Consuelo

“ For there are differences which no habit nor affection can reconcile, and the Bohemian must not intermarry with the Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel Budget, the wife of the Successful Merchant! The best of men and the best of women may sometimes live together all their lives, and for want of some consent on fundamental questions, hold each other lost spirits to the end. ”

“ And to tell the truth, as Enriquez and I fell back, although I had insisted upon still keeping hold of the end of the riata, it was a picture to admire. The petite figure of the young girl, and the graceful folds of her skirt, admirably harmonized with Chu Chu's lithe contour, and as the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender head under the pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted velvet-capped toreador crest of Consuelo herself, that they seemed of one race. ”

“ The relations of professional and amateur, the contradictions and contentions to which, in a woman's nature, the rival forces of love and of an artistic vocation may give rise, have never been better portrayed in any novel. The heroine, Consuelo, is of course an ideal character: her achievements partake of the marvellous; and there are digressions in the book which are diffuse in the extreme; but nowhere is the author's imagination more attractively displayed and her style more engaging. The tone throughout is noble and pure. ”

“ You will not see my eyes, Pancho; thees little grass”—she ran her plump little fingers through a tussock—“will hide them; and the small animals in the black coats that lif here will have much sorrow—but you will not. It ees better so! My father will not that I, a Catholique, should marry into a camp-meeting, and lif in a tent, and make howl like the coyote.” (It was one of Consuelo's bewildering beliefs that there was only one form of dissent—Methodism!) “He will not that I should marry a man who possess not the many horses, ox, and cow, like him. ”

“ There was a law revealed to us—the law of consecration—through obedience to which every man expected to hold all that he possessed subject to the dictation of the servants of God. It is right that we should recollect this law, and continually seek to carry it out. We should feel that we are placed as stewards over the property God has placed in our hands, and that all we have is subject primarily to the counsels of God's servant, and that before we take any step of importance it is our duty to seek counsel from him who has the right to counsel. ”

“ Death the Consoler! Oh from how many an aching brow does he take away the pain for ever? How many sorrows does he soothe into rest that is never broken!—from how many hearts like mine, does he pluck the arrows that fester in them, and bids them feel pain no more! In his house, that house appointed for all living—what calmness and peace is there? How sweet and tranquil is the bed which he smoothes down for the unhappy; there the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Then give me Death the Consoler?—Death the Consoler! ”

“ What ought to be vowed ought to be fulfilled, whether vowed or not; and if duty be vowed falsely, or not vowed at all, sin is committed. Is it not a dreadful thing, by refusing to do this duty, to rebel against Him who said, "Vow and pay unto the Lord your God?" He is guilty and degraded who breaks an oath; but low indeed is the moral state of him who, lest he should not perform his obligation, refuses to swear. And how wretched is the condition of those who will neither vow nor swear, lest they might, as they certainly would, be thereby bound to duty! ”

“ As for myself, I am truly troubled, not only by that love for my children which is natural to all men, but also by the valour which, led astray by a false appearance of glory, thou hast shown this day. Nevertheless, seeing that the Consuls' power must either be established for ever by thy death or abolished for ever by thy escape, I judge that thou thyself also, if there is aught of my blood in thee, wilt not refuse to die, and so establish again that military discipline which thou hast weakened by thy misdoing. ”

“ Besides supervision over matters of faith and discipline, of marriage, of inheritance, and of usury, which belonged to them by general consent, there were comparatively few questions between man and man which could not be made to include some case of conscience involving the interpellation of spiritual interference, especially when agreements were customarily confirmed with the sanction of the oath; and the cure of souls implied a perpetual inquest over the aberrations, positive or possible, of every member of the flock. ”

“ Had God dealt with men according to their iniquities, that law which, in the first of men, they had violated, would have demanded their final punishment; and they, unable, because unwilling to give obedience, and unprovided with the means of deliverance, had fallen to ruin. In order that his mercy might be manifested, the Lord, from the days of eternity, secured to sinners a fitness for duty, to stand as a substitute for that spiritual strength which they should lose by transgression, and acceptance through a great Mediator, which else had not been enjoyed. ”

“ Some one may at this point reflect that earlier in this paper I counseled against people too readily leaving the normal path of life and that I am now counseling a policy which is certain to create disturbance in individual lives, families and communities. That is so. But to depart from the common way in response or reaction to a conscription law, in the attempt to adapt oneself to an abnormal state of society, is one thing. To leave father, mother, wife, child, yea and one’s own life also, at the behest of Christ or conscience is quite another. ”

“ A Consistory has been established for the supervision of morals; it has no civil jurisdiction, and can only restrain evil-doers in accordance with the Word of God, and as the chief representative of God,—that is, it can exclude from the Lord's Supper. ... I know that our friends are not all of one mind upon this subject; there are some learned and pious men who think that excommunication is not necessary under a Christian government, but no sane person would be so infatuated as to condemn and abolish it where it is already established. ”

“ Your Majesty, the first duty of a king is the preservation of the virtue of his people. This is the fundamental principle, and is established as such among counsellors. If the counsellor is lost, the fundamental principle is lost; how then can virtue be preserved? So in this case it would be sinful to destroy the counsellor through his son. You must by all means avoid the loss of virtue which would ensue. Give the Brahman's girl to the counsellor's son. ”

“ It is contrary to the will and commandment of God that those who receive not their inheritance by consecration, agreeably to this law which he has given, that he may tithe his people, to prepare them against the day of vengeance and burning should have their names, enrolled with the people of God. ”

“ Of whom will the land take counsel? There have been two sorts of counsellors hitherto. One has pointed out for twenty years the nature of slavery, its tendencies, the dangers which it threatened; and all the prophecies have come true. The other kind of counsellors have predicted peace, dissuaded from action, urged compromise, and at each reluctant step have promised the country peace. In not a single instance have they been right. Events have overthrown every one of their promises. They have led us down deeper into trouble at every step. We have been betrayed by kisses. ”

“ Ah! " replied the unfortunate soul, "notwithstanding the prayers of our holy community, I cannot obtain the grace of my deliverance until all my brethren, whom my avarice defrauded of the suffrages due to them, have been released. That which has been given to the poor for me has been of no profit but to them, and this by order of Divine Justice. I entreat you, therefore, O venerated and merciful Father, redouble your alms. I hope that by these powerful means Divine clemency will vouchsafe to deliver us all, my brethren first, and afterwards myself, who am the least deserving of mercy." ”

“ God asks, first, a perfect consecration; second, a perfect faith, and third, a perfect love. This idea of perfect consecration is in the realm of human possibilities. Let me look at it. Does anybody doubt that a man may be perfectly consecrated to his business? Don’t we know men that are lost, that are really dying, wrecking body, soul, and spirit, all that they have, in business; business in the morning, noon, and night, so driven with business that they are not acquainted with their own children? ”

“ In like manner, should infidelity—whether Jewish or Gentile, Mahommedanism and Socinianism on the one hand, and Popery and Prelacy on the other, and every other false system, be dealt with. To assault such by the exhibition of the truth of God, and to vow to do so, his people have every warrant and encouragement. They fear him, and under his banner as his Covenanted servants, are called to the duty. "Thou hast given a banner to them that feared thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth." ”

“ Such are the fruits of this sacred Council; it would, therefore, be dangerous to trust again, at this time, the interests of religion to the rage of these perverse men; but it is of consequence that kings, princes, and bishops, combine all their energies, in order that similar calamities, and more frightful ones, be not the result of the new Council now summoned.
Certainly God has sufficiently shewn, in the Council of Constance, how he resists the proud, how he confounds the lofty in their own designs, without regard to the external dignity of any one. ”

“ Such an address may be made either to the wicked or to the righteous.—To the wicked, that they may, with their whole heart and soul, depart from the evil of their doings, and give themselves to the Lord; to the righteous, that they may so give themselves again; to the wicked, that they may prepare their hearts to seek God—but not by any effort of their own in a legal spirit, to commend themselves to him, and then to enter into his covenant ”

“ The dignitaries of the secular and regular clergy, some families of impoverished gentlemen or well-to-do bourgeois and professional people, maintained therein an amiable society which kept up in the most secluded provinces the best traditions of the old regime—courtesy, a taste for literature and charity for the poor. All these little centres of intellectual and moral life were blotted out and the Concordat thus only sanctioned the destruction effected by the Revolution. ”

“ Yet, in shunning as well as in reproving, such moderation and Christian discretion must be used, that it may conduce, not to the destruction, but to the reformation of the sinner. For, if he is needy, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, or in any other distress, we are in duty bound, necessity requiring it, according to love and the doctrine of Christ and His apostles, to render him aid and assistance; otherwise, shunning would in this case tend more to destruction than to reformation. ”

“ First, there is anxiety about discharging the duties of the consulship, which is a difficult and important business to all men, and especially to me above all other men; for if I err, I shall obtain no pardon—if I do well, I shall get but little praise, and that, too, extorted from unwilling people—if I am in doubt, I have no faithful counselors to whom I can apply—if I am in difficulty, I have no sure assistance from the nobles on which I can depend. ”

“ But who are not led by this, know not what it is to suffer for conscience sake.
‘Now, whereas ye take into your consideration the said persecution, tyranny, and cruelty exercised upon them, whom ye call your Protestant brethren, and do contribute and administer to their wants outwardly; this is good in its place, and we own it, and see it good to administer to the necessities of others, and to do good to all: and we who are [Pg 205] sufferers by a law derived from the pope, are willing to join, and to contribute with you, to their outward necessities. ”

“ We should suspect our consecration, and come afresh to our great Counsellor about it, directly we have any sense of bondage. As long as we have an unacknowledged feeling of fidget about our account-book, and a smothered wondering what and how much we ‘ought’ to give, and a hushed-up wishing the thing had not been put quite so strongly before us, depend upon it we have not said unreservedly, ‘Take my silver and my gold.’ And how can the Lord keep what He has not been sincerely asked to take? ”

“ And that they may shun the occasion of sin, counsels advise them as friends. Hence, if a saint should make a divine counsel an occasion of falling from his height into mortal sin—that would be by the breaking of the first command and not by a refusal to obey the divine counsel. But in the heavenly country where the danger and occasion of sin do not exist, the counsel is not spoken of in this way. For in the heavenly country there is no voluntary poverty nor is there any savor of indigence. ”

“ It seems to those who look back on such proceedings, almost a marvel, how men, whose conscience forbade them to receive the sacrament according to certain rites, and who, in many cases, certainly would have resigned property, if not life, sooner than act contrary to their religious convictions, should have been so blindly infatuated as to compel other men, as far as they had power to do so, to violate their conscientious convictions. ”

“ Can a saint and servant of God, young or old, Vicar or Curate, walk closely with Him all day, truly given to Him, wholly submissive to His word and will, and yet find it possible to deal with convictions so? What are personal rights and exterior happiness weighed against the claims of what we have really grasped as truth in the presence of the Lord? It is well for us that martyrs and confessors, and their worthy successors, our Evangelical ancestors of a century ago, knew how to answer that question.
CONVICTION SACRED, SELF NOWHERE.
"I aim to speak with all humility and sympathy. ”