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in the strictest dependence upon the Emperors of Germany. Hildebrand saw that if she were successfully to perform her mission, this dependence must be broken, and with consummate skill and indomitable zeal he addressed himself to the task. He first claimed the exclusive right of the disposal of the property of the church; in support of this claim he waged unrelenting war with the Emperor; and this war involves the charge of insolence towards his superior. But the proud spirit of the Pope bowed to no superior. Impressed with a deep sense of the importance of his position, he felt that he was more than the equal of his Emperor; that he was the common father of mankind; and that his mission was to clothe the church with that authority and power which should make her truly the guardian of the desolate, and the refuge of the oppressed. The time had been when Hildebrand had humbly bowed before the Emperor, and owned him as his liege; but that time was gone forever. The church to be efficient must be independent; and well did the noble spirit of her head assert the dignity of his office.

He enforced the celibacy of the clergy, and has therefore been stigmatized as ambitious, designing, and corrupt. This had always been a favourite point of discipline in the church, but never before the papacy of Gregory had it received the sanction of law. It was necessary towards perfecting the organization of the church, that she should become the country, the home of every person who embraced the ecclesiastical profession. After ordination, the clergyman ceased to be a Frenchman or an Englishman; he was now a Roman, a minister and peer of that mighty empire which claimed dominion over the globe. Like the ambassador of a foreign State, he owed obedience to the laws of the country in which he might be called to labour, but his real country was his order, the Pontiff his sovereign, and their honour and welfare the appropriate objects of his public care.

These are some of the advantages which the church derived from an unmarried clergy. But there was a still greater; it prevented her also from losing the sympathy and fellowship of the people. Were not the celibacy of the clergy enforced, there was danger that the priesthood might become a caste. The tendency of European civilization appeared to be taking that Asiatic direction.

ready were the peasantry hopelessly forever attached to the cultivation of the soil. The nobility had not long before succeeded in making their dignities and their offices, as well as their property, hereditary. The clergy had but to follow their example, and the whole march of civilization would have been arrested by impassable barriers. The church possessed the fairest portions of Europe. They sorely tempted the cupidity of the great, and induced many to take orders. To continue the enjoyment of this wealth and this power in the hands of a certain set, hereditary succession was all that was wanting. The institution of celibacy removed the temptation, and the church remained the common possession of all men. Nor was the danger of this degradation chimerical. It is proved by the several rescripts of the Popes against it-by their severe denunciations of it as an enormity which the church cannot too strongly detest. If it be objected, that the same evil has not followed the indulgence of marriage in later times, we may reply that the protestant church has never enjoyed a tythe of the wealth and power of that of Rome, which it has supplanted; and that the tendency of modern civilization is to break down all legal distinctions. Every attempt to give any set of men exclusive privileges, has been invariably followed by their degeneracy and decline.

The great misfortune of all human institutions is, that if successful in accomplishing the ends for which they were created, they are by a blind, perhaps a wholesome reverence, continued long after the necessity which called them into existence has passed away. The impress of the great mind of Hildebrand remains in the church still. He provided her with the weapons wherewith she might enter into a contest in behalf of law, of order, of humanity. His remote successor, Boniface VIII., endeavoured to continue and perpetuate not merely the institutions of Gregory, but also his thoughts. But the times were fortunately changed. In the contest with Philip, of France, the Pope vainly endeavoured to revive effete notions. He saw not that the church had completely accomplished her mission as a temporal power, and that henceforward she could hope for success only by labouring diligently in the spiritual field. Gregory struggled for an asylum in which humanity might have leisure and peace, and make

progress; Boniface raised the standard against progress. Gregory aimed at the establishment of a power, which, in in the general state of anarchy, might supply the want of law; Boniface set himself in opposition to law. The firmness and courage of Gregory elevated the church to the summit of power; the blindness and obstinacy of Boniface led the way to schism, and ultimately to the great Reformation, which broke out two centuries after his death.

Having noticed the danger of pursuing an institution too long, it may not be deemed irrelevant to make a few remarks on the opposite tendency-the spirit of opposing it unreasonably. Protestantism, rejecting all the human institutions of Rome, appears almost to insist on the marriage of the clergy. This state should be considered a subject purely of personal and private consideration—and it is difficult to imagine how any profession should carry with it an obligation to enter into it. There are many avocations in civil life, which, to the general eye, would appear to forbid marriage. The greater number of men than of women seems to indicate that it was not designed for all men. The sentiment which leads to marriage

should be one of disinterested benevolence. A man should seek in a wife a friend and a companion, not a help. His aim should be to surround himself with objects whom he would delight to cherish; and if he sees before him a future of hardship and of difficulty, he would act the part of a brave man if he venture on it alone. Clergymen are like other men, and should be governed by the same rules in the concerns of life. There is one class of clergymen to whom marriage appears peculiarly inappropriate. Those who devote themselves to the spread of the gospel among the benighted souls of heathen lands, appear to have contracted a burthen sufficiently weighty in itself, without superadding to it the care and anguish which must necessarily result from the sufferings and hardships to which a devoted wife is exposed—and yet the missionary is, of all men, expected to marry. A wife appears to be considered a necessary qualification for the accomplishment of his arduous enterprise.

As we descend the stream of time and approach our own, we find ourselves still more and more encumbered with the difficulties of prejudice and party spirit. The

subject of missionaries recalls those of the Romish church, and we are impelled by a sense of justice to pay a homage of praise to the society of Jesuits. The annals of heroism can furnish no instances of devotion equal to that of their missionaries. Whatever judgment we may form respecting the objects and ends of that celebrated society, we must admit that the ministers in its employment exhibited the purest specimens of apostolical zeal which the world has ever witnessed. The missionary stipulated for no comfort-not even for life itself. He renounced all dignities, except when dignity added to his dangers. He bowed submissively, joyfully, to the will of his superior, and addressed himself with alacrity to his task Jesuitism has long been a term of reproach. It ought not to be so in any portion of America. This whole continent was long the scene of their constant efforts of disinterested benevolence. Where will you find heroism so sublime, mingled with benevolence, so childlike, as that of Rasles? Where a martyrdom so courageous as those of Bubeuf and of Vincennes? And when the imagination would picture to itself a life of primeval innocence and simplicity, when men are under the direct teaching of heaven; when one would describe an Utopia, in which the gentleness of the dove, on the part of the people, is guided by the wisdom of the serpent, on that of the superior, you have but to transport yourself to the interior of Paraguay, and find that the Jesuits have there reduced to practice all your pleasant dreams. That peaceful society, that realization of the poet's dream of a golden age, has been swept away with the suppression of the society which established it. The order was suppressed by the very power whose authority it was created to support; and throughout Europe, protestant and catholic united in a common voice of denunciation. But time will see justice done. What compensation can be made for the destruction of the peaceful society of Paraguay, the only instance on record of an American people enjoying happiness under the influence of European civilization? What have those miserable mèn to show, under what is called a more liberal system, worthy of any comparison with the simple and undisturbed happiness of the halcyon days of Jesuitical rule? And how dare we, in North America, yield to the popular clamour against that society, whilst our soil is

enriched with the blood of a Rasles, a Joyens, a Marquette, a La Salle, a Bubeuf, a Vincennes ?

We are asked, what works have these ever done? Where are the fruits of their labours? Alas! who can point to them? With the race for whom they laboured, they have passed away forever from the face of the earth. But when did men ever labour zealously and faithfully in a good cause, and do nothing? Their memories are the fruit of their labours. The legacy they have left us is the example of faith, of zeal, of devotion, which kindle enthusiasm and makes the good man thank God for having permitted such men to live, to suffer, and to die. Where, it may be retorted, are the results of the labours of men equally devoted, who toiled under the banners of Protestantism? What fruits have resulted from the efforts of Elliot, of Brainard? And what, in future times, will be the history of the gospel enterprise in the islands of the Pacific? Does it not appear as if with the seed of Christianity that of annihilation had been simultaneously introduced?

If we have appeared to depart from the subject of national thought to a consideration of that of individuals and of societies, we have been led to it from a consideration that in the chaotic state of the political world of Europe, after the destruction of the Roman empire, and before modern States had had time to organize their political existence, it would be vain to seek the expression of a national sentiment. We must, therefore, look for that which grew out of the state of the times-that which distinguished and animated the spirits who wielded the destinies of their age, and impressed their genius upon the characters of those which were to follow them. We have selected those subjects which appeared to us most prominent, as illustrating the injustice of history. We shall, in conclusion, offer one more example, not for the purpose of defending a paradox, but to illustrate the different views entertained on the same subject by persons under the influence of different national modes of thinking. In England, France, and this country, the ruling idea is progress. He who makes no advance in wealth and in mental development, is supposed to retrograde-and we apply the same rule to our judgment of nations. Accustomed to see capital accumulate rapidly under the influence of commercial and manufacturing enterprise, we have insensi

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