nestness the efforts being made by the captain and crew on the one hand, and by lifeboats from the coast on the other, to save the lives of the passengers. A great act is being performed, in which all are taking part, some as immediate actors, others as eager assistants. We may suppose this act carried out in the midst of united prayers. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, each in their own tongues, and many without spoken words at all, are sending up petitions to Almighty God for the safety of the passengers. It is a common act at which they assist; it is accompanied by the prayers of all; but they are not common prayers, in the sense of all joining either vocally or mentally in the same form of words.

When the priest Zacharias had gone into the temple of the Lord to offer incense, and all the multitude of the people was praying without' (Luke i. 9), there was a common act performed by priest and people-by the priest as actor, by the people as assistants-and the act was accompanied by united prayers. But it mattered not to the people what language was spoken by the priest or what sacred formulas were used. Their intentions were joined with his. Their individual and varied petitions were one great Amen said to his sacerdotal invocations; and all ascended together in a sweet-smelling cloud of incense to heaven.

Or to come still nearer to the reality of Catholic worship, let the reader represent to himself the great act of Calvary. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Priest and Victim. He accompanies His oblation of Himself with mysterious and most sacred prayer. Two of His seven words are from the Psalms; and it has therefore been conjectured that He continued to recite secretly the psalm, after giving us the clue to it, by pronouncing aloud the words, Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani ?'-'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Or again, 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.' There were many assistants at that act, and among those who assisted piously-the Blessed Mother of Jesus, the Apostle St. John, the holy women, the centurion, the multitude 'who returned striking their breasts'-there was a certain unity in variety, not a uniform prayer, yet a great act of harmonious worship.

I

uses.

6

There are, then, prayers used in Catholic churches in which the whole congregation joins, such as the singing of hymns, the recitation of the Rosary, performing the Stations of the Way of the Cross, and especially the chanting of Vespers or Complin. Such prayers are either recited in the vernacular, or, when Latin is used, they require some little education in those who take a direct and vocal part in them. But the great act of Catholic worship is the Holy Mass, or the unbloody Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. One alone stands forth and makes the awful offering; the rest kneel around, and join their intentions and devotions with his; but even were there not a solitary worshipper present, the sacrifice both for the living and dead would be efficacious and complete. To join in this act of sacrifice, and to participate in its effects, it is not necessary to follow the priest or to use the words he Every Catholic knows what the priest is doing, though he may not know or understand what he is saying, and is consequently able to follow with his devotions every portion of the Holy Sacrifice. Hence a wonderful union of sacrificial, of congregational, and of individual devotion. The prayers of the priest are not substituted for those of the people. No one desires to force his brother against his will. It is the most marvellous union of liberty and law which this earth can show. The beggar with his beads, the child with her pictures, the gentleman with his Missal, the maiden meditating on each mystery of the Passion, or adoring her God in silent love too deep for words, and the grateful communicant, have but one intent, one meaning, and one heart, as they have one action, one object, before their mental vision. They bow themselves to the dust as sinners; they pray to be heard for Christ's sake; they joyfully accept His words as the words of God; they offer the bread and wine; they unite themselves with the celebrant in the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, which he as their priest offers for them; they communicate spiritually; they give thanks for the ineffable gift which God has given them. Their words differ, their thoughts vary; but their hearts are united and their will is one. Therefore is their offering pure and acceptable in the sight of Him who knows their secret

souls, and who accepts a man, not for the multitude or the fewness of his sayings, for his book or for his beads, but for the intention with which he has, according to his sphere and capacities, fulfilled His sacred will, through the merits of the Adorable Victim who is offered for him."7

It will be seen from this that, supposing the existence of cogent reasons for the use of a dead language, there would be no such difficulties in its employment in the Holy Sacrifice and Divine Office of the Catholic Church as there would be in what Protestants understand by public and congregational service.

III. Reasons for using dead languages.

I have therefore now to state how dead languages came to be used in Catholic Liturgy, and why they are retained.

The Church, then, is Catholic, both in time and place. Unity and universality are her attributes. Now in nothing, perhaps, is there more variety and mutability than in language. The Church therefore, from the outset, had to deal with a very perplexing problem: how to reduce the varieties of human speech in religious matters to a minimum.

Divine Providence seems to have prepared the

way for her to solve this problem in the West. She found Latin the dominant language of Europe. It was a majestic tongue suited to her needs. It was the language of civilisation. Before the Church had been four centuries in existence, this language, besides the treasures of heathen literature, contained some of the most glorious achievements of Christian thought. Almost the same may be said of Greek in the East. The Church was therefore led by the Divine Spirit who assists her to cherish these two languages. She thus gained three great advantages. First, she secured the immense treasures contained in Greek and Roman literature, both heathen and Christian; secondly, she formed a bond of union between many nations; and thirdly, as these languages ceased to be vernacular they became fixed, and she thus acquired a language which would share and

7 The above quotation is abridged from No. 61 of the Clifton Tracts. In this valuable collection there are several tracts which explain simply, truthfully, and fully the theory and practice of Catholic devotion and ceremonial. They are published by Messrs. Burns & Oates.

express her own immutability amidst the incessant changes of human affairs.

But the knowledge and use of Latin among priests and people was mainly due to its being continued in the sacred offices and rites of her Liturgy.

It is almost impossible to over-estimate the advantages which have accrued to the Church from this discipline. To mention only some:

1. By the knowledge of one or at most two languages, Latin and Greek, we have immediate access to the accumulated treasures of eighteen centuries of Christianity. The use of Latin throughout Western Christendom makes accessible to us, not only ancient liturgies, but canon and civil law, and the writings of all the great men of every country and every age, which, had they been written in the spoken dialects, would be now as hidden from the majority of men as Anglo-Saxon, Norse, or Sanscrit literature.

2. We have a medium of communication between all parts of the Church, in correspondence, in travelling, in the assembling of general councils, &c.

3. The Sacred Liturgy is secured from the errors which would certainly creep in with frequent changes. If it is remembered that the Ritua! and Liturgy are among the principal channels of tradition, and the most practical teachers of divine things, it will be seen that this benefit alone is of vast import

ance.

4. The very labour and expense of constant translations and re-translations of the liturgical books into the hundreds of dialects of the human race, changing age after age, are formidable considerations. Protestants may indeed point to the achievements of Bible societies. But they must remember that cheap printing is a modern invention; nor have all nations the disposal of British wealth.

5. Even were it possible to give each nation and tribe and dialect a vernacular ritual at the present day, many would be losers by it. Not only ecclesiastics, but educated laymen, and to some extent the uneducated also, feel themselves at home wherever they travel; and can take part, wherever they may be,

in the divine offices which use has made familiar to them. All this would be prevented by a multiplicity of liturgies.

Protestants, whose religions are national, and have but one, two, or at most three centuries of existence, and have never known the want of a printing-press, are slow to perceive the necessity or advantages of a dead and universal language. But enough has been said on this point for those who seek the truth.

IV. Catholic discipline compared with the doctrine of St. Paul. I must now beg my reader to go carefully through the whole of the fourteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. It will not be necessary, so far as the present controversy is concerned, to enter into the difficult question of the nature or purpose of the gift of tongues. One thing is evident, that in the above passage the gift of tongues is not a supernatural means of communication between two persons who otherwise would not understand each other, but rather the very contrary. Of two persons who speak the same language one receives the gift of tongues, by which he becomes unintelligible to his companion without the aid of an interpreter.

Now, if it is sought to establish any parallel between the state of things in Corinth and that among Catholics, to the prejudice of the latter, then Protestants who blame the use of Latin amongst Catholics as a human abuse must contend that strange tongues in Corinth were a human abuse also. But, far from this, they were a Divine operation, a great gift of God. It was God Himself who taught men to utter these strange languages, 'not in the work of teaching, but in that of praise and adoration, and who made them speak mysteries, pray, bless, and give thanks in unintelligible accents."8

If any conclusion can be drawn from this fact as regards ourselves, it would rather be that He who inspired such prayers formerly for wise reasons may also have directed the Catholic Church for wise reasons to employ a dead language in her public Liturgy.

But still, it will be said, St. Paul blames something. No doubt. But it is not the use of tongues, for he says, 'forbid 8 See article on Tongues' in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.