Chapter III (8)

It was such a one that found himself adrift on the high tide at Charing Cross--which Dr. Johnson so loved; and, amazed and confused by the incessant, tumultuous flow of a life in which he had no part, took refuge in the thousand sanctuaries of the past to be found in London. Belonging by a peculiar grace, as one born out of due time, to the ancient church--for ever ancient, for ever new!--he turned particularly to those old Catholic foundations around which cluster so many associations, at once religious, historical, and poetic. Having read of them from childhood, and learned to connect them with the past glory of the church, and familiar with all the romantic and legendary lore concerning them, when he found himself in their midst his heart and soul and imagination were at once aflame. It was then to such places as Westminster Abbey, Christ's Hospital, the Charter-House, and the Temple that his heart instinctively turned on his arrival in London.

Not that he actually visited them first. The Divine Presence, alas! no longer dwells in them incarnate; and it was of course, as became one with pilgrim-staff and scallop-shell, to the foot of the Tabernacle he hastened, the first time he issued from his lodgings, to offer up his prayer of thanksgiving to _Jésus-Hostie_ for a safe voyage across the Atlantic. But at his very threshold he could see a spot associated with many terrible memories, marked by a stone: "Here stood Tyburn Gate." Here the last prior of the Charter-House was executed, and Robert Southwell, the Jesuit poet of Queen Elizabeth's time, whose last words were expressive of his attachment to the Society of Jesus and his happiness to suffer martyrdom. Many others, too, of religious and historic memory, ascended here from earth to heaven. Close beside the spot is the Marble Arch of Hyde Park. "Beyond Hyde Park all is a desert!" said our pilgrim with Sir Fopling Flutter, glad to be diverted from memories too sad for one's first impressions of a foreign city. Two serene-looking "Little Sisters of the Poor," providentially crossing the path, directed him to the French chapel--a modest sanctuary, but where such men as Lacordaire, De Ravignan, and other distinguished French pulpit-orators have been heard. The way thither was through Portman Square, once the property of the Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. Here the celebrated Mrs. Montague once lived. In one corner of the square stands apart--in a large yard, a square old-fashioned brick house with an immense portico in front, and a two-story bow window at the end--one of those houses that we at once feel have a history. This is Montague House, where Mrs. Montague used to give an annual dinner to the London chimney-sweeps, "that they might enjoy one happy day in the year"--a house frequented by the literary celebrities of the time--where Miss Burney was welcomed, and Ursa Major grew tame.

A short distance from the French chapel is the Spanish church, dedicated to S. James, with its S. Mary's aisle lighted from above, giving a fine _chiaro-oscuro_ effect to the edifice. It was pleasant to find an altar to the glorious Patron of Spain in a city where he was once so venerated, and whose name has been given to one of its social extremes. The devotion of the English to S. Jago di Compostella was extraordinary in the Middle Ages. So general was it, that the Constable of the Tower, in the time of Edward II., used to receive a custom of two-pence from each pilgrim to Spain going or returning by the Thames. Rymer mentions 916 licenses to visitors to that shrine in the year 1428, and 2,460 in 1434. And here, in this modern English church, is a statue of the saint, with the scallop-shell on his cape, first assumed by pilgrims to Compostella as a token that they had extended their penitential wanderings to that sainted shore. English Catholics of the olden time seemed to have had a special love for pilgrimages, and we hail a renewed taste for such a devotion as a revival of the spirit of the past.

It was the good fortune of our modern pilgrim to hear the Archbishop of Westminster preach a few days after in the Spanish church on the state of the soul after death--a preacher that harmonizes at once with the past and the present--full of sympathy with the present, full of the spirit of the past. A S. Jerome from his cave, a S. Anthony from the desert! is the first thought, and his wonderfully solemn style of preaching is in harmony with his ascetic appearance. Nothing could be more impressive and affecting. Neither did our wanderer forget the ivy-clad oratory at Kensington, still perfumed with holy memories of F. Faber. He felt the need of thanking him here for the thousand precious words he had spoken to his soul through his beautiful hymns and invaluable works on the inner life; soothing it in sorrow, and arming it against the transitory evils of life. Such evils follow every one, even the pilgrim, and it was good to repeat here Faber's lines:

"These surface troubles come and go
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but thee!"

What a round of sweet devotions in this church, with the taper-lighted oratory of Mary Most Pure! Oh! how near to heaven one gets there!--the beautiful shrine-like chapel of S. Philip Neri, and the solemn Calvary where, between the two thieves, the Divine Image is outstretched on the huge cross, embalming the wood--

"Image meet
Of One uplifted high to turn
And draw to him all hearts in bondage sweet."

Many pious hearts seem drawn here to meditate on the Passion, and, one after another, go up to kiss the blood-stained cross. Oh! how many ways the church has of leading the soul to God! Guido declared he had two hundred ways of making the eyes look up to heaven. The church has many more with its multiplied popular devotions, each peculiarly adapted to some cast of soul. It would be heaven enough below to have a cell somewhere near this sweet school of S. Philip's sons and the beautiful altars they have set up.

While thus gratifying the devotional instincts of his heart, some religious monument of bygone ages was constantly falling in our pilgrim's way. How could he pass S. Pancras-in-the-Fields without falling into prayer, as Windham in his diary tells us Dr. Johnson did, recalling the Catholic martyrs burnt here at the stake in Queen Elizabeth's time? The bell of S. Pancras--O funeral note of woe!--was the last to ring for Mass in England at the time of the so-called Reformation. A wonder it did not break in twain as it sounded that last elevation of the Host! Has it ever uttered one joyful note since that sad morn, when the altars were stripped, the lights one by one put sorrowfully out, and the Divine Presence faded away? No, no; it has the saddest tone of any bell in London, at least to the Catholic ear. As it was here he was laid away, it is no wonder that faithful Catholics, down to the present century, were in the habit of coming to S. Pancras at early morning hour to seek some trace of their buried Lord. Perhaps he sometimes appeared to such devout souls, as of old to his Mother and Magdalen. It is certain that, at least, he spoke to their hearts as they lingered here to pray--pray that he might rise again! And here they wished to rest after death, till they were again allowed to have a cemetery apart. This was the burial-place of the Howards and Cliffords, and others of high lineage, both foreign and native. One old friend lies here, John Walker--well known from his _Dictionary_, once extensively used in America, a convert to the Catholic Church, and a friend of Dr. Milner's, who calls him "the Guido d'Arezzo of elocution, who discovered the scale of speaking sounds by which reading and delivery have been reduced to a system."

S. Pancras was once a popular saint. The boy-martyr of Rome, whose blood was shed in the cause of truth, was regarded in the middle ages as the avenger of false oaths. The kings of France used to confirm treaties in his name. The English, with their natural abhorrence of lying, so honored him as to give his name to one of the oldest churches in London. Cardinal Wiseman has popularized his memory in these days through _Fabiola_.

Again, what a flood of recollections comes over the pilgrim in passing through Temple Bar, or going across London Bridge, first built by the pious brothers of S. Mary's Monastery in 994. The old bishops and monks were truly the _pontifices_ of the middle ages--not only as builders of

"The invisible bridge
That leads from earth to heaven,"

but good substantial arches of stone over stream and flood. The Pont Royal over the Seine was built by a Dominican. So was the Carraja at Florence. The old bridges of Spain were mostly due to the clergy.

Bridge-building was esteemed a good work in those times, and prayers were offered for those engaged in it. At the bidding of the beads, the faithful were thus invited: "Masters and frendes, ye shall praye for all them that bridges and streets make and amend, that God grant us part of their good deeds, and them of ours."

London Bridge was rebuilt of stone nearly two centuries later. Peter of S. Mary's, Colechurch, began it. Henry II. gave towards it the tax on wool, which led to the saying that "London Bridge was built on wool-packs." Peter did not live to complete it. That was done by Isenbert, master of the schools at Xainctes--a builder of bridges in his own country. He finished London Bridge in 1280. Near the middle of it was a Gothic chapel, dedicated to S. Thomas à Becket, and under the wool-packs--that is to say, in the crypt--a tomb was hollowed out of a pier of the bridge for Peter of Colechurch. When this pier was removed in 1832, his remains were found where they had lain nearly six hundred years. On the Gate-house of London Bridge was hung the head of Sir William Wallace. Bishop Fisher's (of Rochester) was hung here the very day his cardinal's hat arrived at Dover; and two weeks after, that of his friend, Sir Thomas More. Here, too, were suspended the heads of F. Garnet, of the Society of Jesus, and scores of Catholic priests in Queen Elizabeth's time.

Yes, London is full of Catholic memories. Bridewell, Bedlam, Mincing Lane, Tooley St., and many more are names of Catholic origin, now corrupted, the derivation of which it is pleasant to recall as they meet the eye. One strolls through Paternoster Row, and Ave Maria Lane, and by Amen Corner, out of love for their very names, reminding us of the Catholic processions around Old S. Paul's. Shall it be confessed?--profaner thoughts here mingle with such memories. Passing through Paternoster Row, one naturally looks up, expecting to see the splendid Mrs. Bungay come forth to take her drive with a look of defiance at the chaise-less Mrs. Bacon at the opposite window!

Not far from here is Christ's Hospital, so familiar to us all through Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt. It is at once recognized by the bust of Edward VI. over the entrance. It is pleasant to be allowed to wander through the arcades and quadrangles at one's pleasure, with no guide to disturb the delightful memories evoked by such a place. Going into a quadrangle, surrounded by a kind of cloister hung with memorial tablets, the first thing noticed is a marble slab on the wall to the right, inscribed:

"In memory of the Rev. James Boyer, who for many years was head grammar-master of this Hospital. He died July 28, 1814, aged seventy-nine years."

One could not help pausing to read and copy this tribute to so old an acquaintance. To be sure, "J. B. had a heavy hand," which was rather too familiar with a rod of fearful omen, but he ground out some fine scholars, and has been immortalized by the great geniuses that expanded under his tuition. I can see Master Boyer now, as Charles Lamb describes him, calling upon the boys with a sardonic grin to see how neat and fresh his rod looked!--see him in his passy, or passionate wig, make a precipitate entry into the school-room from his inner den, and, with his knotty fist doubled up, and a turbulent eye, single out some unhappy boy, roaring: "Od's my life, sirrah! I have a mind to whip you"; and then, with a sudden retracting impulse, return to his lair, and, after a lapse of some moments, drive out headlong again with the context which the poor boy almost hoped was forgotten: "And I _will_, too!"--treating the trembling culprit to a sandwich of alternate lash and paragraph till his _rabidus furor_ was assuaged.

Lamb, in his delightful essay, _Recollections of Christ's Hospital_, dwells on some of his fellow-pupils whose memory one cannot help recalling while lingering under these arches. And chief among them, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard--who in these cloisters unfolded in deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus, or recited Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy." He tells us, too, of Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, "a scholar and a gentleman in his teens," but said afterwards to have borne his mitre rather high as the first Protestant bishop of Calcutta, though a more humble and apostolic bearing "might not have been exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with reverence for home institutions and the church which such fathers watered." There is a monument to the memory of Bishop Middleton at S. Paul's, where he is represented, in his robes of office, in the act of confirming two East Indians, but the hand raised over their heads has all the fingers broken off but one. Let us hope what apostolic authority he possessed was centred in that digit!

Above all, at Christ's Hospital one recalls the gentle Elia himself. Perhaps in yonder dim corner he furtively ate the griskin brought from the paternal kitchen by his aunt. "I remember the good old relative," he says (in whom love forbade pride), "squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite), and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer, shame for the thing brought and the manner of its bringing."

Under these pillared arches, so shadowy to-day with the heavy London fog, Richardson perhaps conceived his first dramatic scenes, and Leigh Hunt began to weave the delicious fancies that have since charmed us all. Yonder was the dormitory the young ass was smuggled into, which waxed fat, and proclaimed his good fortune to the world below, setting concealment any longer at defiance.

While thus musing, an instalment of the eight hundred boys at the Hospital came out to their sports in their quaint costume of black breeches, long yellow stockings to the knees, and a dark-blue gown down to the heels, garnished with bright buttons bearing the likeness of Edward VI., and confined by a leather belt. White bands at the neck give them a clerical look by no means at variance with so monastic a place. They had innocent, open faces, such as we find in our monastic schools, reminding one of Pope Gregory's well-known exclamation: "_Non Angli sed angeli._" They tucked up their skirts and betook themselves most heartily to their sports. It was queer to see their long yellow-stockinged legs flying across the quadrangle. They have caps, it is said, about the size of a saucer, which they dislike so much that they prefer going bare-headed, but they did not mind the fog, now almost amounting to rain. Children, we all know, are, as Lamb says, "proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under-done, and every weapon of fate." One of them stopped to pump some water for the visitor to offer as a libation to the memory of Charles Lamb.

"Pierian spring!" scornfully shouted Master Boyer to a young writer of a classical turn: "the cloister pump, you mean!"

The school-room visited bore marks that would have done credit to a Yankee jack-knife, and revived pleasant reminiscences of youthful achievements in a New England school-house. The chapel, too, with its mural tablets, and flag tombstones, and painted window, of Christ blessing little children, is interesting. At the right of the chancel is a remnant of old monastic charity. An inscription in yellow letters on a claret-colored ground announces that "the bread here given weekly to the poor of the parish of S. Leonard's is from a bequest of Sir John Trott and other benefactors," and on the other side in equally glaring characters: "Praise be to thee, O Lord God, for this thy gift unto the poor!" There is rather a more amusing inscription of a similar nature at S. Giles', Cripplegate, opposite the monument to Milton:

"This Bvsbie, willing to reeleve the poore with fire and withe breade,
Did give that howse whearein he dyed then called ye Queene's heade,
Fovr fvlle loades of ye best charcoales he wovld have brovght each
yeare,
And fortie dosen of wheaten breade for poore howseholders heare:
To see these thinges distribvted this Bvsby pvt in trvst
The Vicar and Chvrch wardenes thinking them to be IVST:
God grant that poore howseholders here may thankfvll be for svch,
So God will move the mindes of moe to doe for them as mvch:
And let this good example move svch men as God hath blest
To doe the like before they goe with Bvsby to there rest:
Within this chappell Bvsbie's bones in dvst a while mvst stay,
Till He that made them rayse them vp to live with Christ for aye."

The said Busby is represented above this curious inscription, in bold relief, as a be-ruffed man of jovial type, holding a bottle in one hand, and a death's-head in the other, so that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. It would be more reasonable to cry over the grave of that dreadful prevaricator Fox, called the Martyrologist, said to be buried in the same church, only one does not know where to weep, as the precise spot is not known. So one has to be satisfied with sighing before a huge stone set up to his memory at the end of the church, and thinking with Lessing that "if the world is to be held together by lies, the old ones which are already current are as good as the new." What a pity Fox had not belonged to S. Pancras' parish! However, that saint seems to have kept an eye on him, and avenged the cause of truth. We do not suppose there are many now who are credulous enough to accept Fox as reliable authority concerning the history of those sad times. And if we stop to look at his tablet here, it is with something of the same feeling that we turn down Fetter Lane to see where "Praise God Barebones" and his brother "Damned Barebones" lived, and wonder how any one house could hold them both.

But to return to Christ's Hospital. It must not be supposed that, meanwhile, it has been forgotten that this institution was originally a Catholic foundation. It was the first thought at entering, nor could the pleasant associations of later years prevent a regret that so monastic a building is no longer peopled by the old Grey Friars. Keats' lines recurred to memory:

"Mute is the matin bell whose early call
Warned the Grey fathers from their humble beds;
Nor midnight taper gleams along the wall,
Or round the sculptured saint its radiance sheds!"

It was on the second of February, 1224, during the pontificate of Honorius III. and the reign of King Henry III., S. Francis of Assisi being still alive, that a small band of Franciscan friars landed at Dover. There were four priests and five lay-brothers. Five of this number stopped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Iwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here--four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirty-five knights--in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and granddaughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar. In the choir lay Isabella, wife of Edward II.--

"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs,
Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate"--

beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.

In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.

The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are still preserved--a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.

It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital. He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF S. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI. By a Member of the Order of
Mercy. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.

THE LIFE OF THE SAME. By the Rt. Rev. J. Mullock, D.D., Bishop of
Newfoundland. New York: P. J. Kenedy. 1873.

S. Alphonsus has never found a perfectly competent biographer, and perhaps never will. F. Tannoja has written full and minute memoirs, containing all the facts and events of his life, but he wrote under the fear of the Neapolitan censorship, and could not speak openly of the miserable infidel Tanucci and the other Jansenists and infidels, or faithless Catholics, of the wretched period in which the saint lived, and the corrupt court with which he had to contend. Moreover, Tannoja had not a sufficiently elevated and comprehensive mind to be able to appreciate and describe the life and times of S. Alphonsus in their higher and broader relations. The Oratorian translation of his life is a most wretched and shabby affair in respect to style and accuracy. The religious lady who has prepared the first of the lives placed at the head of this notice has therefore done a very great service to the Catholic public by compiling a careful and readable biography from the other earlier works of the kind, and adding some interesting particulars concerning the history of the modern Redemptorists.

Bishop Mullock's life of the saint is quite brief and compendious, but of the best quality so far as it goes. The publisher has made a great blunder in omitting the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which has been given to S. Alphonsus since Dr. Mullock's life was first published, on the title-page.

Archbishop Manning, who has given, though in brief form, the best appreciation of the character and work of the great doctor which we have seen, truly says that S. Ignatius, S. Charles, and S. Alphonsus are the three great modern leaders of the church in her warfare. As one of this great trio, S. Alphonsus deserves to be universally known and honored among the faithful, and we rejoice in the publication of the biography compiled by the accomplished Sister of Mercy as the best we have in English, wishing it a wide circulation, as a means of promoting devotion to the latest of the doctors and one of the greatest of the saints.

LIVES OF THE IRISH SAINTS. Vol. I., No. 1. By Rev. John O'Hanlon.
Dublin: Duffy & Co.

It is not often that we have the privilege of noticing such a work as this--the labor of a lifetime, the history of a whole nation's sanctity. Since Alban Butler, no such hagiographer as F. O'Hanlon has appeared, nor has any work on hagiology so full of interest and importance been given to the world. Up to this time the saints of Ireland, with few exceptions, were hidden saints; of the three or four thousand souls who have shed upon her the light of their sanctity, and earned for her the glorious title of the "Island of Saints," the world knew scarcely anything. It was in vain that the ancient annalists compiled voluminous records for the benefit of posterity; those that escaped the hands of the spoiler were left unexamined, and the learned of the nation seemed to have forgotten that their country had a holy and heroic past, whose history it was their sacred duty to look into and perpetuate. No attention was given to traditions of bygone days; no light was thrown upon them; they were fast becoming dim and obscure, and what was, in reality, fact, the rising generation was beginning to regard as fable. This neglect, so ruinous, and even criminal, might have gone on till it became irreparable, had not this learned and devoted priest undertaken the great task of redeeming the past of Erin's sanctity from the oblivion into which it was rapidly sinking. How carefully he prepared himself, and how well qualified he is to perform this labor of patriotism and love, the first number of his work gives ample proof. His acquaintance with Irish lore, his erudition and research, his fine style, all combine to make him the fittest person that could have engaged in so great a work.

Were we disposed to find fault with him at all, we should say he is rather critical; at least, we fancy we perceive in him a tendency to conform to the critical spirit of the age, which perhaps is prudent, after all, and may enhance the historical value of the work, though it will mar somewhat, we think, the poetic beauty it ought to possess.

No literary effort has yet been attempted that appeals so strongly to the national and religious sentiments of the Irish people; and none should receive so large a share of their interest and support. F. O'Hanlon's _Lives of the Irish Saints_, when completed, will be a noble monument to Erin's faith and Erin's glory, to which his countrymen in every land should feel proud to contribute; the appreciation that he meets with may encourage others to enter the comparatively unexplored mine of Irish history, and bring to light the treasures it contains.

We learn that F. O'Hanlon, who is a citizen of the United States, has copyrighted the work here, and it is to be hoped will make arrangements for its reissue in this country. Meanwhile, intending subscribers may address the author directly, or order the book through "The Catholic Publication Society," New York. It will be published serially, and the American price is fifty cents per number.

JESUITS IN CONFLICT; OR, HISTORIC FACTS illustrative of the Labors
and Sufferings of the English Mission and Province of the Society
of Jesus in the Times of Queen Elizabeth and her Successors. By a
Member of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New
York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Another publication throwing light on the period of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, and more especially on the part borne by the Jesuits themselves in this heroic struggle. So many books have appeared lately on this subject that we may almost say that a new branch of Catholic literature has been opened in the English language. The "getting up" of this book is worthy of the subject, and we rejoice that it is so; for, to take a simile from a passage in this very volume, we may say with truth of the outward appearance of a book in these times what the holy lay-brother, Thomas Pounde, considered his rich dress in prison to be: "A means of inspiring Catholics with greater courage, and conciliating authority" (p. 42). The history of the three confessors of the faith, Thomas Pounde, George Gilbert, and F. Darbyshire, is very interesting. In the two former we have examples of lay sanctity and constancy, as distinguished from that of priests, though both saints were in heart members of the Society of Jesus, to which one was affiliated by extraordinary dispensation of the ordinary novitiate, and the other received the habit and pronounced his vows _in articulo mortis_. Thomas Pounde, of Belmont, a man of old family and high connections, had all the burning zeal of a convert whose soul had narrowly escaped the everlasting infamy of the life of a court minion. Not only his fearlessness and constancy, but his high intellectual attainments, claim our attention. Thirty years of perpetual imprisonment had not enfeebled his mind, and his one desire was a public disputation with his adversaries, nay, "with Beza and all the doctors of Geneva," if it pleased his foes to reinforce themselves with such noted aid. In a lengthy paper, written in 1580 to show that the Bible alone is not the true rule of faith, he brings forward the same reasons which we hear so much about in our day, and after specially dwelling on the many articles of universally held Christian faith that are _not_ directly and plainly traceable to Scripture, he says pointedly: "Do not these blind guides, think you, lead a trim daunce towards infidelitie?" He could not have spoken otherwise had he meant his apology for the XIXth instead of the XVIth century.

George Gilbert, also of a good English family, was one of those rich men who, in truth, make themselves the stewards of the Lord. With him originated the useful and ingenious Catholic Association, in which young men of the world bound themselves to become the temporal guides, helpers, couriers, furnishers of the priests who labored spiritually for the conversion of England. The companion of F. Parsons, as Pounde had been of F. Campion, he, too, was a convert not only from courtly vanities, but from actual Calvinism. Ardently desiring martyrdom, he nevertheless embraced obediently and lovingly the cross of a "sluggish death in bed"; but at least the pain of exile had been added to imprisonment, for he was banished from his native land, and died at Rome in 1583. His whole substance was offered to the service of God, and what little remained at his death he left to the Society for the spiritual needs of his country. It was not till he lay upon his death-bed that he pronounced his vows.

F. Darbyshire was as learned as he was zealous. While in France preparing for his perilous English mission, he refused the honors of the pulpit and the professorial chair, and confined himself to giving catechetical instruction; but God so rewarded his humility that grave scholars and theologians would flock to hear him, and make notes of the wonderful learning he displayed, while they admired the eloquence he could not hide. He and his friend, F. Henry Tichborne, might well congratulate themselves, later on, on the holy efficacy of persecution, which had caused the "confluence of the rares and bestes wittes of our nation to the seminaries," and of the happy increase in the number of fervent inmates of the foreign seminaries They descant, too, on the unwise policy of persecution, and the fact that no religion was ever permanently established by the sword. The faith might have been reft of one of its greatest glories in England had not a short-sighted fanaticism resorted to violent means to uproot it. F. Darbyshire died in exile in France in 1604, in the very same place, Pont-à-Mousson, where he had so signally distinguished himself for learning and for modesty in the beginning of his apostolate.

This book is written in simple, Saxon style. The author trusts rather to facts than to rhetoric, just as of old the acts of the martyrs were chronicled without much comment, whether descriptive or panegyrical. The volume bears "First Series" on its title-page, as a promise that it is but the prelude to other biographies as interesting. Let us hope that the promise will be speedily fulfilled.

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED JOHN BERCHMANS. By Francis Goldie, S.J. (F.
Coleridge's Quarterly Series, Vol. VII.) London: Burns & Oates.
1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

At last we have in English a biography of this angelic imitator of S. Aloysius, as charming as himself. The other lives we have seen are edifying but tedious. This one is equally edifying, but as fascinating as a romance, and published in an attractive style. It is specially adapted for the reading of young people.

LECTURES UPON THE DEVOTION TO THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
CHRIST. By the Very Rev. T. S. Preston, V.G. New York: Robert
Coddington. 1874.

We cannot do more than call attention to the publication of this work, just issued as we go to press. It embraces stenographic reports of four extempore lectures by the pastor of St. Ann's, New York, upon a subject of special interest at this time. In an appendix is given the pastoral of the archbishop and bishops, announcing the consecration of all the dioceses of this province to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus; together with a Novena, from the French of L. J. Hallez.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVIII., No. 108.--MARCH, 1874.[249]

JOHN STUART MILL.[250]

In 1764, Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that day; and the Scotchman took occasion to introduce a discussion concerning the existence of an atheist, in the strict sense of the word; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them."

Whether or not the leading men among the positivists and cosmists of England to-day are prepared to be as frank as the Baron d'Holbach, we shall not venture to say; at all events, John Stuart Mill, to whom they all looked up with the reverence of disciples for the master, has taken care that the world should not remain in doubt concerning his opinions on this subject, which, of all others, is of the deepest interest to man. Among those who in this century have labored most earnestly to propagate an atheistic philosophy, based on the assumption that the human mind is incapable of knowing aught beyond relations, he certainly holds a place of distinction, and, as a representative of what is called scientific atheism, the history of his opinions is worthy of serious attention.

It was known some time before his death that he had written an autobiography; and when it was announced that his step-daughter, Miss Taylor, whom he had made his literary executrix, was about to publish the work, the attention of at least those who take interest in the profounder controversies of the age was awakened.

As an autobiography, the book has but little merit; though this should not be insisted on, since success in writing of this kind is extremely rare. If it is almost as difficult in any case to write a life well as to spend it well, when one attempts to become the historian of his own life, there is every probability that he will either be ridiculous or uninteresting. Mill, too, it must be conceded, had but poor material at his command. His life was uneventful, uninviting even, in its surroundings; and when the patchwork of his philosophical opinions is taken away, there is little left in it that is not wholly commonplace.

He was born in London, in 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill, who was a charity student of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, but, becoming disgusted with the doctrines of Presbyterianism, gave up all idea of studying for the ministry, and in a short while renounced Christian faith, and became an avowed atheist, though his atheism was negative; his belief in what is called the relativity of knowledge not justifying him in affirming positively that there is no God, but only in holding that the human mind can never know whether there be a God or not. He, however, did not stop here, but, scandalized by the suffering which is everywhere in the world, forgot his own principles, and maintained that it is absurd to suppose that such a world is the work of an infinitely perfect being, and was rather inclined to accept the Manichean theory of a good and evil principle, struggling against each other for the government of the universe. But of God, as revealed in Christ, he had a hatred as satanical as that of Voltaire.

"I have a hundred times heard him say," writes his son, "that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on, adding trait after trait, till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This _ne plus ultra_ of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."[251] In other words--for Mill can mean nothing less--he held that the character of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospel, is the highest possible conception of all that is depraved and repulsive; that Christ, instead of being incarnate God, is the essence of wickedness clothed in bodily form; that, compared with him, or at least with the God whom he called his father, Moloch, Astarte, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Bacchus are pure divinities; and from the manner in which the son narrates these opinions of his father, he evidently desires that we should infer that they are also his own.

The elder Mill, who seems to have been a natural pedagogue, took the education of his son exclusively into his own hands, and was most careful not to allow him to acquire any impressions contrary to his own sentiments respecting religion. Instead of teaching him to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, he taught him to believe that we can know nothing whatever of the manner in which the world came into existence, and that the question, "Who made you?" is one which cannot be answered, since we possess no authentic information on the subject.

To show, however, his father's conviction of the logical connection between Protestantism and infidelity, he records that he taught him to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, "as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought."

"I am thus," he adds, "one of the very few examples in this country of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it; I grew up in a negative state with regard to it."[252]

How he could grow up in a negative condition with regard to religion is not easily understood when we consider that his father instilled into his mind from his earliest years the doctrine that the very essence of religion is evil, since it is, and ever has been, worship paid to the demon, the highest possible conception of wickedness; though he was at the same time careful to impress upon him the duty of concealing his belief on this subject; and this lesson of parental prudence was, as the younger Mill himself informs us, attended with some moral disadvantages.[253]

These moral disadvantages, in his own opinion at least, were without positive influence upon his character, since through the whole book there runs the tacit assumption of his own perfect goodness. I am an atheist, he seems to say, and yet I am a saint; and he is evidently persuaded that his own life is sufficient proof that the notion that unbelief is generally connected with bad qualities either of mind or heart is merely a vulgar prejudice.

"The world would be astonished," he informs us, "if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.... But the best of them (unbelievers), as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title."[254]

This is probably not more extravagant than the assertion that the God of Christianity is the embodiment of all that is fiendish and wicked.

We cannot, however, pass so lightly over this portion of Mill's book, or dismiss without further examination the assumption that the best are they who refuse to believe in God, and hold that man is merely an animal.

The real controversy of the age, as thoughtful men have long since recognized, is not between the church and the sects. Protestantism, from the beginning, by asserting the supremacy of human reason, denied the sovereignty of God, and in its postulates, at least, was atheistic. Hence Catholic theologians have never had any difficulty in showing that rebellion against the authority of the church is revolt against that of Christ, which is apostasy from God. To this argument there is really no reply, and the difficulties which Protestants have sought to raise against the church are based upon a sophism which underlies all non-Catholic thought.

The pseudo-reformers objected that the church could not be of Christ, because in it there was evil; many of its members were sinful; as the deists hold that the Bible is not the word of God, because of the many seeming incongruities and imperfections which are everywhere found in it; as the atheists teach that the universe cannot be the work of an all-wise and omnipotent Being, since it is filled with suffering and death; and that love cannot be creation's final law, since nature, "red in tooth and claw with ravin," shrieks against this creed.

If the imperfections and abuses in the practical workings of the church are arguments against its divine institution and authority, then undoubtedly the "measureless ill" which is in the world is reason for doubting whether a Being infinitely good is its author.

Hence the traditional objections of Protestants to the church are, in the ultimate analysis, reducible to the atheistic sophism, which, because there is evil in the creature, seeks to conclude that the creator cannot be wholly good; not perceiving that it would be as reasonable to demand that the circle should be square as to ask that the finite should be without defect.

The church is, both logically and historically, the only defensible Christianity; as Jean Jacques Rousseau long ago admitted in the well-known words: "Prove to me that in matters of religion I must accept authority, and I will become a Catholic to-morrow." There is no controversy to-day between the church and Protestantism which is worthy of serious attention. All that is important has been said on this subject, and Protestants themselves begin to understand that it is far wiser for them to try to hold on to the shreds of Christian belief which still remain to them than to waste their strength in attacks on the church, which, as they are coming to recognize, is after all the strongest bulwark of faith in the soul and in God.

The ground of debate to-day is back of heterodoxy and orthodoxy; it lies around the central fact in all religion--God himself.

The scientific theories of the present time, if they do not deny the existence of God, are at least based upon hypotheses which ignore him and his action in the world; and the few attempts which have been made to construct what may be called a philosophy of science all proceed upon the assumption that, whether there be a God or not, science cannot recognize his existence.

The faith which the elder Mill taught his son--that of the manner in which the world came into existence nothing can be known--is that which most scientists accept. The desire to organize society upon an atheistic basis is also very manifest and very general.

"Reorganiser, sans Dieu ni roi
Par le culte systematique de l'Humanité."

The idealistic philosophy of Germany, invariably terminating in pantheism, is another proof of the atheistic tendency of modern thought.

Mill, in his _Autobiography_, has of course made no attempt to prove that there is no God. On the contrary, as we have already stated, he has admitted that this proposition cannot be proved; but he believes there is no God, fails to perceive any evidence of design in the universe, and, from a morbid sense of the evil which abounds, feels justified in concluding that the cosmos is not the work of an infinitely good and omnipotent Being.

Dr. Newman, in his _Apologia_, a work of the same character as the _Autobiography_ of Mill, but which will be read with delight when Mill and his book will have been forgotten, has seen this difficulty, and given expression to it in his own inimitable manner. "To consider the world," he writes, "in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts; the tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending design; the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'having no hope, and without God in the world'--all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution."[255]

But, as Dr. Newman expresses it, ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. When we have sufficient reasons for accepting two seemingly contradictory propositions, the fact that we are unable to reconcile them should not be a motive for rejecting them. The human race has accepted, in all time, the existence of God with an assent as real as that with which it has believed in the substance that underlies the phenomenon. To a countless number of minds, the difficulty to which Mill has given such emphasis has presented itself with a force not less than that with which it struck him.

Millions have approached the mystery of evil, and have asked themselves

"Are God and nature, then, at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?"

But they have not weakly refused to believe in God because they could not comprehend his works. They saw the evil; but the deepest instincts of the soul--the longing for immortal life, the craving for the unattainable, the thirst for a knowledge never given, the sense of the emptiness of what seems most real; the mother-ideas of human reason--those of being, of cause, of the absolute, the infinite, the eternal, the sense of the all-beautiful, the all-perfect--made them fall

"Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,"

and stretch hands of faith, and trust the larger hope.

We do not propose to offer any arguments to prove that God is, or to show that his existence is reconcilable with the evil in the world, since Mill has not attempted to establish the contradictory of this; but we wish merely to state that his apprehension of the difficulties which surround this question is not keener than that of thousands of others who have seen no connection between apprehending these difficulties and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Whilst admitting that science can never prove that there is no God, Mill evidently intended his _Autobiography_ to be an argument against the usefulness of belief in God for moral and social purposes; "which," he tells us, "of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation very generally take refuge in an optimistic deism--a worship of the order of nature and the supposed course of Providence--at least as full of contradictions and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of Christianity, if only it is as fully realized."[256] Confessing the inability of the scientists to prove that there is no God, he thinks that they should devote their efforts to the attempt to show that belief in God is not beneficial either to the individual or to society. We shall, therefore, turn to the question of morality, which is enrooted in metaphysics, out of which it grows, and to which it is indebted both for its meaning and its strength.

Can the atheistic philosophy give to morality a solid basis? To deny the existence of an infinitely perfect Being is to affirm that there is no absolute goodness, no moral law, eternal, immutable, and necessary, no act that in itself is either good or bad, no certain and fixed standard of right and wrong.

Hence atheistic philosophy can give to morality no other foundation than that of pleasure or utility:

"Atque ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et aequi,
Nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum."

And, in fact, this has been the doctrine, we may say, of all those who have denied the existence of God.