Rue de la Paix

“ The old houses of the square, the Prior's Gate, the noble trees, the stretch of green turf, all shared in the dream-like [54] repose. In the Rue Bar-le-Duc, as everybody knows, just where it winds around to the fine gateway of the Cathedral, there is a row of little shops with bulging leaded windows, dusty and delightful. ”

“ On coming from the well-lighted regions of the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. ”

“ Now those who stand without the walls of the City of Peace know nothing, it is true, of the life that its citizens lead within, nothing of the harmony and consolation that Catholicism alone can give. Yet of certain points, it may be, in the large outlines of that city against the sky, of the place it occupies in the world, of its wide effect upon human life in general, it may very well be that these detached observers may know more than the devout who dwell at peace within. ”

“ We heard the town clock in the distance striking midnight, and as the last stroke died away the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral pealed out, and down the deserted street came the chant through the open doors proclaiming God's promise of "Peace on earth, good will to men." ”

“ And this desire for God's glory makes peacemakers of men. They love their fellows because they are dear to the heart of God. A tender feeling of sympathy, and love, and brotherhood steals into their hearts, takes captive all their affections, fills them with love of God's will, banishes hatred, disarms suspicion, and establishes within them God's Kingdom of 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.'
It is this spirit that has made our Slum Officers mightier than police officials in the dark alleys and fetid cellars and garrets of London and New York. ”

“ And as a symbol thereof the doors of the sanctuaries of peace will be flung wide open, and no burdened heart will find the House of God locked and barred against groping hands. One fruit of these grievous days may well be that the Church will realise that it does not become her to occupy a lower plane than that heathen temple in ancient Rome, whose door was shut not day or night while men were dying in battle. ”

“ In New York I find the people more endowed with spiritual susceptibilities. They are not mere captives of nature’s control; they are rising out of the bonds and burden of captivity. For this reason I am very happy and hopeful that, God willing, in this populous country, in this vast continent of the West, the virtues of the world of humanity shall become resplendent; that the oneness of human world-power, the love of God, may enkindle the hearts, and that international peace may hoist its standards, influencing all other regions and countries from here. ”

“ In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months, he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vielle-du-Temple. ”

“ I am sure no one has ever lived in Catholic countries without feeling thankful that there is one door ever open to the passer-by, with its mute appeal to sinful, sorrowing humanity to enter and lay down its burden. It is the door of God's house, which rejects no one—always open, reminding us that the All-Father is ever ready to receive us. Who can resist the appeal? How many a poor peasant have I seen, with care on the brow, turn aside for a moment into a church, lay down the basket of provisions or utensils for a brief prayer, and then go on his way refreshed! ”

“ Nor is the number of these elect souls limited to any one calling or profession, for they are found in the seclusion of home, in the crowded mart, in the stress of business and professional life. When the week-day Mass is over in the parish church, and the little band of devout worshippers descend from the church steps, would one not say that there is a look of heavenly peace upon their countenances, a peace that overflows to their features from the deep well-springs of charity within? No legitimate walk of life, then, is alien to perfection. ”

“ Both city and Red Cross hurried to The Mother Church officials.
On schedule time that train pulled away from Boston loaded with the workers, supplies and money of the Church of Christ, Scientist, with doctors and medicines from the city of Boston and with nurses and supplies from the Red Cross.
Where has there been a more splendid sinking of human belief and opinion, of religious and personal prejudice, the forgetting of all revilings and enmities, in the bigger, nobler, holier faith in a common humanity? ”

“ Before it rose perpetually the haunting vision of another palace of faith—another church or company of the faithful, which was to become the shelter of human aspiration amid the desolation and anarchy caused by the crashing of the old! How many men and women must have gone through the same strait as itself—how many must be watching with it through the darkness for the rising of a new City of God!
One afternoon, close upon Christmas, he found himself in Parliament Square, on his way towards Westminster Bridge and the Embankment. ”

“ Think of a district where there has been peace—the People are poor, but they are innocent; some of the rich are merciless, but some are just, and many are kind and sympathising; in their low homes, in their safe chapels, in the faith of their fellows, in the hope of better days, in the effort for improvement, but above all in their conscious innocence, the most trampled of them have consolation, and there is a sort of smile even on the wretched. ”

“ During the preceding century the city was really in a fairly peaceful and prosperous condition, but the many institutions of charity which flourished under Gregory XVI and Pius IX had not reached the point where they could provide night refuges for its many waifs and vagrants. There were numbers of poor boys—street Arabs, as we should call them—who wandered about in the daytime, earning a little here and there, but subsisting chiefly on charity and having no fixed dwelling-place of any kind. ”

“ The dear old Market Street Church lingered on for a few years more, bleeding at every pore, from the fatal up-town migration, and then peacefully disbanded. The solid stone edifice was purchased by some generous Presbyterians in the upper part of the city, who organized there the "Church of the Sea and Land," which is standing to-day, as a well-manned light-house amid a dense tenement-house foreign population. ”

“ O! if religion were thus a diffusive, practical, every-day reality, there would be a marvellous change in the aspects of life and the conditions of humanity around us. The great city, now so gross and profane, would become as a vast cathedral, through whose stony aisles would flow perpetual service; where labor would discharge its daily offices, and faith and patience keep their heavenward look, and love present its offerings. Yea, the very roll of wheels through its busy streets would be as a litany, and the sound of homeward feet the chant of its evening psalm. ”

“ All along the line of march—Michigan Avenue to Rush Street, to Chicago Avenue, to State Street, to the cathedral—the streets were packed with people. It was a solid line of humanity, on pavements, in windows, on lamp posts, even the tops of the houses were a sea of heads. To the solemn music of the bands the men marched with slow and measured step. The muffled drums, the draped flags, the drooping banners, the tens of thousands of solemn faces, made the sight an impressive one. Every man in the multitude bared his head as the hearse passed by. ”

“ The city found there all that is required for a city like Paris; a chapel in which to pray to God; a plaidoyer, or pleading room, in which to hold hearings, and to repel, at need, the King’s people; and under the roof, an arsenac full of artillery. For the bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. ”

“ But from the ruin of his city, which has so stirred and made turbulent his passion, the prophet lifts his hot eyes to the dear hills that encircle her; and peace takes the music from vengeance. Often has Jerusalem seen rising across that high margin the spears and banners of her destroyers. But now the lofty skyline is the lighting place of hope. Fit threshold for so Divine an arrival, it lifts against heaven, dilated and beautiful, the herald of the Lord's peace, the publisher of salvation. ”

“ But the excited crowds that fill the city streets and make the Cathedral Square look like a deep cornfield stirred by a strong west wind, and the gathering of villagers in the open place in front of their tiny church alike betray one quality that is no more Christian and new than it is Pagan and old. An unquestioning and swift hospitality to strangers is as much in evidence as is the lighted taper borne by each man, woman, and child. ”

“ Indolent and content, they love to lean upon the long parapet of the Boulevard de la République, gazing with deep-set, thoughtful eyes away over the bright blue sea, to lounge in groups at street corners gossiping, to sit at the garish French cafés driving bargains with European merchants, or hand-in-hand to stroll leisurely across to the mosque to their daily prayers. ”

“ Something of monastic calm seemed to linger about the old home and grounds of the begging friars, crowned by part of their church, which since Edward VI.’s time has been handed over to the Dutch congregation of London. Outside, in Broad Street, there was the roar and confusion of a mighty traffic; within the sacred precinct there was peace: wheeled vehicles seldom entered the very foot passengers, I have thought, used to slacken their pace, and relax for a moment the grim, determined look which, as a rule, characterizes the man whose mind is bent on business. ”

“ It blocks the sidewalk in five seconds, and still stays there, growing larger, after those walking up-town have passed on.
37 The beautiful spire of Trinity, with its soft, brown stone and the green trees and quaintly lettered historic tombs beneath and the damp monument to Revolutionary martyrs over in one corner—no longer looks down benignly on all about it, because, for the most part, it has to look up. On all sides men have reared their marts of commerce higher than the house of God. ”

“ Hard by the road is the perfect little Early English Roman Catholic church which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle, in these hurried florid days, of honest work and simple modest beauty. The church being Roman Catholic one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire. ”

“ But there is another aspect of this matter which would perhaps startle those who think that all piety and orthodoxy reside in the rural districts; and that is, that the city, as it is, affords far greater encouragements to well developed piety than the country; and that if the church were fully awake to her duty towards young men, and actually employing all the means afforded her by her wealth, organization and influence to shield, restrain, influence and reform them, the city would be the safest place on earth for a youth. ”

“ To me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streets the way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe, tucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our time. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of business and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays in it—prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below. ”

“ Charity in our day no longer means alms, but justice. The social settlements are substituting vital touch for the machine charity that reaped a crop of hate and beggary. They are passenger bridges, it has been truly said, not mere "shoots" for the delivery of coal and groceries; bridges upon which men [Pg 263] go over, not down, from the mansion to the tenement. We have learned that we cannot pass off checks for human sympathy in settlement of our brotherhood arrears. The church, which once stood by indifferent, or worse, is hastening to enter the life of the people. ”

“ Yet her daughter, the University of Paris, alone has tried to comfort her: Paris has borne the burden and heat of the day, and may well upbraid us. We too must work for the union of the Church and the reformation of peace. ”

“ The best symbol of Peace is a ploughshare that was once a sword; and surely a garden that has been made in the Tiltyard of a Norman Castle may be looked on as an emblem of the same Beatitude. That is how it comes that every one who enters our garden cries,—
“How wonderfully peaceful!”
I have analysed their impression that forces them to say that. The mild bustle of the High Street of a country town somehow imposes itself upon one, for the simple reason that you can hear it and observe it. The hustle of London is something quite different. ”