II. The Work and the Wants of the Catholic Church in England

(Dublin Eevicw, July 1863.)

i; Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion through out the World. Written for the use of Pope Innocent XI. by Monsignor Cerri, Secretary of the Congregation de Propoganda Fide. Now first translated from an authentick Italian MS. never published. To which is added a Discourse concerning the State of Religion in England; written in French in the time of King Charles I., and now first translated. "With a large Dedication to the present Pope, giving him a very particular Account of the State of Religion amongst Protestants; and of several other matters of importance relating to Great Britain. By Sir Richard Steele. (London: printed for J. Roberts, near the Oxford Arms, in Warwick-lane, MDCCXV.)

More than a generation of men has passed away since the emancipation of the Catholic Church in Great Britain from the persecution of the penal laws; and nearly half a generation since the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy. We have reached, therefore, a time when we may review the condition of the Church in this country. The silent and gradual expansion of a tree may escape the eye from moment to moment, but in a series of years its breadth of shadow and its rising stature reveal the accumulation of its life and power. So with the Church in England. After a series of vicissitudes more rapid, abrupt, and various than Christianity has ever known in any other land, the Catholic Church goes forth once more to evangelise the English people. England has heeii Pagan and Christian; then Pagan and Christian again; then Catholic in all the docility of childlike obedience; then, though Catholic still, indocile in all the pretensions of its national pride; then reformed (so called), with all the alternations of action and reaction from Continental Protestantism to Hierarchical Anglicanism, from Latitudinarianism to Pietism, from an imitative Catholicism to a thorough Rationalism, which is now spreading on all sides under the foundations of English society. Meanwhile the Church has been twice all but extinct, and twice restored in power.

For the purpose of bringing out more clearly these facts of Divine Providence, we have prefixed to this article the title of a work which was published in the last century. It presents us with one of those historical pictures which read like a fiction. To the Catholics of this day, and even to our Protestant antagonists, it will seem hardly credible that the account of the Roman Catholic religion in England, which now would fill a volume, should be despatched in about a dozen octavo pages; and even of these, three-fourths at least arc occupied with an account of the schism under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, and of the appointment of first an Archpriest, and then of a Vicar-Apostolic for the whole of England. The description of the actual state of religion in England is contained in a few sentences: ' I shall only say, in general, that there are many Catholics in the country at this present time; hut that their number is not very considerable if compared with that of the heretics, who are divided into Church of England meny Presbyterians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Independents, and several other sects. The exercise of the Catholic religion is wholly prohibited both in public and in private. The Catholics meet together in some few places to perform. Divine worship, but they do so with the utmost secrecy, and not without great danger.' It seems incredible that such should have been our state only two centuries ago. What we purpose in this article, then, is to take u slight survey, by way of contrast, of our present condition, and that rather with a practical view, and for the sake of stimulating zeal and activity, than as a matter of mere literary speculation.

The history of England exhibits in a wonderful way the action of the Church upon the world, and their irreconcilable conflict. It was the Church that civilised England, united its races, founded and consecrated its monarchy. The Church has a twofold work to do for mankind. Its first and primary, indeed, is to save souls, to lead men to eternal life. Its second, but no less true, is to ripen and to elevate the social and political life of men by its influences of morality and of law. As the Church is not a mere school of opinion for the enlightenment of the intellect, but a true king dom for the government of the will, so its mission is not only to direct the conscience and the will of in dividuals as units, but of fathers as the heads of households, and of princes or governors as the rulers of peoples and of nations. Hence, by the Divine law of its mission to mankind, arises what is called the social and political status of the Church.

The Holy See, in creating Christian Europe, contracted social and political relations with the civil society which it had called into existence. The Church in England formed an integral and vital part of tho social and political order of the Saxon races, — permeating its whole structure and life: it anointed their princes, legislated in their parliaments, judged in their tribunals; and being thus intimately united with the whole public life and social order of the people, the Church accomplished more pervadingly and more uniformly its spiritual mission in guiding men to eternal life. Tho theory of unconsecrated civil powers, occupied only with the temporal welfare of the people, was unknown to our Saxon forefathers, and would have been rejected by them as an impiety and a folly. True, indeed, it is that civil society has no Divine mission to the souls of men, no custody of revealed truths or laws, no supernatural discernment of what is for the eternal welfare of its members, no faculties to apply itself to the care of souls, nor any authority to direct the conscience. Nevertheless, a State has higher duties than that of conferring purely temporal benefits; and the Church, in consecrating the civil order by the grace of Christianity, enables it to promote the welfare of its people by & discernment and by means which are above its own. Such was eminently the state of Saxon England.

The Anglo-Saxon monarchy belongs to a Christian and patriarchal period, and hardly enters into the text of modern history. It is, like the source of the Nile, hidden, but prolific; a mighty and productive cause, hut withdrawn from sight. From it descend the unwritten laws, traditions, customs, and characteristic spirit of England in all its ages and in its full maturity. The Norman period, if it be more historical, and more within the range of our cognisance and our criticism, is, nevertheless, a time of culmination and of decline. The English monarchy grew strong; the English Church grew weak. The Saxon period expired in S. Edward, King and Confessor, who symbolised the spirit of that most beautiful age; the Norman reached its full development in Henry VIII., the offspring and the representative of its anti-Catholic spirit and traditions. Nevertheless, in the five centuries of the Norman-English rule, the Church created for itself a vast, mature, and powerful organisation for the discharge of its civil mission to the people of England. It participated in all the political life, and action, the domestic and foreign policy, the legislative and judicial power of the monarchy. It had a rich inheritance of ecclesiastical endowments, it accumulated a vast multitude of eleemosynary foundations, it formed and directed a noble and abundant, system of education in all its branches and for all classes of the people. The grammar schools of England, the higher, or, as we call them, the public schools, and the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were an ample and worthy provision for the education of a people less than three millions in number.

Now of all these the Reformation robbed the Catholic Church at one blow. It was simply exiled from political power, and put out of the sphere of the social life of England. Its pastors were driven from the councils of State. They were excluded from all share in the legislation and the government of the realm. Its charitable institutions were taken away, and its schools and universities turned against itself. It is not possible to conceive the state of privation and of poverty to which the Church was reduced. In France the Protestants were a small minority, who withdrew from the institutions and culture of a Catholic nation. All the accu mulated resources of spiritual and intellectual cultivation possessed by the Church of France remained with it still, because the French nation continued faithful. In England all was the reverse— the Catholics were the minority. They were spoiled of all that their fathers had created and accumulated. All the culture, maturity, and intellectual development of the English people, with all the instruments and means of its progress and expansion, remained in the hands of the anti-Catholic majority. It would be difficult to overstate the effects of this spoliation. The Emperor Julian showed the true instinct of an apostate in closing the Christian schools; and the Tudor princess manifested the same subtilty in robbing the Catholics of England of the means of intellectual culture. The true way to weaken an antagonist is to despoil him of the means of know ledge and cultivation.

The prudence and the providence of the great Catholic men of those times was signally shown in the foundation of colleges in Paris, Douai, Lisbon, Valladolid, Rome, and elsewhere, which for three centuries have returned into England a perpetual though scanty stream of educated priests. Nor have these colleges even now, in our better days, exhausted their mission. It is of great moment to the Catholic Church that its priests should possess as little as possible of the idola spec its of nationalism, and as much as possible of the culture of other Catholic nations; so that, even when hereafter, as we hope, the whole circle of our Catholic education is completed, there will always be an office of high importance for these' colleges to discharge — namely, to contribute the culture of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and 'France to the culture of England in the members of our priesthood.

It would be wearisome and out of place to enter here into the details of the depression under which the Catholics of England have laboured during the last three hundred years, or to trace out the continual diminution of their numbers and the continual decrease of their strength. For a long time great numbers of the aristocracy and of the landed commonalty maintained their fidelity. In some counties of England a large proportion of the country gentlemen and their families were Catholic. Now they form a proportion almost in appreciably small. To give an idea of the effect of penal laws, we may state that we have heard, on good authority, that in Ireland, between the years 1750 and 1775, five thousand persons, some with their whole families, apostatised from the faith. Many English families continued Catholic down to the last generation. It

VOL. I. D was the fathers or the grandfathers of many of the men of the present day who, as it is styled, conformed to the Established Church. ]>ut these times of oppression were to have an end; and the religious reaction caused by the impieties of the first French Revolution came in like a spring-tide upon England and Ireland. Wo have little doubt that this was among the remote causes of Catholic emancipation, and of the wonderful religious phenomena which have arisen since the year 1880: such as the revival of religious earnestness; the profuse church-building throughout England and Ireland; the vast efforts for educating the people; the Anglo-Catholic movement, as it is called, of which the analysis has yet. to be made, and the intellectual history to be appre ciated; and, lastly, the wonderful simulations of Catholic faith, ritual, and devotion, which sprang up simultaneously and in parallel lines within the Established Church of England ami the Established Church of Scotland — namely, what are called Puseyism and Irviugism. All these seem to us to be nothing more than the irregular and impetuous motions of earnest minds driven onward before the irresistible stream of ideas and sympathies which agitated the whole of Christian Europe in its recoil from unbelief and its return towards the sources of supernatural faith.

But we cannot pursue these thoughts further, tempting as they are. We must turn back to the position of the Catholic Church at the time of its emancipation. It found itself stripped of everything, incapable of holding property; of executing a legal trust, of purchasing land for its churches and schools. A few of its churches still remain, spectacles of abject and miserable poverty; such, for instance, as the old Catholic cliurch at Brompton, near Chatham — a structure of planking for walls, with sash windows, and galleries covering half the area, steeped in and squalid with the dirt of years. (Jreat was the faith of those who through all this degradation still beheld and adored the.Divine Presence.

Hut the time was come for a new ago to set in. In the reign of William IV. statutes were passed enabling Catholics to make legal trusts for religious mid clniritable purposes, to purchase land for churches mi<! schools, and to provide endowments for Divine worship and education, and for the maintenance of clergy and school-teachers. ]ty an oversight, or by an absurd and oppressive anomaly, while the Catholic, worship was legalised, the celebration of the Mass for the departed —which is a part of that worship — was still held to be a superstitious use. Nevertheless, the position wns greatly ameliorated, and Catholics began to enter once more into the social and political life of England. We can remember the fear and dislike with which ihe first Catholic members were received in the House of Commons, and the abuse with which they were daily treated by the newspapers of this country. Wo can recollect also with what astonishment and aversion Mr. O'Connell was seen ascending the stairs to a Icrce at Buckingham Palace, in the robes and chain of Lord Mayor of Dublin. These were portents in the State, — as when seven moons were seen tit once, or when oxen spake and statues sweated blood. Nevertheless, Catholics arose and multiplied on every side. It seemed like the exuberant life

3G THE WORK AND THE WANTS OF of Nature. Turn up the soil where you will with a spade, and the surface next the sun will spring with new forms of life. All over England Catholics manifested themselves, and churches and schools created new and visible centres of influence where the Catholic worship had never yet been seen.

Another cause which gave prominence to Catholics was the vehement endeavour of the Protestant Dis senters to reduce the status of the Established Church, by abolishing church-rates and throwing open the Uni versities. The Established Church weathered the storm, mid in many ways became more active and enterprising; but its traditional dignity was marred, and its exclusive superiority has ever since declined. It is now little more than the richest and most numerous among many sects. The country does not regard it as the representative and the expression of its religious convictions, or of its religious affections. This, again, has given to the Catholic Church a new relative position in the social state of England.

Another cause, too remarkable to be passed over, is the change which took place in two of the most important of our colonies — Canada and Australia. In Canada the Catholic Church was always strong, highly respected, and possessed of great social influence. This was much increased by political changes in the colony, and by the diminution of the exclusive privileges of the Established Churches. In Australia, by the wise and equitable government of Sir Richard Bourke, the Catholic Church and the two Establishments were alike admitted, pro rata, to participate in the public revenues.

This has given to the Catholic Church in Australia a position and a pre-eminence which it does not possess elsewhere. We mention these two instances because they have undoubtedly reacted upon the mother country, and the stream of legislation has for these thirty years steadily set towards placing the Catholic Church in England on the same footing as in the colonies.

But all these were only preludes to an act which needed a higher hand. The Supreme Pontiff, by the Apostolical Letters, Universalis Ecclesia, created in England a third epoch of its spiritual history. We are too near the great event to be fully conscious of its magnitude. They who shall be removed from it by a century will perceive its full proportions and see the outline of its results. Perhaps there has hardly been in the history of the Church a more timely and visibly providential event than the restoration of the Hierarchy at the special moment when it occurred. The whole Established Church had been in agitation on the subject of baptism. But the excitement on this special doctrine had been merged in a deeper and more primary question respecting the authority of the Anglican Church in matters of doctrine, and the authority of the Crown as the ultimate judge of ecclesiastical appeals. Every other subject gave way to a discussion of the royal supremacy. The press groaned with pamphlets and protests, replies and rejoinders, upon the subject of the supremacy of the Crown. It was boldly vindicated by the Erastian party; it was impatiently borne by the High Establishment school; it was cavilled at by some, and utterly denied by.others. It was denounced

:',S TUE WORK AND THE WANTS OF by many as an usurpation upon the office of the Church, as a bondage to the civil power, as a violation of the apostolical authority of the Episcopate. Except a few thorough-going Erastians, nobody defended it. Almost everybody lamented it as an excessive claim of the Tudors, and a perpetual, danger to the Church of Eng land. Eighteen hundred Anglican clergymen joined in a public protest against it. Just at this moment, in the midst of this agitation, controversy, and awakening of reason and conscience to the true character of the royal supremacy, the shadow of a Divine hand fell upon men, and another supremacy was seen to assert itself in England. The English people beheld a hierarchy of thirteen sees, under a metropolitan, a prince of the Church, rise like an exhalation from the ground, or descend as if from heaven. The calm power, majesty, and might of the Divine supremacy of the Vicar of Jesus Christ revealed more than ever by contrast the impotence and the unlawfulness of any human supremacy over the spiritual mission of the Church. It seemed that the very moment had been chosen which should exhibit in the strongest light this contrast of the true and the false. Then began one of the greatest religious tumults of our days. The Parliament, the municipal cities, the universities, the counties, the Anglican bishops, the clergy of the Establishment, and we know not who besides, were all in a frenzy of excitement, protesting with one voice against Pius IX. for dc ing what S. Gregory I. had done before. The storm blew furiously. The Protestants threatened a re-enactment of penal laws. Some Catholics blamed everybody who had a hand in the measure, not sparing the Holy See. Croakers croaked. The wise and the prudent were oracular. The timid were frightened; some good men even were carried away by the alarm. It was said that Catholicism was put back in England by a century; that conversions were stopped; that the peaceful relations between Catholics and Protestants were broken; old antipathies revived; and all the gains since the Emancipation, and even the Emancipation itself, endangered.

Now we have always been of those who believed none of these things; but who rather believe, and that most firmly and profoundly, the direct reverse of all these things. We have ever believed that the Hierarchy was the greatest booh that the Vicar of our Lord could have bestowed upon England; that without it Catholicism would have languished; that its efforts would have wanted unity and permanence; that its productiveness would have been only partially developed; that the very gains of the Emancipation would have become' dangerous to us; that if vicars-apostolic suffice for a people under penal laws, nothing less than an ordered and perfect Hierarchy will suffice for a Catholic people restored to freedom; that from the moment of its re-establishment date both the full re-organisation of the Church by the restoration of its old Catholic elements, and the immense development of ecclesiastical order and spiritual fruitfulness which we now behold. All the noise and heat and vehemence we regard as a cheap price for such a gift; nay, even as conducive to its confirmation. It is held by canonists that pontifical acts need only publication to oblige the conscience. The uproar published the Papal decree. The English people became the cnrsores and apparitors of the Sovereign Pontiff. They made the ears of every man to tingle with the clamorous proclamation, that the supremacy of the Vicar of our Lord had reasserted itself in England, and claimed of all men submission to its direction. The royal supremacy paled before the splendour of the head of the Church of all nations upon earth.

Through all the storm of this conflict one name stands out with a clearness which almost isolated him from all others among the pastors and faithful who bore a foremost part in that great contest. A Jesuit in Rome once asked an English Catholic what he thought of the restoration of the Hierarchy in England. He answered by saving that he believed it to be a Divine providence of tire most evident kind, adding that it was visibly * diffitus Dei.' The Jesuit answered, with true Italian felicity, ' Coll1 audio di Pio Xono.' We may further add that the hand to which the execution of the Apostolic Letters, under the seal of the Fisherman, was committed, was the hand of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. It is well known that his friends thought his life in peril; that they endeavoured to prevail on him to continue abroad, saying that his landing in England would be dangerous to him; that they advised him not to appear in the streets, and even to leave the country. And it was generally known that he refused to do any of these things; and that the firmness and calmness of his carriage not only supported the courage of other men, but chiefly prevailed to gain the signal victory which was then achieved.

For many years after this event, hoth in England and abroad, and even in Rome, Catholics were still found to repeat that the restoration of the Hierarchy and the uproar which it excited, had put back Catholicism for generations; that the tide of conversion had been arrested; that the growth of all the works of the Church had been indefinitely retarded. During those years these used to be the first questions proposed by the Catholics of France on meeting their English brethren. The same representations were urged in high quarters, even in Rome itself, where the subject was made matter of formal inquiry. It is impossible for as to do more in this article than to mark in outline the true refutation of all these assertions.

And, first of all, we are at a loss to conceive how the restoration of the Hierarchy, which gives back to a mutilated part of the Church its full ecclesiastical perfection, can be an obstacle to the progress of the Catholic religion. Nor, again, how the more public and conspicuous action of the Church, by means of a Hierarchy governing with an open exercise of its prerogative, can hinder the conversion of a people. Nor, again, how the personal influence and action of thirteen Bishops, in the government and organisation of their dioceses, can fail to produce a result both on the mass of the people and on individuals incomparably beyond the effect produced by eight vicars-apostolic. But, in fact, the very reverse is true. We may affirm that the great expansion of the Church dates from the restora-

1-J THE WORK AND THE WANTS OF tibn of the Hierarchy; that it marked the commencement of a new period of which it was itself the instrumental cause. We can only give, in the most rapid way, a few statistics; hut they will suffice.

Referring to the Catholic Directories, we find the numher of churches and priests in England stated as follows:

Churches. Priests.

is.-tO 410 ls;,o 5H7 788 isji-J 844 1215

To take the vicariate of London alone, we have-Religious Houses:

Churches. Priests. Men. Women.

1850.. 104 IliS 2 17

At this time the vicariate was divided into the dioceses of Westminster and Southwark. In Westminster alone we have-Religious Houses: Churches. Priests. Men. Women.

ls(-,o..,so 1S4 15 28

Thus the increase in Westminster alone is such that, in every particular except churches, it exceeds the re turn of the whole vicariate hefore the division. Other dioceses, such as Birmingham, Salford, and Liverpool, ' would no doubt present the same result; hut we have not the statistics at hand.

Such is the expansion and multiplication of the Church since the restoration of the Hierarchy, as certified by statistics. But these afford only a superficial test. If we would take a more adequate measure, we must look to something more than figures. The Hierarchy ingrafted the Catholic Church in England upon the Episcopate of the world; aiid the influx of the universal Church came into it once more with the full tide of life and vigour. The result was dioceses, cathedrals, chapters, missionary parishes. Then councils provincial and diocesan; then the provisions and traditions of the canon law, adjusted by the Holy See to the condition of our country. Then an intimate union of action and counsel with Rome, such as before had not been attainable. Every Bishop in the Hierarchy became a channel of the spirit and mind of the Holy See to his diocese, with a fulness and a minuteness not possible in the vast vicariates of other days. Hence has come an elevation and a deepening of the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal life, and an activity and a diffusion of Catholic devotion never known before.

The inevitable result of this great expansion of the Church is to multiply its wants, and to expose its members to special social dangers; and of these we will say a few words, or, at least, of the chief of them.

We will begin by briefly noting some of the principal needs of the Church in England.

First, and before all, are needed proper diocesan seminaries, according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, for the education of the priesthood. As yet such do not exist. As yet such could hardly be formed. The vicars-apostolic of other days had done well in forming ecclesiastical colleges, in which clerical and lay students should be educated together. Out of their poverty they could do no more. And the mixture with ecclesiastical students, if less advantageous to them, was very advantageous to the lay students. But the decrees of Trent are express, and remain to be executed. They provide that to every cathedral church, and to all greater churches, such as the metropolitan, primatial, patriarchal, there shall he attached a school of tonsured clerics of whom there is reasonable hope that they will persevere in the ecclesiastical life. They provide also, that if any diocese, by reason of poverty, be unable to maintain such a seminary, the metropolitan in the provincial council, or with two of his senior suffragans, • shall take measures for the establishment of a seminary common to two or more dioceses. The metropolitan lias a conscicntia oncrata to see to the execution of this decree. Until lately dioceses have not existed in Eng land, and the decree has had no application. With the Hierarchy it begun to oblige; and now we may trust that the time of its execution is come. In some of the larger of our dioceses, means will not be wanting for a lesser and a greater seminary. In the smaller dioceses, perhaps, a lesser seminary only could for a time be formed. But in all a beginning could be made; and the beginning is half the work. It may seem paradoxical to say that a seminary is even more needful in the smaller than in the larger dioceses. But it is true; for a small clergy has greater need of some centre of ecclesiastical spirit, and of the influence of example and theological help, than a large one, which possesses in itself more resources and a more vigorous life. More over, a seminary would certainly multiply the number of such a clergy, by inspiring a desire for the priesthood and generating vocations among the youths and even the boys of the diocese. The chief and acknow ledged difficulty is the want of professors, but these may be supplied by a little foresight, arid the English College in Eome seems providentially formed to meet this want. One or two picked men from each diocese would return home in four or five years capable of making at least a sufficient beginning.

But it is not our object nor our duty to enter further into this great subject, which, as we know, has long engaged the most serious thoughts of our Bishops and of other persons.

A second want is an adequate system of education for the poor and the middle classes. In the Keport of the Poor-School Committee of 1853 it is stated that the Catholic schools in England and Wales amount to more than 500. In the Report of the Assistant Commissioner to the Privy Council in 1861 the number is stated at over 700. The number of Catholic children in Eng land and Wales requiring education is put at 160,000. The number under education, as given by the Assistant Commissioner, is over 80,000. If in London alone there be 200,000 Catholics, there will be one-fifth be tween the ages of five and fifteen, or 40,000 needing education. Suppose 10,000 to be an excess, and 12,000 to be at school, as the diocesan returns show, there will be 18,000 or 20,000 Catholic children for whom, after all the efforts which have been made out of our poverty, schools have yet to be provided. To find funds sufficient for this purpose a system is needed which will not only gather or ask alms of Catholics, but so address the intellect, heart, and will of the faithful as to move them to deny themselves for the accomplishment of this great and vital work. We have a full helief that such a system of appeal, if made vigorously and maintained perseveringly, would in a generation adequately provide for our Catholic children.

Another great want is that of a higher literary and scientific education for our laymen — analogous, in fact, to that furnished by the Protestant universities.

And this leads at once to a question of the highest importance, a solution of which must be promptly made, or it will solve itself by drifting beyond all control. It is well known that Catholics have been admitted for a long period of years to reside and study in Cambridge, but not to take degrees. Until 1854 they were absolutely excluded from Oxford. By a recent change, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, Catholics may reside and study in the colleges and halls of Oxford, and proceed to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In Cambridge the degree of Master of Arts is also open to them. In the course of the nine years since 1854 it is said that twenty Catholics have passed through Oxford; and it is likely that others will enter. Now two questions arise —first, whether it be expedient that Catholics should avail themselves of the liberty thus granted to them to study at the two Universities? and, secondly, if so, whether it be expedient that they should reside one by one within the walls of the existing colleges and halls, or that a Catholic college and hall be founded to receive them.

We will endeavour to state with the fullest force the reasons alleged on either side.

First. It is urged that inasmuch as, by the repeal of the penal laws, Catholics are already admitted into the social life and political power of the English people, it is consequent and most advantageous that they should re-enter also into the tradition of intellectual culture and development. If they cannot regain the Universi ties which the Church created, at least they are no longer excluded from partaking of the benefits they confer.

Secondly. It is undeniable that the exclusive possession of the Universities gives to the Protestant Englishman an advantage over his Catholic fellow-country men; and that in order to cope or to compete with Protestants in public and private life, Catholics must be armed with their weapons, and share in the cultivation which constitutes their superiority.

Thirdly. The two Universities, especially Oxford, retain in a high degree their mediaeval if not Catholic character; and it is safer for Catholics to study there than in Paris, in Pisa, or other continental cities.

Fourthly. Inasmuch as Catholics are admitted into the private and public life of England, it is of great importance that they should enter while young into re lations with the men whom afterwards they must consort with in all branches of the public service, and in most of the relations of private life. The time of our exile being over, it is well that our rising generation should take their place in English society.

Fifthly. It is certain that we can in no other way obtain the advantages of so high a culture in literature and science. The long traditional maturity and accumulated knowledge of the two Universities leave Catholics without a hope of competing with Protestants in these fields.

Sixthly. Inasmuch as Catholics must be mixed up with Protestants in every walk and state of life, and that more and more as the religious animosities of the past are mitigated by the gradual fusion and blending of families and classes, there cannot be any special danger in their beginning early to learn how to carry themselves towards their Protestant fellow-citizens; or rather it would be far safer for them to acquire betimes such habits of mind as will fit them for their future contact with anti-Catholic opinions and practices in after-life.

Seventhly. The question is, after all, hardly under control, for already many Catholics have availed themselves of the admission to Oxford and Cambridge, and many more will do so*. We must accept the fact, and deal with it as best we may. Now it is obvious that a Catholic youth, isolated in a Protestant college, without chapel, or director, or religious instruction, or the example of Catholic companions, must bo less able to resist the influences of the anti-Catholic atmosphere to which he is exposed all day long from the whole system and action of the college. Place him in a hall or college founded for Catholics only, under the government of a Catholic president and fellows, with Catholic discipline and instruction, and all the helps of the spiritual life— daily Mass, confession, communion, fasts and festivals — such a youth would be sustained and raised above himself, and a Catholic public opinion would be created within the walls, which would resist the contagion and infection of the surrounding intellectual and moral evils. It seems evident that the establishment of such a hall is rendered necessary by facts beyond our control, be our wishes what they may.

Eighthly. Such a hall would be an example cf Catholic education and discipline which could not fail powerfully to affect the Universities, and to show by contrast that the alleged inferiority of intellectual culture is more than compensated by spiritual advantages, not only greater in degree, but of a higher order.

Lastly. Such a hall might exercise a powerful influence in counteracting the downward tendency of our modern University education, and the development of a license of opinion which is not only anti-Catholic, but anti-Christian.

Such we believe to be a fair statement, in outline at least, of the arguments of those who are in favour of the proposal to establish Catholic halls in Oxford and Cambridge, and to complete the education of our youth in the two national Universities.

On the other hand, the reasons of those who oppose it are as follows:

First. They neither undervalue the importance of intellectual culture, nor overrate the present intellectual standard among the youths or the professors of our Catholic colleges; but they are of opinion that it is the mission and the duty of the Church to provide such intellectual culture within its own unity. The Univer-

VOL. I. E sities of Oxford and Cambridge were creations of the Catholic Church, and what it has created once it may create again. We are well aware that the Church in England cannot now create for itself a system of education which shall possess the traditional maturity and extension of our Universities. But ' mtllum tcmpits occurrit Ecclcs'uc: We may begin in this day as they first began who came to the schools of S. Fridcswidc. The Church of the first ages used the schools of Athens and Alexandria so long as it had none of its own. But the first moment it could form true Christian and Catholic schools the Church withdrew its sons from all contact with an anti-Catholic, or even an un-Catholic, teaching.

Secondly. They are of opinion that the anti-Catholic atmosphere of Oxford and Cambridge cannot fail to be secretly and deeply injurious to the faith and morals of the Catholic students. It is a known fact that, of the Catholics who have studied at Trinity College, Dublin, few have escaped without more or less of injury, not only to piety, but to faith. And yet the Catholic student there has the advantage of living in one of the most energetically Catholic cities in the world, and of possessing in abundance all the means of his own sanctification and perseverance. They have the best evidence for knowing that Catholics have lost their faith in Trinity College. Hundreds, it is said, could be easily counted up — two of them a dean and a bishop in the Irish Establishment. And even those who do not lose their faith are generally but little attached to their religion, and do not regularly frequent the Sacraments. A Catholic Bishop who studied there has heen heard to say that his preservation from perdition amidst so many dangers was as great a miracle as the preservation of Daniel in the lions' den. The same prelate is always anxious to keep young men from Trinity College. Such is known to be the judgment of the highest ecclesiastical authorities in Ireland.

If such has been the effect of Trinity College upon those who have- every help to resist it, what would be the effect of Oxford and Cambridge upon the handful of Catholics who might study there? Hardly is there to be found any atmosphere more powerful to transform and to assimilate those who live in it to its own proper ties. What takes place in Dublin, with almost every check to counteract it, may be reasonably predicted of Oxford and Cambridge, where everything is intensely anti-Catholic, and the anti-Catholic spirit dominant and, in a manner, irresistible.

Thirdly. They believe that even the discipline and spirit of a Catholic hall would not suffice against the powerful allurements and subtil fascinations, intellectual and worldly, of our English Universities. It is not intended that the members of a Catholic hall at Oxford or at Cambridge should live as hermits or as exiles from academical society. The making of friend ships, and the entering into relations with Protestants who will be their companions and colleagues in after life, is part of the argument in favour of such a system. They who oppose this view believe that such contact and society, which in our Universities is very free and irresponsible, would be most dangerous to those who as yet arc immature in mind and character. They think that there is evidence enough of the injurious effects of English Protestant society upon the Catholics who court it or live much in it. They helieve that the fidelity of Catholics showed more brightly a generation ago, through the darkness of the penal laws and of social exile, than now when the sun shines upon them. They are not anxious, therefore, to see the rising Catholic youth hrought under those influences, which dazzle and unman their elders, at an age when they are least ahle to discern and to resist them. They helieve that a thorough and hardy training in Catholic faith and morality, and in science and literature read in their light, with the practices and instincts of Catholic devotion, is a hettcr preparation for the conflict which awaits them in the world, and the only safeguard against its fascinations. They would rather see them trained and cultivated hy a higher literary and scientific discipline, from the age of eighteen to twenty-two, at Oscott or Ushaw, than see Oscott or Ushaw transferred to Oxford and Camhridge. They helieve that Oscott and Ushaw transferred to Oxford and Cambridge would become more or less acclimatised, and that they would lose their high Catholic spirit and power to mould the character of their youths.

Fourthly. They helieve that the whole argument so elaborately and eloquently developed by ])r. Newman, in his Lectures on University Education, applies with direct force to this subject. They believe that not only would all history and philosophy be anti -Catholic as delivered from the chairs of Anglican professors, but that it would not be worthy of the name of history or philosophy if withdrawn from the light and guidance of Catholic theology. Whatsoever, then, he the lectures delivered within the walls of the Catholic hall, the teaching of the University and the examinations of the University, which in the end determine the course of study, would inevitably penetrate into the college, and prevail over any individual teacher. Count de Maistre said that history since the Reformation has been in conspiracy against the Catholic Church. We may say that philosophy since Descartes has to a wider extent than is suspected joined in the conspiracy. And yet these are essentially the history and philosophy delivered at the English Universities.

Fifthly. They cannot find any ground for the sanguine hope that a Catholic hall would teach the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge how to live, or leaven the life and spirit of the Universities. When they see what is the action and power of the whole Hierarchy and priesthood, with all its ecclesiastical organisation, aided by the examples of the faithful, upon English society at large, they have little reason to believe that a Catholic hall will do the work of an evangelist in Oxford and Cambridge. The Church acts as a solid and compact body upon the loose and dissolving classes of English society; and yet, though in one sense how great, in another how little, is the impression it makes. But the intellectual and spiritual antagonism at the Universities is compact, disciplined, and tenacious to the highest conceivable degree. The shadow of Peter might, indeed, work a miracle upon it.

But there is little reason to believe that the shadow of Peter would be cast by a Catholic hall. They are not without fear that the effect might be diametrically the reverse. Much more would be expected of a Catholic hall than perhaps any institution could fulfil; and one Catholic scandal would undo the influence of ten Catholic examples of good.

Sixthly. They are of opinion that the power the Catholic Church exercises over the people of England comes precisely from the fact that it is separate from it, not mingled with it or dependent upon it. They are ready to believe that a Catholic University in England would powerfully affect both Oxford and Cambridge by its more perfect order and discipline; and that men who desire the welfare of their sons would be strongly attracted to a University of which Ushaw and Oscott may be taken as the preludes. They are the living witnesses of what mediaeval Oxford' and Cambridge were. And we know that even Protestants, who are anxious to save their sons from the squandering and vice of our Universities, have of late years contemplated the sending them to a Catholic college.

Seventhly. They believe that the risk to a number of individuals is not to be weighed against the danger of committing the Church to a false position. Much as we must deplore that any should be exposed to the occasion of losing either faith or piety, still even this must be endured rather than implicate the Church in relations which involve false principles; for the loss of individuals is an evil to be measured, but the admission of a false principle is a fountain of evils of which no measure can be conceived. It would be a sad but safer alternative to endure the loss of any number of individuals than to place the Church in the condition it occupies in the Universities of Germany. Syncretism has borne, and will bear, its bitter fruits there as a warning to us.

Eighthly. The founding of such a hall would be a public and authoritative sanction, and even invitation to Catholics to send their sons to Protestant Universi ties. The Church itself would be giving the impulse in that direction.

Ninthly. Such a course would indefinitely postpone all efforts towards founding purely Catholic colleges for higher lay education; a work absolutely needed already, and becoming every day more urgently and vitally necessary as the Catholic Church expands its own system, and multiplies its members among the middle and higher classes.

Tenthly. They submit that the question of founding a hall in the Anglican Universities, so as to participate in a common secular education, reserving the particular religious instruction, is no longer open. It seems rather to involve a concession of the whole principle for which we have been so long and so earnestly contending. This alleged separateness of secular and religious teaching was the basis of Mr. Stanley's Irish education scheme, against which the Catholic Church in Ireland so firmly opposed itself; and from which, under the sanction of the Holy See, it is now extricating itself. This also is the basis of the godless colleges, which the Holy See has declared to be ' intrinsecc periculosa,' and to which the Synod of Thurles warns the faithful not to send their sous. It forbids also any priest to teach in them. This also was the motive for founding the Catholic University, so expressly approved by Rome and so cherished by the Episcopate and people of Ireland. This, again, is the scheme of secular and general education which, when proposed by the Government, caused the great educational movement of the last tive-and-twenty years. Against this it was that the Catholics of England also protested, and from which they so jealously and successfully protected themselves by the agreement embodied in the Minutes of the Privy Council in 1847. It would seem, there fore, to be a departure from the whole of our past conduct, and a giving up of the principles for which we have so strongly contended. How shall we refuse a common secular education for our poor children if we court and catch at it for the children of the rich?

Eleventhly. It would seem also that this is the worst moment for making such a compromise. If it was permissible for the Catholics in Ireland to submit to the National Education Board, and to avail themselves of the only education possible to them by reason of their poverty, certainly the rich families of England can find no such excuse for seeking admission to our Protestant Universities. They have abundant means of educating their children; and if the standard of intellectual cultivation in our Catholic colleges be not so high as at Oxford and Cambridge, no amount of intellectual culture or social advantage can be weighed in the scale against the least measure of fidelity to the

Catholic faith and Catholic morality. It is to he always remembered that the Irish national education, if it was un-Catholic, was at least not anti-Catholic. If it was deprived of positive Catholic teaching and influence, it was not guided nor impelled by an anti-Catholic spirit. But with our Universities this is not so. They are formally, essentially, traditionally, and, so far as any influence Catholics can exert upon them, immutably anti-Catholic. The English schism and the Protestant heresy have penetrated to the bone, and poisoned the life-blood of Oxford and Cambridge, the great schools of Anglicanism — which they will never cease to be, except by exchanging the partial rationalism of the Reformation for that fuller rationalism which is its legitimate development. And this greatly strengthens their argument, and confirms their opposition to such a scheme of united education for Catholics and Pro testants. They would have objected to the sending of our Catholic youths to Oxford and Cambridge at any period since the Reformation, when rthe Universities were at their highest point of Christian belief, while as yet the inspiration and integrity of Holy Scripture were held sacred, and Rationalism had as yet found no formal entrance into them. How much more, then, at this time when the modern spirit of cultivated unbelief, in the form of criticism and philosophy, has not only entered but established itself, so as to be the predominant intellectual tendency of the more studious members of the Universities. The Protestant Bishops of Winchester and London have confessed what Dr. Colenso has repeated — that the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are turning away from Anglican orders. The Times may try to persuade men that this is because the clergy are underpaid. They who are acquainted with the Universities and public opinion know that the true reason is an intellectual departure from the traditional Christianity of England. And is it at such a moment us this that Catholics will forsake the strong holds, which have protected them these three hundred years, to venture into the midst of the occasions of unbelief presented by the Rationalism which gains head day by day? The Catholic Church in Ireland no sooner begins to feel its freedom, and with freedom the return of strength, than it begins at once to liberate itself from the un-Catholic system of national education. It is no time, therefore, for the Catholics in England to make a step so retrograde, and so utterly at variance with the whole march and extension of the Catholic Church in this country. We have already noticed the wonderful unfoldings, of the Church — how the Catholics who lay scattered and hid in the millions of the English people have been drawn and knit together by the Hierarchy into a visible body, which every year increases in bulk and vigour and fruitfulness. The Church is reproducing its past with an exuberance of life and a precision of action which leaves us nothing to desire but patience and fidelity to the immutable principles and the supernatural instincts of the faith. If in the times of their poverty the vicars-apostolic could found and raise three such colleges as S. Edmund's, Oscott, and Ushaw, why should not the united Catholic Hierarchy of England found a University? They did it when

Catholics were few, scattered, and poor in the extreme. We live in days when Catholics are numerous, united, and conscious of their union, and, if not rich, yet possessed of wealth as compared with the poverty of the past. If the Catholics of the penal laws could do such things, why should not the free Catholics of to-day do greater things, if only they have the zeal, the fidelity, the high Catholic instincts, and the unbending integrity of Catholic principles which, as we have said, were luxuriant in our darker days. God forbid that these virtues should droop and fade in our days of peace.

Twelfthly. Nor is it to be thought that the founding of a Catholic University in England is a dream of Utopia. A body which has in one day founded thirteen dioceses and developed them, as we have shown above, need shrink from no enterprise. It possesses already all the elements of a University. Its seven colleges of Sedgley Park, Mount S. Mary's, S. Edward's, Downside, Katcliffe, Beaumont Lodge, Ampleforth, and its four greater colleges of Stonyhurst, Oscott, Old Hall, and Ushaw, naturally lead up to and demand a University for their completion, as an arch demands its keystone. Neither is there lack of mate rials for such a work. The Church of all nations can draw upon the nationality of all nations for its institu tions. The Society of Jesus alone contains in itself men capable of holding professors' chairs in all the chief faculties of arts, literature, and science. For classical literature and Oriental languages, Germany is open to us; for theology, Italy; for science, history, modern languages, and literature, all Catholic nations— for if

GO THE WOBK AND THE WANTS OF

Protestantism possesses the culture of England, the culture of other nations is Catholic. The founding of a Catholic University in England is therefore a thing not only to he desired, hut to he achieved with no greater difficulty than hesets all great enterprises; and all the enterprises of the Catholic Church are great, and none are difficult, hecause it is the Church which for eighteen hundred years has accomplished greater works in a Power ahove its own.1

But here we must leave this suhject. We have done no more than enumerate the arguments per snmma capita, reserving to ourselves, if need be, a fuller and more adequate treatment of it.

Another want is greater practical efficiency and. more public experience in our laymen. The social exile in which they have lived, and their exclusion, if not by statute, yet by traditional prejudice, from public and even private employments, have seriously diminished our capacities of usefulness. No English Catholic has any chance of being returned by an English constituency. The only Catholic member for an English seat is returned by the legitimate influence of a Catholic family. But in time this evil would correct itself, if in our larger towns Catholics were found with capacities for public business — we will not say up to the measure of the late Frederick Lucas, but the same in kind — we mean manly good sense, with a thorough mastery of their subject. If among the Catholic members there were men who would thoroughly study, each

1 Thin was written before the directions of the Holy Sec decided the question.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND. Gl one branch of the public service — finance, poor law, colonies, trade in its details, and the like — they would certainly command the ear of the House at all times, and where any subject of the Catholic Church is concerned would be listened to with respect. The English people are easily conciliated by any public usefulness or power of beneficence.

The only other want we will notice is that hitherto the Catholic Church of England has no organ or provision whatever for foreign missions. It may be said that England is itself a missionary country, and could hardly be expected to undertake missions to other lands, or to give to others what it hardly possesses itself. But this does not seem to us to be true. England is a special debtor to the world — first to its own colonies, next to the nations and races which are opened to it by its commerce. It would be a shame and a rebuke to us if, while Protestant England acknowledges this duty, and sends its missionaries abroad at the cost of nearly half a million a year, Catholic England should do nothing. Such was not the temper of the faithful who lived under the heathen empire of Eome. They regarded the world-wide structure of its power, with all the activity of its material life, as the means and conditions by which they might traverse its vast circuit, and bear the light of salvation to the most distant races of mankind. The time is come for us to recognise this duty — we may say this providential call; and in obey ing it we shall obtain great and specific blessings. It is well known that no congregation in France obtains more or better vocations than the Congregation des

Missions Etrangeres. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church; and the Salle des Martyrs inspires vocations in the generous youth of France. So it would be with England. We believe ihat a College of Foreign Missions, worthily directed, would elevate the ecclesiastical spirit and multiply vocations even for the Church at home. But we can only touch by the way a question which demands a direct and ample treatment.

So much in few words of our chief wants; of those at least which we think it within our province to notice. It may be well, perhaps, to add also a few on our dangers.

One copious and manifold source of danger is the anti-Catholic atmosphere— the Germans would call it the time-spirit— or the dominant current of thought and action which pervades the age and society in which we arc born. No one wholly escapes its influence; most arc deeply penetrated with it. We doubt whether it was so dangerous to Catholics before the Emancipation as it is now. In those days the direct action of persecuting laws ground down or bore down the courage of multitudes. But the allurements of English society and English public opinion had little power. They ' were hostile, harassing, and repulsive. Now they are far more perilous; being bland, insidious, and seducing. Public opinion is Protestant, and Protestantism is formally opposed to the idea of a Church divinely constituted and endowed. The first principles and maxims of Catholic education— such as submission to a teaching authority, fear of error, mistrust of our own judgments — are extinct. This spirit begins in our schools, pervades our Universities, and animates the whole of English society. "We cannot draw breath without inhaling it; and the effect of it is visible upon men who do not suspect themselves of any want of Catholic instincts. It has become unconscious; and 'what strikes and offends foreign Catholics is hardly, or not at all, perceived by those who are born into this atmosphere.

Another serious danger, which might also have been treated as a want, proceeds from the absence of a Catholic literature. As we have said, the culture of the English people passed into the hands of the men of the Reformation, leaving the Catholic remnant stripped of everything. The first race of Catholics, such as Stapleton and Harding, had received their cultivation before the schism. Many of those who immediately succeeded, such as Parsons and Baker, had been educated in the Universities. With them the English Catholic literature ceased until the reign of James II. At that time a few controversial octavos, without name of the author, and printed either abroad or at the private printing-press in Oxford, were published; but a literature — that is, works on history, biography, science physical and moral, or of general information, poetry, or fiction — by Catholic hands has never existed. The Catholics of England have been compelled either to read foreign Catholic works, which are accessible only to a few, or the books of anti-Catholi3 writers, or, as with the great majority, to be deprived of the whole some culture and information on which the development of the intelligence depends. We can never forget the passage in Lord Macaulay's History of England • in which he indulges in a misplaced satire upon the English written hy Catholics in the time of James II. It was assuredly had enough. Those days are happily past, and Catholics can speak and write their mother English with no inferiority to their anti-Catholic fellow countrymen. Nevertheless, a Catholic literature is yet to be formed; and its non-existence entails on our youth disadvantages, the extent and perilous character of which it is difficult to estimate.

But a still graver danger seems to us to he one which many least suspect. We are less afraid of any evils al> extra, howsoever grave or imminent, than of any evil, howsoever light it may appear, which penetrates the interior spirit of what we may call the Catholic society of England. We have said once and again that the old days of storm were rough, hut safer for us. We have much more fear of the sunshine. When Xenophon's soldiers beheld the sea, they fell on their knees and worshipped. When Linnaeus first saw the common furze in full bloom we are told that he knelt down and bared his head. Whether these ecstasies be historical or not, we will not stop to inquire; but they illustrate the fascination of things long hoped for, found at last, and the proneness of man to pay a superstitious adoration, like the Athenians, to the unknown God. We should be gravely alarmed if there appeared, among other signs of the times, a world-worship among Catho lics; and above all if that world were the English world, which has only just begun to tolerate the faith « Vol. ii. pp. 110, 111.

and the persons of Catholics, The polity of England as it exists in statutes is indeed changed, but the policy of Government lags behind the letter of the law. The anti-Catholic spirit of English society controls the public administration, from the patronage of the Crown to the votes of the parish vestry. So likewise in what is called ' society,' that is, in the customs and intercourse of the richer families of the higher and middle classes. In the last thirty years Catholics have pene trated into this sanctuary, as adventurous travellers into S. Sophia. Too often, we fear, they have put. off their shoes upon the threshold, and even, like our adventurous Captain Burton at Mecca, have entered as sound Mahometans. Now it seems to us that any gratuitous conformity on the part of Catholics to the rubrics of worldliness, and still more any simulation of the tone of an un-Catholic society, even by the concealment of their own faith, much more by their wearing the vest ments of another religion, would be not only an infidelity towards God, but what some people may think much worse — a signal imprudence towards the world they desire to propitiate by their worship. English society, with all its vices, does, after all, represent the English character. There is something downright, manly, and decided in it; and it respects the same — that is, its own — qualities in others as much as it despises and ridicules all servile or petty eagerness to court its favour. Downright, masculine, and decided Catholics — more Roman than Rome, and more ultra montane than the Pope himself — may enter English society and be treated with goodwill and respect every-

VOL. I. F

('.I'. THE WORK AND THE WANTS OF where, if only they hold their own with self-respect and a delicate consideration of what is due to others. It is this very holduess which inspires both respect and confidence. It is the pledge of sincerity, and sincerity is respected by everybody worthy of the name of PZnglishman. No greater blunder could be committed than to try to propitiate Englishmen or English society by a tame, diluted, timid, or worldly Catholicism.

But it is not our purpose to write a homily, and our pages warn us to draw to an end. A few words, and no more, we may add on the remedies we need. Philo sophers divide forces into mechanical and dynamical; and we would say that what we need is not so much in the mechanical order as in that of the interior forces of will and character, both natural and supernatural. We have great works to do, and at first sight little material out of which to create them. But it is His work who chooses ' things that are not, that He may bring to nought the things that are.' And it is the paradox arid the glory of the Church, as verified in its history, to do the greatest works with the slenderest means. At every turn we are met by the same objection. At the commencement of every great work we are asked, But where are the men, and where is the money? It is not in impatience, but in pure conviction, we would answer, Vigour creates men and coins money. If we had only vigour, as our Lord said of faith, all things in His service would be easy to us. We are in an age of enterprise, and are busied with all manner of schemes for works of piety and charity. Even our amusements have taken a pious turn. We have concerts, theatricals, balls, excursions, and the like, for religious ends. The world, itself, it seems, is becoming pious. 'All things to me are lawful.' But this is only on the surface. We have a deeper service of the Spirit to learn and to practise; a mightier power is needed wherewith to achieve the important works we have to do. Amphion built cities, but concerts will not remove mountains; and the Church in England has mountains in its path. We do not wish to disquiet the conscience of any one taking a harmless interest in innocent things; but there is a harder service yet to be done, and when begun, these softer things will go over the horizon as the thistledown is blown away from a field of battle. There is a sharper note in the trumpet which gives no uncertain sound; and it is calling us to higher paths than to Willis's Eooms. Catholics have taught the world to build and endow churches, colleges, monasteries — out of their own sole inheritance, for the love of Jesus and of the souls for whom He died. Catholics have taught the world to sell all and follow Christ; that His words are to be taken to the letter now as in the begin ning, in England as in Palestine. Catholics have taught the world the law of almsgiving---that it ought to be proportionate, and not out of superfluity, or of that which costs us nothing. And we are bound to bear our witness that the world has in some degree profited by the lesson. Noble examples in the last twenty years have been and are among our brethren of the separation. And we pray God to bless their generosity with the reward of a perfect faith. But they who have done these noble deeds have not done them by

G8 THE WORK AND THE WANTS OF the above-named means. They have not learned these means of us. We rather have learned them of the world, against which it behoved us always to bear witness to the highest wisdom and the highest good, which not only condemns evil, but gently discountenances the innocent but less-expedient way of serving our Master. Let every one enjoy his Christian liberty, but do not let us mistake the soft and the easy ways of charity for the spirit of the Church. In us it would be a degeneracy. And here we would leave the matter. We have an unlimited confidence in the charity which first measures the work to be done in the light of the Blessed Sacrament, and then its own means of doing it with crucifix in hand; and in the doing conceals itself so that the left hand knows not what the right hand doeth. On this we rely and to this we appeal, leaving all other forms of modern charity to drop off as the toys and gauds of infancy. ' When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away the things of a child.'3

And now, to sum up all we have said of our dangers, we would repeat that what we most fear is that Catholics may cast themselves willingly, or be drawn unconsciously, into the stream which is evidently carrying English society every year more and more decidedly and perceptibly towards worldliness and Rationalism. The growth of worldliness in every form, the appearance of moral evils in our domestic life, the

' 1 Cor. xiii. 11.

breaking clown of the barriers which guarded the last generation; the lower, laxer, freer habits, not only of men but of women, not only of mature age but of the young, both before and after marriage; the growth and multiplication of forms of social corruption never known before, or, at least, never so systematically practised and so habitually connived at; the abdication of authority by parents, and the derision of authority by children; — all these and many more signs are abroad to warn us that a dangerous future is before us, and to awaken Catholics to a redoubled vigilance over themselves and their children, and a greater fidelity to the Church which, with a gentle austerity, restrains them from many points of contact with the anti-Catholic society of England. If any one desire a signal example of our meaning, let him read a recent article in the Saturday Review, misnamed, we think, by an unseasonable Jocularity, ' Frisky Matrons.' We see nothing to laugh at in an evil which, like the head-disease called plica polonica, seems light and superficial, but really eats into the blood and bone. This is not the atmosphere to which we desire our Catholic women to be acclimatised, or in which we wish their daughters to be reared. The readers of the Times will not need us to remind them of the articles on * Pretty Horsebreakers,' and on the growing infrequency of marriage among the young men of the higher classes of society. But we will not pursue these subjects further. This is not the atmosphere in which the Catholics of the penal laws would have desired to immerse their sons' and daughters; and we trust that the Catholics of this day will he faithful to the high moral discernment and traditions of their fathers.

As to the other danger which lies before us from the development of Rationalism, it is impossible to do more than make a passing allusion to it. We are firmly convinced that in twenty years Rationalism will inundate England. In every century since the Reformation England has sunk lower and lower in formal rejection of revealed doctrine. It has passed through the two phases which have appeared in Germany, and it is entering upon the third. The period of Protestant dogmatism has given place to Protestant pietism, and this is now passing off into Protestant Rationalism — the prelude of philosophical Rationalism in the educated, and rude unbelief in the people. The school of Hooker, Andrews, and Laud numbers now but a handful of the population. It is an esoteric literature, not a living power. The school of Cecil, Venn, and Simeon has issued in a multitude of dissolving forms of opinion. The school of rationalistic Christianity is numerous and growing, and possesses many high places of trust and influence. Dr. Colenso is a fair sample of the actual and dominant tendency of religious belief among us. There can be little question that if the majority of the Anglican clergy be against him, the great majority of the Anglican laity would be with him. His common-sense scepticism is the true Anglican layman's faith. And we cannot doubt that every year this unbelief will be more widely spread, and that the two Universities will be thoroughly pervaded by it. Instead, therefore, of implicating ourselves in a sinking wreck, it is the prudence of common sense, as well as the obligation of Catholic duty, to keep ourselves free, not only from all entanglements with it, but as far as possible from the vortex which it makes in going down. We earnestly hope that Catholics, while they manifest to their fellow countrymen the largest social charity and the truest public fidelity, will keep themselves from all contact with the traditions of anti- Catholic society and education. We repeat again, that an education deprived of the light of faith and the guidance of the Church is essentially anti-Catholic. Here there can be no neutrality: ' He that is not for Me is against Me.' There is but one safety for us: ' S 'entire cum Ecclesia,' in the whole extent of faith, discipline, worship, custom, and in stincts — the most intimate and filial fidelity of intellect, heart, and will to the living voice of the Church of God.