The first number of the "Avenir ap en Matière de Religion" burst upon the | It was upon this ground that they both planted religious world like a thunderclap, and the banner of the "Avenir." apgave him European celebrity as much by the opposition it excited as by the admi-peared on October 15, 1830. The Church ration it called forth. The second (1820) was then at a low ebb in France: it was and the two concluding volumes (1824) not popular with the people, and it was were equally successful, and on his first kept in strict subordination to the State. visit to Rome, although half of the con- All ecclesiastical dignitaries were clave were against him, the Pope, Leo pointed by the government. The priests XII., declared him the "last Father of could hardly venture into the streets in the Church," offered him a cardinal's hat, the dress of their order for fear of insult, and hung up his picture amongst the and when the cholera was raging in Paris chosen saints in his cabinet. they had to be smuggled into the hospitals, dressed as laymen, to administer the last Sacraments when required. Then, again they were practically excluded from any interference in the national education, which was under the control of the University and the Minister of Public Instruction. No school could be opened without a license, and no license was given for denominational schools, or for any distinct religious teaching, except in the seminaries, in which none but youths intended for the ecclesiastical calling were received. In fact, the only accessible education for the laity at large was the mixed or "godless" system which the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland have so indignantly repudiated; with the aggravation, constituting a real grievance, in France, that those who were dissatisfied with it were not permitted to provide a substitute at their own expense. "Le Père Lacordaire," by Montalembert, is rather a biographical essay, composed as a vehicle for personal reminiscences, than a biography. Left to discover as we best may when and where Lacordaire was born - he was born at Recey-sur-Ource, Côte-d'Or, the 12th March, 1802-we are told that no adventure, no stroke of fortune, no passion, occurred to trouble the course of his boy hood: excess. Son of a village doctor, brought up by a pious mother, he had, like all the young people of his day, lost the faith at school, and had not recovered it either at the law school or the bar, in which he was enrolled for two years. To all outward seeming, nothing distinguished him from his contemporaries. He was a deist, as all the youth was then; he was, above all, liberal, like the whole of France, but without He has said it again and again: no The triumvirate, therefore, had plenty man or book was the instrument of his con- of useful work cut out for them which version. A sudden and secret flash of grace opened his eyes to the nothingness of irreli- they might have performed without hurgion. In a single day he became Christian, rying into extremes; without flying in the and the very next day from Christian he face of lawful authority on the one hand, wished to be priest. Seminarist at Sulpice in or venturing to the utmost verge of intol1824, ordained priest in 1827, convent almoner erance on the other. In most of their in 1828, college almoner in 1825, he seemed grand efforts they contrived to do both. not to depart on any side from the ordinary We take, by way of specimen, the first course of things and men. There was nothing article by Lacordaire which is quoted singular about him but his liberalism. By a then unheard-of phenomenon, this convert, this seminarist, this almoner of nuns, insisted on remaining liberal as in the days when he was only student and advocate. He comprehended, then, in his youth and in his solitude, that of which no one around him seemed to have a glimpse: first, that the Church, after having given liberty to the modern world, had the right and the imperious obligation to invoke it in her turn; secondly, that she could no more invoke it as a privilege, but only as her part in the common patrimony of the new world. M. de la Mennais, then the most celebrated and the most venerated of the French priests, starting from the opposite pole, had arrived at the same conclusion. It is that which had all of a sudden brought him into proximity with the obscure almoner of the College Henri IV. with commendation by his young admirer. The subject was the refusal of a priest to bury a man who had died without calling in the aid of religion, and the forcible introduction of his remains into a church by the sous-préfet. The form adopted was an apostrophe to the priest hood: One of your brethren has refused to a man who died out of your communion the ChrisYour brother has tian service for the dead. done well; he has acted as a free man, as a priest of the Lord, determined to keep his lips pure from servile benedictions. Woe to him who blesses against conscience, who speaks of God with a venal heart! Woe to the priest who murmurs lies at the edge of a coffin! who conducts souls to the judgment of God through fear of the living or for a vile fee! Your brother has done well. Are we the sextons of the human race? Have we made a pact with them to flatter their remains more wretched than the courtiers to whom the death of the prince gives the right of treating him as he deserved by his life. Your brother has done well; but this shadow of a proconsul believed that so much independence was not becoming in a citizen so vile as a Catholic priest.. The domicile of the citizen cannot be violated without the intervention of justice. Justice has not been so much as summoned to say to religion, "Veil thy face a moment before my sword." Precisely the same appeal might be made and the same range of sympathies invoked, should sepulture in a church or church-yard be denied (as it frequently has been) to those who, like players, died in an unhallowed vocation, or, like many of the greatest men in all domains of genius, departed this life without due preparation by a priest. The Archbishop of Paris did well who sought to deny sepulture in holy ground to Molière: the Curé of Saint-Sulpice did well who denied it to Adrienne Lecouvreur; the Dean of Westminster did well who excluded the bust of Byron from Westminster Abbey; and, despite of the church which he erected to God, Voltaire should have been buried like a dog.* Sir George Beaumont used to tell a story of his asking the Pope to authorize a Protestant burial-place at Rome; and the reply of the Holy Father, that he could not bless a locality for such a purpose, but had no objection to curse one, if, in default of consecrated ground, the heretics were content to repose in desecrated. The editors of the "Avenir" appear to have been moved by the same spirit as this Pope: only they were serious and his Holiness was laughing in his sleeve. It was the favourite theory of Lacordaire that great causes were to be fought out, as in ancient Rome and England, in legal proceedings before the tribunals in the full light of publicity: he was fond of reverting to his old profession of advocacy in which he shone, and he was never better pleased than when brought into open conflict with the procureur du roi. The • The dying words of Voltaire, when spiritual aid was pressed upon him, were, "Laissez-moi mourir en pair." He was buried ia haste and surreptitiously in the Abbey of Scellières, of which his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, was Commendator, only a few hours before the arrival of a prohibitory mandate from the bishop of the diocese to the prior. No attempt, according to Mr. Morley, was made to obtain Christian burial for Rous seau Government were ready enough to give him the opportunities he sought, and on the 31st January, 1831, he appeared with de la Mennais before the Criminal Court ing the King for exercising the constituto answer for two articles bitterly assailtional right of nominating bishops. He made a spirited defence, and they were both acquitted. "The decision was not given till midnight," says Montalembert. "A numerous crowd surrounded and applauded the victors of the day. When it had dispersed, we returned together alone, in the darkness, along the quays. When we reached his threshold I hailed in him the orator of the future. He was neither intoxicated nor overwhelmed by his trumph. I saw that for him the little vanities of success were less than nothing, mere dust of the darkness. But I saw him at the same time eager to spread the contagion of courage and self-devotion, and charmed by those evidences of mutual faith and disinterested tenderness which shine in young and Christian hearts with a glory purer and more delightful than all victories." Besides This victory encouraged the party to a fresh and original enterprise. founding the "Avenir," they had formed a society called Agence de la liberté religieuse, which publicly announced that, attendu que la liberté se prend et ne se donne pas, three of their members would open a school, free and gratuitous, at Paris, by way of testing the right. The school was opened on the 7th May, 1831, after due notice to the prefect of police, by three de Coux, and Montalembert, who sucmembers of the society, Lacordaire, M. cinctly relates what followed : We The Abbé Lacordaire delivered a short and energetic inaugurative discourse. formed each a class for twenty children. The next day a commissary came to summon us to decamp. He first addressed the children: "In the name of the law I summon you to depart." Lacordaire immediately rejoined: "In the name of your parents, whose authority I have, I order you to remain." The children cried out unanimously: "We will remain." Whereupon the police turned out pupils and masters, with the exception of Lacordaire, who protested that the school-room hired by him was his domicile, and that he would pass the night in it, unless he was dragged out by force. "Leave me," he said to us, seating himself on a mattress he had brought there, "I remain here alone with the law and my right." He did not give way till the police laid hands upon him; after which the seals were affixed and a prosecution was forthwith commenced against the schoolmasters. Soon after the commencement of the proceedings, his father died: he succeed "It is sufficiently well known that the career on which I have entered is not of a nature to satisfy an ambition which seeks political honours and places. The powers of the present age, both in government and in opposition, are, by the grace of Heaven, equally hostile to Catholics. There is another ambition not less devouring, perhaps not less culpable, which aspires to reputation, and which is content to buy that at any price: that, too, I disavow like the other. No one can be more conscious than I am of the disadvantages with which a precocious publicity surrounds youth, and none can fear them more. But there is still in the world something which is called faith-it is not dead in all minds; it is to this that I have early given my heart and my life. My life a man's life is always, and especially to-day, a poor thing enough; but this poor thing consecrated to a great and holy cause may grow with it; and when a man has made to such a cause the sacrifice of his future, I believe that he ought to shrink from none of its consequences, none of its dangers. olics were opposed to his description of Catholicism: that they agreed with Bossuet rather than with de Maistre or de la Mennais: that they were Gallican, not Ultramontane, and were instinctively swayed by the apprehension so sensitively alive in England at this hour; namely, that what his beau idéal of a Church meant by liberty was, that she herself should be left free as air, whilst all other freedom of thought or action should be held dependent on her will. "When I mention religion," said Thwackum, "I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Montalembert went still further, for he identified religion and Christianity with the small section of the Catholic Church which then agreed with him. No wonder, therefore, that more lukewarm or (as we should say) more reason able Catholics stood aloof. he had to legislate upon the same subHe became a little more practical when ject, but in these Avenir days he and his clique exulted in their unpopularity. They longed to be persecuted, to be (metaphorically) stoned like St. Stephen or imprisoned like St. Paul. Then the agitation and excitement of the expedi tions undertaken for the propagation of their principles, far more than compensated for the discomfort and fatigue. Montalembert took charge of twenty-two departments, which he visited from time to time, when the means of communicaThe sentence was a fine of a hundred tion were very different from francs. "It is in the strength of this conviction that I appear to-day for the first time in an assembly of men. I know too well that at my age one has neither antecedents nor experience; but at my age, as at every other, one has duties and hopes. I have determined, for my part, to be faithful to both." He thus, on the most solemn occasion of his life, deliberately took his stand upon the principles to which he persistently adhered to his dying day; and the nobility of thought, the moral courage, the spirit of self-sacrifice which actuated him, are beyond cavil or dispute, whatever may be thought of the prudence or wisdom of his course. He here states that the powers of the present age, both in government and in opposition, were, by the grace of Heaven, equally hostile to Catholicism. Twelve years later, he stated that the press, the public, the learned bodies, the councils of state, were against him on the same subject in the proportion of ninety-nine to a hundred. How did this come to pass in a Catholic country? Or in what sense are such expressions to be understood? What he meant was, that the vast majority of Cath now. But "There were neither railways nor tele- Oh, who would not welcome that moment re- | first magnitude, conceived in utter igno turning, When passion first wak'd a new life through And his soul, like the wood that grows pre- flame? "I shall be pardoned," writes Montalembert, "for dwelling upon the events of this year, which were so memorable for us. There is no man, however obscure and little worth his life may have been, who does not at the end of his days feel himself drawn by an irresistible current towards the moment when the first fire of enthusiasm awoke his soul and trembled on his lips: there are none who do not breathe with a sort of intoxication the perfume of their recollections, and who do not feel themselves tempted to boast beyond measure of their charm and brilliancy. Happy and sad days, we say to ourselves-days devoured by work and passion, days such as one sees but once in one's life!" rance or forgetfulness of that traditional policy of Rome which Lord Macaulay strength. deems a main cause of her durability and "She thoroughly understood what no other church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects long established and richly endowed, is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it." She used Ignatius Loyola and St. Teresa: she would have used John Bunyan, John Wesley, Joanna Southcott, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, and Mrs. Fry. The founders of "L'Avenir" were just the sort of enthusiasts she wanted, so long as they could be kept within bounds; as long as they did no more than assert her paramount title to a veto on ecclesiastical appointments, and protest against her exclusion from the schools. But it was a very different matter to insist on her resenting the denial of her privileges by shaking off all connexion with the State or by refusing any revenue or mundane advantages at its hands. A month after his appearance before the Chamber of Peers, Lacordaire wrote, "Cruel as Time may be, he will take nothing from the delights (délices) of the Alluding to the prefect who figured in year which is just over: it will be eter-the burial case, Lacordaire told the nally in my heart, like a virgin who is just priests, "You would have made him turn dead." pale if, with your dishonoured God, staff in hand and hat on head, you carried Him to some hut built with planks of fir, vowing never to expose Him a second time to the insults of the temples of the State." This, Montalembert remarks, was tantamount to telling the clergy bluntly that they must renounce the budget of worship, "sole remaining wreck of their ancient and legitimate patrimony, sole guarantee of their material existence, renounce even the churches of which the State assumed to be the proprietor, to enter in full possession of the invincible forces and inexhaustible resources of modern liberty." Language of the same tendency has recently been used by a section of the Anglican Church, because they could not force their own peculiar views upon the rest. These halcyon days were now rapidly coming to an end. The circulation of "L'Avenir" never reached 3000: instead of being self-supporting, it, was a drain on the scanty resources of the society; which, having also to sustain the expense of prosecutions and propagandism, broke down. As the little band had contrived to place themselves very much in the position of Ishmael, and the clergy, headed by the episcopacy, were among the fellest of their foes, further appeals to an enlightened public were voted nugatory; and they formed the extraordinary step of submitting the crucial questions in dispute to the Pope. His Holiness was to decide whether "L'Avenir" was or was not entitled to the support of the Catholic world, and the journal was to be suspended till his sovereign will and pleasure should be made known. The suggestion came from Lacordaire: "We will carry our protest, if necessary, to the City of the Apostles, to the steps of the Confessional of Saint Peter, and we shall see who will stop the pilgrims of the God of Liberty." No one thought of stopping them: the more's the pity, for this expedition was a blunder of the Nor did "L'Avenir " stop here. It contended that no good or sound institution, sacred or profane, had anything to fear from the utmost freedom of inquiry, much less an institution like the Holy See founded on the eternal rock of truth: Moreover, it is not true in any sense that the evil is stronger than the good, and that the truth fights on earth with arms the inequality of which requires to be repaired by the aid of absolute power. If it were so, the truth would be very badly off, for absolute power has never worked but for itself. Is it by the aid of absolute power that Christianity was founded? Is it by the aid of absolute power that the heresies of the Lower Empire have been surmounted? Is it by the aid of absolute power that the Arians of the West were converted? Is it by the aid of absolute power that the philosophy of the eighteenth century has crumbled into dust? Persecuted truth has triumphed everywhere over protected and powerful error. Such is history. And now we are told that, if truth is reduced to combat error with its own weapons, in the open light of day, all is lost." Lacordaire and de la Mennais arrived at Rome on the last day of 1831. They were speedily rejoined by Montalembert, who had made a short stay at Florence. "From our arrival," he says, "the reserve with which we were everywhere received made it clear that we should not obtain the desired response. After having required of us an explanatory memoir, which was drawn up by Lacordaire, they left us three months without a word. The Cardinal Pacca wrote M. de la Mennais that the Pope, whilst doing justice to his services and his good intentions, had been displeased at seeing us stir up If the Pope and his advisers had been controversies and opinions to say the equally confident that the Church of least dangerous: that, however, he would Rome owed no more to absolute power have our doctrines examined, and that, as than the primitive Church of Christ, or this examination might be long, we might would rise the higher if cut free from its return to our own country. The Pope temporalities, they would have wished afterwards consented to receive us : he nothing better than the support of an treated us with the familiar kindness organ like "L'Avenir." But they would which was natural to him: he made us have been unaccountably wanting in not the semblance of a reproach, but the sagacity for which Lord Macaulay neither did he make the slightest allusion gives them credit, had they not pene- to the business which had brought us trated to the fallacy of such arguments at to Rome." a glance and drawn a widely different moral from history. They could not shut their eyes to the fact that spiritual supremacy attained its loftiest pitch in the Dark Ages, and has everywhere declined in proportion to the spread of knowledge. If it owes nothing to absolutism, does it owe anything to democracy? As well say at once that it has gained by the Reformation. The Pope, Leo X., who patronized literature and the arts, simply prepared the way for Luther. Intelligent travellers have declared that in traveling through Central Germany or Switzerland, looking merely to the external aspect of the country and the people, they could tell whether any given principality, canton, or district, was Catholic or Protestant. There was no mistaking the signs of industry, enterprise, and intellectual life in the one nor the dearth of them in the other. Are Spain, Portugal, Naples, Ireland, held in subjection to Rome by liberty? Or is it possible to contend that the Catholics have been worsted in Great Britain and Northern Europe because the fair field of free discussion has been denied to them? What are the chances that a free Church in a free people (the device of "L'Avenir") would necessarily remain the Catholic Church? Is the habit of passive obedience, or the habit of inquiry, best adapted to prepare the human mind for the doctrine of Infallibility? This, although far from a brilliant or flattering solution, was the most favourable they had any ground to hope. Lacordaire was quite prepared for it; and, on the whole, hardly regretted that he had come. It was his first visit to Rome, and he was not only vividly impressed by the genius of the place, but juster and broader views of ecclesiastical policy broke upon him. "The journalist, the bourgeois of 1830, the Democrat-Liberal, had comprehended at the first glance_not merely the majesty of the supreme Pontificate, but its difficulties, its long and patient designs, its indispensable ménagements for men and things of here below. In this noble heart the faith of the Catholic priest and the sense of duty had instantly got the better of all the fumes of pride, all the seductions of talent, all the intoxication of the struggle with the penetration bestowed by faith and humility, he anticipated the judgment on our pretensions which has been ratified by time, that grand auxiliary of the Church and of Truth." Not so de la Mennais, whose pride was mortified to the quick. His position was widely different from that of his young and comparatively obscure associates. He, "the last of the Fathers," to be neglected and snubbed on the scene of his former glories, in the very Vatican where his portrait had been hung by pontifical grace among the Saints! In vain did |