Aspirations of Nature (a view of nature and the supernatural)

Aspirations of Nature.*

[From Brownson’s Quarterly Review for October, 1857.]

The numerous readers of that admirable book, The Questions of the Soul, will most eagerly welcome a new work by the same popular author. Mr. Hecker’s Aspirations of Nature is written in the same free and earnest style, so much admired in his former publication, and is marked by the same loving spirit, the same tone of independent thought, and the same glowing enthusiasm, while it takes broader and deeper views of the subjects it discusses, and addresses itself to a larger public.

The aim of this new book is to show that all men naturally aspire to religion, and that the aspirations of their nature can be satisfied in the Catholic Church, and nowhere else. The author endeavors, on the one hand, to vindicate the rights and dignity of human nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, who decry it, and seek to supersede it by what they call grace; and on the other, to show that fidelity, in a large sense, to one’s own reason and nature, will conduct the earnest seeker to the communion of the Catholic Church. He takes his starting-point in our own rational and moral nature, and proceeds on the principle that no religion can be deserving of the slightest respect, that contradicts reason or leaves the aspirations of our nature unsatisfied. He meets the rationalist and the transcendentalist each on his own ground, accepts their principle and method, and endeavors to prove that if they will only be faithful to them, they will and must find the true religion.

The author proves that Protestantism does not and cannot, and that Catholicity can and does, fulfil the conditions demanded by the Earnest Seeker; and, as far as we can judge, does it with a force of argument, beauty of expression, and felicity of illustration that leaves little to be desired. There can be no doubt that what is called Evangelical Protestantism Is utterly unable to meet the demands of reason or the wants of the heart, and no one who knows Catholicity can doubt its capacity to do both. Calvinism proceeds on the principle that our nature has been totally corrupted by the fall and that men as they are now born are incapable of thinking a good thought or performing a good deed. Hence it teaches that all the acts of the unregenerate, even their prayers, are sins. Catholicity proceeds on the principle that, thought by the fall man has lost all power, prior to regeneration, to perform acts meritorious of eternal life, he yet retains his essential nature, - reason and free-will, - and can discover and embrace truth, and perform acts really good, in the natural order. Hence the church condemns the proposition: “All the works of infidels are sins,” and asserts the reality of natural truth and virtue. Catholicity presupposes reason or natural truth as the preamble in logical order to revelation, and natural reason and our natural affections, and elevates them to a higher order, purifies and strengthens them, instead of decrying and condemning them.

It will be seen that the author boldly accepts the principle that “what contradicts reason contradicts God.” There is nothing startling in this principle to Catholics, though they do no usually express it in this way, for it is more reverent and less dangerous to say, what contradicts the word of God contradicts reason, making thus the revelation the criterion of reason, not reason the criterion of the revelation. When we say, what contradicts reason contradicts God, we have the appearance of favoring the rule of private judgment, and  of justifying rationalists in setting up their private opinions as the criteria of revealed truth. There are comparatively few who can practically distinguish between reason and their own mental habits and prejudices, or so to speak, between reason and their own private judgment. To the mass of men brought up in a Protestant community, nothing appears more contradictory to reason than the various dogmas and practices of the Catholic Church, and they really are contradictory to their reason, that is, to reason as modified or perverted by their anti-Catholic habits and prejudices. Certainly, reason taken strictly, in its own essential nature, approves or teaches nothing that does not accord with the teachings and usages of the church. But men do not generally so take reason in practice. They do not easily divest themselves of their habits and prejudices. They reason as they are. In practice they confound their habits and predjudices with reason itself, and conclude that whatever contradicts them, contradicts reason. Hence the rule, as stated, is not regarded generally as a safe practical rule, and although strictly true, for God is present in reason as well as in revelation, and his veracity is the same in the one as in the other, the author, we presume, would not lay it down if he did not regard it as in no danger of being abused by the class of minds he is addressing, and also as necessary in some sort to give a strong denial to the denunciations of reason by so-called orthodox Protestantism. He has thought it proper and in the highest degree prudent to show the earnest seeker after truth, who is revolted by the depreciation of reason and nature by Calvinism, that on this point Catholicity is totally different, and not the enemy, but the warm friend of reason. In this he is certainly right, and giving the right direction to Catholic controversy.

We must bear in mind that the author addresses his book not indiscriminately to all classes of non-Catholics; but to that class who have cast off Protestantism, fallen back on simple nature, have become earnest seekers after religion, and are prepared to accept it the moment that they see that it meets their moral wants, and that they can embrace t without denying the plain dictates of reason or forfeiting the rights and dignity of their human nature. He thinks this class includes a majority of the adult portion of our population. On this point, however, we are not able to agree with him. We may be wrong, but we are not, with what knowledge we have of our countrymen, able to believe that they have as yet, to any great extent, cast off false Christianity, absolutely got rid of the various forms of Protestantism, and now stand in simple unprejudiced nature, prepared to receive Catholic truth in proportion as it is clearly, distinctly, and affectionately presented. It is true, as the author states, that the majority of the adult population have been said , on respectable authority, to profess no religion; but I attribute the fact, if it be a fact, not to the hollowness of Protestantism, and rejected it from a conviction that it is essentially unreasonable and false, dishonorable to God and unfit for man; but to their indifference to religion itself, to their want of seriousness, earnestness in the affairs of the soul, and to their insane devotion to the world and its goods. They are not precisely skeptics, but are to Protestantism what cold dead, and worldly Catholics are to Catholicity. A waken them to a sense of their religious obligations, make them feel the necessity of attending to their salvation, and they unite with some one of the various Protestant sects, the one in which their infancy was trained, or to which accident determines them. A General Jackson, old and on the rink of eternity, unites with the Presbyterians, a Henry Clay with the Episcopalians. The American mind properly so called, whatever we may say of it or hope from it, is as yet thoroughly Protestant. Protestantism, chiefly under the Calvinistic or Methodistic phase, has had the forming of the American religious character, and what of religion the American people have it cast in a Protestant mould, and when quickened into life and activity runs in a Protestant channel.

A change is, no doubt, taking place with as great a rapidity as we could reasonably expect, and we look for large accessions to the church from conversions, but not so much from among those who have cast off all religion, as from among those who really believe the Christian truth Protestantism retains, and who see that it is incomplete, fragmentary, insufficient for itself, and are led from a view of its defective and broken character to seek its unity and integrity in the Catholic Church. We are all of us liable to be deceived by relying too much on our own peculiar experience, and taking what, after all, was only our own clique, coterie, or party, as representative of the whole country. It is evident to any one who reads the book before us, and has been acquainted with the New-England transcendentalists, that the author has taken them as the representatives of the class he addressed, and as an index to the direction likely to be taken by the American mind. But every thing in this country changes so rapidly that a reasonable induction from a state of facts which existed yesterday becomes absurd to-day, though it should chance to be reasonable again to-morrow. The transcendentalists, with Ralph Waldo Emerson for their high priest, Margaret Fuller for their high priestess, and The Dial for their organ, never a numerous or a very powerful party, have nearly all disappeared, and are as hard to find in New England now as are the Saint-Simonians in France. They were able, in their best estate, to find little response from the national heart, and were, after all, an exotic transplanted to our American garden from Germany, rather than a plant of native origin and growth, and we think but little account should be made of them in estimating the tendencies of the American people. 

There has been, if we are not much mistaken, since the palmy days of transcendentalism, a reaction in the American mind towards Evangelicalism. The naked pantheism of the transcendentalists, and the tendency of their speculations and utterances to foster a weak sentimentalism, never slow to run into a demoralizing sensualism ; the rationalistic tendencies of the Unitarian preaching and literature; and the bold, unblushing infidelity of Theodore Parker and his friends, together with the attacks of the Catholic press, have alarmed, to some extent, the better portion of the American people, and produced a reaction in favor not directly of Catholicity, but of more conservative forms of Protestantism. I may be mistaken, but I think the American people are more Evangelical to-day than they were fifteen or twenty years ago. But I also believe them nearer the church, because I believe them less rationalistic, and more deeply impressed with those elements of Protestantism which have been retained from Catholicity. Protestants have, to some extent, changed their front. Alarmed by the extravagances and ultraisms of a portion of their own number, and pressed from without by Catholicity, which insists on its right to hold them responsible for all these extravagances and ultraisms, they are now falling back, not as they were on simple nature, but on the truth the reformers retained. We hope much from this reaction, for it will give us some elements of Christian truth in the Protestant mind to which we can make our appeals. We therefore think the class of minds the author addresses not so large as he supposes, nor in fact so large as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. The direction of the leading American mind has changed, and our hopes are now from the more serious and religious among non-Catholics, rather than from those who. still retain their rationalistic and transcendentalist tendencies. In addressing ourselves to rationalists and transcendentalists, and in accepting their principle and method, there may be danger of doing more to confirm them in their present tendencies than to win them to the church; for it may well happen that they will be more deeply impressed with our strong assertions in favor of reason and nature, than with our arguments, clear and conelusive as they may be, designed to prove that Catholicity meets all the demands of intellect and all the wants of the heart. They have not, with individual exceptions, any very deep or painful sense of the need of something above reason and nature, and are far better satisfied with themselves as they are, than we who know from our religion and from our own experience the insufficiency of reason and nature alone commonly imagine. It is only when divine grace is operating on them or striving with them, that they experience those internal longings or those deep aspirations to something above nature, which creates so much misery in the bosoms of non-Catholics. However strictly accordant reason and nature may be with Catholicity, or however necessary it may be to enable man to attain to his supernatural beatitude, reason and nature do not of themselves aspire to it, for they do and can of themselves aspire only to a beatitude in their own order, that is to say, a natural beatitude.

The author has shown clearly that Calvinism, indeed Protestantism throughout as set forth by the leading reformers, is contrary to the dictates of natural reason, and the purer instincts of our nature, that it annihilates reason and nature to make way for grace, and in doing this, though it has been done many times before, he has done good service to the cause of religion. He has demolished for ever the claims of modern Protestantism to be the friend of reason, an intellectual religion, and the emancipator of the mind, the assertor of the rights of reason and the dignity of human nature. He has gone further; he has proved that Catholicity protects reason and the rights of nature. Under this last head it is possible that some who do not fully understand the question may think that he has gone too far, and assigned to reason and nature more than belongs to them. Nobody knows better than the author that we ourselves do not belong to the school of theologians he is disposed to follow, and that we think the disasters of the fall greater than that school appears to regard them; but we cannot find that in any thing he positively says, he goes beyond the line of sound doctrine, and it is only fair to interpret his strong assertions in favor of reason and nature as intended to deny the false assertions of the reformers. If he should be found, in the opinion of some, inexact in one or two expressions, he should be excused, if his general thought is Catholic and his intention right. The author writes to the popular mind, in a popular style, and seldom aims at technical precision. He is chiefly intent on the general impression he produces, and perhaps is not always so clear and exact in his particular statements as if he were writing a strictly scientific work. He intentionally writes in a style familiar to the class of persons he addresses, and expresses his thoughts as far as possible in their language, in the way which he judges most likely to convey the truth to their understandings. We must not tie such an author, anxious to reach the understandings and the hearts of non-Catholics, down to stereotyped forms, but must defend for him the largest liberty compatible with loyalty to the faith.

We do not think, however, that even as to the effects of the fall and the present powers and capacities of reason and nature, the author has said any thing to which any Catholic can reasonably object, or any thing that he has not a right as a sound theologian to say. If any one has any doubt on the subject, it arises either from his own misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine, or from the fact that the author's purpose has led him to dwell on the goods retained after the fall rather than on those lost by it. His line of argument required him to present the goods retained in the strongest light possible, and those lost in the weakest light possible. Hence he has presented in its full strength the case of reason and nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, but not in its full strength as against rationalists and transcendentalists. To the superficial reader, therefore, he may appear to express more on the one side than he means, and less on the other than he actually holds.

There is nothing that is unorthodox, although the terms selected and the forms of expression adopted, betray the purpose of the author to make the most possible of reason and nature in their present condition, and the real loss by the fall is in part implied rather than fully brought out. It is possible that the author holds that man was created in a state of pure nature, and afterwards adorned with the gifts of integrity and of sanctifying grace, but he does not assert this, tor he asserts pure nature only as the state in which man originally was, or might have been., created. Some Catholics have held, I believe, that man actually was created in a state of .pure nature, and only afterwards endowed with the integrity of his nature and sanctifying grace; but the more common doctrine is that he was origi nallj created in the integrity of his nature, and instantly endowed with the sanctifying grace by which he was constituted in a state of justice. All that Catholic faith requires us to hold on the point is, that God could, not that he did, create man in the beginning, as he is now born. For our own part, we do not believe man actually exists or ever did exist in what theologians call status naturc e puree. and we believe he is and always has been under a supernatural providence.

The author's statement of the effects of original sin is we believe dogmatic, as far as it goes. Certainly by the fall man lost none of his natural faculties, and he retains all that is or ever was absolutely essential to his nature as human nature, intrinsically unimpaired; but he did lose not only original justice, but the integrity of his nature, what theologians call the indebita, by which the body was held in subjection to the soul, the flesh to the spirit, the appetites and passions to reason, and reason to the law of God. He did not lose reason and free-will, but reason and freewill lost their dominion over the lower nature, whence internal disorder, anarchy, and discord, immediately followed, as they follow in a state the moment it is deprived of civil government. In the integrity of his nature, man experienced no internal disorder, no lawless concupiscence; all within was peaceful and harmonious: the flesh moved only at the command of reason, and, through the subjection in which it was held by reason, only in subordination to the will of God. Man's whole nature was orderly; its face was towards God, and it aspired to him as its supreme God. All this was changed by original sin. Reason and free-will retained their original nature indeed, but losing their dominion, no longer held the lower nature in subjection, but became its servants, often its vile slaves, serving where they should rule. The flesh, the appetites and passions, the inferior powers retained their nature also, but no longer held in subjection by reason, they went ahead, so to speak, each on its own hook, to its own special end. The appetite for food, dormant before the fall, before the law of death began to operate, for food is necessary only to resist the operations of that law, or to supply the continual waste it causes, sought according to its nature its special gratification, pushed the man to excess, and ho became a glutton; the appetite for drink did the same; pushed the man to excess, and, as soon as he had found the means, he became a drunkard. Noah planted the vine, drank of the juice thereof, and was drunk. The same may be said of all the appetites and passions according to their respective natures. Hence the world became filled with excesses, vices, and crimes.

Now, as the special end of all the inferior powers is a created good, our lower nature, by escaping from the dominion of reason and will, became averted from God, and turned from the Creator to the creature, practically carrying away with it even our higher nature. Original sin, in fact, rendered man averse from God, and he needs to be converted, to be turned towards God, before the primary and instinctive motions of his nature tend to him. We do not think it true to say that man, as a fact, always aspires to God, or tends naturally to him even as the Author of nature; nor do we understand the author of the book before ns to maintain that he docs. Intellect and will have, as before the fall, truth and good for their respective objects, and of course naturally aspire to the true and the good; and as God is the only absolutely true and the only absolutely good, they may be said to aspire implicitly or indirectly to God, inasmuch as that to which they do aspire can be found in its fulness, in its perfection, only in him. But in point of fact, left to fallen nature, intellect and will are developed under the influence of our lower nature, and seek the creature rather than the Creator. Concede that they seek truth and goodness, it is rarely that they directly and formally seek the supreme truth and goodness. The will takes up with a smaller present good, in preference to a greater but more remote good, and there is o*ten intellect enough expended on an intrigue or in compassing a crime, a robbery, or a revenge, if rightly directed, to ascertain the true religion. All this is certain, and included in the consequences of what our nature lost by the fall. The author does not dwell on this, because he is not writing a treatise on original sin, and because he was necessarily more intent on what we retained than on what we lost; but we cannot find that he anywhere contradicts it, or implies the contrary.

The point the author is intent on maintaining is that we did not by the fall lose reason and free-will, and therefore that our higher nature did not become necessarily subjected to the lower, as represented by the reformers, but retained the power or ability to assert and maintain its freedom, and to aspire to God, in the natural order. It is not to what our nature actually does, but to what it has the innate power to do, that he directs our attention. We are able by our natural forces to keep the natural law, but we do not do so, and our theologians of all schools derive an argument for revelation and the aids of grace from their practical necessity to enable men to grasp the truths and to practise the virtues even of the natural order. The author himself does as much, for although he maintains that reason can demonstrate the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the freedom of man, he argues from its failure to do so, the necessity of seeking the helps of revelation, assistance from above.

If we should find any fault with the author, it would not be in his overstating the radical power of reason and nature, for in his statements on this point he is sustained by the highest and most decisive authorities; but in perhaps not taking sufficient pains to guard his readers against confounding what reason and nature have the power to do with what they actually accomplish. The church has decided that "Reasoning,—ratiocinatio—can prove—-probare potest —with certainty, the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the freedom of man;" but I am not aware that she has ever decided that man does, in fact, arrive at these great primal truths of all science and morality, without the aid of revelation. St. Thomas teaches us that revelation is necessary, practically necessary, to enable men to know even the natural law, especially in the case of the great mass of mankind. Undoubtedly, "the great ideas and sentiments which constitute the foundations of the noble institutions of human society, are a part of the domain of reason ;" but not therefore does it follow that reason and nature alone have erected those noble institutions, or are practically able to sustain them. Reason, inasmuch as purely natural reason, is in the savage as well as in the civilized man, and all in the one that it is in the other, and yet the savage does not erect them. If men by reason and nature alone erect the noble institutions of human society, what becomes of all our talk about the services rendered by Catholicity to modern civilization? What reason and nature can do, when rightly directed and exerted to their full power, is one thing, and what they actually do or will do when abandoned to themselves, is another, and a very different thing. The church vindicates the ability of reason and nature, and asserts what they are able to do, but she also has occasion to condemn them, to conclude them under sin for not doing it.

The author, perhaps, in his strong desire to show the power of reason and the dignity and worth of human nature, has not made enough of the practical aberrations of reason and miseries of our fallen nature, or rather, has not brought out as carefully as he might the other side of the picture. He does it, indeed, in the chapter in which he shows that the problems of the Earnest Seeker do not find their solution in philosophy, ancient or modern, and also in the chapter in which he proves the" necessity of light and strength from God to enable us to solve them; but lie does not perhaps, show as clearly and as satisfactorily to his readers how he reconciles the failures of reason and nature with what he asserts of their native ability and aspirations as might be desired. In speaking of their ability and aspirations, he has the appearance of asserting not only that they are able to do, but that they really do what they are able to do; in asserting that they have failed and urging the need of light and help from above, he denies that they have done it, maintains that they have been abused, misdirected, or not properly exerted. Certainly we do not mean that there is any inconsistency in asserting the ability of reason in the strong terms used by the author, and asserting also its miserable failures; and we do not object in the least to the real meaning of the author; but he will permit us to say, that it seems to us that he has s0 expressed himself that the unlearned reader may regard him as maintaining, when asserting reason and nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, what he denies when asserting revelation and grace against rationalists and transcendentalists. The contradiction is apparent, not real, and the author really avoids it, but is not as clear, as distinct, in his statements as we could desire. There is a little confusion of tone and expression, but after all no inconsistency. If it had comported with his purpose to expose the weakness as well as the strength of reason, its practical inefficiency as well as its innate ability, its voluntary submission to the inferior nature as well as its power to master it and maintain its freedom, he would have avoided even the appearance of inconsistency, and shown clearly and satisfactorily how, with all its innate ability, reason in fact accomplishes very little even in the order of natural truth and virtue, without the aid, direct or indirect, of divine revelation and grace.

The author's design, it cannot be denied, is one that it is difficult to execute. He starts with the principle of the transcendentalist that nature aspires to God, and with the principle of the rationalist that reason is able to apprehend and conduct us to our appointed end. He therefore boldly accepts the challenge for Catholicity of the Earnest Seeker. But the fact is, though these principles are true in his sense, they are not true in their sense. As held by them they are false, though there is a truth that underlies them. The difficulty is to eliminate that truth, and fix their minds on it alone, while accepting their statements, or at least not objecting to them. A serious, and, as we think, an insurmountable difficulty. The author does all that man can do to get over it, but after all, he does not get over it. When we use the lannage of rationalists and transcendentalists, whatever explanations and qualifications we may introduce, they will understand us in their own sense, and fail to catch the sense we intend. Concede to the non-Catholic world that they already hold our first principles, and they will find in that fact a reason for being satisfied with themselves as they are, rather than for coming to us; for they feel very little need of logical consistency, or necessity of developing all the consequences of the principles they hold. Strictly speaking, our nature, though it might aspire, and ought to aspire to God, as a general thing, does not explicitly so aspire, nor does it instinctively move in the direction of its true end. It requires an effort of reason and will to raise our affections to God. Virtue is always an effort. The soul desires good, no doubt of that, but to desire good and to aspire to God as the good in itself, or as our good, are not formally one and the same thing, and it is only by a process of reasoning that we perceive that our true good is in God, that he is the end of our nature, and only hy an effort of free-will that, after we apprehend this, we really aspire to him. The transcendentalist principle then is not true, and consequently we can never deduce the truth from it, or bring the truth to harmonize with it. Even if the principle were true, it would not help the matter much, and would be no proof that man naturally aspires to the Catholic Church, or that she is that which responds to the aspirations of nature; for the aspirations of nature cannot rise above nature; nature can aspire to God only in the order of nature,—to God simply as its natural beatitude, while Catholicity and the beatitude it promises lie in the supernatural order.

We know that many theologians maintain that man has an innate natural desire for the supernatural, or to see God as he is in himself, impossible by the simple forces of nature. But this desire is only a vague, inefficacious, and indirect desire, which resolves itself into our general desire of knowing things as they are in themselves, and in their causes, which we cannot fully know unless we see and know God in his essence, as he is in himself. In any other sense the assertion that we have it, is condemned by Pius VI. in the Bull Auctorem Fidei. For ourselves, we doubt the innateness of the desire, and think in so far as it has any explicitness. it is due to reminiscences of the revelation made to our first parents in the garden. We should say, and we suppose that this is really what the author means, not that the son aspires to Catholicity, but that Catholicity meets its aspirations to good, by securing it, the good it craves, or a greater and more abundant good though not precisely of the kind it craves.

The author justifies himself in accepting this principle of the rationalists, on the ground that reason can attain, though not of itself to the true end of man, to a certain belief in revelation. But this is not to attain to our end by reason and nature. Reason can do all that reason is required to do. From the motives of credibility addressed to it, it can attain to a certain belief that God has made us a revelation, but this belief is not faith, nor are these motives of credibility the formal reason of faith. Even these motives of credibility are not furnished by reason; they are furnished by the Revelator himself, and addressed by him to reason, and they render the act of belief in revelation a perfectly reasonable act, for they are sufficient to convince and satisfy it. Revelation is neither through reason nor by reason, but is made to reason, and reason is simply able to receive it, and to yield its assent to it from the motives of credibility in the case. It is not correct to argue, then, that man by reason can attain to his appointed destiny, or his true end, because by it we can attain to a full belief in the supernatural moans by which it can be attained. What the author means is not what the rationalist holds. He means that Catholicity presupposes reason, respects it, addresses it, and satisfies its innate desire for truth, not only by enabling it to know better, more clearly, more fully the truths of the natural order, but by pouring in upon it a flood of light from above, and raising it to the possession and contemplation of the truths of the supernatural order. This is true, but it is not what the rationalist means, nor will it, in point of fact, satisfy him; for what he wants is to be rid of revelation, to be rid of the supernatural, and to be able to assert the sufficiency of reason and nature. The unreasonableness of Calvinism serves him as an excuse for his rationalism, but its real source is in his aversion from God, in the pride of the human heart which refuses to receive assistance even from its Maker. Instead of aspiring to God, the rationalist wishes to suffice for himself, and till subdued by divine grace, he revolts at the thought of being dependent on another.

What the author is really laboring to prove is that the church accepts reason and nature, operates on and with them, vindicates their rights and capacities, and meets and more than meets their purest, highest, and noblest aspirations after truth and good, and therefore that a man may become a Catholic without sacrificing his reason, his natural dignity, or his manhood. He is laboring to prove that in Catholicity the man will find all his intellectual and moral wants amply provided for, but not that Catholicity is formally that to which he naturally aspires or tends, or that to which by a right use even of his faculties, operating upon natural data alone, he can attain. The slight confusion, or want of clear, distinct, and direct statement, which the reader meets or fancies he meets here and there, does not, we are sure, spring from any confusion or inexactness in the author's mind, but from the necessities of the line of argument he has wished to adopt, and, from his unwillingness to set forth distinctly in the outset his real purpose, lest he should unnecessarily excite the prejudices of the class of persons he proposed to address, and therefore, lose his labor. Thus he studiously avoids using the word supernatural, and presenting and defending Christianity, in name, as the supernatural order. He has wished to conduct the Earnest Seeker on his own principles, step by step, to the acceptance of Catholicity, without informing him in advance whither he intends to conduct him. A very pardonable artifice, but, as it strikes us, wholly useless, for every reader knows beforehand, the author is a Catholic, and intends to conduct him to Catholicity. We would excite gratuitously no man's prejudices, but Catholicity is the supernatural order, or it is nothing, and the Earnest Seeker must accept it as such, not as a development of reason and nature, or he does not accept it at all. We cannot, if we would, seduce men into accepting the church through rationalism and transcendentalism. In accepting, or appearing to accept the first principles of rationalists or transcendentalists, we are more likely to be regarded as converting the church to them, than we are to convert them to the church. The moment we convince them that their avowed principles and aspirations require them to go further and join the Catholic Church, they will, unless divine grace prevents, enter into a new analysis of reason and nature, eliminate from their principles and aspirations what is due to tradition and the influences of Christian civilization, and fall back on a reason and nature that aspire to natural good alone.

The fact is, practically considered, reason and nature never operate as pure reason and nature. The Earnest Seeker, as described by the author, is not a man who has or has had only his own unassisted reason and nature. His confessions are such as no man, not in some sense christianized, could possibly make; they presuppose a belief, vague and indefinite it may be, that there is a supernatural order, a supernatural religion somewhere, of some sort, whence may come the solutions demanded. These demands of intellect, these wants of the heart, these aspirations of the soul, which the author so feelingly and so eloquently sets forth and which all serious and earnest-minded men, brought up outside of the church, are more or less conscious of, are not those of a soul in a state of pure nature, but of a soul born and bred in Christendom, and are due rather to reminiscences of a lost faith, than to the operations of pure nature. Christian civilization is never to be confounded with Christianity, yet something Christian enters into it, and is, as it were, assimilated by Christian nations. Reason and nature in the bosom of a Christian nation are indeed essentially what they are everywhere, we grant; but they receive from the first a culture, and are imbued with habits, which render them in their practical development very different from the reason and nature of the savage, the barbarian, or even the civilized pagan or Mahometan. Formed under the influences of Christian civilization, they have habits, wants, and aspirations which are not purely natural, and which in part are due directly or indirectly to the church. Nowhere out of Christendom could the author's Earnest Seeker be found. He is not a man, save as to merit, remaining in a state of pure nature, but a man who has been born and trained in a Christian atmosphere, under direct or indirect Christian influences, for no man absolutely ignorant of revelation and grace could propose his problems in the form he proposes them. He is, we were about to say, an inchoate Christian, and has principles, views, aspirations, feelings, thoughts, which he owes at least to the Christianity Christian nations have morally assimilated, and which characterizes what is called Christian civilization.

Even the heathen were never abandoned to pure reason and nature alone, for they never lost all tradition of revelation made to our first parents in the garden. Among all tribes, and nations, however high or however low in the scale of civilization, we find, mixed indeed with errors and superstitions, beliefs, notions, and practices, which were never derived from reason alone, but from the primitive revelation preserved in a corrupt state by gentile, and in its pure and integral state by Jewish and Christian tradition, 'he state of pure nature is a possible, but is not, and never has been, an actual state. As a matter of fact, it has never existed, certainly not since the fall; for Almighty God intended from the beginning man for a supernatural end, and placed him under a supernatural providence, with gracious helps always within his reach.

We commend this consideration to a very spirited and agreeable writer, for whom we have a great liking, in the London Rambler, who, in his zeal for the justice of God, imagines in the upper regions of hell a sort of natural heaven into which he proposes to admit not only unbaptized infants dying in infancy without actual sin, but the greater part of the heathen world, as well as of "our dissenting brethren" who die out of the church. Indeed, he seems to think the only use of hell, properly so called, is to punish bad Catholics. We can conceive it probable, as our theologians generally hold, and are permitted to hold, that unregenerated infants dying in infancy, though they will never see God, may have mercifully concealed from them the knowledge of what they have lost Not being guilty of any actual sin, they cannot be condemned to suffer the poena sensus, and therefore will not be exposed to positive suffering. But with regard to adults, who have attained to the use of reason, we understand no natural beatitude in or out of hell for them, for they are placed under a supernatural providence, and sufficient grace, if complied with, is given to every one to enable him to gain the supernatural reward of the just; and for one, come to the use of reason, not to comply with that grace is sin, and deserving of punishment according to the degree of malice in the non-complying individual.

Considering that man has never been left without at least some reminiscences of revelation, and that the grace of God strives with all men, it is never safe to conclude that what we experience in ourselves or observe in others, even though not in reality transcending reason and nature, is in fact derived from them; and to found an argument upon it as an argument founded on pure reason and nature will never have that weight with rationalists and transcendentalists it really ought to have. For our own part we think the best way of dealing with those who are disposed to assert the sufficiency of reason and nature, is not to labor to show them that our religion lies in their plane, or may be attained to by reason and nature, but that we have in our religion something far better than any thing they have, far better than reason and nature in their best estate, and that while we accept the natural order, and assert and maintain it in all its rights and dignity, we are able to offer them a supernatural order, another order of life proceeding from the same author, corresponding to it indeed, but infinitely superior to it, and inconceivably better and infinitely more desirable. While we concede to them that reason and nature are not essentially impaired by the fall, and are still good in their own order, and that God could, had he chosen, have created and left man in a state of pure nature, destined to a purely natural beatitude, it is best to tell them distinctly that he did not do so, and did not do so because he chose to do something inconceivably better for us, and thus labor to present our religion not as a want or necessity of their nature intellectual or moral, which, if it be supernatural, it is not and cannot be, but as a higher and nobler manifestation of his infinite love, which would not be contented with providing us nothing more than natural beatitude. It is not so much the needs or the satisfaction of reason and nature we would insist upon, as the inexhaustible bounty of God, which does for us far more than we are naturally able to ask or even to conceive,—more than we have ever desired or been able without divine assistance even to desire,—a bounty that not only meets our desires and aspirations, but infinitely exceeds them. This, it strikes us, is more likely to touch the heart, to win love, and command obedience, than simply showing that Catholicity responds to the wants or aspirations of the soul. It is the fact that Christianity is supernatural, that it introduces us into an order above nature, inconceivably better than nature, good as nature may be, and gives to reason a higher and clearer light, and to nature new and nobler aspirations, that constitutes its great recommendation, and makes it dearer to us than life itself. It is dear in that it redeems us from the curse of the law, and heals the wounds we received by the fall; it is dearer in that it ennobles human nature by making it the nature of God, through its union with the human nature assumed by the divine Word.

In these remarks it would be alike unjust to the author and to us to suppose that we are questioning any doctrine he asserts. We may not place as much confidence in the line of argument he is pursuing as he does, but that is not saying that that line of argument is not allowable, or that it is not important. Brought in with other arguments, we place on it a very high value, and it has always been recognized by our theologians. When taken alone by itself, we do not think it the strongest or the safest. But this is only our opinion, which must go for what it is worth. Every man should be allowed to take his own method of addressing the non-Catholic mind, so long as he keeps within the limits of faith and allowable opinion. Because we think there may be a better line of argument, it does not follow that we are right or that he is wrong. He does not claim his own line of argument as the only one it is lawful to adopt, and we do not claim ours as exclusive of others. We have made our remarks not to controvert any views he advances, but to guard the reader against the injustice of confounding him with a school which we do not like, and to which he certainly does not belong—a school which seems to us to found itself on what may be called the eccentricities of theologians, rather than on the general current of theology, on opinions which are tolerated rather than approved, sententimin ecclesia rather than on sententia eccle8t€6. Several publications, to which our attention has been recently drawn, make us fear such a school is rising, and we do not believe its introduction into our country would do any good. We are also opposed to every thing which looks like accommodating Catholic teaching to the tastes and temper of the age or country. In choosing our mode of presenting Catholic doctrine, we should consult this taste and temper, but that which we present is that over which we have no control, no right, and must be the same one Catholic truth, believed always and everywhere by the Catholic Church; and in this sentiment the author will assuredly agree with us. There are, as far as wo can discover, no other points in Mr. Hecker's book likely to be misapprehended, or to which exception can be taken by any Catholic however fastidious.

The author has addressed his book to non-Catholics, and we hope it will be read by them, and do something towards overcoming that silly and mischievous prejudice which excludes nearly every Catholic book from non-Catholic circles. He has written it with a view to what he conceives to be the wants and aspirations of the American mind, which he has studied with lively sympathy, and evidently with the hope that it will turn the attention of the American people to investigating the claims of the Catholic religion, and ultimately, with the grace of God, lead to their conversion. He thinks there is a crisis in their affairs, and that they cannot pass it safely without the aid of Catholicity. It is but simple justice to him to say that he does not urge this as a reason why they should become Catholics, but as an excellent reason why they should not oppose the church, and why they should investigate her titles. 9 

There has been much said and written of late on the conversion of Americans, and no man amongst us is more devoted to the work of effecting it, or more hopeful of its being effected, than our author. He does all by word and by writing in his power for it, and has quickened the zeal of many to do the same, among whom we may count ourselves But from the much we say and write in reference to this subject, and the frequency with which we speak of the American mind, the American people, American institutions, and the appeals we make to American patriotism, some Catholics not of American birth, or not having any very lively sympathies with the American character as they see it manifested, are led to suspect us of a design to americanize Catholicity, and of a desire to induce the American people to embrace our religion through appeals to their American prejudices, passions, habits, or patriotism. This suspicion, so far as we are concerned, is wholly unfounded, although we as well as others may have used expressions which would seem at first sight to warrant it. Unhappily this is a country in which no good thing can be proposed, but there stand ready a large number of unemployed individuals to convert it at once into a hobby, to mount it, and to ride it to death. Certainly no such thought or design exists as is suspected, but with unreasoning opposition on the one side and unreasoning enthusiasm on the other, we cannot say what may come in the end, if no pains be taken to guard against extremes, and if there be not on the part of those who are so earnest for the conversion of the country a proper respect for the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us, and full recognition of their authority and obedience to it. We know there is a feeling in certain quarters that, under the pretext of converting the country, or presenting Catholicity to the American people in a form adapted to their understanding, there is a secret intention to undermine, or at least to restrict the authority of the bishops and clergy, and to give the laity an influence in ecclesiastical matters which they are not entitled to, and cannot have without subverting the order of government which our Lord has established for his church. Although we know that on our part and that of our personal friends among the laity, there is nothing to justify this feeling, yet the fact of its existence may well make us fear that there has been imprudence somewhere, and that expressions may have been used or a tendency manifested, which are not in strict accordance with Catholic order.

The government of the church is not vested in the hands of the laity, and it does not pertain to them, even though editors of journals and reviews, to assume the direction of Catholic affairs, or to labor through outside pressure, or the force of public opinion which they may create, to compel the ecclesiastical authorities to favor a movement of any sort which has not received from them the initiative. It is no great stretch of humility on our part to concede that the bishops and clergy understand as well as we Catholic interests, have them as deeply at heart, and however unassuming they may be, are quite as well fitted to direct us as we are to direct them. If they fail in their duty, as individual bishops and priests may, it is not our business to call them to an account, for we have not been appointed either their judges or their overseers. We must leave that to God and his vicar. Appels commc cfabus to the editorial tribunal are, in principle, of the same nature as appeals from the ecclesiastical courts to the council of state. Before we can hope to effect any thing for the conversion of the country, we who are Catholics must be thoroughly respectful and obedient to legitimate authority, so that our bishops and priests may have freedom of movement, and liberty to mature and carry out their plans for the advancement of religion.

In a country like ours there is always danger of disrespect and disobedience to authority, save with those who have a simple childlike faith, together with great humility of character, or those who add to the same faith great and manly intelligence. The tone of the country is averse to authority; its very atmosphere is that of liberty,—we might also say, that of license, of insubordination. Young America rails at the "Governor," and has a great dislike to obedience. The very essence of Protestantism lies in its transfer of the ruling authority in the church from the clergy to the laity. Under Protestantism power operates from low to high, the sheep choose, commission, and govern the shepherd; and when he refuses to let them stray whither they please, they dismiss him, and choose a new shepherd, who will prove himself more accommodating. Catholics who mingle much with Protestants, and in general American society, catch something of the Protestant tone, and there is always more danger with us of the laity tyrannizing over the clergy, than there is of the clergy tyrannizing over the laity. The laity, no doubt, have rights, but the more resolute and firm we are in asserting them, the more scrupulous we should be in recognizing and respecting the rights of authority. It were better that our rights than those of authority should suffer. What we call our Americanism does very well in the political order,—at least so our countrymen hold,—but it cannot be transferred to the church without heresy and schism.

We have shown as strong a disposition, both by word and example, to assert and maintain the rights of the laity as any man that can be named ; we have gone the full length we can go, without exceeding the limits marked by Catholic discipline; perhaps we may have gone further in appearance; but we have never forgotten that our first duty is obedience to God in his ministers, and that no plan or project of ours touching religion, can be urged with propriety or advantage against their wishes, or without at least their tacit approbation. We know the Holy Father has admonished the bishops to encourage laymen of science, learning, and piety to write in defence of religion; but we know, also that he addressed this admonition to them, and it is authority to them to encourage such men, but it is not an authority to us to do what is recommended without them. We know that every man has the right to do all the good in his power, and no one has the right to hinder him; but whether what he takes to be good, or whether he is really doing good or not in the way he attempts to do it, is not for him, but for authority to judge. Order is Heaven's first law, and we can never expect the blessing of God upon any enterprise, however good in itself, that carries with it the slightest taint of irregularity. Ever}' movement intended to advance religious or Catholic interests, initiated by laymen, and supported by them against the wishes, or without the approval of authority, is to be distrusted, and abandoned by every one whose attachment to his church is stronger than his attachment to his own private opinion. No one should ever knowingly take part in any such movement. No movement of any sort, not approved by the prelates of the country, should ever have our countenance, unless it has the express sanction of the pope, the bishop's superior, as well as our own,—a sanction never to be counted on against the united voice of the prelates of any country.

Having made these remarks in reply to feelings and suspicions which we know exist in certain quarters, and which are unfounded, so far as we are personally concerned, and which we trust are not likely to be justified by any movement or tendencies worthy of the slightest consideration, we are acquainted with, we turn to the subject of the conversion of the country. Here it seems to us necessary to be on our guard against crotchets and hobbies, and to take care not to say so much about it as to disgust both those within and those without. The bishops and clergy know at least as well what it is necessary to do, in order to convert nonCatholics, as the laity do, and we are not disposed to run in advance of them. There is a great work to be done here before any direct efforts on a large scale can be attempted for the conversion of those who are without. If the souls of non-Catholics are dear to our Lord, the souls of bad Catholics are no less dear. With all that our bishops can do, they can only partially provide for the spiritual wants of the Catholics already in the country. We have a large Catholic population unprovided for, who neglect, if they do not forget, their religion, and are the greatest drawbacks there can be on the conversion of non-Catholics. The pastor's first care is to those who are of the household of faith, and, we may add, to the children of the faithful. The conversion of had Catholics, the proper training of Catholic children, the correction of the vice of intemperance, and other immoralities, prevalent in a portion of our Catholic population of this city, and the introduction of morality, good order, sobriety, and economy, into what are now haunts of drunkenness, dens of vice and petty crimes, would do more for the conversion of non-Catholics than all the books and reviews we can write, all the journals we can edit, or efforts we can make expressly for their conversion, for it would prove to them, what they now doubt, the practical moral efficiency of our religion. We must provide first for our own spiritual wants, get our own population all right, and then we may turn our attention with confidence and success to those who are without.

The conversion of the country is a thing every Catholic desires, prays for, and to some extent, no doubt, works for, although perhaps not with as much earnestness, zeal, and hopefulness as the impatience of us converts demands. But the conversion of a whole Protestant people, like the American, is a work of magnitude, and not to be effected in a day. We agree with our author that there never was opened a more glorious field to the church than is opened here. We believe the church is destined to reap here a glory that she has never reaped in the conversion of any other country, not because the conversion of this country is more easy than that of others, but because it is more difficult. It was easier to convert the Roman empire, than it is to convert the American republic, and it took the church six centuries to complete that; it is easier to convert Great Britain than the obedience, subordination, submission, and retain a stronger attachment to religion. There is scarcely a trait in the American character as practically developed that is not more a spirit of independence, an aversion to authority, a pride, an overweening conceit, as well as with a prejudice, that makes them revolt at the bare mention of the church. In dealing with them the church has and can have no extrinsic aid. She has to address them as individuals, and can hope nothing any further than she can convince the individual reason and win the individual heart. Her success here she must owe to herself alone, to her own intrinsic power and excellence. This is no reason why the Catholic should des pair of the conversion of the country, or make no exertions to effect it. The post of difficulty and danger is precisely the post the true Catholic chooses. Notwithstanding all the difficulty of the task, we believe the Church is able to accomplish it, and will accomplish it, and in doing so acquire a glory greater than she acquired in converting the Roman Empire. 

But we do not believe it is to be accomplished by any new or unusual means. The American people, like every other people, have, no doubt, their peculiarities, their idiosyncrasies, but their conversion will never be effected by seeking in these our point d'apjmi. They must be converted very much in the way and by the same means that other nations have been,—by addressing that in them which is common to all men, their reason, their heart, and their conscience, not what is peculiar to them, or what is their local or temporary interest or passion. We shall not do it by appeals to their patriotism, or by favoring their radicalism or their conservatism, their slavery or their anti-slavery proclivities. The church leaves to every people their nationality and to every state its autonomy, and in return claims to be free and independent of the temporal order. To induce the American people to become Catholic from patriotic motives would be to make them like the multitude who followed our Lord for the sake of "the loaves and fishes." It would be to subordinate the church to American nationality, as the English did at the time of the reformation, as the republicans did, or attempted to do in France in the last century, and to destroy her Catholic freedom and independence. The church must obey God and follow truth and justice irrespective of nationalities. She cannot be trammelled by nationalities. She is catholic, not national, and can no more be American, than European, Asiatic, African, or Australian. She is a kingdom in this world, but not of this world. To mix her up with a radical party or a conservative party would be to compromise her Catholicity. Were we to court the North by leaguing Catholic interests with the anti-slavery movement, abolitionists might pat us on the back, call us clever fellows, and profess great respect for our church. Were we to labor to identify them with the slave interest, southern politicians would also pat us on the back, call us clever fellows, and profess great respect for our church. But besides losing as much in the one section as we should gain in the other, we should be trammelled by the section we courted. If the abolitionists or the pro-slavery men should be disposed to go further than we could with our Catholic conscience go with them, the party deserted would come down upon ns in a storm of wrath, and all the politicians among our own friends would stand aghast, and fear that Catholic interests were ruined, or put back a century. So it must be, if in the hope of winning the American people to the church, we as Catholics form a coalition with one or another political party, or with one or another outside interest. As Americans we have a nationality, political preferences and duties, but as Catholics, we know no nationality, no political party, unless a party is formed for the purpose of depriving us of our Catholic freedom. The church cannot be involved in the conflicts of nationalities or the squabbles of demagogues.

Moreover, in our country the Catholic population is made up of a variety of nationalities, and one nationality in the eyes of the church is as respectable as another. These in time will be moulded into one American nationality. We cannot hasten that time by any attempts to force them to americanize. It is well to bear in mind that they will americanize, so that measures may be taken in season to guard against americanizing becoming apostatizing. The most efficient portion of our Catholic population are of foreign birth and training, and it will be so for some time to come. We cannot serve the interests of religion by throwing our American nationality in their faces, any more than they can by throwing theire in our faces. Americans have the right to be Americans, and we will defend that right against whosoever assails it, as we would defend our country against the enemy who should invade our shores; but in laboring to promote Catholic interests in the country, the best way undoubtedly is, to lay aside nationalities, to remember only that we are Catholics, and make our appeal to our countrymen as men, as simple human beings, endowed with reason and free-will, having souls that will never die, and capable by a right use ot their faculties, assisted by divine grace, to attain to the endless beatitude of heaven.

We must also bear in mind that the instruments AImighty God will use in the conversion of the country are the population with their clergy already Catholic. However we may work for non-Catholics, we must work with Catholics, and carry with us the sympathies and affections of the Catholic body, or effect nothing. No doubt that body has, outside of its religion, its crotchets, its peculiarities, its idiosyncrasies, and, above all, its sensitiveness. We must never run athwart these when it can be helped; we must remember we belong to the same body, with our own crotchets, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, sensitiveness, and therefore must not be too rude upon others. We cannot move much in advance of the public sentiment of our own body. While, however, we say this in reference to those who are thought to be too impatient to americanize, we hope it will be permitted us to say to others of different tendencies or sympathies, that they must not be too suspicious, too ready to take offense at a word or an expression, or to put a bad construction when a good one is possible. On this point we need not say that some injustice has been done to our Review, and its position and influence very unnecessarily injured. No one seems to have considered the delicate position in which we and every American born Catholic were placed on the rise of the Know-nothing party. There was no question that we must oppose that party with all the force and energy we could command; out the difficulty, hard for any one but an American by birth and breeding to appreciate, was to oppose the party without offending the sentiment of American nationality, enlisting it on the side of the party, and thus rendering it still stronger and more dangerous. To oppose it in an antiAmerican spirit, or on Catholic grounds alone, would have been about as wise as for a man to attempt to bite off his own nose. There was only one ground on which we could offer any effectual opposition, that was the American ground,—to accept distinctly and sincerely the American nationality, and to prove that the spirit and principles, the ends and aims of the party were opposed to the genuine principles and spirit of American institutions. It was necessary to take from the party all chance of appeal to the sentiment of nationality, the sentiment common to every man with regard to the land of his birth, and defend Catholics and foreign-born citizens, not as Catholics and foreigners, but as American citizens, as we well could do. Our misfortune was that, while we were doing all in our power to prevent a false issue from being made up before the public, which would have been fatal to us as Catholics, and deeply prejudicial to the foreign-born portion of our population, whether Catholic or not, we were understood to be working on the side of the Know-nothings, and sharing their sentiments against foreigners. A greater mistake it was not possible to commit, and greater injnstice conld not be done us. The Know-nothing party is now comparatively dead, passion has had time to subside, and Catholic charity may induce those who so grossly misconstrued our motives, to inquire if they were not too hasty, and if our course, which seemed to them so unjust and ungenerous, was not dictated by a wise and prudent regard for all the interests attacked by the Know-nothings. A little reflection, it seems to us, might have convinced the persons who took offence, that, supposing us to have the least grain of common sense, we could not have meant any such thing as they supposed; and common justice, not to say Catholic charity, if passion and suspicion had slept, would have prevented us even from being accused. We had and have no interests and no affections but such as are bound up with the Catholic body of which we are an insignificant member, and as the portion of that body from which we have the most to hope for Catholicity are Irish or of Irish descent, it is ridiculous to suppose that we were anti-Irish in our feelings, or were disposed to join the Know-nothings in a war against Irish Catholics, which could be only a war equally against ourselves.

Certainly, we do not allude to these bygone events for the purpose of complaining; we suffered, yet not more than we expected to suffer; but we allude to then for the purpose of reminding those who suppose that there is an American party forming amongst the Catholics of this country, and that it is necessary to crush it out by crushing every man supposed likely to favor it, that they should guard against ungenerous suspicions, lest they in the end bring about the very thing they oppose, and to which we are as strongly opposed as they are. It is difficult for flesh and blood to bear with equanimity what we have had to bear during the last three years, from men whom we have done our best to serve, and if the grace of God had not restrained us, and our deep devotion to the Catholic cause had not influenced us, we might, when provoked almost beyond endurance, have even ourselves been tempted to do what we should for ever have regretted. Confidence begets confidence, and suspicion breeds suspicion, and sometimes makes the thing it dreads. We think there has been too great readiness to suspect American-born Catholics and converts of designs, intentions, aims, and wishes which we would be the last to entertain. We have ourselves been suffered at in the Catholic press as a convert; sometimes we have been scolded because we did not show a proper regard for converts, at other times we have been admonished that being a convert we should shut up our mouth; and one journal has gone so far as to sing its palinode for the encouragement it had given us, and to admonish Catholics that they are too ready to confide in converts and to push them forward. All this is sad, sad, and not the best way to encourage conversions. It is hard enough to feel that one is a convert, that he has not had the advantages of being trained from his childhood in the true faith, and of having grown up with Catholic habits and tastes, without having it sung in his face by Catholics, if he ventures to speak boldly on Catholic matters. But these are trifles, and are mentioned only to show that if these are complaints on one side there might be complaints also on the other, and that the only way is for all to study mutual forbearance, mutual confidence and mutual charity, so that there shall be, as there ought to be, no one side or the other side, but one body, with no rent or schism in it. In reality there is no American side, and no foreign side, but there are American feelings and foreign feelings, which it would not be impossible for evil-minded persons to push to the formation of a native party and a foreign party. Happily, through the good providence of God, no such parties are formed among us, and we trust there never will be, certainly shall not be by our means. We publish our Review because originally invited to do so by the prelates of the church, and because we wish to serve Catholic interests; but if we believed that it was likely to produce any such division, or could, under any possible combination of circumstances, become the organ of any particular section of the Catholic body, we would discontinue it with the present number, for the evil it would do would far overbalance any good it could possibly effect: and we assure the authorities of the church that the moment they signify to us that they lack confidence in its usefulness, that moment we will discontinue it at whatever loss to ourselves personally. We want no party for us or against us; we want to form no schism or school; we want simply to serve the Catholic cause. When it is made clear to us that in the opinion of those who are the proper judges we are not serving it, we shall retire, not because of clamors, or opposition, but because our only motive for publishing a Catholic review will then cease to exist.

Although we have made these remarks a propos of Father Hecker's book, happily neither he nor it is implicated in them, and one of its great merits is, though addressing Americans, it is not American in any offensive seuse, and avoids all references that could offend the most fastidious foreign-born Catholic, yet its author has a livelier sympathy with his own countrymen than we have, and is less disturbed by the dangerous tendencies by which they are affected than we are. With him hope is constant, ever-living, and active; with us it is spasmodic, and is kept up only by an effort. We fear the tendencies now at work in our people will carry them so far, licentiousness and corruption of all sorts, in public and private life, will become so universal before the salutary influences of the church can be brought to bear on them with the requisite power, that they will need to be visited by Almighty God in judgment rather than in mercy. We fear also that they are more likely to carrj* away with them a large proportion of our Catholic population, than this population is to restrain them; we fear that even the salt that should save them will lose its savor, and we tremble hardly less for our Catholic than for our non-Catholic population. But it is always better to take counsel of our hopes than of our fears, and we will not dwell on our gloomy forebodings, which, after all, may spring from the ill-health, under the depression of which we are forced to write.

In conclusion, we wish to thank the author sincerely and earnestly for his deeply interesting and highly valuable book. It is free from routine, from all cant, from all pretensions; a fresh, sincere, earnest, genuine book, warm from the mind and heart of the writer, and cannot fail to reach the minds and hearts of his readers. It is written in a style of great force and beauty, free, spirited, and seductive. The parts which please us the most are those in which the author answers the popular objections of the day to Catholicity. His answers to them are almost universally happy, brief, animated, witty, good-natured, and conclusive, refuting the objector without ever wounding his selflove or mortifying his vanity. It is in its way a model of controversial writing, and it cannot fail to have a good influence on our polemical literature, to which it is certainly one of the most important contributions ever made by a native-born Catholic. We are much mistaken, if it do not prove one of the most popular works ever issued by our American press, and it will certainly establish the author in the first rank among our most esteemed Catholic writers. The author may not realize all his expectations as to the influence on the precise classes he addresses, but there are many minds, where they are not looked for, that it will reach and help, and it will be read with interest and profit very generally by members of his own communion. It belongs to the class of books of which we cannot have too many, and which can nowhere else be produced but in our own country.

Aspirations of Nature.*

[From Brownson’s Quarterly Review for October, 1857.]

The numerous readers of that admirable book, The Questions of the Soul, will most eagerly welcome a new work by the same popular author. Mr. Hecker’s Aspirations of Nature is written in the same free and earnest style, so much admired in his former publication, and is marked by the same loving spirit, the same tone of independent thought, and the same glowing enthusiasm, while it takes broader and deeper views of the subjects it discusses, and addresses itself to a larger public.

The aim of this new book is to show that all men naturally aspire to religion, and that the aspirations of their nature can be satisfied in the Catholic Church, and nowhere else. The author endeavors, on the one hand, to vindicate the rights and dignity of human nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, who decry it, and seek to supersede it by what they call grace; and on the other, to show that fidelity, in a large sense, to one’s own reason and nature, will conduct the earnest seeker to the communion of the Catholic Church. He takes his starting-point in our own rational and moral nature, and proceeds on the principle that no religion can be deserving of the slightest respect, that contradicts reason or leaves the aspirations of our nature unsatisfied. He meets the rationalist and the transcendentalist each on his own ground, accepts their principle and method, and endeavors to prove that if they will only be faithful to them, they will and must find the true religion.

The author proves that Protestantism does not and cannot, and that Catholicity can and does, fulfil the conditions demanded by the Earnest Seeker; and, as far as we can judge, does it with a force of argument, beauty of expression, and felicity of illustration that leaves little to be desired. There can be no doubt that what is called Evangelical Protestantism Is utterly unable to meet the demands of reason or the wants of the heart, and no one who knows Catholicity can doubt its capacity to do both. Calvinism proceeds on the principle that our nature has been totally corrupted by the fall and that men as they are now born are incapable of thinking a good thought or performing a good deed. Hence it teaches that all the acts of the unregenerate, even their prayers, are sins. Catholicity proceeds on the principle that, thought by the fall man has lost all power, prior to regeneration, to perform acts meritorious of eternal life, he yet retains his essential nature, - reason and free-will, - and can discover and embrace truth, and perform acts really good, in the natural order. Hence the church condemns the proposition: “All the works of infidels are sins,” and asserts the reality of natural truth and virtue. Catholicity presupposes reason or natural truth as the preamble in logical order to revelation, and natural reason and our natural affections, and elevates them to a higher order, purifies and strengthens them, instead of decrying and condemning them.

It will be seen that the author boldly accepts the principle that “what contradicts reason contradicts God.” There is nothing startling in this principle to Catholics, though they do no usually express it in this way, for it is more reverent and less dangerous to say, what contradicts the word of God contradicts reason, making thus the revelation the criterion of reason, not reason the criterion of the revelation. When we say, what contradicts reason contradicts God, we have the appearance of favoring the rule of private judgment, and  of justifying rationalists in setting up their private opinions as the criteria of revealed truth. There are comparatively few who can practically distinguish between reason and their own mental habits and prejudices, or so to speak, between reason and their own private judgment. To the mass of men brought up in a Protestant community, nothing appears more contradictory to reason than the various dogmas and practices of the Catholic Church, and they really are contradictory to their reason, that is, to reason as modified or perverted by their anti-Catholic habits and prejudices. Certainly, reason taken strictly, in its own essential nature, approves or teaches nothing that does not accord with the teachings and usages of the church. But men do not generally so take reason in practice. They do not easily divest themselves of their habits and prejudices. They reason as they are. In practice they confound their habits and predjudices with reason itself, and conclude that whatever contradicts them, contradicts reason. Hence the rule, as stated, is not regarded generally as a safe practical rule, and although strictly true, for God is present in reason as well as in revelation, and his veracity is the same in the one as in the other, the author, we presume, would not lay it down if he did not regard it as in no danger of being abused by the class of minds he is addressing, and also as necessary in some sort to give a strong denial to the denunciations of reason by so-called orthodox Protestantism. He has thought it proper and in the highest degree prudent to show the earnest seeker after truth, who is revolted by the depreciation of reason and nature by Calvinism, that on this point Catholicity is totally different, and not the enemy, but the warm friend of reason. In this he is certainly right, and giving the right direction to Catholic controversy.

We must bear in mind that the author addresses his book not indiscriminately to all classes of non-Catholics; but to that class who have cast off Protestantism, fallen back on simple nature, have become earnest seekers after religion, and are prepared to accept it the moment that they see that it meets their moral wants, and that they can embrace t without denying the plain dictates of reason or forfeiting the rights and dignity of their human nature. He thinks this class includes a majority of the adult portion of our population. On this point, however, we are not able to agree with him. We may be wrong, but we are not, with what knowledge we have of our countrymen, able to believe that they have as yet, to any great extent, cast off false Christianity, absolutely got rid of the various forms of Protestantism, and now stand in simple unprejudiced nature, prepared to receive Catholic truth in proportion as it is clearly, distinctly, and affectionately presented. It is true, as the author states, that the majority of the adult population have been said , on respectable authority, to profess no religion; but I attribute the fact, if it be a fact, not to the hollowness of Protestantism, and rejected it from a conviction that it is essentially unreasonable and false, dishonorable to God and unfit for man; but to their indifference to religion itself, to their want of seriousness, earnestness in the affairs of the soul, and to their insane devotion to the world and its goods. They are not precisely skeptics, but are to Protestantism what cold dead, and worldly Catholics are to Catholicity. A waken them to a sense of their religious obligations, make them feel the necessity of attending to their salvation, and they unite with some one of the various Protestant sects, the one in which their infancy was trained, or to which accident determines them. A General Jackson, old and on the rink of eternity, unites with the Presbyterians, a Henry Clay with the Episcopalians. The American mind properly so called, whatever we may say of it or hope from it, is as yet thoroughly Protestant. Protestantism, chiefly under the Calvinistic or Methodistic phase, has had the forming of the American religious character, and what of religion the American people have it cast in a Protestant mould, and when quickened into life and activity runs in a Protestant channel.

A change is, no doubt, taking place with as great a rapidity as we could reasonably expect, and we look for large accessions to the church from conversions, but not so much from among those who have cast off all religion, as from among those who really believe the Christian truth Protestantism retains, and who see that it is incomplete, fragmentary, insufficient for itself, and are led from a view of its defective and broken character to seek its unity and integrity in the Catholic Church. We are all of us liable to be deceived by relying too much on our own peculiar experience, and taking what, after all, was only our own clique, coterie, or party, as representative of the whole country. It is evident to any one who reads the book before us, and has been acquainted with the New-England transcendentalists, that the author has taken them as the representatives of the class he addressed, and as an index to the direction likely to be taken by the American mind. But every thing in this country changes so rapidly that a reasonable induction from a state of facts which existed yesterday becomes absurd to-day, though it should chance to be reasonable again to-morrow. The transcendentalists, with Ralph Waldo Emerson for their high priest, Margaret Fuller for their high priestess, and The Dial for their organ, never a numerous or a very powerful party, have nearly all disappeared, and are as hard to find in New England now as are the Saint-Simonians in France. They were able, in their best estate, to find little response from the national heart, and were, after all, an exotic transplanted to our American garden from Germany, rather than a plant of native origin and growth, and we think but little account should be made of them in estimating the tendencies of the American people. 

There has been, if we are not much mistaken, since the palmy days of transcendentalism, a reaction in the American mind towards Evangelicalism. The naked pantheism of the transcendentalists, and the tendency of their speculations and utterances to foster a weak sentimentalism, never slow to run into a demoralizing sensualism ; the rationalistic tendencies of the Unitarian preaching and literature; and the bold, unblushing infidelity of Theodore Parker and his friends, together with the attacks of the Catholic press, have alarmed, to some extent, the better portion of the American people, and produced a reaction in favor not directly of Catholicity, but of more conservative forms of Protestantism. I may be mistaken, but I think the American people are more Evangelical to-day than they were fifteen or twenty years ago. But I also believe them nearer the church, because I believe them less rationalistic, and more deeply impressed with those elements of Protestantism which have been retained from Catholicity. Protestants have, to some extent, changed their front. Alarmed by the extravagances and ultraisms of a portion of their own number, and pressed from without by Catholicity, which insists on its right to hold them responsible for all these extravagances and ultraisms, they are now falling back, not as they were on simple nature, but on the truth the reformers retained. We hope much from this reaction, for it will give us some elements of Christian truth in the Protestant mind to which we can make our appeals. We therefore think the class of minds the author addresses not so large as he supposes, nor in fact so large as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. The direction of the leading American mind has changed, and our hopes are now from the more serious and religious among non-Catholics, rather than from those who. still retain their rationalistic and transcendentalist tendencies. In addressing ourselves to rationalists and transcendentalists, and in accepting their principle and method, there may be danger of doing more to confirm them in their present tendencies than to win them to the church; for it may well happen that they will be more deeply impressed with our strong assertions in favor of reason and nature, than with our arguments, clear and conelusive as they may be, designed to prove that Catholicity meets all the demands of intellect and all the wants of the heart. They have not, with individual exceptions, any very deep or painful sense of the need of something above reason and nature, and are far better satisfied with themselves as they are, than we who know from our religion and from our own experience the insufficiency of reason and nature alone commonly imagine. It is only when divine grace is operating on them or striving with them, that they experience those internal longings or those deep aspirations to something above nature, which creates so much misery in the bosoms of non-Catholics. However strictly accordant reason and nature may be with Catholicity, or however necessary it may be to enable man to attain to his supernatural beatitude, reason and nature do not of themselves aspire to it, for they do and can of themselves aspire only to a beatitude in their own order, that is to say, a natural beatitude.

The author has shown clearly that Calvinism, indeed Protestantism throughout as set forth by the leading reformers, is contrary to the dictates of natural reason, and the purer instincts of our nature, that it annihilates reason and nature to make way for grace, and in doing this, though it has been done many times before, he has done good service to the cause of religion. He has demolished for ever the claims of modern Protestantism to be the friend of reason, an intellectual religion, and the emancipator of the mind, the assertor of the rights of reason and the dignity of human nature. He has gone further; he has proved that Catholicity protects reason and the rights of nature. Under this last head it is possible that some who do not fully understand the question may think that he has gone too far, and assigned to reason and nature more than belongs to them. Nobody knows better than the author that we ourselves do not belong to the school of theologians he is disposed to follow, and that we think the disasters of the fall greater than that school appears to regard them; but we cannot find that in any thing he positively says, he goes beyond the line of sound doctrine, and it is only fair to interpret his strong assertions in favor of reason and nature as intended to deny the false assertions of the reformers. If he should be found, in the opinion of some, inexact in one or two expressions, he should be excused, if his general thought is Catholic and his intention right. The author writes to the popular mind, in a popular style, and seldom aims at technical precision. He is chiefly intent on the general impression he produces, and perhaps is not always so clear and exact in his particular statements as if he were writing a strictly scientific work. He intentionally writes in a style familiar to the class of persons he addresses, and expresses his thoughts as far as possible in their language, in the way which he judges most likely to convey the truth to their understandings. We must not tie such an author, anxious to reach the understandings and the hearts of non-Catholics, down to stereotyped forms, but must defend for him the largest liberty compatible with loyalty to the faith.

We do not think, however, that even as to the effects of the fall and the present powers and capacities of reason and nature, the author has said any thing to which any Catholic can reasonably object, or any thing that he has not a right as a sound theologian to say. If any one has any doubt on the subject, it arises either from his own misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine, or from the fact that the author's purpose has led him to dwell on the goods retained after the fall rather than on those lost by it. His line of argument required him to present the goods retained in the strongest light possible, and those lost in the weakest light possible. Hence he has presented in its full strength the case of reason and nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, but not in its full strength as against rationalists and transcendentalists. To the superficial reader, therefore, he may appear to express more on the one side than he means, and less on the other than he actually holds.

There is nothing that is unorthodox, although the terms selected and the forms of expression adopted, betray the purpose of the author to make the most possible of reason and nature in their present condition, and the real loss by the fall is in part implied rather than fully brought out. It is possible that the author holds that man was created in a state of pure nature, and afterwards adorned with the gifts of integrity and of sanctifying grace, but he does not assert this, tor he asserts pure nature only as the state in which man originally was, or might have been., created. Some Catholics have held, I believe, that man actually was created in a state of .pure nature, and only afterwards endowed with the integrity of his nature and sanctifying grace; but the more common doctrine is that he was origi nallj created in the integrity of his nature, and instantly endowed with the sanctifying grace by which he was constituted in a state of justice. All that Catholic faith requires us to hold on the point is, that God could, not that he did, create man in the beginning, as he is now born. For our own part, we do not believe man actually exists or ever did exist in what theologians call status naturc e puree. and we believe he is and always has been under a supernatural providence.

The author's statement of the effects of original sin is we believe dogmatic, as far as it goes. Certainly by the fall man lost none of his natural faculties, and he retains all that is or ever was absolutely essential to his nature as human nature, intrinsically unimpaired; but he did lose not only original justice, but the integrity of his nature, what theologians call the indebita, by which the body was held in subjection to the soul, the flesh to the spirit, the appetites and passions to reason, and reason to the law of God. He did not lose reason and free-will, but reason and freewill lost their dominion over the lower nature, whence internal disorder, anarchy, and discord, immediately followed, as they follow in a state the moment it is deprived of civil government. In the integrity of his nature, man experienced no internal disorder, no lawless concupiscence; all within was peaceful and harmonious: the flesh moved only at the command of reason, and, through the subjection in which it was held by reason, only in subordination to the will of God. Man's whole nature was orderly; its face was towards God, and it aspired to him as its supreme God. All this was changed by original sin. Reason and free-will retained their original nature indeed, but losing their dominion, no longer held the lower nature in subjection, but became its servants, often its vile slaves, serving where they should rule. The flesh, the appetites and passions, the inferior powers retained their nature also, but no longer held in subjection by reason, they went ahead, so to speak, each on its own hook, to its own special end. The appetite for food, dormant before the fall, before the law of death began to operate, for food is necessary only to resist the operations of that law, or to supply the continual waste it causes, sought according to its nature its special gratification, pushed the man to excess, and ho became a glutton; the appetite for drink did the same; pushed the man to excess, and, as soon as he had found the means, he became a drunkard. Noah planted the vine, drank of the juice thereof, and was drunk. The same may be said of all the appetites and passions according to their respective natures. Hence the world became filled with excesses, vices, and crimes.

Now, as the special end of all the inferior powers is a created good, our lower nature, by escaping from the dominion of reason and will, became averted from God, and turned from the Creator to the creature, practically carrying away with it even our higher nature. Original sin, in fact, rendered man averse from God, and he needs to be converted, to be turned towards God, before the primary and instinctive motions of his nature tend to him. We do not think it true to say that man, as a fact, always aspires to God, or tends naturally to him even as the Author of nature; nor do we understand the author of the book before ns to maintain that he docs. Intellect and will have, as before the fall, truth and good for their respective objects, and of course naturally aspire to the true and the good; and as God is the only absolutely true and the only absolutely good, they may be said to aspire implicitly or indirectly to God, inasmuch as that to which they do aspire can be found in its fulness, in its perfection, only in him. But in point of fact, left to fallen nature, intellect and will are developed under the influence of our lower nature, and seek the creature rather than the Creator. Concede that they seek truth and goodness, it is rarely that they directly and formally seek the supreme truth and goodness. The will takes up with a smaller present good, in preference to a greater but more remote good, and there is o*ten intellect enough expended on an intrigue or in compassing a crime, a robbery, or a revenge, if rightly directed, to ascertain the true religion. All this is certain, and included in the consequences of what our nature lost by the fall. The author does not dwell on this, because he is not writing a treatise on original sin, and because he was necessarily more intent on what we retained than on what we lost; but we cannot find that he anywhere contradicts it, or implies the contrary.

The point the author is intent on maintaining is that we did not by the fall lose reason and free-will, and therefore that our higher nature did not become necessarily subjected to the lower, as represented by the reformers, but retained the power or ability to assert and maintain its freedom, and to aspire to God, in the natural order. It is not to what our nature actually does, but to what it has the innate power to do, that he directs our attention. We are able by our natural forces to keep the natural law, but we do not do so, and our theologians of all schools derive an argument for revelation and the aids of grace from their practical necessity to enable men to grasp the truths and to practise the virtues even of the natural order. The author himself does as much, for although he maintains that reason can demonstrate the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the freedom of man, he argues from its failure to do so, the necessity of seeking the helps of revelation, assistance from above.

If we should find any fault with the author, it would not be in his overstating the radical power of reason and nature, for in his statements on this point he is sustained by the highest and most decisive authorities; but in perhaps not taking sufficient pains to guard his readers against confounding what reason and nature have the power to do with what they actually accomplish. The church has decided that "Reasoning,—ratiocinatio—can prove—-probare potest —with certainty, the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the freedom of man;" but I am not aware that she has ever decided that man does, in fact, arrive at these great primal truths of all science and morality, without the aid of revelation. St. Thomas teaches us that revelation is necessary, practically necessary, to enable men to know even the natural law, especially in the case of the great mass of mankind. Undoubtedly, "the great ideas and sentiments which constitute the foundations of the noble institutions of human society, are a part of the domain of reason ;" but not therefore does it follow that reason and nature alone have erected those noble institutions, or are practically able to sustain them. Reason, inasmuch as purely natural reason, is in the savage as well as in the civilized man, and all in the one that it is in the other, and yet the savage does not erect them. If men by reason and nature alone erect the noble institutions of human society, what becomes of all our talk about the services rendered by Catholicity to modern civilization? What reason and nature can do, when rightly directed and exerted to their full power, is one thing, and what they actually do or will do when abandoned to themselves, is another, and a very different thing. The church vindicates the ability of reason and nature, and asserts what they are able to do, but she also has occasion to condemn them, to conclude them under sin for not doing it.

The author, perhaps, in his strong desire to show the power of reason and the dignity and worth of human nature, has not made enough of the practical aberrations of reason and miseries of our fallen nature, or rather, has not brought out as carefully as he might the other side of the picture. He does it, indeed, in the chapter in which he shows that the problems of the Earnest Seeker do not find their solution in philosophy, ancient or modern, and also in the chapter in which he proves the" necessity of light and strength from God to enable us to solve them; but lie does not perhaps, show as clearly and as satisfactorily to his readers how he reconciles the failures of reason and nature with what he asserts of their native ability and aspirations as might be desired. In speaking of their ability and aspirations, he has the appearance of asserting not only that they are able to do, but that they really do what they are able to do; in asserting that they have failed and urging the need of light and help from above, he denies that they have done it, maintains that they have been abused, misdirected, or not properly exerted. Certainly we do not mean that there is any inconsistency in asserting the ability of reason in the strong terms used by the author, and asserting also its miserable failures; and we do not object in the least to the real meaning of the author; but he will permit us to say, that it seems to us that he has s0 expressed himself that the unlearned reader may regard him as maintaining, when asserting reason and nature against Calvinists and Jansenists, what he denies when asserting revelation and grace against rationalists and transcendentalists. The contradiction is apparent, not real, and the author really avoids it, but is not as clear, as distinct, in his statements as we could desire. There is a little confusion of tone and expression, but after all no inconsistency. If it had comported with his purpose to expose the weakness as well as the strength of reason, its practical inefficiency as well as its innate ability, its voluntary submission to the inferior nature as well as its power to master it and maintain its freedom, he would have avoided even the appearance of inconsistency, and shown clearly and satisfactorily how, with all its innate ability, reason in fact accomplishes very little even in the order of natural truth and virtue, without the aid, direct or indirect, of divine revelation and grace.

The author's design, it cannot be denied, is one that it is difficult to execute. He starts with the principle of the transcendentalist that nature aspires to God, and with the principle of the rationalist that reason is able to apprehend and conduct us to our appointed end. He therefore boldly accepts the challenge for Catholicity of the Earnest Seeker. But the fact is, though these principles are true in his sense, they are not true in their sense. As held by them they are false, though there is a truth that underlies them. The difficulty is to eliminate that truth, and fix their minds on it alone, while accepting their statements, or at least not objecting to them. A serious, and, as we think, an insurmountable difficulty. The author does all that man can do to get over it, but after all, he does not get over it. When we use the lannage of rationalists and transcendentalists, whatever explanations and qualifications we may introduce, they will understand us in their own sense, and fail to catch the sense we intend. Concede to the non-Catholic world that they already hold our first principles, and they will find in that fact a reason for being satisfied with themselves as they are, rather than for coming to us; for they feel very little need of logical consistency, or necessity of developing all the consequences of the principles they hold. Strictly speaking, our nature, though it might aspire, and ought to aspire to God, as a general thing, does not explicitly so aspire, nor does it instinctively move in the direction of its true end. It requires an effort of reason and will to raise our affections to God. Virtue is always an effort. The soul desires good, no doubt of that, but to desire good and to aspire to God as the good in itself, or as our good, are not formally one and the same thing, and it is only by a process of reasoning that we perceive that our true good is in God, that he is the end of our nature, and only hy an effort of free-will that, after we apprehend this, we really aspire to him. The transcendentalist principle then is not true, and consequently we can never deduce the truth from it, or bring the truth to harmonize with it. Even if the principle were true, it would not help the matter much, and would be no proof that man naturally aspires to the Catholic Church, or that she is that which responds to the aspirations of nature; for the aspirations of nature cannot rise above nature; nature can aspire to God only in the order of nature,—to God simply as its natural beatitude, while Catholicity and the beatitude it promises lie in the supernatural order.

We know that many theologians maintain that man has an innate natural desire for the supernatural, or to see God as he is in himself, impossible by the simple forces of nature. But this desire is only a vague, inefficacious, and indirect desire, which resolves itself into our general desire of knowing things as they are in themselves, and in their causes, which we cannot fully know unless we see and know God in his essence, as he is in himself. In any other sense the assertion that we have it, is condemned by Pius VI. in the Bull Auctorem Fidei. For ourselves, we doubt the innateness of the desire, and think in so far as it has any explicitness. it is due to reminiscences of the revelation made to our first parents in the garden. We should say, and we suppose that this is really what the author means, not that the son aspires to Catholicity, but that Catholicity meets its aspirations to good, by securing it, the good it craves, or a greater and more abundant good though not precisely of the kind it craves.

The author justifies himself in accepting this principle of the rationalists, on the ground that reason can attain, though not of itself to the true end of man, to a certain belief in revelation. But this is not to attain to our end by reason and nature. Reason can do all that reason is required to do. From the motives of credibility addressed to it, it can attain to a certain belief that God has made us a revelation, but this belief is not faith, nor are these motives of credibility the formal reason of faith. Even these motives of credibility are not furnished by reason; they are furnished by the Revelator himself, and addressed by him to reason, and they render the act of belief in revelation a perfectly reasonable act, for they are sufficient to convince and satisfy it. Revelation is neither through reason nor by reason, but is made to reason, and reason is simply able to receive it, and to yield its assent to it from the motives of credibility in the case. It is not correct to argue, then, that man by reason can attain to his appointed destiny, or his true end, because by it we can attain to a full belief in the supernatural moans by which it can be attained. What the author means is not what the rationalist holds. He means that Catholicity presupposes reason, respects it, addresses it, and satisfies its innate desire for truth, not only by enabling it to know better, more clearly, more fully the truths of the natural order, but by pouring in upon it a flood of light from above, and raising it to the possession and contemplation of the truths of the supernatural order. This is true, but it is not what the rationalist means, nor will it, in point of fact, satisfy him; for what he wants is to be rid of revelation, to be rid of the supernatural, and to be able to assert the sufficiency of reason and nature. The unreasonableness of Calvinism serves him as an excuse for his rationalism, but its real source is in his aversion from God, in the pride of the human heart which refuses to receive assistance even from its Maker. Instead of aspiring to God, the rationalist wishes to suffice for himself, and till subdued by divine grace, he revolts at the thought of being dependent on another.

What the author is really laboring to prove is that the church accepts reason and nature, operates on and with them, vindicates their rights and capacities, and meets and more than meets their purest, highest, and noblest aspirations after truth and good, and therefore that a man may become a Catholic without sacrificing his reason, his natural dignity, or his manhood. He is laboring to prove that in Catholicity the man will find all his intellectual and moral wants amply provided for, but not that Catholicity is formally that to which he naturally aspires or tends, or that to which by a right use even of his faculties, operating upon natural data alone, he can attain. The slight confusion, or want of clear, distinct, and direct statement, which the reader meets or fancies he meets here and there, does not, we are sure, spring from any confusion or inexactness in the author's mind, but from the necessities of the line of argument he has wished to adopt, and, from his unwillingness to set forth distinctly in the outset his real purpose, lest he should unnecessarily excite the prejudices of the class of persons he proposed to address, and therefore, lose his labor. Thus he studiously avoids using the word supernatural, and presenting and defending Christianity, in name, as the supernatural order. He has wished to conduct the Earnest Seeker on his own principles, step by step, to the acceptance of Catholicity, without informing him in advance whither he intends to conduct him. A very pardonable artifice, but, as it strikes us, wholly useless, for every reader knows beforehand, the author is a Catholic, and intends to conduct him to Catholicity. We would excite gratuitously no man's prejudices, but Catholicity is the supernatural order, or it is nothing, and the Earnest Seeker must accept it as such, not as a development of reason and nature, or he does not accept it at all. We cannot, if we would, seduce men into accepting the church through rationalism and transcendentalism. In accepting, or appearing to accept the first principles of rationalists or transcendentalists, we are more likely to be regarded as converting the church to them, than we are to convert them to the church. The moment we convince them that their avowed principles and aspirations require them to go further and join the Catholic Church, they will, unless divine grace prevents, enter into a new analysis of reason and nature, eliminate from their principles and aspirations what is due to tradition and the influences of Christian civilization, and fall back on a reason and nature that aspire to natural good alone.

The fact is, practically considered, reason and nature never operate as pure reason and nature. The Earnest Seeker, as described by the author, is not a man who has or has had only his own unassisted reason and nature. His confessions are such as no man, not in some sense christianized, could possibly make; they presuppose a belief, vague and indefinite it may be, that there is a supernatural order, a supernatural religion somewhere, of some sort, whence may come the solutions demanded. These demands of intellect, these wants of the heart, these aspirations of the soul, which the author so feelingly and so eloquently sets forth and which all serious and earnest-minded men, brought up outside of the church, are more or less conscious of, are not those of a soul in a state of pure nature, but of a soul born and bred in Christendom, and are due rather to reminiscences of a lost faith, than to the operations of pure nature. Christian civilization is never to be confounded with Christianity, yet something Christian enters into it, and is, as it were, assimilated by Christian nations. Reason and nature in the bosom of a Christian nation are indeed essentially what they are everywhere, we grant; but they receive from the first a culture, and are imbued with habits, which render them in their practical development very different from the reason and nature of the savage, the barbarian, or even the civilized pagan or Mahometan. Formed under the influences of Christian civilization, they have habits, wants, and aspirations which are not purely natural, and which in part are due directly or indirectly to the church. Nowhere out of Christendom could the author's Earnest Seeker be found. He is not a man, save as to merit, remaining in a state of pure nature, but a man who has been born and trained in a Christian atmosphere, under direct or indirect Christian influences, for no man absolutely ignorant of revelation and grace could propose his problems in the form he proposes them. He is, we were about to say, an inchoate Christian, and has principles, views, aspirations, feelings, thoughts, which he owes at least to the Christianity Christian nations have morally assimilated, and which characterizes what is called Christian civilization.

Even the heathen were never abandoned to pure reason and nature alone, for they never lost all tradition of revelation made to our first parents in the garden. Among all tribes, and nations, however high or however low in the scale of civilization, we find, mixed indeed with errors and superstitions, beliefs, notions, and practices, which were never derived from reason alone, but from the primitive revelation preserved in a corrupt state by gentile, and in its pure and integral state by Jewish and Christian tradition, 'he state of pure nature is a possible, but is not, and never has been, an actual state. As a matter of fact, it has never existed, certainly not since the fall; for Almighty God intended from the beginning man for a supernatural end, and placed him under a supernatural providence, with gracious helps always within his reach.

We commend this consideration to a very spirited and agreeable writer, for whom we have a great liking, in the London Rambler, who, in his zeal for the justice of God, imagines in the upper regions of hell a sort of natural heaven into which he proposes to admit not only unbaptized infants dying in infancy without actual sin, but the greater part of the heathen world, as well as of "our dissenting brethren" who die out of the church. Indeed, he seems to think the only use of hell, properly so called, is to punish bad Catholics. We can conceive it probable, as our theologians generally hold, and are permitted to hold, that unregenerated infants dying in infancy, though they will never see God, may have mercifully concealed from them the knowledge of what they have lost Not being guilty of any actual sin, they cannot be condemned to suffer the poena sensus, and therefore will not be exposed to positive suffering. But with regard to adults, who have attained to the use of reason, we understand no natural beatitude in or out of hell for them, for they are placed under a supernatural providence, and sufficient grace, if complied with, is given to every one to enable him to gain the supernatural reward of the just; and for one, come to the use of reason, not to comply with that grace is sin, and deserving of punishment according to the degree of malice in the non-complying individual.

Considering that man has never been left without at least some reminiscences of revelation, and that the grace of God strives with all men, it is never safe to conclude that what we experience in ourselves or observe in others, even though not in reality transcending reason and nature, is in fact derived from them; and to found an argument upon it as an argument founded on pure reason and nature will never have that weight with rationalists and transcendentalists it really ought to have. For our own part we think the best way of dealing with those who are disposed to assert the sufficiency of reason and nature, is not to labor to show them that our religion lies in their plane, or may be attained to by reason and nature, but that we have in our religion something far better than any thing they have, far better than reason and nature in their best estate, and that while we accept the natural order, and assert and maintain it in all its rights and dignity, we are able to offer them a supernatural order, another order of life proceeding from the same author, corresponding to it indeed, but infinitely superior to it, and inconceivably better and infinitely more desirable. While we concede to them that reason and nature are not essentially impaired by the fall, and are still good in their own order, and that God could, had he chosen, have created and left man in a state of pure nature, destined to a purely natural beatitude, it is best to tell them distinctly that he did not do so, and did not do so because he chose to do something inconceivably better for us, and thus labor to present our religion not as a want or necessity of their nature intellectual or moral, which, if it be supernatural, it is not and cannot be, but as a higher and nobler manifestation of his infinite love, which would not be contented with providing us nothing more than natural beatitude. It is not so much the needs or the satisfaction of reason and nature we would insist upon, as the inexhaustible bounty of God, which does for us far more than we are naturally able to ask or even to conceive,—more than we have ever desired or been able without divine assistance even to desire,—a bounty that not only meets our desires and aspirations, but infinitely exceeds them. This, it strikes us, is more likely to touch the heart, to win love, and command obedience, than simply showing that Catholicity responds to the wants or aspirations of the soul. It is the fact that Christianity is supernatural, that it introduces us into an order above nature, inconceivably better than nature, good as nature may be, and gives to reason a higher and clearer light, and to nature new and nobler aspirations, that constitutes its great recommendation, and makes it dearer to us than life itself. It is dear in that it redeems us from the curse of the law, and heals the wounds we received by the fall; it is dearer in that it ennobles human nature by making it the nature of God, through its union with the human nature assumed by the divine Word.

In these remarks it would be alike unjust to the author and to us to suppose that we are questioning any doctrine he asserts. We may not place as much confidence in the line of argument he is pursuing as he does, but that is not saying that that line of argument is not allowable, or that it is not important. Brought in with other arguments, we place on it a very high value, and it has always been recognized by our theologians. When taken alone by itself, we do not think it the strongest or the safest. But this is only our opinion, which must go for what it is worth. Every man should be allowed to take his own method of addressing the non-Catholic mind, so long as he keeps within the limits of faith and allowable opinion. Because we think there may be a better line of argument, it does not follow that we are right or that he is wrong. He does not claim his own line of argument as the only one it is lawful to adopt, and we do not claim ours as exclusive of others. We have made our remarks not to controvert any views he advances, but to guard the reader against the injustice of confounding him with a school which we do not like, and to which he certainly does not belong—a school which seems to us to found itself on what may be called the eccentricities of theologians, rather than on the general current of theology, on opinions which are tolerated rather than approved, sententimin ecclesia rather than on sententia eccle8t€6. Several publications, to which our attention has been recently drawn, make us fear such a school is rising, and we do not believe its introduction into our country would do any good. We are also opposed to every thing which looks like accommodating Catholic teaching to the tastes and temper of the age or country. In choosing our mode of presenting Catholic doctrine, we should consult this taste and temper, but that which we present is that over which we have no control, no right, and must be the same one Catholic truth, believed always and everywhere by the Catholic Church; and in this sentiment the author will assuredly agree with us. There are, as far as wo can discover, no other points in Mr. Hecker's book likely to be misapprehended, or to which exception can be taken by any Catholic however fastidious.

The author has addressed his book to non-Catholics, and we hope it will be read by them, and do something towards overcoming that silly and mischievous prejudice which excludes nearly every Catholic book from non-Catholic circles. He has written it with a view to what he conceives to be the wants and aspirations of the American mind, which he has studied with lively sympathy, and evidently with the hope that it will turn the attention of the American people to investigating the claims of the Catholic religion, and ultimately, with the grace of God, lead to their conversion. He thinks there is a crisis in their affairs, and that they cannot pass it safely without the aid of Catholicity. It is but simple justice to him to say that he does not urge this as a reason why they should become Catholics, but as an excellent reason why they should not oppose the church, and why they should investigate her titles. 9 

There has been much said and written of late on the conversion of Americans, and no man amongst us is more devoted to the work of effecting it, or more hopeful of its being effected, than our author. He does all by word and by writing in his power for it, and has quickened the zeal of many to do the same, among whom we may count ourselves But from the much we say and write in reference to this subject, and the frequency with which we speak of the American mind, the American people, American institutions, and the appeals we make to American patriotism, some Catholics not of American birth, or not having any very lively sympathies with the American character as they see it manifested, are led to suspect us of a design to americanize Catholicity, and of a desire to induce the American people to embrace our religion through appeals to their American prejudices, passions, habits, or patriotism. This suspicion, so far as we are concerned, is wholly unfounded, although we as well as others may have used expressions which would seem at first sight to warrant it. Unhappily this is a country in which no good thing can be proposed, but there stand ready a large number of unemployed individuals to convert it at once into a hobby, to mount it, and to ride it to death. Certainly no such thought or design exists as is suspected, but with unreasoning opposition on the one side and unreasoning enthusiasm on the other, we cannot say what may come in the end, if no pains be taken to guard against extremes, and if there be not on the part of those who are so earnest for the conversion of the country a proper respect for the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us, and full recognition of their authority and obedience to it. We know there is a feeling in certain quarters that, under the pretext of converting the country, or presenting Catholicity to the American people in a form adapted to their understanding, there is a secret intention to undermine, or at least to restrict the authority of the bishops and clergy, and to give the laity an influence in ecclesiastical matters which they are not entitled to, and cannot have without subverting the order of government which our Lord has established for his church. Although we know that on our part and that of our personal friends among the laity, there is nothing to justify this feeling, yet the fact of its existence may well make us fear that there has been imprudence somewhere, and that expressions may have been used or a tendency manifested, which are not in strict accordance with Catholic order.

The government of the church is not vested in the hands of the laity, and it does not pertain to them, even though editors of journals and reviews, to assume the direction of Catholic affairs, or to labor through outside pressure, or the force of public opinion which they may create, to compel the ecclesiastical authorities to favor a movement of any sort which has not received from them the initiative. It is no great stretch of humility on our part to concede that the bishops and clergy understand as well as we Catholic interests, have them as deeply at heart, and however unassuming they may be, are quite as well fitted to direct us as we are to direct them. If they fail in their duty, as individual bishops and priests may, it is not our business to call them to an account, for we have not been appointed either their judges or their overseers. We must leave that to God and his vicar. Appels commc cfabus to the editorial tribunal are, in principle, of the same nature as appeals from the ecclesiastical courts to the council of state. Before we can hope to effect any thing for the conversion of the country, we who are Catholics must be thoroughly respectful and obedient to legitimate authority, so that our bishops and priests may have freedom of movement, and liberty to mature and carry out their plans for the advancement of religion.

In a country like ours there is always danger of disrespect and disobedience to authority, save with those who have a simple childlike faith, together with great humility of character, or those who add to the same faith great and manly intelligence. The tone of the country is averse to authority; its very atmosphere is that of liberty,—we might also say, that of license, of insubordination. Young America rails at the "Governor," and has a great dislike to obedience. The very essence of Protestantism lies in its transfer of the ruling authority in the church from the clergy to the laity. Under Protestantism power operates from low to high, the sheep choose, commission, and govern the shepherd; and when he refuses to let them stray whither they please, they dismiss him, and choose a new shepherd, who will prove himself more accommodating. Catholics who mingle much with Protestants, and in general American society, catch something of the Protestant tone, and there is always more danger with us of the laity tyrannizing over the clergy, than there is of the clergy tyrannizing over the laity. The laity, no doubt, have rights, but the more resolute and firm we are in asserting them, the more scrupulous we should be in recognizing and respecting the rights of authority. It were better that our rights than those of authority should suffer. What we call our Americanism does very well in the political order,—at least so our countrymen hold,—but it cannot be transferred to the church without heresy and schism.

We have shown as strong a disposition, both by word and example, to assert and maintain the rights of the laity as any man that can be named ; we have gone the full length we can go, without exceeding the limits marked by Catholic discipline; perhaps we may have gone further in appearance; but we have never forgotten that our first duty is obedience to God in his ministers, and that no plan or project of ours touching religion, can be urged with propriety or advantage against their wishes, or without at least their tacit approbation. We know the Holy Father has admonished the bishops to encourage laymen of science, learning, and piety to write in defence of religion; but we know, also that he addressed this admonition to them, and it is authority to them to encourage such men, but it is not an authority to us to do what is recommended without them. We know that every man has the right to do all the good in his power, and no one has the right to hinder him; but whether what he takes to be good, or whether he is really doing good or not in the way he attempts to do it, is not for him, but for authority to judge. Order is Heaven's first law, and we can never expect the blessing of God upon any enterprise, however good in itself, that carries with it the slightest taint of irregularity. Ever}' movement intended to advance religious or Catholic interests, initiated by laymen, and supported by them against the wishes, or without the approval of authority, is to be distrusted, and abandoned by every one whose attachment to his church is stronger than his attachment to his own private opinion. No one should ever knowingly take part in any such movement. No movement of any sort, not approved by the prelates of the country, should ever have our countenance, unless it has the express sanction of the pope, the bishop's superior, as well as our own,—a sanction never to be counted on against the united voice of the prelates of any country.

Having made these remarks in reply to feelings and suspicions which we know exist in certain quarters, and which are unfounded, so far as we are personally concerned, and which we trust are not likely to be justified by any movement or tendencies worthy of the slightest consideration, we are acquainted with, we turn to the subject of the conversion of the country. Here it seems to us necessary to be on our guard against crotchets and hobbies, and to take care not to say so much about it as to disgust both those within and those without. The bishops and clergy know at least as well what it is necessary to do, in order to convert nonCatholics, as the laity do, and we are not disposed to run in advance of them. There is a great work to be done here before any direct efforts on a large scale can be attempted for the conversion of those who are without. If the souls of non-Catholics are dear to our Lord, the souls of bad Catholics are no less dear. With all that our bishops can do, they can only partially provide for the spiritual wants of the Catholics already in the country. We have a large Catholic population unprovided for, who neglect, if they do not forget, their religion, and are the greatest drawbacks there can be on the conversion of non-Catholics. The pastor's first care is to those who are of the household of faith, and, we may add, to the children of the faithful. The conversion of had Catholics, the proper training of Catholic children, the correction of the vice of intemperance, and other immoralities, prevalent in a portion of our Catholic population of this city, and the introduction of morality, good order, sobriety, and economy, into what are now haunts of drunkenness, dens of vice and petty crimes, would do more for the conversion of non-Catholics than all the books and reviews we can write, all the journals we can edit, or efforts we can make expressly for their conversion, for it would prove to them, what they now doubt, the practical moral efficiency of our religion. We must provide first for our own spiritual wants, get our own population all right, and then we may turn our attention with confidence and success to those who are without.

The conversion of the country is a thing every Catholic desires, prays for, and to some extent, no doubt, works for, although perhaps not with as much earnestness, zeal, and hopefulness as the impatience of us converts demands. But the conversion of a whole Protestant people, like the American, is a work of magnitude, and not to be effected in a day. We agree with our author that there never was opened a more glorious field to the church than is opened here. We believe the church is destined to reap here a glory that she has never reaped in the conversion of any other country, not because the conversion of this country is more easy than that of others, but because it is more difficult. It was easier to convert the Roman empire, than it is to convert the American republic, and it took the church six centuries to complete that; it is easier to convert Great Britain than the obedience, subordination, submission, and retain a stronger attachment to religion. There is scarcely a trait in the American character as practically developed that is not more a spirit of independence, an aversion to authority, a pride, an overweening conceit, as well as with a prejudice, that makes them revolt at the bare mention of the church. In dealing with them the church has and can have no extrinsic aid. She has to address them as individuals, and can hope nothing any further than she can convince the individual reason and win the individual heart. Her success here she must owe to herself alone, to her own intrinsic power and excellence. This is no reason why the Catholic should des pair of the conversion of the country, or make no exertions to effect it. The post of difficulty and danger is precisely the post the true Catholic chooses. Notwithstanding all the difficulty of the task, we believe the Church is able to accomplish it, and will accomplish it, and in doing so acquire a glory greater than she acquired in converting the Roman Empire. 

But we do not believe it is to be accomplished by any new or unusual means. The American people, like every other people, have, no doubt, their peculiarities, their idiosyncrasies, but their conversion will never be effected by seeking in these our point d'apjmi. They must be converted very much in the way and by the same means that other nations have been,—by addressing that in them which is common to all men, their reason, their heart, and their conscience, not what is peculiar to them, or what is their local or temporary interest or passion. We shall not do it by appeals to their patriotism, or by favoring their radicalism or their conservatism, their slavery or their anti-slavery proclivities. The church leaves to every people their nationality and to every state its autonomy, and in return claims to be free and independent of the temporal order. To induce the American people to become Catholic from patriotic motives would be to make them like the multitude who followed our Lord for the sake of "the loaves and fishes." It would be to subordinate the church to American nationality, as the English did at the time of the reformation, as the republicans did, or attempted to do in France in the last century, and to destroy her Catholic freedom and independence. The church must obey God and follow truth and justice irrespective of nationalities. She cannot be trammelled by nationalities. She is catholic, not national, and can no more be American, than European, Asiatic, African, or Australian. She is a kingdom in this world, but not of this world. To mix her up with a radical party or a conservative party would be to compromise her Catholicity. Were we to court the North by leaguing Catholic interests with the anti-slavery movement, abolitionists might pat us on the back, call us clever fellows, and profess great respect for our church. Were we to labor to identify them with the slave interest, southern politicians would also pat us on the back, call us clever fellows, and profess great respect for our church. But besides losing as much in the one section as we should gain in the other, we should be trammelled by the section we courted. If the abolitionists or the pro-slavery men should be disposed to go further than we could with our Catholic conscience go with them, the party deserted would come down upon ns in a storm of wrath, and all the politicians among our own friends would stand aghast, and fear that Catholic interests were ruined, or put back a century. So it must be, if in the hope of winning the American people to the church, we as Catholics form a coalition with one or another political party, or with one or another outside interest. As Americans we have a nationality, political preferences and duties, but as Catholics, we know no nationality, no political party, unless a party is formed for the purpose of depriving us of our Catholic freedom. The church cannot be involved in the conflicts of nationalities or the squabbles of demagogues.

Moreover, in our country the Catholic population is made up of a variety of nationalities, and one nationality in the eyes of the church is as respectable as another. These in time will be moulded into one American nationality. We cannot hasten that time by any attempts to force them to americanize. It is well to bear in mind that they will americanize, so that measures may be taken in season to guard against americanizing becoming apostatizing. The most efficient portion of our Catholic population are of foreign birth and training, and it will be so for some time to come. We cannot serve the interests of religion by throwing our American nationality in their faces, any more than they can by throwing theire in our faces. Americans have the right to be Americans, and we will defend that right against whosoever assails it, as we would defend our country against the enemy who should invade our shores; but in laboring to promote Catholic interests in the country, the best way undoubtedly is, to lay aside nationalities, to remember only that we are Catholics, and make our appeal to our countrymen as men, as simple human beings, endowed with reason and free-will, having souls that will never die, and capable by a right use ot their faculties, assisted by divine grace, to attain to the endless beatitude of heaven.

We must also bear in mind that the instruments AImighty God will use in the conversion of the country are the population with their clergy already Catholic. However we may work for non-Catholics, we must work with Catholics, and carry with us the sympathies and affections of the Catholic body, or effect nothing. No doubt that body has, outside of its religion, its crotchets, its peculiarities, its idiosyncrasies, and, above all, its sensitiveness. We must never run athwart these when it can be helped; we must remember we belong to the same body, with our own crotchets, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, sensitiveness, and therefore must not be too rude upon others. We cannot move much in advance of the public sentiment of our own body. While, however, we say this in reference to those who are thought to be too impatient to americanize, we hope it will be permitted us to say to others of different tendencies or sympathies, that they must not be too suspicious, too ready to take offense at a word or an expression, or to put a bad construction when a good one is possible. On this point we need not say that some injustice has been done to our Review, and its position and influence very unnecessarily injured. No one seems to have considered the delicate position in which we and every American born Catholic were placed on the rise of the Know-nothing party. There was no question that we must oppose that party with all the force and energy we could command; out the difficulty, hard for any one but an American by birth and breeding to appreciate, was to oppose the party without offending the sentiment of American nationality, enlisting it on the side of the party, and thus rendering it still stronger and more dangerous. To oppose it in an antiAmerican spirit, or on Catholic grounds alone, would have been about as wise as for a man to attempt to bite off his own nose. There was only one ground on which we could offer any effectual opposition, that was the American ground,—to accept distinctly and sincerely the American nationality, and to prove that the spirit and principles, the ends and aims of the party were opposed to the genuine principles and spirit of American institutions. It was necessary to take from the party all chance of appeal to the sentiment of nationality, the sentiment common to every man with regard to the land of his birth, and defend Catholics and foreign-born citizens, not as Catholics and foreigners, but as American citizens, as we well could do. Our misfortune was that, while we were doing all in our power to prevent a false issue from being made up before the public, which would have been fatal to us as Catholics, and deeply prejudicial to the foreign-born portion of our population, whether Catholic or not, we were understood to be working on the side of the Know-nothings, and sharing their sentiments against foreigners. A greater mistake it was not possible to commit, and greater injnstice conld not be done us. The Know-nothing party is now comparatively dead, passion has had time to subside, and Catholic charity may induce those who so grossly misconstrued our motives, to inquire if they were not too hasty, and if our course, which seemed to them so unjust and ungenerous, was not dictated by a wise and prudent regard for all the interests attacked by the Know-nothings. A little reflection, it seems to us, might have convinced the persons who took offence, that, supposing us to have the least grain of common sense, we could not have meant any such thing as they supposed; and common justice, not to say Catholic charity, if passion and suspicion had slept, would have prevented us even from being accused. We had and have no interests and no affections but such as are bound up with the Catholic body of which we are an insignificant member, and as the portion of that body from which we have the most to hope for Catholicity are Irish or of Irish descent, it is ridiculous to suppose that we were anti-Irish in our feelings, or were disposed to join the Know-nothings in a war against Irish Catholics, which could be only a war equally against ourselves.

Certainly, we do not allude to these bygone events for the purpose of complaining; we suffered, yet not more than we expected to suffer; but we allude to then for the purpose of reminding those who suppose that there is an American party forming amongst the Catholics of this country, and that it is necessary to crush it out by crushing every man supposed likely to favor it, that they should guard against ungenerous suspicions, lest they in the end bring about the very thing they oppose, and to which we are as strongly opposed as they are. It is difficult for flesh and blood to bear with equanimity what we have had to bear during the last three years, from men whom we have done our best to serve, and if the grace of God had not restrained us, and our deep devotion to the Catholic cause had not influenced us, we might, when provoked almost beyond endurance, have even ourselves been tempted to do what we should for ever have regretted. Confidence begets confidence, and suspicion breeds suspicion, and sometimes makes the thing it dreads. We think there has been too great readiness to suspect American-born Catholics and converts of designs, intentions, aims, and wishes which we would be the last to entertain. We have ourselves been suffered at in the Catholic press as a convert; sometimes we have been scolded because we did not show a proper regard for converts, at other times we have been admonished that being a convert we should shut up our mouth; and one journal has gone so far as to sing its palinode for the encouragement it had given us, and to admonish Catholics that they are too ready to confide in converts and to push them forward. All this is sad, sad, and not the best way to encourage conversions. It is hard enough to feel that one is a convert, that he has not had the advantages of being trained from his childhood in the true faith, and of having grown up with Catholic habits and tastes, without having it sung in his face by Catholics, if he ventures to speak boldly on Catholic matters. But these are trifles, and are mentioned only to show that if these are complaints on one side there might be complaints also on the other, and that the only way is for all to study mutual forbearance, mutual confidence and mutual charity, so that there shall be, as there ought to be, no one side or the other side, but one body, with no rent or schism in it. In reality there is no American side, and no foreign side, but there are American feelings and foreign feelings, which it would not be impossible for evil-minded persons to push to the formation of a native party and a foreign party. Happily, through the good providence of God, no such parties are formed among us, and we trust there never will be, certainly shall not be by our means. We publish our Review because originally invited to do so by the prelates of the church, and because we wish to serve Catholic interests; but if we believed that it was likely to produce any such division, or could, under any possible combination of circumstances, become the organ of any particular section of the Catholic body, we would discontinue it with the present number, for the evil it would do would far overbalance any good it could possibly effect: and we assure the authorities of the church that the moment they signify to us that they lack confidence in its usefulness, that moment we will discontinue it at whatever loss to ourselves personally. We want no party for us or against us; we want to form no schism or school; we want simply to serve the Catholic cause. When it is made clear to us that in the opinion of those who are the proper judges we are not serving it, we shall retire, not because of clamors, or opposition, but because our only motive for publishing a Catholic review will then cease to exist.

Although we have made these remarks a propos of Father Hecker's book, happily neither he nor it is implicated in them, and one of its great merits is, though addressing Americans, it is not American in any offensive seuse, and avoids all references that could offend the most fastidious foreign-born Catholic, yet its author has a livelier sympathy with his own countrymen than we have, and is less disturbed by the dangerous tendencies by which they are affected than we are. With him hope is constant, ever-living, and active; with us it is spasmodic, and is kept up only by an effort. We fear the tendencies now at work in our people will carry them so far, licentiousness and corruption of all sorts, in public and private life, will become so universal before the salutary influences of the church can be brought to bear on them with the requisite power, that they will need to be visited by Almighty God in judgment rather than in mercy. We fear also that they are more likely to carrj* away with them a large proportion of our Catholic population, than this population is to restrain them; we fear that even the salt that should save them will lose its savor, and we tremble hardly less for our Catholic than for our non-Catholic population. But it is always better to take counsel of our hopes than of our fears, and we will not dwell on our gloomy forebodings, which, after all, may spring from the ill-health, under the depression of which we are forced to write.

In conclusion, we wish to thank the author sincerely and earnestly for his deeply interesting and highly valuable book. It is free from routine, from all cant, from all pretensions; a fresh, sincere, earnest, genuine book, warm from the mind and heart of the writer, and cannot fail to reach the minds and hearts of his readers. It is written in a style of great force and beauty, free, spirited, and seductive. The parts which please us the most are those in which the author answers the popular objections of the day to Catholicity. His answers to them are almost universally happy, brief, animated, witty, good-natured, and conclusive, refuting the objector without ever wounding his selflove or mortifying his vanity. It is in its way a model of controversial writing, and it cannot fail to have a good influence on our polemical literature, to which it is certainly one of the most important contributions ever made by a native-born Catholic. We are much mistaken, if it do not prove one of the most popular works ever issued by our American press, and it will certainly establish the author in the first rank among our most esteemed Catholic writers. The author may not realize all his expectations as to the influence on the precise classes he addresses, but there are many minds, where they are not looked for, that it will reach and help, and it will be read with interest and profit very generally by members of his own communion. It belongs to the class of books of which we cannot have too many, and which can nowhere else be produced but in our own country.