easily conceive that Father Hyacinthe's preaching, so alive with generous human sympathies, so strenuously asserting his right as a minister of Christ to be interested in whatever pertains to the highest welfare of men, and especially so fragrant with thoughts of domestic felicity, might waken the fears and even enrage the fanaticism of many an unfortunate ascetic to whom nothing can seem truly religious that is not unnatural.

6. When we remember the chronic antipathy with which Roman infallibility regards the progress of the physical sciences, another characteristic of these discourses arrests our attention. Most evidently, the author has no fear of anything that science may discover in the sphere of nature. Familiar with the facts of modern science-not as a specialist in any department, but only as a general scholar-he is the more ready to encounter and baffle the infidelity that allies itself with science. Thus in his first series of conferences (not given in this volume), he boldly grappled with the philosophy which finds in the universe nothing but matter and impersonal force. He never hesitates to accept the legitimate conclusions of scientific discovery, nor to use them in the service of religion. In his sermon on the South American earthquakes, we find an allusion to geology, which seems as if he had studied Dr. Bushnell's chapter on " Anticipative Consequences." He says:

"This planet itself, on which the work of our great race is wrought, would almost seem less to have been made for us than to have been made against us. From its strange infancy, an incandescent mass or abyss of liquid fire, a huge fire-brand hurtling through space or dashing out its confused waves into the darkness, it has seemed the enemy of life in every form. Then during those six days-God's days, not man's, and therefore not to be measured-for a a thous. and years in his sight are as yesterday'—it has, with convulsive pangs of labor, produced, and again destroyed, huge forms of being, plants or animals, which never could have subsisted in the same atmosphere with ourselves. Finally, after all these cataclysms, when that strip of earth habitable for man had emerged—I say nothing of the vast deserts that dispute our occupancy of it, nor of the frozen regions which consume it at the poles, nor of the heats that blaze along its tropical shores-I find it so scanty in its length, in its breadth-I was about to say so scanty in its accommodations-that it seems to me less like a peaceful and permanent dwelling, than a frail ship beaten by the storms of three oceans-the sea of waters round about, the sea of air above, the sea of fire underneath! Once already it has foundered in the waves; may it not, peradventure, be sometime swallowed up in, the flames? For the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with a fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up."" pp 152, 153.

Is there remaining in the Roman Catholic Church anything of that conservative spirit which condemned Galileo for believing and teaching the motion of the earth? Are there any monks or priests in Paris who hold that the Church, by virtue of its infallibility, can safely dictate to men of science what they may, and what they must not, discover, in their own sphere of exploration and induction? If there are any such, it is easy to account for a very bitter dislike of Father Hyacinthe, and a relentless opposition to his ministry. Evidently enough, he does not think according to their way of thinking; and to them, therefore, he must seem a very dangerous person. He finds the sphere of religion and of religious knowledge in those regions of thought which are accessible to all thoughtful minds. "Science," he says, "at that stage of development at which it is worthy of the name, is not an absolute necessity of human nature. If man knows his own soul and God, love and duty, labor and death, he knows the answer to those supremne questions which are put to him by consciousness within and by the world without." The answer to those supreme questions is religion; and any religion is true or false, intelligent or unintelligent, in proportion as it answers those questions wisely and distinctly. Science, however worthy of the name, if it be mere science, cannot answer those supreme questions. In some way, right or wrong, they are already answered before science begins. Perhaps the author of the Nineteenth Psalin, though he knew nothing of astronomy, could answer those questions better than La Place. Perhaps the author of the Epistle to the Romans, though he knew nothing of chemistry, could answer those questions better than Huxley. Perhaps the writer of the Fourth Gospel, though he knew nothing of politico-economical science, could answer those supreme questions better than Stuart Mill. Yet Father Hyacinthe puts great honor upon science.

Contemplative science—what is there that it has not included in its scope? It has scrutinized the invisible, weighed the imponderable, decomposed the molecule, in the laboratories of its physics and chemistry. Queen of the inorganic world, it is extending its conquests, day by day, by means of physiology, into the organic world; and laying hands upon life itself in the currents of blood which it interrogates and directs at its will, it seeks to penetrate those awful secrets which we have been carrying about with us in our own bodies without

daring to explore them. Its realm extends even to higher spheres than this. It takes to itself the name of philosophy, and hovers aloft in the regions of the soul and above the soul it studies the ideas which enlighten it, and, far above the ideas, God who gives them light. Yes! to start from the atom, to go mounting upward, by the blood, by the ideas, by God himself, up to the very topmost height of things, never pausing until, like the dazed eagle, it hangs poised with eye fixed upon the sun-this is the career of science! Ah! I could lift up a lamentation that should not be comforted, were humanity to be bereft of these sublime audacities, of the ravishment of these prolific joys!

"And yet this is not all. Science, as I just hinted, is a prolific mother. She cannot remain cloistered in the sanctuary of contemplation, like a virgin in her calm and luminous beauty. She comes back into the sphere of material activity; she is wedded to productive toil, and they are the parents of power and riches. Into the hands of the laborer from the plough she puts implements and methods that are akin to the miraculous, and bids him, Go, subdue the world, and transform it. And as in these Titanic wars that are led by genius and waited on by fortune, each day is marked by some resplendent victory-so discovery succeeds discovery, each surpassing that which went before, and science, applied by industry, impels society from triumph on to triumph, tʊward a future which they do but just dimly descry, and the prospect of which at once enraptures and dismays.

"And then, over the stalwart and naked shoulders of this positive civilization which controls and operates material forces, lo! Art draws nigh to fling its starry and imperial robe-all the glories of painting, sculpture, and architectureall the harmonies of music and of poetry-falling from heaven, like a transfiguration, upon the stir and din of human toil." pp. 116-118.

On the whole, it can hardly be wondered at that a monk who is, nevertheless, so human-a recluse, yet so much in the world and of the world while not less evidently above the world-a preacher earnestly Roman Catholic, yet so eagerly accepting all the results of science-was anxiously watched. by men who think science ought to be governed by ecclesiastical dictation, was suspected, was denounced at Rome with

secret misrepresentations," and has at last, by "the intrigues of a party omnipotent at Rome," been brought under a public censure from the General of his order.

7. But the worst of all indications of Father Hyacinthe's unsoundness is the fact that he cherishes in his heart a patriotic love of liberty, and frankly commits himself on the side of that great movement toward political reformation which gives character to the nineteenth century. In his speech before the Peace League, six months ago, when France was still fretting against the bit and reins of absolute power, he dared to say:

"It was but the morning twilight of public opinion that was shining in the days of Pascal and Louis XIV. The morning has advanced since then, it approaches its meridian, and everywhere, to-day, it tends to put an end to the caprices of personal government. Personal governments have had their reason and their uses in other ages. A child stands in need of masters and tutors of a very personal sort; but, as St. Paul says, speaking of regenerate humanity, we are no longer children nor slaves; we are entitled to come into possession of the inheritance. It is no time now for personal governments. It is time for the government of public opinion, for the government of the country by itself; and now that all the countries are calling and stretching out the hand to one another, the hour is at hand for the government of mankind by itself." pp. 3, 4. Strange to say, the "personal government" of France took no offense at those bold words. Doubtless the imperial mind, having recognized the force of public opinion, was meditating that great revolution-not then announced, but now accomplished a revolution without barricades-a coup d'état without violence-which has put an end to personal government in France, at least for the present. But there exists at Paris as well as at Rome (we may say everywhere within the shadow of the Papacy) a party to which those ringing words, prophetic of liberty for all the nations, were an offense. At Rome such words must needs be an offense; for what is the secular government at Rome but "personal government"-the most personal now existing within the limits of Christendom? Nay, the "spiritual" government over the Roman Catholic Church, in the Jesuit theory, in the Pope's own theory, in the theory maintained by the Cardinals and by that entire body of functionaries known as the Roman curia or " the Court of Rome," is a purely and absolutely "personal government." The question now coming to a crisis after ages of uncertainty-the question about the personal infallibility of the Pope-is really and simply a question of " personal government." If the infallibility, assumed to be somewhere, resides in the Church represented by its bishops assembled in a council, the Pope is nothing more than a constitutional monarch, responsible in some sort to the great representative body of his subjects; his decisions are binding when they are formally or informally accepted by the Church; and till they obtain such ratification, they are liable to be rejected as erroneous or as exceeding his legitimate powers. But if, on the other hand, the infallibility resides in that individual person who happens to be Pope-if a council

derives its power from him, and if its decisions have no force till he has ratified them-the monarchy of the Pope over the Church is without any limit, and is the very ideal of personal government. No wonder that there was indignation at Rome when the Carmelite monk, speaking with a voice that sounded through the world, declared that the time has come for the government of public opinion, the time for national self-government, and that, inasmuch as all countries are calling and stretching out the hand to one another, the hour is at hand for the government of mankind by itself. Where, then, is the personal infallibility of the Roman pontiff-the government of mankind by the Pope?

Probably Father Hyacinthe had been accustomed to think of the Pope as a constitutional monarch, gathering up and expressing in his administration the "public opinion" of the universal Church, and frankly recognizing a general council as the organ through which, on great occasions, that public opinion-the judgment and feeling of " regenerate humanity" -will declare itself. Doubtless the Ultramontanism of the venerable Count Montalembert-probably that of Bishop Dupanleup-was never anything more than the full belief that the national Church of France is only the Catholic Church in that nation, and is, therefore, dependent not on the "chief of the state" at Paris, but on the chief of the Church at Rome: a belief entirely consistent with the opinion that the Pope is subject to the law instead of being superior to it, and, being personally not infallible, may be instructed, rebuked, and even deposed by a general council. But that which to-day is commonly spoken of as Ultramontanism is a very different thing. The Ultramontanism of the Jesuits, and of all whose opinions they control, recognizes the Pope as personally infallible, the absolute lord over the faith and the conscience of every loyal Catholic. Ultramontanism, therefore, in the now current application of that name, is the sworn votary of personal government in the Church; and why not in the Sate? Perhaps unconsciously-perhaps with distinct intention, the Barefooted Carmelite touched the very center and sensitive core of the question between parties in the Roman Catholic Church, when he uttered so publicly those incisive phrases about the obso