Chapter LV: Part III (5)

We left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our absence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the service of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she never let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible in her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid: she made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with flowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to her by the hour—for, though it had been understood that she was only to devote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed generally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out passionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most intense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent; she told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her grew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She offered her sufferings—and they were manifold and terrible—her weary, sleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and trial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly, for her dear benefactress’ conversion, till it became an _idée fixe_ that was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in interior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there it was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay awake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself with the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she fell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.

We returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready to start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the south and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow to me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had struggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to let myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that waits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me unawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a captive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance. Millicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing, which so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no vows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters were answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.

“You will pray for me, at all events?” she whispered as we embraced.

“Yes,” I said, “but on condition that you pray for me.”

Sybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was sorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was glad to have her out of the way.

“I never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed as we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. “I could have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of her by this.”

“You would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be worse off without it,” I answered crossly. “One really would imagine, to hear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught like measles or the small-pox.”

“And so it is—that is—I don’t mean exactly that—but it certainly is contagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous as living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for Milly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to protect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I suppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved as well.”

“You mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,’” I replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. “Just tell me one thing, Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right of private judgment, don’t you?”

“Do I? Why, I admit nothing else!” screamed Sybil.

“Then if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to believe in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?”

“Only this: that in becoming Catholics they don’t exercise their private judgment, they renounce it,” said Sybil.

“_After_ they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of renunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?”

“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,” said Sybil; “I hate and detest metaphysics!”

“Well, just answer me this much,” I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics are all certain to be damned?”

“Good gracious! I don’t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good ones, at any rate—not such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil with extraordinary vehemence.

“Then why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any one becoming a Catholic?” I asked.

“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful thing to ... change one’s religion, and the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of all sorts.... But look! I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the other side of the street, and he sees us and is coming across!”

“In time to rescue you from metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he won’t stand and speak to us; do you think he will?”

“I won’t let him; I’ll make him walk on at once with us,” said Sybil.

“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must not do that; mamma would be very angry if I were seen walking with him alone.”

“What nonsense! You’re not alone; _I_'m here,” said Sybil.

“You don’t count,” I said; “you know you don’t.”

“Well, you talk of being complimentary,” protested Sybil, “but that beats all _I_ ever said in the way of polite compliments.”

“You must dismiss him at once,” I said hurriedly, for he was close on us now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and go home alone.”

Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or contention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather affected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies; which was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free from grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known it. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on invitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil’s embarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away after inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and myself.

“I am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,” I said. “I am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you kindly call a cab?”

There was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we should both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad to be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the short history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue. I felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at least very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin’s prayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of the faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I was quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I had had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not been once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter on the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I reached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of things. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his eternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the delay seemed long to her.

Her own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much weaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her soul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer region, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit of detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I could only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration. I had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt justified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding her of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical pain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do so. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished for it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source of mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had come to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had become sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition, except the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which foretold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked for news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and happy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and then to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but Millicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half suspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and it consoled her greatly.

“Yes, it is very possible,” she remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle Gray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St. Francis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes, when she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were going to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on without saying anything.”

“You must pray harder than ever,” I said; “there is nothing else to be done.”

“When I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,” she replied.

“I hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at all,” I said; “you have suffered so long and so patiently!”

But she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I shall never forget:

“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of God?”

“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said, after we had been silent a while.

“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”

“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise—_to see God_! That is what makes Paradise!”

She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a thrilling solemnity.

Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not? You will pray for me by my name?”

“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all back to you.”

“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”

I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.

It was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing the prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike fearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the same time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the thought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without having one’s faith quickened.

Christmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold, from which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room close under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin’s sufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came I was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation to both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but sincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me with a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It was like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed so _loosened_ from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God were all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death closed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount seemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long day—the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to refresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it; she had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink to her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me playfully with the salutation, “_Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche_!” But she had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace the slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming out in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me than have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and that there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her mother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.

One day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that very morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some private theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin this; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her present mood.

“She is very well,” I said. “You know she is very bad at writing letters; I only hear of her through friends.”

“I was dreaming of her last night,” she answered musingly. “How I wish she might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation to me to hear of it!”

“You will hear of it in the next world, please God,” I said.

“You think souls know what goes on on earth?” she inquired.

“Of course they do!” I said. “How could there be joy in heaven for the return of the sinner unless they heard of it?”

“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you think they know there what happens here below?”

“I see no reason for not believing it,” I replied. “Many saints and doctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry messages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves direct, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask their prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly with the doctrine of the communion of saints.”

“It is a most consoling idea,” she said. “I shall be longing for a message from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your requests.”

“Pray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,” I said, kissing her face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows once more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of busily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that I could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back, as I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign with her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.

On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.

“She seems just the same, _ma sœur_,” I said. “How long do you think it will last like this?”

“Oh! not very long now,” she replied. “This cold will soon bring it to an end. She may be carried off at any moment.”

My heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and yet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should pay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full consciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I could not resist it. I turned back with Sœur Lucie, and went up again to her room. She did not seem surprised—at least, she said nothing about my reappearance. I waited a moment while Sœur Lucie questioned her, and then kissed her and said good-by.

“_Au revoir_,” she said, “_au revoir_. I will not forget your commissions; and mind you pray for me _always_.”

I was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after this. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger came from Sœur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to receive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a wish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the message was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it was possible.

“You will do as you wish,” he replied, “but you will do it against my emphatic prohibition. I won’t answer for the consequences, if you attempt it.”

Of course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to disobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly distressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the last, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with my love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how pained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme. Martin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the room was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman had insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair, that she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit to her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense suffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in her best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at such a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes, and to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When all was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme. Martin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. “Give my love and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she whispered, “and tell her I will not forget her commissions.” Then, after a short silence, she said, as quickly as she could gasp out the words: “He is coming! Make haste! Light the candles!”

They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.

About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent, informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s _Athalie_ at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward, silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for me?”

“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.

You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written; I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed from the beginning.

In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and Sybil sailed away to New York.

A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high excitement.

“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in the _Tiger_ and is going back with us!”

“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”

Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be married to him in a month.

THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.

Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake George, after George I. of England.

May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the summer months, a silvery bell rings out the _Angelus_ at morning, noon, and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable “encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.

Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology. To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt; but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us, in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated, she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a Madonna-and-Child.

Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the presence of a Madonna-and-Child.

The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which had preceded it.”

Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation; for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study, that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.

We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is _necessarily_ iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally seeks to _image_ his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the _word_ “symbol” is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive, affirmative, dogmatic.

Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.

Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now, images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system, inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental system.

But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is _God made visible_—God with a human soul and a _material_ body. Surely, then, to maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the Incarnation.

This unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have considered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic tendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that Protestantism has passed through various important changes in the course of its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the doctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is practically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols now—such as the cross and the triangle—while some of them encourage painted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the change is not surprising—what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one hand and conflict of principle on the other. “_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_,” says Horace—“You may drive nature off with a pitchfork, yet she will keep running back.” Then, as to principles, logic, like murder, “will out.” The doctrines of the Reformation, though negations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and the right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent in destroying them. Within the last half-century—and particularly within the last quarter—the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme in the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not reached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence a reaction, in favor of what are called “orthodoxy” and “churchmanship,” is perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in Christianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a divine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front ranks of the movement—the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are going back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they take in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine Protestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of doctrines by signs or images—as the triangle signifies the Blessed Trinity and the cross the Redemption.

Our argument, therefore, that Protestantism, _as such_, is necessarily iconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that modern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return means that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and have set their faces—how little so ever they think so—Romeward and homeward.

Here, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are gradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays they set up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the triangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity—where is their symbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation. They bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently, their not even attempting to do so—their having no symbol for it—is abundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to receive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand by it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the background and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything with them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is _the religion of the Incarnation_. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross, that term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the cross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other Christian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the Incarnation or it is nothing. _As that_ it must stand or fall. And if we would express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the crowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly understood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that, besides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all Protestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the only symbol possible, which is—the Madonna-and-Child.

And why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation? Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express the truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In his divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man. Whence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was “_born of the Virgin Mary_”; “_Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary_”—thus setting forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of Mary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother’s arms; they _symbolize_ the Incarnation (a creed is called a “symbol”) by the Madonna-and-Child.

* * * * *

Thus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile to images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular, because it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the Incarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of professing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the Incarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their “confessions of faith” (we are not including Unitarians among Christians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a body of Christians who say with us that they “believe in Jesus Christ ... born of the Virgin Mary”; who keep “merry” Christmas, too, with us—Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for all this, instead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant Saviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are not at home with it as a religious symbol.

Can it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching? No; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an artist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover, it is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire _this_ Mother and Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They display a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other great painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is nothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan superstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a school-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the religion of those old pagans—a religion so much in contrast with the aridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw Catholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked as he came away: “That religion is full of poetry.” “Yes,” was the answer—“of pagan poetry.” And then he was told how all the “corruptions” of Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the Madonna was cited. “They call her the Mother of God,” said the informant (a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well). “You remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods’? Well, there’s their Madonna—the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.” He was told this and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea that the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this very reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us; and the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.

At sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased by some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets, inspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some famous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:

“Ave Maria! Over land and sea,
That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!

“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! _May our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!_
Ave Maria! O that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove!
What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike,
_That_ painting is no idol—’tis too like!

“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft!
As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:
While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air,
Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”

Perhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another canto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his own Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been standing amid the ruins:

“But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d—
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round:
Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d.
_She made the place beneath seem holy ground._
This may be superstition, weak or wild:
But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”

Lord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this makes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion is—and particularly in its worship of the Madonna—when it could so attract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other non-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” we supposed to be a Catholic. But Protestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a sympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears to those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an _ideal_ in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so well as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet—to which, perhaps, we are indebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and comes among a series in which, as a true poet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called Reformation.

“Mother, whose virgin bosom was _uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied:_
Woman above all women glorified—
_Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!_
Purer than foam on central ocean tost:
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast!
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity—
Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”

Clearly, therefore, it is _not_ an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the Incarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of Christianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol _of itself_—has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by either Madonna or Child.

* * * * *

The Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs create for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as well as over soul—a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the world of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be in harmony with that which created it—the Incarnation—and, therefore, with the symbol of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child; and so will find in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol _of itself_—the mould upon which it was cast.

Here, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the Madonna-and-Child a _test_-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is not at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is thereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation. So that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing systems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with the Madonna-and-Child.

Let us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant communions, and particularly the two most important and respectable—the state church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the one hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other that party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or less consciously, to bring back “popery without the pope.” Neither of these extremes is genuine Protestantism.

All classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the Madonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an historic fact in which they believe—the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary—but instinctively feel that it _means a great deal more_. They principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too much prominence. “We all know,” they argue, “that she is the Mother of our Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to _us_?” They are not accustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed; or even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their “idolatrous” fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to see the Child, particularly in Mary’s arms or by her side. “He did not remain a child all his life,” they say. “It was not as a child that he came out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as a child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to _us_?” In a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with which they are familiar.

The secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the Incarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call itself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show for theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a real hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” they do not mean at all what we mean. To them the Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of omnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible institution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them in the relation of a _mother_—carrying them in her arms and feeding them at her breast. If they _did_ mean _this_ by the Catholic Church, they would recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church with them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the Madonna-and-Child.

Neither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament—that lovely “second infancy” of Jesus—or they would joyfully acknowledge in the Madonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her keeping.

But especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from what it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as now, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by instituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself and them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not vituperate our doctrine of the latter’s maternal mediation; not only because of the church’s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of mother church, must needs be _Mother_ Mary.

Now, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history of his conversion. Having come—and, thank God! not so late as it might have been—to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and guide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her “the words of eternal life”—to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to whom, to go to Christ—we gradually discovered that the Church of England, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were looking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We found that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a “part of the civil service”; but that her success in being _fashionable_ was owing—_not_ to any _divine_ commission, _not_ to her speaking “as one having authority,” _not_ to her teaching one definite body of doctrine—but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament; to her _disclaiming_ all authority to teach, except as a fallible human witness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and _contradiction_ of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty to hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to these doctrines—which we had come to believe from joining first the moderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists—was a parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to be truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church and a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till we found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.

* * * * *

And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.

The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet. There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?

While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church. Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he. Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ _See of Peter_; and our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.