"Christianity had saved youth," says a French author, "and youth proved its gratitude by sublime virtues." What instances did the early Church behold? What examples the mediæval Church, multiplied in all the monasteries, colleges, and schools of Europe, some of which, many authors, as the Jesuit Niess in his Alphabetum Christi, have described in most affecting books! Yes, nothing is more certain than the fact which suggested the complaint of Celsus, and nothing more unjust than the inference. True, for the young, in an especial manner, Catholicity has attractions; but when was there ever, even in unblessed times, a shadow of any great moral restoration, which did not elicit their admiration? Antiquity itself might have shamed his conclusion. When Agis sought to restore at Sparta the ancient manners, Plutarch observes, that the younger men entered into his views more zealously than he could ever have expected. They seemed as ready to embrace virtue, and to change their mode of life, as if it were only a question of changing their clothes; but that the aged who had grown old in corruption, like fugitive slaves who are led back to their master, had a horror for the very name of Lycurgus, and inveighed against Agis when he deplored the present state of Sparta, and regretted its ancient virtue.* But, independently of such sublime grounds for loving Catholicity in youth, there are other motives of pure humanity to engage the young to hold it dear; for no one can need to be reminded, that even in regard to material evils the Church has proved herself their tender guardian, invariably opposing and condemning all cruel customs and unjust laws affecting them. If they were no longer exposed to perish under the lash, as at the altar of Diana, under the laws of Lycurgus, to be recruited by the merchants of gladiators, of which the one school at Capua reckoned, as Cicero says, 4500 apprentices, who were destined to gratify the sanguinary taste of the Roman people; if they were delivered from the fate still reserved for them in nations that have not received the yoke of the Gospel; where, in one place, as in New Zealand, their little fingers are cut off in honour of their idols; in another, as in parts of Africa, they are hunted as wild animals; in another, offered as victims, to be first tortured and then put to death, to appease Heaven,-they owe their exemption to the Cross, and to the Catholic religion. Parents continued, indeed, for some time after Christianity was widely spread, to sell their sons. St. Jerome has preserved the complaints of a poor mother, whose three sons had been sold to pay the taxes. In modern times, the revolutionary laws of the conscription re * In Vit. Agis et Cleomenis. 66 vived the ancient calamities; but all this while the young were well aware, that if the Church had uninterrupted power, they would never be afflicted so. "Children are free to choose a state of life, and it would be impious to constrain them," says Julia, in the play of Calderon, called, "Devotion to the Cross." And in every state, at every turning of this road of youth, the Church was there to protect them from oppression. The tomb of St. Adrian was an asylum for poor apprentices when illtreated by their masters. But it would be too long to cite instances.* That the Catholic Church, by investing every boy with the character of our divine Lord, produced temporal results in favour of youth, and that the whole world, including princes and warriors, was constrained to adopt her supernatural view in this respect, can be witnessed in a curious example, related by John, the monk of Tours. "The Count of Mans," he tells us, came to that city to celebrate Christmas in the church which is called of the court, from being the chapel of these princes. After keeping vigils there with a number of warriors, at the first dawn he proceeded in procession, with a crowd of nobles, to the cathedral, to hear mass there; and as he entered, observing a poor little scholar who sought to enter with the clergy, he saluted him in his usual gracious and jocose manner, and asked whether he had any news. The boy answered, Yes, excellent news.' The count, astonished, and thinking that really there were rumours afloat, desired him to tell them quickly. Puer natus est nobis,' he replied, 'et filius datus est nobis.' Which answer of a boy concerning a Boy the count did not disdain; for considering not from whom, but of whom he heard the words, he asked the boy whose son he was; and the other, named his father, who was a poor man. count, not joking, but seriously-for the love of the new-born Boy had wounded his heart-answered, 'Go in with the clergy, and follow as a boy the Boy, for He more than I can remunerate you for your news.' After mass the count addressed the bishop, and begged that for the love of the infant Saviour he would grant him the first vacant prebendal stall in that church to give to whom he pleased; which being granted, he presented the poor boy as the person who should receive it. All were astonished at such a favour being granted to such an obscure lad; but when they heard the cause, they admired still more both his kindness to the poor boy, and his devotion to the Head Boy, through the love of whom he was accustomed to assist the poor."t * Ranbeck, Kalendarium Benedictinum, tom. i. 52. The † Joan. Monach. Majoris Monast. Ganffredi Ducis Norm. Hist. lib. i. But, returning to nobler sites, there to finish this second journey, who can describe the tenderness, the delicate attention, the hearty affection which invites the young to take the highest flight from the first, and not check their aspirations through fear of the path that Phaëton ill knew "To guide his erring chariot ?" * "Melior est puer pauper et sapiens quam rex senex et stultus."+ Such are the sounds heard towards the avenue leading to th church. But let this road be turned aside as her adversaries would recommend, so as to lead in a contrary direction, and then farewell hope, noble elevation, and every prospect beautiful and sublime. A few paces further, and no one will be able to recognize the road of youth. The truth is, that upon this way, all delightful and happy as it may be, there is no choice but one, for either a good or a bad angel must be followed; presenting either as model the angelizans juvenis that Gerson describes, or the art he speaks of de sathanizante juvene.‡ The face must be turned towards either the radiant splendours of our east, or the cold bitter shades of an endless night, where is found far sooner than is imagined possible, a gulf to be entered, of which the demoniac atmosphere is self-torture, and that scornful desertion by treacherous guides, too late detected, "which drowns in sneers Youth's star-light smile, and makes its tears This path of youth, however, confines no steps long: ἄνθρωποι δὲ μινυνθάδιοι τελέθουσιν.§ Of which truth he who bears for arms what Horace beautifully styles the "breve lilium,"|| is admonished even by looking at his paternal shield. Yes, if you would believe otherwise, "These flowers might undeceive you," as Don Fernando says in the "Constant Prince of Calderon;" "they were the pomp and joy of the garden when they awoke so brilliant at the first beam of the morning sky; and in the evening they resemble only a vague regret, buried in the bosom of the cold night. These colours which now defy the brilliancy of heaven, will be soon faded, such modifications take place in the rapid space of a day! The roses of the morning were in haste to flower, and they flowered only to die the sooner. The same chalice was their cradle and their tomb. Such is man-to-day a flower, to * Dante, ii. 4. + Eccles. iv. 13. De Parv. trahend. ad Christum. § Od. xix. 328. || Ode i. 36. morrow a corpse. He is born and he dies the same day; for an age once past is but a moment." Thrice happy those whom such impressions move on the sweet road of youth to follow Him of whom the Church of Spain so beautifully sings: "Respuens annos nimium fugaces Sedulus longa prece, lacrymisque We are at a point of the forest where many ways branch off, or, as Baptist, the Mantuan Poet, says, a great divergence presents itself 'jam venerat ætas Tertia, quam bivium dicunt, namque incidit illic the plea Ere we proceed, let us, casting a last look back upon sant path behind us, repeat that fine prayer which the Gothic Church employs in her mozarabic office of the holy Innocents, beseeching Him whose mercy embraces both sexes, and follows them through every age, that youthful docility may accompany us to the end-"Quo mens nec rigida nec superba, sic sit blanda, sic innocens, ne imprudens ; sic humilis, ne imbecillis; atque ita salubrem sumat temperantiam moderante consilio, ut et simplicitatem imitetur infantium, et fortitudinem vindicet pugnatorum." CHAPTER IV. THE ROAD OF THE FAMILY. HE green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, and make a chequered shadow on the ground under their sweet shade. Let us sit and watch the sweet domestic groups which pass along on this new road; for sisters, brothers, parents, all are here. The views which are obtained on this alley from the beginning can draw the soul, as by an irresistible enchantment, to Catholicity; for all things heard or seen direct to it,-the bells which perpetuate its tones, the love and union which proclaim its power, the very idea of the family which is its creation, the cradle which it blesses, the tomb which it sanctifies, the past * Hymnodia Hispan. in festo C. Simonis de Roxas. + Bapt. Mant. Nicol. Tolent. H which it has crowned, and the future which nothing else can save. Man first enters on the forest of life from the paternal house, where, if the will of God were done on earth as it is in heaven, the divine commandments would be known and dear and familiar to all; for the precept was thus given: “Thou shalt tell them to thy children, and thou shalt meditate upon them sitting in thy house and walking on thy journey, sleeping and rising. And thou shalt bind them as a sign on thy hand, and they shall be and shall move between thy eyes. And thou shalt write them in the entry and on the doors of thy house."* Such is the ideal of the Catholic home; and wherever this type is realized, it is evident that the avenues to the centre are wide and short, and that its members are even already in possession of the truth and of the blessed life which constitute the pledge of the supreme good of man. But evil is of quick and ceaseless growth in this region of shades. In the first ages passions, and then heresy entwined with them in later times, will take root and spring up to bewilder, to efface, to interpose their manifold obstructions and their gloom. Let us take things, then, as they exist at present, and endeavour to show how under all circumstances of sad reality there are issues at the very commencement of this road from darkness to light, and from human misery to the felicity of God. Doubtless no times can be so wretched but that parental instruction will in some degree or other contribute to effect an opening; for the voice of nature conspires with faith to impress its importance on those who are designed to administer it. And Escobar uses an argument which nature herself will sometimes suggest, to prove that this instruction ought to be offered; for he cites Tyconius, commenting on the fourth book of Kings, saying if we should affirm that Solomon is lost with the reprobate, we are met with the voice of God, which saith, "Nec terræ quidem regnum auferri Salomoni propter David patrem suum. For what would it profit David, if for his sake his son should obtain the kingdom of earth, when he was about to lose the celestial kingdom? Therefore it is manifest that Solomon is with God." The Catholic religion consecrates all the old moral traditions of the human race, such as we find in the Holy Scriptures, and even in Homer and the Greek tragedians, as in the oldest oriental monuments, against which some modern governments expressly legislate: following the example of Sparta and Athens, confiscating to the profit of government the power which they take from parents, and de * Deut. vi. Ap. Anton. de Escobar et Mendoza in Evang. Com. vol. vi. 198. |