and of great mercy: they wept for sorrow, because their benignant Creator, to whom the Church offers up prayers with weeping, loveth justice: they wept for joy, because He desireth not the death of sinners, but that they may be converted and that they may live."* They mourned after the example of the prophets, of the apostles, and of the universal Church. They mourned with a Bernard and aVincent, from a consideration of sin and its penalty. They mourned with a Francis and a Bonaventura, from a remembrance of the passion of Christ. They mourned with an Anthony and a Hermit Nicolas, from an auticipation or a retrospect of the persecutions of the Church by heretics—for the latter foresaw the Lutheran, as the former had wept from foreseeing the Arian heresy. They mourned with an Augustin and a Chrysostom, from a consideration of the miseries of the human race. They mourned with a Thomas Aquinas and an Anselm, from the depth and penetration of a mind, to which were made known the hidden and unsearchable things of the wisdom of God. Finally, with a Bellarmin, they mourned, from a sense of the necessity of tears; for the sighs of the dove, the tears of the just-tears of sorrow and tears of love—are an earnest of the remission of sins, an imitation of the virtue of Christ, the nurse of compassion, of reformation, of manners, and of charity. They indicate a contempt for the world and a love for God. They are fruitful in works of penitence and mercy during life, and a consolation which surpasseth thought at the hour of death. All this I have attempted to illustrate from the history of the ages of faith: but still, something more remains in reference to the conclusion of that benign and gracious sentence from the Mount, which proceeds to affirm that these mourners, seen to have been already blest from the operation of a general law, were, in addition, by an especial and supernatural grace to be comforted. "Beati qui lugent quia consolabuntur." They that sowed in tears were to reap in joy: going they had wept, casting abroad their seeds; but coming, they were to return with exultation, carrying their sheaves with them. In this life they had sorrow, because, as St. Augustin interprets the passage, they had lost, by their conversion to God, parents, brethren, and friends, and felt that persecution, which all holy members of the Catholic Church will have to suffer in every age,† or they had sorrow, because, according to the commentary of St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose, they mourned for their own sins and for the sins of others. They thus had sorrow; a sorrow, indeed, most sweet: for, as St. Augustin says, "Dulciores sunt lacrymæ orantium, quam gaudia Theatrorum." And though men of this world, who know not the sighs of the dove, can scarcely be persuaded of this, nevertheless, as Bellarmin says, it is most true.§ Still, in comparison of what awaiteth those that are to be of angels signed, they had sorrow; but their Lord was again to see them, and their hearts were to re *Bellarmin de Gemitu Columbæ. Lib. I. c. 1. Tract. in Psalm cxxvii. +Lib. de Serm. Dom. in Monte. joice, and their joy no one was to take from them. They were to be comforted. But who shall attempt to describe that comforting? Blessed be they that weep; and God himself shall wipe the tears from their eyes. "Those must needs be comfortable tears," adds Father Diego de Stella, "which the blessed hand of our Master doth wipe away!" Even in this brief and wretched life what comforting was theirs! St. Augustin remarks, "That it would be tedious to enumerate the instances of divine being called by the same names as human things, although they are separated from each other by an incomparable diversity.”* ."* Man, when a citizen of the earthly republic, uses God's words, and imparts to them his own infelicity. Thus, in the language which conveys heavenly truth to his understanding, to mourn is to be brought as near to God, the source of all happiness, as the present condition of human life admits. In the language of the impious city, to mourn, is to be wretched, to have every principle of joy, annihilated within us,that is, to be separated from him as far as possible. In the sense of faith, in the view of the city of God, mourning carries with it its own consolation; it is, in fact, only one component ray in the lustrous beam of that light which imparteth unclouded felicity. To mourning belongs charity, and the peace of God, along with which nothing harsh or bitter can ever enter, but only sweetness, and such happy things as have affinity with the glorious end for which souls were first created. Religion, in her severest discipline, seeks to render no one sad. She imposes misery on no one; but, as St. Bernard says, "Charitas vult te tuum sentire dolorem, ut jam non habeas unde dolere: vult te tuam scire miseriam, ut incipias miser non esse." The mourning which she inculcates stands opposed, therefore, not to joy and pleasure, as Johnson and other modern writers would insinuate, but to the sadness of the world and of death, to that unjust delight which, as the poet of old could discern, was necessarily followed by a bitter end— τὸ δὲ πὰρ δίκαν γλυκὺ πικροτάτα μενει τελευτά.† But, perhaps some one will be inclined to suggest a doubt here; and will refer, in justification of his incredulity, to what has occurred during many ages in lands where heresy has been allowed to conquer, and to impart, in show, at least, all the treasures of the earth to such as fell down to worship it. Methinks I see his mind, by thought on thought arising, sore perplexed, and with vehement desire, seeking solution of the maze! True, there are cases, and history, both ancient and modern, furnishes numerous examples of it, when every one, at the bottom of his soul, is forced to admit, that the cause of the conqueror has pleased the Providence which rules the world, that of the conquered, good men. This history, undoubtedly involves one of them; but if these persons diligently attend, they will understand that while full consolation was imparted to just mourners, even in *De Diversis Quæst. ad Simplician. Lib. I. + Epist.2. Pindar, Isth. Od. VII. the present life, to the unjust who seemed to have no need of consolation, the punishment of men was wanting, not that of God. Men defended a tyrant, and pursued and consummated what he had begun in a most detestable action; men praised a most base and pernicious sophistry; men pronounced a sentence of acquittal; men felt not in themselves the injury of their crime; men gave to these destroyers palaces and domains. I admit that all benefits from men were theirs, and greater could not be demanded; but from God,-Almighty God!— what greater punishment could fall upon them than that fury and madness? "Unless," as Cicero says, "perchance in tragedies, you think that those whom you behold, covered with wounds, and consumed with grief of body, are objects of greater wrath than those who are introduced raving and insane; but (as the Roman orator continues) the complaints and groans of Philoctetes are not so miserable as that exultation of Athamas, and those horrid dreams of matricide." These sophists, in rejecting the sweet and salutary yoke of authority; when they overthrew the houses of the religious; when they drove the best men, by sanguinary laws, from the administration of the state; when they established the principle of private judgment, that is, universal disorder; when they overthrew holy churches, to build out of them palaces, for themselves; when they profaned and abolished sacred rites; when they did not perceive that they were impious and insane; then did they suffer those punishments which alone, in many instances, in this present state of existence, are constituted, by the God of heaven, for the wickedness of men: for, indeed, the infirmity of our body is subject of itself to many sufferings, it is destroyed often by the slightest cause: the peace and joy of the soul can triumph over its pains; but the darts of God are plunged into the minds of the impious. Without doubt, some nations, in their collective capacity, have exhibited all the effects which might be expected à priori to follow from a judicial sentence registered against them in heaven; and that, too, while the citizens of the earthly republic were loud in their praises, admiring and esteeming them eminently glorious. True, indeed, great caution is necessary in coming even to any private conclusions with respect to the judgment of God, to which so many wise and holy men, like Cardinal Allen and his contemporary Bishop Watson, have wished that the punishments of states were wholly left; nor need any one be told that, according to ecclesiastical science, a general retention of sins can affect the title of no man formally; but leaving distinctions to divines, and, waving the theological argument altogether, there are historical facts crowding upon the memory, which may well incline thoughtful men to suspect secretly, that a great deal more may frequently be true than what the school requires them to believe, or even than what the caution of the school would permit them to announce. Wars, famine and pestilence, are not the only scourges of God; there are moral invasions, which proclaim, with even greater certainty, the visitation of his anger : pride, avarice, and a mind wholly given up to the worship of matter, constant external prosperity, leading to hardness of heart, and misery of the poor: the being puffed up, like the Corinthians, having no more sorrow, no mourning of the dove, but in its place the gloom and sullen groans of Babylon; the want of spiritual resources, the want or the corruption of the word of God, and the confusion of Babel succeeding to unity of religion; the rich being engulfed in stupid sensuality, and involved in an ignorance which appears to some invincible; the co-operation of all things to obscure the light of Christ, and to make men aliens in spirit from his church ;—these, and other effects following, from the removal of the candlestick, are still more evidently the inflictions of Divine justice; so that, whoever has beheld a nation, with manners thus opposite to the supernatural discipline of the city of God,―a nation, thus, to use prophetic language, adoring the beast and its image, receiving its inscription on the forehead and on the hand, may certainly be warranted in concluding, that he has seen a chastised people, not indeed without numerous particular exemptions, for the general schemes of Divine beneficence are never, in any place, wholly interrupted: but yet, in its collective character, and as far as suits the purpose of furnishing a perpetual lesson to mankind, a people already punished, already under the fearful scourge of Almighty Providence, whether the cause be to human ken fathomable or not. But in the judgment of those who observe history with the eyes of faith, this is the order of grace, and as clearly to be understood as that of nature. Peter and Paul, they say, live yet to mark our doings. Many a time ere now the sons have, for the sire's transgressions, wailed: and that living justice, upon the primal seat, vested with mysterious power, when it denounces pride no longer tolerable, binds it not in vain. The very heathen philosopher could discern what, in the secrets of Divine judgment, would be most terrible for man. "It was," says Maximus of Tyre, "from transgressing the eternal law that Alcibiades was unfortunate; not when he was summoned from Sicily by the Athenians, nor when he fled beyond Attica; these were small calamities, for Alcibiades in exile was greater than those who remained at home; he was honored by the Lacedæmonians; he fortified Deceleia ; he became the friend of Tissaphernes, and the general of Sparta; but the punishment of Alcibiades began long before; it was ordained by an older law, and by older judges. When he left the Lyceum, was condemned by Socrates, and proscribed by philosophy-then it was that Alcibiades was banished and undone." And now, what remains but to express a fervent hope, that some of the many mourners of earth may be induced, by reflections such as these, drawn from the testimonies of past ages, to approach nearer than they have ever hitherto done to contemplate their history. For there is but one way to escape evil, which is by flying to the same citadel in which the ancient Christians stood, and thence taking up the same arms as were used by them; but, from it, alas! how great a distance are the men of our age! "O quam longe recessimus ab apostolica disciplina," cried Bellarmin, "et quam rara nunc est, quæ olim frequentissima erat, gratia lacrymarum.' * De Gemitu Columbæ, Lib. I. 9. Men of sorrows, who mourn with an unvailing, an unblessed grief, you may have heard how the Sage of Greece exhorted his anxious disciples to search, not only into the wisdom of their own country, but also into that of the barbarous nations, whose opinions and customs they should, he said, thoroughly investigate in search of some epode, to deliver them from the fear of death, sparing neither riches nor labor, as there is nothing for which they could more wisely expend both.* In some respects, you stand in the same position as these disciples; in the midst of supposed superior civilization, and in spite of your profession, still conscious of being unpossessed of a practical remedy against that dread of death from which it is clear not all the advance of science, nor all the refinements of your philosophic and liberal views of religion can deliver you at your last hours. Be not then ashamed to imitate the humility prescribed to them, and take that salutary hint from old philosophy, and apply it to the present circumstances, and to your own condition. You call the ages of faith dark ages in the world's history; and you suppose that the generation of men which succeeded, from the fall of the Roman empire till the sixteenth century, were a race of barbarians, at least in comparison with those which belong to the ancient and modern civilization. Well, be it so. Let us, for a moment grant all that you demand; let us call them dark and barbarous ages. Literature, you say, will have it so ; but remember that philosophy may take very little heed of the judgment of literature. At all events, it is never scared by a reproachful epithet; and you must admit, with Plato, that it matters not the least, whether you have recourse to Greeks or barbarians, provided you can but discover somewhere that epode, that efficacious remedy, to enable you to render blest your sorrows, your sickness, and your death. At present, in the midst of all those modern lights, of all this boasted civilization, so contrary to the simplicity which characterizes the city of God, you mourn ; you fear sickness; and, above all, you shrink in terror from the thought of death; at, least, you cannot pretend that men in these days die with as much tranquillity, and with as bright and steadfast a hope as the men whose dissolution we have been witnessing in the ages which you designate as those of monastic darkness. You mourn, and your mourning is avowedly without hope, without a blessing. Indeed, your own guides affirm that, for sorrow, there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned, by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence: it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. There is nothing, in the modern civilization which can make it otherwise. Well, then, will it not be reasonable to try what may be found among the barbarians? "O, wearied spirits! Come, come and hold discourse with us, and be by none else restrained." "You have no comfort in your calamity," as the poet testifies, "but that of tears, and the cries of lamentation, and the muse which *Plato Phædo, 78. |