Chapter VIII: Faith And Science Of Progress (2)

One other topic remains to be considered before we pass on to some general reflections which early Christian art suggests. It was not uncommon for the artist in the first ages of the church to take subjects of heathen mythology, and invest them by his art with a Christian symbolism. The genius of Michael Angelo, so truly Catholic in taste and devout in expression, transplanted pagan forms from the broken temples of the elder civilization to the Christian churches of the new. He retouched them under the aureate light shed upon them by the reverent imagination of the Fathers. On the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are painted by this master‐hand the Sibyls, who in early times were regarded as the unconscious prophets of divine truth, uttering in their blindness crude intimations of the glory of him who was to be the fulfilment and completion of all shadows and of all types.(176) In the Catacombs may be seen a representation of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and subduing by his melodious strains the ferocity of man and beast, and drawing even from inanimate creation by the power of music the subjects of his sway. Rocks and trees yielded to his lyric sweetness, the region of Plato opened to the sound of his “golden shell,” the wheel of Ixion ceased its revolutions, and Tityus forgot for the nonce the vulture that preyed on his vitals. The Thracian bard was the representative of the civilizer of savage men.

“Silvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum
Cædibus et victu fœdo deterruit Orpheus;
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.”(177)

The symbolism of the picture seems to be this, that as Orpheus drew the whole creation to him by the music of his lyre, and called from the realms of Hades his beloved Eurydice to the regions of light, so Christ by his compassion commanded the love of all men, as well by his divine power the hidden forces of nature. Hades, or the grave, opened to him on that first Easter morning, as it will open to us on the last.

“Prisoner of Hope thou art—look up and sing
In hope of promised spring.
As in the pit his father’s darling lay
Beside the desert way,
And knew not how, but knew his God would save
Even from that living grave;
So, buried with our Lord, we’ll close our eyes
To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise.”(178)

The late Dean of S. Paul’s, Dr. Milman, remarks, with an air of triumph, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,(179) that “the Catacombs of Rome, faithful to their general character, offer no instance of a crucifixion.” For the absence of the crucifix in the Catacombs, we as a Protestant can conceive of two causes, either of which would to our mind be sufficient to account for it. First, in the early ages it was highly important for the growth of the church, especially in the Roman Empire, to guard against the introduction of any symbol which would suggest pain or repugnance to Jewish converts; secondly, it was essential to clothe truth under a type which would not inspire mockery on the part of pagans, and so assist in keeping alive the persecuting spirit of the times. This in a measure no doubt led the early artists to use the heathen symbol of Orpheus as typical of Christ. A beautiful passage in the work of D’Agincourt affords still another general cause: “Entirely occupied with the celestial recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness; and, so far from associating with this image that of the tortures or privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in enlivening it with smiling colors, or presenting it under agreeable symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine‐leaves; for it is thus that the asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all breathes softness, benevolence, charity.”(180)

Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus “taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his _Iconographie Chrêtienne_, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.

We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English writers in what spirit all the grave questions of theology connected with subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome, the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.

“Gran Latinà
Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira
Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”

And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos, loquebar pacem de te_.”

Beating The Air.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great magician.

“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”

We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform. Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom‐house duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime. This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson’s daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out of the world without having committed any special faults against society, leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects, where each one claims to be _the_ one, the only one, the church of Christ. One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come at all if this is to be the result, this wrangling and jangling and eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people, who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife. Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals; which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to‐day, as it has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the _Nation_ said the other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice, though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away; and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting‐place over the barren waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.

Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to‐day as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling‐block in the way of the much‐desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices, but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another, and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church replies now as always: “_Non possumus_.” We cannot; God gave the laws to his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget that they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or maliciously, as at least fixed and united to‐day as to‐morrow, as yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be farther off than ever.

The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger, fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result? What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure; a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct, oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.

No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the Protestant _religion_ today, it could not be given him; and the only right answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non‐ Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne. There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and all‐sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such as they see alone in the Catholic Church.

In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth, pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover, we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the thousand‐and‐one such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore, be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist _vs._ Catholic,” for he recognizes(181) no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high‐handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.

It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our author’s mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,” we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be. Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is thrown away.

A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the dissensions that seem racking and threatening to rend that body at present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives members of his community who “would give up their vantage‐ground by concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their “maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning‐note—like the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like Mr. Winkle’s “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer’s “conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church stands precisely at its first starting‐point of some nineteen centuries ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.

The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church, Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a pamphlet of forty‐two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least original.

“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”

Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items, which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject. He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the church to be a divine society”—human‐divine, Catholics would say—“governed by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”

Here we have, then, according to the author’s own words, a society, established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that person to to‐day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing, validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its members practise to‐day what they practised at the beginning—all that is nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”

If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have defined the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.

In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight generally uses to a thick‐headed congregation, who take his words for wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the other; the citing of “well‐known facts” and “notorious things” without substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.” _Apropos_ of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that “the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression upon the theology of the Catholic (not then _Roman_ Catholic) Church of the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX., or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes, reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.” In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation, inasmuch as we are _saved_ before we receive it. He alleges, with reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: Ο δε κυριος προσετιθει τους σωζομενους καθ᾽ ημεραν τη Εκκλησια. The present participle σωζομενους means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as _were being_ saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming into the church through the merit of the death of Christ and the movements of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the author’s fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious rendering of a passage in a dead language.

But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican, Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to‐day that all our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.

“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer’s salvation is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for work,” etc.

Now, this passage is the author’s exposition of the true idea of a church, and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all‐ important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man’s own conscience is his rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into consideration my relations; you tell me that all that has nothing to do with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it, I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read. The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings, rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us visibly, and is only known to us by faith.

Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There is no need of a _church_ at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves. It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our neighbors.

Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions: But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong. Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on; but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom you have this personal union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,(182) and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these things are so.”

In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his text into a puny quibble, which any well‐instructed child might see through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The _Lord_ added to the church daily those who are saved.” _Ergo_, “salvation was dealt with as a personal matter.”

If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer, and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child, but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.

But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would stand as built up by this writer.

People who believe in Christ at all, and indeed all who acknowledge, as they must, Christianity to be a fact, a vast social system, existing under our eyes, looking back, see a time when it did not exist. A man came into the world at the point of time in its history which we fix upon as the beginning of the Christian era. At that time religion, speaking largely, consisted of the Hebrew and the pagan. The Hebrews were the chosen of God, and preserved the only true system which corresponds to the rational idea of the foundation and aim of humanity. This it kept to itself and did not seek to spread. Christ came, the man‐God, and founded a new order, enlarging upon the old, which was to embrace in its bosom the universe, and lead all nations back and up to God. The change contemplated was the vastest that could possibly be conceived, the union of the discordant elements of human nature in a system entirely above the capabilities of that nature. Men were to be chaste, to be humble, to love poverty, to speak no evil, to obey, to mortify themselves always, to pray always, to acknowledge the nothingness of their nature. This man, Jesus Christ, came, and, before he had converted people enough to form a single city even, was crucified, rose from his grave, and ascended into heaven, leaving twelve poor ignorant, timid men, and a few others to spread this new doctrine, this new and all‐absorbing social system, throughout the world and through all time. What did he leave to guide them in this tremendous work; a system, an order perfect in all its details, and capable of spreading with the contemplated growth of the church? or did he leave each to follow his own will and do what he could, by means of what is called personal union with himself, a being who no longer was present, visibly and palpably, before the eyes of men? As he chose men to do his work, to build up Christianity, he let them accomplish it after a human fashion, assisted by the saving fact that he would allow them never to err in the doctrines which he bade them preach: and to this end he gave them an order which was to be handed down forever: the apostleship. That was his government, and at this government was a head, Peter. And Peter, like all other human governors, at his departure handed his authority down to the next chosen to fill his place, the promise of the abiding Spirit passing to all, or the system must have broken down; and so to‐day Catholics recognize in infallibility nothing more than the apostles recognized in the decisions of Peter at Antioch. And so this author is correct in saying that the church with Catholics comes first, and not the Bible; for the church embraces the Bible, which is only the written document of the laws and ordinances of God to man, the letter of the law resting in the hands of the government which has charge of it, but that government itself subject to the law. The government existed among the Hebrews before the law was ever written. This system which we have endeavored faintly to sketch here is denied by the Baptist. He says: Christianity comes this wise: Christ came, died, and thus regenerated us. All who believed in him were saved. “The apostles preached the Gospel. Men were pierced to the heart and asked what they must do.” They must be immersed, not as a necessity, for they were saved by the fact of believing; but this act of immersion gave them the entry to the church of Christ. Then the New Testament was written, not by Christ, though inspired by him, and left in the hands of everybody to interpret the law as he pleased.

Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he pleased; a book subject to more or less of change in transmission from language to language, and in the absolute loss of the living tongue in which it was originally written, and the verdict of its genuineness, the verdict for or against the teachings of a living God, resting upon the dictum of a grammarian.

If Christianity hangs on this, for we have not misrepresented the writer—then we refuse to be Christian at all; for such a system does not and cannot, as he alleges, “sustain the test of sound reason, of stern experience, and of infallible Scripture, which ordeal the Baptist idea of the church endures.”

We need trouble ourselves with this writer no further. There is a great deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying. Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” Now, Catholics will perceive the utter absurdity of such a statement at once. The sacrament of baptism is necessary to infants, who of course are unconscious recipients of it, as they are unconscious of the sin in which they are born. This stain which they inherit, but do not incur by any act of their own, is washed away by the sacrament ordained by Christ, which admits them into the society of the church at the same time that their birth admits them to human society, its privileges as well as its trials. Extreme unction is administered to the dying person, even though he be unconscious, and is the most touching token of the love of the universal Mother for her children, who at the last moment will, although the dying man cannot ask it, administer the sacrament which God has ordained for that occasion, because she _knows_ that his heart desires such aid at its passage from the world. But all sacraments given to adults give grace only in proportion as the recipient receives them worthily.

“If the priest refuses to come, then the sufferer, infant or adult, must die unbaptized and unsaved.”

If this gentleman had only taken the trouble to consult a Catholic catechism, he would have been spared the trouble of putting this further absurdity into print. He would have found little children taught at school that “in a case of necessity, when a priest cannot be had, any one may baptize,” and the instructions for administering the sacrament; and furthermore, that, if a person were placed in such a position that even this means could not reach him, the very desire is sufficient, as sometimes happens in the case of sudden conversions and martyrdoms.

As for Catholicity necessitating a ritual, all religions must more or less. Do men object to the old law because of its glorious ritual? Is not the very Baptist‐act of immersion a ritual, and their singing in common? So much so that, for neglect of this observance, Baptists cut off the whole Christian body from community with them. Which is harder to believe—the Catholic doctrine which teaches that we must obey the church which we believe to be the only church of Christ, and in support of which teaching we bring forward some very substantial proofs, or this? You may interpret God’s Word as you please; that alone is sufficient; but you are not in communion with his church unless you are immersed; a fact which it is very difficult to twist out of the Scriptures.

Again, he shows his weakness in saying that “Francis Xavier, working on the Catholic idea, baptized millions of Asiatics, and believed that in so doing he had saved their souls. But the heathen remained heathen still. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that under his labors one solitary soul was transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.” Not one, but millions, so that Sir James Stephens, a Protestant lecturer on history in a Protestant university, calls him a saint, not only of the Catholic Church, but of the world. Colleges were founded by him, and thousands of Christians suffered martyrdom for the faith. But “Judson” is the apostle after our author’s heart. Judson “lived to see thousands of civilized and christianized disciples in that dark Burman land; and the work still goes on, self‐sustained by the power of a true hidden life.” This latter is a very saving clause; so truly hidden is the work that our author can point to no fruit resulting from it. And as for those “thousands of civilized and christianized disciples,” we took the trouble to look for them, and we regret to say, for our author’s veracity, found them all “wanting.” Judson did not succeed in converting one either in Burmah or anywhere else; and his own sufferings seem to have been reduced to the martyrdom of marrying successively three wives.

If then, as our author says, “Logically there is no middle position between the high rock ground of Baptist truth and the low marsh ground of Catholic error; all things follow their tendencies, and it is easier to go down an inclined plane than to go up,” we fear that, for all he can do to prevent them, people will follow their natural tendencies. As a last word, we would strongly recommend him, before undertaking to set a church in its true colors before the eyes of men, to consider a little whether he knows anything of the subject he is writing about, and not stultify himself by an ignorance which looks like malice, though he calls it truth spoken in love.

A Retrospect.

And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in the forest of Compiègne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity even during his lifetime; he seized the king’s bridle, and boldly petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul, letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling refugee, the king’s horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:

“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king’s chase? Give back that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”

The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away, and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides, when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S. Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles, hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his poor. So stands the legend.

A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of Mucius Scævola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that Mucius Scævola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann wand the storied, moss‐grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that François I.’s heroic _Tout est perdu fors l’honneur!_ was only the poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I to wear the crown of France, let him stand forth and take it”? True, Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand of the hangman publicly in the market‐place. We will deal in like manner with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S. Marcoul’s hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of the château of Compiègne.