Chapter X: A Despairing Chapter (5)

This was the usual style of conversation between the two. Père Jacques presented lumps of sugar which were invariably recognized by a bray, or, more properly, a series of brays, such as no other donkey in France or Navarre but herself could send forth; and while it lasted Père Jacques kept up a running commentary of remonstrance.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Sapristi, veux-tu te taire? A-t-on jamais vu! Lotte, veux-tu en fini-i-i-r!"

Though it was an old novelty in the quartier, it seemed never to have lost its savor, and as soon as Père Jacques and his little cart, full of apples, or oranges, or cauliflowers, as the case might be, were seen or heard at the further end of the street, the gamins left off marbles and pitch-and-toss to bully and chaff Père Jacques and greet his _idée_ with a jocular "Bonjour, Mlle. Adrienne." The tradesmen looked up from their weights and measures, laughing, as the pair went by.

When provisions began to run short during the Blocus, Père Jacques grew uneasy, not for himself, but for Mlle. Adrienne. Hard-hearted jesters advised him to fatten her up for the market; ass-flesh was delicate and rarer than horse-flesh, and fetched six francs a pound; it was no small matter to turn six francs in these famine times, when there were no more apples or cauliflowers to sell; Mlle. Adrienne was a burden now instead of a help to her master; the little cart stood idle in the corner; there was nothing to trundle, and it was breaking his heart to see her growing thin for want of rations, and to watch her spirits drooping for want of exercise and lumps of sugar. For more than a fortnight Père Jacques deprived himself of a morsel of the favorite dainty, and doled out his last demikilog to her with miserly economy, hoping always that the gates would be opened before she came to the last lump.

"Voyons, ma fille!" Père Jacques would say, as she munched a bit half the usual size of the now precious bonbon. "Cheer up, ma bouriquette! Be reasonable, Mlle. Adrienne, be reasonable, and bear thy trials like an ass, patiently and bravely, not like a man, grumbling and despairing. Paperlotte, Mlle. Adrienne! if it were not for thee I should be out on the ramparts, and send those coquins to the right-abouts myself. Les gredins! they are not content with drilling our soldiers and starving our citizens, but they must rob thee of thy bit of sugar, my pretty one. Mille tonnerres! if I had but their necks under my arm for one squeeze!"

And, entering into the grief and indignation of her master, Mlle. Adrienne would set up an agonized bray.

Thus comforting one another, the pair bore up through their trials. But at last came the days of eating mice and rats, and bread that a dog in good circumstances would have turned up its nose at a month ago, and then Père Jacques shook in his sabots. He dared not show himself abroad with Mlle. Adrienne, and not only that, but he lived in chronic terror of a raid being made on her at home. The mischievous urchins who had amused themselves at the expense of his paternal feelings in days of comparative plenty, gave him no peace or rest now that the wolf was really at the door. Requisitions were being made in private houses to see that no stores were hoarded up while the people outside were famishing. One rich family, who had prudently bought a couple of cows at the beginning of the Blocus, after vainly endeavoring to keep the fact a secret, and surrounding the precious beasts with as much mystery and care as ever Egyptian worshippers bestowed on the sacred Isis, were forced to give them up to the commonwealth. This caused a great sensation in the quartier. Père Jacques was the first to hear it, and the _gamins_ improved the opportunity by declaring to him that the republic had issued a decree that all asses were to be seized next day, all such as could not speak, they added facetiously, and there was to be a general slaughter of them, a _massacre des innocents_, the little brutes called it, at the abattoir of the Rue Valois. The fact of its being at the Rue Valois was a small mercy for which they reminded Père Jacques to be duly grateful, inasmuch as, it being close at hand, he might accompany Mlle. Adrienne to the place of execution, give her a parting kiss, and hear her last bray of adieu. At this cynical climax, Père Jacques started up in a rage, and seizing his stick, set to vigorously belaboring the diabolical young torturers, who took to their heels, yelling and screaming like frightened guinea-pigs, while Mlle. Adrienne, who stood ruminating in a corner of the room, opened a rattling volley of brays on the fugitives.

All that night Père Jacques lay awake in terror. Every whistle of the wind, every creak in the door, every stir and sound, set his heart thumping violently against his ribs; every moment he was expecting the dreaded domiciliary visit. What was he to do? Where was he to fly? How was he to cheat the brigands and save Mlle. Adrienne? The night wore out, and the dawn broke, and the raid was still unaccomplished. As soon as it was light, Père Jacques rose and dressed himself, and sat down on a wooden stool close by Mlle. Adrienne, and pondered. Since her life had been in jeopardy, he had removed her from her out-house in the court to his own private room on the ground-floor close by.

"Que me conseilles-tu, Mlle. Adrienne?" murmured the distracted parent, speaking in a low tone, impelled by the instinct that drives human beings to seek sympathy somewhere, from a cat or a dog if they have no fellow-creature to appeal to, Père Jacques had contracted a habit of talking out loud to his dumb companion when they were alone, and consulting her on any perplexing point. Suddenly a bright idea struck Père Jacques; he would go and consult Mère Richard.

Mère Richard lived in a neighboring court amidst a numerous family of birds of many species, bullfinches, canaries, and linnets. She had often suggested to Père Jacques to adopt a little songster by way of cheering his lonely den, and had once offered him a young German canary of her own bringing up.

"It's as good as a baby for tricks and company, and nothing so dear to keep," urged Mère Richard.

But Père Jacques had gratefully declined. "Mlle. Adrienne is company enough for me," he said, "and it might hurt her feelings if I took up with a bird now, thanks to you all the same, voisine."

To-day, as he neared the house, he looked in vain for the red and green cages that used to hang out au troisième on either side of Mère Richard's windows. The birds were gone. Where? Père Jacques felt a sympathetic thrill of horror, and with a heavy heart mounted the dark little stairs, no longer merry with the sound of chirping from the tidy little room au troisième. He refrained, through delicate consideration for Mère Richard's feelings, from asking questions, but, casting his eyes round the room, he beheld the empty cages ranged in a row behind the door.

But Mère Richard had a donkey. There was no comparison to be tolerated for a moment between it and Mlle. Adrienne, still their positions were identical, and Mère Richard, who was a wise woman, would help him in his present difficulty, and if she could not help him she would, at any rate, sympathize with him, which was the next best thing to helping him. But Mère Richard, to his surprise, had heard nothing of the impending raid on donkeys. When he explained to her how the case stood, instead of breaking out into lamentations, she burst into a chuckling laugh.

"Pas possible! Bouriquette good to be eaten, and the republic going to buy her, and pay me six francs a pound for her! Père Jaques, it's too good to be true," declared the unnatural old Harpagon.

Père Jacques was unable to contain his indignation. He vowed that rather than let her fall into the hands of the cannibals, he would destroy Mlle. Adrienne with his own hand; he would kill any man in the republic, from Favre to Gambetta, who dared to lay a finger on her; aye, that he would, if he were to swing for it the next hour!

"Père Jacques, you are an imbecile," observed Mère Richard, taking a pinch of snuff; "you remind me of a story my bonhomme used to tell of two camarades of his that he met on their way to be hanged; one of them didn't mind it, and walked on quietly, holding his tongue; but the other didn't like it at all, and kept howling and whining, and making a tapage de diable. At last the quiet one lost patience, and turning round on the other, 'Eh grand bétat,' he cried, 'si tu n'en veux pas, n'en dégoute pas les autres!'"

Père Jaques saw the point of the story, and, taking the hint, stood up to go.

"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was leaving the room.

"Sold four of them for three francs apiece, and ate three of them, and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with unblushing heartlessness.

"Monster!" groaned Père Jacques, and hurried from her presence.

All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain. When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown, and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a _moulinet_ over his head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille! Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt--ah les coquins, les brigands, les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with "Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole! Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"

The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude. No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.

One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs, were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had disappeared. What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.

A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek, the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent. Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques. There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and, in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known, the fact that both Père Jacques and his _idée_ were well remembered and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing, indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting. She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques, yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his _idée_ to his life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety--for the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses--and what between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.

Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious, while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While he and Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart was moved within him and softened towards all men--nay, towards all boys--he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been, or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault. Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.

"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work, as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again, or it might be worse for her.

A PIE IX.

Le Verbe créateur en paraissant sur terre
Erigea son église, auguste monument.
Il appela Simon du fameux nom de Pierre
Et de son édifice en fit le fondement:

Des volontés du Christ sacré dépositaire,
Interprète et gardien du dernier Testament
Pie inspiré d'en haut et par l'église entière
En achève le dôme et le couronnement.

Pie obtient en ce jour (glorieux privilége!)
De régner a l'égal du chef du saint collége.

Des droits de l'Eternal et de l'humanité
Contre l'erreur du jour défenseur intrépide,
Calme au sein des périls, d'une main sûre il guide
La barque de Céphas au port de Vérité.

NEW YORK, June 17, 1871.

THE SECULAR NOT SUPREME.[156]

Dr. Bellows is the well-known pastor of All Souls' Church, and editor of the _Liberal Christian_ in this city, a distinguished Unitarian minister, with some religious instincts and respectable literary pretensions. As a student in college and the Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was full of promise, and a great favorite of the late Hon. Edward Everett, himself originally a Unitarian minister and pastor of Brattle Street Church, Boston. The Hon. E. P. Hurlbut was formerly one of the judges of the Supreme Court of this state, a lawyer by profession, with a passably clear head and a logical mind, who knows, if not the truth, at least what he means, and neither fears nor hesitates to say it. His pamphlet, as far as it goes, expresses, we doubt not, his honest thought, but his thought is the thought of a secularist, who admits no order above the secular, and holds that no religion not subordinate to and under the control of the civil power, should be tolerated. Both he and Dr. Bellows are from instinct and education hearty haters of the Catholic Church; but while he is content to war against her from the point of view of pure secularism or no-religion, that is, atheism, the reverend doctor seeks to clothe his hatred in a Christian garb and to war against Christ in the name of Christ.

Dr. Bellows, as a Liberal Christian, and though a Protestant hardly allowed by his more rigid Protestant countrymen to bear the Christian name, has a double battle to fight: one, against the Evangelical movement, at the head of which is Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court, to amend the constitution of the United States so as to make orthodox Protestantism the official religion of the republic, which would exclude him and his Unitarian, Universalist, and Quaker brethren; and the other, against the admission of the equal rights of Catholics with Protestants before the American state. Catholics greatly trouble him, and he hardly knows what to do with them. According to the letter of the constitution of the Union and of the several states, unless New Hampshire be an exception, they are American citizens, standing in all respects on a footing of perfect equality with any other class of citizens, and have as much right to take part in public affairs, and to seek to manage them in the interests of their religion, as Protestants have to take part in them in the interests of Protestantism; but this is very wrong, and against the spirit of the constitution; for the nation is a Protestant nation, the country was originally settled by and belongs to Protestantism, and Catholics ought to understand that they are really here only by sufferance, that they do not in reality stand in relation to public questions on a footing of equality with Protestants, and have really no right to exert any influence in regard to the public policy of the country not in accordance with the convictions of the Protestant majority. He tells us, in the discourse before us and more distinctly still in the columns of the _Liberal Christian_, not to aspire as citizens to equality with Protestants as if we had as much right to the government as they have, and warns us that if we do we shall be resisted even unto blood.

The occasion of his outpouring of wrath against Catholics is that they have protested against being taxed for the support of a system of sectarian or godless schools, to which they are forbidden in conscience to send their children, and have demanded as their right either that the tax be remitted, or that their proportion of the public schools be set off to them, to be, as to education and discipline, under Catholic control. Dr. Bellows allows that the Catholic demand is just, and that by making it a question at the polls they may finally obtain it; but this is not to his mind, for it would defeat the pet scheme of Protestants for preventing the growth of Catholicity in the country, by detaching, through the influence of the public schools, their children from the faith of their parents. Yet as long as any religion, even the reading of the Bible, is insisted on in the public schools, what solid argument can be urged against the demand of Catholics, or what is to prevent Catholic citizens from making it a political question and withholding their votes from the party that refuses to respect their rights of conscience and to do them justice? Dr. Bellows says that we cannot legally be prevented from doing so, but, if we do so, it will be the worse for us; for if we carry our religion to the polls the Protestant people will, as they should, rise up against us and overwhelm us by their immense majority, perhaps even exterminate us.

To prevent the possibility of collision, the reverend doctor proposes a complete divorce of church and state. He proposes to defeat the Evangelicals on the one hand, and the Catholics on the other, by separating totally religion and politics. Thus he says:

"It is the vast importance of keeping the political
and the religious movements and action of the people
apart, and in their own independent spheres, that
makes wise citizens, alike on religious and on civil
grounds, look with alarm and jealousy on any endeavors,
on the part either of Protestants or Catholics, to
secure any special attention or support, any partial
or separate legislation or subsidies, from either the
national or the state governments. I have already told
you that Protestants, representing the great sects in
this country, are now laboring, by movable conventions,
to mould public opinion in a way to give finally a
theological character to the constitution. In a much
more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with
their historical antecedents, their hereditary temper,
and their ecclesiastical logic, the Roman Catholics in
this country are, in many states, and every great city
of the Union, using the tremendous power they possess
as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public
treasure in a strong current into their own channels,
and thus secure an illegitimate support as a religious
body. It is not too much to guess that more than half
of the ecclesiastical wealth of the Roman Catholic
Church in America, against the wishes and convictions
of a Protestant country, has been voted to it in
lands and grants by municipalities and legislatures
trading for Irish votes. The Catholic Church thus has
a factitious prosperity and progress. It is largely
sustained by Protestants--not on grounds of charity and
toleration, or from a sense of its usefulness (that
were well privately done), but from low and unworthy
political motives in both the great parties of the
country. Now that Roman Catholics themselves should
take advantage of their solidarity as a people and a
church, and of the power of their priesthood, with
all uninformed and some enlightened communicants, to
turn the political will into a machine for grinding
their ecclesiastical grist, is not unnatural, nor
wholly unpardonable. But it is fearfully dangerous
to them and to us. Their success--due to the sense of
the Protestant strength which thinks it can afford to
blink their machinations, or to the preoccupation of
the public mind with the emulative business pursuits
of the time, or to the confidence which the American
people seem to feel in the final and secure divorce of
church and state--their unchecked success encourages
them to bolder and more bold demands, and accustoms the
people to more careless and more perilous acquiescence
in their claims. The principle of authority in
religion, which has so many temperamental adherents in
all countries; the inherent love of pomp and show in
worship, strongest in the least educated; a natural
weariness of sectarian divisions, commonest among lazy
thinkers and stupid consciences--all these play into
the hands of the Romanists, and they are making hay
while the sun shines.

"There are no reviews, no newspapers in this country,
so bold and unqualified; none so unscrupulous and
so intensely zealous and partisan; none so fearless
and outspoken as the Catholic journals. They profess
to despise Protestant opposition; they deride the
feeble tactics of other Christian sects; they are more
ultramontane, more Roman, more Papal, than French,
German, Austrian, Bavarian, Italian believers; they
avow their purpose to make this a Roman Catholic
country, and they hope to live on the Protestant enemy
while they are converting him. They often put their
religious faith above their political obligation,
and, as bishops and priests, make it a duty to the
church for their members to vote as Catholics rather
than as American citizens. Not what favors the peace,
prosperity, and union of the nation, but what favors
their church, is the supreme question for them at every
election; and American politicians, for their predatory
purposes, have taught them this, and are their leaders
in it.

"Now, as an American citizen, I say nothing against
the equality of the rights of the Roman Catholics and
the Protestants; both may lawfully strive, in their
unpolitical spheres, for the mastery, and the law
may not favor or disfavor either; nor can anything
be done to prevent Roman Catholics from using their
votes as Roman Catholics, if they please. It is
against the spirit, but not against the letter of the
constitution. At any rate, it cannot be helped; only,
it may compel Protestants to form parties and vote as
Protestants against Roman Catholic interests, which
would be a deplorable necessity, and lead, sooner
or later, through religious parties in politics, to
religious wars. The way to avoid such a horrible
possibility--alas, such a threatening probability for
the next generation--is at once to look with the utmost
carefulness and the utmost disfavor upon every effort
on the part of either Protestants or Catholics to mix
up sectarian or theological or religious questions with
national and state and city politics.

"Every appeal of a sect, a denominational church,
or sectarian charity of any description, to the
general government, or state or city governments, for
subsidies or favors, should be at once discountenanced
and forbidden by public opinion, and made impossible
by positive statute. The Protestant sects in this
country should hasten to remove from their record any
advantages whatsoever guaranteed to them by civil
law to any partiality or sectarian distinction. The
most important privilege they enjoy by law in most of
the states is the right of keeping the Bible in the
public schools. It is a privilege associated with the
tenderest and most sacred symbol of the Protestant
faith--the Bible. To exclude it from the public schools
is to the religious affections of Protestants like
Abraham's sacrifice of his only son. When it was first
proposed, I felt horror-stricken, and instinctively
opposed it; but I have thought long and anxiously upon
the subject, and have, from pure logical necessity and
consistency, been obliged to change--nay, reverse my
opinion. Duty to the unsectarian character of our civil
institutions demands that this exclusion should be
made. It will not be any disclaimer of the importance
of the Bible in the education of American youth, but
only a concession that we cannot carry on the religious
with the secular education of American children, at the
public expense and in the public schools. So long as
Protestant Christians insist, merely in the strength
of their great majority, upon maintaining the Bible in
the public schools, they justify Roman Catholics in
demanding that the public money for education shall be
distributed to sects in proportion to the number of
children they educate. This goes far to break up the
common-school system of this country, and, if carried
out, must ultimately tend to dissolve the Union, which
morally depends upon the community of feeling and the
homogeneity of culture produced by an unsectarian
system of common schools."--_Church and State_, pp.
16-19.

But this proposed remedy will prove worse than the disease. The state divorced from the church, wholly separated from religion, is separated from morality; and the state separated from morality, that is, from the moral order, from natural justice inseparable from religion, cannot stand, and ought not to stand, for it is incapable of performing a single one of its proper functions. The church, representing the spiritual, and therefore the superior, order, is by its own nature and constitution as independent of the state as the soul is of the body; and the state separated from the church, or from religion and morality, is like the body separated from the soul, dead, a putrid or putrefying corpse. Exclude your Protestant Bible and all direct and indirect religious instruction from your public schools, and you would not render them a whit less objectionable to us than they are now, for we object not less to purely secular schools than we do to sectarian schools. We hold that children should be trained up in the way they should go, so that when old they will not depart from it; and the way in which they should go is not the way of pure secularism, but the way enjoined by God our Maker through his church. God has in this life joined soul and body, the spiritual and the secular, together, and what God has joined together we dare not put asunder. There is only one of two things that can satisfy us: either cease to tax us for the support of the public schools, and leave the education of our children to us, or give us our proportion of the public schools in which to educate them in our own religion. We protest against the gross injustice of being taxed to educate the children of non-Catholics, and being obliged in addition to support schools for our own children at our own expense, or peril their souls.

We do not think Dr. Bellows is aware of what he demands when he demands the complete divorce of church and state, or the total separation of religion and politics. The state divorced from the church is a godless state, and politics totally separated from religion is simply political atheism, and political atheism is simply power without justice, force without law; for there is no law without God, the supreme and universal Lawgiver. Man has no original and underived legislative power, and one man has in and of himself no authority over another; for all men by the law of nature are equal, and have equal rights, and among equals no one has the right to govern. All governments based on political atheism, or the assumption that politics are independent of religion, rest on no foundation, are usurpations, tyrannies, without right, and can govern, if at all, only by might or sheer force. To declare the government divorced from religion is to declare it emancipated from the law of God, from all moral obligation, and free to do whatever it pleases. It has no duties, and under it there are and can be no rights; for rights and duties are in the moral order and inseparable from religion, since the law of God is the basis of all rights and duties, the foundation and guarantee of all morality. The state, divorced from religion, would be bound to recognize and protect no rights of God or man, not even those natural and inalienable rights of all men, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is going further in the direction of absolutism than go the doctor's dear friends the Turks, whom he so warmly eulogizes in his letters from the East, for even they hold the sultan is bound by the Koran, and forbidden to do anything it prohibits.

Dr. Bellows, doubtless, has no intention of divorcing the state from morality, and does not see that his proposition implies it. He probably holds that morality is separable from religion, for with him religion is simply sentiment or opinion; but in this he falls into the common mistake of all Liberal Christians, and of many Protestants who regard Liberal Christians as no Christians at all. Morality and religion are inseparable, for morality is only the practical application in the several departments of life of the principles of religion. Without religion morality has no foundation, nothing on which to rest, is a baseless fabric, an unreality. Deny God, and you deny the moral law and the whole moral order, all right, all duty, all human accountability. The separation of all political questions from all religious questions, which the reverend doctor demands, is their separation from all moral questions, and is the emancipation of the state from all right and all duty, or the assertion of its unrestricted power to do whatever it pleases, in total disregard of all moral and religious considerations. Is this the doctrine of a Christian?

This surely is not the relation of church and state in America, and derives no support from the American order of thought. With us, the state is instituted chiefly for the protection of the natural rights of man, as we call them, but really the rights of God, since they are anterior to civil society, are superior to it, and not derived or derivable from it. These rights it is the duty of civil society to protect and defend. Any acts of the political sovereign, be that sovereign king or kaiser, nobility or people, contrary to these antecedent and superior rights are tyrannical and unjust, are violences, not laws, and the common-law courts will not enforce them, because contrary to the law of justice and forbidden by it. The American state disclaims all authority over the religion of its citizens, but at the same time acknowledges its obligation to respect in its own action, and to protect and defend from external violence, the religion which its citizens or any class of its citizens choose to adopt or adhere to for themselves. It by no means asserts its independence of religion or its right to treat it with indifference, but acknowledges its obligation to protect its citizens in the free and peaceable possession and enjoyment of the religion they prefer. It goes further, and affords religion the protection and assistance of the law in the possession and management of her temporalities, her churches and temples, lands and tenements, funds and revenues for the support of public worship, and various charitable or eleemosynary institutions. All the protection and assistance the benefit of which every Protestant denomination fully enjoys, and even the Catholic Church in principle, though not always in fact, would be denied, if the divorce Dr. Bellows demands were granted, and religion, having no rights politicians are bound to respect, would become the prey of lawless and godless power, and religious liberty would be utterly annihilated, as well as civil liberty itself, which depends on it.

The chief pretence with Dr. Bellows for urging the complete divorce of church and state, is that Catholics demand and receive subsidies from the state and city for their schools and several charitable institutions. Some such subsidies have been granted, we admit, but in far less proportion to Catholics than they to Protestants or non-Catholics. The public schools are supported at the public expense, by the school fund, and a public tax, of which Catholics pay their share, and these schools are simply sectarian or godless schools, for the sole benefit of non-Catholics. The subsidies conceded to a few of our schools do by no means place them on an equality with those of non-Catholics. We by no means receive our share of the subsidies conceded. The aids granted to our hospitals, orphan asylums, and reformatories are less liberal than those to similar non-Catholic institutions. So long as the state subsidizes any institutions of the sort, we claim to receive our proportion of them as our right. If the state grant none to non-Catholics, we shall demand none for ourselves. We demand equality, but we ask no special privileges or favors. The outcry of the sectarian and secular press against us on this score is wholly unauthorized, is cruel, false, and unjust. It is part and parcel of that general system of falsification by which it is hoped to inflame popular passion and prejudice against Catholics and their church.

Underlying the whole of the doctrine of this discourse is the assumption of the supremacy of the secular order, or that every American citizen is bound to subordinate his religion to his politics, or divest himself of it whenever he acts on a political question. This, which is assumed and partially disguised in Dr. Bellows, is openly and frankly asserted and boldly maintained in Judge Hurlbut's pamphlet. The judge talks much about theology, theocracy, etc., subjects of which he knows less than he supposes, and of course talks a great deal of nonsense, as unbelievers generally do; but he is quite clear and decided that the state should have the power to suppress any church or religious institution that is based on a theory or principle different from its own. The theory of the American government is democratic, and the government ought to have the power to suppress or exclude every church that is not democratically constituted. Religion should conform to politics, not politics to religion. The political law is above the religious, and, of course, man is above God. In order to be able to carry out this theory, the learned judge proposes an important amendment to the constitution of the United States, which shall on the one hand prohibit the several states from ever establishing any religion by law; and, on the other, shall authorize Congress to enact such laws as it may deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions. He says:

"The following amendment is proposed to Article I.
of the amendments to the Constitution of the United
States. The words in italics are proposed to be added
to the present article:

"ART. I. _Neither_ Congress _nor any state_ shall make
_any_ laws respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances. _But Congress
may enact such laws as it shall deem necessary to
control or prevent the establishment or continuance of
any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded
on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican
institutions._

"It is assumed that there is nothing in the
constitution, as it stands, which forbids a _state_
from establishing a religion, and that no power is
conferred on Congress by the constitution to forbid
a foreign hierarchical establishment in the United
States. If such a power be needed, then the proposed
amendment is also necessary."--_Secular View_, p. 5.

This proposed amendment, like iniquity, lies unto itself, for while it prohibits Congress and the several states from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it gives to Congress full power to control or prevent the establishment or the continuance--that is, to prohibit--the free exercise by Catholics of their religion, under the flimsy pretence that it is a foreign hierarchy founded on anti-republican principles. The hierarchy is an essential part of our religion, and any denial of its freedom is the denial of the free exercise of his religion to every Catholic, and of the very principle of religious liberty itself, which the constitution guarantees.

We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is universal is never and nowhere a foreigner; but yet, because its Supreme Pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and infidels will hold that it is a foreign power, and anti-republican. The carnal Jews held the Hebrew religion to be a national religion, and because the promised Messiah came as a spiritual, not as a temporal and national prince, they rejected him. Infidels believe in no spiritual order, and consequently in no Catholic principle or authority; Protestants believe in no Catholic hierarchy, and hold that all authority in religious matters comes from God, not through the hierarchy, but through the faithful or the people, and hence their ministers are _called_, not _sent_. It would be useless, therefore, to undertake to prove to one or another of these three classes that the Catholic hierarchy is at home here, in America, as much so as at Rome, and, since it holds not from the people, that it is not founded on anti-republican or anti-democratic principles. The only arguments we could use to prove it lie in an order of thought with which they are not familiar, do not even recognize, and to be appreciated demand a spiritual apprehension which, though not above natural reason, is quite too high for such confirmed secularists as ex-Judge Hurlbut and his rationalistic brethren, who have lost all conception, not only of the supernatural order, but of the supersensible, the intelligible, the universal reality above individual or particular existences.

For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual. The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same. The Catholic hierarchy represents in the secular and visible world, in the affairs of individuals and nations, this spiritual order, on which the whole secular order depends, and which, therefore, is an alien nowhere and at home everywhere. The Catholic hierarchy is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholic that can see and understand this; it is too high and too intellectual for non-Catholics, whose minds are turned earthward, and have lost the habit of looking upward, and to recover it must be touched by the quickening and elevating power of grace. We must expect them, therefore, to vote the Catholic hierarchy to be in this country a foreign hierarchy, although it is nowhere national, and is no more foreign here than is God himself.

The Catholic hierarchy is not founded on democratic principles, we grant, but there is nothing in its principles or dogmas antagonistical to republican government, if government at all; but since it holds not from the people, nor in any sense depends on them for its authority, non-Catholics, who recognize no power above the people, will vote it anti-republican, undemocratic, antagonistical to the American system of government. It is of no use to try to persuade them to the contrary, or to allege that it is of the very essence and design of religion to assert the supremacy of an order which does not hold from the people, and is above them both individually and collectively, or to maintain in the direction and government of human affairs the supremacy of the law of God, which all men and nations, in both public and private matters, are bound to obey, and which none can disobey with impunity. They will only reply that this is repugnant to the democratic tendencies of the age, is contrary to the free and enlightened spirit of the nineteenth century, denies the original, absolute, and underived sovereignty of the people, and is manifestly a return to the theocratic principle which humanity rejects with horror. To an argument of this sort there, of course, is no available answer. The men who use it are impervious to logic or common sense, for they either believe in no God, or that God is altogether like one of themselves; therefore, in no respect above themselves.

It is very clear, then, if Judge Hurlbut's proposed amendment to the constitution were adopted, it would be interpreted as giving to Congress, as the Judge intends it should, the power to suppress, according to its discretion, the Catholic hierarchy, and, therefore, the Catholic Church in the United States, and that, too, notwithstanding the very amendment denies to Congress the power to prohibit to any one the free exercise of his religion! How true it is, as the Psalmist says, "Iniquity hath lied to itself." The enemies of the church, who are necessarily the enemies of God, and, therefore, of the truth, are not able to frame an argument or a law against the church that does not contradict or belie itself; yet are they, in their own estimation, the _enlightened_ portion of mankind, and Catholics are weak, besotted, grovelling in ignorance and superstition.

There is little doubt that the amendment proposed by Judge Hurlbut would, if adopted, effect the object the Evangelical sects are conspiring with Jews and infidels to effect, so far as human power can effect it--that is, the suppression of the Catholic Church in the United States, and it is a bolder, more direct, and honester way of coming at it than the fair-seeming but insidious amendment proposed by Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his Evangelical allies. It is now well understood by non-Catholic leaders that the growth of the church cannot be prevented or retarded by arguments drawn from Scripture or reason, for both Scripture and reason are found to be on her side, and dead against them. They see very clearly that if she is left free with "an open field and fair play," it is all over with her opponents. They must then contrive in some way, by some means or other, to suppress the religious freedom and equality now guaranteed by our constitution and laws, and bring the civil law or the physical power of the state to bear against the church and the freedom of Catholics. That it is a settled design on the part of the leading Protestant sects to do this--and that they are aided by Unitarians and Universalists, because they know that Protestant orthodoxy would soon go by the board if the Catholic Church were suppressed; by the Jews, because they hate Christianity, and know well that Christianity and the Catholic Church stand or fall together; and by unbelievers and secularists, because they would abolish all religion, and they feel that they cannot effect their purpose if the Catholic Church stands in their way--no one can seriously doubt. We include the Jews in this conspiracy, for we have before us the report of a remarkable discourse delivered lately in the Hebrew synagogue at Washington, D. C., by the Rabbi Lilienthal, of Cincinnati, entitled "First the State, then the Church," which is directed almost wholly against the Catholic Church. We make an extract from this discourse, longer than we can well afford room for, but our readers will thank us for it:

"Of all the questions which demand our serious
consideration, none is of more importance than the
one, 'Shall the state or the church rule supreme?'
All over Europe, this question is mooted at present,
and threatens to assume quite formidable proportions.
There is but one empire across the ocean in which
this problem, so far, has been definitely settled by
virtue of autocratic might and power. It is Russia.
When, in the seventeenth century, the Patriarch of
Moscow had died, and the metropolitans and archbishops
of the Greek Church met for the purpose of filling
the vacancy, Peter the Great rushed with drawn sword
into their meeting, and, throwing the same on the
table, exclaimed, 'Here is your patriarch.' Since
that time the Czar is emperor and pope at once; and,
very significantly, the 'Holy Synod,' or the supreme
ecclesiastical court of Russia, is presided over by a
general, the representative of the Czar. And hence
the Emperor Nicholas used to say: State and church are
represented in me; and the motto ruling the Russian
government was autocracy, Russian nationality, and the
Greek Church.

"But everywhere else in Europe this question agitates
the old continent. In Great Britain, Gladstone works
for the enfranchisement of the church; the Thirty
nine Articles, so renowned at Oxford and Cambridge,
are going to be abolished, and High Churchmen and
Dissenters prepare themselves for the final struggle.
Italy, so long priest-ridden, has inscribed on her
national banner the glorious words, 'Religious
liberty,' and means to carry them out to the fullest
extent, in spite of all anathemas and excommunications.
Spain, though still timid and wavering, has adopted
the same policy. Austria has thrown off her concordat,
and inserted in her new constitution the same modern
principle; and the German Empire has fully recognized
the equality of all citizens, without difference of
creed or denomination, before the courts and tribunals
of resurrected and united Germany.

"But daily we hear of the demands of the clergy, made
in the interests of their church. Since the last
Œcumenical Council has proclaimed the new dogma of
Papal infallibility, the bishops want to discharge
all teachers and professors, both at the theological
seminaries and universities, who are unwilling to
subscribe to this new tenet of the Roman Church. The
Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen even asked for the names
of all those men who at the last election of members
for the German Parliament did not vote for those men
he had proposed as candidates. The government is now
bound to interfere, but nobody can tell how this coming
conflict between church and state will be decided.

"This is the aspect of the old continent. What is the
prospect in America, in our glorious and God-blessed
country? Of course, religious liberty, in the fullest
sense of the word, is the supreme law of the land. It
is the most precious gem in the diadem of our republic,
it is warranted and secured by our constitution.

"The immortal signers of the Declaration of
Independence; those modern prophets and apostles of
humanity; those statesmen who thoroughly appreciated
the bloody lessons of past history, knew but too well
what they were doing when they entirely separated
church and state, and ignored all sectarian sentiments
in the inspired documents they bequeathed to their
descendants. The denominational peace that heretofore
characterized the mighty and unequalled growth of
the young republic bears testimony to their wisdom,
foresight, and statesmanship.