Chapter IX (1)

"A man may lose in a moment
His glory, empire, and dazzling throne."
--Victor Hugo.

Robert, after having lingered long on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the city and its environs, so rich in natural beauties, and having admired the grandeur of the Alps, and, above all, Mount Blanc, the Jura, and Mount Salère, arrived at Saint René, a small village at the foot of the Great St. Bernard. This was the 20th of May, 1824.

The young painter wished to pass the night at the convent with the monks, so he asked for a guide, but was told that they only started in the morning to take travellers to that high point, and the innkeeper advised him to wait until the next day; but he was not willing to take this advice, as time was so precious to him that a day passed in inaction was an irreparable loss. So be started out through the village to look for a guide, but the man had told him the truth--there was not a guide to be found. Robert expressed so much regret at his disappointment to a worthy old man that he replied:

"If it were any other day Joseph would conduct monsieur better than anyone else, for be was the oldest guide, but unfortunately he could not do it, for it was the 20th of May, and this day he always spends at church in praying for his benefactor. But if you will go to his house you can see him; it is down there," at the same time pointing to a pretty little cottage with a garden in front. "A famous history, monsieur, that of Joseph, and if he goes up with you, be will tell it you, and I must not take up more of your time."

"I am much obliged for your information, my good man, and will try and put it to profit." Then he took the road toward the house, and soon reached it, but imagine his disappointment to find it closed! As he was turning to leave, he met a man of about fifty years of age, with a woman, still fresh and beautiful, leaning on his arm, and they seemed to be absorbed in each other; and in looking at them Robert forgot for a moment the guide he was seeking. They stopped at the gate, and were about entering it when he asked, "Is this the man Joseph of whom I was told--the guide up the mountain?"

"At your service, sir," replied he. "I am the person; do you wish to be taken there?"

"I do, but they told me at the village that you could not be induced to go on the 20th of May, but I thought I would ask for myself, and I assure you I will be very grateful if you can make this sacrifice in my favor, for I have the greatest desire to pass the night with the good monks." His amiable and polite manner had won the favor of the guide, but still he was undecided. Robert, seeing his hesitation, begged him to give his consent.

"It seems a little late to start," said the guide, reflecting and looking as if he did not care to go.

"Oh, we can walk fast," said Robert gayly.

"Well, I find I must give up to you," said he, half sadly, half smiling. "Come in the house, sir, while I change my clothes, and you may flatter yourself with having gained a victory. It has been many years since I put my foot on the mountain on the anniversary of this great day. It has been twenty-four years since then."

Robert was looking at a picture while he spoke, representing Napoleon mounted on a mule, climbing up the Saint Bernard, escorted by a guide.

"Aye, aye," said Joseph with emphasis, "this is my history--that guide who walks by the side of the first consul is me, I had the honor of conducting him."

"Indeed," cried Robert, "oh! do tell me about it. If my poor Cyprien was only here, how delighted he would be to hear of the emperor he loves so much."

"Is this Cyprien one of his faithful soldiers, sir?"

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"Yes, and he is more than that; he is one of those soldier heroes who would give the last drop of their heart's blood for the emperor. I have had the happiness, with God's aid, to have saved from misery this noble wreck of imperial glory, for he was indeed miserable when he lost his emperor."

"Well, my good young man, that decides me at once, for, since you have saved one of the old soldiers of the emperor, I can refuse you nothing, for I loved him also, and had good reasons for so doing. We will start, and on the way I will tell you to whom I am indebted for this pretty little house, so good a wife, and children, that make all my joy. We must go rapidly, or we will run the risk of a storm, for we have only time to arrive before night, and in our mountains storms come up very suddenly." Then turning to his wife, he embraced her and said, "Don't be uneasy, Margaret, I will return to-morrow." They walked briskly, and soon left the village behind them, and the guide commenced his history.

"Twenty-four years ago, our valley was not so peaceful as it now is. It was invaded by French troops, whose tumult was rather a strange contrast to the usual noise of the mountains--the roar of the tempest and the moving of the avalanches. The guides all became worn out with fatigue, and one morning I was ordered out. I did not receive the order with much pleasure, but I was young, poor, and unfortunately in love with the most beautiful girl in the valley. The officer whom I was to guide wore a three-cornered hat, and enveloped in a sort of gray riding coat. He had with him two other gentlemen, but be rode first, and I was at his side. He was rather singular, and did not seem to know or care where he was, though we were above frightful precipices which gave the bravest a vertigo, but he was as tranquil as if on a lounge in his chamber. It seemed so strange to me that he had no fear and was so silent. But after awhile he spoke to me, questioned me about my life, my pleasures, my troubles. His manner was so winning that I told him everything, and when on the chapter of my loves told him I would die if I could not marry Margaret.

"Well," said he, smiling, "why not marry her then?"

"For a very simple reason," I replied. "I am poor and she is rich, and I cannot obtain the prize until I have a house and garden."

He listened eagerly, then questioned me a great deal, and at last fell into a a reverie, and remained silent and absorbed, until we arrived at the convent, where the good monks came out to receive us. I did not pay much attention to this, I was so chagrined. A little time after, the officer came to me with a letter, which he directed me to take to the headquarters of the army, on the other side of the mountain. I went and returned in the evening from Saint Pierre with the answer. Imagine my surprise and mortification when I found that the person with whom I had spoken so familiarly was none other than the first consul, and his companions were General Duroe and Secretary Bourrienne. I was terrified, thinking I should be thrown into prison for daring to speak so familiarly to my superior. What an end to my fears! The first consul gave me for my trouble a house, garden, and money, so that all my dreams were in an instant realized. I could now marry Margaret, and I was so completely overcome with joy that I thought it was a miracle. This great man did all for me, and you can now see why I love the emperor, and why all my happy remembrances are dated from the 20th of May.

This was only one of the many kind acts of Napoleon during his glorious life; and if we are electrified in reading of his high military deeds, how much more touching are those simple charities which show the beauty of his soul, and the goodness and generosity of his heart, that will ever render his memory immortal.

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Joseph had related with so much spirit and animation his astonishing adventure, and Robert had listened with such eagerness, that neither thought of hastening their steps. The guide had necessarily consumed more time in relating it than we take, and night was fast coming on. The sun had long gone down, and the guide listened uneasily to a kind of rolling noise that sounded like distant thunder.

"The deuce!" he cried, "it will not be long before it is upon us. It is the voice of the storm; don't you hear it? Oh! mercy! we have lost time, and I have been the cause of it. O holy Virgin, come to our help!"

Robert could not conceive the cause of his fright, but, stopping to listen, he felt the same terror. "O Lord my God, protect me!" was his simple prayer, which gave him strength to follow the guide, and the consciousness of danger gave them wings.

A violent wind filled the air with the snow that was loosened by the mildness of the atmosphere, and it was so thick that they could scarcely see. Then the tempest flapped its strongest wings, and moved huge masses of snow, which threatened at each moment to ingulf them. These frightful avalanches, these precipices, these abysses without bottom, these peaks almost lost to sight, these eternal glaciers, and the imminent peril which appeared on all sides, and presented, above all, the image of death; all these sublime horrors, which freeze with fear the heart of guilty man, Robert contemplated with joyous tranquillity. Before the awful majesty of this grand scene, he adored God, whose powerful hand can raise the anger of the elements or calm them at his pleasure. But the tempest increased so much in fury that he was obliged to concentrate all his faculties to preserve his equilibrium. The snow was blinding, and the guide, in terror of making false steps that might plunge them into some abyss, went along hesitatingly, lamenting and believing they were lost. More uneasy for the guide than himself, in their alarming position, Robert tried to raise his courage by speaking of his wife and children, when in an opening of the path a large sign appeared.

"Oh! we are saved:" said the guide in a faltering voice, and, with a hand made stronger by hope, rang a large bell, which had a clear, vibrating sound.

This was the signal of distress that told the good monks that travellers needed their help. But in the raging of the storm the sound of the bell is not heard at the convent, and, numbed with cold and fatigue, Joseph swoons on the snow. Robert tries to warm him and bring him back to consciousness, but without avail, and at last he is seized with vertigo and dreadful shiverings, and his numbed limbs refuse to take him further. But the strength of his soul is greater than his body, and he falls breathing a prayer to God. Not a sound but the noise of the elements is heard, and the sliding of the snow that covers their inanimate bodies, and threatens to leave no trace of them.

"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of your love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation be carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?"

Listen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution, and they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts which they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to shame many of the human species. Yes; it was "Help" and "Saviour" who had found the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands and faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the mountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they guided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after a few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave thanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their fellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion more self-sacrificing? {77} Impossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime virtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.

Robert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching piety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made several excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and was dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his lonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would consecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his love of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that be was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those noble men who had brought him back to life.

------

From the Dublin Review

Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green &
Co.]

It has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is destined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher order of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing out of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable observers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied theories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes the proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge which have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude of instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting theories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed and far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected phenomena. The influence of such a spirit--long felt in the less complicated sciences--is now, even in England, beginning to act on those which are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away during which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate parts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had hitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in which they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a strange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to narrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day prevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural incapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he was, _ipso facto_, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast coming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and party cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of kings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of the actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the whole social organization. {78} History is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her office is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few superficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific induction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly aimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in such a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of writers as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly numerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more diversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were formerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.

It would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical way of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology. One of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by non-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the action of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state, and it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society that she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has been more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a kingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on the historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies the conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must we suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history of Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has effected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both Catholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as heretofore, in their objective aspect--with respect to their evidence and connections one with another--but more and more in their subjective aspect, as to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a great extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of dogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the tendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of investigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten tracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another. Whatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot be a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the cause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into the subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto but little attended to--will be brought forward from the most various sources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the defence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and represented.

Mr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the more advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the subjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they mutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by the other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the question of _evidence_, or to the arguments by which they were supported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of argument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he writes. The very idea of his work--a history of religious opinions--compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged evidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of the theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary one-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a corresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education, disposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us make it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole ground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the Protestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church, multiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus decided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not sufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable conclusion at all. {79} It is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift supposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he states with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given against some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An instance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage is taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:

"If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles
is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as
follows:

"Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an inspired
messenger announcing doctrines which could not otherwise be established.
They prove that he is neither an imposter nor an enthusiast; that his
teaching is neither the work of a designing intellect nor of an
overheated imagination. From the nature of the case, this could not be
proved in any other way. ... Miracles are, therefore, no more improbable
than a revelation; for a revelation would be ineffectual without
miracles. But, while this consideration destroys the common objection to
the gospel miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church
of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were designed to
introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The
latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object
that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking
place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of
faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and
impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and
commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which
would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial
and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized
by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and
conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character or the
worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial,
purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and
not unfrequently passing the border.

"Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favor of the
cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very
cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have
ceased, but that, _supposing_ them to have ceased, there is nothing
surprising or alarming in the fact. ... This is the full extent to which
they can legitimately be carried. As an _à priori_ proof, they are
far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony.
Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired
messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an
hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported
by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is
distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old
Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. ...
But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; and
appear _primâ facie_ absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance.
A sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more
difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test
for those who know the tone that has been long adopted, over an immense
part of Europe, toward such narratives as the deluge or the exploits of
Samson, the speaking ass or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great
proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of
those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them
some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for
treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly
no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible
neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if
the general promise that these gifts should be conferred may have been
intended to apply only to the apostles, it is at least as susceptible of
a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it
is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they
would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove
invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries laboring among barbarous and
unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind,
are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of
the religion they are called upon to embrace. .... To say that these
miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very
question at issue."--Vol. i. pp. 173-177.

{80}

There is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our readers must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants; but it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the ordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers. In a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and sorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for quotation (Vol. i. pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the evidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to disbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the most extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the time when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful death, and the accused were, for the most part, miserable beings whose destruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no sinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent reasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and deliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must have known the truth or falsehood of what was alleged. _The evidence is essentially cumulative._ Some cases, it is added, may be explained by monomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others by optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange statements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he confesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic explanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.

And now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the following passage something worthy of being dwelt on:

"The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been
one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary
influence than the mediaeval conception of the Virgin. For the first time
woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness
was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or
toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of
sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new
sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity
had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of
female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character
was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a
harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of
gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilizations of the
past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has
left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands
and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their
character into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of
Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the
world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render
themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor, in the
chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of
tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other
ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered
around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our
civilization,"--Vol. i. pp. 234-235.

"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price, of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr. Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations, it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which makes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who criticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does. {81} In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could hear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of glory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the whole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the following words as from St. Jerome: "Ergo cineres suos amant animae martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives the extraordinary reference, "Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13." These words indeed occur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St. Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from Vigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues, in reply to the idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin being regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension, those Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the most strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her anything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with his Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance of Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the Roman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, "is used in the diocese of Tarbes." He need not have gone to an obscure provincial ritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic theologian who denies it; and the most used, and best known of our modern theological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone, De Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material fire "still lingers," he tells us, "in the Roman Catholic manuals for the poor." If by this he meant that it does not remain also among theologians, this is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, "sententia communiter reccpta." (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)

In the latter part of his chapter "on the Developments of Rationalism," Mr. Lecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material character of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion, that the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire became, he says, the foundation of all opinion that the soul is of a material nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Anima, c. viii. This assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. It nowhere appears that this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from making this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his argument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue from the materiality of the fire at all. {82} What he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives, and Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom the tongue or Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the "ignis" merely in an incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to found his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible of "fovela" or of "passio" must be corporeal. It is, of course, quite conceivable that a writer, who believed the soul to be of a material nature, might argue from the commonly received opinion of a material fire; but the origin of this opinion was in fact quite different. Some of those who held it even believed the "fire" of hell to be metaphorical. But before the advent of Christianity the minds of the people had been constantly and persistently directed to the sensible and the material; from the ranks of the people Christianity was recruited; and it is not wonderful if somewhat of their former habits of thought clung to those who were converted. It was only by degrees, and after a patient and silent opposition to prevailing habits of thought, that Christianity succeeded in spiritualizing religious conceptions; and the time which elapsed before this had been effected--a period of more than three hundred years--was one of no little confusion in this regard. But no one seems to have been led into the error of supposing the human soul to be material by the notion of a material fire. Some believed this to be the case because they could not see how it could possibly be otherwise; they were unable to rise to the idea of a spirit, properly so called; they could not conceive anything to be real, and not material. That this was the case, in particular, with Tertullian, cannot be doubted, whether we consider his way of speaking in the whole book _De Anienâ_, in the book _Adv. Praxeam_, c. xi., and in the _De Carne Christi_, c. xi., or the pre-eminently sensuous and realistic character of his mind. The Platonic philosophy was another foundation of this opinion respecting the human soul. Some writers who were especially attached to Platonism, as Origen, explained the Platonic doctrine of emanation as meaning that God alone is a pure Spirit, all beings proceeding from God having a trace of materiality greater or less as they are more or less removed from him. They therefore believed all created spirits to be in some sense material; and forms of expression which may seem properly to belong to this opinion remained, as is often the case, long after the opinion itself had vanished. But the source of the whole error was, as is evident, the materialized method of conception of pre-Christian times.

But Mr. Lecky goes much further than this. He tells us that this opinion of the materiality of the human soul--which, if we except at most two or three writers, had certainly died out in the sixth, if not in the fifth century--was the dominant opinion in the middle ages:

"Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual
conception was materialized, and what at an earlier and a later period
was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded
as the language of fact. The realizations of the people were all derived
from paintings, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and
all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. The angel in the
last judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal
balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the
equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising
out of the mouth of the corpse. But, above all, the doctrine of purgatory
arrested and enchained the imagination. ... Men who believed in a
physical soul readily believed in a physical punishment, men who
materialized their view of the punishment, materialized their view of the
sufferers.

"We find, however," he proceeds, "some time before the reformation,
evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a
purer conception of the soul." And he goes on to attribute this to "the
pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;" and to
ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy "the final downfall of the
materialistic hypothesis." Vol. i. pp. 373-378.

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It is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by evidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses _De Animâ_, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions _De Animâ_ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the scholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the very earliest treatises _De Angelis_, will see that, far from there being merely "a few writers" who maintained the spirituality of the soul, the notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic philosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of the soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense that intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material and the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics explained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us a test-question on this subject. _Did_ their "intense realization" of this doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly not. On the contrary; _because_ all thoroughly realized the spirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of its punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as to its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.

[Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65,
cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course,
drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the
spirituality of the soul.]

Nor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a spiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy eminently favored the "_multiplicatio entium sine necessitate_," than which nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded the doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality of the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation, and it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error which they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and sentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.

[Footnote 14: See St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]

It is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of course) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky argues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus, in a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:

"The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to
the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a
conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur
the lines:--

"Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,
Quae per aurem concepisti,
Gabriele nuntio."

And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris,
the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a
dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which
ray an infant Christ is descending."--Langlois, _Peinture sur
Verre_, p. 157.

And our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation last given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many curious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the history of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing the history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent spiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material images. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among Protestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old Testament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no inclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the ignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind represent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material image; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in public worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of, of correcting an untruthful imagination.

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We have no hesitation in saying that there is far more unconscious anthropomorphism among the Protestant than among the Catholic poor. The doctrines of revelation make known a world akin to, yet not the same as, this; they tell of an order of things itself unseen, but possessing counterparts and shadows here. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there exists a constant tendency to forget that these are but imperfect types and symbols, and to remodel the truths of faith into conformity with what we see around us. To correct this tendency is one of the functions of the science of theology; and the conclusions of theology, infiltrating among the people, keep them from sinking into earthly and anthropomorphic views of religion, these conclusions being communicated by the ordinary resources in the hands of the church, which, certainly, are far more efficacious in the Catholic than in the Protestant system. Indeed, of all the reproaches which have been directed against the theology of the middle ages, that of being in its spirit gross and material is one of the most unfounded and the most unjust. With far greater truth might such a reproach be directed against the Protestant theology of the last three centuries. In the middle ages, theology had a code and a standard of her own; she was the queen of the sciences; she regulated and moulded the ideas of the time. Now, condemned to occupy a subordinate position, she is content to take her ideas from those current in the world, and to use her terms, not in their proper and theological signification, but in the meanings derived from the manner of their present use in physical science and in common life. An example of this occurs in the case of the word _person_, the loss of the theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not obliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of the people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized theological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more feeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more corrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common Protestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. The great Catholic doctrine which places the essence of the beatitude of man, not in a prolongation and refinement of the pleasures of this world, not even in the sight of Christ's humanity, but in that vision of God as God which is emphatically called beatific, had almost faded out of sight. They look forward to an earthly millennium, which is little better than a glorification of commerce, material prosperity, and natural virtue, to be succeeded by a heaven of which the joys very much resemble those which some Catholic theologians with Suarez [Footnote 15] assign to infants who die without baptism. But against the reproach of lowness and materialism of conception being ever directed against the theologians of mediaeval times, the doctrine of the beatific vision, which they so fully and so beautifully evolved, stands a perpetual protest. For in what was this coarseness and lowness of thought more likely to appear, than in their conception of the greatest happiness of man? Or who were more likely to teach what is far removed from vulgar and worldly conceptions than men who placed the sum of all happiness in the vision and fruition of divine essence, which, according to them, could be seen by no corporal eye, [Footnote 16] and in which was, they said, that joy which eye had not seen nor ear heard, neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive? The whole of the scholastic treatise _De Deo Uno_ is but another magnificent protest against such an accusation. {85} The heresy of Gilbert Porretanus [Footnote 17] would never be condemned by the Protestants of the present day; nor has ever the conception of the divine simplicity in perfection been so fully realized as it was by those much-abused theologians. The mediatorship of our blessed Lord is now commonly apprehended by Protestants in a manner which makes a real difference of character between the father and son; but no one who knows anything of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation can imagine that these theologians would have tolerated for a moment a notion so frightfully heretical. With respect to psychology, the scholastic age saw the death of Traducianism; and anyone who has attended to the earlier scholastic opinions respecting the manner in which spirits suffer in the penal fire, will have seen that they are of a more "spiritual" tendency than those of most Protestant theologians. [Footnote 18]

[Footnote 15: De Peccato Originall.]

[Footnote 16: St. Thomas, in ima & q.12, a. 3; and other older authors
in Sent. i. 1, d.1, & l. 4, d.49]

[Footnote 17: Lombardus in Sent. i. 1, d.33, 34; and the commentators
_ad loc_.]

[Footnote 18: Sensation and "sensitive imagination" appeared to the
scholastic to be of sole material a character, that they would not
admit that these and other sensitive affections can exist in a separate
spirit; and, consequently, those theologians who explain the punishment
of separate spirits by the analogy of the soul and body, were compelled
to admit that the pain must be different in kind from the "passio
conjuncti."]

Mr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and material, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception in the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet, however, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of Averrhoes "a few writers" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of conceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period, before his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be felt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the twelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the period preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great depression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of what may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period is to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it is very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical letters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of adoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a low ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth century on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do not reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits considerable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that period as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning and acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was necessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as formerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a degraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the pre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the fathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory the Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself. And, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded to a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no disquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says:

"We do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father.
[Footnote 19] Scenes, indeed, in which he acted were frequently depicted,
but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the
Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to him in
the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the
monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning
Adam and Eve to labor, ... or giving the law to Moses. With the exception
of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled
with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator.
{86}
At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the
Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter,
would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject, and
Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influence over Christian art,
and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old
Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that
these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and the twelfth
centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it
becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to
materialize every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of
everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain
of the senses."--(Vol. i. pp. 224-5.)

[Footnote 19: We cannot ourselves, as Catholics, admit that there is
necessarily the smallest impropriety or inexpediency in picture or
sculptured representations of God the Father (See Denzinger, n. 1182
and 1482); yet we may fairly argue that the absence of such, at the
period in question, disproves Mr. Lecky's assertion that the dominant
tendency of that period was anthropomorphous.]

The most celebrated of the theologians of the middle ages is undoubtedly St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, however, comes in for an extra share of misrepresentation. At p. 72, vol. ii., we read of him, that he was one of the ablest writers of the fourteenth century--he died in the thirteenth-- and that "he assures us that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of the devil, that he can transport men at his pleasure through the air," and that "omnes angeli, boni, et mali, ex naturali virtute habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra." Now all this is precisely what St. Thomas denies. In the first place, anyone would imagine from the manner in which our author writes, that the great mediaeval theologian imagined that, in the ordinary course of things, diseases and tempests are produced by Satanic agency. St. Thomas never taught any such thing, but over and over again refers both the one and the other to natural causes. [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: V.g., Comm. in Ps. xvii., and in Arist. Meteor. i. 2,
lect xvi.; cf. Summa, i. 2, q. 50, a. 2.]

Mr. Lecky ought to have written "may be;" but the meaning of the words would have been very different, and their point would have been taken away. Secondly, while St. Thomas teaches, in accordance with Holy Writ, that the demons can exercise power over material things, he also teaches that they cannot directly change the qualities of things, nor produce any preternatural change except local motion: nor that at their pleasure; for it is a principle with him that God does not permit them to do all that which they have _per se_ the power of doing. [Footnote 21]