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are all these divided against one another, and how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the Catholic Leviathan, their neighbour! Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compartment, its right mounting up into heaven. among the white folios of the 'Acta Sanctorum,' its left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of the 'Law Digest.' Everything is there, in that immense 'Patrologia Cursus Completus,' in that 'Encyclopédie Théologique,' that 'Nouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique,' that "Troisième Encyclopédie Théologique;' religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. The work embraces the whole range of human interests; like one of the great Middle-Age cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it is! a power, for history at any rate, eminently the Church; not, perhaps, the Church of the future, but indisputably the Church of the past, and, in the past, the Church of the multitude.

This is why the man of imagination,-nay, and the philosopher too, in spite of her propensity to burn him,— will always have a weakness for the Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored within her pale. The mention of other

religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought of men of a definite type as their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Anglicanism suggests the English episcopate; Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers's, the Duke of Argyll; Channing's, Boston society; but Catholicism suggests,-what shall I say?-all the pellmell of the men and women of Shakspeare's plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne's coilection faithfully reflects. -Essays in Criticism.

CATHOLICISM TO CATHOLICS.

CATHOLICISM is that form of Christianity which is fullest of human accretions and superstitions, because it is the oldest, the largest, the most popular. It is the religion which has most reached the people. It has been the great popular religion of Christendom, with all the accretions and superstitions inseparable from such a character. The bulk of its superstitions come from its having really plunged so far down into the multitude, and spread so wide among them. If this is a cause of error, it is also a cause of attachment. Who has seen the poor in other churches as they are seen in Catholic churches? Catholicism, besides, enveloped human life; and Catholics in general feel themselves to have drawn not only their religion from the. Church, they feel themselves to have drawn from her, too, their art and poetry and culture.

Catholicism to Catholics.

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Her hierarchy, again, originally stamped in their imaginations with the character of a beneficent and orderly authority springing up amidst anarchy, appeared next as offering a career where birth was disregarded and merit regarded, and the things of the mind and the soul were honoured, in the midst of the iron feudal age which worshipped solely birth and force. So thus Catholicism acquired on the imagination a second hold. And if there is a thing specially alien to religion, it is divisions; if there is a thing specially native to religion, it is peace and union. Hence the original attraction towards unity in Rome, and hence the great charm and power for men's minds of that unity when once attained. All these spells for the heart and imagination has Catholicism to Catholics, in addition to the spell for the conscience of a divine cure for vice and misery. And whoever treats Catholicism as a nuisance, to be helped to die out as soon as possible, has the heart, the imagination, and the conscience of Catholics in just revolt against him.-Mixed Essays.

too.

TRUE Strength of CATHOLICISM.A

WHEN Ultramontanism, sacerdotalism, and superstition are gone, Catholicism is not, as some may suppose, gone Neither is it left with nothing further but what it possesses in common with all the forms of Christianity, -the curative power of the word, character, and influence of Jesus. It is, indeed, left with this, which is the

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root of the matter, but it is left with a mighty power besides. It is left with the beauty, the richness, the poetry, the infinite charm for the imagination, of its own age-long growth, a growth such as we have described,― unconscious, popular, profoundly rooted, all-enveloping.

It is the sure sign of a shallow mind, to suppose that the strength of the Catholic Church is really in its tone of absolute certainty concerning its dogmas, in its airs of omniscience. On the contrary, as experience widens, as the scientific and dogmatic pretensions of the Church become more manifestly illusory, its tone of certitude respecting them, so unguarded, so reiterated, and so grossly calculated for immediate and vulgar effect, will be an embarrassment to it. The gain to-day, the effect upon a certain class of minds, will be found to be more than counterbalanced by the embarrassment to-morrow. Its dogma and its confident assertion of its dogma are no more a real source of strength and permanence to the Catholic Church, than its Ultramontanism. Its real superiority is in its charm for the imagination,—its poetry. I persist in thinking that Catholicism has, from this superiority, a great future before it; that it will endure while all the Protestant sects (amongst which I do not include the Church of England) dissolve and perish. I persist in thinking that the prevailing form for the Christianity of the future will be the form of Catholicism ;-but a Catholicism purged, opening itself to the light and air, having the

True Strength of Catholicism.

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consciousness of its own poetry, freed from its sacerdotal despotism and freed from its pseudo-scientific apparatus of superannuated dogma. Its forms will be retained, as symbolising with the force and charm of poetry a few cardinal facts and ideas, simple indeed, but indispensable and inexhaustible, and on which our race could lay hold only by materialising them.-Mixed Essays.

THE NEED FOR BEAUTY.

THE need for beauty is a real and now rapidly growing need in man; Puritanism cannot satisfy it, Catholicism and the English Church can. The needs of intellect and knowledge in him, indeed, neither Puritanism, nor Catholicism, nor the English Church, can at present satisfy. Those needs have to seek satisfaction nowadays elsewhere, -through the modern spirit, science, literature. But, as one drops the false science of the Churches, one perceives that what they had to deal with was so simple that it did not require science. Their beauty remains, investing certain elementary truths of inestimable depth and value, yet of extreme simplicity. But the Puritan Churches have no beauty. This makes the difficulty of maintaining the Established Church of Scotland. Once drop the false science on which successive generations of Scotchmen have so vainly valued themselves, once convince oneself that the Westminster Confession, whatever Principal Tulloch may think, is a document absolutely antiquated,

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