the numbers in the Austrian portion of ancient Poland, we shall have the gross returns for all the countries to which the first statement refers. The results will appear from the following table: A frightful loss truly, and most afflicting to every Catholic heart. The Latin Church, or the Roman-Catholics, as they are called in Russian official documents, never experienced from Catharine the same savage treatment as their Greek brethren; on the contrary, she seemed to extend to them kindness and protection. But she was silently preparing the way for the later usurpations and oppressions of the reigning emperor. Her principal stroke of policy was the erection of the see of Mohilew, and the appointment of the unworthy Siertrzencewicz to it. Pius VI long refused to acknowledge either; till at last the nuncio Archetti was appointed to treat, and a compromise was effected. The extravagant limits assigned to the new diocese were restrained, by the provision of making the jurisdiction only temporary, until the holy see should otherwise provide. It was likewise made criminal by the empress, for any one to embrace the Catholic faith. Paul, at the same time that, in accord with the holy see, he appointed new sees for the Greek Catholics, likewise divided the Latins into six bishoprics. One of the last acts of Alexander's life was to shew kindness to the Catholics of both rites, by granting them permission to build new churches. Here then, for the present, we conclude; but only to continue, in our next number, the review of the valuable documents before us; and to trace the sad picture of treachery and oppression down to these later times. A sickening task it has been to us so far; and by no means an enticing one in the portion that remains. One hope, however, breaks, like a gleam of distant light, upon the sorrowful prospect which we have brought around us. The Catholic religion is a strong and vigorous plant, and drives its roots down deeper into the soil of a country, than tyrant's sword or oppressor's edict can reach; and when the larger fibres have been plucked up, there are finer and almost imperceptible threads, by which it clings and holds to its former place, till a season of respite comes, when they push forth, with no other tillage than the dew of heaven can give the tillage of Paradise, before sin brought down rain. Poor Poland has been overrun, confiscated, recolonized with strangers to her language and creed. Well, let her take comfort—so has Ireland been, not once, but many times, treated; and yet she is Catholic Ireland still. The very settlers who came to take the place of her sons, have, almost everywhere, more or less, yielded to the influence of her Catholic spirit, and embraced the faith which they came to supplant. Poland has seen her religious houses destroyed; her churches seized, and desecrated by a schismatical worshipand so has Ireland: yet three hundred years' experience has proved that all this suffices not to make a people Protestant. Poland sees her children smitten with every sort of penal disability, proscribed, banished, calumniated, and persecuted. Let her turn to her sister in the west, and learn from her how all these things may be endured, and that for centuries, and yet a people come forth from the crucible more purely refined, and more brightly burnished, than they who have not passed through such fiery trial. A day of retribution will come, when the blessedness of those who suffer persecution for justice' sake shall be made manifest. There are beatitudes for nations, as well as for individuals. APPENDIX TO FOREGOING ARTICLE. As in the course of this paper we have not spoken very respectfully of the proceedings of the Russian clergy, we have thought it right to give some account of them, as described by one who has the best opportunities of knowing them. We extract the following from the conclusion of Part I. of Kohl's "Russia," London, 1842. Their ease in fraternizing with German Protestants we particularly recommend to the notice of some of their Anglican admirers. -"If any one ask a Russian who may have already dined, to eat again, he will often answer, Am I a priest that I should dine twice over?' This almost proverbial way of expressing themselves refers to the running about of the popes (priests) from one funeral feast, or christening banquet, to another, at which they enjoy themselves more than any one else. A Russian driving out and meeting a pope, holds it so bad an omen, that he will rather turn back, if he have not, by immediate spitting, warded off the evil influence. . . "In no class of our society do more terrible things happen, and among none does what is scandalous in itself take a more revolting form, than among our priests,' was the assurance once made to me by a Russian, and he supported his assertion by a number of abominable tales, which it would not be becoming in me to repeat. If we heard only such proverbs, stories, and assertions, concerning the Russian priesthood, it would be better to take no further notice of such a body; but when, on the other hand, we consider they have some good qualities, of which good nature and toleration are not the only ones; that in these times new lights are breaking in, which give hopes of a brighter future; and that the class has produced many excellent individuals; it may not be advisable to turn a deaf ear when our indulgence is solicited, or to refuse a nearer consideration of what we may at first be inclined to pass over as a hopeless desert. * *The priests enjoy no great personal influence or consideration. A priest's advice is seldom asked in family matters; even the domestio chaplains are there to perform divine service only, and never penetrate into the interior of families, as the Catholic clergy do. The peasants with us know no better counsellors than their pastor; but the Russian peasant, in cases of difficulty, rather turns to his saint's pictures, and invokes the sacrament rather than the priest who comes with it. One cannot help wondering how little the people in the streets and houses of public entertainment seem held in check by the presence of a priest. Rarely is one seen appeasing a dispute, or exerting any moral authority to restore order; he passes on like any other indifferent person. Moral influence, indeed, they have little or none; only with the saints in their hands are they feared or respected only as directors of religious ceremonies not as interpreters of the living word of God. The priests naturally reap as they have sown. As they preach no lessons of reason or morality, they have no moral lever to put in motion; and as they only inspire reverence in their magnificent pontificalibus, little or none by their example or personal qualities, the hem of their gold embroidered yepitrakhis is constantly kissed, while their brown every-day tunics, we are assured, often meet with hard knocks. The government uses them no better. The temporal power sometimes makes considerable inroads on the spiritual, without calling the priests to counsel; and priests, like other public officers, are liable to hard reprimands and severe punishments. They may be sent to Siberia, or degraded to serve as common soldiers. So much for the outward condition and position of the Russian clergy. For the inward, it must be owned, when we consider the whole system and its fruits during the course of three centuries, and when we compare their deeds with those of * * the priesthood in other countries, they are a very insignificant body. They have done nothing superexcellent for the arts or for science, nor produced men who, in any respect, have done humanity great service. They lived, eat, drank, married, christened, buried, absolved, and died; and, on the whole, they have not done much else. There are, it is true, notabilities among the Russian clergy, but they are such only in Russia. In the list of Russian authors, enumerated in the Academical Čalendar for 1839, the clerical profession had contributed only one hundred and two; of these sixty-six were patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops: the rest were monks. Some things, however, are to be said in praise of the Russian priesthood. They are not less than other Russians distinguished for their toleration in matters of religion. It is true the matter does not lie very near their hearts, because they have few thoughts or ideas connected with it, which have become firm convictions and are maintained as such; they are therefore peaceful, not so much out of dislike to quarrelling as from a want of zeal and energy. It is a merit in them nevertheless. Nowhere does this tolerant spirit appear in a more favourable light than on the frontiers of the Russian and Polish provinces. Here there are in many places only Greek and Roman Catholic priests, and no Protestant pastor. Should it happen that a foreign Protestant is in want of spiritual advice in sickness, or should the body of a Protestant require burial, it is almost invariably the Catholic, who, in an inhuman and unchristian manner, refuses his spiritual aid, while the Russian gives his without hesitation. In such cases foreigners always apply to the Russian, rather than to the Catholic priest. Seldom is an unkind word heard from Russian priests, when speaking of a person of a different faith; and those who understand German will even go frequently to the Protestant Churches to hear the preachers. In the Baltic provinces, when the military, who happen to be stationed there, have no Russian Church within reach, the Russian priests never hesitate to perform divine service in a Protestant Church; and in the interior it has happened that they have lent their own churches to Protestants. In Austria, Protestant churches are only called prayer-houses: in Russia the priests treat them as on an equal footing with their own. Neither do they hesitate to bury their dead in the same church-yard with the Protestants. The cultivated part of the priesthood, who understand German, are much more inclined to the Protestant than to the Catholic party - more to rationalism than to mysticism. Their libraries prove it: Niemeyer's works, his Bible, the Stunden der Andacht, Schleiermacher's writings, Neander's Church History, are frequently met with; here and there I have even seen Strauss's Life of Christ. The works of the other party are, on the contrary rare. When some recent occur rences in the Baltic provinces and in Poland are called to mind, it may be thought that the Russian priesthood are somewhat less tolerant now than formerly; and in fact it is only natural that, with the proud exaltation of political power, the Church should also begin to lift up her head. As the government seeks to advance the political creed, the Church may endeavour, by more urgent zeal and greater energy, to spread the one and only true faith.' But if the Church does take her share in the conquests, and appears to progress in those provinces, it does so certainly far less from its own impulse than in consequence of commands emanating from a higher quarter." THE CATHOLIC WORSHIP. Or the Catholic worship I am unwilling to speak: I consider it a subject too grave, to be lightly touched upon. But in general I may assert that it contains no mere forms. Everything there is substance. The spiritual essence is every where indissolubly married by Divine ordinance to the outward symbol. They are not two, but one; even as the human body and reasonable soul make up one man. The very objection which is most commonly urged against the Catholic worship-viz: that it is performed in a learned language-is itself a striking instance of this. The Latin prayers are the prayers of the priest. The worship of those who attended the service, does not consist, and is not intended to consist, in their joining in the prayers which the priest offers for himself, and for the congregation. The service itself is a solemn sacrifice, which we believe to be instituted by Christ himself a sacrifice not carnal and outward, like the Jewish sacrifices, which prefigured the eternal offering; but a sacrifice at once symbolical and real, at once commemorative of, and the same with, the sacrifice of Calvary the priest, the victim, the benefit the same. Such is the service: and the devotions of the worshippers are as various as their wants; for though the Catholic Church, mindful of the wants of her children, has supplied them with various forms, which they can use if they feel the need, and which, coming as they do from that authority to which Christ has promised a supernatural guidance in the office of teaching, are received with a certain reverence more than human, yet no worshipper at her altars is bound by a form which does not tend to his own individual edification. And the poor, the illiterate those whose hard fate is so piteously bewailed in Protestant harangues and sermons - following as they do, in due succession, all parts of the sacrifice are often more blessed in the prayers which they offer in the silence of their own hearts, than the better educated, for whom more helps have been provided. The very end and the design of the Catholic worship an end incidentally promoted by the use of the Latin languageis not to fill the mouth, or the natural understanding, with beautiful form of words, expressing accurately and logically all the wants of man, but to nourish a habit of aspiration, of ejaculation, of inward longing and hungering after the true and spiritual food; and most admirably does it answer this purpose. The hardship of the service being in an unknown tongue, can be no object of the indignation of a member of the Society of Friends.* I can barely allude to the awful feeling of reverence with which the Catholic bows his head at the elevation of the Blessed Host, and the deep spiritual impression it necessarily produces on those with whom it is no outward form, but the real presence of the Divinity himself, which they venerate and adore. This spirituality of the daily worship of the Catholics is unnoticed by the sceptical or prejudiced Protestant; who enters a chapel, takes a hasty glance at something strange - he knows not what and never suspects, that beneath the outward form, which is the object of his jibes and sneers, there lies concealed an inward spiritual treasure, to which the eye of the natural man can never penetrate. [Lucas' Reasons. • Mr. Lucas was a member of the Society of Friends until within a few years ago, when he became a Catholic. THE CHURCH. [FROM THE CATHOLIC TELEGRAPH.] THE Church-the Church! a hymn for thee, A thousand years have flown away, Thy fold is Truth's embattled home, And tribes and nations there unite, Stand on the threshold let thine eye Behold! what myriads throng the space- From Afric's shore a mighty band From Europe's soil, with science crown'd, The martyr radiant from the flames- They come- they come, from every age- The peasant, anchorite, and sage They come, oh God! to worship Thee. There shrines the diadems of kings; The scholar there his wreath has brought; The artist, too, devoutly brings His bright realities of thought. And Science, with her starry crown; Before thine altars bending down, The glory of our Church proclaim. Hail, hail to Thee, triumphant home! |