Correspondence
[Rambler, July 1859.]
Sir,—I cannot resist writing a few lines upon the letter signed O. H. in your last Number.
With much in it I agree; but O. H.’s argument overlooks altogether the greatest illustration the world has ever seen of an exclusively national Church,—I mean the chosen people of God in the Old Testament. We see there a people who were, with few exceptions, the sole depositaries of truth in the world; a people to whom God had expressly promised temporal prosperity as a reward of faith and obedience; with whom God had condescended to make a compact, binding Himself to protect them by his visible power, if they would obey His law; to whom He promised a land flowing with milk and honey, and whom He led thither through a series of stupendous miracles.
Yet, when we read the Old Testament, we find their history as full of punishments as of favours; and if we turn to secular ancient history, we cannot fail to perceive that in arts, arms, commerce, naval power, philosophy, literature, and weight and influence in the then known world, they were inferior to many other nations, who were, for the most part, heathen,—to Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans.
Now this appears to me absolutely opposed to the argument that temporal prosperity is a note of the Church; for this, observe, is an instance so complete, that it can never occur again. No people will ever be able to look upon itself as the exclusive choice of the Most High. It is the character of the modern Church to be Catholic, to embrace all nations in her fold, and to be as “a field in which the enemy hath sown cockle:” and we are expressly told that this peculiarity is to continue to the end of the world, if not in all probabi1ity to increase. It seems to me, then, that if, as is in point of fact the case, divine punishment is quite as characteristic of the history of the chosen people of God as divine protection; if, as is likewise the case, that people were inferior in temporal greatness and prosperity to many others; if, moreover, as cannot be denied, that people were marked out from the rest of the world in a manner quite different to what any Catholic nation ever can be,—then it follows that we should not expect to see nations prosperous in proportion to their Catholicity. I am far from saying the connection may not exist, I should be inclined to think it does; but it follows the ordinary laws of God’s providence, which are, and ever must be, a mystery to us. Moreover, since the coming of our Saviour on earth, humiliation, suffering, and poverty are to be looked on as His livery; and His prophecies to His Church rather foretell thorns than roses, strife than peace, and humiliation than triumph. Of course, the lowly virtues of the New Testament are applicable to different states of life in different proportions; but there must be a recognition of them in the king as well as in the hermit. Heroic, by which I mean self-sacrificing, virtues are, as a general rule, less applicable to fathers of families, simply because, all duties being relative, the duty of a man to his wife and children comes before a larger number of more distant duties. This it is which has led, in the Catholic Church, to the celibacy of the clergy; which is no dogma, but a mere consequence of what I may call the division of labour consequent on a more developed state of Christian civilisation. The attire of the glorified Church is to be wrought about with a variety of ornament. Meanwhile, that temporal prosperity should frequently be withheld from the Church, that she should be often bated and despised, that she should be defaced by “spot and wrinkle,” that she should be to many a stumbling-block,—all this seems to me nothing more than what we might be led to expect.
1st. Because she is the body of a Head crowned with thorns.
2d. Because she is like the net, which held many bad as well as good fish.
3d. Because it is easier for her individual members to excel in one thing rather than in many; and therefore intellect, and even moral virtues, will frequently be found dissociated from the Church, which, in imitation of her Divine Master, calls especially the poor, the sinful, and the ignorant: not that she calls them peculiarly, but because her including them repels the rich, the self-righteous, and the intellectual.
4th. Because where there is “community of saints,” there is probably, to a great extent, community of temporal rewards and punishments; as in the Old Testament the innocent suffered with the guilty, and in the New the innocent for the guilty.
5th. That as proximity to grace augments responsibility, and diminishes the chance of excuses of ignorance, so it increases the guilt of those who wilfully choose evil rather than good. Sacraments, humanly speaking, cause sacrileges, and faith blasphemy; and this simply through the exercise of man’s free-will. We should never forget those awful words of Simeon applied to our Lord, “that He was set for the fall and resurrection of many in Israel;” and then we shall wonder less at what seem the more devilish forms of unbelief in the immediate proximity of all that is most holy.
6th. That given an imperfect world, it is easier to bring it to acquiesce in a law of expediency than to submit to one which aims at a definition of right and wrong.
For all these reasons, my common sense is not the least hurt by the fact of the absence of temporal prosperity in the Church in any particular country and at any particular time; though sometimes I might expect to see them culminate together. If I speak of O. H.’s letter as containing a half-truth, I claim no more for my own; for I look upon it as a proof of ignorance as well as presumption, to despise truths which must be partial, because they are shown forth by a human intelligence. Out of the dogmas of the Church I admit no complete truths.
I am Sir, your obedient servant,
F.
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