Chapter II: The Weather-cross (4)

"May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, and to the benefit both of us and of his holy church."

"Amen!" whispered a low voice, and the soft eyes unclosed all dim with tears.

No murmur escaped her lips, no regret was ever spoken, but fairer and frailer in her rare loveliness, the old man trembled as he watched her, and he cried in the bitterness of his agony,

"Save me, O God! for the waters are come in even unto my soul."

It was Holy-week, the most solemn of the Lenten season, and Beatrice Mohun knelt in the old cathedral during the impressive _Tenebrae_, and as the fourteen candles were extinguished, and the solemn _Miserere_ rose, from the depths of her heart came the prayer:

"Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up."

And the pervading gloom corresponded with her own spirit; her life owned no brightness, and the one tie left her seemed fast wearing away. Trouble had weakened the iron constitution of Sir Ralph; for more exhausting than mere physical pain is the ceaseless care that preys upon the vitals, claiming life as its tribute.

He felt that he could buy back ease and comfort for his darling, and he knew that for him earth held but a very few years; but to obtain all this, he must barter his honor, yield his creed, and the old blood still owned the fierceness of a changeless fidelity. No Mohun had ever swerved, not even in the dark days of the last Tudor, nor after, when his graceless daughter held the sceptre. And now, though bereft of home, with his gallant sons lying far from their kindred, his fair young daughter life-wrecked, his own existence a burden, when even starvation mocked them, the loyal spirit knew no change; but staunchly by the old faith, true to the weak king, the brave knight still fought his adverse destiny.

And Beatrice came back through the darkness, and leaned against the couch on which her father lay.

"Come to me, little one; for I fear that you are not as strong as in the days when wild Bess bore you to the hunt. Have you any regrets for the past, my darling?"

"Duty gives us discipline, papa, and it would not be right to question Providence."

"Bravely spoken, my daughter; you nerve a courage which was growing too human to be strong. But you grieve at the choice which has kept you the slave of an old man's caprice?"

"O papa!" and a low quick sob stopped her; then with more control she quietly said, "You forget that it was not only to be with you, but to remain firm and loyal to holy church; and papa, I often think that earth is only the high road to a better world; therefore I only pray that the end may be very near."

"Little one, bring the light nearer--let me look upon your face; hold it nearer, darling. Ah God! this is the dimness which brings my warning. Quick, daughter mine, send for Father Paolo. Now, O God! my eyes, darkened with the mist of death, fix their last dying looks on thy crucified image. Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me!"

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Father Paolo did come, and in the gray dawn of Good-Friday the old knight lay dying.

"Kyrie Eleison!" said the clear voice of the holy father, and, clasping closer the blessed crucifix, the old man's voice was steady as he responded, "Christe eleison!" And alone in her agony the young girl knelt.

A clattering of hoofs sounded in the court-yard, and a quick step, that startled her even then, broke the solemn stillness.

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," prayed the priest.

"Domine Jesu Christe, suscipe spiritum meum," in clear, earnest tones rung out the old man's voice; then the door was flung open, and Philip Stratherne entered.

"Not too late, thank God! Hold her not away from me. Say now that you die William's subject, and all your own shall be hers."

The closing eyes opened, the old strength came back to them, and a sweet smile illumed his face, as the words came,

"Maria, mater gratis, mater misericordiae, tu me ab hoste protege, et in hora mortis suscipe!" And with a long low sigh the spirit passed away to God.

With a sob that rent her heart in twain, Beatrice threw herself beside her father.

"My darling, come with me; the last obstacle has passed away, and God has given you as my legacy."

She made no answer. The solemn monotone of the priest alone was heard, "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei."

But to all this the man was deaf; he only saw the prostrate girl, and listened to her sobs of agony.

"My waif has drifted to her haven, and I will guard her with my life."

His strong arms were around her, and the voice that thrilled her soul was sounding in her ears. How could she send him from her? "Ah! God help me!" she cried.

"Et ne nos inducas in tentationem," came in deep, sonorous tones from the priest.

"Sed libera nos a malo," sounded the response.

And further, "Domine, exaudi orationem meam!"

"Et clamor meus ad te veniat!" and Beatrice fainted with these words upon her lips.

"Son, leave her to us," urged the priest, but he would not go till she opened her sweet eyes.

"Daughter!"--and she caught the hand of Father Paolo, as in the desperation of agonized despair. A shadow darkened Philip Stratherne's brow.

"The cursed priest again!" he muttered between his closed teeth. "Tell me when I may see you again, Beatrice, free from these fearful surroundings."

"The Monday of Easter-week," was all she replied, and he left her.

And when the Monday dawned, bright with the carol of birds, he sought her; but the old chateau by the valley was silent, the shutters barred, and the flowers drooping and dead. An aged woman came hobbling to him, who said, with the tears dimming her old eyes, "Ah! the sweet bird has flown, master, and St. Ursula guards her from behind the bars."

"God of heaven, save me! Here is gold if you will prove this false."

"Keep your gold for charity, master; for the truth is strong; and our holy Mother keeps her safe from all evil."

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Wild with the horror of losing her, he strode across the valley to the convent near. The angelus was sounding, and over the hills, up the broad river, the holy prayer-call echoed, for the Easter season rejoiced the earth; her _jubilate_ for the blessed link connecting the God-man with humanity.

Blade, and leaf, and blossom gloried in the new life, and the spring sun spread over the natural world the same light with which the resurrection gladdened the soul; but to all this was the young man blind and deaf and dumb--for surging and beating within his heart was the stormy, o'er-mastering human feeling. He only knew that the woman to whom he bent the knee in this mad, idolatrous love was lost to him, he only felt that fate had snatched her from him for ever! The sister started, as his deathly face presented itself. With scarcely human utterance, he asked for the Lady Beatrice, and after a few moments, the messenger returned, and a folded paper was put in his hand. He read:

"The Lord keepeth thee from all evil:
may the Lord keep thy soul!"

And she, with her intenser passion, clinging steadily, loving unselfishly, as only a woman can, gave him up; yielded her costly tribute to the faith which taught her that loyalty to God demands, if need be, all that life and love can give. Then, faint and weary, bruised and suffering, yet staunch and true to her faith as she was, the holy church opened its arms to her, comforting the broken spirit, healing the bleeding heart, and blessing her with the precious benediction that brings its calm to those who seek the life that dieth not. In deeds of unselfish love and sacrifice, she passed her days; all the strength within her clinging to the cross, all the human passion purified, glorified into the worship of the Lamb whose blood had made her whiter than snow. And safe in her haven, the dove of peace rested upon her heart; for the "fellowship of the Holy Ghost" had sanctified her: and thus, when her summers were yet in their flush, she passed away to God.

But he forgot her in the years that came after, and found happiness in the fair English Protestant, whose children heired the broad lands of the brave Mohuns. Verily man's love is fleeting, but in God is eternal life; and while we pay our tribute to one who was so strong in resisting, we pray that all who are thus tempted may likewise prove ready to yield all for the faith.

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The Struggle Between Letter And Spirit In The Jewish Church.
Conference Preached In The Cathedral Of Notre Dame,
In Paris, By R. Pere Hyacinthe, January 3, 1869.

Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.

"The letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life."

[It is due to R. P. Hyacinthe to say that the following
translation is made from a short-hand report, published in the
_Semaine Religieuse de Paris_. In style, in development of
ideas, the _compte rendu_ is incomplete. But to us who
cannot listen to the great Carmelite's eloquence, in the nave
of Notre Dame, even an outline of this conference, so full of
fresh and healthy thought, will be acceptable.--TRANS.]

Rev. P. Hyacinthe takes this text from St. Paul, at once as the basis and the summary of his entire conference. On previous occasions he had pointed out two elements in the Jewish Church, opposed to each other yet equally essential to the aims of that church; the one exclusive, securing the preservation of the sacred deposit of revelation; the other universal, insuring the diffusion of this deposit throughout the whole human race. These two elements he now calls, in the language of the apostle, _letter_ and _spirit_. According to the letter, the Bible--that is to say, the Old Testament, is exclusive; according to the spirit, it is universal. The internal struggle of these two elements forms the history of Judaism, thoughtfully viewed. Their startling rupture during the life of Jesus Christ introduced the Christian era, inaugurated the Catholic Church. As sons of that holy and infallible church, we need not fear the triumph of the letter; but as members of a church composed of and governed by imperfect men and sinners, we should not disregard the struggles of the letter for predominance. Let us, then, review the profitable history of these combats between letter and spirit in the bosom of Judaism, considering successively the representatives of the letter and the representatives of the spirit in the Jewish Church.

I. The Representatives Of The Letter.

These were the kings and priests. The kings represented the letter in the political order; the priests, in the religious order.

I. David prophesied, "He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. And all kings of the earth shall adore him; all nations shall serve him." And discerning in the far-off radiance that one among his sons whom he called the Anointed, the Christ _par excellence_, he said, or let the Lord say by his lips: "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool. With thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star I begot thee."

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In the throne of the son of David, the God-engendered, two royalties were united: a temporal royalty, created to reign over the house of Jacob, confined within the narrow limits of its own blood, _regnabit in domo Jacob_; and a royalty destined to extend throughout all humanity, within the wide boundary of the faith of Abraham, _regnabit in aeternumn_.

The danger lay in confounding these two royalties, in absorbing the celestial in the terrestrial royalty--an error so frequent in similar unions. To this danger succumbed the synagogue.

In a national church, or in a religious nation, no peril is more imminent, none more fatal, than the confusion of religious and political forms. [Footnote 168] Already great while remaining human, for such it is in character and origin, political thought becomes still greater in ascending to the heavenly spheres of morality and religion. But religion shrinks in dimensions, abdicating its true position, revolting against human instinct, and wounding the attributes of Divine Majesty, when it assumes political forms, adopting the ideas, the habits, the paltry interests of politics.

[Footnote 168: Lest those who may be unacquainted with
previous conferences of Père Hyacinthe should interpret this
passage as referring to the temporal power, we subjoin a
quotation from a conference delivered by him in Notre Dame in
the year 1867. Speaking of the complications caused by
placing political power and religious power in the same
hands, R. P. Hyacinthe says: "Nowhere under the sun of the
Catholic world do I find this dreadful confusion. If you bid
me look toward Rome, it is not the confusion, it is the
exceptional alliance of the two powers that I hail in that
place, itself exceptional as a miracle. Beneficent alliance,
knot of the liberty of conscience, never to be united,
because it unites there what it must separate elsewhere,
never were you more fearfully necessary to us than now! You
have received the testimony of French blood, shed by those
who have been called mercenaries while they are simply
heroes! You are defended by the eloquent words, the national
words of our orators, by the energetic and loyal declarations
of our government."

In a conference preached at Rome during the Lent of 1868, R.
P. Hyacinthe compares those who urge the church to throw
aside the temporal power, and lead a purely supernatural
existence, to Satan tempting Christ to cast himself from the
pinnacle of the temple, that angels may bear him up.]

Such, however, was the kingdom which kings, and the partisans of kings, persistently dreamed of giving to humanity. For one single instant, under David, that prophetic ideal foreseen and pictured by the prophet king shone with unblemished purity, soon to be veiled under the worldly, (we will speak in plain terms,) under the pagan ideal of Solomon.

Solomon was a great king, especially at the outset of his career. He was always great, even in his errors and crimes. But intoxicated with the science of nature, which he possessed, says the inspired text, from the cedar growing on the summit of Lebanon to the hyssop piercing the cracks of the walls, Solomon, not content with knowledge leading to God, wished to possess all the riches and the loves of earth. He built him palaces bearing little resemblance to the palm-tree beneath which Deborah administered justice, or to the tents where David camped with his soldiers; palaces so sumptuous that the queen of Sheba came from the depths of Arabia to admire them. He had harems filled with women, chiefly foreigners and idolaters; seven hundred sultanas and three hundred concubines! Then letting this inebriation mount, I will not say from heart, but from sense to brain, he fell down with his women at the feet of all their idols, venerating, under poetic symbols, that great nature which is the work of God and so easily takes the place of God.

Such was the spectacle presented by Jerusalem under the successor of David--a hideous spectacle, but made less repulsive in the days of Solomon by a glory he had no power to bequeath to his heirs in Judah and to his Israelitish emulators. He left them only his pride, his sensuality, his idolatry; and when the two inimical yet analogous monarchies succumbed at last beneath the blows of powerful neighbors, of those northern conquerors whose favors they had so often solicited, and whose arms they had so often braved, they left behind them, in the history of the holy nation, a long track of mire and blood.

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Such was the royalty of Judea, such the royalty of Israel; promised to the world under the name of the kingdom of God!

So perverted were the Jews by their kings--or, to speak more justly, for we must not misjudge these kings, so perverted were they by national pride, that they could not throw aside this gross ideal, but contemplated still, under the profaned name of the kingdom of God, the domination of races with the sword and with a rod of iron. When the true Messiah, Jesus, came to them, they misunderstood him, chiefly because he rejected this low and narrow royalty, proclaiming the true principle of the kingdom of God--a spiritual kingdom which should be in the world, but not of the world; _regnum meum non est de hoc mundo;_ a spiritual kingdom which comes to bear witness of the truth, _ego in hoc natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati._ They preferred, before him, the seditious Barabbas, who had fought in the streets of Jerusalem, shedding blood to deliver them from the Romans. They preferred, before him, all the false Messiahs, all the impotent and treacherous Christs, who closed their mad career by precipitating the ruin of the nation, the city, and the temple they had pretended to save.

Break, then, vase of Jewish nationality! formed so lovingly by God through the hand of Moses; royal and sacerdotal vessel, break! since thou wilt have it so. Thou wert formed to keep the treasures of religious life for all humanity; thou didst close upon thyself in jealous egotism; break! and let thy shivered atoms, scattered through the world, spread abroad the balm which shall intoxicate all nations. "The vase was shattered," says Holy Writ, "and the whole house was filled with the odor." _Et domus impleta est ex odore unguenti._

What kings effected in the political order, priests accomplished in the religious order. Indeed, fatal as is the mistake of confounding religious with political forms, still more lamentable is the error of identifying, within the very heart of religion, accidental and accessory forms with essential forms. Every religion--above all, the true religion, the Christian religion--going back to Moses, Abraham, Adam, is not merely a religious idea, a religious sentiment, as it pleases contemporary rationalism to call it. It is a fact, and therefore has positive forms; it is a living fact, and therefore has a determined organism. But, placed amid time and space, the fact of religion must consider the varying conditions of space, the changing conditions of time. Its organism must discharge its functions amid dissimilar or even contradictory surroundings. Therefore, side by side with substantial, permanent forms, we find variable, accessory forms, clothing the first, so to speak, according to the exigencies of races and centuries. By trying to confound religion with accessory forms peculiar to certain countries or races, we should isolate it from the great current of humanity in the present. By trying to bind it to worn-out forms, we should isolate it from the great current of humanity in the future. We should misinterpret St. Paul's words to the ancient synagogue: "_Quod autem antiquatur et senescit, prope interitum est_." No worse service could be rendered to religious unity. On this shoal the Jewish priesthood stranded.

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I would speak respectfully of that priesthood. Last Sunday we inhaled the perfume of its censers, we listened to the harmony of its canticles. The rod of Aaron had not blossomed in his hands in vain, and in the ancient tabernacle we almost adored the body of Christ Jesus prefigured in the manner, the word of Christ Jesus prepared in the decalogue. But however respectable in origin and essence the Levitical priesthood, it no longer merits respect, corrupted as it now is; or, at least, corrupted as are most of its members. This corruption bears a special name, pharisaism.

Is pharisaism hypocrisy? No. Whatever the dictionary may say, in the biblical sense pharisaism is not hypocrisy, unless in that subtle form, at once most innocent and most fatal, that unconscious hypocrisy which believes itself sincere. Jesus often said, "Pharisees, hypocrites," _pharisaei, hypocriae_; but he explained this expression by another, "Blind guides," _pharisaee caece_. And the great apostle Paul, himself a pharisee, reared, as he says, at the feet of the pharisee Gamaliel, bears witness in a striking manner to their sincere zeal for God, _habent zelum Dei_, but not according to knowledge, _sed non secundum scientiam_.

Pharisaism, thoughtfully considered, is religious blindness, the blindness of priestly depositaries of the letter, who think they guard it best by explaining it least; blindness bearing on all points of the sacred deposit--blindness in dogma, predominance of formula over truth; blindness in morals, predominance of external works over interior justice; blindness in worship, predominance of external rites over religious feeling. Blindness in dogma. They taught the truth. "The scribes and pharisees sit on the chair of Moses," said Christ; "all, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not."

There is no revealed idea enlightening and vivifying the world that has not words to contain it: _lucerna verbum tuum, domine_. But when speech compresses itself, when it encloses the idea as in a jealously narrow prison, obscuring and choking it, that is pharisaism. That is what the apostle Paul called guarding the word, but keeping it captive in iniquity. That is what forced from the meek lips of our Saviour Jesus the terrible anathema _Vae vobis!_ "Wo to you who have taken the key of knowledge, and will not enter, and all those who would try to enter, you prevent."

In morals, it is exterior works, it is a multiplicity of human practices, resting like a despicably tyrannical load upon the conscience, making it forget, in unhealthy dreams, that it is an honest man's conscience, a Christian conscience. The pharisees said to Jesus Christ, "Why do thy disciples transgress the traditions of the ancients? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." And our Saviour replied, "Why do you trample under foot the commandments of God, to keep the commandments of men?" Rites are essential to worship, as formula is essential to dogma--wo to him who tears the formula of biblical revelation, or the formula of the definitions of the church; and, since works are essential to morality, wo to him who sleeps in a dead and sterile faith, without works.

Worship! but worship is the expansion of the religious soul; it is the heart's emotion rising odorous and harmonious to God. It is action working from within outward; it is, also, the not less legitimate reaction from without inward. Rites elevate religious feeling, and arouse inspiration in heart and conscience.

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But when there is no religious feeling, when heart and conscience bend beneath the weight of exterior practices; "Yea, verily," said Jesus Christ again, (for the gospels are full of these things; the gospels are the eternal reprobation of pharisaism,) yea, verily, the prophet Isaias spoke truly when he said, "This people honoreth me with their lips, and with their hands, but their heart is far from me."

This is the yoke of which St. Peter said, "You would impose it on the head of nations; neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear it." This is the smothered and exhausted breath with which they thought to renew the world. This is not the Judaism of Moses, but the decrepit Judaism of the scribes and pharisees. When the entire world, by the eloquent lips of Greece and Rome, asked of the East salvation; when, by the sudden stir of barbarians quivering in the depths of Germany and Scythia, the world demanded light and civilization, this was offered to them! Judaism became the more inadmissible as the world had more need of it. Pharisaism, in its blind fanaticism, stood before the gates of the kingdom of heaven to prevent generations from entering.

Away! men of the letter; away! enemies of humanity. _Adversantur omnibus hominibus_, says St. Paul. And thou, Jesus, arise, my Saviour and God!--thou who wert moved by wrath twice only in thy life! Jesus felt no anger against poor sinners. He sat at their table; and when the woman taken in adultery fell at his feet, burning with shame and weeping with remorse, he raised her up, thinking only of absolving her: "Go in peace, and sin no more." He felt no anger against heretics and schismatics. He sat by Jacob's well, beside the woman of Samaria, announcing to her, with the salvation which comes from the Jews, _quia salus ex Judaeis est_, worship in spirit and in truth. But Jesus was moved with wrath on two occasions: once, scourge in hand, against those who sold the things of God in the temple, and again, with malediction on his lips, against those who perverted the things of God in the law.

Arise, then, meek Lamb! arise in thy pacific wrath against the enemies of all men, and against the true enemies of God's kingdom! Arise and drive them from the temple! Thus did the synagogue perish, and the Christian Church come to life.

II. The Representatives Of The Spirit.

I have said (and you already knew it) that we have nothing to fear from the triumphs of the _letter_. Yet we cannot overlook the struggles and temptations, not only of every priesthood, but of all pious persons; the temptation of the faithful, as well as of priests, to allow the letter to predominate over the spirit. Let us glorify God because we are born in a holy and infallible church, which Jesus Christ protects, and will protect until the consummation of his work, in the course of ages, against the ignorance of our minds and the weakness of our wills.

But what voice strikes my ear? These are no longer the coarse tones of earthly domination, nor of carnal legislation. Nor yet is it a Christian voice, the voice of Christ speaking to us a moment ago; but, though anterior to Christ, how like to him it sounds:

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"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear to the
law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha," saith the voice; and
yet it is speaking to the church of Sion. "To what purpose do
you offer me the multitude of your victims, saith the Lord? I
am full; I desire not holocausts of rams, and fat of fatlings,
and blood of calves, and lambs, and buck-goats. Offer sacrifice
no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new
moons, and the sabbaths, and other festivals, I will not abide;
your assemblies are wicked. My soul hateth your new moons, and
your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me; I am weary
of bearing them. And when you stretch forth your hands, I will
turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I
will not hear: for your hands are full of blood.

"Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices
from my eyes: cease to do perversely, learn to do well: seek
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless,
defend the widow. And then come and accuse me, saith the Lord:
if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as
snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as
wool."

This is the voice of Mosaic spirituality in all its energy and light. How different from the pharisaism we were speaking of just now; from the letter, smothering beneath its murderous weight reason, conscience, and heart! How like the gospel, the law of Christ, with its two commandments: an insatiable hunger, an inextinguishable thirst after righteousness, and a heart ever open to mercy! Ah! I feel that this is no local law, no national organization, no restricted or temporary code. It is the law of all people and of all ages. It needs but the breath of St. Paul to bear it from one end of the world to the other.

But the voice of the Spirit still speaks--no longer, now, of the carnal law, but of the earthly _kingdom:_

"And in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be
exalted above the hills: and all nations shall flow into it,
_fluent ad eum omnes gentes_. And many people shall go,
and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and
to the house of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we
will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, _quia de Sion exibit
lex et verbum Domini de Jerusalem._ Come, let us break our
swords and make ploughshares; let us shatter our lances and
turn them into sickles, for the anointed of the Lord will reign
in justice and peace; all idols shall be broken, _et idola
penitus conterentur_, and in those days the Eternal shall
alone be great."

Such was the future _disfigured_ by kings and the successors of kings. Understand it well; this is not oppression, but deliverance! It belongs to the letter to impose itself by force; this is its necessity; it has no other way, if this can be called a way. To the spirit belongs the appeal summoning us to the liberty of man and the liberty of God. _Ubi spiritus, ibi libertas_. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Therefore, I do not see in the Messiah's hands a sword besmeared and gory. I see nations rise up spontaneously, like a sea shuddering to its deepest abysses. _Fluent ad eum omnes gentes;_ this is not servitude; it is deliverance. This is not the reign of the Messiah victor; but it is the reign of the Messiah liberator.

But you ask me whose is this voice preaching a spiritual kingdom to priests, a divine royalty to kings and nations? The voice shall interpret itself; it shall tell its origin and mission.

Here Père Hyacinthe relates the famous vision in which Isaiah receives his mission after a seraph has purified his lips with a burning coal. This is prophecy.

And were not prophets and saints; necessary to the Jewish Church, as they are necessary to the Catholic Church? The two beggars in the dream of Innocent III. upholding the crumbling Lateran basilica, as if symbolizing the decadence of the hierarchical church in the middle ages; those two mendicants, Dominic de Guzman and Francis of Assisi, what were they but prophets of the New Testament, sprung not from the hereditary tradition of ages, but from the living kiss of Jehovah? {696} Yes, we need saints, we need prophets--that is to say, men of love, martyrs; men of vision who read not only according to the letter but according to the spirit, who see God in the vision of their reason enlightened by faith; in the ecstasy of their conscience elevated by grace. "I have seen the Lord with my eyes"--_Oculis meis vidi Dominum_. We need men who speak to him face to face like Moses, and, above all, men who love him heart to heart, and pass through the struggles of days and ages, struggles only to be fully understood by contemplating them in the final future. _Vidit ultima, et consolatus est lugentes in Sion._ Such men were the prophets.

They were _seers_. They saw the future. They did not look only upon the present, so accurately fitted to the measure of narrow minds and hearts. They did not return with cowardly tears toward the past, never to be born again. It was for Gentiles, for pagan antiquity, to dream of a golden age for ever lost. The prophets, gazing into the future, saw the golden age of Eden reappear, under a form more full and lasting, at the gates of heaven, yet still upon the earth.

The prophets believed in the future because they believed in God. They believed in progress; they were in all antiquity the only men of progress. Antiquity did not believe in it, not even knowing its name. But the prophets believed in the most incredible and the most necessary of all progress, moral and religious progress. They believed in it despite the fall, or rather because of the fall and of the redemption. To them evil did not lie in radical vice, essential to our nature, or in the inflexible decree of destiny; it was in the liberty of man, and must find its remedy in the liberty of God. If God had allowed the starting-point of man to recoil, be cause of sin, into the abyss, it was in order to raise, through the redemption; his goal to the very heavens. From the summits to which their faith lifted them, they saw salvation spread from individuals to nations, from nations to the human race, from the human race to all nature.

Such was progress to the prophets; such the future universal Sion they hailed in the future? Isaiah prophesied it in the existence and in the relative prosperity of Jerusalem. Jeremiah mingled it with tears shed over the smoking ruins of his beloved city. Ezechiel in the bosom of captivity pictured Sion, no longer Jewish, but humanitarian, where all nations were to find their place. He engraved upon the pediment of the gates this immortal device, "The Lord is there;" _Dominus ibidem_.

II. This was what the prophets, men of faith in vision and men of vision in faith, believed and respected. This was the object of their love, for they were men of understanding, and also men of heart.

I do not love Utopians, I do not love thought which dwells exclusively in the future, feeding on sterile and chimerical dreams. I love men of the future who are also men of the present; contemplatives, but workers too. The prophets were workers. They did not love the future in the future, but in the present where it germinates. They did not love humanity in humanity--too abstract if it be an idea, too vast if it embrace all individuals; they loved humanity in their nation; they loved the typical Jerusalem of their vision in their terrestrial Jerusalem of their existence.

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I love to follow them in their writings; to see them rise up in the face of every national fact, every religious fact of that gross people--rise up to meet every evil deed with anathema, to consecrate in the Lord's name every moral or religious act tending toward true progress. I love to see them go down into the deep ravines, to the borders of the torrent of Cedron, where the Messiah was to drink before lifting up his head; climb the abrupt acclivity to the citadel, to the temple where Jesus was to teach; traverse the public squares where ever and anon the wind from the desert, as if to mock their hopes, caught up the dust beneath the burning sun and flung it in their faces.

Now, in the ravine, in the citadel, and in the temple of Sion, in the streets possessed by the whirlwind, everywhere in that city environed with their love and their devotion, they saw that Sion which was to grow up in its bosom and embrace the world. They loved the future; they loved humanity in God; they loved them in the house of Abraham and in the church of Jesus Christ.

In the presence of these great examples, let me say to you of the love of country all that I have said of domestic love. We no longer know, or rather we no longer rightly know, what it is to love country and people; to see and love, in them, the city of humanity, the city of Jesus Christ, the city of time and eternity.

III. Men of vision and of love, the prophets were also men of combat, and, when necessary, martyrs, soldiers, and victims. No man passes without effort that Red Sea which separates present and future. The prophets crossed it bearing with them on their vigorous shoulders the ark of God and the ark of mankind. But what combats and struggles!--struggles majestic as their visions and their love. They shrunk from them in their infirm human nature; they dreaded these struggles. They knew that the word of God ends by slaying those who hear it: "I have slain them, saith the Lord, in the word of my mouth." "Ah Lord God!" cried Jeremiah, "behold I cannot speak, for I am a child;" and the Lord answered, "Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee: and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak. Behold, I have given my words in thy mouth. Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build and to plant. For, behold, I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Judea, to the princes thereof, and to the priests and to the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee and shall not prevail, for I am with thee to deliver thee."

And to Ezechiel, colleague and successor of Jeremiah, God ever spoke the language of struggle: "Fear not; I send thee to an apostate people that hath revolted from me, _ad gentem apostatricem;_ but I have made thy face stronger than their faces, and thy forehead harder than their foreheads; I have made thy face like an adamant and like flint. I will set thee up like a wall of iron and like a city of brass, for I will be with thee."

Thus did the prophets struggle for that Sion which fought against them, repudiating them. They never forsook it, they always loved and always served it.

We are about to part for another year. Let me entreat you now to unite yourselves with me in a consecration to that kingdom of God, to that church whose courts we have traversed. Christianity is not of today nor of yesterday. It belongs not merely to the historical period of Jesus Christ and his apostles. {698} It comes from David, from Abraham, it comes to us from Adam, our father, our king, our pontiff. In this unique religion, this church changeable in form, immovable in foundation, friends, brothers--let me use words which come from my heart--let us consecrate ourselves, following the example of the prophets, to the love and service of God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is for ever established in Christianity, in the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church. But, as I said just now, this church must ever pass from form to form--_de forme en forme_-from brightness to brightness--_transformamur claritate in claritatem_--until her pacific empire shall cover the whole earth, until with humanity she shall attain the age of the perfect man in Christ Jesus.

Do we not wish to work for this kingdom? What are we to do if not that? What are the works of our public and private life if they do not relate finally to the kingdom of truth, justice, charity, to all which constitutes Christianity, to the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church? I do not ask you to love her as she does not wish to be loved--to love her as a sect is loved, as the gross Jews loved the synagogue, with a heart and mind restricted to the letter. I do not ask you to love our grand Catholic Church by glorifying the infirmities of her life, which are your infirmities and mine; or by condemning all the truths professed and all the virtues practised outside of her by men who are often her sons without knowing it. No; let us have no sectarian love! I ask you to love the church with the heart of the church herself; with a heart commensurate only with the heart of Jesus Christ, _dilatamini et vos_. "You are not straitened in us," said St. Paul to the Corinthians; "but in your own bowels you are straitened. But having the same recompense, (I speak as to my own children,) be you also enlarged." _Dilatamini et vos_.

Before leaving you, let me tell you the secret of my youth. Let me speak to you of the day of my priestly consecration, when in this nave, less crowded then than it is to-day, stretched upon that icy pavement, filled with burning palpitations, I was sustained, I was inebriated with one thought--the conviction that I had but one love and one service, the kingdom of God and humanity.

Yes, let us love the church in every man, and every man in the church! What matters condition? Rich or poor, ignorant or learned, _omnibus debitor sum_, I am every man's debtor, says St. Paul. What matters country? Whether Frenchman or foreigner, Greek or barbarian, _omnibus debitor sum_, I answer with St. Paul. I am the debtor of barbarism as of civilization. In a certain sense, what matters even religion, if we would love a man?

Ah! if he is not a son of the Catholic Church in the body, by external union, he is so, perhaps--he is, I hope, in the soul, by invisible union. If he is a son of the Catholic Church neither according to the body nor in the spirit, nor in the letter, he is so at least by preparation in the design of God. If the water of baptism is not on his brow, I grieve to know it; but I see there the blood of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ died for all, opening wide his arms to all the world upon the cross! The world belongs to Jesus Christ, therefore the world belongs to the church, if not in act, at least in power. Let me, then, love all men; and you, too, love all men with me--not only in person, not only in their narrow earthly individuality, but in the great Christian community, in the great divine community which summons each and all.

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When Moses, founder of the Jewish church, died on the mountain within sight of the land of promise, the Hebrew text says that he died in the kiss of Jehovah. Before dying let us learn to live in the kiss of Jehovah, which is also the kiss of all humanity. O holy Church! thou art more than man and thou art more than God--than God alone in heaven, than man alone on earth. O holy Church! thou art the kiss of God to man, the kiss of man to God; the embrace of all men, all races, all ages, in the flame of universal and eternal love. "He who abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him."

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A Sketch Of Leo X. And His Age.

In the annals of literature and art, the name of Florence peers above that of any other Italian city, Rome excepted. Here were the poets who tuned the Italian language and made it the most musical of modern idioms; here was the illustrious astronomer, who was not the discoverer of a planet, but the revealer of the whole celestial machinery; and here, too, were the artist and politician who were not only the first sculptors and statesmen of their time, but the inventors of the very art and craft in which they excelled. Every day the pilgrim scholar arrives at her gates and requests to be shown the monuments of her great men, and every day genius worships at the shrine of genius.

At the time of which we write, the middle ages had seen their palmiest days, when a Charlemagne courteously entertained ambassadors from the Mussulmans of Florence and the Caliphs of Bagdad, and when the flower of chivalry, headed by a valiant Philip, a lion-hearted Richard, and a sainted Louis, rushed to the plains of the east to battle with the Moslem foe; they had presided over the erection of those great Gothic piles whose sublime architecture towered to the clouds, and had beheld the pontiffs of Rome issuing orders for the foundation of universities not only in Italy, but on the very outskirts of the civilized world; [Footnote 169] and finally they had seen the laborious and prolific genius of the schoolmen multiplying inventions and discoveries, fathoming the profound depths of theological science, and disserting on those great metaphysical problems, which, like so many apples of discord, have caused endless dissension and controversy among modern philosophers. [Footnote 170]

[Footnote 169: Gibbon tells us in a foot-note to his _Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire_ that, "at the end of the
fifteenth century, there were about fifty universities in
Europe." Though this is indeed a glorious tribute, considering
from whom it came, paid to the mediaeval ages, we are, however,
more inclined to believe with the _New American
Cyclopaedia_ that, "before the year 1500, there were over
sixty-four universities in Europe."]

[Footnote 170: Mackintosh says, "Scarcely any metaphysical
controversy agitated among recent philosophers was unknown to
the schoolmen." (_Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical
Philosophy_.)]

But before these great medieval ages had reached their terminus, they again shone forth with brilliant splendor. That, indeed, was a glorious epoch in the world's history, when the most important invention recorded in the annals of mankind came forth from the brain of Guttenberg; when the stormy Atlantic was first ploughed by adventurous keels, and new worlds discovered; when letters, philosophy, and the fine arts were cultivated in such schools as the Medicean palaces, and were patronized by such men as Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici.

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Under the enlightened patronage of these princely merchants, Florence became the Athens of Italy, and one of the favorite retreats of the muses. Her public halls were crowded with youths eager to listen to an eloquent hellenist, expatiating upon the beauties of Homer; her poets sang in the idiom of the great Mantuan; her philosophers were smitten with love for the divine Plato; and her scholars were so well read in antiquity, that students from every country came thither, to slake their thirst at what was then considered the fountain-head of ancient lore. The gardens of the Medici recalled the groves of the Academies in which the Athenian philosopher descanted upon human and divine things, and the shady porches of the Lyceum, in which the Stagirite perambulated whilst delivering his sublime lessons.

A great bustle might have been observed in these gardens on the 11th of December, 1475; artists and humanists were vieing with one another in congratulating Lorenzo the Magnificent on the birth of his second son, who, in memory of his paternal uncle, was christened Giovanni. Lorenzo was proud of his little Benjamin, and he listened with complacency to those who admired his keen, restless eye, his pure and noble forehead, his flowing hair and snowy neck. In contemplating the sweet expression of his countenance, the poet declared that he would revive classic literature; and the Neoplatonician predicted a bright era for philosophy; whilst a fugitive Hellene read in the Greek profile of the infant happy days for his dispersed countrymen; and an old sage, endowed with Simeon-like prophecy, exclaimed, "My soul, praise the Lord! Giovanni shall be the honor of the sanctuary."

The education of the young child's heart and the embellishment of his mind were, for his enlightened parents, objects of supreme importance. The former duty necessarily devolved upon themselves; and how well they succeeded was best shown by the mild and placable temper, polished manners, and kind and affable disposition of their little favorite; the latter they entrusted to scholars whose names even then were running through the schools of Europe, especially to Politiano, one of the best classical writers of the _renaissance_, and the preceptor of a pleiad of illustrious men. Naturally docile, well endowed with parts, in constant intercourse with men of rank and talent, Giovanni acquired a dignity of deportment, a facility of conversation, and a fund of knowledge, much beyond his years. At sixteen, he had completed the curriculum of Pisa, was graduated doctor and invested with the insignia of the cardinalate, and thus entitled to take his seat among the princes of the church. These precocious acquirements and early preferments ought to have ripened into days of serenity; but no, they were more like the calm that precedes the storm. Brought up in the school of prosperity, he was to acquire his last finish amidst the rude trials of adversity. Before attaining the highest dignity that can adorn the brow of man, he was destined to experience the instability of human affairs and the fickleness of men. The death of his father, and the demise of his munificent protector, Innocent VIII., inflicted deep wounds on his sensitive heart. {701} In the mean time, a terrific storm was gathering in Florence. The inhabitants of this metropolis, exasperated at the seemingly unpatriotic conduct of Piero de' Medici, his elder brother, expelled from within their walls even the last scion of their noblest family; something like the ungrateful Athenians, who ostracized the very man on whom they had conferred the title of just. To cheer the dreary hours of exile, no less than to enrich his mind with useful knowledge, the expatriated cardinal resolved upon visiting the principal cities of Europe. Even here, difficulties and disquietudes unforeseen lurked in the background of the smiling ideal that he had formed of his itinerary. The suspicious authorities of Ulm and Rouen arrested the little caravan, and ordered him and his companions to confinement; the foaming billows deterred him from proceeding to England, and thus deprived him of the pleasure of visiting the land of Bede and of King Alfred. On his return, he was cast by a storm on the Genoese coast, and, thinking it advisable to relinquish his voyage, proceeded by land to Savona, where he met the celebrated Cardinal Della Rovere--a remarkable coincidence, if we consider that Della Rovere, Giulio de' Medici, and he himself were afterward raised to the dignity of the tiara. Notwithstanding all the afflictions that poured in on him, the future pontiff invariably preserved that equanimity of mind and amenity of manners which were the prominent features in his character. Better and brighter days were now about to dawn. The premature death of Piero, partially disarmed the hostility of the Florentines, and they finally threw open their gates to the illustrious representative of the time-honored family of the Medici. A year had hardly elapsed after his restoration before Rome was plunged into mourning by the death of that wary and energetic pontiff, Julius II. The conclave assembled immediately after the obsequies, and Cardinal de' Medici was called by the unanimous vote to the see of St. Peter. Giovanni de' Medici was now Leo X., and the choice of that name, as Erasmus spiritually remarks, was not without its significance. If Leo I. saved the eternal city from the ravages of the "scourge of God;" if Leo IV. again repelled from her walls the barbaric bands of Saracens, Leo X. was to make her the capital city of the republic of letters, as she was already the starry centre of the Christian world.

Italy had already taken the lead in the restoration of ancient learning, and supplied the fire from which the other nations lighted their torches. [Footnote 171] As may easily be fancied, the elevation to the pontificate of the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent spontaneously awoke the most sanguine expectations of the artists and literati. In their fervor, they imagined that genius, worth, and talent could not remain unnoticed or unremunerated. "Under these impressions," says a Protestant writer, [Footnote 172]

[Footnote 171: Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, vol. i.
ch. i.]

[Footnote 172: Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo_,
vol. i. p. 306.]

"Rome became, at once, the general resort of those who possessed or had pretensions to superior learning, industry, or ability. They all took it for granted that the supreme pontiff had no other objects of attention than to listen to their productions and to reward their labors." That their hopes were to be realized, was evident to all from the very first act of the new pontiff's administration, the selection as apostolic secretaries of Bembo and Sadoleti, two scholars who resume in themselves the intellectual life of the time--Sadoleti, a profound philosopher and the best exegete of his age; and Bembo, who emulated Virgil and Cicero with equal success, and recalled in his writings the elegance of Petrarch and Boccaccio. [Footnote 173]

[Footnote 173: Bettinelli. It is to Bembo that we are
indebted for the restoration of the long-lost art of
abbreviated or shorthand writing.]

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