The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-06
PERE HYACINTHE.
The Career of the Great French Divine.

From the London Telegraph.
Although still &C cmparatively young, Pere
Hyacinthe stands among the chief pulpit
forces of the Romish Church. Joining the
order of barefooted Carmelites, he speedily
won distinction by his scholarship and his
culture, no less than by his extraordinary
power of speech. At an early age he pro-
missed to add bright star to the galaxy of
French pulpit eloquence But, from the time
of his first utterances, he was regarded with
suspicious glances by leading dignitaries of
Rome. He was seen to be tainted with
Liberalism. His words had not that tone of
absolute submission to the Holy See which is
now coveted by the most powerful among
the priests of France. On France, almost as
much as on Ireland, the Ultramontane party
has laid its grasp. Much of the power which
the Jesuits have more than once lost in that
country they have won back Such dioceses
as that of Orleans are ruled with rod of iron,
in accordance with the dictates of the Ultra
montane creed; and the prelates who repre-
sent the old Liberalism of France inspire in
men like Bishop Dupanloup much the same
hostility with which the extreme High Church
dignitaries of England regard their extreme
Broad Church rivals.
The Ultramontane party, however, have
been forced to fight hard battle with their
Liberal foes. They have had to contend
with band of men to whom nature had given
extraordinary intellectual gifts, and whose
piety it was impossible for the jealousy of
orthodoxy itself to impugn. Such men as
Lammenais, Lacorlaire, and Montalembert
fancied that they could bridge over the
chasm between the theological creed of the
fifteenth century and the political creed of
the nineteenth. In the encounter Lamme-
nais was so utterly oyerthrown by the men,
bers of his own Church, that he cut loose the
ties which bound him, not only to Rome, but
to revealed religion itself. Lacordaire died
while the struggle Was yet at its hottest, and
Montalemberts record has yet TO be written.
To the same band Of enthusiasts, although he
occupies a less ex2lted place, belongs the
present Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur
Darboy. An ardent Liberal as well as an
ardent Catholic, Monseigneur Darboy has
more than once been the object of Papal
| suspicion, and has been forced to reaffirm
his devotion to the Holy See. But his chief
| offense was the admission of Pere Hyacinthe
| to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. To that historic
church the intellect and the religious fervor
of Paris foclled when attracted by such elo-
| quence as that of the barefooted Carmelite.
And the eager crowd was not disappointed.
| Lettered and unlettered, academicians and
! eGScierS, felt the fascination of the great
| preacher. After the great church had been
| filled in every part, man of short stature
and singularly bright, prepossessing face,
would ascend the pulpit and address the ex-
pectant multitude. His oratory was strikingly
natural. 1t was very much like the best
| speaking of the forum transferred to the sane
tuary, and made holy by the infusion of
sacred themes. 1t was the reverse of eccle-
| siastica About the Church the father did
not say much about doctrines he said still
less; and about the clergy he said little that
was not a rebulle. On the other hand, he
made the aisles OF Notre Dame resound with
the most uncompromising liberalism In
words of burning eloquence he taught
men that they owed duties to each
! other as citizens, and that as fathers
of families they were lowered with rights
which even the Church could not take away.
The claim of the clergy to ''direct" the con-
science of the wife, and to set aside the autho-
rity of the husband, was a pretension which
Pere Hyacnthe denounced with that pecu-
liarly cutting, because personal eloquence,
which men can WELD when assailing the men,
bers of their own order He asserted the
right of the husband to be supreme in his
own household, and the duty of the citizen
to obey the laws OF his own country. I'm
moved by the threats of Rome, he raised up
that old banner of French liberalism, on
which was inscribed devotion to the family
and to the nation. Without directly assailing
the priestly pretensions of the Ultramontane
party, he set forth doctrines which made those
pretenSlonS null and VOID. Hence the men
of France listened to the French preacher
with undisguised rapture A religious creed
which did not compel them to break off all
visible connection with Rome, and yet left
them masters in their own households and
citizens of their own country, was the very
thing for which they pined. On the
other hand, the Ultramontane party of
Paris were furious against the dis
courses of the Carmelite. All his elo-
quent denunciations of the vices which
are preying on the life of France were power
less to still the fierce cry of heresy The
preacher was assailed with that cry; and, at
last even the courageous Archbishop of Paris
} SO far bent before the storm, that he put an
end to the series of Carmelite discourses, and
invited the chief rival of Pere Hyacinthe to
fill the pulpit of Notre Dame. The new
preacher, Pere Felix strove hard to undo the
mischief wrought 10y his gifted predecessor
A Jesuit and lowered with the graces of his
J own most accomplished order, he lent all the
riches of his rhetoric to vilify Protestantism
and to preach the duty of uncompromisne
, submission to Holy Church, as represented
by its chief bishop. But the effort was il
vain. The echoes of Hyacinthes eloquenct
l still fingered on mems ears. At last, however
t the words OF calumny won over to the side OF
r his foes the chief dgnitary of his order, who
O had before encouraged the great preacher
= with loving words. In letter to Hyacntht
the Father-General of the barefooted Carme
ltes blamed him for doing the very thing
s which he had previously encouraged him t,
Il perform, and commanded him to use q Ian
guage' or to preserve silence, which woult
TlN hn tI.rl