E. M 16
 
 242 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 In this manner did Christianity become a new civil- 
 izing element. Now, society is perfect in proportion 
 as the individuals composing society are perfect. But 
 the perfection of the individual consists in submis- 
 sion to the Divine law. 
 
 " When we revere and honor God," says the 
 Angelical Doctor, "our mind is subject to Him, and 
 in this our perfection consists. For everything is 
 perfected by its subjection to that which is above it, 
 as the body when it is vivified by the soul." ' 
 
 III. 
 
 Let us now endeavor to make clear to ourselves the 
 meaning both of church and of state. We will begin 
 with the Church. The Church is an organism. It 
 is a visible embodiment of Divine authority addressing 
 itself to the souls of men in the name of God. It is 
 the visible custodian of the natural law and the 
 revealed or positive law. It has not created or 
 invented or discovered these laws. The Church 
 could not change them if it would. But every 
 church, be it true or false, speaks to man in the name 
 of Divine authority, and every true member of that 
 church recognizes the Divine sanction. A church 
 without such sanction and such authority is meaning- 
 less. A church on a human basis, promulgating a 
 purely human doctrine, looking no higher than 
 human reason, bears upon it the impress of its own 
 fallible, short-lived nature. It is branded with the 
 seal of imposition. Not the combined genius of a 
 Comte, a Littr and a Frederick Harrison can make 
 
 ll 'Summa Theologise," II., ii., qu. xxxi., art. 7.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 243 
 
 the church of Positivism other than a religious by- 
 play. Gautama and Mohammed established their 
 doctrines and built up their churches only in the name 
 of God and as his ministers. Had they presented 
 themselves upon a purely human basis they would 
 have passed away unheeded. But they were in 
 earnest ; they believed themselves sent of God ; 
 therefore, they were accepted for what they repre- 
 sented themselves to be, and accordingly they 
 succeeded. The Protestant synod of Alain, in 1620, 
 excommunicated by virtue of the Divine author- 
 ity which it conceived to be vested in it : 
 
 "We, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 whom God hath furnished with spiritual arms . . . 
 to whom the eternal Son of God hath given the 
 power to bind and to loose upon earth, declare that 
 what we shall bind upon earth shall be bound in 
 heaven." ' 
 
 The Puritan fathers would not and dare not make 
 laws opposed to the teachings of their church. 
 They recognized its supremacy. Believing that they 
 alone were right and the favored ones of God's 
 providence, they stood out against the whole world 
 and persecuted and outlawed all who presumed to 
 hold religious opinions different from the tenets 
 which they believed to be God's own teaching. 
 They stood upon an elevated but a very narrow 
 spiritual plane of religious opinion. 
 
 Of course, not everybody speaking as the mouth- 
 piece of the Divinity is inspired. Brigham Young 
 made thousands believe that he had a Divinely-in- 
 
 1 " Actes eccles. et civiles de tous les Synodes nationaux de 
 l'glise reforme'e de France," ii., 181, 182.
 
 244 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 spired mission ; few believe in the divinity of that mis- 
 sion to-day. But we are not here concerned with 
 determining the notes by which true inspiration is to 
 be distinguished from pure illusion and imposition. 
 We are simply calling attention to the fact that every 
 church has meaning only by reason of its Divine 
 origin and the Divine authority in whose name it 
 teaches. We will define the Christian Church as it 
 appears to us in its oldest and most authentic form. 
 
 Christ organized the Church. The apostles were 
 the first bishops. From the beginning was a hier- 
 archy established. Peter was made head of the 
 Church and was recognized as such by his colleagues ; 
 priests and deacons, and the other clerical orders were 
 established. The Church as thus organized is 
 endowed with a threefold power ; namely, the power 
 to administer the sacraments, the power of jurisdic- 
 tion and the power of teaching. Of the seven 
 sacraments recognized by the Church as the seven 
 channels by which grace is conveyed to the soul and 
 man is raised up into the sphere of the supernatural, 
 five can be administered by none other than a bishop 
 or priest. Therefore it has been with the most 
 scrupulous care that succession in the orders of 
 bishops and priests has been preserved in the Church 
 from the days of the aposttes. And so the faithful 
 of every period in this visible organism, the Church, 
 have had these seven sacraments and a duly ordained 
 and properly authorized priesthood to administer 
 them. 
 
 The Church has a power of jurisdiction, that is 
 to say, she has the right to exercise authority over
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 245 
 
 Christians in those things which belong to religion. 
 This power flows directly from the authority of the 
 Divine Founder. It alone renders licet the sacra- 
 mental power of the clergy. Indeed no pastoral act 
 may be performed within the Church without par- 
 ticipation in ecclesiastical authority. That author- 
 ity may be delegated or it may belong to the office 
 for which one has been ordained. But the main 
 point to hold in view is this : That no jot or tittle 
 of ecclesiastical jurisdiction is derived from the laity 
 within the Church or from the state or from any 
 source other than the Divine authority on which 
 the Church is founded. Therefore, wherever there is 
 lay or state interference in the matter of the sacra- 
 ments, or of doctrine or of religious jurisdiction, 
 there is an element foreign to the Divine institution 
 established by Christ. A church, for instance, that 
 would be organized and legislated for by Congress 
 could scarcely command the respect and submission 
 of men. It might, indeed, be a very wise human 
 institution, but no one would dare call its Congres- 
 sional enactments the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 
 Equally human and equally fallible would be a 
 church created by act of parliament. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the Church is, then, the 
 jurisdiction of a visible independent organism, and 
 is judicial, legislative, and executive. She has the 
 right to make laws within her own spiritual sphere 
 of action, and to execute those laws. She has the 
 right to impose upon her members the obligation of 
 accepting without reserve her declarations concern- 
 ing faith and morals under ecclesiastical penalties.
 
 246 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 As the custodian of the natural law and of the 
 revealed law, she is entitled to interpret and admin- 
 ister them in religious matters. She has, moreover, 
 the power to make and to inforce laws of her own. 
 These last, be it remembered, contain within them- 
 selves so much of a purely human element that 
 they may be changed, or dispensed with, or abro- 
 gated. Thus it is that in certain countries certain 
 holidays of obligation have been abrogated. Thus 
 it is that the Church daily grants dispensation 
 regarding marriage within certain degrees of kin- 
 dred. In like manner does she dispense persons 
 from vows or commute their vows under certain 
 circumstances and with sufficient reason. All this 
 she could not do with regard to the Divine law, 
 whether it be natural or positive. She could not, 
 for instance, permit or tolerate an act of injustice as 
 between man and man, nor could she allow her high- 
 est dignitaries any more than her humblest laymen, 
 to injure their neighbor's reputation by any act, 
 overt or covert, direct or indirect ; nor in such sup- 
 position could she dispense them from making such 
 reparation as is within their power. She cannot 
 change the eternal principle of right and wrong. 
 All these are primary truths. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Next, consider the teaching power of the Church. 
 Her Divine Founder gave her the mission to go 
 forth and teach all nations in His name. He that 
 heareth you heareth me. This mission extends to 
 all subjects bearing upon religion. It includes both
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 247 
 
 the natural and the positive law of God, as well as 
 the revealed truths and mysteries of faith. The 
 teaching power resides in its plenitude in the Roman 
 pontiff as it did in his predecessor the Apostle Peter. 
 He is unerring in defining matters pertaining to 
 faith and morals. His infallibility does not extend 
 beyond this domain. In all matters of political 
 action or of private opinion, the pope is as liable to 
 err as any layman equally instructed. An ecumen- 
 ical council is also unerring when defining matters of 
 faith and morals ; but it is only the papal approval 
 that renders the council ecumenical and stamps its 
 decrees with the seal of authority. The teaching 
 power is communicated to bishops and priests, but 
 not in its plenitude. They may err in their teach- 
 ings, even as they may be culpable in their conduct. 
 Their words have weight only in proportion to the 
 learning and the soundness of judgment they bring 
 to bear upon their subject-matter. 
 
 And here we would dwell upon a grave mis- 
 conception entertained of our mental attitude as 
 Catholics by those not of the body. We give the 
 misconception as stated by an American writer who 
 would not voluntarily do us an injustice. Speaking 
 of the Church in America this writer says : 
 
 " There is almost as much dissent, agnosticism, 
 free thought call it what you will among edu- 
 cated Catholics as among other people in America. 
 This is at once the source of peculiar strength and of 
 unique weakness to the Catholic Church." ' 
 
 1 The Westminster Review, June, 1888.
 
 248 ESS A rs MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 We do not see how this can be a source of any- 
 thing real, since it is a condition of things that does not 
 exist outside of the writer's mind. We Catholics 
 the ignorant layman no less than the learned theolo- 
 gian all profess the same creed and hold by the same 
 truths of faith, upon the same ground of belief, namely, 
 the veracity of God revealing them, known because 
 that the Holy Roman Catholic Church believes and 
 teaches them. This and nothing more. The learned 
 theologian may attempt to account for the faith 
 that is in him ; he may seek to reconcile it with his 
 reason ; he may answer objections raised against 
 certain articles of his faith ; but he cannot pare away 
 or minimize that faith ; he cannot drop a single jot 
 or tittle of that faith without ceasing to be a Catho- 
 lic. He accepts it all neither more nor less with 
 the same sincerity with which his unlettered brother 
 accepts it. The mental attitude of Catholics towards 
 their faith is simply one of absolute certitude. In 
 matters of opinion, or of credence, or of speculation, 
 or of mere probability, we exercise our own judg- 
 ments like the rest of men on those same matters, 
 and come to our own conclusions according to per- 
 sonal bias and the tone of our intellectual training. 
 Even in matters of faith our explanations of the 
 various articles of our creed -may vary and some 
 may even be erroneous. There are men, for in- 
 stance, who find the presence of design in the 
 material world a strong argument for the existence 
 of God ; others refuse to be convinced by that argu- 
 ment, but find their strongest demonstration in a 
 recognition of the moral sense. But it is clearly an
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 249 
 
 abuse of terms to call our honest divergence of 
 opinion concerning all matters upon which we are 
 free to diverge, free thinking or agnosticism in the 
 accepted meaning of these words. 
 
 You cannot conceive a Catholic agnostic. As 
 well might you think a positive negation. One term 
 is as meaningless as the other. You might conceive a 
 minister of the Church, whether priest or bishop, con- 
 tinuing to exercise the functions of his ministry long 
 after he has ceased to believe in their efficacy, but 
 sooner or later he shirks the discipline of his position, 
 and the world takes at his worth the man who sails 
 under false colors or who dares not assume the re- 
 sponsibility of his convictions. Now, it would be a vile 
 slander upon the Catholic priesthood in America 
 and the writer from whom we have quoted would be 
 the last to put it upon them intentionally to say 
 that any number of them were praying to a God in 
 whose existence they did not believe, or adminis- 
 tering sacraments in whose efficacy they had no faith. 
 
 Our Catholic writers are of all shades of opinion 
 upon the issues of the day. In this they are subject 
 to no censure. Take, for instance, the burning ques- 
 tions of modern science and modern thought. Some 
 there are who think that as children of the age it is 
 their duty to face true problems of the age and effect 
 their solution as best they may. Others, again, are 
 alarmed at the hostile attitude of certain leaders of 
 modern thought towards the Church, and, identify- 
 ing the person with the cause, condemn the whole 
 without a fair hearing. They seek refuge in extreme 
 rigidity of doctrine. In their opinion the Decalogue
 
 250 SSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 is incomplete, the Sermon on the Mount too mild, 
 and Rome too lenient. The non-Catholic world is 
 only too prone to identify this class of writers with 
 the Church. Their extreme views bring odium upon 
 all religion. They seem incapable of learning from 
 the blunders of the past. They speak and write as 
 though the Inquisition had never made Galileo say 
 that the earth did not move round the sun, or the 
 Sorbonne had not dictated to Buffon what he should 
 write concerning this world's formation. Every 
 educated Catholic knows that neither the Inquisition 
 nor the Sorbonne is the Church, and though both 
 were formidable bodies, they had no claim to infalli- 
 bility. Why should these over-hasty writers attempt 
 to force a repetition of such blunders? They are 
 misleading, and are not to be considered in any 
 respect representative. You will find other Catholic 
 writers holding views as broad as theirs are narrow. 
 The children of the Church have great liberty of 
 action and opinion. It is the liberty of children in 
 a well-regulated household. They know the limit 
 beyond which they must not pass. 
 
 The doctrinal life of the Church is that she at all 
 times and under all circumstances preserve unity 
 of doctrine in the midst of multiplicity of opinion. 
 The doctrine she teaches to-day she has always, and 
 everywhere, and to all men, taught from the begin- 
 ning. This is the secret of her strength and her 
 endurance as a teaching body. Permit me to quote 
 for you an impartial witness to the fact. Speaking 
 of the characteristics of absolute infallibility Mr. 
 Mallock says :
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 251 
 
 "Any supernatural religion that renounces its 
 claim to this, it is clear can profess to be a semi-revela- 
 tion only. It is a hybrid thing, partly natural and 
 partly supernatural, and it thus practically has all the 
 qualities of a religion that is wholly natural. In so 
 far as it professes to be revealed, it of course professes 
 to be infallible ; but if the revealed part be in 
 the first place hard to distinguish, and in the second 
 place hard to understand if it may mean many 
 things, and many of these contradictory it might 
 just as well have never been made at all. To make 
 it in any sense an infallible revelation, or, in other 
 words, a revelation at all to us, we need a power to 
 interpret the testament that shall have equal 
 authority with that testament itself. Simple as this 
 truth seems, mankind has been a long time learning 
 it. Indeed, it is only in the present day that its 
 practical meaning has come generally to be recog- 
 nized. But now, at this moment, upon all sides of 
 us, history is teaching it to us by an example so 
 clearly that we can no longer mistake it. That 
 example is Protestant Christianity, and the condi- 
 tion to which, after three centuries, it is now visibly 
 bringing itself. It is at last beginning to exhibit to 
 us the true results of the denial of infallibility to a 
 religion that professes to be supernatural. It is fast 
 evaporating into a mere natural theism, and is thus 
 showing us what, as a governing power, natural 
 theism is. Let us look at England, Europe and 
 America, and consider the condition of the entire 
 Protestant world. Religion, it is true, we shall find 
 in it, but it is religion from which not only the super- 
 natural element is disappearing, but in which the 
 natural element is fast becoming nebulous. It is, 
 indeed, growing, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, 
 into a religion of dreams. All its doctrines are 
 growing vague as dreams, and like dreams their out- 
 lines are forever changing. There is hardly any
 
 252 JSSSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 conceivable aberration of moral license that has not 
 in some quarter or other embodied itself into a rule 
 of life and claimed to be the proper outcome of 
 Protestant Christianity." * 
 
 So far Mr. Mallock. His remarks make it clear to 
 us that a church regarding itself as Divine in its 
 origin and inspiration and at the same time not un- 
 erring as a guide, would be a self-contradiction. 
 
 But there are limitations to the teaching mission 
 of the Church. The fulfillment of Christ's promise 
 to be with His Church and to guide and direct her 
 in her mission, extends only to those things for which 
 she has been commissioned. She has no mission 
 to teach purely secular science. She may utilize 
 the science she finds her children possessed of, and 
 speak to them in the language of that science, but 
 she never descends to take issue upon every new 
 scientific theory. Should science trespass upon her 
 domain and assert anything opposed to her fixed and 
 immutable principles, she cautions her children 
 against such teachings. Individual members of the 
 Church may dispute over certain issues, but the 
 Church bides her own time with the patient tranquil- 
 lity of one who has outlived many disputes and seen 
 many brilliant and aggressive theories dashed to spray 
 at her feet. And when science shall have winnowed 
 the chaff from the grain and human reason shall 
 have become possessed of an additional fact or an 
 additional law of nature, the Church shall be found 
 precisely where she stood before the discovery. 
 
 1 "Is Life Worth Living?" pp. 274, 275.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 253 
 
 She is not the one who has been obliged to shift her 
 lines. It is in this attitude of the Church that we 
 have the clue to her whole bearing towards science 
 in the course of its development and its variations. 
 Here it may be asked : Since the teaching mis- 
 sion of the Church is thus circumscribed, why does 
 she make such persistent efforts to control education 
 in all its roots and branches ? To this I would say : 
 The Church cannot recognize any system of train- 
 ing for the child from which religion is excluded. 
 With her religion is an essential factor in education. 
 Among Christian peoples the child has always com- 
 bined Christian doctrine and Christian practices with 
 purely secular teaching in the schoolroom. The 
 child of Christian parents is entitled to this Christian 
 education. To impose upon him any system of 
 education calculated to weaken his hold upon the 
 Christian heritage into which he was born, were an 
 act of gross injustice. Our Catholic clergy, as the 
 pastors of souls, answerable to God for those confided 
 to their care, are in duty bound to see that the 
 children of their parish are instructed in the doctrines 
 and practices of that Church which they believe to be 
 the pillar and the ground of Truth. This can be 
 properly and efficiently done only by means of a 
 system of education especially provided for the 
 purpose. Given a clergy believing in the Divine origin 
 of their religion, believing that religion to be so great 
 a boon that they would gladly die for it, believing 
 that unless the child is at an early age taught reli- 
 gious doctrine and religious practices he runs the risk 
 of growing up wholly indifferent to the priceless
 
 254 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 value of his Christian heritage, and you cannot 
 conceive that clergy holding any other attitude 
 towards a purely secular education for their Catholic 
 children than one of hostility. It were a betrayal 
 of their trust, an abandonment of the birthright of 
 those confided to them, to acquiesce in a school 
 system from which Catholic doctrine, Catholic 
 prayer and Catholic practices of devotion had been 
 banished. Therefore it is that the Church binds the 
 consciences of pastors and of people, to keep their 
 Catholic children aloof from such schools, and to 
 establish parochial schools whenever and wherever it 
 is possible. 
 
 Her mission to teach gives the Church the right 
 to safeguard the child against any influence that 
 would be injurious to faith and morals. Hers is the 
 right to see that the books made use of, the men and 
 women imparting instruction, and the character of 
 the instruction given, be such as aid in the work 
 of spiritualizing and elevating the child, and making 
 his soul worthy of its future heavenly abode. Hers 
 is the duty to forbid to her children the use of books 
 in which there is doctrine contrary to that which she 
 teaches, in which is to be found any system or 
 principle of mental philosophy that she has con- 
 demned, or in which history ,is compiled with a 
 view to misrepresenting Catholicity or undermining 
 Catholic influences. Children, or even young men 
 and young women, are not in a position to take in 
 both sides of religious, philosophical or historical 
 questions ; they lack maturity of judgment and the 
 information essential to determine truth from error.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 255 
 
 It were folly to leave their weak, half-trained, ill- 
 informed minds to grapple alone with issues that 
 exercise the most ripened scholars to comparatively 
 little purpose. And so it happens that while the 
 Church has no mission as regards the imparting of 
 purely secular education, it belongs to her function 
 to exercise due vigilance over every branch of science 
 and letters that would be likely, directly or indirectly, 
 to affect religious belief. 
 
 V. 
 
 We now come to the state. The state is also a 
 social organism. It grows out of the very nature 
 of society. The family, and not the individual, is 
 the unit of the state. 
 
 " The human family," says Cardinal Manning, 
 " contains the first principles and laws of authority, 
 obedience and order. These three conditions of 
 society are of Divine origin ; and they are the con- 
 structive laws of all civil or political society." ' 
 
 Therefore, the state is of Divine origin. It 
 is organized for the protection of society and 
 the commonweal. It has rights and duties and 
 responsibilities. It rights are embodied in the 
 natural law, and come not from society, nor from 
 its own intrinsic nature, but from God who is the 
 source and sanction of all authority, obedience and 
 order. The state is organized directly for the hap- 
 piness and well-being of man in this life. It 
 protects his person and property ; it guarantees him 
 liberty of action in the fulfillment of his duties ; it 
 
 1 "The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Alle- 
 giance," p. 46. American edition.
 
 256 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 frames such laws as promote his welfare and the 
 welfare of the nation. The form of government 
 established in the state is determined by the people. 
 There is no Divine ordinance as to what that form 
 may be. 
 
 Nor has the Church a preference. If our the- 
 ologians speak of the king and the kingly form of 
 government, it is because that is the form with 
 which when writing they were most familiar. But 
 the present Pope, Leo XIII., has clearly defined the 
 position of the Church as regards form of govern- 
 ment: 
 
 " While being the guardian of her rights," he 
 says, "and most careful against encroachment, the 
 Church has no care what form of government exists 
 in a state, or by what custom the civil order of Chris- 
 tian nations is directed ; of the various kinds of gov- 
 ernment there is none of which she disapproves, so 
 long as religion and moral discipline live untouched" ' 
 
 But while the form is determined by external 
 circumstances, the authority and the sanction come 
 from God. No man, for instance, has the power of 
 life and death over another ; and yet in the interests 
 of society, the state condemns the criminal to be 
 hanged. Whence derives it this dread power ? Not 
 from society, for the command Thou shalt not kill is 
 as applicable to a body of individuals as to a single 
 person. Not in the state itself, for the state is only 
 the society composing it, and society cannot give 
 what it does not possess. The power and the sanc- 
 tion of that power come to the state from God alone. 
 
 1 " Encyclical," January 10, 1890.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 257 
 
 And since the state is of God as well as the Church, 
 complete harmony should exist in all their relations. 
 But the history of modern civilization is the history 
 of unintermitting struggle between Church and state. 
 Whence arises this struggle ? The sphere of action 
 of each is distinct. 
 
 " Both Church and state have each an individual 
 domain ; wherefore in fulfilling their separate duties 
 neither is subject to the other within the limits fixed 
 by their boundary lines." ' 
 
 So speaks the reigning pontiff. To understand 
 the struggle we must go back to the origin of Chris- 
 tianity. Christianity found itself face to face with 
 pagan Rome. Its Divine founder counseled his 
 disciples to render unto Caesar the things that were 
 Caesar's and to God the things that were God's. 
 And St. Paul threw the whole force of his energetic 
 soul into insistance on obedience to the state. 
 
 " Let every soul be subject to higher powers ; for 
 there is no power but from God ; and those that are 
 are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the 
 power resisteth the ordinance of God and they that 
 resist purchase to themselves damnation. . . . Ren- 
 der therefore to all men their dues. Tribute to 
 whom tribute is due ; custom to whom custom ; fear 
 to whom fear ; honor to whom honor." " 
 
 But there were clearly defined limitations beyond 
 which the Christian could not submit. He could not 
 worship the false gods of the pagan world. He could 
 not share in the national rights and ceremonies that 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 * Romans xiii., 1-7. 
 E. M. 17
 
 258 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 cloaked the most disgusting orgies and crimes. The 
 Christian had learned the holy nature of the living 
 God, the heinousness of sin and the necessity of 
 keeping his soul spotless before the all-penetrating 
 Presence. He had learned that many pagan prac- 
 tices, sanctioned by religion, were sinful, and he 
 preferred death to sin. This gave rise to a bitter 
 struggle between the state and the early Christian 
 Church. There was no compromise. Under all 
 circumstances God is to be obeyed rather than men. 
 And so the Roman Empire reeked with the blood of 
 martyrs. It was a death struggle. On the one side 
 was the all-powerful, all-absorbing empire of the 
 world, and on the other were a few scattered Chris- 
 tians, weak in number, weak in rank and position, 
 weak in every respect but in the moral courage to 
 live up to their convictions. But moral courage, 
 animated by a burning idea, is an irresistible force. 
 The vast material resources of the Roman Empire 
 could not withstand its progress. Rome under 
 Constantine proclaimed herself Christian. Her very 
 law became regenerated. 
 
 St. Augustine had said and his words bore with 
 them great weight throughout the Middle Ages that 
 true justice has no existence save in that republic 
 whose founder and ruler is Christ. 1 In the light of 
 Christian truth and in the practice of Christian jus- 
 tice, always tempered by Christian mercy, the absolute 
 law of pagan Rome came to be regarded as supreme 
 injustice. Public opinion was gradually educated up 
 to a higher conception of right and equity. Men 
 
 1 "De Civ. Dei.," ii., 4.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 259 
 
 became impressed with the sanctity of human life. 
 From the beginning the Church had set her face 
 against abortion and infanticide. In the course of 
 time the state imbibed the same horror for these 
 crimes and enacted laws against them. Gladiatorial 
 games, in which lives were cast away to pander to a 
 depraved taste, were abolished. A sense of univer- 
 sal brotherhood grew apace. "The dignity of labor 
 became recognized. Charity extended a helping 
 hand in many directions to the relief of want and 
 the assuaging of misery and suffering. Immediately 
 after the days of Constantine it is no longer the 
 emperor who is remembered in men's last will and 
 testament ; it is the Church as the dispenser of 
 charities. Here is already a great revolution of 
 ideas. But the greatest of all revolutions in Roman 
 jurisprudence is the recognition of the woman's 
 rights in the marriage law as standing upon an equal 
 footing with those of a man. This change renders 
 the Justinian Code an immortal landmark in the 
 history of human progress. The world has ceased to 
 be Roman ; the Galilean has conquered. 
 
 In like manner did the Church educate the bar- 
 barian up to the same sense of the sanctity of human 
 life, the same respect for others' rights and others' 
 goods and the same idea of a universal brotherhood. 
 In legislating for sin she was legislating for crime. The 
 early Christian kings frequently made the Peniten- 
 tials the basis of their criminal code. Her bishops 
 and clergy in their councils enacted laws as beneficial 
 to the state as they were helpful to souls. And so 
 almost imperceptibly did modern jurisprudence
 
 260 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 receive a Christian tone till in its whole substance and 
 meaning it has become solely and peculiarly 
 Christian. 1 Well might Lecky write of the influ- 
 ence of the Church : 
 
 "She exercised for many centuries an almost 
 absolute empire over the thoughts and actions of 
 mankind and created a civilization which was per- 
 meated in every part with ecclesiastical influence." a 
 
 Let us not close our eyes to the nature of that 
 influence. It was an influence achieved only after 
 a long and patient struggle. The Church begins by 
 teaching the barbarian his letters. By means of 
 literature and ritual and ceremonial and plain chant 
 she speaks to his imagination and he understands and 
 appreciates her language and his nature grows refined 
 beneath the refining influence. By means of prayer 
 and grace of the sacraments she moulds his charac- 
 ter and forms his soul to virtue. Her mission was 
 one of civilization. It was the effort of mind to pre- 
 dominate over matter, the taming of lawless natures, 
 the lifting up into a higher plane of thought, exer- 
 tion and aspiration, a humanity that had otherwise 
 been content to live within the most circumscribed 
 sphere of earthly existence. An Ambrose stays the 
 footsteps of Theodosius at the Church door because 
 his hands were stained with wanton bloodshed 
 This sublime act embodies the spirit and the mission 
 of the Church towards the state. 
 
 " The resistance," says Bryce, " and final triumph 
 of Athanasius proved that the new society could put 
 forth a power of opinion such as had never been 
 
 1 See Bluntschli. " Allgemeines Statsrecht," p. 6. 
 J " History of European Morals," ii., p. 15.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 261 
 
 known before ; the abasement of Theodosius the em- 
 peror before Ambrose the bishop admitted the su- 
 premacy of spiritual authority." ' 
 
 And so we find the Church at all times and under 
 all circumstances, without respect of persons, regu- 
 lating conduct and preserving purity of faith and 
 morals. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In the midst of this civilizing process there loom up 
 two powers, each the embodiment of a distinct idea, 
 each claiming supremacy. In the struggle between 
 these two powers we have the clue to all mediaeval 
 and modern history. One is the Papacy ; the other 
 is the Holy Roman Empire. From the days of Con- 
 stantine, according as the people became Christian, 
 bishops exercised more and more influence in tem- 
 poral affairs. They* performed the functions of 
 magistrates and judges, and so even-handed were 
 they in administering the law the very pagans 
 brought suit before them in preference to the civil 
 courts. They were the counselors and ministers of 
 rulers. It was the bishops of France who made of 
 France a nation. Her kings in consequence recog- 
 nized their jurisdiction. Charles the Bald (A. D. 
 859) said that "by them he had been crowned, 
 and to their paternal corrections and chastisements 
 he was willing to submit." * What bishops were in 
 their respective dioceses, the pope came to be 
 regarded by all Christendom. How else keep inter- 
 national relations upon the footing of equity? A 
 
 1 ' Holy Roman Empire," 3rd ed., p. 120. 
 1 "Hefele," iv., p. 197.
 
 262 ESS A rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 weaker nation was helpless to right the wrongs 
 inflicted by one more powerful. Countries far apart 
 would find difficulty in coming to a mutual under- 
 standing. But under the authority and through the 
 mediation of the Supreme Head of Christendom, 
 whom all looked upon as the Father of the whole 
 Christian family, the representative of justice and 
 the avenger of evil doing, wrongs might be righted 
 and reconciliations effected under difficulties which 
 might otherwise lead to disastrous results. And so 
 the pope became, by virtue of public law and by 
 the consent of the Christian people, and not by Divine 
 right, the arbiter between sovereigns and the peace- 
 maker among nations. His power as then recog- 
 nized scarcely knew a limit. He could for sufficient 
 reason depose kings, absolve people from allegiance 
 to their rulers, place whole nations under interdict, 
 quell wars, decide upon the justice of a cause, and 
 more than once have we seen rulers place their king- 
 doms in fiefdom at his feet, as their only protection 
 against a too-powerful enemy. Thus, in 1214, we 
 find Innocent III. forbidding any bishop or cleric, 
 without a special mandate from the Holy See, to 
 censure King John of England, as he had become a 
 vassal of the pope. 1 
 
 Side by side with the Papacy stood the Holy 
 Roman Empire. The emperor was the champion 
 of the Church, pledged to her defense against all 
 secular enemies. According to Frederick I., " Di- 
 vine Providence had especially appointed the 
 Roman Empire to prevent the continuance of 
 
 1 " Migne," ccxvii., p. 226. Supplem. ep. 185.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 263 
 
 schism in the Church." 1 The empire was the 
 creation of the pope ; it was not hereditary. The 
 first emperor was Charlemagne, crowned such at 
 the Christmas of the year 800, by Leo III. It was 
 Leo's own work, done for the peace and protection 
 of the Church. The office was, like that* of the 
 Papacy itself, non-hereditary. 
 
 " Each of these lofty offices," says Freeman, 
 " is open to every baptized man ; each alike is 
 purely elective ; each may be the reward of merit 
 in any rank of life or in any corner of Christ- 
 endom. While smaller offices were closely con- 
 fined by local or aristocratic restrictions, the 
 throne of Augustus and the chair of Peter were, 
 in theory at least, open to the ambition of every man 
 of orthodox belief. Even in the darkest times of 
 aristocratic exclusiveness, no one dared to lay down 
 as a principle that the Roman Emperor, any more 
 than the Roman Bishop, need be of princely or 
 Roman ancestry. Freedom of birth Roman citi- 
 zenship, in short, to clothe mediaeval ideas in 
 classical words was all that was needed."* 
 
 And so the Holy Roman Empire, now a shadow, 
 now a power, continued to exist by the grace 
 of the Holy See, sometimes to aid, more fre- 
 quently to hinder, the Church in the exercise of her 
 functions and prerogatives. With the hereditary 
 title came an hereditary tendency of reversion to 
 the absolutism of the Caesars. Ecclesiastical privi- 
 leges, at first granted the emperors by the popes, 
 their successors in the Holy Roman Empire sought 
 
 1 Letter to the Prelates of Germany. 
 1 " Historical Essays," vi., p. 136.
 
 264 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS, 
 
 to convert into rights beyond the jurisdiction of the 
 Papacy. The quarrel may read to us like a story of 
 petty spites and personal squabbles, but its mean- 
 ing is deeper. The very existence of the Church 
 was involved. When bishoprics were put up for 
 sale to the highest bidder, or were kept vacant for 
 years that their revenues might flow into the royal 
 or imperial coffers, it becomes evident that religion, 
 and spiritual life, and morality must suffer and the 
 whole mission of the Church be frustrated. Upon 
 more than one pope must we accept the verdict of 
 Neander concerning the indomitable Hildebrand : 
 
 " Gregory VII. was animated by something higher 
 than by self-seeking and selfish ambition ; it was an 
 idea which swayed him and to which he sacrificed 
 all other interests. It was the idea of the independ- 
 ence of the Church, and of a tribunal to exercise 
 judgment over all other human relations ; the idea 
 of a religious and ethical sovereignty over the world, 
 to be exercised by the Papacy." ' 
 
 Those were stormy times, and it took a strong 
 hand to curb the headlong career of the power- 
 ful when they would ride roughshod over the 
 most sacred rights. When Philip Augustus of 
 France violated the sanctity and indissolubility of 
 the marriage-bond, it was the popes who brought 
 him to a sense of his duty, and compelled 
 him to undo the great wrong he had done his 
 injured wife, the beautiful and virtuous Ingeburge. 
 Instances might be multiplied, in which the popes 
 shall be found struggling against might and prestige 
 in the cause of the honor and dignity of womanhood. 
 
 1 " Church History," ii., p. 375. Third edition.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 265 
 
 " Go through the long annals of Church history," 
 says Cardinal Newman, "century after century, and 
 say, was there ever a time when her bishops, and 
 notably the Bishop of Rome, were slow to give 
 their testimony in behalf of the moral and revealed 
 law and to suffer for their obedience to it, or 
 forget that they had a message to deliver to the 
 world? Not the task merely of administering spirit- 
 ual consolation, or of making the sick-bed easy, or of 
 training up good members of society, and of 'serving 
 tables' (though all this was included in their range 
 of duty) ; but specially and directly to deliver a 
 message to the world, a definite message to high and 
 low, from the world 's Maker, whether men would 
 hear or whether they would forbear. The history, 
 surely, of the Church, in all past times, ancient as 
 well as mediaeval, is the very embodiment of that 
 tradition of apostolical independence and freedom 
 of speech, which in the eyes of man is her great 
 offense now." ' 
 
 Great is the debt the nations owe the Church for 
 having preserved throughout the ages this indepen- 
 dence of speech. Despotism and tyranny would 
 have had little respect for any or every element that 
 enters into our modern civilization, if there were no 
 authority to call a halt and say in tones that were 
 unmistakable and that commanded respect : " Thus far 
 shalt thou go and no farther!" This was the 
 temporal mission of the Papacy. How staunchly 
 and how efficiently she fulfilled her mission has been 
 recognized by all competent historians. Few there 
 are who are not willing to subscribe to the verdict of 
 Ancillon : 
 
 1 Letters to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 34.
 
 266 ESSA rs MISCELLANEOUS, 
 
 " In the Middle Ages, when there was no so- 
 cial order, the Papacy, and perhaps the Papacy alone 
 saved Europe from a state of absolute barbarism. It 
 created relations amongst nations far removed from 
 each other, was a common centre for all, a point of 
 union for states otherwise isolated. It was a supreme 
 court of justice raised in the midst of universal anarchy. 
 Its judgments were from time to time received with 
 the respect they merited. It fenced in and restrained 
 the despotism of emperors. It compensated for 
 the want of a due balance of power and lessened 
 the injurious effects of feudal governments." ' 
 
 Let us add that the Papacy was more than a merely 
 compensating principle. Based upon the supremacy 
 of the spiritual over the material, recognized and acted 
 upon by Christian nations possessing the same faith, 
 it was a most secure, a most economic and a most 
 impartial tribunal of arbitration. Has modern politi- 
 cal science been able to furnish a better substitute ? 
 
 When kings ceased to look to the Papacy for 
 recognition and sanction, and no longer feared inter- 
 dict or excommunication, they sought shelter in the 
 Divine right of royalty to do all things. They 
 refused to hold themselves amenable to any tribunal. 
 
 " It is notorious," says the late Henry Sumner 
 Maine, " that as soon as the decay of the feudal 
 system had thrown the medraeval constitutions out 
 of working order, and when the Reformation had 
 discredited the authority of the pope, the doctrine 
 of the Divine right of kings rose immediately into 
 an importance which had never before attended it." " 
 
 1 " Tableau des Revolutions du Systme Politique de 
 1' Europe," Introduction, p. 133. 
 * " Ancient Law," p. 334.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 267 
 
 We all know how that doctrine brought a Charles 
 I. to the block. Where else is despotism likely to 
 lead? The Kings of France complained of papal 
 interference ; they found theologians to exaggerate 
 the papal pretensions ; they sighed for the freedom 
 of the Caliph. Well, they reduced that interference to a 
 minimum ; they endeavored to make every bishop a 
 pope in his own diocese ; they placed their tools in 
 the diocesan seats. The theory of a national Church 
 became popular ; Gallicanism reigned ; Rome received 
 but scant respect, and what was the result? The 
 people, exasperated against the oppressions of a 
 century, rose in defense of rights and liberties which 
 they were denied, and in the reeking horrors of the 
 Revolution became intoxicated with the blood of 
 king and priest. Were there no Gallican Church 
 identified with a long record of tyrannies and oppres- 
 sions, had Rome been free to elect its own bishops, 
 its clergy would have been wholly identified with 
 the people ; their power and influence would have 
 guided the storm, and instead of the guillotine and 
 the orgies with which every student of history is 
 familiar, a peaceful adjustment of the difficulties 
 between king and people might have been made. 
 This is all the more evident when we remember that 
 the principle of the Revolution is the great under- 
 lying idea of modern times. All modern thought, all 
 great political movements, all great social reforms, 
 are based upon the sublime principle of Liberty, 
 Equality and Fraternity rightly understood. Now, 
 this principle has in it nothing to alarm. All the 
 nations of the earth are marching toward its realiza-
 
 268 ESSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 tion. In some, the awakening is earlier than in others. 
 This was the underlying idea of the old Republic of 
 Florence, "which would have no king because its 
 king was Jesus Christ ; " 1 it was the underlying idea 
 that led to the Constitution of 1688 in England; 
 it nerved the cantons of Switzerland to struggle 
 against Austrian domination till they were free as 
 the chamois ranging their beloved Alps ; it gave 
 birth to our own republic. Its spirit is in the air 
 and will not down. Statesmen and governments 
 may slight or ignore or even resist it, but such a 
 course is one of folly. They who will not recognize 
 it and give it direction and prepare men for its 
 coming, will be borne down by its fierce impetus. 
 
 Again, since the treaty of Westphalia, Europe 
 has been adjusted by what is known as balance of 
 power. According to this principle, no one nation 
 will be allowed to assume control beyond a certain 
 limit. She may absorb a certain number of districts 
 or provinces belonging to a weaker power, but, in 
 order to preserve an equilibrium, she must not 
 destroy that power. Or, a weaker power is a source 
 of trouble to more powerful nations in her neighbor- 
 hood. As a solution to the difficulty, why may they 
 not carve the weaker nation up and distribute a 
 share to each, still preserving, even as happened to 
 Poland, the equilibrium ? These are events that 
 could not have occurred under the arbitration of the 
 popes. A merely mechanical principle, with no 
 other basis than expedience, no other motive than 
 
 1 Cardinal Capecelatra : "Life of St. Philip Neri," vol. I, 
 P-34-
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 269 
 
 policy, such as is this principle of balance of power, 
 must needs be immoral in its very nature and lead 
 to acts of gross injustice. It is bearing its fruits 
 to-day in Europe. Look at the attitude of all the 
 great powers on the Continent ! Each is in arms, 
 grimly awaiting war. The strong and the young 
 are idly consuming the products of the soil, and these 
 nations are becoming impoverished. All human 
 ingenuity is concentrated upon the discovery of the 
 most rapid and most effectual methods of destroying 
 human life. This state of affairs is radically wrong. 
 Who would not rejoice to see every nation of Europe 
 disarm, go back to the arts of peace, and leave the 
 arbitration of all international difficulties to the pope ? 
 The Holy Roman Empire has passed into shadow- 
 land. The doctrine of the absolute right of kings to 
 perpetrate all acts in God's name, and under the 
 Divine sanction, is no more. Even where crowned 
 heads still exist in Europe, not they, but their peo- 
 ples Russia being excepted rule. The world's 
 future is altogether in the hands of the people. The 
 relations of the Church and state in the new order 
 of things may easily prove far more satisfactory 
 than in the old order. In our own American 
 republic these relations are almost ideal. We know 
 that purely ideal relations between Church and 
 state obtain only where religion is one in society. 
 Then might the secular power be subject to the 
 spiritual power, as the body is subject to the soul 
 then might the state cooperate with the Church, 
 aiding her when necessary, in her work of establish- 
 ing the kingdom of God in souls, knowing that all
 
 270 ESSA rS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 else, bearing upon temporal happiness, will surely 
 follow. Here, where the forms of Christian belief 
 are many, this order of things is impossible. But 
 the order of things guaranteed us by our Constitu- 
 tion and our laws is admirable. 
 
 The noble patriots who framed our Constitution 
 and laid so firmly the foundations of our republic, 
 built upon the rights and liberties inherent in man. 
 Now these rights and liberties with their accom- 
 panying duties and responsibilities, as between man 
 and man, are not of the state. They are above and 
 beyond the state. They are the vital principle that 
 gives being to the state. They are the natural law, 
 which is a participation in the eternal law of God. 
 The state is simply the mouthpiece to proclaim this 
 law, and the instrument to enforce it. The princi- 
 ples of right and wrong existed before they were 
 made to enter into statutory decrees, just as the 
 Decalogue was engraved on the hearts of men 
 before Moses inscribed it on tablets of stone. 
 Those principles are eternal, and it is our pride 
 and our glory and the secret of our prosperity 
 as a people that the great charter of our liberties is 
 based upon them. In consequence the state admits 
 the right of every man to worship God according to 
 the dictates of his conscience." Every man has his 
 rights of conscience, not as privileges conceded by 
 the state, but as rights existing among his other 
 natural rights, recognized and acknowledged by the 
 state, as held under a higher law than its own. 
 Church and state do not here exist upon a system of 
 mutual concessions or privileges. There is here no
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 271 
 
 absorption of one into the other. They are distinct, 
 but they are not separated. On the contrary, their 
 union is most intimate and most harmonious. 
 
 "There is nothing," says Brownson, "which Gre- 
 gory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII. and other 
 great popes struggled for against the German em- 
 perors, the kings of France, Aragon and England, and 
 the Italian republics that is not recognized here by our 
 republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here 
 the old antagonism between Church and state does 
 not exist. There is here a certain antagonism, no 
 doubt, between the Church and the sects, but none 
 between the Church and the state or civil society. 
 Here the Church has, so far as civil society is con- 
 cerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has 
 ever struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She 
 summons her prelates to meet in council when she 
 pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the spiritual 
 government of her children without leave asked 
 or obtained. The placet of the civil power is not 
 needed, is neither solicited nor accepted. She 
 erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and 
 conducts schools, colleges and seminaries in her own 
 way, without let or hindrance ; she manages her own 
 temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or concession 
 of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as 
 the right of conscience, independently of the state." ' 
 
 Where society is split up into a diversity of 
 creeds there is supreme wisdom in the attitude of 
 the state towards all, granting freedom of conscience 
 so long as conscience dictates nothing contrary to 
 the principles of natural right, or calculated to out- 
 rage the moral sense of society. We ask no closer 
 relations of Church and state. So far as our re- 
 ligion is concerned, our sole cry is : " Hands off." 
 
 1 " Works," vol. XIII., p. 143.
 
 272 SSArS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 The state is incompetent to pronounce upon religious 
 matters ; it has no mission to determine the validity 
 of a religious creed. To discriminate in favor of 
 anyone to the exclusion of all the others, were an 
 act of injustice to every citizen not holding the 
 favored creed. It were un-American because it 
 were unconstitutional. It is a primary duty of the 
 state to aid and protect its citizens in the fulfillment of 
 their respective duties, to secure to them their inal- 
 ienable rights, to see that justice is done between 
 man and man ; above all is it a duty of the state to 
 safeguard the weak minorities in their rights and 
 immunities against the more powerful majorities. 
 
 In every man and woman there is an inseparable 
 union of Church and state. Each holds certain re- 
 ligious tenets ; many belong to some visible form of 
 Christianity ; but in proportion as all live up to their 
 religious convictions, in that proportion are they 
 good citizens, faithful in the performance of their 
 civic duties honest and honorable and just in all 
 relations of life. Christian virtue in Christian society 
 has never dimmed the civic virtues. Tell me, 
 would the New England Puritans the revered an- 
 cestors of many whom we now address have left so 
 lasting an impression upon this republic if they had 
 been less intensely religious? ' The fierceness and 
 asperity and intolerance that entered into their re- 
 ligious convictions and dictated the Colonial Blue 
 Laws, also shaped the rigid honesty and integrity of 
 character that would die rather than deviate a hair's 
 breadth from the path of rectitude. When that 
 noble son of Connecticut, Nathan Hale, was about
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 273 
 
 to be hanged as a spy, his sole regret was that he 
 had not other lives to give for his country. Think 
 you he was any the less sturdy a patriot because he 
 had been strictly and religiously brought up in the 
 stern tenets of his Puritan father? Can you im- 
 agine Charles Carroll of Carrollton, throwing his 
 broad acres and his spotless name into the country's 
 cause, any the less a patriot because he had been 
 carefully trained by the Jesuits? Did he find any 
 difficulty in reconciling his allegiance to Rome with 
 his allegiance to the newborn republic? Was his 
 cousin John Carroll, the first Catholic Archbishop 
 of Baltimore, less a patriot, when he accompanied 
 the commission who sought the alliance of Canada 
 in the cause of independence, than John Jay, when, 
 by his fanatical address to the people of Great Britain, 
 he rendered that alliance an impossibility ?' This is 
 a subject over which men have needlessly waxed 
 wroth. Let us raise ourselves above prejudice and 
 look facts full in the face, and we will find perfect 
 reconciliation between Church and state. Is not 
 every full and perfect life an harmonious blending 
 of these two orders of duties? In this fact is the 
 solution to the whole problem of Church and state. 
 The name of God may not be in our Constitution, 
 but his hand is discernible in every line of it. With 
 far-seeing wisdom was that first amendment inserted : 
 Congress shall make no law respecting an establish- 
 ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof, 
 
 1 See a valuable article by John Gilmary Shea, in the U. S. 
 Catholic Historical Magazine, vol. III., No. x., " Why Canada 
 Is Not a Part of the United States." 
 
 E. M. 18
 
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