society is not only in some degree virtuous, but must be continually rising to sublimer excellence, to more heroic sanctity. The advantage of having Mary always before the minds and hearts of our daughters, as their model in humility, purity, sweetness, and obedience, in simplicity, modesty, and love, is not easily estimated. Trained up in the love and imitation of her virtues, they are trained to be wives and mothers, or holy virgins, spouses of Jesus Christ, sisters of the afflicted, and mothers of the poor. The sentimentalists of the day tell us that it is woman's mission to redeem society from its present corruption, and we believe it, though not in their sense, or for their reasons. Woman has generally retained more of Catholic faith and morality than has in these evil times been retained by the other sex, and is more open to good impressions, or rather, offers fewer obstacles to the operations of grace. During the worst times in France, when religion was abolished, when the churches were desecrated, the clergy massacred, and the profane rites of the impure Venus were revived, the great majority of the women of France retained their faith, and cherished the worship of the Virgin. We have no sympathy with those who make woman an idol, and clamor for what they call "woman's rights," but we honor woman, and depend on her, under God, to preserve and diffuse Catholic morality in the family, and if in the family, then in the state. There is always hope for society as long as woman remains believing and chaste, and nothing will contribute so much to her remaining so, as having the Blessed Virgin presented to her from the first dawn of her affections as her Mother, her Queen, her sweet Lady, her type of womanhood, a model which it must be the unremitting labor of her life to copy. Undoubtedly the love and service of Mary are restricted to Catholics, and to those Catholics not undeserving of the name; but this is no objection to our general conclusion. We are too apt to forget that the Church is in the world, and that it is through her that society is redeemed, - too apt to forget that the quiet and unobtrusive virtues of Catholics, living in the midst of a hostile world, are always powerful in their operations on that world; and that the world is converted, not by the direct efforts which we make to convert it, but by the efforts we make to live ourselves as good Catholics, and to save our own souls. The little 30 THIRD SERIES. VOL. I. NO. II. handful of sincere and devout Catholics, the little family of sincere and earnest clients of Mary, seeking to imitate her virtues in their own little community, are as leaven hidden in three measures of meal. Virtue goes forth from them, diffuses itself on all sides, till the whole is leavened. No matter how small the number, the fact that even some keep alive in the community the love and veneration of Mary, the true ideal of womanhood, the true patroness of the Christian family, the mother of chaste love, adorned with all the virtues, and to whom the Holy Ghost says, "Thou art all beautiful, my dove," must have a redeeming effect on the whole community, and sooner or later must banish impurity, and revive the love of holy purity and reverence for Catholic morality. For, in the second place, the worship of Mary is profitable, not only by the subjective effect it has upon her lovers, but also by the blessings she obtains for them, and, at their solicitation, for others. In these later times we have almost lost sight of religion in its objective character. The world has ceased to believe in the Real Presence; it denies the whole sacramental character of Christianity, and laughs at us when we speak of any sacrament as having any virtue not derived from the faith and virtue of the recipient. The whole non-Catholic world makes religion a purely subjective affair, and deduces all its truth from the mind, and all its efficacy from the heart, that accepts and cherishes it, so that even in religion, which is a binding of man anew to God, man is every thing, and God is nothing. At bottom that world is atheistical, at best epicurean. It either denies God altogether, or excludes him from all care of the world he has created. It has no understanding of his providence, no belief in his abiding presence with his creatures, or his free and tender providence in their behalf. Faith it assumes is profitable only in its subjective operations, prayer only in its natural effect on the mind and heart of him who prays, and love only in its natural effect on the affections of the lover. This cold and atheistical philosophy is the enlightenment, the progress, of our age. But we who are Christians know that it is false; we know that God is very near unto every one of us, is ever free to help us, and that there is nothing that he will not do for them that love him truly, sincerely, and confide in him, and in him only. Mary is the channel through which her Divine Son dispenses all his graces and blessings to us, and he loves and delights to load with his favors all who love and honor her. Thus to love and serve her is the way to secure his favor, and to obtain those graces which we need to resist the workings of concupiscence, and to maintain the purity of our souls, and of our bodies, which are the temple of God. She says, "I love them that love me," and we cannot doubt that she will favor with her always successful intercession those whom she loves. She will obtain grace for us to keep ourselves chaste, and will in requital of our love to her obtain graces even for those without, that they may be brought in and healed of their wounds and putrefying sores. So that under either point of view the love and worship of Mary, the Mother of God, a mother yet a virgin, always a virgin, virgin most pure, most holy, most humble, most amiable, most loving, most merciful, most faithful, most powerful, cannot fail to enable us to overcome the terrible impurity of our age, and to attain to the virtues now most needed for our own individual salvation, and for the safety of society. The In this view of the case, we must feel that nothing is more important than the cultivation of the love and worship of Mary. She is our life, our sweetness, our hope, and we must suffer no sneers of those without, no profane babblings about " Mariolatry," to move us, or in the least deter us from giving our hearts to Mary. We must fly to her protection as the child flies to its mother, and seek our safety and our consolation in her love, in her maternal embrace. We are safe only as we repose our heads upon her bosom, and draw nourishment from her breasts. world lieth in wickedness, festering in moral corruption, and it is a shame to name the vices and iniquity which everywhere abound. Hardly has childhood blossomed into youth, before it withers into old age. We have no youth, we have only infancy and worn-out manhood. What is to become of us? Our help is in thee, sweet Mother, and we fly to thy protection, and, O, protect us, thy children, and save us from the evil communications of this world, lost to virtue, and enslaved to the enemy of our souls! ART. V. Compendium Theologiæ Moralis, Auctore JoANNE PETRO GURY, S. J., in Collegio Romano, et in Seminario Valsensi prope Anicium, Professore. Lugduni et Parisiis. 1850. 2 tom. 18mo. In our Review for January last, we continued our remarks on the excellent book of Father Gury, and we hope to be able to bring them to a close in our present number. In our January article we cited a few passages bearing upon topics which are now of peculiar interest to Catholics in this country. The prospects of Catholicity here, owing to the mercy of God and to the portentous emigration from Catholic countries, during the last twenty years, are undeniably good. Yet the visible and invisible enemies of the Church seem to hope from that very emigration disastrous results for the Papal Chair. Convenerunt principes in unum adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus. They meet at World's Conventions, and at Madiai gatherings, and they endeavor, with a zeal worthy a better cause, to convince Protestants, who are, or profess to be, alarmed at what they call the growth of Popery in America, that the second, or, at farthest, the third, generation of Catholics in this country will be any thing but Papists. It cannot be denied, that, humanly speaking, their anticipations are warranted by facts. No human institution, were it the most cunning production of the concentrated thought and labor of the most cunning men, could possibly withstand the opposition which the Church in this country has met, meets, and is to meet. The same thing is true of the Church, at a hundred epochs of her history which we could name. Within the memory of men now living, two illustrations of this matter have been permitted by the providence of God. The crusade of Young Europe against the Church, in the time of Napoleon the First, and the hardly less general attack of 1846-49, are the cases to which we refer. It certainly must cause no little wonder among the princes who met together to conspire against the Lord and against his Christ, that their well-digested plans should have failed in so signal and ignoble a manner. We can easily conceive the deep and deadly disappointment which filled the hearts of Kossuth, Mazzini, Baird, and company, when the exquisite schemes of the last revolution were frustrated by unforeseen and humanly inexplicable causes. They must have felt as did the baffled Randal Leslie, who, "amidst the bewilderment of his thoughts, at a loss to conjecture how this strange mischance had befallen him, sought to ascertain what fault of judgment he himself had committed, - what thread in his web had he left ragged and incomplete. He could discover none. His ability seemed to him unimpeachable, totus, teres, atque rotundus. then there came across his breast a sharp pang. For so vital a necessity to all living men is TRUTH, that the vilest traitor feels amazed and wronged, - feels the pillars of the world shaken, when treason recoils upon himself." - And So, we repeat, feel the baffled conspirators against the peace of Christendom. Under a human aspect, the present state of Europe is passing strange. In May, 1848, what uninspired man could have foretold it? Consider that in that month all France, Germany, and Italy were at the mercy of the enemies of the Church of God, and, as they thought, were in their hands as clay in the hands of the potter. Look at the state of the world now, when only four years have passed away, and see how the Lord hath laughed them to scorn. To say nothing at present of the majestic attitude of the Church in America, look at France, Austria, and Italy, with their respective governments reestablished, and far more than reëstablished. Think what a change was that wrought, sorely against their will, by the revolution in Austria, which enabled the young and pious Francis Joseph to decree and to bring about the downfall of Josephism. What a change in France, when a 'Napoleon the Third, who may, and we hope will, turn out to be the eldest son of the Church, was elevated upon the ruins that French atheists had made, and has to construct from those ruins another FRANCE. What a change in Italy! A writer in a contemporary revolutionary publication, who professes to be in the secrets of 1848, says that the fate of the other Continental revolutions depended upon the event of the Roman conspiracy. It is quite probable. The Church was the real power to be overcome, and the instalment of Mazzini in the place of Pius the Ninth might well appear to the revolutionary crowd as a centre of unity to the European Reign of Terror. It must be confessed that all the art and all the force at the command |