something like this very doctrine, as being necessary to explain the facts of human life, to reconcile the justice of God with His mercy, and to establish in general the truth of the Christian religion. What, again, can be more amiable, more estimable in the eyes of men, than to be delivered from the very shade of the shadow of hypocrisy, as Christ commands *, and as Catholicity supposes to be all its children, inspiring some with the desire of being secretly holy, as Henry Suso expresses it-"Occultè sancti ;" others, with a horror of ever entering a temple, excepting like the publican; and all with that humble sentiment which may be expressed by the noble exclamation of the poet "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto?" How exquisite is that picture which the poet draws of his bride, the charm of whose character might be supposed the express result of the element we are observing! "She was a phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight: A lovely apparition sent To be a moment's ornament. A countenance in which did meet Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." What more humane than to be mindful of the fragility of our common nature, even when requiring perfection from those who embrace the spiritual state; as when the Church, in her formula of ordination, says, "Si quis habet aliquid contra illos, pro Deo et propter Deum cum fiducia exeat et dicat; verumtamen memor sit conditionis suæ ?" What more agreeable to humanity than an affable and humble turn of mind, the desire of kind, familiar intercourse with the low and the obscure, loving and helping, not scorning "The sandal'd swain, the shepherd's boy?" How natural are even those high impressions derived by the world from the ascetic life, which Amethus expresses in the 'Lover's Melancholy," saying, 66 * Matt. vi. "Sister! sister! She who derives her blood from princes, ought To glorify her greatness by humility;" and which Raybright gives utterance to, in language still more beautiful, saying— "He who is high-born never mounts yon battlements Of sparkling stars, unless he be in spirit As humble as the child of one that sweats To eat the dear-earn'd bread of honest thrift!" Hear the hymn of blessed Casimir, and mark how suitable to humanity are the gifts which it implores "Quod requiro, quod suspiro, mea sana vulnera : What more humane than that charity which makes no distinction of religion in relieving the distresses of our fellow-creatures, but produces universal benevolence, like that ascribed in old chivalrous romance to Merancie, who, we are told, always began by assisting men, and afterwards inquired as to their religion, but, whether they were Christian or Infidel, she never regretted having rendered them service? What more rational than that wisdom of life which, by the confessional turns to virtue what would grow unwholesome, as heaven's bright eye, the sun, draws up the grossest vapours, and so verifies the poet's deep remark "That best men are moulded out of faults?" " The motives of this morality may be maligned, its end and object misunderstood; but no misrepresentation of its effects can prevent some of those who witness them from becoming at least its secret admirers. St. Paulinus of Aquileia concludes his book of exhortation to the Duke Henry, by praying God to enable him "to bear an equal part in all fraternal burdens, to endeavour to do good to all, to injure none, to be adverse to no one, to calumniate no one, to offend no one, to judge no one, to explore the ways of no one, but to be watchful only over himself *." If this be supernatural, it must be confessed that nature, without the influence of some strong counteraction * Lib. Exhort. c. 66. wholly unconnected with virtue, will not recoil from it. A shadowy approximation to such correction of nature seemed to Cicero a thing that he could not sufficiently recommend. "You are now less inclined to anger than you were," he writes to his brother" nullæ tuæ vehementiores animi concitationes, nulla maledicta ad nos, nullæ contumeliæ perferantur: quæ quum abhorrent a litteris, ab humanitate, tum vero contraria 66 sunt imperio ac dignitati. As the two first years of your government have seen you become less wrathful, more patient, and more gentle, so let the third year finish your emendation, so that not the least thing can be discovered for reproof*." If gentleness be, as Plato says, the mark of a philosophic character t," Catholicism, which is so calculated to produce it, can never be a legitimate object of offence to men who desire that character. If those flowers of the virtues of humanity, sweetness of temper, condescension, and love, be dear to every breast, then should their roots be prized, which are nothing else but the principles of the Catholic religion. No; a supernatural object is not productive of a harsh and repulsive morality. These true ascetics, these men of God, bless us with a human heart, with a heart in which sensibility constantly predominates. Those who hear and follow them, wear each "A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred." Those elegant portraits of the young gentlemen of the League, if placed side by side with the stern and gloomy countenances of a later epoch of social degeneracy, might lead us to reflect that grace, and beauty, and the attributes of a refined humanity, are less opposed to strength of character than the more pretensious qualities of a generation of sophists; for it is with men as with trees, in which, as foresters remark, "weakness is not a necessary consequence of lightness." The supernatural morality of Catholicism recommends itself to all classes of persons, without excepting even those who fail in practising it through human frailty. To the young it is endeared by its harmonious gracefulness, and soft humanity; to the thoughtful and experienced, it is congenial by reason of the depth, and breadth, and loftiness, and solidity, of its principles. Where truly known, it can offend only beings who have nothing in common with humanity, like those sophists who said that "the French are now incapable of a return to compassion-parceque de nos jours l'art social est plus avancé." Ep. ad Quint. + De Repub. iii. Mém. Forest. ii. VOL. VI. X Justice, according to Plato, "consists in keeping all the interior powers of man in their proper, reciprocal subjection, so that one should not encroach on the other-injustice being nothing else but a sedition between the three parts of the soul, which enables one to get the mastery over the other two, contrary to its legitimate office-from which he concludes that justice and injustice are the same in a man and in a society, or nation." To produce this moral equilibrium is the object and result of Catholic virtue, which, while misrepresented and maligned by those who know nothing of it, or by the sophist race and its lordly patrons, will ever be respected and admired by the eminently wise and good, who, on that point, will be found to think like the unpretending and the poor, the humble and the unhappy; as when Leibnitz, in one place using the expression, "our wisest moralists,” adds, like one who felt the common bond of sympathy that unites the little and the great, "such as the present general of the Jesuits +." To live in desire, at least secretly, like the few, exteriorly like the many, true to ourselves, as far as our frail nature will permit, while believing that each soul has a mission for the good of others, this is what nature will love, and this is the moral result of Catholicism, teaching every young man, as Alanus de Insulis observes,― "Interius sibimet ut pauci vivat, et extra Ut plures, intus sibi vivens, pluribus extra. True, its object, when profoundly viewed, is not of this world, nor confined to time, nor human, in the sense of nature fallen. It causes in man, at the bottom, the effect which Cicero considered "the mark of the best and wisest-ut nihil nisi sempiternum spectare videatur §." But the supernatural morality of Catholicism leaves all that is good in nature untouched, untrammelled, fragrant with the choicest grace and primal freshness of humanity; it leaves youth joyous; it suffers the peasant mother to equip her boy as fine on Sundays as a palm-branch. It frowns not on the cheerful; it enhances every joy, since, as Cervantes says, describing the Spanish villagers of Catholic times, they, carrying modesty in their looks and eyes, and lightness in their feet, approved themselves the best dancers in the 66 * De Repub. iv. Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, liv. iv. p. 295, édit. Charpent. § Pro C. Rabirio. Encyclopæd. world." It damps no innocent pleasure. Under its influence, indeed, as far as innocence requires, and with the distinctions which ought never to be overlooked, all the joys of the peasant maid, the holy mother, the princess or the queen, might be summed up as those of Mary, as in the old poem by Herman, entitled, "Les joies de Notre Dame"-but it leaves age serene and indulgent, manhood brave and devoted, female goodness decked with all its graces; it sours nothing, spoils nothing, misapplies nothing, effaces nothing, excepting what constitutes imperfection or deformity,-yes, and what the world itself would stigmatize as baseness and dishonour. In fine, expelling fear by fear, slavery by servitude, for, as Alanus de Insulis observes, "si vis timorem vincere, time Deum,-Deum time ne timeas,-Deo servi ne servias," it forms great characters, heroic, invincible: it constitutes, let the State assume what form it will, the true, valiant, indomitable race of free men, whose will is emancipated, and desire crowned; for "If I have freedom of my love CHAPTER VII. THE LOWER ROAD OF DIVINE VIRTUE. HERE is a kind of fear, not unmixed with compunction, accompanying the pleasure which many take in these walks, companion. But, come; a truce to what is personal! Contemplative content, the lightest men perhaps find in them. They bring into our minds oft meditations "So sweetly precious, that in the parting * Sum. de Arte Prædicat. xi. |