CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIV., No. 144.—MARCH, 1877.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.

THE RUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[177]

The attention of the world is at present fixed upon Russia and upon the aged yet still active statesman who has directed her foreign policy for twenty years with an ability certainly very considerable, though it yet remains to be seen how far it will prove itself consummate and successful. It will help to an understanding of the career of this eminent Russian Minister of State, and of the present attitude of Russia, if we premise a condensed sketch of certain of the most prominent events in the civil and ecclesiastical history of this great and singular empire. It is difficult to find out the certain truth in regard to some of these important facts, and we therefore profess to claim for such statements as we may make, unless they relate to matters of known and undisputed history, only that probability which they receive from the authority of some one or more of the writers whose names we have mentioned in the foot-note annexed to the title of this article. This remark applies especially to facts relating to the schism of the Russian Church. We have never yet met with any professedly complete and minute ecclesiastical history of Russia. Mouravieff’s work is a professed history of the Russian Church, but it is compendious, and too partial to deserve entire confidence. It is much to be desired that some ecclesiastic of profound erudition in Russian literature, such as Father Gagarin or Father Tondini, would furnish us with a thorough and trustworthy narrative of all the facts which can be known in this obscure and interesting department of ecclesiastical history. In fact, we suspect that very much which passes current in the civil history of Russia as written by foreigners needs a critical sifting, and that a perfectly impartial and trustworthy history of that empire is yet to be written.

The Russian Empire embraces Pg 722 one-seventh of the land-surface of the earth, or more than double the area of Europe, and European Russia is thirty times larger than England. The aggregate population is at least 75,000,000, including a hundred distinct tribes, among which more than forty languages are spoken. The ancestors of the dominant race were Scythians and Sarmatians, among whom the beginnings of civilization were to be found during the earliest part of the Christian epoch. It is a curious fact that a republic existed at Novgorod before the arrival of Rurik. The Russian dominant race is Sclavonian—that is, as ethnologists suppose, of Sarmatian origin. The present name of the country and people is not, however, indigenous. The Russian tribe was a branch of the Varangians, who were Scandinavians, and migrated into the country to which they have given their name in the ninth century. The name Russian is derived by some from Rurik, and by others from some one of various Scandinavian words signifying foreigner, wanderer, or scattered, in which case it would denote the migration of the Varangian horde from its former seat and its settlement in a foreign country.[178]

Rurik was the principal chief of these Varangians, the founder of a principality which was the germ of the future empire, and the father of the first line of the tsars. Other chiefs of the same tribe founded minor principalities, which formed together a sort of confederation, the successor of Rurik being recognized as Grand Prince. The city of Moscow was founded in the twelfth century. It was not until after centuries had passed that one united

The reign of Rurik continued from A.D. 861 to 879, and that of his direct line of successors until 1598, when it became extinct by the death of Feodor I., who left no issue, and is said to have had no near, surviving relatives. After fifteen years of disputed successions and bloody civil conflicts, caused by the usurpation of Boris Godounoff, which began with the accession of the imbecile Feodor, the Romanoff family was placed on the throne, which it has kept in possession to the present day.

The first Romanoff tsar was a son of Feodor Romanoff, a nobleman who had retired into a monastery and become metropolitan of Rostoff, which dignity he afterwards exchanged for the higher office of patriarch of Moscow. He was first cousin to the Tsar Feodor through an intermarriage of the Romanoffs with the reigning family. The son of Feodor who was elected tsar was a youth named Michael Feodorovitch. To him succeeded his son Alexis, then Feodor II., then Peter the Great. To Peter succeeded his widow, Catharine I., who was by birth a peasant, followed by Peter II., the grandson of Peter the Great, who died in his childhood, and was succeeded by Anne, Duchess of Courland, a niece of Peter I. After Anne, her grandnephew, Ivan VII., an infant, was proclaimed, but soon displaced by Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter I. and Catharine. Peter III., son of Anne—who was a daughter of Peter and Catharine—and of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Pg 723 succeeded Elizabeth, but was dethroned by his own wife, Catharine II. Her son, Paul I., was assassinated by his nobles, and to him succeeded his son, the justly-celebrated Alexander I., who reigned from 1801 to 1825. The Emperor Nicholas, whose reign terminated in 1856, was the brother of Alexander,[179] and his son, Alexander II., is the present reigning emperor.

For more than two centuries, dating from A.D. 1238, the Russians were subject or tributary to the Mongolians, who had overrun and conquered the country. Ivan the Great shook off their yoke during the latter half of the fifteenth century. Poland was a frequent and often victorious antagonist in war of Russia until internal dissensions broke her power and left her a prey to the enemy who had once regarded her with dread. Turkey, Hungary, Persia, Sweden, and other minor powers were also frequently engaged with her in conflicts of varying success before the period in which she took part in the great European struggles. Having slowly and gradually grown to a gigantic stature and attained to solidity and strength by the long operation of various internal and external causes, this empire of the North founded by Rurik suddenly, under the powerful direction of Peter the Great, took its place among the great nations of Western Christendom. What it is yet to become we may know better than we can now vaticinate in the year 1900, when, to use Prince Bismarck’s strong figure, some more of “the iron dice of destiny falling from the hands of God” shall have made the eternal decrees manifest which are now hidden in the obscurity of the future.

St. Andrew the Apostle, and had some partial success during the period intervening between the apostolic age and the second mission sent from Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries. At this epoch some Christian communities were founded, and the way was opened for greater successes at a later period. The Princess Olga was baptized at Constantinople in 955, and in 988 her grandson, Vladimir the Great, who married the Greek emperor’s sister, became a Christian, with all his subjects. It is true that the conversion of the mass of the people was very superficial, and that it was a long time before they ceased to hanker after their ancient superstitions. Yet the foundations were laid for a future superstructure, and there is evidence that even before the Mongolian invasion sacred science flourished at Kieff. At this period, which lay between the schism of Photius and that of Michael Cerularius—whose revolt occurred in the middle of the eleventh century—Constantinople and the other Eastern patriarchates were in the communion of the Roman Church. The Russian Church was therefore Catholic at its original foundation. The higher clergy were all Byzantines, especially in Muscovy, and were under the influence of the prevailing ideas of the clergy of the Greek Empire. The imperfectly-instructed clergy and people of Russia were therefore naturally left to drift into a condition of alienation from the Roman Church and Western Christendom, when their immediate patriarch revolted from his allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff. The irruption of the Mongols buried them in a sea of ignorance, misery, and Pg 724 barbarism for ages. Nevertheless, their faith and their liturgical books were always Catholic. Every now and then we meet with signs of some intercommunion with the Roman Church, especially on the part of those who were immediately subject to the see of Kieff. We can scarcely, therefore, consider that an act of overt rebellion and complete schism of the national church was committed until the rejection of the Act of Union of Florence, and the erection of the independent patriarchate of Moscow at the close of the fifteenth century.

At the opening of the Council of Florence, in 1439, Vasili III. sent Isidore, Metropolitan of Kieff and Primate of Russia, a learned Greek, as the representative of the national church, to effect a complete reconciliation with Rome. Isidore fulfilled this commission, and returned with the dignity of cardinal and legatine powers. He was well received by the tsar, who nevertheless dared not publicly ratify and proclaim his action without the consent of the Muscovite clergy and boyars. This was violently and obstinately refused. Cardinal Isidore returned to Kieff, and within the provinces immediately subject to his jurisdiction as metropolitan the Act of Union was accepted. He was afterwards banished from Russia, and after the storming of Constantinople, which he witnessed, he, like the more celebrated Cardinal Bessarion, went to reside at Rome. Vasili’s motives for seeking to place his bishops under the supremacy of the Roman pontiff were chiefly political. He wished to free himself from the ecclesiastical and political interference of Constantinople. Thwarted in his first plan, he tried another. On the pretext that the patriarch of Constantinople had I. the erection of a new patriarchate at Moscow was effected by Boris Goudonoff, who ruled, in fact, during the life-time of the last of the Rurik dynasty, and gained the throne, left vacant at his death, by his cunning intrigues. Under Alexis, the second Romanoff, the great patriarch Nicon, whose name is highly venerated in Russia, came into a collision with the tsars which resulted in his own downfall and in that of all spiritual independence of the Russian hierarchy. At last Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchal office, substituting Pg 725 for it the Holy Synod, and reducing the Russian Church to the condition of enslavement in which it has ever since languished. Notwithstanding the rigorous ecclesiastical despotism exercised by the Russian emperors, a large Catholic communion has continued to exist in the empire, a separate Episcopal Church, including several millions of adherents, has steadily maintained its independence of the state church, and great numbers of irregular dissenters are also scattered through the tsar’s dominions.

Within the state church opposite tendencies towards Rome on the one side, and Protestant or rationalistic liberalism on the other, have been continually manifesting the want of a real, internal unity in what is misnamed the orthodox religion. Ivan the Terrible appealed to the pope’s mediation in his political troubles, and received the celebrated Jesuit Possevin as the envoy of the Holy See. During the reign of Feodor II., and the regency of the Princess Sophia while Peter I. was kept under her tutelage as a minor, several prelates and nobles of the court manifested strong Roman proclivities. On the accession of Peter all these adherents of the Princess Sophia shared in her disgrace and punishment. Yet even Peter himself at one time showed a disposition toward reconciliation with the Pope. Under Peter II. the same movement was renewed, but followed by a violent reaction and persecution of the orthodox party, under Anne and her favorite, Biren. The metropolitan of Kieff was degraded, the bishop of Voronége degraded and publicly knouted, the archbishop of Rostoff and the bishop of Kolomna were expelled from the Holy Synod, the archbishop of Kazan was degraded, II. and Alexander I. both gave a temporary shelter and protection to the Jesuits. This last prince, although he dallied for a time with evangelical Protestantism, sent his submission to the pope, asking for a prelate to visit, instruct, and reconcile him to the Holy See, and died a Catholic in faith and intention, although the sudden termination of his mortal career took place before there was time for the arrival of the prelate to whom the Holy Father had confided this mission. The numerous conversions of illustrious Russians to the Catholic Church are well-known facts. That heresy and infidelity are rife among many nominal members of the Russian Church is also equally indisputable and notorious.

The whole history of the empire of Rurik has a close association with Constantinople. While the Russians were still pagans the project of subduing the Greek Empire seems to have been constantly in view. Oleg, Rurik’s immediate successor; Igor, Rurik’s son, who succeeded Oleg, and was the husband of Olga; and their son Sviatoslaf, the father of Vladimir the Great, made invasions into the Greek Empire at the head of armies ranging from eighty to four hundred thousand in number. They were either bought off from conquest by vast ransoms or defeated Pg 726 by Greek craft and their own disorderly conduct. After the conversion of Vladimir, Constantinople was to Russia what Rome has always been to Occidental Christendom; and when the Greek Empire fell, the Turk became in their eyes what the Moslem was to the Catholic Spaniards. The queen city of the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas, the New Rome of Constantine, with the rich provinces of Turkey in Europe depending upon it, has ever been present to the view of the emperors and the people of Russia as the objective point of perpetual crusades, as a prize to be won by their warlike valor, as the natural and destined capital whose possession is necessary to bring their empire to its acme of power and glory.[180] Always mysteriously baffled and thrown back, the colossal power of the northern empire has been incessantly pressing against this resistance, even since the power of combined Europe has backed the weakening Ottoman Empire. The Emperor Nicholas was more completely possessed by this hereditary idea than any of his predecessors since Peter the Great; he undertook and sacrificed more for it than any one of them, and seems really to have caused Russia to make a great stride towards the ulterior object. By the war of 1828 and ’29 Turkey was extremely humiliated and weakened, and immense advantages were gained by Russia. Her arms were completely and brilliantly successful from beginning to end of the campaign, and surprise has often been expressed that the Russian army did not march directly on Constantinople after Adrianople had been captured.

When the treaty of Adrianople was concluded (1829), the present chancellor of Russia was thirty-one years of age and employed in a subordinate position under the ministry. Prince Alexander Mikhäilovitch Gortchakoff was born in 1798, and claims descent from Rurik. He first gained the favor of the Emperor Nicholas by negotiating the marriage of his daughter, the Princess Olga, with the crown-prince of Würtemberg. He had already passed four years at the little court of Stuttgart as resident minister, and he earned the gratitude of the imperial family by remaining willingly eight years longer, in order to aid the Princess Olga as her guide and counsellor. His residence at Stuttgart fell between the years 1842 and 1854, and he was therefore fifty-six years of age before attaining anything above a minor position in the diplomatic service. After the re-establishment of the Diet at Frankfort, in 1850, he was appointed to represent Russia at its sessions, and henceforth divided his time between Stuttgart and Frankfort, and employed his abundant leisure in studying the politics of Europe. It was at this time that he first met with M. Bismarck, then a lieutenant in the Prussian Landwehr, a novice in diplomacy and his colleague at the Diet. Here also he became intimate with two remarkable and singular characters whose history and ideas illustrate the peculiar national spirit by Pg 727 which the genuine Russian people, which remains true to its ancient traditions without any foreign mixture, is animated.

The first of these singular personages was Vassili Joukofski, who had been in early life a poet of considerable renown, not remarkably original, but possessed of a great talent for facile versification and ingenious translation, and sufficiently cultivated as a scholar to have been selected as the private tutor of the Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, the present emperor and his brother. Although he had voluntarily selected a German lady as his wife and a German town as his permanent abode, he remained, nevertheless, confirmed in his belief of the hopeless corruption of Western Europe, and the destiny reserved for Russia to complete the work of the Crusades, drive “the impure beast” from Byzantium, liberate the Holy Land, and regenerate the world by “a new eruption of Christianity.” The other individual of this remarkable pair was Nicholas Gogol, a man of original and powerful genius, full of a sombre and extravagant religious enthusiasm, who haunted the drawing-rooms of Joukofski, and startled the elegant, cultivated guests of his more worldly friend like a fantastic apparition from the spiritual world. Gogol was a terrible satirist of the vices of Russian society, a prophet of wrath and judgment, in despair of civilization and of his own salvation, wandering the earth in a restless search after some relief for his disturbed soul, and reappearing at intervals among his friends at Frankfort to deliver impassioned exhortations to prayer and penance. The only remedy for modern evils, in his view, was a return to the primitive state of barbarian Muscovy,

Prince Gortchakoff is a cultivated sceptic, intent on the aggrandizement of Russia from motives which are earthly and confined within the sphere of that materialistic philosophy which dominates in diplomatic circles. Nevertheless, mystic enthusiasm, the most enlightened and noble aspirations of religion and patriotism, great designs for a lofty end, and the lower qualities of cleverness in worldly wisdom, talent for managing the affairs of administration, and ambition to fulfil a great personal career by serving as an instrument of some grand social or political power, are often found combined together to pursue the same object from different motives. The Emperor Nicholas was undoubtedly thoroughly sincere in his adherence to the religious and political doctrines which he professed, really influenced by the mystical ideas of the “crusaders,” and convinced of the justice of his cause. His chief minister, Nesselrode, certainly did not share these ideas, yet he served his master with all the resources and ability which he possessed. So also did Gortchakoff, although personally he is of the same stamp with his predecessor. The emperor, as the whole world knows, and a great part of it well remembers, reopened the Turkish question and engaged in the memorable, for the time being to Russia unsuccessful, even disastrous, Pg 728 war of the Crimea. In 1855 Prince Gortchakoff was sent as resident ambassador to Vienna; there he labored strenuously, both before and after the death of Nicholas, first to detach Austria from the cause of the allies and win her cooperation with Russia, and then to gain terms which would permit his government to conclude an honorable peace on the least disadvantageous terms. Russia has been profoundly irritated against Austria ever since the latter power refused to take her part against the protectors of the Ottoman Porte; accusing her of ingratitude for the great service which Nicholas rendered to Francis Joseph in suppressing by military force and gratuitously the Hungarian rebellion. Prince Gortchakoff shared this feeling; it has always affected his diplomatic policy, and it may have yet most important results, if hostilities are renewed on a large scale. At the Congress of Paris, which settled the conditions of peace, Prince Gortchakoff was the Russian plenipotentiary. Immediately afterwards Count Nesselrode retired from the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in April, 1856, the successor upon whom the eyes of the court and the empire had been long turned with favor and hope was elevated to the office, which he has filled for twenty years, and which has become essentially more important in his person than it ever was during preceding administrations. Prince Gortchakoff is the first who has filled at the Russian court the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Western acceptation of the powers and responsibilities of that position. Heretofore the emperor had personally directed the state policy, using his minister as a mere counsellor and chief secretary. Alexander II. M. Klaczko’s exposition of the career of the Prussian chancellor—a task which we cannot fulfil at present. Of course each one has had in view the aggrandizement of his own state, and given his concurrence to the designs of the other in the expectation of forwarding thereby his own plans. Bismarck cares nothing for Russia, and, after his residence at St. Petersburg as Prussian ambassador, he expressed his opinion of her by the motto which he pasted inside his watch-case: “Russia is nothingness.”[181] Gortchakoff undoubtedly cares as little for Prussia and the German Empire. Each one looks out for his own ship; for those men whose ideas are catholic are of a different class from mere clever diplomatists, and, unhappily, are rarely to be found among either kings or ministers of state.

Bismarck has always made his special accomplices in ruining the antagonist of the moment the next victims of his undermining schemes. What he has in prospect for Russia is as yet undisclosed. Nor is it certain that he will succeed in playing out his game, making Gortchakoff a mere card in his hand. The Russian is doubtless too astute and farseeing to rely on the disinterested friendship of the Prussian, or on his fidelity to any secret engagements, except so far as self-interest Pg 729 or fear may hold him to his word. Thus far, however, the contract of facio ut facias has been well kept between the two, to their mutual advantage. Prussia has gained a great deal by it, and Russia something, although the decisive crisis is just now coming on, and still undecided, which will solve the problem how much she has gained or will gain. Nicholas died, baffled and disappointed. Alexander came to the throne sad and disheartened. Russia was crippled and exhausted by the terrible disasters of the Crimean war, her prestige and influence in Europe were diminished, and she was placed under humiliating and hampering restrictions by the treaty of Paris. Under Prince Gortchakoff’s administration she has recuperated and increased her strength by the mere force of her immense vitality. By skilful management she has regained a place in European politics almost equal to that of Germany. She has thrown off the trammels of the treaty of Paris. France, England, and Turkey have lost all they had gained by their costly victories. The allies of Turkey have been overcome by superior diplomacy together with adverse fortune, and made to play into the hands of their old antagonist; and Turkey has been driven into worse straits than any which have beset her in the most dangerous epochs of her former history. The initiative in the extraordinary political movements of this epoch has been taken by Bismarck, whom Gortchakoff has merely connived at or seconded. This secondary and mostly negative support has been, nevertheless, most important, probably even necessary, to the success of Bismarck’s schemes. It has involved, moreover, great changes in Russia’s traditional policy and considerable

In the event of war between Russia and Turkey alone it is plain that Russia will not find it an easy task to effect the conquest of Turkey and to expel the Turks from Europe. It seems probable, however, that the Ottoman power must succumb after one desperate struggle, if left unaided by all the European Pg 730 powers. It does not seem likely, however, that Europe will stand idly aloof; on the contrary, there is reason to apprehend that when the conflict threatens to become decisive of the fate of Turkey, all the great powers will become involved in a general war, which will make an epoch in history and determine the destinies of the world for the next ensuing age. We may conjecture, on grounds which are at least plausible, that if Russia is actively supported by any other powers, it will be Germany and Italy which will ally themselves with her, against Austria, England, and France. We can scarcely expect that a war of this kind would terminate in complete success to either of the belligerent parties. In the end all the great nations must come to some mutual agreement in a congress which shall settle the balance of power on a new basis, guarding against an absolute and dangerous preponderance of any one of the chief powers. What is to become of Constantinople we will not venture to predict. But let us suppose that Russia obtains this object of her long, patient, and persevering efforts and ardent aspirations. Must we suppose that this will necessarily be an event disastrous to the interests of the Catholic Church and civilization and to the religious, political, and social welfare of Europe and the world? The language of many most intelligent and religious men, particularly of Englishmen, and of many others, not particularly religious, who look at the matter purely in view of the temporal interests of nations, proves that a very strong and general conviction exists in the sense of the affirmative answer to this question. We think, however, that there is something to be said on the other St. Petersburg to Constantinople. All reasons, therefore, which encourage the hope and expectation of the reconciliation of Russia with the Holy See diminish, in proportion to their weight, the dread which the prospect of such an event may awaken.

We will here quote a remarkable passage from Dr. Mivart’s late essay on Contemporary Evolution having a bearing on this subject. Those who have read this work, or the review of it in our number of last December, will understand the value of the quotation we are about to make, as coming from a man who anticipates such a very different course of events from that whose possibility he here sets forth. It proves his cautious, scientific method of reasoning. He does not advance his own theory with absolute assertion as certain, and his acuteness, combined with candor, causes him to discern and bring into notice a contingency in the direction of Russia which, if it should turn out to be a future actuality, would alter most essentially the “evolution” whose probable course causes so much curious and anxious questioning of the signs of the times.

“Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a reversal will at length ensue, and some modification of the old theocracy be again generally established. Pg 731 At present the only power which seems to contain enough of the old material is Russia. It may be that, instead of politically assimilating itself to Western Europe (like the manners of its highest class), it may come to exercise a powerfully reactionary tendency. It does not seem impossible that, availing itself of the mutually enfeebling wars and revolutionary disintegration of Western powers, it may hereafter come to play that part in Europe which was played of old by Macedon in Greece. Such a Western expansion might be greatly aided if, carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united itself to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theocratic reactionary tendencies latent in Western Europe. It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Russian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration in the Eternal City, yet a fresh dynasty of ‘Holy Roman emperors,’ a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of Charlemagne to the first line of Cæsars.”[182]

What seems to the distinguished writer just quoted barely possible appears to us quite probable. It does not follow, however, that his hypothesis, proposed as possible, expresses precisely the necessary alternative to the opposite term of a complete revolution in Russia by pagan liberalism. The medium between Nicholas Gogol’s fanatical ideas of a reformation by Muscovite barbarism and despotism and their absolute contrary—the uttermost development and sway through the whole extent of the civilized world of Western heathenism—need not be placed exactly at the point marked out by Dr. Mivart. We can suppose that the Russian Empire may reach its ultimatum by attaining a degree of power and grandeur beyond that which it now St. Petersburg does not fear communication with the great republic of the West.

The method of administering government in Russia has actually been undergoing a great modification, in the sense of substituting regular procedures of law and definite codes for personal and arbitrary authority under the initiative and direction of the emperors themselves and their immediate ministers. The local communal government, by the system of free assemblies and elections of the people in districts and villages, exists throughout Russia. The Emperor Nicholas prosecuted actively the work of ameliorating and improving the condition of the common people, which Alexander has carried still further by the abolition of serfdom. The mitigation and attempering to the demands of an improved civilization of the autocratic principle in Pg 732 the empire seems to be an inevitable and certain process which must go on, and which finds its greatest impediment in the nefarious plots and insurrections of secret societies and revolutionists. It is to be hoped that when a stable equilibrium is once restored in Europe, when a solid peace succeeds to the impending storm of war, and Russia is in harmony with other Christian nations, her power, combined with theirs, will be seriously and successfully applied to the suppression of these secret societies, thus giving the hydra-head of revolution a stunning, disabling blow; though we cannot expect that any human power will be able to kill and bury the monster.

Russia cannot fulfil the mission her religious and patriotic children ascribe to her, cannot take a principal part in the redintegration of Christendom, or even attain her complete political growth and strength either in Europe or Asia, without abandoning her schismatical position, reuniting herself to the Pope, and liberating the church from its constricting thraldom to obsolete Byzantine prejudices and secular tyranny. The question of the conversion of Russia has already been treated of in our pages by the learned and zealous Father Tondini, and a number of works bearing on the whole subject are accessible to English readers. We have not space to go into this matter as it deserves. We are merely indicating what a Catholic Russian Empire, in possession of Constantinople, might accomplish for the triumph of Christianity. The long catalogue of crimes, cruelties, persecutions, internal abuses, disorders, heresies, fanatical extravagances, ravages of infidel and revolutionary opinions—in which too much that Pg 733 clear our minds of everything inconsistent with impartial justice to all mankind and Catholic charity. We shall find much that is admirable and hopeful in the great Russian Empire and her people, and be convinced that Russians, even after they have become Catholics and suffered expatriation, are justified in their ardent love for, and pride in, their unique and wonderful country.

The Russian people resembles a belated army, like that of Blücher at Waterloo, coming on the field to decide a doubtful battle. They are of the past, and have but just emerged from their childhood. The old patriarchal spirit lives in them; they are simple, hardy, traditional, loyal, full of reverence for parental, sacerdotal, and imperial authority, industrious and easily contented. The Russian peasantry are warmly clothed and housed; they have enough of the simple food which suffices for their wants; and pauperism scarcely exists. They are a most religious people, and religion is recognized as the basis and foundation of the entire political and social fabric of the nation, as well by the government as by the mass of the people. They only need to be vivified by the current of life from the heart, and energized by the vital force from the head, of Catholic unity, to become what the Western nations were in the times of their pristine Christian vigor. The schism in which they are involved is an unhappy legacy inherited from the corrupt Lower Empire of Byzantium and its ambitious, perfidious clergy. Christianity lacked the full amount of power necessary to accomplish a perfect work in Russia, because the source whence it was derived could not give it. The Russian Pg 734 the Holy See in which they have been unfortunately placed by their ecclesiastical and civil rulers. The misfortune of such a vast number of the true and pious children of the Holy Mother Church must cry to God for deliverance and restoration to the true fold. Their numerous oblations of the unbloody Sacrifice, their communions, their perpetual prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, some of whom belonged in this world to their nation, the sacrifices and prayers of the noble converts from the Russian schism to Catholicity, the mercy of God, which is extended over all men, especially the baptized, must surely effect their reconciliation to their Catholic brethren and the Holy Father of all Christendom. The sufferings and the blood of the victims of Russian persecution will conduce more powerfully to this result than any other human cause. The pagan Russians slaughtered the priests and faithful of the Byzantine Empire but a short time before they fell down before the cross and submitted to the spiritual authority of the Christian patriarch. Vladimir dragged ignominiously to the river the idol he had formerly worshipped. It cannot, therefore, be impossible that God should bring his successor to the feet of the Pope in humble submission, to place himself and his empire under the gentle sway of the Vicar of Christ. Russia once reconciled with Catholic Christendom, [183] We do not think there can be any object more worthy of the united prayers of all Catholics, next after the deliverance and triumph of the Holy See, than the reconciliation of Russia to the Catholic Church.

Pg 735

UP THE NILE.

II.

Like giant walls the Libyan and Arabian mountains bound the valley on either side, at one point close to the river bank, at another receding inland five or six miles. From Cairo to Wady Halfa, eight hundred miles, they stretch in an unbroken line. Beautiful groves of palm-trees line the banks, among which we wander for hours as the boat is tracked up the stream. This mode of progression is slow indeed, and is used when the wind fails us. A stout rope is made fast to the bow, and eight or ten men, taking hold of the other end, walk along the bank, dragging the boat after them, scarcely ever making more than five or six miles a day. We go ashore at this time. There are numbers of fine birds to shoot—over two hundred and fifty different kinds: vultures, rosy pelicans, golden orioles, pink flamingos, many geese and ducks, and innumerable flocks of aboulgerdans, the ardetta russata, or buff-back heron, the constant friend and companion of the buffalo. For hours we wander through palm-groves, cotton and sugar fields, and occasionally pass through a small village, to the intense amusement of the elders and the terror of the juveniles. Near midnight of the 24th of December we reached Ekhmeem, a small town on the east bank. We had been anxious to spend Christmas morning here; for there is a reunited Coptic church, and we all wished to attend Mass. The church was not very handsome nor elaborately finished. St. Joseph for a portion of an obelisk. There were about forty Arabs, men and boys, in the body of the church, and some women behind the lattice-work screens at the rear which separated them from the men. This separation of sex is carried on even in the Christian churches of Egypt. Father H—— officiated, and we had the honor to be the first Latins who had ever heard Mass in the Coptic church of Ekhmeem. Afterwards we were hospitably entertained by the Coptic priest. He invited us Pg 736 to his reception-room on the second story; the congregation crowded in, and each one in turn shook hands with us, and then kissed their own hands in token of respect. Innumerable cups of coffee and cigarettes were forced upon us. I like coffee, and am particularly fond of a cigarette, but both in moderation. One soon tires, however, of converting himself into a movable coffee-pot and perambulating smoke-stack to afford these natives a means of showing that they are pleased with his visit. I have never seen smoking carried on to such an extent as in this country. While dressing in the morning and undressing at night they puff their cigarettes. During the day the smoke is constantly issuing from their lips.

Pococke speaks of some convents near here, one of which is called “Of the Martyrs,” and is mentioned by the Arab historian Macrizi, and another about two miles further in a wild valley, which is composed of grottoes in the rock and a brick chapel covered with Coptic inscriptions. Near this is a rude beaten path leading to what appears to have been the abode of a hermit. Ekhmeem, down to the advent of the Moslems, was considered the oldest city of all Egypt. It was supposed to have been founded by Ekhmeem, the great-grandson of Ham. This was after the Deluge; and if the generally-received date of that event be correct, then the supposition was false. Modern Egyptologists, unless wrong in their chronology, show that many cities existed at least three thousand years before Christ.

A few hours’ sail brought us to Girgeh, a small town on the left bank. Here is the oldest Roman Catholic establishment in Egypt. Girgis, or George, is the patron St. George, and inhabited by upwards of two hundred monks, who possessed much land in the neighborhood. They supplied food to all travellers, and sent annually a large sum to the patriarch at Cairo to be distributed among the Christian poor. About one hundred years ago a dreadful plague afflicted Egypt and carried off all the monks of the convent. There is a small congregation now of some four hundred reunited Copts, with a few Coptic priests, presided over by a Franciscan missionary. We called on him and paid a very pleasant visit. He accepted our invitation to dinner. As it was Christmas day, and this our first dinner-party, Ahmud spared no trouble to have everything as nice as possible. The table was laid with very pretty pink and white china. Ibrahim appeared in a full suit of the purest white. The principal dish was a turkey; and such turkeys as they have in this upper country are to be found nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately, the priest could only speak Arabic and Italian; and as our knowledge of those languages was very limited, the conversation was not animated. One of our party spoke Spanish fluently; with this assistance, and what remained of the Latin of our college days, we made some progress, and were able to exchange a little information and a few ideas. The Father was an Italian of good family, and had been at Girgeh for eight years. His congregation were very much attached to him, but, being very poor, he found it difficult to get along. The only outside Pg 737 aid he received was from the missionary society of Lyons, who send to each mission along the Nile one napoleon (about four dollars) per month.

Further up, at Negadeh, we paid a very interesting visit to an old priest, Père Samuel, who had been thirty-seven years in Egypt, thirty-four of which he had spent at Negadeh. At first he did not seem to understand the purport of our visit. We were probably the first Catholics who had ever called on him. In the course of thirty-four years he had made but twenty converts from Moslemism. This is owing to the severe penalties prescribed by the Koran for apostasy, which but few dare brave. There are about four thousand schismatical Copts and two hundred reunited ones, mostly his own converts. It is an edifying sight to see these small but devoted bands of Christians practising their religion in the midst of fanatical enemies who ridicule and annoy them in every possible way.

On we sail, and soon the white minarets of Girgeh fade away in the distance. On the tops of the houses in almost every town pigeon-towers have been built for the shelter and accommodation of the myriads of semi-domesticated pigeons that abound here. I am informed that this care is taken of them for the sake of obtaining their manure. One would think that the owners would resist any attempts to destroy them. On the contrary, they would call to us from a distance, and, after we had trodden down their standing grain to reach them, they would point out a flock of pigeons, tell us to shoot them, and then, seemingly in great glee, run, pick them up, and bring them to us. On the 27th of December the

Pg 738 After such conclusive proof of this holy man’s power we did not dare to interfere, but some suggested that we would call upon the saintly Moslem with the delegation appointed by the crew. Ali was very nervous and seemed almost afraid to go; but his childlike curiosity got the better of him, and he accompanied us. We walked up the bank in solemn procession, not a word being spoken. We found the saint seated on the top, in the centre of a circle made of the stalks of the sugar-cane. A low fire was burning before him. He must always be approached on his right hand. Reis Mohammed was the first of our party, and, saluting him most respectfully, laid at his feet a small basket filled with bread, oranges, tobacco, and money. Sheik Selim was a very old man, entirely nude, and seated on his haunches, long, matted hair flowing to his shoulders. Around him a group of his retainers watched us with eager curiosity. Our sailors, with awe-stricken countenances, gazed upon the holy monk with expressions betokening those feelings which would fill our breasts at looking upon some phantom from the spirit-world. Above us the moon was riding high in the clear blue of an Egyptian sky, lighting up the scene with an almost weird effect. It was a picture never to be forgotten. The fruitful soil of this land gives back to the industrious farmer three and four crops a year. Had Sheik Selim’s body, as it then was, been properly planted and cared for, no less than six crops could easily be realized. If cleanliness be next to godliness, infinite distance must have separated him from the Deity. Each one in turn shook hands with him. He thanked them for the presents and asked for

On the 29th of December we reached Keneh, on the east bank, and the next morning crossed the river, mounted our little donkeys, and rode to the great temple of Dendera. This temple was dedicated to the goddess Athor, or Aphrodite, the name Dendera or Tentyra being taken from Tei-n-Athor, the abode of Athor. To my mind none of the temples of Egypt can be called beautiful, Pg 739 or even graceful. Compared with the architectural gems of Greece, or the more recent fairy-like structures of the Moguls, they are heavy, coarse, and ungainly. But their interest is derived from their solidity, their antiquity, and the records of events sculptured on them, making each temple wall a page of that immortal book which tells of the manners and customs of the mighty people who ruled the known world six thousand years ago. On the ceiling of this temple was the Zodiac, so long the subject of such earnest controversy, by some assigned to an antediluvian age, but more probably belonging to the Ptolemaic or Roman epochs. The most interesting sculpture on the walls of Dendera is the contemporary representation of the great Cleopatra. It is generally believed to resemble her somewhat, allowance being made for the conventional mode of drawing then in vogue. It is not what would now be thought a very handsome face—full, thick lips, a nose somewhat Roman in shape, large eyes, and rather a sharp profile. But many think that Cleopatra was not so very beautiful, her charm lying more in her abilities and her power to please. She spoke to ambassadors from six or seven different nations, each in his own tongue. She sang charmingly, and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who understood the language of all her subjects—Greek, Ethiopic, Egyptian, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac.

We shot a trochilus, or spur-winged plover. We had been very anxious to obtain a specimen of this bird, called by the Arabs tic-tac, but so far had been unsuccessful. True that almost every bird we brought on board was determined Euterpe). The latter part of this strange narrative I can vouch for, as I have now in my possession three young mummied crocodiles taken from the crocodile mummy-pits of Moabdeh, near the southern Pg 740 extremity of the rocks of Gebel Aboo Faydah. One afternoon, while reclining on our luxurious divan, not a cloud obscuring the sky, as the light winds bore us slowly onward, I dreamed in pleasant reveries of the lands we were about to visit. Suddenly loud cries of “Folk! folk!” are heard, and Ali rushes up on deck. “Warrene! warrene! Shoot him! kill him!” My gun hung above me, loaded with light bird-shot. In a moment I was on the forecastle, gun in hand, but without the faintest idea as to what or where a warrene was. Still, all the sailors cried “Folk! folk!” and, running along the bank, I saw what appeared to be a crocodile, about four feet long. The frightened reptile ran rapidly along, at times about to plunge into the water, but immediately the cry of “Folk!” was raised, and it ran up on the bank again. The whole charge of bird-shot entering its head cut short its career, and it was soon a captive on the deck. “Why did you cry folk?” we asked the sailors. “Why, it means ‘Go up,’ and it prevents the warrene from entering the water.” “So, then, it understands what you say, and obeys?” “Yes; and besides, if you call out ‘Folk!’ to a crocodile, it will raise its forepaw, and thus expose the only part through which a bullet can penetrate its body.” No more said, but considerable doubt raised in the minds of the howadjii, and resolutions formed to experiment upon the first crocodile met with. The warrene is a species of crocodile, brought forth, according to the sailors’ story, in this way: The crocodile lays a number of eggs on land. When these are hatched, from some come forth crocodiles, from others warrenes; but what law of nature operates to produce

Here is how we pass our time on board: We rise between six and seven, and each one, as soon as ready, takes what the Hindoos call the Chotee Hazree, or little breakfast—coffee, eggs, bread, and butter: canned butter brought from England, very sweet; bread baked on board which would do credit to the best café in Europe; coffee far better than all Paris could make; and eggs of a correspondingly excellent quality. After this Mr. S—— and I generally go ashore and shoot. If the wind be not strong, and the men track or pole, we can easily walk ahead of the boat. Madam reads, sews, and sometimes walks with us. Father H—— spends several hours writing in his room, and about ten o’clock shows his bright, cheerful face on deck, ready for a walk, talk, or almost anything else. At noon we breakfast together, and the afternoons are generally spent in practising taxidermy. Many travellers complain that the long Nile voyage is somewhat tiresome. Assuredly it is to one who has no other resources than looking upon the scenes around. The scenery is monotonous, the general features of river, plain, and mountain being almost precisely alike from Cairo to Wady Haifa. To us time was short; day glided into day, week into week—no marked transition, no jarring, scarce anything to note the change, to show that to-day is not yesterday. Nor, in sooth, do we care what day, what week, what month it is. We have left the world and its regulations of time behind us, and we will have naught of the world until we return to civilization. Pleasant occupation of the mind is one of the highest worldly happinesses one can hope Pg 741 to attain. We were constantly employed in pleasing occupations. Add to this the cloudless sky, the sweet, delicious atmosphere, the soft calm and stillness, unknown in our own harsher clime, and one seems lifted above the dull realities of this hard world, and to live in the brightest dream-land. Truly, this is the very acme of pleasure-travelling.

We learned in an empiric manner the art of taxidermy. At first we knew nothing about it—had no books upon the subject. The first birds we prepared were sorry specimens. Each day we made new discoveries, and finally we preserved over one hundred birds in perfect order and condition. In this interesting occupation the afternoon hours glided swiftly by. At six we dined. Then one would read aloud for an hour or more. After that we played dominos or engaged in conversation until ten o’clock, when we retired.

At half-past six of the afternoon of December 30, amid the waving of flags and the firing of pistol-shots, we cast anchor off the town of Luxor. Ali Murad, our worthy consul, appeared on his house-top, and saluted us with a battery in the shape of a pair of antiquated horse-pistols, the firing of which seemed to afford him much amusement. Ali is a fine fellow, it is said. He called and spent half an hour with us. He did not talk—in fact, he could not talk much intelligibly; in short, he could not talk at all so that we could understand him. He represents the majesty and power of the great republic of the western ocean, and is not able to speak the first word of English. But he can shake hands, and tell us through Ahmud that he is glad to see us; so we stop his

That night we visited majestic Karnak. The soft light of the moon playing here and there among its ruined halls and fallen obelisks made the picture so rich and beautiful that we lingered on till late in the night. Luxor, Karnak, and the temples on the western shore mark the site of hundred-gated Thebes. The western division of the city was, in ages long since passed away, under the particular protection of Athor. For, taught the learned priests, beneath yon western mountain our holy goddess receives each evening the setting sun in her outstretched arms. We sailed on the next day, dipping our flag as we passed the Nubia and Clara, occupied by a very pleasant party from Boston, whom we were destined to meet again at the extremity of our voyage. Passing Erment on the west bank, where there is a sugar-factory, we saw a long line of camels carrying sugar-cane. There must have been at least five hundred of these patient animals; but the load that each one carried could not have weighed fifty pounds. Soon we reach Esne. We are to stop here seventy-four hours, according to contract, for the men to bake their bread. They paid three pounds for the doora, or grain, from which the bread is made; this included the grinding. Having kneaded and prepared the dough, it was baked in a public oven at the cost of seventeen shillings. This bread is the staple food of the crew. The quantity baked on January 3 lasted the men until we returned to Sioot, the 21st of March following. The bread was then brought aboard, and for two days the little old cook was busy cutting it up into small Pg 742 pieces, which were strewn over the deck and exposed to the sun for a few days, until they became hard as stones. The preparation of their meals is very simple. A number of these slices of bread are put into a pot filled with water; to this is added some salt and lentils, and the whole is then boiled and stirred over a fire. This meal they have twice a day. Many a time have I joined them in their humble repast; and it was palatable indeed, this time-honored mess of red porridge for which the hungry Esau sold his birthright to his ambitious brother. These fellows, strong and hardy as they were, eat meat but four times in as many months, on which occasions we presented them with a sheep. The animal served them for two meals. It was butchered and skinned by the captain, and the only parts not used were the entrails. The body was divided into fifteen equal parts, one for each man. These parts were weighed to ensure a fair distribution, and the hoofs and head were boiled with the porridge to impart flavor to it.

Some years ago the authorities at Cairo became suddenly imbued with high ideas of morality. In a fit of virtuous indignation they banished thence the ghawázee, or dancing girls of not very reputable character. Numbers of them ascended the Nile to Esne and settled there. Many Eastern travellers, filled with those romantic feelings touching everything Oriental, have raved in wild rhapsodies about the beauty and grace of these ghawázee. Those that I saw were coarse, corpulent, and homely. They were attired in bright robes and tawdry finery, their actions were disgusting, and their movements in dancing a little more graceful than the frantic struggles of a half-boiled lobster.

January 5, at six in the evening, we reached Assouan, and moored alongside the island of Elephantine. Here we are at Syene; for Assouan is but the Coptic Souan or Syene with the Arabic initial Alef added, together Assouan—to the Romans the frontier of the world, as all beyond was savage barbarism and unproductive soil. Domitian could think of no more Pg 743 horrible place to which he might banish the great satirist, and while here Juvenal amused himself by satirizing equally the Roman and Egyptian soldiers. Under the Ptolemies Syene was thought to lie immediately beneath the tropic of Cancer; but, as is now well known, this was a mistake, as it is situated in latitude 24° 5´ 25´´, seven hundred and thirty miles from the Mediterranean. In the early ages of Christianity Syene was the seat of a bishopric, and at one time more than twenty thousand of the inhabitants were destroyed by a fearful pest. The present town is large and well built. Merchandise from the Soodan and Central Africa is here taken from the camel’s back and shipped by water to Cairo. Here for the first time we see those different specimens of the African race—Nubians, Ababdeh, Bisharee, Bedoween, and many others from the still far-off interior. We are pestered and besieged by itinerant venders with every description of wares to be sold. They squat on the bank, waiting for some of the howadjii to come out. As soon as any of us appear we are surrounded by this motley crew, spears brandished in our faces—spears that have seen actual usage in the barbarous wars of the natives of the interior—ostrich eggs are poked under our noses, and the beautiful ostrich feathers waved above our heads. Strings of beads, elephants’ tusks are offered to us. I wish to buy a chibouk. I select one—a fine bowl of red clay beautifully polished, and a stem six feet long and straight as an arrow. “Well, you miserable, sordid, grovelling, lucre-loving, half-naked wretch” (this in English), “How much?” (this in Arabic).

“Well, how much?”

In a low, moaning voice: “Ten piastres”—only five times the proper value.

“I will give you one piastre.”

“Oh! no, by no means.” This is not spoken with the mouth, but by a more expressive movement of the head and shoulders. In the course of time the bargain is concluded for two piastres. I give him a piece of ten and hold out the hand for change. A bag is produced, filled with copper coins, of which it takes an indefinite quantity to equal a silver piece of any given value. Slowly and deliberately he counts into my hand a score or two of them, stops, and looks up into my face. More! Again they are reluctantly doled out one by one. Another stoppage, another demand for more; and so it goes, until one party cries enough, or the other knows that he has given the proper change. This is carried so far that on one occasion, where silver change was to be given for a napoleon, I observed the seller count out from his money-bag the proper amount of change, conceal it in his hand, and then go through the operation above described. But the regular shop-keeper does not bother you to buy—only the outside board, as it were. The merchant is a most dignified man; if it pleases Allah for you to buy, you will do it, otherwise not—Oriental predestination—so he is perfectly indifferent.

We wanted to go shopping, and looked around for the rich merchant of the town, who had fine ostrich eggs and feathers, elephants’ tusks, and spears. We found him seated on the ground reading a letter, brought out, no doubt, to impress us with his importance. I half think Pg 744 the letter was upside down, and doubt very much whether he could read at all; but it gave him the air of a man engaged in extensive foreign correspondence. Ali made known what we wanted. Without raising his head, he sent a boy to open his store, and told Ali he would follow when he finished his letter. Shortly after he came up, sat down on a divan, and got at the letter again. When we complained of the price, he did not deign a reply, and finally, when we rose to leave, he did not even lift his eyes, but seemed to be still trying to decipher his correspondence. I am sure it was partly done for effect, for he could have read a dozen letters while we were in his shop. But then he wanted to show his indifference.

LONGINGS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

Pg 746

SIMILARITIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.[184]

When Macaulay remarked that the Catholic Church owed its success in a great measure to the far-reaching policy of its organization, he uttered a truth of vast pregnancy; for the evidences of this far-sightedness abound on every side, and we find its latest attestation in the attitude the church holds to the questions which agitate the scientific world to-day. Had she, at any period of her existence, so far departed from a well-defined and consistent policy as to formulate theories touching the nature and course of physical phenomena, she might stand to-day condemned and branded in the light of recent scientific discoveries; but apart from the opinions of individual writers, lay and ecclesiastical, to whom she accorded full license to hold what they pleased in such matters, provided they did not contradict revealed truth, and who accordingly often touched on the border-land of the ridiculous and extravagant, not one authoritative expression of hers can be found at variance with a single scientific truth even of yesterday’s discovery. Of course she condemns materialism, because it runs counter to the belief in the immortality of the soul, which is a truth as readily demonstrable as the most undoubted fact in science; and she disbelieves in the eternity of matter, because such a monstrosity involves a violation of reason; but neither materialism nor the belief that

As in the past, the church to-day benignantly encourages all who devote themselves to the prosecution of the natural sciences, and welcomes their discoveries with delight. She wishes merely that scientific investigators confine themselves to their legitimate labors, and do not wildly rush to impious conclusions from insufficient data. She is ever willing to accept whatever conclusions premises really justify, and no more. Surely this attitude of the church towards science is eminently rational, and no right-thinking man can condemn it. Yet it is not alone such men as Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, St. Hilaire, and Figuier who charge the church with being steadily reactionary and actively antagonistic to science, but the whole sectarian world has taken up the cry. We are sorry to number Pg 747 among these the author of the volume which affords subject-matter for this article, and which contains much that is novel, ingenious, and true, as we hope to be able to show when considering the chapter on the “Faiths of Science.”

But we will first learn from Mr. Bixby what manner of religion it is to which science is not opposed, so that we may ascertain the scope and purpose of his work. “In its most general significance,” he says, “it is the expression of man’s spiritual nature awakening to spiritual things” (italics by the author). After developing this definition at some length, he considers it more restrictedly as embracing the following elements:

“1. Belief in a soul within man.

“2. Belief in a sovereign soul without.

“3. Belief in actual or possible relations between them.”

This, then, is religion according to Mr. Bixby, and it is to the rather easy task of reconciling a few modern scientific theories to this attenuated abstraction of religious sentiment, this evanescent aroma of an emotion, that he addresses himself. The statement of those three fully sufficient conditions of religion clearly involves pantheism; and not one of the wildest scientific conjectures of the day is there which may not be made to harmonize with pantheism. The task, therefore, of reducing science and religion to a harmonious plane is quite supererogatory, since on a bare statement of religion it is reconcilable with anything. Pantheism, as taught by its most eminent exponents in Germany—Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte—consists in a sovereign soul without the τὸ non ἐγώ, from which the soul of man, the τὸ ἐγώ, is an emanation—i.e., a fragmentary expression viz., 1, soul within man; 2, sovereign soul without man; 3, actual or possible relations between the two. Now, taking the term soul as univocal in the first and second statements, is it not evident that the latter contains the former, and are we not landed high and dry on the absolute pantheism of Schelling? Or rather, going back to the parent source of pantheism, does not Mr. Bixby’s definition of religion strongly recall these words of the Vedas: “Thus the man who in his own soul recognizes the soul supreme present throughout all creation obtains the happiest lot of all—to be absorbed into Brahma”?

If this be Mr. Bixby’s meaning—or rather, whether meant or not, if this be the legitimate resultant of his views on religion—we see no way of escaping from the conclusion that matter is eternal, since his religion by no means includes the dogma of creation—indeed, it is his custom to scout dogmas—but is strictly limited to the recognition of an inner and an outer soul. It is true Mr. Bixby admits no such consequence, but he cannot help himself; he speaks most devoutly of God, condemns a “bald materialism that would make matter the sum and substance of all things, self-existent, and alone immortal, etc.,” all which is true enough, but by no means bound up in Mr. Bixby’s concept of religion. Our author consequently deprecates a conflict with a shadow, points out to scientific men the possibility of a complete reconciliation between their theories and a Bixbian fugitive tenuity, and devoutly implores them not to use Pg 748 language which might delay “the awakening of our spiritual nature.” Mr. Bixby says that metaphysics must not obtrude themselves on the realm of physical science; that the missions of both constantly diverge. We would, however, remind him that without metaphysics—and we mean the metaphysics he so much abhors, viz., those of the scholastics—we could find no argument as supplied by reason against the eternity of matter. It is wonderful that a man of Mr. Bixby’s respectable attainments should not perceive into what a complete petitio principii he has fallen when he postulates the non-eternity of matter. He does not admit the correctness of the Mosaic cosmic genesis, and as he employs no reasoning to substantiate his postulate, we must regard it as a petitio principii and nothing more.

How differently do the theologians and philosophers of the Catholic Church comport themselves in presence of this old philosophical heresy, revived to-day in full force by Draper, Tyndall, and Huxley, and which may be regarded as the arch sin of modern scientific theories! They do not beg the question as Mr. Bixby does, but, grappling it with an iron logic, dispose of it as effectually as when St. Thomas overthrew the crude systems of Leucippus and Averroës by the aid of a few well-established metaphysical principles. Mr. Bixby says: “Mediæval scholasticism especially grievously sinned in these respects. It delighted in hair-splitting disputations over frivolous puzzles, and in endless speculations about things not only transcending the possibility of human knowledge, but destitute of any practical moment. Its only criterion was the deliverances of the church on the almost equally Summa of St. Thomas is a sealed book for Mr. Bixby, that he has not tempted the page of Suarez with well-trimmed lamp, and that his stock of mediæval lore is borrowed from Hallam or the latest edition of the encyclopædia. To prove how immeasurably superior the “hair-splitters” are to beggars of the question we will show in what way the former hold their own against the modern eternists. Prof. Draper says that as there will be an unending succession in the future, so there has been an unbeginning series in the past; species succeed species, and genera succeed genera, in a never-beginning and a never-to-end chain; Tyndall repeats the words of Draper, whom he so much admires; and Mr. Bixby says, “Gentlemen, it may not be so”; while the scholastic clearly proves that it cannot be so. At the outset a little “hair-splitting” is necessary. We distinguish what is called an actual series, each link of which has had an actual existence, from a potential series, in which the links have not as yet been projected into existence, but will be. Now, an actual series has an end—viz., the link marking the point of transition from the actual to the potential—and is susceptible of increase, since, indeed, it constantly receives fresh accessions from the potential. If, however, it can thus acquire increase, that increase is representable by numbers, so many fresh links added to the series. But a number cannot be added except to another number; consequently, the series to which fresh increase is added must be numerical—i.e., representable by figures. Now, whatever can be represented by figures must have had a beginning; for Pg 749 there can be no number without a first unit, which is the first element of number. Moreover, the supposition that there stretches back into eternity a non-beginning succession of events contradicts the principle of causality; for it would give us one more effect than cause. Viewed in its descending aspect, every link in the chain is cause of the event which follows, till the last link is reached, the which is not cause, since it has as yet preceded no other event. But it is effect, since it depends on the previous event. Viewed now in its ascending aspect, the chain consists of a series of links which are all effects—effects more numerous than the causes by the addition of the latest link, which is effect but not cause. We must have, then, one effect without a cause, which is absurd. The same maybe said about consequent and antecedent terms in such a series; for the last term in the series being merely consequent, the chain or series which, by hypothesis, has no beginning contains more consequent than antecedent terms, which is equally absurd. We have here given but an outline of the argument. The scholastics have summed it up more fully, though far more tersely and concisely, in these words: There can be no infinite series a parte ante, but there can be a parte post. This reasoning not only conclusively disproves, but renders ridiculous, the arguments of Draper, Tyndall, and the rest. Yet from this philosophical armory Mr. Bixby would disdain to draw a single weapon in defence of his thesis, but prefers rather that the church be considered essentially inimical to the progress of true science, and constantly jealous of its encroachments.

Mr. Bixby entertains a special dislike to theology as being apt to interfere with his pet scheme of reconciling science with—shall we call it Bixbyism? Certainly we cannot consistently call it religion. He says:

“Again, theological dogmas and science have been, and still are, opposed. Theologians have formulated their dim guesses about God’s character and ways into creeds, and imagined them finalities. They have speculated upon matters of purely physical knowledge—such as the antiquity of the earth and the age of man, the condition of the primitive globe and its inhabitants, the manner and method of their appearing—and have made these speculations into dogmas held as essential to religion.”

Here we must take sharp issue with Mr. Bixby. In the first place, have not the theologians as good right to speculate on such matters as Messrs. Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall? And if they have fallen into error, it is no more than the latter gentlemen have frequently done. Surely Mr. Bixby must allow the fact that St. George Mivart is no less a sound savant because he is read in theology; or would he maintain that Father Secchi is liable to additional chromatic aberration because he believes in the decrees of the Vatican Council? In the next place, no theologian deserving the name deems himself competent to erect into a religious dogma demanding the reverence and belief of his fellows his individual scientific opinions. The absurdity of such an idea is apparent to any one who has read a Catholic theological treatise, which breathes a spirit of submissiveness in every line where the author’s own views are expounded—a spirit strikingly in contrast with the arrogant dogmatism of our Pg 750 scientific philosophers. Moreover, the church, the only competent authority to promulgate dogmas of faith, has never yet attempted to impose on the minds of her children a purely scientific truth as an article of belief. From this it is evident that Mr. Bixby occasionally palters, and merely wishes to pave the way for an easier adaptation of his religious views to the so-called advanced scientific tendencies of the day.

He says that all theologies stand in the way of science, but that two dogmas especially exhibit this perversity—viz., 1, the assumed infallibility of the Bible; 2, the assumed intervention of God. “In consequence of the first of these dogmas,” he says, “there has been a struggle by theologians to limit modern science to the contracted circle of the ancient Hebrew knowledge of the universe, and any variation of statement from the letter of Moses or Job, David or Paul, is regarded as a dangerous loosening of another screw in the bonds of righteousness and the evidences of immortality.” Mr. Bixby is not himself a believer in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, and evidently thinks that whoever does not agree with him stands on the extreme opposite line and believes the very shaping of the letters to have been divinely commanded. This is wrong. The Scriptures were never intended as a manual of science. They merely state the great facts of human and cosmic genesis in a general way, so far as those two momentous facts affect the interests of the race. It has been proved time and again that the Mosaic books, fairly interpreted, contain nothing adverse to scientific truth. Why, then, will writers be ever harping on this well-worn

“In consequence of the second dogma,” he writes, “theologians have been jealous of any attempt at a natural explanation of the mysteries of the world, and have looked upon every extension of the realm of unbroken order and second causes as an invasion by science of the religious kingdom. They imagine that one must lose what the other gains; that, step by step, as the arcana of the Kosmos are penetrated, and the same laws and substances are found ruling and constituting these as rule and constitute the more familiar parts and operations of nature, the action and presence of the Deity must be denied, and the human mind landed more and more in the slough of materialism.”

These words bear their refutation with them. The accusation is serious, and yet not a word of proof to substantiate it. Too often is Mr. Bixby guilty of this illogical procedure of substituting statements for proven facts and captious deliverances for argument. When Dr. Draper denies the possibility of miracles, he does so at least logically; for he believes in the eternity, immutability, and necessity of law. With him there is no lawgiver, but with Mr. Bixby it is different. He speaks of God “pouring his will through the channels of unvaried law.” Now, it is an axiom in law that the framers thereof may derogate from it from time to time, if so it should seem good to them. Why not, therefore, God? Mr. Bixby cannot, then, deny the utter impossibility of a miracle, and yet he argues against it just as strenuously and in the same spirit as Mr. Draper or Mr. Tyndall. Should he charge that such exceptional deviations from apparently established laws would argue caprice or shortsightedness on the part of God, we beg to reply that they occur in consequence Pg 751 of a higher law, representing the divine will, by which those secondary laws were established, and which, with far-reaching and clear-eyed gaze, made provision for those exceptional occurrences, so that they may be said virtually to come within the scope of the law itself. Should, then, the testimony in support of a miracle be of an unimpeachable nature, we see no reason why the possibility of a miraculous event is to be denied. When Voltaire said he would more readily believe that a whole citiful of people, separated by prejudices, social position, tastes, habits of life, and mutual distrust, might conspire to deceive him than he would that a dead man had arisen from the grave, he confounded physical with metaphysical impossibility; and this is precisely what every unbeliever since his time has done. To this charge Mr. Bixby is more grievously amenable, since he admits the reason for the validity of the distinction between the two impossibilities mentioned, by admitting God to be the author of law, and yet he virtually ignores it by the position he assumes.

But this chapter on the “Causes of Actual Antagonism” is so replete with reckless assertion and inconsequent reasoning that we have only to take up a passage at hazard to be confronted by an error. On page 41 he says:

“Neither is religion based on, nor bound up with, any one book. Had Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob no religion, because Moses had not yet written? Was there no Christianity in the lifetime of Jesus, or the first forty years of the apostolic generation before Matthew put his pen on to parchment? As well say that chemical affinity is based on Lavoisier’s or Dalton’s treatises, or that gravitation is ruined if Newton’s Principia is shown false in a single theorem.”

St. Matthew. No one contends that Christianity did not exist in the lifetime of Jesus, or that it would not now exist had not St. Matthew written his Gospel; but it by no means follows that we are free to reject that evangelist’s history, since it is a compendium of Christian doctrine such as our Lord had preached it in his lifetime, and in rejecting it we would thereby reject the latter. The allusion to Lavoisier and Dalton is just as unhappy; for though it is true the science of chemistry might exist Pg 752 without them, still we cannot reject their treatises, since these contain the essential principles of that science.

Mr. Bixby is sometimes quite happy in stating the objections which scientists urge against religion, but we regret that he also sometimes fails to make good his refutation of their views. Thus, on page 149, he presents the argument of science in these words: “Theologians may talk glibly of soul and over-soul, Creator and creation, absolute and Infinite; they may fancy that they understand them; but they are deceiving themselves, mistaking a familiarity with words for a genuine understanding of things. Their high-sounding terms are but covers to their real ignorance.” Indeed, this is a common objection made by those whose habits of mind have been formed in the laboratory, and who have never troubled themselves much about metaphysics. Still, the objection should be met in a patient and painstaking mood, and answer given according to our lights. Mr. Bixby makes his rejoinder a retorqueo argumentum by showing that science, too, bristles with difficulties and is beset with mysteries; that it borrows from conjecture more even than religion does; and that it can never hope to level all the hills and fill up all the valleys which lie along its course. This is very true and very apposite, but it may be asked: Does it contain an answer to the objection as stated? We rather think not. Cannot it be proved that we do really possess some knowledge of the Infinite and the Absolute, and that the apparent unintelligibility of these terms is to be sought for and found rather in the ignorance of those who object to them? The Infinite differs for us Pg 753 shafts the doctrines and definitions of the Catholic Church.

In order to prove that Bixbyism is the only religion which is at all reconcilable with science, and to brush aside any pretensions Catholicity might entertain in the same direction, he quotes the following:

“Let him be anathema—

“Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when opposed to revealed doctrines.”

This proposition does not meet the approbation of Mr. Bixby. If it does not, then its contradictory must be true, which implies that a scientific utterance may be true in the face of an opposing revealed truth. It is to be borne in mind that the revealed doctrines in question are supposed to be revealed, and revealed by God, and the whole statement is resolvable into this: Notwithstanding that God (in whom Mr. Bixby is a believer) has positively affirmed that a given statement is true, Mr. Tyndall or Prof. Huxley may affirm the contrary with impunity—nay, rather with a better title to our acceptance of their views—

or, as Caramuel says, “We thus sweeten poison with sugar, and color guilt with the appearance of virtue.”

But in order to place himself still more en rapport with his adversaries, Mr. Bixby, seemingly forgetful that he either surrenders the gage or else resolves the conflict into a tilt with a windmill, expresses himself to the following effect: “Religion has no exclusive source of information, but such sources only as are common to all branches of human knowledge.” If this be true,

As if in more strenuous advocacy of this idea, he elsewhere adds: “It [religion] is not all falsehood and masquerade; nevertheless, there is much popularly set down as religion which is no more religion than it is science. Now it has been bound up with one system, now with another. When Christianity first raised its head, it was told that polytheism alone was religion.” Continuing in this strain, he condemns every system of religion which stands opposed to another, and infers from the fact of Pg 754 such opposition the necessary falsity of them all. He even goes to the extent of affirming that the doctrines of the Catholic Church changed age by age, according to the tone of the prevailing philosophy. He says:

“In Augustine’s day Christianity was made inseparable from the doctrines of predestination and fatalism. In Abelard’s time it was bound up with the metaphysics of realism; in Roger Bacon’s time, with the philosophy of Aristotle; in the days of Vesalius, with the medical treatises of Galen; in the lifetime of Galileo, with the astronomy of Ptolemy. To-day it is the orthodoxy of the Council of Trent or the Westminster Catechism that is cemented to religion, and any attack on the one is assumed to be undermining the very foundations of faith and morals.”

This passage is recklessly false. Any one acquainted with church history, with the rise and progress of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, understands perfectly that in St. Augustine’s time no more stringent or rigorous views concerning original sin and predestination were held than tradition and the Scriptures sanctioned and ratified. And the patient reader of the history of philosophy will also condemn the assertion that the church proper had anything to do with the long-drawn disputes between the Nominalists and the Realists. The church left those wordy disputants severely alone, though the controversy was revived by the school of the Neo-Platonists for the very purpose of embroiling the church in the quarrel. We say the controversy was revived; for in reality the dispute is as old as Plato and Aristotle.

Still more absurd is what Mr. Bixby says with reference to Vesalius and Galen. Not a single authoritative passage from father, council, or historian can be adduced viz., the first dissection of the human cadaver that has led to any valuable results.

But in order to be thoroughly careful that he should allow no element of what is entitled positive religion to enter into the conception of his emotional nonentity, he discards all the known and accepted grounds of religious evidence. He says there can be no infallible authority in religious matters, since the only one which fostered the pretence has been repeatedly detected in error. His words are:

“In its unflattering mirror the oracle of Rome is exhibited as convicted of error in scientific matters again and again; compelled to retreat from position to position; forced to correct and recorrect its interpretations. It is shown vacillating to and fro in regard to the most important ecclesiastical questions, possessed of no clear or well-defined principles concerning many essential theological issues, etc., etc.”

All this rodomontade is in the nature of a negative assertion, inasmuch as it would require a full review of the history of the church to refute it. It is the author’s favorite style of logic, however, and may go for what it is worth. He next rejects the authority of the Bible on the most frivolous grounds, and coming Pg 755 to the value of our divine Saviour’s evidence in favor of revelation, he uses the following extraordinary language:

“I desire not to deny the existence of a divine element in Jesus. I gladly recognize him as the loftiest spiritual seer and teacher the world has seen; the best historic embodiment of spiritual perfection that we have. But we must own, if we are clear-sighted and frank, that in Christ himself we do not obtain an oracle exempt from the limitations of humanity and the conditions of earthly knowledge.”

This is a clear negation of the divinity of Christ, and an implied avowal that Mr. Bixby ranges himself with Renan and Strauss. As before stated, Mr. Bixby’s chief aim in the first chapters of his book is to simplify the conditions of the problem which he has set before him, and we see that he has striven to do this by stripping religion of all its positive attributes, and putting in its stead a bloodless and emasculated spectre. “It is a force,” he says, “anterior to all churches and hierarchies, the grand spiritual stream flowing from above through the souls of men, of which ecclesiastical organizations are but the earthly banks, the clayey reservoirs and wooden dams, by which men have thought they could better utilize the heavenly forces.” This is fine and figurative, we confess, but more marked by sound than sense. Mr. Bixby here brands all churches as purely human institutions, and yet allows that they possess religion, that they are its conduits and distributors to men, and that dogmas and codes and ethical enactments are mere accretions, the work of human minds. These must consequently be false, and, being such, should retard rather and operate against the influences of religion

The definition of religion which has passed current for centuries, making it to consist of a determinate and specified allegiance of man to his Maker, is contradicted by the views advanced in Mr. Bixby’s book, and therefore the few only, whose opinions are equally unsettled, can accept his conclusions. There is something so unreal and shadowy in his estimate of religion that one is at a loss to see thoroughly into what he means by it, and consequently incapable of appreciating all that his conclusions are intended to embody. “Religious truth,” he says, “(theologians and preachers defending the old beliefs have maintained) belongs to another realm from ordinary kinds of truth. It is not to be tried by the understanding. It is not to be brought to the bar of common sense, but it is to be discerned by the inner soul, and its evidence found in the soul’s satisfaction in it.” If this be Mr. Bixby’s estimate of the value of the evidence on which religious truth reposes, he must have had in view, as the ideal of all dogmatic religion, the utterances of some strong-lunged preacher at a camp-meeting. No theologian of the Catholic nor of the approximating sects ever thought for a moment that religion is not to be tried by the understanding nor brought to the bar of common sense. The evidences of revealed religion are based upon reason, which, closely scrutinizing these, is compelled to admit the claims of the Scriptures Pg 756 and the church, just as it is obliged to admit the truths of geometry. It is true that individual dogmas are not the subject-matter of purely rational investigation, but they appeal to our reason just as strongly through the evident infallibility of the authority which submits them to our belief. Mr. Bixby, we fear, either misapprehends plain things or is given to misrepresenting. Objectively, all truths resemble each other in that they are true—i.e., eternal, immutable, and necessary; subjectively, for us, those truths which we can discern with the eye of reason pertain to the natural order, and to the supernatural order those whose guarantee depends on the revealed word of God. It is evident that in the logical order, the natural precedes and underlies the supernatural, and that, with respect to the evidence on which both repose, it must be tried by the understanding, and that searchingly, and cannot escape the bar of common sense. “Truth,” says the author of An Essay on a Philosophy of Literature, “is independent of man. The power is his to discover, develop, and apply it; but he cannot create it. That belongs to the Infinite Intelligence alone. He it is who creates it and who creates the light of our reason by which to perceive it.” Truth, therefore, must be consistent with itself; and it is the province of every individual truth to borrow lustre from, and shed radiance on, each sister truth, and not to detract from and obstruct it. This is the logic of the schools—nay, it is the logic of Hamilton, Mansel, Baden Powell, and Faraday, whom Bixby charges with dividing the field of truth into two separate portions: one the province of knowledge, where science holds sway; the other the province of

But he is brave enough in this: that not an inkling or a wrinkle of his too transparent sophistry disturbs him. Immediately after he says (p. 72): “Bishops like he [sic] of London may exhort the modern inquirer as eloquently as they please to throw away doubt as they would a bombshell; but it serves only to make the investigator more suspicious of the validity of religion.” Then is it not proper, Mr. Bixby, to throw away doubt? If not so, it must by all means be better to entertain doubt, so that a state of doubt ought to be our normal intellectual condition. Just in proportion as we entertain doubt may we be less suspicious of the validity of religion; but the moment we think of discarding Pg 757 it suspicions grow up in our minds! Verily, this kind of logic is perplexing. We admire the devout spirit which Mr. Bixby everywhere exhibits, but when it is paraded at the expense of true religion, and in a spirit calculated to lead astray the unwary, we must enter our protest against it. On page 222 he says:

“And religion needs not only to accept the corrections and recognize the coadjutorship of science in disclosing the ways of God, but it should engraft into itself, I believe, more of the scientific spirit. Instead of aiming to defend systems already established [!], and to bolster up foregone conclusions, it should go simply with inquiring mind to the eternal facts.”

And this passes current for reasoning! We write without bitterness of heart, but in the spirit which prompted Juvenal to say:

Religion must borrow all from science, accept her criterion from science, see that she admit nothing but what the scientific plummet is capable of sounding, and reject all that does not conform to the square and compass of this arbitrary mistress. “Established systems” and “foregone conclusions” must be sacrificed at the beck of a scientific clique, and meek religion must sit awaiting crumbs from their table. Surely, had the great author of the apology for the Christian religion anticipated that an apology with such intent would be subsequently offered, he would have bestowed a different title on his famous work. But Mr. Bixby goes farther when he actually breaks down the barriers which have ever been supposed to divide science from religion. On page 223 he says:

“Thus religion is capable of being made a genuine science, and it will never, I believe, maintain the purity, attain the stability and accuracy, reach unto the depth and breadth of truth which is within the demands of its grand mission unto mankind, until it thus weds science to itself.”

This might not give offence if viewed as from the pen of a sophomore; but from a teacher—a philosopher! The passage jumbles science and religion inextricably together; it virtually identifies them, and yet pretends to hold them apart. The idea that religion is capable of being made a genuine science must sound oddly in the ears of those who have been taught to regard religion as the science of sciences, their queen, mistress, and guide. But, according to Mr. Bixby, religion is in the lowly position still of being a handmaiden to her proud sisters, with the possible prospect at some time of being elevated to their queenly plane.

In his chapters on the “Faiths of Science” and “The Claim of Science” Mr. Bixby very adroitly brings into contrast the arrogant aggressiveness of scientism with its own haltings, weaknesses, and vacillations, and we deem these two chapters to be really valuable contributions to the fast-swelling literature concerning the dispute between religion and scientism. They are inoperative of effect, so far as Mr. Bixby’s notion of religion is concerned, but they clearly prove that science is fully amenable to the charge of taking much for granted, of postulating much, of believing in the mysterious and inexplicable—the very charges it flippantly prefers against Christianity. Experience and observation have been the watchwords of science since the days of Locke, and the whole system of Scotch philosophy Pg 758 as taught by Reid, Stewart, Brown, and Hamilton in the past, and Bain to-day, rests on the results of those two procedures. The supersensible finds no room in this system, and is relegated to the domain of the unknowable, the unthinkable. Says Büchner: “Those who talk of a creative power which is said to have produced the world out of nothing are ignorant of the first and most simple principle founded upon experience and the contemplation of nature. How could a power have existed not manifested in material substance, but governing it arbitrarily according to individual views?” Herbert Spencer calls supersensible conceptions “pseudo-ideas,” “symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate order.” Virchow says he “knows only bodies and their qualities; what is beyond he terms transcendental, and he considers transcendentalism an aberration of the human mind.” And so with the majority of the modern school of scientism. They deem nothing demonstrable but what responds to their tests of truth, to chemical or physico-chemical modes of investigation. For this reason physiologists reject the notion of soul as a distinct substance in man, for it cannot be investigated according to the methods known to physiology; and yet, with glaring inconsistency, these men admit as the very basis of experience and observation what outlies the range and limit of the senses.