Chapter XIII: The Search Nearly Over (8)

Unless we believe in God’s essential, actual, and unintermittent government of the world, we cannot solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and her cruel, stony stare will freeze our blood as we traverse the deserts of life. If we believe only in his direct government, we shall find it chiefly, if not solely, in his church; and the area is sadly limited! If we acknowledge his essential providence in his permissions, if we make sure of his presence in what appears its very negation, then alone do we arrive at the solution of life’s problems; and even this, not as an obvious thing, but as a constant and ever-renewed act of faith in the under-flowing gulf-stream of divine love, which melts the ice and softens the rigor of the wintry epochs in the world’s history. If we admit of this theory, which is new to none of us, though dim to some, we let in a flood of light upon many of the incidents described in the Old Testament, and specially spoken of as done by the will of God, but which, to our farther-advanced revelation of God, read to us as unlike himself. The light of the later interpretation has been thrown over the earlier fact; but in the harmony of eternity, when we are freed from the broken chord of time, there will be no dissonant notes.

There can be no more wonderful proof of God’s unutterable love than the way in which he has condescended to make the very sins of mankind work to his own glory and to the farther revelation of himself. From the first “_felix culpa_” of our first parents, as the church does not hesitate to call it, down to the present hour--down even to the secret depths of our own souls, where we are conscious of the harvests of grace sprung from repentant tears--it is still the great alchemist turning base metal in the crucible of divine love into pure gold.

It is one of the most irrefragable proofs of the working of a perpetual providence that can be adduced.

Granted that there are no new creations, but that creation is one act, evolving itself by its innate force into all the phenomena which we see, and into countless possible others which future generations of beings will see, nothing of this can prevent the fact that the moral development of the status of mankind, the revelations of divine truth, and consequently of the Deity, through the flow of ages, has ever been a bringing of good out of evil which no blind, irresponsible law could produce. There is no sort of reason why evil should work into its contrary good, except the reason that God is the supreme good, and directs all apparent evil into increments of his glory, thereby converting it into an ultimate good. We must remember, however, that this does not diminish our culpability, because it does not affect our free-will. It does not make evil another form of good. It is no pact with the devil. It is war and victory, opposition and conquest. It is justice and retribution, and it behooves us to see whether we are among those who are keeping ourselves in harmony with the eternal God in his direct government of the world; in harmony (so far as we know it) with his antecedent will; or whether we are allowing ourselves to drift away into channels of our own, working out only the things that he permits, but which he also condemns, and laying up for ourselves that swift devouring flame which will “try every man’s work of what sort it is.”

* * * * *

We have thus arrived at two different views of God’s government of the world--his direct government and his indirect or permissive government. We now come to what we may call his inductive teaching of the world--the way in which truths are partially revealed to us, and come to us percolating through the sands of time, as mankind needs them and can receive them.

Our Lord himself gives us an example of this inductive process when he speaks of “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” as being “not the God of the dead, but of the living,” thus showing that the Jews held, and were bound to hold, the doctrine of immortality by an inductive process. The teaching of the old law was symbolic and inductive. The histories of the Old Testament are of the same character. They are written with no apparent design. They are the simple account of such incidents as the historian thought himself bound to record; acting, as he did, under the divine impulse, which underlay his statements without fettering his pen. He was not himself half conscious of the unspeakable importance of his work. Consequently, there is no effort, hardly even common precaution and foresight, in his mode of chronicling events. He glances at incidents without explaining them, because while he wrote they were present to his own experience, and would be to that of his readers. A writer in our day would allude to a person having performed a journey of fifty miles in an hour’s time without thinking it necessary to explain that people travel by steam. In another part he would advert to railroads, and the rapidity of locomotion as their result, equally without a direct reference to the individual who effected fifty miles in an hour. To the reader of three thousand years hence the one incidental allusion will explain and corroborate the other, and thus, by internal evidence, prove the authenticity and consistency of the history. Unintentional coincidences crop up as the pages grow beneath his hand, and to the careful student of Scripture throw light unlooked for on the exactitude and veracity of the narrative. And the substratum of the whole of the Old Testament history is the gradual growth of one family out of all the families of mankind, into which, as into a carefully prepared soil, the seed of divine truth was to be sown. Through all the variety of the Old Testament writers the same underlying design exists; and though this was a special stream of revelation unlike any that now exists or that is now required (for reasons which are obvious to every Catholic who knows what the church is), yet they form an indication of the way in which the divine Creator is for ever governing the world and preparing it with a divine foresight for his ultimate purpose. The Holy Ghost speaks now through a direct organ, which organ is the church. Formerly God spoke through historic events and multitudinous incidents in connection with one race of people. But this very fact authorizes us to believe that the same _character_ of government exists throughout the whole universe in a greater or less degree, and that God is preparing the way for the ultimate triumph of the sacred Humanity and of his spouse the Church, on the far-off shores of sultry Africa, in the inner recesses of silent China, among the huge forests which skirt the Blue Mountains, or amid the glittering glories of the kingdoms of ice.

There is nothing more depressingly sad, more deeply to be regretted, and more difficult to explain than the almost hopeless narrowness of most people in their appreciation of divinely-ordained facts. We live like moles. We throw up a mound of dusky earth above and around us, within which we grope and are content. The treasures of sacred lore, the depths of spiritual science, the infinite variety of Scriptural information, with the divinely-pointed moral of every tale, are things which most of us are content to know exist, and to think no more about. The very lavishness with which God has given us all that we want for the salvation of our souls seems to have stifled in our ungenerous natures the longing to know and to do more. When the Evangelist said that the world would not hold the books that might be written on the sacred Humanity alone, he must have had an intuition, not so much of the material world and material volumes, as of the world of narrowed minds and crippled hearts who would be found stranded on the shores of our much-vaunted civilization and progress.

Few things are more remarkable in the tone and character of modern Catholic writers than the small amount of use they make of Scripture: so strangely in contrast with the old writers, and with even the great French spiritual authors of a century and a half ago. Their pages are rich with Scriptural lore. Their style is a constant recognition of the government and designs of God as shown to us in our past and present, and as we are bound to anticipate them in the future. In our time this has given place to emotional devotion; a most excellent thing in its way, but only likely to have much influence over our lives when it is grounded on solid theology and directed by real knowledge. No doubt it is so in the minds of the authors themselves; but we fear it is rare in those of their ordinary readers, who thus drink the froth off the wine, but are not benefited by the strengthening properties of the generous liquid itself. Nor will they be until they have made up their minds to believe and understand that conversion is not an isolated fact in their lives, but a progressive act involving all the intellect, all the faculties, be they great or small (for each one must be full up to his capacity), and all the heart, mind, and soul. The whole man must work and be worked upon in harmony; and we must remember that it _is_ work, and not merely feeling, consolation, emotion, prettiness, and ornament, but an intellectual growth, going on _pari passu_ with a spiritual growth, until the whole vessel is fitted and prepared for the glory of God.

We think we may venture to say that few things will conduce more to this than the study of the divine Scriptures under the light and teaching of the Catholic Church. In them we find a profound revelation of the character of God. We are, as we read them interpreted to us by the lamp of the sanctuary, let down into awful depths of the divine Eternal Mind. We watch the whole world and all creation working up for the supreme moment of the birth of Jesus; while in the life of our Blessed Lord himself we find, condensed into those wonderful thirty-three years, the whole system of the church--the spiritual fabric which is to fill eternity, the one God-revealing system which is finally to supersede all others.

Unhappily many persons are under the delusion that narrowness and ignorance are the same as Christian simplicity, and that innocence means ignorance of everything else, as well as of evil. These are the people who are afraid to look facts in the face, and to read them off as part of the God-directed history of the world. These are they to whom science is a bugbear. They hug their ignorance as being their great safeguard, and wear blinkers lest they should be startled by the events which cross their path. Grown men and women do it for themselves and attempt it for their children, and meanwhile those to whom we ought to be superior are rushing on with headlong daring, carrying intellectual eminence, and originality, and investigation of science, all before them; while we, who should be clad in the panoply of the faith, and afraid of nothing, are putting out the candles and shading the lamps, that we may idly enjoy a shadow too dense for real work.

And yet is not the earth ours? Is not all that exists our heritage? To whom does anything belong if not to us, the sons of the church, the sole possessors of infallible truth, the only invulnerable ones, the only ever-enduring and ever-increasing children of the light? The past is ours; the present should be ours; the future is all our own. Our triumph may be slow (and it is slower because we are cowards), but it is certain. Are we not tenfold the children of the covenant, the sons of the Father’s house, the heirs of all? We alone are in possession of what all science and art must ultimately fall back upon and harmonize with. There is no success possible but what is obtained, and shall in the future be obtained, in union with the church of God. Have we forgotten, are we ever for a moment permitted to forget, that the church of God is not an accident, nor a cunningly-devised, tolerably able, partially infirm organization, but that she is the spouse of the God-Man, the one revelation of God, perfect and entire, though but gradually given forth; that all the harmonies of science are fragments of the harmony of God himself, of his pure being, of the _Qui Est_; and that the harmony of the arts is simply the human expression of the harmony of the _Logos_, the human utterances of the articulations of the divine Word, as they come to us in our far-off life-like echoes from eternity?

Even the great false religions of the past, and of the present in the remote East, are but man’s discord breaking the harmony of truth while retaining the key-note: the immortality of the soul and the perfection of a future state in the deep thoughts of Egypt, the universality of God’s providential government of the world in Greek mythology, the union of the soul with God in Brahminism, and the One God of Mahometanism. Each has its kernel of truth, its ideal nucleus of supernatural belief, which it had caught from the great harmony of God in broken fragments, and enshrined in mystic signs. Even now, as we look back upon them all, we are bound to confess that they stand on a totally different ground from the multitudinous sects of our day, which break off from the one body of the church and drift off into negation or Protestantism. Far be it from us to insinuate that any, the lowest form of Christianity, the weakest utterance of the dear name of Jesus, is not ten thousand fold better than the most abstruse of the old Indian or Egyptian religions. Wherever the name of Jesus is uttered, no matter how imperfectly, there is more hope of light and of salvation than in the deepest symbols of heathen or pagan creeds. It may be but one ray of light, but still it is light--the real warming, invigorating light of the sun, and not the cold and deleterious light of the beautiful moon, who has poisoned what she has borrowed.[281] Nevertheless, and maintaining this with all the energy of which we are capable, it is still true that each one of the great false religions, which at various times and in divers places have swayed mankind, was rather the overgrowth of error on a substantial truth than the breaking up of truth into fragmentary and illogical negation, which is the characteristic of all forms of secession from the Catholic unity of the church. The modern aberrations from the faith are a mere jangle of sounds, while the old creeds were the petrifaction of truth. The modern forms of faith outside the church are a negation of truth rather than a distortion. Consequently, they are for ever drifting and taking Protean shapes that defy classification.

They have broken up into a hundred forms; they will break up into a thousand more, till the whole fabric has crumbled into dust. They have none of the strong hold on human nature which the old religions had, because they are not the embodiment of a sacred mystery, but rather the explaining away of all mystery. They are a perpetual drifting detritus, without coherence as without consistency; and as they slip down the slant of time, they fall into the abyss of oblivion, and will leave not a trace behind, only in so far that, vanishing from sight, they make way for the fuller establishment of the truth--the eternal, the divine, spherical truth, absolute in its cohesion and perfect in all its parts.

The hold which heathen and pagan creeds have had upon mankind conveys a lesson to ourselves which superficial thinkers are apt to overlook. It is certain they could not have held whole nations beneath their influence had not each in its turn been an embodiment of some essential truth which, though expressed through error, remains in itself essentially a part of truth. They snatched at fragments of the natural law which governs the universe, or they embodied in present expression the inalienable hopes of mankind. They took the world of nature as the utterance neither of a passing nor of an inexorable law, but of an inscrutable Being, and believed that the mystical underlies the natural. Untaught by the sweet revelations of Christianity, their religion could assume no aspect but one of terror, silent dread, and deep horror. Their only escape from this result was in the deterioration that necessarily follows the popularization of all abstract ideas, unless protected by a system at once consistent and elastic, like that which is exhibited in the discipline of the Catholic Church. They wearied of the rarefied atmosphere of unexplained mystery. They wanted the tangible and evident in its place. Like the Israelites, they lusted after the flesh-pots of Egypt; and their lower nature and evil passions rebelled against the moral loftiness of abstract truth. The multitude could not be kept up to the mark, and needed coarser food. The result was inevitable. But as all religion involves mystery, instead of working upward through the natural law to the spiritual and divine law, they inverted the process, and grovelled down below the natural law, with its sacramentalistic character, to the preternatural and diabolic. Mystery was retained, but only in the profanation of themselves and of natural laws, until they had passed outside all nature, and, making a hideous travesty of humanity, had become more vile and hateful than the devils they served.

Thus the Romans vulgarized the Greek mythology; and that which had remained during a long period as a beautiful though purely human expression of a divine mystery, among a people whose religion consisted mainly in the worship of the beautiful, and who themselves transcended all that humanity has ever since beheld in their own personal perfection of beauty, became, when it passed through the coarser hands of the Romans, a degenerate vulgarity, which infected their whole existence, in art and in manners, quite as effectually as in religion. Then Rome flung open her gates to all the creeds of all the world, and the time-honored embodiments of fragmentary but intrinsic truth met together, and were all equally tolerated and equally degenerated. All!--except the one whole and perfect truth: the Gospel of Salvation. That was never tolerated. That alone could not be endured, because the instinct of evil foresaw its own impending ruin in the Gospel of peace.

It was a new thing for mankind to be told that a part of the essence of religion was elevated morality and the destruction of sin in the individual. Whatever comparative purity of life had co-existed with the old religions was hardly due to their influence among the multitude, though it might be so with those whose educated superiority enabled them to reason out the morality of creeds. While the rare philosopher was reading the inmost secret of the abstract idea on which the religion of his country was based, and the common pagan was practising the most degraded sorcery and peering into obscene mysteries, without a single elevation of thought, suddenly the life of the God-Man was put before the world, and the whole face of creation was gradually changed.

But as the shadows of the past in the old religions led up to the light, so shall the light of the present lead up to the “perfect day.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

SEARCH FOR OLD LACE IN VENICE.

One is almost ashamed to mention Venice now, or any other of those thousand-and-one bournes of hackneyed travel and staples of hackneyed books. There is probably no one claiming a place in a civilized community who does not know Venice almost as well as do her own children, and who could not discourse intelligently of the Bridge of Sighs, the Doge’s Palace, and the Rialto Bridge, of St. Mark’s and the brazen horses. Still, when one has read multitudinous poems about gondolas and gondoliers, and any amount of descriptions of the Grand Canal, with its palaces of various styles of architecture, and some few dramas about the grand and gloomy, the secret and awful, doings of ancient Venetian life, even then there are nooks in the place and incidents in the doings which escape notice. A traveller arriving at Venice is hardly surprised at the water-street, with which pictures have already made him familiar, but the mode of entering a covered gondola--crab-fashion--is not so familiar, and he generally butts his head against the low ceiling, eliciting a laugh from his gondolier and the good-humored bystanders, before he learns the native and proper way of backing into his seat. So, too, in rowing slowly and dreamily about from church to church, full of artistic marvels or wonderful historical monuments, he feels to a certain degree at home. He has seen all this before; the present is but a dream realized. But there are now and then unexpected sights--though, it must be confessed, not many--and of course such are the most interesting, even if they are by no means on a level with those more famous and more beautiful.

From Venice to Vicenza is but a short distance by rail, and Vicenza boasts of Roman ruins, and mediæval churches, and a Palladian theatre; but on our day’s trip there, in early spring, we certainly dwelt more on the aspect of the woods and plains, with their faint veil of yellow green already beginning to appear, the few flowers in the _osteria_ garden, and the box hedges and aloes in the cemetery. The beauty of the Venetian and Lombard plains lies more in their mere freshness than in their diversity; it is entirely a beauty of detail, a beauty fit for the minuteness of Preraphaelite art rather than for the sweeping brush of the great masters of conventional landscape painting. But coming from Venice every trace of verdure was grateful to the eye, and we felt as one who, having been confined in a beautiful, spacious room, filled with treasures and scented with subtle perfume, might feel on coming suddenly into the fresh air of a prairie. By contrast, the suggestion of fresh air and open space draws us at once to our subject--a search after old lace in one of the cities known to possess many treasures in that line.

Like all other industries in Venice, the sale of lace thrives chiefly on the fancy of the foreign visitors. The natives are generally too poor to buy much of it, and, indeed, much of what is in the market is the product of forced sacrifices made by noble but impoverished families of Venetian origin. It is a sad thing to see the spoils of Italy still scattered over the world, as if the same fate had pursued her, with a few glorious intervals of triumph and possession, ever since the barbarian ancestors of her _forestieri_ rifled her treasure-houses under the banners of Celtic, Cimbrian, and Gothic chieftains. What Brennus, Alaric, and Genseric began the Constable of Bourbon and the great Napoleon continued by force; but what is still sadder is to see the daily disintegration of other treasure-houses whose contents are unwillingly but necessarily bartered away to rich Englishmen, Americans, and Russians. Pictures, jewelry, lace, goldsmith’s work, artistic trifles--precious through their material and history, but more so through the family associations which have made them heirlooms--too often pass from the sleepy, denuded, dilapidated, but still beautiful Italian palace to the cabinet or gallery or museum of the lucky foreign connoisseur, or even--a worse fate--into the hands of men to whom possession is much, but appreciation very little.

While at Venice we were so lazy as never to go sight-seeing, which accounts for the fact that we missed many a thing which visitors of a few days see and talk learnedly about; and if the business activity of an old lace-seller had not brought her to the hotel, our search after lace might never have been made. She brought fine specimens with her, but her prices were rather high, and, after admiring the lace, she was dismissed without getting any orders. But she came again, and this time left her address. We wanted some lace for a present, and fancied that the proverbial facility for taking anything rather than nothing, which distinguishes the Italian seller of curiosities, would induce her to strike some more favorable bargain in her own house, where no other customer would be at hand to treasure up her weakness as a precedent.

It was not easy to find the house. Many intricate little canals had to be traversed (for on foot we should probably have lost our way over and over again); and as we passed, many a quaint court, many a delicate window, many a sombre archway, and as often the objects which we, perhaps too conventionally, call picturesque--such as the tattered clothes drying on long lines stretched from window to window; heaps of refuse piled up against princely gateways; rotten posts standing up out of the water, with the remnants of the last coat of paint they ever had, a hundred years ago; gaudy little shrines calculated to make a Venetian _popolana_ feel very pious and an “unregenerate” artist well-nigh frantic--met our sight. At last the house was reached, or at least the narrow quay from which a _calle_, or tiny, dark street, plunged away into regions unknown but inviting. Our gondolier was wise in the street-labyrinth lore of his old city, and up some curious outside stairs, and then again by innumerable inside ones, we reached the old woman’s rooms. Of these there were two--at least, we saw no more. Both were poor and bare, and the old lace seller was wrinkled, unclean, good-humored, and eager. She talked volubly, not being obliged to use a foreign tongue to help herself out, but going on with her soft, gliding, but quick Venetian tones. Travelling in Italy and coming in contact with all classes of the people is apt sadly to take down one’s scholarly conceit in knowing the language of Dante and Petrarch; for all the classicism of one’s school-days goes for very little in bargaining for lace, giving orders in a shop or market, or trying not to let boat-and-donkey-men cheat you to your face. There is this comfort: that if you often cannot understand the people, they can almost invariably understand you (unless your accent be altogether outrageous), which saves John Bull and his American cousin the ignominy of being brought an umbrella when they have asked for mushrooms, and actually taken the trouble to give a diagram of that vegetable.

The prices were kept so obstinately above our means that all purchase of lace was impossible; but the old woman was untiring in displaying her stores of antique treasures, and we felt sufficiently rewarded for our expedition. She herself was worth a visit; for, like many ancient Italian matrons, and not a few nearer home, she was one of that generation of models whom you would have sworn has endured from the days of Titian and Vandyke, immortally old and unchangeably wrinkled. You see such faces in the galleries, with the simple title “Head of an old man”--or old woman, as the case may be--attributed to some famous painter; and these weird portraits attract you far more than the youth, and beauty, and health, and prosperity of the Duchess of Este, the baker’s handsome daughter, or the gorgeous Eastern sibyl. Again, you do not care to have any allegorical meaning tacked on to that intensely human face; you would be disgusted if you found it set down in the catalogue as “a Parca,” a magician, or a witch. You seem to know it, to remember one which was like it, to connect it with many human vicissitudes and common, though not the less pathetic, troubles. She is probably poor and has been hard-working; wifehood and motherhood have been stern realities to her, instead of poems lived in luxurious houses and earthly plenty; her youth’s romance was probably short, fervid, passionate, but soon lapsed into the dreary struggle of the poor for bare life. Chance and old age have made her look hard, though in truth her heart would melt at a tender love-tale like that of a girl of fifteen, and her brave, bright nature belies the lines on her face. Just as women live this kind of life nowadays, so they did three and five hundred years ago; so did probably those very models immortalized by great painters; so did others long before art had reached the possibility of truthful portraiture.

Our old friend the lace-seller, though she has given occasion for this rambling digression, did not, however, at the time, suggest all these things to our mind.

If she herself was a type of certain models of the old masters, her wares were also a reminder of famous people, scenes, and places of Venice. They were all of one kind, all of native manufacture, and, of course, all made by hand. In a certain degenerate fashion this industry is still continued, but the specimens of modern work which we saw were coarse and valueless in comparison with those of the old. There were collars and cuffs in abundance, such as both men and women wore--large, broad, Vandyked collars like those one sees in Venetian pictures; flounces, or rather straight bands of divers widths, from five to twenty inches, which had more probably belonged to albs and cottas. They suggested rich churches and gorgeous ceremonial in a time when nobles and people were equally devoted to splendid shows, prosperity and loftiness, and a picturesque blending of the religious and the imperial. Chasubles stiff with gems and altars of precious stones seem to harmonize well with these priceless veils, woven over with strange, hieroglyphic-looking, conventional, yet beautiful forms; intricate with tracery which, put into stone, would immortalize a sculptor; full of knots, each of which is a miniature masterpiece of embroidery; and the whole the evident product of an artist’s brain. This lace has not the gossamer-like beauty of Brussels. It is thick and close in its texture, and is of that kind which looks best on dark velvets and heavy, dusky cloths--just what one would fancy the grave Venetian signiors wearing on state occasions. It matches somehow with the antique XVth and XVIth century jewelry--the magnificent, artistic, heavy collars of the great orders of chivalry; it has something solid, substantial, and splendid about it. Such lace used to be sold to kings and senators, not by a paltry yard measure, but by at least twice its weight in gold; for the price was “as many gold pieces as would cover the quantity of lace required.” Now, although this princely mode of barter is out of fashion, old Venetian “point” is still one of the costliest luxuries in the world, and the rich foreigners who visit Venice usually carry away at least as much as will border a handkerchief or trim a cap, as a memento of the beautiful and once imperial city of the Adriatic. The modern lace--one can scarcely call it _imitation_, any more than Salviati’s modern Venetian glass and mosaic can be so called--seems to be deficient in the beauty and intricacy of design of the old specimens; it is so little sought after that the industry stands a chance of dying out, at least until after the old stock is exhausted and necessity drives the lace-makers to ply their art more delicately.

Some modern lace, the English Honiton and some of the Irish lace, is quite as perfect and beautiful, and very nearly as costly, as the undoubted specimens the history of which can be traced back for two or three hundred years. But from what we saw of Venetian point, the new has sadly degenerated from the old, and exact copying of a few antique models would be no detriment to the modern productions. To the unlearned eye there is no difference between Venetian glass three or four hundred years old, carefully preserved in a national museum, and the manufactures of last month, sold in Salviati’s warerooms in Venice and his shop in London. Connoisseurs say they _do_ detect some inferiority in the modern work; but as to the lace, even the veriest tyro in such lore can see the rough, tasteless, coarse appearance of the new when contrasted with the old.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SUPPOSED MIRACLES: AN ARGUMENT FOR THE HONOR OF CHRISTIANITY
AGAINST SUPERSTITION, AND FOR ITS TRUTH AGAINST UNBELIEF. By
Rev. J. M. Buckley. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1875.

Mr. Buckley is a Methodist minister, who seems to be a sensible, honest, and straightforward person, strong in his convictions, ardently religious, and yet abhorring the excesses of credulity and irrational enthusiasm. The substance of his pamphlet was delivered by him as an address before a meeting of Methodist ministers, and is principally directed against some pretences to miraculous powers and wonderful cure-working within his own denomination. So far as this goes, his effort is quite successful, particularly in regard to a certain Rev. Mr. Platt, who professes to have been cured of an obstinate infirmity by the prayers, accompanied by the imposition of hands, of a lady by the name of Miss Mossman. His particular object led him, however, to advance some general propositions respecting real and supposititious miracles, and to sustain these by arguments and appeals to so-called facts, real or assumed, having a much wider range and application than is embraced by his special and immediate purpose. As an _argumentum ad hominem_, his plea may have been quite sufficient and convincing to his particular audience; but as addressed to a wider circle in the form of a published pamphlet, it appears to be somewhat deficient in the quality and quantity of the proofs alleged in support of its great amplitude and confidence of assertion. It is also defective in respect to the definition and division of the subject-matter. To begin with his definition of miracle: “A true miracle is an event which involves the setting aside or contradiction of the established and uniform relations of antecedents and consequents; such event being produced at the will of an agent not working in the way of physical cause and effect, for the purpose of demonstration, or punishment, or deliverance.” This definition errs by excess and defect--by excess, in including the scope or end as a part of the essence; by defect, in excluding effects produced by an act of divine power which is above all established and uniform relations of antecedents and consequents. This last fault is not of much practical importance in respect to the question of the miracles by which a divine revelation is proved, or of ecclesiastical miracles; because those which are simply above nature, called by S. Thomas miracles of the first order--as the Incarnation and the glorification of the body of Christ--are very few in number, and are more objects than evidences of faith. The first error, however, confuses the subject, and opens the way to a summary rejection of evidence for particular miracles on the _à priori_ ground that they have not that scope which has been defined by the author as necessary to a true miracle. It is evident that God cannot give supernatural power to perform works whose end is bad or which are simply useless. But we cannot determine precisely what end is sufficient, in the view of God, for enabling a person to work a miracle, except so far as we learn this by induction and the evidence of facts which are proved. Mr. Buckley affirms positively that the end of miracles was solely the authentication of the divine legation of Christ and his forerunners in the mission of making known the divine revelation. Consequently from this assumption, he asserts that miracles ceased very early in the history of Christianity. He also professes to have “shown, by the proof of facts, that miracles have ceased. If the great Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland, if Methodism, had no miracles; if the missionaries of the Cross [_i.e._, Protestant] are powerless to work them; and if the best men and women of all branches of the [Protestant] church are without this power, then indeed must they have ceased.” No one will dispute the logical sequence or material truth of this conclusion, so far as it does not extend beyond its own premises. He has made it, however, a general conclusion, and promises to prove it by “conclusive and irresistible proof.” He is therefore bound to prove that miracles had ceased from an early epoch in the universal church, including the whole period before the XVIth century, and in respect to all Christian bodies except Protestants from that time to the present. In respect to the former period, his whole proof consists in a statement that no person of candor and judgment who has read the ante-Nicene fathers will conclude it probable that miracles continued much beyond the beginning of the IId century, and in the assertion “that they have ceased we have proved to a demonstration.” In respect to supposed miracles during the latter period in the Catholic Church, the proof that none of them are true miracles is contained in the statement that “the opinion of the Protestant world is settled” on that head. Very good, Mr. Buckley! Such logical accuracy, united with the intuitive insight of genius, is a conclusive proof that the “assistances which our age enjoys” have amazingly shortened and simplified the tedious processes by which “that indigested heap and fry of authors which they call antiquity” were obliged to investigate truth and acquire knowledge. The reverend gentleman tells us that “I have for some years past been reading, as I have found leisure, that magnificent translation of the ante-Nicene fathers published by T. & T. Clark, of Edinburgh, in about twenty five volumes. To say that I have been astonished is to speak feebly.” Probably the astonishment of Origen, Justin Martyr, and Irenæus would be no less, and would be more forcibly expressed, if they could resume their earthly life and peruse the remarkable address before us. If its author will read the account of the miracles of SS. Gervasius and Protasius given by S. Ambrose, the _City of God_ of S. Augustine, the _Ecclesiastical History_ of Ven. Bede, and Dr. Newman’s _Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles_, we can promise him that he will experience a still greater degree of astonishment than he did on the perusal of the ante-Nicene fathers. Mr. Buckley appears to be in _bona fide_, and is probably a much better man than many whose knowledge is more extensive. The hallucination of mind which produces in him the belief that he stands on a higher intellectual plane than Clement of Alexandria and Cyprian in ancient times, or Petavius, Kleutgen, Bayma, and “Jesuits” in general, is so simply astounding, and the credulity requisite to a firm assent to his own statements as “demonstrations” is so much beyond that which was, in the olden time, shown by believing in the “phœnix,” that he must be sincere, though very much in need of information. We cannot help feeling that he is worthy of knowing better, and would be convinced of the truth if it were set before him fairly. It is plain that he has no knowledge of the evidence which exists of a series of miracles wrought in the Catholic Church continuously from the times of the apostles to our own day, and which cannot be rejected without subverting the evidence on which the truth of all miracles whatsoever is based. The number of these which are considered by prudent Catholic writers to be quite certain or probable is beyond reckoning, though still very small in comparison with ordinary events and the experiences of the whole number of Catholics in all ages. Those of the most extraordinary magnitude are relatively much fewer in number than those which are less wonderful, as, for instance, the raising of the dead to life. Nevertheless, there are instances of this kind--_e.g._, those related of S. Dominic, S. Bernard, S. Teresa, and S. Francis Xavier--which, to say the least, have a _primâ facie_ probability. One of another kind is the perpetually-recurring miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of S. Januarius. The miraculous and complete cure of Mrs. Mattingly, of Washington, is an instance which occurred in our own country, and which, among many other intelligent Protestants, John C. Calhoun considered as most undoubtedly effected by miraculous agency. We mention one more only--the restoration of the destroyed vision of one eye by the application of the water of Lourdes, in the case of Bourriette, as related by M. Lasserre. We are rather more cautious in professing to have demonstrated the continuance of miracles than our reverend friend has been in respect to the contrary. We profess merely to show that his demonstration requires a serious refutation of the arguments in favor of the proposition he denies, and to bring forward some considerations in proof of the title which these arguments have to a respectful and candid examination. Moreover, though we cannot pretend to prove anything, _hic et nunc_, by conclusive evidence and reasoning, we refer to the articles on the miracle of S. Januarius, and to the translation of M. Lasserre’s book, in our own pages, as containing evidence for two of the instances alluded to, and to the works of Bishop England for the evidence in Mrs. Mattingly’s case.

Besides those supernatural effects or events which can only be produced by a divine power acting immediately on the subject, there are other marvellous effects which in themselves require only a supermundane power, and are merely preternatural, using nature in the sense which excludes all beyond our own world and our human nature. Other unusual events, again, may appear to be preternatural, but may be proved, or reasonably conjectured, to proceed from a merely natural cause. Here is a debatable land, where the truth is attainable with more difficulty, generally with less certainty, and where there is abundant chance for unreasonable credulity and equally unreasonable scepticism to lose their way in opposite directions. Mr. Buckley summarily refers all the strange phenomena to be found among pagan religions to jugglery and fanaticism. Spiritism he dismisses without a word of comment, implying that he considers it to be in no sense preternatural. We differ from him in opinion in respect to this point also. We have no doubt that many alleged instances of preternatural events are to be explained by natural causes, and many others by jugglery and imposture. We cannot, for ourselves, find a reasonable explanation of a certain number of well-proved facts in regard to both paganism and spiritism, except on the hypothesis of preternatural agency. The nature of that agency cannot be determined without recurring to theological science. Catholic theology determines such cases by referring them to the agency of demons. Mr. Buckley is afraid to admit that the alleged “miracles were real and wrought by devils.” “If so,” he continues, “we may ask, in the language of Job, Where and what is God?” We answer to this that God does not permit demons to deceive men to such an extent as to cause the ruin of their souls, except through their own wilful and culpable submission to these deceits. It makes no difference whether the delusion produced is referred to jugglery or demonology in respect to this particular question.

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM. Part Third. By T. W. Allies.
London: Longmans & Co. 1875.

Mr. Allies dedicates this volume, in very beautiful and appropriate terms, to Dr. Newman, who, he says in classic and graceful phrase, having once been “the Hector of a doomed Troy,” is now “the Achilles of the city of God.” The particular topic of the book is the relation of Greek philosophy to the Christian church. A remarkable chapter on the foundation of the Roman Church, in which great use is made of the discoveries of archæologists, precedes the treatment of the Neostoic, Neopythagorean, and Neoplatonic schools, with cognate topics. One of the most interesting and novel chapters is that on Apollonius of Tyana, whose wonderful life, as related by Philostratus, the author regards as a philosophic and anti-Christian myth invented by the above-mentioned pagan writer, with only a slight basis of historical truth. Mr. Allies has studied the deep, thoughtful works of those German authors who give a truly intelligent and connected history of philosophy, and his work is a valuable contribution to that branch of science, as well as to the history of Christianity. One of the most irresistible proofs of the divine mission and divine personality of Jesus Christ lies in the blending of the elements of Hellenic genius and culture, Jewish faith, and Roman law into a new composite, by a new form, when he founded his universal kingdom. A mere man, by his own natural power, and under the circumstances in which he lived, could not have conceived such an idea, much less have carried it into execution. The most ineffably stupid, as well as atrociously wicked, of all impostors and philosophical charlatans are those apostate Christians who strive to drag Christianity down to the level of the pagan systems of religion and philosophy, and reduce it to a mere natural phenomenon. Mr. Allies shows this in a work which combines erudition with a grace of style formed on classic models, and an enlightened, fervent Catholic spirit, imbibed from the fathers and doctors of the church. At a time when the popular philosophy is decked in false hair and mock-jewels, as a stage-queen, it is cheering to find here and there a votary of that genuine philosophy whose beauty is native and real, and who willingly proclaims her own subjection and inferiority by humbly saying, _Ecce ancilla Domini_.

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC QUARTERLY REVIEW. Vol. I. No. 1. January,
1876. Philadelphia: Hardy & Mahony.

A very large number of the most highly gifted and learned Catholics throughout Christendom, both clergymen and laymen, are at present employed in writing for the reviews of various classes which have existed for a greater or lesser period of time within the present century. Much of the very best literature of the age is to be found in their articles, and a very considerable part of this is of permanent value. In solid merit of matter and style, and in adaptation to the wants of the time, the best of these periodicals have improved steadily, and we may say of some of them that they hardly admit of any farther progress. The advantage of such periodicals is not only very great for their readers, but almost equally so for those who are engaged in contributing to their contents. The effort and practice of writing constantly for the public react upon the writers. Each one is encouraged and instructed in the most useful and effective method of directing his studies and giving verbal expression to their results, so as to attain the practical end he has in view--that of disseminating and diffusing knowledge over as wide an extent as possible. The combination of various writers, each having one or more specialties, under a competent editorial direction secures variety and versatility without prejudice to unity, and corrects the excesses or defects of individuality without checking originality, thus giving to the resulting work in some respects a superiority over that which is the product of one single mind, unless that mind possesses the gifts and acquisitions in _modo eminenti_ which are usually found divided among a number of different persons. To conduct a review alone is a herculean task, and Dr. Brownson has accomplished a work which is really astonishing in maintaining, almost by unaided effort, through so many years, a periodical of the high rank accorded by common consent to the one which bore his name and will be his perpetual monument. That, at the present juncture, a new review is necessary and has a fine field open before it; that in its management ecclesiastical direction and episcopal control are requisite for adequate security and weight with the Catholic public; and that full opportunity for efficient co-operation on the part of laymen of talent and education is most desirable, cannot admit of a moment’s doubt. It is therefore a matter of heart-felt congratulation that the favorable moment has been so promptly seized and the vacant place so quickly occupied by the gentlemen who have undertaken the editing and the publishing of the _American Catholic Quarterly_. It is probably known to most, if not all, of our readers that the editors are Dr. Corcoran, professor in the Ecclesiastical Seminary of Philadelphia; Dr. O’Connor, the rector of that institution; and Mr. Wolff, who has long and ably edited the Philadelphia _Catholic Standard_. It would be difficult to find in the United States an equally competent triad. The publishers, who have already the experience acquired by the management of a literary magazine and a newspaper, will, we may reasonably hope, be able to sustain the financial burden of this greater undertaking in a successful manner, if they receive the support which they have a right to expect, by means of their subscription list. The first number of the new review presents a typographical face which is quite peculiar to itself and decidedly attractive. Its contents, besides articles from each of the editors, are composed of contributions from three clergymen and two laymen, embracing a considerable variety of topics. The clerical contributors are the Right Reverend Bishops Lynch and Becker, and the Rev. Drs. Corcoran, O’Connor, and McGlynn. The lay contributors are Dr. Brownson, John Gilmary Shea, and Mr. Wolff. The names of F. Thébaud, Dr. Marshall, and General Gibbon are among those announced for the next number. We extend a cordial greeting with our best wishes to the _American Catholic Quarterly Review_.

MANUAL OF CATHOLIC INDIAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATIONS.

The Indian question continues to be one of the most troublesome in our national politics. Its only real solution--and we believe this to be President Grant’s opinion--is to Christianize the Indians. The task is undoubtedly a hard one, but it would be far less so if wolves in sheep’s clothing had not been sent among them. The only successful attempt at civilizing the Indians has been made by Catholic missionaries. But under the administration of the Indian Bureau, the utter rottenness of which has been so recently exposed, missions and reservations have been thrown to this religious agency and that without the slightest regard for the wishes of those who, it is to be supposed, were most to be benefited by the operation--the Indians themselves. In this way flourishing Catholic missions were turned over to the Methodist or other denominations, and the representations of the missionaries, as well as of the chiefs and tribes themselves, were of no avail whatever to alter so iniquitous a proceeding. This little manual gives a brief sketch of the status of Catholic Indians and working of the Bureau of Indian Missions. It contains also an earnest appeal to the Catholic ladies of the United States from the “Ladies’ Catholic Indian Missionary Association of Washington, D. C.,” urging contributions and the formation of similar associations throughout the country to aid in sustaining the Catholic Indian missions.

A CORRECTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD:

I have just received, through the Catholic Publication Society, the following card from Mr. Gladstone:

“Mr. Gladstone desires to send with his compliments his thanks
to the Society for a copy, which he has received, of Dr.
Clarke’s interesting paper on _Maryland Toleration_. Having
simply cited his authorities, and used them, as he thinks,
fairly, he will be glad to learn, if he can, the manner in
which they meet the challenge conveyed in the latter portion of
this paper. Mr. Gladstone’s present object is to say he would
be greatly obliged by a _reference_ to enable him to trace the
“irreverent words” imputed to him on page 6, as his _Vatican
Decrees_ have no page 83, and he is not aware of having penned
such a passage.

“4 CARLTON GARDENS, LONDON, Jan. 24, 1856.”