Volume 27 — CONRAD AND WALBURGA. CHAPTER III. (continued 2)

“Do you know who that fellow is?”

“What fellow?”

“That long-eared, long-legged jackass who took that railing as if he was at school.”

“I never saw him before.”

“You’ll see him again. I lay seven to two. And I’ll take the odds that he tells you that he’s Grey Seymour, whatever that may be; that he’s over his long ears in love with a Miss Hattie Finche, whom he followed here from Martha’s Vineyard; and that she has five hundred thousand dollars.”

“I suppose that one of the ladies in the pony-carriage was Miss Hattie Finche?”

“The whip—yaas.”

“I wonder can she be a daughter of Wilson Finche, of New York?”

“The tallow-man, Beaver Street and Fifth Avenue?”

“Ay, and Chicago and ’Frisco,” I added.

“That’s the identical geranium.”

“And is Wilson Finche in Newport?”

“He has taken a cottage on the Ocean Drive for the season.”

“I must look him up.”

“Are you acquainted with him?” the languor of manner disappearing, and a vivid interest rushing to the front.

“Very well indeed.”

“And with his daughter?”

“Why, certainly.”

“Stop a minute!” fumbling in his breast coat-pocket. “You’ll introduce me.”

The coolness of this proposition 519actually staggered me. Introduce a man of whose name even I was in total ignorance!

“I could not venture to do such a thing,” I responded somewhat gruffly. I did not relish the idea of being treated in this off-hand way—of being openly and deliberately made a cat’s-paw.

“Oh! yes, you will. Here’s my card. Let’s have one of yours,” thrusting his pasteboard almost into my reluctant hand.

With very considerable deliberation I searched for my double eye-glass hidden away somewhere in the depths of my capacious waistcoat—I was fat, and fair, and fifty-five at that date—and, carefully wiping it with a scarlet silk handkerchief, adjusted it to my eyes and read:

Mr. Herbert Price,

Temple, London, E. C.

“Let’s have your card,” said Mr. Price, as though I were a tradesman with whom it pleased his high mightiness to have dealings.

“I am not in the habit of”—

“There, now, you’re going to put me aside. Where’s the use? Why wouldn’t you help a poor hungry, briefless English barrister to this piece of gilded gingerbread? You’re not going for her yourself?”

Oho! I inwardly chuckled.

“Not much. I have seen too many of my peers wrecked upon the rock-bound coast of matrimony to permit my argosy within those shallow and treacherous waters.”

“I guessed you were a bachelor,” observed Price facetiously.

“And might I ask, sir, how you were led to imagine this?” I felt curious to hear what the fellow would say.

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Smith.”

“I am not Mr. Smith.”

“Well, Mr. Jones.”

“I am not Jones.”

“Robinson.”

“Your pertinacity, sir, ought to make your fortune at the Old Bailey.”

“Well said, Thompson. Now, you wish me to tell you how I guessed you were a bachelor. Firstly,” putting up his finger and tapping it with his cigar, “your general complacency; secondly, your linen—no married man ever commands the linen of a bachelor; thirdly, your gaiters—such fit, such polish!—fourthly, your isolation; and, fifthly, the methodical way in which you do everything, from lighting a cigar to playing a fantasia on your handkerchief with your nasal organ.”

“I am not aware that I am more methodical than other men of my age and habits.”

“Are’n’t you? Then just watch yourself.”

“You are a very peculiar specimen of your country, Mr. Price.”

“I can return you the compliment; and as one good turn deserves another, you’ll introduce me to Miss Finche.”

“You must excuse me, Mr. Price.”

“But I won’t.”

“I beg to differ from you.”

“We shall see.”

“We shall.”

Mr. Price rose and quitted the piazza, returning after a brief absence.

“Now, Mr. John V. Crosse, of Lexington Avenue, New York, as you say in this queer country, I have posted myself. You are confoundedly rich, living on your dollars, and are not a half-bad sort of elderly gentleman.”

“May I ask to whom I am indebted for this portrait, sir?”

Somehow or other I couldn’t 520get up a feeling of anger. I tried, but it wouldn’t come.

“The clerk inside. I know you now, and you know me. I am the son of Sir Harvey Price, of Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, in Kent. The Moat is about one of the last of the Tudor residences in England. We have been in that one corner since the battle of Hastings, and the Moat has never run dry since Queen Bess visited us, when the waters were turned off and red wine turned on. I am the sixth son, and poor as a sixth son ought to be. I was sent to the bar because I had an uncle on the bench. My uncle died while I was keeping my terms. I am an honor-man of Oxford, and last year my brief-book showed one hundred and fifty pounds. About ten weeks ago my godmother died; she left me five hundred pounds. I paid my tailor just enough to maintain a doubtful confidence in me, my boot-maker ditto. Like an able general, who always prepares beforehand for a retreat—although Wellington, our best man, failed to do this at Waterloo, having the forest of Soignies at his back—I have paid for the rent of my chambers in advance. I have come here just to ascertain for myself if red Indians are to be met with on Broadway, and buffalos to be potted on Fifth Avenue. This is the story, and here is the man. Will you introduce me to Miss Finche now?”

I must confess that the story, brief though it was, and told in a short, sharp, jerky way, somewhat interested me. I had no reason to doubt it, and yet I was too old in the devious paths of the world to accept either the narrative or the man at sight. Surely, if he were so well connected, he should be able to obtain letters of introduction to some persons in society, and then it would be plain sailing enough for him.

“You won’t take me on trust?” he exclaimed after I had said as much to him.

“I have arrived at that time of life, Mr. Price, when I take nothing on trust. I must know my butcher, my baker, my wine merchant, my boot-maker, et hoc genus omne.”

“Never mind,” he gaily cried. “You’ll be sorry by and by, when you see me engaged to Miss Finche.”

“You seem to have a tolerably strong belief in your powers of—”

“Audacity. You are right. Toujours de l’audace. I am a man of a single idea; the idea at present on my groove of thought is the gold Finche. The lion in my path is Grey Seymour. If he were poor I wouldn’t have a chance; but he has millions, and money doesn’t fall in love with money. Your heiress always spoons on a pauper, while your aurati juvenes go in for penniless governesses. Ne c’est pas, mon vieux? Give us a match. I’ll go and take a swim; and you go and call on Wilson Finche. His direction is—stay; I’ll write it down for you. There!” he exclaimed, handing me a card: “‘Wilson Finche, Esquire, Sea View Cottage, The Cliff.’ You’ll find him at home now, Crosse, and in that beatific condition which is the outcome of a Château Lafitte of the ’54 vintage. Adios!”

Obeying the mandate of this very peculiar young man, I strolled down to The Cliff.

The wide sea heaved and plashed beneath me with a dull, dulcet murmur. Away out on its unruffled bosom lay great patches of 521purple, denoting the passage of some fleecy cloud onwards, ever onwards. White sails dotted the deep green sea like daisies on a dappled field. The shingle caressed by the wooing wavelets was red and brown, while the wave-kissed pebbles flashed in the sunlight. Boats like specks were drawn up on the beach, and sailors were busy with sails and cordage and the impedimenta of their craft.

Finche’s marine residence stood boldly prominent, all corners and gables like an old cocked hat. It was new and pert-looking, and wore the air of a coquette in a brand-new toilette from Worth’s. A ribbon border of glowing scarlet geraniums led from the lich-gate to the Queen Anne porch, whereon sat, or lay, or reclined—it was all three—my old friend, his body in one of those chairs which invalid passengers on ocean steamers much affect, to the envy of all who do not possess the luxury, his feet on a camp-stool, beside him a small marble-topped table, whereon stood a bottle of claret, a crystal glass of wafer-like thinness, and a box of cigars. Price had spoken wisely.

After the usual exclamations of greeting had dried up I complimented Finche on the beauty of the location.

“Yes, sir; it costs money, but what’s money if you don’t get value for it? Thompson—you know Thompson, of Brand & Thompson—that man, sir, has four millions, sir, and what value does he take out of it, sir? A back-room in Thirteenth Street; a breakfast at a foul-smelling restaurant, sir; a five-minute dinner at Cable’s; an unhealthy supper at another restaurant, and half a dozen of newspapers. That’s what he has for his four millions.”

“You are wiser in your generation, Finche.”

“I am wise in this way, sir”—Finche is very sententious, and his shirt-collar is always troubling him—“I must have value for my money. One hundred cents for my dollar is good enough for me. If, sir, I can get one hundred and fifty, so much the better; but, sir, I never take ninety, or ninety-five, sir, or ninety-and-nine, sir. Help yourself to that claret—it’s a Nat Johnson, sir; I paid twenty-five dollars a case for it in the year ’70. It’s value for the money, sir, I tell you.”

“You are here with your Lares and Penates,” I observed, after some further remarks upon the value of the surroundings.

“What do you mean, sir?” Finche is as ignorant as a chimpanzee.

“Your household gods.”

“Yes, sir. I am here with my daughter and my wife. My daughter gets value, sir, in the hops at the Ocean House, and the nice society she meets with—real bang-up swells, sir. My wife gets value out of the salt water, sir—health, sir, which improves her body and her temper, sir. She is a quick-tempered woman is Mrs. Finche, and when she’s ill, sir, she’s ugly.”

At this moment the pony phaeton which I had observed from the piazza of the hotel dashed up to the lich-gate.

“My daughter and her friend, Miss Neville, an English girl, sir, of a very high family, poor as cheap claret, sir, but proud as a coupon, sir. She’s on a visit to us, but we get value out of her. She sings lovely, sir; you shall hear her. It entertains our swell friends, and thus we strike a balance. The tall one is my daughter, sir.”

522I saw a slim but well-proportioned figure, clad in a rich black silk dress, the cut of which, even to my masculine eyes, betrayed the hand of an artist; a face, though not beautiful by any means, earnest and interesting, surmounted by a profusion of little fair curls, arranged, as was the fashion, so as to conceal the forehead; a picturesque hat, a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and upon the whole a person decidedly “fetching.” Her companion was petite, and constructed, as they say of saucy steamers, upon the most perfect lines. She was a clear brunette, and as she swept somewhat haughtily past the glowing ribbon borders I bethought me of Cleopatra, and the passage down the Cydnus of that boat which wrecked the fortunes of the luckless Antony.

Of course I gazed at the possessor of five hundred thousand dollars, as the “penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree” counted for nothing.

“Hattie, this is my old friend, Mr. Crosse, of Noo York, who has come to Newport to take some value out of the summer-time.”

Miss Finche was very gracious, presenting me with a hand encased in a glove of many buttons, and flashing a row of magnificent teeth between each smile.

“Are you a ‘cottager,’ Mr. Crosse?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Are you at the Ocean or the Acquednuk?”

“The Ocean.”

“The other is quieter.”

“There is better value at the Ocean, Hattie,” observed her father.

“One sees everybody worth seeing there. Isn’t the piazza charming, Mr. Crosse?”

“Of its kind, yes; but I would prefer a little of this,” sweeping the horizon with my hand.

“It is very beautiful,” said a sweet, low voice by my side, a voice that “chimed” into my ear—I can use no other word. It was Miss Neville who spoke.

“There is great value to be got out of that view at sunset, sir—yellows and reds, sir, that would set up a painter, if he could only fetch up to the right color and give good value to the buyer.”

Miss Neville imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders, while I winced at this commercial view of marine painting. I wondered what Mr. Hook, R.A., or my rising young friend Mr. Quartly would have said to the man of tallow.

“Hattie, another bottle of this wine, although it’s a pity to drink it on a hot day; one doesn’t get the value out of it. Get into the house, girls; I want to have a talk with my friend Crosse here. What is Bullandust going to do in Lake Shores?” addressing me.

I protested.

“Finche,” I said, “I’ve come down here for sea, and sky, and trees, and dolce far niente.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Well, loafing,” I laughed.

“There an’t no value to be got out of that.”

“Isn’t there, though? And I mean to drop Wall Street, and scrip, and shares, and every sort of business. I won’t even look at a newspaper till I choose to go back.”

“You an’t in earnest?” said my host, gazing at me in solemn astonishment.

“A fact, upon my honor.”

“Well, that—say, there’s some one saluting. It’s not me—I don’t know the man. It must be a friend of yours, sir.”

523I adjusted my double glass and gazed towards the lich-gate.

A slight sense of shock vibrated through my system. Leaning upon the gate, and nodding at me like a Chinese mandarin, was Mr. Herbert Price, Temple, London, E. C.

“You seem to be having a good time there, my friend,” he gaily cried.

What could I say? What could I do?

“It’s awfully hot for walking.”

“Won’t you step in, sir?” said Finche.

I could not say, Don’t ask this man. Of course a gossip and a glass of wine, and a mere formal introduction to Finche, meant nothing.

“His name’s Price,” I hurriedly whispered—“stopping at Ocean House—London barrister—don’t know him.” Whether these last three words were lost upon Finche or not it is impossible to determine, inasmuch as he took no notice of them whatever.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Price. Any friend of my friend Mr. Crosse is welcome here, sir. Get a chair. Take that other one, sir, with the back to it; you’ll get more value out of it. That’s my principle—take value out of everything. A glass of wine, sir? It’s a Château Lafitte that cost me twenty-five dollars a case in ’70, sir. Touch that gong, sir!”

A servant appeared in obedience to the tocsin.

“Ask Miss Finche to send me another bottle of this wine, then take the empty bottle. Put it carefully by, Mary, as all the bottles have to go back after I have taken the value out of them, which I guess I do,” with a chuckle.

“Did you walk down, Mr. Crosse?” asked Price.

“Yes.” I was on the borderland of indignation. I felt foolish—checkmated.

“You had no difficulty in finding the place.”

“I can always find my friend’s house, Mr. Price.”

“You were dull enough about it on the piazza when we were speaking about Mr. Finche. What a glorious spot you have here! It reminds me of Devonshire. Ah! you American millionaires know how to live.”

“We try to get value out of the world.”

“And you succeed. Your good health, Mr. Finche. Ah!” smacking his lips, “that is wine. What a superb thing to sit beneath one’s vine or fig-tree, drink such nectar as this, and to be able to—pay for it!” with a light laugh.

“You are from London, sir, my friend Crosse tells me.”

I could have flung the contents of my glass into Finche’s face. Price would perhaps think I had been singing his praises.

“Yes, I hail from that little village on the Thames.”

“A lawyer?”

“One of the briefless. I did not choose the profession, I assure you. Like my first frock, it was chosen for me, and I was thrust into it bon gré mal gré. I’ll tell you who I am and what I am. I have told my friend Crosse already.” And he summed up the case, much in the same words as he had addressed to me.

Finche was impressed by the mention of the title, and deeply interested in a detailed description of the Moat.

“I am happy to meet you, sir, and should be glad to visit Sir Harvey Price at Holten Moat when I go to England next year, sir. Do you purpose taking much value out of this country, sir?”

524Price actually winked at me, and that wink spoke the following words:

“I mean to take five hundred thousand dollars if I can.”

A bell sounded.

“Supper, gentlemen!” said Finche. “Let us get in. No ceremony here, Mr. Price. We have no Moats for three hundred years in our family, although we see them every day in our neighbor’s eye—ha! ha!”

It would never do to have this pickpocket, for aught I knew to the contrary, enter beneath my friend’s roof under the very peculiar circumstances of the case. Had he been an ordinary travelling acquaintance it would not have much mattered, but a penniless adventurer bent upon matrimonial designs—never!

“Mr. Price and I are going back to the Ocean House,” I said in my sternest tone, and in a manner so marked as to bear but the one interpretation.

“What do I hear, Mr. Crosse?” exclaimed Miss Finche, emerging from the interior, arrayed in a bewitching toilette of fleecy white and delicate lilac.

“My dear, this is—”

“I beg your pardon, Finche, but could I—” I burst in.

“This is Mr. Price, of London, a friend of—”

“Finche, I may as well”— But the pompous old ass would have his bray, and Price was conversing with Hattie Finche ere I could utter the words of explanation that were ready to spring from my lips.

“Gentlemen, you would like to wash your hands. Just step up to my sanctum. Tompkins” (to a servant), “show these gentlemen to my sanctum.”

When the door had closed upon us, “Mr. Price,” I said, “do you call this fair?”

“Everything is fair in love.”

“Bosh, sir! You find in me a man unwilling to wound the feelings of another. I have gained nothing by acting the part of a gentleman.”

“I deny that!” his coat off, his head deep in the marble basin. “You’ve made me your friend for life.”

“And who might you be?”

“I’ve told you. See, now,” his hands dripping, “here,” plunging one of them into the breast-pocket of his coat, which was lying on a bed—“here’s a ten-pound note; spend every shilling of it in cablegrams. You have my own, you have my father’s address. Wire him, wire anybody you like, you’ll have your reply to-morrow. My story will be corroborated in every particular. That ought to satisfy you.”

I shook my head.

“Time with me is money. This fellow, Grey Seymour, is to meet her to-morrow at a garden-party at Mrs. Dyke Howell’s. His millions will come into play, and such heavy artillery will sweep my rusty flint-locks into ash-barrels. A duel with artillery is all very well, but when the batteries are all on one side one side wins. My chances depend on what running I can make to-night. I can talk to women as few men can. It is my faculty. I know where to reach them, and how. It is nascitur non fit with me. I don’t go on Doctor Johnson’s idea of making an idiot of a girl’s understanding by flattery. That is false in theory, false in practice. Now, you are not half bad. Stand by me,” placing his hand on my shoulder, “and, by George! I’ll do something for you yet.”

525He was thoroughly in earnest, and hang me if I could refuse him. I suppose it was my bounden duty to have done so. Common sense and common prudence nudged me ere I took his proffered hand, but, heedless of the whisperings of still, small voices, I permitted myself to go with the tide. It was treating my friend Finche badly; it was placing myself in a false, if not a worse, position; and yet—I could not utter that absurdly small word “no.”

The morrow would tell its own tale, for I had resolved upon telegraphing without the assistance of Mr. Price’s ten-pound note, and a few hours could do no possible harm. If Miss Finche were to lose her heart in the space of an evening, she would prove a very noteworthy exception to the great sisterhood to which she belonged.

The addition to her dinner table did not seem to please Mrs. Finche, an emaciated, waspish, red-nosed lady, whose thin lips had an unpleasant twitch in them, and whose bright, beady black eyes darted angrily hither and thither like a pair of beetles in search of prey.

I sat next to her; opposite to me Miss Neville; Finche was at the foot of the table; on his right my friend Price, on his left the heiress.

“What brings you to this fashionable place, Mr. Crosse?” asked mine hostess, the inference being “plain to the naked eye.”

“Well, I thought I’d like to take a peep at the gay goings-on.”

“Ah!” an icy chill in the monosyllable.

Mrs. Finche being very silent, and, if not silent, snappish, I directed my conversation to Miss Neville, whom I found to be absolutely charming. I had travelled a good deal, and, from the loneliness of my life, read about as much as ordinary men, and I discovered, to my most intense pleasure, that there was at least one young girl in the nineteenth century the possessor of ideas above the level of sweet things in sheathe-like costumes, or the latest methods for beautifying the human face divine.

Miss Neville was thoroughbred, and all unconsciously showed her lustrous lineage in every movement, every gesture, every word. Blood will tell, and it spoke its own emblazoned story in the winsome elegance of this “rare bit o’ womankind.”

Mr. Price laughed and talked, and narrated piquant anecdotes, and kept Miss Finche well in hand, causing the host “all the time” to indulge in a vast, expansive smile. Finche was getting the value of his mutton and his claret out of his friend’s friend. He was satisfied. After dinner the young ladies returned to the Queen Anne porch, while the waspish hostess proceeded to take forty wide-awake winks. We mankind talked generally, and, although pressed to remain at our wine, Price and I were glad to get from beyond the range of our host’s perpetual “values.”

As we were seated upon the wooden steps at the feet of the fair ones, gazing out across the wide, wide ocean, gilded with the expiring rays of the setting sun, and canopied by a sky of pale blue merging into delicate green, and again into white, the lich-gate swung back and Grey Seymour swung in.

“What a glorious evening! Are you for a walk on the cliff?” asked the new-comer, eyeing Price and myself as he spoke. “How do?” he added, addressing me.

526“Mr. Seymour, Mr. Price,” said Miss Finche, while the two men nodded stiffly.

“A walk on the cliff, by all means; don’t you think so, Maude?” asked Miss Finche, addressing Miss Neville.

“Comme vous voulez.”

“Let’s go as we are.”

We sallied forth.

“What a nuisance, this fellow’s turning up!” whispered Price angrily. “I shall have to fall back.”

Seymour and Miss Finche led the way. I did the elderly and protecting party.

“I place them in your charge,” were the parting words of mine host. “The youngsters will take value out of one another; you take value out of the whole lot.”

I dropped behind, and proceeded to enjoy the glories of the night in my own way. Soon came that entrancing blue light which steals in between day and dark, and the stars began to throb in the great canopy, and that “hush” which Night sends as her envoy to earth was passing over hill and hollow, and land and sea.

I sat down in a little nook on the cliff—a corner that seemed almost clean out of the world, and as if the earth had suddenly ended there. I thought over many things, and in the bizarre reflections consequent upon the adventures of the day came a dreamy sensation of admiration for the fair young girl whom destiny had thrown beneath the roof-tree of my friend Wilson Finche. I felt strangely interested in her already. Why, I did not ask myself. She was a blaze of intelligence, a mine of intellectual wealth. I do not mean for one second to say that she was a genius, but there was a tone of high culture about her that shed itself like a fragrant perfume.

Miss Finche appeared to me to be a very nice, ladylike, ordinary class of girl—one of those patent-mannered, warranted-to-go-well sort of young ladies who rove at their sweet wild will in the garden of society; but beside Miss Neville she was absolutely colorless.

I sat thinking over the strange freaks of fortune, that give thousands of dollars to some girls, leaving others without a dime, when the sound of approaching voices scattered my reverie to the night breeze that gently fanned my pepper and salt—too much salt—whiskers. I was in a hollow beneath the cliff. The speakers were Grey Seymour and Hattie Finche.

Miss Finche’s tone was cold and resolute.

“I do not love you, Mr. Seymour. I never could. I will not hold out a particle of hope.”

“Don’t say that, Hattie—anything but that. Hope is all I have to live for,” he cried in a quivering, agonized way that made me sad to hear.

“I tell you fairly I can give you no hope.”

“Try and love me. I can make life a dream to you. Your every wish shall be gratified. My whole time shall be spent in anticipating your lightest fancy. O Hattie! do not drive me to despair, desperation.”

She was silent. They had stopped right opposite to where I sat concealed. I frankly confess I was too much interested to think of making my proximity known. It was a mean thing to remain where I was. I reproach myself while I write.

“I do not care for your money,” he raved on. “I have millions, ay, 527millions at my command, and those millions shall be spent to make your life an idyl.”

“Did I not tell you that I could not care for you last season? Did I not repeat it at Martha’s Vineyard two weeks ago? Now I repeat it again and for the last time. Let us be friends.”

“Friends!” he bitterly cried.

“Yes, friends, and good friends. Why not? In a short time you will wonder you ever were in love with me, and—”

“Never!” he burst in.

“Oh! yes, you will. And, what is more, you will fall in love with somebody else.”

“Do you wish to drive me mad?”

“On the contrary, I wish to bring you to your senses. Listen to me calmly.”

“I cannot.”

“But you must. This passion of yours is a boyish love.”

“It is my life.”

“Nothing of the kind. I don’t want your love. I could not return it.”

“But you won’t try.”

“I will not indeed. I am selfish enough to care for my own happiness, and my happiness—that is, the matrimonial part of it—does not lie with you. You are very fond of me?”

“I—”

“Now, don’t rhapsodize. You would do a good deal to make me happy?”

“Anything.”

“Would you be willing to make a sacrifice for me, if I earnestly asked you?”

“Try me, Hattie!”

“Well, then, I’ll put you to the test.”

“Do,” firmly, resolutely.

“You know Maude Neville. She is young, beautiful, penniless. She hasn’t a friend in the world. Be her friend.”

“What am I to do?”

“Marry her.”

There was a sound as though he had sprung backwards.

“This is insolence, Hattie,” he exclaimed hotly.

“Don’t be silly,” coolly observed Miss Finche, and I heard no more, for they had moved onwards.

This was a strange experience—a woman refusing a man, and then asking him to make love to another. I had read much of the doings of the sex, but this situation beat anything I had ever seen on the stage. Miss Finche’s evident self-possession, not a ripple in her voice, told how truly she spoke when she told the luckless love-sick youth she did not care for him, while the coolness, not to say the audacity, of the proposition almost staggered me. And Miss Neville—was not she to be consulted in the business? I was very much mistaken in my estimate of that young lady if she would haul down her colors at the bidding of any captain afloat, if she had not a mind so to do herself.

When I arrived, all alone, at the cottage, it was to find Miss Finche flirting heavily with Mr. Herbert Price, Miss Neville playing a brilliant fantasia of Chopin’s upon the piano, and, mirabile dictu, Mr. Grey Seymour, his face, his neck, his ears in a rosy glow, leaning over her and turning the leaves of the music. Could he have—pshaw! impossible.

“You know Mrs. Dyke Howell?” was Mr. Price’s observation, as we turned out of Sea View Cottage on our way to the Ocean House.

“Very slightly.”

“But you do know her?”

528“Well—yes.”

“You’ll get me a card for her garden party to-morrow?”

“Well, considering that I haven’t got one for myself, I—”

“That’s nothing to the point. A man can ask a favor for a friend he wouldn’t ask for himself, you know.”

“But you are not my friend.”

“I mean to be, though. Friendship must begin somewhere, and ours flourishes like Jack’s bean-stalk.”

“’Pon my word, I—”

“There, now, you’ll write for the card to-night: ‘Mr. John V. Crosse presents his compliments to Mrs. Dyke Howell, and would feel much obliged for an invitation for an English friend’—it looks well to have an English friend—‘for her garden party to-morrow,’ or words to that effect. We’ll send it off to-night, and you see, old man, it will get you an invitation as well.”

“You are the coolest hand I ever even read of.”

“Must be. My godmother’s legacy, like Bob Acre’s courage, is oozing out at my fingers’ ends, and I’ve nothing but my return ticket and my audacity to look to. Come, now, Crosse, don’t do things by halves. You’ve introduced me to a very nice family. Can’t say I admire my mother-in-law. What son-in-law does, though? The old boy is no end of a bore, but Hattie is all there.”

“I did not introduce you, Mr. Price; you introduced yourself.”

“Never could have done it but for you; ergo, logically, you introduced me.”

To my shame be it said, I wrote a note from the Ocean House to Mrs. Dyke Howell, a haughty lady of cadaverous aspect, and a nose resembling that of the late Duke of Wellington, who believed in that small monarchy called Knickerbockerdom, and in everything high, and mighty, and fashionable.

The cards came without note or comment, and my friend Price and I started for Hawthorndale. He wore a frock-coat that, even irritated as I was, evoked admiring comment, and a tall hat so shiny that I felt I could have shaved by it.

Before starting I telegraphed to Sir Harvey Price, Bart., Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, Kent, England, in the following words:

“Is your son Herbert in America? Is he a barrister? Describe him. Of the utmost importance. Telegraph instantly to

“J. V. Crosse, Ocean House, Newport, R. I., U. S. A.”

I chuckled as I handed over my greenbacks.

“He doesn’t think I’ve taken him at his word. A few hours will unriddle him,” were my thoughts as we emerged from the hotel. I had seen Grey Seymour that morning en route to bathe. There were black shadows beneath his eyes, and the great brightness which I had so much admired the day before had faded out of his face. What was the issue of that most remarkable conversation?

He was the first person I encountered after passing through the icy fingers of Mrs. Dyke Howell, and much of the old look had returned.

“Have you seen the Finches?” he asked.

“No.”

“By the way, who is your friend Mr. Price?”

“He’s no particular friend of mine—merely a travelling acquaintance. He’s a member of the English bar, and very clever.” This latter assertion I believed in my heart.

529“Is he rich?”

“Oh! dear, no.”

“Unmarried?”

“Yes. That is, I believe so.”

“I see him here to-day. I suppose Mrs. Howell knows him.”

I was considerably relieved when young Roadwell, of the Coaching Club, cut in with a query as to a pair of roans which Seymour was about to put under the hammer, and left the pair diving “full fathom five” into the mysteries of horse-flesh.

The Finches arrived later on in full force—Mrs. Finche in yellow and green and red like a mayonnaise of lobster; Hattie in floating white; Maude Neville in black and orange. My friend Price clung to Miss Finche’s side like her breloquet, while Grey Seymour seemed to devote himself to the brunette.

“Ma foi,” thought I, “can the convocation of last night have so soon borne fruit? It would not be difficult to fall in love with Miss Neville, but the falling out of it first is the trouble.”

I did not see Price until eleven o’clock that night. He had gone home with the Finches—I was left out in the cold—and returned to the hotel in splendid spirits.

“Anybody there?” I asked with assumed carelessness.

“Nobody but Seymour.”

“Ah! Spooning over Miss Finche?”

“Not a bit of it; it’s over the other one. He was with her all day to-day, and by Jove! sir, to-night they were on the balcony doing moonlight like anything.”

“Where is he? Did you leave him behind you?”

“No; we left together, but he didn’t seem to want me, and—”

“And did you see that?” I sneered.

“Why, of course I did. I wasn’t going to do The Cliffs at this hour. I prefer my cigar on the piazza here.”

I did not see either of my gentlemen the following day, save in a casual way. Seymour appeared to be picking up his good looks, and as the table to which I was relegated was within range of his quartier, I could perceive, from the flotilla of plates and dishes around him at breakfast, that his rejection by Hattie Finche had in nowise impaired his appetite.

I was in love once, twenty-five years ago, and I lived on it. A sweet cake and a glass of champagne twice a day kept me in the flesh. I wouldn’t undertake to try that “little game” again. Judging from my own symptoms at that critical period of my existence, I fairly argued that Grey Seymour had either over-lived his passion for the heiress, that he was off with the old love and on to the new, or that his mistress and he had come to an understanding after they had passed beyond my coigne of vantage. I must own I was “sairly and fairly” puzzled. The reply to my cablegram was anxiously awaited. Properly speaking, it was due upon the evening of the day on which I set the wires in motion. Allowing for the difference in time between Newport and London, say six hours and a half, and having despatched it at 9 A.M., I might fairly have reckoned on a reply that night. The Moat, however, was some little distance from Sevenoaks, so I shouldn’t be utterly disappointed were forty-eight hours to elapse ere tidings would reach me. As it was, however, the appearance of every despatch boy sent a thrill of expectation through me, and a pang of corresponding 530disappointment when I sought the message on the rack under the letter C.

It was upon the second morning that Price came down to breakfast arrayed in nautical costume, deep, dark, desperate blue flannel, with a superb Maréchal Niel rosebud in his button-hole, and a genuine air of festivity in his whole appearance.

“What mischief are you up to to-day?” I asked.

“A sail with my friends the Finches.”

“My friends, if you please, Mr. Price.”

“To be sure; I quite forgot. Doosid nice people. I say, I am making the running, and I mean to win, as we say in the race-course, ‘hands down.’”

“Ahem! It doesn’t follow that if you win the daughter you’ll get over the father,” I observed with a knowing air.

“Oh! I’m not going to trouble myself about him. You’ll square him for me.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Price?” almost aghast at this cool impudence.

“I mean that old fogies understand one another. You’ll rub it into him that I am a man of considerable genius; of keen perception, calm deliberation; in the habit of hand-balancing conflicting propositions, a brilliant orator, and that I have tact, which is better than talent, and audacity, which is better than either or both.”

“If I were to speak about you at all to my friend Mr. Finche, I should certainly pay a glowing tribute to this last quality,” sneeringly.

“That’s a good fellow. You’re a brick of the most adhesive quality. You go for Finche when I give you the word. I mean to pop for Hattie the first good chance.”

“Well, really, I—”

“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Man is man and master of his fate.’ Shakspere says ‘sometimes.’ I mean to play the waiting race. The man who can afford it gets three to one in his favor. I can only be beaten by a dash-horse now. Here comes the man whom I imagined was the favorite, and he is not entered for the race at all.”

Grey Seymour joined us, also arrayed in dark blue, a red rose in his button-hole.

“These are our favors,” laughed Price: “Miss Finche yellow, Miss Neville red.

“‘Oh! my love is like a red, red rose that sweetly blows in June!’”

And gaily humming that song which Sims Reeves has made all his own, he lounged out of the immense salle à manger, casting criticising glances en passant.

I am fond of the sea. I never was sick in my life, and once upon a time thought of running a saucy schooner. Would I, like Paul Pry, drop into this party with an “I hope I don’t intrude”?

The hour was rapidly approaching when I must take action with reference to my friend Mr. Price. He had entered Finche’s house under my ægis, and I was bound in honor to protect Finche and Finche’s child. Yes, I would join the yachting excursion bon gré mal gré, and in a few straight words tell Wilson Finche exactly how the land lay.

I donned a blue flannel suit—no man goes to Newport without one—and taking an old-fashioned telescope under my arm, went upon the piazza to await the appearance of Grey Seymour, who was still occupied in going through the entire menu for his matitudinal meal.

“A telegram for you, sir,” said the clerk, as I passed the desk.

531“At last,” I muttered, as I tore it open.

It was from Lady Price, and dated Holten Moat:

“My son is in America. Barrister. Tall, thin, dark. Black mole under left ear. Scar on right wrist. Telegraph if in trouble.”

At that particular moment Mr. Price appeared on the corridor, engaged in chewing a tooth-pick.

I went to him, and, without a single word, seized his right hand, baring his wrist. The scar was there. I then wheeled him round, and took a rapid and searching look behind his left ear.

“Ah!” he laughed, “looking for the macula materna? So you’ve been telegraphing home, you incredulous old codger,” scanning the open telegram.

“Read it,” I said. I should mention that the black mole was in its place.

“Why, you’ll frighten the old lady into fits. Write her at once, Crosse, and tell her I’m as safe as the milk in a cocoanut. Don’t spare your dollars, old man!”

When I left Newport the Finches were still at Sea View Cottage, and my friend Mr. Price on a visit in the house. About six months later I received cards to attend at the nuptials of Miss Hattie Julia Maria Anne Finche to Herbert Price. An attack of the gout prevented my putting in an appearance, but I sent both bride and groom a little present. To the daughter of my old friend I gave a pearl necklace; to his son-in-law a diamond ring, with the words inscribed in raised letters, “De l’audace. Toujours de l’audace.”

I may mention that Grey Seymour and his charming bride honored me with a visit some time, later on, en route to Europe.

532

THE PRINCIPLE OF BEATITUDE IN HUMAN NATURE.

St. Thomas defines beatitude, in respect to man, to be “the perfect good in which the natural tendency of the human will to universal good attains complete rest.”^[119] This is beatitude objectively considered. Subjectively, it is the actual fruition consequent upon attainment, and rest in the quiet possession, of the perfect good which is the object of volition. This fruition is an immanent act within the nature of the human subject, and must therefore proceed from a principle within the human nature. Nature denotes the same thing with essence, expressing only as a distinctive term its being a principle of activity. By reason of his essence, the human being has within him a principle by virtue of which he desires, seeks, and is impelled by the movement given him by his First and Final Cause toward the attainment of beatitude. As intelligent, universal truth is his object, to which his intellect is connatural; as volitive, universal good is his object, to which his will naturally corresponds.

The idea of universal good is obviously the one which lies at the foundation of this conception of beatitude. It is well known that the notion of good as a universal is one of the transcendental predicates; that is, of those which are outside of everything which does or can mark out any generic ratio, or diversity of kind between any existing or possible beings. Good is not a genus or kind, in opposition to some diverse genera or kinds which are not good; and, à fortiori, it is not a species, under which individuals are to be classed as specifically different, by the note of goodness, from other individuals who by their specific difference are something else than good. It is the species which completely determines the essence of every existing thing, and the specific difference which marks its essential unlikeness to other things whose essence is other than its own. Therefore no being can be essentially unlike any other by reason of one being good and the other somehow dissimilar to good. The predicate of good belongs to all genera, and, of course, to all species and individuals, as a universal notion transcending all their respective determining notes, and identifying itself, in the analogical sense proper to each of them, with all and singular of these notes.

Good is whatever is consonant to nature, whatever is a perfection, or subserves to the conservation and increase of a perfection. It is coextensive with being, and identical with it, as are all the transcendental notions, which merely present the same object of thought under various phases. Whatever is thinkable, as an object is an entity; as having its own entity undivided in itself and divided from every entity other than itself, is a unity; as an intelligible entity is a verity; as containing in itself reason for the volition that it should be what it is, it is a good. All these notions are 533contained in the notion of being, and are as universal as being, which has in opposition to it only nothing, that is, no-being, no-one-thing, no-true-thing, no-good, mere negation and nullity.

We are at present concerned only with actually existing rational nature, in its relation to universal being as the object of its volition, or movement towards the universal good in which it seeks for beatitude. Whatever is consonant to rational nature, gives it perfection or subserves to its perfection, is its good. Good is being regarded in its aspect as something desirable, in which the will can rest with complacency. Every actual, concrete essence is good, as such, because it has being, and in so far as it has being; and it presents, therefore, an object to the will which is desirable and in which it can have complacency. The rational nature is in itself a good as an actual being, and it is a good to itself, or, in other words, it is a good for it that it exists. The universe in which it exists is all good in essence and nature. Universal nature is in consonance with itself, and its laws tend to the perfection, conservation, and augmentation of being, throughout its whole extent. The movement of will in rational nature toward the universal good is only a higher kind and mode of an operation which is common to all nature. Things destitute of sense are put into operation toward the general end of the universe by blind and fatal laws, which receive their impulse and direction solely from the will and motive power of their creator. Those which have sense but not reason are incited to movement by a vital impulse and the excitement of their sensitive faculties by external objects. Rational nature moves itself by intelligence and will toward the good which is its object. Intellect has for its connatural object universal being as verity, and tends toward an adequation between itself and its object. So, likewise, the will in respect to the good of being. This adequation constitutes the beatitude of rational nature, and an approximation to it is an approach toward beatitude which constitutes a greater or lesser degree of imperfect felicity. The principle of beatitude has therefore been pointed out and proved to exist in human nature. The intense longing for it is matter of self-consciousness to every human being. The natural tendency and longing for beatitude cannot have been implanted by the Creator in order to be frustrated. There is no place in the nature of things for any other intention and end of creation, except to produce the good of being in all its grades and orders, according to the determinate measure prescribed by the divine intellect and the divine will. The good of inanimate nature necessarily falls short of any final and complete term in itself, because it does not contain any faculty of apprehension and complacency. Mere sensitive apprehension and complacency in living, irrational beings do not adequately supply this deficiency, because they attain only to the lowest and most imperfect good, in a partial and deficient mode. All nature below the rational, therefore, furnishes only an element, an inchoate and incomplete material substratum for the formal and complete good of created being, which can only possess a final actuality and become an end in itself in rational nature. Material beings have only their own essence and 534existence, which are exclusive and isolated, determined by necessary laws to merely extrinsic states and movements, in which they are totally inert. They have no return upon themselves and no capacity of receiving any other being into their own. Therefore they can have no self-consciousness or self-activity, no cognition or sentiment. Sensitive beings have a partial return upon themselves by sensation and sensitive cognition, and a limited self-activity. A spirit returns upon itself with a complete retroaction, and can receive other beings into itself according to the mode of the recipient, that is, ideally. It has therefore complete self-consciousness and self-activity, intelligence and volition, and in the human essence, by virtue of the union of the rational part with the animal, it has also a more perfect kind of sensitive life. It apprehends and possesses its own being, and universal being outside of itself, as a verity by intelligence, as a good by volition. When it is perfect and permanent in its natural good, the possession of this good is in itself beatitude. There is no other term or effect which can possibly have the ratio of an end to the intention of the Creator in the creative act, for it is the only complete and final good of being. Created being is nothing but a participation of the uncreated and necessary being, and an imitation of it in the finite order. Finite beatitude is, therefore, a participation of the infinite beatitude of the divine nature, and an imitation of it. God alone is THE BEING, who exists by his essence, and possesses being absolutely and in plenitude. In the same sense in which He alone is, whose Name is Ego sum qui sum, He alone is good and He alone is blessed. That is, He alone is good by his essence actually and in plenitude, and is alone by his essence possessed of the plenitude of blessedness.

Boethius defines the eternity of God as “the perfect possession, all at once, of boundless life.” This may answer as a definition of the beatitude of God. His being is living being, in all respects boundless, and so absolutely in act that it is incapable of any increase or diminution. The being of God is essentially good, and an object of complacency. The life of God consists in the act of intelligence and volition in which he knows and wills his own being, as infinitely intelligible and infinitely desirable. For God, to be and to live is to be blessed. The vision of his own essence presents to him an object of infinite complacency in which his will rests with a perfect and eternal quietude. What his essence is, and what that good is which constitutes the infinite beatitude of God, we cannot know except in an analogical manner. The universe of created being is an image and imitation of the divine essence. Whatever being and good we can perceive in the works of God we know must have its archetype in the essence of God, existing in a supereminent mode and an infinite plenitude. Created beauty is something which being seen pleases, in which the will reposes with complacency when it is apprehended by the intellect. Infinite, absolute, uncreated beauty must please infinitely the infinite intelligence which beholds it by a comprehensive vision. This is the nearest approach we can make to a conception of the beatitude of God.

The being of God is the archetype and source of all created being, and his infinite beatitude the archetype 535and source of all finite beatitude in created, intelligent beings. Creation proceeds not from want but from fulness of good in the infinite Being; not from necessity but from free volition. It is an overflow of power, intelligence, and love, diffusive of the good of being from the boundless sea of the divine essence into the streams which it fills. Its ideal possibility is in the divine essence as imitable, presenting to the divine intelligence innumerable terms of the divine omnipotence, and to the divine will innumerable objects of volition and complacency. The act which brings it out of nonexistence into existence proceeds from the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity equally and indivisibly. The origin of the creative act is in the Father, the medium in the Son, the consummation in the Holy Spirit. The almighty word of intelligence and volition calling the nonexistent universe into existence, proceeding from the Father as the origin of infinite and finite essence, in the Word is the creative ideal and measure of all the intelligible and intelligent creation, in the Spirit is the cause and principle of all created good. The formal principiation of the divine essence, proceeding from the Father and the Son as its active principle, whose term is the person of the Holy Spirit, is pure Love. Love is the consummation of the infinite being of God, and its eternal efflorescence is beatitude, the perfect possession of boundless life which is a boundless good, totally, existing in a present whose duration is without any before or after, without beginning or end or successive parts, and unchangeable by any increase or diminution. It is a maxim of philosophy that operation is in accordance with the nature of the operator. An artist produces a work corresponding to the nature of his art. The work of the Holy Spirit is like himself. The divine essence in his person being love, the consummation of the divine work in creation effected by him must be good; and that good in its last result is beatitude. He is “The Lord and Giver of life.” The life of the intelligent creature is like the life of God. He is finite, and therefore his duration is not eternity. It has a beginning, and a before and after, and its totality is not possessed all at once in one present, but its parts succeed each other without end. Although he cannot possess his past and future at one time, he possesses always his present, which glides with him through all time, and is an imitation of the eternal, ever-enduring present of eternity. The perfect possession of all that constitutes his life, without any fear of losing it, constitutes his beatitude. Divine love, diffusive of the good of being out of its own plenitude, can have no other end in creation, in so far as this end is contained within the creation itself, except the beatitude of intellectual creatures.

The idea from which creation receives its form is in the Word, and intellectual creatures are specially made in his image. In the Incarnation, the Word united to his divine nature a rational nature, consubstantial with that which is common to the whole human race, and allied generically to the highest as well as to the lowest orders of created beings, that is, both to the spiritual and the corporeal extremes of nature. The created nature thus assumed into personal unity with the divine nature in Immanuel, who is the only-begotten Son of 536God the Father from eternity, has become the nature of God, and as such entitled to receive from the divine nature the communication of its plenitude of being and of good, in so far as this is communicable in a finite mode and measure. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Son, both in the eternal order of the Trinity and in the temporal order of creation, is communicated to the human nature of Immanuel as the principle of life and beatitude. The hypostatic union of created and uncreated nature in the person of Jesus Christ is the masterpiece of the Lord and Giver of life, the ultimate term of his creative act. The beatitude which he imparts to the human nature of Jesus Christ is the supreme participation of its rational intelligence and will in the divine act of comprehensive vision of the divine essence and infinite complacency in its absolute beauty, which constitutes divine beatitude. The angels were destined to the same beatitude, and, those excepted who forfeited their right by sinning, they have attained it. The human race was created for the same destination, and the elect will receive their perfect consummation in the same sempiternal glory and blessedness which belongs of right to the humanity of the Eternal Son, on the day of the universal resurrection.

It is evident that this supernatural beatitude in God completely fulfils the definition of beatitude given by St. Thomas as bonum perfectum quod totaliter quietat appetitum. The object of the rational human appetite, that is, of the will, is universal good, which is in God in the most absolute and perfect plenitude. But universal good is also in creatures by participation, and presents a proper object of complacency to the will in perfect harmony with its primary object of beatific love. Our Lord Jesus Christ in his human mind and human heart not only has the immediate intuition of God and of all things in God, together with the love which accompanies this highest mode of knowledge, but also the mode of knowledge and love which is strictly natural. He delights in the contemplation of the beauty of his own human nature, in the works which he performed through it, in its dignity and exaltation, in the splendor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the angels and the saints, in his entire and universal kingdom both of mind and matter. He delights in loving his companions in celestial glory, and in receiving their love, in radiating light and beauty and happiness all around himself through countless realms of space and numberless multitudes of beings. His human nature was not essentially changed at the resurrection, but only glorified. He has therefore that sublimated corporeal and sensitive life which is proper to the nature which he assumed, with the sensitive cognition and enjoyment resulting naturally from its attributes and faculties.

The kingdom of heaven has therefore its visible and natural as well as its divine aspect. Natural beatitude in the possession of universal created good, in the enjoyment of the works of God, in science, in the sentiment of the beautiful in created objects, in activity, in society and friendship, co-exists with the uninterrupted contemplation of the divine essence, and the perfect quietude of everlasting repose on the bosom of God. The quiet and repose of the spirit in 537beatitude by no means signifies inaction and the slumber of the faculties. God, who is immutable, is most perfect act, and the first mover of all things. The rest of beatitude is in opposition to the restless inquietude of a spirit which has not found its equilibrium, and is impelled by unsatisfied longings to seek for its perfect good. Its rest consists in its having found its equilibrium in the stable possession of the perfect good. But the presence of the due object to the intellect and the will calls forth their most perfect and intense activity, and the very qualities of the glorified bodies of the blessed saints in heaven prove that they also will be active, and not for ever standing still in one posture or reclining indolently on grassy meads, as some seem to imagine is the Christian belief. It is indeed most difficult to form any imaginary pictures of the future life which are in any way satisfactory to reason. But whatever we can represent to ourselves by such efforts which can give some idea of a glory and a beatitude worthy of rational beings in a perfect state, assuredly will be realized in a way far beyond our conceptions.

The aim of the foregoing exposition has been to prepare the way for presenting, in the natural element which exists in supernatural beatitude, that which is the purely natural good due to the intellectual nature left to itself in its own native sphere, the underworld below heaven. We call this sphere of pure nature native to the intellectual nature in general, because it belongs there by virtue of its essential being, prescinding from any higher destination given to it gratuitously, whether simultaneously with its original creation or subsequently to it. It is an underworld relatively to the supernatural order whose last complement is in the hypostatic union realized in the Incarnation. The state of pure nature in respect to the only species of simply intellectual or rational creatures known to us, is treated by Catholic theologians in a merely hypothetical manner; as a possible state, in which angels and men might have been constituted by the Creator, or in which he could, if he pleased, place other beings generically similar to angels or men, in other spheres of the universe which are distinct from our earth and the celestial abode of the angels. Whether there are now or ever will be such beings, inhabiting the numerous worlds with which the vast extent of real space is filled, can only be matter of conjecture. But the human species, and the hierarchy of pure spirits with which it is in present relation, were destined for the supernatural order immediately depending from the royal seat of Immanuel, the sovereign head of the host of deified intelligences, as its centre. In respect to the human race, therefore, the state of pure nature is presented under another aspect as a state of lapsed nature, and the sphere of the underworld is its native sphere actually and by virtue of natural generation, by reason of a fall and a sentence of deprivation. On this account, the permanent future state of all human beings who are finally excluded from heaven, in Christian eschatology is primarily considered as a state of loss. Whatever felicity is possible in this state appears as something remaining from the original destination of mankind, and not as the complete good of human beatitude. For this reason, 538we have presented first the total ratio of beatitude in respect to human destiny, before considering what remains after the sum of supernatural good has been deducted.

Substantially, the state of lapsed nature as denuded is the same with pure or nude nature. The question of the object and nature of pure natural beatitude is the one to be decided, in order to determine what amount of good in the endless life of human beings who lack the beatific vision of God is conceivable and possible. There is only one serious difficulty in this question. It arises from the consideration of the very essence of intelligence as related to the universal truth, and will as related to the universal good. The intellect, as such, by its very nature, seeks for the deepest cause, and for an adequation with the intelligible being of its universal object, and the appetite of the will follows it. How, then, can the intellect rest in any object except the absolute, necessary, infinite essence of God, apprehended by a clear and immediate intuition, or any other object but this perfectly quiet the appetite of the will? It is evident that if the intellectual nature, as such, has in it an exigency and a longing which cannot be satisfied with any good to which its faculties are commensurate, beatitude is something essentially supernatural. In this case, the natural order must be merely inchoate, potential, needing to be completed by the supernatural. Intellectual beings could not, then, be created for a purely natural end and destiny; the only end suitable and fit for them would be that which reaches its consummation in the beatific vision. Defrauded of this in any way, even without any voluntary fault of their own, they must be miserable during eternity through the suffering of the pain of loss, or at least continue for ever in a state of arrested and imperfect development, in which absence of suffering would be due only to insensibility, with an imperfect kind of felicity similar to that which men possess in this earthly condition, from the common enjoyments of human life.

We deny, however, that there is any exigency in created nature for the supernatural good. The difficulty above stated, that God is necessarily the supreme object of the created intellect and the created will, we answer as follows. Intellect, by nature, seeks God, according to its own mode and measure. The operation of the will is determined by the intellect. Nil volitum nisi prius cognitum. The divine intellect, which is the divine essence considered as intelligent subject, is in adequation with the divine essence considered as intelligible object. God has immediate, comprehensive cognition of himself by his essence. Every created essence is infinitely different from the divine, and therefore has an operation intrinsically unequal to the act in which the divine life consists. Operatio sequitur esse. The being of an intelligent creature is within the order of the finite, of the imitated, participated existence, activity, enjoyment, which is a diminished image of the archetypal reality in the Creator. All this is within the circle of nature, and when this circle is perfect, including whatever belongs to it, there is no exigency of anything beyond. The knowledge of God, not as he is in his essence, within his circle of immanent being, but as he is in the terms of 539his creative act, in the universe, in the intellectual light and intelligible essence of the created spirit itself, is within the circle of nature. As the Author of nature he is knowable and lovable, by perfect and well-ordered faculties of pure nature without grace and without defect. Natural beatitude does not require the immediate and intuitive, but only the mediate and abstractive cognition and contemplation of God, and does not exact any kind of union of the will to God as the sovereign good, except that which terminates by natural sequence its own rightly directed and completed spontaneous movement. Even now we can find God by reason, and take complacency in his perfections. Much more can beings of a higher perfection attain to the knowledge of God in a manner proportionate to their kind or degree of perfection, and with a complacency corresponding to their knowledge, if their intelligence and will are rightly co-ordinated, and directed toward their proper object. As respects the universal verity and good of being in the created universe, there is no difficulty whatever in supposing that it can be attained within any finite limits, in a state of pure nature.

This inferior sphere of natural beatitude being thus theoretically possible, it is most reasonable to suppose that all human beings who at the general resurrection are dispossessed of any right to the kingdom of heaven, and at the same time free from all actual sin, receive their ultimate destination in such a sphere. There is no reason in the order of justice why they should be deprived of any perfection or good of which they are naturally capable. In the “restitution of all things,” the ἀποκατάστασις, there will be no deordination left in the universe, and no imperfection of order belonging to an inchoate condition of nature. Venit dies, dies tua, in quâ reflorent omnia. Inanimate creation will become resplendent with the beauty which the last touches of the divine Artist have given to his consummate work. The influence of the life-giving Spirit will be poured in a full torrent through all parts of the universal realm of living being. In this general restitution we may be certain that the thousands of millions of human infants who have never attained to the use of reason in this world, and have never received the grace of regeneration, will be raised up, by the bounty of their Creator, in the full perfection of their human nature, both corporeal and intellectual, to live for ever in the enjoyment of all the good which is due to pure nature, participating in their own inferior degree in that excellence and felicity which in its highest perfection belongs to the blessed in heaven as an adjunct of their supernatural glory and beatitude. Moreover, it is altogether congruous to the order of redemption in Jesus Christ, and probable, that they will receive, in common with the whole creation, their own special benefit and increase of natural good, through the Incarnation. There is no obstacle in their nature to the reception of any good except that of the beatific vision. They may, therefore, enjoy the vision of the glorified humanity of the Lord, worship him and love him as their creator and benefactor, see and converse with the angels and saints, and in every respect enjoy a better and more desirable immortality than that which 540would be possible in another system of divine providence which did not contain a supernatural order.

Besides those who die in infancy, there are many adults who may be considered as on the same level with infants in respect to moral responsibility. Balmes proposes the opinion that a large proportion of the most ignorant and spiritually undeveloped part of mankind, especially those who are born and brought up in a low state of barbarism, never attain the rational level of a well-instructed Christian child of five or six years old, who, nevertheless, is regarded in Catholic theology as incapable of mortal sin.^[120] Among the whole multitude of those who are destitute of the ordinary means of salvation, each and every individual either has the use of reason sufficiently for full moral responsibility, or he has not. If he has not, he is, in the moral relation, an infant, at most capable of venial sin; but if he has, either he has divine faith sufficient for obtaining salvation, or the sufficient grace and means for attaining the faith, or neither of these requisites for working out his salvation by his own voluntary efforts. In this last case his lack of faith is no sin, and he is only accountable for the observance of the natural law according to his own conscience. If he keeps this natural law, he is subject to no eternal penalty besides the privation of supernatural beatitude. All men, therefore, who really incur the responsibilities and the risks of a moral probation, have an opportunity of meriting heaven, or at least of attaining that natural felicity hereafter which is the lot of infants who die without baptism.

From all these premises we deduce one general conclusion, that the notion of a doom to everlasting infelicity and misery, which is a dire and inevitable calamity involving the great mass of mankind, by reason of the state in which they are born into this life, is a chimera of the imagination, and not any part of the Catholic faith or a just inference from any revealed doctrine. The sufferings of those who have not deserved punishment by their own voluntary transgressions of the divine law are temporary, disciplinary, intended for a final good, and in the end abundantly compensated. Many of the sufferings which have the nature of punishment are condoned altogether, and many others are temporary and in their last result beneficial to those who are subjected to their infliction. No rational and immortal being is permanently deprived of the proper perfection and good of his nature by fate or destiny, or by the arbitrary will of the Creator and sovereign Lord of the universe. The order of reason and justice of itself produces only universal good, and this universal good embraces the private and personal good of each individual being, except in so far as he has freely and wilfully made himself unfit and unworthy to participate in it. Eternal retribution is awarded solely to personal merit or demerit in proportion to its quantity. Outside of the order of just retribution, there is no action of God upon his creatures except that of pure goodness and love, bestowing gratuitously, unmitigated good without any mixture of evil. The desire for permanent beatitude in endless life, and the natural principle of 541beatitude implanted in every rational nature, are not frustrated and thwarted through any deficiency in nature, or failure of divine Providence to carry out his original design and intention to its complete and ultimate term. The only failure is in the free and concreative cause to which God has given dominion over itself and its acts and the effects of those acts, with power to produce in prescribed limits as much or as little good as it chooses. This free cause is free-will, which is the only cause, in every rational creature finally deprived of his original right to beatitude, of the state of irreparable privation in which he is placed by the “restitution of all things.” The restitution brings all nature into order and to perfection, in so far as each thing in nature is receptive of its proportionate good. Rational nature is receptive according to its rational appetite or the attitude of the will. Those rational beings who have determined themselves to a state of volition contrary to the order of reason and justice are, in so far as they are affected by this state, receptive only of a violent reaction of order against their will, repressing and confining their inclination to a perverse activity. The privation of beatitude is co-extensive with the contrariety between the will and the permanent, irreversible order of reason; and this contrariety is proportional to the misuse of freewill by sinning during the term of probation. Their evil is nothing but spoiled good, and they are themselves the spoilers. It is through no defect of goodness in God, or deficiency of good in the order of nature, that they are what they are. Every thing and every person in this order is in the right place and the due relation, according to the highest reason and the most perfect justice. God has made all things well, they are what they ought to be, and there is no flaw or defect in the bonum honestum of the universe. God must take complacency in the fulfilment of his own wise and just will, and every rational being must concur with intellect and will in that which God wills. This is precisely what St. Thomas affirms when he says that the beatitude of the just will be increased by their knowledge of the eternal punishment of sinners, and there is no sense or reason in the diatribes of rationalists against him or any other theologian who does not overpass the limits of Catholic and rational doctrine on this head.

Another conclusion which may be reasonably deduced from sound theological principles and probable opinions is, that the majority of mankind, and of rational beings in general, are in a state of perpetual felicity in the world to come. There is no reason whatever for supposing that more than a third part of the angels fell with Lucifer. It is probable that the greater number of adults who live and die in the faith and communion of the church are finally admitted into heaven. We cannot deny that numbers of those who have lived under the natural law, without any explicit faith in Jesus Christ, have been also saved by extraordinary grace. Nor is it possible for us to determine what proportion of the great mass remaining may eventually attain some degree of inferior natural felicity similar to that which is the lot of infants dying in original sin. The number of infants who have received baptism and have died before the use of reason at least 542equals the number of the baptized who have attained adult age, and to these must be added all those who died in infancy before the sacrament of baptism was instituted, and had received remission of original sin under the ancient covenant of grace. The entire multitude of infants who have died since the beginning of the world at least equals the number of adults, and it is therefore certain that the majority of all human beings will possess in the future life either supernatural or natural beatitude. There is no reason, therefore, for the supposition that the Christian and Catholic doctrine represents the vast majority of human beings as destined to a state of everlasting misery. If any one is disposed to entertain the hypothesis that the universe is filled with a multitude of rational beings who are neither angels nor men, whose number bears a quantitative proportion to the physical magnitude of the vast cosmical system of the starry heavens, there is as much reason for supposing that they are all eternally good and happy as for supposing that they have existence. In respect to mere extensive and numerical quantity, the amount of good resulting from the creative act of God far surpasses the sum of that possible additional good which has been frustrated by the failure of free, concreative causes to co-operate with the first cause toward the great, final end of creation. In reality, the absolute, eternal decrees of God are not in any way frustrated by the failure of a certain number of creatures to attain the good for which they were destined. They leave no gap in the universal order which the foresight of God has not filled up. Their loss is exclusively their own, and their sins have only furnished an occasion for bringing out of the evil which they have attempted a far greater good than they could have effected by a faithful co-operation with the will of God, greater glory to the Creator and to the universe, more splendid merits in the just, a more magnificent exhibition of wisdom and love in the cross, through which the divine Redeemer of men triumphed over sin and death. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath also exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and in hell; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”^[121] The perfection of the whole creation, in subordination to the sphere of supernatural glory inhabited by the sons of God, is also clearly declared by St. Paul to be a consequence of the exaltation of Jesus Christ through the cross. “For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth, and is in labor even until now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body.”^[122]

543Satan himself, with all those whom he has seduced into sin in the mad hope of thwarting the divine work of the Incarnation, has only contributed by his efforts to destroy the universal order, under the overmastering intelligence of God, to increase its splendor. In the end he will be found to have wound himself up by going around in his circuit. A few years ago there was a bear in the Central Park, who was permitted to live on a grass-plat, fastened by a long chain to a stake in the middle. By going continually round and round his post, he used to wind himself up so tightly that he could not stir. Satan is like this bear. His great achievement, and masterstroke of policy, was the crucifixion of the Son of God, by which he was exalted and obtained a name above every name, before which every knee in hell shall bow and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. This is the one great example of the universal action of divine Providence in bringing out of all evil a greater good than that which the evil destroys or prevents.

St. Paul anticipates an objection, which is likely to occur to some minds, in respect to the justice of God in the unequal distribution of grace, and the withholding of mercy from those whom he permits to work out their own final perdition. “Thou wilt therefore say to me: Why doth he then find fault? For who resisteth his will?” The answer is a rebuke of the presumption of those who pretend to dispute the sovereign right and dominion of God over his creatures, and thus in reality make the divine Majesty subservient and responsible to his own subjects. “O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another to dishonor?”^[123] The whole mass of mankind being destitute of any right to supernatural grace and beatitude, there can be no complaint against the sovereign will of God for conferring the grace of regeneration upon some and withholding it from others. None of those who have made themselves positively unworthy of everlasting glory by their sins are entitled to mercy. That God withheld all hope of pardon from the fallen angels and gave that hope to men, that to some sinful men he gives more grace than to others, and that he compels those who rebel against him to glorify him against their will in their own defeat and the overthrow of all their plans, is no ground of complaint against the divine justice. “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated”; that is, loved less, and excluded from certain special, gratuitous blessings bestowed on Jacob. “What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid!” No creature is made to suffer without sufficient reason or deprived of any natural or acquired right. But in respect to gratuitous gifts, and especially graces conferred upon the unworthy, God is absolute master. “For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” It enters into the very notion of grace and mercy that they should be purely gratuitous. The whole order of grace in respect both to angels and men is purely gratuitous. It is therefore 544absurd to argue from the justice and goodness of God, and from the superabundant mercy which he shows toward sinners in this world, especially when they are within his special circle of grace, the Catholic Church, that he will give grace or show mercy after the day of judgment, in derogation of the order of justice. It was a purely gratuitous act of goodness in God to elevate human nature by the hypostatic union, and to give angels and men a share in the privileges of the sacred humanity. The rewards conferred on merit in this order are indeed rewards of justice, but the whole basis of the justice by which glory is proportioned to merit is laid in a gratuitous grant of the very conditions of merit, the grace which made it possible, and the promise of reward on which the title to the kingdom of heaven rests. Absolute, indefeasible, personal right to the glory of heaven does not exist except in Jesus Christ the Lord, who is a divine person, and whose merits are infinite and equal to all the benefits conferred by the Father upon creation. The rights of all those who share with him, the Blessed Virgin Mary included, have been conferred by him upon them. The beatific vision is a pure boon of goodness to every creature who attains its possession. All might have been left in their natural state without any possibility of attaining it, without any derogation of the order of eternal law in respect to intellectual nature. There is no reason, therefore, why the number of the elect, once completed, should ever be increased, or the gates of heaven reopened to admit new citizens and princes of the celestial Jerusalem. Those who have never forfeited a right to admission through their own fault have no reason to bewail their exclusion.

Those who have lost their right cannot possibly hope to recover it, because they are left in their despoiled nature, utterly impotent to turn back toward the supernatural good, deprived of all grace and beyond the reach of the economy of mercy, which has passed away for ever. In respect to supernatural life they are dead, and as incapable of resuscitation by any effort of their own as a corpse is incapable of repossessing itself of the soul which has departed from it. The ἀποκατάστασις is not a resurrection to spiritual life in grace, for this belongs to the preceding, initial order of regeneration which has terminated with the end of the present world. The bodily resurrection and restitution of nature gives only to human beings the complement of the life which they already possess, whether supernatural or merely natural, and to the physical universe its complement of perfection in the eternal order. The angels remain intrinsically unchanged in their spiritual, incorruptible nature, as God made them in the beginning. The holy angels continue in the possession of the supernatural mode of being which they acquired by their free and active co-operation with grace, before the probation of man commenced, without any increase of essential glory and beatitude. The fallen angels remain in the state into which they voluntarily precipitated themselves at the same time. The change which takes place at the end of human probation is, for the angels, only extrinsic. The holy angels cease to combat with the demons, and to minister in the economy of redemption. The demons are compelled to desist 545from their war against Immanuel and his kingdom, and are relegated to their destined abode. All human beings are placed in the state and condition in which they are to remain for ever, those who have followed the demons in their rebellion in a state similar to theirs, as those who have obeyed God are in a state similar to that of the holy angels. It is this part of the Christian doctrine which Origen wholly misunderstood. He may be excused from wilful and contumacious heresy, on account of the paucity of means at his command for learning the complete doctrine of the apostles, and the modest, hypothetical manner in which he proposed his erratic theories. We may also give him the benefit of the doubt respecting the entire purport of what he really and persistently did teach out of all that mass of wholly uncatholic and in a great measure absurd opinions, so justly condemned by the patriarchal synod at Constantinople in its fifteen anathematisms, and in a general way by several subsequent œcumenical councils. It is impossible to doubt, however, that one fundamentally erroneous conception was fixed in his mind, and gave occasion to the fanciful hypotheses of aeons and ages, and transitions of spirits up and down through the scale of being. This conception was an exaggeration of the freedom of will inherent in rational nature. Because no creature is either holy or wicked by his essence, but every one is capable of good or evil, he argued the perpetual flexibility and vertibility of free-will between good and evil. Permanence in good must therefore be attributed only to a habit of right determination, and permanence in sin to an opposite habit or obstinacy of purpose to do wrong. Perhaps his various and apparently conflicting statements can be reconciled, if we suppose that he admitted the actual perseverance of some in holiness through a kind of moral impeccability acquired by long and persistent efforts, with a consequent eternity of unchangeable beatitude; and an opposite state of irreclaimable perverseness in others with everlasting misery as its necessary penalty. Those who are in the middle between these two extremes are then variable, vacillating between the opposite poles of moral good and evil, happiness and infelicity, at least during indefinite periods of duration. Our modern rationalistic Christians to a certain extent are involved in the same imperfect philosophical notions which Origen, in the lack, of a Christian philosophy, borrowed from Neo-Platonism. They do not understand the nature of grace, which gives immutable holiness and impeccability as a perfection to a created essence which in itself is capable of defect. Hence, they cannot get a clear idea of a permanent state of indefectibility in good except as a moral habit resulting from a series of acts. Nor can they understand the opposite state of deficiency and privation as something permanent in itself, apart from the habit of sinning which has been contracted by acts of sin and may be removed by contrary acts under the influence of moral discipline. They choose to consider the state of those who become perfectly good, here or hereafter, and attain the felicity of heaven, as something fixed, because it is agreeable to the feelings to think so. They also strive to make the prospects of those who are not very good, and 546even of those who are very bad, as hopeful as possible, in view of a certain, or probable, or at least possible, future conversion at a more or less remote æonian period, because it is likewise agreeable to the feelings to anticipate this happy change. Moreover, they are very willing to accept the teaching of the Bible and the Christian tradition concerning the eternity of heaven, without seeking too anxiously for metaphysical or moral demonstration of its intrinsic credibility, because it satisfies the natural desire of the heart for perfect good. We do not deny that there is some truth in their reasonings concerning acquired habits of virtue and vice, but they are defective as an argument for the determination of the future destiny of souls. The certainty of a fixed and immutable state of sanctity and beatitude for the just in heaven does not depend either on these reasonings, or on an exegetical and critical interpretation of certain words in Holy Scripture. It has a deeper foundation. The human soul of Jesus Christ is impeccable because of its indissoluble union with the divine nature in his person. The angels and saints are impeccable because they also are united to God by an indissoluble union. The Holy Spirit is in them as the principle of their spiritual life. They love God above all things by a happy necessity, and their intuitive vision of his essence, the infinite good, with the perfect quietude of the will in the enjoyment of this good, raises them above all possibility of attraction toward any object which could allure them from their willing worship and allegiance to their sovereign Lord. Moreover, they actually possess the inferior good in the most perfect manner, with an unbounded liberty to follow all their inclinations, which are all innocent, in conformity to reason, and identical with the will of God. The indestructibility and immortality which belong to their essence as spirits, by nature, pervades their entire actual being with all its accidents, so that they are incapable of suffering any deterioration or injury.

In the natural order of beatitude, the perfect intellectual cognition of God accompanied by perfect natural love to him as the most perfect being, together with the complete possession of all connatural good, removes all tendency to evil. Nature seeks good by a necessary law, rational nature by its spontaneous, voluntary movement. No rational being seeks evil gratuitously or for the sake of evil, but only under the aspect of good, not sub ratione mali but sub ratione boni. Where no illusion is possible, no sin is possible. Liberty of choice between the contraries of good and evil is not intrinsic to liberty of will, or a perfection of liberty, but a defect. It belongs to a defective order and to a defective subject, an order of probation and a subject placed under a trial of his obedience. The order and the subject are arranged to suit each other. The subject is required to move toward his end by using his reason and will rightly, and concurring with the Creator in bringing the inchoate order of creation to its due perfection. The order is such that it is not yet perfect, but capable of being made so by the operation of free, intelligent beings upon it. When the time of the end is reached, in the ἀποκατάστασις, this moral order is superseded; there is nothing which can be injured or abused or misdirected. Intelligent creatures which 547are made perfect have no more scope for election between contraries; their spontaneous and voluntary action is necessarily toward the true, universal good, and their liberty of choice has no possible terms which are not within the circle of order. They cannot think or will otherwise than right, because they are perfect and all things which come in contact with them are perfect. In this way they are brought into a similitude with God. He is what he is by necessity of nature, though he is most pure and simple act, wholly free from any extrinsic limitation or intrinsic contradiction to his will. He does what he will beyond his own being, but only that which is good. It is a perfection of his will that he cannot sin, as it is of his intellect that he cannot err or be ignorant. Falsehood and evil are nothing, and cannot terminate a divine act. Bonum ex integrâ causâ, malum a quovis defectu—Good is from complete cause, evil from any defect. God is absolute, infinite, first cause, and no defect in his causality is possible. Second causes, when they possess and exert their integral causality, are deficient in nothing which belongs to them. All those beings which are constituted in their ultimate perfection are in this integral state, and therefore are above all liability to evil throughout eternity.

This flexibility and vertibility in respect to good and evil, imagined by Origen as perpetually inherent in rational creatures, is a mere figment of his imperfect philosophy. He had scarcely any books to read which could help him to satisfy his unbounded curiosity to penetrate into the rational sense of the doctrines of revelation. Besides the Scriptures themselves, there was only pagan philosophy for him to study. Our modern philosophers have cast away the Catholic theology and philosophy, and strive to reconstruct the higher science for themselves, though with very poor success. The old Protestant theology was a doctrine of cruel, inexorable fate, which suppressed all freedom and justice in the moral order. The new theology which has subverted it restores the freedom of the will, and protests against the gloomy exaggerations and perversions of Christian dogmas which make them incredible and insupportable. But, in the effort to substitute more rational ideas, it overthrows or weakens the stability of the whole order of creation in its relation of dependence on the sovereign power and will of God. The wisest and most sober of those who are seeking for some stable and certain doctrine regarding the destiny of man and the final cause of creation, confess that they are in doubt and cannot solve the most momentous of the problems which force themselves on their attention. They never will find the light of truth until they return to the true church of Jesus Christ, and by her lamp recover the lost clew which guides the steps of the wayfarer through the labyrinth. The one dark mystery which like a cloud overshadows the bright disc of light “which enlighteneth every man coming into this world,” the mystery of moral evil and its punishment, cannot be ignored or reasoned away. Catholic theology does not create this mystery but finds it existing. It cannot remove it, but it, so to speak, absorbs it in another, the mystery of moral probation. And this mystery, awful as are the responsibilities and risks which it presents to view as environing 548those beings who are called to run and to contend for the supernal prize upon the arena, has in it more of light than of darkness. It throws new splendor upon the ἀποκατάστασις in which the order of reason and justice finally and universally triumphs. Its dark spot is reduced by the exposition of the Catholic doctrine as authoritatively taught by the church, in connection with certain or probable and permissible reasoning from revealed or rational premises, to its smallest limits. The gloom of doom and fate in the destiny of rational beings is scattered like an unwholesome mist from the swamps of error, in the light of this doctrine. The universality and perpetuity of the struggle and danger of probation are reduced to the limits of a relatively small number and brief period of duration. The numerical proportion of the losers to the winners in the strife is reduced to the lowest terms which are consistent with a fair and judicious estimate of the probabilities of the question. Moreover, the multitude of beings, whether greater or lesser, who suffer eternal loss as the penalty of their irreparable failure, are not losers through mischance or inferiority to competitors, as in a strife where one person wins at the expense of a less capable or less fortunate rival. Neglect or contempt of their own supreme good, deliberate and wilful wasting of their day of grace, are the sole causes of their failure. Their loss of beatitude is the penalty of their demerit. It is equally proportioned to their ill-desert, and this is limited to the sins committed during the time of probation which have never been remitted. The demerit of the angel which determines his eternal destiny is the demerit of one act only, the sin by which he fell from grace. The demerit of the man is confined to the sins of his mortal life unforgiven at the moment when this life ceases. The notion of an eternal increase of demerit, and a corresponding augmentation of torment without end, is a mere human invention without any foundation in Catholic doctrine. God has set bounds to the dangerous liberty of choice between good and evil, and to the evil as well as the good resulting from its exercise. Hell can become no worse than it is when the last sentence of the Judge has been pronounced, and the active hostility of the powers of hell against the kingdom of God is suppressed for ever when they are made to bend the knee before the name of Jesus, and to confess his glory. “Qui crucem sanctam subiit, infernum confregit.” The unending warfare between good and evil, the perpetual strife, the infinite series of changes, the eternal fluctuations and revolutions of Neo-Platonic philosophy, are a wild dream. The inventions and exaggerations and distortions produced by the working of the human intellect and imagination upon a mystery of God, have no value and are not to be confounded with the revealed truth made known through the teaching of the church. Clear and adequate knowledge of the future life is reserved for the future life. In the obscurity of this present state we not only have the veracity of God as the motive and ground of faith, but also the perfect, unerring intelligence of the human soul of Jesus Christ as the medium of transmitting to us the revelation of those things which are not seen but believed, and its pure love for humanity as the warrant of confidence 549in the divine goodness. Human reason and justice, impersonated in their ideal and integral perfection in union with the divine wisdom in Immanuel, will be the standard and measure of the final judgment by which the destiny of all men and all creatures will be determined for eternity. We need not have any misgivings, lest the ways of God should not be vindicated before the whole rational universe.