Chapter II: “ay De Mi, Alhama!” (7)

“See him?” replied the queen. “No! oh! no, never. God forgive him the injury he has done me; but I will never see him.”

“Will Queen Catherine forget the charity of Jesus Christ?” replied the father abbot in a severe tone. “Can that virtue be more than a vain appearance which is stranded by coming in contact with a resentment, just, perhaps, but none the less criminal?… I conjure you, madam,” he continued, falling on his knees before the queen, “refuse not to see him. Already, without doubt, he knows that you are here. He desires to see you and ask your forgiveness. All of our brothers ask it with him.”

Catherine remained silent, but she advanced a step forward, which the father accepted as a mute consent; and passing immediately before her, he conducted her into the chamber where Wolsey was lying.

She advanced to the middle of the room, and was struck by the spectacle presented to her view. Cavendish supported the dying man in his arms, and wiped the cold sweat from his face, now as white as the sheet on which he lay. A convulsive movement agitated occasionally his extended limbs, and it was from that alone they saw that life was not yet extinct.

Catherine approached at once, and remained standing in silence, in the face of this enemy, heretofore so powerful and so formidable.

She made no movement, and her eyes only were fixed on the dying. “And I too will die!” she said in her heart. “The day will come when I shall cease to suffer. O material life which envelops me! cease also to burden _my_ soul, and let it flee into eternity. Let me find a refuge even in the bosom of the tomb.”

* * * * *

“My daughter, my daughter!” she suddenly cried, as though beside herself; “give her back to me, you who have torn her from my arms!”

A shudder passed over the form of Wolsey; he had heard that voice. It seemed as though a burning fire had touched him. He rose up in his bed, and, gazing at the queen with wildly staring eyes, “Your daughter, madam!” he cried, “your daughter!… Alas! it is I who have done all. You accuse me, and yet, as God is my judge, I threw myself at the feet of the king, and tried to turn him from his evil intention; but it was too late, and I had not foreseen the fatal consequences of a policy which I believed would be advantageous and beneficial. Alas! how differently I regard it at this terrible hour. Pardon me! pardon me!… I conjure you, that I may not bear to the foot of the throne of the Sovereign Judge the fearful weight of the malediction of the widow and the orphan!” And he stretched towards her his hands, which he was no longer able to raise.

“May God forgive you,” responded the queen, “may God forgive you! But what can there be in common between you and me, unless it is suffering? You will soon be delivered from your woes; but I—I must live!”

“Ah!” cried Woolsey with expressions of the most profound wretchedness, “you hear it, brothers, already the voice of God punishes me by the mouth of this woman. And thus,” he continued, fixing his terrified gaze on the queen, “I die at enmity with you, and you will not have compassion on the condition to which I am reduced! How can one human being call down upon another without trembling the vengeance of the Most High? Are we not all formed of the same flesh and blood? Are you not horror-stricken at the thought of the judgments I must suffer and the account I must render?”

Catherine felt her blood congealed by the frightful eloquence of this expiring man—this man whom but a moment separated from death and eternity.

At the thought of the nothingness of all created humanity, she felt the hatred she had borne Wolsey entirely effaced.

“Your reasoning enlightens me!” she cried. “Who are we that we should wish to be revenged?. Weak and blind, should we precipitate ourselves into the bottomless pit? We have received an injury, and shall we inflict one in return? Who are we, and what is our duty?”

She then advanced toward him, and, taking in her own the hands of her enemy, she said:

“I forgive you, I forgive you from the most profound depths of my heart.… May God, the sovereign Creator of all things, bless you, and blot out from the awful book of his justice your slightest fault! May he open to you the mansions of eternal bliss! Then remember me, and ask of him that my eyes also may soon be closed to the light of that day which you have rendered insupportable. Tell him that I want to die, and beg him to recall to himself the soul that he has given me; say that my eyes are weary with tears, and my heart worn with suffering; that sorrow has multiplied my days, and that I have lived during the night, keeping tearful vigils; that I have only enjoyed the blessings of life long enough to regret them; that I am ready, that I listen, I wait to hear his voice, in order that I may arise and depart.”

Wolsey drank in with avidity all of her words, and his eyes followed every movement of the queen’s lips; but suddenly the fire of his burning glance was extinguished, his head fell forward on his breast—he had ceased to breathe!…

What pen can describe, what pencil portray, the terrible and solemn moment when a man is called to leave for ever the world that gave him birth—the moment when those who, having surrounded him with the most constant care, loving words, and affectionate attentions, fall prostrate around the silent couch, which now contains no more than the despoiled and lifeless clay which a beloved and cherished being seems to have cast aside like a soiled garment? Let the cold sceptic come, and, passing through that throng of afflicted friends, let him place his hand on the heart that has ceased to beat, and then turn and dare still to tell them that man has been created to die, and nothing more remains of him after death!… It is easy in the intoxication of joy, amid the false glare of vanity and of worldly dissipations, to put our trust in falsehood and array ourselves against the truth; but the day and the hour will come when she will appear clothed in dazzling robes of light, and the splendor of her irradiated countenance will strike with terror and annihilation the last one of her wretched and presumptuous enemies.

SOME ODD IDEAS.

“Our intelligence,” says the celebrated Montaigne, “is a kind of vagabond instrument, daring and dangerous, to which it is difficult to associate order or appoint limits. It is a hurtful weapon to its owner himself, if he does not know how to use it discreetly.”

No one can doubt the truth of this observation who has ever studied the workings of his own individual mind with some little attention. And even when we cannot perceive the beam in our own eye, how very evident is the straw in our neighbor’s! Though unsuspecting of the bee in our own bonnet, how quickly we hear it buzzing in his!

A specimen of some of the extravagant vagaries of human wit may perhaps interest and amuse. To begin at the beginning: thinkers have endeavored to imagine what was going on before the Creation.

In the seventeenth century, a mystic writer composed a work on the occupations of God before the creation of the universe! Nearly all of it is incomprehensible, but a few sentences will give an idea of its style:

“To ask what God was doing before the Creation is an impertinence, a puerility.… It is certain that the eternal God who made this earth by the power of his word had no need of the world and all the creatures it contains—he had lived and reigned before Time began, happy and contented in the paradise of his essence and in the essence of himself.… He was contemplating his only Son, not made, not created, but begotten from all eternity; in the eternal Word he contemplated the archetype, the world of the world, angels, souls, and all things. In conclusion, we may say that God, before the creation of the world, did something and did nothing.…”

Singular problems, most daringly resolved, have been presented respecting the epoch of the Creation. Chevreau, in his _Histoire du Monde_, 1686, tells us that, according to some writers, the earth was created in the spring; according to others, equally good authorities, on a Friday, the 6th of September, at four o’clock in the afternoon!

A learned Italian of the last century, Monsignor Baiardi, in the course of a conversation with the Abbé Barthélemy, mentioned that he was about writing an abridgment of universal history, and that he intended to commence his work with the solution of one of the most important problems of astronomy and history. His desire was to determine the exact spot in the firmament in which God had placed the sun when he made the earth. “And,” says Barthélemy, “he had just discovered it, and showed it to me on a globe.”

Our common father has been the subject of an infinite number of curious suppositions, not to say crack-brained fancies. The Talmudists, for instance, have constructed the following programme of Adam’s first day of life:

In the first hour, the Creator kneaded the clay of which man was made, and moulded the outlines of his form.

In the second hour, Adam was perfected and capable of action.

In the fourth hour, God called to him, and commanded him to give names to the beasts, birds, and fishes.

In the seventh hour, the marriage of our first parents took place.

In the tenth hour, Adam sinned.

In the twelfth hour, the penalty of labor began.

James Salien, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century, tells us in his _Annales Ecclesiastici_ that, “while man was being created, the divine hands, ambrosial face, and admirable arms of his Creator were visible to him.”

The Arabs have a tradition that Adam, when first created, stretched from one extremity of the earth to the other. But after he had sinned, God pressed him down with his almighty hand, and thus diminished his height to nine hundred cubits. The Creator, it is added, did this at the request of the angels, who regarded the gigantic mortal with strange fear.

According to Moreri, Adam possessed a profound knowledge of all the sciences, especially of astrology, many secrets of which he taught to his children, besides engraving two tables of observations on the movements of the planets. All the learned doctors of the Middle Ages are agreed in ascribing the possession of immense science to Adam. The angels themselves, they say, were inferior to him in knowledge; and they relate as proof of this that God, having heard them speak of man with contempt, determined to confound them by asking them what were the names of certain beasts which he called into his presence at that moment. The angels could not answer; man, summoned to the task, gave each animal its due appellation without hesitation.

Adam, being thus endowed with unlimited knowledge, would have been culpable towards his posterity if he had left none of it behind him. We are accordingly told that he composed two works, one upon the Creation, the other upon the Divinity. Having been present, we may almost say, at the first, and conversed familiarly with the second, he was able to tell us something interesting about both, and it is our misfortune that the two works have been lost. It is, however, said that they survived the Deluge, for a Mahometan author relates that Abraham, being in the country of the Sabeans, opened Adam’s chest, and found in it not only our progenitor’s writings but also those of Seth.

Opinions are various concerning the form the tempter assumed to deceive poor Eve. It has been asserted that Sammaël, the prince of devils, came to her mounted on a serpent as large in girth as a camel; and then again it is said that Satan borrowed the form of the serpent, and made it more seductive by the addition of a sweet maiden’s face! This tradition has been adopted by poets and painters.

As the name of the forbidden fruit is not mentioned in the Book of Genesis, conjecture has had full scope. Northern nations believe that it was an apple; southern people that it was a fig or citron. Rabbi Salomon thinks that Moses concealed the name of the fruit purposely, fearing that, if it were known, nobody would ever eat of it.

According to St. Jerome, Adam was buried in Hebron; other learned authors say on Calvary; either assertion is difficult of verification, for both Hebron and Calvary only date from the Deluge. “Barcepha alleges,” says Bayle, “that a highly esteemed Syrian doctor had said that Noe dwelt in Judea; that he planted in the plains of Sodom the cedar-trees with which he afterwards built the ark; and that he carried Adam’s bones into the ark with him. When he came out of the ark, he divided these bones among his three sons; the skull fell to the share of Sem, and when the descendants of Sem took possession of Judea, they buried it in the very spot where the tomb of Adam had once been situated.” The reader will doubtless feel that Barcepha’s allegation settles the question!

In 1615, a shoemaker of Amiens published a treatise entitled _De Calceo Antiquo_. In this history of shoes, the writer begins at the beginning of the world, and gravely informs us that Adam made the first pair from the prepared skins of beasts, the secret of tanning having been taught him by God himself!

In the last century, Henrion, a French Orientalist, and a member of the Institute of France, conceived the idea of composing an exhaustive work on the weights and measures of the ancients, and presented a specimen of his labors to the Academy of Inscriptions, to which he belonged. It was a kind of chronological scale of the differences in man’s stature from the epoch of Adam’s creation to the time of our Saviour.

Adam, he stated, measured one hundred and twenty-three feet, nine inches; Eve, one hundred and eighteen feet, nine and three-quarter inches; Noe, one hundred and three feet; Abraham, twenty-seven feet; Moses, thirteen feet; Hercules, ten feet; Alexander, six feet; Julius Cæsar, five feet.

He remarked upon this scale that “though men are no longer measured by their stature, if Providence had not deigned to suspend such an extraordinarily rapid rate of diminution, we, at this day, should scarcely dare to class ourselves, with respect to our size, among the large insects of our globe!”

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, an attempt was made to wrest from Adam the honor of being the first man. Isaac de la Peyrère pulished a work in 1655, entitled _Præadamitæ, seu Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 Capitis V. Epistolæ B. Pauli ad Romanos_, in which he endeavors to prove that there were two creations of men—the first on the sixth day, when God created _man_, _male and female_; which, he asserts, means _men and women_ in all parts of the earth, _progenitors of the Gentiles_. The second creation, he says, did not take place until some time after, when God made Adam to _be the father of the Jews_. Those who adopted this idea were called Preadamites. La Peyrère lived to abjure his opinions at the feet of Pope Alexander VI.

Such are a few of the many odd ideas upon the Creation and the first man which human wit, that “dangerous instrument” when not kept within due limits, has been continually devising ever since the beginning of history. The logic of the nineteenth century rejects them all; nevertheless, while we laugh at the extraordinary suppositions of our ancestors, it is pleasant to observe that, even in the most extravagant about our common father, the sentiment of the first man’s innate nobleness is always present. Adam always shines forth greater and grander than his sons—stronger, both physically and mentally. The old fathers of the church, nay, even the pedants of the Middle Ages, adhered to the Scripture text, and believed that in the “looks divine” of the first human pair

“The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure.”

Is it not curious that the queerest crank of all concerning Adam—that which strives to prove that he was an ourang-outang—should have been reserved for our own days of culture, of philosophical research and science?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SPIRITUALISM AND ALLIED CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF NERVOUS
DERANGEMENT. By William A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 366. New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

It is evident, from the appearance of this work so speedily after the publication of a larger volume on _Diseases of the Nervous System_, that Dr. Hammond has contracted the _cacoëthes scribendi_ in its worst shape. He is not easy unless the pen is in his hand, and so delightful must be to him the sensation of a _calamus currens_ that, we fear, he pauses not to reflect over the fate of the cyclical writer of old whose long-continued parlurient efforts resulted in the production of a ridiculously small animal. For all that, he must be quite jealous of his reputation as a strong-minded and rational man, since he has undertaken the vindication of reason, even at the expense of reasoning. We give him credit indeed for research, but of that doubtful sort which delights in jumbling together facts gathered from the most opposite sources—

_Rudis indigestaque moles_—

in order that a boastful parade of erudition might impart weight to his otherwise feather-light conclusions. A certain lack of method in the handling of his subject is what first impresses the reader of Dr. Hammond’s latest lucubration, and stamps the writer as illogical in the last degree. So-called spiritual manifestations are by him included in the same category as the pious acts of the saints, who doubtless would reject with horror the fantasies of Katie King and the _friponnerie_ of Home. Under the head of “curing mediums” we read of cures wrought by some obscure personage called St. Sauveur, which, if true, we are willing to accept, but which, like all unauthenticated cases of the sort, we are free to admit or disallow as the weight of evidence justifies. But, we ask, what relevancy to the heading of this chapter can possess the case of a woman laying an egg, or of another giving birth to two rabbits? If any such there be, we confess our inability to discover it; for certainly in those cases there is no question of curing. Neither can we perceive what induced the author to adopt Kerdac’s absurd division of spiritual agents into “physical mediums,” “seeing and auditive mediums,” and “curing mediums,” since clearly the first caption covers the whole ground. This is a sin against that canon of method which forbids one branch of a division to overlap another. Then the doctor never can discriminate between essential differences and accidental resemblances; and if a so-called medium should, by slight of hand or electro-magnetism, produce phenomena resembling the miraculous achievements of the saints, pop they both go into the same category of frauds or victims to a hallucination. He never dreams as being within the range of possible things that personal sanctity on the one hand has any power which does not belong on the other to deception or mental imbecility. It is refreshing to see how he gets these things mixed together, and with what complacent readiness he relegates all believers in the supernatural to the regions of blind ignorance and grovelling superstition, while he calmly stands on the undimmed hill-tops, or sublimely soars through the placid atmosphere of pure reason. Dr. Hammond rejects _à priori_ the possibility of an occurrence not due to the operation of natural agents, and hence he is necessitated constantly to indicate or suggest an explanation of what is most marvellous and obscure. This, of course, is a very difficult procedure, and hence we need not be surprised at the following ingenious, if not entirely logical, scheme he has devised for making straight paths that are crooked, and smooth those that are rough. Whenever he has in hand the consideration of a general principle, he illustrates it by reference to a case which the common tenets of science can readily elucidate. This elucidation he deems amply sufficient to establish the principle, and then he tacks on, as to be accounted for in the same manner, a mass of cases of every shade and degree of intricacy, often having no relation to the principle by the light of which he pretends to judge them, or to the case he adduces in illustration of the principle. The chapter on somnambulism will serve as an example of this sort of paralogism. He divides this exceptional condition of consciousness into natural and artificial. Somnambulism produces two typical instances of both. In the one case a young lady rises in her sleep, dresses herself, goes into the parlor, lights the gas, and intently gazes on the picture of her deceased mother. Sulphurous fumes are disengaged under her nose, quinine is placed on her tongue, the corners of her eyes are touched by a lead-pencil, and still she remained motionless and insensible. The same person soon after acquired the power of placing herself in the somnambulic state by concentrating her attention on a passage of a philosophical treatise. These cases are, we will grant for sake of reasoning, explicable on the principle of automatism, but what, we ask, does the case of St. Rose of Lima possess in common with these, or how can the principle of automatism be made to apply to her case? This saintly personage dwelt in a climate where mosquitoes were numerous and vicious, yet she enjoyed entire immunity from their sting, while worshipping in a little arbor built by her own hands; and this, she averred, was done in consequence of a pact by virtue of which the blood-thirsty little insects agreed to strike their notes in praise of the divine Being. Either the statement of Görres and its verification in the bull canonizing St. Rose must be rejected _in toto_, or admitted without any slipshod attempt at explanation as that which Dr. Hammond offers. He pretends that if such a thing did happen, it must be in consequence of the saint’s hypnotizing the mosquitoes, and thus obtaining control over them. But is it possible that hypnotized mosquitoes would continue to drone out their peculiar music even to a livelier measure than usual, or would ferociously attack all other persons except St. Rose?—for, as Dr. Hammond facetiously(?) remarks, she was not filial enough to include her mother in the bargain. We have here, then, a case which differs essentially from that of the somnambulic lady mentioned, and one that stubbornly refuses to be accounted for in the same manner. The somnambulic young lady exhibited a condition strikingly abnormal; there was complete loss of sensibility and power to observe what was taking place around her, while the mosquitoes became more tuneful than ever, and followed the natural bent of their instinct towards all but the little saint, who made them join her in singing the praises of their mutual Creator. Yet Dr. Hammond would have us believe either that the story is untrue or that the mosquitoes were hypnotized. And this is his mode of conducting warfare against the supernatural: _Doctus iter melius_. The blunt scepticism of Paine or Hobbes is more tolerable than this skim-milk reasoning. He does not hesitate even to intimate that the prophet Daniel possessed this mesmeric power, and thus escaped the fangs of the enraged and hungry lions into whose den he was cast. The same inconsequence of reasoning may be traced in the conclusion drawn from the experiments of Kircher and Czermak; Kircher having noticed that a hen with tied legs ceased to struggle, when a chalk-line was drawn before its eyes, in the belief that the line was the string which tied it, and that so long as the line remained all efforts at self-deliverance were useless. The good Father Kircher sought no further explanation of the phenomenon till Czermak, in 1873, proved that a true state of hypnotism or artificial somnambulism had been induced. To place the matter beyond doubt, he modified and repeated the experiment, so that now we cannot but accept this explanation, and say of Kircher’s merely:

“Si non e vero e ben trovato.”

This hypnotic condition of the lower animals once allowed, Dr. Hammond rushes to the conclusion that therein is to be sought and found the only true solution of the control which at times the saints of the church exercised over them. This is certainly the most perverse logic that can be conceived of. As well might we infer from the fact that certain characteristic features attend death by strangulation, and that these have been scientifically studied, therefore all animals died this death, and so reject as apocryphal all circumstances pointing to another possible mode of exit from life’s cares. The reasoning is entirely parallel to Dr. Hammond’s when he says that Czermak having demonstrated the hypnosis of hens and craw-fish, and himself a similar condition in dogs and rabbits, therefore whatever we read or hear of in reference to a completely different state of things we must equally set down to hypnosis as the cause. It is on this account he scouts the notion of bees depositing their honey on the lips of St. Dominic, St. Ambrose, and St. Isidore, or of following them into the desert and obeying their commands. If, indeed, we accept the lamp which science kindly furnishes, and, enlightened by its light, call those miraculous occurrences the effect of hypnosis, we may perchance escape the charge of credulity.

In this last sentence we confess to have fallen into an error which, however, we will not correct for the sake of the salutary reflection it has stirred up within us. We said: “Unless we accept the lamp which science kindly furnishes,” etc., thereby seeming to intimate that we are enemies to science, whereas nothing could be farther from our purpose. True science is founded on the eternal principles of truth, and, itself shining out with God’s holy light, can never go astray. But there is a pseudo-science, a spurious affair, which has donned the garb of truth and assumed its name, and which men, calling it science, wonder and are amazed that science and religion so often find themselves in antagonism. If men were always careful to discriminate between what is founded on unquestionable facts on the one hand, and the airy hypotheses of highly imaginative scientists on the other, and not bestow the dignified appellative of science on these latter, they would not be so easily captivated by the gilded sophistries of Draper, or allured by the glitter of Hammond’s showy erudition. This _en passant_.

In speaking of the cures said to have been accomplished by St. Sauveur, Dr. Hammond makes this striking and pregnant remark: “If St. Sauveur had really been the great healer he is said to have been, we should find his doings recorded in a thousand contemporaneous volumes, and every school-boy would have them at his tongue’s end. Neither do facts go begging for believers, nor will they remain concealed in obscure books.” Now, these two sentences fairly teem with fallacies. In the first place, the alleged performances of St. Sauveur are by no means regarded as authoritatively established or widely known, as Dr. Hammond himself subsequently indicates; how, then, even if true, could they have found their way into a thousand contemporaneous volumes? Besides, the age in which St. Sauveur lived differed in this respect from ours: that the recital of even the most marvellous occurrences spread very slowly, and never very widely; how, then, even if true, could the exploits of St. Sauveur have ever obtained much notoriety at the time? And chief of all, there is that inherent spirit of scepticism in every man which prompts him, often in the face of the most positive evidence, to reject whatever is stated to have taken place in derogation of physical law, or else to assign a purely physical reason for it. It is this sceptical tendency which will ever stand in the way of the ready and universal acceptance of supernatural events, however well attested, and, in this respect, essentially distinguishes them from facts of the natural order. It is the operation of this tendency which has driven Dr. Hammond himself into his illogical position, and will leave him there till he subordinates this prejudiced feeling to the higher promptings of his intellect. Long before him Voltaire gave expression to this sentiment when he declared that he would more willingly believe that the whole city of Paris had been deceived, or had conspired to deceive, than he would that a single dead man had risen from the grave. Herein lies the whole philosophy of Dr. Hammond’s position, if philosophy it can be called. He sets out with the conviction that a supernatural occurrence is impossible, and he is consequently determined to reject all testimony of whatsoever sort, no matter how weighty, and which he would readily allow in scientific affairs, which goes to support their authenticity. Historical testimony is of no avail, the good sense and discrimination of individuals goes for naught, when weighed against the flimsiest and shallowest so-called scientific explanations. Whenever a saint either performed a miracle or was himself the subject of a miraculous affection, Dr. Hammond concludes that he was epileptic or cataleptic, or suffering from some derangement of the nervous centres. Of St. Teresa he remarks: “The organization of St. Teresa was such as to allow of her imagining anything as reality; and the hallucination of being lifted up, as I shall show hereafter, is one of the most common experienced by ecstatics.” He thus places the saint in the light of a feeble-minded woman, of weak judgment and puny intellect, whereas all writers agree that in the various reforms she introduced into her religious community she exhibited the rarest good sense, moderation, and vigor of mind. The same remark is applicable to St. Thomas of Villanova. But enough. Rational criticism should be expended on other subjects. The _savant_ who compares Bernadette of Soubirous to the monks of Mount Athos, who go into ecstasy by placing their thoughts on God and their eyes on their navel, cannot expect much dignified criticism. The book is calculated to produce an unfavorable impression against the church in the minds of sciolists and those who are apt to be influenced by the authority of a name. We have already expressed our views on Dr. Hammond’s psychological attainments, and this present volume, so far from inducing us to alter them, rather inclines us to think that our strictures were unduly lenient. The comments which our June article elicited from the press go far to show that the intelligent portion of the community will not accept as genuine science a mere jingling Greek nomenclature—_e Græco fonte parce detorta_—and that, Draper and Hammond to the contrary, commonsense is not yet so rare as but yet to be common. The style of the book is good, the English pure, and the description graphic. It is well adapted, consequently, for popular reading, and will no doubt have a wide circulation—_tant pis_.

GERMAN POLITICAL LEADERS. By Herbert Tuttle. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

If Mr. Tuttle were one of the hired scribes of the Berlin Press Bureau, we should have looked for just such a book as he has written. A genuine “mud-bather” could not have shown himself either a more unfair partisan or a more flippant and inaccurate narrator.

Had the book appeared on its own merits, and not as one of a series of biographies, edited under the supervision of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, we should have passed it by like any other piece of book-making; for it is merely a catch-penny performance, and was most probably never meant to be anything else. This volume is of itself sufficient to show how utterly worthless is the claim put forth by Putnam’s Sons that the whole series is to be made reliable in every statement of fact. Bismarck, we are told, was a youth of very tender nature, and is even yet a devout and pious Christian. “His domestic tastes were always strong; his longing for a wife and household of his own would seem to have been very acute, till in 1847 it was satisfied by his marriage with Joanna von Putkammer.”

The truth is, Bismarck was a wild and reckless youth, who distinguished himself at the university by fighting some twenty-five duels and by taking the lead in the boisterous and riotous debauches habitual with so many German students. As a young man he continued this mode of life on his paternal estates, where he was known as Der Tolle Bismarck—Mad Bismarck. His favorite drink at this time was a mixture of porter and champagne. His letters to his sister show that the “acute longing for a wife” is only in the imagination of Mr. Tuttle. “His whole career,” says this writer, “previous to entering the Prussian ministry, was one of study and preparation, … at the university he was a profound and philosophical student of history, particularly that of his own country.” He never took a degree, and he was a profound and philosophical student of nothing except fencing, boxing, and hunting. Mr. Tuttle does not even quote correctly the sayings of Bismarck, which are known to every newspaper reader. Bismarck said: “Germany must be made with blood and iron”; and Mr. Tuttle makes him say: “The battles of this generation are to be fought out with iron and blood.”

The sketch of Dr. Falk is a still sorrier performance. In an attempt to sum up the relations of the church and the state in Prussia from 1817 to 1862, he says: “Accordingly the Catholics made grave advances along the whole line of social, educational, and political interests.… The church, or the ecclesiastical element, wielded paramount authority in the public councils” (p. 29). Nothing could be more false, nor would one who knows anything of Prussian history commit himself to a statement which can be excused from malice only by being supposed to proceed from gross ignorance.

We might cite fifty passages from this book in which bitter and vulgar prejudice against the Catholic Church has led the author into palpable and unpardonable blunders. Dr. Krementz is the “obstinate and disobedient bishop of Ermeland.” “The complaints of the Ultramontanes are both extravagant and absurd.” The leaders of the Catholic party “as the servants of an infallible spiritual master, were apparently placed above those restraints of moderation, courtesy, and truthfulness which apply in secular matters.… They led their hearers into tortuous mazes of sophistry, they wrapped the subject in clouds of paltry fallacies, at the command of bishops whose gospel is light.” Dr. Falk’s courage “has stood the ordeal required of every statesman who excites the hatred and exposes himself to the vengeance of the pupils of the Jesuit Mariana. He has been threatened with assassination quite as often as the emperor and Bismarck.”

The fact that a book written by an American, for Americans, and published by a leading American house, should evince the most thorough and earnest sympathy with the relentless persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany, throws a very unpleasant light upon our much-talked-of love of fair play and religious liberty.

The will to make martyrs and confessors of the bishops and priests of the United States is not wanting to Mr. Tuttle or Mr. Higginson, if the language of this book may be taken as an evidence of their real sentiments. The only Catholic leader whose biography is given in this volume is Lewis Windthorst, and this is the character which he receives: “He would be the most daring and consistent of sceptics if his interests had not made him the most faithful of believers. Even his religious professions spring from one form of unbelief. To be a free-thinker requires the exercise of faith in human reason and in most of the results of human inquiry, while by espousing the Catholic religion he proclaimed his disbelief in all positive and uninspired knowledge. He doubts everything that is true and believes only what is doubtful.” Since he cannot deny the ability of Windthorst, he makes him a hypocrite; and then, suddenly forgetting what he has just said, he supposes Windthorst to be a sincere believer only to declare him a fool.

We must repeat it. If Mr. Tuttle, during the four years which he has passed in Berlin, had been a pensioner of the “reptile fund,” he could not have written more unworthily.

FAITH AND MODERN THOUGHT. By Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in Union College. With introduction by Tayler
Lewis, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

Contrary to the intention of the author, the title of his work is absurdly tautological, when interpreted by its contents. The impression conveyed by the title page would lead us to expect, did in point of fact lead us to expect, at least an orderly and careful analysis of the subjects chosen. In this we have been disappointed, not by the good-will with which the author labors, but by his want of success. The work is composed of six chapters which might have been published independently of one another. Of these the first is valuable as an aggressive demonstration of the materialistic and irrational tendency of certain modern professors. The fifth and, perhaps, the sixth possess a similar value; while the rest of the book, although fairly written, is comparatively worthless.

The author is manifestly devoted to Christianity; his mind is sensitive to the repulsive features of modern heathenism; he seeks to defend the nobler order of ideas. But the trouble is that his brief is not full. He does not know his case. His theological speculations are crude even to rawness, and the _point d’appui_ of his structure is not only vague and inconsistent, but is shored up with declamation which serves to impart an additional appearance of insecurity to that which is already feeble. It is rather ludicrous to behold an evangelical Protestant, at this late day, endeavoring to undo the whole work of the Reformation, by trying to make faith appear reasonable, or by seeking other grounds for it than his own interior inspiration. Nevertheless, this is a step in the right direction. The writer claims to be a searcher after truth. If so, we can scarcely imagine that he will rest satisfied with his present work. The faith which gave to Christianity its organization, and which converted the ancient world, is no such vague chimera as the shadowy and subjective persuasion to which the author clings. The pious wish and conviction to which Dr. Welch adheres may serve to occupy and quiet his own active mind; but it is less than impotent to compel the assent of others. Dr. Welch seeks to call attention to the ideas contained in the Bible. He must have sense enough to perceive that this very attempt is something beyond his ability, and implies a living power having the right and capacity to speak for the Bible. Men will not listen to Dr. Welch in his well-meant endeavor to obtain a hearing. The inconsequent and abortive assumption on the part of the author of that duty which used to be accomplished by the teaching church, and which belongs to her or else to nobody, and the futile effort to give a coherent account of how he gets from a conviction of the necessity of revelation to belief in evangelical Protestantism, will nullify that part of the work which is good and render it merely another stumbling-block in the way of thoughtful men. We trust that it will do as little harm as possible, and that the author will eventually find some other occupation more congenial to his vigorous and reverent spirit than his present task of attempting to hold himself and others in unstable equilibrium.

ACHSAH: A NEW ENGLAND LIFE-STUDY. By Rev. Peter Pennot.
Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1876.

This is a capital story, or “study,” as the author very rightly calls it, of New England life. The character are all _sui generis_, such as only a small, narrow, sufficiently well-to-do New England town could produce, while one of them, Deacon Manlius Sterne, is a creation. Never have we seen that peculiar union of service of God and service of Mammon, which Christ pronounced to be impossible, so admirably portrayed as in this typical New England deacon, who himself would be the first to quote our Lord’s words condemning such service to a business rival, but who at the same time could very easy satisfy his own conscience on the matter, and find what he would consider a religious way out of the difficulty. God’s religion looks a very small and mean affair among these New England Christians. This very book, we take it, is a revolt against the sham and littleness of such a life. The writer seems possessed of the best intentions, though not of the profoundest knowledge of Christianity. His reflections, for instance, on the death of Dr. Steinboldt are a little out of place in a Christian’s mouth. Thus, he apostrophizes death: “Sent of God, to rich and poor alike, to kings and emperors and peasants, to all nations and peoples, this good physician comes to fulfil Christ’s crowning promise of rest to all who are ‘weary and heavy laden.’” To which we say, all very well; only that in the present instance “this good physician” happens to come in the form of suicide to a murderer, who, to add to his delinquencies, was a quack.

It was a mistake of the author, too, to make one of his characters, an excellent Catholic apparently, attend Protestant service on the Sunday, instead of going to the Catholic chapel in the town and hearing Mass. However, he is evidently very favorably inclined towards Catholics, so we will not quarrel with him on so palpable a slip.

“It has pleased God to give us no very clear idea of the great future, and so we speculate and wonder and dream, each after the fashion of his own heart; _and one is quite as likely to be right as another_. Thank God that he has elevated the mysteries of life and death above the realms of human reason, and left each to aspire to the future of his own imagination, to long for the heaven of his own desires.” This sounds to us little above the Turk’s dream of Paradise, who, by the bye, according to our author, “is quite as likely to be right” as the Christian. All this is a mistake. Our Lord has left us something far more definite to long for than the heaven of our own imagination and desires.

Again: “Madame Wandl, though a ‘bigoted Catholic,’ was more charitable than these free and enlightened Dickeyvillians, and, when the two talked together on matters of religious faith, it was the harmonious meeting of two extremes of belief, one elevating the humanity of Christ to the level of godliness, the other reducing the character of God to the level of a perfect and idealized humanity. Those who read this page will instantly decide which was right, but out of every ten, five will decide in one way and five in another; and as for me [the author], I don’t propose to create a majority one way or the other by throwing myself into the balance, but shall rest contented if I can preach Christ’s gospel of love acceptably and intelligently to my people” (pp. 222, 223).

It seems to us very plain from this and other passages that the Rev. Peter Pennot is far from having made up his mind as to who Christ is. He tells us practically, in the passage just quoted, that he will not say that Christ is at once true God and perfect man. Until he satisfies himself on this point, it is to be feared that his preaching of Christ’s gospel of love will not bear much fruit. It is one thing to preach the Gospel of the Son of God, another to preach the gospel of a being about whom we entertain great doubts.

We have been led aside by such points as these from the main story. The author writes so earnestly and honestly that we cannot but look upon his uncertainty with regret. For the rest, _Achsah_ is as enjoyable a story as we have read for many a day. The author seems to us to have all the gifts of a novelist. He has wit, humor, pathos, and an unforced sarcasm that is very telling. His story runs along without a halt. There is a pleasant, innocent love-plot, and some highly sensational matter is introduced in a very unsensational manner.

MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN
EACH MONTH. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

This little book has been composed for the benefit of those who have or wish to have the most excellent practice of putting aside one day in the month for a religious retreat. Whatever cultivates in us the habit of serious reflection upon the affairs of the soul is of inestimable value, since without some practice of meditation and self-examination it is almost impossible to lead a religious life; and we know of nothing better adapted to create in us this reflective character of mind than what is called the monthly retreat. This devotion is general in religious communities, but it may also be easily followed by persons in the world without interfering with the daily routine of life enough to attract the attention of any one. The collection of meditations before us will, we hope, encourage many to make proof of the efficacy of the monthly retreat. We would suggest, however, that in another edition an introduction be added, giving explanations concerning the nature and practice of this devotion, pointing out how persons engaged in worldly occupations may most easily perform these monthly exercises.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION: A Lecture Delivered at Leeds, England.
By Cardinal Wiseman. St. Louis: Patrick Fox, 10 South Fifth
Street. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This lecture is one of the ablest and most interesting lectures of the late Cardinal Wiseman. It proves in a conclusive and at the same time most agreeable manner that “science has nowhere flourished more, or originated more sublime or useful discoveries, than where it has been pursued under the influence of the Catholic religion.” In demonstrating this truth, the eminent writer has given a great number of facts not generally known to the reading public, which prove the deep indebtedness of science to Catholic Italy for many of its most valuable truths and discoveries.

The publisher has done his part in a praiseworthy manner.

REVOLUTIONARY TIMES: Sketches of our Country, its People and
their Ways, one hundred years ago. By Edward Abbott. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1876.

This is a very interesting and tastefully printed volume of two hundred pages, containing a great many items of interest with regard to the habits and customs of our American forefathers in the beginning of our national history, a glance at the state of literature, the press, and education, with many entertaining sketches of the “worthies” of that period.

From the chapter on “Political Geography” we cull the following extract, which gives an idea of the style of the work:

“The colonization of the West was yet a dream of the Anglo-Americans, the designs of France and Spain standing in the way of its fulfilment. The present great State of Ohio had not a white settlement. St. Louis was a Spanish town. What is now Indiana had but a single settlement, that at Vincennes. Detroit was a far-distant outpost sheltering a few hundred pioneers. This whole region was an unbroken waste, saving at these few scattered points, which were in large measure military and trading stations. Over all the Indian had free range. Adventurers were exploring the lakes and the rivers, and currents of emigration were only slowly setting in; and on the 9th of October, 1776, three months after the Declaration of Independence, two Franciscan monks, indefatigable missionaries of the Roman Church, took possession of the Pacific coast by the founding of their mission of San Francisco, the germ of the modern city of that name.”

THE NEW MONTH OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. From the
original French. By S. P. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham
& Son, 29 South Tenth Street. 1876.

This neat and beautiful little manual cannot but be of service to every lover of the Sacred Heart, especially at this season of the year. This month is prolonged into thirty-three days, corresponding with the thirty-three years of our Saviour’s life upon earth, and is furnished with appropriate meditations and pious practices, calculated to inspire devotion and excite the love of Christians towards the Heart of their Divine Lord. It is sufficient to say of this little work what the venerable Archbishop of Cincinnati says of it in his recommendation—that “it is perfectly free from all blemish on the score of faith, morals, and piety.” Truly, a high commendation.

NOTIONES THEOLOGICÆ CIRCA SEXTUM DECALOGI PRÆCEPTUM. Auctore
D. Craisson. Parisiis: Benziger Bros.; New York: The same.

A certain remnant of Jansenistic rigorism among the French clergy is assigned by the author of this treatise as one of the reasons which induced him to write on the subjects indicated by the title of his book. In the work itself we have failed to discover anything of importance which may not be found in almost any text-book of moral theology.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIII., No. 138.—SEPTEMBER, 1876.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1876.

THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES.

The Constitution of the United States has these provisions:

“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under the United States.”—ART.
VI.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”—FIRST
AMENDMENT.

It is thus the case that, as originally framed, the Constitution simply provided that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” but did not, in terms, prohibit Congress from erecting a state religion or interfering with the free exercise of religion otherwise than as regards office. The First Amendment was therefore adopted, in order that, as amended, the Constitution should forbid Congress from intermeddling in any way whatever with religious matters; and it has hence passed into the general understanding that the government of the United States has no religious character or powers whatsoever, but is purely a secular organization, contrived and devised for purely secular ends. As stated in the eleventh article of the treaty of Jan. 3, 1797, between the United States and Tripoli, “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” (_Rev. Stats. U. S._, “Treaties,” p. 756).