Page images
PDF
EPUB

by the proceeding. Church endowments, even where there may be or have been abuses, were and are turned largely to the account of charitable relief to the distressed: relief afforded in a way and in a spirit very different from what are to be expected or found in the action of most secular governments; not as a dry matter of business, not for the sake of appearance or convenience, not as the necessary fulfilment of a civil duty, not stiffly or grudgingly, not with a wasteful expenditure on officials-but from sentiments of charity, and in a truly compassionate, and reasonably economical, manner. The monasteries in these our own countries helped the poor quite otherwise than they are helped now. The Church, too, besides relieving the indigent in their corporal wants, has always been a friend to learning and to the fine arts, and has made her resources available in these directions.

Some secular governments, using their power and following the bent of their bad will, have lately pursued and do pursue their course of iniquity in robbing the Church. We have a prominent specimen of this in the kingdom of Italy. We see there not only invasion of ecclesiastical property, but the most heartless depredation. There is one reflection which it is worth while to make, and repeat, and repeat often, with reference to this and other public offences against rights, namely, that they are not the less guilty because committed on a great scale, nor yet because they are committed in the name of the law, which after all is not law otherwise than in name, for a law real and at the same time unjust is an impossible thing, since justice enters into the true conception of a law. Mr. Gladstone is shocked at the Pope's having annulled "the law for the suppression of monastic Orders and appropriation of their properties passed in the kingdom of Sardinia (in 1855) on the simple ground of his Apostolic authority . . . and all other laws injurious to the Church," and having excommunicated all who had a hand in them; and calls this invading the province of the civil power!* Such laws did not need to be annulled. They were null already. If the Pope used the word annul-which I am not able just now to say-it was equivalently in the sense of declaring the proceedings null. Then, the Pope inflicted a spiritual penalty for a great crime-sacrilegious rapine. Was there anything so outrageous in this? The Council of Trent did not take this view.t

All men join in condemning highway robbers and fraudulent dealers, and those lower classes of thieves, pilferers and pickpockets; indeed the view the law takes of some of the acts of such offenders in our own countries is fearfully, not to say pharisaically, severe; and yet wholesale spoliation, especially of the Church, is looked on in quite a different light. The men who commit it are reputed honourable members of society, whilst their conduct is in

"Vaticanism,” pp. 88, 89.

† Sess. 22. De Reform, c. II.

truth more guilty, more foul, more immoral, than that of those whose dishonesty consigns them to our docks and our prisons.

Should any Protestant chance to read what I have just written, and remark that the same principle applies to the disendowment of the Irish Church, my answer is, that the Irish Disestablished Church, like the English Established Church, was of its nature a State institution and nothing more. All its rights came from the British Legislature, and so did its property, with the exception of private endowments, for which provision was made in the Irish Church Act, 1869, section 29.

ON THE MOUNT.

“And they sat down and watched Him.”—Matt. xxvii. 36.

[blocks in formation]

The worn-out lash, the clotted cloak,
The red pool in the judgment-hall,
Where flowed the Blood from veins laid bare,
Besprinkling pillar, steps, and all.

I see the reed and thorny crown,
And mark the crimson drops flow down.

Fixed to a cross with three rough nails,
That fair and fatal town outside,

While skies are black at midnoon hour,

And from the grave pale shadows glide;
Suspended 'mid the trembling air,

They sat them down and watched Him there.

The Mother stands in speechless woe,
Suffering each pang with keener dart;
The thorny crown, the iron spikes,

Pierce sharper through her broken heart.
His low "I thirst" falls on her ear,
While gloating eyes still watch Him near.

That face so ever like to hers

Is strangely beautiful e'en now,
As tremblingly the shade of Death

Flits o'er the Lord of Life's pale brow.
His plaintive moan steals on the air,
And cruel hearts still watch Him there.

Oh! tremble, sorrow-heaving earth,
And hide thy face, shamed sun, the more,
And Magdalen and John, press close

To her who stands that cross before-
On fire with pain, one tortured thrill-
Oh! woe and grief! they watch Him still.

I cry: my Mother! give me tears,
And heart with love and sorrow rife,
For Him and thee that fearful day,

And for my own poor sinful life;
And touch my soul with Pity's power
That I may weep with thee this hour.

Oh! let me learn for Jesus' sake
To bear in silence lesser pain,

And with my God all desolate

To suffer meekly, nor complain. And thou wilt teach and be my guide, Sweet Mother of the Crucified!

M. Mr. R.

NEW BOOKS.

[ocr errors]

I. Sketch of the Life of the late Father Henry Young of Dublin. By Lady GEORGIANA FULLERTON. London: Burns and Oates. THOUGH this book fortunately has not for our readers all the charm of novelty, they will hardly welcome it less but more on that account in this elegant and cheap reprint; and they will feel themselves the more bound to propagate in its substantive form this pious biography with which in its detached portions our pages were first enriched. In her interesting preface, in which Lady G. Fullerton claims for herself only the modest part of "a stringer of beads which others have toiled to collect," this characteristic saying occurs: "To do some little good—and no harm-by writing, has been our lifelong prayer." That prayer must have been a humble and fervent one, for it assuredly has been granted in a very signal measure and degree. The list which fills the last two pages of this book will show this to any one who is at all acquainted with the works there mentioned; and, as this list includes only those works of Lady G. Fullerton which are issued by one publisher, there are many omissions such as Ladybird," "Too Strange Not to be True," "Mrs. Gerald's Niece," not to go back to the volumes written before the youthful writer of "Ellen Middleton " became a Catholic, full as they also are of a devout, sincere, and earnest spirit. Yet it is strange withal that such a writer, though using her gifts only for pure and holy purposes, should ever become the biographer of Father Henry Young, whose hidden apostleship seldom strayed far from the lanes and alleys of Dublin. We may here give vent to a grudge which we owe to the popularity of this "Sketch of Father Young's Life." Though provision was made for an increase of readers when the "Life" began in this Magazine, we completely underestimated the number of the holy priest's admirers; and hence has arisen the sad dearth of our fifth monthly part (Nov., 1873), which necessitates an advertisement appearing in this or in our next issue. No doubt this welcome embarrassment of being out of print-which we trust will speedily befal also the reprint of the life of the saintly old Chaplain of St. Joseph's, Portland-row-is due in great part to the fortune which gave him for his historian Earl Granville's sister and the author of "Ladybird."

II. The Life of Our Life. By HENRY JAMES COLERIDGE, of the Society of Jesus. London: Burns and Oates.

THIS title belongs rather to a great work, of which the present volume, the twelfth of the quarterly series issued under the editorship of the managers of The Month, is only an instalment. Though the first to be published, it is not the first part of that long promised work. Father Coleridge in his preface gives some excellent

reasons for beginning with "the Ministry of St. John the Baptist,' which is the title and subject of this volume, the portion, namely, of our Lord's public life which is coextensive with the preaching of the Precursor. The second division of the second part of the Vita Vita Nostra will, we are assured, follow immediately. The careful reader of this work will no doubt study it, in connection with that earlier work by the same writer, of which we have just given the title. Of that Harmony, the twelve sections which are here developed in a full and accurate commentary, are translated in the appendix. We may remark, indeed, that everything is translated, the Latin and Greek quotations of the whole volume not amounting altogether to many lines. This, and the omission of nearly all references, which Father Coleridge accounts for very satisfactorily in his preface, hide in part the solid erudition amassed in every chapter; but these characteristics also help to adapt the work for the use of very different classes of readers. Its learning and scientific accuracy commend it to the preacher and the student, while the continuity of the narrative and the avoidance of, as it were, the pedantic forms of a biblical commentary will allow it to be used as a treasure of devout spiritual reading tending to make meditation on the Gospel more solid and fruitful. It is hard, for instance, to see what could be added for either of these objects to the chapter on our Lord's temptations.

As we have said, this very compactly though elegantly printed volume does not go beyond the introduction to the public life of our Lord. The arduous undertaking, for which Father Coleridge has evidently been preparing himself through many laborious years, is holy enough and important enough to make us pray fervently that God may be pleased to enable him in due time to accomplish it worthily.

III. Our Lady's Dowry; or, How England Gained and Lost that Title. By the REV. T. E. BRIDGETT, C. SS. R. London: Burns and Oates.

FATHER BRIDGETT, whose name will not sound as a stranger's to many of our readers in Ireland, has marshalled with extraordinary industry an array of testimonies to the ancient devotion of England towards the Blessed Virgin, which justify the glorious title (so miserably forfeited) of Our Lady's Dowry. Worm-eaten tomes, unpublished manuscripts, blackletter books buried in private collections-he has laid them all under tribute. These materials he has put together with great skill and care. His clear, cultivated, judicious, nay, judicial style suits well the object of the book which cannot fail to impress many outside the Church. Would that some one would give us a similar work on the devotion of Ireland to the Blessed Virgin, in which, thank God, Father Bridgett's third part, "Disloyalty," would have no counterpart. We may notice as an extraneous testimony to the Redemptorist's learning and the

« PreviousContinue »