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But a little while after Miss Stephen tells us how very unhappy these same Sisters of Charity are because they may not love the poor whom they serve. Which account is the true one? If Miss Stephen believed the words of an infallible and inspired writer, which according to her own statement she does not do, she might have found an explanation therein which would have told her how it was possible to be sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

This leads us to the second set of charges which are made against sisters both by Miss Stephen and her reviewer. They assert that the Religious life is wrong on moral grounds

a. Because it is founded on fiction on the fiction that nuns are unhappy, or at least that their life is one of sacrifice; whereas, on the contrary, they have made a very good exchange. If they are rich, they have got rid of all home troubles, which, according to this authority, are very trying indeed; and if they are poor, they have secured for themselves a good home and a provision for their old age.

I confess it is hard to read the bitter, taunting words in which all this misstatement is conveyed without something like Christian indignation, when we have known so many, both rich and poor, who have given their young lives up to God's poor, not as a grudging sacrifice, but as a sacrifice none the less true and real because it was given gene. rously.

The idea, as we have said before, has certainly the merit of originality. The old theory was that nuns were miserable if through their own choice of a life of misery, that they deserved it; if through the choice and compulsion of others, that they deserved the greatest pity; but all this is changed now, and accord.

VOL. IV.-NO. XXIII. NEW SERIES.

ing to Miss Stephen, they are simply a set of selfish women who have taken refuge in the cloister to escape the troubles of life, and who do escape them. It is to be regretted that this view of the subject was not brought before Parliament in a recent session. Surely if nuns are happy, they ought to be allowed to enjoy themselves undisturbed; if they are unwise, it is no one's affair except their own. Surely if they find a selfish pleasure in giving up their lives to the poor, it ought not to distress anyone. Even if they were not the best women in the world, they can at least do no great harm; and as there are so many unselfish people in the world, who remain there to sacrifice themselves for their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, these very selfish people, who neither do any harm to themselves nor others, might be left in peace. Why all this outcry? why all this commotion against them?

Misapprehension has arisen of late years from the increased number of Protestant Sisterhoods in England, and the circumstances under which persons have joined these establishments. In some cases there has been long previous dispute at home, both on religious questions in general as well as on the subject of entering a Sisterhood; and we must all unhappily know that there are no subjects which create so much acrimony, even in the most united and affectionate families, as religious dissensions. It will also happen, and has happened within the knowledge of the present writer, that persons do enter Protestant Sisterhoods to escape those home trials, and to find society which is more congenial to them; but this cannot be the case in regard to vocations to Catholic convents.

It is quite true that there may be disagreement and disunion in

Y Y

Catholic as well as in Protestant families, and that now and then persons may even wish to escape it by entering the cloisters; but such cases are rare indeed, and no Superior would allow anyone to take solemn vows if she discovered such a motive. Whatever persons who know nothing about Catholic Convents may say, the truth lies between the two extremes. The life of a nun is one of sacrifice, because she gives up in the most complete manner all the ties of family and home, because she enters a state which requires from her sacrifices of will and inclination which are far more difficult to bear than those austerities of a corporeal nature of which Miss Stephen seems to think so little because possibly she has never tried them. But it is also a life of joy, because there is a joy in sacrifice which is made for God which can only be understood by those who have made it, and the joy will be proportionate to the greatness and the perfectness of the sacrifice.

We have yet to notice the entirely novel suggestion that the Religious life is a fiction.

(b) Because the sisters profess to work for the poor gratuitously, whereas they are very well paid indeed.

It is quite true that Religi ous are sometimes paid for their services. As they happen to be human beings, they must eat, they must wear some kind of clothing, and neither food nor clothing can be procured without money. If the sister has been rich, she has paid a certain sum into the convent fund, which helps towards providing those necessaries of life for herself and for others; but even the most wealthy sister who has ever entered a convent makes a vow of poverty, and henceforth she is bound to do all that she can according to the Rule

for her own support as well as for the support of her sisters. There are at this moment in some English convents the daughters of dukes and earls who are earning their daily bread, in point of fact, by working for others, and by teaching the children of those far below them in worldly rank. You will say, 'What folly!' But if it is folly, they follow an example which you, perhaps, will not like altogether to condemn. They have not only read of, but they have also believed in, One who for their sakes became poor; One who for their love became the servant of His creatures; One who said that it was necessary for the perfection of those whom He called to follow Him especially, to leave all that they had, to forsake their houses and lands for His dear sake, and for His sake also, and following His example, to prefer poverty to wealth, humiliation to honour, suffering to enjoyment. You may, if you will, condemn them; but do not forget Whose example they follow, or on what principle they act. You may,

if

you will, deny to them the right of private judgment to form their own opinion upon the words of Scripture and the life of Christ; but you must first show that your opinion is infallible, or how can you require them to act upon it in preference to their own?

As for the poor, it is true, in some cases, that they may be better off-that is, that they may have better food or lodging than they had in the world; but you forget that they also make the sacrifice of home ties and home life, which are as dear to them as to those of a higher station, and that they give up not a part of their time, but their whole time, to their work; that they also can have no personal possession or use of property; and there are few indeed in the world, however poor,

who have not some claim on worldly goods. It is unjust to compare them with paid secular nurses, for such persons can do what they please with the money they receive, and can procure for themselves and their friends a hundred little comforts, which the poor lay sister in the convent has most willingly renounced.

The truth about Sisterhoods can only be known by those who understand the principles on which they are founded, and the motives of those who devote themselves in this life to the poor for the love of God. It is a life which is not intended for all, and is not possible for all. There will always be women enough to make homes happy, even should there be a few

who leave happy homes to pour the sunlight of God's love upon the homeless and the outcast. Those who enter Sisterhoods are no reproach to those who remain in the world; and those who fancy that the Catholic religion teaches that there can be no true or exalted sanctity outside the cloister, and that all who enter there claim to be, or are, better Christians than those who live in the world but not of it, forget, or are ignorant of, the fact that many of the canonised saints of the Catholic Church were men and women who lived in the holy state of matrimony, which is esteemed by the Catholic Church, and by the Catholic Church only, as a sacrament instituted by Christ Himself.

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AMOR IN EXTREMIS.

A GARRISON STORY OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

I

A LAUGH when I wanted a smile, a sting in the honey of play,
A flout at my fustian jacket-and I left my home that day;
Left all to go a-soldiering, and 'listed for the war,

To sail to the far East Indies, and to see my love no more.

II

But the frigates lay at anchor, and our time was drawing nigh, Her face was always haunting me, I'd never said good-bye;

So I swam ashore one summer night, a mile from ship to sand; O the silvery play of the moonlit spray, and the scent of the silent land!

111

I watched her cottage window till at dawn the roses stirr'd,
I saw the casement open; I caught a whisper'd word.

But who comes out of the door below? I started from my place,
And the captain of our company I met him face to face.

I strode full front across his path; he bade me stand aside-
Said he knew me a deserter; so I told him that he lied;
Our fight was fair and open, for I struck when he struck me,
And at last I left him lying with his head on Lucy's knee.

V

Little care have I to pity him, who in the cool grey light

In her arms lay there a-dying that had clasped him all the nightWhile to me the end comes wearily in prison here alone,

For the dark henrs pass me vainly, and at sunrise I'll be gone.

VI

Farewell to you, my comrade-and to-morrow, when I'm shot,
To Lucy take this kerchief with her own true-lover's-knot ;
She'll be luring other sweethearts soon; she knows the scarlet streak
Of two men's blood on her winsome head will only flush her cheek.

VII

She may weep for a space, and think of my face (she seemed now and then to love it)

All splintered through with a bullet or two, and a barrow of earth above it;

And perhaps I may sigh if I think, as I lie with a coffin for bed and

room,

Of her chamber sweet, and the rustle of feet, and Lucy in all her bloom.

VIII

Yet I'd rather stay six feet in clay, where the weeds and brambles

grow,

Than be sitting aloft in cloudland, with the good folks all in a row; For I don't take a pride in my singing, nor parades with the heavenly host,

I'd sooner be left in the village to wander about like a ghost.

IX

Like a ghost! But my love whom I died for-O years of my life that are shorn,

O the odour of far-off summers, the glory of days unborn!

Shall I still see the earth and its beauty, and meet her by meadow or fell?

Alas, for the living know not, and the dead men cannot tell.

X

The parson he says, 'Give praise to the Lord, you're ready and fit to depart;

Your repentance is sore, be troubled no more, nor think of your frail

sweetheart;

You'll soon be on high with the cherubs, so get that girl from your

head;

Talk no more about Lucy,-her sins are as scarlet red!'

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