John Lord

“ He is a monk still, but the monk is merged in the learned doctor and eloquent preacher. He does not yet even dream of attacking monastic institutions, or the Pope; he is a good Catholic in his obedience to authorities; but he hates the Middle Ages, and all their ghostly, funereal, burdensome, and technical religious customs. He is human, almost convivial,—fond of music, of poetry, of society, of friends, and of the good cheer of the social circle. The people love Luther, for he has a broad humanity. They never did love monks, only feared their maledictions. ”

“ He had not denied his master, like Peter; he had not recanted the faith like Cranmer; he had simply yielded for fear of bodily torments, and therefore was not sincere in the abjuration which he made to save his life. Nevertheless, his recantation was a fall, and in the eyes of the scientific world perhaps greater than that of Bacon. Galileo was false to philosophy and himself. Why did he suffer himself to be conquered by priests he despised? Why did so bold and witty and proud a man betray his cause? Why did he not accept the penalty of intellectual freedom, and die, if die he must? ”

“ Was it not in immaterial ideas, in patriotism, in heroism, in conceptions of ideal beauty, in speculations on the infinite and unattainable, in the songs which still inspire the minds of youth, in the expression which made marble live, in those conceptions of beauty and harmony which still give shape to the temples of Christendom? Was Rome more glorious with her fine roads and tables of thuja-root, and Falernian wines, and oysters from the Lucrine Lake, and chariots of silver, and robes of purple and rings of gold,—these useful blessings which are the pride of an Epicurean civilization? ”

“ He finds neither gold, nor jewels, nor silks, nor spices, nor any signs of civilization; only naked men and women, without any indication of wealth or culture or power. But he finds a soft and genial climate, and a soil of unparalleled fertility, and trees and shrubs as green as Andalusia in spring and birds with every variety of plumage, and insects glistening with every color of the rainbow; while the natives are gentle and unsuspecting and full of worship. Columbus is disappointed, but not discouraged. He sets sail to find the real Cipango of which he is in search. ”

“ If many great men and good men have failed to comprehend either his character or his system, how can a pleasure- loving and material generation, seeking to combine the glories of this world with the promises of the next, see much in him to admire, except as a great intellectual dialectician and system- maker in an age with which it has no sympathy? How can it appreciate his deep spiritual life, his profound communion with God, his burning zeal for the defence of Christian doctrine, his sublime self-sacrifice, his holy resignation, his entire consecration to a great cause? ”

“ But with all these advantages Luther was miserable. He felt the agonies of an unforgiven soul in quest of peace with God; he could not get rid of them, they pursued him into the immensity of an intolerable night. He was in despair. What could austerities do for HIM? He hungered and thirsted after the truth, like Saint Augustine in Milan. He had no taste for philosophy, but he wanted the repose that philosophers pretended to teach. He was then too narrow to read Plato or Boethius. He was a self-tormented monk without relief; he suffered all that Saint Paul suffered at Tarsus. ”

“ But I need not expatiate on the new ideas which Michael Angelo accepted, or the impulse he gave to art in all its forms, and to the revival of which civilization is so much indebted. Let us turn and give a parting look at the man,—that great creative genius who had no superior in his day and generation. Like the greatest of all Italians, he is interesting for his grave experiences, his dreary isolations, his vast attainments, his creative imagination, and his lofty moral sentiments. Like Dante, he stands apart from, and superior to, all other men of his age. ”

“ In other words, it was his aim to stimulate mankind, not to seek unattainable truth, but useful truth; that is, the science which produces railroads, canals, cultivated farms, ships, rich returns for labor, silver and gold from the mines,—all that purchase the joys of material life and fit us for dominion over the world in which we live. Hence anything which will curtail our sufferings and add to our pleasures or our powers, should be sought as the highest good. Geometry is desirable, not as a noble intellectual exercise, but as a handmaid to natural philosophy. ”

“ Then Luther rose, more powerful, more eloquent more majestic than before; he rose superior to himself. "What," said he, "keep the light of life from the people; take away their guide to heaven; keep them in ignorance of what is most precious and most exalting; deprive them of the blessed consolations which sustain the soul in trial and in death; deny the most palpable truths, because your dignitaries put on them a construction to bolster up their power! What an abomination! what treachery to heaven! what peril to the souls of men! ”

“ What an atom is this world in the light of science! Yet what dignity has man by the light of revelation! What majesty and power and glory has God! What goodness, benevolence, and love, that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice,—that we are the special objects of His providence and care! Is there an imagination so lofty that will not be oppressed with the discoveries that even the telescope has made? ”

“ He was an isolated man; grave, abstracted, lonely, yet not unhappy, since his world was that of glorious and exalting ideas, even those of grace, beauty, majesty, and harmony,—the world which Plato lived in, and in which all great men live who seek to rise above the transient, the false, and puerile in common life. He was also an original genius, remarkable in everything he attempted, whether as sculptor, painter, or architect, and even as poet. ”

“ Every great poet is as much an artist as the sculptor or the painter: and art survives learning itself. Varro, the most learned of the Romans, is forgotten, when Virgil is familiar to every school-boy. Cicero himself would not have been immortal, if his essays and orations had not conformed to the principles of art. Even an historian who would live must be an artist, like Voltaire or Macaulay. A cumbrous, or heavy, or pedantic historian will never be read, even if his learning be praised by all the critics of Germany. ”

“ Such were some of the lights and some of the enterprises of that great age, when the profoundest questions pertaining to philosophy, religion, law, and government were discussed with the enthusiasm and freshness of a revolutionary age; when men felt the inspiration of a new life, and looked back on the Middle Ages with disgust and hatred, as a period which enslaved the human soul. But what peculiarly marked that period was the commencement of those marvellous discoveries in science which have enriched our times and added to the material blessings of the new civilization. ”

“ The loves of savages are the loves of brutes. The more exalted the character and the soul, the greater is the capacity of love, and the deeper its fervor. It is not the object of love which creates this fervor, but the mind which is capable of investing it with glories. There could not have been such intensity in Dante's love had he not been gifted with the power of creating so lofty and beautiful an ideal; and it was this he worshipped,—not the real Beatrice, but the angelic beauty he thought he saw in her. ”

“ And who gave the last support, who raised the last barrier, against that inundation of destructive pleasures in which some see the most valued fruits of human invention, but which proved a canker that prepared the way to ruin? It was that pious Emperor who learned his wisdom from a slave, and who set a haughty defiance to all the grandeur and all the comforts of the highest position which earth could give, and spent his leisure hours in the quiet study of those truths which elevate the soul,— truths not taught by science or nature, but by communication with invisible powers. ”

“ Michael Angelo not only created, but he reproduced. He reproduced the glories of Grecian and Roman art. He restored the old civilization in his pictures, his statues, and his grand edifices. He revived a taste for what is imperishable in antiquity. As such he is justly regarded as an immortal benefactor; for it is art which gives to nations culture, refinement, and the enjoyment of the beautiful. Art diverts the mind from low and commonplace pursuits, exalts the imagination, and makes its votary indifferent to the evils of life. It raises the soul into regions of peace and bliss. ”

“ Is the time to be hailed when all religions will be considered by the philosopher as equally false and equally useful? Is there nothing more cheerful for us to contemplate than what the old Pagan philosophy holds out,—man destined to live like brutes or butterflies, and pass away into the infinity of time and space, like inert matter, decomposed, absorbed, and entering into new and everlasting combinations? Is America to become like Europe and Asia in all essential elements of life? Has she no other mission than to add to perishable glories? ”

“ The greatest lights of the world have gone out in martyrdom, to be extinguished, however, only for a time, and then to loom up again in another age, and burn with inextinguishable brightness to remotest generations; as examples of the power of faith and truth in this wicked and rebellious world,—a world to be finally redeemed by the labors and religion of just such men, whose days are days of sadness, protest, and suffering, and whose hours of triumph and exaltation are not like those of conquerors, nor like those whose eyes stand out with fatness, but few and far between. ”

“ Poets are the great artists of language. They even create languages, like Homer and Shakspeare. They are the ornaments of literature. But they are more than ornaments. They are the sages whose sayings are treasured up and valued and quoted from age to age, because of the inspiration which is given to them,—an insight into the mysteries of the soul and the secrets of life. A good song is never lost; a good poem is never buried, like a system of philosophy, but has an inherent vitality, like the melodies of the son of Jesse. ”

“ At last she died, when he was twenty-seven, and left him—to use his own expression—"to ruminate on death, and envy whomsoever dies." To console himself, he read Boethius, and religious philosophy was ever afterwards his favorite study. Nor did serenity come, so deep were his sentiments, so powerful was his imagination, until he had formed an exalted purpose to write a poem in her honor, and worthy of his love. "If it please Him through whom all things come," said Dante, "that my life be spared, I hope to tell such things of her as never before have been seen by any one." ”

“ Wrapped up in those glorious visions which come only to a man of superlative genius, and which make him insensible to heat and cold and scanty fare, even to reproach and scorn, this intrepid soul, inspired by a great and original idea, wandered from city to city, and country to country, and court to court, to present the certain greatness and wealth of any state that would embark in his enterprise. But all were alike cynical, cold, unbelieving, and even insulting. He opposes overwhelming, universal, and overpowering ideas. ”

“ Thus died one of the greatest and best men of his age, one of the truest and purest whom the Catholic Church has produced in any age. He was stern, uncompromising, austere, but a reformer and a saint; a man who was merciful and generous in the possession of power; an enlightened statesman, a sound theologian, and a fearless preacher of that righteousness which exalteth a nation. He had no vices, no striking defects. He lived according to the rules of the convent he governed with the same wisdom that he governed a city, and he died in the faith of the primitive apostles. ”

“ If Elizabeth could bring herself, out of respect to her wounded honor and slighted kindness and the dignity of the realm and the majesty of the law, to surrender into the hands of justice one whom she so tenderly loved and magnificently rewarded, even when the sacrifice cost her both peace and life, snapped the last cord which bound her to this world,—may we not forgive Bacon for the part he played? ”

“ And do all men worship these forms of beauty which the imagination creates? Can any woman, or any man, seen exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship? And is any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire emotions which prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends? Can a woman's smiles incite to Herculean energies, and drive the willing worshipper to Aonian heights, unless under these smiles are seen the light of life and the blessedness of supernatural fervor? ”

“ Which is worse, the superstition and narrowness which darken the mind and the spirit, or that unbounded toleration which smiles on those audacious infidels who cloak their cruel attacks on the faith of Christians with the name of a progressive civilization?—and so far advanced that one of these new lights, ignorant, perhaps, of everything except of the fossils and shells and bugs and gases of the hole he has bored in, assumes to know more of the mysteries of creation and the laws of the universe than Moses and David and Paul, and all the Bacons and Newtons that ever lived? ”

“ What is the marketable value of friendship or of love? What makes the dinner of herbs sometimes more refreshing than the stalled ox? What is the material profit of a first love? What is the value in tangible dollars and cents of a beautiful landscape, or a speaking picture, or a marble statue, or a living book, or the voice of eloquence, or the charm of earliest bird, or the smile of a friend, or the promise of immortality? In what consisted the real glory of the country we are never weary of quoting,—the land of Phidias and Pericles and Demosthenes? ”

“ Then all that man has done, all that man can do, in his own boastful thought, will be seen, in the light of the celestial verities, to be indeed a vanity and a failure, not of human ingenuity and power, but to realize the happiness which is only promised as the result of supernatural, not mortal, strength, yet which the soul in its restless aspirations never ceases its efforts to secure,—everlasting Babel-building to reach the unattainable on earth.
Now the revival of art in Italy was one of the great movements in the series of human development. ”

“ What mortal woman ever expressed the ethereal beauty depicted in a Madonna of Raphael or Murillo? And what man ever had such a sublimity of aspect and figure as the creations of Michael Angelo? Why, "a beggar," says one of his greatest critics, "arose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his infants are men, and his men are giants." And, says another critic, "he is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which exhibits the origin, progress, and final dispensation of the theocracy. ”

“ A man who stamped his opinions on his own age and succeeding ages can be regarded only as a very extraordinary genius. A frivolous and pleasure-seeking generation may not be attracted by such an impersonation of cold intellect, and may rear no costly monument to his memory; but his work remains as the leader of the loftiest class of Christian enthusiasts that the modern world has known, and the founder of a theological system which still numbers, in spite of all the changes of human thought, some of the greatest thinkers and ablest expounders of Christian doctrine in both Europe and America. ”

“ All they could do was to fill the world with long beards and long words; whereas Bacon's philosophy has lengthened life, mitigated pain, extinguished disease, built bridges, guided the thunderbolts, lightened the night with the splendor of the day, accelerated motion, annihilated distance, facilitated intercourse; enabled men to descend to the depths of the earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail against the wind. ”

“ And as Homer was the creator of Grecian literature, so Dante, by his immortal comedy, gave the first great impulse to Italian thought. Hence poets are great benefactors, and we will not let them die in our memories or hearts. We crown them, when alive, with laurels and praises; and when they die, we erect monuments to their honor. They are dear to us, since their writings give perpetual pleasure, and appeal to our loftiest sentiments. They appeal not merely to consecrated ideas and feelings, but they strive to conform to the principles of immortal art. ”