said, will be taken by posterity as the original of his own poem. Much classicity results in "words of wondrous length and thundering sound;" and it is remarkable, though not unexplainable, that the most idiomatic writer of English in our day was Charles Dickens, who was neither college-bred nor, until late in life, acquainted with any language save his own. The Protestant preacher pursues all his studies in English, and, instead of making attempts at speaking Latin, manages, in his English commentaries, to pile up quite as much false theology as our own seminarians do true. The great command of texts and of Scripture illustrations evinced by Protestant divines lies completely in abeyance in the hands of the Catholic priest, who cannot on the instant translate his Latin texts into English, no matter how clear to his mind their meaning may be. We remember, on a certain occasion, a priest who had not an English Testament, wishing to read the gospel to his people, took up the Latin Missal. The gospel was that of the unjust steward, and it abounds in untranslatable words and difficult forms of speech. Anyhow, before long, our reverend friend became completely muddled among "bushels of oil" and "barrels of wheat," the very remembrance of which words in the English translation serving to confuse him, and he managed to leave the unjust steward under the haziest cloud of character.

Those who peruse the Yearly Yale Lectures on Preaching will remember the exceeding stress which all the lecturers lay upon moving the feelings. Therein does all Protestantism consist. The appeal to the feelings, which falls under the peroration in a perfect oration, is the body and soul of all Protestant sermonizing. Even preachers who disdain and denounce the word and idea, "sensational," cannot help themselves. Protestantism is a religion of feel

ing,. quite as much as Catholicity is a religion of intellect. There is, of course, no religion without an intellectual basis; and even Mythology endeavored uselessly, as it proved, to give some rational basis to its creed. But all Protestant sects depend mainly upon feeling; and in proportion as the emotional nature is moved, so religion with them is supposed to increase. That calm, cold, statuesque, and everlasting existence of ideas, as unchangeable as fate, or rather as God, an idea familiar to Catholic minds,—has no acceptance with Protestants. A Catholic is a Catholic forever, by reason of the objective force of the Church, and the existence of an external order which he cannot change even if he will. A Protestant feeds upon sentiment.

He loves to be moved,

to be stirred, to have religious experiences, to have "the witness of the Spirit." The sentimental phase is, generally speaking, laughable to the Catholic mind. Even Catholic women, who, by reason of their sex, should be prone to ecstatic experience and general sentimentalism, are apt to be quite intellectual and sensible in their piety.

The rapture and excitement of Methodism are never seen in a Catholic Church, not even in the times of the mission, nor in the most excitable of Catholic peoples, the Italians. Emotionalism, such as is common in nearly all Protestant Churches, is unknown in Catholicism. Sentiment is the life of Protestantism. It has no intellectual or doctrinal vigor. The preacher who electrifies a congregation, or who can even diffuse that peculiar.religious feeling which is regarded as a sufficient substitute for piety, will be sure to be honored and flattered. Hence the homiletic direction of the minister's study. He labors to preach well. He quick accustoms himself to those sympathetic moods which strike the cold and dispassionate observer as so strange and

absurd. He is easily moved to tears, and can assume a lachrymose expression instanter. A frightful whine, which is supposed to indicate religious feeling, has quite supplanted the nasal twang which, fifty years ago, was regarded as necessary to orthodoxy. Nothing can be more painful to the sensitive ear than this whine. Some preachers limit it to the opening prayer and the benediction, and manage to exclude it from the sermon, but the howl is distinguishable even on the street, as one hurries by a Protestant conventicle. The chant prescribed by the Church was arranged on the wisest of reasons, to prevent extempore prayer or the reading of prayers. Why men read prayers in the most unearthly tones they can possibly produce is one of those religious mysteries which all of us are patiently expecting the last day to reveal.

With all his traditions and experiences pointing that way, there is no wonder that the Protestant preacher indulges in the sensational. He is ever on the lookout for striking phrases, and for this purpose he diligently reads light literature. The sermons of De Witt Talmage are curious studies of what Richard Grant White would call "words that are not words." Poverty of thought is concealed by wealth of words. The simple and noble sentiment or idea of which this preacher seems incapable gives place to the slang of the street or the rather dubious joke. Talmage may be written down an ass; but the muscular power of his large ears has long served to attract attention to him. The newspaper men, who are the keenest critics in the country, long ago stripped him of his lion's skin; and no less cosmopolitan city than New York could afford to support him. He represents the extreme sensationalism of Protestantism, and is evidently always on the lookout for the slightest opportunity of attracting attention. How ignoble an

aim, compared with that of simply showing forth divine truth! Robert Collyer some years ago was another sensational preacher, but we believe he went to England. All Protestant ministers aim at the same effects, and resort to the same means; and it is noticeable that Protestant converts who enter the Catholic priesthood can never form any idea of preaching except that which deals largely with the feelings.

Great as John Henry Newman is in history and theology, his sermons are so logically constructed that not even their great learning and beauty prevent them from being at times tedious. It is not so with Dr. Chalmers, with Edward Irving, or even with Spurgeon, whose wonderful poetic feeling, however, is sufficient to render his discourses admirable to a general reader. But why can they not simply state their theme and so let it rest? Alas! they have not the truth. It is not clear to them, nor intelligible to their audiences, and their striking appeals to the feelings affect us as did the philosophical speculations of the Laputans affect Gulliver, who, in his wonderful voyage to that aerial island, relates that all the philosophers were in deep concern about the condition of the sun and the aspects of the planets; and that the very first question which they anxiously asked him, was his opinion upon the spots on the sun's disk, and whether he believed that the universe would be consumed in a million of years or not?

A prominent Protestant preacher remarked to the writer that he never touched upon dogmatic themes, for the reason that his audience might be of divided opinion. The reader of the religious notices in a Saturday paper will often be amused at the variety of topics announced to be discussed, and their very general divergence from the Scriptural orbit a very natural apprehension. The Church prescribes a certain gospel for every Sunday in the year, and whilst

the Catholic preacher is at liberty to select any topic, he is hedged in completely by his character as a priest and the positive disinclination of the Church to his saying anything outré. No pent-up Utica confines the powers of the Protestant minister.

Whatever breathes of the sensational element belongs to him, and the last railroad accident, or the pending silver bill, fall under his category of sermons. It is to be regretted that the highest medium of religious persuasion should be degraded to the clap-trap of street

corner eloquence, and the noble function of human speech, best used when used in the pulpit, should deck itself out in what the stern Cicero would call meretricious ornaments. (De Oratore, cap. ix.) But the sly Protestant reader, who dislikes going to church, jogs our elbow and whispers: "Who cares about all your dull theorizing on the subject of preaching? Tell us where there is a good preacher, even if he is sensational, and we'll go hear him." olic goes to hear the word of God, not of man.

WHEN Pius the Ninth defined that God can with certainty be known from created things by the natural light of human reason, some amongst Catholics thought that a truth so patent needed no definition. The Pope, guided by the Holy Spirit, ruled differently, and the experience of the seven years that have run since the Vatican Council shows the wisdom and the necessity of the definition. Theories that strike at the root of natural and revealed religion are gaining ground so quickly as to be talked about, not merely in the universities, but-so say the Reviews -in club and drawing-room. The pages of the Nineteenth Century are proof sufficient that some foremost writers have parted, on so-called scientific grounds, with their belief in that personal God who is the Father, the Friend, and the End of man. Were there any need of apology for treating a theme apparently so threadbare, it is found in the words of the Sovereign Pontiff, who, in a letter to the Archbishop of Munich in 1862, says that it is the highest duty of philosophy to prove, maintain, uphold (demonstrare, vindicare, defendere) the existence, the nature, and the attributes of Godand it belongs, at least indirectly, to theology to test the cogency of these proofs. For if it be clearly taught in Scripture that great source of theological truth-that reason can with its own unaided strength reach to the knowledge of God, it comes within the sphere of theology to examine the argument.

As grace presupposes nature, so revelation presupposes an acquaintance with those truths which fall within the compass of reason. Theology is only too glad to use philosophy as a help to a better understanding of the dogmas of faith. This is

all the more true in the matter which I treat, for the object is the same to theologian or philosopher, although seen in a different light.

Even a superficial acquaintance with the Old Testament shows us that the inspired writers suppose, where they do not openly state, that this visible universe is a mirror dimly reflecting its great Creator. David never wearies of repeating that the beauty of outward things, the skill in design marked on the face of the world, only serves to shadow forth the greatness of Him who reared the fabric. There are none so deaf as not to hear the note of thanksgiving which, as Bellarmine says in his beautiful interpretation of the eighteenth Psalm, each day transmits to its successor, while the close of one night signals to the other to begin the hymn of thanksgiving to God. The music of creation, to copy a phrase from the Fathers, is heard in every tongue, race, land. There is no consideration more familiar in Scripture than that the works of God are the expression of his thoughts embodied in sensible, tangible shape, and bearing the traces of the Mind that conceived them. Even the monsters that tread the earth or live in the deep waters speak of their Maker. "Ask now the beasts," says Job, "and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; or speak to the earth, and it shall answer thee, and the fishes of the sea shall tell." In the well-known passage from the thirteenth chapter of Wisdom, it is distinctly, clearly, and forcibly laid down, first that from things good to the eye the mind learns of One from whom the goodness has been borrowed; secondly, from created beauty it rises to uncreated; thirdly, from the work may be gathered the

existence of the Architect; fourthly, in the greatness of the creature the Creator may in some way be seena magnitudine speciei cognoscibiliter potest horum Creator videri. I hardly know if it be possible for words to speak more plainly. There is no limitation to any class of men. Si enim tantum potuerunt scire ut possent æstimare sæculum: quomodo hujus dominum non facilius invenerunt? Nor can ignorance plead excuse; for the mind that can prize the world around it can more easily find and therefore appreciate Him who made it. But the Council leans on the first chapter to the Romans, and over it I must pass briefly. "Because," says the Apostle, "what is known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the beginning of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse. The Apostle may speak chiefly, but not exclusively, of philosophers. All the Gentiles are embraced. If the context were narrowed to one class, would the Council have quoted the verse as the basis of a canon binding on the Universal Church? The endeavor to rid the words ita ut sint inexcusabiles of their natural force by the objection that in matters of religion man is bound to take probability in lack of certainty, and that probable not certain knowledge is meant here, is against the obvious sense and spirit of the passage.

"Don't you see,” says St. Paul, as I paraphrase him, "these men simply have not got a leg to stand on. Why they need only look around them to find God's divinity staring them in the face!"

The antithesis is clearly brought out in the original τὰ ἀόρατα καθορᾶτα, where the words Sempiterna quoque virtus et divinitas, are seen to be merely explanatory of the àópara. Interpreters quarrel without end about the sense to be given to in

visibilia, virtus, and divinitas. It seems to me that the invisibilitas may be fairly taken as the complexus of the Divine perfections; virtus, the power of the Maker seen by the mind in the vastness of his work; divinitas, the majesty of the Being on whom all lean, the goal towards whom all things bend. St. Paul says the knowledge is clear (paspi). It must then come from natural light, not from revelation. For the truths of revelation are the object of faith, and faith is not said to be clear, at least as far as regards the person who reveals, although it may be as far as the truth that is revealed. Here God reveals not by his word, but by his work. The Council says, "We can know God with certainty." Certainty is the rest enjoined by the mind in the perception of truth. But what is meant by the words to "know God?" Know is used in a multitude of senses. We know a man by appearance, by his face and figure, while his nature and disposition are in great part hidden to us. Similarly in the text the eye of the mind looks through outward things upon him who made them. At least it is certain he exists; but it knows next to nothing of his nature. The first glance at the feature gives a scanty idea. Time and careful inspection bring out the lines in the portrait. Similarly in the mind's apprehension of God. St. Paul says man learns from his works that the Creator lives, and the lesson is so easy, that the knowledge may be said to be immediate or innate, in that man in the full use of his powers at once sees the hand of God in the world before us. I am not pressing the text. I think it refers to the first knowledge of God, and so it is commonly explained by the Fathers, although the words may also refer to that fuller and more complete knowledge which thought and study bring. The knowledge here spoken of, as I conceive, is