1 to lead a heart; it teaches not the art of disputation, but the way In short, we must not be astonished if he who causes millions of worlds to roll without confusion over our heads, has infused such harmony into the principles of a religion instituted by himself; we need not be astonished at his making the charms and the glories of its mysteries revolve in the circle of the most convincing logic, as he commands those planets to revolve in their orbits to bring us flowers and storms in their respective seasons. We can scarcely conceive the reason of the aversion shown by the present age for Christianity. If it be true, as some philosophers have thought, that some religion or other is necessary for mankind, what system would you adopt instead of the faith of our forefathers? Long shall we remember the days when men of blood pretended to erect altars to the Virtues, on the ruins. of Christianity. With one hand they reared scaffolds; with the other, on the fronts of our temples they inscribed Eternity to God and Death to man; and those temples, where once was found that God who is acknowledged by the whole universe, and where devotion to Mary consoled so many afflicted hearts,-those temples were dedicated to Truth, which no man knows, and to Reason, which never dried a tear. 1 The author alludes to the disastrous tyranny exercised by Robespierre over the deluded French people. K. CHAPTER V. OF THE INCARNATION. THE Incarnation exhibits to us the Sovereign of Heaven among shepherds; him who hurls the thunderbolt, wrapped in swaddling-clothes; him whom the heavens cannot contain, confined in the womb of a virgin. Oh, how antiquity would have expatiated in praise of this wonder! What pictures would a Homer or a Virgil have left us of the Son of God in a manger, of the songs of the shepherds, of the Magi conducted by a star, of the angels descending in the desert, of a virgin mother adoring her new-born infant, and of all this mixture of innocence, enchantment, and grandeur! Setting aside what is direct and sacred in our mysteries, we would still discover under their veils the most beautiful truths in nature. These secrets of heaven, apart from their mystical character, are perhaps the prototype of the moral and physical laws of the world. The hypothesis is well worthy the glory of God, and would enable us to discern why he has been pleased to manifest himself in these mysteries rather than in any other mode. Jesus Christ, for instance, (or the moral world,) in taking our nature upon him, teaches us the prodigy of the physical creation, and represents the universe framed in the bosom of celestial love. The parables and the figures of this mystery then become engraved upon every object around us. Strength, in fact, universally proceeds from grace; the river issues from the spring; the lion is first nourished with milk like that which is sucked by the lamb; and lastly, among mankind, the Almighty has promised ineffable glory to those who practise the humblest virtues. They who see nothing in the chaste Queen of angels but an obscure mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts. are suggested by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-God! What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, the two most glorious characters of woman!-of that youthful daughter of ancient Israel, who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty! We The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a pure-white throne, more dazzling than the snow. there behold her arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning-star, harbinger of the Sun of grace: the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her. In that daughter of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the comforter of the afflicted, who, all good, all compassionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger of the Lord. Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young women whose bitter griefs she has assuaged. The mother carries her babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the God of Heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds. an infant in her arms. CHAPTER VI. OF THE SACRAMENTS. Baptism. If the mysteries overwhelm the mind by their greatness, we experience a different kind of astonishment, but perhaps not less profound, when we contemplate the sacraments of the Church." The whole knowledge of man, in his civil and moral relations, is implied in these institutions. Baptism is the first of the sacraments which religion confers upon man, and, in the language of the apostle, clothes him with Jesus Christ. This sacred rite reminds us of the corruption in which we were born, of the pangs that gave us birth, of the tribulations which await us in this world. It teaches us that our sins will recoil upon our children, and that we are all sureties for each other an awful lesson, which alone would suffice, if duly pondered, to establish the empire of virtue among men. Behold the new convert standing amid the waves of Jordan! the hermit of the rock pours the lustral water upon his head; while the patriarchal river, the camels on its banks, the temple of Jerusalem, and the cedars of Libanus, seem to be arrested by the solemn rite. Or, rather, behold the infant child before the sacred font! A joyous family surround him; in his behalf they renounce sin, and give him the name of his grandfather, which is thus renewed by love from generation to generation. Already the father hastens to take the child in his arms, and to carry it home to his impatient wife, who is counting under her curtains each sound of the baptismal bell. The relatives assemble; tears of tenderness and of religion bedew every eye; the new name of the pretty infant, the ancient appellative of its ancestor, passes from mouth to mouth; and every one, mingling the recollections of the past with present joys, discovers the fancied resemblance of the good old man in the child that revives his memory. Such are the scenes exhibited by the sacrament of baptism; but Religion, ever moral and ever serious, even when the most cheerful smile irradiates her countenance, shows us also the son of a king, in his purple mantle, renouncing the pomps of Satan at the same font where the poor man's child appears in tatters, to abjure those vanities of the world which it will never know.1 We find in St. Ambrose a curious description of the manner in which the sacrament of baptism was administered in the first ages of the Church. Holy Saturday was the day appointed for the ceremony. It commenced with touching the nostrils and 1 That is, the outward pomp of this world; but the poor as well as the rich must renounce all inordinate aspiration after the vain show of this world. T. 2 Ambr., de Myst. Tertullian, Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustin, speak less in detail of this ceremony than St. Ambrose. The triple immersion and the touching of the nostrils, to which we allude here, are mentioned in the six books on the Sacraments which are falsely attributed to this father. opening the ears of the catechumen, the person officiating at the same time pronouncing the word ephpheta, which signifies, be opened. He was then conducted into the holy of holies. In the presence of the deacon, the priest, and the bishop, he renounced the works of the Devil. He turned toward the west, the image of darkness, to abjure the world; and toward the east, the emblem of light, to denote his alliance with Jesus Christ. The bishop then blessed the water, which, according to St. Ambrose, indicated all the mysteries of the Scripture,-the Creation, the Deluge, the Passage of the Red Sea, the Cloud, the Waters of Mara, Naaman, and the Pool of Bethsaida. The water having been consecrated by the sign of the cross, the catechumen was immersed in it three times, in honor of the Trinity, and to teach him that three things bear witness in baptism-water, blood, and the Holy Spirit. On leaving the holy of holies, the bishop anointed the head of the regenerated man, to signify that he was now consecrated as one of the chosen race and priestly nation of the Lord. His feet were then washed, and he was dressed in white garments, as a type of innocence, after which he received, by the sacrament of confirmation, the spirit of divine fear, of wisdom and intelligence, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety. The bishop then pronounced, with a loud voice, the words of the apostle, "God the Father hath marked thee with his seal. Jesus Christ our Lord hath confirmed thee, and given to thy heart the earnest of the Holy Ghost." The new Christian then proceeded to the altar to receive the bread of angels, saying, "I will go to the altar of the Lord, of God who rejoices my youth." At the sight of the altar, covered with vessels of gold and silver, with lights, flowers, and silks, the new convert exclaimed, with the prophet, "Thou hast spread a table for me; it is the Lord who feeds me; I shall know no want, for he hath placed me in an abundant pasture." The ceremony concluded with the celebration of the mass. How august must have been the solemnity, at which an Ambrose gave to the innocent poor that place at the table of the Lord which he refused to a guilty emperor!1 1 Theodosius, by whose command great numbers of the inhabitants of Thessalonica were put to death for an insurrection. For this sanguinary deed, St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, refused to admit him into the Church until he |