Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

...

any manner been intended as a weapon that could possibly affect the existing relations of the Church towards the State. The civil powers of the Christian world have hitherto stood in peaceful relation with an Infallible Church, and that relation has been often recognised and declared by the Church in its Councils. The Vatican Council had, therefore, no new matter to treat on this point' (p. 5). So writes the Archbishop on the occasion when recognising the right of the English people to learn from me what I believe and what I teach,' he comes forward with a profession of faith that purports to be full, frank, and conclusive, and which, moreover, appeals to the justice and to the good sense of the Christian people of this country.' It is, however, the melancholy fact that notwithstanding this solemn assurance of unreserved declaration, the words just quoted stand in hopeless contradiction to what was given forth by the Archbishop to the circle of his own co-religionists in the Pastoral which he indited, with the express purpose of instructing them as to what was the contemplated aim of the coming Council. Here

is what he said on that occasion :—

'Another cause requiring the deliberation of the Church is the change of its relations, both those of the Holy See and of the several Churches of its Communion, to the civil powers of every country. . . . The old forms of usage and of arrangement need revision, in order to bring into peaceful co-operation the two supreme authorities on which the welfare of society reposes. If the Governments of the world know their own highest interests, they will recognise the necessity of entering into loyal and honourable relations of confidence and co-operation with a power which pervades, sometimes a large proportion, sometimes the whole population, subject to their civil rule. The Church pervades at least one-fourth, if not a third, of the population of Great Britain. . . . It is of the highest moment to the civil powers of the world to re-adjust their relations with the Catholic Church, for so long as the public laws are at variance with its divine rights and liberties internal peace and fidelity are hardly to be secured. Poland and Ireland are proofs beyond question." -Petri Privilegium, p. 83.

These words require no comment, as they admit of no explaining away; and the Archbishop is bound to admit that in his frank declaration for the enlightenment of English Protestants he was gravely oblivious of what he said when addressing only the Faithful.

There is still one further matter to be noted in connection with this passage. Ireland is held up as an example of how impossible it is to secure the fidelity' of a people unless public laws be made to accommodate themselves-to what? the demands of conscience? no! but to the divine

rights and liberties' of the Church, amongst which, necessarily, must be comprised whatever can be crammed within the elastic compass of the Third Chapter. No wonder this awkwardly candid slip of the pen is carefully kept out of sight in a treatise where the Archbishop is strenuous in denying that religious interests can be made to exert a disturbing leverage on political allegiance; and in professing his strong loyalty to the Queen, though he does, in a way not very intelligible, couple that loyalty with an expression of equally strong affection for the laws of good King Edward. No one would question for a moment the Archbishop's personal wish to prove loyal in an emergency. The question is how far the principles he advocates are, not such as in consistency should, and in practice actually are being attended with results which can obstruct his own personal desires. In this matter of Irish political disaffection, which the Archbishop distinctly identifies with religious sentiment, how, according to his own expressed views of Catholic duty, could he influence his co-religionists towards toleration in the hypothesis that a majority of the Irish people were to become Protestants? The Archbishop affirms that nothing can be more contrary to his principles than religious coercion; and he claims for Catholics that they have always upheld principles of tolerance, the example brought forward being the Constitution of Maryland. Mr. Gladstone justly expresses a belief that the case does not bear out the construction put on it by the Archbishop. Indeed it is incomprehensible how the action of Lord Baltimore, and of a batch of emigrants, can be invoked as an authority for the practice of the Church. Against the spirit of toleration exhibited by Lord Baltimore, a lay peer who never had any ecclesiastical credentials, we might set the spirit of persecution exhibited in the last century by a Sovereign, at the same time a high dignitary of the Church, the Prince Bishop of Salzburg, who cruelly drove his Protestant subjects into exile. The Archbishop is correct in saying that Papal Bulls have forbidden the baptism of children without assent of the parents; and that doctors have not advocated, as a principle, coercion into the Faith of populations that had never been in it. But he must know that the practice in Rome as regards the former has been different, as was made notorious by the Mortara case, while as concerns the latter point it would be desirable to have some more precise definition. The Prince Bishop of Salzburg evidently held that a Protestantism of more than a century was not yet entitled to security. How long a period, for instance, would the Archbishop consider conditional for a Protestant Ireland to acquire in his eyes moral safeguards against being coerced back into the old Faith in

the

6

the event of a Catholic power acquiring the physical force? From the Archbishop's words we can gain no satisfactory light. The point is curious only in speculation, the true safeguard being the physical condition of things. Still it is the fact that he recognises distinctly religion to be the main factor in Irish politics that he considers Irish disaffection natural, because springing from a religious source and that he clearly justifies the Pope's interference in political concerns whenever he has the physical power to do so. The Italian people,' are his words, have been for twenty years spectators of a Revolution which has overthrown the Sovereigns of Naples and Tuscany.' It is to be observed that the case is not limited to the rebellion in the Pope's own States, but is expressly stretched to other principalities. What,' he continues to say, 'has been the action of the Pope in respect to the Italian Revolution? He has said that to co-operate in the Italian Revolution was not lawful' (p. 38). In our last number we gave documentary evidence how the Pope had directed the offices of the Church to be administered in a manner to act as a deterrent from faithfully fulfilling the duties consequent on military conscription in Italy. It is of no small value now to have from the Archbishop this indirect confirmation of the perfect authenticity of these instruments.

Here we take leave of this discussion; but in parting company we cannot avoid referring to an incident of the hour that affords enhanced proof of the different estimation in which the supreme Head of the Church holds the two divines on whose words we have principally dwelt. While we are in the act of writing, tidings come how the Pope has bestowed on the one the highest grace in his gift. Him whom we have spoken of as Archbishop must henceforth be styled His Eminence. To the other divine no honour of any kind has been paid. Dr. Newman remains, after his 'Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,' the same unnoticed Oratorian Father as before. Yet Pius IX. has been singularly lavish of Approbations and Benedictions on writers to his mind. More than a dozen such Apostolical favours are on record to individuals who have vindicated the doctrine of the Vatican Decrees. Neither Missive nor Benediction, however, has been transmitted from the Vatican to the eminent divine, whose advocacy alone has had any serious effect in calming suspicion in this country. What has been showered on Veuillot and on Ward, that has been sullenly withheld from Newman; and in this withholding lies the authoritative declaration that the language of Newman is no language with which Rome will identify herself. The meaning put by Dr. Newon the Papal Acts is one now plainly not endorsed by Vol. 138.-No. 276.

man

2 K

the

6

the Pope; and that fact carries with it a signal justification of the warning note raised by Mr. Gladstone-not against isolated utterances here and there-but against the smooth and soft exterior of a system which is dangerous to the foundation of civil order,' if it should indeed be enduringly supported by the whole strength of that powerful organization which has been embodied in the old Constitutions of the Latin Church.

ART. VI.-The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to his Death. Continued by a Narrative, &c. &c. By Horace Waller, F.R.G.S., Rector of Twywell, Northampton. In two volumes 8vo., with Portrait and Illustrations. London, 1874.

AMIDST

MIDST the long and universal anxiety for the fate of Livingstone, and the profound sorrow at the tidings of his end, there was not wanting a sense of misgiving lest we had too easily accepted his self-sacrifice, and a fear of retribution by the loss of those records, without which his last seven years' toils and sufferings would seem to have been offered in vain.

6

In vain for us, but not for the 'infants of humanity' among whom, and for whom, he daily wended his weary way. For the first and highest debt due to the memory of LIVINGSTONE is that we should not invert the order of the objects for which, in the uttermost sense of the word, he spent his life. He was, first and last, the Christian missionary; next, or rather an inseparable part of the Gospel message of freedom, was (in the words of his friend and Editor) a sincere trust that slavery, "the great open sore of the world," as he called it, might, under God's good guidance, receive healing at his hands.' His persevering and enthusiastic labours in the cause of geographical science were always subordinate to those higher aims, prompted by 'a fervent hope that others would follow him after he had removed those difficulties which are comprised in a ignorance of the physical features of a new country.'

profound

Of his primary work the record is on high, and its im perishable fruits remain on earth. The seeds of the Word of Life, implanted lovingly, with pains and labour, and, above all, with faith; the out-door scenes of the simple Sabbath service; the testimony of HIM, to whom the worship was paid, given in words of such simplicity as were fitted to the comprehension of the dark-skinned listeners;-these seeds will not have been scattered by him in vain. Nor have they been sown in words alone, but in deeds, of which some part of the honour

will redound to his successors. The teaching by forgiveness of injuries, by trust, however unworthy the trusted,-by that confidence which imputed his own noble nature to those whom he would win,-by the practical enforcement of the fact, that a man might promise and perform, might say the thing he meant;-of this teaching by good deeds, as well as by the words of truth and love, the successor who treads in the steps of LIVINGSTONE, and accomplishes the discovery he aimed at and pointed the way to, will assuredly reap the benefit.

The records of his labours for progress towards that discovery were of a more perishable kind, and their possession is a gain beyond our expectation, or perhaps our deserts. If a merchant makes a venture with insufficient means, he meets with little sympathy for a loss, which is, after all, but a loss of money, time, and labour, and may be recovered by a more prudent investment. But if a traveller, exploring an unknown land, be inadequately provided for his adventure, the man himself may perish with all that he has noted, the aim and fruit of all his toil and travel. The fate of Leichhardt in Australia, and of other gallant, accomplished, single-hearted explorers, furnishes sad examples of miserable miscalculation, stupid indifference, or false economy, in Communities and States concerned in gaining knowledge of the unknown tracts of the globe.

6

England has been especially favoured in the recovery of the record which redeems the last seven years' labour of the most devoted and experienced of her African explorers from being, in their geographical results, a waste of energy-the tracts travelled over not blank-the venture not a total wreck. 'The faint hope,' as the Editor truly describes it, that some of his journals might survive the disaster, has been realized beyond the most sanguine expectations;' and 'we have not to deplore the loss of a single entry, from the time of Livingstone's departure from Zanzibar in the beginning of 1866, to the day when his note-book dropped from his hand in the village of Ilala, at the end of April, 1873.'

[ocr errors]

The work recorded, though left to be finished by other labourers, was the fit crown of Livingstone's discoveries in Africa. From long personal friendship, and especially from correspondence with him of late years,' Mr. Waller testifies, 'that Livingstone wanted just some such gigantic problem, as that which he attacked at the last, to measure his strength against' -the determination of the true, the primary, the real sources of the Nile, is abundantly shown to be the explorer's favourite aim. He had studied the history of prior attempts, of old guesses, of foregone or inadequately supported conclusions.

2K 2

He

« PreviousContinue »