Chapter XXII: Explanations (1)

Meantime, what had been going on in the Yorke family at Seaton? Mrs. Yorke had not feared that there was any serious trouble till she learned that Dick Rowan had gone away. She was in bed when her young people returned the night before, and knew only what Clara came to her door to say:

“We have had a delightful sail, mamma, and are all well. I hope that you have not been anxious. Mr. Rowan fell overboard, for a diversion, and, of course, got wet; but Captain Cary got him out, and he is all right now. Good-night, mamma, for me and the girls, and Carl. We are all here.”

However late her children might be out, Mrs. Yorke could not close her motherly eyes till she knew that they were safe under the home-roof again. Then she turned upon her pillow, and dropped asleep, giving thanks. She felt a slight uneasiness when Melicent, before breakfast the next morning, asked her to send Patrick down to enquire for Dick.

“Why, was he hurt? Is he not coming up, this morning?” she asked.

“I presume that he is very well, mamma,” the daughter replied. “But it would look pleasant to be attentive.”

This was said with an air of reserve, and the young woman evidently did not wish to say any more. In an equally diplomatic manner, she announced that Edith had a headache, and was not coming down to breakfast. Melicent was one of those persons who, when in possession of a secret, as James Russell Lowell has said, “will not let the cat out of the bag, but they give its tail a pull to let you know that it is there.”

Mrs. Yorke said no more. She found this manner annoying. But she observed at breakfast that Carl ate nothing, and that Clara kept up a constant stream of talk, that seemed designed to cover some embarrassment. She noticed, also, that no mention was made of Dick Rowan or their sail of the day before. When she arose from the table, and went toward the entry-door, her eldest daughter interposed, with 590 an air of being in the charge of affairs. “I would not disturb Edith now, mamma.”

“Melicent!” exclaimed her mother haughtily, and waved the young woman aside.

Edith was lying on her bed, dressed as on the day before, her face hidden in the pillow. She started when her aunt spoke to her, and turned a pale and tear-wet face. It did not need this to tell Mrs. Yorke that her niece’s headache came from the heart.

“My head does ache, Aunt Amy,” Edith said. “But I am distressed about Dick. He is displeased with me. I do not wish to speak of it to any one but him.”

“I have sent Patrick down, my dear,” her aunt said; “and you shall know as soon as he returns.”

Mrs. Yorke and her two daughters sat together, pretending to read and sew, but all watching the avenue gate for the return of their messenger. When he had delivered his news, and gone, the mother spoke with authority.

“Girls, I insist on knowing, at once, the meaning of this!”

“You had better ask Carl, mamma; he is the one to explain,” answered Melicent. “But I must say that Mr. Rowan has behaved ill. A young man whom one of our family has promised to marry should at least act like a gentleman.”

“Send Carl to me,” Mrs. Yorke said, rising. “And, Clara, say to Betsey that I shall see no one to-day, then go up and tell Edith.”

Carl was pacing one of the garden paths, and, for the first time that day, his manner showed agitation. He had already heard Patrick’s news, and his first thought was to echo Melicent’s opinion that one who had been connected with their family should at least act like a gentleman. This sudden withdrawal not only gave occasion for gossip, but it was rude to Edith. That it left him in the position of a culprit, Carl would not allow himself to care.

“I thought the fellow had more spirit!” he muttered. “But it isn’t in him to act like anything but a rustic.”

As he said this, an inner voice made answer; not the voice of conscience, for that acquitted him, but the voice which he expected to hear from without: “Neither is it in him to speak or sing love to another man’s promised wife, though silence should break his heart.”

“And what if it broke hers?” asked Carl, as though he had been spoken to.

He glanced up at the window of Edith’s chamber. The curtain was down, hanging in close, white folds, shutting her in.

Then came Melicent to call him.

Carl found his mother in a tiny room, where she always took her siesta in summer, and where she held all her private conferences. It was a cosy, shady nook, with only a sofa, and table, and chair in it, and seemed intended as a place for confidential communion. In that room, with nothing to save him from her steady eyes, Mr. Griffeth had stammered out his apologies to Mrs. Yorke for misleading her son; there, her daughters came for advice and admonition; and there she herself retired when she wished to be alone. It was a place where a rebel could be brought to submission, or a penitent comforted. It is almost impossible to be confidential in a large, well-lighted room.

“Have you had any quarrel with Mr. Rowan, Carl?” his mother asked, the moment he appeared.

“Not an unpleasant word has passed between us, mother,” he answered. 591

She had been standing, but sank back into the sofa as he spoke, and he closed the door, and came and stood before her, doubting, at first, what the tone of their interview would be. Her question had been imperative, and that he could not bear. There are times in the life of the most dutiful when they feel that there is for them then no legitimate human authority outside themselves. But he saw that her face was pale, though the red curtain lowered over the one window behind her warmed all the light that entered; and her voice was entreating when she spoke again:

“My son, have you nothing to tell me?”

He sat down on the hassock at her feet, and leaned on her lap; and she knew all before he had uttered a word.

“My child,” she whispered, leaning toward him, “your happiness is my dearest wish; but there is honor!”

He took her trembling hands, and met her look firmly. “Yes, mother, there is honor,” he said. “But listen to me, before you conclude that it should be mentioned here in the subjunctive sense. You know, mother, I could not speak of love to a child. I did not wish to. It was enough for me to see that Edith was surely, though unconsciously, drawing toward me. If you had a rare plant, with a single bud on it, would you thank the one who would pluck that bud open before its time for blooming? And what flower is so delicate and sacred as a young girl’s heart? Besides, such a thought comes to a man also, when it comes first, with a feeling of silence. To my mind, it would have been rude and indelicate to speak hastily. There was time, and, meanwhile, I guarded myself and her. Of course I saw what Rowan wanted and meant, and he also understood me; I am sure of that. I never dreamed, though, that he would succeed. I was not prepared for that passion of pity and gratitude which Edith has shown for him. When I knew, last year, that he had proposed, it was all I could do to control my anger. I knew that he must have seen in her some instinctive recoil at first, and yet have appealed to her pity. He did not leave her free to choose. I do not say that he realized that. He is an honest, noble-souled fellow, and he loves her deeply; but he lacks a certain fineness which should have told him when urging was proper, and when it was coarsely selfish. I am willing to admit that it may have been only a mistake on his part; but people who make mistakes have to suffer by them, and, if they are not to blame, no one else is. I, too, made a mistake then, mother, and I have suffered for it. I had a thought of saying to Edith, ‘Since you are to think of him as a suitor, think of me also, and choose between us.’ Two motives prevented me. One was pride. I would not enter into competition with him; and there I was selfish. But the other was better. I saw that she was incredibly childish, and looked upon his proposal rather as a request that she should go and live with him and his mother, as she had lived with them before, than as a proposal that she should be his wife. I waited till she should perceive the difference, and this summer I thought that she was beginning to. The night before he came, I wanted to speak to her. I could hardly help it. I would have spoken but for him. But no, I thought. Let her answer him fairly first. I supposed I knew what that 592 answer would be; and when she came down-stairs the next morning to meet him, I felt sure that it was to refuse him. I stood in the entry when she passed, and she knew that I was there, but would not look at me. She was very pale, I saw, and I thought it was for his sake. It seems it was for her own sake. No matter what I felt when I heard the words with which they met. I went away, you know; I did not choose to make a scene. When I came back, I had made up my mind to speak to him clearly, and as friendly as I could, and ask that he should give her back her promise, and leave her free to choose again. He would have done it, mother; I am sure he would. Had he been too loverlike, I should have made no delay; but, as it was, I thought best to wait till his visit was over. You could scarcely expect me to be perfectly cool and reasonable always. Under the circumstances, I think that I have shown as much fairness as any one has a right to require of me. I meant to see him last night, after the girls had come home--went to the sail with that intention. But he made me angry at starting. He stood there, and sang that ballad from _Le Misanthrope_,

‘_Si le roi m’avoit donné_’

--sang it before _me_, and with such an air of triumph and certainty as made me feel anything but pitiful toward him for a little while. Edith was offended, too. I saw her color with resentment. ‘_Ma mie!_’ It was too public a claiming. When we came back--you know what a night it was, mother.” Carl stopped, his face growing very red. “There are some things not easy to tell,” he said.

Mrs. Yorke put her arm around him, and drew his head to her bosom.

“Not even to your own mother, dear?” she whispered, with her cheek resting on his hair. “It was my heart that taught yours to beat, Carl.”

In that sweet confessional, he went on with his story. “It was such a scene as gives one that faint swaying of the brain that just shows the points in our prudent resolutions. The moonlight, the music, the air, the water, our very motion, were intoxicating. And Edith was there, and so beautiful!--an Undine, drooping over the boat-side, as though she might any moment slip into the water, and disappear, if I did not stay her. I sang what I would have said. I called her, and she turned to me!”

Carl lifted his head, caught his mother’s hands, and kissed them joyfully, then stood up before her with an air as triumphant as Dick Rowan’s own. “The time had come, and she was mine!” he exclaimed. “Edith belongs to me, mother!”

For the moment, everything else was forgotten; and the mother forgot, too, till she saw his face cloud over.

“Poor fellow!” said Carl, and knelt on the hassock again. “My heart aches for him. When he saw Edith look at me, he fainted. It seems cruel to be so happy at such a cost. I went up to Hester’s, last night, to see him, but he was not there, and it was too late to go to the ship. I would have borne any reproach from him. I would have been patient, and have explained everything to him. I think, mother, that I could even have made a friend of him. He is generous. But it is too late now.”

“You must go away at once, Carl,” Mrs. Yorke said presently. “It is the only proper thing to do. The family are pledged to Mr. Rowan, and, till all is settled between him and Edith, you must have no intercourse with her here. My position is one of great delicacy. I cannot even 593 advise Edith.”

While they talked, Edith had risen, and written two letters, one to Dick Rowan, the other to Father Rasle. Both were short, the former only a line.

“You have no right to treat me so,” she wrote. “If you go away without seeing me, never call yourself my friend again!”

It seemed hard; but she had said to herself: “If he leaves me here with Carl, I shall not be able to be true to him.”

She dressed herself to go out and post these letters, and had just come down-stairs, when she met Carl in the entry. She stopped abruptly at sight of him, and a deep crimson mantled her face as she waited for him to let her pass.

It was a new blush for Edith, for she knew why she blushed. But the Spartan spirit he had admired in the child was not dead, and she was herself the next moment. She bade him a quiet “Good-morning, Carl!” and was passing on, when he asked to see her in the parlor.

“Certainly!” she said, too proud to shrink.

Carl smiled as he held the door open for her to pass, and closed it after them. He was pleased with her dignity.

“I have been talking with my mother,” he said, “and she tells me that I must go away immediately. Do you agree with her?”

Possibly she had seen, and misunderstood his smile, for she chose to be very high with him. “I do not know why you should go,” she said coldly.

“Shall I tell you why it seemed to us that I should?” he asked.

Her look changed at the tone of his voice, which seemed reproachful. Why should she assume with him what was not true? When had he ever shown himself unworthy of her confidence?

“No, Carl,” she said, “you need not tell me, and you must say nothing to me that you would not say to a married woman. I trust you, Carl. You have always been honorable. You are very dear to me, and I trust you perfectly. It is best that you should go.”

The last words were spoken rather faintly, and she had turned from him, and opened the door.

“I shall go to Boston,” he said, “and stay there. In a few weeks you will all come up, and I shall see you.”

She stood in the door now, with her face half turned, and her forehead resting against the door-frame, so that he saw only her profile. And, so leaning, as though from faintness, she put her hand back, and held out her letters to him, and he took them.

“Read them both,” she said, “and mail them for me. And, Carl, I shall not see you again before you go. And”--she stopped, as though her voice had failed her.

“I will not ask you to,” he said.

“And, afterward,” she went on, “I shall not see you in Boston. If you are at home, I shall go to stay with Dick’s mother.”

She did not look round again, but went up-stairs quickly, and shut herself into her room. It is not for us to intrude in that privacy wherein a young heart fought its first battle.

No one saw her that day; but the next morning she came out, and went about her usual employments, much in her usual manner. Whether, like that Russian empress, she was “too proud to be unhappy,” or she had been soothed by that trust in God which makes every yoke easy and every 594 burden light, or the elasticity of youth made continued pain seem impossible, we do not pretend to say. Human motives are not always easy to be read by human eyes.

Everybody tried to act as though nothing were the matter, and there was enough for all to do. Many things had to be planned and arranged in preparation for their leaving Seaton, and Edith had her own business to attend to. There were the Pattens needing double care since they were so soon to lose her; and the Catholic school to visit, that being permitted now; and a great deal of shopping to be done for her little flock of pensioners.

Within a fortnight came a letter from Carl to his mother, taken up chiefly with business details. But he wrote: “I called yesterday on Mrs. Williams to ask for her son. He was not at home, and I have not seen him yet. He has given up his ship, for this voyage, to Captain Cary.”

Carl could have added, but did not, that the call had not been a pleasant one. Mrs. Williams had just seen Captain Cary, and gleaned from him all that he had thought best to tell, which was, merely, that there seemed to be a slight misunderstanding between Dick and Edith. Her suspicions pointed at once to Carl, and she had not scrupled to express them to him when he came to her house.

“I am sorry not to see Mr. Rowan,” he had said, when he got a chance, ignoring her accusations and reproaches; and, with that, had taken a ceremonious leave.

“A pretty mother-in-law for Edith!” was his conclusion.

A few days after came a letter from Mrs. Williams to Edith. It was what might have been expected from her. Dick had not been to see his mother; was stopping with a priest, and had refused to see her. What had Edith and those proud Yorkes done to her son, that he gave up everything and everybody, and went to hide himself in a Catholic priest’s house, instead of coming to his own home?

Poor Dick! could he have foreseen that such a letter would be written, he would have sacrificed himself a good deal in order to prevent it.

Edith dropped the letter at her feet after reading it, and said, not for the first time since Carl went away, “Oh! that Father Rasle would come!”

As she said it, and for a moment let slip the leash that held her hidden feelings, one could see that, however calm she might have been outwardly, there had been an inward gnawing all the time. A smile and bright words can mask a good deal. When she dropped them, there was visible a whiteness about the mouth, shadows under the eyes, and even a thinning of the cheeks--the work of that short time.

Hearing her aunt’s voice at the chamber-door asking admittance, Edith caught the letter up again, and her self-control with it.

Mrs. Yorke came in with an air of quiet decision, and took a seat by her niece. “I saw the outside of your letter, my dear girl, and know whom it was from,” she said; “and I have no intention of allowing you to be killed by others, or to kill yourself. I understand and respect a mother’s feelings, Edith, and I respect the obligation of a promise. But there are common sense and justice to be taken into account. Feelings, and, especially, the feelings of a young person who has scarcely learned to know herself, are not to be weighed and measured, 595 like iron and lumber, and stored away, and left unchanged, till called for. You know, my dear, that I have a great affection for Mr. Rowan, and would do him no unkindness nor injustice, do you not?”

“You were very kind to him, aunt,” Edith replied quietly. “I am not afraid of anything that you will say or do.”

“You need not be,” Mrs. Yorke said. “I will not ask you if you have learned to think that promise of yours a hasty one; but there are certain points which I wish to insist upon. They are of general application. Honor does not require that one should keep a bad promise. The fault, if fault there be, is in the making, not the breaking. Also, a woman cannot make a worse promise than one to marry a man whom she does not love. Many very good and pious people will tell you that esteem is enough, and that you will grow to love your husband after a time. That is false. You may learn to endure him, but it will be after all the bloom is wiped from your feelings, and love and delicacy both are dead in you. Let no one make you believe that your feelings are romantic folly. Believe, rather, that your adviser is coarse, though honest. One other dictum: there is no favor, nor obligation, nor affection which a man can confer on you, for which your hand is not too high a price to pay. Give gratitude, affection, even service, but not yourself. Do not sell your hand for any price: it should be a free gift. This is all that I can pronounce positively upon. For the rest, do not act hastily and without advice; for, aside from the question of your personal good, you might bitterly wrong some one else. If you have been hasty, it is a pity; but that cannot be helped now, and should not be too deeply mourned. There must have been some doubt in Mr. Rowan’s mind that you did not know what you were promising, for his first word to you was, ‘Are you willing, Edith?’ Your answer was, ‘I am more than willing.’ If you deceived him then, unconsciously, from a loving and generous feeling, it was pardonable. But do not deceive him nor yourself again. He deserves from you a perfect frankness, and he has too fine a nature to take your hand if it is reluctant.”

“But, Aunt Amy,” Edith said, after a moment’s thought, “if a woman, out of gratitude, and from an utter impossibility of allowing herself to give such pain to a friend, should promise never to marry any one else, would that be right?”

“A man worthy of inspiring such a resolution would not accept the promise,” was the reply; “and the woman has no right to make it. But if she should offer to wait till he is reconciled, that might be soothing to both. Is there anything else you wish to say?”

“Nothing now, thank you, aunt. You are very kind.”

This conversation soothed Edith; but, still, she returned to her wishing for Father Rasle; not entirely for his own sake, though that was much, but because her need of confession and communion had become a great longing.

Her wish was destined to be speedily gratified; for the very next day, when Mr. Yorke came home to dinner, he brought his niece a letter from the priest.

She read it immediately, in presence of the family, and her face brightened. “How delightful!” she exclaimed. “He will say Mass here next Sunday. He is to come Saturday, that is, the day after to-morrow He sends his regards to you all. Let no one know that he is coming, he 596 writes, but Miss Churchill, and Mr. and Mrs. Kent, at whose house he will stop. There will be time enough to notify the people when he has arrived. How glad they will be! That was a letter worth bringing, Uncle Charles!”

Looking up with her smile of thanks, she saw his face clouded. “Is there any trouble?” she asked anxiously.

“If he had come while Carl, and Rowan, and Captain Cary were here, I should have been better pleased,” Mr. Yorke replied evasively. “He has, however, the right to come whenever he chooses. Answer his letter to-day, Edith, and invite him to stop with us.”

“Dear Uncle Charles!” murmured Edith, and glanced enquiringly at her aunt.

“Tell him, for me, that we should all be very happy to have him as a guest,” said Mrs. Yorke.

A smiling nod from Melicent and from Clara confirmed this assertion.

“Dear me!” Edith sighed out, wiping her eyes, “I do think that you are the most beautiful people I ever knew.”

They all laughed at her way of saying it, and the little cloud disappeared. Mr. Yorke did not think it best to tell them that the Know-Nothings had called a public meeting for the next evening. There had been no such meeting for several months, and this might not be of any consequence.

The invitation was written, and sent, and on Saturday morning the answer came, only a few hours preceding Father Rasle.

He thanked them for their kindness, but found it necessary to decline their invitation. He must be where all the Catholics could come to him, bringing their infants to be baptized, and going to confession themselves. Besides the distance, he could not think of subjecting their house to such a visitation, which was likely to continue till late in the evening. His flock needed every moment of his time.

But, meanwhile, between the letter and its answer, the public meeting had taken place, and it had been of consequence.

TO BE CONTINUED.

----------

THE NEW “OUTSPOKEN STYLE.”

We looked for dewy flower, and sunny fruit:--
He serves us up the dirt that feeds the root.
AUBREY DE VERE.

----------

POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 597

I have read carefully, my dear Philo, your very welcome letter, and cordially reciprocate the kind feelings it expresses. It has recalled our early friendship, which, with me, at least, has never been forgotten or diminished. I see, from your observations on the recent definition of the Papal Infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, that you still think as we both thought in our school-boy days, when we wondered what sort of people Catholics must be to believe that a man could be infallible, to take their faith from a man called the Pope, and to obey and even worship him, as we were told, as God. We were then in some measure excusable for supposing that they must be exceedingly stupid and destitute of reason and of every grain of common sense; for neither of us had then ever seen a Catholic, and knew nothing of their faith or worship except what our Protestant masters, who held them to be no better than the heathen, told us; but are you, my dear Philo, equally excusable for thinking now as you did then? Have you had no opportunity of correcting the error into which we were both led?

You say, “The Council, by its decree defining the Pope when teaching the universal church to be infallible or exempt from error in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, makes the Pope God, clothes him with the incommunicable attributes of the Divinity, and consequently requires us to reverence and worship him as God.” Are you not a little hasty in this conclusion? You tell me that you believe in the plenary inspiration and consequent infallible authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; you then, of course, believe in God and the supernatural order, or that Christian faith is supernaturally revealed to man, and recorded in a book called the Bible. But through what medium was the revelation made and recorded? Certainly through men who spoke or wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, or what they were taught by our Lord himself, and enabled by the Spirit to commit truthfully and without error to writing. All this, you tell me, you believe and hold.

Now, were these inspired penmen, prophets, apostles, and evangelists each God, or clothed with the incommunicable attributes of the Divinity? You do not believe it. Why, then, does the declaration of the Pope’s infallibility declare him to be God? The sacred penmen, you believe, were infallible in what they wrote, and yet without becoming God, or ceasing to be men; why may not the Pope, then, be infallible without being God, or ceasing to be a man like you and me? Do you say the sacred writers were infallible by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, not by nature? Well, do Catholics pretend that the Pope is infallible by nature, or otherwise than through the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost protecting him from error in teaching the faith taught by the prophets and apostles? I am not aware that they do.

Catholics, I am told, make a distinction between divine inspiration and divine assistance. The prophets and apostles were divinely 598 inspired to reveal truth; the Pope, according to Catholics, is divinely assisted to teach infallibly the truth revealed through the prophets and apostles, or as taught to the apostles by our Lord himself while he was yet with them. Now, if the inspiration which rendered the prophets and apostles infallible in revealing the truth which was hitherto hidden did not clothe them with the incommunicable attributes of God, how can you pretend that the assistance of the Spirit to teach infallibly what God revealed through them, which is far less, makes the Pope God, or clothes his nature with the attributes of God? If more did not do it in their case, how can less do it in his?

You say, “All men are fallible, and no man can teach infallibly.” All men are fallible, it is true, in their own nature; but that no man by supernatural inspiration and assistance can teach infallibly, neither you nor I believe. We both hold, for instance, that St. Peter was a man, and yet that he was an infallible teacher of the word of God. We hold the same of St. Paul, of St. John, of St. Matthew, of St. Mark, and of St. Luke. Say you they were infallible not by their natural endowments, but only through the supernatural external assistance of the Holy Ghost? But Catholics, if I understand them, hold the Pope to be infallible not by nature or by his own natural powers, but only by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost. Grant the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost, and there is no more difficulty in believing the Pope is infallible in his teachings than in believing, as you and I do, that St. Peter and St. Paul were infallible in teaching the revelation of God, whether by word or letter.

Do you not, my dear Philo, confound, in the case of the Popes, infallibility with omniscience, and assume that the Vatican Council, in declaring the Pope infallible in matters pertaining to faith and morals, has actually declared him to be omniscient, and therefore God? This is a mistake: first, because the infallibility declared is not universal; and, second, because the infallibility declared is supernatural and by divine assistance and protection. The Pope is declared to be infallible only when he is teaching the universal church faith and morals, and in condemning the errors repugnant thereto, and even then only by supernatural assistance and protection of the Holy Ghost. The Pope, as a man, is no more infallible than other men: he is infallible only in exercising his function of universal doctor, or teacher of the whole church, and, as this is by the Holy Ghost, the infallibility, like omniscience itself, pertains to God, not to him as a man, and is attached to his function, not to his person. If our Lord, who is perfect God as well as perfect man, has appointed him to the office of universal teacher, and promised him the assistance and protection of the Spirit, there is no difficulty in believing him infallible, even if his personal knowledge should turn out to be no greater than yours or mine. The Pope is simply guided by the Spirit to the truth already revealed and deposited with the church, and, for the most part, at least, contained in the Holy Scriptures, and is simply protected from error in declaring it.

Indeed, my dear Philo, Catholics claim no more for the Pope than our old Presbyterian parson claimed for himself and for each and every individual of the regenerate or true people of God. He taught us, as you well know, that the regenerate soul is guided by the Spirit into 599 all truth, and protected from all error, at least as to essentials. Some, perhaps most Protestants, go farther than this, and claim to have an infallible authority for their faith in the Bible interpreted by private judgment, and therefore claim for private judgment pretty much the same infallibility that the Council of the Vatican claims for the Pope. Either, then, all regenerate souls, nay, all men, if Protestants are right, are each God, or else the declaration of the Council does not, actually or virtually, declare the Pope to be God, or anything more or less than a man supernaturally assisted by the Holy Ghost to perform the duties of the office to which the Council holds he is supernaturally appointed by Him who has all power in heaven and earth, and is King of kings and Lord of lords.

You say, “The supposition of an infallible Pope is repugnant to the rights and activity of the mind.” I do not see it. The human mind can hardly be said to have any rights in presence of its Creator. If any right it has, it is the right to be governed by the word of God alone, and not to be held subject to any human authority or opinions of men. My mind is outraged when it is subjected to the fallible opinions of men, and obliged to hold them as truth, when I have no adequate authority for believing that they are not erroneous. How then its rights can be denied by its being furnished with an infallible guide to the truth, to the word of God, its supreme law, instead of the words of man, is what I do not exactly comprehend, and I do not believe you can comprehend any better than I. An infallible authority lessens the activity of the mind in groping after truth, if you will; but truth being the element of the mind, that for which it was created, and without which it can neither live nor operate at all, cannot very well destroy its activity by being possessed. Does the possession of truth leave no scope for mental activity? If so, what is to constitute the beatitude of the blest in heaven? Your objection strikes me as absurd; for the real activity of the mind is in knowing, appropriating, and using the truth to fulfil the purpose of our existence and to gain the end for which God has made us.

You say, again, that “an infallible authority destroys man’s free agency and takes away his moral responsibility.” The intellect, you are aware, my dear Philo, if prescinded from the will, is not free. I am not free in regard to pure intellections. I cannot, if I would, believe that two concretes are five, or only three; and I am obliged to admit that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. I may refuse to turn my attention to one or another class of subjects, but I see and judge as I must, not as I will or choose. Free agency and moral responsibility, therefore, attach to the will, not to the intellect, and are enhanced in proportion to my knowledge or understanding of the truth. The authority teaching me infallibly the truth, I am bound by the law of God to accept and obey. So far from destroying free agency, it manifestly confirms it, and, instead of taking away moral responsibility, raises it to the highest possible pitch; for it leaves the mind without the shadow of an excuse for not believing. You forget, my dear Philo, that infallible authority presenting infallible truth is not only a command to the will, but the highest possible reason to the understanding. But at any rate, the objection is as valid against the infallibility of the Bible, asserted 600 by Protestants, as against the infallibility of the Pope, asserted by Catholics.

You say, furthermore, “The claim of infallibility for the Pope is incompatible with civil and religious liberty. If the Pope is infallible in all questions touching faith and morals, his authority is supreme, overrides all other powers, and subjects to him our whole life, religious, moral, domestic, social, and political.” But if so, what, then, if he is infallible? You forget that this is no more than Protestants themselves claim for the Bible. Do you admit that any state, sovereign prince, head of a family, or individual has the right, in thought, word, or deed, to contradict or go counter to the law of God as contained in the infallible Bible? Do you not hold that every one is subject in all things whatsoever to the infallible authority of the Holy Scriptures? Well, how can the subjection of our whole life--religious, moral, domestic, social, and political--to the authority of an infallible book be less incompatible with civil and religious liberty than its subjection to an infallible Pope? If the Pope is really infallible, he can enjoin nothing in faith or morals not enjoined by the law of God. Do you pretend that subjection to the law of God is incompatible with civil and religious liberty? If so, you must say with Proudhon, “God is a tyrant, and you must either abolish God or give up the defence of liberty. Once admit God, and you must admit the Catholic Church, Pope, and all.” Now, I am not in the habit, any more than Catholics are, of regarding God and liberty as antagonistic, the one to the other. I have always been accustomed to regard liberty not as freedom from all restraint, but as simply freedom from all unjust restraint, or restraint not imposed by the law of God, which is the law of right and justice. His law is the basis, and obedience to it and it alone is the necessary condition, of all true liberty in any and every department of life. Why, then, should the assertion of the infallible authority of the Pope to declare the law of God, which you and I both hold binds all men and nations, be incompatible with liberty? The law of God is just, and the measure or standard of justice, and justice is the foundation and guarantee of liberty. Your objection is not well taken.

What you really object to, my dear Philo, is not, it strikes me, an infallible, but a fallible Pope claiming to be infallible. But suppose the Pope to be infallible in the sense defined by the Council, it is absurd to object to him as dangerous to liberty, civil or religious, because the Holy Ghost prevents him from declaring anything to be the law of God which is not so, and because, being assisted by the same Holy Ghost, he is always able to decide infallibly what that law does or does not require; and as long as the law as he declares it is observed, no one can be subjected to an unjust authority, oppressed, or deprived of any of his rights.

“You concede,” you say, “the supremacy of the law of God, and that all laws which contravene it, or are not transcripts of it, are violences, not laws, and are null and void from the beginning; but this is something very different from subjecting all individuals and the whole secular order to the authority of an infallible Pope upheld by the whole hierarchy, and backed by a huge corporation that extends over the whole world.” But where is the difference, if the Pope, by divine assistance and protection, is really infallible? The Pope, if infallible, can be so only from the supernatural appointment and 601 assistance of God as his vicar, and, if infallible, he can declare and apply only what is the law of God or authorized by the law of God. You are wrong, then, old friend, in objecting to the infallible authority; for that is what is needed to establish the divine order in human affairs, and to make the church really the kingdom of God on earth. Your objection and your reasoning are misdirected, and should be directed to prove that Catholics assert infallibility for a Pope who, in fact, is not infallible, but fallible.

You and all Protestants claim infallible authority for the Bible read and interpreted by each individual for himself, or, rather, by each sect for itself. Unless this interpretation is by an infallible authority, which it confessedly is not, you have in the Bible practically only a fallible authority, yet claim to have an infallible authority; and hence you claim and seek to enforce in the name of the Bible your own very fallible and contradictory opinions or theories. You are guilty, then, of precisely the offence you charge against Catholics, that of claiming infallibility for a fallible authority, and of which it is possible Catholics are not guilty, and, if the Pope be infallible, not only are not, but cannot be guilty. You have, as I have said--even conceding, as I do, the Bible in its true meaning to be infallible--practically no infallible authority. You have no infallible authority to determine and declare the law of God contained in the Bible. You have not the law itself, but only your view of it, which is only a human view, and therefore fallible. To subject men to a mere human view or to a mere human authority, I need not say, is intolerable despotism; and hence your Protestantism is incompatible either with civil or religious liberty, for all men are born equal, and no man or body of men has, except by divine appointment or delegation, any dominion over another.

Hence, as you and I both know, there is no solid basis or security for liberty under Protestantism. If Protestants grow indifferent and do not attempt to govern in the name of the Bible, there may be license, anarchy, a moral and political chaos; but if they are in earnest, and attempt to enforce the authority of the Bible as they understand it, they only enforce their own view of it, and, consequently, can establish only a spiritual despotism either in church or state. In Geneva, Scotland, in every state in Europe that became Protestant, in Virginia, in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, the dominant sect, you know, in early times established an odious tyranny, and would tolerate no opinion hostile to its own. Owing to certain reminiscences of principles inculcated in pre-Reformation times, and to the growing indifference of Protestants to their religion at the time our republic was instituted, and still more to the dissensions among Protestants themselves, civil and religious liberty were recognized here in the United States, but it had and has no basis and no guarantee, except in parchment constitutions, not worth the parchment on which they are engrossed, and which the people may alter at will; and even now the Evangelical sects are trying to unite their forces to abolish religious liberty, without which civil liberty is an empty name. The founder of Methodism was no friend to civil liberty, and he proved himself the bitter enemy of religious liberty by creating, or doing more than any other man to create, the shameful Gordon riots in England in 1780. Let the Methodists become, as they bid fair to become, the dominant sect in the country, and able to command a 602 majority of the votes of the American people, and both civil and spiritual despotism will be fastened on the country, for Methodism has only a human authority.

The sort of security Protestantism gives to religious liberty may be seen in the proceedings of the general government against the Mormons. It does not interfere with their religion: it pretends it only enforces against them the laws of the Union--laws, by the way, made expressly against them. All the government needs to suppress any religion or religious denomination it does not like is to pass laws prohibiting some of its practices on the plea that they are contrary to morality or the public good, and then take care to execute them. Queen Elizabeth held religious liberty sacred, and abhorred the very thought of persecuting Catholics. She only executed the laws against them. She enacted a law enjoining an oath of supremacy, and making it high treason to refuse to take it, and which she knew every Catholic was obliged in conscience to refuse to take; and then she could hang, draw, and quarter them, not as Catholics, but as traitors. Her judges only executed the laws of the realm against them. I have, as you well know, no sympathy with the Mormons, and I detest their peculiar doctrines and practices, but the principle on which the government proceeds against them would justify it, or any sect that could control it, in suppressing the church, and all Protestant sects even but itself.

Laws in favor of liberty amount to nothing, for all laws may be repealed. The Bible is no safeguard. Under it and by its supposed authority, Catholics have suffered the most cruel persecutions; even when not deprived of life, they have been deprived of the common rights of men by Protestant governments led on by Protestant ministers. Thus the Bible commands the extirpation of idolaters. But Protestants, by their private judgment, declared Catholics to be idolaters, and hence in the name of the Bible took from them their churches, their schools, colleges, and universities, confiscated their goods, and imprisoned them, exiled them, or cut their throats. The pretence of legislating only in regard to morality avails nothing for religious liberty; for morality depends on dogma, and is only the practical application of the great principles of religion to individual, domestic, social, and political life. You cannot touch a moral question without touching a religious question, for religion and morality are inseparable; your only possible security for liberty is in having a divinely instituted authority that is infallible in faith and morals, competent to tell the state as well as individuals how far it may go, and where it must stop.

You object, finally, my dear Philo, that the assertion of the infallibility of the Pope is incompatible with the assertion of the sovereignty of the people and the independence of secular government. The people and all secular governments, you have conceded, are subject to the law of God. Neither the people nor secular governments are independent of the divine law, and have only the authority it gives them, and the freedom and independence it allows them. How can they lose any right or authority they have or can have by having the divine law, under which they hold, infallibly declared and applied? It is singular, my old schoolfellow, that so acute, subtle, and so able a lawyer as I know you to be, should have the misfortune, as a theologian, to object to the very thing you really wish to maintain, 603 and which can alone save you from the evils you seek to avoid. Now, what it is necessary to know in order to determine the rights and powers of government, is to know precisely what in relation to government the law of God--including both the natural law and the revealed law, which are really only two parts of one and the same divine law--ordains, what it prescribes, and what it forbids. This knowledge can only in part be derived through natural reason, because the law is in part supernatural, and can be known only by faith: it cannot be derived with certainty from the Scriptures interpreted by our own fallible judgment or by any human authority: it can be obtained infallibly from the teaching and decisions of an infallible Pope, if really infallible. The infallible Pope will give to the people all the sovereignty they have under the law of God, and maintain for civil government all the rights and powers, all the freedom and independence of action, the law of God gives it. What more do you want? What more dare you assert for civil government or for popular sovereignty? Would you put the people in the place of God, and raise the secular order above the spiritual, man above God? Certainly not, at least not avowedly either to yourself or to others. Then, how can you pretend the Papal infallibility is incompatible with the sovereignty of the people and the independence of civil government? Do you want the line unsettled, and the law of God left undefined, and remitted, as you remit the Bible, to the private judgment of each people or each government, to be interpreted by each for itself, and as it sees proper? But that were to make the divine law practically of no effect, and to leave each people and each government without any law but what it chooses to be to itself. It practically emancipates the secular order from the law of God, and asserts complete civil absolutism.

The fact is, my dear Philo, you and many others in your own minds regard liberty and authority as mutually hostile powers. It is the error of the age, and hence we see the nations alternating between the mob and the despot, each hostile alike to liberty and authority. Both liberty and authority are founded in the divine order, and without recognizing and conforming to that order neither can be maintained. To restrain liberty by an authority that rests on a human basis alone is to destroy it; as to restrain authority by liberty not defined by the law of God, or by popular sovereignty to be defined by popular sovereignty, is to lose all authority, and to rush into anarchy and universal license. There is no true liberty and no legitimate government independent of the divine order; consequently, none without an infallible authority to present and maintain it. The question is, Has God, or has he not, established an infallible authority to declare his law? Yours affectionately, DAMIAN.

----------

THE FOXVILLES OF FOXVILLE. 604

A TALE OF THE PERIOD.

I.

At a huge country-house, not many years ago, some few days after the close of the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, the usual family circle, with one exception, met at the breakfast-table. A man on horseback had just pulled up at the house-door with the family letter-bag from the nearest town. The letters and papers were handed to the head of the family, who glanced over the addresses with the quick eye of a practised man of business, and placed one of the letters on an empty plate reserved for the absent member of the party.

“Oh! For Susy!” exclaimed a young lady, who seemed put to her wits’ end to make herself still younger, for she was the elder daughter of the house, past twenty-six, and disengaged. “I should like to know whom that’s from! A gentleman’s hand, I declare!” And she eyed the characters with a searching scrutiny, but they would tell no more tales.

“Don’t be so curious, Matilda. I shall recommend Susy to keep her letter a secret,” said an obnoxious brother, by name Augustus, one year the junior of the first speaker.

“Yes! you would encourage her in every kind of deception, you would! She is quite artful enough,” answered Matilda. “If I were papa, I would soon see who sends the letter. What can make Susy late, this morning? She is invariably so regular.”

“No, child!” said a white-headed old gentleman, Mr. Foxville, the happy father of Matilda, Augustus, and Susan, his stock of direct descendants, and all told, “I never meddle with other people’s business. Susy is a good girl, and she will let me have any news that may interest me.”

“You are quite right; but she has a duty to her mamma,” said Mrs. Foxville, with a grand matronly air. “Papa allows me to open all his letters, though he never opens mine: and that’s as it should be. If Susy does not come down soon, as I am privileged, I will open the letter. It is a genteel hand, I perceive.

“Well, well,” observed Mr. Foxville, “patience, patience! We can wait.”

“She is my child, Mr. Foxville,” replied the matron.

“Shall I fetch Susy down?” asked Matilda, with curiosity fermenting within her.

“Do, my dear,” said Mrs. Foxville, laboring under the same complaint, but affecting more indifference.

With much nimbleness the sprightly Matilda dashed out of the room, having first made an attempt to carry off the letter.