THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. XCIX.
APRIL, 1914, TO SEPTEMBER, 1914.
NEW YORK:
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD
120 WEST 6oTH STREET.
1914.
CONTENTS.
Alb., Powers and. Elisa-
btik
A New Ap<. - Chester-
ton. M. i
Anglo-Roman Party. Kikuyu and
the. A. H. Nankivell,
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin,
Bertrand L. Conway,
.
Battle of Lake Champlain, The.
Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D.,
Benson. Robert Hugh: Novelist.
Hfltno Loncannon, . . 487,
Bigotry. The Virtue of. Richard J.
Keeff. LL.D
Blindfolding the Mind. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D.. . . I,
Bosnia, The Recent Tragedy in.
Maria Longwortk Storer, .
Catholic Church in Denmark, The.
C. M. Waage,
Catholic Work for the Secular
Press. Emma Sherwood Chester,
Centenary of Scientific Thought,
A.^ir Bertram C. A. Windlt,
LL.D
Charity, The Fundamental Relations
of. William J. Kerby, Ph.D., .
Christianity and the Roman Law.
Bertrand L. Conway, C.SJ 3 .,
Christian Doctrine in the Primary
Grades. Thomas Crumley. CS.C.,
Church in the First Century, The
Government of the. Bertrand L.
Conway, CSJ>., ....
Church and French Democracy,
The. Hilaire Belloc, .
Colonial Empire, Our Far East.
Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P.,
Completing the Reformation. Ed-
mund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
433. 623,
Democracy, The Church and French.
Hilaire Belloc,
Denmark, The Catholic Church in.
C. M. Waage,.
Fear, The Place of. Vincent Mc-
Nabb, Of
foreign Periodicals,
122, 261, 412, 551, 695,
Franciscan Places, The Spirit of.
Char let Wager, ....
Frontiersmen of Orthodoxy. Rich-
ardson L. Wright,
Fundamental Relations of Charity
The. William J. Kerby. Ph.D.,
G. K. Chesterton : A New Aspect.
JB. D. rr ., ...
Government of the Church in the
First Century, The. Bertrand L.
Conway. C.S.P.,
Holy Eucharist, St. Paul and the.
Cuthbert Lattey. SJ., .
Holy Scripture, St. Augustine the
Student of. Hugh Pofe, O.P.,
Humbert's Campaign in Ireland.
A. Milliard Atteridae,
Ireland. Humbert's Campaign in.
A. Milliard Atteridae,
Irish Literary Patriotism. Elbrida'e
Colby,
Kikuyu and the Anglo-Roman
Part A. H. Nankivell.
Lake Champlain. The Battle of.
Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D..
Legend of Pope Joan. The. Ber-
trand L. Conway, CSJ*.
161
24
212
646
72J
635
737
145
674
577
333
289
29
So
799
338
15
472
759
15
577
597
845
462
8x4
29
24
338
657
586
232
232
36i
212
721
792
Legislation, Rural Credit. George
, -n. .....
Lucerne, Modern and Mediaeval.
Jeanie Drake, ....
.Mind, Blindfolding the. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D., . . i
Mothers of the Saints, The. F.
Drouet, CM., ....
Orthodoxy, Frontiersmen of. Rich-
ardson L. Wright,
Our Far East Colonial Empire.
Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P.,
Panama Canal Tolls, The Question
of. Edmund B. Briggs, D.C.L.,
Patriotism, Irish Literary. El-
bridge Colby, ....
Place of Fear, The. Vincent Mc-
Nabb, O.P., ....
Poet and Mystic, Francis Thomp-
son. Joseph L. O'Brien, M.A.,
Pope Joan, The Legend of. Ber-
trand L. Conway, C.S.P., .
Powers and Albania, The. Eliza-
beth Christitch,
Primary Grades, Christian Doctrine
in the. Thomas Crumley, C.S.C.,
Property Its Rights and Duties.
W. E. Campbell,
Question of Panama Canal Tolls,
The. Edmund B. Briggs, D.C.L.,
Recent Events,
127, 268, 416, 556, 702,
Reformation, Completing the. Ed-
mund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
433, 623,
Robert Hugh Benson : Novelist.
Helena Concannon, . . 487,
Roman Law, Christianity and the.
Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P.,
Rural Credit Legislation. George
Keen, .....
Saints, The Mothers of the. P.
Drout, CM., ....
Science and Religion Then and
Now. James J. Walsh, M.D.,
Ph.D., ScD., . . .
Scientific Thought, A Centenary of.
Sir Bertram C. A. Windle, LL.D.,
Secular Press, Catholic Work for
the. Emma Sherwood Chester,
Shakespeare, William, Poet and
Dramatist. Emily Hickey,
Socialism, Successors to. Henry
Somerville,
Spirit of Franciscan Places, The.
Charles Wager, . ...
Successors to Socialism. Henry
Somerville,
St. Augustine, the Student of Holy
Scripture. Hugh Pope, O.P.,
St. Paul and the Holy Eucharist.
Cuthbert Lattey, S.J.,
St. Peter's Day, Rome'. Kate Ur-
sula Brock,
Thompson, Francis, Poet and Mys-
tic. Joseph L. O'Brien, M.A.,
Venice. Evelyn March Phillipps,
S? m> he -Assumption of the
Blessed. Bertrand L. Conway,
v.O.i ., .
Virtu of Bigotry, The. Richard
J. Keeffe. LL.D.,
William Shakespeare, Poet and
v natist. Emt'ty Hickey,
With Our Readers,
138, 281, 425, 569, 713,
188
367
145
513
814
472
320
361
597
600
792
161
799
453
320
852
759
635
50
1 88
779
289
333
375
173
462
173
586
657
499
600
69
646
737
375
860
STORIES.
He^Bonth in Vain.-S. Waldron ^ Mj.Jjl.tti.'. G^n.-Katharine
CONTENTS
111
Safe to Sea. Jacques Busbee,
The Carrier of Christ. Alice
Dease, .....
The Chariot Racers. Mary Cather-
ine Crowley, ....
The Curse of Castle Eagle. Kath-
arine Tynan, ....
Ave Maria. John Jerome Rooney,
Back Home. Mary A. Bishop,
Before the Rood. Charles J. Pow-
ers, C.S.P., ....
Citizen of the World. Joyce Kil-
mer, .....
He Loved Them to the End. T.
J. S.,
Inveni Quern Diligit Anima Mea.
Emily Hickey, ....
771 The Red Pipe. "Oliver." . 526, 609
The Saga of Conal Cearnach and
446 the Son of God. Austin O'Mal-
ley, .... -59
201 The Unlighted Candle. Felicia
Curtis, ..... 748
79 Vox Mystica. Roger Pater,
42, 181, 352, 503, 663
POEMS.
210 On a Flyleaf of Omar. /no Coo/-
49 brith, . . . . .231
Petrarch's Hymn to the Virgin.
621 William D. Foulke. . . .169
The Answering Christ. Caroline
585 D. Swan, . . . . -319
The Lights of Worcester Town.
58 Michael Earls, S.J., . . . 524
The Pilgrim. Eleanor Downing, . 747
791 Untried Wings. M. H. Lawless, 332
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Advanced American History, . 548
A Child's Prayers to Jesus, . . 843
A Complete Catechism of the
Catholic Religion, . . . 257
Aids to Latin Prose Composition, 112
A Little History of the Love of the
Holy Eucharist, . . .117
A Loyal Life, .... 98
Allen's Defence of English Catho-
lics: 1584, .... 244
Allocutions et Sermons de Circon-
stance, ..... 694
Altar and Priest, .... 97
American Catholic Hymnal, . . 118
America Through the Spectacles of
an Oriental Diplomat, . . 687
A Modern Franciscan, . . . 405
A Modern Martyr Blessed Theo-
phane Venard, .... 404
A New School of Gregorian Chant, 690
A New Variorum Edition of
Shakespeare, .... 257
Apercu d'une Histoire de la Langue
Grecque, ..... 260
At the Back of the North Wind, . 840
Avant le Mariage, . . .120
Back Home, .... 692
Back to Holy Church, . . . 692
Benediction of the Most Blessed
Sacrament, .... 408
Bergson, . . . . in
Betrothment and Marriage, . . 403
Beyond the Road to Rome, . . 835
Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis, . 121
Blessed Margaret Mary, . .691
Blind Maureen and Other Stories, 118
Bread and Circuses, . . . 242
Breaking with the Past, or Catholic
Principles Abandoned at the Ref-
ormation, ..... 100
Catholic Democracy : Individualism
and Socialism, .... 825
Catholic Religion, . . .. 120
Chretienne, . . . . .410
Church and State in the Middle
Ages, . . . . ."3
Clio, a Muse and Other Essays,
Literary and Pedestrian, . . 248
Compendium Theologise Dogmatics, 546
Conference Matter for Religious, . 833
Continuity, ..... 246
Correspondance de Bossuet, . .105
Counsels of Perfection for Chris-
tian Mothers, .... 403
Criminology, . . . .103
Daily Reflections for Christians, . 402
De Vera Religione et Apologetica, 844
Dodo's Daughter, . . . 690
El Breviario y Las Neuvas Ru-
bricas 550
Enchiridion Patristicum, . . 844
Eucharist and Penance in the First
Six Centuries of the Church, . 252
Francisco Palou's Life and Apos-
tolic Labors of the Venerable
Father Junipero Serra, . . 255
Fred Carmody, Pitcher, . . 843
Frederic Ozanam and the Establish-
ment of the Society of St. Vin-
cent de Paul, . . . .120
From the Sepulchre to the Throne, 544
Gemma Galgani : A Child of Pas-
sion, ..... 835
Grandeurs et Devoirs de la Vie Re-
ligieuse, . . . . .411
Half Hour with God's Heroes, or
Stories from the Sacred Book, 255
Histoire de la Civilization, . .411
Histoire de 1'figlise Catholique en
France, . . . . .411
History as Literature, and Other
Essays, ..... 259
Histoire Politique du Dix-Neuvieme
Siecle, ..... 550
History of Dogmas, . . . 250
History of the Catholic Church, . 405
Horace Blake, . . . .100
Illustrated Catechism for First .
Communion, .... 400
In Our Lady's Praise, . . . 250
In the Heart of the Meadow, and
Other Poems, . . . .837
Introduction a La Philosophic Tra-
ditionnelle ou Classique, . .120
Italian Yesterdays, . . . 544
Jesus Christ, His Life, His Pas-
sion, His Triumph, . . . 829
Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim, 119
Jesus Vivant dans le Pretre, . 411
John Murray's Landfall, . . 405
La Charite du Christ, . . . 260
La Langue des Femmes, . .410
La Maison, ..... 694
La Piete Grecque, . . 411
La Predication Populaire d'Apres
les Peres, les Docteurs et les
Saints, . . . . .411
Latin America, .... 540
Le Courage du Christ, . . . 260
Le Crime rituel chez les Juifs, . 410
Le Dialogue de Sainte Catherine de
Sienne, . . . . .120
Le Divin Maitre et les Femmes
dans 1'fivangile, . . . 260
Le Droit Ecclesiastique Matrimo-
nial des Calvinistes Francais, . 693
Le Japon, Histoire et Civilisation, 259
L'Enigma della Vita e I Nuovi
Orizzonti della Biologia, . . 550
Les Prophetes d'Israel et les Re-
ligions de 1'Orient, . . . 260
Letters of Mary Aikenhead, . . 249
..nd Instructions of St. Ig-
L1<Ue Revolutionnaire et les Uto-
mes,
!u Cathohque, .
'.
ie, .-_ .
.'Ongine Subcosciente del Fatti
Pomc,
i the English Martyrs,
,'Obttssance du Christ.
Integral de 1'Apologetique,
nu-nr
,95,
.uthcr. y3>
Major Orders. . \ . : '
Manuel d'Archeologie Am6ricame,
Mariology. . .
Maximilian in Mexico. .
- from the Writings of Mon-
r Benson. .
Meditation* Without Methods,
:-.<i Matters.
Merc Maria Poussepin. .
and Modern Thought,
Molly's Fortunes,
Monksbridge. .
Moral Leadership, and Other Ser-
mons.
399
550
844
844
550
844
397
250
260
693
830
828
682
109
410
246
687
550
119
254
260
256
408
542
406
More JOT 678
Mother Mabel Digby. *-"
679
833
545
400
834
844
550
253
408
Notes on Politics and History,
Old Testament Stories,
On the Threshold of Home Rule,
Year of Pierrot, .
Paroles d'Encouragement,
Paysages d'ltalie.
Pedagogical Anthropology, .
Pilgrims of Grace,
Poems 837
Political Economy, . . . H9
Polly Day's Island. . . . 841
Popular Government, its Essence,
rmanence, and its Perils, . 541
Psaltcrium I-atinum cum Grxco et
Hel>rxo comparatum, . . 121
Quxstiones Theologicse Medico-
Pastoralis. . . . .121
Question* and Answers on the
Catholic Church, . . .256
Pentateuchal Studies, . . . 833
Priestly Practice. . . . 836
Readings from the Old Testament, 836
Relectio-Analytica super contro-
-ia De Impotenti a Feminx ad
r.indum. . . . .121
Retraitr d'Enfants. . . . 694
Sacrifice. . . . . .410
St. Antonino and Medixval Eco-
nomics. ..... 399
St. Bonaventure. .... 260
Sauvous nos Ames. . . .411
Sermons and Homilies. . . 403
Shakespeare as a Playwright, . 393
Siniter Street, .... 407
Socialism. Promise or Menace? . 827
Some Counsels of St. Vincent de
Paul. 680
Standard Bearers of the Faith, . 842
St. Catherine of Siena. . . 842
Stories from the Field Afar, . 544
Stud; Suir Estetica. . . .694
Studies in Stagecraft, . . . 839
The Age of Erasmus. . . . 686
The Backward ( hil.l. . . .549
The Barbary Coast . . . .117
The Beginnings of Modern Ireland, 832
The Hook of Hymns with Tunes, 118
The Book of the Epic. . . 404
The Cause of the Social Evil and
. 406
The Children Hour of Heaven on
F -" 1 ' 843
Church in Rome in the First
'in,!' the World,' with'Other
Tlu- Cranberry Claimants,
Tin- Daughter of a Star, .
The Deaf; Their Position in ix>-
The^Development of English Theol-
ogy in the Nineteenth Century,
The Divine Twilight, .
The Early Church in the Light ot
the Monuments, .
The Epistle to the Ephesians,
The Evolution of New. Japan, .
The Fitness of the Environment, .
The Flying Inn
The Four Gates, .
The Freedom of Science, .
The History of the Islands of the
Lerins, .
The Holy House of Loreto, .
The Human Soul and Its Relations
with Other Spirits, .
The Idol-Breaker, . . -
The Influence of the Bible on Civ-
ilization, . -
The Life of St. Columba, Apostle
of Scotland, .
The Life of St. Ignatius Loyola,
The Life of the Servant of God,
Gemma Galgani, . .
The Little Marshalls at the Lake,
The Masked War,"
The Mill on the Creek,
The Mysterious Monsieur Dumont,
The New Ideals of the Gospel,
The New Roman Breviary, .
The Nun: Her Character and
Work
The Old Testament Phrase Book,
The Oregon Catholic Hymnal,
The Parting of the Ways,
The Peacock Feather,
The Princess and Curdie,
The Quest of Adventure,
The Real Mexico,
The Shadow of Peter,
The Shears of Delilah, .
The Sonnets of William Shakes-
peare, .....
The Student's Gradus, .
The Summa Theologia of St.
Thomas Aquinas,
The Theory and Practice of the
Catechism, ....
The Treasure, ....
The Treasures of the Rosary,
The Two Americas,
The Vatican; The Centre of Gov-
ernment of the Catholic World,
The Vigil Hour
The Vocation of Woman,
Theodore Roosevelt : An Autobiog-
raphy, .....
Theological Symbolics, .
Through an Anglican Sisterhood
to Rome, .....
Through Other Eyes, .
Truth and Error, ....
Twenty-Five Years : Reminis-
cences, .....
Un Ami de Machiavel, Francois
Vettori, Sa vie et ses (Euvres,
Un Mois de Marie,
Vices in Virtues and Other Vag-
aries, .....
Visits for Children to Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament,
Watching an Hour, A Book for
the Blessed Sacrament,
When Ghost Meets Ghost,
Why are You Not a Sodalist?
Why I Became a Sodalist,
828
407
840
248
685
689
109
112
110
245
839
834
838
685
106
401
402
541
831
842
842
835
409
688
843
247
101
545
549
836
118
407
249
841
841
824
835
547
"5
547
403
838
244
120
539
409
691
in
546
837
692
404
396
259
411
543
409
843
686
409
409
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCIX. APRIL, 1914. No. 589.
BLINDFOLDING THE MIND.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
I.
[SINGULAR distrust of human reason pervades the
philosophies of the day. It seems to be the peculiar
temper of the times to disparage intellectual convic-
tion, and to seek refuge as well as guidance in some
form of feeling or experience. That noble faculty
which once made man the king of creation, entitling him to a place
but a little lower than that of the angels in the scale of being,
now scarcely raises him to the level of his animal kind in the esti-
mation of some philosophers. The creatures of the animal king-
dom, it is pointed out, easily outstrip man in the swiftness and
sureness of their instincts, not having to pause between stimula-
tion and action, as we do, to ponder and reflect, to verify and
prove. The deliberative intelligence with which we human beings
are endowed seems to philosophers of the sentimentalist school
more in the nature of a drawback than an impetus, to the doing
of the world's waiting work with thoroughness and dispatch. It is
criticized and condemned alike for its slowness of movement and su-
perficiality of achievement. The demand is for a deeper, swifter,
truer, more serviceable mental faculty than this kindly light of
reason which goes about its tasks with a leisurely calm and gentle-
ness, ill-suited to an age that has taken rapidity to its bosom as the
chiefest of the virtues.
Times change, and so do their dominating points of view. Not
so many years ago the cry was, Wait ! Let reason take its course,
and prove what is good. Truth must not be hurried out of its ac-
Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. xcix. I
BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
,>med paces. Lay a soft, muffling finger on all the cognitions;
keep every sense hushed and quiescent. See that no chance specl
O f d ,rl)s the trembling balance of judgment. Weigh all
considerations with the finest care, and then make up your mind with
dignified composure, like the rational being you are, and expected at
all times to be. Rationalism had come unto its own.
But now the trumpets of the times blare forth a far more ur-
gent summons. Stand not upon the order of your knowing, but
know at once! The bard of Avon will incidentally pardon us,
we trust, for the perpetration of this paraphrase. Nowadays truth
is felt, experienced, surmised, divined anything but reasoned out
or rationally approached. The intuitional folk who rush past facts
to a truth, and return all aglow with the radiance of their vision,
have the field of current literature pretty much all to themselves.
The mystics are again among us, and lo ! the name of Rabindranath
Tagore leads all the rest. A royal road to knowledge seems to have
been found at last, and its name is intuition. Philosophers them-
selves are turning away from reason and intelligence from truth
slowly ascertained to those swifter apprehensions of it which come
to us, unbidden, we know not whence, and leave us with a sense
of reality revealed, such as a flash of lightning dazzles us with
for an instant, when it suddenly floods and bathes a darkened world
with the short-lived splendor of noon. Better a single flash of in-
tuition than all man's labored reasonings ! Better far to feel com-
punction than to know its definition ! So runs the new philosophy.
The sentimentalists have come upon the scene.
There can be no doubt that we children of men enjoy a power
of intuition. Our instinctive knowledge is startling at times; our
ability to apprehend things in a flash extraordinary. We skip
middle terms, omit reasoning processes, leap to conclusions at a
bound, guess right answers without studying a question out, esti-
mate a situation at a glance, take short cuts to the solution of prob-
lems, and know instantly what to do in a crisis without stopping to
think. We have instinctive likes and dislikes, favorite sympathies
and pet aversions, for which we should find ourselves in sore straits
rationally to account. We form first impressions, and find them
lasting; make snap judgments, arid prove them true. Presenti-
ments, foreshowings, premonitions, telepathic communications, and
other sorts of quick, unsought impressions furnish every one of us
at times with an instantaneous knowledge which is the fruit neither
of reasoning nor reflection.
1914.] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 3
A fireman on duty in the patrol-room of an engine house, dur-
ing the still watches of the night, suddenly experiences the unac-
countable feeling that an alarm is coming in ; and scarcely has the
feeling died away when the tapper on the wall beside him begins
its hurried ringing, men and horses come clattering out of beds and
stalls to the machines, and are off on a spectacular dash through
the city's streets to save life and property. If information of
this kind could be capitalized, wireless telegraphy would become
a work of supererogation. Speaking of angels is popularly and
proverbially supposed to have something to do with inducing their
presence, though the angels that appear in response to this mys-
terious summons are not always the messengers of sweetness and
light. That, perhaps, explains in part why we are all so loath to
make certain persons of our acquaintance the subject of prolonged
conversation. Fear lest our " absent treatment " of them might
suddenly give rise to an " intuition " makes us indirectly charitable,
and keeps some of our " unconscious cerebrations " from assuming
the draperies of speech. And this reminds me that " unconscious
cerebration " has long since gone to join " innocuous desuetude,"
in the place all good words and phrases go to when they die.
Consider a number of other cases of sudden insight, where
truth seems to spring up unexpectedly from slumberous depths that
defy scrutiny. The poet writes in the morning, with apparent ease,
lines that impishly refused to come, in response to repeated effort,
under the soft radiance of the midnight lamp. A rhyme, for which
he had long and vainly wooed the Muses, walks right into his mind
without knocking, and abruptly asks : " Were you looking for me ? "
Newton guessed at gravitation from the sudden thud of a falling
apple; Watts saw the possibility of making steam run an engine
from the homely circumstance of the lifting of a kettle's lid; and
Pasteur happened upon the " germ theory " by chance, while puzz-
ling over the cause of fermentation in bottled wine that had been
insecurely corked. It is said that the possibility of whitening sugar
long before the present bone-black process was instituted first
occurred to one who noticed the effect produced by a hen's clayey
tracks in the bins of a storehouse; at every impress of the clay-
covered feet the sugar had turned from brown to white. "Mother,"
said a little child, " the hens are all coming into the house. I just
saw them wiping their feet out on the lawn." A child's intuition,
this time, based on observation of precautions usual only with bipeds
of the featherless tribe.
4 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
Still other instances, common in cases where affection or
familiarity of relationship is present. The mother knows the un-
exprewed thoughts and needs of her children. An engineer in his
feels that something is wrong with the engine, long before
examination discloses the fact. A judge on the bench, a lawyer
pleading before the bar, a detective in the court-room, all suddenly
receive the impression that a witness is perjuring himself, and events
so prove. A scientist in his laboratory has gone over the same
problem for years without result. Some day, while he is, perhaps,
on other things intent, an idea emerges, he knows not whence, and
he stands aghast at the greatness of a discovery, which refused to
disclose itself previously to his most meticulous research. How
different seems the lumbering knowledge which comes through the
colder channels of reasoning and reflection, from that which arrives
abruptly and unannounced, when familiarity or sympathy bathes
the light of knowledge with the warmth of love !
Take the mysterious kind of intuition that comes with holiness
of life. The lives of the Saints are a golden source for the anti-
intellectualist. He never tires of claiming their patronage for
his views. The Christian mystics, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa,
and all the shining galaxy of sainted souls, tell us with bated breath
of the vision of God which came to them when they muffled the
reasoning powers of the soul, and extinguished all the distracting
lights of ordinary, every-day consciousness. So holy and trans-
porting was the feeling which then flooded their darkened con-
sciousness that heaven opened, and earth fell away like a robe
discarded; and so sweet was the savor of the presence which
they thus experienced, that the soul fell into a swoon, awaking
later to complain of the poverty of human speech its utter in-
ability to do justice in words to the untranslatable experiences
which they had encountered on the mountain tops of the spirit. It
is holy ground, and we should approach it, as Moses the burning
bush, with unshodden feet. What more wondrous than this intui-
tion of God which holy souls enjoy? What is the secret? Some
magic sublight of the natural mind coming suddenly into play?
Something supernatural an effect produced in them by God?
Or a real raising of the veil, and a vision of the Unseen itself?
Drop from this spiritual altitude for a moment to consider
things that are decidedly more of earth. You are all somewhat
familiar with the mysteries of the so-called " subconscious." It is
a commonplace of hypnotism, that an unconscious patient told to
I 9 i4-] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 5
return at a specified time it may be days, it may be months after-
ward does so unfailingly. Nearly every student has had the ex-
perience of sleeping on a problem, to find in the morning that it had
mysteriously solved itself over night. As Hawthorne elegantly
expresses it, " truth often finds its way to the mind, close-muffled
in robes of sleep." Who that has not marvelled over the myster-
ious improvement knowledge undergoes, when it has lain long dor-
mant in the recesses of the mind, away from the wakeful eye of
consciousness? What student of music, who neglects for a while
the practice of his art, has not been surprised, on his return to it, to
find a new deftness in his fingers as they travel over the keys,
which did not manifest itself in the period of conscious and labored
effort preceding? We sit down to write. Our subject is mapped
out, and we look at the plan, in joyous anticipation of adding to the
sum of human knowledge. We cannot write a sentence. The
world is gray, the founts of inspiration dry, and all " gentle
readers " a most loathsome lot. Suddenly an idea bobs up ; we rush
for the implements of the literary trade; we write fast and fur-
iously, to discover, after an hour or so, that the subject has simply
written itself out, merely employing us for the time being in the
capacity of stenographer. What accomplished this result? What
assembled all the scattered wits and material which the wakeful
mind, coax as it might, could not gather? What forged and riveted
all this mysterious chain of thoughts and words ? If we lived in the
old Roman days, we should have said it was Melpomene, or Clio,
Terpsichore, or some other of the Muses. But now we are more
prosaic in the names we give it, though not less romantic in the way
we explain it, calling it the " subliminal self," or something similar,
as if some hidden elf, mentally related to those of the woodland,
took a peep at itself every now and then in the mirror of con-
sciousness, being vain of its unexhibited virtue, like the flower that
is born to blush unseen.
The astonishing array of facts which we have just finished re-
viewing, seems to call for a special explanation. At least so the
anti-intellectualist thinks. It seems to him that some mysterious
power, other than intelligence, is here at work ; that we are endowed
with a special sense of an extraordinary kind, which acts inde-
pendently of intelligence, and has its own peculiar way of arriving
at truth and reality; that we are all Yankees at guessing, if we
only knew it, and would solemnly set ourselves to cultivate a
faculty that has been allowed to rust from disuse. And so the ques-
6 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
tion comes squarely before us, Have we any such non-rational
power of intuition offering us a convenient " short cut to truth
and rendering superfluous the longest way round, which, the proverl
says, is the shortest way home? In other words, Is the power of
intuition, which we undoubtedly possess, a power of sense-insight
merely, or a power, rather, of rational intelligence? Not the exist-
ence, be it observed, but the nature of this power is the point at
issue. The question is one of great moment, bristling with con-
sequences for life, education, and religion. Let us look into it care-
fully, skirting all the edges of the subjects and clearing the ground,
before we start building a theory of explanation.
There can be no doubt of the fact that the intuitional glimpses
of truth, which come to all of us at odd moments, are not due t
any effort, at the time, to reason matters out for ourselves. Intui-
tions have a habit of arriving abruptly in periods of relaxation,
when all the strain of effort is off the mind. Anybody at all familiar
with what is going on in his own mental life, may readily see,
without requiring to be told, that reasoning is a slow and laborious
process, as compared to intuition; and that to experience a thing
directly is a more perfect way of knowing it, than to infer its
existence, by way of argument, from something else. Just why the
anti-intellectualist should be at such pains to drive this obvious truth
home to the thinking world of the day, passes comprehension, unless
it be that he is acquainted with an abnormal somebody in the
history of philosophy, who denied it, and escaped having his name
recorded.
But are we at liberty to suppose, and is there any evidence going
to show that, wherever you find reasoning absent, you have only
some kind of sense-activity present? Is reasoning the only way
reason has of manifesting and displaying its powers? Has it no
direct, easy, quick, and spontaneous way of acting? Is there not a
direct reason which apprehends instantly, as well as an indirect or
reflex reason which argues and infers? And if there be an intuitive
reason, as well as a reasoning reason within us, has not the anti-
intellectualist forgotten something in his hurry to proclaim the exist-
ence of a new star in the mental firmament ?
If you look into your mind at the present moment, you will find
there a number of notions, such as the real, the true, the good, and
the beautiful, more or less vague, dim, and ill-defined, which were
not, through any labored effort on your part, originally acquired.
They are not the result of reasoning, deduction, or personal choice
1914.] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 7
these primary impressions of the real, the true, the beautiful, and
the good and yet you know spontaneously and immediately, if only
somewhat vaguely, the meaning of all these notions, and their rela-
tion to life and action. How often have you dimly perceived that a
certain action was wrong, and withheld from doing it; or that
another was right, pleading for performance insistently, until you
had it over and done. Have you never stood stock still in your
tracks, your march through a gallery suddenly arrested by the
matchless beauty of one particular picture which seemed to invite
instant and further acquaintance, you knew not why ? And was he
not a type of all of us, in a measure, that old grenadier of Napo-
leon's army, who astonished and thrilled the audience of a Parisian
theatre, listening to the strains of Beethoven's imperial march, by
tottering to his feet in salute, and exclaiming : " Rise. The emperor
is coming ! " Alas ! The emperor, whose expected approach the
music had conjured up, no longer walked the earth, or made it
tremble to the tread of marching feet, but lay quietly beneath it at
St. Helena.
No one can consider these immediate intuitions of the mind,
and the urgent promptings to action which accompany them, with-
out recognizing the presence of an intellective power which is both
active and intuitive at one and the same time. And this bit of intro-
spection is richly confirmed by experimental research. A certain
amount of unreasoned knowledge is an accompaniment of all our
feelings and emotions; enough at least to shatter the thesis that
our first sensations are absolutely irrational and blind blows in the
dark, we know not by what or whom delivered. There is an intel-
lectual knowledge of the particular, as well as an intellectual knowl-
edge of the general. These unreasoned intuitions of the particular
which we find at the lowest levels of sensation, fall far short of
being perfect concepts, it is true ; but it is one thing to say that they
furnish imperfect knowledge, and quite another thing altogether to
claim that they furnish no knowledge at all. It is neither fair nor
just to smother all recognition of this earliest modicum of informa-
tion, by contrasting it to disadvantage with our later and larger
lights, though such is the method usual with critics of the anti-
intellectualist type. One may hold a little flickering candle up to
the splendors of an electric lamp, and still not extinguish the lesser
radiance by the greater. And so, likewise, it may well be, and is.
that the relations between ourselves, on the one hand, and the good,
the true, the real, and the beautiful on the other, are more felt at
s BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
than known; more experienced than conceived or understood,
without justifying the false inference that, because there is pre-
erance of feeling, there must be an utter absence of intelligence.
What would you? Knowledge has to have a beginning somehow,
somewhere. It is not let down ready-made from the skies ; and we
should look for a spark rather than expect a flame. The beginnings
of our knowing are not in abstract ideas, but in spontaneous im-
pressionsconcrete particular intuitions, over which the search-
light of reflex reason has not yet begun to play. But that our prim-
itive feelings, emotions, or experiences are penetrated by no ray of
intelligence, illumined by no light of apprehension whatsoever-
well, it always did seem curious to the present writer how much some
folk knew, and could tell, about what went on absolutely in the dark !
The most striking thing about these primitive impressions
which we receive, of the good, the true, the real, and the beautiful,
is that they are practicaly simultaneous with the first sensations
we experience. All efforts to postdate their appearance have failed.
Rising out of the performance of our earliest mental acts, these
swift snatches of intuition date from the very awakening of our
faculties. The mind seems made to make them, and the world of
objects to produce their appearance, so immediate and spontaneous
is the responsive reaction between the two. Professor James says
somewhere that in touching his first object, the child has really be-
come conversant, in a way remote and dim, with all the categories
of philosophy; and we would be the last either to discount this
admission or to decline its consequences.
So completely absorbed and interested in these first vague glim-
merings of truth does this mind of ours become, that, instead of
clearing them up at once into abstract ideas, by turning on all the
higher lights of consciousness, it prefers to dwell for a while in
this delightful twilight region of knowledge, enjoying contentedly
the vagueness of its own first dawning intuitions, as if the vague
were reality itself, and definition spoiled it, cut it up, and tore
its seamless robe to shreds.
In fact, philosophers themselves have been known to cultivate
this morning knowledge of the mind, in preference to the mid-clay
and evening forms which follow, lingering by choice where the
lights are low, the din of the industrial world hushed, and nature
all a-whisper with mysterious messages. How many a human soul,
experiencing the feeling of universal dependence, has mistaken this
vague impression for an immediate perception of God ! How many
1914- ] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND g
another soul, falling under the spell of the indefinite, which haunts
a scene of special grandeur, to haunt the faculties as well long after,
with the sweet-smelling incense of enchantment, has thought itself
actually blest with a vision of the Infinite ! The imagination takes
fire at the very thought, and the affections stir uneasily in their
sleep. A little rational criticism, if it were allowed to intervene,
would soon tumble all this baseless fabric of a dream. But what
is rational criticism, pray, to one who detaches his feelings from the
ideas accompanying them, and prefers to live at the lower level of
sensation immersed forever in the vague instead of rising up
from it into the clear, and finishing a knowledge that has only just
feebly begun? Yet even those who would rather live close to the
original springs of knowledge, than follow the stream along its ris-
ing course, cannot banish all intellectual elements from their favorite
well of emotion pure and undefiled. We must at least do them the
credit of supposing that some simultaneous glimmer of what they
are doing, accompanies their rapt worship of the indefinite.
But let us turn back from the rhapsodical to the real. It is
impossible anywhere to find activities of sense going on, to which
intelligence is a total, utter stranger. Reflex reason may be asleep,
but spontaneous reason is ever wakeful. A certain amount of
knowledge surrounds our most primitive sensations with a little
fringe of light; leaves, as it were, a luminous spot to which it is
possible for us afterward to revert. The same is true if we tap
the stream of knowledge higher up, and some distance away from
its original springs. You can see for yourself, by consulting such
abstract notions as " reality," " eternity," " justice," " honor," " vir-
tue," that the technical knowledge which you acquire of these sub-
jects in the class-rooms of a college, or the lecture halls of a uni-
versity, in later life, has been to some extent anticipated and pre-
ceded by a spontaneously furnished knowledge of a more direct,
immediate, and unlabored kind. You do not have to be a philos-
opher, a theologian, a moralist, or a lawyer, to apprehend meaning ;
and surely when abstract terms like the foregoing are uttered in
your presence, or pass over your lips in the rush of speech, some in-
tuitive glimpse of their meaning attends upon their utterance, though
perhaps you would not care to present yourself for examination
before a board of specialists on the precise amount.of your informa-
tion. Men had a spontaneous knowledge of God long before the
philosophers put on their thinking caps, to see whether or not it
had been validly acquired.
10
BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
Take, for example, a spontaneous notion existing in all minds,
and the subject of perpetual controversy among philosophers the
notion of external reality. All of us have the notion of an external
world, distinct from ourselves, the knowers of it, and not beholden
to us for its existence. Strive as they may, philosophers cannot
banish or exorcise this notion from the human mind. It haunts
idealists, who disbelieve it, like Banquo's ghost at the feast. Ef-
forts to explain it away have resulted only in accentuating its pres-
ence. No idealist can account for its acquisition, his attempts
to do so all resolving themselves into a description of its develop-
ment, which is far from being or affording an account of its origin.
Philosophers, since Kant's time, have taken great offence at the hu-
man mind for daring to acquire such a notion as this, without con-
sulting them as to its rights and powers in the premises. But
there the notion stands, unreduced and irreducible a defiant proof
that we have a direct, spontaneous knowledge of more than our
own mere selves, whatever the idealists may think or argue theoret-
ically to the contrary.
The usual way of dismissing this notion as worthless and un-
founded is to ask us to try to find it, by doubling the mind back,
and turning its attention inward upon itself, in a perfect act of
reflection. " Will you walk into my parlor ? " said the spider to the
fly. You might as well remain awake to discover how it was you
fell asleep. How, pray, could the mind, when made to reflect
directly on itself, discover anything more than its own sensations
and states of consciousness, or be caught in the act of reflecting
upon something else? Philosophers, it would seem, do not always
submit their reflections to reflection. Otherwise the history of
philosophy might have been a different story. There is a direct,
as well as an indirect, way of reflecting. We may reflect on objects
known, or on the subject knowing them ourselves. The critic
invites us to do the wrong kind of reflecting in this case, and we
decline the invitation to look for something where we have no right
in the world to expect to find it. The mind stops acting sponta-
neously, stops thinking of things, when you ask it to think of
thoughts. The upshot of all of which is that we have direct as well
as indirect knowledge. And the conclusion we wish to draw, or
rather the fact we desire to point out, is that we possess spontaneous
concepts or intuitions which are not the results, but the sources
of scientific knowledge. A work of acquiring knowledge precedes
the work of criticising its deliverances. It is an unpardonable ex-
BLINDFOLDING THE MIND n
hibition of patrician pride to regard all knowledge as synonymous
with scientific knowledge ; to make the end of the knowing process
the beginning. Why, if all our knowledge, or even the greater
part of it, for that matter, came to us only over the slow road
of scientific reasoning, the critics would have nothing to criticize,
and philosophy would have to shut up shop for sheer dearth of
material with which to conduct its business of reflection.
The spontaneous side of the mind's activity is truly wonderful,
and the more we explore it, the more its wonders grow. It is a
veritable laboratory, in which knowledge is prepared for future use
and service. Here it is that we find the beginnings of natural relig-
ion, under the vague traits, at first, of something greater, better,
more powerful, and more beautiful, than the visible panorama of
earth and sky, or the perfections mirrored in man. Here, too, is
the beginning of nature mysticism that so-called experimental con-
tact with the Divine, which seems to its sentimental seekers so
utterly superior to all abstract and reasoned knowledge. Here also
slip into the mind, unnoticed, many untagged, uncatalogued impres-
sions, which fuse themselves with the existing store of knowledge,
to surprise us later with their sudden uprush into a consciousness
that seems to think them no child of hers. For every impression,
however stray or faint, leaves traces, and becomes an item of that
submerged knowledge, which the schoolmen called habitual, to dis-
tinguish it from actual. Here, in fine, the scattered bits of informa-
tion which we gather from this source and that, are all mysteriously
pieced together, each one rinding, by a sort of selective affinity,
which is really the work of the active reason, the companion-bit to
which it is related and belongs.
But the most important thing of all, in the decisive bearing it
has on the outcome of our present inquiry, is the fact that all our
mental states mutually compenetrate, meeting as currents of water
or of air meet, when they come together, passing through one
another rather than around, blending, interfusing, permeating. The
various attitudes, operations, or states of mind which we designate
by the phrases, " I feel," " I think," " I will," " I do," cannot be
physically separated, they can only be distinguished mentally. Our
moral, esthetic, and religious experiences run into one another,
so much so in fact that it requires the finest work of the analytic
reason to unravel the living knot with which they are tied a most
convincing proof, if one were needed, that there is no special cham-
ber of the spirit, where a man may find and keep his religion se-
12 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
questered altogether from the rest of his knowledge, as Albrecht
Ritschl dreamed could be the case.
No such mechanical conception of the mind is possible, in view
of the facts we have just allowed to speak. The mind is an inter-
penetrative whole of organized power, incapable of being split up
into separate, non-communicating compartments, or divided into
opposite hemispheres, of reason and sense, intellect and will. Its
faculties, its functions are all the servants of one fundamental
power which pervades it through and through the power of intel-
ligenceas may be seen from the fact, already described at length
and in detail, that a vague concept accompanies the earliest and
dimmest of our sensations. This mind of ours is a life, not a
mechanism ; and those who divide and subdivide it, speak the lan-
guage of physics rather than that of psychology. In fact, most of
the recent criticism of human ideas, their function, and value,
might be sufficiently discounted simply by saying that it is not ideas
which are to blame, so much as the critic's wrong idea of them.
The last thing we ever think of criticizing is our own preconcep-
tions and presuppositions. The schoolmaster who said that " a
preposition is never a proper word to end a sentence with," gave
good advice, but very poor example.
Who would dare draw a hard and fast line through such a
mind as we have just studied, and divide off feeling from reason
or will from intelligence ? No one ever proved the unity and con-
tinuity of consciousness more richly or more brilliantly than Pro-
fessor James, the psychologist. And no one ever rent its unity
and continuity more hopelessly asunder than the same Professor
James, when he turned pragmatic philosopher, and cut the knowl-
edge process in two, because of his neglect to take into due account
the all too obvious fact that a spontaneous or direct reason is
assiduously at work in the acquisition of human knowledge, long
before the critical or reflex reason has bestirred itself into action.
Wherever he found reasoning processes absent, he drew the too
hasty conclusion that only some kind of sense-activity was present.
He thus transferred to sense and sentiment a function that inalien-
ably belongs to intelligence; robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then
upbraiding Peter with his poverty and general shiftlessness of char-
acter. Peter might well rejoin that his poverty was not voluntary,
but inflicted ; and cite the parallel case, mentioned in the Scriptures,
of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and suffered
despoilment on the way, through no fault of his own.
1914-] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 13
Let us continue the personification, remembering all the while
that Peter is the human intellect. This rhetorical device will add
a vivid touch to the presentation, and redeem it from the pallor
characteristic of abstract speech. Professor Bergson would take
Peter to task severely. " See here," he would indignantly exclaim,
" this talk of your having been robbed and plundered is the sheerest
nonsense. You are poor by native disposition, and even when con-
sidered at your best. All that your most ardent admirers can bring
forward in your favor is that you are a creature of vague intuitions.
Your perception of a tree, flower, table, desk, chair, or what not
else, is the perception merely of a confused mass or indistinct
whole. We have to prod you to secure an itemized account of what
it is you profess to see. You never vouchsafe details of your own
accord; you are unable to tell us what reality looks like when
viewed from the inside, and yet that is precisely what we want and
need to know; you simply stop at the external surface of things,
instead of entering into the life and spirit of reality, by cultivating
closer sympathy with it.
" I propose to place you in a position where you can bring your
superficial talents into full play. You will have charge of the
mind's observatory. Your vague intuitions will do very well there,
and be of service. You are a good spectator of events, and you
can tell us all about what is happening on the surface of reality;
what lines of action we should follow, what course of conduct pur-
sue. For practical work of this kind I find you admirably equipped.
You are a keen observer of the relations of things, a fine guide to
practice, but you have no ability whatsoever for discovering reality.
I have had a commission on efficiency and economy appointed to look
into the way things are managed in the department of the interior,
and their report to me is that you are splendid at suggesting action
and outlining future conduct, but absolutely incompetent when it
comes to gathering reliable information ; so I have decided to place
all the fields of human action under your supervision, and to take
the labor of acquiring knowledge entirely off your hands. The
commission on mental efficiency, of which I have the honor to be
chairman, has recommended this redistribution of functions; so
please put out of your mind from this day forth all concern about
the acquisition of knowledge. Someone else will take care of that.
" I have an understudy who can do this work of acquisition
much better, and in the way my notion of things in general requires.
He has been an assistant of yours for centuries, nay, my theory of
, 4 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [April,
evolution tells me, he was at one time actually your chief. He is
the only real knowledge-gatherer we have. His name is sympa-
thetic intuition. You can see from his very name that he does not
furnish vague intellectual intuitions like yours, which are indeed
excellent as programmes of conduct and plans of action, but worth-
less for knowing reality in its living, marching, changing, constantly
shifting character. To know a reality that is ever on the march
and never standing still, you have to make yourself one with it by
sympathy, feel it and be it in all its changing moods; in a word, you
have to plunge into the flux of reality, the stream of experience
itself, and submerge all differences and distinctions between you,
the knower, and it, the known, in that complete identity which is
born of perfect sympathy, and only mutilated by intelligence. And
that,". says Professor Bergson to Peter, with a gesture of finality,
" is something you cannot do."
" Well, hardly," replies Peter. " I do not propose to drown
myself, merely because you are afraid I'll die of drought. All your
criticism of me is based on an impossible requirement; you want
me to be somebody else. You first make the mistake of identifying
truth and reality, and then you condemn me for not acting in accord
with your error of judgment. How could I make myself identical,
absolutely, with what I know, and still retain my capacity for know-
ing it ? You seem to be under the false impression that to know a
thing, one has to become it; that the relation of knower to known
is a relation of identity, not one of similarity merely. Knowledge,
you say, is an internal relation. So it is. But it is an external
relation also, and that is why I cannot annihilate my own distinct
individuality as knower, and go merge it, as you advise, in the alien
individuality of things. Still, I would like to make a suggestion.
If there is any diving or plunging to be done, you would better
let me do it, because I'm the only one you can find who is able to
keep his eyes open under water, and come back to tell you what is
there to be seen. Sympathetic intuition cannot do that. Why,
man, I'm the very eyes of sympathy, and you positively cannot get
along without me, in the acquisition of knowledge. You are, surely,
not trying to make philosophy a game of blind man's buff, are you,
by blindfolding me? "
In a further study, we hope to show that Peter had the better
end of this argumentative interview. Meanwhile, his statement
that "intelligence is the eye of sympathy" will bear pondering.
THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY.
BY HILAIRE BELLOC.
VI.
HERE remains to complete the explanation of the
tangle between the Catholic Church as an organiza-
tion and the attempt to found a democratic state in
France, a picture of the relations between the two
during the nineteenth century, and this I will present
upon the broadest lines, in the hope that even so general a view
may be of service.
I have shown how the Faith gradually rose, as it were, to be a
sort of film upon French society from the end of the seventeenth
century, throughout the eighteenth, until the Revolution; how its
practices were common to the women at least of the wealthier
classes and to much of the peasantry, but had almost disappeared
among the artisans of the towns ; how it had lost hold to a degree
really astonishing (when we consider how deep a philosophy the
Church can teach) upon the intellect of the nation. How, finally, it
was in the odious position of being something official and nominally
authoritative, bound up with police and law and government, in
spite of its having thus lost its vital -grip upon the nation.
I have shown how the French Revolution, being a vivid na-
tional movement arising under such circumstances, could not but
be indifferent to, and on the whole ignorant of, the Catholic
Church as well as in sections opposed to it; and this simply
because the nation as a whole had drifted further from Catholicism
before the Revolution broke out than ever before or since. Lastly,
I describe how, by a most unfortunate accident, this atmosphere of
indifference or suspicion between the Catholic Church and the great
democratic experiment (which had all the fire of a crusade in it),
was suddenly accentuated into a violent quarrel by the outbreak
of the war. To this people, already careless of religion or opposed
to it, the priest appeared through the blunder of the Civil Con-
stitution of the Clergy to be a friend of the invader and a traitor.
The enemies of Catholicism were quick, of course, to seize such
indifferences and to use them. The Huguenot, the Jew, the small
but highly intelligent and convinced section of Voltairian opinion
16 THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY [April,
all men for one reason or another in revolt against the authority
of the Church from within took advantage of the wedge that
had been driven between the hierarchy and the nation.
The organization called Freemasonry, a secret and somewhat
puerile society with a mass of fantastic emblems and a supposed
" secret," a thing originally un-Catholic and proceeding from the
Protestant countries with a strong Jewish backing, but as yet pos-
sessing many Catholic members, and even many members of the
clergy, was easily established as the chief anti-Catholic organization
in France and in Europe. Meanwhile there must be noticed this
extremely important factor in the three generations that were to
follow. Indifference or doubt may be positive or negative in tone.
It may be slightly positive or slightly negative; it may be heavily
negative, it cannot be heavily positive, but the critical thing is
whether it is positive or negative in tone.
Thus a man may care nothing for the United States of Amer-
ica. For him it may sink or swim. I can imagine a lama in the
monasteries of Thibet to be in this same attitude of mind with re-
gard to the United States. But a European, who is of the same
general Christian civilization, an Englishman who speaks the same
tongue, still more a Canadian who lives on the same Continent, and
most of all an actual citizen of the United States, cannot conceive
this ideal indifference. Thus an Englishman may not be pro-
foundly moved at hearing of some American disaster, but on the
whole he will wish it had not happened. Another Englishman
may also care very little about it, but on the whole be better
pleased that it has happened. Again, a citizen of the United
States, by his mere indifference to the fate of his country, is
necessarily and actively negative with regard to it. He is cer-
tainly a bad citizen. In a word, the more you know about or
are concerned in, or even distantly related to, a particular organiza-
tion, the more is it probable that your indifference will not be color-
less, but will tend towards reconciliation with it, and interest in
and affection for it, or antagonism and hatred against it.
Now the important thing to remember is this: The French-
man was intimately and actively concerned for centuries with Cathol-
icism. It was the Frenchman in arms who saved and upheld the
Holy See. It was his example that had helped to reconquer Spain.
It was he who had made the Crusades, and he who had not evan-
gelized but organized the beginnings of civilized Germany. Never
was there a profounder historical epigram than that which called
1914.] THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY 17
Gaul the eldest daughter of the Church. Therefore, when the typi-
cal or ordinary or average Frenchman adopted what he believed to
be indifference' towards religion, it could not but be that he should
take his stand with the first experiences of real life, with the
first experience of death and of birth, of property and of every other
relation between man and society, either generally towards the Cath-
olic position or generally against it. He was right in the stream, so
to speak, of the European Catholic development, and he must either
be with the stream or against the stream in his direction. Well,
the real story of the nineteenth century in France from this point
of view, not as you will hear it told in the financial press, or in the
innumerable books written by intellectuals, but as you may trace
it in the lives of the people if you know your France, is the
story of an indifference which has gradually changed from being
an indifference negative to the Church, opposed and even acutely
opposed, to an indifference positive to the Church, no longer opposed,
and, latterly, attached to the Church.
This is an exceedingly difficult point for men to grasp when
they live as do the Catholics in the United States or of England,
a minority in the midst of a non-Catholic society. It is, perhaps,
more difficult to be grasped by men who, like the Irish, have their
religion for a national symbol as well as the Faith. But it must
be grasped if you are to understand modern France. Not one
Frenchman in a thousand really thought the Faith in peril of
destruction since, let us say, 1830. But only perhaps one French-
man in five thought the Faith an absolutely necessary daily habit of
thought until quite recent years. The French in the lump lived in a
society where the terms of the Faith were commonplaces, but also
in a society where the objects of the Faith had been three-quarters
forgotten.
To compare great things with small, it was a little like the
attitude of most people to-day towards representative institutions:
everybody talking about elections and majorities and the rest of it,
but nobody at the bottom of his heart thinking that it very much
mattered, and most people indignantly resisting, in their souls at
least, the pretension to authority exercised by elected persons. Or,
again, it was like the way in which we all talk in terms of civic
equality and civic freedom, while in practice we live in terms of
capitalist and proletariat.
Well, a Revolution proceeded between the Napoleonic period
and our own a matter of just over a hundred years by which
VOL. XCIX. 2
18 THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY [April,
Revolution France is in the act of returning to the Faith by an
unexpected road, and the steps of that road I will now very briefly
sum up in conclusion, always begging my reader to remember
that I am looking at a very large process in the most general
fashion, and that those concerned with details might well desire
to deny such broad conclusions.
When the whirlpool of the Revolution had quieted down,
Napoleon, by his famous Concordat, re-established the Catholic
religion in France. Public money was secured to the priests and
bishops, national action upon their part was forbidden even to the
holding of councils, and, so far as such a thing could be possible
in such an organism as the Catholic Church, the hierarchy stood
to the State in the relation of nominated officials. The effect
of the Concordat upon the fate of the Church and of Gaul has
been, like that of most mechanical things, exaggerated by the
thinkers and writers of our time. It did not greatly modify in one
way or another the chances of religion. A strong spiritual move-
ment of returning Catholicism would have easily swept aside its
barriers; conversely, a final decay and disappearance of religion
would not have been prevented by it.
But there is one important provision in connection with this
settlement governing the whole of the nineteenth century, which
must be carefully remembered. The Religious Orders were out-
side the scheme. They had not any constitutional position. Now
it is a general mark of men, epochs and societies, that their sympathy
with, or alienation from, the Catholic Church may be measured by
their attitude towards the Religious Orders. And as the Religious
Orders, by their nursing and teaching and their missionary effort,
permeate the whole domestic atmosphere of a state where Catholi-
cism is strong, to attack the Religious Orders is at once the policy
dearest to the enemies of the Church, and the policy most easily to be
pursued by them in the atmosphere of irreligion, which was the tone
of the nineteenth century throughout Europe until near its close.
Bearing this one important detail in mind, we may pass to the larger
causes of the nineteenth century religious development in France.
Three things combined to continue until well past the middle
of the nineteenth century, the decline of religion in (a) the mass
of the drifting middle class (who in France form the body of
magistrates, officers, and local government), as also in (b) the
artisans of the towns, and, more gradually, among (c) the wealthier
peasant areas.
I9I4-] THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY 19
These three things were, first : The association of Catholicism
politically with the foreign invasion; the unpopular monarchy im-
posed upon the French by that invasion, and in general everything
opposed to the great national legend of the Revolution and the
glorious Napoleonic wars.
Take the case of a man born in, say, 1790: Such a man could
have fought as a lad in the armies of Napoleon. He would have
felt the bitterness of defeat; he would have seen a ridiculous and
unpopular monarch imposed upon him by foreign armies ; he would
have a vague memory from childhood of a great national effort
called the Revolution. He would certainly be democratic in temper
nine times out of ten and he would find the Church so closely
associated in ideas and social service with the anti-national side in
all this, that unless he were either a very pious or a very clear-
headed man, he would conceive the connection between the Catho-
lic Church and reactionary politics as something native and inevit-
able. Now most men are neither pious nor clear-headed, and most
men in France of all that generation, that is, most of the men who
were middle-aged under Napoleon III., and the oldest of whom sur-
vived to see the war of 1870, were thus "orientated " against the
Church.
Second : All that is meant by " modern thought " nowa-
days an old-fashioned phrase, but one very vigorous in the middle
of the nineteenth century overcast men's minds with a philosophy
opposed to Catholicism, and this tincture affected practising Catho-
lics almost as much as it did their enemies. I have no space to dis-
cuss the origin of that complex, but exceedingly imbecile, philosophy
which was current until almost the last few years throughout the
educated world. In part it proceeded from the swamping of the
mind by the rapidity of physical discovery; in part from the last
phase of Protestantism, and the sudden commercial expansion of
Protestant societies; in part from the long neglect of the religious
past, which began everywhere two centuries before. But without
pausing to discuss its origin, we all know what its nature was.
It regarded the things of the soul as undiscoverable. It lost itself
in metaphors when it attempted ultimate definitions, and, if to so
muddled a thing any one term can be given, it was essentially
materialist in theory. Coupled with this " spirit of the time "
wherein both the Jewish intelligence and the English culture played
a very large part was the organization throughout France in the
strictest fashion of a directing corporate body, also Jewish and
20 THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY [April,
English in origin, to wit, Freemasonry. Freemasonry from having
been of its nature vaguely anti-Catholic one hundred years before,
became, during the nineteenth century, an active and directing force,
controlling the campaign against the Church. It relied upon its
affiliation in the Protestant countries, and especially in England. It
long maintained its now exploded secrecy, and, what is more, was
respected by the indifferent, and that because it was joined and
supported by men often of high civic culture, and still more often
of high social influence and position. The whole regime of Napo-
leon III. was Masonic in character, and so was the first part of the
Third Republic.
Third: This persistent decline in French Catholicism, or at
least in the tone of it throughout the State, which proceeded during
the nineteenth century, was aided by the negative policy of the
Church itself. To this there was one brilliant interlude of excep-
tion, when a mixture of democratic and Catholic propaganda was
attempted in the middle of the century. But as a whole the
authorities of the Church throughout Europe, and particularly in
France, stood intellectually as well as morally and even physically
upon the defensive. Time will probably show that attitude to
have been a wise one. It was at any rate an instinctive effect
of the great disasters of the eighteenth century, and he who will
carefully consider the history of the Catholic Church during its
two thousand years, will find many parallels for such an attitude.
Time and again, when the Church has been menaced in any par-
ticular, she has borne the evil without sharp or effective action
against it, until the arrival of a belated but decisive opportunity
compare the Cluniac Reform or the tardiness of the Counter-
Reformation.
How negative was the attitude of the Church, and how purely
defensive, posterity will marvel. It put forward no political party ;
it organized itself under no leader; its apologetics waned and the
tomfooleries and extravagances of the scientists fell, not as they
might have fallen, under the sharp attack of trained Catholic in-
telligence, but of their own weight. For instance, the Lamarckian
view of Trans formism has triumphed over the Darwinian. The
Darwin theory is dead, but it was not the Catholic Church that
killed it, it was the thinking out of its absurdities by men often
just as ignorant of European culture and of the Church as was
Darwin himself.
All this trend downwards was checked roughly at the last
1914.] THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY 21
third of the century, and the change in the curve begins with
the generation that was born before, during, and after the war of
1870. Whatever political fortunes have attended the Church in
France during the last forty years, the main social truth about it
and it is these main social things that always dominate politics
at last is that it has been slowly but regularly winning back.
It has slowly but regularly increased the actual numbers of prac-
tising Catholics in any thousand French families. It has increased
the piety and the fervor of those who practise, and, what is far
more important, it has turned the tone, the general atmosphere of
French directing life, French intellectual and moral life, slowly
round until, although it is not by any means identical with, it is more
sympathetic with, than antagonistic to, the Church.
Here again the causes were three : First, the presence of a new
generation with its own problems and reactions ; second, the rapid
aging and wearing out of anti-Catholic influences, but particularly
of Freemasonry; and, third, a surprisingly great though sur-
prisingly silent missionary effort. I will close by showing these
three in turn.
First: As to the first of these forces: It is perhaps of the
purely temporal and explainable causes the most important.
Roughly speaking, everyone born earlier than or up to the year
1830, had lived under social conditions which practically identified
the Church with a particular theory, and that theory an unpopular
one. It was as though the Church had been allied with the English
ascendency in Ireland. Most Frenchmen were instinctively against
the reactionary political theory, and they mixed it up, as a matter
of course, with the hierarchy of the Church. Now it will be evident
from a comparison of dates, that that generation was dying out
towards the end of the nineteenth century. Conversely, the genera-
tion born from, say, 1865 onwards had no direct experience of this
alliance. They saw, indeed, violent conflicts between the new Re-
public and the Church, but they could never remember a government
actively in power, and either illiberal or anti-national, and yet
supported by most of the clergy. They might believe, because they
were told, that the Church was undemocratic in spirit, but the only
thing that really counts in forming such judgments, actual ex-
perience, was lacking. Their elders could carry on the tradition and
say : " I warn you that if the Church had power again you would
lose your political liberties," but the young men could only regard it,
even if they believed it, as a doctrine arbitrarily conveyed to
22
THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY [April,
them. It had no sanction of physical and tangible social phenome-
non behind it.
The consequence was that first the anticlerical policy continued
in the hands of old men who gradually died off. Nothing is more
striking, if you look at the list of those who were behind the anti-
Catholic movement of the Third Republic, than to see how Old-
World they are, and to see how they all seem to belong to a dead and
quite different time. Meanwhile, though certain of the most violent
anti-Catholic were quite young men as they would be in any state
of society yet the bulk of the young men were either indifferent
or prepared to listen to the case for the Church, and the surprising
reaction towards Catholicism of the last few years is mainly clue
to the fact that the men who have this indifferent or actively vague
attitude towards Catholicism in society (let alone a great mass of
fervent and devout men), are now round about those years of
middle life which chiefly direct the activities of any State.
Second : As to the wearing out of the anti-Catholic activities,
and particularly of Freemasonry, that is a phenomenon with which
the history of the Church renders us familiar. The Church has had
throughout her history a long succession of opponents, but it has
been a peculiar character of her position as against theirs, that she
remained herself without aging while they passed through the
normal phases of mortal organism, and were first more vigorous,
then quiescent, then in decay.
The break-up of Freemasonry came with surprising quick-
ness, and was brought on as much as anything by the Dreyfus case.
Its whole power consisted in France, of course, as it consists every-
where, in secrecy. To get people to believe that it is a mere friendly
society on its own unsupported word and in spite of the grossly
immoral principle inherent in all secret societies was, and is
still in Protestant countries, its principal strength. The Dreyfus
case blew all that sky-high. French Freemasonry then appeared
in the eyes of all Frenchmen, however provincial or stupid, in the
light of an anti-Catholic society, and no one could be so dull as not
to note the way in which in proportion as Freemasonry was strong
in any country, in that proportion was the violent campaign against
the French army and the French Church supported. As always
happens after a breakdown, events accelerated the failure of Free-
masonry when it had once made this principal error. Its last
attempt a failure to play its old role was in connection with the
Ferrer case, and now it may be said, with some truth, that the
1914.] THE CHURCH AND FRENCH DEMOCRACY 23
very name of this secret society has become ridiculous in the ears
of most Frenchmen. Its ritual is exposed, its recruitment has
fallen to a lower and a lower class of citizens; its methods of
conspiracy and private spying are public property, and therefore
have brought it into final and well-deserved odium. A Catholic
member of the French Parliament discovered one of those innumer-
able cases of general and secret spying, for which Freemasonry is
organized, in the case of the army. He exposed the fact that the
Masons had docketed and referred to a Masonic minister at the
War Office every officer who practised the Catholic religion. No
better example of the power of Freemasonry in England, or of its
breakdown in France, is to be found than the fact that such an
iniquity was the one public matter in France and throughout most
of the Continent for weeks, while the whole story was rigidly
boycotted in the English press.
Finally, as I have said, there has been a great, though sing-
ularly unnoticed, missionary effort at work under the surface
during the whole of this generation. It has not had the opportunity
of working through the schools. Indeed, it has had in the educa-
tional system of the country nothing but enmity to meet; but it
has worked through individuals, and especially through the great
and unprecedented masses of vocations to religious! life. The
proportion of the Religious to the total population grew in the
nineteenth century to be far larger in France than it ever has been
before. The domestic and personal effects of these vocations are
quite beyond calculation, .and as against them merely mechanical
measures, such as the confiscation of religious property, or even the
exile of numerous communities, could be of but little moment.
One may sum up and say, that the Church has been regaining
her place in France, and therefore in Europe (for upon the Church
in Gaul the tone of the European mind towards religion depends)
steadily for over thirty years. One may further say, that this
growth, long proceeding beneath the surface, became markedly
apparent in the last ten or fifteen years, and especially since the
great quarrel called the Dreyfus affair. One cannot finally con-
clude that the process will continue indefinitely. There may be
more than one violent reaction the other way, but the significant
thing in modern France is the ceaseless progress made back to
Catholic ideas, and the curious sterility which seems to have struck
the opponents of that progress. It is as though indifference were
almost the only enemy left to fight.
G. K. CHESTERTON: A NEW ASPECT.
BY M. D. W.
|HIS new aspect of " G. K. C. " as a playwright is an
altogether satisfying one. We went to his first play,
Magic, with a curious expectancy; wondering if
those flashlight epigrams, those apparently wholly-
responsible yet altogether-purposeful sallies of wit,
could be transferred or interpreted into action. One knew it was
impossible to be disappointed in Chesterton, who seems to possess
the rare knack of saying the right thing, the sane thing, and the
honest thing, in that inimitable way of his which gives it such force
and (so to speak) local color. But the doubt insistently remained:
whether he would rise to dramatic power in this first adventure in
the drama. The fear was groundless. Critics whose limitations
prevent them from following him to the heights, may complain that
he is ineffectual, that he proves nothing, that his great " conjuring
trick " is left open to natural interpretation (if anyone can discover
it). Yet all agree that he has contrived to impress himself upon,
and hold the attention of, a careless generation by sheer force of his
own triumphant " credo." From first to last the play is a scintilla-
tion of wit; epigrammatic, brilliant, yet (and herein lies its power)
brimming over with an " understanding " sympathy for poor il-
logical humanity, which makes him take all his characters, with a
"divine comprehension," at their "best," and not their "worst;"
notwithstanding the follies and weaknesses he so clearly realizes.
Underneath all the raillery, and the delightful nonsense, sounds the
persistent " leitmotif "the framework and embodiment of " G.
K. C.'s " wholesome, clear, and sound philosophy of life; his con-
fession of faith in God, in humanity, and in the " powers of
darkness."
The characters are few we see them all so clearly cut before
us the delightful old Duke who wants to please everybody, and
to be "broad" (as he repeats so constantly), but whose irrespon-
sibility and general vagueness in expressing himself, reduce his
hearers to a state of mental pulp and complete exasperation, while
conscious of his genuine kindliness and simple goodness. Take,
foi example, a speech like this :
I9I4-] G. K. CHESTERTON: A NEW ASPECT 25
Ah! Yes, the Militant Vegetarians! You've heard of them,
I'm sure. Won't obey the law as long as the government serves
out meat! Well, well, I'm bound to say they are very enthu-
siastic! Advanced, too oh, certainly, advanced like Joan of
Arc! O, well, it's a very high ideal after all. The "sa-
credness of life," you know, the " sacredness of life." But
they carry it too far. They killed a policeman down in Kent.
Then there is the kind-hearted courteous old Family Doctor,
a familiar type of agnostic, to whom science and philanthropy have
taken the place of religion (a wonderfully-portrayed character, in
which Mr. Chesterton has excelled). One of his speeches is alto-
gether Chestertonian, and wholly beautiful, as he addresses the
young girl :
Well, it must be nice to be young, and still see all those stars
and sunsets. We old buffers won't be too strict with you if
your view of things gets a bit mixed up, shall we say? If the
stars get loose about the grass by mistake, or if once or
twice the sunset gets into the East. We should only say,
" Dream as much as you like. Dream for all mankind. Dream
for us who can dream no longer. But do not quite forget the
difference. The difference between the things that are beautiful
and the things that are there. That red lamp over my door isn't
beautiful, but it's there. You might even come to be glad it's
there when the stars of gold and silver have faded. I am an old
man now, but some men are still glad to find my red star.
I do not say they are the wise men "
Then there is the Duke's Niece, " who is Irish and believes in
fairies," and the Duke's Nephew, who has been in America and
believes in nothing; also the young Rector, a splendidly-drawn
character sketch of an earnest worker; so genuine in his high
unspotted ideals, yet so pitiful in the doubts and waverings which
his own sincerity forces him to confess. " Yes, I believe," he says,
in answer to a challenge ; " I wish I could believe."
" I wish I could dubelieve ! " says the Conjurer the central
figure of the play a triumph of Chestertonian paradox one who
is by profession a charlatan and mystifier, who deals in black arts
and dabbles in " spiritism," and who still remains a supremely
honest man! For example, when describing his past spiritualistic
experiences to the girl he loves :
It only means that I have done what many men have done;
but few, I think, have thriven by I dabbled a little in table-
26 G. K. CHESTERTON: A NEW ASPECT [April,
rapping and table-turning. But I soon had reason to give it
U p It began by giving me headaches. And I found that
every morning after a spiritualist seance, I had a queer feeling
of degradation and lowness, of having been soiled ; much like
the feeling, I suppose, that people have the morning after they
have been drunk. But I happen to have what people call a
strong head ; and I have never been really drunk Oh, it
hasn't been for want of trying But it wasn't long before
the spirits with whom I'd been playing at table-turning did
what I think they generally do, at the end of all such table-
turning. They turned the tables. They turned the tables upon
me. As long as these things were my servants, they seemed
to me like fairies. When they tried to be my masters
I found they were not fairies. I found the spirits with whom I,
at least, had come into contact, were evil, awfully, unnaturally
evil
The whole story of Magic is simple, yet every word counts.
An imaginative young girl, wandering at nightfall in a garden,
meets a strange being, cloaked and hooded, rehearsing weird spells,
whom she takes for a fairy, though in reality he is only a con-
jurer, engaged by her uncle, the Duke, to give a drawing-room
entertainment. Her young brother, a blatant atheist, inflated with
the ignorant self-sufficiency of youth, arrives on a visit, just in time
for the performance, at which the Rector and the Doctor are also
present. Aroused by the sight of the conjuring apparatus, the
youth (whose mental balance is not of the strongest) proceeds to
air his views, and launches into a violent outburst of denunciation,
first against conjuring, and then goes on to stigmatize even the "Old
Testament miracles as supreme trickery ! " His attack is met by
the Rector with a splendidly-impressive quotation from the Book of
Job on the " Search after Wisdom ;" vibrating with his own wistful
soul-hunger for the " Source of all Knowledge and Wisdom ;" and
by the Conjurer (maddened by the boy's insulting attitude to him-
self) with the response of making the chairs move about the room,
the family portraits to dance in their frames on the wall, and the
red light before the Doctor's house, half a mile away, change from
red to blue before their eyes. Almost unhinged with excitement
and terror, the lad rushes out into the night to seek a solution, to
be ultimately stricken with a species of brain collapse. Aware that
there is more in it than a trick, both Rector and Doctor beg the
Conjurer to undo his work. The last scene when, urged by their
1914-] G. K. CHESTERTON: A NEW ASPECT 27
importunities, he tells them the truth, " that, goaded by the youth's
taunts and insults, he has been weak enough to exercise his power
acquired in his old days of spiritism; and has done it altogether
by the power of the devil."
Overwhelmed by swift repentance, he flings himself out into
a raging night storm with these words, " I am going to ask the
God Whose enemies I have served, if I am still worthy to save a
child." In this scene Mr. Chesterton has given a wonderful em-
bodiment of suggested evil seldom experienced. One seems abso-
lutely to feel the unknown noxious presences pervading the at-
mosphere; as the three men, the Duke, the Doctor, and the Rector
sit cowering apart, in an interminable heavy silence, terse with
feeling, broken finally, as by a shock, with the Rector's sharp,
almost agonized, ejaculation, "For God's sake, go!'"
Suddenly the Conjurer returns, illuminated in the doorway by
a flash of lightning; his face transfigured with loathing, as he
seems to cast something behind him into the darkness, shouting,
" Go back to hell, from whence I called you ! It is my last order ! "
while the atmosphere once more grows normal, and the other three
men present breathe easily again, as if relieved of some strangely
stifling oppression.
Altogether convincing is G. K. Chesterton's attitude towards
spiritism the entirely Catholic attitude and more interesting still
his defence of belief against unbelief; his high ideal of woman-
hood ; his trampling upon the outposts of the materialism which re-
fuses to believe in God or devil. Take, for instance, this conversa-
tion:
You put a woman in charge of an invalid without a flicker
of doubt because you trust women. You trust a woman
with the practical issues of life and death, through sleepless
hours when a shaking hand or an extra grain would kill !
But if the woman gets up to go to early service at my church,
you call her weak-minded, and say that nobody but women
believe in religion.
Doctor. I should never call this woman weak-minded. No,
by , not even if she went to church !
Rector. Yet there are many as strong-minded who believe
passionately in going to church !
Does it never strike you that doubt can be madness as well
as faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as
proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there
no such thing as irreligious mania?
28 G. K. CHESTERTON: A NEW ASPECT [April,
Why shouldn't men let the universe alone, and let it mean
what it likes?
Here is the boy who questions everything and the girl who
believes everything! Upon which has the curse fallen?
There may be varied opinions as to stage sermons and their
influence, but few could come away from this remarkable per-
formance without being led to think; while the moral danger
of dabbling in spiritism, lightly ridiculed by so many, could not
be more clearly defined. Magic will be interesting read as well
as acted. We have had enough of cheap cynicism; and Chester-
ton's " Dickensian " sympathy with humanity comes as a welcome
relief and antidote. We are tired of seeing every fragment of
God's image, man's higher self, torn from poor shivering sinful
humanity, leaving only the " earthiness " of the animal ; but this
man, with his sane philosophy of faith and love, comes to lift it
out of the mire.
Those who are not willing to leave the path of the " obvious,"
may not appreciate Magic, may find it even unconvincing ; but who
can deny that its author leaves one conscious, with a thrill of
triumph, of the supreme mastery of the " things of the spirit "
over the "things of the flesh;" not as the usual modern philos-
opher and teacher leaves one, wondering is nothing genuine, is
no one sincere. Amid the crowd of petty pedagogues, shouting
a blatant materialism, a belief in nothing beyond their line of
limited vision, we should be grateful for minds like Gilbert Keith
Chesterton's; standing on the mountain heights of his ideals as he
unfurls the banner of his boldly-emblazoned " credo," regardless
of the vulture cries of an unbelief " that doth protest too much "
to be genuine.
THE FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
HE remote background of poverty is found in the di-
versified gifts of man. There are among us the
strong and the weak, the noble and the cunning,
the provident and the thoughtless, the wise and the
silly, the healthy and the diseased, the sinful and the
saintly. Of course, not all of these differences among us are in-
herent, nor were they unavoidable. Very much in every form of
weakness may be traced to conditions over which the individual
has no control. We associate many of these differences in one way
or another to the distressing processes of sin in the world. What-
ever our attitude toward the social ideals which proclaim a nearer
approach to equality than that which we achieved, we may not look
forward in our time to a day when these inequalities among men
will have been eliminated. We do long earnestly for equality
of opportunity in the fullest sense of the term, but this equality
of opportunity will not hinder human differences from asserting
themselves in the play of everyday life. We have not known, and
we may not expect to see in the near future, a condition of society
in which weakness will not call for help, in which dullness will not
ask direction, in which misfortune will not reap its lamentable
harvest of worry and pain.
In the political background of poverty we find the favorite
democratic principle, that the law and our institutions must treat all
men as equals without regard to the natural or acquired differences
of skill or ability, of health or of foresight, of stupidity or of
wisdom among them. The citizen is merely the citizen. There
may be no distinction in the dealings of the State with the citizen.
The State has educated itself into an indifferent stolidity in spite of
the social consequences of this equal treatment of unequal men,
women, and children.
The State in taking its fundamental attitude, has been governed
by certain assumptions, the force of which has been greatly reduced
in the face of our social problems. Thus, for instance, it has been
assumed that the average individual has the power of self-help
and the intelligence to take the initiative when the assistance of the
State is needed to protect his rights. It has been assumed, further-
30 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
more, that all citizens are satisfactorily represented in government,
and that the law by its enactment, interpretation, and administra-
tion assures even-handed justice to everyone. If all men were equal
in intelligence, resourcefulness, and opportunity, such an assumption
would have some merit. As our system has worked out, however,
it has compelled the State to stand impotent, if not indifferent, in
the face of colossal social injustice of which we are so heartily
ashamed.
In the industrial background of poverty, we find that the com-
petitive struggle for wealth, that is for life, has been waged with
almost unabating fury among these unequal men and women and
children. Selfishness has been heretofore the law of industrial life.
Strength has been pitted against feebleness. Cunning has measured
swords with dullness. Skill has been proud in its conquest of
ignorance. Our institutions and the strength of them have served
well the strong. Our institutions and the strength of them have
been a peril to the weak.
In the social background of poverty, we find rigid class or-
ganization, narrow sympathies, and social estrangement. Disdain
brightens the eye of strength, and despair stifles the heart of weak-
ness. The strong know only the strong, and the weak know only
their own kind. Disease, ignorance, dullness, inertia, crime, dis-
integrated homes, neglected education, and moral indolence congre-
gate upon the souls of the weakened poor and bend them down.
Culture, education, wealth, security, opportunity, talent, and power
congregate among the strong, brighten life, and smooth the paths
over which they tread.
Modern imagination confines the word poverty to what we may
call economic weakness, that is lack of income. Usually a suf-
ficiently large income brings to us nearly all opportunity. Through
it we are placed in contact with culture and refinement. We have
the opportunity to become learned. AH of the finer joys of life
are open to us. On the other hand, lack of income exposes us
to every form of deprivation. There is no inherent reason why
the poor should be neglected in our political life, or why they should
lack culture, or why they should be ignorant. But, as a matter of
fact, poverty has been made cumulative, and the class which is
weak because it is without income, is weak in every sense. At this
lower edge of the laboring class, we find the poor.
Any fundamental view of poverty must take account in one
way or another of this background. Any fundamental view of the
mission of charity must include its relation to this background.
1914-] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 31
All of the constructive efforts which we undertake for the sake
of the poor, should be accepted and judged in the light of the
teaching of Jesus Christ concerning human brotherhood. The
things wherein we are equal are the essentials of life, namely, nature,
destiny, dignity, moral government, and spiritual sanctions. The
things wherein we are unlike are the accidents of life, sin alone ex-
cepted. Now, humanity has constantly endeavored to build its
civilizations on the accidental differences among us. That is to
say, personal charm, ability, wealth, social culture, power, have
tended constantly to become the basis of social distinctions, and these
social distinctions have succeeded in achieving almost undisputed
sway over the institutions of civilization. The general drift of
the social teaching of Christ has been to minimize the social dif-
ferences due to these accidentals, and to adjust civilizations toward
the essential equality among us upon which Christ insisted. The
rights to life, to physical health, to opportunity, to normal home life,
to moral security, and uplifting contact with spiritual ideals were
written down in the book of life by the hand of God. Every
principle of social philosophy, every axiom of political wisdom,
every industrial organization, and every law of culture should be
tested as to its truth and sanction by the degree to which it admits
and respects these human rights.
Christianity proclaimed the infinite value of the individual, and
ascribed to him sacred individual rights, which are above and beyond
our institutions. Hence its earliest historical impulses led it to
care with great tenderness for every form of weakness. In later
centuries States were driven by civic impulses to undertake some
hesitating care of the weak for civic reasons. Volunteer organiza-
tions have sprung up among our stronger classes under the inspira-
tion of either Christian feeling or natural philanthropy, whose
aim it was and it is, to bring relief and hope to these disinherited
of the earth. Currents and counter-currents have clashed with one
another. We have had conflict as well as cooperation. We have
had mistaken philosophies, blundering methods, and discouraging
results. But back of all of these, lies a noble history of genuine
achievement and of irrepressible purpose, which is full of promise
for the dawn if not the noon-day of social justice.
Charity is the inspiration of all of these varied efforts to
relieve the poor, and to prevent poverty. Someone has happily
said that charity must carry the world away from poverty as a
social condition, and toward poverty as a spiritual condition. Only
when the stronger classes become poor in spirit, will the poorer
32 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
classes become rich in hope and opportunity and peace. Only when
each class has made its appointed journey in spirit and in fact,
will humanity attain to the brotherhood which Christ laid down as
law and inspiration. We are reminded often of the words of
Christ, " The poor you have always with you." They are antici-
pated in the words from Deuteronomy, " There will not be wanting
poor in the land of thy habitation." Yet the aim of the seventh
year of remission was to suppress poverty, " and there shall be no
poor or beggar among you."
I.
It is the aim of the State to define elementary human rights, and
to protect them for men and women and children. The rights
to life, to liberty, to property, and to happiness in a sense are
ethically and socially fundamental. Naturally the State does not
protect these rights in their full amplitude. The modern State
may not act except under the warrant of an already established law.
Hence it can protect these human rights or any others only after
first having defined them. Its protection is limited by its defini-
tions. Now, the definitions under which the State works lag far
behind in the march of life. When the State realizes that a class
is suffering because legal definitions are too narrow, it is extremely
slow to expand its definitions in a way to afford the needed pro-
tection. Thus it happens that the weaker classes are frequently
left exposed to very real menaces, which cheat them of the funda-
mental guarantees of government. The breakdown of the machin-
ery of justice occurs then at their thresholds.
For instance, the worthy poor are in more danger from
enforced idleness than they are from burglars. The law gives
them ample protection against the latter, and no protection against
the former. The poor have very real human rights, and no property
or property rights. All of the genius and energy of the State are
available for property protection, which the poor do not need, as
things stand, while but little of the power of the State is available
for the protection of their elementary human rights. The children
of the poor are in little, if any, danger of being kidnapped. We
can put the whole power of the State at work to punish kidnapping,
but only recently have we had any legal help to punish the factory
which kidnapped the children of the poor and robbed them of health
and youth. The poor are in little danger of murder, but they have
been in great danger of various forms of industrial killing. We
I9I4-] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 33
have had heretofore ample protection against murder, and only
little against industrial slaughter.
These instances may serve to illustrate the thought held in
mind. The State has been hampered by its narrow definitions of
human rights, and it has not been able to adapt itself or modify
its definitions in a way to protect the poor against the peculiar
menaces which confront them. Let us for the moment overlook
that larger field of newer industrial and social dangers wherein
the State has been so weak and aimless, and take up its activity
within the limits of its own definitions. Even here we find a subtle
process at work on both the State and the poor, which has dimin-
ished still more the effective strength of the State available for the
protection of the poor.
The State has assumed, as regards civil action as distinct from
criminal action, that the individual will take the initiative in calling
upon the State for protection when he needs it. Now, the poor
have practically lost initiative in calling upon the State for protec-
tion. It is highly inconvenient to take the steps needed to get the
protection of the law. It unsettles one's habit of placid life.
Most of us feel an unexplained terror at the thought of a lawsuit.
Furthermore, lawsuits are costly. Lawyers must have their fees.
Again, the wrongs of the poor are in themselves apparently so
trifling that the machinery of legal protection is with difficulty ad-
justed to their measure. A poor washwoman will not go to law to
collect a laundry bill of three or four dollars, although the loss of
that much may mean grossest injustice to her. Again, the poor
are often ignorant of their own rights, or indifferent to them when
known, or hopeless as to any chances of success when they invoke
the law. The poor have little experience of the protective and be-
nevolent function of the State, while they have, unfortunately, a
distressing and varied experience of its role as the punisher of
wrongdoing. Crimes against person, against public order, against
property, and misdemeanors of every type which are found with
such lamentable frequency among our poorer classes, draw down
the swift hand of the State upon them. Why do we think of the
juvenile court as an institution intended for the children of the
poor alone, whereas its theoretical jurisdiction includes all children?
We find the poor, therefore, at a point where the benevolent action
of the State is least realized and least realizable, and where the
drastic action of the State is in its form of highest intensity. The
penitentiary and the workhouse loom up in the imagination of the
VOL. xcix. 3
34 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
poor, in such a way as to hide the temple of justice from the range
of their vision.
The attitude of the State toward the poor is not much more
reassuring than that of the poor toward the State. It has not taken
up poverty as a fundamental problem which challenges its political
wisdom, and places a searching test on its institutions. The State's
understanding of poverty has been clouded, uncertain, shamefully
inadequate, and, if we may believe a Dickens, cursed. The institu-
tions which it has erected heretofore to house the poor, to treat
them medically, or to punish them as malefactors, have outraged
all of our canons of decency, effectiveness, and common sense.
Our political leaders have been, and to a great extent are, so ignor-
ant of the factors and the processes in poverty, and so indifferent
to its tragedies as to shame us. Even when the State has en-
deavored through law to relieve poverty, the work has been done
with such shortsightedness and wastefulness as to have killed prac-
tically all confidence in the value of out-door legal relief.
It appears to be the political mission of charity to take up its
work here, and to secure to the poor the political guarantees of
which they have need. Charity through its representatives must
work in three directions. It must bestir itself first of all to secure
to the poor the full enjoyment of their political and legal rights,
in as far as that is possible under our present narrow definitions and
our imperfect machinery of law. This means that charity must
instruct the poor concerning their rights. It must awaken initiative,
furnish direction, and do everything that is needed in order to bring
to the poor the fullest practicable enjoyment of such rights as
they possess. The second political mission of charity is to educate
the State itself concerning problems in poverty and in the prevention
of it. Charity organizations as attorneys for the poor must present
the cause of the poor to court and legislature and executive. The
facts in modern poverty must be held with unrelenting severity
before them. The responsibility of social conditions and legal in-
stitutions for their share in the perpetuation of poverty must be pro-
claimed. Charity must then take up the popular movements which
aim to modify our laws and lawmaking, in order that definitions
may be so expanded and guarantees may be so understood as to
give to the poor that genuine protection for the sake of which our
States exist.
In a word, charity should create a supplementary political con-
stitution, whose duties would begin at the point where our political
constitution fails of its purpose. Charity organizations which ig-
1914.] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 35
nore or misunderstand the political mission of charity, will do their
work badly, and will in a sense perpetuate the misery which it is
their aim to suppress. The political mission of charity is fun-
damental. No thoroughgoing view of charity may neglect this
aspect of the work, let the inconvenience of such recognition be
what it may.
II.
Reference has been made to the competitive struggle for
wealth. The need of property is universal. Normally everyone
desires it. The world as a whole must work for its living whether
or not individuals do so. The process of distribution of wealth
has become infinitely complex. The place of man and woman and
child in that process has been determined heretofore not by their
rights or dignity or destiny, but by the economic demand for their
labor. In the competitive struggle, the strong, have to a great
extent, acquired ownership and control of the sources of wealth,
other than labor, and they have accumulated practically all of the
authority exercised in the industrial process. The weaker social
classes have, generally speaking, only such access to opportunity
and only such opportunity for labor as may be given with profit to
the stronger classes. The portion of the annual national output
of wealth which the weaker classes get, is usually called wages.
At the lower margin of the laboring class we find those who are
occasionally and permanently helpless, or without income. They
are largely the unskilled, the unorganized, the thriftless, the unen-
terprising, the undisciplined, the uneducated, among whom we
find every conceivable degree of guilt and of innocence for their
condition. The contrast between these poor and the upper classes
is appalling.
Illness among the wealthy is an inconvenience, among the
poor it is a tragedy. Ignorance among the former is an embarrass-
ment, among the latter it declares their doom. Death among the
former means lonely hearts and hopeful grieving; among the poor
it means the nameless terror of dependence and certain woe.
Among the strong the risks of life are scattered and are at their
minimum; among the poor they are congregated and at their
maximum. Among the strong idleness is called leisure; among
the poor it is called sin. Intelligence, credit, and foresight secure
to the strong full value for each dollar that they spend, while
ignorance, lack of understanding, lack of credit, and indifference
36 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
cut in half the value of the income of the poor. The strong are
protected against every form of fraud by the resources of law upon
which they may call ; the poor are exposed to every form of fraud,
and few if any of the resources of law are within their reach. In
last analysis practically all of these differences go back to the ele-
mentary differences of income. Those who have income have
access to all of the joys and securities of life. Those who have
no income find access to none of them.
At this point the industrial mission of charity commences.
Its fundamental duty is to devise a supplementary process of dis-
tribution which will insure income of some kind to those in need.
Economic life is organized on the principle of getting wealth.
Charity organizes this supplementary process of distribution for
the purpose of giving it. Where the work of selfishness ends,
that of unselfishness begins.
The first and simplest industrial duty of charity is to give re-
lief, that is food, clothing, and shelter, to those who need them.
We may never permit our wealth of learning, or our insight into
social processes, or our liking for philosophy and lectures, to harm
our understanding of this first plain human duty of charity. Re-
lief-giving is primary. There will be, of course, every imaginable
variety of service in the giving of relief, because it must be adapted
always with discriminating intelligence to the wants of those whom
we serve. The second industrial mission of charity is to seek to
develop the latent resources of the poor themselves, and put them
back as wage-earners among wage-earners, in order that they may
earn their living and recover their independence. The next in-
dustrial duty of charity is that of humanizing the industrial pro-
cesses, by helping industrial leaders to understand the humanities of
industry and to respect them. This means that industrial leaders
must be trained to respect the home, to venerate womanhood and
childhood, to seek to do justice, and to reform processes and stand-
ards in a way that will help us to approach the justice for which we
long. It is quite natural, therefore, to find that the National Con-
ference of Charities and Correction has endeavored to induce us to
accept a platform of industrial minimums for the weaker portions
of the laboring class. These minimums indicate the point in in-
dustry below which we have inexcusable injustice.
There is profound economic meaning in the Christian doctrine
of the stewardship of wealth. The poor own a lien on the wealth
of the strong, which is recorded in the books of God. While our
economists have too often neglected this aspect of distribution of
I9I4-] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 37
wealth, there are some who have written noble chapters, showing
their understanding of this industrial mission of charity.
III.
Charity has a fundamental cultural mission. Our duty, next
after that of living, is to live well. Living well means widening
life as well as deepening it. Living well requires that we develop
our latent capacities, and that our unfolded life come into refining
and spiritualizing contact with goodness, beauty, and truth. We
are all called to culture. If, as one of our statesmen says it, culture
is " intimate and sensitive appreciation of the moral and intellectual
and esthetic values," civilization ought to make access to these
values easy, and understanding of them sure. The sympathies and
heart of man should be shaped to the larger truths of life and of
the relations among men, while our institutions should be nothing
other than the organized expression and guarantee of the finer
standards of culture.
The cultured man is the socialized and spiritualized man.
None of us are socialized and spiritualized until we understand the
moral and social laws which govern our relations, and condition our
perception of truth and justice and beauty and our respect for them.
Civilization has depended upon scholarship, aristocracy, wealth,
school, religion, home, painting, sculpture, music, and literature to
further, to spread, to perpetuate, and to protect culture in the world.
Life has separated the poor almost completely from these culture
contacts. Poverty not only does this, but it tends to kill the long-
ing for culture or refinement, and thus makes the spread of culture
among the poor trebly difficult. We have permitted debasing coun-
terfeits of culture to degrade and mislead the poor. We have
seen home life perish among them. We have seen them untouched
by learning. We have seen the so-called culture classes shrink
their sympathies from all contact with the poor. The loyalties of
culture are universal because they are to ideals and to persons.
The loyalties of many of our social classes are provincial, because
they are to interests and to class.
It is the fundamental cultural mission of charity to correct
the vision of the stronger classes, to hinder their sympathies from
narrowing, to maintain the true values of human life in right pro-
portion, and to bend our institutions toward the expression of them.
The coarsening of the fibre of the soul of the strong must be hin-
dered, and their capacity to judge and to obey God's laws in our
38 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
social relations must be protected. As regards the poor, it is the
cultural mission of charity to restore among them the channels
by which culture should reach them. The restoration of the home,
the purification of its traditions, are among its nobler duties. Char-
ity, realizing the moral and spiritual and social power of culture,
must call in art, religion, literature, and school to do their work in
refining and elevating our disinherited brothers. Possibly a casual
reader will look upon this as ridiculous talk, yet the poor are not
as uncultured as we sometimes think. They are strangely free from
many of the illusions of life and of the metaphors that becloud life.
They have frequently a clearer perception of the essential funda-
mental truths of culture than is to be found among the stronger
classes. They live nearer to reality and to the experience of the
deeper laws of life than do the strong.
IV.
The religious mission of charity touches the other fundamental
duties which have already been alluded to. Charity is primarily
a doctrine and secondarily a service. The revelation of Christ
concerns the nature of God, the nature of man, the relations between
man and his fellows. The domain of religion is coextensive with
that of conscious human life. The doctrine of charity, the duty of
love, may be looked upon as the consequence of our brotherhood,
which is established and signalized in the person and mission of
Jesus Christ. Since human nature tends constantly to develop
erroneous ideas of God and man, and mistaken principles concern-
ing relations among men, it is the mission of charity to keep right
and true the social expression of revelation.
Charity is the fulfilling of the law. The fundamental rela-
tion between God and man is love. The fundamental relation of
man to God is love. The fundamental relation of man to man is
love. Christ aimed to unite men in perfect unity, of which love
and service are the consequences and the symbol. Humility, for-
giveness of injuries, patience, service, fraternal correction, obedi-
ence, mutual prayer, good example, derive their several grandeurs
and their last interpretation only when viewed as partial expressions
of Christ's single inclusive law of unity and love. When wealth
has understood the spirit of love, it has sought out poverty and
served it. When learning has been touched by the spirit of love,
it has sought out ignorance and served it. When virtue has looked
I9I4-] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 39
most deeply into the heart of God, it has been driven to seek out
sin and to labor in love for its redemption.
Charity as a doctrine is an organic part of the teaching of
Christ. Charity as a service is an organic part of the religious
experience of the Christian. Howsoever our affections and our
intimacies, our sympathies and our associations, our judgments and
our valuations, be narrowed or distorted, or led into false ways by
caste, or blood, or class, or taste, or culture, or party, or occupation,
or prejudice, it is the religious mission of charity to declare our
mistake, and to call us back to the true understanding of Christ's
law, and to stimulate our obedience to that law in dealing with
our fellowmen.
V.
Charity has then a fourfold fundamental mission, political,
industrial, cultural, and religious. Its religious mission is, logically,
primary. The other three are undertaken by reason of the origin
and nature of charity as a spiritual law of life. Political, industrial,
and cultural activities in charity when undertaken without regard
to its religious origin, its spiritual character and its divine sanction,
are counterparts of the great law laid down by Christ. Here we
find explained the unyielding tenacity with which Catholic charities
insist on the fundamental religious nature of social service. It
may be well at this point to make certain practical observations
which follow upon these thoughts.
The work of charity is one of supreme social importance.
The poor are, all things considered, our conspicuous failures. They
challenge our civilization. They declare our limitations. The
serious thought of our time does not even pretend to have under-
stood the processes of poverty, or to have discovered any practical
method of suppressing it. As the poor increase in number, or
rather as our knowledge of poverty becomes more extended and
more accurate, we are forced almost to doubt the ideals which inspire
us, and the principles on which our institutions rest. And in pro-
portion as poverty is traced in its origin to institutions and to other
social causes, rather than to the fault of the poor themselves,
society is compelled to confess its failure and to grope for effective
remedy.
From the standpoint of extent no less than that of quality, the
work of charity is fundamental. It concerns literally millions of
human beings, among whom the undertow of civilization works
40 FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY [April,
dreadful havoc. Unwholesome processes work unhindered among
the poor. Helplessness reaches its last sad extreme in their lives.
We are appalled at the extent and accuracy of our knowledge. The
many-sided literature, which has been created in our endeavor to
understand poverty and prevent it, is one of the distinguishing
marks of the last half century. The highest types of scholarship
do not hesitate to throw their energies into the study of poverty, and
of the problems of its relief. One of the most imposing govern-
mental activities of our day is the colossal report made by a national
commissipn on poverty in England. Universities hesitate no longer
to equip departments for research and direction in problems of re-
lief. Endowments which by their quantity alone stagger the imagina-
tion, have given us unequalled resources for study. Schools of phil-
anthropy are appearing, devoted exclusively to the study of poverty
and its implications. The expert in social work has appeared,
taking his place by the side of the physician, attorney, and teacher,
while his profession is now recognized as an ally of first-rate
value in dealing with poverty.
The work of charity has passed over from the stage of un-
related superficial and occasional activity to a stage wherein system,
cooperation, principles, methods, instruction, and literature appear.
The range of knowledge, of both theoretical and practical kinds,
of which a leader has need is almost encyclopedic. The reconstruc-
tion of the home of a single dependent family may quite readily
require dealings with hospital, court, school authorities, truant
officers, relief associations, city health and building departments,
church, employer, and labor unions. Thus it becomes necessary
to train formally those upon whom the larger responsibilities of
relief work rests. One will not pick up casually adequate knowl-
edge of the charity resources of a city, of laws, lawmaking, and law
administration, of wage conditions and the factors which determine
them, of the whole range of benevolent progress made in medicine
and in the medical resources of relief work. Only systematic re-
search, intelligent direction, command of literature, and thorough
acquaintance with methods and experiences can equip the typical
social worker properly for the great mission of relief.
The work of charity is extremely difficult. It deals with the
least promising men and women and children. It deals with them
tinder most adverse circumstances. Not alone nature, but as well
society has been niggardly toward them, for they suffer at every
point at which adversity may bafHe and inertia may paralyze.
Even when charity finds types among the poor who respond bravely
I9I4-] FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF CHARITY 41
to its stimulating touch, its work is done in circumstances which defy
control, in an environment which bears down upon its victims with
telling force.
With all of this the place of charity in our civilization is, out-
side of its own circles, generally underrated. Much of the ability
and time that are devoted to charity, are exhausted in fighting
against misunderstanding, and in the endeavor to instruct the
learned and power i f ul in the elementary humanities. Mistaken
views of poverty and the poor chill philanthropic impulses. These
mistakes must be overcome before those who share them can
be won. The indifference and ignorance of States and statesmen,
perverted standards of service due to our party system, the apathy
of our schools which find more charm in lessons on the glory of
a dead ancient civilization than in the shame and failure of our
own, the social condition of making the poor outcasts from our
mind and sympathy as well as from our culture and wealth, are
a few, but only a few, of the factors which appear in the underrating
of the place of charity in our civilization.
The mission of charity is divided. Problems of poverty are so
unlike one another that we are compelled to specialize among them,
and to train different sets of social workers to deal with them
in a particular way. We have medical charities and legal charities ;
charities which concern the fallen and those which concern the
aged; those which concern infants or dependent children at home
or in institutions; charities which concern defectives and those
which concern delinquents. There is need in every one of these
lines of special knowledge, special training, peculiar temperament
and experience. If we were united in our interests and philosophy,
and in our religion and our moral codes; if we were of one mind
and one heart in all things, the work of dividing our charities and
keeping them in harmonious touch with one another would be a
colossal undertaking. Unfortunately, we are not so united. We
enter the mission of charity guided by different religions, sep-
arated by contending systems of ethics, at variance in aim and inter-
est and temperament to such an extent as to hamper in a very
material way the effectiveness of the service which we offer to our
disinherited brothers and sisters. Happily, larger views now pre-
vail, and keener insight into the social origins of poverty is widely
shared. Truer vision of the fundamental social mission of charity
is coming, and bringing, let us hope, an all-embracing spirit of
charity to unite the divided army now at work.
VOX MYSTICA.
STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF THE REV. PHILIP RIVERS PATER,
SQUIRE AND PRIEST, 1834-1909.
BY ROGER PATER.
INTRODUCTORY.
HE stories collected under this title were told me by
my cousin, an old priest more than forty years my
senior, in the course of the two years or so which
I spent with him immediately before his death. I
had never met my old relative until the period re-
ferred to, because of the quarrel and estrangement between my
father and himself which took place some years before I was born.
In this quarrel I have always understood that my father was
chiefly to blame; indeed he told me so himself before he died.
Strange to say, however, it affected my cousin far more than it did
the real offender, and, from that date, he became more and more
of a recluse, living alone at Stanton Rivers with a few servants,
most of whom had served the family from childhood, and seeing
hardly anyone except some five or six intimate friends, chiefly
priests, who would come and stay at the old manor house for a
few days at a time.
It was shortly after the quarrel that my cousin decided to
take Holy Orders. The family had kept to the old religion all
through the penal times, except once when the squire of the period
had apostatized under stress of persecution. But in no previous
case had the head of the family ever become a priest, though there
had been a fair sprinkling of vocations among the younger sons,
and one had died for his priesthood on the scaffold at Tyburn.
No little uneasiness seems to have been felt by the servants
and tenants of the estate when the squire announced his intention,
and set out for Rome to make his studies at the College of
Noble Ecclesiastics. However, when he returned no changes were
made, and, except that the squire wore a cassock and said Mass,
instead of wearing gaiters and shooting pheasants, the little world
of Stanton Rivers rolled on just as it had done before. But
gradually, very gradually, the relations between landlord and tenants
became modified. The squire's priestly character told upon his
1914.] VOX MY STIC A 43
people, and their loyal respect deepened into a personal love for him,
which grew with the years, until, to one like myself, who came upon
it suddenly, it seemed almost the atmosphere of another world.
As I went about the property which was soon to become mine, I
heard on all sides of his acts of charity and thoughtfulness, and I
cannot help thinking that one cause of his goodness to his tenants
was the fact of his life-long estrangement from my father, who was
his only near relative. During the short time I spent with him in
the last years of his life, I learned to love him much as a saint's
disciples love their master. When he spoke of things spiritual, it
was like one to whom this world was less real than the invisible
world of the soul. For him, in fact, I am convinced this was liter-
ally the case, and he looked forward to death as a child will do to the
going home day at the end of a long term.
Still it was only because of a chance phrase, which I did not
understand at the moment, that he came to tell me the occurrences
with which these stories deal, and but for my curiosity on the sub-
ject, I do not think he would have made any further reference to
them. It may have been merely the reticence of an ultra-sensitive
nature which feared a rebuff, or, almost worse, a coldly polite
acceptance of the tale which masked the hearer's disbelief in it.
But I think the chief reason of his silence was that, for him, such
sensible evidences of the supernatural had come to be of little
interest, and that, by the time I knew him, he was living in a
higher state of the spiritual life, where mystical union with God
was so real and so direct, that these earlier experiences had lost
their value for him.
The stories were written down in a kind of diary, usually on
the day on which he told them to me, and I have hesitated for
some time about giving them to the public. However, those who
have read the original manuscript have urged me to do so, and, in
any case, I do not see that any harm can come from the publication.
If, on the other hand, these experiences prove a help to anyone,
that fact, I am sure, will reconcile the spirit of my dear old rela-
tive to the wider circulation of his strange experiences.
I.
THE WARNINGS.
The library at Stanton Rivers is a long room, facing west, on
the ground floor of the mansion. On a summer evening the last
44
VOX MYSTICA [April,
rays of the sun come in at the broad mullioned windows, causing
bright gleams of gold and color on the backs of the long rows of
books.
The old squire-priest was sitting by the oriel window with a
rug across his knees, and the light on his white hair and thin refined
features made him look like one of the portraits that hung in the
long gallery. For some time he had been speaking to me of the
ways in which God's providence had dealt with him, how wonder-
fully He answers the petitions of His servants, far better than man
can foresee when he makes his prayer; and the quiet tone of convic-
tion made his words doubly impressive. After this he remained
silent for some minutes while I was thinking over his words. Then
abruptly he began again.
" You understand, do you not? " he asked, with a quiet look at
me.
" I think so," I answered, " at least all but one point. There
was a phrase you used just now which was new to me. You were
speaking of mental prayer and the light God gives you in it; of
prayers for guidance in any special difficulty, and how, after a while,
light seems to grow upon the mind, and the will becomes clear
how to act, as if in obedience to some divine command. And
then, all at once, you added, 'But this is quite different to the direct
speech that sometimes comes to me.' Now that is what I want you
to explain to me, what do you mean exactly by the phrase 'direct
speech?'"
The old priest smiled as I stopped speaking, but he kept silence
so long that I began to feel uneasy, and started to apologize for
my curiosity, fearing lest the question had offended him.
" No, no," said he quickly, " it isn't that at all. I am quite
willing to answer your question; the difficulty is to make myself
intelligible." After another pause he began again.
' The phrase which puzzled you is one that I have come to
use for a certain kind of experience which happens to me from time
to time. Sometimes it takes the form of a sentence, sometimes only
of a word or two, sometimes of long-continued sound or speech,
but always it appeals to the sense of hearing."
At this I felt more mystified than ever, and I suppose my face
betrayed me, for the old man seemed to see it and continued.
" If you like I will give you some examples of what I mean,
but first I must warn you that, although it is many years now since
first this kind of thing occurred to me, it still remains without any
I9I4-] VOX MYSTICA 45
satisfactory explanation so far as I can see. Moreover I am quite
clear that the sound or voice I hear is not due to merely natural
causes, as one might mistake a noise heard in the dark and attribute
it to some agency other than the one which really caused it.
" There is one other point as well which makes my experience
somewhat unusual. No doubt you have heard of apparitions at the
hour of death, cases where the form of a dying man or woman has
been seen by someone far away from where the death took place,
and who, moreover, did not know his friend was ill. In several
instances my voices have warned me of deaths among my friends
and relatives, but, instead of this happening at the moment of death,
such warnings have always occurred a considerable time afterwards,
and only a little while before the news reached me through some
ordinary channel."
" May I interrupt a moment," I asked, " let me be clear on one
point before you give me any instances. The voices you hear, are
they objective, really sounding in your ears, or are they merely in-
ternal, like words spoken in the mind ? "
" Sometimes they are undoubtedly subjective," he answered,
" but more often they seem to me absolutely external to myself,
and, once or twice, it has definitely been my own voice that I heard,
my lips and tongue speaking the words aloud without any control
on my part, so far as I could tell."
I thanked him and promised not to interrupt again if he would
give me some examples of his strange experience, and after a few
moments' thought he began once more.
" I am not sure how old I was when this kind of thing first
occurred to me, but sometimes I think it must have been when I was
quite a child. My old nurse, who remained here as housekeeper for
many years, has told me that, quite soon after I learned to talk, I
used to come to her and ask what some phrase or other meant.
Then, if she questioned me as to who had used the words, all I
could answer was just, 'I heard them,' but who had spoken them I
could never tell.
" However, if that were the same thing, the faculty passed
away for a time, and the first definite instance I remember came
soon after I had left school. I was then in my eighteenth year, and
the things of God and religion played a smaller part in my life than
they have ever done before or since, indeed the morality of acts
interested me less than the question whether they were 'good form'
in a young man of my position.
46 VOX MYSTICA [April,
" As you know I had one brother, four years my senior, of
whom I was very fond. My father had recently purchased him
a commission in the army, and he was with his regiment in a pro-
.vincial garrison town at the time of my story.
" For myself I had no very definite ideas about a profession,
although, as a boy, I had leaned towards the priesthood. That idea
passed away, however, when I was about fifteen, and so I fell in
with my father's proposal, that I should enter the law. I left
school soon after my seventeenth birthday, and, after some pre-
liminaries, was duly articled to our family solicitors in London,
a firm which had a large connection among old Catholic families.
Life in town was a novelty to me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly,
but the office hours were long, and I seldom got any time to myself
before six in the evening. However, that left me free to go to the
theatre, and I think I went to see some play or other nearly every
week.
" On the night in question the piece I went to was Hamlet,
with Macready in the title role. It was my favorite among Shakes-
peare's plays, but I had never seen it acted so. After waiting some
little time for the doors to open, I got a good place, and sat waiting
for the curtain to go up. I think I may say that nothing was further
from my mind at the moment than my brother Oswald, indeed all
my thoughts were about the play. Then, suddenly, as if someone
were whispering into my ears, I heard quite distinctly the words,
'Oswald is dead.' I gave a start and looked round at my neighbor
on the right ; there was no one on my left, as I was next the gang-
way. But my neighbor was turned away from me, talking to his
companion, and obviously had not spoken the words, for, as I
looked at him, they came again, 'Oswald is dead.' Now the only
Oswald I knew was my brother, and, with a shock, I realized that,
if the words meant anything to me at all, they must refer to him.
At that moment they came a third time, 'Oswald is dead.' I began
to be rather alarmed, though I confess I felt it must all be some
strange illusion, and half thought of leaving the theatre. But just
then a bell rang, up went the curtain, and the whole incident was
soon forgotten in the absorbing interest of the great drama.
" It was nearly midnight when the play was over, and I walked
home to my rooms half intoxicated with the emotions of the tragedy,
and without a thought of the strange occurrence that had happened
just before the play. Arrived at my rooms, I let myself in with a
latchkey, and walked quietly upstairs. To my surprise, on reaching
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 47
my landing, I saw a bright line of light beneath the door of my
sitting-room, and heard someone moving inside. Entering quickly,
my surprise was doubled at finding the head of the firm to whom
I was articled pacing up and down the room. He turned on hearing
me enter, and, as he did so, I saw that he held a telegram in his hand.
Now telegrams were still more or less a novelty in those days, and
I guessed at once that something serious was the matter. 'My
dear boy/ he said, 'I have been waiting here for hours, your father
has sent this telegram, and asked me to break the news to you.'
In a flash the words I had heard in the theatre came back to me,
but I kept silent as he continued, 'Your brother Oswald, I am grieved
to say, died suddenly this morning.' On inquiry afterwards I
learned that his death had been caused by an accident a few minutes
before midday, about seven hours before I heard the words in the
theatre."
" Very strange, very strange, indeed," I said, as the old priest
remained silent, " and was that the end of the incident? "
" I think I must say it was," he replied, " but, oddly enough,
the next occurrence of the kind took place precisely a year later to
the day, and I sometimes think the two may be connected. At
that date I was due to go in for my first law examination, and,
by arrangement with my principal, I stayed away from the office
for several weeks before it, so as to give my whole time to reading.
By that time I was fairly sure that I had made a mistake in
taking up the law as a profession, and this did not make it easier to
work hard at my books. In fact, I found it a real difficulty to keep
my attention fixed upon the work, so I sometimes used to read the
book out aloud, as that seemed to make it easier.
" I mentioned that the day in question was the anniversary
of my brother's death, but the date had quite slipped my memory,
and I did not even notice the coincidence until it was pointed out to
me later. Somehow, that morning, I was more stupid than usual, or
perhaps my law treatise was exceptionally dry, anyhow I found it
almost impossible to keep awake over my work. I tried reading
aloud, and, as that was only a partial success, I put the book upon a
tall desk and read aloud standing up. Suddenly at the street door
there came the sharp double rap that means a telegram, and, on the
moment, I heard my own voice say, 'That telegram is to tell me
father is dead,' and then it went on with the sentence of the book
just as if the words had been printed on the page.
" A minute before I had been half asleep, but now I was wide
48 VOX MY STIC A [April,
awake with every nerve a-tingle. As I stood waiting, I heard the
maid pass along the passage to the front door, it opened and shut
again, and her steps came back towards my room. A moment
later I had taken the telegram and torn it open. It read, 'Father
dangerously ill; come at once,' and was signed by my sister. I
hurried home by the first train I could catch, and, on arrival, was
told that my father had died at eight o'clock that morning; quite
three hours before I received the telegram, which was purposely
worded falsely so as to break the shock of his death to me."
The old man stopped speaking and gazed out for a few mo-
ments into the gathering darkness, as if lost in the memories his
story had awakened. Then he turned to me with a smile of inter-
rogation. " Those were the first occasions on which I heard the
voices I call 'direct speech;' what do you make of them? " he asked.
The question was a difficult one, for I did not know what to make
of them.
" It was a strange experience," I said slowly, " very strange
indeed. At first sight it all appears so purposeless. But I will
ask you to let me reserve my judgment until I have had some time to
think it all over, and another day perhaps you will give me some fur-
ther instances."
The old man rose slowly from his chair, " That I will do with
pleasure," he replied, " if you are sure it does not bore you to listen
to my ramblings."
" Indeed, sir," I began in protest, but his smile reassured
me as he took my arm, and walked slowly down the long room
towards the door.
BACK HOME.
BY MARY A. BISHOP.
I
[Verses suggested by the article A Protestant in Italy, by Zephine Humphrey
in the February Atlantic Monthly.}
THE torch of youth we bore so proudly flaming
Across the hills that girt our childhood's home,
May flicker low among the poison vapors
From those far lands that tempted us to roam.
The daring feet that scorned to pause for resting,
May stumble in the pitfalls of the way,
And eyes grow dim with straining for the vision
Miraged upon the sky at dawn of day.
Ah ! then it is we turn with eager yearning
Back to the homestead safe among the hills;
Sure of the love that waits for our returning
Where each familiar sign a hope fulfills.
'Tis thus our souls, though bruised and all but blinded,
By strange fires flaring on the marshy plain,
Hear, with a thrill of joy, all on a sudden,
The bells of home ring out their old refrain.
Falt'ring we come, old memories thickly crowding,
The gate the pasture do they still remain?
Ah, peace! upon the threshold waits our Mother,
The Church of God, forevermore the same.
VOL. xcix. 4
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW. 1
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
HARLES BOUCAUD, the eminent professor of the
Catholic University of Lyons, has written a most
interesting study on the beginnings of the canon
law, and the changes effected in the old Roman law
by the teachings of Christianity. As early as 1837
Frederic Ozanam wrote an article in the Univers calling attention
to the political and intellectual influence of Christianity upon the
science of law. Later on in his History of the Civilization of the
Fifth Century, he gave an excellent outline of the history of the
Roman law, making special mention of the Christian spirit mani-
fested in the laws of the first Christian emperors. About the same
time, the eminent French jurisconsult Troplong published at Paris
( 1843) a work entitled, The Influence of Christianity on the Roman
Civil Law. In this brochure he showed how the teachings of
Christianity had transformed the juridical ideas of ancient Rome.
His general thesis was bitterly contested by the historic school,
particularly by Padeletti. Indeed for many years it was commonly
taught in the schools that the Roman law was practically unaffected
by early Christianity.
The thesis of Ozanam has been taken up again in our own
days, and defended by three eminent Italian professors, Ferrini
of the University of Pavia, Riccobono of the University of Palermo,
and Carusi of Rome. In 1894 Ferrini published an essay on The
Legal Knowledge of Arnobius and Lactantius. Carusi followed
with a comparative study of the early Fathers of the Church and
the Roman jurisconsults (Diritto Romano e Patristica), while
Riccobono in 1911 studied the influence of Christianity upon the
Roman law of the sixth century (Cristianesimo e Diritto Privato).
Their chief antagonist was Baviera, a professor in the University
of Naples, who maintained that the moral, religious, and doctrinal
principles of the Gospel had not exercised any influence whatever
upon the juridical institutions of the Romans, except perhaps in the
l Lo Premiere Ebauche d'un Droit Chretien dans le Droit Remain. By Charles
Boucaud. Paris : A. Tralin. 2 frs. 50.
I9i 4-] CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW 51
field of public chanty, which Christianity organized; that even
Justinian's legislation against divorce was inspired more by the
policy of Augustus than by the teaching of the Fathers of the
Church ; that slavery was not modified in any essential manner by
Christian principles; that the continued struggle in the Lower
Empire in favor of the weak against the strong was prompted
solely by the exigencies of everyday life, and the demands of
pauperism. Of course, we must remember that Baviera's conclu-
sions were affected by his rationalism. In his viewpoint, Christian
morals and law are two parallel lines that never meet; their objects
are different; the one refers solely to the future life, to the utter
despising of this life, while the other has to do with real everyday
practical life, especially in its economic aspect. He distinguishes
also between Christian morality and the Christian religion ; he tells
us that the moral teaching of our Saviour is totally distinct from
the moral teaching of St. Paul and of St. Augustine. Christianity
owes its origin to the popular despair that characterized the times
of Herod, and this despair made the people look solely to the other
life for the reign of the poor and the humble.
It is not our purpose to refute here the erroneous views of
Baviera on the origin and development of Christianity. Let us
simply state that the Christianity of St. Paul and the Fathers of the
Church is identical with the teaching of Jesus; that whereas the
Church assimilated all that was good in the Greco-Roman civiliza-
tion of the time, it was primarily and essentially a divine teaching
and a revelation. It was not merely a heavenly hope born of a
disgust with earthly conditions, but a supernatural religion taught
by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is false to maintain that
because the Christian has ever in view the life to come as the reward
of his loyalty to God's law, that therefore he is totally indifferent
to the things of this life. He does not declare that justice is to
reign only in the hereafter, but he endeavors as far as possible to
bring it about even in this imperfect world. Morality is not in-
dependent of religion, nor is morality independent of law. A priori
we are certain that the principles of Christian morality must in-
fluence in a special manner the laws of a Christian community, and
historically we can prove that they have done so.
That the historical problem is a difficult one, we are ready to
admit. For in the first place, it is hard to determine whether the
development of natural law and equity in the Roman law was due
to Christianity alone, or to the influence of the Stoic philosophy,
52 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW [April,
which had certainly influenced the classic jurisconsults of an earlier
period. In the second place, it is hard to determine whether the
reforms of the Christian emperors were prompted by the Gospel,
or merely by political necessity.
We may distinguish three different stages in the influence of
Christianity upon the Roman law: The first period lasted until
the end of the third century, during which the Gospel teachings were
rapidly spreading, although their inimence upon the Roman law
was only indirect; the second period lasted from the end
of the third century until the middle of the fifth. Christianity had
now become the official religion of the State, and consequently
directly affected the Roman civilization of the time. The Theo-
dosian Code, promulgated by the Emperors Theodosius II. and Val-
entinian III. in 438, clearly witnessed to the growing influence of the
Gospel; the third period extended to the time of Justinian in
the sixth century, and was undoubtedly a time of triumph for
Christian principles.
First Period. Every student of early Church history knows
of the remarkable spread of Christianity during the first three
centuries. Even before the time of Constantine, we read of certain
emperors being favorable to the new religion, or of their having
embraced it. Hadrian is praised by both SS. Justin and Melito of
Sardis for publishing an edict that was favorable to the Christians.
Septimius Severus had his son Antoninus Caracalla educated by
the Christian Proculus, and is praised by Tertullian for having
opposed the pagan demand for persecuting the Christians. Euse-
bius tells us that Philip the Arab (244-249) was a Christian.
Alexander Severus was most friendly to the Christians, and was
one time on the point of erecting a temple in honor of Christ.
Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but the fact is certain that the
best epoch of the Roman law was precisely the reigns of the Severi
and the Antonines. The ideas of justice and of equity professed
by the eminent Roman lawyers of the third century, had been held
by Christians for over a century and a half. It is therefore highly
probable that Christianity had something to do with the betterment
of the Roman law of this time, especially as we notice a great set-
back during the reign of Julian the Apostate.
Second Period. On October 28, 312, Constantine won the
famous battle of the Milvian Bridge. Two months afterwards
he published the famous edict of Milan, which established liberty
of worship, and put an end to the ostracism of the Christian
1914.] CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW 53
Church. The emperor at once proceeded to make the laws of the
empire accord with the principles of the Gospel, without however
doing too much violence to long-established traditions. His legal
and social reforms were thus praised in 321 by the pagan Nazarius :
" New laws were established to maintain a high standard of moral-
ity and to combat vice. He set aside many of the old legal tech-
nicalities of procedure, which were a source of injury to the poor
and simple. He upheld decency and strengthened the marriage
bond."
Following the teaching of St. Paul in the sixth chapter of First
Corinthians, the early Christians submitted their differences to the
bishops to arbitrate, and did not appeal to the law courts. Under
Constantine this Christian custom was sanctioned by the civil law.
An imperial constitution, ascribed to Constantine but probably
apocryphal, compelled the civil magistrates to hand over a law case
to the bishop on the demand of one of the litigants, and in such a
case the bishop's decision was without appeal. This extraordinary
power was done away with by succeeding emperors, who referred
to the bishops only those cases that concerned the clergy or religious
affairs. This was indeed the origin of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction
that prevailed all throughout the Middle Ages. In other matters,
the bishop could be appointed arbitrator only on the demand of
both litigants. The bishops, according to St. Augustine, were soon
overwhelmed with cases; in fact they became the usual defenders
and advocates of the weak, captives, widows, and orphans. In 368
the Emperors Valens and Valentinian decreed that the bishops
should take good care that the merchants did not raise the price
of their goods to the detriment of the poor; another time we find
the Emperors Leo and Anthemius enacting a law empowering the
bishops to see that the soldiers obtained the rations allotted to
them, and that the insane and the orphans were provided with
tutors and guardians.
Georges Goyau, in his book The Vatican, the Popes and
Civilization, has clearly shown the social role played by the Church
at that time. He writes : " The Church at that epoch answered
all the needs of society; she set in order the disorganized Empire;
she substituted order for a state of anarchy It was by enter-
ing into the very life of the people that she conquered them. The
men of that day did not regard her merely as a consoler, who
promised them another life to offset their present misery, and to
appease their desire of happiness. She was not exclusively a guide
54 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW [April,
to a good death. On the contrary, the Church, while telling
men that they did not live by bread alone, saw to it that they had
bread enough to eat."
St. Ambrose, the counsellor of the young Emperor Gratian,
and the author of a treatise on Roman law, certainly inspired the
legislation of the emperor with the Christian spirit, and later on
by bringing the Emperor Theodosius to his knees, was indirectly
responsible for the changes in the Roman law made by him after he
had fulfilled his penance.
Third Period. The Christianizing of the Roman law reached
its full development under the Emperor Justinian in the sixth
century. The Corpus Juris Civilis has been compared to the Bible
for its influence on the history of Christian civilization. The law
codified by Justinian was essentially different from the law set
forth by the jurisconsults of the first three centuries. It was pro-
mulgated in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and under the
auspices of God; it spoke plainly of divine providence and of the
sovereign Trinity; the imprint of the Gospel teaching was evident
on nearly every page. Justinian was not a mere compiler of the old
Roman law; he was in a true sense a legislator, who wished to
breathe a new spirit into the pagan code of the old classic juris-
consults. Despite its technical perfection, the pagan code knew
nothing of the piety, humanity, and benignity which characterized
the Justinian code ; its crude individualism was utterly alien to the
Christian idea of charity and brotherly love, and the Christian
notion of the paramount importance of the general interests and the
common good.
The first reform to which we call attention is the change in
the very notion of right. The Romans had as a maxim: qui
suo jure utitur neminem ladit. Justinian changed this, so that in
future no one could exercise a right which necessarily implied any
injury to his neighbor. The old idea of the sovereign being exempt
from all law (princeps legibus solutus est) ceased with the Gospel.
We find the Emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. pro-
claiming humbly in 429 : " The dignity of the sovereign requires
him to acknowledge that he is subject to law. Our power is
nothing else than the power of the law; it is much nobler to sub-
mit to the law than to command others to obey it. Our aim in the
present edict, therefore, is to make others know what we forbid
ourselves doing." The same principle is voiced by the Emperors
Leo and Anthemius : " A good prince," they say, " believes that
1914.] CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW 55
he can do only what is allowed to individual citizens; and, if
he is liberal, he wishes to be so according to law," etc.
The imperial constitutions of the Lower Empire insist upon
the divine origin of sovereignty, and teach unequivocally the re-
ligious and social duties of the government. They look upon
authority as a sacred deposit, which the prince is bound to use
for the good of the people and the benefit of the weak. They
are very much concerned about having the laws of the State
and the laws of the Church agree. They trace the origin of
the civil laws to the disobedience of men to the laws of God.
It is not at all surprising, therefore, to find the first ele-
ments of social polity in the Roman law of the Lower Empire.
We call especial attention to the legislation regarding the Sunday
rest, inaugurated by Constantine and continued by his successors;
the regulation of the brutal law of supply and demand through the
arbitration of the bishops; the first attempts at State help in the
matter of hospitals, free medical services, etc. Under the old
Roman law a slave was a thing not a person, to be classed with
horses, cows, mules, etc. Under the influence of Christianity, he
became a person with certain well-defined rights. While the
Church did not abolish slavery directly, she taught principles,
like the equality of all men in the sight of God and Christ Jesus,
which eventually drove it out of the Christian commonwealth.
Constantine was the first to decree that the master who killed
his slave was guilty of murder; he forbade a master to expose
the children of slaves; he forbade the cold-blooded separation
of the members of a slave's family; he permitted laymen to set
their slaves free in the presence of the priest in Church, and
clerics to enfranchise them without any formality whatever. Jus-
tinian in like manner passed many laws in their favor. He abol-
ished all the old restrictions of the laws Fufia Caninia, ^Elia
Sentia, and Junta regarding enfranchisement, and did away
with the social inferiority which hitherto had characterized them;
they were to have a liberty " pure, spotless, and perfect." He
prohibited non-Catholics from possessing Christian slaves; he
abolished the sen'itus pcena, which reduced criminals to slavery,
and the law of Claudian which punished with slavery a free-
woman who had immoral relation with a slave; he settled the
old controversy about the freeing of a slave who belonged to
different masters. Leo the Philosopher freed the man who had
sold himself into slavery under false pretenses, and safeguarded
5 6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW [April,
the marriage of a slave and a free person. Alexis Comnenus
made it easy for a slave to obtain his freedom even against his
master's will, and recognized the validity of their marriages.
The Church had fought for the indissolubility of the mar-
riage bond by the clear explicit teaching of her Fathers and the
censures of her Councils. " Different are the laws of Csesar and
the laws of Christ; different the teaching of Papinian and of St.
Paul," writes St. Jerome, apropos of the divorce permitted by
the Roman law. Not content with condemning divorce, the
Church did her utmost to make the State declare in favor of
the indissolubility of marriage. The Council of Mileve, for ex-
ample, demanded of the emperor new legislation on marriage,
which would be more conformable to the teaching of the Gospel.
Constantine limited the number of legal causes for divorce, and his
example was followed by succeeding emperors like Theodosius and
Justinian.
We may mention in passing many other reforms passed under
the inspiration of the Gospel teaching. The Christian emperors
protected the rights of children of a first marriage when the
father married again ; they frowned down upon illegitimacy ; they
protected children against the parental despotism of the old Roman
law; they abolished the old pagan laws enacted to discourage celi-
bacy; they accorded to the widow a fourth of her deceased hus-
band's property; they favored pious foundations and works of
charity; they mitigated the severity of the prisons, and abolished
some of the harshest penalties, etc., etc.
A final chapter of M. Boucaud's treatise deals with St. Greg-
ory the Great and the Christian idea of riches. St. Gregory has
been rightly styled the founder of mediaeval Christian Europe, and
the founder of the Church's canon law. Non-Catholic historians
like Dudden consider him one of the most notable figures in
ecclesiastical history. He says of him : " He has exercised in many
respects a momentous influence To him we must look for an
explanation of the religious situation of the Middle Ages ; indeed,
if no account were taken of his work, the evolution of the form of
mediaeval Christianity would be almost inexplicable." We are not
concerned here with his liturgical reforms, his missionary activity,
his political foresight, or his fostering of monasticism. We merely
call attention to his social influence as one of the richest landowners
of the period. In his time the total area of the States of the
Church were from thirteen hundred to eighteen hundred square
1914.] CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN LAW 57
miles, and the income he derived from them was about $1,500,000.00
a year. As his biographer John the Deacon put it, " the Church had
become the granary of the world." He had agents everywhere, in
Italy, Gaul, Africa, Corsica, Sicily, and Dalmatia, who rendered
an account to him regularly of every modius of corn and every
solidus paid by his farmers. He tells the bishops of his time that
" they were to be responsible not only for the salvation of souls,
but for the temporal good of all the people under their charge."
In all his letters he continually speaks of this vast property as the
patrimony of the poor, and urges his agents never to augment their
revenue at the expense of the poor. The bishops are to divide their
income into four parts : First, for the maintenance of the bishop's
house and the requirements of hospitality; second, for the clergy;
third, for the poor, and, fourth, for the upkeep of the churches.
Nothing was too small to escape his notice. We find him writing
about the wages of the shepherds, the selling and breeding of cattle,
the injustice of some of his officers towards the peasants, colonists,
and slaves, the wickedness of burdensome rents and usury, etc.
Ever and always he is, as Pope Pius X. calls him in his encyclical
Jucunda sane, " the defender of social justice," or as John the
Deacon put it, " the prudentissimus paterfamilias Christi"
His teaching on riches is scattered throughout his homilies,
his letters, his morals, and his liber pastoralis euro;. In the first
place, he sets forth in eloquent words the mystic beauty of poverty,
and denounces most vehemently the avarice of the proud rich.
He next defends the lawfulness of private ownership. He tells us
not to confound private ownership with the love of riches. One
can be rich without being attached to the goods of this life, although
the true Christian must ever be detached in spirit. We read of his
protest to the empress against injustice done to owners of property
in Corsica and Sardinia, and his defence of the Jews against the
anti-Semitism of his time. Lastly, he never fails to insist upon the
duties of the rich man towards the poor. Almsgiving is a rigorous
obligation, which our Lord has sanctioned by an everlasting reward.
In a striking passage of his morals (xxi., 19), he says that "the poor
are not the clients of the rich, but the rich are the mystical clients
of the poor, depending upon the friendship to attain eternal life."
The only reproach ever made to Pope Gregory, was that he emptied
the treasury of the Church by his excessive benefactions. This
is proof enough that he carried out his principles in practice.
Space does not allow us to mention an excellent chapter on the
58 HE LOVED THEM TO THE END [April,
first elements of Christian law in Lactantius, or the brief but careful
introduction which speaks of the present teaching of Roman law in
the universities, and its value from the standpoint of apologetics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Sumner-Mayne. Etudes sur I'Histoire du Droit.
Beach. Le Droit Civil en Amerique.
Demangeat. Cours de Droit Romain.
Carusi. Diritto Romano e Patristica.
Riccobono. Cristianesimo e Diritto Private.
Ferrini. Storia delle fonti del Diritto Romano.
Baviera. Concetto e Limiti dell' Influenza del Cristianesimo sul
Diritto Romano.
Lactantius. Institutiones Divince.
Rivalta. Diritto Romano e Positivo.
De Broglie. L'glise et I'Empire Romain au IV. Siecle.
Claudio Jannet. Les Grandes poques de I'Histoire conomique.
Godefroy Kurth. Les Origines de la Civilisation Moderne.
Ozanam. Melanges.
Ozanam. Histoire de la Civilisation au, V. Siecle.
Troplong. L'Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit Civil des Remains.
Herve-Bazin. Les Grandes Journees de la Chretiente.
Edouard Cuq. Les Institutions Juridiques des Romains.
Goyau. Le Vatican, les Popes et la Civilisation.
Ihering. Histoire du Develop pement du Droit Romain.
Allard. Les Esclaves Chretiens.
Dudden. St. Gregory the Great.
HE LOVED THEM TO THE END.
BY T. J. S.
HE went with those He loved to that last feast,
And there as Priest
Bestowed Himself, the heavenly priceless Dole,
To every hungering soul.
He hung, our one effective Prayer,
Braving the Rood's despair,
And willingly Love's fullest gift did give
That we might live.
THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH AND THE SON OF GOD.
BY AUSTIN O'MALLEY.
" Conal Cearnach, as we see in the Book of the Death of the Wrestlers, the
most celebrated champion at Jerusalem 'of all those of every nation that was
under the sun,' was there when Christ died, and brought home an account
thereof." Ogygia, Part III., chap, xlviii.
CEARNACH, son of Amergin, son of Cas,
of the Clanna Rudhraighe, a cousin of Cuchullain
of Muirthemne himself (whose mother Dechtire was
a woman of the Clanna Rudhraighe), went far and
wide over all the seas of Mannanan mac Lir with
the Irish hunger of wandering upon him. He sailed out from under
the Cruachan Aigle on the Cuan Modha of Connacht in a black
longship of the Men of Aicill and Umhall, and for a year he
raided the coasts of the four quarters of the world, and he
filling the belly of the ship with red gold and beautiful weapons,
the way the oarsmen were hard put to find room for the swing of
the well-hewn ashen sweeps.
Ailill Dubh, son of ^Engus Fionn, King of Connacht, was
pilot, and he the best pilot of a longship in Ireland in his time;
and he drove her beyond the land of Italy, and the land of Greece,
and the land of Troy itself, until he slid on through the gray
manes of the waves to the coast of the Jews of Jerusalem.
The morning they drew nigh that coast, at the prow of the ship
stood Ailill Dubh, and he a big, sea-reddened man, without blem-
ish; straight as a rush on a still evening, the naked hairy arms
of him thick as the arms of Culin the smith. Gold serpents on
him at his knotted wrists ; a white tunic shot with crimson threads
on him; a wide- folding purple sea cloak, clasped with a chief's
brooch, falling behind him to the deck; a skean belt with gold
buckles studded with emeralds around him; the skean hilt of the
bloodstone; a gold torque about his neck, and the neck itself as
strong as the neck of the Dun Bull of Cuailgne; silver network
sandals upon him ; around his long black hair a band of red gold,
and it with a great ruby in the front of it. The dry salt from the
sea scud of the night past was like frost on his head, and he stand-
ing there, with powerful legs apart, the way he could steady himself
and hear the chant of the lead-caster sounding the shoaling sea.
60 THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH [April,
It is not the Men of the Clann Huamoir were at the sweeps,
but Gentiles were manacled two and two, and they picked up along
the ridge of the world; slaves of Numidia, Africa, Libya, and
Egypt; and the skin on the naked backs of many of them black
and glistening like the water of a bog itself, and the dark hair on
their heads like the short wool on a ram. It is how the Men of the
Clann Huamoir were there, and they, standing silent along the
waist of the ship watching the towers of the city of Japho, were lift-
ing from the gray rim of the sea against the dawn of day. Aloft
the winds of the morning sang in the shrouds, and the great sail,
striped crimson and white, boomed and it bosoming toward the land
of the Jews, and the long pennant quivered and cracked like the
whips of the chariot drivers, and the white spume went up like
dust before the race horses at Tara under the forefoot of the leap-
ing ship, and the dawn dripping red from the slant wings of the
following gulls.
And through the leathern curtains of the af terdeck came Len-
dabair, the daughter of Eochaidh, and she the wife of Conal Cear-
nach himself; and beside her his great white wolfhound Ossar, a
gold torque like a chief's around his shaggy neck, and the shoulders
on him up at her girdle. And Lendabair's coming was like the
rising of the horned moon over the shoulder of Muilrea; and her
walking the trembling of the meadow of the sea in a night of June,
and it powdered with flowers of stars ; and the smile on her comely
face was the veer and flare of violets in April; and the rustling of
her garments was the hushing of the soft rain in the hills ; and the
voice of her the memory of a blackbird's whistle above the graves of
our dead, and it in the wrung heart of an exiled woman of Ireland.
A crimson cloak she had, and a film of impearled lace over it
like dewy gossamer threads on a blown rose, and it clasped by a
strap of great sapphires ; and she had on her a robe of soft silk of
the color of young wheat, with a long hood embroidered in dull
gold; and a zone of square topazes, and they shimmering. Two
plaits of hair she had down to her knees, four locks in each plait,
and a jewel at the end of every lock; and the color of her hair was
like the yellow flame of a torch in the night. The hands of her
were new snow under a full moon; her eyes were two blue pools
quivering beneath a sky of August; when she set her foot on the
ground it was as if one dropped a white lily forgotten; her heart
was like a young mother of Ireland, and she crooning over her first
babe.
1914.] THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH 61
Down through the ship she walked, like a good thought coming
into the soul, and the fighting men knelt as she passed, and it is
what she said, laughing like the golden bells on the riders of the
Sidhe : " The gods bless ye all, my brothers of the Clann Huamoir !"
And she came to Ailill Dubh, the son of ^Engus Fionn, and he
watching the sky line, and it is what she said : " The gods bless your
work, Ailill, son of yEngus."
And the steel of his eyes softened, and it is what he said:
"The light of the gods toward me and yourself in it!" And
he knelt, and lifted her small white hand on the back of his great
fingers (and they good fingers on any spear haft), and touched it
with his lips, and the red blood lifted under the sea tan on his fine
face. Then Ailill rose up like the mast in a rolling galley. Ossar
the hound swished his great tail, and nuzzled the Prince's patting
hand.
A moment later, down the ship over all the sea sounds, as you
could hear it in the din of battle, came the belling voice of Conal
the Victorious, and it is what he shouted : " The gods bless all
here!"
The great hero, and bright candle of the Gael, came striding
down between the files of the clansmen, and the light of dawn upon
him. A very fair man, as tall as a lance, bareheaded, with a yellow
lion's mane of hair on him ; the laugh of him like the roar of the
summer tide coming up the Bay of Donegal, and the blue eyes of
him glittering like the blade of a swung battle-axe. A tunic of
cloth-of-gold on him, sleeveless, and all embroidered with red silk
and red gems beyond counting, and the big muscles rippling under
it; his sandle straps hidden under plates of thin gold; his skean
belt a wide pliant serpent of wrought gold, and it taken from a
chief of Carthage in battle; the hilt of his skean was covered
with smooth chrysophrase, and one great sapphire for the pommel
of it. A fine man surely, and with the sling he was the best shot
in Ireland in his time, and he using always balls made of his ene-
mies' brains hardened with lime. It was how with one of these
he so broke the skull of King Conchobhar mac Nessa, that all the
leeches from the four quarters of Ireland, and Cathbhar the druid
himself, could not mend it, and Conchobhar went down to drift
in the wind on the frozen plain of hell.
Conal Cearnach came to Lendabair his wife, and she smiling
up to him and the Irish love in her blue eyes. He put his big
sword arm about her, and it is what he said : " A cuisle mo chroidhe,
62 THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH [April,
to me the May comes back each day, and I seeing your comely
face ! " And to Ailill Dubh it is what he said : " A chara, the light
of the gods toward me and yourself in it. Is that the land of the
illustrious Jews of Jerusalem? "
" It is, Conal, son of Amergin, but now the Men of Rome do be
lords in it."
" The Black Worm mend those same Men of Rome, Ailill, and
they trampling over the cities of the world do you think could we
raid the town, and it rising fair before us? By the oath of my
people, it is good spoil would be in it."
" It is well you know we could not, Conal, with one ship's
crew; but we shall land in it, and go up to the city of Jerusalem
itself they told us of in the land of Egypt, and see the wonderful
temple is in it, the way we can be making stories of it at home in
the long winter nights, and we playing at the chess. After we see
that same it is how we may be able to lift what cattle we need, the
gods willing, and put out to sea again before the gathering of their
clans."
When the sun was mast high they let fall the anchor off Jopha.
Conal Cearnach, Ailill son of JEngus, Lendabair the Fair, and half
the ship's crew, went ashore in the corachs; and they going up on
the quay of Jopha, who should they see standing there but a cen-
turion of the Men of Rome, a big red man, and on his target was
a star of eight points for a device. And Conal Cearnach it is what
he said : " Ailill, I know that target and I seeing the like of it long
ago in southern Alban : the man is from one of the Athach Tuatha,
and there do be some of them in the army of the Men of Rome."
Conal drew nigh to the centurion and it is what he said : " The
gods increase you, brave soldier ! "
The centurion started, and his face lighted up with a laugh at
the sound of the Gaelic speech in a strange land. He lifted high the
hand of friendship, and it is what he said : " The light of the gods
toward me and yourself in it, great Prince from beyond the ridge
of the world. A hundred thousand welcomes ! "
That same day they started toward Jerusalem, the Atticot cen-
turion with them, and he the road finder and the bladaire or spokes-
man; for it is how the Jews were an uneducated people in the
Gaelic speech, though friendly they were long ago to our Progenitor
Gaedhel himself, and he bit by a serpent near the River Nile.
Lendabair rode a white Arab mare of Jopha, with a footfall
like a maiden's, and the clansmen marched about her. Conal Gear-
1914.] THE SAGA OF CONAL C EARN AC H 63
nach, Ailill Dubh, with the Atticot centurion between them, and he
called Conn Ruadh, son of Inderc, rode before the men; and each
chief's Giolla Mor marched beside him, carrying the javelins and the
shield. Conal's Giolla bore the great shield Lam-Tapaid itself,
and it red, all speckled with rivets of white bronze among plates
of figured gold, dinted and battered in a hundred fights.
It is how they let the road from them and they swaying up the
coast with their spearheads rippling, until they came to the mouth
of a glen called the Valley of Sorek; and they went up the glen
to the east until the fall of night, when they pitched their camp in
a grassy place by a wayside well. The spring night was chill, and a
campfire crackled before a small tent the centurion had sent ahead
for Lendabair the Fair. It is how Conal and Ailill laughed at her
and they seeing the tent, and it is what she said :
" By the round moon, Conn Ruadh, son of Inderc, did you
think me a woman of the Romans; that the dews of night would
harm me, and myself going out of the Dun of Taillten in Meath
after the stags since I was a cailin in fosterage there big enough to
sit the back of a pony from the Northern Isles? The white stars
will be my coverlet this night, the gods bless you all the same ! "
And they sat about the fire telling tales of bygone days, of
Baile and Ailinn that died for love, of the Land of Moy Mell
incomparable in its haze, and of good battles the gods sent them,
till the sleep fell on them.
Now, at the middle watch of the night, a man of the Clann
Huamoir, a near cousin of Ailill, son of -dingus Fionn, and he a
sentinel, came in near the fire, and the face of him was pale and
troubled, and the brow of him wet with cold sweat. He touched
Ailill Dubh on the shoulder, and Ailill arose and followed him be-
yond the camp. And it is what Ailill said wondering : " By the
oath of my people, Flann Abradh, son of Airmeadach, your face
is pale, and I never saw that sight before! What is it, a chara? "
And it is what Flann said : " Ailill, son of ^ngus, three times
this night I heard the keen of dark Raghnailt our Bean Sidhe!
Death is in it, or foul fortune ! "
And he saying this, out of the dusky bare hills came again
the slow ghostly caoine, curdling the blood in the two men : " Mo
bhron! Oh! Oh! Oh!" And above them drifting across the
face of the round moon they saw the Bean Sidhe herself, her rai-
ment hanging straight down, her head bent back, the long black
hair trailing, the naked arms stretched above her head, and her
64 THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH [April,
ghastly face turned to the sky. She floated to the east and faded
into the hollow hills.
Ailill Dubh sighed long like a spent swimmer coming out of
the bitter sea, and he went back with bowed head, and sat down
by the fire. He stared into it, and it is not a word he spoke.
He was there a long time, and he silent as a man dead, when came
walking in swiftly toward the fire Dubhdara, son of Feilimidh, the
Giolla Mor of Conal Cearnach, and the face of him white like
Flann's, and he touched Conal, and the Prince opened his eyes.
Dubhdara beckoned, and Conal slipped his arm from under the
head of Lendabair, and rose up and followed the Giolla. Ailill
too went out after them. And beyond the camp it is what Conal
Cearnach said : " By the oath of my people, Dubhdara, son of
Feilimidh, your face is pale, and I never saw that sight before!
What is it, a charaf "
And it is what Dubhdara said : " Conal, son of Amergin, three
times this night I heard the keen of Orla our Bean Sidhe! Death
is in it, or foul fortune ! " And he saying this, there again across
the moon they, and Ailill Dubh with them, saw Orla drifting, as
dark Raghnailt drifted, and she keening slow and bitterly: "Mo
bhron! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Then out of the hollow of the hills came Raghnailt again,
and the two ghosts sank down together near the wayside, and
they stopped there in the air three lance lengths from the princes,
and you could see the rocks dimly through their bodies. " Oh!
Oh! Oh!" They keened again, and the sorrow of all women
dead in their crying, until the tawny fell of hair on the head of
Conal rose up.
Then he started, and shivered, and his color came back again.
" Och ! " he grunted, like one with a bitter herb in his mouth,
and it is what he said, talking to himself : " Now by all the gods
of Ireland, this is strange ! " And to the ghosts it is what he said,
snarling : " What would ye, ye hags of hell ? " And the two
javelins in his hand rattled on the rim of Lam-Tapaid like the
chattering of a frozen man's teeth.
And it is what the ghosts answered and they wailing, wailing :
" Mo bhron! Mo bhron! The Son of God will die to-morrow ! "
And with that the two banshees faded into one thin wisp of mist
and floated away to the east. Ailill leaned on his spear and stared
after the mist, and Conal sank down on the stones and looked
steadily at the ground, and he not seeing it.
1914.] THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH 65
Presently Conal sighed, and seeing Ailill Dubh he rose from
the earth, and it is what he said : " What does it all mean, Ailill? "
" What can they mean, Conal ? 'The Son of God will die
to-morrow' the son of what god? And if the son of some god
dies itself, what is that to us, or to the banshees of our clans?"
They went back silently to the camp, and they found Conn
Ruadh and all the clansmen there standing to their arms, but Len-
dabair asleep. Conal raised his right hand in the moonlight, and
the men stole away and wrapped themselves in their cloaks again
for sleep.
Conal and Ailill sat by the embers awhile, and it not a word they
spoke. Suddenly Ailill fell into a rage, and it is how he swore:
" Conal, by the beard of Manannan, the god of the sea, it is a
woman a banshee is anyhow, and living or dead some women are the
fools of the world ! And it is with the talk of fools our banshees
came startling the souls out of our bodies, the spectres in all the
gales of hell fly away with them ! It is how they have some gossip
from the dead and it crooked ! "
And he flung his sea-brat over his shoulders, and pulled the
cowl over his head ; then he lay down, and dropped off in sleep like
a child. Conal sat there watchful until the moon sank, and the sky
flared saffron and vermilion, and the chill dawn broke sadly.
In the early morning they began to put the road from them
again, and toward midday they came up on the ridge of a hill, and
they saw to the east the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem,
and the sun glinting on them. Soon they could see a multitude of
people swarming just without the walls to the north of what Conn
Ruadh said was the Damascus Gate.
As they went onward the day began to turn of a saffron cok>r;
the wind arose, and brown storm clouds gathered and swirled in
from the northwest. Great levin strokes smashed into the hills,
and the thunder cracked and rumbled. The horses whinnied and
pranced, and the clansmen shook out their cowled brats. The day
darkened to twilight, and Ailill Dubh looking up to the sky, it is
what he cried : " Look, Conal, something black like a target is
sliding over the face of the sun ! "
No drop of rain fell, but the wind began to howl in a great
gale from the west, and it uprooting the olive and fig trees by the
wayside. The horses reared and plunged, and Conal and Ailill
dismounted and lifted Lendabair from her saddle. Blacker and
blacker grew the day, until the city disappeared in the murk, and
VOL. XCIX. 5
66 THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH [April,
the dark target left but a rim of the sun burning, and it like a cres-
cent moon all covered with blood. Then a horrible roaring noise
came from under the earth, and the road itself began to shiver
and heave like the deck of a longship, and it in a southwest gale off
Aran, and slices from the hills slid down to the valleys, grinding
and booming.
Shoulder to shoulder the clansmen stood near a line of tombs
by the wayside awaiting the end of the world, and the heads of the
men uplifted and steady, and they silent. The earth lay still again
like a fear-smitten beast, as if the great Mole of Hell beneath it
had passed on, and the wind fell suddenly. The rain lashed them,
and heavy hail rattled on the targets. Then a blinding levin bolt
ripped open every tomb before them, and the splintered stones cut
their faces.
Out of the cracks in the flags rose a gray mist, and this mist
turned into shapes of men and women and children floating in the
air. Men clothed like kings and crowned were there, and soldiers
in harness, and wan babes, and maidens without blood in them.
And they drifted away toward the city of Jerusalem through the
swinging of the dim rain.
Then Conal Cearnach and Ailill Dubh, and Lendabair, and all
the clansmen, saw the banshees Orla and Raghnailt again floating
over the riven tombs, arid it is what they were keening : "Mo bhron!
Oh! Oh! The Son of God and He dying this day ! " And they
too drifted away toward the city of Jerusalem through the swinging
of the dim rain; and the heads of the clansmen uplifted and steady,
and they silent awaiting the end of the world.
Then the Men of Ireland put Lendabair within their square,
like Deirdre of the Sorrows and she leaving the Red Branch House,
and Conal Cearnach and Ailill Dubh before them with gray faces,
began again to put the road from them, and they marching toward
the city of Jerusalem, not knowing what other thing to do. At
last they could see a light of a house burning within the city walls,
and they came to a low bare hill, and a faint strange glow on its
crest. They went stumbling up toward the top of this hill, and the
stooping clouds came about them on a moaning wind, and the wind
thick with the shrieking of ghosts. When they set foot on the top
of the hill they found there the body of a big Man, and He gibbeted
on a cross what way the Men of Rome do kill slaves and Gentiles,
and the strange glow came from the body of the Man on the cross.
The weeds were trampled flat before the cross, and brown
I9I4-] THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH 67
skulls of men lay among the weeds, and the ribs of corpses stuck
up from the grass. There was a stench in the place like would
come from a pile of enemies' heads a week after a battle. To the
right-hand-wise and the left-hand-wise of the crucified Man loomed
dim, shadowy forms, but the Irish could not make out whether these
were trees or other gibbets. Now and then a long hideous cry of
pain shot out like the thrust of a knife from the shadowy things
to the left-hand-wise.
A long line of ghosts floated between them and the crucified
Man, and the ghosts were raimented like the old kings of Ireland,
and each one as he passed adored the Man on the cross. You could
see the cross through their bodies, and they making the procession
of the kings.
A tall woman within the circle of faint light, and she standing
there with her back to Conal Cearnach and his men, was staring at
the figure on the cross. Her cloak had fallen from her head ; there
was a white wimple over her hair, and it speckled with blood.
Near her, he sitting on the ground, was a young man of the Jews
dazed with the grief and fear. A maiden, she still as death, lay
stretched on the ground, her face hid on her bent arm.
The big Man on the cross was naked, except for a bloody rag
around the waist of Him. Outside the rag, sunk into it, were four
turns of a hempen rope binding Him to the upright post. A broad-
headed spike of iron, and it through His palm, clamped each hand
to the arms of the cross as a joiner would nail block to block, and
a like spike through each foot. The bones of the ankle were bare
where the hammer-head had torn the flesh, and it slipping when
the executioner was driving in the wet nail.
It is not dead the Man was but alive. Now and then His eyes
would open slowly and show the ghastly whites, and His blood
dripped steadily. When the wind stopped the blood could be heard,
and it dripping, dripping. Long bronze colored hair He had, and it
matted with mud and blood. A cap of woven twigs, with narrow
thorns as long as a woman's little finger, was on His head, beaten
down into the scalp; and one thorn lay dark under the skin of
His forehead from the edge of His hair down to the left eye,
and you could see it plainly with the light coming from His head.
The reddish beard on Him was torn out in large bunches, and the
bare places were black and raw. The lips of Him were swollen,
cracked, and black with caked blood. Two slow streams of blood
ran from His nostrils, and the shut eyes were sunken. The body
68 THE SAGA OF CONAL CEARNACH [April,
from neck to heel, arms and legs and all, was cut by whip wheals,
except a narrow line down the middle of His chest and belly. The
fingers were spread, curved inward, and fixed in a cramp. On the
calf of the left leg were bloody teeth marks.
Anon His chest would heave, and a quick, creeping shudder
would run over the entire body, and the cross would shake. The
head was slanted backward, and about two palm breadths above it
was a board, with bloody finger marks along its edges, nailed to the
upright beam. There was writing on it, but Conal or Ailill could
not understand the writing.
A broad reddish-brown streak of glazed blood was on the
cross, and it flowing along the upright post from His feet to the
ground. Like streaks went down the lower edge of each arm of
the Man, past the armpits, down the whip-cut sides, and they
soaked into the waist rag. A line of blood was on the weeds under
the arms of the cross. Blood was everywhere, and it dropped,
smeared, spattered, spurted, like in a shambles, and the chill wind
thickening the blood. When the wind shifted the Iris.h could smell
the blood, and Lendabair would crouch behind the Lam-Tapaid on
Conal's arm.
Back in the shadows a big guard of the soldiers of Rome leaned
on their lances, and they fretting and shuffling their feet like a
reserve line in a battle. Conn Ruadh went over to the centurion
of the guard, and spoke to him in the speech of the Romans, and it
is what he said : "What Man is this ye are butchering like a brute?"
And the centurion with a troubled face looking from under his
helmet, it is what he said : " The fear is on me, friend, that this
Man is the Son of God ! "
And Conn Ruadh ran back, and put Gaelic for Conal and Ailill
on what the Roman said. Then Conal Cearnach remembered the
keen of the banshees. He lifted his casting spear, and shouted to
the clansmen : " Brothers, it is the Son of God is in it, and they
killing Him ! Cut down that guard, and we will take Him from the
gibbet." The Irish leaped into a battle front, and the soldiers of
Rome stared at them with mouth open, and lances held bewildered.
" Charge! " shouted Conal, but with the word the earth lifted,
the Black Mole of Hell heaving and grinding beneath them, and
they were flung to the ground.
The Man on the cross straightened His head, and cried out
with a terrible voice, giving the hero shout, and then He died.
And the head of Him hung outward limp.
VENICE.
BY EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS.
II.
HE first building we enter in Venice should be St.
Mark's, and we return there not once but many
times, for it is the keynote to Venetian art and color.
We must look at it in all sorts of ways; for its
artistic beauty, its historical interest, its living sig-
nificance. We must sit in it until we feel at home. We dream of
its past; we attend great ceremonials, and consider them also from
varying points of view. The weight of centuries is upon it, and
ages of lives have gone to its making.
The Venetians brought back from Constantinople the vision of
Santa Sophia, but they did not dare to reproduce its grand dome
upon their shifting soil, so they created five small domes, which
break into pinnacles and curves and delicate spires. Five hundred
columns of porphyry, verd-antique, and serpentine bind and sup-
port the facades. Everywhere are fantastic plaques and bronzes,
Saracenic gates and golden gleams, and a prodigality of ornament
and fanciful design. It is impossible to imagine a more wonderful
floor than the undulating marble pavement of St. Mark's. It is
impossible to imagine more wonderful color than that dim and
tawny radiance; color struggling through a mist, which seems
as much of the air as of the material. The hazy light constitutes
a scheme of chiaroscuro of unrivalled mellowness, richness, and
power. The spoil of the temples of ancient gods -has furnished
forth its columns and marbles. "That golden church," bursts
forth Contarini, the strange and learned dreamer who wrote in the
cinque-cento, " built by the eternal gods for our protector, St.
Mark."
It is a new sensation in a lifetime to wander in St. Mark's, to
linger at this or that angle, feasting our eyes upon the gleaming
arches ; the broad translucent slabs of marble with which the wide
walls are faced; the rosy-brown of the columns; the radiance of
the golden lamps which tremble before the mysterious shrines; the
strange dim figures that shine out of the gloom. High Mass goes
on in the choir behind the great wrought iron barrier. In a side
chapel a priest offers Mass, at which are a few devout persons;
7 o VENICE [April,
tourists walk about with guide-books ; guides chatter their monoto-
nous information; women draped in black lace; old people with
handkerchiefs tied over their heads kneel before the Blessed Sacra-
ment in rapt unconsciousness. And all takes place in that atmos-
phere of deep, swarthy, half -melancholy richness, which is the
note of Eastern color. Its whole scheme indeed is oriental in feel-
ing, and is overlaid by the splendors of the East, for St.
Mark's was built by Greeks, Greeks of Byzantium, who in that
Eastern colony had become impregnated with Saracenic and Ara-
bian feeling, who had assimilated it in their own way, and who came
to Venice to do for the Eastern ideal of color what in past ages
Greeks had done for the Western ideal of form. Wherever mosaic
became Western it was used in a decorative manner; that is, the
building was planned and mosaics were superimposed as a sort of
picture effect, but in St. Mark's there is a structural use of mosaic
as opposed to the decorative ideal. Here is achieved a great
oriental ideal of an interior moulded out of solid gold, and studded
with groups and figures in smoldering crimsons and dull blues,
giving a color of which the West had not dreamed. On this
thought the Greeks have based their whole plan: architraves and
cornices, pilasters and friezes have all been swept aside.
The new style only uses curved and rounded forms, forms in
fact which would be rather squat and even clumsy if it were not
for their color effect. The builder seems to work in a rich,
auriferous paste. The exact and angular features of architecture
are exchanged for low, heavy domes of immense depth and pon-
derous solidarity. The arches of St. Mark seem like caverns delved
out of the solid earth, and the bright light is toned down to a
solemn twilight, in keeping with the effects of rich color. These
huge curves of ruddy or glowing gold, these dusky marble slabs,
open our eyes to a scheme of Eastern color, compared to which
Western tints appear thin and garish. Bit by bit we examine the
details of the great treasure house; the mosaic is of various
periods, the sweet, ascetic Madonna upon the southern wall, the
wonderful Pala d'Oro behind the high altar, with the series which
Paolo da Venezia painted on it when it was restored in the four-
teenth century. We attend solemn ceremonies, and from a gallery
follow the progress of a procession; greens and crimsons, cream
brocades and golden embroidered banners, sweeping down the aisles
and gleaming through the arches, and we always come back to muse
and dream in an environment in which thought seems stilled, and
emotion and feeling draw life under their spell.
1914.] VENICE 71
The emotional feelings which are induced by the great Byzan-
tine Cathedral, find an outlet in the city's art. Venice alone, among
the Italian cities, has given birth to a group of artists equal in
power and splendor, equal too, in independent completeness and
maturity, to the great Florentine group of cinquo-centists. The
early stages of Venetian painting were directed from the mainland,
and were rather the prelude to the outburst of the Venetian style
proper than an integral part of it. What we mean when we speak
of Venetian painting is not the work of the Vivarini, of Carpaccio,
of Cima, of Gentile Bellini, hardly even of his greater brother,
Giovanni, rather what we mean is that new style, unlike anything
that had preceded it, that lustre of color, that richer sense of
chiaroscuro, that fused and golden manner, which though it may
have been introduced through the agency of Giorgione, yet we feel
owes its origin not to the effort of any individual genius, but to
the national life and character and the Eastern impulses which there
at length found expression. There are beings in most great cre-
ative epochs who seem to embody the purpose and tendency of their
age, and yield themselves ready instruments to its design. When
like a hidden spring, Venetian art bubbles irresistibly to the sur-
face, Giorgione represented the deep impulse with which it burst
into the light. We may then for a brief interval set on one side
the ever delightful Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio and their con-
temporaries, who tell us so much that is fascinating of the life of
their time, as in a fairy tale, and pursue this color of deep and
emotional art as it is illustrated by the most Venetian of all the
artists of the great Republic.
The love of form, the tendency towards form-articulation,
characterizes not Florentine painting only, but the whole of Floren-
tine art. And this passion for form dominated Florentine art
because an analogous and corresponding impulse dominated Flor-
entine life and thought. Florence from the moment she entered
upon the great intellectual movement which she was destined to
lead, set to work to convert painting into an intellectual instrument.
The Florentine cast of thought was scientific and realistic. Its
whole endeavor by which it launched the Renaissance and engen-
dered the modern point of view, was to see things as they are.
Such too was the endeavor and resolve of the typical Florentine
painters. The whole effort of the Florentine mind was towards
exactitude of apprehension, towards definition, in a word, which in
art is the very act of form creation.
The Florentine predilection for form, therefore, tallies with
72 VENICE [April,
all we know of Florentine life. But is there not something equally
characteristic, and that equally belongs to the interior life of this
State, in the Venetian use of color? Is not the emotional and
sensuous appeal which seems inherent in the darkly, glowing Vene-
tian canvasses, the positive contribution of Venice to art? Un-
doubtedly this profound and powerful feeling, as distinguished from
definite thought, does reside in a color-scheme darkened and lit by
chiaroscuro, rather than articulated by form. Clearly there were
Florentines who knew a good deal about color, and Venetians who
knew a good deal about form, but the general drift of Florentine
painting was to control color through the agency of form, and the
general drift and tendency of Venetian painting was to control
form through the agency of chiaroscuro. Color delivered from
the control of form, must lose its share in the intellectual interest
which form embodies, but it stands to gain on the emotional side.
This is the character of Venetian color whether we find it in
St. Mark's or on the canvasses of the later Venetian painters.
The whole life, the whole philosophy of the semi-oriental State,
poured itself into those glowing depths of color, and this is what
is positive in Venetian art.
Up to the time of Giorgione, Venice had fed her sensuous
instincts by pageants and gold, velvets and brocades, but with
Giorgione she discovered that there was a deeper emotional vehicle
than these superficial glories, and Giorgione carried all before him
by giving a direct impression of his sensations in color. We all
know how the shades of evening are able to transform the most
commonplace scene into one of rich and obscure mystery/ making
us feel contemplative and dreamy instead of wide-awake and critical.
The carrying of this profound feeling into a color-scheme by means
of chiaroscuro, is the gift to art which found full voice with
Giorgione. From his time the Venetians gradually worked up their
pictures, imbedding tints, intensifying effects, till the whole rich
harmony was evoked. With the Florentines the background is an
arbitrary addition, placed behind the figures at the painter's leisure,
but in Giorgione's and Titian's concerts, and fetes champetres, the
amber flesh-tints and the glowing garments are so blended with
the deep tones of the landscape that they could not be at all in any
other environment.
Of all the painters who are most definitely indicated in the
manner here described, the one who to an emotional method adds an
imaginative mind, Tintoretto stands foremost. He is less finished,
less suave and accomplished than Titian, but he is more thoroughly
I9I4-] VENICE 73
a Venetian. Titian was perhaps of too intellectual a cast of mind
to be quite typical of the Venetian spirit. It is conceivable that in
another environment he might have developed on rather different
lines, but to Tintoretto the gift of sensuous apprehension, the
crowning glory of the imaginative idea, must always have been of
supreme value. He is the artist of all others, too, who can be
studied only in Venice, where he spent his whole life, so that we
may well follow him from place to place, and make our own the
work of the supreme Venetian, who possessed the power of color
and chiaroscuro, and proved the deep and passionate secrets of
humanity as no other of his school has been able to do.
On some sunny morning let us pass within the lofty halls of
the Ducal Palace, surely one of the most delightful buildings in
existence. It does not lack its dark secrets, but on the whole
it is representative of that same, practical spirit which guided
the public life of Venice. The rose and white chequered marble
of its broad walls, surmounted by silver shafts of parapet, are
supported by that deep arcade that offers shelter and hospitality
at all hours to every comer. The stately stairway of " The Giants "
seems still to await that throng of seigneurial magnificence, those
Doges and Procurators in brocaded mantles and crimson velvet
furred with minever, with which their portraits have made us so
familiar; Titian and Veronese, Tintoretto, Bonifazio, and a host
of lesser lights have covered every inch of walls and ceiling, of
which Sansovino and Palladio and Scamozzi designed the setting.
Nowhere in the world is such a celebration of a city's triumph.
Veronese has incarnated the Queen of the Adriatic as a beautiful
woman, youthful, radiant, enthroned, and crowned by victory.
The fair queen leans back, surrounded by laughing patricians,
who look up from their balconies as if they were attending a re-
gatta on the Grand Canal. The horses of the Free Companions,
the soldiers who go afar to carry out her will, prance among a
crowd, every member of which represents a town or colony of her
domain. The figure of Venice is gentle, yet opulent: she looks
young and loveable for all her splendor. The air circulates freely
through the white architecture and columns bathed in liquid light.
All round are naval combats, the victory of Lepanto, of Zara, of
the Dardanelles. Venice's history is full of conquests over fierce
Dalmatians and the fiercer pirates of the Saracen andAlgerine races,
who waged ceaseless war upon the rich spoils of her fleets. There
seems indeed little reason why Venice should not have become a
Turkish power, another Constantinople, and we still breathe a sigh
74 VENICE [April,
of relief over the exploits of the chivalrous Don John of Austria,
and that grand old sea warrior, Sebastian Venier. The huge sea
fights painted here by Tintoretto and Vincentino acquire a fresh
significance, as we realize what the Moslem terror meant to the
Venetians of that day.
In the Ducal Palace, Tintoretto is the painter who above all
dominates. The official paintings of the old Doges, now presented
to the Madonna of St. Mark, anon assisting at the marriage of St.
Catherine, were perhaps not the most congenial of his commissions,
but he has never let himself go more completely than in the stu-
pendous " Paradise," in which the whole composition is ordered
and disposed in terms of light and shade. He has no need to use the
spacing and outlines of architecture to map out and control the
array of countless figures. It is ordered and disciplined by the
tides of chiaroscuro which roll in and out of the masses the whole
scene is rendered habitable by the shimmer of vibrating air. The
sense of ether prevents the distressing feeling of overcrowding, and
suggests the surrounding of the boundless space, into which the
Blessed can float at will. The whole is framed upon the mystic
Rose of Dante, and follows those concentric circles which are
the poet's unique conception of the scene.
How wide the leaves
Extended to their utmost of this Rose.
The Spirit, the Son and the Mother, the Angels that go all through
the circle every form turning to Christ, as flowers are drawn
by the sun. The Eternal Light streaming through the circles of
the Rose, all are ideas that may be traced in Dante, and that domin-
ate the whole composition. " The Exemplar of Love is the centre
of the Light and Power, and Faith and Divine Charity revolve
forevermore in bliss about the Rose's heart."
It is not only in great wall paintings that Tintoretto excels:
how fully he reveals in that exquisite cycle in the Anti-Collegio
what was the feeling of her sons for Venice. The four are linked
together by their meaning. The call comes to Venice to reign over
the seas, her reign is triumphant, with Wisdom guiding her coun-
cils and keeping Mars at bay, all the beauty and the graces of life
are pressed into her happy service, but underground her soldiers
never cease to forge their weapons, and should she need defending,
they will spring to her side, armed to the teeth.
Tintoretto has never painted anything more gay and tender
than these panels. The thought of Adriadne, desolate and aban-
I9I4-] VENICE 75
doned, and of the god of life and laughter, brought by love to her
rescue, rose in his mind to symbolize Venice wooed by the Adriatic.
He paints the Queen of the Sea with no gorgeous accessories,
no jewels or sumptuous throne. She reigns by right of her own
loveliness, and her crown is God-given, of the stars of heaven.
The lover from the sea brings no costly gifts, but the little ring
which speaks of love and loyalty, and to the Venetian, who loved
the grand spectacle of the Doge going out to wed the Adriatic,
the picture must have spoken as the very soul of all that ceremonial.
The impression of the primitive gifts of life, Love and Beauty,
and the sweet air of land and sea, is accentuated by Veronese's
rendering of the wooing of another goddess which hangs close by.
Europa is a lady of the court. Veronese is preoccupied by the
painting of swishing satins and feathers and laces. The tout en-
semble is as lovely as could be wished, as joyous as a June morning,
but it has neither the large simplicity nor the feeling for youth
of Tintoretto's conception.
No one is so in earnest as Tintoretto, or so well able to thrill
us with imaginative ardor. The various readings of the Last Sup-
per, the subject he has made peculiarly his own, may be traced
from church to church. In the painting in San Polo, the Saviour
gives the Bread of Life, eagerly, generously to all mankind. Tin-
toretto has placed himself in the character of St. Paul, the patron
saint of the church, standing aside in deep contemplation; the
Apostle who was yet not present at the miracle. In San Giorgio
Maggiore the miracle of the gathering of the manna, the Daily
Bread, is contrasted with the Bread eaten to Life everlasting.
The feast goes on, but the supernatural is entering on every side.
"The Light shined in the darkness and the darkness comprehended
it not." A throng of angels pours in through the blue moonlight,
and blends with the glow of the flaming cresset, the lustre of which
pales before the glory which streams from the Head of the Light
of the World, as He pronounces the mystic words of consecration.
We must seek Tintoretto all over Venice: in the Church of
the Madonna dell' Orto, the master's own parish church, in which
he lies buried, and where four of his masterpieces hang, over-
mastering in the flood of destruction of his " Last Judgment,"
the white and lamb-like St. Agnes is contrasted with the dusky
gorgeousness of the Hebrew women, who despoil themselves of
their jewels for the Golden Calf. These are among Tintoretto's
early works, and he already shows that he is past master in the
use of light and shade. He has already discovered that if he would
7 6 VENICE [April,
secure the emotional and sensuous appeal of color, he must soften
down and obscure the intellectual appeal of form. All the Vene-
tians have this gift; it is their trademark, but Tintoretto's mastery
of it is something unique. In his " Presentation in the Temple,"
in this church, the structural setting hardly signifies, as the little
figure, the representative of the New Dispensation, mounts the
stair and confronts the stately representative of the Old. It is
the deep shadows and the golden lights that govern it, that invest
it with its overpowering depth of feeling. Above all, we must seek
Tintoretto in the Scuola di San Rocco, the council halls and offices
of one of those important " schools " or charitable confraternities
in which the Renaissance was so rich. It was founded to succor
the plague-stricken, of whom St. Roch was the patron saint, and
in the two principal halls the painter has left a scheme suggested
by this purpose.
The principal paintings in the upper hall are therefore con-
cerned with works of divine mercy and deliverance, relief from
hunger, from thirst, from pestilence, and even the monochromes
are linked with the central idea. In the refectory which opens
from the Great Hall, the Crucifixion, as the crowning act of mercy,
is surrounded by the events that immediately precede it, and typi-
fied by the lifting up of the brazen serpent. Among the many
wonderful canvases, the " Temptation " is conspicuous. No one
but Tintoretto could have evoked that genius of carnal gratification,
that vision of the flesh that must be fed, which kneels, smiling up,
with little diamond-bright eyes, at the sad Christ, so aloof, so
divided by a great gulf from the heartless, soulless being who has
passed beyond His influence. What pathos, what depth of compre-
hension are revealed in the beautiful " Visitation," where the two
women, brought together by a like experience, clasp one another in
eager trust and protective love. With what lofty majesty Tin-
toretto has invested the Christ, silent before His accusers, a tranquil,
white-robed form, folded in a great calm, standing out like the em-
bodiment of light, against the gloom of the Roman Temple. Long-
est of all we shall linger in that quiet refectory before the great
world-tragedy, compared to which all other renderings seem beside
the mark.
As Ruskin says, " We swim into a sea of light and air," in
the depths of which stupendous events are taking place. Here is
concentrated all conviction of the power and consecration of noble
suffering. The group at the foot of the cross is instinct with lore
and anguish. Its members look up and draw closer together one
I9I4-] VENICE 77
of them, type of future generations of mourners, in her extremity of
woe is feeling for the cross with her hand, and so powerful and
so deeply significant in its mystery and terror is the mighty scheme
of chiaroscuro in which the scene is muffled, so profoundly true to
the emotions of the occasion are the dim and solemn lines which
pervade the gloom, that they seem to open up the very heart of the
subject.
If we work steadily to make the paintings of San Rocco our
own, we shall go away with the possession of a lifetime. We shall
be determined, too, to pursue the painter from one point to another ;
from his splendid old St. Anthony in San Trovaso, to the dim and
murmuring crowd of the Crucifixion in San Cassiano, and in the
morning light to descend into the crypt of San Giorgio, where a
most touching Magdalen weeps by the Entombment. The " Miracle
of St. Mark " in the academy is a picture conceived with the sure
and certain dash of an instinct which culminates at once and without
effort in perfect action. The swoop and rush of the saint has the
impetuosity of an eagle. Each one of the fifty figures the canvas
contains, acts and acts all over. An insight into the invention,
the imagination of Tintoretto is a thing to strive after. He does
not care for the courtliness of Titian, he ignores Veronese's luscious
effects, he delights in throwing himself with prodigality upon broad
spaces, and in bringing deep, smoldering shadows to enhance the
imagery of his soul. All his visions are informed with genuine
passion, and he has a poignancy of inner life which never relates its
intensity.
From this most typical of the Venetian painters of the Ren-
aissance, we can divine the sense of solemn obligations and re-
sponsibilities which informed her sons and gave its weighty sig-
nificance to her art. Tintoretto's are no lightly painted pictures;
they are, whether official or religious, the powerful response of a
great man to the demands of a great age. Is there any artist we can
turn to who is equally typical of the city in another age and under
different conditions?
The eighteenth century is the century of pleasure in Venice.
The old nobility of soul was gone, and enjoyment was the only aim
of life. The whole people had lost their public spirit, the sons and
daughters of the bourgeoisie tried to rise in the social scale by
imitating the pleasant vices of the aristocracy, the men and women
of which were every year growing more gay, more abandoned to
capricious crazes, to light loves and absurd amusements. The study
of Tiepolo takes us into some of those magnificent palaces which
78 VENICE [April,
survived from a greater day, but which the painter, who was himself
full of the modern spirit, decorated to satisfy the theatrical, frivol-
ous vein of the Venice of her decadence.
Yet Tiepolo was an artist of high aims, and if he had been born
a century sooner he would have been a rival of Veronese. Veron-
ese is evidently the model he has studied with most perseverance.
He seems to have a natural affinity for the great master of Verona,
but Veronese, though a painter of pomp and splendor, was born in
a great age, and his work has a stateliness, a proud, sweet quality
that reflects that age with sympathetic spontaneity. Yet we can-
not hesitate to say that Tiepolo is a genius. He is not merely a
great eighteenth-century painter, but a great painter absolutely.
He has covered immeasurable expanses of wall and ceiling with
paintings bright as the light of day, and though instead of the opu-
lence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, he adapts his
genius to the requirements of effeminate men and frivolous women,
his pictures yet have the impressive quality. Perhaps he touches
his highest in the decorations of Palazzo Labia; the two splendid
subjects from the story of Antony and Cleopatra the " Ban-
quet," where the queen dissolves the pearl, and the " Departure,"
where the master of the world is leading the queen to embark, and
which afford him the opportunity for introducing airy architecture,
men in armor, and stately dames in satin and brocades. His color
is exquisite in its soft harmonies. Delicious, audacious fancies are
dashed on with a nervous hand, draperies and clouds are illumined
with radiance, his drawing is perfect in execution, and his faded
pastel colors, blue and rose, golden-gray and pearly-white, are
vaporous and ethereal. In the Rezzonico, the Carmine, the Church
of the Gesu and the Scalzi, we forget the age of profound and
ardent passion, but we breathe an atmosphere of joyous and irre-
sponsible pleasure.
" One cannot laugh forever," and that was what the Venice of
the eighteenth century could not believe. There came a terrible
Nemesis. The great days were over, and the courtly, charming
world followed in their wake. First Napoleon, insolent and aggres-
sive, then fifty years of Austrian rule. But as we loiter through the
piazza that goes by his name, we think of the great patriot, Daniele
Manin, and the heroism of the siege of 1848, by which Venice, puri-
fied by suffering, once more won back her right to stand among
the nations.
THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE WIDOW.
FEW days later there was an arrival at Castle Eagle
of a neatly-attired young woman from a Dublin shop,
who had come to measure Lady Turloughmore for
her mourning. Her arrival with her black bale cast
a shadow on the house.
Miss Roche, by this time, was sustaining the repu-
tation of her family, which according to her was so tenacious of life
that a Roche lived on where anyone else would have died. She had be-
gun to lose the terrible look of starvation which she had worn for some
days after her rescue, and had settled down happily enough at Castle
Eagle, not protesting, which was very unlike her, when Lady Turlough-
more said that she must by no manner of means return to her own
house. There was room for her and to spare at Castle Eagle, which
was too big for the family that occupied it.
" I don't mind telling you, child, I've had a shake," the indomit-
able old woman confessed to Meg. " It's all very well to be indepen-
dent and live in your own house as long as you can, even when it's
all rotting to pieces about your ears. But 'tis another matter to be
lying alone sick in it, and not even a dog to keep you company, and you
not able to do a thing for yourself and There I won't talk about it.
It unnerves me. I'll put the whole place up to auction and sell the
things. And, dear, I'd like to do something for you, and that lovely
young man that carried me so tenderly the night you saved my life.
I thought he loved you very much. If it was to be that there was any
difficulty about money, you'd have all that was made by the sale of the
sticks. Some of the pictures are good. The gentleman in the hall
with the green silk coat and the dark hair I've always heard tell was
a Romney, and would bring bags of gold if he was sent to London."
She paused for breath after the long speech.
" Oh, no, no," said Meg, answering the portion of it on which her
attention had fastened. " Dear Miss Roche, it's all wrong about
Mr. Rosse. We never thought of such a thing."
" Maybe aye, maybe no. I used to think something different.
Anyhow I'd better die in a family when I do come to die. Isn't
Lady Turloughmore an angel of a woman ? And isn't it a queer thing
8o THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
she should be bent under the weight of her sorrows, unless it is
that God chastens whom He loves, as the Scriptures say ? "
It was a wild, gusty October day; Miss Roche had been lifted
on her invalid couch into Meg's room. The chintz-hung, firelit room
was very pleasant, and she looked about it with approval.
" I'm glad to be getting well," she said. " I suppose I'm not
good enough to die yet. I was in a queer state that night you found
me, you and your young man."
Meg passed over the implication.
" As a matter of fact," she said, " neither of us deserves the credit
of having saved your life. That belongs in the first place to Johnny
Flynn, as you know. You may be easy about him. Lady Turlough-
more has seen to that. He is here. She got the permission of the
Guardians to employ him under the head-gardener. He has a love for
a garden. He lives with Curran and his wife at the South Lodge.
They never had a child: and Mrs. Curran stopped me as I passed
through yesterday to say he was the most beautiful boy in the world,
with a beautiful heart, and the proof of it was that woman and the
Union between them had not spoilt him. Rest easy about Johnny
Flynn. He'll be own son to the Currans. You shall see him as soon
as we get you out."
" I'm glad of that. I'll look after the boy, and give him whatever
chance in life he wants. The sticks '11 sell for a good bit, I daresay.
There was nothing common at Carrick."
Meg came to Miss Roche's side and settled her more comfortably,
with an additional cushion behind her shoulders.
" Thank you, child," Miss Roche said gratefully. " It's the kind
creature you are! Indeed I'd be happy if I was to spend the end of
my days in the midst of you. But I've to look ahead. Suppose Erris
Lord Turloughmore he ought to be by right, and the sooner the
better since it has to be done brings home that fine beautiful young
woman to Castle Eagle! What with her money and her rank I'm
thinking some of the great old days will come back to Castle Eagle.
I'm not saying she'd rather have my room than my company, though
that may well be. She seems too sweet a creature, from what I've seen
of her, to let me know, even if it was so. There's a Dower House
to be sure. You and I and Shelagh Turloughmore might squeeze
in there: or if a lodge was empty they might let me have it. With
my furniture it wouldn't be too bad."
While Miss Roche chattered, her bright eyes, half-veiled by the
ivory-colored lids, watched Meg. She changed the subject suddenly.
"Tisn't likely you'd be in it long," she said. "Someone will
see to that. What a pretty room you've got! It's like Shelagh"
Meg concluded the sentence over which she had hesitated.
" To give such a room as this to a dependent."
1914. ] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 81
" Stuff and nonsense a dependent. Why, child, they're depend-
ent on you. Of course Shelagh couldn't have known when you were
coming what you'd be like. No one could have known. What's the
other side of that ? "
The question came abruptly. She indicated with a pointed finger
the rough-hewn wall which showed beneath the chintz. That end of
the room was conspicuous by its lack of the pretty pictures which
brightened the other three walls wherever there was a space for them.
"What's there?"
" It's the tower."
" The tower. To be sure it is ! They used to say this room was
haunted. I hope I'm not babbling like an old fool. They say Conal
M'Garvey still inhabits the tower. You don't believe in ghosts, you
lover of the fresh, open air?"
" I don't know " said Meg slowly. " I may have heard Conal
M'Garvey."
"A handful of bones getting ready for the Day of Judgment?"
" I have certainly heard noises in the tower, twice in the early
mornings. The last time I heard the noise it struck four o'clock
immediately afterwards, I remember."
" The wind and the sea. They're accountable for a deal. What
sort of noises ? "
" I couldn't tell you. I was wakened out of my sleep. My
impression is that it was a loud violent noise. If I hear it again I
shall report it more fully."
" A loud, violent noise ! A handful of bones getting up and
knitting together with the sound of a rushing wind. You dreamt of
Conal M'Garvey, and awoke in a desperate fright. Isn't that so?
Your heart was thumping in your ears so that you could hear nothing
else."
" As a matter of fact I was not frightened. The last time I heard
it was in May. The beautiful golden morning was in the room. The
birds were all singing. How could I be frightened ? "
" Ah, I'm glad you weren't. And I'm glad you don't say there's no
ghost. You're too sensible to say that there are no ghosts in that
tower. My father always said they were smugglers that they played
the ghost, with hollow groans and all the rest of it, so as to frighten
the people from inquiring into the noises they heard. He said they
invented Conal M'Garvey. He had no respect for other people's
ghosts. Many a keg of fine brandy; many a case of tobacco and
wine; many a bale of silk and laces came up the sea-way and were
stored in the tower till such time as the excise men were out of the
way. It's true enough, by all accounts, that the smugglers used it."
"How did they get into the tower? Not by sea? They say
VOL. xcix. 6
82 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
there's communication between the tower and the Little Beach. But
no vessel can approach the Little Beach because of the reef of rocks."
" They didn't come by the Little Beach. They say .it has the
prettiest shells in the world. You know the shell window in the
morning room. Those shells came from the Little Beach. A Lady
Turloughmore in the eighteenth century learnt the art from no less
a person than the inventor of it the famous Mrs. Delany herself.
If it be true that the shells come from the Little Beach, access there
must have been easy enough those days."
" There's another way to the tower they say. If there's a pas-
sage it ought to be a good wide one, for the smugglers had commodities
beyond what they could carry on their backs. I never looked into it
myself."
There was a tapping at the door. Lady Turloughmore came in
with tears in her eyes.
"Julia's delusions grow harder to bear," she said, with a catch
of her breath. " She will have it that my husband has come home.
I do not know what she will say when she sees me in black."
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MESSENGER FLIES AWAY.
Meg had lain awake as she often did, staring out into the darkness
of her room. She had made up her mind that she must go; that she
could not await Lord Erris' return. Time had been when she had
been ardent for the service of those friends who had been good to her
and won her heart. Now she felt that she was better away.
How glad her father would be to get her back! Not that she
was going to stay at home for long. Money was always needed at
Crane's Nest. It was not likely she would find another employment
like Lady Turloughmore's. But how would she break it to Lady
Turloughmore? She did not wish to see Lord Erris again. She
wanted to be gone before he returned as far away as Budapest.
She fell asleep, midway of her worry and perplexity. How long
she had slept she did not know. She was awakened by a groan almost
at her ear. She was sure this time, for the groaning went on after
she was awake. She was in pitchy blackness. She sat up in bed
staring into the darkness. Was the horrible drama that had been
enacted in the tower centuries ago going on still? Did the tortured
soul in the tortured body revisit the scene of its sufferings? Was it
another doom on the Turloughmores that this sin should be visited
upon them?
1914.] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 83
The darkness seemed unusually thick, impenetrable. She slept with
her blinds drawn, her windows open. There was not a star that she
could see amid the impenetrable blackness. She could not even trace
the window by its lighter gloom, as she usually did in the darkest
nights.
She sprang out of bed, and felt for the matches and candle which
were on a table near her bed. Her hands trembled. She told herself
that it was the nervousness of being suddenly awakened from sleep,
the chill of the night, which made her teeth chatter. She groped
uncertainly, with the result that she knocked down the box of matches.
While she felt for it on the floor, the strange, terrible groaning began
again.
She said afterwards that if it had not stopped she must have
died of fright. She felt herself drawn from the safe, comfortable
feeling of being in the hands of God, of which she had talked to others.
She was drawn from that strong stay into a border world of the terror
that flies by night.
Her hand felt the matches. Now if she could only strike one
and light the candle! If her hands would only stop trembling! If
she could lose the horrible feeling of uselessness which lay upon her
as though she must sink away and lie a dead heap on the floor!
If she could only have light! There were things one could not face
in the darkness. How still the night was, and how oppressive, although
it was very cold !
The first match spirted and went out. While she attempted to
strike another the clock in the stableyard began to strike. She listened,
with a scared heart. She knew it was going to strike four. It had
struck four that other time and that other time, but then it had been
in the golden mornings of spring and summer. The sun had held
panic at bay. It was very different in the dark of the autumn morning,
with all the winter to come and her grief before her and behind her.
As the clock struck the last stroke an unreasoning panic seized her.
She could not remain alone, expecting the horrible groans to begin
again. She must find human companionship, no matter what hap-
pened.
She fled from the room, closing the door behind her. She wanted
some strong help and protection. A thought came to her of how Algy
Rosse would have soothed a woman's terror. She had seen him one
day in a thunderstorm when Eileen Trant had been frightened, and
remembered how gently he had soothed her. She controlled herself,
so as not to enter Miss Roche's room in a way to frighten her; but
despite the strong measure of self-control she put on herself, her breath
came in sobbing gasps, she was shaking like an aspen. There was a
night-light burning in Miss Roche's room. Oh, the blessedness of
light! The little glow from the night-light, filling the room with a
84 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
soft dim radiance, lifted up her heart. From hidden things of dark-
ness and the arrow that flieth by night, good Lord deliver us !
She looked back at the door which had closed between her and
a nameless terror ; then uncertainly at the old-fashioned bed, its cur-
tains of creamy woollen stuff sprinkled with roses. Miss Roche slept
well. There was not even a sound of breathing. Should she go back
again and face the terror? Should she keep her experience to herself?
But no she could not do that. Supposing, supposing, there should
really be someone in the tower ! It seemed impossible : but she must
share the doubt with someone. The question was settled for her by
Miss Roche ; who lifted herself on an elbow and peered out between
the curtains.
" Is that you, child ? " she asked. " Why are you standing there
in your thin nightgown ? Is anything the matter ? "
" I've been frightened," said Meg, between the chattering of her
teeth.
" And you're cold, you creature ! Come in here under the blankets
and tell me. Are not soft woolly blankets a thing to be grateful for
in cold weather ? Why, you poor child ! "
In the warmth of the blankets Meg presently recovered herself,
and the chattering of her teeth ceased.
" I am so sorry I awakened you," she said. " Could you go asleep
if I was to go back to my own room and leave you in peace ? "
" Indeed then, you didn't waken me at all. I was lying awake
thinking about you, and what a difference you make in this house.
Now, tell me what frightened you. Was it that unchancy old tower?
The gulls do make queer noises sometimes. You might mistake the
noise they make for anything."
" It wasn't gulls," said Meg. " It isn't likely I should be fright-
ened by gulls, having been used to them all my life. What frightened
me was the most terrible sound that awoke me from sleep. I am
certain it must have come from the tower. It was like someone
groaning in terrible pain. I thought at first, when I was only half-
awake, that it might have come from your room, that you might have
been dreaming, you poor thing, of the time you were left alone in that
great desolate house. It sounded just like that, as of someone deserted
and left alone to die."
" Many a one's heard the same sound from that old tower," said
Miss Roche. " If I was Erris I'd raze it to the ground. Perhaps
some of the ill-luck of the family would go with it."
" You think it was the ghost ? Does a ghost groan with that
terrible sound of desolation ? "
"What could it be but a ghost? How could anything living be
in that place? There's no way to reach the Little Beach unless you
were a gull ; if there's a way into the tower from it as they say there
1914-] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 85
is! The other way must be choked by weeds and thorns long ago
if there is another way. To be sure if the smugglers used it there must
have been a way."
" Does no one know about it if there is a way? "
" I've always heard there was a way. The people wouldn't look
for it not they. It's supposed to run somewhere from Biddy Pen-
dergast's cottage. That would have served the smugglers' purpose
very well if there were smugglers. The cottage is a most unchancy
place. All sorts of apparitions are seen there. Now, go asleep. It
was the gulls you heard, I daresay."
Her voice trailed off sleepily. A little while and her breathing
assured Meg that she was asleep. Presently Meg's own eyes closed.
She had not hoped to sleep; but she had not been sleeping well of
late. When she awoke the early morning light was in the room. She
judged that it would be about seven. There was no wind, and the
intense darkness of the night had given way to a mild gray morning,
with a warm glow as of hidden gold in the gray.
She got quietly out of bed without disturbing Miss Roche. She
did not want to be found out of her room, to have to explain to
Kate the why and wherefore. Servants occasionally left Castle Eagle,
because of their own superstitious fears or for something that fright-
ened them. She would not be the one to start a scare in the house.
She dressed herself fully, and went down through the quiet house.
There seemed to be no one about but she found when she reached
the hall door that it was open, and Phelim was standing on the steps
drawing in long breaths of the morning air.
He greeted her affably, remarking that it was a beautiful morning
for a walk; she answered him and went on. Prince, who wandered
at night between her door and Lady Turloughmore's he certainly had
not been at her door when she made her precipitous flight from the
room that seemed so safe and harmless by daylight had overtaken her,
and frolicked sedately in front and around her, expressing his joy in
seeing her and the adventure of an early morning walk.
She had left the house behind her before she made the discovery
that Lady Turloughmore's pigeon had somehow left his mistress' safe
keeping, and was hopping behind her, now and again making short
flights. The creature was as fearless as a dog. She bent down and
let him hop on to her outstretched palm, then to her shoulder, where
he rested very contentedly. Her walk took her towards the sea and
the cliff above the Little Beach. It struck her that there was an unusual
clamor of gulls. They were screaming loudly, more loudly than
usual, perhaps over a fish of which they were making a greedy meal.
The short grass off the cliff was glistening with one of the heavy
autumnal dews, under which the whole country was steaming as
the sun forced his way through the clouds. The crisp grass, hung with
86 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
myriads of little snail shells, crackled under her feet as she went
towards the sound of the sea and the clamor of the gulls. She paused
beside the railing which protected the edge of the cliff. Now that the
sun had risen the sea showed a surface of pure gold. A soft wind
blew in her face. There was something very gentle about the 1 October
day.
She could see nothing of the Little Beach, which was half-covered
at high tide, but even on this calm day there was a column of spray
high in air where the sea broke off the North and the South Wolf:
and looking down she could see here and there a jagged tooth of
the reef projecting through the water. She glanced back at the square
mass of Castle Eagle, with f the squat tower at one corner. What secret
did it hide ? What was it that moaned within the walls and frightened
people out of their senses at night?
Suddenly she uttered a loud cry. Without warning the pigeon
had hopped from her shoulder and was over the railings at the
edge of the cliff, flashing himself about in the sun's rays, and cooing
with what seemed perfect self-satisfaction. She called to him, kneeling
down and stretching an inviting finger through the stout iron railings.
They were made impregnable against scaling, which was perhaps
as well at this moment, since she would have risked any danger to
recover the creature which had brought so much help and comfort
to Lady Turloughmore. A vision came to her mind of Lady Tur-
loughmore's face when she should hear that the pigeon was gone.
More would go with him than any contrition for her negligence would
ever restore.
The gulls screamed below gulls and puffins and cormorants.
The Little Beach must be a perfect maze of them, the cliff's face
populous with their nests. She called and the pigeon turned his head,
and made one or two dainty steps towards her. She called again
in an agony of hope and fear. He was very wayward, a petted and
spoilt creature. Like a spoilt child, he ran away from the one who
would protect and care for him. He took a few steps towards the
edge of the cliff, made a short flight, and to her horror disappeared
from sight.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE END OF THE PASSAGE.
Meg, wringing her hands in grief and consternation, was aware of
a new arrival no other than Johnny Flynn, who stood regarding
her out of his reddish brown eyes with much affection.
" I seen you crossin' the grass, Miss, an' I made bould to come an'
spake to you. I hope ye're well, Miss, an' th' ould lady doin' finely.
1914-] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 87
I never got a chance to tell you how she kep' me that night else
I'd ha' carried the message quicker. I'm doin' fine where I am, Miss."
There was no need to say it. Decent treatment and happiness and
good food had wrought wonders in Johnny Flynn. He had become
almost able-bodied. He might be the well-to-do elder brother of the
boy who had accosted Meg on Dooras Mountain one summer evening,
now more than three months ago.
" Oh, Johnny, I'm in trouble. I don't know what to do," said
she. " Lady Turloughmore's pet pigeon has just gone over the cliff.
She will be distracted when she hears. And it was my fault, entirely
my fault. What am I to do at all ? "
" Would I be goin' over the cliff after the ould fowl, Miss ? "
suggested Johnny politely.
" Oh, you can't do that. There's absolutely no foothold ; and
the face of the cliff is dreadfully precipitous. There is no way of
getting at the Little Beach. What on earth am I to do, Johnny?
I daren't tell Lady Turloughmore."
" I wouldn't like to be sayin' there'd be much left of the ould
baste of a bird by now," said Johnny consolingly. " Judgin' by the
noise the gulls do be makin' below there they're reefin' him to tatters.
There won't be a dale to go round."
Meg stared at him, not knowing what he said. Something had
come into her mind, clear-seen and aloof as though she looked at
a picture herself of a summer morning amid the ruins of Biddy
Pendergast's cottage, where not a peasant in the country would ven-
ture. She saw the mass of undergrowth growing up against the
blackened stones which had once made the wall of a chimney. She felt
her foot knock against something old iron by the feel. Stooping
to touch the thing she had found it as she had thought a ring of iron.
"Johnny," she said, " do you know Biddy Pendergast's cottage?"
" Th' ould witch's cottage ? Aye, do I, well. Many's the time
I put the heart across in the other childher by runnin' in an' out of it.
They do have great ould superstitions, them country childher."
" Would you be afraid to go there with me ? "
"Is it me? What would I be afraid of? I'll just run an' tell
my father you want me. My mother '11 be expectin' me in to break-
fast." How proudly Johnny spoke of his father and mother! "I'll
just say you want me an' I'll be back in a tick."
Johnny was back " in a tick." His inquisitive eyes were lifted to
Meg's face with a look of devotion, while she told him the thing she
wanted done. It was wild beyond all the probabilities; they were
going to look for the passage from Biddy Pendergast's house to the
tower. If they found it, it was one chance in a thousand that it would
be navigable. If it was, would it land them in the tower? It might
come out under the cliffs. If it really ended at the tower, would there
88 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
be further communication with the Little Beach ? it was all doubtful :
but if there was any chance of recovering the pigeon she must take
it, if there was but one chance in a hundred thousand.
" What was that you were carrying when you came and spoke
to me, Johnny ? " she asked. " Was it a spade ? "
" It was an ould shovel I was takin' to me father."
" Go back and fetch it along. It might be useful."
Johnny obeyed her and brought the spade, carrying it across his
shoulder in a workman-like fashion. They skirted the garden-wall
of Castle Eagle, dipped into a hollow, crossed a field, and were in
the field of Biddy Pendergast's house, nearer by this way than Meg
had thought possible.
To Meg's surprise Johnny Flynn knew all about the secret passage
that led from the old ruin. He cleared the weeds and rubbish from the
iron ring with his spade. It was set in what had been the hearth of the
cottage, but it was not fixed as Meg thought it might have been in a
stone too heavy for them to lift. The green, sodden stuff which
the spade uncovered, round about the ring, might have been earth or
wood or stone. A blow of the spade upon it revealed that it was wood.
It was so set in the earth that it might better have been a part
of it for their purpose. The block of wood resisted all their efforts to
raise it: embedded in the solid stone the wood had swollen and hard-
ened. At last Meg agreed to Johnny's suggestion that he should
run back and fetch a crowbar.
While she waited, the coldness of the place struck her as a strange
thing. The ruins were in the full rays of the mild morning sun ; and
yet she shivered. She stepped beyond the cottage ruin, and the bare
patch to where the cows were grazing in the pasture, and was warm
again. Prince, who had been whining and bristling while she stayed
in the ruin, recovered his lordly placidity and stretched at her feet,
where she sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree to wait for Johnny's
return, her mind full of trouble for the fate of the lost pigeon.
Johnny came quickly, armed with the crowbar.
" I'm glad ye sat there, Miss, and not in the ould cottage beyant.
The cattle '11 never graze near it. They say a bird never flies over it.
The people were frightened from it I've heard tell by some that
got a blast there when they were huntin' about for what they could
find ; and were never the better of it af ther."
" Country superstitions, Johnny. I thought you were above them ?"
"What else? Country people do be terrible foolish. Now, I'm
thinkin' we'll soon have it up wid the crow."
They " had it up wid the crow." The square slab of wood lifted
slowly, revealing a cavity beneath. No foul vapors came up in their
faces as Meg had feared. There was a smell of earth and dampness :
nothing more. A ladder swung by iron hooks over the hollow. Johnny
1914.] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 89
went down it like a monkey, and held it steady below for Meg to
descend. Prince, after shivering on the brink for a time, leaped
down beside them. The drop after all proved to be only a few feet
below the earth. Before them was a dark passage about six feet in
height, roofed and walled and floored, with flags and beams of immense
thickness. Someone, whether the smugglers or earlier builders, had
built the passage to resist the encroachments of time. There was damp
underfoot, and overhead the walls oozed damp; but there was no
foulness in the atmosphere.
" Bedad," said Johnny, producing a candle and box of matches
from his jacket pocket; " this is a quare place. I'm beginnin' to get at
its contrivances. Whomsoever planned it, planned it well. You know
them ould hummocks in the field where the ragweed grows thickest,
fairy forts they do be callin' them, an' there isn't man, woman or
child 'ud interfere with them, though th' ould ragweed do be sowin'
itself all over the place every year till the ground's poisoned wid it.
There's ventilatin' holes under the ragweed. I saw one stickin' its ould
snout out, and 'twas like an ould drain-pipe. It'll be aisy enough
travellin' here, thanks to the man that made it. Weren't they great
builders all out ? "
" You're not afraid of the tower, Johnny ?" Meg said, plunging into
the passage where the water dripped from the roof, threatening to
extinguish the candle.
" Not a bit, wid you by my side. There's some say that
Conal M'Garvey never died in it at all, that he escaped some way,
and was seen about the country afther. If this passage was here in
his time it was like enough. It 'ud explain some of ould Biddy's
quare disappearances too."
He talked of those legendary people as though they had lived and
died but yesterday.
The flame of the candle flickered in the draught of the passage and
had to be protected by Johnny's hat ; but the air was pure enough for
the flame to keep alight in. Now and again they came to a ventilating
shaft, and saw sky above them through a tangle of weeds. They went
carefully, with an expectation that at some point or other the walls of
the passage might have fallen in, but though there had been a fall of
clay in one or two places the passage was amazingly clear, hardly
a passage perilous at all. Meg began to suspect that others than the
smugglers had used the passage at no distant time.
The dog ran on before them in growing excitement, and came back
now and again to jump on Meg, whining as though he would urge
her to further exertions.
" 'Twould be a quare thing if th' ould trap was to fall in when our
backs was turned," said Johnny Flynn, " we'd be like rats in a trap
then sure enough."
90 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
As he said it a wind extinguished the candle. They were in dark-
ness: and Meg had a sudden sense of being in the bowels of the
earth, imprisoned, as in a grave. For a breathless minute she was
panic-stricken. Then, from down the darkness as her eyes grew ac-
customed to the thick murk, she saw something glimmering like
a lighter darkness, and the wind blew freshly in her face. There
was a sound like surf on a sandy shore, or the wind in a hollow place.
" I believe I see light, Johnny," she said. " There ! Do you
see it?"
" The darkness do seem lighter," Johnny agreed as he re-lit his
candle.
They pushed on. Ever the air came fresher and fresher in their
faces. The light in the darkness increased. The dog ran before them
in an increasing excitement, rushing back as though he implored them
to hurry. They were at the end of the passage at last. They stood
at the foot of a winding stair. Facing them was another passage, down
which they could hear the hollow booming of the sea.
" The old tales were true after all, Johnny," Meg said in an
awestruck whisper. " There lies the way to the Little Beach, and here
are the steps to the tower. Which shall we try first ? "
" The dog's on the track o' somethin', Miss," Johnny Flynn said.
" Let us try th' ould tower first. We'll see then if there's any truth
in them quare stories."
Up they went by a long winding staircase, which went round and
round by the wall, and was lit by narrow arrow slits, through which
one caught just a glimpse of the country beyond. These were on two
sides only; one wall was blank. That must be the wall overlooking
the courtyard.
The staircase went round and round till it reached an open door,
and went on again. The open door led to a room enclosed in the
tower, so to speak. There was no light in it. Meg stood at the door
and peered inside nervously. She could see that there was something
there, boxes, furniture, some sort of square shapes in the dimness.
" The light, Johnny," she said.
There was a deep sigh from the dark place. Her heart leaped
in her side and she almost fled, but she stood her ground. Prince
uttered a wild yelp, and bounded past her into the chamber. The
match spurted as it was struck. The candle-flame lit up steadily.
There were a number of cases and bales, packets of various sizes
in the place. A heap of ashes lay on a stone hearth. There were
various stuffs lying about on top of the boxes. One large box ap-
parently had served someone for a table. There was a sickly air in the
place.
What was it which Prince was licking at and whining over with
delirious affection? There was something, someone, lying on a bale
i 9 1 4-] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 91
of stuffs in one corner. Something! It might have been the apparition
of Conal M'Garvey so lean, so starved was it. A man, his eyes
closed ; apparently in the stupor of death or dying ; a rough, straggling
beard ; a face in which the cheek bones stood out of the gaunt hollow-
ness. The hand which lay outside the clothes fluttered feebly.
" Glory be to goodness, is it a ghost or a livin' man ? " asked
Johnny Flynn, peering down at the creature.
Suddenly he caught at Meg's sleeve.
" See you, Miss," he said, " see you that big cruel mark on his
head. The hair's matted over it in the blood. God help the creature,
who can it be at all. The ould dog seems to know him."
Prince was licking the man's hand in a quiet frenzy of delight.
" Oh, Johnny, could it be could it be possible," cried Meg, " that
it is the Earl come home again after all ? "
CHAPTER XXV.
THE END OF THE DOOM.
It was indeed the Earl of Turloughmore. The winds and waves
had brought him home and flung him up on the Little Beach, broken,
and bruised with a terrible gash in his head, where he had been dashed
against a sharp edge of cliff. He had been left on the Little Beach
with injuries enough to kill a man of less robust constitution than
he. He had not died. He had come to himself dazed and weak,
to find himself imprisoned on the Little Beach, with apparently no
means of escape from it. The cliff over the Little Beach was tun-
nelled with caves and winding passages, leading to rock chambers
which had been hollowed out, none knew when or by whom. These
had served as storehouses for the smugglers. At some time or other
perhaps when a whole gang of smugglers had been captured by the
press gang and carried off to the wars in Flanders, only to be sunk
in the Zuyder Zee, the secret of the communication had been lost.
The rock chambers and the tower contained wine and tobacco and
precious silks and laces, bales of fine cloth, all manner of things.
By one of the passages Lord Turloughmore had found the com-
munication with the tower, and there he had established himself and
dwelt all those months during which he had been mourned as dead.
He had attempted no communication with the outer world, but in the
twilight which had fallen upon him since his shipwreck he had lived
as a savage man, feeding himself upon the eggs of the sea birds and
the flesh of those he could surprise in their nesting places and kill. He
fcad found water at the base of the cliff where a pure stream ran.
9-' THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
He had made fire with a flint and rotten wood like a primitive man.
He managed to open the cases the smugglers had left, so as to provide
himself with wine to drink and woollen stuff to make his bed and
clothing. There he had lived and slept, the arrow slit above his head,
communicating with Meg's room, barely two feet away from her as
she lay in bed, although the chintz stretched over it had concealed
its presence.
Meg watched by him whilst Johnny Flynn went for assistance.
The servants had to be taken into counsel. They were afraid to let
Lady Turloughmore know the news too suddenly. Fortunately she
did not rise early of mornings and was still in her room. Very ten-
derly the poor emaciated body was conveyed to the Castle, and, after
being washed and tended, was laid between fine linen sheets, in warm
woollen blankets. While a messenger was dispatched for a doctor,
Phelim, who knew all a gentleman's servant is required to know, shaved
his master and cut the long straggling hair, revealing the scar of the
wound.
The doctor came presently and examined him, keeping a grave
face as he did so. Meg met him as he left the room.
" Well," she said. She and Dr. Doherty were good friends by
this time.
" Well," he repeated : and he wore an air quite unlike his old
cheerfulness. " It's a wonderful story, Miss Hildebrand, but it would
be a thousand pities if we've found him only to lose him again. I
fear that patching up even will hardly be possible. Poor Lady Tur-
loughmore ! I wonder if it will comfort her at all that at last an Earl
of Turloughmore will die in his bed?"
" You think he will not live?"
" I think the casting-away and the exposure have been too much
for him. I should not weep, Miss Hildebrand. That wound in the
head was in a very nasty place. I doubt that, if he could live, he would
ever be like other people. Who is to tell her ladyship ? "
The telling was taken out of their hands. While they stood talk-
ing, they had not noticed that Lady Turloughmore had approached at
the other end of the corridor. She came towards them quickly, her
fair face pale and disturbed.
" Oh, it is you, doctor?" she asked. " How fortunate it is you!
I am so glad you are here. Julia has fainted. I was going to send
for you. I have been up with her a great part of the night, and had
only just fallen into a sound sleep when I heard her call. I couldn't
really have heard her, but her cry rang through my sleep ; and Kate,
who has been sitting in her room, says that she called me just as I
heard her a whole corridor away, with a loud, ringing call. She has
delusions, you know, doctor. Her last one was happy for her, for she
thought the Earl had come home."
1914.] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 93
They were in Julia's room by this time. All the sewing materials
which had been used to litter the place were put away tidily. Amid
the nursery things, the dolls' house, the rocking-horse, the high chair,
the bed with the little shrunken old woman in it seemed strangely dis-
cordant and out of place.
The doctor stooped; peered in Julia's face; felt her pulsation;
lifted an eyelid.
" I'm glad her last thought was a happy one, Lady Turlough-
more," he said. " She's gone, the poor old creature ! "
Lady Turloughmore uttered a low cry. " I have sorrow upon
sorrow," she said, and turning she hid her face.
Miss Roche had come in, using the crutches which she always
used now.
" Come out into the sun, Shelagh," she said. " Julia is in the
sun, after her long desolation. Why, she's smiling, the creature! "
" Because she thought my husband had come back."
She allowed Miss Roche to lead her from the room into the long
corridor, which was now filled with sun. It was as warm as a May day.
" Tell her," whispered the doctor to Meg. " Tell her the joy and
the grief. Poor soul, I wish we could keep him for her."
Meg followed Lady Turloughmore and Miss Roche. They were
standing in a deep window seat talking in low tones. Lady Turlough-
more was weeping.
" She did not recognize me at first," she said, " and she went
babbling on about old things when Hugo was a little boy; and
about Ulick and Cicely. But she seemed to recognize me suddenly,
for she put out her hand and closed it over mine. 'Mistress, dear/
she said, in a loud voice, 'wasn't it a mercy you didn't put on the
black? White would be more your wear an' his lordship come home
again.' Her eyes really looked as though she saw heaven opened."
Meg had come up close beside her.
" Dear Lady Turloughmore," she said, " supposing her vision
were true, yet that one dare not rejoice entirely?"
Her voice broke, but she managed to struggle along bravely.
" Supposing Lord Turloughmore had come home ! Supposing
he is very ill "
"Where is he?" The wife's voice rang out, startling those who
heard. " You would not dare deceive me ! Where is he ? "
" Come, you shall see him, he is very ill. Perhaps he will hardly
recognize you."
Side by side they went along the corridor to the sick room. Lady
Turloughmore wore a look of dazed, incredulous joy. She stumbled
as she walked, almost as though she were blind, and Meg put an arm
about her to steady her. She led her into the room. Lady Tur-
loughmore broke from her as she saw the face on the pillow.
94 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
" Hugo ! Oh, thank God ! " she cried.
Meg signed to the maid who was keeping watch by the bedside
to leave them together. As she turned away she heard Lord Tur-
loughmore's voice, weary, as with an immense fatigue.
" Shelagh ! It is good to be at home. Come closer, Shelagh.
Let me see your face."
Glancing back she saw that Lady Turloughmore had laid her
head on the pillow by her husband's head.
Lord Turloughmore lingered for several months, had a much
longer day than the doctor promised at first, lived to see some happy
things before he died in his bed as no Earl of Turloughmore had died
for centuries.
Long before that time Lord Erris had come home, released from
the plaster of paris and able to walk like other people, although still
for a considerable time to come he must be much more careful than
other people.
Meg had made an attempt to break away before his return, but
it was unsuccessful. Lady Turloughmore had seemed so amazed,
so horrified, at the suggestion that now Castle Eagle could dispense
with her presence, and that her father needed her at home.
" We cannot do without you at Castle Eagle," Lady Turlough-
more had said indignantly. "After all you have done for us. Some
day, of course, you will marry, but till that day comes we cannot do
without you."
The utmost concession Meg could wring from Lady Turlough-
more was an unwilling consent to her going home to see her father.
She left on the very eve of the day that was to see Lord Erris'
return home. She bade a lingering farewell to Castle Eagle, to its
inhabitants, the animals, the dear inanimate objects. As she stooped
to pat Prince's silky head, the tears overflowed her eyes, and she had
to run away lest Lady Turloughmore should detect them and guess that
she did not intend to return. It would be so much easier to write,
when she was out of reach, going into exile again; for it would be
exile more than ever now, although the Archduchess Magda was kind.
Terence Hildebrand, welcoming Meg with open arms, forbore to
say what he thought to her.
" Least said is soonest mended," he said to the sister, who was like
himself and shared most of his thoughts, " and a little girl's secrets
are her own: but I have not got back my own Meg, whatever's hap-
pened to her."
He was angry and dismayed when he heard that Meg was return-
ing to Budapest; but there was something in Meg's eyes that pulled
him up short in the midst of his stormy protestations.
" God help her," he said to Mrs. Carew, " she's got to get well
1914.] THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE 95
in her own way. Perhaps she feels she must get away out of it alto-
gether. Why couldn't she have stayed at home? Home is best
for a girl."
" Let her be," his sister counselled. " She will work out her
salvation in her own way. None of us could do it for her, or for
any of them, although our hearts may bleed to help them."
After that Terence Hildebrand was exquisitely kind to his girl,
with a soft, slow-moving tenderness, as though she were very ill, which
would have made Meg laugh, if it had not made her weep passionately.
The time came round to the last day at home. Meg's letter to
Lady Turloughmore had been written and dispatched. Her trunk
was packed, waiting for the very last belonging to go into it before
being locked. It was very sad to go, heart-breaking sad. Life
stretched very desolate, an arid expanse, dewless, unwatered, before the
girl's vision. She was going to be horribly homesick. If only she
might have stayed at home! But perhaps the homesickness would
help to keep the other trouble out of sight.
She would not look the other trouble in the face. She had escaped
from them all, for a little while, to gain courage on that last evening,
out to the bridge over the rivei which ran through the woods. It
was the early twilight of the short winter day. Still a few gold
leaves tinkled on the branches. The sky had a haze of red and yellow.
There was going to be frost. A little sickle of a moon shone through
the bare trees.
She rested her elbows on the parapet of the bridge and hid her
face in her hands. She felt an overwhelming sense of wretchedness,
of desolation. How sickly the late autumn was! There was a sickly
hue over life, the world. To-morrow, by this time she would have
covered the first stage of her journey.
Someone came gently over the lightly-frosted leaves. A hand was
laid on her down-bent head. The tears had come now in a flood, a
torrent. She struggled with her sobs, trying to keep them back, as
she turned her streaming eyes away. She had no other thought than
that her father had surprised her, given up to grief.
" I I" she began.
" I've come to take you back," said a voice she had not expected
to hear perhaps never again in this world, certainly not for years.
" Did you suppose we should let you go, Meg? After all you
have done for us ! Your father sent me to find you. He has offered
me a lodging for the night most kindly. To-morrow I shall take you
back. We can telegraph to the Archduchess."
He put his hand under her chin and lifted it. Was this Lord
Erris, this straight up-standing masterful person , young at last ?
He laid her cheek against his shoulder, stroking the other cheek
softly with his hand.
96 THE CURSE OF CASTLE EAGLE [April,
" Have you considered, Meg," he asked, " that I have come back
a wonderful example of Kellner's skill? And that my father is slip-
ping out of life gently, in his bed? There is no more doom for the
Earls of Turloughmore. When a Hildebrand crossed our threshold
the doom was lifted. The blood of the Hildebrands will bring the
blessing to our children's children. Now, will you come back ? "
" But you love Miss Trant," she said, holding back her lips from
his kisses. " Everyone tells me you love Miss Trant. Lady Tur-
loughmore "
" My mother knows better now. I was in love with Eileen once
calf-love. I am very much obliged to her that she would not look
at me. She is a dear creature, but she isn't Meg. Nothing would
satisfy me but Meg, since I have known Meg. I am young enough
yet to begin life over again with Meg by my side."
" You are sure? " she asked with a long sigh of delight.
Quite sure. If I were not I should be desolate, for I believe
Eileen has chosen or will choose that ornament of the diplomatic serv-
ice, Mr. Algernon Rosse. Poor Algy! I used to have a grudge
against him because he was not maimed like me. I am maimed no
longer. I grudge him nothing but Meg now. He is a dear fellow.
We shall make it easy for him and Eileen. Now shall we telegraph
to the Archduchess ? "
Meg laughed through her tears. It was so heavenly not to be
going after all.
" They will faint at the post office at the idea of a telegram to
Budapest. They will never understand how to send it."
" Then we can wait till we get to Dublin to-morrow. Let us go
and tell your father. He will be so glad. He has been in trouble
about you."
"After all the foxes did not come for a death," said Meg, as
they walked hand in hand. " Did you know I saw the foxes the first
night I was at Castle Eagle?"
" They came for life," he said. " I have never believed in the
omen of the foxes. They came for life, for luck: for a sign that
henceforth all good things should come to the House of the Foxes."
[THE END.]
Bew Boohs*
ALTAR AND PRIEST. By Rev. P. C. Yorke, D.D. San Fran-
cisco, California: The Text Book Publishing Co.
Out beyond the Mississippi, and especially beyond the Rockies,
we dwellers by the Atlantic seaboard have the reputation of re-
garding ourselves as the thirteen original and only states; at
least, we are accused of believing that there are no other states
worth speaking of. We are thought to be ludicrously unacquainted
with the real America, which lies beyond the Alleghanies; and bliss-
fully ignorant of real American thought, which rises in the West
and, traveling eastward, has a harder time crossing the Delaware
than George Washington himself, and must fight a good, stiff fight
to dissipate the heavy fogs blown off from Boston Bay and the
East River. Now we are, after all, humble and modest people,
and will not deny there is a modicum of truth in this charge of the
young and boastful West ; but is the fault wholly ours ? Take the
instance before us. Here is Father Peter Yorke, famous as speaker
and preacher all along the Pacific Slope; if he is but little known
personally along the Atlantic Coast, who is to blame? Why, he is
to blame, for his light shines only in a remote corner of civiliza-
tion; he and California, which keeps a tight, jealous hold of him.
Let the Western stars move out of their orbit occasionally; let
them beam upon us who sit in oriental darkness, and then will
the reproach of our ignorance be lifted from our brow.
Still, Father Yorke is not to be blamed too severely for stay-
ing home, and attending to his immediate business ; and we are truly
grateful to him for giving us Altar and Priest, this volume of fif-
teen occasional sermons. They were all preached at the dedication
or jubilee of a church, or at the first Mass, jubilee or funeral of
a priest. It is the lot of such discourses to die with the occasion
and, sometimes, to receive an honorable sepulture in the local re-
ligious paper. These sermons deserve the better fate they have
received; they will be warmly welcomed in book form by priests
everywhere, and by others who do not think a sermon is neces-
sarily a dull bit of reading. Everyone who remembers the A. P. A.
controversy, when Father Yorke, like the Hebrew warrior of
old, fought the battles of the Lord with joy (perhaps we had better
say, with glee) and returned with the scalps of the Philistines, is
aware that he is master of a vigorous, lively, elastic style: these
discourses exhibit these qualities and beauty as well. They are the
VOL, xcix. 7
98 NEW BOOKS [April,
product of a mind that has been enriched by familiar converse with
classical and modern literatures, with history and with art, and that
knows how to draw on its ample stores at pleasure and without
ostentation; but particularly they show an intimate and loving
knowledge of Holy Scripture, and a keen sense for the beauty of
its words.
Father Yorke quotes Scripture with a felicity that reminds us
of Newman. The sermons move on in an atmosphere of large con-
ceptions and generous feelings; they are pervaded with a deep
sense of the greatness of Catholicism as a supernatural religion,
as a guide of moral life and religious belief in an age of divided
and confusing counsels, and as the chief factor in the making of
our history. Enlightened Irish Catholic sentiment finds fit utter-
ance in the first sermon, The Island of Saints. Preached in Ire-
land, we should like to see it circulated among our coreligionists in
England, who might learn from it a better understanding of their
brethren in the Emerald Isle. It is, however, as an expression of
American Catholicism that the volume has its chief value; it wit-
nesses to the happy relations existing between people and priest,
the generosity of our people, their desire to provide worthy temples
for the worship of God, their love of Christian education, their
reverence for the priesthood, and their united and staunch Catholi-
cism in the midst of a nation of many conflicting creeds, which seem
to be verging rapidly towards a common, undogmatic, natural
religion. If some of the deeper springs of our religious life are
not touched, it must be remembered that the character of the
occasion almost necessarily excluded them.
Among the funeral discourses, is a worthy tribute to the la-
mented Father Doyle, late editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Father
Yorke must have many other sermons and discourses at the bottom
of his trunk, or scattered here and there in print. Only last sum-
mer, he delivered a splendid address on The World's Desire, at the
convention of the Catholic Educational Association in New Orleans,
which comes to us as a handsome pamphlet. We are confident that
he has material for more than one volume, which would be wel-
comed by the judicious and thoughtful.
A LOYAL LIFE. A Biography of Henry L. Richards. By Joseph
H. Richards, SJ. St. Louis : B. Herder. $2.00 net.
Henry L. Richards was born in Granville, Ohio, in 1813.
He came of New England Puritan stock, but joined the Episcopal
1914.] NEW BOOKS 99
Church with his father in early youth. He studied at Kenyon
College and Seminary, and was ordained a minister of the Protest-
ant Episcopal Church in 1842. Soon after he married and moved
to Columbus, where he became rector of the new missionary Church
of St. Paul, an offshoot of the older parish of the Holy Trinity.
He found himself in the embarrassing position of a Low Church
minister called upon to officiate to a High Church congregation.
One of his parishioners, a bookseller named Whiting, kept pace
very closely with the progress of the Oxford movement, and placed
in his pastor's hands every publication of interest and importance
concerning it.
At the same time Mr. Richards began reading the Churchman,
then edited by Dr. Seabury, who held decided Catholic views.
As a result, he adopted the Via Media theory, trying for years to
justify himself in holding Catholic doctrine while in a professedly
Protestant Church. The Low Churchmen in the United States
opposed so bitterly the Catholic views of their confreres, that within
the space of seven years nearly three-score American Protestant
Episcopal clergymen became Catholics. They were greatly helped
by the submission of Newman in England in 1845, anc ^ the uneasi-
ness caused by the Hampden case in 1847, and the Gorham case in
1849.
On a trip to New Orleans in 1848, Mr. Richards came across
three Catholic books, Keenan's Controversial Catechism, Kenrick's
Primacy of the Apostolic See, and Milner's End of Controversy,
which finally started him on the road to the Catholic Church.
Returning to Columbus he remained for two years in a state of
doubt and uncertainty, though he officiated from time to time as
rector of St. Paul's. He was finally received into the Catholic
Church by Father Borgess, afterward Bishop Borgess of Detroit,
on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, January 25, 1852.
For over fifty years he was identified with Catholic interests
both in Jersey City and Boston. He was President of the St. Vin-
cent de Paul Conference in Jersey City in 1857; he contributed
many articles to the Catholic Review of New *York, and the Sacred
Heart Review of Boston; he was the second President of the
Catholic Union of Boston; he labored for twenty-three years on
the Boston Board of Charities.
In 1871, at the suggestion qi Father Stone, Father Hecker
asked him to be editor of a weekly paper which he had in mind
at that time. Many a convert had recourse to him for guidance
109 NEW BOOKS [April,
in time of doubt, and many a soul sought him for his ready sym-
pathy and wise counsel.
In addition to his writing for Catholic periodicals, a large
share of his time was devoted to prayer and religious reading.
He never let a day go by without paying a visit to the Blessed
Sacrament.
Loyalty to the Church, even in matters rather of counsel than
of strict obligation, was his most prominent characteristic. Al-
though very much attached to the Jesuit Fathers, looking upon
" The Immaculate of Boston " as his spiritual home, he did not
hesitate a moment to answer his pastor's request by becoming super-
intendent of the parish Sunday school. He truly was a perfect
type of the intelligent Catholic laymen.
BREAKING WITH THE PAST, OR CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES
ABANDONED AT THE REFORMATION. By Francis Aidan
Gasquet, Abbot-President of the English Benedictines. With
a Preface by His Eminence Cardinal Farley. New York : P.
J. Kenedy & Sons. 60 cents ; postpaid, 64 cents.
This little book contains four sermons delivered by Abbot
Gasquet at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on the Sundays
of Advent, 1913. They show simply and clearly the repudiation
by the Protestant Church of England of the Catholic teaching on the
Primacy of the Pope, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Priesthood.
The preacher at the outset disclaims all desire to enter into mere
matters of controversy, but insists that all lovers of Christian unity
must first recognize the points of departure out of which our relig-
ious differences have grown. It is a good book to put in the hand
of High Churchmen, who still hold tenaciously to the unhistorical
theory of continuity.
HORACE BLAKE. By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $1.35.
No one, not even his wife Kate who understood him through
and through, ever dreamed that the apostate blasphemer and im-
moral degenerate, Horace Blake, would return to the Catholic faith
of his childhood. But the miracle does happen, and its history
affords Mrs. Ward an excellent opportunity of giving us a subtle
and penetrating psychological study. At the outset this genius dra-
matist is ordered by his physician to go abroad, to the coast of
Brittany, for his health. He takes with him not his devoted wife,
1914-] NEW BOOKS 101
but his illegitimate daughter Trix, whom his wife has nobly ac-
knowledged as her own to save her husband's honor. The first
days of his vacation are spent in finishing a play, which was to
utter the last word of crude immorality and blatant unbelief.
God, however, in His mercy, speaks to this all but damned soul,
and wins him gradually to repentance by the hymns of a Rogation
Day procession, the kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament in the
Corpus Christi procession, and the interviews with a tactful French
cure who reconciles him finally to God.
The greater part of the novel is concerned with the reality
of this deathbed repentance. Was it due to brain failure? Was
he playing a part? or had God indeed worked a real miracle of
conversion? Stephen Tempest, chosen by the wife to write Horace
Blake's biography, declares that " a real moral conversion was
absolutely impossible for a man as rotten as Blake." The wife is
firmly convinced that a man who hated religion his life long, and
taught her to loathe it, could not possibly turn around so completely
at the end. The change could only have been effected by those
scheming French priests who influenced him against his will, when
the poison of his disease reached his brain. She finally comes
to realize that his conversion was real, by reading a notebook in
which her husband had written the story of his return to God.
These last words of Blake's diary, which carried conviction to his
wife's unbelieving soul, are the most beautiful in the volume.
The French cure of St. Jean des Pluies, together with his
assistants and the stern uncompromising housekeeper, are admirably
drawn.
THE NEW IDEALS OF THE GOSPEL. By Professor Hermann
Schell. New York : E. P. Button & Co. $3.50 net.
The late Professor Schell was for several years a storm centre
in Germany; of an ardent nature, he raised up an enthusiastic fol-
lowing and a violent opposition. A theologian by profession, he
was by temperament a philosophic poet or a mystical preacher; a
lover of the people and a firm believer, on the one hand, in the
Gospel and the Church ; on the other, in modern science and civiliza-
tion, he aimed to present the Gospel in a living and persuasive
form to the people, and desired to see the Church take the lead in
progress. His intentions, we believe, are generally recognized to
have been pure and noble; but his mind was not clear or accurate
or measured, and so his large work on dogma and his little book on
ioj NEW BOOKS [April,
Catholicism as the principle of progress fell under the ban of au-
thority. No such condemnation has overtaken the present work,
which is highly esteemed and widely circulated in Germany. It
appears in English as a literary Melchisedech, without father or
mother or sponsor, without name of translator or imprimatur of a
bishop.
We could understand the reluctance of a bishop to sanction
a work in which he would find enunciated " Jesus' conception of
His Messiahship. He taught : Because I am the Son of God, I am
also His Ambassador and Messias sent to transform strangers and
serfs into children of God, and bring them together into the
Kingdom of God. This is the idea of religion in all its purity and
greatness. The consciousness of divine sonship implies that the
soul is entirely God's own; lives His life; depends on Him; gives
itself up to Him. Messiahship implies the freedom and power of
the highest life, the glow and fecundity commensurate with its
energy. As Son of the Father, Jesus is the Source of the Spirit.
The Messianic kingdom is the reign of the Spirit, for it proceeds
from the sonship; from the consciousness of being the expression
of divine thought and divine love " (pp. 41, 42).
All this is perfectly defensible as good theology; but it requires
to be explained in order to be defended. We are living in an age
when the formulation of a dogma, in order to be acceptable, must
be neither obscure nor equivocal. In justice to Schell, however,
let it be recalled that he wrote before the vogue of modernism;
while the mistiness of the above quotation is offset by clear and
explicit interpretations of Christ's doctrine of His own divinity,
which Schell professed without equivocation.
The plan and scope of the work are to treat each of the Gos-
pels in turn, to expose its leading ideas, and to give the historical
setting in which a few of them, at least, were enunciated by our
Lord, and to discuss some special questions connected with each
Gospel. Obviously, the plan is rather loose, being neither historical
nor logical ; it leaves scope, however, for the treatment of several
present-day problems, such as the attitude of Christ towards as-
ceticism, towards property, towards work, towards intellectual cul-
ture, towards the Church and the religious education of mankind.
Schell's handling of these problems is never quite complete, sys-
tematic, or vigorous enough; but his views are generally just, far-
seeing, suggestive, and stimulating. His work is really, though
not explicitly, intended as an answer and rival to Harnack's What
1914.] NEW BOOKS 103
is Christianity? And though the author has not the clear, succinct,
trenchant style which Harnack often employs, he is a better exegete,
and gives a far truer idea of the Gospel.
The question which is most ably and fully discussed is the
Church.
In the mind of Jesus [says Schell] the Kingdom can only
attain its ends by becoming the Church. The Church in the
Catholic sense is the active realization of the Kingdom of God ;
its substantial manifestation, its active assertion, its community
of love; the realization of its inner life, energy, and charity.
The Church/ then, is no more antagonistic to the Gospel than the
body to the soul, or substance to essence, will to thought, action
to conception, society to personal independence, or charity to
the love of self.
This lofty and sensible idea of the Church is well developed,
and constitutes, in our mind, the most valuable portion of the book.
Schell shows so well that the Church must necessarily follow the
Gospel, that some may understand him to teach that it is the mere
natural growth of the idea of a Gospel; but this would be a mis-
take, for he certainly recognizes the origin of the Church in
the will of Christ Himself. One reserve in this matter we would
make: while Schell insists strongly on the need of the people for
authoritative guidance in religion, he is not so clear or strong in
maintaining that the educated classes and the searchers after truth
have the same need. Who, in fact, need it more? It is not the
people, but philosophers, critics, and scientists who originate the
greatest and most harmful vagaries in religious thought.
The book is profusely illustrated, but we admire neither the
taste in the selection nor the execution.
CRIMINOLOGY. By Baron Raffaele Garofalo. Translated by
Robert Wyness Millar, with an Introduction by E. Ray Ste-
vens. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. $4.50 net.
It is well to know that those who are looked up to as authorities
in criminology, are not affected by the foolish popular notions cur-
rent in many quarters about criminals and their fit punishment.
This series of books, The Modern Criminal Science Series, issued
as the result of a resolution passed at the National Conference
of Criminal Law and Criminology held in Chicago at Northwestern
University five years ago, will supply material for any who wish
to have good ground for contradicting many of these foolish
theorists, sentimentally over-merciful to the criminal, and forgetful
104 NEW BOOKS [April,
of his victims, and of the fact that human nature can as a rule be
deterred from crime if the punishment is only immediate and fitting.
There are two chapters in Baron Garofalo's book that are of
special interest to us at the present time. He has no illusions with
regard to the effect of the abolition of capital punishment. Elimi-
nation by death is for him the measure necessary for the limitation
of murder. That is of course well recognized by all who know any-
thing of real conditions, yet there are many theorists who insist that
the death penalty must not be inflicted. We in the United States
execute two out of every hundred of our murderers. In Canada
they come nearer to executing nine out of every ten. We have
very nearly the same kind of population, the same climate,
and almost the same living conditions, but we have many times as
many murders as Canada. England hangs her murderers, and the
consequence is that London has only one-tenth as many murders,
or less than that in some years than New York. Baron Garofalo
points out that in country after country where the death penalty has
been eliminated, or become rare, because of abuse of the pardon and
reprieve, the number of murders has constantly increased. In Bel-
gium, in France, in Italy, whenever the death penalty was allowed
to fall into abeyance, voluntary homicides grew apace.
Another feature of Garofalo's criminology is the insistence on
repayment by the criminal to those he has victimized of anything
taken from them. He must be punished, but he must also repay.
His prison term should be so arranged that the amount paid for his
labor by the State will repay his victim, and not until the debt
is paid shall the sentence end. The feeling on the part of the
criminal that whenever he takes anything unjustly, he shall, if the
law reaches him, have to repay, is the best possible motive to lessen
crimes against property. He suggests the establishment of a com-
pensation fund by the State for the purpose of indemnifying, first,
persons injured by criminal acts, who have been unable to obtain
compensation from the wrongdoer, and, second, persons who after
suffering imprisonment pending prosecution have been acquitted as
the result of a trial on the merits.
We have touched only some of the conclusions, but the whole
character of the book is eminently sane, conservative, evidently writ-
ten from actual knowledge of conditions. Coming as it does from
a Procurator General of the Court of Appeals of Venice, who is a
Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, it is authoritative in its depart-
ment.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 105
CORRESPONDANCE DE BOSSUET. Edited by Ch. Urbain and
E. Levesque. Volumes VI. and VII. Paris : Librairie Hach-
ette et Cie.
The first five volumes of this masterly edition of Bossuet's
correspondence have already been noticed at length in our pages. 1
The work, we need only remind our readers, forms part of that
monumental collection of Les Grands Ecrivains de la France, which
is published under the patronage of the French Academy, and aims
to be the definitive, complete, and standard edition of France's
great authors. These two volumes, like the preceding ones, show
on every page that the editors have taken all possible care to give
us a complete and accurate text, and to elucidate it with all neces-
sary information.
They contain seventy-four letters not published before in the
completest edition of Bossuet's correspondence, and about eighty
that had been published only in an incomplete form. Most of them
are taken directly from the originals, so we have the most authentic
sources. It is a great gain to have this important correspondence
of one of the Church's greatest men, and of France's greatest
geniuses, given to us in a form so entirely satisfactory. The work
will be a valuable addition to any university, seminary or college
library.
At the beginning of volume six, enter Madame Guy on and
trouble; trouble for the poor devout visionary herself, who was
persecuted and calumniated; trouble for Bossuet, who for the first
time in his victorious career of controversy met his match, in the
person of his friend and most illustrious disciple, and came out of
the terrific duel not unscathed; trouble for Fenelon, who was con-
demned for dangerous, though not for heretical, teaching by a re-
luctant Pope, and spent the last twenty years of his life in disgrace
with the king and exile from the court, a punishment which in this
day, especially under the Stars and Stripes, we can hardly appre-
ciate; and trouble above all for the Church of France, which was
sorely afflicted when her two most illustrious prelates, whom all
esteemed for their elevation of character, for their deep piety, for
their surpassing genius, learning and eloquence, broke a life-long
friendship and fought a bitter fight all about the pure love of God.
The pity of it is that one feels the whole scandalous quarrel
between two well-intentioned bishops could easily have been
avoided. It has not yet broken out with this instalment of the
i
'See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1912, page 544.
106 NEW BOOKS [April,
correspondence (October, 1693 to June, 1696), which belongs to the
period between the submission of Madame Guyon's doctrine to Bos-
suet's judgment, and the refusal of Fenelon to approve Bossuet's
book on Quietism. Still friends, their friendship is already labor-
ing under a heavy strain. It is during this period that the Abbe
de Fenelon becomes the Archbishop of Cambrai, and that the
articles of Issy, condemning the doctrine of Madame Guyon, are
signed by both prelates, and seem to promise the continuance of
peace. But Bossuet is writing his L'Etat d'Oraison; to which,
in the next volume of the correspondence, Fenelon refuses his ap-
probation; then comes Les Maximes des Saints; then the rupture
and the quarrel. The succeeding volumes will show whether any
new light is shed on the Quietist controversy, or on the character
of the two protagonists.
We have spoken of the matter in these volumes that is of the
greatest interest to English readers; but the best of the letters
are those written to religious women who were under Bossuet's
spiritual guidance. They have a deep, sensible, confident, and ten-
der piety; yet they may be reproached with too great sameness.
Bossuet does not bring clearly before us the image either of himself
or of his correspondent; unlike, in this respect as in others, both
St. Francis de Sales and Fenelon.
THE HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS OF THE LERINS. The
Monastery, Saints and Theologians of St. Honorat. By A. C.
Cooper-Marsdin, D.D. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. $3.00.
The title of this volume conveys the impression that a gap in
English theological literature has been at last filled up. This is,
however, not the case. Whatever may have been the intention of
the author when first planning the book, the result, strictly speaking,
is not a history at all. The Islands of the Lerins, like so many of the
islands off the shores of England, served as a haven of peace, where
the contemplative or the student sought protection from the stormy
and dissolute world in which the Christians of those early times
lived and les peuples heureux n'ont point d'histoire. At most the
islands can claim but a few historical episodes; these are not
sufficient to fill a volume, and so we get an introductory chapter
about Church history in general ; another chapter about St. Patrick,
whose connection with the Lerins is quite indefinite, followed by a
long one devoted to Cassian, of whom the author candidly says,
1914.] NEW BOOKS 107
" we have no direct evidence that this celebrated monk was ever at
Lerins." It is true, Dr. Cooper-Marsdin makes no claim to have
" given us a history of the wonderful monastery," but that is pre-
cisely what the title led us to expect he had done. Neither is there
any question of original research, and certainly no new light thrown
on the many historical or theological questions raised during the
course of the book. The order of the chapters leaves something to
be desired. Faustus is mentioned as one of the great men who had
lived at Lerins, and whose books and ideals of monastic life
had attracted Caeserius. Such imperfections as these need not spoil
a good book; there are, however, other difficulties which do con-
siderably stand in the way of the success of this one.
The true history of the Lerins is that of the celebrated theolog-
ians who were trained within its cloisters. It was inevitable that
Dr. Cooper-Marsdin should write of them in his history of the
island on which they lived and worked and played. The intellectual
life of those early centuries of Church history were no less keen and
intense than in our own time. Then, as now, the Church was at-
tacked by the worldly spirit, as well as by the ravages of false
teachers. Heresy and unorthodoxy had to be beaten down, and in
no spot in Christendom were more ardent defenders of the Faith
found than at Lerins. Chief among these were St. Vincent, whose
Commonitorium is to this day one of the most prized writings of
the Church. It was written chiefly to counteract the Pelagian
heresy.
Dr. Cooper-Marsdin insinuates that St. Vincent was in reality
attacking St. Augustine, and assumes that the great Doctor taught a
Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. To handle so complex and
thorny a subject with adequate authority, would require a skilled
theologian well versed in the phraseology of the schools, and capable
of dissecting the true from the false. Such a scholar would hardly
venture to speak of " the Augustinian denial of free will," or to
risk the statement " we are all semi-Pelagians now." Then again,
to suggest that St. Vincent's position with regard to the See of
Rome and his teaching concerning the profectus, non permutatio
religionis, coincides with the attitude of the Anglican communion
of to-day, is not likely to be accepted as a fact by those who do really
know what St. Vincent taught and practised. It is curious, too, to
find anyone so ill-informed as to write " in the Roman Church the
idea if tradition has undergone another change, for since the Vat-
ican council it is no longer the conclusion of an ecumenical council
io8 NEW BOOKS [April,
that determines matters of faith and morals, but the infallible Pope
speaking ex cathedra Petri. The infallible Pope certainly, but
speaking quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.
One wonders what distinction Dr. Cooper-Marsdin wishes to
draw by writing " Catholic Church " in one place, while in another
he speaks of explaining things in a " Catholic sense." The " Im-
maculate Conception " is mentioned as one of the " changes " intro-
duced by the Roman Church. Dr. Cooper-Marsdin succeeds best
when he contents himself with summarizing the contents of a book,
or in giving a short sketch of a famous man. On most points he
seems in sympathy with his heroes, but he thinks Cassian " had per-
haps an exaggerated regard for asceticism," and that he gives evi-
dences of pressing for a " blind obedience." It is true Cassian's
attitude in such matters does not exactly coincide with that of the
Anglican communion, and one asks oneself what we should know of
Cassian and his teaching to-day if it were not for his excessive
zeal of asceticism and the obedience of the monastic life? A good
deal is said concerning the authorship of the Athanasian Creed.
Dr. Cooper-Marsdin mentions the various theories held as to who
really did write it without committing himself to any one in par-
ticular; he is, however, almost certain that it "emanated" from
Lerins, but of this there is no proof.
It would be impossible to give an account of the Islands of the
Lerins without mentioning " The Man in the Iron Mask." The lat-
est books and authorities on the question are not quoted, since
Funck-Brentano's publication in 1898 a great deal of light has been
brought to bear on the solution of the mystery, including Monsignor
Stapelton Barnes' book. Nothing is said of the immense spiritual
jurisdiction of the Abbots of Lerins, very little of their great
political influence, and nothing of the mint at which the monks
coined the Papal money. There are some interesting photographs,
and an appendix of notes on the ancient monuments, buildings, and
treasures; these notes would be most useful to the visitor to the
Lerins, but we hope no one will take seriously what is said under
" indulgences for pilgrims," that " the chapels were the objects of
special worship on the part of the faithful." The story of the
decline and secularization of the Abbey make sad reading, but
a note of hope and joy is struck at the end of the book, where we
read of the return of the monks to their old home ; it is now once
again a safe retreat from the world, and a haven of peace which
welcomes the student and contemplative.
1914-] NEW BOOKS 109
THE DIVINE TWILIGHT. Old Testament Stories in Scripture
Language. Edited by Rev. Cornelius J. Holland. Provi-
dence, R. I. : Catholic Scripture Texts Society.
No Bible history can take the place of the Bible itself, even
for children; so it was a very happy thought of Father Holland,
who has already given Catholic children The Divine Story of Our
Lord, to bring them back to the ancient covenant, and tell over its
most interesting and important stories in the very words of Scrip-
ture itself. The need of such a work, and the way Father Holland
executes it, are well expressed in the very appreciative preface of
Monsignor Shahan.
The Old Testament [he tells his young readers] is a very
big book, too big, I fear, for most children to read through.
Besides it contains many things that do not interest children,
and many things that are hard to understand, even for grown
people. So everything that is too hard to understand, and
everything that is uninteresting to children, together with mat-
ters of less importance, has been left out of this book. Here
you have a fine selection of beautiful and interesting stories
true stories which you will read with pleasure and with profit
to your souls. You will read them not once only, but many
times; and I am sure you will love them and remember them
as long as you live.
Father Holland has indeed done his work well. He has made
an interesting selection with judicious omissions : his notes are
brief, to the point and enlightening. He gives the pronunciation
of proper names, three good maps, and a very large number of
excellent illustrations. It is in every way an attractive book for
children. All in all, we do not see how our Catholic schools can
do better than to adopt it for the study of the Old Testament.
MAJOR ORDERS. By Rev. Louis Bacuez, S.S. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $1.50 net.
The books of Father Bacuez on the sacred ministry have long
enjoyed great favor in France. English readers who have made
the acquaintance of the volumes on Tonsure and Minor Orders, will
be sure to welcome this third and concluding volume which deals
with the Major Orders. They know what to expect, not a dog-
matic or historical treatise on the orders ; but an explanatory, prac-
i io NEW BOOKS [April,
tical, and devotional treatment. This volume, like its predecessors,
is intended chiefly for young men preparing for the priesthood,
who will derive from it a high idea of the sublime office for which
they are destined, and of the sanctity it requires. It will be equally
helpful, no doubt, to priests exercising the sacred ministry. In
every paragraph of this excellent little book, there is a sweet savor
of true piety, and such a simplicity and sincerity as are very en-
gaging and winning. There is also much sound sense and whole-
some advice; we call attention particularly to the very fine treat-
ment of preaching.
The translation is, in general, exceptionally well done. We
remark, however, the use of a liberty no longer allowed to transla-
tors, namely, the introduction without notice of changes and addi-
tions into the author's text; two or three instances where this
occurs are such as the author himself, if alive, would undoubtedly
sanction. The name of the translator is not given; the copyright
is in the name of that indefatigable, international promoter of good
literature, Rev. Joseph Bruneau, who is always turning English
books into French and, directly or by proxy, French books into
English. May he long continue his literary apostolate !
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. Translated from a re-
vised Greek text and explained for English readers. By Rev.
George S. Hitchcock, D.D. New York: Benziger Brothers.
$2.50 net.
Father Hitchcock has written a readable and scholarly com-
mentary of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. In rendering St.
Paul's sentences, our author does his best to present the Greek in
an English form as similar to the original as possible. Conse-
quently, it often appears broken, sometimes uncouth, and occasion-
ally obscure. The only fault that we have to find with his book
is that Father Hitchcock pretends to write for the man in the
street, totally ignorant of all matters pertaining to textual criticism,
while at the same time he supposes in the reader perfect familiarity
with the intricacies of the text. He gives as his excuse for re-
peating dates and other notes : " I have tried to save the reader
trouble."
An introduction of some fifty pages discusses the present and
early interest in the Epistles the writing, delivery, chronology, and
encyclical character of the Epistle, etc. This book will prove
invaluable to the preacher and seminary professor.
1914.] NEW BOOKS in
THEODORE ROOSEVELT: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. With
Illustrations. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.50 net.
Every American, whatever his political affiliations, will read
with the greatest interest this most stirring and absorbing of biog-
raphies. Mr. Roosevelt covers a period of fifty years, from his
birth in 1858 to the close of his Presidential term. Modesty and
self-effacement are not the chief characteristics of our strenuous
ex-President, and he certainly follows his own advice on every
page : " Do not hit at all if it can be avoided ; but never hit softly."
He has some bitter words to say regarding corruption in the New
York Legislature of his time, and among the police officials during
his Commissionership ; the incompeterrcy of the Army and Navy
Departments at the outset of the Spanish- American War; the op-
position he met with from angry business men in his fight against
the trusts; the stupidity of the peace-at-any-price policy, etc. His
book from beginning to end is an apologia of his every act and
policy. Like the Sheriff in " Robin Hood," he sings :
I never yet have made one mistake
I'd like to for variety's sake.
Mr. Roosevelt is very loyal to his friends. Their name is
legion : Mike Donovan, Billy O'Neill, Peter Kelly, Gifford Pinchot,
Father Doyle, Bishop Spalding, William Loeb, George Perkins,
John Hay, etc., etc. The book is full of the author's well-known
gospel of the strenuous life, abounds in excellent stories, and adds
not a few members to the already long list of the Ananias Club.
Even President Wilson does not escape.
BERGSON. An Exposition and Criticism from the Point of View
of St. Thomas Aquinas. By Thomas J. Gerrard. St. Louis :
B. Herder. 90 cents net.
This philosophical treatise of Father Gerrard appeared last
year in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Everybody to-day,
with the slightest claim to culture, is reading or at least discussing
Bergsori's new philosophy. As Father Gerrard well says : " It is
a revolt against the static aspect of things. It proclaims that all
is kinetics. Bergson himself calls it the philosophy of change.
Indeed its great success may be set down to this consistency with
itself, namely, that it provides a new sensation."
Professor Bergson's books are written in so fascinating a
style, that he attracts perforce hundreds of readers who are incap-
i I2 NEW BOOKS [April,
able of any careful analysis of the content of his philosophy.
Everybody reads he is the lion of the hour but not many under-
stand Bergson. The difficulty that most men have in reading him,
lies in the fact that his appeal is to the imagination rather than to
the reason, and that he rejects with an airy wave of the hand all
the data of ordinary logic and ontology. Father Gerrard writes
for the man in the street, and tells us that his book is " an attempt
to place the questions at issue on a basis of common sense, with
St. Thomas, the great philosopher of common sense, as his guide."
One severe and cocksure English critic has declared these papers
" neither good philosophy nor good apologetics." This criticism is
most unfair. Father Gerrard's popular exposition answers the need
of the average Catholic affected by Bergsonitis, better than a more
pretentious scholastic treatise.
AIDS TO LATIN PROSE COMPOSITION. Designed for Use in
the First and Second Years of College. By James A. Kleist,
S J. New York : Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss. 60 cents.
Father Kleist, in sixty-two lessons, teaches the young student
the fundamental principles that underlie the simple elegance of the
genuine Sermo Latinus. The illustrative examples, as well as the
great bulk of the sentences of the exercises, have been taken from
the writings of Caesar and Cicero. An appendix contains some
excellent examples of Latin translations, viz., Lincoln's Gettysburg
Speech, Froude's The Sailing of the Spanish Armada, Macaulay's
Heroic Death of Dundee, etc. We recommend this little volume
highly to all the professors of our Catholic colleges.
THE EARLY CHURCH IN THE LIGHT OF THE MONUMENTS.
A Study in Christian Archaeology. By Monsignor Arthur S.
Barnes. The Westminster Library. New York : Longmans,
Green & Co. $1.50.
Monsignor Barnes has written a most excellent and accurate
account of the monuments of the early Church. His volume is in
no sense the fruit of original research, but, as he tells us himself,
a summary of " conclusions rather than of facts," gathered with
great care and judgment from the works of such specialists in arch-
aeology as De Rossi, Lanciani, Marucchi, Wilpert, Cabrol, and
others.
A student beginning his study of early Church history, and
the non-Catholic ignorant of the witness of primitive Christianity,
1914.] NEW BOOKS 113
will find in this volume a good general sketch of the whole field of
early Christian archaeology. The illustrations are numerous and
well chosen, the bibliography good though brief, and the whole
tone of the book is modest in statement, and clear in presentation.
The editors of the Westminster Library have selected a most com-
petent popularizer in Monsignor Barnes.
CHURCH AND STATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. The Ford
Lectures delivered at Oxford in 1895. By A. L. Smith. New
York: Oxford University Press. $2.50.
The subject of these six lectures, as the author himself tells us,
is " the good and evil of the connection of England with Rome,
especially in the middle of the thirteenth century." Mr. Smith
evidently purposes to write objectively about the dealings of the
Papacy under Innocent III. and Innocent IV. with the English
kings and bishops (Lectures I. to IV.), and about the great duel
between the Papacy and the Empire under Innocent IV. and Fred-
erick II. (Lectures V. and VI.). He tells us at the outset that "the
Papacy, taking it all in all, was the greatest potentiality for good
that existed at the time, or perhaps that has ever existed," but of
course he has not the slightest idea of its being a divine institution.
He is most outspoken in setting forth the ecclesiastical abuses of
the period, although one may read a great deal about them in
Catholic writers, as for instance in Abbot Gasquet's Henry III. and
the Church.
He is especially valuable in showing against many modern
Anglican scholars the utter untrustworthiness of the oft-quoted
English chronicler, Matthew Paris, and in proving the utter un-
fairness of those Anglican controversialists who cite Bishop Gros-
seteste as a rebel against Papal authority. Here is his estimate of
Matthew Paris :
He is equipped at every point with healthy English prejudices;
against the Welsh and Scots, against the French and foreigners
in general, against Jews, against Jacks-in-offke, against inno-
vators or reformers, especially in religious methods, against
either injustice or incompetence in rulers He was a -vigor-
ous writer, but no stylist; full of good sense, free from any
subtlety. He had none of the indifferentism or aloofness of
the cloister, but is alive with all the political passions, the
outspokenness, the blunt judgments of a man who has seen the
world He appeals to us as a hard hitter and a good hater.
He has all the English respect for a lord, along with the English
VOL. xcix. 8
Ii 4 NEW BOOKS [April,
exaggeration of liberty as an end in itself. Monk as he is,
he objects to undue spiritual meddling either by Popes or by
bishops. He has little patience with what he does not appre-
ciate, and he is not above burking what he finds inconvenient,
or defending abuses if only they are old and vested He
is a big, healthy, fresh, vehement, but not unkindly man, shrewd
without being profound; sensible, limited, prejudiced; full of
life and its dramatic interests, its tragic and its comic elements,
its crimes and its scandals In robustness, in industry, in
eagerness, in strong language, he is a Macaulay minus the
style. He is also a Macaulay in prejudice, in wilful blindness,
in truculence, in lack of spirituality Instead of being rep-
resentative of his age on the question of submission to the
Papacy, Matthew Paris represents an extreme position. He is
like that millionaire who said, " Merely to be asked for money
makes me feel positively ill." The one constant quantity in
all his charges against the Papacy is extortion of money or
money's worth. Historians have been somewhat too ready to
assume that his attitude was the typical and normal one,
whereas, when viewed in its proper environment and back-
ground, we can see it was extreme, perhaps unique in its vehe-
mence; perfectly natural in a man of his views, perfectly
illogical.
In Lecture III. Mr. Smith declares it a monstrous perversion
of the truth to regard Grosseteste " as a harbinger of the Protestant
Reformation," and he objects most strenuously to those controver-
sialists who are perpetually harping on a certain letter in which
the bishop is supposed to meet a direct Papal order with flat mutiny ;
non obedio, contradico, rebello. Personally he regards this famous
letter of Bishop Grosseteste's to Innocent IV. as a forgery. " Not
a forgery in the ordinary sense, but an academic exercise reminding
one now of the speeches in Livy or Thucydides, now of a modern
leading article." "At that time plagiarism was no crime be-
cause it was universal ; there was little critical sense in the ascrip-
tion of authority. A few great names were apt to gather about
them any floating productions." The letter ascribed to Grosseteste
contradicts his many other letters, which are full of devout sub-
mission to the Pope and denunciation of rebellion, which he stig-
matizes as " the sin of witchcraft."
Matthew Paris' account of the death of Grosseteste must be
rejected on account of its inherent contradictions and absurdities.
' The dying Bishop is made to castigate just the very things and
I9I4-]
NEW BOOKS
persons that were the objects of Matthew Paris' perennial animosity,
the violators of Magna Carta, the non-obstante clause in Papal bulls;
the usuries of Papal money-lenders in England; the exaction of
legacies from the dying; the intrusion of unfit Papal presentees;
the postponement of episcopal ordination. He is made to de-
nounce the Roman Curia as the home of avarice, usury, simony, ra-
pine, wantonness, licentiousness, gluttony, and pomp; to denounce
the king as its accomplice and sharer in rapine ; and, most startling
of all, to denounce the Dominicans and Franciscans for whom in his
life he had nothing but eulogy and the highest esteem."
Nearly all historians, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, accept
without question the famous estimate of Grosseteste, namely, that
the revenues of the alien clerks put in by Innocent IV. amounted
to more than seventy thousand marks, while the net royal revenue
was not one-third of that. But Mr. Smith declares this " a mon-
strous overestimate, as far as we can judge from the actual Papal
Registers in the Vatican, and from the fact that Innocent IV. him-
self, in his letter of May 25, 1253, offered as a fair compromise
a maximum of eight thousand marks a year, and eight thousand is
not an arithmetical mean between seventy thousand and zero."
Although we do not agree with Mr. Smith in his estimate
of the duel between the Papacy and the Empire, we are grateful
to him for his straightforward defence of the famous Bishop of
Lincoln, and his perfect portrait of that unreliable chronicler, Mat-
thew Paris, who so bitterly maligned him.
THE VATICAN; THE CENTRE OF GOVERNMENT OF THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. By Rt. Rev. Edmund Canon Hugues
de Ragnau. New York: D. Appleton & Co. $4.00.
Canon de Ragnau has written a popular treatise on the govern-
ment of the Church, her teachings, her intellectual life, her mis-
sions, her attitude toward education, and her history during the
past one hundred years. It covers too wide a field to be of any
value to the student, and is gotten up in too costly a fashion to
reach the man in the street, to whom it is primarily addressed.
THE SONNETS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By Countess
de Chambrun. Illustrated. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$1.75 net.
The Countess de Chambrun has published a new edition of the
sonnets of Shakespeare, grouped by subjects, with an introductory
n6 NEW BOOKS [April,
discussion of over a hundred pages on the many literary problems to
which they give rise. She proves conclusively that "the fair
youth " of the sonnets is Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
Shakespeare's patron, and the " dark lady," Mrs. d'Avenant of the
Crown Inn, the mother of Sir William d'Avenant. The "rival
poets," so frequently referred to in the sonnets and satirized in the
play Love's Labour's Lost, may be identified with Marlowe, Chap-
man, Greene, Nash, and Florio. All these writers were well known
aspirants for the Earl of Southampton's favor. The Countess
shows that through the sonnets Shakespeare has projected his brain
and personality in an immortal photograph, being conscious of
the miracle by which
Black ink should shine bright,
so that, as he says,
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
She maintains that they prove him " a person of great nervous
susceptibility and sensitiveness, whose qualities of heart are almost
equal to those of his intelligence."
They indicate a person devoted to his profession, and " well
contented " in general, save for those special occasions, when he
seems to have been subject to a violent and brief attack of melan-
choly. He expresses more impatience with pedantry than with
ignorance, although his most bitter words are reserved to denounce
fraud, affectation, and insincerity. He expresses a strong distaste
for what is physically artificial also, paint and false hair, and ex-
hibits, as in the plays, a passionate love for the beauties of nature,
trees, flowers, birds, even an appreciation of landscape, rare in his
time. He also shows a great comprehension of animals and sym-
pathy for their sufferings, which was not at all common in his day.
The constantly recurring use of legal phraseology and metaphor
in the sonnets, have led some critics to believe that Shakespeare
must have spent some time in the serious study, if not the practice,
of law ; it has led others to affirm that these poems could not have
been written by Shakespeare at all, but by the greatest lawyer of
his time! Our author considers that the profound knowledge of
the law evidenced by the sonnets is greatly exaggerated, and is
merely just such a facile mastery of the external part of the
subject that a clever young man picks up from listening to conver-
sation, and assimilates without study.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 117
The Countess, though not a Catholic herself, accepts as con-
clusive the statement made in the manuscript notes written by the
Rev. Dr. Fulman, which are buried in the archives of the Corpus
Christi College at Oxford, and which end with the words, " He
dyed a papist." She adds, " We know little in detail of Shakes-
peare's life, but there is nothing which we do know that especially
differentiates it from the lives of others in the literary or theatrical
profession Ben Jonson and William d'Avenant, for instance, both
of whom were Catholics, as was also the actor Lacey, who at
eighty was noted by Aubrey as being " the man who knew the most
about Shakespeare now living."
The value of this edition is greatly enhanced by the inclusion
of Nicholas Rowe's Life of Shakespeare.
THE BARBARY COAST. Sketches of French North Africa. By
Albert Edwards. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.00.
Most of the sketches of French North Africa in the present
volume have already been published in The Outlook. Mr. Edwards
writes with all the facility of a trained journalist of the natives in
Algiers, Tunis, Fez, Casablanca, the outlining in brief their customs,
prejudices, hatred of change, morals, and religion. In chapter
thirteen, entitled the Religion of Muley Khamedo, he goes out of
his way to cast a slur upon Catholicism. We were rather aston-
ished to learn that Catholics adore the saints, sell indulgences, attrib-
ute false miracles to Christian saints, and teach a religion which is
in great part like unto Mohammedanism. Mr. Edwards is more
happy in his descriptions of scenery, than in his ventures into the
domains of history, philosophy or religion.
A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE LOVE OF THE HOLY EUCH-
ARIST. By Freda Mary Groves. St. Louis: B. Herder.
$1.00 net.
The object of this little book is to bring forward examples of
the love and devotion of Catholics in pre-Reformation England to-
wards the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. The author writes :
" Our early records are not very numerous, but they are to the
point, and let us hope that they will exhibit to some extent the depth
of feeling, and passionate love and veneration which existed in the
hearts of our forefathers in these isles for the Sacrament of Love
and Comfort; and of the effect produced by the constant thought
which was in men's minds in those earlier days of the loving
ii8 NEW BOOKS [April,
Heart of Jesus, that suffered all the pangs of the Passion for us His
children, of which they were kept in mind by the daily offering
of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."
The author takes us from the year 63 A. D. down to the
Reformation, and shows by countless quotations the love of kings,
queens, monks, hermits, and people for the Holy Eucharist.
BLIND MAUREEN, AND OTHER STORIES. By Eleanor F.
Kelly. London : R. & T. Washbourne. 60 cents net.
We read with the most intense pleasure these charming Irish
stories of Eleanor Kelly. They are full of humor, pathos, and
Catholic loyalty under the direst stress of poverty and persecution.
With such a feast of good things before us, it is difficult to select
the best, but we may at random pick out for special mention,
Blind Maureen, In Affliction's Hour, and Father Tom's Investment.
AMERICAN CATHOLIC HYMNAL. Compiled by the Marist
Brothers. New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons. $1.50; post-
paid, $1.68.
THE OREGON CATHOLIC HYMNAL. Edited by F. W. Good-
rich. New York : J. Fischer & Brother.
THE BOOK OF HYMNS WITH TUNES. Edited by S. G. Quid,
O.S.B., and William Sewell, A.R.A.M. New York: Ed.
Schuberth.
We commend these three excellent hymnals to the attention
of our Catholic choirs. The American Catholic Hymnal is written
to meet the needs of trained choirs, of congregations singing in
unison, of the children in school, and of the family at home. The
compilers' aim throughout is to give both children and people an
insight into the sublimity of Catholic worship, and thereby to in-
crease in their hearts love for God and His Holy Church. The
Gregorian numbers are according to the Vatican edition, and in
modern notation. The motets for Benediction of the Blessed Sac-
rament are perfect models of church music, i. e. } Palestrina's Bone
Jesu, and Perosi's Tota Pulchra Es, etc.
Mr. Goodrich, the compiler of The Oregon Catholic Hymnal,
is organist and choir director of the Cathedral of the Immaculate
Conception in Portland, Oregon. He prepared his hymnal at the
request of Archbishop Christie, who was desirous of having a uni-
form collection of approved hymns for the schools and churches of
1914.] NEW BOOKS 119
his archdiocese. The selection as a whole is excellent, though we
were not greatly impressed with the original contributions of the
compiler.
The English Benedictine hymnal of Abbot Ould is by far the
best of the three, and compares favorably in variety, good taste,
and make-up with Mr. Terry's well-known Westminster Hymnal.
POLITICAL ECONOMY. Designed for Use in Catholic Colleges,
High Schools, and Academies. By E. J. Burke, SJ. New
York: American Book Co. $1.40.
Father Burke writes primarily for the youth of our Catholic
schools, and therefore makes no attempt to incline their opinion
towards either side of disputable questions. The book is simply
and clearly written, well arranged, and due credit is always given
to other writers on economic subjects. It is the best manual we
have met with since Devas wrote his Political Economy for the
Stonyhurst Series of Textbooks.
MEDITATIONS WITHOUT METHOD. By W. D. Strappini,
SJ. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.25 net.
In these devout meditations Father Strappini has tried to show
how our Saviour's teaching " emerges from His actions ; how teach-
ing by action supports and amplifies His teaching by word of
mouth." These meditations are arranged as an informal three
days' retreat. We do not think that the author's strange title does
justice to the contents of his book.
JESUS CHRIST, PRIEST AND VICTIM. By the Abbe S. M.
Giraud, Missionary Priest of Notre Dame de la Salette.
Translated by W. H. Mitchell, M.A. New York: Benziger
Brothers. $1.50 net.
The meditations in this book deal with the Incarnation, the
Holy Childhood, and the Hidden Life of our divine Lord. They
were originally written for members of an Association for the
Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Grenoble, France.
We recommend this book highly for use in religious communities.
'"THE veteran missionary, Father McKenna, who is now too old
to engage in mission work, has been urged by many of his
friends throughout the country to print a number of his Rosary
I2O
NEW BOOKS [April,
w
instructions. This he has done in The Treasures of the Rosary.
( New York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. Cloth, $i .00 ; paper, 25 cents. )
Cardinal Gibbons contributes the preface. This book will certainly
make the Rosary better known and appreciated.
-pRfiMRIC OZANAM AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL, by Archi-
bald J. Dunn (New York : Benziger Brothers. 50 cents net), con-
tains a brief life of Frederic Ozanam which the author wrote in
1877, and interesting chapters on the establishment of the Society
in England, its development in various other countries, and accounts
of the centenary celebrations in Paris and Manchester, etc.
E are glad to see that Father Martin of the Cleveland apostolate
has published a second edition of his excellent " bird's-eye
view of religion," entitled Catholic Religion. (St. Louis: B. Her-
der. Cloth, 75 cents; paper, 35 cents.) He treats in a popular
way the chief objections to the Church which he has met on his
Missions to non-Catholics. It would be a good book to give out
freely to non-Catholics, but the price is rather prohibitive.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Introduction a La Philosophic Traditionnelle ou Ciassique, by H. Petitot.
(Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne. 3frs.) This philosophical treatise does not dis-
cuss special questions like the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul,
or the basis of moral obligation. It aims rather at giving the student a general
view of the nature, method, and aim of the traditional Catholic philosophy.
It calls to the special attention of its readers the philosophical writings of
Cardinal Mercier and his co-workers, the Abbes Sertillanges, Rousselot, and
Garrigou-La Grange, etc. This volume is original, suggestive, and exhaustive
in treatment.
Avant le Manage, by the Abbe Louis Rouzic. (Paris : P. Lethielleux. i fr.
10.) The Abbe Rouzic writes this interesting volume for young men and
women contemplating matrimony, in a simple, direct, and charming fashion.
The various chapters discuss in turn the superiority of the virgin state, the
dignity of the sacrament of matrimony, the obligation of purity, the importance
of one's choice of a partner, the evil of mixed marriages and the like. It merits
an English translation.
Le Dialogue de Sainte Catherine de Sienne. Translated from the Italian
by Rev. P. J. Hurtaud, O.P. Two volumes. (Paris: P. Lethielleux. 5/r.y.)
In a preface of seventy pages, the Abbe Hurtaud gives us a scholarly disserta-
tion on the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. He tells us that this book was
dictated by her while in the state of ecstasy to her three secretaries, Caniggiani,
Maconi, and Pagliaresi, October 9-13, 1378. The book has had various titles,
namely, The Book of Mercy, The Treatise of Divine Providence, and The Book
of Divine Doctrine, etc. Three translations in French have preceded it:
First, The Spiritual Doctrine of St. Catherine, published by some French Domin-
1914.] NEW BOOKS 121
leans in Paris in 1587; second, The Doctrine of God Taught to St. Catherine of
Siena, by Louis Chardon, O.P., in 1647; and, third, The Dialogue of St. Cather-
ine, published by a Dominican Tertiary, E. Cartier, in 1855. The translation
of the Abbe Hurtaud differs from these by its exact fidelity to the original text
It is incomparably the best translation that we possess.
Quastiones Theological Medico-Pastoralis. Vol. II. De Scrupulis. By
Augustinus Gemelli, O.M. Translated from Italian into Latin by Caesar Badii.
(Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. 4 lire.) This is the second volume
of a series of medico-moral works which the scholarly Friar Minor, Father
Gemelli, is publishing for the guidance of confessors and seminary professors.
The author was a physician and surgeon before he entered the priesthood,
so that he is well qualified to treat such questions. The present treatise discusses
scrupulosity from both the medical and moral viewpoint, defining its nature,
its various forms, the methods of treatment, its cure and the like. It is by
far the best book on the subject.
Relectio-Analytica super controversia De Impotentia Feminas ad Gener-
andum, by William Arendt, SJ. (New York: Fr. Pustet & Co.) This is a
special treatise on a controversial point of medico-moral, which is intended
solely for theological students. The author's viewpoint is clearly and ably set
forth in three propositions.
Psalterium Latinum cum Grceco et Hebrceo comparatum, by Joseph Bonac-
corsi. (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina.) We welcome this first volume
(Psalms I.-XI.) of Bonaccorsi's critical commentary of the Psalms. The
text is given in four different versions, viz. : First, the Greek Septuagint edited
by H. B. Swete; second, the Latin Codex of Verona used by St. Augustine, and
copied with a few emendations after the edition of Blanchini (1735 A. D.) ;
third, the Gallican Palter edited by Hetzenauer and compared with the Ro-
man Breviary Psalter; and, fourth, the Hebrew Psalms translated into Latin
by St. Jerome, according to the edition of Lagarde. The notes are brief,
without however being obscure or omitting anything essential. They bring
out clearly the meaning of difficult passages; set forth the differences in the
Hebrew, Latin, and Greek versions ; suggest the correct reading in disputed
texts ; refer to the laws and customs of the Jewish people, etc.
Biblia Sacra Vulgates Editionis. Ex Tribus Editionibus Clementinis critice
descripsit, dispositionibus logicis et notis exegeticis illustravit, appendice lectionum
Hebraicarum et Gracarum auxit, by P. M. Hetzenauer, Ord. Min. Cap. (New
York: Fr. Pustet & Co. $3.00 net.) Father Hetzenauer says in his preface
that some may wonder why he should think of preparing an edition of the
Clementine Vulgate, while the Benedictines under Abbot Gasquet are preparing
an official edition of the Vulgate. But he answers them by saying that the restor-
ation of the original text of St. Jerome will be a task requiring many years,
and when it is accomplished, another commission will be appointed at once to
compare it with the original texts, and the ancient versions. St. Jerome was
rather timid about correcting some passages which he knew were incorrect,
because he realized how strong a hold these spurious texts had upon the popular
mind. (Cornill, Einleitung in die kanonischen Biicher des Alien Testaments.
Tubingen, 1913, p. 315.) Moreover, "he added, omitted, and transposed many
texts ; he translated other passages too freely, and made his version at times
fall in with his own exegetical opinions." The editor refers to his Commentary
on Genesis, published in 1910, as proof of these assertions. We recommend to
all Scriptural scholars this work, which Fr. Pustet & Co. has gotten up in a most
accurate and perfect manner.
foreign periobfcals,
The Our Father in English. By Rev. Herbert Thurston.
Down to the Reformation the only official form of the Our Father
was the Latin Pater. Even the peasants learned the Pater, Ave,
and Credo in Latin, and called them by Latin names. Latin was
the language of government, law, church services, and culture.
Probably even in the fourteenth centuries the best preachers in
England and France preached in Latin. There were indeed vernac-
ular translations of the Our Father, but they were not much used
until Henry 'VIII., and Cromwell commanded an English version
to be used. Their translation followed closely those made in
Catholic times, but to them we must probably attribute the constant
use of the English form, and the selection of this one out of slightly
divergent readings. The Protestant doxology at the end was added
in the reign of Charles II. The Month, February.
Professor Bury and Lord "Acton. By Dr. John G. Vance.
The two eminent historians who have occupied the Regius Pro-
fessorship of Modern History at Cambridge within the last fifteen
years, have both published works on freedom of thought. Both
gave inaugural lectures heralding the later, more objective, and
scientific treatment of documents. In the works cited they covered
the same ground, yet no two readings of history could be more
different in tone and fact. Lord Acton's temper of mind was pro-
foundly Christian; Professor Bury is an avowed Rationalist.
Numerous mistakes in date, fact, and theory in the latter's work
have already been pointed out by Mr. Belloc in the Dublin Review
for January. Here we may note their different judgments on the
ancient world, and on the Middle Ages. Lord Acton pointed out
how in antiquity " the vice of the classic state was that it was
Church and State in one."
To the people of Greece and Rome " may be tracked nearly all
the errors that are undermining political (society communism,
utilitarianism, the confusion between tyranny and authority, and be-
tween lawlessness and freedom." In classical literature "three
things are wanting representative government, the emancipation
of slaves, and liberty of conscience." The contrary was true in the
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 123
Middle Ages. Then in philosophy, politics, science, and enthusiasm
for knowledge, mighty evidences of life and progress may be found.
Lord Acton has, unconsciously, uttered the fitting comment on his
successor's book. His words are : " Such things will cease to be
written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives
dignity and worth to history." The Month, March.
Primary Education in Ireland. By Rev. Peter Byrne, C.M.
Since 1882 there has been general progress in primary educa-
tion in Ireland. The number of national schools has increased from
7,705 to 8,289 in 1912; the number of teachers from 10,532 to
13,214; the number of pupils on the rolls from 678,970 to 707,280;
the average number of pupils in daily attendance from 469,192 to
512,862. The buildings are better; the percentage of trained
teachers has increased from 34 to 70.6 ; the percentage of illiteracy
(foolishly reckoned until 1911 on the basis of " five years old and
upwards") has dropped from 25.2 to 11.9 on the old scale, and
taking the new standard of nine years, it amounts to only 9.2 per
cent. The great defects in the educational system are irregular
attendance ; want of elasticity in school programmes ; and, owing to
the parsimony of the treasury, absence of higher or continuation
schools. The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, March.
Virgil Among the Prophets. By Rev. J. F. d' Alton. In
the Middle Ages Virgil was often quoted as a propounder of high
morality; he seemed an anima naturaliter Christiana. His Fourth
Eclogue, singing of a mysterious child whose birth was to herald
the dawn of an era of peace and prosperity, appeared a prophecy
of Christ's coming. Constantine thought Virgil was conscious of
being a prophet; St. Augustine held the poem to be Messianic,
but the poet unconscious of his prophetic dignity. Such explana-
tions have long since been abandoned. The Eclogue was written
in 40 B. c., and probably was written for the heir expected by
Augustus to carry on the glory of his house. The child proved to
be a daughter. The poem may have been put aside and later pub-
lished as too elaborate for suppression, and as expressing the poet's
longing for the regeneration of his native land. The Irish Ec-
clesiastical Record, March.
Stoicism and Christianity. By J. Chiron. Many have thought
that the marvelous spread of Christianity must have been aided by
I24 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
Stoicism, which, particularly in the person of Seneca, prepared the
way by lofty words concerning God and morality. But the fact is,
that Stoicism rests on pantheism and pride; it confounds divinity
with matter; it offers as an escape from suffering, suicide and
annihilation. Its most noble representatives were but proud schol-
ars, scorning the populace; they affected to ignore the new religion,
or disdained, or persecuted it. They dared not themselves attack
official polytheism, slavery, or immorality. Stoicism was no ally of
Christianity, but an adversary. Revue Pratique d'Apologetique,
March i.
The Month (March) : T. Percy Armstrong describes a visit
to Bergen, and gives a glimpse of the present condition and pros-
pects of Catholicism in Norway. " The sixteen or twenty priests
are devoted, intelligent, energetic, and the State is not only not
hostile, but even friendly. In Norway there are sixteen missions ;
in Sweden there are four; in Norway most of the Catholics are
Norwegians; in Sweden many of them are foreigners." A free-
thinker's history of Norway, in which he speaks of Catholicism
with the greatest sympathy, is used in several schools. Besides
in the sixteenth century, Norway had no quarrel with the Church ;
Protestantism was forced upon her. But the latter faith is still
strong there.
The Tablet (February 7) : Liberty and Equality in France:
The law on school attendance takes from parents, who because of
offensive anti-religious teachings, withdraw their children from the
secular schools, the ordinary rights of appeal given those offending
against other laws. Their only appeal is to a partisan Minister
of Public Instruction. Those influencing scholars against schools
or books prescribed, are also subject to penalties. Evidently this
section is aimed at ecclesiastical authorities. A bill for financial
assistance of poor scholars attending lay schools is pending.
Popular Liberal Action: This new French political organization
includes in its programme the restoration of common rights to
French citizens who have been deprived of the power to associate
and teach ; private schools are to " share in the budget in proportion
to the number of its scholars ;" " the State School " to be " brought
back to the observance of the official programme " requiring teach-
ing of duties toward God; and the " resumption of diplomatic rela-
tions with the Vatican." Et Cetera notes the statements of Mr.
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 125
T. P. Armstrong in the London Times on the increase of Catholic
influence in the German Empire and Scandinavian countries; also
the article of Dr. Georges Chatterton-Hill on the Decline of the
French Republic in the February Nineteenth Century. He says
that France has no policy worthy of the name, and its only course
of action is appropriation. In home affairs it has brought about
the persecution of thousands of citizens for their religious opinions ;
the wholesale confiscation of private property; the disintegration
of the army and navy; the despotism of demagogues; and the
disorganization of national finances. He shows plainly how bad
faith in the administration of the Law of Associations has brought
about the betrayal, ruin, and death by famine of uncounted Re-
ligious.
(February 14) : The Modern English Novel: A resume of
Monsignor Benson's lecture. Favorable comment in detail is made
by the writer of Et Catera. Literary Notes: Monsignor Benson
speaks of Henry Kingsley's works as superior to those of his
brother Charles, admires R. L. Stevenson, and calls particular at-
tention to the works of Mr. H. G. Wells. He does not care for
Scott's novels, and W. H. K. fears that his declaration will give
encouragement to the fashion of believing Sir Walter heavy and
dull, and of turning to the light and frivolous works of inferior
writers.
(February 21) : Is Kikuyu the Chief Thing? In the present
controversy the Anglican papers have succeeded in turning attention
from the real point at issue to a secondary one. The first point
raised by the Bishop of Zanzibar, was the toleration by Anglican
bishops of the book Foundations from the pens of leaders of
Anglican thought. The book is modernism pure and simple. All
the fundamental Christian dogmas are swept aside. The real ques-
tion is not the African scandal, but is the Church of England going
to remain Christian or not? A description of Parsifal at Covent
Garden by Shane Leslie. Wagner has produced a thoroughly Catho-
lic opera, wherein the dogmas of Catholic faith form the basis.
How truly he sounded the Christian clarion, Nietzsche the pagan,
who cursed Wagner from his deathbed, is the best witness.
(February 28) : The Irish Bishops and the Dublin Strike: A
summary of the Joint Pastoral of the Irish bishops, wherein the
rights of labor and capital, as set down in the Encyclical of Leo
XIII., are applied to the recent strike. The disastrous effects of the
strike are the result of violation of the principles stated therein,
126 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
especially the wrongful interference with contracts, engineered by
English Syndicalists. The strike must have failed very quickly
if the English labor unions had not given financial support, and it
did fail as soon as this support was withdrawn. It is to be hoped
that the Irish have learned their lesson well, and will not again be
exploited by a few adventurers. When it came to a question of
applying Syndicalism in their own case, the English leaders re-
pudiated the proposition by a majority representing two million
votes. The Pastoral is printed in full. German Catholics and
Trades Unions: Pope Pius X. settled the question, " May Catholics
join the great Christian trades unions already existing, or must they
form unions of their own?" by permitting them to join mixed
unions wherever Catholic unions were impractical, and the Christian
unions were free from any principle or purpose running counter
to the teaching of the Church, and the directions of ecclesiastical
authority. Certain parties who desired Catholic unions or none
at all, by raising controversies and interpreting the interpretations
made by proper ecclesiastical authorities, made the last clause so
odious to the Christian unions that only very skillful handling of
the case by local bishops made it possible for Catholics to avail
themselves of the benefits that labor organizations offer. It is to be
hoped that German Catholics will find something better to do than
sow and keep alive dissensions amongst their coreligionists. r-
Modernism from Within: A summary of M. Loisy's autobiography.
From almost the start of his career, M. Loisy seems to have
been at odds with fundamental Catholic dogmas. The outward
course of his fencing, tilting, and final breach with ecclesiastical
authority is plainly traced. Notes: An International Liturgical
Congress, the first of its kind, will be held in England in West-
minster in July. The general outline of the Congress is given.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (March i): In connection
with the new law aimed to reach parents and ecclesiastics who op-
pose the use of textbooks condemned by the Church, F. Cimetier
rehearses the story of the Morizot affair, where this teacher at
Vievigne in 1907 was brought by the father of a family before a
court, and finally convicted of having uttered before children of
both sexes unpatriotic, anti-religious, and obscene remarks. It was
his condemnation, not the letter of the episcopate in 1908, which
let loose the present storm.
TRecent Events.
The existent situation in France is charac-
France. terized by every mark of inefficiency and un-
certainty. With the exception of the Repub-
lican form of government, the Russian Alliance and the Entente
with Great Britain, there seems to be nothing upon which reliance
can be placed. The fact that there is an immense deficit, and an
enormous increase in expenditures recurring and non-recurring, is
indeed all too certain ; but what is the precise amount it is impossible
to say, so many have been the estimates that have been published.
Still less is it possible to learn in what way the vast sum is to be
found. The Income Tax Bill has passed through the Chamber
of Deputies several years ago, but the Senate does not seem to
be able either definitely to reject or definitely to accept it in any
shape or form. The same must be said about Electoral Reform:
what one house proposes the other rejects. Even the annual budget
has not yet been discussed, although the year is drawing to an end,
and the General Election will take place at the end of this month.
The government itself has no assurance of existence even for this
brief period, although it has secured votes of confidence on the two
occasions on which it was attacked in the Chamber of Deputies.
It met, however, with a defeat in the Senate, but not on a question
of sufficient importance to call for its resignation. Its difficulties
arise mainly from the fact that its members are divided on the ques-
tion of the maintenance of the three years' army service recently
adopted, a division which also exists in the ranks of its supporters.
It is on this point that it is assailed by M. Briand.
The revelations regarding the sanitary state of the army gave
an opportunity to the opponents of the government to open their
attack, but it was made so clear in the course of the debate that it
was in no way responsible for the admitted evils, that it secured an
overwhelming majority. The government accepted " in principle "
the proposal for an inquiry on the subject.
On the second occasion on which the government was attacked
in the Chamber, the victory it obtained, while not so marked, was
substantial. Some even think that it renders probable its continu-
ance in power to the end of the present electoral period. The
Chamber by a vote of three hundred and twenty-nine to two hun-
128 RECENT EVENTS [April,
dred and fourteen declared its confidence that the Cabinet would
carry to a successful issue its scheme of fiscal reform, and particu-
larly the reduction of taxation on land. The attack was led by M.
Briand, and its want of success constitutes a grave defeat of the
Briandist opposition.
The programme of M. Briand and his supporters for the com-
ing elections is described by himself as conservative with regard to
fiscal legislation, social policy, and the army. He protests against
the attitude of the present government, because it excludes genuine
Republicans from taking part in politics. M. Caillaux's fiscal policy
he condemns as inquisitorial. He is in favor of taxes on capital as
well as on income, provided they are so imposed as to be disastrous
to the economic life of France. He offers a resolute defence of
the Three Years' Service Law. As to electoral reform, he remains
a stout defender of the substitution of scrutin de liste for scrutin
d'arrondissement, and of the bill for the representation of minor-
ities, of which he has so long been the advocate.
There are Catholics in France who are not going to allow the
opportunity afforded by the coming elections to pass without making
an effort to retrieve the ground lost in the past. The Unwers has
initiated a movement which has received the support of a large
number of bishops. Its programme includes the reestablishment
of diplomatic relations with the Vatican; the recognition of the
legal status of the Church; the readmission of the exiled religious
orders; the protection of the Catholic right to teach in schools;
the participation of Catholic schools in public funds, and the repeal
of the Divorce Law. Since the separation there has been a marked
revival of popular interest in the Church, especially among what is
called the lower middle classes in the great towns, and this. gives
some reason to hope for success in the movement. Many of the
bishops, however, withhold their support, even considering it dan-
gerous, and likely to have political consequences which may be hurt-
ful to the cause of religion.
No change has to be noted in the relations between France
and her neighbors. The Entente with Great Britain is to receive
a further confirmation by the visit which King George is on the
point of paying to Paris. It will be the first State visit which
he has made since his accession. The long outstanding question
between France and Great Britain about the right to traffic in arms
in the Persian Gulf given to the French by a Convention with the
Sultan of Muscat, has at length been settled in a way fairly satis-
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 129
factory to both Powers. The French government undertakes no
longer to claim for their nationals the privileges and immunities
secured by that Convention.
The outcome of the agitation caused by the
Germany. incidents at Zabern is doubtless satisfactory
to those whose confidence is placed in the
mailed fist. The censure passed by the Reichstag on the Chancellor
has had no effect upon the government. The Committee which the
Reichstag appointed to consider the possibility of legislation to
deal with military powers and jurisdiction, was treated almost with
contempt. After holding two meetings the Committee dissolved
without passing even a recommendation. Nothing so far has been
heard of the result of the military inquiry promised by the Emperor
as to the Army Regulation of 1820, which was relied upon by the
officers at Zabern as a justification of their proceedings.
The success of the military party has encouraged the reaction-
aries to call for strong measures against all the border races. The
Conservative press is demanding special legislation, especially as re-
gards the Press Law and the right of public meeting, against Poles
and Danes, no less than against Alsatians. Heated debates have
taken place in the Prussian Diet. The Poles accuse an association
of Germans in Poland, called the Ostmarkverein, assisted by the
German Consuls, of trying to import Ruthenian laborers into Prus-
sian Poland, and to create agrarian trouble in Galicia, in order to
ruin Polish landlords. On the other hand, the Ostmarkverein ac-
cuses the Poles of conspiracy with their brethren both in Russia
and in Austria. Agitation exists also in Schleswig-Holstein, and is
said to be growing steadily. The government is accused of making
every effort to Germanize the Provinces, placing restrictions even on
religious services, forbidding in an instance a sacred concert be-
cause Danish songs were on the programme. The government in
reply to criticism promised to make use of all the powers which
the law permitted.
Upon the Socialists the Chancellor has made a violent attack,
declaring that with them the Empire could make no compromise.
War was the only course which the government would even con-
sider. Particularism also fell within the scope of his condemna-
tion. As physical defects and old wounds made themselves felt
in bad weather, so, the Chancellor said, the old German sin of par-
ticularism had been making itself manifest of late. The founders
VOL. xcix. 9
1 30 RECENT EVENTS [April,
of the Empire had created democratic institutions, with the definite
intention of suppressing the particularist tendencies of the German
races, and yet there was a movement which sought help and defence
in the revival of those very tendencies.
The Pan-Germans have been criticizing the government for
remissness in its treatment of the navy. They say that it stands
in need of more cruisers, in order that the German flag may be seen
in every part of the world. To these criticisms the government
has turned a willing ear, and it is expected, from the reply which
was made by Admiral von Tirpitz, that an enlargement of the
navy building programme will shortly be announced.
The police rule which is characteristic of Prussia, does not
seem to be more effective in the suppression of immorality than the
laxer methods of this country. A debate took place in the Prussian
Diet, after which a motion was carried calling upon the govern-
ment to employ all lawful means to check the growing immorality,
especially in the towns. What is called " night life " is said to be
flourishing in such an extraordinary manner, as to have become
detrimental to decent living, especially among the upper middle
classes. The Socialists, as well as the Radicals, however, opposed
the proposal, looking upon it as being based upon reactionary or
religious ideas, and upon a general hostility to trade.
The present moment in Germany is remarkable for the un-
wonted degree of good feeling exhibited to all its neighbors, with
the exception perhaps of Russia. Advantage has been taken of
this to negotiate various agreements with France, dealing with rail-
way questions in Asia Minor, and with Great Britain regarding the
Baghdad Railway and the Persian Gulf. Although not actually
concluded, these agreements are understood to be virtually com-
pleted. The object of these agreements is to prevent all further
disputes about rival railway rights and claims in the Turkish Em-
pire. Their real effect will be to settle the whole railway map of
Asia Minor, establishing Russian and French claims in the north,
and French claims throughout Syria, and leaving the Germans
free from all interference in the Baghdad sphere of action, including
various northern branches, but precluding access to the Black Sea.
The most noteworthy event in the Dual
Austria-Hungary. Monarchy is the treason trial which has
been going on for two months at Marmaros
Sziget in Hungary. A large number of persons were accused of
I9I4-] RECENT EVENTS 131
an anti-religious propaganda among the Greek Catholic Ruthenes,
this being the cover of a treasonable movement having for its
object the union of the Little Russians in Hungary with the main
body in Russia. Thirty-two of the accused were found guilty of
incitement against religion and the State, and twenty-three not
guilty.
No sooner has this trial finished in Hungary, than a similar
one is beginning at Lemberg. In this case Austrian subjects are the
accused. The charge is of treason and Russophile agitation in
favor of the Orthodox Church. The preliminary examination has
lasted nearly two years, and more than one hundred witnesses are
to be called.
The political unrest of which these trials are at once an effect
and a cause, is shown by the attempt which was recently made to
take the life of a bishop of the Greek Catholic Church. The bishop
himself escaped, but three priests, including his vicar, and his
secretary, were killed. In this case it is thought that yet another
of the many nationalities which go to make up the dominions of the
Emperor-King is concerned ; that the Rumanes have taken this way
of indicating discontent at the treatment meted out to them
by the all dominating Magyars. This supposition is based upon
the fact, that some twelve thousand Rumane Greek Catholics have
recently been transferred to the care of the Hungarian Greek
Catholic bishop upon whom the attempt was made.
The resignation, or, as it is looked upon by
Russia. some, the fall of M. Kokovtsoff, the Prime
Minister who succeeded M. Stolypin, viewed
in conjunction with the appointment of his successor, gives cause
for grave apprehension as to the future of constitutional govern-
ment in Russia. It has always had its enemies ; hitherto they have
been baffled ; but now their hopes of success are greater than ever.
M. Kokovtsoff tried to hold ground midway between the foes
and the friends of the new order. His chief interest was in plac-
ing the finances of the country on a stable foundation. This he
succeeded in doing, but the main element of this success was the
revenue derived from the government monopoly of the sale of
spirits. In fact, one-fourth of the vast ordinary revenue of the
State was derived from this monopoly. The price paid has proved
too high. The country is being demoralized, and is becoming the
1 32 RECENT EVENTS [April,
most drunken nation in Europe. This year the consumption of
vodka is double what it was ten years ago, two hundred and fifty
millions more having been spent. A writer for many years well
acquainted with the country, Mr. Stephen Graham, draws a terrible
picture of the change that has taken place since his last visit. An
effort is being made to develop the resources of the country.
Hitherto industry has been almost exclusively agricultural. Now
factories are springing up, and the population of the towns is in-
creasing in consequence, and industrial villages are being formed.
According to Mr. Graham, these villages are in such a state on
Sundays and festivals that it is extremely unpleasant, and some-
times dangerous, for a well-dressed person to pass through them.
They are infested with mobs of hooligans, men and women yelling,
singing, screeching like demented creatures. The conditions are
such as to be a menace to respectable society. No paper would
ever dream of recording a tenth of the assaults, murders, robberies,
and obscenities that occur in the industrial cities and villages.
Russia has many prisons, but they would not hold a tenth of the
wrongdoers, and although Siberia is vast, its inhabitants are now as-
piring to become something more than penal settlements.
This state of things was brought home to the Tsar during a
tour which he has recently made. M. Kokovtsoff was Finance Min-
ister as well as Premier. To his successor as Finance Minister, the
Tsar has addressed a rescript, in which he gives expression to his
deep grief on account of the sad facts of weakness, poverty, and
industrial desolation, the inevitable results of drunkenness. These
sad facts had led him to see the urgent necessity of radical reforms
in the financial administration of the State, and in the economic life
of the country. It is, the Tsar declares, impossible to permit the
favorable financial position of the State to depend on the destruction
of the moral and economic strength of the great multitude of Rus-
sian citizens. The Tsar, therefore, charges the new Minister to
carry out a policy of radical reforms.
The Tsar will not fail to meet with the cooperation of both
of the Legislative Chambers. They have in fact anticipated him.
The movement in favor of temperance legislation was initiated by
the peasant and clerical deputies to the Duma last October. The
Duma passed a resolution condemning the spirit monopoly. A bill
has subsequently passed through the Chamber, which has since been
accepted in its main provisions by the Upper House, although a limit
of three years has been imposed, which contains a whole series
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 133
of drastic regulations of the liquor traffic. To all communes, town-
ships, and villages are given full local option powers to suppress
the sale by a simple majority. All local bodies are to have the right
either of completely prohibiting the sale of liquor within their re-
spective limits, or of restricting such sale to special shops to be
opened on certain days or at certain hours. Women are to have
the right to vote on these matters in the village motes. This latter
provision, it is said, will practically secure a majority for prohibition
in every Russian commune. M. Kokovtsoff resolutely opposed
these proposals. His resignation, it is thought, was due at least in
part to this opposition. The way to temperance reform has now
been made clear by the Tsar's rescript.
The successor of M. Kokovtsoff as Premier is M. Goremykin.
His appointment is looked upon as disquieting by the friends of con-
stitutional government, because he is well known as representing the
reactionary and bureaucratic element in Russian affairs. He first
distinguished himself by the energy with which he acted in Poland
during the years of repression which followed the Revolution of
1863 ; and he was a willing assistant of Alexander III. in his odious
autocratic proceedings. Of M. Witte, in his efforts to introduce
a constitution, he was a determined opponent, and when it was
established he showed his contempt for the first Duma by only
appearing once in the Chamber. The chief consolation under the
circumstances which Constitutionalists find, are the declarations
made by the Tsar in his recent rescript, that his policy is to work in
cooperation with the Chambers, and the fact that M. Goremykin
is seventy-five years of age.
Although two Ministers, in addition to the Premier, have re-
signed, M. Sazonoff remains at the Foreign Office, and therefore no
change is likely in the conduct of external relations. The Alliance
with France and the Entente with Great Britain maintain their full
force, while with Italy, one of the Powers of the Triple Alliance,
the relations have for many years been especially friendly. With
Germany there has been a small degree of friction, but the situation
may be described as upon the whole correct. They have been able
to cooperate in bringing about the reforms which have just been
granted by Turkey to the Armenians. Between Russia and Austria-
Hungary a state bordering upon hostility exists. Russia fosters
that union of the Balkan States which is so desirable, while the Dual
Monarchy looks upon dissension and division as most agreeable to
its own interests. The movement for the unification of the
I34 RECENT EVENTS [April,
Ruthenians or Little Russians is another cause of trouble, for while
the great mass is within the limits of the Russian Empire, a con-
siderable number are within the borders of Hungary, and any move-
ment to bring them together necessarily leads to anxiety. A special
tribute is due to Russia for her resolute maintenance of a peaceful
attitude during the recent Balkan wars. The temptation to take
advantage of the opportunity to secure the long-wished for outlet
to the Mediterranean was very strong. That this temptation was
resisted shows the sincerity of the Tsar's love of peace.
A dissolution has taken place of the House
Spain. of Deputies and of the elective part of the
Senate, and elections for a new Parliament
are now pending. The Parliament just dissolved had a longer
existence than any of its predecessors in the last thirty years. It
has not, however, been very fruitful in its labors. The Ministry
now in power is of a moderately Conservative character, with Serior
Dato at its head. So many, however, are the divisions, not only of
parties, but within the parties, that the situation is described as
chaotic. The elections are being " made " by the government in
the way that is customary in Spain. The Minister of the Interior
is making full use of the powers which his office affords to influence
the electors. Little hope can under the circumstances be felt that
the Parliament when elected will be truly representative of the mind
of the country.
After the meeting which was held in London
Portugal. to protest against the treatment of the polit-
ical prisoners in Portugal, the new Cabinet
introduced into the House an Amnesty Bill. How far this proceed-
ing was due to the London meeting is a matter of conjecture. The
bill was quickly passed through both Houses of Parliament. It is
not quite general, eleven persons being excluded who are looked
upon as the leaders and prime movers in the several revolutionary
movements which have disturbed the peace of the Republic. Their
sentence is one of banishment from Portuguese territory. While
perfect satisfaction is not felt on account of the incompleteness due
to these exclusions, the situation in Portugal is looked upon as
more hopeful, although a strike of the railway men has caused
no little inconvenience.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 135
A few steps have been taken to settle the
The Balkans. questions which arose out of the Balkan
wars. The Great Powers, after no little
hesitation, were able to come to an agreement as to the disposition to
be made of those of the ^Egean Islands which as a result of the war
are now in the possession of Greece, although they did not see their
way to adopt Great Britain's proposal to take effective measures
to secure the carrying out of their decision by Greece and Turkey.
The proposal left all these islands, with the exception of those
which are close to the mouth of the Dardanelles, in the possession
of Greece. This State at once signified its acceptance of the plan
with certain slight reservations, but Turkey vehemently protested,
alleging that the leaving of Mitylene and Chios, islands which are
close to the Asiatic mainland, practically left Turkish territory
at the mercy of Greece.
It cannot be doubted that an eager desire exists among large
numbers of Turks to retrieve the disastrous effects of the recent
struggle, as is indicated by the title of a pamphlet recently published
by Izzet Pasha, Paroles de Vaincu: Apres le Desastre-Avant la
Revanche. So clear has this been made that Rumania has plainly
intimated that in the event of a conflict between Turkey and Greece,
she would not be a passive spectator. A greater obstacle, perhaps,
is the want of money, and the fact that France, without whose
cooperation the funds cannot be obtained, will not allow a loan
to be raised without the assurance of the peaceful intentions of
Turkey. So that not from good will but from necessity, it is ex-
pected that Turkey will give a reluctant assent to the decision
of the Powers.
Italy still puts off the restoration to Turkey of the dozen islands
of which she is in possession. She now claims compensation for
the expenses to which she has been put, and while disclaiming any
intention of permanent retention, demands in return a " sphere of
work " in Asia Minor. Unfortunately these demands conflict with
concessions already made by the Turkish government to Great
Britain. Although an arrangement satisfactory to all parties is
probable, it is not yet in sight. Greece has consented, and will
undoubtedly fulfill her promise, to evacuate the southern part of
Albania, which since the war has been occupied by her troops.
This, however, does not reconcile the Greek inhabitants of the
district, and they are now in open rebellion, declaring by all that is
sacred that they will never submit to be ruled by Albanians.
136 RECENT EVENTS [April,
The new ruler of Albania, William of Wied, is on the point
of entering upon his task, whether as Prince or King does not
seem as yet to be definitely determined. One of the most influential
of his subjects, the head of the deputation which went to Germany
to offer him the throne, Essad Pasha, declared that Albania would
not consent to be ruled by a Prince, for that would be making
her position lower than that of Montenegro; he would therefore
address the new ruler as His Majesty.
By whatever name he may be called his task will be indeed for-
midable. Small as is the territory, the divisions which exist among
its inhabitants seem innumerable. The northern half is dwelt in by
Ghegs, who have not the least sympathy with the Tosks, who dwell
in the southern half, while a formidable mountain range forms
a physical separation. He is himself a Protestant; his subjects,
however, are divided into Catholics, followers of the Orthodox
Church, and devotees of Islam. The latter form three-fifths of the
population, while Catholics number less than a tenth. The tribal
system still exists with all its feuds and consequent internecine
rivalries. Among the Mussulmans there still exists a strong attach-
ment to Turkey, based upon the special favors the Sultans bestowed
upon them. Among these was not only the exemption from taxa-
tion, but the reception of subsidies, facts which will not facilitate
their willingness to pay for the new government. The boundaries
of the new State add yet another difficulty. They were drawn in
such a way as to leave the natural markets of Albania outside her
frontiers, in the new Servia and the new Greece. To her internal
difficulties external must be added. Austria-Hungary and Italy
are rival claimants for such favors as she has to bestow. Even the
Great Powers demand a share in the guarantee of the loan which
must be raised. In spite of all, high hopes are entertained that the
Prince will succeed ; his friends are confident that he possesses the
requisite qualities. He has been visiting the Emperors, Kings, and
Presidents of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, to show
that he comes with the good will of the whole of Europe. His
prudence and his grasp of the realities of the situation were shown
by the fact that he would not accept the throne before he had re-
ceived an assurance that the Powers would guarantee a loan to
cover the necessary expense.
About the other Balkan States, there is little to note. In
Bulgaria a general election has just been held ; it is too soon, how-
ever, to be able to form a judgment as to what will be the result.
I9M-]
RECENT EVENTS
137
Bulgaria still remains isolated from the rest of the Balkan States,
although it is said that Russia is striving to bring about a renewal
of good relations with Servia and Greece. The two last-named
States are believed to have entered into a secret alliance as a result
of the visits which M. Venezelos has been paying, an alliance
which may possibly include Rumania. Greece has entrusted the
training of her sailors to a British admiral, of her soldiers to a
French general; and to an English architect has been given the
work of embellishing the city of Athens. Before long this capital
will cease to be isolated from land communication with the rest of
Europe, for the line connecting it with the existent railway system,
a line which Turkey would not allow to be made, is on the point of
completion.
An alliance between the royal families of Rumania and Greece
is said to have been arranged, although it has not yet been formally
announced. The differences which arose sometime ago between
Servia and Austria-Hungary as to the control of the Orient Rail-
way, seem to have been amicably composed; at least nothing has
been heard of them recently. The Pomaks, that is to say, certain
Bulgarians who had become Moslems, were forced when Bulgaria
conquered the Turk to adopt the Christian religion. They have
now, however, reverted to their old allegiance. Changes of this
kind, although not to the same extent, are not unfrequent in the
Balkan peninsula.
With Our Readers.
PROTEST against special personal courtesy shown by the President
i to a Catholic as such might be intelligible to the unprejudiced
looker-on. Such protest might be neither fair nor just, but it is easily
seen how some non-Catholics might take fright at it and read into it
too much.
But the Conference of the Methodist Church of New Jersey
stigmatized itself as a band of blinded bigots, when by a standing vote
it condemned President Wilson's official courtesy to Catholics. Presi-
dent Wilson is bound as a gentleman and as our President to be cour-
teous to Catholics, and he shows us no favor when he is so. As citizens
we have an equal right with all other citizens to claim such courtesy,
nor are we indebted when we receive it.
* * * *
THE bigotry of such a Conference leads it to forget the first prin-
ciples both of fairness and of courtesy. What such a body looks
for is not justice and toleration, but insult and contumely. A Presi-
dent of the United States to satisfy them must be as intolerant and
vulgar as they are. If he considers Catholics to be worthy citizens,
as he is bound to do by his oath, then he is written down as a friend
of Rome; he is almost an ally of the Pope. If he speaks in gentle-
manly tones, or receives in courteous manner, or cordially shakes the
hand of a Catholic, he is on the brink of betraying the Republic.
He should declare himself with great show of temper as the implacable
enemy of Rome. He should regularly follow in the footsteps of the
Protestant Magazine, and show up the machinations of the papists to
control the schools and government of the Republic. His zeal is best
measured not by the care with which he safeguards the interests of all
the citizens of the Republic, but by the violence with which he blows
the trumpet of bigotry.
This is really the mind of the men who go to make up such a
Conference, and who reflect such little credit upon their cloth. They
intend to accept nothing in the spirit of fairness. They will pursue;
harass; trump up charges; distort testimony and reports; they will
throw all the mud they can in the hope that some will stick.
* * * *
IT is a happy sign that even in their own Church they are losing
leadership, and that their unworthy course is repudiated by many
of their people, and many, also, of their official journals.
REMARKABLE psychological study of that most beautiful of
God's processes, the piercing and burning away of the mist
of prejudice, is given in the February Atlantic. The Protestant in
A
WITH OUR READERS
139
Italy arrives shrouded in, blinded by prejudice, but after exposure to
that Sun which is the Church's life, " he bears a changed heart ;"
and leaves, at least acknowledging here " a priceless treasure," " a her-
itage which no Christian can afford to overlook."
Such acknowledgment is, indeed, matter for rejoicing. A further
cause for rejoicing is that it finds place in the pages of a magazine
at whose doors, fifty years ago or less, such Catholic sentiments would
have knocked in vain for admission. For does it not go to show that
not in Italy alone have the mists lifted under the sunlight of Catholic
life?
* * * *
DRAWN within the Church's pale of influence by the lure of art,
The Protestant in Italy discovers the Catholic Church as a life,
incessant, insistent, permeating. The pivotal centre of this life is the
Host, the Host elevated in the Mass, hidden in the tabernacle, exposed
in Benediction. Around this Presence, " during every hour of the
day," a tide of humanity flows in to pray, and ebbs forth to work or
play. The experience strikes " down into the roots of being," stirring
" forgotten memories," " early loyalities " to a long, though remote,
line of Catholic ancestry. He decides to yield temporarily to this
haunting, compelling force about him, to " let life supply the things "
to reason. So he, too, bends and bows and prays, and feels the rush
of God into his heart ; and when Catholic life has " supplied the
things," he turns on the light of reason, and what does he find? He
finds in this strange at-homeness with God an understanding of the
Incarnation as the " complete condescension of Divinity, the perfect
sharing of God with man." He finds " the Word perpetually being
made Flesh and dwelling among us." This life he has discovered is,
in fact, the best embodiment of the Incarnation, for " the Catholic
Church has caught the spirit of eternity," and " Christ is as actually
with us as He was with Peter and John." To the stateliness of Catho-
lic worship, the elemental command of the Church's ritual, the value of
her leadership, the power of her unity, he gives assent. And what is
the concluson? "Alas, there is no conclusion," save the pragmatic
sanction of " the image of an altar, and a glowing, darkling light,"
" set up in his own heart ;" an enforced prostration evermore of body
and soul at sound of " those tremendous words : 'This is My Body.' "
* * * *
MAY one grant so much and still refuse obedience ? May one grant
the Church " the peculiar, actual Presence of God in the Sacra-
ment," and refuse her the abiding Presence of dogmatic Truth ? Is it
more difficult for God to give to weak, fallible human instruments the
power of preserving His infallible Truth, than to give to them the
power of changing bread and wine into His Body and Blood? The
thought casts a shadow on our rejoicing.
140 WITH OUR READERS [April,
THE Church's strength, not her " weakness," lies in her presump-
tion of the extension of Divine Power triumphing over human
weakness, in her rigid maintenance of dogma as the expression of
Eternal Truth. She is not forgetful of the principle of growth. Men
of every age and every clime she assimilates into her being, but as in
every true organism, they must become a part of herself, be trans-
formed in her; what she cannot assimilate, with equal vitality she
rejects. Only that thought that cannot be at one with the Divine Truth
within her does she cast out. All things that are of God, be they old
or new, she uses for God, but no " modernist movement " is hers which
seeks to change the unchangeable Truth. She has the same answer for
the Unitarian to-day as for the Arian yesterday.
* * * *
A MIDST the flux of human opinion, the Catholic Church alone is
*TL stable. She stands not upon shifting sands, but upon the Rock.
True it is, " even the mountains change," even the Rock has its
material limitations. But in as much as the Church stands upon
the Rock, she transcends it. The stability of her doctrine rests not
upon the power of the human foundation that upholds it, but upon
the power of Him Who fixed her there with a solemn promise to be
" with her all days," of Whom it was said : " What manner of Man
is this, for the winds and the sea obey Him ! "
SOME sympathetic students of the Catholic Church, not themselves
Catholics, have of late spoken words of praise for what they take
as a modernist movement within the Catholic Church. Oftentimes
when discussing the theme of Christian Unity, and the spread of Chris-
tian truth, they practically infer that the leaders of that movement
were the worthier standard bearers of the Gospel of Christ.
We hope that all so inclined have been enlightened, and now
understand that the fight against modernism was really a fight for
intellectual honesty. The autobiography of the late Father Tyrrell
should in itself be sufficient to furnish such enlightenment. If fur-
ther data is required, we would refer them to the autobiography of
M. Alfred Loisy, and his Choses Pasees.
* * * *
OF course much in such autobiographies with regard to motives,
feelings, and even beliefs of years before, must be discounted as
far as absolute accuracy is concerned, for a man, who has abandoned
whatever light he once had, can never look upon past scenes in the same
light again. The darkness of denial is no medium in which to read the
days of faith. Age can never with absolute fidelity reconstruct youth,
because it lacks what youth alone can give.
Nevertheless the best witness to the forces that have moulded a
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 141
man either this way or that, is the man himself. He alone can recite
faithfully those forces of construction or disintegration which he al-
lowed to influence him. And M. Alfred Loisy, by his own confession,
shows that for years he gave himself to the ways of dishonesty and un-
truthfulness. This is putting the matter in a very bald but a true way.
In 1904, for example, he wrote to the Cardinal Secretary of State,
after he had been informed that the quasi-submission he had made
would not be accepted: " I accept all the dogmas of the Church, and
I condemn whatever my books may contain as reprehensible, from the
point of view of Faith."
* * * *
NOW Loisy states that he used the word " accept " purposely, in
order to avoid the use of the word " believe," and that when he
spoke of the faith it was " not the Faith in so far as it found expression
in the official creeds."
As far back as 1886, Loisy confesses that what he then be-
lieved " of the Bible, of Christ, and of the Christian beliefs and of their
origin, was the very negation of the supernatural character of religion."
And all through the years that he was a professor in a Catholic
Seminary, he adds that he had to resort to une equivoque enorme
a great equivocation in order by thus deceiving others to retain his
position. During all that time, while he stated publicly that in his
lectures on the Bible he was " guided by the definitions of the Church,"
he " accepted no article of the Creed literally, except that Jesus had
been 'crucified under Pontius Pilate.' "
* * * *
WE have said enough. And may what we have said be sufficient to
show that "her (the Church's) modernist movement should
never be full of hope or promise to her well wishers."
''PHE illuminating thought and comment given in Dr. Shanahan's
A article, The Unconsidered Remainder, in the February, 1914, issue
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, is well seconded by Cardinal Mercier in
an article, entitled Towards Unity, contributed to the March issue of
The Constructive Quarterly. We reprint here the last few paragraphs
of the article :
Of the problems offered to the philosopher by the total experience of life,
philosophy succeeds neither in understanding the whole enunciation nor in
finding the solution. The movement " towards unity " does not, and will not,
lead to full autonomy. The supreme truth of philosophy is, that " separated "
philosophy does not realize the integral synthesis of real life.
" For the consummation of nature and the fulfillment of man's aspiration,"
M. Blondel writes, " man and nature are not sufficient. Now it is inevitable
that the complete development of voluntary action should bring us to this
1 42 WITH OUR READERS [April,
gaping hole which separates us from what we wish to be; it is impossible
for us to fill up the abyss, impossible for us not to wish it filled up, impossible
not to conceive the necessity of divine assistance."
While philosophy is digging at this deplorable poverty, there arises before
it a society which asserts itself to be of Divine origin, declares itself able to
fill with superabundance the void of the soul and heal its wounds, and offers,
besides and this point M. Blondel has unfortunately left too obscure to furnish
the objective proofs, necessary and rational, of the legitimacy of its mission.
" Listen and look," said Cardinal Dechamps : " there are but two facts to be
verified, one in ourselves, and one outside of us; these two facts are seeking
each other to embrace each other, and of these two facts we ourselves are
the witness."
M. Blondel and M. Wilbois have listened and looked. Both of them
believers, they bear witness that they have seen the two facts embrace each other,
and they proclaim that in fact the quest of their thought has no end, except
on the condition that it finishes in the Christian and Catholic Faith. Without
the exterior fact of the Church and the supernatural order objectively revealed
and received with docility, we cannot account to ourselves for the interior fact,
or explain it, or unify ourselves, any more than human society can be legitimately
constituted as an enclosed system, abstracting from the Christian order.
To seek unity is, for man for humanity not to stop before passing through
Christ, before finding God in the Catholic way.
"Thus," Olle-Laprune had said, "philosophy conspires against itself if it
does not rid itself of the set determination to mutilate man, life, things, and
history. As it must try to make its views equal to the whole of the given reality,
it ought to counsel, to prescribe, to endeavor, on its own account, to use all
the resources, human and divine, placed at man's disposition."
The illustrious Manzoni, a convert to Catholicism, liked to repeat:
" I have Catholic convictions, and I wish them to show through all that
I write as through a transparency, for I seek to put force into what I write,
and force proceeds only from a sincere conviction."
All the philosophers who plead for the synthetic interpretation of all the data
of their consciousness plead for sincerity. But what is sincerity but the orienta-
tion of the soul in reference to the truth? Now, to say truth is the same as
saying intellectual representation adjusted to reality.
In the realm of philosophy unity is the law, but the sceptre can belong
only to the understanding.
IN line with what we have frequently commented on in With Our
Readers, are the following wisdom-laden and brilliant passages
from an article in the March Atlantic Monthly from the pen of Agnes
Repplier :
There is nothing new about the Seven Deadly Sins. They are as old as
humanity. There is nothing mysterious about them. They are easier to under-
stand than the Cardinal Virtues. Nor have they dwelt apart in secret places;
but, on the contrary, have presented themselves, undisguised and unabashed,
in every corner of the world, and in every epoch of recorded history. Why then
do so many men and women talk and write as if they had just discovered these
ancient associates of mankind? Why do they press upon our reluctant notice the
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 143
result of their researches? Why this fresh enthusiasm in dealing with a foul
subject? Why this relentless determination to make us intimately acquainted
with matters of which a casual knowledge would suffice?
The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reti-
cence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge, which is now recommended as
nourishing for childhood, strengthening for youth, and highly restorative for
old age, falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find
no need to discuss the processes of digestion. Human experience is very, very
old. It is our surest monitor, our safest guide. To ignore it crudely is the
error of those ardent but uninstructed missionaries who have lightly undertaken
the rebuilding of the social world.
The lack of restraint, the lack of balance, the lack of soberness and com-
mon sense, were never more apparent than in the obsession of sex which has set
us all a-babbling about matters once excluded from the amenities of conversation.
******
What is this topic that all these little ones are questioning over, mulling
over, fidgeting over, imagining over, worrying over? Dr. Keyes requests us
to ask our own memories.
I do ask my memory in vain for the answer Dr. Keyes anticipates. A
child's life is so full, and everything that enters it seems of supreme importance.
I fidgeted over my hair which would not curl. I worried over my examples
which never came out right. I mulled (though unacquainted with the word)
over every piece of sewing put into my incapable fingers which could not be
trained to hold a needle. I imagined I was stolen by brigands, and became
by virtue of beauty and intelligence spouse of a patriotic outlaw in a frontier-
less land. I asked artless questions which brought me into discredit with my
teachers, as, for example, who " massacred " St. Bartholomew. But vital facts,
the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern, crowded out
of my life, and out of my companions' lives (in a convent boarding-school) by
the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics
when we were learning to skate, and our very dreams were a medley of ice and
bumps? How could we worry over "natural laws" in the face of a tyrannical
interdict which lessened our chances of breaking our necks by forbidding us
to coast down a hill covered with trees? The children to be pitied, the children
whose minds become infected with unwholesome curiosity, are those who lack
cheerful recreation, religious teaching, and the fine corrective of work. A
playground or a swimming-pool will do more to keep them mentally and morally
sound than scores of lectures upon sex-hygiene.
A course of lectures will not instill self-control into the human heart. It is
born of childish virtues acquired in childhood, youthful virtues acquired in
youth, and a wholesome preoccupation with the activities of life which gives
young people something to think about besides the sexual relations which are
pressed so relentlessly upon their attention.
******
Nor is it for the conveying of lessons that managers present these photo
plays to the world. They are out to make money, and they are making it.
The Seven Deadly Sins have acquired their present regrettable popularity.
Liberated from the unsympathetic atmosphere of the catechism, they are urged
upon the weary attention of adults, embodied in the lessons of youth, and
explained in words of one syllable to childhood. Yet Hogarth never designed
his pictures to decorate the fans of women. Suetonius never related his
" pleasant atrocities " to the boys and girls of Rome.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. XCIX.
MAY, 1914.
No. 590.
BLINDFOLDING THE MIND.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
II.
HERE is nothing new or novel about the theory of
Professor Bergson, that sympathy plays a part in
the production of human knowledge. The world
did not have to wait for him or for Professor James,
to enlighten it on this point; and the stress which
these two thinkers have recently laid on so obvious a matter is
tantamount to painting the lily, or gilding refined gold. In the
ages men call dark from introspection, it would seem, rather than
from observation or study the fact that sympathy is capable of
furnishing us with an immediate experimental knowledge, distinct
from that which comes by way of rational inquiry, was universally
acknowledged. St. Thomas says that there are two ways of know-
ing things: one by exercising the power of reason to its fullest;
the other by sympathy with the things we are called upon to judge.
Compassio sive connaturalitas are the very words he uses, and even
the illustrations which he gives, of this Bergsonian " knowledge by
sympathy," have a familiar modern ring. " The man," says St.
Thomas, " who has made morality a matter of scientific study,
knows, by means of the rational knowledge in his possession, what
acts fall under the requirements of a particular virtue." " But the
man who possesses the particular virtue in question " it is purity
of which he is speaking " enjoys the same knowledge as his more
learned brother, by a sort of sympathy with things."* Experi-
. Theol., Ilallje, XLV., 2, c.
Copyright. 1914- THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCIX. 10
146 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
mental knowledge of this sympathetic kind was called "wisdom,"
one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, supernatural in origin,
character, and results.
But the admission of " sympathetic " intuitions was by no
means confined to the field of religious experience. It was worked
out for the objects of all the natural human faculties, under the
titles of " habit," " instinct," " disposition," " conation," " inclina-
tion," and " tendency." 2 The play of sympathy or antipathy was
also seen in the " estimative sense " of animals, and the " cogitative
sense " of man those two marvelous sources of swift, unerring,
concrete, and particular information. 3 All the " blind guides," and
" powers of guessing," of which recent philosophy makes so much,
were ordinary topics of the class-room in mediaeval days. The
influence of sympathy on knowledge and on action, was a regular
part of the courses of instruction. A modern philosopher, thumb-
ing these dim and dusty pages, would be surprised at the oldness
of the new and the newness of the old in the history of philosophy.
He would find it necessary to tone down considerably his claims to
originality, the only feature of his work really meriting that
appellation being his fine experimental discovery of the living and
dynamic links which chain our experiences together, not only for
thinking, but for acting as well. He would feel compelled to
acknowledge that those who went before knew, long before he did,
the power of love, sympathy, and goodness of heart, to increase the
number of man's intuitions, and to improve the quality of his
knowledge.
One may readily see from the foregoing bit of history, that
Professor Bergson's " discovery " of sympathetic, experimental
knowledge has been anticipated by seven centuries and a quarter.
The question, therefore, is not whether sympathy has an influence on
our knowledge, but what the nature of that influence is. Not the
fact, but its interpretation. Is sympathy an independent source
of knowledge, or merely a cooperating factor? In other words,
is sympathy a substitute for intelligence, or simply a companion
power, incapable of assuming the chief actor's role, under any and
all circumstances?
Here we come to the dividing of the ways. The mediaeval
thinkers distinguish, where modern philosophers separate. Separa-
tism is the fallacy that has driven philosophy to the wall everywhere,
in these topsy-turvy times, creating and spreading the false im-
*Ibid., LI., 3, ad i. *Sm. Theol., I., LXXVIII., 4.
I9I4-] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 147
pression that reason is powerless when it starts to build systems.
Of course it is, if you cut it off altogether from sensation and ex-
perience, and these latter, in turn, from all contact with reality.
But so is an engine powerless, when you withdraw all fuel from
the fire. There is nothing surprising about such a statement, except
the truistic wisdom of those who make it. All of us, more or less,
live in a mental prison of our own making; behind bars which we
ourselves have forged, and can strike away at will. Perhaps the
worst obsession of all is the mischievous notion, that the mind is a
sort of department store, in which sympathy, love, experience, in-
stinct, intelligence, and reason are all separately set out for in-
spection, choice, and purchase on different counters ; with an eleva-
tor to take us to the top floor, in case we come in search of meta-
physics. Professor Bergson rightly protests against this pernicious
habit of disrupting the mind. Unfortunately, he suggests an alter-
native equally bad that of not distinguishing at all between our
different mental powers. Like most philosophers, however, he does
not follow his own advice, separating where he should distinguish,
dividing where division is impossble. Though he and Professor
James are fusionists in theory, both are really separatists in practice,
singling out sympathetic knowledge as alone of worth and value,
and using this form to discredit all the others.
In the light of the method we have adopted, of allowing the
facts to speak for themselves, instead of our assuming that office for
them, it is clear that all the empirical evidence forbids us to dissolve
the natural partnership existing between sense and intelligence, so
as to set sense up, as it were, in business for itself. Opposed to
all such attempts to create a separate department of sense-activity
are the two decisive facts : first, that our mental states all compen-
etrate, and are incapable of being physically separated or divided;
and, second, that sense and intelligence act simultaneously, in the
acquisition of human knowledge, not one after the other, in succes-
sion. You never find sensation and apprehension going on separ-
ately in your mental life, you always find them going on undividedly
together. There is no absolute priority or precedence. Intelligence
no more follows sensation than the sculptor is secondary to his
chisel, or the artist to his brush, while working. The instrument
seems to have priority over the agent in such cases, but the prior-
ity is imaginative, not real. If, therefore, we are to have a " tool
theory " of knowledge, let sensation be the tool of intelligence,
rather than intelligence the tool of sensation. Reason acts after
148 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
sense, not in acquiring knowledge, but in working up into abstract
notions concrete knowledge already acquired. Our first knowledge
comes in the form of concrete particular impressions of the real.
the good, the beautiful, and the true. In the acquisition of this
first raw and rough kind of knowledge, intelligence and sense act
conjointly together. But when, later in life, we polish off these
first impressions of the real, the good, the beautiful, and the true,
into the abstract notions of reality, beauty, goodness, and truth,
reason turns back to consider critically the work it has done in co-
partnership with sense, and acts subsequently to the latter.
Overlook this fact of simultaneous cooperation in the first case,
and you will be tempted to think that reason always acts, as it does
in the second case, namely, after sense, rather than with it. You
will gather the false impression that reason or intelligence never
comes into play until sense has finished its work of presentation.
And once this false conception of the mind's way of acting takes hold
of your thought, you will be further tempted to imagine that it is
possible to keep your sensations in one corner of the mind and your
thoughts in another. The spell of separatism will hold you tightly
in its grasp, and all your conclusions will go awry. The thought
will come to you, with all the glamor of an inspiration, that by
shutting the power of intelligence completely off, the stream of
experience may be allowed to run on by itself, like a mountain
brook, uncontaminated and pure. You will thus isolate heat from
light, you think the warmth and sympathy of feeling from the
pale white light of intelligence. As you have omitted from con-
sideration the entire stage of spontaneous knowledge which pre-
cedes reflection, there will be no physical world, no external reality,
to stand in the way of your "freedom of thought." Your cry will then
naturally be that " nothing is; everything is becoming." The uni-
verse will appear as " a kind of consciousness in which everything
compensates and neutralizes itself." 4 Life itself will seem nothing
more than a perpetual flow of mental images urging on to action
an endless series of felt-relations, to which reason, instead of being
companion and guide from the start, is merely page and servitor.
But such a view is nothing more than a mirage created by
fallacy and oversight. How could we feel without at all knowing
what we felt, how could there ever be such an unheard-of thing
as an absolutely unapprehended feeling? There is something more
than feeling or experiencing in our perceptions, and that something
*Bergson, Matidre et Idemoire, p. 262.
I9I4-] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 149
more is thought! Take the case most favorable to the theory of
Professor James, and least so, at first sight, to ours the case of the
mystic. If- the mystic's state of consciousness were one of pure
feeling or experience, unaccompanied by any thought or apprehen-
sion whatsoever, how could such a purely affective, sympathetic
state of mind ever become the object of memory, or the subject
of discourse? How could the mystic ever tell us about something
present to his affections and feelings, but not present at all to his
intelligence at the time? If sensation really occurred in one com-
partment of the mind, and intelligence in another, how could the
mystic ever know, by compartment number two, what was going on,
or had taken place, in compartment number one? Between two
powers thus completely isolated and insulated, there could be no
intercommunication; and we would find ourselves reduced to the
logical extremity of saying that we could know only what we felt,
understand only what we sensibly experienced. All else would
have to be declared unknown and unknowable.
Professor James did not shirk the consequences to which the
logic of his first false step inexorably drove him. He frankly
admitted the astonishing conclusion, that knowledge and feeling are
identically one and the same thing. He even went so far as to say
he could feel his " buts," " ifs," " fors," and " becauses " the two
last, best of all, most probably! But did Professor James really
feel these little links of speech, or was it merely his theory which
was talking here, not he ? And even if he actually felt them, as no
man before or since, did he not also apprehend them, simultaneously
ivith his feelings, instead of merely feeling them, independently of
his intelligence?
Sense, or sympathy, or anything else, as a substitute for intel-
ligence, is unthinkable. "If some faculty, other than intelligence,
plays a part in the acquisition of knowledge, it is only by influencing
intelligence, not by supplanting it, that it can do so." 5 Intelligence
may have servants and scouts, but none of these can usurp the
master's place, and preside in his absence. The thought that any-
thing else could really take the place of intelligence and do its
work, is so unnatural and preposterous that one wonders how it
ever came to be entertained, let alone proposed for acceptance.
History furnishes the answer. For the past two hundred years
philosophers have been what is technically termed " critical," that
is to say, they disdained to admit the validity of any knowledge
J. Maritain, L'intuition. Revue de Philosophie, August, 1913.
I5 o BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May.
not acquired in conformity with certain rules or tests which they
themselves drew up and imposed. The result was that the great
body of spontaneous knowledge enjoyed by humanity at large was
rejected, philosophers drifting further and further away from the
habits of mind characteristic of the common run of men. Philos-
ophy thus lost the democratic character it had in the Middle Ages.
This state of aloofness could not last indefinitely, and so about
thirty years ago philosophy began to swing completely round from
a critical to a popular attitude, condemning the straight-laced
kind of knowledge it used to praise, and praising the looser kind of
knowledge it used to condemn. That is why we are hearing so
much nowadays about "intuition," or "knowledge made easy."
Philosophers are trying to recover their lost points of contact with
popular thought, and are bidding for the support of democracy.
An old scholastic, were he to revisit the earth at the present moment,
would enjoy a quiet chuckle. " Why, these modern philosophers,"
he would exclaim, "are at last discovering that I was right in
recognizing the existence of a vast deal of spontaneous and un-
reasoned knowledge. And they are so surprised at finding how
much they actually omitted from the calendar of truth, that they
are crying out, 'A new philosophy !' 'A long lost sense of man !'
Dear me ! How much longer will it take them to discover that it
is intelligence which is intuitive, not sense ! A substitute for intel-
ligence ? Nonsense ! "
It is all very well to analyze and lay bare the part which the
instincts, the feelings, the will and the affections play, in the ac-
quisition of human knowledge. Modern psychology has made a
truly wonderful advance in this direction, forcing the mind to di-
vulge the secrets of many processes it had hitherto kept to itself.
With this research side of the subject we have nothing to do.
Facts are facts for all men, when duly ascertained, and we rejoice
to see the boundaries of knowledge pushed a little further back.
But there is another side to the subject, and it touches the present
theme. This is the general philosophy of the mind, under the in-
fluence of which the research worker carries on his investigations,
and towards which he tries to make them lead. The instinctive
feature of human knowledge is indeed considerable, and we recog-
nize the fact in its fullest sweep. But knowledge has a rational and
intelligent as well as instinctive side, and the fact has been more
than once forgotten. All the evidence at our command goes to
show that these two sides are merely developing stages of one
1914.] BLINDFOLDING THE 'MIND 151
continuous knowing-process. To separate these two complementary
sides of knowledge; to make them mutually exclusive and antag-
onistic ; to cut the continuity of the knowledge-process in two, and
to use one-half of the truth to criticize and annihilate the other half
this is not psychology, but philosophy of the most arbitrary, in-
defensible sort. It does not follow that, if we have instinctive
knowledge, we have instinctive knowledge only; or that, if we have
one way of knowing, there is no other at our command.
If we could strike out this exclusive adverb "only," we would
draw the fangs from most of the modern systems of philosophy.
It is the exclusive spirit in which the present-day philosopher thinks
and writes, that makes him seem to Catholic lovers of the whole
truth little more than a deft profile painter. We like him, so long
as he confines himself to investigation; but we have not the same
feeling for him, when he begins to philosophize, because all that he
offers us then is his own specialty, written large, and unduly in-
flated to the size and dignity of a universal philosophy.
You have a striking instance in the late Professor James, who,
perhaps, did more for the advancement of the science of psychology
than any man of his time, here or abroad. It fell to his lot, at
Harvard University, to investigate the instinctive processes of the
mind; and he became so conversant with this special aspect of the
problem of knowledge, that all other considerations gradually
slipped out of view. In analyzing the countless factors that con-
tribute to the production of knowledge, he forgot the chief one,
which underlies and accompanies them all intelligence! He actually
reckoned without his host. His distrust of reason, partly natural,
partly academic, as he himself frankly acknowledges, confirmed
him in his exclusive attitude. He turned his specialty into a world-
philosophy, his individual attitude into a universal system, and
became the untiring advocate of the doctrine, that truth is inde-
pendent altogether of the control, guidance, and standards of reason.
Once the idea that sense and reason are divorcees, and not com-
panions, began to dominate his thought, there was nothing left
but to draw and face the grim conclusion that the world itself is
irrational in its foundations; and this final step he took unhes-
itatingly, truer to the logical reason by which he set such little store,
than to the facts of experience in which he professed to find all the
principles needed for human guidance. When he looked into the
sources of human knowledge, what could he find there, with his
separatist conception of the mind's way of working, but feeling,
I52 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
vague, dreamy feeling, groping about in the dark, with reason for
a lantern! The philosophy with which he approached the study
of psychology was alone to blame. It led him, as it led many
others like-minded, to misread the plain data before him. Let us
see how this happens in most cases.
This intelligence of ours, like everything else in the world,
has conditions under which it operates, under which it finds its
work made harder or easier, as the case may be. It is a well-known
fact, for instance, that when the imagination, the memory, and
the affections are aroused, intelligence responds to the general
heightening of activity, and finds itself quickened with the quick-
ening of its companion powers. An orator on the rostrum, a
preacher in the pulpit, or a man matching his wits against an unex-
pected situation, has often thought how good it would be if his
mind displayed the same alertness and activity in the quiet of the
study or in the ordinary humdrum routine of life, as it does on
special occasions. Something in the latter seems to turn the light
of intelligence on full. It plays on nooks and crannies of truth,
hitherto but half-illumined, with all the glare of a searchlight, and
as shiftingly. Flashes of intuition denied us at our desks leap
luminous to view, until paradoxically, we wish that our address,
sermon, or speech, might be written after its delivery, instead of
before, so as to catch some of the fine fire and glow kindled by the
occasion and the audience.
What does it all mean ? That a special sense has come suddenly
into play? No! Rather, that our whole soul is aroused, all its
faculties stirred to concerted action, under the unusual conditions
of the moment. Feeling and emotion, affection and sentiment,
sympathy and devotion, furnish the conditions under which intel-
ligence is enabled to come more easily, promptly, and intensely into
play. When these conditions are present to an unusual degree,
and under control, intelligence, acting concertedly with all its
aroused companion powers, manifests a rapidity of intuition, a
power of quick discernment, an instant perception of all that is
going on, quite other than the slow habit of picking its steps re-
flectively, which is its normal course, under ordinary circumstances.
Feeling and emotion, and their kindred states of mind, are there-
fore special aids or helps to intelligence, not substitutes for it. They
facilitate its exercise, increase its efficiency, sharpen its activity,
and call out all its reserves of power. Would you say they were
sources of knowledge, independent of intelligence, and superior
1914. ] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 153
to it? Would you fall into the widespread fallacy of thinking and
saying that the heart has intuitions of its own, which the intellect
knows nothing about? Would you so grossly mistake the auxil-
iaries of intelligence for independent faculties; and then, instead
of correcting this confusion, appeal blindly from the concert of
all the soul's powers in unison to some magical kind of special
sense, the Lord knows what, which has, all of a sudden, made your
mind the theatre of its fantastic sportings and mysterious revela-
tions? Would you? Have you? And all this in the very teeth
of the plain fact that ideas react on sentiments, sentiments in turn on
ideas, and both on action, even on the act of perception itself !
Try as you may, you can never establish an alibi for intelligence,
that will not be at the same time a most convincing proof of its
presence.
And yet, whenever experimental knowledge comes to us in a
flash, as in the numerous cases of intuition, mentioned at the outset
of the present theme, 6 the anti-intellectualist arbitrarily proceeds to
draw the conclusion that sense is acting independently of intelligence.
Well, it certainly looks as if intelligence had fallen asleep at its
post, when this conclusion was drawn! There is nothing in the
premises to suggest it; and a more glaring instance of the wish
being father to the thought, it would be hard to find. The facts
recited prove rather that intelligence sometimes acts spontaneously,
than that sense ever acts independently. Would the anti-intellect-
ualist argue, for example, that Napoleon Bonaparte had a non-
rational sense-power of intuition, because he could calculate at a
glance the weakness of the enemy's formation, and change his whole
plan of battle in an instant, to take advantage of it? Are we given
to understand that intelligence was absent from the lightning cal-
culations which he made in the field, and present only in the abstract
plan of campaign which the great tactician thought out and drew
up at his writing table in Paris? Since when, pray, has it been
proven that rapidity of action is foreign to the ways of intelligence,
and characteristic only of the activities of sense? What is the basis
of all such contentions, but a false contrast between the reason that
perceives instantly, and the reason that slowly verifies, demonstrates,
and proves? When reason acts spontaneously, the critics call it
sense-insight ; when it acts deliberately, they call it a sorting machine,
or compare it to a clerk posting from the daybook into the ledger
the scattered items of the day's business. About all that the anti-
THK CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1914.
I 5 4 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
intellectualist does, really, is to ring the changes on these two
complementary aspects and functions of one and the same funda-
mental power, until sensation and intelligence seem to have fallen
out so completely that reconciliation is impossible. The anti-in-
lellectualist is a fine overdrawer of contrasts, who sees diversity
in the midst of unity, but never 'unity in the midst of diversity.
The reversibility of his thesis does not seem to have impressed him
at all. It is as if a staid old gentleman, accustomed for years to
walk along a certain road, leisurely measuring his paces, should set
the entire community to wondering at his exhibition of new and
unwonted powers, were he one day, for some reason or other, sud-
denly to take it into his head to run !
Everything has its history, intuition not excepted. 7 Nothing
in this world springs up over night, except the mushroom, and in-
tuition is no mushroom growth. Most of the so-called intuitions,
set down in the books as veritable bolts from the blue, are really the
effect of long preparation the result of items of knowledge pre-
viously acquired, the relevancy of which to future problems, experi-
ences, or purposes we do not notice at the time. But things that
escape our conscious notice are not so successful at escaping that
peculiar sub-attentive activity, always going on, which seems to
take as much care of objects in the margin, as consciousness does of
those that lie in the focus, of our observing powers. A mistake we
are all prone to make is to regard this mind of ours as a mere
storehouse of information. There is nothing so static about it as
that. The mind is no passive recipient of knowledge, but an active
assimilator of all that comes within its purview. Whatever enters
its portals, does so only to become a part of its life, an object for
hidden energies to work upon, coordinate and transform. Overlook
the fact that the mind is an undivided life of activity; separate
its hidden from its apparent powers ; think only of the surface per-
sonality that changes, and never of the real personality that sub-
sists underneath all the changing, and the subconscious will become
a mysterious sort of " back door," through which, at any moment,
without so much as saying " by your leave, sir," anything, from
ancestors to evil genii, may enter into consciousness.
"' First principles " such as " every event has a cause," " the whole is greater
than its part," etc. are self-evident intellectual intuitions that have no history.
They are obviously not in question here, and hence not dwelt upon in the text ;
the chief concern being to show that our so-called " instinctive " or " sympathetic "
intuitions are really the work of intellect and sense conjointly, and not an inde-
pendent product of the latter. This is the burden and purpose of the entire theme.
1914.] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 155
But most of these strange visitants have come in by the sub-
attentive route, unnoticed. The fact of the matter is, we have
been paying too much attention altogether to this imaginary " back
door " of consciousness, and too little to the spacious doorway in
front. We forget the history of our intuitions, the long study that
paved the way for their formation, and the ever-active intellect that
deals with them after they drop out of our conscious field of vision.
Their unstudied character, at the moment of their reappearance, de-
ceives us into thinking that we are endowed with a remarkable
faculty for guessing. Napoleon on the field of battle stuns all
recollection of Bonaparte, the student of military matters, poring
over maps and books. Old knowledge never had a chance to grow
very old in a mind so alert and so active as was his.
In fact, the light of intelligence has not the same intensity
in every individual. It differs as star differeth from star in glory.
In the effervescence of the moment, we often set down to the
credit of the sense-powers what is really the result of a superior
degree of intelligence itself. The thought that every man's intel-
lectual vision varies with his capacities and his moods, seldom enters
the mind of the theory- framers, who rush to premature conclusions,
their way strewn with the odd ends of neglected truths. Yet,
when everything is considered that should be, who would venture
to separate the knowledge which he has attentively or sub-attentively
acquired, from the seemingly effortless display of intuition which
he makes in after years? And even in the case where intuition
seems to have had no previous history or preparation though we
question the fact, because former experiences certainly revive, and
swift inferences come into play, on such occasions- who would
separate the action of sympathy from that of intelligence, and say
that the presence of the former in a superior degree implied the
total absence of the latter ? Shall we endow woman with a " sixth
sense," because, instead of reasoning from the general to the par-
ticular, after the more usual manner of man, she skips this slower
process, and intuits the particular instantly, her greater fund of
sympathy whipping intelligence into immediate action, and carrying
her to conclusions, while man is still pondering principles? Is
she a " primitive," " unintelligent " being on that account? Not un-
less you regard intelligence as synonymous with reasoning, and so
fall headlong into the favorite fallacy of the times.
The " sixth sense theory of intuition " is so uncomplimentary to
woman, we wonder how she takes so kindly to it. For once her
i 5 6 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
intuitional powers seem to have deserted her, and the analyst is lost
in the devotee. Reasoning, as a rubbing of the mind's eyes to see
if we have really seen, is a noble and indispensable human need.
It is not the only title to the name of rational creature, but neither
is it, on the other hand, an unnecessary luxury. Knowledge has to
pass from the spontaneous to the scientific stage, if it is to bring us
real light; and to accomplish that transformation, the processes
which we skip in intuition must all be put back, the missing links
recovered and examined. Sympathy and thought were never meant
to go divided ways, and the philosophical crime of the century is the
attempt to make them do so. A psychology less animal and more
human would do the world a vast deal of good at the present mo-
ment, when, in the opinion of many misguided and unthinking folk,
it seems too bad we ever " became upright animals, and left off
walking on all fours."
So true is it that we bring acquired knoidedge to the making of
our intuitions, that we find the fact confirmed in cases where the
anti-intellectualist sees the special triumph of his own theory. The
Christian mystics are for him proof evident that experience can go
on to the highest degree of purity and excellence without the least
admixture of intellectual elements. But he has overlooked some-
thing as usual. The Christian mystics knew the truths of their
religion, before they experienced them. In fact, it was upon their
previous knowledge of the truths of faith that the mystic grace
operated, transforming abstract conviction into concrete experience.
The effects of grace became conscious in their case. God's action
in the soul was, for them, not a matter of knowing merely, but of
experiencing as well. True, their experience of God was of a
presence felt, rather than intellectually known. It was an intuition
of the effects of God's supernatural action in the soul, especially of
the effect of love ; not an intuition of God in His own very essence.
Even granting, as we freely do, that the essential act of mystic con-
templation is of the affections, rather than the intellect, it does not
follow that it was confined exclusively to the lower powers.
The anti-intellectualist evidently imagines that love and knowl-
edge are completely divorced in the mystic experience. He ap-
proaches the study of mysticism, with the false idea in mind, that
if reasoning processes are shown to be absent, no knowledge what-
soever is present. It is this negative which he has to prove. All
the evidence runs counter. The mystics, interpreted by themselves,
make no such exclusive statement. It is of the absence of reasoned
1914.] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 157
knowledge, not of all knowledge, that they speak. Their assertion
that one kind of knowledge is absent cannot be converted into the
statement that no kind of knowledge is present. There is no testi-
mony whatsoever going to show that the mystic state was accompa-
nied by no intellectual illumination. Here, as everywhere else, love
and knowledge proceed in concert, though the amount of love be
greater than the amount of light. The pilot of intelligence cannot,
therefore, be dropped for any " hidden steersman," unless, by a per-
verse act of will, the children of light should prefer the lower dignity
of the children of darkness. And so, when we finish peering closely
into the instances which the anti-intellectualist brings forward, to
prove that intuition is due to a special sense, functioning apart alto-
gether from intelligence, we find that the thesis has been read into
the facts by interested advocates, and not out of them by dispas-
sionate observers. The attempt to blindfold the human mind has
been a complete failure.
The conclusion? Why simply this that intuition is really
and truly intellectual perception; no stranger, therefore, to intel-
ligence, but its own very first-born and dearest child. It is with
acts of intuition that the mind starts out on its career of acquiring
knowledge; and it is towards intuition, not away from it, that the
mind is forever working. Even in the farthermost reaches of
reasoning and speculation, the mind is on the hunt for an intuition.
It never reasons for the sake of reasoning, but to reach, in an
indirect way, an intuition that failed to come spontaneously, or came
so dim at first, it needed clarifying. Its object ever and always is to
see; logically, if it cannot actually; rationally, if it cannot really.
And that is why it judges, verifies, demonstrates, and proves.
Reasoning is but an extra means of sight to intelligence, as the mi-
croscope, the telescope, and other such artificial senses, to the naked
eye. The primacy of intelligence over the mental life of man does
not consist in the power of reasoning, but in the power of intuition
and of sight, however perfect or defective the latter may chance to
be. Intelligence alone sees; its assistant powers are blind.
The anti-intellectualist is " barking up the wrong tree," there-
fore, when he takes such pains to show that an immediate expe-
riencing of reality is superior to all mere reasoning about it. Were
that the question to be decided, he would sweep the field. But as no
one holds the primacy of mere reasoning over insight, he has buf-
feted a man of straw, and missed the real adversary. Let him
address himself to the actual problem, which is none other than this
i 5 8 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
whether intuition is by nature blind, or seeing; whether the
primate of man's mental life is a rational power of sight, or just
blind feeling, and groping sentiment. This problem he will never
be able to solve in favor of sentiment, for the good reason that he
would never know what sentiment was, unless intelligence consti-
tuted one of its concomitant factors.
That is precisely where you are mistaken, the anti-intellectual-
ist finally rejoins. Your whole argument against me is amusingly
irrelevant from beginning to end. The question which is primate,
sense or intelligence ? cannot be settled by psychology, as you seem
to think, but by the verdict of the natural sciences. You base your
argument on the psychological evidence, whereas I draw mine from
scientific sources which you do not consider at all. You take it for
granted, apparently, that the human mind always had the same
developed structure, always acted in the same mature way, as now.
Did you ever hear of evolution? Science plainly informs us that
man began his career as a creature of " pure " feeling. He lived
for a long time on a sense plane of existence, with nothing but his
instinctive sympathies or antipathies to guide him. Pleasure and
pain were his only means of schooling during this period. The
rational intelligence which you so gloriously extol had not yet
appeared. It came much later in the course of man's historical
development, and in response to his growing needs. I appeal,
therefore, from psychology to science, and lay my case before this
higher court, on the ground of new-found evidence, which you
pass over as if it were a matter of no moment. Intuition is not
intellectual perception at all, as you claim. Rather is it the mani-
festation of that non-rational power of sympathetic insight, which
man had at the outset of his career, and has managed to retain ever
since, no thanks to intelligence for its meddlesome interference
and jealousy.
This is the last line of intrenchments, and we must carry it by
assault before quitting the present theme. The final appeal of the
anti-intellectualist is, really, not to science, but to philosophy mas-
querading under that name. This circumstance alone is enough
to discredit the appeal, and to strip it of all cogency. Science tells
us nothing about the first beginnings of humanity. All truly scien-
tific evidence from anthropology, paleontology, or what not else-
stops at the primitive, it never actually reaches the first. When
therefore, the anti-intellectualist says that man was originally with-
out any rational intelligence, he is not talking science, but philos-
I9I4-] BLINDFOLDING THE MIND 159
ophy, and a very unworthy kind of philosophy, at that, to be har-
bored and entertained by one who plumes himself at all times on
being " strictly scientific." For the drift of all the evidence we
have from the fossilized remains and utensils of early man, points
steadily everywhere to his having been an intelligent human being,
lacking none of the rudimentary and essential powers that belong to
manhood. And it is this universal fact of prehistory, which should
control and guide all our speculation as to man's original mental
constitution and powers.
It would not follow, even if evolution were a universally es-
tablished scientific fact which it is far, very far, from being that
any one particular theory concerning the way it occurred was true.
Interpretations cannot be invested with the authority of the facts
they are advanced to explain. One would have to be very naive and
uncritical to suppose that both had equal footing, and could equally
claim the patronage of science. It is one thing to say that man had
from the beginning, in an undeveloped state, all his present char-
acteristic powers; that, for instance, what came late, and by way
of exercise and development, was the critical or reflex, not the
spontaneous or intuitive, reason ; the latter having been present and
active from the very start. It is quite another thing altogether to
suppose that man had only the faculty of feeling to begin with, and
that out of this, by some mysterious sort of legerdemain, all the rest
of his powers reason included miraculously grew. There is abun-
dant evidence for the first statement ; none whatever for the second,
which is made out of the whole cloth of arbitrary conjecture, being
based on the supposition that the simplest form of mind we can
think of sensation, for instance was the first, historically, to
appear. But this is to turn our analyses into history, the course
of logic into the course of events, abstractions into realities. What
scientific value is there to any such analytically manufactured " his-
tory?"
All this cutting of man's original mental stature to the size
and requirements of this particular theory or that, concerning the
manner in which evolution is supposed to have occurred, is sophis-
tication, not science. For omniscience and dogmatic assurance,
commend me, pray, to the modern anthropologist, the greatest
unrestrained speculator in the history of human thought! To read
his intimate and detailed descriptions of primeval man; his circum-
stantial story of how the latter, on a specially beautiful day and
occasion, had a queer sort of " sympathetic feeling " creep over him
160 BLINDFOLDING THE MIND [May,
which afterwards proved to be Religion, though he did not recog-
nize it as such at the time one would really think that the author
was " born and brought up " with these sportive manikins of his,
and was actually commissioned to write their memoirs. He asserts
the existence of universal primitive barbarism, without stopping to
investigate whether savagery was an original or an acquired condi-
tiona case of nature or a case of lapse. It suits his preconceived
theory better to suppose the former, and so down it goes without
further ado into all the books. The gap in the scientific evidence,
between what is first and what is only primitive, does not deter him
in the least. He proceeds to fill in the gap with a highly embroid-
ered tale which, he says, the " scientific imagination " authorizes
him to construct.
This adjective " scientific " will bear careful watching. It
lends a false air of worth and respectability to the notoriously
unreliable noun with which it is thus made to associate; and it
enables the author surreptitiously to palm off on the unsuspecting
and uncritical reader, in the name, of science, an entire system of
theoretical philosophy, for which the former affords no warrant or
foundation. The sooner we begin to distinguish between objective
science and subjective scientists, the better will it be for all con-
cerned. But all this philosophical romancing which we have just
described creates a suspicion to which we cannot help giving ex-
pression. A half-constituted man, such as the one imagined and
portrayed, who felt everything, but knew nothing beyond his feel-
ings; and who transmitted this intellectual incapacity of his, un-
impaired, to the sentimentalist school of skeptics in the twentieth
century never was a primitive creature at all; he is a modern of
the moderns, made in the image and. likeness of his recent makers;
his speech, lineaments, and limitations betray him. Not such was
man, made unto the image and likeness of God. And there we shall
let the matter rest, with but one additional statement.
Religion never could have arisen, never did arise, in fact, from
some primeval state of mystic feeling, " pure " experience, or un-
illuminated sentiment. 8 Reason presided over the birth of Religion,
with sentiment and feeling for companions then as now. And so,
God is a known, not merely a felt Reality. He is Truth as well as
Love, and we owe Him the undivided allegiance and service of the
intellect and the heart. Deus intellectus mei et cordis mei!
*Cf. The Meaning of God in Human Experience. THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
October, 1913.
THE POWERS AND ALBANIA.
BY ELIZABETH CHRISTITCH.
HANGES and upheavals consequent on the Balkan
wars have led to a result as unanticipated as unde-
sired by the victors, namely, the confirmation of
Mohammedan supremacy in the West of the Penin-
sula, under the name of independent Albania. In
vain do the sponsors of the new State point out that a Protestant
Prince is at the head of government, the fact remains that his Cabin-
ets, like the first, formed after the evacuation of Scutari by the Mon-
tenegrins, under the premiership of Ismail Kemal, must be composed
of Mohammedans in order to enjoy respect or exercise authority.
The Christian minority will be subject, as heretofore, to the rule of
an element that has never in any land accepted the principle of relig-
ious equality.
Ismail Kemal propitiated the Powers that presided at the
birth of Albania, by including two Christians in his first Cabinet of
nine Ministers. Their position was, however, so subordinate to that
of their colleagues, that only on rare occasions were they admitted
to the deliberations. Soon they vanished altogether, having accom-
plished nothing for the good of their coreligionists, and thankful
to relapse unmolested into obscurity. It is doubtful that Prince
Wilhelm of Wied will risk his throne in an attempt to put the
Christian tribes on a par with the Mohammedan tribes, who reluc-
tantly accept his sovereignty, and who would never profess open
allegiance, but that they were assured he was but " half a Chris-
tian," and utterly distinct from both confessions known to them:
Catholic and Greek-Orthodox, alike " worshippers of a woman."
Repudiation of any reverence for the Madonna of the Chris-
tians will, nevertheless, scarcely suffice to win the confidence of
such thorough Islamites as the denizens of the hinterland between
Valona and Dibra. Here may no Christian foot tread, nor did
the allied armies who had defeated the Turks venture beyond
certain streams in Albania that, according to the Catholic guides,
had separated from time immemorial Christian and Moslem tribes.
Between the warring creeds barriers were set up to prevent mutual
extermination. The most optimistic believer in the new regime
cannot be surprised that the Catholic tribes cling, as of old, to their
VOL. xcix. ii
162 THE POWERS AND ALBANIA [May,
rifles and to their isolation, as guarantees of their survival in an
Albania more fiercely intolerant than was Turkey itself. For the
Turk was but a stranger, and hatred between brethren is more
intense than between different races. All the world knows that
internecine feud, due to religious intolerance, has hitherto charac-
terized Albania. The Christians of course suffered most; under
Ottoman rule the Mohammedan tribes were allowed to slay and
devastate at will. What can the Catholics expect to-day when this
very element is established as the predominant one, its prejudices
to be respected, its ideals to be preserved, its notions of progress to
be developed ?
No provision has been made for the development of Christian
civilization side by side with the Mohammedan civilization, so
lauded by distant politicians as beneficial to mankind if only given
a fair chance. Protagonists of the Koran are very active just
now in centres where Christian faith has become slack. Following
the Buddhist craze, comes the sudden appreciation of Islam and its
" sublime doctrines of the omnipotence of God and the brotherhood
of man." It is noteworthy that these friends of the new Albania
are mostly concerned in great commercial enterprises within the
limits of the Ottoman Empire, and are naturally anxious to extend
the sphere of their operations. With fine insight they judge the
prevailing current of thought in the kingdom just born, and by the
attitude of these renegades of Christianity alone, we are sufficiently
instructed in the future trend of free Albania. It will not, cannot,
be a Christian State. It is destined to be a fresh fortress for the
Mohammedan power, that should never have been admitted to a
place in Christian Europe.
The consolidation of Albania will, in a certain measure,
depend on the continued good will of the Powers who called it into
existence. It is at present patronized by the Triple Alliance and
tolerated by the Triple Entente. But all the factors of the Triple
Alliance are not equally concerned in the fate of their protege.
It was Austria-Hungary who first staked the peace of Europe on the
acceptance of her creation, and the millions spent in maintaining her
army for months on a war footing showed her determination to
erect this impediment to Panslavism on the east coast of the
Adriatic. Had Austria not thrown her sword, and what was
more impressive the sword of her German ally into the scale,
Albanian autonomy would never have been granted. She who had
not moved a finger for the elimination of Turkish misgovernment,
but had compromised with it, and traded on it, did not dare to
I 9 i4-] THE POWERS AND ALBANIA 163
gather the Catholic tribes under her capacious wing, for swift
retribution would have come in the shape of Russian troops over-
running Galicia. But she would not consent to have the land par-
celled between the victorious allies, who had delivered it at a sore
cost of precious lives. So she insisted on the gift of autonomy for
the Albanians who had not fought for it, and were therefore not
entitled to it ; who are not ready for it because they are still divided
by creed fanaticism. (
Apologists for Austria assert that the Christians of Albania
will probably fare better under the rule of the Mohammedan breth-
ren, with whom they have been at feud for centuries, than under
that of the Greeks and Servians. But the Greek-Orthodox popula-
tion of Lower Albania is even now clamoring for reunion to Greece,
and the Catholics of the North welcomed the Servian and Monte-
negrin troops as deliverers. Until outside influence was brought to
bear, the heads of the Catholic tribes were eager to come to an
agreement with Servia, and there was a spirit of genuine fraternity
between both sections of a common Christian faith, as opposed to
the hostility of the Moslem tribes who stood firm for Turkey.
These latter proved by their sullen and treacherous behavior, rather
than by their valor, that the cause of Islam was nearer to their
hearts than nationality and national independence. Their spokes-
man, Essad Pasha, has on more than one occasion described himself
as a " loyal soldier of the Sultan." It is hard to credit that their old
oppressors will suddenly accede to fair play and kind treatment for
Catholic Albanians. Austria has acted as their protector in the past,
but Albania is now under international control, and her privileges
will be curtailed in deference to other Powers more especially to
one strenuously aspiring rival.
It is disconcerting to find Italy, whose active interest in Alban-
ian matters dates from a mere decade, supplanting Austria, long-
time benefactor of the Catholic tribes, founder of over forty
churches or chapels, and supporter of the clergy. To Austria is
mainly due the preservation of the only scraps of civilization still
extant in this wild corner of the Peninsula. Needless to say this
civilization goes parallel with the degree of liberty meted out to the
Christians. What Islam has produced wherever it reigned is visible
in Albania as in Asia Minor; but the social and moral system to
be evolved from Islam under direct Masonic and Semitic guidance,
remains to be seen when Albania starts on its autonomous career.
Italy seeks to oust Austrian influence, and to imbue the Catholic
tribes with her own " broad " sense of religion, a task to which the
1 64 THE POWERS AND ALBANIA [May,
Prince of Wied's brand of belief is eminently adaptable. In the
anarchical conditions hitherto prevailing, the clergy were the main-
stay of peace and order, and, thanks to them alone, some cohesion
was reached between the Catholic tribes. Precisely against these
traditional guides has Italy stirred up rancor and mistrust, assur-
ing the tribesmen that clerical interests are not identical with the
progress of the State, but often antagonistic, and that Austria pat-
ronizes priestcraft at the expense of the people's welfare. Some
regrettable incidents have already occurred to show how quickly
bad seed ripens in loose soil. For the first time Albanian pastors had
to endure what pierces more than persecution by unbelievers : dis-
respect and open reviling from a formerly devoted flock. Every
mountaineer is encouraged by Italian agents to become a politician,
and the enemy to be routed is indicated as the friend of yesterday.
The Afessagero recently declared that by clause sixty-two of the
Berlin Treaty, Austria's protectorate was annulled. The only claim
to a religious protectorate in Albania still in force was that of
France over the Mirdites, should France care to exercise it.
There are moments when the lesser members of the two great
political groups in Europe, draw close together regardless of their
respective allegiance. Renegade Italy has more in common with
decadent France than mere Latinity. Neither of Italy's allies can
give her the sympathy, in certain fields of work, that is assured to
her from the present government of France. The wheels within
wheels of political combinations admit readily of Italian intrigue
and French gold working harmoniously in Albania. Austria's
dilemma appears analogous to that which overtook her after the
mistaken campaign of Schleswig-Holstein. She has, however, a
preventive to Italy's aggressive designs in that international control
of Albania's development, which she had bitterly resented at first.
The participation of the Powers in all economical and administra-
tive schemes, is Austria's best safeguard from a grasping ally, whose
ambition is to convert the Adriatic into an Italian lake.
The competition between the rivals is acute. A modest print-
ing office that had done good work for Austria in Valona, is now
flanked by a stately building destined to house an Italian press
establishment. Italian initiative in providing hotel accommoda-
tion in many towns has, on the other hand, led to Austria following
suit and surpassing the pioneer. Again, the contract with Austria
for a supply of postage stamps, was rescinded in favor of Italy,
and Italy has likewise secured the monopoly of the olive oil export.
But Italy's greatest triumph is in the literary field. After their
1914.] THE POWERS AND ALBANIA 165
own guttural tongue, the Albanians cultivate Italian as their nearest
link with the rest of mankind. Even the Catholics attached to
Austria and mindful of Austrian benefits, do not go the length
of attempting to learn German. Albanian books of devotion are
printed in Italy, and a knowledge of Latin being indispensable to
aspirants for the priesthood, it is natural that familiarity with
Italian is cultivated as a stepping-stone thereto.
We must repeat that culture went forth from the Catholic
centres, and therefore all culture in Albania has a strong Italian
tinge. Austria's own propaganda employed the Italian medium at a
time when the Italian government seemed oblivious of Albania.
Every modern institution, every means of communication, every
attempt at organization and progress, must in justice be attributed
to Austria. Whatever her ultimate aim, she could with a show of
reason advocate the cause of the Catholic population she had saved
from extinction, and thereby obtain the formation of an Albanian
State to further her anti-Slav policy. Italy has no such record
to justify her assumed authority, but Italy's machinations have suc-
ceeded in confirming her as predominant arbiter of the destinies of
Albania. The Prince of Wied's first visit was to Rome.
One cannot, however, govern a nation by reliance on support
from outside, the less so in the present case, when outside influence
is not unanimously in favor of the new order of things in Albania.
Russia, a mighty factor in the destinies of the Balkan peoples,
cannot view with satisfaction a German Prince installed in the land
which she vainly tried to get allotted between the Slavs and Hellenes
who had freed it from the Turks. She reluctantly consented to
the creation of an independent Albania when Austria made it a
casus belli, and she will certainly not put herself out to help it on its
way. Montenegro's discontent at the cession of Scutari, and
Greece's disappointment at being excluded from Epirus, are assets
in Russia's hands to be used as occasion offers. At her bidding, too,
Albania's finances can be controlled in a crisis, for the world's head
banker, France, is amenable to suggestions from her Muscovite
ally. France has little direct political interest in Albania, and Eng-
land still less. England cuts a sorry figure in recent European
history. No wonder Sir Edward Grey is ambiguous in his present
statements ; he has been compelled to contradict his utterances dur-
ing the Balkan campaign so frequently and so drastically. Eng-
land's foreign policy has become a byword among the Balkan
peoples, who fully realize that in the Triple Entente, Russia, so far
as they are concerned, is the only factor that counts.
166 THE POWERS AND ALBANIA [May,
Albania and its Prince may rely on Germany's benevolence, but
nothing more. The close and cordial connection between Germany
and Turkey was not disturbed, although the Turkish government
connived at a plot to place a Mohammedan on the throne of Albania
at a moment when a German Prince was preparing to occupy it.
Turkey is a more dangerous enemy of the new Albania than Rus-
sia, and it is safe to reckon on her active hostility within the land
to the principle of Christian government for the Moslem tribes,
who are, after all, in a majority. Many dispassionate observers are
of opinion that distinct regimes for Christian and Moslem would
better serve Albania as a whole, than the hybrid arrangement that
satisfies neither.
The six Powers nominally responsible for the creation of Al-
banian autonomy, and the two directly interested in its survival,
have yet to grapple with the true difficulties of the situation. A
State cannot be ruled or administered without funds, and no citizen
of Albania has ever yet contributed a coin to the public exchequer.
The national idiosyncrasy was so well recognized by the Turks that
Abdul-Hamid made no attempt to levy taxes in this part of his
dominions. When the Young Turks sent emissaries to collect in-
formation on the possibility of levying taxes at a future date, these
were summarily executed by the indignant tribesmen. Prenk Bib
Doda, Catholic chief, is worth hearing on the subject :
The idea of paying tribute is repugnant to our people. Per-
haps it could be presented to them under another name, but it
will be hard to accustom our men to let any money go beyond
their own tribe. Hitherto we have managed our own affairs,
but I quite understand that schools must be supported by the
whole population. The necessity for taxes must be taught in
the schools, and then, no doubt, the next generation will not ob-
ject to them. We Mirdites could not pay anything at present.
First, it is contrary to our national customs, and, second, it
would bring us into trouble with our neighbors. Feuds will
die out under the rule of a Christian Prince, and to this all our
hopes are directed. Albanians are generous by nature, but they
cannot at once shake off the duty of the blood-feud, nor can they
stoop to recognize the "danak" (taxes). Reforms must come
gradually and through the schools. Mining and other conces-
sions should supply the State at first with the money needed for
initial administration. We count on Europe to help us.
The opinions of the Mirdite Prenk are more or less those of
the Malissori and other Catholic tribes. Prince Wilhelm of Wied
will find little opposition here, so long as he respects the religion
1914.] THE POWERS AND ALBANIA 167
and traditional customs of Northern Albanians. A journal pub-
lished at Scutari, Skipetari Lyrae, admonishes him as follows:
" We will not be governed either from Rome or Vienna. We do
not object to outside help in building our State, nor to foreign
capital for the development of our natural resources, but we will
stand no tutorship. If the Prince of Wied agrees to be a whole-
hearted Albanian he has nothing to fear." j
The outlook for the new regime among the Mohammedan
tribes is less reassuring. They submit to it because Europe im-
posed it on them, and they are not strong enough to resist Europe.
A native Prince could not rally their united allegiance, for the Mo-
hammedans have not so much cohesion among themselves as the
Catholics ; but a viceroy nominated by the " Padishah " at Con-
stantinople would be more welcome than the Prince of Wied.
Austria's most trusted agent, the late Premier of the Provisional
Government, Ismail Kemal, could not resist the current drawing
his countrymen back to Islam. His rival in the north, Essad Pasha,
if not compromised in the expedition planned by Izzet Pasha to give
Albania a Mohammedan Prince, is himself a wary pretender with a
following of three thousand armed men, without whose suffrage
the new Prince's position would be indeed precarious.
Essad is the greatest landed proprietor and the most brilliant
soldier of Albania. He is almost illiterate his signature scrawled
painfully on the document containing the treaty with the Mon-
tenegrins relative to Scutari, fills half a foolscap page but he is
shrewd and patient. Essad has succeeded in fixing Albania's first
capital at Durazzo, where he is known and feared as well as re-
spected to a certain extent. He is a scion of the old House of
Toptana, which by conformity to the tenets of Islam preserved vast
estates, and gained the prestige of special favors from the Sultans
of Turkey. Essad has made terms with Prenk Bib Doda, and
there is a sacred truce between their followers for the coming year.
The descendants of old apostates from Christianity are, as a rule,
more bitterly irreconcilable to their race brethren who held the
faith, than to the neighboring Greeks and Slavs.
A Mohammedan Albanian once assured me that there was no
living man whom he would refuse to slay if the Sultan's behest
went forth. " We are magnanimous," he explained, " to the Catho-
lic tribes because their great Prenk rides at the Sultan's right hand,
and serves him faithfully. Nothing binds us to spare the lives of
the other Christians. We belong to the 'Padishah' (Sultan)." The
speaker was not a soldier of the Turkish army, but a dealer in eggs !
168 THE POWERS AND ALBANIA [May,
Albania is a poor country, and the Prince of Wied cannot in
justice be blamed for delaying his journey thither until he was in
possession of sufficient funds to ensure his material independence
for at least a twelvemonth. What expectations are founded on
his purse may be judged from the following utterances of a tribal
chief near Alessio : " At present we are in a bad plight, but the
new Tadishah' will soon end all our misery. I intend to see
him immediately after his arrival, 'and get his help to drive my bad
neighbor, Armen Neera, out of his strong house. I want ten horses
of my own, and if I get Armen Neera's four, the Tadishah' need
buy me no more than six. I will never again leave the mountains
to come to Alessio, for I understand the Tadishah' will send money
to each of us, so that we should not be obliged to travel in order
to fetch it." In answer to a query as to what the " Padishah "
required in return for such amiable generosity, the chief said : " We
are all to live in peace and grow rich, but this can only take place
in my part if Armen Neera is shot"
The ruler of Albania will have ample opportunity of exercising
acumen and prudence in dealing with his subjects. His rather
negative qualities are perhaps safer than brilliant ones in the task
he has undertaken. William of Wied owes his elevation in a great
measure to the inspiration of his aunt, the dilettante, romantic, and
somewhat visionary Queen of Rumania. Carmen Sylva is per-
suaded that her nephew is possessed of the virtues needed in the
man who is to weld Albania into a compact entity, and teach fra-
ternity to mortal foes. Perhaps nobody in Europe, not even the
Prince himself, shares her optimism, but there is always a chance
for the dream of a good woman. The Prince is an athlete, a well-
trained soldier (in so far as one can be who has no experience
of real warfare), a respectable family father, and a "moderate
Christian."
His impartiality will have to be demonstrated without delay
to the Mohammedans, who naturally fear reprisals for their con-
duct towards Christian compatriots in the past. Let us hope that
the demonstration may not be excessive, and that, after centuries
during which their rifles and a pale tolerance from the " Padishah "
at Constantinople were their best friends, the Catholic tribes may at
last breathe freely. Old prejudices die hard. Distant well-wishers
will without suspecting the good intentions of William of Wied
reflect with relief on the bessa or sacred truce signed between the
Catholic Prenk and the Moslem Essad Pasha.
PETRARCH'S HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.
TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM D. FOULKE.
VIRGIN fair, who in the sun arrayed,
And crowned with stars, to a greater Sun didst bring
Such joy that He in thee His light did hide!
Deep love impels me that of thee I sing.
But how shall I begin without thy aid
Or that of Him Who in thy womb did bide?
1 call on one who answereth alway
When simple faith we show.
Virgin, if extreme woe
In things of earth thou wouldst with joy repay,
In my hard struggle be thy succor given.
O hear me while I pray,
Though I be clay,
And thou the Queen of heaven!
O Virgin sage and of the blessed number
Of those wise virgins honored by their Lord,
Yea thou the first with brightest lamp of all!
Thou shield of the afflicted from the sword
Of evil fortune and in death's deep slumber,
Rescue and victory come at thy call!
Thou refuge from the passions, blind and dark
Of frail mortality!
Virgin, in agony
Thy fair eyes saw each nail and cruel mark
Upon the body of thy precious Son.
Look on my desperate state!
Disconsolate
To thee for help I run.
O Virgin pure, perfect in every part;
Daughter and mother of thy gentle child,
Sunbeam on earth, bright gem in heaven's array !
The Father's Son and thine, O undefiled,
Through thee (window of heaven that thou art!)
Came to redeem us at the final day!
And God, among all dwellings of the earth,
170 PETRARCH'S HYMN TO THE VIRGIN [May,
Selected thee alone,
O Virgin, who the moan
Of hapless Eve hast turned to joy and mirth.
O make me worthy His unending love,
Thou who in glory drest,
Honored and blest,
Art crowned in heaven above.
O Virgin holy, filled with every grace ;
Who by thy deep and true humility
Didst rise to heaven, where thou my prayer dost hear,
Thou hast brought forth the Fount of Piety,
The Sun of Justice, by whose shining grace
An age in errors dark grows bright and clear.
Three precious names united are in thee:
Mother and wife and child.
O Virgin undefiled,
Bride of the King Whose love hath set us free
From all our bonds and our poor world hath blest ;
By His wounds' holy balm,
O may He calm
My heart and give it rest !
Virgin, who wast in all the world unique,
Enamoring heaven with thy comeliness,
No other near or like thy perfect state !
Pure thoughts and gracious deeds thy life did bless,
And thou thy fruitful maidenhood and meek
A living shrine to God didst consecrate!
By thee my sad life can with joy resound,
If thou but ask thy Child,
Virgin devout and mild,
Where sin abounded grace doth more abound!
My spirit's knees in orisons I bend.
Be thou my guide I pray,
My devious way
Bring to a happy end.
O shining Virgin, steadfast evermore !
Thou radiant-star above life's stormy sea,
And every faithful mariner's trusty guide !
In this wild tempest turn thy thoughts to me
See how I am beset! no helm nor oar!
1914.] PETRARCH'S HYMN TO THE VIRGIN 171
What shrieks of death are near on every side!
My soul despairing puts her trust in thee !
Sin will I not deny.
Virgin, to thee I cry,
Let not my pangs delight thine enemy!
'Twas to redeem our sins, remember well,
That God took on afresh
Our human flesh
Within thy virgin cell.
Virgin, how many were the tears I shed,
How many years I prayed and longed and sighed.
What was my guerdon? Grief and sorrow vain.
Since I was born where Arno's stream doth glide
From land to land my restless feet have sped,
And life was naught but bitterness and pain.
For mortal charms and gracious ways and dear
Have clogged my heart and mind,
O Virgin holy, kind,
Delay not. Haply 'tis my final year.
My days like flying arrows speed away!
In sin and misery
They swifty flee,
And death alone doth stay.
Virgin I mourn for one that now is clay,
Who, living, filled mine eyes with many a tear,
Yet of my thousand woes not one could see!
And had she known them all, the griefs that were
Would still have been; since any other way
To me were death, to her were infamy.
Thou Queen of heaven ; O goddess virginal
Thus may I name thee aright?
Virgin of clearer sight
Than ours, thou knowest all! Though others fail,
The task is easy for thy powers supreme,
End then my grief and woe,
Thy grace bestow,
And my poor soul redeem.
Virgin, my only hope doth rest in thee,
I know that thou wilt help my sad estate.
Forsake me not upon death's dark defile!
Look not on me, but Him Who did create !
PETRARCH'S HYMN TO THE VIRGIN [May,
Though I be naught, His image lives in me,
And that must win thy care for one so vile!
My Gorgon sin hath turned me into stone.
Vain humors I distill ;
Virgin, do thou but fill
With tears devout this aching heart and lone;
That at the end my grief may holier be,
Without the taint of earth,
Which at its birth
Was wild insanity.
O Virgin meek, and of all pride the foe ;
Thy lowly birth win thee to hear my song;
Have pity on an humble contrite heart!
If with such constancy I could so long
On one frail mortal clod my love bestow,
What might I do for thee, God's counterpart !
If by thy hand I now may rise again
From out my low estate,
Virgin, I consecrate
Unto thy service tongue and heart and brain
My thoughts, my songs, my sighs, and anxious fears !
Guide me in better ways,
And crown with praise
These new desires and fears.
My hour draws on, it is not far away
(Thus fleeting time doth run)
Virgin, thou only one!
Upon my heart remorse and death do prey!
Unto thy Son, true man, true God, commend
My soul; to Him I cleare.
May He receive
My spirit at the end.
SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM.
BY HENRY SOMERVILLE.
NTIL very recently Socialism appeared to be quite a
formidable force in the world. There appeared to
be more than a possibility of a Socialist party gain-
ing power in some of the more advanced democratic
countries, and attempting to rule in accordance with
Socialistic principles. At the present day the prospects of a nom-
inally Socialist party gaining office are not less bright than they
formerly were; but there is no prospect of a Socialist party in
power attempting to pursue a Socialist policy. The nearer Social-
ists advance to obtaining the powers of government, the more care-
fully do they confine themselves to the furtherance of moderate re-
forms that leave the structure of capitalism undisturbed. In Eng-
land, France, Belgium, and Germany the observation of this phe-
nomena is a commonplace. In countries like the United States and
Ireland, where Socialism is very weak politically, where Socialists
have neither the opportunity nor the responsibility of acting accord-
ing to their principles, the historic shibboleths of Socialism can be
reiterated with entire sincerity and some plausibility. But when
the movement passes from the stage of irresponsible propaganda to
the stage of responsible participation in government, a considerable
modification is necessitated. In short, it becomes evident that the
mere possession of political power avails nothing towards the estab-
lishment of Socialism. Civil war might conceivably end in the
desired goal being reached; but the Socialist politicians have little
liking for such desperate measures, and they therefore content them-
selves with the regulation of capitalism instead of attempting its
abolition.
The impossibility of establishing Socialism by political methods
is now generally recognized; but this is not all. Many of those
people who formerly placed their whole faith and trust in Socialism,
are beginning not merely to despair of its possibility, but also to
doubt its advantages if it could be established. They are coming
round to the view that Socialism in action might prove not a bless-
ing, but a curse. I am here using the word Socialism to mean
the State ownership of the means of production, distribution, and
exchange. It is true that the original meaning of the term Social-
174 SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM [May,
ism did not necessarily imply State ownership ; and the term is still
sometimes used to describe economic schemes other than State
management of industry. But nevertheless the only sense in which
Socialism has represented any definite proposal and made any wide-
spread appeal, is the sense in which it means that the State should
have the control of industry and the ownership of the means
of production. Socialism in this sense is often called State Social-
ism or collectivism. This is, I repeat, the only form of Socialism
that has had any considerable following in any country. Now it is
precisely this form of Socialism that is at present losing its attrac-
tions. " Collectivism has burst," Mr. Hilaire Belloc told a recent
meeting at Dublin; and the dictum could be confirmed by many
utterances of Socialists themselves. For instance, there is Mr. H.
G. Wells writing on remedies for the prevailing labor unrest, and
making the following confession : " In theory, I am a Socialist,
and were I theorizing about some nation in the air, I would say that
all the great productive activities and all the means of production
and all the means of communication, should be national concerns,
and should be run as national services. But our State is peculiarly
incapable of these functions; at the present time it cannot even
produce a postage stamp that will stick ; and the type of official that
it would probably evolve for industrial organization, slowly but un-
surely, would be a maddening combination of the district visitor
and the boy clerk." 1
The point need not be labored : Socialists are beginning to give
up their Socialism because they are losing their faith in the State.
Of course they realize that with a perfectly enlightened and public-
spirited electorate, a trustworthy State might be possible ; but it is
just this ideal electorate that is so hard to get. The experiences
of the working of representative government during the last half
century in England, America, and France have not been encourag-
ing. Hence Socialists are giving up the State, and in so doing they
are ceasing to be Socialists.
It would be a blunder to assume that the contemporary decline
of Socialism is an indication of an increasing inclination to be re-
signed to capitalism. On the contrary discontent is growing wider
and deeper. I do not think that there has been any time since 1848
when revolutionary thought and revolutionary feelingwere so strong
as they are to-day. The revolutionary movement throughout Europe
which culminated in 1848, was directed against political systems ; the
present movement is directed against the economic system of capital-
*What the Worker Wants.
I9I4-] SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM 175
ism. What will be the outcome of the movement I do not pretend
to prophesy; but it cannot fail to be important for good or evil.
In abandoning Socialism, men are taking up fresh schemes not
less antagonistic to the established order. To indicate the nature of
the chief of these schemes is the purpose of this article. Syndical-
ism is the first and most notorious, though not perhaps on that
account any better known or understood ; there is also Guild Social-
ism and Economic Federalism, of which hardly more than the
names have yet reached the newspapers. All these schemes are suc-
cessors to Socialism, in the sense that they have received their maia
inspiration from Socialism ; their adherents are recruited from the
ranks of Socialists ; like Socialism they are at war with capitalism,
and most important of all they agree with Socialism in their oppo-
sition to private ownership of land and capital. They may be called
neo-Socialisms. There is another doctrine of a new social order
gaining disciples, but its explanation does not come within the scope
of the present article, for though this doctrine is as hostile as any to
capitalism, it is yet utterly alien to Socialism, and stands not for the
abolition of private capital, but for its wider diffusion and securer
maintenance; its advocates name their ideal the Distributive or the
Associative State, and they have received their main inspiration
from the teaching of Mr. Hilaire Belloc.
Socialism as a theory of economic organization, implies essen-
tially the concentration of economic power in the hands of the
State ; the placing of economic and political functions in the same
hands. Syndicalism is an extreme reaction against Socialism. In-
stead of trusting the State so far as to endow it with economic
sovereignty as it already possesses political sovereignty, the Syndi-
calist will trust nothing to the State; he would abolish the State
altogether. Says a leading exponent of Syndicalism in France:
" It is necessary to prevent the workers from passing from a society
in which they are under the economic oppression of their masters,
to one in which they would be under the oppression of an economic
State." 2
The centralization and concentration of power which State
control implies, makes its despotism more dangerous in the eyes
of the Syndicalists. Control of industry must therefore be in the
hands not of the State, but of the workers themselves, and it must
be exercised through the workers' industrial unions; the miners
managing the mines, the railway men the railways, and so on. The
unions must be quite independent of the State; they must possess
'The Syndicat, by Emile Pouget.
176 SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM [May
complete autonomy. "We must," says a Syndicalist leader, " sweep
from the workshop, the factory, and the administration every au-
thority external to the world of labor." 3 And M. Pouget, in the
book already quoted, urges that all the necessary legislative and ad-
ministrative functions can be performed by the labor unions. Polit-
ical institutions are unnecessary. The State is " a social super-
fluity, a parasitic and external excrescence."
The Syndicalists have borrowed for their own use some of
the stock individualist objections to Socialism. In France they are
fond of pointing to the bad matches supplied by the French govern-
ment as showing its business incapacity. Want of initiative, waste-
fulness, incompetence, and a tendency to reward officials for political
services not for professional ability, are all said to be characteristics
of State monopolies. Those who are engaged at working at any
trade are the best critics of the technical abilities of others in the
same trade, and for this reason professional groups would be better
managers of the communal business than the whole of the people.
Democratic control means that a talker must be the ostensible head
of a department in order that someone may be ready to explain any-
thing that needs explanation and to explain it to people more or
less incapable of understanding it. The really capable worker is
often bad at this task. 4
It must not be thought that the Syndicalist objection to the
State applies only to the existing State, the capitalist or bourgeois
State. On the contrary Syndicalists are careful to explain that
they object to every form of State, especially the democratic form.
When they speak of the State they often use the word democracy
as a synonym.
What is the form of industrial organization that the Syndical-
ists propose? The business of industry is, of course, the production
of wealth, using the term " production " to cover the processes of
transport and marketing as well as of manufacture. Broadly speak-
ing, the possible claimants to the control of industry are three.
Control may be in the hands of capitalists as it is to-day; or in the
hands of the State as Socialists propose; or in the hands of the
producers, the workers, which is what Syndicalists advocate. Any
two or all three of these possible forms of control may be blended.
The Syndicalist claim is for the complete control of industry by the
workers, the producers organized in their appropriate unions. All
workers in a particular industry will be organized in one union,
*Le Socialisme Ouvrier, by H. Lagardelle.
'Syndicalism and the General Strike, by Arthur D. Lewis.
1914.] SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM 177
and this union will have complete control of that industry, deter-
mining the wages to be paid, the length of the working day, the
methods of working to be adopted, and the prices at which the pro-
ducts are to be sold. As far as possible, local industrial unions will
be preferred to national unions. It may be necessary (though
some Syndicalists dispute it) for railway workers to be organized
in one national union; tramway workers can and must be in local
unions. Syndicalism aims at all the decentralization possible. This
is especially the case in France, where the autonomous commune and
the self-governing workshop are the ideals.
Here a difficulty is presented to the Syndicalist. If the State
is to be abolished, and production is to be carried on by autonomous
industrial unions, how are the relations between the different unions
to be regulated ? Is the union of coal miners to have absolute con-
trol of the quantity of coal to be produced, and the prices to be
charged to the community? The social dangers of such industrial
monopolies are obvious. The Syndicalist replies that there will be
for each locality, and also for the country as a whole, federal coun-
cils with representatives of the different industries, which will adjust
supply to demand by telling each section of producers, each indus-
trial union, what products are required. The federal councils will
also adjudicate on disputes between the unions.
There is a manifest weakness in this Syndicalist device. For
either the federal industrial councils will have the power of en-
forcing their decisions or they will not. If they have not the
power, the evils of industrial monopoly will not be remedied. If
they have the power, they will merely be the State in disguise.
The recognition of this fact has led to an alternative to Syndicalism
being proposed. The alternative is called Guild Socialism, and its
chief exponent is Mr. A. R. Orage and the writers of the New Age.
Guild Socialism uses the same arguments against State Socialism
that the Syndicalists employ, but urges that the total abolition of the
State is impossible. The State is a necessary institution, not only
because there must be some coordinating power in industry which
pure Syndicalism fails to provide, but also because in a civilized so-
ciety a supreme authority is needed to perform functions of a non-
economic character, which cannot properly be entrusted to trade
organizations. Guild Socialism would retain the State, and would
have the State to be the owner of the means of production, and in
the last resort the State would be the final controller of industry.
But normally the State would not meddle in the management of
VOL. XCIX. 12
178 SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM [May,
industry; it would lease the control of industry to the several
unions, each industry to its appropriate union or guild. The name
guild has been chosen for these bodies, because in some respects
their characteristics have been suggested by the type of organization
which controlled industry in the Middle Ages.
Every worker in any industry must necessarily be a member
of the guild belonging to that industry, for the guild will be a legally
chartered body exercising a monopoly. The State will determine
the kind and quantity of goods to be produced by each guild; but
the methods of production and the conditions of labor within each
industry will be determined entirely by the guilds themselves. Each
guild will be self-governing, in the sense that the members will elect
their own officials, managers and directors. The guilds will be
purely producing bodies, not trading bodies; they will not them-
selves sell their products to the community. Instead, they will hand
over all the goods to the State, and they will receive in return from
the State a lump sum of money in proportion to the numbers of
their members, the division between the individual workers to be
determined by the guilds themselves.
Economic Federalism, the scheme propounded by Mr. G. D. H.
Cole, in his recent book The World of Labour, represents not much
more than a modest amendment of Guild Socialism. Mr. Cole is
in revolt against capitalism, yet he sees that the Socialist remedy
of " extending the powers of the State may be merely a transference
of authority from the capitalist to the bureaucrat." He sees the
need of giving a special share of the control of industry to the actual
producers, but objects to the Syndicalists who would abolish the
State entirely; he complains also that Guild Socialism would
give the State only an illusory share of control. If the guild is
paid by the Siate on the basis of its numbers, there is danger that
the guild instead of constantly striving to improve its methods of
production, will tend to stereotype them, and cling to antiquated and
inefficient machinery and processes. If the pay of the guilds i$ to
come from the State, the State must exercise some control over
the industry not merely occasionally in determining inter-guild
relations, but constantly, and on all matters affecting the efficiency
of production. In short, the management of the industry must be
by a kind of federal arrangement between the State and the guild.
The board of direction must consist of representatives both of the
State and the guild, and this joint board must itself be ultimately
responsible to a chamber, representative of the whole community.
1914-] SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM 179
The authors of these ideal commonwealths have not thought
out their plans with anything approaching completeness of detail,
and it would be easy for a destructive critic to point out ten thou-
sand difficulties in the way of their realization. But to an observer
of social movements, the interest of these several schemes does not
depend on the question whether they will ever be practicable. To all
who have been interested in the great issue between capitalism and
Socialism, the rise of these new schemes is a phenomenon of the
most eloquent significance. It is significant, in the first place, of
the fact that Socialism is now palpably a lost cause, a forlorn hope.
The driving force behind the Socialist movement has always been
the discontent of the proletariat with their subjection to the control
of the capitalist class. The goal of Socialism has been the transfer
of the ownership and control of the means of production from the
hands of the capitalists to the hands of the State. It was thought
that with such a transfer must come the emancipation of labor from
the domination of capital. But when the attainment of the goal
came within view, labor recoiled. It became evident that notwith-
standing all the supposed safeguards of democratic election, State
control might be no improvement on capitalist control. The first
signs of the reaction were shown by the State employees in France,
and Syndicalism was born.
In spite of misgivings the movement towards Socialism might
have continued to press forward, if State ownership had remained
the only alternative offered to capitalist ownership. The attractive
alternative of Syndicalism, however, served to turn the eyes of the
workers in a fresh direction, and Socialism ceased to hold the un-
divided allegiance of the class-conscious proletariat. Under the
test of sustained criticism, Syndicalism has shown itself to possess
elements of vitality, for Guild Socialism and Economic Federalism
are merely modifications of Syndicalism. At the present time
State Socialism is more and more falling into disrepute, whilst Syn-
dicalist ideas are gaining in favor. Whether the present tendencies
will continue their course, or whether they will be checked, is a
question which only the future can determine; but it is not likely
that State Socialism will ever again appeal as an ideal system to the
proletarian imagination.
The supersession of Socialism brings no solace to the champion
of things as they are. Indeed it is one of the most significant
features of the present situation, that disillusionment about Social-
ism has led to no disposition for a reconciliation with capitalism.
i8o SUCCESSORS TO SOCIALISM [May,
By capitalism I mean the present system of the concentration of
productive property in the hands of a small class, with the mass of
the people working for the profit and under the direction of the
owning class. The legislative regulation of capitalism, protecting
the workers from the harsher evils of their proletarian condition,
is the policy now favored by a sympathetic upper class desirous
of bettering the lot of the poor, without sacrificing their own posi-
tion of privilege and power. This is the policy generally dignified
by the title of practical social reform, which has ousted the old
policy of laissez faire. It has been pursued for over forty years,
and though it may have made social conditions objectively better
than they were, it has certainly not led to any diminution of dis-
content among the working masses. There is no reason to think
that this ameliorative policy will be any more successful in producing
contentment under capitalism in the future. In all industrial coun-
tries there has been in recent years an enormous and unprecedented
output of social legislation ; yet " labor unrest " remains as acute
now as ever. Do not these facts suggest that to make our social
system tolerable to the mass of the workers, some fundamental
changes are needed ? The system of capitalism has not had a very
long history as yet ; but whenever and wherever it has been in exist-
ence, there has been chronic discontent and a state resembling class
war. Is it possible that such a system can continue indefinitely?
The friends of the established order can derive but little comfort
from the divisions in the ranks of its enemies ; for divisions among
revolutionaries lessen only their constructive powers, not their
destructive force.
The man who is contented with capitalism and is satisfied
that the present regime will survive all attacks against it, will think
it unprofitable to spend time studying the proposals of the various
forms of Socialism and Syndicalism. But the man who sees that
far-reaching changes in our social structure are not only possible,
but also necessary, will find much that is illuminating and suggestive
in the several schemes of social reconstruction that have been adum-
brated in this article. It will be noted that these schemes have each
in common the characteristic of seeking to substitute some form of
collective property in place of individual ownership. Herein lies
their common weakness, for, as Mr. Hilaire Belloc says, the only
hope for the restoration of a free and stable society lies not in the
abolition of private property, but in its wider distribution among as
many individuals and families as possible.
VOX MYSTICA.
STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF THE REV. PHILIP RIVERS PATER,
SQUIRE AND PRIEST, 1834-1909.
BY ROGER PATER.
II.
THE PERSECUTION CHALICE.
LL next morning the old squire-priest was occupied
with his estate agent, and, except during Mass and
breakfast, I did not even see him. However, his
work was finished by lunch t'ime, and the agent, who
had stayed to that meal, left the house as soon as it
was over to catch his train. We both came to the door to see him
off, and, when the dog-cart had passed out of the courtyard, the
old priest walked, leaning on my arm, to the end of the upper
terrace. Here there was an arbor of clipped yew trees, with a
seat which looked out across the formal garden, and over the lower
terrace to the park beyond. The day was warm and bright, and
the whole place wore an air of peace and quiet, so restful that we
sat in silence for a minute or two enjoying the beauty of the scene.
" I have had your stories of last night in my head ever since,"
I said at length, " and I have a theory to offer if you care to hear it."
" Please go on," he said with an air of interest, and, after a
moment's thought, I began again.
" You said, I think, that one of the points which seemed to
you most unaccountable, was the long time that elapsed in both
cases between the time of the death and the moment when you
heard the voice which warned you of it ? "
" Yes," he answered, " that is, to me, one of the strangest
features of the whole affair."
"Well, that is the point my theory explains," said I; "of
course I don't expect you to agree with it, but this is my idea:
If the voice, or message, or whatever we call it, had occurred
at the moment of death, you would be inclined to attribute it to
the dying man; your brother Oswald in the first case and your
father in the second, would you not ? "
" Certainly," he answered.
" Very well then," I continued, " I think it follows that, as
182 VOX MYSTICA [May,
the occurrence took place so many hours after the moment of
death, the motive force which started the telepathic current which
sent the message, if you prefer to put it so must have been some-
one else; someone who was intent on communicating with you at
the precise moment when you heard the voice."
" That certainly sounds very plausible," he acknowledged,
" but who could it have been? "
" In the first instance I think it was your principal, the
head of the firm to whom your father had wired, asking him to
break the news to you. He received the telegram before leaving
his office, and not knowing where you were, was concentrating all
his thoughts on how to communicate with you. This concentration
of mind, I suggest, produced the words you heard in the theatre."
" That is certainly very ingenious," he admitted, " and I must
own I never thought of such an explanation before. But how about
the second case, does your theory fit that one as perfectly ? "
" Well, no," I acknowledged, " I don't see that it does. Unless
by chance the boy who brought the telegram had seen it in the
post office, and guessed that the words really understated the truth.
But it is foolish of me to theorize so soon; you promised to give
me some more examples of the phenomenon, would you care to do
so now? "
" By all means," said he, " I will tell you another occurrence
of the kind; it happened several years after the cases you have
heard already. As you know, I was ordained priest in Rome, and
returned here soon afterwards. It was delightful to be home again
after spending several years out of England; but one thing I felt
dreadfully, and that was the absence of all the externals of Cathol-
icism. Even now it is bad enough in a little country place like
this, but forty years ago things were much worse; and after the
splendid functions of Rome Rome before 1870 you recollect
I soon found myself longing to see a High Mass, and hear the
liturgy chanted once again. Well, this longing grew upon me so
much that I determined to spend Christmas away from home, either
abroad or at some religious house in England, and eventually I
arranged to go to Faversham."
" I think you told me the other day that you have never been
there ? " I shook my head, and the old man continued.
' Then I must tell you a little about the place first of all, to
make the rest of my story clear. Faversham is a Benedictine
Abbey, though it was only a Priory at the date of which I am
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 183
speaking. The community have only been established in their
present home since the French Revolution. Until then, from the
foundation of the monastery somewhere in Queen Elizabeth's reign,
the monks were settled at Arras in Flanders. The English Bene-
dictines, as I expect you know, trace their origin back without a
break to pre-Reformation times, and the Faversham community al-
ways obtained enough vocations from their school to keep the mon-
astery exclusively English, until at last a return to England became
possible. Now, during the Reign of Terror, the good monks at Arras
were arrested and put in prison. They were monks and they were
English, which was reason enough I suppose; but, although they
remained in prison nearly two years, they were never brought
to trial, and when Robespierre fell they were soon set free and
allowed to retire to England.
" During their two years in prison, the community kept up
their regular life as far as possible under the circumstances, and by
some means probably by bribing the guards they managed to
smuggle in to prison with them a chalice, altar stone, and missal,
with a set of vestments and everything absolutely essential for cele-
brating the divine mysteries. Then on the Sundays and great fes-
tivals through all the period of the Terror, they rose soon after mid-
night, covered the windows with their straw mattresses, and one of
the number said Mass and gave communion to the others. On their
retirement to England, they brought the chalice with them; you can
see it in their sacristy to-day.
" To Faversham then I traveled a few days before Christmas,
and the quiet peaceful surroundings formed a perfect preparation
for the great festival. The country was new to me then, and
though the monastery is less than two miles from a small town on
the edge of a great coal mining district, in the other direction there
lie great open moors, where you may wander for hours without
meeting a single human being. In those days' the beautiful abbey
church was only partly built, and I used to say Mass in a little
chapel above the north cloister. Nowadays this chapel looks down
into the south choir aisle, but at that time the arches were closed
with a wooden partition, as the choir had not yet been begun. In-
deed the transepts were the only part of the church that was finished,
and my chapel was reached by a spiral staircase in one corner of
the south transept, which also communicated with the organ loft.
I have to give you these details because they affect the story later on ;
the important point is, first, that my chapel was accessible only by
184 VOX MYSTICA [May,
the spiral staircase from the south transept, and, second, that its
northern wall was pierced with arches closed at that time with a
wooden partition, beyond which was the open air, as the choir was
not yet built. I hope that is clear. The third day of my stay was
the Vigil of Christmas, and when I came in from my walk that
afternoon, I found the sacristan busy laying out vestments and
making preparations for the feast day.
" The Prior has decided to have midnight Mass this year,'
he said to me, as I came into the sacristy to offer my help in his
work.
" 'But don't you always have it on Christmas night?' I asked
with some surprise.
" 'Well, we always used to,' he answered, 'but four years ago
a Protestant agitator worked up the miners at Bursdon, and the
mob announced their intention of coming to wreck the church if we
had a Mass at midnight I don't believe anything would have hap-
pened, but the police were anxious about it, and persuaded the
Prior not to have one, and we have gone without it for three years
now. However, the excitement seems quite forgotten by this time,
and we are going to begin having it again.'
" 'I'm glad of that,' I said, 'you know this is my first Christ-
mas as a priest, and I should have been sorry to miss midnight Mass.
Am I to say my three Masses in the chapel upstairs as usual ?'
" 'O yes, please,' he answered, 'I have got the bailiff's son
to come and serve you, he will be here at seven o'clock. By the way
would you mind laying out your own vestments, as the Brothers
have so much to do ? I will give you a chalice now, it will be quite
safe upstairs; no one will go there before to-morrow morning.'
" Of course I said I would do what he asked, and he opened the
safe and took out a chalice.
' 'I thought you might like to use the Persecution Chalice/
said he, 'you know its history, don't you ?'
" 'I'm afraid I don't,' I answered, 'but from the name I should
guess it is one that was used in England during the penal times.'
" 'Oh, no, not that at all,' he said, 'it was ,' but just at that
moment the bell rang for Vespers, and my good friend hurriedly
excused himself saying, Til tell you the story later.'
" I took the chalice upstairs to my chapel, and made it ready
with the three large altar breads. Then after laying out the vest-
ments, I came down to the church just as Vespers had begun.
Supper followed Vespers, and, soon afterwards, I went to my room
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 185
and lay down, so as to get some sleep before eleven o'clock, when
the Matins for Christmas were to begin, the High Mass following
at a few minutes after midnight. Neither then nor later did I give
a thought to the chalice, nor to the story I was to hear about it.
Indeed the whole affair was driven out of my mind by the beautiful
liturgy of the Christmas Mass and Office.
" After the midnight services I went to bed as usual, and was
called by the lay brother a little after six o'clock. I got up, dressed,
made my preparation for Mass, and opened my window wider be-
fore going downstairs. As I did so I noticed how perfectly still
it was. There had been a little frost in the night but no snow, and
the silence was absolute. I stood at the window for perhaps half a
minute; the bleat of a far away sheep suddenly broke the silence,
and then it closed down again, almost oppressive in its stillness.
When I got to my chapel I found the bailiff's boy waiting for me,
so I vested at once, and began my first Christmas Mass. Besides
the server and myself, there was no one else in the chapel.
" Just after the Offertory, when I had washed my fingers and
was bowing down for the prayer before the Orate fratres, I noticed
a sound far away outside the monastery. It was only a momentary
distraction, and I paid no real attention to it, but went on to say
the Secret and the Preface. At the Sanctus the boy rang the bell
as usual, though there was no congregation. As I commenced
the Canon I heard the sound again. It was somewhere to the north
of the buildings; quite a long distance away, I thought, but cer-
tainly nearer and louder than it had been. Try as I might to
ignore the distraction, I could not help wondering what it could be.
"As the consecration approached I forgot all about it, but
no sootier had I risen again after the elevation of the chalice
than it forced itself on my notice once more. There was no doubt
whatever, the sound was much nearer, and now it seemed to me like
a number of people shouting. 'Like a crowd at a football match,'
I thought to myself, adding mentally, 'it can't be that, whatever it is.'
Then, all at once, I remembered what the Father Sacristan had said
about the threat of the miners at Bursdon. Perhaps that was the
explanation. They had heard about the midnight Mass, and were
coming to wreck the church as they had promised !
" The theory seemed only too probable, for the noise was
now quite close at hand, and it was unquestionably the howling of an
angry mob. I began to wonder what I ought to do if they did
actually break into the church before I had finished the Mass. 'If a
186 VOX MYSTICA [May,
church catches fire,' I said to myself, 'the Rubrics generalcs order
the priest to proceed at once to the communion, and end the Mass
directly after that.' I determined to do the same. By this time
the noise was almost upon us; it seemed as if the rioters were com-
ing quickly up the road leading from the gatehouse to the church.
I could distinguish the different tone and pitch of many voices,
some high, some deep, but could not catch any of the words.
Even in my anxiety this struck me as odd, 'It is just like a mob in
a foreign country,' I thought, 'I can't make out a word they say.'
" However, in spite of my alarm I stuck to my Mass, deter-
mined to go straight to the communion if the mob attacked the
church. I thought to myself, 'they won't come here at once, for no
one would guess there is a chapel up that little spiral stair.' The
shouting was almost at the door by now, and I had just said the
Agnus Dei, when suddenly the whole noise stopped abruptly. I
could not imagine what had happened, but the relief was immense.
I finished the Mass, and as no further disturbance came, I went on
and said the other two Masses. Not a sign did my rioters make.
I felt thoroughly mystified about the whole affair, and began to
doubt if my theory of a Protestant mob could be the true explana-
tion, so I called to my server as he was leaving the chapel after
covering up the altar.
" 'What did you make of that extraordinary noise during the
first Mass ?' I asked him.
" 'What noise, Father ?' he answered, to my utter amazement.
" 'Why, that shouting or cheering, or whatever it was,' I said,
'you must have heard it. It began soon after the Offertory, and
went on almost up to the communion.'
" 'I didn't notice any noise, Father,' said the boy; 'who would
be shouting or cheering so early on Christmas morning?'
' 'Oh, well,' I said, as carelessly as I could manage, 'perhaps
it was my fancy; but thank you very much for coming to serve
Mass for me,' and I went to my prie-dieu.
" Still wondering what the true explanation could be, I finished
my thanksgiving, and went down to the refectory. A number of
the community were already seated, and a few minutes later my
friend, the Father Sacristan, came in and sat beside me at the guest
table.
" 'By the way,' he said, after some minutes conversation, 'I
never finished telling you about the Persecution Chalice which you
used this morning. Do you know it never struck me before, but,
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 187
as you said, the name suggests a chalice used in England during
the penal times, while it really refers to something quite different.
That chalice is the one which our fathers smuggled into prison with
them during the French Revolution; you must remember my
telling you how they managed to take in a whole set of things for
Mass, and how they celebrated it at intervals during all the Reign
of Terror.'
" 'Of course I remember it/ I said, for light was beginning to
dawn upon me, 'and was that the identical chalice which I used this
morning ?'
" 'That is it,' he answered, 'we don't often use it now, unless
someone wishes to do so out of devotion. There cannot be many
chalices in existence with so strange a history.'
' 'I should think not,' I answered, 'it was a most daring thing
to do. I wonder what would have happened to the good monks if
they had been caught saying Mass?'
" 'No difficulty in guessing that,' he answered, 'the guillotine
for the whole number. You know the story goes that they were
nearly caught on one occasion.'
" 'Indeed,' said I, 'you did not tell me about that ; how did it
happen ?'
' 'It was on Christmas morning,' he answered, 'and the Mass
was being celebrated by the youngest priest in the community. He
had been ordained only a few months before they were sent to
prison, and it was his first Christmas Mass. I suppose he took
longer than an older priest would have done, and the story goes, too,
that the monk whose turn it was to watch and wake the rest, had
gone to sleep, so that they began much later than had been intended.
Anyway, before the Mass was half finished, a loud shouting was
heard in the distance, which gradually came nearer and nearer to
the prison, and finally stopped just at the very gates. Some luck-
less aristocrat had been caught trying to fly the country, and the
howling rabble were bringing him back for execution. They say
the young priest was seized with fear, and could hardly go on with
the Mass, but the saintly old Prior came up and said to him, " Pro-
ceed, my son, they will not come in hither, the Lord is mindful
of them that serve Him." And in fact the Mass was finished with-
out discovery, though the mob were howling in the courtyard below
the windows before it was over. Little did they guess there was
nothing but a straw pallet between themselves and God's most holy
sacrifice !' "
RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION.
BY GEORGE KEEN.
HE last one hundred and fifty years have witnessed
a revolution in the methods of manufacture, and the
means of transportation. Mechanical and power
appliances have enormously increased the wealth of
the world. Unfortunately the industrial revolution
also involved a transfer of the profits of industry from the people
who created them, to the owners of the machinery used as aids in
production. The self -employ ing producer of manufactured goods
of the eighteenth century has, as the result of the economic develop-
ments in the meantime, become a hired worker. Out of this have
arisen most of our modern social problems, and the prevailing in-
dustrial unrest. It is unfortunate that at the inception of the
mechanical age, economic and sociological knowledge was not as
exact and as extensive as it is to-day, and the political rights of the
people as fully enjoyed and exercised as they are at the present
time in most countries in the civilized world. Had economic and
social science been as generally studied and appreciated then as it is
now, it is probable that with the growth of the system equity in the
enjoyment of the fruits of labor would, by careful State regulation
and voluntary association, have been insured, by conserving to the
producer the profits and control of his industry, and making capital
the wage earner. Thereby we should have avoided the extremes
of rich and poor, alike undesirable from the viewpoint of the moral
welfare of the people.
While mechanical inventions and the application of various
types of power to modern industry are assigned as the cause of the
success achieved, the same would have been impossible, were it not
for the fact that manufacturing and transportation industries and
commercial and financial organizations have been found easily
capable of corporate ownership, and legally and safely chargeable
as security for the investment of borrowed capital. It has been
found possible for people directing and controlling corporate indus-
tries to sell and market easily portions of their undertakings in
shares, to borrow on debentures and bonds, and to obtain on unse-
cured loans of various kinds, capital wherewith to finance the pur-
1914-] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 189
chase of expensive machinery and large quantities of raw material,
to hire labor, and to carry considerable amounts in book debts, all
arising out of modern methods of industry. Collective production,
transportation, and distribution have also involved the collective
financing thereof.
Agriculture has not, in the past, lent itself so readily to cor-
porate ownership and the methods of financing above mentioned.
Individual ownership still prevails. The agriculturist, as in the
case of the self -employ ing individual manufacturer of the eighteenth
century, finances his own labor and markets its produce. In this
respect he has, on the whole, a great advantage over the producing
wage earner engaged in factories, mills, and mines. Nevertheless,
the conditions of agriculture are also rapidly changing. While se-
curity for capital is not therein as fluid or as easily marketed as
in other enterprises, the capital outlay necessary for successful
operation has been steadily advancing for years past, owing to the
increase in land values or rather land prices, for increases are
frequently the result of competition for possession only, and are not
represented by intrinsic improvements and the necessity of pur-
chasing more expensive machinery and implements, and other and
similar causes. The fluidity of corporation created securities, as
distinguished from the immobility of farm securities, has caused
the gravitation of a large portion of the savings of agriculture to
finance other industries, instead of being retained for farm land
development.
These circumstances are important contributing causes to
the rural depopulation, the increase in the cost of food produce,
and the disturbance of the industrial equilibrium involved in the
gravitation with agricultural capital of food producers to cities
and towns to become food consumers. Unless, by cooperative enter-
prise, steps are taken scientifically to organize and finance agricul-
ture, it seems probable that capitalistic methods which have operated
so successfully, and yet so injuriously to the people, in other de-
partments of industry, will be applied to agriculture also. A short-
age of food must increase the cost of transportation and the pro-
duction of manufactured goods, reducing profits, and leaving unem-
ployed a considerable portion of the capital at present invested
therein. The displaced capital will, eventually, seek employment
where shortage of production exists and profits are consequently
high, thereby, as in other lines of human endeavor, tending to
convert the individual farmer into a wage earner. It is thought
190 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
by many that corporate ownership of agricultural undertakings
is impossible. Nothing is impossible to the owners of capital un-
employable elsewhere, when the conditions are such as to provide
adequate profits in a new and unexploited field.
The problem of agricultural finance has become acute on this
continent, and it was the occasion of the appointment last year of
a United States Commission to Europe to investigate agricultural
credit there. The Commission may be said, broadly, to have in-
vestigated three types of credit and various modifications thereof.
They are (i) the Raiffeisen Credit Unions; (2) the Schulze-De-
litzch Societies; (3) the Landschaften or Land Banks. The two
first named are, primarily, personal credit or short term loan in-
stitutions. The Landschaften and kindred organizations are long
term and mortgage banks. Many thousands of banking institu-
tions representing the three forms, or their basic principles, are
spread over continental Europe, and the personal credit type is
developing in Britain and Ireland also. They have done much to
stimulate agriculture, and add to the material comfort and moral
welfare of the people engaged therein in the old world.
It was in the famine years of 1846-7 that Friedrich Wilhelm
Raiffeisen, burgomaster in the barren Westerwald, Germany, when
the impoverished land cultivators needed money badly to finance
their labor, suggested to them that what they failed to accomplish
individually they might do collectively, by cooperating to charge the
credit responsibility of all to borrow money for the individual pro-
ductive needs of each.
The fundamental principle in the constitution of the Raiffeisen
Credit Unions or Societies is the unlimited liability of all the mem-
bers for the obligations created by the organization. This, of
course, involves a very careful selection of members, character
being the determining factor. To achieve this object the district
from which members of each union are drawn, is kept as small as
successful operation will permit. It is essential that the borrowing
members should be personally and intimately known to the members
of the committees making and supervising the loans. To protect
the members against loss, there is not only the management com-
mittee, but a council of supervision which watches the loans made,
and periodically audits the accounts. The borrowing member has
to disclose in his application the purpose for which the loan is re-
quired, and care is taken to see that, if granted, it is so applied.
It is the practice not to lend except for productive purposes, such as
1914.] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 191
the purchase of cattle, implements, seed, etc. The terms of re-
payment are usually based upon the time necessary to enable the
borrower to make the same out of the profits of the transaction.
The Raiffeisen Credit Unions aim to improve the condition, material
and moral, of their members, and they have contributed greatly
thereto. The committees of management and supervision work
without remuneration. The organizations being intended, primar-
ily, for mutual accommodation, the net profits are conscientiously
carried to an indivisible fund belonging to the society as a whole,
thereby making its credit-worthiness, the subject it deals in, un-
impeachable. The small individual societies federate to form cen-
tral banks, which, however, are limited in liability by shares owned
by the individual societies. Such central banks act as clearing
houses, taking the surplus funds of societies having an excess of
deposits, and granting accommodation to societies where the legiti-
mate requirements of the locality are greater than the available
funds. The central banks pay a fixed and moderate dividend on
the share capital, and also apply the profit surplus to reserve.
They issue debentures for indefinite periods, as well as receive
deposits. The funds are not only applied for the accommodation of
individual societies federated with the central banks, but loans are
granted to cooperative productive societies and central business or-
ganizations of a cooperative character, and for other purposes not
inconsistent with the general principles of the cooperative credit
bank system. It is sometimes claimed that notwithstanding the
immense proportions to which the Raiffeisen system has been de-
veloped in Europe, no losses have been made. This is, perhaps,
too sweeping an assertion. The probability is that where the prin-
ciples of the movement have been faithfully observed, losses, if
made at all, have been infinitesimal.
People's banks on what is known as the Schulze-Delitzch plan
were commenced by Judge Schulze of Delitzch, Germany, in 1850,
and have also developed greatly in number and importance. They
differ from the credit societies established on the Raiffeisen system,
in the fact that they have share capital as to which the liability of
members is limited, dividends being distributed thereon. Instead
of unlimited liability, shares of a high nominal value are issued,
payable by periodical instalments until the full amount has been
subscribed. The operations are not localized as in the case of the
other system. The majority of the banks of this type are urban,
and meet the needs of handicraftsmen, small employers of. labor,
192 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
and merchants in a humble way of business, rather than the farm-
ing community.
The third system mentioned, the Landschaften and kindred in-
stitutions, is distinguished from the other two by the fact that it is
designed to provide loans on mortgage of land instead of personal
security. The advances meet requirements of a permanent nature,
instead of satisfying a temporary need. The Landschaft or Land
Bank was suggested to Frederick the Great by Biiring in 1767. Its
original purpose was to provide machinery whereby the land owners
of a particular district might escape the necessity of borrowing
money directly from individual lenders. In Germany alone there
are now twenty-three Landschaften, or associations of borrowers,
with outstanding loans amounting to $850,000,000.00. The pre-
vailing interest rate is three and one-half to four per cent, plus an
administration charge of one-fourth to one-half per cent, but, as the
equivalent in bonds instead of cash is given to the borrower in ex-
change for the mortgage created by him, and the bonds are realized
on the open market at such prices as are current, and frequently
below par, and the borrower consequently may receive less than the
mortgage obligation, the interest rate is really often higher than
appears on the face of the mortgage.
The United States Commission has, in its report, given priority
to the mortgage or long term loan system over the personal or short
term type. On its behalf a bill has been introduced in Congress
by Senator Fletcher to provide for the " establishment, operation,
and supervision of a national farm land bank system in the United
States of America, for the creation of depositories for postal savings
and other public funds, and for other purposes." Therein it is
provided that a Commissioner of Farm Land Banks, appointed
under the proposed statute, shall prepare and publish amortization
tables, covering periods from six to thirty-five years, at varying
rates of interest to meet the requirements of the banks organized
thereunder. Such banks must have a minimum capital of ten thou-
sand dollars, and consist of not less than ten persons. People
organizing land banks have the right of election to transact business
on the usual capitalistic plan, or on cooperative principles. In co-
operative institutions no shareholder can hold more than ten per
cent of the share-capital at any time, and one vote only is permitted
to each shareholder, irrespective of the quantity of stock he holds.
Dividend on such stock shall be computed at the rate of interest
ruling in the district, and shall not exceed the legal rate of interest
1914.] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 193
in the State where the bank is situated, the balance of net earnings
being distributed among the patrons in proportion to the business
transacted by each with the bank. Ownership, control, and partici-
pation of profits in capitalistic institutions will, however, be on
the usual lines. Both classes of banks have the right to accept
deposits from the public to an amount not exceeding fifty per cent
of the paid up capital and surplus; to receive postal savings on
similar terms, and upon the conditions required from other banks,
and to make loans on farm lands anywhere within the State in which
the bank is situated for terms not exceeding thirty-five years,
secured by first mortgage or first deed of trust on farm lands. It is
further provided that such loans shall not exceed fifty per cent
of the value of improved lands, and forty per cent in other cases,
the same to be determined by appraisal. The bill further provides
" that every such farm land loan contain a mandatory provision for
the amortization of such loan," that is to say, " by the reduction of
the same by annual or semi-annual payments on account of prin-
cipal," but it is provided that the loan must extend over a period ex-
ceeding five years. It is presumed that the clause refers to a farm
land " mortgage." It is difficult to see how a " loan " can contain
a mandatory provision. This surely relates to a covenant in the
mortgage granted in exchange for the loan, and the clause appears
to need correction to remove the ambiguity. Every borrower has
the right to pay off the loan, wholly or in part, subsequent to the
expiration of five years, when the amortization, or periodical small,
equal payments on account of principal, shall be credited to him as at
the time the same were made.
To provide the contemplated land banks with the necessary
funds to loan on such amortized mortgages, power is granted to
them to issue, sell, and trade in their own collateral trust bonds,
secured by the deposit or hypothecation of mortgages of equivalent
face value. An important provision is that the rate of interest on
such farm land loans shall not exceed the rate of interest paid on
the bonds by more than one per cent annually. Such one per cent
must cover all charges of administration, including, apparently, the
cost of placing the bonds with the public. In other words, the
gross profit of the bank between the price at which it borrows on
bonds and loans on mortgages, shall not exceed the rate mentioned.
If the one per cent appropriation is found inadequate the bill, ap-
parently, becomes inoperative. That it will be inadequate, at least
for some years, is probable, because the banks will be newly organ-
VOL. XCIX. 13
194 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
ized, and the investing public need considerable education in the
quality and convenience of the security tendered. The marketing
of the bonds may, consequently, involve much and expensive sell-
ing energy, the cost of which will possibly exceed, until the securities
become popular, the total appropriation intended to cover not only
commission on bond selling, but bank administration and profit
charges also. It would be more practicable, until a land mortgage
bond market has been sufficiently cultivated, to authorize the banks
to deduct the necessary selling commission from the mortgage prin-
cipal, such commission not to exceed an amount to be fixed, from
time to time, by the Land Bank Commissioner. In the alternative,
the option might be given to the borrower, as is the case in some Eu-
ropean land banks, of accepting bonds instead of cash, leaving him
to market the same by his own labor, or at his own expense. Even
though it cost as much as five per cent, the same spread over a
long term, ranging from six to thirty-five years, would be incon-
siderable, whereas the convenience of the long period of re-payment,
by small instalments, of the mortgage principal, and the rate of
interest being lower than the local competitive price for money,
would justify the borrower assuming the obligation.
The bonds of the bank will be issued for a long term, but will
be liable to retirement at par at the option of the bank at any
interest period by such proper notice or advertisement as the Com-
missioner of Farm Banks may provide. It is sought to protect the
security of the bonds from impairment by the hypothecation of
mortgages of equivalent face value, the same being held under the
joint control of the bank and a federal fiduciary agent nominated
by the Land Bank Commissioner. The fiduciary agent is required
to see to it that the outstanding bonds do not at any time exceed
the mortgages held as security therefor. The capital, surplus, and
deposits may be used by the bank for the purpose of holding mort-
gages for temporary purposes, or purchasing its own bonds, to the
extent of fifty per cent of the total of such capital, surplus, and
deposit funds. Every farm land bank is organized with power to
create bonds to the extent of fifteen times its capital and accumulated
surplus, so that the security given by stockholders in the banks to the
bondholders is a negligible quantity. The periodical payments
of principal, made with the interest, must be sufficient to redeem
the mortgage in full at the due date.
A most important feature, and one upon which the integrity and
the successful marketing of bonds the means whereby the funds
1914-] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 195
are to be made available for mortgages will principally depend, is
the question of accurate appraising of land values. The bill pro-
vides for an appraisement committee consisting of three directors
of the bank. Even the obligation of appraisal is not personal to the
members of such committees for their duty, by the terms of the bill,
is " to appraise or cause to be appraised," and report on the value of
real estate offered as security for loans. Reports of appraisement
must be in writing, signed by a majority of the committee, and be
filed and preserved with the other papers relating to the loan.
As to the general tenor of the bill, it may be said that while
Congress has power to enact legislation, it cannot legislate the
people into the entertainment of the true cooperative spirit, nor into
the possession of an adequate supply of funds at an interest rate
suitable to them. The one is the result of systematic and con-
tinuous education in cooperative principles and the development of
individual character; the other is determined by the question of
the demand and supply of money, and the adequacy of the security
offered therefor. The United States Commission admits that the
basis of success of the credit bank systems of Europe is the enter-
tainment and manifestation of the cooperative spirit on the part of
the people concerned in their ownership and operation. In default
of this spirit, it is proposed to provide legislative machinery for the
capitalistic exploitation of the financial needs of the farmers of
the United States. Even as to the cooperative alternative, sufficient
guarantees are not furnished that the " National Farm Land Banks
Cooperative " will be cooperative in fact as well as in name. Under
this bill, exploitation of the word " cooperative " will be quite pos-
sible. Ten members of one family, or ten business associates, may
start a "National Farm Land Bank Cooperative" by subscribing one
thousand dollars each, whereupon they will be authorized to sell land
bonds and attract deposits as a cooperative institution. It will, too,
be possible for enterprising adventurers to organize a " Land Bank
Cooperative " by a vigorous stock-selling campaign, and, as evidence
of their good faith, they may establish in the minds of prospective
purchasers of stock that they are true cooperators, because the
federal law has expressly given them permission to use the title, the
right being denied by statute to non-cooperative institutions. It is
true that the democratic principle of one stockholder, one vote, is
provided for, but there is no denial of the right to vote by proxy,
nor is there any limitation of the area within which members of
cooperative banks shall be recruited. To insure the cooperative
196 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
character of banks incorporated as " cooperative," it is absolutely
essential that stockholders shall be required, if they wish to vote,
to attend meetings in person, and that the place of the same be so
convenient to the general body of members that they will be able
personally to attend, take part in the deliberations, and vote at very
little expense and loss of time to themselves. Stock-selling cam-
paigns conducted by bank promoters over a wide area, will mean
that the " cooperative " bank will be dominated by the promoters
and the officials they appoint, and that, while its profit surplus is
by law required to be equitably distributed among the patrons of
the bank, the purpose may be defeated by the promoters and officials
granting to themselves the profits in salaries and fees.
While it would appear no public purpose will be served by
facilitating the capitalistic organization of land banks, it is ex-
tremely doubtful, even if the bill were enacted in its present form,
that it would have any practical effect. Because the land banks in
Europe organized on the amortized mortgage and bond-selling plans
are successful, it is assumed that the principle can be applied with
equal advantage on this continent. Sufficient importance is not at-
tached to the difference of conditions. In Europe acreage is limited,
the farms are small, and, by necessity, intensively cultivated and kept
in a high state of fertilization. Europe has the surplus savings of
centuries available as capital for immediate use, and, being relatively
fully developed, its opportunities for employment as capital of such
savings are not so numerous as in America. On this continent we
have larger farms, a comparatively short national history within
which surplus wealth could be accumulated, and, owing to the vast
acreage of valuable land still uncultivated, the extensive mineral
deposits as yet unworked, and the large immigrant population whose
labor has to be financed, there is an ever-increasing avenue for the
employment of the people's savings. Even on this continent" we find
that in agricultural districts which have been settled for a few
generations, capital is relatively cheap and plentiful, and land
high in price. The accumulated savings are available for loaning
purposes, and interest rates are, consequently, low. In such dis-
tricts land is usually high in price, not altogether because of intrinsic
improvements made thereto, but in consequence of the competition
for ownership caused by the higher average financial strength or
land purchasing power of the people resident in the locality. In
newly-settled districts land is free or low in price, and interest rates
are high, owing to the fact that the purchasing and loaning power
1914.] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 197
is not fortified by years of surplus wealth created in the neighbor-
hood. In the province of Ontario, Canada, for example, the normal
rate of interest on farm mortgages is five per cent. In our newly-
settled West, on similar and equally good security, the interest rate
will range to double and more.
If these proposed land banks are to command a ready sale of
their bonds at interest rates sufficiently low to be of advantage to
borrowing farmers, the quality of the security at the back of the
same must not only be absolutely unimpeachable, but the investing
public everywhere must implicitly entertain that view. The bonds can
only attract the most conservative investors, for, besides the necessity
that interest rates should be low in order to be of value to farmers, is
the additional fact that there is no speculative attraction in the bonds,
unearned appreciation being excluded by the right of the bank to
retire the bonds at par at any time. When knowledge of the integ-
rity of the bonds is exclusively local, investors outside the locality
cannot be expected to show any purchasing interest therein. If
land bank bonds are to find a ready market where money is plentiful
and available for investment at low rates on gilt edged security, it is
essential that the security for the bonds should in some way be
standardized. All that the bill under review proposes in that direc-
tion, is inspection of the banks and hypothecation of mortgages to
an amount equal to the bond issue. Hypothecation alone is of
limited value. It insures that under no circumstances shall the land
mortgages available for the protection of the bonds be less in face
value than the bonds outstanding, but it does not guarantee that
any ten men who care to organize a bank will have the necessary
business experience to conduct it properly, that they will be actuated
by motives which are honest, will not discriminate in loans granted
to suit their own private business interests, will have the necessary
experience, or show due diligence to make correct appraisements of
value, or that they will have the executive ability, or display the
sustained energy necessary to protect the mortgaged lands from im-
pairment in value during the currency of the long-term mortgages
created thereon. These are factors as to which a person who re-
sides, say, in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin investing in a
land bank, say, in California, must be unreservedly assured, not
only at the date of the purchase of the bond, but during the many
years of its currency, before he can be expected to be satisfied
that the security he holds for the money he has invested is un-
impeachable.
198 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
While government guarantee for the bond issues of land
banks in Europe is customary, and the United States Commission
in its report 1 admits that " in every instance in Europe where gov-
ernment capital has been granted to establish mortgage credit,
the results have been favorable to the agricultural interests of the
nation," it declares " it is our opinion that such aid should not be
extended to the United States." After stating that the farm property
of the United States is computed to be worth $40,000,000,000.00,
it continues, " surely this vast property whose value is as stable as
the foundations of our government, is sufficient to attract capital in
ample volume to improve and cultivate its area, without subvention
from our government treasury." That is all very true, but the
investor does not lend upon the land of the United States as a whole.
His security is upon certain farm land mortgages held by privately
organized institutions, a fact which imports, in the assessment of
security values, the factors of character, business attention, judg-
ment, and intelligence. The mind of no investor throughout the
wide world requires satisfaction as to the prosperity and credit-
responsibility of the United States, but the purchasers of bonds
will demand that the adequacy of the specific security tendered to
them in exchange for the loan of their money will be demonstrated.
For money to flow freely in adequate volume, and at moderate rates
of interest from quarters where there is a surplus to places, where
there is an urgent need for its use, not the slightest doubt must
exist as to the integrity of the investment. Subvention by way of
government grant or loan is undesirable, but, under certain con-
ditions, it would be in the interests of the food producers and con-
sumers of the United States if the Federal or State governments
would assist honest and industrious citizens, who are associating
together in a spirit of fraternity, to help themselves and each other,
by giving a Federal or State guarantee to investors, throughout the
globe, that the securities offered by certain bona fide cooperative
land banks under strict government supervision are beyond re-
proach.
It may be pointed out, for example, that the State of Minne-
sota, interested in the development of its territory, will know that
its land is good, its citizens industrious and enterprising, its under-
takings prosperous, and, through intimate acquaintance by period-
ical examination and supervision, that its cooperative banking in-
stitutions are soundly and honestly organized and conducted for the
Senate Document No. 380, Art. ii., p. 22.
I9I4-] RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION 199
public advantage, and consequently that the adequacy of the securi-
ties offered by them cannot be successfully challenged. Home and
foreign investors, resident outside the State, will know without
any inquiry whatever that the government of Minnesota is good
for any obligation it may enter into, while such investors at a
distance might not consider for one moment the security of-
fered by a land bank unguaranteed by the government. The
Saskatchewan government, whose representatives accompanied the
United States Commission to Europe, has, by recently enacted legis-
lation, appreciated the difficulty of successfully marketing the bonds
of a farm land mortgage bank, by extending the guarantee of the
province thereto. It is significant, too, that while such statute
provides for a maximum loan proportion to value of forty as
against fifty per cent in the bill under review, the Saskatchewan
act, notwithstanding, contemplates the possibility of impairment of
farm land security by grouping borrowers in numbers of not less
than ten, and charging upon the mortgage created by each member
of the group, an additional contingent liability equal to one-half
of the amount borrowed, as an indemnity against losses on sales
of the mortgaged land of any one member of the group.
The cooperative movement in Europe, whether it takes the
form of production, distribution, marketing or credit, cannot be
reproduced on this continent by legislation. To achieve the mani-
fest success enjoyed there, similar methods must be followed here.
The individual must be taught the duty as well as the advantage
of mutual self-help. To secure the interest and cooperation of the
individual likely to be benefited, the personal credit system would,
in my judgment, be the better one to develop in the first instance.
While cheaper money is needed to buy land, the man who has,
say, five thousand dollars in cash wherewith to purchase a ten thou-
sand dollar farm, has at present available opportunities of borrow-
ing the balance on such physical security. The man without money,
but with useful labor to apply to land, is not, however, so fortunate,
although the security he offers, if properly organized and marketed,
is beyond question. The late John Pierpont Morgan said, on one
occasion, that the best form of security was personal character, on
which alone he had lent large sums of money. In this he
but confirmed the universal experience on a much larger scale of co-
operative credit banks. The most urgent need is the marketing
of the character, intelligence, and energy of people anxious to work
on land as security for the capital needed in the self-employment
200 RURAL CREDIT LEGISLATION [May,
of their labor. The personal credit societies on the Raiffeisen plan,
or a suitable modification thereof, would conserve for agricultural
development the agricultural savings which now gravitate to secur-
ities in other lines of industry, owing to their fluidity, and thus, as a
natural sequence, denuding the land of its labor also. Such so-
cieties will provide the means with which people who have
little or no money to finance their labor, will be able to
engage in intensive cultivation. The small local societies
would develop a community spirit, and create a sentiment in favor
of, and provide the means whereby, cooperative production and
marketing of farm produce might also be conducted. Such credit
societies, as they grew in number and success, would federate in
central banks. The central banks in a State would be few in num-
ber, sound in organization and character, and, consequently, easily
capable of efficient government supervision. Being organized for
the public good, and not for private profit, they would command
public confidence. The central banks in each State might, there-
fore, be used for bond issuing and amortized mortgage purposes,
with, if found necessary or advantageous, government guarantee.
Any special legislation, "either for long term or short term credit,
which is not based upon cooperation through voluntary efforts, or
public spirit through government organization and direction, or a
combination of both, is likely to facilitate the extension to the
ownership and cultivation of land those opportunities for capitalistic
exploitation of property and human labor which have in the past
operated so injuriously to the people in other lines of industry.
THE CHARIOT RACERS.
BY MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY.
HE circus season had just begun. The tents of the
" Greatest Show on Earth," with their splashes of
color, when seen from a distance, might have been
likened to an encampment of a caravan of the
desert, but the nearer view that disclosed the mam-
moth central pavilion suggested a Roman amphitheatre, a com-
parison borne out by the interior in the bold sweep of its vast
ellipse. What though the performers who took part in the races
and games were only pariahs, who scarce knew what Rome was
in the days of her imperial glory, bohemian athletes and riders
masquerading as classic youths, their brows bound with laurels !
Nomads as they were, in the breast of one at least among them beat
a heart as proud as the spirit of any patrician who ever wrote
himself a friend of Caesar.
A few weeks earlier, when Manuel Cevedra joined the troop,
no one asked his history, for, in this motley company, it mattered
not who or what a man had been, if only he could do well whatever
he essayed to do. When word went around that another was en-
gaged to succeed Jack Morton, popularly called " the Whirlwind,"
who had been killed by a fall from his chariot, there were shrugs
of the shoulders and laments that certain feats would never again
be equalled. But before long even the most loyal of poor Jack's
friends grudgingly acknowledged that his work had been tame
compared to the marvelous skill and courage of the new
charioteer.
Cevedra was a Mexican, like the black-eyed senorita who also
daily risked the maiming of her supple limbs and even her life in
the chariot races.
Everyone in the troop, including Mademoiselle Clelie, the
trapeze lady, and Judson the clown, supposed that Manuel and the
senorita had never met before the present engagement. No one
had remarked the charioteers when, for the first time, they en-
countered each other at the green curtain from beyond which the
performers entered the arena.
202 THE CHARIOT RACERS [May,
Straight as an arrow, lithe, and with splendidly developed
muscles, Manuel stood waiting for his horses to be delivered to him.
At that moment, the senorita came out of the tent that served as the
women's dressing room. Her robe was white and reached to her
sandalled feet; her beautiful dark hair hung loose upon her should-
ers, but was caught back from her face by a string of pearls, and
above each of her small shell-like ears glowed a red rose.
" Mercedes ! " he exclaimed in Spanish, " what are you doing
here? How is it that you the Alcade's daughter, are posing as a
circus queen, and leading the life of a wandering Arab without the
liberty of choosing your associates? Why "
" H'sh, someone will hear you," she interrupted, raising a
warning finger. " A motherless girl is lonely on an isolated planta-
tion. My father was stern ; was it strange then that I ran away ?
I must live, and I know only the mastery of horses. Many a time
have I remembered that to your teaching, Manuel, I owe my skill
in riding and driving. Now, teacher and pupil are pitted against
each other. Sefior, do your best."
The gay challenge was all the attendant heard as he came up
with the horses. The senorita stepped into her gilded chariot,
gathered the reins into her firm hands, and spoke to the four sleek-
limbed, white-coated animals that had given her fame, and between
whom and herself there seemed a subtle understanding and sym-
pathy. The next moment the race began.
It soon became an accepted fact among the troop that Cevedra
was madly in love with his handsome compatriot and rival in the
great daily contest. 'Sometimes he actually permitted her to forge
ahead and win. Judson, the clown, opined this to be according
to orders; but Mademoiselle Clelie persisted that it was simply
because of his infatuation.
One evening, as the charioteers entered the ring, Manuel, turn-
ing to look at the senorita, as he always did, noticed that, for once,
she appeared nervous.
" Mercedes, what is wrong? " he anxiously asked.
" Oh, I am tired of this wild life," she cried with sudden
petulance, "tired of this mad drive around the course; and the
worst is, the horses know it. My beauties and I are not one in
heart and spirit as we used to be. Once in a while they chafe under
my hand. I fear, Manuel, that sometime there may come a moment
when I shall not be able to control them."
Cevedra laughed incredulously. "Carissima mia," he said,
1914.] THE CHARIOT RACERS 203
leaning toward her, " you have worked too hard. I have money
saved. Be my wife, and I will take you away where you can
rest."
Just then the clown dropped the handkerchief that was the sig-
nal for the start, and the chariots were off like the wind. Mercedes
had forgotten her nervousness, and the excitement was as glorious
to both the charioteers as was the breath of life to the highly-bred
animals they drove. Manuel's black Arabians dashed forward
with the ardor that knows no flagging, and the beautiful white
steeds of the woman kept with them neck to neck.
Around the great ellipse they coursed; the spectators rose to
their feet; the men applauded vigorously, the women waved their
fans and programmes. Mercedes no longer had a sense of fatigue ;
her heart was set upon victory. Cevedra, for his part, felt that to
suffer himself to be vanquished to-night would be to lose Mercedes.
Suddenly, however, a chill of terror passed over him who had
never before known fear. What Mercedes had dreaded was hap-
pening. The white horses were dashing on blindly now. The girl
stood in her chariot, rigid as a statue, clinging to the reins with a
grasp like death, but powerless to manage the maddened beasts.
Would they dash into the serried ranks of humanity that crowded
the tent, almost in a solid mass, from the ground to the line just
under the canvas eaves?
The people quickly perceived their own danger. In this emer-
gency orchestra chairs were less desirable than the plank benches
where the small boys sat, on the top row, dangling their legs amid
the darkness under the staging. Now the men shouted at the
frightened animals, crazing them the more; the women, divided
between fears for their own safety and horror at the plight of the
woman in the chariot, distractedly wept. In all the throng there
was, apparently, only one individual who did not lose his head,
and this was Manuel Cevedra.
The white horses had communicated their fright to his Arab-
ians, but the magnetism of his hand upon the reins stayed the im-
petuous rush of his own steeds. Another moment, and he had
leaped from his chariot, and snatched for the bridle of one of the
runaways. Providentially he caught it, but was dragged along
in imminent peril of his life. Hanging on with determined cour-
age, nevertheless, he presently caused the brute to lose something
of its speed, a slackening that was communicated to its running
mates. By this time several grooms had run out and, at last,
204 THE CHARIOT RACERS [May,
through the combined efforts of Manuel and these attendants, the
white horses were brought to a halt. But Cevedra did not hear
the cheers of the throng as he dragged from the chariot the woman
he loved, and carried her, fainting in his arms, beyond the green
curtain.
A few days later, Manuel took Mercedes, his bride, to a little
village among the hills, where the villagers grew to know them
only as " foreign folk," and no one dreamed that the quiet couple
who appeared so happy by themselves were a circus king and queen.
The holiday was sweet, but Manuel could not afford to continue to
live in idleness. With renewed strength, a restlessness for the old
life came, also, to Mercedes. Thus, the next season found them
again with the troop, but as riders only; the chariot races were
discontinued for the nonce. Cevedra and Mercedes had not been
back long, however, when the trapeze lady made a discovery.
" Juan the acrobat seeks the company of Manuel's wife, and
there is going to be trouble," she cackled to the clown with a shrill
laugh, in which Judson promptly joined.
The next act in the life drama of the charioteers promised to be
even more exciting than the runaway in the arena, for the watchers
soon found food for their gossip.
One evening Mademoiselle Clelie waylaid Manuel in the early
part of the performance. " Look," she said, lightly touching his
arm and nodding her peroxide head toward a corner near the
entrance to the tent that served as the women's green room.
Cevedra shook off her jewelled fingers, but his eyes wandered
in the direction she indicated, and his brow suddenly darkened.
For there apart stood Mercedes in her graceful white robe, bound
by its golden girdle, and with roses in her hair. What though the
gold was alloy, the roses were paper, and even the glow on her
cheeks was deepened by grease paint? She made a beautiful
picture, yet he muttered an oath as he gazed. For with her was
Juan, the acrobat, a third Mexican who had recently joined the
troop Juan who, in his gleaming suit of silver, now seemed to
Manuel like a glittering serpent, the tempter who had entered his
paradise.
. " I knew you would never believe unless you saw for yourself,"
whispered the meddler at his side.
Manuel turned and would have struck the trapeze performer,
but she fled, frightened at what she had done. Drawing back into
the shadow, he watched his wife and the man, whom he would fain
1914-] THE CHARIOT RACERS 205
have killed then and there. Juan was, evidently, urging Mercedes
to fly with him. She recoiled and hesitated. Falling upon one
knee he pleaded still. She smiled; seizing her hand he kissed it,
and looking up into her face, swore eternal fealty to her.
Oh, it was as pretty a pantomime as was ever enacted, Manuel
thought with cold rage, and then he recalled his own first meeting
with the girl, he, the overseer, who had dared to love the Alcade's
daughter, and had been discharged for his presumption. He was
spared the agony of witnessing any further demonstration on the
part of those upon whom he spied, for the call bell sounded, a boy
came in search of the acrobat, whose turn on the programme was
almost reached, and Mercedes vanished behind the canvas of the
women's tent.
Never had Cevedra ridden as he did that night. Mercedes
seemed to share his recklessness. Never had they made such a
race. Yet, when Manuel won his wife appeared glad. His first
resolve had been to upbraid her for her faithlessness. On second
thought, he decided to say nothing until he should " make assurance
doubly sure." Then . He pulled his poniard from his belt, and
plucking a hair from his head, drew it across the blade. The
edge was keen. Satisfied, he slipped the weapon again into its
sheath.
Several days passed. Manuel kept a strict guard over Mer-
cedes, and they raced together at every performance. Nothing
untoward happened. He began almost to feel that what he had
seen had been an illusion, an evil dream. Then, although he was
not conscious of having relaxed his vigilance in any degree, one
morning the queen of riders was gone. Juan the acrobat had also
disappeared from the troop. Mercedes had outwitted Cevedra
after all, and left not a word or sign by which he could trace her.
Like a madman he railed at his own stupidity in permitting himself
to be so easily duped. By evening he was really ill with a high
temperature and strange fancies, which he put into words involun-
tarily and with increasing incoherence.
" An attack of malarial fever, probably induced by the habit
that governs the circus world of riding through the country from
town to town at night," said the hastily summoned physician.
" This, together with the excitement of the life, is apt, sooner or
later, to play havoc with the strongest constitution."
The sick man was taken to a hospital and the troop traveled on.
The next three weeks were almost a blank to Manuel, but he had
206 THE CHARIOT RACERS [May,
a notion that, sometimes, his ravings were soothed by a patient
little Sister of Charity, who bent over his cot, whispering softly:
" Forgive, as you hope for God's forgiveness."
Someone else came too, a priest who, in the scenes conjured up
by the patient's delirium, seemed to step out of the sanctuary of the
church in the city of Mexico where Manuel had worshipped as a
boy. When Cevedra was convalescent the priest came again, and
to him Manuel confessed with the faith and penitence of his boy-
hood.
When the charioteer was fully recovered and about to leave the
hospital, he said to his gentle, cheerful little nurse :
" Ah, Sister, how I wish I could give you something to show
my gratitude to you for your devoted care."
" Do not thank me ; what I have done is nothing," she replied
sweetly. " Yet there is one thing belonging to you which I have
waited until now to return to you. If you wish to leave it with me
as a gift, I admit I will gladly accept it." Thereupon, she flashed
before his astonished gaze the poniard he had worn for years.
" The design upon the handle is exquisite and the pattern of the
embroidered sheath so exceedingly quaint," she continued critically
examining the golden and silver threads.
Manuel understood the ruse.
" Keep the dagger, Sister," he said, " and may God bless you
for your kindness to a wanderer."
Cevedra's illness had cost him his position with the great cir-
cus. The following season he was forced by circumstances to en-
gage with a smaller " show," whose route lay through the Southern
States, and from Texas across the border into Mexico, the land
of the cacti and of many revolutions. The day after the troop
reached one of the chief Mexican towns, the manager, coming to the
charioteer, said : " I have engaged a horsewoman of extraordinary
skill to join you in the chariot race."
At the words a picture arose before Manuel's mind, a vision
of a beautiful girl who, evening after evening, had been wont to
drive abreast with him, almost to the end of the race, and whose
dauntless spirit sometimes even urged her horses to a fleetness
that honestly outstripped the splendid animals he drove. He sighed
under his breath, and then, as other thoughts crowded upon him,
his brow grew sullen.
" A woman? I will not race against a woman," he broke out
hotly.
1914.] THE CHARIOT RACERS 207
" If you do not, I shall think it is because you fear to match
your skill with hers," the manager replied, and walked away smiling.
He knew that his taunt had settled the matter.
Manuel did not meet the woman who was to race against him
until both drove into the ring from different entrances, an arrange-
ment calculated to render the effect of their appearance upon the
course particularly imposing. Hitherto, whenever he had come
upon the scene, standing erect in his gilded chariot and driving his
four fine horses, the round of applause by which he was always
greeted, had never failed to elate him. To-night, however, as the
" evivas " swept down from the uppermost benches of the amphi-
theatre to the edge of the arena, like an incoming tide upon the
seashore, he hardly responded by so much as an inclination of his
head to the ovation that was usually so gratifying to his self-
esteem. For his eyes were fixed, like those of a somnambulist,
upon the slight figure in the chariot that approached him.
Was he going mad, as he so often feared would happen? Who
was this woman in the white robe of a Roman maiden, this girl
with red roses in her hair? God in heaven, this could be none
other than Mercedes herself! Involuntarily his hand went to his
belt for his dagger. With an ejaculation of impatience, he remem-
bered that he had refrained from replacing the weapon asked as a
gift by his nurse at the hospital.
As the woman in the other chariot confronted him, she too
stared wildly as if, in turn, she saw in him a spectre arisen from
the past. The smile died upon her lips, and Manuel felt that, but
for the painted flush upon her cheeks, she would have been as pale
as death. Yes it was Mercedes. As they drew up the chariots
side by side and reined in their horses, he looked her full in the face.
But now she had recovered her poise, and her eyes did not quail
before his gaze.
" Diavolo ! " he muttered under his breath. A tumult of rage
surged in his heart, but above the storm he seemed to hear the soft
voice that had whispered beside his hospital cot, " Forgive, as you
hope for God's forgiveness ! "
The race began. Cevedra, with the folly of desperation, lashes
his horses until, overwrought with excitement, they rushed onward
as blindly as if they had never known curb nor driver. Two thou-
sand impetuous Mexicans yelled themselves hoarse as they watched
the contest. The woman at first showed a splendid daring, and sur-
passed even her old skill as she managed the four beautiful bays that
208 THE CHARIOT RACERS [May,
she drove. But, after the first lap, the utter recklessness of her an-
tagonist appalled her, and she tried to end the race. The highly-
bred animals that she sought to check had caught the mad contagion
from their lawless rivals, however, and, presently, as on the occasion
when a threatened catastrophe had linked her life with Manuel's,
again her horses were running away. Cevedra need only give
them a wide course, and his wounded honor would be avenged.
A fierce realization of this fact possessed his mind.
" The woman ! The woman ! " The cry re-echoed from all
sides.
" Forgive, as you hope for God's forgiveness ! " The words
rang through his thoughts with insistent force.
Suddenly his heart gave a bound; unaccountably to himself
his jealousy, hatred and anger died down like a fire that is mo-
mentarily subdued. It was not merely his intuitive chivalry that
was challenged, the natural impulse of a normal man to snatch
a fellow-being from danger, to save a weak and helpless woman
from being dashed or trampled to death. Even in that swift ordeal
he was conscious of another motive.
Was he going to let his wife be killed before his eyes ? Not-
withstanding her abandonment of him, was not Mercedes the one
woman whom he had sworn to protect above all others, whom he
had taken for better or worse, to love and cherish during all his
life? Because she was guilty, would he be guiltless if he now left
her to the fate which, in the first instant, he had savagely told
himself was a judgment from God for her faithlessness?
As the runaways passed he lurched in his chariot, and reached
out to grasp the bridle of the nearest horse, but without avail.
Like a rushing wind the terrified animals tore around the track.
Once more they approached him. Cevedra leaped to the ground,
and sprang for the chariot wherein the woman hung powerless.
Providentially he gained it, caught the reins to which her hands
still clung, and pulled so hard at the mouths of the bays that grad-
ually their mad speed slackened, and they finally yielded to his skill.
Just as he had mastered them, however, one of the animals stumbled
and fell, hurling their conqueror over his head.
After his great fight, Manuel lay motionless upon the course,
and the plaudits of the spectators quickly changed to noisy demon-
strations of grief.
" The prince of charioteers is dead," lamented the crowd of
Mexicans and gringos.
1914.] THE CHARIOT RACERS 209
Men leaped over the ropes that divided the track from the
throng, and raising the inanimate form, carried it to the performers'
tent. But Cevedra was not dead. His head bore a frightful gash,
yet, after a few days, the surgeons gave hope that he might live
to ride and drive again in the ring.
And the woman? During this second illness, Manuel some-
times fancied that it was Mercedes who leaned over his cot and
ministered to him. When he was well on the way to recovery, this
apparent delusion proved a reality. One day, his wife came and
knelt before him. She was more beautiful than ever, but white
and weary, like one who has lost sleep for many nights.
" Go away ! Go away ! " he cried with harshness.
" Manuel, forgive me," she besought brokenly.
He turned away his head.
" Where is Juan, the acrobat ? " he demanded.
The woman sprang to her feet. " Juan the acrobat," she re-
peated in amazement, and with an indignation equal to his own.
"How should I know?"
"Has he so soon deserted you?" Cevedra persisted with a
sneer.
" Manuel, is this one of your sick fancies ? " Mercedes replied
with dignity, " or do you know what you are saying? The acrobat
brought me a message from my father, who felt that he was dying,
and begged to see me before the end. 'If she hesitates, kneel to
her and plead with her to come!' such was his order to the mes-
senger. And the man obeyed, entreating me to go when I, dis-
traught between the opposing forces of my love for you and my duty
to my father, was in an agony of indecision. There was no friend-
ship between you and the Alcade, and when I realized that I must
go, I feared to tell you, lest you might attempt to deter me. So
I went without informing you. I traveled to Mexico with the
wife and children of a government official. They knew me only as
the daughter of a planter, whose hacienda was not far from their
own. They never dreamed that I had any connection with a circus.
I wrote you several letters, Manuel, and when no answer came,,
I thought you were so angry with me for stealing away that you
would not forgive me. There are many who can tell you that I
cared for my father until his death, and afterwards continued to
live in my old home until it was sold to pay his debts. Then I
joined this company, for I had no money. Until now I did not
know that Juan the acrobat left the troop at the same time that I
VOL. xcix. 14
210 AVE MARIA [May,
disappeared. I am astounded that anyone supposed I ran away
with him."
For a few moments Manuel lay quiet. Mercedes' voice, her
eyes, and the ingenious expression of her face all bore witness
that she spoke the truth. Through a mist of tears he saw that the
unfaithfulness with which he had, in his heart, daily charged her,
had been only a fabrication of his jealousy. Raising his arms he
clasped them about the neck of his wife and, drawing her down
to him, kissed her with the ardor of his old love, saying, " I never
received the letters; but, Mercedes, if we had only been frank with
each other, how much suffering we both might have been spared.
Let us go back to the little village among the hills, and begin our
life together over again, carissima mia."
AVE MARIA.
BY JOHN JEROME ROONEY.
LADY, thy soldier I would be.
This day I choose thy shield,
And go, thrice-armored for the fight,
Forth to the world's wide field.
There I shall meet the dark allies,
The Flesh, the Fiend, the World,
And fiercely shall their darts of fire
Upon my heart be hurled.
But I will raise thy buckler strong
Betwixt me and the foe,
And, with the Spirit's flaming sword,
Shall give them blow for blow.
Lady, thy sailor I would be.
This day I sign my name
To sail the high seas of the earth
For glory of thy fame.
1914. ] AVE MARIA 211
The tempest may besiege my bark,
The pirate lie in wait :
The perils of the monstrous deep
May tempt o'erwhelming fate :
Yet, wheresoe'r my ship may steer
Upon the waters wide,
Thy name shall be my compass sure,
Thy star my midnight guide.
Thy poet, Lady, I would be
To sing thy peerless praise;
Thy loyal bard, I'd bring to thee
Heart-music from all lays.
Soft melody, outpoured in June
By God's dear feathered throng,
Would mingle with the organ's roll
To glorify my song;
And Dante's voice and Petrarch's strain,
And Milton's matchless line,
Would lend to my poor minstrel note
A harmony divine.
Lady, I choose to be thy son;
For Mother thee I choose:
O for thy sweet and holy Child,
Do not my claim refuse!
Alone and motherless am I:
Tho' strong, I long for rest
The thunder of the world's applause
Is not a mother's breast.
Ave Maria! Shield us all.
Thy sons we choose to be.
Mother of Grace, we raise our hearts
Our hearts, our love to thee !
KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY.
BY A. H. NANKIVELL.
T seems just now that the troubles of the Church of
England will never end. The controversy about In-
vocation of Saints followed hard upon the loss of
Caldey, and before one could estimate the probable
results of the intervention of the Bishop of Lon-
don, the Kikuyu crisis and the letter of the Bishop of Zanzibar
had turned all men's thoughts in a new direction. At first sight
these successive events seemed to be a mere haphazard collocation
of misfortunes, but when they are studied more closely they are
found to stand in a real living relation to each other. Hitherto
the Church of England has shown itself powerless to resist the
invasion of movements and parties quite uncongenial to itself; it
has been, as one has said, " in a state of mental chaos," " proven
guilty of double-mindedness," unable either to assimilate or to re-
ject the teaching that has passed current as its own. But it would
seem now that as the inevitable day of disestablishment draws
nearer, a certain dim instinct has awakened within the body cor-
porate, which is trying to give expression to some intelligible idea,
and to exclude what is fundamentally inconsistent with itself. At
any rate not only is each party considering in a new light its rela-
tions to other parties, and trying to define what it can tolerate, and
what is incompatible with 'its own abiding in the Church, but the
chief officer of the Establishment, a man of great astuteness and
practical wisdom, is evidently feeling his way cautiously in the
direction of the definite exclusion of a certain body of men from that
over-comprehensive communion of which he may be called the
centre of unity.
To consider the matter, first of all, from the point of view
of the principal parties in the Church. The Evangelicals have ap-
parently no hope of being anything but a party in the future, and
that a small one. This is perhaps the reason of much in its public
life that one would have thought quite inconsistent with its general
principles. Its Erastianism and its real " Low Churchism," as op-
posed to the Evangelicalism which was its better mood, has per-
plexed and alienated many who were in sympathy with its un-
1914.] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 213
worldly and independent spirit. This party is affected by the pres-
ent situation in more ways than one. For first it begins to feel in
many ways the pressure of the High Church movement as it spreads
among the devout laity. People who attend celebrations in old-
fashioned Anglican churches without receiving holy communion,
who genuflect and make the sign of the cross, and generally behave
in a " Popish " manner, do cause very real offence and distress
to both minister and people, especially in the country where there
is usually no choice of churches. And in many gatherings of the
clergy it is no longer the High Churchman who feels himself out
of it, or who is regarded as the heretic. It is indeed no wonder
that the Dean of Canterbury has been moved to adopt the phrase
of Newman about " an insolent and aggressive faction," and to
apply it to those who are making his position in the Church of his
fathers so difficult to maintain. The truth is that a considerable
body of the advanced High Churchmen no longer care to leave room
in the Episcopal Church for the ordinary type of Evangelical. It
is felt that on any theory of orthodoxy, they are outside the
pale.
It is the reality and seriousness of this attack on their position
that has made the Evangelicals so amazingly indifferent to the
aggressions of the Broad Church party. For the most characteris-
tic feature of the Anglican body, since the publication of Lux Mundi
some twenty-five years ago, has been the extraordinary develop-
ment of the Broad Church party, or to put it in another way, the
triumph of modernism. Undermined by the teachings of the
Swiss Protestant Godet, whose writings have been regarded in
England as orthodox works of the highest value, neither High nor
Low Church has had the skill and knowledge to withstand the
encroachments of modern unbelief. Only a small minority in both
parties, and particularly among the Romanizing school, have been
alive to the real issues at stake. But now that the modernists have
come out into the open, it is evident that they are claiming a
toleration for the vaguest theistic ideas, which must be fatal to
any claim on behalf of the Church to be a teacher of definite
truth. And such a toleration will not be conceded without a
struggle.
With the High Churchmen the position is somewhat different.
The majority would seem to take much less seriously their claim
to be Catholic members of a Catholic Church than they did some
years ago. Many who formerly used quite different language,
2i 4 KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY [May,
now openly confess themselves to be Protestants, and acknowledge
in their hearts that to be Catholic is to be Roman. But the griev-
ous thing is that their allegiance has been shaken, not only or spe-
cially to the doctrines which were merely characteristic of their
party, but to the Bible and the creeds. On the other hand, there is a
small section of the party which takes itself quite seriously, and is
determined to put its claim to the proof by acting as if it were true.
It lacks the advantage of perfect unanimity, for while one authority
is demanding to know what Ecclesia Anglicana stands for, another
denies that such a unit exists at all. But there are hopeful signs
that the policy of make-believe no longer satisfies, and that there
is a growing desire to bring the whole matter to a definite issue,
and compel the Establishment to declare its mind.
Thus the main drift of parties in England is in the direction
of a clearer definition of the aims and ideals of the Protestant
Church. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury is by
position and temperament the exponent of a different position. It
is his duty, as it has been the duty of his predecessors, to check the
development of any tendencies which may imperil the Establish-
ment, and produce a collision between the clergy and the English
people. The normal balance of parties must therefore be main-
tained, and concessions must be made from time to time by one or
another to the needs or prejudices of the rest. The time has not
yet come when any one of the great parties can be ejected, to make
the Church more homogeneous and uncompromising. But at the
same time he has always seen that the claim of any faction to make
the Church speak clearly in its own sense, is one which is quite
inconsistent with the maintenance of the present compromise.
Those who seriously make such a demand, are violating the condi-
tions on which alone a National Church can be maintained. And,
therefore, those who attempt such a direct disturbance of the balance
of power must be made to yield or go.
In the first place, then, the Roman party has been for some
time marked out for destruction. Its very existence has long
been a menace to the Establishment. Only the difficulty of find-
ing a suitable test question by which to differentiate it from the
main body of the High Church party, has averted the blow for so
long. The Caldey crisis gave some indications of the lines on which
the attack might advantageously proceed. And we may expect to
hear in the future that there will be no toleration for devotions or
doctrines which " cannot be justified on any other than a strictly
1914-] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 215
Papal basis of authority." But the real ground of exclusion will not
be its Romanism, but its final inability to accept the compromise.
For the Establishment is still in England a political arrangement,
and those who are hostile to it will have to quit.
It is obvious that from this point of view, few events could
have been more fortunate for the Archbishop of Canterbury than
the action taken by the Bishop of Zanzibar. For, first of all, he is
a bishop, and so a suitable person to make a decisive example of.
And, second, he is only a colonial bishop, and has never been a
beneficed clergyman, and so his secession, if it should come to that,
will not create too serious a crisis. It is not likely, on the face of
it, that the troubles of an African mission will lead to a dangerous
rupture at home. And, third, he raises all the questions which
form the principal issues between the Anglo-Roman party and the
guardians of the compromise, for the questions relating to the Holy
See are not yet ripe for public treatment. He demands that the
Church of England shall give a definite judgment about ( i ) modern-
ism; (2) episcopacy; and (3) Invocation of Saints.
First. The Bishop of Zanzibar draws emphatic attention to a
book called Foundations, published by seven Oxford men last year,
" as a contribution towards the reconciliation of religious belief
with modern thought." He understands from the preface that the
book is admittedly tentative, but that it is supposed to contain
no theological position so inconsistent with the teaching of the
Church of England that a minister could not lawfully accept it.
In the Bishop of Zanzibar's words:
The book permits priests to believe and teach
(a) that the Old Testament is the record of the religious
experiences of holy men some of whom wrote the
books in order to show how, in their view, God acted in cir-
cumstances that quite possibly, and in many cases probably,
never existed.
(b) That the Christ's historic life opens with His baptism,
at which He suddenly realized a vocation to be the last of the
Jewish prophets.
(c) That Christ did not come into the world to die for us;
but having come, He died because of the circumstances of the
case.
(d) That Christ was mistaken in what He taught about
His Second Advent, thinking that the world would not outlast
St. John.
216 KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY [May,
(e) That therefore he did not found a Church, nor ordain
sacraments.
(f) That His Body has gone to corruption.
(g) That there is no Authority in the Church beyond the
corporate witness of the Saints, many of whom are now un-
known, to the spiritual and moral value of the Christian religion.
Thus it is allowed by the seven to any priest to deny the
trustworthiness of the Bible, the Authority of the Church, and
the Infallibility of Christ.
It is fair to remind ourselves that the authors do not claim
that these views are finally true, but only that they are a reasonable
view of the facts as known to us. But we must also take note that
the publication of these views has not aroused the resentment of
the High Church party as a whole, and that they are apparently
regarded as the expression of moderate modernism, as contrasted
with the more extreme forms found elsewhere, both within and
without the Establishment. And then the bishop justly asks, "What
is the prospect of a missionary Church whose clergy is recruited in
the very dioceses of which these men, and others like them, are the
trusted theologians ? "
The second incident to which the Bishop of Zanzibar draws
attention, is the Conference of Protestant Missions with the Church
Missionary Society at Kikuyu, in June, 1913. Of this we shall
speak briefly, for the facts are known to all. The Low Church
bishops of Mombasa and Uganda realized very keenly the difficult
position in which the small Protestant missions were placed in the
face of a united Mohammedanism, on the one hand, and a united
Catholicism on the other. They considered, not unreasonably, that
the ultimate objective of the missionaries ought to be the formation
of a single native Protestant Church, formed by the fusion of the
different Protestant missions. And subject to the assent of the
parent bodies at home, they agreed on a common policy, including
the recognition of common membership between the federated
churches. After the resolutions embodying their proposals had
been carried, the Bishop of Mombasa celebrated the communion,
according to the Anglican rite, in a Presbyterian Church, and the
delegates of the other sects were permitted to receive the sacra-
ment.
The third incident to which the Bishop of Zanzibar appeals as
proving his contention that the Anglican Church at the present mo-
1914-] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 217
ment, and in its present frame of mind, is quite unfit to preach
the Gospel to the heathen, is found in the fact that the Bishop of
St. Alban's, to whom the Zanzibar letter is addressed, has recently
inhibited a clergyman from ministering in his diocese for the of-
fence of invoking our Blessed Lady and " two other saints " in a
church in his diocese. It appears that a society of clergy and
laity has been recently formed to federate " Anglo-Catholics," and
to advocate a forward policy in the direction of what is called
" Catholic faith and practice " in the National Church, by those
persons who regard their separation from the Holy See as a tem-
porary misfortune to be borne with impatience, and not at all as a
subject for devout thanksgiving. This society, which is nothing
if not audacious, christened itself " The Catholic League," and held
its first anniversary at a place called Corringham in Essex. It is
currently reported that the programme included the Salve Regina
and the Litany of Loreto, and other devotions to which the An-
glican episcopate are quite unaccustomed, and unfortunately a spy
provided the bishop with a copy of the service. He neither dared
nor wished to pass it over ; on the contrary, he took severe disciplin-
ary measures against Dr. Langford James, the president of the so-
ciety, and other persons concerned, and even unfrocked a lay reader.
Finally, he sent a circular letter of warning and protest to the
bishops of the Provinces of Canterbury and York.
Now the Anglican episcopate has been manifestly uneasy on
this subject of Invocation of Saints, since the publication of The
English Hymnal in 1906. The book contains some modern hymns
to our Blessed Lady and the Saints by Anglican authors, besides
translations of the Ave marls stella and other well-known Catholic
hymns. The book came from a quarter with which the authorities
were not at all anxious to come into collision, and beyond a formal
prohibition of its use, which was ineffective, no immediate action
was taken, but it was felt very keenly that a backhand blow had
been aimed at the compromise by men who ought to have been loyal.
And ever since then a large section of the official Church has been
waiting for a convenient occasion to recover the ground which it
was felt had been lost. And so we may understand that when the
Corringham scandal was brought to the notice of the authorities,
those who had been pressing for some decided action, were quite
clear in their own minds that the enemy was delivered into their
hands. The sudden and quite unexpected support given by the
Bishop of London at the Church Congress to the innovating party
218 KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY [May,
altered the whole situation; and one can only guess at what lay
behind that move.
Now of these three questions, modernism, episcopacy, and
the Invocation of Saints, the first is unquestionably the most im-
portant, if not the most urgent, and the Bishop of Zanzibar has
already announced since his return to England, that he does not
intend to let it be lost sight of. It is, indeed, most vital, for while
a Protestant non-sacramental religion leaves out a great part of the
Gospel message, the religion of the modernists is not really a
Christian religion at all. The modernist says in effect that the
Christian ideas are noble, but the Christian facts are incredible,
therefore let us abandon the message, and keep the ideas, if we can.
But the old-fashioned Protestant replies with the Catholic, " if the
facts are not true, we are of all men most miserable ! " And in his
fight for the truth of the Gospel the Bishop of Zanzibar is sure of
the support of a great number of Christians of many different
schools of thought, both within and without the National Church.
On the other hand, it is not doubtful that the archbishop
will do everything in his power to prevent any such question being
raised, and he will receive large support in that endeavor from the
ranks of the High Church party. That is plain enough already,
from his entire silence on the subject, and from the line taken by
The Church Times and The Guardian. It is hardly an exaggeration
to say that the Bishop of Zanzibar has no press. The High Church
papers and reviews will give him no help in trying to bring the
modernists to book. And it is not obvious how he can insist on the
issue being raised, when so many influential persons are interested
in burking the question. The universities are in the hands of the
New Learning, and it is the boast of the Anglican modernists, well-
founded or not, that they have captured most of the theological
colleges. Something no doubt will have to be done to satisfy the
Bishop of Oxford and the Bishop of London. But it need not be
very much. Perhaps the Houses of Convocation will make some
suitable and reassuring reply to the anxious clergy, who are draw-
ing up memorials and signing petitions. But it is not likely that
anyone will have to go on this account, least of all the very prudent
persons who are responsible for Foundations.
The question of episcopacy and " open communion " with Dis-
senters presents more practical difficulty. If the High Church party
had not been going to pieces since 1896, the verdict would be no
doubt that however excusable were the proceedings at Kikuyu, the
1914.] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 219
" historic episcopate " must be loyally maintained. The details
involved would naturally be left in part to the good sense of the
bishops concerned. But at the present juncture it is far more prob-
able that the deciding authority will sanction some measure of
definite intercommunion between the Episcopal Church and the
" other branches of the Church of Christ," which are associated
with it in the mission field. The archbishop did not use the phrase
we have just quoted as an empty courtesy, and he is not lacking in
initiative ; he is a man who can " take occasion by the hand, and
make the bounds of freedom wider yet," and the opportunity to
prepare the way for a reconciliation between his Church and the
Nonconformists will never be better than it is to-day. The Bishop
of Zanzibar is maintaining an unpopular position; the great bulk
of the English people regard his protest with unconcealed impa-
tience, and the High Church press has hastened to announce before-
hand its readiness to accept a compromise ; what is there to hinder
an arrangement which shall pave the way for the ultimate removal
of the barriers that divide the Protestant Episcopalian from his
Presbyterian brother ? In other words, the advance must be so cau-
tious that the Bishop of Oxford, and those who think with him, will
not be compelled to retire. But the form in which the questions
have been stated by the bishops concerned almost preclude such a
disaster. They are given as follows in the Bishop of Zanzibar's
letter of February 18, 1914:
(1) The proposal for admitting members of Protestant
bodies to Holy Communion.
(2) The possible admission of Churchmen to Communion
in Protestant bodies' churches.
(3) The proposal for admitting ministers of Protestant
bodies to the pulpit of the church.
(4) Federation with any body that does not practise infant
baptism.
(5) The omission of any explanation that the one United
Native Church, when it comes, will be fully episcopal, and will
therefore provide: (a) confirmation for all; (b) absolution,
after private confession, in declaratory form, for such as de-
sire it.
(6) The omission of the Athanasian Creed as a ground of
common belief, and therefore of federation.
When these points are considered carefully and separately
220 KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY [May,
in the light of the past practice of the Established Church of Eng-
land, and the present practice of the Protestant Episcopal Churches
in the United States and in Ireland, it is hard to see how any of
them can be made vital questions, except perhaps the fourth. It is
evident then that however desirous certain members of the home
episcopate may be to make a stand while there is something left
to stand for, they will find the utmost difficulty in resisting the con-
clusion that the Anglican tradition is too vague and uncertain to help
them here. And yet we shall make a mistake if we reckon that
Englishmen will be bound by the strict logic of the situation. The
bishops concerned will feel, if they do not say, that the general
effect of all these concessions taken together is a very different
thing from the result of any one taken separately and treated as an
isolated incident. And there are a great many persons, both clergy
and laity, scattered all over the country, who are in a state of ex-
treme anxiety and discontent. They are for the most part not at
all ripe for reconciliation with the Mother of Saints, but they feel
very acutely that the religion in which they were brought up is
passing away, and will be no more seen. And if anyone can rally
and organize these scattered units and weld them into a living whole,
the archbishop will find that the history of a nation is something
more than a matter of clever calculation.
The question of Invocation of Saints is practically much more
difficult of settlement than either of these. A decision in favor
of the practice is indeed not to be looked for; we can hardly say
that it has been asked. All that the Bishop of Zanzibar has done,
has been to protest against its threatened condemnation. He and
his friends will be quite satisfied in the present state of the Protest-
ant Church, if they can secure for themselves a quiet toleration, and
reasonable liberty in extra-liturgical services. And there they
have the advantage. The general disposition of the Anglican
Church to tolerate almost any amount of religious eccentricity, pro-
vided it does not interfere with the liberty and comfort of others,
will operate wholly in their favor. And it must be remembered
that the modernists cannot logically oppose them here, holding
as they do an almost Unitarian view of the Person of our Divine
Lord. But while the opposition to this practice is distinctly weak-
.ening among various sections of Churchmen, the great bulk of the
clergy and laity still regard it with the greatest disfavor, and would
welcome a declaration that the twenty-second Article of Religion,
which condemns " the Romish doctrine," is to be taken in its prima
1914-] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 221
facie sense. It stands to them for the most open and aggressive
manifestation of the Roman spirit. And it is beyond all question
a most potent weapon in the hands of those who wish to destroy the
" insolent and aggressive faction." To refuse to condemn modern-
ism, and to refuse to forbid open communion with Protestants of
other denominations, will sorely try the faith of many. But to con-
demn the Invocation of Saints formally and unmistakably, will be
the most effectual step that could be taken for the removal of those
who are disloyal to the Anglican compromise.
There can be little doubt that the home episcopate were within
an ace of agreeing to take some decisive action against the Roman-
izing party, when they were stayed for the moment by the Congress
Sermon of the Bishop of London, preached at St. Luke's, Southamp-
ton, in September last. The bishop preached on the Communion
of Saints, and discussed very fully the arguments of recent Anglican
writers for and against invocation. In the course of his sermon he
said so much in support of the practice without actually giving it
his own approval, and treated it so entirely as a matter on which
two opinions might be held in the Anglican communion, that it was
impossible at the time for the primate to proceed any further
in the matter without courting disaster. Nor will it be easy for
the Bishop of London to give effective support to his friends, if
he does not see his way to come out frankly on their side.
But whatever course the Bishop of London may finally take,
the future of the Church of England will lie in other hands. And
here comes in the importance of the letter of the Bishop of Zanzibar.
At present the primate is only concerned with the proceedings at
Kikuyu and their consequences. But if he is compelled to take note
of the protest against modernism, put forward in the Zanzibar letter,
he must also concern himself with the question which has been
raised respecting the Invocation of Saints. In that case he will not
only be able to destroy the position of the Anglo-Romans, by con-
demning what they have received on what they are pleased to call
" the tradition of the whole Church," but he will be completely pro-
tected against criticism from the Bishop of London or from any
other quarter. He will stand before the public as one who has
been exceedingly loath to interfere w r ith any man's private belief,
and who regrets more than he can say that his hand has been forced
by the very persons whom he desired to shield.
Meanwhile the only motives which could have weighed with
him in favor of a milder policy, will have ceased to operate. The
222 KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY [May,
Bishop of Zanzibar has made demands which are not at all likely
to be granted, and has made them as a condition of continued com-
munion with Canterbury. He has in fact used a threat, and used
it with the intention of carrying it out. It is useless to offer him
a compromise, or to attempt to conciliate his truculent supporters.
But if there is to be a schism, or at least a secession worth reckon-
ing with, there is plainly nothing to be gained by leaving the
position of the Church of England needlessly weak for want of
definition.
We conclude then that the Bishop of Zanzibar will substantially
lose his case on all three counts, whatever may be said and done
to save his face. We believe that his defeat will be the more
clear and decisive, because he is showing himself utterly unwilling to
accept or even to appreciate the usual compromise. And without
charging him with want of tact or skill in the conduct of his affair,
we are of opinion that the course taken by him has in fact con-
tributed not a little to the success of the policy of the Anglican epis-
copate. For this time the Romanizing party are taken in the net,
and we do not believe that they will escape. And here we must
return to Bishop Weston's words to realize what this means for him
and for his friends. " If to Protestantize the world, and modern-
ize the faith, be the works that she officially undertakes, I for my
part have no longer place or lot within her borders. Let the Ecclesia
Anglicana declare herself, that we may know our fate."
To this must be added the very grave remonstrance of Bishop
Gore of Oxford, who complained, in his letter to The Times of
December 26th, that " the three sections of the Church are pur-
suing their own principles to a point where they become really in-
tolerable to the main body of their fellow-members." And later on
he adds, " I feel quite sure that to the great mass of High Church-
men such an open communion seems to involve principles so totally
subversive of Catholic order and doctrine as to be strictly intoler-
able, in the sense that they could not continue in a fellowship which
required of them to tolerate the recurrence of such incidents." We
have put these words in italics, because we do not think that their
full significance is as yet at all appreciated either by Catholics
or by Anglicans who have written on this matter. It is so out
of all ordinary calculation that the Bishop of Oxford should hint
at the mere possibility of withdrawal from the communion which
he has served so well, that they have been treated as a mere pic-
turesque expression of his extreme alarm and distress at the
1914.] KIKUYU AND THE ANGLO-ROMAN PARTY 223
recent proceedings. But the writer is too studiously moderate in
his expressions to be guilty of saying " strictly intolerable " when
he meant " hard to bear," he is much more the man to say " hard to
bear " when he means " strictly intolerable." And the words of the
Bishop of Oxford do very significantly echo the warnings of Dr.
Weston of Zanzibar, all the more as he is evidently inclined to re-
gret the uncompromising spirit which the latter has shown.
It is our considered opinion that the possibilities of the imme-
diate future are more grave than the Archbishop of Canterbury
appears to imagine. Time will show whether the letting out of
water can be stayed at the moment that he wishes it to cease. But
it would not be fair to leave the reader under any misapprehension
of our meaning. We do not anticipate the return of the Bishop
of Zanzibar to the Catholic Church at the present juncture, nor of
any great number of his followers. Until the experiment of a
High Church schism has been tried and failed, we do not believe
that any large numbers of persons will find their way home.
How the attempt to establish such an organization will affect the
position of the Anglican body in other lands, we cannot now antic-
ipate. But the possibilities of the next Lambeth Conference with
a revised Book of Common Prayer and a divided episcopate for
its consideration, form a fascinating study for the speculative mind.
HERB BORITH IN VAIN.
BY S. WALDRON CARNEY.
HE telephone message was short, and explained noth-
ing; yet it was over ten years since I had actually
seen Deluynes.
" Is that Doctor Robertson? "
" Yes, Doctor James Robertson. Who is
speaking? "
" Armand Deluynes. Doctor, can you come to look me up
to-night; same old place, 9341 Walnut? "
" To-night, Mr. Deluynes ? Why, it's ten o'clock now, and
I am pretty well fagged out. I'll call to-morrow. Didn't know
you were back from Europe. Good night "
" No, no, hold the phone," came the order from the other side,
with its old compelling peremptoriness. " It is a professional mat-
ter, doctor, and I can't wait till to-morrow."
" All right, I'm leaving at once be with you in fifteen min-
utes."
I made a few sleepy conjectures while the street cars bumped
me Walnut-wise; chiefly I reviewed my years of friendship with
Armand Deluynes, and vaguely marveled why he had, at that hour,
summoned me, rather than any other physician; and I vaguely
wondered what was the malady requiring instant treatment ; that no
indication had been given was, after all, not surprising, for tele-
phone wires have neither delicacy nor discretion.
In our undergraduate days at Pennsylvania University, Deluy-
nes had so fascinated my rather dull imagination, that I could have
played Alfred Tennyson to his Arthur Hallam, happy in worship-
ping the idol I had fashioned. His picturesque person, his mys-
tical temperament, his Latin grace of manner and a certain re-
serving of himself, were contradictions that wove complexities
and lit a halo of romance about his baffling personality. The
fact that he was a devout Roman Catholic, was another element of
that " unusualness " that set him apart. To a physio-psychologist,
he might have been an interesting study in heredities.
His father, Albert de Luynes (so they spelled the name in the
South), was a Louisianian of an old French family, claiming de-
1914-] HERB BORITH IN VAIN 225
scent from a man who stands always as a splendid tragic figure on
the stage of French history. After doffing his butternut gray, the
war over, and the lost cause a spectre book or bell could not lay,
Albert had drifted north to seek his fortune; but his fortune, so
far from seeking him, skillfully evaded him, to his life's end, in
every profession he essayed, and in each business venture he un-
dertook. In fact, this elegant, simple-minded, brave son of the
French planters, had no other scenic place in life than that of a
rich, amiable, generous proprietor paternal to his slaves, and en-
tirely delightful to his endless procession of guests. But fate
which gave him no fortune, bestowed on him a wife. He was
already over forty, and the woman, who was but twenty, and a
most unlikely person in every way, was the blessing of his life.
She was a Philadelphia Quakeress, brought up in that very stone
house, 9341 Walnut, to which I was now hastening, sheltered from
a profane world by pious parents who still clung to the old creed
both in belief and in worship, dignified, benevolent, satisfied with
their inheritance of a moderate fortune and an old-fashioned man-
sion. Euphemia was their only child and sole heir, yet they made
no lasting opposition to a marriage which jarred their prejudices
and deeply wounded their sensibilities. What manner of girl
was this whose spiritual elevation ranked her with the " Holy
Women chosen by the Spirit;" whose fair ascetic face would have
served as model for St. Catherine of Siena or St. Clara of Assisi;
whose sudden passion for the middle-aged Creole refused to hear
reason, and only deepened with the years into a silent, protecting
worship, more like a mother's love than a spouse's tenderness ? The
universe is full of mysteries to us, because we see effects and cannot
perceive causes. May I call my friend Armand, son of such
parents, an effect, acknowledging that causes stretched back, on
one .side, through generations of chivalrous Frenchmen courtly
and Catholic, and on the other side through lines of English
Quakers, thrifty, self -controlled, seeking God by an unwonted
path.
Armand lost his mother when in his fifteenth year, and the
bereavement was still shadowing his sensitive face when I first met
him. With her peculiar conscientiousness she had so scrupulously
observed the promises made at her marriage, that she herself had
watched over his religious training; teaching him his Catechism
every Sunday; aiding to prepare him for his First Communion;
always guiding herself in his regard by the directions of his parish
VOL. xcix. 15
226 HERB BORITH IN VAIN [May,
authorities, the Jesuit Fathers at old St. Joseph's. And so, in
faith and utter simplicity before God, she died in her own creed,
and the priest, comforting son and father, did not hesitate to say :
" God takes His own, and we have no voice here, because He
knows His own, and we know nothing."
Launched out on our careers, Armand and I had inevitably
drifted far apart. He achieved a place of distinction at the Phila-
delphia bar, although the legal profession was not, assuredly, the
line which I should have fancied his temperament would have
found attractive. In my own ventures to make an opening as a
physician in three Western towns, one after another, I had also
compassed a reasonable measure of success, always aiming to return
to the East when I could carry back with me experience and reputa-
tion. These had come to me at last, and I was back in Philadel-
phia. I knew that Deluynes had never married, and that the social
world had talked much of a broken engagement which, the senti-
mentalists asserted, had clouded his life and had clouded his sun,
and transformed his gay social graces to a calm gentle urbanity,
which never repelled friends but never sought them. The lady
had married an English baronet, and, gossip whispered, was paying
a heavy price for her title. She lived much on the continent, her
husband was seldom with her, and they were childless. It was also
bruited that Deluynes had sometimes visited her, but in Italy only,
where she spent much of the year. Moreover, I had learned for a
certainty that after the death of his father, who passed away some
twelve years before, Armand had withdrawn from the Catholic
Church, but had joined no other denomination, and locked himself
up into a reticence touching religion, as close as on all other per-
sonal subjects. What truth there might have been in these floating
tales, however, I never knew nor do I know now, but I was naturally
reviewing them as I bumped onward. Emotion stirred at the near-
ness to the interview, for I still had for him a sentiment apart from
that I felt for other men. I had no justification for supposing that
any adequate reciprocity bound him to me; I was a big heavy fel-
low, only equipped for the practical, and he was adorned for the
ideal. But I always had the certainty that he relied on my dog-
like rugged fidelity, which made no demands, but was just simply
there when needed.
At half-past ten o'clock I was ringing the old-fashioned bell of
the old-fashioned house. The door was opened, as I expected, by
his faithful old colored servant, Theophile, who had been his
1914.] HERB BORITH IN VAIN 227
father's slave in ante-bellum days, and who would have resented the
disreputable condition of belonging to nobody, and of classing with
the " Free Darkies " of the North. But Theophile had never been
brought into such social descents, for he remained first as the
body servant of Mr. Albert Deluynes, and then of Mr. Armand
Deluynes, whom he had carried in his arms as a babe, and who was
the unique object of his worship. No " nigger dialect " had ever
sullied Theophile's lips, and he held in frigid contempt the language
of his Northern brethren of color, and the fiction which employed
that medium as a humorous adjunct. His French was really excel-
lent, for he had been a constant companion to his feudal suzerain,
and his English was merely picturesque by its idioms and its for-
eign accent.
" Oh, Doctor Robertson ! How that I am glad ! It is to
thank God ! " he said softly, as he admitted me with his courteously
profound salutation, and showed me into the little hall-reception
room.
" I am delighted to see you again, Theophile. What seems
to be the matter with Mr. Armand ? "
" Neuralgia, M. le Docteur. Very evil species of neuralgia,
face very bad on one side."
" Tooth perhaps? Has he seen a dentist? "
" No, M. le Docteur," and Theophile, always standing and
bowing with each reply, hesitated and was evidently embarrassed.
" May I to venture Dr. Robertson, not too hardy, not presume too
much?"
" Certainly you may speak freely to me, Theophile, and I'll be
glad to know all you can tell me before I go up to my patient.
Sit down, Theophile."
" Excuse me, M. le Docteur, excuse me; it would not be pos-
sible," and he bent himself double in repudiating such a liberty.
" Mr. Armand, you know, is changed, very changed these time.
The joy of things is not any more."
" His father's death, some years back? "
" It may be. And, monsieur, it may not be, also. Who
knows? There is something here," Theophile indicated dramatic-
ally his own interior.
"Dyspepsia? Cancer?"
" Oh, no ! M. le Docteur ! The heart, the soul ! Shall I mis-
take? I carry him on my breast when he could only cry; no cry
comes out now, but there is cry somewhere down there. He goes
228 HERB BORITH IN VAIN [May,
to travel to make change, many countries, California, West Indies,
Europe, "
" You accompany him ? "
" Never, Monsieur, never. I stay to preside affairs ; me al-
ways to maintain the house and our dignity. But I see, yes, I see ;
not always I can understand. Lately, he was in Italy, and came
back more melancolique, but kind always. You are a heretic, M.
le Docteur; pardon me, it is not your fault, but you see we are
Catholique ! Is it not ? Well, many years Mr. Armand not go to
church; that is not healthy neither. Now for three days; he
keeps in his study, takes his meals there, eats less than bird. I
bring salver back, full. I weep yes, M. le Docteur I who speak
to you, Theophile! Neuralgia has him as prey face bandaged.
Neuralgia does it ever come of cablegram, M. le Docteur? It
seems to me that, yes. Cablegram I think some death, somewhere,
neuralgia, bandage."
" Nonsense, Theophile. Go straight upstairs and tell Mr.
Armand that I am here."
As -I strode up and down waiting, some linkings knitted con-
jecture into a shape. I vaguely recalled an obituary line in the
Ledger of that week. Italy yes, Florence a titled Englishwoman
of Philadelphian family some old gossip, faded for me by lapse
of time, took on color and
" M. le Docteur, give yourself the trouble to ascend, if you
please."
Theophile softly opened and shut the study door to usher me,
but did not cross the threshold, and there was a mournful flap to
his loyal old feet as I heard him slowly going back to his post.
The light in the studio was turned low. Our mutual hand
grasp was hearty, and our greetings few of words were full in
earnestness. It was a weird figure that stood before me. The
black hair was heavily brushed with silver; the shoulders were
heavy and drooping; out of a sallow face, prematurely lined and
even furrowed, there looked forth the left eye only, dark and beau-
tiful still, but not meeting mine directly. The other eye and the
whole right side of the face were concealed by a very large cream-
colored silk handkerchief, almost a scarf, firmly wound all about
the head and knotted on the left side of the neck. After our first
exchanges of old comradeship questions and answers, I plunged into
professional business promptly, for it was late, and the man was
evidently suffering.
1914.] HERB BORITH IN VAIN 229
" Neuralgia, Armand? Tic douloureux? Caries in teeth and
jawbone ? "
" No, Robertson ; nothing of that kind. It is skin trouble,
and until you can relieve it, I shall not go out of house. Doctor,
I rely on your discretion as a physician; but I rely more yet on
your secrecy as a friend. There is, on my right cheek, beginning
above the chin and ending under the eye, a deep crimson stain,
peculiar, irregular in outline, fiery red, not aching at any time,
but occasionally tingling as if lightly scourged with nettles."
" Let me examine it." For he not only did not remove the
scarf, but held his hand nervously over the affected spot. Before
him on the table lay his large silver mounted hand mirror. He
slowly unwrapped his face. I turned the gas on full, and looked.
He shrank from the scrutiny. I lit another jet, and investigated
carefully. I took indications for fever; there was no fever. I
considered with keen anxiety, my hands behind my back, pacing the
room in silent deliberation.
"How long since you perceived this this crimson blotch?"
" Three days. It was there when I went to the glass in the
morning."
"Had you slept well?"
" No."
" Just now, has it seemed to deepen or change ? Look in
your hand mirror and make sure."
He studied in the glass, with a kind of spectral horror haunting
his haggard eyes.
" No," he responded. " It is just the same."
Another silence. He gazed into my own countenance with
that appeal of despair that yet touches on hope.
" Doctor, I have bathed in hot water ; in tepid water ; in icy
cold water in vain. Through Theophile, who did not know what
I was ordering, I have got from pharmacies every remedy, every
cream or balm I could recall. In vain. Oh," and his voice became
the wail of a soul in torment, " Oh, I seem to hear at every hour
of the day and night, that awful sentence of the prophet Jeremias :
" Though thou wash thyself with nitre, and multiply to thyself
the herb borith, thou art stained in thine iniquity before me, saith
the Lord God."
He covered his face with one hand; I sat down beside him
and took the other. Hallucinations are a baffling study for every
doctor. This man's right cheek bore not a trace of color; like the
230 HERB BORITH IN VAIN [May,
rest of his skin, it was of a delicate pallor, now sallow from con-
finement and anxiety. But how was I to convince him of this?
Still holding his hand, I rapidly reflected; I could boast but little
Christian faith. At twenty I had broken the chains of Calvinism in
which I had been trained, and now was left with only some sort of
belief in God and prayer. I did pray : I implored God that it might
be given me to speak the right, the helpful word.
" Armand Deluynes, you must pardon me if I step beyond my
province. You are a Roman Catholic, and you know better than
I the duties of your religion and the helps it offers. I think you
believe in them." He did not answer. I continued : " A doctor
of the body has no remedy here. Herb borith and nitre and all
they stand for are vain. The diagnosis must be for the soul's
physician."
He dropped my hand. And then I gave him the truth.
" I swear to you before God, Armand Deluynes, that the
mark is on your conscience only, and that your cheek is spotless."
It was twelve o'clock that night when we parted. No con-
fidence of his so much as hovered near any danger ground of the
past. In all things he was chivalrous, generous, high bred. And no
interrogatory of mine, assuredly, bordered on topics we shunned as
men and gentlemen. I repeat again that I knew nothing then and
know nothing now. But when I left him at the stroke of twelve,
more distinctly than he perceived the tables and chairs in the room,
he still saw the red brand on his right cheek.
It was seven years later that the Father Superior of Geth-
semane, Kentucky, gave me so kind a welcome, in response to the
letter wherein I asked a special permission.
" Brother Jeremias is coming in now from the fields, as you
see in that line of lay brothers with their spades over their should-
ers. Healthy, is he? Oh," and the good Father laughed so
heartily that it cheered me to listen to such merriment in a Trappist
monastery. " Healthy? My dear doctor, he could almost lift an
ox! And as to his appetite, well, you shall see for yourself, so
soon as he washes his face and hands and has time to get over to
the guest house, for he is expecting you with affection and
pleasure."
Then the Superior looked at me with a penetrating and sign-
nificant gaze, as he added slowly : " Our excellent Brother Jere-
mias has told me that he owes his doctor a great debt. God will
repay it at some time, and in some manner we cannot foretell now.
1914-] ON A FLYLEAF OF OMAR 231
Among all our lay brothers, and many are holy men, I count
Brother Jeremias as a saint. Ah, here he is ! "
There indeed; the coarse garb of a Trappist lay brother cloth-
ing a form, stalwart, agile, and graceful even yet; the glow of the
farm on both healthful cheeks, but in both dark eyes light enkindled
from above profound, serene, benignant, there he stood, my boy-
hood's ancient ideal.
The Father Superior withdrew at once. Our interview was
not long, but it carried into my own mind many thoughts over which
I am still pondering, whatever be their outcome. As we parted,
he said with his own beautiful smile : " Robertson, nitre, herb
borith are in vain. But Christ's atonement cleanses the reddest
stain, for when they pierced His side, there came forth Blood and
Water."
ON A FLYLEAF OF OMAR.
BY INA COOLBRITH.
POET-ASTRONOMER, who night by night
God's star-page scanned, yet failed to read aright,
Where throughout space His alphabet of suns
Spells Life, in inextinguishable light!
For not, if cycling Time might blot the whole
Of that vast scheme from the illumined scroll,
The Worlds, incalculable to rayless void,
Could cease of Man the imperishable Soul.
O finite mind that would the infinite
To challenge seek, and measure! Piteous plight!
How happier the bird of lightest wing,
That soars and trusts the Teacher of its flight.
An empty glass upon a broken shrine,
What matters it? the quaffed or unquaffed wine?
See the clear goblet with what nectar brimmed
From fountains inexhaustible, divine!
HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND.
BY A. MILLIARD ATTERIDGE.
N the last decade of the eighteenth century though the
Irish Parliament, which Grattan had created, still
met at College Green, it was elected by a very limited
franchise, and many of its members were really the
mere nominees of a few great landlord families.
Only Protestants were eligible for a seat in it, and it was con-
trolled by the party that was opposed to all reforms. Its powers
for good or evil were limited by the fact that the executive at
Dublin Castle was responsible not to it, but to the English ministry
in London. The real ruler of Ireland was the English Prime
Minister, with his deputies the Viceroy and the Secretary for Irish
Affairs. The great mass of the Irish people, who did not belong
to the privileged Episcopalian and landlord class, despaired of
any reforms being secured by Parliamentary action, and when the
successful Revolution in America was followed by another Revo-
lution in France, their leaders looked to the country, which had so
effectively aided the revolted colonists beyond the Atlantic, as their
ally in the struggle with the dominant party and with England.
The movement began not among the oppressed Catholics of the west
and south, but among the Presbyterians of Ulster, and for awhile
Belfast was its chief centre. It was among the northern men that
the United Irishmen were the strongest. The association had at
first been an open organization agitating for Parliamentary reform.
The repressive measures of the government led to its conversion
into a secret society conspiring to effect a revolution by armed force.
The government made some concessions, but only went far
enough to encourage the popular party to exert further pressure
upon it. The Parliamentary vote was granted to a certain num-
ber of Catholics, but no Catholic could be elected a member of the
Irish House of Commons. Catholics were allowed to hold com-
missions in the army, but the higher ranks were barred to them.
Wise men urged that the way of safety was not to remove this or
that grievance, but to sweep all of them away. But Dublin Castle
refused to grant concessions except in a grudging, half-hearted way,
that caused more disappointment than satisfaction.
1914-] HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 233
There was a brief period of hope when, in January, 1795, Earl
Fitzwilliam arrived in Dublin as Lord Lieutenant, and in his first
speech as Viceroy declared that he meant to see that the just
claims of the Irish Catholics should be granted. But the policy
he had proclaimed was disavowed by the cabinet in London, and
within three months he was recalled, and left Dublin amid the
general mourning of the people.
Lord Camden, who succeeded him, found the country seething
with discontent that voiced itself in intermittent disorder. Eng-
land was at war with France, and engaged in military operations
in various parts of the world, so the garrison of regular troops
in Ireland had been greatly reduced. Those that were left there
were scattered in small detachments through the country under
conditions that made discipline dangerously lax. When, in 1796,
rumors came of an impending French invasion, yeomanry and
militia regiments were hurriedly raised to act as armed police,
and allow the regulars to be concentrated for the defence of the
country. " Of course," wrote Camden, " I shall be construed as
arming the Protestants against the Catholics." This was in fact
what he was doing. The new corps were largely recruited among
the Orange lodges, who were bitterly hostile not only to the Catho-
lics, but to the liberal-minded section of the northern Presbyterians.
The new guardians of order proved such a scourge to the
districts in which they were billeted, that the general hostility
to the government became daily more accentuated. The Irish sit-
uation was soon so threatening that Pitt sent Lord Malmesbury
to Paris to try to arrange a peace with the French Republic. The
negotiations dragged on without result till the middle of December,
when Malmesbury was somewhat curtly dismissed from Paris.
There is good reason to believe that the French government thus
rejected the preferred peace largely on account of the hopes they
built upon a plan of concerted action arranged with Wolfe Tone
and the United Irishmen, and now ripe for execution. General
Hoche's expedition was just ready at Brest to sail for Ireland.
There is no need to tell again how the enterprise failed; how the
fleet reached Bantry Bay but without its chief, and how the French
waited without landing, until a gale drove them out to sea and
scattered their ships. In Irish popular tradition, Grouchy, the
second in command, is unjustly blamed for not having landed with
the forces that had reached the bay. But the publication of his
correspondence has proved that he was anxious to risk everything
234 HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND [May,
on a landing, and only the half-heartedness of the admirals pre-
vented him from so doing. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue, the latest
and best historian of the British army, in telling the story of this
episode notes the smallness of the force at the disposal of the
government for the defence of the south, concludes that " if the
French had been able to land even two-thirds of their force by
Christmas day, they would almost infallibly have captured at least
Cork, with an enormous quantity of naval stores and supplies." 1
The Viceroy, Lord Camden, was thoroughly scared, and asked
for more troops from England, but the army was being frittered
away piecemeal in ill-judged operations in the West Indies and
in Europe, and Lord Portland, the Secretary for War, wrote in
reply from London a confession of helpless weakness. " You
know our nakedness in the matter of regular troops," he said.
:( We could not spare you above a thousand regular infantry,
unless we sent the Guards." France had missed a great oppor-
tunity, how great this letter of Portland's plainly shows.
An attempt was made in the following year to organize a
French expedition to Ireland in the Dutch ports, but Admiral Dun-
can's defeat of the covering fleet at Camperdown made the scheme
impossible. After this second failure France for some months
made no further effort to intervene where intervention promised
the largest results. Of the condition of the Irish garrison in the
year of Camperdown, Mr. Fortescue tells us :
The Fencibles (mounted yeomanry) and militia, which con-
stituted practically the whole of it, were at best none too well
disciplined; and the officers, particularly those of the militia,
were for the most part both ignorant and neglectful of their
duty. Moreover these troops had been scattered broadcast
over Ireland in small parties for the protection of isolated
houses and petty towns, under very imperfect supervision or
control. Now flattered and feasted by the country gentlemen;
now cursed and pelted by the poorer classes ; now courted and
bribed by the agents of the disloyal, they were misled and en-
couraged to excesses by the example of their officers and their
betters, and seldom called to account for indiscipline or oppres-
sion. It was a trial which would have corrupted the Ironsides ;
and many corps had disgraced themselves by cruelty and license.
Even Camden realized that such a state of things meant the
*A History of the British Army, by the Hon. J. W. Fortescue. The work is still
in progress. The long range of volumes and atlases of plans so far issued brings
the story up to the opening years of the nineteenth century. It is an authoritative
work based on wide original research.
1914-] HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 235
accentuation of the danger. He asked for a capable soldier to be
sent to reduce the irregular troops to some kind of discipline and
order. But political reasons prevented him from getting the man
he wanted. He asked for Lord Cornwallis, but Cornwallis was
opposed to the government policy, and so was ineligible. The same
reason excluded Lord Moira, a much abler soldier, for Moira was
denouncing from his place in the House of Lords the misgovern-
ment of Ireland. At last the veteran Abercromby reluctantly
accepted the Irish command.
Abercromby, an upright man and a good soldier, made a real
effort to make the army not an instrument of oppres-
sion and cruelty, but of order and defence for the country
and the people. His action provoked the hostility of the landlords
who were crying out for military protection, and the officials who
had connived at illegal court martials on the peasantry and the
burning of their cottages. In a general order, setting forth new
regulations for the troops, dated February 26, 1798, Abercromby
said : " The very disgraceful frequency of court martials, and the
many complaints of irregularity in the conduct of the troops,
have too unfortunately proved the army to be in a state of licen-
tiousness which must render it formidable to everyone but the
enemy." This frank statement called forth a storm of protest
from the party of ascendency. Lord Portland wrote from England
to ask if the order was a forgery. If it was genuine, it was, he
declared, a triumph for the " disaffected." Abercromby saw that
his position was impossible, and resigned his command. The
Speaker, inspired by the officials, declared, in the name of the
Irish House of Commons, its confidence in " the order, alacrity,
vigor, and discipline of the army." It is not an Irish Nationalist
writer, but Mr. Fortescue, the semi-official historian of the British
army, who remarks that " it would not be easy, even in the records
of Dublin Castle, to find a match for such an example of mis-
chievous effrontery." And he goes on to say:
In despair the government left the command for the present
in the hands of the senior officer, General Lake, who, though
a brave soldier, was above all other officers identified with the
military abuses which Abercromby had striven to check. Lest
he also should by chance endeavor to restore discipline, Camden
ordained that no general order should in future be issued until
first submitted to himself. Thus the reign of violence and the
ruin of the soldiery were erected into a sacred principle; and
236 HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND [May,
a rebellion in Ireland was finally assured. No better measures
could have been taken by the ablest and subtlest French agent
for the success of a French invasion.
And this same year, 1798, saw both a rebellion and a French
invasion. The main scene of the famous rising of 1798 was a
county so scantily organized by the United Irishmen, that Lord
Edward Fitzgerald had left it completely out of account in his
report on the strength of the society at the opening of the year.
But the Wexford peasantry were driven into insurrection by the
cruelties of the Orange militia let loose upon them by Camden and
Lake. The struggle was of the briefest. So much incident was
crowded into the time, that it is not easy to realize that less than a
month elapsed from the first success of the rebels at Oulart Hill,
on May 27th, to their crushing defeat by numbers at Vinegar Hill,
on June 2ist. Few regular troops were engaged in the suppression
of the rising. Lake's forces were almost entirely made up of
yeomanry and militia. They revenged their failures in the first
stage of the brief campaign by systematic barbarity when the tide
turned in their favor. Lord Cornwallis who arrived in Dublin on
June 2Oth, with full powers as Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief,
tried to check these outrages, and proclaimed a new policy of
clemency and conciliation. Of the Orange militia he wrote in
scathing condemnation : " The Irish militia are totally without dis-
cipline, contemptible before the enemy when any serious resistance
is made to them, but ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any
poor wretches, with or without arms, come within their power."
Had the French intervention taken place while Wexford was
still in arms, it might have been effective. But it came when
the rising had been everywhere trampled out. The man and the
army that might have changed the course of history were far away
in the Eastern Mediterranean. As Mr. Fortescue says, " Bonaparte
had lost the greatest chance of his life when he took his thirty
thousand veterans to Egypt instead of to Ireland." In the spring,
when the " Army of the East " was gathering at Toulon, it had
been reported that Ireland was its real object, and this was why
Nelson's fleet was sent to the Mediterranean.
The exaggerated reports of the Irish rising that reached
France, encouraged Wolfe Tone to renew his efforts to obtain
help for Ireland. Even after the failure of the insurrection, he
argued that the struggle in Wexford had shown what a wider
movement might effect, if backed by military help from the Re-
1914-] HUMBERTS CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 237
public, and he declared that, while the south had shot its bolt and
failed, the north and west were still waiting only for a call to arms
and effective succor from abroad. All he could obtain, however,
was that the Directory dispatched mere handfuls of troops, all too
late, to the assistance of the Irish patriots, and of these various
expeditions only one, that of General Humbert, effected a landing.
Humbert was the son of a French peasant farmer. He had
received so little education that he could barely write. As a boy
he had worked in the fields. As a young man he had tramped the
country roads dealing in rabbit skins. Then came the Revolution,
and he volunteered for the army. He was a born soldier, and he
rose rapidly to command. He was one of Hoche's brigadiers in
the abortive expedition to Bantry Bay. There for days he had
waited on board one of the frigates in the wind-swept bay, looking
impatiently at the green hills, and longing for the order to land,
and on the return voyage to Brest he had shared the dangers of an
action with a British squadron. He was eager to return to Ireland,
and was inspired with all Wolfe Tone's enthusiasm. On August
6, 1798 more than seven weeks after the battle of Vinegar Hill
he sailed from the Isle d'Aix with a little squadron of three frigates,
conveying one thousand and thirty-six men, veterans of the armies
of the Rhine and of Italy.
The frigates steered for Donegal Bay, but baffled by adverse
winds on August 22d they changed their course, and anchored
in Killala Bay. Humbert landed his small force, and seized the
town after a skirmish with the detachment that held it. He had
expected to find the country ripe for insurrection, and to be joined
by thousands of enthusiastic patriots ready to use the arms he was
landing from his % frigates. But he had come to a part of Ireland
where the people were utterly unorganized, and in their misery had
neither the heart nor the energy for an adventurous enterprise.
Mr. Fortescue says that the small bodies of Connaught peasants
who joined Humbert, were attracted by the " brilliant uniforms "
he gave them. The narratives of some of the French officers,
which M. Guillon published a few years ago in his work La France
et I'Irlande pendant la Revolution, make one suspect that a much
more powerful inducement was the chance of escaping for awhile
from sheer starvation.
The French peasant general and his handful of veterans were
no band of brigands. Their conduct presented a striking contrast
to that of the forces of the government. In a proclamation issued
238 HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND [May,
at Killala, Humbert announced that the strictest discipline would be
enforced, and life and property of non-combatants would be pro-
tected. Unlike so many of the Republican generals, he also de-
clared that the religion of the people would be respected. His
friend Tone had told him that this must be a necessary condition
of any enterprise in Catholic Ireland. Humbert promised to ob-
serve this policy, and he kept his word.
His campaign lasted rather less than three weeks. He
remained four days at Killala, landing stores and arms, or-
ganizing an Irish contingent of a few hundred men, and sending
a detachment inland to occupy Ballina. On August 26th he
marched southwards by Ballina, in the hope that if he could pene-
trate into the interior of Connaught larger numbers would join him.
Major General Hutchinson, who commanded in Connaught, on
hearing of the French landing, had assembled at Castlebar a force
of Irish militia and yeomanry with four guns. Lord Lake was
hurrying to his assistance with more militia and yeomanry, seven
guns, a company of regular infantry, and the Sixth Dragoons, a
regiment of regular cavalry. Various bodies of troops of Corn-
wallis' command were advancing to hold the crossings of the
Shannon, and Cornwallis himself was posting across Ireland to take
the supreme command of the operations. On the evening of the
twenty-seventh he received the startling news that Lake the victor
of Vinegar Hill had been completely routed that morning by the
French.
Humbert had set out from Ballina at three p. m. on August
26th. He learned from his scouts that the bridge at Foxford,
where the road from Ballina to Castlebar crosses the river Moy,
was held by one thousand, two hundred yeomanry under General
Taylor. But led by Irish guides the column left the road, and
moving by rough hill tracks crossed the Moy higher up by an
unguarded ford in the summer evening. Bivouacking for the night,
Humbert resumed his march at dawn, and at six a. m. on the
twenty-seventh he was before Castlebar.
Lake had joined Hutchinson there the day before, and taken
over the command. English accounts estimate his entire force at
less than two thousand men. It must have been much greater.
Humbert was no boaster, and he reported that the enemy was
six thousand strong. This may have been an overestimate, but it
is quite certain that, though he had no cavalry with which to follow
up a pursuit and collect stragglers and broken men as prisoners, he
1914-] HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 239
had in his camp after the battle one thousand two hundred prisoners
and deserters from Lake's force, and it is incredible that only some
eight hundred remained to be accounted for as casualties in the
fight, fugitives from it, and troops who made good their retreat.
Lake had some thousands of men, and his eleven guns were a
formidable feature of his battle line, which was drawn up in front
of the town, one flank secured by a lake, the other by an impassable
bog. Humbert had to make a direct frontal attack. As he had
left two hundred men to hold Killala and Ballina, he had only
about eight hundred regulars with him, besides the Irish contingent
under the command of Matthew Tone and Bartholomew Teeling.
The battle opened with an artillery fight, in which Lake had the
advantage. It is no slur on the undrilled Connaught peasants that
they failed to make good their advance against the cannon. But
Humbert counted for success on a charge of his French veterans,
and before their bayonets most of Lake's array broke in shameful
panic. The gunners, the regular company of the Sixth Foot, and
Roden's Yeomanry, alone made something of a stand and fought
well for awhile. The Sixth Dragoons, who had disgraced them-
selves by indiscipline and cruel outrages on the people during their
march, broke and galloped away without striking a blow. The
Longford and Kilkenny Militia, the Loyal Galway Volunteers and
Fraser's Yeomanry dissolved into mobs of fugitives. Some of the
militia of the west it is true had no heart in the fight, and
after it was over numbers of them came into Humbert's camp as
deserters. But most of them were clearly anxious to get away as
quickly and as far as possible from the scene of action. Some
of them did not halt till they reached Tuam, forty miles away;
others came streaming into Athlone. Eleven guns, all the stores at
Castlebar, and several regimental colors, were the prize of the
victors.
Cornwallis had reached Athlone on the evening of the battle.
He remained there till August 3Oth, rallying the remains of Lake's
beaten detachment, bringing up reinforcements, and rapidly col-
lecting a formidable force. Humbert had proclaimed the Irish
Republic at Castlebar, and fortified the town, but there were scant
signs of the widespread insurrection on which he had counted.
On September 4th, learning that Cornwallis was approaching from
Athlone at the head of greatly superior forces, the French general
called in all his detached parties, and marched to Foxford. His
subsequent movements show that his object was to avoid for awhile
240 HUMBERTS CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND [May,
a decisive action, and strike for either Ulster or the centre of
Ireland, on the chance of reaching a district more ripe for insur-
rection, and maintaining himself until further succor could arrive
from France. He naturally anticipated that the news of his vic-
tory at Castlebar would be the signal for further expeditions to be
hurried off to Ireland.
Cornwallis was strong enough in numbers to divide his force.
He sent a column under Lake to follow up Humbert, whilst he him-
self with the main body marched eastwards towards Carrick-on-
Shannon, to secure the river crossing there and head off the French.
On a report that Humbert was moving northeastwards from Fox-
ford, Cornwallis sent orders to the garrison at Sligo to abandon the
place without attempting to defend it if the French attacked, and to
retreat to Ballyshannon or Enniskillen. This is enough to show
how great was the alarm created by the fight at Castlebar. Corn-
wallis had no idea that his opponents were a mere handful.
On September 5th Humbert was approaching Colloony, when
he found his way barred by the Limerick Militia under Colonel
Vereker. The colonel, though he had only three hundred men
with him, made a stubborn fight on well-chosen ground. It took the
French an hour to clear the way, and when Vereker retired towards
Sligo, Humbert concluded that he would not have made such a
stand unless he had strong supports behind him and near at hand.
He therefore judged that the militia must be the advanced guard
of an army. It was the only mistake he made, but it had serious
consequences. Abandoning the advance of Sligo he marched by
Drummahair to Manor Hamilton, where he arrived on September
6th. His object so far had been to reach the wild mountain coun-
try of Donegal. But he had changed his plans, and now made the
much more difficult attempt to shake off Lake's pursuit, evade Corn-
wallis at Carrick by crossing the Shannon near Lough Allen, and
push into the centre of Ireland.
He succeeded in crossing the river at Ballintra on the seventh.
But next day at Ballinamuck he found the British columns closing
in all around him. Lake was following him closely. Cornwallis
had come up on his right flank from Carrick. Other masses of
troops were reported in front. Hopelessly outnumbered he made a
brief fight, and then, when it was clear that further resistance meant
only the useless loss of brave lives, he surrendered. Only eight
hundred men of the thousand who had landed at Killala were with
him in this last stand.
1914-] HUMBERT'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND 241
Irish and French writers naturally give high praise to Hum-
bert and his gallant band. It would be easy to quote many such
testimonies. But more significant is the judgment of the English
military historian. Of Humbert's campaign Mr. Fortescue says:
If ever commander did himself honor by the exemplary be-
havior of his troops, by moderation towards the inhabitants of
an invaded country, and by indomitable courage in a desperate
situation, it was this rough, illiterate Humbert. It was not vain
glory when he wrote, after his landing, to the Directory that
if he were reenforced by two thousand men Ireland would be
free.
And it is no enthusiastic Irish patriot who gives this opinion,
but an Englishman studying the records of the time in the spirit of
a scientific historian. Of what followed he goes on to say:
This most shameful episode did not end the disgrace of the
troops in Ireland. The rebellion which had been kindled in
Connaught needed now to be suppressed; and notwithstanding
a succession of severe orders issued by Cornwallis to restrain
the prevailing military disorder, the unhappy peasants were
pursued with a ferocity, which even to the present day has never
been forgiven.
The panic created by Humbert's raid and the rumor of further
French expeditions, led to England being stripped of troops and its
whole defence disorganized to reenforce the garrison in Ireland.
But the government could not control, and could not always even
trust, its own troops. A Scotch Fencible regiment was disbanded
by Cornwallis because its officers refused to convict some of their
colleagues of open misconduct. The Fifth Irish Dragoons, a regu-
lar regiment, incurred the same fate, because it was discovered that
the ranks were full of men who were in communication with the
United Irishmen. For many years its place was a blank in the
army list, till, long after, the Fifth Irish Lancers were raised to
replace it.
Humbert's subsequent career is worth noting. Like other
stern Republicans, he refused to worship the rising sun of imperial-
ism, and having thus incurred the displeasure of Napoleon, he
emigrated to the United States. There, on January 8, 1815, he had
his revenge for his failure in Ireland, for he victoriously com-
manded a brigade under Jackson, when the British attack on New
Orleans ended in disaster for the invaders.
VOL. xcix. 16
Books*
BREAD AND CIRCUSES. By Helen Parry Eden. New York:
John Lane Co. $1.25 net.
Out of England comes a new proof of the fact that piety and
mirth may comfortably dwell together. Helen Parry Eden's Bread
and Circuses is justly named. For this book of verse its author's
first contains some poems that are passionately devout, hot and
bright with the flame of the Catholic faith, and others that are as
irresistibly merry as the laughter of the little girl about whom
many of them were written.
Many contemporary Catholic poets take, as might be expected,
Francis Thompson for their master, and make, some of them with
distinguished success, irregular odes full of great Latin flowers
of speech. They deserve our gratitude and encouragement. But it
is good while we remember The Hound of Heaven not to forget
Burning-Babe, St. Peter's Complaint, The Weeper, and (nearer our
own time) The Habit of Perfection and Te Marty rum Candidatus.
There is no fixed ritual of song. Francis Thompson did not
blindly follow the lead of Coventry Patmore, nor will the Church's
new laureate, when he comes, blindly follow the lead of Francis
Thompson. So it is encouraging to see that Mrs. Eden is inde-
pendent in her expression. She tells the beautiful truth in her own
beautiful way. Sometimes, as in The Confessional, she writes
with a reverent but almost whimsical fanci fulness that suggests
Richard Crashaw. But nearly always she is strikingly original.
And with what grace, with what simplicity, she celebrates the
highest things ! The term " mystic " has been of late used so
carelessly, even by those who should know better, that conscientious
critics hesitate to apply it. The temptation to do so is strong,
however, when there are under consideration such startlingly vivid
revelations of the life of the soul as A Purpose of Amendment,
The Confessional, and the unforgettable Elegy for Father Anselm.
This last must rank among the really great elegiac poems of all
time; it is a sincere personal tribute, a tremendous symbol of
Catholic doctrine, and an enduringly beautiful work of art. It is
too long for quotation; here is a shorter poem which needs no
introductory words of praise :
1914.] NEW BOOKS 243
SORROW.
Of Sorrow, 'tis as Saints have said
That his ill-savoured lamp shall shed
A light to Heaven, when, blown about
By the world's vain and windy rout,
The candles of delight burn out.
Then usher Sorrow to thy board,
Give him such fare as may afford
Thy single habitation best
To meet him half-way in his quest,
The importune and sad-eyed guest.
Yet somewhat should he give who took
Thy hospitality, for look,
His is no random vagrancy,
Beneath his rags what hints there be
Of a celestial livery.
Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with pierced feet.
There is the same simplicity in the lighter poems, and there is
in addition a kindly humor like that of Robert Louis Stevenson at
his best. The Ark is deliciously droll with just the faintest touch
of spiritual dignity in the last few line. Cries of London, Effany,
and The Baby Goat are exquisite interpretations. Mrs. Eden writes
much about " Betsey- Jane," her little daughter. With this adorably
human child, every reader of the book must fall in love. Seldom
has the very spirit of childhood been portrayed in words with such
skill and tenderness as in A House in a Wood and The Petals.
Sometimes, as in A Lady of Fashion on the Death of Her Dog
and The Senior Mistress of Blyth, Mrs. Eden shows that gift of
keen satire which has made her a welcome contributor to the pages
of Punch; sometimes, as in her Sestina to D. E. and the double
sonnet Bournemouth to Poole, she shows her dexterity in the use
of difficult forms. But the poems which are her most valuable
contributions to the world's beauty are those inspired by her faith,
and those inspired by her little daughter. And between these two
sorts of poetry there is no sharp division. Only those poets write
beautifully of children who think beautifully of the Child.
244 NEW BOOKS [May,
ALLEN'S DEFENCE OF ENGLISH CATHOLICS: 1584. Two
Volumes. St. Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents net each.
These two volumes are indeed worthy of a place in the Catholic
Library, for they are of absorbing interest both from a literary
and an historical standpoint. Allen shows conclusively that the
accusation of treason by Lord Burghley against the English martyrs
under Elizabeth is absolutely unwarranted and unjust. They were
put to death for their religion, for " ministering the holy sac-
raments, obeying the Apostolic See, persuading their friends to be
Catholics, the priesthood and the like," and not for anything
treasonable. You may call a man a traitor for saying Mass or
practising the Catholic faith, but he does not become a traitor by
a Protestant politician's ipse dixit. In strong dignified words, Allen
defends his martyred brethren, and calls the attention of the world
to the hypocrisy of the English government of the time, which
did its utmost to connect the martyrs with the charge of plotting
the death of Elizabeth or of conspiring against the State. As
Cardinal Bourne remarks in his preface, this book is an excellent
argument against the modern Anglican theory of continuity. He
says : " To such a groundless theory the lives and deaths of our
Blessed Martyrs are the very best and most conclusive reply.
They knew, and they gave their lives because they knew, that a fun-
damental change was being wrought in the religious condition of
the country."
The text from which this edition is reprinted bears no date,
nor place, nor author's name, but is the original edition which
appeared in 1584.
THE TREASURE. By Kathleen Norris. New York : The Mac-
millan Co. $1.00 net.
We have heard that many an anxious householder, who has
worried for years over the servant problem, has been writing
the author for the address of that perfect American School of
Domestic Science, where the " Treasure " learned her business
so well. For Justine, " the Treasure," knows how to run a house
for her mistress economically, and at the same time give to all its
members the most perfect meals. Still Mrs. Salisbury is not
satisfied. Why this prize servant " goes to Perry's to see their
prize chrysanthemums," visits the apartment stores " to look at an
extraordinary sale of serges," and saddest of all, " often quietly
decides to take a bath before luncheon." And the author adds with
1914-] NEW BOOKS 245
a smile : " Why, Mrs. Salisbury had had maids who never onee
asked for the use of the bathroom, although they had been for
months in her employ." Her heart is broken finally, when she
finds out that her maid is to talk at the exclusive Forum Club,
" membership in which was most prized by the women of River
Falls." The interview of mistress and maid, in which the mistress
tries in vain " to put Justine in her place," is delightfully told.
We recommend this clever book to every woman struggling with
the servant problem. Indeed we think the husbands, who have
listened patiently to the complaints of their wives concerning the
extravagant demands of the servants of the day, will also enjoy
the book. We hope that Kathleen Norris will continue to write
stories of the typical American home.
THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN. By Joseph H. Longford.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 40 cents net.
Professor Longford, one time English consul at Nagasaki,
and now professor of Japanese at King's College, London, has
written a most entertaining account of the rise and development
of modern Japan. He says rightly, " That it is the story of one
of the most eventful reigns of any period or of any nation in the
world's history, a story which is full of the most pregnant lessons,
of what can be achieved by an intelligent and courageous people,
working with whole-hearted patriotism. M
After a brief sketch of the history of Japan, Professor Long-
ford treats of the abolition of the Shogunate; the assumption of
power by the new Emperor, Mutsu Hito; his political and social
reforms; the abolition of feudalism; the mitigation of the cruel
penal code; the formation of a Parliament; the organization of
the army; the fight for national autonomy, etc. Our author cor-
rects one common impression about Japan, viz., that she reformed
herself; that her own statesmen saw of themselves the immense
material superiority of Western civilization, and deliberately fol-
lowed the example set by the nations of the West. He says:
" Nothing could be further from the truth. Her entry into the
paths of Western civilization was largely due to the persistent goad-
ing of Sir Henry Parkes; her subsequent achievements to the tui-
tion of the large band of foreign experts whom she had the good
fortune to enlist in her service, and who served her as loyally and
whole-heartedly as they did efficiently." A brief account is given
of the wars with China and Russia, the seizure of Korea, and the
246 NEW BOOKS [May,
recent dispute with California. Nothing whatever is said of the
vices of the Japanese, but every well-informed man is aware of the
dark background to this bright picture of mere material progress.
MARIOLOGY. A Dogmatic Treatise on the Blessed Virgin Mary.
With an Appendix on the Worship of the Saints, Relics, and
Images. By Rev. J. Pohle, D.D. Translated by Arthur
Preuss. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
We recommend to our readers this excellent series of dogmatic
textbooks, written by Dr. Pohle of the University of Breslau, and
translated by Arthur Preuss of St. Louis. This is the sixth volume
in English dress, the others being, God, His Knowability , Essence,
and Attributes; The Divine Trinity; God the Author of Nature and
the Supernatural; Christology, and Soteriology.
Dr. Pohle follows the general lines of the ordinary theological
textbook, treating in turn Mary, the Mother of God ; her Immacu-
late Conception; her Sinlessness; her Perpetual Virginity; her
Assumption into Heaven, etc. An appendix discusses briefly the
Catholic doctrine of the veneration of the saints, their relics and
images.
CONTINUITY. The Presidential Address to the British Associa-
tion for 1913. By Sir Oliver Lodge. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $1.00.
Sir Oliver Lodge, answering the question, " What in the main
is the characteristic of the promising though perturbing period
in which we live ? " answers : " Rapid progress, combined with
fundamental skepticism." According to him, the dominating con-
troversies of the day concern vitalism in physiology; atomic struc-
ture in chemistry; the laws of inheritance in biology; the curricula
in education ; everything in economic and political science ; back to
the garden of Eden and the inter-relations of men and women,
and continuity in the mathematical and physical sciences. Every-
where, he maintains, a kind of philosophic skepticism is in the
ascendant, resulting in a mistrust of purely intellectual processes,
and in a recognition of the limited scope of science.
The whole address on continuity in the inorganic world, in
biology, and of personality after death, is meant to be a protest
against this excessive modern skepticism, but we do not think the
protest very effective. His plea for immortality rests on the frail
basis of the investigation of the phenomena of spiritism, and his
1914.] NEW BOOKS 247
utterances are vague once he leaves physics for metaphysics. The
paper, however, contains some very valuable and significant state-
ments :
If any philosopher tells you that you do not exist, or that
the external world does not exist, or that you are an automaton
without free will, that all your actions are determined by out-
side causes, and that you are not responsible or that a body
cannot move out of its place, or that Achilles cannot catch a
tortoise then in all those cases appeal must be made to twelve
average men unsophisticated by special studies It is my
function to remind you that our studies do not exhaust the uni-
verse, and that if we dogmatize in a negative direction, and
say that we can reduce everything to physics and chemistry,
we gibbet ourselves as ludicrously narrow pedants, and are
falling far short of the richness and fullness of our human
birthright Scientific men are looked up to as authorities,
and should be careful not to mislead.
THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR DUMONT. By Frederick
Arthur. New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.35 net.
If you are weary of problem novels and want a real old-
fashioned romance with plenty of " thrills," read The Mysterious
Monsieur Dumont. It is a tale of the French Revolution (Book
I.), and the days of Napoleon (Book II.). We are introduced
into the homes of th'e old French nobility; we fight with the
Royalists in La Vendee ; we are witnesses of the noyades of Carrier
at Nantes, and the guillotining of the aristocrats in Paris; we
enter into the secret lodge meetings of the Templars and the II-
luminati; we follow the heroine in her escape to England; we
take flying trips to Paris, London, Hamburg, and Dantzic; we are
present at the battle of Friedland; we learn the details of the
famous interview of Napoleon and the Tsar at Tilsit, etc.
Throughout the story the mysterious M. Dumont does the most
marvelous things. He fights duels with the greatest swordsmen of
Europe ; he is Grand Master of a great secret society ; he controls
all the inner workings of the French Revolution; he rescues fair
damsels from the guillotine; he acts as secret agent of the Eng-
lish government against Napoleon and we discovered at the very
outset of the story that this wonderful man was a woman. This
improbable novel is well written, and, although we do not admire
the heroine very much, we were glad to know the hero wins her
finally after his strenuous wooing.
248 NEW BOOKS [May,
THE DAUGHTER OF A STAR. By Christian Reid. New York :
The Devin-Adair Co. $1.35 net.
Mrs. Lestrange cold-hearted, selfish, vain, deceitful aband-
oned her husband and daughter for a stage career. Years after,
desirous of money to finance a new play, she sends her quondam
admirer, Stafford, across the ocean to induce her wealthy daughter
to leave her Mexican hacienda. Sylvia, who at once falls in love
with her mother's ambassador without knowing it, finally consents
to be initiated into all the ways of modern London life. She man-
ages innocently enough to embitter her unworthy mother,
by taking her place as understudy in a most wonderful and improb-
able way, and by frustrating her plans of marrying a wealthy
Russian prince. Of course Sylvia rejects both her Mexican and
her Russian lovers, and accepts Stafford, who is well worthy of her.
The story is well told, and could readily be staged as a most enter-
taining melodrama.
CLIO, A MUSE AND OTHER ESSAYS LITERARY AND PE-
DESTRIAN. By George M. Trevelyan. New York : Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
We read these charming essays with the most intense pleasure,
although we found ourselves dissenting more than once from the
author's cocksure statements of fact and theory. His first essay
on the writing of history is a protest against the modern German
scientific method, and a plea for the old English or literary method.
To his mind there are three distinct functions of history, the
scientific, the imaginative or speculative, and the literary. The
scientific supposes the accumulation of facts and the sifting of
evidence ; the imaginative selects and classifies the facts ; while the
literary function exposes the results of science and imagination in a
form that will attract and educate the people. He is right in object-
ing to have the youth of to-day drilled into so many " Potsdam
guards of learning," but he puts too high a value on the historical
work of a Carlyle and a Macaulay.
Mr. Trevelyan has a right to speak on George Meredith, as
every reader of The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith
knows. He calls special attention to Verrall's omission to notice
the element of imagination and poetry in Meredith's novels. " If
Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo " is a fine piece of imag-
inative writing, although no two men would agree upon the outcome
so vividly described by our author. Mr. Trevelyan, however, is at
1914-] NEW BOOKS 249
his best when he yields to the glamor of the road, and tells us about
his walking trips in the Middle Marches, Devon or Cornwall, or
far away through the mists of the Pyrenees, or in that paradise for
the walker, Central Italy.
THE PEACOCK FEATHER. By Leslie Moore. New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
Peter the Piper is a most wonderful Knight of the Road.
He plays a penny whistle in a way that a Mozart or a Paderewski
might envy ; writes novels which great critics hurry to praise, and
indites such winning letters that high-born and beauteous ladies
yearn to answer him. Yet he tramps the English roads in summer
and in winter, varying the monotony by stopping for a time in a
deserted cottage ; reading Chaucer under a hedge, rescuing mongrel
puppies in distress, and treating ugly girls to all the good things
of a village fair.
We know, however, that all things will turn out well in the
end, for Father O'Sullivan is praying for him, Muriel is kneeling
day after day to St. Joseph, and Lady Anne's heart is hoping that
in some way the fates will intervene to prove her hero innocent.
A deathbed confession in a city hospital at last shows that Peter
suffered his three years imprisonment merely to shield a friend.
Instantly all England is scoured for a man in a peacock feather,
and Peter at last returns to delight the last days of his dear old
father, General Garden, and to marry the Lady Anne.
LETTERS OF MARY AIKENHEAD. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son,
Ltd. $3.00.
As Father McSweeney says in his preface, " These letters
are free from all suspicion of artificality, because they are the out-
pourings of the mind and heart of a great woman of God to those
whom she felt and knew would not abuse her confidence
Right through them rings clear the cry for the Divine Help in all
things; right through them are a distrust in human means alone
and a supreme trust in God."
These letters of the Founder of the Sisters of Charity in
Ireland (1815) are sufficient to indicate something of her energy
and breadth of mind, though they give but a scanty outline of her
many activities. Most of them were written between the years
1832 and 1858. Afflicted by a painful illness, she was during this
period unable to move about or to take part in the general work of
250 NEW BOOKS [May,
her order. She made up for her enforced bodily activity by the
activity of her mind. Her correspondence manifested her continual
anxiety for both the spiritual and bodily welfare of her Sisters. She
is ever inculcating in her letters forbearance and charity, and giving
a perfect example of patience and conformity to the will of God.
She is ever urging upon her disciples the duties of prayer, meditation
and the reading of the wisdom of the saints. Her letters are rich
in memories of the writings of a Kempis, St. Augustine, and St.
Ignatius. We heartily recommend this book to religious com-
munities.
HISTORY OF DOGMAS. By J. Tixeront. Volume II. From
St. Athanasius to St. Augustine (A. D. 318 to 430) . St. Louis :
B. Herder. $1.50 net.
In this scholarly volume the Abbe Tixeront gives a complete
sketch of the Greek and Latin heresies of the fourth century, and
a general outline of Greek, Latin, and Syriac theology. Two spe-
cial chapters are devoted to the teaching of St. Augustine. We
spoke of the author's History of Dogma when it first appeared
three years ago in the original French. The anonymous translator
has done his work admirably well.
IN OUR LADY'S PRAISE. An Anthology. Compiled by E. H.
Day, D.D. With a Foreword by the Viscount Halifax. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. 75 cents net.
It is an interesting proof of the comprehensiveness of the
Anglican Church to have some of its members calling the Blessed
Virgin an ordinary woman, and deeming love to her an insult to her
divine Son, and to find other devout clients of Mary in the same
communion compiling anthologies in her praise. We must object
to the inclusion of some very mediocre verses. Why Cram, Gur-
ney, and Van Allen should be mentioned in the same breath with
Chaucer, de Vere, and Wordsworth is beyond us.
LIVES OF THE ENGLISH MARTYRS. Second Series: The
Martyrs Declared Venerable. Volume I., 1583-1588. Edited
by Edwin H. Burton, D.D., and J. H. Pollen, SJ. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.50 net.
The previous volumes of this series edited by Dom Bede
Camm, O.S.B., dealt with those martyrs who were beatified by
Pope Leo XIII. in 1886 and 1895; they carried the story down to
1914.] NEW BOOKS 251
the middle of the year 1583. This book, the third of the series,
treats of the lives of sixty-eight martyrs who died for the faith be-
tween the years 1583 and 1588. Many writers have contributed to
this volume, which has been drawn from many fresh sources, such
as the papers from the Public Record Office and other documents
published by the Catholic Record Society, and the Acts of the
Privy Council edited by Mr. Dasent.
The list of martyrs is the traditional one, namely, that which
is found in the decree of December 9, 1886, by which these martyrs
and others were declared Venerable. The introduction to the
previous volume described the change in the character of the per-
secution which was brought about by the Act of 1581. In the
present volume we witness a greater development of repressive
measures following the Act of 1585, entitled "An Act Against
Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and Other Such Like Disobedient Per-
sons," which outlawed the whole of the secular and regular clergy
for two hundred years. All the priests who had been ordained be-
fore the reign of Elizabeth remained throughout their lives subject
only to the same statutes as the laity, though there were some
special provisions in their regard. These priests were liable to a
charge of high treason for five classes of offences: (after 1563)
I. Maintaining the authority of the Pope after having been pre-
viously convicted of the same ; II. Refusing the oath of supremacy
for the second time; (after 1571) III. Procuring, using or receiv-
ing any bull or form of reconciliation; (after 1581) IV. Absolving
or reconciling anyone to the Church; V. Being absolved or recon-
ciled to the Church. But the Jesuits and all English priests or-
dained abroad were declared traitors once they put foot in Eng-
land. This Act of 1585, therefore, marked a definite change in
the character of the persecution, and from that date onwards priest-
hunting became one of the salient features in the oppression of
English Catholicism. Lay Catholics also came under the statute
if they received or relieved a priest, and were guilty of felony, which
meant that they were to be hanged instead of being cut down alive,
boweled, and quartered. The chief political excuse for this cruel
act was the assassination of the Prince of Orange, July, 1584.
The vast majority of the martyrs were priests. The govern-
ment hoped to destroy Catholicism by depriving the faithful of the
Mass and the sacraments on the one hand, and by forcing them to
attend Protestant worship on the other. Many laymen were im-
prisoned for refusing to attend the Anglican service; they were
252 NEW BOOKS [May,
put to death for alleged high treason if they assisted or harbored
priests.
In order to make the Catholic position appear openly treason-
able the martyrs were asked questions like the following : " Whose
part wouldst thou take, if the Pope or any other by his authority
should make war against the Queen ? " These questions were irrel-
evant, unfair, adapted to excite prejudice, and not sanctioned by
any statute. They involved the utterly inadmissible claim that it
was right to judge a man's interior intentions, and to condemn
him to death for them. It was morally impossible for a Catholic
to answer these questions so as to satisfy his persecutors, for they
involved postulates, which both sides were sure to take in different
senses.
For many months before the Armada appeared no Catholics
had been put to death, but from contemporary documents we
know that the government was contemplating measures of unusual
severity. Five days after the Armada appeared three priests were
put to death at Derby, and as soon as the defeat of the Armada
was known, the government determined on wholesale executions.
What makes Lord Burghley's responsibility so heavy is, that he
himself was all the time convinced that the Catholics in England
were perfectly loyal to Elizabeth during the Armada crisis. He
says this plainly in a document now in the British Museum, entitled
'A Letter Sent Out of England to Don Bernardino de Mendoza.
Yet in one year he had thirty-one martyrs put to death.
EUCHARIST AND PENANCE IN THE FIRST SIX CENTURIES
OF THE CHURCH. By Gerhard Rauschen, S.T.D. Author-
ized Translation in the Second German Edition. St. Louis :
B. Herder. $1.25 net.
Professor Rauschen published the first edition of this treatise
six years ago, and ever since that time he has been answering the
attacks of both Catholic and non-Catholic scholars. Bonaccorsi
translated the work into Italian in 1909, and Decker and Ricard into
French in 1910. In this second edition the author has thoroughly
revised his work, so as to answer fully the criticisms of his numer-
ous opponents. The present edition contains some fifty pages more
than the first. The latest researches of liberal Protestants on the
institution of the Eucharist are now given at length, and their
validity examined ; he assumes a stronger position in regard to the
Wieland-Dorsch controversy on the essence of the Sacrifice of the
1914.] NEW BOOKS 253
Mass; he reconsiders the question of the forgiveness of capital
sins in the primitive Church by the light of the objections raised by
Stufler; he adds a new chapter on the frequency of, and the dis-
positions required for, Communion in the early Church.
The importance and scope of this treatise may be gathered
from the subjects treated, viz., The Real Presence, Transubstan-
tiation, the Institution of the' Eucharist, the Nature of the Sacrifice
of the Mass, the Canon of the Mass, the Epiclesis, Frequent Com-
munion, Absolution of Capital Sins, Public Confession, Public
Penance, and Auricular Confession.
PEDAGOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. By Maria Montessori.
Translated from the Italian by Frederic Taber Cooper. New
York: Frederick Stokes Co. $3.50 net.
Our chief objection to Madame Montessori in her first book,
The Montessori Method, was her over-insistence on liberty for the
child, which was very apt to degenerate into license. We are sorry
to say that in her second book, Pedagogical Anthropology, she
seems to have gone to the opposite extreme, and to have become
a convert to the cause of philosophic determinism.
Cesare Lombroso, Achille De Giovanni and E. Morselli have
become her guides. She writes :
The libertarians admit the freedom of the will as one of the
noblest of human prerogatives on which the responsibility of
our acts depends; the determinists recognize that the active
volition obeys certain predetermined causes. Now the Lom-
brosian theories find these causes, not after the fashion of
the Pythagoreans, in cosmic laws or astrology, but in the con-
stitution of the organism, thus serving as a powerful illustration
of that physiological determinism, under whose guidance mod-
ern positive philosophy draws its inspiration It is not too
much to say, that it is etiology which, applied to the Lombrosian
doctrines, reveals the faults of society, the sins of the world,
and, applied to the theories of De Giovanni, reveals its errors;
and that from the two together there results a sort of ethical
guide leading toward the supreme ideal of the purification of
the world and the perfection mean of human species.
We are rather astonished to be told, when thousands of scien-
tists the world over have rejected Lombroso 's theory of a criminal
type, that " the defective physical development tells us that the
psychic personality must also have its defects " or that, in the
254 NEW BOOKS [May,
words of Rousseau, " our intellectual gifts, our vices, our virtues,
and consequently our characters, are all dependent upon our organ-
ism." We sincerely hope that the emotional Maria Montessori
will find few followers in these United States.
MEN AND MATTERS. By Wilfrid Ward. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $3.50 net.
Mr. Waif rid Ward has gathered together .in the present
volume a number of personal studies on Disraeli, George Wyndham,
Chesterton, John Stuart Mill, Cardinal Vaughan, and Cardinal
Newman, and a number of theological essays on the idea of Church
authority, of her conservative genius, and her success in combining
traditional scholastic teaching with the developments of science
and thought.
He defends Disraeli against Lord Cromer, who maintained
that he was " a political adventurer who used his genius to found
a political school based on extreme self-seeking opportunism." Mr.
Ward praises Disraeli's foreign policy; his political seriousness
and earnestness; his unfailing sense of humor; his striving after
the great ideal of a democratic toryism, and his extreme frank-
ness in openly proclaiming his personal ambition.
He feels with Mr. Balfour that Mr. Wyndham's gifts have
not received their full meed of praise, partly because they never
found the theatre whence they could be so exhibited as to be un-
mistakable to the world at large.
Mr. Chesterton he finds penetrating and not superficial, serious
and not merely a purveyor of acrobatic feats of the intellect. " I
class his thought though not his manner with that of such men as
Burke, Butler, and Coleridge." He thinks, however, that Mr.
Chesterton's tirade against liberal theology seems to miss the mark,
and that frequently he does not answer an enemy at all, but spends
his page in refuting a travesty of his position which no one worth
convincing holds.
Of John Stuart Mill he writes:
There are many signs in his correspondence that Mill did,
in the years following the death of his wife, earnestly desire
to accept a form of theism. What kept him from a nearer
approach to Christianity appears to have been partly the in-
sufficiency of such Christian apologetics as he could find
He had none of that natural antagonism to the deepest principles
of Christianity which his father and so many others have had.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 255
His ultimate conclusion was on the whole in favor of a
benevolent Deity limited in power, to cooperate with whom in
improving the world was the most inspiring motive conceivable
for human action.
The essay on Cardinal Newman's sensitiveness is an answer
to those critics who objected to the insertion of certain personal
documents by Mr. Ward in his Life of the Cardinal. His defence
is : " To tell the truth at once is an intelligible and dignified course,
and though some may criticize, most will respect it The faith-
ful and accurate delineation of Newman's personality, with its
very peculiar forms of sensitiveness, was necessary to the picture
of his genius and of his life."
Mr. Ward's theological essays are concerned chiefly with
" the intellectual and moral temper of the ideal Christian savant
and thinker, absolutely candid, jealous of the interests both of
scientific and religious truth, patient of temporary perplexities, and
apparent contradictions, disciplined to discriminate hypotheses from
established conclusions, and conscious that each stage of intellectual
inquiry was but a step on the road towards ultimate truth."
HALF HOUR WITH GOD'S HEROES, OR STORIES FROM
THE SACRED BOOK. By Rev. T. D. Williams. Baltimore:
John Murphy Co. $1.00; postpaid, $1.10.
Father Williams who is well known as the author of an
excellent Textual Concordance of the Holy Scriptures, has written
an excellent story book of Old Testament history for Catholic
children. He says in his preface : " Perhaps the best claim to any
merit this work may have lies in this, that it is somewhat different
from most others 6*f its kind. It enters more into detail than most
of the Bible stories hitherto written." It will prove a useful book
to Sunday-school teachers.
FRANCISCO PALOU'S LIFE AND APOSTOLIC LABORS OF
THE VENERABLE FATHER JUNfPERO SERRA. Founder
of the Franciscan Missions of California. Translated by C.
Scott Williams, with an Introduction and Notes by George
Wharton James. Los Angeles, Cal. : George Wharton James.
$10.00.
This life of Father Junipero Serra, written by one of his mis-
sionary companions, was first published in the city of Mexico in
1787. A few chapters, with snatches here and there from the
256 NEW BOOKS [May,
original, were translated in 1890 by Father Adam, the Vicar Gen-
eral of Los Angeles. Father Mestres, Pastor of Monterey, where
Father Serra lived and died, w r as just about to begin a translation
of this work when Professor Williams was putting this volume
through the press. The translation is well done. Father Engle-
hardt, the well-known author of the Missions and Missionaries of
California, has carefully gone over the manuscript to correct all in-
accuracies of statement in regard to the Catholic Church, while one
of the Jesuits of Santa Clara has translated all the Latin texts.
Mr. James, a non-Catholic, is right in acclaiming Father Junipero
Serra as " one of the noblest, purest, most self-sacrificing, devoted,
humble, apostolic, and Christ-like of men." We are sorry that the
excessive price of this book will prevent its being widely read.
MODERNISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. By J. M. Bampton,
S.J. London: Sands & Co. 10 cents.
Readers who see no harm in the teaching of the modernists,
as well as those in search of additional weapons against such teach-
ing, will profit by a thoughtful study of Father Bampton's book.
It is a reproduction of seven lectures against modernism, with
special reference to M. Loisy and others. There is no invective
or abuse of any kind. The language is simple and straightforward,
the conclusions inevitable. The initial error of the modernists is
the error of Kant, that God and the supernatural are unattainable
by intellectual apprehension. To call Christ " a fact conscious-
ness," implying thereby that there may or may not be an historical
Christ, is useless to human nature Calling out for a divine example
and a divine assistance. The vague modernist interpretations of the
Resurrection are similarly dealt with. The clear message of the
Church uttered against all this mental confusion, is repeated in
this volume in a way to bring many waverers within her fold.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
By A. B. Sharpe, M.A. St. Louis : B. Herder. 35 cents net.
This little book consists of two hundred and thirteen questions
and answers on various points of Catholic belief arranged under
eighteen headings, namely, questions on God, the Soul, the Church,
the Sacraments, etc. All these questions have been actually pro-
pounded by persons desirous of knowing the true teaching of the
Church. A good index is given at the end, a most necessary
addition to a book of this kind. The author keeps a safe way be-
1914.] NEW BOOKS 257
tween the abstruse and the obvious. The moss-grown clap-trap
so dear to popular anti-Catholicism is skillfully cleared away, leav-
ing space in the mind for a proper understanding of the truths
which support, and of falsehoods which war against, Catholic life.
A COMPLETE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION.
Translated from the German of Rev. Joseph Deharbe, S.J.
Edited by Rev. James J. Fox, D.D., and Rev. Thomas Mc-
Millan, C.S.P. New York: Schwartz, Kirvvin & Fauss.
36 cents.
Father Deharbe's catechism, which was translated into English
some forty years ago, has been used extensively in the Sunday
schools and colleges of the United States. Many of us who studied
it word for word as children, have felt grateful to Father DeHarbe
for his thorough treatment of Catholic doctrine, though later on in
life we realized the need of a careful revision from the viewpoint
of style and the better wording of individual questions. We are
glad to inform our readers that this work of revision has been
carefully carried out by Dr. Fox, one of the best theologians at the
Catholic University at Washington, and by Father McMillan, one
of the most experienced, capable, and best loved Sunday-school di-
rectors in the United States.
We know of no better book to put in the hands of the inquirer
after religious truth.
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE. The
Tragedie of Cymbeline. Edited by Horace Howard Furness.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $4.00 net.
In his preface Mr. Furness quotes Dr. Johnson's adverse com-
ment on Cymbeline. In his youthful days Mr. Furness tells us he
resented such criticism as unfair, but time has forced him to confess
that Dr. Johnson was right in his estimate of Cymbeline, " the
sweetest, tenderest, profoundest of almost all the immortal galaxy."
Mr. Furness attributes the inferiority of this play to Shakes-
peare's advancing years 1604-1611. He is confident that there
are many passages in this play which no lover of
Shakespeare would admit could have been written by him.
He believes that the Imogen love story and all that immediately
touched it interested Shakespeare deeply, and that the Cymbeline
portion was turned over to some unknown assistant, who at times in-
serted, even on the ground sacred to Imogen, lines and sentiment
VOL. xcix. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [May,
conspicuous by their dullness. One character, Belarius, was wholly
confided to him. The masque in the fifth act which Stevens termed
"contemptible nonsense" and Staughton called "pitiful mummery,"
is beyond question an interpolation.
From the earliest editorial days, the days of Pope, gross
inequalities have been recognized in this play. Some critics have
suggested that it was written by Shakespeare at different periods
of his life; that he began it in youth and revised it in his maturer
years. But Mr. Furness declares that he cannot picture Shakes-
peare young enough to be so devoid of dramatic instinct, so barren
of poesy as to intermingle within the limit of a single play such
heights of poetry and depths of " unresisting imbecility." Some
scholars have imagined that Cymbeline was influenced in some
way by the tragic comedy of Philaster by Beaumont and Fletcher,
which was acted at the Globe Theatre some time before 1610. But
there is no proof of its priority; even if there were, Shakespeare
so towers above other dramatists in his pride of place that no ques-
tion of priority, or imitation, or plagiarism can reach him.
It is evident that Boccaccio is the source of the plot as far as
Imogen is concerned, and it is equally evident that he is not the
only source. Dr. Ohle has investigated the French versions of the
story from which Boccaccio drew his materials. He assumes that
there was a primeval original story from which arose three ver-
sions : First. An imaginary old English version. Second. The
Count of Poitiers. Third. An imaginary epic text of the Miracle
of Notre Dame, concerning Otho, King of Spain. The first had
two descendants : the story Westward For Smelts and an imagin-
ary Renaissance drama. From the second came the Roman de La
Violette; from the third came King Florus and Jehane and the
extant Miracle of Notre Dame.
Every scholar will enjoy the copious and illuminating notes
that comprise nearly four hundred and fifty pages of the present
volume. Mr. Furness gives us the opinions of three centuries of
critics, and frequently his own contribution does more to elucidate
the text than many of the long drawn-out discussions of his pre-
decessors. He explains fully every peculiarity of construction,
brings out clearly the meaning of strange words and phrases, illus-
trates line after line by parallel passages, points out every interpo-
lation, and makes us smile more than once by his clever jibing
at over-meticulous critics. No Shakespearean scholar can afford
to neglect this excellent commentary.
1914-] NEW BOOKS 259
HISTORY AS LITERATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. By
Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
$1.50 net.
In this volume Mr. Roosevelt has gathered together a number
of addresses which he made before the American Historical Associa-
tion, the University of Oxford, the University of Berlin, and the
Sorbonne at Paris, besides a number of essays written for the
Outlook. The best essay in the volume is the first, History as
Literature, and the worst is that entitled The Search for Truth.
In this last-named essay he writes with an arrogance, ignorance, and
spirit worthy of an anti-Catholic college of the far South. He
speaks of the "grotesque repulsiveness of mediaeval superstition;"
of " the theological tyranny and superstition from which the Span-
ish peoples have suffered so much ;" " of the cringing and timid
ignorance of the dark ages."
He quotes with praise the inane statement of Professor. Henry
Taylor, " that the mediaeval man was not spiritually self-reliant,
and showed no intelligent desire for liberty." He has a few
good words for Dr. Dwight's book, entitled Thoughts of a Catholic
Anatomist, but rather superciliously adds, " It is impossible to have
sympathy with the reactionary (sic) spirit in which he makes his
protest against the materialistic philosophy." We were surprised
to learn that in his day Copernicus was held to be a dangerous
opponent of orthodoxy, and it was news to us that Mendel's work
in our day would have been condemned if Darwin's far greater
work had not distracted attention from him. Mr. Roosevelt has
undoubtedly been a great reader, but history will never class him
as a thinker.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Un Ami de Machiavel Francois Vettori, Sa vie et ses (Euvres, by M. Louis
Passy. Two volumes. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie. i->frs.) Louis Passy,
a member of the Institute, has given us in these two volumes a perfect picture
of Italy, particularly Rome and Florence, during the first forty years of the
sixteenth century. Vettori, the friend and confidant of Machiavelli, was am-
bassador of Florence at the Courts of the Emperor Maximilian, Francis I., and
the Popes Julius II., Leo X., and Clement VII. No man of the period repre-
sents better than Vettori the spirit that animated the politicians of the Renais-
sance. The work is based on original documents, the first volume dealing
chiefly with his letters to Machiavelli and Strozzi, the second treating of his
history of Italy, his voyage in Germany, and his correspondence while ambas-
sador to the Court of Maximilian.
Le Japan, Histoire et Civilisation. Volume VI. Le Japan Moderne La
Transformation du Japan. By Marquis de la Mazeliere. (Paris: Plon-Nour-
260 NEW BOOKS [May,
rit et Cie. 4frs.) This is the sixth volume of the Marquis de la Mazeliere's
detailed account of the civilization and history of Japan. It discusses in some
nine hundred pages the economic and democratic reforms, and the intellectual
and moral status of Japan since the revolution of 1868. A seventh volume is
promised shortly.
St. Bonaventure, by F. Palhories. (Paris: Bloud et Gay. 3frs. 50.) This
volume is an accurate and thorough presentation of the philosophical and
theological doctrine of St. Bonaventure. The various chapters treat of Man,
God, Nature, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Grace, the Sacraments, the Christian
Life, the Mystical Life, the Blessed Virgin, Angels, and Demons. An excellent
bibliography and a brief life of the Saint complete the volume.
L'Obeissance du Christ. Le Courage du Christ. Le Charite du Christ.
By Henry C. Schuyler, S.T.D. Translated by the Abbe F. J. Bonnassieux.
(Paris: P. Lethielleux. I fr. each.) We have already called the attention of
our readers to the excellent series of volumes on the Virtues of Christ, pub-
lished by Peter Reilly of Philadelphia. The Abbe Bonnassieux, of the Seminary
of Lyons, has translated three volumes of the series, and promises in the near
future a fourth volume, I'Amitie du, Christ.
Le Divin Maitre et les Femmes dans l'vangile, by the Abbe H. Riondel, S.J.
(Paris: P. Lethielleux. 2frs.) These meditations on our Saviour and the
Women of the Gospel, will prove invaluable to priests giving retreats to women,
and to religious women for their daily spiritual reading.
Aperfu d'une Histoire de la Langue Grecque, by A. Meillet, Professor at the
College of France. (Paris: Hachette et Cie. 3frs. 50.) Professor Meillet
has written a very complete manual on the history of the Greek tongue. Like
most modern philologists, he believes that the development of a language de-
pends in great measure upon historical and social conditions. The most interest-
ing chapters of the volume deal with the various Greek dialects, the language
of Homer, Attic tragedy, Ionian and Attic prose, the lyric poets, Greek comedy,
etc. An excellent bibliography mostly of German works has been compiled
by the author.
Les Prophetes d'Israel et les Religions de I'Orient; Essai'sur les Origines
du Monotheisme Universaliste, by A. Causse. (Paris: Librairie E. Nourry.
Sfrs.) Following in the footsteps of Wellhausen, Stade, and Cheyne, M.
Causse discusses " the origin of monotheism " from a study of the prophets of
Israel. He treats of " the development of the Jahvist idea, from its beginnings
among the Jewish people, who were steeped in Semitic paganism, up to the great
universalism of the second Isaiah." We found nothing strikingly new in the
volume, which is a rehash of the theories of German liberal thinkers. We give
him credit, however, for his honest rejection of the absurd and arbitrary theories
of the pan-Babylonists, Zimmern, Winckler, Jensen, etc. We are glad to find
an outsider complaining of the " dogmatism of the metaphysicians of oriental-
ism."
Mere Maria Poussepin, by the Abbe T. Mainage, O.P. (Paris: P. Lethiel-
leux. 3frs. 50.) The Abbe Mainage has written a most charming life of
Madame Poussepin, the founder of the Dominican Sisters of Charity of Tours
(1653-1744). It is a popular life, based on the larger work of Canon Poiian,
who spent many years gathering together all the documents relating to the
founder of the Community of the Presentation.
Jperiobicals*
Bulgaria and the Church. A movement for a return to Rome,
born among the Bulgarians of Macedonia, whom the recent war
has detached from Turkey and joined to Servia, has been well re-
ceived at Sofia. In 1860 a somewhat similar return seemed im-
minent. The Bulgarians refused to receive the new Greek pa-
triarch; destroyed the Greek editions of the Scripture, and pub-
lished manifestoes against their former superiors. Others turned
towards Rome. One hundred and twenty, representing two thou-
sand of their coreligionists, placed in the hands of Monsignor
Brunoni, Vicar Apostolic, an act of union with the Church and a
short profession of faith. A church was given to them; France
was notified as their civil protector, and a provisional head ap-
pointed. But Russia intervened, and promised to obtain for the
dissatisfied ones an independent hierarchy. Many yielded to Rus-
sia's entreaties.
When Russia delayed the fulfillment of her promise they ap-
pealed to the Protestant Evangelical Alliance. The Protestant am-
bassadors refused their aid. In the provinces there were many, not
always lasting, conversions to Rome. The Uniate head at Con-
stantinople, Monsignor Sokolski, was spirited away by Russia, and
a falsified retraction spread throughout Bulgaria to increase discord.
Catholic missionaries, however, began to come in greater numbers,
and in 1884 a new movement for reunion took place, with many
conversions. Again they were deceived by the appeal not to
separate from the struggle for political independence. Even vio-
lence was used against the Catholics. In 1896 Prince Ferdinand,
for political reasons, allowed his son, baptized a Catholic, to be
confirmed in the schismatical faith. The present movement, op-
posed by the supporters of Russia, influential laymen, and Prot-
estant influence, may bring individual converts into the fold. But
a national return is out of the question. Etudes, March 20.
Modern Japan. By Alexandre Brou. Mr. Walter Dening, an
English agnostic, has published a volume called Japanese Modern
Literature, wherein he quotes what the leaders of Japanese thought
have said about their own people. The first great problem is that
262 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
of Western influence, which, Dr. Otsuka says, is but superficial.
The Japanese have borrowed our constitutional government, mili-
tary and naval system, our financial organization, and, to a certain
degree, our pedagogy, and have adapted their ancient laws to West-
ern juridical forms. But neither Western science nor religion has
penetrated into the mind of the masses. The conflict between the
new and the old is keen. Baron Kikuchi complains of the passivity
of their students; M. Yasu notes their powerful verbal memory,
but lack of rational memory and spirit of research. The books
studied are the hardest passages in Carlyle and Emerson, galloped
through by narrow-minded teachers. All desire to hold some
position under the government ; those who fail in this lose interest
in life.
The Japanese, says M. Sawayagani, lack endurance, ambition,
the sense of justice and of the common good. Thefts multiply. So-
cialism is spreading. The sense of honor is dying out of the army,
according to General Iguchi. Various efforts are being made to
teach ethics in the schools, but with little success. Mr. Dening,
forgetting the conversions made by St. Francis Xavier, thinks that
the Japanese are hardly at all religious; some embrace Protestant-
ism who expect present advantage to themselves. The real obstacle
to Christian success, thinks M. Brou, is the intellectual pride of
the university teachers, once disciples of Confucius, then of the
English positivists, and now of German rationalists. Etudes,
March 20.
M. Guibert. By Monsignor Alfred Baudrillart. With the
death of M. Jean Guibert, on February 28th, the Revue lost its
real founder and principal director. Born in 1857, he entered
the Seminary at Luc,on in 1876. He was professor for five years at
the Richlieu Institution, and then entered Saint Sulpice in 1885.
Later he was professor at the Seminary of Issy from 1887 to 1897,
and then head of the Seminary of the Catholic Institute in Paris un-
til the final breakdown of his health. M. Guibert was an indefatig-
able worker, a writer of numerous magazine articles, historical and
apologetic works, and pamphlets on moral subjects, besides his scien-
tific work, In the Beginning; a noted spiritual director, and a
preacher. Besides founding the Revue, he was the mainstay of the
Association of Seminaries, and an active participant in many other
societies, notably in the General Education Society.
A week before his death, he sent to the Revue an article, here
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 263
published, apropos of Abbe Magnan's History of the French People
in the United States. In this article M. Guibert argues that religion
is the best means of preserving the mother tongue among Europeans
living in America, and, conversely, that the best means of pre-
serving their faith is for them to live in colonies, and to be attended
by priests of their own race. He speaks with favor of the French
Canadians who retain in the States their native language and clergy,,
and attributes the loss of faith among Irish immigrants here to the
fact that they have not adopted these precautions. Revue Pratique
d'Apologetique, March 15.
<-- ^*
The Tablet (April 4) : Besides reports of the speeches by Car-
dinal Bourne and Father Vaughan, S.J., at the seventh annual meet-
ing of the Catholic Women's League, a leading article is, devoted to
the League's work. The League has established, besides other clubs,
a society for sending girls to Canada ; a Guild for Catholic Nurses ;
an information bureau, and public service committee through which
the League takes part in social questions. Cardinal Bourne ac-
knowledges it as " one of our great powers." Mrs. Marion Mul-
hall declares that " the Abbots of St. Columba's monasteries of
Greenland were the first to exercise episcopal authority in the
Northern Christian colonies of the New World, as St. Brendan and
his companions are supposed to have been the first in the Southern
Christian Colony of Great Ireland, or White Men's Land." The
Roman correspondent notes the return of Abbot Gasquet to his work
in Rome; the prophets of consistories are making him a Cardinal.
Correcting the note as to the re-introduction of catechism into the
public schools of Rome, he writes, from fuller knowledge, that
practically the concession is of little value. Instruction may be
given in a certain number of classrooms for one hour a week, when
the children would otherwise be free. Out of fifty thousand chil-
dren in the elementary schools, only one thousand four hundred are
allowed by the civil authorities to attend this instruction.
The Month (April) : Rev. Herbert Thurston traces the history
of the ringing of bells at Mass, which began about the year 1200.
He concludes that a special bell of intermediate size, hanging in a
cot, was rung at the Sanctus, giving time for loiterers in the vicinity
to assemble for the elevation ; a small bell rung inside the church at
the prayer Quam oblationem and the elevation, with the ringing of
264 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
a large bell at the latter moment in the well-served houses. There is
no trace in the Middle Ages of a bell at the Domine non sum dignus,
nor is it practically recognized to-day at Rome. A. Hilliard At-
teridge presents instances of the ignorance exhibited, the exag-
gerations and falsehoods told in The Campaign of Slander Against
Catholic South America. Thomas Walsh, in Sevilla of the
Images, describes the processions held in that city during Holy
Week. The, Rev. Sydney Smith shows, from a study of the Acts
of the Apostles and the Epistles, the firm conviction of the Apostles
that our Lord had risen from the dead, not in spirit only, but in
body, and proves that it was this absolute conviction which impelled
them to undertake their world-wide apostolate, and persevere in it
to the end. In a succeeding article he will examine the evidence
which begot this conviction.
The Church Quarterly Review (April) : Albert A. Cock
praises Francis Thompson's poetry, but regrets his " excess of pub-
lic penitence " and " ineradicable thriftlessness of Romantic phrase."
" He extolled but failed to imitate " Mrs. Meynell, " an exemplar of
that significant and eloquent silence of a noble soul." In conse-
quence of " this dissipation of personality," " thought itself in him
is paralyzed." Rev. A. C. Headlam attempts to show what
the Ecdesia Anglicana stands for. His purpose is to justify
Anglican comprehensiveness.
The Irish Theological Quarterly (April) : Rev. Leo Moore,
O.P., relying on Fabre's work on insects, particularly on predatory
wasps, shows that their marvelous instinct, though not itself intel-
ligence, is still the creature of a superior creative intelligence, and
is another support of the argument from design. Rev. James
MacCaffrey praises and summarizes a new work by Rev. William
Burke, which shows from State papers the vindictive cruelty with
which the Irish priests were persecuted in penal times (1660-1760).
Referring to Father Conway's review of The Edict of Pope
Callistus, by the Abbe d'Ales, in the February CATHOLIC WORLD,
the Rev. M. J. O'Donnell discusses the views of Origen and Ter-
tullian as to the forgiveness of capital sins, and concludes that no
arguments against the use of the power of the Keys can be drawn
from " the rambling contradictory statements of a man like Origen,
or the hot-headed philippic of a not over-scrupulous master of vitu-
perative rhetoric."
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 265
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (April) : Professor T. M.
Kettle has great hopes for the new France, which has proved itself
a reality by the election of President Poincare, the Three Years'
Military Service law, and a growing recognition of religion as
one of the ideal forces that make men good citizens and gallant
soldiers. Rev. Patrick Boyle gives brief notices of the most im-
portant preachers of " the Irish pulpit in the nineteenth century."
Quoting from Bishop William Lyndwood, a Welsh fifteenth
century bishop, and admittedly the greatest of British canonists, R.
S. Nolan puts the burden of proof on those who assert that the bill
now before Parliament for the disestablishment of the Church in
Wales, seeks now to divert from their original intent the bulk of the
endowments with which it deals. The Church there before the
Reformation was undoubtedly Catholic, subject to the Pope, hold-
ing to the validity of bequests for requiem Masses.
Le Correspondant (March 10) : Maurice Talmeyr describes a
new Golden Legend, the story of Mother St. Joseph, for forty years
after 1866 Superior of the Ursulines at Perigneux. Frangois
Laurentie attacks the competency of F. A. Aulard, for twenty-five
years official historian of France. Citing numerous errors, omis-
sions, and instances of false method, he declares that M. Aulard
has done nothing but republish texts without re-reading, commenting
on, or completing them, and that it would be well for the renown
of the Sorbonne and of French scholarship if he would return to his
profession as journalist. Dr. Grasset attacks the two theses of
the opposing penological schools, namely, that a physician's opinion
as to a criminal's responsibility should not be sought by the court,
and, on the other hand, that it is all important because crime is noth-
ing but illness, and penalties should be inflicted only as a means
of cure. He maintains that brain lesions, which a doctor can certify
to, do affect a man's responsibility; that punishment should be
adapted, in kind and degree, to both the crime and the criminal;
and that, finally, society must not only apply the laws of medicine,
but also spread those of morality and duty. J. Lacaze Bastard
publishes a description, by an eyewitness, of the way in which the
Bourbon restoration was received at Bordeaux in 1814. Father
M. J. Lagrange describes the poem Daphne, by the late Alfred de
Vigny. Daphne here represents a place near Antioch, where Liban-
ius, the noted fourth century rhetorician, discusses with his pupils,
among whom is the Emperor Julian the Apostate, an attempt to
266 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
restore paganism. The poem gives de Vigny's opinion on modern-
ism, and the relation of morality to religion.
(March 25) : A writer on England's foreign policy declares
that by her inactivity in Mexico, she has fully submitted to the
Monroe doctrine; that commercial relations are binding her close
to Germany, with which country England will side against Russia,
the common enemy; and that her policy as regards Turkey is one
merely of peace and of preventing any other power from further
encroachments. He criticizes severely the policy of Sir Edward
Grey, and does not believe that France is to declare war in 1915
or Russia in 1917, newspaper talk to the contrary. Monsignor
Baudrillart depicts from many hitherto unpublished letters, the
intimate relations which existed between Monsignor d'Hulst and
the Count de Paris. The increased price of rented apartments
and homes, declares F. Lepelletier, constitutes a national crisis. Ef-
forts should be made to induce city people to return to their country
homes and to the smaller towns.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (March 15) : Charles Calippe argues
that only a world-wide organization like the Church can fight the
prevailing indecency and extravagance in feminine dress, and ap-
proves of the action of those bishops who have in pastoral letters
scourged this vice. He shows how many styles in the past were in-
vented to hide some physical deformity on the part of a royal per-
sonage ; and points out the evil effects the present frequent changes
in fashion have on the income, the morals, and even the occupation
of the poor. Then he notices the leagues of Catholic women who
have united to prove the possibility of combining taste with modesty.
J. Riviere devotes a long review to the recent work by M.
Adhemar d'Ales on The Edict of Callistus, but, while praising its
extent and completeness, deprecates its polemics and its too evident
apologetic intention. Some articles by M. Tixeront on the same
subject he praises. The extensive article on Faith by R. P. Harent
in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, he likewise heartily
approves of, together with the work by the Dominican Fathers
Gardeil and de Poulpiquet, though the latter, as R. P. Pinard points
out, represents the views of a school rather than those of all theo-
logians. G. Drioux rehearses the varied conclusions as to the age
and nature of the creature, named by Dr. Dubois the Pithecanthro-
pus Erectus, of which bones were found in Java in 1891-1892.
(April i) : L. Cl. Fillion begins a study of "the intellectual
1914-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 267
and moral development of Jesus," as noted in St. Luke ii. 52, and
shows how the apocryphal Gospels and the rationalist critics fail
to solve this problem, the former over-emphasizing Christ's Divinity,
the latter His Humanity. -T. Nanty replies to the arguments of
M. Le Dantec, who argues that life can be explained on mechanical
principles, and that free will is an illusion. Le Dantec's method is
first to ridicule the animists, and to laud the mechanists ; so to define
life as to prove his own theory; and to put on the libertarians the
burden of proof, by assuming that all is matter or a property of
matter. Clement Besse remarks the different effects produced
by the music of Parsifal, when heard in concert and when given as
an opera, the former being truly Christian, the latter not so. He
objects particularly to the religious scene, in which the guilty
Amfortas is the celebrant of something like the Holy Eucharist,
and the utterly improbable conversion of Parsifal himself.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (April i) : J. Touzard presents
a study of the development of the Jewish Passover rites, sum-
marized from the work by Dr. George Beer of Heidelberg. He
traces this feast through the Old Testament, the apocryphal Book
of Jubilees, and the Mishna. The feast seems anterior to the
Exodus, and Moses probably adopted ancient rites, giving them a
new meaning. Ceremonies somewhat similar were found in pagan
nations.
Etudes (March 5) : Joseph Brucker praises a Manual of Amer-
ican Archeology, by H. Beuchat Victor Poucel presents a study
of Frederic Mistral, showing the great influence which his native
land of Provence had upon his poetry, and, on the other hand, the
poet's efforts to make the land and its literature known to the
world. His poems Mireio and Calendeau are highly praised.
IRecent Events*
The disclosures which have been occasioned
France. by the murder of the editor of one of the
leading newspapers of France by the wife of
the Minister of Finance in the present Cabinet, reveal the existence
of a state of things among the classes that now govern the coun-
try, which has caused disgust among the general body of the people,
and may move it to indignation, and possibly to some striking way
of manifesting that indignation. The lady who was guilty of the
foul deed has declared that she committed the act only because
she was assured, on the highest authority, that it was impossible at
the present time in France to obtain redress in a legal manner
for the series of libels which the editor had for a long time been
publishing, or to prevent him from further publications of a still
more injurious character. She acted, moreover, because she wished
to anticipate her husband acting in a similar manner.
This husband, although only Minister of Finance, has been
the strongest supporter, the creator in fact, of the present govern-
ment. He has been himself the head of a former Cabinet, and is
the leader of the strongest party in the country the Radicals
and the Socialist Radicals having succeeded M. Combes on the
latter's retirement. It was he who warned the Catholics that if
they continued to agitate for what they looked upon as fair treat-
ment in the schools of the nation, all liberty to have schools of
their own would be taken away from them. He has been one of
the most determined opponents of M. Briand's movement for the
fair treatment of all Frenchmen. He is, too, a leading representa-
tive of the attempt which is being made by financiers and capitalists
to secure the control of the external policy of the country, and was
guilty, in the interests of finance, of an attempt to betray France
in the negotiations with Germany which followed upon the Agadir
incident. On the other hand, in internal policy he has been quite
lately the promoter of placing high taxation on the wealthier
classes, and the chief advocate of the income tax which has so long
been discussed.
One of the motives of Mme. Caillaux's act was the fear of the
publication of a document which showed her husband's connection
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 269
with the prosecution of the notorious swindler Rochette. This
Rochette had promoted companies which had defrauded investors
of something like fifteen millions. He was on the point of being
tried, when through the alleged influence of M. Monis exerted at
the request of M. Caillaux, the trial was postponed, and Rochette
allowed to escape. M. Monis was at the time Premier, while M.
Caillaux was, as until recently in the Doumergue Ministry, Finance
Minister. The document in question was brought before the
Chamber by M. Barthou. This led to the appointment of a Com-
mission to investigate the whole question. This Commission re-
ported that M. Caillaux and M. Monis, the Finance Minister and
the Premier at the time, were guilty of a most deplorable misuse
of their powers in unduly influencing the judge to postpone the
trial of Rochette. The judicial officer in question was censured
for allowing himself to be so influenced. Both M. Caillaux and
M. Monis were acquitted of any personally corrupt motive in the
matter; their action was prompted by the desire to avoid a public
scandal. Rochette's counsel had in fact threatened to show how
the public had lost between the years 1890 and 1900 a sum of two
thousand millions in concerns floated by " high finance," while he
alone had been singled out for prosecution. To avoid such an ex-
posure of the class to which he himself belonged, was the motive
of M. Caillaux's action.
This report was the result of a political compromise, and some
members of the Commission resigned rather than sign it. In their
opinion it palliated the offences committed. However mild it may
be, it reveals the existence of grave evils. It shows that the mem-
bers of the government in 1911 were guilty of tampering with the
administration of the criminal law for reasons which they called
political. Justice was thereby prostituted, to the knowledge both
of the bench and the bar. In order to keep these proceedings secret,
members of the Cabinet such as M. Monis, both before the present
Commission, and at a Committee of Inquiry which was held two
years ago, attempted to mislead by telling untruths and even, before
the present Commission, by perjury. It also reveals how all power-
ful is the influence of finance over public affairs. From evidence
brought before the Commission by judicial officials, the intervention
of the Executive in the process of the courts was nothing extra-
ordinary in such cases. The present instance has only brought to
light the existence of an evil which is indisputable, and generally
recognized by those behind the scenes. There are those who think
2;o RECENT EVENTS [May,
that events are impending in France which may be either a remedy
of or a punishment for what is becoming an intolerable evil. What-
ever else may happen, the political career of M. Caillaux is ended.
No solution has been found for the difficult financial problem
how to meet the vast deficit, and to find fresh sources of taxation. It
does not seem probable that before the general election even the
ordinary budget will have been passed. In fact everything seems
to be at sixes and sevens. What the Chamber does the Senate
undoes. Electoral reform which has been bandied between the
two Houses, is no farther advanced than it was at the last general
election. It now seems probable that the present government will
"make," as it seems very anxious to do, the coming election,
although upon what issues, if any, it will be fought is by no means
clear. In the recent debate on the Rochette report, M. Maurice
Barres said that in other days there were programmes, members,
and parties, but now, instead of the fixed parties of the past, there
only existed groups which were created by intrigue, and had neither
tradition nor principle. These groups could only find their support
in the country among other groups based upon smaller groups,
and upon similar selfish interests and desires for place and promo-
tion. The climax was reached when the mobile troops in the
Chamber joined up with the mobile troops of finance. The only
way, M. Barres affirmed, to put an end to this was to put justice
before politics. With the view doubtless of contributing to this
result, a new League has been formed, called " La Ligue Franchise,"
to give expression, without distinction of party, " to the profound
and coherent conscience of the country by promoting concord among
the French people." It will abstain from all political and religious
polemics, and ignore subjects of discord. The two Honorary Presi-
dents are M. Ernest Lavisse and General Pau; among the Vice-
Presidents are Monsignor Hercher and M. Joseph Reinach ; and on
its Committee are M. Maurice Barres, M. Lepine, Dr. Jean Charcot,
and Prince Jacques de Broglie.
No perceptible change has taken place in the foreign relations
of France. Towards Italy, however, within the past two years
there has grown up a certain feeling of distrust. It is widely
believed in France that definite arrangements have been made for
the naval cooperation of Italy with the other two Powers of the
Triple Alliance, the result of which would be to deprive France of
any influence in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Denials
on the part of Italy have been made, but distrust has not been
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 271
removed. Active cooperation of the Spanish and French forces
for the purpose of suppressing the revolts of the Moors in the
Spanish zone of Morocco, were proposed sometime ago, with what
result has not been published. Very little is said about the work
which is being done in the French portion of Morocco; it may be
presumed that no news is good news. The visit of King George
will doubtless consolidate the entente with Great Britain, although
there are no signs of such a consolidation being needed, for complete
political harmony exists between the two countries. Much the
same may be said about the impending visit of President Poincare
to Russia.
The death of Mistral has removed one of the glories of the
nation. While his influence was chiefly literary, yet on politics
it had an indirect bearing, for it tended to the development of a
local patriotism which is opposed to the pernicious concentration so
characteristic of our times. Mistral was a devout Catholic, and
yet it was M. Viviani who gave the oration at his burial.
For two or three weeks a newspaper war
Germany. was waged between the press of Germany
and that of Russia. For a time it was
feared that it might be the prelude to the outbreak of real warfare.
It began by the German military and Chauvinist papers giving
alarmist accounts of Russian military preparations preparations
which it was said the Russian censorship was doing everything in
its power to conceal. The Russian government, it was alleged,
were extending to Germany, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere a most
elaborate system of espionage. This was being done, not with the
intention of making war immediately, but with the set purpose of
securing the victory by elaborate preparation when the time for
making war should have arrived. It therefore, these papers alleged,
became the duty of Germany to declare a preventive war with Russia
while she was still comparatively weak. These statements in the
press gave rise for a time to considerable anxiety, and caused per-
turbations on the Bourses of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. The
anxiety was increased by the fact that it was suspected that the papers
were inspired by the government, a suspicion which was strength-
ened by the prolonged silence on its part. The arch-militarist,
General Bernhardi, contributed to the uneasiness by urging in
the Post that Germany must be prepared for war in the near future,
272 RECENT EVENTS [May,
and be ready to spend her last penny in preparations, declaring that
the recent French and Russian army measures had created a new
situation not foreseen in 1913. The government at length, by one
of its authoritative mouthpieces, declared the alarm to be ground-
less; the question, however, remains unsettled why so dangerous
a discussion was allowed to be continued so long. It has had the
result of making the Russian government decide to increase the
standing army of Russia by four hundred thousand men, making
its full strength in time of peace no less than one million seven hun-
dred thousand. However, the semi-official declarations of the
government produced scarcely any effect upon the press. It showed
no repentance, and German opinion seems to be drifting into a
fixed belief that it has the right and the duty to challenge Russian
actions and Russian intentions in every sphere. The- long-standing
friendship between the two Empires is pronounced to be but a
legend.
The Catholics in the Reichstag have been making an effort
to Christianize the military code. A duel which took place recently
under revolting circumstances, has called attention to the sanction
which that code gives to this barbarous practice. The spokesman
of the Centre Party, Herr Grober, described the duel as an official
institution in the army, but for all that as an offence against divine
and human law. The answer of the War Minister must be taken
as an authoritative exposition of the mind of the military upon this
question. The army authorities, he declared, were tireless in their
exertions to educate army opinions upon the subject of duelling.
On New Year's Day, 1913, the Emperor had again called on the
officers' corps to practise more self-restraint. The result had been
a great improvement, and in 1913 there had only been sixteen
duels. The number was still too high, but it would be a mistake to
seek a remedy in special prohibitions of military duels. This
would only intensify the officer's irritation, and would make him
seek satisfaction in irregular ways, or by thrashing his enemy.
Duelling, the War Minister declared, was the lesser evil. Little was
ever heard of its good results. The insulted officer regarded his
honor as more valuable than his life. Such feelings might be
right or might be wrong, but no one could call them debased.
A discussion has taken place in the Reichstag on the value of
the colonies. Great differences of opinion manifested themselves.
It seems to be agreed that they are, with the exception of South-
west Africa, ai)d possibly of Samoa, of no value as places of settle-
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 273
ment. This, however, is not looked upon as a drawback, for Ger-
many has no surplus population which renders colonization desir-
able. The Conservatives and Radicals view the colonies as merely
an industrial asset to a capitalist community, while the Catholic
Centre, in this as in the matter of duelling, takes higher ground.
It pleads for their being administered on religious and moral lines,
and calls for more cordial treatment of the missionaries by the
government. A noteworthy advance in colonial development has
been made by the completion of the railway in German East Africa.
This railway between Dar-es- Salaam on the coast to Lake Tangan-
yika links up the East Coast with the Central African system.
When the railway through the Belgian Congo is completed, it
will be possible to travel from the East to the West of Africa
by rail and steamer.
From what has been said, it will be seen that the exact rela-
tions between Germany and Russia are somewhat problematical.
With the Emperor of Austria and the King of Italy the Emperor
has had interviews on his way 'to Corfu. No one knows what was
the result of their conversations, although it is thought they were
not without significance. The cordiality manifested towards the
Italian government by the German press, and the comparative
coolness shown towards that of Austria-Hungary, are looked upon
as a sign of the times not unworthy of comment.
The death of Cardinal Kopp has deprived the Church of one
of its most faithful pastors, and the Empire of a distinguished coun-
sellor. He is said to have been the only man who ever had the
courage to tell disagreeable truths to the Kaiser, and yet have been
able to retain his esteem and favor. To his efforts was largely
due the mitigation of the Falck laws. In 1884 he was nominated
a member of the Council of State, and, following upon the arbitra-
tion on the Caroline Islands, he was called by the Emperor to a seat
in the Prussian Upper Chamber. During the whole of his career,
the Cardinal had a deep and sympathetic interest in the labor move-
ments. The workmen showed their appreciation of this interest
in 1908 by marching, twenty-six thousand in number, before his
palace at Breslau. Of the two lines of policy advocated in Ger-
many, the Cardinal was in favor of the Catholic workingmen
being banded together into distinctively Catholic organizations, act-
ing in sympathy with the other organizations formed in the inter-
ests of labor, but not throwing in their lot with them by becoming
actually members. Some years ago at a welcome given to the
VOL. XCIX. 18
274 RECENT EVENTS [May,
late Cardinal by the Burgomasters at Fulda, he was styled " pa-
triot and prince of peace;" and this forms a fitting summing up
of his career.
A result of the German press campaign
Russia. against Russia is the decision of the Russian
government to increase vastly the armaments
of the Empire. It will be remembered that Germany took occasion
from the confederation of the Balkan States during the war with
Turkey, to raise its army on a peace footing to eight hundred and
seventy thousand men, an example which France at once, to some
extent, followed. Russia has now taken the same step. To the
first line of defence four hundred and sixty thousand men are to
be added, raising the peace footing of the Russian army to one
million seven hundred thousand men. This will cost no less a sum
than two hundred and fifty millions of non-recurring expenditure,
to say nothing of the additional annual cost. It is, however, con-
sidered necessary by all parties, except the Socialists, in order that
Russia may be placed beyond the reach of attack. Such is the state
of chronic alarm and mutual distrust in which the dwellers in the
Continent of Europe are now passing their lives.
The administration is making many efforts to carry out the
temperance and other reforms which the Tsar has so much at heart.
The output of vodka, which is a government monopoly, and from
the sale of which a very large part of the revenue is derived, is to
be reduced ; the penalties for illicit trading are to be increased ; the
churches and schools are to be used to teach the advantages of tem-
perance; the influence of drinking is not to be admitted as an
extenuating circumstance in the passing of sentence upon law
breakers. The Minister of Ways and Communications will co-
operate with the other members of the Cabinet in these efforts, by
fitting out a large railway car with an exhibition showing the
ruinous effects of drink. This car is to be sent all over the Empire.
Liquor is no longer to be sold at railway stations. To make the
reforms really effective, the administration of the new measures
is to be entrusted to the local governments, as the Cabinet and the
Duma recognize that the formation of temperance habits among
the people cannot be accomplished except by the assistance of the
people themselves. Excise inspectors have been instructed by a
government circular to cooperate with villagers and local bodies in
the curtailment of the sale of drink.
Another effort for the improvement of his people has been
I9I4-] RECENT EVENTS 275
made by the Tsar, and one which shows in a remarkable way the
difference which exists between our own and Russian ideas of
government. With his approval a new government department
has been instituted, called " The Department of Physical Culture,"
to which is entrusted the propagation and supervision of outdoor
games among the young. Even instruction in the way of playing
is included among its duties. This new department is due to the
Tsar's conviction of the importance of outdoor sports for the
well being of his young subjects. The remarkable growth of foot-
ball in schools has shown the eagerness with which Russian boys are
taking to sports. It is worthy of note that a similar movement has
taken place in France, and there are those who look upon this as
a hopeful promise of a new France.
The hopes inspired among the reactionaries, that the appoint-
ment of M. Goremykin to be Premier would lead to the conversion
of the Duma into a purely consultative body, have been disappointed
by the issue of a Rescript addressed by the Tsar to the Premier, in
which he and the Ministry are enjoined to be strong and united,
and to work together in harmony with the legislature, the func-
tions of which are strictly defined by law, and are to be treated with
supreme respect. Respect for the law is declared to be an essential
condition of fruitful legislative work. The Rescript's insistence
upon the necessity of the Cabinet's working in harmony with the
legislature, is looked upon as the recognition of the essential prin-
ciple of constitutional government.
The Imperial assent has just been given to a bill which relaxes
the bonds in which the women of Russia have been held. Hitherto
a married woman has been unable to hold property, to enter busi-
ness, to seek employment, or to obtain a separate passport without
the consent of her husband. She had no remedy, however great
a reprobate her husband might be. The new law gives full liberty
of movement and enjoyment of property to women who for legiti-
mate causes are separated from their husbands.
The recent history of Austria-Hungary so
Austria-Hungary. far as it is of interest to outsiders, is made
up of the racial conflicts, which seem to be
never-ending, between some one or other of the various nationalities,
the issue of loans to pay for the continually increasing armaments,
and the trials of conspirators and spies. The conflict of races
276 RECENT EVENTS [May,
has been carried on by continuous obstruction by the Czechs in the
Austrian Reichsrath. This obstruction has been of so obstinate a
character that the session has had to be prorogued for a second
time. The sittings had been absolutely sterile ; even the loan neces-
sary for the carrying on of the business of the State had not been
sanctioned. Recourse has been had for this purpose to the Emer-
gency Paragraph of the Constitution, which enables the government,
when the Reichsrath is not in session, to pass measures without its
consent on the collective responsibility of the Ministry, provided
such measures make no alteration in the fundamental law, impose
no lasting burden, and alienate none of the domains of the State.
As the new loan is for something like a hundred millions, to issue
it under this Emergency Paragraph seems to be an infringement
even of its provisions.
A new racial conflict has broken out in Hungary. Large num-
bers of Rumanes dwell in this part of the Dual Monarchy, and their
treatment by the dominant Magyars has been about as bad as that
to which the Croats have been subjected. Efforts were made some
time ago to bring about an amelioration of their position, but with-
out success. The agitation has led to the formation of a league in
Rumania to second the efforts of their fellow-countrymen across
the borders. A public meeting, at which violent language was
used in denunciation of Austro-Hungarian methods, with even the
suggestion of armed intervention, was held in the Rumanian capital.
It is looked upon as possible that this agitation, taken together with
Austria's attitude to the Bukarest Treaty, may have the result of
effecting a change in Rumania's attitude to the Triple Alliance, on
the side of which Rumania has, up to the present time, ranked.
A long series of trials of spies and conspirators has resulted in
numerous convictions both of natives and foreigners. There has
been in fact such an epidemic of espionages as to destroy, taken
in conjunction with the measures necessary to prevent and punish
them, all mutual trust and confidence.
On his way to Corfu, the Emperor William paid a visit to the
Emperor-King. It was not a merely personal and private visit,
for the foreign ministers took part in the discussions. Nothing,
however, has been made public of what took place. The Triple
Alliance remains unaffected, although it has been the object of the
attack of some members of the Hungarian Opposition. The revela-
tions of Count Witte of conversations with the Emperor William
are matters of merely historical interest.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 277
The recent general election gave to Signor
Italy. Giolitti the support of a large majority
of the Chamber. But even at the
time it was considered that no reliance could be placed
on the long continuance of this support. By the withdrawal
of the Radicals a few weeks ago, Signor Giolitti, although he still
retained a substantial majority, was led to give in his resignation.
It is not considered that it was done with great reluctance. In fact,
it is said that it was merely an excuse, for the ex-Premier has
never shown himself able, or at least willing, to find a remedy
for a difficult situation. His success has been due to the skillful
manipulation of parties, so as to become the means of their ac-
complishment of their various objects. He has never been a guide,
but a keen observer of the signs of the times, and it was as
an instrument that he maintained himself at the head. It was
in this way that the recent extension of the franchise was brought
about, as well as the war for the conquest of Tripoli. One result
of this war has been to embarrass greatly the finances of the coun-
try. During its course, it was said over and over again, that the
expenses would be paid out of savings and certain other resources.
It seemed a strange assertion, and it has proved to be a false one;
for it is now admitted that at least a hundred millions have to
be raised to cover the deficit thereby caused. This was a task not
relished by the former Premier.
Some little difficulty was experienced in finding a new Prime
Minister, but at last Signor Salandra, a Liberal of old standing, suc-
ceeded in forming a Cabinet in which the Foreign Office is re-
tained by the Marquis di San Giuliano, who has for so long con-
ducted with great skill, and what is considered success, the foreign
policy of the country through the Tripolitan and Balkan wars.
Signor Salandra is regarded, next to Baron Sonnino, as the safest
of Italian financial authorities. The new Ministry represents all
parties with the exception of what is called the Clerical, even the
extreme Left and the Radicals being included. Students of Italian
politics say that the new government is likely to last at least a few
weeks. The demand of the railway men for higher wages is a
cause of anxiety. How far the new possessions of Italy in Africa
are really pacified seems uncertain, for news keeps coming of con-
flicts with the Arabs. Italy still retains the possession of those
of the yEgean Islands which she seized during the war with
Turkey.
278 RECENT EVENTS [May,
Prince William has entered upon his reign
The Balkan States, over the new State of Albania, having
slipped almost unperceived into the little
village of Durazzo, which has been chosen for the capital, although
its claim is being vigorously contested by Scutari. For his subjects
he is neither Prince or King, having adopted the old Albanian style
of Mpret, which is a diminutive of Imperator. A Cabinet has been
formed, of which six of the members are Mohammedans, while two
are Orthodox and one is a Catholic. The unscrupulous Essad
Pasha is the Minister of War, and is said to be far more influential
than the Prince. The latter's palace (if such it may be called)
is said to be almost deserted, the Prince having so far failed to
assert himself; while to Essad recourse is had by all the seekers
after power and place. The rule of the Prince has not been ac-
cepted by the whole of the populations assigned to him by the
Powers, the Epirotes having formed themselves into a Republic
with an elected President. The Powers are using their best efforts
to bring about a settlement of the difficulty thus raised. The Greek
government is thought to be loyally cooperating, although it is a
very great trial to many of the Greeks to leave their countrymen
under the domination of the Albanians whom they have always re-
garded as the most deadly of their enemies.
The rest of the Balkan States seem to be settling down to the
peaceful development of their new possessions. A formal treaty
of peace has been signed between Turkey and Servia. The former
State has given informal assurances to the Powers that it has no
warlike intentions. The Servians are accused of treating the
Bulgarians who live in the districts assigned to Servia by the Treaty
of Bukarest with as great cruelty as ever they were treated by the
Turks. Peasants have been beaten, houses plundered, whole vil-
lages burned, large numbers arrested. Fear of an uprising is given
as an excuse for these severities. Under these circumstances no
surprise can be felt that Bulgarian bands are once more making an
appearance.
The general election gave to the Bulgarian government a
working majority. The people are settling down to their wonted
pursuits, although they are doubtless waiting for a fitting oppor-
tunity to make good their losses. The fact that a loan has recently
been raised without difficulty from internal sources, shows that
prosperity is already reviving. At the opening of the new Sobranye
the Royal Speech referred to the renewal of good relations with
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 279
the neighboring States, and expressed the hope that they woilld im-
prove. With the Ottoman Empire the relations were said to be
developing in the most friendly manner. Complete tranquillity was
said to be the chief need of Bulgaria, as prolonged peaceful activity
offered the only pledge for the national future. An alliance is said
to have been formed between Greece, Servia, and Montenegro. , *'<
.
The Renaissance of China, of which many
China. profess to have seen signs, seems farther off
than ever. The Central government is so
powerless that for months a bandit called by the name of White
Wolf with a few hundred followers, has overrun several provinces.
His depredations have been systematic, deliberate, and prolonged.
One city after another has been attacked by him, thousands have
been ruthlessly and aimlessly slaughtered, girls in large numbers
outraged, and vast quantities of property destroyed. The popula-
tions are so demoralized as to have no courage to offer resistance;
even such troops as China possesses seemed for a long time to be
afraid. The last news, however, is to the effect that at last a check
has been put to the bold bandit's career.
The President is day by day becoming more and more of an
autocrat. The National Assembly has been dismissed, and Yuan
Shih-kai's only advisers are now self-chosen, consisting of a Coun-
cil nominated by himself. The Constitution is being revised by this
Council, and all the articles which restricted the Presidential powers
are being either eliminated or emasculated. The sacrifices formerly
offered by the Emperor, an act which was considered as the supreme
mark of his irresponsible autocratic power, were offered this year by
the elected President. This is looked upon as a practical proclama-
tion that he considers himself as no longer responsible to the nation,
but to the Almighty alone. In fact he who performs this sacrifice
eo ipso becomes to the vast majority of the people the . sovereign
of China. It is true, indeed, that the President publicly disclaimed
an exclusive right to offer this sacrifice; made it in fact the right
of every citizen in his own family. Immemorial tradition, however,
is too influential to be done away with in this way, and the attempt
is looked upon as mere casuistry.
By another decree the President announced his intention of
offering in person the seasonal sacrifices to Confucius, which was
also an Imperial function. Some look upon this as equivalent to
establishing Confucianism as the State religion. This intention
280 RECENT EVENTS [May,
was, however, disclaimed by the President, who declared it to be
his determination to remain faithful to the principle of religious
liberty enunciated in the provisional Constitution. As however
he has already violated most of the provisions of this document, it
is impossible to put much trust in this declaration.
As for the rest of China's needs, the raising of money is the
most imperative. Every week brings news of some new loan.
One of the most important of recent financial transactions is that
which gives the Standard Oil Company the control of large oil
districts.
Japan is in the midst of a political crisis.
Japan. Clan is waging war against clan; the mili-
tary against the naval, while the people are
striving to change the bureaucratic method of government, which
has hitherto prevailed, into the parliamentary, thereby making the
Ministry responsible to the Parliament, and not to the Emperor
alone. A recent trial at Berlin brought to light certain facts which
showed that a widespread practice of corruption existed among the
officials who control the navy. Several admirals and other officers
are now under arrest. The Ministry of Admiral Yamamoto was
forced to resign owing to those scandals, and to a deadlock be-
tween the two Houses of Parliament, and considerable difficulty has
been found in forming a new government. This is the more un-
fortunate, as the coronation of the Emperor is imminent, and it
was in the highest degree desirable that this ceremony should have
taken place under circumstances of better omen. The present is
the third ministerial crisis in the short reign of the new Emperor.
With Our Readers.
IT is reassi ring to note the evident reaction that is taking place against
the radical sex hygiene movement; the propaganda of sex in-
struction ; sex stories ; sex problems, with which the public has been
saturated of late. The noted American editor, S. S. McClure, said
recently that the popularity of sex is on the wane. This awakening
to sense is only a realization after all that God has made us for things
that are higher than sex. Mr. McClure also heralds the passing of
the " cave man " and the " cave woman," quasi-scientific titles that jus-
tified the publishing and reading of stories that some few years ago
would have been read only in private or not at all.
The public is getting tired [this well-informed editor states] of having
" sex " eternally dinned into its ears. People are tired of the muckrake, too.
What readers want now is a little of the good old-style fiction that writers have
found it hard to sell recently, and special articles along uplift lines that are
at once interesting and constructive. I predict confidently that within a few
months sex problem stories and series will be banished from the pages of
reputable magazines.
1T7ORTHY of record as an index of what spirit animates many
VV of the so-called Industrial Workers of the World (the I. W.
W.), are the words of one of its leaders uttered in New York at
a public meeting on April I9th : " The signal given by President Wilson
for war will be the signal for a general strike. Workingmen won't go
to war. It is better to be a traitor to your country than to your class."
THE great Catholic French poet, to whom Lamartine gave the name
of the Homer of Provence, died on March 27th at the age of
eighty-three years.
The life and work of this poet, Frederic Mistral, were described
to our readers by Charles Baussan in the December, 1912, issue of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The first meeting of Mistral's parents was
thus recorded:
One St. John's Day of a year long past, Frangois Mistral stood in the midst
of his fields to watch the harvesters reaping the wheat with their sickles. A
crowd of gleaners followed the workers, eager to gather the blades that es-
caped the rakes. Behind them all, my father noticed a beautiful girl who kept
in the background as if fearing to glean with the others. He approached her
saying :
" 'Where are you from, my child ? What is your name ?'
"The young girl replied: 'I am the daughter of Etienne Poulinet, the Mayor
of Maillane.'
" 'Is it possible,' said my father, 'that the daughter of Poulinet, the Mayor
of Maillane, is a gleaner?'
282 WITH OUR READERS [May,
.
" 'Ah, we are a big family,' she answered, 'six girls and two boys, and
although our father is comfortably off, when we ask him for money to buy
ornaments he tells us: "If you want finery, my little ones, earn i'." And this
is why I am come to glean.'
" Six months after this meeting, which reminds us of the pas oral romance
of Ruth and Booz, the gallant farmer asked the Mayor of Maillan for the hand
of the beautiful Delaide, and I am the son of this marriage."
* * * *
r PHE charm of the Provencal dialect first appealed to him in the songs
J- that his mother sang to him. That charm deepened into love, and
love into consecration, and Mistral won for Provence and its dialect
the renewed admiration of the world. As a consequence he was be-
loved of all Frenchmen, and would have been made a member of the
French Academy, but he refused to go to Paris and present himself
for that honor. He spent practically his entire life in a peasant's
cottage in Maillane; loved the soil and his fellow-workers, and
struggled to keep alive both old idioms and old standards. His favor-
ite maxim was, " He who holds his mother tongue, holds the key that
shall free him from his chains."
And so Baussan wrote of him :
Mistral could not have fought with such ardor for the family and against
individualism had he not possessed the soul of a genuine traditionalist. His
Provence would not have been the true Provence if he had forgotten the
prayers he learned from his mother while his father directed the laborers as to
their toil for the coming day. Mistral was so true and so great only because
he was a Christian. He kept the faith simply and proudly. He was a Christian
in public as well as in private life. In 1870 he chanted the penitential Psalms,
humbly confessing the sins of the country and imploring mercy from on high.
Even when, in his works, he does not affirm his Catholic faith in express
terms, it revivifies his thoughts, giving them the brilliancy and the force of
truth. His faith was the joyous faith that death could not appall, the especial
gift of the Church of the Saints. Saint Madeline and Saint Martha placed
in the soul and on the countenance of the dying Mireille, the radiance of open-
ing Paradise, and Mistral also had beyond the stars another country, another
Provence yet more glorious, with another sunlight than that of Aries and
Avignon. And there also were his brothers, the saints who never forget us, and
who come to earth, at times, to talk with the pure in heart. Like the old church,
overlooking the sea, like the carved doorway of Saint Trophimus, the grain
and the fields woke an echo in the believing soul of Mistral. He would pause
before the tiny insect, " the praying mante," who always holds towards heaven
two of its little feet, and an old legend tells that to reward this attitude of
continual prayer, God has given it the power of pointing out the right path to
the children who wander off during harvest time.
In his Memoires et Recits, Mistral relates the death of his father. The
master of Mas du Juge had received the last sacraments with a living faith.
He was surrounded by his weeping family, he alone remained serene. Listen
to his son : " 'Come, my children," he said, 'come, I am going, and I give thanks
to God for all that I owe Him, my long life, and my labor which He has
blessed.' Then, calling me, he said :
"'Frederic, what is the weather?'
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 283
" It rains, my father," I replied.
"'Good,' returned my father, 'if it rains it will be fine weather for the
sowing." "
" La race fait la race," and when the last hour sounded for the poet him-
self in his white house at Maillane, he could also thank God and cast a back-
ward look over his long life and his good labor. He had kept and increased
the domain of his ancestors. They had had fair weather, these " sowers " of
Provence, " sowers " of France also, for if Provence is not all of France,
France without Provence would not be wholly herself; an essential melody
would be missing in the national harmony the classic song which, thanks to
Mistral, will never again be silent. It brought life into a dead body, this double
transfusion of blood the blood of faith and the blood of the people, the
Christian soul and the love of the land. The ancients did not invent the sun,
nor the cadence of the waves, nor the slow tread of the oxen, nor the gesture of
the sower or the oarsman. They simply looked at them, and it is to be as classic
as they to look upon these things as they have done, only more closely and from
a greater height. From a greater height, for their gods are dead, and art has
not wept for them; our Heaven is infinitely above their Grecian Olympus. By
the light of the sun, which has risen for us, we see infinitely more than they
could, the world, life, the soul, truth, beauty.
IT is blessed to possess any portion of truth, even the smallest whereby
we may guide ourselves with some degree of safety amid the
mazes of this world, and view not merely the external but, in part at
least, the internal, abiding purpose of life. If the possession of the
portion be so blessed, what an inestimable distinction is it to stand upon
the structure of truth itself, and know therefrom the full meaning
and the sure, definite purpose of life even to its slightest thought, and
thus to be the master of time and eternity.
The difference between the Catholic Church and all other
Churches, of Catholic Faith and all creeds, is absolute and essential,
for with one there is completeness and harmony and integrity; with
the others there is a part vision, that because it is but a part perverts
the whole.
* * * *
MISS ZEPHINE HUMPHREY has been describing in the Atlantic
Monthly the awakening of one who begins to view kindly, and
with some measure of appreciation, the Catholic faith. She opens her
latest article with the statement:
The Protestant whose eyes have been opened to the significance of the
Catholic faith, finds that he has gained not so much a revelation of new truth
as a new point of view from which to survey the whole of life.
He stands awestruck and dumb. It almost seems that there is a
greater difference between two points of view of the same thing than
between two different things. And that they are two different things
in their practical final results, Miss Humphrey makes beautifully clear
by the following passage. One has but to summon up the hazy, shift-
284 WITH OUR READERS [May,
ing picture of Protestant truth we speak of it as a definite dogmatic
truth which a knowledge of modern thought and tendency will sug-
gest to him, and then place it beside this picture.
Protestant tolerance will not stand the test of enthusiasm, but Catholic
patience is one of the firmest and most magnificent developments of the human
race. It is cosmic that bottomless word has to be used again to describe it;
it has caught the spirit of time and creation and eternity. Nothing ever dis-
mays or shocks it no raging of the heathen, no dissension or catastrophe, no
injury or insult. It is not tolerant, for it holds that truth must be absolute,
one truth for all humanity; but it is full of forbearance and pity, ready to
make allowances, to wait, to turn back, to begin all over again. There is no
coldness about it; instead, there is a passion. "The passion of patience"
somewhere or other that phrase has lately crept into religious discussion, and
it admirably describes the marvelous temper of the Catholic Church. Caring
so mightily that he would die for his faith and would suffer anything to promote
its cause, a good Catholic yet remains undisturbed in the face of calumny.
* * * *
AND the result of the disintegration and decay of Protestant thought
has begotten indifference ; and modern toleration is in great
measure born of indifference. " Our unconcern has grown with the
gradual growth of our tolerance, and that famous plant has its roots
in no other soil than indifference. We do not care enough, that is the
bottom truth of the matter."
Quite otherwise is it with the soul that thinks that its faith has reached
down below individual distinctions, and has laid hold on a truth which is abso-
lute in itself and therefore of utter importance to the universe. Granting it
any generous impulse at all, such a soul cannot fail to burn to share this truth
with every other soul it encounters. The desire is a possession, a passion,
the most utterly selfless longing that a heart can know. It is to be reverenced,
not criticized. The only real wonder about Catholics is, not that they ever
proselytize, but that they ever contain themselves.
* * * *
THE moment that religion becomes real and personal to a man,
the moment it becomes part of himself, or as the author would
say, the moment a man thinks that such a great treasure may be com-
passed by his own soul and possessed of his own heart, his tongue
is loosened and he begins to speak, " he suddenly finds himself talking
about God and eternity, life and death, to all the world."
The Catholic faith is general. It proceeds from the Church, the Body of
Christ, and informs each one of its members according to its own sweet will and
their receptiveness. The Protestant builds up a lonely creed, painfully challeng-
ing every statement of the creeds of tradition, refusing to accept any of them
until he has squared it with his own experience. The Catholic throws himself
upon the creeds of the ages and the multitudes, feeling that what so many men
have believed must have a larger measure of truth than any limited doctrine
which he can fashion for himself ; and, instead of fitting the creed to his ex-
perience, he fits the experience to the creed. Little by little, if he keeps his
eyes faithfully on the pattern, he finds that his life unrolls an explanation of
every intricacy. A Catholic creed is a puzzle, yes; but life is the key to it
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 285
This expectant attitude gives the Catholic more real freedom than the
Protestant. The latter is a slave to his doubts. He never dares take a step
until he has first looked carefully all about him, sounded the ground, cal-
culated the distance and all the consequences. But the former lets himself
go, making endless experiments in faith, giving himself every possible chance
to appropriate not only his own particular beliefs but also the beliefs of others.
The result (which is also a cause) is a community of experience which squeezes
the whole richness of life into each separate cup. Drink it, drink it, believer!
It is compounded of visions and aspirations which, singly, thou art not great
enough to discover, but which the saints of the Church have had for thee and
now share with thee; it makes thee wise with the wisdom and love of all
the ages.
The externality of the Catholic faith is a characteristic which we Protestants
criticize severely. It seems to us that the love of God cannot be imposed
from without, but must spring up from the individual soul. That is true in a
sense ; not even the Catholic Church can unite men with God against their
will. But, granted a right disposition, how much more worth while, how nec-
essarily fuller in truth is the God of a world-wide Church, comprising mil-
lions of people, than the God of one solitary, groping soul ! God is not for
the one but the many ; and the more people utter the same prayer, the more
fully comes the answer. Moreover, it is worth much to stand allied with a
body which holds its members always, inexorably, in the right attitude. Indi-
vidual souls are uncertain affairs, often incorrigible in their moods. Sometimes
they will not and sometimes they will solicit Heaven. But the Church never
wavers. Steadfast she stands, facing Jerusalem, and with firm hand she
holds her children facing with her. She knows that practice often induces the
spirit, that the prayer of the body sinks into the soul and waters it as rain
an arid plant. She knows that the will of the many is stronger than the will of
the one, and that it better reflects the great Will in which is our peace. She
knows that humility has clearer, braver eyes than self-confidence. Therefore
she commands; or, rather, Heaven commands through her.
It all comes to this : particles of the Eternal Being as we are, the sum of
the truth of things is outside of and beyond us. No man can comprehend it
alone. Only by submitting ourselves to one another, only by learning and
sharing alike, can we know anything, can we escape from the burdensome
ignorance of our individuality. The Church offers us the common cup into
which to empty ourselves and from which to drink.
author proceeds to say that Protestant methods are better
adapted to disruption than to unity. She pleads with her fellow
Protestants to yield a little. The yielding will bring such great fruit.
At the end she writes. " We have gone our own ways, and may
perhaps never return to the home of our Mother. But she lingers
there still, and at her knees waits a blessing for every wandering child
who will stoop to receive it. There can be naught but good for us
in loving her."
Miss Humphrey will pardon us in expressing the hope that some
day the joy may be hers of feeling the blessing descend upon her own
heart.
286 WITH OUR READERS [May,
FROM a timely article, entitled The Social Views of Christ, which
appeared in the March issue of Studies, we take the following
passage :
" The attitude of Christianity towards slave-labor has never been
ambiguous. It may then seem surprising that slavery should have sub-
sisted among Christians until the nineteenth century. But the answer
is simple, Christ took away the sting of slavery. When once the
Son of God had taken the form of a slave and died a slave's death
[Phil. ii. 7], the doom of slavery had come. True, the name persisted
and the shell of the institution survived, but a Christian was hence-
forth free in Christ. No longer was he a chattel to be used and tor-
tured and killed ; he was a man, a person, a brother, a friend of Christ.
The Christian slave was often far better off than his modern successor,
who is worse than a slave in all but name. So conscious were the
Christian slaves of their new freedom through Jesus (with Whom there
was neither Jew nor Gentile, neither man nor woman, neither slave
nor free), that they had to be exhorted not to look down on their
masters, not even if these owners were pagans. This is how St. Paul
wrote on the subject [i Tim. vi. 1-2] :
All who are slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest
respect, so that God's Name and Teaching may not be maligned. Those whose
masters are Believers should not think less of them because they are Brothers;
on the contrary they should serve them all the better because those who benefit
by their work are beloved fellow-Believers.
" Such language in the mouth of a pagan would be simply incon-
ceivable. The citizen of old Rome would no more call his slave his
brother, than would the 'boss' of to-day apply the term to his carter.
What a mighty but silent revolution was effected in that hard pagan
world, when men were induced to treat their slaves (hitherto mere
chattels or playthings) better than we treat our domestic servants.
The full significance of this revolution cannot be better brought home
to us than by reading St. Paul's letter to the Christian Philemon,
whose slave Onesimus had robbed him and run away. The poor run-
away was converted by St. Paul, and was sent back to his master
with a letter full of tenderness and trust inimitable in its humor and
its pathos. And as we read it, let us bear in mind the fate of the
thieving runaway slave in the pagan code of Rome branding with
red-hot iron, torture and mutilation, gyves and shackles. But Christ
speaks through Paul his new evangel of labor:
And so though in Christ I might confidently enjoin what you should do,
yet for love's sake I prefer to plead with you. I Paul the aged and now also
the prisoner of Christ Jesus plead with you for my child Onesimus to whom
in my prison I have become a father. Once he was useless to you, but now he
has become useful [true to his name] not only to you but to me. I am indeed
sending him back to you, but my heart is with him. I would like to keep him
I9H-] BOOKS RECEIVED . 287
with me to attend to my wants as your representative during my imprisonment
for the Good News. But I wish to do nothing without your leave, so that
this favor may be done freely without pressure.
Perhaps indeed it was for this very reason [in God's providence] that he
was for a little while separated from you, that you might receive him back
for ever, no longer as a slave but as something better as a dearly loved
Brother who is specially dear to me and even more so to you, not only as your
fellow-man but as your fellow-Believer.
If then you count me your friend, receive him as you would me. If he ever
caused you loss or owes you anything, charge it against me. I Paul am writing
with my own hand this IOU!
I say nothing about your owing me your very self. Yes, Brother, do me
this favor for the sake of the Lord. Ease my heart for Christ's sake.
" When Christ's great Lieutenant can thus speak of a slave, in
accents of love and tenderness which seemed wondrous new and
strange to hard heathendom, when Paul could thus express the mind of
Christ on the relations of master and man, surely the Good News
has not lost its beauty and its force for the labor question of to-day.
On our ears, too, this talk of brother and sister, this language of love
and respect, sounds strangely incongruous and unmeaning, amid the
whir and jar of the machinery and the raucous din of the market.
Yes, it is so unbusinesslike, so unpractical; why, it is quite personal.
Alas. Think you that, if the Son of Man came again, He would find
Faith on earth ? "
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. XCIX. JUNE, 1914. No. 591.
A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., K.S.G.
President of University College, Cork.
HERE is a lovely mountain tarn, one of the many
in that region of natural beauties known as Kerry,
to which my thoughts have often turned whilst think-
ing over the subject of this article. High up, em-
bosomed in the mountains, for the most part of the
year it is even unfishable, because its sheltered position leaves its
surface too glassy for the trout to be deceived by the fly. When,
however, the wind blows from the right quarter, what a change in
the lake! Its mirror-like surface is torn with waves, miniature
waterspouts and spindrift rage and tear over its face. It is hardly
recognizable as the peaceful thing it was, and will be again. For
when the wind dies down, once more the pool returns to its peace-
ful state; once more puts on its glassy surface. Yet, no doubt,
profound changes have taken place in the disposition of its waters :
they are not as they were. The depths of the pool have been stirred,
all cannot be as it was before the storm raged. The pool is the
same, though a profound reconstruction of its constituent parts may
have taken place. And any dweller by its shores could tell the
casual visitor that such a storm, such a reconstruction, such a sub-
sequent calm, was no unique experience, but a thing which had
happened before, and must be expected to happen again. The anal-
ogy, like all analogies, breaks down if pushed very far beyond its
confines, but in a general way it seems to me to bear a resemblance
to the relations between religion and science. I speak of religion
Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. xcix. 19
290 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
generally, and specially of religion as typified by the Catholic
Church. And, though the period with which I am concerned
is the last hundred years, similar cycles of events have taken place
in the past; can we doubt that their like will take place in the
future ?
Let us turn our attention to the Argument from Design, com-
monly so-called. My intention is to consider its position at the
beginning of the last century, and the effect upon it of the great
controversies of the middle of that century which men think of as
the Darwinian controversy. Finally, I desire to consider how that
argument stands to-day, after the storm and fury of that contro-
versy has abated.
It would be a very great error to suppose that the pre-Darwin-
ian era was one barren of scientific discovery. Quite the contrary
was the case. At the opening of the last century, or during the
last few years of that which preceded it, the ancient caloric theory
of heat was upset by Rum ford and Davy, who showed that heat
was a mode of motion affecting the molecules of the heated sub-
stance. The ancient corpuscular theory of light was also upset by
Young, who showed that light was due to a wave motion in the
ether, then first described as a new medium. The same authority
introduced the concept of energy to the scientific world. Dalton
brought forward the atomic theory; Wollaston detected the dark
lines in the solar spectrum; Volta discovered the electric pile. It is
true that these epoch-making discoveries were on the physical side
of science, rather than on the biological. It is also true that it is
from the latter rather than from the former, that we are accustomed
in these days to look for conflicts between religion and science.
We cannot, however, forget that the one serious conflict with
science in which a mistake was made by the then rulers of the
Church, was on the physical side, for the dispute with Galileo raged
around the geocentric and heliocentric theories of astronomy. With
the merits of this dispute I cannot now afford the time to deal,
though there is much that could be said about it. Here I will only
note in passing that, as Newman remarked, it is the one and only
definite case which can be brought up, and is invariably brought up,
as an example when the Church is accused of being the enemy of
science. Huxley hated our religion and very foolishly and very
ignorantly too rejoiced that evolution " in addition to its truth has
the great merit of being in a position of irreconcilable antagonism
to that vigorous enemy of the highest life of mankind the Catholic
1914-] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 291
Church!'' 1 Yet this same Huxley, having studied the case of
Galileo, took up a position which I must confess I myself should find
it difficult to defend, that " the Pope and the Cardinals had rather
the best of it." 2 And according to Sir David Brewster, Leibnitz
declared that the theory of gravitation was opposed to natural
religion. The view was never supported, as far as I am aware, by
any authority, nor do I see how it ever arose. I mention it merely
to show what curious positions can be assumed by men of the first
order of intellect, when their minds have been enthralled by, and
wedded to, some particular theory. At any rate this may be said
of the pre-Darwinian portion of the era with which I am concerned,
that, from the biological side of science, there arose no serious,
even considerable theory which was taken to be opposed to religious
doctrine.
In the early years of the last century, in 1802 to be precise,
there appeared a work which may fairly be looked upon as the high
watermark of pre-Darwinian apologetics in England. I allude
to that very remarkable work on natural theology, commonly
know as Paley's Evidences. Fallen now, it would seem, and for
reasons which will shortly appear, into quite undeserved neglect,
Paley's book was well-known to the great biologists of the Darwin-
ian upheaval, and highly appreciated by them. Darwin himself
said, " I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than
Paley's Natural Theology. I could almost formerly have said it by
heart." 3 Huxley knew and grasped the real teaching of Paley a
good deal better than many of his opponents, who would no doubt
have thought of themselves as ranged under the banner of Paley.
And Huxley very acutely calls attention to the remarkable argu-
ment in the twenty-third chapter of the Evidences. Here Paley
argues that " there may be many second causes, and many courses
of second causes, one behind another, between what we observe of
nature and the Deity: but there must be intelligence somewhere;
there must be more in nature than what we see; and, amongst
the things unseen, there must be an intelligent, designing Author."
Then he proceeds to point out how things around us are produced
by the adding of particles to one another, so as to become col-
lectively organized bodies by means of motions which we cannot ex-
plain. " There may be," he continues, " particular intelligent beings
guiding these motions in each case; or they may be the result of
*Darwiniana, p. 147. 'Hurley's Life and Letters, vol. ii., p. 113.
*Darvt'in's Life and Letters, vol. ii., p. 219.
292 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
trains of mechanical dispositions, fixed beforehand by an intelligent
appointment, and kept in action by a power at the centre. But in
either case there must be intelligence." In reference to which
Huxley adds, " that is to say, he proleptically accepted the modern
doctrine of evolution, and his successors might do well to follow
their leader, or at any rate to attend to his weighty reasonings,
before rushing into an antagonism which has no reasonable founda-
tion." 4
Paley's line of argument is, or ought to be, well-known to all
educated persons, and need only be outlined here in the briefest
possible manner. He commences by supposing himself to be walk-
ing upon a heath. He strikes his foot against a stone: it is clear
that it may have been there forever; at any rate, to the casual ob-
server, it presents no special problems for solution. But a little
further on he comes upon a watch, and that can hardly be explained
in the same manner, namely, that it may have been always there.
He develops his argument by explaining the structure of the watch,
and by claiming the inevitable inference that the watch must have
had a maker, " an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the pur-
pose which we find it actually to answer: who comprehended its
construction, and designed its use." Nor in his opinion are the
arguments weakened by the facts that: First, we may never have
seen a watch made, or known an artist capable of making one;
second, that the watch sometimes, even frequently, went wrong;
third, that there were parts in it which we did not understand.
Further, he argues that the finder of the watch could not be ex-
pected to be satisfied by any of the following arguments : First,
that it was one out of many combinations of matter, and might have
been thus or otherwise arranged ; second, " that there was a prin-
ciple of order which had disposed the parts of the watch into their
present form and situation;" third, that the mechanism was no
proof of contrivance, only a motive to induce the mind to think so ;
nor again by the argument that, fourth, the watch was no more
than the result of the laws of metallic nature. Finally, he is not
to be put off from his belief by being told that he knew nothing of
the matter. Paley then applies his argument to different parts of
the human body, and subsequently to various contrivances through-
out the animal kingdom.
For example, he considers and describes the human eye a
marvel of contrivance. He points out that it has, like the telescope,
*Darwin's Life -and Letters, vol. ii., p. 202.
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 293
lenses and means for focussing, and other like things. If the de-
vices we meet with in the telescope are designed, as unquestionably
they are designed, to aid our vision, can we doubt that the devices
we find in the eye are also designed for the very purposes of vision
itself ? And in a similar manner he deals with a number of other
contrivances in man and in the lower animals, which exhibit, ac-
cording to his theory, undoubted evidences of design. 5 Such was
the thesis with whose development Paley's work is concerned, and
it embodies the Argument from Design as it was stated at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, and, indeed, as it continued to be
stated up to the Darwinian days. Into this comparatively peaceful
pool rushed the whirlwind of Darwin with the subsidiary and ad-
juvant blast of Huxley a nipping and an eager air from a keener
and adjacent quarter. Let us try to take stock of the events of
that period. Darwin's great book is commonly and most mislead-
ingly known to the majority of mankind as The Origin of Species,
whereas its true title was The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life. The distinction which I have drawn between
the popular and the actual titles is not a mere piece of pedantry:
behind it lies a historical fact of the utmost importance.
Darwin was by no manner of means the first person to propose
the theory now commonly but incorrectly known as " Darwinism,"
but which is more accurately described as " Transformism," that
is, the theory of the derivative character of living things. What
Darwin did was to put forward a means to explain this derivation,
namely, Natural Selection, to which he added some subsidiary fac-
tors such as Sexual Selection. I have no time to deal in any
adequate manner with the pre-Darwinian transformists, but this
may be said, that, apart from pagan writers who foreshadowed it
at least, it has in its essence been a subject of discussion amongst
the great Catholic writers since the time of St. Augustine of Hippo.
I am not enough of a theologian to decide, nor, since theologians
differ on the point, am I sufficiently foolish to attempt to decide,
how far St. Augustine was or was not what would be called an
evolutionist to-day. To me, at least, it seems as if the language of
Peter Lombard and of St. Thomas Aquinas, in commenting on St.
Augustine, makes it clear that the teaching of the greatest and most
influential Doctor in the history of the Church is quite consonant
with any reasonable theory of evolution nay that it is broad
The outline is that of the first chapters of the work in question.
294 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
and comprehensive enough to provide not only for whatever limited
degree of evolution is yet fairly established, but even for anything
that has even a remote probability of being proven in the future.
Nor am I deterred from coming to that conclusion by the very
obvious criticism that the Saint did not state the doctrine with the
clearness with which it is now laid down, a thing which no reason-
able person would expect him to have done.
It seems to me that he stated it " proleptically," as Huxley said
of Paley. But let that pass; what clearly emerges from the con-
troversy is that a theory in its essence quite indistinguishable from
what we call evolution, has been under discussion ever since the
time of St. Augustine amongst Catholic theologians. And to turn
to other people of course, Erasmus, Darwin, Lamarck, and Cham-
bers in his Vestiges of Creation put forward trans formist views,
though without exciting any very great interest, certainly without
provoking any very active controversy.
How was it then that Darwin's work aroused the storm which
it did? This is a point which we may well consider, since there
are important lessons to be learned from it. In the first place the
book arrived at what the trite phrase calls the " psychological mo-
ment." Scientific opinion, more or less prepared by previous
writings, was like a salt in strong solution. Darwin's book was the
added crystal which caused the solidification of the whole. But
while this is so, the main cause of the success of the book was its own
excellence; the careful collection of facts; the patiently elaborated
argument; its modest restrained presentation; and, above all, the
production for the first time of a theory which purported to explain,
and did in large measure explain, how that trans formism, in which
many had believed, perhaps in a somewhat indefinite manner, could
be conceived to have come about. In addition to these reasons
there is a third which must never be left out of consideration.
The book became a party cry. This most unfortunate circumstance
was, I at once and fully admit, in a very large degree due to the
ignorance and the unreasonableness of its opponents, the religious
party, chiefly, if not entirely, I am glad to say, drawn from outside
the ranks of our own body. It has always seemed to me that in
cases of this kind the advice of Gamaliel is golden, and that one
should wait and see what the decision of scientific men, at any
rate, is going to be before debating the question even on philo-
sophical lines, " for if this council or work be of men, it will be
dissolved." Such, however, was not the action of some of the
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 295
defenders of religion ; which might indeed have prayed to have been
delivered from its friends on this as on some other occasions. It is
impossible here to enter into the history of those times. Those
who do so will find in the speech of the then Bishop of Oxford,
the well-known Samuel Wilberforce, a most admirable example
of how not to do it. In his, as in many of the speeches and writings
of that day, will be found a neglect of the plain common-sense rule
that it is well to understand your opponent's case, and the facts
upon which it rests, before entering into argument with him. I
wish this simple lesson could be imprinted on the minds of those
who essay criticism of Catholic doctrine and Catholic philosophy.
But this is too much to expect.
Now one result of the rapid acceptance of Darwin's views,
the full bearing of which could not accurately be appreciated at the
moment, was the apparent destruction of the Argument from
Design. Darwin asserts this himself, and asserts it with regret,
as might be expected from his admiration of Paley's book. " The
old argument from design in nature as given by Paley," he writes,
" which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the
law of Natural Selection has been discovered. We can no longer
argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must
have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by
man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of or-
ganic beings, and in the action of Natural Selection, than in the
course which the wind blows." And this he says, though a few
lines further down he alludes to " the endless beautiful adaptations
which we everywhere meet with."
When a new fact of the first importance or a new theory of
really wide-reaching importance, is thrown into the scientific arena,
it not only creates a vast turmoil there, like the northern blasts on
the mountain tarn, but it also necessitates a re-orientation of all
kinds of matters, not at first sight connected directly with the tact
or theory itself. In our own days the discovery of radium and of
radio-activity, has completely altered the attitude of science towards
all sorts of subjects, even, for example, the age and possible destiny
of the sun and the earth. We used to be told that the earth was
gradually cooling, and would become an extinct " has-been " like
the moon. Yet now there is a school of scientific men which de-
clare that, so far from this being the case, the earth is actually
growing hotter and hotter in its interior, and that, if this process
'Life and Letters, vol. i., p. 309.
296 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
<
goes on, as go on it apparently must, " at some time or another
the world must explode, when the increasing temperature and pres-
sure within overpowers the strength of the crust. According to the
same authority, there is no assurance that such a consummation
does not await the future, nor evidence that such has not more
than once been an event of the past." 7 As this termination is not
expected for something like one hundred million years, we need
have no personal alarm, nor need we tremble on this account for
the future of our children. I mention the matter to show the far-
reaching consequence of a really first-rate discovery or theory.
Such was Darwin's theory, and it is not to be wondered at that
the Argument from Design required reconsideration and recon-
struction in view of his teachings. What the result was will
shortly be considered. Meantime it will be sufficient to note one
result of the appearance of the book, and more especially of the
unfortunate manner in which it was met by those who would have
been well-advised to have exercised more caution and discretion in
their attitude towards it. This serious result was the loss of faith
in revelation on the part of a large number of perfectly honest and
even reluctant persons. Perfectly honest: no one can doubt that
who reads the remarkable letter which Huxley, after the death of
his son, wrote to Kingsley, in which he says that whatever the con-
sequences, he will not try to make himself believe that which in his
heart he feels to be a lie. Reluctant and regretful : as witness the
bitter cry of Romanes when he had lost that belief in Christianity
which he regained in his latter days.
Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those
who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the " new faith " is a
desirable substitute for the waning splendor of " the old," I
am not ashamed to confess that, with this virtual negation of
God, the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and
although from henceforth the precept " to work while it is day "
will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly in-
tensified meaning of the words that " the night cometh when no
man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times
I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of
that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of
existence as now I find it at such times I shall ever feel it im-
possible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is sus-
ceptible. 8
T Soddy, Matter and Energy. Home University Library, p. 237.
*A Candid Examination of Theism, p. 114.
1914-] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 297
Mr. Chesterton, in one of his delightful flashes of thought, re-
minds us that " the hardest thing to remember about our own time,
of course, is simply that it is a time ; we all instinctively think of it
as the Day of Judgment." 9 Those of the mid-Victorian era had
no doubts in their minds that religion and all it entails had come to
judgment, and been dismissed with costs. It is perhaps not won-
derful that the new wine of scientific discovery, the marvelous out-
pouring of researches of all kinds in the biological world which fol-
lowed upon the publication of Darwin's theory, should have got a
little into men's heads. Every great fact, and every potent theory,
has this wonderful thing about it, that it engenders discovery,
and Darwin's theory, even as a working hypothesis, has been the di-
rect cause of an extraordinary advance in knowledge during the
past fifty years. And as it was ignorantly assumed by some, though
not by Darwin nor by Huxley, to have dispensed with any need
for a God, that idea was temporarily at any rate overshadowed in,
or obliterated from, the minds of men.
There are, perhaps I should say there were, excellent people
who really believed that if the Sacred Scriptures in his own tongue
were placed in the hands of a heathen who can read, he must ipso
facto become a Christian. In quite the same way the tendency of
the mid-Victorian age was to suppose that a careful perusal of Dar-
win's works was enough to shatter the faith of the stoutest. There
is a somewhat remarkable novel by a very remarkable, if under-
estimated writer, Samuel Butler, called The Way of All Flesh.
Butler was a real student of the Darwinian controversy, and con-
tributed some pungent writings to it. And no one who was familiar
with the mid-Victorian parsonage will dispute the accuracy of
many of his pictures of that household. For the rest the figures
are somewhat wooden, and in many respects unconvincing. The
real point of interest is the faithful representation of the ethos of
the period, the cocksure attitude which believed that any rational
man who looked into these things could have but one opinion about
them, and that was that we neither could, nor need endeavor,
to know anything about God, our souls, a future life, or other
such vain speculations of theologians and philosophers. This atti-
tude is the very atmosphere in which the book was created, and
which it exhales to those who read it to-day. And yet it was but
a time and not the Day of Judgment. " Few people," says Mr.
Chesterton in continuation of the text already cited, " few people,
'Charles Dickens, p. 288.
298 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
for instance, realize that a time may easily come when we shall see
the great outburst of science in the nineteenth century as some-
thing quite as splendid, brief, unique, and ultimately abandoned as
the outburst of art at the Renaissance. Few people realize that the
general habit of fiction, of telling tales in prose, may fade, like
the general habit of the ballad, of telling tales in verse, has for
the time faded. Few people realize that reading and writing are
only arbitrary sciences, like heraldry." All that he suggests, even
any part of it, seems to us, if not impossible at least incredible, but
it is as well to remind ourselves that all things mundane pass, and
that what we to-day think of as final, is not necessarily or even
probably so. And so after the splendid assurance of the mid-
Victorian period, that everything was to be known the day after
to-morrow if not sooner, comes the reaction of to-day. Of this we
have recently been told in a magistral address, the great tendency,
the " characteristic of the promising, though perturbing period in
which we live," is " rapid progress, combined with fundamental
skepticism," 10 intra-scientific skepticism be it understood, skepticism
as to what science can really insist upon, rather than skepticism
of things outside science.
It is perhaps not wonderful that with the great burst of scien-
tific knowledge which marked the second half of the nineteenth
century, there should arise the idea that science could and would
prove the key to all mysteries. When one passes even a few
of them under review, the achievements of science are marvelous
beyond all description. Look at the immensities of the universe.
It takes light one second to travel one hundred and eighty-six thou-
sand miles, and the distance between the sun and the earth being
more than ninety-two million eight hundred thousand miles, every
sunbeam has spent eight minutes or thereabouts on its journey.
It would take an express train, traveling sixty miles an hour and
never stopping day or night for coal or water, one hundred and
seventy-five years to make that journey. Yet it is a mere trifle to
the distances known to exist amongst the stars. Everybody knows
the Pole Star by sight. Let any person look at it on his fortieth
birthday. The beam which meets his eye, left that star at about
the moment the forty year old spectator was first making his entry
into this vale of tears. Yet even this again is a trifle if the calcu-
lations of astronomers are correct, who tell us that the extreme limit
of the stellar system consists of a star whose light takes thirty thou-
10 Lodge, Continuity, p. 7.
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 299-
sand years to reach us, traveling, though it does, at the terrific,
the inconceivable rate which I have mentioned. Yet over these-
incredible distances science exercises her reign, weighing, measur-
ing, analyzing the composition of the heavenly bodies, estimating
their orbits, and foretelling with unerring accuracy their move-
ments in the future.
Or look again at the smallest things we know of. The living
cell is a very small and, it used to be thought, a very simple thing.
Yet the more we know of it the less simple we find it. The writer
who said that every cell was full of machinery as complicated and
as great as that which is contained in a " Dreadnought," in no way
exaggerated the state of affairs. He was not thinking of the
further complications which have to be considered when we get to
much smaller things than the cell, smaller even than the molecules
of the chemical substances which build up the cell, when in fact we
arrive at what, but a few years ago, was thought to be the ultimate
limit of indivisibility, the atom. For the atom is now said to be
made up of electrons, or units of electricity, positive and negative
electrons. On this hypothesis the oppositely charged electrons are
to be thought of " as flying about inside the atom, as a few thou-
sand specks like full stops might fly about inside a room; forming
a kind of cosmic system under their strong mutual forces, and oc-
cupying the otherwise empty region of space which we call the atom
occupying it in the same sense that a few scattered but armed
soldiers can occupy a territory occupying it by forceful activity
not by bodily bulk." 11
We were recently considering the awful distances over which
science, under the form of astronomy, exercises her sway. Some
of the incredible minuteness of the objects with which she also
concerns herself, will be gained by learning that the molecules of
hydrogen, in which the electrons fly about like full-stops in a room,
are so small that it would require about two million of them placed
in a row to occupy one twenty-fifth of an inch, and that fifteen
thousand million, million, million of them would weigh one grain.
Of all these things great and small science takes cognizance, and
of all of them she can tell us much, more and more every day, new
vistas of knowledge constantly opening before her inquiries. But
there is one thing which she cannot tell us now or ever, nor can
pretend to tell us. She presents to our knowledge a universe com-
posed of matter, and that matter everywhere in motion. But she
"Lodge, Modern Views of Matter, p. n.
300 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
cannot tell us how that matter came into being, or how it came to
be in motion. This limitation of science is of course recognized
by everybody. We Catholics, in common with all Christians, say
that God Almighty, existing from all eternity, created matter, and
endowed it with the wonderful properties which it possesses. It is
at least a simple and a sufficient theory. I am not going to deal
further with it now ; but let us for one moment look at the alterna-
tive. If it is not as we believe, then matter is eternal, and it is
sentient or alive, and does all these wonderful things by its own
powers.
In a remarkable and nowadays too-little read book by two very
eminent Scotsmen I allude to The Unseen Universe by Balfour
Stewart and P. G. Tait it is maintained that the only reasonable
and defensible alternative to their hypothesis, namely, the existence
of a Creator, "is the stupendous pair of assumptions that visible
matter is eternal, and that IT IS ALIVE." And they continue, "If
anyone can be found to uphold notions like these ( from a scientific
point of view), we shall be most happy to enter the lists with him." 12
Yet these assumptions which they regard as a reductio ad absurdum
are actually put forward, not so far as I am aware by physicists,
who make matter their particular study, but by biologists or by
some biologists. At any rate, in the last analysis to this alternative,
all such theories as those of an anima mundi or immanent god, all
pantheistic ideas in fact really reduce themselves.
Apart from any other arguments which can be brought for-
ward, and taking it for the moment as a mere working hypothesis,
I think our theory is a more reasonable one than its rival. I can
understand the position of a man who says, "I neither know nor can
I know about these matters." That was the position of Huxley,
and still is the position of many, though I think not of so many
as was once the case. But the matter-alive view I own baffles
me completely. It appears also to have baffled many if not all of
the physicists who have studied it, like those from whom I have
quoted. One of the greatest of physicists, if not actually the great-
est, the late Lord Kelvin, in an address to the students of University
College, London, having considered these alternatives of which I
have been speaking, proclaimed his belief that "science positively
affirmed creative power." And certainly it is to the physicists that
we must go if we are to get information as to the properties and
possibilities of matter. Science cannot tell us how things began.
"Preface to second edition. (Italics and capitals as original.)
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 301
Professor Ward somewhere remarks that many explanations
are excellent once one has got inside a system; but they do not
explain the system itself. But science is still further limited, for
there are a whole range of things with which she has nothing to do,
and can have nothing to do, since, as we have lately been told by
Mr. Balfour, " Science depends on measurement, and things not
measurable are therefore excluded, or tend to be excluded from its
attention. But life and beauty and happiness are not measurable."
I do not press this part of the argument further here. What I
want to emphasize is this, that science has its own corner a large
one but there are other corners; that science cannot tell us any-
thing about the other corners, any more than the other corners can
tell us about science. Finally, that science admittedly cannot give
us any convincing answer as to how there come to be any corners
at all. All this has been long and well known, and fully recognized
by writers of the first importance.
In connection with aesthetic enjoyments, Huxley was obliged
to describe such things as the enjoyment of music, of art, of scenery,
which cannot be shown to be, or even imagined to be, of any sur-
vival value to human beings, as " gratuitous gifts," that is, as
things not in any way due to the action of Natural Selection, or
even coming within its province, things altogether outside the ken
of science. The same point has been argued in connection with the
lower animals. The late Professor Hutton, 13 of whose early criti-
cisms Darwin spoke in such high terms, claims that the song of
birds must be considered from the same point of view. " The song
of birds," he writes, " apart from their calls, is also due to a sense
of pleasure. Several of the forest birds of New Zealand sing softly
to themselves, and it is necessary to be very near them to hear them.
This is, probably, the primitive style of bird melody, and the loud-
throated thrush and skylark came later. All these songs are the
result of pure enjoyment; there is nothing useful in them, so they
cannot be due to Natural Selection."
And with regard to ethics, we have the confession of Herbert
Spencer, in the days when it was really dreamt that science was to
explain everything. At the conclusion of the second volume of his
Principles of Ethics, he tells us that he found his " satisfaction
somewhat dashed by the thought that these new parts fall short
of expectation. The doctrine of evolution has not furnished guid-
ance," he adds, " to the extent that I had hoped." As a matter of
"Lesson of Evolution, p. 167.
302 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
fact these conclusions might easily have been anticipated, had it been
remembered that science can only take into consideration a group
of experiences, not the whole sum of experiences. These limita-
tions of science, this inability to account for the commencement
of things, this incapacity to touch certain spheres of experience
in any way, may well lead us to consider whether those who thought
that the Argument from Design had completely perished were right
in their supposition. For it is, of course, with the Argument from
Design that I am primarily concerned, and to its present position
I will now direct my remarks.
Let us commence by taking one out of the many instances of
design which are to be found in the pages of Paley's work. In
his thirteenth chapter he deals with the tongue of the woodpecker,
which he says " is one of those singularities which nature presents
us with when a singular purpose is to be answered. It is a par-
ticular instrument for a particular use: and what, except design,
ever produces such?" Then he proceeds to describe the tongue
and its purpose, and asks, with, one might imagine, a prescient eye
on the Lamarckian theory which was to come, " Should it be said,
that, by continual endeavors to shoot out the tongue to the stretch,
the woodpecker's species may by degrees have lengthened the organ
itself beyond that of other birds, what account can be given of its
form, of its tip? how, in particular, did it get its barb, its dentation?
These barbs, in my opinion," he concludes, " wherever they occur,
are decisive proofs of mechanical contrivances."
It is clear what kind of argument underlies these words, and
many others of a like kind in the same book. It is the argument
of the watch found on the heath. The object whether watch or
woodpecker's tongue was designed obviously and ingeniously for a
certain purpose. It must have been designed for that purpose by an
intelligent being. In the case of the watch this was the watch-
maker; in the case of the tongue it must have the Author and
Creator of nature.
This argument, as we have already seen, appeared to be shat-
tered by Darwin's views. He himself remarks, in connection with
the instance I have selected from Paley, 14 " I can see no reason
why he (i. e., Asa Gray, with whom the letter deals) should rank
the accumulated variations by which the beautifully adapted wood-
pecker has been formed as providentially designed."
What shattered or appeared to shatter the Argument from De-
u Life and Letters, vol. i., p. 314.
I9I4-] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 303
sign? The formulation of the theory of Natural Selection. And
how did that shatter or appear to shatter it? Because that theory
taught and seemed to prove that the contrivances on which the
Argument from Design had appeared to rest, were the result of a
process of Natural Selection exercised amongst a myriad of varia-
tions constantly arising in living things, the selection being effected
by the process of the elimination of the less fit, and the survival
of the fitter, that is of those who by virtue of those favorable varia-
tions were better able to succeed in the struggle for life. These
views thus formulated undoubtedly seemed to prevail for a time,
and in the opinion of many at the time, and perhaps of many even
to-day, the Argument from Design disappeared as one unworthy
of the consideration of reasoning persons.
But has it been shattered or has it not, as re-stated in face
of the present attitude of science, really acquired a greater force
than it possessed in the days of Paley, the days before the Origin
of Species had appeared? This is the question which I desire to
consider, and in doing so I do not pause to argue as to whether
the theory of Natural Selection is or is not true. There are at
least three well-marked schools of opinion on that head. There
are those who deny its effectiveness in evolution altogether, a small
but existent band. There are those who look upon it as the main,
even the sole and sufficient factor of evolution, a larger, a more
important, but perhaps decreasing band. And there is the middle
party which, whilst regarding Natural Selection as an agent, per-
haps a very important agent in evolution, sees that its power is
limited, and probably inferior to other factors, such, for example,
as isolation. Let us assume the theory in question to be true, and
consider how it bears upon the argument with which I am
dealing.
It is curious that it should be necessary to make the observa-
tion, but it is necessary to point out that Natural Selection cannot
cause anything, and this because it cannot cause any variation. It
is also curious that this fundamental misconception often made, at
least by implication, to-day should have been made in Darwin's
own time, and corrected by Darwin himself in later editions of his
book, in which he says : " Some have even imagined that Natural
Selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preserva-
tion of such variations as arise, and are beneficial to the being under
its conditions of life." If Natural Selection cannot cause a varia-
tion as, of course, it cannot it is quite clear that, if it is an ex-
304 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
planation at all, it is not a complete explanation. But is it even
a partial explanation, and if so what actually does it explain?
Driesch, in those valuable lectures which he delivered in a
Scottish University under the Gifford Trust, points out that Natural
Selection
can only eliminate what cannot survive, what cannot stand the
environment in the broadest sense, but that Natural Selection
never is able to create diversities. It always acts negatively
only, never positively. And therefore it can explain [he con-
tinues], if you will allow me to make use of this ambiguous
word it can " explain " only why certain types of organic spec-
ifications, imaginable a priori, do not actually exist, but it
never explains at all the existence of the specifications of animal
and vegetable forms that are actually found. In speaking of an
" explanation " of the origin of the living specific forms by
Natural Selection, one therefore confuses the sufficient reason
for the non-existence of what there is not, with the sufficient
reason for the existence of what there is. To say that a man
has explained some organic character by Natural Selection is,
in the words of Nageli, the same as if someone who is asked
the question, "Why is this tree covered with these leaves?"
were to answer, " Because the gardener did not cut them away."
Of course that would explain why there are no more leaves
than those actually there, but it would never account for the
existence and nature of the existing leaves as such. Or [he
concludes] do we in the least understand why there are white
bears in the Polar Regions if we are told that bears of other
color could not survive? 15
Darwin himself recognized this fact, and in one of his letters
says, " Talking of 'Natural Selection ;' if I had to commence de
novo, I would have used 'natural preservation.' " 16
"Natural Selection," says de Vries, 17 acts as a sieve; it does
not single out the best variations, but it simply destroys the larger
number of those which are, from some cause or other, unfit for
their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up to
the required standards, and in special circumstances may even im-
prove them."
It cannot originate variations: that is the first point to which
we have to direct our attention. And in the second place it cannot
"Science and Philosophy of the Organism, vol. i., p. 262.
"Life and Letters, vol. ii., p. 346. "Darwin and Modern Science, p. 70.
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 305
do everything in choosing and shaping the variations with which
it is confronted. What causes the variations? That is the kernel
of the whole matter, and it is one on which science at present, it
must be confessed, can shed but little light. It is no good saying
that there is an inherent tendency in all living things to vary : that
explanation is purely verbal. To say that a thing inheres in, or
stick in, something else, does not explain why it inheres or how it
got stuck there.
Of course there is the question of the action of the environment
as to which so much doubt exists to-day. Of this it may be said
that even if we grant it all the influence which its warmest advocate
could ask, it still does not explain the question, because it does not
explain how living matter acquired the property of responding to
the influence of the environment. We have seen that Darwin in set
terms disclaims the efficacy of Natural Selection as a cause of var-
iations, and in face of that fact is it not extraordinary to find
a man of science stating that "we must assume Natural Selection
to be the principle of the explanation of the metamorphoses, because
all other apparent principles fail us, and it is inconceivable that
there should be another capable of explaining the adaptation of
organisms without assuming the help of a principle of design."
Yet in such terms illogical in the extreme, so it seems to me, does
Weismann address himself to the solution of the difficulty. And, in
so doing, he seems to me to throw a light upon the point with which
we are concerned. If, he says, Natural Selection cannot explain
the matter, then we must have recourse to the only other possible
alternative that, to him, appalling alternative the principle of
design.
We need not hesitate to grant that these are the two alternatives
with which we have to do. Now let us for a moment suppose that
Natural Selection does everything that its most ardent worshippers
claim for it, more, far more, than Darwin, its original describer
claimed for it, can it dispense with design ? That is the question to
which we may well address ourselves. Just let us recall for a mo-
ment what is claimed for the alternative ; what has to be accounted
for by those who deny the existence of an Intelligent Author of the
universe. The world, so science assures us, at a certain date in
the past, was a mass of nebulous matter at a terrifically high tem-
perature. Slowly and with vast convulsions and cataclysms, it
cooled down. Then by some chance mixing together of some nitro-
gen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and other elements, in some manner
VOL. xcix. 20
306 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
hitherto undiscoverable by, and even unimaginable by, modern chem-
ists, the lowest form of living organism emerged the offspring of
the blindest kind of chance, yet endowed somehow or another with
the marvelous power of propagating its kind, and, more, with a ten-
dency to vary fortuitously in all directions. Then the law of
Natural Selection, also the result of blind chance, sprang into
existence without any Lawgiver to lay it down. By this simple
process of extinguishing the disadvantageous variations, Natural
Selection developed out of the come-by-chance Protozoan all the
forms of animal and vegetable life which have flourished on this
earth, or which now astonish us by their multitude and variety.
Finally it brought forth the head and crown of things man. And
more, far more, the brain of man.
And what does that mean? Hamlet, Paradise Lost, the Dif-
ferential Calculus, the music of Handel, the paintings of Botticelli,
internal combustion engines, wireless telegraphy, all the poetry of
a Wordsworth, all the wonderful inventions of a Kelvin. All
these things and a thousand more as wonderful, the Law of Natural
Selection without a spark of intelligence behind it this perfectly
aimless action of physical forces all these things it has accom-
plished. This is the demand which is made upon our powers of
belief by those who deny the existence of an intelligent Author
of the universe, and attempt to put forward an explanation of the
existence of things as they are. Natural Selection, if it be a law
of nature, as we are assuming it to be, must be either the product
of mechanical forces acting at random, or it must proceed from an
intelligent Lawgiver. There is no middle term, since, as we have
seen, there is in the last abstraction nothing between believing in a
Being a Lawgiver Who is something in Himself apart from the
world, and believing in a mere abstraction from, or generalization
of, natural laws or processes, and that, apart from a Lawgiver,
means nothing more than blind chance.
In a letter published in the London Times, in connection with
the alternatives just discussed, Lord Kelvin, in maintaining that
there was no middle choice open to us, narrated a conversation
which he had once had with the great chemist Liebig. When walk-
ing with him in the country, Sir William Thomson, as he then was,
asked Liebig whether he believed that the grass and the flowers
which were all round them grew by chemical forces alone. Liebig's
reply was that he could no more believe that than he could believe
that a botanical work, describing these objects, could be produced
1914.] A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 307
by mere chemical forces. It is indeed a little difficult to see how
anyone can deliberately embrace the blind chance alternative. In
the discussion at Berlin between Father Wasmann and a number
of materialistic opponents which excited so much interest a few
years ago, this point was very clearly put by Professor Plate, an
avowed upholder of monistic and materialistic views. He said:
"The monist asserts nothing about the nature of God, but limits
himself to the laws of nature. These laws are, indeed, the only
things that we can establish with certainty; with regard to what
underlies them there are many different opinions, and we monists
are not all agreed on the subject. Personally," he continues, and
this is the most important part of his address, "personally, I always
maintain that, if there are laws of nature, it is only logical to admit
that there is a Lawgiver. But," he concludes, " of this Lawgiver
we can give no account, and any attempt to give one would lead
us into unfounded speculations." Such is his view. What at any
rate emerges from it is the Argument from Design in a new form.
Instead of the argument to the Artificer from the artifice, we have
the argument to the Lawgiver from the law under which the artifice
has constructed itself.
It certainly is not, at least in my opinion, a weaker argument,
rather one stronger and possessed of a greater grandeur than the
old argument.
If evolution [says Father Boedder] 18 be the true explanation
of the existing order of the cosmos, and this evolution is due
to the gradual working out to their final issues of laws inherent
in matter from the commencement, then the question whether
this existing order be due to intelligence or not, is not solved,
but merely pushed back. In the achievements of human indus-
try, a self-constructing machine would be taken to imply not
comparative absence of skill and contrivance in its maker, but
a higher exercise of these qualities; and the same will have to
be said of the machine of the cosmos. The more its order is
due to an evolution which is the outcome of the action of fixed
laws inherent from the first and tending definitely towards
the final result, the more striking is the manifestation which it
bears upon its face.
"Know, silly child," said Mother Carey to the fairy who had
made a butterfly, " know, silly child, that anyone can make things,
^Natural Theology, p. 166.
308 A CENTENARY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [June,
if they will take time and trouble enough; but it is not everyone
who, like me, can make things make themselves." 19 Now all that
we are learning daily from science, perhaps most of all from biol-
ogy, under the influence of the remarkable facts first discovered
by the Augustinian Abbot Mendel, does certainly seem to leave no
doubt as to the existence of those orderly series of occurrences
which we call " laws of nature." If such there be they must either
be the result of the ordainments of a Lawgiver or they must be the
results of blind chance. It is the same problem which confronted
Paley, stated in a somewhat different manner. He was obliged to
consider whether the watch came to be as it was by blind chance,
or because it had been made to tell the time by an intelligent artificer.
We are asked to decide whether the laws under which life works
out its ends, are the result of blind chance or come from a Lawgiver.
In their essence the two inquiries are identical, and those who would
have elected for blind chance under the Paleyian dilemma will do
so now, whilst those who think that law and order and progress
are inexplicable, not to say impossible, without a Lawgiver and an
Orderer, will hold the conclusion at which Paley arrived, that the
world shows forth its Creator in unmistakable language. Many
other issues, all of them interesting, arise in connection with this
matter, but with none of them can I find space to deal. What I have
been anxious to show is, that the argument which held the field
before the storm, when the lake was comparatively calm, now
that the tempest has raged over it, still remains, restated as we may
suppose the waters of the lake to have rearranged themselves during
the commotion to which they were subjected, but essentially the
same, and the same because founded upon what we cannot but
regard as being the Eternal Verities.
"Kingsley, Water Babies, chap. vii.
MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
HE flowers in Miss Mattie's garden were grouped
together after a plan of Miss Mattie's own. They
were not sown higgledy-piggledy to make a mosaic
of color as gardens usually are. They were har-
monized, softly blending into each other; and this
plan of Miss Mattie's had no doubt a very restful and quiet effect
for tired eyes. So thought the woman who leaned over the gate
of Vine Cottage, on a hot, dusty July afternoon. At least it was
hot and dusty out in the world. At Vine Cottage, down its green
lane, the little house softly swathed up in the great vine that gave
it its name, the day was hot indeed, but with a sense of refreshment
everywhere, a promise of dews at night.
The woman who leaned over the gate had led a child by the
hand as she came down the woodland track. Now she let the child
wander, while she feasted her eyes on the restfulness of the garden.
The child was a boy of about five, a beautiful child, with the com-
plexion of a peach, hair that lay in purplish-black rings on his little
head : like a Christ-child of Murillo. The child wandered after a
darkly-brown butterfly with splashes of scarlet on its wings. The
mother let him go unheeding. It was safe enough here, where
hardly any traffic came, except now and again a visitor or a trades-
man's cart to deliver goods to Miss Mattie.
The woman must have been very pretty at one time. She
had a profusion of light hair, and her skin must once have been
delicate. Her eyes were of a light china-blue, attractive by reason
of their unusualness. But ill-health and deadly fatigue lay like
a blight over what must once have been a charming face. As the
woman leaned upon the gate, she coughed and put her handkerchief
to her mouth quickly. When she took it away it was stained with
blood. She put it in her pocket indifferently, as though she were
used to the occurrence.
You plunge into the woodland path to Miss Mattie's from a hot
and glaring high road. The woman had trudged along the high
road for some miles before the woodland road tempted her to turn
aside. The glare of it was in her eyes and her brain still, the dust
3 io MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN [June,
that seemed to scintillate with millions of particles of white fire,
the steely haze, the sky like mplten brass. Not a stream tinkled
by the roadside. The hedges were thickly whitened by the dust.
Here, it was late afternoon, and the thrush, singing his last songs
before the silent summer, was shrilling it down the long arcades
of shade mottled with light. The trees were heavily green: she
felt she could gaze into them forever. There was water under
the hedge of the sweet-briar that bounded Miss Mattie's garden.
The smell of its wetness was in the air. The woman thought it
the most delicious smell she had ever known.
There were many pansies in Miss Mattie's garden, pansies in
all shades of purple from lavender to something that was almost
black; pansies golden brown; pansies of that dull, grayish rose
for which we have no name; yellow pansies. All sorts of other
flowers there were July lilies standing like young angels one
imagined them carrying a sword in sheath, keeping Miss Mattie's
garden; pinks, stock gillyflowers, forget-me-nots, and sweet William.
There was a bush of boy's-love close to the gate. The sharply
aromatic smell of it reached the woman through the freshness of
the stream, and the smell of the water-mints and wild thyme. Her
head drooped forward. The sweet smells made her senses reel
after the three miles in the dust and glare.
Someone came out from under the porch, over which the vine
hung, together with a rose bush in full bearing and many trails of
honeysuckle. Miss Mattie herself. She was a little woman in a
white dress. At a distance you thought she was quite young. Her
figure was so slender, so alert, her movements so brisk. She had
a small pale face, with a peaked chin and very bright, dark eyes;
a profusion of hair, which was hair-pinned up anyhow on top of
her small head, was worn with something of a wild look.
As she came nearer you discovered with amazement that Miss
Mattie was far from being young, would in all probability never
see fifty again. You discovered that the face was ivory-colored,
and covered with a network of fine wrinkles; that the over-bright
eyes were a little mad; that part of the cloudy look of the hair
at a distance was due to the powdering of gray. You discovered
these things at close quarters. But if you had spoken to Miss
Mattie in her out-of-doors attire she always wore white, winter
or summer, the texture only varying, and enveloped her face and her
big hat in a swathing of net and lace you would have divined a
pretty woman through the swathing. Only very sharp eyes could
1914.] MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN 311
have discovered behind the veil the old woman in Miss Mattie,
wherefore she had various pleasant adventures when she took her
walks abroad, courtesies, kindnesses on the part of the male sex,
which kept up her romantic illusions.
Seeing her come down the garden path between the pansies
with her youthful, mincing gait, the tired woman drew herself up
wearily, and stepped back into the grassy track. It was as though
she expected dismissal. She looked about for the child. Ah,
there he was. He had grown tired of chasing the butterfly, and he
was lying on the grass, dabbling his fingers in the stream.
" Georgie," she called in a faint voice, and stooped as though
to pick up the bag she had been carrying.
Miss Mattie had by this time reached the gate. " My good
woman," she said, "how tired you look! Won't you come in and
rest? A cup of tea and an hour in my garden will strengthen you
for the road."
The woman lifted her heavy eyes. She was enviously con-
scious of the difference between her dusty, trailing blacks and Miss
Mattie's embroidered muslin, to which the little black silk apron,
embroidered with a design of poppies and leaves in one corner,
gave an old-maidish look. Miss Mattie had a heart-shaped locket
about her neck suspended by a thin gold chain. She had blue
earrings in her ears. The sun shone on her old-fashioned rings,
on the silver buckles of her tiny shoes, as she stood facing the tired
woman the other side of the gate. Miss Mattie lifted the latch and
came out into the road. ^
" Come right in, you poor, tired woman," she said. " I have
always a rest and a simple meal for such as you. Don't thank me,
please. I don't expect to be thanked. You know Who it was
said : 'A cup of cold water given in My Name.' "
The tired woman looked as though she did not understand.
She gazed vacantly at Miss Mattie's face. What she did under-
stand was the offer of a cup of tea, and a rest in Miss Mattie's
garden before she need go on to the village to seek a lodging.
The village was a mile away at least, along the glaring road. She
did not feel equal to the effort till she had rested. And the cup of
tea was the one thing to put heart into her. There were other
things she might have preferred once. She had put them aside
with some difficulty for the sake of the child. She allowed herself
to be drawn by Miss Mattie's impetuous hands into the garden.
Then she remembered.
312 MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN [June,
" My little boy is with me," she said ; and called the child.
She had to go back to fetch Georgie, who, lying on his stomach, was
looking into the depths of the pellucid water that ran under the
bending swathes of grass over shining pebbles.
" I saw a fiss," he said without stirring, just moving his fat
legs to show that he was aware of a presence.
" Georgie, get up," said the mother. " If you are a good boy
the lady will let you see her lovely garden."
The boy scrambled to his feet. Miss Mattie uttered a faint
shriek.
" But, dear heaven, what a resemblance ! " she said, and covered
her eyes with her little twinkling hands as though the sun had
dazzled them. " And the name ! My dear soul !"
The woman looked at Miss Mattie, and something of cunning
came into her expression a gentle and harmless cunning as of a
creature who has had to protect her helplessness by the only means
within her reach.
" What is your name, my good woman? " Miss Mattie asked,
uncovering the corner of one eye.
" Mrs. " there was an almost imperceptible pause. " Mrs.
Smith."
" Ah, I thought it might have been Ludlow. How could it
be? Ridiculous! Living so much alone, and with one's thoughts
dwelling on one person, one is very apt to have imaginations. You
think so ? "
She uncovered the other eye and took a good look at Georgie.
" There is certainly a resemblance," she said. " Perhaps it
will disappear after a little while. I often find that resemblances
have a way of disappearing. There was a time when a chance
resemblance in a walk, a figure, the turn of a head used to trouble
me, so much that I gave up going outside my own little place except
to church. That was, of course, after Squire Ludlow's death.
I nursed him like a daughter till he died."
The woman listened, with her furtive look. She was holding
the child by the hand now, and Miss Mattie walking up the
garden path by her side, kept stealing odd peeps at him from the
hither side of his mother, and then averting her eyes as though the
richly-tinted little face dazzled her.
" The curls," she said to herself. " They are as close as the
tendrils of the vine. And purple-black like a ripe grape. It is
very strange."
1914.] MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN 313
She led the way through the porch, across a little tiled hall,
into a sitting-room. The room was curiously pretty. It had gray
walls, and the curtains and coverings of the furniture were gray
and purple. The walls were covered with delicate water colors.
The carpet on the floor had little bunches of faint violet sprinkled
on a dove-colored ground. The woman sank into a chair, with a
murmured apology for the dust of her shoes and the skirts she had
been too weary to hold out of the road dust. The child clung to
her, hiding his face shyly from the bright eyes that seemed as
though they could not keep away from him. Miss Mattie rang the
bell. A neat little servant came in response.
" We will have tea in the dining-room, if you please, Ann,"
she said. " Please send in a good tea some boiled eggs a little
boy's tea, with plenty of jam, honey, and cake and oh, yes!
there are a few strawberries left in the bed. Pick us a little dish of
strawberries."
Georgie's eyes grew large as he turned them on his mother.
She was not noticing him. She was looking intently at a miniature
in a frame of pearls which hung above the mantelpiece. It stood
out among a number of other miniatures. The scarlet soldier's
coat made a violent spot of color. Below the miniature was a hand-
ful of pansies in a glass, the only flowers on the mantelpiece which
was covered with bits of old silver, china, and all sorts of pretty
bric-a-brac. The woman leaned nearer and stared at the miniature.
The face, highly-colored and aquiline-featured, was painted with
delicate skill. The young man in the soldier's coat had a fine
forehead, fine gray eyes with dark lashes, arid rather thick eyebrows
which were not unpleasing. The cheeks were somewhat too red;
the lips somewhat over-crimson. Altogether a face of vivid color-
ing for the scarlet of the lips, the touch of carmine in the cheeks,
the white forehead showing above the brown of the face, were
strongly contrasted with the curling rings of purple-black hair that
fell in heavy clusters like Georgie's, surely like Georgie's.
"You see the likeness?" Miss Mattie asked, leaning a little
nearer. "You see the likeness? An odd thing, isn't it? If George
Ludlow had left a child " her lowered eyelids and the rising color
in her cheeks were strangely young and virginal for a woman
who would never see fifty again " he must have looked very like
your little boy. Of course he didn't. He went out to battle and
never came back."
" He was killed ? " asked the woman, sitting back in her chair
314 MISS MATT IE' S GARDEN [June,
and pressing her handkerchief to her lips. The child was now
seated on the floor. He was tired, and he rested his little head
against Miss Mattie's knee, quite unconscious of any social differ-
ence between the world he was accustomed to and Miss Mattie's.
His eyes blinked. He had tried to make friends with Miss Mattie's
old poodle, but Fifine distrusted little boys and made no response.
Georgie was keeping awake for the glorious tea which had been
promised him. He was very sleepy. The trudge along the glaring
road had thoroughly exhausted him.
" He must have been killed," Miss Mattie replied in a low voice.
" He was the bravest of the brave. Or he died in captivity. He
never came back. The War Office did all it could. We never had
tale or tidings of him."
All the little world of the countryside knew Miss Mattie's
romance. Anyone at all sympathetic could always draw her on
to talk about it. So it was not so wonderful that she should talk
of it to this poor woman with the gentle face, to whom she was
doing a charity that might perhaps be done to the Lord of us all.
" His father and I hoped for a long time past all hope.
Everyone else had given up long before we did. I went and nursed
Squire Ludlow at the Hall. His great grief, as it was mine, was
that I was not really his daughter, in name as well as in love. It
was all so sudden. The troops were called out before we knew
where we were. No time for a marriage. I should have been very
proud to have borne George's name. Not that he could be more
mine than he was, not if there were fifty marriages. Oh, my dear,
here is Ann with the tea. And the very last of our strawberries.
I shall pour out tea. And here is cream for the strawberries."
She lifted Georgie to her knee, crumpling her white muslin,
soiling it with the stain of the road. A pair of little shoes much
worn at the toes and white with dust lay against the lace of her skirt.
Georgie woke up for his tea, ate greedily at first, but was soon
satisfied. He laid his sleepy head against Miss Mattie's shoulder.
Miss Mattie had a way with children, as many a village mother of
a sick child could have testified. She slipped an arm about the
boy. Her other hand lifted the delicate china teacup to her lips.
" As I was saying, when Ann interrupted me," she went on
" oh, yes, I remember. The day Captain Ludlow went away he
was the most splendid of them all and all our men were splendid.
His father and I went up to London to see them march through the
streets. We could not go to Tilbury Docks. His father was afraid
1914.] MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN 315
I might break down, or so he said. I've sometimes thought he was
afraid of himself, and he wanted to keep a proud face to the world.
Oh, my dear, it was a spectacle ! Bands playing, accoutrements
glittering; the horses champing their bits and jingling all their
trappings. How clean they looked! How alert! How bright!
And the people all cheering like mad."
She put down her teacup and her bright, mad eyes seemed to
see the pictures once again. Then she laid a hand over them.
" The pomp and circumstance of glorious war," she repeated,
as though to herself. " Oh, my dear, it was worse for us left be-
hind. How we suffer, we women! And that poor old man!
Well, he hoped till he died. Just at the last it was two years ago
last Christmas he opened his eyes, and he said in a loud terrible
voice : 'George is dead !' Strange was it not ? "
Again the woman pressed her handkerchief to her lips. Her
eyes were fixed on the soldier's miniature. Miss Mattie did not
wait for any comment. She pushed away her teacup with the dis-
engaged hand.
" After all," she said, " we had our compensations our great
and glorious compensations. He was brave and splendid to the
end I am sure of it. His father and I when we could talk of
our grief we used to say that death we could bear, uncertainty
we could bear, though it was harder. The one thing we could not
bear we, possessors of a glorious memory was what others, God
help them, had to bear."
She lowered her voice and leaned nearer the woman.
" My dear, in that very battle from which Captain Ludlow
never returned, there was a heap of slain and every man of
them had been shot in the back. Dreadful! Incredible! I have
my theory : it is that Captain Ludlow followed some of those cow-
ards, trying to turn them back, and that so he was either mortally
wounded or else he was captured by the enemy and never came
back. Think what it would have been if he had been discovered
among those unfortunates! It was impossible, of course; but
other fathers, other sweethearts had to bear it. Our hearts might
be broken, but our pride never. I never saw fear on the Squire's
face except at the hour he died. It seemed cruel tnat it should
have overtaken him then, but there is One Who knows, Whose ways
we must not judge."
The child settled himself lower in her arms, relaxed his limbs
and stretched himself.
316 MISS MATTJE'S GARDEN [June,
" Let me have him," said the mother. " He is heavy for such
a little lady as you."
" No, no, you are tired."
Miss Mattie stood up, and, still holding the child, arranged
her silk sofa cushions with a dexterous sweep of her hand.
" Darling ! " she said, as she laid him down. " Darling ! The
likeness is really terrible; it grows clearer every moment. I won-
der what the Squire would have thought. It would have opened
all his wounds to see this child."
She stood looking down at Georgie as though she could not
tear herself away.
The shadows were now on this side of the house. It seemed
cooler with the coming refreshment of the dews. A light wind
had risen and stirred the window curtains, bringing the scent of
the stocks and of a distant clover field. The wood doves were
cooing all about the house, and there was a cawing of rooks as they
winged their way homewards.
" I had better be going," said the woman, rising to her feet.
" It's a thousand pities to disturb him, but "
" Please, don't go yet," said Miss Mattie. " You don't really
look fit for it, you poor soul. Better stay. You won't be the first
wayfarer to whom I've given a lodging for the night. I'll tell
Ann. How I've talked! And I know nothing of you. Nothing
except that you're a good woman. You haven't seen my garden.
Come and look at my pansies. I love them because they are so
faithful. There is not a day of the year but they will bear a blos-
som. If I had had the inestimable privilege of tending Captain
Ludlow's grave I should have covered it with pansies."
" My husband lies in an East End graveyard," said the wo-
man, with a sudden shrillness. " A horrible place I'd have given
him the green fields if I could."
Miss Mattie looked at her with a certain wonder. She had
forgotten when she talked of her own griefs that her listener might
also have suffered.
" Your husband? " she said, with a manner of gentle remote-
ness. She was prepared to be sympathetic; but the poor woman's
husband would be a drab personality beside that glittering creature
in scarlet and gold who had ridden out of Miss Mattie's life into
the void.
"Your husband? Of course. You are a widow, my poor
woman. But, after all, you have this " indicating the sleeping
1914.] MISS MATTIES GARDEN 317
child " if Captain Ludlow had but left me such an image of
himself."
She blushed again as she said it; and the other woman spoke
with a kind of rage, strange in so gentle a creature.
" Your memories are very different from mine," she said. "I,
poor wretch, I thought it a fine thing to marry a gentleman. I
might have been happy with a man of my own class. He dazzled
me. I worked my fingers to the bone for him. He was a gentle-
man to the end. He did nothing except walk about with a dog
at his heels; and sometimes he went to races. I had my savings
when I married him; I had nursed him back from death's door;
I took a house near the Caledonian Road you don't know London,
maybe it's up the Cattle Market way not where I should have
liked to settle, but the money wouldn't run to more. I took in
lodgers. We lived in the basement, I and the children. They never
got any health. I lost four of them before Georgie came. Georgie
would have gone the way of the others if we'd stayed. The base-
ment was damp. You should have seen the beetles! And rats!
We couldn't keep them under. We were broke out of it after
Georgie was born, else he'd have gone too. His father was a gentle-
man to the last. I took care of that. I never minded what I did
for him. I felt repaid for it all when I saw him walk out with his
cigar in his mouth and his dog at his heels."
Miss Mattie stared at her. Poor soul, what a sordid story she
was revealing! the more horrible because of its contrast with her
own heroic idyll.
" He should not have let you work," she said, her compassion-
ate eyes resting on the weary and flushed face. Poor soul ! What
things women would idealize who had not such a splendid lover as
Captain Ludlow. Her thoughts were full of bitter condemnation
of the man, but she would not speak them.
" And you loved him to the end? " she said, wonderingly.
" Oh, yes. I loved him to the end. I didn't mind working
for him, bless you. Not every poor girl like me marries a gentle-
man."
She laughed oddly as she put her handkerchief to her lips.
The handkerchief vaguely distressed Miss Mattie now that she could
observe it. It was coarse and not over clean. Still, poor soul, she
had been tramping the dusty highways. She would sleep in a
little white bed, in a cool and fragrant room, for once. Part of
Miss Mattie's madness in the eyes of the rest of the world was that
318 MISS MATTIE'S GARDEN [June,
she took her religion literally. She thought she could find a change
of garments for the poor woman. She should have a hot bath and
clean linen to sleep in. And the child. Miss Mattie herself was
going to bathe the child. She had a curiously pleasurable antici-
pation about the bathing of Georgie.
" I came down here," the woman said, with a reckless air, " to
see if any of his people were living who might take the child. I
ask nothing for myself. I'd as soon die under a clean hedgerow
as in a hospital any day : only I should like them to find me soon.
He did use to have relations in these parts. Georgie's father, I
mean. They're all dead and gone, and their money passed to
strangers. I've had my journey for nothing unless maybe
you'd take Georgie."
" I ! " Miss Mattie was startled. " Take your child, my poor
soul! Oh, I couldn't do that. A mother has the first claim. I
could find you some light employment until you were stronger.
A little needlework now. Have you ever mended lace? The
child, of course, could stay. I should love to have the child. His
little feet are not fit for the roads of the world."
" They have carried him far enough," the woman answered.
" He's an affectionate little lad ; but at five a child soon forgets.
I'm worse than you think, ma'am."
She suddenly unrolled the handkerchief she had been holding,
under Miss Mattie's shocked eyes. It was drenched with blood.
" It's the sixth to-day. I washed the others out in a stream
and dried them on a hedge. The blood's always coming into my
mouth. I'm dead tired."
Miss Mattie stood up in alarm. She got the woman to bed in
the little, cool, white room. Not to disturb her she put Georgie,
after his bath, into a little cot by her own bed. Already she felt
as though the child were hers.
The next morning when Miss Mattie stole in softly and pulled
up the blinds, the woman was gone. On the table was a roughly
pencilled note, in which she asked Miss Mattie to keep the child,
" seeing as how you've a fancy for him, and have the best right to
him, me being gone."
The last half of the sentence often recurred to Miss Mattie with
a sense of bewilderment. What on earth did the poor woman
mean? There was no explanation. The traveler had got well on
her way before her absence was discovered. Miss Mattie ascer-
tained later on that the woman had died in the infirmary of a town
1914.] THE ANSWERING CHRIST 319
some thirty miles away, leaving not a trace of where she had come
from.
Miss Mattie sometimes asked herself if she had not delayed to
raise the hue and cry till the woman was well out of reach. She
was full of scruples in all the matters of life and conduct. But,
after all, her doom was written. It was better for the child to be
wholly Miss Mattie's. The time came when Miss Mattie almost
forgot that he was not her own hers, and George Ludlow's. She
believed and she did not believe ; for it was a delusion she was very
careful to keep to herself.
" Georgie shall grow up a gentleman not as his father was,"
she sometimes said to herself; which proved that she was deluded
but with half her intelligence, and that a willful delusion.
THE ANSWERING CHRIST.
BY CAROLINE D. SWAN.
WITH grave, majestic, melancholy eyes
The Sphinx beholds the waste of yellow sands;
Around him eager pygmies swarm in bands,
Whose spirits, unilluminate, unwise,
With foolish queries brave his mysteries.
To him they are but atoms; their demands
As trifles, to the thought which age expands
And deep-eyed pondering of the centuries.
The riddle of the Sphinx! Egyptian lore
And modern swift impertinence in vain
Crave its solution. Problems evermore
Pain and perplex us till the tortured brain
Bowing at Calvary find peace and rest ;
One Love embracing all the guesser and the guessed.
THE QUESTION OF PANAMA CANAL TOLLS.
BY EDMUND B. BRIGGS, D.C.L.
HE Panama Canal Tolls question, so called, was rooted
in the soil of legal and diplomatic dispute more than
sixty-four years ago, and the end is not yet. Even
though the bill repealing the exemption of tolls upon
American coastwise vessels may pass the Senate and
become a law, the end will not be. That law will merely be the
expression of the imperium, not of the majestas of the American
people, which is yet to be expressed at the referendum to be taken
on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 1914.
Even then, the vexed questions now at issue will not be completely
solved, not even in our own public law, much less in the realm of
international law. The constitutional law of any one particular
State and what is known as international law, are two very dif-
ferent moral entities; and the two systems are not infrequently
found to be at variance and in conflict.
If the foregoing observations are correct (and who can reas-
onably dispute them?), then the American people are entitled to
expect from those who are charged by the Constitution with the solu-
tion of the particular matter now at bar, the Canal Tolls question,
a calm, candid, statesmanlike presentation of their respective argu-
ments, pro and con, in other words, to the very best that is within
them ; and not to an exhibition of invective, vituperation, and party
feeling by one side or the other. The occasion calls for statesman-
ship of the highest order, not for the partisanship of mere pol-
iticians.
Historians tell us that the dream of a canal to connect the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans first originated in the mind of Colum-
bus. However this may be, it was fully shared by the Spanish
conquistador es, as well as by the early French and English settlers
of America ; and actual surveys, with an inter-oceanic canal in view,
were attempted in early Spanish times. The tale of the struggles,
sacrifices, and mighty deeds of these iron men of yore would far
exceed the limitations of space which are placed upon a paper such
as this; but, to those who have gone deeply into it, the story has
all the pathos and fascination of " An Arabian Night's Dream."
1914-] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 321
The most that can be hoped for, here, is a fair and candid resume
of the questions which have arisen as to the canal, its construction
and operation, etc., primarily as between the United States and
Great Britain, and secondarily, and only incidentally, as between
either or both of those Powers and Colombia and Panama.
While the digging of a canal between the two great oceans
had been not only the dream of centuries, but had been often and
actively discussed, as between the United States and Great Britain
it may be said to have assumed concrete form only with the opening
of negotiations between the two Powers in the year 1848.
These negotiations culminated April 19, 1850, with the ratifi-
cation of the treaty which is usually styled the Clay ton-Bui wer
Treaty. This treaty, which plainly contemplated the building of
a canal " somewhere in Central America " upon the territory of
some Central American State probably Nicaragua provided for
a joint control, a joint guaranty of neutralization, and a joint pro-
tectorate by the contracting Powers, as also for equal, just, and
equitable charges upon the vessels of all nations for user of the
canal. This treaty embraced subjects other than the canal and
its management ; and, inter alia, contained a distinct mutual pledge
that neither of them should ever acquire, directly or indirectly, any
territory whatsoever in Central America. Great Britain having
already, in 1848, occupied the Mosquito Coast, which belonged to
Nicaragua, metaphorically before the ink upon the treaty was dry,
now proceeded to occupy the Bay or Ruatan Islands, which be-
longed to Honduras, and both of which, taken together, absolutely
commanded any possible Atlantic entrance to a canal through
Nicaragua. Of course, the United States promptly " protested,"
as she had protested for two years about " Mosquitia," and our
government kept on " protesting " for ten long years, twelve in
all. The idea that our own government should build the canal
had not as yet developed, and since whatever canal which might
be built was to traverse the soil of some third State, our manifest
interest, at that time, w r as to secure both neutralization and equality
of treatment for American vessels, the sole existing guaranty for
which was the treaty; and this was the reason why our govern-
ment did not then or afterwards denounce the treaty.
It was not until the year 1860 that Great Britain released her
grip upon the rifled territories of Nicaragua and Honduras. It
was in that year that she sent a Commissioner down to Central
America, and he, in her name, restored the Mosquito Coast to
VOL. xcix. 21
322 PANAMA CANAL TOLLS [June,
Nicaragua, and the Ruatan Islands to Honduras. The then Presi-
dent of the United States was very prompt in sending in a message
to Congress, felicitating that body upon the fact that Great Britain
had, at last, complied with the obligations of the treaty. Then our
country went into the throes of Civil War; and, in 1862-1864, we
woke up to the fact that Great Britain had proceeded to occupy
Belize, declaring it to be a " British Colony ;" and Great Britain is
in occupation of Belize to-day. Did our own government take any
action in the matter ? It " protested ;" but the same reasons for
non-denunciation of the Clay ton-Bui wer Treaty still prevailed. It
was our sole hold upon any sort of a canal, our sole hold upon
neutralization of any practicable inter-oceanic waterway, our sole
guaranty that none of the Continental Powers should rob us of a
canal, and of any rights therein; and so we never went further
than " protests."
On December i, 1884, Mr. Frelinghuysen, then Secretary of
State, in the name of President Arthur, negotiated a convention
with President Zelaya, of Nicaragua, for the purpose of building
a canal through the territories of that State. He was the first
Secretary of State to take openly and boldly the ground that,
because of repeated violations of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by
Great Britain, that instrument had become "voidable," and that
it was subject to denunciation by the United States. He did not
claim that the treaty was " void." The convention he negotiated
with Nicaragua, in practically the exact terms of the Hay-Paunce-
fote Treaty, provided for equal rights of " all nations " in the
user of the canal by their vessels; contained a provision for the
exemption of American coastwise vessels from payment of tolls;
and provided, further, for the assumption by the United States of
a protectorate over Nicaragua. President Cleveland withdrew this
convention from the Senate in March, 1885, " for further examina-
tion by the Executive ;" and, later on, sent a message to the Senate
declining to re-submit the convention to it, basing his reasons upon
substantially the following grounds, viz., (a) that the traditional
policy of the United States forbade any " entangling alliance " with
Nicaragua; (b) that the uniform policy of our own government
had been opposed to anything short of the absolute neutralization
of any canal which might be built across the isthmus; (c) that the
uniform policy of our own government had been to demand exact
equality of treatment and charges for user of the canal for the
vessels of " all nations," including our own. So that convention
1914.] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 323
fell to the ground, and at the direct instance of the President of
the United States, who is, by the Constitution, charged with the con-
duct of our foreign relations and affairs, and with the negotiation
of all treaties.
It thus clearly appears from the foregoing that, up to the last
year of the administration of President Arthur, all American diplo-
macy, all diplomatic negotiations, correspondence and conversations,
had been based upon the ideas of absolute neutralization of any
canal which might be built, and of exactly equal treatment of the
vessels of " all nations," inclusive of those belonging to our own
citizens and nationals, for user of the canal; and that it was our
own President who withdrew the Frelinghuysen-Zelaya Convention
from further consideration by the Senate, precisely upon the ground
that it violated those fundamental principles of American diplomacy.
It was the outcome of the Spanish-American War which first
opened the eyes of the American people to the twofold fact that
a canal must be constructed, and that our own government alone
must build it, operate it, and control it. The fact became apparent
because of our acquisition of territories " beyond seas," just as
the further fact that we must own, operate, and control a continuous
line of railway, from our own borders to the Panama Canal, as
a military necessity for the protection of that waterway, will soon
become apparent. Expansion and foreign conquests are irresistibly
driving us on, even against the reluctance of our own statesmen, just
as Rome was so driven, even against the reluctance of her states-
men. In such cases the pressure is economic rather than political ;
and we may but hope, at best, that we have not " sown the wind,
to reap the whirlwind."
With the ending of the Spanish-American War, came the great
desire of our own government to get rid of .the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty ; and it is not at all strange to relate that, just as we had been
previously "warm" to that treaty, and Great Britain even disdain-
fully " cold " towards it, the positions of the two foreign offices
became diametrically reversed. A canal was in sight; and Great
Britain began to " sit up and take notice." The French de Les-
seps Company had started the ditch, but had collapsed for lack
of funds; and it had become apparent that, if the canal was to be
constructed at all, it could not be done by any private enterprise,
but must be accomplished by the United States, and by the United
States alone. Immediately and incontinently, as it were, the British
government became violently enamored with the Clayton-Bulwer
324 PANAMA CANAL TOLLS [June,
Treaty, a treaty which she had repeatedly violated, and which she
was then in the very act of violating, in Belize. To all suggestions
for the abrogation of the treaty she turned a deaf ear, insisting that
it remained in full force and vigor. We were in the position that
all of our Secretaries of State, unless we can except Mr. Fre-
linghuysen and Mr. Elaine, had uniformly, up to that time, taken
in spite of British violations, and for the reasons above set forth.
Exchanges of diplomatic notes and conversations between the two
governments became very common. These finally culminated in
the first draft of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which was duly
signed by the respective plenipotentiaries, and was sent by the Presi-
dent to the Senate for consent to ratification. The preamble to
this convention expressly stated that " The High Contracting Par-
ties desiring to preserve and maintain the general principles of
neutralization established by Article VIII. of the Clayton-Bulwer
Convention, adopt as the basis of such neutralization the following
rules, substantially as embodied in the convention between Great
Britain and other Powers, signed at Constantinople, October 29,
1888, for the free navigation of the Suez Maritime Canal."
Rule i provided that " the canal shall be free and open, in time
of peace- as in time of war, to the vessels of commerce and of war
of all nations, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no
discrimination against any nation or its citizens or subjects in
respect of the conditions or charges of traffic, or otherwise."
Rule 7 provided that " no fortifications shall be erected com-
manding the canal or the waters adjacent."
A further article provided that, immediately upon the ratifica-
tion of the convention, the two contracting Powers shall immediately
bring it to the notice of other Powers, and invite them to adhere
to it.
It thus clearly appears from the text of this draft of a treaty,
duly signed, and duly sent by the President to the Senate for its
" advice and consent " to its ratification, ( I ) that our government
still adhered to its uniform policy of neutralization; (2) that
it still adhered to its time-honored policy of free and equal use
of the canal by the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations,
including the United States, in time of war and in time of peace,
without discrimination against any nation, as to charges or other-
wise; and (3) that neutralization, not neutrality, two very different
things, was distinctly provided for; and, since no one Power can
possibly establish neutralization, and can only by its own force pro-
1914.] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 325
claim and enforce its own neutrality, other Powers were to be
invited by both parties to adhere to the convention, thus establishing
the principle of neutralization.
Can the intellect of any candid man doubt for one instant
that, up to the time this draft of a treaty was sent to the Senate,
albeit it was already a recognized fact that the United States
would have to construct the canal, as well as to control and operate
it when built, our own Executive had, so far, never even conceived
the idea of anything less than the equal use of the canal by the
vessels of all nations alike, and without discrimination against any
nation or its nationals, in respect of charge of traffic, or otherwise?
Where is there ground up to this time (the time of submitting the
proposed treaty to the Senate) for the assumption that the term all
nations, in the language of the instrument itself, did not mean
all nations at all, and did mean all nations except the United States ?
True, in the aborted Frelinghuysen-Zelaya Convention above cited,
the same term " all nations " did mean, precisely, all nations other
than the United States, but that was, plainly and manifestly, be-
cause another article of that convention granted to the United
States, in unequivocal language, exemption of its coastwise ships
from payment of tolls, something which nowhere appears in either
the first draft of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, or in the treaty itself.
If that construction of the term was intended in the case at bar,
why was it not inserted, as in the aborted Frelinghuysen-Zelaya
Convention, and why does the preamble of the Hay-Pauncefote
Treaty expressly refer to the rules enacted for use of the Suez
Canal, which canal, as everybody knows, has always charged exactly
equal tolls upon the ships of all nations, including the vessels of
Great Britain, Turkey, and Egypt, the two latter being the territorial
sovereigns of the canal? It may be objected that the Suez Canal
is owned and operated by a corporation, and not by a government
of a sovereign Power. Technically this is true, of course, but in
point of fact, not only because of its ownership of a majority of
the shares of the Suez Canal Company, but by reason of its pro-
tectorate over and actual control of Egypt, the British government
controls the operation of the canal as fully as though one of its
military or naval officers were its official head.
The draft of the proposed treaty, so as aforesaid submitted
to the Senate, was not satisfactory to that body; and, under its
asserted constitutional authority, it proceeded to amend it by the
insertion of a clause providing that, in case the defence of the
326 PANAMA CANAL TOLLS [June,
United States required it. the rules for neutralization of the canal
should give way, that is, that nothing in the treaty should stand in
the way of the safety of the United States, as its own government
might regard it. With this amendment included, the Senate " ad-
vised and consented " to the ratification of the first draft of the
treaty, fortification clause, adherence of other Powers and all. It
thus clearly appears that, as yet, there was no idea of anything save
complete neutralization, and absolute equality as to charges for
transit, by the government of the United States.
The treaty, as so amended by the Senate, was promptly rejected
by Great Britain; and her government submitted a second draft
to our State Department, in which the Seventh Article of the former
draft (prohibiting fortification) was entirely omitted, and the first
rule of which provided that " the canal shall be free and open to the
vessels of commerce and war of all nations which shall agree to
observe these rules," etc., etc. This draft was more offensive to
public sentiment in the United States than was the first, not because
the rule of equal use by the vessels of commerce and of war of all
nations was still retained, but because of the phrase " all nations
which shall agree to observe these rules." Public sentiment had so
advanced as to repudiate any treaty which should admit of any
neutralization of the canal by virtue of contract or agreement of
the Powers, and had settled itself upon the idea of a guaranty of
neutrality by ourselves alone, as to all Powers other than our own
public enemies. This second draft was not sent to the Senate
because of these objections; and negotiations were renewed. Up
to this point no objection had ever been raised by the United States,
on the score that any of our ships, coastwise or other, ought to enjoy
exemption from payment of canal tolls.
The continuation of negotiations resulted in the ratification
of the actual Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, November 18, 1901. The
preamble of the treaty states that " The United States adopts as the
basis of neutralization of such ship canal, the following rules, sub-
stantially as embodied in the Convention of Constantinople,
for the free navigation of the Suez Canal, that is to say:
"i. The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce
and of war of all nations observing these rules, on terms of en-
tire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any
such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions
or charges of traffic, or otherwise," etc., etc., and Rule 7 of the first
draft is entirely omitted the rule forbidding fortification and
1914-] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 327
there is substituted therefor a rule permitting the military policing of
the canal by the United States.
Apart from the somewhat ridiculous misuse of ,the term
" neutralization " which, as shown above, no one Power can in the
nature of things effect, instead of the term " neutrality," there is,'
manifestly, no change in the ideas of the United States as to the
construction to be placed upon the clauses providing for equal
terms for use by the vessels of all nations of the canal. The
terminology of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and of the Hay-
Pauncefote Treaty, upon this point, is practically identical; and
the idea itself had always been construed by our State Department
just as it is now contended for by the British Foreign Office, if
we except the instance of Mr. Frelinghuysen and President Arthur
in the aborted Frelinghuysen-Zelaya Convention which, in set
terms, provided for differential treatment of our coastwise ships.
Can any candid mind, after reading the foregoing brief resume,
all of it culled from State papers, doubt the inevitable conclusion?
By the terms of the treaty vessels of commerce, as well as
of war, of all nations " observing these rules," are placed upon
terms of exact equality " as to charges or otherwise " for the use
of the canal; and, as if to show that this principle, for which all
of our Secretaries of State, except Mr. Blaine and Mr. Freling-
huysen, had uniformly and strenuously contended, was the plain
intent and meaning of the two parties to the Hay-Pauncefote Con-
vention, Article IV. of the treaty says : " It is agreed that no
change of territorial sovereignty or of the international relations
of the country or countries traversed by the before-mentioned
canal shall affect the general principles of neutralization " (neu-
trality) " or the obligation of the High Contracting Parties under
this treaty." The language is plain and unequivocal; and, as
above shown, had been uniformly contended for by our own
State Department, up to that time, if we except the policy of
Secretaries Blaine and Frelinghuysen.
Veracity, absolute veracity, is the primary principle of all
social ethics, the very keystone of the arch whereby the solidarity
of society itself is maintained. If this be so, as applied to any
one particular society, does it not apply, a fortiori, to the inter-
national society of nations? Is language "a medium for conceal-
ing thought," as once expressed by a great English statesman;
or has it not been a gift of his Creator to man, among other things,
to enable him best to convey to his fellowman the expression of
328 PANAMA CANAL TOLLS [June,
that veracity upon which the existence of the entire social fabric
depends ?
What is the duty of a President of the United States if,
with his enlarged experience and means of information, his con-
science says to him, that, in a present exigency, any particular
plank of the party platform upon which he stood for election has
become a menace to the true interests of the entire American
people ? Is he to stand by a partisan plank in a partisan platform,
or is he to stand forth for what the voice of his conscience tells
him is the right?
Does the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912, abrogate the
equality of tolls provision of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty? In
so far as our own constitutional law is concerned, as it has been
construed by the Supreme Court, it unquestionably does have that
effect. That tribunal has repeatedly held that a subsequent treaty
has the effect to repeal a prior statute in conflict with its terms,
and that a subsequent statute has the effect to abrogate so much
of a prior treaty as may conflict with its terms. This is, however,
not the case in international law, which holds the obligations of a
solemn treaty to be of force superior to the municipal law, public
or private, of any particular state or nation, and the rule is the
same in what we know as universal public law, the precepts of
which are directly deducible from the two great primary laws
explained by Domat and the Chancellor d'Augusseau as coming
to mankind through secondary natural law, which is the product of
the intellect and will of the Creator Himself.
Has our acquisition of territorial sovereignty over the Canal
Zone, by virtue of the treaty with the Republic of Panama, of
itself altered bur status under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty? In
many, yea, in most respects, it has completely and absolutely al-
tered our status. It has, for instance, ex necessitate, relieved us
from any obligation to maintain neutrality of the canal and its
approaches, in regard to our own public enemies, and has clothed
us with complete belligerent rights within the canal itself and its
environs, as against any public enemy of the United States. This
the British Foreign Office has frankly admitted. All that prac-
tically now remains of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty consists of two
obligations, viz., to maintain neutrality within the canal and its
approaches, as to " all nations observing these rules," except as to
any Power with which we may be ourselves at war; and to extend
equal treatment, " as to charges and otherwise," in the use of the
1914-] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 329
canal by commercial vessels of all nations observing these rules,
including ourselves, except as to the vessels of an enemy State in
time of war.
Further, as an incident of sovereignty and ownership, we have
become entitled to give free transit through the canal to all public
vessels and government goods of the United States, not only our
ships of war, but all government-owned vessels and goods. This
is, in itself, subject to limitations. If, for instance, we should
carry out the suggestions of a bill now pending in Congress, and
actually use our warships for carrying passengers and cargo (other
than the mails) through the canal, we should be bound to rate
those warships as " commercial vessels " and charge tolls accord-
ingly. This would not apply, however, to army or navy trans-
ports. In other words, since we have entered into the business
of operating a canal, we have, as a nation, gone into a commercial
business of a public nature; and, even under a plain provision of
our own public, law, while as the owner of our own canal we are
entitled to its free use for public vessels and government-owned
goods, having also gone into it as a commercial venture, we are
bound to give its commercial use to the nationals of all nations
upon precisely the same terms we extend to our own citizens.
The case of the Erie Canal is precisely in point. New York is
the sovereign and owner of the Erie Canal. She has the right to
the free use of it for State-owned vessels and State-owned ma-
terial; but, since she has thrown it open to commercial use,, she
is bound to give its use to the vessels (barges and canal boats)
and their cargoes not only to her own citizens, but to the citizens
of all the States, and even to the nationals of foreign States, upon
precisely the same scale of " charges and otherwise " which she
extends to boats and cargoes belonging to citizens of New York.
This question long since passed beyond the realm of dispute in
our own courts, as well as in those of England, and the doctrine is
stare decisis.
Nothing has been said in this paper concerning the attitude
taken by Mr. Elaine, when Secretary of State, concerning the
isthmian canal question, mainly because of limitation of space.
Suffice it to say that, in a series of brilliantly-written State papers,
he took the ground that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was " obso-
lete," also that any canal across the isthmus must be controlled
by the United States, and, further, that any canal across the
isthmus must, when built, be a part of the American coast line,
330 PANAMA CANAL TOLLS [June,
more accurately, a part of the coast line of the United States.
To all of this, the calm and characteristic reply of the British
Foreign Office was that the treaty was in full force and vigor, and
that by the deliberate act of the United States in twice declining
an offer of Great Britain to abrogate it, and that a valid subsisting
treaty provided for joint control, and joint protection by the two
Powers. Then came Mr. Olney who, in a most able and scholarly
review of the entire question, took strong ground in favor of the
subsisting validity of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. So the matter
remained until negotiations were initiated, which led up to the
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. It is but fair to both sides in the present
imbroglio to say, here, that up to the actual negotiation of the
latter convention, the United States not only had ample grounds
for, but would have been amply justified in a denunciation of the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, a step which would have left us perfectly
free to act as we pleased. If our statesmen and diplomats had an
idea that the mere acquisition by us of sovereignty over the Canal
Zone, absolved us from the commercial obligations of the Hay-
Pauncefote Treaty, they overreached themselves quite as thor-
oughly as Mr. Hay was overreached in the negotiation and the
Senate in the ratification of the treaty itself. As to any contention
that we are bound to-day with the provisions of said treaty as to
ships of war, or the exercise of belligerent rights in the canal,
mere partisan " clap-trap " set up for partisan ends, the complete
answer is that Great Britain has, by her own course in Egypt,
estopped herself from even making a " protest." Notwithstand-
ing the " neutralization " of the Suez Canal by express terms of
the Constantinople Convention, Great Britain has seized each and
every " coign of vantage " at both ends of that canal, has strongly
fortified and garrisoned them, under her own flag, so that she
completely controls both entrances, and by reason of her pro-
tectorate over and occupation, military occupation, of Egypt, and
her control by the Sidar of every soldier in the Egyptian army, she
had, without words, placed herself in the precise military condition
at Suez in which we have now placed ourselves at Panama. No
wonder she admits in her protest against unequal tolls that our
sovereignty gives us the complete exercise of belligerent rights in
our own canal !
Who ever dreamed, before the recent debate in the House of
Representatives, that a mere grant of equal commercial privileges
amounted either to a " surrender " of sovereignty or to an aband-
I9I4-] PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 331
onment of "control?" The question answers itself, to the mind
of any man who has even skimmed the outside surface of inter-
national law.
In the words of an eminent New York lawyer, " What does a
treaty mea>n, what its plain language says that it means, or what its
plain language says that it does not mean ? " Do the words " all
nations " mean all nations, or do they mean " all nations except
the United States and the Republic of Panama? "
As a conclusion, we will make this summary :
1. The traditional policy of American diplomacy, as well as
the traditional policy of the Democratic Party, is directly opposed
to the stand taken by those statesmen who are opposed to the re-
quest of the President for a repeal of the tolls exemption clauses
of the Panama Canal Act.
2. The plighted word of the nation, the honor of the nation
itself is, in the plain words of a solemn treaty, pledged that there
shall be no discrimination as to " any nation, its citizens or sub-
jects," in the exaction of such tolls.
3. The navigation laws of the United States already afford
not only adequate, but excessive protection to vessels of our citizens
engaged in coastwise trade. They need no such protection, or
subsidy, as is granted by the statute, not even, as so glibly asserted,
against the railroads, by which they are mainly either directly
or indirectly owned and controlled, by reason of our peculiar
system of " interlocking directorates," and with which, as is
clearly shown by their freight and passenger rates, they have a
complete understanding.
4. If any class of vessels of our merchant marine needed any
special favors in the canal, it would be the vessels engaged in
foreign commerce, which are ostensibly obliged to compete with
the foreign shipping of the entire world. As a fact, they do not
need this protection, and for the same reasons stated in the con-
cluding part of No. 3 above.
5. The repeal of the tolls exemption clause of the statute
relieves us from a delicate and dangerous diplomatic impasse with-
out any sacrifice of national dignity and honor, without the delay
and expense of an arbitration ; and without estopping us from tak-
ing up the question again, diplomatically, at any future time.
6. The President of the United States is charged by the Con-
stitution with the conduct of our foreign relations and affairs, and
all diplomatic correspondence and conversations run in his name:
332 UNTRIED WINGS [June,
" The President believes," " The President highly appreciated," etc.,
etc. There is much in the conduct of diplomatic affairs which,
in the nature of things, and by the necessities of the case, must be
kept secret, lest the entire objects sought to be accomplished may be
frustrated by premature publication. The responsibility is upon
him, and upon no one else. The entire matter necessarily remains,
by virtue of the responsibilities of his high office, within his own
conscience; and when Woodrow Wilson, President of the United
States, plainly informed the Congress that his entire foreign policy,
and its success or failure, depended upon a repeal of the tolls ex-
emption clause of the statute, it was not Woodrow Wilson, but the
President of the United States, the executive head, not only of a
party, but of the American people, who was speaking. Do the
American people believe in the veracity, the honesty, the integrity
of the President of the United States? Has the man, or the official,
given them reason to impeach his personal or official character?
These questions, it seems to the writer, answer themselves.
UNTRIED WINGS.
BY M. H. LAWLESS.
WHAT were you but a bird with half-fledged wing,
Still warm from happy nestling at my side?
On the nest's rim you sat with wondering
Upon a sea so deep and blue and wide,
And then aspired above its deep to swing,
Or through its lower billows swiftly glide
You who knew naught but nest-bound fluttering,
Whose strength in flight had never yet been tried !
O pity of it that you could not wait
Until each twig and branch you learned to sway !
That with my bits of food I came too late
To hold you to the place where safety lay!
But now my heart can only bleed for you
Whose broken wings will never sweep the blue!
CATHOLIC WORK FOR THE SECULAR PRESS.
BY EMMA SHERWOOD CHESTER.
T must be obvious to every thoughtful observer within
the Church, that the secular press is elevated and
enriched by any infusion of Catholic truth that
touches the spiritual and social questions of the day.
Especially is this true of those observers whose voca-
tion binds them perpetually to the whirl of the world's unrest.
In a work by M. Rene Bazin which has just left the hands
of an English translator, we have an instance of this sort. M.
Bazin is, by vocation, novelist to the great world; but he is also
which is of immeasurably wider importance a Catholic and a
patriot. In the book above mentioned, entitled Gentle France, he
develops, and we might say faultlessly expresses, the Church's
teachings and ideals on these two themes, religion and patriotism.
Not one of those irresistibly charming stories could have been given
to the world by a writer who was not himself a sincere and intel-
ligent Catholic, and at the same time an ardent patriot. While
inseparably French in sentiment and treatment, they are, like the
Church's teachings, universal of application, impersonal in justice,
and distinctly pure in politics.
Without book or bell, without rite or dogma, M. Bazin an-
nounces himself, from his seat in the French Academy, a champion
of the Church and his country, after the manner of Count de Mun
in his vocation of statemanship. It would be inconceivable for
any reader of Gentle France to ask the questions : " Is this writer
a Catholic Christian ? " " Is he a patriotic Frenchman ? " for the
fact that he is both is proclaimed upon every page, with that
natural insouciance, that dignified assurance which makes the ideal
Catholic writer or speaker fascinating and convincing above all
others. Few possess, of course, the downright genius, which must
always be spiritual in essence, that has been the dower of M. Bazin ;
but it is entirely possible that the humblest contributor to the
Chatterbox Corner of a diocesan paper, let us say, may faithfully
and truthfully express the Catholic spirit.
A few months ago, we were inadvertently drawn into corre-
spondence with the editor of a magazine which has an extensive
334 CATHOLIC WORK FOR THE SECULAR PRESS [June,
Catholic as well as world-wide non-Catholic support. We were with-
drawing our subscription, on the ground that it was no longer
possible for a loyal Catholic to encourage the publication of matter
so inexcusably libelous of Catholic belief and practice.
Like the proverbially inclined moth to the candle, it has be-
come a vogue among non-Catholic story-tellers ( sic) to write novels
about " Catholic " characters in a " Catholic " environment, neither
of which would be recognized as life-like by a Catholic reader.
As current instances I may site The Little Crucified Sisters in the
New York Evening Post, and Edith Wharton's The Custom of the
Country. We do not believe that these caricatures and slanders
are designed with any especial malice aforethought, for these same
writers would just as zealously " study up on " Catholic truth for
commercial rewards as they now lazily make use of Protestant
implements for their " artistic " productions. No. This attrac-
tion of the literary moth to the Catholic candle, is due to the
impressive and commanding reality which the Church has ever
presented to the eye of art in every form. The beauty of her
symbolism, the power of her veracity seizes upon and dominates
the imagination of even very ignorant and careless magazine writers.
To such the Church is an inexhaustible storehouse of " copy " for
editorial or publishing pay envelopes. The sanctuary lamp is
" lovely " in their eyes, because red contrasts so well with gray stone
and white vestments. They perceive in it no homage to the Real
Presence of God upon His altars. Its undying faithfulness, never
extinguished by night or day, makes of this lonely sentinel of
Divinity a mere piece of stage property for such writers, setting
off, as it were, the infamous pranks of Lord John This, or Lady
Joan That.
The editor to whom we made our protest against these abuses
chanced to be a Catholic receiving a very high salary, and, as the
indignant reply was worded, " a very devout one." Certainly
not one out of ten thousand readers of this well-known journal
has ever entertained the faintest suspicion of this circumstance;
for Catholic diplomacy and high salaries are twins whose acquaint-
ance such Catholic writers as M. Rene Bazin would scornfully
repudiate. The editor was offended by our friendly and financial
f alling-off , but made no apology ; nor has the magazine changed its
policy. On the contrary, such writers appear without distinction,
colorless and mechanical, far removed from the seats of the im-
mortals; and this because they have betrayed the wealth of truth
I9I4-] CATHOLIC WORK FOR THE SECULAR PRESS 335
and beauty which was their birthright, for a mess of pottage by
way of pecuniary gain.
Now the foregoing illustrations have been given to show the
need in secular journalism of sincere, accurate, simple, and unapolo-
getic Catholic writers. St. Paul recommends milk for babes. The
secular press is not prepared for the strong meat of dogmatic teach-
ing. The milk must even be diluted a little until secular journalism
is stronger in integrity.
In Gentle France, M. Bazin presents to us every form of belief
and unbelief. The infidel, the scoffer, the skeptic, the howling
atheist. He also gives us nuns of seraphic perfection and work-
men of preternatural intelligence. Into the mouth of one of these
last he puts the arresting words, " What we need, sir, is priests of
extraordinary power. That is why we should pray more fervently
for them at the time of their ordination." One realizes by the
manner in which they are put, that these words express the mind
of the writer himself. They contain the essence of M. Bazin's
religion and patriotism. He declares and he convinces us that he is
right, that intercession for a priesthood of extraordinary power
would remedy all the social and political evils of the times. That
at the present day the spiritual power of our priesthood cries
importunately for an increase. Upon our priesthood devolves the
work of the Catholic press. Upon the laity rests more and more
the duty of acting as interpreters of Catholic truth to secular litera-
ture. Such an interpreter is M. Bazin or Agnes Repplier. They
speak the mind of the Church in a language that can be apprehended
by people engaged in secular pursuits with the secular mind. They
are not apologetic; they speak as having authority. They do not
veil in diplomacy or ambiguity the source of their teaching; yet
they adapt themselves to every form of teachableness or appre-
hension. The impetuous convert is not always to be trusted for
this work. Like a sick man just coming out of a successful opera-
tion, he is inclined to be effusive over the wonders of his hospital,
his surgeons, his nurses, and even his convalescent diet. We are
sometimes told not to trust him until he has learned to forget a
little the authors of his health and happiness.
But there is usually a via media of safety in all human affairs.
The lay convert of some ten or fifteen years experience may, as a
rule, be trusted to walk in the paths of the secular press with honor
to his faith and charity to his enemies. The purgative way of
spiritual and intellectual suffering, has inevitably softened his heart
336 CATHOLIC WORK FOR THE SECULAR PRESS [June,
and clarified his vision. He sees, O, he sees the world's need; and
he tenderly lays his hand upon its aching spots to heal. Not
as the skilled surgeon of the priesthood to whom the invalid
press has not yet submitted itself, but as a brother or sister of the
bon secour who at least knows what ails it, and can influence it to
go to the hospital.
Unlike a free son of the house, such as M. Bazin, the found-
ling convert writer must keep more closely perhaps to the security
of his foster mother for guidance and protection. Yet, though less
eminent and magnetic than the sons of the household, the lay
convert writer of some years of experience may be relied upon to
represent his mother with appreciation, and even a degree of il-
lumination.
An excellent way for a novice in this work, is to begin with
a suburban or even rural newspaper, to challenge some of the long-
accepted fallacies of its Open Forum or People's Column. Social-
ism, defective systems of local education, sectarian controversies
all these things open the way for a Catholic writer to reply with
truth, with beauty, usually with what seems to the jaded editor a
startling originality. Discussion is opened among thinking people.
Fair play is demanded, and in a measure usually allowed in our
American press. Some heretical or socialistic scribbler hitherto
accustomed to the right of way in his local paper for his literary
fireworks, suddenly finds himself brought up short by a Catholic
truth which he does not at first recognize as such, but which he
soon ascertains is a stern reality his enemy par excellence,
walking up to him without fear. A school girl of fifteen recently
put to rout a socialistic propaganda in a Southern city in this
manner. The palm of victory was publicly awarded her, and there
was a wholesale clean-up of Socialism in her town paper. A mere
catechism child, she confounded the doctors of Marx and Bebel
with her Catholic truth.
Current forms of social amusement, agitations for public
reading rooms, sewer systems, or whatever may for the hour
occupy the public consciousness all offer to the Catholic lay writer,
provided he is willing, like St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, to make
himself " small," opportunities for substituting Catholic ideals for
chaotic experiments. If he is bright, resourceful, in full posses-
sion of the truths of the Church's wisdom, his statements will be
copied by neighboring journals, and even find a wider acceptance
and quotation. He has started a current of pure authority into the
1914.] CATHOLIC WORK FOR THE SECULAR PRESS 337
more or less stagnant pools of false philosophy and confirmed
prejudice. Such a Catholic contributor to the secular press has
been known to check and even wholly eliminate some swelling tide
of erroneous belief or propaganda. We speak from a rather happy
and, humanly speaking, successful experience in this work. The
interpreter of the Church's teachings to the secular press is a
thinker of degrees. His work filters and simplifies down from
the learned theologian of the schools to the editor of The Woman's
Page or the Housekeeper's Corner.
Quite recently we read a very brilliant review of Professor
Orwick's Philosophy of Social Progress, by W. E. Campbell. It is
a lucid and masterly presentment of Catholic ideals which would be
of immeasurable benefit to the secular press; but it, in its turn,
needs an interpreter. The average secular mind cannot at once
seize these great facts as expressed by thinkers so highly intellectual
and spiritual. They must be translated, as it were, into the ver-
nacular of the everyday newspaper, before the democracy can appre-
hend them, and the voice of the people proclaim them by majority.
It is here that the Catholic lay writer may find his Christian work.
Whether he be a novelist of fashion like some we have cited, or a
reporter for a city district on a great daily, the opportunity is more
and more inviting to write in the spirit, and with the color of
Catholic truth.
VOL. XCIX. 22
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST
CENTURY. 1
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
HE Catholic Church," writes Father Moran in the
preface of his scholarly essay on the beginnings of
the Christian ministry, " bases her authority to teach
and govern on the apostolic succession of her hier-
archy. Christ founded a Church, and gave the
Apostles whom He placed over it certain ecclesiastical powers to be
transmitted by them to their successors to the end of time. The
ecclesiastical superiors of to-day claim to teach and rule, not by
election or delegation of the faithful, but by a kind of spiritual
descent instituted by Christ. In this age of political liberalism
and popular sovereignty, it is not surprising to find the Church
assailed for her oligarchical constitution. Advanced Protestants
would have the people supreme in the Church as in the State ; while
modern rationalists would have us believe that our hierarchical
jurisdiction is the effect of evolution and the growth of centuries,
and that it was unknown and unheard-of in the early Church. It is
with a view of answering these difficulties that I propose to inquire
into the government of the primitive Church, and to show that its
constitution was in principle the same in the first century as it is
in the twentieth."
An introductory chapter discusses briefly The Church in the
Gospel, bringing out clearly and accurately the true idea of " the
kingdom of God." When our Lord speaks of " the kingdom,"
He at once arouses the enthusiasm of the Jews, for the term stirs
up in the national mind a world of hopes and expectations. The
Jews in the captivity and in the dispersion had ever been sustained
and encouraged by the prospect of the future glory and prosperity
of the everlasting kingdom foretold by Daniel. 2 They did not real-
ize the spiritual nature of the promises of the prophets, but looked
forward to a great political empire, in which Israel would dominate
the whole world. Jesus could not correct this false notion all at
once, for the people would not have understood Him ; the shock to
1 The Government of the Church in the First Century. By Rev. William Moran.
New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.50 net. * Daniel vii. 26, 27.
I9I4-] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 339
their prejudices would have been too violent. His first care was,
therefore, not to explain the nature of His kingdom, but rather to
lead men quietly toward it; to establish the authority of His mis-
sion, and thus place Himself in a position to transform the popular
idea.
Our Lord first tells the Jews that all human hopes and works
must be made subservient to our last end : " What cloth it profit a
man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own
soul?'' "Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice'
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." In this world man's
religious life is never free from persecution, risks and temptations,
but there is a life to come in which the blessed will enjoy all good
things in peace. The words " Thy kingdom come " in the Lord's
Prayer is a prayer for a kingdom on earth ; but that kingdom con-
sists in hallowing the name of the Father, and doing His will on
earth, as it is done in heaven. This phase of the kingdom is op-
posed to the reign of sin and the devil : " What have we to do
with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth; art Thou come to destroy us?"
It is not so much a kingdom, as a sovereignty, a reign of God in
men's hearts. A spiritual entity, it is contrasted with the goods of
this world. " Be not solicitous, therefore, saying what shall we
eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed?
Seek ye first the kingdom of God."
This sovereignty is but the soul of an earthly phase of the
kingdom, in the proper sense of the word. This kingdom is the
collectivity of all those who believe in Christ and His teaching.
" For this was I born," said Jesus to Pilate, " and for this came I
into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth." His
kingdom is primarily a kingdom of truth. It is not a puritanical
reformation of Judaism, nor a prophetic school returning to a for-
gotten justice, but a new entity, based on a new revelation, which
came, after John the Baptist, to complete the law and the prophets.
It is a new glad tiding; a mysterious message; a hidden treasure;
a pearl of great price. It is a message which the prophets longed
to receive, and which the disciples are accounted blessed to hear.
This revelation Jesus calls the word of the kingdom. 8
" The law and the prophets were until John ; from that time
the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone useth violence
towards it." 4 Here Jesus is clearly not speaking of the final king-
*Matt. vi. 31; Luke xvi. 16; Mark i. 15; Matt. xiii. n, 16, 17, 19, 44, 45.
4 Luke xvi. 16.
340 THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
dom in heaven, nor the sovereignty of God in men's hearts, but
of an external institution of some kind. " The time is accom-
plished, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe
the Gospel," says Jesus. The accomplished time is that spoken of
by the prophets, after which " the Lord shall give Him the throne
of David His father." The kingdom is that of the Son of David,
a true kingdom on earth, composed of all those who " repent and
believe the Gospel." This collectivity is represented as a seed-plot,
where the good seed is sown, and where it germinates, and grows to
a full harvest, to be at last gathered into the kingdom of the Father
in heaven. 5
The kingdom of God embraces in this life worthy and
unworthy members, children of Christ and children of the devil.
This is clear from the two parables of Jesus in Matt, xiii., which
tell of the enemy sowing cockle among the wheat, and of the net
containing good fish and bad. The citizens of the kingdom are
those who understand the teaching of Christ, and have responded
to the call of faith. Some guests are invited to the marriage feast,
but they refuse to attend. The call to the kingdom is a great free
gift of God. The great sin of the Jews consisted in their refusal
to accept the word of the kingdom. " The publicans and harlots,"
said Jesus, " shall go into the kingdom of God before you." " The
kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a
nation yielding the fruits thereof." 6 Penance or conversion is the
first condition for entrance into the kingdom. " Do penance, for
the kingdom of God is at hand." The disciple of the kingdom must
receive the word of God with the simple faith and trust of a little
child. " Whosoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a
little child, shall not enter it." 7
On the road to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus promises to make St.
Peter the ruler of the kingdom of God after His death. " I will
give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven Thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build My Church." Peter is to be the
rock foundation; the Church built upon him will be indefectible;
he will be the chief steward ; his binding and loosing will be ratified
in heaven ; he will be the primate in the new kingdom. Later on all
the Apostles will receive together a promise to bind and loose with
divine authority, becoming thereby partakers in one of the promises
B Matt. xii. 3, 18-23; Mark i. 15.
"Matt. xxi. 31, 43.
'Mark x. 15.
1914.] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 341
made to Peter. They will not, however, become the foundation;
they will not receive the keys of the kingdom.
Harnack fails to see in the teaching of Jesus the foundation
of a Church, least of all a Universal Church. According to him
Jesus was sent only to the lost sheep' of the house of Israel, and in
sending forth His disciples, He placed the same limits on their mis-
sion. Harnack maintains that the passages recording a universal
mission, given by our Lord during the forty days, are but the
expression of the Christian mind after it had seen the development
of the Gospel for fifty years. The Apostles, no doubt, established
a Universal Church before their death, but then " the chasm which
separates Jesus from the Apostles has never been bridged over,
nor can it be."
An unbiased examination of the four Gospels reveals naught
of the narrow-minded nationalism suggested by Harnack. So little
does Jesus think of an exclusively Jewish kingdom, that as a matter
of fact the Jews will scarcely find a place in it at all. In the parable
of the vineyard, Jesus tells the Jews that the kingdom will be taken
from them and given to another nation. In the parable of the mar-
riage feast, He develops the same idea. The prophet Isaias and
John the Baptist both taught plainly that only a remnant of the Jews
would inherit the promises, and Jesus frequently spoke of the ex-
clusion of the Jews from the kingdom. 8
In the tenth chapter of Matthew, we see that the Apostles
received two distinct missions. The first, confined to the Jews, was
only a temporary mission which they shared in common with the
seventy-two disciples. In this mission they organized no society,
and enjoyed no special jurisdiction. A second and a greater mis-
sion is also foreshadowed in Matt. x. 17, 18. The Apostles are to
go forth on an unlimited mission ; their testimony is to be given be-
fore Gentiles as well as Jews ; they are to be brought before govern-
ors and kings as well as councils ; they will, in short, be hated by all
men, because they come in the name of Christ. Their great com-
mission " Going, therefore, teach all nations " is not the inven-
tion of a pious Christian, as Harnack would have us believe; it is
the fulfillment of promises made frequently by Christ during His
public ministry.
Early in His ministry, Jesus selected twelve of His disciples
and gave them a special mission, and a special name, Apostles, liter-
ally those sent, messengers. The word was not borrowed from the
* Cf. Matt. viii. 1 1 ; Luke xiii.
342 THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
Jews, nor was it of Scriptural origin. The apostolic office, in the
discourses of Jesus, " seems to be chiefly a mission, a work of testi-
mony." 9
St. Paul brings out clearly the nature of the apostolic office,
because his own claims to apostleship were frequently called in ques-
tion. He defends eloquently the authenticity of his Gospel, the
fruitfulness of his mission, the hardships he has endured, but above
all he insists on the fact that he has been especially called and sent
by Jesus Christ in person. 10
From the very beginning, the Apostles were a centre of author-
ity for the Church. In the mother Church of Jerusalem, the su-
preme ecclesiastical authority was in their hands. 11 The Epistles
of St. Paul represent them as the supreme teachers, the ambas-
sadors of God, the dispensers of the mysteries of Christian knowl-
edge, the guarantee of the purity of Christian doctrine. 12 St. Paul
also speaks of their power of jurisdiction, which has both a ju-
dicial 13 and a legislative phase. 14 The apostolate is not merely a
magisterial charisma. St. Paul is equally a teacher and a ruler;
he requires faith in his doctrine, and obedience to his ordinances.
The preaching of the Gospel is not the free working of the Spirit.
St. Paul preaches what he himself has received, 15 the testimony
of Christ. He governs, likewise, in virtue of the power he has
received from Christ. 16
While the first Christians in Palestine had many points in com-
mon with the Jews, they clearly formed a distinct society or Church.
Men were initiated into this society by baptism; they had their
specifically Christian meetings, with a symbol of brotherhood, the
Eucharist; they were united by the same doctrine, and the " same
fellowship of the Apostles;" and they worked for the same spiritual
end. 17
Dr. Hatch, in his Organization of Early Christian Churches,
page 12, sees in the Christian communities merely an imitation of
pagan collegia, from which they differed merely in one thing, their
philanthropy. But he brings forward no convincing proof of this
arbitrary statement. We are fully aware of the great charity
of the early Church, which frequently found expression in hos-
Acts i. 8 ; Matt. x. 27 ; Matt, xxviii. 20.
"Gal. i. i, ii, 12, 15-17; i Cor. xi. ; xv. ; 2 Cor. v. 20; Rom. x. 14; i Cor. ii. i.
"Acts ii. 42 ; iv. 34.
"i Thess. ii. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 15; Gal. i. 7 ; i Cor. xiv. 37; 2 Cor. xi. 28.
11 1 Cor. v. 2 ; 2 Thess. iii. 16 ; i Tim. i. 20 ; 2 Cor. ii. 10; 2 Cor. xiii. 2.
14 1 Cor. vii. ; xi. 2; xiv. 26-34; 2 Cor. ii. 9; vii. 15.
"i Cor. xv. 3. "2 Cor. xiii. 10. "Acts iv. 32.
1914.] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 343
pitality and almsgiving. But this was nothing new ; it was merely
a continuation of the Jewish tradition. The Christians did not be-
come brethren by loving and helping one another, as Hatch seems to
think, but they loved and helped one another because they were
brethren. In a word, their common faith was the basis of their as-
sociation. The local communities were religious societies, founded
on a common faith, a common hope, and a common calling; they
had a social life peculiar to themselves. They came together for the
Eucharist, instruction, prayer, the reading of Scripture, and the
exercise of spiritual gifts. This social life, and not the philan-
thropic idea, differentiated the Christian societies from the pagan
associations.
Again the collegium was an autonomous, isolated association,
usually formed under the protection of a tutelary deity. Its officers
were elected annually, and derived their authority from the body
which elected them. It was altogether different in the Christian
community. The local church embraced all the faithful of a city,
however numerous they might be. Unlike the pagan funeral clubs,
the Christians formed together one organized body; their officers
were ordained by the Apostles, derived their powers from Christ
through the Apostles, and held office for life. Their faith, morals,
worship, and purpose were so utterly different from the pagans
around them, that they would never have dreamed of turning
to paganism for a type of their organization. As most of them
in the beginning were converts from Judaism, they would naturally
turn to the synagogue if on the lookout for a model.
From the very beginning the Christians had a special name
for their community. They called it a church, ekklesia. This term
was well known in all the Greek cities, where it meant the assembly
of the citizens. It is used in a similar sense in the Old Testament. 18
St. Paul sometimes uses the word in this sense, 19 but more com-
monly in a derivative sense, meaning all the Christians of a local
community. Sometimes he applies the word to all the Christians
of a particular household. 20 He never speaks of the churches of
a city, even though it contain many Christian households, but he
often speaks of the churches of a province, because each town in
the province has its own church. 21 The local church is a " Church
of God," and a " Church of Christ." Each local church is a unity,
a body of Christ, a spiritual Israel. He recognizes the danger of
"Judges xxii. Cf. Acts viii. i. **i Cor. xiv. 23, 34.
10 Rom. xvi. 3. M Gal. i. 22; i Cor. xvi. 19; 2 Cor. \Hi. 2.
344 THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
schism, and constantly combats it. 22 The local flock is the city com-
munity; its pastors are not mere individuals endowed with extra-
ordinary charismata, but a corporate body presiding over a legal
unit.
Every such community has within it a local jurisdiction. We
see this in the passages which deal with the pastoral charge, in
the reference to excommunication in St. Matthew and First Cor-
inthians, and in the action of the elders of Jerusalem, who sat and
voted with the Apostles in the first Christian council. " Take heed
to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you," says
St. Paul to the elders of Ephesus, thus plainly indicating that these
elders were not merely delegates of the Apostles, but held their au-
thority directly from God. St. Paul founded the community and
placed it on a working basis, but God supplied the necessary author-
ity. This ordinary jurisdiction, residing in a local church, is the
basis of the diocesan jurisdiction, which figures so largely in canon
law; for the city communities of apostolic times were the dioceses
of the period.
Besides this local unity, there was also a universal unity, a
Church Catholic, composed of all the churches. The basis of this
catholic unity was universal baptism, universal faith in Jesus,
and the universal mission and authority of the Apostles. 23 The
idea of a universal and visible Church is well set forth in the words
of St. Paul ; he says "that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and
of the same body, and copartners of his promise in Christ Jesus, by
the Gospel To me is given this grace, to preach among the
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all
men, that they may see what is the dispensation of the mystery
which hath been hidden from eternity in God." 24 The same
notion of a universal unity is expressed in the Epistle to the
Romans, where the Gentiles are spoken of as branches broken
from a wild species, and grafted into the olive tree; and all be-
come partakers of the sap of the same root. The Universal Church
is not a number of bodies in Christ, but one body only; for Christ
is not divided. 25 It is through this society that men are to seek
the kingdom of God. " What shall we do? " say the Jews to St.
Peter after listening to his first sermon. " Do penance, believe, and
be baptized," is his answer. And St. John repeats the same teach-
ing : " That which we have seen and have heard, we declare to you,
"i Cor. i. 11-13. 23 Gal. iii. 29; Eph. iv. n, 12.
"Eph. iii. 6-9. "Eph. i. 22 ; i Cor. i.
I9I4-] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 345
that you also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship
is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." 26
Baptism with St. Paul has two significations. It is the source
of sanctification 27 and the rite of initiation into the visible Church. 28
As all must receive baptism, so all must be incorporated into the
Body of Christ. This Body is not an invisible Church of the just
as Luther taught in the sixteenth century, or as Sohm teaches in the
twentieth, but a visible society, having different classes of visible
members, such as prophets, teachers, and evangelists.
St. Paul never expressly treats of the relation between the par-
ticular and the Universal Church, and at times it is difficult to
determine which Church he has in view. The local church is the
Body of Christ, and the Church of God; the Universal Church is
also the Body of Christ and the Church of God. A member of the
local church is by the very fact a member of the Universal Church,
because membership in both is acquired by baptism.
There is not a single passage in all the New Testament which
upholds the theory of Dr. Hatch, viz., that association among those
who believed was a matter of free choice in the primitive Church.
For St. Paul is ever insisting upon the fact that Christians form a
Body of Christ a visible body which one enters by the sacrament
of baptism. He describes in detail its various members, apostles,
prophets, teachers, wonder-workers, and simple faithful; all are
members of the body and of one another. If association is not a
primary duty of the Christian life, then we are not baptized into
the visible mystical body of Christ; and it is mere idealism on St.
Paul's part to think we are. The very texts that Dr. Hatch quotes
refute his thesis. He speaks of those " who separate themselves,"
citing the Epistle of St. Jude. But he fails to see that the Apostle
condemns their schism, declaring them " sensual men, having not
the Spirit." Dr. Hatch might just as well cite the schisms at
Corinth to prove that unity was not required in the local churches,
or the intrigues of the Judaizers to prove that Christianity was but
a new phase of the Mosaic law.
In many places of the ancient world the government was
originally in the hands of a council composed of the heads of
families. Traces of this primitive system survived in the Senate
in Rome, in the Gerousia of Sparta, and in the Sanhedrim of the
Jews. Given this senatorial method of communal government
**John i. 3. "Eph. v. 27; i Cor. xii. 13; Gal. vi. 15.
K i Cor. xii.
346 THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
among both Jews and Gentiles, it was natural that the first Christian
communities should be organized on the same plan. Speaking of St.
Paul and St. Barnabas, St. Luke tells us that returning from their
first apostolic journey, " they confirmed the souls of the disciples,
and exhorted them to continue in the faith and when they
had ordained to them elders in every church and had prayed
with fasting, they commended them to the Lord." 29 St. Paul fol-
lowed the same plan upon his subsequent missions. Elders are
spoken of at Jerusalem and in the church of Pontus, Galatia, Asia,
Cappadocia, Bithynia, Crete, and the Jewish communities of the
dispersion. 30 The letters of Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius prove
beyond doubt that the presbyteral college was a universal institu-
tion before the close of the apostolic period. St. Luke tells us that
St. Paul and St. Barnabas were sent to carry alms from Antioch to
the elders at Jerusalem, 31 though he says nothing of the appointment
of these elders or of their position in the community. We know,
however, that these elders were superiors of some kind in the
Church. At the Council of Jerusalem, we find the Apostles and the
elders assembled to discuss the question raised by the Judaizers,
viz., that salvation could not be obtained without circumcision.
This Council was held in the presence of all the faithful, but it is
clear that the Apostles and elders alone were judges in the matter.
There is no evidence whatever for the theory of Dr. Lindsay, that
the authority in the early Christian communities was democratic.
It is true that the laity were allowed great latitude in the matter
of elections. The seven deacons were elected by popular vote at
Jerusalem, although their ordination was reserved to the Apostles.
The bishops were similarly elected as late as the third century.
In general the assembly had a voice in all matters of prudence and
consultation, but never in the deciding of dogmatic questions or in
the interpreting of the Divine Law.
It is clear from the Council of Jerusalem that the elders held
a magisterial and legislative jurisdiction; their title was not merely
a title of honor but an ecclesiastical office. Again we read of the
elders discussing with St. Paul the state of affairs at Jerusalem as
fathers of the community, 32 and of their anointing the sick with oil
in the name of the Lord in the Epistle of St. James. 33 Both these
instances prove that the elders were a ruling order in the community.
They consulted for the peace and edification of the community,
"Acts xiv. 20-22. "i Peter i. i ; v. i ; James v. ; Titus i. 5.
11 Acts xi. 28-30. "Acts xxi. 23, 24. 31 James v. 14, 15.
1914.] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 347
administered its financial resources, enjoyed a magisterial juris-
diction, and ministered at least some of the sacraments to the
faithful.
The position of the elders in the Pauline churches is set forth
in St. Paul's discourse to the elders of Ephesus. 34 They are the
spiritual superiors of the local church; they are shepherds feeding
and overseeing the flocks; their magisterial authority occupies the
foremost place in the discourse; they have been placed by the Holy
Ghost as stewards in the church to oversee the faithful. At Jeru-
salem the elders decide a question of faith ; in Ephesus we find them
teaching the Gospel preached to them by St. Paul. In his letter
to Timothy 35 the Apostle speaks of the elders laboring zealously in
the word and in teaching.
St. Peter describes the elders of Asia Minor as possessing equal
powers with the elders of Jerusalem and the Pauline churches. 36
They are pastors or shepherds of the flock; they direct and govern
with authority; they are the representatives of the Prince of pastors
in the local community. St. Clement of Rome, in his letter to Cor-
inth, writes a strong defence of the elders of that city, who had
been unjustly displaced from their ministry in a " detestable sedi-
tion." The elders of Corinth are ecclesiastical rulers, successors
of the Apostles, pastors of the flock of Christ, and duly constituted
in authority. The whole New Testament negatives the thesis of
some modern writers who maintain that the presbyterate was not an
office in the primitive Church, but merely an honorary position. 37
Before the death of the Apostles there existed in every Chris-
tian community a body of overseers (bishops). These overseers
were ecclesiastical superiors; they were appointed for life; they
exercised their jurisdiction in virtue of an authority derived from
God, through Christ and His Apostles. They were pastors, who
enjoyed a legislative, judicial, and a magisterial authority. They
also exercised a liturgical function, the essence of which was the
celebration of the Eucharist. They probably controlled the admin-
istration of the public alms. St. Paul calls the elders of Ephesus
overseers, placed by the Holy Ghost to shepherd the Church of
God. 38 They by divine right are to direct their local flock accord-
ing to the received doctrine, and to guard it " from rapacious
wolves, who utter perverse things." In his letter to Timothy, 39
**Acts xx. 28-31.
"i Tim. v. 17-22. M i Peter v. i et seq.
3T C/. i Thess. v. 12, 13; i Cor. xvi. 15-18; Rom. xii. 4-8; Heb. xiii. 7, 17.
"Acts xx. 28. ro i Tim. iii. 1-7.
348 THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
St. Paul describes at great length the office of overseer, and the
virtues required in candidates for the episcopate. The episcopate
is not merely a title of honor, but an office, a good work. The can-
didate must not be a neophyte, nor twice married; he must be
prudent, a teacher, a man of hospitality, chaste, sober, modest,
gentle, etc. 40 The Epistle to Titus brings out more clearly the
teaching office of the bishop. His chief duty is " to exhort in
sound doctrine, and to convince the gainsayers."
St. Peter plainly speaks of the overseers as ecclesiastical su-
periors, who exercise the pastoral charge, and shepherd the flock
by overseeing it. 41 Their authority is a local authority. St. Peter
insists on the same qualifications as St. Paul; he condemns the
same faults.
The Epistle of St. Clement mentions the divine origin
and universality of the episcopate. We read : " The Apostles
received the Gospel for us from Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ
was sent forth from God. So Christ is from God, and
the Apostles from Christ Preaching everywhere in coun-
try and town, they (the Apostles) appointed their first fruits
to be overseers and deacons unto those that should believe." This
is a clear and explicit testimony from one who wrote only thirty
years after the death of St. Paul. The writer speaks in the name
of the Roman Church, which must certainly have known of the
organization set up by the Apostles throughout Christendom.
Moreover, he wrote to the Church of Corinth, which held direct re-
lationship with all the other Pauline churches, and in which St. Paul
himself had lived for eighteen months. St. Clement proves con-
clusively that the bishops have a divine right to rule, and that,
therefore, the people have no right whatever to set them aside.
He also incidentally alludes to the bishop's right of consecrating the
Eucharist, i. e., "to offer the gifts blamelessly and holily."
The Didache, or the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles?* says :
" On the Lord's Day, gather yourselves together, break bread and
give thanks, first confessing your sins, that your sacrifice may be
pure Elect for yourselves, therefore, overseers and deacons
worthy of the law," etc. The writer evidently here speaks of the
Eucharist as a sacrifice, and consequently urges the election of
worthy overseers to offer up this sacrifice to the Lord. The over-
seer must be meek, disinterested, truthful, and approved. His
teaching must be tested by the rule of tradition, for " whoever
"Titus i. 7-9. i Peter v. 2. "XIV.; XVI.
I9I4-] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 349
shall come and teach you all those things that have been said before,
receive him; but if the teacher himself be perverted and teach a
different doctrine to the destruction thereof, hear him not."
Some rationalistic scholars like Harnack and Reville have
argued from the Didache that the ministry of the word did not orig-
inally belong to the local superiors, but was taken over by them
gradually as the prophets died out. But, as a matter of
fact, the Didache gives not the slightest hint that the local elders
or bishops were encroaching on the domain of the prophets, or that
the prophets were dying out at this time. The episcopate was an
office from the beginning of Christianity, whereas prophecy was
never more than a gift or charisma. The bishops taught in virtue
of the power given them by the Holy Ghost, whereas the prophets
taught merely as an instrument of revelation.
There is no proof in the New Testament or in primitive
writers of Dr. Hatch's theory of a purely administrative episcopate.
In all the first century documents, which refer to overseers, there
are many references to their functions as pastors, teachers, and
liturgical ministers, but not one reference to their being financial
administrators. History proves that it was in this very matter
of money, which Dr. Hatch considers essential, that temptations
were greatest; yet the New Testament writers insist on every
qualification in episcopal candidates, except that of a good admin-
istrator.
We learn from St. Paul, the Didache, St. Polycarp, St. Igna-
tius, and St. Clement that the deacons assisted the overseers in all
the episcopal functions, in discipline, teaching, liturgy, and admin-
istration. When a deacon preaches at the present day, he does so
in virtue of the authority delegated to him by the bishop. But it
does not seem to have been so in the beginning. In Jerusalem the
deacons were the first localized superiors, and therefore must either
have held to a certain extent the ordinary jurisdiction of the church
or diocese, or have labored with the authority delegated to them by
the Apostles. With the imposition of hands they seemed to have
received orders and jurisdiction for their higher duties.
As far as we can trace the appointment to ecclesiastical office
in apostolic times, we find everywhere the same theory : all power
comes from Christ by transmission, and the instrument of trans-
mission is imposition of hands. 43
When St. Paul tells Titus " to establish elders in all the cities of
43 Acts vi. ; xiv. 22; Titus i. ; i Tim. iii. ; v. 22; Acts xiii. ; 2 Tim. i. 6.
350 THE CFIURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY [June,
Crete, he evidently orders him to organize a diocesan church in
every city, as St. Paul himself had done in the provinces of Cilicia,
Asia, and Macedonia. Titus is therefore not a diocesan bishop but
an apostolic delegate, exercising a super-episcopal jurisdiction over
all the churches of Crete. It is very probable that Timothy in like
manner was not the diocesan bishop of Ephesus, but a legate exer-
cising an authority over all or the greater part of Proconsular Asia.
We know, moreover, that St. Paul sent his disciples to exercise
similar missions in Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Galatia, and
Dalmatia. Often these legates were sent not to an individual
church, but to a whole province. Even when a city is mentioned,
it is usually the metropolis of a large district, so that even in this
case the legate's jurisdiction was much wider than that of the local
clergy.
As far as we can judge from the evidence at hand, the elders
were not generally allowed to ordain candidates for office. Or-
dination, when necessary, seems to have been conferred by St. Paul
or his disciples during their frequent visits to the Christian com-
munities. In the matter of jurisdiction, however, the elders ap-
peared to have enjoyed true episcopal authority, if not individually
at least as a corporate body.
In the churches founded by St. Paul there is no certain trace
of a monarchical bishop before the death of the Apostle. All the
documents speak only of a hierarchy of two grades, overseers and
deacons, but not one word of a diocesan, monarchical episcopate.
As late as the middle of the second century, many of the Roman
provinces possessed only a single monarchical bishop. About the
time of St. Ignatius, the monarchical episcopate was practically con-
fined to the Pauline churches of Asia Minor, and the four great
patriarchal sees. But while St. Paul lived, all the churches of
Asia Minor were governed by a corporate jurisdiction.
St. Jerome, in his commentary on the Epistle of Titus, main-
tains that the words presbyter and bishop are synonymous in the
New Testament; the first presbyters therefore were bishops. Each
church was ruled by a college of these presbyter-bishops in the
beginning; but the monarchical was afterwards substituted for the
collegiate episcopate under stress of circumstances. The change
was made by a law of the Universal Church, which took the shape
of a binding custom. In his own day bishops were superior to
presbyters, not only in jurisdiction but also in orders.
Some non-Catholic scholars maintain that the magisterial au-
I9H-] THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST CENTURY 351
thority of the local clergy arose from the fact that they assumed
the ministry of the prophets, but the texts cited by no means prove
their point. There is no evidence either in apostolic or sub-apostolic
times to show that the prophets ever enjoyed any jurisdiction.
The prophetic ministry, according to St. Paul, was a means of edi-
fication, but never a pastorate of the flock. The presbyter-bishops
were appointed by the Holy Ghost to teach in the name of Christ,
whereas the prophets always claimed a hearing on the basis of im-
mediate inspiration. The two ministries, therefore, were totally
different in kind. The prophetic was based on an extraordinary
charisma; the pastoral on a divine authority transmitted from
Christ through the Apostles. The ministry of the prophets prac-
tically disappeared before the end of the first century. As the
Church became well established, its necessity was no longer felt, and
the abuses to which it was liable, either from false prophets or from
disagreement with local superiors, soon rendered it unnecessary
and even hurtful to the religious life of the Church.
We have tried to summarize some of the leading ideas of
Father Moran's excellent thesis on The Government of the Church
in the First Century. His treatise is a thorough, scholarly, and
kindly presentation of some of the most intricate and most debated
controversies in the history of the primitive Church.
VOX MYSTICA.
STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF THE REV. PHILIP RIVERS PATER,
SQUIRE AND PRIEST, 1834-1909.
BY ROGER PATER.
III.
IN ARTICULO MORTIS.
|OU must not attach too much importance to my un-
usual faculty," said the old priest to me some days
later, when I was pressing him for other stories of
his strange experiences. " There are times, even
now, when I think the 'direct speech' is all imagina-
tion, a product of my highly strung nature acted upon by circum-
stances of an unusual kind."
" That doesn't seem to me sufficient explanation," I answered,
" besides, in the cases you have told me of, the circumstances were
not specially unusual, at any rate not so far as you could tell before
the event took place."
" True," said he, " but in a good many instances the circum-
stances were more out of the common, more calculated to excite the
imagination and prepare it for self-deception. But I must own that,
although at times I doubt if the whole thing is not subjective, still
in the end I alw r ays come back to the opinion that such an explana-
tion is quite inadequate. In fact I only mentioned it because I
thought you were inclined to take the whole thing too seriously.
For my part I refuse to attach any special meaning or value to
the phenomena. I know that my account of them is as truthful
and exact as I can make it, and if you ask me for an explanation,
all I have to say is that I seem to possess a certain kind of spiritual
perception in an unusual degree; but it does not follow that what
I hear is of any particular importance, any more than the posses-
sion of exceptional long sight by one man would render a thing
important, because he could see it while it was beyond the range
of his companions' vision."
He paused for a few moments and I kept silent, hoping he
might develop his views on the subject more fully, but instead he
proposed to give me another instance of his curious gift.
" Let me tell you another story," he began, " one of the kind I
1914.] VOX MYST1CA 353
mentioned just now, in which the circumstances themselves were
calculated to excite the imagination." I begged him to do so and
he continued :
" While I was in Rome, at the Accademia, I became very in-
timate with one of my fellow-students. He was an Austrian and
a member of one of the most ancient families in the empire, but
if you do not mind I will not give you his name. We chanced to
attend the same set of lectures, and the acquaintance thus begun
ripened rapidly, so that we were soon on terms of real friendship,
and in the vacation time we made several excursions together to
various parts of Italy.
" He was ordained at the Advent Ordination, and left Rome at
once, so as to celebrate his first Mass at his old home, a famous
castle in Austria, but before leaving, he made me promise that I
would go and stay at his home for a little while on my return
journey to England, after my own ordination. That event
took place some three months later, on Holy Saturday, and a fort-
night afterwards I left the Accademia and set my face homewards.
" The journey was a leisurely one, and it must have been the
beginning of June when I crossed over the Brenner Pass and
entered Austrian territory ; but that done I went straight on to the
station nearest my friend's home. Even this place was twelve
leagues away from the castle, but a diligence ran the rest of the way,
and I took a seat in it, glad to be quit of the train. I put up for
the night at an inn where the diligence had stopped about an hour
before sunset.
" After taking my room and arranging for supper, I walked
across the way to see the parish priest and get permission to say
Mass next morning. The good man proved to be very unwell, but
on learning from his housekeeper that a strange priest wished to say
Mass next day, he sent down a message begging me to come up-
stairs and see him. I found him in bed, apparently suffering from
fever, but he assured me that my coming was as good as medicine
to him.
" 'It is certainly our Holy Mother who has sent you,' he ex-
claimed, 'for to-morrow is a feast day with us, and it would be
dreadful if there were no Mass in the church ; yet the Herr Doctor
has forbidden me to attempt it. Now you are here and will say
Mass for my good people, will you not ?'
"Of course I said that I would do anything I could, and he
explained that he had special permission from the bishop of the dio-
VOL. xcix. 23
354 VOX MYSTICA [June,
cese to grant faculties to any priest who came to help him during his
illness, so that I could hear confessions if anyone wished to go.
" By the time I left him, it was quite dark, and my dinner was
waiting for me. Soon after ten o'clock, when I was just thinking
of going to bed, a knock came at the door and the landlord entered.
" 'Your pardon, Herr Priest,' said he, 'but there is a gentle-
man below who wishes to speak with you.'
" 'Impossible,' I exclaimed, 'there must be some mistake; I do
not know anyone in the neighborhood.'
" 'But it is true, mein Herr,' replied the man, 'the Pastor, so
he says, told him to come across and ask for you.'
" 'That is another matter, of course,' said I, 'I will come down
with you,' and we went together to the large room on the ground
floor where I had dined.
" At the door the landlord bowed me in before him and then
retired, leaving me alone with a tall, distinguished looking stranger.
He was obviously an Austrian noble, but to my surprise he ad-
dressed me in excellent English. Put shortly, his story was this:
He was Count A who lived with his younger brother at their
family castle, some leagues distant. Neither his brother nor him-
self were what could be called devout Catholics, and, moreover, they
had quarrelled with the local priest. The previous evening his
brother had been taken seriously ill, and now wished to see a priest.
He had, therefore, come himself to the town to beg the Pastor to
go back with him and see his brother, but as the good man was
himself so unwell, this was impossible, and the only alternative
seemed to be to come and appeal to me to go instead. He knew it
was a very unusual thing to ask of a stranger on a journey, but his
brother was dying, of that the doctor left no doubt, and his soul
was in danger. I was a priest and, he understood, an English
noble. He begged I would not refuse his appeal.
" It was certainly a most inconvenient occurrence, and my first
impulse was to refuse, or rather to point out difficulties which made
my acquiescence impossible. I was a stranger, had no faculties, was
on a journey, and must be off by to-morrow's diligence, had prom-
ised to say Mass for the Pastor next morning, and anything
else I could think of in the way of objections. The Count waited
until I had finished, and then said quietly, 'My Father, it is a ques-
tion of saving a soul, surely you cannot refuse.'
" I was silent for a moment, wondering what I ought to do,
and then, as if in answer, I heard a voice whispering in my ear say
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 355
'Go.' I looked up quickly at the Count, wondering if he had
spoken, and he began to plead with me once more. 'Go with him,'
came the voice again in my ears. It could not be the Count, for
he was speaking at the moment ; and I felt somehow convinced that
my duty was to go. Just as he paused the voice came again as
if to reassure me, 'Go without doubting, for I am with thee,' and
half-dazed I said to him, 'Yes, I will go.'
" As we went through the hall to the door of the inn I chanced
to look at the clock. It was just half-past ten, and I remember
thinking to myself, 'I shall not get to bed before midnight at the
earliest.' At the door stood a carriage, its four horses restlessly
pawing the ground, and anxious to be on the move. As the
Count opened the door and motioned to me to enter, I stopped in
surprise. 'Surely,' I said, 'you wish me to bring the Blessed Sacra-
ment. I must go over to the church and obtain It.'
" 'No, no,' said he, somewhat nervously, I thought, 'we must
'not delay even for that. You understand it is unlikely my brother
will be in a condition to receive Communion.'
" Amazed at this, I began to expostulate with him what good
could I do compared with what our Lord would do in the Holy
Viaticum but even as I spoke the voice came again in my ears,
'Go at once, delay no longer,' and alarmed I stepped into the car-
riage.
" With a look of relief my companion called out an order to
the driver and stepped in after me, the horses at once starting off at
a great pace. The carriage was of the old-fashioned, traveling type
quite unknown nowadays, with deep comfortable seats, and curtains
to the windows. My companion was proceeding to close the win-
dows and draw the curtains, and it was only after some difficulty
that I got him to leave the window on my side a little open, with its
curtain not drawn. This gave me some fresh air, but the night was
very dark, and there was a candle alight in a swinging candlestick
within the carriage, so that I could make out nothing of the country
through which we were passing.
" I felt some anxiety about the Mass I had promised to say for
the Pastor next morning, and asked the Count how far it was to
his castle, and at what time I could get back. 'Several leagues' was
all I got out of him as, ignoring my second question, he lay back in
the carriage and closed his eyes as if tired out. Then all at once
it struck me that I was behaving very selfishly. The poor man's
only brother was dying, and here was I worrying him about needless
356 VOX MY STIC A [June,
details ; so I too kept silence, and taking my rosary from my pocket,
leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.
" I think I must have fallen into a doze, for I had no idea
how long we had been driving, when I was suddenly awakened by
the noise of the horses' hoofs striking loudly on a wooden bridge.
I sat up abruptly and looked out of the window. The moon must
have risen by now, for I could see quite plainly, as we passed under
an arched gateway and halted in a stone-paved courtyard.
" The castle loomed up, huge and uncertain in the dim light,
the buttresses casting deep shadows across the walls that stood out
white in the moonlight. But I had no time to survey the building,
for Count A quickly alighted and helped me out of the carriage.
Before us, at an open door, stood a man servant holding a lantern,
and I was hurried in, through an outer room and across a huge hall,
into a smaller one fitted as a library with dark carved bookcases, and
a bright log fire in a deep, old-fashioned fireplace. Here the Count
stopped, begging me to warm myself though the night was not
cold and to take a glass of wine, while he went to find out if his
brother was able and ready to see me. As I was uncertain of the
time I took no wine, since I had to say Mass in the morning, but
stood by the fire, glad to stretch my limbs after the long drive.
Not more than two or three minutes elapsed before a servant
entered with a message from Count A , begging me to go with
the messenger, who would show the way to his brother's room,
where all was ready for me.
"Of course I went at once, preceded by the servant with a light.
We went down a long corridor and up some steep stairs, but I took
no special notice of the way, and cannot say if we had ascended one
flight or two, when we finally passed through a 'passage-room,'
and stopped at a door before which there hung a deep red curtain.
Drawing this aside my guide knocked at the door, and a voice
within answered clearly in German. The servant then opened the
door and stepped back, holding the red portiere aside for me to
enter. As I did so the door was shut behind me, and I heard a
dull thud as the weighted curtain fell back into position behind it.
" Now all this, no doubt, sounds very ordinary and natural,
but somehow I had a growing feeling that something was wrong.
The non-return of Count A to the library, the deserted condition
of the whole place, the absence of anything suggesting illness, no
sign of doctor, nurse, etc., had surprised me, and my feeling of
uneasiness was increased enormously by what I now saw. I found
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 357
myself in a room, not a bedroom as I had expected, but a large
apartment panelled in oak or some other dark wood, with a heavily
carved cornice and elaborate plaster ceiling decorated in gold and
color. Some handsome old-fashioned chairs were ranged stiffly
along the walls, which bore several portraits; a wood fire burned
in the deep open fireplace, above which was a lofty overmantel
reaching to the ceiling, and carved with some allegorical device of
classic figures. In the centre of the room stood a large table, with
a litter of playing cards and a dice box on it, beside some lighted
candles in tall silver candlesticks. Beyond this was seated a young
man, not more than twenty-five years old at most, and apparently in
perfect health.
" He looked up quickly as I entered but said nothing, and with
some hesitation I began to apologize, as best I could in German, for
intruding upon him. The servant must have made some mistake.
I was a priest, a stranger, and had been brought in great haste to
see the brother of Count A - who was ill, in fact was not expected
to live till morning. At this the young man rose and came towards
me.
" 'There is no mistake, my Father,' he said, speaking in Ger-
man, 'it is I whom you were brought to see ; I shall be a dead man
before sunrise.'
" At this my previous misgivings were increased a hundred-
fold, and I felt thoroughly alarmed ; my fears being oddly coupled
with annoyance at the way I had been tricked. Crushing down the
angry words which were rushing up for utterance, I repeated as
calmly as I could that there was evidently some mistake. That
Count A - had told me definitely that my services as a priest were
needed by his brother, who was very seriously ill and not likely to
live till morning; whereas he appeared to be perfectly well. The
stranger waited in silence until I had finished.
" 'It is not to be wondered at,' said he, 'that you are surprised
and annoyed, indeed the Count seems to have misled you in some
details, but the main fact is perfectly true. I am his brother, I
shall be dead before morning, and it is to hear my confession that we
have brought you all this long journey. You will not refuse me,
surely, now that you have come ?'
" My first inclination was to protest angrily against the way
I had been treated, when the recollection of the voice I had heard
at the inn came back to my mind. After all it was not the Count's
story which had brought me but the strange command, three times
358 VOX MYSTICA [June,
repeated, and I was as sure as ever that Count A - had not
spoken the words which impelled me to go with him.
" Taking my silence for consent the young man motioned me
to a recess, apparently a window but with shutters drawn, in which
there stood a prie-dieu with a chair beside it. Almost uncon-
sciously I obeyed his gesture, walking beside him to the prie-dicn,
where he kneeled down as I seated myself at his side. Even now
I am not clear if I did wrong in hearing his confession, and you will
understand I had to decide without any time for deliberation. I
had only been a priest for a few weeks, and had not heard a dozen
confessions in all. The Pastor certainly had given me faculties,
and Count A had mentioned that his castle was in the same dio-
cese when I raised this point as an obstacle to my coming. Then too
there was the memory of the voice I had heard, commanding me to
go without fear. Automatically I gave the stranger my blessing,
and he began his confession.
" What he told me, under the seal, I cannot of course repeat to
you indeed I scarcely understood it all myself, what with the tur-
moil in my mind and the strange language, for my knowledge of
German was, and is, far from perfect. But this I may say, that no
sufficient explanation of his position was offered, nor did my ques-
tions elicit anything more than that his death before morning was
quite certain and utterly unavoidable, and that he desired most
earnestly to make his peace with God before he should stand at His
judgment seat. In the end I abandoned all efforts to break down
his reserve, and with many misgivings imparted absolution. As I
finished he rose and thanked me, adding in the most earnest manner,
'Let me beg you, my Father, not to inquire further into this matter.
No harm whatever will come to you, and no inquiries you may make
will bring you any nearer its solution.' With that he rang a small
hand bell, which stood upon the table, and the servant who had
brought me to the room appeared almost immediately.
" I tried to speak, but not a word would come, indeed my one
idea was to escape, for I was rapidly becoming unnerved. Ac-
cordingly I allowed myself to be conducted from the room, through
the ante-chamber and down a flight of stairs, where the servant
showed me into a room which I had not entered before. Here he
left me, saying that Count A would be with me very shortly.
Left to myself, my mind ran riot as to the meaning of the strange
adventure I had just gone through. Doubts if I had done right in
hearing the confession and giving absolution, mingled with vague
I9I4-] VOX MY STIC A 359
notions of a secret society, and, I must own, no small amount of
fear for my own safety. All at once the last prevailed, and I ran
quickly to the window and opened it, thinking I might perhaps
escape unnoticed.
" The casement opened inwards, but there were strong iron
bars fixed in the masonry outside, which prevented my leaning out
of it, much less climbing through the opening. However, the cool
night air revived and calmed me, and I stood looking out into the
moonlight. Below was the castle moat, still as glass and reflecting
the cold silvery light, save where the dark shadow of the building
fell across it. This shadow stopped in a hard, straight line some
few yards to the right of my window, showing me that my room
was near a corner of the building; and I found that by pressing
my face against the bars, I could just see the angle of the retaining
wall which formed the outer side of the moat as it too turned round
the corner of the wall.
" I do not suppose I had stood there more than four or five
minutes, when I heard the noise of a window being opened some-
where overhead, and apparently round the corner of the building. I
listened intently, and could just catch the sound of a voice speaking
in a rapid low tone, as if giving some directions; and then, to my
amazement, there came a sound like something falling, followed
by a loud splash in the moat beneath. My heart was in my mouth,
but not another sound came. Then, a few seconds later, a series of
little waves broke the calm surface of the moat, as they flowed round
the angle of the wall. Soon they sank into mere rings, and in a
minute or two the water was a mirror once more. I gazed, fas-
cinated, until the last of the rings disappeared, and then the thirst
for safety seized me again. I closed the window and walked
quickly to the door. Opening it I found the servant who had
brought me there standing, as if listening, at the foot of the stairs.
I called to him in German, saying I could wait no longer, but must
return at once whence I had come.
' 'But surely the Herr Priest will wait and see my master the
Count?' asked the man in some surprise.
' 'No, no,' I said, 'I must get back immediately ; I have to say
the Mass for the people to-morrow morning.'
' 'It is this morning now, mein Herr/ replied the man, 'and
indeed if that is so, you will need to start at once, if you wish to
get any sleep at all ;' and he led the way downstairs, going before me
with a light.
360 VOX MYSTICA [June,
" We crossed the same large hall and ante-chamber, and the
man opened the door into the courtyard. To my relief the carriage
was waiting at the door, so telling him to make my excuses to his
master, I entered it and drove off with a feeling of intense relief.
The drive back must have taken a full hour or more, and I was
surprised to find the innkeeper waiting for me on my arrival. As I
passed upstairs I looked at the clock again, it was ten minutes to
two! Fortunately the Mass was to be at a fairly late hour, as it
was a feast day, but it seemed as if I had scarcely slept at all, when
I was awakened and told it was half -past eight.
" After the Mass, when I returned to the inn, I found to my
surprise that there was a letter waiting for me. It was from my
friend, telling me that he had been called to Vienna where his
mother was lying ill, but begging me to go on to his home all the
same, where he would join me as soon as he could leave his mother.
Of course I did nothing of the kind, but came straight home to
England; and it was some ten years before we met by chance in
Rome, when I told him my strange experience. He made me give
him every detail I could remember about the buildings and every-
thing connected with the place, and then said, There is only one
castle in the neighborhood which seems to me to fit in with your
description,' and he named a place I had never heard of.
* "'And its owner,' I asked, 'who is he?' The name was as
strange to me as that of the castle, but the answer to my next
question was significant.
" 'What sort of a man is he ?' I asked, and my friend hesitated
a little before replying.
"'Well,' said he at length, 'I scarcely know; he is quite a
recluse nowadays, in fact I have only seen him once. People say
that he was very wild in his youth, and the story goes that he quar-
relled with his younger brother about a beautiful peasant girl who
lived in the neighborhood. He is supposed to have circulated a
false report that she was dead, and a few days later his brother was
found drowned in the castle moat. The official view was that he
had committed suicide, but many people suspected foul play, though
no evidence of it was ever forthcoming. It must be ten years now
since the affair took place, and it is becoming a mere legend even
in the neighborhood. All the same, if I were you, I should not pub-
lish your story in Austria, at any rate so long as the Count is
living.' "
IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM.
BY ELBRIDGE COLBY.
HEN Mr. Seumas MacManus appeared before a New
York audience last winter he read a little poem,
by " Ethna Carberry," Mo Chraoibhin Cno. Two
of the verses ran:
The wake, aggrddh! We yet shall win a gold crown for your head,
Strong wine to make a royal feast the white wine and the red
And in your oaken mether the yellow mead shall flow
What day you rise, in all men's eyes a Queen,
Mo Chraoibhin Cno !
The silver speech our fathers knew shall once again be heard;
The fire-lit story, crooning song, sweeter than lilt of bird ;
Your quicken-tree shall break in flower, its ruddy fruit shall glow,
And the Gentle People dance beneath its shade
Mo Chraoibhin Cno!
We shall take the liberty to add to this a single stanza from the
hand of Mr. MacManus himself :
My life is then my Queen's, to leave,
To order, or to ask it,
This good right arm to fend or strike,
This brain, is hers, to task it.
This hand that waits, this heart that beats,
Are hers when she shall need 'em,
And my secret soul is burning for
Her trumpet-call to Freedom
Kathleen,
O sound the call to Freedom!
And immediately there arises to one's lips the exclamation :
" But this is so different from the other poetry of the Irish Revival."
Of course ! People have been too long in error. The Irish Revival
is not, as Mr. Yeats' reputation might seem to imply, an event
of a decade : it began seventy odd years ago with the re-possession
of education. The success in 1829 of Daniel O'Connell's agitation
362 IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM [June,
against the Penal Laws, and the establishment in 1833 of the Na-
tional School System, marked the breaking away from the dread
legacy of past years. Not in the work of Mr. Yeats, not in the work
of the Abbey Street Theatre, not even in the work of these other
Irish writers of English verse more truly Irish and less French than
he, lies the source of the real Irish Revival; that source must be
traced to the spread of the teaching and knowledge of the Gaelic lan-
guage in seventeen years its study has claimed from thirty to three
hundred thousand pupils and to the remarkable industrial revival
of the past decade. And this is the work of the Gaelic League. They,
the true Irish revivalists, do not dream in sorrow of the past:
they look with hope to the future. They are practical idealists :
they labor for social and economic, as the basis of political, freedom.
To them the impending Home Rule Bill, or any Home Rule Bill,
is only a step: they look to a day of freedom for Ireland when her
" splendid sun shall ride the skies again," and she shall " rise in
all men's eyes a Queen! "
Mr. Paul Elmer More, in one of the early Shelbnrne Essays,
said that the movement of which Mr. Yeats is the leader is, in its
last analysis, a defeat. As such, and Mr. More's criticism is true,
it is essentially unrepresentative of Ireland to-day. The Yeatsian
" haunting music of sweet sorrow " is far removed from the actual-
ity and the ideality of Irish life. Mr. Yeats' " Irish Revival " is a
romantic quest of melancholy, a vain longing for " old, forgotten
far-off things ;" and the poems by Seumas O'Sullivan, To a Poet and
In an Irish Theatre, show how little feeling the true Irishman has
for these vague symbols of forgotten Celtic beauty. Spiritual
courage amid material defeat has been the chief characteristic of the
Irish nationality in the fighters of '98 and in the mid-century
songsters, Davis, Mangan, Callanan, and Walsh. This was the
mood of Lionel Johnson, who, though not an Irishman himself,
caught the spirit of this idealism, and ever set his mind on the
" flaming and celestial way afar from our sad beauties." But,
though an ardent Catholic, he was no dreamer : to him there was
but one means of accomplishing the desired end :
Some weapons on some field must gleam,
Some burning glory fire the Gael !
Nor do the patriots recognize any other method.
Instead of looking back and drawing aesthetic inspiration from
1914.] IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM 363
unnatural and old-time beauties, the true Irish literary patriots
sing of the charm of the country ways, and of the nationalistic
hope toward which they strive.
Lionel Johnson, together with several lesser poem-writers such
as Seumas MacManus and " Ethna Carberry," should have the
best claim to distinction in a true Irish Revival. No tear-stained
Celtic Renaissance this, but a courageous and hopeful advance
toward better days, a movement founded on a passionate and
practical love of Ireland, a march of Christians with strong
loves and strong hates, with great hopes and great fears. They
are minstrels to incite advancing warriors; they are bards to
stir the fighters to battle; they are songsters to rouse the mir-
cath in the hearts of the soldiers. 1
They would be immediate and practical says " Ethna Car-
berry:"
But Shiela in Gara, why raise the stony dead,
Since at your call a living host will circle you instead ?
Long is our hunger for your voice, the hour is drawing near
Oh, Dark Rose of our Passion call, and our hearts shall hear !
But the question will immediately arise, why if these men
are such ardent patriots, ready to wage bloody war and to oppose
the might of Britain's empire, why do they not forge a pike and
take to the hillsides, why do they not go out and throw up barricades
in the streets? The ready answer is that to-day such a course
would be folly ; at a future day, for which intense forces are slowly
but surely preparing at a future day Ireland shall be ready for
freedom. " Pikes glinting on a hillside, guns roaring, and blood
flowing, are but incidents of a rebellion, and may, or may not,
accompany its final phase." At present, seriously and steadfastly,
invisible powers are affecting the life and the soul of Irish life.
Political must follow social and economic independence. The blow
for liberty must come at the end of a consistent development, not
as the result of a spasmodic outburst which would rack but not
cure. As one of these writers has said :
I live my life to help to work out my country's salvation;
and when at length the time comes that my country calls, saying,
'The quotation is from an article, entitled The Poetry and Prose of Lionel
Johnson, by the present writer, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1913.
364 IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM [June,
Now is the time ivhcn it is needful that you should give your
life for me, then I go forth, joyfully and give it joyfully,
because I know that, in then giving it, I am advancing my
country's cause and attaining my heart's desire. If in my day
the great hour should not come, then I must heroically live my
life for my country, working to keep alive the traditions and.
the spirit of my race, and passing on to those who relieve me
in the noiseless battle, a heritage of resolve and of noble
purpose which will brace them for the crisis should it come in
their day ; and in that case my silent struggle, though it do not
make a show in this world's eyes, will, in the next, be as richly
rewarded as my successor's glorious sacrifice. 2
In order that there may be a " revival " something must of
course have existed that can be revived. We have but to turn to
our historians to learn of the importance of Irish learning in the
Middle Ages how the scholars at the Irish schools numbered
into the thousands; how the Renaissance began in Ireland seven
centuries earlier than in Italy; how the Irish teachers and preach-
ers carried the torch of faith and the light of learning through the
darkened countries of Europe; how Frederick Barbarossa, return-
ing from a holy Crusade, found a little monastery in the Balkan
mountains presided over by an Irish bishop ; how the " dark ages "
of Europe were ages of effulgence in Ireland. 3 But these things
all passed. There came the raging Danes ; there came the invading
Saxons ; there came Elizabeth of England, " civilizing with fire
and sword;" then Cromwell and the cruel and unjust Penal Laws.
By these laws it was forbidden the Irish to own, inherit, buy or
sell property; to live within a walled town; to enter any of the
professions, or to engage in trade. Education was stopped, and a
price of five pounds was put on the head of every wolf, priest, and
schoolmaster. Finally, the ban was removed it is to be remem-
bered that Catholic emancipation was accomplished in England only
in 1814 and step by step Ireland has been progressing toward a
nationality of her own again.
The Gaelic League is doing a great work. By its county
festivals, at which prizes are given for Irish songs, tales, poems,
airs, and dances, and by its teaching of the language, one step
towards national unity is being made. Mr. Seumas MacManus
has written a play, The Hard Hearted Man, which is offered " to
*From a lecture delivered in 1902 before the London branch of the Irish
National Club, by Mr. Seumas MacManus.
'See Professor Zimmer: Influence of Ireland on European Culture.
1914.] IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM 365
the county dramatic societies free of acting fee," in which he em-
phasizes the intensity and the unnaturalness of the perfectly stu-
pendous emigration. In order to put a stop to this general exodus,
the Gaelic League has exerted itself toward the re-establishment
of rural industries, and has met fair success so far. The young
folk left Ireland because there was no work the lace industry, con-
ducted by Protestants in the North, had been the only one not wiped
out by the Penal Laws. Now there shall be work at home for all,
and with such a condition the " Dawning of the Day " shall not be
far off.
Mr. MacManus has introduced us to Irish fairy and folk lore,
and told many a fantastic snatch from the great store of legend and
myth which is the traditional heritage of the Irish race. For years
past readings for children have been drawn from the mythology
of antiquity and of the Norse nations; the legacy of Ireland has
been neglected. Now, with free intercommunication and ample
opportunity in the revival of interest in things Irish, boys and
girls of coming generations shall enjoy riches drawn from the
treasure houses of Irish legend that their fathers knew not of.
It is this material with which the shanachics of the Donegal
mountain country enthrall the fireside group; it is this same
material which Mr. MacManus is constantly presenting to the
public. Years ago he was shanachie in the little Donegal village
where he was born and bred, where he was schoolmaster, until one
day he turned the key in the door, and came over the range of
mountains and away to America. With spirit saturated with the
feeling for the old life, and with memory rich in quaint and
beautiful stories, he comes yearly over seas to be shanachie to
the New World, telling many a real old tale such as Ke himself told
many years ago in the light of Toal-a-Gallagher's candle, by the
blazing forge of the smithy, or among his friends at the house of
the tailor of the town.
Mr. Seumas MacManus has, aside from these tales, done a
large number of Irish plays and social sketches. His dramatic
pieces are mostly short one-act affairs, but with admirable point
and apt characterization. His situations are ingenious and well
handled. The plays were not written for the Abbey Street Theatre,
but rather to supply a demand felt among the county societies for
typical sketches for amateur representation. Thus they have been
judged by the severest critics of all, the Irish themselves, and their
ready acceptance and continued popularity in every corner of the
366 IRISH LITERARY PATRIOTISM [June,
hills leave no doubt as to their truth. In The Bend of the Road,
A Lad of the O'Fricls, and Yourself and the Neighbours, Mr. Mac-
Manus has recounted typical incidents in the life of the Irish
mountain country ; the Harvest Fair of Glenties ; the handball con-
test ; the reading of the Nation by firelight ; the visit of the Tinkers ;
the turf-cutting barefoot days all of these he has pictured with
simple homely phrase, and in clear and entertaining fashion. With
little difficulty we can surrender to the spell of his enchantment,
and think ourselves back in Ireland, bowing to the presumption
and whim of Nancy Kelly, postmistress at Knockagar, sitting in a
charmed circle hearing the strange shanachie tales which he has
told so many times, or perchance being stirred by the beauty of the
heathery moors and purple mountains.
In America, Mr. MacManus has two purposes to fulfill. He
would interest the Americans in Ireland and the Irish life for their
entertainment and instruction. Secondly, and more significantly,
he would strengthen or renew an affection for the old green sod in
the hearts of the Irish lads and lasses come to push their fortunes
in a foreign land. So he has dedicated one of his books to those
" who have fared forth from their homes, traveling away and
away, far further than I could tell you, and twice further than you
could tell me." To them he would recall the kindly pleasure and
the bright hearth of the old days : he would bring them again to
the spell of the turf smoke and the sweetness of the Irish country
ways:
Our bravest sons, our stoutest ones,
Have rushed across the sae,
And God He knows, each wind that blows
Is waf tin' more away !
It's sore distress does them hard press,
They drop their heads and go
Och, sorrow's Queen, it's you has seen
Their hearts big swelled with woe!
Though gold they make, their hearts they break,
And they oft sit down and cry
For Inver Bay of a harvest day,
And the sun goin' down the sky.
LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIAEVAL.
BY JEANIE DRAKE.
T is a far cry from present-day Lucerne of the hun-
dred modern hotels, with every latest luxury for
swarming tourists, to the small twelfth century town
at the head of the Vierwaldstatter See, ringed with
fortified walls and towers, whose three rude inns, the
Star, the Key, and the White Wind, on the street of the Barefoot
Friars, afforded primitive shelter to the stray wanderer. It is a
farther cry to the tiny " stork's nest of wood," so frequently swept
by fire in the tenth century; and farther still to the few scattered
fisher huts that first bordered the lovely lake and the flowing Reuss.
It all but exceeds imagination to picture the handful of rude
settlers, before the Christian era, who burnt their bridges behind
them and set forth valiantly with other Swiss to seek a more fertile
land. Captured by Julius Caesar, they were sent home inconti-
nently, with injunction to stay there a humorous touch certainly
lost on the literal-minded Swiss ; but evoking a smile, perhaps, from
the keener Italian perception of the versatile master of the world.
Sooner or later, the traveler is sure to come to Lucerne;
for it is the chief continental crossroads, the gateway to
" the playground of Europe." Some few years ago travelers only
tarried on their rapid flight to the high Alps, to Germany, France or
Italy. But fashion has since elected this charming nook as an
abiding place, and from spring until autumn's frosts nearly three
hundred thousand visitors annually enliven with cosmopolitan cos-
tumes, languages, manners, and amusements the imposing cara-
vansaries, the thronged quay, the beautiful four-armed lake, the
verdant mountain sides.
The early comer finds here if of poetic fancy pleasures
all his own. The noble chestnut trees of the lake front avenue
raise aloft their candles of rosy blossoms. The great peaks of Rigi
and Pilatus on either hand, gradually shorten their winter cloaks
of white, and add thereto a vernal fringe. After the grave Middle
Age salutation of " Gruss Gott," some chubby schoolboy gives him
a serious childish account of how Pontius Pilate, after the Lord's
<death, driven by remorse, wandered far and wide, and at last ended
368 LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIAEVAL [June,
his misery on Mount Pilatus by drowning in a lake, which there-
upon dried up. His hearer climbing this grim, rugged mountain,
looming high above the town a three hours' march finds there
only, truly, not so much as a pond. He experiences a snowstorm
probably even as late as July, and sees the sunset cast a fleeting
crimson glow over the white majesty of the distant Jungfrau and
her brethren, and rise in splendor of rose and purple and gold above
the Rigi, Pilatus' snow-capped vis-a-vis.
But while he dreams in this most picturesque of Swiss valleys,
the summer invasion has begun; and from the Bernese overland
through Brunig; through Jura and by the Rhine from France and
Germany; from the forest cantons by their lake; from Italy by
St. Gothard, pours the throng. Even the devout lover of nature
in this, her transcendent setting, is distracted for a while by the
human interest. Under the chestnuts of the quay goes a ceaseless
cosmopolitan procession. Amid its varied forms and tongues the
German may seem to prevail ; but only because the native population
of this canton is German-speaking. The Italian and French give
a note of modish elegance; the English of ownership and patron-
age; the Americans of business, of dress, and alertness of enjoy-
ment. In the bandstand on the Kurplatz Maestro, Angelo Fumagalli
conducts a fine orchestra from La Scala ; the world listens, or strolls
along the Schweizer Quai ; the ballet dancers and opera singers
rally in force at the Kursaal Theatre; the " petits chevaux " trot
away, merrily, in the gaming room with the coin of those who
choose to risk it; while the man who cares for none of these amuse-
ments protests vainly at the tax which his weekly kurkarte exacts
for their support. A dream of beauty becomes, for a space, a back-
ground for a carefully prepared, highly remunerative social drama ;
and the dreamer grows interested in spite of himself.
He drifts with the crowd ; takes his roll and coffee on his hotel
balcony, with one eye for cloud effects over the Rigi, and the other
for what is passing around him ; reads his paper at the casino ; walks
on the quay observant; smiles at the anxious-eyed yet self-assured
English curate, with the angular tweed-clad daughters ; or the stout,
spectacled Teuton who may or may not intend to conquer Matter-
horn, but meanwhile is provided with such knickerbockers and cape,
such queer little, green hat with cock's plume, such pack and staff,
as fit him for that, or for some role in the opera of Wilhelm Tell.
When he stops in the open square and draws a little comb and mirror
from his pocket and arranges his bristling, blonde mustache in the
1914-] LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL 369
face of Lucerne, it is a distinct addition to the gayety of nations.
Bands of fresh-cheeked schoolboys, alpenroses on hats and alpen-
stocks in hand, start forth each morning to visit Tell's chapel, or to
subdue Rigi or Pilatus. Not for them, the modern funicular that
robs peak-climbing of the poetry of adventure that may suit the
old or the decrepit. These gallant hearts demand the joy of
achievement; the keen appetite which makes of hard bread, cheese,
and sausage a feast; the sound sleep on the hay in some chalet's
barn.
Towards noon, the dowagers and their fashionable charges
belles of many climes may be seen on hotel lawn terrace, in deep
wicker chairs, with Italian counts; sons of American millionaires;
presidents of ephemeral Latin republics ; or which is quite as likely,
polished continental or other adventurers in attendance. Super-
vising their comfort is the quiet, urbane landlord, linguist and man
of much general information.
When October's breezes have stripped bare the chestnuts;
when, instead of promenaders, only sere and yellow leaves whirl
in autumn's dance along the water front, those indigenous to the
soil strip the summer stage of furniture; see that all is neat
and trim and tight; turn off the lights and pull down the curtain
on their season's brilliant society play.
Now is the time to find bargains at the Venetian and Neapolitan
and other lace and jewelry and gimcrack shops, for, previous to
flitting, they dispose of goods at half the price asked in gayer
season. One forms the habit of haunting the Weggisstrasse, neigh-
boring narrow, back streets, where woolens and watches and cuckoo
clocks and cheeses and other Swiss staples find sale. The proprie-
tors are courteous, and have the leisurely habit of showing cus-
tomers out, opening the door and bowing them into the street. With
any sign of sympathetic interest, they will easily discourse of such
domestic and social matters as may be found quaintly different and
indigenous to the country. Should a compliment be evoked by
their command of languages, they explain frankly that it is no less
from choice than necessity. " Switzerland is more than a play-
ground," they say placidly, " it is an inn and a bazaar. We must
be prepared for guests of all the tongues."
Now is the season when school days have returned for their
juniors. The hill slopes and the crooked, steep lanes far back,
and the river bank are enlivened by tall lads and little fellows
in caps of color designating section and class to which they belong.
VOL. xcix. 24
370 LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIAEVAL [June,
" It is easy to keep track of them," explained the burgher father
of one. " If in any prank or mischief, the orange or green or
sky-blue cap is observed; it marks and checks the offender."
The pious, age-old " God's greeting " in salutation is invariable
and, surely, heartening in a material age. On these country roads ;
radiating from Lucerne backward and on either side, villages are
frequent, often less than a mile apart. But each tiny collection of
wooden chalets has its church, whose steeple from a distance marks
approach. Should a sharp curve in highway conceal this belfry,
and its absence be remarked to the rosy- faced boy who gapes at the
stranger, the answer is prompt and horrified : " No church ! But
it is there behind the trees. Who ever heard of any place without
a church! Can it be so in your heathen country? " If one should
take a fancy to ride in the incredibly old-time, yellow mail coach,
which lumbers along, connecting these hamlets with one another,
he has a good chance to become acquainted with the inns which liter-
ally besprinkle the way.
The lake steamers, recently so frequent, are now out of com-
mission; a few, connecting with this same mail coach, still skirt
the Vierwaldstatter See for trade and convenience. Those on the
decks now show more often such distinctive costumes of each
settlement as still survives modern sameness. The quaint, silver
hair ornaments of the women; the velvet trousers and gay belts
of the men add variety. A striking note among them is the fre-
quent, religious habit of one from some famous monastery near
or the robe and coif of some pious sisterhood on an errand of
mercy.
Lucerne has been in history and still remains a centre of re-
ligious life. The two, slender spires of the cathedral always se-
renely dominate the landscape, and tell of the real Lucerne the
Helvetian city with memorable religious and patriotic past not the
mere pleasure resort of summer butterflies. The little guidebook
ingeniously remarks, " Where the present is so beautiful, we may
well let the past be forgotten." But as there are those in whom
beauty inspires a wish to learn something, also, of the character,
purpose and past of Lucerne, and its people, it might be well for us
to glance back across the mists of time. Through the maligned
Middle Ages which, nevertheless, held the lamp of faith aloft
during a more or less pagan renaissance, and widespread deplorable
heresy and schism, pious Lucerne did her full share. Her feudal
overlord was the Abbot of Murbach, St. Leodegar; her earliest
1914-] LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL 371
building, other than a few, wattled, fisher huts, the present Hof-
kirche, was first erected in the fourth century. The little settle-
ment from that time had for patrons SS. Moritz and Leodegar, and
was named for the latter, a name time has altered to Lucerne.
In front of the Hof Plats there was at that time nothing to hide the
noble view of billowing, blue lake, verdant heights, and majestic
mountain peaks. The town grew and increased in importance.
It became necessary to protect trade upon the river by bars and
chains and gateway. An unskillful archer, shooting at crows upon
the church roof, contrived to set fire to that edifice. Indeed, so fre-
quent were fires that in the eighth century stone replaced the more
perishable material.
The cathedral was rebuilt of durable stone; so were the can-
ons' and the sacristans' houses, which clustering around the square
and cloisters, continue to delight the eye with their quaint gables
and turrets. About the church were erected fortified walls; and
a sentinel here paced his rounds from dusk to dawn.
From the Abbot of Murbach temporal authority over Lucerne
had passed now to the Duke of Austria, Rudolf of Hapsburg; and
the townsmen's bonds, hitherto light and pleasant, began to irk with
the spirit that later won for the town people entire freedom
Lucerne absolutely repudiated this change of temporal power made
without her consent. A struggle would have been initiated had
not Rudolf's attention been diverted by a call to the Imperial dig-
nity; by a Crusade, and other high matters. When the tyranny
and injustice of the Austrian under-bailiffs inflamed the forest
cantons to revolt, Lucerne joined her brethren, and became a
strongly fortified town.
Already in 1200 she had her picturesque octagonal Wasser
Thurm, which still enchants eye and fancy; and which sentinelled
the river approaches. To this was added the roofed wooden Kapell
Brucke, which joins it by an elbow, and with another diagonal twist
crosses the Reuss and ends in the ancient St. Peter's Chapel, which
gives it name. Patriotism and piety here went hand in hand;
besides deeds of Swiss valor, SS. Moritz and Leodegar are com-
memorated in the curious faded paintings which adorn the trian-
gular roofings of this and another mediaeval bridge of wood, the
Sprem or Miihlen Brucke, so called from the old town mill which
stood near.
Because of an unfortunate plan to modernize, eight or more
towers and gates have been demolished, within living memory. But
372 LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIAEVAL [June,
still the walls and nine towers of the Muscgg crown the heights,
each of them of different name and town, but of equal impressive-
ness.
Around the walls, and from the Hofkirche, across the Kapell
Briicke to the old Franciscan church over the river, went processions
in the early days to offer prayers against the plague, or against
conflagration. St. Charles Borromeo walked in one on the Feast of
the Annunciation. So later did the Lucernese, Franz von Somen-
berg, Grand Prior of the Hospitallers of St. John. So, more than
once, did the pious hermit St. Niklaus von der Flue, having come
down from his mountain cave for the purpose. The Papal Nuncio
was always in the procession; also hundreds of the clergy, and
one burgher from each family, who> if prevented, paid the fine
of one pound for the poor. All the population actually took part,
and, singing, wound their way, with candles and torches, across
the flowing Reuss.
Skirting the city walls, with their towers and gates, one comes
out on Wesmelin heights, and finds the Capuchin monastery and
church, built by the generous gift and efforts of Kasper Pfyffer, who
in the sixteenth century was Lucerne's first postmaster. In return
his effigy, his wife's and those of their fifteen children, are depicted
on the rear gallery, in quaint mediaeval robes and ruffs. Passing
the monastery when sunset rolls its gorgeously tinted clouds across
the mountain tops, and hearing the full, impressive volume of
chanted vespers from the invisible brethren in choir assembled, we
feel that God's praises echoing thus from age to age survive
through time, and are the leaven which leaveneth the mass. Over
this church's front portal is frescoed a sun-dial Sol shooting his
rays around the circling hours. And in the little side porch wait
on the bench some old and crippled beggars, just as such waited in
Kasper Pfyffer's time; and presently the Brother Almoner comes
forth as then and gives to each a wooden bowl, heaped with
food, which is never denied. Having climbed here by the walls
and Musegg towers, it is as well to descend by another route.
One of these turns back into the town by a long, narrow staircase
of stone, precipitously steep. The other, more gradual and wind-
ing, conducts, as it was built to do, from monastery to cathe-
dral, and is lined on either hand by wayside Stations of the Cross,
primitive perhaps, but none the less touching.
The cathedral, with pastors' and canons' homes, and cloistered
and enclosed square, is of mediaeval suggestion and perennial in-
1914-] LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL 373
terest, reminding vividly of a long-gone time when the " stork's
nest of wood " became a strong, stone eyrie. At that time were
formed the guilds of handicraftsmen, who took such pride in their
work as modern machinery is apt to weaken. These were the
masons and carpenters and coopers and button-makers, and scores
of others, among whom the iron-workers, wood-carvers and fresco-
painters gave renown to their city. Such of their work as has
survived, or been artistically restored, in outward decoration of
their homes, is a delight the carven Madonnas and angels on
house corners and niches, the grill and iron-work of signs, the
sanctuary-screen and choir-stalls of the Hofkirche and gates of
the Franciscan church. Even now the burgher, in good, old-fash-
ioned style, dwells with his family over his shop, or place of business.
It was then his pride to record pictorially upon home front the his-
toric deeds and virtues, the armorial bearings of his ancestry.
Across the river, in the Klein Stadt, the ancient " Von Moor's
Haus " is all of carven wood in scroll pattern for three stories,
these resting on a basement of stone, all decorated with floral
wreaths and carven image of the Mother and Child. From the
bend in the Kapell Briicke there are to be seen the cool arcades be-
side the river where, for long ages, the peasants' market boats have
landed, and there in their varied costumes they still land each
Tuesday, and bargain and chaffer amid piled fruit and vegetables.
Opposite the old St. Peter's Chapel there runs a by-lane from
the Kapell Plats, where there is a house on which is carved the stone
figure of an angel. In 1511 Jacob von Hertenstein engaged Hans
Holbein the younger to decorate this, his home. On the fagade
Holbein frescoed armorial bearings of Hertenstein and his four
wives, also the legend from Gesta Romanorum of the old king,
who tested his sons' love for him with fatal result. On the Kapell
Platz, the former Guild House of the farriers, is now the Golden
Lion Inn, and embellished by a fine wrought-iron sign, copied from
the heraldic lions on the Rathaus trophies. On the Rathaus Platz,
or Kornmarkt, this fine fifteenth-century Rathaus stands, its quaint
gables and turrets and ancient clock tower showing from town and
river front. Upon the milk-white end of the Gasthaus zu Pfistern
opposite is a wonderful fresco restored from 1409, when the im-
portant Guild of Bakers ordered their ancient public house painted
with coats-of-arms of their fifty-nine members. The tall young
man pictured in hose and ruff and puffed sleeves and armor, holds
over his shoulder the banner of the guild. On the branches of the
374 LUCERNE, MODERN AND MEDIAEVAL [June,
two-stemmed vine wreathing all over the rest of the wall, hangs the
coats-of-arms, and also a picture of the bakers' patron saint a
sack of flour, clustering grapes, and other ornaments.
Close behind are the market steps, up and down which the
people pass. Tradition says that when Austrian tyranny still
threatened, some of its sympathizers were within the tower. A little
boy who had fallen asleep in a market arcade, awakened to hear the
conspirators' voices. These finding therhselves overheard, yet
unwilling to kill the child, made him swear that he would breathe
no word of their plot to any living soul. Released, the boy fled in
panic up the stone steps and round into the Weinmarkt, where in
the Gasthaus zu Metzgern still sat some late guests, and there his
astonished hearers heard him unfold his story to a huge white-tiled
stove. Tradition adds that the boy's casuistry saved the town's
freedom. The building in which this happened former Guild
House of Butchers and Fishers is most curiously and interestingly
frescoed with such pictures and inscriptions as tell of its foundation
in 1529. The apothecary's next door, dating from 1540, is like-
wise adorned with varied and symbolic frescoes.
In the wine market stands the old fountain of St. Moritz.
Surmounting a Gothic column the patron, armed cap-a-pie, holds
watch and ward, while in niches below stand various knights in mail.
To the left, off the wine market, stands the Hotel des Balances,
on whose highly decorated facade the history of the house is em-
blazoned. In 1389, here stood the Town Hall, overlooking the
Reuss; in 1503 it was used as the cantonal schoolhouse. In 1519
it was the " Inn with Red Doors," for nearby were market shambles
whose doors were painted red. In 1836 it became the Hotel Wage
or " Balances," as at present. A painting of Justice and her scales
over the main door illustrates the name. The next house, now part
of the hotel, was the Schutzen Haus of far-off days ; and in honor
of the Bowmen's patron, St. Sebastian, his picture appears thereon.
The, charm of Lucerne is so captivating that the only way to
break it is to make a firm resolve to go, and follow the resolve by
immediate action.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST.
BY EMILY HICKEY.
T was a great age that into which our poet was born;
an age of splendid fact; an age of overflowing life
that hardly knew how to express its energy ; an age
when there was much finding and bringing of new
things for the eye to see and for the ear to hear.
The finding of new worlds physical had come to match the finding
of old lost worlds of mental and spiritual glory. Truly a great
age and a gallant. The shadow of the Reformation was indeed
over the country known so long as " Our Lady's Dowry ;" but it had
not as yet blotted out the light that had streamed from the Presence
which had been chased away from the open, and only left in the
homes of the few who risked ruin or death for Its dear sake.
The festival days were not yet abolished out of the land : the new
religion had not yet universally replaced the Ancient Faith. All
of the generation immediately before Shakespeare must have known
the light of the Truth ; and the probability is that the ordinary run
of people did not by any means understand the full import of the
great and terrible change. It is well to note that, in all this great
poet's work, you will not find one disparaging reference to the
Catholic Faith, while there are various, and not a few, slighting allu-
sions to Puritans and ministers of the new way ; such as he who is
characterized in the sharp clearness of one word as Master Dumbe,
our minister. 1 How at home he is, too, when the scene and the
time of his play demand the Catholic setting! Whatever form his
outward life gave to his belief; whether he ever realized the beauty
and glory of the Faith, we shall probably never know; but at any
rate the sure knowledge is ours of the reverence and lingering
delight with which he touches all that is of her.
We do not think of the Elizabethan age as altogether without
the unheroic side of life. The England of that day was not peopled
only by men and women as much greater than those of our own day,
as Brutus and Portia are greater than Petruchio and Katharine.
There was commonplace then as now, and things worse than com-
monplace; mean sins enough, as well as sins that had a certain
1 HeMry IV., Part II., Act 2.
376 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
splendor, if so we may speak, coming, as some sins do, from the
excess of fine qualities pushing the soul out of its equilibrium.
Shakespeare's England had its cogged dice, its jockey tricks, its
adulterators, quacks, and the rest of a bevy of that kind. And
men were there who were not only seeing that all the physical and
mental wealth surrounding them might be well utilized and made
marketable, but feeling that the real worth of it all was just as
much money as it would bring. This spirit had grown far mightier
when Shakespeare died than it was when he was born. But in the
main, the England of Elizabeth's day was heroic and great, and
many were the great and good men and women that it brought forth,
and many the brave soldiers, and the noble workers that it gave us.
The boundless activity of that age, too, found scope not only in
action, but in the representation of action, as on the stage; and in
high aesthetic work in poetry, such as that of Edmund Spenser.
On the 26th of April, 1564, William Shakespeare was baptized
in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon. Tradition has given
us the twenty-third of the month as the date of his birth, St.
George's day, on which day, fifty-two years later, he died in his
own town among his own kinsfolk and acquaintance. So, to the
English people, as to their brethren in America, the Festival of St.
George is forever associated with the birth and the forthgoing of
their greatest poet. When Drayton said of Warwickshire, " That
shire which we the heart of England well may call," he did not
know the full sense in which his words were true: for indeed
the birthplace and the home of Shakespeare may well be called the
heart of England. It is worth noting how great a chance if
indeed there be such a thing as chance there was that the child
might have died in infancy with the many who died that very year
of the plague. But the scourge did not come near that dwelling.
Stratford was then a country town surrounded by common
fields ; commons dear to the boy, who, as a man, " could not bear the
enclosure of Welcombe common." Most of the houses were prob-
ably wooden, with thatched roofs. As late as 1618 the Privy
Council represented to the Corporation at Stratford that " great and
lamentable loss " has " happened to that town by casualty of fire,
which, of late years, hath been very frequently occasioned by
means of thatched cottages, stacks of straw, furzes, and such like
combustible stuff, which are suffered to be erected and made con-
fusedly in most of the principal towns without restraint."
John Shakespeare, the father of our poet, had a house in
1914-] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 377
Henley Street; and in 1552 he and two others were fined for
making a dungheap in the street. The population of the town was
probably about fourteen or fifteen hundred. The town affairs
were managed by a corporation of fourteen aldermen and fourteen
burgesses, one of the aldermen being annually elected to the office
of bailiff. John Shakespeare, whose calling was that of a glover
and farmer, married Mary Arden of Arden, who was heiress to
some landed property. One cannot help fancying that when
William read in Lodge's Euphues' Golden Legacy, the novel on
which he based his As You Like It, of the forest of Arden, how his
mind must have gone back to the Warwickshire woodlands that bore
his mother's maiden name. It was a good thing for William
Shakespeare that he was not an only child. Brothers he had to
keep him from being spoiled in the eminence of only childdom.
And what a joyous country life his must have been! How he
breathed the bright clear air ! How his heart was set a-dance with
the daffodils that danced before the eyes of another later poet; the
daffodils that, for him, took the winds of March with beauty.
What delight of country life is in his first poem, " the first heir of
his invention." There is the jennet, lusty, young and proud, with
the braided hanging mane standing on end on the compassed crest,
while his nostrils drink the air and send forth vapors as from a
furnace. There is the chase of the hare also, and this told of not
without the note of compassion for " poor Wat, far off upon a hill,"
standing on his hind legs to listen whether his foes are still pursuing
him, " the. dew-bedabbled wretch " turning and turning, stopped
by every shadow and stayed by every murmur. The two silver
doves that sit a-billing; the brake where the fawn waits for its
mother; the telling of the "red morn that ever yet betokened"
Wreck to the seamen, tempest to the field,
Loss to the shepher'ds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.
These things are not told of thus by the dwellers in towns. All
through the work you will find touches that show the keen observa-
tion of the country-bred. Is it not in the description of the nimble
air of Scone Castle? What man brought up away from these
things that would have told us that where the martlet breeds the air
is delicate? 2
Shakespeare and his brothers must have had a good deal of
* Macbeth, I., 6.
378 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
fun in their boyhood. Perhaps he went to school with his satchel
and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to class.
" Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, but love
from love toward school with heavy looks," says Romeo; and
indeed the ways of learning were by no means delightful to the
ordinary schoolboy as conducted by the ordinary schoolmaster, in
those days. William would have enjoyed playing nine men's
morris, dun's in the mire, hide fox and all after, and many another
game. He would have been among those dancers whose light heels
went merrily among the fresh-strewn rushes. He would have been
at the Whitsun Ales, where amusement and almsgiving were hand-
in-hand. " In every parish," says Aubrey, " is, or was, a church-
house, to which belonged spits, crocks, etc., utensils for dressing
provisions. There the housekeepers met and were merry, and
gave their charity. The young people were there too, and had
dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting gravely
by, and looking on. All things were civil and without scandal."
There were at Pentecost " pageants of delight," as we hear from
Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. There were the Whitsun
morris dance, and the Whitsun pastorals. What a festive time
the sheep-shearing must have been, we can judge from the Winter's
Tale. Knight says of this : " There is a minuteness of circum-
stance amidst the exquisite poetry of this scene, which shows that
it must have been founded on actual observation, and in all likeli-
hood upon the keen and prying observation of a boy occupied and
interested with such details." But Shakespeare would have added
to the reminiscences of boyhood the observation of later years, and it
is not improbable that he was living at Stratford when the Winter's
Tale was written. How delightful the account, and how savoring
of Merrie England, the England that was to lose her title of merry,
of the four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers, the sugar and
currants and spices, the shepherd-queen " most goddess-like prankt
up, Flora, peering in April's front." The old shepherd's rebuke
to his adopted daughter who took her hostess' duties so much
more calmly than his old wife had done
upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook.
Both dame and servant welcomed all, served all :
Would sing her song and dance her turn ; now here,
At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle;
1914-] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 379
On his shoulder, and his: her face o' fire
With labour, and the thing she took to quench it
She would to each one sip.
Perhaps a girl as sweet and lovely as Perdita had come up to
Shakespeare, as Perdita to Polixines and Camillo, and given to him,
then a man of middle age, a nosegay, with words whose spirit he
afterwards clothed in poetry.
Here's flowers for you ;
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age.
And perhaps he felt as he made Perdita speak to Florizel,
Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day:
O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon, daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength
bold oxlips and
The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.
Shakespeare's boyhood had its" merry Christmas, when the
carol-singers went round and sang
As Joseph was a-walking
He heard an angel sing,
This night shall be born
Our heavenly King.
He neither shall be born
In housen or in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.
380 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
He neither shall be clothed
In purple or in pall,
But all in fair linen,
As are babies all.
He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle
That rocks on the mould.
The boy had perhaps been brought up in the belief
that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein Our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long ;
And when, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad :
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm ;
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
Did he ever shake off this belief ? Horatio says, " So have I heard,
and do in part believe it."
There would be the Christmas revels, the Christmas comedy,
the Christmas gambols, which are mentioned, respectively, in Love's
Labour's Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew. These sports show
the love of dramatic amusement, soon to rise to so great a height;
for, as we know, the English drama took its form in Shakespeare's
day. It is far from improbable that as a boy of eleven, Shakespeare
saw the entertainments at Kenilworth which is only a few miles
distant from Stratford, at which Queen Elizabeth was present. In
A Midsummer Night's Dream, there is a passage which one may
well suppose to contain a reminiscence of that time with its pag-
eants and poetic devices. 8
Shakespeare must have thoroughly enjoyed field sports. If
Blessed Thomas More could ask what delight there could be, and
not rather displeasure, in the barking of dogs, so thought not
Shakespeare when he spoke 4 of the hounds
So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ;
Crook-kneed and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells
Each under each.
^Midsummer Night's Dream, II., x, 141, etc.
4 Midsummer Night's Dream.
1914.] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 381
And again :
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
He loved hawking too : the tassel gentle is lured to the bower
of Juliet; the little page in the Merry Wives is. called by Mrs. Ford
her eyas musket; and can we forget the terrible pathos of that
utterance of Othello's,
If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,
I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind
To prey at fortune. 5
The use of the bow was with Englishmen still in Shakespeare's
day; that famous weapon which Englishmen, as Latimer tells
us, bent with the strength of the whole body, not merely, as other
nations, with the strength of the arms ; that weapon wherewith they
had turned the tide of battle on foreign soil. He tells us in the
person of Bassanio,
In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
The self-same way, with more advised watch
To find the other forth; and by adventuring both
I oft found both. 6
In 1582 Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, of Shottery, a
village at the distance of an easy walk from Stratford. The next
year, alas, too early the next year, was born Susannah, whose bap-
tism is registered at Stratford church as that of the daughter of
William Shakespeare. This Susannah was afterwards Mistress
Hall, and is described as " witty and also wise to salvation." Ann
Hathaway was, at the time of her marriage, twenty-six, while her
husband was a mere boy of eighteen. This unequal marriage has
been the theme of a great deal of discussion, and the probability
of its unhappiness much dwelt upon. The well-known passage in
1 Othello, III., III., 260-263.
* Merchant of Venice, I., I., 140-144.
382 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
Twelfth Night, on which the theory of its unhappiness has been
chiefly based,
Let still the woman take
An elder than herself ; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are, 7
would, if taken alone, prove nothing, being a dramatic utterance;
but taken in connection with other things, it seems not unfair to
suppose that there is in it that personal note which is so much more
difficult to distinguish in dramatic writing than in any other. We
know what a merciless divider inequality can be, where there are
not patience and tenderness and sympathy, which things belong
usually to later life rather than to earlier. The inequality in this
case must have been much more than that caused by difference in
age, and may have been more keenly felt as Shakespeare came to
that rinding of himself and that realization of his own power which
must have come to him after his maturer life had set in. We
remember also his association with those of a higher caste, mental
as well as social, than that of his early life. On the other hand, we
know that marriage between highly gifted men and women far their
inferiors mentally, has often been accompanied by real happiness,
and this for many reasons. At any rate, we certainly do not hear
of any coldness between Shakespeare and his wife, and we do know
that his last years were spent at home, the home of which the wife
is by prerogative maker-in-chief; and that both Ann Shakespeare
and Susannah Hall desired to be buried in the same grave as their
husband and father. " It has always pleased me," says Miss Con-
stance O'Brien, " that Shakespeare gives to his middle-class heroine 8
his own wife's name." In 1586 twin children of Shakespeare
were baptized, one of whom, Hamnet, died the following year.
Not long afterwards the young husband and father came to London.
Whether the story of the deer-stealing and of its having been
a cause of his having to leave Stratford has any truth or not, we are
probably never to know; but there is no real evidence for it, and
it is first related by Rowe, in 1707. Shakespeare may quite possibly
have got into some boyish scrape, and have given umbrage to Sir
'Twelfth Night, II., IV., 30-36.
*Anne Page, in Midsummer Night's Dream.
1914.] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 383
Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, and the neighborhood may have been
for a little while too hot for his entire comfort. Supposing the
story to be true, it is not necessary to take it too seriously. A
young fellow would probably not have had any very grave scruples
about poaching, and would have enjoyed the fun of the thing, and
that enjoyment would have been uppermost. Perhaps he held
Andrew Boorde's opinion on the subject of venison: " I am sure it
is good for an Englishman, for it doth animate him to be as he is,
which is strong and hardy." There was, however, a real reason
why William Shakespeare should strike out for himself, in the fact
of his fatherhood, and in the fact that his father's income had
gradually gone down. At the time of William's birth he was a
flourishing man, and one of the Chamberlains of Stratford in the
early autumn of that year, only one of the burgesses gave more
than he did for the relief of the poor who were suffering from the
effects of the plague. Again and again he gave similarly. Five
years later he was a chief magistrate; the next year he rented
Ingon Meadow Farm, and in 1575 he bought property in Henley
Street, perhaps the property which he had previously rented. But
in 1577 begins the record of his reverses, which includes his being
excused from contributing to the relief of the poor. Later on he
was obliged to mortgage an estate which he had received with his
wife, and the next year he sold his property at Snitterfield. In
1586 he and another were superseded as aldermen, because "they
doth not come to the halls when they be warned, nor hath not done
of long time."
In a return of 1592, procured by Sir Thomas Lucy, John
Shakespeare is mentioned with others as staying away from church
for fear of being arrested for debt. I can't help thinking that he
may have been very glad of some excuse for shirking the new
services! The next thing we hear of him is that in 1596 he
applied for a grant of arms. This all looks as if the family cir-
cumstances had induced William to go away to seek his fortune;
and as if with his success his father's life had been brightened and
changed. The manner of the fortune seeking on William's part
would, as far as possible, be determined by the character of his
mind. His earliest biographer, Aubrey, says he was naturally in-
clined to poetry and acting, and did act exceedingly well.
As to Shakespeare's leafning, a report came through Aubrey
that he " understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his
younger years a schoolmaster in the country." This may mean
384 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
that he was an A. B. Cdarius or pupil teacher. We remember Ben
Jonson's saying as to his having " small Latin and less Greek," and
he, a contemporary as well as a personal friend, was more likely
to know than Aubrey, who was not born until some years after
Shakespeare's death, and whose accuracy is not usually understood
to be relied on. Whatever Shakespeare's learning was, and his
actual information must have been great, so widely does he range
and so profoundly treat what he takes in hand, he was a man whom
education as well as nature had qualified to attain excellence in
whatever he might apply himself to. He had the power of learn-
ing and also the power of teaching. There is a legend that when
Shakespeare first came to London, he did not disdain to hold horses
at the theatre doors for their owners, and was such a good and
reliable attendant that every horseman would call for " Will Shakes-
peare." So Will, the story goes on, having more than he could
do, would hire boys who came at the call with " I'm Will Shakes-
peare's boy, sir." One can well believe this, and rejoice in the
ready adaptability of the young man to any honest work that pre-
sented itself. " Johannes Factotum," Greene calls him a few years
later on Jack of all Trades: and this nickname may point to his
willingness to work in any honest fashion.
His earliest work for the drama seems to have consisted mainly
of touching up old plays, writing, perhaps, a scene, or part of a
scene, here and there, or in some way remodelling the whole or a
part. To the last Shakespeare did not, as it were, make his own
materials, but used what came to hand. This, of course, does not
in the least interfere with his originality, for originality does not
consist in quarrying one's own marble, but in revealing the statue
that lies hidden in the block. Another may have quarried the
block ; another may have shaped the limbs and carved the features
from the master's cast; but it is the hand of the master that uses
the chisel to strip away the lingering fragments that hide the per-
fect beauty of the work. It is a master's hand, too, that can take
the good, and give it out as the best, after it has passed through
the laboratory of his mind and his art, or even take what is not
good and endue it with goodness and beauty. " It is only work-
men and bunglers," says Grimm, " who talk of stolen ideas. A
man's mental property consists in what no man can take from him."
But to understand the nature of Shakespeare's first work, we must
remember that, at that time, the stage possessed a mass of unap-
propriated property in a number of plays that had been touched and
I9H-] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 385
retouched, altered here by the addition of a scene or the introduc-
tion of a character, or a change in the presentation of that character;
there, by an omission no less telling and important, until it would
have been impossible to identify the first maker. We must note
in this connection, that whatever Shakespeare uses he makes more
beautiful. If he takes a piece of English chronicle, familiar to the
audience, he -informs it with such life and spirit that he has been
called the creator of English history. If he takes an Italian tale of
cruelty and lawless passion, he ennobles it and sets it under the clear,
blue sky of his imagination, where we not only can bear the intense
coloring, which in the smaller space of the first maker's fancy we
scarcely could endure to look on, but also see in it a meaning and
a glory that there we should not have dreamed it could hold.
In 1591 was published Spenser's Tears of the Muses, in which
occurs an allusion almost unanimously referred to Shakespeare.
It is worth while to read more than the allusion to
that same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet Nectar flow,
that gentle spirit who has chosen silence rather than the joining in
ignoble speech; because the description of the then state of the
comic stage seems to throw a light on the poet's character, as that
of one who would have nothing to do with popularity at the ex-
pense of right.
The story of Greene's attack on Shakespeare, published in the
posthumous Groatsworth of Wit, is well known. It came out under
the editorship of Henry Chettle, not the last editor to be guilty of
grave indiscretion in giving publicity to what could not but be
offensive to the living, when the writer of it could have had no
chance to withdraw it. ;< Yes, trust them not (i. e., the players) ;
for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with
his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well
able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, being an
absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakes-
peare in a country." That this stung Shakespeare painfully, we
may well suppose ; as also we may well think that Chettle did- not
think of his having published Greene's words without regret. In
his own Kindharts Dreame, he speaks in words which are thought
certainly to refer to Shakespeare. " Myself have seen his demean-
our no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Be-
VOL. xcix. 25
386 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
sides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing,
which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that
approves his art." If, as seems probable, it is to Greene that
Shakespeare alludes when he speaks of
The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary, 9
it is worth noting the contrast between his manner of writing about
Greene, and Greene's manner of mentioning him and his work.
True, we must allow for the De mortuis nil nisi bonum principle,
but, at any rate, the compliment to Greene's memory need not have
been paid.
In 1592-1593 the theatres were closed on account of the plague.
In this interval Shakespeare may have written Venus and Adonis,
and perhaps the Merry Wives. It has been suggested that he
visited Italy in person as well as in imagination. " There are,"
as Mr. Knight says, " some very striking proofs of his intimate ac-
quaintance, not only with Italian manners, but with those minor par-
ticulars of the domestic life of Italy, such as the furniture and
ornaments of houses, which could scarcely be derived from books,
nor, with reference to their minute accuracy, from the conversation
of those who had 'swam in a gondola.' ' In 1593 Shakespeare
might have been absent from England without any interference with
his professional work. It is also worth asking where Shakespeare
found his Shylock. Jews were not allowed to live in England,
as is well known, from the time of Edward I. to that of Cromwell.
Perhaps someone will one day be able to throw light on this.
Something of what Shakespeare thought of the mission of the
stage may be gathered from Hamlet's notable speech to the actors. 10
The end of playing " was and is, to hold, as 't were, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her
own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure." But the profession of an actor was according to what
he says in the Sonnet numbered III., fraught with drawbacks that
were painful to him; though he seems to have been fully conscious
of what a great actor might do. Drayton said in 1609, that though
the stage stained pure gentle blood, yet Shakespeare was a gentle-
man in mind and mood. His London friends were some of them,
drawn from among those who were connected with the stage.
'Midsummer Night's Dream, V., I. "Hamlet, III., 2.
IQI4-] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 387
Richard Burbage was probably the most distinguished of these.
In an epitaph written on him we have the names of many of
Shakespeare's leading characters as having been played by him.
We find that he played Romeo, Henry V., Richard III., Brutus,
Coriolanus, Shylock, Lear, and Pericles. The epitaph says,
But let me not forget one chiefest part
Wherein, beyond the rest, he moved the heart,
The grieved Moor,
I think the expression " the grieved Moor " shows that Burbage
had thrown himself into his author's mind, and had the power
of being what the poet had feigned. He named his little daughter
after Shakespeare's Juliet. He, Condell and Heminge, the two
latter the editors, if I may so call them, of the first folio edition
of Shakespeare's plays, are mentioned in his will as " my fellows,"
with the bequest of a sum of money to buy them rings. Ben Jon-
son's intimacy with Shakespeare is well known; he dearly loved
his friend, whom he describes as " of an open and free nature "
with a love, as he tells us, only short of idolatry. The Earl of
Southampton was a friend, perhaps even a very intimate friend, of
Shakespeare's, and the Earl of Pembroke may also have been one
to whom he was most dear. Whether Spenser knew Shakespeare
personally or not, his admiration for him was great. In his Colin
Clouts Come Home Again he says,
And there, though last, not least, is Action,
A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found ;
Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention,
Doth, like himself, heroically sound.
By 1597 Shakespeare was enabled to become a landowner in
Warwickshire, and his father had, in all probability, through his
son, become a " heralded squire " of England. That son's delight
in not merely restoring his father to the comfort of long ago, but
of bringing a further honor to him, can well be imagined. It is
possible that a grant of arms had been made to the Shakespeare
family by Henry VII., but up to this time they had not borne arms,
and there even seems to have been some difficulty in procuring
the grant. In 1598 Shakespeare was the acknowledged writer
of some eighteen plays, most of which were entirely his own ; and
of two poems, beside a number of sonnets which were circulating
388 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
unpublished among his private friends. In Meres' Palladis Tamia
eight pages were given to "A Comparative Discourse of our English
Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," in which Shakes-
peare's name occurs nine times. He is mentioned there as the great-
est writer of comedy and tragedy among the English. " The Eng-
lish tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in rare
ornaments and resplendent habiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spen-
ser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Chap-
man." He is spoken of not only as a dramatist, but as one of the
best among lyric poets. Shakespeare's early plays have in them
much of the lyric element, which a deeper understanding of the prin-
ciples of dramatic art excluded from his later ones.
The patient researches of Dr. Wallace, of Nebraska University,
and his wife among the documents preserved in the Public Record
Office in London, have told us something of Shakespeare's expe-
rience in London, which was unknown until two or three years ago.
Truly, the examination of some million documents has in it the
spirit of the sending
O'er the vast world to seek a single man. 11
We know, from Professor Wallace's discoveries, that for some
years previous to his return to Stratford, Shakespeare was living in a
house in Silver Street, London, with a French family named Mount-
joy, and that he was asked by Madame Mount joy to help in ar-
ranging a marriage between her daughter Mary and a certain Ste-
phen Bellott, who had been an inmate of the house before and
during the six years of his apprenticeship to Mountjoy as a tire-
maker. Mary had also learned the trade. When his apprentice-
ship was over, Bellott was so much liked, as it appears, by the
Mountjoys, that they were anxious that he should marry their
daughter. We learn this from the documents connected with a
lawsuit in which Shakespeare was one of the witnesses. In 1612
Shakespeare, then described as of Strat ford-on- Avon, in the County
of Warwick, gentleman, of the age of forty-eight years or there-
abouts, was examined as a witness in an action arising out of a dis-
agreement between Mountjoy and his son-in-law : and from his
depositions we learn the kindly interest he had taken in the mar-
riage of 1604. The father of the girl had made to Bellott, whom
he held in esteem, " a motion of marriage with Mary," and
Madame Mountjoy " did solicit and entreat " Shakespeare " to move
"Coriolanus, IV., i.
1914.] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 389
and persuade " Bellott " to effect the said marriage, and accord-
ingly " Shakespeare " did move and persuade " Bellott " thereto."
The part taken by Shakespeare argues a kindly, easy disposition, one
which had gained him the confidence of both parties; that "open
and free nature " which Jonson ascribes to him. That the matter
turned out badly as far as agreement later on between father-in-law
and son-in-law was concerned, neither proves nor disproves wisdom
or insight on Shakespeare's part. We are sorry for the end of the
interposition, but its record has given us a peep into Shakespeare's
London life which we would not have missed. 12
Shakespeare probably visited Stratford often during his Lon-
don life, and kept his memory green with the dews of country life.
We must remember, in thinking of him in relation to the green fields
and fair rivers, that in his day there was by no means the sharp con-
trast between town and country that there now is. We must re-
member that, where now in London there is row upon row of
houses, there were, in his time, fields easy for the foot of the Lon-
don dweller to reach. Mo or fields, Spital fields, and others, no
longer suggest their meaning in Shakespeare's time. We are now
shut in by building upon building, and the suburbs have crawled
up to the town and made it one great stone and brick and mortar
being. But ever, it must have been in the country pure and simple
that our poet heard the song of the nightingale and the hum of the
the red-hipped bee, and the voice of the russet-pated chough, and
was caught perhaps among the toothed briars. There, too, he
would renew the memories of his boyhood by chats with country
rustics, the prototypes of Christopher Sly, and Quince and Snug,
and, best of all, the prince of country clowns, Nick Bottom. What-
ever temptation may have come to him in those days of eager city
life, and how far soever he may have strayed from the dear beliefs
and practices of his youth, who can doubt that the passion for
external nature which beats through his work like a pulse, helped
to make him strong to recover what he had lost, to rise where he
had fallen?
In order that a poet should be, not merely great, but, as we
all have agreed to call Shakespeare, representative, it is necessary
that he should have a complete life, a life including passion and
action, as well as peace and beauty. The life must not be so crowd-
ed that there is no time for passive impression, nor, on the other
hand, must the life be an idyll of green fields and quiet waters.
"See Harper's Magazine, March. 1910.
390 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
The natural poet, therefore, must have had these things, and he
must have had them in the right proportion and at the most favor-
able time. Shakespeare's first two-or-three-and-twenty years were
spent in an inland country place where he had time to feel and
take in what was around him; to feel it and take it in naturally
and unconsciously. Could it have been the same thing if these
years had been spent in London, and the next twenty at Stratford ?
Early impressions of external things are usually the most vivid.
The Londoner may go into the country and draw you a word-
picture of the tender glories of spring; but there will be vagueness
about that picture. He can tell how the young buds were breaking
from their winter prison, but he cannot paint them individually
as another can who has watched them day by day, and year by
year. This may be best illustrated by comparing, as Ruskin has
done, the Miltonic description of flowers with the Shakespearean.
Shakespeare knew his flowers, Milton had seen them.
But it was not merely that Shakespeare should well and truly
describe external nature, that it was well for him and so well for us
to have been born in the country and reared there. It was that his
mind might have the strength and evenness which come of happi-
ness and peace. We praise Shakespeare as the natural poet, says
this friend of mine ; the one true to the normal, not to the abnormal.
Let him have pined for nature vainly; let him have seen her too
late, or have lost her too early, and he would not have been the
representative of our natural feelings, but of our special ones. He
might have been Keats, feverish in his thirst for nature, or Lamb,
indifferent to her; or, on the other hand, if he had been too much
retired, from the haunts of men, he might have been a poet like
Wordsworth, whose
eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate.
Besides the need of repose, there is the need of sufficiency of outside
life of common things and things uncommon. Shakespeare's early
life and love and adventure gave the first part; the tragic and pas-
sionate life in London the second. No poet, no man, is harmonious,
or sufficiently true to represent humanity, who has not been moulded
by freedom and happiness. As well say that a tree grown in a
narrow back-yard and a tree on the side of Lebanon are equally
representative of their kind. Some of this happiness is necessary
1914.] SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST 391
for natural development, and some is needful in order that we may
be helped to bear great sorrows without breaking down under
them. I am not forgetting the upholding and sustaining power
of grace ; but we cannot leave out of consideration how God's deal-
ings with us are many-sided, and how He allows influences to help
in moulding us for the life we are to lead, influences which we may
call physical, or earthly, or what we will, but which, as surely as our
sacramental life, are part of His plan for us and for our making.
But more is needed for the making of the representative poet
than passion and action, peace and beauty. He must have stood
face to face with pain; he must have wrestled hard, wrestled a
fierce fall with those things which must be fought with and must
be overcome. And even if conquered for a while, such a poet
must, in the end, have proved the victor. He must go to the
depths as well as bask in the light. He must feel all, in order that
he may tell all. No one can read Shakespeare's tragedies without
feeling that there must have been tragedy in his life; no one
can read the sonnets without knowing that there was. What temp-
tations came to him we surely know something of. We believe that
as he could yield to what would appeal to a nature so rich and full
and deep as his, so he did yield. Whatever was the tragic element
in his life, it does not seem to have been that only which comes
from the sins of others, those sins from which the Psalmist prayed
to be delivered, and from which we with him have often prayed
for deliverance.
From all that we know of him, we cannot think that he would
have sinned from any glozing or any attempt to cheat his conscience,
such as poorer and weaker natures might make. He sins, and he
suffers, with an anguish that beats through the tragedies and breaks
through the sonnets. Acceptance of fate comes to some, acceptance
of the inevitable following upon pain and struggle. But a greater
thing is high resignation. The soul, that might grow stiff and rigid
under mere acceptance of fate, can attain to a fairer growth, and a
loftier stature, after it has bowed itself in resignation; and out of
that resignation wisdom comes, and a great calm. How wise
Shakespeare must have been ! He could never have been an egoist.
Even out of his pain, he could laugh with the world that must not
go without its cakes and ale because he was suffering. His own
pain would, looked back upon, make him understand the pain of the
world, and he would recognize what the less wise among us are
the slower to see, the joys and the compensations manifold. With-
392 SHAKESPEARE, POET AND DRAMATIST [June,
out pain, out of which, rightly apprehended, come strength and
force, he might have beeen a poet, and a true one: but he could
not have been our Shakespeare. Sin as he might, he could not
go on sinning; the eternal beauty and order which it was given to
him to recognize, must reveal themselves in his own soul and in his
own life. His was more than experience; his was that which
makes us feel that not only does he speak to us, but speak for us in
that large humanity which has not merely sought God, if happily
it might feel after Him or find Him, but which knows that in Him
we live and move and have our being.
At last the time came for him to go home and live at home, and
what countless pictures might be made of that life of his in the
latter days of his life. Happy in circumstance, at ease in the pos-
session of riches not great enough to be clogs, rich in the boundless
gift given him as poet, genial and loving and able to enjoy the
everyday things that hold in them the very soul of beauty and bless-
ing; the storms that may have come to his youth and prime
stilled into peace, and the haven, the earthly haven reached. Per-
chance, too, he had come to the haven of the soul, in going back to
the old Faith with which, as it is impossible not to see, he had always
so deeply sympathized. It is good to know of how he and the
corporation of Stratford fought hard against the attempt at en-
closing the common land; how he could not bear the enclosure of
Welcombe common.
What consolation and uplifting may have come to him through
the acceptance of the Faith we do not know; but at least its shadow
may have brought him a light larger and sweeter than Puritan
England could bestow. At any rate, the return to the sweetness of
the country life was not made by a restless soul chafing and fretting
against landmarks set by the hand of fate. No one can read the
later plays without being impressed by this. One is glad to know
that in his daughter Susannah he had much of that sympathy so dear
to a loving heart. One likes to leave him with the quiet stream that
shows the silvery side of the willow leaves; with the nightingales
and doves; to leave him dowered with the larger sympathy and
deeper insight that could now discern points of contact where,
earlier, only points of difference could be seen; to leave him, too,
with souls such as Marina and Perdita and Miranda, the innocent
and the holy, who make life bright and make men pure; and the
grander Hermione and Katharine, who have won the highest victory
through bitter struggle and the seeming of defeat.
Hew Books.
SHAKESPEARE AS A PLAYWRIGHT. By Brander Matthews.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.00 net.
Professor Matthews thinks that Shakespeare has been super-
abundantly discussed as a poet, as a philosopher, and as a psychol-
ogist, but that he has never been adequately criticized as a play-
wright, pure and simple. This volume is an attempt to disentangle
the fundamental principles which guided Shakespeare in the con-
struction of his successive plays, to analyze the elements of his
craftsmanship, and to trace the development of his dramaturgic
technic.
The plays of Shakespeare, like those of Sophocles and of
Moliere, were strictly calculated for the stage ; and it is only on the
stage itself that they disclose their essential dramatic quality. Many
of the secrets of Shakespeare's stagecraft are revealed to us once
we realize that he wrote nearly all his plays, to be performed
by one particular group of actors in one particular theatre, and
before one particular London audience. Viola and Olivia were
plainly written for the boy actors who had already played Rosalind
and Celia, Beatrice and Hero, Portia and Nerissa. The performer
of Malvolio most likely appeared as Jacques, the performer of Sir
Toby as Dogberry, and the performer of Sir Andrew as Slender.
Burbage was the original impersonator of Hamlet, Lear, Othello
and Richard III., and, as the professor surmises, of the tragic
heroes, Romeo, Richard II., Macbeth, and Brutus. We know again
that Kemp appeared as Peter and Dogberry. It therefore seems
probable that to him were assigned one of the two Dromios and
one of the two Gobbios, and that he was either Costard or Dull in
Love's Labour's Lost, and either Launce or Speed in the Two
Gentlemen of Verona. Jack Wilson played Balthasar in Much Ado
About Nothing, and as that was a singing part, he most likely
played Amiens in As You Like It and Feste in Twelfth Night.
The Elizabethan theatre differed widely from our comfortable
modern theatre. It had no roof, and the majority of the spectators
had no seats. It had no artificial light and no curtain. The stage
had no scenery, although it had elaborate properties of all kinds.
The playwright of the sixteenth century possessed a greater freedom
than the dramatist of the twentieth. The modern writer conceives
394 HEW BOOKS [June,
his play in a single compact action, with a beginning, a middle, and
an end; he composes it in a series of acts, each of which contains an
essential portion of the plot, and each of which is laid in its appro-
priate place, made visible by appropriate scenery and furniture.
The action of his story must be clear, logical, and progressive, and
the author must exclude from it all that does not insist upon ad-
mission. Shakespeare felt no compulsion of this sort. He might
intertwine as many separate stories as he chose ; and he had no need
to think where his successive episodes were supposed to take place,
since he could not foresee the modern expectancy of scenery. There
was no attempt made to dress the actors in costumes appropriate to
the time and place of the play they were representing.
The audience that Shakespeare wrote for was an audience of
Tudor Englishmen, sensual, impulsive, furious in hate and love,
overflowing with animal spirits, delighting in wounds and death,
sluggish of mind, inattentive, and eager to be entertained. Vio-
lently passionate themselves, they demanded lofty emotion and
broad humor. Avid of swift sensation, they wanted scenes of san-
guinary brutality and ferocious cruelty. They found pleasure in
startling contrasts, in unforeseen changes of mood, and even in the
transformation of a character in the twinkling of an eye. Shakes-
peare, as a popular playwright, gave his spectators just what they
wanted to see, like his successors of the present day. He utilized
any tale he happened to lay hands on, regardless of its veracity,
or even of its probability, so long as he deemed it acceptable to his
audience. His audience was as a rule ignorant of foreign coun-
tries. That accounts for the unscholarly inaccuracy of Shakes-
peare's geography. He bestows a seacoast on Bohemia ; he accepts
Delphi as an island ; he credits Bergamo with sailmakers ; he raises
a beetling cliff on the plain of Elsinore; he confuses distances and
localities in Scotland, and he makes Russians suffer from seasick-
ness on their way to Navarre!
In his earliest comedies, Shakespeare was experimenting in
construction, and studying how to put together plots that would
arrest and retain the interest of his audience. Love's Labour's Lost,
" a polite comic opera," is not adequately plotted, nor is its story
carried on by characters of any vitality. In the Comedy of Errors
he first concentrates his effort on plot development. The Two
Gentlemen of Verona is a failure in the field of romantic comedy;
The Merchant of Venice a success. Richard III. has the theatrical
effectiveness of the tragedy of blood, while Richard II. is poor
1914,] NEW BOOKS 395
in theatrical effect, and in essential dramatic force. Romeo and
Juliet is the earliest of Shakespeare's indisputable masterpieces.
Hamlet satisfies the crowd, because it is incessant in action, appeals
to women because it is vibrating with passion, and attracts the
thinker, because it is rich in character. In Othello Shakespeare first
completely achieves the full richness of true tragedy. King Lear,
which Shelley considered " the most perfect specimen of dramatic
poetry existing in the world," is, as far as stage effect is concerned,
charged with a message too mighty for it. Macbeth is a well-con-
structed play, except in its fourth act and in part of the fifth.
We may not always agree with Professor Matthew's critical
estimates, but his opinions and surmises are always worthy of the
consideration of the true lover of Shakespeare. His general view
of Shakespeare's development as a playwright is unquestionably
the true one.
LUTHER. By Hartmann Grisar, S.J. Authorized Translation
from the German by E. M. Lamond. Edited by Luigi Cap-
padelta. Volume II. St. Louis : B. Herder. $3.25 net.
The second volume of Father Grisar 's Life of Luther deals
with the ten years that elapsed between Luther's apostasy (1520)
and the Diet of Ausgsburg (1530). The learned Jesuit makes
Luther tell his own story, and refute the legendary character of
Protestant polemics.
We find Luther, the pioneer of modern progress, upholding the
utter corruption of human nature owing to original sin, and deny-
ing the freedom of the will ; we- find the defender of the rights of
reason against a dogmatic and despotic authority, declaring that
" reason speaks nothing but madness and foolishness ;" we find the
apostle of modern democracy ordering the princes in the peasant
war " to drive, beat, slay the people ; to hang, burn, behead them,
and break them upon the wheel;" we find the advocate of toler-
ance demanding the infliction of the death penalty upon those who
dared differ from him in doctrine like the Anabaptists and the
fanatics; we find the saint of the Protestant revolt absolutely de-
void of the sweetness and holiness which mark the true Catholic
reformer, and full of bitterness, hatred, cursing, immoral speech,
contempt of the Fathers, flattery for the secular princes of the
day, intolerance, incitement to pillage and murder, etc. Luther's
filthy talk cannot be defended as of old by saying that he was merely
speaking the language of his age. No man of his time or of any
396 NEW BOOKS [June,
other period of Christianity surpasses him in the vileness and im-
morality of his epithets.
Father Grisar has shown convincingly that Luther's great
apostasy was not prompted in the least by a desire of reform. He
showed in his first volume that many years prior to the Indulgence
controversy, Luther had adopted his heretical doctrine of justifica-
tion by faith alone. Not from external causes did Luther's change
of religion come. No, it was his own nature which demanded a
teaching able to assure his tormented soul of pardon of sin and
ultimate salvation.
Father Grisar is always calm and dispassionate much more
so than the fiery Denifle. His indictment is therefore all the more
effective. When the six volumes of this important biography are
translated, Catholics will be well prepared to meet the fervent out-
bursts of dishonest eulogy which will characterize the centenary
of Luther.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS: REMINISCENCES. By Katharine
Tynan. New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $3.50.
There is not one dull moment in this chatty and entertaining
history of Katharine Tynan's many friendships. There is no rea-
son for her to ask as Francis Wynne once did of some people
who had taken her up warmly at one time, and had later on grown
less warm, " I know that they love me," she said, " but what I want
to know is, is it a hatey love or a lovey love ? " Everyone that
Katharine Tynan met from her earliest days either in Ireland or
England seemed to love her with a lovey love, and she returned it
a hundredfold. Every literary man or woman of her time worth
knowing figures in these pages. She has a good word for all. We
believe the only one she pillories in her book is Mrs. Alexander Sul-
livan, who bored her to death with her dull conversation about her-
self and the United States tariff, and grated upon her as a masterful,
self-assertive, and tiresome personality.
Of Oscar Wilde she writes : " I have been told that in the
bitter days following his downfall, Oscar Wilde said that if his
father had not forbidden his becoming a Catholic while still in his
teens, he would never have fallen as he did." She remained loyal
to Parnell to the last, despite his disgrace. She writes, womanlike,
" It was not so very pleasant to be at daggers drawn with the priests,
for us who were sincere and faithful Catholics. Indeed many of us
suffered. But we believed we saw the right thing, and we did it
1914,] NEW BOOKS 397
without counting the cost." With true Celtic dogmatism she adds,
" Time has proved that we were right." Woe to the man who dares
to argue with the determined and loyal Katharine. Why she even
managed to convert her father to her views, though at first he had
thought it better for Parnell to retire for a while.
There are a few wild criticisms of the priests of Ireland in
the late sixties and early seventies for their Puritanic prohibition of
the novel, the dance, and the theatre. Strangely enough, she gives
this as one of the reasons of the emigration to America. She
writes, " The trouble was she is speaking of the cross-road dances
that these foregatherings of young people being swept away, there
was nothing to replace them. Rural life in Ireland became dread-
fully dull. Among an imaginative and emotional people the mar-
riage de convenance became shamefully and shamelessly the rule.
The people drifted away to America, where they could do what they
liked without the intervention of the priests. The mariage de con-
venance, it was discovered too late, was not altogether for the good
of the race. Some thoughtful priests have discovered this for them-
selves now that Ireland is becoming depopulated in a tragical
degree."
Occasionally our author allows her loyalty to a friend to
influence her judgment concerning that friend's place in the literary
world. This is pardonable, however, for no one will read this
book to find out Katharine Tynan's critical views. We en-
joyed it for its fund of good stories, its love of fun, its abound-
ing charity, and good will toward men, and its love for the Church
and Ireland.
LITTLE POLLY'S POMES. By Tom Daly. New York: The
Devin-Adair Co. $1.25.
We find Polly a very charming little girl and quite a poet
a chip of the old block, so to say, or to speak more reverentially,
a healthy sprig of the parent olive. She is very pretty, too, as we
see in Gordon Ross' truthful and delightful illustrations. Her hair
is flaxen, and her blue eyes are very wistful and thoughtful you
can tell at a glance that she is a philosopher as well as a poet. We
do not think she is a pragmatist; rather, she is an idealist, though
her Weltanschauung is not very clear, but that's the way with philos-
ophers. And Polly, you must know, is only about six years old,
and this is her first " volyume of pomes."
She begins with a deep metaphysical inquiry into the origin
398 NEW BOOKS [June,
and nature of The Dark. (The acute critic will notice the influence
of Hegel, at least on Polly's capitalizing.)
The Dark stays where there is no Light,
And so its always here at night,
And my Pa says Beyond a doubt
Its just the Day turned inside out.
But really
And here we trace the influence of Kant's critical philosophy
But really that could never be,
For thare a Different Size you see,
The Dark is small but Day is wide,
And big and broad as all outside.
Polly is right, no doubt; but is it nice of her to show up her
Pa this way in print ?
Polly's range is as broad as Herbert Spencer's; she treats of
everything from Bugs to The Morning Sun, and always in an orig-
inal and delightful way, which is more than one can say for Herbert
Spencer. It is obviously impossible for us, then, to do justice to this
philosopher and poet within the limits of a book review. Her
forte, we think, is moral philosophy, which runs through the volume
like a golden thread, if we may borrow a beautiful figure from the
essay which Kitty Casey will soon be reading " on her graduation
day." Emerson never wrote anything at once so just, so nicely
balanced, so elevating and so edifying as Polly's pome on Temper.
I have a little temper
That lives inside of me,
And long as it remains there
Its good as it can be.
I do not know exactly
Just where it makes its nest,
But it is only happy
When it has gone to rest.
And it would make me naughty
If it got out of place,
And came out like a fire,
And showed upon my face.
But I will watch my temper
And keep it in control,
And then I will be certain
To save my little soul.
1914,] NEW BOOKS 399
We hope Polly will not consider us patronizing when we say
that she deserves encouragement; she should give the world more
volumes for the delight of young and old, and the middle aged,
whom the orators always unkindly omit. Unappreciative and dull
of soul would that critic be who would " squush her song ! "
LETTERS AND INSTRUCTIONS OF ST. IGNATIUS. Vol. I.
1524-1547. Translated by D. F. O'Leary. Selected and
Edited with notes by Rev. A. Goodier, SJ. St. Louis: B.
Herder. 30 cents.
The aim of the Catholic Library is to place before the public
at a popular price and in a worthy form, the best of English Catho-
lic literature. This will include the literature of the past and the
mind of the present. The editor, Father Goodier, S J., promises us
a series of volumes by modern experts on history, biography, theol-
ogy, philosophy, economics, etc., and reprints of the most represent-
ative works of English Catholic writers of the past. This
first volume of the series contains twenty-four letters of St. Ignatius
on frequent Communion; the beginnings of the Society; advice to
papal legates ; words of comfort to Jesuits banished from Cologne,
etc. Only of late years have the letters of the Saint been collected
and published. The editor has decided to publish only those letters
and instructions which " most reveal the soul of the Saint," includ-
ing every letter which may be called spiritual even in a wide sense.
The work of translating has been difficult, because the style
of the original is always involved, and the sentences prolonged, un-
wieldy, and often ungrammatical. As a rule the style has been sac-
rificed to the sense, although the translator has retained many of the
peculiarities of St. Ignatius, such as his curious use of Latin words,
his Spanish reverence for dignity, and the like. The writer of this
review remembers discussing the possibility of such a series with a
Catholic professor of literature in a Western university some three
years ago. He is glad to see that his dream is now being so well
realized.
ST. ANTONINO AND MEDIEVAL ECONOMICS. By Rev. Bede
Jarrett, O.P. The Catholic Library. St. Louis: B. Herder.
35 cents.
The author says in his preface : " The chief justification that
can be urged for this Life of St. Antonino is to be derived from the
value of his economic theories. These are so eminently reasonable
400 NEW BOOKS [June,
and yet so flamingly ideal, so soberly described by him and yet so
sincerely Christian, that they must make their appeal to every
reader." Father Jarrett sketches a most interesting life of this
great lover of the poor, and summarizes clearly the Saint's detailed
and practical scheme of social advancement, which met in his day
the same problems that are now confronting us. St. Antonino
was the first author to separate ethical from dogmatic theology. He
entered into the labors of theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas,
and canonists like St. Raymond of Penafort, and from their works
built up a new science, the science of morals. His aim was to es-
tablish the great principles of moral action, and by their means to
help the conscience in its decisions of everyday life. To him came
in all their difficulties the citizens of Florence; merchants to con-
sult on the legitimacy of certain actions; bankers on the limits of
usury; guild-men on the exact amount of labor they were morally
bound to contribute; mothers to ask his advice in their household
toils and on the education of their children; priests to hear his inter-
pretation of synodical decrees and papal pronouncements; rulers
to question him on the lawfulness of taxation and the fitting adorn-
ment of the city. It is a biography of most absorbing interest.
ON THE THRESHOLD OF HOME RULE. By B. J. Conlan.
Boston : Angel Guardian Press.
Mr. Conlan has written a most stirring book " on the dawning
of Ireland's redemption, the coming of Home Rule." The volume
is composed in great part of the speeches of Mr. Redmond, and of
articles in The Irish World on Home Rule. He has little patience
with the English Catholic Tory or the opposition of that arch-
bluffer, Sir Edward Carson, and his bigoted, braggart followers.
He dedicates his work to the lovers of liberty the world over, but
particularly to the " scattered children of the sea-divided Gael."
ILLUSTRATED CATECHISM FOR FIRST COMMUNION. By
the Rev. Prosper Libert of St. Bernard's Seminary. Roches-
ter, New York: The J. P. Smith Printing Co. 15 cents.
Within the small compass of fifty-six questions and answers,
together with the Commandments of God and the Church; the
Pater, Ave, Creed, and Confiteor; and the Acts of Faith, Hope,
Charity, and Contrition, we have from the hands of Dr. Libert all
that is necessary by way of preparation for very young pupils, in
order that they may fulfill the fourth precept of the Church. The
1914,] NEW BOOKS 401
text of the Baltimore Catechism has been used, and it certainly will
be of no small comfort to our Sisters in the schools to possess an
authoritative selection for so delicate and important a task.
The type is large, the binding serviceable, but some of the il-
lustrations are not particularly suitable; their omission would not
mar the usefulness of the book, being well-worn in more senses than
one, having already made their appearance in so many Catholic
schoolbooks designed for children.
FAITH. By Monsignor de Gibergues, Bishop of Valence. Ser-
mons preached at a Men's Retreat. New York : P. J. Kenedy
& Sons. 75 cents.
These six sermons were preached last year by the Bishop of
Valence at a men's retreat. They deal with the Psychology of
Faith, the Need to Believe, the Transcendency of Faith, Our Duties
toward Faith, the Spirit of Faith, and Jesus Christ, the Author and
Finisher of Faith. They are a little overburdened with citations,
but perhaps that only proves the scrupulous honesty of the good
Bishop. We would advise the publishers to have a competent
proof reader go over the Latin texts, as most of them are incorrectly
printed. The book is suggestive, instructive, and helpful to a
thoughtful retreatant. It is somewhat above the head of the
average layman.
THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETO. A Critical Study of Docu-
ments and Traditions. By Right Rev. Alexander MacDonald,
D.D. New York: Christian Press Association. $1.25 net.
We were not at all impressed by the arguments adduced by the
author of this volume in proof of the authenticity of the miraculous
translation of the Holy House of Loreto. We believe with Father
Thurston that " the Lauretian tradition is beset with difficulties
of the gravest kind." Canon Chevalier, whose, competence in
mediaeval history is everywhere acknowledged, published his His-
torical Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Holy House seven years
ago; and to our mind his thesis against the authenticity still holds
the field.
He proved, first, by relations of travelers, and pilgrims, that
previously to the period assigned for the first translation (1291)
the house of the Blessed Virgin at Nazareth had been destroyed, or
at least that the spot which had witnessed the mystery of the Annun-
ciation continued, as in the past, to be the object of the veneration
VOL. XCIX. 26
402 NEW BOOKS [June,
of visitors; second, by charters, that there existed a church of St.
Mary at Loreto before the time of that same translation; third,
by a rigorous classification of documents and the legitimate elimina-
tion of spurious ones concerning the Holy House, that there was
no mention, either at Loreto or elsewhere, of this translation prior
to the year 1472; fourth, that the Popes and the Congregation of
Rites have been exceedingly reserved in declaring themselves on
the subject of the miracle of the translation. The first bull that
affirms it is dated 1 507 ; the inscription in the Martyrology is dated
1669; and the first officium proprium is dated 1699.
THE HUMAN SOUL AND ITS RELATIONS WITH OTHER
SPIRITS. By Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $1.50 net.
The Abbot of Buckfast tells us that this book is meant es-
sentially for the educated lay mind. He says in his preface : " My
task has been to explain some of the philosophical truths of scholas-
ticism in as simple language as possible. The book contains very
few quotations, and still fewer references. The reason of this is that
I am more intent on giving the spirit than the letter of Catholic
philosophy." He treats chiefly the subject matter of the two treat-
ises of De Deo Creatore and the De Novissimis. We think that
some of the chapters will prove rather hard reading for the average
lay mind, and the writer is not careful enough at times to discrimi-
nate between matters of faith and matters of opinion, between things
philosophical and things theological. On the whole, however, it is
a most earnest, if not at all times the clearest, presentation of
Catholic truth.
DAILY REFLECTIONS FOR CHRISTIANS. By the Very Rev.
Charles Cox, O.M.I. Two volumes. St. Louis: B. Herder.
$3.25 net.
Father Cox writes in his preface : " The present work offers
the devout faithful, for every day of the year, three pages of matter
suitable for spiritual reading. The subjects are varied, and every
set of reflections stands complete by itself." We are convinced that
the layman who spends ten minutes a day upon these Reflections,
will certainly obtain solid spiritual benefit. But why, we may ask,
are so many of our devout books so utterly lacking in distinction
of style? We think the price prohibitive, especially as the author
makes his appeal to a large audience.
IQI4,] NEW BOOKS 403
THE SUMMA THEOLOGIA OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Part
III. Second Number, QQ., XXVII.-LIX. Literally Trans-
lated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New
York: Benziger Brothers.
Every student will welcome this new volume of St. Thomas
on Christology. We 'know that many botb Catholic and non-
Catholic are now reading for the first time the works of St.
Thomas. The scholarly world owes a great debt of gratitude to
the English Dominicans.
BETROTHMENT AND MARRIAGE. A Canonical and Theo-
logical Treatise, with Notices on History and Civil Law. By
Canon de Smet, S.T.L. Translated from the French Edition
of 1912 by Rev. W. Dobell. Volume II. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $2.25 net.
This second volume of Canon de Smet's Betrothment and
Marriage, treats of the impediments to marriage, dispensations
and invalid marriages. The Decree Ne Temere is given in full, and
reference is made to the civil laws in the United States, Canada,
England, and Germany. It is the most complete and scientific treat-
ise we possess on matrimony in the English language.
SERMONS AND HOMILIES. By Edmund English, Canon of
Westminster Cathedral, and Missionary Rector of St. James',
Twickenham. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $1.35 net.
Canon English tells us that the " chief aim of these discourses
is to promote freshness of thought in matters of doctrine, and in
practical matters to provide a fresh setting for those venerable prin-
ciples of the spiritual life which have been handed down in the tra-
dition of the Church." All but two of these sermons, he tells us,
were preached in his own parish church. His two themes
throughout are the love of God for man as witnessed in the life
of our Saviour, and the divine blessing that follows those who
suffer for Jesus' sake. We found these sermons most devout and
helpful.
COUNSELS OF PERFECTION FOR CHRISTIAN MOTHERS.
By the Very Rev. Pere Lejeune. Translated by Francis A.
Ryan. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
There are two reasons which render laudable the translation of
a book into another language, viz., great excellence in matter or
404 NEW BOOKS [June,
style, or notable fitness to the needs of that country for which the
translation is made. The appeal of a book is either general or par-
ticular, national or world-wide : these conferences seem particularly
suited to the people to whom they \vere originally addressed,
whereas they do not seem so fitted to conditions and needs in our
own country. Praiseworthy, edifying, excellent they most certainly
are, and calculated to do much good to those for whom they were
written.
A MODERN MARTYR BLESSED THEOPHANE V6NARD.
Revised and Annotated by the Very Rev. James A. Walsh.
Maryknoll, Ossining, New York: Catholic Foreign Mission
Society. 60 cents.
Every pastor of souls, who is desirous of fostering vocations
to the priesthood among his boys, should present them with the life
of this devout youth, who died for the Faith in China in 1861.
It will interest all lovers of our young Foreign Missionary Society
to know that the touching letters of this young martyr have already
inspired several vocations at Maryknoll, and many others in various
seminaries and novitiates of the country. We are pleased to notice
that eight thousand copies of this absorbing biography have been
already sold.
TRUTH AND ERROR. By Aloysius Rother, S.J. St. Louis:
B. Herder. 50 cents net.
Father Rother, S.J., Professor of Philosophy in St. Louis
University, has written a number of excellent philosophical text-
books for beginners. The present volume on Truth and Error ex-
amines and demonstrates the nature of truth. Special stress has
been laid on the positive doctrine, and many unnecessary contro-
versies have been dispensed with in the hope of assisting the earnest
student to a clear understanding of the foundations of knowledge.
This manual will prove invaluable to college students and teachers
in our elementary schools in preparing for examinations.
THE BOOK OF THE EPIC. The World's Great Epics told in
Story. By H. A. Guerber. With Sixteen Illustrations from
the Masters of Painting. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
$2.00 net.
This brief sketch of the chief epics of the world is intended
for the use of young students and the busy general reader. They
1914,] NEW BOOKS 405
contain every variety of epic from the Iliad and the Mneid, to the
simplest idyl like the Japanese White Aster or the French mediaeval
tale of Aucassin et Nicolette. This book will prove especially use-
ful to teachers on the lookout for good material for oral language
work. We are certain that this fascinating volume will urge many
of its readers to study the original epics, of which the author gives
such accurate synopses.
JOHN MURRAY'S LANDFALL. By Henry N. Dodge. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net
Mr. Dodge has written a very long, drawn-out poem about
the Universalist, John Murray, who fled from England in the year
1770 "to bury his grief in the wilderness of the New World."
Marvelous to relate, he is driven by stress of weather upon the
Jersey coast near the little village of Good Luck, and still more
wonderful to relate, he is received with open arms by a dreamer
with the very unpoetical name of Tom Potter. In fact Tom has
built a meeting house for the stranger from over the sea, whom he
knew God would send in due season!
The scheme throughout is Universalism with its vague and
wearisome reiteration of the Fatherhood of God and the Brother-
hood of Man, which we have heard many times before. The literary
value of Mr. Dodge's rhapsody is not great, despite the extravagant
praise of Professor Hodell of Goucher College, Baltimore.
HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. For Use in Colleges
and Schools. By Rev. James MacCaffrey. Dublin: M. H.
Gill & Son. 90 cents net.
Father MacCaffrey aims in this little volume to give the prin-
cipal facts of Church history in a clear, concise, and readable form,
to indicate briefly the connection between the great movements, and
to give due prominence to the history of the countries in which
his readers are likely to be interested, namely, Ireland, England,
Scotland, the United States, and Australia. It is first and fore-
most a textbook, and therefore the author presupposes a teacher
capable of developing his over-brief summary. It is a good book
for girls or boys of fourteen or fifteen.
A MODERN FRANCISCAN. By Rev. Dominic Devas, O.F.M.
New York : Benziger Brothers. 90 cents net.
In 1899 Father Norbert, O.F.M., published at Paris the life
406 NEW BOOKS [June,
of Father Arsenius, which Father Devas has now adapted for
English readers. He says in his preface :
It is a life which seems to protest somewhat against a dan-
gerous tendency of modern times to undervalue prayer and mor-
tification, and to replace them by a certain restless external
activity which is busy about many things, yet wholly alien to
that deep interior spirit which alone forms the characteristic
and the power of holy priests It is certainly the life of a
saintly priest and a deeply mortified religious, who living as
he did a very active life in the midst of this matter-of-fact
world of ours, gives us an example we can well appreciate and
not wholly afford to neglect.
It is a book that should be known by every aspirant to the
priesthood.
THE CAUSE OF THE SOCIAL EVIL'AND THE REMEDY. By
Albert W. Elliott. Atlanta, Ga. : Webb & Vary Co.
Mr. Elliott, the President and General Manager of the South-
ern Rescue Mission of Atlanta, has devoted six years of his life
to rescue work among fallen women. During that time he has
studied the underworld from New Orleans to New York, and from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. He recognizes that the real cause of the
social evil lies in the rejecting of Christ and His teaching. But he
fails to see that his vague and indefinite gospel is ineffective for
lasting results. Only the Catholic Church can reach these unfor-
tunates through the kindness of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd,
and the Divine Mercy of the tribunal of penance. The book has
no claim to scientific worth.
MORAL LEADERSHIP, AND OTHER SERMONS. By Leighton
Parks. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $i.oonet.
The rector of St. Bartholomew's Church, the Rev. Leighton
Parks, has commemorated the close of his ten years' ministry
by publishing ten sermons, which he preached December 7, 1913, to
February I, 1914. They are remarkable neither for distinction of
style nor for orthodoxy of doctrine. We do not think his message,
" Doubt is no sin," very helpful to the rising generation of Chris-
tians, nor do we think that the following words should be uttered
from, a Christian pulpit : " It seems to me the time has come for
the Church to discriminate, and to say that though the acceptance of
those miracles is not essential to discipleship of Jesus Christ, we
1914,] NEW BOOKS 407
are not called upon to deride the miracles." In his final appeal
for an endowment of $2,000,000.00, he impertinently states " that
the Catholic Church cannot minister to the deepest religious needs
of the community." An $80,000.00 income, forsooth, is to prevent
apostate Catholics and Jews from reverting to heathenism. Prot-
estanism has always been devoid of a sense of humor.
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. By Florence Gilmore. St.
Louis : B. Herder. 80 cents.
Robert's Beauvais and David Dougherty began life as chums,
but the " Parting of the Ways " came when the latter elected to
prefer that which would advance his worldly prospects at the price
of his Catholic environment. How our Lord's words, " Seek ye,
therefore, the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things
shall be added unto you," are exemplified in the career of Robert
Beauvais, in which the faith bequeathed by his French ancestors is
preserved as his most precious possession. For David, his restored
friendship proves his greatest treasure
THE CITY AND THE WORLD, WITH OTHER STORIES. By
Francis Clement Kelly. Chicago: The Extension Magazine.
This collection, first published in The Extension Magazine,
is now presented in book form, in the hope of reaching a wider pub-
lic. The torch of missionary zeal has been enkindled in our land,
not alone for the needs of our own vast country, but likewise for
the conversion of the heathen. The Church has heard the call of
her Lord bidding her " enlarge the place of thy tent, and stretch
out the skins of thy tabernacles, spare not: lengthen thy cords and
strengthen thy stakes " (Is. liv. 2). And this little book aims avow-
edly to set before us the reminder of Christ : " These things you
ought to have done, and not to leave those undone."
" That things are not what they seem " is borne in upon us
as we read ; and we learn who are the real artificers of God's work
in the souls of men.
SINISTER STREET. By Compton Mackenzie. London : Martin
Seeker. $1.50 net.
Michael, the hero of Sinister Street, is an emotional, erotic,
flighty, illegitimate boy, handicapped in his training by a mother
who, though refined and cultured, is a faithless wife. There is
a great deal in the book of accurate perception of boy life, but the
408 NEW BOOKS [June,
continual suggestion and mention of immorality and unspeakable
vice we found most nauseating. We really think that the author
had a good purpose in view to warn the boys of the public schools
of England against the many dangers that beset them there in
these days of unbelief. But the Catholic tradition of reticence in
such matters is more deeply philosophic and more helpful in the long
run. We are promised a second volume this was five hundred
pages will Michael prove as despicable a man as he was a boy?
MOLLY'S FORTUNES. By M. E. Francis. St. Louis: B. Her-
der. $1.00 net
An old-fashioned story, with a bright heroine, who knows her
own mind in the midst of her unequal fortunes. It is not a problem
novel, nor a novel with a purpose. Its only problem is the finding
of an heir to an eccentric old lady, a scion of the ancient O'Neills,
in the course of which Molly's fortunes seesaw considerably. It
was published serially in The Irish Monthly, the late Father Mat-
thew Russell's magazine.
PILGRIMS OF GRACE. A Tale of Yorkshire in the Time of
Henry VIII. By John G. Rowe. With Fifteen Illustrations
by F. S. Eden. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.25.
This is a stirring tale of the early days of the Reformation
in England. It centres about Robert Aske, the leader of the Pil-
grimage of Grace, who roused up the whole of northern England
to protest in armed array against Henry VIII. 's despoiling of the
monasteries. The story brings out clearly the utter dishonesty and
untrust worthiness of Henry, the malignity of Cromwell, the treach-
ery of Norfolk, and the utter simplicity of the Yorkshire Catholics,
who believed in the word of a Tudor King. The author is right in
calling Aske's death a martyrdom for the Faith, as much as were
the deaths of Blessed Thomas More and Blessed John Fisher.
BENEDICTION OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 60 cents net.
A dainty booklet containing the Rite for Benediction in Latin
and English. The pages are decorated after the style of the four-
teenth century contained in ancient manuscripts of illumination.
The text is given in old English.
The book will make a very suitable gift for First Communion,
or like feast days, but the price is rather high.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 409
THE LITTLE MARSHALLS AT THE LAKE. By Mary F.
Nixon-Roulet. New York : Benziger Brothers. 60 cents.
This interesting child story tells us about the summer vacation
which the little Marshall children spent in the wilds of Wisconsin.
Every youngster will read with pleasure about the marshmallow
roast on the shores of the lake, the brave doings of Honor, Dick,
and Cousin Ben, Kitty's exciting night drive to Fritz's farmhouse,
and the Indian stories of the Stone Boy and the Moon Girl. Only
a true lover of little children could write such a simple and natural
tale.
THE VIGIL HOUR. A Manual of Approved Prayers Suitable for
the Holy Hour. By Rev. S. A. Ryan, S. J. New York : Ben-
ziger Brothers. 5 cents.
We recommend this devout little manual both to Directors of
the Holy Hour, and to the faithful, who will find it most helpful to
private devotion in their visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
WHY ARE YOU NOT A SODALIST? By Rev. Edward Hamon,
SJ.
WHY I BECAME A SODALIST. By Rev. Edward Hamon, S.J.
New York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 5 cents each.
These two pamphlets sum up in a brief manner the chief
reasons why men should belong to a sodality of the Blessed Virgin.
All the objections alleged by lukewarm Catholics against belonging
to any other society but the Catholic Church, are kindly and ably
answered. Similar pamphlets : Why Are You Not a Member of
the Holy Name Society? Why Are You Not a Member of a Total
Abstinence Society? etc., might be written on the same plan, and dis-
tributed to good purpose among all the men of a congregation.
VISITS FOR CHILDREN TO JESUS IN THE BLESSED SAC-
RAMENT. By the author of May Devotions for Children.
New York : J. F. Tapley Co.
This devout little manual was written in view of the devotions
to the Sacred Heart now so general in Catholic schools and Catholic
families during the month of June. These visits inculcate hatred
of sin, emphasize the chief virtues of childhood, hold up the virtues
of the saints for imitation, and aim to win the child's heart in a
closer union with our Lord.
410 NEW BOOKS [June,
CACRIFICE, a Tale by Flora Tilt (St. Louis: B. Herder. 75
^ cents net), contains apt and interesting explanations of such
-points of faith and practice as are often misunderstood by non-
Catholics. Their very terseness renders them the more impressive.
The story, running through them, abounds in sorrow and sacrifice,
but the end is happiness and peace.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Manuel d'Archeologie Americaine, by H. Beuchat. (Paris: Librairie A.
Picard et Fils. i$frs.) This is a most complete (seven hundred and thirty-
five pages) and original manual of American archaeology. The author takes as
his field all America, from Greenland down to Terra del Fuego, and discusses
at length all the problems dealing with the discovery of America, its primitive
history, anthropology, ethnography, religion, linguistics, primitive industries,
and arts. The introduction deals with the discovery of America, and sum-
marizes accurately all that is known of the search for the Western world prior
to Columbus. A most interesting chapter deals with the physical conditions
of the discovery. Book I. treats of Prehistoric America, giving a perfect
picture of the Mound builders, the Cliff dwellers, and the fossil human bones
in both North and South America. Book II. treats of the civilized people of
America, viz., the Mexicans prior to the arrival of the Aztecs, the Aztec
Empire, the Mayas-Qu'iches, the inhabitants of the Antilles, and the people of
Panama, Colombia, and Peru. A very complete index and bibliography complete
the volume.
Le Crime rituel chez les Juifs, by A. Monniot. (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3 /** So.) Only the bitterest anti-Semitism, devoid of the critical spirit and
animated by an un-Christian spirit of hatred forbidden by the Saviour, could
have produced such a book. The ritual-murder accusation is believed on the
same principle of prejudice which made the pagans of Rome accuse the early
Christians of killing a babe at their sacred mysteries and drinking its blood.
The Abbe Vacandard has dismissed the accusation as not proved in the third
volume of his historical and critical essays.
Chretienne, by Madame Adam (Juliette Lamber). (Paris: Plon-Nourrit
et Cie. 3frs. 50.) Every Catholic who read Madame Adam in the days of her
unbelief, will be glad to learn of her conversion, which has caused such a stir
of late in literary circles in France. The unbelieving, sensual, and ultra-pagan
Tiburce and Melissandre of her Paienne, have now both become converts to the
Faith in her last book, Chretienne. We hope it will be translated soon for the
benefit of many of our modern, artistic, and literary Bohemians who are utterly
lacking in both faith and morals. France is proving most prolific to-day in con-
versions of this sort.
La Langue des Femmes, by Monsignor J. Tissier. (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3frs. 50.) Monsignor Tissier, the Bishop of Chalons-sur Marne, has published
a series of conferences on " the Sins of the Tongue," which he gave last year
to the women of Chartres. In ten chapters he discusses the faults of the
average woman of the world, viz., indiscretion, frivolity, selfishness, vanity,
anger, jealousy, slander, etc. He apologizes in his preface for a few rather
sharp words of reproof, declaring that the interests of souls to-day demand
plain speech, and admitting without argument that the sins he speaks of are
not peculiar to women.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 411
Un Mois de Marie, by R. P. Petitalot, S.M. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 2frs.)
The May conferences of the Abbe Petitalot are a devout compendium of the life
of the Blessed Virgin. Each conference is followed by a short story from the
lives of the saints, or from Christian experience, proving the all-powerful inter-
cession of the Blessed Mother of God.
Grandeurs et Devoirs de la Vie Religieuse, by Monsignor Plantier. (Paris:
Pierre Tequi. 2/rj.) This volume contains five pastoral letters of the Bishop
of Nimes to the religious women of his diocese. They treat of the duties of
the religious life in general; the observation of the rule; the ideas of authority
and obedience, and the true spirit in which all duties should be performed. The
Bishop proves himself a master of the spiritual life.
Sauvons nos Ames, by Abbe Charles Grimaud. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 2frs.)
In a series of bright, entertaining dialogues, the Abbe Grimaud tells his readers
how to save their souls by faith, prayer, respect for the marriage bond, recep-
tion of the sacraments, and obedience to rightful authority.
Histoire de la Civilisation, by Henri Joly. (Paris: Bloud et Gay. 3frs. 50.)
Although written primarily for young boys and girls of the French schools, this
volume will prove of interest to every historical student on the lookout for a
broad and general outline of the world's history. The author discusses the true
idea of civilization, distinguishing carefully the moral and religious element
from the material aspect. The book is original and suggestive.
Jesus Vivant dans le Pretre, by R. P. Millet, SJ. (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3frs. 50.) This is the fourth edition of the Abbe Millet's well-known book
on the priesthood, the first edition of which appeared in Paris some forty years
ago. This volume, the fruit of the author's experience in giving retreats to the
clergy in Germany and in France, has been enlarged and annotated by the Abbe
Renard, SJ.
La Predication Pofulaire d'Apres les Peres, les Docteurs et les Saints, by
the Abbe J. Pailler. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 3frs. 50.) The Abbe Pailler has
translated a number of sermons of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church on
the Sundays and festivals of the ecclesiastical year. His favorite authors are
St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Alphonsus
de Liguori. This collection of sermons will prove more helpful to a busy priest
than the vast majority of the dry-as-dust, commonplace sermon books of our
modern times.
La Piete Grecque, by Andre Bremond. (Paris: Bloud et Gay. 2frs. 50.)
This little brochure is an original contribution to the famous controversy about
the salvation of pagans. The author discusses the religious views of Socrates,
Nicias, Xenophon, and Plato. It will prove of interest to the philosopher, the
theologian, and the classical scholar.
Histoire de l'glise Catholique en France, by Paul Deslandres. (Paris:
Bloud et Gay. 3frs. 50.) There are many manuals of Church history in French,
but this is the first we have seen on the history of the Catholic Church in
France. The author's one aim is to set forth briefly but accurately the relations
of the Church of France with the Papacy and with the civil power. It is not a
work of original research, but depends in great part on the works of Mourret,
Chenon, Baudrillart, Madelin, Paquier, Prunel, Pisani, and others. Every chap-
ter is followed by a brief but accurate bibliography of the most recent historical
works, and the general interest is heightened by some hundreds of engravings.
jForeign iperiobicals.
The Birth-Rate in Germany. It had been thought that Ger-
many was free from the plague of race suicide. But the birth-rate
fell from forty-two births per 1,000 people in 1876 to thirty-six
in 1900 and to twenty-nine in 1911. One child less per 1,000
people means in Germany a loss of 65,0x30 children to the Empire.
The Chancellor has ordered an official inquiry into the causes and
remedies of this evil. The chief cause, according to the Liberal
press, is the high cost of living and similar economic conditions.
The Liberals lament the decline, yet continually attack religion, and
consequently weaken the sense of duty. The " Konfessionlos "
Committee encourages and facilitates the presenting of the formal
legal declaration whereby in Prussia people sever their connection
with the Church of their baptism. The Committee claims in the
first eleven months of last year to have presented in the courts of
Berlin and its suburbs no fewer than 20,521 notices of secession
from the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Particular figures for
the two Churches are not given. The connection between these facts
cannot be gainsaid. The Joint Pastoral of nineteen archbishops
and bishops issued after their meeting at Fulda, puts the principal
cause of the decline of the birth-rate as the criminal abuse of
marriage. The Tablet, April n.
Catholic Holland. By Paul Verschave. Under this title
Dutch Catholics have just published an encyclopaedic record of their
history since 1813. King Louis Napoleon had endeavored to make
real the religious liberty proclaimed by the Constitution of 1798;
he did begin to loose the burdens of the two previous centuries.
In 1815 there were 673 parishes served by 925 priests. Frederick
William of Orange, however, guided by the anti-Catholic Van
Maanen and Van Ghert, persecuted the Church, and the concordat
of 1827 remained a dead letter. The first valiant defender of the
faith was Le Sage ten Broeck, a convert, who for thirty years, until
1847, m spite of imprisonment, illness, blindness, championed by his
pen the Catholic cause. The Constitution of 1848 suppressed the
Placet, formally recognized religious liberty and liberty of edu-
cation, and introduced direct votes for the nomination of deputies.
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 413
The Liberal minister Thorbecke undertook to favor the restoration
of the hierarchy, which Pius IX. granted in 1853. From that date
till 1912 nearly 1,000 churches were built or enlarged. The 1,105
parishes have 2,512 secular or regular priests, learned, active, in-
fluential men ; Church societies flourish, several being devoted to the
care of Catholics in the navy.
The problem of primary education is becoming pressing in the
South; a Catholic university is planned at Utrecht, two chairs
having been founded. Social and charitable organizations are being
multiplied ; numerous writers and a few architects have won con-
siderable fame. The civil power does not mix in Church affairs;
clerics are dispensed from military service; and, in general, liberty
of worship is granted. This is due largely to the active Catholic
press, which includes twenty daily newspapers, ninety-eight journals
appearing once or more a week, and fifty- four periodicals ; but it is
due also to a solid electoral organization. Catholics unfortunately
do not occupy many important positions in civil offices, law courts,
or educational circles. Relative to the total population, the num-
ber of Catholics has decreased from 38.97 per cent in 1829 to 35.02
per cent in 1909. Catholic marriages are more fruitful but less
numerous than non-Catholic, and the rate of infant mortality is
higher among the former. Mixed marriages are on the increase.
Le Correspondant, April 25.
The Tablet (April 18) : Rev. Henry Graham, M.A., presents
a resume of a lecture on " King James VI. and His Mother," de-
livered by Mr. R. S. Rait, the lately-appointed Professor of Scot-
tish History and Literature in Glasgow University. From evidence
put in Mr. Rait's possession for the purpose of editing, it becomes
established beyond doubt that " the wisest fool in Christendom "
simply abandoned his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, to the tender
mercies of Elizabeth, without raising a finger effectively on her
behalf, for the sake of his own interests, chief among which was
his secure succession to the joint thrones of England and Scotland.
This evidence had long ago been examined by the three historians
Robertson, Tytler, and Spottiswoode, but none of them had used it.
(May 2) : An article is devoted to praising the work and the
spirit of Abbot Gasquet, which have made him eminently fitted to
be one of the thirteen new Cardinals.
The Month (May) : Rev. Herbert Thurston summarizes the
414 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
article by Abbe Vernet in the Dictionnaire Apologetique de la Foi
Catholiquc concerning the fable of " Pope Joan." He shows that
in every case where the fable is reported, the very language suggests
that a doubt as to its truth existed in the writer's mind. The dates
given for the supposed pontificate (1099, 855, 915) are mutually
inconsistent and separately impossible. Every historical authority
now recognizes the story as a fable. M. L. Egerton Castle con-
trasts the pure love of Dante for Beatrice with the earthly love of
Petrarch for Laura. Irene Herneman briefly sketches the life
and work of Frederic Mistral.
The Dublin Review (April) : Mr. Wilfrid Ward begins a rapid
review of his recent lecturing tour in the United States. Mon-
signor Barnes presents a summary of Luther's early life, based on
Grisar's biography of the " Reformer." Miss Guiney has col-
lected all the references to Cromwell's nickname : " The Brewer"
and describes his family tree. The late Sir Hubert Jerningham
offers appreciations of Three Ambassadors of the Victorian Age.
Lord Lyons, who triumphed in America through silence; Lord
Odo Russell, victorious at Versailles through speaking the right
word at the right time ; and Sir Robert Morier, admired yet hated
by Bismarck because of his profound knowledge of Prussia and its
true aspirations. Dom Chapman, O.S.B., apropos of Mr. Saints-
bury's History of English Prose Rhythm, writes on Rhythm and
Colour in English Prose, with quotations from Ruskin and Swin-
burne.
Revue Benedictine (April) : Dom G. Morin presents brief
notes on ninety-five sermons found in the ducal library of Wolfen-
biittel. Most of these he considers the authentic work of St.
Augustine; others attributed to him are at least very ancient and
interesting. Some have never been edited entire, some not even
in part. Their preservation he attributes to St. Csesarius of Aries.
A dozen other sermons, wrongly ascribed to St. Augustine, Dom
Morin now considers the work of St. Ouodvultdeus, the last Roman
Bishop of Carthage, the friend and best imitator of St. Augustine.
Dom Morin also presents portions of a rhymed Latin version of
Pseudo-Hegesippus, De Bella Judaico, found among the manu-
scripts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Revue du Clerge Francois (April 15) : J. Bricout presents se-
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 415
lections from the public letters of Leo XIII. regarding the relations
of the Church with modern civilization and science, scholastic phil-
osophy, and historical studies.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (April 15) : Theodore Main-
age, O.P., shows that, contrary to the thesis of Le Bon in his
Psychology of the Crowd, conversions are individual, not social,
results. He takes as examples the Oxford movement, the conver-
sion of the Caldey monks, and the apostolate of St. Francis de
Sales in the Chablais. Francois Pinardel begins a resume of the
criticisms directed against the official historical publications of M.
Aulard. Quoting numerous unprejudiced and competent author-
ities, he convicts M. Aulard of bad method, partisan spirit, and of
errors and omissions. The latter, seeing his faults about to be
exposed, tried in vain to divert attention from himself by making
charges against M. Langlois.
Etudes (April 20) : Henry Auffroy gives a brief history of the
development of canon law, including its present codification.
Rene de la Begassiere praises The Education of Young Girls, by
Janet Erskine Stuart, Superior of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart.
Count J. du Plessis welcomes the posthumous publication by
M. Albert Cherel of two volumes of Brunetiere's History of Classic
French Literature. Joseph Boubee summarizes the work and
character of the late Cardinal Kopp.
IRecent Events.
The general election which has just been
France. concluded in France, has not resulted in any
very noteworthy change. The Socialists
who follow the lead of M. Jaures, have indeed increased in number,
but not to such a degree as will give them the control of the Cham-
ber, although they will have to be taken into account more than
before in forming ministries. The new Chamber consists of 602
Deputies, and there were no fewer than 2,902 candidates; these
appealed to the electors ranged under n different banners. At
the dissolution the strength of the parties was as follows : Radicals
and Socialist Radicals, working together as one party, 256; Inde-
pendent Socialists, 24; Unified Socialists (under the leadership of
M. Jaures), 74; Republicans of the Right, 74; Progressives, 68;
Members of the Right, 99. The new Chamber will consist approxi-
mately (for the exact returns of the second ballots have not yet
reached this country) of 97 Unified or Collective Socialists, instead
of the 74 in the last Chamber ; 203 Radicals and Socialist Radicals
instead of 256. This gives to these closely-allied parties 300 votes,
almost one-half of the whole number of Deputies. The rest of
the Chamber, numbering 302, is divided into the nine groups of
Independent and Augagneur Socialists, the Alliance Democratique,
the Republicans of the Left, Progressists, the Republican Federation,
the Action Liberale, the Right, and a small number of Independents.
The group which has suffered the most is that of the Progressives.
Although there seems to be a large number, yet it is said that
they are by no means equal to the programmes, for these
are almost as numerous as there are deputies. There were, how-
ever, three main questions placed before the electors the Three
Years' Army Service, Electoral Reform, and the Income Tax. The
returns indicate that of those elected, 308 are supporters of the
Three Years' Service, 279 are in favor of the imposition of an
Income Tax, while for Electoral Reform 352 have pledged their
support.
The chief interest of the campaign consisted in M. Briand's
movement for I'apaisement. It does not seem, however, to have
been successful, for the parties most distinctly opposed to this pro-
1914.] RECENT EVENTS
gramme have gained in strength. It may, however, have done
better than appears at first sight, for it was not so much M. Briand's
object to form a distinct group as to introduce a spirit which should
animate all the groups. He was himself elected after a keen con-
test, while his chief supporter, M. Barthou, had an overwhelming
victory.
The old saying that what takes place in France is the Unex-
pected, has been exemplified by the return of M. Caillaux. A few
weeks ago the streets of Paris rang with imprecations of his name ;
he was called an assassin and a traitor. He himself declared that
his political life was ended. However, he came forward as a can-
didate, and has been elected, the sympathies of the electors of his
district having been enlisted on his behalf. The allegations against
him were said to be due to the reactionaries, who hated the friend
of the poor, and the advocate of the income tax. Mine. Caillaux
became almost a heroine; M. Caillaux a victim of a diabolical con-
spiracy.
The new Chamber has many problems before it, and in view
of the fact that the Radical-Socialist party is so strong, no great
expectations can be entertained of a solution being found. Among
the disquieting signs are the growth of syndicalism and anti-militar-
ism; the open dissemination of doctrines fatal to the State, to
private property, and to the family; the constant recurrence of
formidable strikes ; the increasing audacity of the criminal classes ;
the impunity with which they have been able to act; the spread,
so recently exemplified, of financial and political corruption; the
decrease in the birth-rate and the rise in the divorce-rate; the
general relaxation of the old moral standards in private life as well
as in public. On the other hand, it must be noted that a much
greater interest is being shown in religious services. Larger num-
bers than ever before attended the ceremonies during the last Holy
Week in Paris. The size of the congregations at Mass in the large
towns throughout France is another encouraging sign. In the 78
parishes of Paris the communicants last Easter numbered 314,000.
A special and most helpful feature of this revival is the fact that
the class most affected consists of the educated young men. Men
of high literary reputation are avowing that it is to religion that
France must look for great moral and social forces. The ablest
among those who are still unbelievers are at last beginning to recog-
nize that there is more in heaven and on the earth than the labo-
ratory reveals.
VOL. XCIX. 27
418 RECENT EVENTS [June,
The political organization referred to in a recent number,
formed under religious auspices in order to influence the elections
for the new Chamber, does not, however, seem to have had much
influence upon the elections. The Bonapartist Pretender, seeing
the evils which threaten his country, has offered himself to be its
saviour, promising, if called back to its service, to bring together
all the good men of the nation irrespective of party affiliations.
The appeal, however, has fallen on deaf ears. Among other signs
of a better future are the reaction against the gross and debasing
realism of the school of Zola, and the revival of a philosophy which
defends those spiritual realities which have for so long been ignored,
or even denied.
A number of books have appeared, the authors of which while
not accepting the Catholic faith are well on the way towards it.
Among these is M. Maurice Barres, who has recently issued a book
in which he makes an earnest appeal for the preservation of the
village churches as the one moral refuge for the people among whom
they are still standing. As a result of the Separation Law, large
numbers of these churches are falling into ruin. They now belong
to the communes, and they are not obliged to repair them. The
authorization of the town council is required to enable those among
the Catholics who may be willing to undertake the work, but such
is the violence of the sectaries that in several instances, out of
sheer malice, the authorization has been refused, and the churches
condemned to death. This has excited the indignation of M.
Barres, and his work is an appeal in favor of these churches. He
asks that to the Catholics should be given the right to repair the
buildings, and also that the State should add an equal amount to
any sum given by private persons.
The election leaves M. Doumergue and his colleagues in the
possession of power; their tenure, however, was very insecure
from the beginning, nor has the course of events added to their
strength. The financial problems which they will shortly be called
upon to solve, will tax their capacity to the utmost. An immense
deficit has to be met, which baffled even the financial skill of M.
Caillaux. Any measure which touches their pockets is deeply re-
sented by the French people, and some measure of this kind is
inevitable.
While the internal affairs of France are giving ground for
many anxious forebodings, its external relations are more satis-
factory. The visit of King George has confirmed the entente
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 419
with Great Britain which was formed ten years ago, and which, in
union with the alliance with Russia, has been the means of main-
taining peace for so many years. It is hard for those who live in
this country to realize the normal state of existence of the dwellers
upon the European Continent. They do not feel assured of a single
week's peace, and have always to be on the alert lest some unex-
pected incident may bring on a war. The position of France in
particular is thus described by Professor Lavisse : " We are evi-
dently more exposed [than England] to the perils of the great
conflict that is always possible. Upon our open frontier the enor-
mous German force presses and grows. Our honor, our independ-
ence, our life are at stake."
What this French writer says of France expresses, mutatis
mutandis the feeling of Germans, Austrians, and Russians. They
are all living in a state of continual alarm. The entente, by pre-
serving the equilibrium, has for the past ten years staved off the evil
day, and it is hoped that it may be the means of altogether averting
the danger. At all events it is the only means available. The way
in which King George was received rendered it evident that the
people as a whole, and not merely the government, are its enthu-
siastic supporters, that it is a bond closely uniting the French and
English nations. There are those who desire the conclusion of a
formal alliance on definite terms between the two countries, instead
of the informal understanding hitherto existing. There is no
reason to think, however, that the recent visit has led to any such
change, nor is it considered desirable. A union of hearts is better
than a legal document.
There is very little to chronicle about Ger-
Germany. many. A new Statthalter has been ap-
pointed for Alsace-Lorraine consequent upon
the resignation of Count Wedel. The late holder of the office re-
tires with honor, and even in the end with popularity, having come
to be regarded almost as a champion of popular rights during the
recent incidents at Zabern. The new Statthalter is Herr von Dall-
witz, who has been for four years the Prussian Minister of the
Interior. As in that capacity he has been responsible for the main-
tenance of order in Prussia, and for the methods adopted by the
police of that country, there is some anxiety as to whether he will
be sympathetic with the inhabitants of the Reichsland, and be able
to secure their cooperation. His successor as Minister of the In-
420 RECENT EVENTS [June,
terior in Prussia is an official who was Prince Billow's right-hand
man, and had a large hand in the colonial campaign against the
Catholic Centre in the famous dissolution of the Reichstag at the
end of 1906, and in the creation and control of the Prince's Liberal-
Conservative bloc.
The Zabern incident has had at least one result it has led
to the suppression of the privileges conferred on the soldiers by the
Cabinet Order of 1820, under which Colonel Renter shielded him-
self. The Emperor has given his approval to new regulations
which have been drawn up by the Prussian Minister for War. The
new regulations provide that the military can intervene independ-
ently in cases of State necessity, but this necessity seems only to
arise in cases when the civil authorities are not in a position to call
upon the military. These regulations are regarded as a distinct
concession to public opinion.
The Pan-Germans are continuing their efforts to promote dis-
cord between their own country and the rest of the world. They
have resumed their agitation for the securing by Germany of new
territory, which shall be her own and suitable for the settlement
of the German people. Great Britain, they allege, has not given
over her opposition to Germany : all that she has done is to yield
to Russia the most prominent place in the fighting line of the
Triple Alliance. There is, however, good reasons to think that the
influence of the Pan-Germans over the policy of the country is of the
slightest, and, therefore, little heed need be paid to these efforts.
The meeting at Abbazia of the Foreign Ministers of Austria-Hun-
gary and Italy has served as an occasion for re-affirming the soli-
darity of the Triple Alliance, and especially of the harmony thereby
shown to exist between Austria-Hungary and Italy, in spite of their
rivalry in Albania and in the Adriatic. The state of tension which
existed a few weeks ago between Germany and Russia has passed
into quiescence, although a section of the press takes every oppor-
tunity to continue agitation against that country. The occasion is
found in the new tariff regulations adopted by the Duma. Equal
resentment is felt on account of Russia's commercial revival to that
which her military revival caused.
At a time when there are so many reasons
Austria-Hungary. for war, when so many armies and fleets are
ready on land, on sea, and in the air, the
illness of the Emperor Francis Joseph has naturally caused great
I9I4-] RECENT EVENTS 421
anxiety, especially as it is doubtful whether the heir to the throne
will prove likewise the heir to his wisdom. The interior condition
of the Austro-Hungarian dominions adds to this anxiety, for the
conflicts between the various nationalities, which are always exist-
ent, are at the present time particularly acute. The last reports are
to the effect that the Emperor's condition is not at present serious,
but it is 'feared, considering the great age of the monarch, that
the end can not be long deferred.
The conference at Abbazia between Count Berchtold and the
Marquis di San Giuliano, the Foreign Ministers of Austria-Hun-
gary and Italy, has given great satisfaction in the political circles
of the two countries, and is said to have brought into perfect har-
mony the policy of the two governments with reference to Albania
especially. It lasted five days, and so there was ample opportunity
for a full discussion. Whether any agreement was reached as to
the cooperation of the fleets of the two countries in the Mediter-
ranean, has not been revealed to the world. What is certain is that
a new naval programme has been laid before the Delegations which
have just been holding their session at Budapest. This programme
when carried out will greatly strengthen the Austro-Hungarian
navy, and will make provision against the marked shifting of
naval power in the Mediterranean consequent upon the recent
changes. Four new battleships of the Dreadnought type are in-
cluded in the new programme, together with three first-class cruisers
and a number of torpedo-gunboats. That financiers place confi-
dence in the stability of the Dual Monarchy is shown by the success
of a large loan, which has just been issued.
Little progress has been made in the settle-
The Balkans. ment of the many unsettled questions.
Prince William's difficulties seem to increase.
The revolt of the Epirotes is still continued, and in the North those
of the Albanian tribes which the Powers handed over to Monte-
negro refuse to transfer their allegiance, declaring their intention
to offer armed resistance to the arrangement made for them ; they
have already formed a new republic the second since the forma-
tion of Albania. The Greek government has been loyal to its
engagement in carrying out the evacuation of Albanian territory
by its regular soldiers. This fidelity threatened at one time to bring
about the retirement of M. Venezelos; so strong was the feeling of
the- country against the abandonment of their countrymen to the
422 RECENT EVENTS [June,
mercies of those who have been their bitterest enemies for many
centuries. The Greek government could not, however, prevent
individual Greeks rendering assistance to those who had risen up
against Albanian domination. It is still doubtful how long this re-
sistance will last, although hopes are being entertained of a settle-
ment by mediation.
Outrages of the most brutal character are still quite frequent.
The " Holy Battalions," as the revolting Epirotes style themselves,
are said, on good authority, to have burned alive many men, women,
and children in certain specified villages. A report reached Vienna
that the Epirotes had crucified two hundred Moslem Albanians.
As no independent Confirmation of this report has been received,
it is to be hoped that it is without foundation. On the other hand,
the Greeks left in Thrace have been treated so badly by the Turks
that they have preferred to leave their homes and all their pos-
sessions, and many thousands have sought refuge in Salonika.
Turkey remains under the domination of the
Turkey. extreme members of the Committee of
Union and Progress. Enver Pasha, said to
be an emulator of Napoleon, is the dominating spirit, and there does
not seem to be much to choose between his methods and those of
the deposed Abdul Hamid, although the scale of his operations is
more limited. For prisoners to be " found dead " in prison is not
looked upon as a thing to be wondered at; on the contrary, it is
expected almost as a matter of course. This fate was escaped by
a fellow officer of Enver Pasha through the influence brought to
bear upon the Turkish government by the public opinion of Europe,
and, it is thought, by the action of the British government. Aziz
Ali had, it is said, excited the jealousy of Enver Pasha by his suc-
cess in organizing the resistance of the Arabs to the Italians in
Cyrenaica. He thus became the idol of his fellow-countrymen,
especially of those in Egypt. During a visit to Constantinople he
was arrested. Not having been " found dead," he was brought to
trial, and ultimately condemned to death for reasons of no weight.
The government, however, yielded to the indignation everywhere
expressed at its proceedings, and released their victim. This in-
cident threatened to have, and in fact it still may have, "important
political consequences, for it has done much to alienate the Arabians
in general, and in Egypt especially.
An important reform has at last been effected for the benefit
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 423
of the Armenians. During the recent war the Armenians were
loyal to Turkey, and fought with and for the Turks against their
fellow Christians. They, in fact, prefer the yoke of Turkey to
that of any other State, on the condition of the promises of reforms
made many years ago being carried out. After negotiations with
Germany and Russia, Turkey has consented to a plan which is ac-
ceptable to the Armenians, and the execution of it is to be watched
over by two foreign inspectors. A Hollander and a Norwegian
have been appointed to this office.
The large loan which has been so long the subject of negotia-
tion, and which is necessary for so many various purposes, has at
last been secured on very onerous conditions. One of these, at least
a tacit one, is that it shall not be used for warlike purposes. If
it is kept, a thing of which no one can be sure, there is reason to
hope that for some time peace will be preserved. At all events
at the present time, everything looks that way, except that an order
has just been given for a new super-Dreadnought.
The most prominent person of late in China
China. has been the bandit who calls himself
"White Wolf." Far and wide through
several provinces of what is called the Republic, his depredations
have been carried on, accompanied by the most dreadful outrages.
At one time he even threatened the impregnable ancient capital of
China, in which the Court took refuge in 1900. The Chinese troops
were at last called out, and by the latest news seem to be bringing
him under control.
But the Republic is suffering perhaps more from the man who
was elected to be its protector and head. Yuan Shih-kai was chosen
to be President; he has made himself dictator. A convention has
been at work, chosen by himself, to amend the Constitution. This
Constitution, as amended, does away with the Premier and the
Cabinet and, although this does not seem quite so certain, with the
Senate as well. Departmental Ministers are to be appointed who
are to be responsible directly to the President, just as the Turkish
Ministers were responsible to Abdul Hamid. An elective assembly
is provided for, but as its powers are to be settled by the govern-
ment, they are not likely to be very great or to last longer than is
convenient. There is to be an Advisory Council, but this is to be
nominated, and so it will not wield any controlling influence. Thus
even this amended Constitution is not of much importance, for it can
424 RECENT EVENTS [June,
be torn up and amended at the convenience of the government.
Nothing remains of the Constitution which embodied the ideas
of Young China. It remains to be seen whether it will acquiesce
in these changes or whether it will break out into a new rebellion.
Proceeding on these lines of arbitrary control, the press has
been subjected to strict regulations. The names, ages, native
places, past records, and present addresses of all editors and pub-
lishers must be submitted to the police before permission to publish
can be obtained. The effect of this rule is to give the police the
power to refuse a licence to anybody who has ever been connected
with a political propaganda. A deposit with the police has to be
made, varying according to the dates and place of publication. No
one is to be the editor, publisher or even printer of a paper unless
he is over thirty years of age. No naval or military man, nor any
official, administrative or judicial, nor any student, will be licensed
to act as editor, nor yet anyone who is afflicted by a nervous disease.
The subjects which the press may discuss are also limited by the
new regulations. The system of government must not be misrepre-
sented; the peace must not be disturbed; diplomatic and military
secrets must not be revealed; private proceedings in Parliament
must not be reported. The accused in a criminal case this as well
as the following seems to be a salutary regulation must not be
pleaded for, admired or shielded. Private or personal conduct must
not be impugned. Finally, when the editor, publisher, printer, and
contributing staff fail to pay all the fines imposed on them, the
whole lot will be cast into prison. The Republic seems to be
getting more tyrannical than the Empire; it is in fact only a Re-
public in name.
Great difficulty was found in forming a new
Japan. Ministry. At last the veteran Count Okuma
was induced by the earnest entreaties of the
Elder Statesmen to assume the responsibility. Under the somewhat
difficult circumstances of the present time, the government formed
by him is considered the best possible. Count Okuma is very pop-
ular, and it is hoped that this will secure for the new Cabinet a
fair opportunity, although it has no majority in the present Parlia-
ment. Economic reform will form an important part of its efforts.
Its chief immediate work will be the reform of the naval administra-
tion, in the ranks of which so much corruption has been rife.
Owing to the death of the Dowager Empress, the Coronation of the
new Emperor has been put off until next year.
With Our Readers.
IT is the fashion in some quarters to defend divorce as a " Christian
institution," and to champion it as a " purifier " of society. Judge
Adelor J. Petit of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, recently
gave some statistics that we are sure should help any who hold such
opinions to see the light. Judge Petit hears divorce cases almost daily,
so he is surely an authority on the subject. His experience, he said,
proved to him that divorce was unquestionably a great menace to
society; that it was becoming more so year by year; that it under-
mined the home, and filled the Juvenile Court with dependent and de-
linquent children who subsequently became public charges.
The number of children taken into the Juvenile Court from July 5, 1899,
to March 27, 1914, was 50,353. Prior to July 22, 1913, no record was kept of the
different kinds of cases. Since that time, 2,829 petitions have been filed, classi-
fied as follows: Dependent, 1,106; delinquent, 1,091; truant, 280; pension, 325.
It will be seen that there are practically the same number of dependents
as of delinquents. As there were no pension cases until a year or so ago, and as
the truant cases only average about 300 per year, or less than 5,000 since the
Juvenile Court was organized, it would leave 45,000 dependent and delinquent
children, or approximately 22,500 to each.
DIVORCE MAKES DEPENDENT CHILDREN.
To ascertain what percentage of children were in the Juvenile Court as
a direct result of divorce proceedings, twenty cases, selected at random out
of 240 petitions filed in January, 1914, showed that six were in as a direct
result of divorce proceedings ; four were in as a direct result of desertion
on the part of the father ; five were in as a direct result of drunkenness
on the part of the father; three were in as a direct result of tuberculosis in
the case of parents ; one was in on account of illegitimate birth and mother's
inability to provide, and one was in on account of immoral mother. Applying
this ratio to the total number of petitions filed in the Juvenile Court, we have
13,500 as a direct result of divorce proceedings; 9,000 as a direct result of
desertion on the part of the father; 11,250 as a direct result of drunkenness
on the part of the father, or a total of 33,750 on account of misconduct on the
part of the parents for which the children are made to suffer.
For the purpose of further ascertaining how many children are yearly
abandoned to their own devices or deprived of the comfort and support of one
or the other of their parents, it was found that during January, 1914, in the
Circuit Court alone there were 103 decrees of divorce, with a total number of
children involved of sixty-one. There were 2,038 decrees of divorce granted
in the Circuit Court alone during 1912. According to this ratio of children,
there would be sixty per cent as many children as there are decrees, making
1,229 children in the Circuit Court alone, or approximately 2,500 in both the
Circuit and Superior Courts per year.
Judge Petit said: "The whole theory of divorce is wrong. The law specifies
certain so-called grounds for divorce, and when people want to separate they
immediately consult a lawyer, put a fifty-dollar bill over his eyes so that he no
longer can see his duty to society, and he tells them how to get grounds for
divorce. Hundreds of cases are heard monthly in which the rankest collusion is
426 WITH OUR READERS [June,
perpetrated. The law puts a premium on perjury and misrepresentation, and
the courts are powerless under the law as it now stands to prevent its abuse."
sessions of the International Catholic Anti-Alcoholic Congress,
A held at the end of April, were of special significance in view of the
organized war now being waged against the scourge of alcoholism in
all the great nations of the world. Our Holy Father received the two
hundred and fifty delegates, and later sent this letter to the Congress,
through the Cardinal Secretary of State:
Our Holy Father Pope Pius X., who has heartily blessed the two hundred
pilgrims of the International League against alcoholism, charges me to ex-
press to you and to your federation the satisfaction and gratitude he felt on
receiving the testimony of your veneration and your filial submission. The
Sovereign Pontiff congratulates you on the success of the splendid crusade
carried on by you throughout the world, based on the principles of the Gospel
and guided by the authority of the hierarchy. He prays God to fructify the zeal
you are displaying against the terrible scourge, which is the enemy of men's
bodies and souls, which brings in its train so many miseries physical and moral.
In blessing the efforts of all the Catholic societies affiliated to your league, the
Holy Father blesses the good will of all their adherents, and encourages them
to persevere in their generous apostolate.
The Popes, in these latter times, have not failed to call attention to the
deadly evil you are combating, and have proclaimed the necessity of prompt
and efficacious remedies. Provincial councils, bishops in all parts of the world,
have raised the cry of alarm, and have roused men's consciences. Following
them, men of faith, of science, of action have by their words and their ex-
ample produced a most salutary movement in Catholic temperance organizations.
And how useful it is to show what a scourge alcoholism is in its economical,
moral, and physiological effects by showing its connection with the deterioration
of the individual whose health, intelligence, conscience, and liberty are dimin-
ished and ruined by it; its connection with the deterioration of the family, in
which it engenders confusion and disorder; with the deterioration of society
whose most important interests are menaced by it. Hence among social works
there are none more pressing than this.
It will, therefore, be very pleasing to the Sovereign Pontiff to see your
league still further strengthened by the accession of new Catholic societies.
His Holiness earnestly expresses the desire that the clergy everywhere en-
courage this work of social re-education and preservation, and that they put
themselves by their example in the very van of the struggle against an evil
which, especially in some countries, is sowing so much shame among the faithful.
But this battle will not lead to certain victory unless it be sustained through
prayer, by the frequentation of the sacraments, and by the general practice of
Christian mortification : " Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain
that build it" (Ps. cxxvi. i). May the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ shine
on men's minds and hearts, and the scourge be stayed with the train of woes it
brings with it. The Holy Father is happy to bless your federation with all the
societies that compose it; he blesses your most venerated protector, His Emi-
nence Cardinal Mercier, who is showing such praiseworthy zeal in arresting
the progress and suppressing the causes of alcoholism. With my personal
good wishes and all my congratulations on your great and holy work, accept,
gentlemen, my entire devotion in our Lord. R _ CARJX MRRY DL
I9I4-] WITH OUR READERS 427
THE eleventh annual meeting of the Catholic Educational Associa-
tion will be held at Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Monday, Tues-
day, Wednesday, and Thursday, June 29th, 3Oth, July ist, and 2d,
1914. The meeting is held under the auspices of Right Rev. James
A. McFaul, D.D., Bishop of Trenton, who has extended a cordial
invitation to Catholic educators to hold their meeting in his diocese,
and who has given his generous assistance in the preparation for the
meeting. He has appointed Rev. W. J. McConnell, the Superintendent
of Schools of the Trenton diocese, to have charge of the arrangements.
An invitation is extended by the Right Reverend Bishop, by Right
Reverend Monsignor Shahan, President General of the Association,
and by the Presidents of the Departments, to all Catholic educators,
to all pastors and teachers and others interested in Catholic education,
to attend the convention.
The headquarters for the officers and committee will be at the
Hotel Rudolf.
QTRENGTH is born of unity; and an increase of wisdom from
O intelligent discussion. The work of direction, organization, and
efficiency done for all the Catholic charities of the country by the
National Charity Conference is incalculable. No one who attends
its sessions, or reads its published reports, can go away without being
convinced (if he were unconvinced before) that a goodly supply of
brain as well as heart is needed to carry out charity work that will
be really beneficial. It has taken a long time and untiring effort to
arouse many of our Catholic institutions and organizations to the need
of a National Conference, and of hearty and ready cooperation with it.
But the heads of the Conference by " keeping at it " with patience and
perseverance have succeeded; and no one intelligently interested in
our charity institutions and our charity work, questions to-day the
great and inspiring work which it is doing and will do.
third biennial meeting of the Conference will be held at the
-1- Catholic University, Washington, D. C., from September 2Oth
to 23d. The following programme has been announced :
The celebrant of the solemn opening Mass will be the Most Rev.
John Bonzano, Apostolic Delegate. The Conference sermon will be
preached by His Excellency Archbishop Keane of Dubuque.
There will be three general meetings of the entire Conference on
the evenings of September 2Oth, 2ist, and 22d. All of the other work
of the Conference will be done in section meetings, each of which has
its own programme relating to different sections of the field of relief.
There are four such committees this year; one on Families; one on
Sick and Defectives; one on Children, and one on Social and Civic
Activities.
428 WITH OUR READERS [June,
THE topics and speakers for the general meetings are as follows:
September 2oth. " The Relation of the Federal Investigation of
Industrial Relations to Problems of Poverty," Mr. F. P. Walsh, Kan-
sas City, Chairman of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations ;
" The Case for Charities Indorsement Committees," Mr. Richmond
Dean, Chicago ; " The Case Against Charities Indorsement Commit-
tees," Dr. Charles O'Donovan, Baltimore.
September 2ist. " Training for Social Work," Dr. Charles P.
Neill, New York ; " Life Insurance and Social Service," Mr. T. B.
Graham, New York; Reports from courses of training in practical
charities given in 1913-1914: Chicago, Rev. Frederic Siedenburg, S.J. ;
Boston, Rev. M. J. Scanlan ; Baltimore, Mr. J. W. Brooks ; Cumber-
land, Mr. W. E. Walsh; Washington, Miss Mary Merrick; Pitts-
burgh, Mrs. T. Molamphy.
September 22d. " The Scope of City Conferences of Charities,"
Mr. Edmond J. Butler, New York ; " Typical Organization of a City
Conference in Catholic Charities," Mr. J. J. Fitzgerald, Brooklyn;
" The Work of the Pittsburgh Conference of Catholic Charities," Rev.
Thomas Devlin ; " The Work of the St. Louis City Conference of
Catholic Charities," Rev. J. J. Butler.
T7RANCIS McCULLAGH, known to our readers through the articles
1 he has contributed to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, writes with a full
knowledge in the current Dublin Review of how the present so-called
Republic of Portugal has killed the liberty of the press. Indeed, he
adds, " it is difficult to think of any liberal principle which the Repub-
licans have not violated." Portugal is largely a Conservative country ;
and it is quite natural to expect that it should have many Royalists,
and at least a few Royalist organs.
* * * *
MR. McCULLAGH has been in touch with the beginnings and the
continuation of the present regime. As a journalist he wished
to keep in touch with both Republicans and Conservatives. He sub-
scribed to the organs of both parties. It struck him that the Royalist
papers had increased in size and quality; and then in quick succession
they suddenly disappeared. The " Republican " government had wiped
them out of existence. At present the whole of Portugal contains
one small Conservative periodical, the Nagao, " whose life blood is
periodically drained from it by fines, suppressions, and censorial de-
lays." Every once in a while the mob wrecks its printing office, and
the police never attempt to stop them. If it be said that the people do
not want these Conservative papers, it may be asked in answer, Why
does not the government let them die a natural death from lack of sub-
scriptions and sales?
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 429
IN Lisbon and Oporto during the last three years, Conservative news-
papers were founded, and met with immediate success. The " Re-
publican " government took alarm. "A gang of Republican ragamuffins
appeared on the scene, sacked the editorial offices, wrecked the print-
ing works, threw the type into the gutter, and smashed the machinery.
The editor appealed for police protection, but the only thing the police
did was to arrest him. The Civil Governor advised the proprietors
to stop publication, as they were exciting the ire of the 'patriots.' Fin-
ally these Conservative newspapers were suppressed by dictatorial de-
cree." This shameful history was repeated throughout the whole of
Portugal. Even devotional periodicals that do not touch upon politics
at all are forbidden.
Only one reason exists for this indefensible tyranny of the govern-
ment. The Conservative organs, " without using violent language
beat the government organs in argument ; they contrasted the promises
with the performances of their opponents ; they exposed the wholesale
peculation and corruption of the new regime."
* * * *
MR. McCULLAGH contrasts the course of the present government
with that of Don Carlos. The Portuguese Republicans complained
of the tyranny under which they groaned. Yet all the while their great
papers in Lisbon poured forth an almost uninterrupted stream of lies
and filth, and were allowed to go their way, scarcely even interfered
with by police or by censor.
Mr. McCullagh knows Russia well. In his opinion the subjec-
tion of the press is not half as bad in Russia as in Portugal. Through
the inhuman treatment they received, many monarchist convicts in
Portugal went insane, and were still kept in prison. " In Rus-
sia," adds Mr. McCullagh, " I never knew of a political prisoner who
went mad, and if one did go mad, I feel sure that he would be handed
over to his friends. But in Lisbon they are not handed over to their
friends."
* * * *
NOT content with suppressing all native publications, the govern-
ment tries to prevent foreign journalists, resident in Portugal,
from doing their duty. So far in her history all that can be credited to
the Republic of Portugal is that she has destroyed liberty of the press ;
added to the Budget; increased the number of prisons, and the ex-
penses of living.
THE unreasonable and unreasoning opposition of the Ulster Prot-
estants to the new Home Rule Bill, is due mainly to their hatred
of the Catholic faith and fear of Catholic ascendancy in Ireland. " It
is now acknowledged practically by everyone," says the Month, the
430 WITH OUR READERS [June,
English Catholic magazine, " that the Ulster imbroglio is chiefly caused
by difference of creed, in plainer terms, by the fear, fictitious or gen-
uine, of certain Ulster Protestants that they would be, to some extent
at least, deprived of their rights by a Parliament in which Catholics as
a matter of course might be expected to predominate."
* * * *
THE London Times, the tireless opponent of Home Rule, thus re-
cently spoke of the Orange Society and the Covenanters of
Ulster :
Anyone who has known him [the Covenanter] in his hours of ease, who
has seen the streets of Belfast on a Saturday night, must have realized the
nature and results of his unsympathetic materialism, the drab ugliness of a life
which finds its chief recreation in religious strife and much of its consolation
in strong drink.
This is the creature of whom we are asked to believe that he is preparing
to lay down his life to preserve the purity of Gospel teaching! The fact is that
the Ulster question is a religious one in the sense that modern troubles in France
have also their source in religion. It is, in other words, a movement engineered
by a community possessed of little real Christianity against people whose
Christianity they misrepresent and despise. We are speaking, of course, only
of the motives of the Ulster Protestants, and we quite realize that many of those
who abet them are actuated by other aims.
PROFESSOR T. M. KETTLE, writing on Labor and Civilisation,
J- thus speaks of our duty in the work of the reconstruction of in-
dustrial society : " If, on the one hand, the living wage were unat-
tainable, if, when the skeleton went, the feast had to go, or if, on the
other, the worker had finally chosen revolution as his trade, the out-
look for our world would be hopeless. But although things are bad
they are not so bad as that. What is essential is that the conservative
should realize that there must be a great change, and that the ex-
tremist should realize that the change can only be gradual. To ignore
either condition is to lose hold of the problem. The transformation
cannot be catastrophic, even the theorists of Socialism have long since
ceased to think in economic Jenas or Sedans. In too many parasitic
or casual industries the immediate choice is between bad wages and no
wages. To enforce forthwith even a moderate standard, would be to
drive out all the marginal employers, and to add whole new regiments
to the army of unemployment. But to torture these commonplaces
into a new iron law, to linger on the difficulties and to deprecate the
necessity of a changed order, is to have already declared war on the
soul of labor. Forbid me to hope for myself, and it is a hard saying
but not intolerable; widen that interdiction until you exile eternally
from the sun my children, and my children's children, and you make
peace nothing better than the drowse of poltroons.
1914-] WITH OUR READERS 431
is in our midnight a hidden morrow ; if we deliberately
1 commit our energies to the task we can, year by year, and stage
by stage, remoralize our society. It is that prospect, and not its
actual shape, that will rally to it in faith and action the working class.
They are realists, and if they see such a purpose honestly pursued, we
need have no fear as to the flag of their election. We must, also,
as it seems to me, be more discriminate in our alliances. Divide
et impera is a dangerous maxim, and those spokesmen of orthodoxy
who regard it as good tactics to exaggerate every difference of opinion
that may chance to arise in the labor camp, to embroil its various
parties, and to include them all in one impartial condemnation, are con-
spicuously ill-inspired. Where the cause at issue is personal vanity
you may well, as the phrase goes, 'play off' one agitator against
another; but when ultimate human needs come in question any such
effort must be at once mean and vain.
* * * *
IF we find men, whose spiritual orientation is not altogether ours,
marching in the same direction, we ought to march with them to
the term of our common objective, and not separate for battle until
the term has been reached. Every voluntary and every State proposal
that tends to broaden the basis of property cooperation, co-partner-
ship, prosperity sharing, manufacturing guilds, taxation of unproduc-
tive surplus ought to be welcomed by us. But in the end it is person-
ality that counts. If we are to be saved we must help in the saving.
* * * *
THE great Encyclicals of Leo XIII., those spacious and noble
utterances of the true social philosophy, bring all our efforts to
its inevitable point.
Everyone should put his hand to the work which falls to his share, and
that at once and straightway, lest the evil which is already so great become
through delay absolutely beyond remedy. Those who rule the State should avail
themselves of the laws and institutions of the country; masters and wealthy
owners must be mindful of their duty; the poor, whose interests are at stake,
should make every lawful and proper effort; and since religion alone can
avail to destroy the evil at its root, all men should rest persuaded that the
main thing needful is to return to real Christianity, apart from which all the
plans and devices of the wisest will prove of little avail Never cease to
urge upon men of every class, upon the highest placed as well as the lowly,
the Gospel doctrines of Christian life." (Condition of the Working Classes.)
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCIX. JULY, 1914. No. 592.
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
I.
HE subject of the present theme is the history of the
modern anti-intellectualist movement the story of
the attempt to shift the centre of human confidence
from reason to sentiment, which began with the Ref-
ormation and has reached its climax in these our
own times. We shall not pause to acquaint the reader with the
profitableness of the study upon which we are about to embark,
though it is usual to advertise one's wares, on such occasions, be-
fore beginning It is sufficient to say that not a theory of the day,
scarcely whether of nature, knowledge, religion, or man but
will have the side light of history thrown upon it, to some degree
or other, as the subject unfolds, and this in itself is enough to re-
ward a writer's toil and a reader's patience. What more illumi-
nating than to see for oneself the relation of all these offshoot theo-
ries to the parent stem ?
There must be something behind the extreme distrust with
which human reason has come to be regarded, that does not dis-
close itself at once to view; something that has its roots struck
deep in the past, and is no child of yesterday or the day before.
What is it prejudice or progress? The reader is capable of
judging for himself. Not every evolution of thought is indicative
of real advance; error may evolve as well as truth, and wear the
Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCIX. 28
"434 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
latter's livery unabashed. Philosophers are a stubborn lot. They
refuse to review their inherited starting-principles, on the ground
that such a procedure would mean a return to the past. Oh! this
category of time what has truth to do with it any more, for in-
stance, than has art? Newness is not the distinguishing mark of
verity by any manner of means. The Greeks were good sculptors,
though they lived in a much younger world than the modern, and
good philosophers, too, though their knowledge was not so extensive
as ours, nor near so rich and bursting with detail. But we are
moralizing already, instead of being up and on with our theme ! Let
us be off without further parleying.
The real starting-point of the modern anti-intellectualist move-
ment was a theory concerning the nature and character of religious
belief. The reformers of the sixteenth century preached the doc-
trine that faith is a matter of trusting rather than of knowing
an act not of the intellect, but of the will. The framers of this
definition labored under a false impression, and allowed their preju-
dices to narrow the sweep of their analytic vision, though they
thought it very deep and broad. The traditional Catholic doctrine
had it, that faith is " an intellectual assent to truths revealed by
God, on account of the authority of God revealing;" an act of the
intellect commanded by the will. The reformers overlooked men
always do when they have a political or religious axe to grind the
second part of this definition, which has reference to the will, and
confined their attention exclusively to the first part of it, in which
the intellect is given prominence. The result was the raising of the
false cry that this doctrine meant a " syllogistic " and " discursive "
faith a frigida opinio which charity, perforce, had to be called in
to warm. Nothing could have been wider of the mark than this as-
tonishing misapprehension. When the schoolmen defined faith as
an intellectual assent, it was far from their minds to consider it an
act of pure reason, a product of the intellect working in chilly isola-
tion from the rest of man's 7 powers of soul, especially that of will.
It was not a reasoned conclusion at all, the faith which they so de-
fined. They expressly repudiated the idea that faith is a reasoning
act, a logical deduction, a scientific conclusion, a purely argumenta-
tive result or consequence. What they said was that faith is reason-
able, capable, that is, of being reasoned, which is quite another
thing.
Faith is reasonable and truly intellectual, said they, because it
presupposes motives of credibility perceived by reason, sufficient to
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 435
justify the assent of the intellect, when the will urges the latter to
acquiesce. It is reasonable, also, because it furnishes the mind with
a motive and an object of the intellectual order; the motive being
the authority of God, and the object a truth to be believed, both of
which could at least be apprehended, however far short of their
comprehension the mind might actually fall. And it was reasonable,
furthermore, in the sense that it might be reasoned out, though in its
very act faith is not critical, reasoning, or discursive. The school-
men never claimed that there is a strictly logical continuity between
science and faith, such as would make the act of faith itself the
conclusion of a syllogism. Neither did they fall into the opposite
extreme of creating a complete gap of severance, psychologically,
between the two.
Divine providence and human prudence work together, the for-
mer being no substitute for the latter. God is light, and in light He
wishes us all to walk towards Him, seeing the way and the goal, the
while He leads us on. Courage, generosity, confidence, self-aband-
onment, " taking the plunge," as converts say, all these may be pre-
requisites or accompaniments of conversion, but this does not mean
that the lamp of reason is extinguished. Absolute darkness is not
God's way of dealing with men, since He did not create us blind.
Faith is indeed no vision of truth, but neither is it, on the other
hand, a blind leap in the dark. It shines upon the exterior of the ob-
ject the truth, namely, to be believed, even though it does not light
that object up from the inside. Science is, therefore, outside faith,
not within it. Preliminaries there are, and many, such as credibility,
evidence, the fact of revelation, and the urge of our own needs and
longings, but these are all this side of the threshold of faith, and
enter not into the constitution of its act. Reason and criticism may
have their true place and part, within due limits, in the act of faith,
but only as preliminaries. They may conduct us to the sanctuary,
but there they stop, to make room for the will, for grace, and for
supernatural light.
To believe on the word of another, and, in this case, on the
word of God, is faith in all its purity. We close our eyes, as it were,
to be all ears. " Master," said the apostolic fisherman, " we have
labored all the night, and have caught nothing, but at Thy word, we
will let down the net." And was it not the Master Himself Who
said that " unless ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven ? " To believe simply and solely because
God has spoken ; to know and affirm a truth, not because we see it,
436 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
but because God has said it that, and none other, is Christian faith.
The sole motive is the authority of the One speaking, and the will is
free to demand this homage of the intellect, or to refuse acquiescence
in the moral sovereignty 'and veracity of God. It is no mere " trust-
ing," though trust and confidence accompany our assent. The
Witness is known to be worthy, infinitely so, that we should confide
in Him, and make the knowledge which He communicates our very
own, by conforming our mind to His. It was this broad-based con-
ception of faith, as the appropriation of Another's knozvledge, that
gave it a social character, kept it objective, and at the same time pre-
vented it from lapsing into instinctive belief, irrational con-
fidence, or the fogginess of mere sentiment. It is a fact all too pa-
tent that life is full of appropriated, as distinct from personal or di-
rect, knowledge. Life would be small, indeed, if we did not live in
union and communion with our fellowmen to the extent, at least, of
making the knowledge of others ours by faith. Not one of us is
capable, out of his own individual resources, to win in life's brief
span what the race has won in the long ascending pathway of the
years. We have to appropriate the lights of others to keep our own
little flickering flame aglow. And how sadly lacking would our
knowledge be, how bleak and bare it actually is, when we refuse to
appropriate the knowledge which God has generously stooped to put
within our reach, through the noble and additional light of faith,
which leads the intellect captive, only to bestow upon it in captivity a
larger vision than before.
One word more ere we turn from this to kindred matters that
wait insistent on consideration. A short distance back we spoke
of the intellect doing this, and the will doing that, in the act of faith.
But we were analyzing . when we did so, and when one analyzes,
things have to be considered separately. It is not the habit of the
mind to analyze two things at once, but rather to take them piece-
meal, so as to give to each its meet and due appraisal. The school-
men followed this analytic method in their searching inquiries into
the complex elements that go to make up the act of Christian faith,
and the result was that they were completely misunderstood by the
Reformation critics, who did not realize the world of difference
that lies between considering things separately, and considering
them as separate. The latter thought never even entered the minds
of the schoolmen, who regarded the various faculties of man as
always acting in concert, never singly or apart. The unity of the
subject acting a concrete, individual, undivided man gave unity
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 437
and continuity to the functions of his different faculties,
where nothing went on in isolation. It was the man, in all cases,
who did the thinking by means of his intellect, and the willing
with his will. There was no separation, there could be none, in
such an interacting organic whole, as is the human individual;
in such a sympathetic agency, alert, and alive to all going on within
it, from rim to centre, as is the mind of man. The latter is a cir-
culating life, and its faculties are not locked up in non-communi-
cating compartments. So that when the schoolmen spoke of the
motives of credibility, of the assent of the intellect, and the com-
manding of the will, it was of one complex, living, interacting thing
they were speaking for it is the same undivided mind which dis-
cerns the motives of credibility, and sees that the authority of God
speaking is a guarantee for accepting the truths revealed, however
obscure these may appear infinitely more sure and reliable than
any intrinsic evidence. Faith was, therefore, according to them,
no frigida opinio of the intellect it was not an opinion at all,
but a total and complete act of self -surrender, if by the latter you
understand an intellectual, truly human act, and not the mere
promptings of unenlightened sentiment. There is light in it,
as well as confidence and love. We cannot consider the last two
of these, and studiously ignore the first, without signally failing to
do justice to the problem as a whole.
The incomplete analysis which the reformers made of Chris-
tian faith, its character and conditions, reduced it to a mere act of
confidence, blind hither ward and fore, with no fringes of light
streaming forth from its edges, to preserve its psychological con-
tinuity with man's naturally acquired knowledge of the world and
God. The reformers recognized no theology which was not at the
same time a christology. Let us turn our attention away, they said,
from the God of nature to the God of grace, to Whom we have ac-
cess directly through Christ, His fullest revelation. This contemp-
tuous dismissal of natural theology shut off the pagan world, which
knew not Christ, from all possibility of salvation. The narrowness
of the view was strikingly made apparent, when the exploration of
America, then but recently discovered, revealed the existence of
tribes upon tribes of Indians living in utter ignorance of Christ's
glad tidings. Were these wild red men within the reach of saving
faith and grace? Catholic theologians fell back for answer upon
the doctrine of St. Thomas, that explicit faith supernatural, of
course in God the Rewarder is tantamount to implicit faith in
438 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
Christ the Mediator, and so they held out for these benighted folk
of forest and stream the possibility of salvation, through the super-
natural providence of God, to the activity of which no bounds
could be set by man. The breadth of their theological principles
allowed them to do so, without sacrifice of doctrine. Not so, how-
ever, was it with the Protestant theologians of the time, all of
whom, with but a solitary exception Mo'ise Amyraut (1634)
consigned the Indians en masse to perdition. The Protestant
theory of faith, as an explicit, unwavering trust in Christ, was too
narrow and exclusive to cover the case of " them that sit in dark-
ness." The rejection of the intellectual character of Christian
faith, the spurning of all " natural " theology, and the restriction
of the workings of grace to the Christian community of elect
believers, did not make for breadth of view or merciful width of
application. Our logical sins of omission all come back, soon or
late, to shame us for our patrician pride or courted paltriness. It
behooves all of us to make and keep our analyses complete, if we
would be set down in history as lovers of the whole truth, rather
than short-sighted worshippers of one, only, of its facets. Reform-
ers seldom see the best side of what they are reforming. If they
did they might not be reformers.
It must be already apparent, from the way our theme is run-
ning, that the exclusion of the human intellect from all vital and
direct participation in the act of Christian faith, partook more of
the nature of politico-religious expediency than of broad and ob-
jective scholarship. Forged in the white heat of controversy, a
misconception of what is meant and implied by " intellectual as-
sent " became a serviceable weapon of religious warfare. The
false charge of a " cold," " syllogistic " faith served admirably the
destructive ends in view. It persists to this day, not withdrawn or
tempered in the slightest, thus furnishing an instructive example
of the slow-footedness of truth in overtaking falsehood in its
wildfire course. The reform movement really battened and throve
on this misdirected criticism of Catholic doctrine. Anti-intellect-
ualist to the core, it kept hammering away at the rational in relig-
ion, until it seemed a bruised and battered thing. And there is
nothing, perhaps, in history, that did more to injure Christianity
in the eyes of thinking men, than the fostering of this spirit of
antagonism to reason, which could only mean to lovers of the light,
wherever found, that faith had lost its lion-heartedness, and for-
sworn its virility and cosmopolitan character. The public road of
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 439
reason was abandoned for the private way of sentiment, Christian
thought retiring ingloriously from the open, competitive field of
the rational consciousness, with its surrounding sun-lit hills, into
the private inner rooms of the spirit, as much as to say to the
great world of rational inquiry, in its struggling efforts to build
up a scheme of truth that would quiet the mind no less than the
heart of man : " We have no sympathy or points of contact with
you. We are content to feel, caring neither to know nor prove."
The individual's sense of things thus became more valuable to him
than the truth. He saw the latter according to his own private
feelings, reason being really no more for him than a floating wick
in a cup of personal sentiment. How had the mighty fallen!
The individual thus cut himself off from the august tradition
of the past, retired within his own small shell, refused to appro-
priate the beliefs of others, resented all invasion of his religious pri-
vacy, and started to fashion a creed of his own, out of such ele-
ments as best fell in with his temperamental likings, setting up his
own private experience against the larger public experience which
is history that inexhaustible treasury of truth and good which no
man singly is great enough to discover, because the wisdom of the
ages is not vouchsafed to one, but comes from seeing eye to eye,
and walking hand in hand, the centuries through, along the path-
way of light and love, that is foreordained of God to be trodden
by men. It was as if the water, pocketed in a pool by some gen-
erous overrunning wave, should forget its orphanhood, and set it-
self up in contented rivalry to the parent sea a drop against the
ocean !
This purely personal attitude drove religious thought from
broad into restricted channels. Attention suddenly shifted from
the objective to the subjective side of religion, and, as always hap-
pens where attention shifts so suddenly under stress of feeling, the
side considered promptly proceeded to force the other side out of
recognition. Because the doctrines of Christian faith could be per-
sonally experienced, as they had been by the mystics who were
and are, by the way, but one type of the Christian believer, not to be
made solitary and sole as if no other types existed it by no means
followed that these doctrines could not also be apprehended, and
intelligently thought out, too, in their relation to the rest of man's
life and knowledge. And yet it was towards this negative and ex-
clusive conclusion, not to say goal, that the whole reform movement
drifted. The affirmative proposition that religion may also be a
440 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
matter of personal experience, was turned into the exclusive propo-
sition that religion is a matter of personal experience only an ar-
bitrary conversion of statements at variance alike with logic and
with history. Experience thus became the sole source and test of
religious truth, and reason was stricken off the list of the factors
of religion. Henceforth it was to be no more than a convenient
lamp for exploring sentiment, for analyzing the contents of relig-
ious experience. As a constructive power, working up to or upon
the rich material furnished by revelation, it was summarily silenced,
as having no right to speak. It was in the heat of religious con-
troversy, therefore, and in pursuance of a hostile religious purpose
that reason was first put down from its seat of primacy, and senti-
ment set up usurpingly in its stead. The remark is important,
and will repay careful noting for the light it throws upon what
followed.
The religious parentage of the intellectualist movement is
not always frankly acknowledged in histories of philosophy. The
introductory theological chapter, upon which we have just dwelt at
some length, is omitted, and the movement made to appear, in con-
sequence, as wholly of philosophical origin an independent de-
velopment of the human mind in the power of self-criticism and
reflection. This effect is secured by tracing the beginnings of the
downfall of the intellect to the labored criticisms of that faculty,
made by Immanuel Kant in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century (1781-1794). Kant, it is confidently asserted, as the
result of a most dispassionate inquiry which he made into the
subject all inquiries in line with our prepossessions are dispassion-
ate ! came to the conclusion that the power of reason is exceedingly
limited, and our confidence in its capacity for leadership sadly mis-
placed; the inference which we are expected to draw being, that
the modern hostility to reason, in matters, especially, that concern
religion, has no theological affiliations or dependence, but is a child
of pure philosophy itself.
This explanation is misleading and incomplete. Anti-intel-
lectualism flourished as a religious movement, for two hundred
years and more, before Kant started it on an additional career in
philosophy. The Konigsberg critic merely extended to human
knowledge in general the Lutheran theory of religious knowledge in
particular. He was not the originator, but the philosopher, of
anti-intellectualism. Long before he wrote his criticism of the
powers of reason, he had prejudged the case which he was after-
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 441
wards, with such apparent impartiality, to try. It is altogether too
much, furthermore, to ask us to suppose that his philosophy was a
closet production, unaffected by the religious currents of the times,
uninfluenced by any temperamental leanings towards the hostile
views of reason then in the air. Philosophies so pure as that are
not ordinary earthly visitants. We cannot take Immanuel Kant
out of the religious atmosphere in which he was nurtured; or
look upon the adverse conclusions which he drew, as the products
of a mind that had no preferential interest, one way or the other,
in their drawing. But of this later. It is a story all by itself
that must not be told out of due time.
The historians of philosophy are so fond of telling us about
the enslaving influence which the positive dogmas of Christianity
exerted on the thought of the schoolmen, that they conveniently
forget to remind us of the overwhelming prejudice which the nega-
tive, exclusivist dogmas of the Protestant reform engendered in
the modern mind. The kettle always calls the pot black, we im-
agine, because kettles happen to be more observant than introspec-
tive. What matters most in such cases we are still speaking of
Kant is not what a man says, so much as how and why he came
to say it. When we secure a glimpse behind the scenes, we are in
a far better position to judge of the objective worth of a man's
statements, because we are able more accurately to compute the rate
of discount to be allowed for prejudice conscious or concealed.
Philosophers are products of their times, like everyone else; they
are effects as well as causes ; nor do they, like Minerva, spring, full-
formed, from the mind of Jove. When we look completely into
the sources, out of which the present distrust of reason sprang, we
find that a religious reaction had a vast deal more to do with it than
is generally acknowledged or recorded. And this is a point well
won to our advantage, did we but realize it as we should.
The leaders of the religious reaction of the sixteenth century
hardly foresaw the sweeping philosophy of nescience that was to
spring from the loins of their sentimental theory of faith. The
rupture with rational religion was at first only partial, but the
seeds of dissolution which were sown in theology soon spread to
the neighboring field of philosophy, and there brought forth a
second crop of negations wider and more far-reaching than the
first. What would the reformers have thought, if they could peer
into the distant future, and hear the complaint uttered, that their
work of demolition was left incomplete, because of their failure to
442 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
expunge from the slate of human consciousness every vestige of
rational truth? That is precisely the lament, expressed in their
regard, by the late Professor James, who takes Luther and Kant
equally to task for having clung to some shreds of the ancient
metaphysics, instead of throwing the whole cargo overboard, and
admitting outright that religion was irrational from top to bottom,
and the whole universe along with it, for that matter. So, you
see, some anti-intellectualists are more frank than others in ac-
knowledging that their aim and object is to complete the Refor-
mation, by making the wheel of negation swing full. circle, instead of
stopping it half-way in its revolution, as the reformers tried to do.
It becomes necessary, therefore, if we are to understand the de-
rationalizing movement of the sixteenth century in its relation to
the past and to the future, to go back some distance into history to
see how matters stood before its advent, and then to come forward
with it, as it gradually breaks its religious bounds, and spreads over
the whole field of modern philosophy, like a flood.
For sixteen centuries the rational character, that is to say, the
reasonableness, of the Christian religion had been universally ac-
knowledged. "Christianity," says Illingworth, 1 in this connection,
" from the day when St. Paul first encountered philosophers at
Athens, has claimed to be a philosophical religion a religion, that
is to say, which, though avowedly based on revelation,
appealed to the intellect no less than to the heart; throw-
ing a new and larger light upon the problems of philosophy,
as well as on the perplexities of ordinary life; and ready to prove,
at the bar of reason, its intrinsic superiority to all rival specula-
tions on the mysteries of things. 'Whom ye ignorantly' or agnos-
tically 'worship/ says St. Paul, 'Him declare I unto you.' '
The crown and climax of all previous thoughts and aspirations,
Christianity claimed it could be truly recognized as such by reason,
and this keynote, struck in the New Testament, continues to resound
through Christian history; apologists, Fathers of the Church, and
theologians, all chorusing that " reasonable service " of which the
Apostle speaks, all singing, with full hearts, of the dignity, capac-
ity, and light inherent in the intellect and reasoning powers of
man. The exceptions usually quoted to show a break in the con-
tinuity of this tradition are but three, and not one of them is
really to the point. We shall dispatch their consideration briefly,
and only in so far as they serve to throw a counter-light on the
1 Reason and Revelation, p. 2.
IQI4-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 443
situation which followed. They are well worth delaying to con-
sider, and will assist in clearing the mental atmosphere of clouds.
Tertullian's famous utterance Credo quia impossibile
marks no departure from the universal attitude, though it is usually
trotted out as an instance to the contrary. The lawyer- theologian
of Carthage, when he employed this stinging phrase at the end of
the second century, was arguing ad hominem, and not analyzing
the motives of Christian belief. He nowhere shows any signs of
having entertained the idea, so often wrongly laid to his account,
that the very absurdity of the doctrines taught by Christianity
constituted for him their sole and chief title to acceptance. We
must, at least, do a lawyer, however ancient, the credit of knowing
how to plead; and if his shafts are tipped with the barb of sarcasm,
it is rather naive, considering lawyers! to think that they are
directed against himself. It was not the reasonableness of the
religion of Christ which he was repudiating, but the pretentious
knowledge of its mysteries, to which the Gnostics of the time laid
claim. To these sophisticated mortals, who knew everything know-
able and a few other things besides, the simplicity of the Gospel
narrative was an absurdity that amounted almost to a scandal.
Tertullian neatly turned the edge of their pompous misgivings by
the contemptuous retort that he preferred simple absurdity to
learned, and that he would have nothing to do with their patronizing
pedantry and spurious enlightenment. Quid academics et Ecclesia?
Quid Platoni et Jesu Christo? Those who see in Tertullian's re-
buke of the Gnostics a condemnation of all reason in matters of re-
ligion, are those who attempt to read back into the second century
the prejudices of the sixteenth. Tertullian was not ashamed of
reason, only of its misuse. He points a moral, he does not adorn a
tale.
In the thirteenth century a long leap from the second
Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia apparently turned aside
from the common tradition regarding the reasonableness of Chris-
tianity, when they broached the view that a man might keep his re-
ligion and his science in separate mental packages, believing by faith,
for instance, that the world was created in time, yet knowing all the
while by reason that it existed from eternity.
This lone attempt to divorce faith from knowledge, and to in-
troduce contradictoriness into the very nature and constitution of
truth, arose in a peculiar way, which discounts the significance at-
tached to it by Protestant historians. A study of the documents
444 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [July,
of the times reveals the fact that these two reactionaries slavishly re-
garded Aristotle as the unimpeachable spokesman of human reason.
They attributed demonstrative force to dialectical arguments, which
the great Greek himself, when discussing the question of the world's
origin, had never regarded as exceeding the bounds of probability;
and when it was once pointed out that they had sadly misread
their sources Aristotle himself disowning their overestimate of
his powers ! the whole fabric of their theory collapsed like a
house of cards. They had invested the master-mind of antiquity
with a false finality; it was impossible, they thought, either to
recast or criticize his philosophy; and so, to make room for their
unduly magnified oracle, they revived the theory of the Arab phil-
osopher, Averroes, and declared that faith and knowledge, Moses
and Aristotle, might be conceived as co-existing contraries, without
harm to either. It was not that they loved rational religion less,
but Aristotle more.
Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, Simon de Tournai, and
other minor lights of the period, would never have had their medi-
ocrity so extolled in the history of philosophy if the anti-intellectual-
ists of post-Reformation times had not detected in them a certain
" family resemblance," and rescued from oblivion the only thinkers
of the Middle Ages, who were so completely enslaved to the word of
the Stagirite that they preferred the vocation of an echo to that
of a critic. The fittest do not always survive in history. Much
depends on whether they are " mental relatives," and have the physi-
ognomy of the family. The invention of ancestry is one of the best
things the race has ever done in fiction.
And the mystics, we must not forget them ! What vilipender
of reason and champion of feeling has failed to claim this holy an-
cestry for his very own ! May they be adduced these noble souls
that felt the burning links that bound them fast to God may they
be adduced in favor of the general Protestant and liberalist theory
that religion is a matter of personal experience, and in no sense
an intellectual conviction? "Thou art trifling, Horatio." The
mystics never divorced faith from knowledge, or looked upon re-
ligion as the enjoyment of irrationality. They admitted external
and objective criteria by which to test the truth of their experiences.
They submitted their private feelings to the judgment of the public
Church. They went down into experience with conviction, not for
it the exact reverse of what they should have done to become the
ancestors of the modern liberals. It is only by detaching their
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 445
previous intellectual knowledge of the truths of faith, from their
subsequent experiencing of these same verities, that the mystics
can be transferred to the anti-intellectualist camp. Harnack says
somewhere that the man who sees in the mediaeval mystics the be-
ginnings of a separatist movement in religion is a dilettante in
church history, and for once we agree with him without reservation.
The mystics never even dreamt of separating the individual from
the social side of religion; the affections from the intellect; the
light of love from the love of light. Their habit of suppressing all
reasoning processes was a method of mental prayer, a means to
devotion, and not, as the ancestor-hunters claim, a repudiation of
the intellectual character of Christian faith. They were far from
being professional advocates of irrationality in religion champions
of the heart in opposition to the intellect. They were not modern
enough to tumble headlong into the fallacy of dismembering the
human mind.
Down to the very eve of the Reformation, therefore, the reas-
onableness of the religion of Christ was universally acknowledged.
The noble idea ran, like a filament, through the thought of Chris-
tianity, Eastern and Western, that reason is a created participation
in the light of the mind of God Himself, an indelible image of the
Divine in man. " Thou hast stamped upon us the light of Thy
countenance, O Lord ! In Thy light, we shall see light ! " And
then, suddenly, the lamp that God had lit in the mind of man, ac-
cording to the Christian teaching of the centuries, was extinguished.
A harsh voice was heard, declaring reason the " devil's bride."
Martin Luther had come upon the scene. Thought had swung clear
over to the opposite pole. Reason was banned, proscribed, vilified,
actually laughed out of the sanctuary of religion. The Reforma-
tion had begun ! So had the anti-intellectualist movement, the past
connections and future course of which still await treatment at our
hands.
THE CARRIER OF CHRIST.
BY ALICE DBASE.
[IS name, of course, was Christopher, but it was in deed
as well as word that he was the carrier of Christ, and
this in a way that no one would have thought of
but a chosen soul such as he. We knew him as
Christy, the net mender, long before we heard the
reason for his other name. He lived in a one-roomed cottage,
white-walled like its neighbors, and windowless, but spotlessly clean
and with two doors, one of which was always open, at least when-
ever the old man was within. There was a dresser in the house, and
two boxes, a chair and table, a creepie stool, and the universal four-
post bed of the west, built into the wall beside the hearth.
Half of the length of the kitchen was low, for an open loft
ran between it and the rafters, on which in the other half Christy's
weather-worn hens roosted happily amongst the soot. Visible in
the loft was a brass-studded, hide-covered trunk, a family heirloom
which had descended to its present owner as the last of his race.
In bygone days this trunk had been bright with the red and white
mottling of the cattle of the country, but two voyages round the
world in company with Christy's sailor father, and the ravages since
then of time and smoke, had stolen away its hair and its coloring,
and now, brown as they, it stood beside a heap of fishing nets that
always lay up there in the loft; nets waiting either to be mended,
or to be taken away mended by their owners.
Under the loft the mwheelin cow, very small and bony, with
the head bare of horns that gave her breed their name, had a freshly
swept corner to herself, except during the season of the year when
she possessed a calf of that newer race known as congested, in
deference to the board that tries to improve the stock in such dis-
tricts as that in which the parish of Incrona lies.
Christy is said to be a man of moods, but I think it is rather that
he is at times too much engrossed with his prayers to pay much
heed to anyone. For days at a time he has no more than a curt
greeting even for those to whom he occasionally unbends. " God
and Mary with you;" "My blessing and the blessing of God be
about you, now and forever;" " May the roof of heaven give shelter
to all belonging to you;" " May the seven blessings be upon you
1914-] THE CARRIER OF CHRIST 447
and your seven generations." At other times he may have longer,
sweeter greetings to give in Irish, some dating back into the past
when such formulas were of daily usage amongst our forefathers,
some more likely of his own composing, but wonderfully poetical
and spiritual too.
It was one day down on the shore that he told us of his annual
pilgrimage to Galway, to celebrate Rosary Sunday there. We came
upon him fixing corks on a hopeless looking tangle of drawnets,
and we could not help wondering if the Apostles had had anything
corresponding to dog fish, to contend with in the Sea of Galilee.
Some time previously Christy had invited us to go and see " the
beautiful way he had the walls of his kitchen, an' they whitewashed
blue." Accordingly we had gone up the mountain a week or so
before, only to be told by a neighboring woman that Christy had
gone " stravagueing off, God knows where."
We told him this, and he answered at once with reproach and
subdued indignation in his voice : " Didn't the creature know well
it was in to Galway I'd gone," he said. " Is there ever a blessin'
of the Roses I've missed in the Claddagh, these years back, since
the Mother of God was after gettin' the cure of the old head for
me."
And with his fingers darting in and out, until the tangled net
was smooth beneath them, he told us the story.
" Back there, one time, I did use to be gettin' a great deal
from me head, be turns. 'Twas not so to say a pain I had in it, but a
heavy lightness, an' a squeezin' like. There was parties did be
tellin' me if I could keep the Mother of God in mind of it, she'd
be getting it cured on me whatever. Well it so happened I had
business that took me into Galway o' Rosary Sunday, when the
White Friars does be blessin' of roses in her honor. There wasn't
one in the chapel there before me, only meself, but had some kind
of a likeness to a rose in his hands. There was one kneelin' along-
side of me, in the one seat like, a low sized, aged girl, an' she
with a bunch of them.
" 'Will you give me a flower,' says I when I sees the way
things was, 'one of them flowers you have there, for to put in me
hat?'
" 'I will not then,' says she, as sour as you please. 'They're
holy, blessed flowers,' says she, 'an' not for decoratin' nonsense,'
says she.
" There was daisies growin' outside of the chapel, an' since I
couldn't get a rose, like the others, didn't I go pluck a daisy in its
448 THE CARRIER OF CHRIST [July,
place, an' when it come to the blessin' I ups with it, an' holds it
out with the best of them.
" "Tis for roses the blessin' is,' says that one to me after, an'
we comin' out, 'an' not for them weeds.'
" 'But sure, didn't God Almighty see how I'd done what I could,
an' me knowin' no better. I'm right sure He blessed the daisy, too,
that time!' Never another year did I go without the roses them-
selves, an' I kep' them after within in the old caubeen"
He took off his hat, and showed us the dry brown remains of
a rose, indistinguishable had we not been told what it was, tucked
safely into the lining.
" Tis a wonder, now, all she done for me," he went on mus-
ingly. " If ever the head came at me after, I off with the old can-
been, an' 'Mother of God, remember me,' says I. That's what the
Friar bid me say. A powerful man, and a great speaker entirely,
God bless him. An' she has me right cured, this time back," he
concluded, " thanks be to her and to her holy Son."
It must be owned that amongst the neighbors Christy had the
reputation of being a bit of an oddity, nevertheless the whispered
conviction that he was a saint was proudly upheld, at least when
Christy himself was not by. It was probable that not one of those
who talked him over after Sunday Mass, or round the hearthstone
of an evening, had ever heard of " a fool for Christ's sake," but
had they known of such a title, so would they have explained the
oddity of Christy.
No one doubted but that his prayers brought a blessing on the
parish, yet any hint to him that God Almighty gave to his petitions
what was granted more tardily or not at all to others, was met
with such real anger, almost with fear, from the old man, that even
amongst themselves the people, unless questioned, spoke but little
of their convictions on this point. Only when in trouble, when
wife or child or beast was sick, then were Christy's prayers en-
treated, and on the silent understanding that there must be no talk
of him if the prayers were favorably answered by God, they were
offered constantly, insistently, and more often than was publicly
known, the man or beast that was sick grew strong again.
The chapel woman had a grievance against Christy. " I can't
keep him from them pictures," she complained, when first the Sta-
tions of the Cross were put in line upon the gray plaster walls of
the new building, which chiefly through American generosity had
lately taken the place of the mud-walled church of old. " He's
at me of a mornin' for the key, an' at night as likely he'll be at them
1914-] THE CARRIER OF CHRIST 449
till its black dark an' not a stim could any Christian see, not if all
the pictures of Ireland was in it." Yet the seashore was his favorite
place of prayer, or the bare hillside, whereon his field and garden lay.
A gray road lines the parish from north to south, edging the
sea, which is its western boundary, so closely that in places the rock
on which the roadway lies is washed bare at seasons when the
tide is high. Nowhere does this road leave the sea further away
than a narrow span, perhaps no wider than a sloping band of rocks,
or at most of width to allow a salty sandy strip of pasture to lie,
where mountain sheep grow to vie with the famed Pre salle of
French Epicureanism, or where small cows lick up the grass that,
though short and scant, is delicate of flavor.
Eastwards a chain of mountains make a glorious land of re-
flections for summer sunsets, and form all the year round a shelter-
ing screen for the white-walled houses that are scattered along their
lower slopes. The poor, though incessantly cultivated fields, from
which the people eke out the living granted to them by the fishing,
stretch from the rocks of the mountains to the road which skirts
the rocks of the shore. The houses mostly lie in groups, and each
group is dignified by the name of village, though they have not got
a street between them all to give even so much semblance to a vil-
lage of the east.
Only a few houses, such as Christy's own, stand quite by them-
selves, and these, with the strange perverseness that the use of a
foreign tongue amongst folk of little education leads to, are said to
be in a town, that is, a literal translation of the Baile of the Gael
which was elastic enough to designate either a dwelling or gather-
ing of houses, large or small, and also the measurement of country
which in English is defined in greater detail as a townsland.
piristy's home and garden lay in the townsland of Ganorena,
p* lovelier spot could scarcely be imagined. Whether the moun-
tain was green with the spring growth of grass and bracken, or
purple with heather in summer and autumn, or golden-russet with
the winter coloring of the fern, it was equally beautiful, whilst the
wide stretch of the sea, never the same for an hour at a time,
reflected the soft pearly lights of the Connemara atmosphere. The
long, long generations when the silence of any bell, for Catholics,
was imperative, has produced a curious indifference, now that re-
ligious freedom is ours, to the Ave Maria, the Angelus bell of other
Catholic countries. Down at the new chapel a new bell hangs, but
unless the serving boy is later than usual coming to Mass, its tones
are seldom heard from Sunday to Sunday. Yet in Ganorena, at
VOL. xcix. 29
450 THE CARRIER OF CHRIST [July,
least the Angelus is said at six of the morning, at noon, and at six
of the night, and this with mechanical regularity. How is it that
Christy knows the hours so well? He has no watch or clock to
warn him of their approach, the sun is too often behind gray clouds
in Connemara to be a guide unfailing, and those who have sat be-
side the old man's fire on a winter's evening, or watched with him
some suffering beast on winter's mornings, before there is a glimmer
of dawn, tell how suddenly he breaks off in his talk to say the
Angelus, or turning from the cow or horse he kneels there in the
byre, with gray head bared and face to the east, and unquestioning
certainty which is never deceived, that six of the morning or of the
night has come, and so it is time to praise the Mother of God be-
cause of the Incarnation of her Son for us.
At noon the same sense seems to guide him. We have seen
him on the shore kneeling amongst his nets, or in his garden plot
with half-dug ridges round about him. Once, too, in the market
square of the town, before the bell had sounded, which there is
rung, though not with punctuality beyond reproach, Christy's con-
sciousness had told him that noon had come, and without moving
from the busy throng he knelt down there on the pavement, un-
noticed except by those close by, and undisturbed by -them.
A passing prelate one day had his attention drawn, from the
window of his railway carriage, to a figure kneeling bareheaded on
the platform of the station, whilst the Angelus tolled out its call,
unheeded by too many, from the neighboring church tower.
" There is faith," he said, and he raised his own hat from
his head. " Thank God for such a sight."
And the sight, of course, was Christy. Yet kneeling is often
far from easy to the poor old bones. A life of long exposure
has brought on rheumatics, which, however, are borne without a
murmur. "A plaster is it? " he met the suggestion of a possible
remedy with disinclination, for different reasons, either to accept
or to refuse. Any approach to incivility was not to be thought of,
and yet . " A plaster now ? Well mightn't it only have me
rattled. Maybe I'd better abide by God Almighty, for mustn't
He take turns out of all of us, now and again? "
Yet the threatened loss of one of his hands obliged Christy
not only to have recourse to doctoring, but even to agree to a
journey to a Dublin hospital. Here the hand got well, of itself,
contrary to the doctors expectations, yet only in accordance with
Christy's firm belief.
" There's plenty needing to ask for charity without my comin'
I9I4-] THE CARRIER OF CHRIST 45 1
to that," he had said. " God Almighty won't be takin' from me
what earns the bit that keeps me in it. If He took me, itself,
wouldn't it be well for me, but welcome be His holy will."
It happened that the feast of Corpus Christi came during the
time of Christy's visit to Dublin, and a fellow convalescent took
him out to see the procession of the Blessed Sacrament at the Pas-
sionists' retreat of Mount Argus. He did not speak much after-
wards of his experiences, but when the next year came he asked the
priest why didn't he carry our Lord out through the parish, as the
priests away in Dublin carried Him through their garden, so that
He might bless the homes and the fields of the people as long ago
He had blessed the homes of Judea and Galilee. But the traditions
of Incrona parish held no record of Corpus Christi processions, and
though no one had more respect for Christy than the priest, the
request was refused.
But the old man, besides taking part in the Mount Argus pro-
cession, had also heard the sermon that was previously preached,
in which the honor given to God by such a carrying, and the bless-
ing bestowed on those He thus passed by, had been told in words
of burning zeal, and Christy determined that if the rest of Ireland
was still to be behind the times in giving this honor and getting this
blessing, Incrona should no longer bear this loss, in so far as he
was able to prevent it.
The new church as yet boasts no confessional, and Christy was
a very white figure that Corpus Christi morning as he knelt against
the altar rails, close inside which the priest was sitting to hear con-
fessions before Mass. Coat and trousers, and to-day even waistcoat
of bainin flannel, were white and spotless. The clothing had all been
bleaching in the sun for days after their last washing. His hair,
too, was white, only his hands and face were tanned to brown, and
when he turned to regain his place, we saw an unusual sight that
a bunch of red roses which grow apparently wild amongst some of
the Connemara rock, were pinned to the front of his coat.
The chapel woman complained that he had spent nearly all the
previous afternoon in church, but once Mass was over, having made
his thanksgiving after Holy Communion, he started out, and was
not seen again within the chapel walls till afternoon. He spoke to
no one, passing out, but went at leisurely pace along the road turning
at the first bohreen, below the nearest village, and mounting the
slope that leads thereto. His head was bare, his hands folded on
his breast, and for a few short minutes he stood beside the group
of houses, evidently engrossed in prayer.
452 THE CARRIER OF CHRIST [July,
From this first village he went down again to the road, and on
until a second bohreen came. So was a second village visited, and
then a third and fourth, until there was scarcely a house in the parish
outside which he had not stood and prayed. The banks on either
side of him, wherever he went, were spread with growing flowers.
The sky was a great blue canopy above his head, and at his feet the
silvery sea was calm and smiling. The birds with the busyness of
early summer still upon them, twittered and sang as the old man
passed. They at least, he did not doubt, knew that he was carrying
Christ, with all the reverence he knew how to show, through the
length and breadth of the parish, just to do honor to the Son of God
and to bring His blessing upon the place and people.
" Tis a mighty poor carriage I was for Him," he made no secret
to the priest of what he had done that day, " but I could do no
better. His own words of absolution had made the heart of me
clean, to carry Him within in it, and what soap and water and
the bleaching of the sun could do for old bits of bainin, these hands
had seen to it that that was done. I stopped at the houses," he
went on to explain, " time enough for Him to give His blessing to
the souls within in them. He had His own flowers along the way, an'
maybe the songs o' the birds, and the clean lappin' of the sea made
music for Him full as well as many a choir."
Then came the final visit to the chapel. The anxious prayer
that what was done in all respect might in God's mercy be taken as
a pledge of reverence and love, and so give Him honor in places
where he had too often had offence. " We want Him roundabout
the countryside, to bless us an' forgive. Aye, an' more than others
do we want to give Him glory, for they others, away in cities, maybe
they don't know Him, an' they sinnin' out the likes of us. We
know Him, an' we offend Him with our sins, knowin' better."
Christy's breakfast that day was taken about three of the after-
noon. Since Mass time he had carried Christ through the lonely,
lovely parish, untired, because he had no thought to spare for his
own fatigue from the Burden he had chosen to bear.
When another feast of Corpus Christi comes, this uncanon-
ized St. Christopher of Incrona will repeat his round of praise and
blessing, unless it may be that the call of death should reach Him
first. And if it does there is not a one in all the parish, down from
the priest himself, who doubts but that the Christ he carried will
instead carry the old man through the grim portals and up, with
very little delay, up to the steps of the heavenly throne, where,
praising God, he surely will pray still for Incrona and for Ireland.
PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES. 1
BY W. E. CAMPBELL.
HE Incarnation the Birth, the Life, the Suffering, the
Death, the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord,
Who is God and Man is the central fact of history.
And it is a fact so spiritual and so universal that its
interpretation has been very gradual. That it has
a social interpretation as well as an individual one, is as certain
as that noonday follows the dawn. The glory of the Lord shall
be revealed, and all men shall see it together. Now what we most
need at the present time is a social interpretation of property in the
light of the Incarnation, and the book we are about to review is
an excellent attempt in the right direction.
The God of Israel was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and He set aside a peculiar people, among whom His Son was to
be born, to live, to work, and to die. They were led as a nation
to accept the truth that God ruled human life in all its relations, and
having this idea they applied it with varying faith and fidelity to
their individual and social experiences. Whatever else the religion
of the Israelites may have been, it was undoubtedly the secret of
their social welfare it explained, it inspired, it limited their daily
life and all the desires that arose therefrom. Let us take, for in-
stance, the case of private property among the Jews, and see how
their religion affected that. When David presented the offerings
of the people towards the building of the Temple, his address to
God gives clear, though unintentional, expression to the Jewish view
of property. " O Lord, our God, all this store is from Thy hand,
and all things are Thine . . . . O Lord, the God of our fathers, keep
this forever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of Thy
people." Here then is the one fact about property which David
prays that God may establish in the heart of his people, the fact
that whatever a man has, he must hold with a deep and ever present
sense of his responsibility towards God for its proper social use.
The history of the Jews shows us how repeatedly they were com-
pelled by their lawgivers, prophets, and kings to apply this same
1 Property Its Duties and Its Rights. By various writers. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
454 PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES [July,
notion as a practical test to their everyday business life. Was the
Lord their God angry with them? Had they neglected their re-
ligion? Was their national well-be.ing at stake? Let them exam-
ine the daily texture of their social life and see what was wrong!
With the Jews flagrant social injustice was always a mark of
spiritual apostasy; it was always a presage of material downfall.
It was made very clear to them that inordinate lust for private ac-
cumulation led straight to the wholesale oppression of the poor,
and that this in turn destroyed the normal basis of their national
welfare, which rested upon a relatively equal ownership of land
and the necessaries of common life. With them it was clear that
selfish commercial instincts severed the bond between the family
and the land, and this they thought to be wrong, because they be-
lieved that God had given the land to all Israelites to enjoy in com-
parative equality forever. It was abhorrent to the social instincts
of their race that any number of their body should be reduced
to a condition of landlessness, destitution or slavery. Such ideas as
this inspired the prophets of Israel. With them social justice was
ever the outward and visible sign of true religion; its absence the
sign of spiritual and national decline. " Thou shalt not steal,"
was then understood in a sense quite other than that now prevalent.
Then it meant, " Thou shalt not accumulate property unjustly."
It was for the breaking of this commandment that Jehovah en-
tered into judgment with the elders and princes of His people.
" It is ye that have eaten up the vineyards : the spoil of the poor
is in your houses. What mean ye that ye crush My people, and
grind the face of the poor ? " Or again, " Woe unto those that
join house to house, who add field to field, till there is no room,
and ye are settled alone in the midst of the land." Such is the
trend of prophetic denunciation, which all should study for them-
selves in the books of Osee, of Amos, of Micheas, and of Isaias.
The importance which the Jews attached to the connection
between social justice and true religion is sufficiently obvious. The
precepts as to the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee will
occur as further example to the point. It is true that in later times
the never ceasing struggle between social justice and selfish accumu-
lation went hard against the former. But this was mainly due to
the stress of foreign domination under which the old religious sanc-
tions lost their hold on national life. But the fact remains that
a small experiment had been made amid a peculiar people, which
was full of promise for the world at large. A social experiment
1914.] PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES 455
had been successfully tried in the seed-plot of Israel. The spiritual
dignity of the humblest human being and his right to a limited
possession of the necessary means of life, had been acknowledged,
established, and proclaimed. But how powerless an example was
this when set out in contrast to the wholesale systems of slavery
which were sanctioned as the necessary basis of both Greek and
Roman life. A new power was to come forth from Galilee to
redeem societies as well as men.
The hymn of prophecy in which our Lady announced that all
generations should call her blessed, spoke of one thing as if already
accomplished by divine power. " He hath put down the mighty
from their seat and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the
hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away."
Was this then to be the final outcome of the Incarnation? Was
God to become Man, and in so doing to become neither rich nor
mighty? Our Lord's own life while on earth is the complete
answer to the question. He would be born in Bethlehem under
the lowliest circumstances, and for twenty-nine years he would
live at Nazareth the life of a free and humble toiler. Though poor
He would never be destitute ; " not a line in the Gospel sets forth
indigence as the normal state of the just man." This was to be
the form of perfect manhood which God would choose for Him-
self. What a new and strange ideal ! How could a man so humbly
nurtured, so simply educated, so entirely unschooled in worldly
wisdom, so long and so habitually engaged in the simplest forms
of manual toil, so obedient to His Mother in the home, and to His
foster-father in the workshop, so small in His local reputation, so
slightly valued among His relations and friends, for all but the
three short years of His public ministry how could such a man be
God, or how could He and the men whom He formed on His pat-
tern, achieve anything for the lasting good of the human race?
This was to be man's supreme achievement in human character.
This was God Himself made Man. In this and in no other way
was the world to be taught the incomparable dignity of simple man-
hood.
But even so, it may be said, " What has the Incarnation to do
with a right appreciation of the nature and uses of property ? "
The answer is that we have only to study the Incarnate Life to reach
the profoundest, because most spiritual, conception of property, that
has ever been given to man. Deep-seated in the heart of fallen
human nature dwells a lust for possession as a means to selfish
456 PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES [July,
power, libido dominandi as it is called in the schools. At the very
beginning of His public career our Lord meets and challenges this
very temptation. He was offered property and riches as a means
to power over human life. But He Who had come to give life, and
to give it more abundantly, had not come to exploit human life, and
to exploit it wholesale. For us He conquered the temptation,
and throughout His ministry he proclaimed that it was impossible to
serve both God and Mammon, drawing thereby a clear distinction
between the accumulative use of property for power, and the dis-
tributive use of property for justice' sake. The distributive temper
belongs to the just man as a necessary quality of true religion. At
the moment of final reckoning, when all nations shall gather before
the Son of Man, each individual is to be judged according to his
record of distributive justice to those who have been most in need.
It is true that Christ announced no definite social policy, but it is
nevertheless a fact that His teaching anticipates the whole move-
ment of industrial life throughout the ages, and suggests the only
method by which it can be raised from a grossly material and
inhuman process to a process that is at once productive, distributive,
and humane.
As our Lord pointed out by various parables, the danger of
accumulative material desires is that they war against our own souls,
and against the souls and bodies of our fellow-creatures. Dives
was not only the loser of his own soul ; he was also the cause of the
temporal destitution which overtook the beggar at his gate. The
unjust steward not only incurred the utmost penalty for himself,
but he also did merciless injustice to his neighbor. The lust for in-
ordinate accumulation prevents the doing of the Father's will on
earth as in heaven ; it delays the coming of His kingdom ; it makes
way for the prince of this world in whom He has no part. The
only hope for a right and sustained distribution of property lies
in a moral disposition akin to the spirit of Christ. The Incarnation
when properly apprehended by man will mean nothing short of
social redemption.
The age-long work of the Christian Church in respect of
property has been to extend, to intensify, and to renew this moral
disposition akin to the spirit of Christ. We know how faithfully
the Apostles carried on the work. Two great principles remained
clear and axiomatic throughout the early centuries : " first, the in-
comparable value of persons as compared with property; and next
the purely relative property rights of any individual, not only as
1914.] PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES 457
compared with God's absolute rights but also as compared
with the paramount human or derivative rights of society as repre-
senting the commonweal." "Understand, ye rich that ye
are in duty bound to do service, having received more than ye
yourselves need. Learn that to others is lacking that wherein you
superabound. Be ashamed of holding fast what belongs to others.
Imitate God's equity, and none shall be poor." The Christian use
of property is a matter of just obligation rather than of optional
" charity."
Clement of Alexandria abates the stern severity of our Lord's
own words to the rich by making a distinction between the posses-
sion and abuse of even large properties. He points out, however,
that a minimum of material goods is necessary to the spiritual life,
but he does not follow this admission to its logical conclusion, that
all should have access to such a minimum. Tertullian teaches that
" we who mingle in mind and soul, have no hesitation as to fellow-
ship in property." St. Cyprian again insists that almsgiving is a
matter of justice. " We should imitate the equality of God the
Father in the common gifts of nature, which all should equally en-
joy." The opinions of Lactantius (c. 260-340) are perhaps even
more interesting as indicative of Christian sentiment about prop-
erty, just before the alliance between Church and State under
Constantine. In his Divine Institutes there is a treatise, de Justitia,
in which the elements of justice are set forth in the clearest manner.
Cupidity has disordered the natural relationship between man and
man ; under its influence not only does man cease to share with his
brethren the common fruits of the earth, but he goes even further
by snatching at property and accumulating it for his private gain;
then he manipulates the law in order to hold unjustly what he has
so unjustly acquired.
Now Christian justice has come to set right what has been
lost by " the desertion of divine religion, which alone causes one
man to hold another dear, and to know that he is bound to him
by the bond of brotherhood, in that God is one and the same Father
to all." It was to restore justice that Christ came. Justice has
two parts, piety which joins us to the God and Father of all; equity
which induces the feeling and practice of equality or fellowship to-
wards men. " The former is called religion," says Lactantius,
" the latter is named mercy or humaneness ; which virtue is proper
to just men and worshippers of God, because it alone contains the
principle of social life What we afford to our friends
458 PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES [July,
through affection, that we should afford to strangers through
humaneness."
We should not attempt to exaggerate the part played by the
Church by way of any direct initiation of social reforms in the
Roman Empire. " What it could do at once that to a large extent
it did. It created a fresh spirit, a new attitude of brotherhood and
spiritual equality irrespective of all outward distinctions, based on
the inherent sanctity of human personality as heir to divine sonship;
and this was bound forthwith to make all relations new, and in the
end if maintained in its original purity of emphasis to leaven
every circle of thought and action, however ethically remote from
such a dynamic centre."
The writer of this section indicates that in process of time two
factors were introduced, which seemed to lessen the more directly
spiritual process by which the Church had begun her work of social
redemption. He points, first of all, to what he calls " the ascetic
retreat from the world," and second, in the fourth century, to a
definitely pessimistic turn given to social idealism by the much
debated doctrine of original sin, and therewith he thinks that " the
true Christian idea of property passed largely into abeyance." Two
remarks may be permited : the first is that " the ascetic retreat from
the world " was preparatory to the great monastic movement, which
established property on a Christian basis in the west and northwest
of Europe. The second remark is that the Church has never al-
lowed what is called the pessimistic doctrine of original sin to be
separated from the optimistic doctrine of divine grace; though it is
true that a later Protestantism actually became pessimistic through
the loss of this proper balance. But our immediate business is to
trace the effect of Christian sentiment on the use and possession of
property.
The mediaeval sentiments about property are set forth in the
writings of the great Fathers and scholastics from the fourth to the
twelfth century, but it must be admitted that much of their thought
takes its color from the pre-Christian philosophy of the ancient
world. A distinction is clear through most of their writings between
nature and custom. One might almost say that nature represented
things in their right and original use as intended by the Creator,
and that custom represented such modified use as the majority of
creatures had made of them. This distinction then admits of an
ideal and an actual use, the latter being in point of fact the feeble
attempt of weak human nature to realize the former; indeed, many
1914.] PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES 459
non-Christian historians have been tempted to say that custom was
the outcome of a compromise between the Church and the world, not
altogether to the credit of the former, something permitted by the
Church on account of the hardness of men's hearts. But however
we may interpret it, the distinction remains valid. There is no
doubt, for instance, that St. Ambrose (340-397) uses it. " They
(the philosophers) counted it a requisite of justice that one should
treat common, that is public, goods as public, but private goods as
one's own. This is not indeed according to nature; for nature
gives all things in common to all. So God commanded all things
to be created in such a way that food should be common to all, and
the earth the common possession of all. Nature, therefore, created
the common right ; usurpation made the private right." 2 Or again,
he points out that God wished the earth to be the common possession
of all men, to produce its fruits for all men, but avarice created the
rights of property. 9
St. Jerome, Ambrosiaster, and St. Gregory the Great may be
quoted to the same effect. These theories may be directly traced
to Cicero and to Seneca, who represented the Stoic tradition, but the
point of most interest to us is the interpretation put upon them by
the Fathers themselves. Do they deliberately recommend com-
munism and denounce private property as sinful and a thing to be
abolished by law ? Evidently not. " The institution of property
represents both the fall of man from his primitive innocence, the
greed and avarice which refused to recognize common ownership
of things, and also the method by which the blind greed of human
nature may be controlled and regulated." Though an accommoda-
tion to the necessities of fallen human nature, it was a right and
necessary accommodation, one that met the approval of Christian
sentiment.
But though the Fathers admitted the institution of private prop-
erty, they also admitted a paramount claim on private property
owners, which would go far to make it a means of distributive
justice. The claims of those who were in need were acknowledged
to be superior to the claims of private property itself. The cry of
the needy is a claim of justice, and not a plea for " charity," as we
understand the word in the modern sense. This important prin-
ciple has been lost sight of in these later times, and the fact that
it is no longer admitted at law is a clear indication that it has lost
*St. Ambrose. Translated by Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D.
*Comm. on Psalms cxviii. 8, 22.
46o PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES [July,
its hold on the general conscience. " When we give necessaries
to the needy," writes St. Gregory, " we do not bestow upon them
our goods; we return to them their own; ice pay a debt of justice
rather than fulfill a work of mercy." 4
St. Augustine [writes Dr. Carlyle] holds that private prop-
erty is the creation of the State, and exists only in virtue of
the protection of the State. To some Donatists who, not un-
naturally, objected to the confiscation of their property in the
interest of the Catholics, he replies by asking by what law
they held their property, by human or divine law; and he an-
swers the question himself, and says that it is only by human
law that a man can say, " This is my house," or " This is my
slave." It is the law of the Emperor upon which is founded
any right of property: it is idle therefore for the Donatists
to say, " What have we to do with the Emperor ? " If you
take away the laws of the Emperor who could say, " This is my
house," or "This is my slave ?"... .In other passages he
maintains that the right of property is limited by the use to
which it is put, a man who does not use his property rightly
has no real or valid claim to it. 5
St. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes in respect of private prop-
erty: first, property regarded as a right to acquire and distribute,
and, second, property regarded as a right to use for oneself. In
the first sense he acknowledges the right, but in the second he re-
fuses to acknowledge it. Following Aristotle he defines man as a
political animal, and goes on to the deduction that private property
itself is a natural right, and not merely a customary one. St. Peter
Damian confirms St. Thomas in his opinions as to property. " Men
who are rich," he says, " are dispensatores rather than possessores;
they should not reckon that which they have to be their own; they
have not received their temporal goods merely to be consumed in
their own use, but are to act as administrators of these goods."
Two other points must be noticed before leaving the scholastic
view of property. One is that class distinctions are admitted as
valid in defining what is necessary and what is superfluous to any
given owner of property. The other is that actual human need is
put above the human law, for God wills that all should have what
they urgently need.
4 Ulpian's definition of justice is as follows: " Justitia est constant et perpetua
voluntas jus sutim cuique tribuendi."
"St. Augustine, Tract VI. in Joann. 25; Ep. xciii. n; Ep. cliii. 6; Sermo. 1. 2.
1914.] PROPERTY ITS RIGHTS AND DUTIES 461
The chapter on the influence of the Reformation on the general
conceptions of property, is very fair and interesting. The writer is
bound to admit that the principle of private judgment was trans-
ferred from the spiritual to the economic sphere, and that conse-
quently the doctrine " that a man may do what he will with his
own," was applied directly to private property with doubtful social
results. When a really zealous man like Wesley can give forth
the following dictum on the use of money, we can see how far the
principles of social justice had been tampered with. " Gain all you
can, save all you can, give all you can," is a counsel of perfection
in which the first two members seem unduly weighted against the
third. "The Puritan attitude," writes Mr. H. G. Wood, "was
marked by the absence of any emphatic social hope. In the first
place the Puritan seldom attached much weight to the claim which
the poor can make on the rich in virtue of the social character
of all wealth; and, second, the Puritan did not press any strong
moral criticism of ownership." But the temptations of the industrial
age have been strong and peculiar, and we must admit that the
Puritans are not the only religious body which has shown lack
of social fervor.
Canon Scott Holland's concluding essay is a little vague ; prin-
cipally for the reason that he appears to be in favor of a socialistic
solution to our present difficulties, but has hardly the courage to say
so straight out. The Bishop of Oxford has written a most stimu-
lating introduction, and the remaining essays of a more strictly
philosophical or historical nature are suggestive, especially that of
Mr. Hobhouse.
THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES.
BY CHARLES WAGER.
N the Palace of the Conservator} at Rome there is a
picture ascribed to Garofalo, which may be taken as a
symbol of the Franciscan mind. In the upper part
of it the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child are seen
in glory, surrounded by angels ; in the background of
the lower part there is a landscape of green and pale blue at the
right a little seacoast city with splendid buildings; at the left a
villa or farmhouse. Across the lower foreground, joining these
two scenes, there is a road backed by a parapet, above which one sees
the little harbor and the boats lying at anchor. Upon <his road,
in the centre of the foreground, stand St. Francis and St. Antony
of Padua talking together, as if they had met by chance, or had
paused on a journey to speak of the things represented in the upper
part of the picture, while at the left, before the villa, stand two
other friars, also engaged in conversation. The peaceful, lovely
landscape, peaceful as if with the light of evening upon it, suggests
the world as it looks to Franciscan eyes, and the angel-encircled
Virgin and Child represent the constant subject of Franciscan con-
templation, the thought that makes all the world radiant with divine
beauty. This is, perhaps, the secret of the charm of Umbrian
painting. Perugino, Pinturicchio, Tiberio, Lo Spagna and the rest,
in the quiet tints and gracious forms of their landscape backgrounds,
paint for us a world over which the spirit of contemplation has
passed, irradiating it with a pale splendor that falls from no earthly
skies.
Pinturicchio, indeed, has painted this very subject. In his
Coronation of the Virgin, at the Vatican, the greater part of the
picture is, of course, occupied by the sacred figures that assist
at the ceremony or that witness it with the eye of contemplation.
Above, in the angel-bordered mandorla, our Lord crowns His
Mother; below, in the background, are the Apostles, while in the
foreground there is a group of Franciscan saints, all kneeling
St. Francis, St. Bernardine of Siena, St. Bonaventure, St. Louis
of Toulouse, and St. Antony of Padua. Here, again, is a symbol
of the Franciscan mind engaged in meditation upon its favorite
1914-] THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES 463
theme; and a landscape in the background seems intended to sug-
gest the effect of that meditation upon the look of things in the
world. Here, too, there is a tiny city by the sea, and above it, on
a low hill, a severe little Franciscan church with a cross before it
and a simple belfry. From the belfry dangles a rope wherewith
some good lay brother will presently ring the Ave Maria, when the
evening light begins to fade from the little town and its harbor.
Beside the church, as if the painter was determined to omit no detail
that would give his picture the meaning that he desired, there is a
tall cliff with a rough door in the face of it, suggesting the moun-
tain hermitages so dear to the Franciscan heart.
In these two pictures are represented most of the elements of
the Franciscan life the depths of devotion from which it springs,
the habit of contemplation which nourishes it, its sense of relation
to the world of men, its need of retirement, its love of nature, its
taste for simplicity and severity. All these elements and others,
not so fundamental, but essential nevertheless, we must take into
account if we would understand the Franciscan mind and the spirit
of the places which it has fashioned for its abode.
When I speak of " Franciscan places," I do not refer to the
famous shrines visited yearly by hundreds of pilgrims and sight-
seers, and, of necessity, ordered to some degree in their interest.
Far be it from me to imply that San Francesco at Assisi, Santa
Maria degli Angeli, and La Verna are not in their inner life as
truly Franciscan as the humblest convent of the hills. But when
one sees them only at the high feasts of the Order, thronged by the
curious and the devout, the Franciscan aroma seems inevitably in
a measure to escape. But outstay the crowd of visitors, walk in the
solitary, echoing cloister with some earnest young priest, linger in
the convent garden at sunset when friars and novices take the air
for an hour together, or, from a dark corner of the church, hear
them at their Office in choir, and you will feel the Franciscan
current running pure and free under the perturbed surface of their
days.
Nor do I refer to a great centre of education, like the college
of Sant' Antonio at Rome, where young men are trained for the
Franciscan life; nor to that noble house of study at Quaracchi,
near Florence, where scholars from almost every country of Europe
devote laborious and delightful days to the history of their Order;
nor even to the quiet chamber in a busy convent, where a venerable
scholar records the triumphs of the religion in distant lands. Yet,
464 THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES [July,
in all these, the Franciscan spirit is present unmistakably. An
hour's conversation with these men, engaged in a work that is
not typically Franciscan, will almost always show that it is per-
formed in the very spirit of St. Francis.
I refer primarily to those little convents hidden among the
hills, dwelt in by three or four friars, accessible with difficulty
and visited by few, without other attraction than the memories
that they enshrine and the spirit that they express. They are so
small and rude that you feel at once the appropriateness of the
ancient Franciscan name for them. " Convent " implies a larger
number of friars than they usually contain, and " monastery " has
stately Benedictine associations that render it quite inapplicable.
They are merely what St. Francis and his followers were ac-
customed to call them " places." Almost always they record a
visit of the Saint to the spot on which they stand. Often they
contain a tiny cell where he lodged, a well from which he drew
water, a wood where he retired to pray. But even when they are
not venerable with such memories of the Saint, they are lovely with
his spirit.
They are usually approached by a road that is characteristi-
cally Franciscan in its disregard of physical comfort. The pos-
sessors of the finest sites in Europe pay the price of their supremacy.
But they are not addicted to ease, and when it is necessary they
descend into the valley to offer Mass, to seek alms, or to do a
work of mercy without complaint. Meanwhile, they have the
solitude which they crave amid the silence of the hills, and herein
they show themselves true sons of their founder. For he drank
alternately of two fountains, solitude and society, his own soul
and other men's, nature and human nature, and this is one of the
secrets of the Franciscan charm. Always among his sons you will
find this craving for remoteness from the world, yet always a
readiness to descend into it. Almost always you will find near
these " places " a wood suited to solitude and prayer, and always a
garden devoted to the useful and the beautiful works of men.
However steep and penitential the road that leads to these ex-
hilarating heights, exhilarating alike to body and spirit, the pilgrim
has no mind to complain.
Arrived at the top, you will find the convent hidden among
trees, or standing bleak and austere in a clearing, or clinging
perilously to the edge of a precipice. It consists of a little church,
bare of ornament within and without; a cloister court, with its
I9I4-] THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES 465
garden and well, surrounded by a covered passage; a clean, white-
washed refectory; and the tiny cells of the friars ranged along a
narrow, stone-paved corridor. Occasionally, the church will con-
tain a single precious work of art, but, for the most part, the inter-
est of these places is quite other than artistic. Life in these places
is busy, ordered, regular. There is the Divine Office to be recited
at least four times a day. There are Masses to be sung, two simple
meals to be eaten, study, meditation, recreation in the refectory
or the garden, each at its appointed hour. Meantime, individual
friars have been going about the countryside doing parish duty or
collecting alms, and many poor, unless the convent is very remote
indeed, have been fed at the convent gate.
Often the little convent on the hilltop or the mountainside
is a veritable shrine, marking the scene of some important event
or touching incident of the Franciscan story. Such is Fonte Co-
lombo, the Mt. Sinai of the Order, where St. Francis, the Moses
of a new exodus, dictated by divine inspiration the Rule of his
religion. Such is La Foresta, where, according to the gracious
legend of the Fioretti, the Saint miraculously multiplied the grapes
of the poor priest whose vineyard was destroyed by the multitude
of visitors who thronged to hear the new gospel of poverty. Such
is Greccio, the scene of one of the tenderest and most character-
istic of all Franciscan legends, the institution of the Christmas
manger. Such is even the quite modern convent of Passignano,
which looks down from its ilexes upon silver Trasimeno and its
islands, for upon one of them, according to the Fioretti, St. Francis
passed a Lent without food, in imitation of our Lord's forty
days in the Wilderness. Such, on a much larger scale than any
of the convents I have mentioned, is La Verna, next to the Por-
ziuncola and the tomb at Assisi the most sacred of all Franciscan
shrines. For here occurred that marvelous event the impression
of the stigmata an event so exactly appropriate to the character
and mission of the Saint that it scarcely needs the external authen-
tication, which it has in abundance. It must, I fear, be granted
that these places, rich as they are in holy and poetic associations,
are, at first sight, sometimes disappointing. Their effect -is rather
trivial than impressive, so cumbered are they by memorial chapels
and monuments. The scene of the slightest incident of the Fioretti,
however ill-authenticated, is identified and marked. The genera-
tions of friars who built these monuments, apparently never imag-
ined that it was desirable to leave their holy places unadorned.
VOL. XCIX. 3O
466 THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES [July,
The Porziuncola and the chapel of the Transitns must be made
precious with fresco, the scene of the stigmatization must be cov-
ered by a chapel, the exact places where the birds welcomed St.
Francis to La Verna, and where the manger of Greccio was built
must be marked. One can only imagine with a sigh what the
holy places of Franciscan tradition might have been if their custo-
dians had understood how touching they were in their original
simplicity. Only at San Damiano, by some miracle, has the hand
of the pious devastator been stayed, and for that reason it remains
the most touchingly real of all Franciscan sites. Yet this child-
like way of expressing devotion ceases to be annoying as soon as
we perceive what underlies it. It proves, at least, that the
persons who built these memorials, were actuated by no mere
veneration for antiquity as such. These clumsy chapels and
crude monuments are really altars upon which is daily offered the
genuine devotion of human hearts. Reverence for their past has
been transmuted into a passion and a motive, and this, to a practical
age like ours, should go far to excuse their innocent vandalism.
It sometimes seems that the convents which have no ancient
associations are the most delightful of all convents of no great
antiquity, unsought by pilgrims and unknown to tourists ; convents
in which there is nothing of interest nothing, that is to say,
except the always interesting spirit of the place and its inhab-
itants. The friars have nothing to show nothing but kindness and
instinctive courtesy, hospitality, and sympathy. There are con-
vents of the other sort, to be quite truthful, in which the impression
of the show place is somewhat too prominent, and the friar who
acts as your escort reminds you uncomfortably of the professional
guide. There is a suggestion of the lecturer in his explanations,
and he even seems in some haste to be rid of you and to be done
with his task. There is never, so far as my experience goes, the
least hint that he desires or expects a gratuity. If you offer it,
he will accept it, for the convent, often with a deprecatory, " But
it is not necessary." From greed, at all events, the most un-Fran-
ciscan friar is wholly free. Indeed, I remember an instance when
a lay brother, who was very far, indeed, from resembling St. Fran-
cis, obliged me to leave my visiting card and a message for his
absent superior, in order that it might be quite clear that I had
forced my small offering upon him against his protest.
Nothing, indeed, can seriously mar the charm of these places,
and if the convent chance to be a house of novices, it will have
1914.] THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES 467
the additional charm which youth gives to all that it touches.
You will see the strong, brown Umbrian and Tuscan boys, like the
young Ion in Euripides' play, sweeping the brick floor of the
church or dusting the confessionals, casting furtive glances, as
they work, at the curious foreigner, and listening with politely
concealed smiles to his halting Italian. If you are so fortunate
as to be there at the right hour, you will see them go in pro-
cession to their sacred places, singing with their loud young voices
some hymn or antiphon of the seraphic Breviary, Salve Sancte
Pater, or Signasti, Do mine, Franciscum, or Voce mea clamavi, or
Gloriosa I "irginum. You will see their grave faces in choir, bent *
over their Office. You will see them at evening, under the charge
of the novice-master, walking and talking together in the convent
garden with a boyish gayety that is veiled and softened, so to say,
by the sense of their vocation. It is not difficult to explain the
peculiar appeal of a house of Franciscan novices. Here is a group
of young men who are learning what it is to bear the yoke in their
youth, in whom, easily and naturally, while mind and body are
plastic, are maturing the pleasant fruits of a disciplined life, so-
briety, contentment, purity, industry, stability, sincerity. They are
entering daily, before their minds are attracted by more specious
joys, upon the great heritage of the Franciscan virtues. They are
learning to be humble and chaste, obedient and self-denying, cour-
teous and kind, with a courtesy and a kindness that are natural,
spontaneous, lavished equally upon all. One is tempted to say that
exquisite courtesy is, after all, the most characteristic Franciscan
virtue. Where is it acquired ? These boys are, for the most part,
peasants Italian peasants, to be sure, in whom civility is native;
but such exquisite courtesy as is all but universal among Franciscans
is the fruit of training, or, more probably, of example. It is
a tradition, interrupted only in the heat of controversy, from the
most perfect of gentlemen, who, like Dante, believed that courtesy
is an attribute of God Himself.
Memories, half sad and half happy, crowd upon one as he tries
to evoke the spirit of these peaceful places. He remembers pathetic
convents, deserted or turned to secular uses, from which all that
happy, beneficent, community life has departed. The altars are
dismantled, the choirs are silent, the cells are full of refuse, the
refectory is a storehouse. What devout aspiration has risen daily
from those altars! With what penance and praise those choirs
have been vocal! What spare feasts of brotherly contentment
468 THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES [July,
those refectories have witnessed ! What meditations, perhaps what
visions and what ecstasies, have filled those cells with light ! Now,
only the sunny garden and the cloister with its well seem still to live
with the life of other days. The faded frescoes of the church,
which once taught a daily lesson to the devout heart, now look down
upon the casual sight-seer, who stares and goes his way. Here and
there a splendid panelled altar-piece, the work of a master, the gift
of devotion or of pious remembrance, has been torn from its
sacred setting and cumbers the floor of a municipal museum. But
the traveler remembers sights sadder even than these.
One hot Sunday afternoon in August, I stood knocking at the
door of an ancient convent hidden in the Umbrian hills. For a
long time there was no answ r er. On its height, above the world,
the convent seemed asleep. Finally the door was opened by an old
and somewhat grim-visaged friar, with his finger between the leaves
of a rubricated manuscript. He greeted me civilly, summoned
another friar, who seemed even older than he, to show me what little
there w^as to show. The place was ruinous and not very clean, for
there were only these two aged priests and one lay brother to care
for a house that was once populous with life. My guide, who was
both intelligent and devout, had lived here in his youth, but had been
driven away by the suppression of 1866. He had gone to Argen-
tina, where he had labored until, as he said, he was good for noth-
ing, and had returned to his native hills to die. I remarked that it
was a solitary life. He looked at me with his dim old eyes and
said: "Yes, youth likes company, but to the old a solitary life
makes little difference." I left the convent and looked dow r n upon
the green valley with its five lakes flashing in the sunshine, sur-
rounded by its cloister of distant hills, and I reflected once more on
the persistence of tl\e Franciscan spirit. Here it was on this deso-
late height in all its purity the devotion, the simplicity, the long
life of labor and of holy and happy memories, the contentment in
the midst of solitude, the kindness and friendliness, which in this
case were almost fatherly; but touched, in my mind, with sadness.
It was not merely the desolation of his surroundings, nor yet his
solitude, that made the old friar seem to me so pathetic. It was the
sense, rather, that this desolation and solitude were somehow sym-
bolic of the new world's attitude towards the Franciscan spirit,
which it needs so sorely, and for which it seems to have so little
place.
But the traveler has other memories happier than these. He
1 91 4.] THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES 469
remembers the sense of awe that fell upon him as he realized the
associations of some famous or holy place. One summer day at
Greccio I was sitting in the wood below the convent. The air
was fresh and sweet with mint. There was no sound but the distant
bells of cattle and the voices of their little guides. The ancient
oaks drooped their great arms almost to the ground. Above me
the white convent clung to the dark, wooded mountainside like
some fungal growth, and on a distant height, above the hamlet of
Greccio, I could see the little chapel that was St. Francis' first abode
in this region. And suddenly I realized that it was this wood that
was all alight with torches and all alive with voices on that Christ-
mas Eve in 1223, when St. Francis held the Divine Child in his
arms, and murmured His name so lovingly that the syllables of it,
says the legend, were like the droppings of the honeycomb.
Such recollections throng upon one at almost all of these
" places," and are a part of their peculiar charm. Assisi and La
Verna are well-nigh oppressive with them. But they have other
associations, too associations with which the traveler, himself,
has enriched them, and which are henceforth a part of the spell
which, even in memory, they lay upon him. I remember, for in-
stance, a Mass which I heard one St. Francis' Day at San Damiano.
It was early in the morning, and the little church was dim save
for the soft light of the candles. There was no beauty anywhere.
On the altar were common vases of ordinary flowers in addition,
of course, to the inevitable artificial ones zinnias, wild and cul-
tivated, asters, and late roses. The friars and novices sang noisily
and out of tune; but the Mass was perfect. I thought of the
inscription above their choir stalls Non vox sed votum, non clamor
sed amor; but here, I knew, were both. And, after the Mass, what
peace in the quiet, dingy church ! Beside me was the window into
which the young man, Francis, threw his money, " valuing it no
more than dust." Behind the altar was the base upon which the
crucifix once stood that gave him his mission, and near it the window
where St. Clare and the Poor Ladies took farewell of him when he
paid them his last visit.
Within a few steps of where I was sitting were three tiny
rooms, bare and plain to the sight, but how beautiful with mem-
ories! One was the sacristy, built upon the spot where St. Clare
prepared a hut for St. Francis when he was unable to see the light
of day, and where, like the blind Milton, he sang a hymn to the
sun. A second was St. Clare's own choir, with its ancient stalls,
470 THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES [July,
at which she and the holy women who surrounded her recited their
Office. And the third covers the spot where many of those holy
women lie buried Ortolana, her mother ; Agnes and Beatrice, her
sisters; Pacifica, her aunt; Amata, her niece; and all those other
" virgins of the enclosed garden " whose very names are lovely :
Illuminata and Mansueta, Benvenuta, Bennata and Consolata,
Benedetta and Felicita. The place was full of presences of the
distant and the dead but ever-living Saints of God, presences as
real, as truly alive, as the flesh and blood friars who have taken
their places.
Indeed, it is this twofold habitation that gives to San Damiano,
as to all places that have a history, its profound appeal. The
devotion, the goodness, the kindness, the genuine Franciscanism
of its present inhabitants interpret and make credible the life of
those departed ones, and that, in turn, gives depth and meaning
to the life of to-day. Neither can do without the other. Without
its background, the Franciscan life of the present day would still,
indeed, be useful and beautiful, but it would lack the poetry that
gives it a place apart among the religious associations of the world.
On the other hand, without its modern sequel, the story of St.
Francis and St. Clare would be only a lovely myth, a golden legend,
of little or no practical account to the world of to-day, though of
perpetual interest and value to the soul of man. It is a mistake
into which many a student of things Franciscan, especially if he be
not a Catholic, too easily falls, to regard the friars of the present
as merely the custodians of a great tradition. They are its custo-
dians, its sufficient custodians, but they are more than this; they
are its continuators and its embodiment.
I sat one afternoon in the twilight of the little chapel of
the Transitns at the Porziuncola, the face of Delia Robbia's St.
Francis looking down upon me dimly from the shrine, the faces
of the first companions glimmering from the walls in the faint
light of the lamps; and I asked myself, not for the first time,
" What is the secret of the power of this place upon the imagina-
tion and the heart? " It is not splendid, and no miracles have been
performed here none but the well-nigh unique miracle, the close
of a perfectly holy life; none but the perpetual miracle, the re-
newal of man's courage and hope and joy by contact with such a
life. One thinks with wonder of his tortured body and the life-
long triumph of the spirit over it, culminating here in the Voce
clamavi. It is St. Bonaventure who says: " Neque enim languor
1914.] THE SPIRIT OF FRANCISCAN PLACES 471
vel desidia locum habet ubi amor is stimulus semper ad major a
perurget"
The living presence of St. Francis is so vividly felt here that
it is impossible not to invoke him and to examine oneself in his
presence. What, for example, would he think of us and of our
world, if he should return to it? At first thought, it seeins easy
to say. Surely a spirit so devout, so obedient, so humble, so free
from self-interest, would hold us and our ways in abhorrence. But
the Saints, like all the great, have the quality of unexpectedness, as
well as the all-encompassing charity which is one of the notes of
their sanctity, one of the marks of their relationship to the God
of the just and the unjust. And probably St. Francis would not
think of us so badly, or at least so hopelessly, as we sometimes think
of ourselves. Certainly the modern world looks with scant tolera-
tion upon the virtues that he exemplified, and practises them little,
or not at all. No one would assert that devoutness, humility,
obedience and self-abnegation were notes of our day. Only in
our growing sense of human brotherhood, and in our sense of
responsibility for the poor and the helpless, can we be said to come
near him in spirit. Nevertheless, our generation admires and loves
him, traces footsteps and treasures his words, as few generations
since his own have done. And it may well be that to have loved
the places that he loved and to have recognized and venerated his
likeness in his sons will avail us somewhat, not only in the
final accounting, but also in our task of fashioning that new world
which, slowly and with infinite travail, we are building out of the
ruins of his.
OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE. 1
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
EAN WORCESTER, who did yeoman work for
twelve years in the Far East building up our colonial
empire, has just written two most absorbing volumes
on the history and progress of the Philippines since
the first days of the American occupation. He writes
primarily to prove to the people of the United States that the Fili-
pinos are utterly unfit for independence at the present moment, and
that for us to withdraw from the islands before their inhabitants
have proved their ability to manage their own affairs, would be on
our part a betrayal of a trust. In his opening chapter, he complains
bitterly of " the preponderance of false and misleading statements
about conditions in the Philippines," and ascribes it to either ignor-
ance or malice.
Dean Worcester takes particular pains to point, out the many
misstatements in Judge Blount's The American Occupation of the
Philippines, 1898-1912. He is able to demonstrate the utter in-
accuracy of this work by quoting frequently from the captured In-
surgent records, which have been translated and compiled by Major
J. R. M. Taylor.
It has often been stated by Aguinaldo, the Insurgent leaders,
Judge Blount and others, that certain American Consuls Pratt
of Singapore, Wildman of Hongkong, and Williams of Manila
and naval officers like Admiral Dewey promised the Filipinos
their independence would be recognized by the United States.
Some have even asserted that the cooperation of the Insurgents
in the military operations against Manila were sought for and se-
cured; that the Insurgents were at least de facto allies of the
United States, and that they were in the end shamelessly betrayed
and wantonly attacked.
Dean Worcester proves to the hilt the falsity of these serious
charges against the honor of the United States, and by documentary
evidence allows the reader to judge for himself. Mr. E. P. Pratt,
our Consul-General at Singapore, was, or professed to be, in hearty
1 The Philippines Past and Present. By Dean C. Worcester. Two Volumes.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $6.00.
1914.] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 473
sympathy with the Filipino leaders in their desire for independence,
but in his dealings with them he was most anxious not to compro-
mise his government. We have his word against Aguinaldo's in
a statement made July 28, 1898: " I declined even to discuss with
General Aguinaldo the question of the future policy of the United
States with regard to the Philippines; I held out no hopes to him
of any kind, committed the government in no way whatever, and
in the course of our confidences, never acted upon the assumption
that the government would cooperate with him General Aguinaldo
for the furtherance of any plans of his own," etc.
We know, as a matter of fact, that soon after the meeting
of Aguinaldo and Pratt at Singapore, the former left for Hongkong
to attend a meeting of the Junta (May 4, 1898). We have the
minutes of this meeting, and they make no mention whatever of
any promise of independence. Sandico, an influential Tagalog
leader, urged his confreres at this same meeting to consult with
Admiral Dewey at Manila about " the intentions of the United
States." This does not look as if any promise of independence
had been made.
Admiral Dewey gave the lie direct to Aguinaldo in his testi-
mony : 2
The Chairman: There was no recognition of the republic?
Admiral Dewey: Never. I did not think I had any authority
to do it, and it never occurred to me to do it. There was a
sort of reign of terror; there was no government. These
people had got power for the first time in their lives, and they
were riding rough-shod over the community. The acts of
cruelty which were brought to my notice were hardly credible.
Consul Wildman of Hongkong and Consul Williams of Manila
both asserted that they made no promise of independence, and that
they were kept in ignorance of the fact that it was even desired up to
the last possible moment. Indeed, at the outset Aguinaldo in all
his proclamations, which were likely to be read by Americans, care-
fully refrained from making any statement to that effect. It was
only as his army increased in size, and he felt able to declare hos-
tilities, that he put forth the claim that the Americans had promised
him independence, and had proved false to their plighted word.
Judge Blount in his book declares that the Insurgents not only
defeated the Spaniards without our assistance, but defeated them so
thoroughly that Spanish sovereignty had practically disappeared
1 Senate Documents, vol. 25, Fifty-seventh Congress, First Session, pp. 2,928,2,041.
474 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
from the islands at the time Manila surrendered. This was not the
opinion of the Filipino leaders themselves, as we learn from the
letters and dispatches of Regidor, Agoncillo, Apacible, and Agui-
naldo. Early in September, 1898, they had all become convinced
that the assistance of the United States was necessary, if they hoped
to destroy all vestige of Spanish sovereignty.
The Insurgent force never cooperated with that of the United
States. The two had a common enemy, and that was practically
all that they did have in common. Each proceeded against that
enemy in its own way. Each ignored requests of the other relative
to the manner in which it should proceed. The documents cap-
tured by our troops prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
Filipino leaders intended to use us in their fight against Spain,
and then to fall upon us if we did not leave them to their own
devices once the victory had been won. Some of the most in-
fluential and most patriotic Filipinos favored either annexation to
the United States or a protectorate, but neither of these plans fell
in w r ith the views of the ambitious Aguinaldo and his conceited
followers.
Aguinaldo had succeeded in defeating the Spanish garrisons
of the provinces, and had been able to equip a force that surrounded
Manila, but he was absolutely powerless to capture the city by as-
sault. While he did not oppose the landing of the American
troops, he was not at all friendly, affording the necessary trans-
portation requested by General Anderson only after a three weeks
delay, and a threat of seizure if he failed to comply. The In-
surgents twice informed the Spaniards in advance of the projected
American attacks, and secretly treated with the Spaniards in order
to secure the surrender of the city for themselves, utterly regardless
of their so-called " allies." Even after the Spaniards had agreed
upon the surrender to the United States troops, the Filipinos en-
deavored to push home an attack, and fired on some Spanish sol-
diers under 'a flag of truce. They at once demanded a share in the
" war booty," looted the parts of the city which they occupied,
and only retired from their positions when warned by General Otis
that they would be driven out if they did not go at once. Letter
after letter of the Insurgent leaders prove that they were most
anxious to capture Manila for themselves, because of the prestige
which such a capture would give them in the eyes of the world.
Admiral Dewey and General Merritt had no option with regard
to the request of the Filipinos for a joint occupation of the city of
I9I4-] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 475
Manila. For in a telegram dated August 1 7th, the President of the
United States had ordered :
That there must be no joint occupation with the Insurgents.
The United States in the possession of Manila city, Manila bay,
and harbor, must preserve the peace and protect persons and
property within the territory occupied by their military and
naval forces. The Insurgents and all others must recognize
the military occupation and authority of the United States, and
the cessation of hostilities proclaimed by the President. Use
whatever means in your judgment are necessary to this end.
The temporary government established by Aguinaldo was in
no sense a republic, or, as Judge Blount calls it,' " a wonderfully
complete going-concern throughout the Philippine archipelago be-
fore the Treaty of Paris was signed." On the contrary, it was a
military oligarchy imposed upon the people without their consent
by armed force, and maintained by the free use of murder as a
governmental agency. The chapters on Insurgent Rule in the Caga-
yan Valley, in the Visayas, and elsewhere is a continued tale of mur-
der, torture, rape, thievery, and injustice of every sort. The Insur-
gents' treatment of the Friars alone would mark them out as Malay
savages, unworthy of the sympathy of any intelligent, civilized man.
Leaders like Villa and Leyba delighted in subjecting these priests to
every indignity. They were tortured, whipped, beaten, not " as a
result of ages of tyranny," as men of Judge Blount's stamp have
suggested, but, as our author honestly states, " out of insensate
greed of gold, and damnable viciousness." He adds : " The tor-
mentors were men of distant provinces, with no possible personal
grievances against the priests whom they martyrized."
A great deal has been written about the cruelty of American
soldiers in the last or guerrilla stage of the war. Dean Worcester
does not deny that there were some individual acts of cruelty, but
he does deny that they were carried on to any great degree.
The members of the first Philippine Commission were Colonel
Charles Denby, President J. G. Schurman, J. R. MacArthur, Ad-
miral George Dewey, General E. S. Otis, and Dean Worcester.
Their first meeting was in Washington, January 18, 1899, the
President directing them " to aid in the most humane, pacific, and
effective extension of authority throughout these islands, and to se-
cure, with the least possible delay, the benefits of a wise and gen-
erous protection of life and property to the inhabitants." They
476 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
were to proceed to Manila as soon as possible, announce by public
proclamation the mission intrusted to them, namely, of alleviating
the burden of taxation, establishing industrial and commercial pros-
perity, and providing for the safety of persons and property. With-
out interfering with the military authorities, the Commission was
to make a full report to the Department of State concerning the im-
provements in the public order that it considered necessary, v. g.,
in regard to the forms of local government, the administration of
justice, the collection of customs and other taxes, the means of
transportation, the need of public improvements, etc.
Judge Blount has stated that the Commission was sent to the
islands to help General Otis conduct the war. As a matter of fact,
there was no war" at the time it was sent, and its instructions were
most explicit against interfering with the military government
or its officers. As Dean Worcester says : " We were sent to deliver
a message of good will, to investigate, and to recommend, and
there our powers ended." Mr. Schurman and our author only
learned of the outbreak of hostilities on reaching Yokohama, Jan-
uary 31, 1899.
The Commissioners spent one year until March, 1900 in-
vestigating conditions in the islands, conferring with Filipinos from
various parts of the archipelago, and many of the foreign residents.
Among the witnesses examined were farmers, bankers, brokers,
merchants, lawyers, physicians, railroad men, ship owners, educa-
tors, and public officials. They were most careful not to interfere
in the slightest degree with the conduct of the war, and they never
conferred with the Insurgent leaders save with the previous knowl-
edge and approval of General Otis.
Dean Worcester has high words of praise for all his fellow-
workers, with the exception of President Schurman of Cornell,
whom he calls a man of very variable opinions. Mr. Schurman
seemed to delight in working independently of his confreres, which
was not at all honorable, and his viewpoint changed with every new
witness that he interrogated. He differed from the other members
of the Commission in his report to Washington, and asserted that if
his policy were adopted, he and General Aguinaldo would settle
things without the assistance of the others, or that he would resign.
His policy was not adopted, but he did not resign, though he re-
turned soon after to the United States.
The report of the first Philippine Commission stated, No-
vember 2, 1900, with regard to our duty towards the islands.
I9I4-] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 477
Should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the Com-
mission believes that the government of the Philippines would
speedily lapse into anarchy, which would excuse, if it did not
necessitate, the intervention of other powers and the eventual
division of the islands among them. Only through American oc-
cupation is the idea of a free, self-governing and united Philip-
pine commonwealth at all conceivable. And the indispensable
need from the Filipino point of view of maintaining American
sovereignty over the archipelago is recognized by all intelligent
Filipinos, and even by those Insurgents who desire an Amer-
ican protectorate. The latter, it is true, would take the reve-
nues, and leave us the responsibilities. Nevertheless, they
recognize the indubitable fact that the Filipinos cannot stand
alone. Thus the welfare of the Filipinos coincides with the
dictates of national honor in forbidding our abandonment of
the archipelago.
On March 16, 1900, a second Commission was appointed to
establish civil government in the islands. Its members were: W.
H. Taft, of Ohio; L. E. Wright, of Tennessee; H. C. Ide, of Ver-
mont;. B. Moses, of California, and the author, who was the only
member of the first Commission reappointed. They had an arduous
task before them, for it was hard to arrange for the gradual trans-
fer of control from military to civil authority.
On September ist, the Commission assumed the legislative
power, their first official act being to appropriate $2,000,000.00
Mexican for the construction and repair of highways and bridges.
In the first year it passed four hundred and forty-nine acts, which
created the administrative bureaus of a well-organized government,
established civil rule in many provinces and towns, provided for
the necessary expenses of government, organized the law courts
and reformed the judiciary, established a local police force, im-
proved sanitary conditions, provided educational facilities, etc.
At the outset no laws were passed until they had been published
in the public press, or until they had passed a second reading, in
order that the public might have ample opportunity of suggesting
objections or amendments to the bills. Before enacting them, they
were always submitted to the military governor for his considera-
tion and comment. The Commission invariably sought the opinions
of the military authorities as to the fitness of the provinces for civil
rule, and never established it without their approval. In point of
fact the military authorities recommended the establishment of
civil government in three provinces rather prematurely, with the
478 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
result that the soldiers were obliged a second time to assume entire
control.
The first provincial officers were necessarily appointed and not
elected. The Commission was helped greatly by the Federal Party,
which was formed by the best and most influential Filipinos, Decem-
ber 23, 1900, to aid in the establishment of peace and order. Its
members succeeded in persuading many Insurgent leaders to lay
down their anus, and were able to convince many of the people of
the good will and honesty of the American government. Many of
them were at once sentenced to death by Aguinaldo, and numbers
of them w-ere assassinated, but they continued undaunted to render
invaluable services to the new government.
By September i, 1901, a complete central government was es-
tablished. Wright became Secretary of Commerce and Police ; Ide,
Secretary of Finance and Justice; Moses, Secretary of Public In-
struction, and Worcester, Secretary of the Interior. Three Fili-
pinos, Legarda, Luzuriaga and de Tavera, were added to the Com-
mission. Before the Commission ceased to be the legislative body
of the islands, it passed some eight hundred acts, the working out of
which Dean Worcester discusses in separate chapters.
Dean Worcester has hearty words of praise for all our Gov-
ernors in the Philippines Taft, Wright, Ide, Smith, and Forbes.
The present Governor-General, Harrison, is the first official who has
entered upon his duties without previous experience in the country
which he is to govern, and according to our author, " he has as yet
displayed little inclination to profit by the experience of either Fili-
pino or American administrative insular officials of high rank."
At the present moment the Philippines have t\vo delegates
both Filipinos to the Congress of the United States, appointed by
the Legislature in accordance with the provision of section eight
of the Act of Congress, July i, 1902. The officials of the islands,
appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, are a Gov-
ernor-General, and Secretaries of the Interior, of Finance and
Justice, of Commerce and Police, and of Public Instruction. The
only Filipino secretary is the Secretary of Finance and Justice.
The Legislature is composed of two houses, the Philippine
Commission and the Philippine Assembly. The Commission is
composed of nine members; five are the Governor-General and the
four Secretaries of departments ex officio, and four are appointed by
the President subject to the confirmation by the Senate. Four of
the members are Filipinos and five are Americans.
1914.] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 479
The Philippine Assembly is composed of eighty-one elected
members, all of whom are Filipinos. They represent thirty-four
of the thirty-nine provinces into which the archipelago is divided.
The two houses of the Legislature have equal powers. Neither has
any special privilege in the matter of initiating legislation, and
affirmative action by both is required in order to pass it. The Phil-
ippine Commission has full control of the Moro Province, the
Mountain Province, and the Provinces of Neuva Vizcaya and Agu-
san, all of which are largely composed of Moros and other non-
Christian tribes.
The regularly organized provinces have a governor who is
elected; a treasurer appointed by the Governor-General with the
approval of the Commission, and a third member who is elected
these three constituting a provincial board. The vast majority of
the elective officers are Filipinos, and ten of the appointive officers
also, the policy being to appoint as many Filipinos as possible.
The municipalities of the provinces elect their own officers, and
as a rule control their own affairs. The provincial treasurers
supervise the municipal expenditures, and the Governor-Gen-
eral may remove municipal officers for misconduct. Three
of the Justices of the Supreme Court are Filipinos, including
the Chief Justice; nearly half of the judges of the courts of first
instance are Filipinos, and practically all the justices of the peace.
At the close of the fiscal year, June 30, 1913, seventy-one per cent
of the employees in the classified civil service were Filipinos. Be-
fore we took charge of the islands, the Filipinos were utterly
ignored as far as the government of their own country was con-
cerned.
Dean Worcester tells us that when the first Philippine Com-
mission left Washington, the President assured it that no political
appointees should be forced upon them. Soon after arriving at
Manila, Mr. Taft drafted a civil service act, which did a great deal
to secure honest and efficient work in the several departments of
the government service. It at first applied to comparatively few
positions, but was gradually extended to include the treasurers of all
municipalities, and to nearly all positions, including teachers, in the
executive and judicial branches of the central government, the pro-
vincial governments, and the cities of Manila and Baguio. None
of the States of the Union has such a widely extended classification
of its civil service. Neither the Governor-General nor the Bureau
of Civil Service has the right to transfer any position from the
480 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
classified to the unclassified service, or exempt from examination
any position in the classified service. This is different from the
United States law, which allows such interference by the President
and by the Governors of the various States, generally in the line
of reward for political services. In the early days there were
naturally few Filipino candidates with the necessary educational
qualifications. During the last two years 1911-1913 eighty-nine
per cent of the persons appointed have been Filipinos, including the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The establishment and maintenance of order in the islands have
been in great part due to the efficiency and bravery of the Philippine
constabulary, recruited from among the Filipinos, and officered
by both Americans and Filipinos. For twelve years they have
fought the head-hunters of the Mountain Province ; the Mohamme-
dan Moros of Mindanao, Jolo, and Palawan; the bloody pulajancs
of Samar and Peyte; the wily tulisanes of Luzon, all of whom were
utterly unrestrained by the ordinary rules of civilized warfare.
The Filipino makes the best man for police duty, because he knows
the local topography and the native dialects. He can get along on
$363.50 a year compared to the American soldier's $1,400.00; he
is familiar with the characteristics of his own people; he is better
able to live off the country and keep well, despite the greatest hard-
ships and long-continued privations.
In the administration of justice, there have been many reforms.
They have resulted in simplifying organization, in decreasing the
possibility of corruption and partiality, and in diminishing the
cost and time of litigation. In an appendix the author describes
fully the past and present organization of the courts, the subject
being rightly deemed too technical for the text.
At the time of the American occupation, the city of Manila
and many towns of the provinces were veritable pestholes of disease.
Malaria, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, beri-beri, etc., were fright-
fully common. The water supply was most impure, the hospital
facilities most inadequate, an adequate sewer system was unknown
cemeteries were frequently built near the local supplies of drinking
water, and the ordinary laws of sanitation either unknown or ig-
nored. The Health Bureau has accomplished wonders in the last
few years. It has installed a modern sewer system costing $2,000,-
ooo.oo; successfully fought a number of severe epidemics of cholera
and smallpox; found a specific for "yaws;" established a number
of excellent hospitals ; supplied the people with comparatively pure
I9I4-] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 481
drinking water; insisted upon an effective quarantine, and taken
particular care of the insane and the lepers.
About 530,000 children are being educated in the public schools
to-day, compared with the 177,000 of the Spanish regime. As a
rule Filipino teachers are employed in the lower grades, while
Americans take charge of the higher instruction. In July, 1913,
there were about 8,500 Filipino teachers in the schools. Girls are
being taught to cook, sew, embroider, and make lace. Boys and
girls are taught gardening, and boys are instructed in wood working,
iron working, and other trades. There are a number of provincial
high schools, the Manila Normal School and the University of the
Philippines for higher academic work, and the Manila Schools ov
Commerce and of Arts and Trades for advanced work on industrial
and commercial lines. As a result of this educational system, Eng-
lish is now far more widely spoken in the islands than Spanish ever
was, but whether the result will be beneficial from the religious
standpoint is doubtful.
Some of the most interesting chapters of Dean Worcester's
volumes are those which deal with the exploration of non-Christian
territory, and the government of the non-Christian tribes. When
civil government was first established, he was put in executive
control of matters pertaining to the non-Christian tribes, and this
necessitated on his part many a journey through their territory.
These trips were full of wild adventures, owing to the hostility of
the natives, the difficulty of traveling through unbroken forests and
over rapids with poorly constructed rafts, and the lack of food.
Many of the native tribes were finally won over by the judicious
distributing of colored beads " the grapevine telegraph " the
holding of fiestas or canaos, at which the kindly intentions of the
American government were set forth to the assembled natives, by
paying them for the making of trails, and by settling their feuds.
As a result to-day, the Benguet Igorots have been encouraged to
increase their agricultural holdings and to market their products;
the Ifugaos have stopped their head-hunting, and have become loyal
and obedient soldiers of Uncle Sam ; the Bontoc Igorots have built
numerous trails which have opened up their country to civilization;
the nomadic Ilongots are sending some of their children to school;
the Bukidnon people have been saved from being robbed of their
crops of hemp, coffee, and cacao. The Moros, with their fanatical
beliefs and prejudices, have ever been the greatest problem in the
islands. They can only be controlled by a heavy hand, and it is a big
VOL. xcix. 31
482 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
mistake to suppose our author says " that they can be subdued
and made into decent citizens by throwing kisses at them." He
thinks it a good move that lately nearly all the army officers in the
Moro Province have been superseded by civilians, chiefly because
continuity of policy is absolutely essential to success.
Dean Worcester asserts categorically the existence of slavery
and peonage in the Philippines to-day. He writes over fifty pages
to prove his contention, which has been denied by Senor Quezon,
Resident Delegate from the Philippines to Congress, in a recent
copy of the New York Evening Post. Conditions in the Moro
Province are thus set forth by General Davis in a report, written
August 25, 1902. He says:
With a people who have no conception of government that
is not arbitrary and absolute ; who hold human life as no more
sacred than the life of an animal ; who have become accustomed
to acts of violence; who are constrained by fear from continu-
ing the practice of piracy ; who still carry on the slave trade ;
who habitually raid the homes of mountain natives and enslave
them ; who habitually make slaves of their captives in war, even
when of their own race ; who not uncommonly make delivery of
their own kindred as slaves in satisfaction of a debt, for liquida-
tion of which they have not the ready money; who habitually
observe the precepts of the Koran, which declares that female
slaves must submit to their masters it is useless to discuss a
plan of government that is not based on physical force, might
and power.
On April 28, 1903, the senior inspector of constabulary in
Isabela, Mr. Sorenson, wired his chief at Manila : " In this province
a common practice is to own slaves. These are bought by proprie-
taries from Igorots and Calingas, who steal same in distant places
from other tribes. Young boys and girls are bought at about one
hundred pesos, men thirty years old and old women cheaper."
Dean Worcester drew up a report at theVequest of the Gov-
ernor-General regarding this matter, which was printed July 19,
1913. In this document he gave specific cases of chattel slavery in
the Provinces of Nueva Vizcaya, Isabela, Tarlac, Zambales, Pam-
panga, Batangas, Palawan, Agusan, Ambos Camarines, the Moro
Province, the Mountain Province, and even in Manila itself. He
described fully the conditions under which the various peoples of
the islands were bought, sold, and held as chattel slaves. As early
1914-] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 483
as 1909 he had sent to Washington a report on the matter, but
when Senator Borah of Idaho, on May i, 1913, had a resolution
passed asking the Secretary of War to send to the Senate all the
facts he had in his possession bearing on this slavery charge, the
Secretary of War answered that his Department had no knowledge
of the matter. " Secretary Garrison was most likely," adds Dean
Worcester, " deceived by some subordinate," for the report of
1909 should certainly have been on file in the War Office.
In a chapter on the Philippine Assembly, our author endeavors
to prove its irresponsibility, and its unfitness to deal with great
questions which vitally affect the common people. In the first place
it tabled four anti-slavery acts passed by the Commission at suc-
cessive legislative sessions. He calls attention to the fact that
three hundred and twelve acts passed by the Assembly have been
disapproved by the Commission, and one hundred and seven acts
passed by the Commission have been disapproved by the Assembly.
By a careful study of these two groups of acts, he believes he has
conclusively proved that the Philippine Assembly has come at least
ten years too soon. As samples of vicious, unintelligent, and un-
just legislation he calls attention to a number of bills brought for-
ward to abolish or reduce existing taxes; to encourage gambling;
to do away with provincial boards of health and the Bureau of Civil
Service; to prohibit the employment of foreigners as engineers of
vessels; to exempt valuable land from taxation; to foster libel;
to urge compulsory school attendance; to authorize the use of fire-
arms; to make Spanish the official language of the courts.
In all he discusses the demerits of thirty-five different bills, claiming
that in opposing them the Commission has prevented the enactment
of a great deal of vicious legislation. He argues that the late policy
of giving the Filipinos a majority in this body, has done away with
a most important safeguard. In many towns the elections have
given rise to serious feuds, which have greatly hindered their pre-
vious rapid social and material progress, and in a number of in-
stances of protested elections the Assembly has seen fit to admit a
number of very disreputable characters.
The land question is an acute problem in the Philippines as
elsewhere. The great majority of the small landholders have no
titles; there are enormous tracts of unoccupied and uncultivated
fand, so that the country is unable to feed eight millions of people,
whereas it could readily take care of eighty millions. The Public
Land Act of the Philippine Commission allows any citizen over
484 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
twenty-one to acquire a forty-acre homestead by five years of
cultivation, two years of occupancy, and the payment of ten dollars.
Only 19,313 homestead applications have been received so far, and
4,811 of these had to be rejected, because of some legal defect.
The people have generally failed to take advantage of the law either
through ignorance, or the opposition of the rich and influential
Filipinos.
The cacique [says our author] does not wish his laborers
to acquire land in their own right, for he knows well enough
that if they did so, they would become self-supporting, and it
would cease to be possible for him to hold them as peons, as
is commonly done at present. Serious obstacles are therefore
thrown in the way of poor people who desire to become owners
of land, and if this does not suffice, active opposition is often
made by municipal officers or other influential Filipinos, who
claim as their private property land which poor men are trying
to get.
It is very doubtful whether the existing legislative restrictions
regarding the sale of land are beneficial. Two classes of men
are responsible for them ; good men who feared the monopolization
of agricultural lands and the evils of absentee ownership, and cor-
rupt politicians who represented the sugar interests of the United
States. They were anxious to keep out Philippine sugar at all costs.
They knew that if they could prevent the acquiring of sugar estates
of any considerable size, they would easily prevent the production
of sugar on any great scale.
Perhaps no country in the world has a greater variety of beau-
tiful and serviceable woods in its magnificent forests. The total
number of tree species thus far discovered is about 2,500. The
Bureau of Forestry is exploring the forests, ascertaining the com-
mercially valuable trees, and collecting information for men de-
sirous of engaging in the lumber industry. The public forests are
not sold, but are developed under a license system. The opening
up of large timber tracts by modern logging methods has meant
additional employment for well-paid labor, decrease in lumber
imports, and the ultimate development of a lucrative export trade.
As a general rule the Filipinos are totally indifferent, both to the
conservation and the development of their forests.
The improvement in means of communication the mail serv-
ice, the telegraph service, steamship routes, railroads, and high-
1914-] OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE 485
ways has been revolutionary. In the first days of the American
occupation there were long delays in receiving letters, and often
one was lucky to receive them at all. There was little respect, too,
for the privacy of letters. Nearly all the old telegraph lines
were destroyed during the revolution which began in 1896, so that
the 4,781 miles of land line and the 1,362 miles of marine cable
are new. The coast guard vessels placed on regular commercial
routes by Mr. Forbes, when Secretary of Commerce, promptly led
to increased production and trade, and greater prosperity through-
out the islands.
The railroad mileage has been increased from one hundred and
twenty-two miles in 1907 to six hundred and eleven miles in 1913,
while the earning in management from $25,823.00 to $2,304,436.00.
The total value of American work on the highways up to June 30,
1911, was $6,100,000.00 The construction of hundreds of good
roadways at about $8,250.00 a mile has revolutionized travel,
and reduced greatly the cost of transporting farm products to the
markets. Many of the roads were so bad in the old days that
wheeled vehicles could not be used even during the dry season, and
cangas or bamboo sledges were used instead, to the utter destroying
of the roads. Frequently the Filipino swam across the unbridged
streams on his carabao, and waiting patiently for the dry season
to transport his products.
There has been a very rapid increase in the trade between the
Philippines and the United States. In 1912 the islands imported
$20,770,536.00 worth of merchandise from the United States to
offset the $21,619,686.00 worth shipped to that country: If the
commercial possibilities of the islands are developed in the next
few years, there is no reason why the Philippines should not pro-
duce the tropical products that we are at present buying from
South America, Japan, China, and Egypt. Manufacturing is still
in its infancy, but with plenty of good labor, cheap power, and
abundant raw materials at hand, its future should be certain.
Dean Worcester has written a strong thesis against Philippine
independence. We think he has proved it conclusively, although
in certain instances his political prejudices may have carried him
too far. He says very little about the influence of the Catholic
Church at the present day, although he has words of praise for the
Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Harty, and the Jesuit Fathers of
Manila.
He praises the people in general for " their dignity of bear-
486 OUR FAR EAST COLONIAL EMPIRE [July,
ing; their sobriety ; their genuine hospitality ; their kindness to the
old and the feeble; their love of their children, and eagerness to
obtain for them educational advantages which they themselves
have been denied; their fondness for music; their patience in
the face of adversity, and the respect which they show for authority
so long as their passions are not played upon, or their prejudices
aroused by the unscrupulous. These are admirable characteristics,
and afford a good foundation on which to build." The Tagalogs,
he tells us, tend to become the dominating Filipino people of the
islands, and practically rule all the other peoples except the Ilocanos,
who are well able to hold their own. The Cagayans are as a rule
notoriously lazy and stupid ; the Visayans comparatively docile and
law-abiding; the Bicots energetic and capable. These several peo-
ples are kept apart by the language difficulty, for there are more
quite sharply distinct dialects than there are peoples. Spanish
never became common; it was spoken only by the educated few.
Another great barrier between the various peoples is the legacy of
prejudice and hatred, handed down from the days \vhen they were
tribally distinct and actively hostile, and accentuated by the well-
marked tendency of the Tagalogs and Ilocanos to dominate the
others. A united Filipino people is at the present day a myth,
whatever the future may bring forth. It is important also to re-
member that very few of the present political leaders have pure
Malay blood. Most of them have a great admixture of Spanish,
Chinese or other European blood. There is a fairly strong hos-
tility to-day between this mestizo class and the great bulk of the
Filipino people, a fact which makes independence impossible, and
an oligarchical rule the only thing now feasible. Dean Worcester
concludes : " Philippine independence is not a present possibility,
nor will it be possible for at least two generations. Indeed, if by
the end of a century, we have welded into a people the descendants
of the composite and complex group of human beings who to-day
inhabit the islands, we shall have no cause to feel ashamed of our
success."
ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST.
BY HELENA CONCANNON.
I.
T the door of Master Raynal's wattled hut (that stood,
between two May trees, in a circle of sloping meadow
bounded by the summer woods) Sir John Chadfield
sat one evening in company with Master Richard
Raynal himself. The little hut of Master Richard
held but one stool, and, as it was fitting, Sir John, that excellent
parochus, now sat upon it, the while his host sat on the ground at
his feet " with his hands clasped about his knee, and his bare feet
drawn beneath him." While they sat and talked, Sir John gazed
across the honeyed bean garden before the hut, and the meadow that
was aflame with yellow flowers, and down the path where " Master
Richard walked with God," and to the brook, that ran, noisy and
shallow, over stones, beneath the hazels, and to the pigeons homing
above the w r oods. But he was thinking of the boy at his feet : " His
hair was, as you know it, a straight, tawny nut-brown head of hair,
that fell to his shoulders ; and he had the cleanest line of face that
ever I have seen."
For the last time Master Richard was having his joy in " his
hidden little hut in the wilderness," and for the last time (but one
at the end) the old priest, who loved the lad, was having his joy in
his holy company. There was a knowledge in Master Raynal's
heart that " he must leave this place, and go to one whom he
thought must be the King, with some message ; but he did not know
the message." He was telling these things to his friend.
After a little time, when the stars had risen, old Sir John stood
under the lych gate of his own churchyard, and saw, as well as his
tears would let him, the boy pass, beneath the starlight, along the
white road. What was to be his message when he should come to
the King? In truth, Master Richard knew it not himself: "Our
Lord will tell it me when I come hither," he had said.
But wise old Sir John, watching by the lych gate beneath the
stars, knew that the message did not matter. What mattered was
that along that road one was passing, for whom it was the beginning
ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
of the " Way of Union." He had seen the lad during the four
years he had lived in the little hut between the May trees, pass from
the " Purgative Way " to the " \Vay of Illumination." Now the
gate to the " Way of Union " was opened, and the brown-haired,
gray-eyed lad had passed through. 1
That was the comfort of living in the fifteenth century, and
having read " the Victorines." But, who was to comfort Jack
Kirkby, young Squire of Berham, in Yorkshire, in the twentieth
century, when he watched beneath the stars, while his friend, Frank
Guiseley, 2 in his tramp's clothes, and with a tramp's red bundle
in his hand, passed with his two disreputable tramp companions
into the darkness? Frank, too, had a message, but Jack Kirkby
found no comfort in his knowledge of it. (It was not to a
king.) It was to the small " suburban " soul of a weak and foolish
girl the tramp's " light o' love." His mission, which involved
the renunciation of all the advantages of " birth, money, education,
gifts, position," was " to get a thoroughly stupid girl away from
a cad who was not her husband ; and get her back to her own people
again." 3 There was no one to tell Jack. Kirkby, when he saw his
friend pass away with the Major and Gertie, between the dark
hedges, that he was watching him take his first steps in the " Way
of Illumination." Just as there was no one to tell him, when he sat
for the last time in Frank's ground floor room, 4 looking out upon the
Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge (after a pleasant tea,
with buttered buns), that to-morrow his friend would enter upon the
way familiar to the old mystics under the name of the " Way of
Purgation." It would have been difficult even for people more
familiar with the mystics than Jack Kirkby, to connect the figure
that lolled in the window seat of this particular room, with the
experiences recorded in those strange old writers. There sat Frank
" very pleasant to look upon."
But perhaps, when all was over, when Jack Kirkby stood by
the bedside in the mean London lodging house 5 (looking down
at the bandaged face on the pillow, and the poor bandaged hands
on the coverlet), waiting for the end, much was revealed to him that
was plain to old Sir John even before he stood by the great royal
bed in the King's Palace at Westminster, and looked at the band-
aged head of his friend. What did it matter if the setting was
^Richard Raynal, Solitary. *None Other Gods, part ii., chap. i. (5).
'None Other Gods, part ii., chap. i. (3).
*None Other Gods, part i., chap. i. (i).
*None Other Gods, part iii., chap. viii. (5).
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 489
different? Here Frank Guiseley who had passed through his "Way
of Purgation " that was instinct with sordidness, was nearing the
end of the " Way of Union " in the sordid East End lodging house,
kicked to death by a ruffianly brute. Outside, in the mean and
hideous street, was the light of a winter's morning. And there
lay Richard Raynal, Solitary, on the King's own bed, in the King's
own palace. The starlight came in through the open windows that
were set wide to let his spirit forth. " Then the moon rose, and
the light lay upon the floor at my side. Then a little after it was
upon the fringes of the coverlet, and it crept up moment by mo-
ment across the leopards and lilies that were broidered in gold and
blue. At last it lay half across the bed, and I could see the King's
face very pale and melancholy upon the other side. And pres-
ently it reached Master Richard's hand and my own that lay to-
gether, but my arm was so numbed that I could feel nothing in it;
I could see only that his fingers were in mine. So the light crept
up his arm to the shoulder, and when it reached his face we saw
that he was gone to his reward." A king's bed, or a tramp's what
did it matter? A certain " Door " had been set open a little, and
there had streamed into the room, where Jack Kirkby watched by
his friend (with his fingers on the bandaged hands), a light which
revealed the tramp's bed clothed with the dignity of an altar.
It was the same light that lay on Richard Raynal's deathbed, or the
moonlight would have had no beauty for the eyes of Sir John Chad-
field.
What matters to all of us is that we find the key which unlocks
the guarded door, so that the Light may follow our deathbeds
too. " I cannot even tell myself what I saw there," cried one 6
who watched and saw the Door open when the priest had fitted into
it his sacramental key, " except that it was not a bleak and empty
room into which I looked. Death is not like that; it is sweet
and friendly as a firelit hall into which men may see from the
darkness outside."
" Love and death and pain are the bones on which life is
modelled," says our author in the Necromancers; 1 and in the rich
and varied life of which these novels are such a remarkable render-
ing, death is certainly the solid substratum. Monsignor Benson
defines his characters by their attitude towards it. What does John
Bannister 8 make of it, when it suddenly reveals itself in the softly
Papers of a Pariah: On Death. f Chapter i.
* The Conventionalists.
490 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
cushioned life at Crowston, and takes away his heir? Nothing
at all. He, the capable squire, the important country gentleman
justice of the peace, sportsman, and all the rest of it is as helpless
as a child before its bewildering mystery. What can he do to
bring Theo red-faced, square-toed, tweed-clad Theo, whose proper
element is the smoking-room, and whose proper occupation is shoot-
ing partridges on the Bovey Acres into harmony with it? How
can he, himself, be brought into harmony with it, when he shall lie
waiting for it, in his great bed in the room upstairs when he shall
pass for the last time (in an oak coffin) through the Corinthian
porch, and so across the park to the churchyard? As for that
stout nobleman, Lord Brasted, " another veteran of the smoking-
room," what shall it avail him to know all that is to be known
about motor cars, when the time shall come for him to make a
nearer acquaintance with death than he has hitherto permitted
himself? And Harold, that charming boy, whom other people be-
side Sybil Markham find so attractive brisk, and easy, so adequate
at present for the small duties, and promising to be equally adequate
for the larger ones, when he shall have succeeded his father as
Squire of Crow r ston where is his adequacy in the face of the
one tremendous test death? And is his "successful individual-
ism" really successful at the last? And even Mr. Mortimer, the
"virile" curate, what does he know of death? Or, for that
matter, Mr. Bennett, 9 the genial Vicar of Hanstead, and later, the
no less genial Rector of Marston? Or Mr. Stirling, the Vicar
of Hinton, 10 or even the eloquent Dean, 11 who sat of evenings with
Mr. Meredith on the balcony of the Swiss Hotel, and talked so
extremely well? What do they make of it more than Lord Brasted
himself? " A fact best treated with discreet melancholy."
And yet there is comfort to be found; and the secret which
shall bring death with all its horrors, the death sweat and the
mortal pains, into harmony with the loving-kindness of God is not so
hidden away but that those who seek it shall find it. The quest
of it brought Algy Bannister to the Carthusian's Cell; and, per-
haps, if he had followed it persistently it would have led Percy
Brandreth-Smith 12 to a Franciscan's, but all men do not need to go
so far to find it. Christopher Dell possesses it secrctnm suum sibi
in his little house at Maresfield, 13 where he writes his books and
ministers to sick souls. John Rolls knows it in his great ancestral
'An Average Man. u The Sentimentalists. u The Coward.
"An Average Man. "The Conventionalists.
1914-] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 491
castle. 14 Old Mr. Yolland 15 carries it with him into the manage-
ment of his pleasant house, and his estate, as his son, Monsignor
Dick 16 into the management of his London parish. Mr. Main 17
knows it, as he goes about unsuccessfully soliciting orders for
cocoa. The light of it falls on Reggie Ballard's 18 desk at his ship-
ping office, and on Maggie Deronnais' 10 weeding in her garden.
Algy Bannister shrewdly surmises that to each man at some period
of his life is given the chance of finding it. It sends men on queer
errands Frank Guiseley, the peer's son, along the highways, a
tramp; Richard Raynal, with an unknown message to the King;
Val Medd 20 to his last dreadful " failure " in the burning muniment
room at Medhurst; Robin Audrey, from his hawking, and his
innocent love-making with Mistress Marjorie Manners, to the
rack, and to the rope. It is summed up in a colloquial sentence :
to do what we have got to do. " It doesn't matter, in the slightest,
what we do so long as we have got to do it." 21 And it is summed
up, too, in one word of tremendous dignity, " vocation."
But were not those of whom we have spoken Lord Brasted
with his motors, old Mr. Bannister, Harold, Mr. Mortimer, doing
what " they had got to do? " In a certain way " yes." It is not
to be doubted that the conscientious management of his estate will
count to Mr. Bannister for righteousness. But are we certain that
better light was not given Mr. Banniser than that in which he saw
himself perfectly fulfilling the duties of life, by his worthy occu-
pancy of the host's chair in the dining-room, or the smoking-room,
his headship of the Bannister family ? It is borne in on us by some
of those extraordinary subtle touches, of which Monsignor Benson
knows so well the secret, that John Bannister, too, " got his chance,"
and failed to take it. Else, why was Chris so positive that he
ought to be met on higher ground than the appeal to the " Ban-
nister " interest, when he and Monsignor Dick and Father Benson
himself went down to Crowston to announce Algy's intention of
becoming a Carthusian ? It is certain, too, that there were moments
in Lord Brasted's life when it was borne in upon him that the
whole duty of man was not exhausted in the skillful driving of a
Panhard. Harold gets the same chance as Algy, " of seeing things
as they really are," by Theo's dying bed. But Harold, emphati-
cally, did not do " ye nexte thynge."
"The Sentimentalists. "Ibid. M Ibid. "An Average Man.
u An Average Man. w The Necromancers.
*The Coward. *The Conventionalists.
492 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
But even those who follow the gleam as steadily as they can,
and reach by its guidance the full light of Catholic faith, often
stumble. And there are ghastly failures among Catholics. That is
true indeed. " But what a religion it is in which to die ! " Here
lies, suddenly struck clown (with no time to remake, or remodel,
or even readjust his personality), an unimaginative, middle-aged
man. 22 What other religion than the Catholic could meet his
needs? "He is a sinner, and he knows it, and he wishes to be
dealt with on that understanding. He wishes to be as clean as
possible and so, a little while ago, Father Thorpe has absolved
him. He wishes God for his company, on that mysterious journey,
and so, from the little silver pyx, Father Thorpe has taken the
Consecrated Particle 'the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ' and gives It to him as Viaticum. He
wishes to be strengthened and cleansed once more, so he is anointed,
on hands, and eyes, and ears, and nostrils, and mouth, and feet.
He wishes to escape as is but natural all pains that can be
avoided, and so he receives the Last Blessing. Finally he wishes to
have his failing eyes cheered, and his nerveless hands supported,
so the image of his Saviour is put into his grasp We have
lived so long by our senses, counting that real which we can touch
and handle, that God in His mercy allows us, in all reality, to do so
to the end. He takes oil, and bread, and water, and metal, and
makes them not only the symbols, but the very vehicles of what
we require. 'Look on that,' cries the Church as she holds up her
crucifix, 'there is the image of your Lord; kiss it for His sake.
Look on this,' as she lifts the Host, 'this is He, Himself Ecce
Agnus Dei! Taste and see that He is gracious Turn your
hands over, and feel the soft oil That is His mighty loving-
kindness. Abandon yourself to these things; throw your weight
on them, and they will bear you up. Seize them, and you have
hold on eternal life.' ' Compare with this what poor Mr. Mortimer
has to offer to Theo Bannister.
If it is our wholesome custom to meditate on death from time
to time, " to look steadily upon coffins and churchyards," we can-
not do better than read certain passages from Monsignor Benson's
works. One of these is to be found in Papers of a Pariah: At
a Requiem. It describes the whole attitude of the Catholic Church
towards death, as expressed in the ritual of a requiem service.
Death is an exceedingly unpleasant fact, and the Church makes
"Papers of a Pariah: On Death.
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 493
no attempt to disguise its horror and its darkness. Rather, she
recognizes it perfectly. Six flames, indeed, from tall candles of
unbleached wax, rise around the catafalque, as if to ward off the
darkness. But no one can adequately describe the terror of the
yellow and black catafalque, and the deathliness of the flames from
the yellow candles. About it go priests, sprinkling hallowed water,
and swinging the smoking censer. But beneath the cleansing water
is corruption, and through the sad-smelling fragrant incense rises the
unmistakable odor of death. Up into the gloom of the arched
pillars rise " wailing airs unsupported by the genial organ, clus-
ters of neumes that falter as they rise." For " death is a terrible
and revolting thing:" "the one eternal tragedy, which so far as
is possible darkens the light of the sun for us all " and there
is no use in disguising the fact.
This then is faced by the Church but the Church does not
leave it there. " The smell of incense, the beads of water, and
the candle-flames proclaim an undying hope;" and these two emo-
tions of terror and hope are welded into a trinity by a third that
partakes of the nature of both penitence. " From the C on fit e or
Deo Omnipotenti of the three black and white figures bowed at the
altar, to the last doubtful Amen, the whole performance is nothing
else than one heart-broken sob of sorrow." " Here is exactly that
in which Mass for the Dead rises head and shoulders above every
other form of funeral devotion. The Catholic Church does not
emulate the eminent man who, when requested by his weeping
friends at the hour of his death to declare what gave such a super-
natural radiance to his face, answered that it was the memory
of a long and well-spent life. On the contrary, she makes not one
reference to the virtues of the deceased. She does not recount
victories, or even apologize for failures. She does what she con-
siders better: she deplores them."
Frank Guiseley saw even more than this when, at the end of
his " Way of Illumination," he was present at Matins for the
Dead in the Benedictine Monastery. He looked at death through
the veiled portal of the catafalque, and saw beyond it souls, in
pain indeed, but a pain to which human beings on this side of
the portal could minister. These figures that moved about the
catafalque with censer and aspersorium were as angels for un-
doubted power, and dignity, and tenderness. They were men like
themselves, yet they were far more ; and they, too, would one day
pass beneath that pall and need the help of others that should
follow them.
494 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
What of love in these books since on love, as well as on
pain and death, life itself is modelled? Much that is beautiful
and tender and true. " Ordinary clean, human passion "the love
of a man for a woman such as that of Percy for Gladys Farham, 23
is treated as what it is, a holy and exalting experience. God
made man and woman, and drew from His own nature (which is
Love) that which was to draw them together, so that they might
work out His will and His purposes. Love therefore is high and
holy both in its origin and its object. It has an exalting, cleansing
power. It would have saved Chris Dell 24 from his unreality, and
his poses, and his weak will, and his vices, just as it would have
saved Ralph Torridon 25 from the dry rot of his worldliness. It
gave Annie Hamilton 26 her chance, and because she had not the
heart to take it, her own sins (and those of her mother) found
her out, and had their will with her so that she developed into
Lady Brastecl. Into Isabel Norris' 27 heart it steals, following noise-
lessly in the footsteps of the Divine Lover. For Algy Bannister,
and Frank Guiseley, and Robin Audrey, 28 and Anthony Norris, 29
it was as the Dawn Star, pure, and clear, and trembling, that pre-
ceded the Rising of the Sun from which it takes its light. Pres-
ently the other Love shall enter into them, and take possession
" the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," and " neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate them " from It.
In the gallery of portraits of the women who share and inspire
this love, one lingers very willingly. The Father Benson heroine
is a very delightful girl. In the earlier books, she is a vivid,
splendid, spirited creature, very gallant and fearless, called Mary
Corbet, 30 or Beatrice Atherton. 31 You must see Mary Corbet, as
Isabel Norris saw her first, sitting under the trees of the Hall
garden, twitching her jewelled buckles in the sun, and talking the
most abominable gossip about her august Queen and Mistress,
Elizabeth. Or, as Anthony saw her, at Court, dancing in the
Queen's " Pavane," in her rose-colored silk, and her cloud of black-
hair, and her jewels and her laughing eyes, and scarlet mouth, and
her violet fragrance, and her fire; or in the last scene of all, when
the ride through the glorious summer night reckless and intoxi-
**An Average Man. "The Sentimentalists.
n The King's Achievement. "The Sentimentalists.
*By What Authority f m Come Rack! Come Rope!
"By What Authority? *>By What Authority?
n The King's Achievement.
I9I4-] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 495
eating that was to bear Anthony to safety, was interrupted by
the shot from the pursuers, and Anthony turned back to hear
Mary's dying confession, and be captured.
Afterwards, when the priest hunters had haled Anthony off
to prison, they brought back Mary's body to Stanford Place, and
laid her on the bed where she and Isabel had sat and talked together
all the afternoon. " And I would let no one in," says Isabel ;
" I did it all myself; and then I set the tapers round her, and put
the crucifix that was round my neck into her fingers, which I had
laid on her breast and there she lay on the great bed
and her face was like a child's fast asleep and smiling; and then
I kissed her again, and whispered 'Thank you, Mary,' for though
I did not know all, I knew enough that it was for you, Anthony."
Beatrice Atherton in The King's Achievement is an elder
sister of Mary Corbet a little graver, and more sedate. One can
never imagine Mistress Beatrice telling those stories about Queen
Elizabeth, or shouting derisive remarks after Sir Christopher Hat-
ton (practising at quintain), or boxing a page's saucy ear. But for
the rest, she has the same vivid beauty, the same shrewd wit, the
same gallant spirit, and the same great heart. Her duel with Lady
Torridon would not be noteworthy of Mary.
Mistress Isabel Norris is of the same family as Marjorie Man-
ners. 32 Here she comes pacing the yew alley, in the sunset, with
Mr. Buxton : " her clear, luminous face and great eyes shrined in
the drooping lace shawl, through which a jewel or two in the black
hair glimmered, her upright, slender figure in its dark sheath, and
the hand white and cool that held her shawl together over her
breast." Who, but Monsignor Benson himself, could paint for
us the soul within ? " That romantic and passionate love for
Christ (on which our author loves so much to dwell) filled it with
fragrance. He is as much a part of her life, and of her actual ex-
perience, as Anthony or her father. Certain places in the lanes
about, and certain places in the garden, were sacred and fragrant
to her because her Lord had met her there. It was indeed a trouble
to her sometimes that she loved Anthony so much ; and to her mind a
less worthy kind of love altogether; it was kindled and quickened
by such little, external details, by the sight of his boyish hand,
browned by the sun or by the very outline of the pillow,
where his curly head had rested only an hour or two ago. Whereas
her love for Christ was a deep and solemn passion that seemed to
well not out of His comeliness, or even His marred Face, or pierced
"Come Rack! Come Rope!
496 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
Hands, but out of His wide, encompassing Love that sustained and
clasped her at every moment of conscious attention to Him, and
that woke her soul to ecstasy at moments of high communion."
Her soul seems to Mary Corbet (when she first knows her as a little
Puritan maiden), "a little herb garden very prim, and plain, but
living and wholesome, and pleasant to walk in, at sunset." But
after that wonderful Easter morning when the Sun rose over it in
Its full splendor, that garden was fragrant with lilies, and the red
roses of love, and passion-flowers.
It is love for the Person of Christ that is the strongest thing
in Marjorie Manners' 33 soul too. But she loves Him under a dif-
ferent aspect. " There was a strong love of Jesus Christ and
His Mother, Whom she knew from her hidden crucifix, and her
beads, and her Jesu Psalter which she used every day as well as
in her own soul to be wandering once more among the hills of
Derbyshire, sheltering at peril of their lives, in stables, and barns,
and little secret chambers, because there was no room for Them
in Their own places." And to the service of the Greater Lover,
Exiled and Proscribed, she sends her human lover from her sends
him forth, like a knight on an adventure, to do Christ's work.
The tall, stately-looking, " steady-eyed " heroines of the novels
of contemporary life present three distinct types. There is first
Jennie Launton. 34 Here comes Jennie, stepping into the billiard-
room of Merefield Court, before dinner, one evening, to find Archie
and Dick Guiseley (who was in love with her) knocking about
the balls. " She was tall, and very fair, and carried herself su-
perbly, looking taller than she really was. Her eyes, particularly
bright just now, were of a vivid blue, wide-open and well-set in
her face ; her mouth was strong and sensible ; and there was a glor-
ious air of breeziness and health about her altogether." I am afraid
Father Benson does not like Jennie. She is " very sensible," as
she herself and Lord Talgarth, and Dick, and Archie, and his father,
and everybody who mentions her name, all assure us. But she is
" sensible " in a way of which our author has small appreciation.
She is certainly a very capable manager whether of her father,
or her father's house, or Lord Talgarth, or even of poor Dick's
proposal. She " gets her chance," however (our author sees to
that), even as Annie Hamilton does, and fails to take it. She jilts
Frank, just when it serves her purpose, and keeps Dick Guiseley
dangling, until she is sure of Lord Talgarth (and yet does it in a
way that no positive breach of faith can be charged against her).
"Come Rack I Come Rope! "None Other Godf.
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 497
And the worst of it is, she hardly feels a qualm. Well, perhaps
that is not quite accurate. She had now and then moments of what
she would call " insanity," and Monsignor Benson calls " grace,"
when " she wondered for a little while whether to be sensible was
the highest thing in life." And she had certainly a sleepless night
to her credit before she finally tore up all Frank's letters. But
what of that? That was just her "chance," and she does not
even wish to take it. Accordingly, Father Benson does not spare
her, and allows an appropriate Nemesis to overtake her in a good,
old-fashioned, vindictive way, which even the least subtle of his
readers can understand.
Towards Mary Maple 35 the author's feelings are, I suspect,
extremely well (if inelegantly) summed up by Monsignor Dick, who
" is beastly sorry for her." Those moods of hers, " which she can-
not always control," show something in the character beneath
which is sure of his sympathy. Her nature and training demand
luxury, and she can only secure it say, by a marriage with Theo
Bannister. But still there is in her feeling for Theo something
more than calculation. Later on there is no doubt of the nature of
her love for Algy. It is not only that he is now the eldest son,
and has everything to offer that Theo once had. These things
count largely, but it is Algy himself she loves, and Monsignor
Richard Yolland knows it, and the knowledge makes him des-
perately sorry for her. In the heart of her heart, Mary Maple is
genuine enough. And this is why, in spite of her scheming (which
is quite as bad as Jennie Launton's), she has the author's sympathy.
Maggie Deronnais 36 is the girl in whom nature and grace
combine to produce the ideal. She lives and breathes as truly
as Jennie and Mary, which does away with the modern theory
that it takes a mixture of faults to produce a living woman. Mag-
gie's faults are not very serious : " She was apt to give way
to internal irritation of a strong though invisible kind, when inter-
ruptions happened ; she now and then gave way to an unduly fierce
contempt of tiresome people, and said little bitter things that she
afterwards regretted. In outward appearance she was not re-
markable, though extremely pleasing, and it was a pleasingness that
grew upon acquaintance. Her beauty, such as it was, was built
upon a good foundation : upon regular features, a slightly-rounded
cleft chin, a quantity of dark coiled hair, and large, steady; serene
brown eyes. Her hands were not small, but beautifully shaped,
n The Conventionalists. "The Necromancers.
VOL. XCIX. 32
498 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [July,
her figure slender, well-made, and always at its ease in any attitude.
In fact she had an air of repose, strength, and all-round compe-
tence." She is, I should say, the most wholesome person in the
company. She has, in the first place, a sense of humor, and we
have Monsignor Benson's own assurance that " a youthful kind
of brisk humor is perhaps the surest symptom of sanity that it is
possible to have." She, too, like Jennie Launton, is "sensible" (and
normal), but somehow or other her common sense is quite a differ-
ent article from Jennie's. Perhaps because certain facts, which she
holds from her Penny Catechism, tinge its energy. So from her
pleasant, normal life, her morning Mass, her chats with Mrs. Baxter
over the breakfast table, her gardening, her interest in the fowl
yard, her afternoon drive, her reading, her prayers she arises
on that dreadful night, when she had to do battle for Laurie's soul
a heroine.
What was the secret of her strength? Monsignor Benson
makes that quite plain I think. The sacraments of the Catholic
Church leavening the simple, normal, natural life she had made for
herself. For our author likes us all to carry away our lesson from
his books and Catholic women cannot look in a better place for
theirs than to Maggie Derronais.
But had not Lady Brasted the sacraments too? As regards
Lady Brasted, I can only repeat the question which Father Benson,
himself, put to Algy when that young man was finding her " pic-
turesque " Catholicism a distinct obstacle to conversion. " Have
you ever thought what she would be if she wasn't a Catholic? Is
it possible you don't see that all the good there is in her comes
simply and solely from her religion? She does her best to love
God and her neighbor, and that's something surely. I pointed out
that Lady Brasted was perfectly sincere, that she took a great deal
of trouble for the sake of her religion, and that it was a far -finer
thing to believe in God, and practise religion, even if it materialized
a good deal in prie-dieux and looking rapt, than not to have a
religion at all."
Nevertheless there are times when she and her Delia Robbias,
and her chaste fleur-de-lis wall papers, and her tuberoses and black
Madonnas, and Italian water colors, and white-and-gold and blue
drawing-room, are simply too much for the honest, wholesome soul
of Monsignor Richard Yolland, and set every red hair on his head
bristling in true Irish terrier style.
ST. PETER'S DAY, ROME.
BY KATE URSULA BROCK.
T is here at last! the day has arrived for which we
have been waiting in the windless, sun-dried city,
long after our compatriots have fled. St. Peter's Day
in Rome! How often we have dreamed of it, and
now, after we have spent long, happy months in the
Eternal City, the great festival is at our doors, bright with the
Italian clarity of air and sky, hot with the unclouded sunshine of
a perfect Roman day. If we are good Catholics we shall make
an early Communion at the nearest church or convent chapel, and
be off at the first possible moment, after the usual rolls and coffee,
to the Apostle's shrine.
The ten o'clock High Mass, celebrated at the Papal altar, over
the tomb of the great fisherman this is what we wish to assist at,
and, since every tram will be crowded and every carriage engaged,
we must start in good time. We economically take a tram, which,
for ten or fifteen centesimi, lands us in the great Piazza. We pre-
fer to walk rather than to drive across it on this day, recalling as we
do so that cruel martyrdom which took place close by, the cruelty
voluntarily aggravated by the hardy, humble victim.
Secure under parasols from Apollo's shafts, swift-winged and
deadly in this Southern city, we stroll between the two great splash-
ing fountains, whose spring rainbows have long since vanished;
past the monster obelisk with its thrilling inscription; and up the
polished marble steps to the church. The Easter crowds of Amer-
icans and English have dwindled away, and in place of the long
rows of motors and horse vehicles seen flanking the Piazza at
the early festivals, only a few stragglers remain, a handful of smart
carriages, drawn up in the grateful shade of the colonnades.
The multitude which is flocking in through the great bronze
doors is of a less mixed character (as to nationality, that is) than
that which came to pay its Christmas dues. There are a few Ger-
mans certainly, for Germans come late and stay long, and do not
mind the heat as we do. There are even a few French people,
lingerers like ourselves. Those notorious stay-at-homes, the
French, are more frequently seen in Rome than elsewhere abroad,
500 ST. PETER'S DAY, ROME [July,
and this circumstance is natural, seeing to whom they have, until
these last few misguided years, been ever true and faithful. Also,
there are many French nuns and priests in Rome, religious refugees
come to nestle, as it were, beneath their Mother's wings from the
dangers of a hostile world. These attract their secular relations,
who rejoice to come to Rome as to the home of those they love.
But St. Peter's Day is essentially a Roman holiday. Just
because the Saint's prerogatives are universal, the Romans love to
claim him as their own, and streets are decorated, shops are closed,
and all don their best and brightest, and turn out to do him honor.
The shining toe of the great bronze statue, protruding from under
rich robes, takes on a higher polish as the day advances. In spite of
their reputation for unclean habits, few Romans bestow their kiss
without first rubbing the toe with a clean pocket handkerchief. The
result may be imagined.
The ancient bronze, which may or may not have been intended
for St. Peter when it was first cast, looks immensely dignified to-
day. The ruddy background of mosaic is matched by the tones of the
magnificent chasuble. The jewelled mitre takes away something
of the antique stiffness of the close bronze curls, and the warm tones
of the dress are further enhanced by the ruby cross on the breast
the gift of a Spanish king. All day long a ceaseless procession
passes before the image, which is closely guarded by two surpliced
youths. And in spite of their ignorance, no least educated indi-
vidual of all that crowd pays homage to anything but the real,
human Peter, whose memory they so lovingly celebrate, and of
whom they know well that the bronze image is nothing but a poor
memorial.
We prefer not to go into the Tribune behind the shrine, but
to hear the Mass standing or kneeling close to the Confession a
spot from whence we can look down at the very tomb itself. This
is our intention, but we soon see its impossibility. When we en-
tered, the vast church seemed but sparsely peopled. The golden
light from the far-off window over St. Peter's chair, even though
reenforced with other clear, white light, sheds but a quiet
radiance into the domed spaces, and it is only after we have paced
half way up the Gargantuan nave that we realize the density of
the crowd about the shrine. Fellow-feeling prompts all who ap-
proach the Confession the small sunken space before the tomb
to remain on their knees there only a few moments, and then retire
to continue their orisons elsewhere.
1914.] ST. PETER'S DAY, ROME 501
Surrounding the Confession ninety lamps, filled to-day with
white wax instead of the customary oil, and wreathed in box, laven-
der and opopanax, flicker fitfully in the eyes of the ever-changing
circle of human faces round the marble balustrade. The box and
flowers give off a pungent sweet odor, which pleases without ener-
vating the senses ; the crowds are quiet, orderly and devotional, and
it costs no special effort to secure that detachment of mind neces-
sary for the following of the great service that is commencing.
It is Cardinal Rampolla who is to celebrate the Mass ; he who
was once apparently so near to the Pontificate. There is a hush,
a thrill, and then a faint murmur. He sweeps into the church
with an almost overpowering dignity, and simple magnificence of
bearing. Preceded by the Cross, surrounded by clergy and acolytes,
clad in the noble vestments of the Mass, he passes through the
the throng, totally unconcerned, with eyes closed, hands clasped, and
lips moving in the preliminary devotions fitting to the mighty office
he comes to perform. The crowd closes in behind, and follows
the procession to the very barriers of the Tribune.
We find ourselves suddenly swept closer to the Confession;
it is our turn to kneel there, and as we do so we realize, as perhaps
never before, the splendor, the power and the holiness of our mar-
velous Mother, the Church. The great Cardinal and the humble
fisherman are one in the Communion of Saints, and the Cardinal
finds in homage to the other a satisfaction which the world can
neither understand nor gauge.
The afternoon Vespers are attended by even greater numbers
than the morning Mass. Doubtless many peasants from the coun-
try, unable to leave their duties, or hindered by distance from an
earlier arrival, augment the crowd, and now the dress and manners
of the people show greater variety than in the morning. Hunts-
men in brown or green velveteen, peasants, carrying dark blue,
stockinet caps, quite a foot and a half in length, and clad in won-
derful pleated lawn shirts and quaint short coats; others in rusty
serge or homespun; women with kilted skirts, black corsages and
gay bodices, with small ordinary handkerchiefs, folded and literally
clapped on the head at the church door by way of covering; soldiers
in every kind of uniform and of every grade, from the gray clad
Bersaglieri to the beautiful blue-legged, gold-laced Roman officer,
carrying his picturesque pastel blue cloak over his arms; nuns in
every variety of coif and veil; monks of the Benedictine, Domin-
ican, Franciscan, Carthusian, and other orders ; seminarists from the
502 ST. PETER'S DAY, ROME [July,
colleges of every nation, the coloring of the trimmings on their
cassocks betokening their origin; old men and women mumbling
prayers from toothless mouths, their glassy eyes scarcely able
to recognize the things about them; widows in heavy crape; little
children with brilliant, eager eyes, and cheeks flushed with the ex-
citement of the day; a few tourists with lorgnettes and camp stools
bent on seeing everything and so equipped to endure fatigue :
all these, and innumerable other human types, pass in and
out of the church, and fill it with an unforgettable medley of
sights and sounds. Here we see a family group, telling their beads
for some special private intention ; there a priest of ascetic, saintly
appearance, rapt in prayer beyond the reach of all distraction.
The beautiful voices of the Papal choir sing with power
and insistence the Psalms of the Vespers; the Ave, Pater, and
Gloria each taking in their turn a part in the chorus of praise.
Many have come to hear the music, and the crowd is densest round
about the galleries where the choir is seated. We move quietly
down the church, throwing many glances backward at the wonderful
scene, taking also one more long look at Michelangelo's exquisite
Pieta: the sorrowing Mother seems to be the very embodiment of
that overwhelming world-sadness which the glorious victory of her
Divine Son, our Saviour, over sin and death, once for all dispersed.
As we stand again in the Piazza, gazing our last on the mag-
nificent pile, the grand curving arms of the colonnades surely
symbolic in their wide embrace the fountains, the obelisk, and the
crowded steps, our notice is attracted by a bright patch of color
in the crowd. It is a small band of students wearing a scarlet habit.
We have come to Rome to enjoy her manifold attractions, and to
enter, if we may, into something of the spirit of her history and
traditions, but the scarlet-clad youths remind us, almost with a
shock, that the splendid celebrations of this day were designed to
honor supreme sacrifice, and that only by the shedding of the blood
of many martyrs have we attained to the privileges we have been
able, freely and without hindrance, to enjoy.
VOX MYSTICA.
STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF THE REV. PHILIP RIVERS PATER,
SQUIRE AND PRIEST, 1834-1909.
BY ROGER PATER.
IV.
THE PRIEST'S HIDING PLACE.
T was clear that the rain would not stop before night-
fall, so after lunch the old squire proposed that we
should take our exercise in the long gallery, as the
walk which we had planned to an outlying farm was
impossible. The gallery is on the second floor, and
runs the whole length of the west wing. At each end is a deep
oriel window, and smaller windows look out westwards. Opposite
these the oak panelling continues without a break the whole length
of the wall, except for a door, near either end, where the north
and south wings join on. Along this wall hangs a series of por-
traits, which though less important from an artistic point of view
than those in the reception rooms below, are still full of value
for anyone interested in the history of the family. We walked the
whole length of the gallery once or twice, and then the old priest
stopped in front of one of the pictures.
"Did I ever tell you how I found this portrait?" he asked,
pointing to the effigy of an ecclesiastic dressed in black.
" No," I answered, " was it not here when you came into the
property ? "
" Well, yes," said he, " it was here, but hidden away in a lum-
ber room, almost black with dirt, and without any frame or any-
thing to show whom it represented. I sometimes wondered what
the picture was like, so one day I sent it up to London, and had it
carefully cleaned on the chance that it might prove of interest.
The result surpassed all my hopes, for the cleaning revealed the
inscription you see near the top of the painting, to the right of
the head; can you decipher it? "
I had not noticed the inscription before, and now tried to
read the letters, but could make nothing intelligible of them.
" What is it? " I asked at length, " it looks to me like 'Effigies
504 VOX MY STIC A [July,
V. PHIL, dc FLUM M. ob TIB. 1621' and I spelt it out letter by
letter."
" Capital," exclaimed the old man, " and can't you fill in the
abbreviations ? "
" I suppose the ( V ' stands for 'vera' to agree with 'effigies' '
I answered, " but I'm afraid the rest is beyond me."
" It might be that," said he, " but for my part I read it as
'Effigies Vcncrabilis Philippi dc Fluininibns, Martyris, Obiit Ti-
Inmnce, 1621! '
" Philippi de Fluminibus," I cried, my interest now thoroughly
aroused, " then it is a portrait of the Venerable Philip Rivers, the
martyr priest of the family ! "
" Ah, I thought you would be interested in it," said my old
cousin, with a smile of satisfaction, " you can imagine my delight
when it came back from being cleaned, and I read the inscription
for the first time, for it had been quite invisible under the varnish
and dirt."
" And now I understand the carving of the frame," said I, for
the design of palms and knives, interlaced with a rope, had puzzled
me, " but I wonder who hid it away in the lumber room and why? "
" I fancy it was my grandfather," said the old squire. " He
was your great-grandfather, of course, the one who took the name
of Pater. You know that he ceased to practise his religion, and
married a Protestant when quite an elderly man. I imagine the
mute reproach of his martyred ancestor's portrait was too much for
him, so he took it down and put it away out of sight. His wife
was many years his junior, but she died when their second child
was born. That child was your grandfather, and the elder son was
my father. However, they were left orphans while still very young,
so they could have known nothing about the picture, though my
father would have valued it had he known, as the children were
brought up Catholics, thank God."
" What a lucky thing you thought of having the picture
cleaned," I said, " it would have been lamentable if it had been
thrown away or burned as worthless. I have always had a devo-
tion to the Venerable Philip Rivers."
" I should think so," interrupted the old priest, " you would
not deserve to have such an ancestor in your pedigree if you hadn't
a devotion to him; but you haven't heard his Mass as I have ! "
" Heard his Mass," I exclaimed in surprise, " what do you
mean ? "
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 505
" Well, I suppose I have let myself in for a story now," he
answered with a smile, " come and sit down in the oriel, and you
shall hear it." So we walked to the window seat at the end of the
gallery, and after a minute's rest he began :
" In the first years after my ordination I used to give a
good number of missions and retreats, especially in Lancashire and
the north, and at the time of my story I had undertaken to preach a
Mission, at a church in Glasgow, during Advent. I had arranged
to get to my destination two days before the Mission was to begin,
which proved to be lucky, for, as you will hear, I was delayed on
the way. In those days the train service was not nearly so good as
it is now, and I had to leave here before dusk, and change twice
en route, so as to catch the night mail for Scotland at
Stafford.
" I was due at Stafford about half -past nine at night, the
Scottish mail coming in soon afterwards, but some twenty miles this
side of Stafford an accident occurred to my train. If I remember
right it was an axle that broke, but anyhow the coach next to the
engine left the rails, and dragged the two adjoining carriages with
it. Luckily we were going slow at the time, as we were quite close
to a small station, so the rear part of the train in which I was
came to no harm. But the line was blocked by the damaged coaches,
so that it was impossible for us to get on in time to make the con-
nection at Stafford.
" Fortunately no one was killed in the accident, but several
passengers were injured more or less severely, and these were con-
veyed to the village inn, which was rilled to its utmost limit. I
did not feel inclined to spend the night in a railway carriage or in
the bare station waiting-room, so I tried various houses in the village
in the hope of finding a bed for the night. After two or three
unsuccessful attempts a young woman, who appeared in answer to
my knock, caught sight of my collar, and asked if I were not a
Catholic priest. I answered 'yes,' an( i sne then advised me to go
and apply at the Manor Farm. 'It is not far by the path there,'
she said, pointing to a stile in the hedge, 'and the farmer's family
are good Catholics, who will be glad to take you in for the night.
It is a big house, and they have a spare room furnished.'
" The suggestion seemed a good one, so I thanked her and set
off with my handbag along the path in question. There was a
bright moon, and I had no difficulty about the path, though the dis-
tance proved further than I had expected, for I must have walked
5o6 VOX MYSTICA [July,
quite half a mile before reaching the farm. However, on telling
my story I received such a warm welcome from the farmer and his
wife that I was very glad I had come.
" The building was quite an imposing one, and had evidently
been an old manor house, as its name implied; but my good host
could tell me little of its history. It appeared that the owner was
an elderly gentleman, a Catholic, who lived at a distance, and dealt
with his tenants through an agent. The latter had instructions al-
ways to secure Catholic tenants if possible, and, in the case of the
Manor Farm, there had not been a Protestant tenant within living
memory. The only other detail I gathered was that the old house
was said to contain a 'priest's hole,' or secret hiding place. How-
ever, no one knew where it was, and the farmer himself believed
that, if such a thing had ever existed, it must have been in the
older wing, which had been pulled down some twenty-five years
earlier, as it was in a ruinous state, and the house was more than
large enough without it. This much I learned in conversation
during supper, which the farmer's wife provided for me, and, as
soon as it was over, I asked to be shown to my room, as I could see
the good people were themselves anxious to retire.
" The spare room proved to be an attic chamber on the second
floor. It was a long, low room, with oak rafters showing through
the plaster ceiling, and panelled along one side and at each end. On
the other side the ceiling sloped down almost to the floor level, except
where two broad dormer windows cut into the angle of the roof.
The door was at one end of the room, and on the long wall opposite
the windows was a broad projection, which I took to be the upper
part of a chimney stack, standing out some three feet into the room.
The bed stood at the far end, its head screened off by the projection,
and I noticed that, in spite of the convenient chimney stack, there
was no fireplace in the room. The bed had been made up for me
while I was at supper, so my host and his wife excused themselves
and retired. I had said all my Office for the day on the train, and
was feeling very tired, so I decided to go to bed at once, and after
saying a few prayers I undressed and got into bed, which proved
to be extremely comfortable.
" I must have slept for several hours when I awoke abruptly,
convinced that someone had just called me by name, 'Philip
Philip Rivers/ I was sure of it. You have noticed, no doubt, how
one's own name will arrest the attention even in the midst of a
babel of conversation. Well, it was like that, only, instead of catch-
1914-] VOX MYSTICA 507
ing my attention among a crowd of talkers, the name had called me
back to consciousness out of sleep.
" I sat up in bed and listened, and as I did so the thought struck
me, 'How could anyone here know what my Christian name is?'
I had introduced myself as Father Pater, and though the label on
my bag read 'Rev. P. R. Pater,' there was nothing to show that
the initials stood for 'Philip Rivers ; ' so I determined to wait and
see if the call would be repeated before I answered it. I lay back
in bed and waited, but nothing happened, and I began to think I
had been dreaming. Still the sensation had been wonderfully vivid,
and I could hardly believe it was all imagination. Then as I lay
there, I heard a voice speaking in a low tone, almost a whisper.
There was no doubt about it now, it was in the room not many feet
away from me, though I could see nothing.
" I was on the point of calling out to ask who was there, when
I caught the word 'Mass' and a moment later 'pursuivants.' At
this I felt sure the voices were not those of the farmer and his
wife, as I had first supposed, and I lay as still as possible, scarcely
breathing, so as to hear anything else that followed. For some
minutes all was silent, and I could feel my heart beating strongly as
I listened to catch the lightest sound. Then quite distinctly, in a
low clear voice, came the words, 'In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, Amen. Introibo ad alt are Dei'
" The surprise was overwhelming and, even if I had wished to
speak, I was dumb with astonishment; but somehow all sense of
fear left me as the voice proceeded calmly with the opening responses
of the Mass. One's mind works oddly on occasions of exceptional
activity, and I remember a feeling of annoyance that the answers
of the server were indistinct and almost inaudible, but half-uncon-
sciously I repeated in my mind the words of the Mass as I heard
them.
" All at once came another surprise. The unknown priest
was saying the Confiteor, and had got to 'Sanctis Apostolis Petro
et Paulo,' and in my mind I was going on to 'omnibus Sanctis,' when
the voice inserted the extra words, 'beato patri nostro Benedicto'
which of course are said only by members of St. Benedict's Order.
" 'So you are a Benedictine monk,' I thought to myself, 'that
narrows down the possibilities enormously, and ought to help me to
identify you,' but I gave no more thought to the point, as I wished
to concentrate my whole mind on the task of listening.
" Soon there came a pause, just where the silent prayers would
VOX MYSTICA [July,
come as the priest advances to the altar, and then again the voice
began, quite distinctly, reading the Introit. 'Ad tc Iczwi aniniani
incam: Dens incus, in tc confido, non crnbescam; ncqitc irridcant
me in'umci nici 1 and I recognized it at once as the Mass for
the first Sunday of Advent.
" I need not weary you with details, but as I lay there I
heard the whole Mass proceed, every word of the 'proper' full of
significance to those who lived under the terrors of the penal laws,
for I felt sure now that it was such a Mass that I was hearing.
" At the consecration came the tingle of a tiny bell, and later
on two or three persons received Communion. Then came the
Post-communion and the concluding prayer, 'against the persecutors
of the Church.' 'O Lord our God, we beseech Thee, leave not ex-
posed to the perils of this human life those whom Thou hast re-
joiced by a share in this divine mystery.' The Blessing was given
in due course, and the first words of the last Gospel followed.
But then, suddenly, from below the windows, there came a sharp
whistle, thrice repeated, and the last Gospel stopped abruptly. I
heard a rapid whispering, but could distinguish nothing of what was
said, and in a few moments there was perfect silence; nor did I
hear another sound, though I lay awake until I was called.
" At breakfast I asked the farmer once more about the 'priest's
hiding place/ but without result; however, I learned one point
of interest. I had noticed at the station, the previous night,
that the village was named Codsall, and so concluded that the
Manor Farm had formerly been Codsall Manor. Inadvertently I
referred to it by that name, and the farmer corrected me, explaining
that it was in a different parish to Codsall, and had been known as
Marston Manor.
" The name seemed curiously familiar, somehow, but I could
not fix it, and soon after breakfast I left the place to continue
my journey north. But before leaving I made a note of the name
and address of the agent, meaning to write and ask for any par-
ticulars he could give me about the farm, in case they might cast
some light on my experience of the night before. The journey
to Glasgow was without incident, but all the way I was thinking
over the affair, and trying to recollect why the name of Marston
Manor was familiar. I felt convinced that what I had heard was,
so to speak, the echo of a Mass celebrated in the penal times,
perhaps by some priest who was afterwards martyred and not
111 To Thee, O Lord, have I lifted up my soul: in Thee do I put my trust, let
me not be put to confusion, neither let my enemies laugh me to scorn ". . . .
I 9 i4-] VOX MYSTICA 509
unnaturally my thoughts turned to my namesake, the Venerable
Philip Rivers. Then, in a flash, it occurred to my mind that in
his trial the evidence which sealed his fate was that of a servant,
who admitted under torture that Rivers had said Mass at Marston
Manor, in Staffordshire, the very day he was captured, which was
Advent Sunday, 1621.
" When I got to Glasgow I borrowed a copy of Challoner's
Missionary Priests, and read his account of Father Rivers, where
the facts I have just told you were fully set out. One other detail
was mentioned, that in 1621 Advent Sunday fell on November 29th,
the exact date on which I had slept at the Manor farm.
" I could do nothing more during my stay in Glasgow except
write to the agent, and ask if I might be permitted to examine the
old house carefully on my return south: giving my connection
with Father Rivers as a reason for my interest in the place, but
saying nothing of the incident of the Mass. In reply he wrote me
a most hospitable letter, begging me to stay with him on my journey
home, and adding that as he was himself keenly interested in the
history of the neighborhood, he would be delighted to give me all
the help he could in my researches. I accepted his invitation very
gladly, and when the Mission was over once more turned my steps to
Codsall. This time the journey proved uneventful, and I reached
the agent's house about dusk on a December evening. My host was
an elderly man, well read and cultured, with a knowledge of local
history which filled me with admiration, and we soon became ex-
cellent friends.
" He told me a good deal about the history of Marston Manor,
and how it had fallen on evil days and come to be a farm house,
and he promised to show me the spot in the neighboring wood where,
according to tradition, Father Philip Rivers had been captured while
trying to effect his escape on the fatal Advent Sunday. I felt very
much inclined to tell him about my experience on the night when
I had slept at Marston, but eventually decided to keep silent for the
moment, and instead expressed my desire to make a thorough ex-
amination of the old house on the following day.
" 'I was sure you would wish that,' said the agent, very
kindly, 'so I arranged for the estate carpenter to meet us there
to-morrow morning. He is an exceptionally able man, and has
done the repairs at Marston for many years now, and if anyone
can cast any light on the whereabouts of the priest's hiding place, it
will be he.'
510 VOX MYSTICA [July,
" Next morning, soon after breakfast, we set off together to
the Manor Farm, and on arrival found the estate carpenter waiting
for us. I talked to him about the building for some time, and was
interested in his account of the older wing, on the demolition of
which he had himself worked, as a boy, some five and twenty years
before. He was positive that nothing like a 'priest's hole' had
been found in it, and equally certain that he must have heard of it
had such a thing come to light at all. Moreover, he pointed out
that the wing which had been destroyed, had been built not later than
the early Tudor period, while the existing wing dated from 1610, as
recorded by a carved inscription over the entrance, and was there-
fore more likely to contain a hiding place, since it was built in the
penal times when such a thing would be almost a necessity.
" With this we entered the house, and made a tour of in-
spection, floor by floor, and so at length came to the large attic room
in which I had slept some ten days earlier. I remarked on the
beauty of the old oak panelling, adding that it seemed odd such fine
work should have been made for an attic.
" 'I can't help thinking it was brought here from somewhere
else, sir,' said the carpenter in reply.
" 'But what makes you think that ?' I asked, with interest.
" 'Well sir,' said he, 'you .will notice that the panels of the
top row are square, while the rest are all a good deal longer than
they are wide. If you look carefully you will see that some
of the square panels have the grain running horizontally, while in
the lower rows it is always vertical. Now you said yourself that
the panelling was exceptionally good work, and so it is; which
makes me think the men who made it would never have spoiled
the run of the grain by setting some of the top panels on their sides.
But if the whole lot was brought from somewhere else, and the top
row cut down to fit a lower room, then, like enough, the people
who altered such fine work wouldn't take too much trouble about it,
and so might get some of the panels in sideways when they put 'em
together after cutting down.
" 'Well that comes of being an expert,' said I, 'even if I had
noticed the blemish I should never have gathered so much from it.
But one thing did strike me as odd when I slept here, and that is
the absence of any fireplace, when the chimney stack was here at
hand sticking out into the room like this,' and I laid my hand on
the projection of which I told you before.
" 'Perhaps they thought it too near the rafters to be safe,'
1914-] VOX MYSTICA 511
said the agent, ' but stop a moment ; is this the chimney stack ? I
thought the chimney was in the gable at the end of this room, not
here in the middle. Isn't that so, Bateman?' he asked, turning to
the carpenter.
" 'Yes, sir/ said the man, after a moment's thought ; 'there
is no chimney stack near this part of the room.'
" 'Come, this is interesting/ said I, 'but if this is not a chimney
stack, why is there a projection here at all? They wouldn't have
brought the panelling out like this unless there was something
behind.'
" While I was speaking the carpenter had been looking up at
the cornice of the panelling, and then he moved the table up against
the projection and climbed upon it, so that he could easily reach
the ceiling.
" 'Why, sir/ he said a moment later, 'there is quite a space
between the top of the woodwork and the ceiling; see, I can put my
hand right into the opening.'
" 'Can you feel any wall behind the woodwork ?' asked the
agent.
" 'No, sir/ replied the man, 'but wait a moment ;' and taking
his rule from his pocket he unfolded to the full length, and inserted
the end through the opening, adding with surprise, ' Why, I can't
find anything at all behind, there's a space more than two feet deep
at any rate.'
" 'Run your hand along the top of the cornice; Bateman/ said
the agent, 'and see if the panelling is fastened to the ceiling in
any way.'
" The carpenter did as he was ordered, without encountering
any obstacle until he reached the angle, where the side of the pro-
jection met the front panelling, when his fingers struck against
a support.
"'There's something just at the end, sir/ said he; adding,
as he withdrew his hand, 'Why it's iron; look at the rust on my
fingers, sir/
' 'Light a match/ said the agent, 'and see if you can make
out what it is.' The man did so and peered into the narrow
crevice.
' 'It looks like a hook, sir, holding all this front piece of panel-
ling back to the sides. It must be nearly rusted through, I should
say. May I break it, sir ?'
" 'Try if you can do so without injuring the panelling/ said
512 VOX MYSTICA [July,
the agent, and the carpenter took a good grip of the cornice, and
pulled it forcibly towards him.
" There was a sound of something snapping, and a lot of dust
flew out, as the whole panelled front of the projection moved out-
wards some inches at that end.
" 'Stop,' cried the agent, 'it's holding at the other end, Bate-
man. See if you can get that loose, too, without hurting the wood-
work.'
" The carpenter jumped down and moved the table opposite the
other end. 'There's a hook here, as well,' he reported. And this
time he managed to push it back out of the eye in which it was
fixed.
" 'Just keep a hand on the panelling, sir, while I move the
table away,' cried Bateman; and when that was done the three of
us lowered the whole panelled front of the projection to the floor,
like the front of an old-fashioned escritoire.
" The air was full of the dust we had dislodged, and at first
it was difficult to see what was behind the opening. But the agent
turned to me with a look of victory, 'I think, Father,' he said,
'that we have discovered your ancestor's hiding place !'
" There could be no doubt about it. The place was a typical
'priest's hole,' some eight feet by six. There were airholes in the
floor and ceiling, as well as the long slit above the panelling we had
let down. At one end was a long, wooden seat, which could have
been used as a bed, and opposite to it was a small cupboard, rather
over three feet high, which had evidently been used as an altar,
for inside it we found two little wooden candlesticks, some rotting
pieces of linen, and a single altar card, broken across.
" Except for these things the place was absolutely empty, and it
had evidently not been used for many years past. But in one
corner, just above the bed, there was a rough drawing of a crucifix;
formed by blackening the plaster with the flame of a candle, and
then scraping away the background. Beneath the drawing was the
one word 'JHESU,' and the initials 'P. R.' "
THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS. 1
BY F. DROUET, C.M.
ROM the Patriarch Jacob to Cardinal Vaughan, from
St. Basil to Pius X., all great men, all great saints,
are practically unanimous in proclaiming the prom-
inent part played by their mothers in the moulding
of their characters and the shaping of their lives;
many a time it has been the pleasant duty of the biographer to
record such a declaration as this found in the correspondence of
his hero : " To my mother I owe what is best in me."
In the case of the saints, the mother has been usually the docile
instrument of supernatural favors, the living channel of grace, and
one would be almost tempted to say, the necessary complement of
God, His visible shadow, His faithful substitute. Most of the
saints, no doubt, could repeat and apply to themselves the words
of St. Gregory the Great, still written on the walls of the Mount
Ccelius Convent : " It is Sylvia, my saintly mother, who gave me
the Church."
Unfortunately, in the annals of Christian motherhood there
are many blank pages; and too often, to his deep regret, the his-
torian finds nothing to satisfy his eager curiosity, except the mere
mention of a name accompanied with some commonplace eulogy of
the vaguest character. And yet, from the heroic mother of the
Machabees to the peasant mother of the Cure of Ars, what a gallery
of unique pictures, what a glorious procession of brave women,
come from every walk of life!
The first three centuries of Church history are the heroic age
of Christian motherhood. For practically three hundred years,
with intervals of unequal duration, the Christian home is under the
fire of persecution; every member of the family is a candidate
for martyrdom, and the mother is educating her children not for
life, but for death. Their little ones breathed freely the heroic at-
mosphere in which Christian fortitude grew and blossomed natur-
ally. Such fortitude had not failed in the Confessors and Virgins,
1 The author acknowledges his indebtedness for the material of this article to
Les Mercs dcs Saints, by Charles d'Hericault ; Les Vaillants du Devdir, by Le"on
Raimbault, and La Bontc Chez les Saints, by the Marquis de Segur.
VOL. XCIX. 33
514 THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS [July,
and it did not fail in the Christian mothers whom we find not more
faithful than other witnesses of Christ, but undoubtedly more sub-
lime : for besides delivering themselves to the executioners, they
were called upon to deliver their children as well. A sentence,
borrowed from the A eta Marty rum, throws a flood of heavenly light
upon this, the heroic age of Christian motherhood. The Roman
magistrate said to the mother : " Sacrifice to the gods or else not
only you, but your seven children will be put to the rack." And
the Christian mother answered : " Is it possible that I may have
the happiness of being eight times a martyr? "
The mother to whom we owe this typical answer was St. Sym-
phorosa, wife of the noble and charitable Getulius. Heroism was a
tradition in the family, for the husband had cheerfully given up his
life for his divine Master, and his worthy spouse had buried him
with her own hands in the arenarium of their country house, in the
land of the Sabines.
The slave mother in those days proved herself the equal of the
patrician woman : so true it is that Christianity had lowered all social
barriers and raised the hearts of the lowly from the dark pits of
misery and vice to the luminous height of Christian perfection,
where they felt as much at home as their aristocratic masters. Zeo,
a Phrygian female slave, is ordered to sacrifice to the goddess For-
tune; her answer is an energetic refusal. " I will have thy chil-
dren tortured," shouts her master, completely taken back by the
resistance of a slave, " and we shall see whether Christ, Whom thou
callest thy God, will be able to save them from my hands." The
children are seized, their tender bodies are torn to pieces with iron
hooks : " Be of good cheer, my children," says the sublime mother,
" fight like men, and be not afraid of torments." Their reply is
worthy of her exhortation : " What are these torments, mother.
Tell the tyrant to increase our sufferings, that we may obtain a more
beautiful crown." The infuriated man casts them together into a
roaring furnace. But from the midst of the flames songs burst
forth, and with a last prayer on their lips : " O Jesus, receive our
souls," the mother and the children united in faith, united in death,
fall asleep in the Lord. A few years later, St. Felicitas and her
children recall and imitate the courage of Symphorosa.
Symphorian, who lived at Autun in the time of Marcus Aure-
lius the Wise, was an accomplished type of the educated Gallo-
Roman youth. Having refused to worship Cybela the goddess
mother, he was sent to his death. Passing by the city walls, a
I9I4-] THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS 515
sudden apparition startles him his own mother come to bid him a
supreme adieu, like Mary meeting her divine Son on the way to
Calvary. " My son, Symphorian my son," she cried, " my son,
think of the living God! Keep your heart on high, look towards
Him Who reigns in heaven ! They are not going to take away your
life; you are going to exchange it for a better one."
From Gaul we pass to distant Palestine, and the same spectacle
of supreme fortitude greets our eyes once more: a mother is
carrying to the place of martyrdom a child who has thrown his little
arms around her neck. The child is smiling, the mother is grave
and silent. When they have reached it, the executipner demands
his victim, and after a last kiss the mother quietly surrenders him.
" Go, my son," says she, " go where God is calling you; until now
I have called you my son; hereafter I will call you my lord."
Then, spreading her veil on the ground, she receives reverently the
precious blood of the little martyr.
With the fourth century a new era opens for the Church of
Christ. The Edict of Milan grants her official recognition and
protection. The age of martyrs is closed; souls have come down
from the heights of Calvary, where they dwelt in an atmosphere of
supernatural heroism, in perpetual expectation of martyrdom.
Their piety lays aside these sublime features we have wondered
at in Symphorosa, Zoe, and Felicitas, and assumes the more human
character of a devotion nearer to the earth, yet keeping, of course, in
constant touch with heaven. The Christian mothers of the fourth
century were the great, extraordinary women to whom Libanius
paid this well-known tribute of admiration : " What wonderful
women among those Christians ! " The mother who drew that
eulogy from the lips of a pagan professor was Anthusa, mother of
the great bishop with the golden tongue, St. John Chrysostom.
God utilized the great affection of John Chrysostom's mother
to keep on the Catholic battlefield of the fourth century one of the
most powerful leaders of the Church militant. For it was An-
thusa's tender and intense maternal love which prevented her son
from retiring into the desert. The four years John spent in the
mountainous region near Antioch, and the two years in a cave, in the
practice of most austere asceticism, were after the death of her
whose entreaties he had not dared disobey. She was the wife of
Secundus, commander of all the cavalry forces of the Eastern Em-
pire. A widow at the age of twenty, she refused to marry again,
in order to devote her undivided attention to the education of her
516 THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS [July,
t\vo children, a daughter, whose name is unknown, and John, who,
she felt, needed all the care she could bestow.
In compliance with a deplorable custom, against which he
inveighed when he became a bishop, John was not baptized until the
twenty-fifth year of his age. There is nothing in his life to warrant
the assumption that, like St. Augustine, like the prodigal son of
old, he wandered into a far away country, where he wasted his
substance living riotously, and whence he had to be brought back
by the burning tears of another Monica. But there is no doubt
that Anthusa witnessed with some concern the brilliant achievements
of her unbaptized son among the high pagan society of a city like
Antioch. Time and again she asked herself whether her son, who
was the favorite pupil of Libanius, would have the moral courage
to break through the net skillfully woven around him by his well-
meaning pagan admirers. So, we may imagine her relief when, in
the year 389, Bishop Meletius finally received him into the Church,
and soon made him a lector.
But then from an unexpected quarter, another danger threat-
ened the happiness of Anthusa. She suddenly became aware of her
son's project to leave the paternal home in order to emulate the
austerities of the solitaries of the Thebaid. The sacrifice was above
her strength; she had generously offered her son to the Lord, she
was willing and even anxious to see him become a priest; but a
monk, far away from her, perhaps lost to her forever, the mere
thought of it drew tears of blood from her heart. And this is
why we are called upon to witness one of the most intensely human
episodes in the lives of the saints, one that lays bare before us,
in all their admirable sincerity, two great hearts worthy of each
other and worthy of God. Let Chrysostom tell us himself.
Our project [he says, speaking of the little plot he had secretly
devised with his friend Basil], our project was about to succeed,
when the entreaties of my mother set it at naught for the present.
Having suspected our plan she took me one day by the hand, led
me into her own apartment, and bidding me sit down near the bed
where she brought me into this world, she began to cry bitterly.
And then with heavy sobs, she said to me things still more
touching than her tears : " My son, I enjoyed only for a short
time the help I received from your dear father, his premature
death left me a widow and you an orphan. My only consola-
tion in the midst of my many sorrows was to have you constantly
by my side, and to behold in you the unforgotten features of
I9I4-] THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS 517
your father. O my son, would you have the heart to leave me
a widow for the second time? The only favor I now beg
from you is not to revive my grief : wait at least for my death,
perhaps, it is not far distant."
John yielded to her tears, and we thank and bless him for it.
For, perhaps it is because of his filial obedience that we may admire
and love, not only John the monk, but John the unique preacher
of Antioch, and John the indomitable Patriarch of Constantinople.
In St. Monica we greet not only the best known of the saintly
figures we are sketching, but also the most accomplished type of
womanhood that ever graced a home. The wife of a man who
for years was brutal and unfaithful, she won him over by her un-
alterable patience and smiling condescension. The mother of a
son who, to use his own words, " was held tight by the chains of
lustful desires, buried in the depth of shame, foul, crooked and
defiled," she brought him back to health of heart and soul by four-
teen years of a struggle without parallel in the annals of Christian
motherhood.
Monica's fight began after the death of Patricius her husband.
In his eighteenth year Augustine, still unbaptized, had allowed him-
self to be bound by those chains that were to hold him for so
many years, and make him an easy prey to that incredulity of the
mind which so readily follows in the wake of the passions of the
flesh. At first Monica's grief was so violent that her life was in
danger. Her tears flowed day and night, in public as well as in the
secret of her oratory, on her garments, on the bread she ate, on the
pavement of the churches where she knelt: blessed and immortal
tears which drew from a holy bishop the memorable answer : " Go,
my daughter, leave him alone, and simply pray for him; it is im-
possible that the son of so many tears should perish."
Fully resolved to do violence to heaven and not to give up the
fight until she was rewarded by a complete victory, Monica added to
her uninterrupted prayers the practice of Christian works. She
buried the dead with her own feeble hands, and while paying them
the last honors she begged them to obtain from God the resurrection
of her own Augustine. She lavished care and tenderness upon little
motherless children, receiving them in her own house, feeding them
at her own table; she taught their young lips to stammer out the
sweet name of Jesus, endeavoring to give new children to God, that
God might bring back her lost child to her. In a word she breathed,
5i8 THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS [July,
prayed, worked for one sole object: the salvation of that dearest
of all souls.
Yet when occasion demanded she knew how to silence the voice
of flesh and blood, to rebuke the wayward son with the sublime anger
of outraged faith. Having learned that the unfortunate youth had
publicly denied his religion, and was dragging into the eternal abyss
the young friends who yielded without resistance to the ascendency
of his genius, she refused to tolerate any longer the presence of
an apostate in her house. With all the majesty of a mother, in-
sulted in her Catholic belief, which she held dearer than her own
son, she drove him out, and forbade him ever to appear before
her. Without a word of protest, the culprit bowed down his head
and retired to the house of a friend. Hardly had he passed the
threshold when nature, overpowered for a moment, reasserted its
rights, and Monica felt her heart literally breaking asunder within
her breast. She would have died, but for a dream that the Lord
sent her the following night, and in which she received the assurance
that her prayers and tears would win the day. But ten long years
were still to pass before she could greet the dawn of returning faith
in that soul darkened by heresy and sin; ten years of the most
thrilling moral struggle the world ever saw ; ten years during which
she regained ground step by step, wrestling as it were by inches the
heart of Augustine from the slavery of his vile passions, and his
intelligence from the clutches of the darkest of all heresies. But
the various episodes of that conversion, the most eventful, perhaps
after that of St. Paul, are too well known to bear detailed repetition.
The joy of his return was too much for Monica; she had lived
for fifteen years under the crushing strain of an unsurpassed sor-
row; but she was unable to bear for more than a year the super-
human happiness which filled to overflowing the frail vessel of her
maternal heart.
With deep regret we must content ourselves with a passing but
admiring glance at such attractive figures as St. Berswinda, mother
of the sweet and deservedly popular St. Odila, patroness of Alsace;
the Countess Heilvige, mother of Pope St. Leo IX., who so inspired
her son with a veritable passion for purity, as to make his soul
" as white as a budding lily." Some historians say it was to honor
the memory of his perfect mother that Leo IX. instituted the Golden
Rose, which the Holy Father still blesses on the third Sunday of
Lent, and sends to some Catholic woman as a token of particular
esteem. We must offer, at least, a passing tribute of praise and
1914.] THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS 519
admiration to Ermemberga, mother of St. Anselm, who saved the
mind of her child from that terrible hypochondria which, for a while,
threatened with insanity the man destined to be the glorious pre-
cursor of St. Thomas of Aquin.
We are now approaching the close of the eleventh century,
where one gigantic figure towers above all the rest. The incom-
parable Bernard of Clairvaux, as might be expected, owes the
precious gift of his soul, after God, to an uncommon mother.
Elizabeth or Alix the early biographers do not seem to agree
on her name is one of the most striking types of womanhood
during the iron period of the feudal system. She is not, as Charles
d'Hericault says, like St. Leo's mother, a lady of the borderland,
always on the alert like a soldier under arms; she has not, like
St. Louis' mother, a kingdom to govern and to defend; she is not
condemned, like St. Francis de Sales' mother, to hear the roaring
waves of heresy breaking against the very walls of her castle;
she is the feudal matron, the mulier fortis, quiet and dignified, the
revered queen of the miniature world that moves within the ram-
parts of her husband's manor.
Eleven centuries of Christianity have cast the human soul in
a new mould, and, to use St. Paul's words, " The goodness and
kindness of our Saviour " have softened the native rudeness of
these much-abused characters of the Middle Ages. The ideal
which the Christian mother of that period sets before the eyes of her
children is not only stainless honor and a chivalrous spirit, ready to
do battle against all miscreants, one against four, four against ten ; it
is an ideal that dwells in a still higher region, in a region where
human feelings are permeated and transformed by the light of
eternity, in a region where piety and purity reign supreme. Not
only does she prefer to see her son dead rather than dishonored, but
she goes so far as to say and she means it she would prefer to
see him fall dead under her own eyes rather than be defiled by
mortal sin. Such was St. Bernard's mother. She bore to Tesce-
lin, who, according to tradition, was a lion in battle and a lamb
before women, old men, and children, six sons and one daughter.
The historians of St. Bernard usually record with emphasis that she
herself nursed all her children; that her instructions and commands
were never given in language ungracious or exaggerated, and that
she raised her children as though they were destined some day to
share the laborious life of the working classes. " She accustomed
them so well," says an old chronicler, " to real hard work that they
520 THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS [July,
seemed to begin, under her direction, the apprenticeship of the aus-
terities which they practised in after life."
The result of her lessons may be summed up in a sentence
that speaks volumes for the irresistible power of her domestic
example : her brother, her husband, her six sons, and last of all her
daughter, all embraced the religious state; not, however, without
a protracted struggle which, for Bernard himself, nearly ended in
defeat. Who saved him from " the bewitching of vanity " to
which his brilliant natural qualities would have made him an easy
prey? His mother, who appeared to him with a look of sadness
that pierced the heart of Bernard and put an end to his hesitations.
Her own brother Gaudry was the next to succumb to that super-
natural influence that came from beyond the grave; five sons fol-
lowed in rapid succession; and the last conquest of that strange,
invisible apostolate was her only daughter Humbelina, who finally
completed the resplendent crown of seven stars which the happy
mother wears now in the kingdom of heaven.
Theodora, mother of St. Thomas of Aquin, is the type of those
exacting mothers who, for a while at least, stand resolutely, like
an armed fortress, between God and the vocation of their children.
She was undoubtedly a pious and virtuous woman, but the thought
that her son, a descendant of the companions of Charlemagne, a
grandson of a counselor of Frederick Barbarossa and of a princess
of the House of Suabia, could become a plain monk, wear a coarse
scapular, and bury the glory of his name in the obscurity of a con-
vent, such a thought was unbearable to her aristocratic pride.
No sooner had she been informed that Thomas had taken the
Dominican habit than she rushed towards Naples, fully resolved
to snatch the boy away and to bring him forcibly back to the
paternal castle. He outwitted and outran her, however, and took
refuge in St. Sabina Convent in Rome. The relentless mother was
close upon the heels of the fugitive, so close, indeed, that this time
he had no chance to escape, and was compelled to keep in hiding
within the walls of the monastery. Theodora laid siege before the
door, and the good Fathers, fearing her influence, finally dispatched
their novice to Paris. But the news of his secret departure leaked
out, and in the neighborhood of Acquapendente, Thomas and his
companions were suddenly surrounded by a troop of armed men,
commanded by his own brother Raynald. In vain did the youthful
friar indignantly protest. The young monk was imprisoned in the
castle of Aquin, where the triumphant Theodora quickly joined him;
I9T4-] THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS 521
and falling upon his neck, opened the floodgates of tears that
had filled her heart to overflowing during these months of bitter
struggle. Thomas was unshaken in his resolution : " Mother," he
used to repeat meekly but firmly, " would I love you less for loving
God more and more?" For ten years this mother, blinded by a
misguided love, endeavored to kill in the soul of her son a vocation
which she would most likely have admired and favored in another.
Of course there could be no doubt as to the issue of that unequal
combat, and the proud Theodora finally laid down her arms and
admitted defeat; but, through fear of displeasing her two oldest
sons to whom their brother's vocation was far more distasteful than
to herself, she dared not open the doors of Thomas' prison, but
contented herself with secretly favoring his flight.
God, no doubt, wanted her to atone, even upon earth, for her
long and stubborn opposition to His will. Frederick, angered at the
devotedness of the Aquin family to the cause of the Papacy, stormed
and razed their castle. Theodora accepted the lesson, bowed her
head in humble submission, and ended her life in a spirit of penance
in singular contrast with the haughtiness of former years.
To quote Charles d'Hericault again: the thirteenth century
was great because it was holy, and God was, so to speak, reflected
in St. Louis more than in any other king. To prepare that century
and that king, continues the same writer, God made use of His
Church and of a woman. On the tomb of that woman, in the
monastery of Montbuisson, the following epitaph has been en-
graved : " Madame La Royne Blanche, mere de Monsieur Saint
Louis." Of all the eulogies bestowed upon her by the admiration
and gratitude of centuries, this is the most simple, yet the most
complete and the most sublime.
By birth Blanche belongs to Spain, and after St. Teresa there
are few women, if any, of whom Catholic Spain has a right to be
more proud. Contemporary chroniclers are at a loss to find ex-
pressions sufficiently strong to convey adequately their admiration
of her: "She was," they proclaim with touching unison, "all
beautiful, all good, all sincere, all wise; truly beloved by God and
man; the most prudent woman of her age; one of the greatest
gifts that France ever received from heaven." Capable of bringing
to a successful close the most difficult undertakings, she held sway
over the supreme council of kings, and her persuasive eloquence
knew the secret of overcoming all opposition; her husband un-
reservedly submitted to her will; which, another historian mali-
522 THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS [July,
ciously remarks, would have been going too far, were love not
such a good and plausible excuse. Grace, energy, courage, these
three words give us a complete portrait of Blanche's character.
Her greatest title to the admiration of posterity is, of course, that
she gave to the world St. Louis, the perfect type of a Christian king.
Blanche was an educator without a peer; development of the
body, culture of the mind, preservation of the soul every phase
of this threefold education was under her personal su-
pervision nothing was neglected that could help make a
man and a Christian of him who was destined to rule a great
kingdom. Monks and knights were his teachers; at the school
of the former he learned to read and chant the canonical office, and
to pore over the pages of the Bible and of the Fathers; from the
latter, w r ith equal ardor and undiminished vigor (for this pious
youth felt the good red blood of France and Spain tingling in his
veins), he learned to mount a horse; to hunt and fish in the royal
forests; to jump ditches; to scale high walls, and to brave the
inclemency of the weather. And at every stage of this sane and
virile formation, the influence of the mother made itself deeply felt;
" she accustomed him to hard \vork and did not even hesitate to
inflict upon him the punishments then in use."
But, of course, the preservation of Louis' soul from all impure
contact was uppermost in Blanche's preoccupations, in her cares,
in her prayers : " Fair son," she said to him more than once, " I
would fain see you dead rather than defiled by a mortal sin."
With such an education to tide them over the manifold
dangers of their exalted position, it is not difficult to understand
how two of Blanche's children, namely, Louis and his sister Isa-
belle, found their way to the honors of canonization. But here
a question naturally arises to our lips : how is it that such a model
mother did not precede or follow her children to this honor ? Alas,
that we must put our finger upon a flaw, in that magnanimous
heart; to complete this sketch, brief though it be, we must speak of
Queen Blanche's relations with her daughter-in-law, Marguerite
of Provence.
On the day of their marriage, the young king slipped on his
wife's finger a golden ring representing lilies and daisies (" Mar-
guerites" in French), delicately entwined, with this significant motto
engraved on the edge : " Dieu, France et Marguerite : hors cet anel
poing n'ey d'amour God, France, and Marguerite : beyond this
ring I have no love." Did Blanche imagine she was thereby ex-
1914-] THE MOTHERS OF THE SAINTS 523
eluded from her son's heart? At any rate from that day the
young couple knew from bitter experience how far and how fast a
jealous mother can travel along the lines of indiscretion, unreason-
able complaint, petty annoyance, and undignified anger.
In spite of this one strange weakness, Louis' respect and love
for his mother remained unaltered to the end. To judge of their
true sentiments, we must read the touching scene of their last part-
ing, when the king was about to embark for Egypt : " Dearest son,"
cried out the disconsolate mother, " how could my heart endure
such a separation; it would be harder than a stone if it were not
even now rent asunder, for you are the most loving son a mother
ever had ! " She nearly fainted away, and leaning upon the king
who was himself bathed in tears, she sobbed aloud : " Fair son,
never shall I see you again ; my heart tells me so, never shall I see
you again." Her presentment did not deceive her; she died before
he returned. When the news of her blessed death reached him, the
saintly king gave full vent to his grief, and kneeling down poured
out his heart in this beautiful prayer : " Lord God, I give you
thanks for 'lending me' my dear mother so long. It is true,
O sweet Father of Jesus Christ, that I loved my mother above any
creature in this perishable world, and indeed she deserved it; but,
since it was your Holy Will that she should die, blessed be your
Holy Name!"
Who has said that the saints, if they wish to be consistent,
must stifle in their heart all tender feelings, trample human affec-
tions under foot, and let the love of God absorb and utterly destroy
all other sentiments? Those who still profess to believe that ab-
surd and stubborn calumny have probably never heard of St. John
Chrysostom nor of St. Louis, and perhaps they have still to be taught
the names of St. Vincent de Paul and of St. Francis de Sales. At
any rate they are not aware that no less than three volumes have
been written under the alluring title : " The natural affections of
the saints."
In bringing to a close this very incomplete and very imperfect
review of saintly portraits, the writer cannot resist the pleasure of
quoting once more the admirable historian and gifted orator to whom
he owes so much, Father L. Raimbault : " There is nothing more
beautiful than a mother, because there is nothing that resembles
God so closely: 'Mater Dens,' St. Augustine says, 'quia fovet,
qnia sustinet, etiam quia calcat' }l Mothers are the queens of life,
being raised to the dignity of coworkers with the Author of life.
524 THE LIGHTS OF WORCESTER TOWN [July,
They are the queens of education; soldiers protect the national
flag, bankers guard the public wealth, but mothers have been in-
trusted with the most precious treasure of this world, after the
Blessed Eucharist : the souls of the children. They are the queens
of sacrifice; the Bible, the history of the Church militant, are replete
with records of how their tears were copiously shed, how their blood
was generously given. Everywhere in the history of souls and in
the history of nations, they assume the suppliant attitude of victims,
and more than once they appear, in the light of supernatural glory,
in the triumphant attitude of saviours.
THE LIGHTS OF WORCESTER TOWN.
BY MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.
FIVE great hills with groves and towers
Stand like a wall round Worcester Town,
Fair are they all days and hours,
Most of all when the night comes down:
Tents of beauty if winter snows them,
Or an they wear rich autumn's gown,
Frescoes if dawn or noontime shows them,
Fairest of all when the night comes down.
Up the hillsides, down the lowlands,
Jewelled in light all Worcester glows,
Magical set like fairy showlands,
Arbors of lily or banks of rose:
1914-] THE LIGHTS OF WORCESTER TOWN 525
Some like ghosts with footsteps stealthy
Glimmer on hills where Spencer goes,
Others in windows warm and healthy,
They of the lily, these of the rose.
Down in Blackstone's courseway flowing,
Held in the eyes of pond and stream,
Tier on tier are mill lamps showing
Arches of light as a land of dream.
Swinging of looms is pictured by them,
Traffic of folk in a golden gleam,
Spindle and shuttle and men that ply them,
Tapestries weave they fair as a dream.
Out from deep, dark hills come flashing
Trailing lights when the trains go by,
Eastward, westward they are dashing,
Speeding as meteors cross the sky.
Beacons aloft on tower and steeple
Signal and answer a watching eye,
Ribbons of light see town and people,
Miniature comets across the sky.
Five great hills all marked with highways
Stand like a wall round Worcester Town,
Lights that glow in halls and byways,
Magical look when the night comes down :
Jewels and gold of the lights are gleaming
Hems of the sable, sheen of a crown,
Rose light or lily as garden seeming
Fairy parterres the night brings down.
THE RED PIPE.
BY "OLIVER."
EOL had been promising for some time to test my
geological knowledge for I had the untimely habit of
straying off in search of specimens of stone, often
when my absence put him to considerable inconven-
ience. I expected him, then, to produce at some
inopportune moment, when the furor geologicus was
not on me, a specimen of drift of some sort crystallized granite,
gneiss, mica schist, or quartz from the northern streams the more
distant and obscure the locality the more likely would he be to con-
sider his find rare or even valuable. I was not exactly prepared,
therefore, when from the depths of a red bandanna handkerchief he
brought forward a most unusually antique pipe of red stone.
At first I took it for a candlestick the bowl and stand lent them-
selves easily to this idea. A short cylindrical urn, spool-shaped, rising
from the centre of a flat and slightly curved base, there being also a
fair-sized edging or lip, served for the moment to nonplus me. Still
the bowl was itself too large for an ordinary candle, and a closer in-
spection showed an opening in the elongated base through which the
aboriginal pipe-stalk reached the tobacco. Moreover the odor of to-
bacco clung closely to the bowl, which was in turn well burned inside.
As this ancient artifact lay on the table before me, it recalled the cur-
rent description of Ericsson's Monitor " a cheese box on a raft "
and I was thereby enabled the more readily to solve Peol's problem.
He was steadily regarding me with a shrewd and quizzical gaze.
Here was a traditional instrument of his tribe, dating as I knew from
the age of the mound builders, brought in from a great distance
what wonder that he expected me to fall down in my reading of it.
The material of this sacred artifact was greasy to the touch yet this
might have been due to the contact of many hands. That it was stone,
and not baked clay, was evident. It showed the marks of the chipping
instrument with which it was first fashioned. I tried it with my knife,
and found that it cut like hard wood, without injury to the blade.
" Your Monitor pipe, Peol," I began for a glimmer of in-
spiration had reached me, and I was quite willing to impress the old
chief with the variety of knowledge " is made of compact steatite, or
soapstone ; in other words, of catlinite, or what if it came from China
would be called agalmatolite. Age and the heat of use have long ago
driven out the first moisture, so that it is harder now than when it was
first made, but there is magnesia in it yet."
1914-] THE RED PIPE 527
I expected the Indian to be overpowered by these words of
thundering sound and my geological knowledge generally, but his
inscrutable eyes gave no hint of his thoughts. I continued : " Of
course I can give you other names for the material of your pipe.
Perhaps if I call it plain pipe stone, you will understand better."
He laughed openly at me an unusual laugh with him and I
felt that he was laughing at my ignorance. I had not impressed him
after all.
" You may be able to read the stones on the shores of Baska-
hegan," he said, " but human flesh when turned to stone is not an
A-B-C book. This pipe was made long ago, before my fathers came
out of the west and into the land of fir trees, of the stone to which
all the Indians were turned who were drowned in the great freshet.
From far and near, when the waters threatened them, they fled to the
ridge of rocks which somewhere in the west rises out of the level
ground like the blade of a knife. But the rock was not high enough,
and so they were all drowned. Then the Great Spirit flashed his
thunders over them, and they were turned to soft stone. Steal him!
Well, you know too much. All tribes free to dig that stone, because
the flesh of all is in it."
Peol had misunderstood my science. Still there was a story
behind all this. So tacitly accepting his correction, I asked for more
information.
" It's a very long story," he began. " Long ago when my people
came from the salt water of the other ocean, which they crossed on
rafts of logs " here he pointed to the west " when our hunters
killed the big animal called mylo 1 you find him in Boston Museum
long before white man's time, they lived out beyond the great lakes.
Hunting was good, and life easy, so that they increased until they be-
came what the ancient word called mamouni, or as thick as the hairs
of the head, and the land could not hold them. Then a portion of
them, seeking adventure and the salt sea, which their fathers loved,
pushed onward down a great river 2 until they came to the ocean.
But the greater bulk of the people remained in their ancient seats.
Years went by, and they had many battles with other tribes, who en-
vied them their rich hunting grounds ; and then they grew mamouni
again, and disputed among themselves, for the country was not large
enough to hold them all. There were two great parties among them,
championed by two leading chiefs, and it looked as if it might be war.
Then arose among them a wise medicine man, who announced that
the Great Spirit wished to talk with his people out on the sacred
ground where the flesh of all Indians lay turned to stone, and whence
they took their sacred pipes. On that ground or near it no warring
lf The Mylodon. 'The Saint Lawrence.
THE RED PIPE [July,
was allowed, and Indians faltered and hid their weapons as they
drew near it.
" And so the two chiefs, with their soothsayers and picked war-
riors, stood in the presence of the sacred rocks, and from a distance
presented their offerings to the two old women that guarded the
ground. Then from their caves beneath the rock the old women
came forth into full sight, while fire and light shone about them, so
that our people fell on their faces with the fright of it. The vener-
able figures each carried in her hand a pipe of peace, fashioned so
much alike that no man could tell one from the other, except that on
the underside one bore the mark of an eagle's claw, and the other that
of a bear."
Immediately I picked up the ancient talisman and sought its
emblem. Sure enough, it bore on the bottom of the base or stand
the minute impress of a bear's paw.
Peol, indifferent to my act, continued : " Then calling each of the
two contending chiefs by name, they gave to each a pipe. ' You will
smoke these pipes here and now on this sacred ground,' they ordered,
' as a sign of peace between you, and that you accept our words.
The chief who has received the claw of the bear will then lead his
people down into Shinaki, the land of fir trees, until he reaches the
salt sea. There he will find his kinfolk who have gone before, already
a great tribe, and he will make peace with them, and they shall be his
allies in war. The chief of the eagle's claw will remain, himself and
his people, in their ancient hunting grounds. When the memory of
this day and of your kinship, one to another, shall have grown dim
with the burden of years and separation, then will you meet and
smoke the one pipe, but woe to the tribe that shall have lost its pipe
in the meanwhile ; and happy the lot of the eagle who on that day
joins himself with the bear.'
" And then they were gone in the flash of the flame which came
from the thunderbird, which had its nest on the mountain. The rival
chiefs smoked together the two pipes on the sacred ground, and
bound themselves to the holy pact.
" Thus it came about that the clan of the bear separated itself
from its brother clan of the eagle, and pushing boldly into the east,
skirted the great inland waters until a great river brought them to the
sea. At the sight of the rolling mountains of green waters, part of
the tribe threw themselves down on their faces for the ancient mem-
ories possessed them; but part took no pleasure in the sight of the
sea, having lost, in the years, the attraction of it. Those therefore
who loved the sea made their homes near it ; while those who pie-
ferred the fresh water lakes and streams went further inland ; and
so we have to-day the Malicetes on the Ouigoudi and the Etchemin
1914-] THE RED PIPE 529
or Quoddies by the sea. These pioneer clans soon met their com-
mon kinfolk, the Micmacs, and renewed blood relation with them ;
but the Micmacs, being themselves salt-water Indians, liked tfie
Quoddies best.
Warning me that the story was long, and that we should need
refreshment before it was through, Peol set the coffee-pot near the
embers, and then lighted his pipe. My gaze rested on the ancient
artifact whose history he was unravelling. However much I might
dissent from its preternatural origin, there could be no doubt of its
antiquity. Its years began with the age of the mound builders of
that there could hardly be dispute. Its story was not yet told. Did
these divinely separated tribes ever come together again to fulfill
prophecy ?
Peol resumed : " The rest of the story is a long one, and hap-
pened since the white man came. In fact, a white man brought it
about. You will remember better than I the name of the long-
faced Frenchman, dry and dour of aspect, who first carried our
Abenaki and Micmac canoemen with him through forest, and over
lakes and down the Great River, to the country where moss hangs
from the trees like a beard, and the earth is red or yellow as you like
it, with no solid spot to camp on when you reach the sea."
The Indian paused to await my reply. " Yes," I answered,
" De la Salle, you mean. He took your people down with him to the
mouth of the Mississippi."
" La Salle, yes, that's the name. We called him sometimes
' Long Face,' but oftenest Tish-an-an-a-gouah ' Go-back-and-sit-
down.' He was so set in his way so sure that his way was best
that when our chiefs ventured to offer him advice, he invariably re-
jected with the contemptuous order: 'Tish-an-an-a-gouah!' speech
which we use only to our dogs.
" Several of my family were with him on that trip ; among them
Talistoga, then a young man, grandson of Guesca by her Iroquois
husband, Waghinethe. We went with his father, who was here-
ditary sorcerer in succession to our great Iroquois medicine man.
Since the expedition was to pass through the great unknown west
out of which our people came, it was decided to allow this sacred
pipe to accompany it in care of Azoa and his son Talistoga. Pro-
phecy might be on the way to fulfillment. For our pipe had re-
mained in the family of the first great chief, to whom the sacred old
woman had given it, through more years than a young popple shakes
leaves to the ground in the fall.
"You may be sure that Talistoga and the other stalwart young
men who were to accompany their fathers on the expedition, were
too much occupied in mind with the forthcoming wonders and adven-
VOL. xcix. 34
530 THE RED PIPE [July,
tures of their journey, to give thought to the stories of the old
people. He paid but little attention to the sacred pipe, therefore, ex-
cept when it went round ; being altogether occupied with his new
firelock musket or fusil, his knives of flashing steel, and his outfit
of powder and lead. So that the elders took him and the other young
men apart, and recounted to them the history of the pipe as I have
told it to you, and taught Talistoga to smoke it with shut eyes, and
the others to read in the smoke clouds what should happen. Talis-
toga was nearest of blood to the pipe, but his father, Azoa, being
half Iroquois, was not considered fit although a great medicine man,
as I have said to read the secrets of the holy instrument. But Azoa
always thought this interdiction a hardship, since he was best part
Abenaki, his mother being Guesca.
" It was agreeable to have so many Frenchmen in the company,
besides some Micmacs; but the Abenaki depended on themselves
on their knives and medicine to carry them through. It was well
they did so in view of the use La Salle made of them when the ex-
pedition reached the great unknown wilderness. There they were
sent out, not only as hunters to get game, but as scouts to precede
the main body and report on the country ahead. Some time was spent
in constructing a fort near the great falls, and then in building a
ship with which to navigate in safety the immense inland seas. It
was then that our people first taught the white man what they could
do with an axe: the Abenaki are still the best axemen in America."
" Aye, and the best men on running logs," I could not forbear
interjecting.
Peol gave me a gratified nod, and continued : " From what our
scouts could learn from the Hurons, a great warlike tribe beset the
farthest stretches of the lakes, where the hills gave way to level
reaches of grass and plains. They were a tribe of mounted Indians,
using horses more than canoes but canoes as well, for they lived
on a river so that even their women rode horseback. Their food
was good eating, being the flesh of some great animal which they
hunted on horses.
" At last the expedition sailed westward over the great inland
seas. Talistoga would sit for hours in the bow of the new ship watch-
ing the unbroken stretch of water, and wondering what lay to his right
hand and what to his left; but his father and the older men held
their breath, and waited for the sight of the land from which their
people had first come. From time to time, when the melancholic
French leader was below in his cabin, Azoa consulted the spirits,
but always received the same answer, ' You have your medicine pipe.'
Still he delayed doing so, being wrathful that he was not permitted to
penetrate its mysteries.
1914.] THE RED PIPE 531
" At length some of the others insisted that the pipe be consulted,
and that Talistoga be chosen to smoke it while the others should
read the smoke. The night was calm, with not a breeze stirring. The
vessel rolled quietly to the swells, and the moon overhead made the
sails look whiter and more ghostly. Few of the Frenchmen were on
deck, and the Micmacs had already gone to their quarters. Then our
Abenaki hunters gathered silently in the bow beneath the shadow of
a great sail; the pipe was produced and given to the young man to
light. Scarcely had he drawn his first whiff of smoke when he felt
the pipe tremble in his mouth, as if his teeth could not hold it, and
then he shut his eyes as he had been bid while the smoke blew
easily from his mouth. The watchers, intent on possible manifesta-
tion, saw the smoke wreaths rise to a certain height above his head,
and then spread out and bank up into fantastic forms. To their
keen eyes every circling ring of smoke appeared to take its place
mechanically, and with its airy fellows arrange and rearrange the
foreground of a picture. There was an Indian encampment on a
hill, with a river running at its foot, and level ground spreading out
interminably; while through all the picture roved figures of men,
some on foot, others on horseback, and their horses ran wild through
the cloudlets. Over and over again the scene was repeated until not
a warrior but knew it by heart. Talistoga alone did not look out at
the smoke he was making. Suddenly he felt that he was called to
look up, and, as he did so with hesitating glance, he started backward
with momentary astonishment. The cloudlets were held before him
in a thin wall of smoke, through which he imagined he saw woods
and single trees, and then quickly there appeared a girl on horse-
back, hurrying and yet checking her horse.
" The vision was so distinct that he saw the gold bands on her
arms, the graceful sway of her body, the sweep of her tunic
over her knees, and the saddle-cloth which covered her horse. But
her face he did not see, only the poise of her head, and the wealth of
hair that was tied at the back of her head. Then he shut his eyes to
the vision, in order to look out afresh. This time he opened them,
fearing the vision had gone. It took him a moment to realize that
a face of the sweetest beauty was gazing down at him from the smoke
wreaths. He saw the pearls in the small ears, and the wimpling of
her hair over her forehead; but her eyes held him. Whether it was
anger or wonder that showed in them he could not read, but behind
whatever her emotion was he saw limpid depths of coyness and
maiden modesty. Her lips appeared to move in speech and then she
was gone, while the rugged faces of his friends blinked at him in
the moonlight.
" They crowded round him now, with many a quick and smoth-
532 THE RED PIPE [July,
ered question, to know what he had seen. His fixed and rapt
attitude while the vision lasted was not lost on them. Whether he
would have yielded to their insistence and related his vision to them,
I very much doubt, but a diversion of such a nature at this moment
came to his relief as effectually drove the thought of his vision from
their minds.
" The gaunt form of La Salle stood suddenly in the midst of
them, a deep frown on his face, and anger shooting from his black
eyes.
" ' Where are they ? ' he demanded in his quick, sharp voice.
* Don't dare tell me they are not here, for I saw them. Where are
those two women?'
" To the Abenaki his words were enigmatic. They hesitated,
and he took their hesitation for guilt. He began at once to search
for the hidden women, and called to his officers to join him. But
their request was useless, as our people well knew, for even they were
assured of his good intentions when he laid his hand on the spot where
the women sat. At once they endowed the wrathful commander
with superhuman powers, since to their minds he had seen the two
Old Women so closely connected with the magic pipe and yet they
had not seen them.
" But Azoa, who had some of his mother's birchbark temper,
although not taking part in the enchantment, flared up at the French-
man, and in his anger gave utterance to a gross insult. Happily La
Salle did not heed his words, being intent on the search. Still Azoa
knew better in his heart, for the severe Frenchman suffered no women
near the expedition at any time; yet he might not have been so hasty
in his judgment.
" The Micmacs, being aroused by the search, and learning the
story of the night's enchantment, at once endowed our warriors with
a sort of mysterious character, so that during the rest of the journey
they consulted us in everything, seeing that we were now closing in on
the land of our forefathers. The land of their forefathers, also,
but their memories had not been kept alive like ours by this pipe, and
they had long since parted with the finer edge of their traditions.
" So, neither to his own friends nor to the Micmacs with whom
he was a prime favorite on account of his size and strength did
Talistoga tell the details of his vision ; he kept them rather in his own
heart, to think on them, and to picture over and over to himself the
wonderful beauty of the girl, and puzzle his mind as to what her lips
whispered. Every morning he looked ahead past the sharp bow of
the ship, wondered where she lived and when he would meet her.
His friends believed he was still in a dream, and said that the Old
Women had bewitched him.
1914-] THE RED PIPE 533
" The little company of adventurers had yet a stranger experience
awaiting them. The weather for a few days had been dull and
hot ; there was a sluggishness in the air which was disconcerting, and
made a man breathe with difficulty and perspire doing nothing. The
commander was in a nervous worry while it lasted, and made many
useless expeditions from cabin to rail in his effort to interpret the
weather. They were still out of sight of land, and no man knew
what was ahead. The next night, after the excitement aroused by
La Salle's vision of the Old Women, was dark and murky; a great
black pall had settled down over the lake, through which the
moon could not penetrate. There was no wind nothing but a gentle
ground swell but the air was tense and still hard to breathe. Sud-
denly a groan went up in chorus from a group of sailors, and they
threw themselves on their knees in wild prayer ; for there, on the mast-
head, burned a large ball of the purest light; a steady, silent light it
was, shining up there in the darkness; a man could see every cord
and rope between him and it. It shone like a great eyeball at the
masthead.
" The Micmacs howled like affrighted beasts, and cast themselves
in among us, as if we could save them who were ourselves stricken
with deadly fear; the steersman fled from the rudder, and the vessel
yawed and fell crossways of the swell; the sails flapped, and the
sailors, crossing themselves, prayed loudly.
" La Salle was at once on the deck to inquire into the tumult.
An officer pointed to the mysterious light on the mast, and the com-
mander blessed himself. Then with a roar of anger he was amongst
us, prepared, if his officer had not dissuaded him, to lay about him
with the flat of his sword. He charged us at once with a second
devilish incantation, in order to bring misfortune to his ship. Then,
driven to desperation by the cries of the sailors and the loose move-
ments of the ship, he boldly threw himself into the rigging, carrying
his sword in his teeth, and scrambled upward to give battle to the
demon on the topmast. The spirit did not await his labored ascent,
but floated away noiselessly like a great white owl on a summer's
evening. La Salle returned to the deck and, ignoring us altogether,
harangued his men in his own tongue. Abenaki and Micmac won-
dered at his boldness and the power of his medicine.
" But the French murmured among themselves, and old Fran-
gois, the hunter, said that the ship was haunted because she had been
built and launched from a graveyard of the Hurons she could have
no good luck. Still La Salle's intrepidity helped him with his men,
and gave him still greater prestige with our people.
" At length after an interval of two days, during which they were
greatly aided by a strong wind that followed the appearance of the
strange light, they sighted land ahead on both sides, and in a little
534 THE RED PIPE [July,
while they raised the mouth of a river that flowed out of the lake.
La Salle, after a long consultation with old Frangois, the hunter
whom he had brought with him from Niagara ordered the helmsman
to enter the river. They found that its current ran southerly; at
which the French commander was well pleased, since it agreed with
the advice given to him by the old man.
" On both sides stretched great level barrens of sand, with here
and. there willow gardens in the lower lands; ahead of them, but much
more to the south, they could distinguish higher ground and a blink-
ing spread of woods against the noonday horizon. Would the river
take them through that delectable woodland? For our Indians, ac-
customed to the wholesome hilly country of the east, where the moun-
tain ridges run like the knuckles of your hand, had no love for barren,
level plains without bush or tree to hide a man when he is scouting.
" Much to their satisfaction, therefore, they discovered after a
second day's sailing that the river was leading them in a roundabout
way to the wooded country. No living being was in sight at any time,
except perhaps a diving muskrat along the shore. Talistoga, who was
continually on the alert, thought he sighted smoke many miles to the
right of their course, but no one else saw it. And yet not a fish hawk
could alight on a willow spray that he did not see, so earnest and
watchful was his expectation of meeting her of whom by this time
he had come to call his Smoke Girl.
" He met her sooner than he expected, and in a manner different
from anything he could have dreamed. The ship had at last reached
the wooded country, through which the river ran placidly, and with an
ever varying succession of mirrored pictures of the accompanying
forest. The wind had died out, or was held in check by the deep lea,
when word was passed to our men to prepare their canoes to land
and scout. Old Frangois said that they were now approaching the
encampment of the powerful tribe, of which they had heard so much
before they left Niagara.
" The vessel was brought to temporary anchor, and the canoes of
the scouting party were lowered overboard. For the first time in
weary days the men could stretch their limbs on dry land and feel its
goodness. Azoa, who had command of the party, decided to drop
down in canoes, with flanking scouts on both banks, to forestall am-
bush. There was the glint of open daylight ahead that bespoke the
end of the woodland.
" Talistoga, as fortune would have it, was detailed among the
scouts to follow the left side of the stream. The woods were different
from those of the east. Here was hickory and wild cherry, great oaks,
sycamores, and other trees which he could not recognize. The deeper
he penetrated into this cleanly forest the better he liked it, and its
straight avenues attracted him so pleasantly that in a short while he
1914.] THE RED PIPE 535
had strayed altogether away from the river and from his companions.
The ground was gradually rising, and he could see that ahead of him
it came to a hill. The light flooded through up there in a way that
showed no further forest to obscure it. So, pushing forward with
the purpose of scouting from the hilltop, he soon had the privilege
of looking out upon a country that was mixed hill and plain, while
beyond in the distance, on a hillside, he glimpsed a large encampment.
The river ran around the base of the bluff on which the village was
situated, and the tepees or tents ran straggling down to the plain,
over which they overflowed. He could see horses grazing on the
levels, and ever and anon his eye caught the sheen of some bright
moving color. Between him and the encampment a broken country,
part woods and ridges, part plains, intervened.
" Knowing that his father would locate the village without
trouble, he set out to descend further into the valley that now faced
him. He had gone some distance, and was about to retrace his steps,
satisfied with his work, when as he turned to make sure of the lay of
the river by the sun, he suddenly looked down on the back of a lodge,
within a sheltered bench or valley of the hillside. It was a good-sized
structure, built with many poles to support, and covered with unac-
customed skins. Thoughtlessly, led by his curiosity, he threw himself
into the little valley, when suddenly it came to him that this was some
mystic lodge or temple, erected by young men in this secluded spot to
hold their spirit offerings while they sought adventure elsewhere. It
was the custom of all the tribes; he himself, if he were not on this
supreme adventure with the white men, would by this time have built
just such a temple. For, like all young men, he had to prove himself
by brave deeds before he would be allowed to go to war or marry.
" He was about to withdraw knowing the sacred character of
the lodge when curiosity to compare the interior of this lodge with
the fashion of those at home prevailed over his discretion, and he
entered, pushing aside the heavy door hanging of skin. A regular line
of propitiatory articles ranged along one side buffalo heads (al-
though he could only guess to what animal they belonged), blankets,
kettles of pottery, shells, and other trifling articles, but no scalps.
From the absence of the scalp string he inferred that the young war-
riors had not yet returned, or had not been altogether successful. He
next sought the most revered article of such a mystic lodge at home
in his own country, the sacred pipe, without which it was forbidden
to make medicine. He hardly expected to find anything at all so
ancient as their own sacred pipe. Judge then of his astonishment
when he saw resting on the top of a block of wood, almost in the
centre of the lodge, a pipe which to his eyes was the exact counter-
part of their own. It was, of course, disguised more or less in
feathers of various colors that fringed the base, but in the color
536 THE RED PIPE [July,
and make of the stone, in its size and unusual shape, it was twin-
brother to the magic pipe of his people.
" He picked it up reverently, all the while marveling at the re-
semblance, and examined it. On the underside it bore an eagle's
claw ! All the ancient words of his race flashed over his mind, and he
trembled at the thought of his discovery. To assure himself fully
he now threw back the door curtain to admit all the light possible,
and again he scanned his wonderful find. There was no doubt as to
the resemblance, even to the greasy feel, and then there was the claw
of an eagle. He was at last in the land of his forefathers; the clan
of the eagle had kept their faith ; he was of their blood, and they of
his : he would smoke their sacred pipe.
" He seated himself on the block, and deliberately lighted the rev-
ered instrument. Then he obeyed his home ritual. First he touched
the ground with the bowl, then he saluted slowly the four corners of
the heavens, and then inhaling the smoke he expelled it through his
nostrils reverently. The herbs and tobacco burned with a rank odor,
to which he was not accustomed, but the smoke ascended drowsily
and without hint or vision. Out of reverence for the holy instru-
ment, he closed his eyes, and smoked on. No living man had now
smoked both pipes but he.
" Suddenly his senses were alert to the approach of some quickly
moving body, and he opened his eyes. Outside there was a rush
like the swooping of an eagle, and then the thud of hoofs striking
smoothly on the grass. He looked out from his seat, and the figure
of a flying girl on horseback crossed his vision. He saw her with
that fullness of sight which is allowed only to those who cultivate the
art of seeing. The sun shone on the bracelets of her arms, and the
pearl in the ear next him gave a gentle glint; from her knees down-
ward she was clad in leggings of buckskins and moccasins of the same,
edged with feathers and worked with stained quills; her arms were
bare, but her tunic fitted closely to her neck, and then fell in graceful
folds around her person, being held in place by a belt of some green
material. All this he saw in the fleeting glance that was given him,
but made little of it, and thought of it only afterward; for his mind
was en the swift beauty of the girl's face, and the graceful poise of
her head. It was the Smoke Girl of his dreams.
" Before he had time to do more than rise, she stood in the door,
but her eyes had none of the coy gentleness of the girl of his vision.
Instead they were fixed upon him with anger and question. He felt
miserably abashed in her presence, and mutely held forth the sacred
pipe, as if he would deliver it up to her. There was something awk-
ward in the .action that reassured the girl, and to his infinite wonder-
ment she put the pipe to her lips. Both said afterward that they
knew not what they did, but acted as if they had been told. The
1914.] THE RED PIPE 537
anger died gently from the girl's face, and in its stead came coyness
and a certain visible shrinking modesty. Her eyes found his, and
were full of question. She was troubled too that he could see but,
manlike, he knew not what to say to her.
" At this moment her horse, which all the while stood behind her,
put his head upon her shoulder, and with his mobile lips tried to nibble
at the curtain of feather around the base of the pipe. Instinctively
she passed it back to the young man; the moment it left her hands
she seemed to recover from its spell and to put on again her mood of
anger. In a moment she was in the saddle, looking sternly at him.
" 'My brother must think little of his life thus to enter uninvited
the war lodge of the Dakotas,' she said with a bitterness that was
not assumed. ' Does he think that because a girl guards the place,
he can abuse the sacred pipe? My brother must be a Blackfoot to
forget the law of the tribes. The Blackfeet are dogs, and live in
holes.'
" Her voice sounded strangely like his sister's at home, and he
understood her words as if his sister had spoken to him in anger.
She looked so young and slim, and yet so confident and determined.
All the time she regarded him fearlessly from her horse, and still he
knew that in a second she was ready to be off like a bird. His eyes
ranged from her face to her dress, to the grace and girlishness of her
figure, to the poise of her head, and then stupidly rested on the dainty
saddle cloth of bright colors which extended from her horse's should-
ers to his withers. She was surely the daughter of some rich chief.
" ' My sister will pardon a stranger,' he spoke, looking to her,
' who is not a Blackfoot, but a son of her own race come into the
land of his forefathers, not knowing its customs or where he stands.
In his country, down by the green sea, it is no sacrilege to enter a war
lodge and smoke the sacred pipe if one be of the blood. The temples
of the Abenaki belong to the Great Spirit, and he has the right to
share his own property with the needy. I am not tired, that I should
want refreshing, and I am not needy, and yet I smoked your pipe be-
cause I sought my sister's face in its clouds.'
" ' Did you find it ? ' she could not forbear asking, while her horse
took a step in his direction. ' Warriors do not usually seek a maiden's
face in the smoke of a war pipe.'
" ' Yes,' he replied earnestly, ' the face of a maiden came between
my eyes and the sun, and the vision blinded me. I can no longer see
anybody but her; the hills have lost their beauty, and I heed no
longer the call of my father. Once before I saw this vision in the
smoke of our sacred pipe, and my sister's face was as wayward and
blithe as a fleecy cloud in the heavens; now she is cross and her
frown is on me. Whom may I call her ? '
" ' I am Unanimi,' she answered with simple straightforwardness.
538 THE RED PIPE [July,
Her gaze searched his face, and she spoke like one who gives infor-
mation grudgingly. ' My brother speaks in riddles. What would
he have me believe? '
" ' He would have you believe/ Talistoga quickly replied, ' that
he is no Blackfoot and no thief, but the son of a great people who
live far from here, down by the green sea; that he saw the face of
Unanimi in the smoke of the ancient pipe of his race; and that,
while his father and his friends seek the tepees on the hillside yonder,
Talistoga has been seeking Unanimi. He has found her and is con-
tent.'
" ' There may be truth in your words, brother,' she answered
after a momentary hesitation, while she backed her pony away from
him. ' The stories our mothers tell us have some such meaning ;
they go with our pipe. I am the guardian of it, and once a day while
our young warriors are absent I ride out to see that it is safe. With
us a young girl, of the race of our first chief of the pipe, must guard
it, and her life is forfeit for its care. She alone of all our women
can smoke it '
" ' Smoke it then once again/ he cried impetuously, and he of-
fered her the holy emblem. ' Smoke it, and let the spirit speak to
your heart. He will tell you that I do not lie/
" Again, as if under the compulsion of his earnestness, she put
the stalk to her lips, and again the dreamy look returned to her eyes,
and the soft beauty of her face came back. She handed him the pipe
with a sigh, but this time she did not resume her anger.
" ' It must be true, my brother/ she said with gentle willingness ;
' but I do not understand. You are there in the smoke, but ever as
you have been to me in mystery, with fire and smoke that is not from
the burning of kinnikinnick. My life seems to depend on you. Oh,
I cannot understand it ! '
" And then as if she would flee from the vision, with but little
thought of him, she was off with a twitch of the rein. He imagined
he heard her say, ' We will meet again among my people/ He fol-
lowed rider and horse with his eyes, but she did not look back. Her
horse's hoofs clattered on the gravel of the canon below him after
both were out of sight, and once through the trees he caught the flare
of a bright saddle cloth.
" Slowly, with wonderment and disappointment, he reentered
the lodge, and put the pipe back in its place. He picked up
his gun, which he had idly left in a corner when he first entered, and
leaving the spot began to swing himself from bush to bush up the
steep hillside. He felt hurt and sore it was all so disappointing.
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
Boohs.
THE TWO AMERICAS. By General Rafael Reyes, ex-President
of the Republic of Colombia. Translated by Leopold Gra-
hame. With Thirty-one Illustrations from Photographs.
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.50 net.
Few men are so well able to speak of conditions in Latin
America as the eminent Catholic explorer and statesman, General
Rafael Reyes, the ex-President of Colombia. He has a great deal
to say about " the many factors that operate as a bar to the friendly
relations that should obtain between Latin America and the United
States." The first reason is the popular misconception in the
United States of the real significance and objects of the Monroe
Doctrine, which in many quarters is looked upon as a kind of inter-
national police regulation to be administered by the authorities in
Washington for the better preservation of law and order in Latin
America. " On the contrary," says General Reyes, " Monroe's
declaration in 1823 was designed as a measure of protection for,
and not as an instrument of attack upon, the integrity of the then
recently-established Spanish republics ; and, from its initial adoption
down to its latter-day reaffirmation, it was intended and has been
declared to be governed by the sole purpose of guarding the weaker
States against the undue aggression of any of the countries of the
other hemisphere."
In Chapter V. we have the Colombian side of the beginnings
of the Republic of Panama. We have read Mr. Roosevelt's pre-
sentation of our government's side of the case in his recently-pub-
lished Autobiography, and we must admit that we were not at all
impressed by his defence of our high-handed and unjust backing
of the Panama revolution. General Reyes tells us that he was in
command of a military force fully capable of putting down the re-
bellion, but that he was prevented from landing his troops by Amer-
ican cruisers. Within two days of the declaration of its independ-
ence, the Republic of Panama was recognized by the United States,
and within two weeks a treaty was made with that Republic, guar-
anteeing its independence and providing for the construction of the
Canal in that territory.
This volume will do a great deal towards correcting the false
views of many people in the United States concerning their neigh-
540 NEW BOOKS [July,
bors in the South, and help them to appreciate the resources, culture,
patriotism, commercial and industrial progress, and religious beliefs
of the great Latin Republics. The volume is beautifully illustrated.
LATIN AMERICA. By William R. Shepherd. New York : Henry
Holt & Co. 50 cents net.
Professor Shepherd has written for the Home University
Library an excellent account of the twenty republics of Latin
America. He writes this book to correct the unfair and erroneous
notions which are only too prevalent among us concerning our
Southern neighbors. Institutions and culture, he tells us, are made
the touchstone that determines appreciation. As exemplified in the
colonial period, they will reveal the kind of equipment with which
the republics started on their career. As exemplified by one state
or another since that time, they will indicate the extent to which
any given republic has advanced to the forefront of nations that
have a direct share in the general progress of mankind, or has lagged
behind them.
Part I. treats of the Colonies: The expansion of Spain and
Portugal, government, the Church, and economic conditions. Part
II. treats of the Republics: Independence, national development,
industry, commerce, education, science, literature, resources, polit-
ical and financial conditions.
Mr. Shepherd's book is remarkably free from the prejudice
which characterizes most Protestant books on Latin America. He
praises the higher clergy of colonial days as men of character and
ability. He says:
Theirs was no slight task to advance the cause of the Church
as the great moral guide of society, to correct misbehavior
on the part of officials, civil and ecclesiastical, and to protect the
natives against oppression, without encouraging them to resist
the enforcement of Spanish authority or incurring the ill will
of the Colonists The missionaries were true pioneers,
and their zealous activity contributed in large measure to the
widening of the area of Spanish control Many of the
lower clergy were intense in their devotion to the faith, enduring
disease, privation, violence and death, and counting it a singular
joy to win the martyr's crown It is safe to assume that
none of their contemporaries in the sixteenth century would
have behaved any better in America than the Spaniards did, if
they had been exposed to similar temptations.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 541
Mr. Shepherd's account of the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay
is rather meager and superficial. We fail to understand how the
Indians " paid for whatever they received in the sacrifice of their
liberty, their individuality and their initiative." He is also inac-
curate in speaking of the general ignorance of the early missionaries
and the so-called " superficial character of much of their religious
instruction." We can, however, pardon a few inaccuracies, inas-
much as the whole tone of the professor's book is eminently fair.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT, ITS ESSENCE, ITS PERMA-
NENCE, AND ITS PERILS. By William Howard Taft.
New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press. $1.15 net.
Ex-President Taft has published the eight lectures which he
delivered as Kent Professor of Law at Yale University on popular
government under the Federal Constitution, and two addresses
which he gave before the American Bar Association meeting at
Montreal last September on " The Selection and Tenure of Judges
and the Social Importance of Proper Standards for Admission to
the Bar." They are sane, conservative discussions of the proposed
changes from our present republican form of government to a more
direct, democratic government, which he thinks utterly subversive
of all that is best in our institutions. He insists upon the small pro-
portion of the people constituting the voting and governing part
of our nation ; he discusses the weak points of the initiative, refer-
endum, and recall ; he treats of the Pure Food Act, the Child Labor
Law, and the Income Tax; he advocates respect for the independ-
ence and integrity of the judges and the courts ; and he pleads for an
efficient army and navy. A professor of Mr. Taft's ability and
experience in the affairs of State, is a valuable asset in the teaching
body of a great American University.
THE IDOL-BREAKER. By Charles Rann Kennedy. New York :
Harper & Brothers. $1.25 net.
From Charles Rann Kennedy the reader has grown to expect
high and purposeful and suggestive (if not always conclusive!)
work work full of militant idealism and half-prophetic invective.
In this the Idol-Breaker is no disappointment. Its theme is free-
dom; its scene the smithy of a tiny provincial settlement; its people
a blacksmith, a woman of the highroad, a wastrel, and the conven-
tional villagers.
One does not suppose that Mr. Kennedy intends the present
542 NEW BOOKS [July,
work for more than a " closet drama." Its dialogue is, at best, tense
and poetic, but also cryptic to a degree ; and while the play adheres
uncompromisingly to the triple " unities " of Greek drama, there
is objectively speaking almost no plot and scarcely any action.
None the less, in the words of Naomi, the Strange Woman, " A
man may move a lot in one short hour, and him never shifting a
foot."
Those who enjoy a semi-symbolic discussion of life and human
liberty, with some elemental sparks of poetry struck from the grim
forge of Little Boswell's smithy, will read the Idol-Breaker with
deep interest. The work is big rather than beautiful, and it would
be easy to read a vague socialism into many of the lines. But there
is no denying that it stimulates thought, and that the conflict be-
tween true and false freedom the freedom that breaks and hates,
and the freedom that loves and builds throughout the fourth act,
is masterfully conceived and sustained.
MONKSBRIDGE. By John Ayscough. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. $1.35 net.
Of all the wonderful heroines of romance, Sylvia, the calculat-
ing, ambitious, all-knowing, seventeen-year-old heroine of the Vic-
torian village, Monksbridge, is the most wonderful. She carries
all the burdens of her family on her back with the greatest uncon-
cern, and by the cleverest manoeuvring manages to marry the vapid
nonentity Lord Monksbridge. The book is more a series of char-
acter sketches than a novel, and they are drawn with the biting
humor that made us laugh so heartily over the author's Gracechurch.
What a motley company of impossible aristocrats, English
churchmen, and village gossips ! Mr. Auld-Baillie, who " hated
nuns in all Evangelical charity, and longed to befriend them by
abolishing them root and branch, and, in the interim, by inspecting
them." The poor but pretentious Miss Belvoir, who though gaunt,
lean, and austerely clad and housed, still " had the grand manner,
which set off her distinguished, if bilious, complexion." The tall
Lady Llantwddwy, " who walked with a short run and a half turn,
as if she was never quite sure where she meant to go;" a plain,
awkward woman, but one who was evidently " somebody." The
empty-headed Anglican bishop " with two good legs, having their
fair proportions confessed in gaiters," and " with a smile that ex-
pressed universal peace and good will to all her Majesty's subjects
except Roman Catholics." The old-fashioned Warden, who is per-
1914.] NEW BOOKS 543
suaded that " the genius of England was practical, i e., unsuper-
natural, and that the religion that would serve her turn must be
practical, i. e., respectable and Erastian, a State Department like
the Foreign Office."
Sylvia's brother, Perkin, becomes a Catholic, because he realizes
the dishonesty of accepting his school's scholarships founded in
Catholic times, and now appropriated by an alien religion. The
village gossip over this conversion is humorous in the extreme.
Of course Sylvia cannot secure for her brother a bishopric, now that
he has proved himself such a fool.
VICES IN VIRTUES AND OTHER VAGARIES. By the Author
of The Life of a Prig. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
$1.20 net.
" It is said by those who know," writes this genial author,
" that there are several ways of reviewing a book. One
way is to begin by reading the book an unusual way; but still a
way. A second way is to read other books." He might have
heaped a little more abuse upon that much abused race of re-
viewers by denouncing them for the reviews they never wrote. For
some publishers and some authors to-day have a habit of writing
their own reviews, so as to be freed from the stupidity, malice or
knowledge of some of the reviewing tribe.
There are lots of good things in these airy nothings, or, as our
author styles them, vagaries. Speaking of gardening : " As to its
pleasures, pure or impure, a garden too often entails nine months
of trouble, expense, and anxiety, preceding three months of irrita-
tion, disappointment and anger Where was the first sin com-
mitted? In a garden." Apropos of the ungentlemanliness of
ladies, he writes : " The writer has known a case, obviously unique,
of a lady who asked the advice of several men, assuring each that
she would be guided by his advice alone, until she found one who
had advised her to do what, from the first, she had made up her
mind to do; and with this laudable object, that, in the case of
failure, she might be able to lay the whole of the blame upon him."
Did you ever hear of the vice of unselfishness? "A very
terrible sinner is the delicate philanthropist who endangers his life
and causes his wife many hours of anxiety by unselfishly exposing
himself to discomfort, over-fatigue, and mental worry in works of
charity, or for the social benefit of his fellow-creatures." It may
possibly amuse him to die for a " cause," but thereby he gives no
544 NEW BOOKS [July,
pleasure to those to whom he is dear. We will say no more about
this delightful book, for we intend to be guilty of the " vice of
finishing."
FROM THE SEPULCHRE TO THE THRONE. By Madame Ce-
cilia. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.75 net.
This volume aims at providing a book of spiritual readings, or
a series of meditations, on the Risen Life of our Lord. Madame
Cecilia has brought the sacred scenes of the Gospel story before
her readers in a most vivid way, enabling them to see the events as
they probably occurred, while at the same time refraining from in-
dulging in pure conjecture. In some of the chapters she has drawn
a few paragraphs from her Catholic Scripture Manuals, since the
same facts had to be recorded.
She promises us another volume shortly on the Holy Spirit and
the Progress of the Church. The " Summaries for Mediation "
which close each chapter, will prove helpful to those who use the
volume for their daily meditation. The preludes and colloquies are
merely suggestive, but may prove useful when the mind has to be
forced into a given groove.
STORIES FROM THE FIELD AFAR. Prepared and Edited by
The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll,
Ossining, N. Y. 60 cents postpaid.
We recommend these short stories most highly to our readers,
especially as we are sadly behind our Catholic brethren abroad in
books of this kind. It will certainly foster vocations to the foreign
mission field, make new .friends for the Catholic Foreign Mission
Society of America, and, we trust, make some of the foreign mis-
sionaries forget their excessive modesty, and give to the world some
of their experience. Father Walsh is doing an apostolic work, and
every Catholic should encourage him with his prayers and his
alms.
ITALIAN YESTERDAYS. By Mrs. Hugh Fraser. Volume II.
New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. $6.00 net.
" I have sometimes thought," says Mrs. Fraser, " that we
modern people scarcely know how rich we are, how many and how
choice the treasures that history has devised to us, and which, for
the most part, lie unclaimed in her storehouses. And I have hoped,
in opening some of them, to induce others to seek out for themselves,
1914-] NEW BOOKS 545
and make their own, some of the wonderful tales of love and valor
which shine at us from the pages, not only of the old books, but
from those which the writers of our own day have so wisely and
lovingly compiled for us."
Her delightfully written volumes are full of personal reminis-
cences, stories from the lives of the Saints St. Peter, St. Cecilia,
St. Gregory the Great sketches of Rome, Venice, Verona, short
biographies of Queen Joan of Naples, Murat, Pius IX., etc. The
two volumes are the last word of the bookmaker's art.
OLD TESTAMENT STORIES. By Rev. C. C. Martindale, SJ.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
Father Martindale tells us that these stories from the Old
Testament have been written because many of the books, similar in
purpose, now in circulation, are unsatisfactory for various reasons.
He has arranged them in order that the guiding Spirit in this
history might be recognized, and that the convergence of type and
hope and incident towards Him Who was to come should be made
clear. Such a volume ought to foster a passionate love for the
simplicity, freshness, grandeur, and richness, which characterize the
writings of the Old Testament. Too often in the past we have
seen in the hands of our children books of the kind, which were
Protestant to the very core. The illustrations in color are excellent.
THE NEW ROMAN BREVIARY. Four volumes. New York:
Fr. Pustet & Co. $11.25.
By command of the Holy Father, the Congregation of Rites
has designated this Pustet edition of the Breviary as the typical
one to which all others must conform. In the letter of approbation
of the Sacred Congregation prefixed to each volume, it is stated that
this edition will remain unchanged for some time to come, that is,
until the recension of the text, hymns, lessons, and homilies is com-
pleted. As this revision will take a " very long time," it is consol-
ing to a hopeful priest to feel that no further changes will be made
till then.
All the changes in the Office since the Motu Proprio of 1911,
including the most recent ones which have not yet been published,
are embodied in this volume. The rcsponsioncs dc tcinporc are
printed in full after every lesson, and also the fourth, fifth and
sixth of the second nocturne. Prime and compline are given in
full for every day in the week, as are also the hymns of the other
VOL. xcix. 35
546 NEW BOOKS [July,
hours. The turning of pages is thus reduced to the minimum.
This edition contains only the feasts of the Universal Church, the
offices pro aliquibus locis, as well as those hitherto proper to the
United States, being omitted. We note the absence therefore of
many offices now in the American Ordo the Friday Lenten offices,
St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, the Expectation of the B.V.M., and others.
We are glad to see that the feast of St. John Baptist is restored to
its ancient date, June 24th.
The present edition is presented in the usual Pustet style it is
well printed and bound, and is of convenient size and weight.
COMPENDIUM THEOLOGIZE DOGMATICS. By Christian
Pesch, SJ. Volumes II., III., and IV. St. Louis : B. Her-
der. $1.60 a volume, net.
All ecclesiastical students will be grateful to Father Pesch for
giving them the substance of his great work on Dogmatic Theology
in this excellent compendium of four volumes. We recommend it
highly to seminary professors as a textbook that is satisfactory
from every point of view. The subject matter is well divided; the
theses clearly stated and briefly proved; the style simple; the
authorities cited ample and to the point.
THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLICS. By Charles A. Briggs, D.D.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
Dr. Briggs gives a very fair and accurate account of the
creeds of the various Protestant Churches, but while he tries to be
fair in dealing with Catholic doctrine, his Protestant prejudice
forbids his grasping the divine constitution of the Church, or her
true teachings on grace, the sacraments, and the like.
Occasionally we read such nonsense as the following : " The
great scholastics of the Middle Ages emphasized the doctrine of the
Church, the ministry and sacraments; and elaborated them into
minute details, which sometimes led far away from Christ in the
emphasis upon the external authority of the hierarchy, and the ob-
jective use of the sacred institutions of the Church." The
reformation " succeeded because of the birth of certain great prin-
ciples, which not only removed evils, but solved essential problems
of Christian life and thought." "It was not the official re-
ligion and doctrine of the Church (sic) that the reformers at first
attacked, so much as the popular, traditional, and common teaching
of the Church." " The monastic ideal of religion had become in the
I9M-] NEW BOOKS 547
sixteenth century the ideal for the entire ministry and also for
Christendom as a whole." " The great work of reform was to
throw off the Papal tyranny, the monastic rule, the scholastic theol-
ogy, and the canon law," etc. Dr. Briggs is honest enough, how-
ever, to admit that the polemic against the decree of Papal Infalli-
bility by Old Catholics and Protestants overshot the mark, and that
the case of Honor ius cannot rightly be adduced to disprove the
dogma. Anyone who reads this book can see why Dr. Briggs never
became a Catholic.
THE STUDENT'S GRADUS. An aid to Latin Versification. By
Leo T. Butler, SJ. Woodstock, Maryland : Woodstock Col-
lege.
The compiler of this excellent student's Gradus makes no
claim to originality, either in the purpose or in the contents of his
work. He has merely made use of Noel's edition of Father Va-
niere's Magnum Dictionarium Poeticum, retrenching what was su-
perfluous, and making a few changes which he thought necessary
and useful for the student of the present day. He has omitted all
words outside the scope of the high school and college course, such
as rare geographical terms, names of obscure personages, and un-
common words rarely met with in the classical authors. Participles
have been omitted, except as synonyms of adjectives, since they will
be found with the verb from which they are derived. Epithets
for the most part have been left out, since the young student's pro-
pensity to fill out his line at any cost has made them an occasion
of abuse.
" So long as we retain Latin as the best type for a thorough
study of language, and as an instrument for the development of
the powers of thought-reception and thought-expression, we may
count," says Father Macksey in his preface, " on the retention of
Latin verse work in the class-room, in spite of sporadic discontent
therewith. If so, the value of the present work is obvious."
THE SHEARS OF DELILAH; STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE.
By Virginia Terhune Van de Water. New York : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $1.35.
Following with dexterous fingers the tangled threads of sel-
fishness, irritability, misunderstanding, mental shortsightedness, and
moral feebleness the writer of these tales disengages the causes of
many a typical domestic tragedy. A kind of morbid interest at-
548 NEW BOOKS [July,
taches to the succeeding phases of decay in the case of a love that
has begun with fair promise of immortality, and so these stories do
not weary. Besides they are reasonably true to fact this we must
admit, no matter how r ugly they make us look. So long as men and
women go seeking happiness in unrestrained surrender to the emo-
tional demands of an undisciplined character, so long will affection
prove itself inconstant, so long will lovers' meetings end in journeys
to the courts. Unrelieved by a single ray of religious faith, or a
single effort to secure divine aid, and scarcely by one lucky accident,
the shadows in these pages go gradually deepening into gloom just
as they do, too frequently, in the real lives of self-centred, hyper-
sensitive, ungenerous men and women who take up the matrimonial
burden without ever having given a thought to the discipline which
is its indispensable preparation.
To some readers, we hope, the stories will hold up an accusing
mirror, revealing the sure consequence of commonly neglected
faults ; the grim cynic is probably the only one whose interest in the
volume will be wholly pleasurable.
ADVANCED AMERICAN HISTORY. By S. E. Forman. New
York : The Century Co. $1.50.
According to Mr. Forman, the three greatest achievements
of the American people have been these: they have transformed
a continent from a low condition of barbarism to a high state
of civilization; they have developed a commercial and industrial
system of vast proportions; and they have evolved the greatest
democracy the world has yet seen. His purpose in this high school
textbook is to present fully and clearly these three aspects of our
growth, and he has succeeded admirably. He realizes well the
limitations of his readers, and consequently does not overload their
minds with too much data, but still he has omitted nothing essential.
He begins with a glance at Europe in the fifteenth century, pictures
aboriginal America; describes well the first explorations, and the
coming of the English, the French, and the Dutch; gives a fair
account of the Revolution; the beginnings of the United States;
its development; the movements of its population; the different
political parties ; its commercial development, and the beginnings and
end of slavery.
We notice that he says nothing of the religious motives that
inspired Columbus; nothing of the Protestant intolerance of the
Colonists which alienated Canada; nothing of the anti-Catholic
IQI4-] NEW BOOKS 549
spirit of the Know-Nothing party of the fifties; nothing of the
polygamy of the Mormons, which has been carried on despite the
laws of the United States. On the whole, however, it is one of the
best historical textbooks that has come under our notice in many
years.
THE BACKWARD CHILD. A Study of the Psychology and
Treatment of Backwardness. By Barbara Spofford Morgan.
With an Introduction by Elizabeth E. Farrell. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
For the past ten years there has been quite an effort made in
the public schools to deal with the problem of the mentally deficient
or backward child. According to Miss Farrell, the Superintendent
of Ungraded Classes in the New York Public Schools, teachers
and school superintendents foolishly looked for the almost total
elimination of the problem of retardation, once the physical defects
of the children had been corrected. Now, wonderful to relate, the
" new " (sic) discovery has been made that " the remedy lies in the
individual differences in the mental make-up of school children."
What Miss Farrell fails to state, however, is the failure which peda-
gogical experts to-day declare has resulted from the public school
treatment of the mentally defective child. Most of the youngsters
that are the bane of the modern teacher in the defective classes of
city schools, should without question be cared for by specialists in
institutions, and the ordinary cases be treated by individual instead
of class instruction.
THE NUN: HER CHARACTER AND WORK. By fitienne Le-
long. Translated from the French by Madame Cecilia. New
York: Benziger Brothers. $1.50.
These conferences were given by Monsignor Lelong, Bishop
of Nevers, to the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, to whom he was
particularly devoted. They are known the world over because they
had the honor of receiving into their congregation Bernadette
Soubirous of Lourdes. This volume reveals a master of the spirit-
ual life, a skilled director of souls, thoroughly conversant with the
peculiar difficulties and grave obligations inherent to religious life,
whatever be its exterior form. The translation, as might be ex-
pected, is excellently done.
550 NEW BOOKS [July,
TTHE compiler of Thoughts from Augustine Birrell has added
* another to the Angeltis Series, entitled Maxims from the Writ-
ings of Monsignor Benson (New York: Benziger Brothers. 50
cents net), which includes a thought more or less appropriate for
every day in the year from the writings of Father Benson.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
El Breviario y Las Nuevas Rubricas. By Juan B. Ferreres, S. J. (Madrid:
Razon y Fe. 3 pesetas.) Father Ferreres has written an historical and liturgical
commentary on the decrees of Pius X. concerning the new rubrics of the
Roman Breviary. He pays special attention to the Spanish breviaries of Tar-
ragona, Barcelona Lerida, Vich, and Urgel.
Paysages d'ltalie. Vol. I. De Florence a Naples. Vol. II. De Milan a
Rome. By Andre Maurel. (Paris: Hachette et Cie. 3frs. 50 each.) These
volumes are not dry-as-dust guide books, but the impressions of a great lover
of Italy, who makes her past live in a few lines, and opens up to us in a most
charming way the wealth of her artistic treasures. Vol. I. takes us through
Volterra, Siena, Montepulciano, Chiusi, Subiaco, and Terracina; Vol. II.
through Cremona, Imola, Faenza, Cortona, and Caprarola. The reader may
stay at home and know his Italy better by reading these travelogues of M.
Maurel, than by traveling under the uninspiring guidance of the prosaic Baedeker.
L' 'Inquisition et I'Heresie. By Abbe Leon Garzend. (Paris: Gabriel Beau-
chesne.) The Abbe Garzend has written a volume of over five hundred
pages to prove that there was in the days of the Inquisition two notions of
heresy: the strict theological idea, which corresponds to our notion of heresy
to-day; and the disciplinary idea, which was peculiar to the tribunals of the
Inquisition, and comprised many other things besides heresy, properly so-called.
His minute study shows earnestness and labor, but we do not think he has
proved his point, or that he has in any way changed the status of the Galileo
case from the viewpoint of apologetics.
L'ldee Revolutionnaire et les Utopies Modernes. By M. Tamisier, SJ.
(Paris: P. Lethielleux. 3frs.) After a preliminary chapter on the anti-
religious character of the French Revolution, Father Tamisier traces the per-
nicious effects of 1789 with regard to the secularization of the State and the
schools, divorce, feminism, socialism, and the attacks on the religious congre-
gations. It is a vigorous and able refutation of the principles that govern irre-
ligious modern France.
Histoire Politique du Dix-Neuirieme Siede. Vol. II. By Paul Feyel.
(Paris: Bloud et Gay. I2frs.} This is a political history of the world in the
nineteenth century, intended for children of high school grade. It is an excel-
lent textbook, well divided, eminently fair and objective in treatment, and pro-
vided with a thorough index, and numerous illustrations.
L'Enigma delta Vita e I Nuovi Orizzonti della Biologia. By Agostino
Gemelli, O.M. Two volumes. (Firenze: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. Lire
12.) Father Gemelli, the scholarly professor of experimental psychology at the
University of Turin, has published a second edition of his well-known treatise
on biology, The Enigma of Life. This second edition has been so amplified as to
constitute practically a new work, and the objections of his critics have been
thoroughly answered. It deserves an English translation.
jforefgn jperfobfcate,
The Reactionary Movement in China. By Albert Perrot, SJ.
Although according to the provisional Constitution complete liberty
of conscience was to reign in China, and all religions to be equal
before the law, the conservative party have pushed the claims of
Confucius with success. The great master's title to reverence is
merely that he sums up and represents antiquity and tradition. The
President is himself religiously indifferent, and has not the scholar's
reverence for Confucius, but he has yielded to insistent demands,
and restored the sacrifices to heaven and to the revered sage. Of
these, the former is least offensive to Catholics, as more nearly
capable, though not really so, of a spiritual interpretation. The
latter, according to an official interpretation, need not be religious
acts because " Confucianism is not a religion, but a system of moral-
ity." However, the cult of Confucius is not welcome to " young
China;" the country will not return to its centuries of isolation. A
curious fact is that the decrees make no mention of the ex- Emperor,
though' the act of abdication had reserved to him ritual functions;
he seems to be put among the class of simple citizens. He has made
no objection; perhaps he thinks that the Chinese Republic is not
eternal. Etudes, May 20.
The Religious Movement in Spain. By F. Girerd. Although
the state of religion in Spain is not so encouraging as in other Euro-
pean countries, there are some indications that, even intellectually,
the Religious are not idle. The Jesuits publish the Razon y Fe;
the Augustinians, Espaiia y America; the Dominicans, Ciencia
Tomista; the Capuchins, Revista de Estudios franciscanos. The
level of studies, in the universities and among the clergy, is, how-
ever, rather low. Original investigations are rare; the libraries
poorly furnished; and there is little curiosity as to what scholars
beyond the Pyrenees are doing. Further, there is hardly any at-
tempt made to make Spanish studies or reviews known abroad.
One Dominican, Father Marin Sola, now in this country, has how-
ever, published a work of wide scope. His attempt is to prove the
homogeneity of Catholic doctrine, to do away with the distinction
between ecclesiastical and divine faith. Such an unhappy distinction
552 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
he attributes to Suarez, and considers that it gives occasion to many
of the attacks by modernists.
Another live topic, discussed by Monsignor Pelaez, Archbishop-
elect of Tarragona, is that of the industries conducted by religious
orders. The latter are criticized now for their labor, as formerly
for their idleness, and they are excessively taxed, although their
profits go to the poor. If such industries interfere with competi-
tion, how much interference would have arisen if the Religious had
remained in the world and worked for their own interests ? Revue
dn Clergc Frangais, June i.
The Tablet (May 30) : Is There a Yellow Peril? Five hun-
dred million whites are attempting to control nine-tenths of the
earth's surface, leaving but one-tenth to four hundred and fifty
millions of the yellow races. The hope of the white races is in a
united Europe. The speech in full of Cardinal Gasquet on his
call to the Cardinalate. An enthusiastic reception was accorded
him in the Trastavere, where his official residence is. A full dis-
cussion of the new and admirable educational law in Belgium.
Special attention is given the rights of parents, and the value of the
voluntary schools is recognized; the salaries of teachers are fixed,
with an increase for good service.
(June 6) : Summaries are given of the centenary celebrations
at the Irish Jesuit college of Clongowes, and the English Benedic-
tine college at Downside.
The Month (June) : In this jubilee number, Rev. Sydney
F. Smith continues his study of The Gospel Without the Resurrec-
tion, and Mr. A. Hilliard Atteridge that of The Campaign of
Slander 'Against Catholic South America. Rev. J. H. Pollen
quotes some appreciations of Cardinal Gasquet as an historian, with
a partial list of his works. The claim of some Baconians that
Shakespeare's illegible scrawl is proof that he could not have written
the plays, leads the Rev. Herbert Thurston to examine the six
examples of Shakespeare's handwriting usually given. He con-
cludes that they are genuine autographs, and are in no way inconsis-
tent with the belief that the actor in early and middle life wielded his
pen with perfect facility. We possess also the manuscripts of
one scene of a play, Sir Thomas More, which from internal evidence
would seem to be from Shakespeare's pen, and the handwriting
bears out this opinion.
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 553
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (June) : The Rev. W. B.
O'Dowd summarizes the argument for " the apostolicity of the
Church in Tertullian's treatise On Prescription." His argument
was not new, having been used by Clement, Ignatius, and especially
Irenseus, but it was by Tertullian invested with brilliancy of lan-
guage and juristic cogency. It refuted the heretics of his time by
showing that their doctrines are not in accord with orthodox tradi-
tion; that they cannot trace their churches to the Apostles or to a
co-worker with the Apostles; and that they cannot appeal to the
Scriptures, because these are part of the property inherited from
Christ by the Church. In this treatise, however, Tertullian does
not show any special intuition of the importance of the Roman See
as the centre of ecclesiastical unity, and his conception of the unity
of the Church does not seem to rise higher than a number of Chris-
tian communities. His test of unity was apostolicity. Rev. D.
O'Keeffe, in Thoughts on Social Reform, praises a recent work on
The Real Democracy, by Messrs. Mann, Sievers, and Cox, who
appeal for an " associative state," wherein every individual shall
posesss private property. Rev. E. Foran, O.S.A., presents
Historical Notes on the Auyustinian Abbey of Adare, founded in the
early fourteenth century, and seized by Elizabeth in 1567.
The Bishops of the province of Canterbury met on April 29th, and
by a majority of twenty-five passed three resolutions, moved by the
Bishop of London. The first declared that the Bishops are deter-
mined " to maintain unimpaired the Catholic Faith in the Holy Trin-
ity and the Incarnation," as contained in the three creeds which
Anglicans use, and that " the historical facts stated in those creeds
are an essential part of the faith of the Church ;" the second denied
the right of any minister to deny these facts, yet laid stress on " the
need of considerateness in dealing with that which is tentative
and provisional in the thought and work of earnest and reverent
students;" the third maintained the necessity of episcopal ordination
in the case of the whole Anglican communion. But these resolu-
tions, as many are already saying, are but the opinions of twenty-
five members of the Church of England; the Church Times says
that " there are some who will think that the words of Dr. Sanday
alone weigh more than the words of the whole episcopate." If
scholarship be the test, this is undoubtedly true. His pamphlet is
a gain for the Broad Church party. The Church Times reproaches
him for his conflict with the episcopacy, but fifty years ago this
High Church organ was decidedly in the same antagonistic frame of
554 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
mind. The Low Church people have made a great mistake, as they
should have joined their old enemies the Ritualists. To any pious
Evangelical it is better to wear vestments than to deny the Apostles'
Creed, and unless they desire their Church to go the way of German
Evangelicalism, they should strive to check the growth of the Broad
Church party, if need be by union with Rome.
Le Correspondant (May 20) : Andre Cheradame presents a
very complete study of the recent developments in Roumania.
De Lauzac de Laborie reviews the relations between the Duke
d'Aumale and his teacher, Cuvillier Fleury. Count F. de la
Laude de Calan contributes some personal reminiscences of the siege
of Paris and the Commune in 1870. Dr. d'Anfredville de la
Salle, apropos of the centenary of the treaty whereby France re-
covered Senegal on the west coast of Africa, writes of an unsuc-
cessful official agricultural effort made there from 1816 to 1830.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (June i): Raoul Plus begins
a study of the evidences, literary, philosophical, and religious, that
souls are coming, more than in former days, to welcome the Catholic
doctrine of God's indwelling in man through grace. He instances
briefly the mystical writings of Vallery-Rodot, Jammes, Pegny,
Claudel, Lcewengard, the spirit of most former members of Le
Sillon, and the programme of the Catholic Association of French
Youths. Dr. R. Van der Elst contrasts a criticism of the miracles
of Lourdes by Dr. Bonjour with defences of these miracles by Dr.
Vourch and Count de Beaucorps. J. D. Folghera, O.P., takes up
Bishop Gore's letter, and asks What Anglicanism Is? Georges
Michelet reviews recent books by Professor Leuba on the psychology
of religious phenomena; Monsignor Farges and M. Maritain on
Bergson; and P. Richard, M. Petitot, and P. Geny on scholastic
philosophy and the way to teach it.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (June i): P. Pisani praises the
second and concluding volume of the Life of Monsignor d'Hulst
by Monsignor Baudrillart, giving some interesting details concern-
ing the political career and the religious spirit of him who has
been called "the leading priest in France." The address by Paul
Bourget on the occasion of receiving fimile Boutroux into the French
Academy, is reproduced in full. O. Habert reviews some valu-
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 555
able works on Mohammedanism. The interpretations by P.
Schmidt in his new work on primitive revelation, M. Habert con-
siders as the product of a too exuberant imagination.
Etudes (May 20) : In reply to a recent work by Dom Festu-
giere, O.S.B., Rene Compaing aims to show that there is no incom-
patibility between the spirit of the liturgy and that of the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius. Louis Chervoillot discusses the exact
details of the conversion of Alessandro Manzoni, and summarizes
his romance, / Promessi Sposi. Jean Marie Dario reviews a
new scientific work on the atomic theory by Professor Perrin. Ap-
proving the theory, the author would do away with atoms as eternal
and indivisible elements, and make each the centre of unimaginable
activities. Joseph Boubee describes some of the Catholic
churches in Amsterdam, Holland, and also a pamphlet published
by a Jansenist society, advocating frequent Communion. Apro-
pos of the elections, Henri du Passage pays tribute to the " original
and interesting sketches " by Hilaire Belloc in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD on The Church and French Democracy. He fears, how-
ever, that Mr. Belloc is too hopeful, and that too many unchristian
ideas are sheltered under the word " democracy " in France for the
Church to come to terms with it.
(June 5) : Armand de Vassal begins a literary study of St.
Teresa's writings, apropos of the centenaries of her birth and beati-
fication (1515 and 1614). Louis de Monadon selects some
flowers from The Garden of the Poets, Paul Bonte, Gaston David,
Pierre Aguetant, the Countess de Magallon, Madame de Pretot,
Paul Harel, and Rene Salome. Lucien Choupin presents all the
recent decrees of the Holy See as to the confessions of Religious.
Pierre de la Deveze describes the immense work to be done in Mada-
gascar, and the great difficulties to be overcome. Only three- tenths
of the island have ever been in the least evangelized ; out of a total
population of 3,170,000 natives, there are 257,000 baptized Catho-
lics, nine-tenths of whom practise their religion faithfully. All
these figures are probably too low. Eighteen natives are now study-
ing for the priesthood, and there are twenty-one nuns, besides the
novices.
IRecent Events.
The telegraphic news received from France
France. last month was so much more inaccurate
than usual that the account of the constitu-
tion of the new House of Deputies was far removed from the facts.
Instead of there being only seventy-four Collective Socialists in the
newly-elected House of Deputies, under the leadership of M. Jaures,
there are no fewer than one hundred and two. This is a gain of
thirty- four, and makes them the largest group with the exception of
the United Radicals. The last-named number one hundred and sixty-
two, which represents an increase of six. After the United Radi-
cals come the Republicans of the Left with eighty-five members, a
gain of eight. The combined Radical-Socialist group lost fourteen
seats, and numbers in the present Assembly eighty-three. The
Progressists come next with sixty-two, a loss of sixteen. Then
follow the Liberals, who number thirty-eight, a loss of one, and the
Conservatives, thirty-five in number, a gain of eight. Last of all
come members of groups of Independent Socialists, thirty-three in
number, fewer by nine than similar groups in the last Chamber.
The classification just given must not, however, be looked
upon as the sole and only possible classification. French
political groups are almost as unstable as soap-bubbles. In
the present case, with the single exception of the one hun-
dred and two Collective Socialists, about which there is complete
agreement, the Deputies are classified in different ways under var-
ious points of view. M. Caillaux, for example, gives his name to
the Socialist Radicals, and there is said to have been a close alliance
betw.een his followers and those of M. Jaures. These two groups,
along with certain Socialists who follow M. Augagneur, and of
others who follow no leader at all, are strong enough to form a
bloc, numbering two hundred and sixty-six, against not merely the
Right, but also against the moderate Radicals and the Centre
the parties which have had control since the fall of M. Caillaux's
Ministry in January, 1902, up to that of M. Barthou's last De-
cember. The newly-formed bloc does not, it is true, constitute
an absolute majority in the House, but its formation is a clear
indication that advanced Radicalism will inspire the immediate
IQI4-] RECENT EVENTS 557
policy of France, that is to say, if any definite policy can be evolved
out of so many confused elements. For with the one exception
of the maintenance of the lay system of education, there seems
to be no point upon which there is complete agreement.
The Collective Socialists are bitterly opposed to Proportional
Representation, of which the Socialist Radicals and the Right are
advocates. In this case the allies of the Socialists are the Right.
The Three Years' Service Law is supported by the greater part of
the Socialist Radicals, but bitterly opposed by the Collective Social-
ists. Upon the income tax there is a more complete agreement, but
divergences exist as to the methods of taxation which are to be
adopted in view of the vast financial deficit, in which the reckless ex-
penditure of past government and the army law have involved the
country. This may lead to a split between the Socialists pure and
simple and the Radical Socialists. M. Jaures is said to be a man of
principle, however bad his principles may be, and, therefore, is not
likely to enter into any compromise which would involve the sacrifice
of them. The one thing that seems certain is that the policy of ap-
peasement advocated by M. Briand has met with no success, and,
therefore, should questions arise affecting the Church, little hope
can be entertained of a favorable settlement.
M. Doumergue decided to resign before the meeting of the
new Assembly. Although the political morality of France does not
forbid the " making " of elections by the government in power, it
stops short of allowing the makers of the election themselves to
profit by the result. Accordingly M. Doumergue, being satisfied
with his success in giving to the new House a more Radical tendency
than that of its predecessor, himself resigned office. The President
following constitutional precedents, much opposed though they were
to his personal predilections, called upon a Socialist Radical, M. Rene
Viviani, to form a new Ministry. After considerable difficulty he
succeeded in forming a Cabinet, but on its first meeting its members
were found to be in hopeless disagreement about the Three Years'
Service Law. M. Viviani therefore resigned before meeting the
Assembly. The President then had recourse to one of the elder
statesmen of France M. Ribot, a member of one of the Moderate
Republican groups, the Republican Union. He succeeded in form-
ing a Cabinet, which included such well-proved statesmen as M.
Bourgeois and M. Delcasse. It lived only one day, having failed to
secure a vote of confidence upon the question of the terms in which
the necessary loan was to be issued. Thereupon M. Viviani was
558 RECENT EVENTS [July,
summoned a second time, and has formed a Ministry the forty-
ninth in the course of the forty-three years of the Third Republic.
M. Viviani, although he has openly gloried in having extin-
guished the lights in the firmament, is yet credited with being,
in comparison with M. Jaures, a constructive statesman. " M.
Jaures is destroying the past; M. Viviani is laying the foundation
of the future," is a saying attributed to a distinguished French
writer. As a constructive Socialist he inaugurated the old-age
pension scheme, and has opposed every attempt to arrest the growth
of trade unionism, as being a step on the road to dangerous reaction.
He has served in three Cabinets those of M. Clemenceau, and
M. Briand, and in the one which has just resigned he was Minister
of Instruction.
As to the critical question at the present moment the Three
Years' Service Law M. Viviani when a private member voted
against its enactment, but afterwards took office in a government
pledged to the loyal maintenance of its letter and spirit. It is gener-
ally said that the majority of the Chamber is bound to this support
as the result of the recent election. The French electorate is heart
and soul on this side. Foreign relations, too, are involved, for
the Tsar is said to have given a clear intimation of his reliance
upon its maintenance, and Great Britain has received like assurances.
The President, M. Poincare, after the resignation of M. Doumer-
gue, took an opportunity of publicly declaring that he intends to
safeguard the Three Years' Service Law as a measure necessary
for the national defence. For the defence of France's independ-
ence, rights, and honor she must have, he declared, trained, in-
structed, and exercised troops, since history teaches that nations that
slumber in apparent security wake too often to humiliation and
defeat. M. Jaures has publicly described this declaration of the
President as brutal, and the making of it during the
political crisis as frankly unconstitutional. So among the other
difficulties of the situation, an attack upon the President is within
the range of the possibilities, the Socialists having vowed hostility
to any and all who will not work for a speedy return to Two
Years' Service. M. Viviani's first Cabinet broke up from want of
agreement about this question. His second Cabinet has been formed
on the acceptance of the Three Years' Service, with a proviso to the
effect that it will submit at an early date bills on the military train-
ing of youths and the reorganization of the reserves. Only when
these are carried into effect will it take steps to lower military ex-
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 559
penditure. This may be either a compromise or an evasion. It
remains to be seen whether it will be accepted either by M. Jaures
or by the defenders of the existent law.
The condition of the village churches continues to excite much
attention. As was mentioned last month, M. Maurice Barres has
written a book on the subject. Now M. Peladan, an artist, has
founded a society to protect the churches which are falling into
decay in many districts. The object of the Society, which is called
" The Stone Cross," in reference to the cross which surmounts
country spires, is to seek the practical help of artists and architects.
Relations with Germany have been affected in some degree by
the determination of the new administration in Alsace-Lorraine to
restrict, as far as possible, the residence in the Reichsland of
French citizens. A number of Frenchmen have been warned that
their authorization to continue dwelling in the annexed provinces
will be withdrawn at the end of the present year, although hitherto
these authorizations have been renewed as a matter of course
every twelve months. Herr von Dallwitz, the new Statthalter, is
credited with the intention of Germanizing Alsace-Lorraine, but it
is not yet clear whether he will go to such extremes as to make
this expulsion general. It is not clear in fact whether it would be
legal, and it is certain that it will rouse a storm of indignation.
Another incident has aroused a certain degree of ill-feeling.
M. Clement Bayard, the well-known constructor of aeroplanes, while
on a business visit to Germany was arrested at Cologne, and kept
in prison for thirty-four hours. The arrest seems to have been due
to the spy-mania which is so widespread in Europe, and is viewed
with much regret by the German press, but it does not seem likely
to have any serious consequences.
Between France and Italy there has sprung up during the past
two years no small degree of coolness, a coolness which has had
somewhat serious consequences. The Manouba incident which took
place during the war between Italy and Turkey, led to a change
in the previous good relations. France displayed so great a want
of discretion and judgment in this matter as to alienate the sym-
pathies of the Italians, and to lead to the gradual abandonment by
Italy of the spirit which had informed her Mediterranean policy
since 1902. The consequence has been that Italy instead of acting in
harmony with France and Great Britain in questions affecting
their mutual interests in the Mediterranean, has thrown herself into
the arms of the Triple Alliance, and in particular of Austria-Hun-
560 RECENT EVENTS [July,
gary, and, it is thought, has entered into a naval convention with
the last-named Power.
While, so far as outside interference is concerned, France
has been in undisturbed possession of Morocco since the treaty
with Germany in 1912, it rs only by degrees that the occupation of
the country has been effected. Advances have been made every
year both from the east and from the west. A few weeks ago there
was an interval of some thirty miles between the occupied districts.
By an advance on Taza, which has just been made from both sides,
the interval has been bridged over, and it is now possible to build a
railway in French territory from the shores of the Atlantic to the
eastern boundary of Tunis. There is still, however, a large extent
of Morocco territory, amounting to about a quarter of the country,
in which the tribes of Moors are still their own masters. It is not,
however, expected that there will be much difficulty in bringing
them under control. An army of 80,000 men has, up to the present
time, been kept in Morocco in order to maintain order, and some-
thing like eighty millions have been spent. But hopes are enter-
tained that the number of soldiers may soon be reduced, and that
by the development of commerce repayment of cost made.
After several adjournments the first session
Germany. of the Reichstag which was elected in Jan-
uary, 1912, has been closed. It is not known
when the next session will be opened. There has, in fact, been some
talk of a dissolution, for the government is said to be much dis-
pleased with the conduct of various parties. A proposal which it
made for the increase of the salaries of officials was defeated by an
alliance of the Centre and the Social Democrats. This intractability
it was that led to the closing of the Session, and to the talk of
dissolution. At the last meeting the Socialists manifested their
own intractability by refusing to rise, and maintaining a grim silence
when all the other members responded to the President's call for
three cheers for his Imperial Majesty. The Reichstag has not
done much during the past two years and a half, except to vote
the ordinary supplies and the enormous increase of armaments an
army bill and a navy bill in 1912, and the great army bill of 1913,
the passing of which led to the Three Years' Service Bill, which is
the chief cause of French anxieties. Although the number of re-
cruits for which the army bill of 1913 called was very large, the
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 561
Empire has found no difficulty in raising them; in fact, so great
was the supply that 38,000 men perfectly fit for service could not
be taken, while of the 30,000 officers required, all but 3,000 have
already been found. Within five days after the new law came
into effect, all the new units were ready and perfectly equipped for
war. This is considered a triumph of organization. The " levy "
on capital which was rendered necessary to pay for this increase
in armaments, has not proved so successful as some of the author-
ities anticipated, about three hundred millions being the amount
realized. As their contribution to this levy, the family and firm of
Krupp have had to contribute something over two millions, of
which Frau Bertha Krupp and her husband alone pay one million
seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
The discussion about the threatening attitude of Russia which
figured so largely some two months ago, has found an echo in a
new discussion which has arisen as to who began the former.
The German press blames that of Russia, and accuses it
of carrying on the agitation for some months before any notice
of it was taken in Germany. The peculiar relations known to
exist between the German government and the German press, give
to its utterances an importance which is not attached to. the press
of other countries. On this occasion, however, as appears from the
statement made to the Reichstag by the Foreign Secretary, the gov-
ernment was in no way responsible for the pronouncements of the
newspapers. While blaming a part of the Russian press for fos-
tering an anti-German movement, and an almost systematic cam-
paign against Germany, he warned the press of his own country
that it had been playing with fire, and protested against any further
press campaign. Foreign countries he said judged Germany un-
fairly. Every pronouncement by a retired German officer who
happened to rattle his sword, every utterance at the meeting of a
national league, where waves of national enthusiasm rose high,
was registered abroad, thereby giving cause for anxiety and com-
plaint. Germany, the Foreign Secretary declared, had " good rea-
son to suppose " that the Russian government was determined to
maintain friendly relations. With France negotiations as to tech-
nical and financial matters were being carried on, by which possi-
bilities of friction would be removed. With Great Britain, also,
negotiations were going on in a most friendly spirit. This friendly
spirit pervades at the present time all the relations between the
two countries. A squadron of the British fleet has been invited
VOL. XCIX. 36
562 RECENT EVENTS [July,
to pay a visit to Kiel on the occasion of the annual Regatta, an
invitation which has been cordially accepted. In fact it was said
that the First Lord of the British Admiralty would himself be pres-
ent a thing never heard of before. This rumor, however, seems
to be unfounded, but shows, however, the spirit of friendliness at
present existing. The British shipping interests are, however,
disquieted by the projected direct service to New Zealand which a
German line is entering upon, as this will involve a loss of nearly
a hundred thousand tons of cargo per annum.
The Navy League has been holding its fourteenth annual
meeting. Considerable importance is to be attached to its proceed-
ings both on account of their influence in the past, and because the
Emperor highly approves of them. After the last meeting he
sent a telegram expressing his approval in the following terms:
" May rich success continue to be vouchsafed to the labors of the
German Navy League labors of willing sacrifice for the Father-
land." At the recent meeting the President, among other things,
demanded that even the Reserve formations of the Navy should be
manned with crews of double their present strength, and that the
construction of capital ships should be at the rate of three ships a
year. The ability of Great Britain to bear taxation was one of the
subjects of discussion. It was stated that .Germany now had
far greater reserves of taxation; that taxes in that country could
not be raised above their present level. England paid one hundred
and fifty millions a year more taxes than Germany, while her popula-
tion was twenty millions less. The national wealth of Germany was
declared to be fifty millions of marks more than that of Great
Britain.
The Bishop of Hildesheim, Dr. Adolf Bertram, has been trans-
lated to Breslau, as the successor of the late Cardinal Kopp. The
new bishop is said to be a friend of the mixed trade unions, of which
the late Cardinal was an opponent.
An appearance of quiet reigns throughout
Austria-Hungary. the Dual Monarchy, but elements of dis-
content are always smouldering. The con-
stitution of Bohemia is still suspended, while that of Austria may be
looked upon as in a like condition, for the government is being
carried on by virtue of the emergency clause which it contains; in
fact the terms of that clause have been stretched to their utmost limit.
The Austrian Cabinet, with Count Stiirgkh at the head, is having
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 563
a prolonged life, having entered upon office in the beginning of
November, 1911.
In Hungary neither the violence offered to the Opposition in the
House of Representatives nor the corruption which has been brought
home to some of its members, have received their due punishment,
as Count Stephen Tisza and his Ministry still retain office. By the
death of Francis Kossuth, the eldest son of the celebrated patriot,
Count Tisza has lost one of his most active opponents. It was he
who was chiefly instrumental in the fall of the first Tisza Cabinet.
From 1906 to 1910 he held office in the Coalition Cabinet, which suc-
ceeded that of Count Tisza, the record of which is said to be one of
self-stultification. Everything which it denounced when out of
office, it carried into effect when in office, and every promise it had
made it broke in the most flagrant manner, especially that of uni-
versal suffrage. For all that, he might have attained a certain
eminence were it not that his name involved a satire upon his actions,
no one having contributed more than he to the weakening of the
Kossuthist tradition. There are, however, those who think that this
is rather a gain for Hungary.
The Foreign Secretary has recently re-affirmed the firm ad-
herence of Austria-Hungary to the Triple Alliance, although he
finds defects in a too rigid adherence to the balance of power
and recognizes with relief a certain relaxation of tension
between the two great groups in Europe. A good deal of uncer-
tainty exists whether relations with Italy have changed for the
better or the worse. On one hand it is thought that a naval conven-
tion has been entered into for the control of the Mediterranean and
the Adriatic. On the other, although Austria-Hungary and Italy
are acting together in the Albanian imbroglio, it is well known
that behind the outward appearance there is secret rivalry, while at
Trieste and Venice manifestations of ill-will between the two na-
tionalities have shown themselves. At Venice an Austrian flag was
solemnly burnt by students amid howls and hisses. Between the
governments of the two countries the relations are undoubtedly cor-
dial, but among the people of Italy there is an undercurrent of
dissatisfaction on account of the treatment of their fellow-country-
men living in Austrian territory.
The small-minded meanness characteristic of the absolutism
which is not yet extinct in Austria, has been shown in the confisca-
tion of a work on The Hapsburg Monarchy, written by a former
correspondent of the Times at Vienna. The reason for this con-
564 RECENT EVENTS [July,
fiscation is believed to be a passage which deals with the Emperor
Francis Joseph, in a way which it is not in the eyes of the Public
Prosecutor sufficiently adulatory. Although His Majesty is so
badly served by officials, everyone rejoices at his restoration to
health, and hopes that his reign may last for many years.
Temperance reform is not proceeding with-
Russia. out opposition in Russia. Although last
Easter was the soberest ever known, sales of
vodka having been prohibited in the large cities for the first three
days, many works and factories could not re-open because their
hands had struck as a protest against these restrictive measures. Dis-
tillers, too, are greatly alarmed, being filled with apprehension at
the disastrous effects the government's action will have on agricul-
ture. In many cases the effect of the enforced closing of the liquor
shops has been an unprecedented rise in drunkenness. The govern-
ment, however, is not faltering in its purpose: even though the
restrictions which it has adopted will diminish the revenue. Fresh
taxation will be proposed to meet this deficiency. A remarkable
feature of this movement is that the initiative has come from above
from the Tsar himself although the Duma and the mass of
people it represents, notwithstanding the exceptions just referred to,
are more or less cordially cooperating. Temperance reform is not
the sole object of the Tsar's care for his people. Several other
matters affecting their social and economic welfare are the objects
of his solicitude. Among these is a great scheme of land develop-
ment, which is being carried out under the auspices of the Minister
of Agriculture. Ten thousand farming specialists are helping the
farmers to a better method of agriculture.
Several events indicate the existence of deep-seated unrest. In
the Duma there have been several scenes, and much dissatisfaction
has been manifested at the action of the Ministers. Republicanism
has been openly advocated by members of the representative House,
and immunity for such claims demanded an immunity which the
government refused to grant. Thereupon a bill was introduced to
secure this right, which received the support of an overwhelming
majority.
Socialist members of the House have been using their parlia-
mentary privilege to propagate ideas looked upon in Russia as revo-
lutionary; fifteen were suspended on this account by a vote of the
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 565
Duma. This led to wide strikes of workingmen. Their agitation
has recently assumed a character and proportions which cause
anxiety to the more moderate members of the Ministry. Owing to
the determination of the government not to recognize trade unions,
workingmen have taken refuge in underground organizations. The
men are ruled by a secret committee with a rod of iron ; not long ago
this committee went so far as to make use of wholesale poisoning
of women workers in order to secure submission to its decrees.
No one dares to dispute its orders, for vengeance is swiftly meted
out upon the recalcitrants, and follows them even if they return
to their villages. The control this committee exercises is extended
to the smallest details, even of work done for the government.
The police are kept in the dark. So far its activity has been con-
fined to social and economic questions, but it is feared that it will
develop into an attempt at revolution.
An old characteristic of Russian government is showing itself
again. Ministers have often been in the habit of pursuing each
one his own policy, paying no respect either to the opinions of fel-
low members, or to the expressed will of the Tsar himself. For
persistent disregard of representative and local government institu-
tions, and for defiance of the Tsar's manifestoes, the Minister of
the Interior was recently censured by the Duma. This disregard
is described as undermining the welfare and safety of the State.
The same Minister is held responsible for the enormous increase
in strikes, and for thwarting the efforts made by the Minister of
Commerce and Industry to encourage that influx of foreign capital
which is so necessary for industrial development. The Minister
of the Interior has, by placing what are described as absurd and
vexatious restrictions on joint stock companies with regard to Jews,
prevented the investment of more than one hundred millions in Rus-
sian industrial enterprises. The statutes of more than three hun-
dred new companies have been pigeon-holed in his office in defiance
of the Tsar's Rescript to the Minister of Finance.
Eight months ago the entire High Court of Viborg in Fin-
land, consisting of sixteen judges, was sent to prison in Russia
for opposing the enforcement of the Russian law of 1912 concern-
ing the rights of Russians. After having served their full term,
they have been released, and on their return to their homes received
an enthusiastic welcome. Flowers were strewn in their path, ad-
dresses were delivered, the crowd meanwhile cheering. For this
unlawful cheering a score of persons was arrested.
566 RECENT EVENTS [July,
The Foreign Minister has recently made a statement about the
foreign policy of the Empire. This he declared was based upon
the unshakable alliance with France and the friendship with Eng-
land. This friendship he prefers to a formal alliance resting, as it
does, upon common aims, without which a formal alliance would
have little value. With Germany Russia continues to seek the main-
tenance of the old friendly relations. If they had been clouded of
late it was due to the indiscreet conduct of the press both German
and Russian. Even for Austria-Hungary friendly sentiments were
expressed, although the animosity manifested for Russia by certain
sections of the population in Galicia was regretted. Notwithstand-
ing, however, these expressions of friendship, Russia is going to rely
upon her own strength, and has, therefore, brought forward a naval
programme which will involve the expenditure within the next five
years of no less a sum than three thousand seven hundred and sixty
millions. This shows the degree of confidence which the members
of the European family of nations have for one another.
For several months apprehension of labor
Italy. disturbances has been felt in Italy. The
Syndicalist movement is well organized, es-
pecially among the railway men. As the railways, with few excep-
tions, are owned by the State, their employees are in the position
of State servants, and this makes their demand for higher wages
amounting, as it does, to an increase of ten million dollars in their
annual salaries, a serious question for the whole country. One of
the causes of the fall of Signor Giolitti's Ministry was the threat
made by the railway men of a general strike. In consequence of
certain concessions made by the Ministry of Signor Salandra, the
agitation calmed down for a time, but a renewal took place at Easter,
and it was feared that the employees of postal and telegraphic serv-
ices would join. Even the public school teachers and the custodians
of museums and public monuments made similar threats, as well as
the workers in the State tobacco factories. The truth is that the
mania for State employment has filled the civil service to such a
degree that three men are employed to do the work of one. The
only way business so conducted can be carried on is by giving very
small salaries. This in its turn has excited the discontent which is
so prevalent. Wholesale elimination of the useless would be the
remedy, but no Minister, depending as he does on the votes of these
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 567
employees, has hitherto had the courage to adopt it. To what
extent the recent widespread disturbances are due to the economic
unrest, information has not yet been received. They owed their
immediate origin to the government suppression by force of anti-
militarist demonstration, which had been organized in Ancona and
elsewhere. These developed into an anti-dynastic movement, which
at one time seemed to be serious. The energetic action of the gov-
ernment seems to have resulted in a complete suppression; at all
events for the time being.
For the conquest of Tripoli the Italians have now to pay the
price by an addition to succession duties, and by taxes on promis-
sory notes, motor cycles, mineral waters, revolver licences and even
theatres, as well as by an increased excise on spirits and certain
brands of tobacco.
The conferences held between the Foreign Ministers of Italy
and Austria-Hungary excited little attention in the Italian press,
especially because the grievances felt by Italians living in the Dual
Monarchy were not mentioned in the official Communique. These
grievances have been brought prominently before the public notice
by the disturbance which took place at Trieste between Italians and
Slovenes, and by the public burning of an Austrian flag by students
at Venice. In fact several anti- Austrian demonstrations have taken
place in various towns of Italy as a consequence of the disturbances
at Trieste. In this as well as in the attitude towards France, there
seems to be a considerable difference between the professions of the
government and the feelings of the people.
So uncertain is the situation in Albania,
The Balkans. varying as it does from day to day, that it
would be fruitless to attempt to chronicle
every incident, especially since what is taking place is only what was
expected. No element of anarchy is wanting. The Albanian
tribes have from primeval ages maintained their independence, but
have as a rule used that independence to become the instrument
of the vilest of despots. Nine-tenths are descendants of apostates
from Christianity, and are now unwilling that a Christian should
rule over them. The Protestant Prince was furnished with a Catho-
lic bodyguard which, miserabile dictu, fled at the first onslaught of
the enraged Moslems. The flight of the Prince to an Italian ship
did not increase the respect of the Albanian warriors, although
568 RECENT EVENTS [July,
within half an hour his courage returned, and he has since re-
trieved his reputation in some degree by bravery in the field. The
most influential of his opponents, Essad Pasha, has been banished.
The International Commission of Control is doing its best to
maintain Prince William in power, efforts which are being seconded
by the Dutch commanders of the gendarmerie. Austria Hungary
and Italy are close at hand, and have in fact given assistance by
landing sailors. In this background are the Great Powers of Eu-
rope.
One thing, and one only, may be looked upon as settled.
Owing largely to the loyalty of Greece to her engagements, an
agreement was reached in the middle of May between the Albanian
government and the provisional government that had been formed
in Epirus. This agreement was largely due to the mediation of the
International Commission of Control. It gives to the Orthodox
religion the same privileges as it possesses in Turkey. It allows
the Greek and Albanian languages to be taught in the schools, in
fact makes Greek obligatory. The local gendarmerie is to be com-
posed of Greeks and Albanians in proportion to the population.
Two of the governors are to be Christian, and in other respects
security is offered for the Greeks against oppression.
The resumption of war between Greece and Turkey seems pos-
sible. Turkey has been buying a small fleet of Dreadnoughts, the
only object of which is to make an attack on Greece. This has
excited a desire on the part of many Greeks to enter upon a preven-
tive war, before the actual delivery of the ships gives superiority
to her enemy.
With Our Readers.
Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD has received the following
1 letter from one who is intimately acquainted with present condi-
tions in Mexico :
" Mexico at this moment occupies the centre of the stage ; and the
press is working overtime giving out authentic details of the revolu-
tionary movements, which within a few hours are just as authentically
denied. That anarchy reigns supreme all over this unfortunate coun-
try is an undeniable fact, and how or when order is to be restored
is a problem of no easy solution. Some few facts which I have not
seen published in any of our great dailies may perhaps prove interest-
ing. In the first place wheresoever the Constitutionalists have entered
a city in triumph, one of their first acts has invariably been to close
the churches and religious schools, and to throw the priests into prison.
Many of the priests have been able to escape to the United States,
and others are in hiding, while not a few of my poor friends are con-
fined in the penitentiary.
" Now from such proceedings it is but logical to deduce that the
revolutionaries consider the Church their enemy, nay more, their chief
enemy; and such an accusation or assumption is both ludicrous and
absurd. The clergy in Mexico does not dabble in politics : they have
absolutely no civil rights, and since the year 1857 have been barely
tolerated in the land. The churches are all government property ; the
bishop and priests have the temporary use of them; and all church
property, as is well known, was confiscated by the great (?) Juarez
in 1857.
" Men living so precariously are generally prudent enough to keep
out of all controversy with the powers that be ; and if perchance there
should be an imprudent individual who might have expressed himself
in favor of one side rather than another, this would involve the fool-
ishness of the individual, but not of the whole body. Why then are
the clergy considered the enemies of the revolution? Obviously be-
cause the leaders of the movement deem it necessary to detach the
people from the priests ; and notwithstanding the falsehoods and cal-
umnies which have been published in sectarian papers against the
Church and the clergy, the fact remains that at least ninety-five per
cent of the population is essentially and cordially Catholic to-day:
this I affirm on the authority of several archbishops and bishops in
whose acquaintance and friendship I very much rejoice. Our enemies
and calumniators accuse us of exploiting the people, selling the sacra-
5/o WITH OUR READERS [July,
ments, and doing many other things a clergyman ought not to do. The
priest demands a fee for a baptism, a marriage or a funeral, when
it can be conveniently paid: this I believe is a universal custom in every
country in the world, just as the lawyer or doctor gets his fee for the
labor he has performed, and to such a proceeding no reasonable man
ought to object. But why have we not more schools under the control
of the Church ? And why did we not have schools while the Church
was enjoying unlimited freedom?
" To the latter question I answer that in Mexico there were as
many schools as in France or any other country during that time ; and
the unrest and discontent that eventually pervaded the country are to be
attributed to the accursed events of 1792 in France, news of which
soon crossed the ocean and culminated in the rising of 1810 under the
leadership of Hidalgo, of whom the less we say the better, if we would
keep our pages clean. From 1810 till 1874 there was continuous civil
war, the country was plunged into misery and disorder, and conse-
quently schools were not in much demand. To the first question I
answer : the Church is doing the best she can with the scanty resources
at her disposal to keep some schools open; but she is handicapped
by the government, which insists upon the attendance at the public
schools of all children whom they can reach ; and in the latter schools
God and religion rare absolutely tabooed. The little ones are taught
that their worst enemies are the priests, that there is no future life,
and that they need only worship the fatherland. Of such individuals
brought up in the national schools or in no schools whatever, is com-
posed the army of the Constitutionalists, who are doing so much mis-
chief and committing such atrocities in poor Mexico to-day. And the
atrocities to which I allude are beyond a doubt inspired by a senseless,
diabolical hatred of the Catholic Church, a hatred fomented by the
calumnies of sectarian missionaries, male and female, who have invaded
the country, and by the Masonic lodges. The proof of this assertion
is that the prisons are full of our priests, our churches are closed and
desecrated, our sacred vessels profaned and stolen, and our houses ran-
sacked and looted. The schools conducted by the Marist Brothers, the
Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and
other Religious are condemned as being inferior to the national schools,
and not up to the requirements of modern pedagogy! and in most
cases the establishments are closed after undergoing a general and
generous looting of the premises. When the followers of Carranza
took the small town of Salinas Victoria a few months ago, one of their
first acts was to enter the church, break open the tabernacle, throw the
Blessed Sacrament to the dogs, appropriate the ciborium, monstrance,
and chalice, and then shoot to pieces the statues of the Blessed Virgin,
St. Joseph, and other saints in that beautiful little church.
1914- ] WITH OUR READERS 571
" What is done in one place is but too frequently repeated in an-
other. This is the work of the men who have been educated in the
national schools, with the valuable assistance of the Americans, Eng-
lish, Scots, French, Italians, and Turks who have flocked to the stand-
ard of the unspeakable Villa, allured by the prospect of loot and lust.
All these men loudly profess a passionate love of liberty for themselves,
and for all those who think and act as they do : for all others intoler-
ance and persecution are the order of the day. I need not refer par-
ticularly to the brutal immorality that everywhere prevails : suffice it to
say that the Apaches of Paris have worthy rivals in the unfortunate
land of Montezuma.
" And yet our rulers in the United States have done all in their
power to help to victory these savage hordes! With all their peda-
gogical proficiency, they have most certainly been led astray and hood-
winked and deceived by the polished, godless clique of rebels who have
made Washington their home for many months. We on our side are
fervently praying for the restoration of peace, for the confounding of
God's enemies, for the reopening of our churches, for the resuming of
business in our stores and factories, and for the privilege of being
able to return safely to the happy humble homes we had established
in that beautiful country."
IF the commencement addresses, as published in the daily press at this
time of the year, were as vigorously definite in statement as they
are lofty in language, much helpful light would undoubtedly be given
to those who are " about to enter upon the battle of life." For the most
part these addresses will be found to be, when sifted well, generalities
glittering with heavily-weighted moral adornment, and designed to fit
the occasion. They are as seemingly fair as a summer afternoon and
they pass just as quickly.
It is an encouraging sign, however, to see that some of them
are protests against the commercialism that for so long has been
eating away the consciences of men, and that many embody a real
serious appeal for the spiritual value of life. It is well that young men
are urged " to have a conscience, sensitive to the eternal difference
between right and wrong," and " to cherish life as a sacred thing coming
from God and to God again returning." It is refreshing to hear the
head of a Presbyterian university tell his students " to have some
positive religious conviction." And if to the following could be given
the vigor of definite truth, it would be of supreme value : " Believe
in something greater than yourselves, and be not ashamed to preserve
some shrine amidst the secret places of your being, some holy of holies,
572 WITH OUR READERS [July,
where you keep perpetually burning a divine fire on the altar of your
soul."
* * * *
''PHE more worthy of the speeches in their appeal to personal re-
A sponsibility, personal worth and the supreme dignity of conscience,
might fittingly be used as companion protests to the timely condemna-
tion uttered by the Honorable Thomas W. Churchill, President of the
Board of Education of the City of New York, against the Carnegie
Foundation. Mr. Churchill said:
" In 1904 Mr. Andrew Carnegie set aside his college pension fund
and formed his committee to administer it. At a salary of $15,000.00
a year a president of the committee was appointed, offices were secured,
and the sign painted on the door, 'Carnegie Foundation for the Ad-
vancement of Teaching.'
" What had previously been announced and hailed as a provision
for the old age of college professors, now appears as a corporation to
buy control of the management of such colleges as are willing to sell
their birthright.
" What had been advertised as an institution for the reward of
teachers who had lived from hand to mouth that they might instruct
the youth of the country, now presents itself as a junta which declares
college teaching and college management should be carried on according
to the pattern prescribed by it. Unless you conform you get none of
this money.
" 'Drop your denominationalism/ says the Carnegie Foundation,
'and we'll advance you the money to retire your professors.' One can-
not but blush with indignation that any body of men in this generation
and in this country would so brazenly employ the tremendous power
of great wealth as to permit it to buy the abandonment of religion.
" The spirit of education as preached by the committee for the
bossing of teaching, is that only those youths chosen according to the
measuring stick of the Carnegie Foundation should sit at the college
table.
" By reason of imperfection of our labor laws a lucky ironmaster
skims from the work of thousands of artisans the cream of their
wages, until they amass for him a fortune that puts to shame the pos-
sessions of Croesus.
" A proposition that was hailed as a work of generous philan-
thropy has developed into a piece of disgraceful bribery, debauching
professors, bribing religious institutions, and threatening colleges with
a reign of uniformity, rigidity, and classification. Let this menace to
the freedom of teaching be undone. Let the Carnegie Foundation be
dissolved, and its revenues converted into a pension service, beyond
the power of a private committee."
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 573
A LTHOUGH not without serious flaws, the new compensation law
-tl- of New York State, which goes into effect on July ist, is a
most encouraging step towards securing for the injured laborer and
his family a just compensation for the loss both suffer. It is the most
radical of all compensation laws yet passed in the United States, and
it is estimated that it will cost the employers of labor in New York
two and a half times as much as those of Massachusetts, and once and
a half those of Wisconsin, in both of which States compensation laws
have been passed which by some were considered radical enough.
* * * *
TINDER the new law the burden of proof rests with the employer.
VJ He has the burden of showing that the injury sustained must be
laid to the employee's blame. All hazardous employments are included
under the law, which catalogues them under forty-two groups. Do-
mestic service, agriculture, and employments not conducted for pecu-
niary gain are excluded.
Every employer subject to the law is liable for compensation
of employees injured or killed in the course of their employment, with-
out regard to fault as a cause, except where the injury is caused by
willful intention, or where it results from the intoxication of the
employee.
* * * *
TO summarize some of the disability benefits : no compensation shall
be paid for the first fourteen days after the accident. The em-
ployer shall promptly provide medical and surgical aid during the
first sixty days. Compensation shall be based on the average weekly
wage. Permanent total disability will entitle the employee to a com-
pensation of sixty-six and two-thirds per cent of weekly wages for life.
Temporary total disability to sixty-six and two-thirds of weekly wages
during continuance ; total not to exceed $3,500.00.
In case of death caused by injury during employment the sur-
viving wife will receive thirty per cent of the average weekly wages
during her entire widowhood. If there are also surviving children,
each will receive ten per cent of average weekly wages until the
eighteenth year of age the total shall not exceed sixty-six and two-
thirds per cent of wages. In case of surviving children only, each will
receive ten per cent.
If the whole of sixty-six and two-thirds per cent of wages has not
been used in compensation, the remainder may be used for the support
of grandchildren or brothers and sisters under eighteen years of age.
employer is obliged to notify the Commission of every injury
to his employees within ten days after the occurrence. Failure
to do so renders the employer liable to a fine of $500.00. The Commis-
574 WITH OUR READERS [July,
sion has the power to fix all claims. An appeal may be taken from
the decision of the Commission to the Supreme Court. The Commis-
sion also has the power to order how the compensation shall be paid.
No agreement on the part of an employee to waive his rights to com-
pensation will be valid.
The law has made certain the security for compensation by
directing that all employers shall be insured. The employer may
give satisfactory proof to the Commission of his financial ability to
compensate in case of accident ; and in such case the Commission may
require a deposit of securities. It will be seen that the law is stringent
and radical.
* * * *
A MOST serious defect which one sees at first glance is that it places
a premium on bachelors, for the employers, who engage men for
hazardous occupations, such as steel construction, will take only single
men. In fact in every business, enumerated under the forty-two
groups, the married man seeking employment will be seriously handi-
capped. We believe that in this respect the law will be changed in the
very near future.
charming simplicity, the easy dignity and the quiet vigor of
1 Abbot Gasquet, won the hearts of all who met him during his
recent visit to this country. One of the foremost historians of his
time, the Abbot President of the English Benedictines ; a statesman of
experience; the director of a Commission to restore the original text
of the Vulgate none of these honors or achievements had lessened
his gracious humility. Indeed, over all his gifts, one recognized the
supreme gift of a deep spirituality that possessed and ruled the man
himself. In his humility, his learning, his love of peace and his
spiritual strength, Cardinal Gasquet is a true son of the great St.
Benedict. The congratulations that have come to him from all sources,
and from persons in every walk of life, from Catholics and non-Catho-
lics, on the occasion of his promotion to the Sacred College, are a
world-wide testimony to his worth.
* * * *
AS one recalls the great work Cardinal Gasquet has done for the
Church, and the achievements that have won the admiring
praise of even hostile critics, he cannot but be struck by the charac-
teristic utterance in the conclusion of the Cardinal's address, imme-
diately after the great honor was conferred upon him. Cardinal Gas-
quet spoke of the characteristics of our age restlessness and religious
doubt and impatience with authority. " The mission of God's Church,"
he continued, " is changeless amid all changes. The Church stands
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 575
for peace and security and individual rights. It alone can secure the
due observance of law and order necessary for the safety of society."
Then Cardinal Gasquet concluded : " Christ walks upon the waters
and stills the storm to-day as He has done for nineteen centuries ; and
the fact that the supreme authority of the Vicar of Christ has raised
me, one of no account, to help him in his almost superhuman task
is, or should be to us all, a token that God's purposes are not as those
of the world : that He uses measures and men without regard to human
calculations ; that the wisdom of men is no match for the foolishness
of the Gospel ; and that the instruments of His and His Vicar's choice,
lowly as they may be, can, with His blessing, effect that purpose, be-
cause they carry out His adorable will. In all things, even in me,
may God be glorified."
* * * *
'TMrlE present campaign of bigotry, of misrepresentation and of insult
1 against the Catholic Church, recalls the great work Abbot Gasquet
did for the Church in England. He silenced once for all what through
centuries of misrepresentation had become a tradition of English
Protestantism that the monasteries and convents in the time of Henry
VIII. deserved to be suppressed and destroyed; that the monks and
nuns who lived therein richly deserved the fate that befell them.
" Cardinal Gasquet," writes Dr. William Barry, " has completely shat-
tered this misunderstanding; but it survives in popular books." It
survives in books popular in certain places in this country also; and
in certain very yellow anti-Catholic journals. The distribution of
pamphlets and tracts that give true history, will do much to enlighten
that portion of the popular mind that still sits in darkness.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The Narrow Way. By Rev. P. Geiermann, C.SS.R. 60 cents. Half Hours
with God. By Rev. J. McDonnell, S.J. 35 cents net. Saturdays with Mary.
Compiled by a client of Mary. 35 cents net. Ballads of Childhood. By M.
Earls, S.J. $1.10 net. Constitutions of the Friends of Jesus and Mary. By
Rev. P. Geiermann, C.SS.R. 15 cents. Altar Flowers, and How to Grow
Them. By H. Jones. 90 cents net. Sweet Sacrament Divine. By Very
Rev. C. Cox, O.M.I. 35 cents net. Roma Ancient, Subterranean, and
Modern Rome. By Rev. A. Kuhn, O.S.B. Part IV. 35 cents. Perilous
Seas. By E. G. Robin. $1.25 net.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York:
Breviarium Romanum. Editio Typica. Ratisbonae et Roma. Neo-Eboraci.
$11.25. The Theory and Practice of the Catechism. By Dr. M. Gatterer,
S.J., and Dr. F. Krus, S.J. $1.25 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York :
Irish Literary and Musical Studies. By A. P. Graves, M.A. $1.75 net. Life
Histories of African Game Animals. By T. Roosevelt and E. Heller. 2 vols.
$10.00 net. American and English Studies. By W. Reid. 2 vols. $4.00
net. The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848. By G. L. Rives. 2 vols.
$8.00.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
The Church in Rome in the First Century. By G. Edmundson, M.A. $2.50
net. Through an American Sisterhood to Rome. By A. H. Bennett. $1.35
net. The Waters of Twilight. By C. C. Martindale, S.J. $1.20 net.
Lourdes. By J. Jorgensen. 90 cents net.
THE CENTURY Co., New York:
The Period of Discovery. By J. V. McKee, M.A., and L. S. Roemer. 50
cents net.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York :
Familiar Spanish Travels. By W. D. Howells. $2.00 net.
McBRiDE, NAST & Co., New York :
The Real Mexico. By H. Hamilton Fyfe. $1.25 net.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York :
Fred. Carmody, Pitcher. By Hugh F. Blunt. 85 cents net.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York :
The Shadow of Peter. By H. E. Hall, M.A. 70 cents.
THE AMERICA PRESS, New York :
What Shall I Be? By Rev. F. Cassilly, S.J.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York :
The Age of Erasmus. By P. S. Allen, M.A.
J. HAVENS RICHARDS, S.J., Canisius College, Buffalo :
Introduction to Catholic Reading. By J. H. Richards, S.J. (Pamphlet.)
SHERMAN, FRENCH & Co., Boston :
Candle Flame. (A Play.) By Katharine Howard.
GINN & Co., Boston :
American Literature. By Wm. J. Long. $1.35.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Cambridge :
The Spiritual Message of Dante. By Rt. Rev. W. B. Carpenter.
DR. GEORGE MCALEER, Worcester, Mass. :
Ireland's Contribution to the Progress of Other European Countries. By
G. McAleer, M.D. Gathered Waifiets. By G. McAleer, M.D.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington :
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year Ended June 30, 1913.
]. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia :
The Heart of the Antarctic. By Sir H. Shackleton. $1.50 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Holy Mass. Vol. II. By Rev. H. Lucas, S.J. 30 cents net. Private First
Communion Instructions. By Rev. J. Nist. 60 cents net. Francis Thomp-
son,, the Preston-Born Poet. By J. Thompson. 90 cents net. An Eliza-
bethan Cardinal, William Allen. By M. Haile. $6.00 net. The Life of
Gemma Galgani. By Father Germanus. $1.80 net. Enchiridion Patristi-
cum. By M. J. Rouet de Journel, S.J. $2.60 net. Her Only Love. (A
Drama.) By Rev. P. Kaenders. 25 cents net. The Triumphs Over Death.
By Ven. R. Southwell. 30 cents net. The Life of St. Columbia. By F. A.
Forbes. 30 cents net. St. Catherine of Siena. By F. A. Forbes. 30 cents
net. '
UNIVERSITY PRESS, Notre Dame, Ind. :
Priestly Practice. By A. B. O'Neill, C.S.C. $1.00.
GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE, Paris:
La Vie intime du Catholique. Par J. V. Bamvel. i fr. 25. De Vera Rehgione
et Apologetica. Par J. V. Bainvel.
PIERRE TEQUI, Paris :
Retraite d'Enfants. Par Abbe H. Morice. 3 frs. Allocutions et Sermons de
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RAZON Y FE, Madrid :
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCIX. AUGUST, 1914. No. 593.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK.
BY C. M. WAAGE.
N January 2ist of the present year, Rt. Rev.
Johannes von Euch, the Catholic Bishop of Copen-
hagen, celebrated the eightieth anniversary of his
birthday. Born in Westphalia, Germany, on Jan-
uary 21, 1834, he was sent in 1860 to Copenhagen as
assistant to the only Catholic priest there, Rev. Hermann Griider.
From that day until the present he has faithfully watched his flock
in that northern land, sharing the political and social vicissitudes
of his adopted country, and, in spite of adverse circumstances, has
established a flourishing Catholic diocese in a domain where, but a
few years prior to his advent, the Catholic religion was not even
tolerated.
The man who has accomplished such a task is well worthy of
notice, but for the full appreciation of his life and work a retro-
spective view of religious conditions in Denmark, prior to the
arrival of Father von Euch, will be both interesting and necessary.
Rev. J. B. Metzler, S.J., who has written a biographical sketch
of Bishop von Euch, states that Denmark was a Catholic country
for seven hundred years before the Reformation found a foothold.
This statement is open to controversy. It is true that as early as
850, or thereabouts, Ansgar, who has been called the Apostle of
Denmark, was made Bishop of Hamburg, and thus virtually became
the Supreme Vicar of Denmark, but his mission was neither of large
extent, nor of lasting effect, and about one hundred years later Gonn
the Old, King of Denmark, died a pronounced heathen. Chris-
tianity was undoubtedly known in Denmark at that period and in
the period that followed, but it was by no means established. It was
VOL. xcix. 37
578 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK [Aug.,
the age of sea rovers. Some were pirates and vikings, others were
merchants, bringing a variety of articles home from the .southlands,
and it is reasonable to suppose that many of them coming in contact
with Christian nations in those days, may have adopted their re-
ligion, apart from any missionary services exerted in Denmark
itself. The history of Ireland is proof of this assertion, for it is
well established that many Danes fought for Irish kings in the
intestine wars of a country which was then Christianized. Many of
them became Christians, and no doubt frequently carried with them
the new faith to the mother country.
But for centuries Christianity in Denmark remained a vague
issue at best. The years in which it fought its first battles for recog-
nition, were not congenial to marked religious inspiration. During
many of these years great disturbances passed over the Catholic
Church, which made themselves felt in distant lands; moreover, the
Danes were not of a disposition to .accept unhesitatingly a religion
which taught submission and humility as some of its first principles.
The German Emperor, Otto, invaded Denmark at the close of the
tenth century, accompanied by Bishop Poppo, and in a decisive battle
forced the Danish king to assume the Christian religion for himself
and his people. Naturally such a conversion was of little avail, and
the worshippers of Odin were loath to accept a faith stamped by the
submission of a conquered chief.
Very gradually, however, the Christian religion overcame the
Odinic system. Monasteries were built in various places, churches
multiplied, and it is stated that about the year 1300 they numbered
as many as fifteen hundred. Yet it is questionable whether such a
condition could have obtained, but for the fact that the bishops
were prominent as warriors no less than as clerics.
In 1104 the country was separated from the See of Hamburg,
and seven dioceses w r ere established, w r ith the Archbishop of Lund
in Sweden as their Primate. By this time the country was de-
cidedly Catholic, but the majority of the bishops were better fitted
for the sword and helmet than for the crozier and miter. The most
renowned of these men was Archbishop Absalon, who died in 1201.
As a statesman and warrior he rendered his country great services,
and the world is indebted to him for prevailing upon Saxo Gram-
maticus to write the famous Chronicles of the Danish Realm,
which ranks among the classics of Norse history. In this work
the writer, himself a cleric, reveals much religious devotion and
piety, and speaks of his masters, the Archbishop and King Walde-
1914- ] THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK 579
mar the First, as men of great spiritual as well as material
prowess.
Waldemar the Second in the thirteenth century waged war on
his pagan neighbors, prompted by the same spirit as the Crusaders.
During these wars, at the battle of Volmark, 1219, legend relates
that the Danish flag fell from heaven upon the almost vanquished
troops, and, inspiring them with renewed courage, carried them on to
victory. This flag, a white cross in a blood red field, has been
ever since the national banner of the Danes, and is the oldest na-
tional flag in existence. When sung in Danish poetry it is always
described as heaven-descended.
This may in truth be termed the most brilliant period in the
history of Catholic Denmark. After King Waldemar the Second
(also called the Victorious), the country degenerated through in-
ternal strife, and the clergy appear to have had no influence upon
the affairs of the nation. In the middle of the fifteenth century,
the house of Oldenburg ascended the Danish throne in the person
of Christian I. His successor, Christian II., in 1520 made the first
attempt to overthrow the hierarchy, and in 1539 introduced a new
liturgy and consecrated Lutheran bishops.
From that time the Catholic Church ceased to exercise any sway
in the country, and in 1613 a royal rescript forbade Catholic priests
to perform any religious functions under penalty of death. A sub-
sequent law threatened converts with confiscation of their property
and banishment. This law prevailed until June, 1849, when the
last of the line of Oldenburg, Frederick VII., granted the country
a new constitution, with absolute freedom of religious worship.
During the intervening years the Catholic religion was virtually
an unknown quantity in Denmark. The representatives of foreign
Catholic countries insisted upon and obtained leave to maintain a
chapel in Copenhagen. Another chapel was allowed in the fortifica-
tion of Fredericia in Jutland for the benefit of foreign-hired troops.
Thus the practice of the Catholic religion was confined to foreigners,
and in the course of time became an object of suspicion and dis-
paragement with the Danes, rather than of positive hatred.
The first man to take up the task of rebuilding a Catholic
community in Denmark was Father Zurstrassen, a German
priest, who became pastor of Copenhagen. He died after a few
years sojourn there, and was succeeded in 1852 by Father
Cruder, a man of rare gifts, who much endeared himself to the
Catholic population of Copenhagen, which slowly increased under
580 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK [Aug.,
his pastorate. To him Father von Euch was sent as assistant
in 1860, shortly after his ordination. The Catholic population in
Copenhagen then numbered but seven hundred and fifty souls.
The young priest was a man of singular attainments. His bril-
liant mind, his power of acquiring and retaining- knowledge, his
studious habits so shortened the years of his schooling, that when
he attained to the dignity of deacon at Paderborn in the year 1857,
he found himself too young to proceed for ordination to the priest-
hood. He was not ordained, therefore, until January 8, 1860, and
a few months later was sent to Copenhagen as one of the priests
of St. Ansgar's Church.
With characteristic zeal the young priest, being ignorant of
the Danish tongue, at once set to work to acquire the language. In
this very act he laid the foundation of the success w r hich attended
him in after years, and of the great popularity he achieved. For
years there had been a bitter feud between Denmark and Germany,
which culminated in 1864 m a w ar most disastrous to Denmark.
Before that Father von Euch had acquired the language so well
that he was entrusted with the management of the Scandinavian
Church Journal, a weekly Catholic paper. The Journal was said
to be on the point of failure, but his energy and efficiency brought it
through the crisis.
Father von Euch remained four years at St. Ansgar's Church,
administering the sacraments in Copenhagen or making journeys
into the country on missions. During these first years of his priestly
activity he had great opportunities for developing his spiritual
power, and of becoming well acquainted with the people to whom he
ministered. His personal sentiments during this period are summed
up in a sentence he wrote a dear friend, the Countess Stolberg-Stol-
berg : " The word mission has a singular sound to me. It goes to
the heart. It carries with it Grace, within and without abundant
and ever-increasing Grace."
After his four years sojourn in the capital, Father von Euch
was called to Fredericia as vicar of the Church of St. Canute. In
an area covering nine thousand seven hundred and fifty square
miles, he was to be the only Catholic priest, but he soon proved him-
self able to meet the emergency. His first attention was given to
the little town, where the few Catholics who formed the congrega-
tion were foreigners. He made it his endeavor to establish a Dan-
ish congregation, and so well did he succeed that in the two
decades, during which he presided over the Church of Holy Canute,
1914.] THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK 581
as it is called, he personally brought into the fold of Holy Church
two hundred and seven adults and one hundred and twenty children,
four of whom became priests, three joined a teaching brotherhood,
and five became Sisters of Charity.
In the first year of his pastorate, Father von Etich built a tower
to his church. Notwithstanding the proclamation of religious lib-
erty, the idea prevailed with the common people that the Catholics
were not allowed to add spires or belfries to their churches, nor to
ring bells for their services. To disabuse them of this idea, Father
von Euch installed two bells in the new tower. So on the Feast
of the Immaculate Conception, 1865, for the first time in nearly
three hundred years, the Catholic people of a Danish city were called
to church by bells joyously pealing forth the praises of God.
There is an old saying that " the pen is mightier than the
sword," but mightier than any weapon, be it for attack or defence,
is personality. With this great quality his Maker had richly
endowed the young priest. His splendid personality carried Father
von Euch on to victory. He won the hearts of those who refused
to join his flock, as well as the affection of his own people ; he was
able to secure assistance where other men might have expected re-
sistance. The appearance of the Sisters in Fredericia caused no
small excitement, for the people realized that the Catholic religion
was surely returning to the country which had trampled it under
foot. And when the great work of these gentle women began to
make itself felt, whether from the school or from the hospital ever
for the relief or uplift of humanity those who had been suspicious
and scornful became serious, and soon good will and admiration
were the predominant sentiments felt for Father von Euch and his
assistants in their noble work.
Far from confining himself to the little town or its immediate
vicinity, the energetic priest covered, as far as he could, the whole
area of the peninsula of Jutland, and thence crossed to the island of
Fiinen, where in the ancient city of Odense the Church of St. Canute
stood still as a monument to the most glorious period of Catholic
Denmark, although now converted into a Lutheran church. The
work he accomplished in these parts, constituting two-thirds of the
entire country, cannot be measured by mere words. The cities he
visited are names unknown to the average American reader. In
1869, when the Danish mission was raised to an Apostolic Prefec-
ture, and Father Cruder became Monsignor Cruder, Father von
Euch was foremost in a movement which resulted in the establish-
582 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK [Aug.,
ment of four new missions. In many places churches and chapels
sprung up, and holy Mass was celebrated anew after centuries of
suppression. In some places foreigners, Catholics whose children
had been baptized in the Lutheran Church, welcomed the priest as
a long-lost friend. In others Catholics had to be discovered. In
one city nineteen were found, in another two, the consolation and
comfort of their Church having been unknown to them for years
past. To these places the priest returned from time to time, and in
every one of them there stands to-day a church or a chapel, with at
least a regular visit from a priest.
In December, 1884, Monsignor Cruder died, after thirty-two
years of devoted service to his congregation in Copenhagen. Father
von Euch had just been called to Osnabriick, Germany, to head
the Cathedral Chapter there, and was busy preparing for his de-
parture when his superior died. Immediately pressure was brought
to bear upon Cardinal Simeoni, then Prefect of the Propaganda,
to have Father von Euch returned to Denmark to continue the
labors of the late Prefect, and, as a result, Monsignor von Euch
shortly after took up his residence in Copenhagen as the head
of the prefecture. In recognition of the advancement of the Catho-
lic Church in Denmark, Pope Leo XIII. in 1892 raised Monsignor
von Euch to the dignity of a bishop, and he was ordained in the
Cathedral of Osnabriick as the first Danish bishop for many
centuries.
During his prefecture and episcopate, Catholic affairs in
Denmark improved and extended their activities beyond all reason-
able expectation. The vast experience of his younger years stood
him in good stead, and he used to the full his great oratorical power.
He stands in the front rank as a speaker, and on his frequent
visits abroad at the great conventions pleaded the cause of Catholi-
cism in Denmark so eloquently as to win generous help from many
of the faithful in other lands, and even from non-Catholics, par-
ticularly in Germany.
Space does not allow us to follow step by step the labors of this
man, whose work was so full of difficulties, yet so fruitful. A few
statistics will show the progress of Catholicity in Denmark, due
principally to his indefatigable efforts. In 1860 Denmark had a
population of 1,608,362, with 1,240 Catholics. In 1910 the popula-
tion was 2,588,919, with 7,870 Catholics, not including a large num-
ber of Polish laborers, who have lately immigrated to Denmark.
At the present ratio about two hundred conversions take place an-
1914.] THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK 583
nually, and it is worthy of notice that the nobility is well represented
among them, also professional men, artists, and literary men.
Among the latter should be noted the convert, Johannes Jorgensen,
one of the leading authors of the country, whose facile pen has, since
his conversion, championed the cause of Mother Church with
marked vigor. When Father von Euch came to Denmark in 1860,
there were only two congregations, with a church for each (Copen-
hagen and Fredericia). At the death of Monsignor Griidur, Den-
mark had eight congregations, composed chiefly of converts, with
sixteen houses of worship. And when, in 1910, Bishop von Euch
celebrated his golden jubilee as a priest, there were twenty-four
mission stations in the country, with thirty-six churches and chapels,
some of which are very beautiful.
In the same year there were in Denmark seventy-one priests,
secular and religious. Some of the secular clergy have been prom-
inent in civic as well as ecclesiastical life. Notable among them are
the Rev. Clemens Stolp, a German, who built entirely at his own
cost a fine church and school in the city of Kolding; the Rev. B.
Hansen, D.D., of Nestved, who was elected several times to a seat
in the city council, and the Rev. J. L. V. Hansen, who translated the
New Testament.
Among the orders represented are the Jesuits, Franciscans,
Lazarists, Marists, Redemptorists, and others. The Jesuits take the
lead as teachers and writers on religious-scientific subjects. One of
their number, Rev. Amandus Breitung, through his writings and
his brilliant discourses, has gained universal popularity in academical
circles, both as a theologian and a scientist.
Seven orders of Sisters are working in Denmark, the Sisters of
St. Joseph predominating. The work of the orders is greatly appre-
ciated by the clergy and laity in general, and has contributed much
to create a kindly feeling towards Catholics in circles where they
were formerly shunned. In schools and hospitals and as visitors to
the poor and sick, the Sisters demonstrate in their everyday life
the great commands of our Saviour, and exercise a benign influence
in the community where they toil. In the boys' schools the teaching
Brothers assist the Fathers with great zeal, and help to make Catho-
lic education a success in Denmark.
This, so to speak, is the staff with which Bishop von Euch
has surrounded himself for the purpose of carrying out his noble
work. Out of his efforts have sprung innumerable institutions,
societies, and organizations. Catholic hospitals occupy a prominent
584 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN DENMARK [Aug.,
place in Denmark ; there are also homes for infants and for orphans.
One institution gives to young girls of the poorer classes a two
years training in everything pertaining to the work of a house-
wife, such as cleaning, mending, cooking, washing. Sodalities and
young people's associations abound, and guilds have been organized
in short, where on his arrival there was but the merest beginning
of a Catholic community, to-day the Catholic element, though yet
in its infancy, has become a national feature, and although sub-
jected to the same enmity by which in this age Holy Church is
assailed from certain quarters in every country, yet it is constantly
gaining fresh recognition as a power for good and for the better-
ment of humanity.
Bishop von Euch throughout his administration has laid par-
ticular stress upon the value of the Catholic press as an adjunct to
his work. From the first we saw him occupying a portion of his
time as editor of a paper; nor has he ever ceased to give special
attention to Catholic publications and reading matter for his flock.
His people have not only the privilege of a weekly and a monthly
paper, but through his efforts they enjoy the benefits of twenty-two
public Catholic libraries. Moreover, he has established a diocesan
library of no less than sixteen thousand volumes, almost entirely
collected by himself, embodying many valuable works in different
languages, principally in Danish, German, French, and Italian.
During his many years sojourn in Denmark, Bishop von Euch
has become very prominent in the community. His imposing figure,
his courteous bearing, his dignified presence, his great learning, and
his burning eloquence have made him popular with all classes and
all creeds. On the occasion of his jubilee one of the leading daily
journals of Copenhagen wrote of him :
Bishop von Euch gives a fine impression of the high dig-
nity of a Catholic priest, when standing before the glittering
altar of St. Ansgar's Church, crozier in hand, mitered and
vested. As the supreme pastor of his flock, he has come in con-
tact with large portions of the Danish people, and during his
many years of labor in this country, he has gained the pro-
found respect of all through his dignified bearing, his great
intellect, and rare foresight. He is a man of exceeding knowl-
edge, and the Danish Kulturgeist has found in him an ap-
preciative admirer and champion. Bishop von Euch has ac-
complished a great work for the community, whose venerable
head he is During the fifty years he has labored in Den-
1914.] CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 585
mark, he has not only been a strong and efficient guide for his
own people, but he has gained the love and appreciation of
everybody else for his great work in the cause of humanity.
Whatever opinion one may hold about the Church over which
he presides, one thing must be admitted : Bishop von Euch
has exhibited an unfaltering love for the country and the nation
whither he was sent to labor..
In the eventide of such a man there can be no gathering gloom,
but rather a glorious sunset. When eternity's morning shall break
upon him, he will surely be of those to whom the greeting shall be
extended : " Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord! "
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.
BY JOYCE KILMER.
No longer of Him be it said,
" He hath no place to lay His head."
In every land a constant lamp
Flames by His small and mighty camp.
There is no strange and distant place
That is not gladdened by His face.
And every nation kneels to hail
The Splendor shining through Its veil.
Cloistered beside the shouting street,
Silent, He calls me to His feet.
Imprisoned for His love of me,
He makes my spirit greatly free.
And through my lips that uttered sin,
The King of Glory enters in.
ST. AUGUSTINE, THE STUDENT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.
BY HUGH POPE, O.P.
HE story of St. Augustine's life is, at least, in its
outlines, familiar to all. Briefly: he was born at
Tagaste in Numidia, A. D. 354; in early life he fell
into the prevailing heresy of the Manichees; but
when he had reached his twenty-eighth year he saw
the futility of their views and passed over to Neo-Platonism. In
385 he went to Milan as professor of rhetoric in that city. There
he came under the influence of St. Ambrose, and to his mother's,
St. Monica's, joy, he, in 387, abjured his errors and was baptized,
being then in his thirty-third year. His mother died almost imme-
diately, when they were on their way to Africa. Augustine re-
turned home alone, and for a few years lived at Tagaste. In 391
he went to Hippo on a visit, and there the Bishop, Valerius, induced
him to accept the priesthood. Four years later he associated Augus-
tine with himself in the episcopate.
Augustine's life as a Christian may be divided into three
periods, according to the three great heresies which he combated.
His first antagonists were his former friends the Manichees; the
battle with them concerned the origin of evil. His next foes were
the Donatists of Africa; this dispute turned wholly upon the
nature of the Church. His last combat it endured till the day of
his death was against the Pelagians, as to the true meaning of
grace.
The weapon with which the Saint fought was always the
Bible. This was the arsenal from which he drew, and in its study
for the purpose of arriving at truth his life was spent. The attain-
ment of truth was the absorbing passion of Augustine's soul. This
truth he sought and found in the Scriptures : " Lo the Scriptures
are in the hands of all! There we learn Christ; there we learn
the Church. If you hold to Christ why do you not hold to the
Church herself? If you believe in the Christ Whom you read
of but cannot see, and if you believe in Him because the Scriptures
are true, then why do you deny the Church which you can both
see and read of?" 1 Shortly after ordination, when Valerius in-
*Ep. CV., 17.
1914.] ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 587
sisted on making him preach, Augustine writes to him in piteous
terms : " I ought to study carefully the remedies God has pro-
vided in His Scriptures; I need by prayer and reading to gain fit
strength for my soul, that so it may be prepared for this perilous
task. I did not do this before because I had not the time. For I
was ordained just at the vacations when we were planning how best
we could learn the Sacred Scriptures, and were arranging for some
leisure for this purpose. Indeed, to tell the truth, I knew not at the
time how ill prepared I was for this present task, which now fills me
with anxiety and threatens to crush me." He then begs the Bishop
to grant him a little time, " perhaps even till Easter," that so he
may study Holy Scripture for the profit of those committed to his
care. 2
When in earlier days St. Ambrose had proposed to him to study
the Bible, Augustine made the attempt but found it distasteful. 3
But now in his Catholic life the Bible became his absorbing passion. 4
It is wonderful to think of a man of Augustine's philosophical and
literary tastes he tells us he had been accustomed to read half
a book of Virgil a day 5 giving himself up wholly to the study
of those Scriptures which he had once reputed as barbarous ! Nor
was the study of them an easy task for him, even with his prodigious
learning. He knew little Greek, so he says, 6 though he shows re-
peatedly that he had an excellent working knowledge of it; 7 he
knew no Hebrew. 8 Nothing daunted by these deficiencies, he grad-
ually gained by assiduous study and meditation a knowledge of the
letter and the spirit of Holy Scripture which is absolutely unrivalled.
He endeavored, too, to supply for his deficiencies by wide reading,
and by repeated appeals for assistance from those who were skilled
in Biblical lore. Thus it seems certain that he had read Origen's
works. 9 He corresponded frequently with St. Jerome, for whose
'Ep. XXI., 3, 4, written at the opening of 391 A. D.
'Con/. IX., v.; cp. ibid., III., iv. ; VI., v., 7, 8; VII., xx., 26; VII., xxi., 27.
4 De Doct. Christ., II., ix. ; Ep. CXXXVII., iii., xviii., and Sermon CCCXXXIX.,
iv., on the beauty of a life devoted to Biblical study and teaching.
*De Ordine, I., viii., 26.
'De Trin., III., i., and Contra Petilanum, II., 91 ; but cp. his discussion of the
Greek text in his Tract, in Joannem, III., 8; LXXXIII., 2; XCVI., 4, etc.; also
Ep. CIV., 6, (inter Epp. S. Hier.) ; De Civ. Dei, XV., xiii.
T C/. under note 4. *Ep. CL, iv.
'His words in De Consensu Evangel., II., xxix., are almost verbatim to those
of Origen, VI., xviii., in Joannem; similarly in his Tract. XL, iii., in Joannem, St.
Augustine gives an interpretation of the expression credere in Nomine, which is
that of Origen, X., xxviii., in Joannem.
588 ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Aug.,
learning he expresses the profoundest admiration. 10 He even pro-
posed to send students to work under his direction. 11
But this assiduous study of Holy Scripture was not an end in
itself. It was but a means. The end in view was the salvation of
souls. For the Bible was the Word of God, 12 and was entrusted
to the Church as containing God's revelation of Himself; 13 the
Church was to expound it; 14 false interpretations of it only served
to beget heresies. 15 Still the Bible was not necessary. It was
necessitated by sin, he says; 10 its real object is to feed our faith,
our hope, our charity ; 17 " A man who is built up upon faith, hope,
and charity, and who holds firmly to these, needs not the Scriptures
save to instruct others." 18 The Scriptures are lamps lit in the world
for our guidance to the next world, 19 but " lamps will not be neces-
sary when that Last Day comes. Then the Prophets will not be
read to us, we shall not open the Apostle, we shall need no testimony
10 De Civ. Dei. XVIII., xliii. ; Ep. LXXIII., v. ; Augustine had read St. Jerome's
Liber Quccstionum Hebraicarum in Genesim, cf. his Qw XXVI. in Genesim, cp.
the notes in Vallarsi's edition of the Opera S. Hier. (Migne, II., col. 1007). So, too,
Retract. II., xxxii., St. Augustine remarks that his own notes on the Ep. of St. James
are poor, because when he wrote them he had not a good translation from the Greek.
u Ep. LXXXIII., v.
"Enarr. II. in Ps. XC., Sermon II., i. ; Enarr. in Ps. CXLIX., v. ; Enarr. in Ps.
CXLIV., xvii. ; Confess. VII., xx. ; XIII., xxix. ; Contra Adversarium Legis, II.,
xiii.
13 Ep. XCIIL, xxviii. " None of us seek the Church in our own righteousness,
but in the Divine Scriptures : and, in accordance with the Promise, she is easily
seen ;" again, Ep. CV., xiv., " In the Scriptures we learn of Christ ; in the Scriptures
we learn of His Church. We all have these Scriptures in our hands ; why, then,
do we not all alike hold to the Christ and the Church which are set forth in them? "
Cp. Ep. CXXIX., ii., and see De Unitate Ecclesice, XLVIII., " What I want is the
Church itself. Where is that Church which, by hearing the words of Christ and
doing them, builds upon a rock?"
""The Church is our Mother, and her breasts are the Two Testaments of the
Divine Scriptures." Tract, in Ep. Joannis, III., i. ; cp. De Moribus Ecclesia, I., Ixi.,
Ixii ; De Vera Religione, VII., xii. ; and note his beautiful words on love of Holy
Mother Church, De Quarto Feria, IX. All are familiar with His famous declaration :
" I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved
me thereto if you, then, hold by the Gospel, I hold by those at whose preach-
ing I have believed the Gospel." Contra Ep. Manichai, I., vi.
M " For neither are heresies, nor those perverse doctrines which ensnare men's
souls and cast them into the pit, begotten save when the good Scriptures are under-
stood amiss, or when what is not well understood in them is boldly and rashly
asserted." Tract. XVIII., i., in Joannem. And again : " There is no Scripture which
cannot be easily distorted by those who do not understand it. Wherefore Divine
Providence permits many heretics, professing divers errors, to arise ; that so,
when they spring upon us questions which we cannot answer, we may be induced
to shake off our sloth and wish that we knew the Divine Scriptures." De Genesi
Contra Manichaos, I., ii. u De Genesi Contra Manichccos, II., v.
"De Trinitate, VIII., vi. ; De Doct. Christ., I., xxxv. ; cp. II., vii. ; Enarr. in Ps.
CXL., i., ii.
18 De Doct. Christ., I., xxxix. "Enarr. in Ps. CXVIII., Sermon XXIIL, i.
1914.] ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE
of John's. Then will all the Scriptures be taken away, lit for us as
they were in the night of this world to serve us as lamps." 20
But since the Scriptures are thus the Church's instrument, com-
mitted to her as the means for instructing mankind, and so bringing
them to eternal life, it behooves God's minister to know them
thoroughly. And first of all he must know what is and what is not
Holy Scripture ; he must, in other words, make sure that he has the
complete Canon of Scripture. Thus in his treatise De Doctrina
Christiana, which is little else than a manual of Scripture study,
St. Augustine is careful to give the entire canon of Scripture. 21 He
prefaces his list with the warning: " He, then, will be a careful stu-
dent of the Divine Scriptures who shall have first of all read them
in their entirety and obtained a knowledge of them all, at least
by reading them, if not as yet by understanding them. I refer, of
course, to those only which are canonical. For the other Books
will be more securely read by a person who is already instructed in
the faith As regards, however, the canonical Scriptures, let
a man follow the authority of the many Catholic churches, among
which are rightly reckoned those which merited to be Apostolic
Sees, and to be the recipients of the Epistles. A student, then, will
observe this rule touching the Scriptures which are canonical,
namely, that he prefers those which are received by all the Catholic
churches to those which some of these latter do not receive. And as
concerns those Books which are not received by all the churches,
he will prefer those which are received by the greater number, and
by the more important of the churches, to those which are received
by the fewer and less important churches. 22 The canon he pro-
ceeds to give is identical with that laid down in the Council held at
Carthage in 419, at which St. Augustine was present, 23 and also
with the Florentine and Tridentine Canon. How often this ques-
tion touching the true contents of the canon came up for discussion
in those days may be gathered from the fact that the same canon
was laid down in the Council of Hippo in 398, also in that of Car-
thage, 397. So, too, at the close of the year 401, St. Augustine
had occasion to write to Ouintianus : " Do not cause scandal in the
church by reading to your people Scriptures which the ecclesiastical
canons do not admit ; for it is by means of such books that heretics
''Tract, in Joannem, XXXV., ix. *De Doct. Christ., II., viii., 12, 13.
"De Doct. Christ., II., viii., 12.
"Mansi, Concilia, III., col. 827. The treatise De Doct. Christ, was commenced
in the year 397, but only finished in 426, four years before the Saint's death. Cf.
JRetractationes II., iv.
590 ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Aug.,
and particularly the Manichaeans are wont to disturb inex-
perienced minds .... You fail to remember that the Council decided
which were the canonical Scriptures to be read to God's people.
Read again, then, the Acts of the Council, and commit to memory
what you there read." 24
Moreover, a student must know the languages of Scripture. 25
His own deficiency in this respect was a perpetual source of grief
to St. Augustine, and he was often sorely perplexed by the divergent
testimonies of the versions. Unfortunately he held that the Sep-
tuagint version was inspired; 26 and its disagreement with the
Hebrew, as witnessed to by St. Jerome's translations, was a further
source of perplexity to him. 27 The Latin text, too, was a maze of
contradictions. 28 Hence the anxiety he expresses in the De Doc-
trina Christiana, 29 that students should get a first-hand acquaintance
with Biblical languages.
But the great principle with St. Augustine was that of the
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. They are written by God's
pen : " I seized with eagerness the venerable pen of Thy Spirit,
and especially the Apostle Paul " 30 By the Scriptures God
speaks to us : " O Man ! what My Scripture saith, I say ! " 31 " The
Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, first of all by
His Prophets, then by Himself, afterwards by His Apostles, spoke
as much as seemed good to Him, and also fashioned the Scriptures
which are termed canonical, and which are of the highest authority.
In them we put our faith touching those things of which we cannot
afford to be ignorant, and yet which we are not of ourselves suf-
ficient to learn." 32 Once more : " Letters have come to us from
our Fatherland : we will read them to you ," and he proceeds
to quote various passages from Holy Writ. 33 Or again : " We
could have believed when He simply spoke. But He did not desire
to be believed at His mere word; He wished His Scriptures to be
held to ; much as though you were to say to a man when you prom-
ised him something : Do not believe my word, I will write it to you.
For since generations come and generations go, and the centuries
pass while we mortal men give place to and succeed one another,
"Ep. LXIV., iii. K De Doct. Christ., II., xiv.-xvi.
"De Civ. Dei, XV., iii. Cp. XV., xi. ; XVIII., xlii., xliii. This view led St.
Augustine into the most curious exegesis ; see especially the last passage referred
to from the De Civ. Dei. See also Quccstiones in Josue, VL, xix. ; also Quastiones
in Genesim, I., clxix.
"Ep. LXXI., vi., ad Hier.; also Ep. LXXXII., xxxiv., *xxv., ad Hier.
"Ibid. "II., xi. xvi. M Conf. VII., xxi., 27. "Ibid. XIII., xxix., 44.
"De Civ. Dei, XL, iii. "Enarr. in PS, CXI-IX., v.
1914-] ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 591
God's writings had to remain ; it was, as it were, God's handwriting
which all who pass by might read." 34 And since inspired nay
penned by God Scripture cannot err. " I have learned," he
writes to St. Jerome, in words which are now classical : " to treat
only those Books of Scripture which are termed canonical, with such
awe and respect as most firmly to believe that none of the authors
of these Books have committed any error in writing. And if I
stumble upon anything in their writings which appears opposed to
the truth, I hesitate not to say that either my copy is defective, or
that the translator has not understood what was said, or that I
myself have altogether failed to grasp it. But other books I so read
that no matter what the holiness or learning of their authors
I do not believe what they say, simply because those authors so
thought, but only in so far as they are able to convince me either
through the above-mentioned Canonical Books or by valid reason-
ing that what they say is not alien from the truth." 35 And on
another occasion he writes to St. Jerome: "If we once admit in
high-placed authorities any officious lie, there will remain no single
thing in these Books which according as to one person it seems
hard to practise, to another difficult to believe may not, according
to the same pernicious rule, be referred to the officious intention of
the author who intends to deceive us." 36 His reason for demand-
ing such absolute veracity from the Sacred Authors is that " the
Spirit Who was in the writer so judged." 37 Again, when
preaching to his people on the apparent discrepancies of the nar-
ratives of the Resurrection, he says : " Such is the authority of the
Holy Gospels that, since it was One Spirit that spoke in them,
that must be true which each one said." 38 Yet with all this Augus-
tine holds no mechanical view of inspiration : " I dare to say it,
brethren, perhaps not even John himself told us things as they
were, but as he was able to tell them. For it is a man who is
speaking of God ; an inspired man indeed, but still a man. Because
he was inspired, he said somewhat; had he not been inspired, he
would have said naught. But because he was an inspired man lie
told us not all that was to be told, though he told us what a man
could." 39 A little further on he puts his finger on what the later
scholastics were to point to as the very essence of inspiration:
" When we lift up our eyes to the Scriptures, let us since these
"Enarr. in Ps. CXLIV., xvii.
Ep. LXXXII., iii., and note especially Contra Faustnm, XI., v.
"/. XXVIII., iii. "De Genesi ad Litteram, V., viii.
"Sermon CCXXXV., i. " Tract, in Joannem, I., i.
592 ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Aug.,
Scriptures were delivered to us through the ministry of men lift
///> our eyes to the mountains whence Iielp shall conic to us. Since
they were men who wrote the Scriptures, they were, therefore, not
light of themselves; but He was the True Light that cnlightcnclh
every man that coinetli into this world." 40
Principles like these gave him great breadth of view. Thus
when St. John says, 41 " they had rowed therefore about twenty-five
or thirty furlongs," St. Augustine remarks : " We must not pass
over this number of furlongs. Not for nothing did he say : 'When
they had rowed twenty-five or thirty furlongs, then Jesus came to
them/ Twenty- five would have done, thirty would have done, more
especially since his words are those of one who estimates, not of
one who affirms." 42
From all this follows that irrefragable authority of Holy
Scripture, on which he is never weary of insisting. 43 But at the
same time it is an authority which depends on that of the Church.
Thus he says to Faustus the Manichsean : " The excellence of the
Books of the Old and New Testaments which are of canonical
authority, is quite different from that of the works of later writers;
for from the time of the Apostles it has been confirmed by the suc-
cession of bishops and by the churches which have sprung from
the Apostles, thus these Books are placed, as it were, on a throne on
high, for the use of every faithful and pious mind." 44
The difficulties of the Bible compelled him to formulate certain
rules for his own guidance. These rules are to be found in the
treatise De Doctrina Christiana. And since he added the Fourth
Book, and also chapters twenty-five to thirty-seven of the Third
Book, in 426, 45 these rules are of the greater value, in that they
represent his mature mind on the subject. Of this work he says :
" The first three Books help us to understand Holy Scripture; the
Fourth Book tells us how we are to set forth what we have learned
from it." 46 It would take us beyond our allotted space were we to
attempt to give here all the rules laid down by the Saint in his
various writings. But briefly we may say that his first rule was
that we must believe what the Bible says. Thus in preaching on
The Trial of Abraham he says : " The first thing is to believe that
what you read so happened, lest, by removing the historical founda-
tion, you be trying to build in the air." 47 Again, preaching on the
40 Ibid. I., vi. "John \i. 19. * Tract, in Joanncm, XXV., vi.
"Confess. VI., v., 8; XII., xxvi., 36; XIII., xv., 16.
"Contra Faustttm, XL, v. "'Retract. II., iv., i.
40 Ibid. "Sermon II., vii.
I9I4-] ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 593
words: "He came to it (the fig-tree) and found nothing on it,"**
he says : " What the Evangelist wrote, let us say ; and when we
have said it, let us understand it. But that we may understand it,
let us first believe. 'For unless ye believe ye shall not understand,'
as the Prophet says." 49 And his second principle is : to make sure
that we have the true text. Thus in addition to the two Epistles
to St. Jerome already referred to, 50 where he speaks so strongly on
the subject of textual discrepancies, note how he regards the text
of Scripture as sacrosanct : " In the Greek copies we read right
cheek, 51 and greater trust is to be reposed in these copies. BUT
many Latin copies have cheek only, and omit the word right.'' 52
And again : " If the word good is wanting in the Greek copies
( from the phrase 'all good things therefore, whatsoever yon would
that men should do to you,' where St. Augustine's Latin translations
had the word good inserted), 53 they must be corrected. But who
would dare do this ? " 54
And the third principle is : the multiplicity of meanings which
rightly belong to many passages of Holy Scripture : " From one and
the same passage of Scripture, not one but two or more meanings
can be deduced even though we perceive not what he meant who
penned it; and there is no danger in this, provided such interpre-
tations can be shown to harmonize with the truth set forth in other
passages of Holy Writ." 55 He endeavored to classify these various
meanings by dividing them into four groups : " The whole of the
Scripture which is termed the Old Testament is delivered
in a fourfold manner, viz., according to history, aetiology, analogy,
and allegory. Deride me not because I make use of Greek terms !
'According to history,' then, is Scripture delivered to us
when we are taught what is written or what was done; also what
was not done but is only written as though it were done. 'Accord-
ing to aetiology,' when we are shown for what cause a thing is said
or done. 'According to analogy,' when we are shown that the two
Testaments, the Old and the New, are not opposed to each other.
And 'according to allegory,' when we are taught that what is written
is not to be taken according to the letter, but to be understood figur-
48 Matt. xxi. 19.
^Is. vii. 9, according to the LXX. text; St. Augustine is very fond of this text,
e. g., Tract. XV., and XIX., xv., in Joanncm.
Epp. XXVIII. and LXXXII.
"Matt. v. 39. a De Sermone Domini in Monte, I., xix., 58.
M Matt. vii. 12. **De Sermone Domini in Monte, II., xxii., 74.
"De Doct. Christ., III., xxvii., 38.
VOL. XCix. 38
594 ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Aug.,
atively." 56 He proceeds to show that " our Lord Jesus Christ and
His Apostles made use of all these methods." 57
Another great principle was the unity of Holy Scripture ; thus
he says : " One and the same Scripture, then and one and the same
Commandment, too when repressing slaves who yearn for the good
things of earth, is called the Old Testament; when it raises on high
the minds of men who are burning with desire of the good things of
eternity, is called the New Testament." 58 And the reason ever
insisted on in proof of this oneness of the two Testaments is:
" Read all the Books of the Prophets, and if you fail to understand
Christ therein, what could you find more insipid or foolish? But
if throughout their pages you understand Christ, then not only does
what you read appeal to your taste, it inebriates you ! " 59 And
a little further on : " From the Lord indeed comes the Scripture,
but it has no savor save you understand Christ therein ! " 60
St. Augustine's main principles in the interpretation of Scrip-
ture may be found summarized in the Seven Rules of Tychonius, a
Donatist. These rules are given and analyzed in the treatise De
Doctrina Christiana, III., xxii.-xxxvii. The first is : Of Christ
and His Body, namely, that Christ and His Church form one Per-
son. The second: Of Christ and His divided Body, namely, that
good and bad are to be found in the Church. The third: Of the
Promises and the Law, or, as St. Augustine points out, more cor-
rectly : Of the Spirit and the Letter. How completely destructive
of the principles of the Donatists themselves these rules are, is
sarcastically remarked by St. Augustine. 61 The fourth : Of
Species and Genus, or Of the Part and the Whole; by this rule is
meant that in Scripture many things are said of an individual, a
person, a town, a country, etc., 62 which can only rightly be under-
stood of a much wider whole, e. g., things are said of Solomon
which are rightly to be understood of Christ or His Church. The
fifth: Of the Times, viz., of the mystic numbers occurring in
Scripture; thus the Transfiguration is referred to by St. Luke
eight days after the preceding event, 63 whereas St. Matthew and
St. Mark assign it to the sixth day after the preceding event. 64
Under this rule will fall the mystic numbers, three, seven, ten,
"De Utilitate Credendi, V. "Ibid., VI.
K Expos\tio Epistola ad Galatas, No. LVIII. "Tract. IX., Hi., in Joannem.
"Tract. IX., v., in Joannem, and see especially Contra Fans turn, XXII., xciv. ;
Enarr. in Ps. CXLIII., ii., and De Moribus Ecclesia, XVI., xxvi.
61 De Doct. Christ., III., xlii. "Sermon LXXI., x.
"Luke ix. 28. "Matt. xvii. i; Mark ix. i.
1914-] ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 595
twelve, etc., which are so frequently used in the Sacred Narrative.
The sixth rule is entitled Recapitulations, under which heading are
embraced those places where the chronological order of events is
disregarded, apparently of set purpose, or where the past is used for
the future, as in the Prophets. 65 The seventh: Of the Devil and
his Body, i. e., of the kingdom of evil as presented in Holy Scripture.
These rules are amplified by St. Augustine. He is never
weary, for instance, of insisting on the principle that many things
in Scripture have to be taken in an allegorical sense; 66 that things
are figuratively expressed, 67 and above all, that Revelation is set
forth in progressive fashion in the pages of the Bible. " If all
novelty were profane," he says, " it would not have been the Lord
Who said : 'A new commandment I give you ;' nor would the
Testament have been termed the New Testament; nor would we
sing throughout the world the New Song ! " 68
Yet with all his study of the Bible St. Augustine ever felt that
he but " skimmed the surface " of the Scriptures. Thus he writes
in 408 or 409 to Paulinus and Therasia : " After all, we do not
touch upon these Divine Words ; we do not treat of them ! " 6D The
very difficulties of the Bible fascinated him. " Heresies come and
go," he writes to Volusianus about the year 412, "they pass like
the empires of old; but as for Christ and His Scriptures: What
mind that yearns for eternity and that feels the shortness of this
present life, can contend against the light, against the overwhelming
evidence (culmen) of this Divine Authority?" 70 And a little
further on : " But Holy Scripture, while accessible to everybody,
can only be penetrated by exceeding few. What it clearly contains,
that it says to us; it talks with us like a familiar friend, and it
speaks without disguise to the heart whether of the learned or the
unlearned. And even those things which it hides under the veil of
mystery, it does not set them forth in lofty eloquence, so that the
slow and unskilled mind dare not approach like a poor man fearing
to come nigh to a rich man but, in simple speech, it invites all
alike; and when they come Holy Scripture not only feeds them
with her manifest teachings, but even exercises them with her
hidden truths, for she is true, alike in what is clear as in what is
hidden." 71
* Sermon XXII., ii. ; XXVII., v.
"Sermon XXXIII., vi. ; De Vera Rcligione, L., xcix. ; Sermon LXXIIT.. ii.
n De Civ. Dei. XVI., ii., 3; Contra Fatistum, XXII., xciv.
/ tact. XCVII., iv., in Joaiiiicm. */>. XCV., iv.
"/'. CXXXV1L, xsi. "/. CXXXVJI., xviii.
596 ST. AUGUSTINE AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Aug.,
In his early days as a priest Augustine had, as we have seen,
begged of his bishop a little time in which to study Holy Scripture.
The years of anxious toil slipped away one by one, and still he
pored over the Sacred Page. Not long after his consecration, the
bishops assembled at the two Councils of Numidia and Carthage
desired him to devote himself to Biblical study. 72 He had, there-
fore, bargained with his flock that they should leave him free from
temporal cares for five days in the week, but the compact had not
been observed. 73
In 426 he reminded his people of this when endeavoring to
persuade them to accept his nomination of a coadjutor. " Let me
now at length," he said to them, " if God shall grant me a little
longer time of life, devote that little space, not to sloth nor idleness,
but to His Holy Scriptures, wherein, as far as He allows and gives
me strength, I may exercise myself." 74
And so the long life of study, of preaching, teaching, and
writing drew to a close. Truly a man of the Bible ! The Bible is
God's revelation to man : we must then study it. But it is replete
with difficulties: we must then have a guide. And that divinely-
instituted guide is Holy Church. If we close our eyes to those
two principles we can never understand St. Augustine's passionate
love of Holy Scripture, neither can we enter into the spirit in which
he interpreted it.
n Ep. CCXIIL, v. "Ibid.
Ep. CCXIII., vi. See also Mansi, Concilia, IV., col. 540.
THE PLACE OF FEAR.
BY VINCENT MCNABB, O.P.
WISE man has set it down as his philosophy of life
that the beginning of wisdom is a noble fear the
fear of God. It is even more undeniable that only on
a foundation of fear can certain heights of heroism
be raised. The true hero, like the true saint, is not a
man who lacks fear, but who conquers it. Even his heroism, like
all his achievements in life, is a conquest; and that most difficult
of all over himself. Yet his victory does not destroy, but bridles
fear, which remains forever within him a fierce steed champing
the bit.
Some natures are almost incapable of fear. They face death
without the quivering of a lip, or the loosening of a limb. Where
others cower and shrink, they stand and almost exult. On the
battlefield they never hesitate, but take their place in the deadliest
spot as unconcernedly as they would lead their partner in a dance.
On land or sea where there is need of some desperate undertaking,
they are amongst the few who are at once ready to take their life
gaily in their hands.
Yet their fearlessness, if not a fault, is almost a failing. It
is based not on any conquered fear, but on something like a missing
sense. Theirs is the fearlessness of little witless children, who,
whilst the storm rages, will play and frolic in the alleyways of a
ship, when the men of the sea are doubly lashed to their post of duty
by hemp and fear. These fearless ones know not what it is for fear
to beat down the gates of the heart, and freeze every pulse of blood
within the veins. They have never borne in their very bodies,
and in spite of their will, a fear which is as real as the pains of a
bruise or the heats of a fever.
Others have had their whole life colored with dread. Every
day at its dawning has been an offered, and timidly accepted, battle
with death's nearest kinsman, fear. Every day at its close has
had to record a battle lost or a battle won. Yet if at the day's
close a Te Dcum is sung, it is with a lowly eye upon the undecided
battle of to-morrow; and if no Te Deum but a dirge closes the
59$ THE PLACE OF FEAR [Aug.,
day's defeat, the tears of sorrow are dried by the thought that the
victory of to-morrow may wipe away to-day's.
Life with its unceasing struggle with principalities and powers,
and its fateful ethical battles, would be almost unbearable were
it not for the lesser victories of the soul. Ethics are the substance
of life; and etiquette, the lesser ethics, its sweetness. Yet it some-
times happens that some souls to whom the ethical life is a pitched
campaign, have little room for the lesser sweetening victories of
etiquette. A battlefield is not the most favorable spot for life's
amenities.
In the same way it sometimes happens that life's lesser victories
are ungained by the great souls to whom the substance of life is a
long, stubborn campaign against themselves. These men are heroes
to those who know all, and cowards to those who know but a part.
But when the soul, in whom fear is native and unsleeping, accepts the
lesser challenges of life, the victories won give them a sweetness
which is victory's most engaging quality. These men are the flower
of heroes the knights not only sans peur, but sans reproche; who
to the splendid heroism of the battlefield have added the sober
heroism of the home and the city gates.
It has been said that as all philosophy is the philosophy of
death, so is all fear the fear of death. But it has been better said
that all fear should be the fear of sin. For this reason it happens
that those often fear death least whose sins should make them
fear it most; and those fear it most whose sinlessness of life
should rob death of its sting. David wrote a psalm whose essence
is the phrase, " My sin is ever against me." The whole psalm
might appear to some of us as a singularly craven production ; the
work of a wretched god-worshipper, whose chief emotion was fear.
Had we no historical account of its writer, internal criticism
might suppose him to be a miserable fanatic devoid of manliness.
Yet the writer was the Shepherd King David, his country's liberator,
and one of the most warlike and engaging characters of history.
There were very few forces in the world able to cast fear into this
warrior heart. Yet he feared God, nobly as a warrior should, with
a fear begotten of love.
It is part of the necessary psychology of nations to understand
their songs, and still more their psalms and prayers. The careless
thinker might easily suppose that the solemn minors of a people's
poetry and liturgy betokened a sorrowful and gloomy national
characteristic. Almost every national treasury of song is the con-
1914.] THE PLACE OF FEAR 599
tradiction of this inexpert psychology. One striking example is
the literature of the thirteenth century, which has given us the
Dies Inc. Another hymn or song of the century is the Salve
Regina. What will internal criticism judge when confronted with
such tenderness shot with terror, as is found in the stanza ?
To Thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve;
To Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this
valley of tears.
Yet it is not commonly remembered that this strange blend of
sweetness and fear was often a war song; and a war song of
the men who went with Richard the Lion-Hearted and St. Louis
into the mysterious East against the victorious Mohammedans. It
was the song not of cowards but of heroes. Richard the Lion-
Hearted bewailing his sins that had prevented him from walking the
streets of the Holy City, is a noble type of manhood, which the mere
name of the hero should prevent us from associating with cowardice.
The beginning of all heroism is then a noble fear of sin. The
other fears with which mankind is full, can be curbed and even
driven out by this master fear. Hardly any follower of Christ has
written so much on fear as has St. Peter, whose weakness was to
have been overbold. Most of the philosophy of his fall and resur-
rection is summed up in his consummate phrase, " Be not afraid
of their fear, and be not troubled." He would have us remember
that just as a man may believe in faith and love his love, so may he
be afraid of fear. He even suggests that the most perilous of all
fears is thus to be afraid wrongly of being afraid. " Non timeo
timere " " I do not fear to fear " might almost be the motto
of the new Peter.
No man can choose not to fear. He can choose only between
two fears a fear which is the way of death, and a fear which is a
hero's gateway through a thousand deaths unto life.
FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC.
BY JOSEPH L. O'BRIEN, M.A.
|N 1893, a modest, little volume, bearing the title Poems,
by Francis Thompson, was placed upon the book
marts of London. There was little in its coming to
attract attention. The author was unknown, the
edition small, and despite favorable notices in the
leading reviews, the book met with very little success. However,
it did produce somewhat of a sensation in the critical world, and won
many warm admirers among the arbiters of literary taste. The far-
sighted began to speak of a new poet of great power and promise.
In 1895, Thompson's Sister Songs was published, and in 1897,
New Poems. Like his first publication, neither of these books was
well received by the book-buying world, but again the critics felt
constrained to analyze, sift, extol, and damn the genius of the poet.
For something in his poetry grasped them, and whether they liked
it or not (and there were many who did not), they were not able
to lay it aside after a cursory reading with commonplace words
of praise or blame.
Twenty years after the publication of that first volume of
Poems, a definite edition 1 of Thompson's work was put forth, but
Thompson was no longer the unknown. Gradually he came to his
own, and now occupies the place in English literature which his
earliest friends felt would one day be his. Time proved the keen-
ness of their insight, and rewarded their confidence. For to-day
Thompson is the one poet of his period who is placed, unreservedly,
in company with the masters of English poetry.
I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper.
In these lines Thompson proclaims the future success of his
1 The Works of Francis Thompson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
1914-] FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC 601
poetry a prophecy which, even now, has been completely fulfilled.
For the world is only too anxious to glean from the works of its
great poets the world which ofttimes seems to have no time nor
place for poets themselves. And Thompson was a great poet. In
his legacy to posterity, every element which goes to make up great
poetry is found in abundance. And so the world gleans and is
glad.
In Thompson's poetry we have the luxury of musical verse
and the glory of bright imagery. His poems are masterpieces of
verbal harmony. His ear was ever attuned to the word which
would best preserve the vigor of his thought, and at the same time
express it most felicitously. He had the instinct of a philologist
for the exact meaning of words. Under his pen obsolete words
take on a new life, new words are hit off, red-hot, on the anvil of
his inspiration, and common words are clothed with a new and
charming beauty. At times his verses rush on with breathless
speed, sacrificing lesser melodies, ultimately to gain a superb har-
mony. Now they vibrate like the blast of many golden-mouthed
trumpets; now they peal like a mighty organ; now they throb like
a harp; now they wail like a violin. At times they gain a sym-
phony effect and give an amazing exhibition of the power of mere
words, which have come down
Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers.
As an example, we offer the opening lines of The Hound of
Heaven.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days ;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years ;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped ;
And shot, precipitated,
Aclovvn Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet
" All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
602 FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC [Aug.,
His figurative language is apt, brilliant and daring. Nothing
is too great to withstand the all-embracing power of his imagination.
The angels a-play on its fields of Summer (their wild wings rustled
his guides' cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, as they pelted each other
with handfuls of stars.
Nothing is too small to escape the penetrating vision of his eye.
He is equally at home with the sun and the moon and the stars;
he plays with the earth and twines her tresses about him; he
laughs in the eyes of morning, and laments with death-stricken
day. He bathes in the colors of the sunset, and clangs the cymbals
of the fiery Occident. He treads on the hem of the sweeping gar-
ments of night, and weaves the fabric of his dreams of the silver
beams of the moon. He revels in the perfumes and tints of the
flowers, and wins their secrets with a loving familiarity. Then he
forsakes the visible world, and delves into the intricate, inner nature
of man. He lays bare the soul, reaching out toward the Infinite,
and voices the secret aspirations which well up in the heart of
every man.
Plato says that " words form the body of a composition, and
thought forms the soul." And so, if there was nothing more to
Thompson's poetry than the music of words and the wizardy
of figure, while it would still boast of some beauty, it would be the
beauty of a corpse a cold, lifeless thing. As the soul of man is
the animating principle, so it is the soul of poetry thought which
makes it a living thing. Thus, the nobler and more sublime the
thought expressed, the nobler and more sublime will be the poem.
Thompson's thought, at all times, is preeminently Catholic. In
an age whose dominant note is a sort of a mystic-materialism,
Thompson's poems float across the mind of the Christian reader like
a refreshing breeze laden with the perfume of newly-mown fields.
His Muse is under the saving influence of revealed religion, and
she glories in her heritage. Built upon the solid-rock foundations
of Christian truth, his poems rise to stately proportions; rich in the
trappings of consummate art. In his own magnificent appreciation
of the unfortunate Shelley, Thompson laments that " during the
last two centuries the Church has relinquished to aliens the chief
glories of poetry." But later on he tells us " that there is a change
of late years: the wanderer is being called back to her father's
house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have the
I9M-] FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC 603
proffered welcome more unstinted." How much Thompson con-
tributed by the mastery of his poems to reclaim the exile, the future
alone can tell. But this the present does know and proclaim :
the religious tone of his poetry is its crowning glory. When treating
of religious subjects he soars to the highest points of his inspiration.
The woof and web of his greatest poems is woven of a spiritual
fabric. In him we have the distinctive marks of the truly great
poets and we have one mark which is missing in many of them
an open, fearless and confident profession of the greatness and
glory of God.
Thompson is essentially a contemplative and subjective poet.
And this is the root of the so-called obscurity of much of his poetry.
His was a constant struggle to express the Infinite. He was occu-
pied with the soul of things.
How praise the woman, who but know her spirit.
One may master his Latinisms, his archaisms, and his inversions,
one may analyze his poetry as much as one pleases, yet they will
remain sealed books, unless one is ready to follow the poet into the
inner castle of the soul to withdraw for a time from this world
of men and things. Thompson existed in this world of ours but
he lived in another with his mistress, poetry. For her sake he was
content to be judged a fool as the world judges. For her sake
he went down into the valley of renunciation as willingly as St.
Francis of Assisi went down for his mistress, divine poverty, or
Blessed Henry Suso for his, divine wisdom. As a man, Thompson
was a failure. But out of his failure as a man was born his suc-
cess as a poet. For poetry he sacrificed all, home and friends,
and even the good opinion of the world. Submerged, an outcast
of the London underworld, penniless, homeless, a derelict on the
ocean of life, his soul dwelt with his mistress in the land of Luthany,
in the palaces of immortal song, and in his heart of hearts he was
cheered by echoes of celestial music. Poetry weaned him from
the world, only to bring him nearer to God. He saw " through the
lamp, Beauty, the Light, God."
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry ; and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
604 FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC [Aug.,
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems ;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
From poetry he learned the lesson of true Christian mysticism
to pass, ab exterioribns ad interior a, ab interioribus ad superior a,
from the world to the soul, from the soul to God.
" By this, O Singer, know we if thou see.
When men shall say to thee : Lo ! Christ is here,
When men shall say to thee : Lo ! Christ is there,
Believe them: yea, and this then art thou seer,
When all thy crying clear
Is but : Lo here ! lo there ! ah me, lo everywhere ! "
Thompson looked upon his vocation as a poet as a sacred
calling, a sort of anointed priesthood working for the honor and
glory of God. " To be the poet of the return to nature is some-
what," he writes, "but I would be the poet of the return to God."
He rose from nature up to nature's God.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
* * * *
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth ;
although he had sought rest on nature's bosom and thought for a
time, he had found it.
" Come then, ye other children, Nature's share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done :
/ in their delicate fellowship was one
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies,
1914.] FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC 605
but he soon learned
All things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
In such lines from The Hound of Heaven, and in many others
scattered throughout his poems, Thompson is indeed the " poet of
the return to God." Like another Isaias he thunders out his mes-
sage to the modern world, and if the world will not listen to priests,
it may perchance listen to a poet, and pause long enough to realize
the existence of God.
Out of Thompson's mysticism springs his delicate sense of the
harmony of creation. United with the Absolute, he perceives,
under the thousands of different forms which go to make up nature,
God, the Guiding Principle of all.
All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.
Or again
That I do think my tread,
Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-grass,
Flickers the unwithering stars.
When he writes
From sky to sod,
The world's unfolded blossom smells of God,
he was reaching out to that height of illumination won by St.
Francis of Assisi or St. Teresa, when they spoke most intimately
of things divine.
Thompson's friend and admirer, the poet Coventry Patmore,
said of him, " He is of all men I have known the most naturally
Catholic." The truth of this tribute is easily proven from Thomp-
son's poems poems saturated with the spirit of Catholicism. The
nearer Thompson drew to his Father, God, the more he reflects
the grandeur of his Mother, the Church. The mysteries of the
Catholic religion are the inexhaustible source from which he drew
606 FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC [Aug.,
his most fiery inspiration, and the Church's liturgy is the store-
house from which he drew many of his most telling figures.
Resurrection, the corner-stone of the Catholic faith, is the
constant recurring theme throughout his poems. Man's journey on
earth is not a passage from life to death, but rather a passage from
death to life.
Hark to the Jubilate of the bird
For them that found the dying way to life !
The cycles of the year prove to the poet, not the death of things,
but the re-birth. Spring with its promise of future harvest, or
autumn with its threat of sterility and death, are, for him, only
symbols of a life which knows no death.
For all the past, read true, is prophecy,
And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, .
And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring.
* * * * *
All dies, and all is born ;
But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.
This same thought is more fully developed in the lines:
death hath in itself the germ of birth.
It is the falling acorn buds the tree,
The falling rain that bears the greenery,
The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.
For there is nothing lives but something dies,
And there is nothing dies but something lives.
Till skies be fugitives,
Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,
Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth ;
For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.
The morning sun in the glory of its splendor, climbing to the
zenith of its power, is to Thompson a symbol of God, the Creator,
nurse at once and sire !
Thou genitor that all things nourishest!
The earth was suckled at thy shining breast,
and in the evening, as it fades away and leaves the world to dark-
ness, it becomes a symbol of the God-man, dying on Calvary.
1914.] FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC 607
Thou dost image, thou dost follow
That King-Maker of Creation,
Who, ere Hellas hailed Apollo,
Gave thee, angel-god, thy station ;
Thou art of Him a type memorial.
Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood
Upon thy Western rood ;
And His stained brow did vail like thine to night,
Yet lift once more Its light.
And, risen, again departed from our ball,
But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.
In Orient Ode, the course of the sun brings to the poet's mind
the beautiful service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,
and the sun is a symbol of the sacramental Christ, before Whom
the faithful bow down at Exposition. The figure is one of the
grandest ever conceived by any poet, and its execution is one of the
finest pieces of Thompson's work. W^hat fervent Catholic can read
the following lines without an almost overpowering emotion!
Lo, in the sanctuaried East,
Day, a dedicated priest
In all his robes pontifical exprest,
Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,
From out its Orient tabernacle drawn,
Yon orbed sacrament confest
Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn ;
And when the grave procession's ceased,
The earth with due illustrious rite
Blessed, ere the frail fingers featly
Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte,
His sacerdotal stoles unvest
Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast,
The sun in august exposition meetly
Within the flaming monstrance of the West.
O salutaris hostia,
QUCB cccli pandis ostium!
In all of his major poems, Thompson is mystic and symbolist.
Mystic because he sought and found union with the Absolute sym-
bolist because all things became symbols of the things he saw in God.
His limitations and shortcomings are the limitations and shortcom-
ings of language as a means of expression. Words are poor instru-
6o8 FRANCIS THOMPSON, POET AND MYSTIC [Aug.,
ments to express the thoughts and reflections of a soul tuned to the
pitch of the Infinite. For adequate expression a seer, such as
Thompson, would need
That high speech which angels' tongues turn gold.
Thompson will never be a popular poet. He will never attract
those who are too firmly anchored to the things of this world.
Ordinary readers will be content with ordinary poets, of which
there is no dearth. But to those of a finer and gentler spirit who
are tempted to follow the darting of his swallow-like fancy into
the far skies of exalted imagery and supernal thought, Thompson's
poetry will be welcome. And they will lay him aside with a feeling
of great satisfaction and earnest thanksgiving, that our literature
has been enriched by the songs of a poet so Catholic, so inspiring, so
mystically sweet.
The third volume of this complete edition of Thompson's works
is m'ade up of selections from his prose writings. For many years he
was a contributor to London literary magazines, especially the
Academy and the Athen&um, and the selections are, for the most
part, critiques on famous men of letters written for these journals.
Thompson's prose is characteristic, but other than his famous essay
on Shelley, it in no way approaches the artistic level of his poetry.
" Prose " in Thompson's own words, " is clay;" poetry " the white,
molten metal," an opinion which reflects his dissatisfaction with all
prose in general, and with his own prose in particular. By journal-
ism he gained bread, mayhap, but by poetry he won fame. The
closing years of his life appear to have been heavy on his hands,
because the wells of his poetic inspiration were all run dry. Most
of his prose was written because he could no longer write poetry.
Yet Thompson's admirers are glad to have this volume of his prose,
inasmuch as it throws many interesting sidelights on himself. In
writing of other poets he discovers to us hidden chambers of his
own soul. Two pieces of fancy, Moestitia Encomium and Finis
Coronat Opus, strongly reminiscent of Poe, contain some brilliant
passages. Throughout the volume epigrams and paradoxes are
scattered in abundance, which, like glowing lines of his poetry, have
a Thompsonian way of fastening themselves upon the reader. In
a word, Thompson's prose lacks the verility of his poetry. It has a
tendency toward floridness, which may be dazzling, but which
carried too far is dangerous. And Thompson did not altogether
avoid the danger.
THE RED PIPE.
BY " OLIVER."
[ALISTOGA lingered a moment in his ascent to look
back at the lodge, now full of memories to him, when
the sharp sound of hoofs on the gravel came again
familiarly to him, and the glint of red cloth through
the trees. The next moment the girl's horse came in
sight racing wildly, Unanimi swaying dangerously in
her saddle; while behind them lumbered an immense bear, whose
angry woofs he could already hear. The parti-colored trappings
streamed out behind the pony, alarming him still more ; but they also
served, he could see, to delay and annoy the bear, blowing into his face
and once almost winding around his head. The girl held to her seat
most wonderfully, seeing that her saddle girths had been loosened,
and the saddle balanced from side to side.
" Talistoga took in the situation at once. He had never before
seen a bear of such size or color, nor one so devilishly intent on
mischief. On they came, the horse neighing piteously in terror, and
the bear gaining now that the uprise of the hill helped his short fore-
legs. The young man instinctively slid down to a lower level, and
then resting his gun on the bough of a tree, he kept the bear covered
until it should come closer for good shooting. It would not do to
miss, for the girl's life was in great danger.
" She looked wildly from side to side, all the time sending forth
quick cries after the manner of women, and searching the hillside with
her eyes. Suddenly from among the trees there burst forth a jet of
flame and the bark of quick thunder; her horse, put to the utmost
terror by this new danger, bounded wildly in the air, lashing out at
bear and flying saddle cloth, and then with a cry that was almost
human fled into the open lodge. The girl losing her balance rolled
forward to the ground, and lay there motionless.
" Talistoga had waited for the wild procession to reach him be-
fore he fired. Then with careful aim he turned the large muzzle of
his musket full on the broad breast of the bear, and fired. The
fierce animal was in the act of standing upright, in order to sweep
rider and horse to the ground, when he received the charge of slugs
and hand-made leaden bullets full in the breast, where Talistoga
wished them to lodge. It bent its head as if to examine what had
struck it, and then suddenly collapsed headforemost to the ground.
Bear and girl lay not ten feet apart. A convulsive twitch of its great
VOL. xcix. 39
6io THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
forearms, and it lay still, its breast blown wide open so that its heart
was exposed.
" Talistoga, seeing that the bear was dead, ran at once from his
covert to the aid of the girl. She was recovering by this time, and
her eyes rested on him with wonderment between her gasps for breath.
In the interview she had not seen his gun, nor could she have known
its use had she seen it. The sudden release from dreadful danger
was too great for her mind to take in and believe her rescuer human.
The fire and thunder, followed by the fall of the bear, all of which she
had glimpsed as she went over the horse's back, impressed her con-
fused senses with the belief that the young man was a preternatural
being, and so she fainted again. This second weak spell did not last
long, however, and when she opened her eyes, she was able to regard
him with a more constant gaze.
" ' My brother's words were true,' she murmured, flushing as if
she now owed him an apology. ' He is of another country, as I might
have known by his dress ; but his speech is the speech of the Dakotas,
and so his blood must be ours. I fear to look upon him ' and her
eyes blinked ' for he may be the messenger of the Great Spirit sent
to save a wayward girl from death/
" By this time she had managed to reach her knees. Before he
had thought of her intention, she caught his hand and placed it meekly
on her head. ' My mother's daughter accepts the message of our
sacred pipe. Long ago, wl.en first she was commissioned to guard it,
she saw the face of Talistoga in its clouds when she smoked it; and
so she lived in hopes of meeting him one day. She is a chief's daugh-
ter, and many would marry her, but she waited, and now he has come.'
" Talistoga stroked her hair not knowing what better to do
and raised her to her feet. He was about to speak, when the rush of
horses and horsemen interrupted him, and the next moment he was
looking into the faces of many young warriors. Their horses plunged
and shied wildly from the dead bear, but not a man lost his seat or re-
moved his eyes from the girl and her rescuer. They were with one
or two exceptions all young men, and were painted for the warpath.
Knives of flint and awkward hatchets of stone hung at their girdles ;
and shields of leather, quaintly painted, with bows and arrows in
sheafs, joggled from their saddles. He noted that the youngest war-
riors did not carry hatchets, but the more easily used pogamoggans,
or skull-crackers. What riveted Talistoga's attention most, however,
were the scalps which each man proudly carried pendent from his arm.
He could see that they were returning triumphant from some raid
among their enemies; and that, were it not for this unlooked-for in-
terruption, they would now be singing and dancing exultantly around
their war lodge.
" In the middle of this silent survey Unanimi's pony neighed
1914-] THE RED PIPE 611
faintly from the interior. The girl, shaking the dust from her robes
and rubbing her arms where the bruises showed, turned to the ex-
pectant circle of silent horsemen, and related the story of her en-
counter with the bear. She said nothing of the previous meeting
with the young man, or of their smoking the sacred pipe
together, much less of her finding him within the lodge, but adroitly
limited her adventure to the narrowness of her escape, and the won-
derful way in which the stranger already able to speak her tongue
had rescued her from death. She limped as she walked over to her
brother, who was one of the warriors, and rested herself against
his knee.
" Talistoga, marveling how the girl could tell her story so fully
and yet conceal so much of it being rather blunt himself and
straightforward, as he had been taught had then in turn to tell how
he had wandered by accident on their lodge while out scouting in
a strange country, for he himself came from the land of fir trees
many, many sleeps away. He took little pride in the exploit by
which he redeemed his young sister of the Dakotas from death. No
animal could live in the presence of his fire-gun when he wished to
kill. His sister had been badly frightened, and perhaps hurt. Would
someone bring her horse?
" Wonder and astonishment were openly depicted on the counte-
nances of the warriors as they listened to these details. To them the
great bear of the mountains was ever an object of terror, to be at-
tacked only in force and from safe positions ; yet here was this strange
young man who made no boast of killing the fierce animal in its wild-
est rage. Moreover, if the story were true and the dead bear, dis-
embowelled, lay there to prove it he carried with him a wonderful
instrument which threw out fire and killed by its smoke. So they dis-
mounted to a man, and crowded round him to examine the marvel at
closer range. Talistoga held up his gun and showed it to them ; and
they touched and caressed his shining knife and steel hatchet, as arti-
cles with the use of which they were better acquainted. But Una-
nimi, who stood by, noted that the stranger was head and shoulders
above the tallest of her tribe, and she was not displeased thereat.
" In the middle of this examination, while exclamations of won-
der and astonishment were passing from mouth to mouth, a loud cry
from the interior of the lodge turned every head in that direction.
A young warrior came rushing out, bearing in his outspread palms the
sacred pipe, now shivered into fragments. The pony had trampled
and bruised it into the earth ; it was still warm from his feet. Talis-
toga saw that the pipe was broken beyond repair: the bowl and base
were in two pieces, and the feathers were crushed and soiled.
" A painful silence fell upon the group, which but a moment
before had been all life and wonderment; with one accord every eye
612 THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
turned to the girl in sorrow and question. There was something
patient yet ominous in their glances, some danger to Unanimi which
Talistoga could not at once fathom. So he moved closer to her;
and tried to read their faces.
" The warrior bearing the remains of the broken pipe advanced
into the ring, which was now silently made to receive him. Talis-
toga's outfit no longer interested them. The girl retained her self-
possession, although Talistoga could see her tremble and blench.
" ' My sister sees the pipe of our fathers, how it is broken and
desecrated. We know it is not our sister's fault, yet what shall we
say to the Seven Chiefs and the old people when we bring it back to
them in pieces ? ' The speaker was a middle-aged warrior, one of the
few mature men among them ; and he spoke in sorrow, slowly.
" ' I can say nothing but what you already know. If my pony has
brought me death, so let it be. I leave the decision with our chiefs.'
And she bowed her head against the face of her pony who had
sought her out.
" ' The Great Spirit can ask no such sacrifice,' Talistoga ex-
claimed, unable to bear the sight of the girl in grief. ' This daugh-
ter of the Dakotas is innocent. She has already almost given her
life for your pipe. It has had its day, and now it has been destroyed
because the spirits need it no longer. Think you that this young girl
met the bear and came near being killed ; that her horse in his agony
threw her sorely to the ground, and then ignorantly stamped your
holy instrument under foot, having through fear sought safety in
your lodge ; and that I, a stranger, should be on the spot, having come
a thousand miles, to save her; unless the Great Spirit had decreed
its destruction? Moreover, I have slain in her defence the animal
which we Abenaki hold in great reverence because its claw is the
talisman of our tribe. The girl is innocent do these things happen by
chance ? '
" ' My brother speaks well,' the elderly warrior replied, ' but the
question must be decided by our chiefs and old people. The safety of
our tribe is bound up with the safety of the pipe. I fear to speak.'
" * Brothers I go with you to see that no harm befalls the girl.'
" They accepted his offer without further question, and im-
mediate preparations were made for their departure. The offending
pony was again saddled ; the girl collected into her bedraggled saddle
cloth the parts of the sacred pipe, and Talistoga held her trembling
pony while she mounted. In a short while a silent procession of horse-
men, with the girl in their midst, filed down the incline in the direc-
tion of the home encampment. Talistoga alone walked on foot, hold-
ing the bridle rein of the girl's horse. It was a gloomy procession,
for there was not a heedless youth in it who did not realize that a
crisis had come to his tribe through the loss of its sacred talisman.
1914.] THE RED PIPE 613
They were also moved with anxiety for the fate of the girl, and Talis-
toga took it as a favorable sign that they were all willing to champion
her innocence.
" Still the girl herself was downcast ; not so much, he knew,
for her own sake as for the loss of an object so dear to her, and so
closely woven with the history of her family.
" ' It is fate,' she said, as he tried to comfort her. ' It is fate,
and we must bide by it.' *
" ' The Abenaki do not fear fate,' he answered gruffly. ' They
fight.' He stalked stolidly onward by the side of her pony, indifferent
to the reawakening interest of the young men, his companions.
" At any other time, the return of young warriors from their
first war path, covered with blood and bearing the scalps of their
enemies, would have drawn an exultant welcome from the younger
members of the tribe from mothers also and sweethearts but no
such noisy outcry greeted them. The usual herds of horses, each herd
under its own leader, frolicked across their road as they entered the
outskirts of the encampment, and old women could be seen here and
there grinding corn ; but life seemed to have departed, with its bustle
and activities. Talistoga shrewdly guessed that the village had gone to
the waterside to view the wonders of La Salle's ship. And so it
turned out to be. Azoa and his scouts had reached the encampment
while Talistoga was viewing it from the hill, or pleading his case with
Unanimi.
" With noticeable ceremony the cavalcade accompanied the girl
to the door of her father's lodge, and there left her with her brother.
It was somehow made plain to Talistoga that she was a prisoner of
her tribe until the elders should pass on her case.
" He in turn was fain obliged to leave her with her brother. His
parting salute was as ceremonious as any that went before. ' My
sister lives/ he said, and then he quietly added : ' Let her not forget
that the Abenaki go in canoes, and that the run of the water is to-
wards the land of the fir trees.' The girl bent her head, and silently
left him.
" Thenceforth for days there was deep grief within the borders
of the Dakotas. From his camping place on the deck of the ship
Talistoga made daily adventures through the village, with the hope of
meeting Unanimi, but her brother informed him at last that until she
had been pronounced guiltless of all neglect of the sacred pipe, even
her relatives could have but little converse with her.
" La Salle chafed at the delay ; . he wished to begin trading at
once with the Dakotas, but they refused with short words. They
wanted hatchets and knives and firearms like that of the young Aben-
aki, and their women wanted colored stuffs and shining beads, but
their hearts were sad and they could not chaffer.
614 THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
" The Frenchman, when he learned the story, called Talistoga,
and taking him apart said to him, ' My son, they tell me that you
would take to wife the young woman now about to be tried for the
loss of the pipe of the Dakotas. She loves you, and you saved her
life. You did well. If death hover over her from the judgment of
her own people, be the son of a chief, and steal her to safety. Old
Francois returns, soon to the slakes and beaver-dams of the Hurons.
My son and his wife can go with him, and I will add the Abenaki
who do not care to go down the Great River. Be silent.'
" And that day Talistoga helped the old hunter to lute
and make ready his canoe. The young Abenaki who were homesick,
also prepared their canoes, outfitting with provisions and spare
paddles.
" The great council that was called to deliberate over the fate of
the girl, and the future of the tribe, sat in circles on the flat prairie
at the foot of the hill. All the Seven Chiefs of the Dakotas were
present an inmost half-circle and old dames, too feeble to move
quickly, at which both Abenaki and Micmac wondered, for they did
not admit women to their council fires. Yet Unanimi's father, who
was the greatest of the Seven Chiefs, took no part in the trial of his
daughter as was fitting but sat near her where she stood alone
before the judges. He was the war chief of the tribe, and behind him
were banked the best fighters. Report said that they would not
suffer harm to come to the girl. Many of the people were on horse-
back, and their horses ranged in circles outside the rows of sitters.
Young women were there on horseback also, a pretty moving picture
with their yellow tunics and glowing trappings. La Salle looked on
from the space allotted by courtesy to himself and his retinue of
French and Indians ; while Talistoga, being a witness, stood to hand
near the girl's father.
" The remains of the sacred pipe were deposited on a colored
mat between the chiefs and the small fire that blazed so indifferently
in the sunlight. Near the broken instrument as if still charged
with the care of it stood Unanimi, graceful but unsmiling. An aged
chief was spokesman of the judges.
" ' My daughter sees the broken pipe of our fathers,' he began.
' It was in her care how comes it to be in pieces like a dry stick
that has been trod on? '
" ' My father knows the story,' she answered respectfully. ' A
great bear, a frightened horse, a race for life up the hillside, with
the breath of the awful beast on my moccasin, and then his daugh-
ter knew nothing except, as she went down her horse threw her; she
knew that the young man from the gray sea had killed the bear. Her
pony knew no better, being overtaken with fear, and so he fled to the
sacred inclosure. There in his terror and trampling he overset and
I9I4-] THE RED PIPE 615
destroyed the reverend pipe, which Unanimi would have guarded
with her life.'
" A murmur of sympathy surged through the rounds of the list-
eners. After due silence the old chief resumed : ' Was my daughter
on her way to or from the mystic lodge when she met the bear ? ' It
was a simple question, but somehow Talistoga was troubled at it.
" ' She was on her way back from the care of the pipe, when the
bear beset her path, and came near dragging her from her seat.'
" ' Why then did not my daughter race her pony homeward ?
Was not his nose pointed to the prairie? Had she run home this
calamity would not have come upon her people. What does my
daughter say? '
" ' The great beast was on the side of the path ahead of me,' she
replied quickly. ' He held out his great arms at us, and my horse
vaulted backwards at the sight, almost throwing me to the ground.
The bear caught my saddle cloth with his claws, and my saddle
loosened. See this,' and she shook the torn blanket open before them.
" This time she was greeted with a ripple of sympathy that
sounded much like a cheer. The horsemen on the outskirts pushed in
closer.
" ' My daughter speaks well,' the old man said in a kindly voice ;
' she could do no better.'
" He appeared to be satisfied with the girl's defence, and turned
to discuss it with his fellow judges. Then there stood up in an
outer circle a warrior, whom Talistoga from that moment cordially
disliked.
" ' Will the young woman tell us/ he asked, ' how she left the
door of the war lodge in the secret valley. Did the buffalo skin still
cover it? '
" ' I cannot tell Kicking Horse whether the buffalo robe hung
over the door or not when I left. My pony was restless,' Unanimi
truthfully replied. She gave a quick look around at Talistoga, while
she pretended to be turning towards her interrogator.
" Kicking Horse's glance followed hers. ' Did Unanimi meet
the strange young warrior before she left the lodge to return home ? '
he asked with slow meaning.
" Again the girl, without hesitation, answered. ' I have met him
often in my dreams, ever since I was a young girl, and was first al-
lowed to consult the sacred pipe.'
" A wave of interest passed over the assembly, and there was a
rumble of exclamation and comment. The revelations of the sacred
pipe were awesome and truthful. Talistoga wondered at the girl's
ability. She had intelligently prepared the way for himself to tell
what he, in turn, had learned of her from the pipe of his nation.
They would thus openly bid for the approval of their union.
616 THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
" The ancient chief now announced that the judges were satisfied
with the answers of the girl, and would now examine the young bear-
killer from the sea. Unanimi therefore took her seat by her father,
who put his arm on her shoulder, and Talistoga took her place as
witness. A burst of admiration greeted him, and the Micmacs gave
a war cry that frightened the horses.
" ' My young brother comes from the rising sun/ the old man be-
gan, ' and report says that he goes with the white chief to view the
Nimaesi-Sipu, or Great River. Rumor also says that he is of the
same blood as the Dakotas, of those who long ago went down to Shin-
aki, the land of fir trees. We will ask him more about this later;
now we would know what he saw when our daughter, who is very
dear to us, fled from the bear.'
" ' I saw a horse mad with fright race towards me on the path
that led to your tepees,' Talistoga's voice rumbled, ' and on its back
my sister of the Dakotas, shaken backwards and sideways by the
jumping of her saddle ; and at the hip of the flying horse such a bear
as we never see down by the salt water. It was uphill, and the animal
gained on the frightened pony, but the red saddle cloth flouted the bear
in the face and delayed him. Then the gray beast stood up to drag the
girl off her horse, and I killed him. The horse ungratefully kicked
and lashed out with its hind feet, and threw my sister wickedly to the
ground. I thought she was dead.'
" The judges nodded one to another, as if this statement agreed
with the facts.
" ' Can my brother tell whether the door of the lodge was open,
that the horse should enter ? '
" The girl's fate was bound up in his answer. He was not
skilled in equivocations, and then the sooner it was over with the
better. ' The buffalo robe was thrown a,side,' he answered slowly,
while he looked coolly into the faces of the judges. He could hear
Unanimi sigh at his discretion, and he saw Kicking Horse listen
attently. He continued, ' I forgot to draw back the cover when I
came out of the lodge.'
" The words were simple, to cause such an effect as followed
them. The judges jumped to their feet in their annoyance, and num-
bers of the onlookers did likewise. Everywhere there was movement
and protest, as if some unheard of liberty had been taken. The aged
warrior waved his hand for silence ; and Talistoga continued, ' I
found your sacred pipe within, and ' his words were slow ' I
smoked it.'
" The entire assembly rose like a man to their feet, and the horse-
men pressed in still closer. A cry of anger went out, and the Micmacs
unslung their guns. But Unanimi's father shook abroad his arms,
and bade them listen to the young stranger's story. With his warriors
1914-] THE RED PIPE 617
he sat down, and the crowd imitated him. The judges listened with
menacing faces, but Talistoga heeded not their frowns. ' I smoked
your pipe,' he cried in a voice that sounded around and through all the
ranks, ' because it was sister pipe to that of the Abenaki ; and the
eagle's claw on it told me that I had found the land of my forefathers,
that my blood was their blood, and their blood was mine.' A great
silence fell upon the people. ' As a young man of the Lenni-Lenape
on his first adventures, I had a right to smoke your pipe, as any of
your sons has the right to smoke ours,' and he pointed to the group
of the Abenaki.
" But the old judge was not to be diverted. ' Did my young
brother know that it was death for a stranger to enter the mystic
lodge, not to speak of smoking our holy pipe? ' he asked coldly.
" ' In the country of the Abenaki, when young men build their
secret lodges, the stranger and traveler is permitted to enter and re-
fresh himself. As to the pipe, I knew not your laws ; still as descend-
ant of the chief to whom the Sacred Old Women gave one of those
twin instruments of medicine, I was entitled to smoke yours, and in its
smoke behold my future. It is the ancient law of the Lenni-Lenape.
Will my aged father say no ? '
" ' What did the young warior see in the smoke ? ' the old chief
asked, ignoring the question.
" ' He saw the Dakota girl, Unanimi/ he could afford to conceal
the truth where it affected her, and the sight was good for him.'
" The examination ended here. Both the girl and Talistoga, un-
der her leadership, had skillfully avoided revealing their first meeting;
while the coincidences of their visions held the minds of the judges
away from the thought of it. He had established a sort of revealed
right to the maid, and she had confirmed it.
" Still he now lay under the charge of smoking the forbidden pipe
of the Dakotas. He must next prove that he was of their blood and
race.
" The old judge stood up. ' The chiefs will give their decision in
all this matter of the pony and the bear,' he announced, ' when they
have heard the young man prove his claim to the ancient blood of the
Lenni-Lenape. Only this proof can clear him of the sacrilege of des-
ecrating our holy pipe, and through the thoughtless horse of destroy-
ing it. The young man can call his friends who are of his tribe. We
would hear their great chief.'
" Then Azoa and his men entered the circle, and stood in view of
the Dakotas. They carried their guns with them, and their axes and
knives shone in the sun. No badling was among them, but every man
had been chosen for his strength. Behind them came the giant Mic-
macs, who were also of the blood of the mysterious people of the
pipes; they came in fighting trim, for the Micmacs dearly loved a
618 THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
scrimmage, and this discussion affected them only through their care
for Talistoga. Behind them some of the French followed, and stood
in line within the circle.
" ' It is a goodly sight,' the aged warrior began, ' to look upon
such men as our plains cannot produce. The land of firs must be a
rich land and home of great wariors. Will our brothers tell us
what truth there is in the story of their young man? But first we
would see the sacred pipe of the Abenaki.'
" Azoa at once produced the emblem. It carried no feathers on
it sides for such was not our custom but was plain as you see it.
He handed it forward to the old chief. The latter examined it slowly,
particularly the mark of the bear's paw on the bottom, and then
turned it over to the other judges. It passed from hand to hand, and
there was much nodding of heads. Unanimi's father joined the half-
circle, and he, too, examined it. The bowl was compared with that of
their own, since it was still intact. In the end the spokesman returned
it to our chief.
" Then, standing in the open where he had freedom to talk for
Azoa was a great orator he gave the history of the pipe as I have al-
ready related it to you. So strong, he assured them, was the sentiment
at home among his people towards their unknown relatives of the west,
that they did not hesitate to permit the sacred emblem to undergo the
dangers of the present expedition. The words of prophecy had to be
fulfilled, and they entertained the hope that the pipe would fulfill them.
He related their experience aboard of ship, when the spirits ordered
them to be guided by the pipe; the foreglimpse which was given
them of this present encampment while they were still far distant on
the fresh water ; the mysterious appearance of the Sacred Old Women
to a man not of their race, but a great sorcerer ; and finally the mys-
terious ball of light which followed their ship in mid-sea. He appealed
to the Micmacs present, and even to the white men, as disinterested
witnesses.
"And then he turned to the mysterious prophecy of the Old
Women. It implied that one of the two clans, of the same blood,
should lose its pipe, and he evidenced the fact that this loss had oc-
curred when the second and supplanting pipe was at their doors oc-
curred, too, without fault of anyone, much less of the gentle girl who
was charged with its custody. It was accident, but fate working
through accident. The usefulness of their pipe he said so with all
respect was finished: it was now time for the reunion of the two
long-separated tribes. The land of fir trees, Shinaki, was a wide land,
with hunting grounds for all. It bred valiant warriors as they could
see, and as the white chief had shown by choosing them, of all the
tribes of the northland, to accompany him on his dangerous enterprise.
" With regard to Talistoga, his son, since the day the young man
1914-] THE RED PIPE 619
saw the face of the Dakota girl in the sacred smoke, he had been a
changed young man, and thought only of meeting her. There could
be no question of his right to smoke the ancient pipes of the Lenni-
Lenape. Azoa and his company then withdrew all except Talistoga,
who was on trial outside of the circle, and the father of Unanimi
went with them; while the judges deliberated on what they had heard.
Several older warriors joined in the debate. It was sharp and ani-
mated for a short while, and then all were silent while the ancient
spokesman delivered their decision.
" ' We have decided,' he spoke, ' that Unanimi, daughter of our
war chief, is blameless for the loss of our pipe. She was dead on the
grass from fear and shock. But her horse which sought refuge within
the lodge while all the woods was open to him her horse must die.
The young man is of our ancient blood, and we are proud of him ; he
had the right to smoke our pipe, but he should not have left the door-
way open. He will therefore pay to the father of our daughter Una-
nimi, when he makes his marriage presents, a fitting price for the loss
of the horse. For we take it to be evident that the spirits have kept
these two young people for each other, so that in them the two tribes
should be united. Their children will be true sons and daughters of
the Lenni-Lenape. And perhaps thus prophecy will be altogether
satisfied and fulfilled, and we who have occupied these hunting
grounds and roamed these prairies more years than there are leaves
on the holly, perhaps the spirits will not ask us to go into the land of
mountains and fir trees forever. We take our relatives, the Abenaki,
to our hearts, and with them our elder brothers the Micmacs. We
will smoke their pipe with them, and together we shall be one reunited
people.'
" Thus the old chief gave the decision, and it pleased all but Kick-
ing Horse and a few other young men, who had long cast eyes at Una-
nimi. And yet, there was sorrow and misgiving in the hearts
of the older Dakotas, and forebodings from the loss of their
emblem. Some, it was whispered, wanted our pipe instead. Others
held that the Old Women Spirits wished the tribes to live together,
and for this reason they were willing to accompany our people down
the Nimaesi-Sipu, and afterwards go into the land of fire with them.
And this many of them did.
" But Talistoga did not go out to the Great River that time he
did so afterward with La Salle on his second trip. He married Una-
nimi instead. They did not wait for La Salle's ship, which was also
to return as far as Niagara ; but with old Frangois and a goodly party
of Abenaki and Micmac young men, who have likewise chosen wives
from among the daughters of the Dakotas, were willing to return to
their own country, they set out in their own canoes, and in safety
reached the hills of their own tribes.
620 THE RED PIPE [Aug.,
" It was well with Talistoga and his party that they did not
await the loading of the ship with furs. It sank or was lost on its
way to Niagara across the lakes, and no man knows to this day where
it lies. Well, too, would it have been for the Dakotas had they list-
ened to the ancient word, and sought good fortune with their relatives
of the Abenaki. Some time after the departure of our expedition
from among them, the Iroquois descended on them in great numbers,
armed with the guns which the Dutch sold them, and slaughtered
almost the entire tribe. When our people returned from their adven-
ture down the Great River, they found only ruined tepees and scalped
corpses withering in the long buffalo grass. A wide trail showed
where the enemy had departed with the women prisoners.
" The Dakotas who were of the expedition threw themselves on
their faces at the foot of their sacred hill, and their cry went up on
the winds for their slaughtered kindred ; while we buried the dead and
gathered together for the survivors whatever of value the Iroquois
had left. And because of the heart-broken remnant of a great people,
La Salle called the fort he built on that hill the fort of Broken Hearts.
" And thus it came to pass that we brought with us from the
West, one way or the other, those whom we found there who were
our bloodkin, and gave them homes and wives and hunting grounds
of their own near the town of Norridgewock in Maine over here.
Nadoga, my ancestor, of whom I spoke in the story of the Maid of
Seraghtoga, was the blood of these ancient Lenni-Lenape ; in fact
in him ran the blood of both clans, for he was the grandson of Una-
nimi and Talistoga. Unanimi the Girl of the Smoke Cloud, as our
people ever called her first brought amongst us the custom of the
sacred moccasin, which is put on the feet of the child when he is born.
In the foot of the new moccasin a hole is cut, so that should death
come and ask him to travel, he can say that he cannot go because his
moccasin is worn out. She was gentle, too, and kindly, and our
maidens learned good ways from her. Yet she never could forget
her home by the prairies, and especially did she mourn the want of a
horse."
The old chief picked up the ancient emblem of his race, so mys-
terious in its history, and regarded it with reverential gaze. It was
the bond of his relationship with the ancient people who in the age
of the mammoth and mastodon came out of the west and northwest,
and afterwards, following some instinct of migration, pushed onward
to the lands by the eastern sea. He held it up for me again to look
at it.
" But we never parted with the Red Pipe, nor did we ever com-
mit it to the care of woman or maid. Sometimes we smoke it, but
never without our kin of Norridgewock. And some old man, like
myself, is deputed to tell its story as I have told it to you."
1914.] BEFORE THE ROOD 621
Peol turned an inquiring eye upon me ; plainly he wanted to hear
my opinion of his tale.
" Your pipe is of steatite, Peol," I said in reply and alas ! I
took no thought of shame for my plodding mind " and its glory may
well be true in some of its outlines. I should like to look into its
smoke, and live its memories over again. Please light it for me, and
suffer me to smoke it like La Salle. Perhaps some of its mystic spirit
may flow over me, and fit me for the duty of perpetuating those quaint
traditions of your race."
And so I smoked the Indian mixture of tobacco and dried leaves
from the bowl of the Red Pipe but I had the grace to keep to myself
the fact that my thoughts wandered rather to La Salle and his abor-
tive heroism.
Peol gathered the pipe and its fresh stem of elderberry back into
his bandanna handkerchief, and with the taciturnity of his race set the
coffee before me.
[THE END.]
BEFORE THE ROOD: 1
UNTO CHRIST'S HOLY FEET.
BY CHARLES J. POWERS, C.S.P.
SWEET Jesus hail ! All hail to Thee !
Salvation's Spring! O save Thou me,
Who living fain would die for Thee,
Who dying died upon the Tree,
Yet liveth everlastingly.
In hope I came to seek Thee here.
And lo ! in faith I see Thee near ;
A blessed presence shining fair.
And O, how shall my soul declare
Thine ever gracious clemency ?
Ye riven Feet! Deem me not bold,
If in these arms I ye enfold,
And clasp the rending nails I see.
Ah, would this piercing were in me
For my so blameful errantry.
'Suggested by the Salve Mundi Salutare of St. Bernard : The Rhythmica Oratio
ad unum quodlibet membrorum Christi patientis et a cruce pendentis.
622 BEFORE THE ROOD [Aug.,
What meed of thanks, Lord, shall they give,
Who, deadly wounded, through Thee live ;
Who, broken, through Thee are made whole;
Who, poor, are so enriched in soul
By Thine exceeding charity?
Sweet Jesus, pity me forlorn !
All spent, all bruised, all sadly torn!
Into me, clay, breathe Thou again,
The spirit erst Thou gavest men.
O heal me with Thy medicine!
Within these wounds, O let me lave
A wounded soul Thou died'st to save.
My hope of weal I fix in Thee
Who, lifted on the bitter Tree,
In dying gave me life again.
Ye ruddy wounds! Ye fissures deep!
Writ in my heart your witness keep,
Until love's fire that glowed in ye,
Hath burned away the dross in me,
And made me all Christ Jesus' own.
O dearest Jesus! God most kind!
May I, most guilty, pardon find,
While at Thy nailed Feet, I lie.
O hear a contrite culprit's cry!
O heed a suppliant's ceaseless moan!
Fast by Thy Feet, full low I bow
Before the Rood, and tarry now.
Good Jesus! From the Rood I wot,
Thy tender mercy spurneth not,
But draweth ever nearer me.
Beloved, look upon me, see !
Mine inmost soul doth turn to Thee.
The while I wait beneath the Tree.
O say, I pray Thee, say to me,
" Lo all have I forgiven thee."
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
II.
[OW did it come about, in the sixteenth century, that
reason fell so low in estimation, waning suddenly
from a star of the first magnitude to one scarcely to
be regarded as of the second? There were many
influences that combined to produce this result, and
we shall endeavor to trace their interplay, so as to clear the back-
ground of our subject, before proceeding to unfold it further.
Reason was the faculty that had socialised Christian truth in
the centuries preceding. Working upon the revealed concepts which
Scripture and tradition furnished, it had discerned the sociability
existing between all branches of truth, whether human or divine,
and had built up a body of divinity as world-wide in its synthetic
sweep, and as solidary in its continuity as the organic life and
intercommunion of the Church itself. " The doctrine of the State
set forth by St. Thomas," says Windelband, " subordinates the one
to the other in a system of thought, and in so doing completes the
most deeply and widely reaching union of the ancient and Christian
conceptions of the world that has ever been attempted." 1 This
synthesis proved distasteful and irksome to the aristocratic element
of society in the sixteenth century. For many years Germany
had been honeycombed with a series of revolts, in consequence
of which the princedom felt its power slipping, its control slacken-
ing. Social and religious unrest filled the land, and it was the
policy of those who sought to retain their hold on power, to fasten
the whole blame for the existing situation upon the Church. The
religious motive had thus a social one behind it, which must not be
overlooked.
This social motive was aristocratic, not democratic, individual-
ism. Luther, before the peasants actually revolted, had addressed
them, in no measured terms, on their individual rights and privileges
as Christian men he was a peasant's son himself. But he changed
this note of encouragement to one of savage denunciation in a
1 A History of Philosophy, English Translation, 1898, p. 327.
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626 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Aug.,
forces of disruption. Christianity, to be brought in line with such
a purpose, had to be recast in more flexible molds, and rewritten
from a subjective point of view, which would haughtily ignore all
the objective, social values and restraints inherent in its doctrines.
The very soul of the movement, in its incipiency, was to de-socialize
the Church, in order to over-socialize the State. Reason the great
commoner! was the first victim demanded for the sacrifice. The
spirit of destruction, once it was abroad in the land, could not very
well miss singling out for slaughter the constructive power of
human reason. There was no blood upon the doorposts then, as
of old, to guarantee immunity. Besides, it stood, just a little be-
hind faith, as the strenuous asserter of that supernatural law of
solidarity, which was not afraid to remind kings and subjects of
their proper places in the scheme of things when they overstepped
the bounds. And it was effaced from the statute books of the
Christian religion, to let vague ethics, and an ineffective sentiment
of human brotherhood, take the place of the positive law of God.
Was it not Luther who asserted the divine right of kings, and bound
religion over, hand and foot, to the secular power ? Verily, he put
his trust in princes !
It is usual with historians of a certain type to pass lightly
over the political affiliations of the Reformation movement, and
to describe it in glowing terms as the revolt of the moral conscience,
single-handed, against the encroachments of religious collectivism.
But this explanation is too simple altogether, too palliating and
exclusive. Social, political, and religious forces in history can-
not be separated in any such summary, clear-cut manner, and one of
them singled out, to draw attention away from the rest, by giving
it all the false splendor that comes of isolation. Individualism
there was, and a plentiful sprinkling of it, assuredly, but it was
not the purely moral, highly spiritual, unadulterated thing, so clean
of heart and skirt, so single-eyed in purpose, as is pictured for us
by the professional whitewashers of history. Even if we grant
that Luther's doctrine of " justification by faith alone " was a pro-
duct of his own inner, personal experience, it still would be far
from following that the political undercurrent of the times had
nothing to do with the particular direction his religious reflec-
tions took. The immediate acceptance of this doctrine of his, on
such slim grounds as he offered in its support, is proof enough, if
proof were needed, that the political feeling of the day had found
a theological voice, and rallied to it, regardless of its intrinsic
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 627
worth or worthlessness religiously. The man had not made the
occasion, the occasion had made the man.
The fact that politics dictated Luther's idea of justification
is implied in the way he, and others along with him, sought a stand-
ing for it in the Scriptures. So eager was he to establish his
one-sided and exclusive proposition, that he went the length of
claiming no one would do so now ! that, in the first five chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul is actually defining justifica-
tion, whereas, in the eyes of all scholarship, Catholic and Protestant
alike, he is merely clearing the ground for a definition, paving the
way, as it were, by refuting in advance the Pharisaic theory that
salvation could be earned through a due performance of the works
of the Law. In the passage which Luther quoted, St. Paul is not
formulating a definition of justification, he is pinching the arrogant
Pharisees with an argumentum ad hominem, the purport of which
is to show that works not performed through faith in Christ are
unavailing to salvation. Would Luther, think you, have pounced
upon this exclusion of some works from faith, as proof of the abso-
lute exclusion of all works therefrom, if the idea of de-socializing
the concept of Christianity, and of making it individualistic, in the
sense explained, had not already entered his mind, from other
sources than the reading of the Scriptures, or reflection on his own
private experiences ? Was not the wish, in other words, here father
to the thought? Men do not throw scholarship to the winds, like
that, and mistake rebuttal for definition, unless they have more than
spiritual and religious designs in 'view. And would this lamest
kind of exegesis have been so readily and so widely accepted, think
you, if there was nothing in the political ambition and temper of
the times to suggest and welcome its expression?
It irks one to see otherwise critical folk appealing to that
supposedly heaven-born thing intuition ! to account for the origin
of Luther's doctrine that faith alone justifies. One would never
suspect that this doctrine had anything of earth about it, but rather
that the heavens suddenly opened, and there shone a great light
so soft and unctuous are the references to " that which no man
thought of before." A little distrust of this feeling of trust would
prove a wholesome, as well as critical, variation. Intuitions are the
result of previous preparation, they have their human psychology,
like all things else. And it is our failure to inquire into the pre-
vious conditions and circumstances which made possible their up-
rush into consciousness, that leads us innocently to entertain a celes-
628 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Aug.,
tial theory of their origin. How men do glorify the mystics, when
they are afraid to trust reason ! " When all else fails," says the
proverb, " welcome haws ! "
If the reformers were really looking for St. Paul's thought,
and not endeavoring to discover their own, reflected back from the
pages of Holy Writ, they would have read a little further on, and
not have stopped so contentedly in the vestibule of his thesis. For
further on, and elsewhere also, comes the definition of justification
as a real inward process of renewal, quite different from the forensic
theory of a judge declaring our sins no longer imputed or subject to
punishment. Obviously this Lutheran doctrine was framed with a
view to undermining the sacramental power of the Church to remit
sin. And this destructive purpose proved so absorbing, that Luther
did not see the low conception of God on which his doctrine rested.
To conceive of God as more anxious to save men from punish-
ment than from sin, and as throwing a cloak of divine forgetfulness
over our evil natures, without troubling further to heal them of
their infirmities, is a view unworthy of the Moral Governor of the
universe, and of the moral conscience of mankind as well. It left
the individual related to the tragedy and sacrifice of Calvary, as
to something that had absolved him from punishment, while still
leaving him steeped in his sins; as to something once and for all,
over and settled, whatever he might do. It put the kingdom of God
completely outside him, while professing to establish it within.
It reduced Christianity to a sort of ell, built on to the house of
corrupt human nature. It made faith a natural sentiment, a feeling
of fellowship, an act of confidence, that God had provided a Sub-
stitute for us in the wars, thereby relieving his aristocratic children
of all " work " and anxiety in the winning of their salvation. An
act of loving trust would see to it all, and Church and clergy could
go a-begging, if they insisted that more than this was necessary, or
that a revealed supernatural law had prescribed a definite way and
means for all ! Salvation is a private affair we are all a royal
priesthood, and a privileged race, that needs no intermediaries,
and this aristocratic sentiment is the sum and substance of the
Christian religion. Who, by thinking, or indulging reason that
pagan light ! could add a cubit to such a towering stature ? Are we
not a race apart we Christians and what have we to do with
those who sit in darkness, beyond sharing our aristocratic temper of
mind and view with them? Send missionaries to the heathen?
Perish the thought, said Luther and Melanchthon. It is evident,
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 629
therefore, why reason waned as feeling waxed. It was part of
the movement to de-socialize Christianity, that it should, and did.
But, apart from the fact that reason stood in the way of aris-
tocratic individualism, there was another cause that contributed
to its disparagement, and helped to bring it further into disre-
pute. This was the traditional doctrine of original sin, so over-
drawn and pessimistically interpreted by the reformers, that one
would think the world at large a sorry scheme of things, past all
recalling from its inborn ways of evil. St. Augustine we are now
beginning a somewhat lengthy historical excursion had powerfully
reasserted this doctrine against the heresiarch, Pelagius, in the
great controversy that raged at the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury, the question in dispute being simply and solely this : whether
the actual man of the present is the same in powers and equipment as
the one whom God originally created and fitted out for his course
in history. Pelagius contended that he was. St. Augustine
promptly rebuked this contention, showing the world of difference
that lay between original man and actual. There had ensued, he
pointed out, in consequence of original sin, " a darkening of the
intellect," a " weakening of the will," and a " corruption of man's
whole nature," changing him for the worse in body and soul.
These expressions were not so terrifically pessimistic, however
as they sounded, for St. Augustine was speaking of man historically,
comparing him as he is with what he was. The great genius of
Western Christendom never spoke or wrote professedly on this sub-
ject, from any other point of view than the historical. He never,
for instance, raised, much less attempted to decide or solve, the
deeper analytical problem, whether man's constitutional powers of
intellect and will had suffered intrinsic injury and impairment
in consequence of the Fall. It was the historical fact of man's
deterioration, not the philosophical analysis of it, that chiefly
concerned him in his duel with Pelagius; and it is in no wise to
be set down to his discredit, that he did not turn aside from his-
tory to philosophy, for the additional insight which the latter
line of inquiry affords, into what really happened to man's nature
and powers when he fell. One problem was enough for a lifetime
against such shifting adversaries as were those to whom he was
forced to give battle with the sword of the spirit.
The philosophical analysis of the problem, which St. Augustine
had left untouched, because his attention was completely monop-
olized by the historical phase of the subject, did not come for eight
630 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Aug.,
hundred years. In the thirteenth century, the schoolmen, especially
St. Thomas, saw the unconsidered problem, and set themselves
at once to solve it. This they did by comparing fallen man not only
with original, as St. Augustine had done, but also with possible;
contrasting man as he was, and as he is, with what he might have
been, if created on a purely natural plane of existence, and endowed
only with the powers and destiny which his human nature, con-
sidered in itself, analytically and objectively demanded. The com-
parative concept which the schoolmen thus constructed let in a flood
of light on many problems. It enabled one to see clearly what it
was that Christ had really added to the thought and life of the an-
cient world; what it was that man might claim as justly due him;
and how insignificant this cold and rightful portion of his would
have been in comparison with that actually bestowed upon him,
over and above the stinting measure of justice.
This comparative concept of a purely natural man led to a
much clearer and more distinct appreciation of the " glad tidings "
of the Gospel, by bringing out into salient relief the supernatural
character of man's final destiny. The facial vision of God was
seen to be no human birthright or due, but a generously superadded
divine favor. In admitting man directly to the enjoyment of His
own infinite life, in the world to come, God had lifted His highest
earthly creature from the natural plane of strangerhood to the en-
nobling diginity of friendship, and had re-empowered him to be
more than human in the destiny he was to reach, in the course he
was to run. The intellect thus saw, and the heart was made to feel,
the magnitude of the divine bounty. An enthusiasm that knew no
bounds spread over the thirteenth century in a rising wave, as it
had swept over the first centuries of the Christian era. A profound
sense of the heinousness of sin, but a profound sense, also, of the in-
wardness of the remedy grace ! which was no mere passive feeling
of trust, but a re constitution of man's very being, nature, and powers
took a balancing hold on attention. Optimism invaded school and
cloister, lining all the clouds of life with silver, and tipping them
with gold. Gratitude expressed itself in art, music, poetry, architec-
ture, and philosophy. The doctrine of grace, as an undeserved
divine gift, was grasped in all its bearings, and the word " gratui-
tous " went into the school-manuals of the day as a short-hand for-
mula for expressing the believed and felt beneficent goodness of
God. The intellect had done its work well, of a surety, when it
succeeded in marking off and determining so clearly the sum of
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 631
man's unrequitable indebtedness to his Maker. What wonder that
the hearts of the faithful, both simple and learned, were set on fire
with charity! with that charity from on high which the Victim
of Love not the Victim of automatic justice, mind you, later con-
jured up by the reformers, to the scandal of the moral conscience
of mankind had kindled in the hearts of those whose blessed
privilege it was to hear Him speak, Who spake as no man did
before !
We are not wandering from the point, but approaching it slowly
over the winding avenue of history. Well, the consequence of this
fine bit of intelligent analysis which the schoolmen made, was the
admission of the fact that man had survived the Fall, uninjured in
his natural powers of intellect and will. He lost none of his in-
trinsic belongings. He fell to the level of normal human nature,
not beneath it. To all appearances he had the same constitutional
powers after his fall that normal natural man would have possessed,
if God had called the latter into being, and had not, at the same
time, showered upon him, over and above what was his constitu-
tional due, the higher supernatural life and principles of action,
known as grace and the virtues respectively. These inestimable
gifts, privileges, and powers, which were the source of the super-
natural, as distinct from the natural, life of the soul, were all lost
through sin. Fallen man was, therefore, a deprived, not a depraved
creature; it would take accumulated actual sin to make him the
latter. His degradation was accordingly relative, -not absolute ;
privative, not positive; extrinsic, not intrinsic; a case rather of
disinheritance than one of positive heredity. Privation of sanctify-
ing grace, not depravity of nature such was the solution of the
problem of original sin, as the schoolmen worked it out. Man still
retained the image of God in his intellect and will, though he
had lost the likeness to his Maker which grace generously added
to his natural constitution and powers in the days of primeval in-
nocence. He had consequently forfeited none of his inherent attri-
butes of manhood. Of none of his natural belongings had he been
despoiled. He suffered no impairment of the powers that went to
make him man.
With this development of theological thought in the Middle
Ages, with this gradual progress in the understanding of original
sin as privative rather than positive, Luther was out of sympathy
temperamentally and by training. For him evil was not made
up of ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail. " The Ger-
632 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION {Aug.,
manic races," says Professor James, quoting Milsand, " have tended
rather to think of sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of
something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and
never to be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations." 2 Both
Luther and Kant were of this persuasion. Anything like religious
optimism was as abhorrent to the former, as Leibnitzian exaggera-
tion to the latter. Luther characterized the privation theory of
original sin as downright insanity (delirium), and then proceeded
to give the world a view which he himself considered sane. He
piled together the phrases of St. Augustine, and the canons of
the early councils, concerning the corruption of human nature ; mak-
ing no allowance for the historical point of view which controlled
these utterances no less than their range of application; and failing
utterly to see that the dogma of Christian faith, which proclaims
man's nature corrupt, his intellect darkened and his will weakened,
expresses no philosophical theory on the matter, but simply and
solely makes a positive declaration of fact. Out of this muddled
medley of documents, none of which meant what was read into
them, he deduced the theory of total depravity, and flung it in the
face of the despised scholastic optimists, of his own and previous
times. Calvin did the same, but managed much better to keep his
temper while so doing, not mistaking heat for light. The result
was the eclipse of reason partial, if not total, and a contempt of its
powers not warranted either in logic or in fact.
The total depravity theory, we may here be permitted to state
in a side-remark, is now obsolete. After infesting Protestant theol-
ogy for well-nigh three hundred years, its hold has been recently
slackened, and gradually shaken off, by the counter-movements of
" mind cure," " Christian science," and " new thought," where the
optimism is as extravagantly roseate as the pessimism which it dis-
placed was forbiddingly dire and dark. Even the growth of the
missionary spirit among modern Protestant bodies indicates a
radical departure from the aristocratic exclusiveness of Luther and
Melanchthon, who saw no reason for preaching the Gospel to the
unpredestined races of heathendom. The Catholic looks on with
unfeigned wonder at this optimistic reaction now leavening Prot-
estant thought, and may well rejoice that his own theology is not
obliged to double back on its course in any such inglorious fashion.
And now let us catch up again the thread of our momentarily inter-
rupted theme.
1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 134.
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 633
One overdrawn conclusion and total depravity was surely
such! naturally led to others in keeping with it, and proved a
fertile source of still further one-sided views. Worst of all, per-
haps, for the consequences which lurked within it and soon resulted
from it, was Luther's conception of the mind as essentially passive
and inert, capable rather of being acted upon than of acting. (The
devil was, surely, not fastidious in his choice of brides, if this were
the object of his wooing!) It is indeed true that salvation is
primarily a matter not of our own initiative, but of God's and grace.
This fact, however, is far from implying, as Luther imagined it did,
that human effort has no place in the working out and winning of
salvation. It is no derogation to the merits of Christ to admit that
it has in the subordinate sense of real, vital, and active cooperation.
God respects His creation, and if He made men intelligent, active
causes, it is a sure sign that He does not wish them to be mere
passive recipients of His power, waiting for the Spirit to move their
sodden and stagnant souls, as the angel moved the curing waters
of the pool of Bethsaida. The work of salvation is a work of
God and man together, of neither apart. Divine and human activity
are both unitedly concerned. And the inevitable result of Luther's
exclusive insistence on God's part in the process was a lapse into
that false mystic quietism which scorned personal effort as of the
devil, and hailed passivity as from on high. The faith that " throws
itself passively upon God," which is the kind that Luther prized,
had no rational principle of control within it, as its votaries soon
discovered from the extravagant, oftentimes silly practices to which
it naturally led. No wonder that Kant, disgusted at the mystic
aberrations into which pietism in his time had degenerated, should
endeavor to check their recrudescence by insisting that religious
emotion should be criticized, and not blindly followed.
Conversions had to be sudden, to fit Luther's passivity theory;
they could not be slow, deliberate, and by way of reasonable con-
viction; and so the higher type of man's return to right relation-
ship with God was denied a place in the scheme of salvation. Relig-
ious thought thus became more and more narrow and exclusive,
pruning off whatever fell not well within the lines of the sentiment-
alist theory of faith too small a net, at bottom and at best,
to catch within its meshes the rich abundance of the historical
Christian religion. All of which, when we look into it, goes clearly
to show how prejudice, whether of heart or of theory, can elim-
inate without qualm or quaver whatever suits its purpose ill to
634 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Aug.,
consider mistaking elimination for reform, and reduction for
amelioration. With the mind's entire activity regarded as par-
alyzed; with reason retaining no more than a flickering spark of its
native light, there was no room in such a theory of the mind's dis-
abling for an intellectual act of faith, there being nothing really
left to fall back upon for cultivation but the service of the heart.
The latter accordingly increased as the service of the intellect di-
minished.
This reduction of the essence of the Christian religion to
" feeling," suggested in turn a sharp distinction between " know-
ing " and " believing," which soon became, in spite of the empirical
fact of the mind's unity and continuity, an absolute and complete
separation. The religious anti-intellectualists were driven by their
principles and purpose to this desperate alternative. They had to
separate faith from knowledge to hold their ground, and this ar-
bitrary step was taken, in defiance of psychology, as the sole means
of defending their original position. Separatism that fallacy of
fallacies! thus came into modern philosophy as the legacy be-
queathed it by Lutheran and Reformation apologetics a dubious
heirloom, surely, to be accepted by those who profess to do their
thinking, independently altogether of their religious views. Prot-
estantism was compelled from the start to seek refuge in a moat-
surrounded castle, and to lift the drawbridge, lest reason cross over,
and rout it from its fancied stronghold of security. Something of
this pristine attitude hangs about all philosophy since. From Luther
to James, as we shall see, this dissecting of the human mind con-
tinues, until it looks as if anatomists rather than psychologists had
risen up among us.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST.
BY HELENA CONCANNON.
II.
HESE novels are shot through and through with pain,
since pain, no less than love or death, is indispensable
to life. In one sense, every one of them is an at-
tempt to solve the " problem of pain," and that un-
doubtedly gives them their high philosophic value.
For this is the " problem that stands in the heart of every attempt
to solve the riddle of the universe the question as to why pain is,
or seems to be, the inseparable accompaniment of life." 1 How
would Monsignor Benson have us solve it? First, by recognizing
that we must approach it not with our intellect alone, but with the
whole of our being. " For pain is one of those vast, fundamental
facts that must be scrutinized by the whole of man his heart, and
his will, and his experience, as well as by his head, or not at all."
Then he bids us look upon Christ hanging upon the Cross. He
Who has made the Law of Suffering knows something about it,
which makes Him willing to submit to it. What is that " some-
thing?" Alas! we do not know as yet but there are moments
when we dimly perceive it.
When we sit with Isabel by the prison bed where the racked
body of Anthony lies, 2 a little glimpse of the secret is revealed to
us : " As she knelt and watched him, her thoughts circled con-
tinually in little flights ; to the walled garden of the Dower House in
sunshine, and Anthony running across it in his brown suit, with the
wall flowers behind him, against the old red brick and ivy, and
the tall chestnut rising behind; to the wind-swept hills, with the
thistles and the golden rod, and the hazel thickets, and Anthony
on his pony, sunburnt and voluble, hawk on wrist, with a light in
his eyes; to the warm panelled hall in winter, with the tapers
on the round table, and Anthony flat on his face, with his feet
in the air before the hearth, that glowed and roared up the wide
chimney behind, and his chin in his hand and a book before him,
or, farther back even still, to Anthony's little room at the top
1 The Friendship of Christ: Christ in the Sufferer.
*By What Authority? Part III., chap. xv.
636 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [Aug.,
of the house; his clothes on a chair, and the boy himself sitting
up in bed, with his arms around his knees, as she came in to wish
him good night, and talk to him a minute or two. And every time
the circling thought came home, and settled again in sight of that
still straight figure lying on the mattress, against the discolored
bricks, with the light of the taper glimmering on his thin face
and brown hair and beard, and every time her heart consented that
this was best of all."
So, too, our hearts consent that " this is best of all " better
than hawking with Marjorie, or even riding the brown moors
as a Knight Errant of Christ when we see Robin stand on the
gallows tree 3 (beneath him the smoking cauldron, and the quarter-
ing instruments that shall do their work on his body), and raise
his hand in absolution over his father. (So wonderful, and noble,
and great a thing is pain that the author thinks it right to give
us, in this book, insight into its very heart. And so in Come
Rack! Come Rope! we are pfesent even at the torturing of Robin.)
How can pain be evil when we see it raise commonplace Theo Ban-
nister to an inconceivable dignity, or throw its august mantle over
Ralph Torridon? So we are led through the books, one by one, to
see that the real tragedy in An Average Man has overtaken Percy
Brandreth-Smith, and has consummated itself on his wedding day
with a peer's daughter, and that Mr. Main returning to his snarl-
ing wife, with his firm's notice of dismissal in his pocket, has
found the better part So " our hearts consenting " see that
the problem is not insoluble, see that " in the Figure of Christ
hanging on the Cross it has been worked out and 'placarded' (to
use St. Paul's phrase) before our eyes, see that in the sufferings
of humanity are being filled up those things that are wanting in the
sufferings of Christ."
There are a great many other things in these books besides
death, and love, and pain. There is, for instance, an astonishing
series of historical tableaux. If we will look on some of those
in which Elizabeth figures, there will be borne in on us, by subtle
suggestions, the knowledge that, in each, she stands for something
more than Elizabeth. It is young Protestantism, wanton and
merry, warm and seductive, and deadly and cunning, that
is pictured in the young Princess, in her white dress, whom Guy
Manton and Tom find in the over-heated, over-scented atmosphere
of the little oak parlor at Bishop's Hatfield. Her white arms
*Come Rack! Come Rope! Part III., chaps, iii., ix.
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 637
emerge, young, slender and rounded from her hanging sleeves,
the clear pallor in her cheeks is a little flushed, her warm auburn
hair a little tumbled from her romp with Tom ; " her small, red,
upturned mouth is smiling as with some secret pleasure."
It is as the incarnate genius of " the laughing, brutal, wanton
English nation," that she reveals herself to Anthony and Isabel,
as she passes them by in her great, gilt carriage with its six horses
tossing plumed heads, and its gorgeous grooms and footmen. " A
figure of extraordinary dignity, sitting upright and stiff like a
pagan idol, dressed in a magnificent and fantastic purple robe, with
a great double ruff, like a huge collar behind her head; a long
taper waist, voluminous skirts spread all over the cushions, em-
broidered with curious figures and creatures. Over her shoulders,
but opened in front so as to show the ropes of pearls and the blaze
of jewels on the stomacher, was a purple velvet mantle lined with
ermine, with pearls sewn into it here and there. Set far back on
her head, over a pile of reddish-yellow hair drawn tightly back from
the forehead, was a hat with curled brims, elaborately embroidered,
with the jewelled outline of a little crown in front, and a high
feather topping all. And her face a long, oval, pale and trans-
parent in complexion, with a sharp chin, and a high forehead;
high arched eyebrows, auburn, but a little darker than her hair ;
her mouth was small, rising at the corners, with thin curved lips
tightly shut; and her eyes, which were clear in color, looked inces-
santly about her with great liveliness and good 'humor."
Queen Mary, too, is a symbolical figure; though she is a
real woman, too, for this is the art of a great master. She
stands for Catholic England, a little worn and weary, and middle-
aged, and unattractive except to the few faithful souls who know
her best. Jane Dormer and Mistress Clarentia have found the
secret of her appeal in their own selfless love; Dick Kearseley,
through his sturdy honesty ; Guy Manton, when he has been through
the fire of temptation, and come forth from it a victor. But to
the others who have never known her to Lady Magdalene Dacre,
to Jack Norris, to Tom Bradshawe she is a mistress to be fled
from. So England leaves the old faith for the new.
There are two stupendous tableaux of King Henry. In the
first, it seems to us, that it is the " incarnate genius " of the " Ref-
ormation," we are looking upon with its enormous animal pas-
sions, and its strength, and gorgeous materialism. He comes sweep-
ing down the Thames, to the sound of trumpeter, in his great barge
638 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [Aug.,
of state that is all blazing with gold and color blue and crimson on
the prow, the stern canopied with crimson. There he sits with his
concubine Anne, amid his courtiers and his councillors : " The man
was leaning back, looking gigantic in his puffed sleeves and his wide
mantle; one great arm was flung along the back of the tapestried
seat, and his large head, capped with purple and feathers, was
bending towards the woman who sat beyond. Chris could make
out a fringe of reddish hair beneath his ear, and at the back of the
flat head between the high collar and the cap. He caught a glimpse,
too, of a sedate face beyond, set on a slender neck, with downcast
eyes and red lips."
In the second tableau we see the same monstrous figure sun-
ning himself like some carrion beast, in the window of his palace
of Placentia.
From his practice in arranging these tableaux, Monsignor
Benson has gathered a great skill in " settings." He tells us,
himself, moreover, that " he is a strong believer in the significance
of rooms;" and so he takes extraordinary pains with his furnish-
ings whether it be of Annie Hamilton's virginal boudoir (" just
a trifle too expensively simple "), or Lady Brasted's drawing-room,
or Father Dick Yolland's sitting-room, or old Mr. Bannister's
library.
As a consequence, the books will be a perfect mine of in-
formation for future " Froissart " in the domain of social history.
In the time-to-come (which Monsignor Benson has made so vivid
for us in his Lord of the World and The Dawn of All) can we
not imagine some Chinese savant, arriving in England,
self-commissioned to do for the " stately homes of England (as
they stand to-day) what Dr. Alwin Schultze 4 has done so admir-
ably for the battlemented castles of the Middle Ages reproduce,
that is to say, the aristocratic life led in them. When Lord Tal-
garth's long wicker chair and little table are reposing in some
museum, our Chinese social historian will, by the aid of these
books, be able to reestablish them in their proper places " in the
little square among the yews in the upper terrace " of the garden at
Merefield Court. Then (if he knows his business) he will load the
little table with a box of cigars, a spirit bottle of iridescent glass,
a syphon, and a tall tumbler (all taken from their actual places
in the museum), and imagine in his proper place in the chair
Lord Talgarth, snoring. This will give you an idea of the method.
*Das hofische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger,
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 639
In the actual working out, the Chinese readers will be asked
to accompany their guide in some mysterious thing called a " tea-
train," 5 to Merefield Court, or Crowston, or Medhurst for an in-
stitution of the period called " a week-end." A motor car will be
at the " station " to meet them, or if the historian wishes, for the
sake of his readers, to be as archaic and local-colorist as possible,
a phaeton (an illustration will help him out here) with two black
horses and a footman (in inverted commas). After a mile or two
along " dust "-covered roads (a note scientific, etymological, social,
historical, medical on the ancient plague of " dust ") they will find
themselves rolling between two gates (beside which a white-pina-
fored youngster "bobs" to them), and so up the drive through the
park to the house. The architecture of the house will have been
exhaustively treated of in a previous chapter, so the party will be
allowed to hurry through the Corinthian porch, into the great hall
to find a number of people at " tea." If the season be summer,
however, it is understood that tea will be served under the cedar on
the upper lawn.
" Tea " is a very important meal in Father Benson's social
economy, and so our Chinese historian will naturally linger over
it. He will explain the significance of the women's dress, the
pleasant mingling of indoor and outdoor life, the proximity of
tweed and silk a thousand things.
Now here a pitfall awaits him, unless he is of quite extra-
ordinary circumspection. With a laudable desire to reproduce,
as far as possible, for his readers, the " conversation " of the
period, he will have read every line of the plays of Oscar Wilde,
and Mr. George Bernard Shaw, or the novels perhaps of Mr. E. F.
Benson. The consequence will be (unless, as I have said, he be
very wary) that he will set his readers listening to a quick fusilade
of epigrams exchanged, say, between Lord Talgarth and Mrs. Ban-
nister.
After tea, his " party " will be at liberty to dawdle about,
in the oak parlor at Esher, or in the " schoolroom " at Hinton,
or Marston Park, or the billiard-room anywhere (note, historico-
philosophico-economico-political on "games"), until the bell rings
announcing that it is time to get into the quaint dress of the period,
for dinner.
Our historian will have gone to all necessary trouble to fur-
*An excursus on the social significance of "tea," and a note on "train" will
be found necessary.
640 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [Aug.,
nish forth a bedroom " of the period " with furniture carefully
selected from museums. A quaint open arrangement in the wall
will require some explanation. It is a " fireplace," for in those
days to which they have slipped back (under his inspired erudition)
heat was made " in sight," " while they wait," from the raw
material, so to speak an interesting primitive arrangement.
The dinner itself will be in a dining-room (of which there
is a reconstruction in the museum which they have already seen)
walls hung with portraits, thick turkey carpet, black marble mantle-
piece, long, heavy sideboard, long table set out with damask napery,
silver, cutlery, glass, flowers. For the menu it will be necessary
perhaps to have recourse to one of the old " cookery books " stored
on their own particular shelf, for Monsignor Benson does not
usually describe meals, except " tea," when he lingers genially over
buttered toast and cucumber sandwiches (in their respective sea-
sons), or lunch, for which he usually provides mutton. Other
meals, too, he will describe; if they be at all characteristic or sym-
bolical as, for instance, Father Mahon's 6 one o'clock dinner
" roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, apple dumplings, and a single
glass of port wine."
After dinner our historian will allow his readers to sit, for
an hour or two with the ladies, in the " drawing-room." Here they
will have an experience of which perhaps they may have read before,
or know traditionally : they will see the " piano " played " by
hand." When the ladies have gone to their rooms, the visitors will
be conducted by their guide to the solemn session in the smoking-
room, and follow the majestic ritual of the place as described in
The Conventionalists. Old Mr. Bannister (in a velvet jacket)
will preside in his pontifical chair, with a whiskey bottle, and a sy-
phon, on a small table beside him, and the guests will dispose
themselves, according to precedence, in a semi-circle around the fire.
About four minutes after Mr. Bannister has laid aside the stump of
his cigar, whiskey will be dispensed. Then just as the clock strikes
eleven, will be uttered the formula: " How about turning in? "
Then next morning they will present themselves for breakfast
in the solemn dining-room, and be gratified by the vision on the
sideboard, of cold partridge, and " various silver dishes of ex-
cellently cooked food." A huge vessel called an " urn " will send
up steam, like incense fumes, around the priestess of the function
the mistress of the house Mrs. Bannister, Lady Brasted, or Lady
*The Necromancers.
1914-] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 641
Beatrice. At this meal the disposal of the day is arranged. But is
there any need to go on ?
I have already spoken of the gallery of women portraits to
be found in these books, and lingered a little before the full-length
pictures of the heroines. Let us walk in the gallery a little longer.
First, there are the two beautiful old miniatures of Lady Maxwell,
and her sister Mistress Margaret Torridon, in By What Authority?
Are they not quite charming with their beautiful, withered old
faces, their high-bred air, their gray silks and their lace? There
is that strange woman Lady Torridon as Sphinx-like as Leonardi's
enigmatic woman in The King's Achievement. There is placid
Alice Babington (who can be "grande dame," too, when she pleases)
in Come Rack! Come Rope! The Chatelaines in the modern
books are finely differentiated. There ic Mrs. Bannister of The
Conventionalists, best described, it appears, by negatives " a kind
of least common multiple of the female nature," to whom the author
finds it necessary to give " a pair of slightly protruding front
teeth," to enable us to distinguish her from all other women of her
kind. There is Lady Beatrice, stately and beautiful and distin-
guished looking, a perfect mother of Medds except of this poor,
strange, unaccountable Val. Then there is Mrs. Hamilton, with her
" pose " of naturalness, and simplicity, and unconventionality
which works itself into her daughter Lady Brasted. The " young
girl " in the novels shows herself in three types: the ordinary, like
Mary Medd, and Mabel Marridon (and Helen Brandreth-Smith,
too, in spite of her middle-class "new art") ; the complex artis-
tic-natured like Gertie Marjoribanks, and Gladys Farham; the
deliberate " ingenue " like Annie Hamilton. There are hardly any
children except a somewhat symbolical baby in A Winnowing,
and the two pig-tailed little girls of Jack Kirby, and the slum chil-
dren of Mrs. Barrington in None Other Gods, and little James
Maxwell in The King's Achievement.
I have also heard a careful reader comment, with some wonder,
on the almost total absence of Jesuits 7 " Father Badminton " par-
taking too much of the nature of Mrs. Gamp's immortal friend,
Mrs. Harris.
But if Jesuits are conspicuous by their absence, there are
other priests in plenty, and all very life-like and well differen-
tiated. There are Anthony and Robin in the Elizabethan novels,
T He must have forgotten the superb figure of Father Campion in By What
Authority f and Come Rack! Come Rope!
VOL. XCIX. 41
642 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [Aug.,
under whose priesthood we find the same splendid boyhood which
we found so delightful in their hawking days; there is Chris Tor-
ridon, whom we see grow to his full length in the gymnasium of
the Cross. 8 In the modern novels, there is, first of all, Monsignor
Richard Yolland, stout, with sandy hair (inclined to bristle after
the manner of " an intelligent Irish terrier," to which his friends
compare him), snub-nosed, blue-eyed, freckled- faced, honest, and
sturdy, and shrewd, with the kindest heart, and the straightest
nature in all the world. There is the little brown chaplain, Father
Baynton. There is Father Maples (in The Sentimentalists) whose
soul dearly loves a lord. There is Father Maple, the musician-
priest in The Coward, the only one in all Val's world who under-
stands his malady and can cure it. For Father Maple, like Father
Thorpe, 9 and Father Mahon, is a " Father in God," and it is this
quality in him which helps him more than " the cultivated discrete
air of him, or his music, or his kindly bright eyes," to get into
touch with Val's sick soul, and bring it into the light. He has been
trained in his seminary " to understand motive and intention and to
interpret events by those things " not merely " to console and say
soothing things." He is expressing for a sick soul a lesson which
Monsignor Benson evidently thinks of the highest benefit for a sick
generation : the lesson of the cultivation of the will. This boy,
with the coward's brand upon him, misunderstood by his own,
driven to.despair by the pseudo-science of the day, finds in the priests
the knowledge that can diagnose his malady and cure it. What
is the malady? An imagination over-fed and a will starved.
The cure is in starving the imagination, and feeding, and strength-
ening the will.
" The first thing you've got to do is to understand your-
self, to see that you've got those two things pulling at you imagina-
tion and will. And the second thing you've got to do is to try and
live by your will, and not by your imagination, in quite small things
I mean. Muscles become strong by doing small things using small
dumb-bells over and over again not by using huge dumb-bells
once or twice. And the way the will becomes strong is the same,
doing small things you've made up your mind to do, however much
you don't want to do them at the time. I mean really small things
getting up in the morning, going to bed Make a rule of life,
by which you live a rule about how you spend the day. And keep
it; and go on keeping it. Don't dwell on what you would
*The King's Achievement. 9 Papers of a Pariah: A Father in God.
I9I4-] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 643
do if such and such a thing happened as to whether you'd be brave
or not. That's simply fatal ; because it's encouraging and inciting
the imagination. On the contrary, starve the imagination and feed
the will."
I am afraid that Monsignor Benson is not quite as kind to
his parsons as to his priests. He disclaims responsibility for the
views of his friend, the broken-down actor, in Papers of a Pariah,
but I am not quite sure that any of the parsons in the novels are
much of an improvement on Mr. Marjoribanks or the rector in that
entertaining book. In An Average Man, I fear me, he has yielded
to the temptation of introducing the comic element in the uncon-
scious person of Mr. Bennett with his "Gadsby in C," and his use
of " one " for " I," if the grammar at all permitted it, and his
" bright " sermons, and his " hearty " services, and his tolerable
bass, and his taste in harvest decorations. Mr. Stirling in The
Sentimentalists is a duller reproduction of the type. Mr. Arbuthnot
in The Coward merely fills in the landscape; Mr. Rymer in The
Necromancers is equally negligible. In Mr. Parham-Carter was he
laughing at his own young ideas ?
In that most beautiful book, The Friendship of Christ, our
author has spoken words of wonderful truth and beauty about
the " princely passion " of friendship. He has introduced this
" motif " into his books with great success. It gives us the human
comfort we need to be able to follow to the end the bitter passion
of Frank Guiseley, to know that Jack Kirby is with him his friend.
Love of father, and brother, love of women, these things have been
burnt up in the fierce purgative fire but the love of the friend has
remained. And when Frank, too, like his Lord, utters his " seven
last words," the name of his friend is first heard amongst them.
So, too, in The Sentimentalists it helps us to bear the terrible
cruelty of the " cleansing " of Christ, to think of Dick, his friend.
But there is one friendship, which has colored these books,
more than anything else the Friendship of Christ. In his Con-
fessions of a Convert, Father Benson has told us how having caught
a glimpse of the spiritual world through the music and ritual of St.
Paul's, his eyes were strengthened by a remarkable book (John
Inglesant) to see moving in its glory the Person of our Lord. It
was the beginning of a romantic passion for Him, of which he is
never tired of speaking putting it, one believes, among the ex-
periences of his characters, that he may think again and again of his
own. This love for Christ is the centre of Isabel Norris' life as of
644 ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST [Aug.,
Marjorie Manners', of Mistress Margaret Torridon's, as of poor
Percy Brandreth-Smith's, when, at the words of the Friar-Preacher,
Father Hilary, " the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord "
revealed itself to him: " If he had been questioned clearly at this
point he would have said that the Person of Christ had become
real to him, as suddenly as if a picture had come alive. The
preacher had told him nothing of the matter that he did not know
before; but it appeared to him as if all he had known had been
but a mask. Now the mask was dropped. This new person had
qualities he had not previously dreamed of. He was no longer the
pained meek Person he had thought Him He was huge and
virile and infinitely tender. He was everything that was worth
anything. He was the Heart of all color, the Melody of all music,
the Perfection of all shape, the Essence of all sweetness."
Some of His " friends " love Him in His Church Mary, the
Queen, for instance, or that other royal Mary, whom we see in
the prison at Chartley, 10 " exquisite in her pale beauty, and yet
more exquisite in her pain," lying like a fallen flower, pale as a
lily, beaten down at last by the waves and storms that had gone
over her more beautiful in her downfall and disgrace, a thousand
times, than when she had come first to Holyrood, or danced in the
Courts of France." The thesis is briefly stated in a conversation
with Algy Bannister, in The Conventionalists. " I set before him
that the Church is actually the Body of Christ, assumed into union
with His Person, experiencing therefore what He experienced on
earth, and sharing in His prerogative of Infallibility, Indefectibility,
and all that flowed from them " (including the power of inspiring
a passionate personal Love). It is worked out in the volume of
religious essays called Christ in the Church.
It is a favorite method of Monsignor Benson to take some
idea which has interested him, when he has met it in the course
of his speculations, and work it out in a separate book. For
instance the average man is a recent discovery of his. He has
written a book about his religion; 11 he has evolved a tragedy
from his failure to " take his chance," he has shown him in the
Papal Chair. 12
Another " thesis " with which Monsignor Benson has been
much occupied, is the problem of the justification of religious
persecution. He has first faced it in the Queen's Tragedy. He has
"Come Rack! Come Rope! u The Religion of a Plain Man.
"The Dawn of All.
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON: NOVELIST 645
looked deep into the heart and soul of Queen Mary, and found
nothing but the tranquil conviction that the fires of Smithfield,
wherein Latimer, and Ridley, and Cranmer died in horrible tor-
ments, burned for the glory of God and the safety of God's
world. He placards his solution in The Dawn of All, and fingers
it in Papers of a Pariah.
There are many other theses in these novels, for the author
knowing that the novel is the way to the souls of the men
and women of to-day, uses the " genre " boldly in the service
of God. The Necromancers is designed to bring home to Catholics
perhaps more than to anyone else the real and very serious
dangers of Spiritism. The Coward is addressed to a whole
generation of neurotics. A Winnowing is sonorous with the proc-
lamation of the stern doctrine of the tf Vocation." In Lord of
the World he aims at showing whither the lines of "modern
thought " are leading, by following them out to their logical devel-
opment. The Dazvn of All shows what (he conceives) would
happen if " ancient thought " were prolonged instead. Not one of
the books but has had for inspiration the desire to serve God
and the neighbor. The whole output represents an enormous and
beneficent apostolate. And this is, when all is duly considered,
the last and best word to be said about Monsignor Benson as a
novelist : " There is God in it all."
THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 1
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
[HE Abbe Renaudin has written an excellent historico-
dogmatic treatise to prove that the doctrine of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a dogma that
may and ought to be defined. We have thought it
good to summarize this volume for our readers, at
times correcting the author's statements in accord with the more
critical estimates of modern liturgical specialists, and adding a few
details about the Feast of the Assumption which he himself has not
mentioned.
In his preface, the Abbe modestly disclaims all over-dogmatism,
declaring " that in the last resort the Church alone has a right
to settle such a question. As she has not yet spoken, I will merely
suggest different hypotheses, clearly indicating those which I prefer."
To quote St. Augustine : " We are speaking tentatively rather than
giving a hasty judgment." 2
After a thorough discussion of the conditions required for
dogmatic definitions, and the reasons that prompt their final utter-
ance, the Abbe discusses in turn the doctrinal character of the As-
sumption, its proof in history and the Sacred Scriptures, its status
as a dogma of divine apostolic tradition, and the movement in Italy,
France, and Spain in favor of its definition.
The term Assumption in Catholic theology connotes three dis-
tinct things, viz., the death of the Blessed Virgin ; her resurrection
soon after death; and her entrance, body and soul, into heaven.
In Christian antiquity, the terms used to signify the Feast of the
Assumption dormitio (sleeping), pansatio (pause), transitiis (pas-
sing to eternity), dcpositio (placing in the grave) emphasized
particularly the fact of the Blessed Virgin's death, although by
metonymy they also designated her resurrection and assumption.
The words in themselves prove nothing against the doctrine, for
as late as the fifteenth century, when no one questioned the Assump-
tion, ecclesiastical writers were still using the term dormitio. We
1 Lo Doctrine de 1'Assomption de la T. S. V verge Sa Definability comme Dogme
de Foi Divine Catholiquf. By D. Paul Renaudin. Paris : Pierre Tequi.
*Qu<erendo dicimus, non sententiam prcccipitamits, Sermon XCIII., De Scripturis,
ch. iv.
I9I4-] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 647
must remember too that in primitive Christianity the word assuinptio
was frequently used to designate the death of the saints, especially
of the martyrs, as we may read in the Hieronymian Martyr ology.
At the present time, the word assiimplio 3 is used exclusively to des-
ignate the Blessed Virgin's entrance into heaven, body and soul.
It is employed in direct contrast to the active term ascensio, which
signifies our Lord's bodily entrance into heaven of His own Divine
Power. His Mother's assumption was due solely to the power of
Almighty God.
It is universally held to-day that the Blessed Virgin died before
she was assumed into heaven. St. Epiphanius (-(-403) is the only
one of the early Fathers who is uncertain on this point, for he says :
" I say not that she did not die, yet I am not certain that she did
die." 4 A few theologians, moreover, in the seventeenth and nine-
teenth centuries, held that she did not die because of her Immaculate
Conception, but they had little or no following.
When and where the Blessed Virgin died are matters of mere
conjecture. The dates assigned for her death A. D. 41-48 rest
on no sure historical foundation. Both Ephesus and Jerusalem
claim to be her place of burial. The scholars, who declare for
Ephesus, point to the fact that our Lord from the cross confided
his mother to St. John, and rely on a false rendering of a very
obscure text of the Synodal letter of the Council of Ephesus in 431.
In very recent times, Monsignor Timoni, Archbishop of Smyrna,
and others quote confidently the rather doubtful discovery of the
house of the Blessed Virgin unearthed at Panaghai Capouli, near
Ephesus. The scholars, who declare for Jerusalem, rely upon a
number of apocryphal writings which are valuable for their an-
tiquity and their unanimity, the accounts of ancient pilgrimages such
as the itinerary of Antoninus of Piacenza, and some other testi-
monies of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries The Jerusalem
tradition is twofold, some authorities favoring Gethsemani on the
Mount of Olives, and others the house of the Cenacle in Jerusalem
itself.
It is only in the second half of the sixth century, that we meet
with the first authentic and unquestioned documents, treating of
the doctrine of the Assumption. It is true that there are a great
number of apocryphal writings of the first five centuries that men-
tion both the doctrine and the feast, but scholars to-day are unan-
imous in declaring these references interpolations of a later date, or
'Mark xvi. 19; Acts i. 2, n, 22. *Adv. Hair., 78.
648 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN [Aug.,
pseudo-writings of periods as late as the twelfth century, full of
imaginary and legendary details. The chief of these apocrypha are
as follows:
Prior to the Council of Ephesus: The Gospel of the Twelve
Apostles; The Death of the Virgin, by Leucius, a pseudo-com-
panion of the Apostles; and a Syriac work, The Obsequies of the
Holy Virgin, fragments of which have been published by Dr.
Wright in 1865.
After the Council of Ephesus : A Coptic text, published by
Zoego in his Catalogus Codicum Copticorum; the Gospels of the
pseudo-Gamaliel and St. Bartholomew; the De Transitu Maria
Virginis of the fifth century, attributed to St. Melito of Sardis
(4-194); the fifth century accounts attributed to St. John (De
Obitu Sanctce Domince) , to St. Joseph of Arimathea, and to St.
Dionysius the Areopagite (De Divinis Nominibus); the interpola-
tion in the Chronicle of Eusebius, which is not found in the oldest
manuscripts; the recently-discovered letter of St. Dionysius to
Bishop Titus, which Nirschl has rather arbitrarily dated 363 A. D. ;
a sermon of St. Jerome, probably of the twelfth century, although
Archbishop Hincmar defended its authenticity against a monk of
Corbie; a sermon of St. Augustine (De Assumptione) of the
twelfth century, and a treatise on the Assumption, which is probably
the work of Fulbert of Chartres (-f 1029).
The principal authority for the details of the Blessed Virgin's
death is St. John Damascene (-\-circ. 760), who tells us that he
relies on the authority of a certain unknown writer, Euthymius.
Pulcheria, the wife of the Emperor Marcion (450-457), had erected
a Church of Our Lady in a suburb of Constantinople known as
Blachernae. Wishing to bury the body of the Blessed Virgin there,
she wrote Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem to that effect, but he in-
formed her that the body of the Mother of God was not to be
found in his episcopal city. She had indeed been buried in the
Garden of Gethsemani, in the presence of all the Apostles save St.
Thomas. He arrived three days after the burial, and wishing to
venerate the body of the Blessed Virgin, had the tomb opened.
The tomb was found empty, save for the linen grave clothes, which
emitted a fragrant perfume. Whereupon the Apostles concluded
that the Lord had taken up her body with Him into heaven. 5 All
scholars regard this account as purely legendary, especially as
Bishop Juvenal was an adept at forgery. His literary dishonesty
B P. L. xcvi., col. 690.
1914.] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 649
was most bitterly denounced by Pope Leo I. in a letter to Maximus
of Antioch. 6
Rationalistic critics like Renan 7 have often asserted that the
Catholic belief in the Assumption depended entirely upon these
apocryphal and legendary writings. This is not the fact. The
Church has never drawn her teaching from such impure sources.
On the contrary, she has utterly ignored and distrusted them,
forbidding, in the so-called Decree of Gelasius, the faithful
even to read the most important of them all, the De Transitu Maria
of the pseudo-Melito. Moreover, although she inserted in the office
of the fourth day within the Octave of the Assumption, the account
of St. John Damascene, which reproduced, as the text declared, " an
ancient and very trustworthy tradition," she very carefully sup-
pressed the words very trustworthy, so as not to vouch for the
legendary details connected with the doctrine.
There are two views among Catholic scholars regarding the
value and use of these apocryphal writings. Some maintain that
they may be cited as an historical proof of the Church's belief at the
time of their composition, and that, though we may set aside the
legendary details, we are to accept the fact of the Assumption as a
doctrine handed down by the Church's oral tradition. Others hold
that it is better to ignore their testimony altogether, until we become
more certain of their origin, and date of composition. At any rate,
the Church is, in her belief, perfectly independent of these apocry-
phal documents, and could see them all disappear with the greatest
equanimity. For as Dom Renaudin says : " It is not probable
that the opinion of an author, more or less trustworthy, originating
in the fifth century, could have suddenly spread throughout the East
and West, in such a way as to be accepted by Churches widely
separated from one another, and to have caused in so many different
cities the immediate institution of a solemn feast. Such an agree-
ment could not have been the result of chance. It must have come
about through the universal persuasion among the Christian people
that the doctrine of the Assumption was officially taught as the
authentic teaching of an apostolic oral tradition." 8
Someone might object that it seems strange the Fathers of the
first five centuries are silent about the doctrine of the Assumption.
But as St. Augustine said in his treatise on Baptism : 9 " There are
'P. L. liv., col. 1,044. *Origines du Christianisme, vol. vi., p. 513.
*De la Definition Dogmatique de I'Assomption. Angers, 1900, p. 21.
V. 23 ; P. L. xliii., col. 192.
650 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN [Aug.,
many things that the Universal Church maintains, and that we
reasonably believe were preached by the Apostles, although they
never have been put in writing." In matters of tradition and belief,
prescription in the Church has the force of law, and the providential
rule of doctrinal development permits of a teaching that was im-
plicitly held at one age, being explicitly set forth in the Church's
preaching, liturgy, and written testimony of a later age. The
dogma of the Immaculate Conception is another instance in point,
for there are no explicit testimonies for it in the first few centuries.
It became prominent about the same time as the doctrine of the
Assumption, {. e., in the sixth century.
Moreover, we may readily conjecture some reasons for the
silence of the early Fathers. Perhaps they feared that certain here-
tics might cite this doctrine in proof of their errors. The Valen-
tinians, for instance, might have used it to confirm their heretical
notions about the body of the Saviour, which they thought was
formed of a celestial and impassable substance. Perhaps, again,
they may have kept the cultus of the Blessed Virgin in the back-
ground, because of the people's proneness to idolatry at that time.
Besides in those days of bitter persecution and bitter controversy on
the most essential dogmas of the faith, it is easy to see how a sub-
sidiary doctrine like the Assumption might rarely have been men-
tioned. From what we shall see later on of the clear teaching of
the sixth century onwards, we are right in concluding that the only
satisfactory explanation of the origin of this doctrine, is the firm
conviction of the Church of its being a doctrine handed down by
oral tradition from the Apostles.
From the very first days of Christianity there was an instinctive
feeling among Christians that prompted them to celebrate the days
on which the martyrs suffered. Later on the custom spread with
regard to other classes of saints, such as virgins, confessors, and the
like. The Church naturally met this popular feeling by making
these anniversaries public solemnities, or feasts. It would seem
natural for the faithful to celebrate in some way the death of the
Mother of God, especially after the Council of Ephesus. As most
of the ancient feasts originated either at the tomb^f a martyr, or at
some of the holy places in Palestine, it may be conjectured
that the feast of the Assumption arose near the tomb of the Blessed
Virgin at Gethsemani.
One of the earliest feasts we know of " in memory of the
Holy and Ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God," was kept at Antioch
I9I4-] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 651
about the year 380. It commemorates the death of the Blessed
Virgin, but says nothing of her Assumption. 10 In a life of St.
Theodosius (+529), a monk who lived near Jerusalem in the
sixth century, there is mention of a solemn feast of the Blessed
Virgin, which Baumer conjectures to have been a Feast of the
Assumption. 11 He places the date as 507, but gives no reasons for
his hypothesis.
The Emperor Maurice (582-602), the friend and contem-
porary of St. Gregory the Great, is said to have ordered the Feast
of the Assumption to be solemnly kept throughout the Empire
on the fifteenth of August. Although this fact comes to us on the
authority of a Greek historian of the fourteenth century, Nicephorus
Callisti (-[-1341), it is generally accepted as authentic by modern
liturgists and historians. He certainly h?d access to many docu-
ments that are now lost.
St. Modestus, Patriarch of Jerusalem (-{-634), is one of the
oldest unquestioned testimonies that come to us from the East. He
wrote a panegyric on the Assumption, which, while full of legendary
details, bears clear witness to the existence of the feast as early as
the seventh century. 12
According to Kellner, 13 the feast in the East was certainly older
than the sixth century, " for not only the heretical sects, which
separated from the Church in the fifth century, such as the Mono-
physites and the Nestorians, preserved this festival at the time of
their separation, but most ancient national Churches, such as the
Armenians and the Ethiopians, have it in their calendars." 14
In the West the most ancient writer to speak of the Assump-
tion is St. Gregory of Tours (-f-593). 15 He writes: "The Lord
had the most holy body (of the Virgin) taken into heaven, where,
reunited to her soul, it now enjoys with the elect, happiness without
end Mary, the glorious Mother of Christ, was taken up into
heaven by the Lord, whilst the angelic choirs sang hymns of joy."
In another passage, 10 he tells us that a feast of the Blessed Virgin
was solemnly celebrated with a vigil about the middle of the eleventh
month, i. e., January. Many believe the feast referred to is the Feast
10 Baumstark, Romische Quartalschrift, 1897, p. 55.
ll ffistoire du Br6viaire, vol. i., p. 267.
11 P. G. Ixxxvi., cols. 3,277-3,312. "Heortology, p. 237.
"The belief in the Assumption was solemnly professed by the Armenian Bishops
at the Council of Sis in 1342 (Mansi, 25, 1,185), an d ky tne Greeks at the Council
of Jerusalem in 1672.
"De Gloria Mart., i., 109; P. L. xxxi., col. 708. lt lbid., 713.
652 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN [Aug.,
of the Assumption, but others think he alludes to the Feast of the
Maternity. The first clear mention of the feast in the West is in
the Canons of Bishop Sonnatius of Rheims, which were composed
about the year 630. 17 Le Blant 18 has called attention to an inscrip-
tion of the year 676, which clearly speaks of the feast celebrated
on August 1 5th. Other seventh century witnesses of the feast are
the Gothic Missal, 19 the Gallican Missal, 20 and the Bobbio Missal,
which was used by Irish missionaries in Gaul.
We have no information whatever regarding the introduction
of the Feast of the Assumption into Rome. We know that the
oldest feast of our Lady celebrated there was on January ist, the
Octave of our Saviour's birth. It was first kept at Santa Maria
Maggiore, and later at Santa Maria ad Martyres. All other feasts
of our Lady were probably of Byzantine origin. Under Sergius I.
(687-701), the Feast of the Assumption, was with the Feasts of
the Nativity and the Annunciation, one of the chief Roman solem-
nities. The Liber Pontificalis speaks of it, 21 without implying in
any way that it was of recent institution, so that some scholars
have inferred that it went back to the days of Pope Gregory the
Great (590-604). Duchesne denies this emphatically, saying: "It
is certain that the Feasts of the Nativity and the Dormitio of the
Blessed Virgin were not in existence in the time of St. Gregory.
Not only does he never make mention of them, but the same is true
of all the documents bearing on the Roman usage prior to, or con-
sidered prior to, the sixth century, such as the Calendar of Car-
thage, the Leonian Sacramentary, etc. But what is still more con-
clusive, these festivals were still unknown to the Anglo-Saxon
Church at the beginning of the eighth century." 22
About 847, Leo IV. ordered that the Feast of the Assumption
should be celebrated with a vigil and octave in the basilica of St.
Lawrence without the walls. We do not hear of it again for a cen-
tury. In 858, Pope Nicholas I., in his response to the Bulgarians,
mentions the fast on the vigil of the Assumption as " an ancient
custom."
Duchesne believes that this feast is a Byzantine importation,
which passed from Rome to Gaul, as soon as they adopted the
Roman liturgy. Kellner questions this, saying : " In the Gothic-
Gallican Missal of the seventh or eighth century, edited by Mabillon,
1T P. L. Ixxx., col. 446. 1S Inscriptions Cret. de la Gaule, vol. i., p. 181.
**No. 317 in Queen Christina's Collection at the Vatican Library.
20 No. 493 in the Palatine Collection at the Vatican.
"Edit. Duchesne, vol. i., p. 376. M Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 272.
1914.] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 653
the festival is placed on January i8th and not on August I5th, as is
also the case in the Lectionary of Luxeuil of the seventh century.
This circumstance points to the conclusion that, independently of
Byzantine influence, it was observed already at an earlier date in
other parts of the Church as well, and came into existence spon-
taneously, so to speak." 23
There is a great deal of uncertainty about the date on which
the Feast of the Assumption was celebrated. The primitive date
in the West seems to have been January i8th, for that is the day
mentioned in Gregory of Tours, the Lectionary of Luxeuil, the
Bobbio Missal, and in many of the ancient calendars and martyrol-
ogies. Baumer says that the monks in Egypt and Arabia kept this
date, and that the monks of Gaul adopted it with many other
usages of Egypt. In the Greek Church, some observed the feast in
January with the monks of Egypt, and some in August with the
monks of Palestine. The Emperor Maurice most likely made the
observance uniform in the seventh century. One martyrology of
the West 24 speaks of January 22d, and the Coptic Church placed
the feast on January i6th (21 Tybi).
In the eighth and ninth centuries, we find the feast mentioned
by the Council of Salsburg in 799, in the Council of Mayence in
813, in the rule of St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Mayence, and in the
laws of Herard, Archbishop of Tours. In the East, we have
three homilies each of St. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (+720),
St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople ( + 733), and of St.
John Damascene (-{-760). It is also mentioned by Cosmas, Bishop
of Majuma in Palestine ( + 781), St. Theodore Studites (+826),
and St. Joseph the Hymnographer (+833). From this time the
witnesses become more numerous. A complete list of the chief
writers who speak either of the doctrine or Feast of the Assump-
tion from the tenth century onwards will be found in Chapter III.
of the Abbe Renaudin's treatise. 25
It is true that at the end of the eighth and during part of the
ninth century, there were some writers who either questioned the
fact of the Assumption, or declared, in view of the apocryphal ac-
counts of it, that " piety and honesty both demanded a confession of
ignorance " on the part of the true Catholic scholar. For example,
a pseudo-letter of St. Jerome to Paula and Eustochium of the
eighth century, written probably by Abbot Autbert of St. Vincent,
warns the faithful against the apocryphal De Transitu Virginis,
u Heortology, p. 238. "Martyr. Luccense of Fiorentini. "Pages 87-94.
654 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN [Aug.,
and urges them " not to take its doubtful assertions for certain
truth." The writer then adds : "Many of us doubt whether she was
assumed together with her body, or whether she departed this life,
having separated from her body. How, when or by whom her
most sacred body was taken away, where it was conveyed, or
whether she rose again, we do not know." 26
The supposed authority of St. Jerome misled a number of
mediaeval theologians, who professed their utter ignorance of the
fact of the Assumption. Among them we may mention the martyr-
ologies of Ado and Usuard (858 and 860), the Capitularies of
Charlemagne, the writings of the pseudo-Augustine and Idelphon-
sus. But, as the Abbe Renaudin asserts, " these are only rare dis-
cordant voices in the general concert of homage rendered to the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by the Popes, the liturgies of the
East and West, the teaching of the Fathers, the preaching of the
Bishops, and the firm conviction of the faithful everywhere."
Since the ninth century, the doctrine has rarely been questioned.
In August, 1497, the Dominican, Jean Morcelle, while preaching in
St. Benedict's Church of Paris, made a number of statements con-
trary to the accepted teaching on the Assumption. He was forced
at once by the Sorbonne to retract. At the Cathedral of Paris,
Usuard's martyrology, which ignored the Assumption, was read
until 1540, when a homily explicitly setting forth the doctrine was
substituted. A century later (1668), Canon Claude Joly managed
to have the old martyrology restored, and at once a bitter contro-
versy arose, in which the orthodox doctrine was ably defended
against him by two other doctors of the University, Jacques Gaudin
and Nicolas Billiard. Some of the Jansenists denied the Assump-
tion, for in one of their books on the Rosary we read : " We must
keep silence about the Assumption, and not honor the Blessed Virgin
by rashness and lying." 27 The French historian Tillemont said
that he was opposed to the doctrine of the Assumption " according
to the principles of history, and not according to the principles of
theology," a false distinction condemned in the modernism of the
twentieth century. Noel Alexander also questioned this doctrine,
but when called to account for it by his superiors, he asserted
that he had simply meant to teach " that the Assumption was not
a dogma defined by the Church." 28
The last controversy on the doctrine dates from the end of the
"P. L. xxx., col. 122. * La Solids Devotion du Rosairc.
*Hist. Eccles. II., ch. ii., art. 3, sec. i.
I9I4-] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 655
eighteenth century. Dr. Marant, a professor of history at Louvain,
denied, in the name of historical criticism, the fact of the Assump-
tion, and when accused of rashness by some of the other professors,
wrote a work against it, which was refuted by the Abbes Salmon,
Van den Baviere, and Van den Driesch (1787, 1788). All these
controversies in the long run were beneficial, as they resulted in
theologians carefully distinguishing the solid from the faulty
arguments frequently brought forward by over zealous but
not over learned disputants. For example, it is generally ad-
mitted to-day that the two texts often cited in the past to prove the
Assumption Luke i. 28 and Genesis iii. 15 are by no means
rigorous proofs, although once the doctrine is otherwise proved,
they might give some intimation of the true teaching.
The Abbe Renaudin devotes some thirty pages to the Scriptural
proofs of the doctrine, but we were not impressed with this part of
his work. It is true that he sets forth accurately the typical sense of
the Sacred Scriptures, and its use and interpretation by our Lord ; 20
St. Paul, 30 and the other Apostles. 31 But he fails to grasp that the
use of such types as the Ark of Noah, the Ark of the Covenant,
the Burning Bush, the Spouse of the Canticle of Canticles, etc., with
reference to the Assumption of our Lady is merely oratorical
coloring, and in no sense dogmatic proof.
In a most important chapter, entitled " The Divine-Apostolic
Tradition," the Abbe Renaudin shows conclusively that the As-
sumption is a doctrine that could only have originated by a special
revelation of our Lord to the Apostles. " How did they know this
doctrine?" he asks, and then he suggests five possible hypotheses:
1. They inferred the Assumption from the fact that they did
not find the Blessed Virgin's body in the tomb (St. John Damas-
cene) ;
2. They saw her body miraculously carried up to heaven by
the ministry of angels;
3. They saw her going up to heaven as once they had seen
the Lord;
4. They perceived her body in heaven, as St. Stephen once
saw the heavens opened ; or
5. God revealed this prerogative of His Mother by a special
revelation.
"Matt. xvii. 12; xxi. 42; Mark xii. 10; Luke xx. 17; John iii. 14; xiii. 18,
and xv. 25.
* i Cor. xv. 45 ; Rom. v. 14; Gal. iv. 22; Col. ii. 16.
81 1 Peter iii. 20, 21; John xix. 36.
656 THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN [Aug.,
He concludes in favor of the last hypothesis, declaring that only
on this supposition can we account for the wide and general accept-
ance of this doctrine by the faithful, and its clear presentation to us
to-day by the Church's ordinary magisterium.
He tells us in detail of the various supplied that have been for-
warded to Rome in late years in favor of the definition of the doc-
trine of the Assumption as a dogma of faith, though he is very care-
ful to state that at present " the doctrine is only certain, and cannot
be denied without the greatest rashness." The ordinary magister-
ium has not as yet given any pronouncement regarding its origin,
and has not as yet presented it to the faithful as a part of the deposit
of the faith. He hopes with many a devout soul that some day it
will be promulgated by the Church as a dogma of the faith, as in
1854 the Immaculate Conception was by Pope Pius IX.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Batiffol. The Roman Breviary.
Baumer. Histoire du Breviaire.
Benedict XIV. De Festis B. V. M.
Bishop. The Book of Cerne.
Cagin. Paleographie Musicale.
Du Cange. Glossarium infima Latinitatis.
Le Camus. Les Sept glises de I' Apocalypse.
Dictionnaire d'Arch. Chret. et de Liturgie, vol. i.
Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. i.
Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. i.
Duchesne. Christian Worship.
Forbes. The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church.
Gabrielovich. Le Tombeau de la S. V. a phese.
Hurter. Nomenclator Literarius.
Holwerk Fasti Mariani.
Hergenrother. Hist, de l'glise, vol. i., pp. 230-232.
Kellner. Heortologia.
Mabillon. Museum Italicum.
Martigny. Diet, des Antiquites Chret.
Nirschl. Das Grab der heil Jungfrau Maria.
Probst. Die Abendldndische Messe.
Renaudin. De La Definition Dogmatique de I'Assomption.
Terrien. La Mere de Dieu.
Thomassin. Trade des Fetes de l'glise.
Tillemont. Memoires.
Monsignor Timoni. Panaghai-Capouli, ou Maison de la S. V .
Tischendorf. Apocalypses Apocrypha.
ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 1
BY CUTHBERT LATTEY.
I. INTRODUCTION.
T is in the main to the First Epistle to the Corinthians
that we must turn for what the Apostle has to tell us
on this great subject; but in a paper like the present,
which must be confined to a brief outline of the lead-
ing features, it is necessary to enter a preliminary
protest as to the nature of the evidence. St. Paul never wrote an
epistle without a definite purpose, and he never set forth doctrine in
an epistle without a practical reason. Like the rest of the Apostles,
it was upon his oral teaching that he mainly relied. He delivered
his full teaching to his converts in person; afterwards he did not
write except to meet a real need. In the case of the Corinthians
he wrote because things had gone wrong. Even then he confines
himself to what is barely necessary for his purpose : he supplies the
dogmatic motive for greater reverence, he gives one or two practical
directions, and so he breaks off : " anything else I shall arrange
when I come." 2 What would we not give for more? But Divine
Providence designed to show us that, like the Corinthians, we must
look primarily to the Living Voice for our guidance.
II. RITUAL.
To begin, then, with what may be called the question of
ritual. Our first difficulty concerns the relation of the Eucharist to
the taking of ordinary food. Our Lord had instituted the Blessed
Sacrament at the end of supper. We gather from the Acts that
the first Christians in Jerusalem attended the temple services with
their fellow- Jews, and only in the evening sat down to a common
meal, perhaps divided into " house-churches," and only after their
usual supper partook of the Holy Eucharist. 3 After that time,
1 Being a paper read at the Catholic Congress at Cardiff, July 10-13, 1914. It is
largely based on the author's edition of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians,
in the Westminster Version, to which the reader may be referred for further ex-
planations. 2 i Cor. xi. 34. 'Acts ii. 42-46.
VOL. XCIX. 42
658 ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST [Aug.,
apart from the present passage, there does not appear to be any clear
case of a connection of the Blessed Eucharist with an ordinary
meal. Naturally, therefore, we examine the passage before us
closely to see what is the precise connection between the two which
it implies. Now St. Paul appears to object to the ordinary meal
preceding the Holy Eucharist. His words are these (I translate
literally from the Greek) : " When you meet together, it is not
possible to eat the Lord's Supper ; for at the eating each taketh his
own supper first, and one is hungry, while another is overdrinking
himself. Have you not then homes for eating and drinking? Or
do you despise the Church of God, and put those who lack to
shame ? " 4 From the fact that St. Paul blames those who take
their own supper first, and asks them whether they cannot eat and
drink at home, it seems right to conclude that he wished to exclude
all ordinary eating and drinking altogether. And this is con-
firmed by what he says at the end : "If any one is hungry, let
him eat at home, lest it be unto judgment that you come together." 5
It may be, then, that the custom of first taking an ordinary meal
was still in use at Jerusalem, but that St. Paul had thought it un-
wise to allow it among the Gentile churches, and was now repressing
its introduction, perhaps, from the Mother Church. In any case he
may have had much to do with the severance of the Eucharist and
the ordinary meal. Nevertheless we may notice that the conjunc-
tion of the Holy Eucharist with the evening repast, the food of the
soul after the food of the body, may have served to bring out its
sacramental function of nutrition.
To come now to speak of the more immediate ritual of the
Eucharist. The faithful in a large city such as Corinth seem to
have been divided into house-churches, that is to say, they would
meet in the larger private houses, and presumably there would be one
priest for each house-church. Each larger city had its college of
priests. Originally the faithful at Jerusalem probably reclined on
couches both for their supper and for the Eucharist that followed, as
our Lord Himself seems to have done; but if the Pauline churches
never took this repast along with the Eucharist, it is possible that
they stood for the latter from the first. The bread was doubtless
ordinary bread; our Lord seems to have used it though this is a
big question into which we may not enter and they would probably
find it difficult to get any other. Besides, for the first six centuries
or so the whole Church was using nothing else. Probably one loaf
4 1 Cor. xi. 20-22. * j Cor. xi. 34.
1914-] ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST 659
was broken for all, and there was one cup, but larger than now, and
presumably with a rather larger proportion of water than is now
usual, for Jews and Greeks and Romans all took much water with
their wine, which appears to have been stronger than ours. Nothing
seems to have been left over; reservation does not seem to be
absolutely primitive. It was in the middle of a prayer, the later
anaphora, that the celebrant would introduce the narrative con-
taining the words of institution, and at the conclusion of the prayer
communion would be given under both kinds, possibly followed by
the kiss of peace.
If, as seems rather more likely, there was in these earliest
times only one regular meeting of Christians daily, for the evening
Eucharist, after the day's work was done, then much else must cer-
tainly have taken place at this meeting, which we cannot stop to
describe. Before the Eucharist there would be reading from Holy
Scripture, as in the Mass to-day; and afterwards the charis-
mata, or extraordinary spiritual gifts, would be exercised, chief
among them prophecy and speaking with tongues'. The latter was
probably a repetition of the gift of Pentecost, symbolizing the
world-wide mission of the Church. St. Paul felt it necessary to lay
down stringent rules for the exercise of these gifts. The collection
of alms on the first day of the week 6 is one of the slight indications
of the new significance of that day.
III. THE REAL PRESENCE.
There was much, therefore, in the externals that might take us
by surprise, even apart from the absence of vestments, large
churches, and the like ; but with the doctrine, of course, it is other-
wise. The Real Presence is clearly presupposed. St. Paul, as has
been said, does not touch on doctrine except with a practical pur-
pose ; he is not teaching the Corinthians the Real Presence as some-
thing new, but is using it as a motive for reverence, just as in the
Epistle to the Philippians his very precise formulation of Christ's
Godhead is merely part of an exhortation to humility. To be men-
tioned as motives, these dogmas must have been already well known
to St. Paul's Christians. " This is My Body:" 7 if these words did
not mean what they said, they would not supply the necessary
motive. " This chalice is the New Testament in My Blood." Ob-
viously the New Testament is not a material liquid; obviously,
i Cor. xvi. 2. 'i Cor. xi. 24.
660 ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST [Aug.,
therefore, the meaning is, ' In this cup is My Blood, which is to
seal and ratify the New Testament, just as Moses 8 with sacri-
ficial blood sealed and ratified the Old." St. Paul himself goes on
to press home the motive which he has used, declaring that whoso
shall eat the Bread or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily shall
be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. 9 And a little earlier
he had said, " The chalice of blessing which we bless, is it not
(literally) communion of the Blood of Christ?" 10 that is, com-
munion with Him and also with each other, union with Him and
with each other, through the drinking of His Blood. And so of His
Body; "the Bread which we break, is it not communion of (or
union in) the Body of Christ? Though many we are one bread,
one body; for we all partake of the one Bread." Here once more
it is implied that we indeed partake of the Body and Blood of
Christ, and it is precisely because the Bread is His Body that It is
everywhere and in all receivers one and the same.
IV. THE SACRIFICE.
And his words are scarcely less clear about the sacrifice offered
in the Eucharist than about the Real Presence. It seems very
likely that the right reading in his version of the consecration of
the bread at all events a reading with which we must reckon is
simply, "This is My Body, in your behalf;" that is perhaps the
nearest approach that we can make in English to the very short
Greek form. As a matter of fact, this latter very likely supposes a
longer form as familiar to his Christians ; but let us leave this pos-
sibility out of account. How is Christ's Body " in your behalf? "
To understand this, we had better proceed at once to consider
the consecration of the chalice : " This chalice is the New Testa-
ment (or covenant) in My Blood." In these words all commenta-
tors find an allusion to Exodus xxiv. 7, 8, where Moses divides
the blood of the victims into two parts, sprinkling half on the altar
and half on the people, saying, " Behold the blood of the covenant
which the Lord hath made with you." Our Lord consciously al-
ludes to this scene and to these words : He Himself is the Victim
Whose Blood is the Blood of the New Covenant. He died but
once, yet the life-giving stream of His sacrificial Blood never ceases
to flow. It is His very death, as St. Paul tells us, which is pro-
claimed or set forth. It is the sacrifice of Calvary, therefore,
8 Exod. xxiv. 8. 'i Cor. xi. 27. 10 i Cor. x. 16, 17.
1914.] ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST 661
which is represented in an unbloody manner. And it is in this sense,
then, that the Lord's Body is " in our behalf." The Holy Eucharist
is the constant renewal of the great propitiatory sacrifice.
A little earlier in the Epistle, St. Paul had already made it clear
that he regarded the Eucharist as a sacrifice, by comparing it both
with the sacrifices of the Old Law and of heathendom. Thus he
says : " You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of
devils; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the
table of devils." 11 He is warning the Christians against idolatry,
and there is no possible doubt that in speaking of " the chalice of
devils " and " the table of devils " he is referring to the pagan sacri-
fice ; hence from the close parallel which he draws between the Holy
Eucharist and these, we conclude that he regards the Holy Euchar-
ist as a sacrifice too. And this conclusion is put beyond doubt
when we realize that this phrase, " the table of the Lord," and the
earlier sentence, " (What they sacrifice) they sacrifice to demons
and not to God," are taken from the first chapter of the prophet
Malachy, verses seven and twelve. Between these two verses stands
the great prophecy of the sacrifice of the Gentiles, already a standard
text even in the second century. Almighty God no more takes
pleasure in the offering of the Jews : " From the rising of the sun
even unto the going down of the same My name is great among the
Gentiles; and in every place incense and a pure oblation shall be
offered to My name, for My name shall be great among the Gen-
tiles." It is inconceivable that St. Paul had not this prophecy
in his mind when he was quoting words just before and just after it,
and was likening the Holy Eucharist to the sacrifices of Jew and
pagan; it strongly confirms the conclusion drawn from the rest of
his language on the subject.
V. THE PLACE OF THE EUCHARIST IN ST. PAUL'S THOUGHT.
Finally we may consider what place the Holy Eucharist held
in St. Paul's whole thought. The dominating idea of St. Paul is
our corporate union with Christ in His mystical Body: He is the
Head; we, who compose the Church, are the members. From the
waters of Baptism the Christian rises in glory like Christ from the
tomb; the old man, the man of sin, the flesh has all been crucified,
and now he shares the glory of the risen Lord, glorious limb of a
glorious Head. From Him he receives his life, that Christ-life
u i Cor. x. 21.
662 ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST [Aug.,
which raises his soul to a higher plane, and is called sanctifying
grace. Now it is the nutrition of this Christ-life that is the func-
tion of the Holy Eucharist. " What is the bread? " asks St. John
Chrysostom, that greatest of St. Paul's interpreters. " The Body
of Christ. And what do they become who receive It? The Body
of Christ." 12 That is St. Paul's true thought, and it has been well
suggested that it was the Holy Eucharist itself that suggested to
him under Divine Providence the doctrine of the mystical Body.
The Holy Eucharist, therefore, in so far as It is the offering of
Calvary renewed, tells us of Christ's crucifixion, and of all it means
to us, and of our own necessary crucifixion in and with Him, pend-
ing the time when our flesh too shall be glorified : and in so far as
it is spiritual nutrition, it sustains the life of the risen Christ within
us, of Him Whose members we are. Such is the place which the
Holy Eucharist occupies in Pauline theology; it sums up all that
is most sublime alike in the teaching and in the practice of the
Apostle. And as through this Blessed Sacrament we learn daily
better the full significance of the cross, and become more closely one
with Christ in this grace and glory, we echo with ever great truth
that supreme cry of the great Apostle, " 'Tis no longer I that live,
'tis Christ liveth in me." 13
"Chrysostom in i Cor.: Horn. xxiv. "Gal. ii. 20.
VOX MYSTICA.
STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF THE REV. PHILIP RIVERS PATER,
SQUIRE AND PRIEST, 1834-1909.
BY ROGER PATER.
V.
THE ASTROLOGER S LEGACY.
AY 26th, St. Philip's feast, is the squire's birthday,
and every year he celebrates the day by giving a
little dinner party to a few very intimate friends.
But, as he says, rather sadly, " I have outlived most
of my generation," and, for some years past, the
whole number, including the host and a guest or two who may be
staying at the Hall, has seldom reached as many as ten.
On the first birthday for which I was present, there were
only half a dozen of us in all at the dinner. These were, first,
Father Bertrand, an English Dominican Friar, and one of the
squire's oldest friends, who usually spent some weeks with him every
summer. Second, Sir John Gervase, a local baronet and anti-
quarian, who, besides being an F. S. A., and one of the greatest
living authorities on stained glass, was also one of the few Catholic
gentry in the neighborhood of Stanton Rivers. The third was Herr
Aufrecht, a German professor, who had come to England to study
some manuscripts in the British Museum, and had brought a letter
of introduction from a common friend in Munich. Fourth, there
was the rector of the next parish, who had been a fellow of one of
the colleges at Cambridge for most of his life, but had accepted
the living, which was in the gift of his college, a few years pre-
viously, and had since become very intimate with the old squire,
who, with myself, completed the number.
The mansion of Stanton Rivers is built round a little quad-
rangle, of which the servants' quarters and kitchen occupy the
north side, the dining room being at the north end of the west
wing. When we are alone, however, the squire has all meals served
in the morning room; a small cheerful apartment on the east
664 VOX MYSTICA [Aug.,
side of the house, with dull, ivory-colored walls, hung with ex-
quisite old French pastels, and furnished entirely with Chippen-
dale furniture, designed expressly for the squire's grandfather
by the famous cabinet maker; the original contract and bills for
which are preserved in the family archives.
The birthday dinner, however, as befits an " institution " is
always served in the dining-room proper, which is approached
through the beautiful long apartment, stretching the whole length
of the west wing, which the squire has made into the library.
The dining-room is large and finely proportioned, and has its orig-
inal Jacobean decoration, the walls being panelled in dark oak,
with a carved cornice and plaster ceiling delicately moulded with
a strapwork design, in which the cockle shells of the Rivers' es-
cutcheon are repeated again and again in combination with the
leopards' heads of Stanton. The broad, deep fireplace has polished
steel " dogs " instead of a grate, and above it is a carved over-
mantle reaching to the ceiling, and emblazoned with all the quarter-
ings the united families can boast, with their two mottoes, which
combine so happily, Sans Dieu rien and Garde ta Foy.
~l think the squire would prefer not to use the dining-room
even for his birthday dinner, but he hasn't the heart to sadden
Avison, the butler, by suggesting this. Indeed the occasion is
Avison's annual opportunity, and he glories in decking out the table
with the finest things the house possesses in the way of family
plate, glass and china; while Mrs. Parkin the cook, and Saunders
the gardener, in their respective capacities, second his efforts with
the utmost zeal.
The evening was an exquisite one, and we sat in the library
talking and watching the changing effects of the fading lights, as
they played on the garden before the windows, until Avison threw
open the folding doors and announced that dinner was served.
Hitherto I had only seen the room in deshabille, and it was quite
a surprise to see how beautiful it now looked. The dark panelling,
reflecting the warm sunset glow which came in through the broad
mullioned windows, formed a perfect background to the dinner
table, with its shaded candles, delicate flowers, and gleams of light
from glass and plate ; and I felt that Avison's effort was really
an artistic triumph. The same thought, I fancy, struck the rest of
the guests, for no sooner had Father Bertrand said grace, than Sir
John burst out in admiration:
" My dear squire, what exquisite things you do possess ! Some
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 665
day I shall come and commit a burglary on you. Your glass
and silver are a positive temptation."
The host smiled, but I noticed that his eyes were fixed on
the centre of the table, and that the eyelids were slightly drawn
down, an expression I had learned to recognize as a sign of annoy-
ance, carefully controlled. Following his gaze, I glanced at the
table centre, but before I could decide what it was, the German pro-
fessor, who was sitting next me, broke out in a genial roar.
" Mein Gott, Herr Pater, but what is this ? " and he pointed to
the exquisite piece of plate in the centre of the table.
" We call it the Cellini fountain, Herr Aufrecht," answered
the squire, " though it is certainly not a fountain but a rose-water
dish, and I can give you very little evidence that it is really Cel-
lini's work."
" Effidence," exclaimed the German, " it has its own erfidence.
What more want you ? None but Benvenuto could broduce such a
one. But how did you come to possess it? "
There was no doubt about the eyelids now, and I feared the
other guests would notice their host's annoyance, but the squire
controlled his voice perfectly as he answered:
" Oh, it has been in the family for more than three centuries ;
Sir Hubert Rivers, the ancestor whose portrait hangs at the foot
of the stairs, is believed to have brought it back from Italy."
I thought I could guess the cause of his annoyance now, for
the ancestor in question had possessed a most unenviable reputation,
and, by a strange trick of heredity, the squire's features were
practically a reproduction of Sir Hubert's; a fact which was a
source of no little secret chagrin to the saintly old priest. For-
tunately, at this point, the rector turned the conversation down an-
other channel; Herr Aufrecht did not pursue the subject further;
and the squire's eyelids soon regained their normal elevation.
As the meal advanced the German came out as quite a brilliant
talker, and the conversational ball was kept up so busily between
Father Bertrand, the rector, and himself that the other three of
us had little to do but listen and be entertained. A good deal of
the talk was above my head, however, and during these periods
my attention came back to the great rose-water dish which shone
and glittered in the centre of the table.
In the first place I had never seen it before, which struck
me as a little odd, for Avison had discovered my enthusiasm for
old silver, and so had taken me to the pantry and displayed all the
666 VOX MYSTICA [Aug.,
plate for my benefit. However, I concluded that so valuable a
piece was probably put away in the strong room, which would
account for its not appearing with the rest.
What puzzled me more was the unusual character of the design,
for every curve and line of the beautiful piece seemed purposely
arranged to concentrate the attention on a large globe of rock
crystal, which formed the centre and summit of the whole. The
actual basin, rilled with rose water, extended beneath this ball,
which was supported by four exquisite silver figures, and the con-
stant play of reflected lights between the water and the crystal
was so fascinating that I wondered the idea had never been repeated ;
yet, so far as my knowledge went, the design was unique.
Seated as I was at the foot of the table, I faced the squire,
and after a while I noticed that he too had dropped out of the
conversation, and had his gaze fixed on the crystal globe. All
at once his eyes dilated and his lips parted quickly, as if in surprise,
while his gaze became concentrated with an intensity that startled
me. This lasted for fully a minute, and then Avison happened to
take away his plate. The distraction evidently broke the spell,
whatever it was, for he began to talk again, and, as it seemed to me,
kept his eyes carefully away from the crystal during the rest of the
meal.
After we had drunk the squire's health, we retired to the
library, where Avison brought us coffee, and about ten o'clock Sir
John's carriage was announced. He had promised to give the rec-
tor a lift home, so the two of them soon departed together, and only
the professor and Father Bertrand were left with the squire and
myself. I felt a little afraid lest Herr Aufrecht should return to
the subject of the Cellini fountain, but to my surprise, as soon as
the other two were gone, the squire himself brought up the subject,
which I thought he wished to avoid.
" You seemed interested in the rose-water fountain, Herr Au-
frecht," he remarked, " would you like to examine it now that the
others are gone ? "
The German beamed with delight, and accepted the proposal
volubly, while the squire rang the bell for Avison, and ordered him
to bring the Cellini fountain to the library for Herr Aufrecht to see.
The butler looked almost as pleased as the professor, and in a minute
the splendid piece of plate was placed on a small table, arranged
in the full light of a big shaded lamp.
The professor's flow of talk stopped abruptly as the conversa-
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 667
tionalist gave place to the connoisseur. Seating himself beside the
little table, he produced a pocket lens, and proceeded to examine
every part of the fountain with minute care, turning it slowly
round as he did so. For fully five minutes he sat in silence, ab-
sorbed in his examination, and I noticed that his attention returned
continually to the great crystal globe, supported by the four lovely
figures, which formed the summit of the whole. Then he leaned
back in his chair and delivered his opinion.
" It is undoubtedly by Cellini," he said, " and yet the schema
is not like him. I think the patron for whom he labored did compel
him thus to fashion it. That great crystal ball at top no, it is not
what Benvenuto would do of himself. Think you not so?" and
he turned to the squire with a look of interrogation.
" I will tell you all I know about it in a minute, professor,"
answered the old priest, " but first please explain to me why you
think Cellini was not left free in the design."
" Ach so," replied the German, " it is the crystal globe. He
is too obvious, too assertive; how is it you say in English, he
'hit you in the eye.' You haf read the Memoirs of Benvenuto? "
The squire nodded. " Ach, then you must see it, yourself. Do you
not remember the great morse he make, the cope-clasp for Clement
VII.? The Pope show to him his great diamond, and demand a
model for a clasp with it set therein. The other artists, all of them,
did make the diamond the centre of the whole design. But Cel-
lini ? No. He put him at the feet of God the Father, so that the
lustre of the great gem would set off all the work, but should not
dominate the whole, for ars est celare art em. Now here," and he
laid his hand upon the crystal globe," here it is otherwise. These
statuette, they are perfection, in efery way they are worth far
more than is the crystal. Yet, the great ball, he crush them, he
kill them. You see him first, last, all the time. No, he is there
for a purpose, but the purpose is not that of the design, not an
artistic purpose, no. I am sure of it, he is there for use."
As he finished speaking, he turned quickly towards the squire,
and looked up at him with an air of conviction. I followed his
example, and saw the old priest smiling quietly with an expression
of admiration and agreement.
" You are perfectly right, professor," he said quietly, " the
crystal was put there with a purpose, at least so I firmly believe;
and I expect you can tell us also what the purpose was."
" No, no, Herr Pater," answered the other. " If you know
668 VOX MYSTICA [Aug.,
the reason, why make I guesses at it ? Better you should tell us all
about it, is it not so? "
" Very well," replied the squire, and he seated himself beside
the little table. Father Bertrand and myself did the same, and
when we were all settled, he turned to the professor and began :
" I mentioned at dinner that this piece of plate was brought
from Italy by Sir Hubert Rivers, and, first of all, I must tell you
something about him. He was born about the year 1500, and lived
to be over ninety years old, so his life practically coincides with
the sixteenth century. His father died soon after Hubert came of
age, and he thus became a person of some importance while still
quite young. He was knighted by Henry VIII. a year or two
later, and soon afterwards was sent to Rome in the train of the
English ambassador.
" There his brilliant parts attracted attention, and he soon
abandoned his diplomatic position, and became a member of the
Papal entourage, though without any official position. When the
breach between Henry and the Pope took place, he attached himself
to the suite of the Imperial Ambassador, thus avoiding any trouble
with his own sovereign, who could not afford to quarrel still further
with the Emperor, as well as any awkw r ard questions as to his re-
ligious opinions.
" Of his life in Rome I can tell- you practically nothing, but
if tradition be true, he was a typical son of the Renaissance. He
played with art, literature, and politics; and he more than played
with astrology and the black arts, being, in fact, a member of the
famous, or infamous, Academy. You may remember that this
institution, which was founded in the fifteenth century by the no-
torious Pomponio Leto, used to hold its meetings in one of the
catacombs. Under Paul II. the members were arrested and tried
for heresy, but nothing could be actually proved against them, and
afterwards they were supposed by their contemporaries to have
reformed. We know now that in reality things went from bad to
worse. The study of paganism led them on to the worship of
Satan, and, eventually, suspicion was again aroused, and a further
investigation ordered.
" Sir Hubert got wind of this in time, however, so he availed
himself of his position in the household of the Imperial Ambas-
sador, and quietly retired to Naples. There he lived till he was
over eighty, and no one in England ever expected him to return.
But he did so, bringing with him a great store of books and manu-
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 669
scripts, some pictures, and this piece of plate, and he died and was
buried here in the last decade of the sixteenth century.
"His nephew, who came in for the estates on his death, was a
devout Catholic, and had been educated at St. Omers. He made
short work with Sir Hubert's manuscripts, most of which he burned,
as being heretical or worse, but he spared one volume, which con-
tains an inventory of the things brought from Naples. Among the
items mentioned is this fountain. In fact it has a whole page to
itself, with a little sketch and a note of its attribution to Cellini,
besides some other words which I have never been able to make out.
But I think it is clear that the crystal was used for evil purposes,
and that is why I dislike seeing it on the table. If Avison had
asked me, I should have forbidden him to produce it."
:< Then I am ver' glad he did not ask you, mein Herr," observed
the German, bluntly, " for I should not then have seen him. But
this inventory, you speak of, is it permitted that I study it?"
" Certainly, Herr Aufrecht," replied the squire, and walking
to one of the bookcases, he unlocked the glass doors and took out
a small volume, bound in faded red leather with gilt ornaments.
" This is the book," he said, " I will find you the page with
the sketch," and a minute later he handed the volume to the pro-
fessor. I glanced across and saw a little sketch, unquestionably
depicting the piece of plate before us, with some lines of writing
beneath; the whole in faded ink, almost the color of rust.
The professor's lens came out again and, with its aid, he read
out the description beneath the picture.
" Item. Vasculum argenteum, crystallo ornatum in quattuor
statuas imposito. Opus Benevenuti, aurificis clarissimi. Quo cry-
stallo Roma in ritibus nostris pontifex noster Pomponius olim uti
solebat." 1
" Well that sounds conclusive enough," said Father Bertrand,
who had been listening intently, " Opus Benevenuti, aurificis clar-
issimi, could only mean Cellini; and the last sentence certainly
sounds very suspicious, though it doesn't give one much to go upon
as to the use made of the crystal."
" But there is more yet," broke in Herr Aufrecht, " it is in
another script and much fainter." He peered into the page with
eyes screwed up, and then exclaimed in surprise, "Why it is Greek!"
"' Item. A vessel of silver, adorned with a crystal supported on four statuettes.
The work of Benvenuto, most famous of goldsmiths. This crystal our Pontiff Pom-
ponius was wont to use in our rites at Rome in days gone by.'"
6;o VOX MYSTICA [Aug.,
" Indeed," said the squire, with interest, " that accounts for
my failure to read it. I'm afraid I forgot all the Greek I ever
knew as soon as I left school."
Meanwhile the professor had produced his pocket book, and
was jotting down the words as he deciphered them, while Father
Bertrand and myself took the opportunity to examine the work on
the little plaques which adorned the base of the fountain.
" I haf him all now," announced Herr Aufrecht, triumph-
antly, after a few minutes. "Listen and I will translate him to you,"
and after a little hesitation he read out the following :
In the globe all truth is recorded, of the present, the past and the future.
To him that shall gaze it is shown ; whosoever shall seek he shall find.
O Lucifer, star of the morn, give ear to the voice of thy servant,
Enter and dwell in my heart, who adore thee as lord and as master.
Fabius Britannicus.
" Fabius Britannicus," exclaimed the squire, as the professor
ceased reading, " why those are the words on the base of the pagan
altar in the background of Sir Hubert's portrait ! "
" I doubt not he was named Fabius Britannicus in the Aca-
demia," answered the German, " all the members thereof did re-
ceive classical names in place of their own."
" It must be that," said the squire, " so he really was a wor-
shipper of Satan. No wonder tradition paints him in such dark
colors. But, why of course," he burst out, " I see it all now,
that explains everything."
We all looked up, surprised at his vehemence, but he kept
silent, until Father Bertrand said gently, " I think, Philip, you
can tell us something more about all this ; will you not do so ? "
The old man hesitated for a little while and then answered:
"Very well, if you wish it, you shall hear the story; but I
must ask you to excuse me giving you the name. Although the
principal actor in it has been dead many years now, I would rather
keep his identity secret.
" While I was still quite a young man, and before I decided to
take orders, I made friends in London with a man who was a spirit-
ualist. He was on terms of intimacy with Home, the medium, and
he himself possessed considerable gifts in the same direction. He
often pressed me to attend some of their seances, which I always
refused to do, but our relations remained quite friendly, and at
length he came down here on a visit to Stanton Rivers.
1914-] VOX MYSTICA 671
" The man was a journalist by profession, a critic and writer
on matters artistic, so one evening, although we were quite alone
at dinner, I told the butler, Avison's predecessor, to put out the
Cellini fountain for him to see. I did not warn him what to
expect, as I wanted to get his unbiassed opinion, but the moment he
set eyes on it, he burst out in admiration, and, like our friend
the professor to-night, he pronounced it to be unquestionably by
Benvenuto himself.
" I said it was always believed to be his work, but purposely
told him nothing about Sir Hubert, or my suspicions as to the
original use of the crystal, and he did not question me about its
history. As the meal advanced, however, he became curiously
silent and self-absorbed. Sometimes I had to repeat what I was
saying two or three times before he grasped the point; and I be-
gan to feel uncomfortable and anxious, so that it was a real relief
when the butler put the decanters on the table and left us to our-
selves.
" My friend was sitting on my right, at the side of the table,
so that we could talk to each other more easily, and I noticed
that he kept his gaze fixed on the fountain in front of him. After
all it was a very natural thing for him to do, and at first I did
not connect his silence and distraction with the piece of plate.
" All at once he leaned forward until his eyes were not two
feet away from the great crystal globe, into which he gazed with
the deepest attention, as if fascinated. It is difficult to convey
to you how intense and concentrated his manner became. It was
as if he looked right into the heart of the globe, not at it, if you
understand, but at something inside it, something beneath the
surface, and that something of a compelling, absorbing nature which
engrossed every fibre of his being in one act of profound attention.
" For a minute or two he sat like this in perfect silence, and
I noticed the sweat beginning to stand out on his forehead, while
his breath came audibly between his lips, under the strain. Then
all at once, I felt I must do something, and without stopping to
deliberate I said in a loud tone, 'I command you to tell me what
it is you see.'
" As I spoke, a kind of shiver ran through his frame, but his
eyes never moved from the crystal ball. Then his lips moved, and
after some seconds came a faint whisper, uttered as if with ex-
treme difficulty, and what he said was something like this :
" 'There is a low, flat arch, with a kind of slab beneath it,
672 VOX MYSTICA [Aug.,
and a picture at the back. There is a cloth on the slab, and on
the cloth a tall, gold cup, and lying in front of it is a thin white
disc. By the side is a monster, like a huge toad,' and he shuddered,
'but it is much too big to be a toad. It glistens, and its eyes have
a cruel light in them; O it is horrible!' Then all at once the voice
leaped to a shrill note, and he spoke very rapidly, as if the scene
were changing quicker than he could describe it.
" 'The man in front the one with a cross on the back of his
cloak is holding a dagger in his hand. He raises and strikes
at the white disc. He has pierced it with the dagger. It bleeds!
The white cloth beneath it is all red with blood. But the monster
some of the blood has fallen upon it as it spurted out, and the toad
is writhing as if in agony. Ah, it leaps down from the slab, it is
gone. All present rise up in confusion; there is a tumult. They
rush away down the dark passages. Only one remains, the man
with the cross on his back. He is lying insensible upon the ground.
On the slab still stand the gold cup and white disc with the
blood-stained cloth, and the picture behind ' and the voice sank
to an audible whisper, as if the speaker were exhausted.
" Almost without thinking, I put a question to him before the
sight should fade entirely. 'The picture, what is it like?' But,
instead of answering he merely whispered 'Irene, de caldo,' and
fell back as if exhausted in his chair."
There was silence for a few moments.
" And your friend, the spiritualist," began Father Bertrand,
" could he tell you nothing more of what he saw? "
" I did not ask him," answered the old priest, " for, when he
came to himself, he seemed quite ignorant of what he had told me
during his trance. But, some years afterwards, I got some further
light on the incident, and that in quite an unexpected way. Just
wait a minute, and I will show you what I believe to be the picture
he saw at the back of the niche !" And the old man walked to one of
the bookcases and selected a large folio volume.
" The picture I am going to show you is an exact copy of one
of the frescoes in the catacombs of SS. Peter and Marcellinus,
where I came upon it, quite unexpectedly, during my period in Rome
as a student; it has been reproduced since by Lanciani in one of
his books. 2 Ah, here it is," and he laid the album on the table
before us.
There, before us, was a copy of an undeniable catacomb fresco
"See Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, London, 1895, page 357.
1914.] VOX MYSTICA 673
depicting an " agape " or love- feast; a group of figures symbolical
both of the Last Supper and the communion of the elect. Above it
were the contemporary inscriptions, " IRENE DA CALDA " and
" AGAPE MISCE MI," while, round about, were scrawled, in
characters evidently much more recent, a number of names : " POM-
PONIUS, FABIANUS, RUFFUS, LETUS, VOLSCUS, FA-
BIUS," and others, all of them members of the notorious Academy.
There they had written them in charcoal, and there they still remain
to-day as evidence how the innermost recesses of a Christian cata-
comb were profaned, and the cultus of Satan practised there, by
the neo-pagans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
We sat looking at the picture in silence for a minute or so,
and then Herr Aufrecht turned to the Dominican. " Fra Ber-
trand," he said, " you are Master in Theologia, what is your opinion
of all this?"
The friar hesitated for a moment before he answered. " Well,
Herr Aufrecht," he said at length, " the Church has never ceased
to teach the possibility of diabolical possession, and for my part
I see no reason why a thing," and he pointed to the crystal, " should
not become 'possessed' in much the same way as a person can. But
if you ask my opinion on the practical side of the question, I should
say that, since Father Philip here cannot legally part with his heir-
loom, he certainly acts wisely in keeping it always under lock
and key."
VOL. xcix. 43
THE RECENT TRAGEDY IN BOSNIA.
ffn nftemoriam.
A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF THE ARCHDUKE FRANZ FER-
DINAND, AND OF HIS WIFE, THE DUCHESS OF HO HEN BERG.
BY MARIA LONGWORTH STOKER.
i
ARLY yesterday afternoon a dim rumor came to
Marienbad that the Archduke and his wife had been
killed in Bosnia. It was Sunday, a day when there
are no newspapers, and but little communication with
the outside world in this quiet spot. The rumor
seemed like a sinister shadow without substance. We went out at
once and tried to find authentic news, and at six o'clock came the
official bulletin confirming the tragedy. As a crime, it belongs
to the category of modern monstrosities, which are the product of
materialism and infidelity. These assassins spring into being from
such hotbeds of atheism as the Ecole La'ique of France, and its
offspring Escuela Moderna of Ferrer in Spain. They all pos-
sess youth and intelligence ; they all despise religion and authority.
The miscreant who tried to kill the young King of Spain and his
bride, and the monsters who both tried and succeeded yesterday in
murdering the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, belong to
the same type. One of the assassins at Sarajevo, yesterday, is
nineteen, and the other scarcely older, and a " student." Their
victims are a man and his wife, whose deep love for each other, and
devotion to their young children, have made their home a model
for every Christian household in Austria.
Everybody knows the story of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's
marriage. He has proved since that time that he did not enter into
it merely out of the proverbial " Hapsburg obstinacy;" nor was it
a mad caprice of passion. It was on both sides distinctly a love
marriage. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was captivated, not
only by his wife's unusual beauty, but by her brilliant mind, and the
Christian zeal and integrity of her character. He made great sac-
rifices to marry her, which many people deplored on account of his
future position. The world in which he lived also judged severely
the bride whom he had chosen; not taking at all into account the
1914.] THE RECENT TRAGEDY IN BOSNIA 675
fact that she, too, had made sacrifices even in marrying above her
own rank. The Countess Sophie Chotek could not become an Arch-
duchess, because the Chotek family had never been what is called
" mediatized."
I pause here to explain the meaning of the term. In the 'Alma-
nack de Gotha the houses of princes or counts ("Maisons Prin-
cieres ou Comtales "), who hold their titles from " the State of the
Holy Empire," are placed in the Second Part (the Third Part
being Dukes and Princes unmediatized} ; and all the families
in this Second Part have the privilege to espouse royalty in an
equal marriage, where the wife takes the rank of her husband.
The Choteks who are Bomischer Uradel (which means ancient
nobility of Bohemia), do not belong to the list of "mediatized"
families. The distinction is a technical one.
No one looking at the question dispassionately can fail to see
that for a beautiful and high-spirited young woman, there were
many galling slights to be faced in becoming the morganatic wife
even of a future Emperor. But it was an ideal marriage, which
strengthened the character of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
brought to his wife ample scope for a wide Christian influence, and
gave reason for hope that Austria would acquire new vitality
and strength under a new leader, when her well-beloved Emperor
should have gone to his rest.
All this confidence in good omens was the outlook in Austria
two days ago. To-day there is sorrow and mourning. Black
banners are streaming everywhere from the houses, and people
wander aimlessly about the forest paths and around the vacant
music stands, speaking in low voices. The august victims were
firm and steadfast in their Catholic faith, strong in their love for
each other, and in their death they are united.
When we first came to Vienna in December, 1902, the Arch-
duke had been married nearly three years, but his wife had been
leading a retired life, busied with the care of two babies, born in
1901 and 1902. The Archduke was at that time kept much in
the background, owing to the persistent dislike of some of the
upper functionaries of that period. He was prevented from taking
the Emperor's place even at unimportant ceremonies, and from
appearing at public gatherings. He was little known to the people,
and there was prejudice against him (stimulated by the foreign
676 THE RECENT TRAGEDY IN BOSNIA [Aug.,
press, which gave maliciously and designedly false accounts of
him), both at home and abroad. My first glimpse of him was in
January, 1903, at a Court ball. On that occasion the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand seemed sullen and ill-humored. I believe now
that much of this taciturnity and bitterness came from resentment
at his wife's exclusion.
In promoting the Princess Hohenberg, the Emperor was ob-
liged to go slowly, for fear of wounding the susceptibilities of
ladies who did not wish to have her precede them. However, her
attractive personality and her devotion to her husband and her
children ended by overcoming prejudices. Besides, the situation
was really abnormal, and had to be mitigated. The Archduke and
his wife could have no social entertainments at all in Vienna. In
June, 1905, the Princess Hohenberg received the title of " Durch-
laucht," and afterwards they began to give small breakfast parties
at the beautiful Palais Belveder, where they lived when they were
not in the country. It was soon after this promotion that we in-
vited the Archduke and his wife to breakfast at the embassy.
The only other guests were Prince and Princess Edouard Liech-
tenstein and Prince and Princess Lobkonitz. These two ladies had
higher rank than the Archduke's wife; and yielded their position
to her for the occasion. It was the first time that she had been
so honored. She was radiantly beautiful, and the Archduke was
like a happy boy out of school.
I saw the Archduke quite often during the four years that we
spent in Vienna. I have never seen a happier family. It makes
one's heart ache to think of the orphan children in the beautiful
castle of Konopischt, with its marvelous flower garden, waiting for
the mother and father, who went away less than a week ago, strong
in health and happiness, never to come back again. The last time
that I saw the Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg, was at the
Emperor's reception at the Hofburg Palace, at the time of the
Eucharistic Congress at Vienna, September, 1912. The Emperor
was alert, genial, and seemed especially happy that evening. The
great procession of the Holy Eucharist was to take place the next
day: a hundred and fifty thousand Catholics. It had been or-
ganized by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Prince Edouard
Liechtenstein. The procession was to march through the streets
of Vienna, amid five hundred thousand spectators (which it did in
a pouring deluge of rain, without a flaw or an accident to mar its
perfect order). That night the Archduke showed himself very
1914-] THE RECENT TRAGEDY IN BOSNIA 677
happy, for his beloved wife was also present at the reception, making
the tour of the hall with the five or six Archduchesses present.
I never saw her again.
Last year I wrote an article for the April number of the
North American Review, called The Awakening of Austria. In it
I spoke of the great part which Austria is destined to play in the
cause of religion and law and order. Thank God ! it still has that
enormous task before it, in the face of political trickery and treach-
ery. Whoever may be at the head, it is still the one great Catholic
power of Europe. But at the time I wrote, there was every pros-
pect that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be one day the
Emperor of Austria. I wrote of his strength and firmness, and
of his home life, where he was an example of what a Christian
husband and father should be. I speak of this, because I wish to
transcribe a letter which the Duchess of Hohenberg wrote to me
when I sent her the magazine. It is written in English, and gives
an idea of her charming personality and simple friendliness.
DEAR MRS. BELLAMY STORER:
It was so very kind of you to send me the last number of the
North American Review, and I can't tell you enough how very
interested I am in the publication sent : being the most true and
well-judged opinion for our beloved Austria.
The way you speak of the Archduke makes me quite proud,
and I must tell you that you sound my inmost heart feelings.
I am so happy that you were present at the Eucharistic Con-
gress. It was a beautiful sight, and one felt so happy seeing
how desirous all nations and subjects were to worship in the
Catholic faith!
Hoping that you are very well, and thanking you again
most heartily for your remembrance now and for the New
Year, I beg you to believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
SOPHIE HOHENBERG.
I write these few pages as a tribute to two people who have
been much talked about, and sometimes willfully misrepresented,
whose high character and courage deserve admiration, and whose
death is a great loss to Austria, and to the whole of Christendom.
Marienbad, June 29, 1914.
IRew Boohs*
MORE JOY. By Rt. Rev. P. W. von Keppler, Bishop of Rotten-
burg. Adapted into English from the edition of 191 1, by Rev.
Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
" There is more optimism," writes Bishop Keppler, " a stronger
affirmation of the value of life, in Catholic Christianity, than in
all the rest of the world." He fully proves this thesis in a devout
book, which breathes on every page the spirit of holy and super-
natural joy. Joylessness and despair, he tells us, characterize our
present age, and are dominant in the life of the people. Modern
culture is mostly material development, and not true culture of the
spirit. The overrating of knowledge and intellect at the cost of
will and character is making countless multitudes unhappy. Is it
not strange that with all our modern progress, the rate of suicide
in Europe has been increasing by four hundred per cent during the
past fifty years, while the population increased sixty per cent ? The
good Bishop deplores the factories and machinery of the industrial
revolution, the excess of external amusements, the art and literature
which diminish joy instead of .increasing it, the disappearance of
the German folk-song, and the irreligious and unchristian spirit
of the age.
There is only one remedy for modern pessimism. " We must
go back to Christian faith, back to healthy folk-life, to religious
earnestness, to humility and simplicity of heart, to plain, noble, pure
habits of thought, to religion, to the Church, to Christ." The
world is utterly mistaken in its belief that austere Christian morality,
the commandment of self -conquest, temperance, mortification, mod-
eration, fasting, interfere with true happiness. " They are really
no more hostile to joy than the gardener is hostile to the rose,
when in spring and autumn he cuts and trims the bush."
Art, education, labor, the religious life, the priestly ministry
all must be dominated by the spirit of Christian joy, or else this world
of ours will be governed by materialism, greed, discontent, shallow-
ness, and sin. The essential characteristic of a saint is joyfulness,
and the author proves this beyond question in a chapter, entitled
" A Gallery of Joyful People." All the saints, according to an un-
known mediaeval mystic, "have within them the source of all bliss
and joy; and no sadness can enter into them, for the Eternal Word,
the source of bliss and joy to all the angels and saints, penetrates
1914.] NEW BOOKS 679
them as it does the saints of heaven." St. Teresa had no patience
with people " who think it is all over with devotion, if they relax
themselves ever so little." St. Philip Neri loved to romp and play
joyously with children, saying to those who wondered at this pa-
tience, " I should be glad even to let them chop wood on my back, if
they only kept free from sin." St. Francis de Sales used to say:
" A saint who is sorrowful is a sorry saint."
There is a brightness and attractiveness about this volume, that
will banish all sadness and melancholy, as the morning sun drives
away the gloom of the night. So many German books of value,
v. g., Streit's Atlas Hierarchicus, Donat's Freedom of Science, have
been poorly translated of late, that we were more than pleased to
meet with so perfect a rendering of the German original. Had
Father McSorley omitted the author's name on the title page, we
would never have imagined that his work was a translation.
MOTHER MABEL DIGBY. A Biography of the Superior General
of the Society of the Sacred Heart, 1835-1911. By Anne
Pollen. With a Preface by Cardinal Bourne. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $3.50 net.
In February, 1853, a troup of musical mountaineers from the
Pyrenees came to Montpellier. They traveled from city to city,
out of devotion, singing only in the churches. Their chant was
peculiar; half the band accompanied the voices of the rest by a
humming sound made through closed lips, which produced the effect
of a musical instrument. A number of Catholic girls invited Mabel
Digby, then a Protestant, to hear the mountaineers sing Benediction
in the Cathedral of Montpellier. What follows we will put in the
author's own words :
Mabel sat down at once defiantly amid the kneeling congre-
gation. Her sister Geraldine was at her side She re-
mained impassive. The chants ended; the priest slowly re-
moved the monstrance from the throne ; the throng bowed low.
Mabel, still seated, threw back her head haughtily as if in pro-
test ; the bell tinkled as the Blessed Sacrament was now raised
in Benediction. In an instant Mabel Digby had slipped from
her seat on to her knees, and flung her arms across her breast
with a clutch that gripped both shoulders. Her face seemed
to be illumined; her tearful eyes were fixed upon the Host
until the triple blessing was complete, and was replaced in the
tabernacle. Then she sank crouching to the ground, whilst
the last short song was intoned. Her head remained bent and
680 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
immovable For fifteen minutes she did not interrupt this
strange trance. Placing her hand upon her sister's arm she
said a few moments later : " Geraldine, I am a Catholic. Jesus.
Christ has looked at me. I shall change no more."
A few years afterwards, despite the opposition of her parents
and her own weak health, she entered the Sacred Heart Convent at
Marmoutier as a novice. In 1859 she made her vows, and
in 1866 she became Superior of the convent. During the Franco-
Prussian war she opened a hospital for the wounded soldiers,
assisting the surgeons at every operation, and dressing the wounds
daily with extraordinary skill. In 1872 she was sent to England
as Superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton.
In a very short time she transformed the formless dwelling into a
complete and highly organized monastery, with separate quarters,
workrooms, and study rooms for novices and professed. The
boarding school annexed was also supplied with all the elaborate
requirements demanded in a secondary school after the modern
system. In 1874 she inaugurated a training college at Wands-
worth, and established new houses at Brighton and in Ireland.
In 1892 Mother Digby left England to succeed Mother de
Sartorius as Assistant-General. In 1895 she was elected Superior
General. During the next fifteen years she had to fight most bitter
persecution at the hands of the French government. The story of
her fight against secularization, together with her determination to
open a new house and school for everyone closed in France, is the
most interesting portion of this charming life.
As Cardinal Bourne says in his preface : " The life of Mother
Digby causes to live before our eyes the inner organization of a
great Catholic religious society. It depicts for us one who in any
position could have taken a leading place. Above all it shows
us a noble, courageous woman with all her great natural gifts
strengthened and enhanced by the divine gifts of grace which she
strove to use with all her energy."
SOME COUNSELS OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL. To which is
appended the thoughts of Mademoiselle le Gras. (First Su-
perior of the Sisters of Charity.) Translated and selected by
E. K. Sanders. London : Heath, Cranton and Ouseley, Ltd.
35 cents net.
This very practical little book should be of use to many per-
sons, and it may be especially recommended to busy people, for every
1914.] NEW BOOKS 681
paragraph, and sometimes even a single sentence, will give food for
a day's spiritual reading, and the meditation and resolution which
should follow it. Among the subjects treated of are " Humility,"
"Prayer," the "Spirit of Service," the "Daily Difficulty," and
many others. These counsels, while originally addressed to the
Companies of Mission Priests and the Sisters of Charity under the
direction of St. Vincent de Paul, are equally useful to us at the
present day, and as the translator's note reminds us, " their signifi-
cance does not depend on place, period, or condition, but still has
application here and now." In the chapter on " Humility " we read
the following:
During the last few days the subject of my meditation has
been the lowliness of the life our Lord chose to lead upon earth.
And I have seen that He cared so much that it should be lowly
and despised by others, that He made Himself conform to it,
even to this point that though He was the Wisdom of the
Eternal Father incarnate He chose a method of preaching
that was far humbler and more familiar than that used by any
of His Apostles And that He chose to allow His own
sermons to be far less effective than those of His Apostles.
We see in the Gospels that His Apostles and Disciples were
conquered almost one by one, and then with labor and diffi-
culty, but the first of St. Peter's sermons converted five thou-
sand. This, I believe, has given me greater knowledge and
understanding of the wonderful humility of the Son of God
than any other consideration has ever done.
In the chapter on the " Daily Difficulty " we find this passage
on patience, written to one who complains that she can bear trials
from outside, but does not expect that her own sisters would vex and
annoy her.
Alas, from whom do we suffer if not from those with whom
we live? Is it from people a long way off from those we
have never seen and never shall see? From whom and by
whom did our Lord suffer if not by His Apostles, His Dis-
ciples, and the people among whom He lived, and who were
God's people I am well aware that one may have a nat-
ural aversion that one cannot help. In the world people often
give in to these, but a true Christian ought to struggle against
them.
Other passages appealing to every variety of reader might
be chosen, but we will conclude with the general recommendation
that all who read it will find it helpful, and that their devotion to that
great Saint of the poor, St. Vincent de Paul, will be much increased.
682 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
LUTHER. By Hartmann Grisar, S.J., Professor at the University
of Innsbruck. Authorized translation from the German by E.
M. Lamond. Edited by Luigi Cappadelta. Vol. III. St.
Louis: B. Herder. $3.25 net.
The six chapters of the third volume of Father Grisar's Life
of Luther deal with the " Organization and Public Position of the
New Church;" the "Divine Mission and its Manifestations;"
" Glimpses of a Reformer's Morals;" " Luther and Melanchthon ;"
" Luther's Relations with Zwingli, Carlstadt, Bugenhagen," and
" Attempts at Union in View of the Proposed Council."
In his first chapter, Father Grisar proves conclusively that the
modern school of Protestant unbelief, which professes to base itself
on the earlier Luther, is utterly unjustified in making him a repre-
sentative of that form of unbelief tinged with religion which is
their own ideal.
As a matter of fact, Luther, had he been logical, should have
arrived at this conclusion, but he preferred to turn aside, and
repudiated and embraced the profound contradiction involved
in the union of that right of private judgment he had pro-
claimed with the admission of binding dogmas History
has to take Luther as he really was; he demanded the fullest
freedom to oppose the Church and her respresentatives, who
claimed the right to enact laws concerning faith and morals,
but he certainly was not disposed to hear of any such
freedom, where belief and revelation or the acceptance of God's
commandments was concerned.
From 1522 onwards he proclaimed the principle of freedom
of interpretation rather more cautiously, and no longer appealed
in so unqualified a manner to the universal priesthood and the
sovereignty of the congregation in matters of religion. In the
beginning of his revolt, Luther had imagined that the new order
of things could be brought about amongst his followers merely
by his declaiming against outward forms, and that a new church
would spring up within the old one, minus a hierarchy and minus
all " false" doctrine and holiness-by-works. From the year 1523
onward he held the congregational ideal, i. e., the congregations
were to be self-supporting, once the new teaching had been intro-
duced among them. All were to be independent, and capable of
choosing their own spiritual overseers. Among these, superin-
tendents were to be selected, and they in turn were to be assisted
by lay visitors. Each member of the congregation was to have
1914.] MEW BOOKS 683
the right of judging doctrine and of correcting the preacher, should
he err, even before the whole assembly. But Luther soon found
this scheme utterly impracticable, and gradually this phantom of
a congregationalist church developed into a State Church, i. e.,
a National Church as a State institution, with a sovereign at its
head.
He quickly realized that the gain to be derived from the
vast amount of ecclesiastical property, would act as a powerful in-
centive with the secular princes to induce them to open their lands
to his innovations. He considered the seizure of church property
the just and natural result of the preaching of the new evangel.
Before 1530 we frequently find Luther speaking strongly
against any conflict with the Emperor, but after the Diet of Augs-
burg, he began to appeal to the national spirit, although he realized
that this meant internal dissension and bloodshed. He was very
fond of professing, in his war on Pope and Church, to be the cham-
pion of the Germans against Rome's oppression. His watchword
was " Germany against Italian Tyranny," although as a matter
of fact he spoke merely in the name of a fraction of the German
nation. The Germans who refused to apostatize considered it
a grievous insult that German nationalism should thus be identified
with the new heresy.
Answering the question, Was Luther a typical German ? Father
Grisar writes :
Specifically German characteristics were certainly not lack-
ing in Luther He was inured to fatigue, simple in his ap-
pearance and habits, persevering and enduring; in intercourse
with his friends he was frank, hearty and unaffected; with
them he was sympathetic, amiable and fond of a joke; he did
not shrink from telling them the truth even when thereby
offence might be given ; towards the princes who were well dis-
posed to him and his party he behaved with an easy freedom
of manner, not cringingly or with any exaggerated deference.
In a sense all these are German traits. But. . . .his perseverance
degenerated into obstinacy and defiance, his laborious endur-
ance into a passionate activity which overtaxed his powers, and
he became combative and quarrelsome, and found his greatest
pleasure in the discomfiture of his opponents; his frankness
made way for the coarsest criticism. The anger against the
Church which carried him along found expression in the worst
sorts of insults, and when his violence had aroused bitter feel-
ings, he believed, or at least alleged, he was merely acting in
684 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
the interests of uprightness and love of truth. Had he pre-
served his heritage of good German qualities, perfected them,
and devoted them to the service of a better cause, he might
have become the acknowledged spokesman of all Germans
everywhere.
In his second chapter, Father Grisar shows Luther intoxicated
by the increase of his followers, and by the unexpected success
of his preaching. In the most violent language, Luther frequently
laid claim to a divine authorization for his new evangel, although
he gave no proofs save his own ipse dixit. Father Grisar writes :
The assumption of an extraordinary call offers an insuper-
able difficulty No extraordinary attestation on the part of
heaven is forthcoming, nor any miracle which might have con-
firmed Luther's doctrine ; God's witness on behalf of His mes-
senger by signs of prophecies such as those of Christ, of the
Apostles, and of many of the Saints was lacking in Luther's
case, and so was that sanctity of life to be expected of a
divinely commissioned teacher whose mission it is to bring men
to the truth.
Chapter III. discusses Luther's moral character. Father Grisar
calls attention to his want of charity; his censoriousness ; his pride
and arrogance ; his utter disdain for obedience ; his irascibility ; his
jealousy ; his want of seriousness in treating of the most important
questions; his childish and womanish outbursts; his novel con-
ception of sin and penance; his lack of missionary zeal; his coarse
and obscene language.
In some sixty odd pages Father Grisar proves ad nauseam
that in the matter of licentiousness of language, Luther stands out
as a giant apart. Many of his utterances are so obscene that the
translator is obliged for decency's sake to leave them in the original
Latin or German. Father Grisar shows that it is absolutely unjust
to defend Luther on the plea that such language was quite the
usual thing in Luther's day.
Chapter IV. discusses the character and influence of Melanch-
thon. Many Catholic contemporaries believe that he did more
harm to the Church by his prudence and apparent moderation,
than Luther by all his storming. His soft-spoken manner and
advocacy of peace, went hand in hand with an intense hatred of
everything Catholic, and a most bitter prejudice in favor of the
new preaching. His attempts at mediation at the Diet of Augsburg
were due to his ignorance, and his prejudice against Catholic
1914.] NEW BOOKS 685
theology. More than once we find him guilty of dissimulation, and
even George Ellinger, his latest Protestant biographer, admits that
he was a weak and not an entirely upright character.
The final chapters deal with Luther's relations with some of the
other reformers, and the attempts at union in view of the proposed
council.
THE DEAF; THEIR POSITION IN SOCIETY. By Harry Best
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. $2.00 net.
" The object of the present study of the deaf," says the author
in his preface, " is to consider primarily the attitude of society or
the state in America towards them, the duties it has recognized
in respect to them, the status it has created for them, and the extent
and forms, as well as the adequacy and correctness, of this treat-
ment." His method of approach is not by the way of medicine,
law, education or psychology; but of sociology. As he puts it
himself : " We regard the deaf as certain components of the state
who demand classification and attention in its machinery of organ-
ization."
Part I. discusses " The Position of the Deaf in Society." It
treats of their numbers in the United States; their means of com-
munication; the causes of deafness, the methods of prevention
and cure; their legal, economic and social status, and the attitude
of the public towards them.
Part II. treats of "The Education of the Deaf." After a
brief account of the history of their education abroad and in the
United States, the author gives a list of private and public schools
for the deaf, their cost of maintenance, and their methods of instruc-
tion.
It is the most complete manual on the subject that we have
in English, and will prove invaluable to the physician, the educator
and the social worker.
THE FREEDOM OF SCIENCE. By Joseph Donat, S.J., Pro-
fessor at the University of Innsbruck. New York: Joseph
F. Wagner. $2.50 net.
In this volume Father Donat answers fully the common objec-
tion that the Catholic Church is obscurantist, the enemy of freedom
of research and of true scientific progress. He treats his theme
in five sections, viz., " The Freedom of Science and its Philosophical
Basis," " The Freedom of Research and Faith," " The Liberal
686 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
Freedom of Research," " The Freedom of Teaching," and " Theol-
ogy."
Incidentally he answers many an objection, such as the tyranny
of the Catholic Church in condemning Galileo, in promulgating
the Index, setting forth the Syllabus, condemning modernism and
the like. The book is scholarly, kindly in tone, thorough, full of
apt citations. It is a pity it has been poorly translated.
WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST. By William de Morgan. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.60 net.
When hundreds of the present-day novelists are buried in de-
served oblivion, William de Morgan will be remembered as a classic
of the early twentieth century. One must be possessed of a great
deal of patience to read through his lengthy nine hundred page char-
acter studies, but if he loves either Dickens or Thackeray, he will
read de Morgan, who combines the good qualities of both. The
plot tells of the enforced separation of twin sisters, Maisie and
Phoebe, for over fifty years, owing to the lying letter of Maisie's
convict husband. They are brought together in a most wonderful
way, the heroine Gwen playing the part of fairy godmother. The
hero Adrian, " a St. Francis behind a mask of Voltaire," is the only
character who voices the irreverent agnosticism that comes out
now and again in our author's works.
THE AGE OF ERASMUS. Lectures delivered in the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge. By P. S. Allen, M.A., Fellow of
Merton College, Oxford. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.
$1.50 net.
These lightly-written papers by the editor of the fine edition of
Erasmus' letters now in process of publication by the Oxford Uni-
versity Press, will delight all those who are interested in Erasmus
and his work. At the same time they are charming sketches of Ren-
aissance personalities, more especially those of Teutonic race.
One main idea. grows as we read the separate papers, and that is
how great a rivalry in ideas and difference in temper gradually arose
between the northern advocates of the New Learning and those
who lived on the other side of the Alps. This rivalry indeed ap-
pears to have been one of the chief causes which led to the re-
ligious differences of the Reformation period.
To say the truth, there is not very much direct reference to
Erasmus himself, but we are all the more grateful to get what is
1914.] NEW BOOKS 687
much more difficult of attainment, valuable but provokingly short
sketches of so many of the persons and places connected with that
great man's career. We have interesting sketches of John Wesel,
Hegius, who taught Erasmus at the great school at Deventer; Ru-
dolph Langden and Antony Vrye, all of them at one time or another
welcome guests of the Cistercian Abbot of Adwert, Henry of Rees.
Then follow three chapters on the schools, monasteries, and uni-
versities of the time, with delightful notices of various scholars,
who gave up everything and devoted themselves entirely to the pur-
suit of learning. We have a chapter on Erasmus' New Testament,
and the critical works which followed it, and after that two or three
most illuminating papers on contemporary habits of thought and
morality. The volume concludes with three essays on Pilgrimages,
the Transalpine Renaissance and the Bohemian Brethren.
AMERICA THROUGH THE SPECTACLES OF AN ORIENTAL
DIPLOMAT. By Wu Tingfang, LL.D. New York: Fred-
erick A. Stokes Co. $1.60 net.
While Chinese Ambassador to Washington a few years ago,
Wu Tingfang, one of the most popular members of the diplomatic
corps, was invited everywhere, and his kindly and witty after-
dinner talks were much in demand. After a good deal of per-
suasion, he has been induced to write his impressions of America.
He speaks in a gossipy and rather superficial manner of American
education, business methods, women, manners, government, free-
dom, sports, theatres, and the like.
One reads the book with pleasure, but he who thinks will not
accept it at its face value.
MAXIMILIAN IN MEXICO. The Story of the French Inter-
vention (1861-1867). By Percy F. Martin, F.R.G.S. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $5.25 net.
A reviewer in the London Spectator has declared that " Mr.
Martin deserves credit for being an industrious collector of ma-
terials, and that he has a liking for such details as please the readers
of society papers." His pretentious volume of over four hundred
and fifty pages tells in picturesque fashion the attempt of Maxi-
milian to carve out an empire for himself in the Mexico of the
sixties. On every page Mr. Martin betrays his prejudices against
the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, the Empress Eugenie of
France, Pope Pius IX., Cardinal Antonelli, and Archbishop Labas-
688 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
tida y Davalos of Mexico. Without the slightest proof, he speaks
of the unreasoning jealousy and animosity of the Emperor Francis
Joseph, who " witnessed the departure of Maximilian with uncon-
cealed satisfaction." He writes of the Empress Eugenie as a merci-
less opponent, deaf, like Napoleon III., to all feelings of humanity
and a sense of honor. He calls Cardinal Antonelli " a traitor,
a thief and a sinister reactionary," who persuaded the obstinate
and intolerant Pius IX. to ignore the pleadings of the Empress
Charlotte. He styles the able Archbishop of Mexico an unscrupu-
lous and scheming cleric, who " possessed most of those evil quali-
ties which have caused the artifice of priestcraft to stink in the
nostrils of honest-minded men." Such utterances prove conclu-
sively that Mr. Martin is not an historian, but a pamphleteer, who
writes for an anti-Catholic, prejudiced English public.
Mr. Martin declares that the Monroe Doctrine was in the be-
ginning (1823) a strong factor in the establishment and the
enforcement of peace and order among the turbulent Latin States,
but that within a few years it became inoperative, because the South
American republics soon became able to manage their own affairs.
It was not insisted on, he asserts, in 1835, when England and France
conjointly established a successful naval blockade along the entire
coast of Argentina; in 1841 when England seized the island of
Ruaton off the coast of Honduras; nor in 1862 when France landed
her troops upon Mexican territory, and kept them there for five
years. He denounces the United States for her unjust Mexican
War of 1848, which resulted in the acquiring of 875,000 miles
of territory. He finds fault with Mr. Seward's opposition to
Maximilian, and his sympathy with the " cruel and vindictive "
Liberals, General Zaragoza and Diaz.
On his own showing, Maximilian lacked all the qualities of a
successful ruler, especially in such a turbulent State as Mexico.
He was without military genius, he knew nothing of finance, and he
alienated the Church by his compromise with the anticlericals.
THE MASKED WAR. By William J. Burns. New York : George
H. Doran Co. $1.50 jiet.
Many brain-workers take delight in reading detective stories
in their hours of ease. Mr. Burns, the best detective in the United
States, has written a true detective story that far outstrips the wild-
est imaginings of a Chesterton or a Conan Doyle. The Masked
War publishes for the first time the evidence he obtained against
1914.] NEW BOOKS 689
John J. McNamara, James B. McNamara, and the conspirators of
the Union of the International Bridge and Structural Iron Workers,
who carried on the dynamite outrages during the years 1905-1910.
These criminals caused the death of at least one hundred persons,
their last crime being the wrecking of the office of the Los Angeles
Times, which resulted in the death of twenty-one persons.
It took great courage to run to earth these desperate criminals,
for the labor men of the country were convinced of their innocence
up to the very time of the McNamara's plea of guilty in the court
of Los Angeles. The earnest backing of the President, Mr. Taft,
who was animated solely by his love of the public good, encouraged
Mr. Burns to see his task through, although he received hundreds
of anonymous letters threatening his life. Every true friend of
labor ought to read this absorbing volume.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH THEOLOGY IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY, 1800-1860. By Vernon F. Storr,
M.A. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $3.50 net.
This is an excellent volume to put into the hands of a High
Church Anglican, who needs to be impressed with the ultra-Prot-
estant spirit of the Establishment. Canon Storr, the Examining
Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, is extreme Broad
Church, with no sympathy for the unintellectual Evangelicals or
" the forces of ignorance and traditionalism " which rule also among
the Tractarians and their descendants. " The Evangelicals," he
tells us, " have no philosophy of history or religion. They have no
conception of theology as a discipline essentially related to the
work of science and philosophy." " The spirit of historical
criticism can come to no terms with authority as the Tractarians
conceived it. The results of modern inquiry into the origin of the
Church are opposed to the rigid theory of Apostolical Succession,
and the oposition will- make itself increasingly felt."
His idea of the Christian Church is decidedly vague. " The
true Church," he says, " ideally regarded, is humanity indwelt by
Christ Any society, however organized, which accepts the teach-
ing of Christ, and looks to Him for life and inspiration, is entitled
to be called part of the Catholic Church." Of course he thinks that
the historical method had utterly destroyed all notion of a dictatorial
authority in either Pope or Council. " The historical method rec-
ognized the principle of authority, but in the form of the authority
of an organic reason, whose verdicts are themselves constantly
VOL. xcix. 44
690 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
liable to revision in the light of growing knowledge and expe-
rience."
How a man can call himself a Christian and hold that " the
only true authority is the authority of the common reason and ex-
perience of the race," is utterly beyond us.
DODO'S DAUGHTER. By E. F. Benson. New York : The Cen-
tury Co. $1.35 net.
The author of Dodo in 1893 shocked many a reader. Dodo's
Daughter may not shock some readers of 1914, simply because
they have grown accustomed to the exploitation of immorality.
Dodo's daughter is one of those ultra-modern girls, who defy
analysis or explanation. She is full of egoism and immoral-
ity; she is irreligious and pagan to the core; she is as unreason-
able as a spoilt child, and as unreliable as an April day. She is
superficially interested in many intellectual and artistic matters,
but without depth ; she will earnestly pursue any fad of the moment,
but will set it aside mercilessly, once it demands the slightest sacri-
fice.
Nadine at first rejects her true lover, and promises to
marry a _ modern " exquisite," just for a lark. But her
heart did she have one? is found at last, when she happens to
witness her disconsolate lover gallantly rescue a lad from shipwreck.
The story aims too evidently at recording the coarse sayings and
doings of the English fast set, so that the reader is bored rather
than interested. We are weary, too, of the obstetric theme which
should be left entirely to medical books. We cannot recommend
this story to our readers.
A NEW SCHOOL OF GREGORIAN CHANT. By Rev. Dom
Dominic Johner, O.S.B., of Beuron Abbey. Translated from
the third German edition by Rev. W. A. Hofler. New York :
Fr. Pustet & Co. $1.00 net.
This primer of Gregorian chant is not written for the profes-
sional musician, but for beginners, to enable them to render the
chant in a worthy manner and in a really artistic style ; " more es-
pecially," as the author says in his introduction, " to train them
for the highly important duties in connection with the liturgy,
and to enkindle their enthusiasm for it."
The aim of Part I. is to teach the correct rendering of the
chant. In this edition exercises have been inserted after the rules,
I9I4-] NEW BOOKS 691
to afford an opportunity of immediate practice of what has been
studied. The chapter on Psalmody has been completely rewritten,
and due attention has been paid to the latest decisions regarding
monosyllables and Hebrew words. Part II. is intended to give both
teacher and more advanced pupils an insight into the more artistic
side of the chant. It gives a short history of plain chant, sets forth
clearly the theory of the modes, explains the notation of the
netims, and adds a few words on the rendering of the chant and
the proper kind of organ accompaniment. The book is beautifully
printed and well arranged.
BLESSED MARGARET MARY. By Monsignor Demimuid.
Translated by A. M. Buchanan, M.A. The Saints Series.
New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00.
Monsignor Demimuid has written an excellent life of
Blessed Margaret Mary, and the origin of the devotion of the Sa-
cred Heart of Jesus. The first " Great Revelation " was on De-
cember 27, 1673. It was a time when the greatest corruption pre-
vailed in the highest circles in France, and when the faith was most
bitterly attacked by Jansenism, well described as " Protestantism
ashamed of itself." No more efficacious and suitable remedy could
have been found for these two evils than the Sacred Heart Devotion.
THE VOCATION OF WOMAN. By Mrs. Archibald Colquhoun.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The writer of this book has had rather unusual opportunities
for contact with different types of women. Her girlhood, after
school days, was spent in London studios among those who were
learning or practising various vocations, and later, when working in
the east and south of London, among others whose interests were
of social or philanthropic character. A home circle in an old-
fashioned country town provided yet another outlook on life, by no
means the least instructive, and, after marriage, travel in many parts
of the world led to a wide acquaintance among people chiefly
interested in politics and world affairs.
Her opposition to the woman suffrage movement in recent
years brought her in conflict with feminism, and led to the study
on which the present book is founded. She has endeavored to find
out the reason of the discontent that as a sex feeling, she believes,
is really confined to the educated woman.
We are glad to find her denounce the immoral views of many
692 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
modern feminists on marriage, divorce, race suicide, and their utter
lack of reticence in discussing the pathology of sex questions. She
says : " As a sacrament, administered in the most solemn way, and
typifying the union of Christ and His Church, Christian marriage
has undoubtedly proved the most binding form of union that the
world has seen. But indissolubly connected with it has been that
principle, now threatened in all religious communities save the Ro-
man Catholic, that those whom God has joined together man can-
not put asunder." " The growing tendency to relax the strin-
gency of the marriage tie constitutes not only a serious menace to the
social position of woman, but a spiritual retrogression."
We do not approve of all the statements in this suggestive
volume, but we commend her main thesis, which stands for reform
and not for revolution in the political and economic status of women.
BACK TO HOLY CHURCH. By Dr. Albert Von Ruville. Trans-
lated by G. Schoetensack. Edited by Monsignor R. H. Ben-
son. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 60 cents.
We call attention to this new edition of Dr. Von Ruville's
Batk to Holy Church, which caused such a stir in Germany at its
appearance in 1911. As the author says in his preface, it is "a
simple word picture of the image under which the Catholic Church
represents herself to me through experience, observation, and
study." It is an excellent book to put in the hands of an earnest
inquirer into Catholic claims.
THROUGH OTHER EYES. By Amy McLaren. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
Amy McLaren has written a wholesome, old-fashioned love
story. Maisie, the irresponsible and spoiled squire's daughter, is
saved at the end from marrying the villain " with the cracky laugh,
who would have dissected the morals of his friends as callously as
he would the antiquity of the chair he was sitting in." Sunshine
is the angel of the tale, who makes the heroine realize her bitterness
of speech, her hostility to her step-mother who was yearning for
a little affection, and her love for " Johnie," the brave and the true.
It is a good book to read of a hot summer's day, when the brain is
not equal to a problem novel.
D ACK HOME is the title given to an "old-fashioned poem " of
*-* about fifty little pages, written by Charles Phillips, editor of
the San Francisco Monitor. (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons.
I9I4-] ^^ BOOKS 693
64 cents postpaid.) Besides this poem in blank verse, we find
between the covers of this slender book, three rhymed poems much
inferior in merit. But Back Home is composed with spirit, and
abounds in goodness. It shows a fertile imagination, and withal
the poetic gift of transfiguring homely objects and familiar scenes
by the rare magic of genuine fancy and elevated diction. The Tack
of Cowper is another sample of this. It cannot give, however, the
all-round satisfaction of a poem conceived and cast upon a Catholic
page in the midst of a Catholic atmosphere. Not that Back Home
is a religious poem, or that it craftily insinuates spiritual advice, or
fails in open sympathy with every human interest; far from it,
for in one breath it mingles rosary beads, Shakespeare, small boys,
and heaven :
And if, sometimes,
I told my rosary beads with thoughts far off
In English lanes or on the bright Rialto,
'Twas but a child's rejoicing discovery
Of fairy worlds that He prayed heaven to open.
Piety need be no hindrance to poetic feeling, nor an emo-
tional son who thrills at the thought of mother be wanting in the
obsequium rationabile.
And in our hearts we carry
The greatest heritage that man may claim
Sonship to a great mother, a good father !
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
L'Objet Integral de I'Apologetique. By E. A. Poulpiquet, O.P. (Paris:
Bloucf et Cie. 3/rj.) The Abbe Poulpiquet assures us that he has no intention
of writing a manual of apologetics. His purpose is to describe, according to the
principles of St. Thomas, the proper scope and the proper method of apologetics.
He declares that the science of apologetics to-day is in bad repute in scientific
circles, because many apologists have no clear idea of its object, identifying it
with fundamental theology, philosophy, and Sacred Scripture, and, again, because
many philosophers are reckless in their presentation of proofs without value,
guilty in their not grasping the real force of an opponent's objections, and in
their use of faulty logic. The volume is divided into two parts, "Extrinsic
Apologetics," which treats of the idea of credibility, its motives, and the evi-
dence of a divine revelation ; and " Intrinsic Apologetics," which discusses its
necessity, method and objective worth. We recommend this book highly to all
students of philosophy, for it is well thought out, dignified in tone, and eminently
fair.
Le Droit Ecclesiastique Matrimonial des Calvinistes Franfais. (Librairie
de la Societe du Recueil Sirey. Larose et Tenin.) M. Faurey, in his introduc-
tion, discusses briefly but accurately the laws of the Catholic Church on betrothal
694 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
and marriage. He then traces the origin of the Protestant legislation on the
subject to Luther and Calvin, who were the first to deny the sacramental
character of the marriage bond. Most of the volume deals with the legislation
of the French Protestant synods on marriage, its impediments, divorce and the
like. The synodal legislation of the French Calvinists differed from the Catholic
laws in three things, viz., it abolished certain impediments, such as public honesty
and spiritual relationship, and lessened the number of the prohibited degrees of
consanguinity and affinity ; it absolutely forbade all mixed marriages ; and it
allowed divorces for adultery and abandonment. In his closing chapter the author
asserts that Protestantism in allowing divorce, has gone directly against the
teaching of the Gospel. He quotes with approval the words of Paul Bourget in
the opening chapter of his novel Un Divorce, " Divorce is condemned by both
reason and history." He also cites other Catholic witnesses on the indissolubility
of the marriage tie, such as de Bonald, Fonsegrive, Canon Janvier, and others.
Allocutions et Sermons de Circonstance. By Monsignor Julien Loth. (Paris :
Pierre Tequi. 3frs.) The Abbe Loth was for some twenty years Professor of
Sacred Eloquence at the Seminary of Rouen, France. His brother intends to
publish a number of the sermons he preached during the fifty years of his
ministry in Normandy. The first volume of the series proves that he was well
advised in printing these excellent discourses.
Retraite d'Enfants. By Abbe Henri Morice. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 3frs.)
These thirty-five instructions, suitable for a children's retreat for First Com-
munion, will be read with interest by parish priests who have to give these re-
treats annually, and are on the lookout for new material. They are interesting,
devout, and full of good stories.
Studi Sull' Estetica. By Romualdo Bizzari. (Florence: Libreria Editrice
Fiorentina. 4.50 lire.} This is an excellent manual of aesthetics, the author re-
futing at length the theories of Croce, Trabalza, Taine and others. It deserves
an English translation.
La Maison. By Henry Bordeaux. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie). Henry
Bordeaux has called the novel of to-day the first of all the literary arts, be-
cause " it comprises autobiography, metaphysics, realism, and poetry." We have
in his latest book, the life of Frangois Rambert, blessed with a perfect father
and mother, but cursed with an unbelieving grandfather, who gradually " eman-
cipates " him, by winning him away from all that is good and true in Catholic
French traditions. We have philosophy, for we witness the influence of bad
example upon a young soul, just awakening to self-love, the spirit of independ-
ence, pride and sensuality. We have realism in Francois' puppy love
for the gypsy girl Nazzarena, his initiation at the Cafe des Navigateurs, and the
well-drawn characters of Tem Bessette and Mimi Pachoux. We have poetry in
the picturing of Bordeaux's one theme, the home, in all the beauty of its loyalty,
faith, sacrifice, and love. The home is triumphant at last, and Francois is won
back at the deathbed of his sturdy and devout father. La Maison repeats Lex
Roquevillard and Les Yeux qui s'Ouvrent, but the style is more lively and
clear cut. Bordeaux is one of the best novelists of contemporary France.
jforefon periobfcate.
The Anglican Minimum. A notable result of the Kikuyu con-
troversy is the " open letter " addressed to his clergy by the Bishop
of Oxford. He admits the present lamentable conditions, recog-
nizes the three divergent schools of Low, Broad, and High Church-
men, and proposes his view of the irreducible minimum of faith
and organization which should be, at least, clearly defined. But even
as regards enforcing such a minimum, there is no body or person
whose authority all Anglicans agree in accepting; and could Bishop
Gore find such a one, these proposals would be found to be merely a
High Church programme.
The Bishop of London has praised this letter, while Dr. Sanday
of Oxford, formerly a conservative scholar, has published a reply
in which he denies the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. The
Times and the Guardian timidly hope that the Canon will in
time change his views, but a correspondent to the Guardian points
out that he need not do so in order to agree with Bishop Gore.
For the latter in a lecture delivered in 1902 in Birmingham said:
" The evidence of our Lord's Birth of a Virgin was no part of the
original Apostolic testimony, and still to-day this question is not a
ground on which belief is asked." The Tablet.
John Ayscough and the Women of Fiction. Monsignor Bick-
erstaffe-Drew, in a lecture on the above subject, spoke of the women
in Shakespeare, less worldly, self-indulgent, self-seeking than his
men. Dickens and Thackeray, too, though their heroines were
sometimes rather " geese," maintained an exalted reverence for
goodness in women. The heroines of Scott he did not care for, but
spoke highly of Browning's Pompilia, not considering the character,
however, as inspired by Mrs. Browning. Meredith's women he was
inclined to rank higher than those of any other novelist; Hardy's,
like their creator, melancholy; "Maggie Tulliver " very lovable;
Jane Austen's heroines immortal, but those of Charlotte Bronte
little better than a nuisance. The heroine of modern fiction, he
thinks, is ponderous on her feet, repulsive in her manners ; she has
developed problems in sociology, renounced the Ten Command-
ments, and, if not the victim of some dreadful disease, she is gener-
ally divorced at any early age.
696 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug..
For Catholic women the highest ideals are the saints ; there are
no fashions in sanctity. If the modern world does not recognize
the saints, it is for Catholic women to emulate them in those things
that make for sanctity. When they remember how the position
of man depends upon woman, they will see there are few things
more imperative than such work as belongs to the Catholic Women's
League. The Tablet.
Welsh Disestablishment. The bill disestablishing the Anglican
Church in Wales has passed the House of Commons by a majority
of seventy-seven. Thus lands and moneys to the extent of one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, for which the Church
of England can show a Parliamentary and prescriptive title of three
hundred years, are to be taken from her solely to gratify Non-
conformist dislike. The Nonconformists have not, however, dared
to claim this money for themselves. It is not to be restored to the
Catholic Church from whom it was originally taken. But it is to be
expended upon art galleries and local museums. The Tablet.
How Japan Educates Women. By J. S. Japan is awake to
the need of right education for its girls, and within the last fifteen
years the importance of this matter has occupied the earnest atten-
tion of the Imperial advisers. The Higher Normal School for
Women was founded in 1874. In 1900 a Woman's University
was opened amid great difficulties ; but it has succeeded remarkably
well. The ideal is to have the students study for the sake of the
knowledge to be acquired. The Month, July.
Crashaw, Shelley, and Thompson. By George O'Neill, S.J.
This is the tercentenary of Richard Crashaw. A devout Anglican,
a student at Cambridge, he was disgusted at the desecration of
images which was part of the " Reformation." An exile in France,
he was received into the Church. He took Minor Orders in Rome,
and died at Loretto at the age of thirty-seven. There is a striking
similarity between this life and the lives of Shelley and Thompson.
As to their literary work, Crashaw excels as a mystic, Shelley
as a poet, while Thompson blends both poetry and mysticism. Cra-
shaw is the greatest English religious poet. The most beautiful
things possible to be said of Shelley have been said by Thompson
in his famous essay. Thompson had the advantage over Crashaw
of living in an age of well-established and highly-refined critical
1914-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 697
standards; his poetry is not so much mystical as priestly; he was
given as a great gift to our materialistic age. The Irish Ecclesias-
tical Record, July.
Islam in India. By Rev. Peter Dahmen. Over one-fifth of the
total population of India, or nearly seventy millions, are Moslems.
Compared with the Hindus of the same race, they are of sturdier
frame and greater energy; their healthier concept of life makes
them value life more than the Hindu. Islam has produced force
of character and self-respect in its converts, and has contributed
to develop the moral sense; further, it has rendered India a great
service by raising the social level of millions of helots. The Brah-
manical law forbids crossing the sea; the whole maritime trade,
therefore, has passed into the hands of the Arabs, and as a result
of their foreign relations, Mahommedan art and architecture far
surpasses anything Hinduism has to offer. Finally, Islam is a
unifying principle in the country, while Hinduism is not one re-
ligion, but a conglomerate of beliefs impossible to define. The
Irish Theological Quarterly, July.
Faith in the Resurrection. By A. Durand. A study of the
appearances of Christ after His Resurrection. The Resurrection of
Christ is the central fact of history. Our faith in this dogma of the
Church is the same as the faith of the Apostles. Few facts in
ancient history are so well established, since in the Four Gospels,
the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, we have the testi-
mony of eyewitnesses. The Resurrection was the divine seal placed
definitely upon the Person of Christ and His mission. Primitive
Christian art is inspired in large measure by the Resurrection. The
art of the catacombs, properly interpreted, shows that it was inspired
in great part by the Resurrection. Revue Pratique d'Apologetique,
June 16.
The Church and Charity Under the Old Regime. By J.
Guiraud. An examination of the administration of public charity
in the later Middle Ages. The sixteenth century marks a pro-
found revolution in the history of charity. Modern civilization
tends to make charity a public service administered by the State.
In most countries of Europe, the goods of the Church have been
taken over by the State, and the management of church charity is,
in a measure, under State control. In the Middle Ages the Church
698 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug.,
exercised exclusive control over official charity. The bishops and
the clergy were the great public almoners. The people looked to
them for assistance in times of public calamity. The hospitals were
under the management of the bishops. Hygiene and scientific
prescriptions were well cared for, considering the scientific knowl-
edge of the time. The article is the first of a series. Revue Prati-
que d'Apologetique, June 16.
Strikes and the Natural Law. By Henri du Passage. Revolu-
tionary syndicalists, like George Sorel, who hope for the complete
overthrow of our present system of society and the substitution of
a single class, the producers, are heartily in sympathy with strikes.
They discuss a universal strike, not as if it were really practicable,
but as one of those ideals which attract the masses. The doctrine
favored by the central Union of Catholic Workingmen's Associa-
tions in Berlin practically abolishes strikes, and admits their ligiti-
mate character only after an appeal has been made to the State to
settle the difficulty, and this appeal has failed. But strikes at times
are really lawful, and, until arbitration becomes more common, they
may be necessary. They ought to respect whatever contracts exist
between employer and employee, unless the employer has rendered
these null by his injustice. Etudes.
Germany and the Missions. By G. G. Lapeyre and E. Moura.
A thorough study of German activity (Catholic and Protestant) in
the mission field. There are 1,187 German Protestant mission-
aries, 1 8 physicians, 342 sisters, and 9,027 native missionaries and
catechists. They count 640,630 Christians and 55,952 catechumens,
3,613 schools, and 60 seminaries. The funds at their disposal reach
nearly $3,000,000.00 a year. German Catholics give about $1,500,-
ooo.oo a year. Revue du Clerge Franqais, June 15.
The Balkans and Europe. By Andre Cheradame. The curious
situation exists that the Balkan States have transformed their
relations in spite of Europe. Although England has the strongest
navy, Russia the most numerous army, France the most easily
accessible funds, the Triple Entente had little influence during the
struggle, because all these three nations found themselves, at the
same time, very much occupied at home. Austria-Hungary likewise
was pre-occupied with preserving the German hegemony in Aus-
tria, and the Magyar in Hungary, and thus caused a weakness in the
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 699
Triple Alliance. Germany could have acted, but feared to pre-
cipitate a general European war. The general failure of European
diplomacy also allowed the Balkans to take their own course. If
the Servians had lost the battle of the Bregalnitza, and if the Rou-
manians had not rendered the Bulgarians powerless, Servia would
have been destroyed, the Austro-German policy would have won a
complete triumph, and the Triple-Entente suffered a complete defeat.
Le Correspondent, May 10.
The Tablet (May 16) : In A Tribute to Catholic Scholarship,
Mr. Harold Wiener, in the April number of the Bibliotheca Sacra,
writing on The Pcntatenchal Text, the Divine Appellations, and the
Documentary Theory, pays tribute to a related article by Father
Hugh Pope, O.P., in The Irish Theological Quarterly, October,
1913. He shows that the materials now being collected for the
new edition of the Vulgate, furnish new proof of the difference be-
tween the Hebrew of the Vulgate and the Massoretic text. In
the same number of the Bibliotheca Sacra Father Pope has a state-
ment of The Doctrine of the Catholic Church Touching Indulgences.
In connection with the centenary of the restoration of the
Society of Jesus, Father Bernard Vaughan has contributed to the
Nineteenth Century and After an article, entitled The Jesuits in Fact
and Fiction. Mr. Wilfrid Ward has accepted the invitation
of Yale University to give the Bromley lectures in 1915.
Le Correspondant (May 10) : Leandre Vaillat, in connection
with a French exhibit of English and Irish decorative art, describes
the pre-Raphaelite school of painters. Edgar de Geoffrey, a
naval engineer, recounts the great quantities of petroleum now used,
its increased price, and the precautions nations, except France, are
taking to insure having enough of it in case of war. Fortunat
Strowski reviews the character of Montesquieu, as seen from the
new edition of his letters published by Frangois Gebelin. Many of
the letters are worthless ; few add anything to Montesquieu's glory
as a writer, or to our knowledge of his times, but naturally they
reveal the man, in morals none too admirable.
(June 10) : Marcel Dubois describes the evolution of the
study of geography in France during the past forty years, and the
renewed emphasis now put upon its human interest, the influence
of environment on man's character and history. The life and
plays of Francois Ponsard, author of Lucrece, I'Honncur ct I'ar-
700 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug.,
gent, and Le Lion amonreux, are briefly described, apropos to the
centenary of his faith, by Fortimat Strowski. Rene Brancour,
of the Conservatory of Music, discusses the marvelous change in
the opera wrought by Gluck, and traces his influence upon important
modern compositions. A new Life of M. Oilier, founder of the
Seminary and Society of Saint Sulpice, attracts the praise of Abbe
Augustine Sicard.
(June 25) : The Problem of the Triple-Entente, according to
Prince Kotchoubey, is how Russia can secure an outlet for her
increasing population, and retain the friendship of France.
Henri Bremond writes a sympathetic critique of Walter Scott as
the Preserver of Romanticism. Henry Laporte sketches the his-
tory of French governmental borrowing from Philip the Fair to
the present day. The Fate of the New Hebrides, thinks an
anonymous writer, must some day be determined by war. Mis-
sionary influences especially complicate the situation. Max Dou-
mic gives the latest progress in providing Cheap Houses for Work-
men.
Etudes (May 5) : Joseph Burnichon publishes part of the intro-
duction to his forthcoming history of the apostolate of the Jesuits
in France since 1814, when they were reestablished. Though sev-
eral times despoiled and expelled because of political antagonisms,
they have accomplished a marvelous pastoral, educational, and spir-
itual work. Joseph Boubee catalogues the poets who, in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, the classic age of Spanish litera-
ture, celebrated the praises of the Blessed Virgin. Besides Lope
da Vega and Calderon, the most famous is Fray Luis de Leon
(1527-1591). French translations of some of these poems are
given. Writings of Royer-Collard and Cournot, who died in
1845 an d 1877 respectively, philosophers once deservedly popular,
but now nearly forgotten, have recently been republished, and are
here summarized by Lucien Roure. Charles Auzias-Turenne
describes the activities of societies founded to meet young girls at
railway stations, in order to protect and shelter them. A list of
such societies in various countries, and a rather full record of the
two main French organizations, the Protestant Union, founded in
1877 an d the Catholic Protection founded in 1897, are given. The
earliest instance of such work is that of the Company of the Blessed
Sacrament, founded at Paris in 1655, whose members met the stage
coaches. A new edition of the works of Thomas a Kempis, says
I9I4-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 701
Joseph Brucker, has just been issued by Dr. Michael Joseph Pohl,
who defends, by new documents, a Kempis' right to be called the
author of the Imitation.
Revue du Clcrge Frangais (May 15) : A. Lemonnyer attempts
a reconstruction of the youth of St. Paul, based on the Saint's refer-
ences in his Epistles, and the historical descriptions of ancient
Jewish-Roman life given by Ramsay and Bohlig. E. Vacandard
presents all the opinions of critics regarding the authenticity and
historic value of an ancient Life of St. Genevieve, apropos of a
recent study on this subject by Godefroid Kurth. A new volume
on the churches of France of M. A. Brouquelet, evokes praise from
F. Martin, who gives a complete description of the chapel of Pontle-
voy. A study of the material conditions, room, lighting, decora-
tions, maps, blackboards, etc., which help to make a catechism class
interesting, is presented by L. Henin. Charles Calippe describes
the ravages of alcoholism and the measures taken against it; legal
measures, particularly, in Sweden and Norway; school instruction
and clubs in Belgium. How a courageous woman, Madame
Danielou, has established a successful normal school at Neuilly
in order to replace to some degree the schools of the exiled nuns,
is the subject of a eulogy by the Count d'Haussonville.
tudes Franciscaines (July) : P. Edouard describes many of
the cures wrought by Father Bernard-Marie de Castrogiovanni, an
eighteenth century precursor in Malta of the Abbe Kneipp, and
something of the opposition which his fresh air and ice-water reme-
dies encountered from the conservative physicians. An anony-
mous article describes a visit to the convent of Agreda in Spain,
where the Venerable Mary of Jesus rose to so great sanctity in the
seventeenth century, and where her body is still preserved.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (May 15) : Monsignor Bau-
drillart announces the Abbes Bainvel and Verdier as successors to
Abbes Guibert and Lesetre, late editors of the Revue. P. Theo-
dore Mainage continues his conferences on the psychology of con-
version, answering the objection that conversion is but a result
of nervous disorder.
TRecent Events*
The first half of the month of June saw the
France. fall of two governments and the beginning
of a third. On M. Doumergue's resigna-
tion, M. Viviani's attempt to form a Cabinet was defeated at the
last moment by the refusal of two Extreme Radicals who had ac-
cepted portfolios to agree to the formula which defined the attitude
of the new Cabinet to the Three Years' Service Law. This for-
mula declared it to be the determination of the government to apply
the law voted by Parliament with regularity and loyalty. The in-
tention, however, was expressed of examining bills dealing with the
military training of the young, and the better utilization of the
reserves. When these bills had been voted, and had become opera-
tive, and when experience had shown their efficacy, the question
of a reduction of military burdens would then be considered, if the
international position permitted. This formula the two Extreme
Radicals, as representatives not only of some eighty members of
the same denomination, but also of the Collective Socialists, refused
to accept, unless it were so modified as to promise the return to
two years' service without any reference to international circum-
stances.
M. Viviani thereupon, without any appearance before the
Chamber, placed his resignation in the hands of the President. It
was at once accepted, and M. Ribot, when called upon, was able in
the course of a single day to form a Cabinet, which included some of
the most distinguished politicians of the time. Towards the crucial
question of the Three Years' Service his attitude was unequivocal :
the maintenance of this law was declared to be a necessity of
France's position as a great power; it would therefore be applied
without faltering, although consideration would be given to bills for
the military training of youths and the organization of reserves.
All the members of the new Ministry belonged to the more moderate
of the Republican groups. Its avowed intention was to rely solely
for support upon a Republican majority, renouncing any purpose
seeking the support of the Right. It also avowed its determination
to maintain the secularist character of State education. One of its
most ardent supporters was in fact made the Minister of Instruction.
Not a single Socialist Radical was included within its ranks.
From the moment of its formation, the group of what is called
Callautin Radicals, so named from M. Joseph Caillaux, together
I9I4-] RECENT EVENTS 703
with the Socialist followers of M. Jaures and the Independent Radi-
cals led by M. Augagneur, numbering all together three hundred and
one, banded together in a determination to destroy the new Ministry.
All these looked upon it as a paradox that the general election,
which had deepened the Radical complexion of the Chamber, should
bring into power a moderate such as M. Ribot, who had voted
against the separation of Church and State.
The opponents of M. Ribot, on his first appearance at the head
of the Ministry, succeeded in carrying a motion that the Chamber
could not give its confidence to a Ministry incapable of realizing
the union of the groups of the Left. M. Ribot at once resigned,
and within twenty- four hours of its formation, his government
came to an end, being distinguished in at least one respect, that of
the forty-eight Cabinets since the establishment of the Third Re-
public, it had existed for the shortest period.
On M. Ribot's resignation, M. Viviani was called upon a second
time, and within less than twenty-four hours was able to form a new
government, the one which is still in existence at the time these
lines are written. In making his second attempt M. Viviani went
first to M. Combes, as a Radical of the purest purity. He met, how-
ever, with a decided refusal, M. Combes being in favor of an imme-
diate return to two years' service. The formula as to three years'
service formerly proposed by M. Viviani, has been only slightly
modified. It leaves the present law in full force until measures
have been taken to organize the reserves, and to give military train-
ing to the youth of the country, and only then " if a change in
external circumstances permits." In spite of the vehement oppo-
sition of M. Jaures, the Chamber, by a vote of three hundred and
sixty-two against one hundred and thirty-nine, passed an order of
the day, which expressed its confidence in the government's pur-
suing a policy of reform based on the union of Republicans, and
supported by a Republican majority. Three years' service, there-
fore, remains in force, although upon a committee recently ap-
pointed, its defenders and opponents were equal in numbers.
Behind the Cabinet crisis through which France has just been
passing, there was hidden another, more serious in character, which
might have involved the President. He is looked upon by the Social-
ist Radicals, and especially by M. Clemenceau, as Dial clu; and one
motive for the defeat of M. Ribot was the hope that M. Poincare
would refuse to choose a ministry from the ranks of avowed per-
sonal opponents, and be thereby forced to give in his own resigna-
704 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
tion. He, however, was too wise to fall into this trap. In fact,
French Presidents have established the custom of not consulting
their own personal predilections, following consciously or uncon-
sciously the example of the Kings of England. Hence the people
of France are coming more and more into the enjoyment of the ad-
vantages of self-government, unless, perchance, they are betrayed by
their own representatives.
The measure for Electoral Reform which has for so long a
time been Viiscussed, has for its object the giving even to minorities
a way of making the wishes of all classes of the people better heard.
This measure is being urged on by M. Viviani's government, and
receives the support of M. Jaures and of the Extreme Right. The
government is so purely Republican, however, that it has declared
it will not proceed with the measure unless it is supported by an ex-
clusively Republican majority. This has proved too much even
for M. Jaures, and has led him to declare that the days of M.
Viviani's Ministry are numbered.
The troubles of France are not confined to what is strictly
political. For a long time what may almost be called a financial
crisis has existed, of which many attempts have been made to find
a solution, but all have so far failed. The present government,
however, has been able without difficulty to carry its proposed
remedy through both the Chamber and the Senate. The deficit is
to be met in part by a loan for one hundred and sixty-one mil-
lions of dollars. This loan which was issued at ninety-one, and is to
bear interest at three and one-half per cent, was on the day of
issue subscribed forty-one times over, thereby showing how great is
the amount of money in the possession of the French people.
An authority in finance estimates France's holdings of foreign
securities at six thousand five hundred millions of dollars, while, with
the exception of the Russian State Bank, the Bank of France pos-
sesses the largest stock of gold in the world. Notwithstanding this
success, financial authorities in France declare that the loan just
issued is inadequate to meet the necessities of the State; in fact,
that a loan of five hundred millions will have to be asked for
so large is the deficit, and so great is the expenditure involved in
the increase of the time of service! The government has succeeded
also in at last passing the Budget, which ought to have been passed
before the last general election. In it have been incorporated
certain income tax provisions to be paid on dividends, but the long-
debated Income Tax Bill still remains in suspense.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 705
Statistics for the last year show no decrease in the decline of
the birth-rate. The number of births last year was 745,539, against
750,651 in the year before. In less than forty years the birth-rate
has diminished by 200,000 a year. In 1912 the excess of births over
deaths was only 15 per 10,000, while in the same year in Belgium
it was 158; in Italy 140; in Hungary 150; in Germany 127;
in Austria 107, and in England 105. The number of divorces has
increased by about 500. There were 15,076 last year, or 761
per million of the population. The Commission appointed some
years ago to report upon this disquieting decrease of the rate of
birth, has so far been unable to find any remedy, unless the pro-
posal recently made to import 50,000 natives of Algeria and Mo-
rocco to work in the industrial regions of northern and eastern
France is due to its suggestion.
The session of the Reichstag having closed,
Germany. German politicians are having a rest. Many
civilities have been exchanged with Great
Britain, manifesting the growth of a better feeling between the
two countries. A party of Berlin merchants have been paying a
visit to England. In the course of this visit, Herr Dernburg, not
long ago the German Secretary of State for the Colonies, made a
speech, in which he generously acknowledged the debt which Ger-
mans owed to England. It was the English, he said, who, when
Germany became strong enough to acquire oversea possessions, gave
Germany the best help. Whenever he was in a difficulty, the study
of British methods enabled him to find a solution. The central
authorities in London, and the statesmen in Africa and elsewhere,
had always shown him the greatest kindness, and had manifested
an interest that was always friendly, placing at his disposal the
experience which long years of colonial service had enabled them
to gain. Herr Dernburg bore testimony to the fact that at length
the political relations between the two countries had attained that
normal state which permitted both to regard events without mistrust.
The visit of a squadron of the British Navy to Kiel in order
to be present at the Regatta, may be taken as another indication of
the improvement in the relations between the two countries. The
Emperor, who is a British Admiral, went on board one of the
warships and was warmly received. The Germans vied one with
another to give the best of welcomes to the fleet. A single unto-
ward incident, however, took place. Lord Brassey, one of the Em-
VOL. xcix. 45
706 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
peror's personal friends, was arrested, on the morning of the day on
which he was to dine with His Majesty, by officious police, for
rowing in the neighborhood of a fortification. He was, however,
detained for only a few minutes, and the incident is of no impor-
tance, except in so far as it shows how unwearied is the vigilance
of the Prussian police.
The better understanding between Germany and Great Britain
has proved no obstacle to a demand for a further increase of
the navy. The new demand is not for a larger number of ships,
but for a fresh and large increase of personnel. No new navy bill,
it is said, will be introduced; the enlargement being sanctioned by
provisions already enacted. The reason adduced for the step about
to be taken is that a stronger representation of Germany abroad
is rendered necessary by the concentration of European interest
in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the problems which have arisen
in the Pacific and elsewhere.
The murder of the Archduke Francis Fer-
Austria-Hungary. dinand and of his consort was a tragedy
characterized by even more horror and a
deeper pathos than any one of the many of a similar character
that have preceded it. All who are in any way qualified from per-
sonal knowledge to speak of his late Imperial Highness, testify to
his simplicity of character, manliness, and ability, and to his con-
scientious realization of the difficulty of the task which he had been
called upon to undertake, as well as of a determination to prepare
himself for the fulfillment of it.
Even greater perhaps is the sympathy which is felt for the
aged Emperor Francis Joseph. The list of the trials through which
he has had to pass is a long one. The crushing defeats of Ma-
genta and Sadowa, the loss of rich provinces consequent thereon, as
well as the forfeiture of his hereditary position in Germany; the
many harassing internal troubles, of which there seems to be no end
among the many and conflicting nationalities which make up the
Dual Monarchy, are instances of what Francis Joseph has suffered
as a sovereign. The sorrows of his domestic life have been even
greater. The execution of his brother Maximilian consequent upon
his attempt to establish an empire in Mexico ; the mysterious death
of his only son and heir, Prince Rudolph ; the murder of his consort
Elizabeth, " a woman who never hurt a soul, and who did good
all her life," were, one would think, enough to fill up the measure
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 707
of his sorrows. But, as he exclaimed, it seems as if he was to be
spared nothing; in his eighty-fourth year he has had to undergo
the loss of the one whom he had so long been training to take his
place. Well has he verified the words his mother wrote of him
when he was yet untried, " God has given him the qualities needed
to meet all turns of fate."
The murder must be looked upon as a consequence of the an-
nexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This annexation was a bitter
disappointment to the Serbs both in Servia and elsewhere. The
Archduke is considered to have been the chief promotor of this
action, and he has consequently fallen a victim to Serbian ven-
geance, and this, although, as at all events is generally believed,
he had in view the placing of the Slavs on a level with the Hun-
garians by the revival of the kingdom of Bohemia. About this,
however, as well as about other objects of his policy, a great deal
is said which is by no means certain. About one thing, however,
there seems no doubt : he was by no means a friend of the Magyars.
The accounts of the strikes which took place
Italy. in the beginning of June, failed to reveal the
gravity of the situation. The Italian is one
of the governments that thinks by suppressing facts to gain some
advantage. Doubtless it may succeed for a time, but the advantage
is so small as hardly to be worth the trouble. The truth in this case
has soon leaked out. The movement began at Ancona on June 7th,
on the occasion of the Festival of the " Statute," the day on which
is commemorated the granting of a Constitution to Piedmont. The
celebration of this festival, the Anarchists, who are numerous
in Ancona and throughout the cities of the Romagna, determined
to prevent. From this centre the disturbances spread with great
rapidity throughout the neighborhood of Ferrara, Bologna, and
Modena, and afterwards to Rome. Outbreaks took place in Milan
and Turin on the north, and at Naples and Bari in the south.
It was, however, in the Romagna and the Marches that they reached
their fullest development. For some days this portion of the king-
dom was in the hands of the disaffected. Murder, arson, violent
assaults, and pillage were committed, and with impunity, for the
military and the police were rendered impotent by the unwillingness
of the government to take harsh measures. At several places little
republics were established, the agitators having sent round the report
that the house of Savoy had been overturned, and that the Premier
;o8 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
had fled to Tripoli. Self-elected committees issued orders, churches
and public buildings were burned, and at one place the firemen re-
fused to quench a fire because it was political.
The movement, however, does not appear to have been spon-
taneous, but to have been organized by the Socialists. A leading
part was taken by Malatesta, the chief Anarchist leader. He has
declared that this is merely an episode in an undertaking of which
the future will reveal greater developments, and which will lead to
the establishment of a social republic. For this end, Socialists, Syn-
dicalists, and Anarchists will combine their forces, and as they seem,
at the present time, to be the only parties in Italy which have a
defined policy upon which their heart is set, there is reason to
apprehend graver trouble in the future. And indeed it seems prob-
able that a general railway strike is imminent.
The war with Tripoli had the effect of bringing the whole
country into close union, but now that it is over, and the burdens
which it has entailed are being felt, the discontent which existed
before the war, of which the Socialists are the chief representatives,
is showing itself again. A thing which contributes to the power
of the agitators, is the fact that law in Italy has for so long been
associated with foreign domination, that large numbers of the
people, who by no means sympathize with the objects of the agitat-
ors, have lost the habit of rendering a hearty support to their
own public servants in enforcing their own law. Even the govern-
ment hesitates to act with the necessary severity, for fear of
losing the support which is necessary for its existence. Although
the recent movement soon came to an end, this was due as much to
the promoters of it as to the government, for the strike was
declared, as is common on the continent, for a determined period,
in this case of forty-eight hours.
Municipal elections which have been held in various cities, show
an awakening of the public mind to the dangers of the situation.
The more moderate parties are seeing the necessity of using their
strength for the defence of their rights, and have risen up in their
defence. This has led to the defeat of Nathan's attempt again to
become the Syndic of Rome.
Spain is enjoying a period of unwonted po-
Spain. litical tranquillity. The Ministry of Mod-
erate Conservatives, of which Senor Dato
is at the head, has now existed since last October, with so little
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 709
opposition, and, perhaps it may be said, with so little achievement,
as to attract no attention from the foreign press. At the general
election which took place in March, the government was supported
by a fair majority. In the month of May the Minister for Marine
introduced into the Chamber a bill providing for an annual credit
of about seven millions of dollars, to be spread over nine years,
to be devoted to naval construction. Between 1915 and 1917 two
battleships as well as two cruisers, with three submarines, are to be
built. Docks are to be made at the naval bases. The last Budget,
introduced in May, showed a deficit of something like twenty mil-
lions of dollars. The Finance Minister received great credit for
his frank admission of the fact. France would not be involved
so seriously financially as she is at the present time had it not been
for the action of a succession of Finance Ministers in disguising the
real state of the case.
It cannot be said, however, that Morocco is flourishing in the
zone which has fallen to the lot of Spain. In this respect a great
contrast is offered to what has been achieved in the part of Morocco
of which France has become the possessor. The French zone is
largely occupied and pacified, although the recent advance is meet-
ing with opposition. Foreigners and natives alike are satisfied with
the progress that has been made under the administration of the
protectorate. Life and property are now secure in a way never
known before. Roads are piercing the country in every direction,
and other large public works are on the point of being commenced.
The Spanish zone, on the contrary, has been and still is the scene
of warfare. The Riff, except for a small strip, remains uncon-
quered. Open warfare exists in the districts round Tetuan, Te-
tuan itself being practically besieged. The roads have to be kept
open and patrolled by troops, necessitating the employment of forty
thousand soldiers. Socialists in Spain are threatening a strike as a
protest against the continuance of the war. It was hoped a short
time ago that France and Spain would agree to work together,
and to harmonize their methods. The proposal was in fact made,
but seems not to have been adopted.
A change in the Ministry has taken place in
Portugal. Portugal, the causes of which are either too
obscure to be intelligible to outsiders, or too
trifling to be worth mentioning, for no information is given by
the press which records the fact. The new Ministry which was
;io RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
formed without any difficulty, has the same Premier, Senhor Mach-
ado, and consists in fact of the same members with two exceptions,
the result having been to eliminate the three Democratic members of
the last administration.
The Portuguese government is accused of having entered upon
the new and strange role of defending the Catholic religion. This
at least is the charge brought against it by its critics, a charge, how-
ever, which it denies. In the Portuguese Congo a Protestant mis-
sionary was arrested and kept in prison on the trumped up charge
of causing disorder, but in reality, as his friends allege, at the insti-
gation of the clergy. The British government has intervened,
and an investigation is being made.
Since the advent of the Republic a great revival of interest has
taken place in her colonies. Although Portugal is itself a small
country, it still possesses a great empire. Sometime ago a willing-
ness existed to sell these foreign possessions, but at the present
time so much are they valued, that no government which should
propose such a step would exist for a single day. Attempts are
now being made to improve their administration, and measures
have also been taken to develop trade. Under these circumstances
the rumors which have been circulated that Germany and Great
Britain are negotiating with each other for a division between them-
selves of the African colonies of Portugal, have naturally aroused
Portuguese sensibilities. There does not, however, appear to be any
solid foundation for these rumors.
The fact that, according to the last estimate, the revenue will
surpass the expenditure by some three millions and a half, shows a
better state of the national finances than has existed for a long
time. A widespread skepticism, however, exists as to the trust-
worthiness of Portuguese official statements.
Albania remains in as unsettled a state as
The Balkans. ever, and every effort made to restore order
seems to add to the confusion. Prince Wil-
liam is still at Durazzo, but it cannot be said that he is the master
of the situation, and there are rumors that his belongings have
already been sent back to his home in Germany. The rebels demand
his abdication, and wish to have a Moslem prince to rule over them
at least nominally. These rebels are not only in revolt against
the authority placed over them by Europe, but have already begun
to quarrel among themselves. A proposal has been made that the
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 711
charge of Albania should be taken over by the International Com-
mission of Control, a body of men whom our late Minister at
Athens pronounces to be unfitted by training and character to form a
government. This Minister has given great scandal in the Chan-
celleries of the Old World by letting it be openly known what the
New World thinks of some of their doings, and of their modes of
operation. A reviewer of Miss Durham's The Struggle for Skutari,
in the Literary Supplement of the London Times, speaks of " the
organized mendacity of governments, the highly paid prevarication
of diplomatists, the interested inaccuracies of historical professors,
the unfounded assertions of royal personages, and 'inspired'
articles paid for at advertisement rates [as having] all helped to
deceive a public, as a rule, too uncritical to observe that many of
these misstatements were mutually contradictory, and too ignorant
of Balkan geography to detect at once what was plainly fantastic."
Mr. Williams, by the statements which he has made, aims at throw-
ing light upon certain dark transactions.
The war between Turkey and Greece which a few weeks ago
seemed on the point of breaking out, has been at least postponed.
The real reason for this postponement is most probably to be found
in the fact that our government consented to sell two warships to
Greece. This made Greece so strong that it became imprudent for
Turkey to begin hostilities, nay, even, it has had the effect of mak-
ing Turkey willing to remove the grievances which rendered the
war likely. These consisted in the fact that the Greek residents in
the Ottoman Empire, not merely visitors and traders, but the Greeks
who are Ottoman subjects, were being driven from their homes to
make room for the Turkish refugees from Macedonia. These pro-
ceedings have now been stopped by the Turkish government, and
in some cases at least the confiscated possessions and homes re-
stored to their lawful owners.
For a long time no reference has been made
Persia. to the affairs of Persia, for the reason that
that ancient nation seemed to be gradually
approaching its end, but in a way so quiet and calm as to furnish
nothing worthy of special notice. Of late, however, several oc-
currences have taken place, which seem to indicate that a crisis is
at hand. In one respect some degree of improvement has taken
place. The gendarmerie under the command of Swedish officers
has been able to restore something like order in the districts which
712 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
for a long time have been given over to rapine and brigandage.
There has also been some little improvement of the financial situa-
tion, but this has now disappeared and the treasury is again bank-
rupt. But all the while Russia has been tightening her hold upon
the Northern Province of Azerbaijan. Not content with holding
many towns and villages by her soldiers, Russian Consuls have
now begun to collect the taxes from Russian subjects and protected
persons dwelling in Persian territory, whose numbers are always
on the increase. These taxes include not merely the land tax, but
indirect taxes, such as excise and transport tolls. This system has
been extended as far as Ispahan, and the question is being asked,
what does Persian sovereignty amount to when Russia is allowed
to act in this way within Persian territory? No less than one-
third of the land and resources of Azerbaijan have passed under
Russian control.
If Russia has practically made the north of Persia Russian, she
has acted openly.. Great Britain seems to have taken a more
insidious, but not a less real, method of securing for herself the
more southern part of the country. The British Admiralty has
bought a controlling interest in a large number of oil wells for the
supply of the British navy. This will necessitate for the protection
of these wells in the event of disturbances, the use of British forces
in what by the agreement with Russia of 1907 was made the neutral
zone. British statesmen disclaim any purpose of interfering with
either Persian or Russian rights, and undoubtedly with sincerity;
but the logic of facts is stronger than the logic of words. Russia
has reason to complain that there has been an evasion of the
terms of the Anglo-Russian Convention.
It is feared, however, by those who are least desirous of the
partition of Persia between Russia and Great Britain, that such a
course is being rendered inevitable by the recent series of events.
A preferable course would be if Great Britain were to set
herself to a serious endeavor to strengthen and help Persia to secure
good government, the elements necessary for securing it, in the
opinion of good judges, being by no means wanting. Capable
and upright statesmen are to be found, if due encouragement and
protection could be given. But Great Britain seems to feel herself
bound to a subservient cooperation with Russia in Persian matters
on account of the necessity of maintaining the equilibrium in Eu-
rope, which is the end for which the Triple Entente exists.
With Our Readers.
ST. TERESA in her manifold activities, but above all else in her love
and practice of prayer, has surely left a special timely message for
men and women of the modern world. We reprint in full the Ency-
clical of our Holy Father Pius X., written for the centenary of her
beatification :
Beloved Sons, Health and the Apostolic Benediction. Since the time when
We, though most unworthy, have been raised by the goodness of God to the
Chair of Peter, We have considered it an important duty of Our Apostolic
office, whenever an occasion presented itself of solemnly honoring any children
of the Church who were distinguished for their splendid virtues, their eminent
doctrine, and their glorious deeds, to avail Ourselves of such an opportunity
with all diligence. Seeing that the minds of men are influenced by deeds much
more than by words, W r e have ever been convinced that Our aim of restoring
all things in Christ could not be promoted so much by exhortations as by hold-
ing up the example of those who made the imitation of Christ their earnest
study and reproduced in themselves with admirable fidelity the likeness of His
holiness. For this reason, on the solemn anniversaries of Gregory the Great,
John Chrysostom, and Anselm of Aosta, We published Letters filled with their
praises; and lately we celebrated in like manner the third centenary of the
canonization of Charles Borromeo.
A solemnity of the same sort, beloved sons, will fall to the lot of your
renowned Order in next April, which will be the 3OOth anniversary of the
Decree of Paul V. conferring the title of Blessed on your Mother and lawgiver,
Teresa. In a general assembly of your Order lately, it has been reported to
Us, you had the matter under consideration, and you are making diligent prep-
aration to celebrate the anniversary of the joyous event with sacred ceremonies
and to offer her in many ways marks of grateful homage. Your pious inten-
tions have our hearty approval, and in the name of the entire Church We
gladly associate Ourselves with you in your rejoicings. For the virgin of
Avila is an ornament and light to the whole Catholic world, and is by no
means the least amongst its illustrious ones. " The Lord so filled her with the
spirit of wisdom and intellect and with the treasures of His grace, that, as a
star in the firmament, her splendor will shine in the house of God for all eter-
nity" (Bull of Canonization). Thus spoke Pope Gregory XV. about St.
Teresa. And how truthfully ! For this saintly woman has been of so much
service in instructing the faithful in the way of salvation that she would seem
to be little, if at all, beneath these great Fathers and Doctors of the Church
whom We have named.
It is remarkable how she was gifted by nature for her heavenly office of
instructress in the ways of virtue. Her marvelously keen intellect, her noble
and generous soul, her sure judgment, her prudence in dealing with people
and in business affairs, no less than her sweet disposition and pleasant manner,
won for her the affection of everyone. But her natural endowments were al-
together eclipsed by her supernatural gifts. Although among her contempor-
aries were many persons distinguished for their holiness of life and knowledge
7M WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
of things divine so that that period may be justly called the golden age of
Catholic Spain it must be admitted that Teresa combined in herself the
virtues and gifts of all of that pious band whom she numbered among her in-
timate friends and advisers.
It would take long, and we do not intend, to describe the many excellencies
of this illustrious woman. But we judge it most opportune to set before you.
beloved children, some considerations about her virtues they will be to you a
source of profitable meditation, and, through you, a source of instruction to
Christians.
In the first place, seeing that those things which exceed the compass of the
human reason and lie outside the narrow circle of nature, are nowadays re-
garded lightly by so many, or even contemptuously thrust aside as worthless,
it will be useful to investigate the strong faith of Teresa. Since faith is "the
substance of things to be hoped for, " that is, the root (as it were) of the divine
heavenly life in man, and the foundation on which the whole fabric of Christian
perfection is built, it wins our admiration to see to what an extent Teresa lived
by faith and was guided by it alone in all her counsels, her words, her deeds.
None showed more loyal obedience to the Church, the mistress of truth; none
clung to the doctrine more unswervingly. Not only was she unshaken by the
wiles of heretics and the deceits of the devil, but she stated in writing that if
an angel or a voice from heaven should propose anything to her belief which
was not conformable to the doctrine of the Church, she would never in any way
believe it And, further, we know that she was ready to face a thousand
deaths, if need be, in defence of the faith. To her nothing was clearer or more
evident than the truth of the Christian dogmas; indeed the more inscrutable
they were to human intelligence, the more whole-heartedly did she assent to
them.
Therefore, when she approached the Adorable Sacrament, her mind
seemed absorbed as if her affections were wrapped in contemplation of this
Great Mystery. As the same Pope Gregory, Our predecessor, says : " She be-
held so clearly in the Blessed Eucharist, with the eyes of her mind, the Body of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, that she asserted that she was not in the least envious
of those who beheld Our Lord with the eyes of the body" (Bull of Canoniza-
tion). In reward for her faith it was granted to her, as far as it is possible to
the human mind in this mortal life, both to penetrate the secrets of God, even
the profoundest and those most removed from human perception and intelli-
gence, and to interpret and explain them with ease. And in this respect it
seemed to those whom she chose as her spiritual directors that she might
reasonably be compared to Moses, who was privileged to enjoy the presence
and conversation of God.
Who has not heard how ardently she longed to share this gift of faith with
those who had it not? While still only a child, she conceived the design and
formed plans for crossing to Africa, to give to those savage peoples " the
Christ or her blood" (Brev. Hymn). Being thwarted in her intention, she
wept for the pitiable condition of pagans and heretics all her life long, and was
filled with holy envy of those who led men back from the darkness of error and
sin to the light of truth and holiness. Hindered by her sex and condition of
life from taking part in apostolic labor, she put on the spirit of Elias, and
undertook what is called the apostleship of prayer and penance. To this end,
since she was unable to join in the work of spreading the faith, she set herself
to practise the evangelical counsels with all her might, convinced that the more
she advanced in holiness the more acceptable to God would be her prayers
for the spread of Christianity and the salvation of souls. Finally, her desire of
1914-] WITH OUR READERS 715
defending Christian Doctrine and making it known may be gathered from
the importance which she attached to the catechism; there was no book which
she wished her daughters to take up more frequently or read more diligently.
Another of the chief glories of Teresa, which deserves particular mention
because it is so opposed to the spirit of the age, was her singular love for her
Lord Jesus. It is regrettable that men have blotted out of memory the answer
which Christ gave to His apostles when they inquired the way that would lead
them to God; Christ replied: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No
man cometh to the Father, but by Me" (John xiv. 6). How completely this
was forgotten by those who were called . Quietists, and by some innovators of
that sect ! But it was deeply impressed on the mind and soul of this holy virgin.
Therefore, whatever benefits she received from God, she attributed them to
Christ; whatever good she sought from God, she sought it from Christ. She
made Christ her sole Master by Whom to regulate her daily actions, her sole
Guide to lead her up the heights of divine contemplation. All who entertained
the like feelings towards Christ, she called most happy; all others she regarded
as most wretched, because of their want of faith. And her manner of life ac-
corded well with her sentiments; for the one object of her endeavors was to
order her life after the example of Jesus Christ, and by imitating Him to engrave
His image more and more on her soul so that she might truly say with the
Apostle: "To me, to live is Christ; and to die is gain" (Phil. i. 21).
Having such a Master for her rule of life, she learned promptly to forsake
the things of earth, and with earnestness to purify her soul from even slight
blemishes and adorn it with virtue. Thus she steadily progressed until she was
so fashioned after the image of her Lord that whatever hardships, cares, and
sorrows He suffered while on earth, and whatever joys and consolations were
His, all these Teresa likewise experienced by the force of that love which so
intimately united her to Him. And since it is an effect of charity that, while it in-
flames the soul, it at the same time quickens and enlightens the mind, Teresa was
so far Vavored by God that she not only beheld the abundant and most perfect
virtue of the Christ Man, but she was admitted by contemplation to the inmost
mysteries of the Word of God; still more, she was made worthy to have dis-
closed to her not a few of the secrets of the Adorable Trinity, and to be ad-
dressed by the Son of God with the words : " Henceforth thou shalt, like a true
spouse, be zealous for My honor; for now I am all thine, and thou art all
Mine."
How faithful she was to the obligations of this compact there is no need
to say. Until this time she had indeed disregarded self, and ever aimed at
advancing the interests of Christ, but from now until her death she lived wholly
and entirely for Christ. We would direct special attention to the way in which
her desire for promoting the greater glory of her Spouse influenced her atti-
tude towards two things, the greatest that the infinite love of Jesus conceived,
and which ought to be most dear to the heart of everyone, since He instituted
the one as His last gift to man and the other when expiring on the Cross
we mean the Blessed Eucharist and the Church.
Who has ever praised more grandly than she did the wisdom and goodness
of God in instituting this Sacrament, in which He accommodated Himself
marvelously to our littleness and gave expression to His love, and ordained for
ever the Sacrifice by which He ransomed the human race? Who hungered after
this Bread of Angels so insatiably? For a time when even pious souls did not
approach the Holy Table frequently, Teresa approached it daily, and with such
eagerness that it seemed as if not even armed men could restrain her from
partaking of the Sacred Banquet. Who was more sadly grieved than she to
716 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
behold men's indifference and irreverence towards this Sacrament? Who was
more zealous in atoning for the injuries offered to this Mystery of immense
love? And she unceasingly urged her daughters likewise to make fervent rep-
aration. On one occasion, unable to bear the torture which racked her, she
earnestly besought God either to end at once the shameful wickedness of these
ungrateful men or to destroy the earth altogether.
And then, too, see her love for the Church, the Mother of all Christians!
She used to say that no one can really love God without being as zealous for
the spread of Christ's Church as for the glory of Christ Himself. What
staunch loyalty she showed in all matters to that Church of which she was so
devoted a daughter! And how lavishly she extolled the authority given to the
Church by Christ its Founder! Indeed, the high estimation in which she a
woman so endowed with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and enjoying such famil-
iar friendship with God held those instruments of divine grace called sacra-
mentals, may appear to superficial minds to have been excessive ; and it is cer-
tainly astonishing that she expressed her willingness to undergo a thousand
deaths on behalf of these or the least of the rites of Holy Church. Again, it
did not escape her discerning judgment and heavenly wisdom that the prosperity
or adversity of the Church depends in large part on its ministers' holiness of life,
and that much more is accomplished for the salvation of souls by one priest
who lives up to the obligations of his high office than by a large number of in-
different priests. Therefore, while she pours out tears at beholding the Church
buffeted by violent storms and so many souls rushing to eternal perdition, she
at the same time tries to win from God by her austerity of life, manifold bodily
chastisements, and humble, persevering prayer that the Church shall have an
abundant supply of priests well disciplined in learning and the virtues befitting
their state, and while they labor for the salvation of others that they may not
imperil their own.
Teresa, however, was not content to work for this object singlehanded.
Since it is the nature of charity to spread its beneficient power to as many
others as possible, she gathered others around her to be her helpers and to trans-
mit to them her zeal and mode of life, " Having effectually conquered the flesh
by perpetual virginity, and the world by remarkable humility, and the snares
of the devil by her many excellent virtues, she then roused herself to higher
achievements, and putting off the weakness of her sex by force of her noble
mind, she girded about her loins with strength, and strengthened her arm, and
enrolled an army of brave souls who would wage holy combat for the house
of the God of Sabaoth and His law and commandments" (Bull of Canoniza-
tion). Spurred on by the double spirit of Elias, and divinely leagued with
your holy father St. John, she undertook to bring back the illustrious Order of
which she was a member to its primitive rigor. A mighty task, surely, and
one of no easy achievement! Yet, as it is well known, she speedily brought
her design to a happy consummation. Thus it came to pass, chiefly through the
exertions of Teresa, that the world at that time was afforded the astonishing
spectacle of an immense number of persons who, withdrawing themselves from
the busy world and entering into the service of God, emulated the ancient
anchorites of Mount Carmel and the Thebaid by a manner of life most rigor-
ous in its discipline, but tempered by all the sweetness of heavenly contempla-
tion; and whatever their contemplation taught them which would be service-
able in leading souls to eternal life, all this they shared with others either by
that apostleship of penance and prayer of which We have spoken or by a dili-
gent discharge of the sacred ministry. It has long been known to Us that you,
beloved sons, still uphold those high ideals which have been handed down to
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 717
you, and have not relaxed from the spirit of St. Teresa ; for We have had in-
timate personal acquaintance with your Order for a very long time. And We
now seize the opportunity afforded Us of giving public expression to the good
will We deservedly entertain for both the sons and daughters of your great
Mother. Sufficient praise, indeed, can never be given to the manner of life
embraced by those young women who exchange the wealth, renown, and pleas-
ures of the world for the simplicity of the Cross, and shutting themselves up in
the silence of holy retirement, are consumed with the fire of charity, pleasing
victims to God on the altar of Christian penance; there day and night they un-
ceasingly make intercession for that world which knows them not. Equally es-
timable is the life of the friars, who are not so much occupied in Divine con-
templation as to take no share in the active life, but attend to both in due order,
and, gathering the good odor of Christ within the cloister by training them-
selves in virtue, spread it around them outside for the benefit of others. There-
fore, beloved children, strive not only to hold fast to the alliance of contempla-
tion and action marked out by your predecessors, but make it flourish and grow
vigorous among you. For in these days more than ever the Church has need
of sacred ministers who will combine close union with God with active love for
men priests such as your holy Mother Teresa so desirously longed for.
Lastly, since that yearning for novelties, which is in evidence more than
ever to-day, has invaded even the field of ascetical and mystical theology, all
must see the importance of jealously guarding St. Teresa's teaching in both
these spheres. For " God Almighty so filled her with the spirit of understand-
ing that she not only bequeathed to the Church the example of her good works,
but she bedewed it with the heavenly wisdom of her treatises on mystical theol-
ogy and other pious writings" (Bull of Canonization). Whoever wishes to
lead a life of holiness, let him but study these, and he will have need of no
others. For in them this renowned mistress of piety points out a safe path of
Christian life from its inception up to the consummation and perfection of vir-
tue ; she sets down accurately the ways best suited for correcting vicious habits,
quelling boisterous passions, and effacing the defilements of sin ; and she puts
before the reader every enticement to virtue. And in explaining all these mat-
ters, she at once shows her admirable knowledge of things divine, and gives
proof of her intimate acquaintance with the nature of the human soul, its re-
cesses, and its inner workings. In this great knowledge of human infirmity,
which inclined her tender heart so exceedingly to mercy, and still more in the
ardor of her charity, is to be sought her characteristic strength of prayer and
gentleness of manner, which exert such wonderful influence on men's minds.
As Our predecessor, Leo XIII. of happy memory, speaking of St. Teresa's
writings, says beautifully: "They have a force, more heavenly than human,
which rouses one marvelously to a better life, so that their reading is most
profitable not alone to those engaged in the direction of souls and those who
tread the highest paths of virtue, but also to everyone who is at all con-
cerned about the duties and virtues of Christian life in other words, who is
anxious about his salvation" (Letter to Father Bouix, S.J., March 17, 1883).
As regards mystical theology, Teresa discourses about those higher regions
(as it were) of the spiritual life with such ease that there she seems to be in
her proper sphere. There is not one secret of that life which she does not
penetrate and disclose to us. Advancing through all the degrees of contempla-
tion, she reaches such sublime heights as are inaccessible to all except those who
have experienced and are acquainted with the divinest affections of the soul.
Yet she says not one word which conflicts with exact Catholic theology ; and
she sets out everything with such facility and clearness that the most disting-
7i8 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
uished doctors of her day were astonished to find the mystical theology which
was vaguely taught by the Fathers of the Church here and there through their
works, gathered together by this saintly woman and arranged systematically.
For our own part, when We review the errors which are so prevalent in these
matters at the present day, We consider specially important not only the ac-
curacy with which Teresa, when describing the mystical movements of the soul,
distinguishes between the human element and the divine, and marks off precisely
the functions of the intellect from those of the will, but also her insistence on
the need of these movements being accompanied by the exercise of all the virtues.
Her teaching is that the several degrees of prayer are so many steps up the
ascent of Christian perfection ; that a man's progress in prayer is chiefly dis-
cernible in a more faithful discharge of his duties and increased zeal in sanctify-
ing his life; finally, that the more one is joined in mystical union with God,
the more fervent becomes his love for his neighbor and his solicitude for the
welfare of souls. Whoever will reflect on these teachings of St. Teresa will
come to understand how deservedly writers on these difficult subjects have ac-
knowledged her as a master and have followed her guidance, and furthermore,
with what justice the Church pays to this virgin the honors given to Doctors,
and in the liturgy prays God "that we may be nourished by the food of her
heavenly doctrine and instructed by the ardor of her tender piety." Would
that those who now write about what they call mystical psychology would make
up their minds to follow in the footsteps of this great mistress !
We have here, beloved children, touched on the principal things that re-
bound to the glory of St. Teresa. When published broadcast by you, they should
help much to increase devotion to her among the people and to add distinction
.to the pious celebrations you are about to hold. For it is much to be desired
that St. Teresa should be known and esteemed among all devout people she
who, as is clear from what we have written, " shone as a brilliant star in Carmel,
and adorned the Catholic Church by the virtues of her angelic life, her writings
of heavenly wisdom, and her numerous children who so faithfully follow the
example left them by their great mother and mistress " (Letter of Leo XIII. to
the Bishop of Salamanca)
Meanwhile, in token of heavenly favors, and in witness of our good will,
We most lovingly impart to you, beloved son, and to all the children of St.
Teresa, Our Apostolic Benediction.
Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the 7th of March, the Feast of St.
Thomas Aquinas, in the year 1914, the eleventh of Our Pontificate.
POPE PIUS X.
WE believe that Dr. Washington Gladden in his article in Harper's
Weekly for July i8th, entitled The Anti-Catholic Panic, exag-
gerates the situation when he says that we are in for another anti-
Catholic crusade that will sweep the country. That there is a rising
wave of anti-Catholic hatred is beyond question ; but it will not assume
the proportions Dr. Gladden describes. The Catholic Church is too well
known, and the majority of our non-Catholic brethren are too fair-
minded and intelligent, to permit of that.
But Dr. Gladden, and the editors of Harper's Weekly who publish
his article, merit the gratitude of all who love justice and peace. Dr.
I9I4-] WITH OUR READERS 719
Gladden seeks, in the face of the terrible storm which he sees impend-
ing, to give some advice to his fellow Protestants, that will calm their
fears and lead them to be reasonable and just.
One of the most effective measures to secure a better understand-
ing and a fairer judgment would be for all the leaders of Protestant
bodies, and all ministers, to denounce such sheets as The Menace and
The Peril that seek to do nothing but breed hate.
We are certain that neither the Catholic body, nor any considerable
portion of it, will " say hard and bitter things about non-Catholics ;" or
" cherish the worst suspicions about their motives and purposes." Mis-
understanding is inevitable; it is a necessary result of our differences.
Misrepresentation should be sincerely and earnestly condemned by
everyone.
JUST as we wrote the above there came to us an able opinion written
by a Catholic, Judge Malone of the Court of General Sessions of
New York, which should certainly make for religious peace. We re-
print a portion of it :
I think the law is perfectly well settled that no man in a house of re-
ligious worship, on the Lord's Day, in a discontented state of mind himself, is to
infuse that discontent into the minds of other persons, by which the tendency is
to disturb the tranquillity and peace of those communicating at divine service
The place was the Calvary Baptist Church, and the date when these pro-
ceedings occurred was Sunday, May loth, about eleven o'clock in the morning.
I think that the quiet, undisturbed worship of God in a house of worship involves
precious doctrines to the people, and cannot be diminished even by well-meaning
and respectable persons ; and Sunday was not a proper time, nor was the Cal-
vary Baptist Church the proper place, for the disputatious discussion upon the
responsibilities of citizenship and the duties of men. It was the time and
place where forms of conduct are to be cautiously and strictly observed.
Surely, if you strip religion of its quiet forms and external symbols, you will fix
it to the earth; it would seem, too, that it was of primary importance to the
community that their retreat from a world of stress and excitement on that
Sunday morning should not be disturbed, and that end, as I view it, would
be defeated, without the instrumentality of outward quietness and proper
behavior, and by conduct that is such as will arrest and fix the attention
of the communicants, and stimulate those who are desponding, those who come
there for contemplation and for religious consolation. No one assuredly can re-
spect religion and at the same time insult its forms and proper symbols
Any conduct, therefore, which is calculated to destroy that nice observance
of orderly behavior which has always existed on the Lord's Day in houses of
worship, is a matter of great importance to the multitude of men generally.
It seems to the court that such a proceeding, from all the evidence that was
submitted before the magistrate and read here, was clearly contrary to the
religious feelings and habits of the people of this country, and cannot be
reconciled with good sense or good feeling
If our municipal authorities have not, within the law, authority to provide
720 BOOKS RECEIVED [Aug., 1914.]
against such evils of confusion and disorder in the house of prayer, then indeed
are our people at the mercy of the combination of those who respect no law,
no order, and no government except their own unbridled wills While it is
beyond the power of the law to rectify men's minds, and to infuse into them
that spirit which prompts them to the doing of praiseworthy things promotive
of the peace and comfort of the community, still it is within the power, yes,
the duty, of the law to take from those who are indifferent and evil-minded,
the ability of doing public mischief, and to limit and restrain them of their
liberty, if needs be, when they grossly abuse it
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Synopsis of The Rubrics and Ceremonies of Holy Mass. By Rev. W. Doyle,
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The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome. By F. W. Fuller. $2.25 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York :
The Franciscan Poets in Italy of the Thirteenth Century. By F. Ozanain.
Translated by A. E. Nellen and N. E. Craig. $2.00 net.
STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, New York :
Educational Missions. By J. L. Barton. 75 cents.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia :
George Macdonald Stories for Little Folks At the Back of the North Wind.
Simplified by Elizabeth Lewis. $1.50.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
The Religious Poems of Richard Crashaw. By R. A. E. Shepherd. 30 cents.
Parish Life under Queen Elisabeth. By W. P. M. Kennedy, M.A. 30 cents.
Richard of Wyche. By Sister M. R. Capes. $1.50 net. Leaves from the
Note-Book of a Missionary. By Rev. Wm. B. Hannon. 75 cents. The New
Man. By P. Gibbs. $1.00 net. The Sweet Miracle. (A Mystery Play.)
By Ega de Queiroz. 30 cents net. St. Bernardino, the People's Preacher.
By M. Ward. 30 cents net. Footprints of the Ancient Scottish Church. By
M. Barrett, O.S.B. $1.80 net. Atlas Hierarchies-. By P. C. Streit, S.V.D.
$10.00 net.
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Satire. By G. Cannan. i s. net. History. By R. H. Gretton. i s. net.
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By Rev. T. Wright. 6 d. net.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCIX. SEPTEMBER, 1914. No. 594.
THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
BY CHARLES H. MCCARTHY, PH.D.
O understand the events which culminated September
n, 1814, in the great naval victory on Lake Cham-
plain, it is not necessary to have in mind an outline
of American history from the date of the discovery
by Columbus. An advantage will be perceived, how-
ever, in a familiarity with the origin and development of political
parties under the Constitution. As we shall see, the declaration of
war in 1812, as well as a number of interesting events in its progress,
is closely bound up with the struggles of the first political parties
in the United States.
In the Convention which sat in Philadelphia during the summer
of 1787 were many discrepant elements. There were delegates
from small States and delegates from large States, delegates from
slaveholding States, and delegates from States that were essentially
free; delegates representing States which were chiefly agricultural,
and delegates from States that were beginning to be commercial.
There were delegates who favored hard money, and delegates who
favored soft money. By the adoption of a few important compro-
mises, some of these jarring elements were finally harmonized. In
another view, that Convention could be regarded as being composed
of two antagonistic groups, namely, one whose members signed the
Constitution, and one whose members refused their signatures. It
is in the fortunes of the latter that we are now interested. The tune-
ful voice of patriotism, which had hushed the agitation of factions,
failed to influence sixteen delegates, who left the Convention with-
out having approved its work. To this class belonged Luther
Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. xcix. 46
722 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMP LAIN [Sept.,
Martin, of Maryland, later known as "the bull-dog of the Feder-
alists."^ Even better known in 1787 was George Mason, of Virginia,
who saw in the lack of a Bill of Rights an insurmountable objection
to the proposed Constitution. Lansing and Yates, both from New
York, left the Convention before its task was finished. Elbridge
Gerry, of Massachusetts, also belonged to this band, to which, ac-
cording to one's political faith, one can apply the epithet statesman-
like or parochial. Concisely to describe the situation, it may be said
that seventy citizens of twelve States were honored by appointment
as delegates to the Convention; that many, like Patrick Henry and
Richard Henry Lee, declined to attend, and that, at one time or
another, fifty-five members visited the Convention, but only thirty-
nine signed the finished draft of a new constitution.
When the Constitution was engrossed and signed, it was
promptly forwarded to Congress, then in session in New York, with
a recommendation that it be submitted for the adoption of the
several States. In that body it was proposed by some to amend the
plan of the Convention. Such action, of course, would have undone
all that had been accomplished, and before another convention could
have prepared a different constitution, there is little doubt that
anarchy would have become general. In 1787 there existed among
the commonwealths controversies of the gravest character. James
Madison, who had been one of the framers, was at that time a dele-
gate in Congress from the State of Virginia. Very much to the
satisfaction of that body, he answered the objections of his colleague,
Richard Henry Lee, who not only criticized the work and the pro-
gramme of the Convention, but, as The Federal Farmer, soon be-
gan in the newspapers a spirited opposition.
In the New York journals Hamilton must have seen the ad-
dresses, the thoughts, and the observations which comfortably
filled their columns. It is certain that he would not have descended
to an argument with every fellow who had an inclination to scribble
in a newspaper, but the letters of Richard Henry Lee were not be-
neath the dignity of notice. Hamilton, doubtless, had some con-
fidence in his own skill in argumentative composition, and in his
knowledge of the new plan. The result was the publication of the
celebrated series of eighty-five letters, printed between the autumn
of 1787 and the following summer, chiefly in the Independent
Journal and the New York Packet. In their preparation Hamilton
was slightly assisted by Jay, who wrote five numbers, and very ably
by Madison, the sole author of twelve or fourteen, and a collabor-
ator, with Hamilton, in the composition of three or four. Not so
1914.] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 723
well known is William Duer, who contributed a few sprightly num-
bers, but did not greatly add to either the dignity or the value of the
papers.
Whatever may have been the effect of the essays, known collec-
tively as The Federalist, they ultimately supplied the leaders with
arguments, and are credited with no slight influence in having
persuaded the conventions of eleven States to adopt the Constitu-
tion. Those who favored and those who opposed the new system,
then, formed the first political parties in the national period, but as
yet they were without organization. One is not to infer, however,
that in this memorable campaign there was any lack of energy. It
is difficult in our time even to imagine the feelings of the partisans
of that epoch, but the existence of factions, now called parties, was
just as real as are the divisions of to-day. From an examination of
contemporary newspapers, one might almost fancy that the buried
greatness of Rome had crossed the Atlantic. Cato, and Brutus, and
Cincinnatus exchanged blows with fearful adversaries as cour-
ageously as did the original owners of these patronymics some two
thousand years before. From a grave more remote came the shade
of Aristides, renowned for public virtue, who volunteered his serv-
ices during the war. We cannot now pause to examine the list of
casualties, but must reluctantly leave this topic with the statement
that the fight was furious. Besides these paper battles there were
armed mobs, and rioting, and bloodshed.
The element which favored the foedus, or union, under the
proposed Constitution, became known as the Federalist Party.
Those opposed, nowhere more numerous than in New England,
were called Anti-Federalists. As was stated in the preceding para-
graph, the former was successful. Though the opposition was bitter
and the feeling tense, even at that early date was illustrated the fine
American characteristic of gracefully accepting a political defeat.
When the Constitution became operative, the occupation of the
Anti-Federalists apparently was gone. Their conduct plainly de-
clared to the victors, "Gentlemen, you now have the Constitution to
which you profess so great attachment. We shall take care that its
provisions are strictly observed." This attitude, manifest in the
action of Gerry, gave us the strict constructionists and the loose con-
structionists.
Hamilton, the intellectual leader of the Federalists or loose
constructionists, conceived a series of fiscal measures which were
soon enacted into law. The extent of his success has been vividly
suggested by Webster, who said that the first Secretary of the
724 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN [Sept.,
Treasury touched the corpse of public credit and it sprang to its
feet. The improvement in the public finances was almost instan-
taneous. The moneyed interests, which have ever had an influence
out of all proportion to their number, were promptly drawn up on
the side of the new government. Jefferson, a foreign secretary
with few duties, dreaded this corrupt treasury squadron, as he
called it, and began to undermine the influence of his colleague and
the authority of his chief. The establishment of the United States
Bank, a measure which divided friends, was opposed by the strict
constructionists, who looked to Jefferson for leadership. The Con-
stitution, they maintained, did not create a state, in the language of
that day a nation equipped with sovereign powers. Therefore the
government could not charter a corporation. The social and the
sectional opposition to this institution, afterward known as the first
United States Bank, we may pass without observation.
After a year under the new system, the agitation in New Eng-
land sank to rest. The more clamorous in opposition had been
silenced by the adoption of ten amendments to the Constitution.
The energetic fiscal policy of the government was satisfactory,
especially the act for assuming the Revolutionary debts of the States;
public securities were rising in price, taxes were reduced, and trade,
interrupted by the war, was everywhere reviving. Rhode Island,
after recovering from her paper money delusion, entered the Union
in May. In a word, one year under what was sometimes called the
new roof had brought contentment. South of the Potomac the
measures of government were differently regarded. Everything
done by Washington's administration was believed to be wrong. All
the bills passed, it was said, were merely schemes in the interest of
the East, as New England was then called. Most detested of them
all was the Assumption Bill. These conditions led to the decline of
Anti-Federalism in New England, and to its rapid growth in the
South.
By Southern Congressmen the funding system was declared
odious, unequal in its operations, and unjust. The excise law, an
alleged imitation of a British custom, was objected to in the House,
and in western Pennsylvania resisted by the "Whiskey Boys." The
very thought of a title for General Washington, which was seriously
proposed, appears to have made some men mad. They likewise ob-
jected to his levees, and to the equipage of Vice-President Adams, as
well as to the books written by that official. The discontented found
a leader in Jefferson, fresh from France and its ultra republicanism.
Every unpremediated remark, every unconsidered observation at an
1914.] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 725
advanced stage of some dinner, were by him written down in his
Anas. Indeed, he seems not to have hesitated to record gossip at
third or even fourth hand. These fragments of conversation,
mixed with his own suspicions, were brooded over with miser care,
until he appears to have been fully convinced that there was in the
land a strong party bent on the establishment of monarchy. The
reader need not be told that many of these monarchy men were as
ardent devotees of freedom as was Jefferson himself. Nevertheless,
the administration and its great chief were assailed by the National
Gazette, a publication edited by the versatile Philip Freneau, sea-
man, satirist, and romantic poet. Very strong, though not conclu-
sive, testimony points to Jefferson, Freneau's employer, as the author
of the most shameless of all the attacks on the first President. In
the House there was animated opposition to the proposed stamping
of Washington's image upon the new gold and silver coins. With
the terrible year, '93, came Citizen Genet, whose criticism of the
President at first delighted the Republicans, and marks a division of
the American people into pro-French and pro-English parties. This
difference of sentiment was intensified by the publication of Wash-
ington's neutrality proclamation. The Jeffersonians denied his con-
stitutional authority to issue it, and they charged him with in-
gratitude for not observing the provisions of the treaty with France,
and coming to the assistance of his ally. The ratification of Jay's
treaty with England, merely added fuel to flames that already
burned briskly. Toward the close of his second term, Washington
was vilified by Tom Paine and by the Aurora. In a word, the ex-
piring hours of the first President's political career saw his country-
men divided into the most bitter factions on the subject of foreign
relations. One felt or feigned the greatest admiration for France,
the other was destined similarly to regard England.
The X Y Z mission belongs to the administration of the elder
Adams. The American commissioners, Gerry, Marshall, and Pinck-
ney, were not received by Talleyrand, the Secretary of Foreign
Relations, though through several of his emissaries it was made
clear that the Directory was willing for a large sum of money to
enter into a commercial treaty with the United States. Because of
the violent changes in their country, the members of this executive
board, virtuous successors of a wicked king, believed that their har-
vest was likely to be brief, and that it was their duty to make it
glorious. Their unfriendly treatment of the American commission-
ers, injured for a time the prospects of the Jeffersonian Republi-
cans. However, the attacks on Federalism were soon resumed. In
726 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN [Sept.,
the single term of John Adams, the blunders of the government of
France led to a quasi war with that nation. For the moment, there-
fore, the spirit of faction lost something of its virulence. Again it
flamed forth after the passage by the Federalists of the celebrated
Sedition Law, an act palpably at variance with the spirit of the
Constitution. This legislation was met by the Virginia and Ken-
tucky resolutions, the former prepared by Madison, and the latter
a modification of Jefferson's draft. On these were based the prac-
tical secession of official New England during the war of 1812, the
nullification of South Carolina in 1832, and the secession of 1860.
High taxes incident to war measures, the passage of the obnoxious
law mentioned, and the quarrels of its leaders brought about the
defeat in the fourth Presidential election of the Federalist Party,
which in a little while was to pass forever from power.
On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of American
political thinkers, took the oath of office as President, and delivered
an inaugural address which was once as familiar as the Declaration
of Independence. Its phrases have long since become a part of the
political thought of this nation. Though he had been elected by the
House of Representatives, and had been opposed by a bold and
vindictive minority, Jefferson's first term was both tranquil and
prosperous. So that he would not be compelled to witness the
spectacle of his successor's inauguration, John Adams, chief of a
moribund party, left Washington on the night of March 3d. In
Jefferson's own picturesque phrase, Federalist appointments had
been crowded through with whip and spur until nearly midnight of
the third of March. For this unhandsome treatment, and for the
petty insult of Adams, the new President owed no courtesies to the
Federalist leaders.
Probably without foreseeing all the consequences of such a
step, Jefferson had long been considering the acquisition of a tract at
the mouth of the Mississippi. Indeed, the subject had been con-
sidered by him when he was Secretary of State. It was while
Minister Livingston was arranging for its purchase, that Napoleon
offered to sell to the United States the whole of the Louisiana terri-
tory. In its purchase the President disregarded the principles of
the Kentucky resolutions, and furnished New England no slight
justification for nullification and secession. But he knew that he
had done an act outside the Constitution, whose amendment he ac-
tually proposed. This draft his less scrupulous friends permitted to
take a quiet slumber. In this transaction, so much ridiculed by the
Federalists, Jefferson showed enlightened statesmanship. Leaving
1914-] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAM PLAIN 727
out of account his failure by a succession of impeachments to change
the political complexion of the Federal Judiciary, his first term was
marked by almost perfect success. Except in the matter of hostility
to the army and navy, his policy had been much the same as that
of his Federalist predecessors, his control of Congress, perhaps,
even more complete than theirs. But dame fortune, who oftentimes
makes sport of armies, and emperors, and kings, was soon to reveal
to her favorite another side of her countenance. The completeness
of his victory in the Presidential election of 1804, must have startled
even Jefferson himself.
In the great wars between France and England, he very much
desired to remain neutral. In the meantime, he shrewdly foresaw,
his own country would be increasing in wealth and population. His
attitude evoked no answering sympathy in England. If the United
States would not be her ally, said the British Cabinet, she must sub-
mit to be plundered by English fleets. Napoleon stepped to the same
sound. If America was to be plundered, France must get a share of
the spoils. Neither power respected the shopkeeping prudence of
the President.
On the 2 ist of October, 1805, came Trafalgar, which estab-
lished the naval supremacy of England. This event, it may be sup-
posed, did not tend to diminish British arrogance. Napoleon would
tolerate no neutrality, while Great Britain with brutal insolence re-
solved to annihilate American commerce. On the high seas, and
even in the ports of the United States, not only the ships of friendly
nations, but the vessels of American citizens were seized. In a mild
manner the government threatened non-importation, but the pro-
posed measure was suspended. To such a pitch were matters carried
that an English warship fired into a coastwise trader, and killed an
American citizen. After manifesting a flash of spirit the President
immediately apologized for it to his friend Monroe, then in England.
He afterward recommended the building of gunboats, toy instru-
ments of war which have provoked the smiles of every succeeding
generation. The meekness of the American ruler invited outrage
after outrage. This was the era of the Orders in Council, and the
retaliatory decrees of Napoleon. The British closed to American
commerce one-half the world, the French the other half. Even
trade between domestic ports could not be carried on with safety.
British arrogance culminated in June, 1807, when the Leopard fired
a broadside into the unprepared Chesapeake, killing and wounding
several seamen, and compelling her to surrender. After a search
for deserters the British commander carried off four, of whom
728 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMP LAIN [Sept.,
three were natural born citizens of the United States. One of
them was hanged at Halifax. For a moment the spirit of '76
flared up. A vessel was ordered to England to demand reparation,
and Congress was convoked in special session. The President feebly
prepared for war.
About this time the government appears to have realized the
dangers to American commerce. In a message to Congress, there-
fore, the President recommended an embargo. A legislature loyal
to the administration promptly passed such a measure. In the im-
perfect view of Mr. Jefferson, this would save American ships and
American seamen. But so ignoble a solution of the difficulty would,
of course, ultimately destroy commerce. The Federalists, it is true,
had declared embargoes, but only for short terms, whereas in its
duration Jefferson's embargo was indefinite. Later it was with a
slender commerce that the nation went to war with England, and
from the injuries of that conflict and the long embargo American
commerce has never recovered. This fatal stroke the President had
not designed. His paternal policy looked no farther than protection.
After no little hesitation, the former supporters of Jefferson
finally introduced and passed a bill for the repeal of the embargo.
Though the President knew that his policy was a failure, he did not
care formally to admit it. After the elections of 1808, when he was
aware that Madison would succeed him, he took little interest in the
new legislation proposed by Congress. During the course of a life-
time, the President had nearly always been the favorite of powers
beneficent. Even at the hour of his retirement, they hid from his
sight impending disappointment and humiliation.
Upon the representations of Mr. Erskine, the British Minister,
President Madison allowed one thousand vessels with their cargoes
to sail from American ports. While the English government dis-
avowed the acts of Erskine, the ships were permitted to complete
their voyages without being molested. The President desired the
return of those vessels, but they never came back. Notwithstanding
the experience of his predecessor, the new President believed that
non-importation and embargo would ultimately bring both bellig-
erents to reason. By the Rambouillet decree, enforced in May,
1810, Napoleon ordered the confiscation of all American vessels
in ports controlled by France. The loss thus entailed has been es-
timated at forty millions of dollars. After a demand for compen-
sation, which was refused, the administration quietly submitted to
the spoliation. At this time France agreed to revoke her decrees
if England would rescind her Orders in Council. The President
I9I4-] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMP LAIN 729
seemed willing to assist the Emperor, who in turn hoped to gain an
advantage over England and America, if only he could persuade
them to fight each other. He demanded that the United States cause
her rights to be respected by England. This will account for the
non-importation measure, as to that power, which before adjourn-
ment in 1811 was passed by Congress. The prospect of peace was
clouded once more, when the frigate President and the British sloop
of war Little Belt had an encounter near Sandy Hook. While neither
side admitted having fired the first shot, it is quite certain that
after the disgraceful surrender of the Chesapeake, American officers
were eager for an opportunity to efface the memory of that event.
When, therefore, the British sloop began its pursuit of the Presi-
dent, that vessel did not, perhaps, try its utmost to escape, and in
turn became the pursuer. In the engagement which occurred, the
American ship lost one man, the British in killed and wounded
thirty.
In a message to Congress the President carefully enumerated
the offences of both governments, and later in his letters stated that
the danger of an armed conflict was as great with one power as with
the other. In fact, were it not for the danger of meeting in northern
waters stronger English fleets, he would have sent warships to
chastise both the French and Danes for their insolence in the Baltic.
Unless'there was indemnity for these offences, the President hinted
at war with France. On the other hand, Congress under the leader-
ship of Calhoun and Clay, was lashing itself into fury against Eng-
land. The grounds of resentment against the two powers appear
to have been equal. The leaders, however, chose to fight it out with
England, perhaps because their party had always been pro-French.
There was, of course, a difference between the offenders, for the
French had not impressed thousands of seamen. Moreover, there
was an ancient friendship for France and an ancient enmity against
England. Furthermore, Southern leaders preferred that policy
which would most displease the North, the commercial section of the
country. On a recommendation of the President, Congress passed
an embargo of ninety days, but before the expiration of that period
another of his messages urged a declaration of war against England.
On June 17, 1812, both Houses agreed to such a measure.
The letters of Madison leave no doubt that in his judgment
there were justifications for a war with France. Why, then, did
he recommend a declaration of war against England? The usual
explanation of his change of front is that Clay and Calhoun, young
and aggressive leaders, made such a stipulation for a second term.
730 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN [Sept.,
It is not at all probable that a formal agreement was entered into.
Whoever was nominated by the Jeffersonian Party was certain of
an election. The case against Madison is strong. A Congressional
caucus renominated him; the war message followed. In other
words, Madison is charged with having disregarded the convictions
of years to gain a second term. This subject, the integrity of
Madison, is far larger than it appears to be. It would lead to a
discussion -of the disputed numbers of The Federalist, the mystery
of the Pinckney plan of a constitution, and the slander of certain
New England Federalists.
War was declared on an empty treasury, as Gallatin had fore-
told it must be. Restrictive measures had almost destroyed com-
merce. The United States Bank having failed to obtain a new
charter, the government had no efficient fiscal agency. Finally the
policy of Jefferson, an economical one to be sure, had substituted for
battleships a number of comparatively worthless gunboats, and had
placed the army on a very peaceful footing. Under Madison there
was little change in administrative principles. It was in these cir-
cumstances that Congress declared war against the mistress of the
seas. In a brief essay its conduct cannot be described. It will be
sufficient to state that, as might have been expected, there followed
eighteen months of disaster. The statesmen who were eager to
annex the two Canadas were a long way from Quebec. In the
lowering clouds, however, there were a few rifts. One of the more
cheerful campaigns we shall presently describe.
From the shores of Long Island to the mouth of the Missis-
sippi, British fleets rode triumphant. The region of the Chesapeake
was actually conquered territory. Though its inhabitants were
terrorized, they were afforded no protection by their government.
To Gallatin's warning of an invasion the President, dreaming on
conquests in Canada, turned a deaf ear. When danger was impend-
ing, feeble preparations were begun. Somebody's kinsman was ap-
pointed commander; his neighbors took up their muskets. Perhaps
the most disgraceful event of the war was the capture of Washing-
ton, which followed the battle of Bladensburg in August, 1814. In
their flight both government officials and militia could see behind
them the flames of burning public buildings. The destruction in the
Connecticut River of a score of seagoing vessels, and the loss of
nearly as many more at Wareham, Massachusetts, showed the su-
premacy of the British in American waters. Eastern Maine was
nominally in the possession of the English under General Sher-
brooke.
1914.] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 731
Two years marked by inefficiency and misapplied energy had
gained nothing in Canada. Thereafter the aggressive became a de-
fensive war against superior forces, for being a little relieved of
its fear of Napoleon, England sent to America four brigades from
Wellington's Peninsular army. The battles around Baltimore, as
well as the victory at New Orleans, were defensive advantages. The
British would have been in occupation of much of American terri-
tory, were it not for the defeat of their land and naval forces at
Plattsburg.
Up to June, 1813, the balance of naval power on Lake Cham-
plain inclined to the side of the United States. Neither belligerent
attempted materially to strengthen its small fleet. The President,
the Growler, and the Eagle, three armed sloops, gave the range of
the lake to the United States. At Isle aux Noix, in the narrows, the
enemy had a fortified station. By determining the American com-
mander for 1814, one event of the year 1813 was of the greatest
importance. With two of his three frigates, Lieutenant Sydney
Smith sailed down the lake to disperse the British gunboats. In
doing so he fell in with three, which on his own responsibility he
chased down the Sorel River. Presently he saw a British flag flying
from Fort Isle aux Noix and attempted to return, but he found the
river narrow, the current strong, and the winds at rest. In a word,
manoeuvring was difficult. In this situation he was soon overtaken
by a strong force of the enemy, which had appeared on both banks.
The pursued boats, too, participated in a desperate three hours'
fight. The Eagle was forced to run ashore to avoid sinking, the
Growler soon became unmanageable and surrendered. The taking
of both sloops gave to the English the supremacy of the lake, while
the capture of Lieutenant Smith gave the command of the American
flotilla to Thomas MacDonough.
The Eagle and the Growler were not only refitted, but renamed.
As the Finch and the Chnbb they were destined soon to take
part in a memorable battle. Taking advantage of their superiority,
the British in July, 1813, made a descent on Plattsburg. In that
place, as well as at Saranac, they plundered the magazines, and
swept American shipping from the neighboring waters. By August
6th, however, MacDonough had afloat three new sloops. No more
plundering was undertaken during 1813.
Through the winter of 1813-14, and the following spring, there
was immense activity in naval construction. The Saratoga was
launched in Otter Creek, where the American fleet was anchored.
The British made at that point an unsuccessful attempt to seal it up.
732 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN [Sept.,
At this time, the early summer of 1814, a small American army
under General Izard occupied the village of Plattsburg, then a place
of fifteen hundred inhabitants. This officer had thought of making a
demonstration against Montreal or Kingston, but in August tidings
of the encampment of British regulars on both banks of the Sorel
persuaded him to remain at Plattsburg. In a letter to the Secretary
of War, he recommended such a policy. About the same time that
official instructed Izard to march at once to Sackett's Harbor with
four thousand men. In obedience to orders he set out August 29th,
and on the seventeenth of September arrived at his destination,
where he heard with amazement of the great victory on Lake
Champlain. While he pushed through the wilderness, fame had
visited his old camping ground.
Scarcely had General Izard and his men turned their faces
toward the west, when Wellington's veterans, eleven to fourteen
thousand strong, crossed the frontier under General Sir George Pre-
vost and occupied Chazy, just abandoned by the Americans. On
September 5th the invaders were within eight miles of the Saranac,
at the mouth of which is Plattsburg, even then important for its
trade. Opposed to the British force were fifteen hundred troops
that General Izard had left behind. These, commanded by Briga-
dier-General Alexander Macomb, were chiefly within the strong
fortifications on the bluffs south of the Saranac at Plattsburg, which
had been built by General Izard, a skillful engineer. Skirmishers,
indeed, had been thrown out to retard the progress of Prevost. To
these the British commander paid not the slightest attention, but
in column continued his march toward Plattsburg, where his army
arrived September 6, 1814, and occupied that part of the town on
the north of the Saranac. Thence he saw the defences of the
Americans, and at anchor beheld their little fleet. Though Prevost
was confident of success, he deemed it prudent to await the arrival
of the British ships under command of Captain George Downie of
the Royal Navy. In the meantime, September 7th to nth, the
General was making preparations to batter down the defences of
Macomb. At both the fords and bridges there was constant skir-
mishing. The militia, which began to arrive in considerable num-
bers, enabled Macomb greatly to strengthen the works planned by
General Izard. The newcomers labored with spirit, and did not rest
either night or day.
For reasons now scarcely intelligible, General Prevost by his
frequent and urgent letters forced Captain Downie, who fully ex-
pected the cooperation of the army, to attack the American fleet
1914-] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 733
before he was thoroughly prepared for battle. Accordingly with a
favorable breeze his ships got under way at daybreak, and at five
o'clock on the morning of September nth fired signal guns for an
advance by the army. A feeble attack by that branch of the service
was the cause of Prevost's subsequent court-martial. The com-
mander of the fleet was amazed to find no concerted action by the
impatient General, but nevertheless went gallantly to his fate. Cap-
tain Downie had hoped that a victorious army would drive the
American squadron from its chosen anchorage in Plattsburg Bay, a
sheet of water two miles long and two miles wide, and with his
superior fleet he would then defeat it on the open lake. From north
to south in front of the American works on shore were ranged the
Eagle, the Saratoga, the Ticonderoga, and the Preble, with ten
gunboats. About one and a half miles out in the harbor Mac-
Donough awaited the enemy. Across the narrow neck of land end-
ing in Cumberland Head, could be seen the masts of the British
fleet coming up the lake. The bay can be entered only from the
south. As MacDonough took a position in the upper harbor, it was
dangerous to attempt to get between him and the north shore. To
the west were his gunboats and the Plattsburg forts. The position,
though not without its elements of danger, was skillfully chosen.
In a boat Captain Downie reconnoitred the American fleet, and
made his "dispositions accordingly. He may have had misgivings
when he saw no victorious British force on shore. Nevertheless
the fleet held on and sailed up the harbor, with the Confiance leading
the line. Next in order came the Finch, and Linnet, and the Chubb.
There were about twelve gunboats in addition to the vessels named.
The Confiance, which was to attack the Eagle, received the
concentrated fire of the American fleet, and was thus unable to carry
out her part of the programme. The wind failing, she was com-
pelled to anchor within five hundred yards of MacDonough's line,
from which position, in still water, she levelled a broadside that
struck down one-fifth of the crew of the Saratoga. Twice Mac-
Donough found his ship on fire. For a time it was bearing the
brunt of action. Like a common sailor he worked a favorite piece.
For a few minutes he was knocked senseless by the fall of a spar.
He had scarcely risen to his feet, when he was knocked across the
deck by the flying head of a captain that had been serving a gun.
Early in the fight Captain Downie had been killed. Fortunately
for the American fleet the Confiancc sent no broadside like the first.
In such havoc no human flesh could live. On the decks of the
Confiance the confusion was quite as great as on the Saratoga,
734 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN [Sept.,
whose fire slackened and then failed. It was at that instant that
the seamanship of MacDonough saved the day. The Saratoga was
worked around until her port guns were brought to bear on the
Con fiance with fatal effect. The sails of that ship were cut to very
rags, her masts were likened to bundles of matches. In two hours
from the time of her first destructive broadside, in a sinking con-
dition, she was forced to strike. After "wynding" the Saratoga,
MacDonough had practically a new vessel, and began a lively fight
with the Linnet, which held out nearly half an hour longer. The
Ticonderoga had taken care of the enemy's galleys. Early in the
engagement the Chubb drifted helplessly through the American
line. The Linnet, however, took the post assigned her, and after
hard fighting forced the Eagle from her position. Her commander,
Captain Pring, was the last to strike his colors. The Finch went
ashore on Crab Island, where the convalescents in a hospital manned
a battery and compelled her to surrender.
In reality this fight was the conflict between the Saratoga and
the Eagle on one side and the Confiance and the Linnet on the other.
About two hundred Americans were killed and wounded, the casual-
ties on the British side were at least three hundred. "Sir George
Prevost and his army," says Roosevelt, Naval War of 1812, "at
once fled in great haste and confusion back to Canada, leaving our
northern frontier clear for the remainder of the war; while the
victory had a great effect on the negotiations for peace."
Of those moving onward to take their places in the hall of
fame, few are they who do not sound a note of the advance. The
hero of Lake Champlain had given at least one blast on his bugle
horn. When the Enterprise and its seventy-four determined young
men entered the harbor of Tripoli and devoted the Philadelphia to
the flames, Thomas MacDonough, twenty years of age, distinguished
himself for gallantry. A little later the Siren, of which he was
first lieutenant, lay at anchor in the harbor of Gibraltar. Near her
was an American merchant brig, which was visited by a boat from a
British man-of-war. Its crew seized a seaman, who was claimed
as a deserter from the English service. MacDonough, whose com-
mander was absent, was an interested spectator. Instantly he armed
and manned his gig and gave chase, overhauling the boat under the
guns of the British frigate. He released the impressed seaman, and
took him back to the merchant vessel. In a great rage the British
captain soon appeared on the Siren, and inquired of MacDonough
how he dared take a man from an English boat. "He was under
the protection of my country's flag, and it was my duty," was the
1914-] THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMP LAIN 735
reply. With oaths such as the departed spirits of the wicked must
forever hear in the brimstone lake, the captain swore he would lay
his frigate alongside and sink the Siren.
"While she floats you shall not have the man!" said Mac-
Donough.
"You'll repent of your rashness, young man," rejoined the
angry Englishman.
"Suppose I had been in that boat, would you have dared to
commit such an act?"
"I should have made the attempt, sir!"
"What! would you interfere if / were to impress men from
that brig?"
" You have only to try it, sir," was MacDonough's cool reply.
The British captain did not try it. Who was this bold subal-
tern that made an overbearing English officer stare and gasp ?
Early in the eighteenth century there dwelt in the vicinity of
Salmon Leap on the Liffey, twelve miles from Dublin, one Thomas
MacDonough, a member of the clan Donchada, a descendant of
Donoch, who was a brother of Cormac, Lord of Moylurg. This
Thomas MacDonough married one Jane Coyle. These were the
great-grandparents of the American Commodore. Writing in 1909
Rodney. MacDonough, Esquire, says, "The family was of the
Protestant faith, and the succeeding generations have been actively
connected with the Episcopal Church in America." 1 Of the union
mentioned three sons, among them James MacDonough, came from
the county Kildare to America about 1730. Family traditions
ascribe to this emigrant, who settled at the Trap, in Delaware, both
wealth and a superior education. It has been supposed that he was
a physician. It is certain that he became a man of no little conse-
quence in his community. In 1746 this successful settler married
Lydia Laroux, a lady of Huguenot ancestry. The names of their
seven Protestant children will be interesting to this generation. In
the work referred to they are given: Thomas, Bridget, John,
James, Patrick, Mary, and Micah. Thomas MacDonough, the eld-
est, was educated as a physician, and practised his profession in the
vicinity of his home. His record in the Revolution, in which he held
the rank of Major, was such as to win the approbation of General
Washington.
Thomas MacDonough, the brave officer of the patriot army,
was the father of the hero of Lake Champlain, who was born, De-
cember 23, 1783, near the Trap, in Newcastle County, Delaware. In
*Life of Commodore Thomas MacDonough, p. it.
736 THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMP LAIN [Sept.,
his sixteenth year, February 5, 1800, he received from President
Adams a warrant as midshipman in the navy. His first cruise was
against the French in the West Indies. His bearing in the Medi-
terranean had been briefly noticed. Soon after the War of 1812
began, he was ordered to Lake Champlain, where, as we have seen,
he won the greatest naval battle of that conflict. In his victory there
was no element of luck. His rare foresight deserved success. The
influence of winds, of seasons, and of currents had been carefully
calculated before he concluded to meet the enemy in Plattsburg Bay.
The arrangements of the American commander neutralized the un-
doubted superiority of Captain Downie. As the British squadron
stood fearlessly up the harbor, the quarter-deck of the Saratoga
was consecrated when MacDonough and his officers for a few mo-
ments knelt in prayer. A confident silence preceded the shock of
battle. The Saratoga had been prepared for "wynding," and it was
the ability to work her around and use the uninjured port guns that
finally gained the day. Unable to imitate her example the Con fiance
met another fate. Begun very early the American commander's ap-
prenticeship was pursued in perilous places. It was this familiarity
with danger that qualified MacDonough for the eminence to which
he attained, the highest won in the American naval service down to
the war for Southern independence.
Though Burke had eloquently noted its disappearance in
Europe, in America as late as 1814 the age of chivalry had not
passed away. The swords tendered by the English officers were
promptly returned by MacDonough, who knew and acknowledged
that they had earned the right to wear them. Their wounded he
took immediate measures to relieve. This humanity was remarked
by Captain Pring, himself a gallant seaman and the soul of the
British attack.
Because of State and other grants this poor lieutenant of
thirty suddenly became a man of means. His health, which at the
close of the war had begun to decline, unfortunately could not be
improved by statute. Notwithstanding his youth, consumption,
which oftentimes prostrates heroes as well as cowards, soon de-
veloped, though he lingered for ten years, dying in 1825 at the age
of forty-two. From Lake Champlain there had come no flashy
story of the greatest victory of the war. MacDonough had in his
character nothing of the theatrical, but was as thoroughly modest
as he was brave and religious. He far surpassed the achievements
of the older navy, and for the future set a high standard.
THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY. 1
BY RICHARD J. KEEFFE, LL.D.
HE world in many respects is better off to-day than it
was when the Saviour first came. One-third of the
earth's population now lays claim to the name of
Christian. Between two hundred and fifty and two
hundred and ninety millions, or nearly twice as many
as the members of all the Protestant Churches together, swear
allegiance to the One Church Universal. It has been computed
that, if all the Catholics of the world were lined up in the United
States army marching form, on the calculation that one hundred
and seventy-six men pass a given point a minute, it would take the
Catholic army, marching without intermission day and night, three
years and fifty-six days to pass the reviewing stand. Arranged
fifty abreast, the column would extend from Havana to the North
Pole, and if strung out in single file, there would be a line two
hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles long, circling the globe
approximately about nine times. 2
All this indicates that quite an advance has been made beyond
the original one hundred and twenty Christians whom Christ left
behind as the nucleus of His Church, when His mission on earth
came to a close. And yet, despite this tremendous advance, religious
indifference, one of the things Christ came to destroy, has not been
entirely eradicated. In fact religious apathy is one of the most
conspicuous features of our modern life, not only without, but also
within, the confines of Christendom itself. Even in our own beloved
America, fifty-six millions, according to recent statistics, profess
allegiance to no religious creed. And surely no one, who looks
about him, can honestly close his eyes to the positive trend towards
naturalism, so evident in many of our modern styles, animal dances,
so-called moi Sjty plays, in divorce and other elements in our life
that make for the dissolution of the truly Christian conscience.
There is no need of taking a gloomy outlook with regard to
the world's progress in general, or our own civilization in particular.
Our American life is not as bad and as hopeless as some people are
'This article was suggested by an essay in the Atlantic Monthly, July, 1914,
entitled, The Danger of Tolerance in Religion.
"Lecture on religion, Catholic University Course.
VOL. xcix. 47
738 THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY [Sept.,
in the habit of describing it. In fact there is every reason for being
proud of our country, and for having the greatest confidence in the
general good sense and ultimate integrity of the American people.
Among them the Church enjoys a freedom and virility unparalleled
throughout the world. In international affairs our nation is setting
a standard of high morality that is serving as a beacon light of
revelation to the other nations of the earth. And there is reason
to believe that, with regard to many knotty problems destined to
arise in the future, America, the youngest of the great powers, will
lead the way to justice and to truth. But it is precisely because of
such faith and pride in our country, because we look upon pa-
triotism as a holy and a sacred obligation, because we regard the
love we entertain for our flag as a form of loyalty we owe to the
One Who has made the flag possible, and Who presides over its
destiny; it is precisely for these reasons, that, if we be true patriots,
we should not complacently remain blind to those elements and ten-
dencies in our life that militate against the first principles of re-
ligion, and therefore against the best interests of the nation. One
of these tendencies is the positive trend toward irreligion.
This fact should be a source of grave concern to all; but
especially to the members of the sectarian Churches, for it is within
their ranks that the effects of this tendency are m'ost apparent.
Already measures have been taken, and policies proposed, to awaken
the drooping faith of the American masses. Outside the Catholic
Church, however, most of these efforts have met with signal failure.
The Protestant pulpits continue, to a great extent, to preach to empty
pews, and largely because the remedies employed succeed only in
ministering to the symptoms, instead of getting at the underlying
disease. The ultimate cause of modern religious indifference is not
the lack of attractiveness in religious service, but the absence of
genuine conviction, a condition that is at once the cause and result
of the much flaunted spirit of so-called broadmindedness and tolera-
tion in matters pertaining to religious practice and belief.
It is encouraging, however, to find that the recognition of this
truth, so familiar to the average Catholic as to appear almost truistic,
is beginning to filtrate into the Protestant mind. A writer in a
contemporary non-Catholic review has recently had the courage to
face the problem squarely, and to accept the conclusions, so deadly
to the average Protestant complacency in doctrinal matters, which
an unprejudiced diagnosis of existing conditions has forced upon
him.
1914.] THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY 739
Notwithstanding all our pretending [he writes] that we are
of an age which lives and thinks scientifically, we are still,
for the most part, not creatures of thought, but creatures of
sentiment. We still, for the most part, have sentimental polit-
ical affiliations, with glorious ideals, but little conception of the
facts which condition their realization. We still are apt to have
and desire a sentimental sort of education for our children,
on a cultural basis which ignores at once the necessity of the
knowledge of the facts of real life, and the vulgar necessity
of our childrens' earning a living. We still speak, with a
pathetic dignity, in terms of a sentimental economics based on
life as a sentimentalist would have it, rather than on life as it is.
We still enjoy sentimental literature. We still patronize sen-
timental drama. And because in all these matters most of us
are still comparatively unthinking beings, we are apt in all of
them to have a general toleration for our fellows, who, equally
unthinking, tolerate us.
In each of these fields, however, there is going on a rapid
change. In each of these are coming small but growing groups,
which are so very much in earnest that they refuse to be toler-
ant. As people are facing facts in life, rather than mere senti-
ments about life, the tendency toward intolerance is becoming
more and more apparent. In religion, however, we are, ap-
parently, for the most part, afraid to permit ourselves this
development from tolerance to bigotry. The very same man,
who is a healthy bigot on sex-relationship, politics, economics,
and what not else, imagines that in religion he is bound, if he
would be in accord with the Zeitgeist, to be tolerant of all kinds
and shades of religious belief and disbelief. Of course part of
this is due to the impression, not now so prevalent as once it
was, that certain truth is truth demonstrable physically, and that
religion, which is incapable of such demonstration, is a thing in
which uncertainty is inevitable. The main (or as we would say,
the more immediate) reason for it, however, is the unthinking
or superficially thinking assumption that mankind has developed
religiously from intolerance into tolerance, and that tolerance,
complete, unquestioned, is the highest point yet reached in the
development of religion. Students of the history of religion,
however, know that this is not so. 3
This arraignment of modern religious tolerance, appearing,
as it does, in a non-Catholic journal, and written by one who was
quite recently made dean of the Episcopal cathedral at Fond-du-
Lac, should be highly suggestive, not only to all sincere non-
1 Atlantic Monthly, July, 1914, The Danger of Tolerance \n Religion.
740 THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY [Sept.,
Catholics, who are earnestly seeking the truth, but also to many
within the Fold, who may have been misled by the false sentiments
constantly expressed by their non-Catholic brethren, masquerading
under the name of liberal-minded tolerance. And how familiar are
their shibboleths ; " What is the sense of being narrow-minded and
intolerant?" one hears on all sides; "We all believe in the same
Lord, and all are working for the same end. What is the use, there-
fore, of arguing about beliefs? Let us all get together, forget the
things that divide us, and think only of that which unites us. One
religion is as good as another, so what is the sense of haggling
over creeds? Let the Baptists and the Methodists and the Epis-
copalians and the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics and the Uni-
tarians, and all the others simply agree to love one another, and
forget their differences."
Tolerance of this kind in reality is not tolerance at all. It is but
the palest kind of religious indifference based on the assumption that
there is no such thing as objective religious truth, or that, if there
be, there is no necessity of trying to determine what it is. One can
hardly be held up as an example of a truly tolerant man, if he
merely assumes a neutral attitude towards an opinion concerning
something, to the objective truth of which he is wholly indifferent.
Siich an attitude, by stretching the meaning of words, might per-
haps be called tolerance; but surely such tolerance hardly rises to
the dignity of a virtue; is neither positive nor dynamic, leads
nowhere in particular; and, in the course of history, has not
achieved any positive results. In fact history proves that such
tolerance is nothing short of a destructive force a sign and cause
of religious decay.
To say that one religion is as good as another, that it matters
not what one believes, is tantamount to saying that in the most
important thing in man's life in the theory of life itself there
is no definite truth which man may hope to make his own. This
is to destroy the reasonable character of all religious belief. " It
is to exalt peace at any price into the throne of ultimate reality.
It is to glorify intellectual cowardice and inefficiency. It is not only
to destroy a rational basis for morals; it is in the end to destroy
a rational basis for thinking as a whole." 4
Such a condition is indeed a sufficient cause for serious alarm ;
not, however, for despair. To one at all familiar with the history
of movements and of thought, it is patent that the present wave of
Ibid.
1914.] THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY 741
toleration is but a flux that will soon be followed by a reflux of
religious intolerance. " Every great upheaval of life and thought,"
to draw once again on the author already quoted, " through which
humanity has gone, has been accompanied, first, by a popular
sense of uncertainty as to truth, and a consequent tolerance of every
sort of belief. This tolerance is a mark of the decay of old stand-
ards rather than of the formation of new ones. After every period
of tolerance has come a period of intolerance, of intellectual strife,"
and, we may add, of positive reconstruction. 5
It is the teaching of experience that where there is genuine
conviction and real love of truth, there is found bitter intolerance
of anything that contradicts what is held to be true. A teacher,
for example, if loyal to her vocation as teacher of the truth, cannot
be indifferent towards the twenty-seven contradictory propositions
which her pupils submit in answer to the same problem. The son,
who really loves his mother, cannot be indifferent with regard to the
opinion of another, which clashes with his own, and which reflects
unfavorably on the name of that mother who brought him into the
world. Such a one cannot in conscience tolerate both opinions as
being equally true. Neither can the Christian who has positive con-
victions in matters of religion, and who loves the truth, as a loyal son
loves his mother, be tolerant of any belief that contradicts what he is
convinced is the truth.
And yet as our Protestant contemporary seems pained to re-
cord, this frame of mind is among Protestants the exception rather
than the rule.
We see many sorts of ministers [he says] in their desire to
promote what they believe to be the unity desired by their
Master, Christ, exchanging pulpits with one another, and pass-
ing genial compliments about one another's superlative worth.
There is a tremendous deal of good feeling, and everyone is very
happy; and, behold, the millennial unity of all men, for which
Christ prayed on the night of His betrayal, is at hand!
But is it? If this was the sort of thing Christ wanted,
why did He not practise this modern, tolerant method when He
was on earth? Why did He not seek to conciliate, on a basis
of mutual toleration, the Sadducees and Pharisees, for instance,
instead of denouncing them both for differing from His concep-
tion of religion? Why did He preach things so definite as to
alienate most of the people whom He came to earth to save?
Why did He die? Apparently it was because He uttered such
Ibid.
742 THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY [Sept.,
definite and positive teaching as to force, by His very intolerance,
the reflex intolerance of those opposed to that teaching. It is
apparent to anyone who reads the Gospels that Christ stood for
the definite in religion, that He himself died rather than tolerate
the religious ideas of most of His contemporaries, and that He
earnestly urged His followers to imitate the steadfastness of
His example. He prayed, it is true, that all the world might be-
come united; but He must have meant united on the positive
and definite platform on which He Himself stood. Any other
interpretation would stultify, not merely His words, but His
whole life. 6
The proper remedy, therefore, for the current irreligion of the day
is not recourse to the open pulpit, is not to be found in an appeal
to the sensational or bizarre, but is to be sought in the proper incul-
cation of uncompromising religious bigotry.
One can almost see the startled look of surprise with which the
reader greets this conclusion. Is it not tantamount to controversial
suicide? Is such a confession not a proof of the very indictment
with which our non-Catholic brethren are particularly fond of
assailing the Church, viz., that the Church is the inveterate foe of
our most precious heritage, religious liberty? Does it not lend
color to the charge that the temporal power of the Pope, if we should
let it, would bend our necks, and that the flag of the Vatican would
supplant the flag of freedom that flies from our nation's dome?
Should the Catholics ever gain the ascendancy in America, would
not the religious persecution of our non-Catholic citizens be the
inevitable result?
Quite the contrary. The religious bigotry which we are advo-
cating is quite different from the kind of intolerance that is implied
by the term fanaticism, and should be carefully distinguished
from it. Bigotry can be a virtue; fanaticism is always a vice.
Bigotry, according to the Standard Dictionary, implies merely " an
obstinate or intolerant attachment to a cause or creed;" fanaticism
involves an unreasonable attitude toward those who disagree with
that cause or creed. It is because of the failure to recognize this
nicety of thought, that much of the confusion in this matter is due.
One of two fallacies awaits the one who is not master of his thought,
either to separate and divide things that are distinct, but not separate
or separable, or else to confuse and identify things that are similar,
but distinct. The one who professed that he could understand how
Noah succeeded in getting all the animals into the Ark, but could
Ibid.
1914.] THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY 743
not understand how the Jews succeeded in carrying that Ark about
with them for forty years through the desert, is no more the victim
of the second fallacy than the one who conceives that all kinds of
intolerance are as one, and that because a Catholic is intolerant
in one sense, he is therefore intolerant in all. Similarity of name
often leads one into the unhappy error of identifying objects that
are different. Just as the man in the story confused the Ark
of the covenant with the Ark associated with the account of the
Flood, so will the careless thinker fall into the error of presuming
that, every time intolerance is mentioned, one and the same thing
is meant.
It is a self-evident fact, once attention is drawn to it, that
in religious matters there are three kinds of intolerance : dogmatic,
social, and political. The Catholic is, and always will be, uncom-
promisingly intolerant in the dogmatic sense, not, however, in
the social or political sense. In other words, the Catholic
believes that, in possessing his Catholic faith, he is in possession
of the Truth, and, consequently, he is, and necessarily must be,
intolerant of every creed or doctrine that contradicts that Truth;
he is always taught, however, to be broadminded and big in his
social and political relations with all his fellowmen, and especially
with those whom he believes are not as fortunate as he in possessing
the Truth whole and undefiled.
This statement of the Catholic position ought to drive from the
Protestant mind that bogey which haunts it so persistently with re-
gard to Catholic endeavors to Catholicize America. It is always best
to state one's position strongly and clearly, so that those who do
not accept it, may at least understand it, and judge accordingly.
We do not deny that we would like to make America Catholic. In
fact we are bending every energy to bring about this consummation
so devoutly to be wished. But in this we are doing no more than
any other Church, whether it be Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist,
or any other whatever, is actually doing, or, at least, should be doing,
if the members of these Churches are really convinced that they are
in possession of the truth. I love to believe that the reason why
the late Mr. Kennedy left his millions to fight the Catholic Church,
is because he was honestly convinced that salvation is of the Presby-
terian faith alone. If this be the case, then no one can doubt the
logic of his intolerance, though reserving the right to challenge
the correctness of his creed. Why then object to Catholic endeav-
ors to take our unbelieving millions into a participation in that
744 THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY [Sept.,
whole truth which we believe we possess? To do otherwise would
be playing false to the first principles of Christianity, and ignoring
the command of Christ when He said : " Going therefore, teach ye
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things what-
soever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world."
Why then this outcry against the efforts of the Catholic Church
to convert America? To the observing and impartial mind, the
only reasonable answer seems to be, that it is because the Catholic
Church is too successful in her efforts to please the fancy of those
whose chief stock in trade is to proclaim from the housetops the
glorious doctrine of religious toleration. In other words, the social
intolerance which the Church suffers at the hands of those whose
proudest boast is their spirit of dogmatic liberality, has its beginning
in the honesty and sincerity of the Catholic claims, and in the
fidelity of the Church in striving to extend that unity of faith for
which Christ prayed and lived and died. Are there not, therefore,
at least grounds for the suspicion that this tolerance, carried on
in the sacred name of toleration, is in reality but a subtle disguise,
behind which the discerning eye may detect the familiar features
of the religious fanatic? Does not bigotry of the Catholic kind
stand forth in contrast as a genuine virtue ? Should the Church be
condemned for practising that kind of intolerance which Christ
Himself made mandatory when He said : " Other sheep I have that
are not of this fold ; them also must I bring, and there shall be but
one fold and one shepherd."
Despite all effort to show how beautiful and restricted the
Catholic notion of intolerance really is, our point of view continues
to be misinterpreted and misunderstood. Under the guise of earn-
est patriotism, the so-called " liberals " in religion are continually
raising their voices in warning against the great " Roman peril "
that threatens to gain domination over the liberties of the American
people. They regale themselves and their willing readers with
startling accounts of instances in the early centuries of the Popes'
actual interference in political affairs, and strive to stir men on to
action by grewsome prophecies of w^hat liberty of conscience might
expect, should the Church make good her intention to convert Amer-
ica to the Catholic faith. To attempt a refutation of such a tem-
peramental accusation would be to dignify the absurd, or to execute
a corpse. The merest tyro in the field of history knows that, while
1914.] THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY 745
the Popes did interfere in things political, making and unmaking
kings, they never claimed to exercise this power as a divine preroga-
tive, but merely as a natural right vested in them voluntarily by the
people who could both give that right and take it away. To allay
the honest fears of those sincere Christians outside our Fold, in
whose minds misrepresentations concerning the threatened en-
croachment of the " Roman machine " may have created a fear
which perhaps stands between them and honest investigation, we
can do no better than to quote the words of one who has anticipated
us by voicing a sentiment to which the most bigoted Catholic
can subscribe.
If, by an impossible supposition, the Pope should man army
and fleet to storm our coast, do you know what Catholics here
would do? You would have two millions in the American
army ready to die to resist the Pope's invasion ; you would have
thirteen million Catholics in their homes praying for their sons,
brothers and fathers in the field; you would have forty-five
thousand Catholic nuns on their knees before the Tabernacles,
beseeching the God of armies to strike the guns from the hands
of the Roman emissaries; you would have seventeen thousand
priests in the first ranks of the army fighting, till they died, for
the Constitution of the United States. We would be loyal Catho-
lics still; but we would say to the Pope: "We shall render unto
God the things that are God's." Yes, but we will " render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's." 7
In conclusion, we would urge the necessity of dogmatic bigotry
in the practice of religion. Every child of the Church should recog-
nize that he has a stringent duty toward his non-Catholic brethren,
which can and ought to be performed without the slightest danger
of giving offence, much less of meriting condemnation. He is
wanting in both charity and courage who tries to minimize his duty
in this regard, and in most cases receives and deserves the just con-
tempt of those whose good will he is trying to secure or retain. If
a man is weak with regard to what he knows to be his duty to God,
he will surely not be strong in fulfilling what his duty to his neigh-
bor may demand. This then is our sacred obligation: to stand
up manfully for what we believe to be the truth; to be intolerant
of every creed that contradicts that truth, and, when occasion
arises, to defend our faith against the assaults of ignorance and
defamation. If this be bigotry, then bigotry is something ardently
to be desired. Were there more of such bigotry abroad in the
T Rev. J. P. McKey, C.M., in the Marian.
746 THE VIRTUE OF BIGOTRY [Sept.,
land to-day, there would be less fanaticism and less decay in the
religious temper of our times. Our beloved country would then
present to the world a striking proof that men can differ with regard
to religion, without ceasing to be friends. There would be no room
for such a degrading and disgraceful society as " The Guardians of
Liberty," and the death knell would be rung for such filthy sheets
as some of our journalistic anomalies edited by self-styled " pa-
triots " who are to-day, greatly to the disgust of all decent Prot-
estants, calumniating our clergy, insulting our devoted nuns, and
vilifying that faith which millions of their fellow-citizens hold
dearer than life itself.
It is indeed a source of encouragement to note that the Prot-
estant mind is beginning to catch a spark from the temper of our
own. Those outside of the Church, who have any faith at all, are
fast tiring of the many makeshifts that are designed to put senti-
mentalism in the place of objective religious truth. Many such
souls are beginning to realize the utter helplessness of Protestantism
to cope with the situation, and are casting imploring glances in
the direction of eternal Rome. Experience has proven that " Prot-
estant tolerance will not stand the test of enthusiasm," 8 with the in-
evitable result that the tide of conversion is sweeping multitudes
back into the Ancient Faith. In the United States alone thirty
thousand non-Catholics are entering the Church each year, and it
is safe to say that there would be ten times as many more if the
Catholics of the country would but show the proper enthusiasm
in furthering the cause of our holy religion. Is there not something
pathetic, though laudable, in the flickering efforts of dogmatic Prot-
estant Christianity to quicken the dying embers of a smoldering
faith?
\:
Is it not time [the author so often quoted, asks in another
context] for those whose intellectual processes have become
completely and not merely partially socialized, to lift their
voices with a religious message somewhat different from that
commonly heard to-day, to call men away from the contempla-
tion of their religious eccentricities, and the age from its admira-
tion of its own religious experiments, back to the contemplation
of that which alone has in it any promise of real knowledge
the religious experience of the race? Is it not time for some
hardy souls, who fear not popular clamor, to insist that the
only kind of religion that is scientific at all is dogmatic religion. 9
'Protestant Paradox, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1914.
Laisses-faire in Religion, Atlantic Monthly, May, 1914.
1914.] THE PILGRIM 747
Surely we Catholics, who enjoy a living union with a Church
whose experience, unlike that of Protestant Christianity, covers
nearly two thousand years, will not let this golden opportunity go
by default. Shall we not rather prove to ourselves and to the world
that there are hardy souls who will inaugurate a strenuous propa-
ganda against the fashionable dogmatic tolerance of the hour, and
at the same time prove by their lives that men can be both broad-
minded and liberal in their social obligations, true defenders and
staunch upholders of our country's rights and liberties, and at the
same time, practise, as far as religion is concerned, the uncompro-
mising virtue of bigotry?
THE PILGRIM.
BY ELEANOR DOWNING.
BEHIND me lies the mistress of the East,
Golden in evening, fairy dome on dome
Poised and irised like the far-flung foam
Lashed on the ribs of some forsaken coast.
Wicked and lovely temptress, fruitless boast
Of all that man may build and little be,
Mart of the world's base passions, where thy feast
Of shame was spread, thy sin encompassed me,
Where all desires and all dreams were rife
With lust of flesh and eye and pride of life,
Lo ! I have reft thy carnal mastery
I have gone forth and shut the gates of thee.
Before me lies the desert and the night,
White star and gold above a pathless waste,
Blue shade and gray to where the world effaced
Flings loose its shadows on the lap of God.
Briars and dust upon my brow, unshod,
In pilgrim weeds athwart a vineless land,
My feet shall pass and mark the path aright,
For lo ! Thy staff and rod are in my hand ;
And with the light Thy city shall unfurl
Its golden oriflammes and tents of pearl
Dead Babylon, thy gilded clasp I flee ;
Jerusalem, lift up thy gates to me!
THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE.
BY FELICIA CURTIS.
[RAVELERS motoring through the lovely Gorreston
district in southwestern England, along the pictures-
que road by whose side runs the babbling little
Gorre, see rising above the trees in its well-wooded
grounds, surrounded by a formidably high wall, the
twisted chimneys of a heterogeneous pile of buildings known to the
country folk as " The Convent," and occupied by a strictly enclosed
religious order. Forty years ago the place was called " The
Towers." It came into the possession of its present owners by a
deed of gift from the principal actor in the story that follows this
brief introduction. The story was written in the third person by
Jasper Thyrlston, among whose papers it was found after his death
a few years ago.
The little group by the grave waited expectantly while the men
arranged the ropes round the coffin, and lowered it out of sight.
The mourner stood for an instant looking down at the coffin, then
signed to the men to shovel in the earth, and turning away with a
courteous gesture of farewell to the onlookers, went away alone to
the great gray house standing above them.
" Buried like a dog ! " muttered Squire Kenyon to the doctor,
as with the rest, mostly tenants on the estate, they went in the oppo-
site direction.
" And among dogs," rejoined the other, with a gesture towards
some dozen white tablets dotted about the grass. " Those are to
the memory of the late Mr. Thyrlston's favorite hounds."
" A shocking burial ! " The squire's good-natured face was
paler than usual. He glanced back half-fearfully at the grave.
" Hang it all, Methuen ! There's something devilish and uncanny
about it ! No parson even ! Not a word of of " the squire had
the usual difficulty felt by his kind when mentioning religion " of
the Church service, or or anything pointing to any er hope
of another life."
" Thyrlston hadn't any such hope," returned the doctor, open-
1914.] THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE 749
ing the gate into the road ; " he had been buried exactly as he
lived; without belief in religion of any kind."
The squire took off his hat, and ran his fingers through his
thick gray hair, then glanced at his companion.
" You were with him at the last. Well, did he die as he lived ?
Was his unbelief strong enough for a quiet deathbed, eh ? "
Doctor Methuen, an erect soldierly-looking man, looked at the
questioner gravely. "You don't expect me to answer that, squire? "
The squire reddened. " Well, I don't, Methuen. Beg pardon
for asking; but it upset me to see a fellow-creature put into the
ground as you'd bury a favorite hunter."
There was silence for a minute, then the squire said hesitat-
ingly :
" There was some village gossip about Father Creagh trying
to see Thyrlston. Good man that, spite of his popery asking
your pardon, Methuen."
The doctor was a Catholic.
" He did try, more than once."
"And?"
" Failed," replied the doctor shortly. There was no end to be
gained by recounting the message from the dying man that had put
finality to 'Father Creagh's efforts.
" Even a papist burial service would have been better than noth-
ing ! Dear ! dear !" grumbled the squire, turning in at his own gates.
Mary Methuen's eyes met her brother's as he came into the
room where tea waited for him, but she asked no questions. The
two were the eldest and youngest of a large family; there were five-
and-twenty years between them.
The doctor went to a bookshelf and drew out a folio.
" That's where Mr. Thyrlston is buried," he pointed to a picture
of the remains of a Druidical circle, its big stones mostly lying
prone; "right in front of what is called The Stone of Sacrifice.'
He chose the spot himself; God help him! "
"And his son?"
" My heart ached, Midge, as I saw him going back alone to
that great barrack of a place. Yet what can one do? His father-
has been a terror to every decent-thinking being, with his aggressive
atheism, ever since twenty years ago he bought 'The Towers !' '
" You'll call on the son now and then, John? "
" Oh, I'll call right enough," returned the doctor impatiently.
750 THE UN LIGHT ED CANDLE [Sept.,
"Give me some tea, Midge; I feel as if I had been in a Scotch
mist."
The girl obeyed; her gray eyes a little dewy, her face grave.
Her thoughts were with the man alone in the huge half -castle, half-
mansion that its late owner had been slowly restoring for the last
five years; and her thoughts as every good woman's pitiful
thoughts do found expression in a prayer.
The subject of those thoughts sat looking out across lawns
ending in a clump of cypresses, pointing like accusing fingers to the
darkening sky. Midway the white tablets gleamed faintly amid
the dark masses of the Druid circle. A heavy oppression lay on the
young man's heart; the weight of a vague terror, a dread that he
denounced as groundless, unreasonable, was upon him. It grew
from the memory of the closing scene in his father's life. For to
the fool who in health had said defiantly, " There is no God ! " had
come in those last hours an awful frenzy of terror as the fact of
the existence of that God Whom he had scoffed at, denied, derided,
forced itself upon his naked, shuddering soul.
That dying man, that abject, shrieking, terrified yet still blas-
pheming creature who had so carefully eliminated all faith in God,
or belief in immortality from his son's training; who had taught
him that all religious systems were but priestly humbug; well-
intentioned plans for keeping the less-intelligent half of mankind
in order, had found his theories collapse like a pricked bubble
at the last ; had died raving against the God he had denied, and the
science that was powerless to save him.
The room grew darker, the cypresses were swayed as by a
rising wind. From the distant kennels came the long-drawn howl
of a dog; again it came, and now some half-dozen more joined in
the cry. Suddenly the noise ceased, and with a swift quickening
of his pulses Jasper Thyrlston saw a darkness moving among the
Druids' stones. For a moment it was as if a cold wind stirred the
watcher's hair. Then with an impatient exclamation at his own
folly, he opened the window and went out upon the lawn. The
darkness detached itself from the stones and came towards him.
In the gray light Jasper saw a man a trifle above middle height, who
uncovered as he approached, and a musical cultured voice asked,
" Mr. Jasper Thyrlston, is it not? "
" Yes."
" Permit me to introduce myself : Max Marlow. Your father
was my lifelong friend."
1914.] THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE 751
" Your name pardon me, sir is unfamiliar to me."
" Doubtless." The stranger laughed easily. " Oddly enough
it is sometimes unfamiliar to myself; but, though my old friend
has not mentioned me to his son, there must be among his letters
many from me; we were closely intimate; but I have no desire,
believe me, to thrust acquaintance upon you, sir."
" My father's friend is welcome." It would be easy to verify
the stranger's statement, and the loneliness of that empty house was
appalling. " If, waiving ceremony, you will dine with me, Mr.
Marlow, you will confer a boon on a solitary man."
A flood of light streamed out into the night. The servants
were lighting the lamps. Jasper led the way back into the room.
The guest was a man of a sinuous grace of movement and with
a courtly manner; but as he stood in the blaze of the lamplight,
Jasper was conscious of a strange feeling of repulsion, that held
in it a something akin to fear. Learning that the visitor had just
arrived from a journey, taken with the hope of being in time for
the afternoon's ceremony, his host put him into the care of a
servant, and made his way to a locked-up room, his father's
study.
The truth of the stranger's assertions was evident. To Jas-
per's surprise letters with his signature abounded among the dead
man's papers. Glancing hurriedly over them he noted that they
dealt with a variety of religious and scientific subjects. The young
man faced his guest at dinner with a resolve to put before him as
soon as they were alone, the difficulty that was shaking his soul to
its very depths. The newcomer was bronzed as with tropical suns,
but his hair was a reddish-auburn and his eyes blue, a blue that
flashed in the lamplight like the glint of steel. He talked lightly
and easily like a citizen of the world; and presently the old antag-
onistic feeling that oppressed Jasper, gave way before the charm of
his manner; and, as they sat over their wine, he said: " You have
been an extensive traveler? "
The other nodded.
" Yes, I've been up and down, to and fro, in this absurdly small
planet like the personage in the history of Job."
" Not a flattering comparison."
" Not ? Did such a being exist what a monarch of all he sur-
veyed he would be ? "
" You don't believe in the devil's existence, then ? "
" My dear sir! " mockingly, " do you? "
752 THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE [Sept.,
" A fortnight ago I should have treated the idea as an absurdity
but now "
Jasper stopped short as he met Marlow's eyes.
" But now" the guest chose a fresh cigar "you are worrying
yourself unnecessarily about words uttered in the delirium of fever,
or the half-stupor of physical exhaustion."
Jasper stared at him blankly.
"How do you know that?"
" My dear sir, I have seen men die." The tone held a sneer.
The hearer flushed hotly.
" Give me the reason then, if you can, why a life spent in com-
plete disbelief in the existence of powers of good and evil, should
end in an awful terror of both?"
" Inherited superstitious tendencies probably, coming to the
surface. Body getting the better of mind."
" My tutor, who like my father was an atheist, died half a
dozen years ago. On his deathbed, to my father's intense disgust, he
sent for a priest and was as he styled it reconciled to the Church."
"And then?"
" That's the remarkable part of it. From a despairing, horror-
stricken wretch, he became serenely calm, absolutely fearless."
The man sat looking into the fire and made no comment.
" Now what I want to know is this," went on Jasper eagerly,
" where is the weak spot in the armor? If at the very time I need
all the support my teaching can give me "
" Why? " interrupted the guest.
" You ask why? This life being all, isn't there something hor-
rible in going out into the darkness ? "
" According to your own showing one is unconscious of such
darkness."
"And yours, sir?"
" Oh, I am unshakeable. I hope I may be useful to you in
helping to dispel what is really nothing but an attack of nerves.
I've studied every religious system known, Thyrlston, and a good
many lost in the mists of the past."
" I hope you'll make a long stay," exclaimed the young man
eagerly ; " our antagonism to Christianity has shut us out from
more than the very slightest intercourse with our neighbors."
" My dear Thyrlston " the blue eyes met the dark ones like
the flash of a sword " I have every hope of our intimacy becoming
as complete as that of myself and your father has been."
1914.] THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE 753
So came Max Marlow into Jasper Thyrlston's life, and the
work of uprooting those tiny seedlings that the sight of his father's
despair had planted in his soul, began in good earnest. The new-
comer had an answer for every question, a knowledge of every sub-
ject. He scoffed good-humoredly at all that men held sacred. His
pupil was anxious to be rooted firmly in unbelief, for the solid earth
seemed to have given way under his feet when those doubts had
first assailed him; he drank in his companion's sophistries with
avidity.
He made merry at Christmastide over the " superstitions " of
the villagers, tracing the story of the Incarnation back to legend and
fable. He was by Jasper's side when sheaves of Easter lilies were
carried into Father Creagh's little church, and declared the history
of the Resurrection of the Lord to be but a survival of a sun myth.
And Jasper listened hungrily, but and his Guardian Angel, closer
to his side than was even the brilliant cosmopolitan and scientist,
knew and rejoiced thereat ever with a vague doubt lurking deep
down in his heart.
The strategist was cautious ; quick to note that though Jasper's
intellect responded to his clever sophistries skillfully disguised as
truths, the man naturally clean-minded and somewhat ascetic in
temperament was repelled by anything savoring of vice. The
undermining of moral laws called for greater strategy and finer
weapons than were needed for the uprooting of those tiny shoots
of belief, sown in the horror of an impenitent sinner's deathbed.
The doctor was, however, waiting his opportunity. It came
with a journey of Marlow's to London. That very afternoon, to
Mary's intense surprise, her brother brought Jasper Thyrlston home
with him to tea. The aversion that had mingled with her pity for
the man's isolation disappeared, as she listened to her brother and
their guest. The doctor was keenly interested in social work, and
aired his hobby on most occasions.
" My father no doubt with reason had little faith in human
nature," said Jasper presently; " my friend, Mr. Marlow, is of the
same opinion ; but I'm inclined to differ from him, and am therefore
ready if you will allow me to second this scheme of yours for a
men's reading room and club, doctor."
" It's really Father Creagh's scheme," said Mary with a smile.
" Well, anybody's scheme that tends to the uplifting of human-
ity deserves help," said Jasper; his eyes resting admiringly on the
fair, earnest face.
VOL. XCIX 48
754 THE UN LIGHT ED CANDLE [Sept.,
" There is only one really uplifting force: religion," said the
girl a little timidly ; but Jasper had no reply ready.
The young man was finding the quiet atmosphere of this
Catholic household strangely restful. A tiny light twinkled in a
distant niche before a statuette of the Sacred Heart. A picture of
the Immaculate Mother with Her Divine Child hung over the
mantelpiece. The face of Marlow, mocking, cynical, contemptuous,
rose before Jasper's mental vision. He put the recollection from
him with an almost physical effort. The thought seemed a desecra-
tion. He assented eagerly when, as he rose to take leave, his host
cordially urged him to repeat his visit.
" But you must come and see me first," he added, " come to-
morrow and let me show you over 'The Towers.' '
The invitation was accepted; then surely Jasper's Guardian
Angel had something to do with it the usually reserved Mary said
suddenly, to her brother's intense surprise : " You have never been
inside our little church, I think you said, Mr. Thyrlston? May
I show it to you ? "
And presently Jasper found himself for the first time in a
Catholic church. There were a good many people there, and more
kept coming in. Mary's heart beat fast; she was praying with all
her soul as she genuflected before the tabernacle.
" I'm staying to Benediction ; will you stay too ? I should like
you to hear our choir," she said quietly; and to Jasper's secret
amusement he found himself seated before the Altar, where an
acolyte was lighting the candles.
It was a festival ; there were a great many candles, and Jasper,
as he watched the tiny stars twinkle out one by one, noted that the
acolyte had missed one. He wondered whether the boy would no-
tice the omission, but no, he went away with his taper, and the
arch of brilliance over the altar remained incomplete. Somehow
that unlighted candle sorely worried the young man. He felt
absurdly sorry for it thus condemned to deadness, while its neigh-
bors glittered joyously. Presently a solemn hush came over the
kneeling people, but Jasper sat with his eyes on a glittering some-
thing, gold, with a central Whiteness, held aloft by the priest.
Then in the breathless silence from the man's heart, involuntarily,
came the wish that was an unconscious prayer, " Oh, that I too
could believe ! "
" Did you notice that one candle was missed ? " asked Jasper,
accompanying Mary to her own door.
1914-] THE UNLIGHTED CANDLE 755
" Yes."
" I felt idiotically sorry for it," he said with a boyish laugh.
" It made me think of a soul in the midst of all God's gifts
and graces standing dead and unresponsive," said the girl softly.
" Yet," returned Jasper, with more earnestness than the occa-
sion seemed to demand, " it was not the candle's fault, but the fault
of the acolyte."
" True. So my simile is imperfect. A soul would be without
that excuse." The girl's voice was a trifle unsteady. Somehow she
felt as if mighty issues were at stake.
"You think so?"
" Why, surely. God's grace is offered to every man."
"God's grace? That is a theological term I scarcely under-
stand," he said with a little smile.
" It is a magnificent reality to those who have it," answered
Mary Methuen, looking up at him with the light born of faith in her
eyes.
" And is gained by ? " The tone was light, but the girl felt
an underlying earnestness in it.
" Asking God for it," she answered, and so left him.
It was a new experience to Jasper to receive guests. His
father's friends had been few, their visits rare. He was glad that
Marlow was away, a sentiment shared by the dogs, who one and
all hctted and slunk from the interloper. They came joyously round
their master next day, as he took his guests through the huge solitary
rooms, full of things of beauty and value.
" The front part of the building is comparatively modern," he
said presently ; " this is the old portion. 'The Towers' was once
a religious house, as you know. This " opening a low arched door
" was the chapel."
It was a beautiful little sanctuary, with one lofty window.
" It has suffered no damage," went on Jasper, " except that of
being stripped of everything portable. I don't quite know what to
do with it."
' Turn it into a billiard room. Just the place for one ! " came
Marlow's voice, accompanied by an angry growl from the dogs as
they slunk away.
He came in, bowing to the guests, and with inward annoyance
at his appearance Jasper went through the necessary introductions.
" Am I not right, Miss Methuen? You think not? Ah, it is
of course a matter of sentiment, but really "
756 THE UN LIGHT ED CANDLE [Sept,
" It is rather a question of reverence," replied the girl, looking
steadily at the speaker, and Jasper saw the man's eyes shift and fall
away from her gaze. " This place has been consecrated to the wor-
ship of God, and ought not to be put to other uses."
"Of course, of course," the usually musical voice grated
harshly on Jasper's ear; "but as Thyrlston here like myself
doesn't believe it "
"What brought you back so unexpectedly?" interrupted Jas-
per abruptly.
" Shall I pose as a seer, and say that I felt you needed me? "
was the laughing reply.
A sudden constraint had fallen on the party. The pleasure of
the day was over. The brother and sister presently took leave,
Jasper and Marlow going with them through the gardens. Jasper
was in no mood for conversation as he stood looking after his
guests. Marlow was also silent. Jasper glanced at him presently,
and was startled into an exclamation by his expression. His face
was distorted with passion, a passion in which malignity, repulsion,
hatred, and above all an awful dread were mingled. Jasper shrank
back in terror exclaiming : "Marlow ! Good heavens, man ! What
is it?"
There was froth on the man's lips, as he turned from gazing
along the road, and looked with an evil light in his eyes at his com-
panion. Then muttering something inarticulate he turned away,
disappearing among the cypresses that hid the Druid circle. Jasper
drew a breath of relief. The oppression that had weighed upon
him since his guest's return had vanished. He was conscious of a
strange calm, a sense of security from some unknown yet imminent
danger. He stood expectant of something, though unconscious of
what that something might be, and as he waited he saw Father
Creagh coming through the gathering shadows. The strange se-
renity that had fallen upon his spirit seemed to become intensified
as the priest drew nearer. He was walking rapidly, one hand thrust
into the breast of his coat. Jasper uncovered as he approached, but
Father Creagh went swiftly on with downcast eyes. An impulse
to follow him, why he could not have explained, came over Jasper ;
he made a few steps into the road, then stopped, wondering at him-
self.
"Were you ill this afternoon?" he inquired, when Marlow
and he met at dinner.
" I'm never ill," returned his guest with a laugh.
i9i 4-] THE UN LIGHT ED CANDLE 757
Jasper was silent and preoccupied during the meal, but his
companion had never been more brilliant. He had just ended a
witty story, the viciousness whereof was disguised under clever
epigram and graceful jest, when Jasper said suddenly :
" I've been reflecting, Marlow, that my education has been a
terribly one-sided affair."
The other's eyebrows arched in delicate inquiry.
" I've heard every imaginable argument against the beliefs,
sentiments, fancies, delusions if you like, call them what you will,
that sway the minds and influence the actions of millions of my fel-
lows, and now I mean to hear a few on the other side."
" Is that necessary?" The tone was good-humoredly sarcastic.
" Undoubtedly. I'll hear both sides."
" Well, my dear fellow, I'm ready to act as guide or fol-
lower through the bogs of dogma if you like."
Jasper shook his head with a smile.
" Not a bit of it. You hold a brief for the other side, Mar-
low."
" Devil's advocate, eh ? " the tone held a snarl.
There was immense surprise in Father Creagh's mind, though
his welcome was cordial, when Jasper was ushered into his shabby
parlor next day. The priest was well-known to be a brilliant
scholar. He was also a writer of repute. Jasper expected a dis-
play of intellectual fireworks, when, after stating his case in much
the same words he had used to Marlow, he awaited the Father's
reply. It was a surprise when it came.
" It will be an immense pleasure to me to help you, Mr. Thyrls-
ton. We will begin at once, if you like, with the Penny Cate-
chism."
" I expected a different reception, sir. I am in earnest."
" So am I, Mr. Thyrlston." The eyes bent on Jasper's flushed
countenance were full of kindness.
" But the the Catechism ! I am not a child, sir."
' You must become one before you can enter the Kingdom of
Heaven," said the old man softly; " so, if you please, we will be-
gin with the Penny Catechism."
:< You cut me dead yesterday, Father," said Jasper as he took
leave of the priest an hour later. It must be added that in the
meanwhile his sentiments with regard to the Penny Catechism had
undergone revision.
758 THE UN LIGHT ED CANDLE [Sept.,
" I was taking the Blessed Sacrament to a dying man," an-
swered the priest ; and Jasper had abundant food for thought as he
went homeward.
The weeks that followed were a continuous duel between the
master of " The Towers " and his guest, for whose departure he
yearned. Only loyalty to his father's memory kept him from inti-
mating to his father's friend that his presence was unwelcome. Jas-
per never mentioned his new studies, yet the two never met with-
out Marlow attacking the dogmas that the other was beginning to
recognize as eternal verities. Every step towards the light was
met by some stumbling-block of skillfully-expressed doubt, some
scientific obstacle, some brilliant piece of sophistry. Marlow was
past master, too, in sarcasm and clever gibe; but Jasper saw the
light shining in the distance, and towards it he plodded with un-
faltering purpose.
Benediction was over. The boy came to extinguish the lights.
Mary Methuen standing beside her brother touched Jasper's arm.
He had been spending the day with them.
" All the candles were lighted to-night," she said; and her eyes
were bright with happy tears as he replied :
"Thank God!"
He went away homeward, his heart full of a joy too deep for
outward expression. He passed through the side gate into the gar-
dens, and started as, coming from behind the clump of cypresses,
he saw Marlow sitting on one of the stones of the Druid circle.
The man sprang up, recoiling further and further away from him as
he approached.
" I have news for you, not unexpected, I think," said Jasper;
" at last I am a Catholic. This morning I was baptized, and "
He spoke to empty air. Marlow had vanished.
Jasper, a good deal perplexed, made his way to the house. A
servant met him at the door.
" Mr. Marlow has been called away suddenly, sir," said the
man ; " he bid me tell you he would write in a day or two."
But no letter came; and when Jasper Thyrlston went to the
safe wherein he had placed the huge packet of correspondence bear-
ing Max Marlow's signature, found among his dead father's papers,
he sought for it in vain.
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
III.
MMANUEL KANT was the one through whom the
Reformation first sought footing and expression in
philosophy. The reformers had conceived of the
great masters of reason as no better than the mis-
guided ministers of Satan, and now philosophy was
to be asked to take the same low note of dispraise. And what more
effective way was there, to create a harmony in negation between
Lutheranism and philosophy, than by attempting to show that the
theoretical reason itself recognized its own limitations, and con-
fessed its inability either to know God or to demonstrate His exist-
ence. If nature could be made to appear as a blank wall, all
scribbled o'er with hieroglyphics, to which there is no key or clue,
natural theology would be left suspended in the air, and the Catholic
doctrine of the reasonableness of religion would vanish into the
same thin medium. But how could this result be accomplished,
without one's going over, bag and baggage, to skepticism? By
means of criticism! After casting about for some years, Kant
finally discovered, as we shall see, the principle he needed : What-
ever is necessary or universal in our knowledge comes from the mind
itself, not from its objects, and is really an anticipation of expe-
rience, instead of being, as hitherto thought, a result of the latter.
This assumption, unproved and incapable of proof, destroyed
the theoretical power of reason in general, reduced metaphysics
from a science of reality to a science of the conditions of knowl-
edge, and cut down man's rational outlook upon the world and life,
to the size and requirements of a pietistic conception of faith.
The horizon of philosophy was thus lowered to the level of Lutheran
theology, both being made to meet in a confession of the same limit-
ations. The wings of reason were clipped, to prevent it from soar-
ing in the future, above the cramped quarters in which it was pro-
posed to keep it cooped. And, strangest of strange things! Kant
never investigated the conditions under which the acquisition of
knowledge becomes possible; he prejudged the whole question of
man's power of knowing, arbitrarily employing a purely speculative
760 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
principle to criticize the actual contents of human experience. No
proof was offered of the glaring assumption that the categories are
wholly subjective; proof is not even possible. For, even if it were
true, as he claimed, that a category " causality," for instance
lives subjectively in the act of knowing, it would not follow that it
lives there only, or that it does not at the same time truly express
the nature of the reality known. So that Kant's attempted proofs
of his main assumption remind one of Daniel O'Connell's historic
saying, th'at " he could drive a coach-and-four through any act of
parliament."
But Kant was the philosopher of pietism we must not forget
that, if we would draw him true to life, and not detach him from
the background in which he lived and labored. We have it under
his own hand and seal, that his purpose was to separate faith from
knowledge, which was exactly what Lutheranism had done in the
sphere of religion, when driven to bay by rational criticism. " I
had to suppress knowing, he declares, to make room for believing."
(" Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu
bekommen.") 1 What clearer betrayal of a religious prepossession
could there be? " There is no doubt," says Professor Kallen, " but
that Kant, earnest and rigoristic pietist as he was, really meant to
vindicate Lutheran Christianity from skepticism." 2 To isolate
science and metaphysical belief so radically that neither would ever
again have anything to fear from the other that was his dominat-
ing purpose, all too plainly avowed in the passage just quoted, though
some of his biographers, who naturally dislike this frank avowal
of a religious aim in writing philosophy, endeavor to explain it away,
in offhand fashion its Lutheran intent is so embarrassing! as
merely the glimmering of a doubt, in Kant's mind, concerning the
objective truth and value of science.
But this attempt at palliation is a leap from the frying pan
into the fire, on the part of those who make it. If there be one
thing more than another, that Kant never for a moment doubted, it
was the work and worth of the sciences. To imagine him wavering
on this point, in order to weaken the force and relevancy of his
personal confession, would be to throw his whole philosophy out of
joint, and to streak it through, from end to end, with contradic-
tion. In the second preface to Pure Reason, he says that, thanks
to critical philosophy, both morality and physics have proved their
1 Kant, Theodore Ruyssen, zd. ed., 1905, p. 67.
1 Boston Evening Transcript, Wednesday, June 16, 1909, p. 26, col. i, par. 4.
Review of Professor James' work, A Pluralistic Universe.
I9I4-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 761
rightful claim to a place in any scheme of philosophy a state-
ment anything but indicative of doubt concerning the validity of
science. 3 To save Luther and Newton, pietism and science, were
the two things on which his mind was ever set. " I have mapped
out in advance," he declares, " the way I wish to follow, and nothing
shall swerve me aside." 4 The course he has in mind is to make
both science and religion the results of immediate sensible expe-
rience, so as to cut the supersensible, or faith, entirely off from all
continuity and connection with scientific truth; so as, in other
words, to create for religion in this case, pietism a sort of
charmed circle, within which it might enjoy a haven of refuge and
a right of asylum from the persecuting attacks of the skeptics for
all time to come. 5 Belief in science and faith in the moral law
were Kant's two unshaken convictions. Making all due allowance
for the fact that he wished to destroy the old metaphysics of Wolff,
in order to build it up again on " incontestable principles " and
" clearly determined concepts," 6 it nevertheless remains true and
undeniable that both his preliminary clearing of the ground and his
subsequent reconstructions followed closely the lines of his own
particular religious persuasion, and for that reason, if for no other,
are open to the charge of special pleading in disguise. The duality
of his purpose, half pietistic, half scientific, is transparent.
Germany has debated the question threadbare, whether Kant
was not after all a less daring, less logical second edition of Hume,
attempting to satisfy religious scruple by rebuilding in the air
an arbitrary system of morals, after having undermined completely
by criticism every single one of the real foundations on which
it might have been made to rest. Certain it is that he who started
out to destroy dogmatism ended by becoming the prince of dogma-
tists himself, claiming for his own views an absoluteness not less
commanding than the " categorical imperative " of the moral con-
science, which proved to be his only plank from shipwreck. And
he certainly sailed the seas of speculation upon it, as if it had all the
steadying ballast and displacement of a full-rigged ship. Critics
take pains to warn us that Kant's views on religion are an incidental
by-product, not to be taken seriously. That may well be. But it is
also true that they might have formed the preface to his philosophy,
instead of having been hurriedly packed into an appendix so
clearly apparent is it that his conclusions were religiously preac-
cepted before having been " critically established." And we say all
*Kant, op. cit., p. 65. 'Op. cit., p. 22. "Op. cit., p. 67. 'Op. cit., p. 66.
762 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
this, not to question his having been a philosopher, but to prove
that he had a particular religious purpose in philosophizing as he
did ; which is a charge commonly preferred against Catholic think-
ers, more often true, however, of those who bring it than of those
it is brought against, because of the greater ability we all have to
detect the mote in another's eye, and to miss the beam within our
own.
The destructive religious purpose which thus inspired and
guided Kant's criticism of the power of reason in general, compels
us to class him among dogmatists of the negative type, much as he
himself would have spurned the designation. We are all too prone
to forget that the worst dogmatist of all is the one who tries to
establish a universal negative. Dogmatic assurance is as much the
trait of the critic as it is of the plain and positive believer, though
it is the latter, usually, who comes in for more than his proper
share of learned denunciation. It is time the wind shifted, and
blew from another quarter it blows too much upon the shorn
lamb, and too little on his shearers, just at present. One might
well ask the latter where they got their shears, and whence
they derive the logical right to use them as they do. But the mil-
lennium will probably be upon us before critics turn to criticizing
their own arrogant assumptions and universal negatives, which are
beyond the power of any mortal man to prove, being, in the last
analysis, no more than unreasoned preferences, temperamental lean-
ings, foregone conclusions, bewitchingly arrayed as angels of light.
Prejudice incandescent!
The dogmatism of the destroyers of dogma, ah! when we see
that, we shall have had a visit from dame wisdom in person, and the
slayer shall himself be slain in long-deferred requital of his mis-
deeds. How few ever notice the purely assumptive nature and
character of the principle which Kant so effectively employed to
lessen the insight and to diminish the constructive power of human
reason? We are all so easily stampeded by unsupported affirma-
tion or denial, that we very much resemble those eastern folk who
regarded the world as resting for support on the back of an ele-
phant, without troubling themselves further to inquire what it was
that held up the elephant. And even when, as often happens, the
sweeping affirmation or denial of the critic is flanked by proof upon
proof, apparently we never criticize the critic, but, by the mis-
placed trust reposed in him, proceed straightway to forfeit the
larger faith that cometh not of criticism or of understanding, but is
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 763
heaven-blown into our vacillating souls, to broaden with a knowl-
edge direct from God, that mental life of ours, which men are ever,
it would seem, full bent upon contracting.
Kant, while ostensibly criticizing the power of human reason
to know its Author, had really in mind, all the while, a defence of
the Lutheran notion of faith, as something utterly to be divorced
from rational knowledge. When this important fact is realized, a
flood of light is let in upon many dark places in his writings, which
one sorely misses, when approaching the study of this inconoclastic
thinker, over the sole avenue of the history of philosophy. The
religious end he had in view accounts for his attempt to partition
the mind off, like a honeycomb, into separate cells, each of which
stores and elaborates the products of experience ; reason sorting the
various material presented, pretty much as a mail clerk casting
letters of different address into their proper pigeon-holes. It also
serves, in no small measure, to explain why Kant invented more
mental faculties than any professional mind-splitter before or since,
and why his philosophy looks so much like a map of Scotland, where
the counties follow the clans and are scattered up and down the
length and breadth of the land, instead of forming an undivided,
continuous territory. Once he had begun separating faith from
knowledge, he could not well but extend the process further. A
faculty was provided for this, another for that all to force his
religious presuppositions through; with a special Faculty, capital
F, black italics, for religion the lonesomest-looking of them all !
And then, to put Humpty-Dumpty together again, after he had been
quartered, an appeal is made to the " synthetic unity of appercep-
tion," that is, to the fact of coefficiency, which implies, if it imply
anything, that no such dismemberment of the mind as he attempted
was right or possible from the start. How far removed all this
excessive " cabinet making " seems from the organic life of the
human soul ! Even Kant himself saw that it was, and tried to mend
matters too late, by an appeal to the unifying principle of apper-
ception. Had he started out with this psychological fact, as he
should have done, because the evidence for it is empirical, his phil-
osophy would have been a different story. But he could not have
defended pietism, except by dividing and opposing the different
faculties of the human mind. So there you are. His religious pur-
pose meets you, unabashed, at every turn.
It would be impossible, therefore, did one so desire, to over-
estimate the influence which pietism exerted on the ideas, principles,
764 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
methods, and conclusions of Immanuel Kant. His mother, Anna
Regina Renter, was a pietist, and so was the mentor of his early
student days, director Schultz, of the Konigsberg gymnasium.
He says of his mother, whom he lost early, that she was a pietist by
conviction, of a reflective type of mind not given, in the least,
to emotional mysticism. And the same appreciation is true also of
the son. Pietism, it should be said, was a religious movement
started by Spener, in the latter part of the seventeenth century,
about a hundred years before Kant's time which sought to revive
the waning influence and drooping spirit of the Lutheran churches
of Germany, by a more enlightened style of preaching, and a com-
plete overhauling of the systems of religious and theological instruc-
tion previously in vogue. It laid stress on the purely individual
character of faith, the superiority of inward piety of heart over
all external religious practises, and the sterility of theological dis-
cussion in general. It inculcated morality of a severe type, made
the sentiment of personal satisfaction the criterion of religious truth,
declared all true conversions sudden and immediate, recommended
family worship rather than congregational, and advocated the prin-
ciple of toleration in the treatment of infidels and heretics, especially
the latter. It was the relentless foe of free thought, opposing the
rationalism of Descartes, then in the ascendant, as Lutheranism had
opposed that of Aristotle and the schoolmen. It was, in fine, a
reaction, against the steadily growing influence of reason in Protes-
tant dogmatics an effort to bring Lutheranism back to its first
principles of emotional fervor. Enjoying a brief period and meas-
ure of success, the pietistic movement eventually drifted into an
excessive emotionalism which sealed its fate with the sober-minded.
The mystic extravagances into which its votaries fell brought it into
a contempt that still lingers, by association, around the name.
Built upon the quicksands of sentiment, and lacking utterly in ra-
tional principles of control, it could have come to no other end.
But pietism had known a bloom, in the heyday of its prime,
that seemed full of future promise to its leaders, and it was this
pristine condition that Kant hoped to see brought back. He con-
demned, as severely as any one else, the mystical direction which
pietism had taken, but he thought that, by reconstructing it on a
moral basis, he could rescue it from the clutches of mysticism,
and launch it forth on a new, more enlightened, and more practical
career. It is history how he asserted and defended its austere
ideal of morality, in the famous " categorical imperative " that
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 765
thunderous " thon shalt " of the moral conscience, which he flung
back at David Hume, as the sole reason for his refusal to follow
the inviting Scotsmen into the byways of skepticism. Out of the
demands and implications of the moral conscience he deduced .the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul, thus admitting
through a side door two truths to which he had flatly refused ad-
mission at the front. This method of deducing the doctrines of
Christianity out of sentiment became sacrosanct with orthodox
Protestant theologians, until the rise of the liberalist school in the
nineteenth century, when sentiment became the be-all and the end-
all of religion, its term as well as source.
It would be difficult, did we not take the influence of pietism
into account, to explain Kant's unhesitating surrender to Hume,
without so much as striking a single direct blow. He was on the
defensive all the time, and his occasional sallies were for the pur-
pose of feeling the strength of the skeptic's lines, so as to make
sure that he had nothing to fear for the position upon which he
intended finally to fall back. That is why, when the time came,
he retreated all along the front before the pressing Scotsman, until
he had barricaded himself in the inner stockade of the moral con-
science. This was the stronghold of pietism, and here he would
turn to bay and give effective battle. All else might be considered
well lost, if this position were not won away. Cicero pro domo sua!
Once safely intrenched behind the moral conscience and its
mandatory ideals, Kant set about transferring to philosophy the
entire pietistic background and scheme of religion its preference
for the subject over the object, its dislike of externals, its dis-
trust of reason, its autonomous individualism, its insistence on
the primacy of the will and moral sentiment. Pietism, it will be
remembered from the sketch furnished a paragraph or two back,
fairly bristled with false contrasts and antitheses. Internal religion
and external, faith and reason, heart and mind, dogma and moral-
ity, knowledge and belief, were all set over, each against the
other, in mutual exclusion and opposition, to such an extent as
falsely to suggest and offer a choice between the whole truth
and some one or other of its divided fractions. Kant brought over
into philosophy this entire list of aspectual contrasts and severed
points of view, increasing it by many personal contributions of
his own, in the form of what he called " antinomies of thought,"
until the theoretical reason fairly dripped contradiction at every
pore, and seemed in very truth the incompetent thing Luther had
-66 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
said it was two centuries previous. Kant never stopped his pro-
cess of isolating pietism from all things else, until he had made
Christ and Christianity, the whole world of human thought, in fact,
empty into it as so many tributary waters to a single sea. History,
philosophy, theology nothing mattered save in relation to the
object of Kant's choice and predilection. Christ's life work was
one of heroic moral example. Nothing else He did counted for
the good of the world. From the pages of modern books they
still stare out at us these arbitrarily invented contrasts and choices.
Originally the products of a very dubious Lutheran apologetics, they
were philosophically warmed over by Kant, and by him extended to
the field of human knowledge in general, which had never known
such fencing-off before the reason being, we imagine, that no one
possessed sufficient arrogance, in pre-Re formation times, to regard
philosophy as a piece of private property.
But this was precisely the view which Kant took, and sought,
might and main, to establish. The very fact of his having employed
the analytic reason to undermine itself, and to prove that no
truth could possibly be built up, which would be a truth for all,
shows clearly the negative dogmatic purpose that dominated his
thought. To admit a public, objective, general truth, as capable
of establishment that of the existence of God, for instance
would cut mortally into the Lutheran theory that faith is a private
act of confidence, with which the intellect has nothing to do. If
any constructive synthesis, therefore, were to be deemed worthy
of attempt, it would have to be moral, not intellectual, so as to
keep it close, all through, to the privacy of conscience. Reason
was to be held in check, while conscience marched on, unhindered,
to capture and reduce to ashes the " white city of thought." He ac-
cordingly took good care, at the start and throughout, to separate
the logical from the real, the universal of reason from the partic-
ular of sense. By this piece of strategy, the former was prevented
from having any real continuity or connection with the latter, and
the work of the constructive reason was made to look very much like
the pastime of building castles in the air. Such universal ideas
as " existence," " causality," " contingency," " necessity," he said,
came from the mind alone, and not from objects. Nothing, there-
fore, can be built upon them, or by their means. They are empty
mental forms, purely subjective in origin, character, and validity
gaunt and bare " possibles," out of which nothing could be got by
way of argument, since they possess no reference or relation what-
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 767
ever to actual experience, not having come into the mind from ob-
jects, but having gone out from the mind, rather, upon them. The
illusion of taking one of these " possibles " for reality, he likened
to that of a merchant, " thinking he could increase his wealth by
adding a few zeros to his bank book." 7
The subjective was everything for Kant, as it was for pietism ;
the objective and rational, nothing, unless it was a moral convic-
tion, as distinct from intellectual which, also, was good pietism
faithfully rendered into philosophy. For, one of the points on
which the pietistic scheme laid particular stress, was the sterility of
all theological discussion, and to Kant this point was paramount.
" All faith," he said ponderously, " is an affirmation subjectively
sufficient, but objectively accompanied by a consciousness of its
insufficiency." 8 It is, therefore, moral faith in God, not intellectual,
towards which he is always heading, and constrained to reach. He
is determined, come what will, to deprive faith of all social char-
acter, and so to individualize it, as to " substitute the God of one
solitary groping soul for the God of a world- wide Church; to
build up a lonely, self-full creed, instead of the companioning and
selfless creed of the ages." Kant simply could not see the woods
for the trees.
And when he said it was not the mind that revolved around
objects, but objects, rather, that revolved around the mind was
he not here, also, translating his individualistic religious attitude,
his fondness for the subject, and his dislike for its inseparable
companion and counterpart the object? He took great joy in
likening himself to the Polish astronomer, Copernicus, for having
been the first to " discover " that the whole world of objects circled
about the individual subject, as about its central sun. This " dis-
covery " has been called " the Copernican revolution in philosophy,"
akin to that other which had turned the science of astronomy into
newer and hardier paths. But the Polish astronomer proved his
position, which is more than can be said of the Prussian philosopher.
Revolution it was, but " discovery " no! Invention, rather. The
idea could not but have been suggested to him by his ambient. The
Reformation had made religion a matter of lonely, private concern,
but so far no attempt, of any account, had been made to extend
this loneliness to philosophy. Things were drifting that way, how-
ever, very fast. Pietism, by putting a fresh ban on the rational
in religion, had made the so-called rights of the heart seem para-
T O/>. cit., p. 133. *Op. cit., p. 340.
768 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
mount to those of reason a position which Jean Jacques Rousseau
promptly flanked and turned to the profit of skepticism. And so
well he might, it was such a helpless attitude, in the first place,
for religion to assume the ostrich policy of burying its head
in the sands. On all sides, the individual was rising against
tradition, philosophical as well as religious, and thought no longer
had a stable place whereon to lay its head. Archimedes was again
tugging at his lever, and crying, " Give me where I may stand, and
I will move the world." Kant was, therefore, translating pietism,
and reflecting back the spirit of the times he was not making
a purely scientific discovery far from it ! when he introduced the
Copernican revolution into modern philosophy. The eye that saw,
in this case, wanted to see, and the desire created the vision, or
rather, the mirage!
We hear somebody interrupting us at this point, to ask how
we dare say all this of Kant, especially in view of the fact that the
critical idea first came to him while pondering the suggestive pages
of David Hume. In reply we would state that we allow this fact
its fullest recognition, as, also, that it was Shaftsbury who impressed
upon Kant the feasibility of making moral sentiment supreme.
Our contention ranges wider in its sweep. In Kant there are, so to
speak, two concentric circles a wheel within a wheel, if you prefer
the inner, full of the urgings of pietism, the outer, characterized
by a lifelong effort to find a philosophy for it. Hume was indeed
the source of the critical idea, as Shaftsbury and Hutcheson of the
moral. But Hume, it should be noted, influenced the development
and systematic expression of Kant's thought, he did not originate
the thought itself. In proof of which we would point to the direc-
tion in which Kant's mind had, independently, been running, long
before he grasped the full suggestiveness and value of his auxiliary
British sources. Of Scotch descent himself, he was indebted to the
land of the thistle for ideas as well as pedigree.
Kant's youth was spent we must say it again under the
influence of pietism, the tenets of which were assiduously instilled
into his mind at home and in school, until, in 1740, he entered
the university of Konigsberg, his native town, where he was taught
the rationalism of Christian von Wolff a somewhat diluted form
of the theodicy of Leibnitz, that invited the shafts of the critical
by the loose joints of its armor. These two influences proved
formative and decisive on the youthful Kant, for he conserved the
first, and reacted against the second, his whole life through. Signs
I9I4-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 769
of this reaction are present in his writings from the very beginning.
In his first venture into metaphysics proper, published in 1755,
under the title, A New Explanation of the First Principles of Meta-
physical Knoidedge, we find the significant doctrine announced,
that existence cannot be deduced from idea. The statement occurs
in the course of his criticism of the ontological argument, held in
such high esteem by the Cartesians, and constitutes his reason for
rejecting that argument as worthless. Kant does not seem to have
realized at the time the full destructive import of the principle he
was using. He still believes metaphysics possible, in the sense of
a knowledge of reality, and there is nothing to indicate the presence
of the " critical " idea, that metaphysics is a science of knowledge
only. But the very thought is present in principle, to which the
critical idea, when it does come, will be but as servant unto master.
Theodicy or natural theology is to be denied the support of reason,
and the arguments in its favor demolished. The pietism he learned
at school, and the rationalism he was taught at the university are
struggling in his mind for the ascendancy, fourteen years before
he discovered, and twenty-six years before he published, the critical
idea. When he said so early, that the existence of a being could
no more be proved from the idea we have of it, than the reality
of a triangle from its concept, he was expressing the general thought
of his lifetime, in the terms, and under the guise, of a particular
criticism. He was " building wiser than he knew," and coming
events were being well foreshadowed. In fact, the Kant of the pre-
critical period might have shaken hands with the Kant of the
post-critical, at any time, without the formality of an introduction !
That this was the case may be gathered from the subsequent
course of events in the pre-critical period of Kant's mental history.
The cosmological argument went, eight years later, in 1763, and
the teleological along with it, in the work entitled The Only Pos-
sible Foundation for a Demonstration of God's Existence. The
progress of Kant's thought is well indicated in the reflection, that,
if it be necessary to convince one's self of the existence of God, this
conviction need not, necessarily, take the form of a demonstration. 9
One year later, in An Inquiry Into the Evidences of the Principles
of Natural Theology and Morals, Kant definitely breaks with the
rational method of metaphysics, and proposes that truth be deduced
from " inner experience," and " immediate consciousness," rather
than from " ideas." 10 He is now well under way, though the
* Op. cit., p. 40. ia Op. cit., p. 43.
VOL. xcix. 49
770 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Sept.,
critical idea has not yet appeared above his mind's horizon. In
1769, five years afterward, the critical idea came, though he made
no mention of its coining, save to Lambert, and to him he vouch-
safed no detail. He kept the idea to himself for eleven years.
He wanted to mature it, to let it grow up, so to speak, before
making its bow of introduction to the learned world. And even
when it did finally appear, in 1781, it was not without showing the
results of its long period of incubation, for it seemed a tired and
labored prodigy not the bounding, bursting, effervescent thing
one would have expected from a really fresh, new, and original
discovery. It had been too unconscionably " long a-borning " to
have been the spontaneous child of genius. It lacked the flash.
Its private influence on Kant went on, in the meanwhile, to
confirm him in ways already chosen. By 1776, metaphysics had
become for him he says so himself " a dark ocean, shoreless
and unlit," upon which he ventured " without enthusiasm." As-
suredly, no one would ever imagine, from the text of his writings,
that it was all a matter of plain sailing, with him ; rather is it borne
in upon one, that, though he
was the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea,
he had suddenly found himself becalmed. He had " shot the alba-
tross," and consequences were following, of a kind not calculated
to promote enthusiasm. In another metaphor he rarely allowed
himself the luxury of figures of speech he calls metaphysics a
fairyland (Schlaraffenland), 11 where everything may be made to
turn out in the end as desired at the beginning a whimsy, nothing
more.
Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the mage.
Two decades of persistent thought in one direction the di-
vorce, namely, of logic from metaphysics, the rational from the real
which is as clear in his first utterance as in his last had sud-
denly found a principle which would justify it completely the
very thing it needed, for as yet it had had no soul. A friend in
need is a friend indeed, and Hume proved himself such, proverbially
and really, to the straitened advocate of anti-intellectualism. How
he did so is a story that deserves to be told in a special chapter,
and must wait its hour.
u Op. cit., p. 52.
SAFE TO SEA.
BY JACQUES BUSBEE.
NEVER was so scared in all my life ! " Bassett ex-
claimed breathlessly. "Did you fellows hear me
holler?"
The Captain of the Cape Hatteras Life Saving
Station who was sitting alone by the red-hot stove,
sprang to his feet and laid down his pipe and week-old newspaper.
He turned quickly towards Bassett, who stood in the door of the
waiting room, which the sudden draught had burst open. "I know
it," he said, " where is the wreck, Bassett? On the outer Diamond
Shoals?"
Bassett was pale under his tan. " There ain't no wreck," he
stammered. Then he added, "And if there was, we couldn't go to
'em. The sea is something awful."
" What has Bassett seen?" the Captain asked impatiently of
Orastus Webb, who came in from patrol, his oilskin dripping and his
moustache glittering with salt spray. " Where is the wreck? "
" I tell ye there ain't no wreck," Bassett repeated.
" A dead man got after him," Orastus said laconically, as he
took off his oilskins and hung them on a peg. " Tell the Captain
what scared ye."
The Captain smiled grimly. "It must have been that skin of
a man, with nothing hanging to it but the hands and feet, which
Bassett found in the Hook of the Cape after that Italian brig struck
three weeks ago."
" Go on and tell the Captain about it," Orastus urged, as he
laboriously removed his boots by folding down the tops, then slowly
drawing out his feet, wet with perspiration from the struggle of
walking.
" Whenever I get to the end of the Cape," Bassett began ex-
citedly, "I can hear that man calling through a megaphone. I just
naturally know that skin was him. Well I rode Polly Dark when
I went on patrol to-night to get above the blowing sand and flooded
beach. But I was sorry I did, for every little while I had to get off
and wipe the sand from her eyes, she staggered so. When we
772 SAFE TO SEA [Sept.,
reached the keypost, I registered on my dial, but Polly Dark refused
to go any further, whickering and trembling all over. Ye know
how wreckage has been coming ashore ever since that vessel struck
three weeks ago. The whole point of the Cape is strewn with it.
So I thought I'd look round a bit. I might find another one of those
poor devils that went down. I tied Polly Dark to the keypost, and
began to pick my way amongst the slippery beams and piles of
seaweed that showed black on the white sand. Just as I was
a-straddle of two beams, something jumped up with a grunt and
dashed between my legs, throwing me a somersault on the sand.
I knew it was a hog, but man ! I was past making a sound I just
lay there. At last I got up, and as I did I let a yell, and I kept on
yelling for a mile. I never stopped till I got back to the boathouse,
where Orastus was on watch. If you fellows had a been to lea ward
ye'd a heard me."
" Give me the dial," the Captain broke in. He took a key from
his pocket, opened it and removed the circular card, which proved
that Bassett had been to the very end of the Cape, and recorded the
fact with the other key chained to the post.
"That Italian brig was beyond human aid," the Captain said
with finality. " The breakers pounded her to pieces in twenty
minutes "
" Now, Captain," Orastus protested, " ye know I'm no coward.
I wanted to go, but ye wouldn't let us."
" You'd drown us all," the Captain replied, as he went
over to the window, which rattled only during lulls. He pressed
his nose against the cold glass. " It's as black as a pocket," he
muttered.
" I'd rather patrol on nights like this than in calm weather,"
Orastus remarked.
"Heavens!" the Captain ejaculated as he looked sharply at
Webb. Then he added as he turned away, " Well every man has
his rathers."
" You've got something else to think about," was all Orastus
answered. But the Captain knew what he meant by "something else
to think about." Never had a man changed like Orastus since his
wife's death. Was it remorse for the way he had neglected her,
and was his unnatural courage despair?
Orastus propped one foot on the other, and watched in silence
the evaporation from his red wool socks. The smell of drying
woolens, of men and tobacco, filled the room.
1914-] SAFE TO SEA 773
Two surfmen, still stupid with sleep, who were to go out on the
twelve o'clock patrol, came downstairs from their cots to the
waiting room. They put on their oilskins and gum boots mechani-
cally. They stood and waited with all the stolidity of hitched
horses. They did not speak.
" The wind blows spiteful to-night," Orastus remarked, as
he rose and nearly uncoupled himself with a yawn. " The tide's
not rolling in, but the combers are just falling on to the beach like
solid walls. I pity any vessel near the shoals this night. Well
I reckon I'll haul it. I may be up again 'fore day," and he threw
a questioning glance towards the Captain as he started upstairs to
his cot.
"Maybe!" the Captain ejaculated. "I'll wager ye everyone will
be up 'fore day. My eyes never lied to me yet. I saw a vessel, I
tell ye, just before dark closed in. She was beating off the Outer
Diamond Shoals, but God knows she'll never make it, if the wind
don'i shift."
" 'Taint no wreck coming in to-night," Bassett muttered as
though to reassure himself. " Nobody could see through that cur-
tain of blowing sand and spray. Captain, you just felt ye saw
something. Nobody else could see anything."
" Boys," the Captain said ignoring Bassett 's remark, " keep a
sharp watch. I know a wreck lies out on the shoals."
" God pity us all if a wreck does come this night," Peter
Mashew exclaimed, as he and Gaskins started out into the storm.
A mile up the beach the revolving beam of Hatteras Light cut
a circle in the blackness on scudding clouds and flying spray a
wheel of destiny. Ten miles to sea the leaping breakers on the
Diamond Shoals danced like ghosts above the shifting quicksands
the graveyard of the American merchant marine.
The Captain remained alone by the stove. He felt that fate
had smirched his honor, though he knew that human courage had
been powerless to save those men aboard that Italian brig when
she struck, and almost instantly went to pieces. Had she only
chosen the outer Diamond instead of the Hook of the Cape. He
suddenly rose and moved back from the stove, as he smelled his
boots scorching. Laying down his pipe and newspaper, he went
over to the closet, took a lantern, lit it, then opened the door
into the boat room and peered into the gloom. There she was the
lifeboat. Resting lightly on the heavy four-wheeled truck, she
seemed a living thing, with graceful swelling sides and polished
774 SAFE TO SEA [Sept.,
handrails. The long oiled oars lay across the seats, and the Captain
involuntarily put out his hand to them. "Are you ready?" he
muttered as the mingled roar of surf and storm pressed around the
isolated house like a tangible presence.
The Captain turned quickly Gaskins stood behind him.
"I know it," he said with a quick intake of breath, " where does the
wreck lie? "
"Peter Mashew took the south patrol I was in the boat-
house," Gaskins jerked out. " Peter must have been near the key-
post when he burned two Coston lights. I saw both red lights flare
up, but they were dim. I don't believe a wreck on the shoals could
see those signals and know that help was coming."
"Where does the wreck lie?" the Captain broke in.
" I couldn't see anything," Gaskins answered.
" It will take Peter Mashew some time to make his way back
through such a " but the Captain turned and began to mount the
stairs two at a time.
Bassett started violently in his sleep then suddenly sat up on
his cot. "Wreck ?" he asked huskily. But the Captain had climbed
the ladder, and was in the lookout on the housetop. " Boys," he
said descending, " she's on the outer Diamond. I saw her lights
distinctly, but only for a second through a rift in the fog. Git
everybody up. I'll call Creed's Hill Station."
Three long and a short three long and a short " Hello
Creed's Hill ! Is that you Steele? "
" A wreck lies on the Outer Diamond. Have you seen their
distress signals? "
" Yes, we have. We'll be ready to start at daybreak."
H Yes, I know, the tide turns at five o'clock. The surf will
fall. We'll start then."
" I tell ye, I'm going. If I can't launch her on the north
beach, I can haul her across the cape, and launch her in the lea of
the hook. The surf's not so strong three miles down the Hook
abreast your station, is it? "
" How can I tell. When we see how the wreck lies, we'll know
how to get the men off. We'll consult when we get there."
Peter Mashew was out of breath from running. " The first
time I saw it I wau'nt sure ; after a little I saw the light plain, but
it was very pale. I saw it for just a flash ; then the fog shut it out.
After a little I saw it again. It bears southeast by east."
From the Cape Point Station a rocket split the night with pow-
1914-] SAFE TO SEA 775
dered fire; then another and another. The life saving station
throbbed with nervous tension. The surfmen, all dressed and ready,
were carefully examining the lifeboat the gear, everything that
might be needed. The medicine chest and bags of blankets were got
out, but the beach apparatus would be useless. The wreck lay on
the outer Diamond, probably eight or ten miles to sea.
By four A. M. the wind had canted to the northwest, and sub-
sided to a moderate breeze, but the sea was appalling. Waves broke
into surf as far off shore as the eye could see through the flying
mist and whirling spoondrift. Towering billows madly chased
one another shoreward, and scattered with thunderous roar into a
smother of foam and spray upon the desolate beach. Lanterns were
beginning to look like glowing embers as the wan light of dawn
filtrated the fog, and disclosed the surfmen with tense, solemn
faces, preparing to match strength with the sea.
"Every man here?" the Captain shouted. "Where is Peter
Mashew ? "
" He's gone for the horses," somebody answered. In tar-
paulins and hip boots (those long boots that drown a man because
they strap over the shoulders) the surfmen silently strained their
muscles to the task of rolling the lifeboat, mounted on the truck,
down the incline.
"Back the horses up there," shouted the Captain, as the fright-
ened animals quivered whickering.
All moved forward. The men threw their weight on the down-
ward turn of the wheels, the horses bowed their heads to the wind,
their muscles standing out in high relief. Three hundred yards
more to the beach !
"'Taint no use to call away the lifeboat! No human can
shoot that surf," Bassett cried out instinctively, as they crawled to
the edge of the beach, and faced the breakers flying up in a thick
white wall of spray that hissed like steam.
" A man must die if his time " but the wind cut away Orastus'
words.
The whole beach was under water. Foam thick as suds boiled
knee deep. Breakers chased one another so closely that their crests
rushed screaming together.
" We'll never launch her," Bassett wailed. " The sea is too
strong; we'll have to wait. Maybe we can in two or three hours
when the tide's out." But Bassett fell silent as he caught the Cap-
tain's eye.
776 SAFE TO SEA [Sept.,
" Lift her off the carriage now all together," and with his
words the Captain bent his shoulders to the strain. " Hold her
there, Midgett. Every man to his oar steady."
Struggling in the swash, framing the sand, the men held the
lifeboat by the oar locks and handrails awaiting the final order.
The Captain held the steering oar, and watched the combers with a
fixity that seemed hypnotic.
' They come in sevens. All ready ? Now with the next
keep her off ."
The boat shot forward with the suction of the retreating wave,
rose instantly upon the next, poised lightly on the crest of the
succeeding comber, plunged headlong into the trough, then rising,
rising, her keel three-fourths dry, pitch-poled over and over, and
was hurled upside down far back upon the beach by the resistless
flood. Five men in cork jackets, half -smothered with salt water,
were tossing in the surf. Three were hanging to the boat one was
missing!
" Where's the Captain? " Orastus shouted as soon as his feet
touched bottom.
The next comber rolled him in, head down. "I'm all right," he
gasped, as several hands seized him, " but I'm full of water. Every-
body safe? Where's Peter Mashew? "
"Lift the boat over quick about it! "
Blood was flowing from a cut on Peter's head. He seemed un-
conscious, but breathing Finally he opened his eyes and groaned.
" Boys, I'm done for," he whispered Then he tried to stand. " My
right knee is jammed."
Bassett and Webb lifted him, and bore him back to the station,
with the assistance of the cook, who had been holding the horses.
" Leave him with the cook and hurry back," the Captain
shouted.
The wind was rapidly backing to the west the surf was falling
with the outgoing tide. " Those boys take their time to come back
Steele will be there ahead of me. A woman could launch a boat
in another hour," the Captain exclaimed impatiently. " There's
three oars and a bag of blankets washed away," he said suddenly
as he scrutinized the lifeboat. "Go to the station, Midgett, get three
oars and another bag of blankets, and tell those boys to hurry back.
See if Peter Mashew is much hurt."
"We five can go without Peter? We five can go," Orastus
said excitedly, as he seized the handrail.
1914-] SAFE TO SEA 777
" Hold on," the Captain ordered, as the three men hove in
sight.
" Come on, boys, drag her down ! Steele will be there ahead
of us. We ivill go."
With the receding wave the lifeboat shot forward, then
grounded for a second, as six surf men, clumsy in cork jackets and
gum boots, scrambled over the sides and took their seats with oars
poised. Bassett and the Captain held the stern.
"All ready? Get in Bassett," said the Captain seizing the
steering oar with both hands. Bassett blanched, and his oar slipped
from his grasp.
' 'Taint no use," he faltered. " No human can launch her in
such a surf my time ain't come."
" Ye an seven surfmen," the Captain hissed, " and ye are the
Cape Point Crew."
" We'll never come back," Bassett cried out, as the Captain
shoved the boat off. " We'll never come back ! "
" By G ! " the Captain shouted, " it's not your job to come
back!"
But they did come back back over the wild waters of the
great Diamond Shoals, with their pitiful load of half-dead seamen,
taken from the masts and rigging of the sunken vessel, where they
had clung hopelessly and naked of clothes, which the storm had torn
off.
The Hatteras Crew reached them first; the Creed's Hill Crew
were a close second. The vessel lay upon her starboard side in the
midst of a seething mass of breakers, her bowsprit, foremast, main-
mast, maintopmast, and deck houses, fore and aft, gone, and her
stern to the mizzen rigging carried away. The surrounding wreck-
age, pitching and beating about in the breakers, threatened death and
destruction to the rescuers and the lifeboats. Eleven sailors still
clinging in the rigging, seemed to regard the life-savers as merely
apparitions called up by their frozen delirium. Then a wild, shouted
consultation. The Creed's Hill Crew would stand guard. The
Hatteras Crew would enter the breakers. Past master of surf-
manship, they pulled to a position windward of the wreck to wind-
ward by both wind and tide then veering carefully upon the cable,
and steadying the lifeboat with the oars, they dropped in among the
breakers. Fending off the debris hurled about by the spuming
waters, the lifeboat crept closer and closer into the maw of death.
" Steady boys, steady ! " the Captain shouted, as he heaved a line
778 " SAFE TO SEA [Sept.,
which fell, thank God! across the spar on which two sailors clung.
But they would not loose their hold, or could not. It lay within
their grasp, but their frozen hands seemed helpless.
Suddenly Orastus Webb bent a line about his waist and leaped
into the sea. In an instant he was swept from sight then tossed
high upon the wreck in a tangle of spars and cordage. He reached
the mizzenmast. The surfmen burst into wild cheers. Taking the
line from his waist, he fastened it about the sailor nearest him, and
tearing loose his hands flung him into the sea. One by one the
others followed, until five rescued men were safely hauled aboard
the lifeboat, frozen, drenched, clean spent but saved. Six helpless
souls remained.
" Don't try to reach them, Webb," the Captain shouted.
"Heave 'em the line."
Nobody saw just how it happened. For only an instant Oras-
tus Webb was seen as the furious waters dashed him high against
the broken mast. His strong arms fought the flood then he
vanished.
It was no time for vain regrets. Six men remained who must
be saved. But the Hatteras Crew lost heart. Then Captain Steele
pulled in to play with death. The sea was falling with the turning
tide. The Creed's Hill Crew crept perilously close, but the line fell
foul. Again and again they heaved it, and when at last those
passionate hands grasped it, and the last man was hauled through
the hissing water, the lifeboats turned and fled from the dissolving
wreck, rapidly sinking through the gathering gloom into the ever-
lasting quicksands of the treacherous shoals.
And they did come back. After seventeen hours, sore and
spent, yet exultant, with their strange cargo wrapped in blankets,
they all came back, except Orastus Webb. He joined that company
from many lands and times, whose voices rise with the rising of the
storm, when Gulf Stream waters charge in furious combat the
waters from the frozen north out on the Diamond Shoals.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D., SC.D.
ATHOLICS are I think sometimes discouraged by the
fact that in spite of frequent corrections, a great
many of the old intolerant objections to the Church
are still being published, and even scattered broadcast
in such a way as to make it clear that a large number
of people are interested in, if not convinced by, them. I have
thought that they might derive some consolation from having
their attention called to the fact that in certain ways at least,
during the generation just past, a decided change has come over
the attitude of that portion of the reading and thinking public whose
opinion is really worth while. Perhaps this change cannot be better
illustrated than by taking a book which, although very popular in
its own time, just forty years ago, is now regarded as an index of
the lack of scholarship of the generation preceding our own.
The book in question is The History of The Conflict Between
Religion and Science, by Professor John W. Draper, which received
the honor or privilege of a place in the International Scientific
Series just forty years ago. It was issued in 1874, and in my copy,
dated 1875, the legend Third Edition shows that the book sold
almost as a popular novel did at that time, and evidently attracted
wide attention. Professor Draper was very well known among
scientific men generally for some excellent work in science, and
well known particularly among physicians as the author of a valuable
Treatise on Human Physiology. He had published besides a series
of papers containing important results of original research on phys-
iological subjects, and many memoirs embodying experimental work
of a high order of merit, on chemical and other scientific themes.
He was the author of a well-known History of The Intellectual
Development of Europe. It is easy to understand then how his
book, supposed to be thoroughly authoritative, deeply influenced
the rising academic generation. Above all it was eagerly read by
those who were to devote themselves to teaching in the colleges and
universities of this country during the subsequent twenty years.
It seems to me not too much to assume that most of the maturer
scientists who are now teaching in this country, read Professor
780 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
Draper's book, and were led by it to the conviction that religion, and
above all the Church, had been constantly opposed to intellectual
progress of any kind, and, beyond all doubt, to such social progress
as would lead to the real development of mankind. It is quite cer-
tain that a great many of these men who are still alive, even when
not entirely conscious of the source of their opinions as to the re-
lations of science and religion and the Church and education, have
at the back of their minds certain prejudices, founded on the in-
fluence produced on them during their plastic, formative state of
mind by the reading of Professor Draper's book. Indeed, so firm is
the feeling in many of these men, that this whole subject is settled
for them beyond the possibility of any modification, that they have
insulated their minds from any further currents of information.
Controversy is distasteful at best; to find out that one has been
cherishing a mistaken notion for years, is always disturbing as one
grows older, and so it is not surprising that many of these men fre-
quently use expressions with regard to the supposed relations of
Church and science that are incompatible with what is now very
generally known of the history of science. Their minds are made
up, and they simply refuse to bring for a second time any of these
subjects before the bar of judgment. Besides, though they would
resent any such imputation as to their own state of mind, they have
the feeling that people with religious convictions are prone to see
only one side, and, therefore, anything that may be said on the other
side is only a bit of special pleading for a conviction that no reason-
ing and no argument would change. They argue, as a consequence,
that it would be quite useless for them to read the other side with any
reasonable hope of getting at the real facts. This attitude of scien-
tists is very different from the open-mindedness that is supposed to
be characteristic of the devotees of science; but it is very human.
Now the interesting fact with regard to Professor Draper's
books is that Professor Draper, a scientist, did not know the history
of science at all. He was entirely ignorant of the great advances
that were even then being made, with regard to our knowledge
of the growth of science during the mediaeval period. He thought
that there was very little, indeed practically no science, during that
period. Looking about for a reason, he made the Church a scape-
goat. The publication during the past generation of many German
volumes on the history of the different sciences and these Ger-
man students went straight to the original documents has shown
us that there were magnificent developments of science during the
I9I4-3 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW 781
mediaeval and early Renaissance periods, when the Church was in
control of the educational institutions and of every phase of aca-
demic work. The story of the opposition between religion and
science falls to the ground at once when these facts are known.
Some of them were already in process of publication even in
Draper's time, but he knew nothing of them. He was so sure that
there was nothing to know in this matter, that he probably did not
bother his head very much about trying to get the latest results
of scholarship in the matter.
Professor Draper's summary of the relations of the Church to
science or learning, and his declaration of her absolute refusal
to recognize anything as scholarship, except what was deduced
from the Scriptures, shows how far a man can go in his assumption
of knowledge when he knows literally nothing about a subject.
For him the Dark Ages knew nothing because he knows nothing
about them. If they knew anything, he would know it, but he
does not. Of one or two men he knows something, but they are
exceptions to the general rule of absolute negation of intellectual
interests and developments. Draper said i 1
Jn the annals of Christianity, the most ill-omened day is
that in which she separated herself from science. She com-
pelled Origen, at that time (A. D. 231) its chief representative
and supporter in the Church, to abandon his charge in Alex-
andria, and retire to Caesarea. In vain through many subse-
quent centuries did her leading men spend themselves in as
the phrase then went drawing forth the internal juice and
marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things. Uni-
versal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows
with what result. The Dark Ages owe their darkness to this
fatal policy. Here and there, it is true, there were great men,
such as Frederick II. and Alphonso X., who standing at a very
elevated and general point of view, had detected the value of
learning to civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect
that ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized
that science alone can improve the social condition of man.
Of course the man who wrote that either knew nothing at all
about a whole series of triumphs of human intelligence, or else
he deliberately put them out of his mind. One wonders if he had
ever even heard of Dante, of whom more has been written than of
*Page 250.
782 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
any man who ever lived. Those triumphs of art, architecture,
the arts and crafts, engineering, construction work of the highest
genius, the Gothic cathedrals and the great public buildings, town
halls, hospitals, university buildings, would surely have appeared
to him as representing magnificent intellectual and social accom-
plishments, had he appreciated anything of their real significance
or allowed himself for a moment to get out of the narrow circle
of interests in which he was unfortunately placed. Our architec-
ture in his time was cheap; our art absent; our crafts lacked
development; our civic and university architecture of the
quarter century before he wrote was literally a disgrace, and of
course Professor Draper could not be expected to appreciate the
achievements of the Middle Ages in those departments in which his
own generation lacked so much.
It is especially striking to take a paragraph of Professor
Draper's, in which he sums up a whole movement, and place beside it
a paragraph of a serious and informed student of the same subject.
Professor Draper inherited the old traditions of lazy monks, living
in idleness, a drain on the country, of absolutely no benefit to them-
selves or to others. Professor Draper wrote; 2
While thus the higher clergy secured every political appoint-
ment worth having, and abbots vied with counts, in the herds
of slaves they possessed some, it is said, owned not fewer
than twenty thousand begging friars pervaded society in all
directions, picking up a share of what still remained to the
poor. There was a vast body of non-producers, living in idle-
ness and owning a foreign allegiance, who were subsisting
on the fruits of the toil of the laborers. It could not be other-
wise than that small farms should be unceasingly merged into
the larger estates ; that the poor should steadily become poorer ;
that society far from improving, should exhibit a continually
increasing demoralization.
As a commentary on this, read the following paragraph from
Mr. Ralph Adams Cram's book on The Ruined Abbeys of Great
Britain, in which he describes what the monasteries actually did
for the people. Mr. Cram has made a special study of the subject
in connection with the magnificent architecture which these me-
diaeval monks developed, and which he would like to have our people
'Page 267.
1914-] SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW 783
appreciate and emulate. Professor Draper is much more positive,
but Mr. Cram is much more convincing. 3
At the height of monastic glory the religious houses were
actually the chief centres of industry and civilization, and
around them grew up the eager villages, many of which now
exist, even though their impulse and original inspiration have
long since departed. Of course, the possessions of the abbey
reached far away from the walls in every direction, including
many farms even at a great distance, for the abbeys were then
the great landowners, and beneficent landlords they were as
well ; even in their last days, for we have many records of the
cruelty and hardships that came to the tenants the moment
the stolen lands came into the hands of laymen.
Or, almost better still, read the following paragraph from an
address at the summer meeting of the State Board of Agriculture
of Massachusetts, delivered by Dr. Henry Goodell, the President of
the Massachusetts Agricultural College, on the general subject of
the influence of the monks in agriculture :
Agriculture was sunk to a low ebb at the decadence of the
Rorran Empire. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the
men who should have tilled the land spurned the plow as de-
grading. The monks left their cells and their prayers to dig
ditches and plow fields. The effort was magical. Men once
more turned back to a noble but despised industry, and peace
and plenty supplanted war and poverty. So well recognized
were the blessings they brought, that an old German proverb
among the peasants runs, " It is good to live under the crozier."
They ennobled manual labor, which, in a degenerate Roman
world, had been performed exclusively by slaves, and among
the barbarians by women. For the monks it is no exaggera-
tion to say that the cultivation of the soil was like an immense
alms spread over a whole country. The abbots and superiors
set the example, and stripping off their sacerdotal robes, toiled
as common laborers. Like the good parson whom Chaucer
portrays in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
This noble ensample unto his scheep he gaf
That first he wroughte and after that he taughte.
When a Papal messenger came in haste to consult the Abbot
'The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain. New York: The Churchman Co.,
1905, P. 458.
784 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
Equutius on important matters of the Church, he was not to be
found anywhere, but was finally discovered in the valley cut-
ting hay. Under such guidance and such example the monks
upheld and taught everywhere the dignity of labor, first, by
consecrating to agriculture the energy and intelligent activity
of freemen often of high birth, and clothed with the double
authority of the priesthood and of hereditary nobility, and,
second, by associating under the Benedictine habit sons of
kings, princes, and nobles with the rudest labors of peasants
and serfs.
President Goodell has told the story of how the monks cleared
and reclaimed the land, transformed fens into forests, marshes
into gardens, and swamps into beautiful domains. As he says:
A swamp was of no value. It was a source of pestilence.
But it was just the place for a monastery because it made life
especially hard, and so the monks carried in earth and stone
and made a foundation, and built their convent, and then set
to work to dyke and drain and fill up the swamp, till they had
turned it into fertile plow land and the pestilence had ceased.
President Goodell did not hesitate to proclaim that the monas-
teries were the early representatives of our agricultural colleges.
They taught the peasantry of the surrounding country how best
to grow their crops and what to grow. Because of their wide
affiliations they were enabled to secure seeds of various kinds, and
stock for breeding purposes, and so were able to teach the people
what was best for particular neighborhoods, and not only show them
how to raise it, but actually supply them with the necessary initial
materials. It became a proverb that the monks and their people
were the best farmers. When we ourselves were ignorant of scien-
tific farming, we did not appreciate what the monks had done for
agriculture. Now that our soil is becoming exhausted by un-
scientific and wasteful farming, the foundation of agricultural
colleges leads the men who have studied the subject to appreciate
what the monks really accomplished. Professor Draper not only
cannot find anything good to say of the monks, but he can scarcely
find anything bitter enough to say of them. On the other hand
President Goodell, who has studied the situation from his point of
view very carefully, can scarcely find words strong enough to
praise them. He concluded his address as follows :
1914.] SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW 785
My friends, I have outlined to you in briefest manner to-day
the work of these grand old monks during a period of fifteen
hundred years. They saved agriculture when nobody else could
save it. They practised it under a new life and new conditions
when no one else dared undertake it. They advanced it along
every line of theory and practice, and when they perished they
left a void which generations have not filled.
Professor Draper makes an especially strong appeal to Amer-
ican readers by contrasting all the accomplishments of our material
civilization here in the United States, with the results in Mexico
and in South America. Our progress has been all beneficent, while
the influence, of the Spaniard was everywhere absolutely maleficent.
He seems to forget all about our obliteration of the Indian, with its
awful injustice. He proclaims our increase in wealth as the surest
sign of our intellectual superiority. He says : 4
Let us contrast with this the results of the invasion of
Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards, who in those countries
overthrew a wonderful civilization, in many respects superior
to their own, a civilization that had been accomplished without
iron and gunpowder a civilization resting on an agriculture
that had neither horse, nor ox, nor plow. The Spaniards had
a clear base to start from, and no obstruction whatever in
their advance. They ruined all that the aboriginal children of
America had accomplished. Millions of those unfortunates
were destroyed by their cruelty. Nations that for many cen-
turies had been living in contentment and prosperity, under
institutions shown by their history to be suitable to them, were
plunged into anarchy; the people fell into a baneful super-
stition, and a greater part of their land and other property
found its way into the possession of the Roman Church.
Place beside that a paragraph from the late lamented Professor
Bourne of Yale, who having made special studies in Spanish-
American culture and education, as well as in its intellectual life, con-
trasts it quite unfavorably with what was accomplished in the Eng-
lish colonies. Professor Bourne was, like Draper, a professor at
an American university, but he had made special studies in the sub-
ject, and knew something about it. Professor Draper talked out
of the depths of his assumption of knowledge; Professor Bourne
Page 289.
VOL. xcix. 50
7 86 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
out of an intimate acquaintance that had been obtained by years
of serious research work. Professor Bourne said:
Both the Crown and the Church were solicitous for educa-
tion in the Spanish colonies, and provisions were made for its
promotion on a far greater scale than was possible or even
attempted in the English colonies. The early Franciscan mis-
sionaries built a school beside each church, and in their teach-
ing abundant use was made of signs, drawings, and paintings.
The native languages were reduced to writing, and in a few
years Indians were learning to read and write. Pedro de
Gante, a Flemish lay brother, and a relative of Charles V.,
founded and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great
school, attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which com-
bined instruction in elementary and higher branches, the me-
chanical and fine arts. In its workshops the boys were taught
to be tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and painters.
Sir Sidney Lee, the editor of the National Dictionary of Biog-
raphy of England, and the author of a series of works on Shakes-
peare, which has gained for him recognition as probably the best
living authority on the history of the Elizabethan times, without
deliberate intent, answered Draper almost directly, in the following
paragraphs from his work, The Call of The West, which appeared
originally in Scribner's Magazine, but has since been published in
book form. Since Mr. Lee cannot be suspected of national or creed
affinities with the Spaniards, and his knowledge of the subject is
unquestionable, his direct contradictions of Draper are all the more
weighty :
Especially has theological bias justified neglect or facilitated
misconception of Spain's role in the sixteenth century drama of
American history. Spain's initial adventures in the New World
are often consciously or unconsciously overlooked or under-
rated, in order that she may figure on the stage of history
as the benighted champion of a false and obsolete faith, which
was vanquished under a divine protecting Providence by Eng-
lish defenders of the true religion. Many are the hostile crit-
ics who have painted sixteenth century Spain as the avaricious
accumulator of American gold and silver, to which she had no
right, as the monopolist of American trade, of which she
robbed others, and as the oppressor and exterminator of the
weak and innocent aborigines of the new continent, who de-
plored her presence among them. Cruelty in all its hideous
I9I4-] SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW 787
forms is, indeed, commonly set forth as Spain's only instru-
ment of rule in her sixteenth century empire. On the other
hand, the English adventurer has been credited by the same
pens with a touching humanity, with the purest religious as-
pirations, with a romantic courage which was always at the
disposal of the oppressed native.
No such picture is recognized when we apply the touchstone
of the oral traditions, printed books, maps, and manuscripts
concerning America which circulated in Shakespeare's England.
There a predilection for romantic adventure is found to sway
the Spaniards in even greater degree than it swayed the Eliza-
bethan Englishman. Religious zeal is seen to inspirit the
Spaniards more constantly and conspicuously than it stimulated
his English contemporary. The motives of each nation are
barely distinguishable one from another. Neither deserves to
be credited with any monopoly of virtue or vice. Above all,
the study of contemporary authorities brings into a dazzling
light, which illumes every corner of the picture, the command-
ing facts of the Spaniard's priority as explorer, as scientific
navigator, as conqueror, as settler.
When an Englishman will admit this much in a comparison of
his own countrymen with the Spaniards, it is easy to understand how
great mast be the actual historical contrast between the settlers
of Spanish and English America.
Professor Draper's philosophy of history is, indeed, something
to make one pause. He says on page 291, " The result of the Cru-
sades had shaken the faith of all Christendom." As a matter of
easily ascertainable history, the faith of Christendom was never so
strong as during the century immediately following the Crusades.
This was the thirteenth century, with the glorious Gothic cathedrals ;
the great Latin hymns; the magnificent musical development; the
wondrous tribute of painting to religion; from Cimabue and Duccio
to Giotto and Orcagna, and of sculpture from the Pisani to the
great designers of some of the doors of the baptistry of Florence, of
the finest arts and crafts in gold and silver, in woodwork, in needle-
work, in illuminated books all precious tributes to religious belief.
In the hundred years after the Crusades, the Popes secured a position
of influence in Europe greater than they had ever had before or have
ever enjoyed since, which they used to secure the foundation of
hospitals everywhere throughout Europe, the establishment of uni-
versities, the organization of religious orders for teaching and
;88 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
nursing purposes, and the finest development of social life and social
happiness that the world had ever known.
According to Professor Draper, the removal of the Papal court
to Avignon in France gave opportunity for " the memorable intel-
lectual movement that soon manifested itself in the great commercial
cities of Upper Italy." For him the earlier Renaissance begins
with the fourteenth century, the thirteenth is entirely neglected,
and a period that is really one of decadence is proclaimed a tri-
umphant era of progress, because forsooth the removal from Rome
of the Papacy and the abandonment by some of Christianity itself,
gives him an opportunity to explain, thus from his prejudiced point
of view, how the first stirrings of the Renaissance began. Verily
indeed Professor Draper has written a joke book of history.
Everything is along the same line. It is very rare, indeed, that by
some chance he states a genuine historical truth, and when he does
he usually disfigures it in some way or other. For him the Moors
are the source of chivalry, of respect for women ( !), and of the
noble sentiment of personal honor. Everything else that is of any
value in Christendom, must be referred to some source not Chris-
tian, lest by any chance religion should seem to have done any
good in the world. And let us not forget that this book was taken
seriously, and not by the ignorant, but by university men, college
graduates, professors, and teachers in many parts of the country.
Above all Professor Draper can scarcely be too bitter in his
denunciation of the way that the poor were imposed upon, their
ignorance encouraged, their rights refused, and all opportunities
denied them. All this was due, according to Professor Draper,
to the tyranny of the Church. President Woodrow Wilson, after
making a special study of that subject, suggested in a passage in his
book, which may be found in The New Freedom, exactly the oppo-
site of this. He knew something of the subject. Professor Draper
was quite sure that he knew all about it, and that no good could
have possibly come out of the Church. President Wilson's expres-
sions are interesting to those who do not know them :
The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in
the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which then
prevailed, was that the men who were efficient instruments of
government were drawn from the Church from that great
Church, that body we now distinguish from other Church
bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic
1914.] SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW 789
Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no
peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no
priest so obscure that he might not become a Pope of Chris-
tendom, and every chancellory in Europe was ruled by those
learned, trained and accomplished men the priesthood of that
great and then dominant Church; and so, what kept govern-
ment alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the
sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body
of the people through the open channels of the Roman Catho-
lic priesthood.
The greatest surprise is to be found in Professor Draper's
ignorance of the history of his own profession. He says, " It had
always been the policy of the Church to discourage the physician
and his art; he interfered too much with the gifts and profits of
the shrines." Professor Draper apparently knew nothing of the
great medical schools attached to the universities in the mediaeval
period, whose professors wrote great medical and surgical text-
books, which have come down to us, and whose faculties required a
far higher standard of medical education than was demanded in
America in Professor Draper's own day. For about 1817 anyone
who wished might enter an American medical school practically any-
where in the country, without any preliminary education, and hav-
ing taken two terms of ungraded lectures, that is, having listened to
the same set of lectures two years in succession, might receive
his degree of doctor of medicine. In the Middle Ages he could
enter the medical school only after having completed three years of
preliminary work in the undergraduate department, and then he
was required to give four years to the study of medicine, and spend
a year as assistant with another physician before he was allowed
to practice for himself. This is the standard to which our uni-
versity medical schools gradually climbed back at the beginning of
the twentieth century a full generation after Draper's time.
We know now that in those earlier centuries they had thorough
clinical teaching in the hospitals, that is, physicians learned to prac-
tise medicine at the bedside of the patient, and not merely out of
books and by theoretic lectures. Clinical teaching had not developed
in Professor Draper's day to any extent. The mediaeval hospitals
had trained nurses and magnificent quarters, while the trained nurse
was only introduced into America in 1871, and our hospitals at that
time were almost without exception a disgrace to civilization, ac-
cording to our present standards of hospital construction. Our
790 SCIENCE AND RELIGION THEN AND NOW [Sept.,
surgery was most discouraging, because there were so many deaths
in the unclean hospital conditions. The mediaeval hospital sur-
geons operating under anaesthesia boasted of getting union by first
intention, and were in many ways doing better work than their
colleagues of 1870, Professor Draper's own time, before Lister's
great discovery. Of all this Professor Draper had no inkling.
Professor Draper's prestige, and the fact that his book was
published in the International Scientific Series, led a great many
people to read it, and it found its way into many of the public
libraries of the country, on whose shelves it may still be found.
Many of its readers thought it could never be effectively answered.
Scientists were affected by it, or at least those interested in science,
and it represented one phase of that pronounced opposition to re-
ligion which characterized the early days of Darwinism.
And if the seriously educated were willing to accept the ignor-
ant and prejudiced views of Professor Draper, what was to be
expected of the general reader? What has helped the position of
the Church in this country during the past generations is knowledge,
and ever more knowledge. When those who are not of the fold
know even a little of the history of the Church, know a reasonable
amount of the other side of controversial problems, and above all
when they have been brought into personal touch with the Church
itself, her pastors and the hierarchy and religious men and women,
prejudice disappears and understanding grows. We still have the
monks and nuns of the olden time with us, but no one who knows
them personally ever thinks for a moment of lazy monks and idle
nuns. After a man has met scholarly Catholic clergymen, he has
quite a different view of the relations of the Church to education.
That is all that the Church has ever needed to be known in order to
be appreciated. Nothing emphasizes this so much as the change
that has come over the knowledge of the Church and her institutions
during the generation that separates us from the writing of Pro-
fessor Draper's book.
INVENI QUEM DILIGIT ANIMA MEA.
BY EMILY HICKEY.
WHAT do I see?
The semblance of a little wheaten cake
Stampt with the image of Him Who for my sake
Died on His Passion-tree.
That wheat was grown in the eternal field,
And threshed with love's own flail, and heavily ground
Between the stones of life and death, and found
In perfectness, that I might see revealed
My Lover and my God ;
Him from Whose eyes
There dropt the sorrow-drops all humanwise;
Him at Whose nod
The everlasting hills would quake and flee.
This do I see.
What do I see?
The chalice seeming of the grapes' red juice,
With water mingled, as for daily use.
O Love and Lord of me,
That juice is of the blood-red grapes that grew
Upon the living Vine Whose fruitage knew
The ripening of the everlasting Sun
Whose course was ne'er begun.
O Lover mine, O King,
What is indeed this thing,
This high, love-dreadful thing?
Thy Life, Thy Death, and Thine Uprist, and all
The glory of Thine Ascension festival
In these few minutes' space
Passing before my face.
Here do I bow my head,
And in my heart be said
Things of adoring love my tongue all weak
Frames not itself to speak.
Oh, here is bitterest bitter and sweetest sweet ;
And here is hunger and thirst and drink and meat ;
And here are clouds of agony, the mist
Wheref rom doth rise the glory of the sun ;
Here the defeat and here the victory won ;
And here is God Himself in Eucharist
THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN.
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
NE of the most common historical questions deposited
in the Question Box during our missions to non-
Catholics is the following: Was there not in the
ninth century a female Pope ? Time and time again
has this fable been refuted, but like all fables cal-
culated to discredit the Holy See, it is still part of the stock-in-trade
of the unscholarly and unscrupulous anti-Catholic lecturer and
writer. We propose in the present article to give a brief summary
of a most detailed and thorough account of the origin, development,
and falsity of this legend, which the Abbe Felix Vernet of the
University of Lyons has lately written for the Dictionnaire Apolo-
getique de la Foi Catholique. 1
It is now generally admitted by critical historians that the
earliest authentic document referring to Pope Joan dates from the
thirteenth century. The earlier texts such as the Liber Pontificalis
(ninth century), Marianus Scotus (-[-1086), Sigeburt of Gem-
bloux (4-1112), Otto of Friesingen (-{-1158), Richard of Poitiers
(arc. 1174), Godfrey of Viterbo ( + 1191), and Gervaise of Till-
bury (arc. 1211) have all been proved interpolations of later cen-
turies. The first four authentic references are John de Mailley's
Chronicle of Metz (circ. 1250), the De Diversis Materiis of Stephen
de Bourbon (circ. 1261), the Chronica Minor of a Franciscan of
Erfurt (1261), and the Chronicle of the Roman Pontiffs of Martin
of Troppau (Polonus, 1279).
The Abbe Vernet divides these eleven texts into two groups,
the first dependent on the chronicle of Metz, and the second on the
chronicle of Martin of Troppau. Each group gives a different
version of the legend.
Group I. The chronicle of Metz puts the story tentatively as
follows : " Query. With regard to a certain Pope, or Popess, be-
cause she was a woman who pretended to be a man. On account
of his ability, he became in turn notary of the Curia, Cardinal,
and Pope. One day while he was riding, he gave birth to a child.
According to the Roman law, his feet were tied together, and he
1 Jeanne (La Papesse), vol. x.
I9I4-] THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN 793
was dragged at a horse's tail for half a league, while the people
stoned him. He was buried on the spot where he died, and this
inscription set up :
Petre, Pater Patrum, Papisse Prodito Partum. 2
During his pontificate the fast of the Ember Days, called the
Popess' fast, was instituted." 3 This account is recorded after the
Pontificate of Victor III., w r ho died in 1087.
Stephen of Bourbon adds but two details, viz., that she came to
Rome from some other city, and that she became Cardinal and
Pope by the devil's aid. His inscription puts Parce in place of
Petre, and Prodere in place of Prodito. He dates the event noo
A. D. The Franciscan of Erfurt briefly recites the same story,
adding that the Popess was a beautiful woman, and that the devil
himself revealed the fact that she was with child. He places the
event in 91 5 A. D.
Group II. The popular mediaeval chronicle of Martin of
*Troppau (Polonus) is the origin of all the interpolated accounts of
the female Pope in the Liber Pontificalis, Marianus Scotus, Sige-
burt of Gembloux, Otto of Friesingen, Godfrey of Viterbo, and
Gervaise of Tillbury.
According to Martin, Pope Joan succeeded Leo IV., who died
in 855. His account runs as follows :
After the aforesaid Leo, John, an Englishman by descent,
who came from Mainz, held the see two years, five months and
four days, and the pontificate was vacant one month. He
died at Rome. He, it is asserted, was a woman while
Pope she became pregnant. But not knowing the time of her
delivery, while going from St. Peter's to the Lateran, being
taken in labor, she brought forth a child between the Coliseum
and St. Clement's Church. And afterwards dying she was,
it is said, buried in that place. And because the Lord Pope
always turns aside from that way, there are some who are fully
persuaded that it is done in detestation of the fact *
The interpolator of the Liber Pontificalis gives her reign as two
years, one month and four days, while the author of the account in
Marianus Scotus agrees with Martin of Troppau. The chronicle
"' Peter, Father of Fathers, reveal the childbirth of the Popess."
*Monumenta Germanice Historica Scriptures, vol. xxiv., p. 514.
4 Dr. S. R. Maitland's translation in the British Magazine, vol. xxii., p. 42.
794 THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN [Sept.,
of Otto of Friesingen makes Pope John VII. the female Pope, thus
assigning the date A. D. 705. Perhaps he realized the impossibility
of putting in Pope Joan between Leo IV. and Benedict III.
How did the legend originate? At least ten different theories
have been put forward since the seventeenth century to account for
this legend, but the majority of them are most arbitrary and im-
probable. Leo Allatius 5 believed that the people made a Pope out of
a pseudo-prophetess, Thiota, condemned by the Synod of Mainz in
847; Leibnitz 6 held that a woman had been bishop once of some see
outside of Rome; Blasco 7 considered the legend an allegorical satire
on the False Decretals; Suares, Bishop of Vaison, traced the legend
to the wife of the anti-Pope, Pierre de Corbiere ( 1328) ; Baronius 8
thought the weakness of John VIII. in dealing with Photius led the
people to call him in mockery the woman Pope, and that the legend
arose from a later chronicler taking the term literally; Wouters 9
held a similar theory with regard to John VII. and his dealings with
the Council in Trullo (692) ; Secchi considered the legend a mere
fabrication of the Greeks at the time of the Photian schism. All
these hypotheses are ruled out of court by the Abbe Vernet, who
proposes three probable explanations.
1. Bellarmine in his treatise on the Pope 10 mentions the letter
of Pope Leo IX. to Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, which protested against the consecration of eunuchs to the
episcopate, and alluded to a rumor which had reached him that a
woman had once been Patriarch. 11 This letter proves conclusively
that in 1054 the legend of the female Pope had not as yet arisen,
otherwise the Greeks could easily have retorted by a tu quoquc.
The Abbe Lapotre 12 and E. Bernheim 13 both call attention to the
tenth century Chronicon Salernitanum which relates this story
of the woman patriarch of Constantinople, and both see in it the
germ of the legend of Pope Joan.
2. In the tenth century Rome was practically ruled by Theo-
dora, wife of Theophylact, and her two daughters Marozia and
Theodora. The four Popes named John, John X. (+929), John
XL (+936), John XII. (+964), John XIII. (+972), who reigned
at this time were so dominated by them that it is easy to imagine
'Confutatio fabula de Joanna papissa. Rome, 1630.
'Flares sparsi in tumulum papissa. Goettingen, 1758.
'Diatriba de Joanna papissa, Naples, 1778. "Annales eccles, ad an. 853.
'Dissertationes, Louvain, 1870. u De Romano Pontifice, Book III., chap xxiv.
"P. L. CXLIII., col. 760. a Le Pape Jean VUL, p. 365.
"Zur sage der Pdpstin Johanna in the Deutsche Zeit, filr Geschicht, vol. iii.,
P- 4io. "M. G. H., SS., vol. Hi., p. 481.
I9I4-] THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN 795
the people saying : " We have women for Popes." The Abbe
Lapotre quotes a chronicle of Benedict of St. Andrew,
used by Martin of Troppau, which says that under John
XL, Rome " fell into the power of a woman (Marozia), and was
governed by her." 15 Such a document, he adds, might easily
account for the origin of the legend that a woman had really occu-
pied the Holy See. He believes that his hypothesis is confirmed by
the fact that the name Johanna is the feminine of John, and that
Joan became Pope between a Leo and a Benedict. We know that
Pope John XII. was deposed by a Council held at St. Peter's under
the patronage of the Emperor Otho, and was replaced by Leo VIII.
Once Otho departed from Rome, John XII. returned, and in a
Council at the Lateran, he condemned Leo VIII. and his adherents.
j^t his death, May 14, 964, the Romans, passing over Leo VIII.,
chose Benedict V. Pope.
3. It is certain that as late as the fifteenth century, there was
a statue of a pagan goddess with a child in a narrow Roman street
near St. Clement's Church on the way to the Lateran. This statue
was removed to the Quirinal by Sixtus V., 18 probably on account
of the legends centring about it. This statue bore an inscription
consisting of five letters, P. P. P. P. P. Lelievre, in the Revue des
Questions Historiqucs 11 interprets it as follows:
Pater Patrum (a priest of Mithra)
Propria Pecunia Posuit (erected this monument at his own expense).
The populace, having a vague notion of a female Pope, de-
duced either from the woman Patriarch of Constantinople or the
dominance of Marozia in the Rome of the tenth century, were not
satisfied with this simple explanation, but interpreted these letters
in the way we find recorded in the chronicle of Metz, viz. :
Petre, Pater Patrum, Papisse Prodito Partum.
When the Popes went in solemn procession from St. Peter's to
the Lateran, they avoided passing along the street which leads from
the Coliseum to St. Clement's. Some concluded that they did so
out of very shame, because the statue of Pope Joan stood there,
whereas the real reason was the extreme narrowness of the street.
It is interesting to note the variations of the legend in the
"Chronicon, ch. xxx., M. G. H., SS., vol. iii., p. 714.
l *Florimond de Remand, I'Anti-papesse, p. 182. "Vol. xx., p. 575.
796 THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN [Sept.,
course of history. While the main source of the two particular
stories may be readily traced in every case, each writer seems
to feel perfectly free to make additions and changes at will. In
1260 a Franciscan tells us in his Flores Tempormn 18 that the Popess
was called John of England, although as a matter of fact she
came from Mainz. We see at once the chronicler's evident desire
to reconcile the two contradictory accounts of Joan's birth. In the
main, he follows the text of Martin of Troppau, though he differs
from him in a few details.
Boccaccio, in his De Claris Mulieribus ( + 1375), makes the
Popess a German named Gilberta. She studied in England, and
succeeded, by the devil's power, in becoming Pope.
Another variation of the legend by an unknown author 19 re-
lates that Joan was deposed, became a religious, and lived until her
son became Bishop of Ostia. She wanted to be buried in the street,
the Vicus Papissce, where her child had been born, but this was re-
fused, and she was buried at Ostia. 20
Dcellinger published a manuscript of the fourteenth century 21
which declared that the Popess was named Glancia, and came from
Thessaly. She became Pope under the name of Jutta and not John.
John Huss called the Popess Agnes, as we read in his four-
teenth proposition, " The Church has been deceived in the person of
(Popess) Agnes." 22 No one objected to this thesis at the time,
for the fable of Pope Joan was generally admitted. 23
The legend in its various forms was very commonly believed
for the three hundred years preceding the Reformation. Lenfant 24
cites one hundred and fifty writers who mention it, and he does not
enumerate them all. It was exploited by John Huss and William
Occam, and by Gerson and his Gallican followers.
Martin of Troppau, the source from whom so many drew their
versions of the legend, was the penitentiarius of five Popes. The
Augustinian, Amaury d'Augier, chaplain of Urban V., made Joan
the one hundred and tenth Pope, 25 and Platina, the librarian of the
Holy See under Sixtus IV., put her after Leo IV. as the one hun-
dred and sixth Pope. 26 When the portraits of the Popes were
18 M. G. H., SS., vol. xxiv., p. 243.
"Manuscript in the Berlin Library, 4to, 70.
10 Rev. H. Thurston, The Month, May, 1914, p. 454.
n Die Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters, pp. 50, 51.
M Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. vii., p. 165.
M Lenfant, Histoire du Concile de Constance, vol. i., p. 324.
^Histoire de la papesse Jeanne, part ii., ch. v.
"Actus pontificum Romanorum. M De Vitis Pontificnm, p. 119.
1914.] THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN 797
placed in the Cathedral of Siena in 1400, the portrait of Pope Joan
figured among them, despite the fact that Pius II., Pius III., and
Marcellus II. had been Archbishops of Siena. Her portrait was
finally removed by the Grand Duke of Tuscany at the instance of
Clement VIII., who substituted Pope Zachary ( + 752).
John de Torquemada and Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards Pope
Adrian VI., admitted the legend without question, and St. Anton-
inus of Florence, while doubting it himself, dared not come out
openly against it. In fact, there is not a chronicle of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, published in Italy under the eyes of the
Popes, which does not mention the existence of Pope Joan.
Since the Reformation, Protestant controversialists have often
spoken of " the Popess Joan as the eternal shame of the Papacy."
The Centuriators of Magdebourg record it three times. 27 We find
it mentioned by a court preacher, Polycarp Leiser, Luke Osiander
(1583), Samuel Huner (1596), Aretius of Berne (1574), Span-
heim ( 1691 ) , Lenfant ( 1 736) , etc. Lenf ant's Histoire de la Papesse
Jeanne, published at Cologne in i6g4, 2S gives the legend in all
its details.
Before the Reformation we find few Catholics questioning the
fable of Pope Joan. The only ones that spoke in a hesitating man-
ner were James de Maerlant (1300), the anonymous author of a
life of XJrban V., published by Baluze, Aeneas Piccolomini after-
wards Pius II., St. Antoninus of Florence, and Plantina in his
Lives of the Popes. 29 They had so small a following that the
Franciscan Rioche declared that their denials went counter to the
general opinion of Christendom.
One of the first to deny it emphatically was John Thurmayer,
(Aventinus) in his Annales Boiorum (1554). He was not much
of a Catholic, for Bayle calls him " a good Lutheran in disguise,"
and his book was put on the Index of 1564. In 1568, Onofrio
Panvinio devoted three pages of his edition of Platina's Lives of
the Popes to refute the legend, which, de Laval (1611) says, were
sufficient to convince Protestants like Casaubon and de Thou.
Bellarmine made use of the proofs of Panvinio in his De Romano
Pontifice. SQ The most complete refutation of the fable came from
the pen of Florimond de Remond, a member of the French Par-
liament from Bordeaux. His book, The Anti-Christ and the Anti-
Pope, although declamatory and full of digressions, showed clearly
*Centuria IX., 333, 357, 501. "The Hague in 1736. "Vol. i., p. 207.
*De la Service. La Thtologie de Bellarmin, pp. no, in.
THE LEGEND OF POPE JOAN [Sept.,
the inherent contradictions of the legend and its utter improbability.
Baronius inserted a summary of it in his Annals.
Bayle in his Dictionary* 1 tells us that in the seventeenth cen-
tury a number of Protestants began to deny this legend. Among
them were Chamier, Dumoulin, Bochart, and particularly David
Blondel ( + 1655). Two pamphlets by the last-named writer
caused quite a stir among Protestant polemists, some of whom,
like Spanheim and Lenfant, made a most strenuous effort to exploit
the legend in the interests of Protestantism. The famous Leibnitz
wrote against Spanheim, and Bayle in his Dictionary gave the story
its quietus forever in the world of scholars. The eighteenth cen-
tury rationalists took their cue from Bayle, as we may read in
Voltaire. 32 Among scholars to-day the legend is unanimously
rejected.
The one argument conclusive against the fable of Pope Joan
is the chronological argument. All the dates given for her pontif-
icate are not only mutually contradictory, but are assigned to some
other well-known Pope. The most commonly given date in the
legend is 855, between Popes Leo IV. and Benedict III. We know
that Leo IV. died July 17, 855, and that Benedict III. was elected
Pope a few days afterwards. On September 2ist, he was ex-
pelled from Rome by an anti-Pope, but returned soon after, took
possession of his see, and was consecrated in the presence of the
Emperor's legates on September 29th. He was Pope until April,
858, as Garampi has shown in his dissertation, On the Silver Coin
of Benedict III. (Rome, 1749). Pope Nicholas I. was consecrated
on April 24, 858, so that we have only ten weeks unaccounted for
in the interval between Leo IV. and Nicholas I. 33 It is impossible
to locate in this century the so-called two years pontificate of Pope
Joan. The other dates assigned $15, 1087, and noo are like-
wise historically impossible.
"Vol. i., p. 576. ^CEuvres, Geneva, 1777, vol. xxx., p. 5.
"Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, vol. ii., preface, pp. Ixvii.
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN THE PRIMARY GRADES.
BY THOMAS CRUMLEY, C.S.C.
T would be unfortunate, I think, if the mere fact that
" Christian Doctrine " is presented as a subject for
discussion, should create a presumption against the
efficiency of either our teachers or our methods. I
for one see no reason whatever for crying "calam-
ity." Behind our system of catechetical instruction there is a
tradition of splendid achievement. Men and women with the high-
est spiritual ideals, and the finest spiritual training, have been gener-
ally engaged in the work, and it would be strange indeed if their
ability, stimulated by their enthusiasm, were lacking in results.
That these results everywhere and always have not been uniformly
good is easily understood. Inhibitory causes were at work; there
was indifference, or ignorance, or poverty, or persecution, or maybe
scandal. But where such causes have been absent and they have
been fairly absent in this country the teaching of religion has cer-
tainly k^pt pace with the successful teaching of other branches.
Opinion to the contrary probably is founded on a misappre-
hension of (a) the reach and (b) the purpose of catechetical in-
struction in the primary grades.
(a) The reach is often overestimated. There seems to be
a tendency to attribute " leakage " chiefly, if not solely, to defective
teaching in the parochial schools. Thus while acknowledging that
" the fashions of the world, inherited perversity or weakness, faults
of education, the example of others, pleasure, interest, fear, en-
grossing occupations, prejudices, calumnies, scandals," all count for
much in explaining " leakage," Bishop Bellord places a heavy re-
sponsibility on religious instruction of the primary sort. In fact
he entitles his pamphlet on the subject Religious Education and Its
Failures. Another writer deplores the spectacle of " a Catholic
doctor who in legal or medical lore is not equalled by any of his
profession, but who in religious learning has the equipment of a
schoolboy." And a teacher makes the charge specific in these
words : " When children go to work many of them do not practise
their religion; every priest in the country knows this to be true.
The chief reason is because they are not thoroughly instructed."
8oo CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
Now it seems to me that such views arbitrarily lengthen the
reach of grade work. How many of us know our geography at
twenty-five? How many of us could on the spur of the moment go
through the conjugation of a Greek regular verb? Suppose a
child's formal instruction in music with the incentive to practise
that formal instruction implies ceases at the age of twelve, what
sort of musician will you have four or five years later? And can
you reasonably expect maturity of judgment in religious matters
from young men and women who have been missing for years the
immediate direction in class, the encouraging word, the wise counsel
of teachers? If the eminent Catholic lawyer or doctor had paral-
leled his medical or legal work with a similar intensive study of
religion, he would probably have been noted as a theologian. The
effect of early lessons in Christian Doctrine goes far; in its measure
it runs through the lifetime of the individual; but it is a thin thread
rather than a full stream of influence, and there is small hope of a
continuous growth in learning religious truths and of a constant
increase in the practice of them without the incentive to learning and
practice that formal instruction gives. If the working boy had re-
ceived private tutoring in catechism after he left school, he might
have kept the faith.
I say might, for of course there is no assurance that he would.
And here let me point out what I take to be the questionable logic
of those who lay the blame of defections chiefly on the parochial
schools. They call attention to the large number of boys and girls
who gradually they all grant that the process is gradual, which in
itself is a significant concession cease to practise their religion
after they are deprived of the influence of a teacher, and they ask,
" What has your teaching availed for these ?" But the obvious reply
is to point out the vast majority who do remain constant and to ask,
"If our teaching was effective enough to keep this larger number
faithful, why has it not sufficed for the minority? "
The fact is the causes of defection are many and different,
and each case has its particular cause or more probably its numerous
particular causes. To subsume all instances of loss of faith under
one head and then attribute them to one cause, recalls the familiar
fallacy against free-will based on the fact of the uniform recurrence
of a definite number of suicides at a definite place within a definite
time. It is a misuse of statistics.
(b) Another possible source of error in measuring the value
of catechetical instructions, arises from an oyerestimation of its
I9H-] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 80 1
purpose. If its purpose is conceived to be the turning out of
infant apologists, child missionaries, precocious controversialists,
or even youthful defenders of the faith, then our system has fallen
short. If, on the other hand, its purpose is simply and solely the
personal sanctification of the child, then there is not so much room
for adverse criticism.
Now whatever we may reasonably expect from college grad-
uates, we are surely going too far when we ask mere children to give
evidence of a thorough understanding of the principal articles of
faith, and to display a considerable power in refuting objections.
It would be fine of course if Johnny could step out on the best
Turkish rug, and lay some visiting gray-haired agnostic low; but
Johnny will have to grow gray himself perhaps, and make years of
higher study, before he is able to do that. It would be fine if little
Mary, manifesting an easy familiarity with delicate questions of
conduct, could tell that Protestant girl just why it is wrong to wear
certain dresses or go to certain places of amusement, but Mary
doesn't yet know why herself. She can only repeat over and over
again that Sister told her it was wrong. The authority of Sister is
enough for Mary. Sometimes, indeed, she doesn't remember ex-
actly that Sister ever really told her it was wrong; she only believes
such would be Sister's verdict if the question were actually put.
In other words, Mary has acquired in the classroom what may be
called a feeling for righteousness, a taste for doing good which
is quite as distinct as a taste for harmony, and also quite as subtle.
Mary cuts a sorry figure perhaps in the oral examination ; but her
heart has been cultivated, and we should remember, with Paschal,
that " the heart has reasons which reason does not know."
Criticism of our parochial school system has then, it seems
to me, been a little too free and a little too harsh, and if there
is room for a pamphlet entitled Religions Education and Its Fail-
ures, there is also room for a larger work entitled Religious Educa-
tion and Its Successes. The presumption is not against the effi-
ciency of our teachers or their methods, but quite the other way
about. My reason, however, for going into this matter was not so
much to combat a prevalent opinion though after all we certainly
have a right to know where we stand as to get a good light on our
subject, and prepare to view it from the proper point. For the
sake of convenience let us consider the subject under four heads:
(i) "Its Nature;" (2) "The Teacher;" (3) "The Child;" (4)
" Methods."
VOL. XCIX. 51
8o2 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
THE SUBJECT.
The subject labors under a disadvantage on account of its
name. " Christian Doctrine " sounds merely a step removed from
" Christian Theology." It suggests a science whereas it is really
an art. The distinction is important for our discussion. The
pragmatists, it is true, assert that there is no knowledge except for
action, that all learning is ultimately for the sake of adjustment to
environmental conditions; that if when my finger is held too close
to the fire I have a burning sensation, it is because I may withdraw
my hand and preserve my finger whole. But while pragmatism has
great merit as a psycho-biological theory, it is not easily applied
to many branches of learning. It is difficult to show, for example,
the relations of formal logic to conduct, and one should have to go
a long way around to point out the practical value of metaphysics.
Even the laws of political economy can hardly be brought to bear
on the affairs of modern business. There are, however, certain
studies which are pursued chiefly for the sake of satisfying the
perceptive and critical faculties of the mind, and certain others in
which the satisfaction of these faculties is merely incidental to some
form of soul-expression. The former we call sciences the latter
arts. The element of learning is all-important in the one; it is
simply the means to an end and not always the only means in
the other. Science teaches us to know; art teaches us to do.
When his learning is over, the student of science has no prospect
of engaging his knowledge in the world of practise, whereas the
student of art undertakes no learning that does not issue in craft.
The farthest goal of the scientist is the laying together of observa-
tions and generalizing from these; but of the artist it may be par-
ticularly said that " the current of life which runs in at his eyes or
ears is meant to run out again at his hands, or feet or lips." Science
stops with the acquisition of truth ; whereas the acquisition of truth
is merely a point of departure for art. The world of fact what
has been or is constitutes the proper object of science; the world
of practise what ought to be in the realm of the beautiful and
good is the concern of art.
With this distinction in mind, we may assert at once that
Christian Doctrine, as taught in our primary grades, is an art rather
than a science. There is of course a science of religion, but it has
the same limitations as any other science. The dogmatic theologian,
viewing his world of fact sacred history, miracle.s, prophecies,
1914.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 803
mysteries, authorities, traditions seeks in orderly presentation and
careful generalization to meet his craving for a comprehensive
understanding of the things of God ; but he goes no farther than the
complete satisfaction of his critical faculty. Even the moral theo-
logian, although his science well illustrates the pragmatic view of
the function of knowledge, indulges largely in theories, makes room
for differences of opinion, resorts to shifts and compromises and
problematic solution of cases, all the while intent on making up
his mind about the right and wrong of actions ; but when his mind
is made up his interest ceases. In the case of catechism, it seems
hardly necessary to say that what the child learns should have imme-
diate reference to conduct. In other classes he may study to know ;
in this class he should study to do. In other classes he is informed ;
in this class he is formed. In other classes his mind chiefly is exer-
cised; in this class he is schooled in motives, and his will is set to
give quick and proper response to the play of graces and temptations.
It makes almost no practical difference to him whether there is a
river called the Nile; but it makes a tremendous difference in his
relations with God and his fellows whether he has learned to act
justly and honorably.
Moreover, we should remember that it is one thing to possess
knowledge and quite another thing to reproduce it ; and it is enough
if the child possess it. Indeed, it is enough if the child possess not
knowledge, but what I have called a " feeling for righteousness "
what psychologists might describe as a subconscious conviction
about morality, a conviction which has somehow been given in the
past, but the conscious expression of which does not enter into a
present state of deliberation. This taste for doing good is highly
important in the education of every one of us; it is what the
child gets in our parochial schools, and what the Catholic boy or
girl who attends the public school misses in the usual hasty inind-
preparation for First Communion. Now, if the class in Christian
Doctrine may rightly be said to engender tastes it is obviously an art,
and perhaps a better name for it would be the class in Christian
Living.
THE TEACHER.
Taking up next the question of "The Teacher," we may note, to
begin with, that the Church in America is fortunate in having the
work of catechetical instruction almost exclusively in the hands of
Religious. Those men and women profess to lead the life of per-
804 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
fection, and their special ways of imitating Christ have the approval
of the Holy See. Is it any wonder that being securely in a position
to sanctify themselves, they should be able to lay the foundations
of sanctity in others? Their very garb is a suggestion of other-
worldliness, of sacrifice, of charity, of noble efforts to attain some-
thing, the value of which is not measured by ordinary standards.
Those who recently opposed the wearing of the habit in our gov-
ernmental schools, were right in asserting that it makes a deep
religious impression on the mind of children. I hardly think they
exaggerated the potency of its influence.
But Religious are happy also in their traditions. Every com-
munity has its heroes and heroines, men or women of spotless lives
and scholarly attainments, teachers who received their inspiration
not only in libraries and laboratories, but in the very Holy of Holies
at the foot of the Cross. What a work was theirs, what triumphs
they enjoyed! What imaginations they fired; what hopes they
kept alive ; what memories they sweetened ; what minds they illum-
inated ; what characters they formed ; what careers they launched ;
what lives they made beautiful ; what souls they saved ! Idealists
they were; strong, even-tempered earth-beings with a constant,
intelligent outlook on eternity; imitators of Christ, their faces
aglow with His truth, their hands apt to administer His mercy,
their tongues eager to proclaim His glory, their hearts burning with
His love, their souls bathed in the saving waters of His grace.
Records of what they accomplished are a source of encouragement;
sayings of theirs are quoted, methods they employed are adopted,
and so generation after generation has profited by their example.
The common advantages that Religious enjoy by reason of
their training and associations, should be considerable factors in
producing the ideal teacher of Christian Doctrine. Most Religious
have traversed successfully the purgative way, and are far advanced
on the road of perfection. They have learned the art of Christian
living. It has become almost instinctive with them to avoid serious
sin, and the practice of difficult virtues is comparatively easy for
them. They can hardly escape being ordinarily good instructors
in catechism. But it is notorious that artists are not always the
best teachers of their particular art, and so I should say that besides
the common advantages Religious receive from their training and
associations, certain other qualifications are to be sought in the ideal
teacher. Perhaps the most important of these is a realization of the
character of the work in hand. Too frequently the teacher of
1914-] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 805
Christian Doctrine is content if he succeeds in imparting a certain
amount of knowledge. And this would be the end of his labor if
his subject were a science. His subject, however, is an art, and his
aim must be to instruct in such a way that every truth he implants
in the mind shall have its issue in conduct. Moreover, this issue
should be as far as possible immediate. The purpose of catechetical
instruction is the personal sanctification of the child. The teacher
takes the place of Christ for the child, and we know that the direct
result of Christ's teaching was not brilliant thinking but right living.
The whole secret of teaching, as you are aware, consists in
establishing wishes in the heart of the pupil. All culture is self-
culture, and all educational development is from within. The func-
tion of good instruction is not to put something into the child, but
to get something out of the child to elicit proper responses. Hence
the best a teacher can do is to inspire. As someone has said, the
pupil may be led to the founts of learning, but he cannot be made
to drink. The teacher's task is to make the pupil so thirsty that he
will want to drink. If the subject is a science, the pupil must be
given the wish to know; if it is an art, the wish to do. You can-
not, for instance, make a boy learn the multiplication table until you
make him want to learn it, until you set him a motive for learning it
fear of punishment, love for his parents, desire to please, ambi-
tion to excel, or the like. And similarly you cannot get a boy to
learn his Eighth Commandment until you make him want to tell
the truth. Not until he actually scorns to lie, can he be regarded
as having learned that particular catechism lesson.
It is decidedly wrong for a teacher of Christian Doctrine
to say, " Well, I've told him now. I've questioned him, and found
out that he knoivs what he ought to do. It's his own fault if he
doesn't do it." Such an attitude, obviously the outcome of a mis-
conception of the purpose of religious instruction, might deserve
the following criticism : " But your work is less than half done.
You haven't begotten in him the wish to do what the law or the
counsel calls for. Besides confronting his intellect with truth, you
should play upon his emotions, the mainsprings of action. You
should entreat, persuade, cajole, goad him if you like; above all you
should watch for the moment of grace and seize it with gladness."
If good teaching consists in establishing wishes in the heart, the
best teaching consists in establishing wishes in the unwilling heart.
The principle underlying this statement is plainly applied in business,
politics, in social intercourse wherever indeed men seek to control
806 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
or direct the conduct of others. How many a woman has come
home from a shopping expedition with a lot of stuff she had no use
for on going out, and has no use for now, only down at the store
the young saleswoman was so attentive and had such a sweet smile
and seemed so pathetically anxious to sell. How many a library,
with its unread volumes, gives silent testimony to the frequent
visits of the irresistible book agent. How many a poor wretch has
returned from a night of debauch a victim of his friends' solicita-
tions to be a good fellow. Recently we beheld the spectacle of two
distinguished men, leaders of great parties, taking the stump for
votes. One might think it would have been enough if they issued
modest statements of their claims to the highest office in the land,
and let their cause rest with the intelligence of the citizens. But no,
they found it necessary to go before the people directly, and appeal
to their emotions, their prejudices, their personal interests, their
sectional pride, their party spirit. Now the point is that if men have
to be furnished with wishes in everyday affairs of life, the child in
the schoolroom can be successfully handled in no other way. The
child is father to the man; the things he does are the things he
wants to do, and when we make profession of directing his conduct,
we can expect results only on condition of filling his heart with
adequate longings.
It seems hardly necessary, since we speak chiefly to a body
of Religious, to make more than a passing mention of another quali-
fication the instructor of Christian Doctrine should have, namely,
the will to teach his subject. An indifferent teacher of science may
be a possibility, but an indifferent teacher of art is almost a contra-
diction in terms. And what inspiring motives there are to teach
the art of living. It was the work of Christ for which He pro-
vided continuity when He sent the Apostles to convert the world.
May we not think it was the work of the Blessed Virgin herself, the
Help of Christians ? It was certainly the work of all the saints, and
some of the choicest souls who have ever labored in God's vineyard
found it a special means of their own salvation. If the purpose of
religious instruction were merely to impart knowledge, there might
be room for lack of enthusiasm, for I don't myself see how anyone
can wax zealous over the prospect of filling child minds with a
given amount of textbook material. But the teaching of Christian
Doctrine means so much more than that on the side of interest; it
means purging emotions, sterilizing imaginations, setting hearts
right, giving calls to the will, in a word, saving immortal souls.
1914.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 807
THE CHILD.
Our third topic, " The Child," would deserve no special con-
sideration except for one thing, that is, the right of the child to be
treated as an individual. Teaching by classes has certain advan-
tages over private tutoring, and they are so great that even if private
tutoring were universally possible, educators would hardly advocate
its general use in preference to the system which now prevails.
Emulation, the example of studious habits in others, the effect of
discipline commonly observed, the lights thrown on difficulties by
questions freely asked and sympathetically answered, are factors too
valuable to be dispensed with altogether. At the same time it must
be borne in mind that the advantages of class teaching are in inverse
ratio to the pragmatic character of the study ; when the subject is a
science they loom large, when it is an art they are comparatively
insignificant. In painting, for example, the word " class " signifies
usually a group of separate w r orkers who are using the same model.
The master's criticism, which is the teaching, is given to each indi-
vidual apart. The same is true of music and sculpture, dancing and
gymnastics, of all studies in which the pupils are learning to do.
In the class of Christian Doctrine, therefore, each child has a right
to individual treatment. The task of saving souls or what is
the same thing teaching the art of moral living, is a delicate busi-
ness, and cannot be accomplished by wholesale methods and rules
of thumb.
Read the New Testament, and see how Christ, your model,
achieved results. He taught classes, it is true; He preached to
multitudes because multitudes have common faults, common ignor-
ance, common needs, and so are capable of receiving common wishes
for proper responses. But can you imagine that He failed to take
time and occasion to come into personal contact with those of His
followers whose situation was special ? You have in all the Gospels
abundant testimony to the contrary. Indeed it is surprising to note
the number of instances in which Christ's attention was given to the
individual case. He gathered His Apostles one by one. and it is
reasonable to think that these first vocations were very difficult to
receive. Each of 'the twelve had engrossing private interests, and
none of them had yet been blessed with the fullness of faith. In
order that Christ should succeed in having them intensely want to
follow Him, He doubtless was obliged to deal with them separately,
to strike the level of each understanding, to picture peculiar ad van-
808 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
tages to each imagination, to stir the sentiments of each heart. It
is recorded in St. Luke (chapter x.) that "The Lord appointed
other seventy-two ; and He sent them two and two before His face
in every city and place whither He Himself was to come." What
follows is a lesson in pedagogy, in which, however, our Lord gives
simply general instructions. The studious omission of particulars
indicates that the disciples were not only paired off with reference
to their character, and the people they were to visit, but were also
taken apart and taught privately. It was a difficult mission
" Behold I send you as lambs among wolves " and the timid had to
be encouraged; the impulsive cautioned; the apathetic aroused;
the over-confident warned; the hot-tempered made gentle; the
uncouth made cultured; the unwise made prudent, and self-right-
eous made humble, the unattractive made magnetic. And all this
required time and patience, but our Lord took the trouble.
He seems to have exercised direct supervision over even the
rank and file of His followers. He rejected some the mercenary
scribe and the man out of whom the devils were departed ; He had
difficulty in calling others the man who begged for time to bury
his father, and the man who wished first to take leave of them that
were at his house ; and He seemed to fail altogether with a few the
man whom He looked on and loved, and who nevertheless " went
away sorrowful, for he had great possessions."
Christ wanted the single soul, and when class teaching did
not produce the proper responses, He condescended to employ other
methods. What would have become of St. Peter if Christ had not
uttered a prophecy about the denial? What would have become of
St. Thomas if Christ had not shown him the sacred wounds?
What would haye become of the public sinner if Christ at a critical
moment had not spoken in her defence ? What would have become
of the Samaritan woman if Christ had not revealed Himself as
the Messiah?
Even the miracles of Christ were often performed not so much
to prove His Divinity, as to meet a need of the individual. And
as what the individual needs most is faith for unless one has a
vivid realization of things unseen, one's wishes will hardly reach
out into the spiritual world so Christ in nearly all His private
wonder-workings added the lesson of faith to whatever other lesson
He may have intended to teach. Thus although He loved Lazarus
with an extraordinary love,He exacted from Martha a formal con-
fession of faith before He brought forth her brother from the tomb.
1914-] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 809
It was the faith of Jairus that won him back his daughter; it was
the faith of the woman who touched His garment that banished her
infirmity; it was faith as well as humility that procured favor for
the centurion ; it was faith as well as obedience that restored vision
to the man who was called to wash in the pool of Silo; it was
faith as well as perseverance that brought happiness to the blind man
who persisted in crying " Son of David, have mercy on me." In
these and many other cases faith chiefly was the lesson taught, but
the important fact for us just now is that it was taught to the
individual.
Now as men and women with special disabilities were treated
by Christ apart, so children with special disabilities should be treated
by teachers apart. The teacher takes the place of Christ for the
child. The child has a soul to be saved, and comes to the catechism
class to be trained in doing good. If it is fortunate enough to have
acquired proper habits, its wishes are of the right kind, and need
only to be intensified. If, however, it has acquired bad habits,
the teacher's problem becomes more difficult, and an entire new set
of wishes must be established. When this can be done in common,
there will of course be a saving of time and effort on all hands;
and it can be done in common, provided the class has pretty much the
same moral antecedents, the same home influence, the same associa-
tions on the street and in the playground.
But the trouble lies just here. Classes in subjects that par-
take of the nature of sciences, can be graded with comparative
success. The ordinary examination tests answer the purpose.
Proficiency in the arts, however, is not so easily measured, and we
often find that pupils in the primary catechism are very unequal in
their knowledge of religious practice. Even if the majority are
conceded to have arrived at about the same stage of progress, there
remain those who have the natural limitations that make them de-
ficient in other studies, those who have indifferent parents or care-
less brothers and sisters, those who are thrown a good deal with
bad companions. To the teacher belongs the task of furnishing all
the pupils with appropriate desires, and to this end the study of
individual needs is imperative. Let us put a case. A boy has
grown up in an atmosphere of violence; his mother was a fury,
his father was a brute, and his companions were bred in cruelty.
Curses and blows and privations for punishment were his every-
day lot; physical forces beat against him continually. With stim-
uli coming from such an environment, the boy's career obviously
8io CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
depended on the character of the wishes from which his actions
would flow. If fright had been established in him, his heart would
have been filled with the desire to flee from suffering, and he would
have developed into a coward. But on several occasions it hap-
pened that he was successful in meeting force with force, brutality
with brutality; and as the idea grew in him that safety and satis-
faction for himself could be attained through cruelty to others,
the wish to inflict pain became dominant and fixed. He developed
into a bully. He comes into the Christian Doctrine class sullen,
defiant, suspicious, ever alert to deal a telling blow. It would be
fatal to his education to use force with him, because though that
might conquer him for the moment, it would only confirm his deep-
rooted conviction that success is best obtained by the infliction of
punishment to-day is yours, to-morrow will again be his. The
problem, of course, is to eliminate this conviction, and its sequence
of desires by making the boy feel his helplessness in certain situa-
tions. Once he realizes that physical force is powerless to effect
a great many things, he will undergo a change of heart, and be-
come amenable to rational discipline. The task, however, is not
so easy. Kindness is often a good remedy, but will not cover
his case. Kindness is lost on him. He is distrustful of soft
answers, for in his experience they never turned away, but always
provoked wrath. Pleadings he scorns as a raising of the white flag,
and the bestowal of favors is intelligible to him merely as a subtle
kind of strategy in war. Perhaps the best course to pursue is a
negative one not fussing over him in any way, but always shap-
ing circumstances so that his efforts to gain things by brute strength
prove invariably futile. The boy must be saved somehow, and
because his case is unusual the teacher should take extraordinary
trouble. Who shall say indeed that the teacher can take too much
trouble ?
METHODS.
The question of "Methods" the fourth of our division prob-
ably deserves a more extensive treatment than we can give it here.
Keeping in mind, however, what there was to say about " The Sub-
ject," "The Teacher," and " The Child," we may briefly touch upon
a few points to some advantage. Let us not, to begin with, lose
sight of the nature of the subject. Christian Doctrine is an art,
and its problem is to get the child to pursue a course of righteous
conduct faithfully. Hence a teacher who emphasizes the intel-
1914.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 811
lectual phase of catechetical instruction makes a serious mistake.
The accumulation of a certain amount of book-learning is the ob-
ject of scientific study in the primary grades, but no religious
truth is known until it is practised. The other day I had occasion
to ask a boy whether he knew how to say the Rosary. He answered
yes. I asked him further whether he had ever actually said it,
and he answered .no. I then explained to him that although he
might be able to tell me the proper sequence of prayers and mys-
teries, he did not yet know how to say the Rosary, and would only
begin to know how after he had many times said it with all the
fervor of his heart. " Do you know your Catechism? " is a mis-
leading question, and the reply it elicits might frequently be dif-
ferent if the wording were: " Do you practise your Catechism? "
To follow Christ is " to hear the word of God and keep it," with the
stress on " keep." Ruskin knew more about painting than ten
Turners, but he was no painter. Similarly the ordinary examina-
tion tests in Christian Doctrine, are to my mind of almost no value
as indicating a child's assimilation of religious truths.
But it may be objected, " Surely the child should be able to
give reasons for the faith that is in him, and explain why he acts
one way rather than another." If I did not fear to be misunder-
stood, I 'should like to deny both parts of that proposition. The
chief thing for the child is to have the faith; to be able to defend
it is an accomplishment perhaps but not an essential. In like
manner it is all-important whether a child acts according to the laws
and counsels, and but slightly important whether he can talk about
the wherefore of them. The fact is faith comes by doing rather than
by knowing, and Catholic traditions are handed down more effec-
tively by Catholic practices than by treatises on Catholic theology.
The case of catechism in the primary grades is similar to the case of
grammar. It is not always the child whose recitation is perfect
that uses the most correct language; it is the child whose ear has
heard no slovenly speech, and whose tongue has, therefore, been
prevented from uttering false inflections. So, too, the child that
knows his religion is sometimes an examination failure, only he has
been blessed with a good mother, whose tender solicitations made
him always want him to say his prayers ; with a good father, whose
nobility of character filled him with desire to be just and honest and
self-respecting; with good companions, whose example evoked in
him wishes to rival their fine behavior.
The wise teacher, then, far from emphasizing the intellectual
812 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES [Sept.,
phase of catechetical instruction, will make it his chief business
in the classroom and out of it, if necessary to get the child to
practise religious truths as a means of learning them. He will
establish in the child a desire to frequent the sacraments, realizing
that the clearest understanding of these great means of salvation
comes to those who actually experience the workings of grace in
the soul. He will not be content with quoting " Blessed are peace-
makers," but will arrange for some particularly belligerent child to
feel the truth of the saying by exercising the office of mediator.
He will teach the virtue of almsgiving by making it possible for a
selfish child to feel the happiness that comes through sacrifice. In
a word, he will complement his theoretical work by the introduction
of laboratory methods.
With regard to the merits of teaching for the understanding as
compared with teaching for the memory in primary catechism, a
general statement by G. Stanley Hall has helped me to make up my
own mind. He writes i 1 " Just as about the only duty of the
young child is implicit obedience, so the chief mental training from
about eight to twelve is arbitrary memorization, drill, habitation,
with only a limited appeal to the understanding." The contention
that truths should not be offered the child mind until it is prepared
to grasp their meaning needs considerable modification, especially
where there is question of religious truths. Even to adults religious
truths are offered for belief as well understanding. Blind faith
receives its reward, and has its functional value too. " I believe,
Lord; help my unbelief," procured grace for him who uttered the
prayer in addition to the cure of his son. The Scriptures con-
tain many " hard sayings," which nevertheless must be accepted as
they are written down. There is a " deposit of faith " which the
Church jealously guards through formulas that have received the
sanction of councils and doctors. Words themselves acquire special
connotation from their traditional use in certain connections. All
important definitions deserve accurate verbal memorizing, whether
the intellect comprehends them or not. If there is hope that under-
standing of them may come later, the form in which they are best
expressed is already in the mind.
Besides, words and phrases have a value by themselves. They
help in the process of understanding, and they function also in the
process of retention. If the color of an object is sometimes useful
in defining it and holding it in memory, the name of an object will
1 Adolescence, chap, ii., p. 451.
I9I4-] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN PRIMARY GRADES 813
often do as much. " That pale yellow thing " might in conceivable
circumstances be an illuminating expression, but not more illuminat-
ing than a name might be in other circumstances. Understanding is
for the most part slow work; it is always slow work for the be-
ginner; and as the mind gropes and halts, and falls behind and
struggles on in its brief approximations to the truth, it is highly
desirable that the right word should be present to lend the assistance
of its rich associations. Moreover, words perform a valuable serv-
ice in the reinstating of meanings. Our grasp of things is often
momentary; we have a flash of insight, and the next instant the
truth is gone; or our grasp of things may only partially be lost.
In either case we have all experienced how the right word will catch
the meaning " on the go " and bring us back our truth. " Arbitrary
memorization " is a big factor in the child's religious training, but
of course it may be overdone. There should be at least a " limited
appeal to the understanding," and any teaching that is confined to
mere drill, to the mere putting of questions and receiving of answers
out of a textbook, is too contemptible for criticism.
In conclusion I may say that my general pedagogical creed
with reference to Christian Doctrine in the primary grades is this :
I believe in all the good old methods, and in about two-thirds of the
new; hut I believe with my whole strength in the teacher who
realizes that the salvation of souls is in his hands, the teacher who
will not stop at the presentation of truths to the mind, but will seek
to reach the heart of the child; the teacher who will always want
to take the trouble that he thinks Christ would take, and who prays
to know what Christ's wishes are; the teacher who is so adaptable
to the needs of individual cases that he may be said to have no set
method, and yet can assert confidently with St. Paul : " I am all
things to all men."
FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY.
BY RICHARDSON L. WRIGHT.
RIBBON of land, in some regions fifty miles wide,
in others fifty yards, threads its way from the Pa-
cific, above the shoulder of the Hermit Kingdom, and
across the backbone of Manchuria. On the fringe
of the Gobi Desert, between the Mongol and Russian
vis-a-vis, Maimatchin and Kiakhta, it narrows to a brook bed.
Widening, it twists thence in and out the passes of the Altai, and,
by a circuitous southern course over sun-parched steppe and forested
mountain face, finally reaches the Caspian, Russia's Asiatic border.
You will see a varied lot of frontiers if you travel extensively :
the wire fence of the Italio-Swiss with its little electric alarm bells ;
the sleepy tree-arched roads between Holland and Belgium; the
granite posts fringing the United States and Canada; but rarely
will you find a border that voices so forcibly the methods and ideals
of a nation as does that neutral strip marking the edge of Muscovite
lordship. Studded along it, like buttons on a lambrequin, stand
little stockaded forts, each with its equipment of men and arms.
From them, by day and by night, tramp stern-visaged men to patrol
the intervening stretches, much as do the life guards of our coast.
By day and by night their eyes are fixed on the southern horizon
Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan and Indiaward. Mounted and afoot,
armed for action and alarm, they form a veritable picket fence of
bayonets from the Pacific to the Caspian.
These soldiers who patrol the farther fringe of the Tsar's
kingdom, constitute only the skirmishing line for a greater army.
Behind the soldiers stand the priests. Until you have seen this
second army, you cannot comprehend the first. Until you are con-
vinced that Russia has assimilated and is assimilating more and more
territory that she may bring " His saving faith," as she understands
it, to all nations, you will not fully grasp the raison d'etre of Rus-
sian arms. ' The world policy of Russia is a gradual growth. It
is the Christian ideal. The expulsion of the Turk, the conversion
of the Asiatic heathen, world-wide dominion of Russian orthodoxy,
are nothing more than the realization of Christ's kingdom on
earth." 1 Incredulous students of international politics may claim
l Wirt Gerrare in Greater Russia.
1914-] FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY 815
that the Slavophils, Alexander III. and Dostoievski and their kind
are all dead, their dream an illusion forever shattered by the Rus-
sian defeat in Manchuria. The reigning Tsar, however, adheres to
the ideals his father set up, as many of his administrative acts prove,
and as is indicated by this continent-cleaving Siberian border to-day.
Beneath the surface of the main channel of Russian endeavor is
rolling, silently, with irresistible impelling force, the Slavophil spirit.
It is to-day the dream of the wise men at St. Petersburg, it is the
dream of the obscure village priest, that through the Orthodox faith
the world will be converted to Christ. And these doubters of the
Filioqne have set before themselves, as a means to attaining that
end, the absorption of territory in Asia, until the borders of the
Russian Empire shall be contiguous to those of a Christian-civiliz-
ing power, British India.
Let us turn to recent history. In the go's when Manchuria
became a complement of Eastern Siberia by the building of a rail-
road, an army was flung across it ostensibly to guard the line from
the depredations of native brigands. But scarcely had these soldiers
become settled in their bastioned forts (you can see them to-day),
than the fiat was declared that missionaries of faiths other than the
Orthodox would be excluded from Manchuria. And into Man-
churia poured the Russian priests. Last year, at the request of the
natives, it seems, Russia established a suzerain over Mongolia. To-
morrow her troops will move southward, and with them the priests.
But a few months back the Minister of the Interior sanctioned the
Holy Synod's ban on the Baptists as " a sect especially harmful to
the State." The Novoe Vremya explained the action of the govern-
ment as due to recent refusals of Baptists to take the military oath.
It is clear, then, that Russia is determined not to step aside from the
path to her purposed goal, so forcibly symbolized by her troop-
lined, priest-guarded Asiatic border, of dispelling national and
racial divergencies through the erection above them of the Cross
of Orthodoxy.
Now what the Russian frontier priests are doing on Chris-
tianity's outer rim, is only a small portion of the work they are
carrying forward in the scattered villages throughout the length
and breadth of Siberia. For it must be remembered that, despite
its mighty railroad, its cities with their schools and shops and giddy
cabaret night life, its steamer lines from the Altai to the Arctic,
from Baikal to the Urals, Siberia is still a pioneer country; and that
the village is typical of Siberian life to-day. Hence the obscure
8i6 FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY [Sept.,
priest in the out-of-way hamlet, and not the city pastor with his
perfectly appointed church and well-defined parish, is typical of the
labor and ideals of the Orthodox Church in Asia.
It has been my privilege to meet many of these humble "popes"
in the scattered settlements all the way from the Urals to the Usurri
Hills. Among them was one of whom I have ever since enter-
tained happy recollections the priest at Ookteechenskaia-on-Shilka
in Trans-Baikalia. His real name I never knew. This is not to
be wondered at, for at his ordination each priest receives a new
name from the bishop, much as a Sister adopts her name in religion.
But I did not even set down his priestly name ; when first I saw him
he reminded me so strikingly of the Emperor Palaeologus in Goz-
zoli's Procession of the Magi, that I knew him ever after in my
journal as Father Palseologus.
When I set forth on my Siberian wanderings, I filled one of
two suitcases with toys crocodiles that actually would wriggle;
phosphor stars and crosses that shone in the dark ; electric torches and
scarf pins fashioned like death heads that glowed with light from
the battery concealed in one's pocket. These toys proved effective
in amusing the children. One afternoon I rode into Ooteechenskaia
and put up at the post house. That night before I unrolled my
blankets, I gave each of the keeper's children an electric torch. The
next evening there foregathered in my room half the village. We
had much fun. Boys and girls were highly delighted. The older
folks, too, were mightily interested. They sat on benches ranged
around the room, audibly wondering what manner of man this was
who had descended on their village with a perambulating toy shop.
The pocket torches were a mystery, and so thick and fast came the
questions that I saw I would have to give a talk on electricity. I
was explaining, with abundant gesticulation, why one did not have
to apply a lighted match to an electric torch, when a face appeared
in the doorway and smiled at the group of children and old folks.
It was a young man's face. Firm features showing through a
scraggly incipient beard made him seem militant. As he stepped
across the threshold, I saw his blue cassock and silver pectoral cross,
and I knew him to be the village " pope." With his kindly assist-
ance I was able finally to explain the mysteries of the electric torch ;
then, overcome by his own curiosity, he " shooed " his spiritual
brood from the room and set to asking me questions. But why, in
the name of common sanity, had I brought toys?
" Because I wanted to understand your people," I replied, wav-
1914-] FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY 817
ing him to a chair. " Tell me what a man laughs at, and I'll tell
you what he is."
" I should express it differently," he parried, his eyes a-sparkle.
" I should say, tell me what a man believes and I'll tell you what
he is."
'The retort was unexpected. I had found the general run of
Siberian priests rather dull fellows, with little knowledge apart from
the simple statements of the faith and the liturgy. Few, indeed,
possessed the gift of repartee. Father Palaeologus, on the other
hand, was a young man, and the enthusiasm of youth had not yet
dimmed. Perhaps that was why he spoke so optimistically of his
work and ideals. Like the average priest, he was the son of a
"pope," and his wife the daughter of a "pope," the bishop having ar-
ranged the match and solemnized the marriage, which is compulsory
in the case of secular priests, and must be accomplished in the period
between his leaving the seminary and his taking Orders.
" I am of the white clergy," 2 he explained with charming sim-
plicity, " or I would not be married, and living here in this village
with my wife and little girl. Were I of the black clergy, I would
be in a monastery, St. Innocent's at Irkutsk. But God did not call
me to the religious life. I am happy though. We must do what
He wantb us to do, that is the only way to be happy."
" It is not that I take holy things lightly," I remarked, after
a pause, " but being a journalist I am inclined to view many spiritual
matters from the point of the world. I have found that happiness
is often enhanced by material things lands and money and what
they can do."
" Well there's little enough money here," Father Palaeologus
laughed, " everyone is poor. The schoolmaster, he gets less than
one hundred roubles a year. If I lived in a prosperous town with
some generous khoutariani (well-to-do- folk) among my parishion-
ers, I might have as much as eight hundred roubles and a big church.
But not here in Ooteechenskaia. I have a house and a plot of land
twenty dessiatines out of the thirty-three in the glebe. I have help
whenever I need it to plow the fields and bring in the crops. My
bees make a little honey, enough for a taste on holy days, and "
He hesitated, seeing that I had caught sight of his frayed el-
bows. " And my parishioners," he concluded quite unconcerned,
" attend to the repair of the church. A committee of the men visit
around and collect the tithes. As everyone is poor, we get tithes
2 The white clergy, as they are commonly called, are the seculars; the black, the
religious.
VOL. XCIX. 52
8i8 FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY [Sept.,
in kind wheat and flesh, chicken, sometimes bread. But too much
bread is bad, it grows stale before we can eat it! "
The mention of bread set me to rummaging among my things
for a box of sweet cakes I had bought of a Chinese provisioner at
Stretensk.
" If it's not too late," I suggested, " let us have some tea."
Scarcely were the words out of my lips than Father Palaeologus
bellowed in a voice that fairly shook the rafters, " Samovar ! "
From the next room came a hurried " Ceychas ! " and with an
alacrity I had never before encountered in Siberia, the keeper's wife
brought in the steaming urn. Now whether or not the worthy Mrs.
Palaeologus had given her husband a substantial supper that night I
could not say; at all events he barely uttered a word until he had
tossed down two glasses of tea and devoured innumerable cakes.
Then he brushed the crumbs off his beard on to his cassock, and
from the cassock to the floor, and finally settled in the chair as if per-
fectly contented with the world. As I watched him sitting there,
so hungrily devouring my sweet cakes and tea, I could not but be at-
tracted by the human side of this lonely fellow. How restricted
and circumscribed his life must be! His wife and child must be
well dressed and his home maintained in order, and, despite his
assurance of the divine blessings, I knew each meal, each stitch of
his clothes, each timber over his head, meant a struggle with poverty.
Cards, drink, dancing, recreations dear to the Russian heart, are
forbidden him. His congregation cared nothing for theology, and
little for the dream of the Church to convert the world. After the
fashion of congregations the world over, they demand much of
their priest, but give him little on which to do it. They see that he
has cloth of gold vestments to wear in church, but few care if his
everyday cassock is out at the elbows. They are willing to obey his
directions to come to church and make their children come, but
the average village priest in Siberia is quite apart from his people
and alone. Many of them consequently become either disinterested
or ascetic ; not a few have recourse to unspeakable immoralities. Was
Father Palaeologus like the others I knew, I wondered, dull and re-
signed, an insignificant cog in the immense machinery of a spiritual
empire ? Or was he aware of what an integral part he was playing
with all the others who had dedicated themselves to the service of
Christ in the Orthodox Church in Asia?
" About how many of the clergy would you say there are in
Siberia, Father? " I asked.
1914.] FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY 819
" Let's see." He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the
rafters. "There are, in round numbers, about twenty-four thousand
clergy in Siberia, besides eight thousand church layworkers, such
as choristers, sextons, and the like."
" That means one priest to every three hundred and fifty souls,"
I replied.
" Would that it were three hundred and fifty," he said with a
wag of his head. " It might, possibly, were all the eight million
people of Siberia Orthodox, but, alas, they are not. Only about
eighty-five per cent of them are members of the Church."
"Does the Latin rite have many members?" I interposed.
" I only ask because when I went to Mass at the little church behind
the cathedral in Irkutsk, the congregation not only filled the build-
ing, but flowed down the steps and along the pavement."
" Yes, the Roman congregation in Irkutsk is large," he agreed.
" You see, the Poles are Roman Catholics, and many of the soldiers
stationed in Siberia are from Poland. There are some seventy-five
thousand Roman Catholics registered in the last census if I re-
member rightly. I'm told that their priest gets part of his salary
from the government."
"And speaking of salaries," he continued, "the Lutheran pastor
in Irkutsk is said to get a small share from the imperial treasury.
Do you recall his church? It stands on the Bolshkaia, opposite the
new Russo-Asiatic bank. He has quite a congregation mostly
Danes and Russians from the Baltic provinces.
" Then there are the Rasknoliki, the dissenters. And Jews ! "
Father Palaeologus threw up his hands in disgust. "Siberia is full
of them! Faugh! Sixty or seventy thousand. They've two
synagogues in Irkutsk .... So you can see that altogether the average
congregation is far from three hundred and fifty."
" But you have not mentioned the native tribes," I said,
" they number some million and a quarter. What of them? "
Father Palaeologus nodded his head sadly. " Yes, a million
and a quarter. That is a very low figure, though the natives are
gradually dying off, or being assimilated much as are your American
Indians Well, they are mostly heathen. In the West, there
are the Mohammedans who constitute two per cent of the popula-
tion. Have you ever seen one of their mosques ? "
I said I had, recalling how once I had looked over the house-
tops of Tcheliabinsk, the first city of size east of the Urals, and had
seen at one end of the town the muezzin's minaret topped by a
820 FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY [Sept.,
gilded crescent, and, at the other, the church with its gilded cross
Saracen and Crusader face to face !
" Here in the East are the Kalmucks, the Booriats, and the
other tribes," Father Palaeologus continued, " many of whom are
professing Buddhists. The story of their religion is rather interest-
ing. These fellows are Mongols, and their primitive religion was
Shamanism. While they recognize a supreme God, they offer no
prayers to Him, but worship a number of inferior divinities, es-
pecially the evil spirits, whose power for harm has to be deprecated
by means of sacrifices. So, to propitiate these powers of heaven
and of earth, they have recourse to Shamans, the medicine men or
wizards, who are accredited with possessing a mysterious influence
over the elements. Nominally, many of the Mongols are Buddhists,
as I said before, paying tribute to the Grand Lama at Urga. Some
few of them, however, are Christians. But when they are re-
moved from the influence of the Buddhist priests, they revert to Sha-
manism ; this is especially true of the Booriats around Lake Baikal."
" But doesn't the Church make an endeavor to convert these
natives ? "
" I was just coming to that," he said with a smile. " You must
know first of all that the aim of the government is to assimilate
these natives, until racial differences shall have disappeared. We
are encouraging the immigrants who come out here to intermarry
with the natives. And they are doing so on all sides. What's the
result ? An Orthodox girl marries a native, and she brings her
husband and her children into the Church. A young fellow marries
a native girl, and he sees to it that she comes and her children. Of
course, we cannot be sure of definite results until the second or
third generation, but intermarriage will finally bring them all into
the fold."
" There is an objection to that," I remarked. " These native
conversions may be only matters of expediency, and not the result
of conviction. Do not these natives relapse into their old faiths
when they get away from the influence of the Church. And, on
the other hand, are not the missionaries of Islam who slip into
Siberia from Kazan wreaking destruction on your well-laid plans
for conversion by marriage in Western Siberia ? You can't forbid
them because of the Edict of Toleration."
" No, we can't forbid them, that's right," Father Palseologus
acknowledged, " and I'm afraid there is much in what you say,
but"
I9I4-] FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY 821
" But could you honestly make the statement that the Church
is gaining ground in Siberia? " I countered.
" Certainly ! " he replied with a start. " We must because
we hold the true faith. We must because the Church has a
chirokaya natoura an expansive nature. It must grow ! "
" However, the Roman Catholics and the Buddhists and the
Mohammedans and the dissenters all say they hold the true faith."
" Bah ! " Father Palaeologus' fist came down on the table, mak-
ing the chai stuccons rattle in their saucers. " We will make these
natives believe or else, how can they hope to be saved? "
" But wouldn't you find it more effective to win them? "
The good Father was silent for some moments, his eyes star-
ing out of the window into the night.
" You do not seem to understand," he said slowly, emphasizing
every word with a decisive gesture. " The Orthodox faith is the
true faith. You can take it or leave it but so long as the army
and the police are around, were it not wiser to take it? "
The next day at noon I left Ooteechenskaia to ride back over
the Shilka Mountains, so that except for saying farewell, I' did not
see Father Palaeologus again. For all I know he is still in that
little village ; still cultivating his twenty-two dessiatines; still won-
dering whence the next meal is coming for his wife and child ; still
ministering to his peasant flock.
I have recounted our conversation at length, because Father
Palaeologus' replies were typical of those one receives from any of
the pioneer priests in Siberia. They are possessed of a peculiar
confidence which, when faced by cold logic and indisputable facts,
seeks refuge in pretty generalities. They seem absolutely assured
that the native tribes will eventually become Orthodox, and that by
intermarriage and assimilation their conversion will be permanent.
With equal assurance do they believe that the presence of troops on
the nation's outer rim will suffice to convince the heathen.
Under the social conditions that exist to-day in Russia, and
under the methods that the Orthodox Church is at present pursuing,
one feels that the attainment of the ideal of universal conversion
is, of course, wild phantasmagoria. For he is blind, indeed, who
would think the various elements making up the Russian Empire to
be united in a common love for the Tsar or even in common pa-
triotism. They are held together by force of arms. But even that
binding force is ineffectual at times. Within the army to-day, just as
within the Church, discontent, breaking often into open revolt, is turn-
822 FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY [Sept.,
ing aside much of the interest and endeavor which should be applied
to the furthering of its aims. Riots at Krondstat and squabbles on
Mt. Athos do not make for that solidarity which a spiritual con-
quest by a nation demands. While the Church claims to add to its
roll two thousand converts yearly, principally from the Armenians
and dissenters, their most optimistic figure for the Orthodox in the
entire empire is sixty-nine per cent. Others give it as sixty-two per
cent, recalling the fact that twelve out of Russia's one hundred
millions are Mohammedans.
When one would seek for the result of Russia's policy of arms
as it affects conversion, he must turn to those lands which the
Russian army has lately evacuated, and he will find that Russia's
policy is a failure. These frontiersmen of Orthodoxy are failing in
their trust, and by short-sightedness and childish fear are defeating
their own ends, denying their own avowed destiny. In Manchuria
are two striking examples and be it remembered that Manchuria
was the territory which Russia reserved for its own proselytizing.
At Port Arthur, shortly after Russia leased that section, there
were laid the foundations for a mighty church. Men and machines
dragged iron-stone monoliths and set them up on the hillside.
Eighty thousand roubles ($40,000) were sunk in the foundations
alone. A fortress of the faith as inaccessible as was Tiger's Tail
on the heights above was to be this church. Slowly from the forest
of scaffolding reared the walls. Then came war and the defeat
of Kuropatkin at the Yalu. Down the peninsula streamed the
Japanese army. Behind Tiger's Tail cowered the Russian fleet
while Togo lay without. The siege guns began to thunder, and into
that quiet corner of Asiatic coastline came the awful thunder of war.
For eleven months Japanese shells battered against the foundation
of the new church, showers of bullets snipped the scaffolding, huge
projectiles pierced the walls and buried themselves in the pavement
where the altar was to stand. On January 2, 1905, Stoessel handed
his sword to Nogi ; ten days later the twenty-six thousand Russian
soldiers, stripped of arms, marched out from the fortress. In their
midst walked the soldiers of Russia's second army, these carrying
the accoutrement of their warfare the sacred vessels, the ikons,
the books of the liturgy. To-day all that remains of what was to
have been the church are some crumbling ruins. The little slant-
eyed Japanese guide who points them out, says with pride, " No
use now, there is only one Russian left in Port Arthur."
To the eastward, thirty miles over the hills, lies Dairen.
1914-] FRONTIERSMEN OF ORTHODOXY 823
" Dalny " the Russians called it, and they had great plans for making
the little Chinese port a mighty commercial capital in the Far East.
Broad streets were laid out, and a civic centre planned, rows of
substantial houses ran up, the harbor was dredged, and wharves
constructed. As a crowning glory, a big cathedral was erected on
an eminence in the heart of the town. Then came the war. With
scarcely the interchange of a shot, Dalny fell into the hands of the
Japanese. The dawn of 1905 brought Russia's dream for the town
to a bitter awakening. The Japanese poured in and took up the
life of the city. To-day Dairen is booming with trolley cars and a
newspaper in English, with office buildings and an electric park,
fashioned after the manner of Coney Island, that looks out over the
sapphire waters of the bay. On all sides buildings are springing up.
Each boat from Japan brings a fresh consignment of settlers. Few
Russians remain a handful of merchants, a score of clerks, and
the consul who lives in the ugly white house to the north of the town.
Central in this bustle and growth stands the Russian cathedral.
What were once its close-clipped lawns are now waist-high meadows
of rank weeds. Far overhead the stay cables of the dome cross,
rusted and snapped, swing languidly in the gentle breeze that blows
in from the Pacific. Attempt to enter the grounds, and you find
the gates chained. Huge padlocks are on each door Across
the street stands the Yamato Hotel, one of those smart, up-to-date
Japanese hostelries. In its parlor each Sunday morning an Anglican
pastor gathers about him the resident Britons, and prays that
laborers be sent forth into the harvest.
Less than two hundred miles north of Dairen runs the ribbon
of land which so strikingly defines the southern fringe of Russian
lordship in Manchuria. There stand her soldiers. There stand
her priests. Though the Treaty of Portsmouth made no such de-
mands, Russia withdrew her spiritual forces just as soon as her
soldiers were defeated. In a word, Russia's spiritual conquests
abroad depend on her victories in the field of battle.
The first glimpse of the frontiersmen of Orthodoxy makes
one think of them as militants, just as Father Palseologus looked
militant to me when he thrust his head into the " postantia " door
that night I gave away the pocket torches. But having known them
for a time, having partaken of their simple fare and witnessed their
blind faith, one is more apt to think of them as mere children. Be-
cause they are guarded by a huge army, they believe they are des-
tined to win.
IFlew Books*
THE REAL MEXICO. By Hamilton Fyfe, Special Correspond-
ent of the London Times. New York : McBride, Nast & Co.
$1.25 net.
Mr. Fyfe has written a most valuable and interesting study of
Mexican life and politics at the present day. He has traveled
through the rebel lines, and interviewed General Carranza and many
of the rebel leaders; he has visited a number of the chief towns
from Monterey to Mexico City; he has journeyed over the coun-
try in trains and mule coaches, dined at the clubs, and conversed
with the common people.
He brings out clearly the discrepancy between the democratic
professions of the Northern rebels and their practical policy of
robbery, murder and absolute intolerance. He ascribes the revolu-
tion to an existence of vast landed properties, the growth of an
ambitious middle class, the general discontent sown by revolution-
ary socialists, and' the chance for plunder and loot afforded the
peons, most of whom were hitherto working for only twenty-five
cents a day.
He speaks of Huerta as a bluff old soldier with a kindly heart,
but utterly lacking in dignity and tact. He rightly absolves him
from the charges of drunkenness and of murder. He severely
calls to task the President of the United States for assuming, without
the slightest evidence, that Huerta was responsible for the assassina-
tion of Madero. He shows clearly that Madero's murder served
only as a pretext for the revolution, for Carranza was on the
verge of making war with Madero at the very time of the murder.
Mr. Fyfe pictures Madero as a " fanatical idealist, lacking
capacity for either business or politics. He was a spendthrift of
glowing words; he was neurotic, a faddist, incapable of thinking
clearly, a vegetarian and a spiritualist; he held seances with his
wife as medium, to obtain guidance from the mighty dead." Dur-
ing his conflict with Felix Diaz in the streets of Mexico City, he
became insane, and shot down with his own hand two of his of-
ficers who had advised him to resign.
In a chapter called " The Nemesis of Paternalism," Mr. Fyfe
admits the strong, despotic and successful rule of Porfirio Diaz,
but he says rightly " that the Diaz regime kept the people in political
1914.] NEW BOOKS 825
swaddling clothes." He styles Diaz a great policeman, but in no
sense a statesman, because the edifice that he built was shattered
in a few short years.
Mr. Fyfe deplores the policy of President Wilson in backing
bloodthirsty, thieving, and murderous rebels, while he refused to
recognize Huerta, who had not been proved guilty of any crime.
The British recognized Huerta on the policy, often acted upon in
India, of supporting the strongest man in sight.
There is very little anti-Catholic prejudice in the book, although
we find him saying for the benefit of the British public, " that
the religion of the Indians is little different from the idolatry which
their ancestors practised." Again, in his chapter " The Church and
the Catholic Party," he states that a fair and honest election
would undoubtedly result in the selection of a Catholic president.
His Protestant bias makes him add : " Would Mr. Wilson and the
people of the United States feel any satisfaction in knowing that
they had substituted a 'clerical for a military despotism? Of the
two the former is usually the worst."
CATHOLIC DEMOCRACY: INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL-
ISM. By Henry C. Day, SJ. With a Preface by Cardinal
Bourne. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.80 net.
" Experience has shown," says Cardinal Bourne in his preface,
"how difficult it is to obtain from either Socialists or non-Social-
ists anything approaching a clear definition of what they really
mean. And it is most unfair to appeal to the teaching of the
Catholic Church in support or condemnation of theories on which
she has not pronounced directly or indirectly." In this excellent
treatise, Father Day, although in no sense original, brings to-
gether in a small compass the exact teachings of the Church on the
social question. He contrasts throughout his volume the essential
democracy of the Catholic Church with the anti-democracy of
extreme liberalism on the one hand, and of Socialism on the other.
In a comprehensive historical survey, he clearly proves that Chris-
tian democracy as set forth in the teachings of Leo XIII. and Pius
X., is by no means a modern growth. In its essential features
of liberty, equality and fraternity, it is as old as the Christian
Church, into which Her Divine Founder originally breathed a
spirit of compassion for the poor. Of course the idea connoted
by the term " Christian democracy " has expanded with the accel-
erated strides of political and economic progress, and with the
826 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
general awakening in recent times of men's consciences to the needs
and claims of the poor.
Father Day shows conclusively that the Catholic Church has
always been earnest and successful in her efforts on behalf of the
people, and on the whole has solved the social problems of every
age more adequately than any of her rivals. He defines Indi-
vidualism in social science as " the disposition to prefer the private
rights and free activities of individual members of society to the
social claims and collective enterprise of society as a whole." So
understood, Individualism is opposed to Collectivism; it prefers
the whole to the part, and authority to freedom. He proves that
both conceptions have this character in common both are unreal
in themselves and consequently are unattainable. Extreme Indi-
vidualism is anarchy, while extreme Collectivism is Socialism.
Against both the Church makes a strong protest.
" The Catholic Church is neither individualistic nor anti-indi-
vidualistic. She lays down no inflexible law. She forges no un-
necessary fetters for the individual or for society either in pol-
itics or in economics. She is content to shape her attitude to the
varying systems which pass before her, not by any rigid, unalter-
able rules, but by considerations arising out of the actual needs
of individuals and the welfare of society." In a chapter entitled
" Some Fundamental Fallacies of Socialism," Father Day refutes
the extreme Socialists' claim for equality, Marx's theory of sur-
plus value, the false principle of labor being the sole or chief
source of wealth, the " right to work " formula of Louis Blanc,
and the materialistic conception of history. He sums up the case
against modern Socialism in two indictments the one economic
and the other religious or moral. His two theses are thus ex-
pressed: The scheme proposed by Socialism for the regulation
of commerce and industry is not only impracticable, but it is also
economically unsound. 2. The ethical principles of Socialism mil-
itate against the fundamental ideas of religion and justice, while
its aim and method likewise conflict with Christianity.
In a chapter on 'The Church's Attitude to the Social Question,"
the author brings out clearly that the mission of the Catholic
Church is preeminently spiritual and non-political. She exists
for the purpose of teaching a religion of the soul, and bringing the
salvation of God through Christ to men. She neither defines the
forms nor directs the actions of temporal governments. No body
of politicians can claim to have a monopoly of her approval or
I9I4-] NEW BOOKS 827
patronage. She cannot identify herself with Socialism with its
materialistic aims and methods, nor advocate the destruction of
individual freedom and the abolition of private property. On the
other hand, she cannot approve of extreme Individualism, for she
must uphold the wider claims of social justice and charity which
it ignores. While claiming the right to speak to society in regard
to the general moral bearing of political and economic questions,
she holds utterly aloof in matters of right and justice on which
her members are divided, viz., the exact fixing of the limits of State
intervention, the arrangements of just wages between employer
and employee, the determination of the relative value of different
kinds of labor, etc.
Father Day concludes by stating that "if the present scheme
of democracy is to prove a lasting success, it must cease to be
irreligious, and conform to the spirit and methods of Christ. By
so doing it will not lose its independence, but, on the contrary,
will increase its freedom."
SOCIALISM, PROMISE OR MENACE? By Morris Hillquit and
John A. Ryan, D.D. New York : The Macmillan Co. $1.25 net.
The chapters which constitute this book originally appeared
as a debate in several consecutive issues of Everybody's Magazine.
The object of this joint discussion was to present to the reading
public both sides of the much mooted social problem, and to draw
their attention to the promise or menace of the movement, which is
yearly growing in influence and extension.
The discussion was conducted fairly and without bitterness,
both sides agreeing on all substantial points no easy task con-
cerning the meaning and doctrine of Socialism. Socialism was
considered in all its important phases, not merely as a scheme of
politico-economic reconstruction, but as a living movement, and
as a system of fundamental principles.
Mr. Hillquit concedes in substance that Socialism as a living
movement and system of thought, is fundamentally and neces-
sarily incompatible with any definite religious creed. The immor-
ality of Socialism lies in the fact that it makes the moral law
merely a social convention, places the most debasing individual
conduct beyond the reach of moral condemnation, adjusts marital
relations on the basis of selfish and temporary passion, and makes
the State the supreme arbiter of right and wrong, justice and
injustice.
828 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
THE CHURCH IN ROME IN 'THE FIRST CENTURY. By
George Edmundson, M.A. New York: Longmans, Green
& Co. $2.50 net.
While the student of early Church history will find nothing
new in this volume, he will certainly, appreciate the careful pre-
sentation of such abundant material and the evident fairness of the
writer. The first lecture treats of the Jewish Colony in Rome, and
St. Paul's letter to them from Corinth. The author maintains the
genuineness of Rom. xvi. 1-23 against the hypercritics, and declares
that St. Paul clearly refers to St. Peter as the founder of the Roman
Church. Lecture II. is valuable for its firm defence of the Petrine
tradition. Mr. Edmundson says : " That Peter visited Rome be-
tween the years 62 A. D. and 65 A. D., and that he was put to death
there by crucifixion, is admitted by everyone who studies the evi-
dence in a fair and reasonable spirit. This is not a tradition, it may
rather be described as a fact vouched for by contemporary or nearly
contemporary evidence." In Lecture III. he refutes the theory of
Baur and Lipsius that Simon Magus had no real existence, and was
really St. Paul in disguise. He also maintains St. Peter's seven
years episcopate at Antioch. Lecture IV. deals with St. Paul's
first visit to Rome after he had made his appeal to Caesar, and the
letters he wrote during the First Captivity. Lectures V. and VI.
treat of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul during the perse-
cution of Nero. Lecture VII. discusses the organization of the
Church in Rome, and Lecture IX. the attitude of the Flavian Em-
perors to the Christians.
The poorest chapter in the book is the seventh, which might
be corrected by a careful reading of Father Moran's Government of
the Church in the First Century. We also question many of Mr.
Edmundson's statements, such as the visit of Barnabas to Rome, his
authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ascribing of the
Apocalypse and the Epistle of Clement to the year 70, the random
conjecture that St. Clement was a brother of M. Arrecinus Clemens
the consul, etc.
LOURDES. By Johannes Jorgensen. Translated from the Dan-
ish by Ingeborg Lund. With a Preface by Hilaire Belloc.
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 90 cents net.
Mr. Belloc in his preface advises "those who have no devotion
or faith, but whose minds are none the less free, and who have the
means and the leisure, to go to Lourdes and see what they shall
1914.] NEW BOOKS 829
see." If they lack the means or the leisure or both, we advise
these undevout unbelievers to read this interesting account of
Lourdes by the well-known, Danish litterateur, Johannes Jorgensen.
The first part of the book, taken in the main from the Abbe Es-
trade's account of Bernadette Soubirous and the apparitions of
Lourdes, is not so interesting as the rest of the volume, which
relates the author's own experiences. He describes in glowing
words the Feast of Corpus Christi at Lourdes, with its impressive
procession aux flambleaux; explains the difference between the
Brancardiers and the Hospitallers; tells us of the scientific
accuracy of Dr. Boissarie and his Bureau des C onstatations ; gives
in detail the cures of Augusta de Muynck, Marie Bailly, Aurelie
Huprelle, Joachine Dehant, Leonie Leveque, and others; refutes
the false theories of modern rationalists in regard to the miracles at
Lourdes, and sets forth clearly the utter dishonesty of Zola's book.
His theology is not always the best, although his meaning
is always evident. He says, for instance : " Christian doctrines
about the Trinity, about the Virgin Birth of Jesus, His Resurrec-
tion, His Ascension, are rejected by many because they are un-
thinkable. This is true, they are unthinkable " Many a
modern philosopher has fallen into this same mistake. It is in-
correct to call a thing unthinkable, simply because it cannot be pic-
tured by the imagination. Again he seems to have imbibed some
of the pessimism of that erratic genius Huysmans, for he asserts
that "Catholic art has become a thing of the past; that everyone
who has talent is enrolling himself among the enemies of Christ;
that the powers of darkness are now supreme in the world; that
Father Benson's Lord of the World confirmed him in his gloomy
views," etc.
The book is beautifully printed and illustrated, and remarkably
cheap.
JESUS CHRIST, HIS LIFE, HIS PASSION, HIS TRIUMPH.
By Very Rev. Augustine Berthe, C.SS.R. From the French
by Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.R. St. Louis: B. Herder.
$1.75 net.
Pere Berthe first became known to English readers through
his Life of Garcia Moreno, the martyred President of Ecuador,
in which he depicted a heroic soldier of Christ.
Now he presents us with a Life of Jesus Christ. Surely it is
not chance, but rather a providence of God, that the nation which
830 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
produced Renan, with his rationalistic Vie de Jesus, should also
have given us the serene faith of Fouard, the glowing ardor of
Didon, and the devout simplicity of Berthe three chivalrous,
loyal knights of Christ springing to the defence of their beloved
Master, Whose Divine claim was assailed by their unworthy coun-
tryman.
This Life of Christ was written for the instruction and edifica-
tion of the devout faithful; to be the daily reading of the family
circle. " Then," exclaimed the devout author, " France would
soon again become the most Christian nation, and the cherished
daughter of the Church."
We have no lack of books on this sacred subject, but each
gives a different view of our Divine Saviour. The book under
consideration lays special emphasis on Christ as the Teacher of
Truth; the unceasing struggle between truth and error; the blind
hatred of Jesus the Eternal Truth, which possessed His enemies
a hatred which pursued Him to Calvary and the tomb.
With no discussion, and but few notes, the narrative moves on
in a calm simplicity that captivates the reader. The translation on
the whole reads smoothly, though there are lapses into French
idioms, an odd choice of words, and faulty constructions. Occa-
sionally, the language lacks the dignity required for a sacred sub-
ject. The translator, as well as the writer, is evidently French.
Had he used either the Douay or some recognized translation of
Scripture, many passages would have been avoided which, although
literally correct, are, to say the least, quite unfamiliar as Scripture.
LOUIS PASTEUR. By Albert Keitn and Louis Lumet Trans-
lated from the French by Frederick Taber Cooper. New
York : Frederick A. Stokes Co. 75 cents.
Louis Pasteur well deserves a place in the Great Men Series,
now being published by the Frederick A. Stokes Co. As Lister said
in his speech at the Pasteur Jubilee in 1892 :
There is no one living in the entire world to whom surgical
science owes so much as to you. Your researches in regard
to fermentations have shed a powerful light that has illumined
the fatal darkness of surgery, and changed the treatment of
wounds from a matter of empiricism, uncertain, and too often
disastrous, to a scientific art of assured beneficence
Medicine is indebted, no less than surgery, to your profound
and philosophic studies. You have lifted the veil which for
1914.] NEW BOOKS 831
centuries had overhung infectious diseases. You have dis-
covered and demonstrated their microbic nature. Thanks to
your initiative, and in many cases to your special and personal
labors, there are already a number of these pernicious disorders
which to-day we completely understand.
Huxley said that Pasteur's discoveries concerning the preven-
tion of grape diseases and the improved manufacture of wine, beer,
and vinegar were worth the five billion ransom of France. His
vaccine for special diseases of cattle alone saved France thirty
million francs a year. His cure of hydrophobia has merited the
gratitude of thousands of patients.
This greatest scientist of his age, remained always the
devout Breton peasant, absolutely loyal to the faith of his fathers.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON CIVILIZATION. By
Ernst Von Dobschiitz, Professor of the New Testament in the
University of Halle- Wittenberg. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $1.25 net.
If this book were to be presented as a doctorate thesis in a
Catholic university, it would be rejected as the work of a careless,
inaccurate student, even had its orthodoxy been unimpeachable.
It is full of what Josh Billings used to call " the things that ain't
so." He holds the oft-refuted theory that the early Christian views
on marriage, divorce, and slavery were influenced to a large extent
by the Stoa ; he calls St. Jerome " an actor who knew how to pose ;"
he asserts that the mediaeval Popes quoted the Bible only " for the
sake of appearances;" he has the mediaeval Church improve the
Psalter by slight interpolations ; he speaks of the obligatory follow-
ing of the Commandments and the free following of the counsels
of Christ, as "a double morality;" he attributes a nonconformist
tendency to the Franciscan movement, shrewdly " turned into an
instrument of ecclesiastical policy;" he makes mysticism creedless,
and scholasticism guilty of an adulteration of Christianity.
He speaks of Queen Mary of England as Bloody Mary, and
ascribes to Galileo the eighteenth century fable of the E pur si
muove; he caluminates the Jesuits for criticizing the genuineness
and historical value of the Bible, etc.
His main thesis repeated verbatim at least three times is
that the Bible is not a textbook of theology and controversies, nor
an authoritative proof of doctrine, but a book for Christian devo-
tion. He tells us that " there are as many doctrines in the Bible
832 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
itself as men who wrote the several books of the Bible or even
more." " St. Paul," for example, " has not one doctrine of the
Atonement, but half a dozen theories about it." As in his view-
point the writers do not agree in doctrine, "the (Protestant) Church
has to formulate a doctrine that keeps to the main line of religious
development, and permits a modern adaptation of the several modes
in which religious experience is expressed." What does the author
mean? He himself declares "that this seems vague, but it is the
path which Christianity is bound to follow, and it promises success."
We were going to find fault with the translator for his very
poor rendering of the German text, but we found on consulting the
preface that the author himself is responsible. There are a num-
ber of misprints, v. g., " Crumwell " for Cromwell, " Gaiseric "
for Genseric, etc.
But at least the author denies the old-time Protestant myth
of Luther's rediscovery of the Bible at the monastery in Erfurt.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN IRELAND. By Philip Wilson.
Baltimore: Norman, Remington & Co. $3.25 net.
Mr. Wilson proposes to write a history of the conquest
of Ireland during the reigns of Henry VIII. and his three suc-
cessors. For he believes that this period forms " a complete and
self-contained chapter of Irish history." The present work ex-
tends only to the accession of Elizabeth, but a second volume is
in preparation which continues the narrative to the close of the
Tudor period.
The writer quotes continually from original authorities such
as the State Papers published by the Record Commission (1832-
1851); the Carew manuscripts, calendared by Brewer and Bullen
(1867-1873) ; the Calendar of Patent Rolls edited by James Mor-
rin (1861-1862); the Calendar of Fiants, etc. He frequently
cites Spencer's View of the State of Ireland; Sir John Davie's
Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland was Never Subdued;
Moryson's Itinerary; Stanihurst's Chronicle; Stafford's Pacata
Hibernia; Ware's Annals of Ireland; and among later writers ac-
knowledges his indebtedness to Froude's History of England,
Richey's Short History of the Irish People, and Bagwell's Ireland
Under the Tudors,
Such an array of authorities prepares us at the outset for a
scholarly treatment of this period of Irish history, but our author
is too full of anti-Catholic prejudice to write objective history.
1914.] NEW BOOKS
CONFERENCE MATTER FOR RELIGIOUS. Compiled by Rev.
F. Girardey, C.SS.R. With an Introduction by Very Rev.
T. P. Brown, C.SS.R. St. Louis: B. Herder. $2.50 net.
These conferences are compiled chiefly from two sources,
Sentences, Lemons, Avis du Pere Champagnat, and L'fccole de
Perfection Religieuse of Rev. H. Clement, C.SS.R. About a
dozen conferences have been written by the compiler. Religious
will find these two volumes full of useful and practical matter for
spiritual reading, and priests called upon to give retreats will also
find them suggestive and helpful. The educational conferences
which Father Brown commends so highly, may be suited to the
French boy, who possibly needs more supervision in certain matters
than his more robust and pure American or English brother.
PENTATEUCHAL STUDIES. By Harold M. Wiener, M.A.
Oberlin, Ohio : Bibliotheca Sacra Co. $2.00.
This volume comprises some two dozen articles, written for
The Bibliotheca Sacra by Mr. Wiener, one of the ablest opponents
of the documentary theory. In The Irish Theological Quarterly
last October Father Pope made use of some of the evidence gathered
by Mr. Wiener, who has made a special study of the relations be-
tween the Massoretic Text and the Septuagint. The book is a
sequel to the author's Essays in Pentateuchal Criticism, which has
been already reviewed a few years ago in THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Although we do not commit ourselves to all the views of this inter-
esting critic, the book certainly deserves serious study.
NOTES ON POLITICS AND HISTORY. A University Address.
By Viscount Morley. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00.
This volume is the amplification of an address delivered last
year by Lord Morley before the University of Manchester, of which
he is Chancellor. It is brimful of questionable statements, which,
of course, he was not called upon to prove in a brief oratorical out-
burst.
We fail to see how self-government was saved by three small
communities, Holland, Switzerland, and Scotland ; we find in Rous-
seau rather the father of modern anarchistic theories than the pre-
cursor of modern conceptions of social justice; we do not accept
M. Aulard's estimate of Taine, since the critics of late have set forth
his own untrustworthiness; we do not believe the achievement of
Italian unity to be the greatest fact in European history since the
VOL. xcix. 53
834 NEW BOOKS [Sept,
Peace of Westphalia; we do not hesitate to decide whether or not
Socialism can be the assured key to progress; we were unaware
of De Maistre's " poor opinion of mankind, and his hatred of
all individual claim;" nor do we think the motives of Bismarck's
Kulturkampf obscure. It would take a volume as long as
Mr. Morley's address to discuss adequately the many theses set
forth in this interesting but superficial essay.
THE FLYING INN. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. New York:
John Lane Co. $1.30 net.
Chesterton is at his best in this tale of wild and rollicking
humor. All his pet theories and all his well-known hatreds figure
on every page. Dalroy and Pump travel about England, evading
in the most impossible and improbable way the lately-passed law
abolishing the tavern. Incidentally Chesterton denounces the stu-
pidity of teetotalers; the impossibility of pacificism; the insincer-
ity of modern journalism; the contradictions of the higher criti-
cism ; the folly of vegetarianism ; the stupid craze for Eastern phil-
osophy; the buncombe of Parliaments, and the insanity of the
futurists.
ONE YEAR OF PIERROT. By the Mother of Pierrot. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.35 net.
An idyll of a mother's love for her first-born! If it be true
that all the world loves a lover, it seems likewise true that all the
world loves a mother, enraptured by the possession of her first-born.
At least this was the experience of the mother of Pierrot. All of
her little world loved her in, and for, her Pierrot. Truly she was
a selfless being, who realizing solely the halo cast about her by the
dignity of her motherhood, seems to have lost her own identity in
that of her baby monarch.
The authoress, in her charming impersonation of the mother
of Pierrot, has been so successful as to make art appear nature.
The naive simplicity with which she assumes her role, recounts
her experiences, lives and breathes in an atmosphere of true-
hearted, refined, yet peasant life, is the perfection of art. The
devoted friends of her Pierrot are worthy of her; the best in them
is evolved by the innocent child, and the unconscious beauty of
the mother-love. There are a few touches which might be dis-
pensed with, but nowhere has romance tempted to unreality, or
the natural been sacrificed to artificiality.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 835
BEYOND THE ROAD TO ROME. Compiled and Edited by
Georgina Pell Curtis. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.75 net.
Many a Protestant friend has said to a new convert to the
Catholic Church: "I will grant that you are contented now in the
first fervor of your conversion. But wait until the glamor disap-
pears; your heart will then long to return to the Church of your
parents." An Anglican said once to the reviewer that he felt sure
that Cardinal Newman longed to return to the Church of England,
once he understood the real ethos of Rome, only his pride prevented
him. He still thinks this, despite the earnest words wherewith
the Cardinal repudiated this calumny.
Miss Curtis has gathered together a number of testimonies
of converts, all speaking eloquently of the peace and satisfaction
that awaits every convert " Beyond the Road to Rome."
Such a book is invaluable to the seeker after the truth, for he
sees clearly how the Church appeals to men and women who have
fought the great fight for principle which he himself is now waging.
THE SHADOW OF PETER. By Herbert E. Hall, M.A. New
York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 70 cents.
The name of the author is familiar to Catholics, as one, who,
having wandered in the desert of doubt and uncertainty, has hap-
pily reached the " City set on a hill."
In The Shadow of Peter, we have an admirably logical
summary of the chief difficulties met by the majority of converts :
and what charms us most is the delicate charity shown by the
author, who has painfully threaded his way through these same
paths. Here the seeker of truth, in this convincing little volume,
has left the clue, and we feel assured that many a pilgrim will bless
his labors and his name, which is the reward he looks for in this
publication.
THE LIFE OF THE SERVANT OF GOD, GEMMA GALGANI.
By Father Germanus of St. Stanislaus, C.P. Translated by
Rev. A. M. O'Sullivan, O.S.P. St. Louis : B. Herder. $1.80
net.
GEMMA GALGANI: A CHILD OF THE PASSION. By Philip
Coghlan, C.P. London: R. and T. Washbourne.
The Abbot Gasquet in his introduction to Father Germanus'
Life of Gemma Galgani says: " I do not know of the life of any
saint in any age of the Church which has brought home the super-
836 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
natural to my mind more plainly and fully than this life of Gemma
Galgani." She was the daughter of a fairly well-to-do chemist in the
village of Camigliano, jiear Lucca, in Tuscany. Although her whole
life was spent in the world, she was from her earliest years at-
tracted in an extraordinary way to things of a spiritual nature, and
was soon raised to the greatest heights of contemplative prayer. A
few years before her death in 1903 she bore the marks of the Stig-
mata in her hands, feet and side. Witnesses testify also to her
suffering on many occasions a sweat of blood similar to our Sav-
iour's, and to her bearing on her flesh the most extraordinary marks
of our Lord's sufferings, such as those of the terrible scourging at
the pillar. Father Germanus, her confessor and first biographer, is
well known as the promoter of the beatification of the Venerable
Gabriel of the Addolorata.
Father Coghlan, the Passionist, has written an excellent
abridgment of the original work of Father Germanus.
PRIESTLY PRACTICE. Familiar Essays on Clerical Topics. By
Arthur Barry O'Neill. Notre Dame, Ind. : University Press.
$1.00.
Father O'Neill's words of advice to young priests ap-
peared first in a series of articles in The Ecclesiastical Review.
In a kindly common-sense way he tells how to preach efficiently,
how to act as book censor, how to read with profit, how to say the
Breviary and Mass devoutly, how to avoid ennui, and profit by leis-
ure time, how to take care of their health, etc. We notice that
he agrees with Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco in declaring:
" Happy the priest with several harmless hobbies, and woe to the
cleric who is too listless or too lazy to enjoy the riding of even one.
Hobbies often serve as virtue's safeguards, and they are sovereign
remedies against sloth."
THE OLD TESTAMENT PHRASE BOOK. By Louise Emery
Tucker. $1.00 net.
READINGS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. Arranged and
Edited by Louise Emery Tucker. New York: Sturgis &
Walton. $1.25 net.
The first of these volumes brings together in a convenient
form the more striking of the shorter passages of the Old Testament
and the more illuminating of its similes, metaphors and descriptive
phrases, and classifies them for the most effective use in class-room
1914.] NEW BOOKS 837
work in English. The second volume arranges in order some of the
longer selections, such as nature descriptions, pictures of pastoral
and court life, character studies, word pictures of war, festal hymns,
and devotional passages. Both of these volumes are well calculated
to develop in the student an appreciation of the literary beauties
of the Sacred Scriptures.
POEMS. By Sister M. Blanche of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.00.
Sister M. Blanche has just published a volume of verses,
most of which appeared originally in the pages of The Ave
Maria. These poems are full of thought and devotion, delicately
and beautifully expressed.
IN THE HEART OF THE MEADOW, AND OTHER POEMS.
By Tnomas O'Hagan. Toronto: William Briggs. $1.00.
Judge Longley of Halifax in his foreword says that " Cana-
dian poetry has been well sustained during the past twenty-five
years by a Roberts, a Carman, a Campbell, a Scott, a Service, and
a Drummond ;" but he seems to have little idea of either the super-
iority or the greater number proportionally of American poets of
that same period. What about the merits of Father Tabb, Maur-
ice Francis Egan, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Eugene Field, Paul
Lawrence Dunbar, Edmund Clarence Stedman, James Whitcomb
Riley, Louise Imogen Guiney, Emily Dickinson, and Emily
Hickey, to mention only a few ? We are willing to grant that Mr.
O'Hagan's poems are easily understood, but they are lacking in
beauty of form, individuality and depth of feeling.
THROUGH AN ANGLICAN SISTERHOOD TO ROME. By A.
H. Bennett. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.35 net.
Miss Bennett writes a kindly appreciation of her experiences
in an Anglican Sisterhood, and clearly brings out the sincerity
of these amateur aspirants after perfection. Her soul was natur-
ally Catholic, for we find her praying frequently before our Lady's
Altar in the Catholic Church long before her conversion. She was
honest to the core, and found it hard to realize how certain of her
friends could call the Catholic Church the Italian Mission, while
at the same time appropriating all the Church's devotions, and tak-
ing her services as a model. The Brighton Crisis with its conver-
sions helped her to realize the utter lack of authority in the Anglican
838 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
Church, and though she hesitated for a time, owing to her love for
its services and a dislike for certain details in the Catholic Church,
she at last realized that Rome alone possessed the divine authority
established on earth by Jesus Christ.
She tells us that the rule of her Anglican community was
harder than the average modern woman could keep, without a
good deal of physical strain; that most of the clergy and laity
thought the religious life evidently a mistake; that the divergent
views of the clergy on convents developed in her mind a lack of
confidence in the clergy in general; that before profession the com-
munity lawyer was called in to persuade the novices to make their
wills; that she was in the community but never "of it;" that for
a long time she was afraid to question the position of the Anglican
Church for fear of losing the faith she already possessed; that
vicars might disobey their bishops and yet be considered loyal
Church officials, etc. A final chapter gives an interesting account
of the Anglican Benedictine Nuns of Mailing Abbey, who came over
to Rome soon after the Bishop of Oxford sent his ultimatum to the
Monks of Caldey.
THE FOUR GATES. By Rev. E. F. Garesche, SJ. New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.00.
Most of the poems of the present volume have already ap-
peared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, The Sacred Heart Review,
America, The Ave Maria,, The American Ecclesiastical Review,
and The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Their study reveals
Father Garesche's chief interests, the love of nature, the love of
the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, and the love of God. While lack-
ing the lyrical genius of Father Tabb, his suggestive and imagina-
tive lines show talent of no mean order.
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE CATECHISM. By
Dr. M. Gatterer, SJ., and Dr. F. Krus, SJ. Translated
from the Second German edition by Rev. J. B. Culemans.
New York: Fr. Pustet & Co. $1.75 net.
This volume, written primarily for seminarians, covers in
detail the whole field of catechetical work. After an introductory
chapter on its importance, the authors give an excellent historical
outline of catechetics from the days of the primitive Church.
Part II. on catechetical instruction treats of the purpose, his-
tory and quality of the Catechism; the teaching of Bible and
1914.] NEW BOOKS 839
Church history; the study of the liturgy; the singing of hymns;
the true method of teaching, presentation and explanation, etc.
Part III. discusses catechetical education or training of the
heart. Part IV. on special catechetics deals with the Catechism
lesson in itself; the children's prayers, and the special instructions
on the Sacraments of Penance, Holy Eucharist and Confirmation.
This is by far the best book we have in English on the fundamental
principles of the art and science of catechization.
THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT. By Lawrence J.
Henderson. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.50 net.
The substance of this book was part of a college course,
delivered last year by Professor Henderson to his students of
biological chemistry in Harvard College. He states his thesis
as follows : " Fitness of environment is quite as essential a com-
ponent as the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolu-
tion; and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment
is the fittest possible abode of life."
The professor is perfectly reliable when he sets forth the facts
of chemistry, but he seems to realize himself the failure of his
ventures into what he calls " the foreign field of metaphysics." Like
many ol his confreres, he arrives at the negation of vitalism and
says, " we are obliged to conclude that all metaphysical teleology is
to be banished from the whole domain of natural science."
STUDIES IN STAGECRAFT. By Clayton Hamilton. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net
The author's Theory of the Theatre deals chiefly with principles
inherited by the drama of to-day from the drama of the past; in
the present volume, the author pays especial attention to" present-
day drama, showing what it may bequeath to the drama of the
future. In his opening chapter, Mr. Hamilton , admits the inferior-
ity of the modern playwright, for he says:
Formerly plays were written in verse or polished prose;
nowadays they must be written for the most part in casual,
drifting colloquialisms. People do not actually talk in verse;
neither do they talk in formal prose, and it has therefore be-
come the leading literary merit of our latter-day drama to
present its dialogue divested of all literary turns of phrase..
. . . .The modern playwright must rely more upon his visual
imagination than upon his literary skill, and must be able to
conceive his narrative as a drift of moving pictures.
840 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
This does not speak very highly of either our " perfect craftsman-
ship," or of our twentieth century culture.
Mr. Hamilton brings out clearly the predominance to-day of the
stage-director, who practically dictates to both actor and playwright.
He points out honestly the defects of modern stage-direction, viz.,
it insists too much on details; it imposes an unnecessary expense
upon the business manager; and is inartistic, because unimaginative.
Mr. David Belasco is its best exponent in America, and though a
painstaking worker, his effects are rather photographic than artistic
in the best sense.
The author takes issue with that veteran dramatic critic, Mr.
Winter, who has so severely castigated the present-day drama in his
book, Other Days. We certainly cannot agree with Mr. Ham-
ilton in his plea for Brieux's Les Avaries. Such plays are not pro-
ductive of good. Like many a modern, he seems to think that the
mere presentation of vice in all its enormity upon the stage is suf-
ficient to teach its heinousness, and that morality is inculcated by
showing the consequences of debauchery. He asserts finally that
we have in America to-day no dramatic critics of the first rank,
and that our newspapers and magazines do not even aim at fulfilling
the role of true and honest appreciation.
THE CRANBERRY CLAIMANTS. By Rosa Mulholland. New
York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 50 cents.
This is not a cranberry patch seeking an owner, but an estate
in Sussex; the claimants are a little girl from America with an
irascible aunt; a young nephew with a redoubtable uncle; and
lastly a gentleman who is popularly supposed to have been eaten
up by bears. The two first named divide the sympathies and alle-
giance of the villagers, while their respective guardians keep the
countryside in an uproar, until the climax is reached, which climax
our boys and girls will do well to find out for themselves.
AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND. $1.50.
THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Co. 50 cents net.
Here are two of George MacDonald's delightful stories, simpli-
fied for the little folks by Elizabeth Lewis, and illustrated in color by
Maria L. Kirk.
The hero, a little boy named Diamond, has learned from his
IQI4-] NEW BOOKS 841
friend, the North Wind, some wonderful secrets, one of which was
that "enduring bad things is often just a way for bringing good
things about;" and that, "when things look bad, they are often
working out all right." Diamond himself, Manny, Jim, and Baby
are all worth knowing, and may perhaps share some more of their
secrets with other little boys and girls who sail with the North
Wind above the stars.
Curdie, the son of Peter the Miner, becomes the protege of
the Lady of the Silver Moon, who sends him to the palace of
Gwynty storm to save the King from the plotting of his enemies.
After a series of wonderful adventures, he manages with the help
of Lina, the magic dog, and his forty-nine strange animals to put
to flight the rascally attendants of the King and the whole army
of the King of Borsa-Grass. Of course in the end he marries the
Princess Irene, and on the death of her father becomes king him-
self.
Every child of eight or nine will read this exciting fairy story
with the greatest delight.
POLLY DAY'S ISLAND. By Isabel J. Roberts. New York:
Benziger Brothers. 85 cents.
One feels inclined to envy the boys and girls for whom this
story is reserved. Given a shipyard for home, real hydroplanes, and
boats of every description for toys, land and water for element,
stirring events are a certainty. The shipyard fair, too, is a revela-
tion of what little people can devise and little hands accomplish
when guided by hearty good will. Over it all there is the atmos-
phere of a thoroughly Catholic home, and the watchful care of
parents whose one thought is for the children whom God has en-
trusted to them.
THE QUEST OF ADVENTURE. By Mary E. Mannix. New
York: Benziger Brothers. 50 cents.
Two little boys set out on this quest, and they do not need to
go far in their search. Friends old and young are made, and kept;
rivers crossed, trees felled, and a host of discoveries and expe-
riences lived through. The name of the author is a guarantee of a
good story, and young folks will not be disappointed in their
expectations.
842 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
STANDARD BEARERS OF THE FAITH. A Series of Lives of
the Saints for Children. London: James Brodie & Co. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents each.
The Life of St. Ignatius Loyola. By F. A. Forbes. No
better choice could have been made for a beginning to lead off
this new series of Lives of the Saints for Children than St. Ignatius.
A standard-bearer of the Faith, indeed, was the Soldier Saint,
and we think it a title that would have well pleased him. The hearts
of children will be won by the story of his heroic life. The author
knows well how to tell a story, and how to appeal to children.
Especially would we commend the simple, lucid account of the
Spiritual Exercises. The illustrations are good and well chosen.
The Life of St. Columba, Apostle of Scotland, by F. A. Forbes.
The standard bearer of Christ to the Western Isles, the great St.
Columba, has been chosen for the second study in this series. For-
tunate, indeed, are the youthful readers who thus begin their ac-
quaintance and friendship with their elder brothers and sisters
among the heroes of God. The grand courage of Columba in ac-
cepting the lifelong penance of his impulsive and passionate act,
will win admirers and lovers amid all who can recognize a hero
and what boy or girl cannot?
St. Catherine of Siena, by F. A. Forbes. St. Catherine is the
third in the series, and her work of standard bearing was carried
out in a restless and warring age. The story of the little maid,
whose mother was wont to lend her to the sad at heart, that her
smile might comfort their woes, challenges interest with the apos-
tolic careers of an Ignatius or a Columba. Catherine in the midst
of her little family of disciples, simple, devoted, zealous, and
sympathetic even with the most degraded, instinctively leads others
to that love of Holy Church which burned so strongly in her
own heart: and not the least merit of this little volume is that
the author shows plainly the loyalty and tact of the Saint in her
delicate tasks. Always and everywhere Catherine, like Teresa,
is the devoted daughter of Holy Mother Church.
If Catholic parents and educators do not hasten to place this
series in the hands of their children, they are certainly losing an
excellent opportunity of implanting virtue in youthful minds.
Every effort has been made to make these volumes attractive.
I9I4-] NEW BOOKS 843
Written in a simple and charming style, illustrated with copies
of good frescoes and paintings, they cannot fail to captivate
young people as well as older ones. A complaint has often been
heard against the price of Catholic literature. This can have no
place here. Indeed the marvel is that these volumes can be pub-
lished at so reasonable a price.
FRED CARMODY, PITCHER. By Hugh S. Blunt. New York:
The Devin-Adair Co. 85 cents net.
This is an excellent story, the interest of which centres about
the National Game. Fred Carmody is the typical boy hero, Hark-
ins the typical boy villain, and Father Campbell the typical college
prefect. All misunderstandings are cleared up in the closing chap-
ter, the wicked Harkins apologizing to the hero for all his
meanness.
TN The Children's Hour of Heaven on Earth (New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. 45 cents), Father McNabb has written a
brief explanation and commentary of six exquisite child poems by
Francis Thompson, S. Baring-Gould, Katharine Tynan Hinkson,
Wilfrid Meynell, and Father Tabb.
A S its title implies this book Watching an Hour, A Book for the
** Blessed Sacrament, by Rev. Francis P. Donnelly, S.J. (New
York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents), consists of exercises of
devotion for the Holy Hour. The spread of this devout practice
through the Eucharistic propaganda makes this little volume very
acceptable as an aid to the profitable use of such a time of grace.
r PHE needs of children are well looked after nowadays, and the
devotedness of Father Roche to their interests is too well
known to need recommendation. His latest work, A Child's
Prayers to Jesus ( New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 30 cents
net), will, if the author's advice be followed, lead the little ones to
a real friendship with Jesus as the Divine Guest of their souls.
r PO all appearances The Mill on the Creek, by Frederick Thomas
1 (New York: The Broadway Publishing Co.), is the work of
a novice in the art of story-writing. The language is stilted; the
sentences often inverted, and too long; the moral reflections too
844 N W BOOKS [Sept.,
abundant and too obtrusive, thereby obscuring the story, which in
itself is an interesting and adventurous one. The title chosen re-
sembles too closely that of a well-known book to be in any way
distinctive.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Paroles d'Encouragement. By Abbe Ferdinand Million. (Paris: Pierre
Tequi. I fr.) The Abbe Million has collected some fifty passages from the
letters of St. Francis de Sales which encourage the devout soul in the pursuit
of religious perfection, and the patient acceptance of sickness, sorrow or
death.
La Vita Scientifica. By Sac. Camillo Balzano. (Naples: Stabilimento
Tipografico M. d'Auria. 5 lire.) This book is a refutation of an article that
appeared some time ago in the Medicina Internazionale upholding pure
materialism, and setting aside altogether vitalism and the traditional psychology.
La Vie Intime du Catholique. By Abbe J. V. Bainvel. (Paris: Gabriel
Beauchesne. I fr. 25.) The well-known professor of the Catholic Institute
in Paris has written a treatise on the essence of Catholicism, bringing out
clearly the Catholic's worship of Jesus Christ, his love for the Blessed Virgin
and the Saints, and his loyalty to the Church. He shows that while the
religion of Protestantism is fundamentally individualistic and only social in
some of its effects and manifestations, the life of the Catholic is essentially
social, even in the direct relation of his soul with God.
De Vera Religione et Apologetica. By Abbe J. V. Bainvel. (Paris:
Gabriel Beauchesne. 3frs.) This theological treatise is divided into two
parts. Part I. deals with apologetics, the author discussing the chiei philo-
sophical and religious tendencies of our time, the nature, object and method
of apologetics, and giving a brief historical sketch of the science. Part II.
treats of religion and revelation, the divinity of Christ's mission, and the
divine authority of the Catholic Church. The author's treatment is clear, de-
tailed, and accurate. A complete and up-to-date bibliography accompanies each
section of this work.
Enchiridion Patristicum. By M. J. Rouet de Journel, SJ. (St Louis:
B. Herder. $2.60 net.) This is a new and enlarged edition of the well-
known Patristric Enchiridion of the Abbe de Journel, reviewed some time
ago in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. In this edition, the author has
added about thirty additional texts of Nestorius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and
St. Leontius of Byzantium. A number of errata in the old edition have been
emended according to the latest critical editions ; the theological index has
been gone over; and alterations have been made in the dates ascribed to many
of the works quoted. It will prove invaluable to the ecclesiastical student.
L'Origine Subcosciente dei Fatti Mistici. By Rev. Agostino Gemelli.
(Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina.) This is the third edition of Father
Gemelli's well-known philosophical treatise on the subconscious origin of
mysticism. He refutes in a thorough and scholarly manner the modern theory
which pretends to account for the facts of Catholic mysticism, and sets forth
clearly the Catholic position. He has added to his new edition a very com-
plete bibliography.
Iperiobfcals*
Catholicism in Geneva. By Albert Vogt. The Reformation
in Switzerland took hold at Geneva in 1535 with the preaching of
Farel, Froment, and Viret, and Catholicism practically died out
The French Ambassador in 1679, however, dared to possess a public
chapel, wherein about fifteen hundred people, many of whom were
Savoyards, heard Mass. About 1798 the Sardinian Minister
opened a second chapel, and some eighteen children a year were
baptized there. Skepticism and immorality lessened the hold of the
Reformed Churches, and some of the more earnest minded looked
back to former conditions. Many priests and emigres fled to
Geneva from France during the Revolution, and some succeeded in
remaining hid there in spite of the persecution under Soulavie. In
1795, at the point of the sword, Geneva was annexed to France,
and in 1799 there came the priest, M. Jean-Frangois Vuarin, who
was to restore the religious life and the public position of the
Catholics in that city. Practically alone, until 1816, with untiring
energy of voice and pen, he worked for the welfare of the Church
and country, and he deserves a remembrance in this year, when
Geneva is celebrating the centenary of her entrance into the Swiss
Confederacy. Le Correspondent, July 10.
Modern Greece. By Andre Cheradame. The real creator
of modern Greece is the Prime Minister Venezelos, called to power
during the revolution of 1909. His clear mind, uprightness, and
moderation have won him respect and confidence, except amongst
a party too elated by recent Grecian successes. The present extent
of territory is 116,000 square kilometers; the population, four and
a quarter millions. Plans are now on foot to increase the army
from two hundred and sixty to five hundred thousand; there are
now strained relations between the general staff and the French mil-
itary advisers. England, through Admiral Kerr, has directed the
navy, and though he considered that a fleet of small torpedo boats
would best defend the coasts of Greece, the party favoring offensive
tactics has forced the purchase of three Dreadnoughts and many
other large ships.
846 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
A new railroad from Larissa to Guida, ninety-six kilometers
long, is expected to be of great financial advantage; it will reduce
the time from Athens to Paris from one hundred to sixty hours,
and shorten, to a great extent, the journey by sea to Egypt. The
budget must, however, be so much increased this year that there
will be a deficit of one hundred and seventy-seven million drachmas,
and in three or four years the national debt will be about two
thousand five hundred millions. The financial situation at Salonika
is seriously crippled; bitter feelings exist towards Italy, Turkey,
and Bulgaria, but otherwise the external relations of Greece are
excellent. The policy of King Constantine and M. Venezelos is
one of organization, and it will be the more fruitful the longer the
collaboration of these two men shall continue. Le Correspondent,
July 25.
The Month (August) : Rev. Sydney F. Smith comments
briefly on the meetings of the Fifth Annual Catholic Congress at
Cardiff, noting particularly the Eucharistic devotion and Bishop
Hedley's paper, the appeal for foreign missions, and the Catholic
Social Guild's attitude toward Socialism. Continuing his study
of The Campaign of Slander Against Catholic South America, A.
Hilliard Atteridge cites statistics to show that Catholicism is not
only the State religion of the ten Republics, but is a living power for
good, becoming more and more widely effective. A. F. Trotter
writes On Incense Ingredients as Used in Oriental and Hebraic
Rites. Rev. Herbert Thurston prints part of a paper read at
the Cardiff Congress on The Ritual of Holy Communion, particu-
larly noting the early custom of receiving the Blessed Sacrament in
the hand or on a white cloth, the administration under one kind,
the kissing of the bishop's ring, and the changes in the words spoken
by the celebrant. Rev. Dominic Devas, O.F.M., begins to trace
the history of The Franciscan Order and Its Branches.
The Tablet (July n) : Father Thurston, S.J., vigorously at-
tacks Mr. Trotman's appendix to the Catholic Library's reissue of
The Triumphs over Death, by the Ven. Robert Southwell, S.J.
Mr. Trotman claims that the real author of the Shakespearean plays,
and of Father Southwell's longest and best known poem, St. Peter's
Complaint, was really one John Trussell, whom Mr. Trotman be-
lieves Father Southwell constituted his literary executor. This
idea Father Thurston dubs " a pure hypothesis without a shred of
I9I4-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 847
fact to support it." He qualifies as " part of the same preposterous
theory," Mr. Trotman's view that " no other than Father Southwell
himself inspired the famous sonnets whose " 'onlie begetter' has
hitherto been known to fame as 'Mr. W. H.' ' The monogram,
W. M. S. E. R., found on the title-page of an edition of St. Peter's
Complaint, is shown to refer not to William Shakespeare, but to
William Seres, the publisher. -The full text of the address on
Reasons for Cheerfulness, in the future of the Interdenominational
Conference of Social Service Unions, by Father Charles Plater, S.J.
(July 1 8) : The Cardinal Archbishop's plea in favor of foreign
missions; that of the Bishop of Newport on The Blessed Sacra-
ment and Catholic Unity; and quotations from many other papers
and sermons read and delivered at the Cardiff Congress. The
German Emperor has presented an exact fac-simile of the Lab arum
of Constantine to the Holy Father, to be placed in the new Basilica
of the Holy Cross. The design is by the famous archaeologist,
Monsignor Wilpert, and the work by the Benedictines of Maria-
Laach. Besides this new basilica, Rome is to have two new
churches, and several parishes are to be reorganized.
(July 25) : A letter from the Cardinal Secretary of State gives
Papal approval to Cardinal Bourne's desire for " a wise and gradual
growth of the episcopate " in England. A capital of fifty thousand
pounds would be required to start five new dioceses. The Bishop
of Sebastopolis, in an article in The Catholic Review, gives fervent
utterance to his belief that the stars are inhabited, each " with its
own suitable inhabitants." The sermon of the Bishop of Clifton
at the Downside Centenary. By a Motu Proprio the Holy Father
grants forever to the Benedictine College of St. Anselmo the right
to confer academic degrees in philosophy, theology, and canon law.
This privilege had already been conceded orally by Leo XIIL,
founder of this college. Pope Pius orders here, as elsewhere in
Italy, the use of the text of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa in theol-
ogy- Description of a ceremony in the chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament of San Francesco, Siena. Since 1730 Particles of the
Sacred Host have been preserved there intact in a ciborium with a
crystal cover. Their perfect condition was verified on the eve of
Corpus Christi by Monsignor Scaccia, Archbishop of Siena.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (August) : Darley Dale contrib-
utes a brief sketch of Herrada of Landsberg, elected Abbess of Hoh-
enburg in 1167, and particularly of her work called Garden of DC-
848 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
lights. This volume, intended for the use of her novices, was a sort
of encyclopedia, dealing with divers matters, from theology to agri-
culture, but most remarkable for the six hundred and thirty-six
illustrations by the Abbess. Copies remain, but the original was
destroyed at the burning of the Strasburg Library in 1870.
W. M. Kennedy gives an appreciation of Mr. R. Dunlap's new study
of Ireland Under the Commonwealth, and, while praising the
author's sincerity of purpose and effort at fairness, considers that
he has not adequately grasped the religious problem involved in
Ireland's opposition to England.
Le Correspondant (July 10) : Andre Cheradame devotes a
long article to internal and foreign relations of Servia; the Vicar-
General of Versailles contributes personal reminiscences of the late
Archduke Ferdinand, added to in an anonymous article; and
Pierre de Chadalen gives some personal notes on the new heir pre-
sumptive, Archduke Charles. Claudius Grillet reviews the spir-
itist experiences of Victor Hugo and their influence on his life and
poetry.
(July 25) : Amedee Britsch reviews the career of Charles-
Joseph, Prince de Ligne, a cosmopolitan courtier, who died in
Vienna in 1814. The French books in six Canadian libraries, in
Quebec, Ottawa, and Montreal, numbering about seven hundred
and seventy thousand volumes, besides pamphlets, help to maintain,
thinks Louis Arnould, the present situation, which promises well for
France. Alfred Marquiset devotes an article to the rise and
fall of one Fouchard, who, assuming various titles such as General
Dubourg and Count Dubourg-Butler, actually governed Paris for
six hours during the Revolution of 1830 until the arrival of Lafa-
yette, and who spent the closing twenty-one years of his life in
boasts, complaints, and futile military and agricultural plans.
The letters of Jules Ferry, reviewed by de Lanzac de Laborie, cast
a vivid light on the policy of the man who from 1846-1893 did so
much to promote the colonial empire of France and to injure the
Church. Max Turmann summarizes "the successive opinions
and attitudes of Socialists with regard to cooperation " in France,
Germany, Belgium, and England.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (July i) : Conversion and the
Subconscious Mind, by Theodore Mainage. Father Mainage ex-
I9I4-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 849
amines Professor James' theories regarding conversion in his
Varieties of Religious Experiences. Conversion, according to
James, is not due to any exterior influences, to the gift of grace
from God, but rather to the influence of the subconscious mind.
The convert who thinks himself dominated by some exterior force,
deceives himself, his state is purely subjective. If Professor James'
theories are true, how account for such conversions as those of
St. Paul, P. Alphonse Marie-Ratisbonne, in which the conversion
was too sudden for any action of the subconscious mind. The
cases of Jorgensen, Elizabeth Seton, Father Hecker, and many
others show that the facts in these conversions contradict James'
theories. Concerning Some Eliminatory Theories of Miracles,
by E. Bruneteau. The first of a series of articles on miracles,
written with a view of demonstrating the falsity of the theories
of such philosophers as Spinoza, Hume, Mill, Kant, etc. Miracles
are the corner-stones of apologetics. Without miracles Christianity
could only be proven by an accumulation of probabilities ; with mir-
acles Christianity is founded upon certainty. Spinoza endeavored
to show four things regarding miracles. That they were impos-
sible, useless, the reason why so many believed in them, and how a
philosopher interprets the narratives of marvels. Spinoza, having
defined God as a necessary Substance, Whose activity is regulated
by necessary laws, logically denied the possibility of miracles. But
his definition denying the personality and liberty of God is without
proof. God is infinite, and not to be identified with changing
bodies. He is not ruled by necessary laws; the miracles, then,
recorded in Scripture are not impossible, nor useless, but part of the
divine plan. The series of articles on The Use of Ecclesiastical
Charity in the Middle Ages, by J. Guiraud are concluded.
(July 15) : Brouage and Its Martyrs, by Gabriel Aubray. A
sketch of the heroic priests who, in 1792, while awaiting deportation
to die in Guinea and Africa, after terrible tortures upon the prison
boats, succumbed after eleven months at 1'Ile Madame, the place of
their last imprisonment, in the citadel. An oratory has recently
been erected there, and this article is written apropos of its inaugu-
ration. The Catholic Liturgy of Doin. Festugiere, by Clement
Besse. A critique of Dom Festugiere's work upon the liturgy of
the Church. Much has been written for and against the Bene-
dictine's book, but all unite in admitting the interest of his views.
The liturgy as source and cause of the religious life is an object of
his special study. -Another favorite theme of Dom Festugiere's is
VOL. xcix. 54
850 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
the value of the Divine Office considered from the social standpoint.
A third is the liturgy as a method of the interior life. In his in-
sistence on the greater value of the liturgy for mental prayer, M.
Besse thinks his zeal has led to indiscretion, since he would sub-
stitute the liturgy in those communities in which meditation takes
its place.
Etudes (July 5) : Gonzague Mennesson shows by many quota-
tions from St. Jerome's letters, how keen, persistent, and super-
natural was the spirit of friendship manifested by one too often
remembered only as having a stone in his hand and a stone for a
heart. Louis Chervoillot summarizes the novels and historical
romances of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, who was born in Zurich in
1825, was almost constantly ill, adopted literature as a profession
late in life, and died, crowned by astonishing popularity, in 1898.
His novel, Ji'irg Jenatsch, had reached from 1876 to 1913 its one
hundredth and eightieth edition, and yet his books are all filled
with murders, poisonings, and unbridled passion. Meyer's mother
drowned herself, and he became insane. Though he slighted his
own poetry, it is his best title to immortality.
(July 20) : Paul Delattre gives a long description of the battle
of Bouvines, fought July 27, 1214, apropos of the seventh centenary
of its occurrence. It has been called the first national event in
French history. There Philip Augustus, thanks to the military skill
of Frere Guerin, Bishop-elect of Senlis, defeated the coalition of
Germany, England, and many French barons, established the Cape-
tian dynasty, put France in the first rank among nations, assured
the Magna Charta to England, and enabled the Pope to hold his
long-projected Council of the Lateran. Paul Dudon praises a
new critical edition of the works of St. John of the Cross, made by
Father Gerard, a Carmelite of Toledo. Valere Fallen begins a
careful consideration of the laws governing education in Belgium,
now and for the past seventy years. Louis Boule concludes a
scientific discussion of " the elementary anatomical conditions of
life."- Joseph Boubee pays a tribute to the late Archduke Fer-
dinand.
Revue Benedictine (July) : D. de Bruyne considers a frag-
ment of a preface to a revision of the Book of Esther, made accord-
ing to the Hebrew, and concludes that the revision was made not by
Rufinus, but by St. Jerome. It is doubtful whether a manuscript
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 851
of this Hexapla version now exists. Dom Morin publishes from
his forthcoming volume of studies an article on An Anti-Arian
Compilation Issued Under the Name of St. Augustine, and one on
a treatise praising monastic life, composed by William Firmatus,
who tried about noo to restore monasticism ,in northwestern
France. Dom Wilmart writes on A Commentary on4he Psalms,
Ascribed to R^^finus, whose author he declares for certain to be Let-
bert, Abbot of St. Ruf, about the year noo.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (July 15) : Claude Bouvier writes
on Vocations Among the Working Classes. L. Glorieux recalls
the speeches and articles by Italian Catholics, which show how much
alive the question of the independence of the Pope still is. Charles
Calippe describes the degradation of many of the workingmen and
their ignorance, particularly of religion. O. Jean shows in how
many ways the material conditions of labor have improved, yet
notes the widespread discontent of laborers. The French Acad-
emy has recently established a prize for those who work for the
diffusion of the French language outside of France. French has
recently been adopted in Chili as the official language of the faculty
of medicine, although Spanish is the language of the country.
IRecent Events,
On the twenty-third of July the Austro-Hun-
The War in Europe, garian government presented to the Royal
government of Servia a note containing
twelve demands, to which an answer was required within forty-eight
hours. Within the appointed time Servia replied in terms which
were almost abject in their character. It gave a formal assurance
that it condemned every kind of propaganda against the Dual
Monarchy. It agreed to publish a declaration expressing this con-
demnation on the front page of the Servian Official Journal of the
following Sunday. This declaration, it was declared, should also
express regret that the Servian officers and officials had participated
in the anti-Austrian propaganda. The Servian propaganda, in com-
pliance with the Austrian demands, promised to proceed with the
utmost rigor against all who might be guilty of machinations, and
this declaration would be simultaneously communicated by the King
of Servia to his army, and published in the Official Bulletin of the
army.
It even agreed to two demands of the most impudent character,
namely, that all Servian publications which incited to hatred
and contempt of Austria-Hungary should be suppressed, and that
teachers and methods of education in Servia which tended to foment
feeling against Austria-Hungary should be eliminated. Finally it
agreed that a Society styled the Narodna Obrana (National Union)
should be dissolved, and its means of propaganda confiscated. To
Austria's demand that all officers guilty of propaganda against Aus-
tria-Hungary should be dismissed the service, coupled with the res-
ervation to the Austro-Hungarian government of the right to com-
municate to Servia the names and doings of such officers and officials,
Servia consented upon the condition that proof was offered of the
guilt of such officers and officials.
As to the demand made by Austria, that representatives of its
government should assist Servia in suppressing in Servia the move-
ment directed against the territorial integrity of the Dual Monarchy,
and should take part in the judicial proceedings in Servian territory
against persons accessory to the Sarajevo crime, the Servian gov-
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 853
eminent replied that it could not be accepted, as it would be a viola-
tion of the Constitution and of the law of criminal procedure. To
the last demand, that Servia should furnish the Austro-Hungarian
government with explanations in regard to the utterances of high
Servian officials in Servia and abroad who ventured to speak ill of
the Austro-Hungarian government after the Sarajevo crime, the
Servian government gave its consent on condition that the Austro-
Hungarian government on its side would forward the particulars of
these remarks, and give some proof that they were really made.
It seems perfectly evident, from the terms and tone of the note,
that it was framed with the direct purpose of bringing on war, and
that no reply of Servia could avert it. Even though to the pre-
posterous demands Servia made an almost complete submission,
it was all to no purpose. Even the Chauvinist press of Germany
was indignant at the terms of the note, and that Berlin had not
been consulted as to the demands. All that the German Emperor
himself knew, it is saiu, was that some kind of action
was to be taken. Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance,
was left completely in the dark a fact which constituted a breach
of the terms of that Triple Alliance.
The oft-repeated maxim, founded upon the experience of the
last and present century, that Austria of two courses open to her
is sure to choose the worse, has thus once more been verified, and
under circumstances which have brought upon Europe and upon the
world a war of which no one pretends to foresee the results. And,
strange to say, the author and chief instigator of the step just taken
by a Catholic country is a man who is one of the leading and most
active Calvinists of Hungary, altogether he combines with his sup-
port of Calvinism a love of steeplechases and a passion for fighting
duels. This is Count Stephen Tisza, the Prime Minister of Hun-
gary, who has acquired over the aged Emperor an influence which
has now proved disastrous. The influence thus acquired is due to
the vigorous resistance offered by him in the Hungarian Parliament
to the Magyar attacks upon the military prerogatives of the Crown,
and to his success in crushing, by making use of the military and
police, the obstruction offered by the Opposition in the Chamber.
"Force the only means" seems to be his maxim, and having partially
succeeded in this way in bringing under control the non-Magyar
races in Hungary, the Count has been encouraged to adopting
the same means in suppressing the Serbian propaganda, and has
persuaded the Emperor to adopt his plan.
854 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
No one denies that such a propaganda exists, but how serious
it is no one not on the spot can tell. In the kingdoms and provinces
represented in the Reichsrath at Vienna, there are nearly 10,000,000
Germans and 18,500,000 non-Germans. Of these 17,500,000 are
Slavs. Among the Slavs, the Croats and Serbs number 780,000,
chiefly in Dalmatia. In Hungary there are 10,000,000 Magyars,
2,000,000 Germans, and 8,000,000 that are not Magyars. Of these
there are over 5,000,000 Slavs. The Croats are Catholic Slavs,
and number 1,800,000, while the Orthodox Slavs number 1,100,000.
Such was the composition of the subjects of the Dual Monarchy
before the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. By this an-
nexation the proportion of Slavs was increased by an addition of
1,860,000 to their number, of whom 434,000 were Catholic Croats,
825,000 Orthodox Serbs, and over 600,000 Moslem Serbs, so that
in all the Emperor-King rules over some 25,000,000 Slavs, of whom
2,840,000 are Serbs.
When Germany drove Austria out of the German Empire, she
encouraged her to seek compensation by the absorption of the Slavs
between her boundaries and Salonika, with the possession of the last-
named city as her ultimate goal. This brought her into conflict
with Russia, while the Balkan Slavs themselves proved unwilling
to be absorbed. Of this unwillingness Servia has proved herself
the most conspicuous example, and has thereby incurred the special
enmity of Austria-Hungary. Not only has Servia not been willing
to be absorbed by Austria-Hungary, but truly or falsely she is
accused of trying to absorb the Serbians who dwell in Austria-
Hungary. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has
strengthened this movement, for it has added a large number of
discontented Serbs to the Austrian dominions. Here is to be found
the real object of Austrian action she is suffering from disap-
pointed ambition. An unwise ambition, too, for the addition of
more Slavs to her dominions would serve no better purpose than
to increase the existing want of equilibrium.
The Servian reply to the Austro-Hungarian note was given
on the evening of July 25th to the Minister at Belgrade, who
immediately rejected it as unsatisfactory. Diplomatic relations
were straightway broken off. Efforts were at once made by the
British Foreign Minister to bring about mediation by means of a
Council of the Ambassadors of the four Powers not immediately
interested in the conflict. France and Italy accepted the proposal,
although the Austrian semi-official journal had declared that Aus-
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 855
tria-Hungary would accept " neither arbitration nor mediation."
Germany, however, held back, and therefore the proposal fell to
the ground. For some days hope was entertained that a conflict
might be averted. Conversations took place between Germany
and Russia, and between Austria-Hungary and Russia, with the
object of localizing the conflict, and of obtaining from Austria as-
surances that she would be satisfied with inflicting punishment on
Servia, and that she had no intention of acquiring an increase of
territory at her expense. Nothing resulted from these conversations ;
Germany seems to have made no representation to Austria-Hun-
gary, but to have left her a free hand to take her own course.
On the twenty-eighth of July Austria-Hungary declared war
on Servia, the Emperor-King issuing a Manifesto to his peoples.
Supreme self-confidence reigned in the Dual Monarchy, the semi-
official Hungarian organ declaring that the remotest consequences
of the action against Servia had been fully thought out and tested,
and that the Dual Monarchy was in a position to meet every emer-
gency. Its strength was sufficient to make its interests respected
in all circumstances. The Burgomaster of Vienna was moved to
declare that it was given to the armies of the Triple Alliance to
ordain the course of the world's history. On the other hand,
Russia did all in her power to prevent war, but was frustrated in
the midst of her efforts by the Austrian declaration. It was after
the mobilization of Austria and on hearing of the bombardment of
Belgrade, that the Tsar mobilized that part of Russian forces, and
that part only, which bordered on the Austrian territory. With
wonderful foresight of the coming aggression, Belgium had by
the twentieth-sixth begun making preparation for the attack which
has since been made.
The German Emperor is believed to have done all in his power
to prevent the war. Even the Socialist journal, the Vorwarts,
which has always been an undisguised opponent in principle of the
monarchy, and has frequently waged an embittered fight against
the present wearer of the Crown, unreservedly admits that William
II., especially in late years, has shown himself the firm friend of
the peace of the peoples. It would seem that in this case he has
suffered, as has the Emperor Francis Joseph, from that ineradicable
evil of all one-man governments the influence of irresponsible
back-stair cliques. With the exception of the very few cases in
which the single ruler is a man of supreme ability, the common-
wealth under this kind of rule is bound to suffer.
856 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
Even before any official steps with a view to war had been
taken by either Germany or France, warlike incidents occurred on
the thirty-first of last month on the Franco-Prussian and on Russo-
German borders. On the same day Russia declared a general
mobilization of an army which numbers 4,000,000 of men, and
Germany proceeded to declare martial law throughout the Empire.
Diplomatic conversations were being still continued between the
Russian Foreign Minister and the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador
at St. Petersburg. These were brought to an end on the first of
August by Germany giving notice to Russia that the Russian mobil-
ization was a great annoyance to her, and that unless demobilization
took place within twelve hours, Germany would place her forces on
a war footing. The German Ambassador at St. Petersburg seems
to have expected the submission of Russia to these demands, for
he waited the allotted limit, and then made his demand a
first, second, and third time. It was only when he was told that
silence meant refusal that he took a crestfallen leave. Thereupon
Germany declared war upon Russia, before any warlike step out-
side her own borders, with a single exception, had been taken by
Russia against Austria.
The justification of this action is found in the terms of the
treaty made in October, 1879, between Germany and Austria-Hun-
gary, which forms the basis of the Triple Alliance. It is well to
note that Italy did not join the Alliance for some years afterwards,
and that the precise terms have never been published. By the first
clause of the treaty between Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the
event " of one of the two Empires being attacked by Russia, the
high contracting parties are bound to stand by each other with the
whole of the armed forces of their Empires, and, in consequence
thereof, only to conclude peace jointly and in agreement." Germany
saw in the mobilization of Russia an attack upon Austria, and was
so eager in her support of her ally as to declare war before it had
been declared by either Russia or Austria-Hungary.
The next step taken by Germany was the invasion of the Grand
Duchy of Luxemburg, an independent state, the neutrality of which
was guaranteed by a treaty made on May n, 1867. This treaty
was signed by Great Britain, France, Russia, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia. All these Powers
pledged themselves to respect the neutrality of the Grand Duchy.
The German invasion took place, too, before any action had been
taken by France. On the same day, without any declaration of
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 857
war, Germany violated the frontier of France at four points. The
spirit of German action is revealed in the official declaration, " Ger-
many must fire first." On the same day skirmishes took place on
the Russo-German frontier, and a general mobilization took place
in Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland, while Great Brit-
ain began to take several precautionary measures.
On August 3d the German Ambassador left Paris, declaring
that a state of war existed, and the French Ambassador was recalled
from Berlin. On the same day Germany presented to Belgium
an ultimatum demanding permission to send her troops through
Belgian territory, promising to maintain Belgian independence on
the conclusion of peace. Twelve hours were given the Belgian
government to return an answer. In the event of a refusal Belgium
was to be treated as an enemy. Belgium's answer was that the
German proposal was a flagrant violation of the rights of nations,
and a complete sacrifice of Belgian honor. The neutrality of Bel-
gium is guaranteed by a treaty of 1839, of which Great Britain,
France, and the States which now constitute Germany are signers.
The binding character of the treaty was fully recognized by Bis-
marck in 1870, and France on the present occasion at once an-
nounced her intention of respecting it.
The violation of Belgian neutrality, among other things,
necessitated the intervention of Great Britain. The other things
included a sober view of her own interests, for if Belgium, as the
result of the war, should become German territory, it would be
a menace to the very existence of Great Britain. Moreover, the
entente with France and the understanding with Russia called upon
England to remain true to the nations with whom she has been act-
ing, in order to prevent Europe being dominated by a certain Power.
An ultimatum accordingly was, on the fourth of August, sent by
Great Britain, requesting of Germany an assurance that she like
France would respect the neutrality of Belgium, and asking for
an immediate reply. To this Germany gave a curt refusal. There-
upon Great Britain formally declared war on Germany, and Ger-
many replied by declaring war on Belgium and France. The in-
vasion of Belgium, which had already begun, was at once continued
in force. It is doubtful whether all the members of Mr. Asquith's
ministry would have been brought into an agreement to enter upon
the war, if Germany could have been prevailed upon to respect
the treaties by which she was bound to respect the neutrality of
Luxemburg and Belgium. It was this breach which decided the
858 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
issue. As it was Lord Morley and Mr. Burns resigned, feeling
that they could not give their support to the war.
On the same day that Great Britain declared war against
Germany, the President of the French Republic sent a message to
the Chambers charging Germany with having made a brutal pre-
mediated aggression upon France, before any declaration of war.
For more than forty years, under many provocations, France had
striven to maintain peace, and even after the Austrian ultimatum to
Servia, France had decided to recommend a policy of moderation,
and to use every effort to avert the coming danger. Every effort
that was being made had, however, been frustrated by the action of
Germany. Therefore, it was with the confidence that France had
the right on her side the eternal moral power which no peoples, any
more than individuals, could despise that he called upon the French
people to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their country.
The unprovoked character of the German invasion has united
all parties in the resolve to defend French territory to the very last.
At first there had been a movement among the Socialists to offer
an active resistance to any warlike measures. At the head of this
movement was M. Jaures. This led to his brutal murder by an
ardent patriot. The national union which has now been accom-
plished, was made manifest on the occasion of the funeral of M.
Jaures. The whole of the Chamber of Deputies, from the Royalists
to the Socialists, listened upstanding to a glowing tribute which was
paid to him by M. Deschanel. The whole of France, said M. Des-
chanel, was united over the coffin of the murdered leader. " II n'y
a plus d'adversaires ; il n'y a que des Francais." The whole House
as one man raised a resounding shout, "Vive la France ! " Another
mark of the union of the French people is the admission into the
Cabinet of M. Clemenceau and M. Delcasse. M. Herve, the anti-
militarist, applied for leave to go to the front with the First
Regiment.
Italy although a party to the Triple Alliance has, so far at all
events, remained neutral. The exact terms of the treaty made by
her with Germany and Austria-Hungary, have never been published,
so that no one can say that the declaration of her neutrality con-
stitutes a violation of her obligations. In fact Austria's precipitate
action without consultation with her partners, released those part-
ners from their obligations. The interests of each State became
then the determining motive. By the advance of Austria-Hungary
into the Balkans, the interests of Italy in those regions were
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 859
menaced. In fact for the safeguarding of these interests, there is
good reason to think Russia and Italy some years ago entered into
an agreement, the exact terms of which, however, are not known.
Even a more cogent reason for Italy's action is to be found in
the hatred for Austria, which is a deep-seated feeling in the Italian
people, the causes for which are well known. This has been mani-
fested of late on several occasions, and has found expression ever
since the ultimatum sent to Servia. There is good reason to think
that any attempt of the government to support Austria, would
lead to a revolution, and to the declaration of a republic in Italy.
What part, if any, the smaller nations will take in the war,
is still a matter of rumor and conjecture. Of these rumors,
one of the most important is that the Balkan Confederation
has been formed again. If Rumania is included this will have a
decisive influence on the future settlement. Turkey is said to be
arming, but the probability that Russia would seize Constantinople
should be a sufficient motive for her remaining neutral. That the
course of the future has now to be settled by brute force, should be
a cause for general humiliation, and lead to doubts as to the reality
of the progress of which there has been so much boasting.
With Our Readers.
WE recently attended a meeting where a champion of the Catholic
position was answering questions put by Socialists among his
audience. One of the objectors said : " I am a Catholic and a So-
cialist. How do you explain that ? " " Easily," answered the speaker.
" Either you do not know the teachings of the Catholic faith, or you
do not understand the doctrines of Socialism."
IN the current issue of the Dublin Review there is an article that
strongly supports this answer.
The article is the personal account of one who was for a period
a Catholic Socialist, but who subsequently came to the conclusion that
the combination was logically impossible. The writer had been edu-
cated in a Catholic elementary school until he was thirteen years of
age. In after years his studies led him to believe that there was no
incompatibility between Socialism and Catholic doctrine. He did not
adopt Socialism at first; he was simply convinced that there was no
necessary antagonism between Catholic and Socialist principles.
Zeal for the Church led him to institute a propaganda of in-
struction for Catholics, to overcome, what he considered, their mis-
taken and ill-advised opposition to Socialism; to make them leaders
in this new movement which he thought destined to win over the
majority of the people. He was fearful lest Catholics, in their ig-
norance and short-sightedness, would make a historical blunder, and
would, if they continued their policy of opposition, in after years
have much to explain away.
His " Catholic Socialist Society " achieved enough prominence to
be condemned by the bishop of the diocese. The condemnation
seemed to him mistaken and unfortunate, but he dutifully submitted
to authority, and withdrew from all further public activity.
But he determined to make a thorough study of Socialism, in
order to be able to convince the Catholic clergy of the error of their
opposition. An article by Father Garrold, S.J., in The Month, how-
ever, brought him face to face with the fact that the Church herself
had been and is opposed to Socialism.
' The Catholic Church as an organized movement showed herself
everywhere and at all times anti-Socialist! The living world-
wide movement of Catholicism was hostile to the living world-wide
movement of Socialism."
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 86 1
It became evident to him that, in some way, there must be an
essential incompatibility between Catholic faith and Socialism.
" Thus," he says, " my faith in the Church destroyed my faith in
Socialism even before I could see how Socialism offended."
right understanding of one fundamental truth brought him
1 the blessing of light by which he saw an essential incompatibility
where he once believed none existed. He perceived, to use his own
words, " by reason, apart from the statements of theologians, that
there was a natural right to private property " in both consumptive
and productive goods. " Property in consumptive goods was neces-
sary for life, property in productive goods was necessary for free
life." Belief in such a truth was absolutely incompatible with So-
cialism.
Some schools of Socialism would not abolish private property
entirely, but even the most moderate would make private capital the
exception and State capital the rule. Private ownership of capital is,
in their eyes, a mischievous and dangerous thing.
" The Catholic, who believes that private ownership of capital
is a natural right, is found to believe such ownership to be in itself
a good thing Thus there is a great difference both in principle
and policy between the Catholic and the Socialist."
THE story of this man's conversion is of great value, because it
shows how the modern Socialist, or sympathizer with Socialism,
may be won back, if he can be won at all, to a right view, and in case
he be a Catholic, be saved to the Faith.
The chief argument, he heard in the days when he called himself
a Socialist, was that every Socialist was an embryonic atheist. " I
never felt anything but anger and contempt for this argument: and
when I heard my opponents so often using this argument so evidently
fallacious, I became more convinced that they had no case." He is
convinced that such arguments only beget a bias in favor of Socialism.
" For this reason I read with a shiver of dismay certain Catholic
articles on Socialism as being more likely to drive men out of the
Church than to keep them from Socialism."
''PHIS man now spends much time lecturing against Socialism to
A Catholic working class audiences. He is more and more con-
vinced that the " Socialism means atheism and free-love " type of
argument is most mischievous.
862 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
" Catholic and other workingmen are now educated enough to
know that Socialism means the State ownership of the means of pro-
duction: and workingmen are clear-headed enough to know that
State ownership of the means of production, though it may mean
many unpleasant things, does not mean necessarily promiscuous sexual
relations, or the abolition of religious worship If we are to oppose
Socialism as Catholics, our main ground of opposition should be the
danger of Socialism to liberty/'
MR. WILFRID WARD, in his impressions of America published
in the current Dublin Review, speaks in a very complimentary
way of the work of the Paulist Fathers.
He falls, however, into what was once a common error, in stating
that almost all of the Paulist Fathers are converts. Of the entire
Paulist congregation, the very small proportion of six of its members
at the present time are converts.
The subjects of lectures for non-Catholics, as recorded by Mr.
Ward, are not typical of the subjects treated by the Paulists in their
missions to non-Catholics. In fact the titles mentioned are of sub-
jects subordinate to those ordinarily treated.
MR. WARD gives us promise of further comment as the result of
his visit, for he writes : " Thus ended an exceedingly interesting
and, for me, memorable tour. I parted from my American friends
with sentiments of great gratitude and good will. I reserve for
another occasion some further account of the lessons I learnt, and
the impressions I formed."
WE look forward with interest to the publication of what must have
been one of the most interesting papers at the Cardiff Congress.
This paper dealt with the ancient religious beliefs of the Welsh people,
and was presented by Mr. de Hirsch Davies, a recent convert,
of Welsh birth. In writing of this paper in the current Month,
Father Sydney Smith speaks of it as one that " excited a very special
interest." " This paper," he writes, " is sure to be published, and its
wealth of apt quotation should cause it to be instrumental in bringing
home to the Welsh people how thoroughly Catholic in every way and
how instinct with love and veneration for the Mass, for the Blessed
Mother of God, for the Pope, for the priesthood and the Catholic
Sacraments was the bardic literature from the eleventh to the seven-
teenth century."
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 863
AS we go to press the Catholic world is thrown into mourning
by the news of the death of our Holy Father Pius X. After
eleven years of pontificate, years full of trial and stress for the Church,
this ardent spirit, who willed " to restore all things in Christ," sinks
to rest, broken-hearted by the strife of nations.
With paternal solicitude, his dying lips voiced a pathetic and pow-
erful charge to his world-wide family to lift up their thoughts and
prayers to Him, Who is the " Prince of Peace."
At this moment when nearly the whole of Europe is being dragged into
the vortex of a most terrible war, with its present dangers and miseries and
the consequences to follow, the very thought of which must strike every one
with grief and horror, we whose care is the life and welfare of so many
citizens and peoples cannot but be deeply moved and our heart wrung with
the bitterest sorrow,
And in the midst of this universal confusion and peril, we feel and know
that both fatherly love and apostolic ministry demand of us that we should
with all earnestness turn the thoughts of Christendom thither " whence cometh
help" to Christ, the Prince of Peace, and the most powerful Mediator be-
tween God and man.
We charge, therefore, the Catholics of the whole world to approach the
throne of grace and mercy, each and all of them, and more especially the
clergy, whose duty furthermore it will be to make in every parish, as their
bishop shs.ll direct, public supplications, so that the merciful God may, as it
were, be wearied with the prayers of His children and speedily remove the
evil causes of war, giving to them who rule to think the thoughts of peace and
not of affliction.
From the palace of the Vatican, the second day of August, 1914.
PIUS X., PONTIFEX MAXIMUS.
What stronger proof can the world need that the arm of Rome
is stretched forth for " the healing of the nations," not to sunder, but
to draw together in the bonds of fraternal unity and peace ! The dying
Pope bids no man deny his allegiance to his civil superiors, but he bids
all men pray for " them who rule to think the thoughts of peace and
not of affliction."
This last appeal was characteristic of the whole pontificate of
Pius X., for it was a spiritual appeal. Nor has this consistent and
enduring appeal been all in vain. For, in spite of the many materialistic
tendencies of the time, in spite of the widespread and mad pursuit of
unworthy pleasures, in spite, even, of the various attacks upon the
Church, there has been, in the years of the reign of Pope Pius X.,
among the children within the fold, a great awakening, a response to
the appeal that has meant no less than a spiritual re-birth.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
Ontology, or the Theory of Being. By P. Coffey, Ph.D. $3.00 net. Essays
on Pastoral Medicine. By A. O'Malley, M.D., LL.D., and J. J. Walsh,
M.D., LL.D. Index to the Works of John Henry Cardinal Newman. By
J. Rickaby, SJ. $1.75 net. The Priest and Social Action. By C. Plater,
SJ. $1.20 net. The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558-1705.
Vol. I. By Rev. P. Guilday. $2.75 net.
THE SENTINEL PRESS, New York:
Venerable Pierre Julien Eymard, the Priest of the Eucharist. By Rev. E.
Tenaillon, S.S.S. 75 cents. Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. By Rev. A.
Tesniere. 50 cents.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
God, Man and Religion. By E. R. Hull, SJ. 25 cents. Jane Grey, a Nine
Days' Queen. (A Drama.) By the Ursulines of New Rochelle, N. Y. 25
cents. Louis XI. (A Drama.) By J. H. Stratford. 25 cents. Within the
Soul. By Rev. M. J. Watson, SJ. 75 cents. The Education of Character.
By M. S. Gillet, O.P. 80 cents. Life of St. Angela. Compiled by a Mem-
ber of the Ursuline Order. 10 cents.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York:
Essays. By Alice Meynell. $1.50 net.
E. P. DUTTON & Co., New York:
Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain. By G. E. Street, F.S.A.
Edited by G. G. King. 2 vols. $2.00 net.
JOHN LANE Co., New York:
The Home of the Seven Devils. By Horace W. C. Newte. $1.35 net.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Highways and Byways in Shakespeare's Country. By W. H. Hutton. $2.00.
Egypt in Transition. By S. Low. $2.50.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York :
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$2.00; cloth, $2.75.
FREDERICK A. STOKES Co., New York :
The Wine-Press. By Alfred Noyes. 60 cents net.
THE CHAMPLAIN PRESS, New York:
The Black Cardinal. By John Talbot Smith. $1.25.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York:
De Curia Romana. Sac. Felix M. Cappello. Vol. II. $1.75.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York :
Where No Fear Was. By A. C. Benson. $1.50. History of Roman Private
Law. Part I. Sources. By E. C. Clark, LL.D.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York :
The Woodneys. By J. B. Ellis. $1.00 net. The Democratic Rhine-Maid.
By F. K. Gifford. $1.25 net. The Passing of the Fourteen. By R. Sutton.
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BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York:
A Challenge to the Time-Spirit. By T. J. Gerrard. $1.25.
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York :
The Continental Drama of To-Day. By B. H. Clark. $1.35 net.
THE GOODHUE Co., New York:
The Question of Alcohol. By E. H. Williams, M.D. 75 cents.
ST. ANTONY'S ALMANAC, St. Joseph's College, Callicoon, New York:
St. Antony's Almanac, 1915. 25 cents.
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE, Washington, D.C. :
Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Con-
duct of the Balkan War.
HOUGHTON MlFFLIN Co., Boston '.
A Naval History of the American Revolution. By G. W. Allen. 2 vols.
$3.00 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
The Question of Miracles. By Rev. G. H. Joyce, SJ. 30 cents. Lourdes.
By Very Rev. Mgr. R. H. Benson. 30 cents net. Outlines of the World's
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SANDS & Co., London :
The Minor of Oxford. By C. B. Dawson, SJ. 2 s. 6 d.
M. H. GILL & SON, LTD., Dublin :
The Absolution of Recidivi and of Occasionarii. By Rev. D. Barry, S.T.L.
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A. TRALIN, Paris :
Conversations Latines. Par. Ch. Dumaine. i fr. 60.
PIERRE TEQUI, Paris :
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Pi.ON-NouRRiT ET CiE, Paris :
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