Chapter I
Just before vespers, as I came in from a visit to the hospital, Mother Frances, our superioress, called me to her, and said:
"Dear sister, you have been out nearly all day, and were up last evening; you can go into the church for vespers, and then you had better go to your cell."
After the service was ended, I remained a few minutes to say my prayers. When my time had expired, I went through the cloisters to my cell; and, just as I opened the door, I heard from the gate-bell a loud peal that rang through the silent house. I heard the door opened, and a hurried message delivered.
"Another call," I thought; and then came a quiet tap at my door. I opened it quickly, and Mother Frances entered, saying:
"I am grieved, sister, to disturb you so soon; but that poor girl, Mary MacNeal, is dying at the hospital, and she wishes most earnestly to see you."
"Is she indeed dying? why, I left her so much better."
"Yes; but a fatal change has taken place, and she has not long to live."
{777}
There was no time to think of my aching head and wearied limbs. I dressed again hastily, and, together with the messenger, soon arrived at the hospital.
At the entrance of the ward where Mary lay I met the nurse. "Oh! God be praised, sister, that you're come at last! Poor Mary's only cry is for you."
This Mary MacNeal was a young girl who had been brought up in our schools, and afterward maintained herself by dressmaking. Hard toil, poor fare, and want of exercise did their work; and Mary lay dying in the last stage of consumption. She was a good girl, and had been long under my especial care. That very afternoon she had implored me to be with her during her last moments. When I reached her bed, a calm, happy smile welcomed me, and the feeble, faint voice spoke a few words of greeting, "And ye'll say the rosary, sister?"
I knelt down and complied with her request. When we said the last Gloria, Father Bernard came, and Mary received the last sacraments. I have stood by many a death-bed: I have seen the strong man in his agony expire; I have seen the atheist, fearing, dreading God, die, with despair in his glazing eye and faithless heart; I have seen infants die with the smile of an angel on their little faces; in every form I have met with death; but I never knew a soul leave this world that seemed more fit for heaven than that of this young girl. The rosary in one hand, the crucifix in the other, she lay so calm and still. Ever and anon, as I wiped the death-damp from the pale brow, she lifted her eyes as though to thank me. She seemed desirous to speak. I stooped over her to catch the few struggling words, and they were:
"Thank God, I have always loved the Blessed Mother; she is with me now." And she murmured the sweet names of Jesus and Mary.
Then the slight breath stopped; anon it came again; again it went, and without a struggle that happy soul took flight. I closed the eyes, still wearing the lingering look of gratitude and love; I crossed the hands, and twined the beads around them, and then knelt down and said the litany for the dead. I was now preparing to leave the hospital, when the nurse came, and asked me if I would step for a minute into the next ward, just to speak to a poor old woman who seemed to be getting worse. This ward was quite full; but I noticed a bed I had seen empty in the morning, occupied; when I had finished talking to the old woman, I asked who the fresh comer was.
"Ah! sister, she's in an awful way, let her be who she may. I asked her this afternoon if she would see you, or the priest; and I declare the look of her frightened me--it was so wild and fierce. But she's a lady, I am sure; for, though the poor feet of her were bare and bleeding, the few ragged clothes she had on were of the finest, and when she is in her senses, she speaks so lady-like; but she went on in a dreadful way, and told me not to talk to her of sisters or priests, but to do her the only kindness I could, and let her die alone; so there she lies, and not one bit or drop can I get down her."
"But, nurse, I must see her, poor thing! Perhaps I can help to soothe her."
I approached the bed carefully, shading the lamp with my hand. I set the light down on the table, and drew a chair close to the bedside, and sat down upon it. Loud, heavy breathing, and quick, frightened starts, told me the patient slept. I gently drew aside the sheet, with which she had covered her face and head, and started at the picture that met my gaze. {778} It was a woman, seemingly about two-and-twenty years of age; her face and neck were covered with a perfect mass of thick, glossy hair; it spread in its rich profusion over the pillow and the bed clothes. I took one of the tresses in my hand, and wondered at its length and softness. One small white hand was thrown above her head, and it grasped a portion of the hair so tightly that I could not move it, lest I should wake her. Before I had sat many minutes, the sleeper awoke with a loud, piercing scream, and a quick, fearful start. I laid my hands on her, to soothe her.
"Do not be frightened," I said; "you are quite safe."
"Who are you?" she replied abruptly and sharply.
"I am a Sister of Mercy, and I am anxious to assist you."
"I don't want you; go away; you only torment me." She turned from me, and concealed her face.
"I am afraid you mistake me," I said very gently; "indeed, I only wish to do you good."
"Do me good? You cannot; leave me alone! Let me die as I have lived."
"God is good, and very merciful, my poor sister."
"Don't mention his name to me. Leave me! Let me be forgotten by God and man. Let me die, and do not torment me."
"God loves you with an infinite love--a love more tender than you can imagine."
"I tell you to go! I am cursed? hated! I want no good; I will listen to none. Your words are all in vain; save them, and go!"
With these words she resolutely turned from me, and covered her face with the clothes, so that she could neither hear nor see me. I took my rosary, and knelt down, and said it for her; and ardently did I pray that the poor heart might be turned to God. When I had knelt above an hour, she turned fiercely round, and said
"Are you still there? what are you doing?"
"I am praying for you, my sister."
"Praying for me!" and a wild, fearful laugh sounded through the quiet room. "Praying for me; my name is forgotten in heaven. Don't do that. My mother is in heaven. Don't let my name be heard there, or she will know; but go away, and leave me. Heaven and earth have abandoned me; why need you care for me?"
The delirium and fever seemed to increase so rapidly, that I feared my longer stay would be useless. A torrent of words were pouring quickly from the parched lips; now a wild appeal, a fearful cry to God for mercy; then a dreadful outburst of reproaches and contempt against heaven; then a wild snatch of song, and a laugh so unearthly, it almost chilled the blood in my veins. Once, and once only, the loud voice grew calm and sweet, and a quiet look came upon the flushed face when she fancied she was a girl at home again, and her mother was speaking to her.
I went home, for I was of no use, and the nurse gave the poor sufferer an opiate before I left. I could not rest; that wild, beautiful face was before me, and those pitiful cries rang in my ears all night. The following morning I hastened to the hospital. I found my patient more quiet, and a good deal exhausted.
{779}
I procured a basin of cold water, and wetting a handkerchief, placed it upon her burning brow. Its coolness seemed to revive her; for after I had bathed her forehead for some minutes, she opened her eyes, and said, in a faint voice, "Is that you, mother? bless you, thank you;" but after looking earnestly at me, she turned away with a despairing sigh I never shall forget. After I had well bathed her face and head, I gathered the long hair and arranged it neatly under a cap. How beautiful she looked! the red flush had gone, and her face was fair and white as marble. The slight eyebrows were marked so clearly and arched so beautifully, and the noble open brow was so fair, I could distinguish every vein. Again my tears fell upon her face as I stooped over her. She gave a quick start, and said, "Who are you?"
"I am a Sister of Mercy, one who loves you."
"Loves me! and is that tear for me?"
"Yes, not only one, but many more I have shed for you."
"O sister!" and she turned and threw herself on my breast, "that is the first tear any one has shed over me since my mother died. My heart has been so proud, so full of bitter anger and hatred, that I thought nothing could ever again soften it; that tear was a dew-drop from heaven. A few moments since, I fancied you were my mother, for your hand lay upon my head just as hers did when she used to come, night after night, and bless me; just as it did the night before I left her. O sister! do not let me lie in your arms, you are so good, and I have been so wicked and sinful."
"Nay, rest here; none are so sinful but there is love and mercy left for them."
"Mercy! can I, dare I hope for it?"
"Hush, my child, you are tiring yourself out; now rest."
"And do you promise never to leave me till I die? Say, will you stay with me?"
"I will indeed do all I can; for the present I must go. Will you let me put this around you?" (It was a medal of the Immaculate Conception.)
"Yes," she replied, and took it with a trembling hand.
"Are you a Catholic?" I asked, startled by the haste with which she seized it.
"I am, sister," and then a burning blush came over her face. "I am, but a guilty, ungrateful one."
"Then will you say some short prayers, while I go and visit my other patients?"
"I will, but it is long since I have said a prayer."
At the end of an hour I returned, and found her weeping bitterly. She took my hand and kissed it. I tried to quiet her excessive grief. I said, "Do not cry, my child. Tell me, can I help you--can I do anything for you? My name is Sister Magdalen; what shall I call you?" She looked up with a sad face, and replied, "My name is Eva." "Well, then, Eva, be comforted; if you have sinned, there is mercy and hope for you; if you are unhappy, there is comfort. Look at this;" and I gave her my crucifix--"does not this teach you to love and hope?" There was no answer, nothing but bitter sobs. I knelt down, and said the Memorare, and then, taking Eva's hand, I was about to speak, when she said, "Sister, sister, when I am better, and have strength to talk, I will tell you my history, and you shall teach me to be better."
Day after day passed on, and she became so ill that we thought she must die; but God so willed it that she began to improve, and, at last, was able to speak and think rationally again. One evening I sat by her bed, saying the rosary while she slept, when, looking suddenly at her, I found her eyes open, and fixed upon me intently.
{780}
"Sister Magdalen," she said, "I want to tell you my history; it is a very sad one. I have sinned and suffered--will you hear me?"
"With pleasure, because, when I understand you, I can the better help you."
And as she told it to me, I here give it.
Chapter II
"I need not trouble you with the history of my childhood; it was spent alone with my dear mother, in a pleasant little village near Bristol, and was a very happy and innocent one. My father died before I was born, but he left an ample fortune to my mother. I was her sole care and treasure; next to me she loved and cared for our little church. The mission in our village was but a poor one; my mother was its chief support. To our care was given the sacristy, the chapel, the altar-linen and flowers. I used to spend hours in dressing the altar and arranging the flowers. The memory of those hours has never died; it has lived with me ever; and even amid scenes of vanity and passion, it has hung about me like the fragrance of a flower.
"My mother was the sweetest and most gentle of women; the early loss of her husband gave her a shock from which she never recovered; and she made a resolution at his death to devote her whole life to my education and to works of charity. I cannot think of her without tears; she was so patient and good, nor did I ever hear one unkind or hasty word from her.
"I grew up well skilled in all the accomplishments my mother loved and taught. One I was passionately fond of, and that was painting. I had a talent for it, and a cultivated taste.
"Imagine, sister, the course of a streamlet, with scarcely a ripple upon it, glittering in the bright sunlight, ever flowing calmly and gently, and you have a perfect image of my childhood.
"This lasted until I was sixteen. A few days after my birthday, a letter came from my mother's agent, a solicitor in London, requesting her immediate presence. Not liking to leave me behind, lest I should be dull, my mother offered to take me with her. I was overjoyed at the proposal. London was a distant fairyland to me, and I knew no rest or peace until we started. We were to stay at Mr. Clinton's, a distant relative of my father's, who kindly offered us the use of his house. He was married, but his wife was dead, and he had one only daughter, with whom I soon became intimately acquainted. Bella Clinton was an elegant girl, and foremost among the leaders of fashion. I had not been there long before I began to blush for my country dresses, and astonished my gentle, yielding mother by the extravagant demands I made upon her purse. Ah! there I learnt the fatal truth that I was gifted with beauty. I had heard strangers say at home, "What a handsome child! how like her father;" but I never realized the fact until I stood ready dressed for my first ball, where Bella had persuaded my mother to accompany us.
"Bella had chosen for me a robe of pale pink satin and a rich lace skirt; she twined pale pink flowers in my long black hair, and golden bracelets around my arms, and then led me to her mirror, and said, 'I am almost jealous, Eva!' {781} Ah! the lace pictured there was very fair, the eyes were flashing with light, the cheek was tinged like a rose, the white neck and arms shamed even the pearls that gleamed upon them. Beautiful, bright, and sparkling the picture was; but would to heaven I had died as I stood there, for I was then innocent and good.
"You, perhaps, sister, never saw or cared to see a ball-room; on me the effect was electrical. Just as we entered, the sweet, fascinating melody of a popular waltz was floating round the room; the room itself was radiant with light and beauty; jewels were shining, feathers waving, rich satins were gleaming; and the wearers, to my novice's gaze, were like beings from fairyland.
"Miss Clinton was soon surrounded with friends, and I listened with astonishment to her witty repartees and animated conversation. I was introduced to many of her friends; our group or party was, I could not fail to perceive, the most select in the room. I sat by my mother, endeavoring to give my attention to some officer who was detailing a striking adventure, when a face and form suddenly attracted my attention; it was that of a noble-looking man, with a head remarkable for the extreme beauty of its contour and the richness of its dark curls. The face, too, though not exactly handsome, was irresistibly attractive, from its aristocratic mould of feature and melancholy expression. His eyes were a singularly dark gray, shaded with long eyelashes; they had a tired, listless look. I watched this gentleman some few minutes, and then turning to my companion, said: 'Can you tell me who is that distinguished looking man standing just beneath the chandelier?'
"'Lord Montford. He is a clever man; but a very reserved, haughty character; he is known by the name of Le Grand Seigneur. I know him well, intimately; but I never can penetrate the veil of melancholy that hangs over him.'
"'Perhaps he is unhappy,' I said simply; 'is he married?'
"'No; he is one of the best parties of the season. Some say an early disappointment is the cause of his want of sociability; others say he has a distaste for the society of your charming sex.' And my informant made a low bow.
"A dozen more questions trembled on my lips; but not liking to continue the conversation, I remained silent. Suddenly looking up, I saw Lord Montford's eyes fixed upon me. I blushed, feeling like a guilty culprit. In a few minutes Miss Clinton came to me, and said:
"'Eva, you have made a splendid conquest. Here is Lord Montford asking to be introduced to you. Come with me.'
"'Indeed I cannot,' I replied, shrinking, scarcely knowing why.
"'Mrs. Leason, make her come,' said Bella, smiling to my mother.
"'Go, Eva,' my mother said; and I went. My first impulse was to run away when I saw that tall, stately form bending before me; but he looked at me with so kindly an expression of interest and admiration that I accepted the invitation for the next quadrille with less of fear and restraint than I had hitherto felt. When the quadrille was over, Lord Montford took me into the refreshment-room.
"'It is no idle compliment to tell you, Miss Leason, that I enjoyed that dance more than I have done anything for years.'
"'Why?' I answered innocently, looking up with astonishment. He smiled and answered:
{782}
"'If I wished to flatter you, I should say because you are more beautiful and graceful than any lady I have seen for some time; but the real truth is, that I can perceive this is your first ball, and the freshness of your ideas is something novel to me.'
"'Are not my ideas like other people's?'
"'Far from it.'
"'I am very sorry,' I began, half hesitatingly; 'indeed, I wish to be like every one else.'
"'Never wish so again, Miss Leason; wish always to be just as you are now.'
"Just at this moment my mother and Bella joined us, and he relinquished my arm.
"'Why, Eva,' said Miss Clinton, 'Surely you have some charm. I have known Lord Montford for years, and I never saw him so animated or so happy before.'
"But I need not dwell longer on this part of my life. Day after day, evening after evening, Lord Montford was by my side; and yet so quietly were these meetings conducted, that it always seemed that chance directed them. As Bella ceased jesting, my mother did not notice his attentions. I soon began to look upon seeing him as the only thing worth living for. I had no thought save for him. As yet no word of love passed his lips, though I could not but perceive that he regarded me with no common interest.
"One day, as we were all in the drawing-room, my mother suddenly announced her intention of returning home--almost directly. I looked at Lord Montford, and saw an expression of pain upon his face. I rose and went to the window to hide the tears that were starting to my eyes. In an hour after this, a servant brought me a note from Lord Montford, filled with expressions of love, and asking for an interview, and praying that I would not mention it to any one, even to my mother. I knew this was wrong, and this was the first false step in my career. I knew concealment from my mother was, in such a case, wrong; but stronger than the voice of conscience, stronger than the whispers of my angel guardian, stronger than the promptings of faith and obedience was the passion that reigned in my heart. I wrote a few words. My mother, Mr. Clinton, and Bella were going out to dine. I pleaded indisposition, and remained at home. I promised in the afternoon to grant Lord Montford the interview he desired. I went, when three o'clock came, to the library, and I left it in an hour the affianced bride of Lord Montford. One thing surprised me, and that was, that he used the most urgent entreaties that I would not mention our interview, or its result, to any one. Imprudently I promised.
"The day came when we left London, and yet no word would Lord Montford suffer to be spoken of our engagement. He stood in the hall as we passed from the house, and he hastily whispered to me:
"'You shall hear from me soon, Eva, and my letter shall explain all.'
"I could scarcely bear the quiet, tranquil beauty of home; my whole time was spent in wishing for and thinking of the promised letter.
"At length it came, and I went with it tightly held in my hand, to my own room. I cannot now remember all it said, but the concluding words I remember, and they were these: 'And now, Eva, I have told you how dear you are to me, how you have come across my dark dreary life like a bright sunbeam; without you I shall again become a dull, melancholy misanthrope; with you I may become a good and useful man. Will you refuse, Eva, to help me: One thing more. {783} A reason of the utmost importance prevents me from at present making public our engagement and marriage--a reason so potent that, if you refuse secrecy, we must part. Say, Eva, shall this be? Will you sacrifice my love, my hope, my happiness, for a scruple?'
"And so with a prayer for my consent, the letter ended; and then I laid it down and wept--ay, wept--for there was a calmer, holier feeling in my heart than I had known for a long time; and the struggle was hard. My mother, could I leave her thus? How had she nursed me, loved me! and with what pleasure and pride had she looked forward to my settling in life! Her sweet face came before me with all its goodness and purity. No; I could not leave her, I could not thus deceive and disappoint her. There was the church, too, with its altars and flowers; who would tend them? I could not go, and so I resolved--a resolution, alas! too soon to be broken.
"At this moment a hand was gently laid upon my shoulder, and looking up hastily, I saw my mother.
"'Eva, are you ill, my darling, or unhappy? Why are you here alone, and miserable?'
"I made no reply, but laid my head upon my mother's breast and cried aloud. Those were the last tears I ever shed there. I even feel now her soft hand caressing me, and drawing back the hair from my brow, while she soothed me as though I had been a little child.
"'I am ill and tired, mother,' I said, at length.
"'I see you are, Eva.' And she laid me down gently, and sat by me until I slept. Two days afterward I was out, and turning round the road that led to the wood, I met Lord Montford. I found he had arrived that day, and had been waiting many hours for a chance of seeing me; but he looked so pale and ill I scarcely knew him. Let me tell the result in few words. I promised him to leave home, mother, and all things, and to accompany him wherever he would.
"'It is but for a short time, Eva,' said he, 'and then we will return, and your mother will forgive us and bless us.'
"'Why not wait the short time?' I said, for my face burned where my mother's tears had fallen.
"'I cannot; you do not know the reasons, Eva. But do not refuse me. You are the last tie that binds me to life and hope.'
"And he arranged that early the next morning I should meet his carriage in the park; that we should go straight to London, and there be quietly married; and then go on the same day to Paris.
"That night, sister, I never slept. Many times I half knelt to pray, and perhaps had I prayed, God would have heard me; but there was that in my heart that would not let me: and so, in wearily pacing my room, in bitter weeping and grief for my mother, in passionate tears, when I remembered my promise, in hard struggle and indecision, did I pass my last night under my mother's roof. When morning dawned, I tried to go and look at my mother; twice, thrice, I half opened the door, and, shuddering, closed it; and with my heart half breaking at leaving her, and yet drawn on irresistibly, I passed from my home a guilty fugitive, a cruel, wilful child. I went out into the pure, sweet, morning air, and it fanned so softly my burning face; the birds were singing such glorious carols of praise; the flowers were lifting their fair heads, drooping with dew; peace and beauty and joy were all around me; but in my heart were darkness and sorrow, grief and remorse. Suddenly a strong arm twined around me, and a low voice, whose tones I knew and loved too well, poured into my ears a rapture of love and thanks. {784} And in a whirl of time that seems to me now a dream, I was married, and in Paris. Immediately on our arrival at Paris, my husband wrote to my mother, telling her of our marriage, conjuring her for a time not to reveal it, and begging her forgiveness and blessing. An answer came, and my mother's gentle love spoke in every line, yet her heart seemed broken as she wrote. Trusting that time would reveal the mystery of my husband's strange desire for concealment. I threw myself into the vortex of pleasure and gayety. The hours passed like golden moments. I knew no wish, no caprice, that my husband did not immediately gratify. The most devoted love and ardent affection were lavished upon me; he was ever with me: if for one hour we were separated, he flew to me the next. Smiles chased the melancholy and languor from his brow, and the light in his eyes was to me brighter than the rarest jewel he loved to adorn me with. It was short but brilliant, this dream of mine; its bliss was dearly purchased. You will think the story that I am going to tell you strange, but there are stranger in the world.
Chapter III
'I told you, sister, how devoted I was to painting; and this taste my husband spared no pains to gratify. He took me, one day, to one of the most splendid picture-galleries in Paris, and there, amongst other chef d'oeuvres, I noticed a most beautiful picture of St. Mary Magdalen. I stood entranced before it: it represented a graceful, slender figure kneeling fore a rustic altar. The hands were clasped in prayer, and the face was slightly raised toward heaven; but anything so exquisite as the blended look of remorse and love upon those splendid features I never saw; it was as though the raining tears had softened the dazzling beauty and brightness of the large, liquid eyes, and had blanched the roses on both cheek and lip, and had left over the fair face a lingering light, soft and spiritual. Long golden tresses waved over her shoulders, and lay (even as she knelt) upon the ground in their profusion and luxuriance. Hope and love were written on the noble brow, while such humility, such self-abasement were expressed in the prostrate, kneeling figure, that at one glance the history was read. I forgot time, place, and all things--my whole soul absorbed in the wondrous beauty of the picture. My husband had left me to procure a catalogue, when suddenly a heavy hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a voice hissed, rather than spoke, into my ear: 'Ay, look--for the sin that branded her is marked upon your brow!' The hot breath of the speaker flushed upon my cheek--a low, scornful laugh, and it was gone. Bewildered, I turned round, but saw no one who seemed likely to have addressed me or who seemed to notice me. A few paces from me, looking intently upon a small painting, there stood a tall, stately lady, and no one else was near. I hastened, when I recovered the use of my faculties, to ask her if she had seen any one speak to me, when she quickly arose, and left the room. As she turned to pass to the door, I saw her face; it was handsome, but so cold and haughty, and with so fierce an expression of self-will, that the words froze upon my lips; it was a strange face, too, and it haunted me all day. I was bewildered; but I did not tell my husband. {785} I did not wish to trouble or annoy him. I was frightened and out of spirits, and when evening came, my husband would insist upon my going to the opera. I went; but I could not forget those dreadful words. The opera was beautiful; but my attention would wander. Looking round the boxes, I suddenly saw the same lady I had met in the picture-gallery. Her handsome, haughty face bore an expression that surprised me; her large, glittering eyes were fixed upon me, and a smile of triumph, malicious and revengeful, curled her lip. I turned to my husband and said: 'I do wish, Percy, you would tell me who that lady is there opposite with the pink dress.' He turned, at my request; but when he saw her, his face became deadly pale, and convulsed with emotion. 'Do you know her?--are you ill?--what is the matter, Percy?' I cried.
"'Nothing,' said my husband, 'but the heat is too great; will you come home, Eva?'
"I rose, terrified, to leave the box, and turning again to look at the lady, I found her gone. As we were driving home, when my husband became more composed, I told him of my adventure in the picture-gallery, and asked him if he could possibly conjecture the meaning of it.
"'Why, why, Eva, did you not tell me this before? Now, do not be frightened; but I have decided to leave Paris by the midnight train: it is now ten o'clock; will you be ready?'
"'Yes; but why this haste?'
"'Ask me no questions, Eva; only hasten, and let us be gone.'
"My husband's manner was stern, and he became so silent that I dared not interrupt him. Directly we arrived at home, he left me to arrange for our journey, and, ringing for my maid, I told her to prepare for instant departure. I was tired, and my head ached with useless conjectures. I felt a foreboding of coming misery that I could not account for. I was in the drawing-room, packing a few books, when a servant entered and told me I was wanted. I said I could not see any one, I was engaged; but in a few minutes the man returned, and said the lady insisted upon seeing me, and before he had finished speaking, the lady I had seen at the opera stood before me.
"'You are leaving Paris,' she said, with a sneering smile; 'but it is important that you should grant me a few moments; perhaps I may alter your plans.'
"I bowed and the servant withdrew. She stood and surveyed me for some minutes with a strange, glittering look in her wild eyes; and then coming to me, she said:
"'You are passing fair. Percy Montford's second choice speaks well for his taste.'
"'I do not understand you, madam,' I said proudly; 'nor do I see by what right you intrude upon me or use my husband's name.'
"'Your husband, girl!' and a mocking laugh rang in my ears. 'Nay, Percy Montford is no husband of yours.'
"'You are mad,' I replied. But she interrupted me--
"'Mad! No; and yet, I tell you, I am Lady Montford! You do not believe me? I will tell you again. Sixteen years ago, when I was young, and the world said beautiful, I became the lawful wife of the man who has deceived you.'
"I rose indignantly, and grasped the bell-rope.
{786}
"'Nay,' said she, 'pause one minute before you summon aid or assistance. I repeat--sixteen years ago I was married. My husband had then no title; he was simply Mr. Ingram; he lived with me one year, and then, finding my temper hot and my spirit bitter, he left me, (amply provided for, it is true,) and has never seen me since. I have followed him, I have tracked him from city to city. I found out his admiration for you; I knew he would marry you secretly--openly he dared not, for fear of me. I could have saved you then, but I would not; I hated you because you were beautiful and good, and I have watched and waited with a fierce longing for the moment when your cup of joy was full, that I might dash it from your lips, and turn it to the poisoned chalice I have so long drunk. You still disbelieve me? Look,' and she took some papers and laid before me. My hands shook, and my sight failed me when I tried to read them; but I saw enough; and covering my face, I sank on my knees.
"I remember now, sister, that in my madness and my grief I knelt to that woman, and I prayed to her to unsay her fearful words. I can remember how she rejected me, how she scorned me and my wild prayers, and how proudly she stood over me, gloating in my misery.
"'No, Eva Leason! you broke your mother's heart--you had no mercy upon her, and I have none upon you. I am claiming only justice, I am speaking only truth.'
"'Percy!' I cried, 'come and save me!'
"'Ah! Percy, save her! You are so noble and good! You never deceived her, never betrayed her!' And then I remember no more, save that darkness seemed to come upon me until I lost all sense and feeling.
"When I recovered in some degree my recollection, I was lying upon a sofa, and my husband--ah! mine no longer!--knelt beside me, his face and head hidden, and yet I knew that he was weeping. She was gone.
"I sprang to my feet.' Percy,'I cried, 'tell me, is this true? You found her here. Has she told me the truth?' And I waited for his answer with my life depending on it.
"'I will deceive you no more, Eva. Alas! she has told you true.'
"'And you have deceived me, stolen me from my mother and my home, and made me an outcast!' My heart seemed on fire. I tore the ring from my finger and the jewels from my hair, and threw them at his feet; but he knelt, and passionately implored me not to leave him, to listen to his story, to have mercy on him. But no, I heeded no word; I tore my dress from his hands; I rushed from him; I took no time; I had but one thought, and that was to fly. I was delirious with grief and anger; my cloak and bonnet were in the hall; I threw them on; and before Lord Montford knew where I was, I had taken a carriage, and was on my road to the station. My heart ached for my mother. I remember but very little else. I crossed the Channel, and my passage took nearly all my money: I had just enough to reach London, and then I was penniless. It seemed to me that I wandered for hours in the dreary streets, and at last I fell. I was picked up and carried here. Now, tell me, sister, was not my punishment bitter? Can you wonder that I craved to die, and hide my shame and misery?"
"You are much sinned against, Eva; but tell me how could Lord Montford marry you when he knew his first wife was living?"
"I do not know, sister; I cannot think; yet now I remember, that night he told me that he had married her when he was quite young, and had never known peace or rest since; and that, when he knew me, he loved me so and feared to lose me, he could not resist the temptation. {787} Did I tell you, sister, that the first thing I heard when I came to England was that my mother was dead? I saw it in a paper."
But, dear reader, I shall weary you if I repeat all poor Eva's long history; I must hasten and finish my story.
Some weeks after this, I was sitting with her, reading to her, when Mother Frances called me hastily from the room. I had told her Eva's history, and I felt from her manner that she had something of importance to say concerning her.
"Sister," said the superioress, "there is a gentleman in the convent parlor, and he has sent in his card. See, it is Lord Montford."
"O Mother Frances! what shall we do? what can we say to him? He has, then, traced poor Eva here!"
"Let us first discover his errand, and then we will act as seems best."
When we entered the parlor, Lord Montford rose, and when he addressed us, his voice trembled.
"May I ask," he began, "if a lady who some time since obtained shelter at the hospital, is still here? I have traced her here; can I be allowed to see her?"
"Lord Montford," said Mother Frances, "Eva's history is well known to me; and I have no hesitation in saying that, while this roof shelters her, she shall be safe from your further deceptions."
"Nay, you mistake, Rev. Mother, I am come to offer Eva the only reparation in my power. As you know my errors, concealment is useless. My first wife is dead, and I am come to make her my own again."
It took a long time to prepare Eva for this news; I dreaded it. She was so near the verge of the grave, that I feared the least agitation would be fatal. She bore it calmly; and when I had told her, Lord Montford entered the room, and I left them together.
Would, dear reader, that I could tell you, as the old story-books do, that Eva lived long and happily; but alas! no; she died three weeks after this, reconciled to God and to the church.
Eva Lady Montford lies in her quiet grave; violets are growing where her bright head was laid low. The winds chant drearily among the trees that shelter her tomb; and if you visit it when the morning sun gilds the flowers, or the moon silvers the leaves, you will always meet there one who, if he sinned deeply, has repented more deeply still.
From the wind that sighs over Eva's grave, comes there, my dear young reader, no warning to you? Is there no secret hoarded in that heart of yours, that a mother's eye has never penetrated; and if so, will it lead to your happiness in this world or the next? Ah! no; concealment or deception in the end works misery, let the cause be what it may. A pure and open heart before God, and a just and blameless one before the world, is my prayer for you.
--------
{788}
The Church and Her Attributes.
The heterodox of all shades recognize, in some form or in some sense, what they call the church of Christ, and hold it in some way necessary, or at least useful, to salvation. The Anglicans profess to believe in a church founded by Christ himself, of which they claim to be a pure or purified branch; the Presbyterians profess to believe that there is a church, out of which there is no salvation; the Methodists and Baptists call their organizations churches, and hold them to be parts or branches of one universal or catholic church; and even Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, who deny the incarnation, speak of the church, though precisely what they mean by it is not easy to say. So far as we know, there is no sect, school, or party, not included among those whom our theologians call infidels or apostates, that does not profess a belief, of some sort, in the holy catholic and apostolic church of the creed.
In a controversy between us and the heterodox, the question is not, An sit ecclesia? but, Quid sit ecclesia? The controversy hinges, not on the existence of the church, but on what the church is, and only rarely on which is the true church; for when all have once come to agree as to what the church is, there will be little dispute as to which she is. We start, then, with the assumption that there is something to be called the church of Christ, and proceed at once to point out what she is.
The church of Christ, taken in its most comprehensive sense, in all states, places, and times, is, says Billuart: "Congregatio fidelium in vero Dei cultu adunatorum sub Christo capite--the congregation of the faithful, united under Christ the head, in the true worship of God." Most of the heterodox, as well as all Catholics, will accept this definition. But this definition includes the faithful who lived before Christ; as well as those who have lived since, and as those who lived and died before the incarnation could not enter into heaven before the way was opened by our Lord himself, who is the first-born from the dead, and the resurrection and the life, a definition more particularly adapted to the state of the church since the coming of Christ is needed. The church has indeed existed from the beginning; but before the Word was actually incarnated, she existed by prophecy and promise only; but Christ having come and fulfilled the promise, the church exists now in fact, in reality, for the reality foretold and promised has come. Hence St. Paul, in referring to the faithful of the Old Testament, says, "And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise"--or the fulfilment of the promise--"God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." Heb. xi. 39, 40. The church, before Christ, was incomplete, and needed further fulfilment or perfecting; the church in the state in which she exists since Christ, is the church realized, completed, or perfected. According to this state, and as the kingdom of God on earth, she is, as Billuart again defines: "Societas fidelium baptizatorum ejusdem fidei professione, eorumdem sacramentorum participatione, eodem cultu inter se adunatorum sub uno capite Christo in coelis, et sub ejus in terris vicario summo pontifice--the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments and the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and on earth under his vicar, the supreme pontiff." [Footnote 70]
[Footnote 70: Billuart, De Reg. Fid. Dissert. III. De Eccl. Art. I.]
{789}
All will not accept the whole of this definition; but all will agree that the church is a society embracing all the faithful, united in the true worship of God under one head, Jesus Christ in heaven; but the heterodox deny the union under one head or one regimen on earth. But what is a congregation or society of the faithful under Christ its head? A congregation or society under one head implies both unity and multiplicity, either many made one, or one manifesting or explicating itself in many, and in either sense supposes more than the heterodox in general understand by the church. The faithful, congregated or associated under one head, Christ, are one body, for Christ is the head of the congregation or society, not merely of the individuals severally; but the heterodox generally, in our times at least, make the church consist solely of individuals aggregated to the collective body of believers, because already united as individuals by faith and love to Christ, as their head; which supposes Christ to be the head of each individual of the church, but not of the church herself. According to this view, men are regenerated outside of the society or church, and join the church because supposed to be regenerated or born again, not that they may be born again. The church in this case is simply the aggregate of regenerated persons, and derives her life from Christ through them, instead of their deriving their life from Christ the head through her. The one view makes the church a general term, an abstraction, performing and capable of performing no part in the regeneration and sanctification of souls; the other makes the church a reality, a real existence, living a real life not derived from her members, and the real medium through which our Lord carries on his mediatorial work; and therefore union with her is not only profitable to spiritual life, but necessary to its birth in the soul, and therefore to individual salvation. This must be the case if we suppose Christ to be the head of the congregation or society called the church, and of individuals severally only as they are affiliated to her.
There is, we suspect, a deeper philosophy in the church than the heterodox in general are aware of. "The church," it was said in this magazine, in one of the essays on The Problems of the Age, "is the human race in its highest sense," that is, the regenerated human race, the human race in the teleological order, not in the order of natural generation, which is simply cosmic and initial. This supposes in the church something more than individuals, as, indeed, does society itself. With nothing but individualities brought together there is no society, there is only aggregation, because there is no unity, nothing that is one and common to all the individuals brought together. In all real society there is a social principle, a social life, in which individuals participate, but which is itself not individual, nor derived from the individuals associated. Thus in every real nation, not a pseudo nation made up of the forced juxtaposition of distinct and often hostile communities, there is a real national life. {790} An insult to the nation each one feels is an insult to himself; and if the existence of the nation is threatened, every one in whose heart throbs the national life, rises, and all, in the fine Biblical expression, "march as one man" to the rescue, prepared to save the nation or die in its defence.
The unity of social life is still more manifest when we come to the race. We are aware of the old quarrel between the nominalists and conceptualists on the one hand, and the old realists on the other; but we disposed of that controversy in the article entitled An Old Quarrel, in the Magazine for May of last year, and established, we think, the reality of genera and species, while we denied that of abstractions, or simple mental conceptions. If we deny the reality of genera and species, we must deny the fact of generation, and the Catholic dogmas of the unity of the species and of original sin. If all men have not proceeded from Adam by way of natural generation, there can be no unity of the species; and if no unity of the species, there can be no original sin, which is "the sin in which we are born," the sin of origin, the sin of the race, transmitted by natural generation from Adam to all his posterity. To deny the reality, of the species is to deny this, is to deny generation, that we are born in any sense of Adam; to deny generation is to deny regeneration; and to deny regeneration is to deny the whole Christian or teleological order. We cannot then logically be nominalists or conceptualists and Christian believers at one and the same time.
We do not pretend that the species subsists without individualization any more than we do that the individual can subsist without the species. What we contend for is, that in every individual there is that which is not individual, but distinguishable from the individuality, which is common to all the individuals of the species, and which in men binds all men, from the first to the last, together in the unity of their natural head or progenitor. The species is more than the individual, operates in the individual, determines his specific nature, and separated from which the individual is nothing; but the species does not subsist without individualization, and could not be explicated by natural generation if not individualized. Yet the entire race was individualized in Adam.
We can now understand the assertion that "The church is the human race in the highest sense," the regenerated race in its progenitor, its unity and reality, therefore in its real head, in the supernatural order. The head of the regenerated race, or the race in the supernatural or teleological order, is Christ himself, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Hence the apostle says, (i Cor. xv.,) "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive." The apostle, in this fifteenth chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, draws a parallel between the first Adam and the last Adam, which must hold good be the race as born of the first Adam, and the race as born anew of the last Adam; and, therefore, the race born anew must hold to Christ in the order of regeneration a relation strictly analogous to that borne by it in the natural or initial order, to the first Adam. The difference is, that in the natural order the race is explicated by natural generation, and in the supernatural or teleological order by the election of grace. But the relation between the members and the head is no less real in the one case than in the other, and we live in the order of regeneration, if born again, the life of Christ as really and truly as in the natural order we live the life of Adam. The church, then, proceeds as really through grace from Christ, the supernatural head, as the race itself proceeds from Adam, the natural head.
{791}
This view of the church is sustained by Saint Augustine, who represents Christ as both the head and the body of the church, and says Christ and his members are the whole Christ--totus Christus. If we view the church in her origin, her principle, her life, that is, in her head and soul, she is Christ himself; if we view her as the congregation or society of the faithful, made one in the unity of the head, the church is the body of Christ. Hence, Saint Paul teaches, (Colossians i. 18,) that Christ "is the head of the body; the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead;" "the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands being supplied with nourishment and compacted groweth unto the increase of God." (Ib. ii. 19.) "Christ is the head of the church; he is the Saviour of his body." (Eph. v. 23.) "Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." (i Cor. xii. 27.) "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph. v. 30.) "And if one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it." (i Cor. xii. 26.) Nothing can more clearly or unequivocally assert Christ as the head of the church, the church as the body of Christ, or the members of the church as members of his body and members of one another, or the perfect solidarity of Christ and the church, and of the members of the church in Christ, and with one another, as implied in the definition of the church quoted from Billuart.
The men of the world do not understand this, because they recognize no existence but that of individual things, and have no conception of unity. What transcends the individual or particular, is, for them, an empty word, or a pure abstraction, therefore nothing. They have never asked themselves how individuals or particulars can exist without the general or universal, nor how there can be men without the generic man. What has not for them a sensible existence is, indeed, no existence at all. They seem never to reflect that, if there were no supersensible reality, there could be no sensible reality. The sensible is mimetic, depends on the intelligible or noetic which it copies or imitates. Take away the intelligible or non-sensible, and the sensible would be a mere appearance in which nothing would appear--less than a vain shadow.
We have defined the church in her origin, principle, and life, to be Christ himself; as the society of the faithful, to which all the faithful are affiliated, to be the body of Christ. But the principle on which we have asserted this union of the faithful with Christ, applies only to those who are in the order of regeneration; for in that order only is Christ our head, or are we, as individuals, affiliated to him, and included in him, as the father of regenerated humanity; and hence they who die unregenerated, suffer the penalty of original sin and of such actual sins as they may have committed. How then do we enter that order? By the new birth; by being born of Christ into it, as we enter the natural order by being born of Adam. The Pelagians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists reject the distinction of the two orders, and recognize no regenerated humanity; the Calvinists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Evangelicals, etc., hold that we are translated from the order of nature into the order of grace by the direct, immediate, and irresistible operation of the Holy Ghost. {792} But the Holy Ghost, in his immediate operations, is God acting in his divine nature, and the medium of our regeneration is God in his human nature, the Man Christ Jesus, who, on this view, would be superseded as the mediator of God and men. The order of regeneration originates in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, or God in his human nature, not in God in his divine nature; and therefore, to be in that order, we must be born of God in his humanity. If we could be regenerated by the Holy Ghost, or God in his divine nature alone, without the intervention of God in his human nature, or the Man Christ Jesus as the medium or mediator, the incarnation would go for nothing, and we should be made by the new birth, sons of God in his divine nature; since neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost assumed flesh; as the eternal Word is himself the son of God, and God as he is God; which, we need not say, is simply impossible and absurd. By the hypostatic union with the Word, man becomes God in his personality, but not in his nature, for the human nature remains always human nature. The two natures remain, as we are taught in the condemnation of the Monophysites, for ever distinct in the unity of the one divine person. By regeneration we are elevated, indeed, to be sons of God, but sons of God by participation with the Eternal Son in his human, not in his divine nature. We are made joint-heirs with Christ, and sons of God by adoption, not by nature.
There is no act conceivable without principle, medium, and end. In the creation of man and the universe, the three persons of the holy and indivisible Trinity concur, but in diverse respects--the Father as principle, the Son or Word as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consuminator. In the regeneration, which St. Paul calls a "new creation," the whole Trinity also concur, the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end, consummator, or sanctifier; but here it is the Son in his human nature, not in his divine nature, that is the medium; for St. Paul says, "There is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Son, in his human nature, is the medium of the whole order of regeneration, or of our redemption, new birth, and return to God as our final cause or last end. We must then be begotten of him in his humanity by the Holy Ghost, as the condition of being born into the regeneration, and becoming members of the regenerated human race. The heterodox overlook this fact, and even when asserting the incarnation, leave it no office in the regeneration and sanctification of souls, or, at best, no continuous or permanent office. According to them, the mediatorial work was completed when Christ died on the cross, at least, when he ascended into heaven; and now the salvation of souls is carried on by the Holy Ghost without any medium or any participation of God in his human nature, as if one person of the indivisible Trinity could operate alone, without the concurrence of the other two! This, if it were possible, would imply the denial of the unity of God, and the assertion of the three persons of the Godhead as three Gods, not three persons in one God. The heterodox, the supernaturalists, as well as the naturalists, really deny the whole order of grace as proceeding from God in his human nature, its only possible medium, and hence the reason why they so universally shrink from calling Mary the Mother of God, and accuse of idolatry the devotion which Catholics pay to her. {793} Though the eternal Word took the flesh he assumed from her, yet, as that flesh is not in their view the medium of our spiritual life, they cannot see in her, more than in any other pure and holy woman, any connection with our regeneration, and our spiritual or eternal life. They cannot see that, in denying her claims, they virtually reject the whole Christian order.
The difficulty, though not the mystery, disappears the moment we recognize the sacramental principle, which it was the prime object of the Reformers to eliminate from the Christian system. In the definition of the church, she is said to be "the society of the faithful baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments." The sacraments are all visible signs signifying, that is, communicating grace to the recipient. Among these sacraments is one, which is the sacrament of faith, the sacrament of regeneration, that is, baptism, in which we receive the gift of faith, and are born members of Christ's body, and united to him as our head, and as the head of the regenerated race. In baptism we are regenerated, born into the supernatural order, the kingdom of heaven, and have the life of Christ infused by the Holy Ghost into us, so that henceforth we become flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, one with him, and one with all the faithful in him, as really united to him in the spiritual order, as we are to Adam in the natural order, and derive our spiritual life from him as really as we derive from God, through Adam, our natural life. This is what we understand St. Paul to mean when he says, "It is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit." The sacraments are all effective ex opere operato, and through them the Holy Ghost infuses the grace special to each, when the recipient opposes no obstacle to it. Infants are incapable of offering any obstacle, and are regenerated by baptism in Christ and joined to him. In the case of adults who have grown up without faith, the prohibentia, or obstacles to faith, must be removed, by reasons that convince the understanding and produce what theologians call fides humama, or human faith, such faith as we have in the truth of historical events; but this faith is wholly in the natural order, although it embraces things in the supernatural order as its material object, and does not at all unite us to Christ as our head. It brings us, when faithful to our convictions, to the sacrament of baptism, but cannot introduce us into the order of regeneration; the faith that unites us to the body of Christ, and through it with Christ himself, or divine faith, is the gift of God, and is infused into the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sacrament of baptism itself. [Footnote 71]
[Footnote 71: Theologians generally teach that an act of supernatural faith, elicited by the aid of a special transient grace, precedes the infusion of the habit of faith.--Ed. Catholic World.]
Hence, in her present state, only the baptized belong to the society called the church of Christ, and only the baptized are united as one body under Christ, their head in heaven, or under his vicar on earth. The satisfaction or atonement made by our Lord to divine justice, though it was made for all, and is ample for the sins of the whole world, avails individuals, or becomes practically theirs, only as through baptism, vel in re, vel in voto, they are really united to Him, and are in Him as their head, as we were in Adam; and hence the dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, judged by the world to be so harsh and illiberal, is founded in the very nature and design of the church, of the whole mediatorial work of Christ, and in the very reason of the incarnation itself. {794} To say a man can be saved out of the church, is saying simply a man can be saved out of Christ, without being born of Him,--as impossible as for one to be a man and, in humanity, without being born of Adam. The justice, the sanctity, the merits, the life of Christ, can be really ours, only as we are really assimilated to His body, and are in Him as our living head, our Father in the order of grace; and hence it was not idly or inconsiderately, that St. Cyprian, one of the profoundest of the fathers, said: "He cannot have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother." It lies in the very nature of the case.
The other sacraments are channels of grace from the head to the body and its members; and are all means of sustaining or restoring the life begotten in baptism, preserving, diffusing, or defending the faith, bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord, augmenting the life and compacting the union of the body of Christ, and solacing individuals in their illnesses, and comforting and strengthening souls in their passage through the dark valley of death. The sacramental system is complete, and provides for all our spiritual wants. Baptism initiates us into the life of Christ; the Holy Eucharist nourishes that life in us; Penance restores it when lost by sin; Confirmation gives strength and heroic courage to withstand and repel the assaults of Satan; Orders provide priests for offering the unbloody sacrifice, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ, intercessors for the people, teachers, directors, and defenders, in the name of Christ, of the Christian society; Matrimony institutes and blesses the Christian family; and Extreme Unction heals the sick, or sustains, strengthens, and consoles the departing. Indeed, the sacraments meet all the necessities of the soul, in both the natural and the supernatural orders, from its birth to its departure, and even leave us not on the brink of the grave, but accompany us till received into the choir of the just made perfect.
The medium of all sacramental grace is the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the sacraments are the media through which the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows out from him, the Fountain,--the grace that begets the new life, justifies, sanctifies, and makes pleasing to God, we mean,--is infused by the Holy Ghost into the soul, and constitutes alike the vital principle of the individual, and of the whole body, quickening and sustaining each. In rejecting sacramental grace, the heterodox separate the individual soul, and also the church herself, from all real communion or intercourse with Christ, or God in his human nature, and accept the seminal principle of rationalism, into which we see them everywhere falling. They dissolve Christ, and render the Word efficient only in his divine nature. The sacraments are the media of our union with God in his human nature, through which the hypostatic union is, in some sort, repeated in us, or made by the Holy Ghost practically effectual to the justice and sanctity of believers, and the perfecting of the church, which is the body of Christ; and as this grace, in its principle and medium, is Christ himself, all who are born of it are born of him, and the life which they live in and by it is the one life of God in his humanity. {795} Looking at the church, in what theologians call her soul, she is literally and truly the man Christ Jesus, and looking at her as the whole congregation of the faithful, she is the body of Christ, and related to him as the body to the soul. It is this intimate relation of the church to God in his human nature, that led Moehler to represent the church as in some sort the continuation on earth, in a visible form, of the Incarnation; and she is certainly so closely united to his divine personality, that we may say truly, that he is her personality, as really as he is the personality of the flesh he assumed and hypostatically united to himself. Perrone says that, if we exclude from this view all pantheistic conceptions, it is scriptural, and, moreover, sustained by the fathers, especially St. Athanasius, who says, in writing of the Incarnation, "Et cum Petrus dicat: certissime sciat ergo omnis domus Israel, quia et Dominum eum, et Christum fecit Deus, hunc Jesum quern vos crucifixistis: non de divinitate ejus dicit, quod Dominum ipsum et Christum fuerit, sed de humanitate ejus, quae est UNIVERSA ECCLESIA, quae in ipso dominatur et regnat, postquam crucifixus ipse est: et quae erigitur ad regnum coelorum, ut cum illa regnet, qui seipsum pro illa exinanivit et qui induta servili forma, ipsam assumpsit." [Footnote 72] Christ, in his humanity, is the universal church, which rules and reigns in him. We cannot study the great fathers of the church too assiduously, and we wish we had earlier known it. The doctrine we are trying to set forth is there.
[Footnote 72: Edit. Maur. opp. tom. i. p. 2, p. 887; apud Perrone, Praelect. Locis Theolog. p. I. c. 2; De Anima Ecclesiae, Art. I.]
There is nothing here that favors pantheism: 1. Because the hypostatic union is by the creative act of God, as much so as the creation of Adam. 2. Because, although God is really the church, regarded in her soul, it is God in his human, which is for ever distinct from his divine nature, and therefore in his created nature. 3. Because the Word was incarnated in an individual, not in the species, as some rationalists dream, save as the species was individualized in the individual nature he assumed; and, 4. Because, though Christ is identically the soul, the informing principle, the life of the church, the individuals affiliated to the body of the church retain their individuality, their human personality, and therefore their own free-will, personal identity, activity, or their character as free moral agents. Not all individuals apparently affiliated to the body of the church are really assimilated to her, and vitally united to the body of Christ. They pertain to the society externally, but not by an inward union with Christ, the head and soul. They are, as St. Augustine says, "in not of the church," as the dead particles of matter in the human body which receive not, or have ceased to receive, life from it, and are constantly flying or cast off. Gratia supponit naturam. All the operations of grace presuppose nature, and nature has always the power to resist grace. Without grace nature cannot concur with grace; yet even they who have been born again, and have entered into the order of regeneration, are always able to fall away, or back, practically, into the natural order. Not every individual in the church is assimilated to her, nor every one who is assimilated to her will continue to the end. But she herself survives their loss and remains always one and the same body of Christ.
{796}
We have dwelt at great length on this view of the church, not because we have any special partiality or aptitude for mystic theology, but because we have wished to show that the church is not something purely external and arbitrary. We hold that all the works of God are real, and have a real and solid reason of being in the order of things which he has seen proper to create. He does nothing in the supernatural order, any more than in the natural order, without a reason, and a good and valid reason. We have wished to get at the reality, and to show that Catholicity is not a sham, a make-believe, a reputing of things to be that are not; but a reality, as real in its own order as the order of nature itself, and, in fact, even more so, as nature is mimetic, and Catholicity, to borrow a term from Plato, is methexic, and participates of the divine reality itself. All heterodox systems are shams, unphilosophical, sophistical, and incapable of sustaining a rigid examination. Their abettors do not, and dare not, reason on them. The age supposes Catholicity is no better, is equally unsubstantial, unreal, dissolving and vanishing in thin air at the first glance of reason. We have wished to show the age its mistake, and to let it see that Catholicity can bear the most thorough investigation, and that it has nothing to fear from the most rigid dialectics. We do not pretend to divest it of mysteries, or to explain the mysteries so as to bring them within the comprehension of our feeble understandings, but to show that the church, with all her attributes and functions, has a reason in the divine mind and in the order of things of which we make a part, and is a real, inward life, as well as an outward form.
From the view of the church which we have presented, it is easy to deduce her attributes. She is in some sort, according to St. Athanasius, the human nature of Christ, or Christ in his humanity, and he is her divine personality, for his humanity is inseparable from his divine person. That she is one, follows, necessarily, from the unity of Christ's person, from the fact that, in her soul, she is Christ and, in her body, is his body. Her unity is the unity of Christ himself, and the unity of the life she lives in him. There are individual distinctions and even varieties of race or family among men in the natural order, but all men are men only in that they are one in the unity of the species. Jesus Christ is not only the individual man Christ Jesus, but also in the order of regeneration the species, as Adam was both an individual man and the entire species in the order of genesis or generation. The church as growing out of the incarnation, and, in some sense, continuing it, and in her body composed of individuals born of him and affiliated to him, must necessarily be one, one in her faith, one in her sacraments, one in her worship, one in her love, one in the life that flows through her, animates and invigorates her, from the one Christ, who is her forma, or informing principle, as the soul is the informing principle of the body--anima est forma corporis, as the holy Council of Clermont defines. Diversity in any of these respects breaks the unity of the body and interrupts communion with the head, and the communion of the body with the soul, whence is derived its life. It is therefore all Christians have always held heresy and schism to be deadly sins, and the most deadly of all. They not only sever those guilty of them from the body or external communion of the church, but from her internal communion, from Christ himself, the only source of supernatural and divine life. {797} There is not only the grossest ingratitude and baseness in heresy and schism, but there is spiritual death in them. By them we die to Christ as, in the natural order, we should die to Adam, or lose our natural life, if we were deprived of our humanity or cut off from communion with its natural head. It is not from bigotry or intolerance that the church regards heresy and schism with horror; it is because they necessarily separate the soul from Christ, and destroy its spiritual life; because they reject Christ, and crucify him afresh. It is so in the very nature of the case, and she can no more make it not so, than the mathematician can make the three angles of a triangle not equal to two right angles. It is not, therefore, without reason that the church has always insisted that to keep the unity of the faith is the first of Christian duties, or that St. Paul bids St. Timothy to keep the deposit, and to hold fast the form of sound words; for without the faith it is impossible to please God. We know men may err without being heretics; we know that invincible ignorance, an ignorance not culpable in its cause, excuses from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but there is no invincible ignorance where one may know the truth, but will not; and invincible ignorance itself cannot regenerate the soul, and elevate it to the supernatural order, which can be done only by faith given in baptism.
The church is holy, holy in her doctrines, her worship, her life, and in her living members. This follows necessarily from the fact, that in her soul she is Christ, and her body the body of Christ. She is holy as he is holy, and because he is holy, as she is one because he is one. Doubtless all individuals in her communion are not holy; for men may, as we have seen, be in the church and not of the church. Regeneration, or the infused habits of faith, justice, and sanctity, do not destroy one's individuality, or take away one's free-will; men may, if they will, profane the sacraments, eat or drink unworthily, even fall from grace, and become gross sinners against God and criminals before the state. These are not holy, but the reverse; yet all who are born again, and are united by a living bond to the church, may derive, if they will, life from Christ through her, and all who do so are holy in her holiness, as she is holy in the holiness of Christ. His life, the life of God in his humanity, is their life.
The attempt to disprove the sanctity of the church from the bad conduct of some, if you will many, of her members, overlooks the real character of the church, supposes her to be simply an aggregation of individuals, living only the life she derives from them; and it also starts from the false assumption that grace is irresistible and inamissible. Poor Luther, in the morbid state into which he fell in his convent, could find relief only in assuming that, as he had once been in grace, he must be still in grace, and sure of salvation; for grace, once had, can never be lost, however one may sin after having received it. Yet this doctrine was false, and but for his morbid, half insane state of mind, he would never have entertained it for a moment. Protestantism sprang from the diseased state of Luther's soul. A sad origin.
The church is visible as well as invisible. This also follows necessarily. The internal life of the church is invisible, hidden with God; but the body of the church is visible, as was the body of Christ when on earth. {798} The church is composed, as we have seen, of body and soul, and everybody living on earth in space and time, is by its own nature visible, and would not be body if it were not. The body of the church is composed of individuals united in the profession of the same faith, and in the participation of the same sacraments, under one head, and is therefore, since the individuals are visible, a visible body. The whole analogy of the case supposes her to be both invisible and visible, as are all the sacraments, which are visible signs or media of invisible grace. The church is the medium through which the soul is regenerated and comes into communion with Christ, the head, and derives life from his life; and how if not visible could we know where to find her, or be able to approach her sacraments, and through them be born again, and be united in the supernatural order to Christ, as in the natural order we are united to Adam? No: the church is as a city set on a hill, and cannot be hidden; and is set on a hill, made visible, that all may behold her, and flock within her walls.
The church is indefectible. This follows from the fact that Christ himself whose body she is, is indefectible, and dies no more, but ever liveth and reigneth. No matter whether you call the rock on which he said he would build his church, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, Peter, the truth that Peter confessed, or Christ himself, her indefectibility is equally asserted. He himself in every case, is the chief corner-stone, is, in the last analysis, the rock; and the church cannot fail, not because men may not fail, but because he who is her support, her life, cannot fail, since he is God, and as truly God in his human nature as in his divine nature. The heterodox of all shades, however they may err as to what she is, hold, as we have seen, that the church is, in some form, indefectible.
The church is authoritative. Her authority is the authority of Christ; and his authority is the authority of God in his human nature. "All power is given unto me," he said, "in heaven and in earth," and therefore is he exalted to be "King of kings and Lord of lords," so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. The church is Christ in his humanity, and his authority is hers, for it is in and through her that he exercises his authority. To resist her, is to resist him, and to resist him is to resist God. "He that despiseth you, despiseth me, and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." This is no arbitrary authority, or authority resting solely on an external commission or appointment. It is internal and real in the church, as the body of Christ, because he is in her, lives in her, and governs in and through her. It is, then, no light thing to resist the authority of the church; for to do so, is not to resist the authority of fallible men, but the authority of God--is to resist the authority of the Holy Ghost himself. The age feels it, and seeks to justify itself in rejecting the church by denying the Divine sovereignty, or that God has any rightful authority over the creatures he has made. It demands liberty, and M. Proudhon, a man of iron logic, maintained that to assert liberty in the sense this age asserts it, we must dethrone God, and annihilate belief in his existence. "Once admit the existence of God," he said, "and you must admit the authority claimed by the church, the papal despotism and all." We have met this denial of the Divine sovereignty in the essay on Rome and the World, in the current volume of the Magazine, and proved, we think conclusively, that God is sovereign Lord and Proprietor of all his works. {799} Very few people are willing to avow themselves atheists, however atheistic may be their speculations; and most people have, after all, a lurking belief that God is sovereign, and has plenary authority over all the creatures he has made. Concede this, and the authority of the Son is conceded; and if the authority of the Son is conceded, that of the church cannot be denied or questioned.
The church is infallible. This follows necessarily, if our Lord himself is infallible, which it were impious to doubt. Our Lord is God in his human nature indeed; but God in his human nature is God no less than in his divine nature. In this is the mystery of the incarnation--that God should humble himself, assume the form of a servant, annihilate himself, as it were, become man, and be obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and yet be God, have all the fulness of the Godhead dwell in him bodily; this is a mystery that only God himself can fathom. We know from revelation the fact, and can understand its relation to our redemption, justification, sanctification, and glorification; but it remains a fact before which we do, and always must, stand in awe and wonder. If Christ is God, God in his humanity and also in his divinity, for he includes both natures in the unity of his divine person. He has all the attributes of divinity, while he has also all the attributes of humanity, what the fathers mean when they say, "he is perfect God and perfect man." He knows all things, and can do all things, and can neither deceive nor be deceived. He is the divine personality of the church, who is not the individual man, but the human nature hypostatically united to himself, as we have seen from St. Athanasius. His life is her life, and she must, therefore, be infallible as he is infallible. He who is infallible as God is infallible lives in her, and she lives, breathes, moves, and acts by him and in him. How then, can she be not infallible? How could she err? She could no more err as to the truth that lives and speaks in her than God himself, for she is all in him, and in her soul indistinguishable from him. She is not infallible by external appointment or commission alone, but really so in herself, in her own life and intelligence. We speak of the soul of the church, but as her soul and body are not separated or separable, she must be equally infallible in her body, or as the body of Christ, who is the life and informing principle of the body. The body of the church, by virtue of its union with Christ is, and must be, infallible. But the body of the church is a society of individuals; and is it meant that all individuals in the communion of the church are infallible? There is in the church regenerated humanity which, though it subsists not without individualization, is not individual. This regenerated humanity is united to Christ, its regenerator, and derives its life from him. In all the individuals affiliated or assimilated to the body of the church, there is both this regenerated humanity and their own individuality. As regenerated humanity, no one can err, but in their individuality all individuals do or may err more or less. Reason is in all men, and reason within its sphere is infallible; but all men are not infallible in their understanding of what is reason, or what reason teaches. Individuals who are in the communion of the church, so far as made one with her body and one with the indwelling Christ, are infallible in his infallibility; but in their individuality they are not infallible. {800} Hence, when it is said the church is infallible, the meaning is, that she is infallible in the universal, not in the particular, or in the sense in which she is one, not in the sense in which she is many. Our faith as individual believers is infallible only in believing with the church, what she in her unity and integrity believes and teaches.
The church, we should have said before, is catholic. This follows from her unity and completeness. Catholic means the whole, or universal; and since the church is one, and is the body of Christ, who is "the way, the truth, and the life," she cannot but be catholic. She is catholic, in the words of the catechism, "because she subsists in all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth." She is catholic because in her soul she is Christ himself; because in her body she is the body of Christ; because she is the whole regenerated human race in their head, the second Adam. Having Christ, who, in the order of regeneration, is at once universal and individual, she has the whole, has the universal life of Christ, has all truth, for he is the truth itself and in itself, and is the only way of salvation; for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved--neither is there salvation in another. She subsists in all ages, prior to the incarnation, as we have seen, by prophecy and promise; since the incarnation, in fact and reality; and has authority to teach all nations, and is set to make all the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of God and his Christ. Whatever is outside of her is outside of Christ, and is necessarily non-catholic.
The church is apostolic. This means that she is endowed with authority to teach and govern, not merely that she descends in the direct line from the apostles, the chief agents in founding and building her up, though, of course, that is implied in her unity and catholicity in time no less than in space. It means that she is clothed with apostolic authority; that is, authority in doctrine and discipline. This authority is distinguishable from the sacerdotal character conferred in the sacrament of orders. Men may have valid orders, be real priests, and actually consecrate in schism, or even heresy, as is the case with the clergy of the schismatic Greek Church and some of the Oriental sects. But these schismatic or heretical priests have no apostolic authority, no authority to teach or govern in the church, no authority in doctrine or discipline, and all their sacerdotal acts are irregular and illicit. This authority, which we have seen the church derives from the indwelling Christ, and possesses as his body, we call the apostolate. It is inherent in Christ himself, and is and can be exercised only in his name by his vicar, the supreme pontiff, and the pastors of the church under him and in communion with him. All the arguments that prove the visibility of the church prove equally the visibility of the apostolate, or, as Saint Cyprian calls it, the episcopate; all the arguments that prove the unity of the church prove the unity of the apostolate or episcopate; and, therefore, with those which prove the visibility of the church, prove a visible centre of authority, in which the episcopate takes its rise, or from which the whole teaching and governing authority under Christ radiates and pervades the whole body. The visible church being one, demands a visible head; for if she had no visible head, she would lack visible unity; and would be, as to her teaching and governing authority, not visible, but invisible. Hence Saint Cyprian, after asserting the episcopate or apostolate, held by all the bishops in solido, says, that the unity might be made manifest, or the apostolate be seen to take its rise from one, our Lord established one cathedra and gave the primacy to Peter. {801} Saint Cyprian evidently assumes the necessity of a visible centre of authority, so that we may as individual members of the church, or as persons outside the church seeking to ascertain and enter her communion, know what is her authority and where to find it. Hence in the definition of the church we began by saying she is defined to be "the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united inter se in the participation of the same sacraments, and in the true worship of God, under Christ the head in heaven, and under his vicar, the supreme pontiff on earth." The papacy is the visible origin and centre of the apostolate, as Christ is himself its invisible origin and centre, and is as essential to the being of the visible church as are any of the attributes we have seen to be hers. To make war on the supreme pontiff is to make war on the church, and to make war on the church is to make war on Christ, and to make war on Christ is to make war on God and man.
It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the constitution of the hierarchy or external organization of the church, which, to a certain extent, is and must be a matter of positive law, and which, though having its reason in the very nature and design of the church as founded by the incarnation, lies too deep in that mystery of mysteries for us to be able to ascertain it by way of logical deduction. The idea of one living God includes the three persons in the Godhead; the idea of the incarnation includes the church; and the idea of the church includes unity, sanctity, catholicity, visibility, indefectibility, infallibility, apostolicity; and the idea of apostolicity includes authority in its unity and visibility; and, therefore, the papacy is the visible origin and centre of the authority of the church as the visible body of Christ. So far we can go by reasoning from the ideas, principles, or data supplied by revelation. The rest depends on authority, and is not ascertainable by theological reason.
We know from the New Testament that our Lord has set in his church some to be apostles, some to be pastors, etc.; but these are all included in the supreme pontiff, who possesses the priesthood, the episcopate, the apostolate, the pastorate, in their plenitude; and all, except what is conferred in the sacrament of orders, is derived directly or indirectly from him, as its origin and source under Christ, whose vicar he is. This is enough for our present purpose, and it is worthy of remark that always has the papacy been the chief point of attack by the enemies of the church; for they have had the sagacity to perceive that it is the keystone of the arch, and that if it can be displaced, the whole edifice will fall of itself. It is the pope that heresy and schism today war against, and the whole non-catholic world seek to deprive him of the last remains of his temporal authority, because they foolishly imagine that the destruction of the prince will involve the annihilation of the pontiff. It is the pontificate, and Garibaldi avows it, not the principality, that they seek to get rid of. But they may despoil the prince; they cannot touch the pontificate. He who is King of kings and Lord of lords has pledged his omnipotence to sustain it. Our Lord has prayed for Peter that his faith fail not.
{802}
It were easy for us to cite the commission of our Lord to the teaching church, and from that to argue her authority to govern under him, and her infallibility in teaching; but we have had another purpose in view. We have wished, by setting forth the relation of the church to the incarnation, and deducing from that relation her essential attributes, to show how the church can be holy and yet individual Catholics can be unholy, and how individuals, all individuals in their individuality, can be fallible and err, and yet she be infallible. The heterodox argue against the church from the misconduct of individual Catholics. They ransack history and collect a long list of misdeeds, crimes, and sins, of which Catholics have been guilty, and then ask, How can a church who has done such things be holy or be the church of God? In the first place, we answer, none of the things alleged have been committed by the church, but, if committed at all, it has been by individuals in the church; and in the second place, even rebirth in baptism does not, as we have seen, destroy the personality of the individual, or take away his free-will. He can sin after grace as well as before, and glorification is promised only to those who persevere to the end. The church is holy by her union with Christ, as his body; individuals are so by their assimilation to her, and by living through her the life of Christ.
It is asked again how, if the church is infallible, can individuals be fallible; and if individuals are fallible, and do not unfrequently err, how can the church be infallible? How from any possible number of fallibles get an infallible? The answer is in principle the same. The church is infallible, for he who assumed human nature, and whose body she is, is her personality, for she is individualized in the individual human nature he assumed; but the individual is not in himself infallible, for he retains his own personality with all its limitations and imperfections. The infallibility is in Christ, and proceeds from him to the regenerated race, not to the individual member in his individuality. Our Lord assumed human nature without its human personality, though human nature individualized; but individuals assimilated to Christ through the church retain their proper human personality, and are infallible only in the church, only so far as they think and speak her thoughts, and believe what she believes and teaches. The pope himself is not personally infallible, but at most only when speaking ex cathedra, in union with the mind of the church, and declaring her faith. Hence some theologians maintain that the papal definitions themselves are reformable till expressly or tacitly accepted by the universal church, though we do not agree with them; for we regard the pope as the vicar of Christ in teaching as well as in governing, and, therefore, as expressing, when speaking officially, the infallible faith of the universal church. For us, in the language of St. Ambrose, ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia. Whenever the church speaks, she speaks the words of her Lord, and is infallible and authoritative; whenever the individual speaks in his own individuality, he is fallible, and his words, as his, have no authority. The church can then be infallible and individuals fallible. Consequently, any arguments drawn from the errors and misdeeds of individuals have no weight against the church.
{803}
If non-Catholics would pay attention to this, they would write fewer books, publish fewer essays, and preach fewer sermons, against the church, for they have hitherto alleged little or nothing against her but the errors and bad conduct of churchmen. When they wish for examples of the purest and most heroic sanctity, they are obliged to seek them in her communion, and the most anti-Catholic among them feel that they may assert without proof any doctrine they happen to like, if the church has taught and teaches it. It is remarkable with what confidence and mental relish they assert particular doctrines for which they feel that they have her authority. Is it because a secret conviction of her infallibility lurks in the minds of all who are Catholic by their reminiscences? and would they not be far less enraged against what they call "the seductions of Rome," if it were not so, if they did not feel themselves constantly tempted to return to her communion? They resist her influence, in fact, only by a constant effort, by main strength.
But it is time to bring our remarks to a close. We have opened a vast subject, one to which we could do scant justice in a magazine article, even if we were otherwise able, as we are not, to treat it not altogether unworthily. No mortal can speak worthily of the church of Christ, in which the power, the wisdom, the justice, the love, and the mercy of God, of the indivisible and ever Blessed Trinity, in all their infinitude are, so to speak, embodied and displayed. Even God himself cannot do more or better than he has done in the church, for he gives in her himself, and more than himself even he cannot give. How great, how glorious, how awful is the church! How great, how exceeding great, the loving-kindness of God, who permits us to call her our mother, to draw life from her breasts, and to rest on her bosom! We love the church, who is to us the sum of all things good and holy, and we grieve daily over those who know her not; we grieve when her own children seem to treat her with levity or indifference; we are pained to the heart when we hear men, who have souls to save, for whom Christ died, and whom she longs to clasp to her loving bosom, railing against her, calling her "the mystery of iniquity," and her chief pontiff "the man of sin." We seem to see our Lord crucified afresh on Calvary, and to hear her sweet voice pleading, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
--------
{804}
Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.
Chapter IV
Four years are past since the incidents above related took place. The scene is neither at Athens nor at Corinth, but at Nauplia. [Footnote 73] Here, suddenly, a new school had been opened by a lady, which attracts a vast concourse of disciples. The lady is young, eloquent, beautiful, and the favor she meets with is almost unbounded. Powerful protectors are around her; and philosophy and science bow to her, though they hardly as yet determine to what school the doctrines she propounds belong. Among those who are attracted by her fame is a lady, just arrived from Athens to be enrolled among the followers of the new Aspasia, or Leontium as she is more generally called. Lotis is herself no mean or obscure daughter of those muses which this new professor has worshipped to such advantage. But Lotis is disappointed in her expectations; the entrance to the academy is guarded with such jealous care, that admission is not easy; in vain she sends her name as daughter of a citizen of Athens of some distinction in the philosophic world; strangers, and above all those from Athens, are carefully excluded. Yet the city continues to derive new lustre from this new propounder of exalted themes; and those who were fortunate enough to gain admission to her lectures, rang with applauses of the lucid doctrines taught; they compared her eloquence to that of Plato, her music to that of Amphion; and contended that, while all other sects were tending to the destruction of ancient truth, this lady demonstrated its existence in every nation, and brought it home to the heart and feelings. Lotis heard of nothing throughout the city but praises of the new exponent of wisdom who had travelled throughout the earth, and had learnt to harmonize the teachings of all philosophies.
[Footnote 73: The Napoli di Romania.]
"'Tis strange she will not admit you," said Lydon, a young disciple, to whom Lotis was complaining of her exclusion; "and the more to be regretted as she is preparing for departure; it seems she did not intend to stay so long at Nauplia in the first place; she was waiting for her protector, who had business at Athens. They will both set out for Rome when he returns."
"And is he expected soon?"
"It is not easy to say. Magas is uncertain in his movements; he often acts from mere caprice. He may be here shortly."
"Magas!"
"Yes, do you know him?"
"I knew one of that name formerly. He was of noble birth; of Athens."
"Likely it is the same. He has been travelling for these few years past, and in his travels picked up this philosopheress, who has so enchanted him."
"Is she really so beautiful as they say?"
{805}
"Words cannot describe her. She has the attractions of Venus with the majesty of Minerva. When in repose, her calm dignity demands our homage; but when she speaks, her features are lighted up with an expression which defies description; her eyes, deeply set as they are, dazzle with the intensity of their fire; she does not declaim, she speaks in a low yet in a distinct and earnest tone which all hear, words which seem to have been gathered at the very fount of wisdom. There is an indescribable melody in her voice, which melts the heart, and communicates the persuasion that she knows more than she says; that she holds back something as fearing the light would be too bright for our unaccustomed eyes: she infuses the desire to know the truth, the certainty that there is a truth; yet somehow, on reflection, the truth itself seems withheld, and we hope next time to hear a fuller exposition of that which no one doubts she possesses."
"What is her doctrine?"
"It would take herself to expound it, in the clear, musical, irresistible manner with which she enforces conviction. I am afraid I should only spoil her discourse by repeating it."
"Try, nevertheless."
"She teaches that truth is one--an immutable, eternal essence, containing within itself all good, all beauty, all harmony, all being; and that in it resides the creative power.
"She says this creative power is an emanation of the Deity, or rather the Deity himself made manifest. It is termed the Word.
"And the Word or creative power made the universe--made all those orbs which we see move around us by night and by day; and moreover, breathed life and intelligence into organic forms, that they might become conscious of, and enjoy existence. But for man she claims a higher life; she says he was created in harmony with the eternal essence, that he might know and enjoy a higher life than that of animals, but that he disregarded the conditions on which this higher life was held, and by violating them brought the disorder into the world which now oppresses it. Man is the only animal unfaithful to his instincts; the only one who does not trust his own nature; the only one who is unhappy in the non-realization of his aspirations."
"But what remedy does she propose?"
"She does not propose one; she declares one. She says the Word became flesh, to communicate to man the Holy Spirit he had lost, and by losing which his misery was occasioned. This Holy Spirit comes alike from the Eternal Essence, and from the Word which is its manifestation, and purifies the heart of man, and so restores it to its primal state, or to a more holy one yet."
"But how is this to be effected for ourselves?"
"That is just where she disappoints us. She gives glowing descriptions of truth, beauty, beneficence in every sort of manifestation, material and mental, and shows how the aspirations of the poets prove that a sublime ideal raises man above the practical existence we see him lead every day; but how to obtain this Holy Spirit we have not yet learnt."
"Has she given no rule?"
"None but material ones; and according to her, material rules are only types of spiritual ideas. She says, as the body has assumed too much sway, it must be subdued by violence--that is, by maceration, fasting, and such like. She says passion must give way to reason, and the affections be rightly governed. This we knew before; but what we want is 'power' to carry out in practice the precepts we admire; or as she would say, 'how to obtain that Holy Spirit which is to live in us and direct us.'"
"And you think she knows how?"
{806}
"I feel satisfied she does; we all feel satisfied she does. Her words come forth as oracles; we question not--we believe. She has been in India, in Cathay, in Tartary; and everywhere she says the same truth lies hidden under some material form, and needs but the light of the Holy Spirit to pierce through the veil and make itself manifest."
"Would I could see her!"
"You would be carried out of yourself. Yesterday she spoke on Light. Material light, with her, is but a type of a far higher light, which penetrates the spirit with beauty, harmony, and love, and makes it pure, holy, eternal, and capable of receiving true knowledge. Light, material light, was created at the same moment that intelligences and harmonies of a high spiritual order sprang to life, to enjoy it. She went off into something of this strain;
God said: Let there be light! Effulgent light! As the wild watery mass chaotic lay; While o'er it did the Holy Spirit move. Obedient to the WORD, the glorious day Sprang into being; and effulgent light, Intelligence all bright Of seraph holy and of angel sweet, In glorious ecstasy their Maker greet, And the deep bliss of their creation prove.
Spirits of beauty, spirits of power Then wakened to welcome the wonderful hour That gave them existence, with light for their dower! All dazzling the brightness illuming space, Investing all matter with beauty and grace-- All lustrous the beauty, the grandeur divine That did in full glory resplendently shine: The Truth--though revealed-- As in Type, yet concealed. The rays of the sun are less dazzling to sight, Than the sparkles begemming the pinions so bright Of the spirits who bowed at that mystical shrine, When first with an impulse or instinct divine They blent their sweet voices throughout every sphere, To worship in love that doth worship endear.
Entrancing and entranced in love to greet, These beauteous spirits kindled into glow, And shed their lustre all that chaos through. And as those rays the harder mediums greet, The sleeping atoms wake as from a trance; The sparks electric shoot in mystic dance, Rousing the power inert to onward move; Impelled by rays of light, create by love, Light's piercing gleams evolve material day And angels' glances brighten up the clay; Refracted rays, the types of virtue bright, Enkindled atoms with their dazzling light;
Splendor and brightness caught from angels' wings, Infuse their action; and such beauty springs From forth the atoms that, erst void and dark, Had lain awaiting th' ethereal spark, That now material beauty wears a grace In which a type of heaven itself we trace. All hail! material light! Emblem of seraph bright. Glowing with intelligence, the mirror of our God, Still dost thou bless our sense. Vesture of Omnipotence; Still with thy visions bright Dost dispel our darksome night, Thou image bright of heaven, on earth's else dreary sod.
"You must hear her to catch her fire, to glow with her enthusiasm. I give her words imperfectly; but her action, her delivery, the way in which she sounds the very depths of her hearers' hearts--that I cannot give you an idea of."
"I must hear her, Lydon; cannot you smuggle me into her presence?"
"I will try, but it will be difficult; the old door-keeper, stationed to keep her company select, will not take a bribe; and a list of names is daily handed to him of those who are to be admitted. But I will try."
"Has she ever been to Athens?"
"I think not. I have heard her speak of Egypt, India, and Cathay, [Footnote 74] but of Athens, never. To-morrow I will try to get admission for you as a resident of the city."
[Footnote 74: The ancient name for China.]
But neither Lydon, nor Lotis, nor any disciple was to be admitted on the morrow. The report was, that Leontium was ill, very ill; a sudden attack of one of those autumnal fevers to which Nauplia is subject, rendered her unable to appear in public. As days went on, the accounts became even more unfavorable; her delirium alarmed her attendants, who spoke of her being given over to the furies, and seemed to shrink from their duties. The arrival of Magas, after a few days, enforced attendance on the lady; the fever left her; but, weak and subdued, and laboring under the influence of the evil tongues of her attendants, Leontium awoke, to find much of her former prestige taken from her--nay, she even fancied Magas himself grown cold. {807} But this last was a mere fancy; the intellectuality, the poetic fire with which she was endowed, and which never left her, animated her features unconsciously, and the pallor and loss of flesh were more than compensated for by the ethereal expression which exalted her countenance to something beyond the human, albeit there were times when it became a question whether the genius that animated them were of Elysium or Tartarus. Magas paid homage to the mind, and was held captive; he asked not whence proceeded the charm that entranced him, he yielded to its influence, and was blest; the altered tone he attributed to the effects of fever; and the signs of mental disturbance, reported by the attendants, were laid to the account of the delirium usually attending such fever; he little dreamed that it was the mind acting on the body, not the body acting on the mind, that caused the derangement. . . .
Chapter V
Lotis was a woman, with a woman's curiosity and a woman's pertinacity. She was one who had risen superior to the prejudices of her age and nation. She reverenced, nay, she worshipped greatness; but greatness, with her, meant power of intellect, strength of character, genius; thus, herself a free woman, she had not disdained to form an intimacy with a slave, when, in that slave, she recognized superior qualities. She had been the pupil of Chione in poetry, music, and eloquence, and had been aware of the passion Magas entertained for the beautiful slave. She was curious to see who had replaced her image in his heart; for she remembered enough of Magas to feel assured that, to ensure his constancy, he must worship as well as love; as also, that it required a woman of commanding genius to hold his mind in bonds.
Therefore was it, that she set a watch upon the house that contained the famed Leontium, that she diligently informed herself of her convalescence, and sought to know her daily movements.
One day, she heard that the lady's litter was being borne from the house to outside the city. Hastily she commanded a litter to be got for herself, and desired the bearers to follow whithersoever the other litter was borne. This was not, however, altogether so easy a matter; for the litter was no sooner out of the city gates, than the bearers proceeded rapidly across the plains for upward of a mile and a half, when they entered on a more sandy district. Gray, craggy rocks, of a dreary aspect, utterly devoid of verdure, began to hem in the prospect, and, at length, the bearers set down the litter in a heap of ruins of very astonishing character. Large stones, measuring twelve or fifteen feet in length, four or five in width, and of an equal length, rough and unhewn, were built into walls, without mortar, in the most solid manner, the walls being from twenty to twenty-five feet thick. Ruined gateways of unequal size, one looking toward Argos, the other northward, toward the mountain, peculiar in shape and construction, attested a workmanship of a race who had long since disappeared, since their work was modelled on another form than that which is termed Grecian, and was beyond the physical strength of the present race. Evidently, it was a citadel in ruins. {808} The site, an abrupt rock, commanding the adjacent country, was admirably fitted for the purpose; but the city it was to protect, the inhabitants to whom it was to guarantee security, where were they to be found? The enclosure, about seven hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and sixty broad, was nearly filled with rubbish, or rather with stupendous stones; and outside of the enclosure all traces of the former city were completely obliterated. It was difficult to account for the invalid lady's choice of such a site for her meditation; but certain it is, she got out, clambered over the stones, motioned her attendants to keep themselves at a distance, and disappeared within the enclosure.
Lotis was now at a loss what to do. She descended from her litter; but to plunge at once into that unknown abyss of sand and ruin, she had hardly courage. Then what excuse could she frame for intruding? Hesitatingly she proceeded; but curiosity got the better of every other feeling; she climbed up the ruined citadel and looked down. It was not possible! yes, it was true--it could be no other! There, seated on a fallen column, leaning against the ruined arch, sat--Chione, the very picture of despair!
To descend softly, so as not to alarm her--to glide to her side as gently as the rugged pathway would allow, was the next idea, and this Lotis accomplished, though with some difficulty; she stood beside her former friend, unseen, unheard. Chione's distraction was too intense, her reverie too deep; her eyes were turned upward, tearless from the very depth of her emotion, and her hollow voice sounded at intervals but these sad words:
"My God! to know thee only by my loss! My God! can it be possible? My God! may I never, never love thee again? Thou first, thou fairest, thou only love!"
The despair of these accents, the deadly pallor of Chione's cheeks, the attitude, the site, the recollection of the past, struck a pang through the frame of Lotis; her tongue seemed to cling to the roof of her mouth; in her excitement she could but advance one step, lay her trembling hand on her friend's shoulder, and utter one word, "Chione!"
The lady started, and gazed earnestly at the form before her. It was some minutes before she spoke; when she did so, the tone of her voice was very low and soft; she simply said, "And what brings Lotis to the ruins of Tiryns?"
"To see the famed philosopher of the east. Three weeks have I been in the city, awaiting an introduction. This morning I followed the litter, that I might at least see the celebrated lady who has made all Nauplia ring with her name."
"And you are punished for your curiosity by finding only Chione."
"I should have been yet more earnest, had I known it was Chione I was seeking. Your disappearance made a great sensation among your friends, and none missed you more than myself. You had bidden me hope, after that day at the temple, that our intercourse was to be renewed, but my hope was cheated. Why did you leave without telling me you were going?"
"I did not know it myself. My mistress disposed of me to a friend of hers at Corinth. I was taken away in the night."
"And how came you with Magas again?"
"I led a dreary life at Corinth. The people I was with were good enough, but unlettered, and the woman was entirely given to housekeeping. She put a distaff into my hands, and thought badly of me that I would not spin from morning to night. I could not; my heart had been devoted to philosophy, to poetry, to art; this drudgery revolted me, though, as I said, the people were good, and of the true religion."
{809}
"And what religion was that?" asked Lotis, with a smile.
"Nay, ask me not; I cannot tell you now. I will tell you how I got away, or rather was forced away. One day, when on a errand for my mistress, I encountered Magas, and he seized me. He would hear no remonstrance; his boat was in the bay; he hurried me off. I went with him through Asia, visiting the temples, the schools of philosophy, the halls of art, the academies of science. Magas has been to me a patron, friend, encourager; he has brought me out, induced me to appear in public; and in fact, done all he could to make my life an elysiun. Impetuous as he is, to me he has been faultless."
"And yet you are not happy?"
"Happy! Happiness is scarcely a plant of this earth, Lotis!" sighed Chione.
"Then why have you spoken as if it were attainable? Why have you fired all hearts, in speaking to them of an indwelling God, who is to restore all things to more than primitive order and happiness? Why have you called the human soul the divine image, if it is not capable of happiness?"
"I said not that the human soul is not capable of happiness. I said only that supreme happiness is not a plant of this earth, and that is true. The earth has been cursed through the fault of man; it cannot yield us this happiness."
"But you give your hearers to understand that, through some means or other, happiness may dwell in our hearts; therefore I say, Chione, why dwells it not with you? Have you the means, or have you not?"
"I had," said Chione sadly. "Once I had the means of happiness; once I was blest. I have forfeited the means, I am happy no more."
"Are they not recoverable then?" asked Lotis.
"I hardly know. Sometimes I think on certain conditions they might be; but those conditions, those conditions, O Lotis!"
"Are they so very hard?"
"They bid me renounce all! This life of excitement, this love of Magas, this applause of the multitude, this luxury of existence--to become again a slave. You know it well, Lotis, I am but a runaway slave."
"Your philosophy must be false, Chione, which implies such hard conditions. Slavery is a necessary evil, I grant; but still it is an evil to such as you, whose mind is exalted above the level of the herd. I cannot think that you are bound to slavery by any divine law; and as for human law, why, if you can keep clear of that, as you have done lately, who on earth will blame you?"
"You do not understand, you cannot understand how I am bound. Magas, you are aware, is not--can never be my husband."
"Well, I don't see why he might not be, if he paid the purchase-money for you, freed you, and then married you."
"He is too proud to marry a nameless slave!"
"But you are not nameless; you have made yourself a name in all the cities through which you have passed. We have heard of your fame at Smyrna, at Halicarnassus, at Ephesus, at--"
"Stop! Unconsciously you are paining me. It was at Ephesus I received the blow which is destroying me.'
{810}
"At Ephesus!"
"O Lotis! if I could but tell you of the hollowness of this philosophy the world so much admires; if I dared speak to you of the light that shineth in darkness, though the darkness comprehendeth it not; if my lips were not profane; if my life were not blighted like a tree struck by lightning; then I might tell you of that wisdom which is not in man's speech, but 'in the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' But I dare not; I am unhallowed, unworthy. Leave me, Lotis. Seek another teacher."
"What did you hear at Ephesus that has so unnerved you?"
"I will tell you, though to you the words will bear no meaning. But my heart must ease itself. I was walking through the streets, when I observed a crowd entering one of those temples frequented by the new sects. I entered with the rest. The preacher was dilating on the necessity of his auditors having the spirit of Christ, which if ye have not, he said, ye are none of his. He then proceeded to show how the world's sin had crucified the Lord of heaven; how essential purity, truth, virtue are to the Christian character; how every Christian's body was to become the temple of the Holy Spirit; and how impossible it was for the Holy Spirit to dwell with aught unholy, or aught not in union with God. Hence the absolute necessity of sanctity to be wrought in us by the power of God, to whom we must surrender our being. He then went on to speak of such Christians as had apostatized; and the words, he used burned into my heart like words of fire. 'It is impossible,' he said, 'for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.' [Footnote 75] I heard no more; I fainted away. When I waked from my trance, I was at home, and Magas was standing over me. His anxiety respecting my health scarce enabled him to suppress his anger at my having been seen in a Christian assembly."
[Footnote 75: Hebrews vi 4-6.]
"That I can easily believe; nor do I see what you wanted with such low company, who have evidently bewitched you; for what need you care what was said in such an assembly as that?"
"What indeed, what indeed! O my God! that it should come to this, that I dare no longer pronounce thy name, that I should be ashamed of thee!" And Chione buried her face in her hands, and gave way to an excessive fit of weeping.
Lotis was puzzled. "Is this the great philosopher?" thought she; "the new Sappho, the Aspasia of the age? Is it illness or magic that has worked this mental derangement? for derangement it evidently is."
Lotis bent over her friend, endeavoring to console her, yet not knowing how, when she was suddenly relieved by the sound of horses' hoofs. She climbed to the top of the ruins. Magas was in sight. She returned to whisper the news to Chione. Chione rose, dried her tears by a strong effort of her will, and prepared to greet her protector with a smile. He was evidently in an ill-humor.
"What sudden caprice is this? What possessed you to come out here to a city of the past? A fine place this for a sick woman!"
"You said you were going to Argos. I knew not that you would require my presence."
{811}
"I was going to Argos, but was hindered when setting out; and when I inquired for you, and heard you had come hither, I put off my journey to learn what attraction could draw you to this place."
"The attraction of the past. Who raised these walls, Magas?"
"How should I know? The Cyclops, I presume. Who else could have lifted these immense stones? What have you to do with who raised them or who destroyed them?"
"The place was in harmony with my feelings, with the meditation I was about to make on the transitory nature of human grandeur. It will be my next theme."
"You might choose a livelier one to advantage, Leontium," said Magas. "You are destroying your own mind by cherishing these gloomy thoughts. If, however, you want a fallen city to meditate on, Mycenae is but seven miles ahead; and there you may ruminate, if you will, on all the incidents of the Homerian epoch; and the wild, savage waste may be the savage emblem of the royal Agamemnon; while the ruins, which are absolutely magnificent, may prove another puzzle--as to how the mighty stones that form the edifices could have been lifted there. I measured two myself. They were immense. One single stone extends across a wide passage, and rests on the massive walls, forming the lintel. Another extends from the lintel to the interior of the edifice. It is thirty feet long, five feet thick, and twenty in width. It is becoming fashionable to doubt the existence of the Cyclops. But, I'd like to know, if they did not lift these stones into their places, who did do it? No mortal men of the present race would be able. So I go in for the old tradition of Cyclopean workers.
"Ah! Lotis, I did not observe you. I inquired for you at Athens, but was told you were travelling. Did you come out here with Leontium? Our secret will be safe with you, of course?"
"Of course," answered Lotis. "But I think you are somewhat too near Athens for safety from other tongues. You will not be able to keep the secret long from the public."
"I shall not try. We are bound for Rome shortly, and there we shall be safe. I would purchase safety, if safety were to be bought; but the mistress who held my Chione will not part with her right. Many offers have been made to her. She still hopes to reclaim Chione, and will not listen to money proposals. When you return, you may renew the offers, if you will favor me so much. I should prefer a legal release, if I could get one; but it matters little."
"You have not told me to whom I am to apply."
"I thought you knew. To the Lady Damaris."
"Why, she is said to be a Christian."
"That does not invalidate her rights."
"No; but it causes me surprise that it should be herself who refuses freedom to Chione. I know many cases where she has freely granted it."
"She is an enigma, and so are all these people. It is not worth talking about. I don't believe she'd prosecute her claim to Chione, did she know Chione and Leontium were one and the same person."
During this colloquy Chione had sat motionless as a statue, and had seemed so absorbed in her own thoughts as to be unmindful of what was said. On its being ended, she rose, and requested Magas to call for her litter. When he had departed to do so, she turned to Lotis, and said earnestly:
{812}
"Lotis, when you return to Athens, will you do me a favor?"
"Assuredly, I will."
"Let the Bishop Dionysius know, in confidence, who Leontium is, and what I said to you of Ephesus today."
"The Christian bishop?"
"Yes."
"For what earthly purpose?"
"No matter. Magas is coming back. Do you promise me?"
"I do."
"And you will keep the secret to all the rest of the world?"
"I will."
"Even to Magas?"
"Yes."
"Thanks, thanks. We will return home now."