came soon after his death. Scethe, which began with St. Anthony, was already changed in the time of St. Arsenius. The sanctity of Sinai was past in the age of St. John Climachus, who lamented its fall. The Laura of St. Euthymus fell as soon as he was dead, and St. Sabas was obliged to leave it. The great Benedictin order became changed in the second century of its institution, as did the order of Grandmont forty years after the death of its founder. Scarcely was St. Bernard dead when the Cistercians evinced symptoms of the abuses which so soon succeeded, and which drew on them the reproaches of Alexander III. The order of St. Francis was changed soon after its foundation by the ambition of Brother Helie. The Carmelites of St. Joseph of Avila were only preserved by the presence of St. Theresa. A monastery," continues this abbot, "is an ark of safety for a certain number of persons. The Almighty conducts and protects it as long as it serves to his designs, but when his work is done, and the passengers have gained the port, He departs if there be neglect; and then this fragile bark, abandoned to itself in the tempest without a helm, is tossed here and there by the violence of vices and passions, as if by tempests and waves; it is dashed to pieces, and in fine swallowed up in the universal wreck of human things *." Catholicism admits, therefore, all that persons observing the history of monasteries from their point of view at a distance from without would have admitted, only it will not conclude that the past is worthless as far as yielding direction to the centre. "You say," observes a great living writer, "that monastic orders were failures because they grew corrupt. Well, so was primitive Christianity then. In your sense Christianity itself has been a failure; for how much less has it touched and healingly troubled the deep fountains of human depravity than might have been expected! No," he continues, "God's providences appear to be thwarted by man's prevarication, and the merciful intentions of Heaven to fall short of the mark at which they are aimed. I see nothing in the objection that monastic orders have been failures, which will not equally apply to Christianity itself. But, after all, in what sense have they been failures ?" It is clear, moreover, from the view of a monastic life taken by its most fervent advocates, that Catholicism recognizes also, in the second place, the continual need of a judicious and watchful scrutiny in regard to the manner in which religious communities are conducted. In every age the Catholic religion has been employed in reforming either particular monasteries or whole orders. The holy see, general councils, provincial synods, mo * De la Sainteté et des Devoirs de la Vie monastique, chap. xxii. nastic chapters, abbatial decrees-all have been exerted in furtherance of this object. When by reason of the commendatory priors abuses and degeneracy prevailed in the order of Grandmont, the Abbot Regald, in 1625, desiring to reform it, assembled some of his monks, with certain fathers of the society of Jesus, as also of the order of St. Francis, and in conformity with their advice drew up twelve chapters of constitutions*. It was in this manner generally that the investigation and reform were carried on. Sometimes even laymen exerted their influence to accomplish this end. Thus among the epistles of Fulbert, we find one from the duke of Aquitaine, written to a venerable abbot, saying, "This second time I implore you to send to the Carofic monastery some of your monks who are fervent in observing the rule of St. Benedict, whose holy conversation may be an example to them. I pray you to send as many as ten monks from your monastery +:" 66 Catholicism, however, in admitting the need for reform, and in making provision for it, takes care, we are assured, to distinguish reform from destruction. It says with the historian of the Benedictines, "Malos monachos in bonos convertere laudabile et sanctum est; sed canonicos facere non est emendare. Nunquam erit bonus canonicus monachus malus. Bonus autem non exuet ordinem suum ." That in the fury and convulsions of parties," as Balmes observes, "a frantic and sacrilegious hand, excited by secret perversity, should cast an incendiary torch into a peaceful dwelling, is conceivable; but to attack the essence of the religious institution, with a view to confine it within the narrowness and imbecility of a little mind, and to strip it of its noble titles, cannot be admitted by either the understanding or the heart. A false philosophy, which withers whatever it touches, may undertake this insane task; but, independent of religion, letters and arts will rise up against such a pretension; for they have need of ancient remembrances; they draw all their wonders from elevated thoughts, from grand and austere pictures, from profound and tender sentiments; they transport the human mind into regions of light, guiding the imagination by unknown paths, and reigning over the heart by inexplicable enchantments." In fine, what will, perhaps, still more surprise some inquirers, Catholicism, as far as a common observer may be allowed to express his impressions, seems to make advances towards the most fervent opponents of the monastic institutions, and to admit with them the necessity at times of not alone reform, but in * Levesque, An. Grand. vi. +Fulberti Carnotensis, cxvii. Yepes ii. 151. general of change, as if recognizing the truth of what an old English poet says, "Change hath her periods, and is natural." It is not from the centre that emanates a resolve to rest in a dead and immutable routine-cultivating the mind of the past in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, or of institutions, that mind is inscribed without any regard to the present or the future. Absolute decisions of this kind are to be expected from such persons as an ingenious author describes, speaking of "a lady of respectable opinions and very ordinary talents, defending what is right without judgment, and believing what is holy without charity;" but they seem by no means to argue a mind that is catholically informed and inspired. The religious orders seem to have always formed or possessed men who, while venerating the past, invoked a scientific, social, and political progress; and I believe it will be difficult to discover in the whole of the ancient monastic literature a single line to throw discredit upon any attempts to promote, in any of these relations, the happiness of mankind. If they respected custom, and were not for abating all former precedents, all trivial, fond records, the whole frame and fabric of society as a nuisance; if their wisdom was not always at the horizon, as Hazlitt says, "ready to give a cordial welcome to any thing new, any thing remote, any thing questionable, and that, too, in proportion as the object was new, impracticable, or not desirablethey were not like the credulous alarmists, who shudder at the idea of altering any thing. No! where do you find them teaching man to turn his back always upon the future and his face to the past, as if mankind were stationary, and were to act from the obsolete inferences of past periods, and not from the living impulse of existing circumstances, and the consolidated force of the knowledge and reflection of ages up to the present instant, naturally projecting them forward into the future, and not driving them back upon the past?" No sooner was any discovery within the order of things subject to invention announced, than we find monks among the very first to welcome and admire it, while many of them were themselves the first to produce it, having devoted their lives to the improvement of mathematical instruments, of agriculture, of architecture, of laws, of institutions, and of manners. Wherever any advance seemed possible towards truth of any description, or towards a less imperfect state of civilization, they seemed to hail it with enthusiasm ; and in this respect it would be hard to point out what limits they were for imposing either on others or on themselves. Moreover, there seems to be nothing to lead any one to suppose that Catholicism in general, either in regard to monasteries or to any thing but truth itself, which is unchangeable, declares any war with time. The monks themselves, inspired by it, might VOL. VII. A a address their opponents in the beautiful lines of the poet, saying to Time, "O fret away the fabric walls of Fame, And grind down marble Cæsars with the dust! Make such decays the trophies of thy prime, That dares exterminating war with Time,— The monastic legislation itself admits of many cases where dispensation from the rule, which after all seems to be only another expression for change, is lawful. It enumerates them as "temporum mutatio-utilitas communis-personarum conditio -pietas-rei eventus-multorum offensio." Any one of these circumstances, it admits, may render necessary alterations which the original Legislator Himself would have required if He had witnessed them t. And if one order is seen to approve of and exercise such a power, what must we not believe the entire Church prepared to do when it judges what is best for a whole country, or for the universal body of the faithful? All things change for man but love and charity, and faith and hope; all changes but visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction. The form of vestments, the architecture of temples, the days of fastingall these the Church has repeatedly changed. Public confession and other parts of discipline she wholly abrogated so early as the fifth century. The multitude and prodigious austerity of monasteries in the early ages, when no doubt the equity of Providence balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments, mark the height to which, under peculiar circumstances, the waters once rose; but to conclude that Catholicism was on the decline because its streams do not flow in precisely the same channels, and because the same phenomena do not present themselves in the present century, would, at least in the judgment of many, be rash and absurd in the extreme. Without exaggerating the meaning of what Heraclitus said, that "you cannot bathe twice in the same river," it seems clear from history that the Church from time to time makes use of new instruments, and that with the course of events new wants are experienced by mankind, while ancient * Hood. + D. Sero de Lairelz, Optica Regularium seu in Comment. in Reg. S. Augustini Spec. vi. provisions lose their applicability, their expediency, and their object. It has been said, with some degree of truth, that "each age must write its own works, or each generation for the next succeeding." To affirm, indeed, that even such men as St. Bernard always wrote precisely as they would think it necessary to write now, appears to argue singular courage. To use the words of our great English philosopher, we may say that "their instructions were such as the characters and circumstances of their readers made proper." But whatever we may think of the books, it seems an experimental certainty that in material foundations some changes or modifications of things are required from time to time, and that all the forms belonging to institutions of an older period may not prove suitable to the circumstances or times that succeed. Even the Abbé de Rance admits that the order of Cluny, after departing in some degree from the exact observance of the rule, was favoured with eminent graces. Catholicism, as well as philosophy, seems to call on us to behold the day of all past great worthies here. In the aspect of nature, in the sighing of these woods, in the beauty of these fields, in the breeze that sings out of these mountains, in the workmen, the boys, the maidens you meet-in the hopes of the morning, the weariness of noon, and the calm of evening,-in all of these, I say, it seems to call on us to behold the past combined with the present and the future, it seems to call on us not to cling to the stiff dead details of the irrevocable past, but, as a great author says, to consult with living wisdom the enveloping Now; and it, too, seems to assure us that the more we inspect the evanescent beauties of this "now," of its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, and its astounding whole, so much the more we shall catch the spirit of the past, and cultivate the mind of the past, which was great, not through archæological imitations, but through living wisdom and living justice. Thus, to continue using even the words of an eloquent representative of modern views, "is justice done to each generation and individual,”-Catholicism with wisdom teaching man that he shall not hate, or fear, or mimic his ancestors; that he shall not bewail himself as if the world were old, and thought were spent, and he were born into the dotage of things; for by virtue of the Deity, Catholicism renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. "As far as is lawful, and even farther, I am indignant," says the Venerable Bede, "whenever I am asked by the rustics how many years yet the world will last. On the contrary, I demand of them how they know that we are in the last age of the world? since our Lord did not say whether his advent was near or remote, |