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FOUR YEARS' EXPERIENCE 
 
 CATHOLIC RELIGION: 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON ITS EFFECTS UPON THE CHARACTER, 
 INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND SPIRITUAL. 
 
 BY J. M. CAPES, ESQ. 
 
 S PHILADELPHIA: 
 PRINTED BY T. K. AND P. a. COLLINS. 
 
 1849. 
 
<&«* 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 Mr. Capes, the author of the following pages, was formerly a dis- 
 tinguished member of the Oxford University, and a divine of the Pro- 
 testant Episcopal Church. In 1845, he was received into the Catholic 
 Church, and, since that time, he has had ample opportunity to view 
 her in all her phases, and the little work before us shows, that he has 
 turned this opportunity to good account. He has, in a condensed form, 
 brought under review T the principal doctrines of the Church, and shown 
 their adaptation to the wants of man. The clear and logical manner, in 
 which he treats his subject, proves, that he is well versed in theological 
 controversy, while the honest and open earnestness, which is apparent 
 upon every page, will convince all of his unaffected integrity and cheer- 
 ful piety. 
 
 All, who will give these pages an attentive perusal, will be amply 
 repaid ; and the sentiments contained in them will command great 
 weight, when the character, talents and experience of their author shall 
 be taken into consideration. The testimony of one such man alone 
 should, of itself, be sufficient to break up the monstrous deep-rooted 
 prejudices, which exist against the Catholic Church. 
 
 The expense of this little publication has been mainly defrayed by 
 the self-prompted contributions of two or three charitable gentlemen. 
 The proceeds from the sale of it will, therefore, be appropriated to one 
 of the charitable institutions of the city. 
 
 E. Q. S. Waldron. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 7, 1849. 
 
FOUR YEAES' EXPERIENCE 
 
 CATHOLIC RELIGION 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON ITS EFFECTS UPON THE CHARACTER, INTELLECTUAL, 
 MORAL, AND SPIRITUAL. 
 
 BY A LATE MEMBER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 It is not too much to suppose, that there is a large class of persons 
 in this country who feel a deep interest in the present mental condition 
 of those numerous converts who, during the last few years, have sub- 
 mitted themselves to the faith of the Catholic Church. There are, 
 perhaps, thousands who would rejoice to be able to see into the minds 
 of those, who know the Catholic Church by personal experience of its 
 influence upon themselves. It cannot be doubted, that the Church of 
 Rome presents to those, who are without her pale, an aspect, which is 
 partly terrifying, partly confounding, and partly mysterious, even in 
 those instances, where it is admitted, that she undoubtedly is a portion 
 of the true Church of Christ, and even may after all be that spiritual 
 home, for which so many anxious souls are eagerly yearning. From 
 the ferocious anti-Popish zealot, up to the ultra-Puseyite, or the ob- 
 server of extreme candor, all agree in regarding her with a species of 
 painful curiosity, as something awful, strange, incomprehensible, and 
 self-contradictory; as uniting the noblest with the vilest qualities ; as 
 producing, apparently by the same means, heroes, villains, knaves, and 
 dupes ; as a strange compound, in short, of evangelical purity and 
 worldly craft, of apostolic zeal and grasping ambition, of inspired 
 truth and debasing delusion. Whether, therefore, as a mere psycholo- 
 gical phenomenon, or as a branch, though corrupted, of the true Church 
 of Christ, or as a body, which has attracted to itself some of the most 
 learned, able, and self-denying of English Protestants, the Catholic 
 1 
 
Church is, at the present hour, an object of deep interest to vast num- 
 bers of the best of our countrymen, and they long to comprehend the 
 precise nature of the power she exercises over the minds which are 
 subjected to her sway. I propose, then, as one who has thus made 
 personal trial of her powers for some considerable period of time, to 
 communicate the results of my experience to those, who are interested 
 in knowing what it is really to be a Catholic. 
 
 In so doing, I must request pardon for the apparent egotism of the 
 following pages. The very nature of the case will compel me to speak 
 of myself in a manner, and with a frequency, which, unless absolutely 
 necessary, would be absolutely intolerable. The statement I am about 
 to make is so eminently a personal statement, and so essentially con- 
 nected with the individual, who puts it forward, that it will be impossi- 
 ble to avoid a repeated reference to myself and my ideas, opinions, and 
 feelings, for which some little apology may perhaps seem due. 
 
 The first question that will naturally be asked of a person who pro- 
 fesses to give a true picture of the influence of the Catholic religion, 
 and of its features at the present time, refers to his own competency as 
 a witness. " What are you?" it will very justly be said ; " what op- 
 portunities have you had for forming a correct judgment? what are 
 your personal qualifications for so delicate an office ? what were you 
 before you entered your new state, and what means did you then pos- 
 sess to enable you to institute a correct comparison between the in- 
 fluences and facts of Catholicism and Protestantism?" 
 
 In all these points I believe that I may legitimately claim to be heard 
 as a competent witness. Since I entered the Catholic Church, circum- 
 stances have made me acquainted with a very large number of English 
 Catholics, of various ranks and different ecclesiastical positions. I 
 have known personally, with various degrees of intimacy, seven or 
 eight Bishops, several presidents of colleges and superiors of religious 
 houses, a large number of the clergy, both secular and regular, in dif- 
 ferent parts of England, and of the laity, of different professions, occu- 
 pations, and rank, with a considerable proportion of those converts 
 who, during the last five or six years, have left the ranks of Anglican- 
 ism and submitted themselves to the Catholic Church. With many of 
 all these I am on terms of intimate friendship, while chance and the 
 course of events have put me into positions for seeing an unusual num- 
 ber of eminent and influential personages, in circumstances of trying 
 character, and such as reveal not only a man's strength, but his weak- 
 ness, and test both himself and his religious faith and principles to the 
 very foundation. 
 
3 
 
 Before I was a Catholic, I had also as many opportunities of exa- 
 mining into the true character and genius of Protestantism, as fall to 
 the lot of most men; indeed, few Protestants have had such ample 
 means for forming an unbiassed judgment as those which fell to my 
 lot. From the time of my boyhood, until I submitted to the Church 
 of Rome, I had met with, and, in many instances, had entered into close 
 bonds of friendship and affection with men of almost every class of 
 opinion, which is to be found in the Church of England, having also 
 been acquainted with individual Dissenters, who were very trustworthy 
 examples of the dissenting schools. I numbered among my near friends 
 and relatives old-fashioned High Churchmen, cautious Tractarians, 
 zealous Puseyites, unhesitating Romanisers, conscientious Latitudina- 
 rians, with Evangelicals, old and young, of every shade of Church- 
 manship ; and persons of the untheoretical, amiable, do-their-duty 
 Church of England school, who go on their way as their fathers taught 
 them, and live and die seeking only peace and quietness, and sober yet 
 sincere practical religion. From an early age, also, I had been accus- 
 tomed to notice and reflect upon the various characters and principles 
 of every one with whom I associated, to form opinions upon their 
 conduct, and investigate the connection between their religious views 
 and their actual life and state of mind. 
 
 Nor could it be reasonably alleged against what I have to say, that 
 I entered the Church of Rome under the influence of those ardent 
 feelings and determined prepossessions, which might, perhaps, warp 
 my judgment of the facts, which I really encountered, and render the 
 history of my experience, a history of my personal emotions and fancies, 
 rather than a detail of unvarnished realities. So far was I from sub- 
 mitting to the Church under the power of an unreasoning enthusiasm, 
 that it was in most respects, with the greatest reluctance, that I took 
 the step. It was simply on a clear, well-argued conviction, that it was 
 absolutely necessary to my salvation, that I broke through every bar- 
 rier which kept me ba<jk. I had none of that yearning for the advan- 
 tages of confession, that feeling of utter intellectual helplessness, or 
 that dependence upon the example and opinions of others, which in 
 some cases, predispose the mind to seek for rest in the bosom of 
 Catholicism. Long before I had the faintest idea of ever actually be- 
 coming a Catholic, I had reasoned myself into a belief, that all the 
 doctrines of Rome were true, and that the Scripture, to those who will 
 really examine it, and who believe in its inspiration, is an incompre- 
 hensible book, except on the supposition that the decrees of the Coun- 
 cil of Trent are to be received as infallible. Absurd as it may seem, 
 
and absurd as it certainly was, I was convinced that the Church of 
 England was, in no sense of the word, a portion of the Church of Christ, 
 long before I even thought of leaving her. I accounted my own an 
 exceptional case, and rested on the belief, that I could be saved, though 
 I was out of the visible Church, and though I knew, that I was out of 
 it. Monstrous indeed was the belief, but still it was my belief; and it 
 proves, that though at length the conviction of the hollowness of my 
 theory came upon me with an irresistible force, which would brook no 
 longer delay, yet I was, in fact, as well acquainted with everything that 
 could be said on both sides of the question, as if I had been four or 
 five years considering whether I should myself personally obey the 
 call of the Catholic Church to enter her fold. In truth, I was far bet- 
 ter acquainted with the real bearings of the controversy, than if I had 
 weighed them under the influence of high-wrought excitement, and of 
 that intense anxiety, which presses upon the mind the moment the 
 idea of becoming a Catholic, takes a practical hold upon it. It was 
 with all the coolness of a mere speculative reasoner, that I examined 
 into the truth of every single separate doctrine of the Roman Church, 
 and into the tenableness of every ecclesiastical position, which could 
 possibly be taken up against her. Profoundly interesting as was the 
 subject, I had become as clearly convinced, on undeniable grounds, that 
 belief in any religious doctrine whatsoever is logically impossible, 
 without the existence of a living infallible guide, and that a visible 
 Church, without such a head as the Pope is, is a contradiction in terms, 
 as that the earth is round, and that the moon shines by reflected light 
 from the sun. I saw that, if Christianity is from God, Protestantism 
 in every possible form is an intellectual absurdity, and a violation of the 
 elementary laws of reasoning and common sense. 
 
 Lastly, since I have been a Catholic, I have repeatedly recurred both 
 to the arguments, which, in my judgment, establish the truth of Catho- 
 licism, and also to the reasonings by which religious belief, in its very 
 essence, is recommended to the mind. Again and again, sometimes 
 on various practical occasions more immediately bearing upon my own 
 conviction, sometimes in the way of controversy with Protestantism, 
 or infidelity in their various modifications, sometimes in the way of 
 calm meditation and reflection, I have gone over everything, that can 
 be said on the general question involved, and on all the details of faith 
 and practice which are found in the Catholic Church. I have en- 
 deavored honestly and courageously to look every difficulty in the 
 face, to do justice to the facts of history, to avoid all undue palliation 
 of the errors or sins of individual Catholics, and to separate my own 
 
private notions and likings from those objective truths, which exist apart 
 from my individual experience. 
 
 How far I may be personally fitted to bear trustworthy testimony 
 on the subject, is a question on which I can offer no opinion. No man 
 is a competent judge of his own merits or demerits, or a dispassionate 
 observer of the features of his own character. Still, if I might ven- 
 ture upon any such statement, I should be disposed to say, that I am 
 not naturally disposed to unreasoning credulity, to superstitious vene- 
 ration, or to an undue dependence upon the authority of great names, 
 or upon the views of those with whom I may associate. My errors 
 would be rather on the side of a too great independence of judgment, 
 of excessive dislike of assertions unsupported by clear proofs, and of 
 general incredulity in everything that appears marvellous or supernatu- 
 ral. But however this may be, I may fairly lay claim to those average 
 powers of observation and criticism, that mens sana in corpore sano, 
 which would entitle any person to be received as a competent witness 
 in a court of justice, and commend his evidence to the respect, if not 
 to the acquiescence, of every fair and candid mind. As to sincerity 
 of intention and truthfulness of statement in what I have to say, of 
 course, like other men, I believe myself upright and honorable. No 
 man, who invites the attention of the public on such a subject, professes 
 himself otherwise than sincere and religious, and few think themselves 
 not to be really so. I can only say, that I trust I have been, and still 
 am, guided by a single-minded desire, both to learn what is strictly true 
 and good in the sight of Almighty God, and to practice no imposition 
 whatsoever, upon the belief of others. Without further preface, then, 
 I proceed to lay before the world the results of four years' experience 
 of the Catholic religion. 
 
 The first question that would be asked of persons who have become 
 Catholics, by those who are unconnected with any religious party in 
 the country, would probably be directed to ascertain the effects of 
 Catholicism upon the practical freedom of the intelligence. Various 
 as are the views which English Protestants take of the creed of Rome, 
 they all agree in looking upon it as a despotic sovereign, which holds 
 the intellect and judgment of those, who submit to its dictates, in an 
 iron grasp, and rigorously forbids that unbiassed liberty of following 
 after truth at all costs, which is the inalienable privilege and the 
 bounden duty of every creature endowed with the great gift of reason. 
 There can be little doubt, that a man who has entered the Catholic 
 Church is popularly believed to have parted with all rights to think 
 
for himself, or to escape from a benumbing, destroying thraldom of the 
 faculties, except by bursting the bonds, in which he has unwittingly 
 involved himself, and casting off the yoke of Rome in indignation. 
 His friends pity him, his kindred weep for him, the man of shrewd 
 sense laughs at him, and the vulgar crowd stares at him as a sort of 
 wild beast. Whatever be the degree of moral enormity, which is at- 
 tributed to a convert, all agree in thinking him more or less a fool. 
 He is regarded with much the same mingled wonder and sorrow with 
 which we listen to the ravings of insanity, and see a poor creature in 
 a lunatic asylum disbelieving the evidence of his senses, and imagining 
 his wretched cell to be a royal palace. We are supposed to have fallen 
 into a sort of second childhood, in which we voluntarily surrender our 
 powers of reasoning, observing, and reflecting, and acquiesce in state- 
 ments as absurd to the free intelligence of men of sense, as the notion 
 that two and two make five, or that the whole is not greater than a 
 part of it. Have I, then, found Catholicism an intellectual bondage 
 to myself, and have I remarked a similar slavery in the case of others? 
 
 If I may state the truth, without fear of being counted guilty of 
 ridiculous exaggeration, I should reply, that no man knows what per- 
 fect intellectual freedom is, until he becomes a member of the Church 
 of Rome. I have passed my whole life in as bold and unhesitating 
 an exercise of the privileges of thought as is ventured upon by most 
 persons ; but most conscientiously can I allege, that my previous inde- 
 pendence in reasoning was like a toiling in fetters, compared with the 
 unbounded liberty of which I have been conscious, ever since I ceased 
 to be a Protestant. I am unconscious of what intellectual fear is, ex- 
 cept the fear of being wrong, and the fear that passion, pride, self-in- 
 dulgence, prejudice or ignorance, should warp my judgment, delude me 
 into miscalculating probabilities, tempt me into mistaking my own 
 wishes for logical proofs, or blind me to the real laws of reasoning, 
 which control all human knowledge whatsoever. 
 
 It is commonly supposed, indeed, that a man of sense and intellec- 
 tual courage cannot believe the dogmas of Catholicism without vio- 
 lating the first principles of reasoning, and enslaving his judgment at 
 the beck of a designing priesthood. So far from this being the case, 
 I find myself compelled to act in the very opposite direction. I can- 
 not help believing the truth of Catholicism in general, nor can I per- 
 ceive the slightest violation of the laws of reasoning in any one of its 
 separate doctrines. Granting the truth of Christianity as a divine 
 revelation, my reason forces me to be convinced that no one form of 
 Protestantism can possibly be true. So far as argument is concerned, 
 
I can see and feel the difficulties, which exist in the way of the recep- 
 tion of the Christian religion as divine, and even of belief in any reli- 
 gion whatsoever, natural or revealed ; but when once the question of 
 the origin of Christianity is settled, though I can see and feel argu- 
 ments against the Church of Rome, and admit that, so far as they go, 
 they are difficulties which must be solved, yet I can see nothing in 
 favor of any doctrinal Protestantism whatsoever ; and I can no more 
 avoid believing in the exclusive claims of the Church of Rome, than I 
 can help believing in the deductions of physical astronomy or of elec- 
 tricity. The argument in favor of Rome is precisely similar to the 
 reasonings, which establish the great facts of any purely human science, 
 which is based upon probabilities, and not on mathematical certainties. 
 On such morally proved sciences, whether physical, domestic, social, 
 or political, the whole course of our daily existence is conducted. We 
 neither eat, drink, move, talk, read, buy, sell, grieve, rejoice or, in a 
 word, act for a moment as reasonable creatures, except on the suppo- 
 sition that certain general ideas are true, and must be «acted upon, 
 although not one of them can be proved with all the strictness of a 
 mathematical proposition. Yet no man in his senses calls this an in- 
 tellectual bondage, or wonders that people can devote their whole lives 
 to a course of conduct against which some difficulties can be alleged, 
 though the balance of probabilities is decidedly in its favor. 
 
 And just such is my experience of the effect of a belief in the infal- 
 libility of the Catholic Church on my daily, moral and spiritual exist- 
 ence. I grant that there are some difficulties to be urged against 
 Christianity, and that the proof of the infallibility of Rome is not a 
 mathematical proof; but nevertheless,! cannot help perceiving, that the 
 balance of proof is undeniably in favor of Christianity and of the 
 Catholic Church, and therefore I cannot help acting myself in accord- 
 ance with that balance, and no more believe or feel that I am intellect- 
 ually a slave, than when I believe that I am at this moment awake, though 
 it is impossible to prove that I am not asleep and dreaming. Many 
 people imagine that a Catholic lives and moves with a sort of sense of 
 intellectual discomfort, with a half-admitted consciousness that he is 
 the victim of a delusion ; that he dreads the light of criticism and ar- 
 gument, and is afraid of having his opinions honestly and rigorously 
 canvassed. For my own part, 1 can most solemnly assert, that, from 
 the moment I entered the Catholic Church, I felt like a man, who has 
 just shattered the fetters, which have impeded his movements from his 
 childhood. I experienced a sensation of intellectual relief, to which I 
 believe every conscientious Protestant to be an utter stranger. So far 
 
8 
 
 from feeling as if I had renounced the great privileges of humanity, 
 and subjugated myself to a debasing servitude, I was conscious that 
 now, for the first time, my faculties had fair play, that I was no longer 
 in bondage to shams, forms of speech, pious frauds, exploded fables, 
 youthful prejudices or the impudent fabrications of baseless authority. 
 Reason, like a young eagle for the first time floating forth from its 
 mountain nest, and trusting itself with no faltering wing to the bound- 
 less expanse of ether around, above and below, rejoiced in her new- 
 found powers, and looked abroad upon the mighty universe of material 
 and immaterial being, with that unflinching gaze with which the soul 
 dares to look, when conscious that the God, who made her, has, at 
 length, set her free. To tell me, at such a time, that I was enslaving 
 my reason by that very act which enabled her to assert her supre- 
 macy, or that I was violating truth and common sense, by embracing 
 the most probable of two momentous alternatives, I should have counted 
 a folly not worthy to be refuted. And such have I felt it to this day. 
 I am conscious that I have embraced one vast, harmonious system, 
 which alone, of all the religions of mankind, is precisely what it pre- 
 tends to be, and nothing less and nothing more. I behold before me 
 a mighty body of doctrine and practice, self-consistent in all its parts, 
 cohering by rigid logical deductions, and held together by certain 
 moral laws, which are as universally applied in every conceivable con- 
 tingency, as is the physical law of gravity throughout the visible uni- 
 verse. Complicated and varied as it is, and diverse in nature as are 
 the many elements which go to make up its far-stretching whole, I can 
 detect no flaw in the structure, no incompatibility of one feature with 
 another, no tendency to decay, no token of failure in accomplishing all 
 that it really professes to accomplish. I find everything to charm and 
 invigorate my intellect. If I am enthralled, it is in a bondage to truth; 
 if I am fascinated, it is by the spell of faultless beauty. 
 
 It is the same, too, when I go on to view the separate doctrines, 
 which the Church of Rome teaches, one by one. I hear and read of 
 persons saying that these dogmas, or some of them, are absurd, or im- 
 possible, or self-contradictory, or immoral; but no where in the whole 
 range of Roman doctrine, can I discern for myself any single state- 
 ment which is opposed either to reason or morality. All, that I marvel 
 at, is the dense ignorance which possesses those who bring the accusa- 
 tion, and the astonishing stupidity, which has enthralled mankind with 
 respect to the very doctrines, which they profess to disprove, and which 
 they vehemently denounce. Profound as is my conviction of the 
 wickedness of man, still deeper is the conviction of his intense folly 
 
which the sight of the course of theological controversy induces. I 
 hear myself charged with holding doctrines, which were never heard 
 of in the Catholic Church; I see her accused for not accomplishing 
 results, which she never pretends to accomplish, and which were never 
 attempted by any religious body upon earth; I behold her charged 
 with crimes and absurdities which, by no possibility, can exist together 
 within her ; while, within her magic circle alone, reason acts reasonably, 
 ascertains her own powers, makes use of them to the fullest possible 
 extent to which they can reach, and then pauses in conformity with 
 her own irrefragable decisions. 
 
 I cannot help being aware that those who formerly knew me, and 
 others who, like myself, have entered the Catholic Church, are amazed 
 that we should have been able to bring ourselves to accept what they 
 regard as the most monstrous of absurdities, if not the most scandalous 
 of enormities. Yet the only absurdity, that I can perceive, lies in the 
 charge they bring, and in the enormity of that uncharitableness which 
 condemns a man unheard. For instance, it is supposed that in the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, we run counter to the evidence of our 
 senses, and believe that to be true which our sight, touch, and taste 
 tell us is not true. Yet in the whole range of false accusations, which 
 history records, nowhere is there to be found a more gratuitous and 
 disgraceful slander, or an assertion which more strikingly displays the 
 ignorance of those who make it. The doctrine of the Catholic Church 
 with respect to the change in the Eucharistic Elements is, that nothing 
 belonging to the bread and wine of which the senses take cognizance 
 is changed ; and that what is changed, is that with which the senses 
 have no more to do than they have to do with the inhabitants of the 
 antipodes. We are all agreed (except a few book-worms) that in every 
 material object, besides its color, its form, its taste, its smell, and so 
 forth, there exists a certain something, of which color, form, taste, and 
 the like, are what is popularly called the qualities, or, in metaphysical 
 language, the accidents. Now, it is manifest to every person, who 
 knows the meaning of words, that our senses of smelling, tasting, 
 touching, &c, inform us of the nature of these qualities or accidents, 
 and that they do nothing more. We see that a thing is black, white, 
 or blue ; we feel it to be rough or smooth, cold or hot; and so with 
 the rest; but as to that mysterious something, that "substance," as it 
 is termed in metaphysics, which lies at the bottom of these qualities, 
 and to which they are all attached, our senses tell us nothing whatever 
 about it. For aught that our senses can judge, the substance of bread 
 is the same as the substance of flesh, or the substance of lightning is 
 
10 
 
 the same as the substance of a piece of wood. Whether the substance 
 in all the elements of the universe is essentially alike, or whether there 
 are as many myriads of variations in substance as there are in outward 
 appearances, our senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and seeing, leave 
 us hopelessly in the dark. 
 
 When, then, I, who believe, that, in the Eucharistic Elements, this 
 substance is changed — no matter on what grounds I believe it — am 
 charged with asserting that, which contradicts the evidence of the senses, 
 I simply smile at my accuser's foolishness. I see that he might as 
 reasonably pretend that it contradicts the evidence of the senses to be- 
 lieve that there is a God, because the Divinity cannot be touched, tasted, 
 smelt, heard, or seen. I ask him if he ever saw his own soul ; and 
 why, if I may not believe more than my senses tell me, respecting the 
 presence of Jesus Christ in the consecrated species, he is justified in 
 believing more than his senses tell him with respect to himself. So 
 far from finding myself more in a state of bondage as a Catholic than 
 I was as a Protestant, even in respect of this great doctrine, which is 
 regarded as the crowning point of Catholic folly and imposture, I see 
 that nearly all men and women, of every rank and grade, who attack 
 the dogma of transubstantiation, are so extravagantly absurd as to con- 
 ceive they overthrow its claims by assertions which have nothing on 
 earth to do with the question really under discussion. 
 
 Such also have I found to be the result upon myself in all other 
 separate Catholic doctrines. One and all commend themselves to the 
 reasoning faculty, with a clearness and force, which I truly believe to 
 exceed the clearness and force that are possessed by any branch of 
 purely human knowledge, excepting always the deductions of pure 
 mathematics. In almost every case I find them different from what they 
 are popularly supposed to be ; and the longer I continue to be a Catholic, 
 the more extraordinary appears the contrast between that which the 
 Church really believes and teaches, and that which the world imputes 
 to her. The more I reflect upon it, the more mysterious is the phe- 
 nomenon she presents, as the most misunderstood, the most misrepre- 
 sented, the most maligned institution, which ever existed in the whole 
 history of mankind. So far from feeling that my judgment is clouded, 
 or that my faculties are prevented from having their full play, I per- 
 ceive more and more clearly that the Catholic Church is the only body 
 in which man's reason has tolerable liberty to follow out its conclusions 
 with consistency, unbiassed by association, unwarped by prejudice, 
 and unenslaved by passion. Admitting to the fullest extent the sins 
 of many Catholics in all ages, their errors, their ignorance, their blind- 
 
11 
 
 ness, and their superstition, still I cannot possibly help seeing that in 
 comparison with the intellectual servitude which holds the world with- 
 out in bonds, we are faultless, enlightened, acute, and profound to the 
 utmost limits of which humanity is capable. 
 
 On the other hand, how far the course of modern civilization is im- 
 peded by the reception of Catholicism, is a question which is, by no 
 means, easy of solution. From all that I can judge by experience of 
 its effects on myself and on others, I should be disposed to say, that, while 
 it tends to the culture of the intelligence, and to the development of all 
 the faculties of the mind to the highest possible extent, it would lead 
 its disciples to march, with a somewhat hesitating step, in what is 
 commonly termed the civilization of the age. How far it would dis- 
 courage purely intellectual cultivation apart from religion, is a question, 
 with which I have nothing to do, as I am speaking only of what are 
 the effects of a sincere belief of Catholic doctrines, and an earnest 
 practice of Catholic duties, upon the thoughts and life of man. While, 
 then, I see every token that there is not a faculty in the soul, whether 
 it be the pure reasoning faculty, the imagination, the taste, the love of 
 extensive and accurate knowledge, or that which we term common 
 sense, which Catholicism does not tend directly to stimulate in the 
 healthiest and most effective possible manner; — while I see that its 
 sons may be impelled by a burning enthusiasm to triumph throughout 
 the whole domain of human studies, and to bend every acquisition of 
 mental power to the service of God and the salvation of souls ; — while 
 the Catholic will labor with unwearying energies, and with the highest 
 abilities, in the fields of mathematics, history, philosophy, science, 
 poetry, or fiction, just as in former days the whole course of European 
 civilization was directed and impelled by the devoted sons of the 
 Church ; at the same time it is impossible to overlook the fact, that so 
 far as our civilization depends upon the pursuit of gain, and the restless 
 strivings of ambition, so far it would suffer in the hands of devout 
 Catholics. There exists in the Catholic faith a power to detach the 
 affections from everything on this side of the grave, which neces- 
 sarily makes men take matters somewhat too easily to be in harmony 
 with the notions of the present epoch. A pious Catholic, to a certain 
 extent, sees no future, except that which commences after death. He 
 lives for the present hour and for eternity. He has a greater tendency 
 to take the affairs of life as they come, and to enjoy what he actually 
 has in possession, without putting himself very much out of the way 
 to add to his store, than is usually found among ardent and business- 
 
12 
 
 like Protestants. Taken on the whole, I do not believe that Catholic 
 merchants, Catholic tradesmen, Catholic travelers, or Catholic bank- 
 ers, will ever so successfully compete with men of the world of simi- 
 lar occupations as to make as large fortunes as their Protestant compe- 
 titors, or to exercise as powerful an influence upon the economic pro- 
 gress of the age. We never shall, taken as a body, be the first in the 
 nation as men of business ; and I question whether we could ever be 
 first (though we might be second) in the study of those physical 
 sciences with whose cultivation the characteristic movement of our time 
 is so intimately bound up. It is undeniable, that Catholics do not care 
 so much as others, for those objects which furrow the sober and labo- 
 rious Englishman's brow, and bend him down with premature old age. 
 Not only the general influence of their religion, as a spiritual system, 
 but the nature of their belief in the excellence of poverty, and of the 
 monastic and celibate life, and in the pernicious nature of excessive 
 carefulness, and of a melancholy, anxious spirit, tends to make them 
 sit down contented amid reverses, and comparatively careless about 
 worldly success, where other men would strain every nerve to struggle 
 against the assaults of fortune, and to "provide against every possible 
 future contingency. 
 
 That such a diminution in the energies of our day would cause 
 a diminution in the amount of human happiness, I am, indeed, pre- 
 pared totally to deny. I should regard a colder devotion to the busi- 
 ness of life, as one of the greatest blessings which could be granted 
 to our care-stricken country. Next to a reception of the true religion, 
 I can conceive nothing so beneficial to the Anglo-Saxon race as an in- 
 fusion of a spirit of light-hearted cheerfulness, and a less keen suscep- 
 tibility to the peculiar charms of our modern civilization. Not only 
 would such a change from our gloomy, toiling habits produce an in- 
 stantaneous addition to the positive enjoyments of every hour in the 
 day, but it would exert a controlling power over that awful movement 
 towards universal pauperism, which is the great frightful fact of our 
 times. Strange and paradoxical as it may seem, a comparative care- 
 lessness about wealth is the only practicable cure for the evils of ex- 
 cessive poverty. For some generations now past the whole course of 
 the English social and economical system has been to multiply the 
 productions of human labor with the least possible advantage to the 
 producers. Though every human being brings into the world the same 
 physical and mental powers of production as his forefathers of every 
 past age, and though the marvellous instrumentality of machinery ena- 
 bles him to employ those powers with tenfold^.twentyfold, or a hun- 
 
13 
 
 dredfold more successful results, so that the entire population of the 
 empire at this moment calls into existence far more in proportion of 
 the necessities of life than did any past generation, yet such is the 
 unhappy distribution of these increased products that every day fewer 
 and fewer is the comparative number of those who are benefited by 
 them, and harder and harder does it become for the great mass of the 
 people to live. 
 
 Now, political economy recognizes no counteracting power in 
 human nature to check this excessive operation of the principles on 
 which civilized life is carried on. It has no safety-valve to prevent a 
 frightful explosion in the machinery of society. The very law on 
 which the riches, the luxuries, the comforts, and the refinements of 
 civilization are created, is the law of selfishness. These things could 
 not exist without a distinction between rich and poor, without that 
 command over the labor of others which wealth confers upon its pos- 
 sessor. Were all men equal in property, according to the dreams of 
 Socialism and Communism, the utmost that humanity could reach 
 would be a step or two above the nakedness and houselessness of 
 savage life. Art, refinement, literature, comforts, delicacies, of every 
 conceivable description, would be, literally, impossibilities. Without 
 the command, which the unequal distribution of wealth, enables the few 
 to exercise over the many, we must sink at once into a state, resem- 
 bling that of the settlers in a newly inhabited country, and be thankful 
 if we could clothe our bodies and shelter them under a roof, and keep 
 off actual starvation. Such, a state of things is, of course, wholly hypo- 
 thetical ; for our inequalities in physical strength and in mental power 
 would be sufficient to make some rich and powerful, and many poor 
 and weak, in the course of four-and-twenty hours after the commence- 
 ment of such a supposed universal equality. There are only three 
 possible states in which man can exist: the paradisiacal state of inno- 
 cence and bliss; the savage state, in which all things remain stationary; 
 and the civilized state, in which all moves either in one uniform direc- 
 tion forwards, or backwards towards barbarism. Civilized society can 
 never check at its will the operation of the principle which is the source 
 of its very existence. The law of nature, which makes one man rich 
 and another poor, tends to make the first richer and the second poorer 
 every day that passes by. The inevitable necessity, which first trans- 
 ferred a portion of the natural property (so to call it) of the second to 
 his more healthy, more powerful, or more skilful brother, goes on thus 
 transferring fresh portions of the results of his labor to those, who are 
 above him in command, until, as ages run on, gigantic wealth swells up 
 
14 
 
 one extremity of the social scale, while the abyss of pauperism swallows 
 all that are doomed to the other. The productions of civilized life are, 
 in fact, the productions of a bargain between two parties, which is al- 
 ways more favorable to one party than to the other. Nothing but 
 some violent change can stay the inevitable termination. Civilization 
 cannot control itself, or hold back the motive power to which it owes 
 its being. Hence the whole history of the human race is a record of 
 the advances of 'civilization, and of its ultimate issue in a wretched 
 state of enfeeblement, wealth, and pauperism, which has invited con- 
 quest, revolution, or total decay and death. 
 
 The fanatics of Socialism and Communism, alive to these terrible 
 facts, would fain remedy them by the substitution of some other social 
 system, based on a radical misconception of human nature, and of the 
 essence of civil society ; but they can no more cure the deadly disease 
 than they can restore paradisiacal innocence and health to man, or para- 
 disiacal fruitfulness to the earth. Their schemes are more fatal than 
 the mischief they would counteract. The power of religion alone can 
 stay the speed of this mighty engine, whose ever-increasing velocity 
 threatens to whelm us all in destruction. Nothing upon earth can save 
 society which cannot control man's selfishness, and make him content 
 to forego those powers over his fellow-creatures which circumstances, 
 or his own talents, have placed in his hands. What the French call 
 V exploitation de Vhomme par Vhomme defies the skill and energies of 
 all merely human motives to stop its headlong course. Man will hire 
 man to do his bidding, till the employer and the employed perish to- 
 gether, unless a voice come down from heaven and proclaim that this 
 life is naught, in accents which shall command the attention of the most 
 worldly, and accompanied with a spiritual power which shall soften 
 the most selfish and stony heart. Nothing less than a voluntary and 
 continually practiced renunciation of some portion of their legal rights 
 over the poor on the part of the rich, can save the former from pauper- 
 ism, and the latter from a simultaneous prostration into the abyss they 
 have dug with their own hands. 
 
 Now, that Catholicism is the only religion which thus strikes at the 
 heart of the excessive love of wealth, few candid observers will deny. 
 It is indeed a common reproach against Catholic countries, that they do 
 not foster that spirit of secular enterprise on which the existence of 
 modern civilization depends. The shrewd, sensible, prosperous Eng- 
 lishman despises Catholicism, because he thinks that its votaries, when 
 they have their religious services, their churches, their priests, and their 
 amusements, are content to remain in happy inactivity, careless about 
 
15 
 
 the future of this earthly life, and shrugging their shoulders in amaze- 
 ment at the untiring toils of the care-worn Briton. And exaggerated 
 as is this popular notion of the effects of Catholicism, I am prepared 
 not only to admit that there is some measure of truth in it, but to main- 
 tain that in this very feature of its influence is to be found the only 
 safeguard of modern Europe. It is the only engine which the states- 
 man and lawgiver can command, in order to control those suicidal tend- 
 encies of the social system, at which at present he stands aghast, 
 hopeless, helpless, and trembling. It is the only moving power which 
 can exercise an antagonistic influence upon that love of money, rank, 
 and ease, which in its unrestrained operation is ultimately as great a 
 curse to those who thrive upon its gifts, as to those who writhe under 
 its torturing grasp. Politicians, political economists, and the skeptical 
 worldly-minded Protestant member of Parliament, may smile in incre- 
 dulous contempt, but the unprejudiced thinker may be assured that the 
 Catholic religion alone can ensure to society that permanence in earthly 
 peace and prosperity which of old was sought by the advocates of 
 agrarian laws, confiscations of the property of the rich, and heavy tax- 
 ation upon their incomes, and which in these days is the blessing at 
 which the wild theories of Socialism and Communism aim with frantic 
 passion. How it does this, I will now show in detail. 
 
 In the first place, from my personal experience of Catholicism, and 
 from what I have seen of its influence upon others, I find that, practi- 
 cally, it does detach the affections of man from his earthly possessions 
 far more effectually than any one form of Protestant Christianity. Of 
 course I am comparing its results upon persons who are conscientious 
 and zealous in acting upon their own principles. I am not contrasting 
 the mental condition of a careless Catholic, who, though he lives a not 
 immoral life, is yet cold or lukewarm in his religious ways, who just 
 fulfils the letter of his obligation as a Catholic and nothing more, with 
 a devoted, energetic Protestant, who is given to prayer, almsgiving, and 
 works of mercy. I am taking two men or women, whether old or 
 young, rich or poor, who are apparently (as men usually judge) equally 
 sincere and zealous in acting fully up to the highest moral and devotional 
 standard of their respective communions; and I have not a moment's 
 hesitation in alleging, that what I may call the unworldliness of the 
 Catholic is so different from the unworldliness of the Protestant, that 
 the latter can scarcely comprehend what it is, both in its nature and in 
 its effects. I do not say that Protestantism will not, sometimes, during 
 periods of great temporary excitement, as, for instance, during the better 
 season of the Puseyite movement, impel its followers to very remark- 
 
16 
 
 able and almost heroic acts of pecuniary self-denial and munificence ; 
 but I do say, that of that practical, habitual, and irresistible sense of the 
 transitory nature of all worldly goods, which forbids the mind even to 
 care much about possessing them, they have at the best a very faint 
 conception; while there is not an age, not a year, not a day, in which 
 there are not thousands and tens of thousands of Catholics, both lay 
 and clerical, both in the cloister and in the world, to whom the loss of 
 worldly possessions, and the self-sacrificing renunciation of them for 
 the good of others, is comparatively an easy and trifling task, for no 
 other reason than that the realities of the spiritual world are present to 
 their consciences with a vividness and closeness of contact, which is 
 unknown to the conscientious Protestant mind. 
 
 So striking, indeed, is the influence of this keen perception of the 
 realities of eternity, that the Catholic sometimes appears insensible and 
 almost heartless to his Protestant friends and kindred. The tender- 
 hearted, anxious-minded, or prudent Protestant is shocked at the seem- 
 ing coolness and indifference with which the Catholic will often go 
 through scenes, or carry out his principles into acts, which rend the 
 souls of those, who are strangers to that mysterious perception of the 
 invisible, which sustains him when other men sink prostrate or yield in 
 helpless weakness to a cruel destiny. Two friends shall be knit to- 
 gether in the bonds of the closest Christian friendship, and pass their 
 days together, laboring with apostolic zeal for the welfare of souls, and 
 sharing all each other's hopes, fears, joys and sorrows, with the open- 
 ness of a most brotherly affection: in a week or a day, sudden death 
 shall carry one of them to his rest, and leave the other to toil alone for 
 many a long year; yet is the survivor's heart still calm and peaceful ; 
 the tears, that nature sheds, are wiped away by the hand of faith ; he 
 goes on with his solitary labors, and men see scarce an additional 
 furrow upon his brow, and marvel at his strange composure ; and all 
 because his eyes are opened to the invisible world, — because he has 
 been ever accustomed to live with his dearest friend as men, who walk 
 together on a brief journey; and now that he, whom he still loves so 
 warmly, is gone from his sight, he feels but as a traveler when his com- 
 panion has parted with him just before the termination of his journey, 
 only to hasten forward by a speedier road, and in a few days to welcome 
 him with the embrace of love, when he too, at length, enters the portals 
 of his true and only home. 
 
 Or a maiden in the first bloom of youth, when all seems bright and 
 promising, and while she has every prospect of still gladdening the 
 hearth of her parents for many a long year with her cheerful smile, and 
 
17 
 
 tending them in sorrow or sickness with sweet filial affection, all at 
 once announces to them, that she believes that God is calling her to the 
 life of the cloister ; that either for the sake of ministering to the sick 
 and the poor, or of passing her days in mortifications and prayers, she 
 desires to leave them now in the season of their most cherished enjoy- 
 ments, and to become in some sense a stranger to them until death. 
 Yet so deep is their sense of the reality of eternal things, and of the 
 vanity of this life, that when the first shock is past, and all have sought 
 strength to bear the parting from Him, whose will they trust they are 
 performing, the father and the mother consign their child to her future 
 life with scarcely more pain or anguish, than many parents commit their 
 daughters to the care and love of a husband, and sometimes with a joy 
 and gratitude to Him who is calling her to Himself alone, of which no 
 conception can be formed by those who know the practices and feelings 
 of Catholicism only from without. 
 
 And so it is in the point, to which I am more especially referring. 
 Wheresoever the Catholic faith comes, with even an average amount 
 of zeal and fervor, there will be found innumerable instances of a 
 facility in renouncing wealth and station, which is unknown except 
 within the pale of the Church. When men and women have no fa- 
 mily ties, which make it a duty to them to preserve their property in 
 their own hands, they will devote it all to the service of religion, whether 
 for the poor, or for education, or for the maintenance of the clergy and 
 ecclesiastical edifices, with a readiness, which can only be produced by 
 that sense of the worthlessness of secular pleasures which their religion 
 infuses into them. I claim no great merit for them in so doing; I am 
 only saying that it is comparatively easy Sot them to do it. The power 
 of their faith upon their minds is such, that the sacrifice actually zsless 
 to them, than it would be to the conscientious Protestant. During the 
 hours of darkness we trim our candle or lamp with anxious gentleness, 
 lest it be suddenly extinguished, and leave us in cold obscurity; but 
 when the first rays of the morning sun shoot across the heavens, we 
 care no more for our artificial light, and the sooner it disappears the 
 better. Just so it is with the devout Catholic mind. It is not really 
 insensible to the blessings of light and warmth. It feels as keenly as 
 the most susceptible of mortal men; but in the midst of the blaze of 
 noon it cannot be troubled at the loss of a flickering taper, or feel chilled 
 when a few sticks upon the hearth cease to throw out their genial heat. 
 
 Still more powerfully do Catholic ideas on poverty and monasticism 
 tend to counteract the selfishness, which, as it is one of the chief sources 
 of civilization, so is it ultimately its relentless destroyer. As the special 
 2 
 
18 
 
 influences I have been describing make it easy to a pious Catholic to 
 part with his wealth, so his principles on these other points make him 
 esteem it a glorious privilege to be able to distribute his possessions 
 among a large number of persons, and to descend himself from the 
 ranks of the wealthy to the ranks of the poor. A lukewarm, ill-in- 
 structed, or merely correct Catholic may in truth pay the same offen- 
 sive homage to wealth and greatness which we see in the separatist 
 world around us; and wherever this miserable subservience to the anti- 
 Christian feelings of that world, which is the enemy of God, is thus 
 found in the children of the Church of the poor, it is doubly detestable 
 in the eyes of those who treat the world's maxims with the contempt 
 they deserve : but a good Catholic aims at esteeming poverty and 
 wealth in precisely the same light as his Lord and Master esteemed 
 them; and as he counts it an honor to be despised for Christ's sake, 
 and a joy to suffer for him, so he looks upon the renunciation of riches, 
 when God calls him to it, as a gain, and not as a loss — as an increase 
 of his real treasures — as a purchasing of gold and jewels in return for 
 worthless stones, dust, and stubble. 
 
 Especially is this disregard of wealth fostered by the rules and spirit 
 of the monastic life. Not only does the convent tend to the creation 
 of a class of men and women in just that pecuniary condition, which 
 the politics and economics of nature cannot produce, though they im- 
 periously demand it, namely, the condition in which we have just 
 enough, and are neither very rich nor very poor; but it is notorious 
 that, even where the covetousness of human nature has made the utmost 
 inroads it has ever accomplished in the cloister, the consequent accu- 
 mulation of property has been far less rapid than in the hands of in- 
 dividuals in the world. Every man who is in the least acquainted with 
 the history of monastic institutions, however violent may be his pre- 
 judices against them, will admit that the products of industry, when 
 controlled by their hands, are divided between landlord and tenant — 
 between the party who has the capital, and the party who toils with 
 his head or his hands — far less unequally than in any other class in the 
 whole world. Granting that the abuses of the system are all they are 
 said to be (which is, of course, very far from what truth obliges us to 
 grant), still it is a palpable fact, that, however selfish, or covetous, or 
 luxurious monks may in some instances have become, they never have 
 sought money with that intensity of purpose which impels the man of 
 the world to make the largest possible profit out of every article that 
 passes through his hands, and to drive the hardest possible bargains 
 with the poor laborer in purchasing the fruits of his toil. A person, 
 
19 
 
 like a monk, who has only a life-interest in the possessions his society- 
 may acquire, and who during his life only possesses property as a 
 member of a corporation, with no individual right over a farthing, or 
 over a foot of land, is, by the very laws of humanity, by the very nature 
 of selfishness itself, less careful to store up boundless wealth, than 
 those who, while they live, are absolute masters of every penny they 
 possess, and who, when they die, can dispose of it to whomsoever they 
 please. And thus it is that monks have ever been the best masters, the 
 best employers, and the best landlords. 
 
 In connection with this subject, the practice of celibacy by the Ca- 
 tholic clergy, as well as by the monks, must not be overlooked. There 
 can be no doubt, in any reasonable person's mind, that a man who has 
 no family to provide for is less inclined to hoard than a man who has 
 a numerous offspring to place out in life, and to enrich by his savings 
 after death. The contrast is seen, perhaps, in its most striking forms 
 in the cases of the prelates of the English and Irish Protestant Churches, 
 and in the wealthy Catholic Bishops and Archbishops of the Middle 
 Ages. Immense as was the treasure of the Church before the Reforma- 
 tion, and immense as it has been in some parts of Europe and America 
 ever since that period, the Catholic prelates have rarely been found to 
 leave much property of their own at their death. What they have re- 
 ceived from the revenues of their sees they have spent as fast as they 
 have obtained it. In innumerable instances they have employed their 
 riches on every possible work which was most beneficial both to the 
 spiritual and temporal prosperity of their fellow-creatures; and when 
 this has not been the case, still they have not joined that most perni- 
 cious band of men, who heap gold upon gold and silver upon silver, in 
 order that they may create for themselves and their descendants a high 
 place among the great ones of the earth, and ennoble a family that has 
 sprung from the multitude. 
 
 Compare, on the other hand, the conduct of the Bishops and Arch- 
 bishops of the Established Church in England and Ireland. Even the 
 ingrained Protestantism of this country is disgusted when it learns the 
 enormous fortunes, which again and again are accumulated by these per- 
 sonages during the years they possess the revenues and patronage of 
 their sees. A fortune of fifty thousand pounds is nothing for a Bishop 
 to leave behind him. The episcopal savings must be reckoned by hun- 
 dreds of thousands of pounds. Ministerial favor or chance raises the 
 son of a shopkeeper or a country parson to the bench of Bishops, and 
 straightway the whole energies of the new prelate are devoted to the 
 storing up the fortune of a nobleman for his widow and children. Men 
 
20 
 
 whose fathers stood behind a counter leave their sons incomes of many 
 thousands ayear, andseethem marryingamonglords, and associating with 
 the highest in the land. And all this is accomplished by the cold, bitter 
 practice of that parsimony, which is destructive of all social prosperity 
 and of the well-being of the poor. Thousands and tens of thousands 
 of pounds, the representatives of the labors of multitudes, are annually 
 drawn out of circulation, instead of being honestly spent, even in lux- 
 uries, as fast as acquired, and all for the increase of the class of idle 
 men of property. There is no more mischievous a being in the whole 
 social scale, or one whose conduct tends more to the increase of pauper- 
 ism and the widening the distance between rich and poor, than a Bishop, 
 who hoards the revenues of his see, in order to leave a nobleman's 
 fortune to his sons and daughters. 
 
 Now, I would ask, what is it that our present social system demands, 
 but the introduction of some device, among all classes of the commu- 
 nity, which shall ensure a more equal distribution of the profits of labor 
 between the employers and the employed ? Can we, without audacious 
 folly, deny that the evil against which Socialism and Communism direct 
 their frenzied attacks is a real, and not an imaginary evil? Is it not 
 true that capital has more power over labor than it ought to have, and 
 that the tendency of our social life is ever to increase that unhealthy 
 influence, and to make the rich richer and the poor poorer in every 
 succeeding generation? Can it be doubted for a moment, that any 
 scheme, which, without violating the laws of property, or unduly check- 
 ing the energies and enterprise of mankind, should increase the average 
 income of the laboring poor to half as much again as it is now, while 
 it diminished the number of those frightfully gigantic fortunes, which 
 exist like mountains in the midst of the desert plains of our pauperism, — 
 can it be doubted, I say, that such a scheme would be the most precious 
 gift, which Providence could bestow upon this toiling and struggling na- 
 tion, and would do much to save us from the wreck of revolution which 
 is now desolating so many kingdoms of the continent of Europe, and 
 from that more silent but more fatal bankruptcy and decay to which we 
 are now most manifestly hastening? 
 
 I do not hesitate to say, then, that such a remedy can be found in the 
 propagation of those principles respecting poverty, celibacy, and mo- 
 nasticism, which are bound up with the very life of the Catholic religion, 
 and in the encouragement of that disregard of earthly wealth, which the 
 Catholic religion tends to nourish in the bosom of its faithful children. 
 Without any agrarian law, without one item of unjust taxation of a par- 
 ticular class, without the shadow of countenance to the schemes of the 
 
21 
 
 Socialist and the Communist ; here we have a system of faith and 
 morals, which stimulates the rich voluntarily to descend from their ele- 
 vation, not to join the ranks of pauperism, but of those who, though 
 poor, are no burdens to the community, and who produce more than 
 they consume; and which would erect in every city of the empire, and 
 in every dozen or score of country parishes, an institution filled with 
 men and women who would be the fairest of dealers, the most lenient 
 of rulers, and the most liberal of landowners. Scattered thickly through- 
 out the land, we should have one whole class of the population devoted 
 to the counteraction of the ruinous tendencies of the general course of 
 trade, commerce, agriculture and money-lending; one whole class whose 
 business it would be, as fast as the eager excitement of an ambitious 
 race overloaded with weight the upper stories of the social edifice, to 
 replace the stones of the building in a lower position, and daily to 
 strengthen that solid and humble foundation which is daily robbed of 
 its strength by the passionate love of show and splendor of its ordinary 
 inhabitants. Catholicism, including the celibacy of the clergy and mo- 
 nasticism, is the only possible safety-valve for the superfluous steam of 
 the vast engine of modern society ; and they who, as I have done, have 
 come to learn by their own experience what Catholicism really is, in its 
 children and in its general workings, are filled with a conviction, which 
 no sophistry can shake, that in its propagation in this land is to be found 
 the only permanent security for England's prosperity and greatness, for 
 her freedom and for her peace. I do not mean that Catholicism must 
 again become the established religion of the country. Far from it: so 
 far as human foresight can tell, this will never be; and so far as human 
 wisdom can judge, it would be well that this should never be. But 
 seeing as I do the course of modern society, and the utter impotence of 
 all political schemes and of all forms of Protestantism to cope with that 
 awful evil which the popular eye, in its miserable, short-sighted folly, 
 still fails to discern, but which is hurrying upon us with steps all the 
 more fatally swift because they are noiseless ; and knowing as I do by 
 the most careful observation what Catholicism is, both in theory and in 
 practice, I place my only hope for this still great, and, in many things, 
 this noble nation, in the cordial reception of the Catholic religion by a 
 very numerous portion of all ranks and classes in the community. 
 
 Having already stated what I have found to be the influence of a 
 submission to the Catholic Church upon a man's freedom and inde- 
 pendence of judgment on all matters not of faith, I now proceed to 
 give an account of the effect it exercises upon the general faculties of 
 the mind, not simply as leaving them to the unhindered development 
 
22 
 
 of their native strength, but as exerting upon them a positive strength- 
 ening and elevating power; as serving, in a word, to confer a true in- 
 tellectual discipline upon the mind. And in saying this, I must again 
 beg the Protestant reader to observe, that in asserting that Catholicism 
 leaves the judgment perfectly free in all mutters not of faith, I am as 
 far as possible from admitting that it enforces the shadow of intellectual 
 servitude even in those things which are of faith ; that is, which are 
 defined and laid down for belief by the Church herself. I most strenu- 
 ously deny that the faintest degree of irrational domination is exerted 
 upon me by the Church, even though her command that I should be- 
 lieve all that she proposes to my faith is absolute, and brooks not a 
 moment's hesitation. It is rigidly in conformity with the laws of pure 
 reason that I should place an implicit reliance upon the declarations of 
 an authority which I am convinced is a far more competent judge of 
 religious truth than I can possibly be, and which, I am persuaded on 
 sure grounds, is guided by a divine influence which supersedes the 
 private deductions of my personal, unaided, reasoning powers. It is 
 not slavery to believe the word of a competent witness; rather it is 
 worse than folly to doubt it. It Is not slavery for a laboring man who 
 knows nothing of mathematics, to rest in undoubting certainty in the 
 conviction that the earth goes round the sun, though to his personal 
 judgment the sun seems to go round the earth, because philosophers tell 
 him that he is misled by appearances. It was not slavery in the Jews 
 and Gentiles when they believed the words our blessed Lord spoke to 
 them, because they saw the miracles he wrought. And in like man- 
 ner, I am not a slave because I entertain no doubts of the truth of 
 Catholic doctrines, when I see that the common laws of reasoning 
 compel me to regard the Catholic Church as infallible. I cannot help 
 believing what she tells me, just as I cannot help believing that the 
 three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Will any man 
 who wishes to escape the imputation of craziness tell me that he should 
 like to be allowed to believe that two and two do not make four, or 
 that the earth is square, and not spherical? Does he feel uncomfort- 
 able when he studies the demonstrations in Euclid's Elements, and 
 wishes to be permitted to deny their cogency ? What would he say if 
 some ignorant simpleton rose to express profound pity for his enslaved 
 condition, and ask him why he did not exercise the inalienable rights 
 of reason, and set up a new algebra or a new astronomy for his own 
 private use and delectation ? 
 
 And such, I can seriously assure the Protestant reader, is the feeling 
 of intelligent and well-educated Catholics respecting the obligation 
 
 A 
 
23 
 
 under which they lie to accept all that their Church teaches. They 
 do not wish to believe otherwise than they are taught, any more than 
 they wish to believe that New York is situated in China. If we were 
 to meet any person who claimed such a liberty in his geographical 
 faith, we should all agree in thinking that he verged upon the insane. 
 And just such is our judgment of the well-informed separatist from our 
 Church. We pity him quite as much (at the least) as he pities us. 
 We do not wonder at a Heathen, or a Protestant who knows nothing 
 of the question, remaining out of the Catholic Church ; but that any 
 man who cares for truth, honesty, and the laws of reason, should study 
 the case between Rome and her opponents, and finally embrace the 
 belief that any form of Protestantism is true, appears in our eyes a 
 violation of the elementary rules of logic and common sense, very 
 nearly as monstrous as a denial of the law of gravity, or of the com- 
 monest facts of universal history. I do most confidently assert, that 
 could the philosophical heretic discern the indescribable pity with which 
 we regard his state of mind, and the contempt with which we treat 
 the quibbles of his sophistry, he would be more puzzled to reconcile 
 it with his theories of the intellectual bondage of Catholicism, than he 
 had ever been in investigating the subtleties of the cloudiest of meta- 
 physicians, Hindoo or Greek, Scottish or German. 
 
 Let me also here call attention to the claim which the Catholic makes 
 to the possession of a special faculty for the discernment of and belief 
 in religious truth, in addition to those general preliminary proofs of the 
 truth of the Catholic religion which address themselves to those who 
 are without the Church, as well as to those who are within. Whether 
 or no this claim be well-founded, I am not now discussing ; still, in 
 examining into the intellectual influences of Catholicism, it must not 
 be forgotten that we do assert that we possess this power. Every Ca- 
 tholic divine will lay it down as an elementary truth of practical and 
 doctrinal religion, and every convert from Protestantism will allege 
 that the doctrine is confirmed by his own private experience, that the 
 individual Catholic has a personal certainty of the truth and reality of 
 the objects of his faith, which goes further than the mere external 
 logical proof of the truth of Christianity as a religion from God, and 
 of Catholicism as identical with Christianity. To the observer from 
 without, this singular faculty will appear what is popularly called mys- 
 ticism ; he will say that it is simply a delusion; that we have no tan- 
 gible proof that we are not the sport of the fantasies of our imagina- 
 tion, and that the pure intellect has no healthy work in producing the 
 convictions I speak of. And that it will so appear to him so long as 
 
24 
 
 he is himself deprived of this faculty, I do not deny. A blind man 
 cannot conceive color, though he may feel by his touch the physical 
 difference between one hue and another. We are all of us lost in 
 amazement when we try to comprehend what is the faculty by which 
 a dog, when shut up in a dark hamper, and carried two hundred miles 
 away from his home inside a carriage, is no sooner set free than he 
 returns direct to his former abode, though he has never before been 
 at the place to which he was taken. In like manner the Protestant 
 has not any conception of the nature of that mysterious gift which the 
 Catholic Church terms the gift of faith, by means of which her chil- 
 dren are brought into a certain contact (so to say) with the invisible 
 world, and which makes them more sure of the truth of the doctrines 
 of their religion than can be imagined possible for any cultivated 
 mind, by those who are themselves not in possession of this super- 
 natural power. 
 
 Still, whatever may be thought of us, it is a fact that we are uncon- 
 scious of that bondage under which we are popularly imagined to groan 
 and writhe. So far from yielding an unwilling homage to authority 
 against the suggestions of our better judgment, we look upon ourselves 
 as the only thoroughly sane persons in existence. We regard man- 
 kind in general, and our Protestant friends and fellow-countrymen in 
 particular, as in some respects out of their senses. We have no more 
 respect for their views than for the delusions of a madman who fan- 
 cies himself a sovereign prince, and his cell in Bedlam a royal palace. 
 We respect their motives, their intentions, their feelings, their goodness 
 and amiableness; but as for their religious belief, and what they call 
 their arguments and proofs, we only grieve that poor human nature can 
 labor under such an infatuation as to count such perversions of com- 
 mon sense worthy of the name of reasoning. 
 
 To all that I have alleged in favor of the healthy and invigorating 
 influence of Catholicism upon the mind, it will be objected, that were 
 the case as I have stated it, the Catholic body in this country would 
 hold a position among their fellow-countrymen far higher than they 
 now possess, and would be distinguished for their literary attainments 
 to an extent which it would be absurd to claim for them in their pre- 
 sent state. I say nothing of the vulgar objection that in other coun- 
 tries and other ages Catholicism has crushed rather than aided the de- 
 velopment of the faculties, because I am speaking only of what has 
 fallen more immediately under my own observation. The objection 
 itself will not, in truth, bear a moment's examination, and our posterity 
 will come to class it with the rest of the herd of John Bull's self-corn- 
 
25 
 
 placent delusions, and admit that it is no more true that Catholicism 
 depresses the intellect than that it teaches Frenchmen to eat frogs, while 
 Protestantism teaches Englishmen to feast on beef. I confine myself 
 to the state of English Catholicism alone, and have no hesitation in 
 asserting that the exact state of English Catholic education and Eng- 
 lish Catholic literature furnishes no test whatsoever of the intelligence 
 and abilities of the English Catholic mind. I have anxiously and 
 carefully compared the average range and power of the Protestant in- 
 tellect with the Catholic, and I have possessed very extensive means 
 for instituting the comparison ; and I do not hesitate to declare, not 
 only that the young Catholic's mind is at least as able, as imaginative, 
 as keen, as animated, and as courageous, as that of the young Protest- 
 ant, but that the influence of our hitherto defective education has had 
 far less depressing results upon our mental condition, than could have 
 been possible under any form of Protestantism whatsoever. The faults 
 of our education have not been our fault; they have been the inevitable 
 result of circumstances over which we have had no control; they are 
 rapidly passing away, and a progress towards a thoroughly satisfactory 
 state of things is going forward with all possible speed. 
 
 There can be little doubt, indeed, that a person who had judged of 
 the state of the English Catholic intellect by the actual books it has 
 produced, and is now producing, or by the estimation in which it is 
 held by the Protestant world, would be taken completely by surprise, if 
 he was thrown for some length of time among any fair average specimen 
 of Catholics themselves. Let him for instance contrast the cleverness, 
 the quickness, and the energy of a number of boys from Eton and 
 Winchester, with an equal number from one of the best of the Catholic 
 schools, or of a number of young men from Oxford and Cambridge 
 with their fellows in age in Catholic seminaries, and he would confess, 
 without a moment's hesitation, that so far from seeing any sign of 
 intellectual deterioration in the youthful Catholic intelligence, there was 
 a vigor, an activity, a healthy life of imagination, and an openness to re- 
 ceive impressions of the purest and noblest character, which he had not 
 been in the least prepared to find among them. 
 
 If it be asked, how it is that when the means of secular training were 
 to so great an extent torn from the Catholic body by the persecution 
 of the law, there yet remained to them any such powerful instrument 
 for preventing the entire stagnation of the natural faculties ; I reply, 
 that taken as a mere means for cultivating the intellect, the Catholic 
 religion stands pre-eminent among all branches of human knowledge. 
 Bind and fetter the Catholic as you may ; tread him under foot ; 
 
26 
 
 trample upon him; rob him of every earthly good; drive him from 
 all intelligent society; burn his books; shut up his schools; denounce 
 him as a slave, till you have done your utmost to make him one; still, 
 so long as he retains his religion, he has that within him which feeds 
 the intellectual flame, and suffers it never to be wholly extinguished, 
 and preserves in every faculty of his soul a marvellous elasticity, 
 which will make it spring forth into life and action the moment that 
 the repressing power is withdrawn, and he enters the lists with his 
 fellow-countrymen a free and unpersecuted man. It is very true that 
 English Catholicism can as yet boast of but (ew names which are 
 eminent in any path of intellectual culture ; but then, how extremely 
 small is that class of Catholics from which men of intellectual emi- 
 nence generally proceed. Those who judge us by our numbers, 
 judge us most falsely, because we are almost all poor, almost all 
 approaching to paupers. That immense professional and middle class, 
 which supplies almost the whole of the literary, philosophical, and 
 scientific writers and thinkers of the age, not to mention its political 
 celebrities, scarcely exists amongst us. Considering the paucity of 
 our numbers, the wonder is that we have so many great names to 
 show, and not that we have done no more. Most people, too, have 
 little idea how many of those whom they extol with unbounded praise 
 in the walks of science and art, are Catholics. I will not allude to 
 individuals by name, but I cannot but repeat the assertion, that as his- 
 torians, antiquarians, artists, and men of science, the English Catholics 
 have done far more than could be expected of them considering their num- 
 bers, and the overwhelming difficulties under which they have labored. 
 And I entertain a strong conviction that before another generation has 
 passed away, it will be found that Catholicism in England has grappled 
 with the awful difficulties of the time, and has succeeded in ruling and 
 guiding the intelligence of this day of trial and trouble, to an extent 
 which must seem visionary and impossible to those who know not the 
 astonishing strength that is hidden in her faith and morality. 
 
 The source of this intellectual discipline is to be found in the nature 
 of those subjects of thought to which the Catholic religion directs 
 the minds of its followers. While every division of Protestantism is 
 of so vague, inconsistent, varying, and depressing a character, that 
 minds of a high order, and free energetic spirits, find pleasure and 
 training for their powers only in criticising its statements, destroying 
 its foundations, and detecting its absurdities, Catholicism calls forth the 
 energies of the mind by a directly opposite process. It is by the con- 
 templation of the perfections of Catholicism, by repeated examinations 
 
27 
 
 into the strength of its basis, by the study of its wondrous scientific 
 completeness, that the Catholic intelligence is disciplined. The Pro- 
 testant exults in the destruction of the follies which he sees to have 
 enthralled his Protestant brethren of less keen penetration than him- 
 self. The more he searches into his own belief, the more incon- 
 sistencies he discovers, the more is he startled at the intellectual 
 imposture to which mankind have been giving credence. Protestant 
 theological science consists in a systematizing of unbelief, in the gra- 
 dual erection and completion of a system of philosophy which, while 
 it assumes the name of Christianity, is virtually a denial of everything 
 positive and distinctive in Christianity as a revelation, and is nothing 
 more than Deism, Pantheism, or Atheism, under a new designation. 
 
 With us, the very reverse is the fact. Every fresh addition to the 
 philosophy, the poetry, the moral or dogmatic science of the Church, 
 is an addition to the strength and durability of her entire system. We 
 destroy nothing. We develop, we add, we expound, we illustrate, we 
 enforce, we adapt, but we never take away or deny what was once 
 held. And thus it is that the employment of the faculties of the mind 
 in the contemplation of the theology and practices of Catholicism, even 
 when every other means of education is rent away, is sufficient to com- 
 municate a certain measure of intellectual vigor and keenness. The 
 mind is perpetually directed to the examination of a vast, far-stretching 
 body of truths, relating to the profoundest possible subjects of thought, 
 arranged, defined, analyzed, and connected by the labors of centuries 
 and centuries; expounded in books in every language, embodied in 
 devotions of every kind, illustrated by innumerable ceremonies and 
 customs, and accompanied with the practice of a system of morals, in 
 comparison of whose scientific completeness it is not too much to say, 
 that the ordinary moral and physical sciences of secular life are but as 
 the guess-work of a speculator or the crotchets of an empiric. Under 
 the influence of this extraordinary system, the pure reasoning powers, 
 the imagination, the taste, with the whole of our moral being, romantic, 
 self-sacrificing, shrewd, and practical, undergoes a degree of drilling, 
 so to say, which I believe to be utterly incomprehensible to those who 
 judge of the effect of theological science upon the intellect by the results 
 which they see produced by the positive creeds of Protestantism, such 
 as they are. 
 
 Such, then, are, on the whole, the results of my personal experience 
 of the intellectual effect of a submission to the Church, and of the ob- 
 servations I have been able to make on the subject. I shall next 
 request the reader's attention to its moral influence, leaving the 
 
28 
 
 influence of its peculiar theological doctrines and its supernatural 
 claims to another opportunity. 
 
 What is the popular English belief with regard to Catholic morality- 
 need not be described at any length. It is clear enough that we are 
 thought to be — to use the word in its scientific sense — monsters. We 
 are esteemed a sort of lusus naturae, a combination of the great and the 
 vile, of the rigid and the licentious, of the benevolent and the cruel, 
 such as is nowhere else to be found in the entire range of humanity. 
 Almost every body is more or less afraid of a Catholic. A kind of 
 power of fascination is attributed to us, such as is possessed by some 
 of the snake species. Men of shrewd sense, calm and not easily led 
 away by their fears, seldom feel thoroughly safe in dealing with 
 Catholics. They fancy that our movements cannot be calculated 
 upon like those of other men ; that we alternately bind ourselves as 
 slaves, and take the most inconceivable of liberties; that at one mo- 
 ment we aim at living like angels, and at another are content to become 
 as devils. The one thing above all others which is attributed to us is an 
 unconquerable and impenetrable secrecy in all our dealings, which is 
 supposed to be carried to the highest- extent by the Catholic clergy in 
 their dealings with the laity, and with Protestants of all descriptions. 
 This is, on the whole, the popular belief among candid Englishmen; 
 while there is a multitude of persons, who, for want of a better term, 
 may be styled the fanatics of Protestantism, who simply regard us as 
 incarnate demons, the victims of deadly delusion, the blinded instru- 
 ments of an atrocious scheme of deception, devised and carried on by 
 a profligate priesthood and hierarchy. As these last, however, will 
 probably not read a word of what I have to say, or if they do read it, 
 will suppose that I am writing under the dictation of some crafty priest, 
 monk, or Jesuit, it is needless to show that their ideas of Catholicity 
 are the mere ravings of folly, and that it is literally impossible that the 
 Catholic religion could exist and spread as it does among respectable 
 and intelligent men and women of all countries, ages, ranks, and incli- 
 nations, were it in the slightest degree such as they suppose it to be. 
 I address myself solely to those persons of common sense and chari- 
 table intentions, who knowing Catholicism only from the representations 
 of vehement anti-Catholic writers, are yet staggered in the belief in 
 which they have been brought up by undeniable facts of a diametrically 
 contradictory character, and who would fain know whether or not 
 Catholics are that strange compound of good and evil which the candid 
 philosophical observer accounts them. I shall perhaps best commu- 
 nicate that clear knowledge of the facts of the case which I desire to 
 
29 
 
 fnrnish, by taking in detail some few of those points of Catholic prac- 
 tice which are believed to be most injurious to pure morality, and of 
 those views which we are believed to hold in violation of the sim- 
 plicity of Gospel strictness. 
 
 First, then, with respect to the personal character of our clergy, and 
 of the members of religious orders. It is undeniable that Protestants, 
 even the most charitable, are extremely suspicious of the moral character 
 of a large body of men, like our clergy; and of cloistered institutions, 
 like our monasteries and convents, where hundreds and hundreds of 
 men and women are subjected to what is supposed a most unnatural 
 restraint, at the same time that they are withdrawn from the sight of 
 the world, and enabled to perpetrate all sorts of wickednesses un- 
 checked by the voice of public opinion. I suppose that there is per- 
 haps net a Protestant in England who does not in his heart believe 
 that the clergy of the Established Church, if not the body of dissenting 
 ministers, are a more moral, more pious, and more modestly retiring 
 class of men than the eight hundred popish priests of Great Britain, to 
 say nothing of the monks and Jesuits. They feel convinced that 
 though many of our clergy may be men of irreproachable lives, and 
 devoted to the welfare of their flocks, yet, that if they could see behind 
 the scenes, they would discover many a shocking exception, even if it 
 did not turn out that the immoral Catholic clergy were more numerous 
 than the correct and self-denying. 
 
 What, then, has been the result of my personal knowledge of the 
 moral condition of our clergy? I most solemnly assure my readers 
 that I have only heard of one solitary instance of immorality among 
 them, while that one was of a far less heinous character than would be 
 at all supposed. The priest in question was given to drinking a lit- 
 tle too much, and is now, I believe, thoroughly reformed. Persons 
 may start at this statement, and think it a glaring falsehood, or an im- 
 possibility ; but nevertheless, I assert that it is true. I have never even 
 heard of, much less known, more than this one instance of clerical 
 misconduct among the English priesthood. Of course, there may be 
 others ; perhaps there are ; I can only speak as far as my experience 
 goes ; but unquestionably so far as it does go, and that is to a very 
 considerable extent, the fact is as I have alleged. Nor, again, am 
 I saying anything of other faults of a different species from those 
 which are popularly described by the word immorality, when applied 
 to an individual; I do not say that every one of the Catholic clergy is 
 an immaculate saint, who never by word or deed transgresses the most 
 minute precept of the moral law of God. All have their infirmities, 
 
30 
 
 because all are still in the flesh, still encompassed with trials, and often 
 harassed and proved beyond the ordinary lot of men. I am speaking 
 at present of that general correctness and irreproachableness of life 
 which we have a right to expect from every member of the priesthood, 
 and in which the Protestant world supposes that they fall so grievously 
 short of their duty. 
 
 Compare this fact, then, with the condition of the Anglican clergy, 
 and mark to which class the palm of purity of life is to be assigned. 
 Let any man who has had the means of knowing them, as I have 
 known both them and the Catholic clergy, call to mind the results of 
 his experience, and ask himself whether the contrast is not most favor- 
 able to the Catholic religion. There is not a person who is familiar 
 with the discipline of the Established Church, and with the ecclesias- 
 tical and criminal courts of this country, who could not, with five 
 minutes' reflection, count up a score or so of cases which have come 
 under his own personal knowledge, in which, from deans down to 
 curates, the moral law has been flagrantly violated by crimes, varying 
 from such as it is forbidden for pen to describe, to that swindling and 
 perjury which is barely esteemed immoral in the lax judgment of com- 
 mon men. Let any person recall the circumstances which have come 
 under his cognizance during the last ten or fifteen years, and he will 
 be constrained to admit, that if there is any class of ecclesiastics who 
 practically answer to those pictures of scandalous vice which he has 
 been brought up to believe to apply to the Catholic clergy, that class 
 are the clergy of the Church of England. I am not asserting, be it 
 remembered, that all the Established clergy are immoral, or that a 
 majority of them are immoral; but I do say that the proportion of the 
 scandalous to the decent livers in the Establishment is far, far greater 
 than in any portion of the Catholic Church in which I have ever had 
 an opportunity of ascertaining the true state of affairs. The case is 
 also just the same in the religious orders. The monks are almost in- 
 variably men of irreproachable correctness of conduct; while as to the 
 convents of women, I am morally convinced that there is no such a 
 being as a nun of questionable character in the entire kingdom. 
 
 I will, however, go much farther than this, and profess my sincere 
 conviction that an immense majority of the Catholic priesthood and 
 members of monastic orders are not only persons of correct life, but 
 thoroughly religious persons, whose hearts are sincerely given to the 
 service of God, and who love Him with that true affection which He 
 will recompense with eternal life in heaven. As I have already said, 
 they vary considerably in degrees of sanctity, from that of the most 
 
31 
 
 exalted piety downwards ; but nevertheless it is impossible to know 
 them personally and intimately, to see them in their hours of relaxa- 
 tion as well as to meet them in the confessional, to hear them in the 
 pulpit, or to see them by the bedside of the sick; — it is impossible to 
 learn their weaknesses and their trials, as well as their powers and their 
 successes, without being impressed with a moral certainty that in the 
 last great day there will be few of the English Catholic clergy to 
 whom their Master will not say, "Well done, good and faithful ser- 
 vant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." I am the last person in 
 the world to entertain a superstitious respect for any person, or to close 
 my eyes to what I might see or ought to see; but I cannot help record- 
 ing my experience, and saying, that as far as I can remember, I never 
 yet met with a priest who did not appear to me to have a conscience, 
 to be alive to the paramount claims of Almighty God to the undissem- 
 bled homage of his heart, or who shamefully neglected the ordinary 
 duties of his sacred calling. Nor do I wish to speak, with unnecessary 
 harshness, of the Protestant clergy, with very many of whom I have 
 lived on terms of affectionate intimacy, and for some of whom I still 
 entertain a sincere respect and hearty regard ; but when I come to com- 
 pare their apparent religiousness, as a body, with that of the Catholic 
 priesthood, I see that while the latter are (as far as I know) habitually 
 influenced by the fear and love of God, the former are generally more 
 decent men of the world, who make a compromise between its service 
 and a devotion to its comforts, and the claims of religion to their whole 
 hearts. When I have had to do with Protestant clergymen, or con- 
 versed with them on any practical or spiritual subject, it was only in 
 exceptional cases that I found I could reckon upon their being in- 
 fluenced by a religious motive, worldly prudence and ecclesiastical 
 party spirit being the ruling guides of the majority; while the Catholic 
 priest is ever accessible to reasons or ideas founded upon the will of 
 God, and the general happiness of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 As to the popular idea of Romish priestcraft, it is simply a fiction. 
 That assumption of something like personal infallibility which is so 
 intolerably offensive in very many of the Anglican clergy, is really 
 scarcely known among Catholic priests. It is a rare thing to hear a 
 priest claim any more deference to his personal views or expositions 
 of doctrine than ought reasonably to be conceded to those who have 
 made religious questions their especial study. Protestants may rest 
 assured that the notion that the clergy have any right to domineer over 
 the consciences of the laity, that a priest always claims to decide every 
 question ex cathedra, that the laity as generally stand in slavish fear of 
 
32 
 
 the opinions, the censures, or the denunciations of the clergy, is a 
 pure creation of the imagination, contradicted by the facts of every 
 mission in England, and radically opposed to the great Catholic doc- 
 trine that the Church is infallible, and not the individual members of 
 the priesthood. 
 
 In like manner, what is termed the Bon is a rarity in the Catholic 
 Church ; so much so, indeed, that I despair of making many of my Ca- 
 tholic readers understand the sort of creature whom Protestants designate 
 by the term. I do not say that such beings never exist among us; but 
 I do say that they are to be found in a far less proportion to the num- 
 bers of our clergy, than in the Established Church. Empty-headed 
 assumption; an oracular manner of giving vent to common-places; 
 a practicing upon the simplicity or ignorance of inferiors in rank or 
 intelligence ; a deliberate repetition of canting, high-sounding phrases, 
 which serve only to deceive the unenlightened and to amuse the keen- 
 sighted ; a sham, pompous, artificially dignified manner ; — these are 
 not the ordinary faults of the Catholic clergy, as they are but too com- 
 mon among that body which is the loudest in its declamations against 
 Romish tyranny and priestly craft, and which regards a Catholic priest 
 as a sort of respectable monster, a compound of deceitfulness, cunning, 
 cleverness, zeal, and despotism. In fact, our clergy sometimes carry 
 the openness of their character and manner to an extreme. They are 
 really at times too open, too honest in what they say, too little studious 
 of appearances, too ready to give other people credit for good inten- 
 tions, and to expect a charitable interpretation of their words and con- 
 duct from a censorious world. Nobody that knows them can possibly 
 pretend that they are apt to put on an exterior which belies their real 
 nature; that they hide themselves from the eyes of the world and of 
 their flocks by the assumption of an unnatural, stiff, pompous manner, 
 or by affecting to be better than they are in reality. If they err at all 
 in the matter, it is with that most amiable and pardonable error which 
 no Christian man can find it in his heart severely to condemn, the error 
 of thinking too well of mankind in general, and of their friends and 
 acquaintances in particular. 
 
 Here, too, I should introduce that one feature in the intercourse be- 
 tween the priesthood and the laity which is viewed with especial 
 dread and suspicion by the Protestant, the discipline of the confes- 
 sional. Amid the vast varieties of opinion which the separatist world 
 entertains respecting this momentous subject, it is undeniable that all 
 Protestants regard confession as a terrible engine in the hands of the 
 clergy for exercising an undue power over men's souls. One, a zea- 
 
33 
 
 Ions Protestant, views the whole practice with nndissembled horror; 
 one, a timid old lady, or a country parson, devoutly believes that by 
 means of confession the priests instill every species of abomination into 
 the minds of their flocks, especially into the young ; a third, a philo- 
 sophical politician, or an intensely candid Anglican, admits that great 
 good may often result from confession, but is confident that great spirit- 
 ual tyranny also is its very frequent result; a fourth, an ultra-Roman- 
 izing Puseyite, or an anxious, trembling, devout person who longs for 
 some practical guidance, is convinced that the system is full of benefit, 
 to those who judiciously employ it, but is possessed with an unde- 
 finable dread of its mysterious powers, and cannot believe that it is not 
 frequently most terribly abused. All agree in thinking that the abuse 
 of the confessional is anything but rare. 
 
 To this I have again to reply, that if there is any fault to be found 
 with the Catholic clergy, it is directly on the opposite side from that, in 
 which they are supposed to sin. If they err in directing the con- 
 sciences of their flocks, it is in exercising too little authority over them, 
 rather than in exercising too much. Unquestionably there is a very 
 considerable variety in their claims to be considered as good spiritual 
 directors ; but it is equally undeniable; that, if any are ever to be found 
 fault with, it is in being too considerate, too forbearing, too cautious of 
 interfering with our personal wishes and free judgment. I can most 
 solemnly say, that I never heard of such a thing as a priest making 
 mischief in a household, coming between its various members and set- 
 ting them against each other, or practising upon the simplicity and obe- 
 dient spirit of his penitents for his own benefit, or for the benefit of his 
 order. I have often heard complaints made, both by born Catholics 
 and converts, that confessors left them too much to themselves ; and I 
 have occasionally, though rarely, heard of a priest asking questions 
 which showed that he wanted a power of discriminating character, or 
 that his ideas of his office were narrow and unattractive ; but never 
 have I known or heard of an instance in which the confessional was 
 employed as an instrument of tyranny ; as a vehicle for instilling a 
 knowledge of sins, hitherto unknown, to the innocent mind; or as a 
 source of misery and discomfort to a household. 
 
 My Protestant readers may smile, but I must assure them that the 
 laity are a far greater plague to the clergy in the confessional than the 
 clergy to the laity. If at the time of confession one of the two parties 
 concerned is a master and the other a slave, it is certainly the priest 
 who is the slave and the penitent who is the master. Again and again 
 have I been astonished at the patience, the forbearance, the endurance, 
 3 
 
34 
 
 with which a Catholic priest will listen for hours after hours, in the hot, 
 stifling, poisonous atmosphere of a crowded chapel, to recitals which 
 try human calmness to the uttermost, so confused, so needless, so diffi- 
 cult to comprehend and elucidate, that one wonders how the priest's 
 brains can stand the wear and tear, and he can come forth as unruffled 
 in spirit as he is exhausted in body. The confessional, indeed, is in 
 some cases an infliction; but it is an infliction of which by far the 
 largest portion falls to the clergy and not to the laity. Its trials are 
 perhaps as great as its blessings, and these latter are great and wonderful, 
 but the trials and the blessings are not equally shared between priest 
 and penitent. The former, abundant as are the consolations which he 
 receives as well as bestows, has far more than his share of the pains 
 with which the guidance of immortal souls is of necessity ever accom- 
 panied. However, of the general influence of the practice of confession, 
 as a portion of Catholic discipline, I shall say more hereafter. Now I 
 pass on to the observations I have been able to make on the results of 
 the monastic system on those who are subjected to its restraints. 
 
 And here again I find it difficult to realize to myself the exact nature 
 of the feelings which I know that the Protestant world entertains to- 
 wards monks and nuns of every kind. So completely is the Catholic 
 Church a new world to those who enter her pale, that, after a very short 
 time, it becomes almost impossible to enter into the minds of those who 
 are still without her fold, or to recall what we ourselves once thought 
 and felt in common with the rest of our Protestant fellow-countrymen. 
 So singularly unlike is it to be a Catholic to what it is imagined from 
 without, and so marvellously does the whole system of Catholic faith 
 and practice enter into one's whole life and absorb one's very nature 
 itself, moulding one's every idea, sentiment, and liking after that very 
 model which prevails throughout the whole of Catholic Christendom, 
 that, before a few months have passed away, the convert has forgotten 
 that he ever was different from what he has now become, and can hardly 
 convince himself of the fact that he once entertained opinions respect- 
 ing the Church and her children which now he laughs at as the most 
 childish of absurdities. We seem as if the first part of our lives had 
 been one long dream, and as if our eyes had been opened to realities 
 for the first time on the day when we were reconciled to the Church. 
 We wonder how we could ever be so deluded as to fancy those visions 
 of brightness, truth, and love which formerly we worshiped to be any 
 thing more than the phantasms of our own imagination. Having now 
 the free exercise of our faculties, we can scarcely persuade ourselves 
 that there was a time when we lived year after year in the same country 
 
35 
 
 with the children of the true Church, with her temples open all around 
 us, with her clergy ready to converse with any who came to them, with 
 books in abundance to tell of her doctrines and system, with monasteries 
 and convents scattered about the country, ready to show hospitality to 
 the most vehement of opponents, and yet could pass our lives in an 
 abject servility to the vulgarest of prejudices and the most irrational of 
 theories, without troubling ourselves to ascertain, by the employment 
 of our common sense, whether facts were such as we had been taught 
 to believe. ' 
 
 Hence I find it difficult to meet the popular feelings about monks and 
 nuns with any fully intelligible and satisfactory answer, because I now 
 can scarcely realize those feelings, or suppose that my sensible and well- 
 disposed fellow-countrymen can be so preposterously absurd in their 
 prejudices as I nevertheless know them to be, because I was once as 
 absurd myself. I am confident that they will not trust what I tell them, 
 or believe that, whatever be the true character of the inmates of the 
 cloister, it is such as I assert it to be. So deeply are they possessed 
 with what they imagine must be the result of the peculiarities of the 
 monastic life, that they will hardly fail to receive my statement as a 
 romance, as a tale conjured up by my own excited imagination, and 
 contradicted by what facts would appear to be, if they could only see 
 into them. -■ 
 
 Yet the truth must be told as it is, and, while the world thinks with 
 alternate horror, indignation, contempt, and pity upon the inhabitants 
 of the cloister, I must repeat my conviction that they are the happiest 
 people upon earth. As a Catholic, I of course consider that, taken as 
 a body, the members of the religious orders are the most holy of all 
 Christians ; for great as are the miracles of sanctity which Almighty 
 God accomplishes in the secular clergy of the Church, and even in the 
 privacy of domestic life in every rank and grade of society, still it will 
 scarcely be questioned by any Catholic that the highest degrees of holi- 
 ness and love are so often accompanied with a vocation to the monastic 
 life, that, as by a kind of natural law, a considerable proportion of the 
 saints of Christianity will be found dwelling in the cloister as contem- 
 platives, or occupied as members of some active order in ministering 
 to the poor and sick, or teaching the ignorant. It is therefore a mere 
 statement of common Catholic belief, to say that monasteries and con- 
 vents, whatever may be the occasional exceptions to the rule, abound 
 with men and women of fervent piety and devoted love to their fellow- 
 creatures. That which the world will be least prepared to hear, is the 
 testimony of an observer to the remarkable and uniform cheerfulness 
 
36 
 
 and happiness which fills the breasts of persons cut off from all the 
 ordinary sources of human pleasure and enjoyment, and subjected some- 
 times lo the severest bodily austerities, and always to the discipline of 
 a military obedience. 
 
 I can, indeed, scarcely conceive a greater contrast than exists between 
 the interior of many a convent and the strange gloomy conceptions 
 which Protestants in the world entertain respecting it. The rough 
 black, white, or brown habit in which the monk's or nun's figure is 
 generally wrapped ; the uncouth substitution of these ungainly garments 
 (as they are thought) for all that makes the female form and countenance 
 so charming in the eyes of man, and of woman also; the unvarying 
 monotony of a life, which, for twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty long years, 
 is passed within the walls of one single house, and the enclosure of one 
 small garden; the thought that every moment of every hour in every 
 day in all those revolving years is subjected to the rigid regulations of 
 a written rule, and the direction of a superior who is but an erring, 
 fallible mortal; that father, mother, brother, sister, come to see the nun 
 but as visitors — as half-friends, half-strangers — as her kindred, and yet 
 as having no claims or rights over her; and that a most solemn vow has 
 bound her irrevocably to this voluntary death, until the last hour of mor- 
 tality arrives, and she passes into eternity, untended by one hand that 
 owns the relationship of blood or marriage; — all this impresses the 
 popular mind with a mournful and angry feeling, and makes it think of 
 these victims of a superstitious creed as the most miserable and unfor- 
 tunate of earth's inhabitants. Yet I can most conscientiously say, that 
 convents and monasteries are, without a solitary exception, the happiest 
 and most cheerful places in the world. As in everything else, there 
 are differences between one religious house and another, not only in 
 their strictness and spiritual fervor, but in the general tone of mind 
 which pervades the community. Some are more grave and silent, others 
 more lively and given to conversation. In some the labors of mercy 
 for the poor are so exhausting, that they leave hardly spirit and strength 
 for much vivacity or merriment. In others, severe austerities are borne 
 with a redoubled energy of patience, through the perpetual buoyancy 
 of spirit w 7 hich a daily recurring recreation of the most animated species 
 confers. Yet the rule will be found to hold good universally, that the 
 cloister is a more cheerful place than the world without. Its inmates 
 have a sunshine in their hearts, which, strange and inconceivable as it 
 must appear to those who know Catholicism only by false report, is 
 both the result of the peculiarities of the conventual life, and its never- 
 failing support and consolation. 
 
37 
 
 Nor let it be supposed that, because the monastic spirit severs in twain 
 those ties of affection which hold society together, and are the sweetest 
 charm which this world has retained since Paradise was lost, therefore 
 the hearts of monks and nuns are cold and hard, unfeeling towards one 
 another, and destitute of affectionate sympathy towards those who are 
 still occupied in secular affairs. Nothing could be more false than such 
 a supposition. Every Catholic who has had much intercourse with 
 them, whether in England or abroad, unites in bearing testimony to the 
 fact, that not only are they among the most agreeable, hospitable, in- 
 telligent, and often most polished persons to be met with, but that their 
 kind-heartedness, practical benevolence, and readiness to love all, is one 
 of their most striking features. An undeniable proof of the bright, 
 happy, attractive spirit which pervades the cloister is to be found in the 
 circumstance, that wherever they keep a school, of any description, 
 they win the affections of the young with an irresistible power, and 
 attach to themselves throughout after-life almost all who have ever been 
 under their care. 
 
 Still further, it is a remarkable illustration of the gentle and cordially 
 sincere character of the inmates of religious houses, that a large pro- 
 portion of many of them is made up of persons who were originally 
 brought up in their schools, and who have either chosen never to leave 
 them, or, when circumstance" have permitted it in their after-career, 
 have returned at once, as a bird to its nest, to that home of peace and 
 happiness which in their childhood they felt to be truly a refuge in the 
 midst of the sorrows and sins of this time of trial. Incomprehensible 
 as is the enigma which the monastic state presents to the speculative 
 and liberal-minded Protestant, who judges of its nature by the feelings 
 he perceives working in his own mind, and by the principles and habits 
 of common secular life, those who know it by personal experience, at 
 the season when the heart is least likely to be led away by theories, 
 and is still unsaddened by the bitter experience of after-years, furnish 
 the most signal attestation of its delights, by constantly flying to it and 
 embracing it as their portion, at that very age when pleasure is most 
 intoxicating and the future seems most brilliant, and care and anguish 
 have not imprinted one single furrow upon the brow. We know how 
 singularly different is the feeling produced in Protestant schools, and 
 even in some Catholic seminaries, towards those who are the instructors 
 and managers of the young. So far from finding that seven or eight 
 years passed at a great school, whether of boys or girls, induce the 
 pupils in after-days to long for a return to the society of those who 
 taught and governed them, and for a share for life in all their daily oc- 
 
38 
 
 cupations, the very reverse is the almost universal consequence. Men 
 and women never become schoolmasters or ushers, schoolmistresses or 
 governesses, by choice. One laughs at the very idea. Yet in the Ca- 
 tholic Church it is a fact, that if we want our boys to become Bene- 
 dictines or Jesuits, and our girls to bury themselves in the cloister for 
 ever, the best possible means we can take to ensure the fulfilment of 
 our wishes is to send them to the schools of the religious order which 
 we wish them to embrace, saying nothing at all to them about our wishes, 
 but leaving things to work their natural way upon their youthful hearts. 
 Nothing is, accordingly, more common than for parents to learn from 
 their sons and daughters, just at the time that others are marrying and 
 settling down amid the blandishments of the world, that they are strongly 
 disposed to return to such and such a monastery or convent, and trust 
 they have the permission and approbation of their father and mother. 
 Doubtless the heart of many a freeborn Briton will swell with indigna- 
 tion at hearing that natural affections are thus scandalously interfered 
 with, and they will hate the cloister all the more because it is the fatal 
 foe to those worldly prospects which the fond and foolish parental heart 
 cherishes for its children. It is true that people who would consign 
 their daughter with gladness to the arms of a wealthy husband, who 
 lived thousands of miles away in India, or rejoice to purchase a com- 
 mission in the army for a son, who would thus be practically banished 
 from his home for ever, will exclaim with vehement wrath against the 
 tyrannical cruelty and unnatural wickedness of those who would coun- 
 sel a youth or a maiden to take the vows of a religious, and so break 
 up the unity and enjoyments of a smiling family; I only state this as 
 a proof that monks and nuns are so happy a class of beings, that they 
 attract, in great numbers, those who at any time come under their 
 charge, and that to the merry, light-hearted boy and girl they approve 
 themselves the most favored and agreeable class of beings upon earth. 
 Oh, wonderful power of grace and goodness ! At this very moment, 
 while almost every individual in the Protestant world of England, who 
 has any opinions at all on the subject, is viewing the life of the Catholic 
 convent as either a life of dark, morose misery and gloom, or of un- 
 bridled worldliness and licentiousness, — at this moment there is many 
 and many a young heart within the Church that is rejoicing to put aside 
 the wedding-garb, to quit the scene of gaiety and amusement, to part 
 from all it loves most on earth, and refusing to give its love to any fresh 
 object of mere earthly tenderness, and preparing to pass through those 
 doors which open only to those who enter, and are closed to any who 
 would fain return; and all this not by restraint — not because it has tried 
 
39 
 
 the world's pleasures to the utmost, and found them wanting — not be- 
 cause it had ceased to love its natural kindred — not because it is misera- 
 ble — not because it is priest-ridden and superstitious — not because it 
 has no means of support in the world, — but of its free, unbiassed will, 
 after weeks, months, or years of reflection and prayer, simply because 
 the "religious" life has attractions for it such as nothing earthly can 
 offer, because it loves that life, and trusts to serve God more perfectly, 
 and to do more good to its fellow-creatures, by thus withdrawing from 
 the habits and customs of mankind, and devoting itself to Jesus Christ, 
 alone. Wonderful also it is, and not less true, that at the same time 
 there are many and many parents in this realm who, from the earliest 
 infancy of their offspring, hope and desire for them no other destiny 
 than they should thus flee from life at the very moment when it is most 
 tempting and full of promise; that while the worldly father and mother 
 look forward with joy to the fame, the wealth, the domestic bliss which 
 is to be their child's portion when he grows up to manhood, or depend 
 upon the affectionate care and solicitude of a daughter to soothe the 
 sickness of their old age, these strange and incomprehensible parents 
 should even pray to God to take their child from them, to sever the tie 
 that binds them to nature, and to bind them by an irrevocable vow to a 
 state in which this world is to be to them as though it existed not. Yet 
 such is the fact, and such the deep-seated belief which many a pious 
 Catholic entertains of the blessedness of the conventual life, that the 
 more purely and unselfishly they love their children, the more earnestly 
 do they desire to see them thus safe from the storms which make ship- 
 wreck of so many souls. 
 
 But we must pass on to two or three of those other points in which 
 Catholic morality is especially misunderstood by those who are not 
 Catholics themselves. Perhaps in no one point is this misconception 
 more complete than in regard to our belief and practice in respect to 
 truth and falsehood. For generations this Protestant country was guilty 
 of the glaring absurdity of imputing to Catholics a disregard of the 
 sanctity of promises and oaths, at the same time that it refused to alter 
 the oaths which kept Catholics out of Parliament. So monstrous are 
 the delusions which men can practise upon themselves, that for cen- 
 turies Catholics were popularly believed to keep no faith with heretics, 
 and to be habitually guilty of perjury, while no single instance could 
 be found of a Catholic whose conscience would permit him to take the 
 oath which kept him a slave in the midst of a free people. And though 
 the English nation is now beginning to think that all Catholics are not 
 necessarily scoundrels, still we see many signs that people scarcely 
 
40 
 
 trust us — that they think us slippery, deceitful, and crafty beyond other 
 men, and are suspicious of the actual doctrines which our clergy teach 
 respecting the duty of telling the truth. 
 
 I can declare, then, that so far as my experience and observation 
 go, this idea is without a shadow of a foundation in fact. I never met 
 with a Catholic priest or a Catholic layman who was not at the very 
 least as rigid in his observance of the law of truth, both in word and 
 in deed, as the most upright and honorable of Protestants. That a 
 different rule is to be followed in keeping faith with heretics, from that 
 which Catholics follow among one another, is a notion which I have 
 never heard even broached among them, and never mentioned but as 
 an instance of Protestant misunderstanding of Catholic opinions I 
 have said that, at the very least, Catholics are as honest and truth-telling 
 as Protestants, but I might say a great deal more; I might with strict 
 correctness add, not only that they are much better informed as to what 
 constitutes falsehood than Protestants, from their ignorance of moral 
 science, can possibly be, but that they exercise a rigid watchfulness over 
 themselves in speaking which is unknown to those w T ho do not practise 
 confession as we do. There are a thousand little acts of trickery and. 
 deception all but universal in the world, which the Catholic knows to 
 be absolutely forbidden by the moral law, and which he avoids as sins. 
 From the exaggerations and embellishments of mere conversation, up 
 to the innumerable rogueries which are thought nothing of by men of 
 the world, we are taught to mark the line between honesty and decep- 
 tion with an unyielding severity of demarkation, to which the popular 
 laxity of both rich and poor, men and women, is absolutely a stranger. 
 I would counsel any candid inquirer who wishes to ascertain what our 
 morals in this respect really are, to put the question to any respectable 
 Catholic man in business, to a solicitor, a merchant, or a common 
 tradesman, who at all bears the character of being a good Catholic, who 
 attends to his religious duties, and to ask him whether he does not find 
 his religion a positive hindrance to him in competing with Protestants, 
 who think nothing of practices to which he entertains conscientious 
 scruples, and who act upon lax ideas of truth and falsehood, from which 
 he himself recoils. I am, indeed, most firmly convinced that the large 
 majority of men who are called men of honor in the world, are habit- 
 ually guilty of sayings and doings which, in the judgment of the Catholic 
 clergy and all well-conducted Catholic laity, would be nothing better 
 than swindling, lying, and perjury. 
 
 A similar difference from the Protestant practice, even more striking 
 in its nature and extent, is to be observed in the private conversations 
 
41 
 
 of Catholics respecting the faults and sins of their fellow-men. I have 
 not a moment's hesitation in asserting, that the universally recognized 
 principle on which every decent Catholic controls his tongue, is all but 
 unknown even to the better sort of Protestants. I need hardly remind 
 my readers, that in the familiar conversations of private life, it is the 
 habit of all classes and denominations to mention the moral faults of 
 other persons without the slightest scruple, when inclination or the turn 
 of conversation prompts it. I am not alleging that it is thought allow- 
 able to say what is untrue of others, or to say what is true from a 
 malicious and uncharitable spirit; but it will not be disputed that not 
 one Protestant in a thousand considers it wrong to mention in a quiet 
 way that such and such a person has been guilty of such and such a 
 fault, or is influenced by such and such a sinful habit or feeling. A 
 lady no more hesitates to tell her friend that she has just discharged 
 her servant for theft, than to say that it is a fine morning. Gentlemen 
 over their wine have no more scruple in repeating any stories they have 
 heard of the immoralities of their acquaintances, than of discussing the 
 previous night's debate in Parliament. Every Catholic child, on the 
 contrary, is taught that not even to our nearest and dearest friends and 
 kindred is it permitted ever to mention the moral faults of another per- 
 son, unless they are matter of public notoriety, or unless the law of 
 charity not only permits, but actually requires it. If I see my friend 
 unwittingly putting himself in the power of a man whom I know to 
 be a rogue, I am bound by my duty to my friend to warn him, in con- 
 fidence, of what he is doing. If I have had proof that a certain pro- 
 fessional man or shopkeeper is a swindler, there maybe cases in which 
 I am imperatively called upon to prevent others from dealing with him. 
 But until I am so summoned by charity to destroy my fellow-man's 
 fair reputation, I have no more right to make his sins a subject of private 
 gossip than to publish them in the columns of a newspaper. 
 
 It will perhaps be said, that whether this be so or not, Catholics 
 do not generally act on this rigid rule. I reply, however, that most 
 unquestionably they do act upon it. I do not, of course, pretend that 
 they never act otherwise. They are still sinners, even when most 
 saintly, and the devil's temptations and their own bad inclinations, and 
 evil example, at limes throw them off their guard, and hurry them into 
 the sin of detraction which they condemn. But as a rule, I assert, 
 without fear of contradiction, that the difference between Catholic and 
 Protestant gossip is of the most striking character. You may go to a 
 Catholic dinner, or a Catholic evening party, where perhaps there is 
 not one who is what may be called an eminently saintly person, and 
 
42 
 
 come away without hearing a solitary syllable spoken against the fair 
 fame of a single individual. You may hear a vast deal said of others, 
 and much, perhaps too much, that may, at first sight, appear free and 
 unrestrained handling of their lives and characters; but, when you 
 calmly review what you have heard, you will find that all this discus- 
 sion and merry laughter has been confined to trifling personal pecu- 
 liarities, which were perfectly harmless, and that you had heard no more 
 evil of your neighbors, than you hear, when you are told that a man's 
 nose is ugly or his hair is turning gray. And the same forbearance is 
 practised with reference to Protestants as to Catholics. The rule holds 
 good to all alike. . The reputation of every human being, from the child 
 to the hoary sage, from the servant to the prince, we esteem a sacred 
 possession belonging to him, of which we have no more right to rob 
 him, than to help ourselves to a man's silver spoons, or to forge his 
 name to a cheque. I am convinced, that no acute or watchful Protest- 
 ant could mix familiarly with Catholic society, and have his attention 
 directed to these points, without observing a difference from the state 
 of things, which prevails even in the very best disposed and most re- 
 ligious Protestant society, which could be accounted for only by the 
 admission, that the fear of God and the love of his neighbors habitually 
 rule the Catholic's life to an extent unknown beyond the pale of 
 Catholicism. 
 
 Here, also, I cannot forbear alluding to a subject, which, though it is 
 very far from creditable to English Catholics as a body, is yet accom- 
 panied with mitigating circumstances, which bespeak the presence of 
 deep-seated genuine religion amongst us in a very remarkable way. I 
 allude to the excessive freedom and want of delicacy — to call it by no 
 worse name — with which too many amongst us have occasionally been 
 accustomed to handle each other's public acts and words, both in pri- 
 vate conversation and in print. Compared to other classes and reli- 
 gious bodies, Catholics attack one another with a virulence, an un- 
 charitableness, a reckless imputation of motives, and an ungentlemanly 
 coarseness of language, which can be paralleled in no other society 
 professing to be guided by religious principles, and to be restrained by 
 the rules of common propriety. This, I say, is the way, in which we 
 appear to the looker on, who judges us by what he publicly sees and 
 hears, and is naturally ignorant of the existence of that numerous class 
 of Catholics, who mourn over these lamentable exhibitions of our 
 foolishness and bad taste, and strive to the utmost to discountenance 
 and repress them. To our shame we have to confess, that there is 
 scarcely a rank or order of men amongst us which, during the last ten 
 
43 
 
 or fifteen years, has not furnished one or more examples of persons, 
 who have forgotten the laws of decency and charitable feelings, and 
 displayed themselves before their fellow-Catholics and fellow-coun- 
 trymen in a character, of which every reflecting man must be deeply 
 ashamed. 
 
 But here is the striking feature in all this violence of language and 
 action, to which I would especially direct attention. These ebullitions 
 of hasty temper and an uncharitable spirit of interpretation amongst 
 us are not what they would be in any other class of men in the United 
 Kingdom. They mean far less at the very time they are put forth, 
 than they would mean in the mouths and from the pens of Protestants 
 and men of the world ; and, when the first heat, which produced them has 
 subsided, they are not followed by those permanent feelings of ill-will 
 and hostility which inevitably result from the quarrels of others. It is 
 marvellous how soon this fire and fury subside, and the smoke passes 
 away, and the astonished observer perceives the wrathful combatants 
 locked in a fraternal embrace ! Our quarrels are but a portion of the 
 result of those penal laws, which have kept us behind the age in gene- 
 ral civilization. Grown men among us Catholics are often like grown- 
 up boys rather than like persons of mature years. We are rough, 
 hearty, headlong, honest, open-minded, free of tongue, hasty of inter- 
 pretation, and reckless of appearances ; but then, if we have the faults 
 of youth we most unquestionably have its virtues, and we forget and 
 forgive with as much facility, as we take offence and abuse one another. 
 So certain it is that if we are not always gentlemen, we are always 
 Christians. 
 
 Again, as a further extenuation of our faults in this respect, it must 
 be remembered, that we are extremely limited in numbers in our more 
 respectable and educated class. The comparative proportion of our 
 poor is enormous. Within that class, which comes forward before the 
 public, almost every man is known to every other, so that not only can 
 half-a-dozen wrong-headed people throw us all into confusion, but we 
 cannot possibly separate ourselves into minor divisions, according to 
 our personal tastes and notions, and act together without interfering 
 with those who differ from us in subordinate and trifling details. But 
 among Protestants it is not so. In the vast vortex of English society 
 each phase of character, each combination of ideas, finds itself re- 
 peated again and again in numberless instances; and when a man 
 does not like the views and feelings of his associates, he quits them, 
 and unites in action with others more akin to himself. Thus every 
 section in the Establishment, in the political and in the literary and 
 
44 
 
 scientific world, forms its own separate republic, with its ruling spirits, 
 its periodicals, its books, its reunions, and its very phrases of speech 
 and of manners. And these sections rarely interfere with one another 
 in any such way as to bring out their real animosity before the general 
 public gaze. The country forgets the intensity of that bitterness, the 
 irreconcilableness of that hatred, which separates the Puseyite, the 
 Anglican, the old High Church, the Socinian, Methodist, Evangelical, 
 and the Calvinistic dissenter, the protectionist, the free-trader, the Whig, 
 and the man of the people, each from all the rest. Protestants seem 
 to agree, while in reality they are the deadliest of foes. Catholics 
 seem to revel in assaulting and smashing one another, while in reality 
 they are practically friends, and like headlong boys, make up their 
 quarrels while still smarting from the bruises they have inflicted on 
 each other. I am not, of course, defending such a state of things as 
 the highest conceivable, or the highest practicable, among Christians. 
 On the contrary, it is deeply to be deplored, and assuredly it is speedily 
 giving way to a more healthy and truly Catholic public opinion amongst 
 us; but still I am bold to assert, that its very faults are the faults of 
 genuine, sincere, and hearty, though imperfect, Christians, while their 
 existence is alone a sufficient proof of the utter fallaciousness of the 
 vulgar English ideas of the disciplined craft and clever cunning which 
 are supposed to be the great weapons, with which Popery would fain 
 subdue the world. 
 
 One more feature in the Catholic moral character must be briefly 
 touched on before concluding this division of our subject. It is one, 
 indeed, which demands peculiar delicacy in handling, and which a 
 false sensitiveness might require me to omit altogether; but it is of such 
 paramount importance towards the forming a just estimation of our 
 religion, that I must, though briefly, allude to it. I refer to the purity 
 of thought, word, and life which is found to exist among Catholics, as 
 compared with their Protestant fellow-countrymen. There is no need 
 that I should allude to the opinions that are rife in this country respect- 
 ing the supposed licentiousness of foreign Catholic countries. I am 
 testifying only to what I have heard and seen, and only so far mention 
 the question of continental morality as to state my certainty that the 
 real amount of morality or immorality which exists abroad is a sub- 
 ject on which the general English reader has no possible means of in- 
 forming himself of the truth. I believe that there never was a Catholic 
 country abroad, which was more sunk in sensual wickedness than Eng- 
 land was a hundred years ago; and that whatever may have been the 
 temporary criminality of the upper classes, and the inhabitants of 
 
45 
 
 towns, in some Catholic kingdoms, their agricultural population has 
 always been far higher in the scale of morality than Protestant Eng- 
 land ever was ; and that never was any Catholic country which retained 
 the name of Catholic plunged into such an abyss of abominations as 
 still are found in the Protestant countries of the continent. 
 
 As to the present comparative state of English Catholicism and Protes- 
 tantism in this momentous element of Christian morality, I have been 
 impressed in the profoundest degree, since I became a Catholic, with 
 the immeasurable superiority of the former over the latter. It will be 
 understood, of course, that I am speaking in both cases of the average 
 class of persons in the two communions, who pay a general regard to 
 the dictates of their respective creeds, and publicly identify themselves 
 with the Church to which they belong. It w r ould not be fair to com- 
 pare the lives of the most devout of Catholics, with the most openly 
 licentious of Protestant men of the world ; I therefore take on each 
 side the ordinary class of persons who go to church on Sundays, who 
 conduct themselves with propriety and general uprightness in their 
 private life, who conscientiously believe Christianity to be true, and 
 are what is popularly termed thoroughly respectable persons. Com- 
 paring, then, the individuals of this class in the two communions, I 
 perceive a difference between them in respect of purity of thought, 
 word, and deed, which is truly astonishing, and which would probably 
 be deemed incredible to those, who know human nature only as 
 influenced by the Protestant creed. Undoubtedly, there are occa- 
 sional exceptions to be found in the Catholic body, to what I have 
 stated ; now and then persons are to be detected among the laity — (for 
 among the clergy I never perceived the faintest trace of any such evil) 
 — who, under the mask of decency and religion, are more or less slaves 
 to their vile appetites, and insensible to the rigid purity, which Chris- 
 tianity demands from all men ; but notwithstanding these exceptions, I 
 should be blind if I did not see, that in the point I am mentioning the 
 Catholic Church is literally another world of beings, contrasted with 
 the Protestant. However rude or rough, however boisterous and un- 
 civilized, however wanting in that refinement, which has nothing to do 
 with real morality, and is the mere result of a high state of intellectual 
 cultivation, the society of English Catholics, whether of grown-up 
 men or of youths, is untainted with that grossness of language and 
 sentiment, which, with a few individual exceptions, undeniably exists 
 in every other class throughout the kingdom, however polished and 
 refined it may outwardly be. 
 
 I know, by long experience, what are the real habits of thought and 
 
46 
 
 recognized principles of decent and respectable Protestants of every 
 rank. I know what boys, and youths, and grown-up men, and per- 
 sons of venerable age are, in the public schools, in the universities, at 
 the bar, in the Protestant ministry, and in the higher ranks ; I know 
 what is the tone of thought and feeling, which is accepted by them all, 
 as natural, inevitable, and allowable through the overpowering strength 
 of human passions ; and I cannot but perceive that the discipline of 
 the Catholic Church is founded upon a depth of practical wisdom, and 
 accompanied by a supernatural influence, which places her children, 
 when tolerably obedient to her commands, so far above the level of the 
 gross, sensual world, in which they live, that by most Protestants I 
 should be treated as a deceiver for attempting to persuade them of what 
 they account an impossibility. 
 
 No person can become familiar with a Catholic college, or with 
 Catholic boys at home under the parental roof, without remarking this 
 extraordinary contrast. However deficient may be the Catholic semi- 
 naries in many things which cultivate the intellect, however far they 
 may occasionally fall short of that perfection of discipline which the 
 Catholic Church desires of them, no man can compare their inmates 
 with the inmates of Protestant schools, and with the general run of 
 young men of respectable character, and fail to be astonished at what 
 he sees. My readers may be assured that a Catholic boy, as such, is 
 generally a different species of being from the Protestant boy. He 
 frequently preserves his innocence, his simplicity, his openness and 
 guilelessness of character, to an extent which I believe to be wholly 
 without parallel among the best of Protestants. And at this very time, 
 I am convinced that there are large numbers of grown-up Catholics in 
 this country, especially among the priesthood, who have retained the 
 freshness of their baptismal purity, and who know sin as a matter of 
 knowledge only, and not of experience. The candid and well-meaning 
 Protestant, whose credulity has been abused by horrible tales of Romish 
 wickedness, and who contemplates with horror the prospect of the pro- 
 gress of Catholicism among the families of decent and moral England, 
 may be assured that, could he know this dreaded religion as it is, — could 
 he personally test the practical result of that system of self-examination, 
 and of that auricular confession which he believes to be pregnant with 
 frightfully defiling mischiefs, he would indignantly cast away his pre- 
 vious prejudice against the Catholic Church as one of the most accursed 
 of delusions with which the enemy of men ever thwarted the Divine 
 purposes of mercy to mankind. 
 
 I can, however, linger no more on this branch of our subject; and in 
 
47 
 
 another paper shall endeavor to bring it altogether to a conclusion, by 
 showing what are the real influences of the reception of the peculiarly 
 Catholic religious dogmas upon the minds of those who embrace them, 
 and how far our spiritual character is what it is supposed. 
 
 In recording my personal experience of the influence of the doctrines 
 of Catholicism, and the remarks I have been able to make upon their 
 influence on other Catholics, it may be as well to commence by stating 
 the general character of that sense of relationship to the invisible world 
 which the Catholic religion professes to work in the mind, with an 
 efficacy peculiarly its own. 
 
 I must remind the Protestant reader, then, that the Catholic Church 
 claims to possess a power of communicating to her children a certain 
 definite spiritual gift, which she terms faith, by which a pious Catholic 
 is not only morally certain of the truth of all Catholic doctrines, and 
 contemplates the actual spiritual realities which those doctrines speak 
 of, as realities, and not as mere opinions, figments of the human mind, 
 or logical deductions, having no existence apart from the reasonings 
 which prove them. This faith she professes to communicate originally 
 at baptism, and to restore when lost after baptism, by a worthy parti- 
 cipation in the sacrament of penance. It is the result of that indwell- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost in the soul, which accompanies baptism in the 
 case of all infants whatsoever, and of all adults who receive bap- 
 tism with the proper dispositions. In infants it begins its work the 
 moment the dormant intelligence awakes to life and thought ; so that 
 as fast as external teaching communicates to the growing mind the 
 various dogmas of Christianity, so fast does the youthful Christian 
 grasp them with the confidence of a living faith, and regard them not 
 merely as the private opinions of its teachers, but as the word of God, 
 and as positive, existing, and ever-present, though invisible, realities. 
 
 What, then, ought we naturally to expect to find to be the conse- 
 quence of a reconciliation to the Catholic Church in the case of a 
 person who, though rightly baptized (probably) in his infancy, and 
 thus made a member of the Catholic Church,* has grown to manhood 
 
 * The Protestant reader will bear in mind, that the Roman Church teaches that 
 every infant who is rightly baptized, whether by a Catholic, a member of the Church 
 of England, by a dissenter of any denomination, including Socinians, or even by a 
 Jew or Pagan, and whether by a man, a woman, ot a child, is thereby regenerated 
 and made a member of the Roman Catholic Church ; and baptism is rightly conferred 
 when the person baptizing pours water upon the person baptized, or immerses him 
 in water, at the same moment that he utters the words, " I baptize thee in the name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," having himself the intention 
 
48 
 
 in schism, perhaps in mortal sin, and certainly without partaking in 
 those ordinary means of grace which Jesus Christ has appointed for 
 keeping alive and maturing this great gift of faith which he received at 
 his baptism? In such an individual, even if he has not forfeited his 
 baptismal grace by mortal sin and wilful disobedience to the true Church, 
 yet nevertheless the power of faith will be fearfully weakened, his hold 
 upon religious truths will be feeble and trembling, and he will have 
 become, if not like a blind man, at least like one whose eyes are dim, 
 or who gropes his way along by the aid of the faint, flickering light of 
 a half-extinguished lamp, instead of walking freely and courageously in 
 the broad blaze of day. Consequently, if the pretensions of the Catholic 
 Church be well-founded, and such a person be really re-admitted to the 
 possession of this mysterious and wonder-working gift, he will neces- 
 sarily perceive (if he be at all given to watch the phenomena of his 
 own mind) that he has literally acquired a new faculty, that the un- 
 seen world has become to him what it was not before, and that the 
 range of his intellectual vision is not only far wider, but far keener and 
 more sure, than while he continued a member of any Protestant com- 
 munion. 
 
 And such I have no scruple in declaring to be the case with myself, 
 and with every person with whom I have conversed on the subject, 
 and who was capable of instituting the necessary investigation into 
 the processes of his own mind. And I am speaking, be it observed, 
 not of those instances in which the convert has been undeniably a 
 mere devotee of this world's vanities before his conversion, and in 
 which it would be natural that invisible things should produce a 
 totally new impression upon him, simply from the fact that now he is 
 earnest, while formerly he was heedless of his soul, of eternity, and of 
 God. I am examining the state of those who for years and years be- 
 fore their conversion, have been laboring to the very utmost of their 
 powers, and with all apparent sincerity, to save their soUls and to do 
 the will of God; who, by constant prayer, meditation, mortification, 
 and study, have striven to realize the mysteries of the Gospel, so far as 
 they knew of them, and to preserve in their thoughts, an unceasing and 
 vivid recollection of the tremendously momentous nature of that world 
 which is unseen, but of whose existence they are convinced by irrefra- 
 
 of doing that which Jesus Christ commanded when He instituted the ordinance of 
 baptism. The private opinions of the person who baptizes have nothing to do with 
 the efhcacy of the baptism, which depends simply upon his intending to do what 
 our Lord commanded , whatever that was. 
 
49 
 
 gable demonstrations of reasoning. Presuming, then, though most 
 humbly, to hope that such was my own case while I was still a mem- 
 ber of the Church of England, I cannot but be conscious, that, by 
 submitting to the Church of Rome, and entering her pale, I have 
 received a fresh and extraordinary accession to my powers of believing 
 in the truths of Christianity and Catholicism, and of habitually re- 
 garding the objects of faith, as living, eternal, ever-present realities. 
 To a certain extent I believe that this increase came upon me at once, 
 the moment that I was reconciled to the Catholic Church ; but as the 
 feelings, at such a time, are naturally highly excited, it is almost im- 
 possible for a person to analyze correctly the processes of his own 
 intelligence, either at the hour itself, when the change in his circum- 
 stances takes place, or for some lengthened period afterwards, during 
 which the novelty of all, that is around and within, him produces effects 
 upon the reason and the imagination which may be easily mistaken 
 for purely spiritual results, which they have no real claim to be. 
 
 Judging, therefore, by what I have perceived to be the permanent 
 result upon the mind, I venture to say, that I have found the promises 
 of the Catholic Church to be strictly fulfilled, and that reception into 
 her bosom does confer upon the intelligence a power both of resting 
 with undoubting certainty upon the declarations of the Church, and of 
 realizing the presence and various attributes of the invisible world, to 
 an extent to which I was previously an utter stranger. That which 
 before I found an unconquerable difficulty, I now find to vanish before 
 a well-directed effort of the will. Those duties, which before presented 
 a repulsive and awful aspect, commend themselves to my inclinations 
 with a sweetness and attractiveness which enchain the better portion of 
 my whole being, however violently the evil propensities of nature at 
 times may rebel. Those Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation, 
 the invocation of saints, the efficacy of the intercession of Mary, the 
 reality of purgatory, the value of vicarious suffering and of the indul- 
 gences granted by the Church, — these and other such dogmas, of the 
 truth of which I was firmly convinced before I even thought of actually 
 becoming a Catholic, but which I found it impossible to realize, with 
 all the efforts I made, in accordance with the convictions of my 
 reason, — all these have naturally become to me as truly a part of the 
 eternal realities of the existing world, as the globe on which we dwell, 
 the stars above our heads, or the bodies, with which we find ourselves 
 clothed. I am not saying whether this is, or is not, enthusiasm, mys- 
 ticism, self-deception, or any other product of the morbid action of an 
 excited imagination; I only allege, that after instituting the calmest 
 4 
 
50 « 
 
 inquiries into my internal consciousness, and contrasting what were 
 my past with what are my present sensations, and again, comparing 
 the operations of my mind towards the invisible world with its opera- 
 tions towards the visible, I have come to the experimental conviction, 
 that the promise of the Catholic Church, that she will confer a new 
 spiritual faculty upon the soul, is not a delusion, but that we actually 
 are in possession of a mysterious power, — call it instinct, call it power 
 of vision or contact, call it inward consciousness, or what you will, — 
 which enables us to live on from hour to hour, under an habitual impres- 
 sion of the reality of the being and attributes of God, of eternity, of heaven, 
 hell, and purgatory, and of all the varied objects of the Catholic's faith, 
 and which I am equally convinced is not possessed by conscientious 
 Protestants, as such, whatever may be their creed, or whatever their 
 struggles to obtain it. Baptized children, who are nominally Pro- 
 testants, but really Catholics, are of course in possession of this gift; 
 and its results are so marvellous, that observant Protestants constantly 
 contrast the facility with which their children realize the truths of 
 religion with the difficulties they themselves experience in piercing 
 through the veil which hides God and eternity from their gaze. Nor 
 do I presume to allege, that Almighty God may not, in his overflow- 
 ing mercy, in certain exceptional cases, bestow upon religious sepa- 
 ratists, who are in invincible ignorance, such an extraordinary effusion 
 of his grace, as may open their eyes, with all the clearness of 
 Catholic faith, to the mysteries into which natural sight cannot 
 pierce. The Catholic Church expresses no opinion as to indi- 
 viduals who are without her pale, and teaches nothing respecting 
 subjects which are not revealed. But that the mental power of 
 living in an habitual sense of the presence of God, and of realizing 
 the truths of revelation, which is possessed by ordinary Protestants, 
 even the most orthodox and the most devout, is at all to be com- 
 pared to that which is the treasure of every sincere Catholic, I 
 believe to be a purely gratuitous assumption, which will be denied by 
 every person who, like myself, knows both Protestantism and Catho- 
 licism by his own experience and trial. 
 
 And the more observations I am enabled to make upon the mental 
 condition of other Catholics, of all ages, ranks, and degrees of intelli- 
 gence, the more numerous are the proofs I discover of the truth of 
 what I have stated. Wherever I meet with a man or a Woman, an 
 ecclesiastic or a layman, who is even tolerably attentive to his duties 
 as a Catholic, I perceive the same facility of believing all that the 
 Church teaches, and of recognizing Christian doctrines, not merely as 
 the statements of well-proved opinions, but .as matters of fact. One 
 
51 
 
 and all, they plainly show that to their minds the great mystery of exist- 
 ence is cleared up ; the blindness which darkens the eyes of man by 
 nature is in tfieir case cured. The three Persons in the blessed 
 Trinity, the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, the heaven in 
 which the Mother of God and his other Saints are now interceding for 
 them, the hell in which the reprobate are punished forever, the purga- 
 tory in which the imperfect souls of those who love God are purified 
 before admittance into heaven, the real presence of Jesus Christ in his 
 glorified body in the consecrated eucharistic species, the actual com- 
 munication of pardon to the penitent in the sacrament of penance, the 
 possession of miraculous powers by the existing Church of the pre- 
 sent day, the benefit conferred on the departed faithful by the prayers 
 of the living, the reality of that spiritual help which sincere prayer 
 infallibly brings down from God into our souls ; — all these things are 
 clearly, to the Catholics with whom we daily associate, not mere doc- 
 trines or opinions, but things, which they no more practically forget in 
 action, than they forget that there are twenty-four hours in the day, 
 and that a man must eat and drink in order to live. This, I repeat, is 
 to be observed, not only in our greatest Saints, in men and women 
 whose whole lives are given up to prayer and meditation, or to serv- 
 ing Christ in the persons of his poor, but in every commonplace Ca- 
 tholic who has any pretensions to be sincere, and to practice heartily 
 that religion which he professes to believe. They have manifestly re- 
 ceived a revelation from God. The heavens have been opened to 
 them, and they are as men who see in the midst of a blinded race. 
 
 At the same time, let it not be supposed that I mean that the Catholic 
 is not as subject as any human being to that difficulty of fixing the 
 attention upon invisible things, which forms one of the sore trials of 
 our present state. Like the Protestant, at one time he finds it easy to 
 withdraw his thoughts from secular objects, and, with an undivided 
 thoughtfulness, to concentrate the powers of his mind upon the affairs 
 of his soul; at another, with all the efforts he makes, with all the iron 
 energy of an indomitable will, he experiences an almost absolute help- 
 lessness of thought, when he would meditate, pray, or calmly adore 
 his Almighty Lord. His difference from the Protestant consists in 
 this ; that while the latter, when he has fixed his attention on the sub- 
 ject which he desires, finds his soul still chained down to earth, by 
 the want of some faculty of believing without doubt, and of contem- 
 plating unseen things, as well as of believing certain doctrinal state- 
 ments ; the former, even when his attention is most obstinate in re- 
 fusing to be fixed, yet experiences no difficulty in recognizing the in- 
 
52 
 
 fallible truth of his creed, and in acting towards the objects of his 
 faith with the same facility of energy with which he conducts himself 
 towards what he sees with his bodily eyes. The (ffivout Protestant 
 will not dispute what I say, when I allege that so soon as he can dis- 
 engage himself from the entanglement of his own inward thoughts, 
 feelings, emotions, and convictions, and go directly out of himself, and 
 fix his attention solely upon objective realities, apart from his own 
 ideas, he is conscious of an awful, dreadful, distressing sensation of 
 intellectual helplessness, which chills his fervor, daunts his energies, 
 and throws him back, again and again, upon secular objects, as the 
 only things which are really sure, the only things on which he knows 
 he cannot be mistaken. If he is in any degree a thinking and candid 
 person, and willing to subject the views in which he has been brought 
 up to the test of rigid proof, the consciousness of the miserable defi- 
 ciencies of any proofs which he can rely upon, repeatedly tortures and 
 agitates him, and he feels as if he would give the world only to be 
 convinced on irrefragable grounds that he is not trusting to a delusion 
 of his own brain. And when he is least troubled with this conscious- 
 ness of the sandy basis on which he is standing, and directs all his 
 efforts to prayer, meditation, and contemplation of divine things, still 
 he feels like one who is shooting arrows into the dark, and aims he 
 knows not where. He stands, as it were, upon the edge of a beetling 
 precipice ; before him is the vast, immeasurable expanse of ether, but 
 all overspread with a dense and impenetrable gloom; he would fain 
 look and see what is the mighty landscape that he knows lies spread 
 beneath his feet, who are its inhabitants, to w r hom he shall call for aid, 
 and where he shall be received when he descends into that boundless 
 region ; but in vain he strains his eyes to see, and his ears to catch 
 some clear response to the voice of his cry ; here and there a light 
 gleams for a few moments, and he thinks all will be manifest, — but it 
 is gone, and the darkness seems blacker than before ; — sounds — mu- 
 sical, wild, unearthly — float upwards upon the breeze, and then all is 
 still ; and he remains cold, trembling, hoping, fearing ; and returns to 
 his own thoughts, to his dry, unsatisfactory knowledge, to reason, to 
 argument, to self-inspection, as the only means that remain for learn- 
 ing the mysteries that refuse to unfold themselves to his sight. 
 
 With us all is different. Our difficulty lies in fastening our atten- 
 tion, and in that alone. The cares and the pleasures, the sorrows and 
 the joys, the excitements and the occupations, of secular life, distract 
 and harass us ; while physical weakness occasionally renders all purely 
 mental exertion almost impossible to our enfeebled brain; so that it is 
 
53 
 
 at times with considerable difficulty we can enchain our minds, and 
 force our thoughts to be obedient to our will, and pray or meditate with 
 a perfect recollectedness and composure of spirit. But whensoever we 
 can do this, even in the slightest degree, and if it be only for a few 
 occasional moments in which we force our thoughts away from the 
 excitements which would enslave them, then do we find all clear and 
 open to our intellectual gaze. We are not agitated by doubts ; we 
 know that we are right; the more we reflect, the more complete is the 
 reasoning on which our religion is based; and the more we test it in 
 practice, the more satisfactorily does it commend itself to our minds, 
 and the more powerful do we find that faculty of faith which we have 
 received. If the whole visible earth and heavens were in a moment 
 to vanish from before our eyes, and God and his Saints and Angels 
 were to appear before us, astounded, awe-struck, and humbled to the 
 dust as we should' be, our souls would instantly recognize the in- 
 effable sight as^the glorious manifestation of what we had ever been 
 beholding by faith; it would be the very same world of beauty, 
 majesty, and holiness, in whose presence we had been living, while it 
 was still hidden from our carnal vision.* 
 
 As especially connected with this feature in the Catholic's practical 
 condition, I may here advert to what I have found to be the real place 
 which the forms and ceremonies of religious worship hold in the Ca- 
 tholic devotions. It is commonly believed that the externals of reli- 
 gion are accounted of far more importance by Catholics than by Pro- 
 testants ; and that we are practically dependent upon the accessories of 
 public functions for the warmth of our religious feelings, in a very ex- 
 cessive degree. Music, painting, architecture, sculpture, incense, vest- 
 ments, bodily postures, and symbolical ceremonies, are popularly con- 
 ceived to be almost essential to a Catholic's prayers , or, at any rate, 
 to be esteemed by us of a value wholly inconsistent with the spiritual 
 character of all true worship. Now, that we think more of them than 
 many Protestants do, I most readily admit and maintain. We consider 
 
 * It will be of course understood, that I am not here asserting that the Catholic 
 does not experience those temptations against faith, whether in Catholicism, as the 
 only true Christianity, in Christianity itself as a divine revelation, or in the being 
 and goodness of God himself, which are the natural results of human infirmity, and of 
 the snares which the devil places before our minds. These are, however, but tempta- 
 tions, and nothing more; and except when deliberately entertained or yielded to, 
 affect only his lower nature, not touching his regenerate will, or preventing his offer- 
 ing to God the same homage of faith and obedience which he offers at those times 
 when he is most free from such assaults and delusions. 
 
54 
 
 that any voluntary neglect of external propriety and decency in the 
 worship of God is a token of the absence of heartfelt love and devo- 
 tion to his service. We say that it is the very law of our being, that 
 where the heart is truly engaged, we should show, by our outward 
 posture, gestures, and language, that it is so ; just as no man who had 
 a request to make of another, would commence it by turning his back 
 upon him. 
 
 Further, we maintain that Christianity leads man to offer the best 
 of all that he possesses to the visible service and honor of his God and 
 Savior ; that as by nature we offer gifts to those we love on earth, 
 not so much for their personal advantage, as for a token and expres- 
 sion of our affection for them, so, by grace, man, redeemed, and regene- 
 rated, consecrates to the Almighty offerings of all that he himself holds 
 most choice and beautiful, of all that costs him most labor and thought, 
 of all that the loftiest genius can devise most perfect and most lovely. 
 Thus, we say that a gorgeous public function, in which every art and 
 science unite to complete a magnificence such as will captivate the 
 most cold and satisfy the most severe, is but the natural expression of 
 the love of the Christian's heart towards Him who gave him all that 
 he enjoys. 
 
 Again, it is a Catholic maxim, that outward circumstances, whether 
 ceremonies, music, forms of prayer, or postures of the body of the 
 worshiper himself, act upon the mind within, assist it in its endeavors 
 to realize the truths of religion, and form, in a subordinate sense, chan- 
 nels by which the Spirit of God excites, controls, and strengthens our 
 purely spiritual devotions. All these principles I have found to be re- 
 cognized by Catholics of every class, as elementary facts in human 
 nature, and not to be rejected without a violation of the laws of com- 
 mon sense and philosophy, as well as of those of ecclesiastical re- 
 gulation and devout feeling. So far, therefore, it is eminently true 
 that Catholics think more of the externals of religion than most Pro- 
 testants. 
 
 But at the same time, judging both from myself and from what I 
 see in other Catholics of every class, I perceive that Catholic devotion 
 stands far less in need of these aids than does Protestant devotion ; and 
 that when circumstances compel us, we can dispense with everything 
 that is outward and visible in our worship of God, with a facility 
 and even a joy, which, to those who know us not, will appear incre- 
 dible. And not only so ; but even when we are in possession of every 
 delightful and appropriate accessory to our devotions, we at all times 
 think of them, and rest upon them, and put ourselves out of the way 
 
55 
 
 in order to enjoy them, so marvellously little, that at times the Catholic 
 almost seems utterly regardless of the common propriety of outward 
 appearances. As far as my experience teaches, persons who have 
 been brought up Catholics can hardly understand the importance which 
 some Protestants attach to the outward forms of devotion ; they as 
 naturally dispense with them, when called to do so, as they employ 
 them when occasion offers. They do not refute the common charge 
 of formalism which Protestants bring against them, for the best of all 
 reasons, that they are hardly conscious that it is brought. That reli- 
 gion should consist in outward forms, in words, in postures, in rubrics, 
 in ceremonies, or even in fasting and bodily mortification, seems to the 
 Catholic such a palpable absurdity, that he cannot conceive how deeply 
 the Protestant world is convinced that Catholicism is a religion of cere- 
 monies and external acts. 
 
 Let the question be put to any average Catholic; let him be asked 
 whether he cannot pray without an image or picture before him, with- 
 out crossing himself or touching holy water, without being in a par- 
 ticular posture, without using one particular form of words, without 
 being in one particular place; let him be asked whether he thinks 
 prayer consists in saying words, and not in the direction of the thoughts 
 and heart to God; and he will laugh at the person who supposes him 
 capable of such childish and anti-Christian folly, and hardly believe 
 that any man who has the slightest idea of what religion is, should 
 suppose him guilty of such a perversion of the first elements of Chris- 
 tianity. I can most conscientiously declare, for my own part, that I 
 have found the influence of the Catholic system to be such, that while 
 it enables me to spiritualize, so to say, every outward religious form, 
 and to infuse a living meaning alike into the most simple and the most 
 elaborate ceremony ; at the same time it has conferred on me a practical 
 power of being independent of all external aids to devotion, when cir- 
 cumstances make them virtually impossible. So far from finding splen- 
 dor, good taste, refinement, architecture, painting, music, more neces- 
 sary than before to keep alive the spirit of devotion, and to act as wings 
 on which the soul may mount up from earth to heaven, I have found 
 them far less necessary, or rather, in honest truth not necessary in the 
 slightest degree. 
 
 And what I personally experience, that I see in every one else around 
 me. I see persons who, while they were members of the Anglican 
 communion, were the loudest in insisting upon the immense importance 
 of splendor and ceremonial in the public worship of God, and who 
 were distracted and tormented in their prayers by every casual viola- 
 
56 
 
 tion of strict propriety, rapidly passing from this slavish condition to a 
 spiritual power and freedom of soul, and enabled to rule instead of 
 being in bondage to outward circumstances. Observers, who are 
 strange to the inward life of Catholic devotion, would be amazed at the 
 extraordinary facility which Catholics possess in praying at all times 
 and in all places, in the midst of noise, and bustle, and movement, 
 which would be utterly fatal to all collected thought in themselves. I 
 would that they who think we are formalists, and abject devotees to 
 that splendor with which we delight to surround our great religious 
 celebrations, would accustom themselves to visit Catholic churches and 
 chapels at various hours in the day, or to associate with Catholics in 
 familiar domestic life. I can assure them, that they would perceive that 
 the soul of the devout Catholic repeatedly communes with her Lord in 
 heaven, with a directness, an energy, and a warmth of feeling, which 
 makes her independent of everything visible and audible around her, 
 and enables her to pray amid scenes where the best of Protestants 
 would find prayer a simple impossibility. In no one thing is the con- 
 trast between a Catholic and a Protestant church more striking than 
 in this, that the former is a place, in which persons are seen to pray 
 naturally, at all hours and in all circumstances ; during the regular 
 public service, before it begins, after it is over, in union with the 
 officiating priest, or independently of him, in a crowd, in solitude, 
 while the turmoil of workmen fills the air, while a choir or an organist 
 is practicing music, while Catholic strangers are reverently walking 
 about, while Protestant strangers are staring and lounging, on a Sun- 
 day or a week-day, for ten minutes in the midst of a walk, at a few 
 hurried intervals while the necessities of business cause incessant 
 interruptions, with a book or without a book, standing, sitting or kneel- 
 ing, as bodily strength or accommodation may permit ; — in every pos- 
 sible circumstance, and under every conceivable disadvantage, a Catholic 
 church displays men, women, and children at prayer, absorbed in their 
 own thoughts, insensible of all that passes around them, and filled with 
 the consciousness that they are in the presence of their God. 
 
 Especially is this power of approaching Almighty God at all times 
 in heartfelt prayer, to be noticed in churches where the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment is reserved in the tabernacle upon the altar. The instantaneous 
 and spontaneous homage which the soul of every Catholic pays to the 
 Presence of his Lord in the consecrated species, must indeed be per- 
 sonally experienced in order to be adequately comprehended. It is a 
 thing which cannot be explained in words. How it unites awe with 
 love, fear with tenderness, reverence with joy, and obedience with 
 
57 
 
 childlike freedom ; how it naturally silences the voice to a whisper, 
 bids the foot tread gently upon the floor, bends the knee in adoration, 
 and fills the whole soul with a sense of the greatness of God, the 
 blessedness of redemption, and the hatefulness of sin ; — all this must 
 be felt to be understood. No tongue can describe it, as nothing but 
 the indwelling grace of the Holy Ghost can confer it. All that can be 
 done is to remind the non-Catholic inquirer, that we have a doctrine 
 which teaches us, that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, resides 
 day and night upon our altars, imprisoned, as it were, through the ex- 
 cess of his love, and waiting every moment that passes to shed his 
 boundless blessings upon every heart that comes to visit Him in peni- 
 tence and affection; and to assure him that this is no empty, unprac- 
 tical dogma, but a belief which is beyond expression dear to our souls, 
 and which exerts an incessant practical influence in those places where 
 He thus resides, to which every sincere Catholic mind delights to 
 yield. 
 
 Here, too, I must add a word respecting that singular notion which 
 Protestants entertain with regard to the supposed Catholic rule, that we 
 should always pray in a set form of words, learnt by heart, or read from 
 a book. That Catholics discountenance extempore public prayer in an 
 assemblage of persons, except in peculiar circumstances, is most true ; 
 and the reasons why they do so will commend themselves to every 
 person of common sense. But that the Catholic is taught to pray only 
 in fixed forms of words in his closet, or even while he is joining in the 
 public services of the Church, is as unmixed an untruth as ever pro- 
 ceeded from anti-Catholic prejudice. Everything I ever read in a 
 Catholic book, everything I have ever heard since I became a Catholic, 
 unites in teaching a doctrine the very reverse of this common accusa- 
 tion. I never met with a spiritual treatise which did not expressly 
 declare, that in our secret devotions it is of the utmost importance 
 never to check the free aspirations of the soul to God by any rigid 
 conformity to the forms we ordinarily use; that the best prayers are 
 those which, we may trust, are inspired by the Holy Ghost at the time 
 we pray ; and that we should have habitual recourse to set forms only 
 because the human mind is weak and ignorant, and cannot at all times 
 express itself fitly in its own phrases, or recollect all the details in 
 which it is right that it should pray, and praise, and adore, and inter- 
 cede. Written prayers are to the Catholic a kind of skeleton for his 
 devotions. He is taught to clothe them, precisely as his own personal 
 love and necessities require, with those petitions, those phrases, those 
 prolonged meditations, or those arrowlike ejaculations, which are the 
 
58 
 
 natural fruit of his own personal feelings and thoughts. The greatest 
 masters in the spiritual life, while they advise an amount of prayer and 
 meditation during the day, which few Protestants would not think 
 outrageously excessive, at the same time furnish written prayers of the 
 briefest possible character, rather subjects for prayer than actual devo- 
 tions, and modeled upon the principle on which we may humbly con- 
 ceive that our blessed Lord himself modeled the prayer He taught us, 
 when He said, " Thus, therefore, shall you pray." 
 
 In immediate connection with the power of faith in the realities of the 
 invisible universe, it will be natural to state the influence of Catho- 
 licism upon the general relationship of the heart towards its God and 
 Savior. And if I have found that the popular ideas of this influence 
 are deficient in the points to which I have already alluded, still more 
 radically false have I found them in all that pertains to the feelings of 
 man towards his Maker. The common opinion of Catholicism is, that 
 its natural result is a sense of mingled slavery and presumptuousness ; 
 that it obscures the essentially ^/za/ relation of man redeemed, to his 
 almighty Lord ; that it makes religion consist in a sort of bargain be- 
 tween God and man, in which the former sells and the latter purchases 
 heaven by his good works ; that it substitutes superstitious dread for 
 reverent fear, and self-trust for self-sacrifice and humility ; that it 
 almost obliterates the perfectly gratuitous character of the gift of re- 
 demption ; and that the very last thing which would enter into a 
 Catholic's mind is to teach and believe that love for God is all in all. 
 
 In replying to this idea, I first meet it simply with a direct negative 
 in every one of its parts. I speak the opinion of myself and of every 
 Catholic of whose opinions I have any knowledge, when I assert that 
 the feeling of bondage, or slavery, does not enter for a moment into 
 our habitual frame of mind. Strict and absolute as are our ideas of 
 duty, of the necessity of penance, of the value of suffering, they do not 
 in the slightest conceivable measure interfere with that sense of our 
 filial relation to our almighty and all-holy God, which lies at the very 
 foundation of our spiritual life, and which pervades our every thought, 
 word, and deed. If there is any one result of reconciliation to the 
 Church which the convert finds more striking than another, it is the sense 
 of reconciliation to God through the merits of Jesus Christ, and of the 
 transcending greatness of his love and mercy towards us. We know 
 not what it is to be of raid of Almighty God; we see nothing in Him 
 which is not sweet, attractive, touching, and inviting, even to the most 
 abominable of sinners. We fear Him, as every creature must fear 
 its Creator ; but we are unconscious of any feeling of being driven from 
 
59 
 
 Him, or of having duties imposed upon us which it is impossible to 
 perform. Our confidence in Him is boundless ; whatever our sins, 
 whatever the enduring obstinacy of our own evil nature, we know that 
 we only add to our guilt by keeping away from him and by doubting his 
 mercy. We have but one cause of dread, the knowledge of the deceit- 
 fulness of our own minds, and of the possibility that, after all our 
 prayers and our efforts, we may still be cheating ourselves, and imagin- 
 ing that we love God, while in reality our hearts are estranged from 
 Him. Peace is so emphatically our possession, that, contrasted with 
 what we perceive to be the general condition of conscientious Protest- 
 ants, I do not hesitate to say that no man knows what peace with God 
 really is until he enters the fold of the Catholic Church. 
 
 The doctrine of the absolute necessity of doing penance for our sins, 
 though forgiven — of making satisfaction for them, after their eternal 
 punishment has been done away with through the atonement of Jesus 
 Christ, either by sufferings in this life or in purgatory, is supposed to 
 be incompatible with that deep sense of joy and happiness which the 
 Bible tells us that Christians reap from their sense of reconciliation to 
 God. And so it will naturally seem to those whose minds are not im- 
 pressed as ours are with a sense of the awful nature of sin, and of the 
 strictness of the divine law; but nevertheless, theorize as people may, 
 the knowledge that all sin, though forgiven, demands suffering as a 
 satisfaction for its guilt, either here or hereafter, does not interfere with 
 the fulness of the Catholic's gladness and peace, or for one moment 
 cloud that sunshine which the hope of seeing God in heaven produces 
 in his soul. For myself, the longer I experience, and the more calmly 
 I examine into, the effects of the doctrine of satisfaction upon the peace- 
 ful serenity of the Christian heart, the more clearly do I perceive, the 
 more thankfully do I acquiesce in, its perfect harmony with the bound- 
 lessness of that pardon which the death of Christ has procured for all 
 men. And all Catholics say the same thing. Ask them, if you doubt 
 my words, whether the knowledge that purgatory awaits them if they 
 die with one stain of sin remaining on their souls, embitters a single 
 hour of their lives, or calls forth a single murmur against the justice of 
 God who demands such a satisfaction at their hands ? 
 
 Again: this same doctrine of the value and necessity of suffering, as 
 an expiation of sins which are yet at the same time forgiven, is sup- 
 posed to foster a notion that man can atone for his own guilt towards 
 God, and to be derogatory to the perfectness of that sacrifice which our 
 blessed Lord offered up for us on the cross. As I am not engaged in 
 an exposition of what Catholic doctrines really are, but in relating their 
 
60 
 
 practical influences upon the mind, I shall not stay to show that they 
 who bring this accusation are entirely ignorant of the true nature of the 
 doctrines they condemn, but rather call the reader's attention to the 
 matter of fact, which he may ascertain for himself by making the 
 inquiry of any Catholic who attends to his religious duties. For my- 
 self, I can most truly allege, that whatever might have been my sus- 
 picions of the tendency of the doctrine of satisfaction while I was still 
 a Protestant, no one thought has ever crossed my mind since I was a 
 Catholic which tended to disparage the infinite value of the atonement 
 of the eternal Son of God : nor has it ever entered my thoughts to 
 esteem the sufferings of any creature whatsoever as of the slightest 
 value, except that which they received from the sufferings and merits 
 of Jesus Christ. Candid Protestants suppose that an intelligent and 
 religious Catholic preserves himself from falling into all kinds of abo- 
 minations by a perpetual balancing of one doctrine against another, by 
 watching the effect of each separate dogma upon himself, and prevent- 
 ing it from producing that pernicious result which they suppose that it 
 would naturally work if left to itself. Thus, they conceive that the 
 doctrines of human satisfaction and of the perfectness of the atonement 
 of our blessed Lord are naturally antagonistic to one another, and that 
 Catholics are in perpetual peril of sliding into a state of mind which 
 dishonors the mediation of Christ, and makes man his own redeemer. 
 The practical result, on the contrary, shows that this fear is a mere 
 illusion. Every Catholic who knows what the doctrines of his Church 
 really are, is literally unconscious of any such antagonism in his own 
 bosom. I can most solemnly protest, that so far from having found my 
 sense of the infinite value of the atonement of Christ encroached upon 
 by my belief in the doctrines of satisfaction and penance, I find that 
 the very reverse is the case. Since I have become a Catholic, my con- 
 ceptions of the boundlessness of the merits of our blessed Lord, and 
 the utter nothingness of all man's merit, except as communicated from 
 the merits of the sacrifice of the cross, have wonderfully enlarged and 
 deepened, and become unceasingly habitual, and have entered into my 
 every thought, work, and feeling, to such an extent, that the honor I 
 formerly paid to the one atonement of the Eternal Son was compara- 
 tively a divided homage and an ignorant faith. And I am not speaking 
 mere rhetorical words, or indulging in controversial exaggeration, when 
 I add that, from all I have learnt and observed since I became a Ca- 
 tholic, I am convinced that the only persons in this country who truly 
 realize the infinite value of the sacrifice of Calvary, and who depend 
 upon that sacrifice alone for everything that they possess and every 
 
61 
 
 thing they hope for, are the children of the Catholic Church. The 
 incredulous Evangelical or Anglican may smile, and count this a mere 
 effusion of angry declamation; but, on the word of an honest man, I 
 assure them, that could they experience for one single day what are the 
 habitual thoughts, feelings, prayers, and acts of a conscientious Catholic, 
 they would admit the truth of what I say, when I repeat, that the in- 
 effable perfections and meritoriousness of the death of Jesus Christ, 
 and the complete and never-ceasing natural helplessness and worthless- 
 ness of man's works, are comprehended and accepted in the Roman 
 Catholic Church alone. 
 
 Such also is unquestionably the practical influence upon the mind of 
 the Catholic doctrines of free-will and the merit of good works. It is 
 the doctrine of the Church that, though we can do nothing whatsoever 
 that is good, not even think a good thought, without the aid of the Holy 
 Spirit of God, yet that, in order to be saved, our will, when set free by 
 grace, must co-operate with the Divine influence, or we shall continue 
 lost in sin. And further, she teaches that it pleases Almighty God, in 
 his infinite condescension, to treat our good deeds as meritorious, and 
 to reward them with eternal life, although they are from first to last 
 the work of his Spirit within us, and although, even if we were to 
 become literally sinless, we should be for ever and ever unprofitable 
 servants. And it is commonly supposed that, even granting these 
 doctrines to be true, yet their tendency is to conceal the nothingness of 
 man's deeds, to obscure the glory of the atonement offered for our sins, 
 to make us forget the positive sinfulness and infirmities which cling to 
 our holiest thoughts and actions, and to foster a spirit of audacious pride, 
 which makes us think that we are purchasing salvation with a certain 
 payment of our own, and that we do not from first to last owe all to 
 the mercy and goodness of God. The most candid Protestants are 
 suspicious of the urgency with which these things are inculcated by 
 Catholic preachers and writers; they are conscious that in their own 
 minds there is an incessant tendency to self-trust, to forgetfulness of 
 their own nothingness and helplessness, and to a distrust of the unlimited 
 promises of spiritual aid which God makes to those who believe. The 
 purely gratuitous character of our salvation, from first to last, is a truth 
 which, though they know to be true, they feel the greatest difficulty in 
 realizing. They imagine that the only way by which a Christian can 
 be preserved from this idolatry of self is by a perpetual balancing of 
 one doctrine with another — by setting the doctrine of the atonement 
 against the doctrine of human merit, and the omnipotence of God 
 against the feebleness of man. When, then, they see Catholics never 
 
62 
 
 dreaming of this perpetual qualification of truths, but insisting upon 
 each separate doctrine as if it alone were the whole truth of the Gospel, 
 they are staggered and confounded; they cannot conceive how such 
 things can be done, without baneful mischief to the religious character, 
 without fostering the most unchristian sentiments in those who are 
 guided by such rash and careless teaching. 
 
 Again, a similar pernicious consequence is attributed to our belief in 
 the efficacy of the intercession of the Saints. I am speaking, of course, 
 of what is supposed by Protestants of ordinary sense and charity, who 
 are aware that the Catholic does not positively worship the blessed 
 Virgin Mary as God, and that we depend on her prayers, and on those 
 of other saints, simply as prayers offered up for us by our fellow- 
 creatures now in glory. As to those who regard Catholics as neces- 
 sarily idolaters, polytheists, or such like, I have nothing now to say to 
 them. Their fanatical blindness must be cured, if cured at all, by other 
 means besides calm and rational argument. But it is notorious that, 
 from the most ultra-Romanizing Anglican down to the mere shrewd 
 observer in the non-religious world, it is received as an undoubted axiom, 
 that the Roman doctrine and practice with respect to the blessed Virgin 
 and the Saints is naturally antagonistic to the doctrine that there is but 
 one essentially meritorious Mediator between God and man. Our very 
 best friends are persuaded that, in order to avoid idolatry, we are forced 
 to be ever explaining away some portion of our creed ; that Catholic 
 devotion sways, as it were, from side to side, now verging on a neglect 
 of the Saints and doubts of the advantages to be derived by praying to 
 them, now in imminent peril of dishonoring Almighty God and of de- 
 pending upon creatures for salvation. It is supposed to be impossible 
 that we should hold any one dogma of our Church in its perfect ful- 
 ness, or carry it out uncompromisingly to its legitimate consequences, 
 without violating some other article of our faith. In a word, Catholic 
 practice, when good and religious, is believed to be a system of checks 
 and counterbalancing, like the British constitution, in which king, lords, 
 and commons have each a separate interest and separate tendencies, and 
 act together (to use a mathematical phrase) by a composition of opposing 
 forces, just as the earth is kept in its place in the solar system. 
 
 This, then, is that striking and universally true fact which I have 
 learnt since I became a Catholic, — that while all other religions are kept 
 from falling into the chaos of infidelity or the madness of fanaticism by 
 such a balancing of their elements as I have described, the nature of 
 Catholic truth is precisely and in every respect the reverse. The result 
 of my personal experience, and of what I see all around me, is a con- 
 
63 
 
 viction, which every day gains fresh strength, that the Catholic system 
 of doctrine is the only self-consistent scheme of faith in existence. 
 Day by day, and hour by hour, as we practice its rules and act upon 
 its dogmas, the more amazing and divine does its wondrous harmony 
 appear. Throughout its vast range we can detect no one solitary doc- 
 trine or custom which may not be carried out fearlessly, energetically, 
 and incessantly to its utmost consequences, and leave no trace of injury 
 to the perfection of the spiritual life. They have but to be correctly 
 understood, and there is no shadow of danger of their leading us astray. 
 So far from interfering with one another, or balancing one another, they 
 are rather each a part of all the rest, a consequence of the rest, an 
 eternally logical deduction from the rest. You cannot touch one of 
 them with irreverent hand, without wounding the susceptibility of the 
 remainder. You cannot doubt the truth of one of them without a 
 measure of unbelief in every one that remains. They act together 
 upon the soul, as friends, not as rivals; their interests, so to say, are 
 one, not many ; not only do they not serve to antagonize one another, 
 but they cannot do so; the more vividly the soul realizes one of them, 
 the more brilliant is the light which beams out upon her from all the 
 rest; the more deeply and fervently she meditates upon each separate 
 truth, the more profound is her perception of the truth and glory of the 
 whole system, the more keen her appreciation of its descent from the 
 eternal throne of God. 
 
 No man, I repeat, can be a consistent Catholic, and not learn to smile 
 at the simplicity which accounts the honor we pay to the Saints to be 
 a derogation from the incommunicable majesty of God. No man can 
 love and honor Mary the mother of Jesus as we love and honor her, 
 without feeling that the more he loves her the more he loves her Son 
 and her Lord, and the more he honors her, the more overwhelming is 
 his sense of the distance which separates her from Him whom she bore. 
 The whole mass of objection, censure, pity, and fear, which the Pro- 
 testant feels for the Catholic, vanishes like a morning mist when the 
 soul once finds herself within that communion whose creed presents 
 such an incomprehensible enigma to those who are without her pale. 
 He perceives at once that he has come into a state in which the apostle's 
 words are fulfilled in a sense of which before he little conceived, 
 " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Such, with literal 
 exactness, can I declare to be the influence of the Catholic system on 
 those who are within it. I am now unconscious of the very existence 
 of any of those chains which in former days hampered and bound 
 down my intelligence and moral nature. I find myself in the midst 
 
64 
 
 of a system which is eminently what I should expect from a revelation 
 of the eternal nature of God; a system, not of servitude hut of free- 
 dom, in which I am not called to set up one article of my creed against 
 another, to be ever fretting myself with anxiety lest — oh, monstrous 
 supposition! — truth lead me into error; or to exercise my private 
 critical faculties upon the general spirit which, from its foundation, has 
 animated and ruled the communion to which I belong, in order that I 
 may be wiser than my fathers, and discover doctrines as scientific 
 people discover facts in electricity or geology. I find that all I have to 
 do is to throw myself, with all my powers, into the creed and practical 
 system which is around me — without hesitation, without worldly cau- 
 tion, without nervous fear lest it fail me or lead me astray ; and the 
 more vigorously, deeply, and humbly I do this, the more does its sur- 
 passing beauty, its perfect unity amid boundless variety* its harmonious 
 action, and its logical self-consistency, strike upon my mind, and satisfy 
 every aspiration of which my soul is capable. 
 
 And the reader may assure himself that in saying this I am but put- 
 ting into shape and words, the consciousness of tens of thousands of 
 his fellow-countrymen. I challenge him to appeal to any tolerably in- 
 telligent person among those who have left Protestantism for Catholic- 
 ism, who may be intellectually capable of explaining the phenomena 
 of his own mind, and to ask him whether I have in the slightest degree 
 overstated the fact when I say, that the various doctrines of Catholicism 
 cohere by mutual relationship, and not by mutual antagonism — that 
 they are one, as the demonstrations of geometry and algebra are one, 
 because each depends for its very existence upon the rest; and not as 
 a system of rules devised for a secular institution or society, by balanc- 
 ing one another, and by correcting one another, under the severe super- 
 vision of some external authority, which has power to enforce submission 
 to every rule, and to see that no one regulation is stretched beyond the 
 intentions of its framers. The inherent unity of Catholic doctrine is 
 as complete as that visible ecclesiastical unity which it enjoins on all 
 who obey it. 
 
 After touching on one or two more features in Catholic belief and 
 opinion which demand a brief notice, I shall now bring my remarks to 
 a conclusion. The first refers to that excessive. credulity and super- 
 stitious delight in the marvelous which the unbelieving or philosophic 
 observer imputes to members of the Roman Church. It is imagined 
 that generally throughout the Catholic Church there exists an absurd 
 disposition to believe that every little event which is in the slightest 
 degree removed from the run of every-day occurrence is miraculous; 
 
65 
 
 while among the more educated classes, however devout they may be, 
 there is a practical disbelief in many things which authority counte- 
 nances in the vulgar. The popular Catholic feeling is supposed to be 
 groveling, debased, and superstitious to a frightful extent. What, then, 
 is the fact, so far as I have been myself able to judge? 
 
 In the first place, it cannot be denied that, among Catholics, as among 
 all mankind, there exists an immense variety of personal character, and 
 that in such a matter as credulity or incredulity, this variety in natural 
 penetration displays itself with especial force. Consequently, we meet 
 with Catholics who, the moment any event is reported to be miraculous, 
 instantly believe that it is so ; and we meet with others who are mor- 
 bidly sensitive to the peril of false belief, and refuse to be convinced 
 that anything supernatural has taken place, even upon the most unde- 
 niable testimony. But that the former class are confined to the poor 
 and uneducated, and the latter to the rich and cultivated, I absolutely 
 deny, as I equally deny, that the general skepticism in the supernatural, 
 which the world attributes to educated Catholics, has the slightest founda- 
 tion in fact. Doubtless, men who are Catholics only in name — who 
 were brought up Catholics, but by their lives plainly show that they 
 have no religion at all — delight to display their superiority to what they 
 call the vulgar follies of priests and pious fools. We have Catholics 
 in every rank, from the highest to the very lowest, who are never so 
 pleased as when they can mock at the silliness of a devout believer in 
 the powers of relics, in the gift of healing, or the reality of demoniacal 
 possession. In the peerage and the poorhouse alike, these miserable 
 self-convicting scoffers are to be found ; but they are invariably distin- 
 guished, not by the superior keenness of their intellects, for they never 
 rise beyond second-rate or third-rate abilities, but by the laxity of their 
 lives, the infrequency of their prayers, and the unwillingness, with 
 which they yield to the rules of the Church even that minimum of 
 obedience, which she exacts under penalty of virtual excommunication. 
 
 Among good Catholics, of whatever rank, I have found but one ge- 
 neral belief prevailing respecting things professing to be supernatural. 
 All hold the same principle ; all believe that miracles are wrought in 
 the present day, sometimes rarely, sometimes frequently ; all believe 
 that special graces are sometimes connected with material objects, such 
 as pictures, images, relics, and various devotions. The only variations 
 I have seen have arisen from the difference in different persons' ideas 
 as to what constitutes a sufficient proof that supernatural interference 
 has taken place in any one given instance. Those, who know how 
 easily men are deceived in all things, and what great discrimination is 
 5 
 
66 
 
 necessary to separate the miraculous from the merely marvelous, are 
 naturally most cautious in giving credence to the reports of miraculous 
 events which they hear from time to time ; but then they are equally 
 cautious in denying, without investigation, that anything supernatural 
 has really occurred. Others, deeply impressed with the reality of that 
 Divine presence in the Church, which can at any moment burst through 
 the ordinary laws of nature, and little experienced in the follies, the 
 ignorance, and the hastiness even of good men, are prone to give an 
 instant assent to every extraordinary story they hear, and, through fear 
 of doing wrong in denying a miracle where it really exists, rush head- 
 long into the equally irrational extreme, of believing a miracle to have 
 certainly occurred, whenever it is barely possible for such a thing to 
 have taken place. Still, the principle is the same in all alike; all re- 
 pudiate with horror the feeling which Protestants attribute to educated 
 Catholics. The only distinction, that exists among them, is in the de- 
 cree of evidence they require before giving their absolute assent. 
 
 That the clergy, and especially the highest authorities in the Church, 
 are in the habit of encouraging an irrational and superstitious belief in 
 the supernatural, so far as my experience goes, is utterly untrue. I 
 have no hesitation in saying, that the whole spirit of Catholic Church 
 authority is to throw the greatest doubt upon every professed miracle 
 or marvel, and to refuse approval to any such reports, until searching 
 inquiry has been made. Not that this is done with a feeling of unbe- 
 lief, but from a sentiment of caution and prudence, from a knowledge 
 ihat the safe side is to leave every private individual to entertain any 
 opinions he chooses, and to lend the sanction of judicial authority only 
 to extraordinary and undeniably proved cases. 
 
 I have also found that the importance, which is attributed to miracles 
 among Catholics, is very different from what would popularly be sup- 
 posed to be their feelings on the subject. They are as far as possible 
 from feeling that nervous, excited interest in every miraculous story 
 which is characteristic of a superstitious disposition. They take a 
 miracle, when even proved beyond a doubt — to use a common phrase — 
 wonderfully coolly. They see nothing extraordinary or startling in it. 
 They think it quite natural, that such things should occasionally occur, 
 and can see nothing astonishing in our blessed Lord's fulfilling his own 
 promises. They feel a deep interest in them, just as astronomers are 
 especially interested in the discovery or the return of a comet; they are 
 edified, and their devotions are powerfully quickened. They are not 
 morbidly anxious to talk about them, to boast of them, to relate them 
 to Protestants, to see the persons who have been their subjects. They 
 
67 
 
 view them as an integral portion of the vital phenomena of the Church ; 
 as consolations to the faithful, rather than as arguments to unbelievers ; 
 and to be received with thankfulness, rather than sought after with 
 eagerness. I have never myself had the opportunity of witnessing a 
 miracle, but I have received accounts of them from persons, with whom 
 I am intimately acquainted, and who were themselves either eye-wit- 
 nesses or actually the subjects of the supernatural influence. Three 
 such instances I can at once call to mind, exclusive of those mysterious 
 manifestations of divine power and love, the Addolorata and the Es~ 
 tatica of the Tyrol, whose circumstances have been more than once 
 made public in accounts, for whose rigid accuracy I have had the testi- 
 mony of several of my own friends. What these were the reader may 
 be interested in learning. 
 
 One of these three was the instantaneous cure of the divided tendons 
 of a woman's wrist, by the application of a relic, and that by a process 
 which continued the miracle through the remainder of her life; for the 
 division between the tendons was not healed, while she regained the 
 perfect use of her hand and arm, the cut to the bone remaining visible 
 to the eye. This has been related to me by two gentlemen who had 
 seen the person repeatedly, and examined her wrist. The medical 
 man, who had attended her, though an infidel, had admitted that the 
 cure was supernatural. 
 
 Another was related to me by the person, who was himself healed, 
 and who is now an officer in the Queen's army, and of whose perfect 
 truthfulness I do not entertain the shadow of a doubt. A wound in the 
 foot, from injudicious treatment, had confined him to his bed for ten 
 weeks, and brought him to the point of death, through exhaustion and 
 spasms of the whole body. He was given up by his medical attendants ; 
 and he told me, that the foot was so swelled, that he could not himself 
 even see the toes. A certain relic, after the usual prayers, was applied 
 to the wounded part ; the swelling instantly subsided, and in a quarter 
 of an hour he was dressed and out of doors, and in the enjoyment of 
 perfect health and strength. All this he detailed to me himself, relating 
 it with the same natural simplicity as if he had been relating a cure by 
 common medical means. 
 
 The third was the appearance of a woman after death to her husband, 
 informing him, that she was in purgatory, and desiring him to do certain 
 things, which I need not detail. Among others, he was to communi- 
 cate what she told him to my friend, who informed me of the par- 
 ticulars ; and this communication comprised an account of what he 
 (the friend of whom I am speaking) had done since her death, and 
 
68 
 
 which by no possibility could have been known to any other living 
 being upon earth. 
 
 These three cases I briefly mention, not with a view to prove them T 
 though I could do this to any person, who wished to make the inquiry, 
 but as facts connected with my experience of Catholicism, and as illus- 
 trations of the kind of belief in the supernatural, which still prevails 
 among educated Catholics, both of the clergy and the laity. 
 
 Lastly, it will be expected, that I should relate the practical influence 
 of the Catholic doctrine of the exclusive salvation of members of the 
 Church of Rome. That doctrine, it is known to all tolerably well- 
 informed persons, by no means implies, that none but Catholics actually 
 are saved, but that none are saved, who have had the means of com- 
 prehending the claims of the Catholic Church upon their obedience. 
 Well or ill understood, however, it is certain, that no one dogma of 
 Catholicism is more hateful to Protestants than this. It galls them, 
 wounds them, and at times stimulates them to an almost frantic hatred 
 of the Catholic Church ; as if our opinion made the slightest difference 
 10 them and their real state before God. And even the most reason- 
 able are painfully anxious to know what we do feel respecting our Pro- 
 testant fellow-creatures, and what change takes place in the mind of a 
 convert towards those, whose views he formerly shared. 
 
 It cannot be concealed, then, that the instantaneous result of a sub- 
 mission to the Church, is an entire change of sentiment towards every 
 possible denomination of Protestantism, and an alienation of spiritual 
 feeling from those, with whom once we ardently sympathized. The 
 moment I entered the Church, the Anglican Establishment became to 
 me as nothing more than what a dream is to a waking man. A gulf — 
 wide, deep, and impenetrable — separated my present from my past 
 interests. What they most valued, I looked upon as a delusion ; their 
 principles I accounted to be logical absurdities ; their hopes, baseless ; 
 their strength, weakness ; their faith, mere fancy. Whatever might be 
 my hope, that such and such persons among them were guiltless in the 
 sight of God, because they really could not see the truth, I ceased to 
 feel the slightest interest in their opinions, their system, their conduct, 
 — except so far as it indicated a tendency to Catholicism, and created 
 hopes, that they might do, as I had done. 
 
 In other respects, the Christianity (so-called) of Protestant Europe, 
 merely occupies a place in my interests in conjunction with its political 
 systems, and all other human institutions. It is a subject for study, for 
 interest, for knowledge, for history, for controversy, for pity, for indig- 
 nation ; but my deep and real spiritual interests are as rigidly confined 
 
within the limits of the Catholic Church, as the island of Great Britain 
 is girt in by the waves of the seas that surround her. 
 
 But all this generates no feeling of hostility towards individual Pro- 
 testants, and not the slightest disregard of their wishes or happiness. 
 In all subjects in which religious principles, hopes, and fears do not 
 enter, they are to me the same as before ; while my interest in their 
 everlasting welfare, and the depth of my sorrow for their condition, be- 
 come greater every day. As to their state as individuals in the sight 
 of God, I know nothing, nor do I venture to speculate, except so far 
 as to hope for the best. And such I find to be the ordinary feelings of 
 Catholics towards Protestants. As for regarding Protestantism with 
 respect, or treating the theories of Romanizing Anglicans as anything 
 but the phantoms of a diseased imagination, Catholics never dream of it. 
 But when they come to think or speak upon the probability, that any one 
 single person is in a state of invincible ignorance, and therefore, per- 
 haps accepted by God as a true Christian, they invariably abstain from 
 any conclusion. They know, that God alone sees men's hearts, knows 
 their difficulties, or can judge them with strict justice. Such I have 
 found to be the universal sentiment of Catholics, call it tolerance, or 
 call it intolerance, as we may. Undoubtedly, there are wide differences 
 amongst us as to the amount of real piety, which probably does exist 
 among Protestants. Some Catholics, both clergy and laity, believe 
 that very many Protestants, who have no means of learning the truth, 
 are so sincerely devoted to God, and love Him with so pure a love, 
 that they will be saved. Others think that almost all the tokens of 
 piety we see in the Protestant world, are mere outward appearances, 
 and that the whole heart of the Protestant is rarely, if ever, given up to 
 the service of God. In such a subject, every man naturally has his 
 own opinion, and every man judges very much by the kind of persons 
 he has himself met with in the Protestant body. 
 
 For myself, I hardly know how either to hope or fear for any one, 
 even of those of whom I know the most. I see so much, that is unde- 
 niably good, mixed up with symptoms, which seem to indicate radical 
 mischief in the heart ; and with all my fervent anxieties to believe, that 
 great is the number of Protestants who will be accepted at the last, I 
 can detect such rare signs of the love of God (without which none can 
 be saved), that my thoughts respecting seemingly-religious Protestants, 
 oscillate between hope and fear, between a conviction that they cannot 
 know the truth, and a fearful perception, that they ivill not know it. 
 A familiarity, too, with true Catholic piety renders the eye far more 
 keen, than before in detecting real religion from its counterfeits. The 
 
70 
 
 mind, thai has come to know the genuine Christian character as it is 
 manifested in the Church, perceives a falling short in the very elements 
 of the spiritual life in those, whom it was once wont to look up to with 
 reverence and admiration. Not that we come to look upon our Pro- 
 testant friends as hypocrites and deceivers. Far from it. We give 
 them as much credit as ever for being what they seem. But we see 
 that they deceive themselves ; that they are living in the midst of a 
 spiritual atmosphere, which blinds their eyes to their shortcomings, and 
 induces them to mistake morality, amiableness, and a sacrifice of half 
 the heart to God, for that entire consecration of the whole man, without 
 which all else is vain. We recognize a spirit of the most presumptuous 
 private judgment, where formerly we saw only a deference to authority ; 
 we see a trust in self, in bodily austerities, in forms and words, and a 
 forgetfulness, that all these are worthless without pure love, where be- 
 fore we thought, that this outward religion was the token of a genuine 
 religion of the heart within ; we see a disposition to make a compromise 
 with the world, to adopt its maxims, to shrink from consequences, to 
 close the eyes to truth, to oppose the true Church at all risks and by 
 unscrupulous means, to overlook facts, to pervert reasonings, and to 
 cling to the temporal advantages of Protestantism, in minds which in 
 other days we accounted sincere, truth-seeking, and almost saintly in 
 their devotion. And therefore, fervent as is our desire to believe all 
 that is kind and charitable of those we have left behind, we cannot 
 blind ourselves to the manifest tokens, that their ordinary spirit is not 
 the spirit of Christ ; and that, whatever be the unknown exceptions, 
 he, who would find the true spiritual life of the follower of Jesus Christ, 
 must seek it in the Catholic Church alone. 
 
 Such, then, is my experience of the effects of this mysterious and 
 dreaded faith ; and such the facts which lie open to the sight of every 
 careful observer. I came, forced by my convictions, and almost against 
 my will, into this mighty community, whose embrace I had all my life 
 dreaded as something paralyzing, enslaving, and torturing. No sooner, 
 however, could I look around me, and mark what presented itself to my 
 eyes, than I saw, that I was in a world, where all was as satisfying as 
 it was new. For the first time, I met with a body of men and women, 
 who could talk and act as Christians, without cant, without restraint, 
 without formality, without hypocrisy. After years and years of disap- 
 pointment, in which, the more deeply I saw into the hearts and lives 
 of Protestants of every class, the more clearly I perceived that the 
 religion they professed had not become their second nature, but was 
 
71 
 
 a thing put on, which did not fit them, which confined their move» 
 ments, and gave them an outward look, while it was not wrought into 
 ■ the depths of their being, — after years and years of this disappointment, 
 in which the contrast between the Bible, which they praised, and the 
 spirit of their own lives, and the doctrines they preached, struck me 
 more bitterly each succeeding day, — at length, I found myself in the 
 midst of a race, with whom Christianity was not a rule, but a principle; 
 not a restraint, but a second nature; not a bondage, but a freedom ; in 
 which it had precisely that effect, which it claims to produce upon man ; 
 in which, not a few hours, or an occasional day, was set apart for re- 
 ligion, but in which life was religious ; in which men spoke at all 
 hours, and in all occupations, of religious things, naturally, as men 
 speak of secular things, in which they are deeply interested ; in which 
 religious thoughts and short prayers were found not incompatible with 
 the necessary duties and pleasures which fill up the round of existence; 
 and in which, the more deeply I was enabled to penetrate below the 
 surface, the more genuine was the goodness I found, and the more 
 inexhaustible I perceived to be those treasures of grace, which divine 
 goodness places at the disposal (so to say) of every soul that seeks 
 them within this favored communion. 
 
 And now, when so long a period has elapsed since my first sub- 
 mission to the Church, that everything like a sense of novelty has long 
 passed away, and I have tested experimentally the value of all that she 
 has to offer: now that I can employ her means of grace, and take a 
 part in the working of her system, with all that ease and readiness of 
 action, which long practice alone can bestow ; the more profound is my 
 sense of her divine origin, of the divine power, which resides in her, 
 and of the boundless variety and perfection of the blessings she has 
 to bestow. The more I know her, the more complete do I perceive 
 to be her correspondence to what she professes to be. She is exactly 
 what the one Church of Christ is proclaimed to be in Scripture, and 
 nothing less, and nothing more. She makes her children what she 
 promises, with a literal fulfilment of her words, but she has no indul- 
 gence for the dreams of fanaticism, or for the theories of those, who 
 would have the Church of Christ to be fashioned after their model, 
 and not Christ's model. For those, who would really ascertain what 
 her doctrines are, nothing is easier of comprehension, and nothing can 
 more abundantly repay the study of a whole life. Her moral system, 
 elaborate as it is, and adapted to almost every emergency, which the 
 boldest imagination can conceive, is found in practice to be as simple 
 and direct in its operation as the elementary laws of the physical sys- 
 
72 
 
 tern of the universe. Wherever she is touched, grace flows forth ; 
 wherever she is leant upon, she puts forth an arm to support those, 
 who trust her; wherever she is tried in argument, she comes forth 
 more gloriously unassailable, the more rigorously she is tested by 
 proofs, and the more thoroughly she is known as to facts ; and wherever 
 she is tried by personal experience, she displays her adaptation to all 
 the wants, the aspirations, the sins, the infirmities, and the powers of 
 the soul of man. 
 
 Truly, can I say with the patriarch, " The Lord is in this place, and 
 1 knew it not. This is no other but the house of God, and the gate 
 of heaven." The Catholic Church can be nothing less than the 
 spiritual body of Jesus Christ. Nothing less, than that adorable Pre- 
 sence, before which the angels veil their faces, can make her what she is, 
 to those, who are within her fold. Argument is needed no longer. 
 The scoffings of the infidel, the objections of the Protestant, the sneers 
 of the man of the world, pass over their heads, as clouds over a moun- 
 tain-peak, and leave them calm and undisturbed, with their feet resting 
 upon the Rock of Ages. They know in whom they have believed. 
 They have passed from speculation to action, and found that all is real, 
 genuine, life-giving, and enduring. Such, with all my sense of the 
 awful mysteriousness of the world, which is still invisible, of the falla- 
 ciousness of human knowledge, and of the argumentative points, which 
 controversy will ever urge against the claims of the Catholic Church, 
 — such is the result of my experience of her aspect towards those, 
 who repose upon her bosom, in order that they may gaze upon the 
 lineaments of her countenance. As a child that rests upon its parent's 
 breast, pressed to her heart with a tenderness that nothing less than a 
 mother can bestow, and from that place of peace and security looks 
 up into her eyes, and there reads the love which is its sweetest joy, so 
 do I watch the aspect of her, who has clasped me in her arms, and sus- 
 tains me, that I should not fall, and know, that she is indeed the mother 
 of my soul. I know only one fear, the fear that my heart may be 
 faithless to Him, who has bestowed on me this unspeakable blessing ; 
 I know only one mystery, which the more I think upon it, the more 
 incomprehensible does it appear — the mystery of that calling, which 
 brought me into this home of rest, while millions and millions are 
 still driven to and fro in the turbulent ocean of the world, without rud- 
 der and without compass, without helmsman and without anchor, to 
 drift before the gale upon the fatal shore. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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