THE LETTERS OF MARY AIKENHEAD

M

ANY a time we heard warm friends of the Irish Sisters of Charity express surprise that no steps had been taken towards the beatification of their holy Foundress, Mary Aikenhead. At long last these steps have been taken, and we have now but to wait the result. Perhaps we owe it to these proceedings in connexion with the Cause that this volume of letters has been published. There is a noble preface to it. Mary Aikenhead's letters thus collected and published are the best gift to the Congregation for fifty years.

But, indeed, they will be useful to other readers as well. Given strong, practical, common-sense piety, a forceful power of expression, and, over both, the unction of the Holy Spirit, there is hardly any form of ascetic literature that will help so much as the letters of holy men and women. There are in this collection close upon 600 pages of letters. Perhaps fewer letters with better editing had produced a better book. But as they are, we believe it to be well-nigh impossible for anyone to read carefully a number of these letters without feeling urged to greater generosity in God's service. Nor can they be read, we think, without a feeling of admiration, even of veneration, for the servant of God, whose life in God they so well reveal.

Mary Aikenhead was born in Cork in 1787. She founded her Congregation in 1815. She died in July, 1858.

It will be noted that the series of letters begins in 1831, and continues uninterruptedly till Christmas Day, 1855. The last we have is of that date. Now in the year 1831 Mary Aikenhead was afflicted with spinal trouble brought on by too severe strain of work. The trouble might easily have yielded to judicious treatment, but the error of a physician, who misunderstood the case, disabled her for the rest of her life. For one of her temperament and position it must have been a terrible trial. Was that mistake the shadow only of God's hand outstretched to confer a favour? To that sickness, which controlled and directed the terrible energy of mind and body, she probably

* Letters of Mary Aikenhead. Dublin, M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd. (Price, Ios. 6d. net.)

owed some of God's choicest gifts to her soul. It was then she acquired a marvellous union with God in prayer and insight into the working out of His adorable providence in the affairs of life. It was then she grew to love the cross and learned to speak and write of its strength and sweetness as few have done. Then was heightened her tender sympathy for every sort of sorrow or suffering, and pity for poor sinners. To that sickness the Congregation owes these letters, and to it they may one day trace far more.

"Who is that noble-looking woman?" a visitor asked as she passed the window. Noble looking, indeed, she was from all accounts. The gentle and beautiful girl had bloomed into a lovely, prepossessing woman. This is the woman who is reduced, by a mistake, to being a practical cripple. Like some old war-battered leader who is borne about and guides the battle from plank or palanquin, so from the bed of suffering, where mostly she lay on the broad of her back, or, when pain had somewhat abated, from a bath-chair, Mary Aikenhead dictated, or wrote with her own hand, the letters we have here collected. Her living voice is gone; these burning words remain. Seventy years ago, or more, they were first sent broadcast through the little army, and still they cheer and comfort her daughters of to-day. In them the old Mother's lofty spirit breathes.

They are curious letters. They are the letters of one born and brought up in cultured and refined society, and yet there is no literary flavour in them. At times they are even carelessly faulty. The writer is rushed as she writes she is listening to another story-she sets down the thought, another comes on top of it, and funny sentences are the result. But the whole thing is genuine, is alive. The writer is in deadly, but loving,

earnest.

They are curious letters! Yes, in a way; indeed in more than one way they are curious letters. It is tedious a bit, her eternally harping on the one string. Yes, like Bernard and Dominic and Ignatius-and, like the men of one great idea, whether in literature or science, she finds it hard to keep her master-passion out. And writing to her own dear ones, for these are the privileged notes of a mother to her own children, she makes no attempt to hide that passion. Her whole aim is to fire them with the same. Her one eternal topic is God and the poor of Ireland. And so these letters from their

Mother, these "dispatches" from their General (that word, perhaps, best describes all they are, and best explains why they are not more), these dispatches were like bugle-calls to those working in the ranks. The well-known sounds fell upon ears that heard with pleasure. The Sisters heard the letter read round the fire-side of an evening, and went about their work silent and smiling. Their Mother had been talking to them.

Some of us might wonder at the virtue set before these young girls as making too great demand upon human nature. Such faith, such love of God, such contempt of self. But she is at no pains to pare away the rugged from great virtues-to mix the great Gospel truths with some poorer stuff to make them palatable. In the simple fact of the Sisters' vocation to the Institute she is sure about the abundance of grace imparted to them, and in the Rule approved by the Vicar of Christ she is sure about God's will for them. With these she is safe. On these she counts. And that happened which does happen so often in such cases. People asked: "How comes it that Mrs. Aikenhead was able to find out and gather round her such a crowd of gifted women ? " "We knew So-and-so before. Well, she didn't seem to be so much-but now she is another woman." Well, there was the appeal to mind and heart in the Rule of St. Ignatius many believed that Rule to be impossible for women; but Mary Aikenhead clung to it, and Dr. Murray strongly supported her, and it told. Then there was the personality and living example and watchful training of the Foundress herself. She had the gift of impressing her own character on those around her and thus creating, in a short time, what afterwards became a living tradition in the Order. It is a gift of God to founders of religious Orders.

Some might wonder that these letters give no idea of current events, when events in Ireland were epoch making. She lived and wrote in the days when the great voice that roused the people from their slumber and won for them Emancipation was still heard in the land; she heard, for even convent walls could not shut it out, the gathering cry "Repeal "; she was only a few streets away when O'Connell and the rest were put on their trial and sent to Kilmainham; she saw Famine strike the people and break the heart of the great Chief; she saw the rise of Young Ireland and their dispersion into exile or dungeon. She saw all this-and yet we have not one letter about these things. Only here and there a passing remark; the sum of

these remarks leaving you in doubt as to what her thoughts were about the national aspirations and the national struggle.

But there is no doubt about the part she and her children played in the Irish life of that day. The needle is not truer to the Pole than she was to her great purpose. And hers was a great purpose, and like every such purpose, fed by a great fire. Neither O'Connell himself, nor Davis, nor Duffy worked for Ireland with more love and constancy than Mary Aikenhead and her children worked for Ireland's suffering and famished poor. No wonder that in her eyes the calamity of the Famine was no mere vast political event: it was more, it was the eternal question of God's suffering poor presented in a wider way and more acute form. This question was her divinely-appointed work; it was of divine significance and proportion, and both for her and for the poor it stretched out into eternity. "Master, will You at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?" And He hearkened not, and went on doing the will of His Father. But in the end light and love were in His eyes when He said at the Supper: "Father, I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do."

She was a woman of action, this, though pinned by pain to a sick bed. Her activities were great and they were wise. They have bome great fruit. Well might Cardinal Cullen ask, on hearing of her death, "Who has done more for religion?" She did great things. In these letters you see where she got the strength, you get near to the fire that burned in her breast. Her heart was aflame with love for God. May the spirit of the old Mother animate still, and ever, her dear Congregation, and may they be blessed in their work, as she was.

H. F.

JULY MOON

WAN truth, that vigil keepest
Beyond men's singing ways,

No song hast thou, nor sleepest
Bowed o'er the strong, dead days.

The world's fair hope for evermore thou weepest,
And June's wide-wandering lays.

E. W. LYNAM.

THE BROOCH OF LINDISFARNE

By JESSIE A. GAUGHAN

Author of "The Plucking of the Lily"

CHAPTER VIII

THE SCOTTISH SOLOMON

EDINBURGH CASTLE brooded over the town in massive majesty. The ruler of the castle and of the country, James Stuart, the sixth of that name, sat at an open window and let his eyes wander over the still waters of the North Loch, glistening far below in the bright sunshine; over the rising ground beyond and away to the coast of Fife, across the Firth of Forth, which bore on its broad bosom many a boat that seemed to the royal observer but as a dancing speck. Whatever elements of strife were lodged within the castle and the town, peace and the joy of early summer reigned over the surrounding country.

But the King's thoughts were not upon the scene spread out beneath him. James had undertaken a work worthy of a king, and his mind dwelt pleasantly on a little surprise he had planned for his Court on the morrow, and for those who would then be his guests. He has been accused of folly and weakness, and even of the darker defect of personal cowardice; but lack of good intentions cannot be urged against him. A self-satisfied smile played upon his face, for what he aimed at and confidently hoped to ensure, was the domestic peace of his country and the prosperity that would be certain to follow the cessation of the feuds which had been for so many centuries the curse of Scotland.

The King was attended by a favourite nobleman, who stood near him, dressed in such elegance as few of the Scottish Court could equal, and such as never adorned the person of James himself, who was far less rich than many a vassal of the great clans. Seeing his favourite's eyes rest on the quiet fields beyond the loch, and wishing to draw him from the reverie into which he had fallen, James exclaimed, "What's tied your tongue, man ? "

The pity of it, my liege, that the peace of yonder country rests not over all your bonnie realm."