The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-21


mission, and that he exposed himself to the
penalties which have been visited upon him Iy
the executive officers of his order. His
Church provides a mode of procedure for the
secularization of priests desiring to renounce
their monastic VOWS, but Father Hyacinthe did
not choose to avail himself of IL. He declined
to recognize an authority which, as he thought,
had been abused in his person, which was de-
grading the priesthood, corruptng the hierarchy
and sapping the vital forces of the Church. He
thought II his duty to stand TO the faith he had
conscientiously espoused, and which he
believed Evangelical, rather than succumb
to what he regarded as organized error and
pharisaical oppression. 1t was the duty of some
one to challenge the wolf which in sleeps
clothing was deyouring the faithful. He nat
urally enough concluded that there was no filter
person than himself to do it. Nor in this was
he mistaken. His piety his well-known devo-
ton to the Church; his eminent gifts of speech
which promised him every possible distinction
that Rome can confer, and which therefore pro-
tect his motives from degrading suspicious, all
seemed to conspire to make his the voice that
should cry I" in the wilderness, to prepare the
way of the Lord and make his paths straight"
Since Luther there has been no such signal
revolt against the authority of the Romsh hier-
arcy. Fenelon professed doctrines which Louis
XIV. compelled the Pope and his Cardinals to
condemn Though Fenelon defended his Mar
iRes up to the last hour OF the deliberations at
Rome with unreentng earnestness, the moment
Rome spoke, though by bare majority of the
Cardinals, he succumbed and publicly de-
nounced his book from the pulpit of his own
cathedral. Lammenais revolted against the
abuses of the Papal Government, but unhap-
PLY his religion had the Church. not the Bible
for its base. and he wandered away into rational
ism and unbeef.
Lacordaire hovered all his life on the borders
OF the Church, forever preaching a broader
Christianity than was tolerated at Rome, always
tormented with the restraints imposed upon his
tongue and conscience by his ecclesiastical supe-
rior, and always in state of mental and moral
insubordination to the Papal hierarchy. But
Lacordare had not the physical health nor ami
NAL force necessary to brave the consequences
of an open revolt. He constitutionally
tmd; his monastic life had gradually incapa-
citated him for comprehending the vast re-
sources for such contest which the living
world around him, with the Divine blessing,
would have supplied, and he succumbed to the
rigors of ecclesiastical discipline and to
disease, induced no doubt by his inability to
live the complete life for which he had been
created. He fell u prey to sort of dry rot,
which lastens, sooner or later, upon all who
commit their conscences to the keeping of fell
low sinners, who seek TO escape sin by fleeing
from temptation rather than by fighting and
overcoming it, and who fancy that the best way
of keeping the commandments is to spend all
ones time in reciting them.
The elOquent Bishop of Orleans is also one of
those representative men, too earnest and en-
ightened Il Christian 10 accept the perverse
follies of the Syllabus but instead of taking his
stand against it, he set himself to work, as soon
as it appeared, to prove that it meant something
very different from what it said and that in
stead of being in conflict it was in harmony with
the doctrines proclaimed at Malines. This dis
ingenious plea for the Papal Government was
attributed by his partisans TO his worthy desire
to avoid discussions in the Church. He preferred
to see 1t prey to error rather than to schism-
to surrender the shepherds crook to the wolf
than to have the flock scattered by learning their
peril.
The consequence Is, that this gifted and ad-
mirable prclatc, instead of remaining what his
genius designed him to be, Il controlling power
in the Church Of Christ, has by degrees parted
with his birthright, and is now the reluctant but
unressting instrument Of u devastating Ultra
mOntanism. Like Lammenais and Lacordare
and Feneon he has not proved equal to his op-
portunitics. Like them, he rejected the COM
mandments of God that he might keep the tradi-
ton OF the elders" Like them. too he has
always been toiling for reforms but accomplish
ing none, because he had more faith in the
Church than in Providence. He made flesh his
arm"
1t was not so with Luther. Thus far it has
not been so with Father Hyacinthe. VIII he,
too, fall by the way, or is he to share the reward
reserved for those who endure unto the end
- Father Hyacinthe, it is believed,
has thus far followed his convictions
faithfully. When his conscience told
him distinctly that Roman theology was not
mfallbe theology, he refuse to acceptit as such;
when his conscience told him that the temporal
power of the Pope was maintained at the eX-
pensc OF his legitimate spiritual influence, that
il was an element of weakness rather than of
strength to the Church of Christ, he refused any
longer to cOuntenance or defend it. When he
found pontifical allocutions and the canons of
councils usurpiug the place and authority of the
Bible in the Church. he chose to stay with the
Bible rather than 90 with its papal substitute.
In this firm faith in God and the right, in this
bold rejection of all compromises with the
priesthood of error, he alone of all the illustrous
rcformers OF Catholicism since Luther holds an
apostolic attitude. Will he maintain it?
To surrender deliberately and voluntarily the
most cherished affections of ones heart is fear
full trial for any man. Few are equal to it.
With Father Hyacinthe the Church of Rome
had represented all that was most pure and
lovely on earth. His life had been spent in de-
corating it with imaginary charms. To his
youthful vision it was the New Jerusalem
coming down from God out of heaven, with
walls OF jasper, gates of pearl, and streets OF
gold He finally awoke from his illusion, and
found that temptation and SIN reap their harvests
at Rome as regularly us se"here, and that
"God alone is great
Father Hyacinthe has no quarrel with the
Catholic Church, but with its abuses. He wisely
thinks that its maladies. like those of the human
system, are TO be cured from within and not
from without; that the remedy must be applied
| to the heart, not to the skin. He does not,
| therefore, intend TO abandon his Church,
| but to labor for it. He wisely declines TO take
| refuge in any other religious organization, for
| he knows that the vices of which he complains
in his Church belong to the universal human
| heart, and, in one shape or another, are likely
| to present themselves in all denominations. He
has, therefore, given the world to understand
| that what capacities of usefulness remain to
him will be consecrated to the publication and
| edificaton of the Church in which he was
reared, aud which he thinks has enjoyed aud
| continues 10 enjoy, at least, as much of Gods
| favor as any other.
Naturalists tell lis that the sparrow abandoas
| eggs which she discovers have been handled. aud
81, offsr ,iuI,S fapl