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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
"But your good wishes—your hopes—"

"Oh! as to that, I must frankly own I prefer the good old school to
your new-fangled conceits and innovations. But come—the audience
waits."

Each in turn, the two rivals played a piece composed by himself,

accompanied by select performers. Then each improvised a short
piece. The delight of the spectators was called forth in different
ways. In the production of Wolff a sustained elevation, clearness,
and brilliancy recalled the glories of Mozart's school, and moved the
audience to repeated bursts of admiration. In that of Beethoven
there was a startling boldness, an impetuous rush of emotions, a
frequency of abrupt contrasts—and withal a certain wildness and
mystery—that irresistibly enthralled the feelings, while it outraged,
at the same time, their sense of musical propriety. There was little
applause, but the deep silence, prolonged even after the notes had
ceased, told how intensely all had been interested.

The victory remained undecided. There was a clamor of eager

voices among the spectators; but no one could collect the
suffrages, nor determine which was the successful champion in the
contest. The Prince Lichnowsky, however, stood up, and boldly
claimed it for his favorite.

"Nay," interrupted Beethoven, advancing, "my dear prince, there

has been no contest." He offered his hand to his opponent. "We
may still esteem each other, Wolff; we are not rivals. Our style is
essentially different; I yield to you the palm of excellence in the
qualities that distinguish you."

"You are right, my friend," cried Wolff; "henceforth let there be no

more talk of championship between us. I will hold him for my
enemy who ventures to compare me with you—you so superior in
the path you have chosen. It is a higher path than mine—an
original one; I follow contentedly in the course marked out by
others."

"But our paths lead to the same goal," replied Beethoven. "We will
speed each other with good wishes; and embrace cordially when
we meet there at last."

There was an unusual solemnity in the composer's last words, and

it put an end to the discussion. All responded warmly to his
sentiment. But amidst the general murmur of approbation, one
voice was heard that seemed strangely to startle Beethoven. His
face grew pale, then flushed deeply; and the next moment he
pressed his way hastily through the crowd, and seized by the arm a
retreating figure.

"You shall see me in Vienna," whispered the stranger in his ear.

"Yet a word with you. You shall not escape me thus."

"Auf wiedersehen!" And shaking off the grasp, the stranger

disappeared.

No one had observed his entrance; the host knew him not, and
though most of the company remarked the composer's singular
emotion, none could inform him whither the unbidden guest had
gone. Beethoven remained abstracted during the rest of the
evening.

The opera of Leonore was represented at Prague; it met with but

indifferent success. At Vienna, however, it commanded unbounded
applause. Several alterations had been made in it; the composer
had written a new overture, and the finale of the first act; he had
suppressed a duo and trio of some importance, and made other
improvements and retrenchments. Not small was his triumph at the
favorable decision of the Viennese public. A new turn seemed to be
given to his mind; he revolved thoughts of future conquests over
the same portion of the realm of art; he no longer questioned his
own spirit. It was a crisis in the artist's life, and might have
resulted in his choice of a different career from that in which he
has won undying fame.

Beethoven sat alone in his study; there was a light knock at the
door. He replied with a careless "come in," without looking up from
his work. He was engaged in revising the last scenes of his opera.

The visitor walked to the table and stood there a few minutes
unobserved. Probably the artist mistook him for one of his brothers;
but, on looking up, he started with indescribable surprise. The
unknown friend of his youth stood beside him.

"So you have kept your word," said the composer, when he had
recovered from his first astonishment; "and now, I pray you, sit
down, and tell me with whom I have the honor of having formed
acquaintance in so remarkable a manner."

"My name is of no importance, as it may or may not prove known

to you," replied the stranger. "I am your good genius, if my counsel
does you good; if not, I would prefer to take an obscure place
among your disappointed friends."

There was a tone of grave rebuke in what his visitor said that
perplexed and annoyed the artist. It struck him that there was
affectation in this assumption of mystery, and he observed coldly,

"I shall not attempt, of course, to deprive you of your incognito;

but if you assume it for the sake of effect, I would merely give you
to understand that I am not prone to listen to anonymous advice."

"Oh! that you would listen," said the stranger, sorrowfully shaking
his head, "to the pleadings of your better nature!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Beethoven, starting up.

"Ask your own heart. If that acquit you, I have nothing to say. I
leave you, then, to the glories of your new career; to the popular
applause—to your triumphs—to your remorse."

The composer was silent a few moments, and appeared agitated.

At last he said, "I know not your reasons for this mystery; but
whatever they may be, I will honor them. I entreat you to speak
frankly. You do not approve my present undertaking?"

"Frankly, I do not. Your genius lies not this way," and he raised
some of the leaves of the opera music.

"How know you that?" asked the artist, a little mortified. "You,
perhaps, despise the opera?"

"I do not. I love it; I honor it; I honor the noble creations of those
great masters who have excelled in it. But you, my friend, are
beckoned to a higher and holier path."

"How know you that?" repeated Beethoven, and this time his voice
faltered.

"Because I know you; because I know the aspirations of your

genius; because I know the misgivings that pursue you in the midst
of success; the self-reproach that you suffer to be stifled in the
clamor of popular praise. Even now, in the midst of your triumph,
you are haunted by the consciousness that you are not fulfilling the
true mission of the artist."

His piercing words were winged with truth itself. Beethoven buried
his face in his hands.

"Woe to you," cried the unknown, "if you suppress, till they are
wholly dead, your once earnest longings after the pure and the
good! Woe to you, if, charmed by the syren song of vanity, you
close your ears against the cry of a despairing world! Woe to you,
if you resign unfulfilled the trust God committed to your hands, to
sustain the weak and faltering soul, to give it strength to bear the
ills of life, strength to battle against evil, to face the last enemy!"

"You are right—you are right!" exclaimed Beethoven, clasping his

hands.

"I once predicted your elevation, your world-wide fame," continued

the stranger; "for I saw you sunk in despondency, and knew that
your spirit must be aroused to bear up against trial. You now stand
on the verge of a more dreadful abyss. You are in danger of
making the gratification of your own pride, instead of the fulfilment
of Heaven's will, the aim—the goal of your life's efforts."

"Oh! never," cried the artist, with you to guide me."

"We shall meet no more. I watched over you in boyhood; I have

now come forth from retirement to give you my last warning;
henceforth I shall observe your course in silence. And I shall not go
unrewarded. I know too well the noble spirit that burns in your
breast. You will—yes, you will fulfil your mission; your glory from
this time shall rest on a basis of immortality. You shall be hailed the
benefactor of humanity; and the spiritual joy you prepare for others
shall return to you in full measure, pressed down and running
over!"

The artist's kindling features showed that he responded to the

enthusiasm of his visitor; but he answered not.

"And now, farewell. But remember, before you can accomplish this
lofty mission, you must be baptized with a baptism of fire. The
tones that are to agitate and stir up to revolution the powers of the
human soul come not forth from an unruffled breast, but from the
depths of a sorely wrung and tried spirit. You must steal the triple
flame from heaven, and it will first consume the peace of your own
being. Remember this—and droop not when the hour of trial
comes! Farewell!"
The stranger crossed his hands over Beethoven's head, as if
mentally invoking a blessing—folded him in his embrace, and
departed. The artist made no effort to follow him. Deep and bitter
were the thoughts that moved within him; and he remained leaning
his head on the table, in silent revery, or walking the room with
rapid and irregular steps, for many hours. At length the struggle
was over; pale but composed, he took up the sheets of his opera
and threw them carelessly into his desk. His next work, Christ in
the Mount of Olives, attested the high and firm resolve of his
mind, sustained by its self-reliance, and independent of popular
applause or disapprobation. His great symphonies, which carried
the fame of the composer to its highest point, displayed the same
triumph of religious principle.

The Last Hours Of Beethoven.

Once more we find Beethoven, in the extreme decline of life. In

one of the most obscure and narrow streets of Vienna, on the third
floor of a gloomy-looking house, was now the abode of the gifted
artist. For many weary and wasting years he had been the prey of
a cruel malady, that defied the power of medicine for its cure, and
had reduced him to a state of utter helplessness. His ears had long
been closed to the music that owed its birth to his genius; it was
long since he had heard the sound of a human voice. In the
melancholy solitude to which he now condemned himself, he
received visits from but few of his friends, and those at rare
intervals. Society seemed a burden to him. Yet he persisted in his
labors, and continued to compose, notwithstanding his deafness,
those undying works which commanded for him the homage of
Europe.

Proofs of this feeling, and of the unforgotten affection of those who

knew his worth, reached him in his retreat from time to time. Now
it was a medal struck at Paris, and bearing his features; now it was
a new piano, the gift of some amateurs in London; at another time,
some honorary title decreed him by the authorities of Vienna, or a
diploma of membership of some distinguished musical society. All
these moved him not, for he had quite outlived his taste for the
honors of man's bestowing. What could they—what could even the
certainty that he had now immortal fame—do to soften the anguish
of his malady, from which he looked alone to death as a relief?

"They wrong me who call me stern or misanthropic," said he to his

brother, who came in March, 1827, to pay him a visit. "God
knoweth how I love my fellow-men! Has not my life been theirs?
Have I not struggled with temptation, trial, and suffering from my
boyhood till now, for their sakes? And now if I no longer mingle
among them, is it not because my cruel infirmity unfits me for their
companionship? When my fearful doom of separation from the rest
of the human race is forced on my heart, do I not writhe with
terrible agony, and wish that my end were come? And why, brother,
have I lived, to drag out so wretched an existence? Why have I not
succumbed ere now?

"I will tell you, brother. A soft and gentle hand—it was that of art—
held me back from the abyss. I could not quit the world before I
had produced all—had done all that I was appointed to do.
Has not such been the teaching of our holy church? I have learned
through her precepts that patience is the handmaid of truth; I will
go with her even to the footstool of the eternal."

The servant of the house entered and gave Beethoven a large

sealed package directed to himself. He opened it; it contained a
magnificent collection of the works of Handel, with a few lines
stating that it was a dying bequest to the composer from the Count
de N——. He it was who had been the unknown counsellor of
Beethoven's youth and manhood; and the arrival of this
posthumous present seemed to assure the artist that his own close
of life was crowned with the approval of his friend. It was as if a
seal had been set on that approbation, and the friendship of two
noble spirits. It seemed like the dismissal of Beethoven from further
toil.

The old man stooped his face over the papers; tears fell upon
them, and he breathed a silent prayer. After a few moments he
arose, and said, somewhat wildly, "We have not walked to-day,
Carl. Let us go forth. This confined air suffocates me."

The wind was howling violently without; the rain beat in gusts
against the windows; it was a bitter night. The brother wrote on a
slip of paper, and handed it to Beethoven.

"A storm? Well, I have walked in many a storm, and I like it better
than the biting melancholy that preys upon me here in my solitary
room. Oh! how I loved the storm once; my spirit danced with joy
when the winds blew fiercely, and the tall trees rocked, and the sea
lashed itself into a fury. It was all music to me. Alas! there is no
music now so loud that I can hear it.

"Do you remember the last time I led the orchestra at Von ——'s?
Ah! you were not there; but I heard—yes, by leaning my breast
against the instrument. When some one asked me how I heard, I
replied, 'J'etntends avec mes entraillies.'"

Disturbed by his nervous restlessness, the aged composer went to

the window, and opened it with trembling hands. The wind blew
aside his white locks, and cooled his feverish forehead.

"I have one fear," he said, turning to his brother and slightly
shuddering, "that haunts me at times—the fear of poverty. Look at
this meanly furnished room, that single lamp, my meagre fare; and
yet all these cost money, and my little wealth is daily consumed.
Think of the misery of an old man, helpless and deaf, without the
means of subsistence!"

"Have you not your pension secure?"

"It depends upon the bounty of those who bestowed it; and the
favor of princes is capricious. Then again, it was given on condition
I remained in the territory of Austria, at the time the king of
Westphalia offered me the place of chapel-master at Cassel. Alas! I
cannot beat the restriction. I must travel, brother—I must leave this
city."

"You-leave Vienna?" exclaimed his brother in utter amazement,

looking at the feeble old man whose limbs could scarcely bear him
from one street to another. Then, recollecting himself, he wrote
down his question.

"Why? Because I am restless and unhappy. I have no peace, Carl!

Is it not the chafing of the unchained spirit that pants to be free,
and to wander through God's limitless universe? Alas! she is built
up in a wall of clay, and not a sound can penetrate her gloomy
dungeon."

Overcome by his feelings, the old man bowed his head on his
brother's shoulder, and wept bitterly. Carl saw that the delirium that
sometimes accompanied his paroxysms of illness had clouded his
faculties.

The malady increased. The sufferer's eyes were glazed; he grasped

his brother's hand with a tremulous pressure.

"Carl! Carl! I pardon you the evil you did me in childhood. Pray for
me, brother!" cried the failing voice of the artist.

His brother supported him to the sofa and called for assistance. In
an hour or two, his friend and spiritual adviser, summoned in haste,
had administered the last rites of the church, and neighbors and
friends had gathered around the dying man. He seemed gradually
sinking into insensibility.

Suddenly he revived; a bright smile illumined his whole face; his

sunken eyes sparkled.
"I shall hear in heaven!" he murmured softly, and then sang in a
low but distinct voice the lines from a hymn of his own:

"Brüder! über'm Sternenzelt,

Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen."

In the last faint tone of the music his gentle spirit passed away.

Thus died Beethoven, a true artist, a good and generous man, a

devout Catholic. Simple, frank, loyal to his principles, his life was
spent in working out what he conceived his duty; and though his
task was wrought in privation, in solitude, and distress, though
happiness was not his lot in this world, doth there not remain for
him an eternal reward?

The Viennese gave him a magnificent funeral. More than thirty

thousand persons attended. The first musicians of the city executed
the celebrated funeral march composed by him, and placed in his
heroic symphony; the most famous poets and artists were pall-
bearers, or carried torches; Hummel, who had come from Weimar
expressly to see him, placed a laurel crown upon his tomb. Prague,
Berlin, and all the principal cities of Germany, paid honors to his
memory, and solemnized with pomp the anniversary of his death.
Such was the distinction heaped on the dust of him whose life had
been one of suffering, and whose last years had been solitary,
because he felt that his infirmities excluded him from human
brotherhood.
 The Assumption Of Our Lady.

If sin be captive, grace must find release;

From curse of sin the innocent is free.
Tomb prison is for sinners that decease;
No tomb but throne to guiltless doth agree.
Though thralls of sin lie lingering in the grave,
Yet faultless corse with soul reward must have.

The dazzled eye doth dimmèd light require,

And dying sights repose in shrouding shades;
But eagles' eyes to brightest light aspire,
And living looks delight in lofty glades.
Faint-wingèd fowl by ground do faintly fly:
Our princely eagle mounts unto the sky.

Gem to her worth, spouse to her love ascends;

Prince to her throne, queen to her heavenly king;
Whose court with solemn pomp on her attends,
And choirs of saints with greeting notes do sing.
Earth rendereth up her undeservèd prey:
Heaven claims the right, and bears the prize away.

Southwell.
 The Conversion of Rome.
[Footnote 196]

[Footnote 196:
1. History of European Morals, from Augustus to
Charlemagne. By W. E. H. Lecky. London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1869. 2 vols. 8vo.
2. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe. By the same. From the London
edition. New York: Appleton & Co., 1868. 2 vols. 8vo.]

Two irreconcilable systems of morals have disputed the empire of

the earliest times. The one is founded on the fact that God creates
man; the other on the assumption that man is himself God, or, at
least, a god unto himself. The first system finds its principle in the
fact stated in the first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning God
created heaven and earth;" the second finds its principle in the
assurance of Satan to Eve, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil." The first system is that of the Biblical patriarchs, the
synagogue, the Christian church, and all sound philosophy as well
as of common sense—is the theological system, which places man
in entire dependence on God as principle, medium, and end, and
asserts as its basis in us, HUMILITY, "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The other system is the
gentile or pagan system, or that which prevailed with the Gentiles
after their falling away from the patriarchal religion. It assumed, in
its practical developments, two forms, the supremacy of the state
and the supremacy of the individual; but in both was asserted the
supremacy of man—or man as his own lawgiver, teacher, and
master, his own beginning, middle, and end, and therefore, either
individually or collectively, man's sufficiency for himself. Its principle
or basis, then, is PRIDE.

Mr. Lecky adopts, as we have shown in our former article, the

pagan, or, more properly, the satanic system of morals, at least as
to its principle, though in some few particulars he gives the
superiority to Christian morals, particulars in which Christians
advanced further than had advanced the best pagan school before
the conversion of Rome, but in the same direction, on the same
principle, and from the same starting-point. He nowhere accepts
the Christian or theological principle, and rejects everywhere, with
scorn, Christian asceticism, which, according to him, is based on a
false principle—that of appeasing the anger of a malevolent God.
He accepts Christianity only so far as reducible to the pagan
principle.

The only points in which Christian morals—for Christian dogmas, in

his view, have no relation to morals, and are not to be counted—
are a progress on pagan morals, are the assertion of the
brotherhood of the race and the recognition of the emotional side
of human nature. But even these two points, as he understands
them, are not peculiar to Christianity. He shows that some of the
later Stoics, at least, asserted the brotherhood of the race, or that
nothing human is foreign to any one who is a man—that all good
offices are due to all men; and whoever has studied Plato at all,
knows that Platonism attached at least as much importance, and
gave as large a scope to our emotional nature, as does Christianity.
Christian morals have, then, really nothing peculiar, and are, in
principle, no advance on paganism. The most that can be said is
that Christianity gave to the brotherhood of the race more
prominence than did paganism, and transformed the Platonic love,
which was the love of the beautiful, into the love of humanity. This
being all, we may well ask, How was it that Christianity was able to
gain the victory over the pagan philosophers, and to convert the
city of Rome and the Roman empire?
Mr. Lecky adopts the modern doctrine of progress, and he
endeavors to prove from the historical analysis of the several pagan
schools of moral philosophy, that the pagan world was gradually
approaching the Christian ideal, and that when Christianity
appeared at Rome it had all but attained it, so that the change was
but slight, and, there being a favorable conjuncture of external
circumstances, the change was easily effected. The philosophers of
the empire had advanced from primitive fetichism to a pure and
sublime monotheism; the mingling of men of all nations and all
religions in Rome, consequent on the extension of the empire over
the whole civilized world, had liberalized the views, weakened the
narrow exclusiveness of former times, and gone far towards the
obliteration of the distinction of nations, castes, and classes, and
thus had, in a measure, prepared the world for the reception of a
universal religion, based on the doctrine of the fraternity of the
race and love of humanity.

All this would be very well, if it were true; but it happens to be

mainly false. The fact, as well as the idea of progress, in the moral
order, is wholly foreign to the pagan world. No pagan nation ever
exhibits the least sign of progress in the moral order, either under
the relation of doctrine or that of practice. The history of every
pagan people is the history of an almost continuous moral
deterioration. The purest and best period, under a moral point of
view, in the history of the Roman republic, was its earliest, and
nothing can exceed the corruption of its morals and manners at its
close. We may make the same remark of every non-Catholic nation
in modern times. There is a far lower standard of morals reached
or aimed at in Protestant nations to-day than was common at the
epoch of the Reformation; and the moral corruption of our own
country has increased in a greater ratio than have our wealth and
numbers. We are hardly the same people that we were even thirty
years ago; and the worst of it is, that the pagan system, whether
under the ancient Greco-Roman form or under the modern
Protestant form, has no recuperative energy, and the nation
abandoned to it has no power of self-renovation. Pagan nations
may advance, and no doubt, at times, have advanced, in the
industrial order, in the mechanic arts, and in the fine arts, but in
the moral, intellectual, and spiritual order, never.

Mr. Lecky confines his history almost entirely to the moral doctrines
of the philosophers; but even in these he shows no moral
melioration in the later from the earlier, no progress towards
Christian morals. In relation to specific duties of man to man, and
of the citizen to the state, the Christian has, indeed, little fault to
find with the De Officiis of Cicero; but we find even in him no
approach to the Christian basis of morals. The Greeks never have
any conception of either law or good, in the Christian sense. The
was only a rule or principle of harmony; it had its reason in
the , or the beautiful, and could not bind the conscience.
The Latins placed the end, or the reason and motive of the moral
law, in the honestum, the proper, the decent, or decorous. The
highest moral act was virtus, manliness, and consisted in bravery
or courage. The rule was, to be manly; the motive, self-respect.
One must not be mean or cowardly, because it was unmanly, and
would destroy one's self-respect. We have here pride, not humility;
not the slightest approach to the Christian principle of morals,
either to the rule or the motive of virtue as understood by the
Christian church.

Yet Mr. Lecky tells us the moral doctrines of the philosophers were
much superior to the practice of the people. He admits the people
were far below the philosophers, and were very corrupt; but we
see no evidence that he has any adequate conception of how
corrupt they were. What the people were we can learn from the
satirists, from the historians, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, especially
from the De Civitate Dei of St. Augustine, and the writings of the
early Greek and Latin fathers. Our author acknowledges not only
that the philosophers were superior to the people, but also that
they were impotent to effect their moral elevation or any moral
amelioration of their condition. Nothing more true. How, then, if
Christianity was based on the pagan principle of morals, was in the
same order with paganism, and differed from it only in certain
details, or, as the schoolmen say, certain accidents—how explain
the amelioration of morals and manners which uniformly followed
whenever and wherever it was received?

If, as the author holds, Christianity was really only a development

of the more advanced thought of the pagan empire, why did it not
begin with the philosophers, the representatives of that advanced
thought? Yet nothing is more certain than that it did not begin with
them. The philosophers were the first to resist it, and the last to
hold out against it. It spread at first among the people, chiefly
among the slaves—that is, among those who knew the least of
philosophy, who were least under the influence of the philosophers,
and whose morals it is confessed the philosophers did not and
could not elevate. This of itself refutes the pretence that
Christianity was an offshoot of heathen philosophy. If it had been,
and its power lay in the fact that the empire in its progress was
prepared for it, its first converts should have been from the ranks
of the more advanced classes. But the reverse was the fact. "You
see your calling, brethren," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "that
not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble; but the foolish things of the world hath God chosen,
that he may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world
hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong; and the mean
things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God
chosen, and things that are not, that he might destroy the things
that are; that no flesh should glory in his sight." [Footnote 197] So
said the great teacher of the Gentiles, as if anticipating the
objection of modern rationalists. Evidently, then, the pretended
preparation of the Roman empire for Christianity must count for
nothing, for Christianity gained its first establishments among those
whom that preparation, even if it had been made, had not reached.

[Footnote 197: Cor. i. 26.]

We cannot follow step by step the author in the special chapter
which he devotes to the conversion of Rome, and the triumph of
Christianity in the empire. We have already indicated the grounds
on which he explains the marvellous fact. He denies all agency of
miracles, will recognize no supernatural aid, and aims to explain it
on natural principles or by natural causes alone. Thus far he has
certainly failed; but let us try him on his own ground. We grant
that the breaking down of the hundred nationalities and fusing so
many distinct tribes and races into one people, under one supreme
political authority, did in some sense prepare the way for the
introduction of a universal religion. But it must be remembered that
the fusion was not complete, and that the work of amalgamating
and Romanizing the several nations placed by conquest under the
authority of Rome was only commenced, when Christianity was first
preached in the capital of the empire. Each conquered nation
retained as yet its own distinctive religion, and to a great extent its
own distinctive civilization. Gaul, Spain, and the East were Roman
provinces, but not thoroughly Romanized, and it was not till after
Christianity had gained a footing in the empire that provincials out
of Italy were admitted to the rights and privileges of Roman
citizenship. The law recognized the religion of the state, but it
tolerated for every conquered nation its own national religion.
There was as yet nothing in the political, social, or religious order
of the empire to suggest a universal religion, or that opened the
way for the introduction of a catholic as distinguished from a
national religion. All the religions recognized and tolerated were
national religions. Christianity was always catholic, for all nations,
not for any particular nation alone. If, then, at a subsequent period,
the boasted universality of the empire favored the diffusion of
Christianity, it did not favor its introduction in the beginning. In all
other respects there was, as we read history, no evangelical
preparation in Rome or the Roman empire. The progress, if
progress it may be called, of the Gentiles, had been away from the
primitive religion reasserted by Christianity, and in a direction from,
not towards, the great doctrines and principles of the Gospel. What
of primitive tradition they had retained had become so corrupted,
perverted, or travestied as to be hardly recognizable. They had
changed, even with the philosophers, the true basis of morals, and
the corrupt morals of the people were only the practical
development of the principles adopted by even the best of the
Gentile philosophers, as rationalism is only the development of
principles adopted by the reformers, who detested it, and asserted
exclusive supernaturalism. Even the monotheism of some pagan
philosophers was not the Christian doctrine of one God, any more
than simple theism—the softened name for deism—or even
theophilanthropy is Christianity. The Christian God is not only one,
but he is the creator of the world, of all things visible and invisible,
the moral governor of the universe, and the remunerator of all who
seek him. The God of Plato, or of any of the other philosophers, is
no creative God, and the immortality of the soul that Plato and his
master Socrates defended had hardly any analogy with the life and
immortality brought to light through the Gospel. The Stoics, whom
the author places in the front rank of pagan moralists, did not
regard God as the creator of the world, and those among them
who held that the soul survives the body, believed not in the
resurrection of the flesh, nor in future rewards and punishments.
Their motive to virtue was their own self-respect, and their study
was to prove themselves independent of the flesh and its
seductions, indifferent to pleasure or pain, serene and unalterable,
through self-discipline, whatever the vicissitudes of life. The
philosophers adopted the morality of pride, and aimed to live and
act not as men dependent on their Creator, but as independent
gods, while the people were sunk in the grossest ignorance and
moral corruption, and subject to the most base and abominable
superstitions. Such was the pagan empire when Christianity was
first preached at Rome, only much worse than we venture to depict
it.

Now, to this Roman world, rotten to the core, the Christian

preachers proclaimed a religion which arraigned its corruption,
which contradicted its cherished ideas on every point, and
substituted meekness for cruelty, and humility for pride, as the
principle of morals. They had against them all the old superstitions
and national religions of the empire, the religion of the state,
associated with all its victories, supported by the whole power of
the government, and by the habits, usages, traditions, and the
whole political, military, social, and religious life of the Roman
people. They could not move without stepping on something held
sacred, or open their mouths without offending some god or some
religious usage; for the national religion was interwoven with the
simplest and most ordinary usages of private and social life. If a
pagan sneezed, no Christian could be civil enough to say, "Jupiter
help you," for that would recognize a false god. Yet the Christian
missionaries did succeed in converting Rome and making it the
capital of the Christian world, as it was, when they entered it, the
capital of the heathen world. You tell me this mighty change was
effected, circumstances favoring, by natural and human means!
Credat Judaeus Appelles, non ego.

The cause of the success, after the preparation named, which turns
out to have been no preparation at all, were, according to the
author, principally the zeal, the enthusiasm, and the intolerance or
exclusiveness of the Christians, the doctrines of the brotherhood of
the race and of a future life, and their appeals to the emotional
side of human nature. He does not think the conversion of Rome
any thing remarkable. The philosophers had failed to regenerate
society in the moral order, the old religions had lost their hold on
men's convictions, the old superstitions were losing their terrors,
and men felt and sighed for something better than any thing they
had. In fact, minds were unsettled, and were ready for something
new. This description, not very applicable to Rome at the period in
question, is not inapplicable to the Protestant world at the present
time. Protestants are no longer satisfied with the results, either
dogmatic or moral, of the Reformation, and the thinking portion of
them wish for something better than any thing they have; yet not,
therefore, can we conclude that they can easily, or by any purely
human means, be converted to the Catholic Church; for they have
—with individual exceptions, indeed—not lost their confidence in
the underlying principle of the Reformation, or opened their minds
or hearts to the acknowledgment of the principle, either of Catholic
dogma or of Catholic morals. It is not so much that they do not
know or misconceive that principle, but they have a deep-rooted
repugnance to it, detest it, abhor it, and cannot even hear it named
with patience. So was it with the pagan Romans. The whole pagan
world was based on a principle which the Christian preacher could
not speak without contradicting. The Christian ideal was not only
above, but antagonistic to the pagan ideal, and, consequently, the
more zealous the Christian missionary, the more offensive he would
prove himself. His intolerance or exclusiveness might help him
whose faith was strong, yet little heeded in practice; but when faith
itself was not only wanting but indignantly rejected, it could only
excite anger or derision.

The apostle had no point d'appui in the pagan traditions, and it

was only rarely that he could find any thing in heathen authors,
poets, or philosophers that he could press into his service. The
pagan, no doubt, had natural reason, but it was so darkened by
spiritual ignorance, so warped by superstition, and so abnormally
developed by false principles, that it was almost impossible to find
in it anything on which an argument for the truth could be based.
The Gospel was not in the pagan order of thought, and the
Christian apologists had to support it by appealing to a line of
tradition which the Gentiles had not, or had only as corrupted,
perverted, or travestied. The only traditions they could appeal to
were those of the Hebrews, and they found it necessary, in some
sort, to convert the pagans to Judaism, before they could convince
them of the truth of the Gospel. This was any thing but easy to be
done; for the Gentiles despised the Jews and their traditions, and
the Jews themselves were the most bitter enemies of the
Christians, had crucified the founder of Christianity, and rejected
the Christian interpretation of their Scriptures.

The doctrine of the brotherhood of the race taught by the church

was something more than was taught by the philosophers, in fact,
another doctrine; and, though it had something consoling to the
poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, yet these are precisely the
classes with whom old traditions linger the longest, and prejudices
are the most inveterate and hardest to be overcome. They are the
classes the most opposed to innovations, in the moral or spiritual
order. The Protestant reformers proved this, and the peasantry
were the last to accept the new gospel they preached, and rarely
accepted it at all but through the influence or compulsion of their
princes and nobles. We see, also, now, in Protestant countries,
that, the peasantry having become Protestant, are far more difficult
to convert than persons by birth or education belonging to the
upper classes. Yet, it was precisely among the lower classes, or
rather the slave class, that the Christian missionary had his greatest
success; though the emancipation and equality he preached were
spiritual only, not physical or social.

The doctrine of future life the church taught was coupled with two
other doctrines hard for pagans to receive. The mere continuance
of the spirit after the death of the body was, in some form, no
doubt, held by the whole pagan world, a few sceptics excepted; but
the resurrection of the body, or that what had once ceased to live
would live again, was a thing wholly foreign to the pagan mind.
Plato never, to my recollection, once hints it, and could not with his
general principles. He held the union of the soul with the body to
be a fall, a degradation from its previous state, the loss of its
liberty; regarded the body as the enemy of the soul, as its
dungeon, and looked upon death as its liberation, as a restoration
to its original freedom and joy in the bosom of the divinity. The
pagans had, as far as I can discover, no belief in future rewards
and punishment in the Christian sense. They believed in malevolent
gods, who, if they failed to appease their wrath before dying, would
torture them after death in Tartarus; but the idea that a God of
love would doom the wicked to hell, as a punishment for their
moral offences or sins, was as hard for them to believe as it is for
Mr. Lecky himself. Yet Christianity taught it, and brought the whole
empire to believe it. Christianity, while it delivered the pagans from
the false terrors of superstition, replaced them by what to the
pagan mind seemed even a still greater terror.

In what the author says of appeals to the emotional side of our

nature, he shows that he has studied paganism with more care and
less prejudice than he has Christianity. The emotions, as such, have
for the Christian no moral or religious value. The love the Gospel
requires is not an emotional love, and Christian morals have little to
do with the moral sentiment which Adam Smith asserted, or the
benevolence which Hucheson held to be the principle of morality.
There is no approach to the Christian principle in the fine-spun
sentiment of Bernardine Saint-Pierre, Madame de Staël, or
Chateaubriand. Sentimentalism, in any form, is wholly foreign to
Christian morals and to Christian piety, and neither has probably a
worse or a more dangerous enemy than the sentimentalism so rife
in modern society, and which finds its way even into the writings of
some Catholics. The sentiment of benevolence may be a mobile,
but it is never the motive of Christian virtue. No doubt, one of the
great causes of the success of Christianity was the inexhaustible
charity of the early Christians, their love for one another, their
respect for and tenderness to the poor, the forsaken, the
oppressed, the afflicted, the suffering. But that charity had not its
origin in our emotional nature, and though it may be attended by
sentiment, is itself by no means a sentiment; for its reason and
motive was the love of God, especially of God who had assumed
our nature, and made himself man for man's sake, and died on the
cross for man's redemption. The Christian sees God in every fellow-
man who needs his assistance, or to whose wants he can minister.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me." The Christian finds his Lord, the Beloved
of his soul, wherever he finds one for whom Christ died, to whom
he can be of service.

This charity, this love, may be mimicked by the sentiment of

benevolence, but it does not grow out of it, is not that sentiment
developed or intensified; it depends on the great central mystery of
Christianity, that of "the Word made flesh," and can never be found
where faith in the Incarnation is wanting, and faith is, always and
everywhere, an intellectual act, not a sentimental affection. If it
were a natural sentiment or emotion, why was it to be found
among Christians alone? The heathen had all of nature that
Christians have; they even recognized the natural brotherhood of
the race, as does the author; how happens it, then, if Christianity is
only a development of heathenism, and Christian charity is only a
natural sentiment, that you find no trace of it in the pagan world?
There is no effect without a cause, and there must have been
something operating with Christians that was not to be found in
paganism, and which is not included even in nature.

The pagans, like modern Protestants, worshipped success, and

regarded success as a mark of the approbation of the gods.
Misfortune, ill-luck, failure was a proof of the divine displeasure.
Cromwell and his Roundheads interpreted uniformly their victories
over the royalists as an indisputable proof of the divine approval of
their course. It never occurred to them that the Almighty might be
using them to chastise the royalists for their abuse of his favors, or
to execute vengeance on a party that had offended him, and that,
when he had accomplished his purpose with them, he would break
them as a potter's vessel, and cast them away. The heathen looked
upon the poor, the needy, the enslaved, the infirm, the helpless,
and the suffering, as under the malediction of the gods, and
refused to offer them any aid or consolation. They left the poor to
struggle and starve. They did not do even so much for them as to
shut them up in prisons called poor-houses. They looked with
haughty contempt on the poor and needy, and if they sometimes
threw them a crust, it was from pride, not charity, without the least
kindly sympathies with them. As with modern non-Catholics,
poverty, with them, was regarded and treated as a misfortune or as
a crime.

Yet the Christians looked upon the poor with love and respect.
Poverty, in their eyes, was no misfortune, no crime, but really a
blessing, as bringing them nearer to God, and giving to the
Christian more abundant in this world's goods an opportunity to do
good, and lay up treasures in heaven. The Christian counts what he
gives to the poor and needy as so much treasure saved, and placed
beyond the reach of thieves and robbers, or any of the vicissitudes
of fortune. Whence this difference between the pagan and the
Christian, we might say, between the Catholic and non-Catholic? It
cannot come from the simple recognition of the natural
brotherhood of the race, for the natural ties of race and of kindred
fail to call forth a love so strong, so enduring, so self-forgetting as
Christian charity. Indeed, Christian charity is decidedly above the
forces of nature. The brotherhood that gives rise to it is not the
brotherhood in Adam, but the closer brotherhood in Christ; not in
generation, but in regeneration. Give, then, as large a part as you
will to Christian charity, in the conversion of Rome, you still have
offered no proof that the conversion was effected by natural
causes, for that charity itself is supernatural, and not in the order
of natural causes.

Mr. Lecky wholly fails to adduce any natural causes adequate to the
explanation of the conversion of Rome and the triumph of
Christianity over paganism. He cannot do it, for this one sufficient
reason, that paganism was impotent to reform itself, and yet it had
all the natural causes working for it that Christianity had. The
Christians had no more of nature than had the pagans, while all the
natural advantages, power, wealth, institutions, human learning and
science, the laws, habits, customs, and usages of the entire nation,
or aggregation of nations, were against them. How, then, not only
do by nature what the same nature in paganism could not do, or
by nature alone triumph over nature clothed with so many
advantages, and presenting so many obstacles? Why should nature
be stronger, and so much stronger, in Christians than in Pagans,
that a few illiterate fishermen from the lake of Genesareth,
belonging by race to the despised nation of the Jews, could change
not only the belief, but the moral life of the whole Roman people?
Clearly, the Christians could not succeed without a power which
paganism had not, and therefore not without a power that nature
does not and cannot furnish.

The author denies the supernatural, and seeks to combat the

argument we use by showing that several eastern superstitions,
especially the worship of Isis, were introduced into Rome about the
same time with Christianity, and gained no little currency, in spite of
the imperial edicts against them. This is true, but there was no
radical difference between those eastern superstitions and the state
religion, and they demanded and effected no change of morals or
manners. They were all in the order of the national religion, were
based on the same principle, only they were a little more sensual
and corrupt. Their temporary success required no other basis than
Roman paganism itself furnished. And the edicts against their
mysteries and orgies were seldom executed. It needs no
supernatural principle to account for the rapid rise and spread of
Methodism in a Protestant community, for it is itself only a form of
Protestantism. But Christianity was not, and is not, in any sense, a
form or development of paganism; in almost every particular, it is
its direct contradictory. It was based on a totally different principle,
and held entirely different maxims of life. A worshipper of Bacchus
or Isis could without difficulty conform to the national or state
religion, and comply with all its requirements. The Christian could
conform in nothing, and comply with no pagan requirements. He
could take no part in the national festivities, the national games,
amusements, or rejoicings, for these were all dedicated to idols.
There is no analogy in the case.

Mr. Lecky denies that the conversion of Rome was a miracle, and
that it was effected on the evidence of miracles. He admits that
miracles are possible, though he confounds miracles with prodigies,
and says there is five times more proof in the case of many
miracles than would be required to prove an ordinary historical fact;
but he rejects miracles, not for the want of proof, nor because
science has disproved them, but because the more intelligent
portion of mankind have gradually dropped them, and ceased to
believe in them, as they have dropped the belief in fairies, dwarfs,
etc. The enlightened portion of mankind, it must be understood,
are those who think like Mr. Lecky, and profess a Christianity
without Christ, moral obligation without God the creator, and hold
effects are producible without causes. We confess that we are not
of their number, and probably shall never be an enlightened man in
their sense. We believe in miracles, and that miracles had not a
little to do with the introduction and establishment of Christianity.
As the author admits them to be possible, and that many are
sustained by far greater proof than is needed to prove ordinary
historical events, we hope that it will be allowed, that, in believing
them, we are not necessarily involved in total darkness. But we
have no space, at present, to enter upon the general question of
miracles—a question that can not be properly treated without
treating the whole question of the natural and the supernatural.

The author tells us that the early Christians at Rome rarely

appealed, if at all, to miracles as proofs either of their doctrines or
their mission. Yet that they sometimes did would seem pretty
certain from the pains the pagans took to break the force of the
Christian miracles by ascribing them to magic, or by setting up
analogous or counter miracles of their own. Certain it is, however,
that they appealed to the supernatural, and adduced not only the
miracle of the resurrection of our Lord, which entered into the very
staple of their preaching, and was one of the bases of their faith,
but to that standing miracle of prophecy, and of a supernatural
providence—the Jewish, people. The very religion they preached
was supernatural, from beginning to end, and they labored to prove
the necessity of faith in Christ, who was crucified, who rose from
the dead, and is Lord of heaven and earth. There is no particular
miracle or prophecy adduced to prove this that cannot, indeed, be
cavilled at; but the Hebrew traditions and the faith of the Jewish
people could not be set aside. Here was a whole nation whose
entire life through many thousand years had been based on a
prophecy, a promise of the Messiah. This prophecy, frequently
renewed, and borne witness to by the national organization, the
religious institutions, sacrifices, and offerings, and the entire
national and moral life through centuries, is a most stupendous
miracle. When you take this in connection with the traditions
preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, which go back to the creation
of the world—developing one uniform system of thought, one
uniform doctrine, one uniform faith, free from all superstition; one
uniform plan of divine providence, and throwing a marvellous light
on the origin, duty, and end of man—you find a supernatural fact
which is irresistible, and sufficient of itself to convince any
unprejudiced mind that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promises
made to Adam after his expulsion from the Garden, to the
patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to the Jewish people.

We have no space here to develop this argument, but it is the

argument that had great weight with ourselves personally, and, by
the grace of God, was the chief argument that brought us to
believe in the truth of Christianity, and in the church as the
fulfilment of the synagogue. The apostles and early apologists
continually, in one form or another, appeal to this standing miracle,
this long-continued manifestation of the supernatural, as the basis
of their proof of Christianity. They adduced older traditions than any
the pagans could pretend to, and set forth a faith that had
continued from the first man, which had once been the faith of all
mankind, and from which the Gentiles had fallen away, and been
plunged, in consequence, into the darkness of unbelief, and
subjected to all the terrors of the vilest, most corrupt, and
abominable superstitions. They labored to show that the Gentiles,
in the pride of their hearts, had forsaken the God that made them,
creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible or
invisible, for Satan, for demons, and for gods made with their own
hands, or fashioned by their own lusts and evil imaginations. They
pursued, indeed, the same line of argument that Catholics pursue
against Protestants, only modified by the fact that the Protestant
falling away, so clearly foretold by St. Paul in his Epistles, is more
recent, less complete, and Protestants have not yet sunk so low as
had the Gentiles of the Roman empire.
But it was not enough to establish the truth of Christianity in the
Roman mind. Christian morals are above the strength of nature
alone; yet the pagans were not only induced to give up their own
principle of morals, and to accept as true the Christian principle,
but they gave up their old practices, and yielded a practical
obedience to the Christian law. Those same Romans changed their
manner of life, and attained to the very summits of Christian
sanctity. The philosophers gave many noble precepts, preserved
from a purer tradition than their own, but they had no power to get
them practised, and our author himself says they had no influence
on the people; yet they enjoined nothing above the forces of
nature. The Christians came, taught the people a morality
impracticable to nature even in its integrity, and yet what they
taught was actually practised even by women, children, and slaves.
How was this? It was not possible without supernatural aid, or the
infusion of grace which elevates the soul above the level of nature,
enabling it at once to act from a supernatural principle, and from a
supernatural motive. All who have attempted the practise of
Christian perfection by the strength of nature alone, have sadly
failed. Take the charitable institutions, societies for relieving the
poor, providing for the aged and infirm, protecting the fatherless
and widows, for restoring the fallen, and reforming the vicious or
criminal, established by non-Catholics—they are all comparative, if
not absolute failures. Though modelled after institutions of the
church, and supported at lavish expense, none of them succeed.
They lack some essential element which is efficacious in Catholic
institutions, and that element is undoubtedly supernatural grace, for
that is all Catholics have that they have not in far greater
abundance. They have humanity, natural benevolence, learning,
ability, and ample wealth—why do they not succeed? Because they
lack supernatural charity, and the blessing of God that always
accompanies it. No other reasons can be assigned.

Mr. Lecky thinks the persecutions by the state, which the early
Christians had to endure, or that the spread of Christianity in spite
of them, are not worth anything in the argument. In the first place,
he pretends that the persecutions were not very severe, and were
for the most part confined to particular localities, and rarely
became general in the empire; they were of brief duration, and
came only at distant intervals, and the number of martyrs could not
have been great. In the second place, the persecutions rather
helped the persecuted religion, as persecution usually does. Rome,
in reality, was tolerant, and most of the pagan emperors were
averse to harsh measures, and connived at the growth of the new
religion, which they regarded as one of the innumerable
superstitions hatched in the East, and which must soon pass away.

Rome tolerated for conquered nations their national religion, or

worship, but no religion except the state religion for Romans. The
national gods recognized by the senate, and whose images were
allowed to stand by the side of the Roman gods, might be
worshipped; but no Roman citizen was allowed to desert the state
religion, and nowhere in the empire was any religion tolerated that
was not the national worship of some people subject or tributary to
Rome. Now, Christianity was no national religion, and was hostile to
the state religion, and utterly irreconcilable with it; for it there was
no toleration; it was prohibited by the laws of the empire as well as
by the edicts of the emperors. The Christians might at first be
overlooked as too insignificant to excite hostility, or they might have
been regarded, since they were chiefly Jews, as a Jewish sect; they
might also, as they were a quiet, peaceable people, obeying the
laws when not repugnant to the law of God, performing all their
moral, social, and civil duties, and never mingling in the affairs of
state, have been connived at for a time. But they had no legal
protection, and if complained of and brought before the tribunals,
and proved to be Christians, they had no alternative but to conform
to the national religion or suffer death, often in the most
excruciating forms; for the Romans were adepts in cruelty, and took
delight in watching the writhings and sufferings of their victims.
Even Trajan, while he prohibited the search for them, ordered, if
accused and convicted of being Christians, that they should be put
to death. Such being the law, the prefect or governor of a province
could at any time, without any imperial edict, put the law in force
against the Christians, if so disposed; and that they did so in all the
provinces of the empire, frequently and with unsparing severity, we
know from history. The Christians were safe at no time and
nowhere in the empire, and it is probable that the number of
victims of the ten general persecutions were by far the smaller
number of those who suffered for the faith prior to the accession of
Constantine. We place no confidence in the calculations of Gibbon
or our author, and we have found no reason for believing that the
Christian historians, or the fathers, exaggerated the number of
those who received the crown of martyrdom.

It is a great mistake to suppose that paganism had lost its hold on

the Roman mind till long after the Christians had become a
numerous body in the empire. There were, no doubt, individuals
who treated all religions with indifference, but never had the pagan
superstitions a stronger hold on the mass of the people, especially
in Rome and the western provinces, than during the first two
centuries of our era. The republic had been transformed into the
empire, and the government was never stronger, or the worship of
the state more intolerant, more fervent, or more energetically
supported by the government. The work of Romanizing the various
conquered nations was effected under the emperors, and the signs
of decline and dissolution of the empire did not appear till near the
close of the third century. The Roman state and paganism seemed
to be indissolubly linked together—so closely that the pagans
attributed to the rise and progress of Christianity the decline and
downfall of both. Certain it is, that paganism lost its hold on the
people or the state only in proportion to the progress of
Christianity; and the abandonment of the heathen gods and the
desertion of the heathen temples were due to the preaching of the
Gospel, not a fact which preceded and prepared the way for it.
Converts are seldom made from the irreligious and indifferent
classes, who are the last, in any age, to be reached or affected by
truth and piety.
The fact is, that paganism fought valiantly to the last, and
Christianity had to meet and grapple with it in its full force, and
when supported by the strongest and most effective government
that ever existed, still in the prime and vigor of its life. The struggle
was harder and longer continued than is commonly supposed, and
by no means ended with Constantine. Paganism reascended the
throne—in principle, at least—under Constantius, the son, and
avowedly under Julian, the nephew of the first Christian emperor.
Every pagan statesman saw, from the first, that there was an
irrepressible antagonism between Christianity and paganism, and
that the former could not prevail without destroying the latter, and,
of course, the religion of the state, and apparently not without
destroying the state with it. The intelligent and patriotic portion of
the Roman people must have regarded the spread of Christianity
very much as the Protestant leaders regard the spread of
Catholicity in our own country. They looked upon it as a foreign
religion, and anti-Roman. It rejected the gods of Rome, to whom
the city was indebted for her victories and the empire of the world.
We may be sure, then, that the whole force of the state, the whole
force of the pagan worship, backed by the passions and fanaticism
of the people, whether of the city or the provinces, was exerted to
crush out the new and offensive worship; and, whether the
numbers of martyrs were a few more or a few less, the victory
obtained by Christianity against such fearful odds is not explicable
without the assumption of supernatural aid—especially when that
victory carried with it a complete change of morals and manners,
and the practice in not a few who underwent it of a heroic sanctity,
or virtues which are confessedly above our natural strength.

No false or merely natural religion could have survived, far less

have vanquished, such opposition as Christianity encountered at
every point. The very fact that it thrived, in spite of the fearful
persecution to which it was subjected, is a proof of its truth and
divinity. We grant the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the
church, but persecution fails only when it meets truth, when it
meets God as the resisting force. We know the strength of
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