Chapter III (2)

He says that Richard (of St. Victor) teaches that these children will have more goods and greater joy in their possession than sinners have who possess created goods in this life. Lyra says, that according to the opinion of all doctors they will enjoy a happier life than would be naturally possible in this present world. Almost in the same way speak Origen, Marsilius, St. Buonaventure, Cajetan, and others {661} cited by Cornelius à Lapide, who all teach that children dying without baptism lead a happier life than those who are living on the earth. Lessius writes, that although they may be said to be damned because eternally deprived of the celestial glory for which they were created, it is nevertheless credible that their state is far happier and more joyful than that of any mortal man in this life. Salmeron says, these children will rise again through Christ and above this natural order, where they will daily advance in the knowledge of the works of God and of separate substances, _will have angelic visits_, and will be like our rustics living in the country, so that as they are in a medium between glory and punishment, they will also occupy an intermediate place. Suarez says, that children will remain in their natural good and will be content with their lot; and, together with Marsilius as quoted by Azor, he describes to them a _knowledge and love of God above all things_, and the other natural virtues. Didacus Ruiz, a theologian of extensive reading, lays down this conclusion: Great mercy will be mingled with the punishment of infants dying in original sin, although not a diminution of the punishment of loss, since that is incapable of diminution; yet in the remission of death which was the punishment directly do to original sin, and would naturally have endured to eternity, so that in spite of this infants will be resuscitated at the day of judgment nevermore to die, endowed with supernatural incorruptibility and impassibility, and they will also supernaturally receive accidental, infused sciences, and will be liberated from all pain, sadness, sickness, temptations, and personal sins, which are naturally wont to arise from original sin. Consequently, they are liberated from the punishment of hell which they might have incurred. Albert (the Great), Alexander (de Hales), and St. Thomas agree with this doctrine. Suarez shows that these children obtain some benefit, in a certain way, from the merits of Christ; and says that it pertains to the glory of Christ that he should be adored and acknowledged as prince and supreme judge on the day of universal judgment even by infants who died without grace. He also considers it more probable that they will understand that they have done neither good nor evil, and therefore receive neither glory nor pain of sense, and also that they are deprived of glory on account of sin (that is, original). He adds the reason of this, to wit, that they may understand the benefit which they received, first in Adam and afterward in Christ, and on this account may worship and adore him. Martinonus adds: when even the demons love God in a certain way even more than themselves as the common good of all, according to St. Thomas, why shall not these children love Christ as their benefactor and the author of their resurrection, and of the benefits which they receive with it through Christ, who is the destroyer of corporeal as well as spiritual death? He cites also what Suarez says, that although one who should speak of the bodies of infants in the same way as of the other damned would say nothing improbable, since St. Thomas speaks of all indifferently, nevertheless since those bodies will have a greater perfection and some gifts or benefits which are not at all due to nature, therefore, in regard to these gifts, Christ may be said to be their model. The same Martinonus subjoins: although those words of the apostle, "In Christ all shall be made alive," Suarez affirms, must be properly and principally understood of the predestined, nevertheless they can probably be applied to a certain extent to these children, inasmuch as they will have in their risen bodies a certain special conformity and relation to Christ, which will be much less and more imperfect in the damned than in the predestined. Nicholas de Lyra affirms that "infants dying without baptism do not endure any sensible punishment, but have a more delightful {662} life than can be had in this present life, _according to all the doctors_, [Footnote 185] who speak concerning those who die in original sin alone."

[Footnote 185: This is true of the great majority, but not of all.]

Those who die in actual sin, and the fallen angels, although in the same state of existence with those who die in original gin only, that is, in the Infernum, or sphere below the supernatural sphere of the elect angels and men, have to undergo a punishment corresponding to their individual demerits. This truth, which is clearly revealed in the Holy Scriptures and defined by the church, is confirmed by the analogies of this present life. The transgressions of law is punished in this world in accordance with the sense of justice which is universal among men. There is no reason, therefore, for supposing that the same principle of retribution is not continued in the future life. Moreover, there is positive proof from reason that it must continue. There has never been a more absurd doctrine broached than that of the Universalists. To suppose that all men are saved on account of the merits of Christ without regard to their moral state or personal merits, is most unreasonable; and subversive of the moral order as well as destructive of the idea of a state of probation. It is equally absurd to imagine that the mere fact of death can make any change in the state of the soul, or that separation from the body causes the soul to make a mechanical rebound from a state of sin to a state of holiness. The soul can be made happy only from its own intrinsic principles, and not by a mere arbitrary appointment of God, or a bestowal of extrinsic means of enjoyment. Sin brings its own punishment, and the state of sin is in itself a state of misery. Plato and other heathen sages taught the doctrine of future punishment, Mr. Alger, who has written the most elaborate work on the subject of the history of the doctrine of a future life which has appeared in recent times, has fully proved the universality of the doctrine of future punishment. Other rationalistic writers of ability have also of late years seen the impossibility of removing this doctrine from the teaching of Christianity and from universal tradition. We have already fully proved that God does not deprive any of his rational creatures of the felicity which is proper to their nature by his own act. It follows from this that it is the creature himself who is the author of his own misery. Existence is in itself a good, a boon conceded from love by the Creator. So far as this good is turned into an evil, it is by a voluntary perversion of the gift of a benevolent sovereign by the subject himself. The punishment which he must undergo in eternity is, therefore, the necessary consequence of his own acts, together with such positive penalties as are required by the ends of justice and the universal good. This doctrine, which is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, based on the clear evidence of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, [Footnote 186] is also the doctrine of calm, unbiased reason, and of the common sense of mankind. The probation of the Angels having been finished with their first trial, and the probation of men ending for individuals at death, and for mankind generically at the day of judgment, the epic of grace is closed for ever with the completion of this present cycle of providence; and consequently the state of all angels and men is fixed for eternity. Hell is, therefore, an eternal state out of which there is no possibility of transition into heaven.

[Footnote 186: It is now considered by the best authorities as fully
proved that Origen and St. Gregory Nyssen, who have been so often
cited by the advocates of the doctrine of universal salvation, did
not teach anything contrary to the Catholic doctrine of eternal
punishment.]

Heaven, or life everlasting, is the eternal state of supreme, supernatural beatitude, to which the elect angels and men are elevated by the grace of God, and in which they participate in the {663} glorified and the deific state of the Incarnate Word, through and ineffable fellowship with the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.

Man being integrally composed by the union of soul and body, and his corporeal nature being hypostatically United with the divine nature in the person of the Word, the resurrection of the body must necessarily precede his complete glorification. The only difficulty which the doctrine of the resurrection of the body presents to the understanding relates to the principal of identity between the earthly and celestial body. This principle of identity, or unity and continuity of life, must be the same with that which constitutes the unity of the body in all the stages of its natural growth; and through all the changes of its material particles, from the instant of its conception to its disintegration by death. It is the soul which is the form of the body, its vivifying principle. The soul and body have an innate correspondence with each other, not only in the generic sense, but in the sense of an individual aptitude of each separate soul for its own body, and each separate body for its own soul. The soul and body act and react upon each other perpetually while the development of both is going on, producing a specific type in each individual which is a modification of the generic type of manhood. The determination of the active force of the soul to the production of this type remains with it after the separation from the body. At the resurrection, it forms anew its own proper body in accordance with this type which is the product of the conjoint action of the soul and body during the earthly life. There is, therefore, the same continuity and identity between the earthly body and the celestial body that there is between the body of the embryo and that of the full-grown man. The celestial body is the same that it would have been if there had been no death intervening between the two corporeal states, but a transformation of the earthly body into the celestial perfection and glorification of its proper type. If this is not all which is included in the definition of the church respecting the identity of the body in the two states, we must believe, in addition to what has been stated already, that there is a material monad which forms the nucleus of the corporeal organization and is a physical principle of identity. This physical principle must contain virtually the whole body, as the germ does the plant; it must be preserved when the body is disintegrated; and reunited to the soul at the resurrection, in order to become the physical germ from which the celestial body is developed.

The natural beatitude of the glorified angels and saints, which is only a more exalted grade of that felicity which is accorded to the inferior intelligent creation, need not be specially noticed. It is the essential and supreme beatitude consisting in the clear, intuitive vision of God, which is the principal subject of the divine revelation proposed by the creed as the object of faith.

The possibility of this divine vision will not be called in question by any who are properly speaking theists and rationalists, and with others we have nothing to do at present. Much less will it be questioned by any class of believers in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. We have not, then, the task of laboring to show the intrinsic reasonableness and credibility of the doctrine, but merely of setting forth that which can be made intelligible respecting the _relation between our present state in which we are unable to see God, and the future state in which we may be enabled to see him_. The examination of this relation includes that of the means and method by which the soul is elevated to an immediate intuition of that which constitutes the divine essence and personality. It requires a statement which shall show what is the nexus between the act which constitutes the soul in the power to exercise {664} intelligence, and that which constitutes it in the power to behold God immediately. It may be said, that the essence of the soul is transformed or enlarged in such a way that it becomes able, _per se_, to see God as it now perceives the creation. But this would be equivalent to the creation of a new essence with a new personality; which would destroy the identity of the subject who is supposed to be elevated to this new grade of existence. Moreover, according to the doctrine we have laid down, that supernatural grace elevates the soul _super omnem naturam creatam atque creabilem_, the supposition is impossible. We cannot go over again the principles already discussed, but merely endeavored to state such a theory of the mode of the beatific vision as shall be in harmony with these principles. We, therefore, dismiss this first supposition without further discussion. Another supposition may be made, that the complete evolution of the idea of God which the soul possesses in the present state in an obvolute manner bring it to that relation _vis-à-vis_ two God as its intelligible object, which corresponds to the relation of the visual faculty to the visible, material object. We cannot accept this supposition any more than the other. It contradicts the principles we have previously laid down, and the generally accepted maxims of Catholic theology respecting the supernatural quality of the power conceded by God to the creature of beholding his intimate essence, just as palpably as the first one. We do not deny that the reason of man is to a great degree in a obvolute condition in this life, and that it is capable of evolution in another and higher life. In this higher life the soul may be capable of perceiving immediately the essence of things, and spiritual substances, after the mode of intelligence which is proper to the angels. But the angels themselves, according to Catholic theology, though created at the summit of the intelligent order, with the complete exercise of intelligence in the highest possible grade, have no natural power to see God immediately; and their natural knowledge of him, though very perfect, is merely abstractive contemplation like that of men. The power of seeing spiritual substances, and the perfect evolution of the idea of God in the soul, therefore, do not give the intuition of the essence of God which constitutes the beatific vision. The beatific vision is supernatural, by means of immediate light communicated by God to the intelligence, called by theologians _lumen gloriae_, the light of glory. By means of this light the intelligence perceives God by an active intuition, or a clear, distinct act of reflective consciousness, as immediately present to it in the creative act, the cause of its existence, the source of its active power, the light of its reason, in whom it lives in moves and as it's being. God presents himself to the intelligence immediately in his concrete being, as the visible world is presented to the eye by the light of the sun. This is not accomplished by the creation of any new essential faculty in the soul or the addition of anything to its substance. The very same intelligent, thinking principle, or subject, which in this present state of existence of firms to itself the existence of God by and intellectual judgment, behold him in the beatific state by an intuitive vision. It must be, then, by a concurrence of God with the same faculties of the mind by which we think and reason and perceive, and our self-conscious, in our natural mode of rational activity, that the intelligence is raised to this higher power of supernatural intuition. That act which constitutes it rational in the natural order, must be the basis and substratum of its supernatural tuition of the divine essence. It has already been proved that a created spirit cannot be constituted rational in the first instance by the beatific vision of God; that is, cannot have an essence whose intrinsic, necessary act is a clear intuition of the divine essence, like that {665} act in which God has the eternal, necessary intelligence of himself. The created spirit must first be constituted a rational, intelligent subject, before it can be capable of a supernatural illumination. It must be extrinsicated from God, made a distinct, thinking substance, and constituted in its own finite, rational activity; before there can be any subject, or really existing, active force, with which God can concur; with which he can unite himself, and to which he can communicate the power of looking back upon himself by a distinct intuition. The created spirit must be, therefore, in a certain sense, self-subsisting, or containing in itself its own rational principle. It must have its own separate self-consciousness as a thinking substance, containing within itself all the necessary principles of thought. The necessary, the universal, the eternal, or, in a word, the idea, cannot be contained in a created spirit in its concrete being, but only in an abstract form, any image, or a created word. This is identical with the intelligence itself; it is what constitutes its intellective force and principle of activity. In man, as we have already seen, this intellective activity needs the concurrence of exterior, sensible objects, acting on it through the senses and occasioning perceptions and reflections, before it can attain distinct reflective consciousness of itself, and evolve its own ideal formula. This reflective consciousness cannot go back of the soul itself, where it finds the abstractive idea passively received from concrete being. The contact of being, or of God who is alone being, gives the apprehension of being to the soul by creating it. The creative act, and the being who produces the creative act, are unperceived by the soul, and lie back of its existence, which is the terminus of the creative act. The soul's separate activity begins at the terminus of God's activity, and is projected forward to its own proper terminus. Its natural activity would never bring it face to face with its creator, God, or enable it to contemplate him in any other way than it is now able to do so, by the vividly apprehended demonstration of his being from its own first principles and exterior works of his hand. In order that the soul, in its reflexive acts, may see God continually and clearly, it is necessary that he should unite himself in a new and ineffable manner to its substance and its faculties, and concur with them in such a way that they can look beyond their natural limit of vision into the infinitude of the being of God which surrounds the creation like an ocean on every side. The soul, which is, so to speak, projected from God by creation, must receive a movement of return, which does not arrest itself at the mere fact of self-consciousness, but brings the soul to a consciousness of God as immediately and personally producing its self-consciousness. This act is most perfect in the human soul of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. The personality of the human and divine natures in him being one, there is but one Ego. The human soul, therefore, terminates its act of self-consciousness, not upon itself, as its own _subsistentia_, but upon the divine Ego or person. It is conscious of itself as a distinct substance, but not a substance completed and brought to distinct subsistence in itself. Its consciousness terminates in the divine person, and is referred to it, so that Jesus Christ, in every human act, affirms himself by self-consciousness as both God and man in one person. The union of glorified spirits to God is similar to this hypostatic union, though not so perfect, and not implying personal identity. The nature and mode of this union of the created spirit with God, by which it is glorified, beatified, and even deified--as the doctors of the church fear not to affirm, in accordance with the declaration of the Holy Scripture--is impenetrable to the human understanding. The Indian philosophers, having retained a confused idea of it from the primitive revelation, have expressed this idea in their sublime mysticism with all the superb imagery of their luxuriant imaginations. With {666} them, it is an absorption of all individual souls in the infinite fount of being. Nearly all their language may, however, be adopted, in a good sense, as expressing the Christian dogma, if clear, philosophical conceptions are substituted for their obscure and unscientific notions of the creative act. Without these clear conceptions and definitions, it is impossible to escape money into pantheism. The language of Christian mystic writers, even, is liable to misapprehension as expressing the pantheistic notion of the identity of God and the creatures, unless their terms are properly explained. In point of fact, Eckhart did give expression to some propositions which implied pantheism and were condemned by the Holy See. The mystic writers continually affirm that the soul is made _una res cum Deo_, and becomes God by participation. By this, however, they do not mean that the soul loses its distinct substance or becomes identified with the divine nature. They intend to signify and ineffable union between the soul and God, in which, each remaining distinct in its own proper essence, God communicates his own knowledge, sanctity, glory, and beatitude to the soul; and admits it into the Fellowship of the Blessed Trinity. This is the vanishing point of all theology, and of all sciences, beyond which even the most illuminated eye cannot penetrate. The return of all things which proceed from God as first cause to God as final cause, consummated in this beatific union, solves all the problems of time; there remains only the problem of eternity, which eternity alone can solve.

--------

ORIGINAL.

MY AUNT'S WORK-BOX.

Sure, such a mess was never seen
Of white and brown and black and green!
Not Noah's Ark, Pandora's box,
Such dire confusion e'er displayed
Here's wool, shorn from the fleecy flocks
That o'er Circassian Meadows strayed,
With spools of cotton, every number;
Buttons and studs, and other lumber;
Needles of every size and kind,
The blunts and sharps, the coarse and fine;
White linen, recent wounds to bind;
And rows of pins in order to shine.
Lo! Thimbles, for each finger fit,
And yarn too darn with or to knitt.
Here's sewing-silk of every hue
From brilliant red to modest blue;
And floss, with which the maiden traces,
With all the painter's art and skill,
Flowers, landscapes, birds, and human faces,
The verdant field or purling rill.
Here every sort of thread is seen,
The jolly ball and languid skein;
And here's the ivory thing that shapes
Small eyelet-holes in caps and capes.

{667}

Look at that pair of rusty tweezers!
They must blame their many years.
Dear! what a tiny pair of scissors!
Sure, they're the twins of those huge shears.
Here's lots of crewel, which I mean
To use, someday, to work the screen.
Here are pin-cushions and emery bags,
Small shreds of lace and other rags,
Linen, calico, and crape,
And hanks of twine and bits of tape.
In short, here's every earthly thing
That thrifty wife could wish, I ween;
But I've not time to say or sing
The treasures of this magazine.

--------

Original.

HOW MY AUNT PILCHER FOUND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Perhaps you don't know my aunt, Patients Pilcher? Very likely not. i know her very well, and am going to tell you something about her. She is my mother's sister, and was born in the town of Squankum, Vermont, where she lived until she was over thirty years old--she says, twenty-five, but that don't matter--when she came to New York to see Uncle George. Well, Aunt Pilcher was mightily pleased and surprised when she saw New York; and as she knew every house, barn, and fence, and every lane and field in Squankum, and to whom they belonged, she thought she must find out as much about New York. She had no sooner taken off her bonnet and shawl when she got to our house--I say _our_, because I live with Uncle George since mother died--than she wanted to put them on again and go out "and see the places, and find out where people lived, and git introduced," as she said, adding that she would "hev to begin directly, or she would never git through."

My Aunt Pilcher is a very tall, thin woman, with a very cold face, as I found out on the first day she came to our house, when she bent over and kissed me. She thought I wiped off her kiss, and said "Oh, fie!" but it wasn't that, it was the cold. As I was saying, she wanted to see all of New York, and I believe she has, too, by this time; but she soon got disgusted with what she called "the offishness of the Yorkers." "You don't know anybody," said she, "and nobody 'pears to want to know you." She never tired, however, of seeing the many beautiful buildings in the city, and among them all the churches seem to her to be the most attractive and the most worthy of her close investigation.

"I'm gittin 'most ashamed of our wooden meetin'-house to Squankum," said she, one day, after returning from a visit to Trinity Church; "we used to be kinder proud of it, though, when some of the folks down to Rattlebog came over to spend Sabbath with us; 'cause ye know what a mis'able little country skule-house of a place they've got over there. Then, ye've got sich a lot o' churches, my! I'm 'most afeered never see them all, or I'll forgit abeout the first ones afore I git through."

"What sort of churches have you seen, aunty?" I asked.

{668}

"Oh! I've seen white-marbled ones and brown-stun ones, and a sort o' speckled mixed ones like Washin'ton cake, ye know, a streak o' jelly and a streak o' cake. Then agin, I've seen all kinds o' styles; Grecian, Beshantem, Gothys, high-steepled style, low-steepled style, and no-steepled style. But I haint seeing a green winder-shutter one like ours to Squankum yit. I s'pose the taste in architectur here in York don't run that 'a way."

But I was not thinking of the outside of the churches when I asked her the question, but of their inside. The truth was that Uncle George and I had been two or three times to see Mass and Vespers in the Catholic Church, and I was so full of all I had seen and heard there that I was nearly dying to talk with some one about it. But Uncle George had told me that he thought Aunt Jane--that is, Uncle George's sister who keeps house for him and me--might possibly disapprove of our going again if I happened to mention it, and so I took care to say nothing about it. I was very anxious to find out if Aunt Pilcher had seeing a Catholic Church, so I asked her if she happened to see any boys in the churches she had been to.

"Boys!" said she. "Why boys? Of course boys. Shouldn't boys go to meetin' as well as girls?"

"But boys dressed up," said I.

"Dressed up! Laws yes, in their best Sunday-go-to-meetin', as they ort to be."

"In long red coats, perhaps, down to their heels," I suggested, in spite of Uncle George's frown; "with nice white lace jackets over that again, and carrying torch-lights and censers, and going up and down and all around?" I added, eager to describe all I had seen.

"Why! what's come to the boy?" exclaimed Aunt Pilcher, raising up her hands in astonishment. "He ain't right," meaning in my head."'

"Oh! yes, he is!" said Uncle George, "that's the way the Catholics go on in their churches, and I suppose that Fred must have seen it somewhere."

"Catholics!" ejaculated Aunt Pilcher, in a tone of horror, and half looking over her shoulder as if some ghost of one might come in at the sound of the word. "Ye don't mean them papists and other Jesuits that call themselves Catholics! It's enough to make a body hate the name."

"That won't do, you know, sister Pilcher," said Uncle George, "because it is in the Apostles' Creed."

"I know it," returned Aunt Pilcher, "but I'd like to know what the Holy Catholic Church in the Apostles' Creed has got to do with them ignorant idolaters, the Catholics, the Roman papists, I mean?"

"It's the same name, that's all," said Uncle George, with a sly twinkle in his eye; "and they say it's the same thing."

"Which in course is nonsense!" ejaculated my aunt.

"Oh! of course it is," rejoined Uncle George. "We are the real and true Catholic Church, and if some one wanted to come to our true and real Holy Catholic Church we would just tell him to ask for the Catholic church and anybody would show him."

"Well, they ort to, that's all I got to say," said Aunt Pilcher doubtfully.

"Certainly," continued Uncle George, "and I've no doubt now, sister Pilcher, that if you were to go out and ask people in the street here to point you to a Catholic church that they would show you our Protestant churches directly."

Aunt Pilcher looked very hard at Uncle George, as if she feared he might be making game of her; but he looked so solemn and sedate that she didn't suspect, but I did, and I got a crick in the back of my neck trying to keep from laughing. She seemed to think that she was bantered by my uncle, and said:

"Well, I never sot eout to do a thing yit that I didn't do it, and I'm going to do _that_."

"Hurrah! Aunt Pilcher," I shouted, "I would too, if I were you." And that confirmed her in her engagement, {669} for the very next morning she put on her bonnet and shawl, and hung her reticule on her arm, without which she never went out of doors, and off she started. She was gone all day and did not return until tea-time, appearing completely fagged out and exhausted. She was not in the best of humors either, to judge of the way she pulled off her out-door additions to her ordinary dress, and bade me "carry them things up-stairs, for people dead a'most and starved can't always be expected to wait on theirselves." But not a word did she say about the object of her long day's journey. I was all curiosity to know where, she had been and what she had seen; and when we had nearly got through tea, that is, Uncle George, Aunt Jane, Aunt Pilcher, I, and Bub Thompson, who had come to play with me in the afternoon, and said he smelt short-cake, and wondered whether Aunt Jane could make it nice, and so got invited to try them--then I could stand it no longer, and said I, "See anything nice to-day, Aunt Pilcher?"

"I didn't particularly _see_ anything, my dear, but I heered something I shan't forgit, I can tell you, if hearin' a thing a hundred and ninety-nine times over is enough to' make a body remember it."

"What did you hear, aunt?" asked everybody at once.

"Hear!" exclaimed she. "These Yorkers never knows anything if a body asks them a perlite question abeout who lives in any house, or which is the way to somewhere; but to-day I do think they was all possessed, for everybody 'peared to know only one church, when, dear knows, they ort to know their own churches, I should think, and not be a' directin' everybody everlastin'ly to St. Peter's."

"How was that, aunt?" asked every one again.

"Well," said she, "I told you what I was goin' eout for, and I went. Neow I always do things in order: commence at the beginnin', I say, and then ye'll know when ye git to the eend. So I went clean deown to the battery, and then I turns reound and comes up. Not wishin' to ask questions of people _too_ fur off (for these Yorkers don't know where anythin' is ef it ain't right deown under their nose), I walked on till I got pretty near Trinity Church, belongin' to the Episcopals, and says I to a knowledgable lookin' man, says I, 'Couldn't ye pint me eout, neow, a Catholic church?' 'I can't precisely pint ye to it,' says he, which I thort was queer, with a Christian church right afore his eyes, 'but I can tell you where one is: in Barclay street, right up Broadway, ma'am, Saint Peter's church,' and off he went like a shot. These Yorkers air in _sich_ a hurry, they won't stop to hear a body eout. Well, on I walks, and I saw another church, Saint Paul's in Broadway, similarly belongin' to the Episcopals; and this time I got straight in front of it. The folks 'peared to be in sich an orful hurry jist here that I thort somebody must be dead; or somebody's house had ketch't afire, and I couldn't git eout the first word afore the person I spoke to was a whole block off, and I got kind o' bewildered like. At last, I tried a lady--for I give the men folks up--and says I to her:

"'Is this a meetin'-house of the Holy Catholic Church, ma'am?'

"'No, ma'am,' says she rather short, 'ef you want to go there, you had better go deown Barclay street, next street above, St. Peter's on the left,' and off she went. Well; I goes deown Barclay street, jist to see this St. Peter's, and do you believe, I found eout it was one of them papist churches.'

"That was rather strange," interrupted Uncle George.

"I thort it was a leetle so myself," said Aunt Pilcher, "and I began to conceit people took me for a papist or a Jesuit, so I made up my mind to say so to once; and on I walks agin till I come to Broome street, deown which I went till I found a nice look-in' church, and says I to a minister-lookin' gentleman, says I:

{670}

"'I'm not a Jesuit, sir.'

"'Glad to hear it, ma'am,' says he, 'there are concealed Jesuits all over.'

"'I'm a Protestant,' says I, 'pre-haps you can show me a meetin'-house that believes in the Holy Catholic Church; is that one there?'

"I am grieved,' says he, 'that anybody should wish to know anythin' abeout the Catholic Church, and I hope you have no intention of goin' to sich a place of abomination.'

"He didn't 'pear to know my mean-in', so says I, 'I mean the _real_ Catholic Church.'

"'Ma'am,' says he, 'real or unreal, it is always the same thing; always was and always will be. That is a Baptist church, ma'am, before you, and not a Catholic mass house. There is one of them, called St. Peter's, in Barclay street, I believe,' and off he walked without sayin' another word. 'Patience,' says I to myself, 'be true to your name,' for, to tell the truth, I was gettin' a leetle bit flustrated. I walks on, turnin' corners and reound and reound, and at last I got into a street called Bedford street. There I saw a meetin'-house with a sign over the door tellin' it was a Methodist. Says I to a man that was jist then sweepin reound the door--thinkin' to begin right this time--says 'I:

"'My Christian friend, the apostles believed in the Holy Catholic Church.'

'"Not a bit of it,' says he.

"'Oh! yes,' says I, 'they did; it is in the Apostles' Creed.'

"'Is it?' says he.

"'Yes, it is, and what's more, you ort to know it,' says I, gettin' bothered with sich ignorance.

"'None o' yer impudence,' says he.

"'Why, good lands!' says I, almost swearin', 'they believe in the Holy Catholic Church in this meetin'-house, don't they?'

"'No, they don't, and don't want to,' says he, and slammed the door in my face. Then I wanders reound and seen lots of churches, but I didn't see anybody, to speak to till I got ever so fur off in the Fifth avenue, where I saw a handsome brick church with a tall steeple, and there I saw some people goin' in. I asked what was goin' on, and they said it was a prayer--meetin". I should liked to have jined in a York prayer-meetin', but I wasn't in a fit state jist then--in sich a twitter as I was--so I ups and speaks to a young lady who looked like a Sabbath school teacher, and says I:

"'The real Catholic Church in the Apostles' Creed is where the gospil is preached.' She kinder opened her eyes at me, and says she:

"'The gospil is preached here, ma'am; but this is not a Catholic church; this is a Presbyterian church.'

"'But,' says I agin,' where the gospil is preached is the true Catholic Church.'

"'I guess not,' says she, 'the gospil is not preached in the Catholic Church.'

"'Well, ma'am,' says I, feelin' considerably riled, 'I guess I larnt my catechism, not afore you was born, but abeout the same time, I should say; and I'm jist lookin' for somebody else that knows it, and if anybody in York knows what and where the Holy Catholic Church is;' and do you believe she actually turned 'reound to another gal and said I was crazy, and had run away from a 'sylum. I went away disgusted and tried agin, one plase and another. I even tried the Washin'ton cake church in the Fourth avenue, but not a soul would own up to what they ort to believe. You wouldn't get papists sendin' you to their St. Peter's, I'll be bound, if you asked them for a Protestant church."

"Of course not," said Uncle George, "and what conclusion have you come to, sister Pilcher?"

"I've come to the conclusion," said Aunt Pilcher, "that these Yorkers don't know the Apostles' Creed."

"I should say," said Bub Thompson, "that those folks you 'saw didn't believe it."

{671}

"Boy!" exclaimed Aunt Pilcher, with an awful expression of countenance, "speak when you air spoken to."

"How is it when you're spoken about?" asked Bub; "'cause I'm a Catholic, a papist as you say, and you've been speaking about my church."

"My! I never!" ejaculated Aunt Pilcher, looking first at one and then at another for explanation.

"Sister Pilcher," said Uncle George, "the truth is, it is no use for us Protestants to call ourselves Catholics, for we are not. You see how everybody denied it. Of course you could never get a Protestant to own to the name of 'Catholic,' either here in New York or anywhere else, any more than you could persuade any one to give us the name; and it seems to me that where the name is, and always has been, the reality is likely to be. As for your experiment to-day, it is just what would have happened thirteen hundred years ago; for I read in a book that Bub Thompson's father lent me, that St. Augustine said, speaking about the sects that tried to call themselves 'Catholics' in his time: 'The very name of _Catholic_ detains me in the Catholic Church, which that church has alone, and not without cause, obtained among so many heretics, in such a way as that while all heretics wish to be called Catholics, nevertheless not one of them will dare to point out his basilica or house to a stranger inquiring for a place of Catholic worship." [Footnote 187]

[Footnote 187: Epist. contra Manich. I. 5, 6.]

"Well! sakes alive! live and larn," exclaimed Aunt Pilcher, "but it's enough to make a body think they never knowed anythin' when they find oat some things!"

----------

Translated from Le Contemporain.

A PORTRAIT OF FRA ANGELICO.

BY EDMOND LAFONDE.

At dawn of a summer's day in the year of grace 1453, a Dominican monk set out from his convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, at Rome. He was an old man, but the brightness of youth still shown in his aged countenance, attributable, perhaps, to the shadowless sanctity of his life, and the purity of a soul which had never known wrinkles. He walked slowly in his dress of white woolen covered with a black scapular, his shaven head bared to the sun, his eyes cast down, and his hands employed in rolling the beads of the Rosary of St. Dominic. He traversed the square of the Pantheon, and was going to cross the bridge of St. Angelo, when, in passing the prison of the Tor di Nona, he saw coming out of it a funeral cortége; a condemned person, led to death in the usual place of execution, the piazza della Bocca Verità. A man nearly forty years of age, of noble and proud figure, but seemingly worn out by vice or grief; his costume curious, and wholly oriental; clothed in red silk, with a turban ornamented with gold and ermine. A Franciscan accompanied him, but endeavored in vain to direct his thoughts to heaven, and make him kiss the crucifix, from which he turned away his lips in discussed. The crowd that followed, becoming infuriated, exhorted him to penitence, crying out, "Amico, pensa a salvar l'anima." "My friend, think of saving thy soul."

{672}

As soon as the Franciscans saw a brother priest, he called to him, saying: "Ah! Fra Giovanni, in the name of the holy friendship which united our two glorious patriarchs, St. Dominic and St. Francis, come to my aid. You see this unhappy man. He is one of the Greeks just come from Italy, since the taking of Constantinople. His name is Argyropoulos. He has murdered a Roman woman; is doomed to die, and will not reconcile himself with God. He is not merely schismatical, but pagan. Try if you can be more successful than I." At a sign from the chief of the guard the _cortége_ stopped--for in Rome, since the earliest age, pontifical justice does not wish to kill the soul, and makes every effort to save it while sacrificing the guilty body. Fra Giovanni tried to speak to the Greek, but was met with repulse and blasphemy. With tears rolling down his cheeks he whispered a few words to the Franciscan, who, elevating his voice, thus addressed the chief of the guard: "This son of St. Dominic," he said, "is Fra Giovanni of Fiesole, the favorite painter of his holiness. He is going to the Vatican, and will ask the Holy Father a delay of one day, in order to try once more to induce the sinner to repent." The people applauded, and the captain of the guard declared himself willing to assume the responsibility of suspending the execution while awaiting a new order from the sovereign pontiff. The condemned man, who remained apparently immovable during this debate, was re-conducted into the prison of Tor di Nona, where still later were to be enclosed the guilty family of Cenci, and the Franciscan entered with him. The crowd remained a long time before the door, losing none of its interest or curiosity. Fra Giovanni again pursued his way to the Vatican, his soul, so calm ordinarily, deeply agitated and troubled by the unfortunate event. Arrived at the square of St. Peter, he kneeled by the obelisk which contains a piece of the true cross; then passing the guards, who were daily accustomed to see him, entered without difficulty into the pontifical palace. He repaired immediately to the new chapel, which Pope Nicholas V. had just finished, and charged him to decorate; for it is time to say that Fra Giovanni was the painter-monk of Fiesole, whose purity of genius and sanctity of life had surnamed him Beato (blessed) or Fra Angelico (the angelical brother), under which latter name he is most generally known, and which is equally appropriate to his beauty of soul and to his works. The great Pope Nicholas V., who had known him at Florence, and watched the budding of these marvellous products of his pencil in the convent of St. Mark, had just called him to Rome, where Eugene IV. had already bid him come, to enthrone in his own person Christian art in the Vatican. Nicholas V. had built in his palace a small chapel, in which he desired the painter-monk to retrace for him the story of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen, reuniting them in the same poetical commemoration; as had been the custom of the faithful to invoke them, since their bones had lain united outside the walls in the ancient basilica of St. Lawrence. This chapel being very small is lighted by a single arched window; happily it has been preserved, and is one of the sanctuaries where the friends of Christian art love to make a pilgrimage. Below the window is now placed the altar which formerly faced it. On the three other sides Fra Angelico has painted two series of compositions, one above the other; in the arches of the upper part is represented, in six compartments, the history of St. Stephen, and in the lower that of St. Lawrence. On entering the chapel Fra Angelico fell on his knees to pray God to guide his pencil, then commenced to paint the scene where St. Stephen was led to martyrdom. He there represented an enraged Jew, who conducts the saint outside of Jerusalem, while others pushed and pursued him with stones in their hands. While painting the violence of the Jews Fra Angelico {673} thought deeply of the Greek whose execution he had arrested, and awaited with pious impatience the arrival of the Pope, who never failed daily to visit the works of his favorite painter. The Dominican interrupted his work now and then to rest, reposing his mind with prayer and singing occasionally a stanza of Dante, who was then for mystical painters an unfailing source of religious inspiration. He recited the exquisite passage where Dante paints the glorious martyrdom of St. Stephen:

"Poi vidi genti accese in fuoco d'ira
Con pietre un giovinetto ancider, forte
Gridando a se pur; Martira, martira, ect."

"Then I saw an excited and angry crowd, stoning and forcing onward a young man, with loud cries of 'Kill him, kill him!' And him I saw bent to the earth by the weight of death, but with eyes uplifted and turned to heaven; in the midst of the terrible struggle praying the sovereign God to forgive his enemies, with an expression so beautiful as to command pity and respect."

At last the door of the chapel opened and the Pope entered. Nicholas V. was old, but more bent by sorrow than age. In his youth he was called the poor student of Sarzana, and had passed his life in the society of saints and literary men. Become sovereign pontiff, he encouraged piety, science, art, and letters; laid the foundation of St. Peter's, embellished Rome, and merited truly to give his name to the fifteenth century as Leo X., gave his to the sixteenth. During the Council of Florence he had known Fra Angelico, and soon perceived that the soul of the Dominican artist was worth far more than his pencil. Pope Eugene IV. had thus judged him when he wished to name this holy religious Archbishop of Florence. Fra Angelico, seized with fear on learning the intentions of the pontiff, besought to be spared so great a weight. His vocation, he said, was not to govern, but stated at the same time he could recommend a brother of his order far more worthy than he of such a dignity. Eugene IV. listened to his suggestion and named for archbishop the monk who was afterward to be St. Antonine. When Nicholas V. entered the chapel he appeared so unhappy that Fra Angelico, in kneeling to implore his blessing, could not forbear asking the cause of his sadness; if some recent misfortune had not befallen him. "O my son," replied the Pope, "the misfortune which has happened me is the catastrophe long since foretold, but not the less bitter to all Christian hearts, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks! My dreams, even, are troubled, for since I have been Pope the principal aim of my pontificate has been the pacification of Christianity, so as to unite and direct all our forces in a crusade against the Turks. But the unfortunate Greeks have upset all my projects in their hatred of the papacy, preferring the turban to the tiara. They have broken the peace of Florence, ill received the assistance of the Latins, and now their capital is no longer for Jesus Christ, but Mahomet. Ah! Fra Giovanni, can any one in the world be more wretched than I? Were it not that I fear a failure of duty, I would renounce the pontifical dignity, to become again Master Thomas of Sarzana. Then, one day gave me more true happiness than I have since enjoyed in a whole year." The Pope shed tears abundantly. [Footnote 188]

[Footnote 188: See this scene in Muratori, volume 25th, page 286.
The taking of Constantinople was a mortal blow to Nicholas V. From
that day he was never seen to smile.]

Fra Giovanni deeply commiserated him, and replied in a voice choked with emotion: "Most Holy Father, let us resign ourselves to the will of God. Bear your cross as did he of whom you are the vicar; I wish I were the good Cyrenean to aid you. Let us contemplate the images of the two martyrs I am to paint on the walls of the chapel, and, like them, let us learn to suffer." "You are right, Fra Giovanni. Your soul and talent are truly consolatory, and I love to come here and open my heart, charged as it is with incurable anguish." {674} Just then twelve o'clock struck. The Pope knelt down to recite the Angelus, and dried the tears which since St. Peter so often had reddened the eyes of the sovereign pontiffs. At this moment a prelate came to announce that the dinner of his holiness was ready. "My son," said the Pope, "do not leave me in this hour of affliction. I beg you to dine at my table." "Holy Father," replied the humble monk, "without the permission of the prior I dare not do so. I must dine with my community." "But, my son, I can dispense with this obligation. Come, come!" The Dominican dined, therefore, _tete-à-tete_ with the Pope, but in silence, and with eyes cast down, as if he had been in his own refectory. It was not a day of abstinence, and meat was served on the Pope's table, but the monk refused to partake of it, "Fra Giovanni," said Nicholas, "you exhaust yourself with this painting, and I perhaps urge you too closely to finish it. You have worked hard to day, and should strengthen yourself anew by eating some meat." "Holy Father, I can not without the permission of the prior." The Pope smiled, but could not help admiring the innocent scruples of the pious monk. "My son," said he, "do you not think the authority of the sovereign pontiff greater than the permission of your prior? For to-day I dispense with the rule of St. Dominic, and order you to eat all that is offered you." [Footnote 189]

[Footnote 189: This scene, which so well portrays the virtue of Fra
Angelico, is related by Vasari and Fra Leandro Alberti; De Viris
Illustribus Ordinis Predicatorum, libri sex.]