CONTENTS. PAGE About Words and Phrases........................38, 101 | Letters to a Protestant Friend, Giving a Brief Catholics and the Centennial. The Grand PAGE 157, 206, 286, 347 226 266 Off with the Old Love.................. Order of Our Savior, The.......... Our Fast Age, A Study in American Char- 75, 163 61 232 265 305 171 65 Our Lady of Perpetual Help........... 303 The Theory of All-sufficiency of the Bible is 379 Vatican Basilica, The............ 253 43 Wasted Treasures....... 105 Waiting for Something to Turn Up............. 123 Adventures of a Protestant in Search of a Religion, The......................................... 384 Life and Writings of St. Catharine of Genoa, 255 126 Life of Blessed Mary Margaret Alacoque...... 64 Life of St. John of the Cross........... Life of St. Thomas of Villa-Nova................................ THE CATHOLIC RECORD. VOL. VII, No. 37.-MAY, 1874. THE STORY OF A NOBLE LIFE. AMERICA'S poet laureate, "singing at will beneath his Cambridge elms,' never more truly touched the sympathetic pulse of popular favor than when he told us, in his now world-quoted Psalm of Life, that: Lives of great men all remind us, Footprints that perhaps another, Especially is this true of a land like ours, under whose social and political system every man has a free start, and a fair field, in the chance of a life successful in every aspect. Let him be blessed with only the most ordinary gifts of heaven, and not wanting energy, he cannot fail to do well, but if he possesses any advantages which may elevate him above the common level of humanity, he has only to develop that bump which is peculiar to the American cranium, and which is known in a common parlance, which ignores the technical VOL. VII.-1 phrases of phrenology, as "push," and he will soon find himself one of those democratic princes of the people, who are crowned not with the jewelled coronets of an hereditary royalty, but with the glory and power and wealth, which a psalmist of life, older, wiser, and sweeter than even Mr. Longfellow once promised, as the reward of a man who feared God and kept his commandments. The trouble nowadays is, however, to discover who are our great men, a difficulty mainly arising from the fact that we overdo ourselves in this matter of getting along in the world; our "vaulting ambition has o'erleapt itself." We have prostituted a naturally noble impulse to the base and degenerate spirit of the times. Formerly, men not only cared for "getting along," but they also kept a jealous eye upon their own self-respect, and were very cautious as to how they got along; our modern communistic spirit, like the excited individual, when he heard a stump-speaker ask if one man wasn't as good as another, cries out, vociferously, "Yes, and a good deal better." This is the principle upon which men, who do not fear God and keep the commandments; men whose name is legion, and who, gorged with false ideas of progress, liberalism, and money-making, take as the keynote of their worldly career. Policy is the best honesty with them; the way of the commandments of truth, honor, and virtue is too narrow and tedious. Our public-school system, with its modern American geographies, has developed a broader and shorter and smoother way to earthly renown and temporal wealth; a way that makes as great a divergence as possible from the old royal road our fathers trod, and which, after rounding the hill of questionable fame, finds its terminus to be the antipodes of the kingdom of God, and his justice. The histories and biographies too, which are most in favor with those pot-house Solomons, the publicschool directors, largely sustain the above quoted geographies. Their writers, with a boundless Christian charity, fairly revel in the fulfilment of the popular philanthropic maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," hence, every departed worthy is held up as a paragon of perfection to the rising generation, providing he have been a successful man, ergo, a presumably great one. Yet all prominence is by no means greatness, and a writer in a late number of a secular magazine, referring to the lack of truly great statesmanship at the present day, boldly declares that it is owing less to a diminution of brains than to the absence of an honest heart in our public men. Yet, the world professes an indiscriminating admiration for men of this class, because it knows them to be among its most obsequious followers, and all the ambitious Young Americas" shine in the light of their examples; and, what is worse, even our Catholic men, young and old, seeing the prosperity of these sinners, have, like the royal prophet, wellnigh, if not quite, stumbled from the path of uprightness. But let us not be deceived by treacherous examples of false heroism. Honesty, truth, and purity have not quite deserted the earth, wicked as it may be. Nor do they cease to command the respect even of those who, pretending to ignore them, worship in their stead their graven and senseless images. The mass of social, moral, and political corruption, engendered by the votaries of these false gods, cannot bury beneath its reeking pile the fearless and self-reliant sons of virtue. Truly, great men still live, and we need not step into a first-class optician's shop and purchase a pair of double convex spectacles to assist our eyes, bleared by the clouds of modern iniquity, in finding them. The light of their own lustrous virtue will pierce, of its own force, the surrounding darkness, and unfailing and unerringly rivet our attention, admiration, and successful imitation. Such a man was he, whose life we have chosen as a theme, most suitable and most worthy of our consideration, the late Hon. THOMAS EWING, of Ohio; one of nature's noblemen; one of America's truly great statesmen; one whom all the people of America can esteem as one of her purest public men; one whom we Catholics of America can honor and emulate as a man; who living not merely by the trite dictates of a commonplace morality, but who, worshipping God in the sincerity of a truth-loving and truth-seeking heart, "Touched God's right hand in the darkness," and was guided, like the Israelites of old, by Faith's pillar of fire, by night, unto the brightness of revelation's perfect day. |