Puslapio vaizdai
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can dream of it, one rascally passion has suddenly gained the mastery, and all is confusion and anarchy within. Nature is cursed. For six thousand years you have cultivated it, and it has yielded you only briers and thorns; cultivate it as you will for six thousand years to come, and it will yield you nothing else. "He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh

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Another mistake, not less fatal, is also committed by our reformers. They see there are evils, that men and women suffer, and suffer horribly. Their sympathies are awakened, and they seek if relief cannot be found. All this is well, commendable even. But they assume that relief is to come here, and the good craved, but found not, is to be realized in this world, in this probationary life. "The highest ideal man can form of his own powers, says Miss Fuller, "that he is destined to attain." And this ideal is to be attained here. But Eden, the terrestrial paradise, is lost, never to be regained. Man forfeited it, and has been driven forth from it, never to repose again in its fragrant bowers, or beneath its refreshing shades. The earth is cursed; do what you will, rebel as you please, the curse is irrevocable. This world is a prison-house, and escape you cannot till death sets you free. The sooner you come to this conclusion, the better for you, the better for all. This life is and must be a discipline, a probation, a warfare. You must stand on your guard, always in arms, sleepless, and fight, fight for your life, with enemies from all quarters, and of all sorts and sizes, till you are called home to enjoy the victory and the triumph.

We know this is an unpalatable truth to our zealous philanthropists, and we know the scorn and derision with which they will treat it. But the realization of a heaven on earth is not the end for which the Gospel was given us. Our Maker has not abandoned us; far from it. He has prepared something far better for us than a terrestrial paradise. He has prepared heaven and its eternal beatitude for us. But we can enjoy that here only through faith and hope. It is ours here only by promise. It is set before us as a glorious prize, as an exceeding rich reward; but it is not to be gained without the dust and heat of the race; nor will it be bestowed till the race is run, till the battle is fought, till the victory is won. Consolations we may have, consolations which the world knows not, cannot give, cannot take away. Angels will minister unto us and revive our fainting strength; but happiness, the full freedom and joy

of the soul, are tasted not till the songs and harps of angels welcome us home to our Father's house.

True wisdom consists in fixing our eyes on this heavenly reward, and throwing off all that we may win it. We must count the sufferings of this present life not worthy to be compared with the glory hereafter to be revealed; we must despise the joys of this life, and trample the world under our feet. Beati pauperes spiritu. We must despise riches and honors, we must joy in poverty and destitution, and count all things as mere dross for the sake of Chrst. This is the law imposed upon us, and no reforms which come not from obedience to this law will avail us aught. Here the struggle, the warfare; there the triumph, the joy.

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But we have no room to proceed. As much as we dislike Miss Fuller's book, as pernicious as we regard the doctrines or notions it contains, as utterly as we are forced to condemn the whole race of modern reformers, all who are seeking to recover the lost Eden on earth, from the harmonious development of nature alone, we can still believe, without dif ficulty, that she may be a pure-minded woman, honestly and earnestly struggling to obtain a greater good for suffering humanity. Taking her starting-point, we should arrive at her conclusion. Believing a terrestrial paradise possible, we should strive for it; believing the free, full, and harmonious development of human nature the means and condition of obtaining it, we should protest against whatever restrains nature in woman as well as in man. We believe Miss Fuller wholly in the wrong, but we see no occasion for the kind of animadversions on her or her book, which we have noticed in some newspaper criticisms. She has done or said nothing which should be regarded as a sin by her Protestant brethren. In our remarks we have designed nothing personal against her. We are able, we trust, to distinguish between persons and doctrines. For persons, however far gone they may be in error, or even in sin, we trust we have the charity our holy religion commands, and which the recollection of our own errors and sins, equal to any we may have to deplore in others, requires us to exercise. But for erroneous doctrines we have no charity, no tolerance. Error is never harmless, and in no instance to be countenanced.

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ART. V. The United States Catholic Magazine and Monthly Review. Edited by REV. CHARLES I. WHITE, and VERY REV. M. J. SPALDING, D. D. Baltimore: John Murphy. Vol. IV. No. III. March, 1845. Svo. pp. 44.

WE notice this periodical because it is the ablest and most exclusively Catholic magazine published in this country, and one deserving to be taken by every one who wishes an excellent literary periodical devoted to the exposition and defence of the doctrines and discipline of the Church. We also notice it for the purpose of making a few remarks suggested or called for by an article which appeared in the number before us, reviewing the first volume of our own Journal. The article is written with ability, but is quite too eulogistic, and speaks of ourselves in terms quite beyond our deserts. But it is not of this we wish to speak. Most men are willing to swallow all the praise they can get. Yet Catholic writers, who may be presumed to believe and to know that the greatest enemies to our progress towards Christian perfection are pride and vainglory, ought to use some measure in their praise of a poor sinner, who probably at best finds it no easy task to practise the humility his religion demands.

It

The Reviewer refers to an opinion said to have been expressed of us by Lord Brougham. This opinion the newspapers friendly to us have taken considerable pains to circulate. is a small affair, but we own that we are unwilling it should continue to be quoted; 1. Because we have not, and never have had, any respect for Lord Brougham's opinion on any subject; and 2. Because we have good evidence that the anecdote which has circulated in the newspapers is totally false, at least so far as concerns Lord Brougham, who in all probability has never read a page of our writings, or even heard of our name. We are not quite so famous abroad as some of our friends now and then are pleased to represent.

66

The Reviewer, speaking of our philosophical principles, says we are rather an Eclectic." Now, to be called an Eclectic is worse than to be commended by Lord Brougham. Some years ago we were an Eclectic, we own, as we have been in the course of our life" all things by turns and nothing long "; but we disavowed Eclecticism in the Boston Quarterly Review for January, 1842, and have not had conscious

ly any fellowship with it since. After disavowing Eclecticism, we undertook to excogitate a new system of philosophy of our own, which we termed synthetic philosophy, based on principles wholly repugnant to Eclecticism. This system was our hobby during two years and a half, and it brought us, or rather was the occasion of bringing us, to the door of the Catholic Church. We say the door; for, though we thought at the time it opened into the temple itself, and led to the very sanctuary, it really led only to the door, and even that accidentally, not necessarily. The truth is, though during those two years and a half we talked much of the Church, and dogmatically too, we knew nothing of it except what we had learned from its enemies, the French Eclectics, the Saint-Simonians, and the Protestants. One year ago, we had read only two Catholic books, to wit, Milner's End of Controversy, and the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and these only partially. We had never seen and conversed with an intelligent Catholic on the subject of religion the value of one hour in our whole life, and of course could have known very little of what Catholicity really is. We guessed at its leading doctrines from our knowledge of the Protestant doctrines opposed to them; and though we often guessed aright, we still oftener blundered. Nevertheless, we had formed to ourselves an ideal Catholicism, demanded by our philosophy and sustained by it; and this ideal Catholicism we imagined was substantially what the Catholic Church believes, or really intends by her articles of faith. So we concluded, about as sagely as in other cases, that we were a Catholic, and had discovered a philosophy which would legitimate the Catholic Church, and give a scientific basis to all her doctrines.

Such was our belief when we commenced the first volume of this Review, and such continued to be our belief till after the publication of our number for July last. But such ceased to be our belief before the publication of the number for October. Whether the system of philosophy for which we contended, and of which we published some fragments, is or is not sound, we do not feel able now to determine. We are sure that it does not necessarily lead to Catholicism; but whether it is necessarily opposed to it we do not know, and cannot decide for ourselves till we have had leisure to review and compare it more fully than we have yet done with what the Church teachOur conversion to Catholicity, which rests on other than metaphysical grounds, has so revolutionized our whole mind, presented us a world of thought so entirely new to us, and en

es.

abled us to see all things in a light so different and so much clearer, that we have very little confidence in the value or soundness of any thing we advanced on our own authority prior to its taking place. Sure we are, that the best things we wrote are mixed up with many things we should now disown. If in our philosophical writings, or in any other of our writings, any thing can be found contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church, we of course disown it; and we are far from believing that any of us have made or will make any advance in philosophy except perhaps in the physical sciences - on the old Catholic Schoolmen. For ourselves, we have more confidence in the conclusions of Saint Thomas than we have in our own; and where we find our conclusions differing from his, we regard it as a strong presumption, to say the least, that ours, not his, are wrong. We lay aside, utterly renounce, all our pretensions to a philosophy of our own; and content ourselves in this matter, as well as in others, to walk in old paths, instead of striking out new ones. We set no value on what we have done, and request our friends to set no value on it. Our life begins with our birth into the Catholic Church. We say this, because we wish no one to be led astray by any of our former writings, all of which, prior to last October, unless it be the criticisms on Kant, some political essays, and the articles in our present Review on Social Reform and the Anglican Church, we would gladly cancel if we could. We have written and published much during the last twenty years; but a small duodecimo volume would contain all that we would not blot, published prior to last October.

We have said that we fancied our philosophy conducted necessarily to the Catholic Church. We honestly believed this for a long time, and when we commenced this Journal we had not a doubt but the Catholic Church was the true Church; but such was the view which we then took of the Church, that we fancied we might consistently, for a time, at least, stay outside of it, and labor to bring the Protestant public to right views of the Church in general. Hence we said, "Stay where you are." We thought we could do more good out of the Church than in it; and our dream was, that we might, by working in the bosom of our Protestant Churches, prepare them to return to the bosom of Catholic unity. It was a dream, hardly an honest dream, at any rate a very foolish dream; but it was a brief dream. Logic demanded a plain, open avowal of Catholicism, and we had always a great horror of the mortal sin of being inconsequent. Moreover, another question pressed rather hard,

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