VII. An Ultramontane Son
Greifmann and Gerlach had driven to the railway station. The express train thundered along. As the doors of the carriages flew open, Seraphin peered through them with eyes full of eager joy. He thought no more of the fate that threatened him as the sequel of his father’s arrival; his youthful heart exulted solely in the anticipation of the meeting. A tall, broad‐ shouldered gentleman, with severe features and tanned complexion, alighted from a coupé. It was Mr. Conrad Gerlach. Seraphin threw his arms around his father’s neck and kissed him. The banker made a polite bow to the wealthiest landed proprietor of the country, in return for which Mr. Conrad bestowed on him a cordial shake of the hand.
“Has your father returned?”
“He cannot possibly reach home before September,” answered the banker. The traveller stepped for a moment into the luggage‐room. The gentlemen then drove away to the Palais Greifmann. During the ride, the conversation was not very animated. Conrad’s curt, grave manner and keen look, indicative of a mind always hard at work, imposed reserve, and rapidly dampened his son’s ingenuous burst of joy. Seraphin cast a searching glance upon that severe countenance, saw no change from its stern look of authority, and his heart sank before the appalling alternative of either sacrificing the happiness of his life to his father’s favorite project, or of opposing his will and braving the consequences of such daring. Yet he wavered but an instant in the resolution to which he had been driven by necessity, and which, it was plain from the lines of his countenance, he had manhood enough to abide by.
Mr. Conrad maintained his reserve, and asked but few questions. Even Carl, habitually profuse, studied brevity in his answers, as he knew from experience that Gerlach, Senior, was singularly averse to the use of many words.
“How is business?”
“Very dull, sir; the times are hard.”
“Did you sustain any losses through the failures that have recently taken place in town?”
“Not a farthing. We had several thousands with Wendel, but fortunately drew them out before he failed.”
“Very prudent. Has your father entered into any new connections in the course of his travels?”
“Several, that promise fairly.”
“Is Louise well?”
“Her health is as good as could be wished.”
“General prosperity, then, I see, for you both look cheerful, and Seraphin is as blooming as a clover field.”
“How is dear mother?”
“Quite well. She misses her only child. She sends much love.”
The carriage drew up at the gate. The young lady was awaiting the millionaire at the bottom of the steps. While greetings were exchanged between them, a faint tinge of warmth could be noticed on the cold features of the land‐owner. A smile formed about his mouth, his piercing eyes glanced for an instant at Seraphin, and instantly the smile was eclipsed under the cloud of an unwelcome discovery.
“I am on my way to the industrial exhibition,” said he, “and I thought I would pay you a visit in passing. I wish you not to put yourself to any inconvenience, my dear Louise. You will have the goodness to make me a little tea, this evening, which we shall sip together.”
“I am overjoyed at your visit, and yet I am sorry, too.”
“Sorry! Why so?”
“Because you are in such a hurry.”
“It cannot be helped, my child. I am overwhelmed with work. Harvest has commenced; no less than six hundred hands are in the fields, and I am obliged to go to the exhibition. I must see and test some new machinery which is said to be of wonderful power.”
“Well, then, you will at least spare us a few days on your return?”
“A few days! You city people place no value on time. We of the country economize seconds. Without a thought you squander in idleness what cannot be recalled.”
“You are a greater rigorist than ever,” chided she, smiling.
“Because, my child, I am getting older. Seraphin, I wish to speak a word with you before tea.”
The two retired to the apartments which for years Mr. Conrad was accustomed to occupy whenever he visited the Palais Greifmann.
“The old man still maintains his characteristic vigor,” said Louise. “His face is at all times like a problem in arithmetic, and in place of a heart he carries an accurate estimate of the yield of his farms. His is a cold, repelling nature.”
“But strictly honest, and alive to gain,” added Carl. “In ten years more he will have completed his third million. I am glad he came; the marriage project is progressing towards a final arrangement. He is now having a talk with Seraphin; tomorrow, as you will see, the bashful young gentleman, in obedience to the command of his father, will present himself to offer you his heart, and ask yours in return.”
“A free heart for an enslaved one,” said she jestingly. “Were there no hope of ennobling that heart, of freeing it from the absurdities with which it is encrusted, I declare solemnly I would not accept it for three millions. But Seraphin is capable of being improved. His eye will not close itself against modern enlightenment. Servility of conscience and a baneful fear of God cannot have entirely extinguished his sense of liberty.”
“I have never set a very high estimate on the pluck and moral force of religious people,” declared Greifmann. “They are a craven set, who are pious merely because they are afraid of hell. When a passion gets possession of them, the impotence of their religious frenzy at once becomes manifest. They fall an easy prey to the impulses of nature, and the supernatural fails to come to the rescue. It would be vain for Seraphin to try to give up the unbelieving Louise, whom his strait‐laced faith makes it his duty to avoid. He has fallen a victim to your fascinations; all the Gospel of the Jew of Nazareth, together with all the sacraments and unctions of the church, could not loose the coils with which you have encircled him.”
In this scornful tone did Carl Greifmann speak of the heroism of virtue and of the energy of faith, like a blind man discoursing about colors. He little suspected that it is just the power of religion that produces characters, and that, on this very account, in an irreligious age, characters of a noble type are so rarely met with; the warmth of faith is not in them.
“Mr. Schwefel desires to speak a word with you,” said a servant who appeared at the door.
The banker nodded assent.
“I ask your pardon for troubling you at so unseasonable an hour,” began the leader, after bowing lowly several times. “The subject is urgent, and must be settled without delay. But, by the way, I must first give you the good news: Mr. Shund is elected by an overwhelming majority, and Progress is victorious in every ward.”
“That is what I looked for,” answered the banker, with an air of satisfaction. “I told you whatever Cæsar, Antony, and Lepidus command, must be done.”
“I am just from a meeting at which some important resolutions have been offered and adopted,” continued the leader. “The strongest prop of ultramontanism is the present system of educating youth. Education must, therefore, be taken out of the hands of the priests. But the change will have to be brought about gradually and with caution. We have decided to make a beginning by introducing common schools. A vote of the people is to be taken on the measure, and, on the last day of voting, a grand barbecue is to be given to celebrate our triumph over the accursed slavery of religious symbols. The ground chosen by the chief‐magistrate for the celebration is the common near the Red Tower, but the space is not large enough, and we will need your meadow adjoining it to accommodate the crowd. I am commissioned by the magistrate to request you to throw open the meadow for the occasion.”
The banker, believing the request prejudicial to his private interests, looked rather unenthusiastic. Louise, who had been busy with the teapot, had heard every word of the conversation, and the new educational scheme had won her cordial approval. Seeing her brother hesitated, she flew to the rescue:
“We are ready and happy to make any sacrifice in the interest of education and progress.”
“I am not sure that it is competent for me in the present instance to grant the desired permission,” replied Greifmann. “The grass would be destroyed, and perhaps the sod ruined for years. My father is away from home, and I would not like to take the responsibility of complying with his honor’s wish.”
“The city will hold itself liable for all damages,” said Schwefel.
“Not at all!” interposed the young lady hastily. “Make use of the meadow without paying damages. If my brother refuses to assume the responsibility, I will take it upon my self. By wresting education from the clergy, who only cripple the intellect of youth, progress aims a death‐blow at mental degradation. It is a glorious work, and one full of inestimable results that you gentlemen are beginning in the cause of humanity against ignorance and superstition. My father so heartily concurs in every undertaking that responds to the wants of the times, that I not only feel encouraged to make myself responsible for this concession, but am even sure that he would be angry if we refused. Do not hesitate to make use of the meadow, and from its flowers bind garlands about the temples of the goddess of liberty!”
The leader bowed reverently to the beautiful advocate of progress.
“In this case, there remains nothing else for me to do than to confirm my sister’s decision,” said Greifmann. “When is the celebration to take place?”
“On the 10th of August, the day of the deputy elections. It has been intentionally set for that day to impress on the delegates how genuine and right is the sentiment of our people.”
“Very good,” approved Greifmann.
“In the name of the chief‐magistrate, I thank you for the offering you have so generously laid upon the shrine of humanity, and I shall hasten to inform the gentlemen before they adjourn that you have granted our request.” And Schwefel withdrew from the gorgeously furnished apartment.
Meanwhile a fiery struggle was going on between Seraphin and his father. He had briefly related his experience at the Palais Greifmann; had even confessed his preference for Louise, and had, for the first time in his life, incurred his father’s displeasure by mentioning the wager. And when he concluded by protesting that he could not marry Louise, Conrad’s suppressed anger burst forth.
“Have you lost your senses, foolish boy? This marriage has been in contemplation for years; it has been coolly weighed and calculated. In all the country around, it is the only equal match possible. Louise’s dower amounts to one million florins, the exact value of the noble estate of Hatzfurth, adjoining our possessions. You young people can occupy the chateau, I shall add another hundred acres to the land, together with a complete outfit of farming implements, and then you will have such a start as no ten proprietors in Germany can boast of.”
Seraphin knew his father. All the old gentleman’s thought and effort was concentrated on the management of his extensive possessions. For other subjects there was no room in the head and heart of the landholder. He barely complied with his religious duties. It is true, on Sundays Mr. Conrad attended church, but surrounded invariably by a motley swarm of worldly cares and speculations connected with farming. At Easter, he went to the sacraments, but usually among the last, and after being repeatedly reminded by his wife. He took no interest in progress, humanity, ultramontanism, and such other questions as vex the age, because to trouble himself about them would have interfered with his main purpose. He knew only his fields and woodlands—and God, in so far as his providence blessed him with bountiful harvests.
“What is the good of millions, father, if the very fundamental conditions of matrimonial peace are wanting?”
“What fundamental conditions?”
“Louise believes neither in God nor in revelation. She is an infidel.”
“And you are a fanatic—a fanatic because of your one‐sided education. Your mother has trained you as priests and monks are trained. During your childhood piety was very useful; it served as the prop to the young tree, causing it to grow up straight and develop itself into a vigorous stem. But you are now full‐grown, and life makes other demands on the man than on the boy; away, therefore, with your fanaticism.”
“To my dying hour I shall thank my mother for the care she has bestowed on the child, the boy, and the young man. If her pious spirit has given a right direction to my career, and watched faithfully over my steps, the untarnished record of the son cannot but rejoice the heart of the father—a record which is the undoubted product of religious training.”
“You are a good son, and I am proud of you,” accorded Mr. Conrad with candor. “Your mother, too, is a woman whose equal is not to be found. All this is very well. But, if Louise’s city manners and free way of thinking scandalize you, you are sheerly narrow‐minded. I have been noticing her for years, and have learned to value her industry and domestic virtues. She has not a particle of extravagance; on the contrary, she has a decided leaning towards economy and thrift. She will make an unexceptionable wife. Do you imagine, my son, my choice could be a blind one when I fixed upon Louise to share the property which, through years of toil, I have amassed by untiring energy?”
“I do not deny the lady has the qualities you mention, my dear father.”
“Moreover, she is a millionaire, and handsome, very handsome, and you are in love with her—what more do you want?”
“The most important thing of all, father. The very soul of conjugal felicity is wanting, which is oneness of faith in supernatural truth. What I adore, Louise denies; what I revere, she hates; what I practise, she scorns. Louise never prays, never goes to church, never receives the sacraments, in a word, she has not a spark of religion.”
“That will all come right,” returned Mr. Conrad. “Louise will learn to pray. You must not, simpleton, expect a banker’s daughter to be for ever counting her beads like a nun. Take my word for it, the weight of a wife’s responsibilities will make her serious enough.”
“Serious perhaps, but not religious, for she is totally devoid of faith.”
“Enough; you shall marry her nevertheless,” broke in the father. “It is my wish that you shall marry her. I will not suffer opposition.”
For a moment the young man sat silent, struggling painfully with the violence of his own feelings.
“Father,” said he, then, “you command what I cannot fulfil, because it goes against my conscience. I beg you not to do violence to my conscience; violence is opposed to your own and my Christian principles. An atheist or a progressionist who does not recognize a higher moral order, might insist upon his son’s marrying an infidel for the sake of a million. But you cannot do so, for it is not millions of money that you and I look upon as the highest good. Do not, therefore, dear father, interfere with my moral freedom; do not force me into a union which my religion prohibits.”
“What does this mean?” And a dark frown gathered on the old gentleman’s forehead. “Defiance disguised in religious twaddle? Open rebellion? Is this the manner in which my son fulfils the duty of filial obedience?”
“Pardon me, father,” said the youth with deferential firmness, “there is no divine law making it obligatory upon a father to select a wife for his son. Consequently, also, the duty of obedience on this point does not rest upon the son. Did I, beguiled by passion or driven by recklessness, wish to marry a creature whose depravity would imperil my temporal and eternal welfare, your duty, as a father, would be to oppose my rashness, and my duty, as a son, would be to obey you. Louise is just such a creature; she is artfully plotting against my religious principles, against my loyalty to God and the church. She has put upon herself as a task to lead me from the darkness of superstition into the light of modern advancement. I overheard her when she said to her brother, ‘Did I for an instant doubt that Seraphin may be reclaimed from superstition, I would renounce my union with him, I would forego all the gratifications of wealth, so much do I detest stupid credulity.’ Hence I should have to look forward to being constantly annoyed by my wife’s fanatical hostility to my religion. There never would be an end of discord and wrangling. And what kind of children would such a mother rear? She would corrupt the little ones, instil into their innocent souls the poison of her own godlessness, and make me the most wretched of fathers. For these reasons Miss Greifmann shall not become my wife—no, never! I implore you, dear father, do not require from me what my conscience will not permit, and what I shall on no condition consent to,” concluded the young man with a tone of decision.
Mr. Conrad had observed a solemn silence, like a man who suddenly beholds an unsuspected phenomenon exhibited before him. Seraphin’s words produced, as it were, a burst of vivid light upon his mind, dispelling the multitudinous schemes and speculations that nestled in every nook and depth. The effect of this sudden illumination became perceptible at once, for Mr. Gerlach lost the points of view which had invariably brought before his vision the million of the Greifmanns, and he began to feel a growing esteem for the stand taken by his son.
“Your language sounds fabulous,” said he.
“Here, father, is my diary. In it you will find a detailed account of what I have briefly stated.”
Gerlach took the book and shoved it into the breast‐pocket of his coat. In an instant, however, his imagination conjured up to him a picture of the Count of Hatzfurth’s splendid estate, and he went on coldly and deliberately: “Hear me, Seraphin! Your marriage with Louise is a favorite project upon which I have based not a few expectations. The observations you have made shall not induce me to renounce this project unconditionally, for you may have been mistaken. I shall take notes myself and test this matter. If your view is confirmed, our project will have been an air castle. You shall be left entirely unmolested in your convictions.”
Seraphin embraced his father.
“Let us have no scene; hear me out. Should it turn out, on the other hand, that your judgment is erroneous, should Louise not belong to yon crazy progressionist mob who aim to dethrone God and subvert the order of society, should her hatred against religion be merely a silly conforming to the fashionable impiety of the age, which good influences may correct—then I shall insist upon your marrying her. Meanwhile I want you to maintain a strict neutrality—not a step backward nor a step in advance. Now to tea, and let your countenance betray nothing of what has passed.” He drew his son to his bosom and imprinted a kiss on his forehead.
The millionaires were seated around the tea‐table. Mr. Conrad playfully commended Louise’s talent for cooking. Apparently without design he turned the conversation upon the elections, and, to Seraphin’s utter astonishment, eulogized the beneficent power of liberal doctrines.
“Our age,” said he, “can no longer bear the hampering notions of the past. In the material world, steam and machinery have brought about changes which call for corresponding changes in the world of intellect. Great revolutions have already commenced. In France, Renan has written a Life of Christ, and in our own country Protestant convocations are proclaiming an historical Christ who was not God, but only an extraordinary man. You hardly need to be assured that I too take a deep interest in the intellectual struggles of my countrymen, but an excess of business does not permit me to watch them closely. I am obliged to content myself with such reports as the newspapers furnish. I should like to read Renan’s work, which seems to have created a great sensation. They say it suits our times admirably.”
The brother and sister were not a little astonished at the old gentleman’s unusual communicativeness.
“It is a splendid book,” exclaimed Louise—“charming as to style, and remarkably liberal and considerate towards the worshippers of Christ.”
“So I have everywhere been told,” said Mr. Conrad.
“Have you read the book, Louise?”
“Not less than four times, three times in French and once in German.”
“Do you think a farmer whose moments are precious as gold could forgive himself the reading of Renan’s book in view of the multitude of his urgent occupations?” asked he, smiling.
“The reading of a book that originates a new intellectual era is also a serious occupation,” maintained the beautiful lady.
“Very true; yet I apprehend Renan’s attempt to disprove to me the divinity of Christ would remain unsuccessful, and it would only cause me the loss of some hours of valuable time.”
“Read it, Mr. Gerlach, do read it. Renan’s arguments are unanswerable.”
“So you have been convinced, Louise?”
“Yes, indeed, quite.”
“Well, now, Renan is a living author, he is the lion of the day, and nothing could be more natural than that the fair sex should grow enthusiastic over him. But, of course, at your next confession you will sorrowfully declare and retract your belief in Renan.”
The young lady cast a quick glance at Seraphin, and the brim of her teacup concealed a proud, triumphant smile.
“Our city is about taking a bold step,” said Carl, breaking the silence. “We are to have common schools, in order to take education from the control of the clergy.” And he went on to relate what Schwefel had reported.
“When is the barbecue to come off?” inquired Mr. Conrad.
“On the 10th of August.”
“Perhaps I shall have time to attend this demonstration,” said Gerlach. “Hearts reveal themselves at such festivities. One gets a clear insight into the mind of the multitude. You, Louise, have put progress under obligations by so cheerfully advancing to meet it.”
After these words the landholder rose and went to his room. The next morning he proceeded on his journey, taking with him Seraphin’s diary. The author himself he left at the Palais Greifmann in anxious uncertainty about future events.
VIII. Faith And Science Of Progress
Seraphin usually took an early ride with Carl. The banker was overjoyed at the wager, about the winning of which he now felt absolute certainty. He expressed himself confident that before long he would have the pleasure of going over the road on the back of the best racer in the country. “The noble animals,” said he, “shall not be brought by the railway; it might injure them. I shall send my groom for them to Chateau Hallberg. He can ride the distance in two days.”
Seraphin could not help smiling at his friend’s solicitude for the horses.
“Do not sell the bear’s skin before killing the bear,” answered he. “I may not lose the horses, but may, on the contrary, acquire a pleasant claim to twenty thousand florins.”
“That is beyond all possibility,” returned the banker. “Hans Shund is now chief‐magistrate, has been nominated to the legislature, and in a few days will be elected. Mr. Hans will appear as a shining light to‐morrow, when he is to state his political creed in a speech to his constituents. Of course, you and I shall go to hear him. Next will follow his election, then my groom will hasten to Chateau Hallberg to fetch the horses. Are you sorry you made the bet?”
“Not at all! I should regret very much to lose my span of bays. Still, the bet will be of incalculable benefit to me. I will have learned concerning men and manners what otherwise I could never have dreamed of. In any event, the experience gained will be of vast service to me during life.”
“I am exceedingly glad to know it, my dear fellow,” assured Greifmann. “Your acquaintance with the present has been very superficial. You have learned a great deal in a few days, and it is gratifying to hear you acknowledge the fact.”
The banker had not, however, caught Gerlach’s meaning.
But for the wager, Seraphin would not have become acquainted with Louise’s intellectual standpoint. He would probably have married her for the sake of her beauty, would have discovered his mistake when it could not be corrected, and would have found himself condemned to spend his life with a woman whose principles and character could only annoy and give him pain. As it was, he was tormented by the fear that his father might not coincide in his opinion of the young lady. What if the old gentleman considered her hostility to religion as a mere fashionable mania unsupported by inner conviction, a girlish whim changeable like the wind, which with little effort might be made to veer round to the point of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy? He had not uttered a word condemning Louise’s infatuation about Renan. On taking leave he had parted with her in a friendly, almost hearty, manner, proof sufficient that the young lady’s doubtful utterances at tea had not deceived him.
Upon reaching home, Gerlach sat in his room with his eyes thoughtfully fixed upon a luminous square cast by the sun upon the floor. Quite naturally his thoughts ran upon the marriage, and to the prospect of having to maintain his liberty by a hard contest with his inflexible parent. He was unshaken in his resolution not to accede to the projected alliance, and, when a will morally severe conceives resolutions of this sort, they usually stand the hardest tests. So absorbing were his reflections that he did not hear John announcing a visitor. He nodded mechanically in reply to the words that seemed to come out of the distance, and the servant disappeared.
Soon after a country girl appeared in the entrance of the room. In both hands she was carrying a small basket made of peeled willows, quite new. A snow‐white napkin was spread over the basket. The girl’s dress was neat, her figure was slender and graceful. Her hair, which was wound about the head in heavy plaits, was golden and encircled her forehead as with a nimbus. Her features were delicate and beautiful, and she looked upon the young gentleman with a pair of deep‐blue eyes. Thus stood she for an instant in the door of the apartment. There was a smile about her mouth and a faint flush upon her cheeks.
“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin!” said a sweet voice.
The youth started at this salutation and looked at the stranger with surprise. She was just then standing on the sunlit square, her hair gleamed like purest gold, and a flood of light streamed upon her youthful form. He did not return the greeting. He looked at her as if frightened, rose slowly, and bowed in silence.
“My father sends some early grapes which he begs you to have the goodness to accept.”
She drew nearer, and he received the basket from her hands.
“I am very thankful!” said he. And, raising the napkin, the delicious fruit smiled in his face. “These are a rarity at this season. To whom am I indebted for this friendly attention?”
“The obligation is all on our side, Mr. Seraphin,” she replied trustfully to the generous benefactor of her family. “Father is sorry that he cannot offer you something better.”
“Ah! you are Holt’s daughter?”
“Yes, Mr. Seraphin.”
“Your name is Johanna, is it not?”
“Mechtild, Mr. Seraphin.”
“Will you be so good as to sit down?” And he pointed her to a sofa.
Mechtild, however, drew a chair and seated herself.
He had noted her deportment, and could not but marvel at the graceful action, the confiding simplicity, and well‐bred self‐possession of the extraordinary country girl. As she sat opposite to him, she looked so pure, so trusting and sincere, that his astonishment went on increasing. He acknowledged to himself never to have beheld eyes whose expression came so directly from the heart—a heart whose interior must be equally as sunny and pure.
“How are your good parents?”
“They are very well, Mr. Seraphin. Father has gone to work with renewed confidence. The sad—ah! the terrible period is past. You cannot imagine, Mr. Seraphin, how many tears you have dried, how much misery you have relieved!”
The recollection of the ruin that had been hanging over her home affected her painfully; her eyes glistened, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. But she instantly repressed the emotion, and exhibited a beautiful smile on her face. Seraphin’s quick eye had observed both the momentary feeling, and that she had resolutely checked it in order not to annoy him by touching sorrowful chords. This trait of delicacy also excited the admiration of the gentleman.
“Your father is not in want of employment?” he inquired with interest.
“No, sir! Father is much sought on account of his knowledge of farming. Persons who have ground, but no team of their own, employ him to put in crops for them.”
“No doubt the good man has to toil hard?”
“That is true, sir; but father seems to like working, and we children strive to help him as much as we can.”
“And do you like working?”
“I do, indeed, Mr. Seraphin. Life would be worthless if one did not labor. Man’s life on earth is so ordered as to show him that he must labor. Doing nothing is abominable, and idleness is the parent of many vices.”
Another cause of astonishment for the millionaire. She did not converse like an uneducated girl from the country. Her accurate, almost choice use of words indicated some culture, and her concise observations revealed both mind and reflection. He felt a strong desire to fathom the mystery—to cast a glance into Mechtild’s past history.
“Have you always lived at home, or have you ever been away at school?”
She must have detected something ludicrous in the question, for suddenly a degree of archness might be observed in her amiable smile.
“You mean, whether I have received a city education? No, sir! Father used to speak highly of the clearness of my mind, and thought I might even be made a teacher. But he had not the means to give me the necessary amount of schooling. Until I was fourteen years old, I went to school to the nuns here in town. I used to come in of mornings and go back in the evening. I studied hard, and father and mother always had the satisfaction of seeing me rewarded with a prize at the examinations. I am very fond of books, and make good use of the convent library. On Sundays, after vespers, I wait till the door of the book‐room is opened. I still spend my leisure time in reading, and on Sundays and holidays I know no greater pleasure than to read nice instructive books. At my work I think over what I have read, and I continue practising composition according to the directions of the good ladies of the convent.”
“And were you always head at school?”
“Yes,” she admitted, with a blush.
“You have profited immensely by your opportunities,” he said approvingly. “And the desire for learning has not yet left you?”
“This inordinate craving still continues to torment me,” she acknowledged frankly.
“Inordinate—why inordinate?”
“Because, my station and calling do not require a high degree of culture. But it is so nice to know, and it is so nice to have refined intercourse with each others. For seven years I admired the elegant manners of the convent ladies, and I learned many a lesson from them.”
“How old are you now?”
“Seventeen, Mr. Seraphin.”
“What a pity you did not enter some higher educational institution!” said he.
A pause followed. He looked with reverence upon the artless girl whom God had so richly endowed, both in body and mind. Mechtild rose.
“Please accept, also, my most heartfelt thanks for your generous aid,” she said, with emotion. “All my life long I shall remember you before God, Mr. Seraphin. The Almighty will surely repay you what alas! we cannot.”
She made a courtesy, and he accompanied her through all the apartments as far as the front door. Here the girl, turning, bowed to him once more and went away.
Returning to his room, Seraphin stood and contemplated the grapes. Strongly did the delicious fruit tempt him, but he touched not one. He then pulled out a drawer, and hid the gifts as though it were a costly treasure. For the rest of the day, Mechtild’s bright form hovered near him, and the sweet charm of her eyes, so full of soul, continually worked on his imagination. When he again went into Louise’s company, the grace and innocence of the country girl gained ground in his esteem. Compared with Mechtild’s charming naturalness, Louise’s manner appeared affected, spoiled; through evil influences. The difference in the expression of their eyes struck him especially. In Louise’s eyes there burned a fierce glow at times, which roused passion and stirred the senses. Mechtild’s neither glowed nor flashed; but from their limpid depths beamed goodness so genuine and serenity so unclouded, that Seraphin could compare them to nothing but two heralds of peace and innocence. Louise’s eyes, thought he, flash like two meteors of the night; Mechtild’s beam like two mild suns in a cloudless sky of spring. As often as he entered the room where the grapes lay concealed, he would unlock the drawer, examine the fragrant fruit, and handle the basket which had been carried by her hands. He could not himself help smiling at this childish action, and yet both great delicacy and deep earnestness are manifested in honoring objects that have been touched by pure hands, and in revering places hallowed by the presence of the good.
Next morning the banker asked his guest to accompany him to the church of S. Peter, where Hans Shund was to address a large gathering.
“In a church?” Gerlach exclaimed, with amazement.
“Don’t get frightened, my good fellow. The church is no longer in the service of religion. It has been secularized by the state, and is customarily used as a hall for dancing. There will be quite a crowd, for several able speakers are to discuss the question of common schools. The church has been chosen for the meeting on account of the crowd.”
The millionaires drove to the desecrated church. A tumultuous mass swarmed about the portal. “Let us permit them to push us; we shall get in most easily by letting them do so,” said the banker merrily. Two officious progressionists, recognizing the banker, opened a passage for them through the throng. They reached the interior of the church, which was now an empty space, stripped of every ornament proper to a house of God. In the sanctuary could yet be seen, as if in mournful abandonment, a large quadrangular slab, that had been the altar, and attached to one of the side walls was an exquisite Gothic pulpit, which on occasions like the present was used for a rostrum. Everywhere else reigned silence and desolation.
The nave was filled by a motley mass. The chieftains of progress, some elegantly dressed, others exhibiting frivolous miens and huge beards, crowded upon the elevation of the chancel. All the candidates for the legislature were present, not for the purpose of proving their qualifications for the office—progress never troubled itself about those—but to air their views on the subject of education. There were speakers on hand of acknowledged ability in the discussion of the doctrines of progress, who were to lay the result of their investigations before the people.
Seraphin also noted some anxious faces in the crowd. They were citizens, whose sons were alarmed at the thought of yielding up the training of their children into the hands of infidelity. And near the pulpit stood two priests, irreverently crowded against the wall, targets for the scornful pleasantries of the wits of the mob. Leader Schwefel was voted into the chair by acclamation. He thanked the assembly in a short speech for the honor conferred, and then announced that Mr. Till, member of the former assembly, would address the meeting. Amid murmurs of expectation a short, fat gentleman climbed into the pulpit. First a red face with a copper‐ tipped nose bobbed above the ledge of the pulpit, next came a pair of broad shoulders, upon which a huge head rested without the intermediary of a neck, two puffy hands were laid upon the desk, and the commencement of a well‐rounded paunch could just be detected by the eye. Mr. Till, taking two handfuls of his shaggy beard, drew them slowly through his fingers, looked composedly upon the audience, and breathed hotly through mouth and nostrils.
“Gentlemen,” he began, with a voice that struggled out from a mass of flesh and fat, “I am not given to many words, you know. What need is there of many words and long speeches? We know what we want, and what we want we will have in spite of the machinations of Jesuits and the whinings of an ultramontane horde. You all know how I acquitted myself at the last legislature, and if you will again favor me with your suffrages, I will endeavor once more to give satisfaction. You know my record, and I shall remain staunch to the last.”
Cries of “Good!” from various directions.
“Gentlemen! if you know my record, you must also be aware that I am passionately fond of the chase. I even follow this amusement in the legislative hall. Our country abounds in a sort of black game, and for me it is rare sport to pursue this, species of game in the assembly.”
A wild tumult of applause burst forth. Jeers and coarse witticisms were bandied about on every side of the two clergymen, who looked meekly upon these orgies of progress.
“Gentlemen!” Till continued, “the blacks are a dangerous kind of wild beast. They have heretofore been ranging in a preserve, feeding on the fat of the land. That is an abuse that challenges the wrath of heaven. It must be done away with. The beasts of prey that in the dark ages dwelt in castles have long since been exterminated, and their rocky lairs have been reduced to ruins. Well, now, let us keep up the chase in both houses of the legislature until the last of these black beasts is destroyed. Should you entrust to me again your interests, I shall return to the seat of government to aid with renewed energy in ridding the land of these creatures that are enemies both of education and liberty.”
Amid prolonged applause the fat man descended. The chieftains shook him warmly by the hand, assuring him that the cause absolutely demanded his being reelected.
Gerlach was aghast at Till’s speech. He hardly knew which deserved most scorn, the vulgarity of the speaker or the abjectness of those who had applauded him. Their wild enthusiasm was still surging through the building, when Hans Shund mounted the pulpit. The chairman rang for order; the tumult ceased. In mute suspense the multitude awaited the great speech of the notorious usurer, thief, and debauchee. And indeed, progress might well entertain great expectations, for Hans Shund had read a pile of progressionist pamphlets, had extracted the strong passages, and out of them had concocted a right racy speech. His speech might with propriety have been designated the Gospel of Progress, for Hans Shund had made capital of whatever freethinkers had lucubrated in behalf of so‐called enlightenment, and in opposition to Christianity. The very appearance of the speaker gave great promise. His were not coarse features and goggle eyes like Till’s; his piercing feline eyes looked intellectual. His face was rather pale, the result, no doubt, of unusual application, and he had skilfully dyed his sandy hair. His position as mayor of the city seemed also to entitle him to special attention, and these several claims were enhanced by a white necktie, white vest, and black cloth swallow‐tail coat.
“Gentlemen,” began the mayor with solemnity, “my honorable predecessor in this place has told you with admirable sagacity that the kernel of every political question is of a religious character. Indeed, religion is linked with every important question of the day, it is the ratio ultima of the intellectual movement of our times. Men of thought and of learning are all agreed as to the condition to which our social life should be and must be brought. The friends of the people are actively and earnestly at work trying to further a healthy development of our social and political status. Nor have their efforts been utterly fruitless. Progress has made great conquests; yet, gentlemen, these conquests are far from being complete. What is it that is most hostile to liberalism in morals, to enlightenment, and to humanity? It is the antiquated faith of departed days. Have we not heard the language of the Holy Father in the Syllabus? But the Holy Father at Rome, gentlemen, is no father of ours—happily he is the father only of stupid and credulous men.”
“Bravo! Well said!” resounded from the audience. Flaschen nudged Spitzkopf, who sat next to him. “Shund is no mean speaker. Even that fellow Voelk, of Bavaria, cannot compete with Shund.”
“Gentlemen, our good sense teaches us to smile with pity at the infallible declarations of yon Holy Father. We are firmly convinced that papal decrees can no more stop the onward march of civilization than they can arrest the heavenly bodies in their journeys about the sun. ’Tis true, an œcumenical council is lowering like a black storm‐cloud. But let the council meet; let it declare the Syllabus an article of faith; it will never succeed in destroying the treasures of independent thought which creative intellects have been hoarding up for centuries among every people. Since men of culture have ceased to yield unquestioning submission, like dumb sheep, to the church, they have begun to discover that nowhere are so many falsehoods uttered as in pulpits.”
Tremendous applause, clapping, and swinging of hats, followed this eloquent period. A distinguished gentleman, laying his hand upon Till’s shoulder, asked: “What calibre of ammunition do you use in hunting black game?”
“Conical balls of two centimetres,” replied Till, with no great wit.
“Yon fellow in the pulpit fires shells of a hundredweight, I should say. And if in the legislative assembly his shells all explode, not a man of them will be left alive.”
Till thought this witticism so good that he set up a loud roar of laughter, that could be heard above the general uproar.
Stimulated by these marks of appreciation, Shund waxed still more eloquent. “Gentlemen,” cried he, “no body of men is more savagely opposed to science and culture than a conventicle of so‐called servants of God. Were you to repeat the multiplication table several times over, there would be as much prayer and sense in it as in what is designated the Apostles’ Creed.”
More cheering and boundless enthusiasm. “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the speaker, with thundering emphasis and a hideous expression of hatred on his face, “the significance of religious dogmas is simply a sort of homœopathic concoction to which every succeeding age contributes some drops of fanaticism. Subjected to the microscope of science, the whole basis of the Christian church evaporates into thin mist. We must shield our children against religious fables. Away with dogmas and saws from the Bible; away with the Trinity; the divinity and humanity of Jesus, and other such stuff! Away with apothegms such as this: Christ is my life, my death, and my gain. Such things are opposed to nature. Children’s minds are thereby warped to untruthfulness and hypocrisy. In this manner the child is deprived of the power of thinking; loses all interest in intellectual pursuits, and ceases to feel the need of further culture. The times are favorable for a reformation. Our imperial and royal rulers have at length realized that minds must be set free. For this end it was as unavoidable for them to break with the church and priesthood as it is necessary for us. If we cherish our fatherland and the people, we must take the initiative. We are not striving to effect a revolution; we want intellectual development, profounder knowledge, and healthier morality.
“Shall peace be seen beneath our skies, The spirit’s freedom first must rise,”
concluded the orator poetically, and he came down amidst a very hurricane of applause.
There followed a lull. In the audience, heads protruded and necks were stretched that their possessors might obtain a glimpse of the great Shund. In the chancel, the chiefs and leaders crowded around him, smiling, bowing, and shaking his hand in admiration.
“You have won the laurels,” smirked a fellow from amidst a wilderness of beard.
“Your election to the Assembly is a certainty,” declared another.
“You carry deadly weapons against Christ,” said a professor.
Mr. Hans smiled, and nodded so often that he was seized with a pain in the muscles of the face and neck. At length, the chairman’s bell came to the rescue.
“The Rev. Mr. Morgenroth will now address the meeting.”
The clergyman mounted the rostrum, but scarcely had he appeared there, when the crowd became possessed by a legion of hissing demons.
“Gentlemen,” began the fearless priest, “the duty of my calling as well as personal conviction demands that I should enter a solemn protest against the sundering of school and church.”
Further the priest was not allowed to proceed. Loud howling, hissing, and whistling drowned his voice. The president called for order.
“In the name of good‐breeding, I beg this most honorable assembly to hear the speaker out in patience,” cried Mr. Schwefel.
The mob relaxed into unwilling silence like a growling beast.
“Not all the citizens of this town are infected with infidelity,” the reverend gentleman went on to say. “Many honorable gentlemen believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in his church. These citizens wish their children to receive a religious education; it would, therefore, be unmitigated terrorism, tyrannical constraint of conscience, to force Christian parents to bring up their children in the spirit of unbelief.”
This palpable truth progress could not bear to listen to. A mad yell was set up. Clenched fists were shaken at the clergyman, and fierce threats thundered from all sides of the church. “Down with the priest!” “Down with the accursed black‐coat!” “Down with the dog of a Jesuit!” and similar exclamations, resounded from all sides. The chairman rang his bell in vain. The mob grew still more furious and noisy. The clergyman was compelled to come down.
“Such is the liberty, the education, the tolerance, the humanity of progress,” said he sadly to his colleague.
To Be Continued.
Christian Art Of The Catacombs
By An Anglican.
“I do love those ancient ruins: We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.”—Webster (1620).
“Quamlibet ancipites texant hinc inde recessus, Arcta sub umbrosis atria porticibus; Attamen excisi subter cava viscera montis Crebra terebrato fornice lux penetrat; Sic datur absentis per subterranea solis Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.”
—Prudentius, Peristephanon, Hymn iv.
The Catacombs of Rome were the birthplace of Christian art as well as the sepulchre of the children of the early church. It is only within a few years that the modern traveller has been induced, through the careful study which the Catacombs have received, to visit these subterranean homes of the persecuted Christian, so filled with the symbolism of his faith. From 1567, the year in which Father Bosio began his investigations in the Catacombs, till the present century, some minds of kindred interest in these burial‐places of the martyrs have been fascinated with their Christian archæology, and from time to time have appeared works upon subjects connected with the Catacombs. F. Bosio spent thirty years in making explorations, and left for posthumous publication his _Roma __ Sotterranea_, which F. Severano issued from the press in Rome in 1632. Seventy years later came Inscriptionum antiquarum explicatio by the learned Fabretti, and eighteen years later still, F. Boldetti, who had devoted the greater part of his life to the examination of the monuments, inscriptions, and paintings of the Catacombs, embodied the results of his patience and industry in the great work Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii dei Santi Martiri, etc., di Roma. Then came Bottari’s wonderful studies on the Christian art of the Catacombs entitled Sculture e pitture sagre, estratte dai Cimiteri di Roma. Following in the paths opened by these zealous Italian students, M. D’Agincourt, M. Raoul Rochette, Abbé Gaume, and the eminent artist M. Perret, have contributed to the archæological literature of France several important works on the Roman Catacombs.
To the pontificate of Pius IX. belongs the honor of producing the two greatest antiquarian scholars of our age. The one, the Cavaliere Canina, has treated with remarkable acuteness and judgment of the Appian Way from the Capenian Gate to Bovillæ;(150) the other, the Cavaliere de Rossi, of the Catacombs,(151) and it is of the latter that we propose to speak. It is impossible, in the brief space that is allotted to us, to do more than select one of the interesting subjects with which his works on the Catacombs abound, and as an Anglican student of the Catholic Church, its doctrines, its discipline, and its literature, there is none which so enkindles our enthusiasm as the Christian art of the early ages, and the symbolism with which it is clothed. We approach these pictures in the dark crypts and amid the countless tombs of the first martyrs of the faith with no little reverence. We lay aside our shoes, for the ground consecrated to the early dead is sacred, and the earnest wish of our heart is to put away the prejudice of ecclesiastical education and association. With this view before us, we make the noble words of Montesquieu our own: “Ceux qui nous avertissent sont les compagnons de nos travaux. Si le critique et l’auteur cherchent la vérité, ils out le même intérêt; car la vérité est le bien de tous les hommes: ils seront des confédérés, et non pas des ennemis.”(152)
From the early ages of the church till the close of the Vth century, the Christians of Rome were driven by the sword of persecution to seek a hiding‐place wherein to exercise the holy mysteries of their religion, and to inter the remains of their dead. The vast subterranean caverns, now known as Catacombs, but more anciently called Areæ, Cryptæ, and Cœmeteria, afforded a shelter for the living and sepulture for the faithful departed. These Catacombs doubtless had their origin in the sand‐ pits, or arenariæ, arenifodinæ, which the pagans had excavated to procure materials for building purposes.(153) Suetonius(154) describes how Phaon exhorted Nero to enter one of these caverns made by excavations of sand, and Cicero alludes to the arenariæ, outside of the Porta Esquilina.(155) In the admirable essay by Michele Stefano de Rossi, entitled Analisi Geologica ed Architettonica, and annexed to the work of his brother, it is stated that the Catacombs, with perhaps the exception of two that are Jewish, are the work of the early Christians.(156)
By singular perseverance and careful discrimination in the study of documents running far back into the centuries, the Cavaliere de Rossi transferred the situation of the Catacombs of S. Callistus from the church of S. Sebastian, where they had erroneously been located, to a place a half mile nearer Rome, between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina; on the left of the road was the cemetery of S. Prætextatus, and on the right that of S. Callistus. The discovery of these hallowed crypts and sarcophagi of the early saints and popes, is of inestimable value in elucidating intricate questions of doctrine and practice, of history and tradition, which have vexed the theological world for centuries. We can scarcely resist the temptation to follow M. de Rossi through these dim cathedrals of our Christian ancestors, and reproduce a part, at least, of his masterly elucidation of their general topography, together with the history of heroic suffering and Christlike courage which the sites and names of those dark ages of danger suggest. But we must forbear, and proceed to the pictures and emblems in order to draw from them some lessons of that early fortitude, which the child of the church of the first centuries learned, as he knelt by the tomb of his companion in the faith, and looked up to the ceilings of crypts and semicircular compartments to catch by the glimmering light of smoking lamps the lineaments of some design of the religion which he professed.
The paintings of the Catacombs represent the cardinal truths of Christianity, and their types are taken from both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, as also, in rare instances, from heathen mythology. The picture, perhaps most common to the eye of the worshipper at those shrines of the martyred dead, was the representation of the Saviour in that character which exhibits the tenderest attributes of his sacred humanity, and appeals to the sympathetic element in man. Christ as the Good Shepherd conveys in its fulness of meaning what perhaps no other type of our Lord does. It is variously represented, and under different forms may refer to the foreshadowing of the Messiah’s coming in the Old Testament and its fulfilment in the New. King David had been a shepherd, and understood the needs and labors of the shepherd life, and it may be that in the days of his pastoral innocence, when the lion and the bear were the destroyers of his flock, he wrote that psalm whose tone is one of quiet and trustfulness: “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”(157) Thus, in the days of persecution, the Christian of the Catacombs might read the sacred legend of our Lord under the figure of a shepherd—bearing the sheep upon his shoulders. The Good Shepherd was pictured again as bearing a goat, and in the Catacombs of S. Callistus he stands between a goat and a sheep; the former occupies the more honorable place, the right hand, and the latter the left. Often the Good Shepherd leans on his pastoral crook, and bears in his hand a pipe. All these typical allusions refer to his character as exhibited in the Gospels. They teach the merciful watchfulness of our Lord, and the readiness with which he takes back into his fold, the church, yea, to the more honorable place by his side, the wayward and the erring. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”(158) Protestant critics have not been wanting in an attempt to trace the symbolism of this figure of the Good Shepherd to a heathen origin, and adduce as an argument in behalf of their theory that its prototype is in the Tombs of the Nasones. Even in questions of Christian archæology is exhibited the same polemical spirit which animated the accomplished English scholar, Conyers Middleton, who lent all the resources of his vast learning in classical history to prove the resemblance and identity of pagan and Catholic rites. But a more learned and reverent critic in the field of antiquities is the incomparable Marangoni, whose splendid work, Cose Gentilesche trasportate ad Uso delle Chiese, sets at rest for ever many problems which Mr. Poynder, a shallow pretender to scholarship, revived in the Alliance of Popery and Heathenism.
While the ancient heathen lived in the atmosphere of a religion which incited to cheerfulness and pleasure in the present life, it portrayed but faintly any idea of immortality. The world around him was peopled with unseen spirits. They inhabited woods and streams, and he was ever watchful to interpret the slightest signs or omens which might yield him some token to enlighten the spiritual darkness of his soul. The mythological system of the pagan was a vital reality. It accompanied him not only to the solemn festival in the temple, but on the march, in the camp, and in the market‐place. It was with him in hours of joy and of sorrow; but it penetrated not beyond the boundaries of this world. It offered no cross here, and knew nothing of the crown hereafter. There were no bright pictures of the rewards of eternity. This life was the narrow limit of his hope and his labor. Hades or the grave was dreaded because of its sunlessness. Iphigenia entreats her father for life in an impassioned appeal, which sums up the heathen’s belief:
“To view the light of life, To mortals most sweet; in death there is Nor light nor joys; and crazed is he who seeks To die; for life, though full of ills, has more Of good than death.”
Occasionally the ancient philosophers and poets give intimation of a belief in immortality, but not in resurrection, as Cicero in that eloquent longing for the day when he shall meet his illustrious friend Cato.(159) But, as we have said, of the great doctrine of the resurrection, which solved the dark enigmas of humanity, they were ignorant. The hold which classical mythology had upon the human mind was relaxed before this august mystery of the Catholic faith. Pagan temples were deserted, and the sacrificial fires on their altars extinguished.
“The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!”(160)
It is not remarkable, therefore, that delineations of the doctrine of the resurrection should not have been unusual in the church of the Catacombs. Two such representations, one from the Old Testament, and the other from the New, will exhibit the forms under which it was presented. Jonas as a type of the resurrection of our Lord has its authority from S. Matthew.(161) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Four scenes from the history of Jonas are found in the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs, sometimes represented singly, sometimes all compressed under one type. The first is the prophet being thrown into the deep, the second as swallowed by the great fish which “the Lord had prepared,” the third as “vomited out upon dry land,” the fourth as lying under the shadow of a gourd. As we have seen, according to the Gospel of S. Matthew, the swallowing of Jonas by the whale, and being cast forth in safety after three days, was typical of the burial and the resurrection of our Lord himself; and may not the pictures of the fourth series denote not only the sufferings of the individual Christian, and the care which his risen Master bestows upon him, but also the vicissitudes of the Church Catholic in every age of the world? “Sometimes she gains, sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in different parts of her history.... Scarcely are we singing Te Deums, when we have to turn to our Misereres; scarcely are we in peace, when we are in persecution; scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaced the traitor Judas.”(162) When the eye of the early Christian rested upon this fourth representation from the prophet’s life, it caught another and a more subtle signification, which is read perhaps oftener in the night of affliction and persecution than in the day of joy and prosperity. Our century, Catholic and Protestant alike, needs to study its outlines as much as the first century and the worshippers in the Catacombs. “Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”(163) Here is a beautiful symbolism of the tender mercy of our God for all who are in error and in sin. It opposes the spiritual Pharisaism of our day, and exacts meekness and charity from all men. It is the destroyer of malevolence and anger and strife.(164)
Another picture, taken from the New Testament, and of frequent representation, is the “man sick of the palsy.” It is generally regarded by Protestant writers as belonging to that series of symbolical illustrations which embody the doctrine of the resurrection; and, to give greater force to their interpretation of the painting, they place much stress upon the words of the sacred text: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” So far as we have examined copies of this picture, we are inclined to believe that it is connected with these which refer to the resurrection, except in one remarkable instance, in which it clearly symbolizes the sacrament of penance as it is taught in the Roman communion. In the Catacombs of S. Hermes is a representation of a Christian kneeling before another, which seems from its close proximity to the series of pictures of the Paralytic to point more directly to that other passage of the Gospel narrative: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” If our Lord delegated “such power unto men”—and the only logical and intelligent interpretation of the words of S. John(165) conveys this doctrine or it conveys nothing—here is a clear illustration of the power of the priesthood, which admits of no evasive contradiction, of no complicated and artificial hypothesis for the sake of escaping the recognition of the belief of the early Christians in the doctrine of sacerdotal absolution.
As resurrection is the portal of the church triumphant, so is baptism to the church militant. The former is but the complement and fulfilment of the latter. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death.”(166) The blessedness of the final consummation of the faithful departed was pictured in the symbols of the resurrection, and, as baptism is the foreshadowing of that glorious change which shall come over our vile bodies, it became a common subject of Christian art in the Catacombs. Its types are somewhat complex, and often susceptible of a twofold explanation. From the four scenes in the life of Moses, which are constantly repeated in the different Catacombs, we select that which prefigures Christian baptism—the miraculous supply of water in Kadesh. Art critics who have bestowed any attention upon the sacred pictures of the early ages place the representation of this miracle of Moses in the Catacombs of S. Agnes among the finest specimens of primitive delineation. Moses is pictured as bearing a rod, the emblem of power, with which “he smote the rock twice, and the water came out abundantly.” It is worthy of remark in passing that on vases found in the Catacombs, and on the sarcophagi as early, perhaps, as the IVth century, this same scene is depicted, and the rod, instead of being in the hand of Moses, is in that of S. Peter, and, in a few instances, the two are represented together, but the person who smites with the rod has inscribed over his head the name of S. Peter. Catholic writers on subterranean symbolism draw from it an artistic argument, which, coupled with the historical, seems an unanswerable statement of the question of the primacy of S. Peter. Quando Christus ad unum loquitur, unitas commendatur; et Petro primitus, quia in Apostolis Petrus est primus.(167) S. Peter bears the same relation to the Christian church that Moses did to the Israelitish. The one received from God the decalogue, which was to govern the actions of the Jews; the other, the keys, which were to open the kingdom of heaven. Nam et si adhuc clausum putas cœlum, memento claves ejus hic Dominum Petro, et per eum Ecclesiæ reliquisse.(168) Another type of baptism taken from the Old Testament, and capable of two expositions, is Noah in the ark. Here again, on the authority of an apostle, the church in the early ages read the history of Noah by the light of the new revelation made through the institutions founded by Christ. S. Peter, speaking of the small number saved by water at the deluge, adds: “The like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth now also save us,... by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,”(169) The ark is generally represented by a small box in which Noah sits or stands, receiving from the dove the olive branch of peace. Some writers on Christian archæology find in it a secondary meaning, regarding it as typical of the church, and the danger of those who are without the ark of safety.
Among favorite Old Testament subjects familiar to art students of the Catacombs are—Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three children of Israel in the fiery furnace at Babylon. Both are types of persecution, and of final deliverance through the miraculous interposition of God. In the cemetery of S. Priscilla, each of these pictures is to be seen, varying but slightly in the details of the portraiture. The three children appear clothed, and standing on the furnace. In a compartment beneath, the figure of a man is represented as feeding the fire with fresh fuel. Daniel, in the same cemetery, stands with outstretched arms between lions. The attitude in both these scenes from Jewish history appears to exhibit the ancient posture of the suppliant when in the act of prayer. A late writer on the Roman catacombs, the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., formerly of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, spent much time, in company with the Cavaliere de Rossi and M. Perret, the French artist, in collecting materials for his small work on the burial‐places of the early Christians in Rome. He is so trustworthy a guide in everything that appertains to their archæology, that we gladly accept the explanation which he suggests of the position of Daniel and the three children of Israel. Speaking of the ancient attitude of Christian prayer—the hands extended in the form of a cross—he says:(170) “This form, which, as we learn from the Fathers, was universal among the early Christians, is still retained in some measure by the priests of the present day in the celebration of Mass, by Capuchins and others in serving Mass, and by numbers among the poor everywhere; it is worth noticing that S. Gregory Nazianzen expressly speaks of Daniel overcoming the wild beasts by stretching out his hands, meaning, of course by the power of prayer; but the explanation might almost seem to show that S. Gregory himself was familiar with this usual way of representing him.”
The publication of the Cavaliere de Rossi, which has so greatly alarmed the Protestant controversialist, is Immagine Scelte della B. Vergine Maria, tratte dalle Catacombe Romane. It is most beautifully illustrated with chromo‐lithographic engravings, and reflects great honor on the present state of art in Rome. The purpose of the work is to exhibit the veneration with which the Christians of the Catacombs esteem the Mother of our Lord. At a period of time in the history of the church, almost apostolic, that purest of human feelings, maternal love, subdued the soul of the artist, and kindled his imagination to trace with the brush or carve with the chisel the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Son.
The Virgin Mother,
“Who so above All mothers shone, The Mother of The Blessed One,”
is depicted by the artist with a tender and devout affection. The scenes are taken from the sacred narrative of the Evangelists, and an examination of them, simply from an æsthetical point of view, will more than repay the connoisseur of art. But to the conscientious archæologist and the sober inquirer, they occupy a grave relation. They throw additional light on the writings of S. Justin, S. Irenæus, S. Cyril, S. Jerome, and Tertullian, in regard to that dogma which, of all others, has perplexed the minds of earnest men outside the Roman communion. The honor paid to the Blessed Virgin is to‐day the especial “crux” of Dr. Pusey,(171) as it is, perhaps, of many not so learned as he, but as thoroughly dispassionate in the temper of their souls toward the attainment of divine truth. The poet of The Christian Year reached a lofty strain in behalf of a long‐forgotten doctrine in the Anglican Church when he gave in his verses for the Annunciation:
“Ave Maria! blessed Maid! Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade, Who can express the love That nurtured thee so pure and sweet, Making thy heart a shelter meet For Jesus’ holy dove?
“Ave Maria! Mother blest! To whom, caressing and caress’d, Clings the Eternal Child; Favor’d beyond Archangel’s dream, When first on thee with tenderest gleam Thy new‐born Saviour smil’d.”(172)
But Keble caught from an excursion to Ben Nevis, as his biographer conjectures, the hints of that beautiful poem, “Mother out of Sight,” which was intended for the Lyra Innocentium, but through the influence of two friends, Dyson and Sir John Coleridge, was withheld by the author, and only saw the light as one of his posthumous pieces. It has a clearer doctrinal ring than the stanzas for the Feast of the Annunciation, which foreshadow something of the intercessory power of the Mother of God. It merits the high praise which Keble’s ever‐faithful friend and, for years, his gifted ally bestows upon him. We more than regret that space forbids us giving the entire poem. It loses much of its beauty and continuity by fragmentary quotation, yet, from the fourteen stanzas, we are only able to reproduce four:
“Yearly since then with bitterer cry Man hath assailed the throne on high, And sin and hate more fiercely striven To mar the league ’twixt earth and heaven. But the dread tie that pardoning hour, Made fast in Mary’s awful bower, Hath mightier prov’d to bind than we to break; None may that work undo, that Flesh unmake.
“Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore, He calls thee Mother evermore; Angel nor saint his face may see Apart from what he took of thee; How may we choose but name thy name, Echoing below their high acclaim In holy creeds? since earthly song and prayer Must keep faint time to the dread Anthems there.
“Therefore, as kneeling day by day, We to our Father duteous pray, So unforbidden we may speak An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek (As children with ‘good morrow’ come To elders, in some happy home), Inviting so the saintly host above With our unworthiness to pray in love.
“To pray with us, and gently bear Our falterings in the pure, bright air. But strive we pure and bright to be In spirit. Else how vain of thee Our earnest dreamings, awful Bride! Feel we the sword that pierced thy side; Thy spotless lily‐flower, so clear of hue, Shrinks from the breath impure, the tongue untrue.”(173)
Another poet, once an Anglican, then a Catholic priest, and now passed into the land where the mists of controversy are cleared away, attained a higher plane of truth in regard to the Mother of our Lord:
“But scornful men have boldly said Thy love was leading me from God; And yet in this I did but tread The very path my Saviour trod.
“They know but little of thy worth Who speak these heartless words to me; For what did Jesus love on earth One‐half so tenderly as thee?
“Get me the grace to love thee more; Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead; And, Mother, when life’s cares are o’er, Oh! I shall love thee then indeed.
“Jesus, when his three hours were run, Bequeathed thee from the cross to me; And oh! how can I love thy Son, Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?”
We return to these pictures of the Catacombs, and we will content ourselves with an allusion only, preferring that the reader who is interested in them should examine them through his own, rather than through another’s eyes. From a lunette in an arcosolio in the cemetery of S. Agnes is a picture which of late years has been frequently copied. It represents the Blessed Virgin with uplifted hands, seemingly in the act of intercession, with the Infant Jesus in her lap. In the cemetery of Domitilla is a picture of the Mother and Son, and four Magi offering their oblations. It may be well to remark that the Gospel history of the Adoration of the Wise Men from the East does not limit their number. We have somewhere seen it suggested that the restriction to three had its rise from the offerings presented—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Another scene of the Adoration of the Magi is given with some difference of detail. The Virgin Mother is seated holding the Divine Son in her lap, above her head appears the star which guided the wise men to where the Infant lay. To the left is a somewhat youthful person, supposed to be S. Joseph. He holds in his hand a book, which the Cavaliere de Rossi very wisely and ingeniously interprets to be the writings of the evangelical prophet Isaiah, whose prophecies concerning the Messiah had now their fulfilment in the Infant Jesus.
Such are some of the many beautiful pictures which Roman art, through the indefatigable industry of de Rossi, has given us of the Blessed Virgin as represented in early ages. To other than jaundiced eyes, calmly and candidly studying them, they reveal the light in which they were so often viewed by the suffering children of the church amid the persecutions which attended the conflict between paganism and Christianity. In teaching us to honor the Mother of our Lord—Θεότοκος—they impress us with more distinct and more tangible thoughts of the incarnation of her Son.(174) With his usual discrimination and mastery of style, Dr. John Henry Newman has well said: “The Virgin and Child is not a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, and, I will add, of her power over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be so dear to Christians and so carefully preserved? The only question to be determined is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans call the ‘undivided church’ is certain, but lately investigations have been pursued which place some of them at an earlier date than any one anticipated as possible.”(175)
One other topic remains to be considered before we pass on to some general reflections which early Christian art suggests. It was not uncommon for the artist in the first ages of the church to take subjects of heathen mythology, and invest them by his art with a Christian symbolism. The genius of Michael Angelo, so truly Catholic in taste and devout in expression, transplanted pagan forms from the broken temples of the elder civilization to the Christian churches of the new. He retouched them under the aureate light shed upon them by the reverent imagination of the Fathers. On the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are painted by this master‐hand the Sibyls, who in early times were regarded as the unconscious prophets of divine truth, uttering in their blindness crude intimations of the glory of him who was to be the fulfilment and completion of all shadows and of all types.(176) In the Catacombs may be seen a representation of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and subduing by his melodious strains the ferocity of man and beast, and drawing even from inanimate creation by the power of music the subjects of his sway. Rocks and trees yielded to his lyric sweetness, the region of Plato opened to the sound of his “golden shell,” the wheel of Ixion ceased its revolutions, and Tityus forgot for the nonce the vulture that preyed on his vitals. The Thracian bard was the representative of the civilizer of savage men.
“Silvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum Cædibus et victu fœdo deterruit Orpheus; Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.”(177)
The symbolism of the picture seems to be this, that as Orpheus drew the whole creation to him by the music of his lyre, and called from the realms of Hades his beloved Eurydice to the regions of light, so Christ by his compassion commanded the love of all men, as well by his divine power the hidden forces of nature. Hades, or the grave, opened to him on that first Easter morning, as it will open to us on the last.
“Prisoner of Hope thou art—look up and sing In hope of promised spring. As in the pit his father’s darling lay Beside the desert way, And knew not how, but knew his God would save Even from that living grave; So, buried with our Lord, we’ll close our eyes To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise.”(178)
The late Dean of S. Paul’s, Dr. Milman, remarks, with an air of triumph, in his Ecclesiastical History,(179) that “the Catacombs of Rome, faithful to their general character, offer no instance of a crucifixion.” For the absence of the crucifix in the Catacombs, we as a Protestant can conceive of two causes, either of which would to our mind be sufficient to account for it. First, in the early ages it was highly important for the growth of the church, especially in the Roman Empire, to guard against the introduction of any symbol which would suggest pain or repugnance to Jewish converts; secondly, it was essential to clothe truth under a type which would not inspire mockery on the part of pagans, and so assist in keeping alive the persecuting spirit of the times. This in a measure no doubt led the early artists to use the heathen symbol of Orpheus as typical of Christ. A beautiful passage in the work of D’Agincourt affords still another general cause: “Entirely occupied with the celestial recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness; and, so far from associating with this image that of the tortures or privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in enlivening it with smiling colors, or presenting it under agreeable symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine‐leaves; for it is thus that the asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all breathes softness, benevolence, charity.”(180)
Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus “taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his Iconographie Chrêtienne, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.
We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English writers in what spirit all the grave questions of theology connected with subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome, the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.
“Gran Latinà Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”
And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos, loquebar pacem de te.”
Beating The Air
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great magician.
“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”
We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform. Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom‐house duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime. This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson’s daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out of the world without having committed any special faults against society, leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects, where each one claims to be the one, the only one, the church of Christ. One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come at all if this is to be the result, this wrangling and jangling and eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people, who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife. Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals; which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to‐day, as it has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the Nation said the other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice, though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away; and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting‐place over the barren waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.
Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to‐day as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling‐block in the way of the much‐desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices, but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another, and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church replies now as always: “Non possumus.” We cannot; God gave the laws to his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget that they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or maliciously, as at least fixed and united to‐day as to‐morrow, as yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be farther off than ever.
The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger, fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result? What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure; a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct, oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.
No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the Protestant religion today, it could not be given him; and the only right answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non‐ Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne. There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and all‐sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such as they see alone in the Catholic Church.
In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth, pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover, we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the thousand‐and‐one such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore, be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist vs. Catholic,” for he recognizes(181) no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high‐handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.
It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our author’s mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,” we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be. Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is thrown away.
A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the dissensions that seem racking and threatening to rend that body at present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives members of his community who “would give up their vantage‐ground by concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their “maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning‐note—like the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like Mr. Winkle’s “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer’s “conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church stands precisely at its first starting‐point of some nineteen centuries ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.
The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church, Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a pamphlet of forty‐two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least original.
“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”
Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items, which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject. He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the church to be a divine society”—human‐divine, Catholics would say—“governed by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”
Here we have, then, according to the author’s own words, a society, established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that person to to‐day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing, validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its members practise to‐day what they practised at the beginning—all that is nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”
If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have defined the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.
In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight generally uses to a thick‐headed congregation, who take his words for wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the other; the citing of “well‐known facts” and “notorious things” without substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.” Apropos of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that “the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression upon the theology of the Catholic (not then Roman Catholic) Church of the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX., or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes, reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.” In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation, inasmuch as we are saved before we receive it. He alleges, with reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: Ο δε κυριος προσετιθει τους σωζομενους καθ᾽ ημεραν τη Εκκλησια. The present participle σωζομενους means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as were being saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming into the church through the merit of the death of Christ and the movements of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the author’s fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious rendering of a passage in a dead language.
But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican, Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to‐day that all our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.
“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer’s salvation is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for work,” etc.
Now, this passage is the author’s exposition of the true idea of a church, and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all‐ important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man’s own conscience is his rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into consideration my relations; you tell me that all that has nothing to do with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it, I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read. The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings, rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us visibly, and is only known to us by faith.
Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There is no need of a church at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves. It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our neighbors.
Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions: But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong. Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on; but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom you have this personal union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,(182) and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these things are so.”
In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his text into a puny quibble, which any well‐instructed child might see through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The Lord added to the church daily those who are saved.” Ergo, “salvation was dealt with as a personal matter.”
If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer, and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child, but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.
But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would stand as built up by this writer.
People who believe in Christ at all, and indeed all who acknowledge, as they must, Christianity to be a fact, a vast social system, existing under our eyes, looking back, see a time when it did not exist. A man came into the world at the point of time in its history which we fix upon as the beginning of the Christian era. At that time religion, speaking largely, consisted of the Hebrew and the pagan. The Hebrews were the chosen of God, and preserved the only true system which corresponds to the rational idea of the foundation and aim of humanity. This it kept to itself and did not seek to spread. Christ came, the man‐God, and founded a new order, enlarging upon the old, which was to embrace in its bosom the universe, and lead all nations back and up to God. The change contemplated was the vastest that could possibly be conceived, the union of the discordant elements of human nature in a system entirely above the capabilities of that nature. Men were to be chaste, to be humble, to love poverty, to speak no evil, to obey, to mortify themselves always, to pray always, to acknowledge the nothingness of their nature. This man, Jesus Christ, came, and, before he had converted people enough to form a single city even, was crucified, rose from his grave, and ascended into heaven, leaving twelve poor ignorant, timid men, and a few others to spread this new doctrine, this new and all‐absorbing social system, throughout the world and through all time. What did he leave to guide them in this tremendous work; a system, an order perfect in all its details, and capable of spreading with the contemplated growth of the church? or did he leave each to follow his own will and do what he could, by means of what is called personal union with himself, a being who no longer was present, visibly and palpably, before the eyes of men? As he chose men to do his work, to build up Christianity, he let them accomplish it after a human fashion, assisted by the saving fact that he would allow them never to err in the doctrines which he bade them preach: and to this end he gave them an order which was to be handed down forever: the apostleship. That was his government, and at this government was a head, Peter. And Peter, like all other human governors, at his departure handed his authority down to the next chosen to fill his place, the promise of the abiding Spirit passing to all, or the system must have broken down; and so to‐day Catholics recognize in infallibility nothing more than the apostles recognized in the decisions of Peter at Antioch. And so this author is correct in saying that the church with Catholics comes first, and not the Bible; for the church embraces the Bible, which is only the written document of the laws and ordinances of God to man, the letter of the law resting in the hands of the government which has charge of it, but that government itself subject to the law. The government existed among the Hebrews before the law was ever written. This system which we have endeavored faintly to sketch here is denied by the Baptist. He says: Christianity comes this wise: Christ came, died, and thus regenerated us. All who believed in him were saved. “The apostles preached the Gospel. Men were pierced to the heart and asked what they must do.” They must be immersed, not as a necessity, for they were saved by the fact of believing; but this act of immersion gave them the entry to the church of Christ. Then the New Testament was written, not by Christ, though inspired by him, and left in the hands of everybody to interpret the law as he pleased.
Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he pleased; a book subject to more or less of change in transmission from language to language, and in the absolute loss of the living tongue in which it was originally written, and the verdict of its genuineness, the verdict for or against the teachings of a living God, resting upon the dictum of a grammarian.
If Christianity hangs on this, for we have not misrepresented the writer—then we refuse to be Christian at all; for such a system does not and cannot, as he alleges, “sustain the test of sound reason, of stern experience, and of infallible Scripture, which ordeal the Baptist idea of the church endures.”
We need trouble ourselves with this writer no further. There is a great deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying. Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” Now, Catholics will perceive the utter absurdity of such a statement at once. The sacrament of baptism is necessary to infants, who of course are unconscious recipients of it, as they are unconscious of the sin in which they are born. This stain which they inherit, but do not incur by any act of their own, is washed away by the sacrament ordained by Christ, which admits them into the society of the church at the same time that their birth admits them to human society, its privileges as well as its trials. Extreme unction is administered to the dying person, even though he be unconscious, and is the most touching token of the love of the universal Mother for her children, who at the last moment will, although the dying man cannot ask it, administer the sacrament which God has ordained for that occasion, because she knows that his heart desires such aid at its passage from the world. But all sacraments given to adults give grace only in proportion as the recipient receives them worthily.
“If the priest refuses to come, then the sufferer, infant or adult, must die unbaptized and unsaved.”
If this gentleman had only taken the trouble to consult a Catholic catechism, he would have been spared the trouble of putting this further absurdity into print. He would have found little children taught at school that “in a case of necessity, when a priest cannot be had, any one may baptize,” and the instructions for administering the sacrament; and furthermore, that, if a person were placed in such a position that even this means could not reach him, the very desire is sufficient, as sometimes happens in the case of sudden conversions and martyrdoms.
As for Catholicity necessitating a ritual, all religions must more or less. Do men object to the old law because of its glorious ritual? Is not the very Baptist‐act of immersion a ritual, and their singing in common? So much so that, for neglect of this observance, Baptists cut off the whole Christian body from community with them. Which is harder to believe—the Catholic doctrine which teaches that we must obey the church which we believe to be the only church of Christ, and in support of which teaching we bring forward some very substantial proofs, or this? You may interpret God’s Word as you please; that alone is sufficient; but you are not in communion with his church unless you are immersed; a fact which it is very difficult to twist out of the Scriptures.
Again, he shows his weakness in saying that “Francis Xavier, working on the Catholic idea, baptized millions of Asiatics, and believed that in so doing he had saved their souls. But the heathen remained heathen still. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that under his labors one solitary soul was transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.” Not one, but millions, so that Sir James Stephens, a Protestant lecturer on history in a Protestant university, calls him a saint, not only of the Catholic Church, but of the world. Colleges were founded by him, and thousands of Christians suffered martyrdom for the faith. But “Judson” is the apostle after our author’s heart. Judson “lived to see thousands of civilized and christianized disciples in that dark Burman land; and the work still goes on, self‐sustained by the power of a true hidden life.” This latter is a very saving clause; so truly hidden is the work that our author can point to no fruit resulting from it. And as for those “thousands of civilized and christianized disciples,” we took the trouble to look for them, and we regret to say, for our author’s veracity, found them all “wanting.” Judson did not succeed in converting one either in Burmah or anywhere else; and his own sufferings seem to have been reduced to the martyrdom of marrying successively three wives.
If then, as our author says, “Logically there is no middle position between the high rock ground of Baptist truth and the low marsh ground of Catholic error; all things follow their tendencies, and it is easier to go down an inclined plane than to go up,” we fear that, for all he can do to prevent them, people will follow their natural tendencies. As a last word, we would strongly recommend him, before undertaking to set a church in its true colors before the eyes of men, to consider a little whether he knows anything of the subject he is writing about, and not stultify himself by an ignorance which looks like malice, though he calls it truth spoken in love.
A Retrospect.
And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in the forest of Compiègne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity even during his lifetime; he seized the king’s bridle, and boldly petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul, letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling refugee, the king’s horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:
“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king’s chase? Give back that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”
The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away, and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides, when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S. Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles, hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his poor. So stands the legend.
A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of Mucius Scævola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that Mucius Scævola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann wand the storied, moss‐grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that François I.’s heroic Tout est perdu fors l’honneur! was only the poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I to wear the crown of France, let him stand forth and take it”? True, Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand of the hangman publicly in the market‐place. We will deal in like manner with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S. Marcoul’s hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of the château of Compiègne.
The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons, whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting‐lodge the scene of atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at Compiègne and died, while the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and, afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.
Clotaire II. lived many years at Compiègne, much beloved for his gentle and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen’s Cross. The king was out hunting, one hot summer’s day in the year of grace 631, and emerging from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow. Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful symbol, and raised on the road from Compiègne to Verberie the stately pile called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.
Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at Compiègne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless, indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le Debonnaire lived chiefly at Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode, befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour’s song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages of man’s ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic Cæsar was not proof against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls, till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it stood.
The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold‐ blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent his father, bound hand and foot, to Compiègne, where he was kept a close prisoner. Lothair’s brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings for himself, they set out for Compiègne, stormed the fortress, and set free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him, and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.
In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at Compiègne to receive the ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their master. Charles did a great deal to improve Compiègne; the old château of Clovis, which was no better than a hunting‐lodge grown into a fortress, he threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town, but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the greater part of their respective reigns at Compiègne, and added to the number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now, my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people knew it, and hated Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!” the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.
Philip II.’s occupation of Compiègne, which in those days of simple faith, when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a motive power in the great movements that enlist men’s energies and direct them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy winding‐sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,(183) by Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold, inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald to the Abbey of S. Corneille at Compiègne, is thus described in the procès‐verbal of the translation, given at full length in the Grandes Chroniques: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (aunes) in length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff, esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.
In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been considered mortal, sent as a thank‐offering for her recovery a costly shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has pleased us to place in a shrine (chasse) of gold, enriched with precious stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (linge), in which the body of our Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (suaire), according to the holy evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their Lord had lain wrapped in this winding‐sheet. The union of mystical devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which they were hastening, and the transfer of this sacred memento of the Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems, the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear, home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright and glowing past.(184)
Philip’s son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at Compiègne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during the king’s absence.
When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his crown to the fair Agnes de Méranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile the ill‐fated love of the king and her own short‐lived happiness, it was at Compiègne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.
But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of Compiègne is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople, before starting for the Holy Land came to Compiègne to swear fealty to the King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope’s legate at S. Sophia (1204). He immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new‐found honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople, but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband’s election to the throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin’s grief was inconsolable; he laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople. Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to “the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon Joanice, full of wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the emperor’s release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power, or any man’s, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was taken for an announcement of Baldwin’s death, and universally accepted as such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited eye‐witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being afterwards made into a drinking‐cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood by gloating over the spectacle of his victim’s agony. Years went by and nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin’s death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.
Baldwin, finding his secret discovered, fled to a distant and more inaccessible part of the forest; he was tracked thither, and again fled; but the pursuers finally got possession of him, and dragged him by main force into the neighboring town; the people flocked eagerly to see him, and with one voice they proclaimed him their long‐lost Baldwin, welcoming him with joyful acclamations as a father returned from the dead. Whether this popular welcome merely emboldened the real Baldwin to confess his identity and, as a necessary consequence, claim his rights, or whether it suggested to the false one the idea of simulating the person whom he resembled and was taken for, it is impossible to say, but at any rate from this period we no longer see him dragged, but marching forth, of his own free‐will, from town to town, and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of an injured claimant. His march was not, however, one of unbroken triumph; the town of Flanders refused to believe in him, and indignantly scouted himself and his followers as a band of impostors. The daughters of the dead man, Jeanne and Marguerite, refused to believe in him, and denounced him as a malefactor whose aim was to stir up disorder in the state for his own ambitious purposes. But Jeanne’s government was odious to the people; to escape from her harsh and cruel rule they would have willingly adopted any claimant who came with a fair show of right to enlist their credulity. Jeanne knew this, and at once took strong measures to put down the movement. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Before many months the country was in a blaze, divided into two camps, one of believers, the other disbelievers, but both ready to devour each other to prove and disprove their special theories. A witness whose testimony went hard against the claimant was that of the old bailiff of Quesnoy; he had known Baldwin from a child, and mourned over him like a father, and, when he now appeared at the castle gates and demanded admittance, the old man refused to open to him, and vowed solemnly that he was not his master, but a base impostor. The conduct of this stubborn sceptic drew forth a pathetic appeal from the claimant. “I find,” he says, “more cruel enemies in my own house than in the land of strangers. Flanders, my mother, dost thou repulse thy son whom Greece and Macedonia received with open arms! I escaped from Adrianople through the carelessness of my guards; I fell into the hands of barbarians, who dragged me to the distant plains of Asia; there, like a vile slave, I, who had wielded the sceptre, was condemned to dig the earth; I dug until some German merchants, to whom I confided my story, ransomed me, and sent me back to my country, and lo! I arrive and show myself, and you repulse me! My daughter Jeanne refuses to own me in order not to resign her rank and subside into the subject of a court!” Unmoved by this touching denunciation, Jeanne persisted in disowning him, but, failing to prove her case, she referred it to Louis VII. of France. Louis, much interested in the extraordinary story, willingly undertook the arbitration. The claimant, on his side, testified great satisfaction on hearing that his fate was placed in the hands of a wise and powerful monarch, who was sure to prove a just and discerning judge; he set out in high spirits to Compiègne, where the king was then residing. Attired in the violet robes of a hermit, and bearing a white wand in his hand, he entered the august assembly with a countenance full of unblushing assurance, saluted the King of France with an air of proud equality, and noticed the barons and knights by a courtly inclination of the head. Louis, who had carefully studied the case, conducted the examination himself; he put many subtle and perplexing questions to the supposed Baldwin concerning events which had passed in his youth, and which it was thought impossible he could have learned from any one he had seen since his return, and the claimant answered accurately with an assurance that carried conviction with it. The examination lasted several hours, and, the closer it pressed him, the more triumphantly it established his identity. The witnesses who boasted of being able to confound the imposture in the twinkling of an eye were themselves confounded; they withdrew covered with confusion, and vowing inwardly that “this man was sold to the devil,” as only the father of lies could have told him so many hidden things, and borne him to success through such a quagmire of difficulties. There was, indeed, much conflicting evidence forthcoming. Henri, his brother, was dead, but the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg, cousins and contemporaries of Baldwin’s, swore that the claimant was the real man; on the other hand, sixteen knights of unimpeachable honor swore to having seen the real man dead on the field of Adrianople. The king, after hearing with great patience, and weighing most impartially what was said on both sides, declared in favor of the claimant. The excitement was indescribable when he rose to pronounce the verdict; but at this point the Bishop of Beauvais stepped from his seat, and, holding up his right hand, adjured Louis to suspend for one moment the final words while he put a few short questions to the hermit. The king consented; a deathlike silence fell upon the assembly, and the bishop, going close up to the hermit, who was seated on a chair in the centre of the great hall, addressed him thus in a loud voice:
“Answer me three questions: 1st, In what place did you render homage to King Philip Augustus? 2d, By whom were you invested with the order of knighthood? 3d, Where did you marry Marie de Champagne?”
The claimant stammered, grew pale, and, after a vain attempt to fence with the questions, broke down. Extraordinary as it may seem, he had never given a thought to these prominent events in the life of Baldwin of Constantinople, or foreseen that he would be questioned concerning them. The enthusiastic sympathy of the court was changed in an instant to rage and scorn. Sentence of death was pronounced on the hermit of Glaucon on a charge of high treason, conspiring, fraud, perjury, and the long list of iniquities that make up the sum of a claimant’s budget. But having thus far acquitted himself of his office, the king handed over the criminal to Jeanne to be dealt with as she thought fit. In those rough and ready days there were no back‐stairs for a plucky claimant to escape by, no counsel to save him with a nonsuit, or such like modern convenience; the make‐ believe Baldwin was without more ado hung up between two dogs on the market‐place of Flanders. Some chroniclers throw uncomfortable doubts on the justice of the execution; a few maintain that this was the true man, and anathematize Jeanne as a parricide who sacrificed her own father to the love of power. Père Cahour, who is certainly a conscientious writer, speaks of her, on the other hand, as a just and upright woman, utterly incapable of so diabolical a crime, and stoutly vindicates the evidence of the sixteen knights, though how he adapts it to the belief in Baldwin’s capture by Joanice, which appears to have been general after the battle of Adrianople, it is difficult to see. The Chronique de Meyer, again, denounces Jeanne as an execrable monster, and declares that the man who was hanged was the real Baldwin. Clearly claimants have been always a troublesome race to deal with; even hanging does not seem to make an end of them, for their claims outlive them, and leave to historians a legacy of doubt and discord that is exceedingly difficult to settle.
The passage of S. Louis at Compiègne is marked by an event characteristic of him and of his time. He had ransomed from the Venetians at at an enormous price the crown of thorns of our Saviour. To do it public honor he carried it bare‐headed and bare‐footed from the wood of Vincennes to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and thence to the Sainte Chapelle, that gemlike little shrine which had been raised expressly to receive the priceless relic, and whose beauty is invested with a fresh interest since it escaped the fire of the Communists; the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice were burning so close to it that the flames might have licked its walls, yet not even one of its wonderful stained‐glass windows was injured.
Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. Compiègne in the days of the saintly king was the refuge of God’s poor, of the sick and the sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what time he could steal from the affairs of state.
To Be Continued.
The Russian Clergy
We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture and irritation.
Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have been very well satisfied with their new brethren had the alliance been effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the Russian clergy,(185) which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian life.
The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be ordained.
The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained deserted. The clergy were then ordered to send their children to them, and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all clerks’ children between six and eight years of age should be at the disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any other career without special permission, which is almost invariably refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles, unless he chose to become a monk.
Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here. What shall be done with the priests’ daughters? In the degraded condition of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly ranked lower in the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen’s servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian, therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest’s daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of the kind.
Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a tolerable, if not a brilliant career.
The clergy of a fully supplied parish consists of a priest, a deacon, and two clerics, who perform the duties of lector, sacristan, beadle, bell‐ ringer, etc. The deacon has little to do, except to share on Sunday in the recitation of the liturgy, which, being inordinately long, is sometimes divided into sections and read or chanted by several persons concurrently, each going at the top of his speed. The clerks of the lower ranks, however, may pursue a trade, but they are all enrolled in the same caste, out of which they must not marry. The number of parish priests in Russia is about 36,000; of deacons, 12,444; of inferior clerics, 63,421. One‐half the revenue of the parish belongs to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and one‐eighth to each of the two clerics. The prizes of the profession are the chaplaincies to schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals, in the army, in the navy, about the court, etc., most of which are liberally paid. The parochial clergy are supported by: 1. Property belonging to the parish, chiefly in the towns, yielding about $500,000 per annum; 2. A government allowance of $3,000,000 per annum; 3. About $20,000,000 per annum contributed by parishioners; 4. Perpetual foundations, with obligation to pray for the departed, invested in government funds at four per cent., say $1,075,000. The average income of a priest is thus about $341. In addition to this, however, each parish has a glebe, of which the usufruct belongs to the clergy. The minimum extent of this church domain is about eighty acres, and it is divided after the same rule as the revenues, namely, one‐half to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and the remainder to the inferior clerks. When there is no deacon, the priest’s share is, of course, proportionately larger. In many parishes, the glebe is much more extensive than eighty acres. In Central Russia, it amounts sometimes to 250, 500, even 2,500 acres; and, in those fertile provinces known as the Black Lands, the share of the priest alone is sometimes as much as 150 acres. At St. Petersburg, the church provides the parish priest a comfortable and elegant home. “The furniture is from the first shops in Petersburg. Rich carpets cover the floors of the drawing‐room, study, and chamber; the windows display fine hangings; the walls, valuable pictures. Footmen in livery are not rarely seen in the anteroom. The dinners given by these curés are highly appreciated by the most delicate epicures. Occasionally their salons are open for a soirée or a ball; ordinarily it is on the occasion of a wedding, or the birthday of the curé, or on the patron saint’s day. The apartments are then magnificently lighted up; the toilettes of the ladies dazzling; the dancing is to the music of an orchestra of from seven to ten musicians. At supper the table is spread with delicacies, and champagne flows in streams. A Petersburg curé, recently deceased, loved to relate that at his daughter’s nuptials champagne was drunk to the value of 300 roubles (£48).”
Considering the education and social standing of a Russian priest, this is not bad. In the rural districts there is much less clerical luxury; there is even a great deal of poverty and hardship. But we must not forget that the rustic clergy is but a little higher in culture than the rudest of the peasantry, and a life which would seem intolerable to an American laborer is elysium to a Russian hind. Most, even of country priests, have comfortable houses, well furnished with mahogany and walnut; and, though they do not eat meat every day that the church allows it, they have their balls and dancing parties, at which their daughters dance with the young men from the neighboring theological seminaries. The wives and daughters of the reverend gentlemen, to be sure, have to labor sometimes in the fields; but “they are dressed by the milliner of the place; you will always see them attired with elegance; they do not discard crinoline, and never go out without a parasol”—except, of course, when they are going to hoe corn and dig potatoes.
The voluntary contributions of the parishioners are collected, or enforced, in a variety of ways, and paid in a variety of forms. Towards the feast of S. Peter each house gives from three to five eggs and a little milk. After the harvest, each house gives a certain quantity of wheat. When a child is born, the priest is called in to say a few prayers over the mother, and give a name to the baby; the fee for this is a loaf and from 4 to 8 cents. Baptism brings from 8 to 24 cents more. For a second visitation and prayers at the end of six weeks there is a fee of a dozen eggs. At betrothals the priest gets a loaf, some brandy, and sometimes a goose or a sucking‐pig. For a marriage he is paid from $1 60 to $3 20; for a burial, from 80 cents to $1 60; for a Mass for the dead, from 28 to 64 cents; for prayers for the dead, which are often repeated, 4 or 8 cents each time; for prayers read at the cemetery on certain days every year, some rice, a cake, or some pastry. The peasants often have a Te Deum chanted either on birthday or name‐day, or to obtain some special favor; the fee for that is from 8 to 16 cents. The penitent always pays something when he receives absolution; but as confession is not frequent in the Russian Church, the income from this source must be small. In the towns the fee is often as high as $1, $2, $4, and even more. Among the peasantry it sometimes does not exceed a kopec (one cent); but if the penitent wishes to receive communion, he must renew his offering several times. At Easter, Christmas, the Epiphany, the beginning and end of Lent, and on the patron saint’s day, which sometimes occurs two or three times a year, it is customary to have prayers chanted in every house in the parish, for which the charge varies in the rural districts from 4 cents to 60 cents each visit, according to the importance of the occasion. In the large cities the fees are much more considerable. Father Gagarin cites the case of a parishioner in St. Petersburg to whom the clergy presented themselves in this manner twenty‐seven times in a single year, and at each call he had to give them something. This, however, was an exception. Generally the visits are only fifteen a year. “Sometimes it happens,” continues our author, “that the peasant cannot or will not give what the priest asks. Hence arise angry disputes. One priest—so runs the story—unable to overcome the obstinacy of a peasant refusing to pay for the prayers read in his house, declared that he would reverse them. He had just before chanted, ‘Benedictus Deus noster’; he now intoned, ‘NON Benedictus, NON Deus, NON noster’ thus intercalating a non before each word. The affrighted peasant, the chronicle says, instantly complied. Often enough, too, in spite of all the prohibitions of the synod, the wives and children of the priests, deacons, and clerks accompany their husbands and fathers, and stretch out their hands also. The worst of all this is that the Russian peasant, while long disputing merely about a few centimes, will think himself insulted unless the priest accept a glass of brandy. And when the circuit of all the houses in the village has to be made, though he stay only a few minutes in each, this last gift is not without its inconveniences.” It must be an edifying round certainly. But then the reverend gentleman has a wife to help him home.
The black clergy is not in a much better condition than the white. All the monasteries are supposed to be under the rule of S. Basil; but they are not united in congregations, each establishment being independent of all the rest. Most of them do not observe the great religious rule of poverty and community of goods, but each monk has own purse, and the superiors are often wealthy. One hundred years ago, the number of convents, not reckoning those in Little and White Russia, was 954. The ukase of Catharine II., which confiscated the property of the clergy, suppressed all but 400. Since then the number has increased.
The great increase in the number of monks between 1836 and 1838 is accounted for by the forcible incorporation of the United Greeks. This was not formally effected until 1839, but the United Greeks were reckoned as part of the Russian Church in 1838, and many of their monks were transferred from their own to the non‐united monasteries earlier than that. It will be seen, however, that the increase thus obtained was not permanent.
The curious discrepancy between the number of monks and the number of nuns has an equally curious explanation. Women are forbidden, by a decree of Peter the Great, to take the vows under forty years of age. Hence the convents are crowded with postulants who must wait sometimes twenty years before they can take the veil. Some persevere, some return to the world, and many continue to live in the convent without becoming professed. If we reckon the whole population of the convents—monks, nuns, novices, and aspirants—we shall find the number of the two sexes more nearly agree.
It is interesting to see from which classes of society these monks and nuns are drawn. F. Gagarin distinguishes five classes: I. The clergy, including priests, deacons, and clerks, with their wives and children; II. The nobility, embracing not only the titled nobility, but government functionaries and members of the learned professions; III. The urban population, comprising merchants, artisans, citizens, etc.; IV. The rural population, consisting of peasants of all conditions; V. The military. The monks are recruited from these five classes in the following ratio:
Clergy: 54.3 per cent. Urban population: 22.3 " Rural population: 16.3 " Military: 3.4 " Nobility: 3 "
The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling, therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the population of the nunneries:
Urban population: 38.8 per cent. Rural population: 31 " Clergy: 13 " Nobility: 12 " Military: 4 "
The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First, there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys. Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests. Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites; so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find. Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side, instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago. Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies (these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public‐houses and getting drunk. They are carried home on hand‐barrows, and this proceeding is known as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be forgiven.
There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law, academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30. It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25; in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.
What sort of monks can be formed by such training? The asceticism prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said, no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680, $1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles, or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400 to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one‐ half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues, however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come empty‐handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and they have to buy nothing but their clothing.
The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments, though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.
The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted, degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure. Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were, of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports. All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary, appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers. This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no business without drink‐money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently, when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one all‐powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.
The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar’s chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator, in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed practically without troubling the clergy at all.
The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are (perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife, are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to improve upon the models of Almighty God.
The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.
Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.
But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting‐room, looking pale and worn.
“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”
The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular degree.
“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”
“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of persons he trusted.”
“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.
“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”
“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”
“So have you, my poor child.”
“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a full‐grown tree.”
“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear it alone.”
“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.
A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman’s face.
“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”
“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”
“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”
“Oh! they are comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”
“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be seen if you can be a stoic.”
“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor resignation.”
Here a light step was heard, and the half‐open door was pushed quickly back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and, holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:
“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just come from the jeweller’s, just as my father ordered it!”
And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful parure of opals and diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned away impatiently, saying to the child:
“Thamar, I am engaged; don’t come fooling here about these jewels; put them down, and go into the next room.”
The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.
“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never mind the pretty gems just now.”
And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her mother, resumed her seat.
“There are the first‐fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to‐day, and I shall have to tell him to take them back!”
“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”
Maheleth’s father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness when that success disappears.
One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and honored: he could trace his ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain. It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife’s beauty, his lavish hospitality, his daughter’s charms, were strong enough, he knew, to break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in energy and strong will.
And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very galling to him. They now would turn from him, would forget his open‐ handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps, but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his friends.
Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his fortunes.
“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters’ dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”
“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.
“Oh! you and I will be co‐workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”
The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller’s; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.
Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days’ wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.
One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray’s Guide‐Book, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.
At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he did go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral‐niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven‐soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer‐house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive Murray nor the ostentatious Byron; and, in fact, he departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.
He was walking one day down the Juden‐Strasse, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval‐looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half‐hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.
“Oh! thank you, mein Herr!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.
But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark‐clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn‐looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.
He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the gushing style too much followed just then by some of his fair countrywomen.
The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.
He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann, Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families were given thus: “money‐lender,” “banking‐clerk,” and “lace‐merchant,” respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house. Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away. Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the mysterious face would visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground‐floor room, a merry face full of health and mischief—not his dream. The blinds were always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he began to fancy she must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home from the Juden‐Strasse, and surprised him by telling him he was going home in a fortnight to get married.
“I’ve been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed myself immensely. And I’ve got such a pile of things going home to my fiancée, for our house. She will be delighted, she is so fond of queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I’ll show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the different parts of the world I’ve been in.”
And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.
“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha’s wife sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets, and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and mother‐of‐pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”
“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”
“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe, she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”
Then he turned out a huge tiger‐skin, and said: “All my Indian things except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other curiosities. By the bye, I have some old point from Venice, but some people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn’t it?”
Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he did not answer. His friend went on:
“I’ll just ask the landlady, she’ll be likely to know if there is any place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”
“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom face was directly in his mind’s eye, and he could not drive the vision away.
“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice; “you have been here longer than I have.”
So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular houses bordering the curious Juden‐Strasse. It was Friday evening, and the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish‐looking building, with Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair‐ cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice‐work defended these galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.
The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building; sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry Holcombe seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him. And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner’s Kaddisch, as he saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he could hear the women’s clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.
When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded him of the table d’hôte they had most likely already missed.
“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”
Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk, a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.
“By jove! that is a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a Christian.”
“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She looks like a Spaniard.”
The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to Holcombe:
“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace‐merchant this morning.”
Holcombe’s heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 Juden‐Strasse.”
“I don’t know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with pleasure.”
“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble‐ down dens of the Juden‐Strasse.”
“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”
They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr Zimmermann.
“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all alone, he has got into very queer ways.”
They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded them.
“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for us, for my father, I mean, and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg, he is a stranger and has no friends.”
The two young men then knew that she was the money‐lender’s daughter, and Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.
“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well‐known in the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for laces.”
“Oh! yes; rich he is; so rich he won’t sell generally; but then an Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves himself.”
By this time, they had reached the door of the miser’s room; a low, subdued voice was heard within reading.
Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was drawn ajar by some one inside.
“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”
Holcombe knew that voice must belong to the girl he had never forgotten. Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened, narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.
“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”
“To‐day, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”
Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.
“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will let us see the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”
The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low voice:
“No; please do not ask to come in to‐day; he is hardly conscious, and he might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”
“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come away; don’t you understand?”
The door was closed gently, and Henry said:
“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”
“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that’s it. But, I say, is she not pretty?”
“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.
“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.
“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man. Her own father is ill and can’t work, and she is very good to him. She reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has two little sisters also.”
“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.
“She keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann’s bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two months after they came here.”
“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.
“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a foreigner.”
“Maheleth! A curious name.”
“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister’s—Thamar.”
They were at the street‐door now, and Ellice bade the girl good‐morning, saying they would come again on Monday.
“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”
“Yes,” said Holcombe.
“You don’t seem very much interested, anyhow.”
“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”
“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”
Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace‐merchant’s den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried‐up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back‐ yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.
While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.
The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”
“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”
“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to‐ night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.
“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.
Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning’s visit to her old protégé, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.
“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.
“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”
“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the young man turned to the lace‐merchant.
“Have you been ill long?”
“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot do without her.”
“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”
“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell nothing now; I have no customers.”
Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:
“Are you fond of flowers?”
“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”
“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts‐ease of you; but, if you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you something you will like to‐morrow.”
“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you some; she has some growing in her room.”
“No, this one is enough. Good‐by, and I will try and see you again.”
As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:
“Well, Holcombe, you are green! You don’t mean to say you believe he is poor?”
“No, I don’t believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few flowers and some good food, if he won’t get them for himself.”
“I suppose you remember that there is another invalid in the house, and the same person nurses both?”
“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn’t joke; it is not fair.”
“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”
A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the Juden‐Strasse. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic cathedral, at eight o’clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why, determined to go.
The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace‐giving and heart‐soothing one. A rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the Tantum Ergo, and the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on was a slight, dark‐robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace? Or from the curiosity of a chance passer‐by?
He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding‐place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.
“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”
To Be Continued.
Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah
If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of the shah’s pleasure‐house, and hearken to what the humming‐birds tell thee in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley’s lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah; and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were covered with woods and flowers, and watered with streams and fountains, shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows, or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold‐broidered silks of all colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.
Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace, or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion of mortals. “I went to seek the rose‐king,” said or sang a poet of the court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen, except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself to his dreams as others do to their books.
At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard like almond‐blossoms, and the milky color of his throne‐bearer, they who visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning on the cushions of his vine‐encircled pavilion, his silken beard and silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under their gorgeous sails or to the time‐beat of their oars those songs which, with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one of those fine day‐dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower‐ fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an illusion of humor and beauty?
Ah! the deep‐eyed, far‐gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green ages in the youth of the world, of far‐off golden centuries to come, of ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of nights with the great moon‐shah! They were not to be told or counted; the number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah’s visions persuaded him to become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant feast‐days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more than wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new temples set up here and there, the shah’s dreams were praised. When he had completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many‐ colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment, peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not his slumbers.
Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white‐haired sire,” cried the affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,” rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have this dream.”