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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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people. Nor was it a slight satisfaction to their national pride and
patriotism to be permitted to resume the costume which had also
been proscribed and included in the suppression of the clans.
Since those days of long ago we have not seen a Scottish
Highlander; but the notice in the London Tablet of which we have
spoken awakened the recollections we have thus imperfectly
embodied as our slight tribute to the cairn that perpetuates, in this
world, the memory of all this people have done and suffered for that
faith which shall be their eternal joy and crowning glory in the next.
 THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF HALIFAX, N. S.

The Catholic Church in America has recently lost, in the person of the
Most Reverend Dr. Connolly, one of her most distinguished prelates.
Thomas Louis Connolly was born about sixty-two years ago in the
city of Cork, Ireland. In his person were found all the virtues and
noble qualities of head and heart that have made his countrymen
loved and honored. Like many other distinguished churchmen, he
was of humble parentage; and there are many townsmen of his in
America to-day who remember the late archbishop as a boy running
about the streets of Cork. He lost his father when he was three
years old; nevertheless, his widowed mother managed to bring up
her little son and a still younger daughter in comfort. She kept a
small but decent house of entertainment, and the place is
remembered by a mammoth pig that stood for years in the window,
and which bore the quaint inscription:
“This world is a city with many a crooked street,
And death the market-place where all men meet.
If life were merchandise that men could buy,
The rich would live and the poor would die.”

Father Mathew, the celebrated Apostle of Temperance, whose church

was but a few doors from young Connolly’s home, noticed the quiet,
good-natured boy who was so attentive to his church and catechism,
and, perhaps discerning in him some of the rare qualities which
afterwards distinguished him as a man, became his friend, confidant,
and adviser. The widow was able to give her only son a good
education, and we learn that at sixteen young Connolly was well
advanced in history and mathematics and in the French, Latin, and
Greek languages. The youth, desiring to devote his life to the
church, became a novice in the Capuchin Order, in which order
Father Mathew held high office.
In his eighteenth year he went to Rome to complete his studies for
the priesthood. He spent six years in the Eternal City, and they were
years of hard study, devoted to rhetoric, philosophy, and theology.
Even then he was noted for his application, and was reserved and
retiring in his disposition, except to the few with whom he was
intimately acquainted. He left Rome for the south of France, where
he completed his studies, and in 1838, at the cathedral at Lyons, he
was ordained priest by the venerable archbishop of that city,
Cardinal Bolæ. The following year he returned to Ireland, and for
three years he labored hard and fervently in the Capuchin Mission
House, Dublin, and at the Grange Gorman Lane Penitentiary, to
which latter institution he was attached as chaplain. In 1842, when
Dr. Walsh was appointed Bishop of Halifax, the young Capuchin
priest, then in his twenty-eighth year, volunteered his services, and
came out as secretary to the studious and scholarly prelate whom he
was afterwards to succeed.
Until 1851, a period of nine years, Father Connolly labored
incessantly, faithfully, and cheerfully as parish priest, and after a
while as Vicar-General of Halifax. In the prime of his manhood,
possessed of a massive frame and a vigorous constitution, with the
ruddy glow of health always on his face, the young Irish priest went
about late and early, in pestilence and disease, among the poor and
sick, hearing confessions, organizing societies in connection with the
church, preaching in public, exhorting in private, doing the work that
only one of his zeal and constitution could do, and through it all
carrying a smiling face and cheering word for every one. It is this
period of his life that the members of his flock love to dwell upon,
and to which he himself, no doubt, looked back with pleasure as a
time when, possessed of never-failing health, he had only the
subordinate’s work to do, without the cares, crosses, and
momentous questions to decide which the mitre he afterwards wore
brought with it. Indeed, at that time Father Connolly was
everywhere and did everything. All the old couples in Halifax to-day
were married by him; and all the young men and women growing up
were baptized by him.
The worth, labors, and abilities of the ardent missionary could not
fail to be recognized, and when Dr. Dollard died, in 1851, on the
recommendation of the American bishops Father Connolly was
appointed to succeed him as Bishop of St. John, New Brunswick. He
threw all his heart and soul into his work, and before the seven
years he resided in St. John had passed away he had brought the
diocese, which he found in a chaotic, poverty-stricken, and ill-
provided state, into order, efficiency, and comparative financial
prosperity. Without a dollar, but with a true reliance on Providence
and his people, he set to work to build a cathedral, and by his
energy and the liberality of his flock soon had it in a tolerable state
of completion. He seems to have taken a special delight in building,
and no sooner was one edifice fairly habitable than he was at work
on another. Whatever little difficulties or differences he may have
had with the Catholics under his jurisdiction can be all traced to this;
they were money questions, questions of expense. He always kept a
warm corner in his heart for the orphans of his diocese, whom he
looked upon as especially under his care, and who were to be
provided for at all costs; and soon the present efficient Orphan
Asylum of St. John sprang up, nuns were brought from abroad to
conduct it, and, through the exertions of their warm-hearted bishop,
the little wanderers and foundlings of New Brunswick were provided
with a home.
On the death of Archbishop Walsh, in 1859, Bishop Connolly was
appointed by the present Pontiff to succeed him. In his forty-fifth
year, with all his faculties sharpened, his views and mind widened,
and his political opinions changed for the better by his trying
experience, Bishop Connolly came back to Halifax a different man, in
all but outward appearance, from the Father Connolly who had left
that city eight years before.
Halifax is noted as being one of the most liberal and tolerant cities
on the continent. Nowhere do the different bodies of Christians
mingle and work so well together; and although it is not free from
individual bigotry, the great mass of its citizens work and live
together in harmony and cordial good-will. It is too much to credit
the late archbishop with this happy state of affairs, for it existed
before his time, and owes its existence to the good sense and
liberality of the Protestant party as well as the Catholic; but it is only
common justice to say that the archbishop did all in his power to
maintain it. Hospitable and genial by nature, it was a pleasure to him
to have at his table the most distinguished citizens of all creeds, to
entertain the officers of the army and navy, and to extend his
hospitality to the guests of the city. Without lessening his dignity,
and without conceding a point of what might be considered due to
the rights of his church, he worked and lived on the most friendly
and intimate footing with those who differed from him in religion. A
hard worker, an inveterate builder, and a great accumulator of
church property, he was hardly settled in his archdiocese before he
set to work to convert the church of St. Mary’s into the present
beautiful cathedral. The work has been going on for years under his
personal supervision, and he resolutely refused to let any part out to
contract; and although his congregation has grumbled at the money
sunk in massive foundations, unnecessary finish, and the extras for
alterations, yet time, by the strength, durability, and thoroughness of
the work, will justify the archbishop in the course he adopted.
School-houses were built, homes for the Sisters of Charity,
orphanages, an academy, and a summer residence for himself and
clergy at the Northwest Arm, a few miles from the city. All of these
buildings have some pretensions to architecture, and are substantial
and well built. Excepting the cathedral, the archbishop was generally
his own architect; and as he was a little dogmatic in his manner, and
not too ready to listen to suggestions from the tradesmen under
him, he on more than one occasion made blunders, more amusing
than serious, in his building operations. A man’s religion never stood
in his way in working for Archbishop Connolly.
His duties as the father of his flock were not neglected on account of
his outside work. No amount of physical or mental labor seemed too
much for him. After the worry, work, and travelling of the week, it
was no uncommon thing for him to preach in the three Catholic
churches in the city on the one Sunday. His knowledge of the
Scriptures was astonishing, even for a churchman, and was an
inexhaustible mine on which he could draw at pleasure. His reading
was wide and extensive. It was hard to name a subject on which he
had not read and studied; on the affairs and politics of the day he
was ready, when at leisure, to talk; and on his table might be found
the periodical light literature as well as heavier reading. In 1867,
when the confederation of the different British provinces into the
present Dominion of Canada was brought about, he took an active
part in politics. Believing that Nova Scotia would be rendered more
prosperous, and that the Catholics would become more powerful by
being united to their Canadian brethren, he warmly advocated the
union. But despite his position and influence, and the exertions of
those on his side, the union party was defeated at the polls all over
the province as well as in the city of Halifax. Since that he ceased to
take an active part in politics, and refrained from expressing his
political opinions in public.
As a speaker he was noted for his sound common sense and the
absence of anything like tricks of rhetoric or of manner. His lectures
and addresses from the pulpit of his own church to his own people
were generally extempore. He was powerful in appealing to a mixed
audience, and spoke more especially to the humbler classes. He had
a fund of quaint proverbs and old sayings, and, by an odd conceit or
happy allusion, would drive his argument home in the minds of
those of his own country. He could, at times, be eloquent in the true
sense of the word; and when he prepared himself, girded on his
armor for the conflict, he was truly powerful. On the melancholy
death of D’Arcy McGee the archbishop had service in St. Mary’s, and
delivered a panegyric on the life and labors of that gifted Irishman,
who was a personal friend of his own, which is looked upon as one
of his ablest efforts.
If he was quickly excited, he was just as quick to forgive; and when
he thought he had bruised the feelings of the meanest, he was ever
ready to atone, and never happy till he did so. Like many great
republicans, while claiming the greatest freedom of thought, word,
and action for himself, he was, though he knew it not, arbitrary in
his dictates to others. Whatever he took in hand he went at heart
and soul. The smallest detail of work he could not leave to another,
but would himself see it attended to—from a board in a fence to the
building of a cathedral. Travelling over a scattered diocese with poor
roads and poor entertainment, preaching, hearing confessions, and
administering the sacraments of the church, can it be wondered at
that his health broke down? that a constitution, vigorous at first,
wore out before its time? With everything to do and everything a
trouble to him, can we wonder that some mistakes were made, that
some things were ill-done?
Though hospitable, witty, and a lover of company, he was very
abstemious and temperate in his habits; and, although never
attacked by long disease, his health was continually bad. Last fall he
visited Bermuda, which was under his jurisdiction, partly for his
health, and also to see to the wants of the few Catholics there. In
the spring he returned to Halifax, but little benefited by the change.
If there was one subject of public importance more than another in
which the archbishop was interested, it was the public-school
question. No question requires more careful handling; none involves
vaster public interests. His school-houses had been leased to the
school authorities; he had brought the Christian Brothers to Halifax,
and these schools were under their charge; and the Catholics in
Halifax had, thanks to their archbishop and the tolerance of their
fellow-citizens, separate schools in all but the name. For a long time
past there had been personal and private differences and grievances
between the archbishop and the brothers. What they were, and
what the rights and the wrongs of the matter are, was never fully
made public, nor is it essential that it should be. On the Sunday after
his arrival from Bermuda the archbishop was visited by the director-
general of the brothers, a Frenchman, who gave him twenty-four
hours to accede to the demands of the brothers, or threatened in
default that they would leave the province. Both were hot-tempered,
both believed they had right on their side, and it is more than
probable that neither thought the other would proceed to
extremities. The archbishop did not take an hour to decide; he flatly
refused. Next day saw the work of years undone; the brothers
departed; their places were temporarily filled by substitutes; the
School Board took the matter in hand; and the sympathies of the
Catholics of Halifax were divided between their archbishop and the
teachers of their children.
Many think the excitement and worry that he underwent on this
occasion had much to do with his death. A gentleman who had some
private business with the archbishop called at the glebe-house on
the Tuesday following the Sunday on which the rupture with the
brothers had taken place. Although it was ten o’clock in the morning,
and the sun was shining brightly outside, he found the curtains
undrawn, the gas burning, and the archbishop hard at work writing
at a table littered with paper. In the course of their conversation he
mentioned incidentally to his visitor that he had not been to bed for
two nights, nor changed his clothes for three days. Even after the
difficulty had been smoothed over, and matters seemed to be going
on as of old, it was noticed that the archbishop had lost his
cheerfulness and looked wearied and haggard. His duties were not
neglected, though sickness and sadness may have weighed him
down. He began a series of lectures on the doctrines of the church
which unhappily were never to be completed. On the third Sunday
before his death, in making an appeal to his parishioners for funds to
finish the cathedral, he enumerated the many other works he wished
to undertake, and stated that he trusted he had ten or fifteen years
of life before him wherein to accomplish these works. The meeting
which he had called for that afternoon was poorly attended, and the
amount subscribed not nearly what he expected. It was noticed that
this troubled him; for he loved to stand well with his people always,
and he took this as a sign that his popularity was on the wane.
On Saturday, the 22d of July, he complained of being unwell, but it
did not prevent him from speaking as usual at the three churches on
the morrow. He never allowed his own sufferings to interfere with
what he considered his duty. None of the many who heard him that
day surmised that the shadow of death was then on him, and that
on the following Sunday they would see the corpse of the speaker
laid out on the same altar. On Monday, still feeling unwell, he drove
to his residence at the Northwest Arm, thinking that a little rest and
quiet would restore him to his usual health. The next day, growing
worse, and no doubt feeling his end approaching, he told his
attendants to drive him to the glebe-house and to write to Rome.
Next day the whole community was startled to hear that the
archbishop was stricken down by congestion of the brain; that he
was delirious; that he had been given up by the doctors; and that
his death was hourly expected.
A gloom seemed to have fallen over the city. The streets leading to
the glebe-house were filled all the next day and late into the night
with a noiseless throng; and hour after hour the whisper went from
one to another, “He still lives, but there’s no hope.” All this time the
dying prelate remained unconscious. The heavy breathing and the
dull pulse were all that told the watchful and sorrowing attendants
that he yet lived. From his bedroom to the drawing-room, in which
he had at times received such a brilliant company, they carried the
dying man for air. Those who wished were allowed in to see him; but
he saw not the anxious faces that gazed sorrowfully for a moment
and then passed away; he heard not the low chant of the Litany for
the Dying that was borne out through the open windows on the still
night-air; he knew not of the tears that were shed by those who
loved and honored him, and who could not, in the presence of
death, repress or hide their sorrow. At midnight on Thursday, the
27th of July, the bell of the cathedral tolled out to tell the quiet city
that the good archbishop lived no more.
The next day, in the same apartment, the corpse was laid in state,
and was visited by hundreds of all creeds and classes, who came to
take their last look at all that remained on earth of the wearied
worker who had at last found rest. What were the thoughts of many
who looked upon that face, now fixed in death? Among the throng
were those who had come to him weighed down by sorrow and sin,
and had left him lightened of their loads and strengthened in their
resolutions of atonement and amendment by his eloquent words of
advice. Some had felt his wide-spreading charity; for his ear and
heart were ever open to a tale of distress, and he gave with a free
and open hand, and his tongue never told of what his hand let fall.
The general feeling was one of bereavement; for the great multitude
of his people knew not his worth till they had lost him. Who would
take his place? They might find his equal in learning, in eloquence,
even in work; but could they find one in whom were united all the
qualities that had so eminently fitted him for the position he so ably
filled? Perhaps there were others present who had to regret that
they had misjudged him, that they had been uncharitable in their
thoughts toward him, that they had not assisted as they should have
done the great, good, and unselfish man who had worked not to
enrich or exalt himself, but who had worn out his life in the struggle
for the welfare of his people and the glory of his church.
In his loved cathedral, the unfinished monument of his life, now
draped in mourning, the last sad and solemn rites of the Catholic
Church were performed by the bishops and clergy who had been
ordained by him, who knew him so well and loved him so deeply. He
was followed to his last resting-place by the civil and military
authorities, by the clergymen of other denominations, and by
hundreds of all creeds, classes, and colors, who could not be
deterred by the rain, which fell in torrents, from testifying their
respect for him who was honored and esteemed by all.
We may add that the late and much-lamented archbishop was ever
the sincere and faithful friend of the Superior of the Paulist
community. Among the first of their missions was one at St. John;
and the archbishop afterwards called them also to his cathedral at
Halifax. Both superior and congregation, no less than his own
people, owe Dr. Connolly a debt of gratitude which it would indeed
be difficult to pay.
The character of Archbishop Connolly was marked by an ardent zeal
for the faith; a magnanimity which, whenever the occasion called for
its exercise, rose above all human considerations whatever, even of
his own life; and a charity that was not limited either by nationality,
race, or religious creed.
 NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon Wm. Gabriel Brute, D.D., first
Bishop of Vincennes. With sketches describing his recollections of
scenes connected with the French Revolution, and extracts from
his Journal. By the Rt. Rev. James Roosevelt Bayley, D.D., Bishop
of Newark. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.
The Catholic Church in America has reason to be thankful that the
seeds of faith were sown on her shores by some of the most
eminent and holy men that ever lived. The names of Cheverus,
Flaget, Carroll, Dubois, and Gallitzin might be fittingly blazoned on
the same scroll with those of an Augustine, a Gregory, or an
Ambrose. To the untiring labors, profound piety, and extensive
learning of these men Catholic faith and sentiment in our land owe
their freshness and vitality. To their devotion to the Holy See, and
strictest adherence to all that is orthodox and canonical, American
Catholics owe their unity and their ardent attachment to the fortunes
of the Sovereign Pontiff. And if the distinguished ecclesiastics just
mentioned contributed much to secure those glorious results, more
still even did that prince of missionaries and model of bishops,
Simon William Gabriel Bruté. The growing interest manifested in this
admirable character is full, timely, and calculated to do much good.
As a man he was eminently human, feeling for his fellows with a
keenness of sensibility which could alone grow out of a heart that
throbbed with every human emotion. This feature of high humanity
also it was which gave that many-sidedness to his character, making
it full-orbed and polished ad unguem. Thus viewed, he was in truth
totus teres atque rotundus. His constantly-outgoing sympathies
brought him into the closest relations with his people, and magnate
or peasant believed that in him they had found one who could
peculiarly understand themselves. Nature endowed him with just
those gifts which pre-eminently fitted him for missionary life. Lithe,
agile, and compactly built, he could endure exposure and privation
beyond most men. Constantly cheerful, and with a mind which was a
storehouse of the most varied and interesting knowledge, he could
illumine darkness itself and convert despondency into joy. Travelling
at all seasons and at all hours, his presence was everywhere hailed
with delight, and many a cot and mansion among the regions of the
Blue Ridge Mountains watched and welcomed his presence. So
inured was he to hard labor that he deemed a journey of fifty-two
miles in twelve hours a mere bagatelle. And the quaintness with
which he relates those wonderful pedestrian achievements,
interspersing his recital with humorous and sensible allusions to
wayside scenes, is not only interesting, but serves often to reveal
the simple and honest character of the man. His English to the end
retained a slightly Gallic flavor, which, so far from impairing interest
in what he has written, has lent it a really pleasing piquancy. He thus
records one of his trips: “The next morning after I had celebrated
Mass at the St. Joseph’s, I started on foot for Baltimore, without
saying a word to anybody, to speak to the Archbishop.… Stopped at
Tancytown at Father Lochi’s, and got something to eat. At
Winchester found out that I had not a penny in my pocket, and was
obliged to get my dinner on credit.… In going I read three hundred
and eighty-eight pages in Anquetil’s history of France; … fourteen
pages of Cicero De Officiis; three chapters in the New Testament;
my Office; recited the chapelet three times.” As a worker he was
indefatigable; nay, he courted toil, and the prospect of a long and
arduous missionary service filled him with delight. Not content with
preaching, administering the sacraments, and visiting the sick and
poor, he was constantly drawing on his unbounded mental resources
for magazine articles, controversial, philosophic, and historical. He
longed to spread the light of truth everywhere, and to refute error
and recall the erring was the chief charm of his life. He had early
formed the habit of committing to paper whatever particularly
impressed him, and recommended this practice to all students as the
most effectual mnemonic help, and as accustoming them to
precision and exactness. His admirable notes on the French
Revolution were the normal outcome of the habit of close
observation which this practice engendered. Nothing escaped his
notice, and the slightest meritorious act on the part of a friend or
acquaintance drew from him the most gracious encomiums, whilst
the reproval of faults was always governed by extreme consideration
and charity. Consecrated first Bishop of Vincennes, much against his
will, he entered on his new field of labor with the same zeal and love
of duty which had characterized him as missionary and teacher at
Mt. St. Mary’s. The limitless distances he had to travel over in his
infant diocese never daunted him. Four or five hundred miles on
horseback, over prairie and woodland, had no terrors for him, who
bore a light heart and an ever cheerful soul within him, praising and
blessing God at every step for thus allowing him to do what was
pleasing to the divine will. What he most regretted was his
separation from the friends he left behind at Mt. St. Mary’s. He had a
Frenchman’s love of places as well as of persons, and he accordingly
suffered much from the French complaint of nostalgia, or home-
sickness. But nothing with him stood in the way of duty; and when
the fiat was pronounced, he went on his new way rejoicing. His
memory will grow among us “as a fair olive-tree in plains, and as a
plane-tree by the waters”; “like a palm-tree in Cades, and as a rose-
plant in Jericho.” When such another comes among us, our prayer
should be, Serus in cælum redeas.
The Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore has honored himself by thus
honoring the memory of a saintly bishop; and whoever knows the
graces of style which the fluent pen of Archbishop Bayley distils will
not delay a moment in obtaining this delightful volume.

The Voice of Creation as a Witness to the Mind of its Divine Author. Five
Lectures. By Frederick Canon Oakeley, M.A. London: Burns &
Oates. 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This little volume bears the undoubted impress of a high reverence
for the Creator. It is not a mere refutation of atheistical opinions, as
is the celebrated work of Paley, but an eloquent tribute to the divine
beneficence as made manifest in the works of nature. Everywhere
and in all things the author, looking through the eyes of faith,
beholds the finger of God—not alone in those marvels of skill and
design in which the animal and vegetable worlds abound, but in
those apparent anomalies which the unseeing and unreflecting
multitude often pronounce to be the dismal proofs of
purposelessness. Canon Oakeley, however, is not a mere pietist, but
a highly cultured, scientific man withal, and so grapples with the
latest objections of godless philosophers, and disposes of them in a
satisfactory manner. In his letter of approbation his Eminence
Cardinal Manning thus expresses himself: “The argument of the third
lecture on the ‘Vestiges of the Fall’ seems to me especially valuable.
I confess the prevalence of evil, physical and moral, has never
seemed to me any real argument against the goodness of the
Creator, except on the hypothesis that mankind has no will, or that
the will of man is not free.… If the freedom of the will has made the
world actually unhappy, the original creation of God made it both
actually and potentially happy.… What God made man marred.” His
Eminence pronounces the book to be both “convincing and
persuasive,” with which high approval we commend it to the
attention of our readers.

Union with Our Lord Jesus Christ in his Principal Mysteries. For all
seasons of the year. By the Rev. F. John Baptist Saint Jure, S.J.
New York: Sadlier & Co. 1876.
Father Saint Jure flourished in the seventeenth century and is known
as the author of several spiritual works. The present volume, which
is a good translation of one of these works, published in a neat and
convenient form, is intended as a help to meditation during the
various seasons of the ecclesiastical year. It is very well adapted for
that purpose—simple, brief, easy of use, and in every way practical.

Real Life. By Madame Mathilde Froment. Translated from the French

by Miss Newlin. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.
Real life is, generally speaking, a dull enough thing to depict. The
living of a good Christian family life has nothing outwardly heroic in
it, however much heroism there may be, and indeed must be,
concealed under the constant calm of its exterior. For Christianity, in
its smallest phase, is eminently heroic. It is just such a life that
Madame Froment has taken up in the present volume, and out of it
she has constructed a useful and, on the whole, an interesting
narrative. The narrator is the heroine, who begins jotting down her
experiences, hopes, thoughts, aspirations, while still a girl within the
convent walls. On the twenty third page she is married, and
thenceforth she gives us the story of her married life, its crosses and
trials as well as its pleasures. The whole story is told in the first
person, and in the form of a diary. This is rather a trying method,
especially as in the earlier portions of the narrative Madame Froment
scarcely catches the free, thoughtless spirit, the freshness and
naïveté of a young girl just out of a convent and entering the world.
Then, too, many of the entries in the diary are remarkable for
nothing but their brevity. Of course this may be a very good
imitation of a diary, but too frequent indulgence in such practice is
likely to make a very poor book. As the narrative advances, however,
the interest deepens, and the whole will be found worthy of perusal.
The translation, with the exception of an occasional localism, is free,
vigorous, and happy.

Silver Pitchers and Independence. A Centennial Love-Story. By Louisa M.

Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
Of course our Centennial would not be complete without its
Centennial literature. We have had odes, poems, and all manner of
bursts of song which might have been better, judged from a literary
point of view, but which all possess the one undeniable character of
genuine and unbounded enthusiasm. It was but proper, therefore,
that we should have some Centennial story telling, and we are glad
that the task has fallen into no worse hands then those of Miss
Alcott. This lady has already recommended herself to the reading
public by a series of fresh, sprightly, and very readable little
volumes. She tells a story well. She is not pretentious, yet never low,
and the English has not suffered at her hands. Of late it has
somehow become the vogue among so-called popular writers to
supply true tact and the power to enlist interest by a sort of double-
entendre style which, if it does not run into downright indecency, is
at least prurient; and, alas! that we should have to say that our lady
writers especially lay themselves open to this charge.
To our own credit be it said that this reprehensible manner of writing
is more common in England than among ourselves. Miss Alcott has
avoided these faults; and in saying this we consider we have said
much in her praise. Her Silver Pitchers is a charming little
temperance story told in her best vein. It is somewhat New-
Englandish, but that has its charms for some—ourselves, we must
confess, among the number. Pity Miss Alcott could not understand
that there are higher and nobler motives for temperance than the
mere impulse it gives to worldly success and the desire to possess a
good name. The siren cup will never be effectually dashed aside by
the tempted ones till prayer and supernatural considerations come to
their assistance.
 THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIV., No. 140.—NOVEMBER, 1876.

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

THOUGHTS ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY.

St. John of the Cross, in commenting on these two lines of the thirty-
ninth stanza of his Spiritual Canticle:
“The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,”

gives us a definition of mystical theology. “‘In the serene night’—that

is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold the grove (God
as the Creator and Giver of life to all creatures). It is called night
because contemplation is obscure, and that is the reason why it is
also called mystical theology—that is, the secret or hidden wisdom of
God, wherein God, without the sound of words or the intervention of
any bodily or spiritual sense, as it were in silence and repose, in the
darkness of sense and nature, teaches the soul—and the soul knows
not how—in a most secret and hidden way. Some spiritual writers
call this ‘understanding without understanding,’ because it does not
take place in what philosophers call the active intellect (intellectus
agens), which is conversant with the forms, fancies, and
apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the intellect as it is
passive (intellectus possibilis), which, without receiving such forms,
receives passively only the substantial intelligence of them, free from
all imagery.”[35]
Father Baker explains mystic contemplation as follows: “In the
second place, there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly
and properly such, by which a soul, without discoursings and curious
speculations, without any perceptible use of the internal senses or
sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the
mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and
incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in
him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good.… This is
properly the exercise of angels, for their knowledge is not by
discourse (discursive), but by one simple intuition all objects are
represented to their view at once with all their natures, qualities,
relations, dependencies, and effects; but man, that receives all his
knowledge first from his senses, can only by effects and outward
appearances with the labor of reasoning collect the nature of
objects, and this but imperfectly; but his reasoning being ended,
then he can at once contemplate all that is known unto him in the
object.… This mystic contemplation or union is of two sorts: 1.
Active and ordinary.… 2. Passive and extraordinary; the which is not
a state, but an actual grace and favor from God.… And it is called
passive, not but that therein the soul doth actively contemplate God,
but she can neither, when she pleases, dispose herself thereto, nor
yet refuse it when that God thinks good to operate after such a
manner in the soul, and to represent himself unto her by a divine
particular image, not at all framed by the soul, but supernaturally
infused into her.… As for the former sort, which is active
contemplation, we read in mystic authors—Thaulerus, Harphius, etc.
—that he that would become spiritual ought to practise the drawing
of his external senses inwardly into his internal, there losing and, as
it were, annihilating them. Having done this, he must then draw his
internal senses into the superior powers of the soul, and there
annihilate them likewise; and those powers of the intellectual soul he
must draw into that which is called their unity, which is the principle
and fountain from whence those powers do flow, and in which they
are united. And, lastly, that unity (which alone is capable of perfect
union with God) must be applied and firmly fixed on God; and
herein, say they, consist the perfect divine contemplation and union
of an intellectual soul with God. Now, whether such expressions as
these will abide the strict examination of philosophy or no I will not
take on me to determine; certain it is that, by a frequent and
constant exercise of internal prayer of the will, joined with
mortification, the soul comes to operate more and more abstracted
from sense, and more elevated above the corporal organs and
faculties, so drawing nearer to the resemblance of the operations of
an angel or separated spirit. Yet this abstraction and elevation
(perhaps) are not to be understood as if the soul in these pure
operations had no use at all of the internal senses or sensible
images (for the schools resolve that cannot consist with the state of
a soul joined to a mortal body); but surely her operations in this
pure degree of prayer are so subtile and intime, and the images that
she makes use of so exquisitely pure and immaterial, that she
cannot perceive at all that she works by images, so that spiritual
writers are not much to be condemned by persons utterly
inexperienced in these mystic affairs, if, delivering things as they
perceived by their own experience, they have expressed them
otherwise than will be admitted in the schools.”[36]
That kind of contemplation which is treated of in mystical theology
is, therefore, a state or an act of the mind in which the intellectual
operation approaches to that of separate spirits—that is, of human
souls separated from their bodies, and of pure spirits or angels who
are, by their essence unembodied, simply intellectual beings. Its
direct and chief object is God, other objects being viewed in their
relation to him. The end of it is the elevation of the soul above the
sphere of the senses and the sensible world into a more spiritual
condition approaching the angelic, in which it is closely united with
God, and prepared for the beatific and deific state of the future and
eternal life. The longing after such a liberation from the natural and
imperfect mode of knowing and enjoying the sovereign good, the
sovereign truth, the sovereign beauty, through the senses and the
discursive operations of reason, is as ancient and as universal among
men as religion and philosophy. It is an aspiration after the invisible
and the infinite. When it is not enlightened, directed, and controlled
by a divine authority, it drives men into a kind of intellectual and
spiritual madness, produces the most extravagant absurdities in
thought and criminal excesses in conduct, stimulates and employs as
its servants all the most cruel and base impulses of the disordered
passions, and disturbs the whole course of nature. Demons are
fallen angels who aspired to obtain their deification through pride,
and the fall of man was brought about through an inordinate and
disobedient effort of Eve to become like the gods, knowing good and
evil. An inordinate striving to become like the angels assimilates man
to the demons, and an inordinate striving after a similitude to God
causes a relapse into a lower state of sin than that in which we are
born. The history of false religions and philosophies furnishes a
series of illustrations of this statement. In the circle of nominal
Christianity, and even within the external communion of the Catholic
Church, heretical and false systems of a similar kind have sprung up,
and the opinions and writings of some who were orthodox and well-
intentioned in their principles have been tinctured with such errors,
or at least distorted in their verbal expression of the cognate truths.
This remark applies not only to those who are devotees of a mystical
theology more or less erroneous, but also to certain philosophical
writers with their disciples. Ontologism is a kind of mystical
philosophy; for its fundamental doctrine ascribes to man a mode of
knowledge which is proper only to the purely intellectual being, and
even a direct, immediate intuition of God which is above the natural
power not only of men but of angels.
There are two fundamental errors underlying all these false systems
of mystical theology—or more properly theosophy—and philosophy.
One is distinctively anti-theistic, the other distinctively anti-Christian;
but we may class both under one logical species with the common
differentia of denial of the real essence and personality, and the real
operation ad extra, of the Incarnate Word. The first error denies his
divine nature and creative act, the second his human nature and
theandric operation. By the first error identity of substance in
respect to the divine nature and all nature is asserted; by the
second, identity of the human nature and its operation with that
nature which is purely spiritual. The first error manifests itself as a
perversion of the revealed and Catholic doctrine of the deification of
the creature in and through the Word, by teaching that it becomes
one with God in its mode of being by absorption into the essence
whose emanation it is, in substantial unity. The second manifests
itself by teaching that the instrumentality and the process of this
unification are purely spiritual. The first denies the substantiality of
the soul and the proper activity which proceeds from it and
constitutes its life. The second denies the difference of the human
essence as a composite of spirit and body, which separates it from
purely spiritual essences and marks it as a distinct species. The first
error is pantheism; for the second we cannot think of any
designating term more specific than idealism. Both these errors,
however disguised or modified may be the forms they assume,
conduct logically to the explicit denial of the Catholic faith, and even
of any form of positive doctrinal Christianity. Their extreme
developments are to be found outside of the boundaries of all that is
denominated Christian theology. Within these boundaries they have
developed themselves more or less imperfectly into gross heresies,
and into shapes of erroneous doctrine which approach to or recede
from direct and palpable heresy in proportion to the degree of their
evolution. Our purpose is not directly concerned with any of the
openly anti-Christian forms of these errors, but only with such as
have really infected or have been imputed to the doctrines and
writings of mystical authors who were Catholics by profession, and
have flourished within the last four centuries. There is a certain more
or less general and sweeping charge made by some Catholic authors
of reputation, and a prejudice or suspicion to some extent among
educated Catholics, against the German school of mystics of the
epoch preceding the Reformation, that they prepared the way by
their teaching for Martin Luther and his associates. This notion of an
affinity between the doctrine of some mystical writers and
Protestantism breeds a more general suspicion against mystical
theology itself, as if it undermined or weakened the fabric of the
external, visible order and authority of the church through some
latent, unorthodox, and un-Catholic element of spiritualism. We are
inclined to think, moreover, that some very zealous advocates of the
scholastic philosophy apprehend a danger to sound psychological
science from the doctrine of mystic contemplation as presented by
the aforesaid school of writers. Those who are canonized saints,
indeed, as St. Bonaventure and St. John of the Cross, cannot be
censured, and their writings must be treated with respect.
Nevertheless, they may be neglected, their doctrine ignored, and,
through misapprehension or inadvertence, their teachings may be
criticised and assailed when presented by other authors not
canonized and approved by the solemn judgment of the church; and
thus mystical theology itself may suffer discredit and be
undervalued. It is desirable to prove that genuine mystical theology
has no affinity with the Protestant heresies which subvert the visible
church with its authority, or those of idealistic philosophy, but is, on
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