< Hfc - ; ~V - . * 7* •• » ?<- "•• s ' f 'cr *.. «* m^ *>•/ X v* V\. f ' * - ? . \ ,.-, aM Ex LIBRIS REV. W. P. CONSIDIHE, 383 SIXTH STREET, DETROIT, MICH. f. lft TO! ^©©^YO©K] ©IF TO! ©Kl (From the original design of the Roman Painter, Gagliardi.) THE MESSENGER SACRED HEART OF JESUS VOL. VI (xxvi). JANUARY, 1891. No. 1 BOTH OLD AND NEW. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. EAR her sing through the hush of the night, Sing through the dawn of the fair, young day, — The Bride to her Spouse, to her heart's delight, — Love-song thrilling the years for aye ! Sweet and strong and tender and true — Hark to the heavenly harmony ! "All my fruits, both old and new, I've kept, Beloved, for Thee, for Thee !" All the fruits of the year gone by, All the fruits of the year begun; Thoughts and words that never can die, Good deeds ripened in shade and sun : Clear and low, 'neath the vault of blue, Bride of the Canticles, sing with me ! "All my fruits, both old and new, I've kept, Beloved, for Thee, for Thee !" Copyright, 1891, by Rev. R. S. Dewey, S. J. All rights reserved.] TIMOLEAGUE. All the fruits of the dead old year, All the fruits of the year new-born, — Prayers, and labors, and sufferings dear, Pledges plighted, and vows re-sworn — Gilded with sunlight, gemm'd with dew, Heart of Jesus, our harvest see ! "All my fruits, both old and new, I've kept, Beloved, for 1 hee, for Thee !" KINSALE HARBOR. TIMOLEAGUE. r 1 ^HE passenger on board one of the great trans- Atlantic steam- ships for America, as he comes slowly forth from the Cove of Cork (now called Queenstown), sees to the right for many hours a frowning, ruggedly broken sea-wall, iron-gray and mottled with russet weather stains, with here and there a glimpse of the daintiest green fields where some creek or bay opens suddenly inland. Most forbidding and longest seen of all is the low, out- reaching promontory called the Old Head of Kinsale, just beyond the harbor of the same name. Underneath its rocky chine, he is TIMOLEAGUE. 3 told, the ceaseless beating of the waves age after age has worn caverns from side to side, through which the sea keeps up its ever- lasting booming. When at last he turns the Head, a deep inden- tation of the shore line marks the entrance to — Courtmasherry's placid bay, at the end of whose westernmost inlet lie the picturesque ruins of Timoleague Abbey, dear to the lover of the beauty of Irish scenery and the glory of Ireland's antique saintliness. Timoleague is just an easy, half-Englished way of pronounc- ing the Irish words meaning the "House of Molaga"; and Molaga was one of the early Saints when Ireland was young in the Christ- ian faith for which it has suffered so much. Like many another Saint of that time, he had much to do with his brother missionaries of the Celtic race in Scotland and Wales ; and his own life was spent in much travelling to and fro, studying and founding mon- asteries and doing any good work that came to hand, even to spreading the culture of bees in his own Ireland. It is common enough among these early Irish Saints — and yet it is strange, when one comes to think of it — that they have left their names bound up with all the different periods of their country's history. This is because of the work done so well by them during their busy lives, and of the work done after they were dead and gone by the devotion of the common people to them through the succeeding centuries. Thus, in the case of Molaga, we have a few antique bits of building in the rude, prim- itive style of the early Celtic Christians, dating from himself or his disciples and telling a story of zeal for the glory of God's house and the salvation of souls. Then we have the fine "Abbey" built much later in his honor by friars who came over from Italy hundreds of years after his death. And, in their turn, these splendid arches now stand broken and open to the day with only the ivy to clothe them round about, and the birds and winds to make music where the priests once sang to the glory of God and the Saint God gave them — Molaga. All this is in the old sub-kingdom of Desmond, which was South Munster; and just as the faith of Molaga has outlived Celtic 1 3 o .§> rr\ •*J TIMOLEAGUE. 5 wars and Danish and Norman invasions and persecutions of Eliza- beth and Cromwell, so the old names of his time are well known among his still faithful Irish people of to-day. The "Bed of Molaga" — his own chief abiding-place in life and in death — is near to Mitchelstown, of unsaintly doings in recent days; and the "House of Molaga"- — Timoleague Abbey — is down in Corkalee, the territory of the O'Driscolls. The M'Carthy, or perhaps Barry, founded it for the Franciscans ; and it was defended by the O'Sullivan Bear when the persecutor would have destroyed it root and branch. And since then, how many dead of names familiar to the Saint as to us sleep peacefully amid the ruins in this blessed ground of his! It was in the territory of Fermoy, on the bound of the present barony of Condons and Clangibbon, far toward the north- eastern corner of County Cork, that our Saint was born, in the old principality of the O'Keefes which was long known as the Roches' country. He was of the family of the O'Dugans, possessors of this territory of the "woodland," as it was called. His parents were humble tillers of the ground, as were many who were kin to the petty Kings then governing the land. They had long been childless, and had all their hopes in the heavenly kingdom. One day, as they were sowing a ridge of flax on the south side of the road that runs along the little river Funshion, a troop of priests passed by travelling somewhither with St. Cummin the Long at their head. The Saint foretold to them that they should bring forth a son to their old age, as did Abraham and Sara; "that he would be a friend of learning, and that he should sit in the smooth hill of the plain as Abbot of the school." When the child of prophecy was born, his parents brought him to the Cross of the Dun or neighboring Fort; and, behold, St. Cummin was at the ford awaiting to baptize one with whom, indeed, he was to be connected all his life. Here, later on, arose the church of Aghacross. Its ruins remain by the bend in the river ; and beside it is still an ancient well, consecrated to the Saint and flowing with its clear waters — by lone Molaga's holy cells. 6 TIMOLEAGUE. The cells of the Saint, which he built for himself and his disciples in the rude fashion of the time, have still their ruins on his "smooth hill of the plain." They are in the Saint's own parish of Tempul Molaga ; for his name, as we have said, remains everywhere here, however far away and dim may be the memories of the period in which he lived. On the southern slope of the hill, with the mountain stream winding below, the cashel or termon wall encloses an open space in which are the early oratory, DOORWAY OF ORATORY, LEABA MOLAGA. (After photographic view of Lord Dunraven.) a church of later date, another square building, and two of those crosses which speak so pathetically of the faith of Erin. The ora- tory is some twenty feet from the church. A great ash tree over- shadows its eastern window, inside which according to ancient custom stood the altar whereon Christ — the mystic Day spring and Orient from on high — was offered in the Holy Sacrifice, even as now in the nearest and scarcely less humble parish church. Forty years ago there were six of these trees, and the walls stood much TIMOLEAGUE. 7 higher; but everything is slowly disappearing before the hand of man. So much the more necessary is it that the holy associations of the place should be preserved while there is yet time. Eighty feet away and still along the southern side of the hill, are four pillar stones as if to mark a boundary. To the west stretch afar the Galty Mountains in swelling waves, blue in the distance and mingling nearer the deep shadows of retreating valleys with the great russet spots on greenclad slopes which form so character- istic a picture in the memory of the tourist through Southern Ireland. Molaga — a young Culdee or Irish monk — did not long remain in the monastery after the years of his studies were over. He had gathered together a few disciples in this spot. But there were still Druids and idolatrous practices in the country ; and he felt himself driven forth, sore at heart, from the midst of so many evils. So he set out for Connor in Ulster, where there had been a bishop since the time of the Apostle St. Patrick. It still forms a bishop's see, though long since united under one head with Down. Like the other holy men of his day, he carried a bell with him to give sign of the exercises of devotion. It was lost by him on the way, and its recovery was the occasion of founding a church (now Kill-foda in O'Neil-land East), whose lands were afterward called the Termon of the bell, while the " priest's mis- take of his bell " passed into a proverb. From this he wandered on into Scotland and down to Wales, to the disciples of the great St. David of Menevia, a title which in our own day — after cen- turies of forced apostasy on the part of the Welsh people — has again been given to a Catholic bishop's see. After some time spent in Wales, the Saint returned to his own country. He had received during his stay in other lands, first, the name by which we know him — for Mo-laga is the kind- hearted Irish way of saying " My Lachen," the name bestowed on him by the religious children of St. David ; — and second, a bell presented to him in memory of the religious ties he had formed with them. This present was enough to leave his name to a place in Wales, long called Boban-Molaga. 8 TIMOLEAGUE. St. David had always been in communication with his Celtic brethren of Ireland, and another of his disciples — Modomhnog, or Dominic of Ossory — had brought home with him from the Welsh monastery a swarm of bees, the culture of which he introduced among the Irish monks. But by this time " My Dominic's " bees were in need of another trained hand for their due care ; and the services of our own Saint were eagerly demanded by the chieftain of what is now Dublin, as soon as he arrived there on his way homeward. He took this as an indication of the will of Provi- dence ; for he was ever distrustful of the voice of flesh and blood in seeking again his native region among the hills of Munster — Liath-Muine. So a church and land were given him a little to the north of what is now Balbriggan town ; and the King of Dun Dubhline ordered that every person in his domains should pay the Saint a pighin or penny every three years for his support, while he was to take charge of the patriarchal swarm of the Irish bees. In the midst of the blessed ground where the dead of his race are still laid away in the hope of the same resurrection which he preached, are the ruins of his old chapel of Lambeecher in Bremore, which is nothing else than the good Welsh name — Llan-beachaire — or "Church of the Beeman." As late as the year 1200, when these parts were known as Fingall, or the region of the " tribe of the Danes," the Archbishop of Dublin gave the chapel to the Canons serving God in the religious house of the Blessed Virgin at Kilbixy. These may seem insignificant details; but they point the moral — how, through all the ages and in all things, bees and Danes, home learning and foreign emigration, Ireland has drawn her best life from the Catholic faith. Because of her faith, it is true, she has had suffering which is the reward of faith ; and happiness is the recompense of suffering. We next find St. Molaga amid St. Kieran's Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon, the greatest of the ancient Irish establishments of religion and learning. About this time his old neighbors of Fermoy came to beg him to return to his own monastery of lulaeh-mhin — the smooth hill on the plain. TIMOLEAGUE. 9 They promised him many things, even fifty white milch cows every successive year ; and when he sent them away, they simply came back to him accompanied by their beseeching wives and children. He could no longer withstand so earnest entreaties ; and henceforth, to his death, his name is associated with his native home. It afterward became known by his name as Labba or Leaba Malaga — " the Bed of Molaga ;" — for there, as all tradition has it, his mortal remains still lie awaiting the resurrection. It is there the ruins here described may be found. You enter the western door of the oratory, which like all these very PILASTER OF ORATORY. PILLAR STOUP. > ANCIENT STONE-WORK AT LEABA MOLAGA. early houses of prayer is little more than a dozen feet in length. Notice by the way the rude yet true art with which the lintel is disposed ; it is the early entablature, used before the arch had yet been introduced into that curious and original system o± architecture which belongs to early Christian Ireland. In its later developments this presents a true progress in art, worthy of the study and admiration which the ancient art of Ireland has only of late — too late, alas — received. A remarkable pillar stoup, or columnar stone font, is still preserved here. It once stood just within the door. On the south side, near the foot of the altar, there is a large flag stone, lifted above the ground by two low side stones ; and here is the <=> S ^ 1 «< TIMOLEAGUE. 11 tomb of St. Molaga. Until these later days devout pilgrims came and, creeping into the space beneath the flag, prayed to the Saint to whose sanctified relics they were thus brought so near. It is only within the last few years that the stone altar under the east window has been destroyed ; but the Holy Mass and, let us hope it, the memory of St. Molaga will not perish from among his faithful people. One of the latest acts of the Saint had been to imperil his life for his brethren by ministering to them in the time of the terrible "yellow plague" — the Buidhe Chonnuil. And — a final remembrance to bring us up short with a reference to our own so different age — one who worked along with the Saint in his later time was the Abbot of Spike Island, which the passenger for America has also seen, with all its prison recollections, in Queens- town Harbor. It is not in connection with his last resting-place, but with the great Abbey called by way of excellence the " House of Molaga" — Teach-Molaga — that our Saint's name is chiefly known. Colgan, the historian of the Irish Saints, gives on the 20th of January " the feast of St. Molaga, Confessor, Patron of the Church of Timoleague." This was probably the site of one of the Saint's primitive monasteries ; but its present memories date only from the coming of the Franciscans, in 1240. Even its noble, but irregular architecture — lofty arches resting on pillars without capitals, some cylindrical and some square, windows with mullions and without, lancet-shaped and square-headed and obtuse — all tells of the later art that came in with the Normans and the Cistercian monks of St. Bernard. Into Courtmacsherry Bay, stretching away from the Abbey's southern side, the Spanish galleons laden with their rich wines were wont to come to trade with the Irish. Hides and fish and wool, linen cloth and squirrel skins, were the unromantic articles the latter offered in exchange. A considerable village grew up ; and, in consequence of the tradition affirming that St. Molaga had once sojourned here, the whole district was put under his invocation and called Timoleague. When the Normans, destined to become 12 TIMOLEAGUE. more Irish than the Irish themselves, penetrated thus far — Barrys and De Courceys and the rest — they found no difficulty in accom- modating themselves to the devotions of the native Celt ; and when the friars arrived and the great Abbey was to be built, no patron could be thought of but St. Molaga. The honor of founding Timoleague Abbey is given by some to the Norman Barry, by others to McCarthy, Prince of Carbery. Beside the convent rose the church, with its nave of ninety feet running into a spacious choir half its own length, and a lateral wing or transept extending nearly forty feet to the south. The bell tower, at every period a special feature in Irish churches, rose sixty-eight feet at the junction of choir and nave. Outside, along the sheltered angle with its southern exposure where the tran- sept joined the main body of the church, were the arcades of the pleasant, sunny cloister. There the friars might walk to and fro in sight of the peaceful bay, and The swelling fields of Barryroe, And all the westward Carbery heights. In the choir, the tomb of Daniel M'Carthy, the supposed founder, and the monuments of the O'Donovans and O'Heas were still there in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The De Courceys, Lords of Kinsale, also had their burial place here. One of these, Edmund, Bishop of Ross and himself a Fran- ciscan, was a great benefactor of the Abbey. He induced his nephew, James De Courcey, the Lord of Kinsale, to rebuild a great part of the convent; and, at his death in 1517, he bequeathed to his brethren there many valuable legacies of altar-plate and books. During Queen Elizabeth's reign, Timoleague suffered much from the Catholic-hating soldiery let loose on Ireland — that "most distressed country." An attack on this home of prayer and charity has inspired one of Mr. T. D. Sullivan's most stir- ring ballads : In Tinioleague's old Abbey pile By Courtmasherry's placid bay, T1MOLEAGUE. 13 EAST WINDOW. ^ THROUGH ARCH (BELOW TOWER) DIVIDING NAVE FROM CHOIR. A monk sat in the bell-tower, while Down sunk the snn of a summer day ; He heard his brethren's hymn of prayer Float upward on the balmy air ; Then clasping in his bony hand His large black bead, he bent and swayed With deep emotion, while he prayed That Ireland's troubles soon might cease. 14 TIMOLEAGUE. But almost ere the prayer was sped From his pure lips, a sense of dread Thrilled through him in that quiet hour ; And casting 'round a furtive glance, O Christ ! he saw the quick advance Of Saxon troops. He scarce had pow'r To call, to shriek, to strike the bell, To rush below from cell to cell, To summon all his startled freres, When crash ! in splinters went the door — The soldiers tramped across the floor, Burst to the chapel, laughed and swore A goodly prize was theirs. WEST WINDOW AND CLOISTER, TIMOLEAGUE ABBEY. The beautiful windows were smashed in, the carving and statues hacked by sword and axe, and the tombs of the dead trampled under the hoofs of the horses which had been spurred into the house of God. The sacred vessels were torn from the Tabernacle, and the consecrated hosts profaned. Then, to com- plete their sacrilegious work, Before they went they'd show their grace By pausing just to say — That was a generous Saint indeed, Who in their day of real need TIMOLEAGUE. 15 When wine was scarce and cash was slack, Had set them on that blessed track, And after hours of sore fatigue Had led them safe to Timoleague By Courtmasherry bay. The good friars bent to the storm and prayed for their despoilers. Not so another stout-hearted inmate of Timoleague, not a friar, but only the carpenter who had — labored gladly here While many a tranquil year went round, To carve and shape and polish fair What now lies wrecked upon the ground. This one, in his righteous anger, unto the founder of all Franciscans Spoke from his hot brain hastily : If this base crew before me now Shall pass from hence unhurt away. O great Saint Francis ! hear my vow — I'll not work here another day. I'll cast my well-loved tools aside, I'll tramp and travel far and wide, And let your monks as bast they may Refit their convent by the side Of Courtmasherry bay. As if his stern words had moved the Saint to action, his prayer was scarcely ended when the wild cry of the Irish kerns came borne on the breeze. The valiant Donal of Dunbuidhe — the O'Sullivan Bear — was coming, not speedily enough to hinder the sack of Timoleague, but not too late to avenge it. Short was the combat. Fiercely well The troopers fought, and loud they swore ; By twos and threes and tens they fell Beside the walls, before the door. The leader of the ribald jest And mocking prayer profanely bold Felt cloven downward to the breast, Nor longer clutched the beaten gold. 16 TIMOLEAGUE. One horseman only, faint and pale, Sped from the field of death away — Spared to make known the dreadful tale, And shout the warning on the gale — " Beware the Abbey in the vale By Courtmasherry bay. " But the sacrilegious spoliation of St. Molaga's House was not at an end. In the profanation leading to its final ruin, the names of two Anglican Churchmen appear — William Lyons, the intruded Protestant Bishop of Cork and a certain Doctor Ham- GREAT EAST WINDOW OF CHOIR, FROM POINT BEFORE EAST WINDOW OF SIDE-CHAPEL, SOUTH. mer, a minister. Of course, in speaking of Elizabethan prelates it must be always borne in mind that they were apostates. In the Protestant prelates of a subsequent period, education and long- rooted prejudice were responsible for what in the case of Lyons and Hammer was due to something very akin to demoniacal possession. Lyons naturally had little love for the friars. As for their beautiful Abbey with its treasures of art, it was of value in his eyes only as available for building materials. In 1590, wishing in his zeal for the Gospel to put up a mill of his own, he made a TIMOLE/tGUE. 17 descent on a mill the friars had built on their little River Arighi- deen. He carried off everything belonging to it, even to the very stones of which it was built. An inundation, however, swept all his work away when it was completed and the people did not fail to see in this a proof of Heaven's displeasure. In 1596, the minister Doctor Hammer came in a small vessel to Timoleague, to get timber for a fine dwelling-house which he was building near Cork. He pulled apart the richly carved oaken wainscoting of the friars' cells, and loading his vessel with it sailed away. Hardly had the ship however cleared the bay, when a gale sprang up and sent the vessel with all its freight to the bottom. On Christmas Eve in 1612, Lyons the Bishop of Cork, who had then reached an extreme old age, was told that the people all around Timoleague were to assemble in the Abbey to assist at the Midnight Mass. Straightway rising up with the band of ruffians who were his ordinary suite, he started out to hunt the friars and their congregation. He had passed the gates of Cork into the open country, when he was seized with sudden illness. His companions begged him to return. But hatred of the Catholics was stronger in him than the pains of the body. He dismounted and, wrapping himself in warmer garments, bestrode his horse again, determined to accom- plish his bloody purpose. But God was watching over the wor- shippers in Timoleague that night. The pains grew more and more intense till finally they forced him to retrace his steps to Cork. In 1602, Owen McEgan, the Catholic Bishop-elect of Ross, while acting as chaplain to the troops of the O'Sullivan Bear, fell mortally wounded by the English and died on the field. His remains were brought to Timoleague by the O'Sullivans and the M'Carthys. There they still lie awaiting the coming of the Lord Who shall judge persecuted and persecutor alike. Round about have been laid the ashes of generation after generation of Irish Catholics. Many nameless 'heaving mounds of clay' are here, on which the sun pours its warm ray through the ruined 18 TIMOLEAGUE. southern window. The uncovered peasant, with that respect for the dead which is so marked among the Irish, still kneels — before the portals Where of old were wont to be, For the blind, the halt, and leper, Alma and hospitality. One of the last of the Irish harpers, John Collins who died in 1816, fittingly sang in the old tongue a last " Lament over Timoleague." Sir Samuel Ferguson has translated it from the Irish and preserved it to us in his Lays of the Western Gael. There, I said in woeful sorrow, Weeping bitterly the while, Was a time when joy and gladness Reigned within this ruined pile. Empty aisle, deserted chancel, Tower tottering to your fall, Many a storm since then has beaten On the grey head of your wall. Gone your Abbot, rule and order, Broken down your altar stones ; Nought see I beneath your shelter, Save a heap of clayey bones. Oh ! the hardship, oh ! the hatred, Tyranny and cruel war, Persecution and oppression That have left you as you are ! RUINS OF LAMBEECHER CHAPEL, BBEMORE. JOSEPH'S DREAM. By Agnes Hampton. 1 HIS is the true story of an Arab child of Christian parents ; his happy, dreams in Bethlehem of the East become real only after weary days in this New World of the West. The fair blue sky of Palestine looked down on the house where little Joseph was born. There he spent twelve happy, innocent years. The same hills that echoed the Angels' chorus, on the first holy Christmas night, threw their shadows across the spot where he dwelt. Bethlehem, the city of David and the birth- place of the world's Redeemer, was his home. His parents were pious in their humble condition. They were the descendants of Christian Arabs who for generations had lived in the ancient city. They earned a meagre livelihood by the manufacture and sale of rosaries, crucifixes, and holy images. They had their modest home in a house that had once been almost stately in its architecture and surroundings, but was fast crumbling away for want of the care their poverty would not permit them to bestow upon it. Near the dwelling, along the hillside, was the garden with a few venerable olive trees. An ancient vine shaded a rustic bench and table ; and there was a shed to shelter the donkey which was the willing servant and the children's playmate. It too shared the family fortunes, feasting when times were good and starving when shekels were few. Death visited their humble home and called away good old Simon, the father. So the widow was left with her four orphan children, of whom Joseph was the youngest. He was a sprightly, affectionate boy, always active and willing to help, always happy and smiling. Yet his was a thoughtful heart, and 19 2O JOSEPH'S DREAM. he looked out into the future and planned a high and holy calling for himself. He was sitting in the doorway at his mother's feet. The evening meal was finished, and the industrious widow was seated with a piece of the curious Eastern needle-work before her. The twilight was fast departing, and she laid down the work and placed a tremulous hand upon the soft, dark tresses of her boy. " Joseph, my son, they are taking you from me far across the great sea. But I can trust you, my child, my youngest one. Be true to the teachings of your father ; be faithful to the holy Virgin and to your patron St. Joseph ; and the infant Saviour will love you and never forsake you." " Mother," said the boy in a low voice, " why must I leave you ? Simon does not need me. He is a big man and I am but a little boy. I would better love to stay here with you and my sisters." " My poor child, since your father's death your brother Simon is the head of the family ; and he thinks it best for you to go with him to that great free land they tell us of, where boys and men can make much money. Here we are very poor and in debt. If you and your brother can do well for yourselves and help me to pay our debts, will it not be better for us all ? O my little one, my Joseph, my Benjamin, it breaks my heart to part from you — and yet, it is best, it is best. God will surely befriend you in that strange land." She stooped over and kissed him lovingly, tenderly, while large tears ran down her cheeks and sobs choked her voice. A harsh voice called : " Joseph !" The boy started up and ran quickly to where Simon stood unloading an unwieldy cart laden with packages of various sizes and shapes. " Here !" said the latter roughly ; " why are you always worrying the Mother with your foolish whining? Jump about quickly and help me, for we must be ready to leave to-morrow before noon." The child grew very pale ; he bit his lip and made no reply, JOSEPH'S DREAM. 21 busying himself with carrying in the bundles his brother was unpacking. Before his father died, no one had ever thought of scolding him ; but now all was changed. The older son had stepped quietly into his father's authority, and the gentle, timid mother was afraid to check him. So he had forced from her a consent that Joseph should go with his cousin and himself ; for they had promised to join a party of friends and neighbors who were going out to America to sell the wares of the Holy Land. There was no chance of making a living in Bethlehem, he said, and they were already burdened with debt. In the great world beyond the seas they would soon get rich, and they would come back and live like the English lords when they travel. The boys were very much alike in a way, yet strangely dissimilar. Simon was about twenty-one, tall, erect and graceful. His complexion was swarthy, his eyes and hair very dark, his nose aquiline, the lower part of his face heavy-set and muscular. Joseph too had the complexion and hair of his race. But his eyes, fringed by long black lashes, were of a dark hazel tint ; and his skin, though dark, was transparent and easily varied with his emotion from a creamy paleness to a crimson flush. His mouth was small, and his nose and chin delicately chiselled. Late that night as he lay asleep in his little cot, with the starlight through the open window throwing a gentle radiance upon him, his mother crept stealthily into the room. She leaned over him and saw that his placid face bore the traces of tears. His hands were joined and, tightly clasped between his fingers, was the well-worn rosary she had taken from her husband's hands after his death and given to her youngest child. She kissed his eyelids, his rosy mouth, his little brown hands, murmuring : " Holy Joseph, protect my fatherless boy ; Holy Virgin, keep him pure ; Sweet Jesus, have mercy on him !" The child smiled in his sleep. He dreamed he was in the Holy Cave with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Virgin Mother had put her Babe into his arms and allowed him to kiss the lips 22 JOSEPH'S DREAM. of the Divine Lord. Then he thought St. Joseph said kindly : "Little Joseph is my namesake; he shall be a brother to the Holy Child Jesus. He shall live to preach His Gospel, and to break the Bread of Life, unto those who hunger for It." H. High Mass was over ; and the crowd was slowly filing out through the narrow portals of St. Joseph's Church in one of our populous cities of the South. It was a poor little weather-beaten edifice, half-brick and half-frame, in which the Catholics of that portion of the city had worshipped for nearly twenty years. They often laughingly called it Bethlehem. But although stable- like in its exterior, within all was light and fragrant of burning incense. The altar was radiant, and the aisles echoed to the same stately hymns that have charmed royal ears in the cathedrals of other lands. The little old church is now torn away, and a handsome Gothic pile occupies its place. But it is not too late to chronicle one sweet act of mercy which was commenced within those humble walls, hallowed by so many sacred memories. Two ladies in deep mourning, Miss Fitzhugh and her sister, were slowly proceeding down the aisle. Suddenly Martha, the younger of the two, called her sister's attention to a child kneeling in a sheltered corner near the confessional. He was clad in a coarse woollen suit, and his feet were encased in heavy boots several sizes too large for him. His little hands were bronzed by the sun and roughened by exposure to the cold weather. But these signs of toil and poverty were not what had attracted her notice ; it was the expression of his face. He clasped in his hands an old rosary ; and his eyes were fixed with rapturous devotion upon the little crucifix, held between his thumb and forefinger. His face was pale, but placid. Great tears streamed down his cheeks and splashed unheeded upon the sacred image. As Miss Fitzhugh glanced toward him, he reverently blessed himself and rose to leave, when he met her kind eyes fixed upon JOSEPH'S DREAM. 23 him. She had scarcely time to catch in return a pleading, sorrow- ful look from the large brown eyes, before she saw a young man roughly nudge the boy and push him forward. The little fellow hesitated, glanced at the ladies and said a few words to his com- panion, who replied with an angry scowl and hurried him away. This is what the boy said : " That sweet lady has eyes like the Mother, like the Holy Virgin. I want to speak to her. Please, Simon, let me speak to her." " No, Joseph, you act like a simpleton. What has the strange lady to do with you ?" By this time they were outside the church. Another young man, whom they called Cousin John, was with them ; and thus the three Arabs hurried away, little Joseph running and limping painfully to keep up with the swinging stride of his companions. " What a beautiful child !" said Miss Fitzhugh, as the sisters walked thoughtfully homeward. "His great, dark eyes haunt me, and I believe he wanted to speak to me. Did you see how roughly that man hurried him away? I know the little fellow was speaking of us." Several times during the day she alluded to the little scene, and said : " That child is surely in trouble ; I know it. His sad eyes follow me, and I cannot keep them out of my mind. I will speak to him, if we see him again." Martha, finding that the subject really distressed her sister's tender heart, tried to laugh away the thought of the poor Italians, as she supposed them to be. But her gentle ridicule had not the desired effect. That afternoon, at Vespers, Miss Fitzhugh prayed for the stranger and asked St. Joseph to help her to befriend the poor child. " For I know," she said, " his little heart is in sore dis- tress, and he must be a good child to say his beads with such tender devotion." Finally she concluded that the good Saint probably knew more about the poor little fellow than she did, and that he would certainly help her to find him and comfort him in some way or another. Hers was a simple childlike faith into which no shadow of doubt ever entered. 24 JOSEPH'S DREAM. Several weeks passed before another glimpse was caught of the foreigners. Then again they were seen in the vestibule of the church, one morning after Mass. Miss Fitzhugh' had no excuse to speak to them ; but she caught the boy's glance and gave him a radiant little smile that warmed every corner of his lonely heart and brought the bright, glad light into his sorrowful eyes. A few days after, she met him on the street with a heavy basket of small articles, which he was peddling about the city. She examined his wares, bought a few trifles, and then questioned him about himself. A child's instinct is rarely mistaken, and Joseph knew he had found a true friend. In broken language, for his English was not yet very intelligible, he told her how he and his brother and cousin had come from Bethlehem. He told of his mother and • sisters at home, and of their wants and hopes. She conjectured that he was badly treated by his brother and cousin, and that he was overworked. He was plainly so foot-sore that he could scarcely walk ; and, worse than all, she found that he was heart-sick and home-sick for his mother and his quiet, peaceful home so far away. That he had refined instincts and aspirations above his station, perhaps unintelligible to his companions, was easily seen ; and the tender, womanly heart of his new friend was at once enlisted in his behalf. She determined that he should be cared for and protected. Giving him her address, she told him to come to see her and tell her all about the Holy Land ; and she would show him pictures of the holy places near his home and of the Saints he loved. He thanked her, and his expressive eyes sparkled with pleas- ure and gratitude. Miss Fitzhugh was not wealthy. Indeed she was poor, if we may call one poor whose heart is overflowing with holy thoughts and generous impulses. But she determined to enlist her friends and interest them in this poor, home-sick, desolate child. He came to see her, as he had promised. She drew from him his whole simple story — his father's death, the parting with mother and sisters, the ocean voyage in the reeking steerage of an emigrant JOSEPH'S DREAM. 25 ship, the cities they had visited, the rebuffs they had met with, the wearisome tramps, the cheerless lodgings where he had to be cook and porter and drudge at night, after a long, weary day of toil and travel. And finally, with sighs and blushes, came the heaviest, hardest trial of all, his longing to study and learn so that he might grow up to be a priest. " I know so little," he said sadly, " and I grow so fast. It will take many, many years to make me wise enough, and I shall soon be a man." Miss Fitzhugh showed him some pictures of the Holy Land, ^nd of the Blessed Mother and the Saints. From these he picked out one of St. Joseph and fervently kissed it. After the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph was his favorite Saint. This was a very happy day for the little Arab. After a gen- erous repast, he took his leave and, running lightly down the steps, hurried back to his brother's poor lodgings. Miss Fitzhugh went at once to work devising plans to help this little waif, who had crept so suddenly but surely into her compassionate heart. She learned that he could enter a Catholic night-school in the city. She raised means to clothe him nicely, so that he might present a neat appearance among the other boys. All things were looking bright for the little Arab when, suddenly, he disappeared. m. For several weeks Miss Fitzhugh waited in hopes that Joseph would visit her again. Her heart was heavy with fore- bodings of trouble for the child. At last she met him in a part of the city remote from her dwelling. He was carrying a heavy basket, his face was paler and thinner, his eyes looked unnaturally large, and his steps were weary and lagging. A pathetic look of quiet endurance was on his face. When he saw his kind friend, the warm blood rushed to his cheeks and his eyes grew bright with joy. " Well, my little Joseph," she said, " why did you never come again to see me ? I have good news for you. I can help you to go to school and learn ; will not that make you happy ?" RSSBMPTIOH 1IOSITY LIBRRRY 26 JOSEPH'S DREAM. He blushed and hung his head, a furtive look crept into the frank eyes, and he painfully stammered some trifling excuse. Finally he told her that his brother had forbidden him to see her again, and had even beaten him for asking to go to her house. He would never consent for him to ro to school. It was no use to ask. " I will see your brother," said the lady resolutely. " Per- haps he fears I am not a true friend to you and will do you harm." Procuring Simon's address, she sent for him on the plea of important business. He came, and was at first surly and dis- agreeable. But finally, thawing out under her genial manner, he consented to let his little brother enter the night-school. They could not spare him, he said, .for his work was worth much money to them and they were very poor. People bought much from him because he was little, and they pitied him. He was too useful on the street to waste his time going to school ; but he might study at night. The crafty, selfish expression of the older Arab impressed Miss Fitzhugh far more unfavorably than anything she had learned from Joseph. She secretly resolved to free the child, as soon as possible, from the tyranny of his unnatural brother. Little Joseph entered the night-school, where his polite, gentle manners, his earnestness and attention, won all hearts. The boys loved to gather round him during recess ; they never tired of hearing him recite verses and prayers in his native tongue. He was remarkably bright. Every one that conversed with him remarked what a fine mind he must have to learn so readily, to understand so quickly, a language which a few months ago had been entirely new and strange to him. About this time John, who was a most plausible fellow, came frequently to see Miss Fitzhugh concerning his little cousin. He finally procured admission for himself to the night-school, where his graceful and insinuating manners and his ready wit won him many admirers. Bat Joseph always seemed ill at ease with him ; and one could detect a nervous, frightened look about him as if JOSEPH'S DREAM. 27 he were continually on the lookout for a pinch or a blow. His lessons were never so good nor his manners so free when John was watching him. Still, he learned fast and won friends every day. Whether it was his bright, intelligent face or his large, sorrowful eyes, or his quick, attentive manner, I know not ; but there was a charm about the little Arab that proved an " open sesame" to all hearts. He had been fitted up in comfortable clothes, such as are worn by American boys in ordinary life. With his neat suit, hi& clean, shining face, and his soft, dark curls crowned by a red Turkish cap, he made an attractive picture. But the life of hard, grinding toil never ceased. Day by day he grew paler, thinner, more ethereal-looking. IV. One Sunday evening, Joseph came to see Miss Fitzhugh, and she noticed that he limped painfully. She asked him if he were tired. "Some," he said quietly, sinking into the chair to which she motioned him. Presently she glanced up and saw that, although his face was calm and placid, great tears were streaming from his eyes and his hands were tightly clasped as if in pain. " My poor child, what is grieving you ?" "My feet are very bad," he said. "I can hardly walk. Yesterday I walked, walked, \valked all day ; and when I came home at night, I had only sold five cents." Here he held up his five fingers with a little grimace of disgust, which would have been amusing had it not been so pitiful. Meanwhile Martha, who had quietly left the room, returned with a basin of warm water and Castile soap, a little box of salve, and soft towels. " Joseph," she said, " I am going to bathe your feet. No, no, you must not move " — for the boy blushed and stammered, putting out his hands to prevent her. " Don't you remember how our dear Lord washed His disciples' feet ? and don't you think it will please Him for me to wash and anoint your feet?" 28 JOSEPH'S DREAM. While she 'was speaking, she had unfastened and taken off his shoes and stockings. Swollen, discolored with bruises and sores, the poor feet were indeed as he had said, " very bad." It was a mystery to her how he could bear his weight upon them. Her face grew dark with indignation as she thought of the cruel men who could allow a child so to suffer. But she tried, with her wonted gentleness, to banish the uncharitable feeling, remembering that Evil is wrought by want of thought As well as want of heart. Very tenderly she bathed and dried the poor swollen feet, spreading a soothing ointment with a soft linen cloth on the wounded places. Then she replaced his shoes and stockings. They were very much too large, else he could not have borne their pressure. " Sister," she said, " this is frightful ; something must be done. His brother must be forced to let us get the child a home." " Do not tell my brother," pleaded the child ; " he will beat me for letting you know." " But, my boy, you cannot continue walking with your feet in this condition. Only yesterday a good lady told me she would give you a home with her for a month, until something better can be done. You might stay with us, but we have only these two rooms and could not make you comfortable. Miss Halleck is a good kind lady. She is not rich, but she can give you a little room and you can pay your board by helping a bit in the kitchen. And then you can have more time to study. You can still go to the night-school, and she will take you to church and to Sunday-school with her." The lad's eyes brightened a moment. Then the old helpless look came back as he said : " My brother will never let me go to her. It is no use, no use." " I will see him this very day," replied Miss Fitzhugh ; and, suiting the action to the words, she donned her bonnet and wraps and started out with Joseph to find his brother. JOSEPH'S DREAM. 29 Simon scowled at the boy, and spoke a few words in Arabic. Joseph with a mute, frightened look shrank away from his kind protector and retired into a corner of the room. The lady explained her errand, and at first met with a decided refusal. " No, he cannot go. We are very poor, we need him. It is for his good as well as ours to work. He is strong and well. He walks lame to make people sorry for him ; you should see how fast he can walk when he is with me." Here Simon laughed sneer- ingly. " O madam, you do not know that boy. You think him a little saint because he says his beads and weeps, and because he talks soft. Oh, but he is an idle, deceitful young" — here he stopped for a word, and finally brought out what he evidently considered the climax of a terrible accusation in America — " dude — an idle, whining young dude." The winding up of this oration was so irresistibly funny to Miss Fitzhugh that, indignant as she was, she laughed heartily. It was the best thing she could have done. Simon accepted her laughter for approbation. He became mollified, and gradually yielded to her persuasions to let the child have at least a month's rest with the kind lady who offered him a home. It was settled that he could go at once. I know not who slept the most soundly that night, Joseph in his soft downy bed in his new home, or Miss Fitzhugh and her sister on pillows which surely ought to have been blessed by happy dreams. The next day Simon and his cousin came together and explained that they could not let Joseph stay away from them, unless they could be promised five dollars a month to recompense them for the loss of his services. Deceived by their plausible words, Miss Fitzhugh agreed to this demand. It was impossible for her to do so unaided ; but such was her faith that she felt certain the means would be forthcoming to pay for the child's liberty. She had already embarrassed herself in assisting him, but heretofore she had found her friends glad to advance her charitable designs. She felt confident of their continued gener- osity. 3O JOSEPH'S DREAM. When she told them of this new imposition they were very indignant. What, were the selfish, crafty fellows not grateful to have the poor child cared for, clothed, and educated? How dared they attempt to extort money from her on such a silly pretext ? Poor little Miss Fitzhugh was fairly overwhelmed by the tempest she had evoked. But Providence came to her assistance, and before the end of the month she had means to keep her •promise to Simon. She told him decidedly, however, that her friends had deter- mined to have the boy taken care of, and that under the laws of this country he could be punished for cruelty to children. At this he flew into a terrible rage and went away scowling and muttering : " She will get the worst of it yet, for meddling with that good-for-nothing boy." V. Joseph will never forget that happy month with Miss Halleck. How quickly sped the days sweetened by prayer and study and light, cheering toil. He was kept busy assisting the elder ladies of the family just as he had been taught to help his mother. With his deft, tidy ways he accomplished a thousand trifling things that are never noticed until the omission of them recalls their great necessity. Often he would tell them of his distant home, of the great Convent and Church of the Nativity, of the holy places in Jeru- salem, and of the pilgrims from all over the world who flock incessantly to the scenes of our Saviour's birth and death and resurrection. "And just to think," Miss Halleck would often say, "our little friend here has played hundreds of times in the hills and valleys of that holy land, his feet have walked over the very spots hallowed by the footprints of our Lord Himself. O Joseph, how- much you must love your home !" " Yes, I love my home — my poor, humble, holy Bethlehem. How happy we should be if our land were free as your America is." JOSEPH'S DREAM. 31 He never tired of geography, but studied it greedily. He would hunt for the map of the world and trace with his finger the long route he had journeyed over. He would linger along the shores of Italy and Southern France, then out the Mediter- ranean and across the Atlantic into the harbor of New York. When he reached that city, a sad, frightened look would come into his eyes, as though painful memories were aroused. " I like it not — it is a great place ; but oh, the noise !" and then he would clap his hands to his ears as if to shut out a deafen- ing roar. He was quick and agile in every movement and full of gesticulations ; indeed there was scarcely an emotion that he could not portray with the joint movements of hands and eyes. The beginning of another month brought a new change into the boy's life. Mrs. Lee was an amiable widow lady with two daughters, living in a charming country home a few miles from the city. She had seen Joseph and heard his story. She became very much interested in him, and offered to give him a home as long as he should need it. Here he was in another quiet, refined Catholic family. Under the gentle influence of these kind ladies, the child's mind expanded like a beautiful flower opening to the sunshine. At the same time, the pure, invigorating country air brought back the roses to his wan cheeks and the buoyancy of childhood to his limbs. The poor home-sick boy became deeply attached to his new friends, and they in turn grew very fond and proud of their young ward. Meanwhile, Miss Fitzhugh was enjoying an animated corre- spondence with a New York priest — the Father of blessed memory for homeless boys. It resulted in securing a permanent home for the poor child. Mr. Barry was a gentleman of charitable disposition and some little means. He interested himself in the case, and promised to help Miss Fitzhugh who was always fearing the trouble they might have with the older boys. They had lately grown very abusive and threatening. 32 JOSEPH'S DREAM. Mr. Barry went to the Orphans' Court of the Southern State, told the whole story, and asked to be appointed the boy's guardian. The authorities replied that such a step was unnecessary, there being no property involved. They directed him to act as he thought best for the child's welfare. Accordingly, he fitted Joseph out nicely and took him with himself to New York. He parted with him only after he had placed him safely in the Father's mission school, under the patronage of the Immaculate Virgin. Joseph's leave-taking of his friends was very touching. Miss Fitzhugh and her sister were at the depot to bid him " God speed !" Martha stood a little behind her sister, carefully hold- ing a small basket packed with cakes and fruit. Joseph greeted them with the innocent affection of a little child. But the New York train was ready, and so he followed his guardian into the coach. He sat gazing back as long as the ladies were in sight. At last, as he turned his head from the window, his eyes were full of tears. VI. Joseph's journey to New York had taken place while his brother and cousin .were out of the city on one of their periodical tramps, peddling through the adjacent counties. On their return they learned what had happened, and were furious. John was particularly disagreeable. He appeared several times at the door of Miss Fitzhugh with surly, downcast counte- nance and threatening language. He commenced dogging her footsteps. He appeared suddenly at the most unexpected times and places. At last, fairly worn out with his persistence, she threatened to appeal to the police for protection. He in return declared he would take his grievances to the Turkish minister. A few days after this last threat, the ladies were startled by a summons to the parlor. It was from a gentleman whose name was not familiar to either of them. He introduced himself as the Secretary of the Turkish legation. He explained his visit by saying that he came to inquire into the case of a little Arab whom they had befriended. The Secretary was accompanied by his wife, a gentle little JOSEPH'S DREAM. 33 foreigner. He was himself of French training and marriage, and his manners were extremely suave and polished. He apologized profoundly, in his broken English, for disturbing them. " I wish not to trouble you," he said, " or to cause you any uneasiness. But these boys, these Arabs have complained to the minister, and he directed me to investigate." He then listened attentively, while Miss Fitzhugh related the whole story. When she finished there was a suspicious moisture in the bright eyes of the French lady. She murmured, "Poor child, poor child !" It was the critical moment. The Secretary arose, looked doubtingly at his wife, and then grasped Miss Fitzhugh's hand impulsively : "Allow me, madam, to say you have done a noble work. God will bless you for it. I promise you shall not be again annoyed by these men." The trial was over ; he kept his promise. Long afterward, poor, frightened, yet firmly charitable Miss Fitzhugh learned that the two cousins were living honest, indus- trious lives. What was more — it is a side-light on the Oriental character — they had at once begun corresponding regularly with little Joseph in his New York home ! And now for Joseph's dream which came to him as he left, perhaps forever, his own and the Christ-Child's birthplace ? In far Bethlehem, his mother's heart is comforted ; for he is safe. The child who has inherited from her the blood of the desert wanderers cannot but chafe at times against the confinement of school. But when the longing for home and mother swells his heart almost to bursting, he knows to whom to go for comfort. His Christian mother and his dream in Bethlehem have taught him. For in the Holy Family of Bethlehem — with the Divine Child Jesus and His Virgin Mother Mary and His foster-father St. Joseph — the whole world can find their true home. MOSAIC OP ST. APOLLINARIS PROM RAVENNA *(6TH CENTURY). THE CHASUBLE. By the Secretary of a Tabernacle Society. "And thou shalt make a holy vesture for Aaron, thy brother, for glory and for beauty ... in which he, being consecrated, may minister unto Me in the priest's office." Exodus, xxviii. 2, 3. r I THE more we look into the ritual of the Church, the more we are impressed by the deep significance of her ceremonies and accessories. The Church of Form, she is called ! How little do those who so name her understand the beautiful lessons of holiness and of truth she thereby teaches her intelligent child- ren. The pomp of a court is looked upon with awe, even in democratic America ; when we go abroad, we willingly join in and enjoy the least part of ceremonial to which we are admitted ; we watch, with intense interest, the customs handed down through generations, and we long to be acquainted with their significance. Can any court be more worthy of our attentive study than that of the Great King of Kings ? As we kneel before His throne, the lighted candles take us back in imagination to the Catacombs and show us there the courageous piety of the early Christians, which we are so slow to imitate. The floating incense calls to mind our own vocation to Christianity in the offering of the Magi to the Babe of Bethlehem, while it fills us with the spirit of prayer which we beg of God may be directed like incense in His sight. 34 THE CHASUBLE. 35 So with all other things relating to the service of the Altar, and more than all, with the Church Vestments, those robes ' for beauty and for glory ' in which the eternal priesthood minister unto God ! Most striking of these is the Chasuble, the last garment put on by the priest in celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass. He is vested in Amice and Alb, in Girdle, Maniple, and Stole ; then he places over all the Chasuble, embroidered with a cross to repre- sent that which was borne by Christ upon His sacred shoulders. It is a question much discussed among litur- gical writers, as to whether the Apostles and their immediate successors had distinct vestments for Divine Office, or whether they celebrated in ordi- nary dress. The latter was probably the case, though Cardinal Bona tells us that St. Peter's Chasuble was brought from Antioch to the Church of St. Genevieve at Paris, and there carefully pre- served.1 This, however, may have been his ordi- nary mantle which most certainly would have been held in great reverence by the early Christians. I. HlSTOEY AND DEVELOPMENTS. The word Chasuble — Casula — is thought by some, among others by St. Isidore, to be derived from " Casa " meaning a little house. In the thirteenth century it seems to have been identical with the Planeta and the Penula of earlier times, being the cloak worn by the Romans for protection against the weather and also in military service. There were two kinds, varying in adornment according to the wealth and position of the wearer ; that of the people, short and of coarse cloth, was called penula, while that worn by senators and dignitaries, of rich material and ample folds, was called Planeta. The Church retained the Planeta for her priests after it fell into disuse among the laity, as she has kept the Latin for her service though it is no longer a living language. 1 Rer. Liturg., p. 206. (llTH CENTURY.) 36 THE CHASUBLE. It is certain that it was early associated with the ministry. We read that at the dedication of the church at Tyre Eusebius thus addressed the Bishops : " Priests, beloved of God, who are clothed with the holy tunic, adorned with a crown of glory and covered with the sacerdotal robe." St. Jerome, speaking of the dress worn by the priests and levites in the Old Law on entering the Temple, says : " Let us learn from this that we should not enter the sanctuary with the clothes of every-day life, but that the mysteries of the Lord should be treated with a pure conscience and proper dress." When St. Germain was made Bishop of Auxerre in 419, after the ceremony of the tonsure came that of taking off the vain ornaments of the time, to be clothed with the robe of religion — habitus reli- gionis. From this time authors began to speak of the sacred vestments as distinguished from those of the laity, but the exclusive adoption by the Church of the Roman robes of rank and position in the early days of Christianity may be dated from the end of the sixth century. The Chasuble was not put in the number of sacred vestments till after the Stole and even the Alb and the Dalmatic had been counted among them. It is mentioned as such for the first time in one of the Canons of the Fourth Council of Toledo. In the Latin Church, all wear the same Chasuble ; but among the Greeks the Chasuble of a Bishop has a number of crosses, while an Archbishop wears a different vestment altogether which is supposed to resemble the garment of our Lord during His Passion. In Russia, since the time of Peter the Great, even Bishops wear this garment, to the sides and sleeves of which are attached a number of little bells. CHASOBLE OF ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY, FRONT VIEW. THE CHASUBLE. 37 A circular or oval garment of ample dimensions, the Chasuble of the early Christians (old English form, Chesible or Chysible) completely enveloped the priest. It had no opening at the side, but only one for the head to pass through. This form without change is retained by the Orientals, Catholic or schismatic, but in the Latin Church it has been gradually modified. Most of the early monu- ments show us the loose round form ; but mosaics of the sixth cen- tury, which are known to be correct for the vestments, represent the Chasuble pointed back and front, though reaching to the feet. In the collection of Buonnarnoti, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lawrence Deacon, are clothed with planetae or Chasubles, sloping into points. The Chasuble of John XII. in the curious mosaic formerly at the Lateran Basilica, and of which a copy exists at the Barberini Museum, is of the same shape. This dates from the year 960 and represents the Pope clothed with a tunic, bowing his head to receive from the hands of the deacons the Chasuble, which is sloped on the two sides and ends in a point back and front ; it reaches only to the knees. In the twelfth century it was much cut and shortened in front and at the sides ; and, later, in the Rococo period all resemblance to the first type had disappeared. This excited much indignation among the writers of the day and attempts were made to revive the ancient shape; St. Charles Borromeo," in a pro- vincial council, ordered that the Chasubles should be about four and a half feet wide, and should reach nearly to the heels. St. Thomas of Canterbury's Chasuble is described as three feet ten inches deep, and its shape formed the half of a perfect circle joined together; the seam was in front and there was no opening but the one through which to pass the head. 2 See November MESSENGER, 1890, frontispiece, for an excellent specimen. CHASCBLE OF ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY, BACK VIEW. 38 THE CHASUBLE. These changes of form seem to have come about naturally. The priest, robed in the ample Chasuble of the early centuries, needed deacons to assist him. In celebrating, he kept his hands beneath it during the Conftteor, after which the attendant gathered up the pliant folds and placed the Maniple on his arm. During the solemn parts of the Mass, when he needed the free use of his arms, the deacons had again to gather up the vestment. The Church, ever jealous of the least ceremony showing her antiquity, keeps in her service this act of the deacon though it is no longer neces- sary. For how many interesting facts and customs are we not indebted to her? Another reason for the change of form may have been the introduction of the Latin cross. Its straight lines could not well be preserved on the flowing robe of the early Church. In the Middle Ages, too, there was great difficulty in procuring pliant material, and as the vestments became rich with embroid- ery of gems and gold it was very necessary for them to be of portable shape. It is a rather remarkable fact that these changes seem to have been the work of private individuals; there is no known decree of Popes or Councils which have sanctioned them. The present form of Chasuble, though it has gained in con- venience, has lost much of the grace and dignity of that of the earlier times. ABBOT OF ST. ALBAN8, (14TH CENTURY.) ORPHREY, 14TH CENTVRY. THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." THE LAST HOURS OF DR. LEVI SILLIMAN IVES. > HE morning mail of November 7, 1890, brought me a note with a letter from William Jefferson Guern- sey, M. D., of Frankford, Pa., a recent convert, which has occasioned the writing of this article and the postponement of the one promised on the spiritual side of Cardinal Newman's life. The note, written in a feminine hand, read as follows : " Bishop Levi S. Ives died in the communion of the Epis- copal Church. He publicly read his recantation of the Church of Rome. He died about 1867. This book [which contains the statement] dates 1884." It was while Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, during a visit to Rome, that Dr. Levi Silliman Ives resolved to become a Catholic. After his conversion he wrote The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism as " a letter to his old friends and his late brethren of the Protestant episcopate and clergy." In his Introduction he gives us an insight of himself : It is due both to you and myself, as it is more especially to the cause of God, that I yield to the promptings of my heart and conscience, and lay before you, as best I can, the reasons which have constrained me to take so serious, and to many dear ones, as well as to myself, so trying a step as that of abandoning the position in which I had acted as a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church for more than thirty years, and as a Bishop of the same for more than twenty years, and of seeking, at my time of life, admission, as a mere layman, into "the Holy Catholic Church, " and with no prospect before me but simply peace of conscience, and the salvation of my soul. Further on he tells vividly and candidly how the denial of Sacramental Confession by his Church made him doubt whether it was " an institution of God." But the circumstance which at this period shook my confidence most of all, was the absence, in my view, of any instituted method among Protestants for the remission of post-baptismal sin. Sins before baptism were expressly forgiven in that sacrament. But for the remission of those committed after, however deadly, 4O THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." I could see in Protestantism no provision. That Christ left power in His Church to remit these 1 had no doubt. And for a time, after my mind had become alive to the importance of the exercise of this power, I believed that it existed and might be lawfully exercised in the communion of which I was a bishop. But upon stricter examination and more mature thought, I became convinced that if the existence of such power was not actually denied, its exercise, except in a very modified sense and within very restricted limits, was virtually prohibited. The discovery filled me with dread, which daily observation increased, till finally it passed into absolute consternation. No one. who has not been in my state, can fully appreciate my sensations, when I opened my eyes to the fact that multitudes around me, intrusted to my care, were goaded by a conviction of mortal sin and demanding relief, and I was not allowed by my Church to administer that relief in the only way which seemed to me to be directed by God's word as understood by His early Church. The question now forced itself upon me, Can that be an institution of God which thus locks up the gifts (supposing it to have received them) which He commands His priesthood to dispense to the needy and perish- ing souls for whom Christ died? This state of doubt and fear awakened in my mind the inquiry, why I should not more thoroughly examine the ground on which I stood, and on which were based my hopes of eternal salvation ? Doctor Guernsey's letter, enclosing the note printed above, asked these questions: "My DEAR FATHER: "Is this story true? If not, can you inform me where I can obtain facts to contradict it? "Very respectfully yours, JEFFERSON GUERNSEY." I was positively sure that the "story" was not true, but when appealed to for "facts," I was not so positive. I knew, however, where the facts could be obtained, and I wrote a few days after to Miss Isabel Shea, the daughter of the distinguished historian, Dr. John Gilmary Shea, enclosing Dr. Guernsey's note and letter to her. Miss Shea kindly sent me the following interesting answer : "ELIZABETH, K J., November 26, 1890. "REVEREND AND DEAR FATHER: " I was in the West with my father when your note reached Elizabeth, and I only received it on my return home. I gave the note and letter from your friend, Doctor Guernsey, to my father. He will, I am sure, give you the information you wish regarding Doctor Ives. " The Ives family have been friends of ours for many years. I remember seeing the Doctor's grave in the Catholic Cemetery at THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." 41 Westchester, New York, some time ago. With very many kind regards, believe me, "Most cordially, "ISABEL SHEA." The same mail, in which his daughter's letter came, brought one from Dr. Shea. "ELIZABETH, N. J., November 22, 1890. "REVEREND AND DEAR FATHER: " Dr. Levi Silliman Ives died in the house of Richard H. Clarke, Esq., brother of the late Father Clarke, S. J., at Manhat- tanville, N. Y. He was attended during his last illness by Mrs. Clarke and her sister Mrs. Fitzgerald, who held him up in his dying moments. So far as I can learn, he was attended by Rev. Mr. Breen, his weekly confessor for a long time. " Mr. and Mrs. Clarke are still alive, as is Mrs. Fitzgerald, and a line from you to Dr. Clarke will obtain a distinct account of his last moments. " Their statement can be verified by Mr. Edward Ives, of this city, who saw Dr. Ives constantly in his last days, and who knows that Dr. Ives sent for his two brothers, Protestants, and urged them to become Catholics. " I had never heard the story manufactured by the evil- minded, but on inquiry, I find that it is not recent. If you can obtain an authoritative statement from Dr. R. H. Clarke and print it, you will render good service to the truth. " Mr. Edward Ives will add what he knows from personal knowledge. " With sincere regards, and a petition for your prayers, I remain, Reverend Father, " Yours truly in Christ, " JOHN GILMARY SHEA." So far I had only sought personal satisfaction for the purpose of answering Dr. Guernsey; but Dr. Shea's suggestion "to print" the truth concerning the circumstances of Dr. Ives' death deter- mined me to write to Dr. Clarke and Mr. Edward Ives to learn the whole truth of Dr. Ives' death. It is due to Dr. Shea's hint that the MESSENGER readers are put in possession of testi- mony that vindicates the faith of the worthy Dr. Ives. Meantime a kind note was received from Miss Shea, together with the subjoined letter written by Rt. Rev. Mgr. Preston, 42 THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." now Vicar General of New York and a dear friend of Dr. Ives long before the latter's conversion. "Saint Ann's Church, "NEW YORK, November 23, 1890. " The story about Dr. Ives is a calumny. He died an ardent Catholic. I saw him a few days before his death, and he could not find words sufficient to express the joy of his faith, nor the consolation of dying in the one Church of Christ. " Yours very truly, " T. S. PRESTON." In reply to my letter Mr. Edward Ives wrote : "ELIZABETH, N. J., November 27; 1890. " REVEREND AND DEAR FATHER : " Your esteemed favor of the 21st inst. has just this moment come to hand, and it will give me great pleasure to see at once that evidence be sent to you from members of the family of Dr. Ives, even more closely related to him than I, proving the utter groundlessness of the report to which you allude. " I lived near and was a daily visitor to the home of Dr. Ives, during the last days of his life. It was my privilege to receive his solemn blessing a few hours only before his death, in words such as only a most devout Roman Catholic could utter. "The members of his own household will testify that he daily received the Blessed Sacrament during his last illness. They also remember the earnest appeal which he made to two of his Protestant relatives, who from a distance had come to visit him on his dying bed. Nothing could exceed the earnestness with which he charged them to examine and study the evidences of the^ truth of our holy faith. q™ qTH ^T* 1TH ^T* Vr* " I have now lying before me a most beautiful book entitled Devotion to the Blessed Wrgin Mary, which at the time he directed to be sent to me. The presentation on the fly-leaf in his own feeble handwriting bears the date of August 21, 1867. ^T/H "Of all the inventions of the enemy, surely not one can be more unfounded or more easily disproved than that Dr. L. Silliman Ives ever made a recantation of the Roman Catholic Faith. " I remain, Reverend and dear Father, " Faithfully your obedient servant, "EDWARD IVES. " To Reverend F. X. BRADY, S. J." THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." 43 Some days later the desired information was received from the learned author of The Lives of Deceased American Bishops, Richard H. Clarke, LL.D. Dr. Clarke's testimony, from the intimate relations which he had with Dr. Ives as will be seen in his letter, dispels forever any doubt, ignorantly or maliciously entertained, regarding the manner of Dr. Ives' death. The account tells more than that Dr. Ives died a Catholic. It gives us the beautiful scene of a Christian death-chamber where the soul of a great hero was passing out through earthly shadows up to the Eternal Light Whose guiding rays of inspiration and calling he had ,in prosperity and adversity, in storm and quiet, always conscientiously striven to follow. The calm and peaceful death, the ardent devotion, tender piety and simple faith, as described by Dr. Clarke, are in striking contrast to The Trials of a Mind, as Dr. Ives has himself so vividly depicted them in his own case in his work of this title ; but it is the usual reward with which God crowns the honest efforts of those who have ever kept their face toward Him. The following is what Dr. Clarke wrote : "NEW YORK CITY, November 30, 1890. " DEAR FATHER BRADY : " Your favor of November 26 informed me that it had been stated in a book, published in 1884, that the late Dr. Levi Silliman Ives who, after having been the Episcopal Bishop of North Caro- lina from 1831 to 1852, became a Catholic and was received into the Catholic Church at Rome in 1852, afterward, shortly before his death, had apostatized from the Catholic faith and had returned to the Episcopal Church. You ask me if I can .furnish any evidence as to the truth or falsity of this statement. "As Dr. Ives resided in our family and was our daily asso- ciate as a member of my family from February, 1864, to the day of his death, October 13, 1867, my testimony as to whether he lived and died a Catholic or apostatized from that faith, ought to be of some weight ; and I can say from my own personal know- ledge and daily intercourse with him that, in his professed faith as a Catholic, his practice of every Catholic devotion and his fre- quentation of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, he never faltered, deviated, or wavered at any time before and up to the day and moment of his death. 44 THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." "So far from apostatizing from the Catholic faith, he availed himself of every opportunity of making public and private pro- fession of it during his entire life. He had several severe attacks of illness, including his last illness, and during all these he fre- quently received Holy Communion, and he was a weekly communicant all the time. The Holy Communion was brought and administered to him while confined to his bed in my house, at least every week, by Catholic clergymen during the whole period of his last illness to his death, and on each of these occasions he went to confession. " He received Extreme Unction and the last Sacraments just before his death. " He was President of the Manhattan ville Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Vice-President of the Superior Council of that Society, during all this period and to the moment of his death. He was also during this same period Presi- dent of the New York Catholic Protectory and was its President at his death ; and after his death the Protectory managers adopted and had engrossed and printed resolutions of respect to his mem- ory. These resolutions hang on the walls of the Protectory as well as his portrait to this day, and a marble bust of him was made and now stands among the memorials of illustrious Catholics and Presi- dents of that Institution, in the main hall of the Male Depart- ment. " Being now one of his successors as President of the Protect- ory, I see his memorials preserved there with veneration, weekly or oftener, in my official visits to that Institution. His remains and those of Mrs. Ives were buried in consecrated ground in the lands of the Protectory, and over them stands the monument erected in his honor by the Protectory after his death : and on this sacred spot memorial ceremonies in his honor have frequently been held since his death. " During his last illness he was visited by many Catholic clergymen and, among others, by Archbishop McCloskey, after- ward elevated to the Cardinalate, who celebrated Mass in his bed- room for him, and then and there administered Holy Communion to him, shortly before his death. This scene was very impressive on account of the high dignity of the officiating minister, the eminence of the dying man and his profound devotion and child- like piety, which remained conspicuous in him to his last breath ; and because there hung on the wall of his bedroom and over the little altar, which was erected for the occasion, a copy by McClel- land of the famous picture at Rome of the Communion of St. Jerome. All present were struck with the resemblance between the last Communion of Doctor Ives and that of St. Jerome, both THE END OF "THE TRIALS OF A MIND." 45 of them being aged and infirm, and requiring from weakness to be held up by their sympathetic and venerating friends, in order to receive the Blessed Sacrament. " During his last sickness Doctor Ives was visited by his two brothers from Wallingford, Connecticut, one of whom was a Pro- testant minister, and perhaps both. On this occasion, he requested Mrs. Clarke and the other members of my family to be with him during their presence in his room, and when all were standing around his bed, he solemnly made a profession of the Catholic faith, with a loud voice ; and, in the presence of his two brothers, he pronounced his adherence to the Catholic Church, his commu- nion with the See of Peter, and his determination to die a Catholic. This was a few days before his death. He continued to repeat these sentiments during his few remaining days and up to the hour of his death. " He received Catholic burial from St. Stephen's Church in New York City, at which Cardinal McCloskey pronounced his eulogy. His remains were afterward interred and still lie at the Catholic Protectory in consecrated ground. To all who have the least acquaintance with the laws of the Catholic Church, it is well known that none but persons dying in the Catholic faith can receive the Sacraments on their death-bed, or have Catholic burial, or be interred in consecrated ground. " Doctor Ives never for a moment wavered in his Catholic faith, but professed it every day of his life, and during his last illness to the moment of his death. He was very devout ; he said the Rosary and other prayers every day ; and his faith throughout his entire life was like that of a child, implicit and undoubting. " I had heard, before receiving your letter, that it had been asserted in some published work that Doctor Ives had apostatized from the Catholic faith before his death, but I have never seen the work or the statement in print. "I hereby, of my own personal knowledge, pronounce the statement to be utterly false. " I remain sincerely and respectfully yours, " RICHARD H. CLARKE." In the presence of this array of eminent witnesses, men of more than national reputation and distinguished alike for their learning, for their loyalty to religion, for their love of truth and for their personal honor, who will have the hardihood, in future, to deny that the venerable Doctor Ives died the truly edifying death of a fervent and loyal Catholic ? ' EUCHARISTIC THOUGHTS. By the Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J. I. A SAINTLY and exquisitely gifted Frenchwoman, whose ^~j^ letters and journals, meant for no eyes but her own and her brother's, have nevertheless made her already a classic in the literature of her country — this Eugenia de Gu6rin writes somewhere in her Journal : Oh, quel don! Que dire de VEucha- ristie ? Je n'en sals rien. On adore, on possede, on vit, on dime ; I'dme sans parole se perd dans un abime de bonheur. " Oh, what a gift ! What can be said of the Eucharist ? We adore, we possess, we live, we love ; the soul, speechless, loses itself in an abyss of happiness." That beautiful soul passed out of this world many years ago ; but the same devout joy that she felt in her country chapel in southern France is, thank God, felt at this moment by many a beautiful and holy soul in convent chapel or in public church in thousands and thousands of places over all the world. With these pure and fervent souls I now unite my poor tribute of praise and prayer. O Lord, infuse Thy love into my heart, that I may adore Thee under this sacramental disguise as I hope to adore Thee in Thy heavenly beauty and majesty for ever. n. I wish I could feel now, here at Thy feet, O Lord, the most burning love, the most vivid faith, the firmest hope, and the truest contrition that ever any heart felt before Thy tabernacle. But this would be the purest happiness, this would be heaven on earth, no matter what sweet sadness might accompany such holy feelings ; 46 EUCHARIST 1C THOUGHTS. 47 and I, being what I am and having been what I have been — how could I dare to expect such grace and happiness ? But at least I can be happy in the thought that there are many innocent and penitent hearts feeling this happiness at this moment in many a nook of this sinful earth ; and I can bless God with all my heart for the countless acts of faith and love that are now being made before so many tabernacles over all His Church. III. What is told of many of God's saints is not true of canonized saints alone ; there are even mortal creatures like ourselves whose presence is a sort of vicarious presence of God — whose voice, whose look, whose smile, whose very neighborhood, nay the mere thought of them, the remembrance that such beings exist, tends to purify, refine, and elevate the soul and to make what is vile and ignoble impossible, even in secret thought. And if this is true of some of God's poor creatures still on their probation, how much more is it true of the glorious company of heavenly citizens — of St. Agnes, St. Aloysius, and so many others of the special patrons of purity ! And what are all these to their Mother and their Queen, the Virgin of virgins, Mary Immaculate ? But if the Sun of Justice thus communicates His divine influence to His creatures and most of all to her who is "fair as the moon" — if her borrowed light, the moonlight of her smile, puts to flight unholy thoughts and all the demons of darkness : how transcendently must all this hold good of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, the incarnate God of Purity ! Nay, all this would have been true if God had never become incarnate, if Jehovah had never made Himself our Emmanuel, if God had remained (or had seemed to remain) far away. But He has not remained far away ; He has drawn near to us, very near, nearer than He was to the favored disciples in the Garden when He withdrew from them a stone's throw. And even this was not enough for the incom- prehensible yearning of our Saviour's love : He comes nearer still, and, not content with abiding in the tabernacle of our altars, He makes our very hearts His tabernacle. 48 EUCHARIST 1C THOUGHTS. IV. From how many sins and miseries has Jesus preserved us through the means of this sacrament from our First Communion — how many years back in the past ? From how many dangers will this sacrament continue to preserve us, on till our last viaticum — how many years (or days) forward in the future ? And the sacra- ment of purification which prepares for the sacrament of union — how many sins that we committed have been pardoned, and how many sins that we might have committed have been prevented, through the thrice blessed influence of the tribunal of penance, from the first trembling but happy confessions of our childhood long ago, and by the watchfulness and self-restraint which, please God, have linked confession with confession ever since, on to the last absolution to be received, as we pray and hope, with the most perfect dispositions on our deathbed which we think to be far away, as many a one has thought to whom death in reality was very near. May the Food which makes the young heart chaste strengthen us in our dying hour, and in the strength of that Food may we reach safely the judgment-seat of our Eucharistic Lord Himself, Whose merciful Heart will then yearn (may Its yearning be satisfied !) to give His blessed Mother to us for ever as our nurs- ing Mother. THE ALBAN HILLS. DISTANT VIEW FROM THE JANICULAN, ROME. A VISIT TO THE FALLEN JUPITER. sunny day in late October I was standing on the crest of the Janiculau where it rises up steeply from the western bank of the Tiber. Below me the yellow waters of the river wound lazily beneath the arched bridges and beside the palaces and churches, which also shone out yellow under the golden Roman sun. Along the hilltop to my right was the church and convent of St. Peter in Montorio. For this is the "golden mount" — Mons Aureus — of the Latin god Janus who, here in his stronghold, held the key of Rome against all the outer world. And this, as tradition has it, is the hill climbed by Peter, Christ's key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, and the scene of his martyrdom. His power of the Keys, left to his successors in Rome, has opened the way hither to a universe the ancient Latins little dreamed of. Its sign for all time may be seen over there to the left where the giant dome of St. Peter's — the world's greatest church — lords it over the Eternal City. Away to the east, a dozen miles across the Roman Field, 49 5O THE FALLEN JUPITER. mountains sweep round southward in clear-cut prisms of blue and purple till they reach a last central summit and then sink down in gradual hills toward the sea. This distant peak has an outline as much its own as is a profile to a person's face. It stands half apart from the other mountains and hills that make up the semi- circle to north and east and south of the rolling Campagna, in the middle of which Rome has her seat. All the lines of the land- scape centre in it ; and the fishermen along a hundred miles of the western sea hail the white walls glistening from its height in the rays of the setting sun. Wherever we may go between the moun- tains and the sea, and wherever within the city a vista opens out across the plain, that one peak will draw the eye to itself. It might also well draw the mind's eye to its story of three thousand years. If the traveller of a day who looks and passes, or who climbs to the broad platform upon its summit only that he may enjoy its view beyond compare, would take its lesson to heart, i « there ^^^^^^Hfc. 9 would be for him no need of other miracle to con- firm his faith in the Church whose Head bears the Keys of Peter. This is the moun- tain at whose foot lay THE LAKE OF ALBA- the long white walls of that Alba which was the mother of great Rome ; and on its summit for a thousand years, even when Rome had become mistress of all, the many cities of Latium met before the shrine of their Latin Jupiter. But all this has fallen from its THE FALLEN IUPITER. 51 PALAZZUOT.O. high estate, the religion of the ancient world and its material embodiment alike. Of Alba Longa not one stone remains above another ; and the worship of Jupiter and his idol gods has faded from the earth before the faith of Peter. At last, in the crisp January morning, I went on foot to the top of the mysterious mountain. The path skirts the southern end of the Alban Lake before it plunges into the dense thickets of oak and hazel and chestnut along the mountain slope. The lake is sunk down into the earth like a huge bowl, and the banks descend over four hundred feet before reaching the motionless green sur- face of the water. There is no apparent outlet, but at the water- level toward the west there is an artificial channel tunnelled for a mile and a half through the tufa rock and discharging its waters into the Campagna on the other side of the hill. This is the famous Emissary, from seven to nine feet high and never less than four feet in width, which was made by the Romans at a time when they feared the waters of the lake might burst their banks and sweep down upon the plain. This was four hundred years before the birth of Christ ; and the work remains a marvel of 52 THE FALLEN JUPITER. engineering which could not easily be accomplished with all the resources of our modern civilization. Just above the Emissary, on the highest point of the ridge which thus holds the lake in check from leaping across the plain to the Tiber and the sea, is the square outline of the Pope's palace with the domed church and clustering houses of Castel Gandolfo. Directly opposite us, at the northernmost end of the bowl more than two miles away, the banks are somewhat lower. Over the outer corner Rome — a great modern city, into which lines of rail- way converge across the plain, but which is still lorded over by the overshadowing dome of St. Peter's — spreads its yellow streets in the middle of the brown Campagna. But we must hurry on, though it is hard to know when we could have enough of such a place. Whole volumes could not con- tain all the thoughts which arise of themselves ; for from this semi- circle of land before us all the present history of the world has taken its rise. The very air seems to thrill with the fulness of its life. From the eastern shore of the lake the Alban Mount rises up over two thousand feet. As the lake is nearly a thousand feet higher than the silvery sea glistening yonder, the pagan Jupiter must have been cast down from a throne over three thousand feet up in the sky. Perhaps he still lies beneath the waters of the lake. This mountain bowl is simply the crater of an extinct volcano ; and even within the memory of man, it is said, there have been tremors here as of some one below the waters laboring to upheave the solid earth. "When the world is wicked enough," the peasants say, " the volcano shall wake again to life and swallow up Rome and the world." And that the world will come to an end with the Rome of the successors of St. Peter, I think no one who rightly reads the history of this spot will doubt. In a way, the mountain itself has made the land on which Rome is built. It should seem to have the right to reclaim it when the world refuses to leave Rome to fulfil the designs of Providence in making her the mistress, first of this Latin land and then of the entire known world, and finally the sure home and centre of God's faith on earth. 54 THE FALLEN JUPITER. This peak, whose hollowecl-out profile is so peculiarly its own — and from this, perhaps, it has its name of Monte Cavo — is indeed only the great outer lip of a giant volcano that once burst its rim to westward and poured over all the rocks below the lava which has formed so much of the soil of the fertile Campagna. Between the mountain and the lake, is a narrow tableland on which Alba Longa was built. Only the painful excavations of recent explorers could determine this, so complete had been the ruin of the city of which Rome was the colony two and a half thousand years ago. Toward the southern corner of the lake, at the end of the tableland, there is the solitary Franciscan convent of Palazzuolo. In the winter, with two stalwart priestly companions from Venice, I had held my way straight up the mountain side. But I came out to this interesting foundation of the Middle Ages later on, in the flush of early summer. There is just room for the road to wind between the brink of the cliff, which in several places breaks away into deep chasms yawning startlingly at your feet, and the wall, in some places thirty feet high, which keeps the convent garden from sliding down into the lake. From every crevice in these gray stones grew snapdragon all in flower and clothing the long wall with a crimson flame. There is a view of surpassing beauty from the platform in front of the church, across the lake to Castel Gandolfo, over the Campagna with great Mother Rome in its midst, and beyond all the silver line of the Mediterranean Sea. But these views, ever varied and yet ever the same in their changeless splendor to eye and soul, form the charm of all these hills. This is one of the few convents which the present Italian Government has not seized, owing to the fact that it was the foundation of a Portuguese Bishop and so is under the protection of that Crown. Otherwise Humbert the First of United Italy would have shown here as elsewhere how, according to his latest boast, " he ever respects the religion of his ancestors." As it is, only a few friars remain on in utter poverty and loneliness. One — a pathetic figure, of more than fifty years in the rough gown THE FALLEN JUPITER. 55 STREET CORNER, ROCCA DI PAPA. and knotted cord and bare feet of St. Francis — gladly showed us a short-cut through the fields of Prince Colonna to the next station of our pilgrimage, on the carriage way which has been terraced round the face of the mountain. This is the shrine, of great local fame, of the Madonna del Tufo, " of the Fallen Rock." Its name declares the miraculous 56 THE FALLEN JUPITER. escape to which its foundation was due. The rich marble altars and numberless ex-voto offerings within the modest chapel, and the platform shaded by dark ancient ilex trees whence there is a view more stupendous than ever, declare that this is the home of faith and the land most favored of Heaven. Up the road, which has been lately much improved by the comfort-loving Englishmen who have built their villas and spend ' their guineas here, is the quaintest town you well might meet. Rocca di Papa, named from some anti-pope of long ago, huddles up and around the slopes of a cone that stands off from the hollowed-out side of the mountain near its top. The houses seem literally to climb one upon another ; and it is no easy work to mount up the narrow paved streets on the few days in winter when the tramonta or north wind has congealed into frost and ice the mists which float up here from the sea. Passing beyond the broken tower of the old citadel, we come out on a broad plain setting back into the hills. This is the Campo d'Annibale, from some traditional connection with the invasion of the Carthaginian leader. In late years it was used by the troops of Pius IX. as a summer escape from the heats, and here now encamp their usurping successors. The Pope meanwhile must breathe as best he can in his not too large garden of the Vatican far below. But when, at last, after much puffing along the steep ascent, we reach the height and see the whole of the Latin land out- stretched below us, from the twin hills of Civita Vecchia at the northernmost point of the coast to the Circean Mount where Homer's Ulysses came at the south, Rome draws all our hearts to herself. Yes, this deserted spot tells us Jupiter is fallen ; and Christ and Peter, His Vicar, reign forevermore from Rome. The building behind us, it is true, tells also that the enemies of the Christian faith are powerful ; for within the past two years the Passiouist monks have been expelled from it in the name of " Free and United " Italy. But this is for the sake of having no religion at all, not for the false gods of old. Their overthrow, and the fact that the contest is henceforth openly between the faitli of Christ THE FALLEN JUPITER. 57 and no faith, is the miracle wrought by Peter and his successors below there in the Roman Field. As I turned to depart, the sweet tones of the Angelus floated up from Albano beyond the lake. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary . . . and the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt amongst us. I remembered words written by an American traveller far back in the century when Rome was the Rome of the Popes, not only as now by the strong and unquenchable spirit of faith that will not down, but outwardly and publicly in the name of its government — the much belied Temporal Power of the Roman Pontiffs. This was Horace Binney Wallace, a lawyer of Phila- delphia, I believe, and an amiable writer though now forgotten. In this land of Italy, there was one thing above all others that drew his attention. It is the result of the century-old miracle of which this short sketch has depicted the scene. Jupiter is fallen. This is the laud of Christ and Peter, His Vicar, and of His Mother Mary. "Ihis is the land of the Madonna" THE MORNING OFFERING. A FIRST DIALOGUE. DISCIPLE. How easy it is for ideas to go in at one ear and out at the other. I have heard the main principles of the Apostleship of Prayer, and its organization in a universal League of the Sacred Heart, explained many times over ; and yet there are points on which I am always wishing for information. Teacher. Can you get your ideas together, from time to time, so as to tell me briefly just where your difficulties lie? I might then be able to give you a talk a month, as I remember having done some three years ago. Disciple. My difficulties are somehow all in a bunch. I will do my best to separate them. I see that where the League is spread the habits of devotion — prayer, saying the beads, receiving the Sacraments — are very much increased among all classes of people, even among those who are not attracted by the more formal associations of the Church. And I also believe, as a Christian, that this accumula- tion of prayers on the part of so many souls for the same objects must have great power over the Heart of God. Otherwise, I could not believe in the power of prayer at all. But I do not see clearly how it is that people take up so readily with the idea of praying in union with each other. It is hard enough to get men to understand practically any principles of faith. Now these principles of praying for certain intentions, and of offering one's own sufferings and works as so many prayers, do not seem to be the easiest things in the world to explain to any and every one. Yet I constantly see the people you would least suspect of being given to piety, taking up with the League and drawing great profit from it. It is like an effect without a cause, or rather with a cause I do not understand. Teacher. We priests often find the simple faithful putting in practice what theologians find it difficult to explain in theory. 58 THE MORNING OFFERING. 59 This is sometimes from the direct Providence of God, stirring up a devotion in His Church for His own merciful designs. In that case, we usually come to understand how it is that His grace is working. The first spread of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus seemed very mysterious, and yet it was evidently designed to bring back Christian souls from cold indifference to a personal love for our Divine Lord. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that something of this kind is going on in the work of the League. Circumstances are such nowadays that many Christians are in great danger of forgetting about prayer almost altogether ; and the League stirs up an active public opinion in favor of praying. Then everybody is organizing together ; and here is a world-wide organization for getting people to pray together. Disciple. Yes, I had got as far as that. It has always struck me that the Apostleship of Prayer is a great providential League for collecting prayers for the needs of the Church and her children, just as the Propagation of the Faith and the Holy Child- hood are Leagues for collecting alms for the foreign missions. Teacher. This is so much the case that even the outward form of the Apostleship, as approved by the Church, is not that of a Sodality or Confraternity, but that of a League. It is governed by the same laws as the two zealous Associations you have named. They have Head Directors, under the one General Director, who issue Annals and have other means of communication with the different centres depending from them ; and we have our MES- SENGERS and Intention Tickets in all the different languages. They have their groups of contributing members with collecting heads, and special medals and insignia are used to distinguish them ; so we have our bands, with Promoters who wear the indulgenced Cross and Associates with the indulgenced Badge. Probably without this unity of organization the work of the League would never be done. For this reason the Church has made it a con- dition of the spiritual favors granted, that they can be gained only by those centres which remain united with the Head Direc- tion. Disciple. I think you are coming to the point which puzzles 6O THE MORNING OFFERING. me, though I must acknowledge the people seem to find it all plain sailing. Teacher. That is because they are sensitive to the power of associated prayer. Their instinct of faith makes them desire to share in the prayers of so many Christians, united together in all the different parts of the world. Disciple. I suppose that is it. I certainly have known several members of the League who, I suspect, would have done little praying if they had not had this desire of sharing in the prayers of the others. But all this does not explain fully the success of the Apostle- ship of Prayer. True, its organization into a grand League encourages many to practise it ; but prayer is always a difficult thing, all the same. I wish to know how the League lightens the burden, rather than how it encourages its Associates to bear it. Teacher. So you think it is a burden for most people to pray, even under the light conditions required by the League. Perhaps it is. Where precisely do you think the burden falls ? Disciple. On the will of a man, and that all along the line. You have first of all to will to remember to pray. The reason why lukewarm Catholics forget their morning prayers is regularly because they haven't a mind to remember them. leaclier. Stop there, please. You go on the principle that no one likes to make an effort. And, to remember one's prayers requires an effort ; so the majority of men will not remember them. How then is the League going to induce them to make the effort ? That is very easily answered, even from a natural point of view. Your principle does not take in the whole truth. It should be — No one likes to make an effort without some reason ; but men regularly do make efforts when they see it is worth their while. This is the principle the League goes on. It manages, by its popular organization, to make even unpraying people see that it is very much worth their while to pray, at least so far as the essen- tial condition it requires of them is concerned — the short Morning Offering at their morning prayers. The reason it gives them they easily understand : if they will pray this much for others, then THE MORNING OFFERING. 61 innumerable others will pray for them. Even hard-headed Dr. Brownson says that one of the things which most affected him before his conversion to the faith was his having heard that Cath- olics were praying for him. And Dr. Pusey, who showed so many the way into the Church without ever entering it himself, is reported to have said sadly in his later days : " When I heard that the Catholics were praying for Newman (the late Cardinal) I lost all hopes of his staying with us ; they never prayed for me." There is but one family of man ; no man is indifferent to the prayers of others, especially when he has the faith to whisper to him his sore need of grace, which is obtained by prayer. Disciple. I think you are running beyond the merely natural point of view. The need of grace is something beyond the natural man, isn't it? Teacher. It is not at all beyond the natural reason of a man to know that he is in great need of something in face of death and an unknown future. Of course, it is only God's interior grace in the soul which can make this knowledge fruitful. But the League appeals to Catholics, who already have the grace of faith. However careless they may be, there is something to work on in them. They are sensitive to just such thoughts as this : if I will but pray a little — say the Morning Offering with my prayers — I shall receive help and blessing from God because of the prayers of all the other Associates, offered up for me on that condition. But you must let me say that these easily understood motives of the League are not only for the careless ; they apply in their measure to the half pious, and to the wholly good. We must speak of this again. THE READER. * With the New Year the MESSENGER brightens its face. The old features remain, but there is a livelier air about them ; and the wrinkles have been smoothed away. We speak of our new cover. A mere magazine cover, destined to disappear in the binding, is not of the very greatest importance, to be sure ; yet it should give some sign of what may be expected within. And, to the end, there will be many who persist in "trusting to appearances" or — as the Latin proverbs warn them not to do — they "believe in the face of things, and trust too much to the color." Ne fronti crede! Nimium ne crede colori! Even a mere magazine cover, by its bright face as with a smile, may draw eyes to itself and to the thoughts contained within. * * The exact name of our new cover paper is, we believe, rose antique laid ; which would be neither here nor there, were not rose color — the color of flame and of love — devoted to the burning love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for men. It is also the color of hope ; and should not the heart of the MESSENGER beat high with hope, now that it has successfully outlived twenty-five years ? It is no easy thing for a religious magazine to live at all nowadays; it is so much easier for the magazines of this world to put on a bright face that quite carries away the hearts of easy-going men. The features, we say, remain. Only now, through a window beside the Contents, are seen steps along the mountain side. Up these the various works put forward in our pages may lead the reader toward the Dayspring — the Orient from on high, as our Lord is called in the Christmas Scripture. Curiously enough, our dayspring is a real sunburst; and the pointed arches, through which all is seen, have trefoils to the capitals of their columns, and the cross above is quite a Celtic one. What is the harm? The race which owns these emblems will not grudge their use to 62 THE READER.. 63 all Christians. It is because it is a Christian race that it has them; and perhaps, because it is Christian, the MESSENGER can live here in America. The trefoil was St. Patrick's symbol of the Trinity Most Holy ; and where the Irish Cross has cast its shadow the heavenly sunburst — the Orient from on high — appeals to us all. The article in the November MESSENGER on the Maronite Christians of Lebanon has brought us a letter containing correc- tions of the statements made and additional items of interest. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, FOEDHAM, K Y. November £, 1890. REVEREND FATHEE : I am a Marouite from Lebanon ; it has been my privilege and my good fortune to have been educated by the Jesuit Fathers of the Seminary of St. Francis Xavier at Ghazir and Beyrout. At present I am the companion of a missionary of my nation sent by our Patriarch, Mgr. John Peter el Haj, to take charge of our countrymen who have emigrated to the United States. As Maronite and student of the Seminary of St. Francis Xavier I have had opportunities to inform myself on all points regarding my nation, and the condition of the Reverend Jesuit Fathers who are among us. I have already published in the Catholic Review of New York, for September 20, an article entitled ' The Jesuits' University at Beyrout, Syria. ' Some inexactitudes having crept into the article in the MESSENGER on the Maronites on Mount Lebanon, I beg you to permit me to point them out so that they may be corrected in your next number. In the first place the origin of the Maronites is quite well known. They were the first Christians enlightened by the preaching of the Apostles and notably of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who established his first See in Antioch among the Maronites who were then called Syrians. It is of them that we read in the Acts of the Apostles : "The inhabitants of Antioch and of Cilicia and of Syria have received the preaching of the Apostles." They were known as Syrians until the seventh century. As they would not allow themselves to be corrupted by the Monothelites, nor by the Jacobites and Nestorians, despite the efforts of the princes of Constanti- nople and the persecutions of these latter, they were called Mardaites, Rebels, and a little later, Maronites, which name they still retain. In another part of your article you speak of the Chair of Law in the Semi- nary of Ain Ourakat. It never had a course of law, nor did any one ever study law there. [The Illustrated Catholic Missions published in Manchester, Eng- land, in the September number of this year, has this statement : " John Peter el Haj, the present Patriarch of the Maronites, was ordained priest in 1849, lect- ured for a few years at the same college (Ain Ourakat) on Mahomedan law, and formed many excellent lawyers." — EDITOE.] The French Protectorate over Lebanon dates from the Crusades, from the time of St. Louis IX. especially. During the reign of Louis XIV., however, it 64 THE READER. was exercised more effectively than before. The Maronite chief of whom the article speaks who was made afterward the French Consul at Beyrout, was the same who gave the Residence of Antoura to the first Jesuit Fathers. The Fathers had been cast by a storm on the shores of Lebanon -and the inhabitants at first took them for pirates. The Convent of Loueizeh is not the Mother House of all the Maronite Monks. These monks, who all follow the rule of St. Antony, are divided into three branches. The Convent of Cozhara built near a cavern where St. Antony spent a number of years as an Anchoret is the Mother House of the 1st branch, which counts about 800 members. The 2d branch numbering about 350 monks has for its Mother House the Convent of St. Elias. Loueizeh is the Mother House of the 3d branch, the Alepin Monks who number about 80. The Feast day which reunites all the monks, the Solitaries as well as the Conventuals, is St. Antony's day, and the object is the renewal of vows. In general the novitiate lasts two years. As for the Maronite rite, the article in the MESSENGER is quite wrong on one point. The Maronites consecrate with unleavened bread, and Communion is given under one kind exactly as among the Latins. The Mariamettes and the Xaverian Brothers no longer exist. The Seminary at Beyrout is not called St. Joseph's Seminary, but the Oriental Seminary of St. Francis Xavier. Speaking of schools and the efforts of the Protestants to proselytize, a Pro- testant minister came to open a school in a village near Beyrout. He was asked the object of his coming. "To open two schools," he replied. "Would not one school be enough for you?" was then asked. "Oh," said he to me, "I will open only one ; but the Jesuits will soon be after me to open another ; so I can truly say I am going to start two schools." He knew well that the Jesuits' • whole heart was in counteracting his efforts. Your devoted servant, JOSEPH YASBEK, Maronite. Among the works carried on at the MESSENGER Office, is one called the "Holy Childhood." This is a nineteenth-century way of conversion — to buy pagan babies, otherwise cast out to die, and make Christians of them. We heartily recommend it to all our readers. Practically, a cent a month is all that is asked to be paid in to the head of a group. Instructions and the little blanks, with all else needed, may be had on application. GENERAL INTENTION FOR JANUARY, 1891. Designated by His Holiness, Leo XIII., with his special blessing, and given to His Eminence the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda — the Protector of the League of the Sacred Heart, called the Apostleship of Prayer — for recom- mendation to the prayers of the Associates. DEVOTION TO ST. ALOYS1US. A" the opening of the new year the Holy Father invites the Associates of the League to pray for the spread of devo- tion to St. Aloysius. As such devotion, if it be real, neces- sarily implies an imitation of the Saint's virtues, there could not bo an aim more worthy than that of spurring the minds of the young to follow in their lives the example of that holy patron of youth. The young of to-day will be the men and women of the next generation; and much of the progress of Christianity depends upon the preparation which they must make betimes for the acting of their part in the serious drama of human life. I. Aloysius Gonzaga has, for three hundred years, stood out before the Christian world as a blameless pattern of youthful holiness. His life covered but the short space of three and twenty years. And yet, within that narrow span, we find him giving sublime example of heroic virtue in prudence, fortitude, puirity, obedience, poverty, and mercy. Even in early childhood he was noted for a wisdom far beyond the ordinary capacity of his age. At the very dawn of reason, he seemed to have caught the import of that message which the Spirit of God had sent down to the children of men. It is a proverb : A young man according to his way, even when lie is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs, xxii. 6). Forthwith he set himself to learn and to practise the virtues which make up the honor of age and are the passport to everlasting glory. He 65 66 GENERAL INTENTION. •saw ever shining out before him, in clear splendor, the noble end ibr which he had been created ; and the one aim of his life was to make earnest use of the means by which he could most securely attain it. Belonging to a noble family and having every advantage that could help toward a brilliant career ; having, moreover, a father whose fortunes and successes made the way to a lofty station easy for his son to walk in, Aloysius, with noble intrepidity of soul, spurned all earthly glory and, with respectful firmness, stood out against the wishes of a parent whom he loved most .tenderly. The rank of a marquis, the fame of a diplomat, the :riches of a princedom — these things were as nothing to him who had set his heart upon securing the heavenly inheritance to which, ;at Baptism, he had received the title. Difficulties stood in his way, manifold and great. But, with a grand firmness of purpose, he swept all opposition aside and strode on to the goal set before him. Even the sturdy determina- tion of his father to thwart what seemed to him an ill-considered project on the part of his eldest-born, had to give way in the end before the steady, unwavering valor of a youth still in his teens. And thus it came to pass that Aloysius, with his father's reluctant consent, gave up his titles, his riches, his worldly prospects, and was enrolled among the novices of the Society of Jesus in Rome. The novitiate, the house of studies, and the hospital were to be henceforth and until the end the sphere of his achievements. H. Young men, according to the world's standard, are estimated by the progress which they make in their chosen career. Here was one who always, in the judgment of the sagest, stood eminent among his fellows. In philosophy, in theology, in all things wherein depth of understanding and quickness of memory were of value, among the first stood Aloysius Gonzaga. He had even among his fellows the honors of a genius. And yet he valued all this as naught beside the privilege of being considered one among the many who were working out the GENERAL INTENTION. 67 will of God and trusting in God to make their labors fruitful. Thus he had brought himself down deliberately and, it might seem, unnecessarily, to the common plane of a common man, in order that he might lead others to follow him toward the higher plane of superhuman, that is Christian, prowess. Aloysius Gouzaga in the Jesuit Novitiate was simply a unit. His titles, prospects, immense family influence counted for noth- ing : and he knew it. But he knew, as well, that the faithful walking in the path of duty was the one highway to honorable eminence before God ; and so he kept every rule that bound him. Thus he has won the full honor of perfect performance, in being declared blameless of all disobedience, a pattern of exact fidelity in the keeping of his rule. Thus, too, he led the way wherein others may follow. We must look up to Aloysius Gonzaga as a giant in the race wherein we are but stragglers. And we ask him to aid us by his prayers that we may keep on running — for some that began have dropt away ! III. The Associates of the Holy League ought to have great con- fidence in praying for the spread of devotion to St. Aloysius. With their success his honor is inseparably bound up. It is won- derful, as well as edifying, to know how many Associations or Sodalities have chosen St. Aloysius for their Patron. What does it all mean ? Just this. In these days of ours when sights of evil everywhere meet our eyes and when sounds of evil are in our ears, it will be a reminder and a help to look up to St. Aloysius Gouzaga as a perfect model of the guardianship of both ear and eye from all evil assault. Imitating him, we may hope to escape the evil influence of the numerous enemies that assail us. Under his patronage our youth will find those helps of grace without which they can never withstand the torrent of evil around them. Thus the spread of devotion to St. Aloysius, Patron of youth, will bring with it Christian modesty and morti- fication of the senses on the one hand, and on the other that grace of holy and blessed living which is won by prayer and the fre- quentation of the Sacraments. The unfailing result of our prayers, 68 GENERAL INTENTION. which should be continued all this year — the three-hundredth anniversary of the Saint's death — will be a chaste generation like unto himself. And it is well worth while to remember that young men fashioned after such a pattern will never be found lacking in what are specially looked upon as manly qualities. Aloysius was no mere lay figure set up to display the shapes and lineaments of holiness : he was a genuine, thorough-going, brave young man whose every action had a higher worth than what human eyes could look upon or human lips extol. Some idea of his character may be gathered from the inscription beneath the statue raised to his honor at the Hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Rome. It reads thus : "Whilst a plague was wasting the city, the holy Aloysius Gonzaga, of the Society of Jesus, took upon his shoulders one of the stricken and carried him to this hospital. Soon thereafter, smitten himself by the scourge of pestilence, he died a victim of Christian charity, in the year of our Lord, 1691." Whilst, therefore, we pray that our Catholic youth may follow hini in his blameless life, we may also implore that they may be like him in Christian valor : the pure who are brave, and the brave who are pure, are the worthy followers of Aloysius Gonzaga. OFFERING FOR THE INTENTIONS OF THE MONTH. O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee all the prayers, work, and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Thy Divine Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in reparation for all sin, and for all requests pre- sented through the Apostleship of Prayer : and in particular, for the spread of a true devotion to St. Aloysius, whom the Church has declared the Patron of youth. Amen. TWO APOSTOLIC CIRCULARS.1 FROM THE RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP OF COLUMBUS, OHIO. I. COLUMBUS, ()., October 8, 1890. REV. AND DEAR SIR: The 1 7th of this month will be the two-hundredth anniver- sary of the death of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, the favored and holy instrument in the hands of our Lord to promote devotion to His Sacred Heart. It is my desire that this Second Centenary shall be celebrated in this diocese in a fitting manner. I wish that all the children that have reached the age of reason, shall consecrate themselves publicly and solemnly to the Sacred Heart, either on the 17th of October or the Sunday following, according to a form of dedication that will be sent to you next week, and that their names shall be inscribed on Lists, to be furnished you for this purpose, and sent to Rev. R. S. Dewey, S. J., MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART, 114 South Third Street, Philadelphia, Pa., who will have them bound into Albums and sent to Paray-le- Monial, to be placed in the shrine where the Blessed Margaret Mary breathed her pure soul into the hands of God. If Sunday, the 19th, will be too soon for you to prepare your children for this important act, let everything be completed and the Lists sent to Philadelphia before the 28th of this month, as none will be received there later than the 1st of November. You will please prepare the children for their Act of Conse- cration by special instructions, both in the schools and in the Church, on the nature of the devotion and the love of the Sacred Heart for all mankind. As many of the children as have made their First Communion should receive the Holy Eucharist on the day of Consecration, and if possible the rest should go at least to confession. 1 These Circulars, we regret for the sake of our readers during the past year of consecration to the Sacred Heart, came to our notice too late for earlier insertion. 69 7O TWO APOSTOLIC CIRCULARS. I grant you the permission to have the children make the Consecration of themselves to the Sacred Heart during the Bene- diction of the Blessed Sacrament on any day yoii may choose for this purpose. You should expose the Blessed Sacrament and after the incensation and the singing of the O Salutaris, pronounce the words of the Form of Consecration, and let the children repeat them after you. Ask the children to join with the other devout clients of the Sacred Heart throughout the world, in beseeching our Blessed Lord so to manifest the sanctity of His beatified servant, Margaret Mary, that, if it be His holy will, she may be entitled to the honor of canonization, for the greater glory of His Divine Heart. I earnestly exhort you to cultivate the devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord among all your people, and to establish in your parish the Apostleship of Prayer called the League of the Sacred Heart. The Consecration of the grown people can take place later. Yours in Christ, ©JOHN A. WATTERSON, Bishop of Columbus. II. COLUMBUS, O., October 10, 1890. REV. AND DEAR SIR: I send you some more of the Forms of Consecration to the Sacred Heart, together with the children's Lists and an envelope, in which to return them to Rev. R. S. Dewey, S. J., 114 South Third Street, Philadelphia, Pa. In filling the Lists, besides the family names, use the full baptismal names : e. g., Mary, Cath- erine, John, Charles, and not diminutives, such as Mollie, Kittie, Johnnie, Charlie. I now and then find such diminutives on the announcement books of some of our churches. They ought not to be used in the church or on the church records. Please place the name of the diocese, parish and town, or district at the head of the Lists, and keep the names of the boys and girls separate. If you have schools, the Sisters will be glad to write the names for TWO APOSTOLIC CIRCULARS. 71 you. Do not confine yourself to the day-school and Sunday-school children. Get, if possible, all the young people in the parish to interest themselves in this work, and to make the Form of Conse- cration. Be enthusiastic yourself and try to excite enthusiasm in them for the glory of the Sacred Heart. Read and explain the Form of Consecration to the children before they make it, and dis- tribute copies of it among them. If you want more Lists, let me know, and I will send them. Ask the Sisters in the schools to teach the children some easy hymns and prayers to the Sacred Heart, and get them all into the habit of using them frequently and devoutly, and the enthusiasm will not easily die out. It will be very edifying, if you can have the fathers and mothers present at their children's consecration. Make the ceremony as impressive as you can. Father Dewey will be very glad, if you will send him an account of it, to be published in THE MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART. I earnestly recommend to you and to all under your charge THE MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART and The Pilgrim of Our Lady of Martyrs, otherwise called The Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart. The latter will be specially interesting and useful to the children. I have asked Father Dewey to be good enough to send you sample copies of them. They are most entertaining and edifying to ecclesiastics as well as lay people ; and you will be abundantly consoled for any trouble you may put yourself to in introducing them into your parish. Old and young will be delighted with them. The terms are very moderate. You will find them on the title-page. In my circular the other day, I exhorted you to establish in your parish and missions The League of the Sacred Heart, other- wise called The Apostleship of Prayer. I do not wish you to ''treat this as a mere exhortation, but as a command, which the charity of Christ presses me to make, and which I know the same charity of Christ will press you to put into effect. Let us all say with St. Paul : Caritas Christi urget nos. To organize the League and keep it going will cost you some work and trouble ; but what are we for, but to put ourselves to trouble for the good 72 THE LEAGUE AT WORK. of souls? Be assured, however, that the happy results in your missions will well repay you for all your zeal and pains. My heart is in the work, and I hope yours will be too, and I promise you, our Lord's will be in it likewise with many graces to your people and consolations to yourself. To save you trouble at the outstart, I will send you some preliminary instructions and documents in a couple of weeks, together with a copy of the Handbook of the Holy League. A little study of it will show you how to organize the League and keep it alive and active. It will be of small use to start it, if it be not kept going. I want your heart to be in it, and from the fulness of the heart the mouth will speak. You will preach it from the altar, teach it in 'the confessional, talk about it in private, and pray for it in the secrecy of your own heart. Its success under God will be largely in proportion to your xeal. I commit the work to your charity in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Yours sincerely, ® JOHN A. WATTERSON, Bishop of Columbus. THE LEAGUE AT WORK. ST. JOHN BAPTIST'S CHURCH, SYRACUSE, N. Y. I AM pleased to tell you that the League is doing much good in this parish. We have large Communions on the First Fridays and many conversions have been effected through this consoling devotion. Very many have been brought to the Sacra- ments who have been away from God for years. Many beautiful gifts have come to the church through our petitions, for which I am most grateful. We have yet much to desire. I have a few families in the parish who have not been reached yet, but with the prayers of the League I look for a change of heart soon. I remain, gratefully, J. F. MULL A NY. THE LEAGUE AT WORK. 73 ST. JOSEPH'S CHURCH, NEWPORT, R. I. Through the /eal arid discretion of the Promoters the League lias made enormous strides, the vast majority of the members taking the Second and even the Third Degree. I know I have bothered you about the Rosary sets, but the demand so far exceeded expectation that I am hardly to blame — I will be able, I). V., to send you an accurate order for January. — Thank God for the League and for the untold blessings it has brought on this parish and city. In Corde Jesu, JAMES COYLE. ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH, MEMPHIS, TENN. Our League, thank God ! is doing much good. A very large number, indeed scores, go to Holy Communion now on the First Friday when but a few were previously accustomed to approach it. The Promoters bring us every month many new accessions into the ranks of the League, a large proportion of whom promise to practise the 2d and 3d Degrees. It is a glorious work and will be a saving power to numbers of our people. Very fraternally yours in the Sacred Heart, JNO. VEALE. ST. COLUMBA'S CHURCH, YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO. On the 15th of June, our new Promoters, to the number of thirty-four, received the much coveted Cross and Diploma. The ceremony took place before Benediction in the evening. Our Rev. Pastor explained in a beautiful and very clear manner this grand devotion of the present, and urged all to lose no time in earning the privilege of wearing the dear Sacred Heart Badge. He then solemnly blessed and conferred the Badge upon fully one thousand persons, who approached the altar for that purpose, while the choir sang O Cor Amoris and other beautiful hymns. There is some- tiling so touching and sublime in this devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, and its public observance seems, more than any other, to lift the soul and bear it " out beyond the bounds of 74 THE LEAGUE AT WORK. space," only to bring it more sweetly and at peace back to the world's homely duties, already consecrated in the Morning Offer- ing. LORENE H. DUBBIN, SEC'Y. DANBURY, CONNECTICUT. I thought of writing to you several times during the past months, to tell you of the marked success which the League of the Sacred Heart is having in my parish ; but one thing or another kept me putting it off, until now I am ashamed of myself. Well, I am glad to tell you that its effects are simply astonishing. Nearly all the " stay-aways " of the parish have returned to their duty. Immense crowds — nearly 1500 — go to Communion monthly. I have in all, about 2000 enrolled in it. Sincerely in Christ, H. J. LYNCH. RANDALL'S ISLAND, NEW YORK. Since the establishment here of the Holy League, by our venerable pastor, a marked change has manifested itself in the increased piety and devotion of all the Catholics, and we earnestly beg through the prayers of the League, that this spirit of devotion may continue and daily increase, until each one of us is called to receive the reward in the bosom of the Divine Heart, that is promised for those who have been faithful, and have persevered to the end. TRANSFIGURATION CHURCH, NEW YORK. Enclosed find our Intention-blank. I think it will open your eyes, as it certainly did mine, when I saw the grand total of Intentions. The people are gradually recognizing the power and efficacy of " co-praying," and each month is more and more prolific in obtaining favors. Nothing is better calculated to keep alive the interest in the devotion of the Sacred Heart than is this feature of special intentions. May all the Associates of the League learn of the efficacy of these prayers and make use of this means of obtaining favors from the Sacred Heart. W. F. DOUGHERTY. APOSTLESHIP in 1 NOTICES. RECENT AGGREGATIONS. — To the Apostleship of Prayer, League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (December 12, 1890, to January 12. 1891). (Name of diocese in italics, before parish or community aggregated. ) Baltimore) Maryland : St. Peter Claver's Church, Baltimore ; Our Lady of Mercy Convent (Sisters of Mercy), Mount Wash- ington. Belleville, Illinois: St. Joseph's Church, Olney. Boston, Massachusetts: St. Joseph's Church, Wakefield. Grand Rapids, Michigan : St. Joseph's Church, Grand Rapids. Hartford, Connecticut : St. Francis' Church, New Haven. Helena, Montana: St. Francis Xavier's Church, Missoula City. Kansas City, Missouri : St. Mary's Church, Kansas City. Newark, New Jersey: St. Antoninus' School (Sisters of Charity), Newark ; Convent of St. Joseph (Sisters of St. Joseph), Orange Valley. New Orleans, Louisiana : Holy Angels' Academy (Marianite Sisters), New Orleans. New York, New York : St. Mary's Church, Clifton. North Carolina, North Carolina: Sacred Heart Church, Ohio. Ogdensburgh, New York: St. Mary's Cathedral, Ogdens- burgh ; St. Andrew's Church, Norwood ; Visitation Church, Norfolk. 75 76 APOSTLESHIP NOTICES. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : St. John Baptist's Church, Pottsville. Savannah, Georgia : St. Patrick's Church, Savannah. St. Louis, Missouri: St. Vincent's Seminary (Lazariste) and Academy of Loretto (Sisters of Loretto), Cape Girardeau. Trenton, New Jersey : Sacred Heart Church, Mount Holly. Vincennes, Indiana : St. Michael's School, Madison. THE SODALITY OP THE BLESSED VIRGIN. Diplomas of Affiliation, received from the Prima Primarifi, have been transmitted to the following : Chicago, Illinois : Catholic Industrial School, Chicago. Detroit, Michigan: Immaculate Conception Church, Lapeer, Michigan. Scranton, Pennsylvania : St. Leo's Church, Ashley. St. Louis, Missouri: St. Joseph's Church, JCdina. THE TREASURY OP THE SACRED HEART. Associates can gain 100 days' Indulgence for each action offered for the Intentions of the League. Offerings for the Intentions of the Sacred Heart, received from December 12, 1890, to January 12, 1891. No. OF TIMKS. No. or TIMES. 1. Acts of Charity . 481,994 11. Masses Heard .... 135,613 2. Beads 217,574 12. Mortifications .... 188,117 3. Stations of the Cross . 45,606 13. Works of Charity . . 116,287 4. Holy Communions . . 48,518 14. Works of Zeal .... 115,032 5. Spiritual Communions . 262,184 15. Prayers 2,197,168 6. Examens of Conscience 87,163 16. Charitable Conversation 80,104 7. Hours of Labor . . . . 407,728 17. Sufferings or Afflictions 76,171 8. Hours of Silence . . . 189,744 18. Self-Conquest .... 86,136 1 9. Pious Reading .... 86,376 19. Visits to B. Sacrament 179,728 10. Masses Celebrated . . 1,701 20. Various Good Works . 235,568 Total 5,238,512 The above returns represent five hundred and fifty Centras. The Treasury is made up of prayers and good works specially offered for the Intentions of the Holy League. Promoters and Associates are exhorted to make use of the printed lists (on Intention Blanks), which, when filled up, should be forwarded with the Intentions to the MESSENGER. ALL YDU THAT LABOURED ARE BURDENED IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. TOTAL NUMBER OF THANKSGIVINGS FOR LAST MONTH, 95,424. For I say to you, Ask and it shall be given you (St. Luke, xi, 9.) PASSAIC, N. J., NOVEMBER 12. — A person in debt, having no means of meeting his engagements, recommended the matter to the prayers of the League. Two days after, this person received word that the debt was cancelled, the demand having been satisfied by other parties. SCRANTON, PA., NOVEMBER 14. — Sincere thanks to the Sacred Heart for the recovery of an invalid from the influenza : also, kindly offer our heartfelt gratitude for the preservation of the same person's sight, which was threatened to be taken away by ulceration of the eyes. , PA., NOVEMBER 16. — Especial thanks for the return of my husband to his duties — he had not been to confession for more than a year. OMAHA, NEB., NOVEMBER 17. — Thanks are returned to the Divine Heart for an extraordinary improvement in health, and a great spiritual favor bestowed on a person recommended some months ago ; for a lady's return to the Church after an apostasy of twenty years ; for the cure of several cases of diphtheria in which Blessed Margaret Mary was invoked, her relic being applied in two of them ; for removal of obstacles to a religious vocation, and for several spiritual and temporal favors. COLORADO, NOVEMBER 21. — Heartfelt thanks to the Sacred 77 78 IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. Heart for bringing me safely through a night of danger, which was nothing short of a miracle from Heaven. JOHNSVILLE, CAL., NOVEMBER 22. — I asked some time ago for my brother to get a chance to make his First Communion before winter. A priest came last week and he received his First Communion last Sunday. ST. Louis, NOVEMBER 24. — For the blessing of relief from a very painful and severe illness, of a very slow and tedious nature. Great relief came within the nine days of the Novena, and almost complete cure since. CANTON, O., NOVEMBER 25. — Some weeks ago the baby had an attack- of pneumonia ; the doctor on being called said he was a very sick child and only very careful handling would bring him through in safety. I placed a picture of Blessed Margaret Mary on his chest, and promised that I would write to the MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART, if she would obtain his recovery from the Sacred Heart. He recovered rapidly and I now fulfil my promise. LOGAN, O., NOVEMBER 27. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for two special favors granted, along with many smaller ones. LEE, MASS., NOVEMBER 27. — A young girl wishes to return sincere thanks for a position she has obtained as book-keeper through the prayers of the Associates. PETALUMA, CAL,., NOVEMBER 29. — Thanksgiving for the conversion of a young man, who though belonging to a good Cath- olic family, ignored all religious sentiment, and had never made his First Communion. After some years of a reckless life he returned home in the last stages of consumption. He positively refused to hear one word on the subject of religion. Some days before his death, he consented to see a priest, who was immediately summoned ; with sentiments of heartfelt contrition he made his confession, received Holy Communion, and the next day, Extreme Unction. The change wrought in him by the reception of the Sacraments was truly a miracle of grace ; from a peevish, irreligious man he became a perfect lamb of patience and mild- ness, edifying every one by his faith, piety, and resignation until his last breath. IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. 79 SPRINGFIELD, MASS., DECEMBER 1. — Many thanks are returned to the Divine Heart of Jesus for employment obtained the day after the intention had been recommended. CHICAGO, DECEMBER 2. — Will you thank the Sacred Heart for many spiritual and temporal favors granted during the past month, especially for three happy deaths. , DECEMBER 3. — Please thank the loving Heart of Jesus through the MESSENGER for employment obtained by my two brothers in a most unexpected way. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 4. — An Associate returns most heart- felt thanks to the Divine Heart of Jesus, for her child's miraculous escape from being killed. It fell from a great height, but was found unhurt. An Associate returns thanks for the conversion of one who was wayward, recommended for two months. An Associate returns thanks most gratefully for being speedily cured of an affliction, recommended last month. A Protestant friend borrowed the MESSENGER last month. On returning it a few weeks later, she requested to be recom- mended to the prayers of the League. She is now receiving instructions in the Catholic Faith, and owes her change for the better to the prayers of the Holy League. May I ask the prayers of MESSENGER readers, for the grace of perseverance for her. PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 5. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for a very great favor. The favor I received was almost a miracle — and I feel and know I received it through the prayers of the Holy League. ST. Louis, Mo., DECEMBER 7. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for the grace of the last Sacraments to a man who had neglected his religious duties since the time of his first Communion, a period of more than thirty years. He had also been long addicted to the vice of intemperance and had opposed his family in the practice of their Christian duties. — A mother of six children returns heartfelt thanks to the Heart of Jesus for the conversion of her husband from the vice of intemperance. He had also long neg- lected his duty to God, and had abused and neglected his family. He is now temperate, and a model husband and father. 8O IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. TOLEDO, O., DECEMBER 11. — My husband lost his position in the middle of the year, and in his business it is very difficult to get another at that season ; but thanks to the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph, and Blessed Margaret Mary he got another one. FREDERICK, MD. — \Ve, the Catholic deaf-mutes of Frederick, wish to give our grateful thanks to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus for one very great spiritual favor, obtained through the prayers of the League, as also for many other blessings given to us and our teachers. . — A family desires to return thanks to the Sacred Heart by publishing the conversion of their grandfather, whose advanced age and peculiar disposition precluded all hope of his acceptance of our holy faith. However, his daughter, her husband and five children have been faithful Associates of the League for some years and constantly implored the Sacred Heart of Jesus to give him the light of faith. Last April the youngest of the grandchildren, who is an Associate of League, being about to receive his First Communion, said he would ask our Lord the favor of liis grandfather's conversion. This child had been remarkable in always asking this conversion in the monthly inten- tions. On the afternoon of the day on which the little fellow received his First Communion a letter came from the grandfather, saying that on the following morning he was to be baptized ! The conversion is especially remarkable in its entire completeness, and the aged man, before so self-sufficient, is now with the humble docility of a little child preparing for his First Communion. VARIOUS CENTRES. — Thanks through the MESSENGER for the baptism of three of my children. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart, through the MESSENGER, for a business position for a young man, which he obtained after the Intention had been recommended to the prayers of the League. — Heartfelt thanks are returned for the obtaining of a temporal favor from the Sax; red Heart, through a Novena made to Blessed Margaret Mary. — Thanks for the settle- ment of a lawsuit between relatives. TflKIH /^©©OT M TO! (From a Diisseldort design ot C. Schonherr) SACRED HEART OF JESUS VOL. VI (xxvi). FEBRUARY, 1891. No. 2 THE HOLY HOUR, By M. Regina Colgan. ADST thou been in Gethsemani That darksome night and drear When Christ the bitter chalice drained, With none to comfort near, When all the crimes of sinful men His cup filled to the brim, And trickling fell the sweat of blood — Wouldst thou have watched with Him? All agony that heart can bear, All sorrow earth hath known, He suffered in that cruel hour And suffered it — alone. The comfort that the Angel brought Had rapture been from thee : Oh, hear His cry of wounded love : "Wilt watch one hour with Mef" His Heart is calling to thee still : Canst thou resist its power? Oh, bow before His lonely shrine, To watch with Him one hour ! Copyright, 1891, by Rev. R. S. Dewey, S. J. All rights reserved.] 81 TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA. THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. THE sun of Rome is mighty. In the clear winter days it glorifies the earth and sky with a semblance of the summer of less favored lauds. Then many a stranger who is "doing Rome" is tempted beyond the city walls, at least so far as a carriage will take him. There are plenty of things for him to see, yet for the most part nowhere is there less really seen. It is because the "mind's eye" of the traveller has not been fitted beforehand with a glass for proper insight. The average tourist will go out beyond the Porta San Sebas- tiano to the Catacombs of St. Callistus. Perhaps his excursion will be prolonged to the Basilica of St. Sebastian — one of the seven of Rome — a little further on. He is told that he has seen the famous Via Appia. He has indeed been driving along its 82 THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. 83 course, but always between high walls of brick roughly plastered over with cement, and shutting out the view of everything except the intensely blue sky above and the black polygonal century- old paving-stones over which he jolts below. The most curious thing he will have seen by the roadside is the rare species of ivy growing over the walls and showing in this season its clusters of yellow berries. Here and there, through a clumsy gate, there is a break into some vigna where there are antiquities to show and perhaps to sell to the unshrewd traveller. But the real Appian Way — "the Queen of High Ways," as the ancient poet called it — he has not seen at all. The more's the pity. All the surroundings of Rome might give him an education in this world's history and point its moral, if he only visited them with some proper insight into what they all mean. A little further along this Appian Way, for instance, the mind's eye can look through all the periods of Roman history from the time it became the world's centre until now, quite as easily as the eye of the body can look down its long line of ruined monuments. If he would silver over his persuasion, the vetturino who is his charioteer would readily bring him a mile or so beyond the Basilica, and then alighting he could wander at will on foot along the wonderful High Way. There he would tread the soil over which passed the feet of heroes, Apostles, and Martyrs. But if city life has altogether unfitted him for a pedestrian excursion, still from the first elevated point he may have a fair view of all that has been preserved of the great way which once led from the Eternal City down to Capua and then across Italy to where the ships started for Greece, Egypt, and the East. He should certainly find it as interesting as two thousand years from now posterity will find our own lines of railway, if indeed our work will endure so many years. All this part of the Roman Field is a continuous up and down of the surface of the ground, never rising so high as the hills of Rome and never descending lower than some deeply cut water-course which drains the hills far away. The elevation near 84 THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. which we emerge from the line of walls that shut in the way is the great circular tomb of Cecilia Metella, wife of a certain Crassus, perhaps the "lean and hungry" conspirator against Caesar. Her name goes back to the early Republic, when the plebian family bearing it gradually grew rich and strong until it was ennobled. But it was later, in Christian times, that the Martyr St. Cecilia became the crowning glory of her race in the Cata- combs we have just passed. All along here the Cecilian family had its possessions. Back from the broad High Way were the sumptuous mansions. Along the great Way, after the ostenta- tious manner of the Romans when they grew rich, they housed their dead in great masses of brickwork, three and four and more stories in height, all encased in precious marble. The marble disappeared centuries ago and went to adorn churches and palaces in the City, or was ground up into lime for whitewashing the vineyard walls of the neighboring peasants. But the brickwork remains and, to all appearances, may remain for ever. The Roman bricks were long thin slabs, and when firmly set together with the tenacious cement of the ancients in which broken earthenware was freely mixed they form a conglomerate mass of rubble that seems a part of the earth's living rock. From this point on for many miles the whole Way is lined with these monuments, more or less dilapidated. On the top of some of them is found a modern tower, if that can be called modern which was built nearly a thousand years ago. These towers were places of refuge against the Saracens when they made their inroads, or for the shepherds of one powerful family when harried by the sudden onset of the retainers of the next powerful family at feud with their own lords. At the end of the vista from this first great tomb, some few miles away toward the Alban mountains, one of the most curious of all these Roman ruins may be seen. Over the very top of a great circular tomb, the ages with wind and weather have scattered so much fertile soil that a farmhouse has been set up there as on some natural mountain, and an olive orchard may be seen growing far above the remains of Rome's proudest nobility. 86 THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. When this part of the Appian Way was first- excavated and laid open to - the ordinary traveller by Pius IX., then ruler in Rome and public-spirited in all his works, many travellers came out here to refresh their classical memories. But either the lazi- ness of recent tourists, or the short time in which they hurry over all these scenes that would need years of study, has caused this excursion to be again neglected except perhaps by a few profes- sional students. Yet nowhere are there finer views to be seen. To the left of the great road you see stretching for miles across the plain the lofty broken arches of the Roman aqueducts, over which the water from the distant mountain streams was con- veyed to the City when it had outgrown the use of the muddy Tiber. Further still against the horizon you have the framework of the Sabine Mountains and the Alban Hills. The former are of limestone worn away into all manner of angular and prismatic shapes. All through the winter season their tops are covered with snow and shine forth in the sunlight like masses of rose quartz. The Alban Hills nearer have their rugged sides clothed with the russet-brown hues of the Campagna at their feet, except where, far away, they show dark-blue against the intenser azure of the sky. On their sides here and there gleam the yelloAv walls of the Italian villages. To the right, the eye passes over the fields of the Campagna toward the sea, which however can be seen from few points. When seen at all it is only as a silver streak at the horizon, some twelve miles distant. The Campagna itself is the despair of painters. Every shadow of the clouds, every change of light from the sunrise over the Albali summits to the western sheen across the sea waves gives a vital change in color to its surface. In the dis- tance it looks like the smooth floor of an American prairie, but coming nearer you find it the same continuous up and down variety of hill and dale which we have along this part of the Appian Way. Grazing here and there are herds of the light dove- gray, sleek-coated oxen, so famous for the immense span of their ebony-black shining horns. Then there may be some of the humped-backed black and white Roman buffaloes, now becoming 88 THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. rare, or again black goats with glistening yellow eyes waging their gray beards. For the tourist from the New AYrorld, as interest- ing as any are the herdsmen themselves in their coats of sheepskin, with sheepskin leggings curiously protecting the front of the leg. All this region — the ruined tombs, the amphitheatres, the High Way and the ruins which border it, even the names of its insignificant streams — is bound up with some one or other impor- tant part of the world's history. To explain all its transforma- tions of land and population would go far toward determining many of the vexed questions of our own day. Here, in the oldest period of which we know, were scattered the fifty or so small independent towns which made up together the confederacy of Latium. Alba Longa, far away on the mountain yonder, was at first the head of the confederacy, until supplanted by its all-con- quering daughter, Rome. Some three hundred years before the Christian era, Rome had nothing more left to conquer in her own immediate neighborhood. Then she began absorbing all to herself. Means were found by which the population of these towns was drawn to the great City, and then the more powerful citizens of the Republic — the leading politicians, or those who had "political influence," as we would say — began buying up, or appropriating without buying, all the land into great estates. These estates were cultivated by slaves and little by little ceased to be ploughed, as under the old system of careful cultivation. Then home-grown food had been eaten and home-made garments worn ; now every- thing became foreign and exotic, and the land at home was turned over to pasture. Thus began the second period, of which the Roman historian says sententiously, Latifundia perdidn°e Latium "Great landholdings ruined Latium." But the Roman landlord now found an enemy witli which he could not deal as with those of his own kind. When the careful cultivation of the soil had ceased and only great herds roamed over the broad Campagna there came forth a subtle influence from the land which, little by little, has reduced it to its present desolate condition. The soil is made up of the friable tufa coming from the THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. 89 decomposition of the great streams of lava sent forth ages ago by the Alban Mountain. It is only along a narrow strip of the plain, beginning just here at the tomb of Cecilia Metella, that we find the strong lava rock resulting from a later eruption over the earlier tufa. It is the property of this volcanic soil greedily to suck up moisture and tenaciously to retain it. In autumn and winter all this land is brown and bare with little but dry stubble upon it, because the intense heat of summer has at the very last dried up its moisture. But with the heavy rains of winter and springtime SHEPHERDS OF THE CAMPAGNA. 9O THE QUEEN OF HIGH WAYS. the soil will again become spongy and damp, and so remain month after month through the greatest heats into the Dog-days. Then such vegetation as can be seen, perhaps, nowhere else in the world will spring up on every hillside. Myriads of flowers, homely or exotic elsewhere, will here bloom together — crimson-tipped daisies, daffodils with perfume as of the tuberose, fox-gloves and hollyhocks, lupins and gorgeous scarlet poppies that wave from the top of every tomb and crumbling tower — even the very thistles will flaunt their purple tufts and give a crown of glory to the land. But then the tourist will be warned not to pass through these beautiful vales after the sunset, for it is the hour when the subtle influence is rising to stalk abroad through the land. It is the dreaded malaria, generated by the moisture left stagnating in fertile soil through lack of cultivation ; and the lack of cultivation began with the great landholdings, when the people were driven away and all this fair region was turned to the pasturage of cattle by landlords, "absentee" in Greece or by the Hellespont. This is the state of the Roman Campagna down to the former Neapolitan frontier. Perhaps no government will ever command the necessary means and men to bring it back to that state of fertility when fifty independent nations two thousand years ago lived from its broad acres. But their natural fertility is so great that they prove a source of riches to the few owners who can induce the peasants to brave the deadly fever. Even so, in the summer season all with the night seek the protection of some neighboring hill, or of the City itself, against the subtle enemy. But so far we have said little of the tomb before us. It is an immense round tower of Roman brick, once cased with marble, resting on a square foundation of massive blocks of travertine. Nearly all that remains of ancient adornment is a band of ox skulls alternating with festooned garlands round the upper part. From this the neighboring peasants have called it for centuries the Tower of the Bull's Head. Conspicuous above it are the forked battlements which distinguished the Ghibellines of the Middle Ages. For these Roman tombs have suffered many a THE QUEEN OF HIGH IV AYS. 91 curious change in the course of time. This one was used by the great Gaetani family as their stronghold ; and from its wall to the ruins across the road they extended their castle like a monstrous toll-gate whence they might domineer over the whole Appian Way, lords or brigands as we choose to consider them. The great tomb far away at the end of the long line was used in like fashion by the Orsiiii family, which still remains in its broad possessions of the Roman Field. Another curious thing of this tomb is that it has the same buff color which distinguishes ruins and ancient buildings alike through all this part of Italy, as if the Italian sun had somehow got into the eyes of men and created in the color-sense a craving for something of its own sheen. The period of Rome's boundless wealth and luxury passed away, and with it the memory of most of these great landed proprietors who, to the ruin of their country, built up these monuments of an idle ostentation. This much alone we know — Metella died, The wealthiest Roman's wife : behold his love or pride. It was in those last days of human vanity, which were to- end in the subtle malaria of these fields, that another influence sprang up, subtler and more powerful and which from here was to spread little by little through the whole world. This was the religion of the Christian Martyrs who lie by hundreds of thou- sands in the Catacombs beneath these fields. From his prison in Jerusalem the Apostle Peter came out hither to the Jews who had settled around the gate opening on the Appian Way. They were the lowly and despised of this world; but their traditional industry and enterprise, and the purity of their social relations had already made them felt as an element in the corrupt Roman society. Along this Appian Way St. Peter, and later on St. Paul, came to find their countrymen and to spread among them, and among the Romans in whose midst they lived, the faith of the Crucified God. To Him they had given up their lives, and for Him they were to suffer death in this same Rome. St. Luke, who was St. Paul's companion, THE QUEEN OF HIGH IV AYS. 93 in the Acts of the Apostles tells how the new Christians of this Jewish colony came out to meet them far along the Appian Way when the great Apostle was brought as a prisoner to Csesar. But there is something more interesting yet about this Way than the passing over it of those who were to give the beginning to the Roman Church. It is connected with the great estates whose palaces and monuments lined the Queen of High Ways. The Cecilian family, as has been said, found its crowning glory in the Martyr St. Cecilia, who was laid to rest with count- less other martyrs, Popes and priests and simple faithful, in the Catacombs on her own estate. But these Catacombs had long before been opened to Christian burial by a more ancient member of her race, one who has been eulogized by no less a pagan than the historian Tacitus and who may have received St. Peter himself when he first came to Rome. It is only the diligent deciphering of inscriptions long hidden under the ground, which has made it possible during the last few years to identify this noble matron. Tacitus, who saw in the Christian religion only an " execrable superstition," was still able to appreciate the fruits of that relig- ion in a saintly life which he wondered at and eulogized without understanding. In the year 43 after Christ, shortly after the arrival of St. Peter in the Capital of the World, Pomponia, a matron of high rank, suddenly changed her worldly life to the unqualified aston- ishment of her pagan friends. She withdrew from society, she put on the garments of mourning, and went to live retired on her country estate. Some thought she was mourning her intimate friend, Julia of the family of Csesar, who had been put to death under Tiberius in one of the endless intrigues of his corrupt court. But the years passed by, and there was no change in the manner of her life. " She lived long," says Tacitus, " always in her Bad- ness. During forty years she wore only the habit of mourning." At last this existence, so singular in the world of that day, excited suspicion. Pomponia was accused of joining in " foreign superstitions." According to the Roman law, she was handed over to the judgment of her husband. He was an old consul, who ©4 THE QUEEN OF HIGH IV AYS. had had a hand in the conquest of Britain. He seems to have had something of the oldtime honor. After holding a council of his noble family, he declared his wife innocent and free to continue in the way of life she had chosen. Recent discoveries made in the excavation of the first Christian cemeteries along the Appian Way show that the famous crypt of Lucina, which ran into the Cata- combs of St. Callistus where St. Cecilia was buried, was the private property of Pomponia. Among the earliest Christian inscriptions there is one narrating the virtues of a young Pom- ponius, two generations later, showing that this Christian matron had left the heritage of her faith to her descendants. It is not certain even that the name Lueina, which means the "enlightened one " and which is attributed to the powerful Roman matron who preserved the bodies of the first Christian martyrs, is not the mystic name of this same Pomponia. So does this Appiau Way bring back the memory of the good and the evil of ages past. In its present desolation, it tells the story of that "foreign superstition" which from Rome and the See of Peter has spread and subtly transformed the whole civiliza- tion of the world and the lives of men, even of those men who would now drive it from the earth. Without Rome the world had not been Christian, nor without Christianity had our brief life been worth the living. Awe-struck I gazed upon that rock-paved way. The Appian Road ; mannorean witness still Of Rome's resistless stride and fateful Will. Which mocked at limits, opening out for aye Divergent paths to one imperial sway. The Nations verily their parts fulfil ; And war must plough the fields which Law shall till ; Therefore Rome triumphed till the appointed day. Then from the Catacombs, like waves, up-burst The Host of God, and scaled, as in an hour, O'er all the earth the mountain seats of Power. Oladly in that baptismal flood immersed The old Empire died to live. Once more on high It sits ; now clothed with immortality ! (Aubrey de Vere.) EUCHARISTIC THOUGHTS. By the Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J. V. IN our moments before the tabernacle we might be supposed to be occupied with nothing else but prayer ; and these are not prayers. No ; because I think it is well in our devotions to practise sometimes one of the wise suggestions of St. Ignatius. He tells us that we ought to show more reverence when we address God directly in prayer than when we are only thinking about Him and His eternal truths.1 Now our sloth is not capable of much strain, and therefore we quickly tire of our attempts at direct and fervent prayer, taking refuge in that exercise of the powers of the soul which exacts less reverence and less restraint. And therefore it does not seem to me wise to impose it on our- selves as a duty to be always formal and solemn in the thoughts and words which spring up in our hearts or rise to our lips during our moments before the Tabernacle. We may very properly and very fruitfully occupy ourselves with holy and appropriate thoughts of any kind cast in any form. And therefore, kneeling or sitting before the Tabernacle, we may now perhaps dwell with profit on a eucharistic thought, which I will set down here, not by itself but with some of its surroundings. VI. In the Life of Felix Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, there is given incidentally an account of an English governess, Harriet 1 Exerdtia Spiritualia, Annotatio 3. The Directoriuin (chapter 15, section 7) says that our colloquies with God and His Saints in meditation require greater reverence than our meditations and speculations. 95 96 EUCHARIST 1C THOUGHTS. Shillito, who was received by him into the Catholic Church, and who has been for more than twenty years a Poor Clare in Eng- land, if she is living still. Her name occurs to me now before the altar, not on account of the Bishop's words to her : " Why are you not a Catholic? Are you quite sure you are in the truth, your religion having so many separate sects? Can you strike the Tu es Petrus out of the Gospel?" Not for those words of the Bishop, but for these other words of Harriet Shillito herself. "The Church has the Eucharist, the most complete and perfect gift of God to man; the Church produces Virginity, the most complete and perfect gift of man to God. I think that perfect truth must be there where there is perfect love." VII. The foregoing words join together, with a slight variation, two ideas which I have long been accustomed to link with certain words of a great and good man wrhose death has called forth a wider and more earnest expression of affectionate admiration than has marked the departure of any man of our time or perhaps of any time. Yes, the truly Christian heart needs no other notes of the true Church of Christ than the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin. Ecce Mater tua. Hoc est corpus meum. But with these grand war-cries and watchwords of the Faith let us join Tu es Petrus, The great and good man from whom we take the eucharistic thought on which wre are going now to dwell for a little, is Cardinal Newman. Long before that title belonged to him, in his first year as a Catholic priest, he preached some sermons which even he never before or since surpassed, and wThich form his first Catholic book, Discourses to Mixed Congregations. In the last of these he makes a remark which I have often repeated to others, and to myself hundreds of times as a sort of meditative ejaculation : for I hold strongly that the practice of ejaculations ought not to be confined to direct aspirations to God and His Saints but ought to include mottoes and principles and reflections of many kinds, not all directly spiritual. But this saying is directly spiritual. "It EUCHARIST 1C THOUGHTS. 97 is the boast of the Catholic religion that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste : and why is this but that it gives us Jesus for our Food and Mary for our nursing Mother?" vin. It is the name of Jesus and not of Mary that brings these words before our minds in these moments before the Tabernacle ; yet He will let us think first of His nursing Mother. She was so indeed for Him in reality. Et lade modica pastus est Per quern nee ales esurit. "He on a little milk is fed Who gives the birds their daily bread." Did the great neophyte mean by calling Mary not only our Mother but our nursing Mother to claim for her again, in her mystical maternity, not the half only but the whole of the bene- diction pronounced on her of old by the good woman in the crowd : " Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that Thou hast sucked !" St. Clement of Alexandria says that the mother who does not nourish her infant at her breast is but half a mother. Quce parit et non lactat dimidium matris est. All the love. and tenderness of the best and truest mothers must yield to the higher and truer love that yearns toward us all from the Immaculate Heart of Mary our nursing Mother. She is our Mother and our nursing Mother. The relations we hold to the Blessed Virgin are not those of the grown-up son or daughter to the venerated parent on whom they lavish marks of respect and affection, the arrears of gratitude accumulated during the long years during which they were, first, the wholly unconscious and then the only half conscious objects of a mother's self-sacrificing love. We are not so far independent. We have not outgrown the wants of childhood. We are helpless children always, quasi modo geniti infantes, like new-born babes needing always to be nursed and tended, needing always the Blessed Virgin for our nursing Mother. THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. By Joseph E. Barnaby. I. 4<TT TA-WA — Germantown — Mauch Chunk — Through traiu \ \ — Bel-vi-dere division !" Every frequenter of the superb railway station on Broad Street in Philadelphia knows that this is not quite the way the words run. But this seemed about their sum to the tired little woman in black who had been waiting till late in the night for a train that was never called. Her clothing was old and rusty, but very neat. A soft white handkerchief was pinned round her wasted throat in motherly fashion. The dingy crape veil pushed back over her antique bonnet set off a pale worn face from which smiles had long since fled. On her arm was an old-fashioned wicker-basket ; and the fingers of her thin hands were nervously locked together in her lap. She sat at the end of one of the long benches of the waiting- room. It was close to the great door opening out on the platform. She could hear the first words of the " usher " or caller-out of trains, as he came in to announce their departure. She looked him steadily in the face, leaning a little forward that she might not miss a word of what he was saying so deliberately. But her train never came. After a time it seemed to her that he only called out over and over the same thing. " Wa-wa — Germantown — Mauch Chunk — Through train — Bel-vi-dere division !" Her expectation grew more anxious each time that she settled back into her place. She looked timidly after the usher to see if she might not speak to him the next time he should pass her by. He was very different in look from herself. Youth was still a-Maying with him ; and he stood straight upright in the dark blue uniform and close cap worn by the employees of that great 98 THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 99 company which, it is said, owns the State of Pennsylvania. He was a handsome figure of a man. His black hair and kindly grey eyes were set off by a bright healthy flush on cheeks of dusky firm complexion. All this belongs to the " dark Irish " \vho are the true Milesians, and came from Spain two thousand years ago. He was known as "Irish Charley," though American-born." He was very proud of his calling out. When his turn came on, all the waiting passengers looked relieved. They were sure to understand in time when their train was ready. He had noticed the poorly dressed little woman in black. She had given a twinge to his heart-strings, which were tender after his race's wont. Only a few years brought him back to his childhood when he had seen his mother seated like that in the waiting-room of these great railway offices. That was after his father had been crushed to death between two freight cars he was coupling one stormy night. She had grown old and wasted then like this woman before him. She worked hard and ate little that he might have enough, until at last some one in the great corporation was found willing to take him in and pay for the life of the father by enabling the son to earn a living. He earned more than that, now he had been promoted to call out the trains ; and the mother could rest a little and try to grow young again. At least, this should have been the case. But it was just here that the twinge came to his heart-strings. He called out the trains so loudly that all the waiting crowd turned agape to hear what was so specially announced. He half excused himself by winding up with a prolonged — " Local !" Then all the people who were for the through trains settled back and looked at the long gilt hands on the black dial of the clock up against the wall before them. Irish Charley stood with a deepened flush on his face beside the little old lady who had betrayed him into this unusual out- burst. Her faded eyes were looking straight up to his, with a wan look. The frank kindliness of his own questioning gaze emboldened her to speak. 1OO THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. "If you please, sir, when is the train for Paradise?" He gave a surprised start, but she went on quickly: "I try and be patient; but I have been here very long and you never call out that train. And I'm so tired." By this time he was reassured. "Oh, I see now. I've heard of the place. It's not on this line — that's why I don't call it." The poor creature shrank back in her corner trembling violently as with cold and misery combined. It was time for him to be back at the platform for another train ; but he said a word to comfort her in her dismay. "Don't be afraid. There's a connection somewhere — I'll ask out at the Inquiry Window and tell you the next time I come in. Sorry I didn't know before. 'Twill be all right — don't be afraid. We connect here with everywhere — no trouble at all." She pressed her fingers tightly together, and the look of patient expectation slowly came back to her eyes. She still shivered slightly under her faded shawl. When the door next opened, she sat forward to hear, with a touching glance of recog- nition at the usher. He was flustered, and his calling out was not nearly up to the mark. When he had finished, he stopped beside her once more. "I've found your connection. It's up above Lancaster, and you'll have to ask the conductor where you're to change. I guess you'll have to stage it part of the way." She looked gratefully up at him and laid her withered hand anxiously on his sturdy arm, though he was not moving away. "Can I go now? Is it long before the train goes? Oh, I'm in such a hurry — and I'm so tired." He flushed up once more and turned aside his look as he answered almost timidly: "Well, the truth is, lady, there ain't any more trains that way to-night. The Harrisburg Express was the last, and that's gone half an hour." The woman was trembling violently again, and warm-hearted Charley could not endure the suffering and agitation visible on her pinched features as he hastily glanced down at her. THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 1O1 "Now, now, it can't be helped and 'twill all come out right, I know. Have you no friends you can go to for the night, here in the city?" She stared straight before her, without saying a word. Charley was afraid she was going to faint clear away. Her hands were clasped together again on her lap, but she no longer leaned forward with expectation. He touched her on the shoulder and bent slightly over to say soothingly: "Well, don't mind it now. I'll be off work in a few minutes now, and then I'll see to getting a good cheap lodging for you near the station. Then you can get the early train. The evening train would have landed you any- way in the night ; and I don't think that's pleasant out in those country-places. Now, do you?" If she could answer his question, he thought, she would not faint. She mumbled something faintly, but he could only catch as he bent more closely — " I'm in such a hurry to see the King—." It was time for him to be back at his post. He did the best thing to be done with women and children and even men, when they are weak and in trouble. With a firm, cheery voice and giving a little pat on her shoulder to draw attention to his words, he said : "Now, see here. Just stay quiet where you are till I'm through, and I'll see everything is all right." She turned her eyes toward his steady gaze, and after an anxious scrutiny bowed her head in assent. There was an old- fashioned ladylikeness about the gesture, and her lips formed the word " Thanks " without uttering it. When the next train had been called, Charley stopped at her side and said : " There is only one more. Then I'll be ready." H. At last it was midnight, and the special officer came on. He was to attend to the duties of the usher as well as of several other functionaries of the more busy time of the day, until six in the morning when the railway public would again begin ebbing and flowing in its ceaseless tide. Charley ran hastily off to the coat- 102 THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. room to doff the cap and insignia of the Company and to put on the ordinary attire of an American citizen. It is one of our national characteristics that, outside of the duties of our respective offices, we desire to look each quite like the other, excepting always the inborn American principle that clergymen should wear their cloth. Just as he was leaving the room, with his neat black hat and grey coat, one who had come in on the same errand clapped him on the shoulder. " Oh, here you are, just in time ! The boys are all ready, and we'll have a night of it. You know the officials of the Steel Ring will be up, and if you make friends with them you will not be black-balled at the election." Charley started back, and the flush on his face grew several shades deeper. "Sorry," he mumbled, "but really I can't go to-night. I have to hurry up home on important business." The new-comer was employed like himself in the great Rail- road Company. He was very different in appearance. Of about the same age, he had lost all frankness of look, if indeed he had ever had it. His pink-and- white cheeks were inclined to hang down in pockets, and the moustache which railway men favor only partly hid those cruel lines about the mouth which betoken a disposition sure to follow on prolonged self-indulgence. His eyes too had taken that half-almond shape which we see in the worst classes of the Chinese, and which perhaps has something to do with their general paganism in religion. He looked sharply, and for a moment threateningly, at his Irish companion. Then, smoothing his face, he spoke persuasively. " You are not going back on me now, after all the trouble I have taken with you, are you ? It isn't everyone I could get into the Steel Ring, you know, and if you do not make yourself solid with the boys to-night you might as well give up all hopes of it." Charley looked up resolutely, though a little stunned, and said: "Never mind about the Steel Ring just now. I have to go home — and home I am going." The other looked at him with the same fell look on his face, THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 1O3 before he spoke again : " I suppose you know the harm this will do you, my fine fellow?" Charley laughed lightly, though there was something forced in his manner, and answered: "I guess I'll live through it all right. I am sound enough with the Union, and your Steel Ring don't seem so powerful around here anyway." His companion, with an ugly sneer, replied: "Yes, since you Irish took possession of the Union, we decent fellows don't seem to have the power we ought to have by rights. All the same, you will be fixed if you go back on us now." On the whole, he seemed greatly vexed at the conduct of Irish Charley. However, he had reason to see that he was not gaining ground, but rather exciting the natural obstinacy of the one he wished to persuade. So he tried another tack. "Now, what is to prevent your coming with us to-night, after all the plans we've made? It ain't right you should lead us into all this expense and then back out. Sunday's our only day, and here you are, free till morning, with your turn not on again till four in the afternoon. Why, you'll sleep everything oif by that time." Charley laughed again, this time more easily, and answered lightly: "Well, you're not putting things very nicely for an employee of the corporation that owns the State of Pennsylvania. What would the Governor say if he heard you? You boys will enjoy yourselves just as well without me, and I can't get out of it — I have to go home." The other was not to be rebuffed so easily. There was evidently some reason for his wishing to get the usher into the Steel Ring. This was a new secret society among the employees, half-convivial and half-beneficial, and generally dreaded by the employers and looked on with suspicion by the more honorable members of the ordinary Labor Union. It was one of those societies whose name, as it were, "left a bad taste in the mouth." On the present occasion its advocate had said the very worst things possible to persuade his friend. An Irish workingman — even an Irish American — may be drawn with his eyes closed into 1O4 THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. any number of ill-meaning associations; but when his eyes are open, and especially when his nationality or his religion are attacked, it is not easy to draw him forward. . The advocate of the the Steel Ring, with another sneer, now said: "See here, Charley, you're an Irishman. I didn't think you folks got religion so strong. Have any of your priests been at you about the Steel Ring?" A flush now came to the usher's face, which did not leave it speedily. He answered, almost bitterly: "If I did get religion in the Catholic way it certainly wouldn't bring me oif with you boys to-night, let alone the Steel Ring. Perhaps it would be better for me if I had got it ; but since I have been going with you, you know as well as I that religion is easy. And no priest has been talking to me. He wouldn't be likely to," he added, with an additional tone of bitterness in his voice, "unless he came to change me from what you've made me." Then, hastily button- ing his coat, he added: "Well, I can't go with you, and that is the end of it. There is a person waiting for me there in the waiting-room, and if you wish to see me again to-night you'll have to follow me where I'm going." So saying, he stalked off with rather more dignity than became his station in life. He found the little old woman still sitting at her place near the door. She looked at him timidly, . and there was again the twinge at his heart-strings as he noticed the resemblance between her and his mother. He went up to her hastily, and bending over said: "My work's over now, and you had better have a cup of tea with me here in the restaurant. Then I'll take you home to my mother. She'll be the best one to take care of you for the night, and to-morrow we'll get you a nice train for the place you want to go to." His face was still agitated, but his voice had recovered the cheery tone which is so affective with those who are shaken in mind and whose dependence has been thrust home upon them. She allowed herself to be raised from the seat, and taking him by the arm feebly walked through the great doors into the dining room. He placed her at a table and gave an order to the sur- THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 1O5 prised waiter, who knew him from his daily familiarity with the station. The Steel Ring advocate had followed, looking curiously at what he was doing. Coming up behind him he leaned over and said quietly, " Is that your mother ?" Charley again flushed angrily, and said : " No. But it's not your business to ask." The other scowled and said : " Well, you're not the fellow I thought you were. You are just a big Mamma-boy. You may expect that we'll show you small favor, after leaving us in the lurch like this." Charley felt himself insulted in his nation, his religion, and his family. Under other circumstances, he probably would have felt inclined to resent the treatment in some more violent manner. As it was, the presence of his charge restrained him. He simply answered in a low voice, between his teeth : " I expect from you just what you are likely to give me. You can go your way and I will go mine. That is the end of it." The workman flung himself out of the room. The waiter, who had been watching the incident with interest, remarked in an aside to his nearest mate : " I believe it is that young fellow's mother. She's keeping him tight. She knows the Saturday night business." And the two laughed together until all the teeth in their heads glistened. Charley was considerably discomposed. Yet he took the tenderest care of his charge ; and when the cup of tea, which is the comfort of the poor, seemed to have brought a little warmth into her face he led her down the great stairs, and calling one of the few hansoms that remained at the stand drove oif to the little side- street where the mother had all but given up waiting for him. III. As the door opened, Charley's mother came forward with a little glad cry of surprise, which was at once changed into an exclamation as she saw her son's companion. Charley felt again the troublesome twinge at his heart-strings. 106 THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. He was more conscious than he had been for many a long day how he had neglected latterly the good mother who devoted her life to him. It was a new drop in the cup of his bitterness against his fellow- workman that even to-night he would have left her waiting against hope, had it not been for this poor old creature whom Providence had so strangely thrown in his way. Without hesitation, however, he spoke up in a cheery, resolute way : " Mother, here is a poor old lady who was unfor- tunate enough to miss all her trains. I am the usher, you know, and I felt a little responsible as she had no friends with her. So I thought it best to bring her home to you for the night." Charley's delicate heart suggested to him this way of introduc- ing the stranger in order that she might not feel so dependent. For herself, the stranger seemed rapidly sinking beyond any feel- ing of dependence. She was trembling again and looking wistfully at Charley's mother, who at once stepped forward and taking her by the hands brought her into the warmth of their little room. It was in one of those " detached residences," as they are curiously called — since they all seem attached to others, in a single row of small brick houses with white doors and steps and shutters, easily the most striking object to the strange visitor to Philadelphia. None the less, they are one of the great helps to the solution of what is called "the workingmen's problem." Here, in this little four-roomed house, with its cheap rent, was a true home for Charley and his mother, and the independence of one who has his own front-door key in his pocket. The room was neatly furnished. The young man's supper, waiting for him after his night's work, gave forth its pleasant fragrance in the room. Just at present, however, the whole attention of the two was demanded by the new-comer. She seemed on the point of fainting. Charley briefly informed his mother of the events of the afternoon. With the usual sense of womenkind, she at once devoted herself to the care of the poor creature. "I could not send her off to the station-house in her condi- tion," said Charley, as if to excuse himself. "You have done for the best," said his mother, thinking THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 1O7 perhaps it was this that had brought him home to her side. " Only help me now until I can warm her up a little ; and then, if neces- sary, we will send for a doctor." The poor woman soon seemed more easy and was placed on the mother's bed, but her mind now began wandering. The two soon learned her simple story — common enough in this world of ours and yet always new to the individuals to whom it comes for the first time. She was an English woman from one of those great Lanca- shire manufacturing centres where Catholics have remained on without changing their religion in spite of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and all the other Reforming sovereigns. Her journey to America was comical enough in a way, though the two hearers could not refrain from tears as they listened to her tale. She was a widow, with a son — his name too was Charley — who had employment in one of the great railway stations at the junction of many lines. Here he had worked his way up, until he had been given a post of considerable responsibility. It occupied him constantly about the tracks, which he had to traverse every few minutes. He had much to do with the incoming and outgoing of those trains which, to an American, seem to dash about heedlessly and without system in the railway centres of England. Charley, who had a professional interest in the matter, could not make out to just what office in his own station this other Charley's position in England might have answered. But what happened to him became clear as the poor mother went on with her story. He had been led away, little by little as the case always is, by some of his fellow-workmen. He had first been taught to drink; then he had joined in their convivial societies. He had finally been initiated into some one of the secret associations with which the paternal government of England has more than once tried to interfere by law. At last, one Saturday night like this, just as he was finishing up his duties and in haste to join his boon companions, he had tripped on the rails as the flying Liverpool Express came thundering by. All that was left of his mangled 108 THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. body was brought home to add its horror to the misery of his mother's loss. Her sympathetic hearers gathered that at that time a strange mixture of ideas had been set going in her poor brain. She told it very simply in her own words, — " When my Charley was brought home and the priest tried to comfort me, I fell so ill that I remember nothing more for many days. When I awoke they told me as how he had gone to Para- dise, and the priest had sung a Mass and had sprinkled the holy water over his grave. Then I remembered how in the Church we school-girls sang about Paradise." And in her cracked old voice, flightily, she struck up a hymn which, without much sense, has touched the popular sentiment all through England : O Paradise ! O Paradise ! The world is growing old- — and so it goes on. Now, if she could reach the King in Paradise she might get back from him her dead Charley. Through all her other flighty thoughts ran this one settled idea, that he had gone into the next world unprepared to meet the King. By some strange chance, her case had not been understood. With that dread of the workhouse which settles down upon every English laborer in distress, she concealed many of her ideas and actually obtained a passage to America which she had always heard called the " New World." And, if " this world was grow- ing old," Paradise must certainly be found in the New. With her neat upper-servant air she passed unnoticed through the port. When questioned as to her destination, she had managed to interest some of the officials in her search. They simply understood that in some American town called " Paradise " was the son from whom she had been separated ; and finding there was a place of this name in the southern part of the State of Pennsylvania they had forwarded her from New York. She was waiting patiently to go still further on toward Paradise, when she fell under the observa- tion of Irish Charley. It would be hard to say who was the more touched by this THE THROUGH TRAIN TO PARADISE. 1O9 simple tale — the mother or the son. The mother of Irish Charley had had many occasions of late to fear a fate much like that of this English Charley for her own boy. The latter had himself heard every word with a little stab of self-reproach for his own past conduct. He could not help thinking that the fate of English Charley might have been his own, if it had not been for this poor crazed being so strangely thrust into his life. All manner of good resolutions began waking in him, but just at this tune the state of their guest demanded all their atten- tion. The nervousness, the nighty manner, the disposition to faint, increased so much that Charley hastened out for the nearest doctor and the priest. When he came back with the latter he saw that all was nearly over. She recognized the priest and said a word about the King in Paradise; that she should find her Charley ; that if she could get to the presence of the King he would give him back to her. Then she sank away into uncon- sciousness. Charley and his mother sat by the bedside watching through the remainder of the night. As the early morning light came in through the white curtains of the window, the two could see that the end was at hand. The mother read from a worn prayer-book the Prayers for the Dying which are so dear to every Catholic heart; and Charley kneeling by her side answered her. At last the sun shone between two gaunt brick walls that stood on the other side of the way. A ray came stealing down and fell full vupon the white face on the pillow. All the hard drawn lines of suffering had faded away, there was a look of peace on the worn features. The mother and son knew that the King in Paradise was listening to the petition of the mother of English Charley. Irish Charley, still upon his knees, looked up doubtfully to his mother as she arose from her place. Then he spoke huskily : "Dear Mother, do you remember how I used to tell you every- thing when I was a child?" The mother, whose heart was full, could only bow her head in assent. HO THE STAR IN THE EAST. The boy went on : " You will not expect me to do that now that I am grown. But I promise you here that you shall never have from me the suffering which this poor woman has taught me would have been waiting for you, had she not" found me last night." The mother placed her hands on the dark locks of her boy in silent benediction. The sunlight crept over till it shone around them both. It was not alone the soul which had dwelt beneath the pinched features of the corpse on the bed that had taken a through train to Paradise that night. Two others also had heard it called out, and were henceforth on the way. THE STAR IN THE EAST. Unhappy man that I am ! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death f St. Paul, to the Romans, vii. 24. O ancient Kings, O Wise ones of dim story, Through what dark depths of Time your eyes were aching ! One flash" of light upon your figures breaking, And then the vision blinded by New Glory ! Enough, enough, ah, keep your secret hoary ! I too, from blackest darkness now awaking, May share the pilgrimage that ye are making, Though giflless, sad, and weak and dilatory. " His star we've seen ?" I, too, have seen it sadly ; I, laggard on the track that Kings have run, Crawl toward the goal for which great hearts beat madly. Without avail ? Yet I would worship gladly : Oh, body of this death, when wilt have done ? S. H. THE CHASUBLE. CS}> /fo Secretary of a Tabernacle Society. II. ORNAMENTATION. A MONG the Romans a white toga with a purple border was £\_ worn as a distinction by those holding office. Following the custom of the times, as well as' the seemliuess of it for the sacrifice of the Lamb without spot, it is probable that the Eucharistic robe was originally white. In the life of St. John Chrysostom we read that, being about to die, he desired to celebrate the Holy Mysteries and called for the white vestments that he might clothe himself therein. The purple border of the toga, was repeated in the bands of purple, called clam, which adorned the planeta of the Romans. These usually went to the end of the robe and were made rich with arabesques and embroidery ; they varied in elegance according to the wealth and dignity of the wearer. When the planeta passed from profane into ecclsiastical use, these adornments were retained for enriching the sacred vestments of priests and deacons. It is cer- tain that in the first centuries the richest chasubles had a band of stuff of distinctive color back and front. In certain places it took at the back the form of a cross. In the frescoes of the Cata- combs and in early mosaics, we 111 112 THE CHASUBLE. see vestments adorned with the bands of purple. This color does not mean the purple of our day. Crimson, blood-red, scarlet, and what we call rose-purple, were all comprised under this name. Sometimes the band was of gold ; it was then called aureus cla.vus, and later Aurifrigium or Orphrey. From the earliest days of Christianity the spirit of faith delighted to lavish adornment on the vesture of the priest. The historian Anasta- sius speaks much of the beauty and costliness of the sacrificial vestments from the time of the Emperor Aurelian, A. D. 275, until the conver- sion of Constantino after 300, when the sacred ritual naturally became magnificent. Then the scarlet stripe, which bordered the white vestment, began to be exchanged for bands of costlier mate- rial to correspond with the greater splendor of the material of the vestments. Gold, silver, and precious gems made them brilliant ; and images of the Blessed Virgin and of the Saints, or symbolic flowers and animals were embroidered on them, a custom consecrated by the Fathers of the Second Council of Nice, A. D. 787. A curious fashion sprang up in the Diptych Chasubles, representing the successors of bishops or pontiffs who had governed the Church. One belonging to the Church of St. Apollinaris at Ra- venna bears in needlework the images of thirty- five bishops of Verona, from the third to the sev- enth century. They are in as many medallions on a large band of gold cloth sewed front and back and dividing round the neck. This chasuble was six feet ten inches in length, while the front meas- ured six feet. A few fragments of it yet remain. The earliest deviation from the straight band or clavus was, according to an English authority on church em- I THE CHASUBLE. 113 r«j«\S I broidery, what is called the Y- cross, within the fork of which were placed elaborate needlework, gold, and jewels. Dr. Rock says : " The most beautiful and rarest stuffs were sought after to make this ornament (called the 'flower'), which consisted of a mass of rich golden needle- work which spread itself in broad thick branches, sometimes before all over the breast, and always behind upon the higher part of the back and about the shoulders of the chasuble, while all around its neck ran a broad band of gold studded with jewels." When the Latin cross was introduced the orphreys followed its straight lines ; and figures of Christ, the JBlessed Virgin and the Saints, as well as sacred symbols, were embroidered on it. In the South Kensington Museum, London, many of the sacerdotal vestments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are preserved and are a most interesting study of sacred subjects for embroidery and painting. In mediaeval times, spinning and embroidery were the occupation of women of all ranks. Imi- tating Mary, the Virgin Mother who ' worked and prayed/ pious women delighted in enriching the robes of the house of God with the work of their hands. St. Etheldreda, Queen and first Abbess of Ely, presented to St. Cuthbert a stole and maniple marvellously embroidered and em- bellished with gold and precious stones. In the tenth century, in France, Queen Adelaide wife of Hugh Capet, presented to the Church of St. Martin at Tours and to the Abbey of St. Denis chasubles of different designs and of wonderful workmanship. Emma, wife of Canute, gave costly vestments to the church at Ely, one of which had been embroidered all over with orphreys by the 114 THE CHASUBLE. queen herself, and embellished with gold and gems disposed with such art and profusion as could not be matched at that time in all England. St. Barbara, the dear St. Elizabeth, and hosts of others, wrought lovingly the vesture for glory and for beauty in which the priests were to minister to God. While the lords and knights of the Middle Ages fought for the cause of the Church in the Crusades, their ladies sat at home and with patient zeal worked rich stuffs and embroideries for chapel and monastery. Endless are the interesting accounts in the old chronicles of the gifts of the rich and puissant to the Church. One that is specially attractive is that from the Duchess of Lancaster. "A chesible of red baudekin, with orphreys of gold with leopards, powdered with black trefoils, with two tunacles and three albes of the same suit, with all their apparels. Twenty fair capes every one of which had wheels of silver in the hoods. And a chesible of red velvet with Catharine-wheels of gold, with two tunacles and three albes, with all the apparels of the same suit." The vandalism of Henry VIII. and of Cromwell ruthlessly destroyed the rich treasures of the Church in England, while the wars and revolutions of Continental Europe have left us little of the work of mediaeval days. MISSION HOUSE, ST. PETER'S, MONTANA. THE URSULINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. NESTLED among the Montana Buttes is a spot of which few but the Angels have heard. It seems nearer to heaven than any other on earth, and yet a natural winding road •connects it with the Manitoba Railway station, Cascade. Hither wandered Father De Smet with a devoted companion fifty years ago ; hither in 1884 came six devoted Ursulines from the pros- perous Toledo mother-house. Like many great things the Ursuline foundation in the Rocky Mountains had a small beginning. First conceived by an ignorant laborer, the thought was communicated to one of those sterling characters not often found even under the hallowed seal of priestly consecration. From him, with the lightning's power and with its speed, the thought became a deed under the guidance of two of the most noted prelates of the North American Church. 115 116 THE URSU LINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. How few noble-hearted nuns who have drunk deep at the springs of self-immolation, how few generous-hearted girls who yearn with all the eagerness of pure youthful enthusiasm for the active seclusion of religious life, have heard of the picturesque Ursuline Novitiate of St. Peter's Mission ! And yet its door swings gladly back to welcome devoted workers into the whiten- ing field where may be yearly garnered a rich harvest of soulg. St. Peter's Mission lies fourteen miles south of Cascade in the hilly district of Western Montana. It boasts a post-office, a Jesuit mission house, an Ursuline convent, several rich ranches, and many picturesque huts and "tepees." Thus the people of the surrounding country, old and young, enjoy plentifully the advan- tages of religion and education. While the boys, both white and Indian, are trained in separate schools by the Jesuit Fathers, the girls enjoy like advantages at the hands of the Ursuline Sisters. We who trace these lines for the readers of the MESSENGER have long listened to the Sisters' enlightened teachings, and would not exchange them now for all the advantages that Europe and our own American so-called "fashionable" boarding-schools afford. All who have given the matter of education serious Christian thought, know well that the heart together with the mind needs careful training, and that no hand so well as woman's can gently strike its strings and make them vibrate to what is noble and good. The Convent at St. Peter's is a series of log-cabins, hung with the saintly memories of the dead, vocal and bright with the cheer- ful voices and the smiling faces of the noble workers of to-day who keep With many a slight disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. Under the watchful polar star rises the " Fish-back " Butte ; a little to the east is the " Square " Butte, the glory of the land- scape ; while proudly forming the apex of this gigantic triangle rises the " Crown," a resplendent hill, full of inspiration, which to the thoughtful mind speaks in accents not unlike those suggestive and delicate promptings of Hawthorne's Great Stone Face. 118 THE URSU LINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. A short distance from the log-cabin convent is the ' college ' of the Jesuit Fathers, a square stone building, facing the semi- cardinal points, and smiling its cheery greeting, to the unfinished monastery where future Ursulines will follow in the footsteps of their pioneer log-cabin sisters. This building is responsive to the grand austerity of the surrounding landscape. At a glance the tourist might detect its object, even were not its massive walls of cut grey stone surmounted by a ponderous gilt cross. Here it is that in the very near future, so we trust, the | despised and deeply-wronged race that long held sway in this mighty land will receive, in exchange for these glorious hills and copious waters, the benefits of enlightened civilization and deeply Christian Catholic education. Nor has St. Peter's Mission gathered for itself alone the blossoms the wilderness has been forced to yield. We read in the life of the great St. Dominic how that, scarcely had he clothed his brethren in the white garb of the Friar Preacher, than he sent them two by two to scatter abroad with lavish hand the Heaven- sent seed. Some of these, listening to the dictates of human pru- dence, bade him garner first the precious germ to let it ripen beneath his paternal eye, and not scatter it broadcast upon the desolate waste of this poor world. But the founder, wiser in his seeming foolishness, did not change his purpose. And the thirsty earth drank in the dew from Heaven and the cockle of Albigensian growth rotted and died beneath its gentle violence, and the order grew strong and prospered, and God's blessing rested upon the spreading Dominican tree. In six years the mustard seed planted by Ursuline hands has sent forth seven mighty shoots : St. Peter's, the Novitiate and generous Mother-house ; St. Francis Xavier's Mission among the Crows, its proudest blossom ; next, but not second in importance, old St. Ignatius, in the heart of the great Rocky Mountains; Holy Family Mission among the Blackfeet ; Miles City, where first the Mothers rested on their Western pilgrimage ; St. Labre among the Cheyenne Indians ; and picturesque St. Paul's, where the generous purpose of the workers is aided, as the seraphic Teresa o > » O 12O THE UR.SULINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. would have it for her daughters, by all the grace and loveliness of nature. The reader perhaps now asks : What is the actual work of these pioneer missionaries in their distant western field ? What and how must the Indian children be taught? Of the seven missions we have mentioned, the Holy Family Mission in the Blackfoot Reservation is the youngest. To trace the every-day life of the workers there, is to answer the question we have proposed, in the fairest because the strongest way. The Blackfoot Nation numbers three families: the Blood, the Black- foot, the Piegan. The representative of this latter is simple man. Sunk in degradation by centuries of paganism and by the recent example of fortune-seekers, which the late treaty with his nation has drawn in crowds to this distant point of the great mining state, he is still faultlessly reserved, silent, and quick to discern and to revere purity and truthfulness in others. And this man must be reached, Christianized, civilized through his child. Its first Sign of the Cross is his religion ; its stuttered English his Shakespeare and his Addison ; its simple song, his Mozart and all the harmonies that are to soothe and soften him. He is a foolish, doting parent, governed by his child's caprice. The first work of the founders of a mission, therefore, is to entice the child by all the means that God's grace may suggest to those whom the Church has fitly styled the "Mothers of Christianity" — from the squalid "tepee" to the peaceful, beautiful convent, from ignorance to education. Reason and philanthropy are nowhere ; maternal tenderness, the purest supernatural charity alone can compass this. Tents whose filth and misery cannot be described, scenes of degradation and sorrow that make the heart sick and faint, deception, misunderstanding, trickery on the part of the prejudiced white man, may not stay the worker. And when, at last the children are safe, sheltered beneath the convent roof, what must they be taught, what is left for the Ursuline to do? AVe spare our readers the ceremony of initiation to civilized life. If charity were not its own reward, perhaps some compensation might be found in the expression of strange and exquisite comfort x 5 > a^ O K Z 50 s ^ O t» z 122 THE URSU LINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. that steals across the dusky face when the process nears comple- tion. Comb, brush, needle, thread, fork, knife, broom and mop are strangers to these little ones : to these must they be personally introduced. The task of teaching household work is very labori- ous. Not only must the children be watched and directed, but in many instances the work must be renewed before them day after day. At last their imitative genius gets the better of their native laziness, and then they are quick and willing enough. Two hours daily are devoted to such instruction in these mission- schools ; and besides the sewing and the ordinary school branches, the pupils are occasionally and in turn called upon to assist with the washing, cooking, and baking. The Indian children are fond of books: writing is their delight : and singing ! — there is no better means of teaching them. The English alphabet was a medley of intangible nothings to the Piegan children, until communicated to them by means of song, when it began to re-echo enthusiastically through the school-rooms and back from " Buffalo Rock." They are wild and roving in disposition, with pretty, suggestive faces, full of merriment and affectionate ways. Philanthropy might smile at a scene which the above recalls. Not far from the white cross-shaped convent of the Holy Family Mission is the little church which the children love to visit. What strikes their fancy in the Ursuline dress is the girdle, and this they are fond of seizing at recreation hours with the suggestive cry "Natuapaki notas — Holy Mother, thou art my own horse" — and off to the church. Is their irreverent reverence unwelcome to Him Who said : Suffer little children to come unto Me? While the little Indian girl is learning to be clean, to be reconciled to a roof and to the customs of civilized life, to speak English, to read, to write it, is she doing nothing better ? We hear of the ecstasy of the philanthropist who, after years of toil, suc- ceeded in making a girl that was dumb, deaf, and blind conceive the idea of God. Her shapeless countenance was transfigured. Now this very grace and joy may be hers, however unlettered she THE URSU LINES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 123 may be, who offers a true and generous heart to the Ursuline Novitiate at St. Peter's. Gentleness and prayer and the force of example transmute our wild little creatures. As we have said, they are imitative ; the rites and ceremonies of the Church captivate them and little by little the inner meaning dawns on their clouded intellects. Though they have the word "Apistatokin," they have not as yet the true idea of God. Surely no prouder privilege was ever woman's than to kindle in the mind of a fellow-creature this mighty light. Ah ! little human souls, buried for centuries in sensuality, paganism, and degradation, shall there be none to break to you the bread of Catholic education ? Shall your fathers still reach you a stone ? And when the workers of the present lie down in your midst to-night, broken and weary, or are awakened to-morrow, more |weary still, perchance by the wailing voice of Montana's URSUUNE NUNS WITH INDIAN PUPILS. ST. PETER'S MISSION, MONTANA. 124 THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. buttes or the grey streaks of the circling dawn, must they be pur- sued by the dread that when their strength has wholly waned, you are to be bereft of your truest, your only friends ? Shall not this first band of Ursulines live many years in generations of successors? Welcome to this laborious work, ye hearts of gold, who in your silent, well-appointed cloisters have learned the price of naked poverty ! Welcome ye who watching the shadows play on tessellated floor and oaken rafter have learned that the sanctuary lamp can guard as dear a Treasure in the western wilds ! Welcome, ye devoted teachers, who in the delights of deeper study or mathematical research have learned the wisdom of the little catechism, the value of a single soul! Shall this great work perish for want of workers? Shall we suffer the urgings of our soldier-hearts to be silenced by dreamy indolence, or lack of energy? Shall we who were born to work for God — and who was, if not we? — indulge the sweets of contem- plation, turning a deaf ear to the silent whisperings of the Spirit that presses us night and day to go forward and join these con- quering ranks? THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri and Cardinal of the Holy Koman Church : born in London, England, 21 February, 1801, elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford University, in 1823, sometime University preacher (Anglican), received into the Catholic Church, October 9, 1845, died 11 August, 1890. MONG the notable deaths of the year which is past, that of Cardinal Newman drew most atten- tion to itself. Indeed, it was the fitting close — after a lifetime long and full of work well done — of a career most worthy of note. All, of every or no religion, knew something of the wonderful power of thought and expression of the dead Cardinal ; and all THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. 125 had felt something of the still more wonderful power he wielded over the minds of men by leading them to think along with him- self as he expressed his thought in sermons or written books. Catholics cannot doubt that he was raised up in this difficult gen- eration to bring back the minds of men to the eternal interests of the soul, so often forgotten in the midst of the passing interests of worldliness and worldly science. It will be pleasant and comfort- ing for them to follow him in his co-operation with the Spirit of God while working out his Providential mission. God does not regularly choose out men to work great things in the souls of others without first making their own souls ready for the great work. Happily, we have many words from the worker himself — written at the various periods of a life exposed of necessity to the glare of publicity — which may help us to appreciate the spiritual worth of this remarkable career. While as yet only a young Protestant minister at the Uni- versity of Oxford, he visited Rome and had an interview with one who was destined to help him much later on in reaching the term of his course — the future Cardinal Wiseman. "When we took leave of Monsignore Wiseman, he had courteously expressed a wish that we might make a second visit to Rome; I said with great gravity, 'We have a work to do in England.' I went down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew stronger. I struck into the middle of the island, and fell ill of a fever at Leonforte. My servant thought that I was dying, and begged for my last directions. I gave them, as he wished ; but I said, 'I shall not die/ I repeated, 'I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light.' I never have been able quite to make out what I meant.' '; Thus he wcote thirty years after; but meanwhile He Who searcheth the reins and the heart of man well knew whither He was leading this sincere soul. It was at this time that Newman himself wrote lines inspired by the great thought weighing upon him. They have become familiar wherever the English language is spoken, and they express more perfectly than anything else we can know the inmost spiritual life of this man w,hom God 126 THE FATHER. OF MANY SOULS. was leading on to be the "Father of many souls" in their way to the light of the Christian Catholic faith. Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on ; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thon me on. Keep Thon my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene ; one step enough for me. All this first part of his life the young Newman had been a diligent student of holy things. He preached the first sermon of which we have record in 1825 ; and before the great movement Homeward with which his life is connected had begun he pub- lished his first book — 2 he Arians of the Fourth Century. In his writings of this time we have glimpses of an unusually earnest soul, one to whom conscience is all in all. It may be said here that one of the lessons of his life, which was also inculcated in many of his writings in defence of his final faith, was simply this : Faith in the Divine Revelation is not likely to be accepted by one who merely reasons about it as a matter of speculative truth or falsehood ; it is not the mere knowledge of truth which is sufficient for receiving into the heart God's gift of faith, but the willingness to receive it is also required. And this supposes that a man's reason acts not only by judging truth from falsehood, but also by judging right from wrong and acknowledging the obligations of conscience. Thus, in a sermon on " Secret Faults," preached January 12, 1825, he goes on in this way — curious enough at that time of dead calm in the Established Church of England : "If you receive Revealed Truth merely through the eyes and ears, you believe words, not things : you deceive yourselves. You may conceive yourselves sound in faith, but you know no- thing in any true way. Obedience to God's commandments, which implies knowledge of sin and of holiness, and the desire and endeavor to please Him — this is the only practical interpreter of Scriptural doctrine. Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally : you may endure for a time, but under affliction and persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age, (and in every age), become infidels, heretics, THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. 127 schismatics, disloyal, despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth because it never has been to them more than a form." This turning in upon self of the light of conscience was one of the first effects of his influence over others : and to understand his life in the lines along which it was cast from the beginning, it should be remembered that he was specially raised up by God to influence others. As he thought and worked out truth for himself and trembled with fear or hope, so many others around him thought and labored and feared and hoped. This comes out curiously in some of the familiar reminiscences which have been published since his death. Father Lockhart, who was his early disciple and even preceded him by some years into the Church, has this : " Newman's sermons had the most wonderful effect on us young men. It was to many of us as if God had spoken to us for the first time. I could never have believed beforehand that it was possible that a few words, read very quietly from a manuscript without any rhetorical effort, could have so penetrated our souls. I do not see how this could have been unless he who spoke was himself a seer, who saw God and the things of God and spoke ot that which he had seen in the keen, bright intuition of faith. We felt God speaking to us, turning our soul, as it were, ' inside out.' " What follows will, to most observant Catholics, be still more expressive of that disposition of mind which made Newman and his true followers so open to the influences of the Catholic faith. Father Lockhart goes on : " The great defect of Protestant training is that no one, (I speak of fifty years since), ever spoke clearly of the essential immorality of all impurity. Certain things which injured life, health, or reputation were reprobated. Nothing else was ever hinted at. There was, of course, no training of the confessional, by which alone with Catholics this evil is generally nipped in the bud. For the Catholic child knows by the instinct of faith and through the few modest words said to him by teachers or parents, when he is preparing to make his examination of conscience before confession, that ' immodest thoughts ' even, if deliberately 128 THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. indulged in, would be mortal sin. This is the great defence ol Catholic morality, — a fortification with a strong outwork — murus et antemurale. . . . The absence of this training left English Protestant society in a very corrupted state. The public and, still more, the private schools were such that it was rare indeed if any innocent youth passed through them without being stained : too often he was utterly corrupted. It was of such materials that the youth of Oxford were chiefly composed. On such as these Newman's sermons came down like a new revelation. He had the wondrous, supernatural power of raising the mind to God, and of rooting deeply within us a personal conviction of God — a sense of His presence. He compelled us to an intuitive perception of moral obligation — of that natural law of right which is written in the mind by the Word and Wisdom of God, and which St. Augustine and St. Thomas say is the 'Reason of the Divine Wisdom imparted to man by the light of human reason.' '' Another characteristic of the young University preacher was his unworldliness. It is certain that, humanly speaking, the use he made of his exceeding literary talent was not such as to draw to him the rewards of this world. If a great name came to him later in life, it was rather in spite of the line of thought and labor which he mapped out for himself than because of it. In a sermon of the year 1831, toward the close of this period of preparation for his life work, he has this : Christians are called upon to think little of the ordinary objects which men pursue, — wealth, luxury, distinction, popularity, and power. It was this negligence about the world which brought upon them in remote times the reproach of being indolent. Their heathen enemies spoke truly — indolent and indifferent they were to temporal matters. If the goods of this world came in their way they were not bound to decline them, nor would they forbid others in the religious use of them ; but they thought them vanities, the toys of children, which serious men let drop. Nay, St. Paul betrays the same feeling as regards our temporal callings and states generally. After discoursing about them, suddenly he breaks off, as if impatient of the multitude of words ; "But this I say, brethren," he exclaims, "the time is short." Another prime element in the spiritual life of this man so pure and unworldly was his keen sense that the truths of religion must be taught him from above. That is, as a sympathetic, but THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. 129 non-Catholic biographer has but lately said, " Dogma is the back- bone of religion."1 Newman's mind was all along clear in this regard. He says in the Apologia, that wonderful history of his religious opinions which an attack obliged him to lay before the world : "From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion. I know no other religion. I cannot enter into the idea of another sort of religion. Religion as a mere sentiment is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. What I held in 1816 I held in 1833 and I hold in 1864. Please God, I shall hold it to the end." He came at the close of an age when the scattered fragments of Christian faith which early Protestantism had preserved were still held with a certain vigor. It was not as in these later days when even the fragments seem dissolving before the powerful action of free thought. But Newman already had an unusually intense realization of that spiritual world whose existence is made known to us by the teachings of the Christian faith. A sermon on the action of the Angels in connection with the natural forces of this world is often quoted as an instance of curious speculation. An exquisite early poem on "The Separation of Friends," begun in 1833 and finally completed on the death of a beloved com- panion in 1836, shows this even more clearly. As it is little known, it will be worth while quoting a few lines from it : Do not their souls, who 'neath the altar wait Until their second birth, The gift of patience need, as separate From their first friends of earth? Not that earth's blessings are not all ontshone By Eden's Angel flame, But that Earth knows not that the Dead has won That Crown which was his aim. So day by day for him from earth ascends, As dew in summer even, The speechless intercession of his friends, Towards the azure heaven. 1 Cardinal Newman, by R. H. Hutton. ISO THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. We may stop to notice, in these lines of his first period, that he had already a firm hold of the Catholic truth of the Com- munion of Saints. Later, after the death of Hurrell Froude — a brother of the historian, and one of whom Cardinal Wiseman said that he might be considered as dying a catechumen, so near was he to the Church, these lines were added : Ah ! dearest, with a word he could dispel All questionings, and raise Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well, And turning prayer to praise. Dearest, he longs to speak as I to know, And yet we hoth refrain : It were not good ; a little doubt below, And all will soon be plain. To this same line of thought belong the two last verses of the hymn " Lead Kindly Light," which seem to have puzzled one of the Cardinal's later correspondents. In 1879, he answered quaintly that " he was not bound to remember his own meaning, whatever it was, at the end of almost fifty years." But the lines, taken in this connection, explain themselves : And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. Another characteristic of the soul of Newman was his intense reverence for truth, his utter sincerity in seeking for it, his will- ingness to be satisfied with it when it was found. With this reverence for truth was bound up his life-long opposition to what he called "Liberalism" in religion. When he was raised to the Cardinalate, he spoke these significant words: "I rejoice to say, to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years, I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did the Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now when, alas, it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth. . .' . Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any religion as true." THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. 131 As to the sincerity of the great Cardinal, it is curious to notice that precisely on this point he was accused both before and after the time of his conversion. People could not understand why he did not say flatly just what he believed and whither he was tending in his belief. It should have been plain that he could not say what he could not possibly know without a divine revelation of the future. But this strange opinion remained floating in the air till the late Canon Kingsley publicly accused him of saying that "truth had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy, and on the whole ought not to be." This ruthless accusation forced Newman into writing what will, perhaps, remain the most important of his works and what was, undoubtedly, the most painful to him in the writing. This is the history of his religious opinions, published under the title of Apologia pro Vita sua. It is this book, more than anything else, which has com- pletely changed the course of English thought in regard to the Roman Catholic Church. Its entire frankness and simplicity, its touching laying bare of the inmost roots of belief in the soul of one so entirely in sympathy with his age and with the souls of other men, its portrayal of the growth of Catholic belief in one who by nature should have been a leader in the opposition camp, strongly impressed English readers with the mistaken judgment of the past three centuries concerning that Church which had civilized the world and given them their own moral life. From this book we may date the recognition on the part of English thought that the Roman Catholic Church leads now, as before, in Christian religion and the observance of the Ten Commandments. Of his confidence that truth can be found and his satisfaction with it once it was in his grasp, we have only to repeat the words of a non-Catholic critic and others, still more significant, from him- self. Mr. Hutton, the well-known writer of the London Spectator, says : " This is what makes Cardinal Newman a really great man. His whole life has been lived in the passionate confidence that these great, these apparently appalling difficulties are not only not really insuperable but are infinitely less than those which any man 132 THE FATHER. OF MANY SOULS. would encounter, who, dealing honestly with his own conscience, should yet give up as false belief in the divine origin of the world and the divine character of Christianity." Newman's own words need always to be remembered by those who breathe in, day by day, the atmosphere of a world that gives ear to all objections and never waits to know the answer. "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt; as I understand the subject difficulty and doubt are incommensurate." This can be easily illustrated from a school of philosophy which has sprung into great vogue since Newman has upturned English thought from its depths. It declares that no less obvious a truth than that two and two make four cannot be known to be a necessary truth. Undoubtedly many who would stand open- mouthed at the assertion would be unable to answer clearly the arguments brought to sustain it. It is the same in regard to the defence of the Christian faith. What is demanded is not a ready answer, tripping on the tongue, to every difficulty which may be brought from any and every quarter, but enough reason for belief that God has revealed what is taught. Then God Himself will do the rest. For faith, being a grace, is always a gift from Himself to the soul of His creature. What we have said of this early period of Newman's life is intended to show why a soul, in circumstances naturally so ill- adapted to the reception of Catholic faith, might still be rightly expected to receive it as a gift from the Holy Spirit on account of its dispositions for welcoming the truth. Such dispositions, which are needed much more for the will than for the intellect of man, were his sensitiveness to the obligations of conscience, his purity and unworldliness, his trust in God as a Teacher and his near sense of the spiritual world, his sincerity and readiness to follow the " kindly Light " whenever he could discern its leading. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene ; one step enough for me. THE SECOND BISHOP OF CHARLESTON. By M. L. Meany. [GNATIUS A. REYNOLDS, successor of the glorious England in the See of Charleston, is almost for- gotten. The doom of being misunderstood, which attended him through life, seems to have followed him after death. This has sometimes been imputed to his predecessor's overshadowing renown; but it seems to have a deeper and earlier cause. Mr. Webb says:1 "Of all the native priests of Kentucky, the late Dr. Reynolds was possibly the least understood and the least appreciated by others than men of discriminating judgment. Nature had not given to him the pleasing ways by which persons so endowed are able to attract and lead captive the hearts of men. Still, it was not because his own heart was not open as the day to all gentle influences that such was the case. It was for the reason, rather, that his was a peculiarly sensitive nature. No man ever had a juster appreciation of the transcendent dignity of the priesthood. He appeared, indeed, at all times, as if he were fearful lest, by some inadvertent act, or some frivolous speech, he might cause men to lose sight of the unworldly character of his ministry." This timidity, which in such a divine might seem absurd, probably arose from one of the earliest incidents of his ministry — the excommunication of a brother priest, who, after giving bright promise of a noble career, suddenly abandoned not only his mission but the Faith, and sealed his apostasy by marrying. Mr. Webb thus pictures the sad ceremony: "Shortly afterward he was publicly excommunicated — the first and last time the awful ceremonial was witnessed in the diocese — from the high altar of the cathedral church of St. Joseph, Bardstown. I was present on this occasion, and occupied a place in my father's pew, immediately in front of the sanctuary. I was 1 Sketch of Eight Rev. Bishop Reynolds, in the Catholic Centenary of Ken- tucky. By Hon. Benj. J. Webb. 133 134 THE SECOND BISHOP OF CHARLESTON. under twelve years of age at the time, but I can say that, from that day to this, the scene I witnessed, in all its terrible signifi- cance, has remained firmly impressed in my memory. It had become publicly known that something extraordinary was to take place in the cathedral on that day, and the building was filled by a dense and expectant crowd, many of whom were non-Catholics. In the sanctuary appeared Bishops Flaget and David, accompanied by a numerous retinue of priests and seminarians. While the dread formula was being read by the late Rev. I. A. Reynolds, afterward raised to the See of Charleston, the attitude of the venerable Bishop of Bardstown was itself a study. His face was stern, but very sad. As it has since appeared to me, it was as if another Abraham, at the voice of God, was on the point of sacri- ficing the beloved of his heart. As was their head, so were the ecclesiastics by whom he was surrounded. One could discern the sorrow that was in their hearts by its pictured impress on their faces. The stillness that pervaded the church was so profound that the reader's voice, rendered tremulous and deeply pathetic by his own emotion, was audible in every part of the sacred edifice. The saddest of obsequies could not have been more impressive, nor more significant, indeed, of death and the grave." The recollection of that sad day probably overshadowed all the young priest's life, made doubly personal to him as the reader of the "dread formula." Among the early emigrants from Maryland to Kentucky in 1785 were John and Ann (French) Reynolds who settled on a small farm about three miles north of Bardstown. Of their five children, Ignatius Aloysius (the second eldest) was born on the octave of the Assumption, 1798. "But for the fact," says Mr. Webb, "that John Reynolds was the husband of an extraordinary wife, and the father of a still more extraordinary son, no special mention of his name would be here necessary. He was an industrious, well-meaning man, to be sure, and after a manner, pious. But he was given to the vice of intemperance. His wife was altogether of another stamp. To use the expression applied to her by an aged Sister of the Nazareth THE SECOND BISHOP OF CHARLESTON. 135 community, she was ' a living saint.' It is doubtful if there has ever occurred in Kentucky a more noteworthy example of health- ful influence exerted over a household than that which is presented in the case of Mrs. Ann Reynolds. In addition to the fact that her religion was as the measure of her life, she was of that precise temperament that is most attractive of love and confidence. Modest, retiring, helpful, prayerful, sweet of temper and loving her children in God and for God, it will not be considered strange that these latter should have readily yielded themselves to her moulding hands, and become, even as she was herself, exemplars of Christian life and social respectability." The Holy Spirit re warded the fidelity of this valiant woman not only by unusual graces to all her children, but by making one of them a shining light in the Church. The little Ignatius was among the earliest ecclesiastical students in the log-cabin Seminary of St. Thomas, and was transferred by its venerable President, Father David, to the Sulpitian Seminary at Baltimore, where he completed his theological studies, and was ordained priest in Balti- more, by the Most Rev. Archbishop Marechal, on the 24th Octo- ber, 1823. During the next twenty years, the young priest was con- tinually at work for God and souls. As companion to his bishop (Flaget) and to the renowned missionary priest, Kenrick (afterward Archbishop of Baltimore), he went through the vast diocese of Bardstown, preaching the jubilee of 1825, teaching in St. Joseph's College, of which he was president for three years, pastor of the Bardstown Cathedral, and afterward of the Church of St. Louis, then the only Catholic temple in Louisville. One year was spent abroad in attending to diocesan affairs, and then, after three years of arduous and successful labors as vicar-general, he became Bishop of Charleston. Never was ecclesiastical promotion more unwelcome to its recipient. The most aspiring ambition might well hesitate to take the place of the lamented England. What then must it have cost this modest, self-distrustful priest ! But, as his biographer says : " Dr. Reynolds was not the man to evade in the least particular 136 THE SECOND BISHOP OF CHARLESTON. the requirements of ascertained duty. It had never been his habit to question either the motives or the wisdom of those to whom he had vowed obedience, and now that Christ's Vicar on earth had given expression to his will in his regard, he felt that the proper course for him to pursue was to render cheerful obedience." He was consecrated in the Cathedral of Cincinnati, on the feast of St. Joseph, 1844. Even in this he felt a "splinter of the cross ": his own bishop would have been his choice for consecrator, but his age and infirmities forbade it. " Bishop Flaget could do no more than be present at the ceremonial and pray, as he no doubt did, that this son of his adoption might be led by the Spirit of God — " says Mr. Webb, who adds in a note : " I was present at the consecration, and I remember to have been greatly struck by an incident that took place immediately after the newly-conse- crated bishop had imparted the episcopal blessing to the kneeling crowds that filled the cathedral. I observed from where I sat the tottering form of our late saintly prelate being led up the steps of the high altar. In a moment after, in accents so feeble that they could scarce be heard at the extremity of the church, he intoned the initiatory words of the solemn episcopal benediction, Sit nomen Domini. When he turned to give the blessing, every knee was bent to receive it, whether of bishops, priests, or people." It was characteristic of the unassuming nature of the new prelate, that he had already taken leave of his Kentucky home and friends, so that there was nothing to delay his immediate journey to Charleston. During this journey it was the writer's privilege to see him, under circumstances never to be forgotten. Stopping over Sunday on the way, Bishop Reynolds was pre- vailed on by a former college-mate to fill the pulpit in his church. Late as it was on Saturday night, word went with lightning speed through the parish, and some who had more curiosity than piety were induced by anxious friends to anticipate an intellectual treat. Among them was a young scape-grace whose feet had since boy- hood been unfamiliar to the house of God. Great was the delight of many to see him duly walk up the middle aisle. . The Gospel of 'the day was rather long, and Bishop Reynolds read it in a con- THE SECOND BISHOP OF CHARLESTON. 137 fused, hesitating tone that promised poorly for the sermon, his eye glancing occasionally in a strangely-beseeching way at the silent and motionless crowd before him. When he had finished, and all had taken their places, the youth before mentioned opened the pew-door and walked deliberately down the middle aisle, in full sight of the pulpit. The Bishop's face did not flush at what was but too evidejitly meant as an insult. The appealing gaze became more childlike, as it rested on the congregation, and in a tone no less calm than sad, he proceeded to say that not many words were needed to explain the Gospel just read : it was its own best expounder. What the sermon was, whether eloquent or common- place, no one probably could have told. "That was just like Ignatius!" said the pastor afterward. "Well, you came to hear a preacher, — you saw a saint." "Perhaps will owe his conversion to it," said a sorrow- ing relative ; for all felt that the sensitive heart prayed for the offender. No greater contrast could be imagined than between the first prelate of Charleston and his successor. Each had his pecu- liarities. But in the one essential, zeal for God's honor and the interests of the Church, both were alike and both successful. Bishop Reynolds was not deficient in pulpit oratory; indeed we are told that in the first year of his ministry he was ranked as the second preacher in the diocese of Bardstown — Rev. R. A. Abell, his senior by ten years, being the first. Bishop England was dauntless and in fact aggressive, where Bishop Reynolds was patient, retiring and almost shy. The first had the true Irish- man's facility in turning strangers into friends and helpers : the second, by his want of self-confidence, made others slow in yield- ing to an influence that was more supernatural than they would have believed. He once, in a moment of unthinking confidence, no doubt, told Mr. Webb "that relief, often from unexpected quarters, had never failed him in his most urgent needs." During the eleven years of his episcopate there was some- thing about him that often recalled the scriptural eulogy on the valiant woman: "The heart of her husband hath trusted in her." 138 THE MORNING OFFERING. The heart of the Church could trust implicitly in him. As great a contrast as could be imagined to his illustrious predecessor, he yet carried out his unfinished work, was as ready to help on the publication of Bishop England's varied writings as to approve' a child's catechism, as zealous for the building of a grand cathedral as for opening poor stations where others deemed it "a sin to have Mass said." A hard and close worker himself, he was indulgent to the weakness of others. Always keeping within the strict lines of his legitimate duty, he was yet neither impatient with so-called dreamers, nor distrustful of new undertakings. It was fortunate for Mr. Webb that it was Dr. Reynolds he consulted about pub- lishing a Catholic paper, the thought of which had occupied his mind for five years. Of course, he met with neither discourage- ment nor ridicule. "Our relations may be said to have been intimate from this time to the end of his life. I can truly say that the more he revealed himself to me, the greater was my respect for him as a man, and the more was my reverence for him as a priest." To the last, he was the same — a worshipper of the Divine Will and a doer of it. In the midst of his great episcopal labors, he was struck with a mortal illness, which, after many months of suifering, terminated his earthly life on the 9th of March, 1855. As his untiring labors had edified all, so the Bisho'p's patience and resignation in suifering completed the holy example he left his widowed flock. THE MORNING OFFERING, A SECOND DIALOGUE. DlSCIPLE. We were on the question of principles. You were saying that the. union of many in a League of Prayers was likely to induce certain careless Christians to remember their morning prayers. Their motive would be to have the benefit of THE MORNING OFFERING. 139 all those prayers which would be offered for them by others, pro- vided only they themselves are faithful to the common Morning . Offering. Just here I have a difficulty. Is it worth the while to induce careless Christians to pray in that manner ? Some people imagine that as long as a man is in a state of sin, it is of no great use for him to pray at all, let alone the expecting any benefit to be received by others in virtue of his prayers. I think you under- stand what I mean. Teacher. The difficulty is not a new one, and you will find it explained by the old theologians. I wish a little more of this old theology would get into our present-day practices. I consider this one of the chief benefits of a League like the Apostleship of Prayer, which makes a morning offering, common to all its mem- bers, its essential starting-point. Disciple. What is it the old theologians can have to say on this point? Do you mean that the Apostleship of Prayer is merely an application of what has always been taught by Christian Doctors ? Teacher. That is about what I mean. The theologians put the question to themselves in this way : Ought every one, whether saint or sinner, to pray ? Disciple. The stricter sort of people are apt to think that it is a kind of undue familiarity on the part of one who is not a friend of God to address Him. Teacher. St. Augustine had heard so, and answers that the duty of prayer amounts to this : We are .to do what we can to obey God, and what we cannot do (either through our own weak- ness, or extraordinary temptations, or even from our own wretched fault) we are to pray God that we may become able to do. It would be a very sad thing that a sinner who has no direct claim on God's kindness could not even ask for a little of His mercy. Disciple. I am afraid that it is here the difficulty begins. There is a certain class of minds who are always rating God from a human standpoint. They seem to think that if absolute justice is done, all and more than all that one has a right to ask is done. So they conclude the work must stop there. It is, as I under- 14O THE MORNING OFFERING. stand you, the duty of the sinner to count on the mercy of God over and above every claim He may have on him. Teacher. Yes ; that is partly the case, but.it does not reach the whole truth. It is said in the Scripture that God hears the little ones of the raven that open their mouths to call upon Him ; and He fills their beaks with food. Now, no matter how great a sinner a man may be, he is still God's creature. God is with him, God works in him, God is still his father — One God the Father of all, as St. Paul reminded Timothy. It is a horrible perversion of ideas that the one who needs God's grace the most should not be allowed to ask for it. In fact, the asking for it is all that he can do. He is God's creature, he is under God's Providence ; and, unless like the devils in hell he wishes to reject once and forever all love of his Maker, he is under the bounden duty of having some communication with Him. Now this com- munication is prayer for God's mercy. Disciple. I imagine that in this the theologians do not far diifer from the sinners themselves. I know that very hard cases, when in some imminent danger, break out quite spontaneously into some hasty prayer for help. It may be the first time for years, but it shows that they have the real feeling that there is a God above them. Teacher. Yes ; I think it very rarely happens that a man is so far gone that he willingly contemplates dying in his sins. Usually there is simply a question of temporizing : he will accept God's grace some time, but not to-day. Now in such a case the practice of prayer is invaluable. When the sinner prays he exer- cises faith and hope, to say the least ; and all this is a direct dispo- sition toward penitence and charity. Disciple. I suppose, then, you would extend the duty of praying to all that great number of people who have little more than the light of nature to guide them, and who profess no religion at all. TeacJier. Yes ; and to bring back the question to that from which we started — to our Apostleship of Prayer — I can give you some instances. An unbaptized person came to me not long THE MORNING OFFERING. 141 since with one of the cards of the Apostleship in his hand. He was greatly struck by the very idea of such a vast Association of people praying to God for the same things. He asked whether he could not join in with the others and have his own needs and intentions recommended. Of course, I could not say to him that he could share in the privileges of the others ; for, not being a Christian, he was evidently incapable of the Communion of Saints. But I did advise him to begin the practice of the Morning Offer- ing, and promised to recommend his intentions along with the others. I believe that where a man will not do much for God, he should be encouraged to do a little. That little, with God's grace, may grow until it reaches the friendship of God : and this is the aim of all our labor. I cannot bear to shut the door of God's grace to the sinner because he will not, here and now and at once, come forward to enter it. Disciple. I hope that is not lax teaching, for it certainly seems greatly needed in our time. I am constantly running across people who have given up all practice of religion. The result is that except for some very serious event, as at the death of a friend or in the case of some misfortune, they never pay the slightest attention to God. I do not quite see how God's mercy is likely to reach them. There is nothing in them for Him to lay hold on. He would have to work a downright miracle in order to bring them back to Himself. leacher. Oh, for that matter, the turning of a man from a state of sin to penitence and grace is always a kind of miracle : that is, only the grace of God can do it. But we must remember that this grace is always ready, even for the worst sinner in the world. It was the greatest sin of Judas that he despaired and put himself out of the reach of God's grace by taking his own life. God could have pardoned him the betrayal of His own Divine Son ; but even God cannot create a free will which at the same time shall not be free. This is the true secret of all impenitence. It is not because God has not offered the grace, but because the man has freely refused it even unto the end. THE READER. * With the Lenten season our Mother the Church opens before us the fair book of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour. All the year round the simple Catholic faithful read therein, and are com- forted in their disappointments and sorrows. But with Lent, which is the old Saxon word for the springtime, the Church calls us to walk together along the royal road of the holy Cross. Weekly in all her temples the sweet solemn procession takes place from station to station of the Way of the Cross. All the voices are lifted up to Mary Mother of Jesus Crucified : Holy Mother, pierce me through, In my heart each wound renew Of my Saviour crucified. * * Sometimes a stranger to the Faith timidly enters the door through which the heavenly harmony sounds beyond the church's walls and into the profane street. He looks curiously around, only half-understanding. The loving words of prayer read out for each successive mystery of the Divine suffering move him strangely. Is not his own life a solemn journey ever lengthening out, wherein are mysteries of suffering ? Along with the touching prayers follow the homely practices of devotion which to his beclouded understanding seem minutious, unbecoming, even grotesque. So he goes away, perhaps to come back again and again until clearer light dawns upon his soul, perhaps to drift away forevermore into the darkness. He has had but a glimpse of the heart-filling religion of Him Who has trans- formed the world by His sufferings and death. Will he remem- ber afterward that to Catholics Christ is not a mere ideal to bolster up some theory, nor Jesus a name to be bandied about irreverently in the mouths of men that say unto their fellows — "I am holier than thou"? * * * No, the " mighty Mother," the Catholic Church, the Church of Rome which alone is universal, acknowledges all to be her 142 THE READER. 143 children — the publican and the sinner quite as well as those who seem to be the salt of the earth. And she does this in the name of the Good Shepherd Who trod the way of the Cross with bleed- ing feet, that He might seek and save the sheep that were lost. She is a mighty Mother, gracious, strong, faithful in life and in death ; and these devotions are but the least of her many ways for binding her children fast to her in the faith and hope and love of Christ. Yet in all and through all, it is the Christ Himself, Jesus the Son of the Living God, Whom she brings before us. Visibly He is gone from us; but she stands visibly before us clothed in widow's weeds. " Why, O my Mother, dost thou wear the garb of mourn- ing ?" And' the sinner, still sore from his grievous sin, and the saint in whom divine love stirs strange questionings about this unhappy world, and the unbeliever himself if he will but look attentively upon her, see behind her and above her, rising high as the heavens the awful presence of the Crucified One. * * * * O Face of agony, from whose mercy no sin can debar the penitent heart ! O outstretched Arms, from whose embrace of love not Judas himself had been excluded, had he not so willed it in his despair ! O wounded Hands that beckon, O bruised Feet that point the way! O pierced Heart, with Thy charity infinite as Thy Divinity, draw unto Thyself all souls, for all do sorely need Thee ; with Thy strength in the midst of suffering, stay their weary feet amidst the sorrows of this life ; with Thy flames of zeal, enkindle in all Thy faithful servants the. desire to bring souls to Thee, true Lover of souls, even though they must sacrifice themselves with Thee on Calvary, where Thy Mother stands beside Thy Cross. Holy Mother, pierce me through, In my heart each wound renew Of my Saviour crucified. In spite of the power and sweetness of Catholic devotions, perhaps many of us — because "the world is too much with us" — do not rate them at their true value. Controversy is good, pro- vided it is divine enough to bring about conversion — which is not 144 THE READER. always the case. Organizations humanly planned out for the reform or betterment of Catholics are also good, and may easily have the grace of God attached to them. And the Holy Mass and the ringing of church bells, and the duty of observing the Ten Commandments go on always. Still, there is always the room and always the need for devotions in private and in common. One of the most grievous attacks made on Christian Faith at the time of the so-called Reformation was that on the devotions of the faithful ; and as such it was recognized by the Council of Trent. Perhaps in our own day the Faith would spread more rapidly among those who live and die unbaptized in the shadow of our churches, if Catholics would breathe in more constantly this air of devotion. Perhaps the hope of the future is here. A great part of the " printing work " of the MESSENGER has been to spread abroad little ways and means of just such devotions. Here and now, it is proper for us to speak again of the booklet on The Holy Hour, — one of the three practices asked by our Lord Himself of Blessed Margaret Mary ; viz., for His sorrowing love to keep one hour each week, one day (the First Friday) each month, and one day each year as the feast of His Sacred Heart. In this book Father Nonell says : "All can console the suffer- ing Heart of Jesus; first, all who suffer from bodily ailments, whatever they may be ; secondly, all who have some natural defect which humbles or grieves them ; thirdly, all who have to lament the loss or absence of one who is most necessary or dear to them ; fourthly, all who stand in need of human aid or sympathy, and yet are deprived of it ; fifthly, all who are under spiritual trials, temptations, doubts or fears as to their salvation ; sixthly, all who suffer loss of their earthly estate or fortune, and have to bear poverty ; seventhly, such as are victims of dishonor, calumny, insult, or loss of reputation ; or, in a word, all who, whether will- ingly or unwillingly, have to suffer. But to those who call them- selves lovers of the Sacred Heart, especially those who form part of the Apostleship of Prayer, this office of Consoler particularly belongs." GENERAL INTENTION FOR FEBRUARY, 1891. Designated by His Holiness, Leo XIII. , with his special blessing, and given to His Eminence the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda — the Protector of the League of the Sacred Heart, called the Apostleship of Prayer— for recom- mendation to the prayers of the Associates. FIRMNESS OF FAITH. WHEN the Holy Father summons us to pray for firmness of faith, it may be worth our while to call to mind what a very important part faith plays in the ordinary affairs of human life. In its broad outlines it means information taken on trust. Thus we trust our baker for the freedom of our bread from poison; we trust our grocer that our coffee has not been adulter- ated; we trust our newspaper that the stock quotations are not misleading. In general, we take upon trust, partly as a con- venience and partly as a necessity, very many things which we have not the time nor, perhaps, even the ability to investigate by ourselves. In this way faith — mere human faith — conies to be a very common method of information to man about the common details of life. When we pass from the realm ot the visible and strive to glean some knowledge of the invisible world, then faith becomes the only source of information. We cannot enter in or investi- gate. We are even overwhelmed by the consciousness of our own inability ; and the utmost that we can achieve is to insist upon a thorough scrutiny of the claims of any one who professes to offer us knowledge of the world beyond our senses. That brings us, in a certain way, face to face with God Himself. For, if He does not speak, as of old He spoke in the lightnings and the thunder of Sinai, He gives, at least, the commission to one who can speak 145 146 GENERAL INTENTION. in His name and with His authority, thereby demanding of us a reverent obedience to His authority and a submissive acceptance of His teaching. And it was in this way that our Lord Jesus Christ sought for and won the faith of mankind in the doctrines which He proposed to them. He claimed to be the Son of God, and He established the justness of that claim by His numerous miracles and works of divine power. Those who heard Him heard God the Father Who had sent Him; and their faith rested on the divine authority itself. Faith was the very foundation of the Kingdom He had come to establish — the Kingdom of God upon earth. And when He deigned to exalt men to the dignity of being His fellow- workers in the development of that Kingdom, faith was their first equip- ment for the discharging of their sublime duty. It was by firm- ness of. faith that they were to stand bravely against all the assaults of a hostile world and be ready to forfeit their lives for the sake of a religion which to the Jews was a stumbling-block and to the Gentiles folly. Their firm faith vanquished the world: that was the path to victory which had been marked out for them by their Divine Leader. II. When the solemn moment was drawing near in which He was to leave this world and return to the Father, He spoke very instructive words to the one whom He had chosen to be His visible representative upon earth. A man was to rule the King- dom of Christ, to be the guardian and expounder of His truth, to teach in His name and with His authority ; and to that man He said : " Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren." (St. Luke, xxii. 31, 32.) Union with Peter in his faith and its profession is the first essential requirement for membership in the visible Kingdom of Jesus Christ upon earth. It is, in the ordinary Providence of God, the one way of salvation. Hence it becomes clear that faith GENERAL INTENTION. 147 is a priceless treasure bestowed by an all-bountiful Father upon His children. Neither is it less clear that the precious gift is held by very unsteady hands and is always in danger of being either lost or injured. The chief office of faith being to enlighten the mind with regard to divine truth, its firmness will be shown in the strength and clearness of conviction and in the fixity of purpose to hold on to that truth in all its purity, come what may. Wherefore a man runs very dangerous risks who does not watch closely after the safeguards of faith, or who deals too lightly with things which of themselves tend toward its destruction. Sensuality, pride, wil- fulness deal very damaging blows against the spirit of faith : the light is obscured, the conviction becomes infirm, the virtue itself languishes. It is corruption of the heart which pushes a man to that depth of folly wherein he says : There is no God. Other serious dangers to the purity and firmness of faith spring from association with those who either have no faith or a very spurious quality of it. Our newspapers, our current litera- ture, our political doctrines assign faith a very inferior position in all their aims and reckonings. They regard it as a right or privilege to be allowed to question, to criticize, to explain or to impugn doctrines of faith with as much freedom as might be used in regard to any uncertain information. The countless sects into which Protestantism has been split up, and their wide diversity of views about the fractional tenets of the Christian faith which they have retained, make upon the minds of many an impression that it is extremely hard to know what to believe. Then the evil tendency of fallen nature suggests the corollary, that it makes very little difference what one believes. It is in an atmosphere impregnated with such false principles that our lives are passing. Hence the great readiness to find fault with the teachers of religion, from the Pope down; to lay down stern laws for the Church in her dealing with the affairs of men; to stand aghast at the ignorance of Catholic people and their supposed tendency to superstition. As if, indeed, scholar- ship and culture can be substitutes for divine revelation, or as if 148 GENERAL INTENTION. the simple faith of one in whose mind the light of God's truth is shining must necessarily be superstition because out of harmony with the earth-born materialism above which it so'ars heavenward ! in. Associates of the League, pray for firmness of faith for our- selves and for our Catholic brethren. Clear and firm faith in God and in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolical Church which He founded upon earth to be the ark of salvation for man, is the greatest blessing we can possess. The faith of the Patriarchs and Prophets, of Apostles and Martyrs, of Confessors and Virgins; the faith St. Paul describes in his grand eleventh chapter to the Hebrews, which sounds like a great triumphant march after glorious victory — such faith is to be our model. We should aim at having a faith as simple as the trust of a child in its mother and as strong as the loyalty of a hero to the flag under which he fights. Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evi- dence of things that appear not. But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him. Let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us, looking on Jesus the Author and Finisher of faith, Who having joy set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and notv sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews, xi.-xii. OFFEEING FOR THE INTENTIONS OF THE MONTH. O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee all the prayers, work, and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Thy Divine Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in reparation for all sin, and for all requests pre- sented through the Apostleship of Prayer : and in particular, for firmness of faith amid all temptations, whether from the life around us or from the weakness of our own hearts. Amen. DIRECTOR'S CORRESPONDENCE. IN answer to a number of letters lately received by the Head Director, it seems necessary to state very plainly and dis- tinctly certain formal regulations which have been made concerning the management of the League of the Sacred Heart, called the Apostleship of Prayer. These regulations, of course, have for their sole object to safeguard the work which is done by the League : they were not made for this or that special country, but for the whole League when it was approved at Rome. Doubtless it was considered that without these regulations the League would be inefficient and, perhaps, finally altogether unable to do its work. They concern the publication or issuing of various documents and articles which are made use of in its simple machinery. After all, men cannot be united together without some exterior signs of their union. Also, the Church grants her spiritual favors in connection with similar exterior signs. The questions now before us concern the Indulgenced Cross conferred on the Promoters who are the necessary officers of the League, and the Indulgenced Badge, which forms the special outward mark and rallying-sign of the Associates as well as a scapular for constant wear. As to the first, it is evident that any number of trinkets quite as pious in look and far more expensive might be manu- factured : but they could never be the Promoters' Cross. They might be diamond crosses, and emblematic of all the mysteries of religion, but they would simply serve to no purpose, no matter by whom made and by whom conferred, so far as the League of the Sacred Heart goes. The Promoters' Cross is given out with the Diploma which confers on them their office. This Diploma is signed and the Cross given in the name of the Director General of the League throughout the world. The Director General is named by the Pope; and those who sign documents in his name must be specially delegated by him for that purpose. They are, 149 150 DIRECTOR'S CORRESPONDENCE. briefly, the Head Directors of the work in the different countries, and are regularly associated with the publication of the different MESSENGERS. It is therefore idle to bring in more ornamental diplomas or richer crosses simply for the sake of adornment, and it is worse than idle to pretend to associate these things with the League. The League Cross and Diploma do not constitute a mere decoration : they signify a thing. And it is evident that the Indulgences granted by the Holy See are connected only with those which are validly given out by the authorized Head Directors of the League. Second, as to the Badge — something which has become dear and sacred to millions of souls throughout the world — it is still less a decoration. It is very essential that those who wish to support the work of the League should remember that the League is for all, for the rich and poor alike. Hence, whatever simple, outward means it may use must be of a most democratic — or republican, whichever you wish — character : meaning that it must be within the reach of all. For this it must be cheap, stout, and serviceable. For the Irish soldiers going off to the battle of Tel- el-Kebir in Egypt, silk-faced and gold-fringed badges were not sewed in their jackets ; the common Badge of the League — which, once again, is dearer to its members than any new invention can be — was all they asked for. And for those who have any true idea of the spiritual use of such outward things it is evident that the League has already all that is required, and needs nothing more and nothing finer. Besides, any other is spurious. We ask, then, the good friends of this work to protect it as far as they can against the mania for regalia and expensive deco- rations. Once for all, nothing of the kind I rlongs to the work or has been authorized for it. The Head Director in the United States is as powerless in this regard as the humblest Associate. Third. It may be well to notice here that the great zeal of manufacturers to include all possible devices on the articles they sell has led to the insertion of the special motto of the League on very many badges and scapulars, which properly have no right to it. " Thy Kingdom come !" is doubtless a prayer for all and THE CENTENARY OF ST. ALOYS1US. 151 sundry, and cannot be spread too widely; but it has been indul- genced by the Holy See as the special motto of the Associates of the League. To publish this Indulgence, therefore, on the badges of other associations is, unwittingly, to put out a false declaration. (The Roman Rescripts explicitly limit the right of issuing whatever is officially connected with the Holy League to the Director General, and to those expressly delegated by Mm to act in his name, -i.e., the various Head Directors. This was declared in 1866, 1867, implicitly in the New Statutes of 1879, and explicitly in 1880, and finally in the Letters Apostolic of 1886, declaring the powers of the Director General. The latter officially promulgated this limita- tion, for the American Head Director in 1887, and with reference to the Badge in 1888 to Ireland.) THE CENTENARY OF ST. ALOYSIUS. FATHER DE AUGUSTLNIS, an old Woodstock friend of the MESSENGER and for some years now Professor of Theology in Rome writes from the latter place concerning the prepa- - rations made for the due celebration of the 300th anniversary of the death of St. Aloysius, Patron of Catholic youth. The "General Intention " of January brought this model Saint before our readers. We have also given a general notice o,f the Centenary in the Almanac for this year, and we shall have occasion to recur to it again in detail. At present we desire to draw the attention of our readers to Father de Augustinis' letter : I congratulate your Reverence on the progress of the work of the Sacred Heart in the United States, and I bless God for it. It is having wonderful success ; and your periodical really deserves it in my opinion. I desire for the glory of God and the honor of your MESSENGER to lay before you a thought which has come to me. You know that in Italy as well as in the rest of Europe there is a great movement on foot to celebrate worthily the ter-centenary of the death of St. Aloysius. The date is the 21st of next June. Besides the feast in the churches, exercises in schools, and the like, there will be pilgrimages to Castiglione and to Rome. Some of them will be national, for Italy ; but there will also be inter- national pilgrimages. I really think that your MESSENGER ought 152 THE CENTENARY OF ST. ALOYSIUS. to set to work to promote as far as it can this honoring of St. Aloysius in the United States. A special reason is that St. Aloysius had unique relations with the spread of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. You know the words of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi : they are taken from her vision in Florence about nine years after the death of St. Aloysius and seventy-three years before the first apparition of our Lord to Blessed Margaret Mary, to manifest the devotion to His Sacred Heart. Now the Florentine Saint says : "Would that I might go through the whole world and declare how great a Saint is Aloysius the son of Ignatius." And then immediately she exclaims : " How great was his love while on earth. Wherefore now in Heaven he is in possession of God in the highest fulness of love. As darts to the Heart of the Eternal Word were his aspira- tions while in this mortal life, and now that he is in Heaven, as arrows that have returned, they rest in his heart." Father de Augustinis next cites the part directly taken by St. Aloysius, a century and a half after his death, in the propaga- tion of the devotion through the Italian Jesuit novice, Nicholas Celestini. This was described in our MESSENGER for June, 1888. We reprint it here, adding that the renown of this remarkable vision and miracle worked profoundly in the minds of both friends and foes of the devotion" at that time. The Saint took an active part from his blissful heaven in the spread of a devotion calculated to make men know and love and follow Jesus Christ. It was in the year 1765 in the Jesuit novitiate in Rome. The young Nicholas Celestini lay at the point of death. He had been during his short religious life a worthy imitator of the three Saints who stand together as the special models of such as he — Aloysius Gonzaga, Stanislaus Kostka, John Berchmans. An Italian, a Pole, and a Belgian, they represent how the grace of the Church's Sacraments brings to all nations healing and peace. The face of the young novice was already corpse-like, his eyes sunken, and the rattling of his breath announced the last agony. The physician silently took his departure, saying — " In two hours all will be over." Suddenly the dying man raised himself up, and fastening his THE CENTENARY OF ST. ALOYSIUS. 153 looks on a picture of St. Aloysius which was hung in the room for the consolation of the sick, he cried out as though to one who had entered by his deathbed : " O St. Aloysius, how beautiful thou art ! My brother, how beautiful thou art !" He fell back upon his bed. Then again he rose up, and the eager listeners heard him say — " Thy will be done I" Then he turned to them amazed and affrighted, and said to them in a resolute and strong voice : "I am cured ; I will arise." It was true ; and he related, later on, all that had happened. "All the morning • long I saw St. Aloysius. Suddenly, I heard him ask me the question — very distinctly : " e Which do you wish, your health or to die ?' " I answered — ' Thy will be done.' " Then the loving Saint replied : ' During your illness you have manifested no desire save that of receiving the Holy Viati- cum, and in all else you have desired only the will of God. Therefore our Lord has granted thee, at my prayer, the grace of health, that thou mayst apply thyself to the acquiring of perfec- tion, and during thy whole life mayst spread the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus! This is a devotion most pleasing to Heaven.' '; The young novice was faithful to his mission. The miracle which had been wrought was examined by order of the Holy See, and published with its authority. The scene of the apparition and its history were engraved and spread throughout Europe, and powerfully contributed to spread the devotion in the midst of the increasing coldness of those evil days of revolution and anti- Christian violence. Thus St. Aloysius Gonzaga, long after his death, continued his work as an apostle of the Sacred Heart. Long after, among the papers of Father Ramiere, the chief founder of our League, was found a little picture of the Saint leading young souls to the Sacred Heart. Father de Augustinis adds to this : You see, then, that the MESSENGER has reason to give special honor to St. Aloysius, and the organization of the League is well adapted to secure good results in promoting the celebration of the Centenary. And as so many come over to Europe for their own amusement, perhaps some might come to glorify God in His youthful Saint. All the good people are hoping for a great renewal of virtue, especially among the young, on account of this Centenarv. APOSTLESHIP (1"&fflBtf>n NOTICES. NEW APPROBATION. — The Right Reverend Bishop of Natchi- toches has graciously approved the propagation of the League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in his diocese. RECENT AGGREGATIONS. — To the Apostleship of Prayer, League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (December 12 to January 12, 1891). (Name of diocese in italics, before parish or community aggregated.) Albany, New York: St. Colman's Presentation Convent (Presentation Nuns), West Troy. Brooklyn, New York : Holy Name Church, Brooklyn ; St. Francis de Sales' Church, Patchogue. Brownsville, Texas : Ursuline Convent, Laredo. Chicago, Illinois : St. Sylvester's Church, Chicago. Cincinnati, Ohio : Holy Cross Retreat, Mt. Adams. Columbus, Ohio : St. Mary's Church, Lancaster ; St. Rose's Church, New Lexington. Detroit, Michigan : St. Boniface's Church, Detroit. Grand Rapids, Michigan : St. Mary's Church, East Saginaw. Green Bay, Wisconsin : St. Casimir's Church, Stevens Point. Helena, Montana : St. Labre's Mission, Ashland. Leavenworth, Kansas: St. Francis Xavier's Church, Bur- lington. Milwaukee, Wisconsin : St. Rose's Church, Racine. Natchitoches, Louisiana : St. John Baptist's Church, Cloutier- ville. Nesqually, Washington : Gonzaga College, Spokane Falls. Neivark, New Jersey : Seton Hall College, South Orange. 154 APOSTLESHIP NOTICES. 155 New York, New York : Epiphany Church, New York ; Immaculate Conception Church, Stapleton ; Sacred Heart Church, Mount Vernon. North Carolina, North Carolina: St. Mary's College (Bene- dictine), Belmont. Peoria, Illinois : St. Mary's School, Peru. Providence, Rhode Island : Convent of Mercy, Providence. San Antonio, Texas : St. Mary's College (Brothers of Mary) ; Ursuline Convent, San Antonio. St. Joseph, Missouri: Immaculate Conception Church and Convent of Benedictine Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration, Con- ception. St. Louis, Missouri: St. Kevin's Church, St. Louis. Vineennes, Indiana: St. Michael's Churcji, Madison. THE SODALITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. Diplomas of Affiliation, received from the Prima Primaria, have been transmitted to the following : Baltimore, Maryland: St. Aloysius' Church, Washington. Boston, Massachusetts: Immaculate Conception Church, Boston. Chicago, Illinois : St. James' Church, Kankakee. Concordia, Kansas : St. Boniface's Church, Tipton. Detroit, Michigan : St. Boniface's Church, Detroit. Green Bay, }Visconsin : St. Stephen's Church, Stevens Point. New York, New York: St. Mary's Church, Williamsbridge. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : St. Joseph's Church, Philadel- phia. Providence, Rhode Island: Immaculate Conception Church, Westerly. Springfield, Massachusetts : St. Mary's Church, Uxbridge. St. Louis, Missouri: Our Lady of Good Counsel School (Sisters of St. Joseph), St. Louis. 156 APOSTLESHIP NOTICES. THE SACRED HEART MISSION, INDIAN TERRITORY. [This extract is from The Indian Advocate, a quarterly review published by the Benedictine Fathers in the interests of the Indian Missions. ] The League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was organized at the Sacred Heart Mission by Rev. Father Thomas, Sunday, October 24. His Reverence distributed the Badges of the Sacred Heart, after Vespers, to the newly-received members, all of whom were students of the Sacred Heart College. This is only a beginning ; the girls of the Sisters' Convent will no doubt follow the noble example of the boys. The Indian children take pride in wearing openly this Badge of the Holy League, and every morning, at the beginning of Mass, they recite together the beautiful Morning Offering. We hope that in a short time this devotion may spread throughout the Prefecture, and that the fire which Jesus came on earth to kindle may soon burn deep in every Catholic heart. THE TREASURY OF THE SACRED HEART. Associated can gain 100 days' Indulgence for each action offered for the Intentions of the League. Offerings for the Intentions of the Sacred Heart, received from December 12, 1890, to January 12, 1891. No. OF TIMES. No. OF TIMES. 1. Acts of Charity . . 164,620 11. Masses Heard .... 117,637 2. Beads 208,959 12. Mortifications .... 223,533 3. Stations of the Cross . 45,215 13. Works of Charity . . 74,334 4. Holy Communions . . 68,417 14. Works of Zeal .... 35,126 5. Spiritual Communions . 203,650 15. Prayers 1,515,349 6. Examens of Conscience 119,617 16. Charitable Conversation 14,529 7. Hours of Labor .... 656,599 17. Sufferings or Afflictions 25,073 8. Hours of Silence . . . 444,832 18. Self-Conquest .... 65,913 9. Pious Reading .... 171,954 19. Visits to B. Sacrament 107,994 10. Masses Celebrated . . 626 20. Various Good. Works . 109,388 Total 4,373,365 The above returns represent five hundred and fifty-two Centres. COMf TOMC«ALLYOU THAT LABOURoANO ARE BURDENED IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. TOTAL NUMBER OF THANKSGIVINGS FOE LAST MONTH, 94,415. That for this gift obtained for us, by means of many persons, thanks may be given by many in our behalf (II. Corinthians, i. 11). BUFFALO, N. Y., DECEMBER 12. — I wish to thank the Sacred Heart for the reform of my nephew who had been addicted for three or more years to intemperance. Also for his return to the practice of his religious duties after the same number of years. NEWBURGH, N. Y., DECEMBER 13. — A Promoter returns fervent thanks to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the restoration to health of her brother who had been in ill health for a number of years. In November he was recommended to the prayers of the Holy League, and is now in perfect health. FLORENCE, ALA., DECEMBER 15. — Please return sincere thanks for prayers answered. FREDONIA, N. Y., DECEMBER 16. — I wish to return thanks to the Sacred Heart for improvement in health, the reformation of a brother from drinking, and assistance in temporal affairs. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 17. — A year ago I was asked to petition the Sacred Heart for the conversion of one who had not practised his religion for over forty-five years. Thanks to the Sacred Heart, he received the last Sacraments three weeks pre- vious to his death. MOORELAND, LA., DECEMBER 19. — God has most mercifully heard my prayers. 157 158 IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. SYRACUSE, N. Y., DECEMBER 21. — Thanks for the conver- sion of my brother, who had been very negligent about his religious duties and who gave his whole time to the world. CLEVELAND, O., DECEMBER 25. — Thanks in the MESSENGER for two situations obtained, in spite of many difficulties. CHICAGO, DECEMBER 26. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for recovery from a very serious illness, and also for a tem- poral favor granted. ODANAH, Wis., DECEMBER 27. — Two children offer thanks to the Sacred Heart for the return to the Sacraments of their father who had neglected them for eighteen years, being a Free- mason and a constant drinker for many years. The children recom- mended him several times to the prayers of the League, and since last September he has not tasted a drop of liquor. On Christmas Day he received holy Communion with their mother, who had not lived with him for the last eleven months. ST. Louis, Mo., DECEMBER 27. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for the conversion of the father of a family who was addicted to intemperance ; he has given up drink, and has entirely reformed. Also, for the conversion of a young man, who had given up the practice of his religion, and was leading a scandalous life. His case seemed desperate, but thanks to the prayers of the League, he attended the mission given in his parish and took the pledge. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 27. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for the conversion of a young lady. She had been recommended every month for nearly two years. For the continued good feeling between parties who were at variance. For the success of a class at an examination. For means to build a church. KANSAS CITY, Mo., DECEMBER 29. — Thanks to the Sacred Heart for the happy death of my husband, who was converted on his death-bed. WEST HOBOKEN, DECEMBER 30. — A religious offers special thanksgiving to the Sacred Heart for the speedy recovery of a fellow-religious. The latter had received the last Sacraments. A brother-religious recommended him to the Sacred Heart, IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. 159 promising to offer public thanks — through the MESSENGER — if he should be restored. In a few days the crisis had passed and he is now able to go about. NEW YORK, DECEMBER 31. — Thanks for the conversion of a man after a life of dissipation lasting forty years. KANSAS CITY, Mo., JANUARY 1. — Most fervent thanks to the Sacred Heart for an almost hopeless favor asked through the kind intercession of Blessed Margaret Mary. I commenced a novena to her, and on the eighth day my prayers were granted. SOUTH BEND, IND., JANUARY 1. — Thanks are returned for five favors granted through the prayers of the League. NEW YORK, JANUARY 5. — Thanks are returned for the con- version of a man who had not been to confession in twenty years. The prayers of the League were asked one month. He has received the Sacraments and is very attentive to all his religious duties, particularly in attending Mass. Also for the conversion of a friend to the faith, recommended to the prayers of the League for fifteen months ; she has joined the League, is a fervent Catholic, and owes all to the Sacred Heart ; for many spiritual and temporal blessings received through the prayers of the League ; for an Associate who had not been to the Sacraments in almost three years but has at last gone to confession. JEFFERSON, S. DAK., JANUARY 6. — A young lady returns sincere thanks for the curing of her eyes which were seriously attacked. WILKES-BARRE, PA., JANUARY 6. — I beg you to give sincere thanks to the Sacred Heart for the return of a father to temperance. He has taken the pledge and is now a sober man. ST. JOSEPH, Mo., JANUARY 8. — Thanks for two temporal favors received in November. I had to meet two debts, and I asked the Sacred Heart to lend the money to me through another party, and I got the money without delay and met the debts the day they came due. PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY 9. — Thanks for a situation obtained ; the request was sent but two weeks ago and the young man procured an excellent position on the 7th inst. 16O IN THANKSGIVING FOR GRACES OBTAINED. BOSTON, JANUARY 10. — A Promoter returns her grateful thanks to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of His divine Mother for a temporal and spiritual favor unexpectedly granted her. FREDERICK, MD., JANUARY 11. — Thanks are returned for a very special grace obtained eight hours after it was placed on the Blank, with a promise to insert it in the MESSENGER if granted. NEW YORK, JANUARY 11. — Thanks are most gratefully returned to the Sacred Heart for the baptism and reception into the Church of a lady and her four children. Her husband, who abandoned the faith when he married, has had the grace to repent and return to the practice of all his religious duties. Thanks are returned for a temporal favor recommended since last June. NEW YORK, JANUARY 12. — Thanks are returned to the Sacred Heart for a special fulfilment of the promise : " I will give peace in their families." WORCESTER, MASS., JANUARY 12. — A Promoter returns thanks for a sister who had been blind. At present the doctor has every hope of her entire recovery. FORDHAM, N. Y., JANUARY 12. — Please return thanks to the Sacred Heart for a remarkable conversion of one (recom- mended in the MESSENGER some time last August) who had for the space of seven or eight years given up all the practices of religion, even doubting the articles of our holy faith, but through the great goodness and mercy of the Sacred Heart is now again reconciled to God. VARIOUS CENTRES. — Thanks to the Divine Heart for send- ing me money to pay some pressing debts. — Thanks for assistance in a business matter. — Thanks for recovery from illness. Also, for the return of my mother to her religious duties after neglect- ing them for eight years. She was recommended to the League two months ago. — A poor widow returns sincere thanks to the Sacred Heart for winning a lawsuit which would have deprived her of the only means of support. — A Promoter wishes to return thanks for a temporal favor granted. (Design from the Studio of Gajfliardi, Rome.) THE MESSENGER SACRED HEART OF JESUS VOL. VI (xxvi). MARCH, 1891. No. 3 AN AUBADE FOR THE ANNUNCIATION. By Maurice Francis Egan. HE crocus waits a touch of sun, The hyacinth has no curled bells, The winds' wild races are not done, And no spring bird his story tells : The violets and .the dogwood fair No purple cups or clusters show — The winter's rime is in the air, And see there is a gust of snow ! And yet, wild March, we love thee well, For thou art first of all the year To greet our Lady, and we know Thy message casteth out all fear : No cherry blossom in the May, No crimson rose in heart of June, No woodbine on an August day Is sweeter than the March, winds' rune. Copyright, 1891, by Rev. R. S. Dewey, S. J. All rights reserved.] 161 162 THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. Upon thy winds came Gabriel, Beneath thy sky our Lady heard The Voice that on her rapt heart fell And spoke the message of the Word : Ah, not September's tendriled grape, Nor sunsets on October eves Compare with March's gusts that make A whirlwind with last Autumn's leaves. Like sun upon the crocus bed Which make the brown bulbs spring to it, Like breezes to the tulips red Which make their great bells ring to it, The lilies, in our Lady's heart, Of faith and love and purity From tenderest buds to sweet blooms dart : And so, dear March, good morn to thee ! THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. IT was the last day of August, and the sun was blaz- ing in the Roman heavens. In fact, this and September are the worst months for the Roman fever. I had been staying through the hot season in the city, and now my last day had come. I had not yet seen what I much desired to visit — the establishment of the Trappist monks where Pius IX., so public- spirited in all his works, had placed them to combat the dreaded malaria by their careful cultivation of the ground and the planting of the eucalyptus tree. I had only the afternoon left for my visit; and with the parting words of my friends not to be caught at twilight, when men and beasts — everyone except the poor — hasten cityward for protection, I drove out through the Porta San Paolo. THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. 163 Just before reaching the gate there is the curious pyramid of Cestius, a Roman of the days of Cicero. It is built in rubble on a square foundation of travertine, like most of the massive Roman monuments, with a casing of white marble. The city walls of the time of the Empire have been run up against it ; but it still stands out boldly to tell the vanity of the rich Roman who erected it for his monument. It is no inconsiderable gravestone, for it measures 97 feet on each side at the base and rises to the height of 120 feet. THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS. The worn and rough turrets of the gate shimmered in the fiery sun. Just beyond, there is a more curious monument still by the roadside. It is a high hill surmounted by a cross. What is extraordinary about it is that it is entirely made up of broken pieces of pottery. No one knows whether this was the result of long agglomeration from the city, where pottery must have been in daily breakage ; or whether it came from the factories near at hand; or, as some have suggested, from the ruins left after Nero 164 THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. had burned Rome. Books have been written about this Monte Testaccio ; perhaps it is no more trivial a subject than many another on which wise-looking books are published. The Catholic will look with more interest to the vineyard on the right. There the noble St. Frances of Rome devoted herself to the poor. That she might aid them the better she used to come, clad in a coarse woollen garment, to cut fagots which she brought away to the houses of her clients on her head. The road now leads straight onward for a mile and more. A low range of hills runs off toward the sea on the eastern side, and to the west the meadows gradually widen toward the Tiber. In front of us is the great Basilica of St. Paul-without-the- Walls. The outside is rude and bare, in spite of its mere impressiveness of size ; but every visitor to Rome must remember the glory of polished marble and brilliant mosaic that shines upon him as he enters the portal. On the ordinary traveller I doubt if St. Peter's itself makes quite so strong an impression. This Basilica, which was restored in its present brilliant state after the great fire at the beginning of the century, is attached to the old monastery dating from the early Middle Ages. But the monks here do not remain through this dangerous season, when the chill dews of night bring up from the ground the fatal seeds of fever. It is one of those places of which the Roman says, " There is a fever in every drop of water." The great Basilica honors the first burial-place of St. Paul. But the exact scene of the martyrdom is at the Trappist mona- stery to which I was going. This is on a country road, narrower than the great highway, and turning off from it toward the left some little distance beyond the Basilica. Good Mrs. Jameson has left a gloomy description of the place, as she saw it fifty years ago. In all the melancholy vicinity of Rome there is not a more melancholy spot than Tre Fontane. A splendid monastery, rich with all the offerings of Christendom, once existed there : bnt the ravages of that mysterious scourge of the Campagna, the malaria, have rendered it a desert. Three ancient churches and some ruins still exist, and a few pale monks wander about the swampy con- fines of the hollow in which they stand. In winter you approach them through a quagmire ; in summer you draw in the breath of the pestilential vicinity. 166 THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEYER. And yet there is a sort of dead beauty about the place, something hallowed as well as sad, which seizes on the fancy. As I approached, I dared not only to breathe but I found that the beauty of the place had become alive. It is certainly hallowed ; I fear it is still sad. I will describe it for the reader as I found it. It has changed much since the day of Mrs. Jameson, who was a sympathetic art writer but unseeing, after the fashion of those who visit Rome without a knowledge of the Roman faith. It is a modern road that leads from the great Ostian Way, on which the Basilica stands, to the Tre Fontane. Before arriving at the latter place, we reach an old road with black lava paving- stones along which St. Paul himself must have passed to his mar- tyrdom. It is not the least of the stirring recollections of the place. Passing over the brow of a hill we see beyond us the tall glistening trunks of the eucalyptus trees, planted in long dense patches, to form a forest safeguard against the malaria. Its light green leaves have a dull gummy look which indicates their power of sucking up moisture from the earth, and there is a faint aro- matic perfume wafted from them which is supposed to counteract the perilous miasma. The churches and the monastery are inside the great enclos- ure, out from the hill. The time-worn stone portico at the entrance dates from the time of Charlemagne, and there are still fragments of the old frescoes then painted on its walls. It is a long way back to Charlemagne ; but from an inscription dug up here a few years since, it seems that this was made the property of the Basilica by no less ancient a Pope than St. Gregory the Great. It is curious how few works of recent scholarship, even of those specially devoted to the Roman Campagna, speak of this place. It is only De Rossi and the Christian archaeologists who have investigated it. It was a place of springs and known as the Aquae Salvise in the time of the holy matron Lucina, who supplied bury- ing places for the earliest Christian martyrs in her various villas. I have already had occasion to say that she has been identified by some with the Roman lady whose austere life is described by the THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FE^ER. 167 historian Tacitus. Her broad fields extended to this part of the Carnpagna. After the martyrdom of St. Paul, she transported his body to that part of her possessions where the Basilica now is. Afterwards, it was transported to the catacombs and finally deposited, with his companion in martyrdom, St. Peter, in the cen- tral church of the Christian world. Some distance back along the road we have traversed, a modest chapel commemorates the farewell of St. Peter and St. Paul on their way to martyrdom, the former to the Janiculan Hill across the Tiber, the latter to the Aquse Salvise. The inscriptions in it, even if not authentic, agree with writings of the earliest cen- turies and tell us what the traditional feeling of the first Christians was concerning the two great Apostles : In this place Saint Peter and Paul separated on their way to martyrdom. And Paul said to Peter, " Peace be with thee, foundation of the Church, Shepherd of the flock of Christ." And Peter said to Paul, " Go in peace, preacher of good tidings, and guide of the salvation of the just." At the door of the monastery the Trappist porter stands before you like an apparition from another world. His rough reddish-brown gown, his bare head, his complexion like transparent yellow marble telling plainly of the hardships of a life led in these malarious swamps, are enough to impress ffie most casual visitor. He was like some figure from the deserts of Egypt mummified in the days of the ancient hermits and now risen to welcome hither the modern world. At the left of the entrance there is a hall where visitors can obtain information, or rest themselves, or drink a glass of the eucalyptus liqueur. Past the shrubbery to the right there is a mass of rock- work in the form of a grotto, enclosing a representa- tion of one of the most modern devotions of the Church. This is a group of life-size statues — the apparition of our Lord to the Blessed Margaret Mary to reveal the devotion to His Sacred Heart. So the new meets here with the old, the religious feeling of the present-day followers of St. Peter and St. Paul with the most ancient Christian memories. In fact, memories of all ages from the Apostles down may here be gathered. THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. 169 A little over twenty years ago, the laborious monks desired to improve the stone aqueduct which supplies them with water. Digging along the hillside they found the remains of an ancient church. De Rossi, who scents from afar every vestige of Christian antiquity, at once began his investigations. By the nature of the architecture and by other remains found here, it was discovered that this church dated from the first centuries. The learned German, Tischendorff, had published some years previously one of the early accounts of the martyrdom of St. Paul, which narrated that his head had been stricken from his shoulders at the foot of a great pine. During these excavations there were also found the calcined remains of myriads of pine-needles. Present travellers know — and it is about the only thing of which they generally have taken pains to inform themselves — that the church farthest along the hillside is built over three springs of water which give its name to the place — Tre Fontane. This church follows the slope of the hill, and the springs are enclosed by it. The principal one is some feet higher up than the second, and the second higher than the third ; and there is a corresponding difference in the temperature of the water. Now, it has always been said that the head of the Apostle, when struck off by the axe of the executioner, bounded thrice down the hillside ; and at each place where it struck the ground there sprang up a stream of water. It is really instructive to note that, in building the earliest church on this spot, not many lifetimes after the Apostle himself, care was had to preserve sacred the position of these three springs which still exist. By means of a long-handled dipper the visitor or pilgrim draws up through the marble opening water from these springs. It is a pity that those who are not Catholics should see in all this only an amusing, half-childish custom, with- out knowing how far back the tradition goes. As I entered the monastery on this day in the heart of the malarial season, three travellers came up at the same time. It was very easy to identify their nationality from the bad French which they were speaking to the porter, who was himself a German. They stared at me, in my gown with the mantle and broad hat of 17O THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEl/ER. the ordinary Roman priest, as a part of the curiosities of the place. I could not help addressing them in plain English. " You are Americans, surely. Are you not afraid of the malaria ? This is considered a dangerous time to visit these places." But fear does not seem an attribute of Americans abroad. After assuring me that they were from Albany, New York, and that they had been " doing Rome " for the last twelve days and " had seen everything worth seeing," they cheerfully sipped their thimbleful of the aromatic eucalyptus liqueur, went hastily through the paths, evidently knowing nothing of the history of the place and inquir- ing for nothing ; and then drove off to reach Rome after twilight ! Perhaps their manner of travelling explains the great number of graves with English names to be found in the Protestant Cemetery which we passed on our way here. The trees and tall shining-leaved shrubbery mass so densely around these antique buildings that you must look back from every open space to see well the monastery. On the way back from the Church of Saint Paul, which is built over the Three Springs, there is a good view of the long side-wall. It is the side of the cells of the monks, with narrow windows in the dingy stone wall opening against the fierce rays of the sun. By day their poor rooms must be like ovens ; and there must be a sad contrast when the dews of the night throw a sudden chill over the atmosphere, even in the midst of the dog-days. It is no wonder the Roman fever abounds here, and I am afraid the monks are waging a losing war against it. Theirs is a curious vocation. They are here first of all for the purposes of their own religious life, that is, for prayer and penance — for they are purely contemplative monks — and this manner of life is bound up with all the holy recollections of the spot through the past centuries. In such a vocation, the very keeping together of such holy recollections would be a motive for their braving these dangers. Their life, in any case, can never have the fulness of earthly existence. We are not to judge any of their actions by the ordinary rules of hygiene and good living. But these inonks are here now for yet another object, which THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FE1/ER. 171 seems scarcely at all religious, and yet is for the greater good of many. It is a most comforting instance of how the "mighty Mother," the Roman Catholic Church, bends herself to the least needs of her children. Successive governments had given up all hope of reclaiming this region from its unhealthy condition. Then the last Pope who was allowed to rule here called on the devoted- ness of the monks. They were to come in numbers, joining the few of their brethren who had always guarded this holy place — at least during the winter season, for they migrated mostly to some healthier monastery in the summer — and they were to plant here forests of the eucalyptus tree. Devotedness was required; for it was necessary that they should reside here at all seasons of the year, to keep their fields in cultivation. Moreover, it was certain from the beginning that for many years little advance would be made against the subtle malaria, and that many would come here only to pray, labor, do penance, and die prematurely. It is not, then, a vocation of direct charity as in the service of the sick in hospitals, nor has it any- thing directly to do with the evangelizing of souls which leads missionaries into the deserts of the torrid zone. But simply because these monks have given up life already, they are content to devote whatever remains to them of health and strength to the merely material well-being of the Roman peasants. The Govern- ment, which has usurped the place of the Popes, has been unwill- ing to dispense with the services of the monks, whom elsewhere it universally persecutes ; but on the other hand it has not had the public spirit to uphold them in their work. The great farmers, who own the neighboring estates and live far enough away from any influence of fever not to suffer from it themselves, have simply done nothing to help on the sanitary work which was entrusted to these monks. It is difficult to see how work done in this one limited spot can be of any wide benefit to the country around. Meanwhile the monks themselves are reaping the full benefit of their devotedness. They are simply dying off in numbers, as they were sure to do under such circumstances. " Five died the THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEVER. 173 summer before my visit, and as I entered the monastery the death- bell was tolling for the first one of that year. The monks are of different nationalities. A German wel- comed me at the door, and the majority are French ; but there are some from Italy and other countries. With all the burden and heat of the day which has been placed upon them and with all the burdens which they have taken up freely in their vocation — silence among themselves, seclusion from the busy world, ceaseless manual labor in the fields, the many hours of prayer which they snatch from the night-time or noon-day rest — they have ever before them the grand inspirations of the place. To go back to the entrance, just in front rises the first church called St. Mary of the Ladder of Heaven. This is an old founda- tion, containing what is perhaps the single monument left of the first Pope Nicholas from the year 857. He had restored on this spot a still more ancient church, which was then called the " Dwelling-place of Mary the Holy Mother of God." Its present name came to it from the great St. Bernard, the chief propagator of the Cistercian monks, of whom the Trappists are a branch. He was brought to this place with a community of his monks of Clairvaux by Innocent II. Perhaps the malaria at that time was not so deadly. His monastery flourished, one of his monks became Pope under the name of Eugenius HI., and here St. Bernard — himself one of the greatest preachers since the Apostles — held high communication with Heaven. One day, as he was saying Mass in our Lady's church, he had the well-known vision of the holy souls which mount up from purgatory to heaven by the prayers of the faithful as by so many steps. In memory of this the name " Ladder of Heaven " was given to the church itself. The visitor may descend into the crypt of this church where, in times of early persecution, St. Zeno and many other martyrs were buried. Still further along the hill is the Church of Sts. Vincent and Anastasius. This is not without architectural pretensions. It is noted by Fergusson, who has a design of it in his History of Architecture, as being one of the earliest deviations from the old 174 THE MONKS AND THE ROMAN FEl/ER. arrangement of the basilica toward what is now called Gothic. This was, properly, the church of the adjoining monastery. The interior is plain to excess. It may interest the traveller who has artistic tastes to know that the great cartoons of the Apostles on the central pillars of the nave are of Raphael, although his guide-books will simply speak of them as " common work done in a coarse manner." So perhaps they are, but they stand out well in the bare and somewhat rigid simplicity of the church, especially when the light comes streaming through the windows at the end. Saint Anastasius, who is buried here, was a monk murdered in the year 626 by Chosroes, King of Persia. Hither, to do honor to St. Paul and the religion he preached, were brought monks and martyrs from East and West. And here their lineal successors — these sallow-skinned, rough-gowned, haggard shades that flit about, with lives consecrated to good in despite of every maxim of worldly common sense, ke*ep up the tradition of the religion of St. Peter and St. Paul. FIRST CHURCH INSIDE ENTRANCE. MARY'S HUMILITY IN THE ANNUNCIATION. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. And the Angel being come in, said to her: Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she had heard, she was troubled at his saying. St. Luke, i. 28, 29. ROUBLED at his saying — the deep peace Of her pure soul, like some vast shining sea, Ruffled, disturbed ! — By what ? — An Angel's praise ! O rare and marvellous humility ! Ne'er was there woman like this Woman blest, Nor daughter like this Daughter of delight ; Yet, see her, by an Angel's laud distress' d, Trembling upon Annunciation-night ! Trembling and sinking in the deep abyss Of her own nothingness — completely blind To her own merits ! — Is there aught like this In all the storied lists of womankind ? Up from the soundless depths, wherein she lies, Lost to all thought of Self — abyssed in love — Humility's strong guardian ramparts rise, Shutting out all save God and heaven above ! Come to this gulf profound, daughters of Eve, And hide yourselves in true Immility ! Come, and from Mary troubled learn to grieve At every breath of praise or flattery. For he who with such fare your weakness feeds Doth but deceive you and destroy your way — The way that from the lowly valleys leads Up to a glory that can ne'er decay ! 175 GREGORY'S SISTER. By L. W. Reilly. [VERY one that knew her in the years gone by spoke of her as ' Gregory's Sister.' To them she had no other name. If they ever heard what she had been called when she was christened, they for- got it in following the family custom that identified her by means of her relationship to her only ^ brother. And, indeed, her life was strangely bound up with his. Their father was a doctor. He had inherited a small patri- mony that consisted of a stony farm adjacent to a hamlet in Massa- chusetts and a half interest in the village paper. If he had been contented to concentrate his energies on the practice of his profes- sion, or on his land, or on his weekly, he might have had a fair measure of success. But often when he was attending a patient, his mind was busy with his fancy fowl ; and sometimes when he should have been tending his stock he was composing verses for "The Poet's Corner." " He is a genius," said the priest of the parish. But less considerate critics declared : " He is daft." When his wife died — and she, poor thing, was a gentle creature, too much like her dreamer of a husband to rouse him from his rainbow plans — Gregory was nine months old and Gregory's Sister had entered her eleventh year. There were two other girls in the family, Stella and Agnes, one older and the other younger than Gregory's Sister, but to her the child clung when his mother could no longer care for him and from her no one could take him away. " You must be a mother to him, my dear," said the doctor. And Gregory's Sister accepted the trust as if she understood its full solemnity and foresaw the self-immolation that it would entail. 176 GREGORY'S SISTER. 177 For three years Gregory's Sister was the doctor's housekeeper, for his eldest daughter inherited his poetic temperament and had no talent for administration. It must have been during that period that she lost her name and had her identity merged, as it were, into the personality of her brother, for it was then that he asserted an exclusive ownership and had his claim allowed. Almost as soon as he could talk, he spoke of her continually as " My Sister." The name stuck to her. The other members of the family gradually adopted it, so far, at least, as to call her " Sister," and their neigh- bors followed suit by referring to her always as " Gregory's Sister.'* In the third year of his loneliness, the doctor took unto him- self another helpmate. She was an energetic woman. Almost before the honeymoon was over, she had turned the house upside down, and from that time on she kept it full of her presence. The old order changed. The doctor parted with his interest in The Chronicle six months after his second marriage, and before the year was out he sold his patrimonial fields in order to purchase a house in the centre of the town, with the 'intention of devoting all his energies to his profession. Thenceforward for five years he went about bewildered at his own activity and secretly lamenting for the halcyon days of old. He could not get used, however, to the bustle and the uproar of his new life and it was a dazed worry more than sickness that brought him to his end. " Good-bye, Father Mapes," he said to his pastor, when the latter had anointed him. " Good-bye, and take care of Gregory." And with one hand clasping a crucifix and the other around his only son, the weary doctor died. From the first day that Gregory was introduced to his new Mamma, he would have nothing to do with her. He did not dis- like her nor treat her disrespectfully, but he avoided her. In a childlike way he shunned her, and neither caresses nor chidings could draw him to her lap. He fastened his arms around his favorite sister's neck and nestled his head on her shoulder, and from that coigne of vantage, laughing or crying, he resisted all attempts (to coax or compel him away. The step-mother soon quit trying to wean him from this 178 GREGORY'S SISTER. partiality — selfish and cruel and burdensome as it was at times — and left his sister in full charge of him. He did not suffer on this account. He was dressed and fed and sung to sleep, nursed in sickness and watched at play, kissed and corrected and carried, taken to school and helped with his lessons, loved and worried for and cried over, with the affection of a mother and the devotion of a slave. Life was hard for the family after the father's death. The income of the money received from his life insurance policy and invested in mortgages was not sufficient to support them. They were getting into debt. " Let us go out to work," said Gregory's Sister to Stella. So one of them found a situation as assistant teacher in the district school and the other obtained employment in a store. The step-mother became fretful and fault-finding in the early days of her widowhood and grew more severe and vexatious as the melancholy months went by. " Be patient," was the advice of the priest, " and all will turn out well." So the young folk never resisted their step-mother but once, when Gregory's Sister decided that he should go to college. " He shall do no such thing !" exclaimed the step-mother, when the project was broached to her. " Oh, yes, he will," his sister replied, with a tremor in her voice. " Father Mapes says that he ought to. Besides, it is my money that will pay his expenses and it is his desire to go." So go he did. When the next scholastic year began, he was a pupil at a well-known Worcester institution conducted by the Jesuits. It was about this time that Gregory's Sister received her first and only offer of marriage. She had little leisure to receive atten- tions from gentlemen, but one good man, attracted by her Madonna face and cheerful disposition, asked her to be his wife. The high compliment — the highest that a man can pay to a woman — was flattering to Gregory's Sister and elated her during the week that t she took to consider it; and it might well delight her, for the GREGORY'S SISTER. 179 maker of it was a gentleman, refined, honorable, manly, and well- to-do. Her brother, however, had lately shown an inclination to be wild. His love for her and her devotion to him were barriers that kept him back. She must be free to serve him. So the offer was kindly refused. Expostulation was vain. " I cannot leave Gregory," she finally said. And that was the end of her romance. In the middle of his second term at college Gregory was called home to attend the funeral of his step-mother, who had fallen a victim to paralysis. Two weeks later he returned to his class. There he remained until he was graduated, an event which occurred when he was in his twentieth year. On his return home Gregory knew not what to do. He had shown no conspicuous aptitude for any special pursuit, unless a love for literature that was probably inherited from his visionary father could be so considered. He wrote a few communications for The Chronicle, but they brought him little glory and no pay. He submitted essays, stories, and poems to the magazines, but they were returned to him as " not available." He thought of going to New York to look for work as a reporter. Gregory's Sister comforted him in this time of trial and stimulated him to further eifort. She believed in him. To her his sketches were charming. She wondered why the unappreciative editors could not see their merits while they published articles that in her biassed judgment were much less worthy of praise. "Never you mind, Gregory," she chirruped, "you'll make your mark yet." " If I had no education," he replied, jocosely, " I should make my mark now." She thought that this repartee was characteristically witty, and she insisted on entering it in his note-book, for him to use in his next short story. When Gregory was pretty well discouraged, a college friend of his, who had gone West and started a book-store in Kansas City, invited him to become his clerk. After careful consideration the invitation was accepted, and speedily thereafter Gregory went out to Missouri. ISO GREGORY'S SISTER. But his favorite sister could not endure to be separated from Gregory, nor did he get along satisfactorily apart from her, although he did not appear to suffer in his affections from her absence so much as she did from his. So, three months after he went from home, she resigned her post as teacher and made prepa- rations to follow him. By this time, Stella was married and living in Boston, and Agnes was a novice in a convent in Maryland. The old home was rented, and a little later it was sold and the proceeds were divided among the heirs. Just when Gregory and his sister began to feel contented in their new surroundings, a new trouble arose — the young man's employer received a munificent offer from a publishing house in Chicago and decided to accept it. But what was to be done with the store ? And would the new proprietor keep the old clerk ? After much deliberation, Gregory resolved to buy out his friend. He gave him in payment his own and his sister's share of the price of their father's house and the savings of the latter from her salary as teacher. Then, behold ! the sign over the store was changed. Gregory's name was substituted for that of " Harold Kent, bookseller, printer, and stationer." A more accurate name for the proprietorship would have been " Gregory's Sister & Co.", for it was her money chiefly that bought the busi- ness, it was her energy that emboldened her brother to take it, and it was her tact that was to make it a success. Gregory did not appreciate all that his sister was to him. He took her presence, her love of him, her fidelity to his interests and her helpful advice, as a matter of course, to which he had been used all his life, and which could not be expected to falter or to fail any more than the sunlight, or the coming of evening after day, or the growth of the flowers in the spring. He did not realize the extent of his indebtedness to her. He gave himself credit for ideas that originated with her, he congratulated himself on avoiding mistakes that had been pointed out by her, and he assumed to himself all the honors of the concern. Shortly after Gregory purchased the store, his sister went to GREGORY'S SISTER. 181 his assistance while his salesman and book-keeper was off on vaca- tion ; and, when at the end of a fortnight the latter wrote from a ranche in Colorado that he had become a cowboy for good, she persuaded her brother to let her do the work. Accordingly she became the keeper of the accounts and general assistant. The brother and sister were conspicuously happy during the next three years. They rented a pretty frame dwelling near the suburbs of the city, and with the aid of one servant began housekeeping. Their cottage, with its beds of flowers in the front yard, reminded them of their home in Massachusetts before their mother died. At last, Gregory's fancy turned to thoughts of love. It was somewhat of a shock to his sister when he told her that he con- templated matrimony. She had noticed his liking for the young woman whom he had chosen for his bride, but she never dreamed that this fondness would lead to marriage. She could not get rid of the notion that he was still a child, and every successive stage in his manhood's development was a surprise to her. But, as his happiness was her passion, she seconded his plans when he deter- mined to take a wife. There was a pang in her heart, however, when she discovered that her affection was not sufficient for him, as his had been for her ; but, when she considered the affair that night before saying her prayers, she reproached herself for wish- ing to engross his love. " May God forgive me," she said, " for being so selfish !" So. she stifled all repining and set her face resolutely toward the new conditions that were about to confront her. After the wedding, life in the cottage went on pretty much as usual. The monotony of its history was broken only by the purchase of the little home and by the coming of five children, who in the course of a dozen years made their appearance and claimed their share of love. As soon as each babe began to take notice, it went trustfully to its aunt ; and, as it grew older, this fondness increased. It was "Auntie " that had to dress them in the morning, give them their food at breakfast and tea, and put them to bed at night. Into 182 GREGORY'S SISTER. her arms too they cuddled when they were sick, and on her lap Rose, the lovely darling, died. Mary and Gregory, Jr., Leo, and Grace, she loved them all, but if she had a favorite, was it strange that Gregory, Jr., should be the one? At one time, Gregory thought that his sister ought to stop working in the store, which had now become a large establishment, and — possibly urged thereto by his wife, who was somewhat jealous of her sister-in-law's influence in the business — he entreated her to stay at home. She consented at last, reluctantly but not unpleasantly, and for five weeks she took a rest, helping in the household, visiting the shops and the parks, and going on a trip to her sisters in the East. But the store missed her. The clerks missed her. The customers missed her and inquired for her. Worst of all, the proprietor missed her every hour in the day, and it dawned on him that he had deprived himself of a helpful coadjutor. Just then, too, everything seemed to conspire to worry him. He became exceedingly abrupt and irritable, and many a joke the facetious porter cracked with the chipper errand-boy about the amiable temper of their employer. " Come back soon," Gregory wrote to her, " the store cannot get along without you." From that time forward, her services were valued at their proper worth, even if, as of old, she drew nothing from the business but her board and clothes and these of the plainest sort, for she was abstemious at table and her gowns were neither numerous nor rich. Sometimes of a night, when the work had been trying to her nerves, or her brother had been more than usually preoccupied with his own happiness, or the little ones had been exceptionally troublesome, Gregory's Sister would sit in her room alone, ques- tioning her own heart and brooding over what might have been. She did not yield often or long to these wretched feel- ings. The remembrance of Gregory's temporary waywardness, of his docility that was made possible by her devotion to him, of his return from the downward path, and of their peaceful years together comforted her. GREGORY'S SISTER. 183 " Our Lord knows that I acted for what I thought was best," she would say, " and I will accept what He has sent." It was hard at times to be cheerful and resigned, for Gregory was absorbed in the future of his children and Gregory's wife was not always considerate. Once she said something about " a prim old maid," and on another occasion she remarked that " somebody was not worth her salt," words which fell on ears for which they were not intended and cut to the quick. " Remain where you are," was Father Mapes' advice in the last letter he ever wrote, " for Providence placed you- there and Gregory will yet need you more than ever." No one but the priest knew the sorrows of her heart, for her face was always placid and her tones were low. She was blithe by nature and she methodically cultivated cheerfulness as a habit^ Only those who observed her closely could notice the tightening of the lines of the mouth that was her only signal of distress. After ten years of married life, Gregory fell sick with typhoid fever. In spite of the best medical attention and the most devoted nursing, he sank under the malady. Inside of a week he was dead. After the interment, a fortnight passed before the bereaved family could resume the regular order of their life. But Gregory's Sister had to return to the store two days after the funeral, for she could not spare more time to the luxury of grief. The widow and the children had to be supported and they depended on her. So she brushed away her tears, saying to herself: "My heart can cry, if my eyes are dry," and she went back to the drudgery that brought in their daily bread. She is there still. She has consecrated the rest of her life to the task of rearing Gregory's children. Quiet, unassuming, diffident, she does not realize that she is one of life's heroines. " I am of little use in the world," she said yesterday, " and soon I shall be of less." But the Angels of God have a different opinion of her worth, and some day when her unselfish work is all done, they will throw open wide the gates of Heaven to welcome her to her abiding home. ISSDMPTIONlfNIVEflSITYLIBIUlRy THE SOUL OF SAINT PATRICK. The soul from Patrick's body toil-worn at last departed, God's angels all the night sang round it unceasing. Together they ascended to Jesus, the Son of Mary. Hymn of Fiacc. TV^OTHING so builds up the interior man as coming in L^ contact with the soul of a Saint. Men change through the different ages. The manners of the time of St. Patrick would seem to us as grotesque as his language would be difficult. But souls are always much the same, with capacity for love and sorrow, for desires lofty as the heavens and low as the nethermost earth. Fortunately something has remained to us of St. Patrick which lays bare the working and aspiration of his soul. Con- cerning the dates and events of his life there has been much dispute among the learned. But all have agreed that the two curious documents called the Confession and the Epistle to Coro- tivus are his genuine productions.1 They resemble each other too much not to be from the same hand. Full of sympathy and as poetic as they are mystical, the one in its earnest humility and the other in its still more earnest remonstrance' against wrong done to Christian souls, they lay open to us the inmost heart of the Saint. We say " heart," because it is not merely the work- ings of his mind that are set down before us, but the sincere affections of the soul. All this is done with constant reference to the religious ideas which impelled him along his difficult way of life. 1 The recent translation of Sir Samuel Ferguson, in his posthumous work The Remains of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, is here followed with slight modifications. 184 THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. 185 The thought which seems to have impressed most deeply the soul of the Saint is that he has been guided to his present life by the Spirit of God. He comes back again and again on this thought as did St. Paul. "It is not I, but the Spirit of God that worketh in me." Thus he says of himself to Coroticus, who was doing a great wrong to Christian converts : Not for mine own delight : 'twas God that stirred That strong solicitude within my heart, That, of the hunters and the fishermen Whom He aforetime for these latter days Had pre-appointed, I too should be one. And he gives as the reason of writing his Confession that it is only a fit return for the favors bestowed on him by God. . . . And therefore now I will not hide, nor could I, were it fit To hide, such boons, such graces, as niy Lord Has deigned me here in my captivity. And this my poor return : that having attained The touch and apprehension of my God, I should with high exalted heart, in face Of all that lives below all skies, confess That other God nor was, nor is nor shall be : One God in Trinity of Holy name. This thought overrules him. Telling of God's Providence which has led him step by step to his high calling, he lets drop precious details of his own history. In this leading of Provi- dence he sees the clear reason and justification of his desertion of his own race. This he boldly brings up to Coroticus, who seems to have been an only half-Christianized kinglet inclined for his own selfish purposes to leave his Christian brethren a prey to the pagan Picts and Scots. What ! Was it then without God's promises Or in the body only that I came To Ireland? Who compelled me? Who me bound In spirit that I should no more behold Kindred or early friend ? Whence came the sense Inspiring me with pity for the race 186 THE SOUL OF ST. P /I TRICK. That once were mine own captors? I was born Noble ; my father a Decurio ; That privilege of birth I have exchanged (I blush not for it, and I grudge it not) • For benefit of others, bartered so In Christ and given over to a race Extern to mine, all for the glorious hope Ineffable of that perennial life Which is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. He speaks of the sorrows of his early captivity, after he was carried away to Ireland as a slave, with patience and thanksgiving; for by this way of sorrows he has been led to his present calling wherein he has been able to do something for his Lord. . . . Before my happy humbling came, I was as is a stone that, in deep mire, Lies on the highway : and He came, Who can, And in His pity thence did lift me up And set me on the wall-top. ... . . . Not, indeed, that I Was worthy that my Lord His servant poor Should so far favor, after all the toils, The hardships heavy, and the captive years Borne 'mongst this people ; — should bestow such grace As till I came to Ireland I nor knew Nor ever hoped. He looks back over the commonplace unending toil of those youthful days, no longer with a sense of their wretchedness, but with thankful heart because of what God then wrought in him. . . Herding daily here, And often in the day saying my prayers, Daily there more and more did grow in me The fear of God. And holy fear and faith Increased in me, that in a single day I've said as many as a hundred prayers, And in the night scarce fewer ; so that oft In woods and on the mountain I've remained, And risen to prayer before daylight, through snow, Through frost, through rain, and yet I took no ill, Nor was there in me then aught slow as now, For then the Spirit of God within me burned. It is touching to note the humility of the Saint who, at the THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. 187 very end of his glorious career, counts himself as slow in com- parison with the devotion of the days when he was a boy, a wretched slave — For then the Spirit of God within me burned. The special call which came to him from the Divine Voice, after he had escaped from slavery and returned once more to his family and the comforts of a Roman military post, resembles not a little the voice which came by day and night to Saint Paul — Come over to Macedonia and help ws. The calling of St. Patrick has been told a thousand times, but never more impressively than in his own simple words : . . . I found myself at home Amongst the Britons with my family, Who all received me as they might a son, And earnestly besought me that at length, After these many perils I had borne, I never more would leave them. It was there In a night vision I beheld a man Coming as 'twere from Ireland. Victor he. Innumerable letters bore he : one He gave to me to read. I read one line, "The voices of the Irish," so it ran. And while I read, methought I heard the cry Of them that by the wood of Focluth dwell, Beside the Western Ocean, saying thus, "Come, holy youth, and walk amongst us, come!" All with one voice. It touched me to the heart, And I could read no more ; and so awoke — Thank God at last Who, after many years, Has given to them according to their cry ! Whenever he speaks with authority, it is always as one who has this authority from the vocation God has given to him. Thus he begins to Coroticus : I, Patrick — I, a sinner and unlearned, Here in Hibernia constituted Bishop, Believe most surely that it is from God I hold commission to be that I am, A proselyte and pilgrim, for His love, Here amongst savage peoples. He Who knows All things, knows also if this be not so. 188 THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. This special call seems to have been borne in upon his soul by something of that high divine action which was used in the case of St. Paul. " I will show unto him what great things he must suffer for My name's sake." The story of the voices of the Irish calling to him in his sleep is paralleled, in later times, in the life of the great Apostle of the Indies, St. Francis Xavier. In his life we read that, whilst at the University of Paris, dreaming of the literary distinction to which his family and his undoubted talent entitled him, in sleep he bore with toil and suffering an Indian upon his shoulders over rock and torrent. As is probably the case with all the supernatural vocations which somehow transcend the ordinary call to help in the saving of souls, a special grace of God seems to have wrought a peculiar union between the destined Apostle and his Master Christ. St. Patrick is every- where conscious of this grace ; and he gives us details from his own life as wonderful as those we read in the writings of the most mystical Saints. It will be noticed, too, that his uncertainty con- cerning the definite manner of such wonderful action of the Divinity on his soul is quite like that of St. Paul who, when carried to the third heaven, knew not " whether he were in the body or out of the body." And, on another night, I know not, I, God knows, if 'twas within me or without, One prayed with words exceeding exquisite I could not understand, till, at the close, He spoke in this wise — "He Who gave His soul For thee is He "Who speaks." I woke with joy. And once I saw Him — praying, as it were Within me, and I saw myself as though Within myself, and over me, that is Over the inner man, I heard Him pray Strongly with urgent groans, myself the while Amazed, and wondering who should pray in me, Till, at the very ending of His prayer, He showed, a Bishop. I awoke and called To memory what His Apostle says : "The Lord our Advocate doth plead for us." This conscious indwelling of his Master Christ in the depths THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. 189 of his soul sustained him through many trials. Doubtless the personal love of Jesus Christ is necessary to the most ordinary practice of the Christian faith. The martyrs, as has often been said, did not die for any ideal truth, but for a Person in Whom they believed and hoped and Whom they loved more than life itself. In the career of St. Patrick a peculiarly bitter trial seems to have come upon him, concerning which he says : . . . Some certain of my seniors came Against my toilsome, hard Episcopate, And made impeachment of me for my sins. In that day truly I was tempted sore To fall both now and everlastingly. . . . They found me, after thirty years, To charge me with one word I had confessed Before I was a deacon. In my grief And pain of mind I to my dearest friend Told what I in my boyhood, in one day, Yea, in one hour had done : — because as yet I had not strength : I know not, Heaven knows, If, at that time, I yet had fifteen years. With the strange contrition which great Saints by reason of their completer light conceive concerning the slight or few sins of their youth, St. Patrick goes on humbly to attribute the suffer- ings of his slavery to this sin, whatever it may have been. Then, with a surprising burst of faith, he beholds the road from sin through chastisement to his present glorious calling : I had not yet believed the living God Even from my childhood ; but remained in death And unbelief till sore chastised I was By hunger, nakedness, and enforced toil Daily in Ireland — for I came not here Self-sent — until, indeed, I almost sank. Yet these were rather boons to me, because, So chastened by the Lord, I now am made What once was far from me, that I should care Or labor for the weal of others, I Who then took no thought even for myself. It is probable that those he calls his " seniors " did not take 190 THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. quite the same view of the case. Even estimable men may be lacking in the discretion of spirits, which is after all a free gift of the Holy Ghost ; and they may unconsciously be swayed by natural feelings of jealousy which prompt them to exaggerate the least fault in men who are most nearly faultless. St. Teresa quaintly remarks that if the members of your community once get the idea you are a Saint, they will expect such great things from you that in the end they will make you a martyr. But in the midst of his trouble St. Patrick felt again, and in a new manner, the abiding presence of his Master with him. On that same day when these niy elder ones Rebuked me, in a vision of the night, I saw a script against me, and no name Of honor written ; and the while I heard That voice within make answer, "We are here Ill-styled by men, stripped bare of dignity." It was not "Thou art here ill-styled", it said, But "We," as if the Speaker joined Himself Incorporately with me, and the voice Were His Who once said, Whoso toucheth thee, Toucheth as ''twere the apple of Mine eye. This sense of his union with Christ in working for~the Irish people crops out constantly. f . . With fear and reverence Faithful in heart and uncomplainingly I serve this people, to whom the charity Of Christ assigns me, for my rest of life, If I be worthy ; that, with humble heart, And truthful lips, I teach it, in the faith And measure of the Holy Trinity. With the faith of the Holy Trinity St. Patrick's mission began and ended ; and the same may be said of the faithful people he left behind him. A last thought, to show how his spirit has remained among the Christians he formed, may be taken from the Confession. In the midst of their wretchedness and poverty and forced ignorance, the Irish people have become known throughout the world for the love and practice of purity. How beautiful is the THE SOUL OF ST. PATRICK. 191 chaste generation in glory. This, too, is the great ideal of St. Patrick for his people. Now the Irish, who in former days Had but their idols and their rites unclean, Nor aught knew of the Lord, have late become The Lord's own people. And the sons of Scots And daughters of their kings, now sons of God Are counted, and vowed handmaidens of Christ. And one bless'd Scotic lady nobly born, A most fair person whom myself baptized, Came soon thereafter making her report Of intimation by a messenger, Sent her from God, with His admonishment, That virgin she should live and nearer Him.- The violation of this high ideal by Coroticus, who had exposed the Christian flock to the lawless violence of the pagans, is the burden of St. Patrick's complaint. Lord, ravening wolves have eaten up Thy flock, Which here in Ireland had such fair increase, Sons of the Scots and daughters of the kings, Now holy monks and handmaidens of Christ, So many, past my counting. And he reproaches the faithless chieftain : Thou slayest and sellest into extern lands Which know not God, my Christians, and dost cast Christ's baptized virgin members into shame. What hope canst thou, so acting, have in God? This was the last message of holy love for God and man of him who described himself, humbly — A proselyte and pilgrim for His love Here amongst savage peoples. THE HYMN OF THE ANNUNCIATION. By Adrian W. Smith. THE dawn arose more radiantly grand Than at God's first command, Where Juda smiles with Jordan to the sea; And every saintly power Acclaimed the destined hour When Jesus came on earth to make men free. They brought no glittering gift of gold or gems, Or burnished diadems ; But all men's goodly deeds since Adam's wrong God's angels held on high And, tender as the sky, His mercy shone resplendent from the throng. The host came trooping from the flaming East To greet the bridal feast ; And Gabriel his wondrous message bare Where sate in simple state, Unwist of sacred fate, The temple's royal handmaid, Mary fair. Her queenly will unto the Will Divine She hastens to incline ; For comes He not in love, when she has heard In all her dreams of night, At eve and morning's light, The music of the promise of. the Word? Incarnate God ! ye angels fold your wings, While awful Mystery flings Her glowing veil o'er Hope's ecstatic face ; Supernal incense bring, And let each living thing Adore the Christ upon His throne of grace. 192 ' VILLAGE IN THE CORDILLERAS. THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. I. GONZALO PIZARRO. 1 TN the year 1539, the Marquis Don Francesco Pizarro, being in the city of Cuzco, received tidings that beyond the city of Quito and beyond the limits of the Empire formerly ruled by the Incas there was a wide region where cinnamon grew ; and he determined to send his brother Gonzalo Pizarro, that he might conquer such another land as the Marquis himself had found and become the Governor of it." ' This discovery of Canelos or the Cinnamon Land had been made three years before, in 1536, by Captain Gonzalez Diaz de Pineda. Beyond the fact of its existence, however, little was known of this vast tract of country, the Provincia del Oriente of Ecuador ; the imagination of the Spaniards working on the lying or imperfectly understood relations of the Indians did the rest and conjured up visions of vast empires and of wealth untold 1 The Expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro to the Land of Cinnamon, by Garci- lasso Inca de la Vega, Part II., Book iii, of the Royal Commentaries, translated and edited by Clement R. Markham, F.R.G.S.. Hakluyt Society Publications. 193 194 THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. hidden behind the huge ramparts of the Cordilleras which rose above them, snow capped and threatening, " grim wardens of the passes" into the regions beyond. The lust of gold and of empire has always been a potent factor in the affairs of men, but never perhaps were men so ready to brave hardships and danger for the sake of gold as in the early days of the Spanish conquest of South America. The chronicles of that time are one uninter- rupted tale of famine and privation, of cruel physical suffering, of brutality and rapacity, and in more than one case of unparalleled treachery ; and the impelling motive of every recurring expedition was gold. Such a tale in all its features is the history of the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro from the time it crossed the Cor- dilleras until Pizarro found himself basely deserted by his lieu- tenant Francesco de Orellana and was forced to retrace his steps to Quito, a broken man with the poor remnants of the brave little army with which he had set out nearly two years before. It is true the expedition, in spite of all, led to the discovery of the Amazon ; but the glory of this achievement is more than counterbalanced by the act of disloyalty and of pitiless cruelty, which led to the great discovery. Before taking up the tale of Pizarro's expedition, a word is needed here to enable our readers to do justice to these expedi- tions and to the men who took part in them. We have spoken of cruelty and rapacity and treachery, but we do not at all join in a too common wholesale and bitter condemnation. These were men of faith ; and though their conduct too often belied their belief it never destroyed it, and gave consequently to the brave and generous missionaries, Dominicans and Franciscans and Jesuits, who were always found vvith or ahead of these expeditions, something to work on in their efforts to restrain or hinder the excesses of the cavaliers and the troopers. Mr. Markham, to whose labors we owe very much and whose right to speak no one questions, assigns four motives that led men into these wilds of the Amazon and, generously enough, he puts as the first " the conversion of the Indians " ; the search for gold he puts in the second place. It is true he is speaking of the expeditions subsequent to Father THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. 195 Acunha's, of the Society of Jesus, in 1640 ; but even before this the desire to plant the Cross had brought more than one intrepid missionary into the valley of the Amazon. The Franciscan Saint Francis Solano who reached Peru in 1589 and whose feast the Church celebrates on the 24th of July ; Father Juan Fonte who in 1589 with only a boy to serve his Mass ventured among the Lules ; Father Alonzo de Barzana who in the wilds of Eastern Bolivia married three thousand couples 'in facie ecclesice' in 1591 ; Father Gaspar de Monroy who in 1592 preached to the Chiri- guanas, and Father Rafael Ferrer who, sometime after 1608, was murdered by the Cofanes of the Cinnamon Land, are but a few of the glorious names in the Martyrology of these regions. In this very expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the principal figures that appears in the chronicle is that of the Dominican monk, Gaspar de Caravajal. Through all the hardships and sufferings of the expedition his courage and fortitude and his generous words were employed to keep up the sinking hearts of the soldiers. The Spaniards were the instrument God employed to bring to innumerable souls the grace of faith ; and, though we cannot defend many features of their government of the conquered races, we must not hastily condemn either. More than all we must not forget the heroic labors of the missionaries, who also were Spaniards for the most part and who laid down their lives for their savage brethren. In 1539, Gonzalo Pizarro, who had been summoned to Cuzco by his brother, set out for Quito, nearly five hundred leagues to the north. Francis Pizarro had appointed his brother Governor of this city as a preliminary step to assigning to him the govern- ment of the Cinnamon Land he was to conquer. After a long and toilsome march, fighting most of the time, and on one occasion so hard pressed that reinforcements were sent him from Cuzco, he finally reached Quito. On his arrival he found the government in the hands of Pedro de Puelles, who however made no difficulty in resigning it. With absolute control of the city and its resources and the good will of everybody — for, as the chronicler tells us, " he was the best beloved man in Peru and had by his noble qualities A PASS IN THE CORDILLERAS. THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. 197 endeared himself as much to strangers as to his own friends — " Gonzalo found little trouble in fitting out his expedition, and in a very short time was ready to start for the Cinnamon Land. On Christmas Day, 1539, though there is some dispute about the year, the march was begun. There were in the party one hundred and fifty horsemen, about two hundred foot, and four thousand Indians. And of these Indians we may note in passing some remarks of the chronicler, which throw light on the relations of the Spaniards to the Indians in these countries at that time. When, after the desertion of Orellana, the party began to retrace their steps to Quito, but one thousand out of these four thousand Indians were alive and these " served like sons to their masters, in these hardships and privations, searching for herbs and roots and wild fruits, frogs and serpents and other wretched food." Another remark is made a little further on, when the chronicler tells how finally even these Indians perished from hunger, " and among them was an Indian beloved by Gonzalo whose death Gonzalo mourned as if he had been his own brother." Again the chronicler carefully sets down the fact that "many Indians perished from hunger and Spaniards also, though the flesh of the horses was equally divided." Nearly four thousand head of swine for food and a flock of llamas to carry part of the baggage com- pleted the equipment. During the first few days of their march, nothing seems to have occurred to cloud the high hopes of Pizarro and his men. They were still on the great central plateau of Ecuador between the eastern and western ranges of the Cordilleras, and the climate here is most agreeable and invigorating. Food was plentiful and easily procured, and where the fame of the Spaniards had not prepared for them a welcome, their mere appearance with their horses and firearms was sufficient to drive every hostile force from their path. Soon however they began to ascend the first slopes of the Eastern Cordilleras, and as they ascended the face of nature changed very rapidly. The trees disappeared ; the cold became severe ; roads there had been none up to this — there are no roads in Ecuador even yet — but at least progress was easy. 198 THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. Now rain began to fall in huge drops mingled with hail and snow, the wind came whirling down the mountain side in violent gusts strong enough to hurl a man to the ground. From time to time the clouds would part and the sun appear, but only to burn with its fierce rays the exposed features of the soldiers without giving any warmth. Drenched by the rain, almost breathless with the winds, and parched by the sun, it is little wonder that the Spaniards were surprised at the difference between that land and Peru. For forty or fifty days they were exposed to these hardships, to which were added the terrors of a violent earthquake accom- panied by thunder and lightning, which destroyed the greater part of a hamlet in which they had encamped. Snow too began to fall in such quantities and it became so cold that many Indians were frozen to death, being so lightly clad. To escape from this region was imperative and that speedily ; so, without considering the hardships there might still be in store for them in the unex- plored tract on the eastern side of the mountains, they left the herd of swine and the provisions they had brought behind them, and by forced marches crossed the crests of the Cordilleras and descended into the district watered by the Coca. Here they found themselves surrounded by vast and trackless forests, but without any signs of inhabitants. They had cut themselves off from their stores of provisions, counting on the natives to supply their wants ; and too late they realized their folly. With much difficulty, they forced their way through more than one hundred leagues of this dense forest, oftentimes being obliged to open a way with axe and hatchet and living on herbs, roots, and wild fruits, and finding not even sufficient of these. At length they reached the Coca, which rising in the Cordilleras forms a great curve from east to south and falls into the Napo. They had consumed two months in this march, and during that time the rain had been falling constantly so that their clothes had become rotten. Near the great river they came upon a village, Cuca, the THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. 199 chief of which received them well and supplied them with provisions. Here they remained another two months until they had been rejoined by a band that had been left behind at the foot of the Cordillera^ Then, following the bank of the stream, they proceeded another fifty leagues without meeting a bridge or even a ford by which to cross, so swift and deep was the volume of water this stream ^ carried down to the Napo. Many were the surprises that met them on their march. The great Cascade of the Coca and the rapids below ; the rain which never ceased ; the oozy soil and matted undergrowth and the strange forms of bird and beast are mentioned in the chron- icle, with the astonish- ment of the Spaniards to see a thing so great and so strange. Forty leagues further down they reached a point where the stream narrows and fl o w s between precipitous banks nearly two hundred feet high. By felling trees after the manner of the Indians they succeeded in bridging the stream ; and, after scatter- ing some Indians who ventured to oppose them, they proceeded on their way down the other bank of the stream. But the same difficulties met them here and finally, having passed through a BRIDGE OVER A TRIBUTARY OF THE NAPO. 2OO THE NAMING Of-' THE AMAZON. land called Guema, where many Spaniards and Indians fell sick and died owing to hunger and fatigue and the heavy rains, they reached a more hospitable country. Here it was determined to build a brigantine, to transport the sick and the baggage ; and this it was that led to the crowning disaster of the expedition and to its great glory as well. When this brigantiue was built, all their gold and everything of value was put on board, and then the weary march was resumed. Two months more were spent in efforts by those on land to force a way through the thick and matted brushwood and the soft spongy soil, into which they sank at every step, while those on board the brigantine had all they could do to keep their bark from being carried down the stream and separating them from their comrades. At last when their hopes of reaching the wonderful land they had started to conquer had almost died out in their breasts, some Indians appeared and by signs made them understand that ten days march down the Coca they would reach another great river, the Napo, on the shores of which was this land they were in quest of, a land well provisioned and rich in gold. A council was called and Gonzalo Pizarro gave Francisco de Orellana command of the brigantine and fifty men, and sent him on to this land with orders to load the brigantine with provisions and return to his starving comrades as quickly as possible. Pizarro up to this evidently had seen no reason to mistrust Orel- lana, and sore indeed must have been the temptation or cold and cruel the heart of the man who could conceive under the circum- stances the act of treachery which Orellana completed. Over two thousand of the four thousand Indians who had started were already dead, and many of tfie Spaniards ; and the only hope for the survivors was the speedy return of the brigantine. Three days sail down the swift stream brought Orellana to the Napo, a distance of eighty leagues, only to find that the Indians had deceived them. The banks of the river were deserted. There were neither Indians nor gold nor provisions to be found. What was to be done ? To return against the current was almost impracticable ; to remain where they were and await Pizarro was THE NAMING OF THE AMAZON. 201 the only honorable course left. This Orellaua decided not to do, and without opening his mind to anyone he ordered his men to sail on. To their credit be it said that many, suspecting his design, opposed him strongly. Chief among these was the Dominican Father Caravajal. But Orel 1 ana gained over some and, abandoning the head of the opposition, he proceeded down the Napo till he reached the Amazon and the Ocean and finally arrived in Spain. Gonzalo Pizarro, when he found that the brigantine did not return, slowly and painfully, now that he had no brigantine to transport the sick, made his way down to the Napo. There he found THE AMAZON AT THE MOUTH OF THE NAPO. Don Hernan and learned of the base treachery of his trusted lieu- tenant. But all this only served to bring out the greatness of the man. Animating his followers by word and example, he continued his march three hundred miles down the Napo until even he saw that to proceed farther would only result in the destruction of his whole band ; so reluctantly and despondently he turned back. The story of the retreat was a repetition of the tale we have just been recalling. The dogs and the horses that were still alive were killed and eaten ; the bodies of their dead comrades that fell by the way were, horrible to relate, greedily devoured and when these 2O2 A RONDEAU FOR ST. JOSEPH. were gone, roots and herbs and the few animals they were able to snare, with frogs and snakes, were all they had to quiet the pangs of hunger. Three hundred leagues of march brought them to Quito. The four thousand Indians had perished to a man ; of the Span- iards, two hundred and ten had died out of the three hundred and forty had started, not counting the fifty who followed Orellana. Little wonder then that " they kissed the earth when they reached the borders of Quito, giving thanks to God Who had delivered them from such great perils and hardships," or that the citizens of Quito who came out to receive them, " wept for grief to behold those who came and to know that the missing had died of hunger." Thus ended the first great expedition into the lands watered by the Amazon and its tributaries. A RONDEAU FOR ST. JOSEPH. 'By Marie Louise Sandrock. E silvern cup that rises there, From pillared stalk of lily fair, Ingathers ev'ry day, I ween, Hosts of petitions all unseen To our kind Saint and debonair. The largess sought, which is my prayer, I leave within the lily's care That it be purer made through sheen Of silvern cup. This is thy treasury; so dare We all, St. Joseph, here repair That thou, when clam'rous have we been In loud outcry of wants most keen, Mayst give to us some helping fare From silvern cup. THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri and Cardinal of the Holy Eoman Church : born in London, England, 21 February, 1801, elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford University, in 1823, sometime University preacher ( Anglican t, received into the Catholic Church, October 9, 1845, died 11 August, 1890. II. was in 1833 that what is now known as the Oxford Movement was finally begun. In this remarkable movement of minds no one has ever doubted that Newman had the leading part — not that held by the highest drop in a wave-crest, pushed up by the chance work of the forces around it, but a true leadership of minds. All who took a part in it have confessed this. The late Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury said : "It was a time when Newman reigned supreme in the University." Mr. Gladstone has spoken in the same sense in well known words. One who himself became a Catholic, the Jesuit Father Coleridge, son of the biographer of Keble, roused himself from illness to write the following words after the death of the great Cardinal, whom he aifectionately calls " a father of souls." Now I shall speak more freely, as is sometimes allowed to those who have a great debt to pay, of one whom, as I said in my opening words, many souls (of whom I am one) look upon most truly as the father of their spiritual life. . . . What St. Paul claims to have done for the Corinthians, that I most humbly and gratefully acknowledge to have been done to myself by John Henry Newman. God might have used many other instruments, many other means, but what I know of our past tells me that the instrument and the means He has used for my conversion was Cardinal Newman. This second period of Newman's life has been told in its inmost detail in his own Apologia. For those who desire a complete and thoroughly trustworthy history of the Movement, the 203 204 THE FATHER OF M4NY SOULS. son of one of its chief men, who followed Newman into the Church and was long editor of the Dublin Review, has written fully in a book on that period of his father's life — William George Ward and the Oxford Movement. To these volumes we must refer our readers for the details. We will content ourselves here, in accordance with our design, with quoting, mainly from New- man's own words, passages that show how the sincere dispositions of soul which he had shown when comparatively unknown still led him on, through all the temptations of a brilliant public career, up to the great act by which, as an Anglican newspaper has not hesitated to say, " Protestantism lost the founder of the present Anglican Church !" These were years of mental difficulties ; but through them all Newman preserved his balance of mind unshaken. Little by little the whole ground of the convictions he had been advocating so earnestly was changed beneath him. He could not see whither he was tending ; and the distrust, even of his friends, must sorely have grieved a heart so sensitive. Yet to one thing he was always true. Christ, the Son of God, had taught truth to the world, and to Him alone would he go. All the difficulties of the world and unbelief, all the uncer- tainties of a State religion patched together by the private judg- ment of individuals, could not make him swerve in his faith that what Christ had taught and all that He had taught is to be believed. This is simply the Catholic faith ; for our reason for believing what the Church teaches is that we know that the Church teaches what Christ has taught. She continues His work and, like Him, is the living mouthpiece of God among men. In the year 1838, he spoke these stern words to the men of the University who flocked around him : Oh, miserable we, then, if we are of the number of those who prefer sight to faith ! Oh, miserable, if when our Saviour, the very Word of God and the True Witness, speaks plainly one way, we listen to the serpent's voice, saying, l Ye shall not surely die.' We have no right, indeed, surely not, to say absolutely that this or that man, whom we see and can point out, is destined to future punishment ; God forbid, for we can but judge by outward THE FATHER OF M^NY SOULS. 2O5 appearance, and God alone seeth the hearts of men. But we are expressly told that there are persons so destined ; we are told that the finally impenitent, whoever they shall be, are so destined : whatever the sight of things may tell us, however the weaknesses and waywardnesses of our hearts may plead against such awful truths, however our feelings and imaginations and reason may be assailed, yet 'Let God be true and every man a liar.' Let us believe Him, though the whole world rise up and with one voice deny His words. His intense devotion to the Person of our Lord, and his clear appreciation of the fact that mere intellectual conviction is insuf- ficient to Christian Faith, come out in a remarkable sermon preached at Oxford in the year 1841. His discourse was designed to defend the position in which he then was. He did not as yet look forward to anything further. He asks : Would you know why holy men believe, even in an age of miracles ? Hear St. Poly carp's words when the heathen magis- trate asked him to blaspheme Christ : ( Eighty and six years/ said he, ' have I served Him and He hath never wronged me, and how can I blaspheme my King Who hath saved me ?' Or, as St. Paul said, ' I know Whom I have believed.' Already he had recognized the " Offices of the Church." This is the glory of the Church, to speak, to do, and to suffer with that grace which Christ brought and diffused abroad. . . . This was that new thing that Christ brought into the world, a heavenly Doctrine, a system of holy and spiritual truths, which are to be received and transmitted, for He is our Prophet ; maintained even unto suffering, after His pattern, Who is our Priest ; and obeyed, for He is our King. This, indeed, is the immovable foundation of Catholic faith. We believe what the Church teaches, because Christ — God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived — teaches through her. On this the Faith of Peter is built up, according to the words of that Apostle when his Master in a time of sore trial asked of His disciples : Will you too go away f — to which Peter, the Rock on which Christ was to build His Church, made answer, To whom, Lord, shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we 2O6 THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. have believed and know that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God. (St. John, vi. 68). At last his confidence in the teuableness of the views he had hitherto advocated was seriously shaken. In the two volumes of letters of this period of his life, published only in the last few weeks, we have striking marks, in this supreme trial, of the good dispositions of his soul for welcoming the truth wherever it was to be found. Of course, one of the sorest trials to one of his sensitive nature was the necessary discomfort and unsettling of conscience which he would have to inflict on those over whom he had so much influence. To this he alludes in the Apologia; and it brought considerable criticism upon him both at the time and later on. He could not give a sharp, abrupt decision to those who were in distress of mind, for the simple reason that his own mind had been unsettled. On the other hand, he could not in conscience lead men on with himself in his own doubts, the end of which he could not foresee. This made him miserable whenever he was consulted in regard to matters of belief. In 1842 he thus answered Dr. Pusey, who had asked him concerning one of the more advanced of his followers : As to my being entirely with Ward, I do not know the limits of my own opinions. If Ward says that this or that is the development of what I have said, I cannot say yes or no. It is plausible, it may be true. ... I cannot assert that it is not true ; but I cannot, with that keen perception that some have, appropriate it. It is a nuisance for me to be forced beyond what I can fairly accept. In the recently published letters there is a private comment on this state of mind, addressed to his sister in 1844, the year previous to his final conversion to the Church. I am not unwilling to be in trouble now and for others to be — for it is what must be — and the more of it the sooner over. It is like drinking a cup out. I am far from unmindful of what you say about unsettlement of others being a providential intima- tion ; but there must be a limit to its force, else the Jews could never have become Christians in early times, or Nestorians or THE FATHER. OF MANY SOULS. 2O7 Monophy sites Catholics in more recent. How St. Paul must have unsettled quiet Jews, who were serving God and heard nothing of our Lord but as a Samaritan and a ' deceiver.' And this suggests what has ever been said against the Church at all times, namely, that it was corrupt, anti-Christian, &c. This has ever been a note of the Church. And I do believe the Church of Rome has the imputation only in this sense (allowing for our Lord's parable of the Net). It is no new thing that the Church has been under odium and disgrace, and I confess the atrocious lies — I can call them nothing else — which are circulated against myself have led me to feel how very false the popular impression may be about the Jesuits, &c. I say this because one of the most plausible arguments against the Church of Rome is, { We do not understand these things, but we are quite sure that there could not be so much suspicion, so much imputation, without cause for it at bottom, in spite of prejudice, exaggeration, &c.' ; just what people may say, or do say, about myself. In this correspondence there are a few very touching words, showing his utter unworldliness : Nothing you say about my loss of influence has any tendency to hurt me, as you kindly fear it should. I never have thought about any influence I have had. I never have mastered what it was. It is simply no effort whatever to give it up. The pain, indeed, which I knew I was giving to individuals has affected me much ; but as to influence, the whole world is one great vanity, and I trust I am not set on anything in it — I trust not. Nor have I thrown influence away if I have acted at the call of duty. The time had come when Newman felt that he could not in conscience retain the place which he held in the Anglican Estab- lishment. On the other hand, he could not yet see whither his steps were leading. He accordingly resigned his position and retired into the lay communion of the Church whose great light he had been. His last sermon — "The Parting of Friends" — winds up with one of the most pathetic passages in the whole field of English oratory. Touchingly enough, he had chosen for his text the same verse of the Psalms from which he had preached his first sermon nineteen years before to the University of Oxford. Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor until the evening. 2O8 THE FATHER OF MANY SOULS. This was his final farewell to all that had hitherto made up his life and influence. His face was now set whither he did not see, but faithfully to follow the kindly Light, step by step. O my brethren, O kind and aifectionate hearts, O loving friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act ; if he has ever told you what you knew about yourselves, or what you did not know ; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted you by the very reading ; has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see ; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed ; if what he has said or done has ever made you take interest in him, and feel well inclined towards him ; remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it. This, as we have seen, had been the one burden of his spiritual life — " in all things to know God's will, and at all times to be ready to fulfil it." The two following years he spent in his retirement at Little- more, where he had already gathered together a little community. Father Lockhart, who was its inmate for a time, describes it : This was a kind of monastic life, of prayer, fasting, and study. We rose at midnight to say the Divine Office. We fasted always till twelve o'clock, except on Sundays and great festivals ;