The page of history may, and often does, disclose to us the phenomena we allude to, as portrayed in the lives and conduct of many a brave spirit, who has nobly "struggled with the storms of fate." But, on the other hand, history alone is unable to teach us their true philosophy and source. And what is this but the great and divine secret which was once proclaimed from the holy mount, published since to all the nations of the world, and now visibly made known to man, in the mysteries of the Catholic faith, and the sacraments of its living Altar?

How truly catholic is the sentiment of the immortal bard, as expressed in the following language of the exiled prince, so familiar to us all!

"Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season's difference; as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind;
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say
This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

From many passages, of a similar catholic strain and tendency, which the writings of our poet so copiously exhibit, we cannot help being often reminded of his having lived in enviable nearness to the "ages of faith," and of the strong proof which they furnish us of a mind which must have been early and strongly imbued with the sacred traditions and wisdom of other and happier days. How strikingly, also, do they testify to the practical and remedial excellence of the Cross, whatever may be said of his own example, or the frailties of a nature which might yet confess, "probo meliora deteriora sequor!

Sir Humphrey Davy, after remarking upon the benign influence of the Christian faith, in seasons of prosperity, goes on to say, that it is only "in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and benefi

cially felt, when submission in faith, and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties become pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now renovated as an immortal hope."

To what, indeed, can we trace such remarkable and mysterious changes, except to the supernatural power of that truth which lives forever in the words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Of such, the feelings are already loosened from the world, and while they "die daily" to its impressions, whether proceeding from its lights or its shadows, theirs is a discipline to which they bow in thankfulness, and accept as the heavenly mean through which the rewards of an humble spirit are made to flow, being fraught with a peace and hope which earth can neither give nor take away. Such, in fact, is even the acknowledged necessity of this poverty of spirit towards the attractions of this passing scene, in order to the attainment of true content, that, without this grace, the prosperity of man be it as flattering as the earth, with all its praises, may afford, is, in sober truth, no better than an empty dream, or the mockery of a passing shadow. How often

does the page of history unfold to us the solemn confessions of those who have tasted the bitterness of a contrary spirit! And what are these but so many practical illustrations of the wisdom of that heaven-born humility, which, as it comes loaded with gifts from the Cross of Calvary, can enable us to bear up cheerfully under "the whips and scorns of time," and find in it a sure relief from all the disasters of our fallen state?

How faithfully is this truth depicted in the following language, which the poet puts in the mouth of the unfortunate Wolsey, in addressing his servant Cromwell!—

"Thus far hear me, Cromwell,

And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be,

And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me must more be heard-say then I laught thee;
Say, Wolsey, that once rode the waves of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ;

A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
Mark but my fall, and that which ruined me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition :
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
Though the image of his Maker, hope to win by't!"

And now, amidst all the depths and shoals of this life's troubled sea, where, we would ask, but in the Catholic Church, shall we find a sure, and tried, and perfect way? Her faith at once points us to the royal highroad of her holy Cross. But, in so doing, she leaves us not to the uncertain wandering of our own footsteps, or our own unaided light. She shows us that the Cross is not idly to be gazed upon, but to be borne and carried with us to our graves. While she teaches how we are to endure, and how to sanctify sorrow, she cautions us against that ruinous faith which would account the work of our redemption, which was once finished in our Forerunner according to the letter of the law, to be also finished in his followers, in the same sense and manner in which it was accomplished by Him, and Him alone. She points out to man the dreadful fallacy of his trusting to a bare and transient act of solitary faith, as any ground whatever of Christian hope in the purifying salvation of the Cross. All such, she plainly declares to him, "Shall be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand;"* a building which cannot endure the shock of this world's elements, because it is not founded upon the unity of the Christian's Rock. But the substance of her faith brings him to the incarnate union of the Man-God, who once was dead, but is risen again for our justification, in that He once suffered for us alone, according to the law, that we might, also, suffer and reign together with him as members of his own body; not, indeed, according to a sentence of law, but only after the Spirit of the resurrection, and the coming down from heaven of the Holy Ghost.

In this Spirit, she leads her disciple to "the passion of his Saviour, the crown of thorns, the drink of vinegar and gall."+ And these she teaches him, by the self-same Spirit, not to regard as mere historical and transient

* Matthew vii. 25.

+ Digby's "Ages of Faith."

events, finished only upon the wood of the Cross; but as living mysteries, still existing in his risen body, and in the reality of their actual participation within, by all his regenerate members, even now, and here on earth, and, at the same time, in the communion of the saints above. Through these, he learns what "he could never have gained from all the consolations of philosophy,"*"to estimate the value of being condemned to suffer bitterness, and yielding him in return for the proud and lofty spirit which he renounced, the power of preserving his peace while beholding man's unkindness; the power of reducing to a sweet calm that once restless and troubled sea of the heart;"" nay, even the faculty of converting pain, and misfortune, and the dire events of a calamitous life, into images of quiet beauty, on which the memory and imagination may dwell, almost with a poetic fondness."† "Who would not wish to have known, from the first moment of life, this great divine secret, proclaimed, indeed, from the Mount, and yet to many still a hidden mystery? Then youth would have been gentle as the breath of spring, and age as gifted as the sweet luxuriant season, when the powers of nature exhale a living balm for every sense; then, each once proud follower of earthly glory, might exclaim with Dante,

'Devoutly joy, ineffable as these

Had from the first and long time since been mine." "+

A Protestant, when, for the first time, he reads the lives of the canonized saints of the Church, will meet with many things which, in accordance with the principles of his own private and limited judgment, must appear to him, not only as incredible in themselves, but as unmingled foolishness and absurdity to his understanding. Their austerities and extraordinary love of mortification and self-punishment seem to him only as so many vestiges of barbarism-as the natural offspring of the dark ages, as the historians of his party call them-as the infatuations of monkish ignorance and superstition-or as the morbid workings of an unnatural and depraved appetite.

66

* Digby's " Ages of Faith." + Ibid.

+ Ibid.

The Catholic, on the contrary, knowing the evidence upon which the certainty of the facts is supported, and believing in the supernatural graces by which alone they can possibly be accounted for, sees in them nothing at variance with the fundamental principles of his belief, confirmed and established as it is by the universal sentiment of his ancient and divinely guided Church. The self-assumed theory that the age of miracles has passed away, he knows to be not only destitute of proof, but contrary to the common experience of mankind, as authenticated both by the testimony of the fathers, and of profane historians, and admitted also by the acknowledgments of many learned and distinguished Protestants themselves. He believes and knows that, in the words of Hamlet,

"In the middle of the fourth century," says Dr. Milner, in his End of Controversy, 66 happened that wonderful miracle, when the emperor Julian the Apostate, attempting to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, in order to disprove the prophecy of Daniel concerning it, (Dan. ix. 27,) tempests, whirlwinds, earthquakes, and fiery eruptions convulsed the scene of the undertaking, maiming or blasting the thousands of Jews and other laborers employed in the work, and, in short, rendering the completion of it utterly impossible. In the mean time, a luminous cross, surrounded with a circle of rays, appeared in the heavens, and numerous crosses were impressed on the bodies and garments of the persons present. These prodigies are so strongly attested by almost all the authors of the age, Arians and Pagans, no less than Catholics, that no one but a downright skeptic can call them in question. They have accordingly been acknowledged by the most learned Protestants...

Besides the testimony of the Fathers, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, and of the historians Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, &c.; these events are also acknowledged by Philostorgius the Arian, Ammianus Marcellinus the Pagan, &c. Bishop Warburton published a book called Julian, in proof of these miracles. They are also acknowledged by Bishop Halifax, Disc. p. 23."

Although the end of Dr. Conyers Middleton's "Free Enquiry," is to discredit the testimony of all the fathers, after the times of the first Apostles, and of all ecclesiastical writers down to the Reformation, and since that period, in order, by such an absurd and horrible libel upon the whole world, or human nature itself, to get rid of the DIVINE ATTESTATION in favor of the Catholic Church, he nevertheless affirms that, "The prevailing opinion of Protestants, namely, of Tillotson, Marshal, Dodwell, &c., is that miracles continued during the three first centuries. Dr. Water

land brings them down to the fourth, Dr. Beriman to the fifth. These unwarily betrayed the Protestant cause into the hands of its