His eye, have found attentive observation and affectionate remembrance; and have been interwoven in some prayer of her Liturgy, or commemorated by some ceremony of her Ritual. The proofs of all this can only be apparent to those who will study and try to understand her books. Alas, in the present day how few even of her children do this as it was done in those ages when the preparation to take an intelligent part in the divine worship was deemed no inconsiderable portion of the training of a Christian gentleman! However, even the stranger who has eyes to see and ears to hear cannot altogether miss the spirit of her worship. As I have so often had to quote the words of Protestants only to refute them, I am glad to conclude this chapter with words that will form a pleasing contrast. The celebrated Lavater thus writes his impressions of a Catholic church: 'He doth not know Thee, O Jesus Christ, who dishonoureth even Thy shadow. I honour all things where I find the intention of honouring Thee. I will love them because of Thee. What, then, do I behold here? What do I hear in this place? Does nothing under these majestic vaults speak to me of Thee? This cross, this golden image, is it not made for Thy honour? The censer which waves round the priest, the Gloria sung in choirs, the peaceful light of the perpetual lamp, these lighted tapers, all is done for Thee. Why is the Host elevated, if it be not to honour Thee, O Jesus Christ, who art dead for love of us? Because It is no more, and Thou art It, the believing Church bends the knee. It is in Thy honour alone that these children, early instructed, make the sign of the cross, that their tongues sing Thy praise, and that they strike their breasts thrice with their little hands. It is for the love of Thee, O Jesus Christ, that one kisses the spot which bears Thy adorable blood. For Thee the child who serves sounds the little bell, and does all that he does. The riches collected from distant countries, the magnificence of chasubles, all that has relation to Thee. Why are the walls and the high altar of marble clothed with tapestry on the day of the Blessed Sacrament? For whom do they make a road of flowers? For whom are these banners em broidered? When the Ave Maria sounds is it not for Thee? Matins, vespers, prime, and nones, are they not consecrated to Thee? These bells within a thousand towers, purchased with the gold of whole cities, do they not bear Thy image cast in the very mould? Is it not for Thee that they send forth their solemn tone? It is under Thy protection, O Jesus Christ, that every man places himself who loves solitude, chastity, and poverty. Without Thee, the orders of St. Benedict and St. Bernard would not have been founded. The cloister, the tonsure, the Breviary, and the chaplet render testimony of Thee. O delightful rapture, Jesus Christ, for Thy disciple to trace the marks of Thy finger where the eyes of the world see them not! O joy ineffable, for souls devoted to Thee to behold in caves and on rocks, in every crucifix placed upon hills and on the highways, Thy seal and that of Thy love! Who will not rejoice in the honours of which Thou art the object and the soul? Who will not shed tears in hearing the words, "Jesus Christ be praised"? O the hypocrite who knoweth that name, and answereth not with joy, "Amen!" who saithnot, with an intense transport, "Jesus be blessed for eternity, for eternity !" '2 2 Lavater, quoted by Digby in Mores Catholici, book v. ch. 2. PART II. THE ORIGIN OF CATHOLIC RITUAL JUSTIFIED BY THE NEW TESTAMENT. CHAPTER I. RITUAL CONSIDERED AS TRADITION. FROM all that has preceded it will have been gathered by the attentive reader that a great part of Catholic Ritual is of ecclesiastical institution, and that the Church appeals to the New Testament not for the origin of each particular rite and ceremony, but for the principles that guide her in her development of divine worship. It will also have been observed that the Church claims to possess certain Rites, altogether supernatural or beyond her own power to institute or her authority to abrogate. She professes to have received these from her first founders, the Apostles, and believes them to have been instituted by her Divine Head, Jesus Christ. In the first part of this Essay we have been considering what support the New Testament gives to some of the principal characteristics of Catholic Worship. We have now to examine how far the Rites themselves, as well as their form, are of Christian origin. The Catholic Church does not profess to have derived her Ritual from the New Testament. She believes it to be founded, in a great measure, on events of which there is more or less record in the New Testament, and therefore to be in perfect harmony with those records. But she believes it, in its essential parts, to be more ancient than the New Testament; and she has never maintained that the New Testament gives a full and detailed account of all that is of divine or apostolic origin in her Ritual. In a word, Catholics believe that Ritual is founded on Tradition, and is itself no inconsiderable part of what is called divine or apostolic Tradition. When St. John had completed his supplemental Gospel, he wrote these words: 'There are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written' (John xxi. 25). The Rev. Mr. Beecher has made the following reflection on this saying of the Apostle : 'These words,' he says, 'affect me more profoundly than when I think of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, or the perishing of Grecian art in Athens or Byzantium. . . . . The leaving out of these things from the New Testament, though divinely wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unaccomplishment of noble things, as the destruction of great treasures, which had already had oral life, but failed of incarnation in literature.' This is certainly a most true and natural thought, and may to some extent be shared by all. But a Catholic knows that there are words of Jesus Christ, not written in the New Testament, yet not therefore lost; for they were incarnate in a tradition which subsists to this day, and will subsist while the world lasts. It may be said that I have promised to confine myself to Scripture. I have not forgotten, nor do I intend to violate my promise; for I am not going to consider the testimony of Tradition to Ritual, but the testimony of Scripture to the Tradition of Ritual. In the present chapter we are to consider what is meant by this word Tradition, and how Tradition and Ritual are related in the Catholic theory. 1. First, then, what is Tradition ? Various misconceptions exist respecting the meaning of this word, even among educated men,-misconcen ions that would seem wilful were it not for the notorious confusion of ideas engendered by the Babel of controversies amidst which we live. Thus Dryden, in his Religio Laici, written when he was a Protestant, contrasts Tradition with Scripture as 'oral sounds' with 'written words :' If written words from time are not secured, To take a modern instance, the author of a treatise on the Bible, called Liber Librorum, says that those who appeal to Tradition forget 'that everything to which man attaches importance he desires to have in writing; that all we know of history comes down to us in books; that books live when Tradition dies; and that letters remain unchanged when institutions have altogether lost their original character.'1 He is mistaken. We do not forget such elementary truths. But he forgets that Tradition is not necessarily unwritten. We do indeed maintain that oral teaching has many advantages over teaching by writing; but, again, books are of the greatest help to oral teaching, and may sometimes be necessary. When St. John wrote to Gaius, 'I had many things to write unto thee, but I would not by ink and pen write to thee, but I hope speedily to see thee, and we will speak mouth to mouth' (3rd Epistle of St. John v. 13, 14), he recognised the superior facility of oral communication. When he wrote his Gospel, he by the very fact recognised the great utility of written records. The question of Scripture and Tradition is not one merely of the respective advantages of written or oral teaching, for Tradition is not necessarily unwritten. Unwritten Tradition' is a technical phrase. It does not mean Tradition committed to memory, and which it is unlawful to put on paper; it means Tradition not written down in the canonical books of Scripture by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,-Tradition intrusted by the Holy Ghost to the Church, to be transmitted in other ways, of which writing is of course one of the principal. 1 Liber Librorum: its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose, p. 84. N |