original purity and beauty, but shall have gathered to itself, besides, the depth of its analyses, the breadth of its syntheses, the experience of its toils, its struggles, and its griefs through all these centuries." (p. 13.)

Was it for such a judgment, and such a feeling as this, that the great preacher at Notre Dame was regarded as a man to be circumvented, and suppressed? On the contrary, has not "the Catholic World" expressed the same judgment and feeling? Has it not expressly repudiated as "erroneous" "the notion of Catholic doctrine which conceives of it as requiring one to believe that there is no true faith or holiness outside of the visible communion of the See of Peter." (Catholic World, Vol. V., p. 111.) Has not Archbishop Manning of Westminster written a letter to Dr. Pusey about the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England?

4. If this book should be put into the hands of one of those Protestants who believe that one distinctive feature of the Roman Catholic religion is a violent antipathy to the Bible, he would probably be surprised at finding that the preacher refers often to the Bible, and refers to it in a way that shows how thoroughly he has studied it and how highly he appreciates it. Father Hyacinthe must seem to such a reader quite unlike the ideal Roman Catholic of anti-papal literature. It is true that he quotes the apocryphal books not unfrequently, and that when he quotes the canonical books, he does not quote from our translation. But the use which he makes of the Latin Bible in his sermons, is very much like the use which Protestant preachers, in this country and in Great Britain, ordinarily make of the English Bible. He quotes it sometimes for authority, sometimes for illustration only, and sometimes by mere allusion. Thoroughly acquainted with it in his own. studies and devotions, he assumes that his hearers are also familiarly acquainted with it. What he said about the Bible in his famous "speech before the Peace League," would not have been out of place if uttered from the anniversary plat. form of the American Bible Society.

"We must record and expound to the world, which does not un erstand them as yet, those two great books of public and private morality, the book of the synagogue, written by Moses, with the fires of Sinai, and transmitted by the prophets to the Christian Church; and our own book, the book of grace, which

upholds and fulfills the law, the gospel of the Son of God. The decalogue of Moses, and the gospel of Jesus Christ." * *

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“This is what we need to affirm by word and by example, what we need to glorify before peoples and kings alike. [Prolonged applause]. Thank you for this applause. It comes from your hearts, and it is intended for these divine books. In the name of these two books, I accept it. I accept it, also, in the name of those sincere men who group themselves about these books, in Europe and America. It is a most palpable fact, that there is no room in the daylight of the civilized world except for these three religious communions, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaisın!" pp. 9, 10.

That speech-especially the passage about the Bible and the three religions communions of the civilized world-was made the occasion of an agitation at Paris, and of reports and machinations at Rome, which brought upon the orator a rebuke and censure from the General of the Carmelite Order. It should be remembered, however, that the agitation was raised not ostensibly against his commendation of the Bible, but chiefly by means of a perversion of his language—as if he had said (what he did not say) that "the three religious communions" which he named were equal in his regard, or equal in rightful authority. Whatever dishonor some Roman Catholics (or all) may put upon the Bible indirectly by exalting the authority of their Church, and however they may make it void through their traditions, no intelligent adherent of that Church-be he ever so illiberal-would dare to acknowledge himself offended by Father Hyacinthe's most eloquent tribute to the Bible. Indeed, the orator had expressed himself in similar terms, more than once, from the pulpit of Notre Dame, as we see in the Conferences of 1867. For example, "I have told you before, I am not ashamed of the Bible. Antireligions prejudice may deny its inspiration, but it cannot contest its historical authority. I take the Bible, which one of the deepest thinkers of our age has called 'the book of humanity,' the Bible, which is not the history of a political organization or of a religious sect, but the history of the great race of man; I open its first book," &c. p. 20. Again,and these things, be it remembered, were said not in a concio ad clerum, but in advent conferences addressed most emphatically ad populum :-" We read the gospel, and we do well, but we do not read the Old Testament as much as we ought-the history of that people Israel, of whom Moses

says, in language full of mysterious significance, that it is the measure and the type after which the other nations have been formed." [Deut. xxxiii., 8.] p. 53. There may be a party at Paris and at Rome-probably there is-sufficiently illiberal and timid to be frightened at the "dangerous tendency" of Father Hyacinthe's habit of freely commending the Bible to his hearers. But surely he has never said anything stronger in that direction than what the "Catholic World" has said to the American public. Our readers know something about that monthly issued by the Catholic Publication Society, with the particular approval of the Archbishop of New York, the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda, and of Pope Pius IX. Of such a work we may be sure that nothing inconsistent with the soundest loyalty to Rome can be found in it. Yet the Catholic World says, "the Bible is the work of God as the firmament of heaven is his work. It has the precedence of dignity over tradition, decrees of councils. theology, science, literature, every other work in which man concurs with the spirit of God, because in the production of the Bible the Spirit of God has concurred with the spirit of man in a higher and more immediate manner." "We believe that the books of Scripture are intelligible, and a perfect mine of intellectual, spiritual, and moral treasure. This is true, eminently, of the sacred books as they are studied in their original languages. It is no less true, however, that its most important treasures of knowledge are equally open to those who can read the best versions. No book has ever been so many times well translated as the Bible." * * * "It is, therefore, without doubt, a most excellent and profitable exercise for good, plain people, able to read and understand the English Bible, to read it continually and attentively." * * "We have no fear of any intelligent, instructed Catholic being injured by reading the Bible. Nor do we consider the very general and high esteem of king James's version among English-speaking Protestants, and their familiarity with it, as an evil, or as an obstacle to the spread of Catholic doctrines." Catholic World, Vol. V., pp. 117, 118. Surely, if we should even hint that Father Hyacinthe's free speaking in commendation of the Bible had anything to do with his being

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brought into disgrace at Rome, Father Hecker would cry out with a more grieved and injured tone than ever, "Is it honest ?"

5. The reader of these discourses, watching to find what it is in them which could give offense to the most sensitive Roman Catholic, may be impressed with the fact that while the author is a monk, preaching in what he calls "these glorious rays of the monastic habit," he is, nevertheless, a man with all the instincts and sympathies of unperverted manhood. He does not indeed disparage the celibate life which is so often represented by writers of his Church as the highest sort of Christian life. He even claims for the monastic orders great honor in consideration of their service in the middle ages (p. 62), and he holds that there is still a part for them to perform in the progress of Christianity. Thus he says:

"Suffer me to disengage from my poor person the sublimity of the monastic state, and to greet in the true monk not some dead fossil of the unreturning past, but the boldest and most far-sighted forerunner of the ultimate future. He is the man who, without despising what there is of grand and noble in this world, loving it, on the contrary, and keeping heart of hope for all its interests, warms with enthusiasm for a loftier form of goodness that is yet to come, but which is brought nigh to him by faith. He looks far beyond these most solid realities to the boldest and most splendid Utopias, and ever, as humanity grows impatient of its voyage and longs to land ere it has reached the port, he seems to point for ward to some invisible shore and say, 'Not yet! not yet!'" p. 121.

Yet, on the other hand, our preacher finds the true home of religion not so much in the cloister as in the family. He is deeply penetrated with the primeval truth, recovered and vindicated by the gospel, that the family is a divine institution, and that all the affections and relations that constitute the family are hallowed by God's benediction. What he calls "the law of love in the family," is in his view the first element of civilization. He says:

"I have spoken before now about love in the family-quite too much about it, some people say. I am only sorry that I have not said more. To exhibit the indissoluble union between love and the family is the Loblest and most needed task that any earnest man, and especially any priest, can set himself. For my part, I have never been able to put myself into the position of those theologians, with neither heart nor genius, who ignore this sentiment of the human soul, and are afraid, apparently, to pollute their lips by uttering its name.

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I make bold to declare that it is such men as these who have prepared the way for the dynasty of those conscienceless writers who, separating, after their fashion, passion from duty, extol love without comprehending its true dignity, and inflict upon it that supreme outrage of confounding it with caprice and lust. Except when it fixes its indiviual gaze on heaven, and becomes virginity, love cannot blossom, save in the sanctuary of home, with that two-fold bloom, so beautiful and yet so serious and holy-marriage and parentage." "As the best and worthiest service to humanity is attained by serving it in one's own country, so one may best serve and love his country in his family There, most of all, is played the drama of human life, intense and ravishing as the best passions of the heart, grave as duty, active as the pursuit of interest (which is itself a duty), calm and recollected as study and prayer." * * "Doubtless the life of a great nation is at the polls and in the legislature; but far more than this, it is at the fireside. Where shall we find philosophers to teach us this-authors and artists to depict it-where, above all, the men to live it? Ah! look beyond the Alps, at our little neighbor Switzerland, home of toilsome industry and of the household of simple, honest, happy life!-home, too, of free, traditional domocracy! And here, poor French democracy, despising the family, despising religion, bere thou art lying yet, after eighty years, crying, helpless, in thy bloody swaddling clothes!" pp. 109, 110.

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This is certainly the sort of instruction which France needs, and has needed through long centuries past. But is it not possible that in this exaltation of the sanctity that encircles the domestic relations, as if the family might even be holier than the convent, there was something to startle into jealousy the traditionary sentiment which appropriates the word "religious" as the distinctive designation of those who live in artificial associations and under vows of artificial duty, and virtually denies the equal religiousness of all who serve God, however humbly and devoutly, in the relations which, by the will and wisdom of God, belong to the constitution of human nature. In the presence of that sentiment (which we call traditional because it has no place in the authentic records of Christianity), the monk is "a religious," and the nun is "a religious," but the bride and bridegroom, though their vows of mutual love be offered in the fear and love of God-the father and mother, though they be laboring with all diligence and prayer to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord-the brothers and sisters in a Christian household, though their home be like that in Bethany where Jesus loved to rest-cannot be, in the distinctive sense, "religious," without substituting for the duties of these natural relations the artificial duties of monastic life. We can