Chapter XIV: The Episode Explained (1)

The night closed in—night, that is so cruel, yet so merciful; intensifying every pain in the long dark watch, or lulling it in blessed sleep.

There was very little sleep for Raymond that night, and none at all for his two nurses. They sat by his bed while the slow hours dragged on, watching his feverish restlessness, that was occasionally soothed by broken snatches of rest, thanks to a potion that was administered at intervals. Franceline’s anxiety gradually returned as she sat there observing every sound and symptom. She could not but see that there was something far more serious in this sudden attack than an ordinary fainting fit. Raymond was so troubled and excited in his sleep that she almost wished him to awake; and then again she longed for unconsciousness to soothe his feverish terrors. He clutched her hand; he could not bear her to move from him. At last the dawn came, and like a bright-winged angel scattered the darkness and scared away the ghostly phantoms of the night, and Raymond fell into a slumber long and deep enough to be refreshing.

Some days passed without bringing any change; but he was no worse, which, the doctor said, meant that he was better. His condition, however, continued extremely critical.

It was wonderful both to Angélique and to herself how Franceline bore up under the strain; for both her mental and physical powers were severely taxed. She had hardly closed her eyes since her father had fallen ill; and she took scarcely any food. But anxiety, so long as it does not utterly break us down, buoys us up.

The few neighbors who were intimate were kind and sympathizing. Lady Anwyll had driven over and made anxious inquiries, and would gladly be of use in any way, if she could. Miss Bulpit also came to offer her services in any way they could be available. Miss Merrywig called every day. So far Franceline had seen none of them; she was always with her father when they called, and Angélique would not disturb her for visitors.

Father Henwick came constantly to inquire, but did not always ask to see the young girl. Franceline wondered why her father had not before this expressed a wish to see him; it seemed so natural that such a wish should have manifested itself the moment Raymond was able to receive any one. She dared not take the initiative and suggest it, but she could not help feeling that it would be an immense relief to the sufferer if he could disburden his mind of the weight that was upon it, and speak to Father Henwick as to a tried and affectionate friend, if even he did not as yet seek spiritual help and guidance from him. It had long since been borne in on Franceline that the horrible suspicion which had so mysteriously fallen on Raymond was in some way or other connected with his sudden illness; she brooded over the thought until it became a fixed idea and haunted her day and night. How was it that he did not instinctively turn for comfort to the Source where he was sure to find it? Father Henwick himself must feel pained and surprised at not having been summoned to the sick-room before this. Franceline was thinking over it all one morning, sitting near Raymond’s bedside, when Angélique put in her head and announced in a loud whisper that M. le Curé, as she dubbed Father Henwick, was down-stairs, and would be glad if she could speak to him a moment. Franceline rose softly, and was leaving the room, when her father, who was not dozing, as she fancied, said:

“Why does he not come up and see me? I should be glad to see him; it would do me good.”

Father Henwick came up without delay, and Franceline soon made a pretext for leaving him alone with the invalid. It was with a beating heart that she closed the door on them and went down-stairs to wait till she was recalled. She could hear only the full, clear tones of Father Henwick’s voice at first; after a while these grew lower, and then she heard the murmur of Raymond’s voice; then there seemed to follow a silence. She was too agitated to pray in words, but her heart prayed silently with intense fervor. The conference lasted a full half-hour, and then Father Henwick’s cheerful voice sounded on the stairs.

“How do you think he looks, father?” she said, meeting him at the study door with another question in her eyes that Father Henwick thought he understood.

“Much better than I expected!” he answered promptly and with a heartiness of conviction that was music to her ears; “and you will find that from this out he will improve steadily, and rapidly, I hope, too.”

A stifled “Thank God!” was Franceline’s answer.

“And now how about you?” said the priest, with something of the old blunt grumble that was so much more reassuring than the tenderness called forth by pity. “I heard a very bad account of you this morning—no sleep, and no food, and no air; you mean to fret yourself into an illness before your father is up and able to attend on you, do you? That would be one way of showing your dutiful affection for him. Humph! Are those the eyes for a young lady to have in her head on a fine sunny morning like this? Did you go to bed at all last night?”

“Yes, but I could not sleep; I was too anxious, too unhappy.”

“Too unbelieving, too mistrustful. Go up-stairs this minute, you child of little faith, and lie down and lay your head upon the pillow of divine Providence, and be asleep in five minutes!”

He left her with this peremptory injunction, and Franceline, with a lightened heart, went up-stairs determined to obey it. It was as yet, of course, a matter of pure conjecture what had passed between the priest and her father; but when, an hour later, after obediently taking that refreshing sleep on the pillow of divine Providence which had been commanded her, she came into Raymond’s room, there was a marked change in his whole demeanor. He had not passed the interval in the listless apathy that had now become habitual to him. He had made Angélique bring over a little celestial globe and set it on the bed for him, and had amused himself with it awhile; and then he had taken up the book Franceline had left on the chair beside him when she stole out of the room. It was _The Imitation of Christ_. He was reading it when she entered, and there was an expression on his features that made her happier than she had been for a long time. He looked more peaceful, more life-like than she had seen him for weeks even before he had fallen ill.

“You are feeling better, petit père?” she said, kissing him, and taking the dear face between her hands to look into it more closely.

“Yes, my clair de lune, much better,” he replied, with a smile that had all its wonted sweetness and something of the old brightness. “I think I shall be able to get down-stairs in a day or two.”

“I see you have been at your old tricks again,” she said, shaking her finger at him and pointing to the globe; “you know you are forbidden to do anything that gives you the least fatigue.”

“It was not a fatigue, my little one—it amused me; but I will not do it again, if you don’t wish it.”

Franceline hugged his head to her cheek, and said she would let him do anything so long as it amused him.

“I was thinking of you last night, petit père,” she said, making the globe revolve slowly on its axis; “the sky was so beautiful at twelve o’clock when I happened to look out of my window that I longed for you to see it.”

“Ha! Then probably it will be the same to-night,” said Raymond. “I will keep my curtain drawn, so that I may see it, if it is.”

“Yes; and let the moon keep you awake whether you will or not! I should like to hear what Angélique would say to that proposal! No; but I will tell you what we’ll do: I will be on the watch to-night, and if the stars are like last night I will steal in and see if you are awake, and if you are I will draw the curtain so that you may see them from your bed. We shall be like two _savants_ making our ‘observations’ in the night-time, shall we not? And—who knows?—we may discover a new star!”

Raymond pinched her cheek and laughed gently. His hopes in this respect were limited by facts—or rather negatives—that Franceline did not stop to inquire into; she had not gone deeply into the science of astronomy.

“There is no saying what I might not discover with those bright eyes of thine for a telescope,” said M. de la Bourbonais.

Angélique rejoiced in her own fashion at the decided turn for the better that her master had suddenly taken. She saw that he spoke a good deal during the evening, and ate with a nearer approach to appetite than he had yet shown; so she settled him for the night, and went to bed with a lighter heart than for many past nights, and soon slept soundly.

Franceline did not follow her example. It was not anxiety that kept her awake, but happiness; she could not bring herself to part with it so quickly, and lose it for a time in unconsciousness. There was a presence, too, in the ecstatic silence of the night, that answered to this sense of joy and appealed to her for responsive watch. Joys are more intense when we dwell on them in the night-time, because they are more separate, farther lifted from the jarring discord of our daily lives, where pain cries around us in so many multiform tongues. It is as if the world grew wider in spiritual space, and that senses and fibres, too delicate to vibrate in the glare of daylight, woke up in the solemn hush when the world of man is out of sight and God comes nearer to us.

Franceline stood at the window and gazed at the beautiful scene that spread itself before her. The moon was at her full; the landscape, diluted in the moonlight, floated in mystic, illimitable space, still and hushed as if the world were holding its breath to hear the stars tingling in the sapphire dome; every tree and blade of grass were listening to the silence; the river sped stealthily along like a silver snake between its banks where the gray poplars stood looking down, frighted by the vibration of their own shadows, dyeing themselves black in the water.

“If he were awake, how he would enjoy this!” murmured Franceline to herself; and then, unable to resist the temptation, she stole softly through Angélique’s room and across the landing into Raymond’s. The doors were all open, partly to admit more air, partly that they might hear the least tinkle of his little hand-bell, if he sounded it.

“Is that my Franceline?” asked a voice from the bed. The night light threw her shadow on the floor, and Raymond, who was not asleep, saw it.

“Yes, petit père,” she answered in a whisper; “the sky is so lovely I thought I must come and see if you were awake. Shall I draw the curtain?”

“Yes.”

She did so, and then crept back and knelt down beside him. Raymond laid his cheek against her head, and clasped her hand in his, and they remained for some moments gazing at the beauty of the heavens in silence. Then he said, making long pauses, as if he were thinking aloud rather than speaking to her:

“How wonderful is the splendor of God as he reveals it to us in his works!… Who can measure his power, his glory?… Think what it means, the creation of one of those stars! And there are myriads and myriads of them spangling millions of miles of blue sky! There are no steppes, no barren spots, there where the stars cannot grow. They are not like flowers, those stars of our world; they never perish or fade—they only draw behind the light for a while; always harmonious, moving in their appointed places like the notes of a divine symphony; they make no discord. The great stars are not scornful of the little ones; the little stars are not jealous of the great; each is content to be as it is and where it is, and to stay where the great Star-Maker has fixed it.… My clair de lune, let us try and be content like the stars.”

Franceline raised his hand to her lips, and murmured the strophe of her favorite hymn of S. Francis: “Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in the heavens.…”

The next morning Father Henwick came and was once more closeted with Raymond. Nothing had been said about it, but, when the door-bell sounded, M. de la Bourbonais glanced quickly at the clock, and exclaimed in a tone of surprise: “Already half-past twelve! I did not think it was so late. Thou wilt show him up at once, my child, and then leave us alone for a little.”

No further explanation was necessary. Franceline kissed him in silence, placed a chair close by his pillow, and then, in a happy flutter, went down to meet Father Henwick.

Two days after this there was great joy at The Lilies. The little cottage was decked out as for a bridal. Franceline had stayed up late to have it all finished for the early morning; she would do everything with her own hands. The stairs were wreathed with garlands of green leaves and ferns; every vase and cup she could find was filled with the sweet spring flowers—cowslips, primroses, anemones, and wild violets—and placed in the tiny entrance and on the landing opposite Raymond’s room. The room itself was transformed into a chapel. At the foot of the bed stood a small table covered with Franceline’s snowiest muslin, joyously sacrificed for the occasion. Lights were burning on either side of a large crucifix; there were lights and flowers on the mantelpiece, where she had placed her statue of the Madonna and other precious ornaments; the thin curtains were drawn and filled the little room with a soft golden twilight. Franceline was kneeling beside the bed, reciting some litany aloud, which Raymond answered from a book in timid, reverential under-tones.

But now a sudden hush falls upon the faintly-broken silence. There is a sound of footsteps without; a dear and awful Presence is approaching. No need to ring; the door stands open to its widest, and Angélique, kneeling on the threshold, adores and welcomes the divine Guest; a little bell goes tinkling up amidst the flowers, and ceases as it enters the illuminated room.…

* * * * *

The sudden improvement in Raymond’s state was not followed by a proportionately rapid progress. He still continued extremely weak, and was not able to come down-stairs until several days later. Dr. Blink was puzzled; he had been very sanguine when the rally took place, and now he hardly knew what to think. He was convinced from the first that the attack had been in a great measure caused by some mental shock; but that seemed at one moment to have righted itself, and he thought his patient was safe. This was apparently a mistake. The pressure may have been unexpectedly lightened, but it was clearly not removed; and until this was done medicine could do very little.

“There is something on his mind,” said the doctor to Mr. Langrove one morning, on coming out from his daily visit; “there is some trouble weighing on him, and he will not recover until something is done toward removing it.”

The vicar understood perfectly the drift of this remark. It was an appeal from the medical man to the friend of the patient for help or light. Mr. Langrove could give neither. He observed that the count had been seriously anxious about Franceline’s health; but Dr. Blink shook his head. He knew how to discriminate between the effect of heartache and a pressure on the mind. In this case the mind was oppressed by some secret burden, or he was very much mistaken; it might be some painful apprehension in the future, or something distressing in the past; but whatever the cause was, past or future, the present effect was unmistakable, and, unless some friend who had the full confidence of the patient could afford some relief, the worst might still be apprehended. Mr. Langrove answered by some irrelevant expression of sympathy and regret, but volunteered no opinion of his own. He went home and sat down and wrote to Sir Simon Harness. This was all he could think of. If Sir Simon could not help, he believed no one else could.

It so happened that the baronet was just now absent in the South of Italy, in dutiful attendance on Lady Rebecca; and as he had been called off suddenly, and left no orders about his letters being sent after him, those directed to his bankers lay there unopened. There was another besides Mr. Langrove’s lying there, which, if it had reached him, would have rejoiced the baronet’s heart and provoked a quick response.

The fears which Raymond’s tardy progress raised in the mind of his medical man were not shared by Franceline. Hope still triumphed over alarm, and she felt confident that, since the great weight on her father’s mind had been removed, his complete recovery must ultimately follow. This certainty made the delay easy to bear. It was wonderful how her own strength bore up. She had quite lost her cough—a fact which confirmed the doctor’s previous opinion that the nerves had more to do with this symptom than the lungs—she kept well, and was altogether in better health than for some months previously. Her spirits raised to elation after that happy morning’s episode, continued excellent—at times as joyous as a child’s.

The moment M. de la Bourbonais was able to get down-stairs Angélique insisted on Franceline going every day for a walk while the sun was shining. One morning, when he had come down and was comfortably established on the sofa in his study, propped up so that he could see out of the window, Franceline said she was going to gather him a bouquet. She smoothed and changed the cushions, put another shawl over his feet, moved the sofa a little bit nearer the window, and then back again a little bit nearer the fire, until, finding there was absolutely nothing more to fuss over, except to kiss him for the tenth time with “Au revoir, petit père!” as if they were separating for a journey, she sallied forth for her constitutional.

The weather was mild and beautiful; spring was intoning the first bars of its idyl, striking bright emerald notes from the tips of the trees, and drawing low, pink whispers from the blackthorn in the hedges; the birds were beginning to tune their lutes and make ready for the great concert that was at hand. Franceline’s heart bounded in unison with the pulse of joy and universal awakening; she began to warble a duet with the skylark as she went along, stopping every now and then to make a nosegay of the pink and white anemones and violets and torch-like king-cups that grew in wild luxuriance in the woods and fields. Dullerton was famous for its wild flowers. Half an hour passed quickly while thus engaged, and then she turned homewards. The doves were on the watch for her, “sunning their milk-white bosoms on the thatch,” as she came in sight, and swelling the sweet harmony of earth and sky with a tender, well-contented coo. But hark! Could that be the cuckoo that was already calling from the woods? She paused with her hand on the latch to listen. No: it was only the voice of the sunshine echoing through her own happy heart. She pushed open the gate and walked quickly on; but again her step was arrested. Some one was coming round by the park entrance. It was no doubt Mr. Langrove; no one else came that way—no one but Sir Simon Harness, and there he stood. Franceline had nearly uttered a cry, when a quick sign from the baronet checked it and made her walk leisurely on without doing anything to attract attention. She cast a furtive glance towards the casement, to see if by chance her father had changed his place and come to sit by the window; but he was still on the sofa where she had left him.

Sir Simon opened his arms and clasped her with a warmth of emotion that did not surprise Franceline.

“You heard that he was ill! You are come to see him!” she exclaimed.

“I have only heard it this minute from my people at the house. Why did you not write to me, child? Ah! he would not let you, I suppose? My poor Raymond! And now how is he? Can I see him? _Will_ he see me?”

“Why should he not see you, dear Sir Simon?” said Franceline, raising her large, soft glance to him, full of wondering reproach.

“Of course, of course,” said the baronet; “but is he strong enough to see me? They tell me he has been terribly shaken by this illness. It might cause him a shock if he saw me too suddenly.” “Shall I tell him that you are expected down to-day? That would break it to him,” suggested Franceline. “Or you might write a line and send it in first to say you were here; would that do?”

Before Sir Simon could decide for either alternative, fate, in the shape of Angélique, decided for him. She had seen Franceline enter the garden, and wondered why she loitered outside instead of coming in; so she came out to see, and, on beholding Sir Simon, threw up her arms with a shout of astonishment.

Franceline cried out “Hush!” and shook her hand at the old woman, but it was too late; Raymond had seen and heard her from his sofa.

“Go in at once,” said Sir Simon, much excited—“go and tell him I am come to kiss his feet; to ask his forgiveness on my knees. Tell him _I know everything_.” And he pushed her gently from him. Franceline did not stop to ask what the strange message could mean, but ran in, thinking only how best she could deliver it so as to avoid too sudden a shock to her father.

Raymond was sitting up on the sofa, his face slightly flushed.

“What is the matter? Who is there?” he cried.

“Dear father, nothing is the matter; only something you will be glad to hear,…” she began.

“Ha! it is Simon! What has he come for? What does he want?”

“He wants to embrace you; and, father, he bade me say that he knows everything, and has come to ask you to forgive him and let him kiss your feet. He is waiting; may he come in?”

But Raymond did not answer; he was murmuring some words to himself, with hands lifted reverently as in prayer, while a smile of unearthly joy diffused itself on his whole countenance. The emotion was too much for him; he fell back exhausted on his pillow.

Franceline thought he had fainted and screamed out for help. Sir Simon was beside her in an instant.

“Raymond! my friend, my brother, can you ever forgive me?” he cried, kneeling beside M. de la Bourbonais and taking his hand in both his.

“You know the truth, then? You got his letter?”

“Whose letter? I got no letter; but I found the ring. Look at it!”

He drew an enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and held up the diamond, that flashed in the sun like a little star.

“Thank Heaven! I shall now be justified before all men!” exclaimed M. de la Bourbonais with trembling emotion. “This is more than I dared to hope. My God! I give thee thanks for this great mercy.”

No one spoke for a moment. Franceline had signed to Angélique to leave the room, but remained herself, a silent spectator of the strange scene.

“Who had it? How was it found?” said M. de la Bourbonais, taking the ring and examining it with an expression of mistrust, as if it were some uncanny thing that he half expected to see melt in his fingers.

“It has been in my possession, locked up at the Court, all this time!” replied Sir Simon. “You may remember I used this snuff-box that night, and sent it round the table. Someone dropped the ring into it unawares; it was not opened afterwards, and it never entered into my stupid brain to think of looking into it. I went away in a great hurry next morning, and threw the snuff-box into a safe in my room where I keep papers and the loose jewelry I have in use. I came down this afternoon to get a deed out of the safe, saw the snuff-box, and by the merest chance opened it and found the ring.”

“Mon Dieu!” murmured Raymond, after hearing this simple explanation of the mistake that had very nearly cost him his life.

“Bourbonais, can you ever forgive me?” said Sir Simon.

Raymond opened his arms without speaking. Sir Simon flung himself with a sob upon his breast, and the two clung together and wept.

Franceline felt as if even she had no right to be present; that she was intruding in a sacred place where some mystery, not intended for her eyes, was being unfolded. She was moving softly toward the door when her father called her back.

“Come hither, my child; come and embrace me. I can have no happiness that thou dost not share.”

“Franceline,” said Sir Simon, rising from his knees and taking her hand with an expression of humility that was very touching in the grand, white-haired gentleman, “I have been guilty of a great act of disloyalty towards your father. I cannot tell you what it was; perhaps he will. Meantime, he has forgiven me for the sake of our long friendship, and because his soul is too noble, too generous, to bear malice, even against an unfaithful friend. Will you do as he has done, and say you forgive me too?”

His voice was full of trembling, his eyes were still moist. Franceline did as he had done to her father: she flung her arms round his neck and wept.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.

III.

The keen relish which we all have for other people’s sins is proverbial. As those who think with us are right, so are they virtuous who have only our own vices. Prodigality, which, to the miser’s thinking, is the worst of sins, is, in the eyes of the spendthrift, merely an evidence of a generous nature. Men who wish to be thought gentlemen have a weakness for what are called gentlemanly vices; but from the coarser though less depraved wickedness of the vulgar they turn with loathing. This bias of our common nature is not confined in its action to individuals; it affects classes, nations, races. The rich are shocked by the vices of the poor, and the poor, in turn, no less by those of the rich; masters hate the sins of servants, and are repaid in their own coin.

When the free-born Briton sings, “England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,” he means that faults, if only they be English, are after all not so bad. Wrapt up in the precious bundle of our self-love are all our pet sins and weaknesses. The universal hatred which existed between the nations of antiquity must be attributed in great part to the fact that their vices were unlike, and therefore repellant. The national contempt for foreigners is, in Christian times, strong in proportion to the barbarism of the people by whom it is felt; but in Greece and Rome such civilization as was then possible seemed to have no power over this prejudice. Not to be a Greek was to have been created for vile uses, and not to be a Roman was to be nobody. The French, as seen by the English, are giddy and lack dignity; the English appear to French eyes, sulky and wanting in good nature; the Turk thinks both struck with madness, because they walk about and stretch their legs when they might sit still; and though he is at their mercy, yet he cannot persuade himself that they are anything but Christian dogs. The negro is quite sure the first man must have been black, and in this he is in accord with Mr. Darwin. The North American Indian will vanish from the earth through the golden portals of the western world still believing that he is the superior of the “pale face.” The power of national prejudice is almost incredible. “Our country, right or wrong” is, we believe, an American phrase; but it expresses a sentiment which is almost universally held to be right and proper. In international disputes men nearly always take sides with their own country, without stopping to inquire into the merits of the quarrel, which, indeed, the strong feeling that at once masters them would prevent them from being able to do. They act instinctively like children who always think that in difficulties with neighbors their own parents are in the right. We Americans are certainly not paragons of virtue, and in this centennial year it is probably wise to discuss almost anything rather than our morals; yet we cannot but think that M. Louis Veuillot was somewhat under the influence of national prejudice when he wrote that, if we were sunk in the bottom of the ocean, civilization would have lost nothing. Our form of government, it is true, does not lead us to look for salvation, either in church or state, from a king by divine right; still, he might just as well have let us alone, especially as he is at no loss for quarrels at home. Nor can we think that the Germans who have raised such a storm of indignation over the crime in Bremerhaven, committed, as it is supposed, by an American, would have held the whole German people and their civilization responsible for the offence had they known its author to be native there and to the manner born.

As no passion takes hold of the human heart with such sovereign power as that of religion, it follows that no bias of judgment is more fatal to truth than religious prejudice; and now let us gently descend again to M. Emile de Laveleye and his pamphlet:

“It is agreed on all sides,” he says (p. 25), “that the
power of nations depends on their morality. Everywhere is
found the maxim, which is almost become an axiom of
political science, that where morals are corrupted the state
is lost. Now, it appears to be an established fact that the
moral level is higher among Protestant than among Catholic
populations. Religious writers confess this themselves, and
explain it by the fact that the former remain more faithful
to their religion than the latter, which explanation I
believe to be the true one.”

Here is fairness surely. The soft impeachment could not have been made in a more moderate or subdued tone. Catholics are notoriously more immoral than Protestants; but the subject is a painful one, and M. de Laveleye does not wish to emphasize the unpleasant truth by giving proof—which, indeed, would be superfluous, since Catholics themselves, we are assured, admit the fact and are concerned only about its explanation; and, strange to say, they have found the key to the mystery in the greater fidelity of Protestants to their religion: so M. de Laveleye and the Catholics shake hands and the dispute is at an end.

The position of Protestants with regard to this question is peculiar. The very life of their religion is intimately associated with a fixed belief in the preternatural wickedness of popes, priests, nuns, and Catholics generally. The sole justification of Protestantism was found in the abominable corruptions of Rome, and its only defence is that it is a purer worship, capable of creating a higher morality. The history of the Reformation, as written by Protestants, traces its origin to an awful and heaven-inspired indignation at the sight of papal iniquity, which resulted in a divine Protest against sin. It is this feeling, indeed, which is the living human magnetism in the words of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox. They all felt that in so far as they protested against open and patent evil they were right, and therefore strong. Leo X., with God’s eternal truth, but encircled by all the Graces and Muses, was at a disadvantage with those strong and plain-spoken men. In fact, the eternal ally of human error is human truth. It is because men who are right do wrong that men who are wrong seem right; and if men in general were fit to be priests of God, there would be on earth no power to oppose the Catholic Church. St. Paul had protested, St. John Chrysostom had protested, St. Peter Damian had protested, St. Bernard had protested, St. Catherine of Sienna had protested, and yet there was no Protestantism. To protest was well and is well, but to seek to found a religion upon a protest is madness; and this is Protestantism. With Protestants purity of dogma is out of the question; and nothing, therefore, remains to them but purity of morals. To this they must cling like drowning men to straws. Protestantism, if considered from a doctrinal point of view, is nihilism. Gather up the hundred sects which, taken collectively, are called Protestantism, and we will find every positive religious dogma excluded; not even the personal existence of God remains. Mr. Matthew Arnold is a true Bible-Protestant, who has a little sect of his own, and all that he holds is that there is “a Power in us, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”; and this he has discovered to be the sum and substance of all Scripture teaching. Doctrinal Protestantism is like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry with its fag-ends hanging in patches, twisted and jumbled; and yet they are the very substance out of which has been wrought a work of divine beauty. The dogmatic weakness of Protestantism throws its whole energy upon the moral side of religion. Its utter falseness, when we accept the fact that Christ has established a divine system of faith, is so manifest that no impartial thinker would hesitate to give his full assent to the sentiment of Rousseau: “Show me that in religious matters I must accept authority, and I shall become a Catholic at once.” Supposing the Christian religion to be what it is commonly held to be by both Catholics and Protestants, it necessarily follows that the Catholic Church is the only logical as it is the only historical Christianity. This, we believe, is the almost universally-received opinion of non-Christian writers in our own day, in which, for the first time since the Reformation, a considerable number of learned men who are neither Catholic nor Protestant have been able to view this subject dispassionately. We do not mean to say that these writers prefer the church to the sects; on the contrary, they are partial to these because in their workings they perceive, as they think, the breaking-up and dissolution of the whole Christian system. Protestantism is valuable in their eyes as a stage in what Herbert Spencer calls “the universal religious thaw” which is going on around us. If there has been no divine revelation, then whatever tends to weaken the claim of the church to be the depository of such revelation is good, especially as her claim is the only one which rests upon a valid historical basis. And it is because a very large number of men more than half suspect there never has been a revelation that Protestantism meets with so much favor from the unbelieving and pagan world, as serving the purpose of an easy stepping-stone from the strong and pronounced supernaturalism of the church to the nature-worship of Darwin and Spencer or the German _Culturists_.

Macaulay was struck and puzzled by what his keen eye could not fail to perceive to be so universal a phenomenon as to have the force of a law of history.

“It is surely remarkable,” says this brilliant writer, “that
neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century nor
the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth should have
in any perceptible degree added to the domain of
Protestantism. During the former period whatever was lost to
Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter
whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries
was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have
expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to
infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to
superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point.
Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits,
and those which were maintained at the little supper-parties
of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval in which the
human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some
resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two
extremes; and at the time of the Reformation millions found
such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced popery
without ceasing to believe in a First Cause, in a future
life, or in the divine authority of Christianity. In the
last century, on the contrary, when a Catholic renounced his
belief in the Real Presence, it was a thousand to one that
he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and when the
reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back
belief in the Real Presence. We by no means venture to
deduce from these phenomena any general law; but we think it
a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did
not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end
of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them.
Catholic communities have since that time become infidel and
become Catholic again, but none has become Protestant.”

There could not be a more satisfactory proof of the transitional and accidental nature of Protestantism. Like all human revolutions, it grew out of antecedent circumstances; and these were primarily political and social and only incidentally religious. The faith in the divine authority of the Christian religion was at that time absolute, and not at all affected by the tendency to scepticism observable among a few of the Humanists. The political power of the pope, however, together with his peculiar temporal relations to the German Empire, had gradually created throughout Germany a very strong national prejudice against his authority, which, upon the slightest provocation, was ready to break out into downright hatred of the Papacy. The worldly lives and ways of some of the popes had been as fuel for the conflagration which was to burst forth. Men, unconsciously it may be, grew accustomed to look upon the Christian religion and the Papacy as distinct and separable; and the temper of the public mind, while remaining reverential toward Christ and his religion, was embittered against his vicar. When, from amidst the social abuses and political antagonisms of Germany, Luther, in the name of Christ, denounced the pope, his voice struck precisely the note for which the public ear was listening, and, as Macaulay says, whole nations renounced allegiance to the pope without giving up faith in God and his Christ. This was done in the excitement of revolutionary enthusiasm, when passion and madness made deliberation impossible, and when a thoughtful and analytical study of the constitution of the church was out of the question. The Reformers imagined that they could abolish the pope and yet save Christianity, just as in France, two centuries and a half later, it was thought possible to abolish God and yet save the principle of authority, without which society cannot exist. And, indeed, it is as reasonable to suppose that this world, with its universal evidence of design and adaption of means to ends, could have come into existence without the action of a supreme and intelligent Being, as to think that the system of religious truths taught by Christ can have either unity or authority amongst men without a living centre and visible representative of both. Protestants, by rejecting the primacy of the pope, were forced to accept as fundamental to their faith a principle of so purgative and drastic a nature that, in the general process of sloughing of religious thought which it brings on, it is itself finally carried away into the vacuum of nihilism.

This became evident as soon as the attempt was made to agree upon articles of belief. New heresies sprang up day after day, and complete chaos would have ensued from the beginning had not the different states taken hold of one or other of the sects and “established” it, thus, by the aid of the temporal power, giving to it a kind of consistency, but at the same time depriving it of vitality. Thus what Macaulay regarded as so remarkable—that no Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them—and he might as well have made the proposition universal, since there was no reason why he should limit it to Christian nations, since it is well known that in nothing has Protestantism given more striking proof of its impotence than in its utter failure to convert the heathen,—this, we say, far from surprising us, seems so natural that we cannot understand how an observant mind should think it strange.

Protestantism was, in the main, the product of the peculiar political and social condition of Europe during the last period of the middle ages, and to expect Catholic nations, or indeed individual Catholics of any intellectual or moral character, to become Protestant in our day argues a total want of power to grasp this subject. As well might one hope to see the pterodactyls and ichthyosauri of a past geologic era swimming in our rivers. Catholics there are, indeed, now, as in the eighteenth century, who become sceptics, who abandon all belief in Christianity, but none who become Protestants; for we cannot consider such persons as Achilli or Edith O’Gorman as instances of conversion of any kind. A very limited acquaintance with Catholics and Catholic thought will suffice to convince any reflecting mind that for us there is no alternative but to accept the doctrine of the church or to renounce faith in Christ. Was there ever fairer field for heresy to flourish in than that which opened up before Old Catholicism at its birth? But it was still-born. To this day its sponsors have not dared define its relation to the pope; and until this is done it remains without character. At any rate, it does not claim to be Protestant.

Turning to view the present condition of Protestantism, we are struck by the contrast. The very word “Protestant” is without meaning when applied to two-thirds of the non-Catholics of Germany, England, and the United States. Their mental state is one of disbelief in, or indifference to, all forms of positive religion; and if occasionally they are roused to some feeling against the church, it is through an association of ideas, traditional with them, which places her in antagonism with their political theories and national prejudices. Among earnest and reflecting Protestants who are united with one or other of the sects, there are two opposite currents of religious thought of a strongly-marked and well-defined character. Those who are borne on the one are being carried farther and farther away from the historic teachings of Christ, and are busied in trying to dress out in Biblical phraseology some of the various cosmic or pantheistic philosophies of the day. They very generally assume that religion has nothing to do with theology, nor, consequently, with doctrines and dogmas. As its home is the heart, its realm is the world of sentiment; and so it matters not what we believe, provided only we feel good. Opposed to this current, which is bearing with it all the distinctive landmarks of the Christian religion, is another which is carrying men back to the church. In fact, all great minds among Protestants who have been strongly impressed by the objective character of Christian truth have been drawn towards the Catholic Church. Who can have failed to perceive, for instance—to mention only the three greatest who have occupied themselves with religious questions—how Leibnitz, Bacon, and Bishop Butler, in their intellectual apprehension of the Christian system, were, in spite of themselves, attracted to the church? Or who that is acquainted with the English Catholic literature of our own day is ignorant of the divine illumination which many of the most intellectual and reverent natures from the sects of Protestantism have found in the teachings of the one Catholic Church? In this way, by a process of supernatural or natural selection, the fragments of Protestantism are being assimilated to the church or are disappearing in the sea of unbelief in which even now they are seen only as barren islands in the wild waste of waters.

These considerations must be borne in mind by whoever would take a comprehensive view of the question which we propose now to discuss. In the first place, by reflecting upon them we shall find no difficulty in accounting for the marked difference in tone and character between Catholic and Protestant controversy, by which no attentive observer can have failed to be struck. Taking for granted the existence of God and the divinity of Christ, as admitted by the earlier Protestant sects, the logical position of the church is unassailable, which, as we have already stated, is generally conceded by impartial non-Christian thinkers.

As a consequence, Catholic controversialists, assured of the absolute coherence of their whole system with the fundamental dogma of the divine mission of Christ, have been chiefly concerned with showing the logical viciousness of the essential principles of Protestantism. They have, indeed, not omitted to remark upon the moral unfitness of such men as Henry VIII., Luther, Knox, and Zwingli to be the divinely-chosen agents of a reformation in the religion of Christ; but such observations have been incidental to the main course of the argument, and this is alike true of our more learned discussions and of our popular controversies.

Catholic writers—allowing for individual exceptions—have not felt that, to show the falsity of Protestantism, it was necessary to denounce Protestants or to stamp upon them any mark of infamy. They have treated them as men who were wrong, not as men who were wicked. Protestant controversy, on the other hand, presents for our consideration characteristics of a very different nature. In the consciousness of their inability to settle upon a fixed creed, which has been shown by history, and from the necessarily feeble manner in which articles of faith could be held by them, on account of the disagreement and conflict of opinion among themselves, Protestant writers were forced to treat their religion, not as a doctrine, but as a tendency; and for this reason, together with the natural hatred which men entertain for a church or government against which they have rebelled, they were led to draw contrasts between the results of Protestantism and Catholicity; so that it became customary to attribute all the enlightenment, morality, progress, and liberty of the world to Protestantism, and to represent Catholics as cruel, ignorant, corrupt, and in every way depraved. Luther, as we should naturally expect, led the way in this style of controversy.

“The Papists,” he said, “are for the most part mere gross blockheads.… The pope and his crew are mere worshippers of idols and servants of the devil.… Pope, cardinals, bishops, not a soul of them has read the Bible; ‘tis a book unknown to them. They are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich, wallowing in wealth and laziness.… Seeing the pope is Antichrist, I believe him to be a devil incarnate.… The pope is the last blaze in the lamp which will go out and ere long be extinguished—the last instrument of the devil, that thunders and lightens with sword and bull;… but the Spirit of God’s mouth has seized upon that shameless strumpet.… Antichrist is the Pope and the Turk together.… The pope is not God’s image, but his ape.… Popedom is founded on mere lies and fables.… A friar is evil every way; the preaching friars are proud buzzards; all who serve the pope are damned; the Papists are devoid of shame and Christianity.”[3]

This is the style of Protestant controversy which, except in form, still lingers in this nineteenth century. Protestant devotion, it may be said without sarcasm or exaggeration, consists essentially in a holy horror of popery. Were it possible to eliminate the Catholic Church from human society, Protestantism would at once fatally assume an attitude towards the world wholly different from that in which it now stands. At present, when attacked by evolutionistic pantheism—which means all the sophistries of the day—it takes refuge behind the historic fortress of Christianity, the Catholic Church, and, when encountered by the church, it makes an alliance with cosmism or anything else. Were the Catholic Church not in existence, it would be forced at once to build a fortress of its own; for the Bible is only a breastwork, which must be in charge of a commander-in-chief if we hope to hold it for the sovereign Lord. From the beginning, then, Protestants branded Catholics with a mark of infamy; they were idolaters, worse than pagans, for the most part gross blockheads, who fall an easy prey to the designing arts of priests and monks, who are only knaves and rogues, whose chief aim is to carry out the fiendish purposes of the pope, the arch-enemy, Antichrist, the devil in the flesh; and thus the church becomes the Woman of Babylon, flaming in scarlet, and alluring the nations to debauch.

No evidence, therefore, is needed to show that Catholics are immoral, depraved, thoroughly corrupt. To doubt it would be to question the truth of Protestantism and to believe that something good might come out of Nazareth. In good sooth, do not the Catholics, as M. de Laveleye says, admit the fact themselves?

We often hear persons express surprise that intelligent and honest Protestants should still, after such sad experience, be so eager to believe the “awful disclosures” of “escaped nuns,” and to patronize that kind of lecture—of which, thank God! Protestants have the monopoly—delivered to men or women only, in which the abominations of the confessional are revealed and the general preternatural wickedness of priests, monks, and nuns is made fully manifest. This, to us, we must say, has never seemed strange. The doctrine of total depravity is an article of Protestant faith, and, when applied to Catholics, to none other have Protestants ever clung with such unwavering firmness and perfect unanimity. When disagreeing about everything else, they have never failed to find a point of union in this. Even after having lived and dealt with Catholics who are kind-hearted, pure, and fair-minded, in the true Protestant there still lurks a vague kind of suspicion that there must be some mysterious and secret diabolism in them which eludes his observation; that after all they may be only “as mild-mannered men as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat”; and after his reason has been fully convinced that the Catholic Church is the only historical Christianity, he is still able to remain a strong Protestant by falling back upon the undoubted total depravity of Papists. Dr. Newman, in his _Apologia_, the most careful and instructive self-analysis which has been written in this century, or probably in any other, declares that after he had become thoroughly persuaded of the truth of the Catholic Church his former belief that the pope was Antichrist still remained like a stain upon his imagination; and yet he had never been an ultra-Protestant. Many a Protestant has ceased to believe in Christ, without giving up his faith in the pope as Antichrist. It is not surprising, in view of all this, that Protestants should have habitually held the church responsible for the evil deeds of Catholics.