Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1869-03-31

at least to honor and reverend,
those who do. But to do this it il
not necessary to enter into a con.
vent, and those who do enter into
a convent may find from this case
that they do but encounter tempta-
tions of a baser and a meaner ma
ture. Dragged into 'the light OF
common day." judged of by CON-
mon understanding, this life loses
all its romantic character, and turns
out to be a very poor and ordinary
affair indeed. Little sins created by
silly rules foolishly enforced, child
ish penances for childish faults, boots
worn round the neck and busters
worn upon the head, pins and nee
dies watched for as carefully as a
miser counts up his silver or his
gold, all simplicity of character de-
stroyed by perpetual and petty self
consciousness and self-watchfulness,
all independence of mind crushed
out under abject humiliation (Which
is very different thing, indeed,
from true humility)-this is what,
as it appears to us, convent life has
come down TO in the nineteenth
century-at all events, as admins
tered in the Convent of Our Lady
of Mercy at Hull, and under the
care of the defendants in this &C.
ton. l hope, gentlemen, that one
good result of this case may be to
show men and women throughout
The length and breadth of the land
what utter rubbish all this is; what
parody it is upon the stern, sim
pie, manly sense of the teaching Ito
use no higher names) of st. Peter
and st. Paul Not, indeed, immor-
al, in the ordinary sense of the
word, but dull, and unattractive,
and prosaic, and utterly unsuited to
all the best, and greatest, and most |
crying needs of the world around
us. Speaking, gentlemen, to
Roman Catholics - in older and
sterner times, when the world was |
harder, and men were rougher,
though more simple-I can mag
inc that the great monastic system
of the Middle Ages may have had
its recommendations as well as fails
ings, and that in that state of
things its virtues and vices, its good
and its evil, may have been more
evenly balanced. But | cannot help
thinking that even then people who
devoted themselves to that life imi-
tated too exclusively one part of the
life of our Divine Lord and forgot
the other; they remembered and
initiated the forty days in the will
derness and the lonely hours in the
garden or on the mountain, and
they failed to bear in mind the mar
rage of Cana and the feast of
Bethany. Do not suppose | mean
TO make any attack upon life Of
or TO deny that there
may be persons TO whom such life
may have a stern and austere at
traction. There may be men and
women whose duty it is to separate
themselves from the world, and who
may find some kind of serene salts.
faction in going along their lonely
path, if it be the path of christian
hope, kept fresh by christian
charity and lightened by christian
loubt They may find that they
outwear the temptations Of passion
md outlive the asperities Of their
.emper, and may feel that their day
light has begun and ended amid in
luences of this kind. But, if it be,
ct it be some simple and ineligible
system, founded upon the necessi-
les of human nature, and admins
cred according to it, And / can
Tot but think that the miserable
which the case has pre-
iented, the petty personalities, the
litter travesty of the religion of an
EQUITY which has been displayed
o us in the course of this inquiry
all this is not the life which is
iuited to the present time, or
adapted to the wants of the age in
which we live.