on which that rests is the authority on which his whole creed rests, and, if he should admit it to be insufficient for the hierarchy, he would admit it to be insufficient for the other articles of his creed, and then he would have no faith left. No man, then, can oppose the Catholic hierarchy without opposing directly the whole Catholic faith. Alas! man is a poor church builder, a miserable church reformer. There stands the Catholic Church, as she has stood for these eighteen hundred years, and as she will stand unto the consummation of the world. Either she is the church of God, or she is not. If she is not, away with her; we have nothing to do with her, and want nothing which is hers. If she is, as she is as certainly as God exists, then you must take her as she is, as a whole; you have no questions to ask, no suggestions to make, no improvements to recommend. Your sole business is to bow down your reason and will to her, as the visible representative of Almighty God, and to believe and do simply what she commands you. If she does not please you, if she does not suit your taste or judgment, it does not follow that she is in fault. The Almighty was not bound to take you or me into his councils, and it is not likely that it would have been of any great advantage to him, if he had actually consulted us. Men are a little too ready to counsel the Allwise, and to inform him how he ought or ought not to do. It is but becoming modesty to presume that he knew as well as we how to constitute his church, and that it is for us to seek to conform ourselves to her, and not for her to seek to conform herself to us. The objection is a silly one, if the church be not of God; it deserves a harsher name, if she be of God.

In conclusion, we assure our young friend that we duly appreciate his liberality in not blaming us for becoming a Catholic, and intimating that he can still respect us. We honor his liberality as it deserves. But, after all, the question is not one of human praise or blame, of human respect or disrespect. Human respect, however pleasant it may be, is of no great value, and should never be suffered to weigh in the balance with the love and approbation of Almighty God. If we have his consent or approbation for what we

do, it matters little what men may think or say of us.

It is not what we think of our young friend's liberalism, or he of our Catholicity, that is to decide the character and value of either. The Catholic is not likely to feel that he is the party

which stands most in need of commiseration, or that he calls for any remarkable stretch of liberality. His great difficulty is in being sufficiently grateful to his divine Master for making him a Catholic, when so many others, no worse by nature, are left to perish in their error. If he obeys his church, he knows he is well enough off; that he has a hundred-fold here, and the promise of the life to come.

Our young Protestant friend may think lightly of all this now; for he is fresh from the schools, in the heyday of life, with his spirits elastic, and his prospects radiant. Youth, health, talents, learning, eloquence, troops of affectionate and applauding friends, how can he look upon life as he will one day when these disappear or lose their value in his estimation, and, with his ideals all unrealized, he is obliged to look round for something solid and permanent on which he may rest, some safe shelter from the storms and tempests of life? "Beatus qui intelligit quid sit amare Jesum, et contemnere seipsum propter Jesum. Oportet dilectum pro dilecto relinquere, quia Jesus vult solus super omnia amari. Dilectio creaturæ fallax et instabilis. Dilectio Jesu fidelis et perseverabilis. Qui adhæret creaturæ, cadet cum labili. Qui amplectitur Jesum, firmabitur in ævum. Illum dilige, et amicum tibi retine, qui, omnibus recedentibus, te non relinquet, nec patietur in fine perire. Ab omnibus oportet te aliquando separari, sive velis, sive nolis. Teneas te apud Jesum, vivens ac moriens; et illius fidelitati committe, qui, omnibus deficientibus, solus potest juvare."* We know the writer well. We know God has once spoken by his grace to his heart, and called his attention to the church, and, as secure as he may now feel, as secure as all his education has tended to make him feel, the great question, What shall I do to be saved? will one day press upon his heart, and demand an answer. The answer with which he now amuses himself and his people will then appear to him a bitter mockery, a sort of Mephistopheles laugh over the deep agony of the once innocent, now guilty, Margaret. When that question comes up, may the good God grant him to be true to the promptings and inspirations of divine grace!

We have concluded our reply. We have answered our young friend at full length. We have not spared his reasonings, but we trust we have said nothing to wound his sensibilities, or to indicate any want of that esteem for him we

*De Imitatione Christi, Lib. II., Cap. 7.

began by expressing. We beg him to read and study what we have replied, for it concerns the most momentous question that can possibly occupy the thoughts of man. If what we have said fail to satisfy him, we shall be happy to receive his objections, and pledge ourselves, in advance, to remove, as far as a complete logical reply can remove any objections, whatever objections he can urge, without denying that very reason on the authority of which he objects. All we ask is, that he do not repeat his old objections, without undertaking to show that our replies are not to the point, are unsound in principle, or not sustained by the facts in the case.

THE GREAT QUESTION.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1847.]

MR. PENNY is a convert from Anglicanism, and a young man of great worth and promise. The little work he has given us here was for the most part written while he was passing into the church, and retains some traces of his transition state; but it indicates learning, ability, and a turn for scholastic theology not common in Oxford students. It is written in a free, pure, earnest spirit, mild but firm, and, though not always exact in thought or expression, is a very valuable controversial tract, and may, with slight reservations, be cheerfully recommended to all who are willing to seek for the truth, and to embrace it when they find it.

The recent converts from the Anglican Establishment are making large contributions to our English Catholic literature. We give their productions a cordial welcome, for, though they are in some respects immature, and not always critically exact, they breathe a free and earnest spirit, and are marked by a docile disposition, and a deep and tender piety. Nevertheless, the greater part of them are, perhaps, too local and temporary in their character to be of any general or permanent utility. They are almost exclusively confined to the controversy between their authors and their

*The Exercise of Faith impossible except in the Catholic Church. By W. G. PENNY, late Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Philadelphia: 1847.

former high-church associates. Where that controversy is the only or principal one remaining between Catholics and Protestants, they are no doubt not only valuable, but all we could desire. Yet, after all, that controversy is not the important one; it affects, in reality, only a small portion of the English people, and the works specially adapted to it are far from meeting the wants of the great body of English Evangelicals and Dissenters. Still less do they meet the wants of the various sects in our own country. The great body even of Episcopalians here are low-church, and as far from conceding the premises from which the Oxford converts reason as they are from accepting their conclusions.

Protestant Episcopalians, whether high-church or lowchurch, though respectable for their social standing, do not constitute with us a leading sect. We are pleased, rather than otherwise, to see the tendency of a very considerable number of persons to unite themselves with them, because we cannot doubt, that, if the American people go far enough from their present position to become Episcopalians, they will soon go further, and attain to the reality of which Episcopalianism is only a faint and mutilated shadow. But the sect has no firm hold on the American mind and heart, and does and can exert no commanding influence. It is an exotic, and no labor or pains can naturalize it. The grand current of American life and nationality flows on, saving a few ripples on the surface, undisturbed by its presence or its absence. Except, perhaps, in here and there a particular locality, it is Anglican rather than American, and is patronized chiefly, if not exclusively, by those who are affected by English rather than American tendencies, as a fashionable religion, which serves to distinguish its professors from the vulgar. Works, therefore, which seek primarily its refutation, and confine themselves to the points specially in debate between it and us, however useful they may be to a few individuals, can make no deep impression on the national mind, and will contribute very little towards the conversion of the country. The Catholic makes no secret of his earnest wish to convert the country. He of course is not contented to reside here simply as one of a number of sects extending a certain degree of religious fellowship one to another, and asking only not to have his property confiscated or his throat He would not only be Catholic himself, but he would extend the unspeakable benefits of his holy religion to all, and, by all the Christian means in his power, he must seek

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to convert the whole population to Catholicity. He would be wanting in the blessed charity of the Gospel, if he aimed at any thing less. But in order to effect this glorious result, he must strive to reach the heart of the peculiarly American people, through which flows the mighty current of the peculiarly national life; he must labor to make an impression on that portion of the American population which is in an especial sense the repository of peculiarly American thought, principles, passions, affections, traditions, and tendencies,the indigenous portion, the least affected by foreign culture and influences; and it is only in proportion as he reaches and gains the attention of these, that he can flatter himself that he is advancing in the work of converting the country.

These are not Episcopalians, nor distinguished individuals, whatever the sect to which they may appertain. The conversion of a very considerable number of distinguished individuals may take place with scarcely a perceptible effect on the great body of the American people; because these individuals do not represent the general thought and tendency of the country; because their example has little weight with the people at large; and because they are, for the most part, under foreign rather than native influences. The peculiarly American people are democratic, and generally distrust whatever rises above the common level. Distinguished individuals count for less here than in any other country of the globe. With us the individual loses himself in the crowd, and leads the crowd only by sharing their passions and consenting to be their organ. It is, therefore, on the crowd that we must operate, if we would effect any thing. The multitude govern, and it is their views and feelings, their tastes and tendencies, that decide the fate or determine the character of the country. These are now all either not for us or strongly against us; and our great and pressing work is to turn them into the Catholic channel. Hence, the important thing for us to study and address is the views and feelings, tastes and tendencies, not of distinguished individuals who may seem to be leaders, but of the great body of the common people. When we hear of the conversion of a distinguished individual, we rejoice for his sake, for he has a soul to save, and his conversion places him in the way of salvation; but when we hear of the conversion of large numbers from the middle and lower classes, we give thanks and rejoice for our country's sake, for we see in it a token that God himself is at work in the heart of the people, and preparing

Vol. V.-34.