Chapter VIII (1)

Those whom Hullin named met in the hut attached to the saw-mill around the immense chimney. A sober sort of merriment seemed to play about the face of more than one.

"For twenty years I have heard people talking of these Russians and Austrians and Cossacks," said old Materne, smiling, "and I shall not be sorry to see one at the muzzle of my rifle."

"Yes," answered Labarbe; "we shall see enough of them at last, and the little children of to-day will have many a tale to tell of their fathers and their grandsires. And how the old women of fifty years hence will chatter of it at evening around the winter fire!"

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"Comrades," cried Hullin, "you know the country--you know our mountains from Thann to Wissembourg. You know that two grand roads--the imperial roads--traverse Alsace and the Vosges. Both starting from Bâle, one runs along the Rhine to Strasbourg, and enters Lorraine by Saverne. Huningue, Neuf-Brisach, Strasbourg, and Phalsbourg defend it. The other turns to the left to Schlestadt. Leaving Schlestadt, it enters the mountains, and passes on to Saint-Dié, Raon-l'Etape, Baccarat, and Lunéville. The enemy would like to force the passage of these two roads, as they are the best for cavalry, artillery, and wagons; but, as they are well defended, we need not trouble our about them. If the allies lay siege to the cities upon them, the campaign will be dragged out to a great length, and we shall have nothing to fear; but this is not probable. After having summoned Huningue to surrender, and Belfort, Schlestadt, Strasbourg, and Phalsbourg, on this side of the Vosges, and Bitche, Lutzelstein, and Sarrebrück, on the other, they will fall upon us. Now, listen. Between Phalsbourg and Saint-Dié there are several defiles practicable for infantry, but only one for cannon, that is, the road from Strasbourg to Raon-les-Leaux, by Urmatt, Mutzig, Lutzelhouse, Phramond, and Grandfontaine. Once masters of this road, the allies can debouch in Lorraine. This road passes us at Donon, two leagues hence, to our right. The first thing to be done is, to establish ourselves upon it at the place most favorable for defence--that is, upon the plateau on the mountain; to break down the bridges, and throw heavy abatis across it. A few hundred large trees, with their branches, will do the work, and under their cover we can watch the approach of the foe. All this, comrades, must be done by to-morrow night, or by the day after, at the latest. But it is not enough to occupy a position and put it in a good state of defence. We must see that the enemy cannot turn it."

"That is just what I was thinking," said old Materne. "Once in the valley of the Bruche, and the Germans can bring their infantry to the hills of Haslach, and turn our left; and there is nothing to hinder their trying the same movement upon our right, if they gain Raon-l'Etape."

"Yes; but to prevent their doing either, we have only to occupy the defiles of the Zorn and of the Sarre on our left, and that of Blanru on our right. We must defend a defile by holding the heights, and, for that purpose, Piorette will place himself, with a hundred men, on the side of Raon-les-Leaux; Jerome, on Grosmann, with the same number, to close the valley of the Sarre; and Labarbe, at the head of the remain on the mountain, will overlook the hills of Haslach. You will choose your men from those belonging to the villages nearest your stations. The women must not have far to come to bring provisions, and the wounded will be nearer home. The chiefs of each position will send me a report each day, by a messenger, on foot, to Donon, where will be our headquarters. We will organize a reserve also; but it will be time enough to see to that when our positions are taken, and no surprise from the enemy is to be feared."

"And I," cried Marc-Dives, "am I to have nothing to do? Am I to sit with folded arms while all the rest are fighting?"

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"You will superintend the transporting of our munitions. No one among us understands keeping powder as you do--preserving it from fire and damp--or casting bullets and making cartridges."

"That is a woman's work," cried the smuggler. "Hexe-Baizel can do it as well as I. Am I not to fire a shot?"

"Rest easy, Marc," replied Hullin, laughing; "you will find plenty of chances. In the first place, Falkenstein is the centre of our line--our arsenal and point of retreat, in case of misfortune. The enemy will know by his scouts that our wagons start from there, and will probably try to intercept them. Shots and bayonet-thrusts will not be wanting. Besides, we cannot confide the secret of your cave to the first comer. However, if you insist--"

"No," said the smuggler, whom Hullin's' reflections upon the cave touched at once. "No; all things well considered, I believe you are right, Jean-Claude. I will defend Falkenstein."

"Well, then, comrades," cried brave Jean-Claude, "we will warm our hearts with a few glasses of wine. It is now ten o'clock. Let each one return to his village, and see to the provisions. To-morrow morning, at the latest, the defiles must be occupied."

They left the hut together, and Hullin, in the presence of all assembled, named Labarbe, Jerome, and Piorette chiefs of the defiles; then he ordered those who came from the Sarre to meet, as soon as possible, near the farm of Bois-de-Chênes, with axes, picks, and muskets.

"We will start at two," said he, "and encamp on Donon, across the road. To-morrow, at daybreak, we will begin our abatis."

He kept old Materne, and his two sons, Frantz and Kasper, by him, telling them that the battle would surely begin on Donon, and sharp-shooters would be needed there. Mother Lefevre never seemed so happy. She mounted her wagon, and whispered, as she embraced Louise:

"All goes well. Jean-Claude is a man. He astonishes me, who have known him forty years. Jean-Claude," she cried, "breakfast is waiting, and a few old bottles which the Austrians will not drink."

"Good Catherine, I am coming."

But as he struck the horses with the whip, and as the mountaineers had just begun to scatter on their way to their villages, they saw, on the road to Trois-Fontaines, a tall, thin man, mounted upon a red mare; his hare-skin cap, with a wide peak, pulled well down upon his head. A great shepherd-dog, with long black hair, bounded beside him; and the skirts of his huge overcoat floated like wings behind him.

"It is Dr. Lorquin, from the plain," exclaimed Catherine; "he who at the poor for nothing; and that is his dog Pluto with him."

It was indeed he, who rushed among the crowd, shouting:

"Halt! stop! Halt, I say!"

His ruddy face, large, quick eyes, beard of a reddish-brown, broad, square shoulders, tall horse, and dog, in a moment appeared at the foot of the mountain. Gasping for breath, he shouted, in his excitement:

"Ah the villains! They wanted to begin the campaign without me! They shall pay for it!"

And, striking a little box he carried at his crupper, he continued:

"Wait awhile, my fine fellows, wait awhile! I have some things here you'll want by and by; little knives and great ones--round and pointed ones--to cut out the bullets and canister your friends yonder will treat you to."

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So saying, he burst into a gruff peal of laughter, while the flesh of his hearers crept. After this agreeable pleasantry, Dr. Lorquin said gravely:

"Hullin, your ears should be cut off! When the country was to be defended, was I to be forgotten? It seems to me that a surgeon might be useful here, although may God send you no need of one!"

"Pardon me, doctor; it was my fault," replied Hullin, pressing his hand. "For the last week I have had so many things to think of that some escaped me, in spite of myself. But a man like you need not be called upon by me to do his duty."

The doctor softened.

"It is all well and good," he cried; "but by your fault I am here late. But where is your general? I will complain to him."

"I am general."

"Indeed!"

"And I appoint you surgeon-in-chief."

"Surgeon-in-chief of the partisans of the Vosges. Very good, Jean-Claude." And, approaching the wagon in which Catherine was seated, the doctor told her that he relied upon her to organize the hospital department.

"Very well," she answered; "forward. You dine with us, doctor."

The wagon started, and all the way the brave doctor laughingly told Catherine how the news of the rising reached him; how his old house-keeper Marie was wild with grief, and tried to keep him from going to be massacred by the Kaiserliks; the different episodes of his journey from Quibolo to the village of Charmes. Hullin and Materne and his sons marched a few paces in the rear, their rifles on their shoulders; and thus they reached the farm of Bois-de-Chênes.

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Catholicity And Pantheism.

Number One.

Introductory.

Man is made for truth. The ray of intelligence beaming from his countenance and kindling his looks with life marks his superiority over all inferior creation, and loudly proclaims this fact. Intelligence must have an object; and what can this object be but truth? As a necessary consequence from this fact, it follows that error can be nothing else than fragments of truth; ill-assorted, improperly joined together. Error does not consist in what logicians call simple ideas, or self-evident propositions; but in complex ideas, the result of a long chain of syllogisms. Another consequence, closely allied to the first, is, that the greater the error, the more universal and more widely spread, the more particular truths it must contain. Or, if it does not contain a greater number of partial truths, it must have the power of apparently satisfying a real and prevalent tendency of our mind, otherwise it would never exert dominion over the intelligence; or else it must possess the secret of awakening and alluring a true and imperative aspiration of our nature.

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It is through these views that we have been enabled to explain to ourselves the prevalence of Pantheism. The simple utterance of the word Pantheism, the Deity of everything, would seem to carry its refutation with it, so plain and evident is its falsehood, so glaring its absurdity.

Pantheism, however, has been the universal error in time and space. In India, Persia, China, Greece, Rome, Pantheism flourished; now under a religious, and then under a philosophical form. After the Christian era it was the religion or system of those who did not understand the Christian dogmas as taught by the church; and the fathers of the first centuries, in battling against Gnosticism, Eclecticism, and Neoplatonism, were struggling with this old error of the world--Pantheism. Depressed for awhile by the efforts of the doctors of the church, it arose with fiercer energy under the forms of all those heresies which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation of the Word.

In the middle ages there were many philosophers who held Pantheism; and in modern times, since the dawn of the Reformation, it has become the prevalent, the absorbing error of the world. Always the same as to substance, it assumes every variety of form: now you see it in a logical dress, as in the doctrine of the German school; again it takes a psychological garb, as in that of the French school with Cousin at its head; or it assumes a social and political form, as in the Pantheism of Fourier, Leroux, Saint Simon, and all the progressists of every color or shade; and finally, it puts on a ghostly shroud, as taught by the American spiritualists. Under whatever garb it may appear, it penetrates and fills all, and pretends to explain all. It penetrates philosophy, natural science, history, literature, the fine arts, the family, society and the body politic, and religion. It holds its sway over all, and exhibits itself as having the secret of good and evil. How is this to be explained? If the falsehood of Pantheism be so evident, whence is it that it is the universal error in time and space, and has made such ravages in man's intelligence? The greater its falsehood, the more inexplicable becomes its prevalence. Has the nature of man changed? Has his intelligence lost its object? It is true, man's intelligence is not perfect. Since the fall it is weakened and obscured, but doubtless it has not ceased and could not cease to be intelligence; truth has not ceased to be its natural essential object. How, then, are we to explain the prevalence of so mighty an error?

By the fact that it is a system which by its generality seems to satisfy a supreme tendency of our mind, and to appease one of the most imperative cravings of our souls. Man's intelligence has a natural tendency to synthesize, that is, to bring everything into unity. This tendency arises both from the essential oneness of the mind and from the nature of its object. The object of the mind is being or reality in some form or other. That which does exist cannot even be apprehended, and hence cannot be the object of the mind. To understand and to understand nothing is, at the same time, the affirmation and the negation of the understanding. {183} Now, if the object of the intelligence, in order to be known and understood by the said faculty, must represent itself under the form of being or reality, it is under this respect necessarily one. Under whatever form it may exhibit itself, under whatever quality it may be concealed, it must always be reality or being, and, as such, one. But if being, reality, or unity, taken in the abstract, was the sole object of the intelligence, there would be an end to all its movement or life. All science would be at an end, because science is a process, a movement; and movement is not possible where an abstraction is the sole object of the mind. Being and unity, then, abstractly considered, would be the eternal stupor of the mind. This cannot be so, however. Intelligence is action, life, movement. Now, all this implies multiplicity; hence the object of the intelligence must also be multiple. But does not this second condition also destroy the former, which requires that the object of the intelligence should be one? Here reason finds a necessary, though, as we shall see, only an apparent contradiction, both in the logical as well as ontological order. In the logical order, because the intelligence seems to require unity and multiplicity as the conditions without which its action becomes impossible. In the ontological order, or the order of reality, because if the object is not at the same time one and multiple, how can those conditions of the mind be satisfied?

The intelligence, then, in order to live, must be able to travel from unity to multiplicity in an ascending or descending process, and to do so, not arbitrarily, but for reasons resting on reality.

In this lies the life of the intelligence; science is nothing but this synthetical and analytical movement. Let the mind stop at analysis or multiplicity, and you will give it an agglomeration of facts of which it can neither see the reason nor the link which connects them: and hence you place it in unnatural bonds, which, sooner or later, it will break, it matters not whether by a sophistical or a dialectic process. On the other hand, let it stop at unity, and you condemn it to stupor and death.

The foregoing ideas will explain the fact how a particular error will either have a very short existence or fall into the universal error of Pantheism. For in this, so far as we can see, lies the reason of the universal dominion of Pantheism. Because it proposes to explain the whole question of human knowledge, it takes it up in all its universality, and the solution which it sets forth has all the appearance of satisfying the most imperative tendency of our mind. To be enabled to explain the numberless multiplicity of realities, no matter how, and, at the same time, to bring them into a compact and perfect whole, strikes to the quick the very essence of man's intelligence and allures it with its charms. If this be not the main reason of the prevalence of Pantheism, we acknowledge we do not understand how such a mighty error could ever take possession of man's mind; we are tempted to say that human understanding was made for falsehood, which is to deny the very notion of intelligence.

What Pantheism proposes to do for the mind it also promises to accomplish for the soul.

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There is, in man's heart or soul, impressed in indelible characters, a tendency after the infinite, a craving almost infinite in its energy, such is the violence with which it impels the soul to seek and yearn after its object. To prove such a tendency were useless. That void, that feeling of satiety and sadness, which overwhelms the soul, even after the enjoyment of the most exquisite pleasure, either sensible or sentimental; the phenomenon of solitaries in all times and countries; the very fact of the existence of religion in all ages and among all peoples; the enthusiasm, the recklessness and barbarity which characterize the wars undertaken for religion's sake; the love of the marvellous and the mysterious exhibited by the multitude; that sense of terror and reverence, that feeling of our own nothingness, which steals into our souls in contemplating the wide ocean in a still or stormy night, or in contemplating a wilderness, a mountain, or a mighty chasm, all are evident proofs of that imperious, delicious, violent craving of our souls after the infinite. How otherwise explain all this? Why do we feel a void, a sadness, a kind of pain, after having enjoyed the most stirring delights? Because the infinite is the weight of the soul--the centre of gravity of the heart--because created pleasures, however delightful or exquisite, being finite, can never quiet that craving, can never fill up that chasm placed between us and God.

The pretended sages of mankind have never been able to exterminate religion, because they could never root out of the soul of man that tendency. I say pretended sages, because all real geniuses have, with very few exceptions, been religious; for in them that tendency is more keenly and more imperiously felt.

This is the second reason of the prevalence of Pantheism. To promise the actual and immediate possession of the infinite, nay, the transformation into the infinite, is to entice the very best of human aspirations, is to touch the deepest and most sensitive chord of the human heart.

Both these reasons we have drawn _a priori_; we might now prove, _a posteriori_, from history, how every particular error has either fallen into Pantheism or disappeared altogether. But since this would carry us too far, we will exemplify it by one error--Protestantism.

The essence of Protestantism lies in emancipating human reason from dependence on the reason of God. It is true that at its dawn it was not proclaimed in this naked form, nor is it thus announced at the present time; but its very essence lies in that. For if human reason be made to judge objects which God's reason alone can comprehend, man is literally emancipated from the reason of God.

What does this supreme principle of Protestantism mean, that every individual must, by reading the Bible, find for himself what he has to believe?

Are the truths written in the Bible intelligible or superintelligible; that is, endowed with evidence immediate or mediate, or are they mysteries?

If they be purely intelligible, endowed with evidence mediate or immediate, there is no possible need of the Bible, for, in that case, reason could find them by itself. If they be mysteries, how can reason, unaided by any higher power, find them out? It will not do to say, They are written in the Bible, and reason has merely to apprehend them. Suppose a dispute should arise as to the right meaning of the Bible; who is to decide the dispute? Reason? Then reason must grasp and comprehend mysteries in order to decide the dispute. For none can be judge unless he is qualified thoroughly to understand the matter of the dispute. From this it is evident that to make reason judge of the faith is to make it judge of the mysteries of the infinite, and, therefore, is to emancipate the reason of man from subjection to the reason of God. Hence, Protestantism was rightly called a masked rationalism.

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It soon threw off the mask. The human mind saw that it can never be emancipated from the reason of God unless it is supposed to be independent, and it could never be supposed independent unless it was supposed equal to the reason of the infinite.

The result of all this is necessarily Pantheism. And into Pantheism Protestants soon fell, especially the Germans, who never shrink from any consequence if logically deduced from their premises. Such was the latent reasoning of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and others, in building up their form of Pantheism.

To understand is to master an object, to mould it so as to fit our intelligence. We can understand the infinite, we can master it. Therefore, we are at least equal to the infinite, 'we are ourselves the infinite,' we ourselves lay it down by a logical process. Hence the astounding proposal which Fichte made to his disciples, that the next day he would proceed to create God, was nothing else but the echo and logical consequence of the cry raised by the unfrocked monk of Wittenberg, proclaiming the independence of reason from the shackles of all authority.

On the other hand, the denial of human liberty and the absolute predestination of the Calvinists give the same result. If we are not free agents, if God can do what he lists with us, we are no longer agents in the strictest and truest sense of the word. Now, every substance is an act, a _monos_, a force; if, then, we are not agents, we are not substances, and hence we become qualities, phenomena of the infinite substance. All this as regards doctrine. But Protestantism ran into Pantheism by another road almost as soon as it arose, for the action of the feelings is swifter and more rapid than logic. Protestantism being rationalism in doctrine is necessarily naturalism with regard to the soul; and by presenting to the soul only nature, its authors left the craving after the supernatural and the infinite thirsty and bleeding. What was the consequence? Many Protestant sects fell into mysticism, which is but a sentimental Pantheism, a species of interior theurgy. History is too well known to render necessary any proof of these assertions. These are the consequences at which active minds must arrive when, in their researches, they do not meet with truth.

As to those minds which are not active, or not persevering in their inquiries, they fall into indifference, which is but a scepticism of the soul, as doubt is the scepticism of the mind.

Now, the question arises, What is the best method of refuting Pantheism? Many have been the refutations of Pantheism, but they are limited to pointing out the absurd consequences following from it, which consequences, summed up, amount to this: that Pantheism destroys and makes void the principle of contradiction in all the orders to which it may be applied; that is to say, it makes void that principle in the ontological order or order of realities, in the logical order, etc.

But, notwithstanding the truth and force of this refutation, we do not know that it has converted a single Pantheist. From the fact that Pantheism is more prevalent at the present time than ever it was, we should conclude that it has not. We say this with all the respect and deference due to those who have exerted their talents in the said arena. {186} For we know that some of the noblest intellects have brought their energy to bear against this mighty error. But, if we are allowed to express our opinion, we say that all former refutations have been void of effect for lack of completeness, and a determination on the part of their authors to limit themselves to the abstract order, without descending to particulars, and to the order of realities. The result was, that while Pantheism, without any dread of consequences, applied its principles to all orders of human knowledge, and to all particular questions arrayed under each order, and was, as it were, a living, quickening system--false, indeed, in the premises, but logical and satisfactory in the consequences resulting from those premises--the refutations of it, confined within the limits of logic, were a mere abstraction; true, indeed, and perfectly satisfactory to any one who could apply the refutations to all the orders of human knowledge, but wholly deficient for those who are not able to make the application. We think, therefore, that a refutation of Pantheism should be conducted on the following principles:

1st. To admit all the problems which Pantheism raises, in all the generality of their bearing.

2d. To examine whether the solution which Pantheistic principles afford not only solves the problem, but even maintains it.

3d. If it is found that the Pantheistic solution destroys the very problem it raises, to oppose to it the true solution.

These are the only true principles, as far as we can see, which will render a refutation of Pantheism efficient. For, in this case, you have, in the first place, a common ground to stand upon, that is, the admission of the same problems; in the second place, if you can prove that the Pantheistic solution of the problems destroys them, instead of solving them, it will be readily granted by the Pantheist for the sake of the problems themselves. When you have done all this, you do not leave the mind in doubt and perplexity, but you present to it the true solution, and it will then be ready to embrace it.

A refutation conducted upon those principles we have attempted in the articles we now publish.

We take Pantheism in all its universality and apparent grandeur; we accept all its problems; we examine them one by one, and we show that the Pantheistic solution, far from resolving the problems, destroys them; and we substitute the true solution. In a word, we compare Pantheism with Catholicity; that is, the universality of error with the universality of truth--the whole system of falsehood with the whole system of truth. We make them stand face to face, and we endeavor to exhibit them so plainly that the brightness and splendor of the one may thoroughly extinguish the phosphoric light of the other. We show the Pantheist that, if he ever wants a solution of _his_ problems, he must accept Catholicity, or proclaim the death of his intelligence.

To do this it will be necessary for us to compare Pantheism and Catholicity in all orders; in the logical order, in the ontological order or the order of reality; and under this order we must compare them in the moral, social, political, and aesthetic orders. The truth of the one or the other will appear by the comparison.

It is true we undertake a great task; great especially as regards the positive part of the refutation. For it embraces the whole of theology; not only with relation to what is commonly regarded as its object, but in the sense of its being the supreme and general science, the queen of all sciences, the universal metaphysic in all possible orders. {187} We own that we have felt the difficulty of such a task, and many times have we abandoned it as being far above our strength. But a lingering desire has made us return to the work. We have said to ourselves: Complete success and perfection are beyond our hope, but we can at least make the attempt; for, in matters of this kind, we think it well to reverse the wise maxim of the Lambeth prelates, and rather attempt too much than do too little.

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Friendships.

The glowing wreaths that 'mid curled locks repose,
Through night of pleasure worn,
Myrtle and jasmine, orange-flower and rose,
Fall shrivelled by the morn.

The simple immortelles for loved ones twined--
With many a tear and sigh,
Hung round the cross--the rain-compelling wind
And winter snows defy.

Thus gilded friendships, knit by pleasure brief,
Fade when joy's scenes have passed;
But duller links, annealed by burning grief,
Through checkered years shall last.

_The Lamp._

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Translated From Le Correspondant.

Discourse by the Rev. Père Hyacinthe. [Footnote 65]

[Footnote 65: Delivered on the occasion of a profession of
Catholic faith and the first communion of an American
Protestant lady, in the chapel of the convent of "Les Dames
de l'Assomption," at Paris, July 14th, 1868]

"Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo,"
"I will sing eternally the mercies of the Lord."
--_Psalms_.

Madam and my sister in Jesus Christ:

It is you who have given me the text and the subject of this exhortation. It is you who, overflowing with gratitude toward him who has called you from darkness to his admirable light, have asked me to forget this audience and to think only of you and of God, and to speak only of his loving-kindness which has been manifested in every event of your life. I will obey you; and, taking this life in its three divisions which mark time, I will endeavor to speak in simple truth, and the pious confidence of an overflowing heart, of the mercies of God over your past, your present, and your future career.

The history of Christian souls is the most marvellous and yet the most hidden of all histories. The more exterior events which agitate society find only in these interior histories their true sense and their highest reason; and when we shall read these entire in the book of life, and by the light of eternity, we will find therein the unanswerable justification of the providence of God over human affairs, and the true titles of the nobility of mankind in the blood and by the grace of Christ. "We will sing eternally the mercies of the Lord!"

I.

And first, madam, what were these mercies of your past life? Or, to be better understood, what were you? What have you been until now? I acknowledge some embarrassment in giving an answer to my own question. Although born in the bosom of heresy, you were not a heretic. No, by the grace of God you were not a heretic; and nothing shall force me to give you this cruel name--justly cruel--against which cries out all the knowledge I have of your past. One of the doctors--the most exact and the most severe--of Christian antiquity, Saint Augustine, refuses in several of his writings to class among heretics those who, born outside the visible communion of the Catholic Church, have kept in their hearts the sincere love of truth, and are disposed to follow it in all its manifestations and in all its requirements. [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: See particularly the letter xliii. of the
edition of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur: "Qui sententiam
suam, quamvis falsam atque perversam, nulla pertinaci
animositate defendunt, praesertim quam non audacia
praesumptionis suae pepererunt, sed a seductis atque in
errorem lapsis parentibus acceperunt, quaerunt autem cauta
sollicitudine veritatem, corrigi parati, cum invenerint;
_nequaquam sunt inter haereticos deputandi_."]

That which makes heresy is the spirit of pride, of revolt, and of schism, which burst forth in heaven when Satan, separating the angels of light, attempted to remodel, according to his liking, the theology of eternity, and reform the work of God in the world; it is that breath blown from the nostrils of the archangel in wrath to stir up about him his propagandists throughout time. Gentle and humble of heart, you have never breathed that breath. You are not, then, a heretic.

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But then, what were you? One day I interrogated one of your most distinguished fellow-countrymen, Protestant by birth, now a Catholic and a priest, and in the outburst of that pious curiosity which is awakened by the history of souls I asked him this same question: "What were you?"

He answered me thus: "I did not belong to any Protestant communion; I had been baptized in the church of my parents, but I had never professed their faith." "You were, then, a rationalist?" said I. "No," responded he smilingly; "we of the United States know nothing of that mental malady of the Europeans." I blushed and was silent an instant, then pressed him to explain further, when he gave me this noble reply: "I was a natural man, seeking the truth with my whole intelligence and heart."

Well, madam, you were like that: you also--a noble, womanly nature--seeking the truth in love, and love in truth. But you were more: you were a Christian; ay, a Catholic.

This is a fundamental distinction without which it becomes impossible to be just toward communions separated from the Catholic Church, and toward the souls which compose them. All religious schisms contain within their bosom two elements entirely contrary: the negative element, which makes it a schism and often a heresy; and the positive element, which preserves for it a portion more or less great of its ancient heritage of Christianity. Not only distinct, but hostile, these two elements are nevertheless brought together in constant combat; the darkness and the light--life and death--meet without mingling, or without either being vanquished; and then results what I shall call the profound mystery of the life of error. As for myself, I do not give to error that undeserved honor to suppose that it can live of its own life, breathe of its own breath, or nourish of its own substance souls who are not without virtue, and peoples who are not without greatness.

Madam, Protestantism, as Protestantism, is that negative element which you have repudiated, and which with the Catholic Church you have condemned and abjured. But the spirit of Protestantism has not been alone in your religious life: by the side of its negations there were its affirmations, and, like savory fruit confined within its bitter husk, you were in possession of Christianity from your infancy.

Before coming to us, you were a Christian by baptism, validly received, and when the hand of your minister poured the water upon your forehead with the words of eternal life, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," it was Jesus Christ himself that baptized you. "Of little importance is the hand," writes Saint Augustine, "whether it be that of Peter or that of Paul: it is Christ that baptizes."

It was Christ who affianced you, who received your plighted faith and pledged you his. The depths of your moral being--that sacred part which in noble souls feels instinctively a repugnance to error--the Word consecrated to himself, and like a chaste virgin he reserved it for the skies! "_Virginem_ castam exhibere Christo." [Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: 2 Corinthians xi. 2.]

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Christian by baptism, you were also one by the gospel. The Bible was the book of your infancy; and therein you have lisped at once the secrets of this divine faith, which is of all time because it comes from eternity, and the accents of that Anglo-Saxon tongue which is of all lands because it prevails over the globe in civilizing it. Without doubt the principle of private judgment, so-called--the principle under which you have formerly lived--is the source of numberless errors; but again, let us render thanks to God, besides the Protestant principle, with the Protestants themselves there is the Christian principle. Besides private judgment, there is the action of that supernatural grace received in baptism, and the mysterious sense, of which Saint Paul speaks, "We have the mind of Christ," [Footnote 68] and of which Saint John said, "Ye have unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." [Footnote 69] When we have read together that Scripture which has separated our ancestors, I was agreeably surprised to find that we understood its every page in the same sense, and consequently in reading it alone, and out of the Church, you have not read it without the spirit of the Church.

[Footnote 68: "Nos autem sensum Christi habemus."
(i Cor. ii. 16.)]

[Footnote 69: "Sed vos unctionem habetis a Sancto, et nostis
omnia. ... Et non necesse habetis ut aliquis doceat vos: sed
sicut unctio ejus docet vos de omnibus, et verum est, et non
est mendacium." (i John ii. 20, 27.)]

Again, my child: with Baptism and the Holy Scriptures, with the sacrament and the book, you had prayer; that interior, invisible, ineffable, and withal common property; that language pre-eminently of the soul to God, and of God to the soul; that personal and direct communion of the humblest Christian with his Father in heaven.

In what, then, were you wanting? I remember what you once said to me when you were still a Protestant: "You, monk as you are, and I, Puritan that I am, are, nevertheless, of the same blood royal." You spoke truly, not because you were Puritan, but because you were Christian: we were of the same blood, both royal and divine. You were a child of the family like myself; but your cradle was carried away in a night of storm by imprudent hands from the paternal mansion--that mansion of which your eyes could no longer retain the image, of which your lips knew not the name, but which you reclaimed by your tears, by your cries, and by all the emotions of your soul. What you needed, my daughter, was to find it again, to weep upon its threshold, to embrace its old walls, and to dwell therein for ever.

You found it at Rome, in the temple of Saint Peter, the vastest and the most splendid which man has ever built to his God; but vast and splendid above all to the eyes of faith, because it is to them the image of the universal brotherhood of the children of God upon the earth. "To gather together in one the children of God that were dispersed." [Footnote 70] Coming from the great dispersion of souls, which is the work of man in Protestantism, you contemplated at last their supreme unity, which is the work of God in Catholicity. Deeply impressed and suddenly moved, you looked about you--it is your own touching account that I repeat here--you looked about you for a priest of your own tongue; not to confess to, for you did not then believe in its necessity, but to whom you could unburden your soul, and to whom you could tell your joy at having found at last a hearthstone for the heart, a _home!_--word so dear and sacred to your race and more necessary in the religious than in the domestic life. "This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it." [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 70: "Ut filios Dei, qui erant dispersi,
congregaret in unum." (John xi. 52.)]

[Footnote 71: Psalm cxxxi. 14.]

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II.

I have tried, madam, to tell what was your past, and how the mercy of God prepared you in it by his far-reaching hand for the marvels of the present. What is now this marvel? It is the mystic marriage with Jesus Christ, by the communion with his real body and with his real blood, in the sacrament of his true church. Affianced of God in baptism, you become his spouse in the Eucharist. "Oh! blessed are you to have been called to the marriage feast of the Lamb." [Footnote 72]

[Footnote 72: Apocalypse xix. 9.]

It is not without a touching motive that you have chosen the 14th of July to consummate this solemn act. This is the anniversary of your marriage--of that marriage sundered by death. You have made your entry into the Catholic Church the epoch of a great transformation in your spiritual life: you have chosen the day most appropriately, desiring that this date, so full of the remembrances of tenderness and grief, should mark your entire union with your crucified Lord, to be no more separated for ever.

How beautiful is he--in his blood, and through your tears--this Spouse of Calvary, and how lovely, and how truly is he made for you, my daughter! It is not

"Patience on a monument smiling at grief:"

it is love transported with sorrow and reposing in death.

I remember well the day when I met you for the first time in the parlor of my humble convent. The Catholic crucifix you already wore upon your breast, and from time to time your eyes were turned toward that other cross suspended against the wall, and which presided over our interview, full of light and full of tears, with an expression which revealed your whole soul--all that it still lacked--all that it already foresaw.

I would exaggerate nothing, and above all I would offend no one; but can I not say that the orbit wherein, ordinarily, Protestant piety moves is the divine, rather than God himself? It is conscience, with its steel-like temper, which is at the same time evangelic and personal. It is respect for truth--the instinctive taste for what is moral and religious. All these are what I call the divine: it is not God. It is the glorious ray of the sun, but it is not that resplendent disk. Where, then, is the elevation of the soul to the living God? "My soul has thirsted for the strong and living God; when shall I come, and appear before his face?" [Footnote 73]

[Footnote 73: Psalm xli. 3.]

Where is the habitual communion of the heart and its works with the Word made flesh? and the tears poured out like Magdalen at his feet? and the bowed head--like that of John--upon his breast? and all that which the book of the _Imitation_ so well calls the familiar friendship of Jesus? Where, in a word, is that Real Presence which, from the holy sacrament, as from a hidden fountain, flows forth to the true Catholic, like a river of peace, all the day long, fructifying and gladdening his life? It was this Emmanuel--this God with us--who awaited you in our church, and in the sacrament which attracted you with so much power even when you but half-believed in it. As in the ancient synagogue, you found in your worship only symbols and shadows; they spoke to you of the reality but did not contain them, they awakened your thirst but did not quench it. Weak and empty elements which have no right to existence since the veil of the temple has been rent asunder and the eternal reality discovered. {192} "Old things have passed away, and all things are become new." [Footnote 74] Oh! blessed are you to have been admitted into the nuptial chamber of the Lamb.

[Footnote 74: 2. Cor. v. 17.]

However, madam, if Christ has taken captive your heart, it is the language of the prophet: "Thou hast beguiled me, O Lord, and I am beguiled: thou hast been stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed." [Footnote 75] But he has respected all the rights of your reason and of your liberty. That which you have resolved, that which you are about to accomplish, you have weighed well and long in the balance of investigation, study, reflection, and prayer; and I owe you this justice to say that you have carried your reflection to the utmost scruple, and completion almost to delay--so much have you feared, in this great religious act, any other argument but of personal conscience; to such a degree have you persisted in rejecting the shadow of any human influence, or the shadow of the influence of imagination or sentiment.

[Footnote 75: Jer. xx. 7.]

It is thus, however, that Jesus Christ would have you to himself. Spouse of love, he is at the same time the Spouse of truth and liberty, and this is why, in drawing souls to him, he never deceives nor constrains them. He is the eternal Word, begotten of the reason of God the Father; born in the outpouring of infinite splendor, he remembers his origin, and when he comes to us it is not under cover of our gloom, but in the effulgence of his light. And because he is the truth he is also liberty. He bows with respect [Footnote 76] before the liberty of the soul, his image and daughter, and forgets the language of command that he may only employ that of prayer.

[Footnote 76: "Cum magna reverentia disponis nos."
(Sap. xii. 18.)]

As in the sacred song, he says: "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights." [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: Canticle v. 2.]

"Here am I." He says again in the Apocalypse, "I stand at the door, and knock: if any one shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in, and will sup with him, and he with me." [Footnote 78] He never forces an entrance into the heart; he enters it only when it is opened for him. How tender and beautiful those words that prove that with God as with man there is the same love and the same tenderness! True love respects as much as it loves, and disdains triumph at the expense of liberty!

[Footnote 78: Apocalypse iii. 20.]

Is this all, however? For his love is jealous and liberty is not enough; there must be the combat and the sacrifice. What were the desperate conflicts, free though you were, that rendered your decision so difficult and so painful? I may not speak of them. Family, friends, country: I have seen these sacred wounds too near to dare to touch them. I will only say that I was ignorant until now of what it costs even to the mind most perfectly convinced, and to the strongest will, to leave the religion of their mother and of their country!

Ah! why is it that on that noble soil of the United States our church is still, I do not say unknown, but despised, by so many souls? Would to God it were only unknown! A new apostle will invoke upon her shores the God whom Paul invoked before the Areopagus, _ignoto Deo_, the church which they love in the ideal, without knowing it in its reality; and, free from prejudices, the sober-minded Americans will receive it better than did the frivolous Athenians. {193} But they think they know us, while they see us through such base report that even our name excites disgust and hatred. How much longer must these sectarian misapprehensions continue? and when will God at last command that the walls of division shall be thrown down? At all events, it depends upon us to prepare for that much desired day, by coming together, not with doctrinal concessions, which would be criminal if not chimerical, but by abandoning our respective prejudices before the better known reality, and by the formation of those kindly relations, while esteem and charity could yet unite those whom diversity of beliefs still separate. As for me, this is my most ardent prayer, and as far as I understand and appreciate the situation of religious affairs in this century, this feeling is invested with a quickened and more pressing character. And since, then, the time has come when judgment should begin at the house of God, [Footnote 79] let us Roman Catholics know how to give the example; let us arise resolutely and give a loyal hand to our separated but well-be-loved brethren.

[Footnote 79: "Quoniam tempus est ut incipiat judicium a domo
Dei." (i Peter iv. 17.)]

But what do I say? Is it not you, madam, who have come to us first, surmounting obstacles which I cannot recount? You have overcome them not only with the sweat of your brow, but by the blood of your soul; for, as Saint Augustine so truly says, "there is a blood of the soul." And it is this which you have poured out; you have removed by your heroic hands the hewn rocks which shut you in. Like the daughter of Zion, you have made straight your way and have come. [Footnote 80]

[Footnote 80: "Conclusit vias meas lapidibus quadris, semitas
meas subvertit." (Lam. iii. 9.)]

Ah! let me welcome you with these words of your own, in which you expressed the inspiration which was your strength: "My love, my beautiful, calls me: I know his voice, and though I am weak and trembling I will come to him."

III.

Let us finish this song of the loving-kindness of God in your soul. Affianced by baptism, even in the bosom of your involuntary errors, espoused by the Eucharist in the integrity of Catholic faith and charity, what remains for you to complete the cycle of divine love and to consummate your life therein, except to become a mother in the apostolate?

Our Lord was speaking one day to the multitude, when he was told that his mother and his brethren were without and had asked for him. Surveying the people with his look of inspiration, he asked, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" Then stretching out his hand over the listening multitude, he said, "Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother and my mother." [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Matthew xii. 49, 50.]

The Pope Saint Gregory the Great, explaining, in one of his homilies, this teaching of the Master, found some difficulty in his saying, "This is my mother." "We are without doubt his brothers and his sisters, by the accomplishment of the will of the Father; but how could any being other than Mary be called his mother?" And the great pope remarks, as soon as a soul by a word, by example, by a spiritual influence, whatsoever it may be, produces or develops in another soul the Word, the God, the Truth, substantial and living, justice and charity, in fact, Jesus Christ--for Jesus Christ is all these--she becomes in a way superior to the reality of maternal conception, the mother of Jesus in that soul, and the mother of that soul in Jesus.

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Well, madam, if I mistake not, God reserves for you a part in his choice of this spiritual maternity. It is of those cherished ones of whom I cannot speak--respect and emotion forbid--but you will be their mother in Jesus, their mother in the integrity of their liberty as you have been his spouse in the plenitude of your own. Since there are other souls without number and without name, at least to our feeble minds, but who are counted and inscribed in the book of divine election, and who, by the mysterious power of your apostleship, shall be gathered from the four winds of heaven; for the Lord hath not spoken in vain: "And many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." [Footnote 82] Yes, many, born like you in heresy without having been heretics, ignorant without being culpable, are hastening to the banquet of Catholic truth, to the joys of a refound unity; while, alas! some there are among us, zealous for the letter, but using it to smother the spirit, who will see themselves perhaps excluded from the kingdom of God, for which they do not bring forth fruit. [Footnote 83]

[Footnote 82: Matthew viii. 11.]

[Footnote 83: Matthew xxi. 43.]

Go, then, as a missionary of peace and of light to the land that awaits you, and of which by an especial design of Providence the moral future is almost entirely in the hands of women. You will not regret the public preaching which is forbidden your sex; you will speak in the modest and persuasive eloquence of conversation; you will speak by your person and your entire life, free yet submissive, humble yet proud, austere yet tolerant, carrying the love of God even to aspirations the most sublime, and the love of your fellow-beings to condescensions the most tender.