Chapter XXVII (6)

In human tribunals the supreme court is presumed to know the law which constitutes it, and it defines its own jurisdiction and powers. It declares the law of which it is the depositary and guardian, and though the judges have only their human wisdom, learning, and sagacity, it is remarkable how few mistakes through a long series of ages they commit as to what is or is not the law they are appointed to administer, and nearly all the mistakes they do commit are due to the changes the legislature makes in the law or in the constitution of the court. Why should the church be less competent to judge of the law under which she is constituted, and to define her jurisdiction and powers? And since her constitution, as well as the law she administers, changes not, why should she be less exempt, even as a human court, from mistakes in interpreting and declaring the law, than the supreme court of England or the United States? What higher authority can there be to judge of her own constitution and the law given her to administer than the church herself?

The church received her constitution in the commission given to the apostolic body with whom she is one and identical, and the law or revealed word in the reception of it by the apostles. Being one and identical body with them, she has received what they received, and knows what they knew, is taught what they were taught, understands it in the same sense that they did, and has the same authority to interpret and declare it that they had. If they were commissioned to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever our Lord commanded them, she is commissioned in their commission to do the same. If he promised them his efficacious presence and assistance to the consummation of the world, he made the promise to her; if he made Peter the prince of the apostles, the father and teacher of all Christians, and gave him plenary authority to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, he made the successor of Peter the visible head of the church, and gave him the same authority. The church, being the apostolic body persisting through all times, knows what the apostles received, knows therefore both her own constitution and the law deposited with her, and is as competent to judge of them as the apostles were, and has full authority to interpret and declare both, and it is to her, as to the supreme court of a nation, to judge what they are, and to define her constitution, jurisdiction, and powers.

The objection which many make to this conclusion arises from their confounding the authority of the church to interpret and define the law--and, as a part of the law, her own constitution, jurisdiction, and powers or functions--with the authority to make the law: a mistake like that of confounding the supreme court of the United States with Congress. The church, like the court or the supreme executive, may make her own rules and orders--what are called the orders and rules of court, for the purpose of carrying out the intent of the law--but she no more makes the law than does the civil court make the law under which it is constituted, and which it administers. God alone is the lawgiver or lawmaker, and his revealed word is the law--the law for the human reason and will, and which binds all men in thought, word, and deed. We want no church, as the supreme judge of the law, to tell us this, for it is a dictamen of reason itself. It is the revealed word of God, which again is only his will, the will of the supreme Lawgiver--that is the law under which the church is constituted, and which she guards, interprets, and declares, whenever a question of law arises. She does not make the law; she keeps, interprets, declares, and defends or vindicates it. Even with only human wisdom, she can no more make the law, or declare that to be law which is not, than the supreme civil court can declare that to be civil law which is not civil law. The objection, therefore, is not well taken.

The law, it is agreed on all hands--that is, the revelation, whether written or unwritten--was deposited with the apostles, then it was deposited, as we have seen, with the church identical with the apostolic body. Now, she knows, as the apostles knew, what she received, the law committed to her charge, and, as she is constituted by the law she has received, she knows, and cannot but know, her own constitution and powers, also what promises, if any, she has received from her divine Lawgiver and Founder. The promises of God cannot fail; and if he has promised her his assistance as an immunity from error she knows it, and knows that her judgments of law, or in matters of faith, are through that assistance infallible. Of all these questions she is the divinely constituted judge. She is the judge of the law constituting her, of her own appointment and commission, and of her rights, powers, and jurisdiction, no less than of the law or revelation committed to her charge, for all this is included in the law. If she defines that in her commission is included the promise of the divine assistance to protect her from error in interpreting and declaring the law--that is, the faith, the revealed word of God--then of all this she judges infallibly, and she is the infallible authority, not for believing what God has revealed--for that is believed on the veracity of God alone--but for believing that what she teaches as his revealed word is his revealed word, and therefore the law we are to obey in thought, word, deed, as the supreme court is the authority for defining its own constitution and powers, and what is or is not the law of the state. Say we not, then, truly that the church is her own witness and accredits herself? Say we not truly, also, that she is the faithful and infallible witness to the fact of revelation, and teacher and judge of what God has or has not revealed? The fact, then, that the church defines that she is the divinely appointed guardian and infallible teacher and judge of revelation, is all we need to know in order to know that it is God we believe in believing her.

None of the sects can apply this argument to themselves; for no one of them can pretend to be the identical apostolical body, or to span the distance of time from the apostles to us, so as to be at once their contemporary and ours. They all have either originated too late or have died too soon for that. Not one of them can pretend to have originated in the apostolic communion, and to have existed as one continuous body down to us. There were sectaries in the lifetime of the apostles, but they were not in the apostolic communion, but separated from it; and there is, as far as we know, no sect in existence that originated in apostolic times. Some of the Gnostic sects sprang up at a very early day, but they have all disappeared, though many of their errors are revived in our day. The Nestorian and Jacobite sects still subsist in the East, but they were born too late to be of apostolic origin, and our modern Unitarians are not the old Arians continued in one unbroken body. The Lutheran and Calvinistic sects are of yesterday, and they and their numerous offshoots are out of the question. The poor Anglicans talk of apostolic succession indeed, but they separated or were cut off from the apostolic body in the sixteenth century, and, with all the pretensions of a few of them, are only a Protestant sect, born of the Reformation, as the greater part of them strenuously contend. There is something in people's instincts; and it is worthy of note that no people who have cast off the authority of the Holy See have ever ventured to assume as their official name the title of APOSTOLIC. Even the schismatic Greeks, while they claim to be orthodox, do not officially call their church apostolic; and the American Anglicans assume only the name of Protestant Episcopal. _Protestant apostolic_ would strike the whole world as incongruous, and very much as a contradiction in terms.

Let the argument be worth little or much, the only body claiming to be the church of Christ that has or has had an uninterrupted historical existence from the apostles to us, is the body that is in communion with the See of Rome, and recognizes the successor of Peter in that see as the Vicar of Christ, the teacher of the nations, supreme pastor of the faithful, with plenary authority from our Lord himself to feed, rule, and govern the universal church. The fact is too plain on the very face of history for any one who knows history at all to deny it. Nor, in fact, does any one deny it. All in reality concede it; and the pretence is that to be in communion with that see is not necessary in order to be in communion with Christ, or with the universal church.

But this is a question of law or of its interpretation, and can itself be determined only by the supreme court instituted to keep, interpret, and declare the law. The court of last resort has already decided the question. It is _res adjudicata_, and no longer an open question. The court has decided that _extra ecclesiam, nulla salus_, or, that out of communion with the church there is no communion with Christ; and that out of communion with the Holy See there is no communion with the universal church, for there is no such church. Do you appeal from the decision of the court? To what tribunal? To a higher tribunal? But there is no higher tribunal than the court of last resort. None of the sects are higher than the church, or competent to set aside or overrule her decisions. Do you appeal to the Bible? But this were only appealing from the law as expounded by the church or the supreme court to the law as expounded by yourself or your sect. Such an appeal cannot be entertained, for it is an appeal, not from an inferior court to a superior, but from the highest court to the lowest. The law expounded by the individual or the sect is below, not above, the law expounded and declared by the church. The sect has confessedly no authority, and the law expounded and applied by the sect is no more than the law expounded and applied by the private individual; and no private individual is allowed to expound and apply the law for himself, but must take it as expounded and applied by the court, and the judgment as to what the law is of the court of last resort is final, and from it, as every lawyer knows, there lies no appeal. To be able to set aside or overrule the judgment of the church, it is necessary, then, to have a court of superior jurisdiction, competent to revise her judgments and to confirm or to overrule them. But, unhappily for those who are dissatisfied with her judgments, there is and can be no such court to which they can appeal.

There might be some plausibility in the pretended appeal from the church to the Bible, if the church had not the Bible, or if she avowedly rejected its divine authority; but as the case stands, such an appeal is irregular, illegal, and absurd. The church has and always has had the Bible ever since it was written. It was, as we have seen, originally deposited with her, and it is only from her that those outside of her communion have obtained it or their knowledge of it. She has always held and taught it to be the divinely inspired and authoritative written word of God, which none of her children are allowed to deny or question. There is no opposition possible between her teaching and the Bible, for the Bible is included in her teaching, and consequently no appeal from her teaching to the Bible. It would be only an appeal from herself to herself. The only appeal conceivable in the case is from her understanding of the sacred Scriptures or the revealed word of God to--your own; but as you at best have confessedly no authority to expound, interpret, or declare the law, your understanding of the written word can in no case override or set aside hers.

The Reformers, when they pretended to appeal from the church to the Bible, mistook the question and proceeded on a false assumption. There never was any question between the church and the Bible; the only question there was or could be was between her understanding of the Bible and theirs, or, as we have said, between the Bible as expounded by the church and the Bible as expounded by private individuals. This the Reformers did not or would not see, and this their followers do not or will not see to this day. Now, count the authority of the church for as little as possible, her understanding cannot be below that of private individuals, and the understanding of private individuals can never override it, or be a sufficient reason for setting it aside. The Reformers had recognized the church as the supreme authority in matters of faith, and the question was not on admitting her authority as something hitherto unrecognized, but on rejecting an authority they had hitherto acknowledged as divine. They could not legally reject it except on a higher authority, or by the judgment of a superior court. But there was no superior court, no higher authority, and they could oppose to her not the authority of the Bible, as they pretended, but at best only their private opinion or views of what it teaches, which in no case could count for more than her judgment, and therefore could not overrule it or authorize its rejection.

It is all very well to deny the divine commission and authority of the church to expound the word and declare the law of God; but a denial, to serve any purpose, or to be worth anything, must have a reason, and a higher reason than has the affirmation denied. One can deny only by an authority sufficient to warrant an affirmation. It needs as much reason to deny as to affirm. The authority of the church can really be denied only by opposing to her a truth that disproves it. A simple negation is nothing, and proves or disproves nothing. Yet the Reformers opposed to the church only a simple negation. They opposed to her no authority, no affirmative truth, and consequently gave no reason for denying or unchurching her. Indeed, no individual or sect ever opposes either to the church or to her teaching anything but simple negation, and no one ever makes an affirmation or affirms any truth or positive doctrine which she does not herself affirm or hold and teach. Every known heresy, from that of the Docetæ down to the latest development of Protestantism, simply denies what the church teaches, and affirms nothing which she does not herself affirm, as Catholics have shown over and over again. These denials, based as they are on no principle or affirmative truth, are gratuitous, and count for nothing against the church or her teaching. Who would count the denial by a madman that the sun shines in a clear sky at noonday?

The simple fact is that whoever denies the church or her judgments does it without any authority or reason but his own private opinion or caprice, and that is simply no authority or reason at all. It is not possible to allege any authority against her or her teaching. Men may cavil at the truth, may by their sophistries and subtleties obscure the truth or involve themselves in a dense mental fog, so that they are unable to see anything distinctly, or to tell where they are or in what direction they are moving. They may thus imagine that they have some reason for their denials, and even persuade others that such is the fact; but whenever the fog is cleared away, and they have _easted_ themselves, they cannot, if they have ordinary intelligence, fail to discover that the truth which in their own minds they opposed to her or her teaching is a truth which she herself holds and teaches as an integral part of her doctrine, or as included in the depositum of faith she has received. Do you say there is truth outside of the church; truth in all religions; in all superstitions, even? Be it so; but there is no truth outside of her in any religion or superstition that she denies or does not recognize and hold, and hold in its unity and catholicity. There may be facts in natural history, in physics, chemistry, in all the special sciences, as in the several handicrafts, that she does not teach; but there is no principle of science of any sort that she does not hold and apply whenever an occasion for its application occurs. None of the special sciences have their principles in themselves, or do or can demonstrate the principles on which they depend, and from which they derive their scientific character. They all depend for their scientific character on a higher science, the science of sciences, which the church and the church alone teaches. The principles of ethics, and therefore of politics as a branch of ethics, all lie in the theological order, and without theology there is and can be no science of ethics or politics; and hence we see that both, with those who reject theology, are purely empirical, without any scientific basis. An atheist may be moral in his conduct, but if there were no God there could be no morality; so may an atheist be a geometrician, but if there were no God there could be no geometry. Deny God, and what becomes of lines that may be infinitely projected, or of space shading off into immensity, on which so much in the science of geometry depends? Nay, deny God, and what would become even of finite space? Yet without the conception of space, which is in truth only the power of God to externize his acts, geometry would be impossible. All the special sciences are secondary, and are really science only when carried up to their first principles and explained by them. What more absurd, then, than the attempt of scientists to prove by science there is no God, or to oppose science to the theology of the church, without which no science is possible?

We need but look at the present state of men's minds to see how the world gets on without the church. Never were men more active or indefatigable in their researches: they send their piercing glances into all subjects, sacred and profane; they investigate the heavens and the earth, the present and the past, and leave no nook or corner of nature unexplored, and yet there is not a principle of ethics, politics, or science that is not denied or called in question. In the moral and political world nothing is fixed or settled, and moral and intellectual science, as well as statesmanship, disappears. Doubt and uncertainty hang over all questions, and the distinctions between right and wrong, just and unjust, as well as between good and evil, are obscured and well-nigh obliterated. The utmost confusion reigns in the whole world of thought, and "men," as a distinguished prelate said to us the other day, "are trying the experiment of governing the world without conscience." All this proves what we maintain, that they who deny the church, or reject her teaching, have no truth to oppose to her, no reason for their denial, and no principle on which they base their rejection of her authority. Their rejection of the church and her teaching is purely gratuitous, and therefore, if not sinful, is at least baseless.

This much is certain, that it is either the church or nothing. There is no other alternative. Nothing is more absurd than for those who reject the church and her teaching to pretend to be Christian teachers or believers. They cannot believe the revelation God has made on the veracity of God alone, for they have no witness, not even an unassisted human witness, of the fact of revelation, of what God has revealed, or that he has or has not revealed anything, since they have no witness who was the contemporary of our Lord and his apostles--they were none of them born then--and they have no institution that dates from apostolic times, and that has continued without break down to the present. In fact, what they profess to believe, in so far as they believe it at all, they believe on the authority of the church, or of that very tradition which they reject and deny to be authority. They agree among themselves in their doctrinal belief only when and where they agree with the church; whenever and wherever they break from Catholic tradition, preserved and handed down by her, they disagree and fight with one another, are all at sea, and have neither chart nor compass. Do they tell us that they agree in the essentials of the Christian faith? Yet it is only so far as they follow Catholic tradition that they know or can agree among themselves as to what are or are not essentials. There is a wide difference between what Dr. Pusey holds to be essential and what is held to be essential by Dr. Bellows. Nearly the only point in which the two agree is in rejecting the infallible authority of the successor of Peter; and, in rejecting that authority, neither has any authority for believing what he believes, or for denying what he denies. Deny the church, and you have no authority for asserting divine revelation at all, as your rationalists and radicals conclusively prove.

But, happily, the other alternative saves us from all these logical inconsistencies. The church meets every demand, removes every embarrassment, and affords us the precise authority we need for faith, for she is in every age and every land a living witness to the fact of revelation, and an ever-present judge competent to declare what God reveals, and to teach us what we have, and what we have not, the veracity of God for believing. She can assure us of the divine inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures, which without her tradition is not provable; for she has received them through the apostles from our Lord himself. She can enable us to read them aright, and can unfold to us by her teaching their real sense; for the Holy Ghost has deposited with her the whole revelation of God, whether written or unwritten. Outside of her, men, if they have the book called the Bible, can make little or nothing of it, can come to no agreement as to its sense, except so far as they inconsistently and surreptitiously avail themselves of her interpretation of it. They have no key to its sense. But she has the key to its meaning in her possession and knowledge of all that God reveals, or in the divine instruction she has received in the beginning. The whole word of God, and the word of God as a whole, is included in the depositum she has received, and therefore she is able at all times and in all places to give the true sense of the whole, and of the relation to the whole of each and every part. In her tradition the Bible is a book of divine instruction, of living truth, of inestimable value, and entitled to the profoundest reverence, which we know it is not in the hands of those who wrest it from her tradition, and have no clue to its meaning but grammar and lexicon.

The notion that a man who knows nothing of the Christian faith, and is a stranger to the whole order of Christian thought and life, can take up the Bible, even when correctly translated into his mother-tongue, and from reading and studying it arrive at an adequate knowledge, or any real knowledge at all, of Christian truth or the revelation which God has made to man, is preposterous, and contradicted by every day's experience. Just in proportion as men depart from the tradition of faith preserved by the church, the Bible becomes an unintelligible book, ceases to be of any use to the mind, and, if reverenced at all, becomes, except in a few plain moral precepts, a source of error much more frequently than of truth. One of the most precious gifts of God to man becomes instead of a benefit a real injury to the individual and to society. Our school-boards may, then, easily understand why we Catholics object to the reading of the Bible in schools where the church cannot be present to enlighten the pupil's mind as to its real and true sense. It is the court that keeps the statute-books, and interprets and applies the law, whether the _lex scripta_ or the _lex non scripta_.

The church, existing in all ages and in all nations as one identical body, is a living witness in all times and places, as we have said, of the fact that God has revealed what she believes and teaches, and is through his assistance a competent and sufficient authority for that fact, and to interpret and declare the revealed law, as much so, to say the least, as the supreme court of a nation is to declare what is the law of the state. The objection made by rationalists and others to believing on the authority of the church, or to recognizing her authority to declare the faith, is founded on the false assumption that the church makes the faith, and can make anything of faith she pleases, whether God has revealed it or not. We have already answered this objection. The church bears witness to the fact of revelation, and declares what is or is not the faith God has revealed, as the supreme court declares what is or is not the law of the state; but she can declare nothing to be of faith that is not of faith, or that God has not revealed and commanded all men to believe, for through the divine assistance she is infallible, and therefore cannot err in matters of faith, or in any matters pertaining in any respect to faith and morals. Since she cannot err in declaring what God has revealed and commanded, we are assured that what she declares to be revealed is revealed, or to be commanded is commanded, and therefore we know that whatever we are required to believe as of faith, or to do as commanded of God, we have the authority of God himself for believing and doing, the highest possible reason for faith, since God is truth itself, and can neither deceive nor be deceived; and the highest possible law, for God is the Supreme Lawgiver. It is they who reject the church or deny her authority that have only an arbitrary and capricious human authority, and who abdicate their reason and their freedom, and make themselves slaves, and slaves of human passion, arrogance, and ignorance. The Catholic is the only man who has true mental freedom, or a reason for his faith. His faith makes him free. It is the truth that liberates; and therefore our Lord says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Who can be freer than he who is held to believe and obey only God? They whom the truth does not make free may fancy they are free, but they are not; they are in bondage, and abject slaves.

The church in affirming herself is not making herself the judge in her own cause, is not one of the litigants, as some pretend, for the cause in which she judges is not hers, but that of God himself. She is the court instituted by the Supreme Lawgiver to keep, interpret, and declare his law, and therefore to judge between him and the subjects his law binds. She, in determining a case of faith or morals, no more judges in her own cause than the supreme court of a nation does in defining its own jurisdiction, and in determining a case arising under the law of which it is constituted by the national authority the judge. She has, of course, the right, as has every civil court, to punish contempt, whether of her orders or her jurisdiction, for he who contemns her contemns him who has instituted her; but the questions to be decided are questions of law, which she does not make, and is therefore no more a party to the cause litigated, and no more interested or less impartial, than is a civil court in a civil action. Indeed, we see not, if it pleases Almighty God to make a revelation, and to set up his kingdom on earth with that revelation for its law, how he can provide for its due administration without such a body as the church affirms herself to be, nor how it would be possible to institute a higher or more satisfactory method of determining what the law of his kingdom is, than by the decision of a court instituted and assisted by him for that very purpose. In our judgment, no better way is practicable, and no other way of attaining the end desired is possible. We repeat, therefore, that the church meets every demand of the case, and removes every real difficulty in ascertaining what is the faith God has revealed, as well as what is opposed to it, or tends to obscure or impair it.

It is agreed on all hands, by all who hold that our heavenly Father has made us a revelation and instituted a church, that the Church of Rome, founded by Saints Peter and Paul, was in the beginning catholic and apostolic. If she was so in the beginning, she is so now; for she has not changed, and claims no authority which she has not claimed and exercised, as the occasion arose, from the first. She is the same identical body as she has been from the beginning. All the sectarian and schismatical bodies that oppose or refuse to submit to her authority acknowledged her authority prior to rejecting it, and were in communion with her. The change is not hers, but theirs. They have changed and gone out from her, because they were not of her, but she has remained ever the same. Take the schismatic Greeks. They originally were one body with her, and held the successor of Peter in the Roman See as primate or head of the whole visible church. They got angry or were perverted, and rejected the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and have never even to this day ventured to call themselves officially the Catholic or the Apostolic church. The men who founded the Reformed Churches so-called--Anglican among the rest--were brought up in the communion of the Catholic Church, and acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, and the Church of Rome as the mother and mistress of all the churches. The separation was caused by their change, not by hers. She held and taught at the time of the separation what she had always held and taught, and claimed no authority which she had not claimed from the first. Evidently, then, it was they and not she that changed and denied what they had previously believed. She lost individuals and nations from her communion, but she lost not her identity, or any portion of her rights and authority, as the one and only church of Christ, for she holds from God, not from the faithful. She has continued to be what she was at first, while they have gone from one change to another, have fallen into a confusion of tongues, as their prototypes did at Babel; and Luther and Calvin could hardly recognize their followers in those who go by their name to-day.

In the very existence of the church through so many changes in the world around her, the rise and fall of states and empires, assailed as she has been on every hand, and by all sorts of enemies, is a standing miracle, and a sufficient proof of her divinity. She was assailed by the Jews, who crucified her Lord and stirred up, wherever they went, the hostility of the people against his holy apostles and missionaries; she was assailed by the relentless persecution of the Roman Empire, the strongest organization the world has ever seen, and the greatest political power of which history gives any hint--an empire which wielded the whole power of organized paganism; she was driven to the catacombs, and obliged to offer up the holy sacrifice under the earth, for there was no place for her altars on its surface. Yet she survived the empire; emerged from the catacombs and planted the cross on the Capitol of the pagan world. She had then to encounter a hardly less formidable enemy in the Arian heresy, sustained by the civil power; then came her struggle with the barbarian invaders and conquerors from the fifth to the tenth century--the revolt of the East, or the Greek schism; the great schism of the West; the Northern revolt, or the so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century; and the hostility since of the greatest and most powerful states of the modern world; yet she stands erect where she did nearly twenty centuries ago, maintaining herself against all opposition; against the power, wealth, learning, and refinement of this world; against Jew, pagan, barbarian, heretic, and schismatic, and preserving her identity and her faith unchanged through all the vicissitudes of the world in the midst of which she is placed. She never could have done it if she had been sustained only by human virtue, human wisdom, and human sagacity; she could not have survived unchanged if she had not been under the divine protection, and upheld by the arm of Almighty God. The fact that she has lived on and preserved her identity, especially if we add to the opposition from without the scandals that have occurred within, is conclusive proof that under her human form she lives a divine and supernatural life; therefore that she is the church of God, and is what she affirms herself to be.

Believing the church to be what she affirms herself to be; believing the Roman Pontiff to be the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the father and teacher of all Christians, we have no fear that she will not survive the persecution which now rages against her, and that the Pope will not see his enemies prostrate at his feet. Through all history, we have seen that the successes of her enemies have been short-lived, and the terrible losses they have occasioned have been theirs, not hers. It will always be so. Kings, emperors, potentates, states, and empires may destroy themselves by opposing her, but her they cannot harm. See we not how the wrongs done to the Holy Father by Italian robbers, obeying the dictates of the secret societies, some of which, like the _Madre Natura_, date almost from apostolic times, are quickening the faith and fervor of Catholics throughout the world? Not for centuries has the Holy Father been so strong in the love and devotion of his faithful children as to-day. Never is the church stronger or nearer a victory than when abandoned by all the powers of this world, and thrown back on the support of her divine Spouse alone.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[22] _The Vatican Council and its Definitions._ A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D. & J. Sadlier. 1871. 12mo, pp. 252.

BORDEAUX.

One of the first objects that strikes the mariner ascending the Garonne towards Bordeaux is the ancient tower of St. Michel. I visited it the very morning after my arrival in that city. It is the belfry of a church of the same name, but is separated from it, being about forty yards distant. It was built in 1472, and is two hundred and fifty feet high. Formerly, it was over three hundred feet in height, but the steeple was blown down by a hurricane on the 8th of September, 1768. The view from the top is superb. Before you, like a map, lies the whole city--a noted commercial centre from the time of the Cæsars--encircling a great bend of the river. The eye is at first confused by the mass of roofs, spires, and streets, but in a moment singles out the great cruciform churches of St. André, Ste. Croix, and St. Michel. They lie beneath like immense crosses with arms stretched out--a perpetual appeal to heaven. Such remembrances of Calvary must ever stand between a sinful world and the justice of Almighty God. How can he look down upon all the iniquity of a great city, and not feel the silent _Parce nobis_ of these sacred arms extended over it, repeating silently, as it were, the divine prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Oh! what a love for the Passion dwelt in the heart of the middle ages which built these churches. Absorbed in the thought, I lost sight of the city. Its activity, its historical associations, the fine buildings and extensive view, all disappear before the cross. Bordeaux is generally thought of only as a wine-mart, but it also has holier associations. "Every foot-path on this planet may lead to the door of a hero," it is said, and very few paths there are in this Old World that do not bring us upon the traces of the saints--the most heroic of men, who have triumphed over themselves, which is better than the taking of a strong city. They it was that made these great signs of the cross on the breast of this fair city, hallowing it for ever.

Beneath the tower of St. Michel is a _caveau_, around which are ranged ninety mummies in a state of preservation said to be owing to the nature of the soil. Why is it that every one is enticed down to witness so horrid a spectacle? Dust to dust and ashes to ashes is far preferable to these withered bodies, and a quiet resting-place, deep, deep in the bosom of mother earth till the resurrection. Edmond About says the twelfth century would have embroidered many a charming legend to throw around these bodies, but the moderns have less imagination, and the guardian of the tower, who displays them by the light of his poor candle, is totally deficient in poesy. Had this writer been at Bordeaux on the eve of All Souls' day, he would have been invited at the midnight hour, "when spirits have power," to listen to the lugubrious cries and chants that come up from the _caveau_, where, as the popular voice declares, these ninety forms are having their yearly dance--the dance of death! I wonder if the mummy next the door, as you gladly pass out into the upper air, has his hand still extended like an _au revoir_.... Yes, there is one place where we shall meet, but not in this repulsive form. May we all be found there with glorified bodies!

The church of St. Michel is older than the tower, having been built in the twelfth century. It is of the Gothic style, and one of those antique churches that speak so loudly to the heart of the traveller from the New World--one in which we are penetrated with

"An inward stillness,
That perfect silence when the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart that we may know
His will, and in the silence of our spirits
That he may do his will, and do that only."

The ancients had a deep meaning when they represented the veiled Isis with her finger on her hushed lips. The soul profoundly impressed by the Divine Presence is speechless.

In one of the side chapels is the tomb of an old bishop of the middle ages, in a niche of the wall. On it he lies carven in stone, with the mitre on his head, and clad in his pontifical vestments, and his hands folded in prayer.

"Still praying in thy sleep
With lifted hands and face supine,
Meet attitude of calm and reverence deep,
Keeping thy marble watch in hallowed shrine."

The cathedral of St. André is another of these venerable monuments of the past. Founded in the fourth century, destroyed by the barbarians, restored by Charlemagne, and again ruined by the Normans, it was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and consecrated by Pope Urban II., in 1096. I went there at an early hour to offer up my thanksgiving for the happy end of this stage of my journey. The canons were just chanting the hours, which reverberated among the light arches with fine effect. Masses were being offered in various chapels, and there were worshippers everywhere. I was particularly struck with the devout appearance of a venerable old man in one of the dimmest and most remote chapels, enveloped in a hooded cloak, with the capuche drawn over his head. He looked as if his soul, as well as his body, was almost done with time.

Through all these aisles and oratories, which whispering lips filled with the perfume of prayer streaming through the old windows came the morning sun,

"Whose beams, thus hallowed by the scenes they pass,
Tell round the floor each parable of glass."

I can still see the purple light filling the chapel of the Sacred Heart and ensanguining the uplifted Host.

"A sweet religious sadness, like a dove,
Broods o'er this place. The clustered pillars high
Are roséd o'er by the morning sky:
And from the heaven-hued windows far above,
Intense as adoration, warm as love,
A purple glory deep is seen to lie.
Turn, poet, Christian, now the serious eye,
Where, in white vests, a meek and holy band,
Chanting God's praise in solemn order, stand.
O hear that music swell far up and die!
Old temple, thy vast centuries seem but years,
Where wise and holy men lie glorified!
Our hearts are full, our souls are occupied,
And piety has birth in quiet tears!"

And all the worshippers in this church were turned toward the holy East, whence cometh the Son of Man. The glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the East. I like this orientation of churches now too much neglected. The old symbolic usages of the church should be perpetuated. This turning to the East in prayer was at one age the mark of a true believer, distinguishing him from those who had separated from the church. True, some of the old basilicas at Rome and elsewhere have their altars at the west, but, according to the ritual of such churches, the priest turns toward the people, thus looking to the East. Cassiodorus and others say that our Lord on the cross had his face toward the west. So, in directing our thoughts and hearts to Calvary, it is almost instinctive to look to the East.

"With hands outstretched, bleeding and bare,
He doth in death his innocent head recline,
Turning to the west. Descending from his height,
The sun beheld, and veiled him from the sight.
Thither, while from the serpent's wound we pine,
To thee, remembering that baptismal sign,
We turn and drink anew thy healing might."

Let us, then, place, as Wordsworth says,

"Like men of elder days,
Our Christian altar faithful to the east,
Whence the tall window drinks the morning rays."

While I was lingering with peculiar interest before a monument to the memory of Cardinal de Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, and afterward Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose memory is revered in the Old World and the New, I heard a chanting afar off, and, looking around, saw through the open door a funeral procession coming hastily along the street toward the church, and singing the _Miserere_--coming, not with mournful step and slow, as with us, but like the followers of Islam, who believe the soul is in torment between death and burial, and so lay aside their usual dignified deportment and hurry the body to the grave. But in France the funeral _cortége_ does not necessarily include the relatives, and I felt this very haste might be typical of their eagerness to commence the Office of the Dead. Anyhow, I forgave them when, in the chapel draped in black, I saw them devoutly betake themselves to prayer during the Holy Sacrifice. I, too, dropped my little bead of prayer for the eternal rest of one whose name I know not, but which is known to God.

"Help, Lord, the souls which thou hast made,
The souls to thee so dear;
In prison for the debt unpaid,
Of sins committed here."

The confessionals seemed to be greatly frequented the day I was at St. André's--those sepulchres into which rolls the great burden of our sins. There

"The great Absolver with relief
Stands by the door, and bears the key,
O'er penitence on bended knee."

What non-Catholic has not felt, at least once in his life, as if he would give worlds for the moral courage to lay down the burden of memory at the feet of some holy man endowed with the power of absolving from sin! Almighty God has made his church the interpreter between himself and his creatures; hence the peculiar grace a holy confessor has to meet the wants of the human heart laid bare before him. Zoroaster told his disciples that the wings of the soul, lost by sin, might be regained by bedewing them with the waters of life found in the garden of God. It is only the consecrated priest who has the power of unsealing this fountain to each one of us. These confessionals are distributed in the various chapels, everywhere meeting the eye of the parched and sin-worn traveller who would

"Kneel down, and take the word divine,
ABSOLVO TE."

Of course there is a Ladye Chapel in this church, as in all others. Jesus and Mary, whose names are ever mingled on Catholic lips, the first they learn and the last they murmur, are never separated in our churches. Devotion to the Virgin has grown up through the church, beautifying and perfuming it like the famous rose-bush in the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany--the oldest of all known rose-bushes. It takes root under the choir in the crypt. Its age is unknown, but a document proves that nearly a thousand years ago Bishop Hezilo had it protected by a stone roof still to be seen. So with devotion to our Mystical Rose--_quasi plantatio rosæ in Jericho_--its roots go down deep among the foundations of the church; saints have protected and nourished it, and all nations come to sit under its vine and inhale its perfume.

"Blossom for ever, blossoming rod!
Thou didst not blossom once to die:
That life which, issuing forth from God,
Thy life enkindled, runs not dry.

"Without a root in sin-stained earth,
'Twas thine to bud salvation's flower,
No single soul the church brings forth
But blooms from thee, and is thy dower."

What a safeguard to man is devotion to Mary Most Pure! It is like the Pridwin--the shield of King Arthur--on which was emblazoned the Holy Virgin, warding off the strokes of the great enemy of souls.

There are some poetical associations connected with Bordeaux: among others, the memory of the troubadours who enriched and perfected the Romance tongue, but whose songs at last died away in the sad discord of the Albigensian wars. Here the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine held her court of love, gathering around her all the famous troubadours of her time, and deciding upon the merits of their songs. Among these was her favorite, Bernard de Ventadour, chiefly known to fame by being mentioned by Petrarch. Eleanor herself was a musician and a lover of poetry--tastes she inherited from her grandfather, William, Duke of Aquitaine, generally called the Count de Poitiers, one of the earliest of the troubadours whose songs have come down to us. Around this charming queen of love and song gathered the admiring votaries of _la gaia sciencia_, like nightingales singing around the rose, all vowing, as in duty bound, that their hearts were bleeding on the horns!

Poor maligned Eleanor was too gay a butterfly for the gloomy court of Louis VII. She wanted the bright sun of her own province in which to float, and the incense of admiring voices to waft her along. She herself was a composer of _chansons_, and is reckoned among the authors of France. She dearly loved Bordeaux, her capital, and was adored by its people. Here she was married with great pomp to Louis, after which the Duke of Aquitaine laid aside his insignia of power, and, assuming the garb of a hermit, went on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, and devoted the remainder of his life to prayer and penance in hermitage on Montserrat, by way of preparation for death. It is well to pause awhile before plunging into the great ocean of eternity.

These pilgrimages to Compostella were exceedingly popular in that age, and hospices for the pilgrims to that shrine were to be found in all the large cities and towns. There was one at Auch, and another at Paris in the Rue du Temple, which was particularly celebrated and served by Augustinian nuns. And here at Bordeaux was the Hospice of St. André for the reception of the weary votary of St. Jago.

"Here comes a pilgrim," says one of Shakespeare's characters. "God save you, pilgrim. Where are you bound?"

"To St. Jacques le Grand. Where do the palmers lodge, I beseech you?"

"Eftsoones unto an holy hospitall
That was forby the way, she did him bring,
In which seven bead-men that had vowed all
Their life to service of high heaven's King,
Did spend their daies in doing godly thing;
Their gates to all were open evermore,
That by the wearie way were travelling,
And one sate wayting ever them before
To call in comers-by, that needy were and pore."

Digby says the hospitality and charity of these hospices had their origin in the bishops' houses. Fortunatus thus speaks of Leontius II., Archbishop of Bordeaux, who, in accordance with the apostle's injunction, was given to hospitality:

"Susceptor peregrum distribuendo cibum.
Longius extremo si quis properasset ab orbe,
Advena mox vidit, hunc ait esse patrem."

That the devotion of the middle ages is yet alive in the church is proved by the influx of pilgrims at the shrine of St. Germaine of Pibrac, at Notre Dame de Lourdes, and a thousand other places of popular devotion. So great is the number of pilgrims to Lourdes, drawn by the brightness of Mary's radiant form, that the railway between Tarbes and Pau was turned from its intended direct line in order to pass through Lourdes. In one day the train from Bayonne brought nine hundred, and at another time over a thousand pilgrims. And as for the continued charity and hospitality of the church, witness the monks of St. Bernard and of Palestine, known to all the world. How disinterested is genuine Catholic charity, done unto the Lord and not unto man! Some suppose the good works practised among us is by way of barter for heaven, but they little know the spirit of the church. Charity is one expression of its piety, which, in its highest manifestations, is devoid of self-interest. Listen to John of Bordeaux, a holy Franciscan friar, who, after quoting a saying of Epictetus, that we generally find piety where there is utility, says: "He does not come up to the standard of pure Christianity: he pretends that piety takes its birth in utility, so that it is interest that gives rise to devotion. Yes, among the profane, but not among Christians, who, acquainted with the maxims of our holy religion, have no other end but to serve God for his love and for his glory; forgetting all considerations of their own advantage, they aspire to attain to that devotion which is agreeable to him without any view to their own interest."

And in these practical times another holy writer, Dr. Newman, says in the same spirit: "They who seek religion for culture's sake, are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they can never have the religion. To seek religion for the present elevation, or even the social improvement it brings, is really to fall from faith which rests in God, and the knowledge of him as the ultimate good, and has no by-ends to serve."