"If I believed Protestants to be right, I would join them to-morrow." Though your father disowned, and your brother reproached you?" 66 Clara's heart smote her as she remembered she had parted with her Testament from love to Hubert. "You may tell me, Clara, since I do not feel it my duty to confess, whether you have ever read the Bible." "I have, but parted with it at Hubert's request." "Yet you would blame me for concealing mine, lest I should pain my mother." "Concealing yours! Oh, Clara! have you indeed a Bible?* Surely God must have sent me here." me. Clara burst into tears, and her cousin affectionately observed― "I have gone too far to recede, and I feel sure you will not betray Yes, I have a Bible, yet I seldom read it, because it condemns me for neglecting what I feel to be its demands." "Shall we study it together, Clarice, and pray God to direct us to a right understanding? Yet, what if we should be among the number of the unstable, who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction." "Nay, fear not. Think you a Father would give bread to his children, and when they eat of what He has provided, would He convert the bread into poison? No, I fear not this! My danger arises from want of moral courage to act up to the convictions of my conscience." Clarice then informed Clara how she had obtained the Bible, observing, that before she had ever seen it, many things had occurred which led her to question the infallibility of the Romish Church; she could not mention all the circumstances, which, like links in a chain, had had an imperceptible and gradual effect on her mind. The most important she would, however, relate. It was two years since (long before Father Adrian came to reside with us; the priest we then had was of a very different character; worldly-minded, ignorant, fond of the good things of this life, he kept the poor people in ignorance of the grossest kind), when on a lovely morning in the month of May, I bent my steps towards the cottage belonging to the faithful nurse of my infant days, after being absent several weeks from our village. When I reached her humble, though picturesque dwelling, I was struck with the silence that reigned around. She was not, as usual, in her garden, either tending her bees, or tying up her flowers; neither were her husband's spade and hoe to be seen on the plot of ground he so loved to cultivate. I opened the wicker gate and knocked at the door-no voice replied. I softly entered, but started when I saw the pale face of the poor woman, rendered still more sad from being shrouded in widow's weeds. Her tale of sorrow was quickly told: her husband had been snatched away by sudden illness, but her bitterest grief arose from the remembrance that he had died without receiving the last sacraments, and on this account the awful flames of purgatory were torturing his hapless soul with tenfold fury. "Alas!" said the poor creature, in a tone of despairing anguish, "Were I rich he should not suffer thus; his Reverence tells me masses will release him from these torments, but for these masses they require a sum far beyond my power to raise. I have given all I can-have sold my furniture, gone without my food, and would it avail, would shed my blood to raise the sum that should release his soul." Clara, I cannot describe the startling force with which this question arose in my mind-Is this religion? Can it be possible that if a priest believe he has power with God to release a soul from purgatory, he can yet leave that soul to suffer tortures, and offer no prayers for its release, till he wring from the surviving relatives a sum of paltry gold and silver, as the price of admittance to the joys of heaven? The thought was revolting; the impression then made on my mind was abiding. I set the poor woman at rest by sending her all I had then to bestow, and saw her a few days after, eased of her heaviest load, assured that her husband would speedily be released from purgatory, in consequence of the gold I had given her. Clara, I had never seen the Bible then; but when I afterwards met with these prophetic words in its sacred pages, "And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you," I saw the prophecy fulfilled in the priest of our village. Though I had never read the Bible then, my mind recoiled from the doctrine of buying souls out of purgatory. I had naturally a keen sense of the ridiculous, and felt an utter contempt for the childish legends so religiously inculcated as a matter of faith among the more credulous part of our community. The absurd tales contained in the lives of the saints tended also to nurture this feeling in my mind, which would have led to an indifference to religion bordering on infidelity, had I not remembered the Protestants I had seen in England professed a purer faith. One other incident alone I shall mention, which filled me with further suspicions of the infallibility of the Romish Church. A few weeks after the narrative of my poor nurse, some little bustle was excited in our village by the arrival of a young and beautiful widow with a lovely girl, five years of age. A shade of mystery hung around the new arrival which our village gossips vainly longed to penetrate. The lady had evidently at her command all the luxuries that wealth could purchase, but the deep dejection of her sorrowful countenance, and the shattered state of her health, too plainly foretold that an early death and the silent grave were the portion that awaited her. We soon became acquainted with this lady, whose name was Granville; she sought rather than declined our friendship, hoping (as she told me when time had deepened our acquaintance into a warm and tender attachment) that we should prove friends to her only treasure when left a timid orphan in a cold-hearted world. Meanwhile, the mother rapidly declined, and as her body grew weaker, and death grew nearer, her dread of eternity increased. I know not much of her past history; her husband had been an officer in the army; he had embraced Infidel principles, and reasoned her into the same; but as death approached, the remembrance of her former careless contempt filled her with terror; she entreated me to send for the priest, that he might console her anxious mind. Ah, Clara! had I known, or knowing had I faithfully applied the Bible truth of pardon for all sin from Him against whom it has been committed, she had found a cordial which, alas! was denied her; but I knew not. Our priest was sent for; he often visited her, and I found her, from the time of his visits, more reserved towards me. I also noticed the child was less frequently in the room, and its innocent caresses seemed to awaken feelings more acutely painful than formerly. It was just a week before Mrs. Granville died, when I called to see her, and was told by the servant she was engaged with the priest and a strange gentleman. I was not admitted till the next day, when I found her more excitable and nervous than I had ever seen her; she was reclining on a couch with the window open, which reached to the ground, when little Lucilla, who was playing in the garden, gently crept in, and climbing my knees, threw her arms round my neck. The unhappy mother burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Take her from me, I cannot bear the sight-I have ruined, I have ruined my child!" A violent fit of hysterics ensued, which painfully shook her tender frame; but no other word would she utter in explanation of her meaning. Clara, I will not needlessly harrow your feelings-Mrs. Granville died; her child was conveyed to a neighbouring convent, and the mother's property was voluntarily, freely given to save her soul, to purchase heaven, to rescue her from eternal misery. For more than a month after Mrs. Granville's death, we heard much about the number of masses said for the repose of her soul, after which her name seemed forgotten, and was seldom mentioned; but her fate made a deep impression on my mind. I have little doubt that the terrors of another world were pictured in vivid colours to her excited imagination, and that the hope, if not the certainty of atoning for past transgressions, and procuring the blessedness of heaven by bequeathing her money for charitable purposes, led her to deprive her infant orphan babe of the fortune justly her due. My heart again more deeply revolted from the doctrine of the efficacy of masses and prayers for the dead; they appeared to me then as clearly contradictory to reason as I have since seen them to be to revelation. 66 LIFE IN A CONVENT. BY SAMUEL PHILLIPS DAY, FORMERLY OF THE ORDER OF THE PRESENTATION; WE have fallen upon evil days. Our moral atmosphere is impregnated with the malaria of by-gone times. The leprous spirit of the dark ages has taken possession of the present generation. Holy Scripture has lost its authority; tradition usurps its place. Monasticism, that relic of impiety, which centuries ago should have found an everlasting tomb, rears its haughty front, and presses its antiquity as a claim for our recognition. What! is the meridian blaze of the nineteenth century to be tarnished by a gloom so fatal? Is its glory to be totally eclipsed? Is a protracted night of darkness and despair to succeed a day so brilliant and so cheering? There is a pestilential disease agonizing the mind of the people, urging them to deeds which their forefathers would have scorned to think-and die ere they would perform! But the children fancy themselves wiser than their progenitors; and he would be a Solomon who could undeceive them. Nothing short of bitter experience can turn the pernicious bias of their dispositions. Rome, fearless, and sanguinary, long endeavouring to darken the world by her own influence, has, at length, summoned satellites to her aid, and OXFORD ranks as a star of the first magnitude in her planetary system. Strange! that where the crystal river of truth rolled majestically onwards, the murky waters of error should mingle with its flow and corrupt its fountains,-that the grand luminary of the moral world, should shed glowing beams and streaks of darkness. In this the uniform laws of nature are outraged; and whatsoever is opposed to nature's harmony, is likewise opposed to the God who created it; for "Order is heaven's first law." In the retrograde movement of Oxford, the ordinary rules of nature have been violated. A monster is the result. And every man who values what is equitable, and noble, and freeborn, should strive to crush the spurious creature in its infancy; and thus prevent it from plaguing the world at mature age! The taste of the day is vitiated. Frivolity attracts many worshippers to her shrine, whilst the temple of truth is rarely entered. It is not what instructs the mind, but what enchants the senses that is sought after. Wisdom's ways are no longer "ways of pleasantness." The sober realities of religion are recklessly bartered for gewgaw ceremonies and superstitious parade. The loud peal of the organ speaks more forcibly than the voice of God: for men are devout only in the cathedral, where the glimmering taper would fain exclude the beams of day. Asceticism is again evoked from its sepulchre: and "veiled nuns and "cowled men are regarded as creatures of unearthly mould whose mission it is to restore universal freedom, harmony, and peace. Men are sceptical of everything but error, and acredit everything but truth. For, "A faint erroneous ray, Glanc'd from th' imperfect surfaces of things, Flings half an image on the straining eye.' Thus they regard what is antagonistic of liberty as the safeguard. And monasticism is viewed through an inverted lens. Men see the body but cannot view the heart. They behold the tinsel, but will not strip off the disguise. Hence they fall down and worship the puppet of their fancy, unconscious of their being concerned in its formation. Pitiable delusion! Disastrous mistake! Judicial blindness! But will the voice of one who has been behind the scenes have any weight? Will it serve to dissolve the infatuating spell, or tend to absorb the mists that bedim and obstruct their vision? If so, no richer gratification can reward our labour; nor do we desire a greater boon. I am fully convinced that the monastic system has given birth to "as much real wretchedness, as much secret guilt, as much spiritual, aye, and actual, substantial wretchedness, as the scenes of public life ever produced." The chains with which it binds its votaries are galling. The yoke it lays upon their shoulders presses them to the earth. But it is not the body alone that it prostrates: the mind also it crushes and subdues. And this revolting system is lauded as the guardian of religious truth, and the friend of freedom! Execrable wickedness! And can mankind believe the daring lie? From the iron trammels of this bondage I have, thank God, been released! The strong spell that attached me to such a master-piece of delusion is now dissolved. The fetters that held the noblest part of my being are now broken. And my spirit, once surrounded by the impenetrable gloom of captivity, now exults in the glorious light which heaven-born liberty sheds, like a halo, around it. And,— "Never shall tyranny lend to dissever, The love that I bear it-'tis stronger than ever!" The fervent true devotion of my heart I present at the honoured shrine of liberty, and powerfully actuated by its love, I am induced to espouse a cause so divine, by exercising my pen, in order to pourtray the absurdity, the folly, and pernicious effects of the monastic state,-impressed by the potency of Luther's remark, that "Error chiefly becomes formidable from its concealment, and a detection of falsehood dispels its charm." For this cause I have written; and for this cause I shall yet speak. The "march of intellect" is advancing apace. True. But is it not Rome's object to cause it to recede? What has she done in the struggle for so noble an advantage? She has but laboured to annihilate it! If England be marching forward, Rome is marching backward. Slowly, it is true, because she is labouring to drag this great nation with her! Knowledge, whether of a divine or philosophic aspect, is decidedly unfavourable to the genius of monachism. The monastic system had its origin in darkness. Its complicated machinery was constructed and arranged during the dark ages, and it still derives its existence from dark influences, so that light, information, science, and inquiry, are ungenial elements, perfectly unsuited to its condition, and irreconcileable with its aims. Hence, it hates the light, because it is not of the light and loves obscurity and ignorance because they partake of similar properties, and are branches of the same upas tree, that disseminates around misery, devastation, and death,-impregnating with its virulent qualities the moral atmosphere of nature; blighting the fairest work of God, and annihilating the brightest hope of man! And, like the fabled Pandora, who, led by a fatal curiosity, opened a casket given her by Jupiter, when out of it flew all the evils that desolate the earth,-this hell-born system has emitted its evil genius, and thereby entailed misery indescribable upon thousands of the fairest forms, and the purest minds, and the most soaring spirits, upon whom angels may well delight to gaze! Nor has even hope, which remained at the bottom of the casket, a dwelling here! For within this region, "peace bleeds, and hope expires." The inscription which the Italian poet saw, when in imagination he entered the regions of despair, may well be written in flaming characters, upon the portals of every monastic edifice in the land "Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi che entrate." "All hope abandon, you who enter here."-DANTE, Canto iii. (To be continued.) |