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safety to the spread of Catholicity. We render solid and imperishable our free institutions just in proportion as we extend the kingdom of God among our people, and establish in their hearts the reign of justice and charity. And here, then, is our answer to those who tell us Catholicity is incompatible with free institutions. We tell them that they cannot maintain free institutions without it. It is not a free government that makes a free people, but a free people that makes a free government; and we know no freedom but that wherewith the Son makes free. You must be free within, before you can be free without. They who war against the church, because they fancy it hostile to their civil freedom, are as mad as those wicked Jews who nailed their Redeemer to the cross. But even now, as then, God be thanked, from the cross ascends the prayer, not in vain, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

As to the effect this Native American party may have on the church, or the cause of Catholicity in this country, we have no fears. We know it is a party formed for the suppression of the Catholic Church in our land. Protestantisin, afraid to meet the champions of the cross in fair and open debate, conscious of her weakness or unskilfulness in argument, true to her ancient instincts, resorts to the civil arm, and hopes by a series of indirect legislation-for she dare not attempt as yet any direct legislation-to maintain her predominance. But this gives us no uneasiness. We know in whom we believe, and are certain. We see these movements, we comprehend their aim, and we merely ask in the words of the Psalmist, "Why have the gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord, and against his Christ. Let us break their bands asunder, and let us cast their yoke from us. He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh at them, and the Lord shall deride them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage." Ps. ii. 1-5. They wage an unequal contest who wage war against the church of the living God, who hath said to its Head, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I will give thee the gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession." Ib., 7, 8. These may combine to put. down Catholicity, form leagues against it, enlist all the powers of the earth against it; but what then? Nero tried. to crush it in its infancy. Diocletian tried it. And Nero

and Diocletian have passed away, and their mighty empire has crumbled to pieces and dissolved, leaving scarce "a wrack behind;" yet the church has lived on, and the successor of the fisherman of Galilee inherited a power before which that of Rome in her proudest day was merely the dust in the balance. Pagan and Saracen tried to crush it, but pagan and Saracen are scattered before its glory as the morning mist before the rising sun. Heretic and schismatic have tried to exterminate it,-Luther, and Calvin, and Henry of England, like the great dragon whose tail drew after it a third part of the stars of heaven; and their own children are rising up and cursing their memory. The powers of the earth have tried to do it,-Napoleon, the Colossus who bestrided Europe, and made and unmade kings in mere pastime; but Napoleon, from the moment he dared lay his hand on the Lord's anointed, loses his power, and goes to die at last of a broken heart in a barren isle of the ocean. Jew, pagan, Saracen, heretic, schismatic, infidel, and lawless power have all tried their hand against the church. The Lord has held them in derision. He has been a wall of fire round about her, and proved for eighteen hundred years that no weapon formed against her shall prosper; for he guards the honor of his spouse as his own. Let the ark appear to jostle, if it will; we reach forth no hand to steady it, and fear no harm that may come to it. The church has survived all storms; it is founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell are impotent against it. It is not for the friends of the church to fear, but for those who war against her, and seek her suppression. It is for them to tremble,-not before the arm of man, for no human arm will be raised against them; but before that God whose church they outrage, and whose cause they seek to crush. The Lord hath promised his Son the gentiles for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession. He must and will have this nation. And throughout all the length and breadth of this glorious land shall his temples rise to catch the morning sun and reflect his evening rays, and holy altars shall be erected, and the "clean sacrifice" shall be offered daily, and a delighted people shall bow in humility before them, and out their hearts in joyous thanksgiving; for so hath the Lord spoken, and his word shall stand.

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So far as the spread of Catholicity in this country is concerned, we look upon this anti-Catholic party with no apprehension. If we deprecate the formation of such a party, it

is for the sake of those misguided citizens who may unite to form it. It is because we see the terrible injustice of which they render themselves guilty, and the awful judg ments they may provoke. We say to them, as St. Justin Martyr said to the Roman emperors," Take heed how you hearken only to unjust accusations; fear lest an excessive complaisance for superstitious men, a haste as blind as rash, old prejudices which have no foundation but calumny, may cause you to pronounce a terrible sentence against yourselves. As for us, nobody can harm us, unless we harm ourselves, unless we ourselves become guilty of some injustice. You may indeed kill us, but you cannot injure us." It is for our countrymen, who will render themselves guilty of gross wrong, of terrible sin, that we fear. They are engaged in an unholy cause, and, if they persist, cannot fail to draw down the judgments of Almighty God upon their guilty heads. They can shoot us down in the streets; they may break up our schools and seminaries; they may desecrate and burn our churches. Such things have been, and may be again; but it becomes those who have been and may be the perpetrators of such things to pause and ask themselves what manner of spirit they are of; and how, in that day of solemn reckoning which must come to us all, they will answer the inexorable Judge for their abuse, their riots, their murder, and their sacrilege. As they love their own souls, and desire good, we entreat them to beware how they plunge deeper in sin, and rekindle the torch of persecution. For their sakes, not for ours, we pray them to pause before they go further, and to make their peace with. the Son of God.

LABOR AND ASSOCIATION.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for January, 1848.]

UNLESS the estimable and accomplished translator has greatly improved upon his author, M. Briancourt is one of the most agreeable writers attached to the school of Association with whom we are acquainted. He appears to be sincere, earnest, gentle, and philanthropic; and he writes with ability, ease, vivacity, and grace. His pages have, comparatively, little of that barbarous terminology which renders the writers of the associationists, in general, so forbidding to all but adepts. If we had the least conceivable sympathy with his doctrines and schemes, we could read him with pleasure, and, at times, with admiration; and we cannot but regard his little work as the best summary of the plans and hopes of his school which has as yet appeared.

But the more able, skilful, and fascinating is a writer, the more dangerous and carefully to be eschewed are his writings, if devoted to the propagation of false and mischievous theories. Error, though reason be free to combat it, is never harmless, any more than_poison, because its antidote may be known and at hand. It may, upon the whole, be more prudent to allow it free course, than, by attempting its suppression by force, to run the risk of also suppressing the truth; but however that may or may not be, the publication of error is always an evil which no freedom of its contradictory truth can ever wholly prevent or overcome. No man ever puts forth a system of unmixed falsehood; and the currency his error gains is always by virtue of the truth he mixes with it, and which he misinterprets and misapplies. To unravel his web of sophistry, to pick out his tangled yarn, or separate what is true from what is false, is a task of no small difficulty, and requires a patience of investigation, habits of nice discrimination and of close and rigid reasoning, which can be expected only from the gifted and thoroughly disciplined few, and rarely even from these. An error may be stated in a few words, in a popular form, and

* Organization of Labor and Association. By MATH. Briancourt. Translated by FRANCIS GEO. SHAW. New York: 1847.

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clothed with a brilliant and captivating dress, which, nevertheless, is not to be refuted, nor its truth, which gives it currency, separated from the falsehood which renders it mischievous, without long, elaborate, and abstruse reasoning, subtile distinctions, and exact definitions, beyond the capacity of the generality, usually held by them in detestation, and of which they are always impatient. But even if the refutation could be presented in a popular form, the majority of those who have embraced the error would not profit by it. Having adopted the error and committed themselves to it, they are unwilling to listen to any thing which may be urged against it, lest perchance it may disturb the tranquillity of their conviction, mortify their pride, or affect unfavorably their reputation. Hence it is that nothing is more difficult than to recall or repress an error once fairly in circulation. Hence it is that we can never allow ourselves to commend a work, however kindly disposed we may be towards its author, which, in our judgment, or according to the rule of judgment we are bound to follow, teaches a false doctrine or proposes a visionary scheme. The reading of such works, when not absolutely hurtful, is unprofitable, and no man can justify it, unless it be to refute them, and guard the public against their dangerous tendencies. The associationists, then, must not be surprised, if we notice M. Briancourt's work only to censure it.

That M. Briancourt's doctrine is unsound, no argument is needed to prove. No man, who proposes a doctrine which reverses all that has hitherto been regarded as settled, is ever entitled even to a hearing. He who, on his own authority, gives the lie to all men, of all ages and nations, gives to every man the best of all possible human reasons for giving the lie to him. If reason is to be trusted, the reason of all ages and nations overrides his; if it is not to be trusted, he has no authority for what he proposes. He places himself in an awkward position, who, asserting the authority of reason, yet opposes his own reason to the reason of all men. He must be a bold man, a man of unbounded self-confidence, the very sublime of egotism, who dares pretend, that, on his reason alone, the whole world. may be rationally convicted of having blundered. They have all the attributes he can claim; why, then, assume that they have all blundered, and that he alone has hit upon the truth? Truth is revealed to the humble and childlike, not to the proud and arrogant; and who is prouder or more ar

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