ON THE 
 
 Road to 
 Rome 
 
 AND HOW 
 TWO 
 
 BROTHERS 
 GOT THERE 
 
 BY __ 
 
 WILLIAM 
 
 :har[)s, 
 
 BX 
 
 4662 
 
 Tis 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 ©pr|i. — CqiJjvwfyt ¥}$+ • 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
ON THE ROAD TO ROME, 
 
 How Two Brothers Got There. 
 
 WILLIAM RICHARDS. 
 
 / 
 
 2> 
 
 NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: 
 
 BENZIGER BROTHERS, 
 
 Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 
 1895. 
 

 
 Copyright, 1895, by Benziger Brothers. 
 

 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 In the Fall of 1886 it was arranged at 
 one of the weekly meetings of Carroll 
 Institute, in Washington City, D. C, that 
 addresses should be given from time to 
 time by members of the Institute, present- 
 ing reminiscences of the Catholic Church 
 in the State from which the speaker 
 came. As I was a native of Ohio, it fell 
 to me to treat the subject with reference 
 to that State. Accordingly I prepared 
 an address which I delivered before the 
 Institute on the evening of January 6, 
 1887. Subsequently the Institute, re- 
 sponding to the effort to raise funds for 
 the Brownson monument, invited me 
 to repeat the address. I cheerfully ac- 
 
4 Introductory. 
 
 cepted the invitation out of devotion to 
 the memory of Brownson; and accord- 
 ingly, on the evening of March 20, 1887, 
 I repeated the address with considerable 
 additions. It is now offered to the public 
 substantially in the form as last delivered, 
 though with some verbal changes, and 
 some additions, the most of which will 
 be found appended in notes. 
 
 Washington, D. C. , March 10, 1895. 
 
ON THE ROAD TO ROME. 
 
 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 When on a former occasion I read a por- 
 tion of this address before Carroll Insti- 
 tute, I explained that I could not, as re- 
 quested, give any " Reminiscences of the 
 Catholic Church in Ohio" — my native 
 State — because it had so happened that I 
 had never entered a Catholic church but 
 once before I accepted the faith, and soon 
 thereafter had emigrated to Keokuk, 
 Iowa, and therefore my reminiscences 
 had to partake more of a personal than a 
 local nature, and would more properly 
 be entitled : How and Why I Became a 
 
6 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 Catholic. This title indicates what many 
 of you know, that I was not born a Cath- 
 olic. 
 
 It was my lot to be born and brought 
 up in the small village of Granville, in 
 central Ohio, which with one or two ad- 
 joining townships had been settled in 
 1805 by a colony of about one hundred 
 families, who were mostly emigrants 
 from the town of Granville, Mass. The 
 majority of them were sturdy believers 
 in the Westminster Catechism, and 
 worthy descendants of New England 
 Puritans — honest, sober, industrious, 
 and thrifty, their religion being deeply 
 pervaded by the sourness of Calvinism. 
 It followed that I imbibed their views, 
 feelings, and prejudices, and was not fur- 
 nished with any instruction or traditions 
 that were favorable to Roman Catholics. 
 As a schoolboy, the first thing put into 
 my hands was the " Little Primer," from 
 
On the Road to Rome. 7 
 
 which children learned their A B C's in 
 such couplets as: " In Adam's fall, We 
 sinned all," illustrated by a large letter A 
 and a small picture of Adam, and similar 
 couplets for every letter in the alphabet, 
 which were easily learned and rarely for- 
 gotten. 
 
 I mention this primer because I retain 
 a vivid remembrance of its thrilling pic- 
 ture of the so-called Protestant martyr, 
 John Rogers, tied to a stake, standing in 
 the midst of flames rising from a pile of 
 blazing fagots, and gazed upon by his 
 persecutors, and also by his weeping wife, 
 who stood there, as the legend read, 
 " with nine small children and one at 
 the breast." This terrible scene was 
 given as an awful example of the perse- 
 cuting tyranny of that English queen 
 whom the Protestants called " Bloody 
 Mary." In the contemplation of that 
 soul-harrowing picture, and the short 
 
8 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 story explaining it, it was natural that 
 the youthful mind should conceive a 
 vague horror of Catholics and their re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Connected with that early period of my 
 life is another reminiscence which left its 
 indelible impression. One day the star- 
 tling report flew through our town and 
 county as on the wings of the wind — for 
 the telegraph was not then thought of — 
 that one Peter Diamond, living in the 
 woods, some four or five miles south of 
 our village, had got into a fight and 
 killed his man. This in itself was hor- 
 rifying in a law - abiding community, 
 where even justifiable homicide had 
 scarcely ever been known to occur. But 
 when it was eagerly told, though with 
 bated breath, that Peter Diamond was a 
 Papist and, before the affray, had ac- 
 tually gone to the adjoining county of 
 Perry — where the Dominicans had a 
 
On the Road to Rome. - 9 
 
 house at Somerset — and had paid a Roman 
 Catholic priest for permission to commit 
 this murder, getting pardon for the sin 
 in advance, perhaps you can imagine the 
 horror it inspired.* 
 
 And yet I seem to remember how the 
 question rose and silently worked in my 
 youthful mind : " Can it be possible that 
 anybody can teach or believe in pardon 
 for future sin, or believe that Almighty 
 God will ratify such an arrangement at 
 the judgment day?" Of course, I got no 
 answer then, but continued for many 
 years to have false views and bitter prej- 
 
 * Peter Diamond was tried, convicted, and sen- 
 tenced to be hung, and when, on the day appointed 
 (October 14, 1825), he stood on the scaffold, at 
 Newark, with the rope round his neck, the Deputy 
 Sheriff appeared at the last moment from Columbus, 
 pushing his way through the crowd on his foaming 
 steed, waving the reprieve of the Governor, much to 
 the disappointment of the thousands of people who 
 had gathered in from four or five surrounding coun- 
 ties to witness the hanging. 
 
io On the Road to Rome. 
 
 udices against Roman Catholics instilled 
 into my mind by all my surroundings. 
 When I recall the subtle and powerful 
 influences of such early teachings, I am 
 not surprised that both men and women 
 who have been subjected to them are so 
 slow to believe that there is anything in 
 Catholic teachings worthy of their atten- 
 tion. 
 
 In the days that I am now recalling, so 
 firmly was the conviction imbedded in 
 the minds of Protestants that Catholic 
 doctrines were full of error, and the 
 Catholic Church itself a corrupt and mori- 
 bund or played-out institution, that even 
 those of them who became dissatisfied 
 " Seekers after Truth" scarcely ever 
 thought of looking in that direction to 
 find a solution of the tremendous ques- 
 tions of human life that were perplexing 
 and agitating their troubled souls. And 
 the mischief was aggravated by the fact 
 
On the Road to Rome. 1 1 
 
 that such men as Carlyle, Emerson, Al- 
 cott, and various others who became 
 leaders of thought in the non-Catholic 
 world, confidently assumed and seemed 
 never to suspect otherwise than that the 
 hard absurdities of Calvinism and the 
 other erroneous, incomplete, ridiculous, 
 and illogical developments of Protestant- 
 ism were genuine, orthodox Christianity. 
 And this remark applies with equal force 
 to men of a later date, such as Huxley 
 and Ingersoll, whose names I mention 
 because they are about my age, and are 
 examples of men who had bigger doses 
 of Calvinistic diet in their early days than 
 I had, and unfortunately have not found 
 or accepted the antidote as I did. It 
 seems almost incredible that men of such 
 general intelligence, and with such op- 
 portunities of finding the truth as they 
 have, should so utterly fail to discover 
 that the perversities of Protestantism are 
 
12 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 not genuine Christianity. And it is this 
 thought that should inspire all Catholics 
 with charity for those misguided people, 
 even including Ingersoll, and urge us to 
 make earnest and constant prayers for 
 their enlightenment. I know from sad 
 experience that a person brought up in 
 the midst of such influences as I have in- 
 dicated must inevitably be covered, as it 
 were, with almost inexpugnable encase- 
 ments, from which all the batteries of 
 argument and logic rebound and roll off 
 like water from the back of a duck in a 
 rainstorm. How any human being es- 
 capes from such an environment, and 
 succeeds in making his way back into 
 the bosom of Mother Church, is a ques- 
 tion the answer to which is generally full 
 of interest to Catholics, and especially to 
 converts. 
 
 Trusting to your kind indulgence, I 
 propose to say a few words relating to 
 
On the Road to Rome. 13 
 
 my own experience in this regard. And 
 to begin with, it may seem to yon a little 
 curious that probably the first step 
 towards my return to the Old Church, 
 and that of my elder brother, Henry L. 
 Richards, was taken when the minister 
 of our meeting — for we did not then say 
 church — the Rev. Ahab Jinks, allowed 
 carpenters and plasterers to work in fin- 
 ishing his dwelling-house on the Sab- 
 bath-day, his justification being that he 
 was obliged to give up his hired house 
 in a few days, and as winter was at hand 
 he feared to lose a single working hour 
 lest freezing weather should delay the 
 .work and prevent the occupation of the 
 house at the stipulated time. With the 
 Puritan notion of the awful and solemn 
 sacredness of the Sabbath-day, which 
 stopped all work, and would not allow 
 children to play or even laugh aloud, 
 from sundown on Saturday night to sun- 
 
14 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 down on Sunday night, you can imagine 
 what commotion it caused in that congre- 
 gation when it was known that the minis- 
 ter was a Sabbath-breaker! A majority 
 of men and women in the meeting cen- 
 sured the minister, and insisted that he 
 should retire. But there was a respecta- 
 ble minority who recognized the necessity 
 of the minister's action, and justified it 
 on scripture grounds. The controversy 
 became hot and raged for months, and 
 furnished a striking example of the an- 
 archy that must result when every mem- 
 ber of a society or congregation asserts 
 his own right to interpret the scriptures, 
 and lay down the law, and become a Pope, 
 for every other member. 
 
 It was the utter lack of authority in this 
 disturbance which led my father,* who 
 
 * Dr. William Samuel Richards, born in New Lon- 
 don, Conn., January i. 1787, settled in Granville in 
 1811, and died there May 8, 1852. 
 
On the Road to Rome. 15 
 
 supported the minister, to study the ques- 
 tion of church government. The result 
 was that he preferred the order and seem- 
 ing authority of the Episcopal form of 
 church government to the Congregational 
 system based on irresponsible individual- 
 ism, and he became an Episcopalian. 
 Perhaps a dozen other heads of families, 
 including the deposed minister, joined 
 him in organizing an Episcopal church in 
 1827. I recall the fact that he and his 
 friends were subsequently confirmed in 
 their choice by reading a little book pub- 
 lished in 1832, entitled "An Apology for 
 the Episcopal Church/' by Thomas S. 
 Brittan, which, as I now remember it, 
 contained the Catholic argument in sup- 
 port of Episcopacy, so far as it went. 
 My interest in this change consisted prin- 
 cipally in the fact that we children were 
 no longer required to wrestle with the 
 dry and crabbed and forbidding pages of 
 
1 6 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 the Westminster Smaller Catechism, in 
 which I had just reached that long and 
 awful paragraph on Predestination ; but, 
 greatly to my joy and relief, were put to 
 study the more simple and practical cate- 
 chism in the Episcopal Prayer Book. 
 
 I may say here, what of course I did 
 not know then, that this Prayer Book was 
 taken from the English Book of Common 
 Prayer, which, in its Thirty-Nine Arti- 
 cles and Forms of Service, was the result 
 of a compromise between various parties 
 holding the opinions of Churchmen, Cal- 
 vinists, Lutherans, and others; and it 
 contained in its Articles of Religion, its 
 Catechism, its Offices of Baptism, Confir- 
 mation, Communion, etc., a double set of 
 principles — one set being Catholic and 
 logically leading back to the Catholic 
 Church from which they were derived, 
 and the other set being radically Protes- 
 tant, and, in the denial of Catholic 
 
0?i the Road to Rome. 17 
 
 truths, leading logically to the denial of 
 all authority and all faith. No doubt 
 some of you are aware of the interesting 
 fact that Cardinal Newman and his tal- 
 ented and learned brother, who were at 
 first evangelical or extremely low church 
 members of the Established Church of 
 England, separated in course of time — 
 John Henry, the Cardinal, following the 
 Catholic set of principles into the Catho- 
 lic Church, and William Francis follow- 
 ing the Protestant set into the denial of 
 all faith. As I now recall the subtle 
 power of the Protestant influences that 
 surrounded and acted upon us every mo- 
 ment of our lives, it seems to me little 
 less than a miracle that my brother and 
 I ever got out of the fogs of darkness and 
 doubt, and were at last brought into the 
 glorious light of the grand old Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church. 
 
 Another very important result of my 
 
1 8 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 father's change was that my brother, 
 who, at an early age, had " experienced 
 religion/' as they called it in the Con- 
 gregational meeting of our village, de- 
 cided to study for the Episcopal ministry, 
 and with that end in view went to Ken- 
 yon College, an Episcopal institution at 
 Gambier, Ohio, founded by Bishop Phi- 
 lander Chase, where I joined him, and 
 where we were graduated in the same 
 class (1838). I can safely say that dur- 
 ing our college course we heard very lit- 
 tle about, and nothing favorable to, the 
 Catholic Church. Afterward, however, 
 while my brother was studying theology 
 at the theological seminary at Gambier, 
 there began to be discussions of the ques- 
 tions that divided low from high church- 
 men, and the latter from "Romanists." 
 Upon being ordained, it was his fortune 
 to be settled in a short time in Colum- 
 bus, Ohio (1842), as the pastor of a high- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 19 
 
 church congregation, which, by the way, 
 was almost the only one of the kind in 
 the State. There the standard works and 
 arguments of the high church party be- 
 came familiar to him through the zeal 
 and kindness of his principal parishioner, 
 Mr. Isaac N. Whiting, the well-known 
 bookseller and publisher at Columbus; 
 and as my brother was an honest-minded 
 and logical seeker after truth, the prog- 
 ress which he made in the right direc- 
 tion was somewhat rapid, and in the end 
 he went considerably further than his 
 high church friends expected or desired. 
 While my brother was thus running 
 his course as a theologian and successful 
 pastor of a parish, it was my fortune to 
 follow a quite different course in pursuit 
 of philosophy, history, political science, 
 law, and practical politics. It is not nec- 
 essary, and I do not intend, to inflict 
 upon you my biography. Yet it will be 
 
20 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 convenient to allude now and then to a 
 prominent fact or event that may, as it 
 were, be used as a peg on which to hang 
 a sign indicating my progress to Rome — 
 though, of course, I had then no more 
 notion of going to Rome than I had of 
 going to the moon. And thus it seems 
 pertinent to mention that while I was 
 making an extra course of study at my 
 alma mater, principally under the in- 
 struction of the Rev. Dr. William Spar- 
 row, from Ireland — a learned and tal- 
 ented man, and a most competent and 
 thorough teacher, though a radical Prot- 
 estant — it so happened that there was a 
 "revival" among the students. It com- 
 menced without preparation or special 
 efforts — no one knew how. The first 
 convert was a young student from Vir- 
 ginia, named Kinsolving — his conversion 
 from a rather wild and irreligious life 
 having been so sudden and remarkable 
 
On the Road to Rome. 21 
 
 as to attract attention. He is now (1887) 
 a prominent Episcopal minister in Vir- 
 ginia. Beginning in this way, the revi- 
 val went on until nearly every student 
 was counted as a "convert." The last 
 month or two of the college year (1839) 
 was given up mainly to this revival, as 
 the saving of souls was considered of 
 vastly more importance than mere learn- 
 ing or any other earthly interest. 
 
 I allude to this event, and mention the 
 fact that I was one of the subjects, simply 
 for the purpose of setting before you 
 what was, and perhaps still is, the 
 evangelical notion of "getting religion/' 
 " Seekers" were diligently impressed with 
 the notion that they must expect, seek, 
 and pray for a "change of heart." And 
 when, after a sharp struggle, sometimes 
 short, and sometimes lasting days or 
 weeks, one could at last get up in meet- 
 ing and say with tears of joy, or without, 
 
22 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 but with evident sincerity, that, "at such 
 an hour and such a place — possibly be- 
 hind a bio; loo; in the woods, or in the loft 
 of the barn, or in the closet if he had 
 one, or elsewhere — while agonizing and 
 praying to the Lord, suddenly he was 
 convicted, light came in upon his soul, 
 and he felt happy," then he was regarded 
 and received as a convert. He had " ex- 
 perienced religion" ; he was no longer a 
 mere worldling; he had come out from 
 the world ; the old Adam was put off ; old 
 things had passed away, and all things 
 had become new! While the excitement 
 of the revival lasted, there was a happy 
 state of feeling. But it is not in the na- 
 ture of man to keep up such excitement 
 continuouslv. * In time, the tension 
 
 * I remember that there was one young man there 
 who had the good judgment to avoid all such excite- 
 ment, and who said to himself, " This is the most im- 
 portant matter that ever will or can engage my at- 
 
0?i the Road to Rome. 23 
 
 must give way, and lassitude and cold- 
 ness follow. Then came in many cases 
 the surprising and painful discovery that 
 the "change of heart" was not a radical 
 
 tention, and I must decide it with a cool, calm 
 judgment." And he very soon decided that it was the 
 highest wisdom "to turn unto the Lord," and he did 
 so, and he proved to be one of the most straightfor- 
 ward, sensible, and zealous converts that I knew. 
 Perhaps I may be pardoned for mentioning the case 
 of another young man, who, greatly to my surprise, 
 was brought to me, by a very zealous and pious 
 church member, to receive instruction. I was very 
 free to give him my views, and was afterward com- 
 plimented by an old church member and a competent 
 judge, who overheard my instructions (without my 
 knowledge) , and pronounced them good. But I no- 
 ticed that my pupil, though a good listener, said very 
 little, and I never heard that he was "converted," 
 though I did hear of him till the day of his death as 
 a most excellent and conscientious man, a regular at- 
 tendant at church, and always having a profound 
 sense of right and of his duty to God. My theory of 
 his case was that, with his cool judgment and correct 
 conduct of life, he did not see the necessity or the use 
 of going through the excitement that took hold of 
 nearly every one of the converts. The name of the 
 young man was Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward 
 President of the United States. 
 
24 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 change after all — that the old man Adam 
 was not conquered and put off, and that it 
 was still just as easy as of old to be 
 wicked, to get angry, to lie, or swear, or 
 slander, to have bad thoughts, or be 
 worldly-minded. 
 
 And the convert who held on for a 
 time was not without difficulties. For he 
 was sure to be plied with the doctrine of 
 total depravity, and "justification by 
 faith alone ;" and he would hear the zeal- 
 ous preacher declare that "the whole 
 head was sick and the whole heart faint," 
 and that one could not "think a good 
 thought or do a good deed," or if he did 
 they would count for nothing, for he 
 could not be saved by works, but by faith 
 in the Saviour, whose merits would be 
 "imputed" to him for righteousness 
 which would envelop his " total deprav- 
 ity" as with a white robe of purity. 
 And then a reflective man would begin 
 
On the Road to Rome, 25 
 
 to think that if he was totally depraved it 
 would be folly to expect that radical 
 change which he had been taught to look 
 for. And so, when the reaction came, as 
 it did with multitudes, the painful ques- 
 tion would arise : " Was I converted ? If 
 there had been a real ' change of heart' 
 would I now be in this cold, unsatisfac- 
 tory state?" To make a long story short, 
 a majority or a large number of converts, 
 wherever and whenever the revival oc- 
 curred in those days, would generally be- 
 come "backsliders," and very many of 
 them would come to be counted among 
 the reprobate or the unregenerate. 
 
 How did I escape that result? The 
 answer to that question is closely con- 
 nected with the story of my progress to 
 Rome. Before and after the revival in- 
 terlude, I was making with Dr. Sparrow 
 a diligent study of Cousin's lectures on 
 the " History of Philosophy," his " Criti- 
 
26 On the Road to Ro?ne. 
 
 cism of Locke on the Understanding/' 
 and Dr. Lieber's "Political Ethics." I 
 am not going to dwell upon the world of 
 new ideas — grand and absorbing — which 
 these studies opened up to me. For my 
 present purpose it will suffice to recall 
 Cousin's famous scheme of eclecticism, 
 that is to say, of culling and selecting 
 from each one of the numerous systems 
 of philosophy its particular and un- 
 doubted truth, and by skilfully putting 
 together these various truths, construct- 
 ing a harmonious whole, and calling it 
 eclectic philosophy. I well remember 
 how this suggested to me the ingenious 
 scheme of selecting from each of the 
 numerous Protestant sects that portion of 
 truth which it held, and thus putting to- 
 gether a collection of truths and practices 
 which should be altogether free from 
 error, and would constitute true Chris- 
 tianity. Was it not a brilliant scheme? 
 
On the Road to Rome. 27 
 
 You may at once infer from this that I 
 had some difficulties about what consti- 
 tuted the true faith, which were consid- 
 erably increased when my reaction came 
 on, though, thanks to the faithful teach- 
 ings and good examples of my parents, I 
 could not give up my belief in God ; and 
 I had a vague sort of conviction that 
 there must be some truth in the scheme 
 of redemption if we could only get at it. 
 But how to get at it was the question. 
 Thus it was that the great question of 
 authority began to loom up. How many 
 years it was in taking definite shape in 
 my mind and coming to a head, remains 
 to be stated. 
 
 A very important part of my course 
 with Dr. Sparrow was, as already men- 
 tioned, the study of Dr. Francis Lieber's 
 great and celebrated work on " Political 
 Ethics/' which came from the press late 
 in 1838, and for a number of years held 
 
28 On the Road to Rome, 
 
 its place at the head of works on political 
 science. Time will permit me on this 
 occasion to mention only two ideas or 
 views which I obtained from that work, 
 and which radically influenced the forma- 
 tion of my solutions of certain great prob- 
 lems of the day. 
 
 The first was Dr. Lieber's complete 
 refutation of that absurd theory, so much 
 dwelt upon by Blackstone in his Com- 
 mentaries, and by others in their discus- 
 sions of the origin of the State, that the 
 primitive condition of man was a " state 
 of nature" or mere savagism — a state or 
 condition in which poor, ignorant sav- 
 ages lived without law or organized gov- 
 ernment, in solitary and gloomy equality 
 — the only government being that by 
 club-law, or the law of the strongest. 
 Erroneous as this theory was, yet philos- 
 ophers had not then (1839-40) devel- 
 oped the still lower, more erroneous, and 
 
On the Road to Rome. 29 
 
 more absurd theory — so widely accepted 
 by the so-called scientists of this day — 
 that man originated in protoplasm, and 
 after an indefinitely long period of time 
 was gradually evolved through the mol- 
 lusk into the tadpole, and from the tad- 
 pole through various changes into the 
 monkey, and from the monkey through 
 other changes into the poor, ignorant 
 savage. The nearest approach to that 
 kind of science was, as I remember, the 
 fanciful speculation of Lord Monboddo — 
 which was received with incredulous 
 laughter — that the monkey, by sitting 
 on his tail, had gradually worn it down 
 to a short stump, and while doing so 
 had chattered himself into the savage 
 man. 
 
 But unfortunately the Blackstone the- 
 ory of man in a "state of nature," out of 
 which he slowly emerged through bar- 
 barism by successive steps of improve- 
 
30 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 ment, until he reached the highest civili- 
 zation of the ancient nations, has left its 
 mark upon nearly all the literature of the 
 world for the last hundred years or more. 
 It was this theory that Dr. Lieber at- 
 tacked with vigor and successfully con- 
 troverted, showing that there never had 
 been such a condition as that imaginary 
 " state of nature" — that man, as Montes- 
 quieu said, is born in society and there 
 must ever remain; that society was of 
 divine origin equally with the indi- 
 vidual man, and that it was ordained 
 from the beginning that man should 
 work out his destiny in this world, and 
 for the next, only in and through so- 
 ciety. 
 
 This was the first idea which I learned 
 from Dr. Lieber, and the second was sim- 
 ply its logical development. For society, 
 with its divine origin, necessarily culmi- 
 nated in the State. And, therefore, the 
 
On the Road to Rome. 31 
 
 State is not, in its origin, a voluntary as- 
 sociation of savages who have become 
 tired of club-law ; nor is it a co-partner- 
 ship of shareholders to promote each 
 one's selfish interest; nor an immense 
 insurance company established for the 
 protection of property, and incidentally 
 " to look out that my neighbor does not 
 pick my pocket" or cut my throat; nor a 
 cunningly devised machine to grind out 
 taxes and support the constable and the 
 gallows. It is neither one nor all of 
 these. For the State is aboriginal with 
 man, and, jurally considered, is the soci- 
 ety of societies in the temporal order, 
 having an organic life of its own, which, 
 in its identity and continuity, is distinct 
 and palpable like that of the individual 
 man. The individual, indeed, is above 
 the State in that he is not limited to time, 
 but is made to be a citizen of eternity. 
 But then the State is above the individual 
 
32 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 because, being the organism of society, 
 it never dies, but lives on from age to 
 age, embracing and sustaining all genera- 
 tions of men in their unbroken conti- 
 nuity. 
 
 Now both of these ideas were of im- 
 mense benefit to me in many ways — the 
 first one by guarding me against the er- 
 rors of any teacher or any book whose 
 starting point and fundamental assump- 
 tion was that the primitive condition of 
 man was that of the low and ignorant 
 savage ; for the theories on the origin of 
 society, government, language, and relig- 
 ion, flowing from such a source, are cer- 
 tain to be mixed up with very serious and 
 dangerous errors; — the only true theory 
 being that in the beginning God made 
 the heavens and the earth, and in due 
 time ushered man into life, a grand and 
 glorious being, whose nature, being fash- 
 ioned in body and soul upon the idea of 
 
On the Road to Rome. 33 
 
 the Incarnate Son,* as Father Faber said, 
 "was beautiful in its perfection, but was 
 clothed upon by the surpassing beauty of 
 primeval grace and the radiance of 
 original justice," and "the greatness of 
 whose science was such that we can 
 hardly form an idea of it to ourselves,'' 
 while " the most startling miracles of the 
 saints are but feeble indications and par- 
 tial recoveries of that rightful and super- 
 natural dominion over nature which man 
 possessed and exercised" in his first es- 
 tate, but whose sad and mournful history 
 from the time of the fall down to the 
 Christian era was one of gradual depart- 
 ure from God's truth as given in the 
 primitive revelation, involving loss of 
 
 *For whom He foreknew. He also predestinated to 
 be made conformable to the image of His Son : that 
 He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. 
 — Rom. viii. 29. 
 
 And God said : Let us make man to Our image. 
 — Gen. i. 26. 
 3 
 
34 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 control of the powers of nature, and more 
 or less rapid decline in religion, in morals, 
 in language, in art, in government, and, 
 in short, in everything that was good and 
 true and beautiful. 
 
 And, secondly, immense benefit was 
 derived from familiarizing the mind with 
 the idea that society is a living organ- 
 ism, an organized body, having an or- 
 ganic life of its own, with a head, an 
 office, a mission, as distinct as that of the 
 individual. Those of you who have 
 never had the misfortune of having been 
 Protestants can scarcely conceive of the 
 difficulty which Protestants had, in the 
 days of which I am speaking, of forming 
 to themselves any notion of the State or 
 the Church as an organized body. Their 
 congregations were simply meetings of 
 individuals, each one asserting the un- 
 limited right of private judgment, and 
 their religious teachings being addressed 
 
On the Road to Rome. 35 
 
 to each one as if he had merely a spiritual 
 nature — "the scheme of redemption," or 
 atonement, or at-one-vient, as Dr. Albert 
 Barnes called it in his Commentaries, be- 
 ing a scheme which did not necessarily 
 call for the coming of a redeemer in the 
 body — the only use they made of that fact 
 being the sentimental one of appealing to 
 our feelings in view of the great humility 
 of the Redeemer in taking upon Himself 
 the form of man, and voluntarily suffer- 
 ing the pains and agonies of the crucifix- 
 ion. This came to appear to me to be 
 mere sentimentalism, and I was puzzled 
 by the speculations of some Unitarians 
 who held that we have nothing but a his- 
 torical Christianity, which we can criticise 
 at pleasure; while we may, indeed, if we 
 choose, indulge an unbounded admiration 
 for "the Christ" as a great and good and 
 really wonderful historical person who 
 lived nearly two thousand years ago ! 
 
36 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 I had not then learned the profound 
 truth that the Church is a continuous, 
 ever-living, and teaching body, with all 
 that that implies, and especially always 
 having the Body and Blood of Our Lord 
 ever present upon the altar, ever giving 
 life to the humble and penitent commu- 
 nicant. But, of course, it took me yet 
 some years to see it in that light, though 
 I readily perceive now how the ideas I 
 gained from Lieber and Brownson on or- 
 ganized society, and the views on the in- 
 carnation which I had subsequently read 
 in the writings of Hugh Davey Evans in 
 "The True Catholic," were what Cole- 
 ridge called " seed-thoughts" which took 
 root and finally bore glorious fruit. In 
 the mean time, however, other influences 
 were working. 
 
 Thus I find an old memorandum which 
 reminds me that while studying law at 
 the Yale Law School in 1842, I became 
 
On the Road to Rome. 37 
 
 profoundly interested in Carlyle's book 
 on " Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the He- 
 roic in History. ,, I never have forgot- 
 ten the surprise with which I read that 
 passage in his lecture on " The Hero as 
 Priest," wherein, after glorifying Luther 
 and the Reformation, he started the ques- 
 tion whether "popery" would ever come 
 back again, speaking very contemptu- 
 ously of the " Poor old Popehood" as if it 
 were nearly dead, and giving his answer 
 in this oracular manner, to wit: "The 
 poor old Popehood will not die away en- 
 tirely, as Thor has done, for some time 
 yet ; nor ought it. We may say, the Old 
 never dies till this happen : Till all the 
 soul of good that was in it have got itself 
 transfused into the practical New. While 
 a good work remains capable of being 
 done by the Romish form; or, what is 
 inclusive of all, while a pious life remains 
 capable of being led by it, just so long, if 
 
3 8 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 we consider, will this or the other human 
 soul adopt it, go about as a living wit- 
 ness of it. So long it will obtrude itself 
 on the eye of us who reject it till we in 
 our practice too have appropriated what- 
 soever of truth was in it. Then, but also 
 not till then, it will have no charm more 
 for any man. The Romish form lasts 
 here for a purpose. Let it last as long 
 as it can." 
 
 How judicial, how oracular, how con- 
 descending! But such was then Car- 
 lyle's authority with me that this remark 
 worked a small revolution in my Protest- 
 ant notion that the Roman Catholic 
 Church was so filled with erroneous doc- 
 trine and corrupt practices that no soul 
 need expect to find salvation there. 
 Thenceforth, however, I no longer 
 doubted that a " pious life" might be 
 lived in that Church so as to secure salva- 
 tion hereafter. This admission once 
 
On the Road to Rome. 39 
 
 made, you can readily infer that the proc- 
 ess of softening prejudice went on 
 apace, though it was rather slow in its 
 operation. 
 
 Here would be the place, if I had the 
 time, and you the patience to listen, to 
 set forth at some length the results of the 
 diligent study which I made during the 
 years 1842-43-44 of Carlyle's brilliant and 
 soul-stirring essays, which spoke to me 
 like the blast of a bugle in the stirring 
 battle of life, and of his "Sartor Resar- 
 tus," his "Past and Present," and his 
 "French Revolution," in all of which he 
 exposed and riddled the shams of mod^ 
 ern society, and especially exploded the 
 modern commercial system, based as it is 
 upon the utter selfishness of competition, 
 and proclaiming as it does the modern 
 Gospel of Mammon : " Every man for 
 himself and the devil take the hindmost!" 
 But I must hasten on and bespeak your 
 
4© On the Road to Rome. 
 
 attention while I refer as briefly as possi- 
 ble to an incident which caused a sensa- 
 tion somewhat like unto the sudden 
 bursting of a bombshell in the tent of 
 the enemy. 
 
 In the summer of 1844, I was invited 
 by the faculty of Kenyon College to de- 
 liver an oration at their ensuing com- 
 mencement. Accepting this invitation, 
 I spent some weeks in carefully prepar- 
 ing an oration in which I discussed and 
 reviewed the signs of the times, and set 
 forth what appeared to me to be the pre- 
 vailing tendencies of the age in its social, 
 political, and religious aspects. In doing 
 this I availed myself freely of the studies 
 which, during the preceding five years, 
 I had made of Cousin, Lieber, Carlyle, 
 and Brownson — and as to the latter I may 
 say, in passing, that his essays on syn- 
 thetic philosophy, and his profound dis- 
 cussions of the political questions grow- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 41 
 
 ing out of the Dorr rebellion in Rhode 
 Island, all of which appeared in the 
 Democratic Review in 1842-43, had greatly 
 interested me, and led me to take and 
 read his Quarterly Review, which he re- 
 sumed in 1844 upon his disagreement 
 with the editor of the Democratic Review, 
 Brownson's views substantially agreed 
 with those of Dr. Lieber on the origin of 
 society, the constitution of the State, and 
 the true theory of constitutional govern- 
 ment, which I made use of freely in my 
 oration in combating what I considered 
 to be the rapid tendency of that day to- 
 ward Democratic absolutism, as shown by 
 the persistent attempts to break down the 
 intermediary, or, as Lieber called them, 
 the mediatorial institutions, such as the 
 free law-making representative, the inl- 
 awed jury, the executive governed by 
 law instead of his own will, the indepen- 
 dent judiciary, and other like institutions, 
 
42 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 which were the growth of Christian civil- 
 ization, and which should stand between 
 the supreme power of the State and the 
 subject or individual, insuring the Safe 
 generation, expression, and transmission 
 by the legislature of the public will in the 
 shape of public law, to be wisely inter- 
 preted by the judiciary, and firmly bu-t 
 legally executed by the executive branch 
 — thus avoiding the tyranny of absolut- 
 ism on the one hand, and the disruption 
 of unrestrained individualism on the 
 other hand; and thus, by insuring the 
 harmonious co-existence of order and lib- 
 erty, solving what Carlyle called the 
 hugest problem of modern times. 
 
 I may also say that, progressing in en- 
 tire sympathy with my brother in his 
 theological studies, I had with him be- 
 come a high churchman, and so we had 
 begun to lay much stress upon the doc- 
 trines of apostolical succession, baptismal 
 
On the Road to Rome. 43 
 
 regeneration, the real presence, and that 
 assertion in one of the Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles "that the Church hath authority in 
 controversies of faith." We had even 
 come to admit that Luther's so-called 
 Reformation was in fact no reformation, 
 and that Protestantism was loaded down 
 with sad and direful consequences. And 
 yet we held that the Roman Church was 
 overlaid with errors, while the Anglican 
 Church — founded as we fondly fancied by 
 St. Paul himself — was a pure reformed 
 church ! 
 
 Some of you may remember that just 
 at that time (1844), Episcopalians were 
 in the highest tension of excitement 
 growing out of the agitation of those 
 church questions, and the publication in 
 England of the celebrated "Tracts for 
 the Times," including the famous "Tract 
 Number XC," in which Dr. John Henry 
 Newman undertook to reconcile the stand- 
 
44 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 ards of faith of the English Church with 
 the creed of Pope Pius IV. This excite- 
 ment had been greatly intensified in Feb- 
 ruary, 1843, by Dr. Newman's formal re- 
 tractation of the charges which he had 
 uttered against the Church of Rome and, 
 in the September following, giving up 
 his living and resigning his office as a 
 clergyman, though he was not received 
 into the Catholic Church until October 9, 
 1845. Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio — the 
 great gun of the low church party in the 
 United States — had added fuel to the 
 flames by publishing his book against 
 " Oxford Divinity." 
 
 Under these circumstances I appeared 
 at the Commencement of 1844, which was 
 presided over by Bishop Mcllvaine, and 
 was attended by many of the clergy and 
 prominent laymen of the diocese of Ohio, 
 and by a large crowd of visitors. I ven- 
 tured to proclaim church views and theo- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 45 
 
 ries quite antagonistic to theirs, though 
 it is proper to say that I began, and spent 
 some time, as already indicated, in point- 
 ing out some dangerous and revolution- 
 ary tendencies in political and social mat- 
 ters — which views met, perhaps, with 
 general acceptance, as nearly all of us 
 were Whigs of the Henry Clay school. 
 
 But my principal effort was, following 
 the teachings of Carlyle, to show the 
 horrible results of that famous doctrine 
 of "competition and laissez faire" in- 
 troduced and advocated by the French 
 economists, and adopted and published 
 in England by Adam Smith, Mai thus, 
 Ricardo, Paley, and Bentham. I summed 
 up this doctrine by saying: " Its funda- 
 mental principle or starting point was 
 'the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. ' This general result was to be 
 obtained by each one 'pursuing his own 
 true and substantial happiness' in his 
 
46 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 own way. Wherefore, each one should 
 have the 'largest liberty,' be 'let alone' 
 to come and go as he pleased — to buy and 
 sell where and what and how he pleased. 
 'Enlightened self-interest' would teach 
 him to respect the law of maim and tuam, 
 and, in seeking a particular, to promote 
 the general result. Competition would 
 be the life of business, or 'the soul of 
 trade,' and straighten out occasional ir- 
 regularities. And for the rest, the great 
 law of 'supply and demand' would regu- 
 late all, and thus restore the lost Eden to 
 earth! Was it not," I exclaimed, intend- 
 ing to be sarcastic, " a beautiful theory, a 
 fascinating vision, worthy of all accepta- 
 tion among men?" 
 
 And then I controverted the ultimate 
 fact of this theory that man must be 
 happy, by declaring with Carlyle that the 
 fact of nature is that man is not born to 
 be happy here, but is sent into this world 
 
On the Road to Rome. 47 
 
 to do his duty and get his proper work 
 done. Then, after showing with many 
 more words that the fundamental assump- 
 tion of this teaching was false, I alleged 
 that the whole theory in practice goes 
 wrong, and then followed a paragraph 
 which, on account of its applicability to 
 the present time, though written over 
 forty-two years ago, I think you will par- 
 don me for repeating. I said : 
 
 "And besides, 'enlightened' self-inter- 
 est is found to be scarce. The 'demand* 
 for it, indeed, is great; while ever an 
 abundant 'supply' of mere selfishness re- 
 mains, to clash and jar and compete with 
 self-interest as best it may. With all pos- 
 sible compensatory adjustments, with all 
 conceivable checks and balances, by the 
 'never so cunning mechanizing of self- 
 interests' [though the ingenious device of 
 substituting the bell-punch and such like 
 cunning mechanical contrivances in the 
 
48 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 place of sterling integrity had not then 
 been thought of], your 'laws of supply 
 and demand' and 'laissez faire,' it is 
 found, do not feed the hungry, clothe the 
 naked, restrain the all-absorbing greed 
 of gain and lust of power. Nor yet, as 
 Carlyle said, do they solve the problem 
 from which they started, and which they 
 undertook to solve: 'Given a world of 
 knaves, to educe an honesty from their 
 united action!' In short, universal 'lais- 
 sez faire' and competition, we discover, 
 finally turn out to be: Universal liberty 
 to cut yourself loose from all men and 
 seek your own interest; to suspect all 
 men; liberty, therefore, to drive cute 
 bargains with Yankee shrewdness, or 
 else liberty to die by honest starvation. 
 'Laissez faire!' 'Let me alone!' 'Give 
 me independence!' so long clamored in 
 the world, result at last in establishing — 
 not merely in the commercial world — but 
 
On the Road to Rome. 49 
 
 one relation between men, that of cash- 
 payment!. Every one for himself and 
 due payment of wages in money; 'cash 
 the sole nexus of man to man;' this be- 
 ing your highest code of morality, is it at 
 all astonishing, if, instead of beholding 
 the lost Eden restored, we catch no un- 
 certain glimpses of the mean perplexities 
 of society, with its fraud and deceptions, 
 its shams, its vulpine cunning and clash- 
 ing interests, its winkings and blinkings 
 at dishonesty and rascality ?" 
 
 And yet, my friends, let me say, in 
 passing, that in those days (1844) the in- 
 genious money-making business of wreck- 
 ing railroads, and virtually stealing them 
 from the first subscribers to the stock, 
 had hardly begun ; nor had speculators 
 yet entered upon the equally ingenious 
 and disreputable scheme of " watering" 
 the stocks of great companies; nor had 
 the sense of morality and fair dealing be- 
 
50 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 tween man and man become so benumbed 
 and depraved as to tolerate dealing in 
 "futures;" and as to that diabolical spec- 
 ulation in breadstuffs and other neces- 
 saries of human subsistence, in which 
 one gambler pretends to buy what he 
 does not want from another gambler who 
 does not own and cannot deliver it — that 
 was still an unheard-of atrocity. Nor 
 was there then a small army of default- 
 ing trustees and bank presidents and 
 cashiers and "boodle" aldermen migrat- 
 ing in rapid succession to the cities of 
 refuge in Canada and elsewhere. Nor 
 were there any enormous corporations 
 stretching from ocean to ocean, combin- 
 ing and " pooling their issues" in order to 
 escape the disastrous consequences of 
 ruinous competition, and laying a heavy 
 hand upon the whole business of a help- 
 less community in order to fill their own 
 coffers with their stealings. Nor yet 
 
On the Road to Rome. 51 
 
 were there any gigantic industrial com- 
 panies which, in order to increase their 
 disproportionate gains, were importing 
 ignorant and half-starved Italians and 
 Bohemians and the "heathen Chinee," 
 to work for half wages, and displace and 
 reduce to starvation the laborers of our 
 own land. 
 
 And yet the results of competition in 
 those days were truly bad enough, espe- 
 cially in England, as they were vividly 
 described byCarlyle; and they were al- 
 ready appearing even in this glorious 
 country, where economists had begun to 
 stigmatize the unsuccessful laborer as a 
 " pauper" and cast him into the poor- 
 house — that wretched abode over whose 
 portals the sad and gloomy legend should 
 be written : " Whoso enters here leaves 
 hope behind!" Even then the good old 
 common law described by Blackstone as 
 to forestalling the market, regrating, and 
 
52 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 engrossing (which were indictable and 
 finable offences), was almost a dead let- 
 ter, or in modern phrase had about 
 reached the point of "innocuous desue- 
 tude"; and, finally, men were beginning, 
 in reply to the searching question: 
 "Where is thy brother?" to give an an- 
 swer like that of Cain: "My brother? 
 Am I my brother's keeper? Have I not 
 paid him his wages in cash? I have no 
 further business with him!" 
 
 And so I said on that commencement 
 day at Gambier : " The competitive sys- 
 tem is making its ultimate manifestation 
 in some all-too-common vagrant Sam 
 Slick, who, friendless, unrelated, roves 
 over the earth, doing strokes of trade, 
 without brother, without home, the in- 
 carnation of Individualism. Well may 
 we ask," I said, "whither are we tend- 
 ing? What kind of a society is that 
 ' where there is no longer any true social 
 
On the Road to Rome. 53 
 
 idea extant' — not even an idea of a com- 
 mon home, but only of a common lodging- 
 house and merchants' exchange, — where 
 friendship, communion, is an incredible 
 tradition, and love of thy neighbor only 
 a thing to be preached of on Sunday !" 
 
 But this " final outcome of the 'greatest 
 happiness' principle, or utilitarian the- 
 ory, was," I said, "the last wave of the 
 movement started by the French econo- 
 mists in the eighteenth century" — one of 
 its products being the terrible French 
 Revolution, which Carlyle characterized 
 as a new assertion of man's rights, a 
 terrific protest against shams — "procla- 
 mation of a truth once more, though a 
 truth clad in hell-fire!" and I quoted the 
 philosophic historian as maintaining that 
 this revolution was not an isolated fact, 
 but stands connected with and related to 
 the whole past, as well as to the whole 
 future, and that, with the rebellions and 
 
54 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 revolutions in England, "it found its 
 point of departure in the Reformation of 
 Luther/' And thus having traced the 
 modern Gospel of Mammon, with its un- 
 restrained individualism, its competition 
 and pauperism," and the destructive 
 
 *A striking evidence of reaction against the in- 
 human selfishness practised in commercial life and 
 defended by heartless economists was presented by 
 Prof. Felix Adler in his lecture on February 14, 1895, 
 in the School of Applied Ethics, at the Columbian 
 University, Washington, D. C, when, among other 
 weighty utterances, he said, as reported in the Post: 
 
 Abject Misery on All Sides. 
 "I will criticise this principle of selfishness on the 
 ground of its actual results. We see abject misery 
 every day in spite of the vast fortunes accumulated 
 side by side with it ; we see the audacity of our 
 trusts, the heartless desertion of public interest on 
 the part of the wealthiest, the shirking of the bur- 
 dens of taxation on the part of those best able to bear 
 it, and the oppression of those least able to bear it. " 
 
 He had previously said, as reported : 
 
 "There are, in my estimation, two ways in which 
 the ethical student and worker can speed the moral 
 development of industrial society of the present day. 
 Assuming as a fact that men in their commercial life 
 
On the Road to Rome. 55 
 
 revolutions of three centuries back to the 
 Reformation, I exclaimed before my audi- 
 ence that day : 
 
 " Given your protest against spiritual 
 abuses in the sixteenth century, your 
 protest against the existence of sacred 
 rights between rulers and ruled in the 
 seventeenth century, your protest against 
 
 are largely governed by selfishness, it would be the 
 function of the ethical student to consider what 
 checks can be imposed upon that selfishness and what 
 new conditions can be prescribed to soften the harsh- 
 ness of economic egotism. The second function 
 would be to consider whether in the nature of things 
 it is necessary that selfishness should always be the 
 leading motive of the commercial and industrial life 
 of man, and whether there are not other motives by 
 which the world can live that would not dangerously 
 affect production, distribution, and consumption ; 
 that would not lessen the industrial efficiency of 
 mankind, but at the same time elevate the tone of 
 those who are engaged in industrial and commercial 
 life. " 
 
 If the School of Applied Ethics persistently fol- 
 lows out this line of thought to its logical conclusion, 
 may we not hope to see it achieving great success in 
 bringing back the civilized, otherwise designated as 
 
56 0?i the Road to Rome. 
 
 all restraint and all authority in the 
 eighteenth century, and the protest 
 against the existence of any relation 
 between men but that of cash-payment 
 in the nineteenth century is also ;jiven. 
 Did the one necessarily contain the 
 other? Perhaps not. But from the one 
 to the other we are tugged along by a 
 
 the devilized, world to the salutary practice of the 
 Golden Rule as taught by Pope Leo XIII., wherein is 
 the sole remedy for the fearful evils that threaten 
 speedy revolution and widespread disruption? 
 
 Is it not an encouraging sign of the times that, on 
 February 28, 1895, at the regular Thursday afternoon 
 lecture of the Catholic University, Washington, 
 D. C. , the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of 
 Labor, after alluding to what Carlyle called the dis- 
 mal science, said : " There is a new and better school 
 of political economy in which the old question of 
 'will it pay' gives place to the more pertinent ques- 
 tion, 'is it right;'" and he held "firmly to the view 
 that the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, 
 faithfully applied by all conditions of society, would 
 go a long way toward reconciling the differences be- 
 tween capital and labor," adding that "there is no 
 safer platform for employer and employee, even on 
 the plane of expediency, than the Decalogue." 
 
On the Road to Rome. 57 
 
 chain that snaps not nor breaks in any 
 link. 
 
 14 Reform of whatsoever evil thing is 
 upon earth," I added, "is forever a duty. 
 Protest against error, falsehood, and 
 tyranny is forever necessary. Only it 
 , behooves a man to think well of the 
 spirit in which he will make it. If his 
 protest is made in wrath and hatred, and 
 with headlong selfish violence, it may 
 become 'denial of divine right as well as 
 diabolic wrong.' And then your denial 
 of Mother Church becomes denial of the 
 divine right of rulers — spiritual and tem- 
 poral ; passes into the mitigated form, of 
 Presbyterianism, matures into Congrega- 
 tionalism, goes to seed in Socinianism, 
 and then, naturally flying off into innu- 
 merable independent, isolated, hostile 
 fragments, ends in cold, horrible selfish- 
 ness and ghastly despair." 
 
 Then briefly discussing the "right of 
 
58 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 private judgment," I said: "Man's con- 
 science, his judgment, his belief are his 
 own, and by these he must stand or fall. 
 In this world of distraction and error, 
 what a man shall judge to be right and 
 good and true, what with all his heart to 
 believe — this is his highest difficulty — 
 how blessed if some highest, wisest mind 
 would teach him what." 
 
 Ah ! my friends, what painful seeking 
 for guidance was therein expressed ! 
 What doubts and " questionings of des- 
 tiny" would have been saved me had 
 I then known the Infallible Church ! 
 Thank God, that knowledge was to come. 
 But then, all I could say was this: "Pri- 
 vate judgment, unchainable as the winds, 
 must be exercised. It exists forever a 
 sacred right to be exercised. But woe to 
 him who, casting away fear and rever- 
 ence, in the pride of intellect, or in the 
 obstinacy of ignorance, asserts this lib- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 59 
 
 erty to the length of making his own will 
 the supreme law, and his own selfish feel- 
 ings his standard of right. There are 
 limits here, perhaps undefinable, yet 
 real, beyond which it is perilous for man 
 to go, yet beyond which he has gone. 
 'I stand alone before my God' is a solemn 
 truth; yet, not wholly, not lovingly un- 
 derstood, it leads to results injurious, in 
 the spiritual world, to the highest and 
 holiest relations of man to his fellows — 
 results which we see all round us in life, 
 harmonizing with the wretched results 
 of 'universal competition and laissez 
 faire.' " 
 
 And then I deprecated the radical con- 
 duct of those who " go on asserting this 
 right of private judgment to the length 
 of abolishing government with the 'Xo- 
 government' man; of becoming a law T to 
 yourself with the Perfectionist; of find- 
 ing in the pure reason the absolute God 
 
60 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 with the Transcendentalist ; of making 
 the absolute God the soul of the universe 
 with the Pantheist; and, as the last act 
 of this career, of plunging into the bot- 
 tomless, wide, wasting whirlpool of 
 Atheism." And then, referring to the 
 rule of faith recognized by my audience, 
 I concluded as follows : 
 
 " And now you will point me, as a 
 refuge from all these distractions, to that 
 ancient book, the Bible, as containing the 
 ground plan of all life and duty, accom- 
 panying the act with the declaration: 'He 
 is free whom the truth makes free. ' And 
 then, with Pilate of old, I ask 'What is 
 truth?' And unlike him I zvill stay for 
 an answer. Is that necessarily truth 
 which one may believe with ever so much 
 heartfelt sincerity? If so, then is not 
 the sincere Perfectionist, walking with 
 the Bible in his hand, right? Is not the 
 Transcendentalist who, with awful sin- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 61 
 
 cerity, finds the Most High God in the 
 pure reason, right? Is not every secta- 
 rian right who holds his particular view or 
 opinion with sincerity? Are, then, truth 
 and duty dependent upon the transitory 
 feelings and perceptions of each finite in- 
 dividual ? Or is it not most certain that 
 truth is eternal, at one with itself, and 
 possessing a harmonious diversity in 
 unity? If this is certain, then does it 
 necessarily follow that I, that any iso- 
 lated individual, with his diseased will, 
 innumerable prejudices, and warped feel- 
 ings, will apprehend the whole truth? — 
 for the question is not with how little 
 truth I can possibly get along. Is it not 
 becoming a very general feeling with 
 men that each one's belief, formed, as it 
 has been, by the unlimited exercise of 
 the right of private judgment, and lead- 
 ing to the results already -mentioned, 
 needs verifying? And do they not feel 
 
6 2 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 that they cannot with safety appeal from 
 their own unauthorized versions of truth 
 to the versions of other isolated men 
 equally unauthorized? Is it not becom- 
 ing the earnest, passionate cry of the 
 times : Where is the version that we can 
 depend upon? Is it no longer possible 
 to discover a manly, noble, god-like rela- 
 tion between men, — a principle which 
 shall lead to a glorious unity in diversity, 
 and bind men together once more in a 
 true, loving, universal brotherhood ?" 
 
 Such was the conclusion of my oration 
 on that Commencement Day in August, 
 1844.* Do you ask how it was received, 
 
 * At the end of my speech, as I left the stage and 
 walked down the aisle, I met my friend, Thomas 
 Sparrow (brother of Dr. Sparrow, and then a lawyer 
 in Columbus), going toward the stage to deliver the 
 next oration. He saluted me with the blunt ques- 
 tion : "What did you mean by that oration?" Hav- 
 ing no time to answer fully, I simply replied: "I 
 meant just what I said." "Well, "said he, " I brought 
 two orations with me— the best one is on French 
 
On the Road to Rome. 6$ 
 
 and what was its effect? I can answer 
 only in a general way that it was the 
 topic of discussion that day at many of 
 the dinner-tables in Gambier; and you 
 will doubtless not be surprised to learn 
 that some of my hearers promptly said : 
 " That young man is well on the road to 
 Rome." But perhaps 3?ou will be sur- 
 prised to hear that, while I w r as appar- 
 
 literature, and the other is on William Leggett, and 
 now I am going to give you a counterblast by read- 
 ing the one on Leggett. " And so he proceeded to 
 eulogize Leggett and shock the feelings of his Whig 
 auditors by uttering the most radical Democratic — 
 then called "Locofoco" — doctrines. 
 
 At the close of the exercises, as the people were 
 going out, the Rev. George Denison (my brother- 
 in-law, and my exceedingly low church pastor at 
 Newark) , met me with the ejaculation : "Well, Tom 
 gave you a good counterblast, and I am glad of it. 
 Not that I am a Democrat." "Oh! no," said I, 
 "you are a Whig in politics, but unfortunately a 
 Locofoco in religion !" And then each went his way. 
 I heard that he was greatly annoyed by having to 
 admit, in answer to sundry questioners, that I came 
 from his parish. 
 
64 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 ently so near to Rome, it took me yet 
 nine more years to get there. * And 
 this is the more surprising to myself 
 now after again glancing over certain 
 articles of Brownson's in his Quarterly 
 Review for January, April, and July, 
 1844 — all of which I had read, and 
 some of w r hich I had carefully studied 
 and even quoted from in preparing my 
 oration. 
 
 Brownson, I may remind you, had at 
 
 * At this point my conclusion of this address, on its 
 first reading before the Institute on January 6, 1887, 
 was as follows : 
 
 "The story, however, of my final struggle and tri- 
 umph must be written hereafter, if at all. And now 
 making my apology for holding you so long, and re- 
 turning you my thanks for your patient attention, 
 I beg to suggest that, in view of the fact that the act 
 of our village minister in 'breaking the Sabbath- 
 day' resulted, under God, in bringing two brothers 
 into the Church — the elder of whom has brought up 
 a son who is now (1887) a Jesuit priest at Woodstock 
 [in 1895 President of Georgetown University,] it 
 would be a good and wholesome thought to pray for 
 the soul of Ahab Jinks." 
 
On the Road to Rome. 65 
 
 the close of 1843 severed his connection 
 with the Unitarians, and come back again 
 to Trinitarianism. The publication of 
 this fact, and of certain essays of his on 
 church questions, had attracted wide at- 
 tention, and all those who were watching 
 his career — and they were many — were 
 curious to see where he would land. 
 Prior to 1843 he had published and writ- 
 ten most of the articles in the Boston 
 Quarterly Review. In the latter part of 
 1842, that review having been discontin- 
 ued, he wrote for the Democratic Review 
 until the close of 1843, when, owning to a 
 radical disagreement w r ith the editor in 
 discussions about the Dorr Rebellion in 
 Rhode Island, he recommenced in Janu- 
 ary, 1844, the publication of his quarterly 
 in Boston, calling it Brownson s Quarterly 
 Review. In the July number he reviewed 
 the letters of Bishop Hopkins, of Ver- 
 mont, " On the Novelties which Disturb 
 
66 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 Our Peace," in which Brownson advanced 
 serious objections to Anglicanism. At 
 that time Dr. Samuel Seabury was the 
 great gun of the high churchmen in this 
 country, and was the able editor of The 
 Churchman — the organ of the high church 
 party. In the hope of inducing Brown- 
 son to join the Episcopal Church, Dr. 
 Seabury replied to his objections to An- 
 glicanism, using his most powerful argu- 
 ments. To these Brownson replied in 
 his October number for 1844, demonstrat- 
 ing with unanswerable logic that the An- 
 glican Church was schismatic, and an- 
 nouncing at its conclusion his conversion 
 to Rome, being "happy," he said, "to 
 acknowledge the authority of the Holy 
 Father." Somehow this logical shot, 
 which I shall notice further on, did not 
 then demolish the armor with which I 
 had covered myself. And so I quit tak- 
 ing his Review, much to my subsequent 
 
On the Road to Rome. 67 
 
 regret, and stuck to our high church, 
 pet branch theory. And soon there- 
 after becoming involved in the dis- 
 tractions of business and practical poli- 
 tics, for several years I gave compara- 
 tively little attention to the studies 
 which had hitherto been so deeply ab- 
 sorbing. 
 
 However, as the months and years 
 passed on some incidents occurred which 
 I recall with interest, and which may be 
 mentioned as having had a certain influ- 
 ence in the development of my church 
 views. The first of these to be men- 
 tioned in the order of time occurred while 
 I was preparing my Kenyon oration. I 
 remember one day (in 1844), while sit- 
 ting in my law office in Newark, Ohio, 
 with Major Benjamin W. Brice (after- 
 ward paymaster-general of the United 
 States Army, and now, March, 1887, a 
 resident of this city — Washington, 
 
68 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 D.C.— * together with William D. Wil- 
 son and George Peyton Conrad, all law- 
 yers, we engaged in the discussion of 
 high church doctrines and Puseyism 
 (the exciting topics of that time), and as 
 I was known to be high church, I was 
 asked to state what were the peculiar 
 tenets of that school. Having mentioned 
 apostolical succession, baptismal regener- 
 ation, and the real presence, the discus- 
 sion centred upon the latter topic, and 
 became somewhat exciting, when Major 
 Brice, who did not profess any religious 
 belief in particular, though he attended 
 the Episcopal Church, astonished us by 
 saying, in regard to the Roman Catholic 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation, that he 
 could not see why one who believed that 
 God became an infant in the womb of a 
 virgin should have any difficulty in be- 
 
 *Died in December, 1892. 
 
On the Road to Rome. 69 
 
 lieving that He was present in the Host. 
 This was to me a startling way of putting 
 the case. For, although I was a firm be- 
 liever in the Incarnation, yet, as I recall 
 it now, the truth as stated by Major Brice 
 had never been presented to me in that 
 realistic manner. But the idea took 
 lodgment and abided with me. And I 
 think you will appreciate my surprise 
 when, some twelve years later, after I 
 had become a Catholic and had migrated 
 to Iowa, while absorbed one day in read- 
 ing Father Faber's profound and wonder- 
 ful work on "The Blessed Sacrament/* I 
 came to this sentence : 
 
 " Multitudes of men believe the Incar- 
 nation who disbelieve Transubstantia- 
 tion ; yet out of twenty arguments they 
 will use against the last, the chances are 
 that nineteen would lie equally against 
 the first." And on the following page, 
 referring to " the curious national frenzy 
 
70 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 which took place [in England in 1851] in 
 consequence of the establishment of the 
 Catholic hierarchy in England," in 1850, 
 Father Faber mentions how "an infidel 
 journal observing upon the fact of Protest- 
 ants chalking over the walls [in London] 
 'No Wafer Gods,' said that it seemed to 
 reasoning men who held themselves sub- 
 limely aloof from both parties, an absurd 
 inconsistency for those to make any seri- 
 ous objection to the Catholic who looks at 
 the Host and says it is God, who them- 
 selves require you to look into the face of 
 a new-born Babe and to believe It is the 
 Eternal and Immutable God!" You may 
 be sure, when I read that passage away 
 off in Iowa, I recalled with some interest 
 the remark of my friend, Major Brice, 
 made a dozen years before. 
 
 Another incident which I could never 
 forget was my first sight of Archbishop 
 Purcell. It may have been early in 1846 
 
On the Road to Rome. 71 
 
 when the report was circulated among us 
 that Bishop Purcell was coming to offici- 
 ate at the Catholic church in Newark. 
 Some five or six of us young lawyers, at- 
 tracted by the fame of the bishop's cele- 
 brated controversy with Alexander Camp- 
 bell, were anxious to see and hear him, 
 and accordingly we went to the church at 
 the appointed time. This was my first 
 entrance into a Catholic church. What I 
 saw on this occasion was the poorest 
 specimen of a dull brick-and-mortar 
 building, with a cold brick floor, plain, 
 even rough, seats, a dim light, and a 
 small congregation of poor Irish and Ger- 
 mans. It was a low Mass, though I did 
 not then know one Mass from another, 
 and had not the remotest idea what was 
 going on about the altar, as I could hear 
 nothing, and there was little to be seen 
 except the dinginess of the walls and 
 floors. It seemed to me a singular way 
 
72 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 to conduct public worship, for I did not 
 then know that the priest was performing 
 the highest act of worship by offering the 
 unbloody sacrifice upon the altar of God, 
 thus fulfilling the prophecy of Malachy 
 that "from the rising of the sun even 
 unto the going down of the same My 
 name, saith the Lord of Hosts, is great 
 among the Gentiles, and in every place 
 there is sacrifice, and there is offered to 
 My name a clean oblation/' 
 
 At last there was a pause, and the 
 bishop turned round and faced the peo- 
 ple. His presence was not at all impos- 
 ing, and his tenor voice, though clear, 
 did not at first indicate the orator or man 
 of power. My first impression was one 
 of disappointment. But this was momen- 
 tary. The bishop spoke in a conversa- 
 tional tone. He was merely talking; but 
 he had not spoken a minute before we 
 discovered that it was the talk of a man 
 
On the Road to Rome. 73 
 
 of intellect, of culture, and deep thought ; 
 and we imagined from the line of his 
 talk that he knew of our presence, and 
 endeavored "to speak to our condition." 
 I well remember how, in speaking of the 
 completeness of Catholic doctrine, he said 
 that even the humblest Catholic, who w T as 
 well instructed in the catechism, had an 
 immense advantage over even the most 
 learned outsider or non-Catholic, because 
 the Catholic stood, as it were, at the cen- 
 tre of truth, whence he could look out 
 in all directions; while even the most 
 learned non-Catholic stood as it were on 
 a mere point on the outside of the circle, 
 and could see only a short distance above 
 or beyond on the circumference — the dif- 
 ference between outsiders being that the 
 greatest or most learned man could see 
 just a little further around than the 
 others. And then the bishop went on 
 to speak of the conquests that this Catho- 
 
74 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 lie truth was making, mentioning the 
 then quite recent conversion of Dr. New- 
 man and other Puseyites in England, and 
 the great philosopher, Dr. Brownson, and 
 others in this country — all of whom had 
 sought this central truth, and were happy 
 in having gained the illumination of its 
 glorious light. Somehow, while this 
 grand utterance of the bishop struck 
 home to my soul, still I evaded its force 
 by fancying that our branch of the Church 
 was just as near the centre of truth as the 
 Papal or Roman Church. And this illu- 
 sion continued with me yet for some 
 time. 
 
 Another incident to which I may al- 
 lude was connected with the spirit-rap- 
 pings which were exceedingly prevalent 
 in 1845 and thereafter. It was probably 
 due to something I had read in Brown- 
 son's writings that I was led to hold that 
 these or some of them were manifesta- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 75 
 
 tions of evil spirits, with which it was just 
 as wicked for the Christian to have inter- 
 course as it was for King Saul to consult 
 the Witch of Endor. It was a curious 
 fact that very many, if not the majority, 
 of the rapidly increasing multitude of 
 Spiritists were people who were not noted 
 for any religious belief; and yet here 
 they were accepting without question be- 
 lief in the agency of spirits which they 
 knew nothing about, and had no means 
 of determining whether they were good 
 or bad. The more this matter of spirits 
 was discussed the more I came to see how 
 utterly inadequate and barren was the 
 Protestant teaching respecting the agency 
 of good angels among us. As to the 
 consoling and comforting Catholic teach- 
 ing in regard to our Guardian Angels,* 
 
 *The Catholic idea of the Guardian Angel is ap- 
 propriately and beautifully expressed in the follow- 
 ing prayer, which I copy for the benefit of ray Prot- 
 
7 6 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 I had never heard of it, or at least it had 
 never been taught as a thing which we 
 ought to believe. And I well remember 
 the surprise and pleasure with which I 
 
 estant or non-Catholic readers, if there should be 
 any : 
 
 A Prayer to One's Guardian Angel. 
 
 O most faithful companion, appointed by God to 
 be my guardian, my protector, and defender, and 
 who never leavest my side ; how shall I thank thee 
 for thy faithfulness and love, and for all the benefits 
 which thou hast conferred upon me? Thou watchest 
 over me while I sleep ; thou comfortest me when I 
 am sad ; thou liftest me up when I am down ; thou 
 avertest the dangers that threaten me ; thou warnest 
 me of those that are to come ; thou withdrawest me 
 from sin, and excitest me to good; thou exhortest 
 me to penance when I fall, and reconcilest me to 
 God. Long ago should I have been lost unless by 
 thy prayers thou hadst turned away from me the 
 anger of God. Leave me not, nor forsake me ever, 
 I beseech thee ; but still comfort me in adversity, 
 restrain me in prosperity, defend me in danger, as- 
 sist me in temptations, lest at any time I fall be'neath 
 them. Offer up in the sight of the Divine Majesty 
 my prayers and groanings, and all my works of 
 piety, and make me to persevere in grace, until I 
 come to everlasting life. Amen. 
 
On the Road to Rome. 77 
 
 read a remarkable passage in a book by 
 Frederika Bremer, in the days when her 
 books were so popular, contrasting the 
 barrenness of belief of the people of her 
 day in this regard, and their consequent 
 low, dry, and narrow views of life, with 
 that of their ancestors who were conscious 
 of being surrounded with a world of 
 Guardian Angels — of good spirits, and 
 also of evil spirits, and to whom it was 
 natural to live in a bright world of imag- 
 ination teeming with beautiful and soul- 
 inspiring legends. 
 
 It was also about this time — perhaps in 
 1849 — that an Episcopal clergyman from 
 another diocese, during a visit in my 
 family where he found sympathetic lis- 
 teners, advanced the idea that the Mother 
 of our Divine Lord must necessarily have 
 been a woman of perfect purity, and en- 
 titled to the highest possible honor and 
 veneration. This struck me at once as 
 
78 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 being so reasonable that I thereafter 
 wholly rejected the absurd Protestant 
 charges against Catholics of Mariolatry. 
 And I fully sympathized in this regard 
 with the venerable Bishop Philander 
 Chase (uncle of Chief-Justice Chase), 
 who, after many years of separation, once 
 more met a certain Episcopal minister 
 who, in the mean time, had printed a book 
 to show that the blessed virgin mother 
 of Our Lord was the mother of other chil- 
 dren ; and when the minister advanced to 
 greet him, the old bishop, in the dignity 
 of his magnificent presence, repelled him 
 with the scornful remark, "You beast!" 
 It is needless to add that a little later on 
 I had no difficulty whatever in accepting 
 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception 
 promulgated in 1854 by Pope Pius IX., of 
 glorious memory. 
 
 A few words on another matter and 
 then I shall come to the culminating 
 
On the Road to Rome. 79 
 
 point in my progress to Rome. Perhaps 
 no prejudice was more deeply imbedded 
 in my mind than that of the corruption of 
 the Catholic Church in practice, as well 
 as its defection in doctrine. And for a 
 long time the argument against its claims 
 to authority seemed to me to be fair and 
 strong that God would not select and 
 trust such a corrupt body to act as His 
 favored instrument for the promulgation 
 of His truth, and the administration of 
 spiritual affairs on earth. I cannot now 
 recall what author it was who gave a fatal 
 shock to this assumption by citing the 
 example of the Jewish Church, which, 
 with all the errors and crimes of its 
 priests, and the dreadful backslidings of 
 its stiff-necked people, still remained the 
 chosen Church of God, so that even Our 
 Saviour Himself, when He had healed the 
 leper, said to him : " Go, show thyself to 
 the priest and offer for thy cleansing the 
 
80 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 things that Moses commanded for a testi- 
 mony to them." Thus it dawned upon 
 me that the agents whom God selects for 
 the execution of His divine purposes are 
 not guaranteed against erroneous con- 
 duct, nor even against the commission of 
 sin, but are left, as were Lucifer, the 
 brightest archangel, and Adam, with his 
 lofty intelligence, to the exercise of their 
 free w r ill. And this reasonable view of 
 the case went on enlarging until I 
 learned that even the Pope, although in- 
 fallible when speaking ex cathedra on a 
 question of faith or morals, is not impec- 
 cable; that, as every intelligent person 
 knows, or ought to know, his infallibil- 
 ity does not include or imply impecca- 
 bility; and that, although he is the suc- 
 cessor of St. Peter, and the head of the 
 Church, with its two hundred and fifty 
 millions of people, yet even he is obliged 
 to go down on his knees before his 
 
On the Road to Rome. 81 
 
 confessor the same as the humblest lay- 
 man. 
 
 Thus I have indicated how, from time 
 to time, my views and prejudices were 
 greatly modified and softened on a num- 
 ber of important points pertaining to 
 church questions. And yet I continued 
 to flatter myself that we high church 
 illuminati, who had picked out the first 
 four councils as our standards, and had 
 settled it that St. Paul had founded the 
 Anglican Church in Britain, could safely 
 stand upon the branch theory — assuming 
 that the Anglican Church (from which 
 the American Episcopal Church derived 
 its life) was as really a branch of the true 
 Church as was the Church of Rome, or 
 the Greek Church (for we held that also 
 to be a true branch) . In the midst of the 
 distractions of business and politics which 
 absorbed my attention, I know not how 
 much longer I might have rested on this 
 
 6 
 
82 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 frail assumption, when suddenly, like an 
 electric shock, there came to me an epis- 
 tle from my brother, who was spending 
 the winter of 1849-50 in New Orleans for 
 his health, containing these startling 
 words : " I am a Roman Catholic in be- 
 lief." Of course I was astounded. But 
 even the long exposition and argument 
 set forth in his letter did not convince 
 me ; and I still felt sure that if I only had 
 the time and opportunity I could demon- 
 strate to his satisfaction that the Angli- 
 can Church was the true via media and 
 house of refuge, avoiding, as I imagined, 
 the disintegrating individualism of Prot- 
 estantism on the one hand, and what I 
 then considered the liberty -killing abso- 
 lutism of the Papacy on the other hand. 
 
 In the heat and enthusiasm of his new 
 conviction, my brother soon returned to 
 his home in Columbus, expecting to carry 
 with him to Rome a number of his de- 
 
On the Road to Rome. 83 
 
 voted high church friends. But he soon 
 found that he had reckoned without his 
 host. His advances were met with hor- 
 ror and indignation. And the storm of 
 opposition was such that he was fain to 
 bend under it for a time till the gale 
 should be overpast. Of course he was 
 not inclined to do any more preaching, 
 and indeed the state of his health fur- 
 nished a good excuse for his silence. 
 Yet during this intermediate state of 
 nearly two years — the unhappiest of his 
 life — he did preach a few times, and he 
 produced one sermon which he delivered 
 at Gambier — doubtless with a grim sort 
 of pleasure — before the professors, theo- 
 logical students, and literati of Kenyon 
 College and Bexley Hall, causing a buzz 
 and fermentation that lasted for some 
 time, and leaving the impression that 
 he too was well along on the road to 
 Rome. 
 
84 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 Not long thereafter he delivered the 
 same sermon in our church in Newark. 
 I noticed it particularly because it showed 
 that he had familiarized himself with the 
 idea that the Church is a visible corpora- 
 tion, an organic body with a life and head 
 of its own. Speaking of the popular 
 error of making the preaching of faith 
 everything, he said : " It is not belief 
 merely that imparts spiritual life. We 
 must come into organic connection with 
 Christ the Head. As the individual is 
 united to the head of the race by natural 
 generation, so he is united to the Head 
 of the Church by spiritual regeneration. 
 The life of Christianity is a corporate 
 life. God has chosen to provide means 
 by which children shall be new-born to 
 Him by a principle of continuity and 
 reproduction which makes them all one, 
 binds them together in one body, and 
 through that body to the one Head, even 
 
On the Road to Rome. 85 
 
 Christ. Thus the Church is a visible, 
 organized body. The God-man has taken 
 it into union with Himself. He has 
 breathed upon it the divine effluence. 
 The Holy Ghost has taken up His abode 
 in it, and the God-man has promised to 
 be with it to the end of time." 
 
 This quotation will suffice to show the 
 drift of his thought. He had closely ob- 
 served the controversy in 1844 between 
 Dr. Seabury and Dr. Brownson, and had 
 specially noticed, as I had not, that Sea- 
 bury, although invited by Brownson to 
 do so, had never replied to Brownson's 
 October article in which he argued and 
 proved, in reply to Seabury, that the 
 Anglican Church was schismatic. Sea- 
 bury had admitted, with the Oxford di- 
 vines, that the Church was a corporation. 
 But he seemed to think he had raised up 
 an effectual guard by asserting that a 
 " visible centre" and a "visible head" 
 
86 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 were not essential to the existence of a 
 corporate body. To this Brownson an- 
 swered by quoting abundant authority to 
 show that, while the right of a number of 
 persons to act collectively as a corpora- 
 tion is invisible, yet the corporation it- 
 self is as visible a body as an army. In 
 like manner the authority of the Church is 
 invisible ; for it is the authority of Christ, 
 who is its invisible Head. But the indi- 
 viduals composing the corporation, and 
 the organs through which it acts, are 
 visible ; and this, Brownson said, was all 
 the visibility he contended for. And 
 then taking the Oxford divines on their 
 own principle — that the Church is a cor- 
 poration — Brownson held that " the 
 Church must needs be one in the unity of 
 the corporation, and one in its corporate 
 authority, as well as one in the unity of 
 faith and charity. Now T if the Church be 
 a single body, corporate or politic, as it 
 
On the Road to Rome. 87 
 
 must be if it is one corporation, and not 
 an assemblage of corporations, then the 
 Anglicans, in breaking the unity of the 
 corporation, as we all know they did, 
 were guilty of schism." And "the 
 Church of England" being a " distinct, 
 independent polity, participating in the 
 authority of no other body, but holding 
 communion with the authority of no body 
 but itself, is, therefore, not a member of 
 the Catholic body." It is cut off — schis- 
 matic. 
 
 Such was the argument of a portion of 
 Brownson's October article, to which Sea- 
 bury made no reply, as my brother had 
 noticed, and the force and truth of which 
 he had admitted in his own mind, al- 
 though he was delaying to act out his 
 convictions. As he did not, in his ser- 
 mon — which we called his "organic ser- 
 mon"— go on to argue with Brownson 
 that the Anglican Church was schismatic, 
 
88 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 I most heartily indorsed his theory of the 
 Church as an organic body, but I was not 
 yet quite ready to take the last step. 
 While writing this address I learned from 
 him that at the time when he wrote that 
 sermon, his mind was greatly impressed 
 with the following syllogism : " Every or- 
 ganized body must have a head. The 
 Church is an organized body. Therefore 
 the Church must have a head." This 
 brings to mind Father Hecker's mention, 
 in his "Aspirations of Nature," of the 
 case of a celebrated professor of natural 
 history * who, years ago, called on the 
 Bishop of Philadelphia, and in a state of 
 evident excitement bluntly asked the 
 bishop : " Sir ! do you know of any reason 
 why I should not become a Catholic?" 
 " On the contrary," answered the bishop, 
 " I know of many reasons why you 
 
 * Professor Haldemann. 
 
On the Road to Rome. 89 
 
 should." Having come to a good under- 
 standing, the bishop, finding that the 
 professor was in earnest, asked him what 
 it was that first directed his thoughts to 
 Catholic doctrine. "Bugs! Bugs!" was 
 the prompt answer. "Bugs," repeated 
 the astonished bishop, " what have these 
 to do with the truth of the Catholic relig- 
 ion?" And then the professor related 
 how he discovered one day by the aid of 
 a microscope that a family of animalculae 
 had a perfect system of an organized gov- 
 ernment — with a chief and subordinate 
 officers, all acting in unison and perfect 
 order. This unexpected discovery led 
 the professor to make other observations, 
 when he found everywhere in the wide 
 field of nature the same law, the same 
 form of government, from the meanest 
 floweret or insect to the vast system of 
 worlds. And then it occurred to him 
 that this same system of order and gov- 
 
90 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 ernment prevailed also in God's spiritual 
 government. And then he sought a 
 Catholic bishop, and found his proper 
 home in the Catholic Church. 
 
 In this matter of the headship my 
 brother had got a little ahead of me in his 
 progress on the road to Rome, although 
 halting for a brief period. But it re- 
 quired one more impulse, one more thun- 
 der-clap, so to speak, to rouse us both to 
 the last effort, and that came in a short 
 time to my brother, in the month of 
 November, 185 1, in the guise of sickness 
 almost unto death. Then he called for a 
 Catholic priest that he might be recon- 
 ciled to the Church and make his peace 
 with God at once. His request was de- 
 nied. Then there was a commotion in 
 his wide family circle by marriage. And 
 it was in the midst of the excitement 
 which followed that I went from New- 
 ark to Columbus to visit him. Acting as 
 
On the Road to Rome. 91 
 
 a peacemaker, I was happy to see that 
 the excitement was temporarily allayed, 
 and I arranged that he should visit me at 
 my quiet home at Newark just as soon as 
 he could safely get out. In a short time 
 this plan was carried out — my expecta- 
 tion being that in the peace and quietness 
 of my home his excitement would pass 
 away, and that by calmly reasoning to- 
 gether we would harmonize, as we always 
 had done, and meet again on the good 
 old via media. Little did I anticipate the 
 unanswerable arguments for the Catholic 
 Church which he had already mastered, 
 and with which he unexpectedly but 
 effectually posed me. 
 
 Among other points presented by him, 
 it would be well worth a half hour's lec- 
 ture to quote the texts from the New 
 Testament which he cited and showed 
 had either never received any interpreta- 
 tion, or had be^n grossly misinterpreted 
 
92 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 by Protestants, such as: "Thou art Peter 
 (a rock) and upon this rock I will build 
 My Church, and the gates of hell shall 
 never prevail against it"; and especially 
 passages in the sixth chapter of John. 
 But time does not permit this now, and I 
 must hasten on to say that my brother's 
 quiet visit to me was soon ended, with 
 benefit to his physical health, but with no 
 such change as I -expected in his spiritual 
 condition. When he returned home he 
 lost no time in seeing a priest (Father 
 Borgess, afterward Bishop of Detroit), 
 and in being received into the Church on 
 the festival of the conversion of St. Paul, 
 January 25, 1852.* 
 
 *In his letter to The Catholic Columbian, of 
 Columbus, Ohio, dated January 25, 1892, and after- 
 ward published at St. Paul, Minn., in Pamphlet 
 No. 29 of "The Catholic Truth Society of America," 
 under the title, "Forty Years in the Church," he paid 
 this fervent tribute to the Church in this eloquent 
 passage : 
 
 "For forty years I have been studying the Catholic 
 
On the Road to Rome. 93 
 
 I have thought it proper and needful to 
 mention these few details by way of in- 
 troduction to the climax in my own prog- 
 ress to Rome. For our interviews at 
 various times, before, during, and after 
 that visit of my brother resulted in the 
 discussion of the question of authority, 
 and on that matter I could not gainsay 
 his experience as an Episcopal minister 
 in the various diocesan and triennial con- 
 ventions which he had attended during 
 
 Church, both theoretically and practically — its sys- 
 tem of teaching, of devotion, and its wonderful or- 
 ganization ; and I must say its magnitude, its beauty, 
 and its glory have grown upon me continually till I 
 am ready to declare that there is nothing like it in 
 all the world. It bears unmistakable evidence of the 
 divinity of its origin and the superhuman wisdom 
 of its organization and development. The only won- 
 der is that a system so grand, so venerable, so 
 fraught with all that is intellectually great and devo- 
 tionally beautiful and attractive should not have 
 commanded more attention from intellectual men, 
 and more general investigation of claims whose proof 
 lies as it were on the surface, and is so easily acces- 
 sible to any candid, honest inquirer." 
 
94 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 the previous ten years, and at the close 
 of all of which he found himself and his 
 Church just as far as ever from an author- 
 itative settlement of a number of "con- 
 troversies of faith" which w T ent to the 
 very essence and foundation of Chris- 
 tianity. Ranging from the lowest low 
 churchman to the highest high church- 
 man, the variations of doctrine and views 
 held by them were numerous, startling, 
 irreconcilable. In vain had we looked, 
 lo ! these many years, for a realization by 
 the Episcopal Church of its famous asser- 
 tion " that the Church hath authority in 
 controversies of faith/' No such author- 
 ity had we been able to find in the Epis- 
 copal Church. 
 
 And yet the conviction had grown in 
 us to the force of a burning truth that 
 that authority must exist and reside 
 somewhere in a visible, tangible, recog- 
 nizable form, or else Revelation was a 
 
On the Road to Rome. 95 
 
 sham, the Church a delusion, the world 
 simply chaos, and human life not worth 
 living! For it all came to this, as was 
 once said by an old Presbyterian minis- 
 ter, that God having seen fit to create 
 man with reason and free will, it is due 
 to that creature that means should be pro- 
 vided whereby he may infallibly know 
 what is the will, the law of God, which 
 the creature must obey. Is it reasonable 
 to require man to obey a law under pain 
 of losing his soul, and yet to leave things 
 in such a loose way that no man can ever 
 be certain as to what that law is? 
 
 Here is the grand, central starting 
 point. Settle this, and all other ques- 
 tions which we need to have settled will 
 settle themselves. Let the Catholic al- 
 ways hold his antagonist rigidly to this 
 point until it is settled. If accepted, 
 agreement w r ill readily follow. If re- 
 jected, controversy is almost useless, es- 
 
g6 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 pecially on questions of interpretation and 
 history, because there is no mutually ac- 
 cepted judge to decide, and no mutually 
 accepted standard by which to be gov- 
 erned. If then it is due to the creature 
 that means should be provided whereby 
 he may infallibly know the law of God so 
 far as it pertains to man's eternal salva- 
 tion, it follows that these means have 
 been provided. For what God ought to 
 do, He certainly does not fail to do. And 
 if He has provided the means spoken of, 
 then we must be able to find them read- 
 ily. For if we cannot find and identify 
 them, they might just as well not have 
 been provided, and the result must be 
 uncertainty, anarchy, chaos. Therefore 
 they must be open, visible, ascertainable, 
 so that even he who runs may read, and 
 the wayfaring man though a fool may 
 understand. 
 
 As already indicated by quotations from 
 
On the Road to Rome. 97 
 
 my Kenyon oration, I had even then out- 
 grown the common Protestant notion — so 
 deeply and almost ineradicably implanted 
 in the Protestant mind — that the Bible 
 contains the whole counsel and will of 
 God, and that each one must go to that 
 fountain for the rule of faith. I had 
 asked then, as I ask now: "Does the 
 Bible interpret itself?" As well might 
 one ask : " Does the volume of statutes 
 issued every year by Congress interpret 
 itself? Does Congress throw out that 
 book and say to each citizen : ' There is 
 the law of the land; read it and find 
 out for yourself what it means'?" How 
 long would it be before the nation would 
 be reduced to hopeless and destructive 
 anarchy on that scheme? To save the 
 nation from this terrible result, Congress 
 has, under the Constitution, established 
 the Supreme Court of the United States 
 to interpret the laws and decide between 
 
98 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 disputants. And this court is an author- 
 ity outside and independent of each one, 
 to be recognized, respected, and obeyed 
 by each one. 
 
 Now is not the spiritual superior to the 
 temporal? Is not the soul above the 
 body? Are not the things that concern 
 the eternal welfare of the soul of more 
 importance than the mere temporal inter- 
 ests that concern this short span of life? 
 If then the Bible contains the will of God 
 concerning the salvation of man, must it 
 not be interpreted? For, observe, this 
 will or law of God is and must be one and 
 the same for all men, in all times; and 
 its interpreter must be some one having 
 authority objective to each man, above 
 each man, and imperative upon all men. 
 This view, as a matter of course, excludes 
 that other popular Protestant assumption 
 that God makes known His will by a spe- 
 cial revelation to each one ; for this would 
 
On the Road to Rome. 99 
 
 virtually constitute each one an authority, 
 not only for himself, but for every one 
 else. Certainly no one can establish 
 
 absurd a proposition ; for h old you 
 
 prove to me that you had had such a spe- 
 cial revelation ; or how could I prove to 
 you that I had ? Plainly there never 
 could be in this way a common objective 
 standard outside of each one, indepen- 
 dent of each one, and yet authoritative 
 for all. Therefore it follows that author- 
 ity must be lodged somewhere outside of 
 
 orself, outside of myself, and yet ac- 
 cessible to all and ascertainable by all. 
 
 Where then is this authority lodged ; 
 Is it to be supposed that Our Saviour. 
 while fulfilling His mission on earth, 
 overlooked this matter? How then did 
 He arrange it? Of course, while yet on 
 earth His word was law to His disciples. 
 Did He not also intend that word to be the 
 law to all men in all times"" And how 
 
ioo On the Road to Rome. 
 
 was that law to be made known to men 
 except through His disciples? Therefore 
 He commissioned them to go into all the 
 world and teach all nations. And, strange 
 to say, He did not give them even one 
 book of the New Testament to start out 
 with. And it is a historical fact that the 
 latest book of the New Testament was 
 not even written till about the last year 
 of the First Century, and the Bible itself 
 was not collected and authenticated by 
 the Church in its official capacity for 
 more than three hundred years after the 
 Ascension. And yet during those three 
 hundred years and more, did not the 
 apostles and their authorized successors 
 teach the w T ord, the law of God? How 
 came they to know it infallibly, and that 
 too for a long time without any written 
 word? For even the liturgy, as stated 
 by Father Thebaud in his great work on 
 the Church, although composed, was not 
 
On the Road to Rome. 101 
 
 written for many years after the Ascen- 
 sion, and during the first century, at 
 least, every priest had to commit to 
 memory the formulas of prayers, rites, 
 and ceremonies. Not even the Creed 
 and Pater Noster were put on paper or 
 parchment. The catechumens had to 
 learn them by word of mouth from 
 their teachers, as well as everything 
 else connected with religion.* 
 
 *The apostles and their immediate successors 
 were familiar with the custom of the oral transmis- 
 sion of religious traditions which prevailed in the 
 sacred colleges of the Jews, the Romans, the Egyp- 
 tians, and the Brahmans. A striking example of this 
 custom was given by Professor Whitney in his learned 
 article on "The Veda" in The Century for April, 
 1887, in which, speaking of the Vedic songs, he says : 
 " There are more than a thousand of these songs, and 
 they contain over ten thousand two-line stanzas — a 
 body of text about equal to the two Homeric poems 
 taken together." The professor gave it as his opin- 
 ion that this collection of Vedic hymns dates from 
 about two thousand years before Christ, and he said 
 that "this great mass of literature" — including all the 
 Vedas — "has been handed down to our time mainly 
 
102 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 Now was not all this work done in the 
 mode prescribed by Our Lord? He prom- 
 ised that the Holy Spirit should guide His 
 disciples into the truth. When, there- 
 fore, they taught what God required of 
 men to believe and to do in order to be 
 saved, how could they be certain of 
 teaching God's will infallibly unless they 
 were certainly guided by the Holy Spirit? 
 Yet they could not teach a common doc- 
 trine without agreement, and they could 
 not agree without consultation, discus- 
 
 by living tradition, from the mouth of the teacher to 
 the ear of the scholar. The schools of the Brahman 
 priesthood . . . are not yet extinct. There is not one 
 of the Vedic texts which has not still in India its per- 
 sonal representatives, men who, without ever hav- 
 ing seen a manuscript of it, can repeat it from begin- 
 ning to end, with all its tones and accents, and not 
 losing a syllable. " 
 
 In the same way the Creed, the prayers, the Canon 
 of the Mass, the hymns, the Psalms, and the ancient 
 music to which they were sung, were all known and 
 transmitted by the apostles to their catechumens and 
 their successors. 
 
On the Road to Rome 103 
 
 sion, and a final embodiment of the truth 
 to be taught in a "form of sound words." 
 Thus acted in concert that body — the 
 Church — organized by Our Lord to last till 
 the end of time. The officers of that or- 
 ganic body, having authority to act de- 
 rived from Our Lord, were infallibly 
 guided into the expression of truth when 
 they formulated definitions of faith ; that 
 is, prescribed what it was necessary to 
 believe and to do in order to be saved. 
 And the grand reason why men are 
 bound to accept these definitions is pre- 
 cisely because the Holy Spirit guides the 
 Church, and especially the head of the 
 Church — the successor of St. Peter* — 
 
 *In the fall of 1853, while spending several weeks 
 in Columbus, engaged on some literary work, I vis- 
 ited in the family of Isaac N. Whiting, and was 
 urged, by way of arresting my progress to Rome, 
 to read the work of Bishop Barrow on the " Supremacy 
 of the Pope." I took the volume which was hope 
 fully handed me, and undertook to read it. I well 
 
104 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 into all necessary truth. Thus it is God 
 Himself who speaks to us through these 
 definitions, made and delivered to men 
 authoritatively in this way. Here is di- 
 vine authority acting through human in- 
 strumentalities. Here is our certainty; 
 here is our security. We know in whom 
 we believe, and we know what we be- 
 lieve. I am just as certain that a dogma 
 of the Church contains the truth and ex- 
 presses the will of God, as I am that God 
 exists. There is and there can be no 
 error and no mistake in these dogmas. ' 
 
 remember the interest with which I read the chapter 
 in which the bishop quoted every verse in the New 
 Testament containing the name of Peter, and I was 
 not surprised at his full admission that of the apos- 
 tles Peter was primus inter pares. But the bishop's 
 subsequent argument against the supremacy of Peter 
 struck me as being about on a par with the argument 
 of Presbyterians against the Episcopacy, which I had 
 long since decided was illogical and untenable. And 
 so my progress to Rome was not arrested, but, on 
 the contrary, was rather hastened. 
 
On the Road to Rome. 105 
 
 And not a single instance can be found 
 in the whole history of the Church of 
 one dogma contradicting another. You 
 might just as well expect that the All- 
 Wise God would reveal one thing to-day, 
 and a totally contradictory thing to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Now it is a matter of history that this 
 Church was organized and instructed, and 
 the doctrines of Christ were preached, 
 and branches of the Church were estab- 
 lished in all parts of the Roman Empire, 
 in Persia and Bactriana, in far India and 
 parts of China, and it is highly probable 
 that St. Thomas even visited Central 
 America, before the latest book of the 
 New Testament was written. And it 
 was this Church, acting officially, that 
 passed judgment upon the numerous gos- 
 pels, epistles, and other writings which 
 were claimed to be sacred scriptures, and 
 rejected many, and selected what now 
 
106 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 constitute the canon of Holy Scripture. 
 And that Church is now, always has been, 
 and always will be, during this dispensa- 
 tion, the living interpreter of that book, 
 as well as the interpreter of divine reve- 
 lation outside of that book — the keeper 
 and witness of the truth. Consequently 
 when a question arises involving faith or 
 morals — things necessary to be believed 
 or to be done in order to be saved — the 
 first duty is to inquire, " What does the 
 Church teach?" When the Church, or 
 the head of the Church, speaks ex catliedra, 
 I must accept its definition just as I would 
 accept a direct and properly attested reve- 
 lation from God. I must also accept its 
 teaching within the domain of discipline 
 and official instruction. 
 
 But all beyond that domain and the 
 dogmas of the Church, which by the way 
 can readily be enumerated — some of the 
 most important being: God, the Trinity, 
 
On the Road to Rome. 107 
 
 the Incarnation, Transubstantiation, the 
 Fall of Man, the Hypostatic Union, the 
 Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Con- 
 ception, and the Infallibility of the Pope 
 — I say all beyond these and the domain 
 referred to is free ground, is the region 
 of opinion in which the widest freedom 
 is allowed consistent with those funda- 
 mental truths ; a freedom that is all the 
 more perfect and satisfactory because we 
 can start out from that centre of truth 
 which I heard Bishop Purcell describe as 
 radiating principles of absolute certainty 
 in every direction, w T hich serve at once 
 as chart, compass, and anchor, with a 
 beacon light forever illuminated by the 
 glorious light from Heaven. 
 
 Without this interpreter, thus divinely 
 aided and guided, who could have formu- 
 lated with certainty and established the 
 doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, 
 Transubstantiation, and all the other 
 
108 On the Road to Rome, 
 
 great truths of Christianity? But with 
 this interpreter, and the definitions which 
 it unerringly makes, and the traditions 
 which it unerringly preserves and trans- 
 mits, the humblest layman may find the 
 truth with certainty, and the honest 
 seeker after truth, however long in wan- 
 dering mazes lost, and however fiercely 
 storm -tossed upon the ragged edge of 
 those questions of destiny which perplex 
 and agitate the souls of non-Catholics, 
 may easily find, as I found in the sum- 
 mer of 1853, a port of safety, a harbor of 
 rest, and that sublime peace of soul which 
 passes all understanding — a peace which 
 is based upon the believer's absolute con- 
 viction and certainty that the dogmas and 
 points of faith of the Church flow logically 
 from belief in God, thus verifying the 
 famous saying of the French philoso- 
 pher, Proudhon, who thought he was an 
 atheist, but said: " Admit God, and the 
 
On the Road to Rome. 109 
 
 Roman Catholic Church, with its dogmas, 
 is the logical consequence." 
 
 " Admit God!" As if a man of any 
 sense could do otherwise. On this point 
 let me say a word. Obviously all my 
 remarks have assumed the existence of 
 God, and have been addressed to those 
 who admit it. What then can I say to 
 those unfortunate persons who assent to 
 the assertion of agnostics that you can- 
 not prove God, and therefore relegate 
 that idea to the region of the " unknow- 
 able"? My answer shall be given in a 
 few words from Dr. Brownson, who, in 
 1873, said:* " Though reason is competent 
 to prove the existence of God with cer- 
 tainty when denied or doubted, as we 
 think we have shown, it did not, and per- 
 haps could not, have originated the idea, 
 but has taken it from tradition, and it 
 
 * Works, vol. ii., p. 97. 
 
no On the Road to Rome. 
 
 must have been actually taught the first 
 man by his Maker Himself." " If," then, 
 as Brownson said in his review of Wil- 
 liam Francis Newman's essay on the 
 soul,* "the human mind is unable to 
 generate the belief in God," and "if we 
 can have it only as we are taught it, we 
 must either assume that God Himself has 
 first taught us, or else suppose an infinite 
 series of teachers. Your father may have 
 taught you, but who taught him? His 
 father. But who taught his father? 
 These questions may be continued to in- 
 finity, and we must either assert an in- 
 finite seri.es of teachers, which is an 
 infinite absurdity, or we must stop with 
 the first man, the commencement of the 
 series of generations, and then arises the 
 question, Who taught the first man? 
 God Himself, is the only answer conceiv- 
 
 * Works, vol. i. , p. 265. 
 
On the Road to Rome. in 
 
 able, and then God really is; for if He 
 were not, He could not teach His exist- 
 ence, since what is not cannot act. This 
 is historically the way in which the be- 
 lief has actually originated. God taught 
 the first man His own existence, and the 
 belief has been perpetuated to us by the 
 unbroken chain of tradition.'' Thus the 
 human race came into possession of the 
 idea and has never lost it, and never will 
 lose it. Therefore it was true in the 
 days of old, and it is true to-day, that only 
 the fool hath said in his heart there is no 
 God. Furthermore the very fact of the 
 existence in the mind of man of the idea 
 of God, as argued by St. Anselm and 
 Brownson, is unanswerable proof of the 
 existence of God.* 
 
 * At last that famous "unknowable" theory, which 
 during the last twenty years or more has played so 
 conspicuous a part in the writings of "scientists," 
 and has exerted such a widespread demoralizing in- 
 
1 1 2 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 I may here appropriately add the re- 
 mark of Father Faber, in regard to the 
 
 fluence in ail " civilized" society, has itself been hap- 
 pily relegated to the region of darkness from which 
 it came. For confirmation I refer to two remarka- 
 ble articles — one, the profoundly scientific and criti- 
 cal address of Lord Salisbury, president of the Brit- 
 ish Association, at its last annual meeting (see 
 Popular Science Monthly for November, 1S94), and 
 the other, the no less profound and learned article in 
 the Revue ties Deux Mondes for January, 1895, 
 headed "After a Visit to the Vatican," written by the 
 editor, M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, embodying his re- 
 flections suggested by his interview with the Pope on 
 the 27th of November, 1S94, when the principal sub- 
 was the question, "How far has the advance of 
 science crowded out religious faith?" After pointing 
 out the "bankruptcy of science" in its failure to re- 
 deem its promises to furnish man with the only means 
 he has for ameliorating his lot, the editor said, as 
 translated and digested by The Literary Digest: 
 
 "No one can deny that the physical or natural 
 sciences have promised to suppress 'mystery. ' Not 
 only have they not suppressed it, but we see clearly 
 to-day that they never will throw light on it. They 
 are powerless — I will not say to resolve, but even to 
 give a hint of a solution of questions of the utmost 
 importance to us : these are the questions relating to 
 the origin of man, the law of his conduct, and his 
 future destiny. The unknowable surrounds us, en- 
 
On the Road to Rome. i 1 3 
 
 idea of the Incarnation, that neither men 
 nor angels — "not even the highest an- 
 
 velops us, constrains us ; and we cannot get from the 
 laws of physics or the results of physiology any 
 means of knowing anything about this unknowable. 
 I admire as much as anybody the immortal labors of 
 Darwin. . . . Yet, whether we are descended from 
 the monkey, or the monkey and ourselves have a 
 common ancestor, we have not advanced a step 
 toward knowing anything about the origin of man. 
 Neither anthropology, nor ethnology, nor linguistics, 
 has ever been able to tell us what me are. What is 
 the origin of language? What is the origin of soci- 
 ety? What is the origin of morality? Whoever 
 [evidently meaning the scientists referred to], in 
 this century, has tried to answer these questions has 
 failed miserably. And every one [of the same class] 
 who hereafter shall try to answer these questions 
 will fail as miserably, because you cannot conceive 
 of man without morality, without language, or out- 
 side of society ; and thus the very elements of the 
 solutions are beyond the reach of science. 
 
 "It is clear that the fact that science, after long 
 trying, has been unable to aid us in any way in living 
 proper 1 j'has been recognized by a great multitude of 
 persons. This is proved unmistakably by the litera- 
 ture of the last few years. There has been an un- 
 deniable change in the sentiments of both writers 
 and readers. The present situation may be summed 
 
114 O n t ne Road to Rome. 
 
 gelical intelligence could have conceived 
 it without a revelation from God; and 
 Scripture pictures the angels to us as ever 
 bending over and looking into this mys- 
 tery to feed their love, their wisdom, and 
 their adoration out of its depths of glory 
 and sweetness/' 
 
 That remarkable and glorious title of 
 Our Lord— "The Angel of the Great 
 Council" — derives its significance from 
 that one of the councils of eternity char- 
 acterized by the decree of the Incarna- 
 tion, which, as many theologians teach, 
 preceded the permission of sin, was the 
 first act of the Trinity ad extra — outside 
 of itself, and was the beginning of all 
 creation, as declared by St. John in that 
 magnificent opening of his gospel: "In 
 the beginning was the Logos — the Word, 
 
 up in a very few words : Science has lost its pres- 
 tige, and religion has reconquered a part of its 
 own." 
 
On the Road to Rome. 1 1 5 
 
 and the Word was with God, and the 
 Word was God. The same was in the 
 beginning with God. All things were 
 made by Him, and without Him was made 
 nothing that was made" — the angels, the 
 countless worlds, and man himself. And 
 thus, as Father Faber says in " The 
 Blessed Sacrament" (Book IV., Section 
 III.): "The Incarnation lies at the bot- 
 tom of all sciences, and is their ultimate 
 explanation. It is the secret beauty in 
 all arts. It is the completeness of all 
 true philosophies. It is the point of ar- 
 rival and departure to all history. The 
 destinies of nations, as well as of individ- 
 uals, group themselves around it. It 
 purifies all happiness, and glorifies all 
 sorrow. ... It is the great central fact 
 both of life and immortality, out of sieht 
 of which man's intellect wanders in the 
 darkness, and the light of a divine life 
 falls not on his footsteps. 
 
u6 On the Road to Rome. 
 
 " There never has been in the world a 
 power like to this power of the Incarna- 
 tion. None which has wrought such 
 changes, or brought about such tremen- 
 dous revolutions. None which has gath- 
 ered to itself such enthusiastic loyalty, or 
 for which men have been so eager to lay 
 down their lives and to shed their blood. 
 None which has allured such a vast 
 amount of holiness to adorn it, or of con- 
 summate intelligence to propagate and 
 defend it." 
 
 And yet " the Incarnation is not simply 
 a past fact ; it is the living life of the In- 
 carnate God. It is not merely the glory 
 of the theological schools ; it is the sacri- 
 fice of the daily altar. On earth as well 
 as in heaven, Jesus Himself is the pres- 
 ent centre round which all the elements 
 of the world of the Incarnation are per- 
 petually revolving. . . . Nothing will 
 explain the phenomena of the Church, 
 
On the Road to Rome. 117 
 
 nothing will interpret its history, or ac- 
 count for its miraculous propagation and 
 preservation, except the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment" As it is the life of the Church, so 
 is it the life of the individual, and be- 
 comes to every worthy communicant the 
 seed of immortality whereby the lost 
 image of the Word made flesh is restored 
 to man, and the perfection of his nature 
 is realized by participation in the divine 
 life. 
 
 When at last I saw the truth, I could 
 well exclaim with St. Augustine: "O 
 Eternal Truth! Ever ancient and ever 
 new ! Too late have I known Thee ! Too 
 late have I loved Thee!" 
 
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