'"•iV? ■ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. J i JM* /7S- PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION. 'HE work entitled the "Ark of the People," is presented to the public with full confi- dence that it will be found instructive, edi- fying, and entertaining. It treats of subjects of the greatest interest in a religious, moral, and political point of view. With remarkable ability it scatters the darkness now brooding over the minds of the masses, and brings into clear light the principles which must be understood and practised, to insure the welfare of every age and nation. The author treats with great skill the conspiracy against the sovereignty of Heaven, probes its grossness and inveteracy, unravels its complicated ignorances, and exposes its malignity. The false pretences of modem thought, advanced science, and refined civilization, are exposed in all their deformity and deceit, so that we can perceive the convulsions now tormenting society to be really a retrograde tendency to the obscurantism 7 8 Preface to the Translation. of the dreariest epochs of ancient stupidity and depravity. An impartial examination of the opera- tions in every department of physical and mental toil, except whatever appertained to materialistic in- dustry, exhibits a displacement of all the elements requisite for the construction and maintenance of a social system, prosperous and happy, in harmony with religion and morality. In fact, Christianity is now substituted by Gentilism of the meanest type. The disquisitions of our author guide us to this conclusion, for we are excited to reflect on the revolutions, disturbances, and political corruption ; the heresy, infidelity, and atheism ; the colloquial blasphemy; the discarded devotion; the innova- tions of divorce, the magisterial and senatorial pro- fligacy; the obscenity in literature, dramatic or general; the homicide or infanticide; the swind- ling, gambling, profusion, suicide and parricide, that, more or less, infect and disgrace the nations. Were we disposed to refine a little, we might add the tendency to exalt and extenuate genius, energy, audacity, success, irrespective of intrinsic worth, nay, often united to intense depravity; forgetful of the revealed and reasonable maxim, "To whomso- ever much is given, of him shall be much required, and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." So in some recurrence to the heroic mythology Preface to the Translation. 9 of ancient times, as well as in some advance to the antichristian idolatry of future, Mohammed, Harry the Eighth, Cromwell, Mazzini, Gasparoni, Dick Turpin, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi, Jack Shepherd, Bismarck, and similar demigods, have found, not only admirers of their abilities, but apologists of their crimes, of their imposture, their turpitude, their sacrilege, their avarice, plunder and murder. Sensual sagacity, vulpine cunning and animal energy are preferred to principle and brave self-denial. The end justifies the means, and success constitutes the test of virtue, capable of altering the nature of things and the eternal principles of right. The traitor is by victory metamorphosed into the hero, and becomes the greatest man of the age and the idol of posterity. The immorality or infidelity of the past is over- looked, so long as the vehicle of it be the music of the siren. The poetic parallel of ancient Rome towards the close of the republic, and under the sway of the empire, in point of constitutional degeneracy, might be illustrated by a continuous chain of medical testimony, for many years of apostasy and revolution, down to the universal conviction of contemporary physicians. For con- sider but a little and it will appear plain, that the withdrawal of the monastic and celebate con- tracts of poverty and chastity, coupled with the io Preface to the Translation. abandonment of such Christian and scriptural pre- servatives as confession, fasting and abstinence, must have led to serious changes in the national conscience and constitution. Among other con- sequences, as we may observe incidentally, came the inconveniences of repletion ; these our fore- fathers endeavored to remedy by bleeding and purging, as before they had fasted in spring and autumn, and now their descendants can neither endure bleeding, purging, nor fasting, hence so many new and sudden diseases of heart, brain, spine, etc., and so much paralysis and apoplexy, and similar results of the Deformation by Satan, Luther, Calvin and Co. We will not dwell on the increase of insanity, which, among other considerations, may not unrea- sonably be inferred from the general impairment of constitution ; the prevalence of nervous disor- ders to an extent, if not also of a kind, not known in former ages ; the exciting and depressing influ- ence of many trades and occupations, subservient to a highly artificial state of pseudo-civilization ; the premature, unsanctioned and ill-regulated sen- suality; the free use of alcoholic stimulants, espe- cially whisky; the sedentary and self-indulgent habits of society; the mutability of events, the pre- cipitance of life, the very conflicts of liberty itself, the misery of competition, the multitude of busi- Pre/ace to the Translation, 1 1 ness, the inability to procure employment or sub- sistence, the disregard of prudence and the absence of reflection : above all, the self-reliance and con- tempt of the principle of authority in matters of faith and duty, with the consequent neglect of religious and moral discipline, both aggravated by the substitution of a false and frivolous philosophy, and the superficial and sensational character of general literature. We cannot avoid judging the present age to be not merely imperfect, but inferior in some grave respects of truth and wisdom, to many of its predecessors. The philosophy of the present age is often false, and liberty tends to licentiousness. Who, in former times, would have so much as dreamt of divorce, and thus paved the way to the acceptance of polygamy, the less evil, and for which more scripture may be pleaded, however fallaciously in either instance, than for the dissolution of God's own foundation of society? Who have attempted such modes of insevere, undisciplined, frivolous, and indiscriminate educa- tion, imparting unserviceable knowledge, disre- garding solid facts, charging the memory, not developing the reason and exercising the under- standing, so as to constitute habits of judgment and reflection, application and attention, and tend- ing to make the various classes of society dissatis- fied with their position, conceited of themselves, 12 Preface to the Translation. and contemptuous of their betters? More serious still, the present age, with all its accumulation of experience, circulation of knowledge, freedom of inquiry, and opportunity of comparing and adjudi- cating opinion, is so wise as not even to be of one mind in religion, the first of all things. On the con- trary, it is promised by a faction of blasphemous idiots, that religious unity shall be approximated by a pseudo-evangelical alliance who will convene to " agree to differ/' a plan worthy of the circus clown. To conclude the poetic parallel which we have expanded, perhaps exceeded, the present state of society, religiously, morally, and politically, corresponds t6 that of a man who is cognizant of his disease by its symptoms rather than its cause, and who therefore strives to palliate, not to cure it; resorting to empirical, superficial and temporary remedies, in contradiction to rational, radical and comprehensive treatment. It is a maxim alike medical, legal, moral and metaphy- sical, that " sublata causa tollitur effectus ;" remove the cause and the effect will cease. The cure, certainly like the disease, must be chronic, espe- cially in a body so extensively affected, and com- pounded of so many heterogeneous parts; but the great difficulty is to incline the patient to adopt it, for which end it is necessary that he should first be informed. Preface to the Translation. 13 Our author exposes in a clear and scientific manner the hideous maladies of our society, and, at the same time, spurns and condemns the nau- seous poisons imposed upon the imbecile genera- tions by the robbers and assassins who now intrude upon every position from the throne to the pet- tifogger's desk. The book is therefore recom- mended to all those who are willing to become acquainted with the impiety and infamy of rebel- lion against Christ and His Church, and to be warned and protected against the adversary who goes about like "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." The publication having been made several years past, some transactions of the heathen and publican are cited which agreed with former dates. But the recital is fitted for our time, with the amend- ment that the same war is continued against the kingdom of God, and waged with novel atrocity, and more intense malignity. Credit is given to Austria for a former spasmodic effort to be honest, but since that was written, that power has fallen to the lowest abasement, and its rulers have become the lick-spittles of Satan's scavengers. Our readers being thus advised, it will be per- ceived that it was proper to avoid in this transla- tion any change which might otherwise be deemed proper, in order to avoid the seeming inaccuracy of dates. 14 Preface to the Translation. We have been honored with the task of revis- ing the translation, and according to our humble judgment, we deem it perfectly accordant with sacred truth, and a correct version of the original most creditable to the piety and talent of the gifted religeuse, who has contributed zealously and abundantly to our Christian instruction. P. E. Moriarty, D. D. WHY THIS ARK HAS BEEN BUILT. Aj\yUR world, although it is six thousand years old, and has so often felt the rod, is none the less a silly child, and fully justifies the proverb, "A fool's head never grows gray" What could you expect? It is a long time since this idler deserted the school of wisdom, and took for its master the father of all follies. Satan said to the first man: "Laugh at the law of the Creator, yield to your desires, and you shall be as gods!" Sixty centuries of miseries and disappointments have not disabused us of that infernal deception. In the year of our Lord 1873, palaces, shops and cottages are still filled with gods in fine clothes and in . rags, who persist in trying to find true happiness on earth, where nothing is permanent save suffering and death. Say to those poor dupes: What you are now attempting has been tried before by millions of 15 1 6 Why this Ark has been Built. men like you; what are they now? what shall you yourselves be very soon? dust. A cradle wet with tears, a series of movements to and fro, of longer or shorter duration, then a very small hole in the earth, which shall soon be given to another; such is the temporal destiny of man, whether he be a monarch or a porter. What we call life is only the dance of death. Renounce, then, a folly which, though almost universal, is none the less enormous. Reason thus simply with yourselves: — All men, without exception, enter on the world with an ardent desire of happiness, of perfect life ; then this hap- piness must exist. All depart this life without having found it; then it must exist elsewhere. Among all those religions which promise perfect life to their believers, the Christian religion alone presents serious evidences of truth ; let us then study Christianity. It is thus that Reason, whose disciples you pretend to be, will lead you to her who is its mother and the Mistress of faith. This is to speak like good sense personified, Nevertheless, if out of one hundred honest people to whom you address this language, only ninety do not laugh in your face, you may esteem your- self happy. Poor ministers of Christian truth, who have to Why this Ark has been Built. 17 teach us that we are not immortal gods, but can attain to the immortal and divine life of heaven, what a sad mission is yours! It has cost the lives of your Divine Chief, and millions of your pre- decessors ; it is not at all impossible, that our gods and demi-gods of all ranks, will yet proscribe your heads for the greater good of humanity. In the meantime, you may expect their insults and out- rages. In vain you rank reason, philosophy, history, experience, knowledge and eloquence, on your side; in vain you reduce to dust the silly theories which emanate from the crazy brain of the so-called philosophers; you are none the less, in the eyes of their dupes, the enemies of progress and enlighten- ment. Dear readers, you who form the innumerable body of the people to whom my Ark must open its vast sides, in the catastrophe which threatens us, allow me to explain why I have given so singular a name to my work. It is well known that folly has always more or less governed the world ; it is also acknowledged that it has moments of recrudescence, in which God, who tolerates it, without permitting it to become universal and incurable, must forcibly interfere in order to preserve our species. Such, among others, was the year of the w r orld 1656. The evil was so great, that after repeated warnings, He 2* 1 8 Why this Ark has been Built. was obliged to have recourse to a monster-bath. The bath is, in fact, admirably efficacious in cases of insanity, particularly when the water rises for a few months, fifteen cubits above the patient's heads, as it then did. Now, our present state of society is not very dissimilar to that immersed in the year 1656. The antediluvian world perished, because, as the Bible tells us, man had become all flesh. Ah well! more than three centuries have elapsed since our Europe, tired of being Christian, began to labor with all her might to reestablish the religion of the flesh which had been stifled in the blood of Jesus Christ, and His apostles and martyrs. She has succeeded so well that the adoration of the body and all that flatters it, has become the predominant worship everywhere. Take away from what we call the upper classes, a more or less feeble minority of true Christians, who remain, with our old Cathedrals, as monu- ments of the Middle Ages ; take away our rustic populations, still the friends of labor and good morals, but deprived of all influence since the State has become everything, and the State is the capital; take away, I say, those good people who pray and work, while others blaspheme, beg, prate and fill themselves with good cheer, what have you left? The innumerable world of sen- Why this Ark has been Built. 19 sualists, that is to say, the innumerable multitude of those who, believing only in what they see with their two eyes, in what they can bring under their five senses, fear no hell but that of work and privation, expect no other heaven than that of the table and the bed, frequent no other temples than theatres, political assemblies, clubs, and places of debauchery. They do not wish to have the Christian society which prescribes to all, abstinence, labor, and charity. They must have a social order which procures them the most of honors, riches, and pleasures, to the least possible merit of labor and virtue. They desire, above all, a society free from the clerical and Jesuitical party, that execrable party which troubles the conscience of Atheists and Epicureans, by telling them of that prison of eternal fire awaiting the obstinate transgressors of the law of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, those gentlemen disagree very much among themselves as to the kind of society they wish, and the degree of liberty to be granted to the appetites. Among the thousands of sects into which they are divided, we distinguish two great parties — the well-filled sensualists, or those on the way to the feast, called the Moderate ; and the hungry sensualists, called the famislicd or voracious. 20 Why this Ark has been Built. The first, thanks to the honorable economy or revolutionary exploits of their ancestors, thanks to some wise bankruptcy, or some long and free draughts at the fountain of the budget, have created for themselves a little terrestrial paradise, where they would be glad to enjoy themselves, far from the sight of God, from the cries of misery, and the threats of the famished. Great partisans of their property and family, they feel the neces- sity of a religion which can hold the rabble in check, but they must have a religion slavish and supple enough to become the sentinel at the gate of their paradise, without ever entering it to say to them : "God forbids you the use of that fruit, and commands you to employ your superfluous substance for the relief of those in want of the necessaries of life." This is why, in Spain, Switzerland, and Pied- mont, where religion still enjoys some civil influ- ence, on account of its property, we have seen and still see, the moderate parties or demagogues, whether filled or famished, unite to despoil the Church, and put her in the pay of the people, by saying to the latter : Sweat a little more to support your priests, to preserve your churches, so that the surplice-wearers of the State may continue to tell you that theft is a great crime, unless when committed by statesmen, like ourselves, or when Why this* Ark has been Biiilt. 2 1 there is question of the goods of the Church or the poor. The famished are fervent worshippers of self, who, having nothing of their own but their vices and the desire of satisfying them, are enraged to see themselves excluded from the terrestrial para- dise, in consequence of their commerce with the demons of idleness, of gaming, of wine, etc. De- termined to enter therein by the door, the window, or a breach, they make infinitely more noise than the well- filled, for the very simple reason that they are the more numerous, and that an empty vessel gives a louder sound than a full one. They clamor loudly for an equal division among all, and call to their aid the lower classes, whose arms and shoulders help them to storm the gov- ernment. Having once attained it, they will say to them, as have their predecessors: Thanks, heroic people, so worthy the title of sovereign ! Now let us divide; yours be the task of providing the money; ours, the duty of spending it! The greedy ones speak also of religion and the Gospel. Now the socialistic Gospel is not like ours, an exhortation to despoil one's self of his goods in favor of the indigent, to fast, or to crucify the flesh ; it is the divine right to gorge one's self with pleasures, to despoil one's neighbor, and to crucify all that oppose him. " Jesus," say these 22 Why this Ark has been Built. new apostles, "has willed that all men live as brethren, and hold their goods and women in common, so that every one may have enough: death to the Jesuits, the priests, and the aristocrats who have corrupted the Gospel !" And to defend this theology, they have besides the doctor Eugene Sue, a few priests, excommunicated for having lived too freely, who, veritable Judases, but with less remorse than the Iscariot, will leave to others the task of hanging them. In fine, our modern sen- sualists, while equally as dissolute as those of the ancient world, are much more impious. In effect, Noah's contemporaries had only forgotten the just God of Eden, who had condemned our guilty first parents to suffering and death, but ours have the horrible courage to drag in the mire the God of charity, who died on Calvary. The gorged wish to make of the Saviour of souls a commissary of police; and of the priest, a watch-dog chained by the State to their doors; the famished wish to transform the Holy of holies into a chief of brigands and unclean beasts. Is it not likely that He to whom all power has been given in heaven and on earth, will cast both one and the other into the bath? But what shall be Europe's bath? Will God say to the Ocean, to the Mediterranean, to the North Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea: "Spread your waters from the heights of the Why this Ark has been Built. 23 Pyrenees to the top of Mt. Blanc, and from Mt. Blanc to the Caucasus." No; thus did heaven act with mankind in its infancy; but with nations which Christianity has exalted so much, that dazzled by their own enlight- enment and power, they say: "We are too great to carry the yoke of Christ, and hear His Church." With such giants, I say, God may rest and let us do as we please. Our deluge is our folly, accumulated for three centuries, which shall soon cover us from our feet to our head. Look at the flood-gates of the great abyss, (according to the expression of the Scrip- ture,*) that is to say, the secret societies, the clubs, bad journals, coffee-houses, taverns, places of debauchery, etc. ; are there not enough of evil passions to carry destruction fifteen cubits higher than the highest mountains? Look at the cataracts of heaven, that is the clouds of titled ministers, either retiring or aspi- ring, who cover our horizon; those talkative and stormy parliaments, which send us a hail-storm of laws in torrents of phrases ; in fine, that multitude of vultures, nourished in the bureaucratic aviary ; is there not in all this, ten times more of self-suffi- ciency, weakness, pride, ambition and folly, than is necessary to cause the destruction of a society much less diseased than ours?" * Gen. vii. 11. 24 Why this Ark has been Built Above, the griffons who govern or wish to govern us; below, the famished wolves of riots; we are between two fires. If we escape, it shall not be without a good roasting, nor without a good stroke from the hand of our Father who is in heaven, nor without great efforts from those w r ho believe in Him, to whom I dedicate this book. Plato Punchinello, who in the course of his long and mysterious existence, has thoroughly known the ancient and modern world, has for a long time been warning the rulers of Europe of the abyss into which they are forcing it. Al- though he has been so happy as to lead many back to the path of good sense, yet the mass of the people have closed their ears. He is not much astonished at this, seeing that for three hundred years, all the thunderbolts of heaven, and the howlings of hell, have taught nothing to the poor human race. To-day he is compelled to obey a voice which has for a long time been repeating to him these words : " Hasten, indocile prophet, to reveal what I have enjoined thee. Allow the blind to go into their dwellings, but do thou construct the Ark, the plan of which thou hast received, Religion shall be its hull, its bulwark and its rudder. On deck and between decks, thou shalt lodge the Why this ^Ark has been Built. 25 civil societies, with their new monarchies and republics. '"The deluge of barbarity having to take the lead, especially in great cities where centralization has accumulated the sources of knowledge, there will yet perish more books than men. Give them, then, some just views of the religious, social, and political history of Europe, so that if she desire to enter the age of manhood, she may know the miseries of her infancy before the coming of Christ, the vigor and gigantic progress of her youth under the cross, and the miserable charlatans, who, after having corrupted her by their drugs, have dragged her expiring to the charnel-house of the ogres. "As errors, after having produced their deadly fruits, are very proper to set off the truth, mdke an extract of the most remarkable follies of the past and the present. Imitating the example of Noah, who, besides his children, caused to enter into the Ark the domestic animals, the fallow-deer, the bird of paradise and the most disgusting rep- tiles, give a place in your books to both the good and the bad, to great men, to foo's and scoun- drels, and mark them so plainly, that the twen- tieth century may be able to know them, and may not, like the preceding centuries, give itself up to the worship of the most worthless persons. 26 Why this Ark has been Built. "The trial which Europe is about to undergo, being without example in history, her guides will be disconcerted, and will disagree on the manner of leading her. Trace then the way boldly, and fear not to make a wide breach in the forest of prejudices. "In fine, let thy book, written for all, be suited to the capacity of all, but principally of the people, who are much more numerous, and who, when not fanaticized by error, imbibe truth as others imbibe impious sophisms and obscene stories." This is what was said to Plato Punchinello by a voice which he knows well; it is what he has done first in the Reveil du Penple, which has been already spread over Europe, and has crossed the seas; it is what he is doing now in the Ark of the People, secured against shipwreck; what he will soon do, please God, in other publications, espe- cially in his Dictionaries, destined to complete the Popular Library, which is most wonderful, both for the amount of truths and the small number of volumes which it contains. Plato Punchinello. Given where the want is most pressing, Dec. lSth t 1850. PLATO PUNCHINELLO'S ADVICE TO HIS HEARERS. FTER having seriously considered what kind of instruction would be the best suited to you, my friends, I have concluded to adopt the familiar form of the entertainment But in order that these entertainments may not degenerate into idle talk, and that our reunions may have nothing in common with that which is called a parliament, I have the honor to tell you beforehand, that I reserve to myself the right of speech during the whole discussion. My reasons are, first, that through a heavenly gift, which I am not so foolish as to be proud of, I am accustomed to treat my subject so weli, that no one finds fault with me, except cavillers and simpletons, two kinds of persons rare among you, whom we must cure by enforcing silence on them. Secondly, the wish to answer all would cause an immense loss of time; the thread of our ideas would be broken every moment, and the clearest 2J 28 Plato Punchinello s Advice. things become confused. As, however, there is no rule without an exception, I will cheerfully allow two men, the Mayor and the Teacher, of whose intelligence and discretion I am well aware,, to propose to me, from time to time, any ques- tions they may judge useful, and also the objec- tions that may be current in the country. In my turn, I shall call upon them, and give their testimony with regard to matters with which they are more familiar than the greater number of you. Let us begin. THE PEOPLES ARK. FIRST ENTERTAINMENT, Why it is that our nature is so perverse, and how it mat be improved — What religion is, and how many kinds there are ^ ANY times, my friends, you have addressed to yourselves the following questions: ^wlL Whence comes it that the wolf lives in peace with the wolf, while man is continually at war with man, and the art of destroying , his fellow-creature is that which he honors the most? How is it that the only creatures endowed with reason are the most unreasonable? In reality, if animals were capable of thinking and speaking, they would be perfectly right in saying to us: Our dear masters and lords, it seems that among all the living species that people the globe, you are the most bestial. You complain of your miseries, and you will not see that nine-tenths of your evils are the fruits of your own discords. You all aspire to perfect good, and very few among you ask yourselves in what this good consists, or if it is possible to obtain it in this world where nothing perfect exists. We who have been obser- ?9 30 The People s Ark. ving you during sixty centuries, laugh when you speak of the natural progress of your enlighten- ment and civilization. What, in reality, are those among you doing, who despise the light that comes to them from heaven ? Philosophers or people, they do but turn in the same circle of extravagances and gross ignorance. What is needed to cause the cessation, or at least the diminution of this lamentable disorder in the human family? Obstinate fools only will not reply: It is necessary that the human family have a head, but it must be a head whose voice may be strong enough to be heard by all, and whose power shall be such that none who despise his commands, can hope to escape his arm. Now who shall this ruler of mankind be ? Shall he be a hero like Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, Char- lemagne, or Napoleon, those great ones who have figured in the scenes of the world? No, my friends, besides that the greatest men remain always inconsiderable in presence of the human race, there is not one hero who is not obliged to conform to the vulgar custom of dying. His power descends to babes still in the nurse's arms, or to gray-haired children ; then the old cat being buried, the human mice dance and quarrel more furiously than ever. The only possible sovereign of mankind is that infinitely wise Being, whom all souls, except the wilfully blind, hail as the Author and Legislator of the universe. It is only God who can make men live together in harmony, by saying to them : " I, alone, have First Entertainment. 31 given you being; I, alone, can tell why I have given it you. One only God you shall adore and love perfectly, etc. Such is my law ; if you observe it faithfully you will attain to the perfect life I have prepared for you elsewhere ; but if you despise it, the punishment of your audacious folly will be eternal and irremediable. The present life is given you wherein to make your choice ; on leaving this world you shall receive only what you have chosen." In a word, religion, the law which God had to give to men at their creation, is the indispensable foundation of all human society. Take away this moral bond which turns the mind and heart to- wards the same truths and affections, and nothing remain but blind and insatiable passions, which make the earth a theatre of robbery and carnage. Many ignorant persons who know religion only through the calumnies of her vilifiers, imagine that if it be good for anything, it is, at the most, for the life to come. They have but little faith in the truth of her teachings on the affairs of eternity, and still less in its utility in the affairs of time. When we speak to them of the extreme impor- tance of religion, they think they display their wit by replying: "What concerns us most is to live; with us, religion is work." I say to those poor misguided minds: In ac- knowledging no other religion than that of labor, you will be of the same mind as an infinity of people, who, having embraced the religion of plea- sure, will be only too glad to make you beasts gf burden. Your accounts will also be settled 32 The Peoples Ark. very quickly with God, who will say to you : " Since you have done nothing for me, ask your reward from those to whom you have given your labor; go and rejoin them in the eternal dun- geons." You say, "Before everything, it is neces- sary to live." Yes, but to live well, you must know what life is, and religion alone teaches that. What, in reality is true religion, my friends ? It is the law which teaches us to regulate our work and labor so well as to attain to the blessed life, to never-ending repose. Our nature being composed of two parts, the soul and the body, welded together, we know not how, yet very distinct, there are, then, two lives in us, the spiritual and the animal. To live for the soul is to think, to judge; that is, to discern the true from the false, to love truth, and hate false- hood. To live for the body is to act, to feel; to procure for one's self agreeable sensations, to free one's self from suffering; this is what is sought by the animal part of our nature. There exist, then, two wills, two laws, two reli- gions, between which every one of us must choose. Let us then put the soul before the body, the love of truth and virtue before the love of carnal pleasures, and the fear of God before the fear of man. We are of the spiritual religion ; we are thinkers and Christians, as I have said in the Reveil dn Peitple, and we preserve our souls and bodies. But if, on the contrary, we prize animal plea- sures before everything else, degrading the soul to the condition of a slave of the body, whatever may First Entertainment. 3 3 be the religious or philosophical mantle with which we try to clothe ourselves, we are, necessarily, adorers of the body, and through this life become even worse than animals; for, as I have said in the above-mentioned work, " Once that men wish to glut themselves with pleasures, they, necessarily, kill themselves." MAYOR. You then assume, sir, that there are only two religions in the world, Christianity and atheistic Materialism. Nevertheless you are not ignorant that a great number of religions exist in the world, and that even among those men who ignore or hate that of the Gospel, there are very few who profess atheism ? PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir; atheism shows such disorder in the mind and heart, that very few dare acknowledge themselves atheists. For that, they must have received the gift of effrontery in the same degree as Robert Owen, Proudhon, Heinzen, Struve, Marr, etc. There are, then, a great many apparent reli- gions, by means of which the crafty and inconsistent lovers of the body try to deceive themselves and others. But if in matters of religion they can blind themselves and deceive the blind, they cannot deceive Him who hears all they say, who sees all they do. In effect, my friends, religion is a law essen- tially moral and practical, which directs every man, and is revealed by acts much more than by 34 TJw Pcop y es Ark. discourses. You may speak well of God, of moral- ity, of brotherly love, yet if you conduct yourself as if there were no God, or as if He had never given a law to men ; if you live like egotists who pamper themselves in pleasure, while men perish from hunger at your side, you are in reality materialists, adorers of the body, and your religion is only hypocrisy. Between these two states there is only a middle one for fools ; either man occupies himself seri- ously with his soul, and desires to know what he must do with regard to its destiny, whence he infallibly becomes Christian, if not already such; or man, absorbed in the worship of his desires, is as little troubled about his soul as if he had none, and he infallibly advances towards atheism ; if he does not reach that end, it is for want of logic or freedom. On the one side, God enlightening men with regard to their destiny, and saying to them: Be- lieve my word, observe my law, and you shall live ! On the other, Satan trying to bewilder his victims, by crying out to them : Despise the heavenly word, and look for no other good, no other pleasures than those which the earth pre- sents to you ! Such are the only two masters, who, since the beginning of the world, have divided between them the empire of souls. What have been, what are still, all the non- christian forms of worship, not excepting Mahom- etanism? Disguised atheisms, phantoms of reli- gion, conceived by the father of lies and the inspirer of bad passions, in order to degrade men, First Entertainment. 35 and make them but a drove of cattle under the command of inhuman masters, as I have proved elsewhere.* What have been, what are still all the so-called Christian religions fabricated by schism and heresy? Only so many halting-places, from which the great master of evil gradually leads people on to atheism. It is well proved that all heresies, all schisms end, sooner or later, in deism, in indifference, and that the final motto of deism and indifference is always : God is only a dream. What is important for you to understand well, my friends, is that those phantoms of Christianity, which they try to place between the Catholic Church and atheism, are, in the minds of those who invent or protect them, only muzzles for you. "It is necessary for the people to have a leli- gion," say the adorers of self; "if they have not, being freed from the fear of God, they will plunder us and do worse. But let us beware of Catholicism which takes the unwarrantable liberty of preaching morality to the learned as well as to the ignorant. We want a religion that will com- mand the people and be commanded by us." Those gentlemen deceive themselves completely.^ Religions of the middle class have had their day.1 Setting aside a few blinded followers of expiring sects to-day, every one adores either the God of the Catholic, or the god of money and pleasure. Now the adorers of money and pleasure would be * s See Reveil du Feujple, Lessons iv. and v. 36 The Peoples Ark. true devotees, did they not say to the class which possesses and enjoys more, Let us divide, other- wise you shall be made away with. It is impossi- ble to decatholicize a nation, without, at the same time, socializing it. He who does not perceive this, must be very stupid. As to you, my friends, who do not wish to be muzzled by hypocrites, nor become devotees of robbery and murder, regard as the most furious enemies of our dignity, of your spiritual and tem- poral rights, of your liberties and repose, those miserable men who are laboring to deprive you of knowledge, respect, and love for the only religion which men have not fagoted. The enumeration and description of the enemies of religion would not be an easy task ; for though they all unite in crying out : " Down with the Catholic Church," they differ on every other point, and this very reasonably. When one does not wish to believe in Jesus Christ, he is right in believing only in himself; there are, then, as many religions as persons; as many gods as bodies. Like Samson's foxes, tied by the tail, to carry fire and devastation every- where, the enemies of Catholicism are as one against it, but they have a thousand dens, and as soon as they are no longer busy about the great Church, they oppose and fight one another like veritable demons. Nevertheless we may include them and their blinded followers in three classes ; first, declared atheists and pantheists; second, atheists and pan- theists disguised under the name of deists; third, First Entertainment. 37 the inventors and patrons of false systems of Chris- tianity, whether heretical or schismatical. In the following entertainments I will point out to you, my friends, the doctrines and intrigues of those different sectaries, and the manner in which you ought to resist their endeavors to rob you of your richest treasure in the present time, and the eternal future, the religion of Jesus Christ. SECOND ENTERTAINMENT, Symbol op the faith and morals of atheists and pan- theists — HOW WE CAN CURE THEM OR DISMISS THEM. CCORDING to atheists, God has never given religion to the world, for the simple reason that there is no God. Nature caused the first men to spring up like mushrooms. If the earth produces no more of those plants, it is, do you see, because it is too old, and because, men having discovered the art of reproducing themselves, she has judged proper to rest herself. This manner of expressing atheism being too foolish, too odious, the modern free-thinkers have given it a form less crude, and have become pan- theists. Instead of saying, God is nothing, the pantheistic say, God is everything. According to them, the divinity is not a being apart from all others, who has created the universe and who governs it, but it is the universe itself, it is the universal being, including in its existence everything that exists, making everything that is- made. It thinks, rea- sons, or raves in man; browses on the herbs of the field in the cow and the ox ; tears its prey in the lion and tiger; sings in the nightingale, grunts in 38 Second Entertainment. 39 the pig, brays in the ass, clucks in the hen, devas- tates our gardens and granaries in the mole and the mouse, flows in liquid substance in the beds of the rivers, is hard and immovable in the rocks. Mud and manure, as well as the sun and stars, are members, parts of the divine nature. You will ask me, my friends, how so silly a god could have met with believers. But it is precisely because he is the most foolish of the gods invented by men, that the god of the pantheist finds so many lovers. Do you not see that believing in a god, in a great part material, whose intellect extends no farther than that of man, the most vil- lanous conscience must be at ease ? With a god who is everything, who does everything, who is at once both the robber and the robbed, the assas- sin and the victim, do you not see that the idea of divine justice is annihilated, that there is no longer either crime or virtue, and that the most abominable excesses are irreprehensible, because it is God who commits them? And here, I beg you, my friends, to observe the difference between atheistic and pantheistic morality. The atheist says: — God and his justice are but a word; man is, certainly, capable of everything, but if nothing hinders from evil, so neither does anything drive him to it, save his evil passions. The pantheist, on the contrary, says : — I am a part of the divinity; all that I think, desire and will, it is God who thinks, desires and wills it: — the pantheist is, I say, a fanatic, whose most wicked desires become heavenly commands; parricide 40 The People s Ark. itself would be to him a duty, a satisfaction demanded by God. In a word, atheism permits all crimes, pantheism inspires them all, it commands, it deifies them. This is the most execrable invention of hell for man's perversion. As I do not like to preach to converts, I beg you, Mr. Teacher, to tell me whether atheism or pantheism has made any dupes among you, and if it would be well for me to try to disabuse them ? TEACHER. Our populations, sir, certainly leave something to be desired with regard to religious and secular instruction, but they still preserve enough of good sense to detest the follies of atheism and pan- theism. The laborers and mechanics of our bor- oughs and country towns see the works of God too closely for them to doubt His existence ; they feel too deeply the need of His aid, not to go from time to time to those places wherein we pray to Him, and learn to know and love Him. They have too much practical knowledge of the earth's skill, when not aided by the labor of their hands, to believe that it could ever have brought forth men, and have given them souls. In fine, they are not proud enough to think themselves gods. Let the sciolists and idle liber- tines of great cities, whose lives are but disorder, attribute the progress of the world to chance ; let their minds be so false, and their hearts so wicked as to deny the existence of God, or try to usurp Second. Entertainment. 41 His place; it is all very well, — The fool hath said in his hearty Titer e is no God* However, as the evil of irreligion is on the increase, and hell has everywhere emissaries occu- pied in destroying the foundations of all morality, it may not be useless, sir, to tell us in a few- words, how we should conduct ourselves towards the preachers of atheism and pantheism. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I expected, sir, the tribute you have rendered to the good dispositions of the people. As you have said very well, atheism and its brother, pantheism, are emanations from the filth of great cities. It has been remarked thousands of times, that those hideous maladies are not found in the masses, nor in great minds. We can defy the atheists to point out a nation or a great man that resembles them. This is because the people pre- serves its understanding, thanks to its religious instruction and moral habits; and what makes men great, is the understanding raised to its highest state by study and reflection. The simple and right-minded man, in contem- plating heaven and earth, there sees, there feels the hand of God. To tell him that such order, such beauty, is but the work of chance, is to shock him. It is the same, and with much more reason, with superior minds, who have closely studied the * Psalm xiii. 1. 4* 42 The People s Ark. wonders of nature. They behold the wisdom and power of the Creator in everything, in the smallest insect as well as in the general system of the world. Bourrienne, Napoleon's secretary, relates, that in his voyage from Toulon to Egypt, the immortal general was conversing on religion and philosophy with some officers and members of the Institute. It was a beautiful night in summer, and they were seated on deck. Many of the physicians, chemists and calculators made open profession of atheism, according to the fashion of the day. After having listened to them, Napoleon, pointing to the res- plendent vault of heaven, said : " Gentlemen, behold what ruins all your reasoning. Never could I be brought to believe that chance is the author and commander of the incomparable army of the heavens." Nature ! chance ! Who does not see that these are words employed by ignorance. If you find a pin or a nail in your way, you will certainly not attribute it to nature or chance. Why? Because you see in it the mark of the workman's labor and intelligence. Now, if that pin or nail, which a child can learn in a few hours to make, shows the skill of an intelligent being, how is it that that flower, that butterfly, that bird, which the greatest geniuses are incapable of making, does not demonstrate the existence of a being infinitely more powerful and intelligent than man? But is it necessary for man to come out of himself in order to see and feel God ? He stes, Second Entertai7irnent. 43 he feels the life of his soul and body, but ignorant as he is of the generation of his body, and still more of the constitution of his soul, can he say that he is the author of his own life ? Evidently not. Can he give the honor of it to his father and mother, equally ignorant as himself of what is indispensable to the life of the body and soul ? Evidently not. In my studies, which already date far back, I had a great desire to examine the human 'body. In order not to lose myself in that little world, I contented myself with examining the skeleton, composed of only some two hundred and forty pieces. By a detailed calculation, of which I have made the public the judge, I found about one hundred combinations. Around this admira- ble frame-work of the bones are arranged four- teen different tissues. As these are much more complicated than the skeleton, we remain below the truth in affirming that each of them includes at least one hundred thousand combinations. Behold then fifteen hundred thousand things, to which the author of our body must necessarily have given attention, in order not to spoil his work. Can we then say, without folly, that that author is nature, is chance ? Must not our parents acknowledge that they are only the moulds in which God has cast the most wonderful of figures? Must they not say, like the mother of the Machabees : " Look up to heaven, my children ; there behold your Father. I know not how you were formed in my womb, for I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, 44 The Peoples Ark. neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you."* Yes, my friends, whether we contemplate the immense spectacle of the earth and the heavens, whether we consider in detail the least of the creatures which people the air, the earth, the water, it is impossible not to recognize the exist- ence of a being strong and powerful enough to maintain life and order in this great family, in which not one, not even man, knows exactly in what life and order consist. This labor is evidently beyond the strength of the universal god of the pantheists. In fact, this god being neither stronger nor more intelligent than we ourselves, who should be his highest form, how could he understand and do what no man has ever been able to do or understand ? And again, this god, mired in matter, incarnate in every animal from the oyster to the elephant, and guilty of all the follies, all the disorders of the human species, how could he establish and main- tain those laws so wise, so constant, which govern the universe ? Where, then, have the atheists and pantheists spread their absurd doctrines? If we except the crowd of dupes and certain cross-grained # minds, atheism and pantheism are to be met with only in haughty, shallow-minded persons, or those excessively vicious. Dissatisfied with everything, because nothing answers to their exorbitant pretensions, those piti- * II Mach. ch. vii. 22, 28. Second Entertainment 45 ful men enter into a rage against God, the idea of whom terrifies them, and against society, which overwhelms them with its contempt. To abolish the thought of God, and to remodel society to the image of their bestial passions, such is their aim. As this class is now making great efforts to spread itself even in the country, I will here give the antidote in a few words. It is necessary to distinguish atheists into two classes, the dupes, and the teachers. The dupes are feeble-minded men, who stupidly repeat all the nonsense they have heard from their teachers, or have read in the books written by their worthless scribblers. We must pity their ignorance and try to enlighten them. Hence when you meet with one of those simple- tons who substitute for the omnipotent God, our mother, Nature, and our father, Chance, have the charity to say to him: "Are you such a simpletbn as to believe those idle tales ? Let us suppose that this evening, when you return home, you find your dog killed, your door broken open, your money taken, your cellar and granary empty, will you blame nature or chance for it? And would the wicked knaves, whom you would accuse of those acts, be able to justify themselves by saying that nature and chance might very well have taken from you what they had given you ? You would answer, that nature and chance are two idle words, incapable of doing any harm, and you would be right. "Well, now, will you believe that those words, incapable of killing your dog or rifling your house, are potent enough to give life to men and animals, 46 The Peoples Ark. and to fill the earth and heavens with so many beautiful things ? "You say that the earth could well have en- gendered men! Go then to Paris and to London; ask the greatest geniuses and the most learned workmen, to arrange with Mother Earth to make for you, not a human body, but only one hair perfectly like that on our heads. They would send you away. What does this prove ? That you have on your head a hundred thousand proofs of the folly of the atheists, and of the existence of a God infinitely wise. " You find it difficult to believe in God because you do not see Him. But have you ever seen those who built our steeple two hundred years ago ? And because you have not seen them, will you say that the steeple has been built by nature or by chance? Have you ever seen the mind of our pastor, of our mayor, of our teacher? You believe in it, nevertheless, because you know that the first preaches well, the second administers well, and the third instructs w r ell. " Now contemplate the heavens on a beautiful night, the earth on beautiful days; do you not find there a sermon, a lesson, an administration which speak of the greatest of all minds? " Come, my friend, read your catechism, listen to your conscience, to your pastor, and leave to libertines and rogues that poodle philosophy; for should it come to spread itself among our people, our watch-dogs would not be vigilant enough, our bolts strong enough to protect our goods, our lives, or the honor of our wives and daughters." Second Entertainment. 47 This, my friends, is the way in which we should deal with the dupes. As to the enraged teachers who would preach to you the religion which makes tigers, do not take the trouble of reasoning with them. Seize whatever comes next your hand, rods would be preferable, and say to them: "Our ancient reli- gion of the Cross has cost the life of its Founder, and of millions of martyrs. It is then just that you, gentlemen, should prove the truth of yours by accepting, for the love of the devil, a flagel- lation unto blood. Come, then, uncover your shoulders. ,, But if instead of teachers working by the way of persuasion, you should come in contact with atheistic proconsuls, establishing atheism by law and the guillotine, as in the year 93, it is clear that the rod would not do. 1 shall tell you elsewhere how a nation frees itself from the government of tigers. THIRD ENTERTAINMENT. Creed op the deists — What we would become with their gospel of nature, and animal papacy — way of van- quishing them. *HE deists are a very common species of self- worshippers, who think it well that God should create, preserve, and nourish our bodies, but are not willing that He give to our souls the bread of His word. God is too great, they say, to become our pedagogue. He has given us reason and con- science ; He has spread before us the great book of nature; let us read it attentively, and we shall know enough. You have too much good sense, my friends, not to perceive the fallacy of such reasoning. We ought to say to the deists: — What! you acknow- ledge that God presides over the lowest functions of the body, that He causes the blood to circulate in our veins, the air in our lungs; you do not judge it unworthy of His majesty that He should cause our aliments to grow, that He should ripen them by His sun, that He should attend to them in our stomachs to elaborate their juices, and distribute them through all our members; yet you believe Him dishonored if He endeavors to 4 8 Third Entertainment. 49 enlighten and elevate our minds and hearts by His teachings! You make Him the purveyor, the nourisher of our animal nature, yet are unwilling that He be what He delights in being, the teacher of our souls, the God of knowledge. You are either fools or impostors. What, in reality, are all those cunning deists ? Hypocrites, who practise atheism without being candid enough to profess it They are men who say to themselves : — It would be necessary for us to submit to a God who speaks and gives laws to man, and we wish to have no other master than ourselves. But that we may not be pointed out as atheists, let us acknowledge a God, but a working God, who does everything and says nothing, who serves man, and exacts nothing from him. Behold, my friends, what makes deists. Their pretended religion of reason, of conscience, of nature, is but the worship of all vices. I will prove it. What do you find in the mind and conscience of your children before you have taught them anything? Nothing but perfect ignorance. What do you find in their nature, in as far as you have not cultivated it? Vicious inclinations which grow more quickly than weeds in untilled land. Allow them to live according to their reason, their con- science, their nature, and you shall have little monsters, who will have no other religion than that of pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, luxury, anger, and idleness." Who does not know that the child is born even more feeble in mind than in body, and that he 50 The Peoples Ark. learns to eat and to walk, before knowing how to think or judge wisely on things? His reason is a vessel, well fitted indeed to receive knowledge, but empty so long as nothing is put therein. It is a spiritual organ destined to see the things of the soul, as the eyes are a material organ proper to enlighten the body. But in order to see clearly, is it sufficient for us to have eyes? No; we must also have light. Well; it is the same with our reason ; it is enlightened only when we present to it the light of instruction. Reason without instruc- tion is an eye without light, and consequently blind. To say, then, like the deists: God having given reason to men, what necessity is there to teach them His law ? is to say, God having given eyes to men, why need He have created light? But, answer the deists, God instructs men by the spectacle of nature. The universe is the temple in which He manifests to us His will, and desires that we adore Him in spirit and in truth. All creatures render homage to the wisdom of His laws. Who can contemplate the admirable harmony which reigns in His works without becoming better, without being penetrated with the love of order, and a profound respect for the supreme Legislator? What are all these, my friends, but high-sound- ing words, which cover abominable errors ? Without doubt, the sight of the wonders of nature proves the existence of God, in the same manner as the sight of a magnificent palace demon- strates the existence of an architect; but even as the palace leaves us in complete ignorance of the Third Entertainment. 51 architect's personal character and private thoughts, so does the universe fail to tell us why God has made it, and what He proposed to Himself in placing us in it. That we may learn our destiny and our duties, the deists refer us to the teachings of animals; this is to say to us : If you wish to know what you have to do, look at the stars, consult the animals and imitate them; they are the only models and masters of morality which God has given to our species. My friends, is not this a beautiful school for your children ? Do you not see what grand pro- gress they would make in wisdom under the direction of wolves, foxes, dogs, and swine? They would first see that the young of animals remain subject to their parents only so long as they are necessary to their life, and that once they are grown, they know them no longer, but beat and kill them without scruple. Hence they would conclude w T ith the famous deist Rousseau, that "children remain bound to their father only so Jong as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this necessity ceases, the natural tie is dissolved."* Your children would see that in the animal republic, every one thinks only of himself, that the strong pitilessly devour the weak, and the weak employ a thousand artifices to destroy the strong. They would see that all satiate their instincts without shame or remorse, however disgusting or * The Social Contract, Book L, ch. 2 r 52 The Peoples Ark. cruel they may be. Hence they will conclude with Voltaire, the great pope of modern deists, that pleasure is the universal end ; and that to combat out desires and our propensity to enjoyments, is to go contrary to the laws of nature. What is, then, that book of Nature, so much vaunted by deists, if the Gospel be not there to explain it ? It is a book in which the most execrable villains find their justification. What, in reality, do all those mon- sters who dishonor the human race ? They only imitate animals, and yield to the inclinations of their nature. And observe well, my friends, that the man who would wish for no other law than that of his natural instincts, would become a hundred times worse than the beasts. Why? Because the de- sires of animals are very limited, and they never tend to the destruction of their species, while those of men are infinite, and if the moral check did not restrain them, they would prey upon one another even to the last. Let us give a few examples. The most lascivious animal has never appro- priated to himself one hundred, two hundred, or a thousand females. But man has done it, and does it still in every country where the Gospel does not say to him : Thou shalt have but one wife. The lion, the tiger, the bear, and the wolf content themselves with hunting in their grounds, and the prey for the day once found, they stop. They have never been seen to undertake to con- quer one or many kingdoms, nor to say to any one of their species : Serve me, or I will kill you. But men do it, whenever the true religion does Third Entertainment. 53 not subdue their insatiable passion of possessing, enjoying, commanding, and destroying everything that resists them. What was that race of monsters, thirsting for blood and pillage, who, more than eighty years ago, not content with the carnage wrought by a war against all Europe, cut off by millions the heads of their countrymen whom they governed. They all were simply atheists, deists, who had substituted the religion of reason and nature for the religion of the Gospel. What would have become of France under the government of those children of nature, if a general, dear to the army and the people, had not reopened the temples of the true God, and said to the devotees of reason: Enough, rabble, enough ! Go no farther, or ! You see now, my friends, what you must reply to those miserable men, who, in order to turn you aside from the divine teachings of religion, would tell you that divine revelation is an idle tale invented by the priests, and that the sun of reason suffices to enlighten all those philosophical enough to advance only by its light. However, for the sake of those who might not yet have an answer very ready to their mind, I beg Mr. Teacher to be kind enough to give it to us. TEACHER. I fear, sir, that you presume too much on my strength. I have frequently heard such speeches, and when I answered, I did not feel satisfied with my arguments. But now, thanks to what you have said of the manner in which our minds are 5* 54 The Peoples Ark. enlightened, it seems to me that I could serve those self-worshippers. I would say to them : I believe that reason may be sufficient for men with- out reflection, who wish to enjoy themselves and make merry until that day, when their body des- cending into the grave, their soul shall go to receive the reward of a life wholly animal. To him who wishes to live like a beast, the teachings of God are in no wise necessary, and become even very troublesome. But it is evident that reason is not enough for those of reflecting minds, who desire to know whence they came when coming out of their mother's womb they were placed in the cradle, and what will become of their soul when their body shall be enclosed between four planks. Your beautiful sun of reason, alas ! we behold arising every day in our children, and we know what it is worth, and what it can do. You, who owe to it so much enlightenment, tell us, was it reason which cared for you while you were in swaddling-clothes, and prevented you from being stifled in filth? Was it reason that taught you how to stand on your feet, how to distinguish your right hand from your left, how to eat, to to walk, to speak? It is probable that you, like every one else, learned all this from your nurse ? Is it reason alone that has taught you reading, writing, ciphering, Latin, and all that college learn- ing which may have left many empty places in your head, but has so puffed up your heart as to cause you to despise the religion of your parents ? Your knowledge is the fruit of the revelations Third Entei'tainnient. 55 of your masters, and of the books they put into your hands, and you know only in proportion to what you have learned. Our reason, then, instead of being a sun, enlight- ening every man coming into the world, is a lamp, beautiful, indeed, but giving light only when enkindled and supplied with oil. Had not God illuminated the first two reasons, and given them the oil of truth, we should never have heard the light of human reason spoken of. Since we remain ignorant of the concerns of our body and the world, except in as far as those who know them reveal them to us, we must, with much greater reason, be ignorant of the affairs of our soul, and of the invisible world, so long as the masters of our souls and of heaven shall not have imparted them to us. Come, then, no more to tell us that reason dispenses us from believing in revelation, or you will give us room to believe that philosophy, instead of improving your head, has only softened your brain. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Thanks, sir; the following conversations, in which we shall examine the beautiful works of the human mind in religious matters, will confirm what you have said so well of the feebleness of our reason when not directed by God. FOURTH ENTERTAINMENT. Deistical self-worshippers judged by the pontiffs and magistrates of their choice — why we are born more ignorant than animals — duty of our first father, Teacher, and Master. N the last entertainment we saw, my friends, that the deists acknowledge no gospel save that of nature. In this they agree with atheists and pantheists. When we ask them who are the interpreters of the great book of Nature, they point to all creatures, animate and inanimate, from the sun to the ground-mole. Rousseau, the most spiritual and eloquent of them, did not hesitate to write : " The man who thinks" (that is who wishes to know more than beasts) "is a depraved animal." Let us take those knaves at their word, and let them be condemned by th^ir equals, or rather, by their superiors, since by accepting animals as their masters and models, they acknowledge the pre- eminence of the animal species. Has God given laws to creatures, and has He revealed them? Yes, answer all creatures; see you not that we are faithful to those laws, and that the pretended 56 Fourth Entertainment. 57 irregularities of nature exist only in the imagina- tions of the ignorant ? This is the answer given by entire nature and by all animals. In fact, if the latter have not re- ceived reason, they have been gifted with instinct, that is to say, with a singular aptitude to fill the functions which the Creator has imposed on them in this world. They make admirable use of their modicum of wisdom, and we find none of them in ignorance of what they have to do. The birds destined to people the air and gladden us by their beauty and the sweetness and variety of their songs, acquit themselves admirably of their task. They know their food, which consists, in part, of injurious insects. If they eat a few grains, they are sure to pay their full reckoning.* The fishes know their place in the vast extent of the sea, and those kinds which se-*ve as our food, never miss the rendezvous where the fisher- man's net awaits them. It is the same with terrestrial animals. It costs a great deal to tame a wild beast and draw it out of its natural state, and even then we do not always succeed very well. As to domestic animals, des- * In the last century, which was that of philosophers without philosophy, the savants of Berlin showed that sparrows were destructive birds, which famished Prussia by their voracity. The government ordained that every peasant should bring the heads of twelve sparrows every year. The poor birds were destroyed. But scarcely two years had elapsed, when the harvest being ravaged by clouds of insects, the government was obliged to acknowledge its mistake, and offer a handsome prize to whoever would introduce a couple of sparrows into the country. 58 The Peoples Ark. tined to live in our midst, the strongest obey the voice of a child. See with what intelligence they separate to their several employments, and what good they draw from what we should otherwise lose. Allow me to quote a few lines from a book which I would like to see in every family. " The heavy cow pastures down in valleys ; the light sheep on the sides of hills; the climbing goat browses on the shrubs of the rocks ; the pig rakes up the roots of marshy ground; the duck eats fluviatic plants; the hen, with attentive eye, picks up the grains dropped in our fields; the pigeon with rapid wing, those of the distant forests; and the thrifty bee feeds on the pollen of flowers. There is not a spot of the earth on which they cannot make a harvest of plants. All return in the evening to our habitations with lowings, bleatings, or cries of joy, bringing us the sweet tribute of plants, changed by an inconceivable metamorphosis into honey, milk, butter, eggs, and cream."* Con- fide the nursing of an infant to that goat, usually so heedless, so inconstant, you will see it, at certain hours, run from a distance of more than a league, and place itself with all the dexterity of a mother over the cradle of its dear nursling, inviting it, by bleatings and caresses, to take its nourishment. Yes, my friends, animals also have their reli- gion, that is to say, a law that attaches them to the place and functions destined for them by the Creator. This law is infused into them, that is, * Lessons of Nature. By M. Cousin Despreaux, augmented by M. Desdouits. Consider, cxix. Fourth Entertainment. 59 they are not obliged to learn it from man or one another; they have it from their very birth, and are so subjected to it that they cannot violate it. It is not so with us who require so long an apprenticeship of life, and who, even in the ma- turity of age, are always in need of our neighbor's help and experience But I think Mr. Mayor has something to remark, and I beg him to speak. MAYOR. Sir, the question which you are touching has frequently attracted my attention. In discussing this point with friends, we have often asked our- selves : How is it that animals seem so learned and sagacious in regard to their own affairs, while we their masters are so ignorant, so untractable, while study sometimes makes us such wicked animals ? After a few days nursing the young animals know as much as their parents, and find them- selves, as the saying is, doctors in -utroque. The chickling hatched only eight days, no sooner hears or sees the eagle or hawk, than it takes refuge under its mother's wings, or cowers under a bush. If our dogs or cats be sick, (a thing which often happens more through our fault than theirs,) and we open the door for them, they will go direct to the herb that cures them. If the weasel, which often attacks the viper, feels that it has been stung, it makes one bound to rub its wound on a plant known to our shepherds, and falls again on its enemy, before it can regain its hole. 6o The People s Ark. As to our little ones, who at fifteen pretend to know so much that they think the world ought to be made over again, we see what it costs to teach them the little that we know. But if, wish- ing to raise them above our condition, we push them in their studies, we find it a very tedious and expensive process, and what is its result ? For one good subject whom we give to the Church or State, we raise four miscreants, who shall have ruined their family only to become the destroyers of society. The catechism, it is true, teaches us that our first parents having sinned in the terrestrial paradise, in punishment thereof, fell into those depths of ignorance and corruption which they have transmitted to us. In fact, seeing with what intractable minds and hearts we enter into this world, and how difficult it is to improve us, the mystery of original sin is very credible. But is that mystery a sufficient explanation of the great difference there is between the skill of animals and the intractable ignorance of our race ? Since, notwithstanding the sin of Adam, God has willed to save our race, does it not seem that He should have given us the same advantages as animals ? should have united their instinct to our reason and abridged the term of our infancy? This doubt I submit to you, begging you to excuse my somewhat lengthy speech. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. We are never lengthy, sir, when we say nothing but what has a bearing on the subject, and when the question is, like yours, full of interest. Fourth Entertainment. 6 1 You are right in thinking that original sin does not suffice to explain the difference existing be- tween men and animals in regard to education. Sin has degraded our nature and enfeebled our faculties, but it has destroyed neither one nor the other. Man in the state of innocence would have been taught as he had been conceived; his educa- tion, thanks to the vigor and uprightness of his mind, would have been most easy and successful. Let us come to the true reason of the difference of which we speak. This reason is the wholly different destiny of men and animals. Men, despite their misery and weakness, are the masters, the kings of the earth, while animals are but slaves, each limited to a particular task in the general service of the great kingdom. Now, you know that the education of a king is different from that of a slave. If beasts owe so little to their parents, it is because they are not destined to live with or for them. Scarcely are they nursed ere they leave them, never to meet them again, and go their way. Living generally alone, they at certain times meet in pairs for so long as is necessary for the propa- gation of their species. This is the case with wild beasts in particular. Animals created to live with us are more socia- ble, but the bond of their society is ourselves. You know what would become of our herds and flocks if the shepherd were not there to prevent them from dispersing and fighting with one another, by the authority of his presence, his voice, and his crook. 62 The Peoples Ark. Beasts know their duties from the very first, and acquit themselves of them admirably. This is necessary for the well-being of our kingdom. But, again, that is the extent of their knowledge, which they are incapable of increasing or dimin- ishing. For thousands of years they have been observed, and always found to have the same manners, the same habits, without one shadow of progress. Let us bless God for it, for were they to begin to reason, to deliberate, to form constitu- tions, to organize parliaments, name commissions, occupy themselves with reforms, we should be deserving of pity. Our own revolutions are, cer- tainly, not amusing, but the most terrible of those we now experience are but child's play, compared with the calamities which would be produced by the irruption of the revolutionary spirit into the ani- mal species, from the eagle to the gnat, from the elephant, the lion, the bull, even to the cheese-mite. In fine, the beasts, those in particular who do not live under our laws, are seldom subject to dis- eases, and heal themselves without consultation. This, again, is necessary for the exactness of the service. It is natural, since three-fourths of our maladies are the consequence of our excesses or those of our parents, and beasts are never guilty of excesses. It is, also, an effect of the goodness of the Creator, who, having limited the existence of beasts to this life, does not wish that those crea- tures incapable of violating His laws, should bear the penalty of that violation, which is suffering. We, also, should consider this, my friends, we who are made to the image of God, and invested Fourth Entertainment. 63 by Him with empire over animals ; it is bad enough that we should be in the sad necessity of devoting to death those excellent servants, without our making of their useful and devoted lives a con- tinual suffering. Were we to exercise towards them that justice and mildness prescribed by God to the Jews in the old law, and shown by the Arabs and Bedouins to their horses at the present day, we would fulfil a duty of humanity, and would be rewarded by a greater degree of sagacity, devoted- ness and strength in our beasts of burden, which, by our ill-treatment, become more feeble, fierce, and irritable, But, alas! how can we be surprised at our cruelty and ingratitude towards animals, when we look at our conduct towards the Master who placed them at our service, and to whom we owe everything? Let us return, however, to our own species. If the education of man be so tedious, so labori- ous ; if, in reality, it be of as long duration as our life, it is because we are destined to immortality; it is because this present life is only a preparation for that which is eternal. We receive everything from God through the interposition of man, in this world in which we are only exiles, as well as in the great future world in which we are to dwell eternally, therefore, we ought to live in intimate union with our Heavenly Father and with men our brethren. What is the bond of society, my friends ? Is it not the need we have of one another? Is it not the love which results from the good we render one another? You have, doubtless, observed that 64 The Peoples Ark. a favor not only binds him who receives it to him who confers it, but it also attaches the benefactor to him who is benefited. Is it not true that you would love your children less had they cost you less, and that those you love most dearly are, ordinarily, those to whom you have been obliged to give most care, for the same reason that you feel greater interest in that field on which you have labored most? Who is it, in the family, that is the most tenderly loving, and the most tenderly beloved ? It is the mother, the great benefactress, the household mar- tyr, who bears her children, not for nine months only, but for twelve or fifteen years ; who carries them still in her heart, and accompanies them with her prayers when they are two thousand leagues distant from her, employed in instructing the savages or defending the flag of their country. Let us observe that it is not to our own family alone, but to the whole human family that God has desired to bind us by the bonds of mutual necessity, gratitude and love, so that all men may be united. Let us recall a few of the benefits we owe to unknown hands and past generations. Were they not our fathers, our benefactors, those first foreign- ers who came to cultivate Europe, and introduce into it all the arts known at that remote period ? Are not the same titles due to those who, con- tinuing the work, brought the arts to perfection, planted harvests in the place of woods and marshes, and changed our first huts into houses, our vil- lages into cities ? Should we not regard as bro- thers those Persians, who, by cultivating t\ie cherry Fourth Entertainment. 65 and peach-trees, gave to the Roman, Lucullus, the idea of introducing them into Europe two thou- sand years ago. What should be our gratitude towards those who first discovered the potato in the mountains of South America, and brought it to Europe at the end of the sixteenth century ? Is not the same acknowledgment due to the apothecary, Parmentier, who suffered so much in combating the absurd prejudices of two centuries against this precious article of food, that he ran a risk of being killed for having invented a poison ?* Do not the savage American Indians deserve well of us, they who, knowing the wonderful properties of quinquina, revealed them to the mis- sionaries, which circumstance gave it the name of "the powder of the Fathers; and it is still known as 'Jesuits' bark "? Do we not owe an acknowledgment to the religious, and also to the goat that found the coffee plant ?f And you, my friends, who smoke the pipe or the cigar, do you not feel grateful to the American savages who have taught you the use of the * In an electoral assembly, in which there was question of appointing Parmentier to a public office, one of the speakers cried out: u Preserve us from him ! He would make us eat potatoes ; it is he who has invented them." f It is commonly believed that the merit of the discovery of the properties of coffee is due to the prior of an Arabian monastery, who; noticing an extreme vivacity in the goats who fed on the fruit of the plant, counselled his religious to use this berry to conquer the inclination to sleep. 6* 66 The Peoples Ark. agreeable tobacco plant, and have, at the same time, cautioned you against the abuse of it? Such, my friends, are some among the thousands of facts which prove what the religion of Jesus Christ tells us : that God wishes all men to con- sider themselves as members of one and the same family, and that they should contribute to the good of one another. If instead of forgetting ourselves and quarreling with one another, we would take as our rule that Christian charity which embraces all men, savages as well as the civilized, it is evident that we should draw the greatest fruit in every point of view. Such is not the case with animals. Those of the present day owe nothing to those of past times. A bear-cub might be reared by all the bears in the universe, and he would be none the wiser. And what can even we ourselves teach to the most industrious animals ? A few tricks — nothing more. The reason of this is that animals shall have no future beyond death, and that they have all the knowledge necessary to their present con- dition. Man, on the contrary, can always learn and increase in enlightenment, wisdom and well- being, and why? Because he is always more or less a child in this world, in which he must receive his education, and he shall not attain his perfect age, until he enter the mansion of his divine Father, which is heaven. What follows, my friends, from the palpable and striking fact that men must be moulded and educated by one another? That the two first human beings must have Fourth Entertainment. 67 been taught by God Himself, and must have learned of Him that which is beyond all human science — the history of their origin and the know- ledge of their destiny. That which you must do for the good education of your children through yourself, the pastor, and the teacher, was not God bound to do for His first two children, of whom He was at the same time, the Father, Pastor, and Teacher, and to whom He confided the education of the great human family? What would you think of the father of a family, who, having a great fortune, should bestow all necessary care on the bodies of his children, but should leave their minds in complete ignorance of everything, so that they could neither think, nor speak, and would remain perfect idiots all their lives? You could account for such cruelty only by saying he was a fool. Well, can you believe that God, the best of fathers, could have created the first two human beings without teaching them what they could learn from Him alone, that is, by whom, how, and why, they had been placed in the world, what functions they were to fill therein, what they had to do and to avoid in order to answer the designs of the Creator, to merit his friendship, and avoid His displeasure? Failing to receive those precious lights which God alone could give, our first parents would have remained in veritable idiocy, and would have been much more deserving of pity than are animals. In fine, to admit the divine creation of man, yet reject revelation, as do the deists, is to outrage God and common sense. FIFTH ENTERTAINMENT. "Were our first parents foundlings? some of the patri- archs of deism — Education of Adam and Eve — Their destiny and ours. OD having been sufficient for Himself until the beginning of the creation, nothing obliged Him to create the human family, among whom some love and serve Him very sloth- fully, others forget Him, and some are so wicked as to curse and outrage Him. But God having once created man, you understand, my friends, that He would not dispense Himself from the obligation of providing for His education, as He does for that of the smallest insect. Reason being only the faculty of learning, of being taught, the gift of the faculty, of learning, separated from instruction, would be ridiculous. With an instinct inferior to that of animals, and a mind void of all knowledge of their destiny, the first two individuals of our species would have been in the great family of beings only miserable foundlings, cruelly abandoned by their Heavenly Father. Yes, the Being infinitely good would have shown Himself more pitiless than the unna- tural mother, who places the fruit of her womb in 68 Fifth Entertainment. 69 the turning-box of the foundling hospital. She, at least, knows that her child passes into the arms of the daughters of St. Vincent de Paul. But when God created Adam and Eve, where was the Sister of Charity appointed to take charge of them, and teach them from whom and why they had received existence? He that will not confess that reason calls for revelation, must have a great share of dishonesty or foolishness. Deism, which admits a God- Creator but rejects a God-Revealer, has been preached only by poets and sophists destitute of morality, who would wish to have a God like their egotism, a God who would give Himself the pleasure of paternity without assuming its respon- sibilities. Such were, among others, Voltaire and Rousseau. The first, after having devoted a long life to impiety and luxury, the twin-daughters of Satan, died without having been either a husband or a father. The second, after many vagaries and obscenities, of which he has himself been the historian, attached himself to a woman whom he forced to carry his children to a foundling-hos- pital. Those two apostles, naturally, met with great success among the higher classes, who were charmed with the idea of having to do with a Supreme Being, a ci-devant God, whose entire law would be comprised in the words : Live according to your appetites, and you shall work out your salvation. In fine, you see very plainly, my friends, that deism and the so-called religions founded upon it, 70 The Peoples Ark. . are not, nor ever shall be anything but religious phantasms, for the use of fools and hypocrites. Nothing, then, is as reasonable as what the Bible tells us of the care with which God formed, instructed, and united Adam and Eve in the de- lightful abode of Eden. It says that He filled them with the knowledge of understanding. He created in them the science of the spirit; He filled their hearts with wisdom &nd showed them both good and evil He gave to them His precepts and made them the depositaries of the law of life. He made with them an eternal covenant. He made known to them his justice and his judgment. They contemplated with their eyes the majesty of his glory, and he said to them, Beware of all iniquity! And he commanded every one of them to take care of his neighbor,"* that is, of his children. Is not this Biblical account a hundred times more sensible than the fabulous one in which the deists represent to us the first two human beings as orang-outangs, coming from no one knows where, subsisting on roots and by the chase; who, meeting each other accidentally in the forest, managed to create speech by means of signs and grunts, and successively invented all the arts ? If there is mystery in the Christian Genesis, how much stupidity there is in the Genesis of deism ! But what was the truth which God particularly inculcated to our first parents, and which He recommended them to engrave on the minds of * Ecclesiast., ch. xvii. Fifth Entertainment. 71 their children? It was, without doubt, the know- ledge of their destiny. "In creating you to my image and likeness, " said He to them, " I have wished to give myself children worth}' of being on^ day associated to my eternal kingdom. " Raise, then, your minds and hearts above this earth, through which you are only passing; look up at the immense vault of the heavens; it is but the vestibule of the dwelling I have prepared for you. There you shall enjoy without measure and eternally all the pleasures your heart desires. You can enter there only by the observance of my commandments ; woe to you if you violate them ! Despair, confusion, and sorrow shall be your eternal portion." Such, my friends, is the future which Chris- tianity promises : — is it deficient in nobleness and grandeur ? Is it not worth more than the terres- trial paradise which the greedy revolutionists or communists promise, the first by delivering the earth to pillage, the second by turning it into a stable for swine ? MAYOR. As for me, sir, I find but one defect in that future: it is too grand, too exalted for the poor human species which takes such delight in feeding itself with the filth of the world. When we see how three-fourths of men employ their lives, how can we believe what the Gospel tells us of our destiny ? We must, at least, confess that God and men do not understand each other, and that their dis- 72 The Peoples Ark. agreement, already of long duration, is not near its end. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, certainly, there seems to be a far from per- fect understanding between God and the greater number of men, but whose is the fault? Can it be God's, in that He has not been sufficiently explicit? or, rather, is it not men's, who close their eyes and ears against evidence itself? Now, I maintain, that in this difficulty all the fault is on our side. That the desires of man are unbounded, while the goods and pleasures he can procure for him- self here below are extremely limited, is not only an evangelical truth, it is a proverb, as ancient as the w r orld, as universal as the human conscience, as clear as the sun. Where is the nation that has not expressed, in a hundred ways, in its own tongue, the saying of La Fontaine, that "four Mathusalems could not put an end to the desires of one."* All self-delusion on this point is inexcusable. Thus, if you had a more intimate knowledge of the miseries of those whom you consider rich and happy, you would find yourself the least to be pitied among men. You imagine that nothing is wanting to the happiness of one who enjoys a cer- tain net revenue of ten thousand dollars a year ; — what folly! Among the millions who enjoy such an income, or who have increased it ten or a * Quatre Mathusalem bout a bout ne pourraient Mettre a fin ce qu'un seul desire. Fifth Entertainment. 73 hundred-fold, show me a single one, who, unless he is a true Christian, bears on his brow the impress of contentment Besides that the appetite comes in eating, that riches engender avarice, which is perpetual poverty, who does not know that the wealthy worldling is ruled by two insatiable tyrants — pleasure and ambition? The life oi the man of pleasure, like that of the drunkard, is always divided between the torments of thirst and the sleep of intoxication. And his life, which is not a life, ends in stupidity and suffering. What ambitious man has ever said, " It is enough"? The official wishes to become a min- ister ; a minister, a governor ; a governor, the ruler of the state ; the ruler of one state covets two, then ten, then twenty. Napoleon, who within the space of ten years rose from the rank of lieutenant of artillery to the government .of Europe, said : " I shall not have done much while England remains standing, and while my dynasty is not the oldest reigning." Alexander the Great being master of half the world, and seeing the rest about to yield to him, was inconsolable because the universe was so small. You will say with me, that, with all their genius, those great heroes were great fools. Yes, but not greater than those farmers, who, having ten acres of good ground, think they would be happier if they had twenty. When there is question of satisfying the heart of man, I see only one dif- ference between a small domain, a quarter of a 7 74 The Peoples Ark. league in circumference, and the empire of the world, which is nine thousand leagues in every direction ; that is, that the proprietor of the world would be a hundred times more tormented than the owner of ten or fifteen acres, according to the proverb, Nulle terre sans guerre. No land without war. Yes, my friends, on the capital j)oint of our destiny, God has sufficiently explained Himself by the voice of our heart. What does that heart ask ? It asks unceasingly for the infinite, it vehe- mently tends to that religion which promises unlimited happiness. To think with the socialistic atheists that we can appease its clamors by giving it a little ground and a few dollars, is the fanaticism of folly. Even if the experience of six thousand years had not demonstrated that no man is content with his condition here below; even if care, sorrow, ennui, satiety and disgust were not the inseparable attendants of what we call honors, riches, and pleasures, would not sickness and death be sufficient to dissipate all our dreams of terrestrial felicity? Therefore, when the promoters of socialism come to promise you universal happiness in return for the bold stroke of social revolution, tell them reso- lutely: — You, gentlemen, prophets of the future, have promised to each of us the right to work and to receive aid. This is, indeed, something, but yet not enough ; decree that every one shall have a right to health and life, but above all, provide for the execution of your decree. So long as you shall not have procured an infallible recipe against Fifth Entertainment. 75 the surprises of sickness and death, we hold your terrestrial paradise to be one of those sorry jests which call for a less pleasant answer. Believe it well, my friends, or rather see it; faith teaches us nothing of our destiny but what is in perfect accordance with the voice of conscience, with the philosophy of experience and good sense. If there are pure and lasting pleasures in this valley of tears, are they not enjoyed by those truly religious souls who renounce the pursuits of ter- restrial happiness ? In truth, happiness is like John de Nivelle's dose, Which flies when it is called. Give me sincere Christians, who believe and practise all that is prescribed in the Catholic cate- chism, who avoid what it forbids ; I hold them, and so will you, when you observe them closely, to be the most tranquil, contented, and happy ot men. They are the most tranquil, and why ? Because, being possessed of the true science of life, they are little surprised or dismayed at its storms, and where others would lose their senses, they say : " So long as our soul remains under the guardianship of God, all will be right, even should we be like Job on the dunghill." They are the most contented, and why? Be- cause, willing only what God wills, they do the good that is in their power, and patiently endure the evils they cannot prevent. Limiting their de- sires to the necessaries of life for themselves and their families, they know how to procure those J 6 The Peoples Ark. necessaries by their labor and good conduct, and their charity still finds something superfluous for the relief of the necessitous. They are the happiest, and why? Because, religion teaching them where true happiness is to be found, they look for it to God instead of demanding it from the state. They avoid those ^reunions in which the proletarian disturber wal- lows in drunkenness and debauchery, loses his head, and dries up his blood by a political mania. In this way they keep themselves sound in mind and body, and if illness come upon them, they have the best of remedies; the balm of patience, the sweet assurance that they gain much by suf- fering. In fine, at that last hour which we all fear, the Christian feels that he is passing from darkness to light, from death to life, and he joyfully wel- comes the last words of religion : " Depart, Chris- tian soul/' You, who are overwhelmed with doubts and uncertainty, go to the death-bed of the faithful Christian, and you will feel religion revive in your hearts. Let us go farther. Do you know a truly Chris- tian family ? I mean one in which the father and mother, united by the sweetest and strongest ties, know, after thirty years, how to cherish and sup- port each other as they did on the first day of their marriage; a family whose children, the image of their parents, are but one heart and soul with them. No matter what may be the condition of that family in respect to fortune, is it not, both Fifth Entertainment. 77 to itself and the beholder, a little image of heaven. Let us multiply the number of such families until they form a town; we shall have a little terrestrial paradise, in which the police and magis- trates find nothing to do, religion which reigns therein, having banished thence all vices, dis- orders, enmities, and law-suits ; the nineteen- twentieths of our evils. With this spectacle of the believers in the hea- ven of the Gospel, contrast that of the seekers after the socialistic paradise, who, if they do not yet dare to say with Proudhon and others, that religion is a great evil, say at least : Our religion is to enjoy life, and labor for the happiness of the people, by teaching the rich to live according to the holy laws of liberty, equality and fraternity. Those apostles have become common enough for you to form an idea of the happiness they enjoy, and which they are preparing for their dupes. Perhaps Mr. Mayor can tell us something on this subject. MAYOR. Yes, sir; the followers of the new church, though far less numerous than those of our good old reli- gion, give me a little more to do. Certainly they are not the most tranquil, contented and happy of men. Out of a hundred, we scarcely find two favored with enough of the gifts of fortune to dispense them from labor. Others not being able to escape from the tyranny of want except by the tyranny of labor, think such an order of things to be intolerable, and become 7* ' 78 The Peoples Ark. the instigators and abettors of revolutions. If they have an honest profession, a profitable trade, they abandon the exercise of it to others, and go to work for the good of the people in clubs, coffee- houses, public places, and houses which we do not name. To meet their expenses they borrow. Once in debt and insolvent, they become much more violent communists and socialists. If they have a family, and their wives or children take a fancy for the liberty of the appetite, the house, however well furnished it may have been, is soon empty. When liberty has emptied the house, equality requires that others should empty theirs; if they refuse, fraternity devotes them to death. As soon as this kind of people spreads through a town, all the devils enter into it. The crucifix and the image of the Blessed Virgin are no longer sufficient to protect the doors; locks must be multiplied, old carbines and revolvers must be polished, and cartridges and powder be kept near the holy water. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir ; as soon as men cease to aspire to heaven, they find the earth too small for them, and begin to murder one another. Could God have explained Himself more clearly on the matter of our destiny, than by making our faith in eternal life the necessary condition of our peace and tran- quillity in the present? In a word, there is no one, who, on a little reflection, cannot understand and feel this truth. Fifth Entertainment. 79 It is evident that the tendencies of man are supernatural, that is to say, that they rise above the order of all actual things. His destiny, then, must be supernatural. Therefore, when Chris- tianity speaks of the sovereign life awaiting us in the bosom of our Father who is in heaven, it is less a mystery which it proposes to our reason, than the necessary solution of a mystery of our nature. In the next entertainment we shall examine the necessary conditions which God has attached to our admission into the sojourn of eternal life. SIXTH ENTERTAINMENT. Necessity of trial and combat— Man's defeat — Dialogue with a free-thinker. HE Christian religion tells us that we are " heirs of God and co-heirs of Jesus Christ," on one condition, however. It is, that in order to enter into the glory of the Divine Chief of the elect, we will have to pass like Him through the fiery trial. * Is the condition too hard? Should not the infinite dignity of heirs of God, which gives us a right to the eternal enjoyment of the Most High, and to all that He has created, have required a suitable education ? Would it not have deserved a few days of trial and combat? Do you think, my friends, that God would have acted more generously towards us if He had given us heaven without any effort on our part ? I beg you, Mr. Mayor, to tell us what you think of it. MAYOR. To tell the truth, sir, we are all so lazy, such enemies of pain and labor, that the greater number of men, not to say all, would be very well content * S. Paul. 80 Epist. to Romans, ch. viii. 17. Sixth Entertainment. 81 with a heaven into which they could enter easily, and without one drop of sweat on their foreheads. It remains to be known if that reunion of idlers would be as beautiful as the heaven of the apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins. It is possible that our Heavenly Father, who loves us much better than we love ourselves, might judge other- wise. Jesus Christ tells us that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and that only those who do them- selves violence are received into it ; that He Him- self had to suffer before entering into His glory.* It seems to me, then, that we ought to believe Him. By entering into heaven without having combated, we would, no doubt, enjoy exemption from every evil ; we would have, also, every good, save one of great value, I mean merit PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir, and merit is something so great, even in the judgment of men, that every noble and well-taught heart prefers merit without honors, to honors without merit. I will cite one example among thousands. In the time of Louis XIV., the Due de Villeroi and Fabert, the grandson of the bookseller, were both marshals of France. The first owed his baton to favor, the second had won it by his valor, wounds, and noted feats of arms. What soldier would not have preferred the role of Fabert, so poor in titles of nobility, but so great * S. Luke, ch. xxiv. 82 The Peoples Ark. on the field of battle, to that of the great favorite, who was of so little account in the army, that when he was captured in bed by Prince Eugene, at the siege of Cremona, in 1702, his officers and soldiers were overjoyed? Those among you, my friends, (and they are the most numerous) who are obliged to labor very hard in order to support a numerous family and pay their taxes, judge, no doubt, that their condition is hard when compared to that of those who are called the rich and happy of the world. Well, they will judge far otherwise when, having received their marshal's baton in the mansions of eternal glory, they will learn the value of suf- fering, and the end of all worldly enjoyments. Until that hour arrive, let them meditate on the words of our good Master: Blessed are they who live, like me, in poverty, labor, privation and tears ; heaven, with its inexhaustible treasures and eternal joys is theirs. Doubtless, your zealous pastor and the excellent teacher who seconds him in the important work of your children's education, would desire that they might be all angels by their wisdom and intelligence. Their labors would be less severe and more fruitful. Yes; but with less pain and more satisfaction here below, they should find less glory above, where, according to one of our prophets : Those who shall have taught justice to their brethren, shall shine eternally as stars.* Again, your Mayor and all those who cooperate * Daniel, ch. xii. 5. Sixth Entertainment. 83 with him in the administration of city affairs would, doubtless, be glad to find in all minds a just appreciation of their acts, of their solicitude for the public good. They would also wish in the superior administration, less pretension to the regulation of affairs of which they know nothing, less desire to make its agents responsible for its mistakes. But it is devotedness repaid with in- gratitude, vexation, and injustice, which forms the heavenly crown of Christian administrators. On the day of the great judgment they will not be asked : Have you done great things, etc. ? But — What have you suffered in order to do good and combat evil ? This explains very well, my friends, why God, who has a great desire of our good, and our true greatness, has wished to give us an occasion of meriting, and has made our first existence a time of trial and combat. It is, also, I think, a suffi- cient refutation of the immoral absurdities of the reformers of the sixteenth century, such as Luther, Calvin, and other doctors of Protestantism, who dare to sustain, as an article of faith, that man can be saved by faith alone in the merits of Christ, that he who has that faith ascends to heaven even were he guilty of one hundred thousand adulteries and murders, and that the virtuous soul that be- lieves in the necessity of good works, descends into hell with all its virtues. Thus it was that those false prophets who accused the Catholic Church of corrupting the Bible, and concealing from the people the true word of Christ, immea- surably outraged the Bible, which, from beginning 84 The Peoples Ark. to end, is one long exhortation to practise good works, and fly from all iniquity. Thus it was that they mocked at Christ and His apostles, whose entire doctrine and example were all directed to lead -us to crucify our desires, and to practise every virtue. It is just to observe that the greater number ot the Protestants of our day have abandoned those detestable principles, which would make society a hell. Would that they might understand that the men who overturned Europe in order to spread them, were only the instruments of the enemy of God and men ! TEACHER. Allow me, sir, to submit to you a difficulty which somewhat disturbs my neighbors. Struck at what you have said of the necessity of good works and the importance of merit, they conclude that something will be wanting to the happiness of those little innocent souls who owe heaven only to the grace of Baptism. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. No, my friends, nothing will be wanting to the happiness of those angels. If they have not per- sonal merit, they have as members of the Christian family, their share in the merits of all. This is the great advantage of the Communion of Saints, that Catholic dogma which flows from the capital truth that God wishes all men to be as one, and that the strong should labor for the weak. Do we not find this communion in the social and political order ? Sixth Entertainment. 85 Who is the good citizen, however obscure he may be, who does not rejoice in his country's glory, who does not suffer in her reverses and humiliations ? On the day of a great victory, the soldier of the reserve-corps is none the less victorious although he be out of the range of the enemy's cannon. It is true that he will not be given the cross or epaulettes, like him who has captured the enemy's flag or rescued his own, but he will very justly have a share in the general merit of the army. Well, it is the same in the grand Christian army fighting for the conquest of heaven, and with much stronger reason, for our religious union is more grand, more intimate than is our national union, our union in the ranks of the army. Those children dead before the struggle, are reserve-corps, which, although not having had occasion to combat, have none the less right to the common fruits of the victory. Among the men who attain the age of reason, and live long enough to take part in the trial and engage in the combat with vice and error, some yield, throw down their arms, and pass to the enemy. On the day of retribution, those cowards and traitors shall be degraded, and banished forever from the ranks of triumphant humanity. Many limit themselves to the performance of their duty; they shall receive the crown of the faithful soldier. Very many fight like ten, twenty, or a hundred, 8 86 The Peoples Ark. and take many prizes from the enemy. To these, the brave among the brave, the just Remuneratof will distribute dignities and grades, from the simple stripe to the marshal's baton. And in the army of the elect, united by perfect sentiments of justice and charity, there will be unanimous approval of the distinctions awarded to high martial deeds, the glory of which redounds to the whole body. Without those victories won by the bravery of all and the heroism of some, what would the heavenly militia be? Only an army of parade, composed of idle soldiers and commanded by favorites. The human family having been placed on earth only for trial and warfare, its first two chiefs must encounter a tempter, an enemy; for without temp- tation, no trial; without an enemy, no combat. Do not ask, then, my friends, why God allowed Satan to mislead Eve, and trouble the happy family in the terrestrial paradise. We have seen in the preceding entertainments that the heavenly Preceptor had neglected nothing to enlighten our first parents and prepare them for the attack. To test their fidelity to the divine teachings it was natural that the father of lies should give them a lesson opposed to the first. He did so, and you know with what success. Nothing is more just than that we deplore that catastrophe, but there would be great injustice and ingratitude in throwing the blame on God. It was, plainly, the interest of Adam and Eve, as also of their numerous family, that they should Sixth Entertainment. 87 fight and ennoble themselves by victory. That their triumph might be meritorious, it was neces- sary it should depend en themselves to vanquish or be vanquished. God had done everything to facilitate their victory; if they were vanquished, it was because they willed it. To ask why God permitted them to abuse their liberty, is to ask why, instead of two free and intelligent beings, God did not give us two automata to be our father and mother. With regard to original sin and its conse- quences, you must have heard, my friends, a thou- sand objections, which may all be reduced to the following. It was only justice in God to punish Adam and Eve, but what cruelty, or rather, what absurdity, in Him to involve all mankind in their disgrace! What shall we think of a religion which places this at the head of all her dogmas ? Well, this objection, so fair in appearance, is, at the bottom, only great nonsense. In fact, it not only denies an historical fact, constantly believed by Jews, Christians, and even pagans,* but it also denies facts which come under our eyes, and overturns our fundamental ideas of man and society. This is what I am about to demonstrate to you, my friends, in a short dialogue with a free- thinker. " Do you believe," — I will say to this man who treats original sin as an absurd fable — " do you believe that all men have descended from Adam and Eve ?'' * Reveil du Peuple. Lesson ii. 88 The Peoples Ark. "The Bible says so, but I cannot believe that history." " If you do not believe that history, the only one which teaches us of the origin of man and the world, your philosophy has no foundation, and cannot soar very high. It is above all, forbidden you to speak of humanity, or fraternity, for there is no fraternity for those who have no common father; there is no humanity or unity of species where all the individuals come from no one knows where. In your system, there shall be, if you wish, points of resemblance between men, such as there are between different kinds of monkeys, but the Frenchman cannot say to the German, the Italian, the Chinese, and the Negro : ' Thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh/ You do not believe in the fact of human fraternity ; very well; but can you not, at least, believe in the possibility of the fact?" "That possibility is not proved." " You have, then, never observed a fact exces- sively common and already ancient. It is that men, instead of coming from no one knows where, proceed from one another in virtue of a law, mysterious, no doubt, yet of whose existence it would be folly to doubt. And I beg you to observe that the law of propagation is such, that if by a disposition of Providence, our species was suddenly to disappear from the earth with the exception of one couple, this new Adam and his consort would be sufficient to repeople the earth. This point conceded, is not the possi- bility of the historical fact of the Bible, viz : that Sixth Entertainment. 89 all men have proceeded from one, clearly demon- strated ?" " Be it so : but what conclusion is to be drawn from it? " This : — If it is possible that we proceed from Adam and Eve, is it not equally possible that Adam and Eve have engendered us to their image and like- ness ? Let us, again, suppose that our first parents had by their misconduct ceased to be perfect, angelic, and endowed with all those prerogatives with which they had been gifted by the goodness of the Creator, and that by their folly and ingrati- tude they had become like us, miserable men, filled with weakness, with the germs of death in their physical constitution, and inordinate passions in their souls ; is it not natural to suppose that those two poor parents, instead of giving birth to angels, would have been able to communicate only what they themselves possessed — a nature full of weakness and misery ? It is true that the corruption of our nature in Adam remains a mystery, but is not our descent from Adam by way of generation, also a profound mystery? Then, why should you judge this possible and credible, and that absurd ?" "There is a vast difference. I see men eno-en- dering others, but I have never seen fathers trans- mit original sin with life to their children. " "What, sir! you have never perceived that chil- dren receive with life, the germs of every vice, and of all maladies of soul and body; that they are born with a fund of ignorance and corruption, and with inclinations to evil, which give terrible work 9<3 The People s Ark. to those who have to raise them? Well, that fund of moral and physical disorder, which has made sensible man, pagan, as well as Christian, say: 'An infinitely wise and good God could not have created man in such a state/ that fund, I say, is original sin. In rejecting this as an absurdity, you go against the direct evidence of facts." " I do not admit, sir, the natural corruption of man. Children are born good, but society, such as superstition and despotism have made it, spoils them." Behold, my friends, the folly which the incre- dulous are obliged to sustain. To the faith of mankind, to the teachings of the Catholic Church, to the evidence of a fact known by all fathers, mothers, nurses and teachers, they oppose the dream of John James Rousseau on the native goodness of man, as given in his Entile. I will not stop to combat that dream, in which Rousseau himself did not believe, since he always refused to raise the little angels wlr'ch his concubine gave him, Neither will I recall what I have said elsewhere: that those who deny original sin are living proofs of it* * Eeveil du Peuple. Lesson ii. SEVENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Of what God could have done, and of what He did — Futility and injustice of our complaints. S soon as it was certain that Adam and Eve had thrown down their arms and said to Satan, " Be our master," it seems to me, my friends, that God had to determine between two things ; either to do what religion teaches He has done, or allow things to go on, and say- to the guilty ones, "Your will be done." Satan was only waiting for that word, to finish what he had begun, and carry his two pupils into the kingdom of eternal torments. Once there, our unfortunate parents would have lost the power and the idea of generating us, and nonentity would have been our portion. Would that have been better than our present condition ? I do not think so; and you, probably, are of my opinion. With a God, such as men would make Him, the part of strict justice would, no doubt, have prevailed; and by abandoning to their fate those creatures who had traitorously abandoned him, Jehovah would have shown greater regard for justice and. humanity than did the great Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans. Mythology tells us that his wife Juno having given him a misshapen 91 92 The People s Ark. and deformed child, he became so enraged that with one kick he precipitated him from heaven to earth.* The God of charity, at the sight of His most beautiffil creatures transformed into beasts by their obedience to Satan's blasphemies, felt more com- passion than anger, and instead of turning away from those miserable beings, He went in search of them. They, as you know, hid themselves, which sinners still do, blindly imagining that if they forget God, God will also forget them. The fugitives being found, it was necessary first, in order to dispose them for pardon, to obtain an avowal of their crime. Before it was raised to the dignity of a sacra- ment by Jesus Christ, confession was, as it still is everywhere, a natural law of our moral consti- tution, which, in order to deliver itself from the venom of sin, feels the necessity of expec- torating it. Hence the universal proverb, " Without confes- sion, no remission. " To facilitate the work God interrogated the guilty: "Adam, why did you hide?" * This god, called Vulcan, or the god of fire, was not killed, thanks to his quality of immortality, but he remained always lame, which did not, however, hinder him from superintend- ing Jupiter's forges, and espousing Venus, the most im- modest of the goddesses. It is unnecessary to observe that this story was for the pagans, the apology for infanticide, as the worship of Venus was the adoration of the most unbridled lust. Seventh Entertainment. 93 "Because I was naked." The liar! "And who told you that you were naked? ts it not because you have eaten of the forbidden fruit?" "The woman whom you gave me to be my companion, gave me the fruit, and I did eat." You see, my friends, that our father Adam had made great progress in the school of the other, and hearing him, one would suppose, that all the evil, if evil there had been, lay between his wife and Him who had created her. "And you, Eve, why have you done this?" "The serpent deceived me, and I did eat." This was to say to the Creator of the serpent, that it was He who ought to strike His breast and cry, Mea culpa. Behold here a confession passably diabolical, yet made to God in person : this, we may say, en passant, is a bad augury for those who say, "We confess to God, and not to priests.''* With such dispositions in the guilty, you under- stand, my friends, that God could not wholly absolve them, without violating all the principles of morality. What, then, did he do ? Like the good father who strikes indirectly, God fulminated His male- diction against the serpent and him who had possessed it; and He inspired hope into the hearts of his victims in saying to him : " Thou thinkest that thou hast made an end of man, but I intend the war to recommence. From the womb of the woman into which thou hast carried death, shall come forth a new woman and a new man, who, 54 The People s Ark. while repairing this day's defeat, shall crush thy head." Then addressing Himself to the two unhappy beings, whose hearts by that merciful promise had doubtless been predisposed to love and repentance, He announced to the woman the pains attached to her condition of mother, and her obligation of remaining, thenceforward, subject to her husband's power. On Adam He imposed the obligation to labor hard, in order to conquer the sterility of the earth, on which he had drawn a curse, and to draw thence what was necessary for his wants and those of his family; in fine, the penalty that his body should return for centuries to the dust from which it had been taken. When closely examined, what was that new existence which God granted to Adam and Eve, that existence intermediate between the happy state in which they had been created, but of which they had deprived themselves, and that state of eternal reprobation which they had incurred ? It was, evidently, a great favor. What is it for us? A misfortune, if you wish, but a misfortune preferable to nonentity, which would have been our lot, had not God stopped our first parents on the very brink of the abyss. This misfortune can be easily supported by those who treat it as a fable, as well as the crime that caused it. It is, moreover, very salutary, for were it not for the sting of our miseries, and the cease- less attacks of death, would we ever think of one important point, that we are only in this world for Seventh Entertainment. 95 trial and combat, and that the land of repose and enjoyment is to be found elsewhere? Such, then, my friends, is the history of our foil in Adam. Is there anything in it injurious to right reason, or unworthy of the goodness of God ? Is not the association of all men in that misfortune a necessary consequence of that law of humanity which makes us all members of one body, all bound to one another, and incapable of profiting by the goods of the community, without also sharing in its evils? On this principle is founded the beautiful law of Christian charity. Being all of one flesh and blood, we ought each to feel the good or evil which befalls another. By rejecting the fact of original sin, the free- thinkers deny the unity of the human race, take away the foundations of universal fraternity, and for the duty of charity substitute a brutal egotism, which cries, " Every one for himself.'* Finally, the same religion which explains so well our miseries and sorrows, by teaching us that our poor humanity has received a cruel wound by the fall of our first mother and first chief, teaches us also that it has pleased Divine Charity, not only to raise and heal us, but to ennoole us immeasurably by giving us as our Mother that Woman, who in grace and power surpasses all other creatures; and as our Chief, the God-Man who unites in His divine person all the greatness of divinity and humanity. It tells us that instead of being the children of a mere man. we may be, if we wish, by our incorporation with Jesus Christ, the true children of God, partakers of the divine 96 The People s Ark. nature, according to the expression of the apostle St. Peter.* Therefore, in acknowledging, also, with St. Paul, that where sin had abounded, grace has superabounded, the Church sings on Holy Saturday: " O happy fault of Adam, which has merited for us so great a Redeemer!" MAYOR. It may be true that Christians have gained more than they lost in the disaster of the terrestrial paradise, but is it true of so many millions of men, who, in consequence of the ignorance and corrup- tion inherited from Adam, have died, or are now dying in the darkness of idolatry ? Have not those victims of the first prevarication a right to complain of their fate ? PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I know of none who are excluded from glory on account of original sin, save children who have died without baptism. Now, everything leads us to believe that those victims will have no reason to complain. The sight and enjoyment of the infinite Being are favors which God owed to no creature, whether angelic or human. An existence prefer- able to nonentity and naturally happy, is the por- tion which creative goodness owes to the beings who have not placed themselves personally and freely in opposition to His laws. Such is to be, according to the strongest probabilities, the con- dition of those children. They will be able to * II. EpiBt., eh. i. 4. Seventh Entertainment. 97 bless God for having given being to them in pre- ference to so many who remain in nonentity, and for having preserved them from the eternal fires. As to adult idolaters, who are subjected to the trial, I maintain that those who have been lost, or who are still being lost, are the victims, not of original sin, but of their resistance to those lights which God grants, more or less abundantly, to every soul that makes the voyage of life. In fact, my friends, if the sun of the true reli- gion has, at times, been eclipsed in the world, yet it has never set. It continually enlightened the first human generations from Adam to Noah. The latter did not die until 350 years after the Deluge, so the light of religion must have been preserved pure until about the year of the world 2000. Then appeared idolatry among the descendants of Cham, and we find it spread very wide by the Egyptian colonies, by commerce, and by fleets from Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage. But it is evident they did not at first arrive to that degree of igno- rance and corruption into which they sank later, and that the sons of God long fought, with more or less success, against the degrading inventions of the sons of the earth. It is, above all, probable, that the numerous families, who, after the confu- sion of tongues, dispersed far and wide under the conduct of their chiefs, would preserve intact for centuries their primitive religion and faith in the promised Redeemer, a faith which we find, although more or less disfigured, among all pagan nations. The ancient traditions concerning the Redeemer and the time of His coming were, it seems, long pre- 9 98 The Peoples Ark. served among the Chinese; for about the middle of the first century of the Christian era, the then reign- ing emperor dispatched messengers to the West, to search after the religion of the true Son of Heaven. Unfortunately, his envoys, not being guided by a star, as were the Magi, took a wrong direction and introduced into China the worship of idols, which very probably had been unknown there until then. The same causes may have long preserved other nations, so happy as to be situated at a distance from the great centres of corruption, where the multitude of people, and the heat and fruitfulness of the climate rapidly developed the carnal pas- sions, of which idolatry was the adoration regu- lated by Satan. Let us, also, observe, my friends, that as Sacred History, from the vocation of Abraham, treats in general only of the chosen people and the nations with whom they came in contact, we must not judge the morality of all nations by that of the Egyptians, Chananeans, Assyrians, and others. Those, as we have said, were the most corrupt. Again it is from the very bosom of countries buried in darkness that we see the God of Charity raise and preserve, with great trouble, the Chris- tian pharos of the ancient world, I mean the religion and history of the present, past and future; the religion engraved on the stones of Sinai amid thunder and lightning; the history recorded in the Bible; the religion and history both con- fided to the care of the Jewish nation, more last- ing than marble, immortal as the Bible. The free-thinkers laugh at that history of the Seventh Entertainment. 99 Jewish nation, which is but one long chain of miraculous events. Well, before laughing at the chain, it would be well to wait and see the last link of it ; and again it shows very little honesty or good sense to laugh at the Jews in view of what they have done. You understand me, my friends, that without all those miracles, the flood of idolatry would have rolled over the children of Israel, and the pharos of ancient Christianity. They accuse the God of the Christians of having done nothing to save the ancient world, and when we show the works of His mercy, they cry : " It is incredible !" Such is their logic. Let no one say that the Jews were too insigni- ficant a na.ion, their country too little known to attract attention. All history establishes the con- trary. Again, seven hundred years before Christ, at an epoch when the shadows of error were deepest, Salmanazar, King of Assyria, was sent to destroy the kingdom of Israel, and disperse the ten tribes to the four winds. Where did not those poor exiles go ? Colonies of them have been found in the centre of China, and in the heart of Africa, where they had settled long before the Christian era. Later, we find that one of the successors of Alexander the Great caused the Bible to be translated into Greek, at that time the language of the learned. We know, also, that the greatest princes of Asia, and later, the Romans, esteemed it an honor and a duty to contribute towards the worship of the God of Abraham and David, and that the court of the temple of Jerusalem was reserved for the Gentiles. IOO The People s Ark. Let us add to those external means of teaching-, the thousand interior and mysterious ways in which Divine Charity can touch and enlighten souls; and also the examples of religious faith and perfect virtue, which the Gospel reveals in the Roman army, and which Jesus Christ pro- poses as models to the Jews :* the result will be with you, my friends, as with me, the conviction, that if before the coming of the Redeemer, so many souls remained in the shadows of death, the reason for it is given in the words of the Gospel: "Men loved darkness more than light, because their works were evil."t Before speaking of the prodigies of divine mercy, operated since the coming of Jesus Christ, for the conversion of modern idolaters, let us for a moment cast a glance at idolatry, that true mas- terpiece of the perversity of Satan and human corruption. I have already signalized elsewherej its causes and principal effects, but we cannot speak of them too often. The horrors of the idolatrous world are the best introduction to the history of the Gospel, and you, my friends, will never so well understand what you owe to the Christian faith, so long as you remain ignorant of the depth of that abyss of misery and abjection whence it has drawn you. The enlightenment and social institutions of infidel nations shall be the subject of the following entertainments. * Matth. ch. viii. 10.— Acts x. 1. f S. John iii. 19. X Reveil du Feuple, Lesson iv. and v. EIGHTH ENTERTAINMENT. Amenities of ancient paganism in matters of belief, morals, and social institutions. O learn what we owe to Christian revelation, and what can be done in matters of faith by- human reason when not directed by God, we have but to cast a glance over the religions of infidel nations, whether ancient or modern. You know, my friends, that in speaking of those nations the Bible tells us they are buried in the shadows of death, and that their gods are demons. Nothing more true. The system of those nations is composed of nothing but absurd dreams, foolish and ridiculous ideas and abominable practices. I should fear to be disbelieved in what I am about to tell you, did I not know you to be convinced that Plato Pun- chinello is incapable of deceiving you. Besides, the Mayor and Teacher are here, and they have sufficient knowledge to understand, that, far from exaggerating, I speak of but a small part of the extravagances of paganism. Let us begin. You have all heard of the Egyptians, the most ancient of nations, and the most renowned for the wisdom of its laws and the cultivation of the 9* IOI 102 The Peoples Ark. arts. Well, if any one had asked them whence came the world, with all it contains, they would have answered, " From the egg of a crocodile." They worshipped that horrible beast, which they were careful to supply with human flesh. When a mother heard that her child, while playing on the banks of the Nile, had been devoured by a crocodile, she rejoiced at having been found worthy to regale her god. With the crocodile, the Egyptians worshipped also the ox, cat, hawk, vulture, and a multitude of other animals, most of them carnivorous. They devoted enormous revenues to the lodging and food of those gods, who were served by persons of the highest rank. Their deaths were a public calamity ; their funerals, the ruin of their devotees. In case of fire, the Egyptian, before thinking ot extinguishing the flames or preserving his family, was bound to save his cat, ibis and hawk. Woe to him, who, even accidentally, killed one of those sacred animals ! A learned author has well said, that in Egypt one would run much less risk in killing a man than a cat* The Chananeans, Phoenicians and Carthaginians, who, by their commerce and industry were the English of the ancient world, adored gods less ridiculous, perhaps, than those of the Egyptians, but far more execrable. Not only the Bible, but profane histories, also among others that of Dio- dorus Siculus, tell us that among those nations of * Goquet. Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences. T. i., Book vi., ch. 11. Eighth Entertainment. 103 common origin, mothers went, with great cere- mony, to deposit one of their children in the burn- ing arms of the statues of the gods Moloch or Baal, whence those innocent victims fell into a furnace, while loud music drowned their cries. Diodorus relates, that during the siege of Carthage by the tyrant Agathocles of Sicily, they immolated in this manner two hundred children of the first families, and that three hundred persons accused of having provoked the god, by their negligence in offering their children, were forced to cast them- selves into the divine furnace. The young persons of both sexes who escaped the furnace, had to go to places consecrated to Astarte or Astaroth, to lose what was more precious than life. In reading sacred history, many of us have, no doubt, found rather severe the order which God gave the Hebrews to exterminate a great part of the inhabitants of Palestine, but our surprise ceases when we learn the abominable state of morals among those people, and their incorrigi- bility. God, who ardently desires the salvation of mankind, acted in this like the skilful sur- geon, who, in order to save the body, cuts off a gangrened limb. Let us pass to the Greeks and Romans, so famed for skill in war and the fine arts. . Their poets, philosophers, and historians were much amused at the stupidity of the Egyptians, w T ho, besides the animals we have named, wor- shipped also the leek and the onion, yet those Greeks and Romans were not much wiser. 104 The Peoples Ark. The father of all the gods of Rome and Greece was Saturn, or Time, a kind of ogre, accustomed to devour his children alive. This would have made an end of both the divine and human species, had not Rhea or Cybele, his wife, deceived him, After giving birth to her children, she confided them to a goat, to be nursed, and told her husband that she had brought forth stones, or the like. In this way she preserved Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, and Ceres. The history of those gods and goddesses, and of the offspring with which they peopled the hea- vens and earth, is somewhat amusing, but at the same time so full of obscenities, that I advise you, my friends, to read rather the history of the Old and New Testaments, and I believe that Mr. Teacher is of the same opinion. TEACHER. Yes, sir; I have some knowledge of those heroes of mythology, and I also know, well enough, that among the honest fathers and mothers who are listening to you, not one would wish their son or daughter to bear the least resemblance to any of those deities. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I am persuaded of that. Let us resume our review. Those of our Gallic ancestors who had not adopted the fables of the Greeks and Romans, trusted, for the origin of things, to the sayings of the Druids, of whose religion we know very Eighth Entertainment. 105 little, except that they attributed a divine virtue to the serpent's egg and to the mistletoe of the oak, and offered up an immense number of human lives in their abominable sacrifices. The celebrated Julius Csesar, who subjected the Gauls to the Romans, and who has written the history of his campaigns, relates that our ancestors, in their religious ceremonies, filled enormous statues made of osier, with living men and women, and set them on fire in honor of their divinities. Let us see how the Scandinavians, the people of Northern Europe, explained the origin of the world, before they learned the Christian doctrine from the apostles of Jesus Christ. The god Odin, (whose grandfather Buri came into existence after the mythic cow Audhumla had licked the snow,) being aided by his two brothers, Vili and Ve, killed the giant Ymir. Of his flesh they made the land ; of his bones, the rocks ; with his blood, the sea; of his skull, the heavens; and of his brains, the clouds. Odin found afterwards the trunks of two trees, one an ash, the other an alder, out of which he made the first man and woman. The northern deities were very fond of human flesh ; Odin was called the Lord of the fatten. Let us now speak of the best instructed pagans of modern, times, that is, the Chinese and Hindoos, who have, for centuries, possessed the elements of our civilization, but are wanting in that, how- ever, which gives value to everything else. Ask the Chinese, "Who made the world ? Who governs it?" One will tell you it is Foo-Hee, io6 The People s Ark. whom he worships under the form of a marmoset, and about whose works he will relate many droll tales. Another will teach you that it is the Grand Lama, or Buddha, living always in Thibet. And such will be the answer of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred millions of Chinese, Tar- tars, etc. If you address yourself to the learned classes, mandarins and officers, three-fourths of them will smile at such a foolish question, and will tell you that the god which occupies them most, is the stomach and its dependencies. There, as elsewhere, those who wear feathers are taken for eagles, and their manners are adopted. To seize upon the most lucrative offices, and to devour the people under pretence of governing them, such is their religion. In India they will tell you that Brahma, the god of that country, after having slept for thou- sands of years, began, one day, to work. From his mouth sprang the divine class of Brahmans; from his shoulders, the caste of kings, governors, and warriors ; from his body, the race of agriculturists, artisans, and merchants; and from his foot, the laborers. The two lowest classes were so little considered in the religion of the Brahmans, that they were condemned to live in ignorance, and he who would teach them the law that conducts to heaven, would himself be con- demned to hell. To hold in horror strangers and pariahs (the outcasts from society); to kill them, if they should by chance enter the houses of people of caste ; to look on the Brahmans as the Eighth Entertainment. 107 equals of the gods ; to venerate the cow and besmear themselves and their houses with its excrement ; to worship and feed the most terrible serpents; never to kill any animal, above all, the vermin which devour them ; to compel widows to burn themselves alive on the remains of their husbands, and to counsel the perfect devotees to drown themselves in the Ganges, or be crushed in processions beneath the car of their idols; such is an epitome of the religion of India, and I beg of you to believe that I have left the most shame- ful part in the shade. As I have chosen my examples from among the best known and most enlightened pagan nations of the ancient and modern world, it seems to me that I may be dispensed from speaking of the horrible religions of the barbarians of Africa and Central America, before its conquest. In those torrid regions we should find their gods to be still more bloodthirsty. Do we need stronger proofs, my friends, of the truth of what the Bible tells us, that the gods of the pagans are veritable demons, and that when a nation abandons the law of the true God, it is not able to give itself a religion, but receives one from Satan ? With gods so wicked, so debauched, so eager for blood and carnage, I leave you to imagine what their devotees must be. It is commonly said, and with good reason, that education moulds a man, and that the disciple is seldom better than the master. Now the edu- cation of a people is its religion; and that great 108 The Peoples Ark. master, whose ideas, habits and morals it adopts, is its god. No one thinks himself obliged to live more wisely than the god he adores. What then could have been the state of public and private morality among nations that found the history of their deities to be only a tissue of adul- teries, rapes, and infamy, and beheld their altars reeking with human blood? Their morality could have been only abominable corruption and fright- ful cruelty. I will prove it by its effects. As I wish to be listened to and read by every one, particularly by youth, I will cast into oblivion that excess of impurity, and those hor- rible outrages which were everywhere heaped uppn human nature, and will speak only of the cruelty exhibited in the pagan code of laws and morality. And that I may not be accused of pointing out a few 7 of the most barbarous usages of barbarous nations, I will cite only those of the nations best known, most famous, and most pol- ished of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans. You have often heard the free-thinkers or their dupes, vaunting the liberty of these two nations. Well, I beg Mr. Teacher to tell us if liberty was so great in the republics of Greece, what .was the number of those who enjoyed it, and what the fate of those excluded from it. TEACHER. To tell the truth, sir, I have never calculated the number of freemen or slaves, but the latter, most certainly, far exceeded the former. I re- member that in Athens, where manners were more EigJilJi Entertainment 109 gentle and the slaves less ill-treated, there were twenty thousand citizens, and four hundred thou- sand slaves, which gives twenty slaves to each master. In the Republic of Sparta, the proportion of slaves called HelotS, was much greater, and their fate was so fearful, that those unfortunates might have envied the fate of our beasts of burden. The Helot's clothing consisted only of a kind of cap and a garment of dog-skin, The master who fed them so well that they grew tall and robust, was fined, and his slaves w T ere killed. On one occasion they thus massacred two thousand of the handsomest. In fine, those who exercised the young citizens in the art of war, led them out to hunt the Helots. No one was considered a good soldier, if he had not maimed or killed a certain number of slaves.* PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Thanks, sir ; you have spoken like history. Behold, my friends, what was the liberty enjoyed by the greater number, that is by the lower classes, in those beautiful republics, so highly vaunted. The masses were only beasts, more to be pitied than our asses and mules, and ruled by a handful of masters well worthy of the gods they worshipped. You have remarked, sir, that the Athenians were the most humane of the Greeks towards their slaves. It is true ; but I beg you to remember that the Athenian philosophers seri- ously discussed the question: "Are slaves men, * Goquet. Origin of Laws, Arts, etc., T iii., Book vi., c. 3. no The Peoples Ark and have they rational souls ?" Those who answered in the affirmative, agreed that souls had been given them only that they might under- stand their masters' orders, and that they were, by their very nature, excluded from virtue and happiness. Let us now speak of Rome. The population of that capital of the world was two millions. Cicero, the most illustrious orator, philosopher, and consul of Rome, tells us, that out of that number, there were only two thousand citizens who owned anything — who were proprietors. By placing the number of poor citizens at ninety-eight thousand, which is high, we should have, in Rome alone, nineteen hundred thousand slaves, or nine- teen slaves to one freeman. We must not be sur- prised, since the famous historian Tacitus tells us, that the greater part of the senators and knights kept in their places from four to five hundred slaves, and that the families of the Roman lords had become veritable nations.* Such was the city. But what was the state of affairs in the country which provides for the city, as the city (when not inhabited by fools) provides for and renders the country prosperous? By whom was the country around Rome cultivated ? By millions and millions of slaves. And what was their condition ? Their lives depended on the humor of the intendant of each troop of slaves. This intendant was a freed slave, that is to say, one of the proudest and harshest of men, who * Annals, Book xiv., c. 44. Eighth Entertainment. 1 1 1 wished to purchase his master's favor at the price of the sufferings and life of his subordinates. This tyrant had for his aids in his office of executioner, some vigorous slaves who were anxious to win the honor of enfranchisement, and every country house was provided with instruments of torture, of which we find a frightful description given by the Roman writers. Those worthy intendants and their officers, in order to incite the slaves to labor and form them to obedience, planted crosses here and there, on which they fastened those of whom they had to complain, or whom they desired to serve as warn- ings to others. During the day, the whip and the lash were plied on those poor human machines, save for the few short moments in which they were permitted to take their meals, and you can imagine what those meals were. When night came on, they were chained by the neck, hands and feet, and locked in subterraneous and infected places, in which you would not lodge your cattle. If the slave was attacked by a serious or tedious illness, he was either killed or abandoned. If the indisposition promised to be of short duration, he received some attention, so that a useful animal might be saved. When they became old and decrepit, the master who did not have them killed, or leave them to starve on his domain, delivered them to contractors, who transported them to desert islands. The celebrated Cato, reputed to be the greatest and most virtuous citizen of his time, says in a book still extant, that he does not 112 The Peoples Ark. wish to have those slaves killed who have served well, but that neither ' should a proprietor be oblieed to feed the useless. He then advises masters to cause their slaves to be sold before they become wholly decrepit, so that they may make some profit on them. And history tells us that this excellent man always did himself that which he counselled to others. As to the city slaves, if their life was, in general, less severe, yet there was nothing to guarantee them against the most barbarous whims of their masters and mistresses. The law did not concern itself with those animals. That great lord w 7 ho judged proper to have them cut in pieces to feed the fishes of his pond, was none the less esteemed on that account. We see from the humorous poets that the Roman ladies were somewhat in the habit of causing to be crucified or cut in pieces, under their eyes, those slaves, whether male or female, who had displeased them, or on whom they wished to revenge their husbands' whims or lovers' infidelities. One word now on the frightful butcheries of the amphitheatre, of which, perhaps, you have never heard, as our liberal writers have tried to bury in oblivion the abominations from which Christianity has delivered us. The innumerable nation of slaves was not only obliged to lead a horrible existence in order to nourish the citizens and provide for their luxury, but it had also to labor for their amusement. And the most agreeable diversion of those monsters was to behold multitudes of slaves tearing one Eighth Entertainment. 113 another to pieces, or being devoured by lions, tigers, panthers, and bears. In the beginning, those games cost daily the lives of only some scores of persons. In order to prolong the combat, they allowed the gladiators to cover themselves with defensive armor, but they soon wearied of such tedious work. They then compelled the gladiators to appear naked, so that no blow might fail, says Seneca, the first Roman philosopher who dared to criticise those spectacles.* They also deprived of their offensive weapons those who fought against the beasts, fearing that instead of being devoured by them, they should kill them, which would have been accounted a great loss. They even made a law, which for- bade under pain of death, the killing of the wild beasts of Asia and Africa, destined to devour men in the circus and amphitheatres. As the appetite increased in satisfying it, there was no other means of giving a great feast than by causing thousands of those unfortunate beings to be exterminated. All classes of persons, particularly women, were so passionately fond of those abominable games, that the illustrious emperor, Trajan, a prince other- wise humane, believed it his duty to give a show, in which perished in one day ten thousand gladia- tors, and eleven thousand wild beasts. f The his- torian Tacitus speaks of another feast at which nineteen thousand men were massacred.J * See his Letters, letter vii. f Pliny — Panegyric on Trajan. % Annals, Book xii. c. 3G. 10* 114 The Peoples Ark. You have often heard, my friends, of the almost infinite number of our martyrs, who, rather than deny what was then called the Christian supersti- tion, allowed themselves to be thrown to the lions and tigers in the amphitheatre. Well, those are the heroes, who, by their con- stancy, have caused the triumph of the religion of the God who died the death of a slave ; a triumph which has delivered at least nineteen-twentieths of the people of Europe, from the most horrible slavery. They are the friends of God and humanity, to whom you, especially, and the masses of our cities, boroughs, and country places, are indebted for not being beasts of burden, delivered over soul and body to a race of monsters, thirsting only for blood and pleasure. What, then, must be thought of those who come to tell you that the great obstacle to the enlightenment and civilization of nations is the religion of Jesus Christ, and those who preach it? MAYOR. As for me, I hold them to be very foolish or very wicked persons, whom it would be necessary to watch. But allow me, sir, to submit to you a question which has just occurred to me, and has probably suggested itself to others. How was it that among that nation of slaves, particularly the gladiators, exercised in the use of arms, there were not some courageous men to give to their unhappy companions the signal and example of revolt ? Were those unfortunates really Eighth Entertainment. "5 men, or was it water that ran in their veins instead of blood? PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Your question, sir, is a very natural one, but the answer would occupy too much time ; allow me to leave it for the next entertainment. ^^#J NINTH ENTERTAINMENT. Why the slaves weee so patient — Servile wars — Amenities of the pagan family — Imperial crueltz — To whom we OWE THE ABOLITION OF THE WORSHIP OF TIGERS. i OWARDS the close of our last entertainment, Mr Mayor asked whether the innumerable slaves who covered pagan Europe were really men, that they supported so patiently their fearful condition, and whether, if instead of blood, they had not water in their veins. I have the honor to answer that blood is not enough to make men reasonable and courageous. The elephant, the horse and the ox have blood and nerves far more powerful than the strongest amongst us. Nevertheless a child may lead them, and they never ask themselves by what right he controls them as their master. There is no doubt but that pagan slaves had, like us, souls capable of reasoning. But what is a soul in perfect ignorance of all things? The reason why we do not understand the abjection and brutishness of those unfortunate creatures, is because we have had the happiness of imbibing Christianity with our milk. From our earliest infancy, religion has taught 116 Ninth Entertainment. 117 us that all men are the cherished children of the same heavenly Father; that all are the issue of the blood of Adam, and of Noah, the second father of mankind ; that all have been redeemed by the blood of the Son of God ; that all are equally called to the inheritance of the eternal kingdom. Our children know that, at the tribunal of God, the powerful and the rich will make but a sorry figure, if the poor and the lowly be not there to take them under their protection, and say: " Lord, grant us their pardon ; for if they have done some evil, they have also done much good. It is to their charity we owe the relief of our miseries, and, above all, the happiness of knowing and loving thy law." Behold, my friends, what it is that renders slavery impossible among Catholics who know their religion. In order to enchain them, it would be necessary to exterminate them ; but again, a nation, however small or unimportant it may be, when it fights for the glory of God and its own salvation, is inexterminable. For this reason those dema- gogues, who would wish to make you their beasts of burden to labor for them, try to deprive you of the Catholic catechism, and to send away those who teach it to you. As to the pagan slaves, what could they know of the dignity of man ? You may well imagine that no pains were taken for the instruction of those miserable beings. If there were temples, they were not for them. Besides, the pagan 1 18 The Peoples Ark. temples, were not, like our churches, places for instruction ; they assembled there only for sacri- fices and chants, most of them immodest, in honor of their gods. And, then, what were the ideas of even the best instructed pagans, with regard to the origin of man ? All that could be imagined of the most extravagant. As the Greeks had retained some remembrance of the Deluge, let us see how their mythology explained the second birth of mankind. Deuca- lion, King of Thessaly, and his wife Pyrrha, being the only ones preserved from the deluge, were ordered by Jupiter to repeople the world by cast- ing stones behind them. Those thrown by Deuca- lion were changed into men, and those of Pyrrha, into women. As to those philosophers, judicious enough to laugh at this absurd explanation, but not modest enough to confess their ignorance, they, like our atheists, said that men had sprung out of the earth. You can understand, my friends, that those ideas were not well calculated to inspire the pagans with respect for our nature. I have already told you what the greatest philosophers thought of slaves. Those who were willing to grant they had a soul, regarded them as an inferior species of men, destined by the gods to serve the real men. It must not, then, surprise us, that those unhappy beings, brutalized by misery and the want of all instruction, should have become habit- uated to the yoke, insupportable as it may appear to us. They believed in their obligation to suffer, as did their masters in their right to torment them. Ninth Entertainment. 1 1 9 There occurred nevertheless, in Sicily, and even at the gates of Rome, revolts and wars of the slaves, so terrible that they almost stifled in blood that immense republic, at the time of its greatest glory. But who were the authors and sustainers of those wars ? They were brave foreign soldiers, reduced to slavery by the barbarity of their con- querors. The first leader of the revolted slaves in Sicily was a native of Syria named Eunus. In order to determine his companions to break their chains, it was necessary that he should speak in the name of the gods and work miracles. He placed in his mouth a nut filled w 7 ith sulphur, which he secretly set on fire; and blowing lightly, he seemed to vomit flames. But the most formid- able of the leaders of those insurrections was Spartacus, a Thracian by birth, who had been confined at Capua with other prisoners, to exercise himself in the arts of a gladiator, in order one day to amuse the Roman citizens and ladies by the blows he should give or receive. This man, gifted with prodigious strength of mind and body, incited his companions (most of them from Gaul, and born like himself beneath the sun of liberty,) to force their prison. They gained a mountain on which they entrenched themselves, and there he rallied around him a crowd of fugitive slaves, foreigners and robbers. Spartacus disciplined them, and with their aid, cut in pieces three Roman armies. Terror reigned in the capital of the universe, and it would have 120 The Peoples Aik. been all over with that empire of monsters, if, of so many millions of slaves that filled Rome and the neighboring provinces, some thousands had thought of seconding the victor. But not one moved. Spartacus, surrounded by a chosen army under Licinius Crassus, fought desperately, and fell with the last of his soldiers in the midst of the slain. With him ended the so-called Servile Wars, in the year Jl before the coming of Him, who, by His divine doctrine, by His life, and His death of a slave, could alone enfranchise men, by saying to the slave: "Be subject to thy master, but more so to God;" and to the master: "Acknowledge in thy slave a brother, created as thyself to the image of God. Treat him as thou thyself wouldst be treated; otherwise, on the great day of justice, the Lord of lords will crown thy slave, and deliver thee to the eternal torturers." I believe I have answered Mr. Mayor's question. MAYOR. Yes, sir; I now understand the reason of the conduct of those slaves, and see that in order to make them men, it was necessary, above all, to make them Christians. To free them, before giving them enlightenment and virtue, would have been to let loose tigers on tigers. The most frightful massacres would only have ended in replacing the ancient masters by others still more covetous and inhuman. But there occurs to me another thought on this sub- ject, a question after the manner of Gros-Jean, who preaches to his cure. Ninth Entertainment 121 It is this: Why do not those charged to give us religious instruction sometimes make known to us the condition from which Christianity has drawn us? Some historical details, such as you are now giving us, would have a better effect, I think, than other proofs of religion, which we cannot so well understand. We can understand, to a certain degree, the ardent faith and devotedness of the martyrs, when we see the state of the society under which they had to live. We, also, with a better knowledge of what we owe to religion, would be more docile to its pre- cepts, more wary of its enemies. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. You are very right, sir. The best means to make religion known and loved, is to give its history. We appreciate its value, only by seeing w T hat it has done for us ; we understand what it has done only by knowing the state of the world in which it had to labor. Many of our clergymen in their instructions employ the historical method, and draw great fruit from it. That it is not employed by all, is due, in a great measure, to the style of their education. You must know, my friends, that, for a long time, our colleges have been too much occupied with the Greeks and Romans. Both one and the other have left books of poetry, philosophy, and history written with marvellous talent. Those nations did great things, but their writers have made them seem much greater. To flatter their 11 122 The Peoples Ark. nation, they have extenuated the evil and exagge- rated the good. Those books are placed in the hands of our students, and for eight or ten years they are made to spell, translate and learn them by heart, with more care than the words of the Catechism and Gospel. Lest they might be scan- dalized, we only present to them the fairer side of things. Those heroes, those sages of Greece and Rome, the least vicious of whom would, with us, have deserved a prison, are made to appear as veritable models of social virtue and magnanimity of soul. Hence our young men are seized with admiration and love of the ancient republics, which they know about as well as we do the inhabitants of the moon. Christians by baptism, they are pagans in mind, memory, and imagination, and, but too often, in heart. Well, in seminaries there is so much to be taught to young aspirants, that the false ideas they have imbibed in college regarding pagan history cannot always be rectified. You must not, then, be surprised that among young clergy- men a few may be found, who, instead of exhibit- ing religion to you in the full light of history, speak of metaphysics, or in beautiful phrases, after the style of the Greeks and Romans. This, my friends, ought to make you feel the necessity for reform in the manner of teaching, and should show you the great importance of the contest now being waged, throughout the world, between the Catholic Church and her devoted children on the one side, who are claiming the liberty of raising Christians, and the free-thinkers Ninth Entertainment. 123 and their dupes on the other, who wish to raise, in the name of the state, beings who will adore only riches and pleasures. It would be well, as you see, to know whether they wish to recon- struct over the shoulders of the people, that beau- tiful society of monsters which has been over- thrown by the religion of Jesus Christ. But enough for the moment on this question, of which we shall speak elsewhere. Let us finish the picture of pagan society. We know to what a depth of brutality and misery the immense majority of men had fallen. Let us now see if their masters, who, enjoying the earth as the gods did their heaven, were ego- tistical tyrants, knew at least how to respect the rights of humanity. In the family, the law acknowledged only one man, the head. Absolute master of his wife and children, he possessed over them the rights of life and death. The murder or abandonment of children they did not wish to raise, was something so clearly allowed by their moral code, that even the greatest minds saw in it nothing w r orthy of correction. See what we read in the Politics of Aristotle, called the Prince of Philosophers, and who was the preceptor of Alexander the Great; " If custom did not permit infanticide, it would be necessary to determine the number of marriages, and how many children are to be raised, etc."* In the Republic of Sparta, of which Mr. Teacher * On Polities^ Book ii., c. 16. 124 The Peoples Ark. spoke to us in the last entertainment, the new-born child was laid at the feet of the public magistrate; if its appearance gave evidence of a strong consti- tution, he stooped to raise it, and it was preserved ; if otherwise, he turned away his cy^s, and it was cast aside as rubbish. Romulus, the first king of Rome, being in want of soldiers, commanded fathers to- raise all their male children except those deformed; as to his daughters, he was allowed to rid himself of the youngest Later, a law was made to save from death all children free from deformity, but his- torians tell us that custom was stronger than the law, and that the destruction of children only increased with other vices, Finally, it is proved that this horrible custom is still common in all countries in which the true religion does not consecrate the lives of children by baptism, and cause to be respected the words of Jesus Christ : " Despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father."* As to women, they were everywhere more or less abandoned to the brutality of men. Among the nations of northern Europe a man did not marry a woman, but bought her; she could be sold or exchanged. At her husband's death she was obliged to follow him to the tomb. In Rome, where they were not so badly treated, the mother of the family was only a" household chattel, which, at the death of her husband, passed under the power of the eldest son. * Matth. xviii. 10. Ninth Eiitertainment. 125 When, later, they relaxed in this severity, they had reason to repent of it. Profligacy became so fearful, that marriages ceased, and those contracted through interest remained sterile. Augustus, the first emperor, seeing the empire in danger of being depopulated, made laws after laws to obtain mar- riages and children. But with a corrupt nation, laws are like a plaster applied to a dead body. The masters of the world, knowing nothing but how to destroy men, and prevent their being born, would have perished in blood and impurity, had not Christianity appeared to create a new morality, and regenerate the family by means of woman. Banished from the family, where, then, was liberty? It was occupied in keeping alive the fire of dissension between two classes of persons, the one, the patricians; the other, the plebeians. They formed the Right and Left of those times, whose only anxiety was to know who should govern, that is to say, who should devour the provinces. After some contests more or less stormy, which lasted as long as the republic, and ended in fright- ful civil wars, the patricians and plebeians took refuge under the government of one man called emperor. And what was the government of those pagan emperors which lasted for nearly three cen- turies and a half, from Augustus, who began to reign alone in the year 31 B. C, until Constantine the Great, who placed the cross on his standard in the year 312? It was what might be supposed among a people so demoralized. As the pagans acknowledged no moral law superior to the will of the sovereign, the good 11* 126 The Peoples Ark. pleasure of the latter was the supreme law of the state. Now the prince who is told that he can do all things, is very much exposed to the danger of becoming a monster. Not only have his passions no restraint, but his power is manifested by all the evil passions which assail him. This is what really happened. With the exception of a certain number of emperors, who, in a great measure, owed their reputation for greatness and virtue to the baseness and perversity of the others, pagan history is but one record of tyrants and monsters so execrable, that we can scarcely believe in so much crime and infamy. There have been tyrants and bad princes among Christian nations, but besides that the most wicked of them were lambs in comparison with the Roman tyrants, the public conscience has at least delivered them to execration ; and has boldly said to their successors, "Beware of doing as they have done!" It was not so with ancient Rome, which raised to the rank of the gods the most sanguinary of those monsters. If among them I cite only Nero, it is not because he was less cruel than Tiberius, less extravagant in his pride and cruelties than Caligula, less in- credibly dissolute than Heliogabalus; but it is because you have heard him spoken of as having first persecuted the Christians, and condemned to death the great apostles Peter and Paul. This monster, after having caused his mother to be murdered at a party in the country, went afterwards to insult her body; on his return, he was received with great honor by the people and Ninth Entertainment. 127 magistrates, who congratulated him for having freed himself from that wicked woman. Wishing to give himself the spectacle of a conflagration, he caused the four corners of Rome to be set on fire. The fire lasted for nine days, and consumed ten of the richest quarters of Rome. As he found that his play had been carried too far, and that the patricians and plebeians were beginning to murmur, he threw the blame of it all on the Christians. No one believed him ; but so many Christians were put to death, and with such a wonderful variety of torments, that Nero quickly recovered the good graces of the people. Besides other inventions, the pagan Tacitus relates, that he caused Christians to be covered with pitch, bound to posts or crosses placed at certain dis- tances in his gardens, which were opened to the public. At nightfall, fire was applied to those living flambeaux, and Nero, surrounded by his courtiers, promenaded through the gardens, enjoy- ing the cries of the victims, and receiving the acclamations of the people. When an old Roman general had put an end to the reign of this miserable coward and ferocious beast, the good people of Rome could not believe that Nero was dead, and they for a long time flattered themselves with the hope of the reap- pearance of the prince who had given them so many feasts.* Behold, my friends, what had become of the * Historical Studies. T. i. 128 The Peoples Ark. greatest nation of pagan antiquity! Not know- ing the law of Jesus Christ, which threatens the wicked sovereign with a judgment much more terrible than that of bad subjects, they were not at all surprised at seeing their emperors satisfy their most atrocious caprices; and as those crowned tigers resembled very much the gods of the empire, they became objects of worship. To whom do we owe the abolition of the degrading worship of those reigning tigers? To the greatest of all great men — to our martyred heroes. Yes, my friends, while the august magistrates, the great philosophers, poets, and writers of Rome and all the known world, were shamelessly ap- plauding the most infamous sovereigns of history, the Christians of every condition, their sons and daughters, ten or twelve years old, braved the fury of those monsters, and killed their despotism by gorging it with Christian blood. Their rulers said to them: " Adore the gods of the empire." They answered: "No; the gods of the empire are but devils, who degrade you in this life, only to torment you in the next. We adore only that God who has , made us to His own image and likeness, whose Son has deigned to become man, to die for us and deliver the world from the tyranny of your gods." They said to them: " Sacrifice to the genii of the empire, to the sacred image of the emperors." "No," answered they, "a thousand times, no! we sacrifice to God alone. We respect the emperor as holding his power from God, and vye pbey him Ninth Entertainment. 129 when he commands according to right and justice, but we would rather die than recognize in him a being higher than a mortal man, subject as are we to the King of kings." Those principles of our liberty from having been so oft repeated, and so many having died to inculcate and defend them, became general, and Constantine the Great, in raising the standard of the cross, said to the world: "It is Jesus Christ who must reign; the emperor can be only the first subject of the Gospel." TENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Answer to an objection of the progressionists — Keflections on the work of the propagation of the faith — a glance at the social progress of the chinese, hindoos, and turks. FTER having shown you, my friends, the beautiful social system constructed by ancient paganism, it will be well to say a word about the contemporary nations who live under the empire of false gods. It will be the best answer to an objection common enough for you to have some knowledge of it. The free-thinkers, who wish to make us believe that men sprang out of the earth, tell us, also, that all religions have emanated from the brain of man. Obliged to acknowledge that Christianity is su- perior to all the pagan systems, behold the beautiful explanation they give of it. The law of progress, say they, by which man, who probably was at first no more than a plant or an oyster, has been raised by successive trans- formations to the condition of a terrestrial animal, standing on two feet, served by two hands, and endowed with intelligence; this same lav/ has ordained, that the human mind in improving itself, should also be elevated from the gross and childish imaginations of paganism, to the more spiritual, 130 Tenth Entertainment. 131 noble, and moral ideas of the Gospel. But man must not stop half-way. The law of progress, which makes him aspire to give himself a body less feeble, less subject to sickness and death, and a mind more enlightened, more free from the dark- ness of ignorance, leads him, also, to seek for a higher religion, and it is only Catholics who are stupid enough to believe that their religion is perfect. You see, my friends, that those persons explain a great folly by one still greater. Will it be necessary for me to refute each in detail, and according to my method, by facts rather than by reasoning? On this point, I ask Mr. Teacher's advice, begging him to tell me if the idle tales of the philosophy of progress have found any believers amongst us. TEACHER. I do not think, sir, that those extravagances are in greater credit in the country districts than are the absurdities of atheism with which they are mixed up. A runaway from college may tell his idle tales to those idiots, who philosophize in taverns, amidst the fumes of wine and tobacco, and he will be applauded. "A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." Let those idlers, both great and small, who see in our cities only the work of man and his progress in the arts, fancy it is the same in the works of nature, and that the stem of a plant, or the shell of an oyster could have been the first cradle of humanity; this has been already believed. 132 The Peoples Ark. I have known, by their books, some famous acade- micians of the close of the last century and the beginning of this, who, not having sufficient faith to believe that we came from the hand of God through Adam and Eve, found enough to sustain seriously, the theory that we might, very likely, have come from a plant or a fish, and have passed through the state of our great-great-grandfather, the pig, and our grandfather, the orang-outang. This sublime philosophy would only raise a laugh among our country people. Although ignorant of Greek and Latin, they, at least, know that the cabbage remains always a cabbage, and that although it may be very easy for a man, even an academician, to think and live like a beast, it is impossible for a beast to think and live like a man. We might long search in nature for the law of universal progress ; it exists only in the brain of the ignorant. We find that animals, and all kinds of alimentary produce deteriorate, if we do not aid, sustain, and improve them by our labor. Our natural organization, far from becoming perfected, is being degraded and enfeebled, since we make an idol of our bodies. We renounce religion only to fall into the bestialities of atheism, and make our social duties give place to the stu- pidities of the sect of the communists. In fine, if free-thinking philosophy makes us progress, it is by leading us downwards to a depth of barbarity such as has never been seen. But I must hasten, sir so as not to retard what Tenth Entertainment. 133 you are going to tell us of modern infidel nations. It is a subject less unknown to your auditors, many of whom, I dare say, read the " Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," and consequently have a better knowledge of the moral and social state of the modern than of the ancient pagans. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I am delighted, sir, with what you tell me, and understand the great facility with which religious truths are grasped here, now that I know I have the honor of speaking to an apostolic people. This is in reality, the glorious title due to the mem- bers of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. In aiding our missionaries with their alms, they have a share in the labors and the crown of those messengers of heaven, and benefactors of the human race. He who promises nothing hut what he can perform, has said : "Whosoever re- ceives the prophet as a prophet, (and comes to his help,) shall receive the reward of a prophet."* At present, much is said of universal fraternity, but how shall we establish this fraternity, and make the barbarians believe in it, if our mission- aries do not teach them that men are children of the same God, the fruit of the same mother, redeemed by the blood of the Man-God ? We speak of liberty, equality and progress, but what power will those words have over the idolaters of Asia, Africa and Oceanica, so long as no priest shall have said to those blind and para- * Matth. x. 41. ' 12 134 The Peoples Ark. lyzed nations, " In the name of Jesus Christ, open your eyes; arise and walk"? In the midst of the infernal intrigues which are drifting the vessel of Europe on the rock of death, the work of the Propagation of the Faith has been given us as the last anchor of our salvation. France, to whom was given this sublime inspi- ration, owes to it, I am convinced, the prodigies of mercy by which she has been preserved for many years. Catholics of every nation, whether we be tepid or fervent, let us all then rally to this divine work of universal redemption, and poor though we may be, let us not regret the offering of one cent a week, and a short prayer every day for the salvation of seven hundred millions of our brethren. Honest laborers and workmen, you, who find it burdensome to contribute fifty-two cents in the year, go one time less to the tavern; yourselves and your families will be the better for it, and on that day when even the saints will be in fear and trembling, you shall find great consolation. It is written that " Charity covereth a multitude of sins/'* and is it not the charity of charities to cooperate in the spiritual and temporal salvation of so many souls ? After these few words of recommendation, which I owed to this, the Catholic work, par excellence, and to the desire I have of seeing you all asso- ciated to it, let us say something, my friends, * St. Peter, I. Epist. iv. 8. Tenth Entertainment. 135 of modern pagans, and the grand progress they have made in religion and social amelioration. Since many among you read the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, which are, as far as I know, the most curious and interesting of the pub- lications of the press, they can tell you in what a state of brutishness, disgusting corruption and ex- treme misery, our missionaries found, about thirty years ago, the islanders of Oceanica, otherwise endowed with much intelligence, and for the greater part, living on the richest soil in the world. They can also tell you the fondness of those chil- dren of nature and reason for what they call the food of the gods, that is, human flesh roasted in an oven, or eaten whilst still bleeding. This fond- ness was such that, before the arrival of the mis- sionaries, it was not a rare thing for the husband to put his wife into the oven, in order to regale his friends. Not more than sixty years have elapsed since the king of the islands of Wallis and Futuna, now inhabited by angelic Christians, had on his table as many as fourteen human bodies, some roasted, others alive, so that each guest might suit his taste. You are horrified, and so am I, but that ought not to prevent us from recogniz- ing in that monster a real free-thinking sensualist. As I do not wish to be accused of seeking my proofs either too far or too low, let us leave the anthropophagi of Oceanica, and cast a glance over two of the most ancient and well cultivated nations of Asia, the Chinese and the Hindoos. I have already spoken of their religious ideas; let us now speak of their social state. 136 The Peoples Ark. In China, men do not eat human flesh, but it is customary for parents to throw their little chil- dren to the dogs and swine which fill the streets of the cities. The Jesuit missionaries in Pekin wrote in the last century, that in less than three years they had counted nine thousand seven hundred and two children thus exposed in the streets of the capital. This account was thought too strong, as Voltaire, then the Gospel of France, affirmed that the Chinese, whom he had never seen, were much more civilized and humane than the Christians of Europe. But another philoso- pher, an English traveller, in a work entitled, " Philosophic Researches among the Chinese," has affirmed that the Jesuits, far from saying too much, have rather said too little. He holds that, counting those children smothered after birth in a basin of warm water; those thrown into rivers, with an empty gourd tied to them ; those taken every morning in rubbish carts to be thrown into the common sewers; those devoured during the night by dogs and swine; those crushed beneath the feet of horses and mules, thrown into the canals, etc., etc.; it would be no exaggeration to estimate the whole number of infanticides as high as thirty thousand a year in Pekin. The accounts of our present missionaries but too well confirm the fact, that in China, as elsewhere, the capital gives the tone to the provinces. Observe that those innumerable victims are nearly all boys ; as for the girls, the Chinese, who value gold more highly than life, make great Tenth Entertainment. 137 profit on them from the Turks, who buy them to fill their seraglios. It was such horrors as those which inspired a French bishop, Mgr. Forbin de Janson, to found for the ransom of pagan children in China, and other idolatrous countries, the Society of the Holy Childhood; that touching association, com- posed of our children from their earliest infancy up to the time of their First Communion, the contribution to which is only one cent a month. Many of you, my friends, might have your chil- dren enrolled therein, and I think that twelve cents a year laid up in the bank of Catholic charity, would be an excellent speculation for time and eternity. Such, then, is Chinese domestic society. As to civil and political society, it is composed of three classes ; first, the Son of Heaven, the emperor, an idol shut up in his palace, having all power, yet knowing nothing, doing nothing: secondly, of an infinity of higher or lower man- darins, both civil and military, incomparable in the art of selling justice, and squandering the revenues of the state and private individuals: thirdly, of a people obliged to suffer and bear everything, a people unrivalled in dishonesty, and swarming with usurers who lend at three thousand per hundred. Here is one fact which will give you an idea of the Son of Heaven, and the army of mur- derers and plunderers to whom he confides the government of three hundred millions of men. The Chinese religion obliges the emperor to 12* 138 The Peoples Ark. go every twelve years to offer sacrifices to the Sons of Heaven, his ancestors, whose bones repose in a city of Tartary. For the pilgrimage, there must be a new road each time ad hoc ; for you understand, my friends, that the Son of Heaven could not, without lower- ing his dignity, travel on a road beaten by the children of Earth. The road must be so well constructed and so carefully guarded, that no Chinese, no Tartar or any other, can sully his Imperial Majesty by a glance; — a crime, which, although committed inadvertently, is always pun- ished with death. The emperor deigns to defray the cost of this road himself, and assigns for it a sum of thirty millions from the public treasury. This the man- darins divide among themselves ; they make the people do the work, which they pay for in blows of the bamboo. Do you wish to have an idea of the forces of that China, which ought to be the most powerful of empires, since it is five times more populous than the greatest of ours? Well, listen; in 1840 the Son of Heaven, wishing to prevent the Eng- lish from selling poison (opium) to his subjects, placed himself on a great war-footing. The Eng- lish government dispatched a small squadron carry- ing some troops. From the very first encounter, it was evident to the Chinese themselves that a few battalions of red-coats were well able to reduce Pekin, and to imprison the Son of Heaven in the very midst of his millions of soldiers. They has- tened to come to terms. Tenth Entertainment. 139 "In 1848/' wrote recently a Chinese missionary, "a small English brig of eight guns, manned by at most forty marines, blockaded for a month the imperial port of Chang-Hay, where there were four thousand Chinese Junks, manned by upwards of forty thousand sailors. Those braves dared not move either hand or foot until the day when the English captain, having received satisfaction, deigned to weigh anchor." Let us pass into India, another immense theatre of cruel robbery and spoliation in those who govern, of oppression and butchery of the feeble in the family. I have already spoken to you of the beautiful fraternity which reigns between the castes, and between the four castes on one side, and the pariahs accursed by their religion on the other. That religion absolutely forbids the killing of a serpent, a fly, or a flea, and makes the killing of a cow as irremissible a sin as the murder of a Brahmin ; yet it requires that the woman, created solely for the service of man, who is her god, should suffer herself to be burned alive on the funeral-pile of her husband ; it not only advises parents to rid themselves of those children born on certain unlucky days, but, in certain provinces, allows those little creatures to be fattened, that with their flesh and blood the earth may be fer- tilized, and that by those sacrifices they may draw down the benedictions of heaven.* * History of Domestic Society among every Nation. By Abbe Gaume. T. II. Part 3 c. 8. 140 The Peoples Ark. What is the political power of those populations, equally abominable for the licentiousness and cruelty of their manners. Here is a proof of it. For a long time, the society of English merchants called the India Com- pany, exercised absolute sovereignty over nearly a hundred million of Hindoos, and when that im- mense troop showed the least sign of resistance, a few English regiments were able to reduce them to submission. Let us finish our review of infidel nations by a word on the Turks. The believers in Mahomet are certainly better than the Chinese or Hindoos. Why? Because their false prophet has borrowed greatly from Christianity, and even while disfigur- ing the true God and His law, has wished his followers to adore Him. Being less removed from religious truth, the only mother of social virtues, the Turks have some laudable customs, such as hospitality, a certain honesty in their dealings, respect for virtue in others, and gratitude for benefits. Our priests and religious, so often ill- treated in the West, are generally respected in Turkey and among the Mussulmans of Africa. Our Sisters of Charity, against whom the free- thinkers of Switzerland and Italy howl like fero- cious beasts, are venerated by the Turks of Con- stantinople and Smyrna, as angels descended from heaven for the alleviation of their sorrows and the instruction of their little daughters. But notwithstanding all this, the children of Mahomet are only despicable barbarians. They hold under lock and key, and reduce to the con- Tenth Entertainment. 141 dition of animals, the fairest portion of the human race. In allowing fifteen or sixteen hundred women to one man, they make, it appears to me, fifteen hundred wretched women, for the pleasure of enervating and brutalizing a lascivious being, gifted with the title of Sultan, Vizir, Pasha, etc.* It is true that in order to console those unfortunates, thus deprived of a consort, they subject them to a certain treatment of which I need not speak to you. We are told that, setting aside the trifle of the brutishness of men and women, and the castration of eunuchs, the Turks are enemies to bloodshed. Yes, when they think it useless. But the late Sultan Mahmoud, in order to reduce his troops to subjection, did not hesitate to have twenty-two thousand janissaries thrown into the Bosphorus in one day; the pasha Mehemet AH acted in a like manner with his mamelukes; and we know that the pashas and other commanders of provinces are very ready to ply the bastinado and the cimetar on him who is suspected of hiding his gold. Mahmoud, however, had abolished the ancient custom of putting to death all the male descen- dants in a collateral line, of the reigning house, but it was reestablished by his son, Abdul-Medjid, the most humane of the Sultans. His sister, married to Halil-Pacha, having had the misfortune to give * The late Sultan Mahmoud, celebrated as a great lover of reform and enlightenment, left, at his death, 1600 widows in his seraglio. 142 The Peoples Ark. birth to a male child in 1843, he caused it to be strangled within forty-eight hours, which reduced the unhappy mother to such a state that she died two months after. Yes, my friends, the Turks are Turks; they also live under the laws of nature and reason. What shall we conclude, my friends, from this review of infidel nations, whether ancient or modern ? We must first conclude that Chris- tianity is the only law, religious or social, that prevents men from becoming worse than the beasts, from preying on one another here below, and from going to prey on one another elsewhere. Again, we must conclude that the only progress to be expected from nations whose reason has not been enlightened, whose nature has not been reformed by the Gospel, consists in this: instead of spitting men by thousands in the temples and in princes' kitchens, as they did in Mexico and Oceanica, those nations will find a more scientific manner of disposing of mankind. They will do as in Greece, Rome, China, India, and among the Turks ; they will shed less blood in honor of idols, but the sovereigns and great ones will set themselves up as gods, and will devour the people with insatiable avarice and cruelty. To provide for the pleasure of a few thousand slothful and lascivious monsters, they will con- demn to seclusion, to infamy and sterility, some millions of women ; they will cast to dogs and swine the fruit of lubricity; they will deliver the poor laborer and workman to the incessant out- Tenth Entertainment. 143 rages, to the cruel deeds of a band of robbers, licensed by the prince. Such, my friends, is the only civilization possible to nations, which have not, as we, the happiness of living under the Christian law, alone capable of civilizing men, because it teaches them to res- pect and cherish one another as children of the same Father who is in heaven. It seems to me that Mr. Mayor has a question to propose. MAYOR. Only this, sir: — Why has not God made the Christian law known to all nations, I would not wish to raise doubts as to the goodness of God, but in thinking of so many of our fellow-men who live in ignorance of the true religion, I am tempted to say, " Either Christianity is not as necessary to salvation as we are told, or our priests exaggerate in speaking of the great desire which God has for the salvation of all men." We are told that this is a profound mystery, and I can well understand that everything in the works of God cannot be explained ; but without destroy- ing the mystery, could not some good reasons be given to aid us in believing it, and enable us to refute many objections, particularly this : If the Christian religion is the only true one, the human race is lost. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. In the following entertainment, sir, I will try to do what you desire. In giving you an his- torical sketch of the Christian religion from its 144 The People s Ark. origin to our day, I hope to prove that God has neglected nothing to give the knowledge of His law to all nations, and that if it still remains unknown to a great number, it is not God who is to blame. QBi£ ELEVENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Revolution operated by Christianity — What we should have to think of europe if jesus christ were not God — Silliness of the objections against the Christian faith. F the history of the Old Testament shows us God's solicitude for the salvation of all nations, it also clearly proves that the success of the enterprise required other hands than those employed up to that time. This is why St. Paul says to us : " God, after having, formerly, spoken to our fathers by the prophets, at different times, and in divers manners, has ended by send- ing us His Son."* The Word-Creator, by whom everything was made, became a foetus in the womb of the Blessed Virgin ! the Infinite Majesty, before whom millions of suns distributed through space are but dark- ness, concealed Himself under the appearance of an infant in the crib, in the workshop of Nazareth, in the tortures of Calvary ! Behold here, most certainly, a fearful mystery! Those who were first charged to make it believed by the world, felt so deeply the difficulty of the undertaking, * Heb. i. I. 13 US 146 The Peoples Ark. that they loudly declared this doctrine would seem to the pagans a folly ; to the Jews, a scandal and a blasphemy* Nevertheless, the folly of a Crucified God, after having been combated with incredible fury by all the powers of the world, has ended in triumphing over the most potent nations of the universe, and in its causes and effects, this triumph bears no resemblance to that of other religions. In fact, my friends, after what I have told you in the preceding entertainments regarding the pagan religions, whether ancient or modern, you can easily see whence they came, how they have been established, and what they have done. Produced by the passions which are in the hearts of all men, they have had no obstacles to overcome in order to reign over them, and have in no way deranged the course of human affairs. Who were the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, etc. ? The same as are now the deities of the idolaters of Asia, Africa and Oceanica. They were under different names, some heroes and heroines, princes and princesses, whose history they had placed in the heavens, and who, not content with their frolics on high, came down, from time to time, to make merry here, at the expense of their votaries. What did they exact of those votaries ? Many sacrifices; some inhuman, others ridiculous ; divers hymns and feasts, for the most part licentious. How could that be refused to such beneficent * 1 Cor. i. 23. Eleventh Entertainment 147 divinities? Could the lords and citizens of Greece and Italy very well cavil against this homage to Jupiter, in whom they beheld reflected their pride, despotism, adulteries, and unnatural disorders? Was the worship of the spiteful Juno and the shameless Venus, disgusting to the ladies of those times and their daughters? What good luck to usurers and rogues of every kind, to have Mercury, the god of thieves! Could the jovial Bacchus, the god of wine, and old Silenus, his preceptor, always intoxicated, be disagreeable to the lovers of the juice of the grape ? It is true that those deities so benign, showed a desire to prey upon men, and that in some of them, this desire was insatiable. But were men so precious a thing, when, even among the freest nations, every citizen had at least nineteen slaves, with whose flesh he might, if he so willed, feed the fish in his pond, and no one could say any- thing against it? And again, have we not seen, my friends, that everywhere among the pagans, the strong preyed upon the weak, and that the Romans, among others, thirsted for human blood in the shows of the amphitheatre ? The gods, therefore, in human sacrifices exacted nothing but what was customary in public and private morals. To ask, then, how the world had become pagan and remained such, is to ask how men became vicious ; adorers of their evil passions, and how they can remain such. The answer is so plain, that the question seems foolish. But how have the pagans, the adorers of every vice — how have the greatest, the most famous 148 The Peoples Ark. nations, become Christians and followers of a law that commands every virtue, and proscribes even the shadow of vice? How was it that the Euro- pean nations, the deepest reasoners, the most intelligent, the most turbulent, the most passionate for their independence, had generally accepted for fifteen centuries the faith in a God, who was born, and died like the last of men? How was it that those nations, so haughty, so intractable in matters of honor, made the gibbet of slaves the object of their adoration, the sign of all grandeur and glory, by wishing that the cross should shine in the emblems of sovereignty as in those of religion, on the breast of the brave as on that of the pontiff? How was it that the religion of the crucified God, far from being like other religions, content with some external tokens of homage, operated in thoughts, manners, institutions, laws, fine arts, in a word, in everything that constitutes the life of a people, the most radical transformation that has ever been known? How did it raise, ennoble, make sacred, that which men, guided by reason and nature, had everywhere oppressed, vilified and looked upon as nothing, that is, women, children, and the poor? How did it first ameliorate, then abolish, then make absolutely odious the fearful state of slavery, which, during so many centuries, had weighed so heavily on nineteen-twentieths of our species ? In fine, how is Europe, so changed in everything else, and in which, during the last three centuries, the genius of heresy and rationalism has made such prodigious efforts to ridicule and abolish Eleventh Entertainment. 149 Christianity; how is it still so profoundly Christian, that the errors which inundate it can be preached successfully only under the cloak of the gospel, and in that name always so imposing, the name of Christ? The pagan world become Christian! Behold, my friends, the mystery of mysteries for those who reject the mystery of a God made man. The establishment and reign of Mahometanism in apart of Asia and Africa can be easily explained, for its apostles said to the pagans and Christians of conquered countries: Believe in the prophet, and take as many wives as you please ; if this be not according to your taste, you shall die ! But who can explain the establishment, not only in Europe, but over all parts of the globe, in the midst of infidels, of a religion which has continually said: In the name of the Crucified, crucify your flesh with all its concupiscences, and if you have not courage to live like Christ and His most cherished disciples, take, at least, only one wife, and remain indissolubly united to her, as is Christ to his Church. What are the armies who have imposed this religion on Europe, and still impose it on so many Christians of barbarous nations, who profess it at the expense of all their temporal interests ? They are armies of lambs, who, after the example of their Divine Master, only extend their necks to the persecutor, who says to them: Reject those absurd dreams, or die ! Every sensible man is obliged to say : Either the Christian nations, which are incontestably the most 13* 150 The Peoples Ark. enlightened in the universe, have been struck with incurable folly during fifteen or sixteen cen- turies, or they have received the most evident, crushing, and irresistible proof that Jesus Christ is God. That sensualist, who since leaving college has read only romances, with some books of law and medicine, has conversed only with actresses and dancers, may very well be allowed to say, Chris- tianity is as much a superstition as any other. When one is encrusted with ignorance and absorbed in the gratification of his appetites, he can indifferently believe or doubt everything. But to the man who has somewhat seriously studied history, Christianity shows the God-Saviour as evidently as the order of nature gives evidence of a God-Creator and Conservator. Among many great geniuses who have thus judged of Christianity, I shall cite only the latest in point of time, because he is known to you all, and because he was not the most devout of men ; I mean Napoleon I. That man, who loved and appreciated the Catho- lic religion so much as to wish its solemn reestab- lishment, despite the few thousands of free-thinkers who said: We are the thought of France!- that man who afterwards so deeply afflicted and hu- miliated the Church in the person of her Chief, for which the Founder of the Church afflicted and humbled him in his turn, and placed him under the guardianship of an infamous jailer ; that man, I say, when at Saint Helena, loved to read the New Testament and to speak of religion. Eleventh Entertainment.. 151 General Bertrand, that model of bravery, loyalty, and chivalrous devotedness, but somewhat im- pressed with his revolutionary education, acted the part of an unbeliever, and said one day to the emperor: " I cannot conceive, sire, how a great man like you can believe that the Supreme Being has shown Himself to men under a human form, with a body, face, mouth, eyes, everything in fine, like ourselves. I grant that Jesus may be all that you could desire, the most comprehensive intelli- gence, the most moral mind, the most profound, and, above all, the most singular legislator that has ever existed ; but he is a simple man, like Orpheus, Confucius, Brahma, &c, who has taught some disciples, and seduced credulous persons. If he has revolutionized the world, I see in that only the power of his genius, and the action of a great soul which overcame the world by his intelli- gence, as so many conquerors, Alexander, Caesar, yourself, sire, and Mahomet, have done by the sword." Napoleon replied : " Bertrand, I know men, and I tell you that Jesus is not a mere man." Then, in a discourse too extended and too long for me to quote or abridge it, he passed in review all the gods and demi-gods of paganism, all the great geniuses and conquerors of history, and comparing their doctrines, works and conquests, with the doctrine, works and conquests of Jesus, still subsisting and ever increasing, the emperor concluded by saying to Bertrand, who remained silent, judging, with reason, that reply w 7 as impos- sible: "If you do not know that Jesus Christ is 152 The Peoples Ark. God — well, I have done wrong in making you general."* This was to give him to understand that he was wanting in common sense. As ignorance and want of reflection are infinitely more common than knowledge and genius, we must not be surprised, my friends, that the mystery of a God made man and dying on a cross for the salvation of all, has given rise to a multitude of objections. That I may not lose time in refuting sophisms unknown to you, I beg you, gentlemen, to point out to me those which are current in the country. MAYOR. Here, sir, as you may think, we are not very well skilled in metaphysics. When a college scapegrace comes to ask us the why and the where- fore of the mystery of the Incarnation, etc., we willingly answer : " Would you pretend to know as much and more than God? If He has made man and united the soul to the body, why could He not have become man Himself, and have united His nature to ours? You wish us to explain this? Explain to us, then, how the cherry grows at the extremity of a piece of wood. Nevertheless, you swallow the cherry ; well, we also, through our faith in God and our mother the Church, accept the mys- teries, and our reason receives no injury thereby." If the fop replies : " That savors strongly of the * We find the above conversation at the end of the first volume of the Solution of Great Problems, Note C, Eleventh Entertainment. 153 sacristy," we answer : " Yes, just as your questions seem to come from accursed places." That the descent of the Most High among men should be a folly to the proud egotists, whose only concern is to exalt themselves, and who occupy themselves with the people only to make them the footstool of their ambition, may well be believed ; but it is far otherwise with men of good heart and mind, who feel that greatness is never so great as when it lowers itself to raise the feeble and the lowly, and say to them : " Come to me, all you who are under the burden of affliction and misery, and I will comfort you." It is not, then, the stable of Bethlehem, so consoling to the poor; it is not the laborious and painful life in Nazareth, so re- freshing for the heart of the laborer and workman, which surprises and scandalizes us ; it is the fright- ful end of that life so worthy of the God of Charity; it is the sea of humiliations, of outrages, of fearful sorrows which we see between the prayer in the garden : My Father, if it be possible, remove this chalice ! and that other word : All is consum- mated ! As for me, I cannot understand the ex- treme severity of the Father. We are told that a satisfaction was required for the crime of the terrestrial paradise, and the torrent of sin which followed it. Yes; but are we not also told, and without exaggeration, I think, that one tear of the Man- God, one drop of the blood shed at His circumcision, would have sufficed? And then, could not that God, so good as to give us His Son, and substitute Him for the guilty, have abated still more the claims of His justice? 154 The Peoples Ark. We are told that we were under the power of the demon, and that it was necessary to redeem us. Very well, but could not the robber have been paid with a kick, instead of doing him the honor of treating w r ith him, so to say, as power with power. It was necessary, we are told, to overthrow the idols and enlighten men. Without doubt; but, could not God or His angels have in one moment reduced every idol into dust? and after that, St. Bartholomew of the false gods ? and the arrival of the apostles, with the gospel in one hand, and the miraculous power in the other, it is probable that Christianity would have made more rapid progress. These, sir, are some of the things which are said when we wish to philosophize on religion. This does not amount to unbelief, but it creates doubts, and if faith be shaken, Satan has full play. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir ; and that faith may not falter, it must be supported on the Credo of those thousands of millions of Catholics, who for eighteen hundred years have sung, still sing, and will sing for ages, in the face of all unbelievers: " I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. . . . who t assum- ing flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the operation of the Holy Ghost, became man, was cruci- fied for us, suffered under Pontius Pilate and was buried. — And when reason wishes to carp at this fact, the best attested of any under the sun, it must be turned back to the mystery of the cherry, pro- duced at the end of a twig. Eleventh Entertainment. 155 It is not, my friends, that I do not feel able to overcome all those doubts and difficulties, but before I answer, I wish to make you observe this: Our Christian dogmas not being metaphysical ideas, but facts, which occupy a more conspicuous place in the history of the world than does Mont Blanc among the Alps, it would be absurd to make our faith depend upon the answer to the objections raised against those dogmas. The more they raise difficulties against our belief, the more do they prove God's intervention in its establishment. When I find myself face to face with those strong minds, who know their Voltaire and Rousseau by heart, I allow them to display their fripperies, and I frequently seem to " set greater value on their objections, so % as to deceive them sometimes, and draw upon myself singular eulogies; then I say: Yes, gentlemen, Christianity is incredible ; and if it is incredible for us, from whom it demands only the sacrifice of our vices, it must have been much more so for those first generations, from whom it exacted the sacrifice of everything that we hold most dear — liberty, goods, and life. Nevertheless, it is believed, and believed so strongly, that millions and millions of men, of all countries and conditions, have given testimony to it with their blood. Let us agree, then, that if it be still incredible, it is so only for cowards and the ignorant. We would laugh at the simpleton who should allow himself to be deceived by this gasconade. "Are you aware, sir, that it has been discovered that Mont Blanc is only a fable invented by the 156 The Peoples Ark. inhabitants of Chamouni."* Well, that simpleton would be less ridiculous than he who allows him- self to be shaken by such foolish sayings as this : " Catholicism has been invented by the priests." In fact, if the giant among the mountains of Europe has a multitude of believers and wit- nesses ; if it has wrapped within the folds of its icy mantle some scores of martyrs to curiosity, the Catholic religion counts its believers by thousands of millions, and there is no year in history, no country in the world, however unimportant, in which she cannot show the blood of some of her innumerable martyrs. The direct reply to the grave objections or questions of Mr. Mayor, requires some develop- ments; let us refer them to the next entertain- ment. * Valley of Savoy, serving as an avenue to Mont Blanc. TWELFTH ENTERTAINMENT. Necessity for the lessor of Calvary — Immensity of its kesults. HE difficulties proposed by Mr. Mayor are these: Why the frightful butchery of Calvary? Was it then necessary to determine God to pardon men, or to obtain from Satan the relinquishment of his rights over sinners ? Had not the divine power a means more prompt and efficacious to overthrow those false gods and idols which now, eighteen centuries after the sacrifice of the cross, reign over the greater part of the human race? These questions, my friends, comprise all that is most elevated in Christian philosophy; but thanks to the Divine Master, who has been pleased to reveal to simple souls, and to children, truths hidden from pedants, infatuated with their own reason,* I hope to solve them in a manner most decisive and intelligible to those among you who wish to listen with attentive ear. Let us begin. Does religion tell us that it was absolutely ne- cessary to offer blood, divine blood, to the Eternal Father to open His heart to mercy? No; for His * St. Matth. c. xi. 25. 14 157 158 The Peoples Ark. mercy is eternal as Himself, and the history of the ancient world proves that our sins had not ex- tinguished it. Does religion tell us that divine blood was due to Satan for the ransom of the souls he held in bondage? No; for had it been necessary to treat with that father of liars and thieves, he would not have failed to take the ransom, and hold his pri- soners. But religion, Christian philosophy, history, the knowledge of men, our conscience, the greatest common sense, all tell us, all prove to us, that nothing less than the frightful martyrdom of the Man-God could awaken our souls, sleeping in the mire, and determine us to come forth from the disorder and evil which make us enemies of God and slaves of Satan. Recall to your minds, my friends, these two principles of the Catholic catechism: first, God, who has created us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves ; second, Satan proposes evil, but does not impose it on us, and no one is lost, but he who wishes it. What follows from this ? That in order to save us, Jesus Christ had not to vanquish the severity of the Heavenly Father, or the power of Satan, but that He acted thus to determine us to renounce Satan, his works and pomps, by leading a new life worthy of our quality of children of God, and heirs to the eternal kingdom of heaven. Now then, how could the Son of God, made man, determine Jews and pagans to enter into this new life? Was it only by preaching accompanied by Twelfth Entertainment. 159 miracles? No; preaching and miracles lavished during forty centuries had not prevented men from falling, as they say, from fever into worse heat. During three years the Saviour employed those two means with incomparable splendor. Never has man spoken like him, exclaimed the multitude, everywhere so passionate for his discourses, that they even forgot the want of food. His miracles were so multiplied, so striking, that the people unanimously cried out: No prophet has ever done such great things ; this is the Messiah promised to our fathers ; this is the Christ. But what fruit did Jesus derive from so much labor, so many benefits, such unequalled popularity? His abandonment by His most devoted disciples in the hour of trial, and the cry of the people, Give ms Barabbas and crucify Jesus. Would our Saviour have succeeded better by joining to words and benefits the power of chas- tisement? Do you think, my friends, that a few thunderbolts on the heads of his enemies and opposers, would have drawn their minds and hearts to the lights and virtues of the Gospel ? No, evidently not. His enemies and opposers would have been more cunning, that is all. Chastisements, as you know, had not been wanting from the time of Adam to that of Jesus Christ. Was not that spectacle presented through- out the world, of a society of monsters adoring every vice, and devouring nineteen twentieths of the human race, in itself the most fearful of chas- tisements? Nevertheless, who thought of amend- ment? No one. The great men and sages of 160 The Peoples Ark. paganism thought everything was right. The un- fortunate slaves, having no idea of a better ordei of things, remained peaceably in their degraded condition. In Judea, where the true God was known and exclusively adored, the most influential classes, the Scribes and the Pharisees, had corrupted by their customs and traditions the purity of the divine law, as our Saviour reproached them with. Whited sepulchres without, but full of corruption within, those hypocrites decorated their houses and gar- ments with sentences of Scripture, while their hearts were the sanctuaries of satanical pride and egotism, of unbridled envy and avarice. Let us understand well, that for a chastisement to be salutary, and turn the sinner from evil, the sinner must have knowledge of the evil. And that the sinner may know evil, he must be taught to know good, for evil is only opposition to good. Now, to know good, it is indispensable to know God, the eternal and immutable Good, the only Source of life and of all good. Fathers and mothers, how do you induce your children to do good and avoid evil? You say to them, Do this; Almighty God commands it; if you obey, He will bless you in this life, and receive you one day into His eternal kingdom: — Avoid that, for God forbids it; woe to you if you do it! Well, my friends, such was the lesson to be given to the whole race of men. They had lost the knowledge of good and evil, and that science of sciences could be taught them only by the ever- fearful, yet sovereignly-consoling lesson of Calvary. Twelfth Entertainment. 161 There alone shines that truth of truths, outside which there is no salvation for either nations or individuals. God is infinitely good, and He so loved men, even when they were wicked, that He sent than His only Son to teach them His law, and aid them in deliver- ing themselves from evil ; but, for the very reason that He is infinitely good, He has an infinite horror for evil, and for those who persist in the evil He lias forbidden ; this horror of iniquity is so great that His well-beloved Son, having deigned to cliarge Himself with our prevarications, was bruised like a worm of the earth. Such, my friends, was the order, the command- ment decreed, from the very beginning, in the counsels of Infinite Charity and Sanctity, and which the Son had to accomplish. Such was the baptism of blood, as He Himself called it, by which He was to purify souls and inspire them with a horror for sin. Such was the ceremony of His coronation as Head and King of regenerated humanity; He could be recognized and obeyed only by placing Himself on the throne of the cross, as He said to the Jews : When you shall have raised the Son of man, you will then know that I am sent by God. , . . When I shall be raised from the earth, I shall draw all men after me ; and lest we might think that in this He alluded to His ascension, the Evangelist tells us that He spoke of the kind of death He was to undergo.* Facts prove that this means has been the most * St. John, c. vii. 28; c. xii. 32, 33. 14* 1 62 The Peoples Ark. efficacious in triumphing over the obstinate corrup- tion of men. The cross, empurpled with the divine Blood, in less than half a century overran the whole Roman Empire, and extended beyond its boundaries ; the most abominable manners were succeeded by divine virtues. Everywhere, at the appearance of the cross, woman was exalted, and with her, the family also. The life of the child and the slave became sacred. St. Paul, by making a bishop of a fugitive slave and thief,* abolished slavery in the minds of the Christians, who afterwards confided, without scruple, the highest dignities of the priest- hood to those whom the pagans called a second species of men. We see the great lords kneeling at the feet of their slaves and saying to them : Bless me, father, and aid me to make my peace with God. Greeks, Romans, Jews, all barbarians whatso- ever, who had hated and preyed upon one another, became as brethren, prayed one for another, sent apostles and material succors from one end of the world to the other ; and knew how, when necessary, to expose themselves for men whom they had never seen. To the free-thinker who laughs at the miracles of the apostles, to him who repeats that verse of Voltaire, as impious as absurd, " God visited the world and changed it not," I say: You do not believe in the miracles of the apostles, because * S. Gnesimns, who is the subject of the admirable Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon. Twelfth Entertainment. 163 you have not seen them; all well and good; you seem to me to be like those men whose reason is all in their eyes, and who would be beasts if they had been born blind. But there is a miracle which you must see, unless you be in perfect ignorance of history. Who was cultivating Europe and exercising in it all the mechanical arts, about eighteen hundred years ago ? One hundred and fifty millions of slaves, wholly brutalized and absolutely delivered over in body and soul to the discretion of less than ten millions of citizens. Instead of that ignoble crowd, what do we now see ? Two hun- dred millions of free men, the greater number having more or less property, entire masters of their person, their labor; all well enough instructed in religious philosophy, so that the villager's child knows more of God, of man and the world, than did the greatest geniuses of paganism ; all are so great in the eyes of justice, that no one can be deprived of his goods, liberty, or life, unless in virtue of a legal judgment. Travel over our great cities, above all, over that which, after having been the capital of the pagan world, has become the centre of the Chris- tian world. Behold, yet standing, the immense amphitheatre of the Coliseum, built by the em- perors Vespasian and Titus. Whom do you see there ? Pontiffs, princes, citizens, peasants, poor servants, mendicants, assembled together in prayer at the foot of the cross, in the same place, where, under the least inhuman of the emperors, lions, tigers, and panthers tore in pieces, day by day, 1 64 The Peoples Ark. thousands of our fellow-beings, to amuse one hun- dred thousand citizens. What are those immense and sumptuous edifices which you behold erected everywhere in place of the amphitheatres and circuses raised by Roman ferocity? They are hospital, hospices, asylums for the poor, the sick, and the indigent, in which Christian charity welcomes and serves with reve- rence those same poor unfortunates whom the magistrates and great men of paganism put on old ships, that they might be drowned, or cast them on desert islands. And who are those women so assiduous in attending day and night by the bedside of so many disgusting patients, and in joyfully rendering them those services so revolting to our delicacy? They are daughters of the God of Charity, who have come, some from a palace, others from a cabin, in virtue of the words : Love one another as L have loved you, in giving my life for the last among you. Behold, I will say to the free-thinker, in those Europeans learning from the Gospel to cherish, to devote themselves for one another, as they had learned from nature to hate, to devour one another, behold the miracle of Jesus Christ and His apostles still subsisting. And if this prater reply : I see in that only the natural progress of the human mind ; I will say : Go, then, simpleton, study the natural progress of the human mind among the Tartars, Chinese, Hindoos and African negroes. Yes, my friends, I repeat it; nothing but the sovereignly fearful, yet sovereignly touching lesson of Calvary, could have revolutionized the ancient Twelfth Entertainment. 165 world and torn it from the worship of the most degrading, the most inhuman vices. God certainly gave to the words of the apostles a power over souls which He had never given in the same degree to those of the ancient prophets, but that their words might convert men, it was necessary then as now, as ever, that men should will it, and will it resolutely. Now, what was it that determined the pagans to break with the immemorial worship of the false gods, and those sovereignly dissolute morals ? It was the faith in a God crucified by and for our iniquities. It was meditation on the words of the Saviour to the women of Jerusalem, weeping over His fate : Weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children. . . . for if the green wood is thus treated \ what shall it be with the dry?* What inspired those neophytes with the strength to shed their blood so generously, for Jesus Christ? It was the blood of Jesus Christ, borne to them by the priests and deacons even in their prisons. Well, it is the same to-day. Who is the young man determined to live in labor, sobriety, chastity, and the practice of every Christian virtue ? He alone who nourishes his faith in the crucified God, and frequents those places where he receives the word and the bread of life. Whence comes it that so many of our youth reassume pagan manners? It is because they leave the Church for the tavern, the cafe and the club. They listen no longer to the God of Charity, they do not eat His flesh, and St. Luke, c. xxiii. 28. 31. 1 66 The Peoples Ark. this is why they hearken so willingly to the revo- lutionists who preach the hatred of the rich and the necessity of preying upon them. What we see in individuals, in families, w T e per- ceive also in great nations. What are the idola- trous and barbarous nations which renounce their absurd superstitions and ferocious manners ? Those in whose bosom our intrepid missionaries have planted the cross, and preached the God who died for the salvation of all. Let an army of professors, artists, officials, and artisans, raised and sent by the state to carry our sciences, arts, and all the baggage of our civili- zation, save the catechism, among a brutalized people ; let them say afterwards that they have made them a civilized people, gentle and humane; I would as soon believe them if they were to say, Mont Blanc has cast off its mantle of ice, and from foot to summit is but one forest of fig-trees and orange-trees. You see, now, my friends, that the free and moral regeneration of men rendered indispensable the frightful immolation of the Saviour God. We shall see, in the following entertainment, why the effects of that great sacrifice have been neither so prompt nor so universal as they should have been, to use the expression of Mr. Mayor. THIRTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Why the world has not been long since converted by a sudden stroke of policy— b, aridity and, universality of apostolic teaching — reasons for the infidelity of so many nations. T is asked, Why God, wishing to abolish idols, did not, on some fine morning, reduce them to dust by a miraculous stroke? I will first observe to you, my friends, that the evil lay not in the idols. This is so true, that our popes have expended immense sums of money to disinter the gods of paganism and preserve them in the palace of the Vatican, where, in fact, is to be found the most magnificent collection of gods and goddesses that has ever been seen. Far from suspecting the popes of idolatry, all lovers of the fine arts and of religion, have ap- plauded the excellent idea of ranging around the tombs of the apostles the army of gods van- quished by the cross, as the prisoners and flags taken from the enemy serve to decorate the tri- umphal chariot of the conqueror. Idolatry reigned in their minds and hearts; to dethrone it, it was necessary to convert those minds and hearts ; for this conversion their own consent was needed, which required some delay. 167 1 68 The Peoples Ark. And that the pagans might will their conversion, it was necessary that the disciples of Jesus Christ should teach them the law which converts souls. This again required delay. You will say: Could not Jesus Christ have employed legions of angels for the instruction and conversion of the world ? — Yes, but if He has not done so, far from complaining, we ought to thank Him. Besides, by that He would have reversed the natural order and constrained human liberty, and the result would have been less glo- rious for humanity. Everything by man and for man; such is the law which God prescribed to Himself in the work of the redemption. As I have elsewhere observed, the human family having been delivered to the enemy by the treason of the first man and woman, was it not a great honor to have been delivered by the Son of a woman, at once true God and true man ? And is it not also a great honor to us, that the Liberator shoufd have confided the work of our regeneration, not to angels, but to an infinity of men of every country and condition ?* TEACHER. Allow me, sir, to make an observation. From what you have said, some of your hearers may conclude that the angels remain strangers to the work of our salvation, which would certainly be as little in accord with your thoughts, as with the teaching of the Church and so many passages * Eeveil du Peiqjle. Lesson vii. Thirteenth Entertainment 169 of Scripture, which prove the solicitude of the angels for the salvation of men. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. 1 thank you, sir, for calling for an explanation necessary for some, useful for all. Yes, certainly, the good angels employ them- selves most actively for our salvation. Jesus Christ shows them to us as watching lovingly over the souls of little children, and St. Paul calls them ministering Spirits, sent to the help of tliose who shall receive the inheritance of salvation* The chief of the evil spirits having greatly contributed to our perdition, it was worthy the divine charity to make the faithful angels concur to our deliver- ance. To every human soul that enters on its career of trial, in which it is exposed to the seductions of enemies visible and invisible, God has, then, given an invisible friend to be its helper and guardian; and you should understand, my friends, that from this association in the combat is formed, between the angels and men, the link of love and fraternity which will unite them eternally in the bosom of the Eternal Father. But the ministry of the good angels is, like the war we wage with the demons, invisible. To souls vested with a body and receiving lively impres- sions by the senses, visible angels, that is, priests, were necessary. It is, in fact, to these that Jesus Christ has exclusively confided two things neces- * St. Matth. c. xviii. 10.— Ileb. c. i. 14 15 170 The Peoples Ark. sary to the life of souls : first, the preaching of the Word, without which the human soul remains in its darkness, and the power of its angel guar- dian is, in part, restrained ; second, the admin- istration of the sacraments necessary for the regeneration of the soul, and the support and development of the true life. The angels have, then, great need of the priest for the sanctification of the souls confided to them; and the priest, to second his ministry over souls, has great need to solicit the concurrence of their invisible guardians. The different offices of these two ministers of salvation appear plainly in the history of the con- version of the Ethiopian eunuch, related by St. Luke in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. This eunuch, treasurer of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, had gone to Jerusalem to adore. A new proof of what I have told you in one of our entertainments, that, even in the midst of the general corruption, God could still count many true servants, and by consequence, apostles, in the most distant countries. His devotions being ended, the eunuch was returning, and reading, in his chariot, the words of the prophet Isaias, w r here he speaks of the death of the Saviour. He understood nothing of the passage, his quality of stranger, and his ignorance of the language of the country not permitting him to know what had happened in Jerusalem. The angel of the Lord said to the deacon Philip, who was evangelizing the city of Samaria Thirteenth Entertainment. 171 with great success : "Arise, and go on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. Being arrived there, he again said to him : Draw near the ehariot, and enter into conversation with this stranger. The eunuch invited the deacon to place himself by his side ; and the passage in Isaias furnished matter for a conversation which determined the Ethiopian to say, Here is water; why cannot I be baptized? If you believe with your whole heart, it can be done, replied the deacon. Yes, answered the other, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. They stopped near the fountain. Baptism was administered ; the eunuch, now become a Christian and an apostle, joyfully reascended the chariot ; and, by the power of the angel, Philip suddenly found himself in the city of Azotus. From that divine law which reserved the ad- ministration of the word and the sacraments to the apostles and the ministers chosen and delegated by them, there resulted, as we have said, a certain slowness in the propagation of the Gospel, In reality, it does not appear that the angela often had permission to transport the ministers of the Gospel from one place to another in the twinkling of an eye. We learn^ frGtn the Acts of the Apostles and their epistles, that, in their voyages, they were not well served, except in ill-treatment That you may be edified on this subject, listen to St Paul rendering account to th-e Christians of Corinth oi the emoluments and rights of his priestly office.. "From the Jews, five times did I receive forty 172 7 he Peoples Ark. stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods ; once I was stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea.* In journeys often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in peril from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea 7 in perils from false brethren. In labor and pain, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and nakedness. Besides these torments with- out, add the continual solicitude of all the Churches."! He also had great reason to write to the same in his first letter : If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, the most miserable.^ Nevertheless, my friends, the labors of those intrepid envoys of the God of the cross were so prodigiously active, they were so well seconded by the bishops, priests, and deacons whom they established in every new church, and by the zeal of the faithful, become ardent catechists, that, only thirty years after our Lord's ascension, it was not possible to show a single province of the vast Roman empire in which Jesus Christ had not fervent adorers, and some ministers. The first persecution of Nero discovered an immense multitude in Rome, according to the re- lation of Tacitus and Suetonius ; and we learn from the apostle St. Paul, that he had a little church in the very court of the monstrous Caesar. * St. Paul alludes to the circumstances of his shipwreck near Malta, related in Acts xxvii. t II. Cor. xi. 24, 28. % I. Cor. xv. 19. Thirteenth Entertainment. 173 All the saints salute you, writes he to the Philip- pians, and principally those of the house of Ccesar* Seeing the cross erected in such a high place, you can imagine, my friends, what advance it must have made elsewhere. The persecution only gave greater publicity to Christianity. The Christians of that time made greater account than we do of the words of the Master: I will deny before my Father him who will be ashamed of me before men. To the question: What are your name, profes- sion, etc.? they always replied : We are Christians, adorers of the true God, and our other qualities are of so little account that it is useless to speak of them. The defence of the accused was always a sermon, a process terrible against the false gods and their adorers; a trial which the martyr termi- nated by the irrefutable proof: I am so certain of what I say, that I will joyfully die for my religion. When a Christian trembled at the sight of the executioners, an individual would step forth from the crowd of spectators, and boldly say: Courage, my brother; the eternal crown is within your grasp, do not refuse it ! And he would go with him to receive that crown. I ask you, my friends, could debates so sharp and so extraordinary, which were soon opened throughout the empire, have allowed any one to remain in indifference ? It may then be said, that before the end of the first century, the light was so great in three-fourths of Europe and Africa, and * Philip, iv. 22, 15* 174 The Peoples Ark. half of Asia, that men of good will had the means of being instructed and arriving to the true faith. As to those regions not subject to Roman dom- ination, the history of their evangelization is less known to us. St. Philip and St. Andrew carried the faith among the Scythians and in upper Asia; St. Thomas evangelized the Parthians, and it is believed that he penetrated into India, and there received the crown of martyrdom. It appears certain that St. Bartholomew labored there with equal success, since, towards the end of the second century, St. Pantsenus of Alexandria, having been called thither by the Christians of the country, found a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the Hebrew tongue, which had been left there by this apostle. St. Matthias preached in Ethiopia, St. Jude in Arabia and Idumea. Did China, then, receive the good-tidings? We can neither affirm, nor deny it. That which is proved by a most curious and authentic monu- ment, discovered in the ancient capital of China in 1625, and placed by order of the government in a temple of idols, is that the Christian religion was extremely flourishing there, and had become, it seems, the religion of the empire during the sixth and seventh centuries.* Was America peopled in the first centuries of our era, and was the gospel carried thither? We do not know. Some monuments disinterred in * See on the monument of Siganfou, Annals of Christian Philosophy, T. xii. — Universal History of the Catholic Church. By M. Rohrbacher, T. x. Thirteenth Entertainment 175 Mexico, would appear to demonstrate that Chris- tianity had been preached there at least one hun- dred years before the entrance of the Spaniards.* In the profound ignorance in which we are regarding the ancient history of America and some other parts of the universe, what shall we con- clude, my friends? That if we are not permitted to show what God did for the conversion of those nations, we are none the less forbidden to say that He did nothing. From his conduct towards the Romans and their subjects, who comprised nearly half the human race, and were the most corrupt, we have every reason to believe that He did not neglect other nations. What shall we conclude regarding those nations that are, and have been for centuries, in the dark- ness of idolatry? That some, for instance, the inhabitants of India, resisted the evangelical sum- mons, and succeeded in destroying the first bands of Christians established in their midst; that others, as the Chinese and Tartars, after having joyfully received the seed of faith, and tasted of its fruits, did as the Prince of the apostles tells us : They returned, like the dog, to their vomit; and like the unclean animal, they returned to their ancient filth.f Why did God permit their resistance or apos- tasy? Because He would not save them without themselves ; because He wished to make heaven a chosen society of grand and generous souls, and not a collection of automata and machines. * Annals Christ. Phik T. xii. xiv. f II. Pet. ii. 22. 176 The Peoples Ark That those nations might become or remain Christian, the beautiful law, Everything by man, required two things; first, that those nations should wish to embrace the Christian religion, and preserve it, after having received it ; second, that other Christian nations should be willing to concur to the propagation and maintenance of the faith among their brethren, still pagan, or as yet feeble and unsteady in the Christian life. One of those conditions, or rather both of them, not having been fulfilled, it naturally results that many nations remain yet immersed in a sea of vice and blood, to show to Christian nations from what an abyss of moral and material misery the gospel has drawn them, to accuse their indifference and ingratitude, and to say to them : Go, then, to the help of your brethren; do for them what has been done for you, and forget not that the whole law of Jesus Christ is comprised in the precept, Love one another as I have loved yon. MAYOR. My question, Why has Christianity remained unknown to so many nations? — has procured explanations so new to us, and so interesting regarding the conduct of God towards the human race, that before abandoning it, I beg you, sir, to allow me to say another word. That the divine goodness is perfectly justified in regard to the perverse and obstinate generations who reject the evangelical light, or stifle it after having received it, every one can understand, but is it the same with the unhappy generations that Thirteenth Entertainment. 177 succeed them ? Have not they reason to com- plain, and to say like the jews: Our fathers sinned, they are no more ; and we bear their iniquities ?* PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir ; that complaint will be uttered on the great day of justice, by millions and millions of mouths ; but instead of rising to God as a reproach, it will fall like a shower of fire and sulphur on all those who, from Cain to Antichrist, shall have labored more or less knowingly in the persecution of Christianity and the extermination of souls. God's principle, To save men by men, has very great advantages, as we have seen ; but it has also this inconvenience, that men having to take part in it in this world, if they do not labor with God for the salvation of one another, they infallibly work with Satan for their own perdition and that of fheir brethren. Was this inconvenience such, that in order to avert it God was obliged to renounce the making of the human race a family whose members should be mutually interested in the good or evil of one another ? Instead of a society of brethren, should He have made us beings ab- solutely savage and isolated, entering into this life, going through it and leaving it without the help of any one, and consequently without any scandal ? As God did not do this, we may believe, my friends, that He had excellent reasons for it. Those reasons which we can already discern dimly by the aid of Christian common sense, will * Jer. Lam., v. 7. 178 The Peoples Ark. appear to us in all their splendor, when, on the day of final judgment, the Sovereign Judge will settle the accounts of the human race and of every individual. As He will demand of every one only an account of the lights he has received, so He will punish in him only the evil denounced by his own conscience, and as the evil will be punished in just proportion to that knowledge; as no good, however little it may be, will be forgotten in the retribution, so there will be but one voice in all honest souls to say: Thou art just, O Lord, and thy mercy is still greater than thy justice! Meanwhile, my friends, let us leave the infidels for a moment, to occupy ourselves with what God has done for the children of the faith, and the more readily, because, that in working for us, God has willed to work for all, every true Christian having to be an apostle in some way. A glance, in the following entertainments, at the Constitu- tion of the Catholic Church, and at her trials, will enable us the better to comprehend how nations can cease to be Christian without any fault on God's part. FOURTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Theee successive forms of Christianity — Present form- Appreciation of two methods of propagandism. FTER the study which we have made of false religions and the abominable morals they everywhere introduced, I do not believe it necessary, my friends, to refute the absurd blasphemy of unbelievers : All religions are good y save that which presumes to condemn all This is the proposition of a fool or a demon. Religion being the law which God was neces- sarily obliged to give to men, to enlighten them on their destiny, and prevent them from becoming worse than the beasts, you understand that that religion must have alw r ays been like God, like the destiny of men. Immutable by its foundation, it had to adapt itself to the different ages of the human race and grow with its growth ; thus we see that God changed its form three times. In the patriarchal age, which embraces the first twenty centuries, and during which men knew only family life, religion was domestic, having for its ordinary ministers the heads of families, who were, at the same time, pontiffs and kings. I say its ordinary ministers, for the Scripture, in speak- 179 i8o The Peoples Ark. ing of Noah, shows us a succession of prophets whose ministry was public, and served as a bond to families each forming a little church.* From the year of the world 2000, families hav- ing gathered together into societies directed by public powers, elective or hereditary, religion became a public and social institution. We first see Abraham, the father of believers, rendering homage to Melchisedech, King of Salem and Pnest of the Most High God, in whom, St. Paul tells us, he saw the representative of Christ, the eternal King and Pontiff of humanity. f After- wards among the chosen people, religion became the soul of the state, with which it incorporated itself, which it animated and ruled by its laws and institutions. It had a priesthood to which holy functions were exclusively reserved; it traced in- violable limits to the civil power, of which the depositary, chosen by God and confirmed by the election of the people, could be only the minister of God to protect the good and repress evil, such as they were known by the law which prescribed only good, forbade only evil. J From the union of those two powers in their submission to God's latv, resulted the prosperity of the Jewish nation. From their dissensions and infidelities resulted ter- rible chastisements. In fine, that cry, Down with Jesns! crucify him, and let His blood be upon us and upon our children! produced the frightful national chastisement which still lasts. I beg you, my friends, to remark these things, which, according * II. Pet. ii. 5. f Hd). vii. % Rom. xiii. 4. Fourteenth Entertainment. 181 to St. Paul, should serve us as an example, for they have been written for our instruction, for us who were to live in the latter age.* If God has so rigorously chastised the violation of the law given by Moses, and if He has not yet pardoned that nation which, in a moment of delirium, cru- cified the Man-God, what must not be expected by a Christian nation, which, after eighteen cen- turies of benefits, cries : Down with the religion of Jesus Christ? In fine, the Eternal Word, by whom all things were made, having deigned to descend among us to abolish the work of hell, to purify and conciliate by virtue of His word and His sacrifice, those men whom abominable religions had transformed into egotistical brutes, and enemies of their own blood; do you not understand, my friends, that that reli- gion, revealed from the beginning, should receive a form, an organization, more perfect and better adapted to the end of the universal redemption ? That Jesus Christ proposed to Himself the evangelization, not of one, nor of many, but of all nations without exception; that the end so openly proclaimed by Himself and the ancient prophets, of His descent among men, of His sufferings and death, was the conversion of the world ; that He had nothing so much at heart as the reunion of all the sheep, docile to His voice, in one fold, and under one Pastor, f is what cannot be contested, without having previously torn up the New Testa- ment, and a great part of the Old. Even were that divine will, to save all men of good will, by their * I. Cor. x. 11. t St. John x. 16. 1 82 The Peoples Ark. submission to the law of the Son of God, not so clearly drawn up in the Gospel, it would be none the less eminently credible. In fact, I ask you, my friends, can one well conceive that the Creator and Father of all souls, annihilated Himself as St. Paul says, so far as to take the form of a slave, and suffer the death of the cross* without wishing to facilitate to all the knowledge and practice of the law, which alone can save both the soul and body, and make of all men a family of brethren? MAYOR. No, sir; a fact so strange as the incarnation and immolation of the Son of God, Himself God, can be explained and believed only in virtue of this reason: It was the only means to awake men sleeping in the darkness of error, and to open to all the way of salvation. This is precisely why in the present year of the Christian era, the work of universal conversion is so little advanced, that one sometimes asks: Is Christianity really the work of the omnipotent Father? You have very well refuted this objection by observing that God, who lias created us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves, and that, instead of peopling heaven with automata and slaves, He will admit therein only those determined to enter by the way of the commandments. But there yet remains this question: With all respect to our liberty, could not Jesus Christ have employed more efficacious means to draw all men to the knowledge of His law? Because that from the earliest ages there * Philip, xx. 7. Fourteenth Entertainment 183 have been and still are Christians in every clime, can it be said that the Gospel has been sufficiently announced to all nations? PLATO PUNCHINELLO. It is precisely of the means of Christian propa- gandism from which the Divine Master might have chosen, that I wish to speak. God, persisting in His design, as ancient as the world, of enlightening and saving men by means of men, and wishing that they should engender each other according to the spirit, as they do according to the flesh, there were, it seems, but two possible methods of evangelical preaching; the Catholic and the Protestant. The Catholic method consisted in saying to some chosen men what the Saviour, when about to reascend to the right hand of the Father, said to His apostles : All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, then, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days even to the end of time. . . . All that you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and all that you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. ... As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. . . . Receive my Spirit ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained, etc., etc.* As the apostles could not live till the end of * St. Matth. xviii. 19, 20.— St. John xx. 21—23. 1 84 The Peoples Ark. time, and as St. Peter and his colleagues in the apostolate were in the material impossibility of preaching to and baptizing all nations, the words of Jesus Christ evidently included, for His first envoys, the command to choose other ministers who should aid and succeed them in the great mission of envangelizing the universe, even to the end of time. We see that the apostles did this, and recom- mended it to all the bishops whom they estab- lished. This method was constantly followed during the first fifteen Christian centuries, and we do not find that the schismatical or heretical sects which have risen since that time, have invented any other means of propagating their errors, than by having them taught by the living voice of schismatical or heretical ministers, preaching in the name of Jesus Christ. In the sixteenth century, Luther, a German Augustine monk, a man of much genius and pretty jovial manners, seeing himself condemned by Pope Leo X. for theological errors, began to preach that the Papal Church had been for centuries under the government of the devil, and that the only means of reestablishing the religion of Jesus Christ was to invite every one to search the Bible. Salvation by faith in the pure word of Christ y contained in the Bible, and by hatred of the satanic church of papism; such was the method advanced by Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and other partriarchs of Protestantism ; a method still fol- lowed by a crowd of their followers, who always imagine that by throwing millions of Bibles to Fourteenth Entertainment. 185 the idolaters of popery and paganism, they shall lead all men to the knowledge of the religion of Jesus Christ. According to this method, the Saviour should have said to His envoys : I wish to employ you in the conversion of the world, but while serving me with your pen and your Jimbs, I intend that you shall save your tongue, and that the religious belief of men shall be only the result of their biblical reading and the inspirations of my grace. Instead, then, of preaching all that you have seen and heard, write it. To the forty and odd books of the Old Testament add twenty-seven more; this will make a good sized volume, containing from thirty-four to thirty-five thousand verses. Translate it into every language, into all the dialects of the universe. While waiting for the aid of the art of printing, which I will not send you for thirteen or fourteen centuries, procure enough of copyists to have very soon, seven or eight hundred millions Bibles. Make them into packages, procure means of transport, carriages, beasts of burden, or colporteurs, and go to distri- bute the word of salvation to all, from kings on their thrones to slaves in their cabins, and say to them : In the name of the true God, who has sent us, take this book and read it with extreme attention, for it contains the pure word of God, which will open to you the gates of eternal life. If any one ask you the contents of the book, be not so presumptuous as to constitute your- selves doctors of my law, answer them : The Spirit of God has reserved to Himself the care 16* 1 86 The Peoples Ark of teaching you ; read then with all confidence. But if, after having read the divine book, your neophytes believe they have need of your min- istry to baptize them, to give them the Blessed Eucharist or the like, do as they wish ; for it may be that some will see in my word the institution of the sacraments, and that others not seeing it, will believe they may be dispensed with. I desire that every one follow the religion which he will form for himself with the aid of the Bible. Behold, my friends, the Protestant method, not such as the pretended reformers employed in the churches of their fabrication, but such as they preached it to Catholics, such as their deluded followers still preach it. Do you think it better calculated than the Catholic method to Chris- tianize all nations ? What is your opinion, Mr. Mayor. MAYOR. I think, sir, that of all methods of conquering the world to the Christian faith, that of the travel- ling bookseller is really the most absurd that could be imagined. Had it been adopted by Jesus Christ, the result would have been, that either the nineteenth century would no longer remember Christianity, or would speak of it as an abortive folly. First, where would the poor fishermen of Naza- reth have found the time, men, and material resources necessary to compose in part, and to translate into three or four thousand dialects a book like the Bible ? That superhuman work achieved, where have found enough of copyists Fourteenth Entertainment. 187 to procure a Bible, I do not say for every inhabi- tant of the globe, but at least for every family or village? Secondly: suppose that the angels of heaven, becoming translators, copyists, and colporteurs, had carried, according to the orders of the apostles, to all parts of the world, enormous bales of Chris- tianity in parchment, how should they have caused the Bible to be read by those two or three hundred millions of slaves who filled the Roman empire, among whom it is very probable that scarcely twenty thousand knew their letters. First of all, it would have been necessary to establish two or three millions of schools, and prevail on the masters to send their people — no very easy matter! As to the higher classes of that time, it would have been necessary to inspire them w 7 ith such a passion for religious truth, that they would consent to seek for it in an unknown book, presented by strange travellers who should say to them, We cannot precisely tell you in what consists the religion we are charged to offer you, but it is con- tained in this volume ; take and read ! In fine, to obtain from the inhabitants of the universe a serious reading of the Bible, it would be necessary to suppose them all very learned, very idle and very foolish. Thirdly : let us multiply miracles on miracles, and suppose that they determine all men, from the minister of state to the lost shepherd, to make the Bible, their daily food, what would be the result ? Does any one believe that those millions of minds so differently influenced, will read in the 1 88 The People's Ark. thirty and some thousand verses of the Bible, the same truths to believe, the same duties to practise? To hope this, it would be necessary to find among so many Protestants, who, for three centuries, have been prating about the Bible, at least some hundreds who have agreed in their interpretation of it. Instead of hundreds, we need find only ten. To say that Christ has not proposed to Himself to give the same religion to all ; that He holds as good that which each one constructs for himself by means of some fragments of the Bible, is simply to say, The Son of God was made man and sub- mitted to the death of the cross, in order to make as many religions as there are men, and to divinize the saddest lollies which can find place in the mind of man. In a word, I do not believe, sir, that a single Protestant seriously believes in the conversion of the world by the reading of the Bible. The Biblical Propaganda is a weapon against the Catholic Church, that is all. PLATO PTOCHINELLO. Yes, sir; the idea of causing the Bible to be read and interpreted by the whole human race; the idea of conquering the world to the Christian faith by the ministry of colporteurs crying out everywhere, " Ladies and gentlemen, here are the religions of Christ, some in paper, others in boards ; I have forty of them ; take your choice ;" this idea is, I say, an extremely amusing absurdity; but as you have very truly remarked, it is a weapon against the Catholic Church. Now every machination Fourteenth Entertainment. 189 against the Church, however absurd it may be, is received with transport by every sensualist, whether heretical, schismatical, or Catholic. This species was very general and very influential in the six- teenth century, when Luther began to cry out: Down with popery! Long live the Bible! No- thing but the Bible! The sensualist princes and their famished sub- jects saw in the Bible religion an excellent means of freeing themselves from the spiritual power, from confession, fasting, abstinence, and of seizing on the goods of the ecclesiastics and monks. The crowned robbers recognized in particular, the great advantage of making themselves popes in their states, and of regulating at will the religious affairs of their beloved subjects. It is true that some of the German people took rather to heart the beautiful evangelical liberty which the prophet Luther preached. Those good people said to themselves : If God has not given us magistrates and masters in the religious order, why has He given them in the civil order? Why should the Bible, destined to nourish our souls, belong to us, while the earth, which only sup- ports and nourishes our body, belongs to others ? Thereupon those excellent theologians began to cry: Long live the Bible! Nothing but the Bible! Death to the Pope, to the bishops, kings, dukes, and lords! They began to sack and burn Episcopal palaces, Catholic monasteries and Lutheran castles, massacring and burning their inhabitants. Seeing this, the Lutheran princes called on Luther to ex- communicate those of his flock whose only crime 190 The Peoples Ark. was the having too well understood the new gospel Luther, terrified, launched against the peasants a bull such as no pope had ever published ; while condemning the insurgents to eternal flames, he promised heaven to those princes who should purge Germany of that cursed race. The crusade of the inconsistent Lutherans against the sincere and logical Lutherans took place in 1525, and in two encounters they killed one hundred thousand peasants. That expedition once terminated, the Protestant princes took the Bible under their high protection, and said to their people: The Bible tells you that the pope is Antichrist; that his church is the work of Satan; that the mass, confession, fasting, the vows of religion, the invocation of the saints, praying for the dead, etc., are papistical abomina- tions, and that Christ has given you no other masters, either spiritual or civil, than your princes ; this is absolutely certain. As to the rest of your beliefs and religious practices, it is for us to regu- late them, and we will cause to be hanged or broken on the wheel whoever shall meddle with the catechism which we shall give you. Behold what the male and female popes of Protestant countries have obtained without resist- ance from Luther's time to ours; and nevertheless their foolish flocks unceasingly vaunt their religious liberty, and foolishly laugh at our submission to the Church of jesus Christ. The extreme pride and covetousness of the great, the calculations of an infamous policy, such were, then, the reasons of the great success of Fourteenth Entertainment. 191 the absurd idea that Christianity is wholly con- tained in the Bible, and that Christ ordained that every one should seek it therein. If this absurdity still finds so many partisans, even after having produced its infallible results, to wit, contempt of the Bible, contempt of all positive religion and communism, it must be attri- buted to the same causes. To sectarian pride and the hatred of Catholicity, which have given birth to the societies for biblical evangelization, are visibly united the spirit of industrial and political speculation. Can you not understand, my friends, that the forty or fifty millions annually collected by those societies from their dupes, are an excel- lent thing for the founders of those societies, for the translators and printers of the Bible, for paper-makers, etc., and particularly for those fops who go to disseminate those paper religions in all the quarters of the globe. Since many of you read the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, you must know that the life of our poor missionaries in infidel countries is everything most afflicting to nature ; on the contrary, the Biblical missionaries are grand gentlemen, who live and travel very comfortably, surrounded by their family, and with the hope of amassing a fine fortune in a short time. As to the political interest which England finds in the biblical propaganda, it is no secret to any one. Wherever you see landed a pack of English Bibles and little anticatholic tracts, you may be sure that it is accompanied or followed by enor- T92 The Peoples Ark. mous bales of merchandise of every kind. It might even be wagered that the minister of the Bible-religion is a diplomatic agent, or at least the travelling agent of some commercial house, if he be not himself a manufacturer. You have doubtless heard of the exploits in Tahiti of the famous Pritchard, who filled at one and the same time the functions of officer in the biblical army, of apothecary, of physician and counsellor to Queen Pomare, and Britannic Consul. No one is ignorant of this, save, perhaps, the poor senseless Italians, whom we see laboring at present to decatholicize their beautiful land, to make it a drain of the biblical and industrial manufactures of London. As to apostolic colporteurs who come to offer to you the trite religion of Christ, and treatises filled with the grossest calumnies against the only divine Church, say to them very coolly : You come to us in the name of Christ, show us your commis- sion signed by Christ. You say that this book is divine ; and that it contains all the Christian religion; prove it by an immediate miracle; if not, we will regard you as scoundrels whose sole occu- pation is to spread contempt for our holy religion ! Enough for the present on the Protestant method. Let us pass to the Catholic one. FIFTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Catholic Method — Catholicism of Protestants — Reply to THEIE OBJECTIONS — THE AIM OF THEIR PRINCIPLE— NeCESSITT FOR AN INFALLIBLE POWER. S much as the idea of making of all men, even children of eight years, interpreters of the Bible and founders of religions, is absurd, impracticable, antichristian and immoral, so much is the Catholic method ©f religious instruc- tion conformable to good sense and the wants of our nature. This is so evident, my friends, that the proof would seem to be superfluous. How many minds are there sufficiently culti- vated, and enjoying all the leisure necessary to study assiduously the thirty and some thousand verses of the Bible, and able to flatter themselves that they have well understood it as a whole, and in detail ? I warrant you that among one hundred thousand there are scarcely ten. And those ten wise men would need many long years to settle, I do not say their convictions, but their opinions, on the basis of biblical doctrine. How many minds are there, on the contrary, who by the aid of the priest or a good catechist, can learn in a short time all those things necessary 17 19: 194 The Peoples Ark. to be believed and practised, in order to think and live like good Christians? All can, with the exception of a few idiots condemned to remain in perpetual infancy. This mode of instruction is so natural, that Protestants as well as Catholics employ it in reli- gious as well as civil education. With every one and everywhere, with the book and long before the book, there has been a master or a mistress who prepared the child to read, and directed it in its reading. Those ardent biblicists, who have, for so long a time, set the world on fire with the cry: Long live the Bible, nothing but the Bible ! have always had r and have still, like our- selves, creeds of faith, catechisms, religious books, and ministers to preach and explain them. There are no parents, however careless of their children's education, who do not make themselves pope, bishop and pastor in their family. When we bring home to them this manifest fact of papism, they believe they can defend them- selves by saying : We help our children to under- stand the Bible, as we ourselves are helped by our ministers; but neither we nor our ministers have the temerity to constitute ourselves absolute masters of religious faith, as your priests do in saying : Believe this, and act in accordance, under pain of damnation ! We must answer them : Do not lie thus in the face of heaven and earth ! Which of you would dare to say to your children arrived at the age of reason : My children, I believe that I have seen in the Bible that it is a divine book, Fifteenth Entertainment. 195 and that in it God commands children to be very good, submissive to their parents, affectionate towards all, to fly idleness, gluttony, lying, theft, disputes, impurity, etc.; however, as I am not infallible, do you yourselves read the Bible, and hold to whatever you find therein ? Which of you would think it well for a minister to use this language to your young people? You teach everything with the assurance of the priests and Catholic parents who speak in the name of the Church. Thus it is, that daily denying Protestantism, and usurping in matters of faith and morality the authority you refuse to the universal Church, you condemn yourself by your own judgment, accord- ing to the words of St. Paul speaking of heretics. Protestants say to us, with that parrot-like erudition which picks up one of the thirty-five thousand verses of the Bible, and pays not the least attention to the rest: "But is it not writ- ten that we shall be all taught of God?" Yes, I answer, we are all taught of God, as we are all created and preserved by Him. He employs the sacerdotal ministry to teach us His law, as He employs the ministry of our parents to pro* duce and care for us during our infancy, as He employs the ministry or multitudes of men to procure those things necessary for our pre- servation. In pretending that we have less need of masters to teach us religion, than to procure us the knowledge and other things necessary to our physical and social life, you outrage common sense and your own conscience, In reality, where 196 The Peoples Ark. is the one among you, having any positive religion, who has not received it from some of his fellows? The difference between your believers and those of the Catholic Church, is, that you believe in a religious word, which, certainly, does not go far- ther back than the jovial prophets of the sixteenth century, while we believe in a teaching which most undoubtedly dates back to tfce Divine Master, who said to the first ministers of the Gospel : Go, teach all nations. Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. TEACHER. To this reasoning, which does not amuse them much, Protestants are accustomed to reply: In reading the Bible which contains the pure divine word, we enter into direct communication with God ; it is He who speaks to us, who teaches us; whereas Catholics, by admitting the priest between them and the Bible, hear man and are taught by him. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir; that is what they have continually re- peated during three centuries, and good sense has as continually replied: When you read and inter- pret the Bible, is it really God who speaks and explains His thoughts to you? Have you not every reason to fear that your ignorance, your prejudices, your evil passions, and the great master of lies, will interpose themselves between God and you ? In truth, Satan is very fond of the Bible, as we see in his tempting of the Saviour in the desert, and there are a thousand chances against one that Fifteenth Entertainment. 197 the Bible religion is His. What most clearly proves that those causes of error act powerfully over your biblical studies, is your everlasting division on every subject. God has only one word, but you have ten thousand. And again, do you not perceive that between God and the Bible you hold in your hand, you are obliged to admit an infinity of men ? First: from the time of St. John, the last of the biblical authors, who died towards the close of the first century, up to that of the glorious Reformation begun in 1517, there is a space of fourteen hundred years. During all that time, to whom was confided the care of the Bible? To that accursed Popish Church, which, according to you, had corrupted everything. Behold then, forty generations of idolatrous papists, who interpose themselves between . the original Bible and that which you hold in your hands. How can you reconcile your faith in the integrity of the divine book, with your faith in the abominations of popery? Secondly : your Bible-religion rests entirely on the authority of those men who have said to you: It is certain that the authors of the New Testament have recorded all the teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles. That Luther and Calvin, who affirmed this, should appear to you to be men of God, notwith- standing the gross slanders of history, is all well and good ; however, you must confess that they were men, and that it would have been well to demand from them a proof of an affirmation which 17* 198 The Peoples Ark. had every appearance of being a deception. By- accepting the affirmation without any proof, you and your fathers have made an act of human faith, which does honor to your credulity. Thirdly : you allow to be interposed between the evangelists and yourself, the translators and printers of the Bible, upon whose ability and probity necessarily rests your faith in the sense you attach to the divine word. Do you wish to reject all intervention of men between God and yourself? This, then, is what I would advise you to do : Dismiss all your min- isters, translators and printers ; cast into the fire all your Bibles and catechisms as so many human works ; call in question all that your parents and teachers have told you of Christianity; address yourself directly to the Supreme Being, whom your reason seems to perceive, and say : Eternal Father of all beings, I do not wish to believe in any one but in thee*, speaking to me in person. My fellow-creatures tell me that thou hast sent thy only Son on earth, under the name of Christ, and that He has given us thy law in a book called the Bible. If this be so, deign to procure me a Bible containing the pure expression of thy word ; and lest the spirit of error should mislead me in the reading of it, come thou thyself to explain it to me. Behold, my friends, to what every Protestant obliges himself by these two beautiful principles ; first, in religion one must listen only to God; second, religion is a thing to be regulated between God and the soul in private and without witness. Fifteenth Entertainment. 199 Now I beg Mr. Teacher to tell us what those private religions are, and what would happen to society were they to be multiplied. TEACHER. It appears evident to me, sir, that those religions are always a passport to atheism or fanaticism. The man who pretends to regulate between him- self and God, his beliefs and his morality, is necessarily either a contemner of all religion, or a wicked simpleton who believes himself inspired. As for me, instead of losing time in refuting him, I would merely say : I have always believed, sir, that God has given only one religion to men, and the same to all ; I am delighted to learn that for you He has derogated from the general law, and honors you with particular conversations. Never- theless, as I am ignorant of what He may say to you, do not mind it, sir, if every time that we be alone I keep a defensive weapon at hand, in case your God should command you to kill me; for with all due respect to your Supreme Being and His favorites, I would rather kill one of his pro- phets than be killed by one. One should have to be very blind not to see, that the pretended right of every one to make a religion with the help of the Bible or of reason, would be the absolute destruction of all public and domestic society. A people truly Catholic, that is to say, well instructed in its religion, and faithful to its precepts, might really dispense with civil laws and material force ; while a people with- out religious faith, or divided into as many religions 200 The Peoples Ark. as it has families or individuals, would be only a crowd of intractable savages, ever ready to murder one another. What would become of that family, truly protestant, in which all the children and servants, seeking in the Bible for their morality, would find in it the right to say to the father and mother: We do not see that God has commanded w r hat you command, or forbidden what you forbid ; we even have some reason to believe that He prescribes the contrary; we will, then, follow His voice arid that of our conscience : It is better to obey God than man. Every one can see that that family would be a hell. If Protestants have pre- served family life, it is only because they have remained Catholic in their family government, and also in the government of their religious society. But it is not the less true, that their antichristian and antisocial principles have produced, as you, sir, have proved, that contempt and hatred, unhap- pily too common, of all religion, of all power, of all right. If our separated brethren do not at last comprehend, in view of what is now transpir- ing and preparing, that their motto: To every one his own Christianity, is equivalent to No Chris- tianity ; and that the Bible given to all, is the earth abandoned to all; if they do not comprehend this, I say that the most savage communism is not the illegitimate, but the truly legitimate child of Protestantism, and that in continuing their impious war against true Christianity, they expose Europe to carnage ; to them we may well apply the words of La Fontaine, if we change but the first: Fifteenth Entertainment 201 "Fanaticism, when thou dost seize us, we well may say, Wisdom, adieu. " PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I thank you, sir, for having so well and so briefly demonstrated these two fundamental truths: There is no society possible without a public and general religion. No public and general religion is possible without a priesthood invested with sovereign, that is to say, infallible authority. At the words infallible authority, the whole flock of unbelievers begin to sneer, and believe they can overwhelm Catholics by saying : You must know, gentle- men, that God alone is infallible, and that to attri- bute such a prerogative to a man, or to a body of men, is to make a god, or a senate of gods. Behold the most expeditious manner of silenc- ing those cavillers. Yes, gentlemen, we know very well that God alone is infallible by essence ; and this is why we hold that every religion that is not marked with the visible seal of God, is but a human invention, and that those who belfeve in it, or pretend they believe in it, are only miserable dupes or hypocritical atheists. Do you agree with us that the true religion, that is to say, the law which God necessarily owed to men, is a work essentially divine? Be it so; what would you conclude from that? We conclude the absolute necessity of an infal- lible religious authority. In fact, do you not see, that to confide the teaching of the divine law to men whom nothing guarantees from error, would be to try to keep wine by pouring it into a barrel pierced with holes? 202 The People s Ark. If you admit that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God, or, at least, his Envoy to enlighten the world, you must confess, that after so much abasement and suffering to give the true law of God to men, He was necessarily obliged to provide the means to perpetuate and render universal the knowledge of that law in the world. Now those means may be reduced to two : either to remain Himself in a visible manner on the earth, and to constitute Himself to the end of time, pope, bishop, pastor, and catechist for all and every one, or to confide that mission to a body of pastors whom He would preserve from all error in religious matters, by a special assistance. That Jesus Christ has chosen the latter part, is what we read in the broad light of the Gospel, of Christian history; this it is that demonstrates to every earnest thinker the supernatural spectacle of that Catholic Church, which, during eighteen hundred years has seen all human institutions pass away, while she herself remains. Because we recognize in the pope the supreme spiritual, and, consequently, infallible power, we make him neither a god nor a demi-god, but we look on him as being what Jesus Christ has made him— the visible head of the Church, the centre of Catholic unity, the vicar and representative of the Man-God. Because the gospel teaches us that the Epis- copacy is associated to the exercise of the spiritual power, and consequently to its essential prero- gatives, w r e hold the Episcopacy to be divinely assisted, and consider its members, whether indi- Fifteenth Entertainment. 203 vidually or collectively, as the envoys, the ministers, the men of God, but we do not make them a senate of gods. Such, my friends, is the answer of all sensible Christians, armed with the testimony of one hundred passages of the Gospel, and all the historical monuments of our faith. I do not tell you that this answer will render all reply impossi- ble to our enemies ; for it would be as reasonable to try to prevent the wind from blowing as to prevent their ravings ; but in thus receiving those knaves on the threshold of the door, we reduce them to their ordinary resource, which is to fly from the field. MAYOR. Yes, sir; I believe I see that that infallibility of the Church, which foolish minds represent to us as a dogma so difficult to digest, is, after all, with Christians a matter of common sense. My argu- ment against the reasoner who, while calling himself a Christian, refuses to believe in the in- fallibility of the Church's teachings, would be this: What do you think, sir? must we all seriously believe in the Christian religion, or is it enough for the ignorant to believe in it? If all must believe, and are blameworthy if they do not, it is indispensable that the minister charged to teach religion be infallible, and held as such by all, for how could you expect me to trust from my heart and in all sincerity, masters whom I should believe liable to be deceived or to deceive me ? If you say that faith is for the ignorant and the vulgar, and that men of spirit and high standing can do without it, you will allow me to disagree with you. 204 The People s Ark. I am well convinced that if religion is necessary to all classes, it is particularly necessary to the influential and the literary. Who cannot see that it is the noble, the educated and the rich who lead society, and that when those gentlemen give the example of contempt for reli- gion, a great part of the people wish no more of it, and believe in those who preach the necessity of plundering and murdering the rich, the educated and the higher classes? In a word, there must be one of two things — either an infallible Church, or no lasting religious faith ! Such would be my reasoning, and I do not think that it can be opposed by anything solid. But if the principle, that is to say, the necessity ot an infallible religious power is incontestable, one cannot be without inquietude in regard to its con- sequences. In seeing this necessary but formidable authority vested in one man, the pope, it would require a very lively faith in the divine assistance not to be affrighted. Does the Church in her constitution afford any guarantees against the abuse of such a prerogative? This, sir, is a point on which I am not sufficiently well informed, and upon which I think further enlightenment neces- sary. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir, those explanations are necessary, and I hope you will find them very reassuring against the dread of the abuse of infallibility. This shall form the matter of the following entertainment SIXTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Remedy against the fear of the abuse of infallibility — ■ Necessity of infallibility fob the liberty of all, par- ticularly OF THE PEOPLE, 'OWARDS the end of the preceding entertain- ment, the Mayor asked me what securities have Catholics against the possible abuses of the prerogative of doctrinal infallibility. I reply — the divine gift of infallibility makes all abuses simply impossible. The Church is an organism divinely constructed — " it is a body whereof Christ is the head" — it cannot admit "spot or wrinkle, or blemish ;" therefore no defect, no variation in its divine action can occur. Hence it is so conservative of truth, and so destructive of error, that it is infallible in the execution of the work committed to it by the divine founder. Infallible ; — it cannot deceive nor be deceived; there is no room for any abuse. This is explicitly and definitely appointed by our Blessed Lord. When He constituted the Church, personated in twelve apostles, the Teacher of His Gospel, He decreed : "Go, teach all things I have commanded to be observed." Nothing more nor less ; no oppor- tunity or danger of error, of mistake, of abuse. 18 205 206 The Peoples Ark. The comprehensive terms, "all things," so cover the whole teaching operation, that there is no room left for divergency or extravagance. Now, infallibility is here established as an essential and vital principle, in the doctrine which consists of the " things Christ commanded to be observed/' which being divine, cannot deceive nor be a mis- take; also in the ministry which is by divine authority commanded to " Go and teach/' certainly not at the risk of failing anywise in the perform- ance of Christ's own work, committed to them. There is not an inch of space, nor a moment of time left, wherein any deviation or defalcation can occur; for the infallible work proceeds during "all ages and nations." Finally, guarantee is given against all mishaps, the Saviour saying: "I am with you until the end of time." No motive for fear or alarm ; the w r ork of teaching is so perfectly divine, that the Holy Ghost not only "teaches the ministry all truth," but also abides with it, " bring- ing to mind all the things our Lord commanded to be observed." The endowments imparted to the body and the head in the integrity of union were specially con- centrated in the head, and in a distinct formula, giving it a capacity and power exclusively appro- priate for the functions of the headship. Our Blessed Lord having appointed St. Peter head of the apostolic ministry, He informed him of the duties to be executed personally, and supremely in the capacity and with the power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, viz: "To feed the whole flock, — to bind and loose on earth, — to keep and use the Sixteenth Entertainment. 207 keys of the kingdom of heaven, etc.," ?.nd here emphatically declared the action of Peter, in all these respects, to be identical with the divine action in heaven, — " whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven." Now the vicariate of Jesus Christ is a delegation of divine power; therefore it is infallible; it is in action one with the divinity in heaven, therefore in the knowledge of its functions and application of that knowledge, it is infallible. Besides this plenitude of power and jurisdiction settled on St. Peter, he receives a prerogative exclusively and pecu- liarly the property of the head. The Saviour said to Peter alone: "Confirm thy brethren." He only can and must give the seal of divine security to all matters of religion, be they otherwise ever so proper and trustworthy. Hence to the Supreme Pastor of the Church belong the power and duty to define, or, in the words of Christ, to confirm the truths of religion. It is self-evident that Peter is infallible, and that his pontifical office is a prevention of error and a security against abuse. All this is derived, not from the conjunction of head and body, but is inherent in the head, being placed there by God Himself. Hence all speculations about Papal infallibility being realized in the consent of the entire episcopacy, and having effect through the agreement of the universal Church, are simply puerile. The Pope does not convene a council to be instructed, to have his duty appointed for him or to be confirmed, but he does it to ask the bishops — have you always taught "the things 208 The Peoples Ark. Christ commanded to be observed"? Then he "confirms the brethren/* he defines that to be divine faith which has been taught by the authority of Christ, and under the instruction and by the suggestion of the Holy Ghost. All suppositions according to the standards of the vicissitudes of temporal and human events are inadmissible in the discussion of this subject. The constitution of the Church is divine, and thus it is out of the sphere of mortal and earthly casualties. This "faith/' as St. Paul says, "is our victory." What religion has made as many efforts as ours to reveal herself in the clearest light, that no one might be ignorant of what she teaches and prac- tises? Is not her catechism, a complete com- pendium of her teachings, placed in the hands of all ? Is she not anxious to impress it on the mind and heart of every Catholic who has attained the use of reason ? Has she not, in Europe alone, three hundred thousand sacred pulpits, and one million schools, wherein Catholic doctrine is ex- plained and expounded? Has she not a multi- tude of universities and ecclesiastical high-schools, wherein all religious matters are searched into, and victoriously defended against the attacks of false science ? Are not the public and private libraries filled with expositions of Catholic doc- trine? Nor is this all: the Catholic religion is really a religion, that is to say, according to the sense of the word, a law which binds and powerfully obliges men, which takes possession of all their Sixteenth Entertainment. 209 faculties, not only of the mind and memory, but especially of the heart, the will, the imagination, and the entire conduct; it is, then, essentially positive and practical. In order to adapt herself to the present state of our souls, under the dominion of the senses, she renders herself palpable and sensible, incorporating herself in a thousand ways in worship and all that belongs to it. Do you not see, my friends, that the result of all this is the material and moral impossibility of even the slightest change in religious matters? Those matters being known by all, both pastors and people, and being read, even on the walls of our sacred edifices, any innovation would arouse the whole Catholic world, and the higher the rank of the innovator, the greater would be the excitement. This is what has happened every time that an heresiarch has threatened Catholic unity by trying to amalgamate his particular conceptions with the eternal doctrines bequeathed by Jesus Christ to the whole human race. What have the popes done under such circum- stances ? Have they availed themselves of their prerogative of infallibility to anathematize the new opinions immediately, without having taken the advice of the bishops ? without having heard the innovator and his partisans, and tried to bring them back by the way of persuasion ? No one can adduce a single instance of such a course. It is only after many years spent in the discussion of the controverted subjects that the pope, approving the decisions of a general council, and declaring them executory, or pro- 18* 210 The Peoples Ark. nouncing judgment himself, with the votes of the bishops, the advice of the Sacred College, or of the Congregations he has established for that purpose, declares and solemnly defines what is the true faith of the Church on the contested article, and strikes with the spiritual sword of excommunication, as a corrupter of the common faith, whoever refuses to submit to that Church of which Jesus Christ has said : He that will not hear it, let him be to tliee as tlie he at! ten and the publican. The last of the great heresies, Protestantism, born in the year 15 17, was not definitively judged until the Council of Trent, which lasted nearly eighteen year^, and was closed only in 1563. What is, then, my friends, that supreme authority which we recognize in the Church teaching by the Catholic priesthood, presided over by the Chief given her by Jesus Christ ? Is it in the power of the pope and bishops to decide according to their good pleasure, what we must believe and practise, and to give us from morning to night new dogmas and precepts? No; this is a power aban- doned to the male and female popes of heresy, which, as we shall soon see, they employ freely, without giving great umbrage to the sheep that follow them. You now understand that Jesus Christ has placed invincible obstacles to such licenses in His Church, not only by His promises, but also by the constitution of the sacerdotal hierarchy, and by the very nature of His religion, which is emi- nently popular, and so well known by all those who do not obstinately wish to be ignorant of it, that no change of any importance could be intro- Sixteenth Entertainment. 211 duced without causing a great commotion. Catho- lic authority is, then, essentially conservative, and when it is displayed in solemn decrees, it is not to create new beliefs, but the better to explain, expose, and defend the invariable faith of all Christian ages, against the proud sophists who endeavor to corrupt it, and deprive the human race of it We need not, then, be surprised that those impu- dent falsifiers become furious against the authority which prevents them from mixing the poison of error with the salutary truths confided by the Son of God to the care of the apostolic priesthood; or that they are enraged to see the great majority of the children of the Church prefer the religion of the popes, the bishops, and fifty Catholic gene- rations, to their senseless dreams. Every heresi- arch who knowingly fights against the judgment of the universal Church, is a demon of pride, in whom we may suppose a grain of madness, but not of honesty. He is a child of Satan, who, like his father, wishes to be right, even against God. But do you not see, my friends, what would become of the religion of Jesus Christ, if religious society did not possess a power to which all must submit when it says to them : " Beware ; that is an error which proceeds from the abyss ; fly from its inven- tors and propagators as from public pests"? Were permission to be given to one heresiarch to preach his visionary doctrine peaceably, one hundred thou- sand others would immediately claim the same right. Among those hundred thousand Christiani- ties, how could the true one be discovered ? What, then, is the infallible power conferred by 212 The Peoples Ark. Jesus Christ on the Head of His Church ? Is it an intolerable despotism which can be accepted only by fools, as is continually repeated by the crowd of heretical, schismatical and incredulous pansards? Far from it; it is the only possible security from political and religious despotism ; it is the only means of preventing the people from becoming, as St. Paul says, a crowd of children, tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive both soul and body.* THE MAYOR. Yes, sir; this old accusation against the spirit- ual power, can be repeated only by those who are enemies to every religion not of their own fashioning, or by the fools whom they have indoc- trinated. I thank you for having so well secured me against the imaginary dangers of religious infallibility. Would to God that our most liberal political constitutions could afford us one-half the securities against the excessive and arbitrary power of our rulers, that we find in the constitution of the Church. Armed with my Catechism, which does not differ from my great-grandfather's, I know all, the obligations imposed on me by the laws of God and His Church, and if my pastor were to try to add to, or retrench from it, one unanimous cry would denounce him to the bishop. I see that those obligations were the same for my ancestors, that * Ephes., ch. iv. 11 — 14. Sixteenth Entertainment. 213 they are the same for all my Catholic contempo- raries, and I am bound to believe that they will remain the same for my great-grandchildren. This is, it seems to me, a religious system which we find united with Order, Fraternity, Equality, and also with Liberty, unless we make religious liberty consist in the power of living without reli- gion. As to the political and civil order, I would be very curious to know if there is one man in Europe who can tell me exactly under what civil or political regime my ancestors lived, under what regime my countrymen and myself are living, and under what kind our children shall live. All that I know is, that I can scarcely remember the number of political constitutions under which I have lived, and that it would require at least ten yoke of oxen to carry the rubbish of the laws, decrees, and regulations made by our governments since my childhood. Uncertain of what is reserved for our posterity, I ardently wish that, thanks to the follies of their forefathers and the lessons of Plato Punchinello, they may have enough of political good sense to laugh at their ease at our foolishness. I begin to suspect that they shall enjoy that happiness, only so far as they become, what we no longer are, good and true Catholics. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir, Catholicism or death ! Such is the alter- native to which we are reduced by a superior power. I am so sure that we shall not escape it, that, notwithstanding my repugnance to name a date in the future,! have said, and I repeat without 214 The Peoples Ark. the slightest hesitation, that before the year 1900 the great majority of the nations of Europe shall either be confirmed in the Catholic faith, or there shall not remain of their present inhabitants a number sufficient to wash the feet of their new masters. In the following entertainment we shall see briefly what you, the common people particularly, owe to the Catholic faith, and what you may ex- pect for your children in its future triumph. This magnificent subject will, I hope, determine you to neglect nothing by which you may concur to that triumph; by it you will know more clearly what the friends of God and humanity owe to those who have labored, and who still labor to ruin, or, at least, retard this eminently divine and human work. SEVENTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. What the people owes to its modern eriends, and what it owes to Jesus Chrtst — Comparison between Catholic INSTITUTIONS AND REVOLUTIONARY INSTITUTIONS — WHO ARE THE PEOPLE'S TRUE ERIENDS, [([F the people is not a happy body, living in the midst of wealth and enlightenment, it is not certainly for want of warm friends and valor- ous champions in the regions of power. Since the people has been called to govern itself by its elections, where are the deputies or candidates for office who have not made profession of unlimited devotedness to the interests of the masses, and who have not confirmed their protestations by warm shaking of hands and more or less drinking of wine? Where are the public officers who have not clung desperately to bench or chair for the greater happiness of the people, or who have refused to increase the public debt, by working longer for the moral and material improvement of the laboring classes ? If some men of that species have been found, you will at least agree, my friends, that they have never been numerous, nor have they been flattered by the public journals. Nevertheless, it is clearly seen by every one not wilfully blind, that the moral and material condi- 215 21 6 The Peoples Ark. tion of the masses has fearfully deteriorated under the government of the sovereign people, so that its sovereignty bears a strong resemblance to that which Pilate decreed to the Crucified of Calvary. How comes it that the works have so badly answered to the promises ? Whence comes it that you have never been more plundered and deceived than under the bright reign of public discussion, and charters published and applied by your friends? Whence comes it that you have never been so much enslaved as under liberal institutions, and that the cheap government is clearly found to be the dearest and most outrageous ? All this is a mystery only to incorrigible simpletons. I have already told you in the Reveil du Peuple, and it cannot be too frequently repeated: the majority of those who have governed you, have been generally self-worshippers. Now it belongs essentially to them to be devoted to self above everything, and to love the people as the wolf loves the lamb, as the hawk and the fox love fowl. Politicians of this class are but demons, who, taking the people for a crowd of simpletons, try to flatter and lull them to sleep with fine phrases, that, in the end, they may rob them at will, stuff them with taxes, and lead them to revolution. It is time that the people should understand the infallible sign by which it may be able to know its exterminators from its friends; its executioners from its devoted benefactors. This sign, my friends, is faith in Jesus Christ, but faith demon- strated by works. Faith without works is dead, says the Scripture, and the Saviour admonishes us Seventeenth Entertainment. 217 that He will recognize as His own, not those who shall have spoken in His name, but those who shall have accomplished the will of His Father. That Jesus Christ had been and is still the friend, par excellence, of all classes, but particularly of the poor and the suffering ; that by His devo- tedness and that of His Church, He has attracted the lowly, the poor and the feeble, who form at least the nineteen-twentieths of our species ; that He is the primary author, propagator and defender of the principles of fraternity, equality, and universal liberty, in a word, of all the prin- ciples of true civilization, and of all really popular institutions ; all this, my friends, I believe I have already proved to you in the full light of history, and it can be called in question only through great dishonesty or gross ignorance. Outside the Jewish nation, living under * the law of the true God, where was the people in the first year of the Christian era? The people had no existence; but in its place there was an innumerable mass of individuals whom the philo- sophers, legislators, and writers of that epoch called a second species of men, created for the service and good pleasure of their masters. What are still the non- christian nations of our day? They are troops of slaves who regard as a god or demi- god the monster who governs them, and recognize in him, without the least difficulty, the right to dispose arbitrarily of their property, their children, their lives. How did Christ progressively create, enlighten, and enfranchise the popular classes? Was it by 19 218 The Peoples Ark. debating or writing in fine phrases on the rights of the people, as do our philosophers, journalists and novelists, after having dined luxuriously in their gilded saloans, at the public cost? Was it by continually prating in noisy legislatures where our popular revolutionists have been, for more than half a century, legislating for the liberty, instruction, and well-being of the people, yet work- ing only for its enslavement, its brutalization, and its ruin. No; it was in making Himself a slave, in being born like the last and the poorest of slaves, that the Son of God broke the strength of slavery; it was by assuming the laborious life of the artisan, that He prepared the ennobling of labor and the laborers ; it was by evangelizing towns and country by day and by night; it was by placing Himself at the service of the poor, the sick and the igno- rant, that He labored for the education and relief of the people; in fine, in order to obtain from divine justice and human apathy, universal redemp- tion, He crowned a life the most devoted to the salvation of all, by delivering Himself to the most cruel and humiliating death. This was, it seems to me, paying dearly enough for the title of friend, of Saviour of all, and particularly of those masses of the people to whom the ancient dema- gogues refused the quality of men, and whom modern demagogues have used as labor-machines and food for powder. Nor is this all. It is evident that the life and death of the Man-God would have been without results for humanity, had He not confided the Seventeenth Entertainment. 219 word of salvation, the charter of the human race, to apostles sufficiently devoted to God and man, to publish and maintain it, from age to age throughout the universe, at the price of their blood. It is again certain that the evangelical charter would have run great risk of being altered or ignored, had not the Divine Liberator rendered Himself present in a real, although invisible man- ner, in the midst of His own, to direct and sustain them ; if, in order to preserve and augment the fire of divine charity, He had not appeared to all, and had not communicated Himself to all in the adorable sacrifice and sacrament of our altars. And here, my friends, I beg you to observe one difference between the institutions of pretended Catholic despotism, and the liberal institutions of revolutionary democracy. If Catholicity bows all human heads, those of pontiffs and princes, as well as of laymen and plebeians, under the obligation of believing the same things, of fulfilling the same duties, in re- compense, it produces for all the same spiritual advantages. Whether you be one of the Pope's household, or a member of the poorest Catholic parish in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, it is all the same. If in this last state you be so unfortunate as to be lost, or that you attain a less height in lieaven than the Pope's officer, the fault will be your own, and not that of the Church, who has placed in your hands the same general means of sanctification as are enjoyed by the popes and their 220 The Peoples Ark. household. In fine, by the obligations imposed on them, all Catholics are the people, and by the advantages they enjoy they are kings. The sole distinction to be recognized among them is that of the priesthood ; but the priesthood is only a public charge, exercised for the benefit of all by those ministers whose supreme Head is, with truth, called the servant of the servants of God. Among the millions of martyrs who have brought about the triumph of Christian civilization, has any class given so many as the priesthood? or, rather, is there a single martyr who has volun- tarily given his life for the faith, unless after the example, or under the inspiration of the priest- hood ? Fraternity, equality, liberty for all, founded on the law and charity of Jesus Christ, ever living in His priesthood; — behold what the Catholic Church really offers us ! Let us now glance at the beautiful institutions of revolutionary leaders. Their constitutions are headed by the words ; " Liberty for ever ! Down with despotism \" And those same constitutions decree that liberty shall consist in the right, for the ministerial majority, to dispose despotically of all the moral and material interests of the people, and for the public to suffer everything and pay for everything. Then we read: " Long reign universal equality! Down with privileges !" Yet it is found that the capital is everything, in it everything is accumu- lated, power, enlightenment, wealth and pleasures, leaving only to the provinces the monopoly of Seventeenth Entertainment 221 abjection, work, and misery. One of the most abominable emperors of Rome, desiring to rid himself of his subjects by one blow, cried out : Would that the Roman people had but one head ! . . . . Our modern revolutionists have so well accomplished that monster's wish, that they revo- lutionize a nation as one would turn an omelet. As to their fraternity and love for the people, it is evident that they have always consisted in two things : first, in causing the destruction, as aristo- crats and enemies of the people, of those who have given them offence, or whose fortune they covet: second, in preying upon one another, as soon as they begin to divide the spoil of the victims. The calendar of their saints and martyrs presents the names of robbers and murderers killed by other robbers and murderers, fearing for their own lives and purses. I am well aware that Marat, Danton, and their worthy colleagues, still find some vota- ries, who laud them as the immortal victims of the popular cause; this proves that the religion of Red Republicanism is not near its end ; but I hope, my friends, that it has found no adepts among you. MAYOR. No, sir; with the exception of two or three admirers of 1793, virtuous enough themselves to have drawn the attention of justice, and deserving of a lodging at the expense of the state, I do not think we have any devotees of the revolution. As to the heroes of that infernal worship, I know enough of their deeds and actions to be convinced, that if they did anything for the country, it was on 19* 222 The Peoples Ark. that day, when, after having covered it with blood and ruins, they conceived the salutary idea of mur- dering one another. My horror for Robespierre is diminished when I see him sending to the scaffold, Danton, Hebert, Camille Desmoulins, and a host of other friends and brothers. My heart is dilated when I afterwards see the heroes of the ninth Thermidor, after having broken Robespierre's jaw, in a hall of the Hotel-de-Ville, drag the Incor- ruptible friend of the people and so many of his associates to the Place de la Revolution. I have only one regret; it is, that in the moment in which Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Henriot, etc., fell, there was not found a representative of the true people, to end the festival by going, well escorted, to read to the tribunal of the Convention this decree: " Inasmuch as the half of the members of the assembly and all the members of revolution- ary tribunals and committees, are worthy of follow- ing their chief, they are declared outlaws, with the injunction to the citizens' executioners to make away with them without the least delay." In fine, what were all those martyrs and advo- cates of the cause of the people ? As you have said, sir, they were true sensualists, adoring only their miserable selves, thriving on blood and rapine, and loving the public as the tiger loves his prey. This is the character common to every man desti- tute of religion ; he is necessarily an egotist, and adorer of all his vices, and if he be neither a thief nor assassin, it is less his fault than that of circum- stances. To Christian faith alone it belongs to make souls devoted to God and men. Seventeenth Entertainment. 223 PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir; the real love of God and our neighbor, which makes us love God above all, and men, even our enemies, as ourselves, is evidently a super- natural fruit of Christianity; for it is found no where else, unless, perhaps, in a few chosen souls whom God leads to Christianity by ways known only to Himself. But the heroic charity, which, elevating a man above all self-seeking, determines him to devote himself to the service of his brethren purely for the love of God, and even to give, if necessary, the greatest proof of Christian charity, the proof of his blood in accepting martyrdom ; this charity, I say, is a virtue so supernatural and divine, that it has never been met with, save in the Church of the true disciples of the Lamb immo- lated for the salvation of all and every one. That the charity which extends to complete devotedness of self, even to martyrdom, is an exclusively papist fruit, which ripens only under the warm influence of Catholic faith and practice, is a fact so notorious, that the greater number of Protestants make no difficulty in recognizing it, while many even impute it to us as a crime. In fact, if they dare not openly tax with fanaticism our missionaries who give their lives in order to spread the light of the Gospel among infidels, in revenge, they accuse of superstition and stupidity our religious of both sexes who engage themselves by vgw to the service of ignorant and suffering humanity. What could you expect, my friends? Luther, their father in Christ, who had his own reasons for disliking monastic vows, told them, 224 The Peoples . Ark. three hundred years ago, that vows were an abomi- nation of popery, absolutely contrary to Christian liberty. They still believe in that oracle of the unfrocked monk. Therefore they enjoy themselves in the Christian liberty of the Bible-religion, which consists in every one remaining in his own house, and living for himself; and they contemptuously abandon to the stupid children of popery the imitation of the superstitious charity which led the Saviour-God, the slave of infinite love, to journey from the stable to Calvary by the rough and bloody way of obedience. Yes, my friends, let us with a holy pride, acknowledge . in the Catholic Church the sole and ever-fruitful mother of men great by- excellence, the heroes of God and humanity! Her annals show us nearly twenty millions of intrepid souls who braved all torments for the triumph of the only religion which can reconcile the univer- sality of men over the ruins of religions and societies founded by brutish and cruel men. Even in the present day, the epoch of cowardice and egotism, do you not see that wherever pagan or irreligious despotism places Catholics between their conscience and proscription, we are never wanting in bishops, priests and laymen, who say to the persecutors: We will suffer everything, even death itself, sooner than bend our heads beneath your barbarous laws ! Besides those legions of martyrs immolated for the defence of our faith, the Catholic Church pre- sents to us one hundred species of martyrs whose life is but a perpetual immolation of nature to works of charity and faith. Those rnartyrs are Seventeenth Entertainment. 225 innumerable. Count, if you can, the religious con- gregations whose members devote themselves for life, some to the holy austerities of the cloister, others to the instruction of the ignorant, to the succor of the poor, the sick, the unfortunate, etc. It is that long and admirable martyrdom which renders religious societies infinitely dear to true Catholics, and makes them hated by advanced free-thinkers. Wherever these triumph, they never fail to rush with delight on religious communities, and why? First, to satisfy their satanic rage by abolishing the living proofs of Christian charity. Secondl} 7- , because they know well that the religious will not receive them with guns or swords. Cowardly before strength, and ferocious before weakness, such is the indelible character of these revolution- ists, above all, if they be men of the pen. There- fore, I would always say to Catholics who have not renounced the rights of secular life : When you have anything to do with those valiant destroyers of communities, do not amuse yourself in reason- ing, but aim straight at the stomach ; if they have a soul, as is probable, it is there you will find it. What, in reality, is that Catholic priesthood, which, during so many centuries, has devoted half a million of men to the most laborious task by saying to them : Renounce all the hopes of the world to consecrate yourselves to study, to perfect observance, to the teaching and vindication for and against all,. of a law which, sparing no evil passion, will expose you to the fury of the wicked and the incessant murmurs of the good. 226 The Peoples Ark. You, my friends, who recognize in the priest only an ordinary man, better lodged, better clothed and better fed than yourselves, and moreover, free from the encumbrance of a family, are in the habit of saying, Priests have no cause to complain! I, who for a long time have closely studied and com- pared social conditions, am very much of St. Paul's opinion, when he says that the ministers of Jesus Christ would be the most miserable of all men, had they not for their consolation the future glory of heaven.* What are really the engagements of the victims of the priesthood ? To solemnly renounce from their early youth, by ecclesiastical celibacy, the independence of secular single life, and the sweets of family life, in order to bind themselves to the most severe discipline and most painful duties ; to oblige themselves before God and men to bring about the divine reign of the law of the Gospel, in a family more or less numerous, called a diocese or parish, which has nothing so much at heart as to ignore that law, or bend it to the pretensions or convenience of each individual ; to combat inces- santly the universality of ignorance and prejudice in religious matters, and, for this end, to continu- ally examine the same points in public and in private instructions ; to speak to every one in the manner best suited to him; to repeat the catechism with the ignorant; to dispute and philosophize with gray-haired children ; to give reasons for everything to people who know nothing, and know religion and the Church only by the silly * I. Cor. xv. 19. Seventeenth Entertainment 227 calumnies of her enemies. To religious instruc- tion, the essential foundation of all Christian life, let us add the other functions of the sacred minis- try, the administration of the sacraments, above all, of the most disagreeable, the sacrament of penance, — to enclose one's self in the narrow prison of the confessional, to become the confidant and physician of the moral maladies which infect all classes, from the great lord even to the beggar; to hasten at any hour of the day or night to the bed-side of the dying, whoever he may be, or wherever he may be found, and without taking thought of the weather, or the probable conse- quences of excessive fatigue; — in a word, to make himself, in the spiritual, and even in the temporal order, the perpetual slave of all classes, above- all, of the unfortunate, whose cause he must espouse, whose sufferings he must alleviate ; — such are the principal obligations of the Catholic priest ; they are a frightful responsibility in the sight of God, and on the part of men, they present the most disheartening difficulties. Let us now glance at the general conduct of men towards the Catholic priesthood, out of the time of violent persecution, that is to say, when the scribes and pontiffs of the revolutionary church have not the power of so far deceiving and per- verting a population as to excite them to the cry : Down with the priests ! In the eyes of our holy Mother, the Church, men are divided into decided enemies, conditional friends, and devoted friends. Now all, both friends and enemies, unite in tormenting the priest. 228 The Peoples Ark. To the enemies, what are priests ? A set of hypocrites, bigots, ambitious intriguers, furious des- pots, exterminators, corrupters and oppressors of the human species, whose extermination should be desired and hastened by every friend of humanity. Such is the idea which their enemies are never tired of reproducing under a thousand forms, more or less artful or brutal, by the mouth of their orators, the pen of their writers, the pencil of their artists, and the lyre of their poets. As the reward of a life immolated to the evangelization of men and the promotion of their happiness, they see themselves accused of all vices, of all crimes, by the infamous swine and robbers nourished by human society, and they have no other arms against the machinations of hell than patience and prayer; such is the priest's destiny. To enemies who calumniate, while waiting a favorable opportunity to destroy, are joined con- ditional friends, who, in every possible way, fetter the action of the priesthood. By these I under- stand the crowd of honest conservators, who, feel- ing the necessity of a religion to defend their lives and their social positions against the atheism of the rabble, are much disposed to take it under their high protection, provided, however, that it does not dare to say to them as to the vulgar crowd: Study your catechism; assist at the in- structions and offices ; confess your sins ; repair the injuries you have done to others; renounce your idleness, luxury, and impure pleasures; be more laborious, less avaricious, less harsh towards the poor ; more Christian in everything. But this, Seventeenth Entertainment. 229 they say, is an unwarrantable assumption; it is to wish to lead us back to the Middle Ages; it is to wholly ignore the progress that we owe to the lights of philosophy and constitutional liberty! If after having been fifty years under the rod, the priests have neither learned nor forgotten anything, we will abandon them to their fate. And, in fact, for fear of returning to the Middle Ages, those honest conservators deliver up the priest to the executioners, not suspecting that for one priest and two or three Catholic believers, the knife of the atheists will send ten thousand of the devotees of philosophy to the eternal dwelling- place of fools. In fine, the priest is charged with the more or less numerous family of the children of the Church, whose spiritual wants, whose real or fancied neces- sities, keep him in continual anxiety. If {hey hear his voice and do what he commands, he must, in return, lend his ear and assistance to all their holy fancies, and the most devout are far from being the most easy to satisfy. In order to obey the voice and example of the Divine Master, who has charged him with universal evangelization, but particularly of the poor* does he not abandon for the moment the nijiety -nine just, to run after the strayed sheep? Does he not refuse to lavish spiritual favors on a few souls absorbed in devotion, in order to go and distribute the word of life to a multitude of sinful and ignorant people? Does he not love to be surrounded with the latter, * St. Luke iv. 18. 20 230 The Peoples Ark. and does he spare anything to render his church and confessional accessible to the poor? For many enlightened souls, who in this will recognize the character of a truly Catholic pastor, how many murmurs rise from a certain class, how many reproaches about the people and bad educa- tion. In this universal conspiracy against the priest, where shall he seek his consolation? In his con- science ? But of all Christian consciences, the conscience of the good priest is the most clamor- ous, the most intolerant that he could consult. It reduces to nothing the good that he docs; it reproaches him with the good that he does not do, and the evil he allows to be done; it magnifies the faults committed through frailty. That peace which he causes to reign in the souls that he directs, he himself possesses with difficulty, and when he enjoys it, he is afraid of delusion. Poor victims, nailed by the sacerdotal office to the cross for your whole life, resign yourselves to the fate of your Divine Master. Could you expect men full of indifference for the God of Charity, born in a crib, dying on Cal- vary, enchained by love upon our altars, to set any value on your hard labors, your incessant tortures? Expect neither gratitude, justice, nor repose, before that hour in which your soul, freed by death from the heavy weight of your chains, shall receive in exchange the immense weight of glory due to a martyrdom, the longest, most sorrowful, and most rending to the soul, the most obscure, and the Seventeenth Entertainment 231 least appreciated by those who reap the fruits of it. What are the fruits of the Catholic priesthood's devotedness? And why, instead of reaping them in abundance, are Christians in danger of losing them forever? We shall see this, my friends, in the following entertainments. EIGHTEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. What Christian civilization is — Why it has made so little progress — Authors and partisans of schism and heresy, and their manner of proceeding — how a nation cam" baffle it, or how it may become their plaything. N our enlightened age, which has placed itself under the government of the pretentious me- diocrity and ignorant declaimers, no word has so often resounded in our ears as that of civilization. Among the innumerable barkers of philosophy, journalism, and parliamentary tribunes, not one can be found who does not establish himself as an organ of the lights and principles of our civilization, and who has not sworn to defend them against the dark enterprises of clerical obscurantism. But not one thinks of telling us plainly what they mean by civilization. Declamations and generalities please talkers of that species; as to definitions, which are the seal of science, they like them as much as they do the touch of hot iron. What is it to civilize men ? Is it to teach them so much to prefer their sensual desires and earthly joys before the promises and commands of the Catholic faith, that it would require many large 232 Eighteenth Entertainment. 233 armies always on the qui vive to prevent those who have little or nothing, from robbing and killing those who have more ? This, my friends, is the beautiful task imposed on themselves, during sixty years, by the talkers about civilization; and if we are not now in a complete state of barbarism, we owe it to the obscurantism of two bodies of militia; the one, always subjecting a great number of souls to the law of Jesus Christ; the other, holding in check the self-worshippers. To civilize men, is to make them mutually understand, support, aid, and compassionate one another, in their moral and material miseries; in a word, to love one another, and to take as the rule of their mutual relations, that law unknown before Jesus Christ: Love one another as I have loved you. Who cannot see it, unless he does not wish to see, that the irreplaceable foundation of civilization is Christian charity, which, as the word indicates, consists in all men regarding one another as of the same flesh, one and the same body, whose every member takes a lively interest in the affairs of the others, and holds as done to himself the good or evil that happens to them. Now, to lead people to love one another thus, it requires nothing less than the power of the Catholic faith, and the indefatigable devotedness of the martyrs of the priesthood. It is evidently to the priesthood, and to all the faithful who second its action, that society owes what it still retains of Christian virtues and active charity, that is to say. of civilization. 20* 234 The People s Ark. Recall to your minds, my friends, what I have said in one of the preceding entertainments, of the peace, the union and happiness which the Catholic faith procures to individuals, to families, and to communities which show themselves docile to its precepts. Multiply, then, those individuals, those families, and those communities, so as to form a nation wherein all, penetrated with a lively faith in the judgment of God, apply themselves to merit the eternal crown by a constant fidelity to all the duties of their state; what a model nation! Doubt- less, there would be therein both great and small, rich and poor; but we should not see the first die of e?i7tui and satiety, nor the others live and die in the horrors of want and misery. The strong would exert their strength in the service of the weak, knowing that, at the tribunal of Jesus Christ, the weak will be the support and succor of the strong. What care in the governing not to abuse their power, or the public money ! What respect in the governed for power and the laws ! Or rather, in such a state, what necessity would there be for laws, asks a celebrated English Protestant, whose words I will quote for you. This statesman, after having examined the prin- ciples and institutions of the Catholic religion, thus concludes his work, as brief in words as extended in social science : " If in a Roman Catholic state no one were ever to turn aside (from these principles), the question would not be, Which is the best government? but rather — In such a government, what necessity would there be for laws ? Probably all human Eighteenth Entertainment. 235 laws would be as superfluous and unnecessary, as they are now powerless, wherever they have not the Roman Catholic religion for their foundation."* These, my friends, are the expressions of com- mon sense, in every impartial mind that knows something of religion. Realize now, in imagination, the most ardent wish of Jesus Christ and His Church; extend to every nation under the sun the benefit of Christian faith ; suppose that all those nations now so sove- reignly barbarous and degraded, among whom we count only a feeble minority of Christians, con- tinually under the sword of the persecutor, become like their compatriots, Catholic Christians, behold- ing, as do we, in the whole human race only brethren created by the same God, the issue of the same marriage, redeemed by the blood of the same Saviour, and destined to live eternally united in the society of their Heavenly Father; — who could figure to himself the immense and happy results of such a revolution? How many abominable institutions destroyed! how many wars appeased! how many tears dried up! how many scourges and miseries ameliorated, if not removed, at the same time that all the strength now occupied in the destruction of good and the preservation of evil, would be employed in the moral and material improvement of the great family of God's children. Now here a question extremely interesting pre- sents itself: Why is not the universe entirely Chris- * Letters of Atticus, dedicated to Louis XYIII., by Lord Fitzwilliam. Letter v. 236 The People s Ark. tian ? how does it happen that the religion of the Cross, which, in the first ages of its appearance, shook the world and subjected to its yoke the greater number of nations, should have met with immense losses in the vast continents of Asia and Africa, where it had displayed all the prodigies of charity, that is of Christian civilization? How comes it that that Europe, which, at the close of the eleventh century, was so much of the same mind in religious matters, that it rose as one man against the enemies of the Christian name, is, since 1520, a prey to the most fearful religious dissen- sions, and hears with indifference the savage cry of more than one-third of its inhabitants: Down with Christ and His Church. This question, proposed to me by Mr. Mayor, in the Tenth Entertainment, I could then answer only in a general way. Now I intend to bring it for- ward into the light of common sense and history, and to show you, my friends, what the human race owes to the authors and first promoters of schisms and heresies. In what does schism consist? In separating a people from the communion of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, and in making it enter, either will- ing or unwilling, into a new church, built by a man for the benefit of his pride, or his cupidity. The author of a schism is a man who says: To save the religion of Jesus Christ, perverted by the abuse and prejudices of the court of Rome and the ultra- montane clergy, I desire to reconstruct the Church and reform the clergy. — And that man makes a church and a clergy according to his fancy. Eighteenth Entertainment. 237 In what does heresy consist? In making a people reject, by inclination or compulsion, one or many articles of the faith revealed to the world by Jesus Christ and His apostles, and in causing it to profess the dreams of a wicked knave. The inven- tor of a heresy is a man who says : The Christian religion is true, but it has been misunderstood by the Catholic Church ; to me it belongs to recon- struct it ! — He constructs a religion to his fancy, which he cannot himself seriously believe, but which he makes to be believed by his dupes. That schism never advances without drawing heresy in its train; that those who desert the com- munion of the universal Church are not long in deserting its belief, and that for the communion of faith and charity which unites the disciples of the Lamb, Satan substitutes among his subjects, whoever they may be, the community of error and hatred, are facts the most natural, and the best substantiated. There cannot be found, at present, a single schis- matical Church that is not eaten by the worm of heresy, and which does not cry out with heretics, Down with the Roman Church ! That heresy, by force of pulling down and building up the Chris- tian religion, should end by utterly despising it, and saying, Christianity is a fable, is also very natural and well proved. Hence it is, that all the modern antichristian clique, from the deists Vol- taire and Rousseau, to the late atheists, Proudhon, Mazzini, Heinzen, etc., are natural children, but by no means bastards, of the fabricators of schis- matical and heretical religions. 238 The Peoples Ark. What have those fabricators been? You under- stand, my friends, that in order to draw one or many nations out of the Church or the Catholic faith, it was necessary they should be men enjoying great influence, by their talents or social position. The author of a schism is often a wolf in the sheep-fold, in the clothing of a pastor, who by his excesses calls upon himself the severity of the supreme Pastor. Excommunicated by the Pope, the schismatic judge thought proper to excom- municate, to depose the Pope, and to make himself the supreme head of the ecclesiastical provinces which he succeeds in drawing into his revolt. Such was Photius, the intruded Patriarch of Constanti- nople, who in the ninth century produced the ever- to-be-deplored Greek schism. The inventors of heresy are ordinarily some renowned theologians, professors, and preachers, who to great talents join great pride. In their discourses or writings, they advance some great blunder, which might happen to all, but particu- larly to those who speak and write much. A retraction is called for; they reply by injuries; the Pope, after many useless attempts, ends by anathematizing that opinion opposed to the belief of all ages. The inventor, who has profited by the Pope's patience to make for himself many and powerful protectors, then becomes furious against the Pope and the Church of all ages; he makes of Rome the prostitute of Babylon, the great beast of the Apocalypse, of the pope an antichrist, of all Catholics miserable idolaters, and allows salva- tion to no one but the dupes who will believe and Eighteenth Entertainment. 239 cause others to believe his condemned opinion as a sacred and inviolable dogma. Such was, in the fourth century, the inventor of the Arian heresy; such were, in the sixteenth century, the fabri- cators of the Lutheran, the Calvinist, and the Anglican religions, a Protestant trinity, which has given so many religions to Europe, that a part of its inhabitants no longer want any kind. However, those originators of schisms and here- sies would not have fair play, did not they find sovereigns disposed to second them by transform- ing into state religions their hellish inventions. Those rulers are princes, who, in matters of reli- gion, morals, and government, have fancies which they cannot satisfy in the midst of a people wholly Catholic. Their courtiers and mistresses tell them what the heart of despots already says too often : "Why incommode yourself? The pope and bishops can exercise against you only their old spiritual weapons ; yours are a little more formida- ble. The Church with her large revenues, her silver plate, her convents, her charitable institu- tions, is rich enough to pay the expenses of her burial. You have a multitude of ruined nobles, of greedy officials and citizens who will be glad to dig the tomb of popery if you abandon to them its spoils. The people will murmur, no doubt; the more reason for you to give them priests who will reduce religion to these three duties: first, adore God, then the king; obey him in everything; labor, and you shall be saved ! Look, sire, at the nations of the East and of Africa; they never think of murmuring, whatever may be done by 240 The People s Ark. the monarch or his court. This is truly to reign. So long as you shall not have in your own hands the religion of your people, so long shall you be only the shadow of a sovereign." Sovereigns find this admirable, and they labor to become the gods of their people. Such have been the grand dukes and czars of Russia who for so many centuries have reigned absolute mas- ters of both the souls and bodies of their subjects of the Greco-Russian schismatical religion. Such was Henry VIII., the exterminator of Catholicity in England, such were all the Protestant princes. Let us see now, my friends, how these mitred or crowned robbers succeed in despoiling a Catholic nation of the only religion which saves both soul and body, to impose on them a new religion, con- ceived by them in the madness of their pride, or filthy pleasures. They succeed in it by their infernal hypocrisy, through the number and activity of the sensual and the covetous, and through the folly and indifference of the people. Those demons take good care not to reveal their thoughts, by saying: "We do not want a religion w T hich lays its commands on every one ; we want one that will impose silence on the people while we rob them." If they were to speak thus, there is no nation, however little Christian it may be, that would not think it a duty of justice and charity to reply to them: Villains, fly! otherwise you will soon not have the power to do so. Being worthy children of their father who is in hell, they can always transform themselves into angels of light. Eighteenth Entertainment 241 Gangrened by vice, consumed by debauchery, they hypocritically deplore the abuses which dis- figure the religion of Jesus Christ, formerly so pure. Those men who by their malversation and extravagance have consumed their patrimony and the finances of the state, never tire of speaking of the bad government of the Church, of the idleness of the clergy and the monks, and of the necessity of reforming the priesthood. They are powerfully seconded in this by many that wear the cassock, who wish to change the Church, for fear that the Church will oblige them to change their lives.- But the principal strength of the schismatical reformers is in the great army of the famished or half-satisfied sensualists. There are, in every country, men in the higher and middle walks of life who indulge in pleasures forbidden by the Catholic Church; men, who have but one-tenth of the money it w T ould require to pay their debts, and continue their life of idleness and debauchery. There is, everywhere, a crowd of hare-brained college youths, who after having ruined their family, wish to ruin the Church and the. state. There are thousands of doctors, with- out morals or doctrine, or rather, let us say, there is an infinity of men who need offices and gold for themselves and their sinful companions, and who can never obtain them but from a plundering and immoral government. These, then, are they who so passionately desire religious reform, and begin to rail in the clubs and journals against the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, priests, religious, and all that they call the clerical party. 21 242 The Peoples Ark. To this crowd of well-dressed voluptuaries who are the aristocrats of revolutions, are joined the ragged wretches, who are its people ; I mean those supporters of taverns, those freed from prisons, liberated convicts, etc., all cordial enemies of priests and religious, and none the less cordial lovers of the spoils of churches and convents. To be able at the same time to rob and destroy that Church which can alone strike terror into robbers and murderers, — what a happy chance for the chiefs and soldiers of revolutions ! Encouraged by this army of robbers, increased by the volunteers of crime, drawn together by Satan from a distance of two or three hundred leagues, the reformers published unjust laws against the rights of the Church and the liberty of the ministers of religion. The bishops reclaim those rights, protest against those laws, and are pursued and hunted for the crime of rebellion. The pope supports the protest of the bishops, and there rises a unanimous cry against the foreign despot who abuses a religion, all peace and charity, to disturb the state and sustain the factious. While they imprison, banish, or murder the faith- ful pastors, they make money out of the goods of the Church and the convents, in order to pay their executioners, and buy those apostates who blind the people by saying to them : M Good people, be not uneasy ! all this is for your greater good, and for the glory of our holy religion ! It was neces- sary first of all to free you from the infamous domination of the pope and his factious priests, who opposed all amelioration of your condition Eighteenth Entertainment. 243 and devoured your riches while they kept you in ignorance. Now that the government is free to work for your happiness, you shall soon see its effects." There is now but one means of salvation left to the people ; it is that of an humble remonstrance to the monarch, conceived in terms the most respectful, but signifying this : — If, forgetting that you have the honor of reigning over a Catholic nation, you try to tread on our consciences that you may the more readily deprive us of our goods and liberty, we will send you to reign elsewhere. Revoke immediately those laws which have been imposed on you by ambitious knaves, and dismiss them ; otherwise the nation will provide for its own defence. Thus spoke the brave Belgian Catholics, when, towards the end of the last century, the Emperor Joseph IT. wished to endow a church after his own fashion. After many representations which had no other effect than to animate the persecutor, the Belgians had recourse to the last right of a people against its executioners. At a given signal the imperial edicts served to make cartridges, and the troops of the autocrat fled for their lives. Not being able to conquer them by force of arms, the hypocrite had recourse to the Holy See, (which up to that time he had overwhelmed with humilia- tions and outrages,) in the hope that the Supreme Pastor would invite his children to place themselves again under the government of the wolf. Pius VI. addressed some words of conciliation to the Bel- gians, but they replied : "Holy Father, in speaking 244 The People s Ark. as you do, you fulfil the duty of the common Father of all Christians, and we like to believe that we, also, have fulfilled ours in beating the insolent violator of our faith and the compact into which we had entered with him. If he dare to return, let him beware!" Some time afterwards his Majesty, Joseph II., consumed by chagrin and anxiety, went to render an account to God of his marvellous reforms, and left to his successor one fair state the less. But if a nation have neither the religious energy of the Belgians, nor political chiefs sufficiently united to direct the national movement, and break the yoke of religious tyranny without falling under that of anarchy, the people will infallibly be en- slaved, after some partial insurrections have been stifled in blood. God will crown a greater or less number of martyrs, who will brave everything rather than leave to their children the infernal heritage of schism and heresy. The rest will fool- ishly slumber in the darkness of a phantom Chris- tianity, created by the blackest villains that have sprung from Satan's acquaintance with human per- versity. This is, my friends, the title undoubtedly de- served by those miserable men who have torn the unity of the Christian family, as we shall see in the following entertainment. NINETEENTH ENTERTAINMENT. CURIOUS COMPARISON BETWEEN" TWO SPECIES OF MONSTERS — WHY SO MANY OF THE REFORMERS AND STILL HONORED — POPU- LARITY of Anglicanism. (HEN we wish to designate in one word, a monster born for the shame and misfortune of our species, we are accustomed to say, he is a Nero. It is very true that that lascivious and ferocious beast, of whom I have already spoken to you in the Ninth Entertainment, neglected nothing to unite in his imperial person every vice, every crime, and thus became the image of human wick- edness, elevated to the height of power. But Nero was a pagan, the absolute head of a pagan society, at an epoch which the pagan moral- ist, Tacitus, thus defined : Corrupting and being cor- rupted is what we call the zvorld. Nero was then only what at that time a crowned villain could be ; he was the worthy representative of an impure and ferocious society. He cannot be accused of having corrupted the Romans, for the very simple reason that one cannot infect a charnel-house. It was not so with Christian teachers and poten- tates, who, in order to satisfy their satanic pride and brutal appetites, employed their talents and 21 * 245 246 The peoples Ark. power in dismembering Christianity at the moment it was about to consummate the deliverance of all nations, that they might divide among them the bleeding members, and subject half the children of truth and charity to the yoke of the most stupid errors and hatred. A brief comparison between some of Nero's exploits and those of the founders of schismatical and heretical religions, will place you, my friends, in a position to judge whether I have exaggerated in calling these the blackest vil- lains that have sprung from Satan s acquaintance with human perversity. Nero was so proud as to cause himself to be adored as a god, but that folly was consecrated by the general opinion of the pagans, and in it he only followed the example of other sovereigns, all placed by the servility of their subjects in the rank of the immortals. And then, with all his crimes, could not Nero appear without blushing in the assembly of the pagan gods, and say to them : After all, my dear colleagues, which of you can throw a stone at me? It will not be, I think, the father and master of us all, the great Jupiter, who began his career by dethroning his worthy father, Saturn. To reestablish the worship of the most auda- cious villains among those Christian nations who had conquered at the price of so much blood this great principle of all liberty : We are all disciples, and people in religion, tinder the sovereignty of our Divine Master and Father, Jesus Christ, behold the inexpiable crime of the Christian Neros, who, erect- ing their churches on the ruins of the divine Nineteenth Entertainment. 247 Church, have caused, during so many centuries, the brutal conceptions of their pride to be adored by more than one hundred and twenty heretical and schismatical Christians. Some will tell me that neither the schismatics of the East, nor the heretics of the West, have made Photius, Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII. , etc., their gods. No ; they do not adore the persons of those corrupters of the universal religion ; but it is notorious that they always adore their most senseless, most antichristian dreams. Whence comes, in the schismatics of the Greek and Greco-Russian churches, that intense hatred against the Christians of the great Church, which causes the Catholics of the East to suffer infinitely more from the partisans of schism, than from the believers in Mahomet ? What has inspired those ignorant populations with that cry which hell has finally answered : Better to live under the govern- ment of the Turk than tinder that of the Pope ! It is historically demonstrated that the first originator of those hatreds and wicked prejudices was the eunuch, Photius. At the great day of re- velations shall not the Supreme Judge, in pointing to that ambitious innovator, have a right to say to the immense crowd of his more or less willing dupes : The god whose word you have heard and adored is not I; it is this miserable tormentor of my Church. The senseless affirmations of Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, etc., that the Bible is the religion given by jfesus Christ to all ; the Roman Church is tlie prosti- tute of the Apocalypse ; the Pope is Antichrist; the 248 The Peoples Ark. Mass is an abomination invented by Satan; the CatJwlics are idolaters who adore the Pope and the saints, etc., etc.; — are not those absurdities, I say, the articles of faith preached to the people by all the Protestant sects? Do not the Anglicans of the present day cele- brate, more loudly than ever, the old dogma of their queen s religions supremacy, which rests on this supposition of folly and impiety — Jesus Christ, in order to deliver the English from papal tyranny, charged Henry VIII, and his illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth, to reform His religion, and He has con- fided to their successors on the throne, (it matters not whether their ministers of state be Christians or atheists,) the mission of leading His sheep in the ways of sanctity and justice? It is evident that the authors of the religious saturnalias of the sixteenth century are still the directing spirits of Protestantism, and that, in the light of truth, it may be said to those who boast their evangelical liberty : Behold the god whose wildest follies you have swallowed, with the blind faith of the Buddhist, incorporating with himself certain not very agreeable relics of the Grand Lama. Nero was a most shameless libertine; it was his right as a pagan, as emperor, and as a member of the obscene family of the gods. He did not, how- ever, publish a law, declaring as guilty of high treason, and condemning to be drawn and quar- tered, whoever should doubt the legitimacy of his adulteries, as did the holy founder of Anglicanism, Henry VIII. It is also probable that he would Nineteenth Entertainment. 249 not have permitted the holy reformer, Luther, to preach publicly his sermon on Marriage. Had the monk of Wittemberg been his guest, he would, doubtless, have been amused at the incredible obscenities scattered through his Table-talk, and his letters to some friends ; but perhaps he would not have thought it well to publish his indecencies. In fine, if the glorious reformers were not able to lead Europe back to the morality of Nero's time, they at least obtained, that between the bigoted obligations of Christian marriage, and the rather loose principles of a community ofwomen, their honest followers adopted the wise medium: Marry one woman, live with others, and love only yourself. Nero was a thirster for blood, and never refused to his caprices either the life of man, or the honor of woman. This is also the testimony which could be rendered of Henry VIII., at the end of a life spent in blood and impurity. He bequeathed his tastes to his daughter Elizabeth, whom the English still call the good virgin — a virgin, indeed, after a very Protestant manner; one who gave death to seventy-five thousand of her beloved subjects, the greater number of whom were guilty of no crime but that of disbelief in her religious supremacy. What a mild and tolerant spirit was that of Luther, who, in 1525, the day after the massacre of one hundred thousand peasants, whom he had first incited to revolt, and then blessed their murderers, wrote: It is I who have shed that blood ! — Again, what a tiger under the cloak of a reformer was that Calvin, who surrounded himself 250 The People s Ark. at Geneva with spies, executioners, and funeral- piles, and rendered himself so odious to his own flock that it was commonly said: Better would be hell with Beza* titan Paradise with Calvin. Now, if to the victims immolated by the heads of the new religions during their lifetime, we add, first, the innumerable victims slaughtered during the fearful persecutions and religious wars which deluged Europe with blood, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century; secondly, the victims, up to the present day, of our wars and revolutions, ostensibly politi- cal, but really born of our religious antipathies, and the cry of Luther and Calvin, which still resounds, Down with the papacy ! thirdly, the probable vic- tims of that war imminent between the Europe of the conservators and the Europe of the rationalists and socialists, who demand only the free applica- tion of Protestantism to the social order ; if, I say, we count all these, what are the butcheries of Nero, compared with the open butcheries of the fathers of Protestantism ? — only a small stream of human blood compared to a vast sea. Nero caused the murder of his mother, Agrip- pina, a woman very wicked no doubt, but to whom he owed his life and throne. The creators of schism and heresy had nothing so much at heart * Theodore de Beze, although a warm partizan of the atro- cious theology of Calvin, and his successor in the Genevese papacy, was, however, a bon-vivant, who counting too surely on salvation by faith without works, and in spite of ivories, lived till extreme old age in the quasi-mahometan habits of his youth. Nineteenth Entertainment 251 as the extermination of the Catholic Church, estab- lished by Jesus Christ as mother of all men, and from whose breast they had imbibed those lights and that religious influence of which they made so execrable a use. That unreflecting Christians do not conceive a great horror of this parricide, so long as they do not see its consequences, may very well happen, but on the day when eternal light will reveal to the gaze of all the extent of each one's works, there shall arise but one voice from the immense assemblage of angels, men, and demons, to recognize the fact, that while Nero, by his hatred against the Christians, only hastened the progress of the gospel, the schismatics and heretics of the East and the West have made incredible efforts to stifle it wherever it was reigning ; and if they have not been able to render impossible the conquest of the universe to the faith of Jesus Christ, they have, at least, been able to retai'd it for centuries. In fact, my friends, what was the effect of the frightful tortures inflicted on the Christians by the first persecutor of our faith ? They called the attention of the universe to that religion, and won for it immense success in the capital of the world. The constancy of the martyrs, joined to the general conviction of their innocence, keenly interested the honest pagans, as Tacitus remarks. Finally, at Nero's fall, there was a reaction in their favor. But who can tell us when shall fall the hatreds and furious prejudices incessantly raised against the church of the martyrs by the partisans of the anti- christian societies of Photius, Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII., etc.? See, then, what has been the result. 252 The People s Ark. If, with the exception of the Christians more or less numerous, yet always oppressed, the six hun- dred million inhabitants of Asia live for the most part under the yoke of the absurd and inhuman superstitions of Buddhism, Brahminism, and other worships still more degrading ; if the magnificent countries conquered by Catholicity to Christian civilization have fallen under the brutalizing des- potism of the law of Mahomet, which makes of man an idle and lascivious animal; of woman a species created for the pleasure of man ; and of children an article of traffic, — to what shall we attribute such a state of things? To the Greek and Greco-Russian schism, and to it alone; this is the reply of history. To conquer that great obstacle to the conversion of Asia, Africa, and the isles depending on them, there remained the Church of the West, still so powerful by its unity and its means of conversion. The glorious reformers appeared, and by the fearful dissensions which they sowed, destroyed not only the Catholic faith in nearly the half of Europe, but shackled and paralyzed the labors of external pro- pagandism. In fact, do you not see, my friends, that infidel nations, knowing our religious discords, have good reason to say to our missionaries : , Be- fore coming to preach the Gospel to us, let the Europeans agree among themselves, and no longer make a religion of peace and charity a subject for hatred and sanguinary disputes. Besides the contempt for true Christianity with which the excesses of heresy have inspired the infidels, who is ignorant of the continual efforts Nineteenth Entertainment. 253 of maritime Protestant nations to overthrow the conquests of Catholicity over pagan barbarism? Among a multitude of facts, I will cite only one. Who drew on Japan that fearful persecution which gave to the Church nearly two millions martyrs? History tells us that it was the English and the Dutch. Who in 1637 attacked the last thirty-seven thousand Christians of Arima, ranged around the cross and their prince's flag, and holding in check an army of 80,000 idolaters ? History tells us it was the Dutch artillery.* Finally, what is being done at present by the missionaries of the Bible religion? They go to found schools in infidel countries, to teach the idolaters to read in the Bible that the Pope is Antichrist, and that his mission- aries are the agents of the enemy of God and man. It is, then, manifest that Christianity has suffered '""finitely less from the fury of Nero than from the fuiy of heresy and schism for the last eight or nine centuries. Finally, Nero, to give himself the spectacle of a magnificent fire, caused the torch to be applied to the most beautiful quarters of Rome. But what was that fire, compared to the conflagrations en- kindled and fed for so long a time by the fanaticism of schism and heresy, conflagrations which have devoured so many men and so many masterpieces of every .kind ? And what did those fanatical incendiaries pro- pose to themselves in overturning Europe with * See Univ. History of the Church, by Rohrbacher, t. xxvi. book 88. ' 22 254 The People s Ark. the cry: Long live the Bible! Down with Popery? They wished to abolish the Mass, confession, fast, abstinence, the obligation of good works, the in- vocation of the saints, and prayer for the dead; they wished to melt the gold and silver plate of the churches, to burn the books, pictures, orna- ments and relics ; to erect edifices in which, after having sung some psalms, they listened to the discourse of their minister against the prostitute of Babylon, and the papist abominations, or a homily on the edifying dogma of Lutheran and Calvinistical predestination, a dogma which consists in believing that human liberty is a popish dream, and that men are only machines, whom God drives, according to His good pleasure, into heaven or hell, without any regard to their works. It is just to add, that modern Protestants have generally abandoned the wicked dogma of predestination to evil; but they remain faithful to their hatred against the Church of the Roman Antichrist, and it would be very possible for the old cry of, Down with Popery! to light new conflagrations. Am I wrong in saying to you, my friends, that among the most frightful enemies of the Christian religion and the human race, Nero is far from meriting the first place? MAYOR. No, certainly not. Had not Satan been the master of the glorious reformers, we should have a right to say to him : Descend from your fiery throne, and yield your place to the most furious enemies of God and man. It only remains to be Nineteenth Entertainment. 255 known why the pagan Nero is so universally ab- horred, while the Christian Neros are still praised by the very persons who have suffered most from their fanatical destructions. That self-worshippers of every kind, whether Catholic or Protestant, should glorify in Luther and his colleagues, the conquerors of the liberty of thought, that is to say, the right to make a mockery of the only religion that causes them serious inquietude, is well and good. That the rulers of Protestant nations, be- coming popes and supreme judges of the religious affairs of their subjects, should rejoice in such a state of affairs, and praise those who have delivered them from papal tyranny, is very natural. That the ministers of the Bible-religion, richly rewarded for defending the system, should affect a great veneration for its authors, I can well understand ; but what I can with difficulty conceive, is the respect of so many honest Protestant Christians for those reformers of whose scandalous history they cannot be ignorant; what surprises me beyond everything, is the fanaticism of the popular masses for the defence of a reform which has made their condition so much worse. This reflection is sug- gested to me by the savage conduct of the English people, who, not satisfied with having dragged in the mire and delivered to the flames the images of the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and all Catholic institutions, ask nothing less than the extermination of the restorers of the papacy. In a word, the horror attached to Nero's memory and the popularity of the murderers of Catholicity, this, sir, is what I find it difficult to understand. 256 The Peoples Ark- PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Behold, sir, the reason of that difference. It is a long time since paganism and the divinity of the Caesars ceased to find in Europe either believers or apologists, but Protestantism is ever subsisting therein, and if its primitive dogmas, its confessions of faith no longer exist, save in history, its tradi- tions of hatred, its absurd prejudices against the Catholic Church are still vigorous. You yourself, sir, must have observed that the number of men interested in perpetuating that hatred and those prejudices is immense. Without speaking of the great school of writers who during three centuries have seemed to propose but one thing to themselves in their historical and literary labors — the hatred of the Catholic Church, and the apotheosis of its enemies — without speak- ing I say, of that school of shameless calumniators, who does not see in the influential classes of Protestant countries, a manifest interest of pride and cupidity in sustaining the liberties they have acquired by their glorious reform? First, an interest of pride. — To what have states- men and the class from which they are drawn, always aspired more or less ardently? To reli- gious autocracy, that is to say, the right to teach to the public a religion which binds its conscience without binding theirs, or prejudicing the pre- tended rights of their reason, that is to say, their passions. Now, such is the position which the Reformation has given to the higher classes, in which they are envied by all the self-worshippers of Catholic countries. How could you expect Nineteenth Eiitertainment. 257 that the nobility and higher classes of Protest- antism would not be filled with a holy zeal against papal despotism ? Secondly, an interest of cupidity. — When by the union of the spiritual power with the political, they are master of the souls and bodies, of the religious beliefs and material interests of a people, is it not evident that they can plunder it, yet at the same time make it bless its plunderers? This is what happens in every country deprived by schism and heresy of the only religion which prevents the great from becoming tigers, and the lowly from degenerating into stupid slaves. This we see par- ticularly in England, where a miserable population of more than twelve million helots is not dis- contented at seeing thirty or forty thousand great lords possessing all the riches, and spending their lives in the splendors of luxury, while, at their very side, hunger devours in a single year a mil- lion of victims. Add to this, for England, the enormous revenues of the Church established by law. In fact, my friends, it is well that you should know that the English Protestant ministers, who for so long a time have raised and caused to rise throughout Europe, a cry against the avarice of the Roman court and the popish clergy, are un- doubtedly, the greatest cumulatists under the $un, the most devouring leeches that the demon of cupidity has ever applied to the muscles of a nation. The English publicists themselves have established by creditable researches and calcu- lations, that the Anglican clergy having only six and a half millions in the flock, possesses in itself 258 The Peoples Ark. alone a revenue superior, by some millions, to the total revenue of all the Catholic and dissenting clergy, charged with the religious service of more than two million Christians. Is it not just that the happy prelates of the Established Church should cherish as a part of themselves, that system which has delivered the English from the frightful tyranny of Popery ? . . . . With a clergy and higher and lower classes so pow- erfully attached to Protestantism, we must not be surprised at the absurd veneration which this society still meets with among the masses, and even with some Christians of the higher classes. The latter, it is true, could easily find the truth of the sanctity of their reformers, and the abomina- tions of popery. Without consulting popish writ- ings, it would suffice them to run over the works of those holy reformers, and see the judgment they formed of one another. They would there find on every page, among other gentle terms, the epithets addressed to each other of, enraged fools , monsters of pride, lasciviousness and ignorance, im- pious and ignorant blaspliemers, sacrilegious buffoons, satanical corrupters of Scripture, satanized tongues, etc., etc. By studying the lives of those singular apostles they would see, that by those testimonies they only render justice to one another, and that their union for the destruction of popery was only a concert of the most abominable passions against the Church of Jesus Christ. But no ; those honest believers in Protestantism, who reproach the papists with their submission to Catholic teachings, find no difficulty in accepting, Nineteenth Entertainment. 259 on the word of their ministers the most incredible calumnies against the Catholic Church and its two hundred millions of believers. An impostor of good family, a well-endowed clergyman of the Church established by the good virgin (!) Eliza- beth, can yet say from his pulpit to auditors of a certain class, that we are idolaters, adorers of a wafer, of the Virgin and the saints, and that the popish bishops and priests never travel without an escort of inquisitors and executioners, charged to torture and burn heretics.* * Among other proofs of the facility with which the English Protestant clergymen knowingly, and with extreme effrontery, calumniate the Catholic religion in the presence of a numerous auditory, we will cite the following extract from the corres- pondence of a French journal' on the subject of the savage manifestations with which the Brief of Pope Pius IX. for the reestablishment of the English hierarchy was received in London. " You know that on Nov. 5th there was a strong force of sermons against popery and the papists. I had heard one among others in which we were most vigorously treated as pagans, idolaters, etc., etc. The clergyman who spoke was really a gentleman, who had had the following conversation with one of my Catholic friends, a few weeks previously. " 'But tell me, do you sincerely and conscientiously believe that we adore the holy Virgin, the saints, etc.?' — ' No ; I do not believe it, and I should be foolish to believe it.' — ' But, then, why do you speak in the pulpit in the manner you so often do?" — ' What do you expect? AYe have always spoken thus to the people ; it pleases them, it attaches them to the Church ; it must be continued ' The day before yes- terday, I met a Protestant young lady, who related to me what follows : " 1 1 live with my two aunts ; yesterday they returned from church as pale as death. 0, aunt, aunt, what is the matter? 2oo The People s Ark. When the worthy ministers of the Anglican Church can hold forth in such language to well- instructed classes, how could you expect that the lower classes, brutalized by ignorance and misery, whose whole religion consists in the hatred of popery, should conceive any doubt of what is told them by the great men of church and state, that is, that the Catholics are a troop of wicked animals, governed by the Roman Antichrist, and mitred monsters ? This, my friends, is what becomes of the popular masses, wherever the governing aristocracy have removed them from the authority of the Catholic Church, to subject them to a religion and clergy of their own liking. The lower classes in England, who have gained by the Anglican Reformation* only pauperism, and the most frightful servitude that has ever been imposed on man, do none the less cry out: Long live the Church of Elizabeth! Hail to the Protestant emancipation! and at a given Are you sick?' — 'What, my niece! you do not know it? You do not know that the Inquisition is about to return here from Rome? All the instruments of torture are en the way, and if the whole nation does not oppose their entrance into England, before a month we shall be all tortured and burnt alive!' — 'But, aunt, this is an idle tale.' — 'My niece, I have for some time perceived that you have a tendency to Roman- ism, and if the Inquisition arrives, you will become a papist; but as for us, we would rather die than become papists,' etc., etc."— (See L Univers, Nov. 17, 1850.) * One may form a good idea of the frightful moral and material condition to which the Protestant Reformation has reduced the masses in England, by reading Letters on the Pro- testant Reformation, by Cobbett, the English Protestant pub- licist. Nineteenth Entertainment. 261 signal from their unworthy destroyers, we see them rush, with brutal fury, on the only religion that can remedy their evils, and restore to them that of which heresy has robbed them — their right to the heavenly inheritance, and a larger share in the terrestrial patrimony. Nothing is better calculated than such a spec- tacle, to cairse Catholic nations to feel the inesti- mable advantage of a priesthood independent of the civil power, and, at the same time, the necessity of that spiritual sovereignty of the successors of St. Peter, which can alone prevent the religion of Jesus Christ from becoming, in the hands of the ruling classes, an instrument of religious and polit- ical oppression. In the following entertainments I propose to offer to you, my friends, an historical view of the Papacy, and of what Divine Providence and Chris- tian ages have done to assure the independence of the sacerdotal ministry, charged with making the human race accept the perfect law of liberty* * St. James i. 25. TWENTIETH ENTERTAINMENT. Chaeactee of the Papacy — Its establishment in Home — Its connection with the empire become cheistian — reflec- TIONS ON THE OMNIPOTENT STATE. F the liberalists of philosophy, history and politics were not enemies to all conscientious study in matters of religion, they would, at least once in their lives, ask themselves the following question: What is, then, this government, religious, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman, which during the eighteen centuries that have intervened between the reign of the Caesar Nero and that of Mazzini, the Caesar of Young Italy, has not ceased to exercise, by the power of speech alone, a do- minion much more extensive than that of the ancient masters of the world? How does it happen that in the terrible combats of the Vicars of the Crucified Lamb with the most formidable poten- tates, the victory always remains with the former, and that the Roman Church erects superb cathe- drals over the ashes of its martyrs, while the shepherd's flocks browse over the abhorred tombs of the persecutors ? You understand, my friends, that this question is truly the most interesting that could be proposed 262 Twentieth Entertainment. 263 to a philosopher, historian, or politician; but its examination is severely interdicted in that modern schooi which only opens history to corrupt it and make it say: The Papacy is the work of superstition and of the execrable clerical faction. If the progressionists who affect so much zeal for the universal civilization and fraternity of all nations, were not egotistical boasters, who are as fond of the inhabitants of the earth as of those of the moon, they would say to themselves: The papacy is the only power which, up to the present day,, has been able to unite in the same thoughts and affections an infinity of men of every nation, of every language, and to make them cherish one another as brethren; nay, more, as the members of the same body. If the work of civilization and universal fraternity is to be realized, it can be only by means of Catholicity. Then let us not combat it. There are, indeed, certain of its practices and institutions which displease us, but would it not be better that the inhabitants of Asia and Africa should go to Mass and Confession, rather than live under the good pleasure of the most infamous oppressors of body and soul ? Would it not be better to allow- the youth of both sexes the liberty of vowing celibacy in religious communities, than to see them become the victims of the horrible excesses of the Mussulmans? This, my friends, is what a sincere friend of civilization and humanity should say. But the most honest of our humanitarians does not blush to write, that in the comparison instituted between Catholic and Mahometan institutions h^ 264 The People s Ark. has found the monastic state to clash with his intelli- gence and reason, that nothing can justify an insti- tution so contrary to nature, to the family and to society, while the Mussulman, seeing the idea of God in the thoughts of his brethren, bows dozun and respects. . . . This is the only tolerant people* If popular demagogues were not, as I have already proved to you, wicked sycophants, who flatter the public only that they may take every advantage of it, they could not but respect and love that spiritual sovereignty, so eminently demo- cratic, which, confided by the Redeemer of the popular masses to Peter, a poor fisherman, and rendered accessible to the most lowly conditions* has won all our liberties, and can alone defend them efficaciously against the despotism of ab- solute monarchies and of parliamentary bodies, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical. But you, my friends, have already a sufficiently just idea of the Catholic Church and the progres- sionists of every kind, to understand, that what- ever may be their colors, they will always unite in acting for the overthrow of Catholic unity. What more proper to redouble your affection for the Holy See, than the rage which it excites in all tyrants, whether they be crowned heads, ministers of state, or public demagogues? Let us begin our study on the origin and pro- gress of that remarkable sovereignty, the only one in the world on whose territory the sun has never * See M. de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, t. ii., p. 148, 188. Twentieth Entertainment. 2 C 5 set during eighteen hundred years. Let us first see in what place Peter, established by the Divine Master visible chief of that immense empire and charged to preside over its conquest, had to erect his standard, and establish his head-quarters. Was it in Jerusalem? No, for the Master had said ; Before the end of this generation , Jerusalem shall be destroyed, and there shall not remain of it a stone upon a stone. This was literally fulfilled thirty-four years later. After having overrun Judea, the principal cities of Asia Minor, and founded the church of Antioch, the capital of the East, where he gave the name of Christian to the citizens of the new society,* Peter took the route to Rome, about the year 42 of our era. Rome and its people owed their origin and name to Romulus, the head of a band of brigands, born of a princess of Alba and an unknown father. This small nation, which, at the death of its founder, 715 A. C, numbered only three thousand foot and three hundred horse, had become so powerful at the time of our Saviour, as out of all other empires to form only one. How can we explain that prodigious dominion ? That we may not be unreasonable, it is necessary that w r e hold to the explanation given by the prophet Daniel to Nabuchodonozor, six centuries before Jesus Christ. Interpreting the dream of the king of Babylon relative to the four great empires which should precede the universal em- * Acts of the Apostles, xi. 26, 23 266 The Peoples Ark. pire of the Messiah, Daniel designated to him the Roman Empire by these words : There shall be a fourth empire strong as iron. . . . ; for as iron breaketh into pieces and subdueth all things, so shall that break and destroy all that will oppose it, until the time in which the stone, that you have seen breaking that empire, shall become a great mountain which shall fill the whole earth.* What, then, were the Romans ? They were the pioneers of the Christian army, charged to prepare the way for it. Therefore was no mountain so high, no forest so thick, no river or arm of the sea so great as to stop their march, no wall so strong as to blunt their weapons. In laying the foundations of Rome, Romulus and his followers prepared the throne of the divine ravishers of souls, who in giving themselves to be immolated like their Divine Master, should one day, from the height of the Vatican, shed on the universe more temporal and spiritual favors than the Romans had caused tears and blood to be shed therein. Rome having become the capital of all errors, of all despotisms — the principal organ of Catholic truth, the mother of all liberty, was bound to carry the war thither, and strike a death-blow to the empire of Satan. Once known there, Christian faith could not fail to resound throughout the universe, for, " what nation could then be ignorant of that which Rome had learned ?"t * Dan. ii. 44, 45. f Words of Pope St. Leo the Great. — Sermon on the Feast of St. Peter. Twentieth Entertainment. 267 After a first evangelization, fruitful enough, as we can judge from the conclusion of his First Epistle to the Christians of Asia, St. Peter was expelled from Rome with the Jews. He employed the time of his exile in visiting the churches of the East, of his dear Antioch, and finally in the cele- bration of the Council at Jerusalem. He soon returned to Rome with fresh ardor; whither he was either preceded or followed by his colleague, St. Paul, whose immense labors had already pro- cured for him the title of " Doctor of Nations." Their conquests there w T ere so rapid that they brought forth saints in the very court of Nero. The persecution burst, and the two apostles were pursued. Tradition says that St. Peter, yielding to the prayers of the faithful, left; but at the place where still can be seen the church called Quo vadis, (whither goest thou ?) Jesus Christ appeared to him, journeying towards the city. "Where art thou going, Lord ?" asked the apostle. " I am going to Rome to be crucified anew." The dis- ciple understood that he was bound to imitate his Master, and that if Christ had won on the cross His title of Saviour of the human race, and Supreme Judge of the living and the dead, His vicar should also pay the price of his blood for the apostolical sovereignty. He returned, then, to Rome, and some time after, came forth from the Mamertine Prison, where he had baptized his guards, to expire on the cross, the same day that his colleague St. Paul was decapitated,, at some distance from Rome on the Ostian road. This 268 The Peoples Ark. was the 29th of June, of the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, the thirty seventh after the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the sixty-sixth of our era. You may, perhaps, have read, my friends, in those little tracts and pamphlets so often distributed by Protestants, that the sojourn and death of St. Peter in Rome is a fable. You have too much good sense not to destroy those scraps, written by men foolish or imprudent enough to give the lie, not only to the whole Catholic world, but also to all heretical and schismatical sects, both past and present, not one of which has ever contested the fact of the apostolate and martyrdom in Rome of Sts. Peter and Paul. All Protestant writers of any repute have recognized the truth of this history, and many of them have even learnedly demon- strated it, among others, Pearson, the celebrated Anglican bishop of Chester. It can be denied only by the screech-owls of party, whose only science is to know how to heap insult and injury on the popes and the Catholics. St. Peter being gone to receive the crown of glory, his throne passed to his successors as a right to martyrdom, until the year 314, when by the conversion of Constantine, St. Sylvester I., the thirty-second Pope, could peaceably occupy the Holy See for more than twenty years. Then began for the Church a new existence. From a religious society proscribed by the civil society, up to that time pagan, it became naturally the soul and the directing principle of the Christian society which it had created by the force of its labors and suf- ferings. Twentieth Entertainment. 269 The majority of the subjects of the empire, and the emperor himself, being Christian, that is to say, adoring Jesus Christ as the Eternal Son of God, God Himself, absolute Master and Judge of the living and the dead, King of kings, and Lord of lords, must there not have succeeded a great and total transformation in the constitution and laws of civil society? Now, in the new order of things consecrated by the triumph of the evan- gelical law, what must have been the position of the priesthood, and particularly of its chief, the Vicar of Jesus Christ ? That pastor of pastors, whose spiritual sove- reignty already extended far beyond the limits of the Roman empire; that successor of Peter, whom all were bound to consider, and did really consider as the teacher and common father of all the faith- ful, from the emperor even to the lowest baptized slave — could you well believe, my friends, that he could accept the place of First Almoner to his Imperial Majesty, charged to offer holy water to him, to say Mass for him, and receive his orders for the good religious service of his beloved sub- jects ? No, certainly not. The Church established by the blood of Calvary had not braved during three centuries the power and fury of the forty Caesars, to apostatize at the feet of the first Christian emperor, and say to him: Now that you adore Jesus Christ, you can make his religion suit your convenience, and constitute the Pope the head of the administration of religious affairs. To what did the emperor engage himself in 23* 270 The Peoples Ark. becoming Christian ? To live as a true child of God and of the Church, to submit like the very- lowest Christian, to the teaching and judgment of the Church in matters of faith, morals, and general discipline. And in case of scandalous violation of his duties as a Christian, and obstinate resist- ance to the warnings of religious authority, he was recognized as subject, like every one else, to spirit- ual penalties, and to excommunication, the most terrible of all. I do not think, my friends, that any instructed Catholic dare contest these principles, and pretend that Jesus Christ has made an exception in favor of sovereigns in this fundamental article of the religious charter: He that will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican.* That princes and their courtiers find very dis- tasteful the admonitions and corrections of the Church, we can well understand. But in founding His Church, Jesus Christ consulted less the desires of princes than the salvation of the human race. Religion has no longer the character of a divine law, if she does not bind alike the conscience of the great and the lowly ; and you know, as well as I, that among all consciences, those which it is most important to submit to God, are precisely those of sovereigns. Our liberty of conscience, and all our civil and political liberties, are founded on religious equality, which makes all Catholics as one common people in religion, all subject to the same general laws. Yes, every one, even the pope * St. Matth. xviii. 17. Twentieth Entertainment. 27 r and the bishops, recognize themselves as personally bound, not only by their dogmatic decrees in matters of faith and morals, but by general laws and discipline ; for those laws are dictated to them by the spirit of the Gospel ; — now who is more bound by the spirit of the Gospel than the pope and the bishops ? Personally subject to all the duties of the Chris- tian, to what did Constantine and his successors bind themselves yet more in their quality of Catholic princes ? They engaged themselves, first, to leave to the Church full liberty to labor in her great mission of saving souls, and of taking the means which she judged most proper to preserve her spiritual conquests, and carry them even to the extremities of the world. Secondly, to favor the propagation of the Gospel, not by taking the initiative themselves, but in gently removing, ac- cording to their power, the obstacles which should be opposed to that work, the most dear to the heart of Jesus Christ and of every true Catholic. These, my friends, are the general duties of the Catholic sovereign, such as the Christian conscience has always understood them, such as it shall ever understand them ; there is nothing in this meta- physical; all is Christian common sense. Let us now see to what Constantine obliged himself before God and men, towards the Christian majority of the empire, in regard to the manner of governing in temporal matters. Could he say : Being the successor of the ancient Caesars, whose good pleasure was made the sole law and rule, I intend to dispose sovereignly, as they did, of your 272 The Peoples Ark. property and lives, w thout allowing any one to find fault with me for it? — No, certainly not; such a proposition would have filled every Christian with horror, and, with one voice, they would have said: You desire then to reerect the idol of the empire, tvhose overthrow cost so many prodigies wrought by our Divine Master who is in heaven, and so much of His disciples' blood! Well, if this is your will, sooner than submit to it, we will do like our fathers ; we will die, until such time as it shall please Heaven to punish your apostasy, and send you to dwell w 7 ith other persecutors. The evangelical law for which they had so long combated was so deeply engraven in every mind, that every one knew what to hold in regard to the rights of the state. The Gospel defines the sove- reign as " the minister of God, established to protect the good, armed with the sword to repress evil." And it is very clear that the Gospel does not make the Christian prince absolute judge of the good or evil works of his subjects, but that it obliges him to consult that law which has given us the know- ledge of good and evil. The Gospel says again : Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; — yes, but there, as elsewhere, the Gospel speaks of the tribute necessary to the service of the state. It tells us by the mouth of St. Paul: " Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."* As to the laws of the prince or the state, the * Rom. xiii. 7. Twentieth Entertainment. 273 Gospel tells us, that we owe them an entire sub- mission, whenever they contain nothing contrary to the religious law, but that, in the contrary case, we must reply, even unto death, as did the apostles and martyrs : " Better to obey God than man." To refuse submission to an impious law, is not a revolt against the prince, it is obedience to the Prince of princes. If we cowardly submit to it, we render ourselves guilty of treason before God, and make a very bad calculation, for He whose word shall never pass away, has said : " Fear not those who kill the body and cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul into hell."* This was the religious and political alphabet of the first Christians ; by holding nothing dearer, not even their life, they overthrew the most fright- ful civil and religious despotism. And this alpha- bet must now be taught to Christian nations more than ever, for our free-thinkers are everywhere making the most incredible efforts for the reestab- lishment of these two principles of atheistical paganism : The state can do everything. Religion must remain apart from politics, and must preach only submission to the laws. What do you think of these principles, Mr. Mayor? MAYOR. It seems to me that the first article of the faith of the church of the socialists, is, / believe in the omnipotent state \ which will make of the earth a * St. Matth. x. 28. 274 The People s Ark. paradise, and of idlers so many saints. As I have not the honor of belonging to it, I am very much of the opinion that the mortals who govern us should leave to God the omnipotence, and do all that is in their power to extricate us from the frightful confusion into which we have been thrown by inventors of laws and systems of government; men who, until now, have been all-powerful only in their pretensions, in the art of idle talking, and in plundering the public. As to the other principle, that religion must not mix with politics or the government, and must content itself with preaching submission to the laws of the state, this is, it seems to me, to make a very strange division. It follows from this, that our souls must be regulated according to the laws of God, and that our bodies, with our temporal interests, must remain under the power of the devil and his co-laborers ; for wherever God does not direct, Satan governs. This is to say again, that religion was made for the people and not for the great. But if religion is very necessary to the people, I believe it to be ten times more necessary to the great; for while an atheist of the poorer classes can, at the most, only steal, murder a few individuals, or set fire to a village, atheists in fine clothes, or those who wield the pen, can pillage, poison and assassinate whole nations, enkindle fires in the greatest states. As for the rest, we know what those gentlemen gain by preaching to the people contempt of religion. The cry: Down with the priests ! is everywhere soon succeeded by the cry: Down with the noble and the wealthy! Twentieth Entertainment. 275 Yes, sir, these principles : The government can do everything, and religion has nothing to say to it, — are the invention of brigands, who would wish that religion should shut the mouths of the people and bind their hands, while they destroy them. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. I thank you, sir, for having done such ample justice to the two principles of political atheism. Let us now see the means to be taken to prevent the ministers of religion and their people from falling under the hand of the destroyers. TWENTY-FIRST ENTERTAINMENT. Temporal dominion of the Popes — Its origin — Its necessity — Napoleon's sentiments — Answer to difficulties. E have said that the Roman Pontiff, in order to fill the sublime functions of spiritual father of all the Christians of the empire and of the world, must have enjoyed great liberty. Besides that he was soon under the necessity of struggling against the emperors for the defence of the faith and constitution of the Church, do you not understand, my friends, that his subjection to Caesar would have deprived him of all influence over those foreign princes and nations, almost continually at war with the empire? Now, what was the first condition of liberty for the popes ? It was to have the means of support for themselves, and those who aided them in the spiritual government of the universe. Obliged to employ in that immense work, not angels, but souls dwelling in bodies, it was necessary that they should assure to those bodies, food, clothing, lodging, the expenses of travelling, and of admin- istration. Up to that time those expenses had been defrayed by collections, offerings, and, in the intervals between persecutions, even by donations 276 Twenty-First Entertainment. 277 of land, as is proved by an edict of Constan- ts ne for the restitution of property taken from the churches. The cross having come to render sacred the right of property, and even to confer it on slaves, was it not very just that the Church, to whom that benefit was due, should enjoy the right of property, and so much the more, that, by their destination, ecclesiastical properties were then, as they are still, the most popular of all ? In effect, from the farthest antiquity the Church has always divided her revenue into three parts; the first, for the service of her altars ; the second, for the sup- port of her ministers, taken from every class, but particularly from the people; the third, for the relief of the poor. The Church which then inherited the legacies of paganism, found everywhere, but particularly in Rome, an infinity of poor, but not the least chari- table foundation. Paganism, which was the adora- tion of all vices, excelled in the art of making people poor, but when their number became incon- venient, they were conducted to a seaport, and, after being forced on board old and rickety ves- sels, were driven out to perish in the sea. This had been done by the Emperor Galerius, one of the last and most furious persecutors of the Church. This, I think, is sufficient to justify the donations made by Constantine and the faithful to all the churches, but particularly to that of Rome. Many Protestants and all Catholic renegades who labor to protestantize us, vie in declaiming against those 24 278 The Peoples Ark. bigoted liberalities, and accuse the Church of having renounced the poverty of Jesus Christ and her first pontiffs. We suppose that to those gen- tlemen nothing would be so beautiful as to see a priesthood of beggars, who, instead of giving alms, should themselves be obliged to beg, and be liable to be incarcerated for vagrancy and pauper- ism. Catholic nations have thought otherwise; they have always considered as public benefactors those who founded and endowed churches, and as sacrilegious robbers those who despoiled them. But, in order to assure the independence of their spiritual chief, did Catholic nations think it sufficient that he should not suffer from hunger? Did not their religious, and even their material interests, require that he should, as far as possible, be removed from the influence of the Caesar ? On this subject let us hear the words of a man of genius, who cannot be suspected of too much de- votedness to the popes, words handed down to us by an historian still less to be suspected. When, in 1801, there was question of officially reestablishing the Catholic religion in France, Na- poleon had to contend against all the free-thinkers who were in office, and particularly in the Council of State. At a time when, of the forty thousand parishes that composed the republic, thirty-two thousand two hundred and fourteen had already, of their own accord, reopened their churches, and four thousand five hundred and seventy-one others were preparing to do so, those honest atheists wished the all-powerful Consul to oppose the super- stition of France, and desired that, as a religion Twenty- First Entertainment. 279 was necessary to the canaille, he should impose on them Protestantism, of which he might be the head; like all other Protestant princes. After having reproved those odious stupidities, Napoleon spoke of the Pope, with whom they were trying to frighten him, and said : "The institution which maintains the unity of the faith, that is to say, the Pope, the guardian of Catholic unity, is an admirable institution. This Chief is reproached with being a foreign sovereign; he is, in fact, foreign, and we must thank heaven for it. What! could we imagine that in the same country there should be such a government beside that of the state? United to the government, that authority would become the despotism of the Sul- tans; separated from, or perhaps hostile to it, it would produce a fearful, an intolerable rivalry. The Pope is out of Paris, and this is very well; he is neither in Madrid nor Vienna, and this is why we support his spiritual authority. The same can be said in Madrid and Vienna. Can we believe that if he were in Paris, the Viennese or the Spaniards would consent to receive his decisions? Every one is glad that he lives outside his domain, and that while living away from his, he does not dwell in that of his rivals, that he resides in that ancient Rome, independent of the emperors of Germany, independent of the kings of France or the kings of Spain, holding the balance between Catholic sovereigns, leaning always a little towards the strongest, but rising as soon as the strongest be- comes an oppressor. This has been the work of centuries, and it has been well done. For the 280 The Peoples Ark. government of souls, it is the best, the most bene- ficent institution that could be imagined."* See, my friends, what, in the calm of reason, were the opinions of the greatest political and military genius of modern times; and when, later, ambition had turned his head, you know how cruelly he expiated the dethronement and captivity of Pius VII. Well, that political independence of the Pope, which was, is, and ever shall be in the wishes and necessities of the Catholic universe, was prepared by God from the accession of Constantine. After a very short stay in Rome, the idea occurred to that prince to build Constantinople, and there he established himself in the year 330. Later, when the empire was divided, the Emperors of the West resided at Milan or Ravenna, in preference to Rome, so plainly did the general opinion say to them, that their throne figured badly by the side of that of St. Peter. The greater number of those emperors, down to the dethronement of Augustulus by Odoacer in 476, having by their feebleness and bestial manners drawn on themselves the contempt of their subjects and of barbarians, it naturally came to pass that Rome and Italy had recourse to the popes, as their only refuge in those disastrous times. Thus, in 452, when Attila, after having ravaged Gaul and two-thirds of Italy, prepared to make Rome a heap of ruins, the Emperor Valentinian III., * History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M. Thiers, Book xii. Twenty-First Entertainment. 281 his generals, patricians and people, trembling with fear, could find only the Pope St, Leo, who would go to meet him who called himself, with so much reason, "The Scourge of God." The Pontiff's words really obtained from the terrible idolater what could not have been won by ten Roman legions. Three years later, when Valentinian III., who amused himself with criminal pleasures while the Barbarians were desolating the empire on all sides, had been massacred, and Rome delivered by his wife to Genseric, the Vandal king, it was again St. Leo, who, in a great measure, disarmed the cruelty of the most furious enemy of the Roman name. Will it be said that the popes cunningly em- ployed their influence, and the services rendered by them, in order to attain to a temporal throne ? Nothing could be more opposed to all historical monuments. After the fall of the Western Empire, the popes incessantly conjured the Eastern em- perors to undertake the defence of Italy, so horri- bly devastated by the Barbarians. Finally, in 752, that is, two centuries after the emperors of Constantinople, devoting themselves, some to the pursuit of filthy pleasures, others to the reconstructing of the religion of Jesus Christ, had ceased to occupy themselves with Italy as little as if it did not exist, we see Pope Stephen II. invoking the aid of Pepin, the French king and father of the immortal Charlemagne, against the horrible devastations of Astolphus, king of the Lombards. Pepin, after some ineffectual remon- strances, crossed the mountains at the head of an army, obliged Astolphus to return what he had 24* 282 The Peoples Ark. taken from the patrimony of St. Peter, and to that patrimon} r , which already comprised the city of Rome, its dependencies and vast domains, he added, by a solemn donation, the twenty-two cities of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which he had re- conquered from the tyrant. Charlemagne, in 774, flew to the succor of Pope Adrian, again oppressed by Desiderius, king of the Lombards, whom he made prisoner, united the Lombard crown to his, confirmed the donation made by his father, added much thereto, and thus put the final seal to the pontifical monarchy, the most pure in its origin, and that which, even according to the testimony of the best Protestant writers, saved the society of the Middle Ages ; that which is still the most neces- sary to the peace of Europe, according to the con- firmed judgment of the most sensible politicians. Such is not, I am sure, my friends, the idea which modern demagogues have given you of the temporal crown of the Pope, which they have at last succeeded in placing on the head of their absolute king. Instead of Pius IX. repeating to the universe by his words and his virtues, the law of justice and charity, which binds sovereigns as much as subjects, those gentlemen would have as the head of Young Italy, Mazzini, giving to all the revolutionists of Europe the signal for pillage and proscription. Not being able to answer in detail the numerous objections that have, in these latter days, been urged against the temporal dominion of the popes, I pray you, gentlemen, to indicate to me those that have made the greatest impression on your minds. Twenty- First Entertainment. 283 TEACHER. In the declamations with which we have been deafened since the war against the Roman Repub- lic of Mazzini, the greatest weight seems to have been attached to four points : first, the gospel, par- ticularly the words, My kingdom is not of this world: secondly, the right of the Romans to govern them- selves after their own fashion ; thirdly, the abuses of the Pontifical government; fourthly, the con- tinual altercations of the pope with the temporal powers, for the preservation of his domain and the ecclesiastical property. It is asked why the pope is so tenacious of his royal power, and if he would not do better to imtate Jesus Christ, who, though Master of the universe, wished not to have a place whereon He could rest His head. Is not the charge of govern- ing the immense empire of souls great enough, difficult enough in itself? and by adding to it that of the administration of a state, is not the pope placed in the impossibility of providing adequately for the spiritual good of the Church, and the tem- poral good of his subjects ? Hence arise crying abuses, and the complaints of the Romans, de- prived of their political rights. To the union of these two powers are also attributed the scandal- ous struggle of the papacy against the empire in the Middle Ages, and the abuse of excommunica- tion, which has ended in producing contempt for these two powers and for spiritual arms. Such, sir, are the principal objections now current, and they have made impression on even well-disposed minds. 284 The Peoples Ark. PLATO PUNCH INELLO. As I have answered to the first three objections in a former work,* I shall now give but a brief summary. First. If it were necessary that the pope should represent in everything the life of the Divine Saviour, it would then be necessary that, instead of governing the Church, he should devote himself to preaching in cities, towns, and villages, and, at the end of the third year, expire on a cross. My kingdom is not of this world. What is the meaning of this reply of Jesus Christ to Pilate's question, Art thou the King of the Jews ? It signi- fies that the Son of God had not descended from heaven to reestablish the temporal throne of David and sit thereon. To conclude that by those words Jesus Christ interdicted the heads of His church from occupying, in the course of time, a temporal throne necessary to the free exercise of their spiritual power, is pure nonsense. Secondly. Without doubt the charge of watch- ing over the progress of thousands of dioceses disseminated throughout the globe, would be sufficient for the most active pope, but first find him a place where he could fulfil this charge, at a distance from every influence that could be suspected by the governments with which he must treat; and, yet more, provide him with the funds necessary for his administration, the vastest in extent that has ever been seen. I have heard well-disposed persons, who believe * Beveil du Peuple. Lesson xiii. Twenty- First Entertainment. 285 that all might be conciliated by limiting the domain of the pope to the city of Rome, the port of Civita-Vecchia, and the small territory that unites them. As to the expenses of the adminis- tration, they might be provided for, say they, by the contributions of Catholic states. This is an after-dinner-speech, that is all. A pope, who from his windows could hear the Qui vive of Austrian, Neapolitan, or Piedmontese sentinels, might, perhaps, be able to go to the cabinets of Austria, Naples, or Piedmont; but I doubt very much if that would be agreeable to the true Catholics of those nations, and 1 am very sure, that it would not at all suit the French, the Belgians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Irish, or Ameri- cans, etc. A pope paid by governments, which, at the first remonstrance, could deprive him of that salary^ is not at all the Catholics' idea. To them nothing is so acceptable as that which has been the work of centuries and has been so well done, according to Napoleon's expression. Honor, then, to those French soldiers, who in 1849 went to defend against bandits and plunderers the work wrought by time, and by their fathers of the eighth century, and to repair the scandals of February 1798 and July 1809. Thirdly. They speak of the abuses produced in the Papal states by the union of the two powers in the same person. But who are they who exclaim most vehemently against those abuses? They are honorable Roman nobles, lawyers, and citizens, who as soon as masters of those states, 286 The Peoples Ark. have spread therein shame, ruin, and devastation, and delivered them to the power of the most con- temptible revolutionists of Europe. You tell me that foreign governments have themselves solicited the reform of those abuses. Yes, all our liberal governments of the past and the present, have complained of the Pontifical government, and they have had great reason. The pope had no Chambers to discuss, during eight months of the year, points of liberty and economy, and in the meantime, to double and treble the public burdens and charges. With the small revenues of a small state, he found means adequate to the administration of the Catholic universe, to the progress of the Church in the five parts of the globe, and to preserve to his capital the reputation of a city of marvels, the paradise of artists, and of the fine arts, the asylum open to all the unfortunates, to all the fallen or persecuted great ones. They, on the contrary, knew only how to plunge themselves into debt, to ruin their people morally and materially, and to open under our feet the abyss of revolutions. How could they regard the temporal administration of the popes other than as a censure of their own ? Cer- tainly, I do not pretend to say that the papal government is free from all abuse. Where is there a perfect government ? I shall not, I think, be referred to the constitutional government, which, even by Italy's experience of it, is now well known to be the best opportunity to proud, rapacious, and prating demagogues, to destroy with impunity and in their very foundations, the religion, morality, Twenty-First Entertainment. 287 public liberty, finances, and moral and material well-being of a state, until the time when those preyers on the public vitals shall give place to the slaughterers of humanity, and substitute the scaf- fold for the tribunal. That the moderate revolu- tionists of Italy and elsewhere, should be anxious to subject the pope to a constitutional charter which would permit some lawyers to arrange the law for him, and make an end with one blow, of the government of the Church and State, by a refusal of subsidies, can be well understood, but it could never give pleasure either to the Catholic world, or the true Roman people. The latter showed what they thought of the Pontifical govern- ment when they celebrated its restoration in 1850, by rejoicings the most cordial, the most sponta- neous that have ever been seen. Among many advantages of which I have spoken elsewhere, the Roman people has that of having always at its head an enlightened, virtuous, and Christian prince, obliged to draw from the gospel his rule of conduct, and to reflect often on the terrible account he shall have to render of his sub- lime functions of priest and king. This guarantee is, after all, the best. Such a sovereign may not, perhaps, be able to cover the seas with his fleets, nor fill his ports with the riches of the universe, but there shall not be seen, as in liberal and wealthy England, one-fifth of his subjects a prey to hunger, or a million of men swept away by star- vation in one single year. In fine, my friends, whatever may be the incon- veniences of the pope's temporal government, they 288 The Peoples Ark. will never equal the frightful inconveniences that would result from giving, as the guardian of the unity of faith and of religious liberty, the sole mother of all liberty, a pope, politically subject to one or many powers. I have shown you, and it is as clear as the sun at noon-day, that such a pope would be acceptable to no one. He would not suit the sub- jects of the government that ruled the pope; for every Catholic is extremely anxious that the direc- tor of his soul should not take the orders of Caesar. That such a pope would be suspected by other powers and their subjects, we need not say. Finally, when Pius IX. was in Gaeta, was it not said that he was ruled by the court of Naples, although King Ferdinand took the most minute and most delicate precautions to avoid giving any pretext for such a rumor ? The last objection relative to the contests of the popes with the emperors and other sovereigns ot the Middle Ages, requires an answer more in detail; let us refer it, my friends, to the following enter- tainment. TWENTY-SECOND ENTERTAINMENT. Cause of the contests between the Holy See and the ancient governments — pretended abuse of excommunica- TION — End and consequences of religious spoliation — Value of the reproaches addressed to the clergy. ^NE is deceived in all and everything, my friends, when he assigns the temporal do- minion of the popes as the cause of the struggles between the priesthood and the empire. On the contrary, the necessity for the Catholic universe to have a head spiritually inde- pendent of crowns, and consequently wearing a crown, is most clearly proved by the history of those dissensions. What, in effect, was wanted by those honest German emperors against whom Gregory VII. and his successors struggled so courageously, and at the risk of their lives ? They wished to give Europe a new religion and a Church after their own fancy. They arrogated to themselves the right to sell bishoprics, archbishoprics, and abbeys, to the accomplices of their debaucheries and their oppressions of their people. They pretended, above all, to the right of making the popes. The em- peror Henry IV., had, among other imperial fancies, that of wishing to change his wife at every turn, 25 289 290 The People's Ark. and to effect this, he employed means too horrible to be mentioned, which at length forced his son, Conrad, already elected king, to wage war against him. Let any one read the history of that mon- ster and of Gregory VII. , written some years ago by the Protestant Voigt, and he will see whether it was possible for the pope to display more pa- tience towards a sovereign, who, by his incredible excesses, had arrayed against him all the members of his family, and all the honest subjects of the empire. To understand the conduct of the popes of the Middle Ages towards crowned heads, it would be necessary to know one thing: — all the Christian peoples of those times of ignorance, as they are called, a little more intelligent than we in matters of order and liberty, had a constitution, of which the first article was: "That sovereign, who by his wicked attempts against faith and morals, shall incur papal excommunication, shall have one year in which to amend and procure absolution ; this time of trial being elapsed, the States-general shall provide for his removal." That public right, agreed and sworn to by the sovereigns themselves at thejr coronation, did, without doubt, give room to some abuses ; but all the great publicists of Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and England, whether Protes- tant or Catholic, have united in saying : Without this public right, placed under the protection of the popes, Europe would never have become civilized, and before the twelfth century its barbarism would have given place to Mahometan barbarism. In the sixteenth century, when the Church was Twenty-Second Entertainment. 291 violently abolished in more than one-third of Europe, the Catholic sovereigns, envying the ab- solutism of Protestant princes, shook off the yoke of that public right which was such a restraint on their passions and those of their courtiers and mistresses. Not only did they wish no more of the pope's control and paternal intervention in political affairs, but they undertook to exclude him from ecclesiastical government, in making themselves the rulers of the Church in their respective states. What resulted from this, for themselves and their people ? As it is written in the book of life, that we are all subjects of the divine law, and that he who despises it, is delivered to the government of beasts,* so dynasties have freed themselves from Catholic restraint only to fall under the brutalizing yoke of courtiers and courtesans. They have been led by them from folly to folly, from turpitude to turpitude, until some have been smothered in filth, others delivered to the executioner; some have been expelled, others chained by constitutions and changed into ridiculous mummies. Their great power has fallen to the share of despotical assem- blies, which have achieved the ruin of states, under cover of moral and material reform. No, certainly, my friends, if any one has a right to laugh at the constitutions of the Middle Ages, which placed national liberties under the protection of the guardian of the evangelical charter, it is not the champion of absolute monarchy, the mother of disastrous revolutions; it is not the government * Psalm xxxi. 9. — xlviii. 13. 292 The People s Ark. of barristers, which deliver us to the plunderers of socialism; neither is it the people, obliged to pay- by its blood and sweat for the follies of monarchical or legislative despotism. Was not the excommunication decreed by the popes against a sovereign destitute of faith and morality, and a notorious oppressor of his subjects, a little better than a convention adjudging to death a weak king, whose only crime was that of occupy- ing a throne sullied by the orgies of his predeces- sors. The excommunication fulminated by the famous bull, In Ccena Domini, against all those who should establish in their lands new imposts, or should allow themselves to increase the old, unless in cases foreseen by the right, — was it not a little more efficacious for the relief of the people than the modern charters which say to them : "Every three or five years you shall elect men charged to increase every year the amount of your debt, of your taxes, and the number of officials despoiling you of your liberties ?" Let us now pass to the excommunications de- signed to defend the patrimony of the Holy Father. If the popes had employed those spiritual arms for the enlargement of their dominions, there would be reason to exclaim against the abuse, but evi- dently it was not so. Of all the ancient govern- ments of Europe, that of the pope w*as the only one, that, with every means of aggrandizement, contented itself with the territory which it had at the end of the eighth century, and had even relin- quished some provinces of it, such as Parma, Mantua, the island of Corsica, Venice and Istria, Twenty-Second Entertainment. 293 expressly contained in Charlemagne's donation. Do we need anything more to confound the decla- mations of the liberalists against the ambition of the popes ? But, we are told, they employed excommuni- cation against the sovereigns who attacked their domain, and was not that to abuse the spiritual sword to the profit of their temporal interests? Yes, for this they employed it, do still employ it, and we must hope will ever continue to do so. And first, robbery by force of arms, although a temporal affair, is none the less a violation of God's law, a criminal act, and, as such, subject to spiritual penalties in the Christian ; and because the spolia- tor, instead of being one individual, robbing his victim in the obscurity of the night, is a sovereign acting in the face of the universe, and causing himself to be followed by twenty thousand accom- plices,— is not this spoliation twenty thousand times more criminal, more worthy of punishment? You will, perhaps, allege in behalf of the prince, the condition of his state; but I answer: The con- dition of his state can be invoked by the simple malefactor, and not by the prince; theft is neither necessary nor suitable to the latter, but it is the trade, the condition of the former. If you think it well that justice condemn to the prison or the gallows, robbers of low condition, do not take it ill that the pope excommunicates the princes who try to replace the Seventh Commandment of God by this : The goods of others thou mayst take when thou canst do so with impunity. To these considerations, common to all property, 25* 294 The People s Ark. may be added another of much greater weight, when it deals with the temporal domain of the Holy See. And this consideration you have already seen, my friends ; it is that the pope's domain is the guarantee of his independence in spiritual, and by the same, the religious liberty of the Catholic universe. If, from the Lombard kings, Astolphus and Desiderius, down to the chiefs of the atheistical brigands of our day, you can find only one usurper of the states of the Holy See who has not proposed to himself to annihilate the papacy, and make it the docile instrument of his favorite passions, I beg you to name him to me, for I do not know one, although I have turned nearly all the pages of history. It is, then, clearly manifest, that if the popes had hesitated to draw the spiritual sword of excommunication against the usurpers of a prin- cipality which belongs far less to them than to God and the Catholic world, they would have failed in their duty. It is the same, in proportion, with all ecclesias- tical property. Destined by their donors for the support of the altars and their ministers, and the relief of the people, thus freed from the expenses of religious service, and from the obligation im- posed on them to assist the indigent, those pro- perties are a patrimony at once religious and national, which it imports us to declare inviolable. Again they have been placed, from their very origin, under the safeguard of Catholic laws, with the penalty of excommunication against the rav- isher, whoever he may be. This measure is as much in the interests of states as of the Church, Twenty-Second Entertainment. 295 inasmuch as the public and official robbery of ecclesiastical property always constitutes an at- tempt on the social and religious life of a people. First, an attempt on the religious life of a nation. What I said, a moment ago, of the invaders of the States of the Pope, is equally applicable to the despoilers of ecclesiastical goods. You will not find one, from the fourth century down to the radical Swiss and Italians of our day, who have not proposed to themselves either the destruction or subjection of the Church. The hangmen of atheism begin by disrobing the bishops and priests, and cutting off their hair, pre- paratory to cutting off their heads, or fastening them by a chain, which makes of the clergy a watch-dog, barking for the profit of the managers of the state. This is what I have elsewhere called the toilet of the condemned. And ought not the Church, who sees all this, to fulminate her anathe- mas against the sacrilegious brigands who wish to rob a nation of its most precious treasure — the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion? Secondly, an attempt on the social life of a nation. No society is possible without a great respect for the right of propriety. Now, when a government itself violently seizes on ecclesiastical property, the civil right of propriety is by the same act abolished. Those rulers who think they can confiscate religious property without endangering their own, because they have soldiers, while the Church has none, have against them three terrible systems of logic— that of heaven, that of the human conscience, and that of hell. 296 The People s Ark. Jesus Christ says: This government dees not wish that either I myself, my Church or my poor, should enjoy the right of property; — well, until there be complete separation, no one shall enjoy that right. Socialists, march on! The human conscience says: If the voluntary donations and offerings made to the altars to assure the perpetuity and independence of religious service, and the relief of the poor, may well be taken, there is a hundred times more reason to lay hold on the possessions of the king, duke, marquis, count, magistrate, lawyer, solicitor, manu- facturer, shopkeeper, etc. Then long live the socialists! Death to the obstinate proprietor! Satan says to his agents : If the robbery of the great defenders of property does not lead to uni- versal robbery and the slaughter of the human race, it will be our fault; — forward! When one has these three logicians against him, armed force can do nothing ; he must either boldly deny the principle, or bear the consequences and submit to the toilet of the condemned. One might doubt the divine justice, if the secularization of Church property by the higher classes, did not lead to the socialization of the fortunes of those classes by demagogism. What, then, does the Church do, when she anathematizes the invaders of religious property? She defends society against those blinded and savage men whom they call to pillage, massacre, and incendiarism. What, then, should a Catholic nation do? It ought to support with all its strength the claims of its common mother against Twenty-Second Entertainment. 297 the robbers, and neglect nothing to make them relinquish their prize. They must not permit themselves to be deceived by the high-sounding phrases by which those men seek to justify their odious robberies. What do the robbers of church property say? They never fail to allege the good of religion, the good of the state, the good of the people. Let us see what is in these sayings. First, the good of religion. The honor of the priesthood, and the exactitude of religious service, say those graspers, require that the priests be not distracted from their functions by the embarrass- ments of temporal affairs. In freeing them from those cares unworthy of priestly souls, and in pro- viding for their honest support, by means of the treasury, we render them an inappreciable service. Look at the French clergy! Is it not a model since it has been salaried ? This is the reasoning of those who wish to make the pope the head of a convent of cardinals, salaried by the powers, and placed under their high protec- tion. They know very well that a clergy paid by the state and deprived of the right of acquiring, remains necessarily below its high functions, even were it most eminent for its knowledge and virtues. They cite France ! Well, I most heartily sub- scribe to all their eulogies of its present clergy, provided they do not oppose it as a criticism on the French clergy of 1790; for the latter, with the miseries inseparable from the state of oppression in which they were so long held, remains none the less one of the glories of France and the Churchy 298 The Peoples Ark. and by the heroism of those who so nobly fell under the knife of the atheists, and the admirable conduct of those who w T ent among Protestant nations, particularly England, they combated anti- Catholic and anti-French prejudices, and opposed the spectacle of the highest virtues to the abomi- nable orgies of the sons-culottes \ and also, allow me to say, covered the scandal of the Voltarian man- ners of the greater number of the other emigres. The actual French clergy would, I doubt not, do the same in the like circumstances* but does it exercise the same influence over the people ? No, evidently not. This is precisely what we would wish, say the liberalists. Yes, but see what you would not wish. To the influence of the priests, who said in the name of God, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not take the goods of others, has succeeded the influence of those who say to the people, in the name of reason — Rob all the wealthy, and kill all those who shall resist ! And these two command- ments of the socialistic Decalogue would have been already executed, were it not for the zealous labors of the priesthood and the army. If you wish to know, my friends, how the salary has, in a great measure, destroyed religious in- fluence, I shall here adduce some of the most striking reasons." First: the extreme smallness of the state sub- sidies has, so far, produced a great gap in the ministry of the evangelical word ; now, where religion does not preach, evil passions teach. Secondly: the insufficiency of ecclesiastical sala- ries, known to every one and acknowledged by Twenty-Second Entertainment. 299 the state, has necessitated the establishment of a perquisite, which, however just it may be in itself and indispensable to those who receive it, is none the less odious? What could you expect? The people, also, have their whims. They will not murmur at judiciary perquisites or those of the university, no matter how large they may be; they will not find it too much to ruin themselves to pay for justice, for the doctor, or for the college, in order to obtain the redress of their wrongs, the reestablishment of their health, or that of their cattle, or to give a little better education to their children. But when there is question of the culture and religious care of their souls, they do not wish it should cost them anything. Thirdly: the support of churches and of all that belongs to worship, formerly sustained by religious foundations, is now imposed on the public. There are the pew-rents, and those endless collections, things necessary, but very melancholy in the house of our Heavenly Father, open to all, particularly to the poorer classes. These latter stay away and say: "Religion costs too much; it is for ladies and gentlemen." When one-half of the people say this, beware ! The spoliators of the Church allege, above all, the good of the state, the prosperity of agriculture, and the well-being of the agricultural populations. The charges and embarrassments of the treasury are such, say they, that, in order not to crush the people with taxes, it is necessary to take those pecuniary resources which the unenlightened piety of our ancestors has accumulated. In giving cir- 300 The People s Ark. culation to those large funds which languish in the hands of the clergy and the monks, we shall obtain the division of lands, raise the farmer to the rank of a proprietor, encourage agriculture, which is the people's wealth, etc., etc. It is very true that the number of the possessors of the soil is considerably increased since 1790, and why? It is true that the interests in landed pro- perty having been lost or forgotten in the revolu- tion, the spirit of speculation is carried elsewhere. Let a strong and intelligent government favor and free it from encumbrance, you would see the capi- talists fall upon it, remove an infinity of hedges and boundaries, and gather together much more landed property than they did under the ancient regime. The reason of this is, that it is only the rich who buy, and it is religion alone that can intervene between the strong and the feeble; hence wealth necessarily falls into the hands of the strong, who are the smaller number. It is very evident that in France, agriculture, far from following the progress of the population, has, until now, lan- guished under the weight of taxes and the tyranny of usury, and by the absence of arms and capital, which have been drawn to the great cities, to play their part in revolutions. Formerly a grain-grow- ing country, France is at present in want of it, although it possesses now what it had not formerly, the rich substitute of the potato. The number of the proprietors is greater ; be it so: but are the revenues of the properties more usefully employed to the profit of a greater number? The religious proprietors, however lazy they may Tiventy-Sccond Entertainment. 301 be called, consumed their revenues on the spot, caused all the arts and trades to flourish, provided for worship and education, and were the resources of the country in years of distress. Even suppos- ing that the great gentlemen, who have succeeded those idlers, manage the land much better, where do they go to spend their revenues? How do they employ them ? In the support of one of our most grievous social wounds ? — the devouring luxury of cities. "The farmer shall become a proprietor/' Yes, the farmers of the clergy and the monks, could, by their conduct, become good proprietors, and what is more, educate without expense their children who should show a liking for study; but the ninety- hundredths of our actual farmers and their children remain proletaries, and as they but too frequently resemble their masters in a religious point of view, they are socialists. Let us conclude, my friends. That those intrigu- ing and ambitious men who call themselves the state, and are only its pest, should find it to the interest of their pride and cupidity to despoil and humble the Church at the risk of drawing her anathemas on their head, I can conceive; but that the common people of the cities, and still more the country population, who know the state only by its officers of justice and its tax-gatherers, should behold those acts of spoliation with indifference, is what I cannot understand, and I find in it a proof of complete stupidity. What is the Church to you } my friends? Is she a stranger, whose interests are to be separated 26 302 The Peoples Ark. from yours ? No, certainly not ! The Church is manifestly your all — both for soul and body, for time and eternity. To recognize this, it is only necessary to open your eyes. What are the clergy, with all the imperfections and weaknesses from which the sacerdotal charac- ter does not entirely free our poor human nature ? They are your men by excellence, drawn nearly always from your class, leaving you for some years, only to return to dwell in the midst of you, like their Divine Master, full of grace and truth. They are obliged, by the solemn engagements which they take before God and men, to renounce all the hopes of this world, that they may live only for you. They procure you the first and greatest of all goods, even in regard to this world, that religious instruction which expands your ideas, elevates your heart, and prevents you from becom- ing, like the pagans, miserable slaves under the lash of the priests of vice and error. In opening to you the treasury of religious consolations which give so much peace to the soul, and are the gauge of the joys of heaven, they wage continual w 7 ar against your great spiritual and temporal enemies — your vices. You say: The priests, instead of being the min- isters of peace and charity, are nearly always in- tolerant, grumbling, discontented busybodies, who wish to meddle with everything. Yes, the priests are as intolerant as the physi- cians, as grumbling as the shepherd who sees the wolf coming, as discontented as the father who sees his children take to evil courses, and as med- Twenty-Second Entertainment. 303 dling as the mother who has an eye on the conduct of her daughters. What is the good physician? Is it he who seeing gangrene on your hand or foot, says : " It is nothing!" or is it he, who not tolerating it, opens his case of instruments, makes you cry aloud, but saves you ? Well, the gangrene on yourself, on your family, is drunkenness, impurity, idleness, envy, hatred, and the hideous wound of lawsuits. Those who, by their fair speeches foment those wounds among you, are your most formidable enemies. The priest who is afraid of those maladies, and makes every effort to apply a remedy to them, is your friend above all others. He does more than if he gave a bag of gold to your family. Vice and lawsuits would soon empty the bag; but virtue, even in the poorest family, does not allow hunger to enter. Your pastors are grumblers ! But if they do not complain of you when you go astray, they will be sure to hear the complaints of the Heavenly Father. If they complain of the good you are doing, you can denounce them to the bishop. But if it be for the evil by which you would draw upon yourself the reproaches of God and your conscience, and which would conduct you to mis- fortune, whither evil ever leads, believe me, profit by their advice, how bitter soever it may appear, and correct yourselves. They wish to domineer over all! What could you expect? It is in some measure their duty. The beauty of the religion of Jesus Christ is that it is for all, it must speak to every one, everywhere, 304 The People s Ark. and always. As she recognizes no right which does not impose duties, and as she wishes to give rights to all, it is necessary that she should teach to all their duties, and not only in a general way, but in their most minute details, since religious, civil and domestic society can dispense with gene- ral virtues, but has great need of virtues in detail. I acknowledge, my friends, that of all known religions, the Catholic religion is the boldest and most exacting. Have I not told you that her first apostles had scarcely entered into Rome, ere they went to the very palace of Nero, and formed a little church of saints from among his courtiers and mistresses? What imprudence! and how dearly did they pay for it ! for history tells us, that Nero, naturally very curious, and not too firm a believer in the gods of the empire, had not at first regarded the new religion with an unfavorable eye, until he was rendered furious by the conversion of one of the victims of his lust. What must plead excuse for the pretensions of the Catholic religion, is that the submission of everyone to her precepts would make the world a terrestrial paradise, as we have already seen. Do not forget the Mayor's maxim, which in itself is worth a book: "Where God does not direct, Satan governs." And as the Catholic religion could not exist without the Catholic priesthood, you must understand that all the moral and material power which they draw from their office is drawn for your benefit. When bishoprics, abbeys, chapters, and parishes are richly endowed and gifted with great influence, Twenty-Second Entertainment. 305 who draw the greatest profit from this ? You, my friends, to whom other careers are almost inter- dicted. The Church, to open to her children a way to the highest dignities, even that of the pope, asks of them only virtue and intelligence. You are perhaps aware that among so many immortal priests, abbots, bishops, cardinals, and popes, a great number were born in even a lower condition than was our Divine Lord. And those children of the people having attained that dignity, could they well forget the people's interests without resisting the cry of religion and nature ? And what use do they generally make of their large revenues? Do they spend them in foolish extrava- gance, as is but too frequently done by the princes of the world ? or do they hoard them up for the benefit of their heirs ? No, certainly not ; the scandal given by some priests who have dishonored their ministry and ruined their families, in wishing, not to relieve them, but to enrich them with the gold of the sanctuary, should not prevent us from recognizing the truth of the account rendered of the Church as a proprietor in presence of her spoliators, an account which I have thus drawn up elsewhere: "The secular and regular clergy had founded all, the spoliators have melted all ; the people are obliged to buy all." MAYOR. For my part, I thank you, sir, for your reflec- tions on ecclesiastical property, and the necessity for having a clergy influential enough to speak of religion and morality to those who need it most. 26* 306 The People s Ark. That among those who govern, many dislike the severe lessons of the priest on the management of affairs and the public revenues, we can understand; but there is so much the more reason why we should say to the priest : Speak boldly and loudly to those gentlemen, and provided that you hold to the words of the Gospel against thieves, hypocrites and oppressors, fear nothing ! Those nations so happy as to have preserved their ecclesiastical and other foundations, would do very wrong were they not to cry out to those who wish to renew the brigandage of former times : Beware of touching them; if not, there shall be a great uproar! As to those, who, for the last century have been eating their golden goose, it would seem that for them there is but one way of extricating themselves from their trouble, — that is full and entire liberty for the religion of the majority and those of the minorities, to receive, acquire, possess and ad- minister the funds destined for the expenses of worship, the education of youth, and the exercise of benevolence. This would have the immense advantage of rapidly lessening the amount of^taxes on the budget, of reanimating the spirit of religion, and devotedness to the public good, a spirit kept alive only by works and sacrifices — of making a reality of that liberty of religion and conscience which has been so long decreed; in fine, of arresting the forced march of our administration towards so- cialism. Some rulers seem to recognize the evil ; would to Heaven that they might also see the remedy and hesitate not to apply it! Twenty-Second Entertainment. 307 Regarding the States of Sardinia, which would enter, it is said, on the way of revolution by the ordinary door, that is to say, by striking the Church, I should be much pleased if you would say a word on the laws about to be published there for the abolition of ecclesiastical privileges and immunities, and the reduction of the number of feasts recognized by the state. It seems that they have been rather hasty, and that in not wishing to negotiate with the pope on the subject, they have done wrong in the method; but is the prin- ciple really so bad? Privileges in matters of jus- tice have in them something odious, and the priest who has taught us that there should be but one weight, one measure, one justice for all, ought he to hold that there should be two? Does the honor of the holy place require that it should become an assured refuge for robbers ? With our manners and present necessities, is not the multiplication of feasts a grave inconvenience? Such, sir, is what is said. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. My entertainments being addressed to my audi- ence, that is to say, the universality of Catholic people, you understand, sir, that I can occupy myself with a particular state only in view of those principles. However, as the privilege of the eccle- siastical court, the immunity of holy places, and the holy days, belong to Catholic principles, I will say something about them in the next entertain- ment. TWENTY-THIRD ENTERTAINMENT. Reasons for the privileges of the ecclesiastical tribunal — Immunity of the holy place — Of the number of festi- vals — What the people gain by the abasement of the clergy — European lawsuit. ^HE gratuitous privilege, that is to say, the privilege granted to one person or class and unreasonably refused to others, is an odious thing. The Catholic Church has never wished any such ; she desires that the rights should be proportioned to the obligations. The onerous privilege which is given only by reason of the charge, and tends solely to facilitate its accomplishment, is pure justice to him to whom it is granted, and evidently turns to the public good, if the charge be public. Now, my friends, such is the privilege of the tribunal established for bishops and priests. This privilege exists, and should exist, for all profes- sions really exceptional. The most liberal legis- lators and friends of equality have granted it, not only to the heads of state, but also to members of legislative, university, and military bodies, to prin- cipal officials and others. It is everywhere under- stood that it is but just to give to citizens, compe- 308 Twenty-Third Entertainment. 309 tent judges, subject to special laws and duties; it is everywhere understood that the public service could not allow 7 important functionaries to be dis- turbed in their employments without serious cause, and that it would never do to leave them at the mercy of the vexations and cabals of their subor- dinates. Well, I ask you, my friends, have not the bishop and priest, charged by God and the universal Church to intimate to kings, and their ministers, as well as to the least of the citizens, that law r to which all greatness should bow profoundly, — the bishop and priest, victims of the public salvation from their early youth even unto death, — the bishop and priest, who are, by their state, men of God and of humanity, the ministers of that Christian republic whose head is in Rome, whose citizens are in the whole universe ; have not those men, I say, a right to some regard? Do not the spiritual, and also the temporal interests of the human race, of every state, family, and individual (for the priest is the debtor to all) exact, that in a state making profession of Catholicity, the bishop may not be dragged before public tribunals, or before a beardless judge, by the first comer, and for whatever he may choose? Would you, my friends, think it proper that your pastor, who has to wage war against every vice, should be obliged to go before tribunals to reply to all the complaints and interpellations of vice? Is it to be desired that that man, who is by duty the settler of your enmities and lawsuits, should be placed at the discretion of those officers, solid- 3 io The Peoples Ark. tors, attorneys, and lawyers, who live only by your enmities and lawsuits ? You say: "If he be innocent, he will be ac- quitted !" — Yes, he will be acquitted, but it is none the less true that w 7 hile he is on the roads and streets, he will not be able to attend to your sick and your children. While he is preparing his defence, he will not be able to write the Sunday sermon, and if he prepare it, instead of speaking of your spiritual maladies and touching them to the quick, he will be strongly tempted to speak to you of trifles. Of all that has been said and written on the subject of the Piedmontese law, I shall speak of only two follies, the one of the people, the other of the parliament. After the publication of the law, a peasant, who was a passably good Christian, said, after reading it: O! if they stop here, the evil will not be great; we shall know a little better what the priests are doing! — Good man, if you are curious to know what the priests will do, I will tell you, replied Plato Punchinello, who was there. The priest with a Catholic heart in a young body, will say to his bishop: My Lord, allow me to go and evan- gelize the infidels. The bishop will at the, first request, answer, No ! At the second, he will say : Yes, my son, go, and may God bless your steps ! The pries', Catholic in heart, but feeble in health, or broken down by age, will remain as in the past, and some time or other he will be imprisoned or banished as rebellious to the laws. Those priests who wish the peace which God Twenty-Third Entertainment. 311 does not give, will conform themselves to the will of the statesmen, and make every effort to hold their sheep while being sheared, re-sheared and skinned, until there come a socialistic chief to say to you: Poor victims, arm yourselves with your guns, scythes, and axes, and make such slaughter of the priests and those leeches of the state, that there shall not remain a vestige of them ! What he will say, you will not do, but others will. Then you shall be at the mercy of the devil, for Jesus Christ will deny the nation that has denied him. The parliamentary folly is this : The partisans of law in the two houses are ever saying: The jus- tice of the state must be extended to all its subjects without distinction. The justice of the state! That a lawyer who has read only the law of Pagan Rome, in which the will of the sovereign, whether he was Titus or Nero, was the principle of all justice; — that a lawyer who knows only certain jurists of the time of Louis XIV., declaring that the king is the supreme source of all justice in the state, should utter those ex- travagances of wretched servilism, is all well and good. But a nation which has drawn from the Gospel its ideas of justice, cannot accept those maxims without degrading itself, without meriting to pass under the yoke of the Grand Turk, who says to a Cadi: "Strangle that man," and sees himself obeyed, in virtue of Mussulman justice. Let us hearken again to the voice of history. When a great nation was bowed under the justice of a Louis XIV., trifling with the laws of Church and state, and causing his natural children to be 312 The Peoples Ark. legitimated and worshipped; when it afterwards submitted to the morality of a Louis XV., causing hundreds of young girls to be dragged away by the police; girls whose support and dishonor cost millions to the state ; while at the same time, the civil magistracy caused the sacred tabernacles to be broken open, and the Holy Viaticum to be borne to obstinate heretics between four officers of justice; when, I say, a great nation acted thus, God, in order to bring it to a sense of duty, per- mitted it to fall, for a time, under the rule of Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Hebert, Chaumette, Carrier, etc., etc. It is indispensable that the head of a Christian nation content himself with the title of minister of God for tlie exercise of justice in conformity with laws, themselves confirmed by the Christian con- science. It must be openly recognized that the supreme president of all tribunals is Jesus Christ, who says to the magistrates : It is less to the king and his ministers than to me, the Judge of judges, that you must render account of your sentences ! — This is what constitutes the greatness of a king, the greatne^ of magistrates, the great- ness of a nation. As soon as they deviate from it, they advance towards revolutionary justice, the murder of kings, magistrates, and all the liberties of a people. That justice thus understood, should be exer- cised in the name of God and the state, is very good; that it should be exercised on all the citi- zens of the state in absolutely the same manner, with the exception of those reserved cases which Twenty- Third Entertainment. 313 Iiave been everywhere set aside, as I have said above, is also very good ; but have not those who, -above and beyond the quality of citizens are min- isters of the universal religion, in the state and out of the state, and who pay for this title by im- mense services, — have not those, I say, some right to be included in the exceptional cases? It is necessary, you say, that the priest should be subject to the common law. To subject to the common law the citizen who remains in the common vocation, is all well and good ; but to subject to it in everything, one who, for the general good, lives in an exceptional state, con- tracts very onerous obligations, and submits him- self to a special and most severe discipline, is not only ingratitude, but injustice; it is a violation of that principle you pretend to establish — equality of burdens. To say to the bishops or priests, in the face of a nation : " The law recognizes you merely as citizens," is to despoil them of their religious cha- racter ; it is legal atheism, for every one is a priest, where the law no longer recognizes any. For the pleasure of humbling the Church of the Pope, they will enlarge that of Proudhon and Mazzini; — it is, I think, a bad bargain. Finally, I see danger of the total destruction of a nation, in which the gentlemen of the pen would cause to depend unreservedly on the king's tribu- nals, those whose mission it is to say to the highest functionaries, and even to kings: "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not be impure, thou shalt not rob the people, etc/' 3i 4 The Peoples Ark. Is this to say, that the clergy must be completely exempt from secular legislation ? Certainly not ; such have never been the pretensions of the priest- hood; such are not its interests well understood. As the holy unction is not a warrant of impecca- bility in him who has received it, and as it would be only an aggravating circumstance in the priest who should stain himself with crime, it must not be a warrant of impunity. How then can be recognized the two great in- terests, — the independence of the religious ministry, and the good service of justice? There is not an earnest thinker who will not reply: It is a subject for an agreement between the two powers, and it is very probable, that, in the mutable part of her discipline, the Church would limit herself to the guarantees necessary to the freedom and respect due to the sacerdotal office, and would make a good bargain of the rest. It is the same, my friends, with the privilege of immunity for the holy place. To say absolutely that nothing must retard the march of justice, is pure despotism. Woe to the people among whom nothing retards the course of justice! To say that nothing should be sacred to justice, is legal athe- ism; it is an insult to the conscience of the human race; for all nations have recognized, in one manner or other, the right of asylum in their temples, as the Piedmontese lawyers learned from an old and brave general.* The Catholic conscience does not suffer that the * Gen. d'Aviernoz. Twenty- Third Entertainment. 315 temples in which the immolated Lamb hears our prayers and unites them to His, should ever be- come a den of thieves, or the theatre of acts of violence and scenes of carnage between refugees and the ministers of justice. How can we recon- cile these two things? As it has always been * done, — by a treaty between the two powers charged to provide for the honor of God's house, and for public security. I pass in silence over some beautiful considera- tions which might be made on the importance of the right of asylum in our times of faction and revolutionary storms. I pass equally over the great lessons of history, among others, that of the proud eunuch Eutropius, favorite minister of the Emperor Arcadius, violating by his laws and acts the right of Christian asylum, and obliged, some days afterwards, to have recourse to it, in order to retard his own death. I come to the question of feasts. How is it that the people, in whose name the reduction of the number of feasts is demanded, have always found that they had not enough of them ? How is it that where the reduction had been legitimately effected by a concordat, as in France, it took years for the two powers to obtain submission to the law? We have, in fact, the police reports which state, that, in crowded locali- ties, despite the measures taken by bishops and magistrates, pastors and mayors, the people forced the hand of the priests , and compelled them by threats to return to the ancient religion. They had, nevertheless, at that time, the well- 31 6 The Peoples Ark. known will of the pope, and besides, the sword of Napoleon. Those who have studied the history of Catholic worship, know very well that more than the half of our feasts are of popular command, and that there had been holidays in fact, long before they were of precept. And why so ? Ah ! it is because a Catholic people has an instinctive consciousness of two great truths : first, the time consecrated to the religious culture of souls, conduces greatly to the cultivation of the fields, and the good employment of wealth ; secondly, in proportion as a Christian people becomes civilized and progresses in the arts, it can moderately diminish material works, without prejudice to its well-being. I shall not undertake to develop these two truths, which I have touched on elsewhere,* and which your own good sense can investigate. How does it happen, then, that everywhere is demanded an increase of working days for the people ? The palpable reason is this : When, by the enfeeblement of Catholic belief which can alone make labor acceptable to all, and place limits to the thirst for gold and pleasure, the number of idlers, misers, and voluptuaries is immeasurably increased; — when by the boundless depravity of manners, a great number of workmen are drawn from the nutritive labors of a people to be applied to factitious wants, or to work at manufactures lucrative to the master ; — when, by the system of administrative centralization, the state is become * Science of Life, t. Twenty-Third Entertainment. 317 a hive, in which the drones, which do nothing but eat and hum, nearly equal in number the honey- bees, it is highly necessary that the people work the six days of the week, a great part of the nights, and even on Sunday; otherwise famine enters the country, and the peasant cannot pay his taxes. See, my friends, what you gain by the abasement of the clergy, who are your only fampart against the oppressive tendencies of the influential classes. All the power and consideration taken from them, passes necessarily to their enemies, who try to free themselves from pretended clerical despotism, only to render themselves absolute masters of the religious and material interests of a people. Once that those new popes shall have united in their hands both the cross and the sword, the catechism and the civil code, what shall happen? That which we see in England, and in all countries that have Anglicanized themselves : — to the Catholic religion, which preaches to all the law of justice and fraternal charity, shall succeed two religions ; the egotistical religion of gold and pleasure in the higher classes, and the brutalizing religion of forced labor and of hunger among the masses. The latter sink beneath the condition of the slaves of antiquity. In fact, the slaves belonged to their masters, who were interested in preserving those machines which they could not replace, except at great expense, while the English manufacturer is only embarrassed in the choice among that laboring population whom hunger places at his discretion. He naturally prefers the machines which promise 27* 318 The Peoples Ark. him the most labor at the least expense; he uses and abuses them according to his good pleasure, and as soon as they are out of order, he throws them aside and takes others. When the capital alone offers fifty thousand young zvomen who consent to ivork eighteen hours to earn seven cents y is there any fear that they shall be in want of laboring machines? In a state, in which, thanks to the influence of the Catholic priesthood, the Christian spirit is still powerful, it is not the same. There the heartless speculator cannot obtain permission to stow in infected workshops, thousands of individuals of both sexes, the greater number children, to draw gold from them ; there the well-dressed knaves and libertines, who keep holiday the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, and clamor against the holidays of the feasts, are neither numerous nor considerable enough to become statesmen; there they are very careful not to confide the role of legislators to those who live by the great number of the laws, and the ignorance of the people re- garding those laws; there the government is wise enough to limit itself to the doing of that which the citizens, corporations and provinces cannot do, neither does it place the treasury under charge of an army of officials who devour one-half the public moneys, in order to rob the people of their faith, their morals and tleir liberties. What is the result of this state of things, my friends? It is the general good. As one of your proverbs says: "When every one wishes to bear a little of the burden, no one is hurt. ,, Every one laboring more or less Twenty-Third Entertainment. 319 usefully, and being able to enjoy the fruit of his labor, the people are at leisure to breathe and to refresh their soul more frequently in raising it towards God. If there be excess in religious fes- tivals, the clergy, who are by principle enemies to excess, and to whom those feasts are days of toil, lend themselves willingly to reforms operated by competent authority. Such was the case in the Sardinian states. Sup- pose that the Concordat concluded with the Holy See by the Sardinian government had not suffi- ciently remedied the abuses complained of, nothing prevented them from supplying it by a new agree- ment. But that would not suit the heads of the English Cabinet, their ally Mazzini, nor the Pied- montese lawyers, invested by constitutional statute with parliamentary omnipotence. The noble Lords Russell and Palmerston, inconsolable at seeing the fire, which they had been fanning in Italy for three years, almost extinguished, were anxious to re- kindle it. Mazzini, not content with the forty or fifty millions stolen from Rome, was well pleased to continue his trade, and make Piedmont feed his bands. Those high personages then said to the Piedmontese ministers : " If you wish us to aid you in raising the kingdom of Upper Italy, so much compromised by your defeat at Novara, hasten to break with the pope, imprison the bishops and priests, and allow the press to protestantize the country, by ruining all respect for religion and morality." — " Bravo! bravo!" exclaimed the lawyers of the country, reinforced by all those of Italy, "the priests have made us live long enough under the 320 The Peoples Ark. despotic laws of God and the Church ; let us prove to them that there is a law superior to all laws — the law of the state, when we make it ourselves !" What will be the result of such a system for the Sardinian states, composed of incongruous parts, which can be firmly united only by the cement of religion, and the constant wisdom of an impartial government? There is no one who does not see it, except those blinded men, who labor for the destruction of religion, and one of the most illus- trious sovereign houses. Finally, this is only one incident of the great lawsuit now going on in Europe between Catho- licity — which says: The mighty and the lozvly, the strong and the feeble, are all the property of God and of Jesus Christ, and owe an equal submission to His law! — and the anticatholic parties, who all say, in one way or other: The earth, with all its wealth and its inhabitants, is delivered over to the strongest and most clever. This trial, entered on by preceding generations, must be decided before the end of this century, as I have said elsewhere.* As this suit is of the deepest interest to you, and as its object is to know whether you and your children shall live under the civilizing law of Catho- licity, or the brutalizing code of swine and tigers, it is necessary that I place before your eyes the diverse phases of the case, and signalize the prin- cipal authors of the terrible imbroglio, whence we can come forth only by the way of Rome, or that of the tomb. This is what I propose to do in the following entertainment. * Reveil du Peuple. TWENTY-FOURTH ENTERTAINMENT. Labors of modern Europe to secularize everything — Who have undertaken this great work, and what they have gained by it. 'O secularize the temporalities of the Church, to secularize the instruction of youth, to secularize the public benevolence, this is the modern spirit," was said some time ago by a Belgian minister. He expressed a great truth. To secularize the temporalities of the Church, that is, to erase the Church from the catalogue of proprietors, to place her at the charge of the people, and under the hand of the government; to secularize instruction and benevolence, that is, to draw from religion the minds and hearts of youth and the masses, and to make it only an odious and intolerable means of polity; such has been the constant end of politics ever since it has ceased to be Christian. Royalty, nobility, magis- tracy, and citizens, have labored hard for it, with- out reflecting on the result ; but Satan, the great master of antichristian politics, preordained all the efforts of those noble workers to the furtherance of his favorite plan, the extermination of the Church, a prelude to the extermination of Europe. 321 322 The Peoples Ark. If he has not yet succeeded, it is not his fault, nor that of kings, nor that of the nobility, nor that of the magistracy, nor that of the citizens, nor even the fault of the national clergy, who have but feebly resisted the invasions of secular despotism; it is the fault of Jesus Christ and His vicar. Let us see the part that each class has taken in the work of destruction, and the reward it has received. In those states that accepted, or rather, that submitted to the Protestant Reformation, the sove- reigns attained the end with one bound. They did more than declare themselves popes; they set themselves up as absolute masters of the religious and temporal affairs of their subjects, and caused to be proscribed, broken on the wheel, hanged, drawn, and quartered, such as called in question their spiritual or temporal supremacy. If they did not immediately gather the worthy fruits of their conduct, it was because that minds, still wholly Catholic, had not imbibed the logic of revolution. England, however, soon exercised the natural right of a country against the sovereign who makes himself God: she cut off the head of Charles L, and abolished the royalty. The repub- lic not succeeding very well, she has returned to the monarchical form; but in order not to expose herself to the sad necessity of decapitating the royal person, she decapitates the crown ; she makes it an honorary bauble, and the noble lords and baronets say : The king shall reign, but we will govern in his name and for our profit. In fine, the English Protestant royalty, guilty of Twenty -Fourth Entertainment. 323 having dethroned Jesus Christ by the abolition of 'the Catholic charter, has been justly subjected to the outrages of the scaffold and of exile ; and reduced, since 1688, to be only a constitutional fiction, necessary to maintain the absolute reign of thirty or forty thousand lords over nearly one hundred and thirty millions of native and colonial subjects; she is probably destined to perish under the ruins of a political system marvellously con- ceived for the brutalizing of the masses. As to the other Protestant sovereignties, if they have been able to sustain their supremacy up to this time, they have exhausted all their expedients. Their subjects enlightened by that socialism which is the soul of Protestantism, utter now only the cry of death against the usurpers of the civil and idigious sovereignty, which they claim for every one. I have said elsewhere that before the year 1900, those crowns shall have become Catholic, or they shall no longer exist; I hold to my words. In Catholic states the work of secularization advanced less quickly but more surely, by the care with which legality was substituted for brute strength. Their sovereigns, professing to be the defenders of the Church in their states, naturally obtained a larger share in the administration of ecclesiastical temporalities. The appetite coming in the eating, what they had in their hands they soon gathered in their arms, then under their feet. They were admirably aided in that enterprise by the magistracy, that adorer of Roman law, and hence, the natural enemy of Catholic theology which has so greatly 324 The People s Ark. modified the law of pagan Rome. Depositaries of the hand of 'justice, the magistrates had a personal interest in reducing everything under the hand ot the king's justice. They declared at first that temporalities belonged of right to the prince, and that if the Church had temporal prerogatives, it was only by a benevolent concession of the sove- reign, always subject to revocation when the necessities of the state demanded it. Temporalities being mixed with everything, the legists hence concluded that not only the goods of churches, convents, and benevolent foundations ought to return to the crown, but that the nomina- tion to all episcopal and abbatial benefices, etc., and the administration of the revenues during the vacancy of the sees, were essential parts of the royal prerogative; that the decision of the causes regarding this matter belonged to secular tribu- nals; that ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even within the narrow limits in which it was enclosed, was a royal benefit, since the Church of Christ is without territory ; that those reunions of the bishops called councils, their theological teachings, even the administration of the sacraments, and above all, their relations with the Holy See, constituting a permanent danger for the state, and even for the liberties of the Church; considering the encroach- ing spirit of the clergy and of the Roman court, it was indispensable that the royal and magisterial authorities should exercise a rigorous surveillance over everything, in their quality of defenders of the state and of true ecclesiastical liberty. Louis XIV. was, then, in the legal right or Twenty-Fourth Entertainment. 325 sovereign omnipotence, when, not content with disposing at will of all ecclesiastical properties, by the regal right extended violently over all benefices, by the pensions and commendams with which he oppressed them for the profit of his favorites, he assembled the bishops in 1682, to dictate theologi- cal declarations against the pope, which he then made laws of the state and theses to be sustained in universities and seminaries. He was the faith- ful organ of the legal right of omnipotent sove- reignty, when, in his instructions to his son, he wrote: "You should be persuaded that kings are absolute lords, and have naturally the full and free disposition of all the properties possessed, those of churchmen as well as of seculars, to use them at all times as wise stewards As the life of his subjects is his own property, the prince should take great care to preserve it"* The parliament had also the legal right of judi- ciary omnipotence, when, under the despicable suc- cessor of the Great Monarch, it gave to the execu- tioner the pontifical bull, the mandates of bishops and Catholic theology ; when it proscribed religious societies, and caused the sacred tabernacle to be forced open, to give the holy viaticum to demons. The parliamentary magistracy was equally in the legal exercise of its omnipotence, when, turning against royalty the power conquered from the Church, it delivered the prince to the States-General. The States- General were in the legal right of that * Lemontey. — Essai sur T etabli sement monarchique de Louis XIV. 2$ 326 The Peoples Ark. omnipotence, when, erecting themselves into the Constituent Assembly, they tore in pieces royalty, nobility, clergy, and parliament. The Convention was in the legal right of omnipotence, when, after having overwhelmed with ignominies the unhappy representatives of royalty, and of the classes which had contributed to the royal orgies, it caused them to be dragged to the scaffold, ordered the dust of the royal tombs to be cast to the winds, and confis- cated the metals for the use of the state. Less than eighty years after the death of Louis XIV., who had so loudly proclaimed this principle: France belongs to me and my successors; nothing shall be possessed therein, not even by the Church of Jesus Christ, save by my good pleasure — behold his glorious dynasty lose at one blow, throne, life, even its tombs; — what sublime, what solemn jus- tice ! Can you not see in it, my friends, an emi- nently legitimate and legal judgment of Him, who said to the fisherman of Galilee: "All power is given to me in heaven, and on earth ; go then, teach, baptize, etc."? MAYOR. Yes, sir, this explanation of the revolutionary excesses satisfies me better than any that I have read in our historians, more or less bigoted, what- ever may be their political opinions. After all, when a 'king forgets that he is a man and a Chris- tian, and that his subjects are men and Christians by the same title as himself, and, above all, when this king is, by his high position, the model of other kings, it is just that the Eternal Chief of kings and nations say to that autocrat: Ah! thou Twenty- Fourth Entertainment. 327 desirest to break with the Most High, and to make my religion a fief for thy family! Well, before one century, in this beautiful country, the theatre of thy omnipotence, there shall not be even a grave for thee and thine ! The strong minded men of this age of enlight- enment talk a great deal about Roman law. con- stitutional law, national law, state law, the law of the citizens and the people; as to the divine law, our legists and politicians regard it as old rubbish, defended only by priests and bigots. It may come to pass that this old rubbish shall be the law of the world. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir, the law of God is imprescriptible; when a nation is determined not to know it, there re- mains to it only the right of descending from slavery to slavery, even to the eternal dungeon destined for the obstinate contemners of the right of the Author of all justice, of all law. We shall now see how far Europe has gone in that direction. The secularization of property, instruction, and benevolence, had been with absolute monarchs only an affair of pride. Content with sovereign dominion, they left the Church in the enjoyment of a great part of its property, its establishments of education and of benevolence. Nothing could be done but by the good pleasure of his majesty, the King; but it pleased his majesty that the priests should continue to preach the religion which saves the people, and solaces their moral and material mis- eries. The revolutionary leaders, to whom, under the name of the nation, were adjudged all rights, 328 The Peoples Ariz. whether monarchical, ecclesiastical and national, made the preservation of that fair patrimony an affair of pride and cupidity. Not satisfied with pre- siding over everything, as did the ancient royalty, the new masters wished to reform everything, and make their government a work-shop and store- house of religion, instruction, and philanthropy, of which they should have the absolute direction and all the advantages. Fearing above everything the return of the religion which never agrees with assassins, robbers, and debauchees, they neglected nothing to nationalize atheism, or at least deism. For the worship of the goddess Reason, which did not take, the all-powerful lawyer Robespierre imagined he could substitute the worship of his Supreme Being. This last having fallen with his honorable creator, the theophilanthropists wished to place it in honor again under a new form. A wag bethought himself of baptizing them under the name of Filons- en-troupe, and a universal burst of laughter killed the last essay of revolutionary religions. Obliged to assist, with rage in their heart and foam on their lips, at the official reestablishment of the Catholic religion, imperiously demanded by the real nation and supported by the Little Cor- poral, the revolutionary legists succeeded in em- barrassing in a hundred ways the action of the clergy, and did not allow it to reassume any of the influential positions whence it had been expelled. The continual war they waged against it was only redoubled when the ancient royalty came to gather in its enfeebled hands a share in the succession Twenty -Fourth Entertainment. 329 of the empire, and to play the role of the last Stuarts in England. The revolutionary leaders assumed the title of liberals \ and enlarged their party with a crowd of honest people, even Chris- tians, discontented with a system of politics bas- tard and without posterity. The great mission of the liberals was, according to themselves, to watch for the defence of the glorious national liberties won by the revolution, against the retrograding and invading tendencies of those who regretted the ancien regime, and above all, against the clerical party. Again, when the enlightened friends of the country proposed some measures proper to ameliorate the position of the clergy and extend its sphere of moral action, particularly in matters of education and benevo- lence, there rose a unanimous cry from the liberal press to warn the nation against the emigres ^and the priests who had come to impose on it again, the infamous yoke of feudality, the theocracy of the Middle Ages, the decimations and butcheries of the Inquisition. It was by conjuring up those phantoms, it was by causing to be believed by dint of repetition, the most absurd calumnies, that they prevented the restoration from touching on those monopolies of revolutionary despotism, dignified with the name of national liberties, and that they placed them in 1830 under the protection of a fabricated royalty, exclusively citizen. If the war against the Church seemed then to be abated, it was because the victors saw in Catholi- city, some, a means of preserving the fruits of the victory, others, an expiring religion, whose obse- 28- 330 The People s Ark. quies it would be well to prepare very peaceably. The glorious conquests of the modern mind were to be henceforth out of its reach, guarded as they were by citizen omnipotence. Thus, my friends, it was no longer to be feared that your God, your pastor, and yourselves, could say in speaking of the Church built by your ances- tors or yourselves : This is ours ! Modern legis- lation says : The temporalities of w r orship belong to the state ! And for fear that you might forget it, you are forbidden to make the least repairs in your Church without a hundred signatures of the state. It was no longer to be feared that a rich testator, desirous to console himself and give greater eclat to worship, would leave to your parish a part of his fortune. The law says to him : Give it to whom you wish, except to the Church of whose expenses the state intends to take charge. In fine, the lower classes were assured of pre- serving the liberty of always supporting a religion always poor, at least until it pleased the governing class to relieve them from it, in obliging the smaller properties to be merged in the greater; which in the long run was inevitable. Secondly; No one could any longer seriously contest with the state the exclusive right of teaching youth, and forming citizens worthy of the age of enlighten- ment. No more danger then for your children to fall under the yoke of the priest, of the religious, of the bigoted benefactor, who would have wished to teach them reading, writing, ciphering, and the elements of grammar, geography and history. Twenty -Fourth Entertainment. 331 The law punished that guilty concurrence to the sale of enlightenment by the soldiers of the state. Those among you who could not buy those lights, joined to the benefits of ignorance the obligation of contributing to the cost of the education of the chosen ones of the upper classes. Again, of all revolutionary monopolies, that of instruction has been, is still, the dearest to the revolutionists. Over and above the plentiful endowments and magnificent sinecures which it offers them, they find therein an incomparable means of influence, and an army of instructors, /who teach youth to laugh at the priests. Thirdly, and finally, the state, in administering benevolence and taking on itself the charge of consoling all miseries, deprived the Church of charity, its weapon by excellence, and the administrative workshop placed at the cost of the tax-payers a host of commissioners charged to watch over the moral and material ame- lioration of the suffering classes. It is true that all the precautions of pretended liberalism against the return of ecclesiastical de- cimation and the funereal piles of the Inquisition, raised frightfully the sum of the citizens' tithes for the budget, and that the inquisitorial army of the holy office of the state, obliged to provide for all, became an intolerable burden. But they were masters of the parliamentary tribune, and of the grand voice of the press, to celebrate incessantly the immense benefits of the new order of things, and to storm against the enemies of constitutional liberty ; they were masters of education in order to obtain a youth devoted to that state of things; 332 The Peoples Ark. and the 250,000 French citizens paying the legal quit-rent, had almost no reason to envy the 250,000 English lords reigning in peace over a population of helots whom they make cry out : Live liberty ! Down with popery! Unfortunately for them, the liberals had not suspected one thing : it was, that for Catholic nations there is something in the human conscience, and something in heaven, which baffles the oppressors' calculations. One morning, then, the masterpiece of the modern mind found itself crushed, no one knew how. The representative of citizen royalty escaped alone by the light of his throne in flames, amid the universal cry of: Live the Republic! The secularizers of property, of education, and of be- nevolence, saw themselves face to face with omni- potent proletarians, who said to them : Let us divide or have everything in common; let all or none have possession ! Equal and gratuitous in- struction to every one, no longer any aristocracy of knowledge. You have taught the rich and the poor to despise alms as unworthy a free people, compensate for it then, by the right to labor and assistance, and let the state, the parent of the indigent, seat us all at the table of the budget! If the suit has not been definitively settled in France between the secularizers and the proletariat, it is, my friends, owing to local circumstances of which you are aware, and to a principle of divine government which I wish to explain to you. The social cause now being agitated is not French alone, it is European; yet more/ it is humanitarian, and Jesus Christ, the eternal Autocrat Twenty -Fourth Entertainment. 333 of humanity, intends it to be signally decided on our continent, and under the eyes of the human race. It is evident that the conduct of all the governments of France, whether ancient or modern, has served as a rule to all Catholic governments, whether under absolute monarchs, constitutional kings, or citizen oligarchies. To strip the Church of her rights, her liberties, of her every means of influence, to degrade her into being a mere instru- ment of the police, or a vain shadow of herself, — such has been the end constantly pursued, with more or less cunning and audacity, by statesmen, with very few exceptions. The class which has undoubtedly contributed most to religious oppres- sion is that of legists and lawyers, who have always had their own reasons for not loving what they called clerical domination. In fact, what becomes of those men of the law, wherever clerical domination is powerful enough to bring about the reign of the law of justice, of charity, to prevent lawsuits, or conciliate contend- ing parties without ruining them ? Add to this the antichristian atmosphere which they breathe in the study of law, which absorbs the life of the legist. What do we find in the Roman law, so much adored by all legists ? Among many admirable things, we find there the principles of pure pagan despotism, and we see in reality, that modern legists have never ceased to apply, first to the government of the prince, afterwards to that of the citizens, this maxim — Whatever is pleasing to power has the force of law. 334 The Peoples Ark. What do we find in modern law, almost wholly- drawn from Protestant writers, or those strongly- inclined to Protestantism ? On every page, violent invectives against clerical despotism, and the spirit of invasion and usurpation which tends to subject civil society to religion, instead of making religion subservient to civil society, as Christ has wished. Say to the man imbued with those principles, that to subject the Catholic religion to the civil power, is to make as many religions as there are deposi- taries of the civil power, and that nothing could be more opposed to religious liberty and the wishes of Christ; he will hardly listen to what you say, for it does not enter into his designs to preserve religious liberty or the wishes of Christ, but to defend the law against the priests' incurable ambi- tion. When I hear legists of this class speaking of their ardor for liberty, it has on me the same effect as to hear a courtezan preaching purity. Finally, what are the habits of those people, when religion does not keep them in her holy- guardianship ? Whatever we can imagine best calculated to falsify the mind and the tongue. Trained to defend all causes, they have only one anxiety — to acquire the reputation of discoursing eloquently on everything, and to cause the triumph of those who pay them. Proudhon asks some- where : "When a lawyer's tongue is in motion, who can say where it will stop?" I reply: Like a horse, with regard to the law, it will always go wrong : and will depart from the truth only to arrive at falsehood. Now that a constitutional charter has placed Twenty- Fourth Entertainment.. 335 power in the hands of the most intrepid speech- makers, you are sure that the legists and lawyers will obtain the lead, and fall with great blows of laws upon the Church, as the Piedmontese rulers are now doing. In vain does France, who has preceded them in this way, but who has changed her mind, say to them : What are you doing there? It is false to say that the danger to states comes from the Church; do you not see socialism in arms! — "Socialism!" exclaim those ignoramuses smiling, "fear it, you who deliver your youth to the clerical faction; but we, men of progress, who have broken up the Jesuits like glass, and who, at this time, are turning out the bishops and mocking the pope, we have no fear. Against the enemies of the state we have the power of powers, that of constitutional liberties." What insolence and what imbecility! you ex- claim. Yes, but in laboring to satisfy their insen- sate hatred against the Church, those secularizers prepare their country for the speedy solution which Divine Providence has in store for Europe's great lawsuit. This solution, which all minds are seeking, is, I believe, well-known to me, my friends, and I could point it out to you, but as it should be the finishing-stroke of the Ark, I will first reply to the objections you may have yet to propose against the Catholic Church, and I beg you, gen- tlemen, to be good enough to point them out at the beginning of the next entertainment "^v^^S: TWZNTY-FIFTH ENTERTAINMENT. Catholic Inquisition— Conduct towards the Church of all those who accuse her oe intolerance — the church's constant rule against infidels. MAYOR. N the division which Mr. Teacher and myself have made of the most serious objections which still remain against the great Church, the first and the most important one has fallen to me; this, sir, is the Inquisition. It is true to say, that ninety-nine hundredths of those who cry out against the Inquisition would be seriously embarrassed if we were to ask them what was that monster. The least ignorant believe they know, first, that it was a tribunal of the Middle Ages, composed of monks, and established by the pope and bishops to discover, torture, and burn heretics, philosophers, and such as were suspected of thinking evil in matters of religion ; secondly, that that institution, established to keep minds in perpetual infancy, covered Europe with funeral piles, particularly Spain, which it depopulated and impoverished in every way; thirdly, that without the reaction of Protestantism, which produced the enfranchisement of reason, we should be still 330 Twenty -Fifth Entertainment. 337 bowed beneath the yoke of blind faith, and as the spirit of the Church never changes, the triumph of the clerical party would naturally bring back the reign of the Inquisition. In proof of this, they cite a number of facts, which they think go to show that the intolerant and domineering pre- tensions of the court of Rome are not reformed, and that if it no longer persecutes, it is less for want of will than of power. This, sir, is what is said. As for me, I am inclined to believe that those declamations are, for the most part, the effect of the ignorance and dishonesty of the liberal sect, and I acknowledge that I have a greater dread of the intolerance of modern liberal inquisitors than of that of the papal inquisitors. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Yes, sir, the horror attached to the Inquisition evinces gross ignorance of the nature of that insti- tution, and of the exigences of the epoch in which it appeared: the fear of its reestablishment can be seriously entertained only by fools. Before estab- lishing these two points, my friends, let us cast a glance over Europe of the present day; let us hear what is said, see what is done. From the north to the south, from the east to the west, what do we hear ? A general cry of rage and hatred against Roman intolerance, and the love of power inherent in the clerical faction. What do we see? The conspiracies of all the enemies of the Catholic Church to rekindle against her the scarcely extinguished torches of persecu- tion. 29 338 The Peoples Ark Let us begin with that England who boasts so much of her tolerance, because, that for the last forty years she has not oppressed her Catholic inhabitants with those penal laws, the most atro- cious that could have been suggested to heresy by the demon of fanaticism. Yielding to the earnest prayers and to the spirit- ual necessities of the English Catholics, placed up to that time under a provisionary and exceptional religious administration, Pius IX. finally granted them an ecclesiastical organization conformable to common law, after having taken all the measures that wisdom and prudence could suggest, in order that that act, irreproachable on the grounds of Eng- lish law, might in no way wound the susceptibili- ties of the British government. But what could be expected? For at least four years, English policy had been laboring to anglicanize and protestantize Italy, and, in particular, Rome, whence she had caused the pope to be expelled ; could she, then, without profound regret, see the pope, reentered into Rome, bear witness to the progress of popery in England by reestablishing the English Hie- rarchy? Then at a signal given by the ministerial bureaus, and repeated in all the pulpits of the Anglican Church, and those of the thousand sects dissent- ing from her, but always united against Rome, then, I say, arose a concert of howlings: "Down with the Papacy \ Death to the papists!" Then were enacted those scenes of the most savage fanaticism, outraging everywhere the religious con- victions of the Catholics, and imperilling their pro- Twenty- Fifth Entertainment. 339 perties and lives. Then were presented those innu- merable addresses to the Queen and her ministers, to beg the reestablishment against popery of some of those statutes of the good virgin Elizabeth, who had caused the enemies of her spiritual supremacy to be embowelled alive. That that explosion of fanaticism did not suc- ceed in replacing the papists under the sanguinary reign of the Anglican inquisition is not, at least, the fault of the government, nor of the clergy, nor of the heretical population, but it is the fault of those Catholics, now so numerous in the three united kingdoms, in the colonies, and particularly in the army, that it is thought prudent to settle matters with them. Let us run over the countries of the North, where either heresy or schism is dominant, from the Low Countries even to Russia* If the Catholic Hollanders, thanks to the French revolution and the reign of the good king Louis Bonaparte, have been freed from the state of helot- ism in which they had been held for three cen- turies ■; if they finally see their civil and political rights guarded by the constitution, it is none the less notorious that Protestant tolerance continues to debar them from employments, and that electoral laws have been made expressly to exclude their candidates from the Chambers. Belgium, that nation so Catholic, which has made two revolu- tions to preserve her religious liberties, now sees herself despoiled of them by ministers, oppressors of the Church, in their triple quality of legists, sensualists, and liberals. If the Catholics are not 340 The People s Ark. being persecuted in Sweden and Denmark, it is because the Protestant inquisition has constantly watched that popery might not raise its head in those countries. I do not know if the Danish government has effaced from its code a law decree- ing death to the priest or religious who should settle in that kingdom. As to Sweden, the supreme tribunal of Stockholm, upon the request of the Lutheran clergy, condemned to confiscation of goods and to perpetual banishment, the painter Nilson, guilty of having been converted to the Catholic faith. What can be said of the immense Russian empire, in which are tolerated all religions, even the grossest idolatry, with the sole exception of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, for whose annihila- tion has been employed, during the last half cen- tury, the most incredible mixture of cowardly deceptions and atrocious acts of violence ? Let us pass to Germany. If for three years the Catholic Church there has seen falling off those chains which had been riveted on her neck, feet and hands, by the tolerance of Protestant princes, and the crushing protection of the Austrian cabi- net, to whom does she owe it? First, to the cry of religious liberty raised by two illustrious victims of Prussian intolerance, the archbishops of Cologne and Posen ; secondly, to the revolutionary torment, which, by causing their German majesties to trem- ble, obliged them to momentarily remove the foot which they had on Catholic breasts; thirdly, to the energetic rising of her episcopate, and to the activity of her vast associations for the triumph of Catholic liberties; fourthly, to the personal inspi- Twenty -Fifth Entertainment. 341 rations of the young emperor of Austria, abjuring the deplorable traditions of a government, which for the greater part of a century had been Catholic only in name. In fine, German Catholicity, stripped of all her property, of her establishments of education and benevolence, breathes for an instant; thanks to the condition of her oppressors, who have their feet in boiling water. Look at the Catholic populations of Switzerland, and tell me if the conservative and radical Protes- tants have spared them anything of what consti- tutes a perfect martyrdom. They have secularized, that is, have stolen all their ecclesiastical and monastical properties; proscribed, imprisoned and banished their bishops and religious; put up at public auction the ornaments of the sanctuary, and extended the proscription and confiscation to the wealthiest citizens. Two or three hundred wretches protected by the federal army, imposed at Freiburg a constitution worthy of the brigands who had conceived it, who executed it; and when after three years of frightful atrocities, from six- teen to eighteen thousand electors went to demand justice from the federal authorities, they were answered: "We can do nothing for you, but if you attempt to take justice into your own hands, we will crush you !" Here the Protestant Vaudois government orders Catholic priests to publish from the pulpit its religious commandment for the federal fast, and upon their refusal, expels them from their parishes ; there, or rather, everywhere, they established mixed schools to pervert Catholic youth, if they do not wish to be condemned to 29* 342 The Peoples Ark. ignorance. Finally, to cause the entrance of Pro- testantism, that is of contempt for all religion, into the bosom of the family, the federal powers make a law on mixed marriages. It is useless to speak of the Italy of legists, lawyers, and liberals, and of her constitutional Anglomaniacs of every kind. This so-called " Young Italy," which is nothing but a league of desperadoes, retrograding towards pagan barba- rism ; this Young Italy, I say, now concentrated in Piedmont, is admirably faithful to the device of its two chiefs, Mazzini and Lord Palmerston : To make an end, by all possible means, of the Catholic Church. One word now on Spain and Portugal. If Queen Isabella II., and her ministers, have had the prudence to arrest with the same blow the storm of religious persecution and the devastations of civil war, it is none the less true that the Church is still bleeding from the wounds inflicted on her, that her clergy still wait there for bread in return for what has been taken from them ; it is none the less true that Rome, in order to avert greater evils, will have to sign one of those concordats which justify the old proverb: " With our good Mother the Church, who cannot defend herself with loaded cannon, the essential thing is to drag from her by force, what cannot be obtained with her consent :" a proverb which has made the tour of Europe, but will also play it a bad turn, as I shall have the honor to tell you of in time. Portugal also, crushed as she is, wishes to dis- play her strength against Rome, and recalls her Twe7tty- Fifth Entertainment. 343 ambassador, because the pope refuses to give sus- pected bishops to the Portuguese Catholics. If in this union of the oppressors of the Church I do not make the French government play a part, it is because France remains Catholic, des- pite its ancient would-be very Christian royalty; despite her first revolution, eminently antichris- tian, of her empire half-Christian, of her restora- tion overthrown in 1830, and her citizen-royalty swept away in 1848, and since then, a little against her inclination, but most certainly by the grace of God, a republic, and that that republic, not being easily managed by a party, necessarily expresses the real national spirit which remains Catholic. Thence those acts of Catholicism both within and without, which France performs by a sort of instinct, and under the pressure of events. If her return to a better system of politics is not sufficiently well-marked, among many well-known causes of her blindness there is one which I have already indicated, and which I will develop here- after; it is, that the great European lawsuit is not yet sufficiently prepared and paid for. Before the grand reconstitution, or the final discomfiture of which France, according to all probabilities, will give the signal, there are some demolitions to be made here or there. Behold, then, all the governments of Europe, who wage a war more or less cunning and violent against Catholicity, yet all crying out against Catholic intolerance. Everywhere we are op- pressed, and everywhere the oppressors point us out as the irreconcilable enemies of public liber- 344 The Peoples Ark. ties. Everywhere we see our bishops, priests and religious outraged, robbed, proscribed and sub- jected to the most iniquitous inquisitorial mea- sures; everywhere those brigand legislators, after having invaded our religious properties, force the sanctuary of our consciences, rob us of our chil- dren's souls to deliver them to the corrupter; and nevertheless, those enraged despots never cease to howl against the usurpations of the priesthood, and its efforts to subject us again to the yoke of the Inquisition. Well, my friends, what you see to-day is the exact image of what has been done at all times. There has always been an agreement among the persecutors of the Church to cast upon their victim the reproach of persecution and violence. When we read the edicts of the first persecutors of Christianity, from Nero to Maxentius, we there see that those Christians, who everywhere allowed themselves to be slaughtered like lambs, even when they filled the empire and formed entire legions of the army: — we there see, I say, that those Christians are an execrable faction, guilty of the most abominable excesses, bound by fright- ful oaths, and enemies to all law. What was the Catholic Church and her most illustrious defenders when the Arian heresy, mistress of the throne under Constantine, Valens, etc., persecuted to extremity the adorers of the Word, and gorged itself with their spoils and their blood ? She was, according to the Arians and their emperors, a mass of sacrilegious factions, of enemies of God and men, of corrupters and oppressors of eon- Twenty-Fifth Entertainment. 345 sciences. The great Athanasius, on whose head they set a price, was a monster who outraged women and cut off the head and hands of Arian bishops to use them in magical operations. When was it that they declaimed with greatest fury against the execrable intolerance of the popes, of the Catholic clergy, and the pretended thirst that they had for the blood of heretics and unbe- lievers ? Was it not during that sixteenth century, when, in all Protestant states without exception, atrocious laws, pitilessly applied, condemned to frightful torments the popish clergy, and gave the Catholic populations the alternative to abjure their faith, or undergo penalties, the mildest of which were the prison, banishment, and the confis- cation of goods. My friends, what could you expect ? It enters into the temporal destiny of the Church to be, like her Divine Founder, a prey to the most atrocious calumnies, to the most iniquitous, most brutal hatreds, as it is the spirit of all her persecutors to accuse her of the evil that they do. She has, in the eyes of all her enemies, the unpardonable fault of being the organ of the immutable law of truth and justice, which confounds all errors, condemns all iniquity. What is religious error, however little wilful it may be ? It is the love of falsehood, and conse- quently, the hatred of truth. Schism and heresy can sustain themselves, and delude their partisans, only by covering themselves with some shreds of the religion of Jesus Christ : when the Catholic religion appears, those shreds fall off, and there is 346 The Peoples Ark. something in the human conscience whicn says: 44 Behold true Christianity; the rest is but an un- worthy mockery !" How could you expect that schism and heresy would not employ all their efforts to calumniate and change the nature of Catholicity, when they cannot do worse? It is part of their existence. What is iniquity ? It is the love of evil, and, consequently, the hatred of the law that condemns evil, and commands good. Those whose works are evil, as the Gospel tells us, prefer darkness to light;* to show them the latter, is to exasperate them. In fine, it is not the Catholic Church who takes pleasure in tormenting the enemies of her doc- trine and laws, but it is those enemies, who, tormented by the brilliancy of her light and her charity, incessantly react against her with, indescrib- able fury, like those demoniacs who hastened to our Saviour, and foaming at the mouth, cried out: " What is there in common between thee and us, and why dost thou torment us before the time?"f Now, my friends, let us enter more deeply into the question. I begin by proposing three facts of historical notoriety to whoever has read history elsewhere than in the romances of our enemies. First: the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church during the eighteen centuries of her existence has never employed force, nor authorized the employ- ment of force, to impose her doctrines on the sectarians of other religions. Secondly : if, in the thirteenth century, the * St. John iii. 19. f St. Matth. viii. 29. Twenty-Fifth Entertainment. 347 Church had recourse to the extraordinary means of the Inquisition, it was not to compromise the liberty of thought, and the true progress of science, but rather to preserve religion, society, and all the elements of Christian civilization against the bru- tal aggressions of the most savage and fanatical sectaries. Thirdly : the abuses and severities of the Catho- lic Inquisition to defend the religion which had enlightened and civilized Europe, were nothing compared with the atrocities committed by the legislators and inquisitors of heresy, schism and free-thinking philosophy, in order to establish their absurd, immoral religions, and reconduct us to barbarism. As to the first proposition, that the Catholic Church has never approved, that in order to lead infidels to the Christian faith other means should be employed than instruction, edification, and pa- tience; it can be contested only through ignorance or dishonesty. It is impossible to find, either in the history of the Church or in the collections of the ordinances of popes and councils, anything that authorizes evangelization by way of constraint, but it is easy to show in the canon law, the express prohibitions, frequently under pain of excom- munication, issued in the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great; in the seventh, by the Spanish bishops ; in the twelfth, by Clement III. ; in the fourteenth, by Clement VI. ; in the sixteenth, by Julius III., against molesting the Jews in the ex- ercise of their worship, or baptizing their children without their consent. If you, Mr. Mayor, know 348 The Peoples Ariz. on this subject of any facts urged by the enemies of the Church, I beg you to acquaint me with them. MAYOR. I believe I remember having heard them re- proach Constantine and his successors with having contributed not a little to the conversion of the pagans by their laws against idolatry, and in favor of Christianity. They also vaguely accuse the first Catholic missionaries of America of having concurred by their fanaticism, to the oppression and massacre of the idolatrous Indians. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. To attribute the ruin of paganism to the laws of the Christian Caesars, is to go against all religious evidence. One hundred and twenty years at least before Constantine's conversion^ Tertullian did not fear to say to the Emperor Severus, in his elo- quent apology: "We are not of yesterday, and we fill your cities, your colonies, the army, the palace, the senate, the forum ; we leave you only your temples." In the century which separates Septi- mus Severus from Diocletian, Christianity had only made greater progress. In the year 303, at the commencement of the great ten years' persecution, known as the era of the Martyrs, Diocletian saw his house a prey to the Christian superstition ; he found it even in his bed.* Thus the famous in- scription by which he announced the abolition of Christianity, expressed only a vain desire, and the * Prisca, his wife, and Valeria, his daughter, were Chris- tians. Twenty-Fifth Entertainment. 3 49 frightful butcheries by which he sought to realize it, were only the last convulsions of idolatry, strug- gling in the victorious embrace of Christianity. Nothing is better proved : at Constantine's ac- cession, Christ reigned everywhere except on the throne; He had reserved that for His last conquest, in order that no one might be able to attribute His victories to the throne. To say, that, when once mistress of the sceptre, the Church evangelized by force of laws, is an insolent lie against history, against the well-known laws of the Caesars, and those of the Church. What did she say to Constantine, who, with the fervor of a neophyte, demanded what he should do ? — " Give an edict of universal tolerance to permit Christians to publicly profess their worship and to build churches." Constantine issued that edict, and induced Licinius, his brother-in-law .and colleague, to sign it. Become sole master of the empire, he made great donations to the churches, and ordered the restoration of all the goods taken from them in the late persecutions. He freed the ministers of the Church from the greater part of public charges, so that they might be able to attend without obstacle to their ministry; this was justice, no citizen being obliged to bear a double burden. Regarding the pagans he was told: "Limit yourself to restraining their violence, and while you show your contempt for their idols, beware lest you render them dearer to them by forcibly destroying them." Thus it was done. The Church changed nothing of her tactics against idols, attacking them always in their first temples — 30 350 The Peoples Ark. ignorance of the mind and corruption of the heart. Far from making them Christians against their will, she required of the pagans, except in danger of death, long trials before they were granted the grace of Baptism. When they presented them- selves, they were made to submit to an interrogatory to assure her of the rectitude of their intentions; after which they were admitted among the number of the catechumens or postulants ^ obliged to follow a course of instruction, and to renounce supersti- tious practices, with full liberty to abandon the catechism and the trials when such was their good pleasure. If they persevered and were judged worthy of baptism, the same ceremonial as that of our day was followed, with this difference, that, instead of godfathers and godmothers, it w r as the catechumen that replied. "What do you ask of the Church of God ?" " Faith."— " And what will faith give you?" "Eternal life." — "Yes, but in order to attain eter- nal life you must keep the commandments." — Then followed the profession of faith, the triple renouncing of Satan, his pomps, his works, etc. So long as the holy unction and baptismal water had not made the catechumen a living member of Jesus Christ, and a child of God and of the Church, he was free to return to the idols without incurring any spiritual penalty, in virtue of that principle as ancient as Catholicism : The Church does not judge those who do not belong to her. Her mission is only to preach to and exhort them. Behold how the Church acted towards her exe- cutioners. If we except a few excesses of zeal, Twenty -Fifth Entertainment. 351 very rare, and which cannot without injustice be imputed to the body, the pagans were so little disquieted, that in Rome, under the eyes of the Popes St. Sylvester I., St. Mark, St. Julius I., Libe- rius, St. Damasus, St. Siricius, who was promoted to the Holy See in 385, the greater number of the Roman senators remained idolaters and well- worthy of being such, supported their temples and lavished sacrifices at the public cost. Finally, Theodosius the Great, in a visit to the Senate in 389, after having patiently listened to and refuted the partisans of a worship, absurd and generally despised, ended by saying : " You are free to continue your sacrifices, but the Emperor Valentinian and myself, who entertain only horror for your worship, can no longer allow the public treasury to defray the expenses of it. Besides, the charge has become too heavy; menaced as we are by barbarians, we have more need of soldiers than of your sacrifices. ,, Who would not admire the extreme patience of the Christians, who during seventy-seven years had indirectly contributed to the support of a worship which they regarded w 7 ith horror, and from which they had had so much to suffer? Nothing could be imagined more iniquitous or more imprudent than the accusation against the Spanish missionaries in America. Against those lying romancers who have made them fanatical murderers, it will suffice for me to oppose the authority of Robertson, an historian of America, a Protestant minister of Scotland, and passably antipapistical. 352 The Peoples Ark. "It is with yet more injustice," says he, "that many writers have attributed to the intolerant spirit of the Roman religion the destruction of the Americans, and have accused the Spanish ecclesiastics of having excited their compatriots to massacre those innocent people as idolaters and enemies of God. The first missionaries in Amer- ica, although simple and unlettered, were pious men. They early espoused the cause of the Indians, and defended that people against the calumnies with which the conquerors tried to blacken them, representing them as incapable of ever being formed to social life, or of understand- ing the principles of religion, and as an imperfect species of men, whom nature had marked with the seal of servitude. . . . They were the ministers of peace to the Indians, and always tried to draw the iron rod out of the hands of their oppressors. It was to their powerful mediation the Americans owed all the regulations that tended to sweeten the rigor of their lot."* After having recognized this first fact, that the Church has never had recourse to force to reduce infidels under the yoke of faith, let us see, my friends, why she has appeared to depart from this principle with regard to heretics. This shall form the subject of our next entertainment. Robertson. History of America. Book viii., t. ii., p. 345. = -;- TWENTY-SIXTH ENTERTAINMENT. ej a) Why the Inquisition was established — Character and struggles of the mlddle xa.ges — comparison oe that epoch with ours — One word on the Spanish Inquisition — Roman Inquisition. AS the ecclesiastical Inquisition established to constrain liberty of thought, as its ene- mies pretend, and was it its mission to inquire of every one what they thought in matters of religion? No, evidently not. Ecclesiastical justice, any more than secular justice, has not the absurd pre- tension to penetrate to the bottom of your soul, and to know what passes therein. It knows only facts which appear outwardly, according to that maxim as ancient as ecclesiastical tribunals : Ec- clesia non judicat de internis. Think whatever you please ; no one can see your thoughts save God, the supreme Judge of consciences ; for the con- fessor himself can penetrate into your conscience only so far as you wish to introduce him into it, and he judges only of those things you are pleased to submit to his judgment. Was the Inquisition established to arrest the progress of minds in the career of letters, of sci- ences, of philosophy, and to retain the human 30* 353 354 The Peoples Ark. reason captive in the swathing bands of the cate- chism, as has been written and said by so many bigoted writers ? No, evidently not. It is precisely under the frightful reign of the Inquisition, that is to say, during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen- turies, that we see the European mind take the most marvellous flights in every direction. It was under the extinguisher of the theocracy and the Inquisition, to use the language of the bigots, that all Europe was covered with schools and univer- sities, in which an innumerable world of professors and students explored to an unheard-of depth, all questions imaginable in matters of theology, philosophy, politics, etc. I say, "an innumerable world of students/' for I think I can prove that the present population of Europe, numerically far superior to that of the Middle Ages, does not give half so many students as that age of ignorance. It will suffice for the moment to observe that France, who then saw twenty universities arise in her bosom, had a school of the second order, in which were to be found nearly ten thousand students* As to the scientific monuments which the Middle Ages have bequeathed to our libraries, you cannot judge of them yourselves, my friends; trust then, to Plato Punchinello, who has lived in the company of the great men of that epoch, and who often asks himself: How many dozen of our most renowned savants would it take to make a St. Thomas of * School at the Monastery of Floury. Twenty-Sixth Entertainment 355 Aquin, a St. Bonaventure, a Vincent de Beauvais, a Gerbert, (Pope Sylvester II.,) a Roger Bacon, etc., etc. ? Contemplate also those old Cathedrals, •prodigious libraries of animated, speaking stones, which our artists can scarcely decipher, and which seem to say to us : You are truly the puny chil- dren of your truly great fathers! In fine, the Inquisition in no way prevented the Middle Ages from being what it was in all reality, as the Protestant Guizot tells us, "The epoch of the greatest industrial and intellectual activity, an epoch of voyages, enterprises, discoveries, and in- ventions of all kinds."* Far from hindering the progress of minds towards great things, the In- quisition contributed much to it, as I shall prove to you, my friends, by a comparison. The Europe of the Middle Ages, of which I have already given you a slight glimpse, f was a vast school of half-savage children, fearfully undisci- plined, capable of everything, of evil more than of good. What was necessary to assure order, and protect studies in that busy crowd? There was needed a rod to say to all, but particularly to the mutinous: "If you disturb the class, beware !" Without that rod confided to vigorous hands, what would have happened ? The most wicked youths, springing on the benches and putting an end to the studies, would have divided the class into parties; those parties, after having fought with the tongue, would have thrown at each other their * Course of Modern History, Lesson xi. f Beveil du Peuple, Lesson x. 356 The People's Ark. books and inkstands, the benches would have followed the books, the pieces of benches would have broken their heads ; and as blood demands blood, extermination would have been stopped only by the intervention of a bully, exclaiming: " To the fire with the books ! People were not made to study or to reason, but to labor and to eat; death to whosoever shall attempt to teach them the alphabet!" Whoever knows a little of the Middle Ages and of the character of the enraged mastiffs who labored to tear in pieces the Catholic religion, in order to establish in blood, millions of stables for swine, will, I think, agree with me, that the rod of the Inquisition was, at that time, a great instru- ment of salvation for religion, for society, for letters, science, and all the elements of civilization. Against whom, in fact, was that rod raised? Was it against those honest thinkers who recorded in their books or expounded in the chairs of univer- sities, the fruits of conscientious study? No, but against a host of absurd, infamous, fanatical secta- ries, who forced themselves everywhere, under the mask of piety, and then, when strong enough, joined in the most brutal violences against those persons and things held inviolable by religion and morality; sectaries powerfully protected by a nobility without faith, morals, or humanity, and desirous of changing the lower classes into galley- slaves charged to provide for the wants and luxuries of their masters. What was the creed of the Albigensian sect, which was as the centre of all others, and which Twenty- Sixth Entertainment. 357 particularly exercised its fury in the south of France? It taught that the physical world and the human body are the work of an evil genius; that Christ dead on Calvary is a demon ; the cross the character of the beast of the Apocalypse, mar- riage a prostitution, etc.* The modern historian who is so prodigal of antitheses and flashes of wit, in order to embellish while disguising the history of those sectaries, and make the nobility of the south, who patronized them, a school of great thinkers, acknowledge, nevertheless, that their manner of evangelizing was in harmony with the brutality of their dogmas. " Those rioters/' says he, " maltreated the priests like the peasants, dressed their wives in the con- secrated vestments, beat the clerks, and made them sing mass in derision. It was one of their pleasures to sully and break the images of Christ, to break off the legs and arms. They were dear to princes, precisely because of their impiety which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures. Impious as our moderns, and savage as barbarians, they cruelly oppressed the country, stealing, de- manding ransom, murdering at random, waging a horrible war." In short, M. Michelet establishes very clearly, that the result of the doctrine and exploits of the Albigensian sect was to implant in the south; with the morals of Sodom and Gomor- rah, the benefits of Moorish civilization, and the * On the origin of those sects, on their doctrines and means of propagandism, see M. Hurter, Hist, of Innocent III., t. iii. p. 272. 358 The Peoples Ark. creeds of Asia, and to make Toulouse the Rome of a Mahometan Church.* After sixty years of useless attempts made by the popes and some Christian princes to enlighten and lead back those Mahometans within the fold, Innocent III. saw himself obliged to employ against them the same means that had succeeded against those foreign infidels. He, in 1207, pub- lished a crusade against the Albigenses, giving to his legates and generals the wisest instructions to avoid a great effusion of blood. If his direc- tions were not followed, and if to the excesses of the heretics the crusaders opposed other ex- cesses, all things being well considered, we must acknowledge that it was less the fault of the chiefs than of circumstances. It was only then, that to prevent the return of those sad wars, in which some of the preachers of the new religions led to the combat their innumerable dupes, and caused the loss of both body and soul, that was conceived the idea of establishing the tribunal of the Inquisition, whose special mission was to discover and prosecute those fanatical corrupters and incendiaries of states. Great evils call for great remedies. Religious policy and surveillance of heretics had, up to that time, been exercised in each ecclesiastical province by the bishops and their ordinary tribunals, refer- ring to the final judgment of the pope, the erring whom they had not been able to reclaim by mild- ness, and who had resisted their condemnation * M. Michelet : History of France, t. ii., p. 400. Twenty-Sixth Entertainment. 359 in the first and second instance. This means, sufficient in ordinary times, was not so in an epoch full of perils, and in which the bishops who did not connive at the evil, rarely enjoyed the independence and concurrence necessary to labor efficaciously for its 'repression. This it was that determined the great Pope Innocent III. to create the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Holy Office, and to confide its exercise to religious named by him, agreed to by the sovereign and bishops of the place, subject in their proceedings against heretics, to forms regulated by the canons, and to special rules laid down by the pope and the councils of the times; rules, the first of which, according to the Council of Narbonne, was — "Con- demn no one .unless upon conviction, since it is better to allow a crime to go unpunished than to condemn an innocent person." And how did the inquisitors proceed? They commenced by publishing " The Edict of Faith," commanding all the faithful under pain of excom- munication, to denounce within a brief period, heretics, fabricators of heresy, and persons guilty of certain excesses implying the suspicion of heresy. To that summons was added "The Edict of Grace," granting pardon to all those who, within the space of thirty days, should confess their crimes and reveal their accomplices. The Edict of Grace being despised, they cited to appear, or if necessary, brought by force, those persons pointed out by public rumor and reliable information as propagators of heresy. Once con- victed, either on their spontaneous confession. 360 The People s Ark. (which always availed to a diminution of punish- ment,) or by means of the law, they were exhorted to repent, to abjure, and accept the ecclesiastical penalties, which consisted in prayers, fasts, pil- grimages, in a detention more or less lengthy in the ecclesiastical prisons, perpetual only for the greatest criminals. The guilty who obstinately persisted in the satanical idea of destroying the religion of Jesus Christ, to substitute for it their visions or those of their companions, or who, after having once abjured heresy, were convicted of having fallen into it again, were declared by the tribunal of the Inquisition to be impenitent or relapsed here- tics, and, as such, abandoned to secular justice, with a recommendation to spare the lives and limbs of the culprits. Such, my friends, was the method of the Inqui- sition in the epoch in which it exercised its greatest rigors. Those who have pretended that it con- demned to the fire, have plainly lied. We can defy any one to cite a single reliable fact in proof of that impudent falsehood. Hence this absurd accusation is now generally abandoned by who- ever does not wish to be convicted of ignorance or dishonesty? But behold what they say: The abandonment to secular justice, pronounced by the inquisitors, was equivalent to a death-warrant, and the prayer which they addressed to the lay- tribunal, to exercise goodness and mercy towards the guilty, was only a ridiculous formality, which availed nothing to the unfortunate creature con- ducted to the funeral-pile. Twenty-Sixth E?itertainment. 361 To this I answer: No, the merciful request of the inquisitors did not prevent the secular judges from doing their duty, in applying the law of that time, which everywhere decreed the penalty of fire against the inventors of new religions. But it is none the less true, that the secular power remained perfectly free to apply the penalty or commute it, and that the Church expressed her desire to miti- gate that terrible legislation ; a desire whose sin- cerity could not be doubted by those who knew the constant spirit of the Church, and the efforts that she had made more than once, particularly in the Council of Tarragona, in 1242, to substitute perpetual imprisonment of the relapsed, in place of abandonment to the secular arm. It now only remains to be examined, why the civil legislators of the Middle Ages showed themselves so severe against the incorrigible enemies of the common law, and why the Church, then so influential, did not more efficaciously oppose the excessive rigor of those laws. The first quality of legislation being its propor- tion to the intellectual, moral, and social state of the people governed, common sense requires that in order to judge impartially the legislation of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, we must transport ourselves to that epoch. They were decidedly Christian in belief, but not equally so in morality, customs, and social institutions. Religious convictions were sound, lively, and pro- found, but their very energy, joined to the remains of barbarous severity still remaining in their cha- racter, easily led them into inexcusable severities. 31 362 The Peoples Ark. Among a hundred examples which might be re- lated, there is one which plainly shows the differ- ence then existing between the spirit of the Church and that of the best of princes, regarding punish- ment for outrages inflicted on religion. Louis IX., so worthy, in every sense, of being canonized at his death by the general voice of his people and his contemporaries, before being so by the judgment of the Church, was led to publish a law condemning public blasphemers to be burned on the lips with a red-hot iron. That law startled Pope Clement IV., who hastened to solicit its repeal; this was granted him by a new law, *which, for the punishment of burning, substituted fine, imprisonment, or scourging, according to the con- dition of the guilty. But before he obtained that alleviation, the pontiff, fearing the example of so great a king might be contagious, had written to the King of Navarre, on the 12th of July, 1268, to conjure him not to imitate in this the illustrious King of the French* With that propensity to exaggeration in good as well as in evil, that can be observed everywhere in that epoch of effervescence, we must understand that it was not so easy for the Church to com- pletely master those turbulent generations. To ask why it was that she did not sooner correct the numerous vestiges of barbarism which we observe in the feudal times, in its laws and traditions, particularly in the administration of criminal jus- tice; here, a fearful indulgence of assassination; * Universal History of the Catholic Church. By IT Abbe Rohrbaeher. Twenty- Sixth Entertainment. 363 there, an atrocious cruelty in the punishment of theft ; to ask this, I say, is to prove that we know neither the times nor the men. As well might we ask why our most laborious pastors, and those most worthy of their holy mission, instead of making our children, in a few months, Christians fully enlightened and ornamented with every virtue, employ in that work eight or ten years, and very often lose all their pains. Behold the comparison of which I avail myself in order to give you a somewhat just idea of the society of the Middle Ages, and of what distin- guished it from ours in good as well as in evil. Society, anterior to the sixteenth century, was a young tree full of promise, enlivened by great abundance of Christian sap; it promised an ad- mirable harvest of excellent fruit of all kinds, with which it was already laden in prospective, but for want of the time necessary to the complete elabo- ration of the sap and the maturity of its fruits, they were sour, green, retaining as much of the wild stock of barbarism as of the Christian graft. Modern society is the same tree, which, notwith- standing the fearful storm that three centuries ago broke a part of its branches, has, none the less, given most fair and beautiful fruits, but ar- rested in its development and tainted by the worm of doubt, it languishes, its fruit diminishes, and is corrupted, while the sprouts of barbarism, rising around it on every side, are on the point of stifling it, and bringing on it the decree of the Heavenly Agriculturist: It is dead, cast it into the fire ! 364 The Peoples Ark. In a word, our ancestors were Christian in foundation, barbarous in form; we ourselves are Christian in form, barbarous in foundation. The foundation having a necessary tendency to deter- mine the form, they advanced towards a limited civilization; we tend towards unexampled barbarism. Let us prove this by what was then done, and by what is being done at present. In the Middle Ages, the sovereign, the nobility and the people were all good Christians by faith; that is, they believed that Jesus Christ is God, that His religion is the greatest benefit that has been given us by Heaven, the treasure of treasures for time and eternity, and that, consequently, the enemies of the true religion are the most cruel enemies of God and man. And they were right. They believed that good morals and virtuous habits being the fruit of sound doctrines, the integrity of these was necessary to public morality; that to allow a few wicked heads to destroy in the minds of the masses, for the profit of their pride, the fundamental law of right and of duty, and to substitute for it opinions subversive of all civil and religious order, was to introduce anarchy and provoke massacres. In this they were very right, and the conduct of their sectaries was well calculated to confirm them in the idea. From all this, our ancestors concluded that the incorrigible corrupters of religion were worthy of the punishment of the greatest criminals, and as their penal code added to the final punishment a fearful increase of tortures, they had no scruple in condemning to fire those whom they, with Twenty-Sixth Entertainment 365 reason, held to be the most dangerous incendia- ries. It would, without doubt, have been better to reclaim those fanatics and treat them as diseased minds, than to have exalted them by a death which their followers transformed into martyr- dom. This was, in reality, the wise policy that had been adopted by the Church, the principle of whose penitential system was to replace the penalty of death by public penance, and to exercise severity towards the guilty, only to lead them to repentance and voluntary expiation ; as has been demonstrated by the learned Thomassin, and as M. Guizot also has observed. * But should we be surprised that the secular judges of the Middle Ages had not adopted the just medium of wisdom and moderation, when we know that the greater part of the legislators of the eighteenth century punished with death, not only the crime of coining false money, but also domestic theft, the smuggling of salt, etc., and inflicted the fright- ful torture of the wheel for an attempt at assas- sination, even when unsuccessful? In a word, it is incontestable that our ancestors were slowly coming forth from the land of bar- barism and still retained a leaven of its customs, which they found it difficult to shake 01F. But we who are so proud of our civilization, whither are we going, with our laws founded on atheism or legal indifferentism? We allow every one to pub- lish and teach whatever he wishes in matters of * See Thomassin in his great work on the Discipline of the Church. — Guizot: Course of Modern History, Lesson vi. 3i* 366 The Peoples Ark. religion, and if there be some restrictions to this liberty, we are careful that they be against the Church ; then when the flood of demoralization can no longer be restrained by ordinary checks ; when the inquisitors of the police and of secular justice, after having filled the prisons and peniten- tiaries, and reddened the scaffold with the blood of the most criminal, at length are overpowered; when the masses, freed from all religious belief, and fanaticized by the preachers of the club or the tavern, arm themselves to cause the triumph of theft, lawlessness and carnage, our political chiefs publish the crusade against the enemies of order ; armies ten times more numerous than that of Simon de Montfort (Chief of the crusade against the Albigenses) march against the new sectaries, murder them and are murdered by them, and in one day, are exterminated more men, some inno- cent, others led astray, than the Middle Ages ever burned incorrigible villains. To judge of our ancestors' policy and of our own only by the number of victims, on which side is to be found the greatest amount of ignorance and barbarity ? In reply to this, I beg you, Mr. Mayor, to tell us what is the presumed number of obstinate or relapsed heretics delivered by the inquisitors to the secular arm, even according to those calcula- tions least deserving of credit. MAYOR. To tell the truth, sir, I have heard and read on this subject only the most vague accounts. Gene- ^Twenty-Sixth Entertainment. 367 rally speaking, the enemies of the Inquisition are more profuse in declamations than in computa- tions. From Simon de Montfort's expedition against the Albigenses, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to the death of John Huss and Jerome of Prague at Constance in 1415, they tell of thousands of heretics delivered to the flames here and there, particularly in the South. But the most rapacious Inquisition should have been that of Spain. I remember that one of her late histo- rians, who had himself been secretary of the Inqui- sition, but no lover of it, estimates the total number of those condemned by the Spanish Inquisition during three centuries, at upwards of three hundred thousand, among whom more than thirty thousand were burnt in person, from seventeen to eighteen hundred burnt in effigy, and the rest condemned to divers punishments.* PLATO PUNCHINELLO. As to the Spanish Inquisition, which is inces- santly thrown in the face of the Church, this is, my friends, what should be first answered, relying on the historical notoriety of the fact. Erected in 1478 by the concurrence of the two powers, the * Let us cite Llorente's calculation : Condemned to be burned in person, . . 31,912 " " " in effigy, . . 17,659 u to rigorous penalties,. . . 291,450 Total, 341,021 — Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, by D. John A. Llorente. 368 the Peoples Ark. tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition was withdrawn from pontifical jurisdiction in 1498, by a royal pragmatic sanction, forbidding to the condemned any appeal to the court of Rome. This was evi- dently the result of the briefs and bulls of the popes of that time, cited even by Llorente.* It is true that this writer, in his quality of ultra-liberal priest, cordially hated the Church and the popes, and did not hesitate to attribute to the avarice of the Roman Court, its facility in giving absolution to appellants.f But you should know, my friends, that the ambition and cupidity of the Catholic clergy, and particularly of their chief, are the favorite theme of all bigoted writers ; with this they explain everything, even the services rendered to humanity at the price of sacerdotal lives. If we count by millions our martyrs of faith and charity, it was not that they had so much love for God and men, it was because they had a passion for ruling over others and enriching themselves ! What could you expect, my friends ? The worthy castigation of the howling mob is neither my affair nor yours ; it is the task of the eternal Cor- rector of incorrigible sinners. The Spanish Inquisition having, then, been from the year 1498 an institution separated from, and independent of the head of the Church, the latter is responsible for nothing, since the Church an- swers only for her acts; she tolerated the harsh laws of the Middle Ages, doing all that depended * Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, — Appendix, t Ibid. t. i. Twenty-Sixth Entertainment. 369 on her to mitigate it. Nevertheless, in the interest of truth and for the defence of one of the noblest nations of the Catholic world, let us sum up in a few words what history tells us, and what has been written by the most illustrious writers of Spain and elsewhere, to vindicate the heroic penin- sula from the reproach of savage barbarism, attri- buted to it by all the apologists of our modern cruelties. Behold what an educated Spaniard would be perfectly right in saying openly, to all the nations of Europe, without fear of contradiction, except from fools : " Nations of Europe, I do not wish to discuss with you a would-be Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, miserably compiled by a miserable writer, worthy of placing his ignorance and dis- honesty at the service of the enemies of his religion and his country. I am well content to accept his calculations, however suspected they may be, even by the least judicious reader, who is willing to abide by the researches of Llorente's work. From 148 1 to 1 78 1, the time of the last bloody auto-da-fe , the inquisitors had caused nearly thirty-two-thousand victims to be led to the fire. And why ? To defend from the attacks of heresy, Judaism and Islamism, not only the Catholic faith, which was the soul of our nationality, but also letters, science, industry and commerce, which lived and prospered only beneath the sun of internal peace. "As to those who pretend that the decay and impoverishment of Spain are the work of the In- quisition, they are evidently stupid men, who do 370 The People s Ark. not know the first word of our history. Who then can be ignorant that the Golden Age of our literature of all kinds, of our political, maritime, commercial and industrial preponderance, was coincident with the reign of Philip II., the most earnest protector of the Inquisition ? " Now let us see what you Germans, French and English were doing while barbarous Spain was engaged in such noble works, under the shadow of that institution which protected her faith with the principles of all civilization. "In the year 1525, I see one hundred thousand German peasants fanaticized by your religious reforms, and murdered by the partisans of those reforms. It was thus, that in its first appearance, your religious emancipation made in a few months three times as many victims as our Inquisition during three hundred years. " To this lake of Anabaptist blood let us add. first, the blood shed by Germany in the religious wars from the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which put an end to the frightful butcheries of the Thirty Years War; secondly, the blood which won the triumph of Lutheranism in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland; thirdly, the blood shed by Zwinglianism and Calvinism in Switzerland; fourthly, the butcheries in France in her civil reli- gious wars from the expedition of Cabrieres and Merindol in 1545, so much blamed by Protestant historians, which cost the lives of three thousand Vaudois, to the exploits of the Camis?"d prophets in 1704, in murdering with frightful barbarity four thousand Catholics and eighty priests; exploits Twenty-Sixth Entertainment. 371 which they leave in the shade to speak only of the dragonades of Louis XIV.; fifthly, the mas- sacres of the Low Countries, in which the Duke of Alba was as barbarous as the Anabaptists, as the followers of the Prince of Orange, of de La Marck and Sonoi ; sixthly, and finally, the mas- sacres, which during so long a time drenched in blood the three kingdoms of Great Britian. " In estimating the number of victims carried off, whether by those atrocious wars, or by the sovereignly intolerant inquisitions which heresy established wherever it triumphed, particularly in England, where the good virgin Elizabeth alone immolated twice as many unfortunate beings as did our Inquisition, we find not only that they were millions, but tens of millions, and that with- out any exaggeration, Spain can say to you : A vessel could float on the blood which your inno- vators have caused to be shed; while the Inqui- sition shed only theirs !"* When every man, a little versed in modern history, can thus crush the censors of the Inqui- sition proper to Spain, an Inquisition whose rigor and severity in its first period it is difficult, not to say impossible, to excuse, you can understand, my friends, that it would not be difficult to justify the Catholic Inquisition, the only one for which the Church is responsible. They speak of millions of victims during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, par- ticularly in the south of France. As for me, I * M. de Maistre — Letters on the Spanish Inquisition. 37 2 The Peoples Ark. have read with great attention the history of those times, and have applied myself to compute the number of the Albigenses and other sectaries, whose death put an end to the fire in the south of France, and I have found it to reach only some hundreds. If any one thinks that this was too dear a price to pay for the reestablishment of peace and civilization in those countries, I answer: Yes, so many capital executions grieve me to the heart ; but would you have preferred that Mahometanism should have been established in the heart of Europe, and have necessitated a second crusade, which, instead of costing the lives of four or five hundred fire-brands wholly perverse, would have killed on the spot and buried beneath a mountain of ruins, a hundred thousand unfor- tunates, armed, some for the defence of Catholic enlightenment, others for the triumph of the most abominable errors ? If the tribunals of the Holy Office had been an inspiration of the ferocious despotism of the popes and their thirst for the blood of heretics, as has been repeated by so many calumniators, it would have been particularly in the Pontifical States that the carnage would have been greatest. Now it is notorious that of all the Inquisitions, that of Rome was incomparably the mildest. From Arnold oc Brescia, the Mazzini of the thirteenth century, to the atheist Giordana Bruno, burned at Rome in 1600, I defy any one to cite more than three or four factious fanatics who lost their lives in the Papal States through the judgment of the Holy Office. The Inquisition was then what it was Twenty-Sixth Entertainment. 373 destined to be : A rod raised against the most exe- crable executioners of body and soul. In fact, my friends, they pity and wish us to pity such men as John Huss and Jerome of Prague, two monsters of pride, who deluged their country with blood for the pleasure of seeing their images and their feasts taking the place of those of Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin* and they shed not one tear for the three hundred thousand unfor- tunates who paid by their blood, in the Hussite war, for the sacrilegious folly of those wretches. Thousands and thousands of writers have praised, and still praise Luther for having triumphed, and caused human reason to triumph over papal des- potism and the executions of the Inquisition, and they say not a word of the hundred thousand peasants immolated at one blow, to the infernal pride of that apostate monk, destitute of faith and morality; they say nothing of those millions and millions of men of all ages and conditions, mur- dered in a thousand ways, in the midst of a Europe in flames — and why? To know which was right: the pope, defending the religion of the God of Charity, adored by all Christian ages, or the dissolute monk, making man an automaton under the iron hand of a cruel God, who saves or damns us, according to His good pleasure and despite our works! Do you understand the estimation in which the human race, particularly the masses, is held by * This fact is given by Pope Martin V. in his Letter to the Lords of Bohemia. 32 374 The People s Ark. those great preachers of religious liberty against the barbarous intolerance of Rome, a?id the fearful tribunal of the Holy Office f MAYOR. Yes, sir; one would have to be very blind not to recognize here again the truth of what you have said elsewhere, that those gentlemen love us as the wolf loves the lamb, and that their most ardent wish is to free us from the shepherds of the Catholic fold, that thus the people may be delivered over defenceless to their brutal appetites. The Inquisition having been the rod that contributed most to counteract the projects of their predeces- sors, we must not be surprised that they preserve ill-will towards it, and represent it as an implacable enemy of enlightenment. Among the facts which they cite on this subject, there is one to which they attach great value; it is the condemnation and imprisonment of the celebrated Galileo, guilty of having taught and proved that the earth revolves around the sun. If this fact be true, as it seems, we must acknowledge that in that circumstance the inquisitors of the Holy Office were themselves astray. PLATO PUNCHINELLO. They were not astray, but they found evil mixed up with that subject, as we shall see in the follow- ing entertainment, where I shall say a word on the fact, which is really true, but not in the sense taken by the enemies of the Church. TWENTY-SEVENTH ENTERTAINMENT. Galileo's condemnation — Exploits of peotestant and infidel Inquisitors — Reflection. E have seen, my friends, that the tribunal of the Inquisition was a kind of extraordinary police, destined to intimidate and repress the obstinate partisans of those errors opposed to universal faith. Far from being an obstacle to the real progress of enlightenment, that institution was, then, rather favorable to it; for there is no enlightenment save in truth. In an epoch when the Catholic catechism was the only means to enlighten and teach morality to minds, to combat the ferocity of manners, to draw together and unite divers nations and social conditions, to have al- lowed ambitious dreamers to oppose teaching to teaching, and to establish as many religions and churches as they had knaves capable of playing the role of prophets, would have been to condemn Europe never to come forth from the chaos of barbarism. But because it was an ecclesiastical tribunal established by the popes, it must not be imagined that the Inquisition was the organ of the teaching of the Church and of the Holy See. The inquisi- 375 376 The People s Ark. tors never arrogated that office to themselves, and no instructed Catholic has ever given to their sen- tences the value of a doctrinal decision, emanating from a council or a pope. It was a judiciary court, called to pronounce on the fact: Are the opinions of such an author opposed to Scripture and the doctrine of the Church ? In this there were two questions — one, a question of right: Is such an opinion opposed to Scripture and the doctrine of the Church? — the other, a question of fact: Is this opinion really that of such an author? Now, on these two questions, the inquisitorial judges could, like all other judges, be deceived. They were really deceived on the question of right, in Galileo's affair, adopting, in their sentence, the general prejudice which considered the opinion of the earth's revolution around the sun as false in philosophy, contrary to Scripture, and to common teaching. But it is well recognized, that the illus- trious Florentine philosopher would not have been condemned by the tribunal of the Holy Office in 1633, for having sustained the system of Coper- nicus, had he been willing to conform to the deci- sion of the Holy Office in 1620, which permitted that. system to be taught as an hypothesis, but not as a thesis. Instead of imposing on himself that wise reserve, in a time when the famous discovery of the German Canon, although favorably received by many popes and cardinals, encountered great opposition in the schools ; instead, I say, of using that reserve, Galileo had wished to introduce the new idea into the domain of theology, by making it a thesis demonstrable from Scripture and the Twenty-Seventh Entertainment. 377 Fathers ; this drew on him the first sentence, to which he submitted. After some years of respect- ful silence, he began to compose Dialogues full of wit and malice, in which, under pretence of defend- ing the opinion of the inquisitors, he combated it in every way, and covered the judges with ridicule. Can we be surprised that they became angry ? To conclude that the Inquisition, thus provoked, was the interpreter of the thoughts of the Church and her chiefs, and that the popes and those who sur- rounded them, tried to retain Europe in the absurd prejudices of ancient philosophy, is to give an inso- lent lie to history, which shows us in Pope Urban VIII., under whom the condemnation took place, an admirer of Galileo,* and in the preceding popes, protectors of the new system. "Tiraboschi has demonstrated in three interesting dissertations, that the sovereign pontiffs, far from retarding the knowledge of the true system of the world, had, on the contrary, greatly promoted it; and that, during two entire centuries, three popes and three cardinals had successively sustained, encouraged and rewarded Copernicus himself, and the more or less successful astronomical precursors of that great man, so that it is, in a great measure, to the Roman Church we owe the true knowledge of the system of the world. They complain of the persecution which Galileo suffered for having sus- tained the motion of the earth, and they do not wish to remember that Copernicus dedicated his * u Pope Urban VIII. had composed some verses to cele- brate Galileo's astronomical discoveries." Rohrbacker — Universal History of the Catholic Church, t. xxv. book 87. 32* 378 The Peoples Ark. famous book of " Celestial Revolutions" to the great Pope Paul III., the enlightened protector of all sciences; and that in the same year which beheld the condemnation of Galileo, the court of Rome omitted no effort to draw to the university of Bologna the famous Kepler, who had not only embraced Galileo's opinions on the earth's motion, but had given immense weight to that opinion by the authority of his immortal discoveries, the ever famous complement of the demonstration of the Copernican system.* .... 11 Never has the united Church, never have the popes, in their quality as heads of the Church, pronounced a word against either the system in general, or Galileo in particular. Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, that is, by a tribunal that could be deceived like others, and which was really deceived on the grounds of the question; but Galileo himself inflicted injury on the tribunal; and he finally owed to his multiplied imprudences a mortification which he might have very easily averted, without compromising himself in any way. There is no doubt about these facts. We have the despatches of the Grand Duke's ambassador in Rome, who deplores the errors of Galileo. If he had abstained from writing, as he had given his * It is well to observe that that Kepler, so envied to Ger- many by the popes, had much to suffer from his coreligionists, particularly the Protestant theologians of Tubingen, and that he had great difficulty to preserve from fire his mother, accused of sorcery. — See the historical and critical memoirs published at Koine by Mgr. Marino Marini, under the title of Galileo e Vinquisizione, Twenty-Seventh Entertainment* 379 word to do; if he had not so obstinately wished to prove the system of Copernicus from the Holy Scripture ; if he had only written in the Latin tongue, instead of exciting minds in the vulgar tongue, nothing would have happened him."* And what were the severities exercised by the Inquisition towards the great man? He himself recounts them to his friends: " I arrived at Rome," says he, " on the 10th of February (1633), and was referred to the clemency of the Inquisition and the sovereign Pontiff, Urban VIIL, who had for me some esteem. I was placed under arrest in the delightful palace of Trinite-du- Mont, the residence of the Tuscan ambassador (his friend) When I arrived at the Holy Office, two Jacobins very politely invited me to make my apology." His prison was the very commodious habitation of the fiscal of the Holy Office, which he occupied only fifteen days; after which he was permitted to return to the ambassa- dor's residence. His sentence was made known to him on the 22d of June, and this is what he said of it: " To punish me, they forbade me the Dialogues , and dismissed me from Rome after five months' sojourn. As the pestilence was raging in Florence, they assigned me as my dwelling the palace of my best friend, Mgr. Piccolimini, archbishop of Sienna, where I have enjoyed full tranquillity." You see, my friends, that the Roman Inquisition, even when punishing, knew how to spare its vic- * De Maistre. Examination of Bacon's Philosophy, t. ii., oh. 7. 380 The Peoples Ark. tims, and that nothing in Galileo's affair breathes the persecuting and ferocious fanaticism which many of its enemies would make us believe. Let us now speak of the enemies of the Church, and prove that I said nothing too much, when, in the twenty-fifth entertainment, I laid down this proposition : — "The abuses and severities of the Catholic In- quisition for the defence of the religion which had enlightened and civilized Europe, are nothing, compared to the atrocities committed by the legislators and inventors of heresy, schism, and infidel philosophy, to establish absurd and immoral religions and reconduct us to barbarism." Let us commence by a glance at the programme and exploits of those great men to whom many of our modern writers attribute the intellectual and moral emancipation of Europe. " Down with the pope, the Roman antichrist! Down with the bishops, priests and religious ! Away with celibacy and monastic vows ! Away with fast, abstinence, confession, mass, devotion to the Virgin, and the saints, and prayers for the dead. Away with the necessity of good works ! Faith in the merits of Christ !" This was what made an angel of the most horrible wretch, provided that he cried : " Live the Bible, death to the papists!" Such was undoubtedly the religious programme of Luther, Zwingle and Calvin. We find that appeal of the new Gospel res- ponded to and applauded in Germany by one half of its princes; in Denmark, by Christian II. and Frederic I.; in Sweden, by Gustavus Vasa; in Twenty-Seventh Entertainment. 381 Switzerland by the lords of Berne ; in France by a part of the princes and courtiers ; in the Low Countries by the Prince of Orange, with his bandits of land and sea; in England and Ireland, by Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth; in Scotland, by Knox and all the enemies of the unfortunate Mary Stuart. And what did those new apostles do? They raised armies to reform the cathedrals, parishes, and monasteries, that is to say, to pillage, devas- tate, burn and violate them even to the tombs; to expel, to massacre the bishops, priests and monks ; to outrage the religious, to drag them to the foot of the altar to be married, to force the people at the point of the bayonet to Protestant churches, and to places where they burned the crosses, missals, statues and relics of the saints. We see princes and princesses, enriching both themselves, their courtiers and mistresses . with the property of the Church and the poor, making themselves popes, giving to their beloved subjects religions made in their council, and obligatory, under pain, first, of fine and imprisonment; then of confiscation of goods, banishment, and the gallows ; we see them decreeing the penalty of high treason* against every priest, religious, or papist layman, criminal enough to speak ill of the religion established by law. This is what we see in the broad light of the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is what is demonstrated by a host of monu- ments which leave no room for doubt. Establish- * To be hanged, drawn and quartered. 382 The Peoples Ark. ing themselves everywhere by violence, the new religions aimed at preserving themselves under the guardianship of the most violent laws, and transformed public functionaries, and even special ones into inquisitors, implacable against those who had the misfortune to profess the ancient religion. To compass their end, the innovators waited not until they had the majority in a country; it suf- ficed them to have enough of pikes and swords with which to enforce obedience. The decree is still preserved, by which the Cal- vinists of Dauphine, commanded by Crussol, or- dained on the 15th of April, 1563, that no one should acknowledge any other religion than that which had been preached by the ministers for about a year, and prayed Crussol and the political council to prevent the Mass from being reestab- lished there ; and that for the future, no one should hold any public office who had not made profes- sion of the reformed religion, since that the union necessary to the tranquillity of the nation exacted unity of belief.* " Who is ignorant," says the great Bossuet, " of the cruelties exercised by the Queen of Navarre against priests and religious ? The towers from which the Catholics were cast headlong, and the deep pits into which they were flung, are shown to this day. The wells of the bishop's palace at Nismes, and the cruel instruments employed to force them to Protestant sermons are not less known to the whole world. * Chorier. General History of Dauphine. Book xviii. p. 593. Twenty- Seventh Entertainment. 383 "We have still the informations and decrees by which it appears that those bloody executions were the deliberate resolves of Protestants in coun- cil assembled. We have the original orders of generals, and those of cities, at the request of con- sistories, to compel the Papists to embrace the Reformation, by taxes, by quartering soldiers on them, by demolishing their houses, and uncover- ing the roofs. Those who withdrew to escape those violences were stripped of their goods ; the records of the town-houses of Nismes, Montauban, Alais, Montpellier and other cities of the party are full of such decrees."* When Protestantism acted thus in states in which it formed only one-fifth of the population, we may imagine the beautiful toleration exhibited by it wherever it was dominant. We can defy any one to cite a single country in which the sectarians, being in the majority, had given religious freedom to the Catholics, except when it had been won by them, sword in hand, as by the Catholic cantons of Switzerland. It, most certainly, does not belong to the Canton of Berne to speak to us of toleration, when, as late as 1821, it applied to the illustrious Von Haller the law decreeing the loss of political and civil rights to the Bernese converted to Catholicism. Neither does it belong to the republic of Geneva, which, even after it had mitigated the Draconian and inquisitorial legislation of Calvin, would not, before the French occupation, permit any act of Catholic worship, whether public or private. * History of the Variations, Book x., c. 52. 384 The Peoples Ark, We will not cite the reformed states of Germany, which all, even in 1806, excluded the Catholics from offices, corporations and communities, and in Saxony, even from the right of possessing landed property. We will not cite Denmark or Sweden, whose death-law against Catholics I have pre- viously mentioned. Neither will we cite Holland, whose States-General, four years after the act of eternal confederation, guaranteeing entire liberty to Catholics, declared that the Catholic religion should not be allowed in any place subject to their au- thority. And that edict of 1583 was followed up to the end of the seventeenth century by twenty other edicts marked with the stamp of the most cruel intolerance. What shall we say of England's penal laws against the Catholics of the three kingdoms, exe- cuted during nearly three centuries with atrocious perseverance and barbarity? At a time in which religious fury had been everywhere diminished, William III., not content with violating the treaty of Limerick (1691), added to the horrible measures already taken to decatholicize Ireland, his code, which the celebrated Protestant Burke called u An engine of rare address and finished labor, as fit for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people and the debasement of human nature itself, as all that had been, up to then, produced by the perverse genius of man." On the abominable exploits of the English In- quisition, let us leave Catholic writers aside, and hold to the account of the Protestant Cobbett, in his " Letters on the Reformation, " and those of Twenty-Seventh Entertainment. 385 the Protestant historians cited by Daniel O'Connell, in his famous " Memorial to the Queen of England," and we shall feel the truth of those words of the immortal Agitator: "I conjure the English and Protestants to read these extracts from Protestant historians, and to reflect how much disgrace they cast on Protestantism in general, and on the Eng- lish nation in particular. Ah ! if they had such facts to urge against Catholics, we should never hear the end of it."* I have spoken only of the cruelties of the Pro- testant inquisitions against Catholics, whose sole crime was that of preferring the religion of the Christian universe to the miserable inventions of a few wretches ; and of these I have said only a word. What shall I say of that beautiful toleration which the Protestant sects exercise towards one another? Reformed Germany was not the only one to decree the massacre of the Anabaptists, the eldest children of the Reformation ; she was imitated everywhere; and as those sectaries inundated every country in which resounded the cry: Down with popery ! Live the Bible ! — they burned, decapi- tated, and drownedf more Anabaptists than the Spanish Inquisition ever destroyed relapsed Jews and Mahometans. * Memorial, p. 258. f The Swiss reformers preferred drowning to other deaths, in virtue of the frightful jest of the reformer Zwingle, who, playing on the word Anabaptists, as rebaptizing, wrote : u Let those who rebaptize be baptized until death result from it." — Hoeninghaus : The Reformation against the Refor- mation, t. i., p. 345. 33 386 The Peoples Ark. We know the extreme intolerance of Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, against the dis- senters; of Calvin against those who dared to doubt his frightful doctrines on predestination to evil and to hell, the inamissibility of grace, etc., etc. We know of the terrible war waged by his children in Holland, under the name of Gomarists and Arminians, in the beginning of the seven- teenth century; a war which ended in 1617 by the death of the celebrated Barneveldt, the per- petual imprisonment of Hogerberts and the illus- trious Grotius, and by the banishment of more than one hundred ministers. Let us not forget the long and bloody pursuit which Protestantism made everywhere during the first two centuries of its existence, against socerers and witches, a class from which Catholicity had nearly delivered Europe, but which increased very fast in those countries in which the reform gave credit to the teachings of Luther and Calvin regarding Satan's omnipotence, and his long do- minion over the Christian universe. While the consistories and universities were fighting to know what Jesus Christ had come to say to the world, and making His religion a pro- blem to be solved by the Bible, the people, who read little and wish to be taught, addressed them- selves naturally to sorcerers and diviners. Now, in his inquisitoral code, Calvin had judged sorcery deserving of fire, as the crime of treason in the highest degi'ee against the Divinity. That decision became a rule. In the Protestant Rome, they burned, Twenty-Seventh Entertainment. 387 within sixty years, one hundred and fifty persons for the crime of magic, and the Protestant Fazy observes with reason, that under the long reign of the bishops of Geneva, " we find no trace ot those monstrous proceedings against opinions, or those horrible torments inflicted on the unfortu- nate beings suspected of being in communication with the demon."* Nevertheless, the Genevese autos-da-fe for the crime of sorcery, are nothing compared to those beyond the Rhine. " Nearly all the German pro- vinces furnish documents according to which, dur- ing all the seventeenth century, multitudes of men and women were burnt for sorcery, frequently at such short intervals, that we can count many hundreds in a year."f While the most celebrated reformed theologians and jurists kept silence, or wrote in favor of those proceedings, as iniquitous in the form as inhuman in the spirit, the Catholic priests courageously raised their voice, as the Pro- testant historian Menzel acknowledges. Among them were particularly distinguished two young Jesuits, Tanner and Spee, the first of whom by his demands excited a storm, which was not with- out danger in an age when the most celebrated jurisconsult of Germany, the Protestant Benedict Carpzouro, held that they ought to proceed, not only against the sorcerers, but against those who denied the reality of compacts with the devil. As to F. Spee, it was undoubtedly to his learned * Essai (Tun precis de Vhistoire de Geneve, t. i., p. 185. f M. Rohrbacher. — Universal History of the Catholic Church, t. xxv., liv. 87. 388 The Peoples Ark. work,* published in 163 1, that Germany owed first, the mitigation, and afterwards the abolition of her absurd legislation in regard to magic. The great Leibnitz has also believed it a duty to discharge the debt of his contemporaries and coreligionists towards the Jesuit, by calling him "an excellent man whose memory should be precious to the wise and the learned."! To this passing glimpse of Protestant toleration, let us add, my friends, a small sample of that of infidel philosophy. The learned Bergier, who died in 1790, terminated an article on the Inquisi- tion by these words: "We boldly assert that if infidel philosophers were masters, they would establish an Inquisition as rigorous as that of Spain, against all those who should preserve an attachment for religion.";); "What a furious calum- niator !" then exclaimed thousands of Voltarians, great preachers of toleration. Well, the grave of Bergier was yet fresh, when the infidel philosophers , become masters \ had already immolated to their antichristian and antimo- narchical fanaticism, nearly two millions of French people of every condition, age and sex, in the midst of scenes of unexampled barbarity. La Vendee alone had furnished nine hundred thou- sand victims. " For the execution of the law of the suspected of the 2 1st of September 1793, more than fifty thousand revolutionary committees were installed * Cautio criminalis sen de processibus contra sagas. t Essai de theodue , Ire. part. % See his Theological Dictionary, art., Inquisition. Twenty-Seventh Entertainment 389 on the soil of France. According to Cambon's accounts, they annually cost five hundred and ninety-one millions (assignat). Every member of those committees received three francs a day, and they numbered five hundred and forty thousand: there were then five hundred and forty thousand accusers having the right to devote to death. In Paris alone, there were sixty revolutionary com- mittees, each having its prison for the detention of the suspected."* And, as the same historian observes, " It was not only priests and religious who figured on the mortuary register prepared by those five hundred and forty thousand inquisitors; there were thou- sands of women and children guillotined, drowned, shot. . . . The Reign of Terror alone has given to the world the cowardly and pitiless spectacle of the juridical assassination of crowds of women and children." Among so many grand inquisitors whom the revolutionary government sent into the depart- ments, to purify them from all the enlightened and virtuous suspected of incivism, there were very few who, in a single circuit, did not surpass all the horrors charged to the memory of the Spanish inquisitor, Torquemada. The correspondence and official relations of those monsters, inserted in the Moniteur, would alone suffice to demonstrate that philosophical fanaticism has left far behind it all the fanaticisms of which history has preserved the remembrance. * Chateaubriand. Historical Studies — Preface. 00* 390 The Peoples Ark. The horrible crusade, directed at first against religious knowledge, was soon extended to scien- tific knowledge. Let us compare the fate of Galileo, condemned by the Roman Inquisition to pass some months in a delightful palace, with that of so many- illustrious literary and scientific men stowed away in dungeons, whence they came forth only to mount the scaffold. The celebrated chemist, La- voisier, asked a respite of fifteen days to complete some experiments of great interest. He was answered : " The Republic has no need of learned men !" With the men of science, the disciples of deified reason destroyed scientific monuments. It was the very philosophical Condorcet, himself a savant, who made that barbarous motion in the tribune of the National Assembly, on the 19th of June, 1792, and we know with what success.* Gorged with carnage, rapine, and destruction, without being satiated, the inquisitors of philosophy decreed the violations of the tombs, and threw themselves, like veritable jackals, on the remains of fifty royal generations. Let us pass in silence over some other philoso- phical conceptions of that epoch, such as the motion to open slaughter-houses for human flesh, which failed; such as the working in human skins \ which obtained some success in Mendon's tannery, and procured to fashionable sans-culottism the satisfaction of being able to appear at the feasts of liberty in garments made of the skins of aristocrats. * Chateaubriand. Historical Studies — Preface. Twenty-Seventh Entertainment. 391 In reading the feats of the inquisitors of '93, one would think that they had exhausted all the excesses of barbarous fanaticism contained in the motto of the Voltarian school : Crush the infamous! Take the bowels of the last of the priests to strangle the last of the kings! Nevertheless, the prophets of socialism tell us, that the tigers of that period sinned by excess of moderation, and that the reign of social democracy shall not be so tender. We may believe them. Atheistic socialism being the final word of all religious, social, and philosophical errors, its ulti- mate result will be the extermination of our species. Enough, my friends, on this sad subject. I end by this reflection : — If the Catholic Church, to defend the only religion which remains here below, had employed the one-thousandth part of the atrocities committed, and caused to be committed by schisms, heresies, and infidel philosophy, for the establishment of religions equivalent to and ending in atheism and the most frightful anarchy, no Catholic would dare to speak of toleration or religious liberty. I beg Mr. Teacher to refer to our next entertain- ment the objections that may still remain. TWENTY-EIGHTH ENTERTAINMENT. answer to the last objections against the church and the Priesthood. TEACHER. CHARGED to make known to you, sir, the objections and prejudices that should exist in the minds of your audience against the ** Catholic creed, I have acquired the happy conviction that my task, which would have been very great some days ago, has now become very light. The point of view, at the same time vast, profound, simple, and luminous, under which you have shown us the Catholic religion, has truly interested minds, and caused a great commotion. Those who still doubt, know, at least, that their doubts are the result of ignorance. The resolu- tion to learn, and to be more assiduous, more attentive to their pastors words, shall be the first fruit of your entertainments, and the dissipation of their doubts the natural result of their progress in religious instruction. By laying aside a host of objections, the detail of which would be tire- some, and which the torch of instruction shall speedily dissipate, the mass of objections is re- duced to three points : severity of Catholic dogma and morality; inferiority, in many respects, of 392 Twenty- Eigh th En tertainment. 393 Catholic populations; and relaxation and scandals among the clergy. First, the reproach of severity in dogma, falls, almost exclusively, on the eternity of punishment. What you have said of this towards the end of the Reveil da Peuple y has already greatly dimin- ished that prejudice. One is delivered from the revolting idea of a God, Himself torturing His creatures eternally to avenge His justice; but some have still a difficulty in reconciling with the divine goodness, the idea of poor creatures being the eternal victims of their passing folly. As to morality, you are not ignorant, sir, that in the Ten Commandments of God, the sixth is too much. They know well enough that on this mat- ter there are excesses to be avoided, especially adultery, but many think that the prohibition is carried too far, and they say: "If this be so, who shall be saved ?" They are told : " Have recourse to the remedies ; mortify yourselves, confess, com- municate !" But the remedies frighten them more than the evil. How many objections arise against confession! Those objections, it is true, do not give us much concern ; a hundred times have we seen them victoriously overthrown by our pastors, but their foundation still remains, it is an extreme repug- nance. We must no longer speak of mortification, fast, and abstinence; they are not of our age. The Church, it is true, continues to command these things, but the transgression of the Command- ments of the Church has become so general, that for many it seems an acquired right. 394 The Peoples Ark. Secondly, the Protestant and Catholic self-wor- shippers have so greatly vaunted the happy fruits cf the religious revolutions of the sixteenth cen- tury, and the immense progress that we owe to them in science, philosophy, politics, commerce, industry, and the culture of all the arts, that many able minds imagine that our populations are inferior to Protestant populations in regard to material well-being, and even in intellectual and moral culture. We observe this particularly in those who travel, a class extremely apt to view everything favorably, because they see nothing to the bottom. You, sir, have already lifted a portion of the veil that hides the wounds of those Protes- tant states the most boasted and the most boast- ing. It is to be desired that you would complete this work, and confound the indefatigable calum- niators of Catholicity, by saying to them : You who take pleasure in making the most of the stains and vermin on our robe, come forth from the filth that rises even to your w r aist, and cast away the reptiles that tear your sides ! Thirdly and finally, the people are too much accustomed to judge of religion by the conduct of those who preach it, and to judge of the con- duct of the priesthood by the mediocre knowledge and virtues of a certain number of priests, and by the scandals of others. Among a clergy of forty thousand individuals, to whose devotion a country owes all that remains to it of faith and Christian virtues, that is to say, of civilized life, there may be one or two thousand relaxed priests, who render themselves contemp- Twenty-Eighth Entertainment. 395 tible by their idleness, their luxury, and their worldly activity; but we forget the former to occupy ourselves with the latter. Some of those priests without virtue, instead of arresting the progress of vice, fall themselves into crime, and become demons like Judas; then our enemies cry out: Behold the priests! And that judgment continues, till it impresses even those who under- stand the sovereign injustice of it. Such, sir, are the last sighs of incredulity expir- ing among your auditors. By giving to the mon- ster the final stroke, you will render an immense service to those minds over which it still tyran- nizes, for who is the unbeliever, knowing a little of religion, who has not said a thousand times in his heart : How happy should I be if I could believe and practise ! PLATO PUNCHINELLO. Nothing is more real, sir, than the fact of which you speak. Every unbeliever has, more or less, the consciousness of this truth : Incredulity is an evil, faith a benefit. We have on this subject the public avowals of the most famous coryphoes of irreligion. That consciousness, it is true, does not suffice for belief, but it is an invitation from on high to take the road to faith, — reflection, study and prayer. If one resists that divine summons, he is guilty, and finds himself condemned "by the judgment of his own conscience/' as St. Paul says.* In incredulity, as in other vices, there are two * Epist. to Titus, c. iii. 11. 396 The People s Ark. kinds of guilty persons, the passive unbeliever or the simply incredulous man, and the active unbe- liever or preacher of incredulity. The first, limiting himself to not believing, or rather, to not practising, does not regard with an evil eye those who believe and practise. He holds himself on the defensive, shows his incredulity only when attacked. He is an indifferent person, whose disease is less in the wanderings of the mind, than in the weakness of the heart, and the phantoms of the imagination. That soul can be very easily led back, if, instead of irritating it by too urgent solicitations and discussions, we exer- cise patience, and apply ourselves to gently dissi- pate his prejudices and repugnances by an exposi- tion of what is most attractive in religion. The preacher of irreligion is corrigible, inasmuch as he preaches only through foolishness and vanity; but the great master of irreligion soon puts into his heart this satanical sentiment: Faith, with its promises and menaces, its virtues and its benefits, makes me too uneasy not to labor for its extermination! — Must we despair of this man? No; but this is what I say: Every soul drawn by him from the life of faith, is as the blow of a poignard on the heart of Him who died for the redemption of every soul; the number of those blows being measured, the Saviour of souls says: "Enough!" Satan immediately falls on the slayer, and millions and millions of angels and archangels would not be able to drag from him his eternal and truly legitimate prey. Referring to our final entertainment what I have Twenty- Eighth Entertainment. 397 to say of the unhappy eternity, I come to the second point of the first objection, viz: the severity of Catholic morality. Do you not perceive, my friends, that the objec- tion turns against him who makes it, with all the force of a demonstration. Catholic morality com- mands all virtues, spares no vice ; what is the consequence ? That it is God who has invented it, for we have seen that the religions of human fabrication have been only cowardly compromises with evil passions, save when they have been the complete adoration of them, as in paganism. The general rule is, that a thing is valued only in proportion to what it costs. What would be that religion which should demand of you no sacrifice for your instruction or moral conduct? It would be a religion that would abandon you to all the wanderings of your igno- rance and that of others, to the absolute despotism of your own vices and those of the men in whose midst you live. Is this what you would wish? Would you envy the fate of the slaves of pagan- ism, fallen as low as we have seen, only for want of Christian knowledge and virtue ? It is but too evident that we are born with a nature much diseased, which can be healed only by vigorous treatment. We are born in perfect ignorance of our destiny; seek for another means of dissipating that ignorance than that of religious instruction ; you shall not find it. Where religion does not teach that first truth, there are found only darkness, complete uncertainty, and superstitious folly. We are born with the germ of all vices, and 34 398 The Peoples Am. you know, my friends, that by allowing that fatal germ to develop itself without restraint, you would make your children only unhappy wretches, who would be their own executioners, the ruin of their family and of society. How can this be prevented? By no other means than that which religion points out to you : — Raise your children in the fear of the Lord and the love of His law. They complain of the excessive severity of the sixth commandment, interdicting, under pain of spiritual death, even the voluntary thought of evil. But a very simple consideration is sufficient to make you see that that complaint is destitute of even common sense. Is it not true, that by tolera- ting the thought, the desire comes ; that when this enters, and is entertained, the act is almost inevitable? that the act in being multiplied, forms a habit which tends to become a necessity? that that degrading habit makes of a soul created to the image of God, an, I know not what, exclu- sively applied to destroy, far and wide, both souls and bodies, for the pleasure of ruining and corrupt- ing his own body ? This being so, could God dispense Himself from saying to His ministers : Warn well the souls confided to you, that in refus- ing to combat evil thoughts and desires, they bid me an eternal adieu ?* Impurity ! — is it not the evil among all the evils of humanity? Was it not the creator of the Deluge, the exterminator of infamous cities, the generator of all the abominations of paganism, * Wisdom i. 3. Twenty-Eighth Entertainment. 399 of all the degrading and sanguinary inventions of Asiatic, Mussulman, and African despotism? Impurity ! — has it not been, in common with pride, the inspirer of all religious, philosophical, and social errors, tending to that abominable device: Down with all the opposers of division, or of a community of goods and women! Would the Catholic Church be really the Church founded by the Saviour of the world, if she did not possess the remedy to the most terrible of our maladies ? And this remedy, as Mr. Teacher has very truly said, is the purification of the soul by repentance and confession, it is the regeneration of the soul and body by the Divine Communion, it is the preponderance of the moral life over the organic life, obtained by- the observance of the laws of Christian mortification. Confession, frightful thing ! Yes, my friends, as frightful as ghosts are to those who have never seen them closely. Do you wish to overcome that terror, somewhat ridiculous ? Look at the infinite number of those who confess, yet do not die. Do as you would to the ghost; go straight to the phantom, and you shall be not only cured of your fear, but shall feel that confession is to the soul having the greatest repugnance to it, a source of the most ineffable consolations. This is the ac- knowledgment confirmed by millions of guilty souls. I will cite only two of them, chosen, one from the summit, the other from the lowest step of the social ladder. Napoleon, after having opened his conscience to the minister of reconciliation, said, a few days 400 The People s Ark. before his death to General de Montholon: " Gen- eral, I am happy, I have fulfilled my duties; I desire for you, at your death, the same happiness. I had need of it, you see. I am an Italian, a child of Corsica. The sound of the bells moves me, the sight of a priest gives me pleasure. I wished to make a secret of all this, but it would not be right; I owe, and I wish to render glory to God."* Listen now to what was written some years ago (April 8th, 1850) by the parricide Godart, con- demned by the judges of this world, but converted and absolved by the minister of "heaven. "Still under the influence of a duty the most sacred that a Christian can fulfil, a duty which I had for so long a time neglected, and the omission of which has been fatal to me, I hasten to answer your letter which has done me so much good. " No one can know from what a weight one is freed when he has opened his heart to the minister of God; no one can understand with what good- ness he penetrates by his paternal words into the hearts of the most guilty. After God, where is the friend more sincere, more devoted than the priest? Unfortunately, the advice of that friend so sincere, so devoted, is not heard; or if we hear it, it is but to reject it, and follow the torrent of those passions that conduct us to the brink of the preci- pice, down which, miserably blinded as we are, we fall" Yes, my friends, confession is frightful only to those cowards who view it from a distance. It is * Universal Biography. By M. Michaud. Art. Napoleon. Twenty- Eighth Entertainment. 401 the same with works of Christian mortification, particularly those prescribed by the commandments of the Church. I have many times proved the following proposition : The art, by excellence, of suffering less here below both in soul and body, and of living better and longer, is the exact obser- vance of the laws of God and of the Church. I even propose to myself to give you the demonstra- tion of it, some day. As to those who should tell you that the laws of the Church touching fast and abstinence are no longer in season in the nineteenth century, look on them as perfectly ignorant of the Christian spirit and our social maladies. The first and the last word of the Gospel is to repress the desires of the flesh, it is to establish the reign of God in the soul, and the reign of the soul over the senses. What is the great malady of the age, that which threatens to precipitate us, from one instant to the other, into the final convulsions of death ? It is sensualism, the adoration of pleasures and whatever procures them. The Church has, then, more than ever, a right to say to nations and individuals: "If you do not do penance, you shall all perish."* And when the Church speaks to and commands us, you ought now to know who speaks and commands; it is He who says: "He that will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican All that you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. . . . He that despises you despises me," * St. Luke, c. xiii. 5. 34* 402 The People s Ark. To say, as so many ignorant persons do, that one is obliged to keep the commandments of God under pain of reprobation, but not those of the Church, is to show one's self not only a bad Catholic, but a real Protestant. The ignorance, more or less involuntary, in which the heretic remains with regard to the Church, may serve to excuse him before God ; but what can be alleged in favor of him, who, born in the bosom of light, has lived in the contempt of light? The number of the trans- gressors of ecclesiastical laws, were it ten times as great as it is, could not prevail over that maxim as ancient as Catholicism : " One has God for his Father only by accepting the Church as his Mother." On this point, as on others, the Catholic yoke weighs heavily on those who reject it or drag it; it gives wings to those who carry it resolutely. In fine, let us not lose sight of the capital truth of the Christian. Why are we here below for some days ? For trial, for sacrifice, for combat, for the acquisition of that kingdom before which all the kingdoms of the earth are as nothing. The heaven which Jesus Christ promises to our obe- dience to His precepts; heaven, that eternal ocean of all that can win our heart, — glory, gran- deur, power, delights, — is it then so trifling a thing, that we should complain of the price which God puts on it? On this subject, there recurs to my memory a little anecdote. In his famous Northern campaign, during the winter of 1806 and 1807, Napoleon confided to the Marshal and Senator Lefebvre, the command of the siege of Dantzic, a place extremely strong. Twenty-Eighth Entertainment. 403 Such a task suited not the taste of an old cavalry general, as ignorant as he was brave. He com- plained bitterly to the emperor, who replied : " But, my old general, why do you complain of what will cover you with glory? I have taken every measure to compel Dantzic to open to you its gates. It is really necessary that yon also, when we return to France, may have something to say in the Senate Chamber!'* Well, would not you, my friends, wish to have some victories to recount in the eternal Senate of heaven ? Can you flatter yourselves to arrive without effort at the sojourn of heroes; first, those angels who have entered there only after hav. j valiantly combated the defection of a great num- ber of their companions drawn into revolt by one of their chiefs; then those men who have been crowned only inasmuch as they had resisted the seductions of Satan, the world and the flesh? Jesus Christ tells you that such a thing is impos- sible : He who suffered so much to facilitate our entrance into heaven, expressly tells us that it shall be given only to those zvlw do themselves vio- lence, that the gate is narrow, that the road that leads to it is not very commodious, \ and that by wishing to escape from pain, they inevitably end — where ? At the eternal gehenna, the sad abode of the base and cowardly, who, in refusing the combat, passed, by that act, under the flag of the enemy of all virtue, of all good. * History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M. Theirs : Book xxvii. t St. Matthew, e. viii. 13.— xi. 12. 404 The Peoples Ark. The second objection indicated by Mr. Teacher, which is founded on a pretended moral and mate- rial superiority of those populations separated from the Catholic Church, still enjoys great credit among that class so numerous, of superficial readers and observers ; I have resolved to overthrow it to the foundation by a comparative picture of Catholic nations and separated nations; but this picture, in order to forever confound those idle talkers, would require at least a small volume. This volume you shall have, my friends, in a few months, unless that between now and then, the separated nations, aided by our liberal revolu- tionists, give us the last fruit of their three cen- turies' progress : the triumph, at least momentary, of the most savage barbarism. I pass to the third objection. Referring to the book which I have promised, the discussion of a certain number of facts relating to the clergy, I here limit myself to some considerations which result from what I have had the honor of saying to you of the Catholic priesthood, in the Reveil du Peuple, and in the preceding entertainments.* The priesthood having been by Jesus set over the great work of human regeneration, we must not be surprised to find in this chosen corps, and in a superior degree, the three elements which agitate the Christian world — the divine, the human, and the infernal. First: the divine element visibly predominates in * See Reveil du Peuple, Lessons x., xi. — Entertainments, Twenty-Eighth Entertainment. 405 the history of the priesthood, and is clearly mani- fested in the durability of that body, and the gene- ral results of its action. Show me then a corporation composed of five or six hundred thousand individuals of every condi- tion, of every country ; a corporation unceasingly combating both within and without, all ideas, actions and customs opposed to Catholic faith and morals ; a corporation incessantly fought against, both within and without, by all the vicious inspirations of the human mind and heart; a corporation always strong enough to resist, during eighteen centuries, the most furious exterior attacks, the most cruel interior lacerations, yet still to retain in unity, by the sole power of conviction, nearly two hundred millions of subjects. No government could have been more impossible to establish, none more impossible to maintain, in a human point of view, than the government of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, seek for a civil government wise enough, strong enough to have reigned over only one nation the one-fourth the duration of the sacerdotal reign over the extent of the Christian universe. Yes, my friends, it would be necessary to be ten times more blind, not to recognize the work of the Most High in the duration of the priesthood. Therefore, when the enemies of the Church say to you : Catholicism is the work of the priests' ambition and the people's imbecility, — give them only this answer : If this be so, why have not you yet overthrown Catholicism, you who are so superior to it, by your chiefs' lust of power, by 406 The Peoples Ark. the incurable imbecility of your dupes, and by the more or less eager concurrence of anticatholic rulers ? Are not the general results of sacerdotal action still the proof of the divine element? In my pre- ceding lessons, and in the course of these enter- tainments, I think I have rendered palpable the fact, that all that remains to us of faith and charity, that is to say, of Christian civilization, is due to the action of the priesthood, and that wherever this action ceases, or at least diminishes, there we see the resuscitation of barbarism, but a barbarism with those characteristics of subversive fury which it finds among nations guilty of apostasy. We always see our clergy brave injuries, sufferings and death, to preserve, extend, and propagate the work of Jesus Christ, whether at home or abroad. Show me among the clergies created by schism and heresy, only one among those hosts of volun- tary martyrs of apostolic charity, which we have always been accustomed to send to the most fero- cious oppressors of Asia and Oceanica, to the most deadly climates of Africa. When our enemies ask you what the priests do, tell them: They do just the contrary from you. They go to establish in the midst of barbarians that civilization which you have stifled among us. You, to make yourselves great, and enjoy yourselves at our expense, labor to change Christian nations into herds of swine and tigers ; and they, to accomplish the words of Jesus Christ, go to sacrifice themselves and to die, in order to transform herds of swine and tigers into Christian nations. The priests are, with some Twenty-Eighth Entertainment 407 exceptions, men of the God of Charity, as you are men of Satan. Secondly: as it has pleased the Man-God to compose His priesthood of men, the human ele- ment must necessarily play in it a great part, and agree tolerably well with the divine. Compared with Jesus Christ, whose lieutenant he is, the best, the holiest of priests will make but a paltry figure, and must say to himself: I am a miserable priest, unworthy of my divine profession! — All the heroes of the priesthood have said this, and more than this; and had they not said so with the most perfect conviction, they should not have been heroes. The priesthood is visibly sustained by the arm of its Divine Chief, but its members have been, are, and shall eternally be, overwhelmed by the comparison that is made, and should of right be made, between the disciples and the Master, be- tween the ambassadors oi heaven and the eternal King of heaven and earth. This comparison, so humiliating for the priesthood, is the cuirass w r hich Jesus Christ has given it to resist the most common and the most terrible of the priest's temptations, that of pride. Therefore, my friends, there is nothing more true than this sentence: The priests are not what they ought to be. But I think that you should not complain, when you can say: Our priests are, in general, all that could be expected from the grace of God and the miseries of our nature. — And when can you say this ? When you find in the sacer- dotal militia, first, a very great number of generals, captains, lieutenants, sub-officers and soldiers, all 4oS The Peoples Ark. excellent, some with heroic heart, others with more than ordinary capacity and devotedness: secondly, a mass of under-officers and soldiers generally brave but with less ardor, — I mean a number of priests endowed with sufficient know- ledge and virtue to fulfil their duties regularly, and give no reason for grave reproach by their conduct. Let their commanders reproach them for the cow- ardliness and lukewarmness of their ministry; let their own conscience, when they enkindle it by the fire of the charity of Jesus Christ, accuse them of the evil which they allow to be done, and of the good that they do not do; this is all very well. But whoever will keep an account of the i^ood which even those tepid priests preserve by their action, and the evil they prevent, v/ill find that they are still worthy of the beautiful title of men of God and of. humanity: When the great majority of your sacerdotal army belong to these two classes, bless God, my friends, and do not be too much scandalized at seeing on the flanks, in the rear, and even in the ranks of that militia, a certain number of loun- gers, stragglers, marauders— in fine, of traitors and Judases, who constitute the infernal element. Thirdly: in Lesson x. of the Rcveil du Pcuplc, I have shown you how the combat between good and evil, which is the end of our passage here below, must be found again among the priesthood. Satan finds his way even there. He entered into the terrestrial paradise; — would you then expect that he could not enter into the sanctuary? He thrice tempted the Divine Chief of the priesthood ; Twenty-Eighth Entertainment. 409 could you, then, think that he would respect His disciples ? Rest assured, my friends, that for one demon who tempts you, the priest has a hundred pursuing him. Why? Because, as his Master has said : The pastor once fallen, the flock shall be dispersed.* Again, He said to the apostles, ad- dressing Himself to their chief: " Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded thee, that he may sift thee as wheat."f And in truth, we see that at the first shake of the sieve, Simon Peter fell, and of his eleven colleagues, nine fled away, and the tenth marched at the head of the deicides. If you ask, my friends, how it is that the bad priest so easily becomes a demon, the Gospel again explains it to you. In speaking of the com- munion of Judas, it tells us that Satan immediately entered into himX incorporated himself with him and became his master, as your soul is the mis- tress of the body. Ah, yes, that sacred beverage of the altar, which enkindles and increases in the fervent priest the inextinguishable thirst of good, and which preserves the mediocre priest from descending so low as to drink of the empoisoned waters of vice; that beverage, I say, enkindles in the unhappy wretch who profanes it, with the knowledge of what, he does, the satanic thirst for evil. I shall only repeat what the priesthood has continually said with sorrow, and what is demon- strated by history, when I say : The pest of public pests is the bad priest. It is he, principally, who * St. Mark, c. xiv. 27. f St. Luke, c. xxii. 32. \ St. John, c. xiii. 27. 35 41 o The Peoples Ark. has kindled and carried through the Christian world the torch of schism and heresy, devouring at the same time both faith and morals, souls and bodies. The bad priest is the poisoner of poi- soners, the murderer of murderers. But do not forget, my friends, what I have said to you : Bad priests are a great proof of the divinity of Catholicism and its priesthood. Both one and the other would have been a hundred times demolished, had not both one and the other been the work, by excellence, of the incarnation of the God of Charity. Those who demand why the Church does not apply herself more energetically to reduce the number of bad priests, do not then know the super- human efforts of the Church to have in her ranks none but good priests, and the incessant efforts of the powers of the world to give her none but the mediocre, or the bad. The Church has always demanded three things for a good clergyman — vocation, education, and discipline; and in all times, particularly in the last century, and in ours, nothing has been neglected that could prevent and ruin vocations to the priesthood, sacerdotal educa- tion and ecclesiastical discipline. Having to speak of this elsewhere, I will limit myself to a few words. Vocation. — The superior classes, invaded by incredulity and sensualism, are not content to abandon, almost exclusively to the people, the career, by excellence, that of devotedness to God and to men. They have tried to depopularize it, and have succeeded only too well in this, even Twenty- Eighth Entertainment. 411 in view of their material interests, for they have given rise to that terrible question : What use are so many great gentlemen, wealthy stockholders, and proprietors? Education. — Clerical education, they say, is very poor in regard to knowledge, and perhaps also in virtue. It is true ; but who are those accusers of clerical education? They are the authors or par- tisans of the spoliation and demolition of all our ecclesiastical and monastic establishments of sacer- dotal education and profound studies of every kind; they are the oppressors of religious liberties, who have not ceased to say : Let us prevent the return of a Church and of religious societies powerful by word and works. Discipline. — The great nerve of Catholic disci- pline starts from the Holy See, arrives at every metropolis, is there displayed in the provincial synod, resides there in the metropolitan tribunal, thence it branches off through each diocese, where it develops its power over every priest by the dio- cesan synod, and by all the springs of episcopal administration. Well, everything has been done to break this powerful organization, and you, my friends, have also concurred in it. Is it not true, that when you have a priest according to your taste, as you say, but not according to that of the Church of Jesus Christ, you boldly assume his defence before all and against all ? What is the consequence ? The bishop, for fear of a greater evil, tolerates a suspected priest, confines himself to reprimands and exhortations, when energetic treatment would be necessary. The bishop might 412 The Peoples Ark. have saved that priest who was only on the br!nk of the precipice; you have thrown him down it, and once become a demon, he will drag you into it. Yes, my friends, the crime of the crimes of Eu- rope has long been the efforts of influential classes to secularize in every way the Catholic clergy, that is to say, to reduce it to be what it is in Protes- tant states, an excellent means of subduing the people under the government of sensualists. This is what renders imminent the solution of the great European trial, a solution which shall be the subject of the following entertainment. TWENTY-NINTH ENTERTAINMENT. Poverty of the solutions proposed by man — Grandeur op the solution prepared here below and decreed on HIGH. SOLUTION ! a solution ! a solution ! Such is, my friends, the general cry from the north to the south, from the east to the west. In truth, solutions are not wanting. Every one, placing himself in his own point of view, in that of his circle, of his village, at the most, of his nation, holds to one, which shall be our affair. Thus, for some, the solution is the return to absolute monarchy; for others, it is always the constitutional monarchy. For these it is a strong government, a military dictatorship, an empire; for those, a republic ; and there are a thousand republican solutions which can be reduced to three — the moderate and conservative republic, the progressive republic, and the social and demo- cratic republic; that is to say, the thoroughly revolutionary. For Germany, there is the imperial solution, divided into the x\ustrian and Prussian; then the republican solution, which wishes to make of the three states only one. For Russia, there is the grand solution which 35 * 413 414 The People's Ark. she has been preparing for so long a time, and which would place us all under the religious and political suzerainty of his majesty the Autocrat. For England, there is the solution, at once Pro- testant and industrial, which seeks the extinction of popery, and wishes, more than ever, to preserve its manufacturing and commercial monopoly, by employing the torches of Mazzini and his fol- lowers, to ruin the industry and commerce of the continent. Finally, under all these solutions, which cross one another in every direction in the upper and middle regions of politics, there is yours, honest petty proprietors and laborers of town and coun- try. When shall this brawl end ? you ask. When, in fine, shall w r e have a government which will assure order, without which there is liberty only for rascals ; a government that with order will procure for us that liberty, the most necessary in a country, yet the most forgotten — the liberty of attending to our work, and of giving to those who govern, the least possible allowance of men and money. Such, my friends, are some of the means by which they flatter themselves they can unravel or cut the stitches of the net-work interwoven throughout Europe. We may well say: Man pro- poses, but God disposes. The chains that bind us are of such strength, that no intellectual or moral power can remove or break them; they are so well adjusted about our necks that violent efforts to rid ourselves of them would only end in our strangulation. We ourselves have forged Twenty-Ninth Entertainment. 415 those chains; like all sinners, "we are taken in our own nets," and if we perish, it will be like Judas, "by our own hands."* And why has Europe the rope around her neck? Because she has thrown down, has trodden under foot the yoke of the Ruler of rulers. From being sanctified as she was by Christianity, she has become secularized. For the divine right, that is to say, the Christian law regulating the duties and rights of all, of subjects as well as of sovereigns, and covering them with the seal of divine inviola- bility, we have substituted the right of the sove- reign, disposing of all secular and ecclesiastical rights, and recognizing no other duties than the inspirations of his haughty wisdom. To the unlimited right of the state personified in the sovereign, revolutions have caused to suc- ceed the yet more unlimited right of the state represented by the middle classes. Finally, ever descending the ladder of despotism, we reach its most brutal form, that of the state wholly democratized, that is to say, ruled by those factions most capable of misleading and perverting the masses. Protestant sovereigns killed the Catholic Church in their states, and substituted for it churches of their own fabrication. Catholic sovereigns, the better to protect the Church against the Head whom Jesus Christ has given her, took her under their hand, nationalized and royalized her as much as possible; and we still see kingdoms laboring * Psalm ix. 16, 17. 41 6 The Peoples Ark. for this, as earnestly as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The conspiracy of temporal sovereignties has terribly shaken and broken the spiritual sove- reignty; but this still subsists, and is evidently the only one that shall have a future. Where are the monarchies which wished to exterminate it, or bring it under their power ? Some are smothered in filth; others have passed away under the hand of the executioner; others have been expelled by the vulgar rabble; some we see awaiting their hour, deprived of their liberty by the very legists who led them to imprison the Church. If there are still some who give signs of vigor, it is because that, here, there is still a powerful basis of Catho- licism ; there, as in Russia and England, there is an autocratic monarchy or oligarchy, capable of still galvanizing two great corpses : those corpses may, by a last effort, vomit over Europe the ele- ments of death which they bear within them ; but I defy them to establish their dominion therein, or even to maintain their preponderance. Those kingdoms, with their dependencies, guilty of felony towards Christ, are, then, some executed, others on the way to it. Could the latter sue for a return to favor? Yes; he who asks does not offend : even supposing that the kingdoms were no longer pardonable, the royal persons are always so. The citizen despots carried still farther than their royal predecessors the war against the Church. They said to her : " Both land and capital belong to us ; you shall not possess either rents or lands, but only a moderate provisional salary. Benevo- Twenty -Ninth Entertainment. /\iy lence belongs to the state; you shall, then, no longer warm in your bosom the suffering classes. The education of youth is our affair; be content to preach the catechism to whoever will go to hear you in the churches." And in fact, my friends, we see that she shall soon have no longer in all Europe, either rent-roll, or field, or edifice, of which it can be said : " This belongs to the Spouse of the Eternal Word, to the Mother of European civilization!" The Church still alleviates many sufferings, but there are others to which she can only give her tears. With the youth, dragged from her maternal hands, she has seen the masses of the people desert her temples. Honest citizen legists and lawyers, nothing is wanting to your triumph, but here is a little damper. Where are the incomes and stocks so certain as not to tremble under the threats of that bankruptcy to which all states advance, either willingly or of necessity? If I had any property that I cared for, invested in the public funds, I would withdraw it. But in what should I invest it ? Certainly not in houses or lands, for they are shaking and falling before the precursory signs of division, or rather of plunder. I know of no place so safe as the bosom of the poor — but I forget that their assist- ance has become an affair of the state. This is, in fact, the second chain which despotism has put around its neck. The poor, whether healthy or infirm, learning that alms is humbling, and that heaven is an invention of the priests, threaten to set the state on fire, if they be not assigned a com- 4i 8 The Peoples Ark. fortable place in the terrestrial paradise. To those two chains is added a third, which of itself would suffice to strangle the most vigorous society. Edu- cation has become so secularized in all its branches, that youth is no longer willing to submit to restraint. The laboring class, which has been inspired with contempt for the divine offices of Sunday, frequents the tavern, at least on Monday, and the religion of the tavern is comprised in this principle : Seeing that the aristocrats refuse to divide with us, let us make an end of them! It is, then, evident that the middle classes, in trying to overthrow the Church and put it quietly in the grave, are twisting three ropes, which are for them the augurs of an evil hour. By their rage for centralization they have made capitals a scaffold to which executioners are not wanting, and a funereal pile which waits only a spark; by the implacable war they have waged against religious associations, they have left the field clear for infernal societies. The slaves enrolled by the Mazzinis, the Ledru- Rollins, the Struves, Heinzens, etc., are about to avenge those societies founded for the glory of God, and the service of men, by St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisium, St. Ignatius, and so many others. This is admirable justice; but a justice fearful on account of the number of its victims. You, my friends, may not hope to escape it. For, alas ! in all times The lowly have paid for the follies of the great. I believe I have given superabundant proof in the Twenty-Ninth Entertainment. 419 Reveil dn Peuple that all revolutions have weighed on your shoulders, and brought you only an increase of labor and misery. This one will make an end of you. The day on which an aristo should fall in his quality of aristo, those among you who would not wish to imbrue your hands in his blood by crying out: " Long live the guillotine !" should be aristos. You would either bow your heads under their sword, or try to put a bullet in their head or breast; in either case there would be an unprecedented massacre. When the devotees of the guillotine say to us : " '93 was but a faint dawning of the future that is being prepared ;" they speak more truly than they think. If they succeed in raising the red flag, during only one month, in the great European centres, they will make the tour of the continent by the glare of capitals in flames, enlightening all places with scenes of carnage and banquets of human flesh. If, then, it please the Supreme Ruler to save the masses still unperverted, He will say to the strong of ami, Arise, go forward! And these will not put the sword into the scabbard until they have engraven on grave-stones scattered from place to place, this inscription: ''Here lie the devotees of the guillotine, beneath the ashes of their mother; woe to him who will shed one tear over them." The kings of the future shall, probably, gain their crown as the first kings of the ancient world gained theirs, and the title of gods or demi-gods — by delivering the earth from the monsters that infected it. How shall Europe free herself from the cord and the stake? Shall it be by reestablishing, or by 420 The People s Ark. better consolidating the monarchies, whether of the past or the present, by accepting them as the true principle of order and liberty? If any monarchy attempt to raise or consolidate itself before having made with eclat an act of reparation to the Mon- arch of monarchs, it shall immediately disappear beneath its ruins, with its restorers. What could you expect? Above, infinitely above all monarchs, by right and fact, there is the Eternal Monarch, the source of all right, of all legitimacy, of all power. I would strongly counsel monarchists and re- publicans of all shades, to weigh the rights of this Pretender of pretenders, such as they read them in the holy books, which are the programme of the divine pretensions, and in universal history, which is the relation of what nations have expe-. rienced under God's suzerainty, and under that of the enemies of God and men. While waiting for the result of that study, which is not the affair of a day or a year, here is a little summary of the divine right. The God-Man says : " I am the Creator, the Legislator, the Conservator, the Reedemer, the Supreme Judge, not only of individuals and nations, but also of all forms of government. I have given monarchies to nations which I had prepared for monarchy; I have given republics to nations which I shaped for republics; one is as dear to me as the other, and I preserve them with equal care in my love and in the love of the people, so long as they acknowledge and honor my sovereignty by their fidelity to my law. Twenty-Ninth Entertainment. 421 "When, in a monarchy, a dynasty despises me, after one or two useless warnings I reject it. Such was the dynasty of Saul, my choice and that of the people. David, whom I substituted for him, and who was welcomed by the people, sinned. I chastised him in his own person and in his people, for both were as one before me; in other places, kings become usually despots and corrupters only through the servility and corrup- tion of the people. The chastisement having been operated, the crown passed to Solomon ; he being corrupted, became a corrupter, and of the twelve tribes that composed the kingdom, his successors preserved only two. " The kingdom of Juda and the kingdom of Israel were successively chastised and pardoned, until, finally, the evil increasing, I delivered them to the stranger. The former returned from Baby- lon and assumed a republican form, for I try by every means to lead nations back, sometimes chastising and saving monarchies by republics, and republics by monarchies. All forms have the same value before me, — that which is given them by my will, determined by men's submission to my law. "After some fair days under the chiefs that I gave them, the quasi-monarchical republic of Judea was justly placed under the power of the great republic which bore on its flanks the vast empire destined to prepare the way for my eternal empire. Descending then in person, for the reli- gious and social regeneration of the human race, particularly of my chosen nation, I w r as delivered 4-2 2 The Peoples Ark. to the most cruel and ignominious death by the whole nation, acting through its sacerdotal college, through the college of its nobility and middle classes, and finally by the cry of the popular masses. Shortly afterwards, the Temple and Jeru- salem with its 1,200,000 inhabitants, was ruined as a capital has never been ruined, the nation scattered like the dust carried by the winds in a thousand different directions; and, after eighteen centuries, that dust, everywhere trodden under foot, has not yet been able to amalgamate itself with the dust of so many nations and empires ! " What I had done on a small scale and figura- tively in Palestine, I have done on a grand scale in Europe. I had taken one of the families issued from the blood of Abraham, to prepare the world for the humiliating fact of my Incarnation and my Passion. I chose the European family to cause me to be recognized and adored throughout the universe as the Saviour and Eternal Chief of hu- manity, enfranchised by my law, which is the perfect lazu of liberty* How many labors, how many pro- digies, during fifteen centuries, to purify that earth sullied by the long-continued reign of filthy and cruel monsters, and to prepare the new races which I called forth from unknown regions ? Monarchies, republics, royalty, nobility, magis- tracy, citizens, clergy, people, all, had been ren- dered great by my care; but at the moment in which I expected that the flowers and fruits of that tree, watered by so much apostolic blood and * St. James, Cath. Epis., ch. i. 25. Twenty- Ninth Entertainment. 423 sweat, would shed in the universality of nations their divine perfume, and determine them to range themselves under the mild yoke of my law 7 , a great conspiracy burst forth against me and mine, and notwithstanding three centuries of disasters and severe yet merciful chastisements, that conspiracy has become universal. From the higher and middle classes, to the lowest stratum of society, there are only two cries, which amount to the same thing: Down with all the laws of God, interpreted and applied by the Church ! "In fine, among the immense majority of those who imagine themselves to be strong, some wish to do away with the principles of my government, others desire to abuse them to their own profit. Well, do you, the absolute enemies of conditional friends of my government, put yourselves at work, try to reconstruct something over the ruins heaped up by your folly! You shall not place two stones, but I will make them fly into dust. Either my law shall be the base and the crown of your laws, or, notwithstanding your lawyers and soldiers, or rather, by means of them, you shall arrive at my eternal tribunal, through carnage and incendiarism. " Such, my friends, is the solution which Plato Punchinello holds as certain. In truth, let us be frank ; what is wanting in this solution to be emi- nently just before God and before those men who have not their souls under their stomach? After all, who has created us, with the earth that bears and nourishes us, with the sun that warms and enlightens us? Who preserves us even to that hour which no human power can 424 The People s Ark. either know or retard for a single instant? Are they monarchies, with their old or new dynasties ; republics with their constitutions more or less quickly changing? Could it be aristocracy, could it be democracy, in all their degrees and with all their great religious and political fabricators ? No; those are things and men, who, animated by the divine principle of life, lead to life, but who, directed by the spirit of death, conduct surely to death, both for time and eternity. When those things and their partisans fight as obstinately against the Author of life as they had done for some centuries, I do not see what could have hindered the Eternal Architect from breaking them. 1 have sometimes the insolence to say to Him: "In your place, Lord, I would not have waited so long. It is well indeed for the European Marmozet that you are what it will no longer recognize you to be : the God who suffers in time, in view of eternity I'' Could it be that the executive power was want- ing on high ? Ah, my friends, even though we ourselves should not have made the preparations for our torture, although the slaughtering dema- gogues whom we have made, enrolled, and armed^ should be wanting in intelligence and courage sufficient for the crime, cannot the Master, by one glance on the globe, make therein a derangement of which no human intellect would be able to divine the cause or prevent the effects? After much study, our wise men would tell us : It is a natural phenomenon! Yes, but that natural phenomenon, corrupting our aliments even under ground, produces famine, Twenty- Ninth Entertainment. 425 which gnaws alike the intestines of kings, clergy- men, and statesmen, of the rich and of peasants; the natural phenomenon operates so quickly, that souls depart by millions and millions towards the supernatural world. No, most certainly, the means of making an end of us are not wanting on high, but the means visibly predestined are the cords twisted by our own hands; — the imitators of Judas shall end like him. Finally, were Europe to be wholly crushed, which I do not think, do you believe that Jesus Christ would be embarrassed to find its successors? If you ask me whence they should come, I, in my turn, would ask you, Whence came the long pro- cessions of barbarians who, from the fifth to the twelfth century, overran Europe, entering from all directions? The greater part of those nations knew not whence they came, or whither they were going. Composed at first of some nomadic families, they increased faster than the rabbits; they advanced, impelled by necessity, and by an unknown voice, which said to them: Go forward! Yes, my friends, by a little reflection on what I have said in the course of these entertainments, you will understand that what is demanded by the honest and reasonable partisans of those diverse solutions, can be obtained only by reconstituting Europe on the divine foundation of the Roman Catholic and apostolic religion. So long as this foundation shall not be accepted by the builders, whatever may be their banner, you may expect explosions, more and more terrific. 36* 426 The Peoples Ark. All that progress whose preservation we demand, and a progress far superior to all that hope can conceive, is assured to us for the moment in which the Catholic spirit shall penetrate individuals, families, parishes, provinces and countries, and binding these one with the other, shall throw down the walls of division raised between people by the infernal spirit of schism, heresy, and infidelity. Then, and only then, shall the immense material forces, which we turn against ourselves, take, under the inspiration of a truly Christian policy, an incomparable flight. But in order to arrive at that grand future, the only possible and the only probable, we must needs see issuing from the midst of our ruins, evangelical laborers, to whom alone it is given to establish the foundation of all social regeneration; the submis- sion of all to the law of justice and charity. What fills attentive observers with hope, is to see the Catholic priesthood arising, drawing up its ranks, while all around it is giving way and being dis- solved. But if the Spirit of truth and life is ener- getically revealed in the head and the principal members, what feebleness, what torpor here and there; what deplorable resistance in certain frac- tions of the clergy to the efforts of their chiefs to raise them above the miserable arena in which political parties work for our dissolution. Here I have nothing to say to the clergy, but to you Christians of the age, some monarchists, from the most absolute monarchy even to the most limited ; others, republicans from the most limited aristocracv even to the widest demo- Twenty- Ninth Entertainment. 427 cracy, this is what I say: — Beware of making your priests descend from their sublime state of politi- cal neutrality, to range themselves under one or other of your standards. Your flag would ruin the priests, and the priests would ruin your flag. Understand, then, that the representative of Jesus Christ must not have any other political principles than those of Jesus Christ. Now what are those principles ? Is the Eternal Autocrat for the here- ditary monarchy or the elective, for the absolute monarchy or the limited, for the republic under one form or another? No, evidently not. He embraces, blesses and sustains all political forms, inasmuch as they serve His supreme end — the glory of God and the eternal salvation of men. He abandons them all to death, when they act contrary to His designs. Such must be the unchanging policy of the ministers and functionaries of the universal^ king- dom. Men of God, the primary Author of all forms of government, men of humanity which lives under thousands of different governmental con- stitutions, they must not assume colors, or wear mourning for any government whatever. Their regrets, incapable of raising the fallen regime, would compromise them with the new one, to the detriment of religion. Although they should be enemies of revolutions, because they are never accomplished without great disorders, Christain light shows them in those violent explo- sions, the consequence and just chastisement of inveterate disorders. In like manner, after having combated against vice, they receive without seve- 428 The Peoples Ark. rity, at the door of the temple, the child of prosti- tution, and admit it among the children of God and of the Church; so likewise, when the new- born child of the revolution is presented for bap- tism, they have not to inquire regarding its birth : it is sufficient for them to know that it lives, that it demands baptism, to address to it the usual questions : " Do you believe in the law of Jesus Christ? Do you know the obligations it imposes on you, and are you determined to fulfil them ?" On the affirmative reply of the sponsors, the priest privately baptizes the child of disorder, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and as far as the baptized one shall not violate the principal obligations of a Christian govern- ment, although you may well call it a bastard, the priests will treat it as the legitimate child of God and the Church. The mission of the Catholic priesthood is not to pronounce on the legitimacy of the origin of governments, but to subject every government to the primary principle of all legi- timacy, — the law of God. Had it not acted thus, what government could it now recognize? Beware, then, my friends, of causing your priests to deviate from the line of policy which has always been that of the Church; it would do much harm both to religion and to your party. I have said somewhere, and it will not be amiss to repeat, that "the priest who enters the service of any party whatsoever, is a deserter from his divine post, a Jonas, who draws the tempest on himself and the vessel that carries him." This abstention of the clergy in political questions of a secondary nature Twenty- Ninth Entertainment. 429 t is especially necessary in our day, when society, broken into fragments by party spirit, has no chance of salvation save in a return to the grand religious principles which can alone conciliate all parties by ruling over all. But that the branches of the priesthood may have the vigor necessary to the production of the fruit of life, it is indispensable that they be united to that trunk which is in Rome. I think I have already proved to you, my friends, that the religion of Jesus Christ is inseparable from the priesthood to which it has been confided, and that the Catholic priesthood is inseparable from its head, the Roman Pontiff, the successor of St. Peter. What are all those clerical bodies separated from Rome ? We have seen that they are state officials, richly paid to keep the people in hatred of that religion which saves both soul and body, and to make them a docile herd under the power of the superior classes. What is proposed to themselves by all those who push the heads of a state to break with Rome? They wish to free themselves from the religion of Jesus Christ, in order to make one which shall aid them in imposing on and wronging the people. What is the papacy? It is the only infallible guarantee which the lower classes possess against the oppressors of both soul and body. By the solemn voice proceeding from Peter's throne, re- peated immediately by the bishop in every diocese, by the priest in every parish of the Catholic uni- verse, the people, menaced in their religion by the 430 The Peoples Ark. authors of schism and heresy, are able to say to them: Do you submit yourselves to the judgment of the Church of Jesus Christ, or do you persist in your work ? If you persist, you are by this very fact convicted of the greatest crime of which one could be guilty against a nation, you rob it of the life of the soul. Robbers among robbers, flee the country, or ! Incorruptible defender of the rights and liberties which all owe to the Gospel, the Pope is for you, my friends, the sole defender of those rights and liberties. You have, doubtless, in the superior classes many devoted friends, but who are they ? You know they are Catholics in name and in effect. But there is also a multitude of ambitious hypocrites and enraged despots, who wish to detach you from the religion of the Pope and the universe, only to drag you into their stables. Re- cognize them by their hatred to the Holy See. Those wretches feel strongly that it is the greatest obstacle to their designs against you ; they feel also that it is a power whose arms, how feeble soever they may appear, end by breaking all arms. Yes, my friends, if the popes have not an army to execute their sentences, they have something better. The more the world laughs at excom- munications, the more seriously shall they be received on high. Assemble around a throne six hundred thou- sand brave soldiers, commanded by one hundred generals, each of whom is worth an army, com- manded themselves by the " Little Corporal/' worth a hundred generals. Let the latter say: Tzventy- Ninth Enter tai?iment. 43 1 " Does the Pope then believe that his excommuni- cations will cause the weapons to fall from my soldiers' hands?" The God of armies will say to the cold : " Go and do what I do not wish the Cossacks to do." The cold obeys; the arms fall from his warriors' hands, the warriors fall on their arms, and those spared by the cold carry their flag and gather some laurels in the very face of the Cossacks. — This was a little regard which God willed to show to the great excommunicated general in his fearful discomfiture. After all, Na- poleon compared well, in a religious point of view, with the potentates who, after having made a jumble of the treaties of Vienna, have so jumbled Europe that to-day she is utterly worn out. I have given you, my friends, the solution of the great European trial, which may be thus summed up : — European society, in revolt during three cen- turies against God and His Church, is condemned to make reparation within a very short time, under penalty of being treated like the Jewish family. In the following entertainment, which shall be the last, I will say a word on the consequences of the European solution, as also on the eternal solu- tion of the great humanitarian trial. THIRTIETH ENTERTAINMENT. Temporary consequences -of the European solution — Eter- nal SOLUTION FOR THE HUMAN RACE. N the terrible crisis through which we are now passing, whatever part may be taken by Eu- rope, Jesus Christ has taken His : — before the great day of justice, when all the angelic hosts, and all human generations will bend the knee before His eternal royalty, He wishes to see the advent of the great day of mercy, when all nations joining hands at the foot of the Cross, will adore Him in His quality of God, the Saviour of humanity. To judge by the preparations, that day is not distant. What are our advances in the arts, par- ticularly our railroads, our steam, our electric tele- graph, our trials of aerial navigation, etc.? They are for the final explosions of evangelical lio-ht, what the Roman roads were for the first. The immense superiority of our means of commu- nication and action, presages results of a grandeur incomparable in the history of the human race. Shall we merit by our conversion to become the eiorious instruments of the universal conversion, or, shall we, by our impenitence, be like the ancient 432 Thirtieth Entertainment. 433 Romans, only the blind pioneers of the spiritual conquerors of the world ? Behold, my friends, what is left to our choice. Nevertheless, the Eternal Wisdom will not be foiled in His views on the European family; Christ will not lose the fruits of the labors, tears and blood of His laborers from Peter and Paul down to Pius IX., and those who second him in the present circumstances. If the Catholic minority cannot prevent the catastrophe to which we are being driven by the governing majority, even by the very means which they take to avert it, it can at least temper it, abridge its horrors. It will gain in it yet more apostles than martyrs ; and those apostles, escaped ix ova the land of fire, will be for the universe what the Christian Jews were, when they escaped from the disorders of the deicidal nation, — a powerful leaven of Catholic fermentation in the universe. The eclat of our chastisement will give to their words an irresistible force. Who does not see that the last explosion of our revo- lutionary volcanoes, in causing the ruin of our empires undermined by the antichristian spirit, will resound a hundred times farther than did the burning of Jerusalem ? At the fall of the thun- derbolt, nations, arising from the sleep of error, will fall at the foot of the cross, crying out: Lord, Lord, it was time ! That divine charter of universal enfranchisement which our European ancestors had been charged to make us know and love, but which, in their sacrilegious folly, they wished to stifle in their own bosom, it is just that we read it by the light of their funeral-pile. 434 The Peoples Ark. Let us not doubt it, my friends, everything is ready for great things. Listen not to those blind ones who, discerning nothing in heaven or earth, in the past or the present, say : The world goes and comes as it always did. — Poor deluded men, where then, do you wish it to go, since it is at the end of the way, and since every thoughtful mind agrees that we now live only by expedients, and that the expedients that do not harm us end in smoke? Yes, we are well taken in the inextricable chains forged by our would-be great men, but the ends of those chains are held by the God-Man, who wills, with that will which nothing can resist, that we should serve to the regeneration of the universe, either by our speedy return to His law, cr by the awful solemnity of our punishment. He has done too much for Europe; Europe has done too much against Him, for it to be able to avert the greatness of its punishment, otherwise than by the generosity of its penitence. Now the penance for us, the turbulent race of Japhet, a cosmopolitan and travelling people, is not to cover ourselves with ashes and tears; it is to repair our scandals, and fully accomplish our sub- lime mission; it is to take the pilgrim's staff and the apostle's scrip. Our insatiable avarice and our disastrous rivalries have carried to every corner of the globe the terror of our arms, the infection of our vices; it is necessary, then, that our charity, truly Catholic, should display the omnipotence of its remedies, and cause to be shed on all nations the divine perfume of Christian virtues. In a word, we are destined speedily to enlighten the world by Thirtieth EtiiertainmenL 435 the brilliant rays of our faith, or by the fire called down by our impurity and infidelity. In announcing to you, my friends, a speedy solution, followed by a magnificent future for the human race, I do not wish you to be deluded with regard to the nature of that future, which most of you will be able to hail only in the distance. I would not wish that you should envy your grand- children a happiness which shall indeed be great, but, after all, shall be only a small amount com- pared to that which may be tasted by men on the theatre of combat and trial. This triumph of truth and love over error and hatred will be neither complete nor definite. It will be a rest more or less long and delightful, in the laborious journey of humanity, before that frightful reaction of evil which shall cause to rise over the last ruins of the world the day of eternal justice. Then, and only then, shall we have the solution of solutions. Then Jesus Christ, the Glorified and the Glorifier of His own, will give a new sense to those words which His enemies have so much abused against His Church: " My kingdom is not of this world!" This kingdom of God, the promise of which fills the holy books, and which the Church invites us to beg for each day, by the petition, Thy king- dom come; — this kingdom, of which that future foretold above will be only the shadow — this king- dom, my friends, will be displayed in the eternal world with a magnificence which no human thoughts could conceive, no human tongue des- cribe. 436 The Peoples Ark. This kingdom of Jesus Christ will be displayed without measure in His elect, to whom He will say: While so many wretches overwhelmed me with contempt and outrages, you publicly made me to reign over you, at least in your last hour, and you contributed by your prayers and good example to make me reign over your brethren : come, then, you blessed of my Father, enjoy the king- dom prepared for you from the beginning; not satis- fied that you should reign with me over the uni- versality of creatures, I desire that you reign over me ; you have done my will ; / will eternally do yours* This reign of Jesus Christ will weigh, with inex- orable justice, on the hosts of cowards, of filthy and cruel monsters, who have departed this life without having made honorable reparation to the Author of life. He will say to them : You scornfully rejected the sweet and light yoke of the law which I gave you ; I, who had created and preserved you by the inspirations of my love; I, who, in order to deliver you from the slavery of Satan and your evil passions, had carried my love so far as to become the victim, in my own person and in my church, of the long-continued fury of Satan and his followers. Your life has been only a stolid indifference or a satanic aversion to my doctrine, and you have applauded every word opposed to my word, or that of my Church. Well! go then, wretches, drag in the lowest abysses of my empire that yoke of torture and ignominy made by your * Psalm cvi. 30. Thirtieth Entertainment. 437 own hands. Submit finally to that sentence which I caused to resound ten thousand times in your ears, but which was answered only by your sar- casms : Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- pared for your master, and for all the accomplices of his absurd war against the absolute King of time and eternity. Such is, my friends, the sentence which shall end that final discussion of which I have spoken in the last lesson of the Reveil dn Peuple, a sen- tence which, in assigning to every one that place prepared for him in the everlasting kingdom, shall render all claims useless, and shall close forever the great suit opened since the beginning of ages between the servants of God and the slaves of the great beast. Some of you, according to what Mr. Teacher remarked not long ago, have still a diffi- culty in reconciling with the goodness of God, the idea of poor creatures being eternally the victims of the errors of a life so fleeting. I limit myself to two or three reflections, which I beg them to medi- tate on in the sanctuary of their conscience. First, when there is question of pronouncing on the goodness of God and the eternal future of men, who is the most competent judge? Is it Jesus Christ, or is it I, even were I supported by the w T hole host of cavillers ? Do I thoroughly know the Divine Being? Have I exactly measured the extent of His goodness and justice? Have I made man ? Can I know exactly the proportions given to this mysterious being? Is it I who have joined to a handful of clay, marvellously organized, a soul so great that nothing here below can content 37* 438 The Peoples Ark. it? No, this is the work of the Word made flesh, who has said: "I am the principle and the end, the author and finisher of everything that exists. . . I am the truth and the life." It would, then, be an unpardonable folly to prefer on this subject my opinion and that of my companions, to the opinion of Jesus Christ, expressed in the most formal manner in a hundred places of Scripture; an opinion constantly published and defended by the Catholic Church, and invariably believed by all her children; an opinion, in fine, which is still that of the infidel world ; for it is well proved that all nations, ancient and modern, have believed in an eternity of torments for the wicked. Secondly, the dogma of an eternity of punish- ment is not only eminently humanitarian and Chris- tian, it is yet more indispensable to make men and Christians. When self-worshippers say to me : The dogma of hell is calculated to make base and servile souls ; we wish to have men who serve God and their brethren through the noble motive of love ! — when, I say, I hear all this prating, I keep my eye on those who speak, and I soon have full proof that those grand souls love everything but God and their brethren, and that they would willingly set fire to the world for the greater glory of their pride and their appetites. The fear of hell alone does not suffice to make us walk for a long time in the paths of virtue; but it is a curb neces- sary to check the sinner in the ways of sin, and prevent him from falling into them again. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," as the Holy Spirit tells us, and as facts clearly prove. Thirtieth Entertainment. 439 Where shall we find works and virtues truly- worthy of a friend of God and man? In the souls most distinguished by their faith in the severity of God's judgments. Whence flow the vices, dis- orders and crimes which desolate society? From the forgetfulness, and above all, from the denial of a hell. In fine, it is the unshaken faith in the eternal torments of hell that peoples the earth with penitents and Christians more or less vir- tuous, and heaven with the elect: no enlightened moralist has a doubt of it. It is the disbelief of this fundamental article, which, in becoming gen- eral, has brought hell upon earth. There is a host of unbelievers, who by their works merit the answer given to his sans-cidottes judges by a holy priest, immolated by the inquisitors of '93. Those wretches, taking pleasure in insulting their victim before delivering him to the executioner, asked him: "Are you so foolish as to believe in hell ?" " Citizens, if I had not believed in it up till now, you would make me believe in it. ,, Thirdly; the eternity of pain, my friends, is the sovereignly just consequence of the plan of crea- tion ; a plan eminently worthy of the grandeur of God and the dignity of man. What did God propose to Himself in creating us? He wished that we should be His image and likeness, and by consequence, imperishable as Himself. Is not this beautiful ? Who amongst us, that has not lost his mind, would wish not to exist? The sentiment, the desire of immortality and the horror of nonentity are so lively in the human conscience, that no nation, how degraded 44-0 The People s Ark. soever in a religious point of view, has ever doubted the eternity of the soul. To the divine seal of immortality our Heavenly Father has joined the royal character of freedom: sublime gift, which places between us and animals an infinite distance, makes us the arbiters of our fate, and cooperators with God in His work by excellence; — the salification of our own soul and those of our brethren. He has said to us: "All creatures are in my hand only blind instruments which accomplish my will without knowing it; but as for you, my children, I wish that you should know it, and by your free concurrence, during the trial of the present life, to the execution of my designs, you may merit to be associated to my eternal royalty in the better life. Behold my commandments, if you keep them, they will keep you. . . . Fire and water are before you, choose. Life and death are in your power; only that shall be given to you which you have willed."* See, my friends, what God has said to us, and I have given you in the course of these entertain- ments an idea of what Infinite Charity has done to facilitate to men the knowledge and accomplish- ment of His law. Let us now see what men say and do. Some respond to the divine appeal: "Yes, Lord, cost what it may, we will keep your command- ments." God immediately takes them by the hand and says: "Courage, my children, inasmuch as you shall be faithful, I will be with you, and we will advance from victory to victory until the eternal * Ecclesiasticus, ch. xv. 15-17. Thirtieth Entertainment. 441 crown be placed upon your head." All difficulties vanish, and the interior contentment which those souls find in the midst of the severest trials, is to them a pledge and foretaste of the joys to come, 1 have said to you, and I repeat, nay, I will prove to whoever wishes it, that if there are any happy and wholly contented persons in this life, they are those true Christians who do not seek their satisfaction in it. The adorers of their own pride and desires, reply to all the exterior and interior calls of the king of souls: "We recognize no other law than our own will !" — If their tongue does not say this, their conduct does. Behold in effect, those w 7 ho run after as many idols as they have passions and caprices. God, on whom they turn their backs, might do the same to them; but no, Divine Charity ceases not to call on them, to pursue them by the exhortations of His ministers, by the voice of their conscience, by the gnawings of remorse, by salutary examples, some of justice, others of mercy; finally by chagrins, sorrow, and anguish, sown along their way ; for even in this world, w r hoever does evil is unhappy, and although he may seem to us to be in delights, he carries within his heart a miniature hell. Should those prodigals pause in the very road to the abyss, and sincerely implore pardon even at the last hour, the God of Charity hastens to clothe them with the nuptial robe, and their admission to the banquet is made a great feast in heaven* If, on the contrary, they resist, even to the end, the pleadings of divine mercy, the hour * St. Luke, ch. xv. 7. 442 The People s Ark. strikes, the Supreme Judge says: Let us make up our accounts! The accounts, my friends, shall be speedily made up with those souls born in the bosom of light, who have never wished to settle accounts with Jesus Christ and His Church. In the light which shall then invest them, those unhappy souls will see all their sophisms vanish, and will com- prehend that it is absolutely impossible for the animal man, flesh and blood, ever to possess the kingdom of God.* If they have done any good of which they have not received the reward, they shall have a diminution in the intensity of the pain, but not in its duration. After which the Judge will say: "Follow the masters whom I could not prevent you from choosing; your eternal future is at once their affair and yours, only as hell remains subject to my justice, I will see that Satan and his accomplices and yours, do not, in their rage, go beyond the degree of torments merited by your evil deeds !" What is there, then, my friends, in this sentence and its consequences, irreconcilable with the divine goodness? This fate, you say, is fearful, terrible. Yes, fearful, terrible, indeed! would that you could well comprehend it, for it is the infallible means of averting it! Were hell to be only the reunion, in a less desolate region, of all those monsters of per- versity that there have ever been, from the cor- rupter of angels and men to the ferocious murderer of Abel, and from Cain to Judas, and from Judas to the latest Cains and Judases whom the earth * St. Paul. 1 Cor. xv. 50. Thirtieth Entertainment. 443 will bear, would anything be wanting to justify the definition given of it by the Scripture : // is the abode of eternal horrors? But is this fate unme- rited? Is it not the voluntary, nay, the obstinate work of those who receive it ? I do not think there is any necessity of saying to you again what I have said elsewhere, that, according to Catholic doctrine, every one shall be judged according to his works, and that every one's works shall be judged according to his lights. No one, therefore, shall be punished for the evil he has not known or could not have known; no one shall be judged guilty of ignorance which he could not have avoided. As to those who accuse the Church of holding as condemned to eternal fire, children dying unbaptized, or good and honest unbelievers who have not professed our religion because they have not known it, look on them ? my friends, as ignorant fools or fanatical calumniators of our faith. It is true that every well-instructed Catholic firmly believes, on the express word of Jesus Christ and His Church, that no soul shall be admitted to see the face of God and to enjoy the infinite felicity promised to His elect, if it be not qualified for it by the supernatural virtue of baptism, real or of desire. But we believe our God to be too just and too good, and the future world too great, not to include therein a series of existences more or less happy, for those souls who have preferred good to evil, according to their knowledge, or who, at least, have not personally abused the great benefit of existence. 444 1-he People s Ark. This being supposed, I address myself to you, my friends, who have been urged by Christian light on every side, for ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years; you, on whom it now makes, by these enter- tainments, another effort which will, probably, be its last appeal to a great number; what pretext will you be able to urge against the awful sentence, if you should have the misfortune to appear before the Redeemer without that robe of innocence, either preserved or rewon, with which you were invested at the sacred font, on that day when the joyous sound of bells announced to the world a new child of God and of the Church, a future heir of the eternal kingdom ? Will you then say to the Master what you say to His ministers, — that you have not settled your doubts ; that you are waiting for the gift of faith ; that for the moment, you have other things to do ; that, after all, religious affairs are something that regards yourself, and that you are well content to treat of them with God ? — I am convinced that you will not think of alleging such reasons; for you should soon hear the answer of the Eternal Reason: "As you have not had time to think of me or my commandments, go, ask the reward of your great occupations from the master whose inspira- tions you have so well followed." Will you say that you have been weak, and that the greater number has drawn you ? No, you will not, for this answer would not be deferred : " I have subjected the body to strength; I have sometimes suffered my purest virgins to be dragged to places of infamy, and the outrages of hell have but made Thirtieth Entertainment. 445 them greater in heaven ; but I have so admira- bly constituted souls, especially those whom, like yours, I have washed in the bath of my blood, that not one shall ever be able to say that she has been forced against her will. As yours has allowed herself to be dragged even unto the end, let her follow in the train of those who have dragged her. My justice will not subject you to all the torments of the great murderers of souls, but you shall ever be what you have wished to be, the dupes and victims of the masters you have preferred to mc." If Jesus Christ were not to act thus; if He were to push His complaisance to His enemies so far as to gainsay the promises and threats sealed with His blood and that of so many martyrs, I acknow- ledge my friends, that I should no longer consider Him as the true God and the true Man. Let us not deceive ourselves regarding His divine character: He is the God of charity, the God of mercy, but He is also the God of justice, inexorable for those who have despised the prodigious inventions of His charity and mercy. It is not the enormity of the crimes that closes His heart to pity. Give me a fearful criminal, who, opening his soul to the breath of that grace, shed everywhere around sinners, says: Lord, my crimes are enormous, but your mercy is still greater; grant me strength to weep over them and confess them ! — Repentance comes with such abundance, that this demon, often purified by his love and tears before being so by the sacrament, becomes the object of the most special favors of the King of souls. Jesus Christ knows not how to refuse 38 446 The Peoples Ark. anything to him who does such honor to His charity. If you wish to obtain great things, employ the prayers of a great sinner truly converted. But if Jesus Christ grants everything to the criminal who humbles himself, He is inexorable towards the pride that will not submit to the conditions required for pardon. He who, in order to save us, did not fear to humble Himself even to our nothingness in His incarnation, in His passion; He, who, for so many ages, has remained humbled in the Eucharist under the hands of His ministers, and the will of those who receive Him, has He not a right to require that we humble ourselves from time to time under the hand of His ministers of reconciliation, obliged in turn to humble themselves under the hand of one another? Yes, my friends, the God-Man is love and im- measurable goodness towards every living soul that says to Him : I desire to believe and obey, help me ! — But He is haughtiness, inflexibility itself before the enemy of God, of angels and of men, before the proud one who says : I will not obey ! With a Monarch thus disposed, so worthy of all our adorations, but incapable of capitulating with reasoners having no faith in His word, w 7 hat must we do, my friends ? I am going to tell you in a few words. =^,e T7 ~.-s^ CONCLUSION. 'HE first homage that we owe to Infinite Wis- dom, my friends, is the submission of our opinions to^ the divine opinion, always living, always pure in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.* Faith being a gift of God, which is lost by pride and ignorance, let us humbly and earnestly beg the preservation and increase of this indispensable gift, and neglect none of the means given us for our religious instruction, and that of those under our care. Let us not expose our faith by giving ear to the discourses of irreligious persons, or by reading their books, unless authorized. As to those who tell you that you would do well to learn the reasons for and against, and that you are wise enough to retain the good and reject the evil, look on them as poisoners. It is as if they were to say: Your stomach is strong enough to eat poisoned meats, it will digest all that is nutritious in them, and reject what is poisonous. — Believe me, my * St. Paul. Heb. xi. 6. 447 448 The Peoples Ark. friends, your mind is yet more feeble than your stomach; if it wishes to take what is for and what is against matters of faith, it will keep the latter and reject the former. This is what happens to those far advanced in unbelief. The religious word pleases them as much as holy w r ater does their master. They are possessed persons, whom we must not hope to instruct- until their deliver- ance be obtained from God. But faith without works is dead.* Now what are the w r orks of the faith which lives, which vivi- fies the Christian soul? It is before all things, the observance of God's commandments. If you wish to enter into life, says the Master, keep the com- mandments, f And it is necessary to keep all without any distinction, for an apostle tells us: Whoever violates the law in one point, though he observe all the rest, disobeys God as much as if he violated all.t To make a choice in that which God commands, to adopt this article and reject that, is to constitute one's self the judge of the divine law, it is revolt, it is the crime of heresy. We must then observe, in the same spirit of submission, the precepts of the Church. Were a Catholic to neglect the commands of the Church, yet be faithful to the commandments of God, (which would, I believe, be without example,) he would nevertheless, be in formal opposition to the com- mand of Jesus Christ to hear the Church, under pain of being treated as the heathen and the pub- * St. James ii. 26. f St. Matth. xix. 17. t St. James ii. 10. Conclusion. 449 lican. To regard the ecclesiastical laws of general discipline as laws purely human and importing little to salvation, is a gross and culpable igno- rance, it is to tread under foot the divine words to the heads of the Church: "Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. . . . Go, teach, regenerate nations and individuals, teach them to observe all whatsoever I have commanded you ; behold I am with you all days, etc. Who- ever despises you despises me, etc." What renders the transgression of the command- ments of the Church unpardonable, is the facility with which we can obtain dispensation or commu- tation when the works prescribed are too difficult for us. But this dispensation or commutation is the business of the ecclesiastical authority, to which we must render homage by making it the judge of our reasons. Fast, abstinence, abstaining from labor on certain festivals, etc., are not, of themselves, works essential to salvation, but no one can be saved without obedience to the Church that prescribes them. I think I have already told you, that the great number of the contemners of the laws of the Church, should not give us any security: the Supreme Judge of the living and the dead does not say to us, Do what you see others do; but, Do what I command you by my Church, for whose establishment and conservation I did not disdain to humble myself and to suffer beyond measure ! If you be ashamed of me before men, I will be ashamed of you before my Father. Whether we be repulsed from heaven for having despised the commandments of God, or those of 38* 450 The People s Ark. the Church, will make little difference to us; we shall none the less descend into the sorrowful kingdom of the Transgressor of transgressors, there to dwell for all eternity. But the virtue of Christian virtues, that which animates and crowns all others, is divine charity. And the great end of Christian charity is to labor that all men, without exception, be united as mem- bers of the same body, in the knowledge and love of their adorable Head, Jesus Christ. This is, as we have seen, the great principle of the eternal salvation of souls, and the temporal salvation of society. The soul that loves not is dead,* says the Apostle of charity. And we plainly see that a country in which charity is crushed with its indispensable principle faith, becomes a carcass torn asunder by the egotism of parties, and de- livered to the workings of every vice. The most necessary, the most meritorious, the most efficacious of charities, is to procure for souls their divine pasture, the great remedy of all our evils, — faith in Jesus Christ. The Christian faith, in entering into a poor family, does therein more good than a great inheritance, which would, pro- bably, introduce only an increase of vices. With faith, arrive peace, union, patience, love of labor, of economy, the good education of children, and finally, that which can ameliorate all evils, — the hope of the eternal possession of all good. Such is, my friends, the treasure you must pro- cure, first for yourselves, and those under your t St. John, I. Epist. iii. 14. Conclusion. 45 1 care; then, for your neighbors, and finally, for all those who are still buried in the darkness of error, who, on the great day of justice shall have a right to complain of your indifference, if you neglect the means in your power of contributing to their conversion. In the Tenth Entertainment, I have said a few words to you of the Propagation of the Faith y that Catholic work by excellence, and of the spiritual and temporal blessings you would draw upon your families by aggregating yourself to it. To those who find it too much to give an alms of one cent a week, I would say: For this intention cast into the Catholic treasury at least the tribute of a short daily prayer. Prayer, my friends, is the infallible art of arresting the justice of God, and, what is more difficult, of vanquishing the pride and obstinacy of man. It was the prayers of our saints yet more than their words, which converted Europe. The lightnings and thunders of the Catholic word will not save Europe, nor other continents, if they be not ac- companied by a shower of graces obtained by a grand concert of prayers. Pray, then, my friends, and you will do more in the sight of God for the salvation of the world, than those who, like me, preach much yet do not pray enough. What prayer? you ask. First, that which in its divine brevity comprises all, and is the work of the Divine Master of prayer. To aid you in saying it with an intelligent heart, I will here give you a little commentary on it, which shall be a resume of our entertainments. Our Father t who art in heaven. — Yes, Lord, 452 The Peoples Ark. thou art the Father of all classes of society, but particularly of the people, always the victims of the pride and covetousness of the great, wherever thou are not recognized and revered as the Father, the Legislator, the Saviour, and Supreme Judge of the great and the lowly. The people are the creation of the blood of thy Son, of the long-con- tinued devotedness of His apostles and His priests. We were counted as nothing in society, so long as its chiefs did not descend with us into the baptismal font, there to receive and acknowledge our dignity of children and heirs of the King of kings. It is sufficient to cast a glance on those nations that ignore us, to understand that, if we were not Christians we should be neither citizens nor even men. Therefore let us consider as the greatest enemies of the people, those who preach to us the contempt of thy law and thy Church. Hallowed be thy name! — Yes, Lord, may all names be abased before thy name; and may every name that would dare to exalt itself to the preju- dice of thine, be forever confounded. The names of false gods and of false great men, have only caused the human family to be divided into thou- sands and thousands of fractions, provoked to mutual destruction. Grant that, by the triumph of thy Church, thy blessed name, adored through- out the universe, may extinguish all hatreds, all divisions, and finally establish the happy religious and political fraternity of nations. Thy kingdom come! — Every man, every party that wishes to reign over us without having thee to reign over it, is a tyrant, an oppressor. We Conclusion. 453 have had enough of those reigns and legislations created and managed by ambitious men without respect for thy law, without love for thy people. Give us, in fine, governments profoundly Christian; it is the only means of delivering us from the demon of revolution and the excesses he excites. But as thy kingdom on earth shall always have many enemies, and shall be incessantly combated, enkindle in our souls a lively faith in that kingdom promised by thee to those who, here below, allow thee to reign over their souls. May thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven! — Human wills, when they are not recti- fied and fortified by thine, tend towards evil. Our evils, whether domestic, civil, or political, are all born of the depravity and opposition of wills. Reconcile them, O Lord, by subjecting them to the sweet and light yoke of thy law. Give us this day our daily bread! — Thanks for the fruitfulness thou hast given to the earth and to the labor that we bestow on it. It is not, O Lord, material bread which we need ; it is the celestial bread, which, ennobling the souls of the rich and the poor, causes both to content them- selves with necessaries ; the first, substitute the calculations of charity for those of selfishness; the second, seek from labor and economy the resources not given them by birth. By the power of thy grace and the zeal of thy ministers, grant that the upper and lower classes may meet together, at least at Easter, at that Divine Banquet served by Infinite Charity; and social hatreds shall be extin- guished with the evils that give life to them. 454 The People s Ark. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us! — What are the most flagrant injustices of which we may have to com- plain, compared with our revolts against thee, O Father, infinitely good, but also infinitely just? We accept, then, that condition so light, to which thou hast deigned to attach our reconciliation with thee; help us to surmount our repugnances and to return good for evil. Lead its not into temptation ! — Everything here below is a temptation, even the good that we do, and the victories we gain, if we be so weak as to take complacency in them and rob thee of thy glory; preserve, then, in us, humility, the founda- tion and guardian of all solid virtue. How many tempters, how many demons dare to invoke thy holy name, and pervert and defile the words of thy Gospel, in order to make us desert thy Church and to drag us under their power ! Confound the designs of those evil beasts, and abandon not to them the souls whose salvation has cost thee so dear.* But deliver us fi'om evil, Amen! — Yes, Lord, make us understand well, that disobedience to thy law is the source of all our evils, that hell is only the work of sin, or rather, sin itself, arrived at its last and eternal consequences. By it, inspire us with a sovereign horror of everything which can give death to our soul. To this prayer let us add another, which will cause it to ascend more quickly to the throne of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. * Psalm lxxiii. 19. Conclusion. 455 When one wishes to be heard by a father or a sovereign, yet has reason to believe that he is not in favor with him, what does he do? He addresses himself to the mother or the queen, and if these two pleaders charge themselves with the request, he no longer doubts of success. Well, my friends, it is the same in the great family of the children of God. We have near the throne of thrones a mother, a queen, to whose intercession the divine Majesty will make concessions which could not be obtained by all the heavenly court. Let the dupes of heresy laugh at our confidence in Mary and the worship that we render her; nothing could be more natural. What do the children of Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII., owe to Mary? They owe her Christ; here Lutheran, there Calvinist; farther on, Anglican, over whose law they have been disputing for three centuries, and whom many of their ministers now regard as a philosopher. They owe to the Son of the Virgin that Bible which, for so long a time, has served to divide and desolate Europe. In fine, what is Mary in their system? She is the grandmother of the Bible religion. Seeing such a shabby grand- daughter, what opinion, do you think, they could entertain of the grandmother ? The worship of Mary would be in the Protestant worship, only another proof of its absurdity. But we who have the happiness of professing that Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion, which, from the Ascension of Christ until now, has never ceased to labor and suffer for the enfranchisement of the human race; we, the children of that Church, 456 The Peoples Ark. who, by the devotion of her martyrs, has destroyed successively two states of barbarism in Europe, and who still preserves all that there is amongst us of civilizing knowledge and virtue; we who always see falling from three or four hundred thousand pulpits that word of Jesus Christ which all past ages have received with faith, and which still nourishes two hundred millions of our brethren in religion; we who adore Jesus Christ present on our altars, there ever offering Himself to His Father as our victim, and incorporating us w 7 ith His flesh, His blood, His soul, His divinity; how could we forget the Mother to whom we owe the Author of so many benefits? How ungrateful would be the Catholic who should neglect to render to Mary the homages and benedictions due to her on so many titles, and which the Holy Ghost Himself claimed by the mouth of His glorious spouse, when He made her say, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, " Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!"* Let us then address to her, with the most filial veneration and confidence, that short prayer, which is also, in a great part, the work of the Spirit of God.f Hail Mary, full of grace ! — Through you, in effect, O glorious Mother of Him who is the Truth and the Life, the very ocean of graces is shed on this earth, devastated by the infernal breath of error and death. The Lord is with thee / — Yes, the Eternal Word, the Creator and Conservator of all beings, before * St. Luke i. 48. f Ibid. 28. 42. Conclusion. 457 whom the universality of worlds is as a grain of dust, willed to be enclosed within thy womb, and to receive of thee that human nature which He will never abandon. Therefore, thy name, indis- solubly united to that of the Most High, shall be eternally dear to the adorers of your Son. Blessed art thou amongst women! — In exalting thee above all mothers, inasmuch as the God-man is above the greatest men, Eternal Wisdom, who proportions graces to the functions, has then given thee a heart whose tenderness surpasses that of all maternal hearts. Mother of the God of Charity, who, from the height of His cross con- fided us to thy love, grant, by the power of thy prayers, that the eternal benediction, conceived in thy womb, may be spread over all human genera- tions. May the unfortunate children of Eve, who are still buried in the sleep of error, be finally united to us, to salute thee with the beautiful title of " Mother of the living." And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus ! — Alas ! for the number of Christians, more or less great, who bless Him and apply themselves to make Him known and blessed, how many wretches are there who ignore and delight in ignoring Him ! How many monsters who hate Him, and labor to render Him odious in His faith, in His sacraments, in His Church and His ministers ? What would become of us, O Mother of mercies and refuge of sinners, if against this deluge of frightful blasphe- mies, of unheard-of impieties and obscenities, we had not the blood of thy Son, which is thy blood, the protection of thy prayers, and also the works 458 The Peoples Ark. of sanctity which thou dost never allow to lan- guish among those who honor thee ! Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for tcs poor sinners, now, and at the hour of our death, Amen. —Yes, divine Mother, exercise the irresistible power given thee by this incomparable title, which thou hast purchased by incomparable sacrifices and sorrows; exercise it to appease the justice due to each one of us and to a society fearfully guilty. If the chastisement be inevitable, sweeten it, render it salutary, and obtain for each and every one of us the grace of all graces, that of a happy death. I have done. If you draw some fruit from these Entertainments, bless the Father of lights, and say a Pater and Ave for the poor instrument which it has pleased Him to employ, to the end that Plato Punchinello, when touching on the threshold of a blessed eternity, may not hear the overwhelming response : — There is no place here for the prophet who has known his mission yet has so badly accomplished it! CATHOLIC BOOKS PUBLISHED BY PETER F. CUNNINGHAM & SON, 29 South Tenth St., Philadelphia. C acholic I>octrine as 3>efined by the Council of Trent 2 Expounded in a series of Conferences delivered in Geneva. By Rev, A. Xampon, S. J.,the most complete work on Catholic Doc- trine yet published in the English Language; approved bv the Bishop of Philadelphia, the Arch-bishops of Baltimore, New'Yc rk and Cincinnati. 1vol. octavo, of 7-50 pages, splendidly bound in cl0 *h $3 50 Th T e Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Ma- donna. By Rev. J. Spencer Northcoate, D.D. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. James Frederick Wood, Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol., 12mo. Price — Cloth, extra beveled » $1 50 Cloth, gilt edge 2 00 he Year of Mary; or 5 The True Servant of the Blessed Virgin. Translated from the French of Kev. M. D'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary, and published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Phila- delphia, the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore, and the Most Rev. Arch- bishop of New York. 1 neat 12mo volume. Price— In cloth $1.» In gilt edges 2.00 This is a delightful book ; brimful of sweet flowers ; a lovely garland ia homor of Mary our Mother and powerful intercessor before the throne of her Son. Well has the Magnificat said, "all generations s>\all call me blessed;" all times, and in all lands, wherever the symbol, upon which her Divine Son lansomed a wicked and undeserving world with his excruciating sufferings and death : has a votary, her name, spotiess and beautiful, shall be pronounced with reverence, and her protection implored. The tome before us is a collection of the honors paid to Mary by the great and good of all lands ; by those who, with the diadem of earthly grandeur adorning their brows, and vexed political commonwealths to guard and pacify, found time to honor the daughter of St. Anne, the beloved Mother of our Lord and Saviour. Buy the book. Eead one or two pages. We promise a feast, a desire to read the whole, a determination to do so. — CatUlic Telegraph. This work is divided into seventy-twc Exercises, corresponding with taa aumber of * ears which the Blessel Virgin passed on earth, with a consecration (3) 4 Published by Peter P. Cunningham, to Mary of the twelve months of the year, in reference to her virtues ; alsa t method of using certain of the Exercises by a way of devotion for the "Month of Mary," a Novena in honor of the Immaculate Conception, and other matters both interesting and advantageous to the true servant of Mary, and those wh$ would become ao. " Baltimore, April 6, 1865. " We willingly unite with the Ordinary of Philadelphia and the Metropolitan •f New York in approving 'The Year of Mary/ republished by Peter P. Cun- ningham, of Philadelphia. "M. J. SPALDING, "Arek&ishop of Baltimore." A work presented to the Catholics with such recommendations does not need any woid of encouragement from us. — Pilot. This work meets a want long ungratified. The devotional Exercises which make up the book are ingeniously arranged in reference, 1st, to each year of the Blessed Virgin's long residence on earth ; 2d, to every Sunday and festival throughout the year. The Exercises are therefore seventy-two in number, cor- responding to the generally received belief of the duration of her terrestrial life. The First Exercise is thus appropriated to the Immaculate Conception, and may be used both for the 8th of December and for the first day of the year. The seventy-second celebrates the Assumption, and may be profitably read on the loch of August, and on the last day of the year. Each Instruction is prefaced by a text from holy writ, and followed by an example, a historical fact, a practice and a prayer. The Approbations are: 1st. By the Roman Theological Censor. 2d. By a favorablo letter from his Holiness Gregory XVI. 3d. By the recommendatory signatures of the Archbishops of Baltimore and New York, and the Bishop of Philadelphia. This Devotional is a deeply interesting and practical manual, and Mrs. Sadlier, who has very skilfully reduced the originally free translation into graceful con- formity to the original, has rendered the Christian public a most essential ser- vice. We wish it the widest circulation. — N. Y. Tablet. "The Year of Mary" is one of the most beautiful tributes to the Mother of God that a Catholic* family could desire to have. We are free, however, to confess our partiality in noticing any book that treats of the pre-eminent glory of her whom God exalted above all created beings. But, independently of this consideration, the present volume' can be recom- mended on its own special merits. Besides being replete with spiritual instruc- tion, it presents a detailed account of the life of the Blessed Virgin from the Conception to the Assumption, and views her under every possible aspect, both as regards herself and her relations with man. It lays down the rules by which we are to be guided in our practical devotions towards her ; displays its genuine characteristics, and indicates the sublime sentiments by which we ought to be actuated when we pay her our homage, or invoke her assistance. "The Year of Mary" contains seventy-two Exercises, in accordance with the received opinion of the Church that the Blessed Virgin lived that number of years on earth. In these instructions, the reader shall learn her life, her pre- rogatives, her glory in Heaven, and her boundless goodness to mankind. We would like to see this book in every Catholic family in the country. It is impos- sible for us to honor the Mother of God sufficiently well. But in reading this book; or any like it, we must ever bear in mind that acts, not mere professions of piety, should be the distinctive marks of "the true servant of the Blessed Virgin," and that she is really honored, only in so far as we imitate her virtuea for the sake of Him through whom alone we can hope for eternal life. The name of Mrs. Sadlier is familiar to the public ; her talents as an authoress are too well known to need any eulogy here ; she is an accomplished lady, and bas faithfuLy done her part. As to the publisher, Mr. Cunningham, we say, without flattery, tnat he has done a good work in presenting this excellent book to his fellow-Catholics, and with all our heart we wish him the fullest aaeasure of succesi to which this n? ble enterprk* entitles him.— The Monthly 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia. 5 iTjUditatiosas of St. Sgnatius; or, "Tlie Spiri. tual Exercises" expounded, By Father Siniscalchi, of the Society of Jesus. rJoL SL 12mT! Lil tne approbation of the *W *«>. Bisxop of Philadelphia. Price— ffeai! y bound in cloth, gilt back *l ^ The fame of the great founder of the Society of Jesus xrnniri it^i* ;«„ Thi« is the first American edition of this ortphvn+n-i ™^wn _t,- -u -l transited into nearly all the European lan-ua-es ItTS^'iiT* 1611 ha ! ? een The Meditations are twenty-two in number, each divided into thrPA mrf a * n A f^acerdos Sanciiiieaius ; or, Discourses ea tlie Mass and Office, With a Preparation and Thanksgiving before and after Mass for ever, day m the week Translated from the Italian of St. Alphonsus J.lgomrl, lvohismo. B y theR ev. James Jones. Pr:2«— Neatly bound in c *«h, „,_ _ g Q , tgt Published by Peter F, Cunningham. he Life of St. Teresa. "Written by herself. Translated f.-om the Spanis! by Re?. Canon Dalton, and publ!rh» f m the approbation of the Rijht R^c. Bishop of Philadelphia. ,*]. 12mc, neatly bound in cloth. b rice— Id cloth jl,50 In cloth, gilt edge 2.00 JL lie Life of St. Catherine of Sienna. By Elessed Haymond of Capua, her Confessor. Translated from the French, by the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. Witl* the approbation of tne. Eight Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 12mo., neatly bound in cloth. Price— In cloth ...$1.50 In cloth, gilt edge 2.00 .Jife of St. Margaret of Cortona. Translated from the Italian, by John Gilmary Shea, and published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 16aio. f neatly bound in cloth, gilt backs. Price $1.00 lie Life of St. Angela Merici of Brescia. Foundress of tlie Order of St. Ursula. By the Abbe Parenty. With a History of the Order in Ireland, Canada and the United States, by John Gilmary Shea. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 16mo., cloth, gilt back. Price $1.00 T lie Life of Blessed Mary Ann of Jesus 5 de Parades y Flores. " The Lily of Quito." By Father Joseph Boero, S. J. Translated from the Italian by a Father of the Society of Jesns, and pnV liahed with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. l(5mo., neatly bound in cloth, gilt back. Prie*. ..$1.00 lie Life of St. Rose of Lima. E*I ! ted by the Rev Frederick William Faber, D D., and published with the approbation o the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol., U\rg« 16mo , neatly bound in clot i, gilt back. Price— Only .-» * 1 «°° 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia. 7 lie Life of St. Cecilia, Tirgin and Martyr. Translated from the French of Father Gneranger, and published with *it§ approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 \oi. 12mo. Price— In cloth fcl.sc In cloth, gilt edge 2.0C The above is one of the most interesting works which has been issued for dome time from the Catholic press in this country. The life and martyrdom of Paint Cecilia, is itself, one of the moi beautiful chapters in the history of the Church. . The account of it by Guerange? is most touching. It combines all the spright* liness of romance, with the solid truth of history. The author is one of the most learned archaeologists that has appeared in this century, and is well known for many learned works. In connection with the life of St. Cecilia, he gives a graphic account of the state of the Church at the time of the persecutions undei the Roman Emperors. There is a beautiful description of the catacombs and of the usages of the Christains in paying honor to the martyrs. In reading his work we seem to be transferred to tneir days. The character of St. Cecilia is drawn out in the most vivid colors, though the account is almost entirely taken from the ancient Acts, the authenticity of which is. abiy vindicated by tha learned author. He then gives an account of the Church, built at her own request on the spot where she suffered. This goes over a period of over sixteen hundred years. It has been, du ring all that time, one of the most clearly cherished sanctu- aries of Rome. The incidental accounts of various matters connected with the history of the Saint and her Church, are themselves sufficient to give great inter- est to the volume, we hardly know which to admire most in this work — the information imparted on many most interesting topics, the healthy tone of the work, so well calculated to enliven faith, and cherish a devout spirit, or the beauty of the style of the author who nas weaved the whole into so interesting . a narrative, that no romance can vie with this truthful account of the. patroness of song. — Baltimore Catholic Mirror. We are glad to see that the American public have been favored with this very interesting work. While the name of the author is a guarantee for historical accuracy, and learned research, the period of which it treats is one of great in- terest to the Catholic. In these pages one can learn the manners and customs of the early Christians, and their sufferings, and gain no little insight into their daily life. The devotion to the Saints is becoming daily more practical, and we are glao to see revived the memory of the ancient heroes and heroines whom the Church has honored in a special manner. The mechanical execution of the American edition is very good. — Catholic Standard. We cannot sufficiently admire and commend to the attention of our readers, young and old, this delightful work. The tenderness and exquisite refinement and purity which surround, like a veil, the character of tne loveJy St. Cecilia, ierve to throw into stronger relief the unfaltering courage by which she won the crown of martyrdom. The author has made use of all the authentic and import- ant details connected with the life and death of the Saint, following the most approved authorities. The discoveries of her tomb in the ninth and sixteenth •enturies form not the least interesting portion of the work, and the description of the church, which was once her dwelling and the witness of her sufferings and triumphs, brings those scenes so vividly before us that Cecilia seems to belong as much to our own day as to tke period when young, beautiful, wealthy ana accomplished, the virgin bride of the noble Valerian laid down her life for thf martyr's crown of faith. — 2f Y. Tablet. 8 Published bj Peter F. Cunningham, Mr- Cunningham, of Philadelphia, has earned a new claim on our gratitu*le by publishing the LIFE OF SAINT CECILIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR. Ih* Acts of her martyrdom are a monument of the wonderful ways of Gcd, and » mosl sweet record oi Cnristian heroism, heavenly love, and prodigious consvancy. Her ver.y name has inspired Christianity for fifteen centuries, with courage, and the noblest aspirations. The work is a translation from the French of prosper Gfcieranger. We have had only time to read the title, preface, and a few pagei before going to press. But we can say this much, that it was a very happj thought to undertake this translation, and we know of no other book w* should like to see in tne handa of Catholics so much as the LIFE OF SAINT CECiLI £.. VIRGIN AND MARTYR.— Boston Pitot. Mr. Peter F. Cunningham has just brought out, in very a -inirable style, the 1 Life of St. Ceciiia," from the French of the celebrated Dom. Gueranger. It is difficult to fina a more delightful volume than this. Its subject is cue of the most attractive in all the annals of the Church; and its author one of the most pious an! gifted of modern French writers : the result is one of the most charming contributions ever made to Catholic literature. As intimated the publisher has done his part in printing, in paper, and in binding. We re turn him thanks for a copy. — Philadelphia Unicerae, Oct. 6. This is a most interesting volume, truer than history and stranger than fic- tion. The author does not oonfine himself to the details of the Saint's life and martyrdom, but describes, with the faithfulness and minuteness of an antiquary s the wonders of Imperial and Christian Rome--the catacombs, the basilicas, the manners of the times, the persecutions of the Christians, etc. The book is handsomely got up, and enriched with a portrait of St. Cecilia seated at hei harp.— JUT. Y. Met. Record. "We have received this beautiful and very interesting life of one of the most beautiful Saints of the Church. The reading public ought to be much obliged to the Publisher for giving them such a work. It abounds in the sublimest sentiments of divine love and human devotion, such as Catholics would expect from the life of such a Saint ; and at the same time portrays the combat of rising Christianity and decaying paganism in the livelist colors. Such works as thia form the proper staple of reading for all who desire to become acquainted with the period to which it refers, ana who cannot afford to purchase or peruse the more profound works of our Historians.— Western N. Y. Catholic. The name of the learned and religious Abbot of Solesmes Dom. Gueranger, was long since made familiar and pleasant to us, in the pages of Chevalier Bonnetty's learned periodical, the Annales de Philosophie Clmtienne, pub- lished in Paris. In the pages of his " Life of St. Cecilia"— which we ha\e not met with in the French, — we have the same high talent devoted to other than liturgic themes. This is an admirable volume, well translated. The quiet style in which the story is told of the great honor with which Catholic ages have crowned St. Cecilia, is charming. — JN. Y. Freeman's Journal. ife of St. Agnes of Rome, Virgin and Martyr. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 18mo., neatly bound in cloth, with a beautiful steel plate Pois trait of the " Youthful Martyr of Rome." Price » • 50 e*nts» lT-fi.an's Contract with God in Baptism. Translated fr >m the French by Eev. J. M. Cullen. 1 vol., 18m o. Price- -«•• <••< • 5° oe » t * L \f Published by Peter F. Cunningham, 9 Ife of St. AJoysius GoMsnga, Of flae Society of Jesus. Edited by Edward llealy Thompson. Published with the approbation of thi R-. Rev Bishop oj Philadelphia. 1 vol., 12nio., neat cloth, beveled, $1.50 Cloth, Gilt, $2.00. 45F* Tbia is the best life of the Saint yet published in tt 3 English lacgaag* and should bo read by both the young and old. lie liife of St. Stanislas Kostka of ike Society of Jesus. By Edward Healy Thompson, A.M. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia- lvol. 12mo. Cloth extra beveled .' $1 50 Cloth full ed^es. $2.00 lie Life of Blessed Jolm Berciimans of tlie Society of Jesus, Translated from the French. With an appendix, giving an account of the miracles after death, which have been approved by the Holy See. From the Italian of Father Borgo, S. J. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 12mo. Price— In cloth $1.50 In cloth, gilt edge * 2.00 The Society of Jesus, laboring in all things for the " Greater glory of God," fass accomplished, if not more, as much, towards that pious object, as ever did any Institution of our holy religion. Actuated by that sublime and single motive, it has given the world as brilliant scholars, historians and men of science in all departments, as have ever yet adorned its annals. Nor is this by •any means its greatest boast ; it is what has been achieved by the Society in the advancement of Catholicity and sanctity, that makes the brightest gem in ita coronet. It is in that, that it is most precious in the sight of the angels of God ; it is for that its children will sing with them a new canticle on high. It has poopled heaven with a host of sainted choristers, many of them endowed with a worid-wide fame for sanctity, and many, like Blessed Berchmans 'laown to bGt few beyond the pale of her order. This saintly youth, like St. Aloysi&p and St. Stanislaus, died young, but a model of that true wisdom which neve* loses sight of the end for which man is created. The work before us beauti- fully describes the virtues, and the exemplary life and practices of this piou.8 youth ; and is richly entitled to a place in every Catholic library. — Catholic Mirror. Mr. P. F. Cunningham, of Philadelphia, may well rejoice, in his Catholic teart, for having given us this work, the perusal of which must needs be the SGurce cf immense good. No be ter work can b3 placed in the hands of Ee- lig'.ons novices Perhaps no other book has fired those privileged souls with more fervid aspirations towards attaining the perfection proper of their reli- gious professions. A perfect pattern is placed before them, and whilst th« .^srt s drawn towards it with admiring love, the reader cannot allege any honest c^use whereby to excuse himself from following the noble example placed before him. Blessed Berchmans teaches, by his own life, that perfec- tion is to be attained n the fa, thful and conscientious discharge of the duties o/ one'- daily life, whatever its circumstances may be. An excellent, mosr ey- •e.'ieut took this will also prove for socialists —Boston Pilot. 10 Published by Peter F. Caiumgham, 1 he Sign of the Cross in the Nineteenth Century. £y Mgr. G-aume, Prothonotary Apostolic. With the Brief of his Holiness Pope Pius IX. Translated from the French by A Daughter of St. Joseph. Published with the approbation of the Riqht Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. lvol. 12mo. Cloth. Extra beveled. Price $1.50 Gilt edge $2.00 I he Life of St. Augustine, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church. By P. E. Moriarty, D.D., Ex-Assistant General, O. S. A. ; Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadel- phia. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, extra beveled, and gilt centre $1 50 Cloth, gilt edge „ 2 00 T T lie Life of St. Charles Borromeo. By Edward Healey Thompson. Published with the approbation of the Eight Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, extra beveled $1 50 44 '« giltedge 2 CC lie Sodalist's Friend. A Beautiful Collec- tion of Meditations and Prayers. Compiled and translated from approved sources, for the use of member* and leaders of confraternities, lvol. ISmo., neatly bound. Price— In cloth 80 cents. Roan embossed $1.00 Embossed gilt 1.50 Full gilt edges and sides 2.00 Turkey, superior extra 3.00 lie Montli of tlie Sacred Heart* Arranged for each day of the month of June. Containing also the Arcb Confraternity of Sacred Heart, and Father Borgo's Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. With the appiobation of the Rigid Rev. Bishop oj Philadelphia. 1 neat vol. 24hk Cloth, gilt back. V*" j O^. -A wrote 29 South "Tenth Street, Philadelphia. 11 T lie itlontn of 8*. Josepli. Arranged for each d?.y of the month of March. Frcm the French of th« Kev. Father Huguet, of the "Society of St. Mary." Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 neat vol. ISmo. Cloth, gilt back. Price 50 cents. An attentive perusal » f this little work will prove, with a .sincere utterance of thieu. A beautiful and very edifying work on the Glories and Virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God ; from the Italian of Father Alphonse Capecelatro, of the Oratory of Naples, with an Introductory Letter of Father Gratry, of the Paris Oratory. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. 1 neat vol. 18mo. Cloth. Price 5C cents. he Roman Catacombs; or, Some account of 111 e Burial Places of tlie Early Cnris- tians in Home. By Rev. J. Spencer Xorthcoate, M. A , wi:h Maps and various Illustra- tions. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev Bishop nf Phila- delphia. 1 vol., 16mo., neatly bound in cloth gil . back. Price 31.00 19 Published by Peter F. Cunningham, JUetters Addressed to a Protestant Friend, By a Catholic Priest. With a Preface by the Right Rev. Bishop BeCKer. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth extra beveled • $1.21 harity and Truth; or, Catholics not un- charitable in saying that None are Saved ont of the Catholic Church. By the Hev. Edward Eawarden. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia, i toI. 12mo. Price— Neatly bound in cloth $1.25 T^ this book, the learned and earnest author discusses a question of vital im- portance to all, viz.: Is there salvation out of the Catholic Communion? At the present moment, when the strongest proof of Christianity, in the popular opinion, is a belief that every road leads to heaven, and that every man who lives a moral life is sure to be saved, the very title of this book will prate harshly on many ears. To such we w_>uld say— Read the work, and learn rtat " a charitable judgment may be very unfavorable, and a favorable judgmeat may be very uncharitable " "Charity and Truth" is the work of one of the ablest controversialists and most learned theologians of the Catholic Church in England. The method adopted in "Charity and Truth'' is the catechetical, and to help the memory the questions are pet in large characters at the top of each page. In the preface, the Reverend reviewer takes up and disposes of sx vulgar errors, — 1st. That it is charity to suppose all men saved whose life is morally honest. 2d. That the infinite goodness of God will not suffer the greater part of mankind to perish. 3d. That it is charity to believe the Jews and Turks are saved. 4th. That if I judge more favorably of the salvation of another man than he does of mine, I am the more charitable of the two. 5th. That, setting all other considerations apart, if Protestants judge more favor- ably of the salvation of Catholics than Catholics do of theirs, Protestants are on the more charitable side. 6th. That he is uncharitable whoever supposes that none are saved in any other religion unless they are excused by inviuci- ble ignorance. — Met. Record. We owe Mr. Cunningham an apology for not having noticed this work ere this ; and we should have done it more readily, as we hail with utmost pleasure the republication of one of those works written by the uncompromising cham- pions of the Church during the hottest days of persecution and Catholic disa- bilities in England. Wc have often wished that some of the learned professors of the illustrious College of Georgetown would select from among the numerous collection they have of books written by English missionaries during the first two centuries of persecution in England, some such work as "Charity and Truth, " and republish them in this country. These works will not please, of course, our milk and water Catholics. But, after all, they are the real kind of works we need. It is high time that we should take the aggressive. We cava put up long enough with Protestant attacks. We owe nothing to Protestants. We have allowed them to say all kind of things to us. We -have received w'.Ln thanks the benign condescension with which they grant us the merit of there being some good people among the Catholics, and that some bishops and priests are clever, in spite of their being Catholics. We have bowed so low as to kiss the right hand that has patted us on the head, whle the left was lifting its thumb to the nose of the smiling but double-hearted ca*esser. It is high time, we say, that we should do away with this sycophancy. It is high time that war was carried to the heart of the enemy's country. Hence we are thankful to the American editor of this work. Let Catholics buy it, read it, and then give it to their Protestant acquaintances.— Boston Pilot. B CAT HOLIC T ALES. eecii Bliilf. A Tale ©f the South Before the War. By Faniiie Warner. lvol. 12mo. Cloth extra beveled $1.50 Cloth gilt edge „.. . . „^„fc.0C FerncIMTe. A Catholic Talo of great merit 1 volume l/'mo. Price— CI jth, extra beveled $i 50 Cloth, gilt edges. . , ....... 2 00 A lie j?1ob targes Legacy, A Charming Catholic Tale, by Florence McGoamb. (Miss Meline, of Washing' tea,) 1 volume, small 12mc. 6 Price— Cloth, extia beveled $1.00 Cloth, gilt * 1>2 5 race Morton; or, Tiie Inheritance. Anew and beautiful Catholic tale, written by Miss Meaney of Philadelphia. 1 vol., large lSino., neatly bound in cioth. Price $1.00 This is a pleasing story, instructive as well as amusing, and worth an espe- cial place in the library of youthful Catholics. It depicts with rare skill the trials and sacrifices which attend the profession of the true Faith, and which are so often exacted of us by the fostering solicitude of our Mother the Church. —Catholic Mirror. A chastely written Catholic tale of American life, which is most pleasantly narrated ; and conveys much that is instructive and elevating. — Irish American, lie Knout ; a Tale of Poland* Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier. 1 vol., large 18mo., neatly bound in cloth, gilt back, with frontispiece. Price , $1.00 aura and Anna; or, The Eifeet of Faith 00 tlie Character. A beautiful tale, translated from the French by a. young lady, a Graduate of St. Joseph's, Eminittsburg. 1 vol. 18mo., neatly bound in cloth. Price 60 cents he Confessors of Connanght; or, Tlie Ten- ants of a Lord Bishop. A tale of Evictions in Ireland. 8y Miss Meanev, author of "' Grace Mor- ton." Small 12mo., cloth. Price $1.00 Keard thifc bwk and you will have a feeling knowledge of the sufferings of «ur brethren in the Isle of Sainte. — Bcston Pilot. L, 14 Published by Peter F. Cunningham, THE "YOUNG CATHOLIC'S LIBRARY.' BEAUTIFUL CATHOLIC TALES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. FIRST SERIES. 6 NEAT 18*10 VOLS., CLOTH, EXTRA, 50 CENTS EACH. 1. Cottage Evening Tales, for Young People. 2. Children of the Valley ; or, The Ghost of the Ruins. 3. Mag Carleton's Story, and The Miller's Daughter. 4. Fliilip Hartley ; or, A. Boy's Trials and Triumphs. 5. Count Leslie; or, The Triumphs of Filial Piety. 6. A Father's Tales of the French Revolution, SECOND SERIES. 6 NEAT 18mo VOLS., CLOTH, EXTRA, 50 CENTS EACH. 1. Ralph Rerrien. Tales of the French Revolution. 2. Silver Grange and Fhillipine, Two charming Tales. 3. Helena Butler. A Story of the Rosary. 4. Charles and Frederick. By Rev. John P. Donnollon. 5. The Reau forts, A Story of the Alleghanies. 6. Lauretta and the Fables. A charming little book. THIRD SERIES. 6 NEAT 18mo VOLS., CLOTH, EXTRA, 50 CENTS EACH. 1. Conrad and Gertrude. A lovely Swiss Tale. #. Three Petitions. A Tale of Poland. 3. Alice; or, The Rose of the Black Forest. 4. Carolina; or, Self-Conquest. A Book for Young Girls. 5. Stories of the Commandments. Eight charming Tales. 6. The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. Seven Tales. FOURTH SERIES. 6 NEAT 18MO VOLS., CLOTH, EXTRA, 50 CENTS EACH 1. Elinor Johnston, A Story of great interest. 2. The Queen's Daughter; or, the Orphan of La Graoja. 3. Hetty Homer. By Fanny Warner. . 4. The Beverly Family. By Hon. Jos. R. Chandler. 5. Aunt Fanny's Fresent; or, Book of Fairy Talea. 6". Woodland Coitaye, and Other Tales. 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia. 15 Hawthorndean; or, Philip Benton's Family. A Tale of every day life. By Mrs. Clara M. Thompson, Author of '• Rectory of Moreland," ; - Chapel of St Mary," <£c. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, extra beveled, and crilt centre ftl 50 " " " Gilt edges 2 00 Uineas; or, Rome under Nero. By J .M. Villefranche. ItoI. 12mo. Cloth. Extra beveled Si. 50 Gilt edge £2.0Q This charming story of the time of Nero— the burning of Rome under thai (yrant. the destruction of Jerusalem, and the most cruel persecution of the Christians, is of that class of beautiful Christian novels, of which Fabiola was ihe first, and is considered one of the best yet written. A Iphonso; or, the Triumph of Religion. 1 vol. small 12 ino. neat cloth. Price , Si. 00 We have the pleasure to announce another of Mr. Cunningham's works, Al- phonso, or the Triumph of Religion. It contains everything calculated to instruct aad edify at the same time, and we think it a work that will be read with g-eat pleasure by ail uur readers. — Spare Hours. The scenes of this boot are laid in France, but the moral applies with equal force to our own country. The work is intended to show the evil effects of an irreligious education, and does so with great force and effect. The tale is from the pe;i of a gifted Irish lady, and well worth reading. Those who are sluggish in their response to our Most Rev. Archbishop's recent call in behalf of an In- dustrial School, should take a lesson from this valuable little book. --Baltimore Catholic Mirror. A History of England, For The Young. Compiled by the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, for the use of theu schools in England, and republished for the use of the Catholic Schools in the United States. 1 vol. 12 mo 80 cts This is an admirable compendium of English history, deserving a place in all our schools. It is well arranged for a class book, having genealogical tables, a good index, aud questions for each chapter.— Catholic Mirror. This is a most valuable little book, giving just sufficient information to interest and attract the young without wearying them with superabundance of dates which thev rarely remember, and dry statistics which they never read unless compelled to do so, (a ino-t injudicious process.) while by means of excellent genealogical and chronological taoles, it furnishes to those disposed to seek it, ample instruc- tion, and it will most probably inspire in the mind of an intelligent child, the wish to read more extended works. We -nae pleasure in commenaing thii • History of England" to the attention of all those interested in providing agree- .ble means of improvement to children.— N Y. Tablet. 16 Published by Peter F. Cunn'ngham. PRAYER BOOKS. FLOWER GARDEN. An admirable small Prayer Book. Contains Morning ana Evening Players, Mass Prayers, Ordinary of the Mass, (in Latin and English,) Vespers, Forty Hours Devotion, Stations of the Cross, and a great va- riety of other'practical devotions, all together forming the most coin* plete small Prayer Book yet printed. 1 vol., 32m o. No. 1, Neat cloth, variety of nice bright colors 50 45 2, Roan, embossed, gilt edge 80 3, " " " and clasp 100 4, " full gilt edges and sides 100 5, " " " '■ and clasp 125 FLOWER, GARDEN, 32mo., line edition, printed on the finest quality of paper, and made up in the neatest and very best manner : No. 6, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, red or gilt edges, stiff or flexible ?2 50 7, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, red or gilt edges, with clasp 2 75 8, Turkey, super extra, rims and clasp 4 00 9, Calf, extra, stiff or flexible, very neat 2 75 10, " " with clasp 3 00 11, " «• rims and clasp 4 50 12, Velvet, full ornaments, rims, clasps and ovals... 6 00 LITTLE FLOWER GARDEN. A beautiful miniature Prayer Book. 4Smo. Containing a selection of practical devotions, and made up in a variety of beautiful stylea of binding, No. 1, Neat cloth, variety of plain and bright colors. ..$0 20 2, Roan, embossed, gilt edges 40 3, '* full gilt edges and sides 50 4, '* tucks, very neat 60 5, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, red or gilt edges 1 50 6, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, with fine gilt clasp 175 7, Turkey, super extra, rims and clasp 2 50 8, Calf, extra, red or gilt edges, very neat 1 75 9, " " " " with clasp 2 00 10, " " rims and clasp 3 00 DAILY DEVOTIONS FOR CATHOLICS. An admirable small Prayer Book. 32m o., with very large type* (English,) good for the short-sighted, and for all who like to read \s itli ease, without the necessity of using glasses. No. 1, Neat cloth, variety of nice bright cclors $0 45 2, Roan, embossed, gilt edge 80 3 ? •« " " and clasp 100 4, " full gilt edges and sides 1 00 5; « " " " and clasp 126 6' Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, red or gilt edges, stiff or flexible 2 50 7, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides, red or gilt edges, with clasp. 2 75 8, Turkey, super extra rims and clasp 4 00 9, Calf, extra, stiff or flexible, very neat 2 75 10, <4 «• " with clasp 3 00 XI, " " ** rims and clasp 4 50 12', Velvet, full ornaments, rims, clasps and ovais... 6 ^ 29 South TentL Street, Philadelphia. 17 MANUAL OF DEVOTION. An excellent 32mo. Prayer Book, with illustrations of the Mass. No. 1. Neat cloth, a variety of plain and bright colors. SO 30 2, Roan, emboss .id giit edges CO 3, " ' " and clasp 8J 4, '« full gilt edges and sides 80 5, " '• ■' *' and clasp 100 6, Turkey, super extra, full gilt or plain sides 2 50 7, " " rims and clasp 3 '0 8, Calf, extra, stiff or flexible, bound very neat 2 75 9, ;i " * and clasp 3(0 10, " rims and clasp 4 00 DAILY EXERCISE. A beautiful miniature Prayer Book. 48mo., with illustrations of ih* Mass. No. 1, Neat cloth a variety of choice colors $0 Z0 2, Roan, embossed, gilt edge u 4) 3, «' full gilt edge and sides 50 4, " tucks, very neat 60 5, Turkey, super extra 1 50 6, -' " tucks 150 7, " " rims and clasp 2 50 8, Calf, extra 1 75 9, " with clasp 2 co 10, " rims and clasp 3 00 The Hymn Book. The Hymn-Book— 180th thousand— the mo3t popular little Hymn Book ever published. Contains, also, Prayers for the Mass, Prayers for Con* fession and Communion, and Serving of Mass. 13 cents each, or $10 per hundred ; cloth, 20 cents, or $1 80 per dozen. The Gospels. For Sundays and Principal Festivals during the year, together with the Four Gospels of the Passion for Palm Sunday and Holy Week. 1 vol. i2mo. Paper cover 10 cts , or per dozen, $L CO. Confirmation and Communion Certificates. The subscriber has had prepared very beautiful certificates of Conjir- maiion ami First Communion, giving also exterior and interior views of the Cathedral of Philadelphia. These are the most beautiful certifi- cates ever published in this country, and are sold at low rates to the Reveren i Clergy and others who buy in quantity. $> 00 per hundred Angels' Sodality. Manual of the Holy Angels Sodality. Price, in cloth, flexible. $12 50 per hundred, or $l ;0 per dozen Diplomas for Membership of the Angels' Sodality. Beautiful design $10' per dozen Blessed Virgin's Sodality Diploma. A Very B autifvl Diploma for Members of the Modality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, size oi plate 1.x .o. has just been prepared by the umJ.er* Big tied Orders respectfully solicited. The name of the Church dn