Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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22 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW life, especially when permeated with Baconian ideas respecting the true task of man in the world, is pointedly unascetic. If we turn over a series of pictures of eminent modern men, there is one common feature which we cannot fail to notice, whether the subject of the picture be artist, or literary man, or man of action, and whatever intelligence, power, or benevolence may breathe from the face— namely, the absence of an expression of self- mastery. А similar series of portraits of men who lived in the middle ages, when law was weaker than at present, but the sense of necessity of self-control stronger, reveals a type of countenance in which the calmness of self-conquest, gained by Christian asceti- cism, is far more frequently visible than in later ages. ы This seems to have been one of his favorite ideas: for he had already given it a different form іп an article on ‘“‘Ritualistic Reasons against Conversion, which appeared in The Month for February, 1879. “ Aus- terity, he there wrote, gives the hard, clear-cut life, the fully persuaded man, readiness to suffer, prompt obedience, and (through this promptitude) capacity for ruling. Without austerity there can be no sanctity, and without sanctity, which is the beauty of the soul, the eyes of the multitude will not be opened to the exterior beauty. It was not the artists, nor kings, nor rich men who built and ado rned our cathedrals; these, indeed, all labored; but the aspiring heart of the saint, thirsting for the greater glory of God, was what set in motion, directed, and co-ordinated their labors. Austerity is still honored in countries which adhere to Rome, though obsolete in Pro- testant England; and this—such at least is my own conviction—goes far to account for that remarkable difference in respect of art and the beautiful which exists between those countries and our own. No wonder the man whose heart was so nobly attuned to the highest spirituality was not appreciated by a daughter who had become the self-sufficient apostle of religious revolt and an open disbeliever in the divinity of Christ. For it was in this guise that she first became famous. Нег Robert Elsmere was the great sensation of 1888 and the following years, though it was almost for- gotten when I met her twenty years later. The cynical Squire Wendover, who upsets the Rev. Robert Elsmere's traditional Anglican belief, was an exaggerated portrait of a certain principal of Brasenose College, Ox- ford, from whom Mrs. Humphry Ward imbibed blind belief in the so-called dis- coveries of that Higher Biblical Criticism which was then shaking the foundations of Protestantism. This craze culminated in the Polychrome Bible, an edition of the Bible in which the authorship of each verse was shown by a different color in the text, some chapters exhibiting half-a-dozen colors. This supposed authorship of particular passages was based exclusively on the internal evi- dence of the words and phrases used in the original Hebrew text. The use of one special word proved that that particular verse had been written five or six hundred years after the hitherto accepted date of the whole book. Proofs of this sort were at that time, thirty or forty years ago, deemed conclusive by people who adored German learning. This style of criticism has s ince lost much of its spurious popularity. It still passes in Protestant circles with, how- ever, considerable discount. It was never accepted by the most learned and truly critical Catholic Orientalists. But on the appearance of Robert Elsmere the Protest- ant world went mad. Elsmerian churches and Elsmerian. workingmen's homes sprang up overnight. Gradually, however, it dawned on really philosophic critics that one man may use different styles and different words at different periods of his life or in totally different circumstances; a common sense truth, you will say; yes, but there is nothing less common than common sense, especially among learned men when they peer into religious subjects without the illuminating torch of the true faith. Has any of you ever heard of a Robert Elsmere church existing to-day, only thirty- two years after the first one? In fact, twelve years ago, when I talked with Mrs. Humphry Ward—who, by the way, was extremely simple and never intro- duced the subject of her own works—the most fervent Protestants thought that she herself had come round to more orthodox

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 21 delight in England and in America, where a new edition, giving additional information about religious orders and societies on this side of the Atlantic, appeared three months after the first English publication. This valuable work has since been vastly improved upon in point of size and scope by the Catholic Encyclopedia; but in one respect it has not been superseded. Connoisseurs will always turn with renewed zest to those conspicuously absent in most of the articles of the most celebrated encyclopedias. But when practically all the articles are written by two men, each one of whom is alone responsible for his department, as happened for the Catholic Dictionary, the preface of which states: ““Аз a rule, the articles on dogma, ritual, the ancient Church, and the Oriental rites, are by Mr. Addis; those on medizval and modern history, the religious FORTY HOURS IN COLLEGE CHAPEL articles of the Catholic Dictionary in which the personality of the editor makes itself felt. Except when the writer's mental power rivals that of his biographical subject as when Dr. William Barry writes on Car- dinal Newman in the Catholic Encyclopedia, or when R. Н. Hutton dissects George Eliot in Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Litera- ture, the charm of the personal touch is orders, and canon law, by Mr. Arnold ; then we are not surprised at the expression of personal opinions. Take, for instance, the following passage in the article Ascete by Thomas Arnold. After explaining that the object of Christian Asceticism is to master, not to eradicate, man's lower nature, he makes this wise reflection, a rather unusual one in a book of reference: “Modern

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 23 views, because she had, in her more recent novels, shown sane sympathy even with Catholic principles. But two years later she returned to her darling error of Modernism. I drew attention to this deplorable relapse in an article, “Ignorance of the Learned, which appeared in the Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart for January, 1911 (misprinted 1910). The article says: —When Mrs. Humphry Ward visited Canada two years ago, some of the Protestant ministers who lionized her excused themselves for kotowing to an infidel by alleging that of late she seemed to be endorsing Christian views. Their optimism will receive a sad shock if they read the “foreword” to her new novel and the first instalment thereof in the December McClure’s. She there gives promise of reviving and intensifying Robert Elsmere. Her strong point with her semi- educated readers outside of the Catholic Church is—as was so cleverly pointed out some six years ago by the author of When It Was Dark—not real knowledge but only the ‘‘atmosphere of knowledge. Atmos- phere is, indeed, what she aims at and skilfully produces. That, however, facts do not correspond to her elaborate statements, which really create that atmosphere out of airy nothings, is amusingly exemplified when, at the beginning of this new novel, she ranks Renan, the refined sensualist, among the saints. But for Catholics there is in the very first chapter of The Case of Richard Meynell a still more startling proof of ignorance without the redeeming feature of a deep-laid plan to make it plausible. Mrs. Humphry Ward, describing the multifarious contents of her hero’s mail, says there were “three or four French letters, shown by the cross preceding the signatures to be the letters of priests. Mark the self-com- placency with which this exceptionally learned woman informs the non-Catholic world that priests always put a cross before their signatures. Many simple-minded Pro- testant admirers of hers would say of this to them hitherto unknown circumstance: What a curious little gem of fact that is, quite characteristic of Mrs. Humphry Ward, who lavishly scatters pearls of valuable knowledge in her stories! And if any one doubted the fact their answer would be: “Surely, she ought to know. Was not her father, Thomas Arnold, joint author of the first Roman Catholic Dictionary that was ever published in English? Did he not die a Roman Catholic? And are not many of Mary A. Ward's friends Roman Catholics? Altogether true. And yet priests never put a cross before their signatures. Only bishops do so, and even they not always in private letters. This mistake is just as bad as if a Catholic, confounding parsons with b ishops of the Church of England, were to say that all Anglican rectors signed, not their family name, but the title of their parish church, for instance, “John Christ, “James Trinity. How easily Mrs. Hum- phry Ward could have avoided the humilia- tion of so sillp a blunder. All that was needed was a saving sense of doubt as to her own infallibility and a consequent dis- creet inquiry of some Catholic friend. It really looks as if she did not care so much for facts as for general impressions created by a manufactured atmosphere. And in this she shows her knowledge of human nature when shorn of the true faith. Vague general impressions, an atmosphere surcharged with doubt, ahundred “‘perhapses”’ leading illogically to a triumphant ‘‘there- fore, and the trick is successful with the innumerable victims of religious error. I sent this article to Mrs. Humphry Ward’s address, and when her serial novel, The Case of Richard Meynell, appeared a few months latter in book form, I noticed that the phrase which I had criticized was changed. Instead of “‘three or four letters, shown by the cross preceding the signatures to be the letters of priests there was “опе letter, shown by the cross preceding the sig- nature to be the letter of a bishop. She had learnt her lesson; but she thought she might risk one bishop, although, as a matter of fact, no Catholic bishop ever adopted Modernism. А handful of unbalanced and left-handedly learned Catholic priests apos- tatized. That was all. Pius X's bull killed Modernism. LEWIS DRUMMOND, S.J.