Various

“ Beautiful—sadly, solemnly beautiful—are the remains of Ireland’s ancient grandeur; but though her splendor may have passed away; though she be no longer “the school of Christendom”; though her abbeys and monasteries, her churches and towers and sculptured crosses, lie mostly heaps of wayside ruins, still her faith, her wondrous faith, is fresh and strong as in those bygone ages. As it was in those days of old when the fervent piety of her sons led them to distant lands, apostles of religion and science, so is Ireland’s faith now, warm and active as ever. ”

“ There is a power of instinctive recoil by which some natures are saved from being destroyed by the shock of a great blow. The senses shut their inner doors at the jar of the enemy’s approach, and the soul, in some remote privacy of its being, arms itself before coming forth to see who knocks at its portal and bids it to battle. But for this merciful interposition, it would have fared hard with Dick Rowan, when, struck by the lightning of a glance, the framework on which all his life had been built up gave way without a moment’s warning. ”

“ One who disdained the thought of diluting Catholic doctrine to suit the delicate palate of the age, who was regardless of the opinion of men, who plumed his pinions for a kind of audacious flight into the lofty ether in which saints alone are wont to soar and poise in contemplation, who threw off all drapery from the glorious form of Catholic truth, and loudly called on all men to gaze and worship, is the one who wins the confidence and captivates the hearts of the greatest number of the church’s lost and estranged children. ”

“ What can be more base and cowardly than for those who have a higher place in society than their fellows, and who have ordinarily risen from the ranks of the poor, laboring class of our Catholic people, to desert or regard with apathy that sacred cause for which their ancestors suffered and died, and for the sake of which they have sought an asylum in this free country, where they have found success and prosperity? Here they have found that inestimable boon, liberty of conscience, freedom to profess and practise their religion, and to provide for their posterity the means of doing the same. ”

“ Never was there a more cruel and bloodthirsty party, one redeemed by fewer virtues or blackened by more or greater crimes, or more deserving the execration of mankind, than that which these Orangemen represent and delight to honor. Is it no insult to us free-born Americans for them to come here and flaunt in our faces their banners stained with the blood of the innocent and the good, branded by the widow’s curse, and wet with the orphan’s tears—symbols of ages of wrong, oppression, and religious intolerance and persecution? ”

“ Germain, where there is nothing beautiful to strike the eye, nothing artistic to make the heart beat. Plain and even unsightly, tawdry and faded, as all churches are whose history lies between the dreaded persecution of the sixteenth century and the Gothic revival of the nineteenth, St. Germain yet possesses that untold charm which the Italians so broadly but accurately describe by the word simpatico. Sympathy! yes, that is it. It breathes on us from every corner; it is the atmosphere of the little church; it softens every incongruity, and sweetly blinds us to every defect. ”

“ Here is everyday Christianity; here is the inner working of that silent, God-wielded mechanism whose outward robes and draperies only come to us in the shape of those glittering festas; here is the real work, the real core of things, the heart whose pulsation alone gives meaning to all that external magnificence, the sun of which those ceremonies are the radiance, the consuming fire of which that glorious ritual is but the outgoing heat and the coruscant light. ”

“ Even if we were the majority of the American people, as we are not, nor likely to be to-day, to-morrow, or the day after, you would be in no danger, for we understand liberty as well as you do, appreciate it more highly, love it better, and have made greater sacrifices for it than you can imagine. Not a few of us have fled hither from the tyranny and oppression of Protestant governments, expatriated ourselves for the sake of liberty, and do you believe us such fools as to destroy it the moment we have found it? ”

“ Childhood passed in plenty and obedience. Ploughing and reaping came only in their seasons, and, while kings and princes tended flocks, labor was worship and life was not all drudgery—there was some time for happiness and God. Then came the curse of cunning and trade and cities. Here began a fiercer strife, and, instead of the accidental miseries of drought and famine, men learned to fear beggary. And, now that craft and commerce are supreme, slavery is universal. No more days of festival, no more years of jubilee! You, George Peters, wretch that you are, are the bond-slave of Hawkins & Smith. ”

“ In the dim twilight of an October evening, a rich man prepared to leave the vast treasures accumulated by a fruitless life. Fruitless, I say, for though his increasing millions ranked him a merchant prince of the great metropolis, yet the gold had hardened and crusted and metallized his heart—fusing a subtle poison that destroyed the softer instincts of his nature. Therefore, instead of bearing upward a Godward soul on prayerful incense, those last pulses concentrated in one bitter feeling against the daughter whose faith had won from him the intense hate of his life. ”

“ There is no object in nature that delights me like a beautiful gem. They are the good acts of the earth. A ruby is an act of love, a sapphire an act of faith, an emerald an act of hope, a diamond an act of joyful adoration. Pearls are tears of sorrow for the dead, opals are tears of sorrow for sin. The opal, you know, is the only gem that cannot be imitated.”
“So you wanted the carbuncle,” Carl said, much pleased. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I waited till I knew that you cared nothing about it,” Edith answered. ”

“ Do you not hold that every one is subject in all things whatsoever to the infallible authority of the Holy Scriptures? Well, how can the subjection of our whole life—religious, moral, domestic, social, and political—to the authority of an infallible book be less incompatible with civil and religious liberty than its subjection to an infallible Pope? If the Pope is really infallible, he can enjoin nothing in faith or morals not enjoined by the law of God. Do you pretend that subjection to the law of God is incompatible with civil and religious liberty? ”

“ So rough, so uniform, so commonplace is the aspect of the crowd, that these things are only visible to spiritual sight, to the eye of the soul; and, if visible even to our darkened organs of spiritual understanding, how much more clearly and far more touchingly to the eye of eternal Wisdom and fathomless Love! What a rose-garden is a church full of humble communicants before the sight of God! ”

“ But whatever fate may be reserved for long-tried Ireland in the future, however disconsolate her present, every Irishman’s heart should glow with pride and love when he remembers the glory of her early days—glory such as no other country ever possessed—glory of which no centuries of relentless tyranny can deprive her—the glory of having been, when all was dark around, the home of learning and the fatherland of saints! ”

“ Are those bound to read or interpret the Bible for themselves who know not even how to read? These are reckoned to be at least nineteen-twentieths of mankind; shall they receive no religious instructions till they have learned to read? What shall we say of those who—and they are the bulk of mankind—obliged to toil incessantly to sustain their bodily existence, have no time to learn to read, much less to study diligently the sacred Scriptures, even if they could read? What are we to say of children who are too young to read and understand the Bible for themselves, and yet are old enough to sin? ”

“ Although Lourdes is a small town, there is a continual passing to and fro upon the road to the grotto, a stream of men, women, priests, and carriages, as in the streets of a large city.
When the pleasant weather comes, and the sun, overcoming the cold of winter, opens in the midst of flowers the gates of spring, the faithful of the neighborhood begin to bestir themselves for the pilgrimage to Massabielle, no longer one by one, but in large parties. From ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues’ distance, these strong mountaineers come on foot in bodies of one or two thousand. ”

“ Florent, under the shadow of its semicircular hills that look down upon the Loire, where the little islet of —— sits like a brooding swan midway in its waters. The night had fallen, but the moon was not yet up, and the darkness was only lightened by the snowy reflex of the landscape. A bank of cloud hung like a heavy curtain over the hill, and hid away the moon. Somehow Gaston was glad of the darkness. But it was in vain that he strove to make it dark within. No outer darkness could conceal from him the workings of his heart. ”

“ At the château now he was the baron’s constant companion. He led the old man little by little to interest himself once more in the duties of life—in plans for ameliorating the condition of some of the poor vassals—in some improvements in the château. Before two years had passed the old man seemed to love him like a son. Yet often a cloud passing over the weary face, a deep sigh, a sudden indifference to all earthly things, betrayed the lifelong grief of the baron’s heart, and the thought still kept of her whom that heart so truly loved but would not pardon. ”

“ The entire sacrifice of all human affection has not yet been accomplished. My life has been one continual combat, and the powerful influences of religion itself are not always able to repress the flights of my imagination. It often draws me, in spite of myself, into a whirlpool of vain desires, which tend toward a world I have no knowledge of, but strange visions of which are ever present to torment me. ”

“ The poor old gossips feasted with a good heart, and laughed as they tippled, their glasses tumbling against each other; while the sparrows, somewhat ousted, piped in the branches, astonished at so much noise, then dropped gently to the earth to peck at the crumbs of cake that fell in the grass; the violin of Pierrot, seated at his post under the arbor, played for the delighted old women all the minuets, gavottes, and hops of the good old time.
You can judge of the gratitude and general joy. ”

“ It is nothing less than the flesh and blood of the Theanthropos, not dead, but living and quickening, by the indwelling of his soul and divinity, under the appearance of the simplest and most primitive elements of life—bread and wine. All partake of it; it penetrates and fills them all. A glow of theanthropic life runs through their supernatural being; their supernatural intelligence grows brighter at the flashes of his infinite, finite intelligence; their will expands at the embraces of infinite and finite loveliness; their hearts swell with virtues under the pressure of the heart of Jesus ”

“ Why has Nature been so cruel a step-mother to me?’ Like a disinherited child, I saw before me the rich patrimony of the human race, of my share of which heaven had defrauded me. ‘No, no,’ I cried in my fury, ‘there is no happiness for thee on earth. ”

“ In spite of the mingled emotions of horror and disgust I feel in recalling the men and the deeds I speak of, I may be permitted to manifest two feelings that prevail over all others in the depths of my soul—a redoubling of constant sympathy for the unhappy city of Paris, only rendered dearer by its misfortunes, and an ardent gratitude for the infinite mercy of God, which preserved me, contrary to all human expectation, from the bullets of a herd of assassins more shameless and lower than their predecessors of 1793. ”

“ The verity must be that in which they all agree; the error, in their differences, or in the matters in which they do not agree. Eliminate the differences and take what is common to them all, and you will have the universal verity which they all assert. But what verity is common to truth and falsehood, to theism and atheism? The verity common to religion and science, that the solution of the cosmic mystery is unknowable? But that is not a verity; it is a mere negation, and all truth is affirmative.
Atheism is not a religion, but the negation of all religion. ”

“ On every side of the mountain, so fair to look on when peaceful, so terrible in its wrath, one may follow for miles on miles these ancient currents, radiating from the centre. Here the hard, dark rock rings, as iron would, under your horse’s hoof. There, what was once a death-bearing stream of lava has been covered by time with a rich soil, on which vines and olives flourish. ”

“ Yorke said. “What you complain of is merely the abuse of a good gift. A priest of your church has expressed himself very well concerning these difficulties. ‘It always pains me, in such periods,’ he says, ‘to hear men express doubt concerning our institutions. As for me, I would rather suffer from the license of freedom than the oppression of authority. War is better than a false peace; riot better than servitude; heresy better than indifference. But none of these things,’ he adds, ‘is to my liking. And may the good God preserve us from them all!’ That was Father John, an American priest.” ”

“ In believing what the church teaches me is the word of God, I have infallible authority for my belief, and cannot be deceived, be mistaken, or err. This is all so plain, and so fully in accord with the demands of reason, that we are forced to explain the repugnance so many people manifest to believing on authority, by supposing that they understand by authority simply an order of a master to believe, without accompanying it with anything to convince the understanding, thus making the act of faith an act not of faith at all, but of mere blind obedience. ”