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in the English Church, which, far from originating either in the formularies of the Church itself, or in the bishops who might most naturally be taken as the representatives of her authority; on the contrary, if it be not actually condemned by both, cannot claim from either more than the merest toleration,-is, after all, a voice in, not of the Church;-a subtle refinement of private interpretation, without weight, because without commission; without permanence, because unembodied in any determinate organ; without utility, because incapable of being applied in any practical emergency; and far from being calculated to create and preserve unity, itself the very occasion of discord and disunion, by claims which cannot be supported and which will not be obeyed? And how can it be otherwise in a body which comprises members so motley and incongruous? What can possibly be hoped from, we will not say the union, but even the co-existence of two tendencies so utterly irreconcilable. What permanence, nay, what passing fruit can be hoped from an attempt to engraft Catholic doctrines upon a system whose institutions are essentially Protestant to their very core; to cherish Catholic feelings, and enkindle or keep alive a Catholic spirit in a Church which it is first necessary to "unprotestantize,”* as a preliminary to its reform? Men's views are dependent on external things, and take their tone and color from the scenes in which they live and the objects by which they are surrounded. Will the mere change of name produce an alteration of spirit? Will the substitution of Catholic for Protestant, and the adoption of the technical language in which some of the leading doctrines of Catholicity are embodied,—especially when this is unauthoritative, if not against authority, be sufficient to eradicate from the constitution of the Church, the inveterate Protestantism in which her present form originated, and which centuries of rampant anti-Catholic prejudice have hardened and ground in? Alas! the lifegiving doctrines of Catholicity, to whatever extent they may be embraced by indivi

* See the British Critic, No. lxiii (July, 1842), p. 211, and following.

duals, must ever be strangers in such companionship; a theory without a practice; a beautiful dream without a reality. No wonder it should be thought by many persons that the doctrine of apostolical succession is formal, unpractical, little fitted to cope with the social evils under which we labor."* Well may men sigh for the 'secret intercourse between priest and penitent, by far the best adapted machinery which the world has seen, to keep alive that keen sensitiveness of conscience which worldly trouble so miserably deadens ;† for the sight of holy men, voluntarily renouncing the comforts of wealth, and reducing themselves to their level, in order to minister to their spiritual and bodily wants!' While these and the other similar devices of piety which the Catholic Church alone cherishes, which are the necessary complement of her doctrines, and, as it were, the visible form in which her spirit is embodied, are wanting,—so long it is vain to talk of a 'Catholic system.' So long it will be but an array of names imposing but unreal; so long will faith be formal and unpractical, with a blight and a chill upon its energies; so long must rush upon the mind the startling question with which Mr. Faber closes his volume, in the Stranger's' words: 'You have led me through a land of closed churches and hushed bells, of unlighted altars and unstoled priests; IS ENGLAND UNDER AN INTERDICT?' "

In another place, Mr. Faber reverts to the subject of a monastic life, citing the Benedictine institute as an example. We must make room for the whole of this exquisite passage. Our traveller has reached the memorable plain of Marathon.

"We are entering the low vine-clad convent which is to be our home for the night, and the priest is descending from the small chapel on the hill, where he has been saying the afternoon prayers, and the little boy who makes the responses is with him. He leads a happy life, yon old Greek priest. From sun-rise to sun-set, except at prayertime, he smokes a cherry-stick pipe, and is happy. He threatens the cattle with evil

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eye, and the people with anathema, and kids are brought him, and he is fed, and paid, and feared, and the cherry-stick pipe never goes out, and he sits under the shade of the convent fig-tree, and he gazes on Marathon always. The green lizard on the wall beside the tank is not happier than the long-bearded convent priest. But what if more be required of the one than of the other? Then it is not so well!

"Nature's fearful and most sweet sounds blend into one harmony, and nothing remains to offend the ear. Throughout the bright night was the air filled with the howling of wolves and the singing of nightin. gales, and the two were pleasant together. The woody mountain side was alive with nightingales, and they sang incessantly and loud. I was at rest in a Greek convent on the south western verge of the plain of Marathon, kept wakeful by the rough and tender serenade which overpowered the low voice of the shrunken brook. There was novelty enough in my position to make me feel no want of sleep. About midnight the Stranger appeared. I was the first to accost him.

"What!" said I, "in a Greek convent?" "Not a word of that," replied he. "Come forth into the star-light. I come to remind you of Latin thoughts and things. Have you thought of what I said to you at Ancona ?"*

The following is part of the conversation alluded to.

"You are now," said the Stranger, "leaving be hind you the last avenue to Rome. The road by Spoleto would soon lead you across the narrow peninsula to the eternal city."

"Certainly," replied I, laughing, "it requires an effort to pass by Rome; but I shall console myself with the thought that 'earth has something yet to show,' the haunted hills of the legitimate capital of Christendom."

"Are you not afraid,” said he, "to acknowledge that title?"

"No," I answered, "Rome has been a marvellously fruitful mother, and the curious diligence of antiquarians cannot alter the fact that all we of the west, at least, are her children.

The papacy,"

said I, "is really an awful page in the history of man, and the lower we stoop to decypher the mysterious characters in which it is written, the more manifestly do they appear divine."

"This," said he, "seems to have struck the world so early as the council of Chalcedon in the middle of the fifth century."

"Yen," I replied, "the fathers of Chalcedon strove to make out the primacy of St. Peter's successors to be a political matter only."

VOL. II.-No. 10.

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In reply to the above question our traveller is free to avow, that "he appreciates the magnificence of the idea of the papacy, and is not slow to admit the many blessings of which it has been the cause," but his convictions "do not amount to making it a duty to adhere to the chair of St. Peter."*

The supposed dialogue between our traveller and the mysterious Stranger here takes a discursive turn. The spirit of the papacy and the power of the Church lead to a series of reflections upon the punishment of death for heresy. Among other observations is the following:

"You will have no more of it," said I. “No,” he added with a half smile; “you

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"But," he answered, "the feelings of the Christian world did not respond to their notion. It was, I think, thrown out by them as a feeler. However, it did not satisfy men, and carried no influence along with it."

"Had it been but an affair of politics," said I, "it would not have kept its wonderful hold upon the reverence of the faithful when Belisarius and Narses had reduced Rome into one of the provincial cities of the eastern empire. . . . The early fathers saw something about Rome, they hardly knew what; something which distinguished her from other churches. One of the heathen emperors, Aurelius, if I mistake not, referred a dispute to the bishop of Rome in some such way as to show a belief in his mind that his Christian subjects looked up to the chair of Rome. He was doubtless expressing something which he had observed. Some of the fathers, as Tertullian, speak of the peculiar happiness of the Church of Rome, where the two apostles were martyred, and St. John confessed. Others seem to regard it in a peculiar way as the only clearly apostolical chair of the west; others again, as being in type as a church what St. Peter was as an apostle; and indeed this is true, for Rome is a type of the whole Church. I too see even in early times something distinguishing that Church very honorably, an almost miraculous fecundity in planting Churches. Then other early writers mentioned her long freedom from heresy as something peculiar, and calling her the Virgin Church.' A passage in St. Gregory Nazianzeu's poem on his own life shows with what affectionate reverence even the eastern doctors regarded her; and it is the more striking in that Gregory himself was patriarch of Constantinople."

*How far such an avowal is reconcilable with Mr. Faber's previous declaration, that "the characters of the papacy manifestly appear divine," we leave the lovers of consistency to determine.

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have too many heresiarchs now; there is safety in a multitude. But," he continued, "let us away with this cynical strain. It ill beseems either the hour or the place. To sit in judgment and pass hard sentences is an unfitting boldness amid this tranquil beauty. It is we who sympathise not with the earth, not earth that sympathises not with us. Listen to that long howl above yonder copse. What a power has silence to absorb and incorporate herself with every sound that comes not from man or human toil! The howling of the wolf, and the baying of the watch dog do not interrupt the deep tranquillity. They enter into it, and form part of it. How divine a thing is silence!"

"Yes," replied I; "and with what wisdom did the authors of monastic observances make it a part of their discipline!"

"You will generally find," he answered, "most deep sagacity in the ascetic system of old times. It is a profitable study, because of the numerous holy uses and spiritual meanings comprised within it, the gradual contributions of many generations of saints."

"It seems," said I, "at first sight strange, that so large a portion of the practical rules of Scripture should concern the government of the tongue."

"And," replied he, "what a key-stone to the arch of all such precepts is made by those words of our Blessed Saviour, 'By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned.' And as in Scripture, so in the Latin hymns of the Breviary, how numerous and beautiful are the allusions to silence as a penitential or elevating discipline, and in what singular combinations do they many times occur. We grow into an intelligent apprehension of them. It is very wonderful to observe the deeply scriptural character of all the systems of [Christian] antiquity, whether dogmatical or ascetic. A lively regard for and reverent custody of tradition seem to bring, as a natural consequence, a deep understanding of Scripture, and an affectionate dwelling upon it, and realizing of it, in its minutest parts. Though portions of Scripture, Levitical details, topographical

catalogues, or Hebrew genealogies, appear to have been full of Christ, full of outlines of his Church, so the affectionate temper of early times, where now to us the lamps have gone out. Even the genealogy of our Blessed Lord himself is often left unread in churches, as having no springs of heavenly meditation flowing from it. Yet if we open the commentaries of the fathers, what exuberant and beautiful wisdom springs beneath their touch from the dry desert of hard names, overflowing it all, and making it green with spiritual herbs good for the use of man. And this use of silence, as part of the old ascetic system, is another instance of the fidelity with which the record of antiquity, as a pure mirror, reflected the faintest shadows of Scriptural objects upon itself. Its uses as a penance, and again as an habitual restraint of a dangerous member, are very obvious; but such views as these fall short of ancient ideas on the subject. I have often been struck with the word fed, as applied to silence, as if there were some way in which silence feeds the soul. And cannot we in these times see some way in which it feeds the soul? A silent contemplation of heavenly mysteries, without shaping them into thoughts or melting them into words, may be to the soul what a silent study of some surpassing model is to the artist. It becomes a source of beauty, unconsciously transferring itself to the spirit of the beholder. It is like a stamp, whose reverted images are unintelligible until they are impressed upon another substance, when we may read and interpret them. St. Ephrem is very bold and majestic; he calls silence the language whereby the Father and the Son converse, understood by the co-equal Spirit only, and above even angelic comprehension."

"But," he continued, "it is not only Scripture which is with such affectionate fidelity, represented by the mind of antiquity; the objects of external nature are filled with a sort of symbolical theology, and elevated into the ritual of the Church. Earth's mysteries are sufficiently interpreted to enable us to consecrate common objects, and through them our daily life, which lies among common objects. Doubtless tradi

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tion was one great fountain of this knowledge to the ancient believers; but this aided them also to discern them in the deep places and bye-paths of Scripture. The one which I would specify now, as connected with the public and private devotions of Christians, is the frequent recurrence in nature of the powerful and hallowed sign of the cross. This is one of the safeguards against sin in common use among the ascetics; and there was no Christian who was ashamed to sign himself with the sign of the cross, especially when, from any sudden and apparently causeless irruption of bad thoughts, he has reason to believe his chamber filled with unclean spirits. Surely it is a great privilege not to be forbidden the use of that effectual token. a serious man how quickly it raises a fence between the world and himself! How does it remind him of the new birth, when he rises in the morning! How does it meekly defy the evil angels when he leaves his chamber for the duties of the day! How does it bless his bed when he retires to rest! How does it, as it were, absolve him in the dead of night from the guilt of miserable dreams! How does it stay fits of sudden anger! How is it a very real and felt contact with the invisible world! O blessed sign! how art thou like the finger of the Lord, the touch of One whom we love and fear! How fearless, too, was the use of this dread admonition among the saints of old; for what is wanting in Tertullian's catalogue?—At every stir and movement, at every coming in and going out, at putting on the clothes, and binding on the sandals, at the bath and at the banquet, at the lighting of the lamps, at lying down or sitting, whithersoever the conversation of our life leadeth us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross.' And nature too was full of this sign to them when they walked abroad. Not only were the pools of water and the fields of corn instructive shadows of the font and the altar, and the olive yards of the holy unction, and the vines of the redeeming blood, but the cross, too, was every where, among the boughs, and in the clouds, and on the plains, and on the skins of animals. If St. Ephrem saw a little bird fly, he remembered that with outstretched wings it

was making the sign of the cross before the eye of heaven, and that if it closed its wings and marred the sign, it straightway fell to the earth. If he trusted himself on shipboard, he looked up to the mast, and behold! a cross; and when they spread the sail, it was like the body of One hanging on the cross, propelling the ship; and forthwith the ship became the Church, and the fierce sea the world, and there was one on board whose presence is our haven. I would that I could win the habit of so regarding the beautiful scenery of my daily walks that when my body is driven out into the air for recreation, my soul might feed on beautiful symbols, and be kept pure by images of heaven, and be drawn to Christ by a thousand sacred admonitions. But this is not a matter of the intellect. Such a habit must be won by continual meditation on divine things, by a love of Christ, and an imitation of Him. Leave off wrangling and let go high-mindedness. Throw yourselves into antiquity; its controversial witness is a great thing, but its beautiful spirit is a far greater. Strive to imbibe it; incorporate yourself into it. Fearlessly contract habits of thought alien to those you have now; and realize the truth that there is neither space nor time in the communion of saints."

At this moment the rim of the sun appeared above the mountain. "The earth's bridegroom cometh," said the Stranger, and he made the sign of the cross. We descended towards the convent.

"Is not," said I, "this little monastery a useless burden to the poor valley and circumjacent villages?"

"At present," said he, "the lamps are gone out within it, but they may be rekindled at any time. And be careful how you ever pull down a form wherein a spirit has once abided. A hundred lichens and medicinal mosses may cling and find nourishment between the stones."

"The priest," said I, "seems to have a low notion of a happy life."

"Yet," he answered, "who shall say that the recitation of the liturgies makes no stir in the invisible world, and brings out no blessing from it? The days may be at

hand for this monastery, when the true happy life shall be lived therein by a pious brotherhood of Greeks."

"What do you call the true happy life?" said I.

"The life," he answered, "bound one to another by a threefold cord of obedience, silence, and humility; the life, in short, which is lived by the spiritual children of St. Benedict in the west. Thus their days

are passed: The monks rise at the eighth hour of the night, that is, at two in the morning, to join in the nocturnal office, or vigils. The time which remains from vigils to matins, which are celebrated at sunrise, is employed in learning the psalms, in holy reading, in meditation. The vigil service commences with Deus in adjutorium, &c. It is followed by the third psalm, the Gloria Patri, ninety-fourth psalm, and the hymn of St. Ambrose. Twelve of the psalms are to be chanted immediately after the hymn of St. Ambrose. On finishing six, however, the monks are allowed to sit; and after the Benedicite by the abbot, they are to read, each in turn, three lessons, at the end of each all joining in a response, and rising at the Gloria Patri, in reverence to the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity. Then come the six remaining psalms, followed by a lesson from the New Testament, and the Kyrie eleison. On Sunday this vigil service is deemed insufficient. After the Deus in adjutorium, and six psalms, come four lessons and four responses, after the last all rising to chant the Gloria Patri, next come six psalms with the antiphon, and four other lessons with the responses; then three canticles from the prophets, the Hallelujah, the Deus in adjutorium, and the Benedicite. Four lessons more from the New Testament, with their responses, are followed by the Te Deum, which the abbot commences; and the same dignitary reads the Gospel, all standing devoutly, and then is chanted Te laus decet, &c. The services besides the virgil, were seven, in conformity with the practice of the psalmist, seven times in the day have I uttered thy praise.' At prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and complin, which, as the names import, are celebrated at the first, third, sixth, and ninth

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hours, at sunset, and before retiring to rest, hours corresponding to six, nine, twelve, three, half past four, and about six o'clock, and which are called the diurnal hours, a certain number of psalms, canticles, and responses are chanted, in such manner that the whole Psalter is read once a week. This, says St. Benedict, is as little as we can do, considering that our forefathers read the whole every day. After matins, in summer, come four hours of labor, from six to ten o'clock, either in the fields, or at some mechanical employment; then comes reading, followed by sext at twelve o'clock, when the brethren dine. After dinner, meditation during about one hour; and though it is then only half past one, the nones, which should be celebrated at three, are repeated, that the monks may again go out to labor till half past four, when they return to vespers. If the brethren, during their labors, are near the monastery, they repair to the oratory at the canonical hours; if they are distant, they kneel in the fields, to repeat certain prayers. In winter, after the tierce, which is said an hour earlier, namely at eight o'clock, the monks go to their agricultural labors, and work till nones, or three o'clock, when they dine. Their meals are two only, dinner and supper; and at both, flesh meat is prohibited. During meals, some brother reads aloud from the Scriptures, the expositions of the fathers, or some edifying book. As to appa rel, each monk has two tunics, two cowls, and a scapulary, one for the night, the other for the day. Each has a separate bed; ten or twenty sleep in the same dormitory, which, throughout the night, is lighted by a lamp, and superintended by one of the deans, who is always an aged man. After confession no word is allowed to be spoken by any of the brethren, but one of the number usually reads aloud. Mental prayer concludes the arduous service of the day,-a service which appears too much for human

nature.

No monk is allowed to receive letters or presents without the superior's permission, and if the necessary business of the community leads him outside of the walls, he first commends himself to the prayers of the rest, and on his return passes

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