Part 2 — HOW I LEARNED LATIN.

When I was young, I travelled a good deal, but travel then was very different from what it is now. My travelling was all obligatory, it was on business, and I sometimes found myself detained in places from which I would gladly have taken a quick departure. It happened once that, during my tour through France, I had to stay a Sunday at Lyons. The stages on Saturday were few, and did not suit me, and of course it was against my principles to travel on the “Sabbath.” I had been brought up a very strict Presbyterian, and was very particular, especially in a foreign country, about attending service. I could hardly speak any French, which perhaps you will think strange, since I had business to transact in France, but my business was with English and American houses and their agents. You know, too, in my time young people did not learn French as they do now, any more than young ladies learned to play on the piano. But I was determined I would go to church, and so set about finding out whether there was any English-speaking clergyman in Lyons. I could not find any, and, when I inquired after a church, I was deafened and confused by the number of St. Marys’, St. Monicas’, St. Vincents’, St. Josephs’, that were pointed out to me. If it had not been the “Sabbath,” I think I should have been tempted to swear at the whole calendar and its Lyons representatives. I asked for a Protestant church. “Oh! yes,” said one (all the others looked blank), “there is a ‘temple’ (so they call them in France) in such and such a street,” naming it, and giving me directions by which I could not fail to discover it. I started, fearing I should be late. I had heard that the French Protestant religion was not unlike the Presbyterian, but I had never been to one of its churches before, having always been luckily within reach of some church where my own tongue was used. At last I found my “temple,” and got in, rather behind time, to be sure. The people were singing. The church—meeting-house, I should say—was bare and whitewashed, large square windows lighted it with a painful exuberance of brightness, the seats were stiff and uncomfortable. I could not understand one word, and thought the voices rather nasal. The congregation sat down and the minister got up. This evidently meant a sermon. I tried hard to fix my mind on some Bible texts I knew by heart, so as to prevent my thoughts from wandering. As the preacher went on, his voice droning into my ear, I caught myself wondering whether I were in the right place after all, and whether his doctrine was the same as mine. I could not tell what he might be saying, but, of course, the hymns must be all right. I took up a hymn-book, and tried to make out from their analogy to some English words what these French words could mean. I could see the name of “Jesus” pretty often, and could make out “Saviour” too, but that was about all. The sermon was very long, and I was hardly quite awake at the end. Then the people sang again, and a harmonium joined in from somewhere. When it was all over, I felt very dissatisfied, and somehow it did not seem to me as if I had been to church at all. I lost my way going back to my hotel, and happened to pass one of the “saints’” multitudinous shrines, just as the Catholic congregation were coming out. An acquaintance of mine, a young Englishman, was among them. He came across the street and shook hands.

“Why, where have you dropped from?” he said.

“From church,” I answered.

“What church?” he asked, rather blankly.

“The Protestant ‘temple,’ of whatever religion that may be,” I said, not in the best of humors. I told him my whole adventure, whereat he seemed very serious.

“My dear fellow,” he said at last, “have you not often heard us Catholics abused for all sorts of mummeries, for muttering and mumbling in an unknown tongue, for bowing and scraping, and popping down, suddenly on one knee, and so forth?”

“Of course I have,” I said.

“Well, and what do you think of what you saw in the French Presbyterian church, this morning?”

“Think! I simply think it was unintelligible.”

“Well, say, quite as unintelligible as our Latin, for instance?”

“Yes, but not for the Frenchmen who were there.”

“But if those Frenchmen had been in a Presbyterian church in America, they would have been as badly off as you were this morning. And if both you and they went to a German church, as Calvinistic as you could wish and as like your own in belief, would not you and your French friends be all at sea, as the saying is?”

“Exactly so; but what are you driving at?”

“Only this: that, when you go to the church, and know that the people believe pretty much as you do, you would like, I think, to be able to join in their devotions, and not feel yourself left out in the cold, as if you were a heathen or a Mormon, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course; but it can’t be helped.”

“I tell you it can, my dear fellow. Look at us, millions and millions of Catholics, all believing the same doctrine, all going to the same ceremonies, and taking part in the same devotions, because we have only one language for our services, one language that is spoken in Canton, in San Francisco, in London, in Africa, everywhere where a Catholic altar is put up and a Catholic priest says Mass.”

“There is some convenience in that, I’ll grant you.”

“I tell you, my friend, when I come to a foreign city and find everything strange and feel very lonely in the hurrying crowd that has not one idea in common with me, I just find out a Catholic church as quick as I can, and hear Mass. See if every worshipper does not become a brother then, and if one’s feelings don’t change! I take my chair, put it where I like, open my book, and follow the same old prayers that I heard long ago in little poky chapels in England. I feel quite at home.”

“Well, it is pleasant: but that is not all one wants.”

“But is it not a great deal? What do you think of a religion that meets you everywhere, just the same, dear old familiar faith, never changing among the mandarins of China, the Red Indians of your own territories, the blacks of South Africa, and the traders of London and Birmingham? Don’t you call it comfortable, homely, to say the least?”

“Yes, but I suspect it is all sentimentalism: you like the sound of the old words, but you don’t really understand them. A baby would like the same cooing it was used to at home, supposing it got lost and picked up somewhere, but there would be no sense in the cooing, for all that.”

“But, my dear fellow, we do understand our Latin. All of us who can read have the translation of it plainly printed alongside of the text in our books of devotion, and the greater part we are already familiar with on account of its being taken from the Gospels and the Psalms.”

“No, really? Is that so indeed?”

“Indeed it is. And, now, what do you think of this? You see the priest ‘pop down suddenly on one knee, and pop up again,’ as you would put it. Well, he has been saying, ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ Is not that in the Bible, in St. John’s Gospel? Of course you are well up in texts, you know where that is. And, again, when you see the priest beat his breast three times, and you call out ‘Superstition!’ do you know what he is saying? ‘Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof; but say the word, and my soul shall be healed.’ Is not that in the Bible (with the substitution of ‘soul’ for ‘servant’), where the centurion begs our Lord to cure his servant? And so on through the greater part of the Mass. When you see the priest wash his hands, he repeats a whole Psalm, the Twenty-fifth; and at the very beginning, when you see him stand at the foot of the steps, he is also repeating a Psalm, the Forty-third. Further on he repeats the ‘Our Father,’ and there are other parts of the Mass, whose names would only confuse you, which change according to the ecclesiastical seasons, but are always exclusively composed of Scripture texts, aptly chosen for the different solemnities of the year. So, you see, we know all about what we hear said in Latin.”

“Well, you surprise me; all that mumbling seemed to me so childish.”

“Do you think these Frenchmen childish when they speak their own tongue, and do their business in it, and their courting, and their literature?”

“Well, no, of course that would be absurd.”

“And the Italians, the Germans, the Greeks, the Spaniards, don’t they all talk foreign languages, yet you don’t think them childish, or call their conversation mumbling?”

“No; I simply say I am sorry I cannot understand them.”

“Then don’t you see that as a Catholic you would be even better off, for though the Latin would be a foreign language, yet you would understand it?”

“Certainly, if all you say is true, the Latin is by no means a bad contrivance.”

“Do you know that, up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at least, most books were written in Latin, no matter to what country the author might belong, and that till even later than that all law business was transacted in Latin all over the civilized world?”

“Was it indeed? Well, I have learnt something this morning, and it is really worth thinking over.”

“Come this afternoon to St. Vincent’s, and I will show you at Vespers how well every one understands the service.”

“All right! agreed.”

And so we parted, and in the afternoon my English friend and I went to a Catholic church, and sat down among a crowd of very attentive worshippers, all of whom were reading their prayer-books. My friend opened his, and pointed out the Psalm the choir was singing; it was one I knew very well: “The Lord said to my Lord.” The people about us were all French; their books had the same Latin Psalm on one column as my friend’s book showed, while the French translation was in the place of the English one which he had on the opposite page. Many of the congregation were singing alternately with the choristers at the altar. My friend sang too; he did not mumble, but said the words distinctly, so that I heard each syllable, though I could not understand the meaning. He gave me his book presently, and chanted by heart. As we came out, there was a group of dark-skinned men, talking eagerly near the door. They were Spaniards; they too seemed quite at home. The next day, I was curious enough to go to Low Mass with my friend; as the ceremony went on, he showed me every word, and made me follow everything, even the introit, collects, gradual, communion, which he looked out for me in a missal he had with him. I was puzzled by all these names then, though they are A B C to me now. My friend had to leave in a day or two, but I had bought a book like his in the meanwhile at an English library, and continued through curiosity to go to the different Catholic services, just to assure myself that the Latin was not gibberish. It struck me as strange that three-quarters of the prayers should be my own Bible texts!

Well, to make a long story short, I left Lyons soon after, and travelled to many other places, European and Asiatic. At last one day I was in Canton, in high spirits, for I was to go home soon and be a partner in the firm whose foreign business I had been managing. Sunday came, and I went to church; I was just as anxious as ever about my Sunday duties, but somehow it was not for a Presbyterian church that I was looking. I knew my way very well to my church, and my church had a cross on its gable end, and was called “The Church of the Holy Childhood.” There were plenty of Chinese there, a few English, a few Americans, and a good many French people. They all had the Latin on one page of their books, and their respective languages on the opposite page. But I did not need to look at my English translation, for I knew the Latin by heart now. I am sorry to say I had distractions, and during one of them I suddenly perceived my old friend of Lyons. When Mass was over, I went to him and called him by name; he stared and did not recognize me; we had never met since, and I had a beard of many years’ growth. I told him my name, and asked him if he had forgotten St. Vincent’s Church at Lyons? I can tell you we had a good long talk over the past, and he congratulated me heartily, while I thanked him eagerly for the best lesson I ever learned in my life.

And that, boys, was how I learned Latin.

But I have only told you about one reason which our church has for keeping to the Latin tongue; that particular reason struck me most, because it was through that I was converted; but of course, when I came to examine things thoroughly, I learnt all about the other very good reasons assigned by the church for this practice. You know how modern languages are always changing, and how the same word will mean a different thing in two separate centuries; there is the word “prevent,” for instance, which now means to hinder, but which formerly was used in the Anglican liturgy in its Latin sense, to succor and to help. Well, it would not do for the dogmas or the rites of the church to be subject to these apparent changes, which would lead most likely to misunderstandings and perhaps heresies, so the church chose to fix her liturgy in a language whose rules and construction undergo no alteration from century to century. You know the law, also, has Latin terms, probably used for the same reason. Then, besides, it is not necessary for the people to be able to join in the absolute words of the Mass and other services, provided they join heartily in the intention of the sacrifice and prayers. As I have told you already, the fact is that most Catholics do understand the words themselves, and not very imperfectly; still, the theory remains that such comprehension (which after all is more a grammatical accomplishment than a devout necessity) is not absolutely required. If it were otherwise, you see, the doctrine of intention would suffer. In the old days, the Hebrews—on whose ritual all non-Catholics claim to take their stand, or by which at least they measure their standard of adequate worship—used to stand outside the temple, where they could neither see nor hear, though they knew that by their presence alone they were participating in the sacrifice and receiving the blessing attached to it. Then, again, we forgot, when as Protestants we used to object to the Latin liturgy, that the Catholic ceremony of Mass is essentially a sacrifice offered to God for the people, the priest being the sole representative of the people and interceding in their name. Long ago, at the English court of the Plantagenet kings. French was the language universally spoken, while the Saxons, the subjects, adhered to their own tongue. The petitions of the people were offered to the king in the language of the court, that is, French; but the result was identical with that which would have been the consequence had the prayer been in a tongue the people could understand. So in the church it is sufficient for God to hear the petition of his children; they themselves would not be benefited the more for understanding every word of the pleading of the priest. The things that are said to us, not for us, the sermons and instructions which are to explain God’s will and our duty to us, are always in the tongue common to each particular country; and when there is a large foreign settlement in a town, it has a church of its own where such instruction is administered. Look at this large city of New York: have we not German churches and a French church besides our English-speaking churches? The Mass is identically the same in each, but for those who are to be taught the language is varied according to their nationality. And so for all offices which the priests perform toward us, as, for instance, confession. In the great church of which you have all heard, St. Peter’s at Rome, there are confessionals where priests of every nation are ever ready to receive and console the sinners of every clime, while above each box is plainly written “For the English,” “For the Spaniards,” “For the French,” “For the Germans,” “For the Greeks,” “For the Poles,” etc., etc. So, you see, the church, after all, is quite as wise as she is loving, and indicates her claim to be our mother in every way. Take my advice, and always look well into things before you condemn them; for, if I had done so when a boy, I should have saved myself a great deal of trouble in getting rid of prejudices which every year increased and deepened, till it needed a miracle of the grace of God to strip the tightening garment they were wrapping round my fettered soul.