Part 11 — CHAPTER XX. (continued 2)

His appeal is from bishop to bishop, and from doctor to doctor, according to his own private judgment. We are pained more than we can express at the malicious quibbles which distort words so emphatically plain. We submit that, if Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, he must be adored by all but infidels; and, secondly, that, if the bread is his body, as he said it was, it cannot at the same time be bread, since two substances cannot coexist in the same space. All changes of words upon the terms “spiritual and corporal” are only the unfortunate sophistries of a deceiver or of the deceived. If our ritualistic brethren have any doubt as to the meaning of the bishops, let them go and ask Dr. Smith, or Drs. Lee and Coxe, Potter and McIlvaine. They will give a clear reply, we do believe.

We approach another and most important act of the Council of Episcopal bishops which will certainly render this convention memorable for all time. They have, in the most solemn manner, given their definition of the term “regeneration” which is used in the offices of their church. The Twenty-seventh of the Thirty-nine Articles was probably framed to suit different opinions among the followers of the Reformation of Luther. There baptism is called “a sign of regeneration,” though it is not declared to be the instrument of regeneration, and may be only a mere sign without the substance. But the Office for Baptism in the Prayer-Book is in no way equivocal. There it is distinctly taught that the child baptized is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. According to all the received acceptation of words and the doctrine of formularies from which this office was derived, regeneration means the new birth by which through divine mercy the child, naturally born of Adam, is supernaturally born again of water and the Holy Ghost, receives the new life of grace, and becomes really the child of God. Such are our Lord’s words to Nicodemus, wherein he instructs him concerning baptism: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Ever since the formation of the Episcopal Church the great majority of her members have found the words retained in the baptismal service onerous and out of place. For they do not believe in any such doctrine, since they have adopted the heretical notions of Calvin and Luther concerning Prayer-Book to sustain them in controversy. One of the best and most learned of the Episcopalian ministers, for many years professor in the General Theological Seminary, taught that “regeneration” in the baptismal service, by a special use of terms, meant only a “change of state,” and that the doctrine that baptism was the new birth was utterly untenable in the Episcopal Church, and contrary to the whole spirit of its creed. The united voice of the bishops now comes to declare the same opinion, and to make of the regeneration taught in their offices only such an external change by which the child is promised unto God, and, without any interior operation, is adopted into the visible fold of Christ. We give the language of this most remarkable definition:

DECLARATION OF THE BISHOPS IN COUNCIL, OCTOBER 11, 1871.

“We, the subscribers, Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, being asked, in order to the quieting of the consciences of sundry members, of the said church, to declare our convictions as to the meaning of the word ‘regenerate’ in the ‘Offices for the Ministration of Baptism for Infants,’ do declare that in our opinion the word ‘regenerate’ is not there so used as to determine that a moral change in the subject of baptism is wrought in the sacrament.”

To this declaration are appended the signatures of forty-eight bishops, all but two, we believe, of the whole of their hierarchy. Now we were somewhat prepared for attempts to wrest the meaning of these very plain words, but not for the flagrant dishonesty of some of the High Church journals. Let us call things by their right names, and speak the truth, if need be, in all sadness. We were not prepared to hear that “the bishops were not asked nor did they profess to say what regeneration means”; that in saying what it was not, they aimed to give no explanation whatever of the word. We give two short extracts, one from the Churchman, and the other from the Church Weekly, which for candor and sincerity certainly deserve the first premium:

“The object aimed at was ‘the quieting of the consciences of sundry members of the church.’ It was not to give an exhaustive definition of the word. Certain persons claimed that the term might be interpreted to signify a moral change in the subject of baptism. They knew that many would so understand it. And so the bishops, being asked, stated what no sound churchman ever denied, and no well-read theologian and respectable student of the meaning of language ever denied, namely, ‘that the word is not so used’ in that connection. The thing asked for was granted. The object aimed at was accomplished, and those who represented the unquiet consciences have acknowledged their grateful appreciation.

“We can illustrate this point by a single example. Some readers of the Bible may think that, whenever the word ‘day’ occurs in the first chapters of Genesis, it must mean a period of twenty-four hours. Common people have come to understand it in that sense. Now, suppose that the question has been raised in some Baptist or Congregational ‘Sabbath-school.’ The teachers think a declaration from their pastor or bishop—if they please to call him so—to the effect that the word does not of necessity imply a period of time limited to twice twelve hours, would quiet the consciences of some of their pupils who have studied geology. Suppose the thing asked for is granted: are we, therefore, to conclude that the pastor has pretended to give a definition of the word ‘day,’ and to state exactly ‘what it does mean’? Shall we speak of him as having ‘grappled with’ the creation question, and yet ‘failed to tell a waiting’ Sabbath-school what the exact time indicated by that word ‘day’ was—whether ten thousand years, as some believe, or, as others think, ten million?”

“Alas! the House of Bishops have put forth a definition which is no definition! They pretend to define, and yet they do not define! There is not a churchman, however ignorant of theology, who does not laugh in his sleeve at this pseudo-definition, which will have the effect, however, of making manifest either the ignorance or the insincerity of ‘Evangelicals,’ provided that they remain in the church. For, if the latter remain therein after this, it must be either because they cannot tell a definition from an evasion of a question, or because they are in search of some excuse for not carrying out those boisterous threats with which they have been for some time past making both day and night hideous to all peaceful churchmen.”

The respect here shown to these right reverend fathers in God is nearly as great as their honesty. Now, we insist that the new birth of water and the Holy Ghost implies a moral change of the most important kind, and that even the forgiveness of original sin cannot take place without such a change. We will take the words of the Episcopal Catechism, and leave it to any just mind if regeneration determines a moral change. There we are taught that the inward grace, inseparable from baptism, else it is no sacrament, is “a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness; for, being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace.” To be made the child of grace surely requires a moral change, which the bishops deny. They will, therefore, have to put out a new catechism or a new dictionary. As for the quibbles upon the sense of the word “determine,” as if the venerable prelates meant to sport with the common sense of their constituents, they are too paltry to deserve the notice of any respectable man. The plain fact is beyond dispute, that the supreme authority of the Protestant Episcopal Church has formally denied the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which is contained in the Catechism and Office for Baptism. In this they have only spoken the real feeling and belief of the great majority of their religious communion since the time of its formation. Of this wonderful declaration, they say in their pastoral that “they have, with an extraordinary unanimity, set forth a definition touching their offices for the baptism of infants.” The declaration, they inform us, “was made in the loving hope that many consciences might thus be for ever freed from false impressions concerning the teaching of the church, as respects spiritual religion and personal piety.”

We have no right to expect any accurate use of terms in the language of those who, according to the testimony of many of their children, know nothing of canon law or theology; yet here we have a plain statement which admits of but one interpretation. The bishops at the next convention may retract it or deny it, and individuals among them may gravely say that they do not receive a doctrinal definition which they signed. Stranger things have happened. The two who did not sign it are, we are told, High Churchmen of the old, dry school, while the hopeful abettors of ritualism have gone down under this cloud, from whose darkness they can never clear themselves before an honest public.

We pass on to notice the further action of the reverend prelates in council, since to us ecclesiastics they are the only part of the convention who are properly judges in doctrine or discipline. Having denied regeneration in holy baptism, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, they have, with like unanimity, attacked and forbidden, as far as they may, private confession. Sometimes, they inform us, a soul is so burdened with its sinfulness as to desire “an authoritative assurance of arbitrary direction which supplants the conscience, is to do away with that sense of moral responsibility under which every man shall give account of himself to God.”

This is not the place to point out the gross ignorance and prejudice of the Episcopal bishops. They speak of what they know nothing, having never confessed their own sins, nor felt the need of any “authoritative assurance of pardon.” To assert a wholesale slander of one of the most sacred institutions of Christ, hallowed by the practice of three-fourths of all who call themselves Christians, which is really the great source of the little purity left in the world, is a fearful crime before heaven. We acquit them, therefore, in charity, of the intention to slander, and hold them culpably ignorant. All this is, however, beyond the scope of our present purpose. We have only to say that they have forbidden, as far as their words go, the ordinary practice of confession, and that they deprecate it as “an engine of oppression and a source of corruption.” It remains now to be seen whether these counsels of the chief pastors of the Protestant Episcopal Church are to be followed by their children who think them to be successors of the apostles and fathers in God. Will the Right Rev. Dr. Potter, who once published, as we have been informed, a manual for the examination of conscience, to whom a prayer-book, with directions for confession, has been publicly dedicated, now interfere and put a stop to this great abuse? Will the handful of ritual priests in this city cease to sit in their pews or their libraries to hear and absolve penitents? To speak our honest opinion, the words of the bishops will have no influence whatever, and things will go on precisely as they did before. We only venture to wish, for the sake of propriety, that confessionals might be erected in all these churches, where at least the female penitents might be heard. We assure our friends that this advice comes from a good heart. If they cannot hear confessions in public, they would do well for themselves not to hear them at all.

The most reverend prelates go on to condemn “the tendency towards saint-worship, and especially its culmination in the worship of the Blessed Virgin.” “The bare suggestion that the intercession of the Virgin Mary, or of any other saint, is in any way to be sought in our approaches to the throne of grace, is an indignity to the one only Mediator and Intercessor which we, his apostolic witnesses, cannot too strongly nor distinctly forbid in his holy and all-sufficient name.” Is this language plain enough for our ritualistic friends? apostles have forbidden any one to seek the prayers of the Mother of God or of any other saint. To do so is to offer indignity to Christ, according to their theology. On the same principle, Episcopalians must not ask the prayers of each other, unless they wish to insult the one Intercessor. The reason why the saints cannot intercede for us is that Jesus Christ alone may do it. We cannot, therefore, suppose that living men or women are in a different position in this respect from their departed brethren, especially from the great heroes of Christianity. We really blush at the stupidity of men who call themselves teachers and wear episcopal robes, but it is not our business to criticise their directions to their flock. We simply put before the world what they have so plainly said. All invocation of any one but Christ is to be stopped within their communion by their solemn decree, if, indeed, it was ever practised.

From this restriction of prayer, they pass on to condemn the devotional books which “have been insidiously multiplied of late years in England and America, and are alien in their character to the whole spirit of the Liturgy.” We presume they here refer to the translations of Catholic books of devotion which have become for some time past the pious nourishment of all the advanced Episcopalians. We have seen many of these works ourselves, and have even seen the Book of Common Prayer bound up with parts of the Missal, and preparations for communion and confession taken from well-known Catholic authors. This, to say the least, is an acknowledgment that their own church does not feed their souls, and that they seek a life it can neither give nor support. This alone ought to be sufficient to send them where they can find a religious system according with their wants. Certainly they can do as they like in the matter. They can put on all our vestments, and their bishops may wear rings and crosses, and bear mitres and crosiers, and they may cross themselves with the left hand, and bow down before an altar which is only wood or stone. They may call themselves the only Catholics in the world, and out-herod Herod himself, and quietly put us Romanists in the shade. But we think the bishops are right to tell them that all this is inconsistent with Episcopalianism, and that they ought to be either one thing or the other. A man has a right before the law to play the Harlequin; but has he a moral right to do so? Is it an honest or fair thing to remain in a church and use devotions and teach doctrines which it condemns? Much is said of “that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.” But can that be a liberty to contradict ourselves, to profess to be what we are not, and to carry private judgment to absurdity? We are forced in reason to commend the advice of the bishops, and to say with them to our good friends, “Gentlemen and ladies, if you wish to use Catholic books, be kind enough to go where they belong. Please do not attempt to foist upon our people a spirituality which is foreign to our Protestant communion.” From our past knowledge, however, we do not believe that the counsel of the reverend fathers will produce much effect. We shall still as ever have Catholic books of devotion luxuriously bound (the binding goes a great ways), “and adapted to the use of the American Church.” For our own part, we hope that this will be the case, since the recitation of our prayers, and the reading of the masters of the spiritual

3. A few remarks will now suffice to show the position in which the Protestant Episcopal Church has placed herself by the action of this convention. If we regard the whole body, including the laymen as well as the clerical deputies, we can see how true to its birthmarks has been the legislation of a communion which glories in the non-committal character of its creed and profession. Two or three parties, with views diametrically opposite, are thus kept together, and in the diversity of opinions is the safety of the whole. When the Episcopal Church begins to have anything like a faith, then will it fall to pieces, and new sects will arise of its component parts. How long it will go on holding together High Church and Low Church, Broad Church and no church at all, we do not know. But this we think, its Protestant character is now well established to all mankind. Not one single link which could bind it to the doctrine or practice of the past has been left. If it will not baptize itself with the names of Luther, Calvin, or Zwingle, it can boast of no father or mother. In the words of its Bishop Lee, if it is not a Protestant church, it disowns its birth, and has no right to be called a church. Through the most solemn action of its supreme authority it has denied the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the regeneration of children in baptism, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of confession. As for the ritualists, they have been handled without mercy, and their whole system of faith and worship summarily condemned. It will be of little avail to them to say that the bishops only have pronounced a decision, and that the division of the clerical and lay vote in four or five dioceses saved them from a prohibitory canon of the whole convention. Are the presbyters and lay deputies the successors of the apostles, whom the Lord instituted to govern the church of God? Who made the sheep of the flock the judges in ecclesiastical causes?

We have no heart to believe that the condemnation of the bishops will do any good with the majority of them. A few earnest souls will come, one by one, into the true fold of the Good Shepherd, where a man has to receive and obey Christ, and not make a religion for himself. Yet we fear, and with sadness we say it, that no power whatever could open the eyes of many. If their church should deny the Holy Trinity or the incarnation of God the Son, they would explain away the denial. Blow after blow with a rough hand has been given to these so-called Catholics within the past few years. Many are not shaken, but in spite of all the decisions of their councils and the admonition of their pastors, they go on insisting on vanity, erecting an idol which their own hands have made, and blindly falling down to worship it. Who shall reason with men who have histories and even grammars and dictionaries of their own? Who but God in his infinite mercy can roll away the darkness of hearts which walk in a vain shadow and disquiet themselves for naught, calling evil good and good evil? Here logic is wasted, and the past, with its lessons, ignored, as if the Word made flesh had never been on earth, nor quickened with divine grace our fallen humanity. Fellow-Catholics, let us to prayer, that such souls may not die eternally out of their Father’s house, strangers to the Bread of Life. In their great need, the pitying heart of Jesus crucified will hear, and scales shall fall from many eyes. Oh! how sad to travel long and far in this weary life, and then only to see from a distance the promised land, but never to rest in the tabernacles of the God of Jacob.

A CHRISTMAS STORY OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

I.

A proud man was the Baron Regnier. In the old days of Charlemagne, the Chateau Regnier had risen, a modest mansion on the pleasant banks of the Garonne. That great monarch died; his empire fell to pieces; the lords became each one an independent sovereign in his own castle, making perpetual war on each other, and electing kings who could enforce neither respect nor obedience. Then the Chateau Regnier was enlarged and fortified, its retainers and vassals became numerous, and, as was the method of growing rich in those times, large parties of horsemen would sally from its gates, as suited their pleasure or necessities, to plunder neighboring lords or defenceless travellers.

The Barons Regnier were brave men; never was there a brilliant or dangerous expedition wherein some scion of the house did not distinguish himself. When the first preaching of the Crusades stirred the soul of Europe, there was bustle of preparation and burnishing of weapons at the château; even in the motley company of Peter the Hermit went one of the younger sons of the family, who did his part of plundering in Hungary and Dalmatia, and perished on the shores of the Bosphorus; and in the more orderly expedition that followed, the reigning baron himself led a brave array under the banner of Raymond of Toulouse.

The return of the crusaders brought more refined tastes into France, though not more peaceable manners. The Château Regnier was enriched and beautified; troubadours gathered there; feasts were continually spread; still plunder and anarchy were the order of the day till the reign of Louis le Gros. That energetic king devoted his life to establishing law and order in France. Then the house of Regnier, having plundered all that it conveniently could, took part with the king to prevent all further plundering, so it grew strong in its possessions.

With such a line of ancestry to look back on, no wonder that the Baron Regnier was proud. He himself in his youth had shared in the disasters of a crusade. After his return home, he had married a beautiful wife, whom he tenderly loved; but his happiness had been of short duration; in three years after their union she died, leaving him an image of herself—a frail and lovely little being, the last flower on the rugged stem of that great house.

A lovely land is the south of France. Two thousand years ago [115] called it the Beautiful, and its soft langue d’or is the very language of love. It was on the shores of the Garonne, in the twelfth century, that the troubadours sang their sweetest songs. Among them was found Pierre Rogiers, who wearied once of the cloister, and so wandered out into the world—to the court of the beautiful Ermengarde of Narbonne, to the palaces of Aragon, at last to the shores of the Garonne, and, finding everywhere only vanity of vanities, once more entered the gates of the monastery and lay down to die.

Here, too, lived Bernard de Ventadour, who loved and celebrated in his songs more than one royal princess. Here he dwelt in courtly splendor, till he too grew weary of all things earthly, and yearned for the quiet of the cloister, and, wrapping the monk’s robe around him, he too died in peace.

No wonder if Clemence Regnier, growing up a beautiful girl in the midst of these influences, should yield her soul to the soft promptings of affection. She was the favorite companion of her father; no wish of hers was ungratified; her sweetness of temper endeared her to all around her. She was sought in marriage by many rich nobles of Toulouse; she refused them all, and gave her preference to the younger son of a neighboring baron—a penniless and landless knight.

When the old baron first discovered their mutual attachment, he was at first incredulous, then amazed, then angry. He persistently and peremptorily refused his consent. The De Regniers had for so long married, as they had done everything else, only to augment their power and wealth, that a marriage where love and happiness only were considered, was an absurd idea to the baron.

“This comes of all these jongleurs and their trashy songs!” he exclaimed; “they have got nothing to do but wander about the world and turn girls’ and boys’ heads with their songs. I’ll have no more of them here!”

So the baron turned all poets and musicians out of his château, but he could not turn love and romance out; the young heart of Clemence was their impregnable citadel, and there they held their ground against all the baron’s assaults.

Four years went by; Clemence was pining away with grief, for she loved her father and she loved her lover; at last, her love for the latter prevailed, and, trusting to win the old baron’s forgiveness afterwards, Clemence fled from the château with the young Count de Regnault.

Baron de Regnier was a man who, when moderately irritated, gave vent to his wrath in angry words, but when deeply wounded he was silent; and here both his pride and his affection had been wounded most deeply.

He signified to the guests at the castle that they might depart; he closed the grand halls, keeping near him a few old servants; dismissed his chaplain, whom he suspected, though falsely, of having married the runaway couple, and who had been their messenger to him, begging for his forgiveness and permission to come to him; closed his chapel doors; and shut himself up, gloomy and alone, in a suite of rooms in a wing of the château.

Many loving and penitent messages came to him from Clemence. At first he took no notice of them: at last, to one he returned an answer—“He would never see her again.”

II.

The summer came and the winter, and many a summer and winter passed, and the dreariest domain in all France was the once merry Château Regnier. Year after year the old man brooded alone. If friendship or chance brought guests to the château, they were received with stately formality, which forbade their stay; rarely did a stranger pass a night within its walls. The retainers kept their Christmas holidays as best they might; no great hall was opened and lighted, no feast was spread. They wondered how long the baron would live such a life, and what would become of the château should he die, for he had no heir to take it.

Ten years passed: the old man began to grow tired at last of his solitude; he listened to the voice of conscience—it reproached him with ten long years of neglected duties. The first thing he did was to open the doors of his chapel. He sent for artisans and ordered it to be repaired and refitted, then he sent a messenger to the Bishop of Toulouse, asking him to send a chaplain to the Château Regnier.

The church was in those days what she is now—the great republic of the world; but at that time she was the only republic, the one impregnable citadel where, through all the centuries that we call the middle ages, the liberties and the equality of men held their ground against hereditary right and feudal despotism. In the monastery the prior was often of lowly birth, while among the humbler brethren whom he ruled might be found men of patrician, even of royal lineage. Virtue and talent were the only rank acknowledged; the noble knelt and confessed his sins, and received absolution from the hand of the serf. Thus, beside the princely-born Bernard we see the name of Fulbert, the illustrious Bishop of Chartres, raised to the episcopal throne from poverty and obscurity—as he himself says, “sicut de stercore pauper”; and the life-long friend and minister of Louis the Sixth, Suger, the abbot of St. Denis, and regent of France, was the son of a bourgeois of St. Omer.

So it happened that when the baron sent to the Bishop of Toulouse for a chaplain, a young priest, who was the son of a vassal of Château Regnier, threw himself at the prelate’s feet, and begged that he might be sent. The bishop looked on him with surprise and displeasure.

“Monseigneur,” said the priest, “you reproach me in your heart for what appears to you my presumption and boldness in making this request. I have a most earnest reason, for the love of God, in asking this; for a very brief time do I ask to remain chaplain at the Château Regnier, but I do most earnestly ask it.” So he was sent.

The young Père Rudal had been in his childhood a favorite with the baron. It was the baron who had first taken notice of the bright boy, and who had sent him away to the great schools of Lyons to be educated; and now, when he saw his former favorite return to him, the old man’s heart warmed again, and opened to the young priest.

It was with strange emotions that the Père Rudal stood once more in the home of his childhood. When a careless boy there, with no very practical plans for life, he had loved, with a boy’s romantic love, the beautiful Clemence. He was something of a dreamer and poet; she had been the queen of his reveries. He was the child of a vassal, and she of noble birth. This thought saddened

After he had gone to the university he heard of her departure from her father’s castle, and the old man’s unforgiving anger against her. The thought of her grief kept the remembrance of her in his heart, and now—though he could laugh at those old dreams of romance—he could love her with a nobler love. He knew the baron’s former predilection for himself, and he prayed daily to heaven that he might once more see her restored to her father’s halls.

At the château now he was the baron’s constant companion. He led the old man little by little to interest himself once more in the duties of life—in plans for ameliorating the condition of some of the poor vassals—in some improvements in the château. Before two years had passed the old man seemed to love him like a son. Yet often a cloud passing over the weary face, a deep sigh, a sudden indifference to all earthly things, betrayed the lifelong grief of the baron’s heart, and the thought still kept of her whom that heart so truly loved but would not pardon.

It was drawing near to the Christmas season, when one day Père Rudal said to the Baron:

“My lord, more than a year have I been with you, and although you have heaped many favors upon me, I have never yet solicited one; now I am going to ask one.”

“My dear friend and companion,” replied the baron, “whatever is in my power, you know you have only to ask.”

“In the old days,” continued the priest, “this château of yours saw many a gay feast, especially at the Christmas-tide; then there were nobles and ladies here; now it has grown gloomy and silent. What I ask is, that this Christmas you will give an entertainment, but one of a novel kind; let the halls be opened and a banquet spread, and invite all your poor neighbors, your vassals, your retainers, their wives and children; let none be omitted: do this for the love of that little Child who was so poor and outcast for love of us. I myself will superintend the whole, and pledge myself for the good conduct and happiness of all; and moreover, you yourself will accompany and remain among your guests, at least for a little while. I know I am making a bold request in asking this, but I am sure you will not refuse it, and I promise you will not repent of it.”

The baron acceded to the request. Had he been asked to entertain grand company at his castle, in his present mood he would have refused at once and haughtily; but he was too generous to refuse anything asked in the name of the poor; besides, he felt in his heart the truth of what the young priest had said to him: “There is no solace for grief like that of solacing the sorrows of others; and no happiness like that of adding to their happiness.”

III.

Christmas Day came; and, after the Grand Mass was over, the great hall of the château was opened, and tables were spread with abundance of good cheer; there were presents for the little children too; and there were jongleurs who, instead of the customary love ditties, sang old Christmas carols in the soft Provençal dialect. Amidst the hilarity there was, what by no means was common in those

After a while the priest laid his hand on the baron’s arm:

“Let us retire to yonder oriel window—there we may sit in quiet and contemplate this merry scene.”

The baron gladly escaped from the crowd, but, as he seated himself, a sigh of weariness escaped him, and a cloud gathered on his brow.

“How happy you have made all these good people,” said the priest. “The merriment of children has something contagious in it, has it not?”

“What have I to do with the merriment of other people’s children—I, a poor childless old man?”

The baron spoke bitterly; for the first time in his life had he made an allusion to his griefs.

“But see these three pretty little children coming towards us,” the priest continued; “we did not see them as we passed through the hall.” And he beckoned them nearer—a little girl about eight years old, a little boy some two or three years younger, and the smallest just able to walk: beautiful children they were, but dressed in the ordinary dress of peasant children.

“Do not refuse to kiss these pretty little ones for the love of the little Child who was born to-day,” pleaded the priest, as he raised one on his own knee. “Now, my lord, if it were the poorest vassal in your domains, would he not be a happy man whom these pretty ones should call grandpapa?”

The baron’s face assumed a look of displeasure. “I want no more of this; entertain your guests as you please, but spare me my presence here any further. I am glad if I can do anything towards making others happy, but happiness for myself is gone in this world.”

“O my lord!” said the Père Rudal, “why is your happiness gone? Because you have cast it away. When your daughter, your Clemence, threw herself and her little ones at your feet, and prayed you, for the love of the little Child born in Bethlehem, to take her little ones to your heart, why did you coldly turn away and refuse her?”

The baron turned to him with unfeigned surprise. “What do you mean?” said he. “I have never seen her since, and her children never.”

“But you see them now.”

“O father!” said a well-known voice, and his own daughter Clemence was kneeling in the midst of her little ones at his feet.

The old man sank back in his seat—his daughter’s arm was thrown around his neck—her head was resting on his heart—and after an instant’s struggle between love, the divine instinct, and pride, the human fault, his arm was clasped closely about her. Père Rudal lifted up the youngest child, and placed it on the baron’s knee, and then quietly stole away.

A merry place was the Château Regnier after that night; the rooms and halls were opened to the daylight—there was romping and laughing of children from one end of it to the other. The Count de Regnault was sent for on the very next day after that happy Christmas, and was embraced by the baron as a son—and evermore thereafter, with great splendor and merriment, was that feast held at the château; so that the Christmas festivals of Château Regnier became famous throughout France.

As for the young priest—that night, after he had seen Clemence once more in her father’s arms, he left the château and never returned to it. He went away to Toulouse, and wrote from thence to the baron, telling him that his love for him and his was unalterable, but his mission at the château was accomplished; the voice of duty called him elsewhere; and he begged the baron’s consent to depart. The baron gave his acquiescence reluctantly. Père Rudal soon after entered the order of the Trinitarians, for the redemption of captives, which had been recently established, and perished on a voyage to Tunis.

THE “BROAD SCHOOL.”

Aubrey de Vere.

THE LIQUEFACTION OF THE BLOOD OF ST. JANUARIUS.

NO. V.

We are confident that, the more closely those objections are examined, the weaker they will be found to be; and their weakness is an additional argument for the truth of our conclusion.

The general charge is that this liquefaction is effected by some trick or other on the part of the priests. A vague charge by itself means nothing, and is of no value. To be worth anything, there must follow a “specification,” some indication or explanation of the precise mode or trick by which the liquefaction is effected. How is it done? This is the first question to which a reply must be given, before the objectors can come into court.

The replies to it have been numerous, very numerous—in fact, so numerous as to lose all real value: they are so wonderfully discordant and so contradictory.

The liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius has occurred, during to select which he pleases. Which of them or whether any one of them be actually true is apparently a question of minor importance. The grand purpose aimed at—and for that, any one of them, even if a mistake, will, it is thought, be sufficient—is to find some passable or colorable pretext to relieve the reader from the exceedingly disagreeable necessity of admitting a popish miracle.

When two and a half centuries of keen and critical examinations, covering so many thousand instances of the liquefaction, have resulted only in such utter confusion and disagreement among those who profess to have discovered the fraud, we may legitimately conclude that in reality there has been no discovery of any trickery or fraud whatsoever.

Not to tax the reader’s patience too much, we will endeavor to classify the various modes in which we are assured by these discordant voices that the fraud is perpetrated.

The first class attributes the liquefaction, or seeming liquefaction, to some kind of jugglery or legerdemain practised by the officiating clergymen during the exposition of the relics.

But when, or how, it would puzzle Houdin himself, or the Fakir of Ava, to say.

Is it, as some have suggested, the adroit substitution of a second reliquary which contains a liquid, and which, at a suitable moment, is presented to the bystanders, instead of the original reliquary containing a hard substance?

Most certainly not. The officiating priest stands in front of an altar built of marble and bronze, without drawers or hiding-places. The reliquary in his hands is of considerable bulk—twelve inches high, five inches broad, and two and a half or three inches thick—entirely too large to

If it were possible and actually done, it would not answer the requirements of the case. In such a substitution, the liquefaction would always appear to be instantaneous—as instantaneous as the adroit substitution. But the real process of liquefaction is seldom so instantaneous. It is often gradual, occupying an appreciable, sometimes a long time. It may often be followed by the eye in the various stages from solidity to perfect fluidity.

Moreover, no substitution can account for the subsequent hardenings, or the alternations of hardenings and liquefactions, especially when these occur, as they sometimes do, while the reliquary remains untouched, mounted on its stand on the altar, in the sight of all, or during a procession in the streets when it is borne aloft, equally untouched, in its open frame, and is equally visible to all.

The idea of a substitution of reliquaries can only be entertained by one who is utterly ignorant of the circumstances of the liquefaction. We set it aside. If nothing else can be said, the miracle must stand.

The publicity of all the movements of the officiating clergyman who holds the reliquary, and the unceasing inspection of the reliquary by so many observers on every side, are equally peremptory in excluding the supposition that the liquefaction may possibly be produced by inserting, during the exposition, some new ingredient into the ampulla, which, uniting with the hard substance already there, will give a third substance of a liquid character. How could this be done so many thousand times; and always under the eyes of a crowd of most attentive and watchful observers, without a single one of them ever, in a single instance, detecting this new substance while held in reserve for the proper moment, or noticing the act of inserting it, as this precedes the liquefaction? And what shall we say of those numerous cases in which the blood, having liquefied, becomes hard again, and, after a time, liquefies again? Is there an adroit withdrawal of this new ingredient from the ampulla in order that the liquid may harden again, and is there a fresh application of it, each time, for every renewal of the liquefaction, during the day? And what if these changes occur while the reliquary is not in the hands of the clergyman at all, but has been placed and remains all the while on its stand on the altar, or is borne aloft in its open frame during a procession? Does this wondrous ingredient of wondrous power wondrously manage, of itself, and without the aid of human hands, to find its way to and into the ampulla, or to withdraw from it, as often as needed?

The drollest attempt at a solution, in this line, which we remember to have met, was one put forward, with Hot water, the writer maintained, was stealthily introduced into the hollow metal stem or handle below the reliquary; the heat from which might pass, by conduction, through the intervening substances, and at last reach the substance itself within the ampulla and cause it to melt.

The stem aforesaid is just three inches and one-eighth in length, and seven-eighths of an inch in external diameter. Allowing the metal of which it is formed to be one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness—less it can scarcely be—and that the hollow extends the entire length—on which point we avow our ignorance—the cavity of the stem would hold about one-fifth of a gill—rather too small a quantity for the purpose in view.

Moreover, the opening or mouth of the hollow stem is at its lower extremity. Now, inasmuch as even hot water is subject to the laws of gravity and will fall downwards, we submit that for the hot water to remain in the stem or cylinder with its lower extremity quite open, for even ten minutes, would be as truly a miracle as the liquefaction itself is claimed to be. Even allowing some invisible plug to be used to close that opening and to prevent the water from falling down, would not the first and most powerful effect of the heat of the water be manifested in the thin metallic sides of the stem itself, scorching and blistering the hands of the priest that held it?

And again, when the liquefaction is delayed—which, on this supposition, would occur because the heat in the small quantity of water first introduced is not sufficient for the purpose, and has been absorbed by the metal reliquary before producing the desired liquefaction—it would obviously become necessary to empty the stem and to take in a fresh supply of hot water. The same thing would, at least on a cold day, have to be repeated over and over again until the liquefaction finally does occur; and would have to be repeated still over again as often as the substance in the vial grows hard during the day, and a fresh liquefaction is required. Where is the vase into which they pour out the water that has lost its heat? Did any one ever see the kettle brought in with the fresh supply of water, steaming hot, as needed?

Perhaps the author of this explanation was a wag, making game of the gullible readers of the anti-Catholic magazine. If he was in earnest, we regret that he did not turn his brilliant talents to the task of discovering perpetual motion.

Lest the reader may think that we are not doing justice to the opponents of the liquefaction, we will quote the words of one who is or should be held as a high authority in their ranks. Bishop Douglas (of Salisbury, England) published A Criterion for distinguishing the Miracles of the New Testament from the Tricks of Pagan and Papal Priests. Speaking of the liquefaction, he says:

“The particular natural cause is not indeed absolutely agreed upon. Some have imagined that the heat of the hands of the priests who have been tampering with the vial of blood during the celebration of Mass will be sufficient to make it melt. Others, again, have been inclined to believe that the liquefaction is affected by the heat of vast numbers of wax tapers of enormous size with which the altar is decked out, and many of which are placed so conveniently that the priest can, without any appearance of design, hold the glass so near to them as to make it hot, and consequently dispose

“I am informed (for I have never tried the experiment myself) that a composition of crocus martis and cochineal will perfectly resemble congealed blood, and, by dropping the smallest quantity of aqua fortis amongst this composition, its dry particles will be put into a ferment, till at last an ebullition is excited and the substance becomes liquid.

“That a glass may be so contrived as to keep the aqua fortis from the dry substance till the critical moment when the liquefaction is to be effected may be easily conceived. And indeed the vial containing the pretended blood is so constituted. It is something like an hourglass, and the dry substance is lodged in the upper division. Now, in the lower division of the glass, a few drops of aqua fortis may be lodged without furnishing any suspicion, as the color will prevent its being distinguished. All the attendant circumstances of this bungling trick are perfectly well accounted for by admitting this solution. Whenever the priest would have the miracle take effect, he need only invert the glass, and then the aqua fortis, being uppermost, will drop down on the dry substance and excite an ebullition, which resembles the melting. And upon restoring the glass to its former position, the spectators will see the substance, the particles of which have been separated by the aqua fortis, drop down to the bottom of the glass, in the same manner that the sands run through an hour-glass.

“Now, upon the supposition that I have assigned the real cause, the priests can prevent the success of this miracle whenever they please; and accordingly we know that they do actually do so, when they have any prospect of advancing their own interest, by infusing a notion into the minds of the Neapolitans that heaven is angry with their nation.”

Bishop Douglas with his reliquary “something like an hour-glass” deserves to stand next to him who filled the stem with boiling water. They both seem to value the dreamy supposition which they evolve out of their own inner consciousness as fully equal to undoubted and actual facts demonstrated by experience or fully established by testimony.

We leave aside the chemistry involved in his supposition, since he candidly avowed that he never tried the experiment. It is a pity he did not make a similar candid avowal when speaking of the shape of the vial containing the blood. He should, for the sake of good faith, have warned his readers that he had never seen the vial itself, nor even an engraving of it; and should have let them understand that his whole explanation was based on his assumed ability to describe accurately and minutely the shape of a vial which, he must have been aware, and should have informed them, he was entirely ignorant of.

Any one who has seen the reliquary and the ampulla within it, or has even looked at the figure of it which we have given, or at engravings of it which are easily obtained in Naples and elsewhere, will see at a glance that the shape of the ampulla is just the reverse of an hourglass. In fact, in form it much more closely approaches a sphere. Not a single point set forth in the explanation is correct. There is no upper division in which the dry substance, compounded of crocus martis and cochineal, and perfectly resembling congealed blood, is or can be lodged; there is no lower division, unoccupied save by the few drops of aqua fortis, the color of which prevents its being discovered, even by keen, curious, prying eyes. There is in the liquefaction no sandlike fall, from an upper into a lower division, of a stream of particles of the dry substance, now separated or liquefied by the aqua fortis. The bishop has not only failed to hit the bull’s eye, he has entirely missed the target, every shot.

And yet, with what delicious complacency Criterion, may have closed the book in perfect confidence that, after such an exposure, so clear and detailed, by so learned and so respectable an authority, it would be waste of time to read another word on the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius!

Need we go back to the two previous explanations he mentions, but which he will not adopt, until he is forced by the failure of his pet explanation? So many others have urged them that we may not pass them entirely unnoticed.

The ordinary form of the first one is this: The officiating priest, who holds in his hands the vial containing the blood, rubs it with his handkerchief, and clasps it in his palms. The animal heat of his hands, and such heat as the friction may produce, suffices to bring about the liquefaction.

Let the reader cast an eye on the very correct figure of the reliquary which we give. The priest holds it by the stem below; sometimes, in turning it, he may put one hand on the crown above. He does not, for he cannot, touch the interior vials containing the blood. They are inside the case, held in position by the soldering above and below, and are enclosed and protected by the thick metal rim, and the plates of glass in front and rear. The heat of his hands, as he holds it, and the utmost heat that can be produced by the friction—as occasionally, every five or ten minutes, he may, if he thinks it necessary, rub the plates of glass with his white handkerchief, in order to see better through them into the interior—cannot possibly affect the contents of the ampulla in any appreciable degree. As for causing them to melt or liquefy, one might as well expect the same animal heat of one’s hand to light a wax candle by simply grasping and holding the candlestick in which it stands, or that lightly rubbing the candlestick with a handkerchief, every five or ten minutes, to keep it bright and dry, would produce the same physical effect on the candle placed in it as ordinary mortals obtain nowadays by igniting a lucifer match and applying it to the wick.

No one who has ever witnessed the liquefaction can listen to this attempt at explanation without a smile of pity or of contempt. Even in those cases in which the liquefactions take place while the reliquary is in the hands of the priest, it is equally insufficient and absurd. It has no application whatever to the other many cases in which the liquefaction occurs while the reliquary stands on the altar or is borne in procession. Like the other solutions we have examined, it makes no attempt to account for the reiterated hardenings and liquefactions which may occur during the day, nor for the variations of volume and for the other phases which are presented. Yet we must bear in mind that all these are striking and characteristic points, which are to be strictly accounted for, equally with the simple fact of a solid substance becoming fluid.

As for the second mode of solution mentioned by Bishop Douglas, that which attributes the liquefaction to the general heat around the altar due to the “vast number of wax tapers of enormous size” burning on the pis aller? If he did believe that the priest really so manipulated the vial in order to produce the liquefaction, ought not that to be sufficient? Why postpone the truth in favor of a pet theory about crocus martis, cochineal, aqua fortis, and the hour-glass? Evidently, his mind was rather cloudy on the subject. Seriously, the priest could not hold the reliquary so near to a lighted wax taper of enormous size, long enough to make it hot, without attracting the attention of hundreds each time he did it. Not to overlook the smallest point, we may remark that, on the six occasions when we were present at the liquefaction, on all of which it invariably occurred at the main altar of the Tesoro chapel, the lighted tapers on the altar were few. If our memory serves us right, they were just six, three on each side of the crucifix over the centre of the altar, and all of them placed on tall and elevated altar candlesticks. The nearest blaze must have been, at least, seven feet away from and above the reliquary, as the chaplain held it in front of the altar. To achieve the feat which Bishop Douglas mentions, it would have been necessary to move back a portion of the crowd, near the altar, in order to get room, and then to bring in and make use of a good-sized step-ladder! The only burning light ever held in proximity to the reliquary is the single small taper, sometimes held by an assistant chaplain, and used on cloudy or hazy days, when the general light in the Tesoro chapel is not sufficiently strong to show through the glass plates of the reliquary and the sides of the ampulla, as distinctly as desired, the state of the blood in the interior of the ampulla. In such cases, this taper is now and then brought for half a minute or a minute within eight or ten inches of the reliquary, and is held a little downward, and behind it, in such position that its light may shine obliquely onward through the glasses, on the surface of the blood, and show, as we saw it show, the state of the interior with perfect distinctness. It is not applied to the reliquary in any way that can appreciably heat it. When the atmosphere is perfectly clear, the general light of the chapel is amply sufficient, and this taper is not needed nor brought forward.

What we have said of the modes thus examined is true of all attempted explanations based on some supposed feat of jugglery or legerdemain during the exposition. To one who has witnessed the liquefaction at Naples, and knows what is really done, they are simply ridiculous. We

This has been felt, and in consequence we have another class of proposed solutions, of a seemingly higher character. Chemistry is brought into service. Some compound is skilfully prepared, we are told, and inserted by the priests into the ampulla beforehand. It is of such a character that it appears more or less hard and solid at the beginning of the exposition, and, during the exposition, is made to melt or to appear to melt. Chemists, we are assured, can easily prepare such substances, and can thus reproduce the liquefactions at will. These experiments, it is claimed, settle the question. What the chemists do and acknowledge, the priests do, and pass off as a miracle.

Let us analyze these experiments, and see whether in reality they repeat and renew the liquefaction with its characteristic and essential phenomena, or in what respects and how far they fail to do so.

The first of these of which we have any account dates from Berlin, in 1734. On the 26th of January in that year—so we are told in a letter dated a few days after, and published in Paris—Gaspar Neumann, councillor of his majesty’s court, doctor in medicine, and professor of chemistry, entertained a party consisting of fourteen learned friends, assembled to dine at his festive board, with an imitation of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The letter was written by one of the party to his friends at home. We carefully reproduce the facts which the letter states, omitting the badinage and sneering remarks with which it accompanies them—remarks quite characteristic of the school of Voltaire whenever religion or anything connected with it was in question. In default of the original French, we quote from a translation published in England.

The professor, we are told, placed before his friends “a human skull.” He also produced from his laboratory “three vials of crystal or very clear and transparent glass, in each of which was contained a matter in a very small bulk, dry, black, and so hard as to produce a noise on the sides of the vial when shaken.” The first vial being brought near to the head, the matter in it “became of a deep-red color, liquefied, bubbled, increased its bulk, and filled the vial.” The second vial was also brought near to the head, and the portion of matter in it “bubbled but little.” But when the third vial was similarly brought near the head, the whole of its contents “remained dry, hard, and black.”

The writer evidently wished to convey the impression—perhaps he himself believed—that these vials, which the professor had carefully prepared in his laboratory and showed to his friends after dinner, correctly exhibited the liquefaction in all its chief phases. If the liquid in the first vial had also several times changed its color; if it had filled the vial, not by adding bubbles to bubbles, but by an actual increase of the volume of the liquid within, independently of that frothing or bubbling; if it had then similarly decreased in bulk; if the liquid had solidified without any diminution of temperature, and become fluid again without increase of it, he would have presented a far stronger case than he has done.

But those points are absent. Perhaps the writer did not know that they were necessary. The letter itself is written in a jocular and mocking tone, and evidently in a spirit that relished sharp epigrammatic

We find another account of this same experiment in a French work before us: La Liquefaction du Sang de S. Janvier, by Postel. This account is more calm and sober in style, and is based upon the Bibliothèque Germanique, a work to which we have not access. It varies considerably from the sportive account given in the letter. According to Postel, the contents of the first vial liquefied entirely; the contents of the second vial liquefied only partially; in the third vial there was no change whatever. The statement is distinctly made that neither in the first vial nor in the second was there any sign of ebullition. The variation is important.

As between the two accounts, we could scarcely hesitate a moment which to hold most worthy of credit on any point on which they differed. In neither account do we find any indication of the nature of the chemical compounds which Dr. Neumann had prepared in his laboratory and placed in the vials. But as the experiment was made known and repeated, especially in France, we may take it for granted that the material used in those repetitions is the same that he devised.

This material is a mixture of suet, or other similar fatty matter, and ether, the compound being brought to any desired tint—in this case, a deep or dark red—by a further admixture of any suitable pigment. The mixture or compound so prepared is solid at ordinary temperatures; but at about 92° F. it will melt. If a quantity of such a mixture be inserted in a small glass vial, and the vial be clasped in the palm of one’s hand, it will soon receive from the hand sufficient heat to bring about a total or a partial liquefaction, according to the greater or smaller proportion of the ether used in originally compounding it.

Neither would it be beyond the art of chemistry, in preparing this mixture, to introduce other ingredients, the particles of which would be brought into contact with each other when the liquefaction has been effected and the chemical combinations of which would then give rise to a greater or less amount of frothing or bubbles.

All this, however, is very far from being a reproduction of the liquefaction which is seen at Naples. The differences, or rather the failures to imitate and reproduce it, are essential and evident. We point out the chief ones:

I. This liquefaction of the laboratory always and entirely depends on the application of the proper degree of heat. So long as its temperature is below the melting point, the substance in the vial remains hard and unliquefied. When the temperature, from whatsoever cause, is raised above that degree, liquefaction ensues. If the temperature again sinks below it, the substance, if not meanwhile decomposed, returns to its previous solid condition. The operators themselves inform us frankly how the required degree of heat is usually communicated to it; by holding the vial, if small enough, in the palm of one hand, or tightly pressing it, if somewhat larger, between the palms of both hands. If the general heat of the room be raised high enough to reach the melting point of the substance in the vial, this circumstance alone would suffice to bring the compound to a fluid condition.

On the other hand, being from Naples and not from Brobdignag, the chaplain or canon has a hand only of the ordinary size, and is altogether

Moreover, the liquefaction often takes place when the reliquary is not held in his hands at all.

II. We repeat it again. The real liquefaction does not depend on heat It takes place at various temperatures. There is no fixed melting point for the substance in the ampulla. It will often solidify at a higher temperature than that at which it stood liquid; and will liquefy at a temperature notably below that at which it became or stood solid. This is an essential difference, going to the root of the question.

III. The attempted imitation may, at the utmost, present a bubbling or frothing, produced in the way we have indicated. This may even go to such an extent as to fill the vial with froth or bubbles. But it can never cause the bulk or body of the liquid itself, free from those bubbles, and independently of them, to swell and increase in actual visible amount so as to completely fill the vial. The amount of the liquid obtained, when at rest and in its tranquil state, and at the same temperature, will always be the same. Precisely the reverse happens in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The liquid blood may bubble and froth without increasing its bulk, or it may increase its volume with or without this frothing, or it may decrease its volume, again, with or without the frothing. And these changes of the bulk of the actual liquid in the ampulla do not depend on the temperature. Neither are they points on which a mistake is possible; for they reach, as we have stated, to the extent of twenty per cent.

On those two cardinal points, the imitation entirely fails. We need scarcely note the facts that the preparation, when solid, does not resemble coagulated or hardened blood, and, when liquid, could never be mistaken for liquid blood, whether arterial or venous, nor does it present the changes of color so often seen in the real liquefaction.

IV. Ether is an essential ingredient of this artificial compound. Suet, or whatever other fatty substance is used instead, will dissolve in ether; while it will not dissolve in water or in alcohol. Now, ether is comparatively a modern discovery. Whether Paracelsus hit upon the discovery of it or not is a point mooted among those who have studied his life and achievements in chemistry. But, if he did, the knowledge of it was lost with him, and it remained unknown to the world until Künkel discovered or rediscovered it in 1681—early enough for Neumann, but entirely too late to be of any service in getting up a compound for the liquefaction at Naples, which, for the matter of that, runs back far beyond the days of Paracelsus himself.

This explanation, therefore, that the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is in reality the liquefaction of a compound of ether and suet or other fatty substance, must be set aside, because entirely insufficient to meet the case, and because it involves a glaring anachronism.

It fails, too, in another point. The ether will, in course of time, gradually escape though the pores of the glass. When it is gone, the liquefactions are at an end. The fatty matters, too, will decompose in time. In fact, the whole preparation would have to be frequently renewed. On the other hand, as we shall see further

These reasons were too patent to allow Dr. Neumann’s attempted imitation to hold its own in the estimation of those who seriously examined the question. It was thrown aside for others. We find an account of one of them, written by La Condamine, and presented to no less a body than the Academy of Sciences in Paris, in 1757. His article may be found among the various articles published in the Memoirs for 1763.

La Condamine explains, with no little glee, and some detail, an experiment which he had lately witnessed in company with others, and which he was allowed afterward to repeat and study out in private and at his leisure, and with the assistance and explanations of the inventor himself. He does not give the inventor’s name, but we know, from other sources, that it was San Severo.

There was a circular case of bronze or silver gilt. In front and rear, there were circular plates of glass. The whole stood on a richly ornamented foot, and was surmounted by a winged mercury. Within the case, between the plates of glass, was seen a vial. So far, the workman had prepared a vague imitation of the actual reliquary.

“The vial appeared half full of a stiff grayish paste, which, judging by its surface, seemed to be powdery or granulated. By inclining the case, alternately, from side to side, and shaking it for half a minute, more or less, the paste became liquid and flowing, sometimes only partially so; at other times, it grew hard again, and by shaking it anew it became liquid again.... I remarked beneath the vial two small cones, I do not know of what material, meeting by their points. I was told (by the inventor) that there was a little passage through these points. He said, also, that the cones were hollow, and that, as the lower one was movable, it sometimes happened that its orifice exactly met the orifice of the upper cone, and sometimes did not; this was altogether a matter of chance.... As for the powder which I saw in the vial, I was told that it was an amalgam of mercury, lead, tin, and bismuth; that the bismuth, which amalgamated only imperfectly, hindered the mixture from becoming a pasty lump, and gave it rather the character of a powder too coarse to pass through the little opening which communicated with the cones. Finally, there was hidden, within the case, a circular tube communicating with the lower movable cone, and containing liquid mercury. In shaking the whole irregularly, whenever the openings of the two cones came together, more or less of this mercury made its way into the vial and liquefied the amalgam. It happened sometimes, in these various movements, that the mercury which had entered got out again, and then the amalgam returned to its previous condition and was fluid no longer.”

This is the account which La Condamine has given, after a long and careful private examination, aided by the explanations of the inventor, and which, he tells us, he wrote down the same day. The inventor promised to give him in writing a fuller account, with minute drawings of all the parts; but up to the date of publication (five years later) he had, for some unknown reason, failed to keep the promise.

La Condamine acknowledges that he had never seen the real reliquary, and had never witnessed the true liquefaction at Naples. He thought this substitute just as good.

Had he witnessed the reality, and had he examined it with one-half the care he bestowed on the substitute, he never would have written his report.

I. He would have instantly seen the difference between a true liquefaction—where

II. He would see that this grayish amalgam, in its dry, powdery state, is totally unlike the hard, dark mass of blood in the ampulla, and, in its pretended liquid state, it is equally unlike the liquid blood. In fact, as the mercury enters below and permeates the mass, its silvery gleam may somewhat enliven the dull-grayish hue of the amalgam, but it can present nothing akin to the rubicund, the bright vermilion, or the dark hue of the liquid blood. Nor is there anything like the film which the liquid blood sometimes leaves on the sides of the glass, nor like the frothing, or the ebullition. On all these points, the experiment failed.

III. After sufficient mercury has been introduced to occupy the interstices in the granular mass, any additional supply will lift the particles, separate them, and allow that motion which the inventor passed off for fluidity; and this seeming fluidity becomes greater as the quantity of fluid mercury so introduced for the grains to float in is increased in amount. But the mercury occupies space, and so increase of bulk and increased fluidity must go together. A hardening requires, on the contrary, a withdrawal of the mercury, and is consequently always connected with a decrease of bulk. This is directly contrary to one of the most striking features of the real liquefaction, on which we have already commented at length.

IV. It fails to account for the hardenings and the liquefactions which occur when the reliquary is not in the hands of a chaplain or canon to incline it never so coaxingly, but stands and has been standing for hours, untouched and immovable, on its pedestal on the altar. In this point the imitation again signally fails.

V. What we said of ether, we may almost repeat here concerning the bismuth. This is the important ingredient of the amalgam, the intractableness of which keeps the material in a state of powder or grains. When that is overcome, the whole mass coheres and becomes a hard lump; and the liquefactions, such as they were, are over. Now, bismuth was discoved by Agricola in 1529, centuries after the date when the liquefactions are known to have regularly occurred.

VI. The prying eyes of thousands have never discovered in the reliquary any trace of a circular tube containing mercury, nor of the all-important little hollow cones, meeting by their points. More than once, as we shall see, the reliquary has been in the hands of goldsmiths and skilled workmen. They found nothing of this nor of any other contrivance.

These two of Neumann and San Severo are the chief attempts made to St. Januarius, and they have signally failed. We need not examine, one by one, the various substances which have been proposed as the chemical substance craftily used no this occasion; from the “deep-red sublimate of gold,” which, one tells us, “being easily fusible by the heat of one’s hand, is exhibited by the Neapolitan priests for St. Januarius’s blood,” down to the theory that “the dark-red mass which melts in the ampulla is only a preparation of ice; for everybody knows that in Naples they are more skilful in preparing ices than even in Archangel.” By the way, we suspect that Aulic Councillor Rehfues, a German Protestant traveller, to whom we owe this last explanation, was only making fun of his brother Aulic Councillor Neumann, and of the other theorists, who were proposing, each one, his own guess as to the substance.

Anyway, the fact that the real liquefaction is not caused by the application of heat rules out all these suppositions. The fuller and more accurate our knowledge of chemistry, the more clearly do we realize the truth that all experimental liquefactions are governed by the laws of nature. The more conversant we are with the facts of the real liquefaction, the more clearly do we see that here those laws are set aside. We cannot shut our eyes to the opposition.

Sir Humphry Davy, who witnessed the liquefaction when he visited Naples, and who carefully examined it, made no secret afterwards among his friends of the deep impression it produced on his mind, and of his decided judgment that chemistry, so far as he knew it, could not account for the liquefaction. This may have been one of the causes of that inclination toward the Catholic Church which, from the period of that visit, was manifested by that eminent scholar, and which led him to think seriously, at least, of entering her fold, even if he did not—as some thought he did—carry his purpose into effect before death.

And yet we are asked to believe that, “away back in the dark ages,” those “ignorant monks and priests in Naples” possessed a knowledge of chemistry which enabled them to do this! And, more wonderful still, that they have secretly handed down that knowledge and power, within their own body, and that they continue to this day to effect the liquefaction in some strange way entirely unknown to the scientific world!

We pass on to other views of the question.

This charge of fraud implies that the ampulla is tampered with from time to time; and that those who have charge of it—clergy and laity alike—and especially those who hold it at the time of the liquefaction, are all playing a trick.

Is the ampulla or vial really tampered with? Is it regularly opened for the insertion of some duly prepared material?

The ampulla stands within a case or reliquary, as our figure shows it. The case or reliquary, of silver and of glass, is kept in an Armoire, or closet, wrought in the solid stone wall of the Tesoro chapel, as strong and secure as a bank-vault. This Armoire is closed by metal doors, each secured by two strong locks, with different keys, one set of which is always in the possession of the municipal authorities of the city, the other in that of the archbishop and clergy. They have been so kept for just two hundred and twenty-four years; for we need not take account just now of the previous centuries, when the relics were in the exclusive custody of Tesoro, or strong room, still to be seen in the second story of the cathedral tower. During all these two hundred and twenty-four years, the locks have not been tampered with. The clergy have not charged any one with doing it. The municipal authorities have never suspected it.

Moreover, the reliquary, when brought out, remains exposed to public scrutiny for ten or twelve hours at a time, on eighteen days of each year; and there is no man, woman, or child in Naples, and no stranger in the city, who may not, if so minded, scrutinize it a score of times a day, at less than twelve inches’ distance. Any opening or closing of the case, any taking out or putting in of the vial, would leave some trace of the fact, either in the silver rim, or in the position of the vials within, or at least in the soldering at bottom and at top, which would have to be disturbed, if not broken, each time, and then restored. Among the special industries of Naples are working in jewelry and coral, retouching and repairing paintings, and—we are sorry to say it—fabricating Old Masters. The Neapolitans have eyes for signs and traces like these in question as quick, sharp, and unerring as an Indian on a trail. No change or trace of any tampering has ever been seen by them. The vials are in identically the same inclined position from year to year—the same as represented in engravings a century or two centuries old. The soldering, in which the bottoms and tops are immersed, is hard, old, black, through age, and evidently untouched. The outer case shows no sign of any opening by which a side can be unscrewed or lifted out, so as to allow the vials themselves to be touched. Probably, when originally made, five hundred and fifty or seven hundred years ago, this could have been done. But the screw or the joint has long since rusted, and the whole thing is now one mass of dingy and rusted silver, holding two glass plates.

In the year 1649, Cardinal Ascanio Filomarini was Archbishop of Naples, a man of great culture and taste and of ample private fortune, and much given to the adornment of the churches of his diocese.

The new Tesoro had just been completed, and was shining in all the brilliant splendor of newness. The cardinal thought that the reliquary to contain the vials of the blood, for which the Tesoro had been built, ought to correspond, as the bust did, with the grandeur of the chapel itself. This the dingy old silver reliquary, in which they had been kept for so many centuries, did not do. He determined to replace it by another of gold, of excellent workmanship, and adorned with rich jewels. He had one made “regardless of expense,” and, when all was ready, on September 1, 1649, he came into the Tesoro with some of his clergy and the delegates from the city, and with public notaries, that proper legal record might be made of everything, and with chosen goldsmiths. Are not the names of them all duly recorded? The Armoire was opened, the reliquary was taken to the adjoining sacristy; and there, for several hours, in presence of his eminence and his clergy, and the honorable delegates, “and of us, the undersigned notaries,” the goldsmiths tried and essayed to open the reliquary. They failed and gave it up. They could break the reliquary, if so directed; but they could not open it. Accordingly, the reliquary was locked up again as it had been taken out. The cardinal was a persevering man. He got other goldsmiths, and came a Armoire. The cardinal’s heart was set on using his new grand reliquary on the festival near at hand, the 19th of September. He thought over the matter, again summoned the delegates and the notaries, and on the 16th came, a third time, with his clergy and yet other goldsmiths. A third prolonged trial was made with the same ill-success. The reliquary might be broken, if they wished; it could not be opened. To break it was not to be thought of; that might endanger the precious vials within. So, the old silver reliquary was put up again, that evening, and his eminence was forced to use it on the festival of the 19th for the exposition that year. It has been used ever since. And now, two hundred and twenty-two years later, it was again brought out on the 19th of September in this present year, 1871. The cardinal, it is to be presumed, devoted his rich reliquary to some other pious purpose.

But if his eminence had lived to the age of the olden patriarchs, and had retained it in his possession, he might have at last found a more favorable opportunity for again trying to change that reliquary. On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 5, 1762, one of the glass plates, by dint, of course, of being rubbed for so many hundred years by white handkerchiefs, became somewhat loose in its groove or socket, and threatened to fall inward, endangering the precious vials. Accordingly, early next morning, an hour and a half before the time for the regular exposition (for it was in the May octave), the archbishop of that day, Cardinal Sersale, came with clergy, city delegates, notaries-public, and goldsmiths. The reliquary was taken out of the Armoire, and the glass was fixed again firmly in its place, and the reliquary was returned to its Armoire, before the hour for the public exposition. It does not appear, from the very succinct account we have of the occurrence, whether or not, during the work, the vials or ampullæ were taken out of the reliquary, within which they are held in their places by the old soldering. Nothing is said of this having been done, nor of the soldering being touched and then repaired when they were put back in their places. On the whole, considering the nature of the repair to be done, and that it was done in a few moments at the door of the Armoire, back of the altar, we are inclined to think that they did not find it necessary to move them, and that they were accordingly left untouched in their places.

These are the only occasions on which the diaries say anything bearing on the feasibility of opening this reliquary, or of its being repaired. In the archives of the cathedral, another incident is mentioned, of an ancient date. In the year 1507, nearly a century and a half before the building of the new Tesoro, the relics were kept in the old Tesoro or strong room of the cathedral, a strong vaulted chamber of stone, in the second story of the tower, which rises at the northeast corner of the church. That Tesoro was then approached by a winding stairway. A very aged canon was bringing down the reliquary from the Tesoro to the church for an exposition. At the very first step, he tripped and fell; and the reliquary rolled down, from

We may take these facts as fair evidence that the reliquary is strong, and not very easily opened, and that they who know all about it do not believe that it is or can be regularly opened.

The same conclusion is also forced on us by considerations of an entirely different character. We have already drawn attention to the fact that, whatever the level at which the blood stands when the reliquary is locked up at night, at the close of one exposition—whether at its ordinary level, or somewhat increased, or very much increased, or full—it is invariably found at the same level when taken out the next time for the ensuing exposition, whether that time be next morning or after the lapse of months. The level is one of the points specially noticed and recorded. A variation would necessarily be detected. Yet, if on each one or on very many of the four thousand occasions we have spoken of, the old contents had been privately taken out between the expositions, and a fresh supply put in, would there not have been, not unfrequently, some appreciable inequality of level?

Again, sometimes the blood was hard when put up. How could a hard substance be extracted from a narrow-necked vial of glass without breaking it? According to our tables, on three different occasions the blood, after its usual liquefactions and changes in September, filled the ampulla, and was so locked up at the end of the novena. It was found full and hard in December following, and, not liquefying at all, was again locked up in the same condition. It was found in precisely the same state when the reliquary was again taken out in the May following. Here, on three occasions, the contents of the vial, solid and completely filling it, must have remained unextracted from September to May, seven months. Yet in the May octaves that followed, the liquefactions went on as usual. No freshly inserted compound was necessary for the liquefaction. The same reasoning applies in a measure to the numerous cases in which such a fulness went over, four months and a half, from May to September, or nearly three months, from September to December.

Again, in quite a number of instances, as the same tables show, the condition of the blood, when locked up, is noted as liquid with a floating hard lump, as was the case on the 16th of December, 1870. When it was taken out, the next day, or after several months, though often found entirely hardened, yet not unfrequently—as on the 6th of May, 1871—it was found in precisely the same state in which it had been put up: liquid with a floating hard lump. In all these cases, the condition of the contents of the ampulla is a new and insuperable objection to the supposition that a newly prepared amount of matter had been inserted for the subsequent liquefactions. Did other circumstances allow it, we might conceive a liquid to be poured out of the ampulla, and a fresh liquid to be poured in. But how is the solid hard lump, that would not liquefy, to be got out? And if got out, how is another hard lump to be put in to replace it? Are the constituents of

The more carefully the facts of the case are studied, the more imperatively do they exclude every hypothesis save the simple one which so many other facts corroborate, that no attempt has been made to change the contents of the ampulla. Every- thing about the ampulla excludes the idea that it is regularly tampered with privately between the expositions.

There is still another light in which we must view this charge of fraud. Ever since the opening of the new Tesoro, in 1646, there have been attached to that chapel twelve chaplains and a custos, with inferior attendants as needed. In the cathedral itself, at least from 1496, there have been twenty canons and beneficiaries, besides minor attendants. When the liquefaction takes place in the Tesoro, the reliquary is in the hands of the chaplains, who act in turn, or relieve each other as convenient. When it occurs in the procession or in the cathedral, or in some other church, the reliquary is in the charge of the canons, who similarly relieve each other. Hence, canons and chaplains, all alike, must be cognizant of the fraud, if any there be, and must participate in it. Add to these the archbishops and their vicars-general in Naples since 1496. Add also those clergymen who, having been canons or chaplains, have passed to other dignities, or have retired from their office, but must of course still retain the knowledge of this fraud, if they once possessed it. We may say that there have been on an average, at all times, forty ecclesiastics, if not more, who had cognizance of the fraud, if there were any. The dignity of canon of the cathedral or chaplain of the Tesoro is ordinarily reached only after years of meritorious service in the lower grades of the ministry. Hence the canons and chaplains are usually men of mature and advanced age. We can scarcely give them more than fifteen years of average life. We have thus about a thousand clergymen since A.D. 1500, all charged with being cognizant of and participators in the fraud.

Now, what was the character of those men? Those among whom they lived, and who knew them, respected them as a body of men devoted to the service of God, pure and exemplary ecclesiastics, proved by years spent in the zealous works of the ministry. Some were men of honorable and noble families; others were men distinguished in the walks of literature and science; some had sacrificed all the world promised them, in order to spend their lives in the sanctuary. Some were revered in life, and remembered after death, as pre-eminently true servants of God, men of prayer, of strong faith, and of singularly pure and saintly lives. Of course, individuals here or there may indeed have been wicked or hypocritical. But this testimony of the people to their character must have been true of the great body.

Is it possible that no one of them ever repented, even in the presence of death, and sought to save his soul, and to make reparation, by disclosing the fraud and arresting the evil? Could all have chosen to die impenitent, with the certainty of everlasting damnation before them, rather than reveal the blasphemous and, to them, henceforth useless trick? The thing is impossible.

Again, men, even though good and pious, may be garrulous. All men have their unguarded moments. How came it that the secret never leaked out from any one of them during all these years?

Again, among so many there must have been men wicked, avaricious, passionate, revengeful. How comes it that no one sought to make money by revealing the secret; that no one declared it through anger; that no one did so in retaliation when he was punished by his ecclesiastical superiors?

Nay, more, we fear that instances might be found in which, toward the close of the last century, some of them were carried away by the irreligious mania then prevailing, and became the companions of infidels, if not themselves infidels. And unless our memory is at fault, one or two yielded to the blandishments and the privileges of Protestantism. How comes it that, through such, the world has not learned how this antiquated trick is actually done? Obviously, they had no disclosure to make. This is the only possible answer.

There is still more to be said on this point. The civil authorities of Naples are, and have been for two hundred and twenty-four years, joint custodians with the archbishop and clergy of the Tesoro chapel and of the relics of St. Januarius. They keep one set of the keys of the Armoire, or closet, which can never be opened save in the presence of one of their members, whom they send as a delegate, and whose sworn duty it is never to lose sight of the reliquary until it is placed in its closet, and he assists in duly locking it up. During these two hundred and twenty-four years, Naples has again and again changed masters. Austrians, Lombards, Spaniards, and French—Bourbon, Imperial, and Republican—have held, as the Piedmontese now hold, the city, which in fact has oftener been ruled by strangers than by Neapolitans. These rulers have been men of every character, from the best to the worst; often rough, ruthless soldiers, who brooked no opposition, and were ever ready with the sword; often keen, crafty civilians, ready to cajole, to bribe, and to deceive, and thoroughly practised to detect plots and ferret out hidden things; sometimes professed infidels and avowed enemies of all religion; oftener political enemies of the Neapolitan clergy, whose hearts, of course, were with their own oppressed people. How comes it that none of these rulers at any time have ever discovered and made known the fraud?

Can we suppose that those rulers, ill-disposed as they often were toward the clergy, could or would sacrifice their own interests, their policy, their jealousies, and their personal feeling, in order to co-operate in a fraud, the success of which would certainly be less agreeable, perhaps

Would not the French infidels, in 1799, have gladly put this stigma on the odious cause of Christianity?

And, in these present years, would not Ratazzi, Garibaldi, and their party gladly do it if they could? What a triumph it would be for them if they could strike this blow at “clericalism”—a blow far more effective than fining, imprisoning, or exiling bishops and priests and religious! They would glory in doing it if it were possible. What holds them back? There are no limits to their hatred or to their powers of calumny. They are ever denouncing the ignorance and the blind superstition of priests and people. But the very gist and copiousness of their invectives prove that they themselves know and feel that the priests and people are alike sincere. It is the depth and earnestness of that sincerity which excites their rage.

Brought face to face, in Naples, with this manifestation of the supernatural, the civil government, whatever the political circumstances and whatever the private character of individual members of it, have always seemed struck with awe, and have never failed in respect. Nay, more, they have ever claimed and exercised their privilege of sending their delegate to intervene in the exposition.

And so, after all, on the 19th of this last September, as in times past, they did send a delegate, with his scarlet embroidered bag, and the two antique keys chained together; and the doors of the Armoire were opened; and the relics were reverently taken out and carried to the altar; and the blood was seen to be hard; and the clergy and the crowd prayed and waited for the miracle; “and, after eight minutes of prayer, the hard mass became entirely liquid.”

There is an anecdote current in the world on this subject which we have heard cited as peremptory against much of what we have just said. The anecdote, in passing from mouth to mouth, has become so vague and so full of variations that we would scarcely know how to present it, had we not found a precise and quasi authoritative form of it in the columns of the Coryphæus of French infidelity, the Siècle of Paris of the date of October 11, 1856:

“The history of Championnet did some damage to the miracle of St. Januarius in the minds of a great many. In 1799, the French army was in Naples, where it had been well received at first.... On the 6th of May, the crowd filled the chapel of the cathedral.... For more than half an hour the priest had been turning backward and foward, on his hands, the round silver lantern with two faces of glass within which is preserved the precious blood in a small vial. The little reddish mass would not quit its state of solidity.... The exasperated populace commenced to attribute the stubbornness of San Gennaro to the presence of the French. There was danger of a tumult, when an aid hastened to notify General Championnet of the suspicious conduct of the saint. In a few moments the aid returned, approached the priest politely, and said a few words in his ear. What he did say is not precisely known, but he had scarcely said it when the blood at once liquefied, to the great joy of the people, who at last had their miracle.”