scientific schools of Italy, expanded until it took in another hemisphere. The Muses and Graces, banished by the strong arm of the Musselmans, heard in their exile the sweet song of poesy sounding across the waves of the Adriatic. The harp of the West had become vocal under the touch of Petrarch and of Dante. Soon Tasso was to join in and swell the chorus by the praises of Rinaldo. Classic Greece, driven from home, met with an elegant reception at Florence, from Lorenzo the Magnificent. All Italy soon caught the inspiration for classic learning. The yet more magnificent descendant of Lorenzo, raised to the highest honors of Christendom, led the willing Muses in a graceful triumph to Rome. Thus, while England and the rest of Europe were still in the darkness of the Middle Ages, the meridian splendor of the sun of literature was shining full upon the glorious pontificate of Leo X.

We need not dwell upon either the triumphs or reverses, or literary excesses of this checkered period. Roscoe, an unprejudiced and competent witness of the history of that time, assures us that when the great moral defection in Germany began, Italy was in the zenith of her literary fame. The Church, the guardian of letters, by her diligence, fostered the arts and sciences, and at the same time preserved intact, unchanged and unchangeable, the faith of the mistress of the Christian world.

The religious societies went forth then with a determination to preserve inviolate what was yet incontaminate in faith and morals, and to reconquer by their preaching and literary labors the portion of Germany that had been lost. The conflict has already continued with various success for three centuries. It is by no means over. Our own times see the rescuing army renewing their efforts and striving to vindicate the honor of a saving host. Saint Francis Xavier and his little band more than indemnified the Church in the first years of the struggle for her losses in Germany, by his peaceful victories in the East. He there renewed in the hearts of the children of the patriarchs, the faith taught them by the great St. Thomas, and revived for the glory of Christendom "the works and words" of the first、 Apostles.

The blessings of the Church, the guardian of letters, like her power, extend to all nations and to all times. We, the citizens of this great Republic, feel the effects of her sweet and efficacious influence. The guardian of letters, she neglects no condition, no wants, no grades of society. All are in her keeping who love truth: and her Catholic arms are outstretched to embrace every child of her household of faith.

Her solicitude slumbers not over the interests of any. Every thing excellent in learning and in morals flows upon us from her altars, and her enemies have nothing good in religion, that they did not, when they left her, pilfer from her sanctuary. All that they can claim, independently of her, are their "spiritual rappings," and the honor of these they may perhaps have yet to share with the genius of folly, or with "the archangel in ruins."

Her mitred pontiff's look to preserve the freedom of education and the integrity of faith-her loin-girded confessors devote their lives in colleges to the teaching of her youth-her consecrated virgins guard, in the holy precincts of their academies, and educate her daughters-the orphan finds a mother in her "Sisters of Charity," the poor have instruction in her parish schools; for the clergy have helpers and the poor boy friends in her charitable societies. "How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel!"—Numb. xxiv.

THEOLOGY, THE UNIVERSAL SCIENCE.

TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED FROM DONOSO CORTES.

MR. PROUDHON, in his Confessions of a Revolutionist, has these remarkable words: "it is surprising that we always find theology underlying our politics." There is nothing surprising, however, in this, except the wonderment of Mr. Proudhon. Theology being the knowledge of God, must comprehend all the sciences, since God in his immensity contains and embraces all things. They were all in the divine mind before their creation, and have been ever since, for, in calling them forth out of nothing, he formed them according to the type which has existed in him from eternity. They are in him, as effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, forms in their eternal models. In him are the immensity of the ocean, the beauty of the fields, the harmony of the celestial bodies, the splendor of the stars, the magnificence of the heavens: in him are the measure, the weight, and the number of all things: in him are the supreme and inviolable laws of all beings. Every living thing finds in him the law of life: whatever vegetates finds in him the law of vegetation; whatever moves, the law of motion; whatever feels, the law of sensation; intelligence, the law of mind; liberty, the law of will. Thus it may be said, without falling into pantheism, that all things are in God, and God in all things.

This reflection enables us to explain, how truth diminishes among men in proportion to the diminution of faith, and how society by turning away from God finds itself enveloped in darkness. Religion has been considered by all men and in every age, as the indestructible foundation of human society. "Omnis humanæ societatis fundamentum evellit," says Plato, "qui religionem convellit:"* he who banishes religion, roots up the very basis of society. On this principle reposed all the legislation of ancient times. Cæsar, while young, having expressed in the open senate some doubt about the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero immediately rose from their seats, and accused him of having uttered language detrimental to the republic.

The diminution of faith, which causes a corresponding disappearance of truth, does not bring about the destruction but the wandering of the human mind. Merciful and just at the same time, God denies truth to the guilty intelligence, while he grants it life: he condemns it to error, but not to death. Those ages that have rolled by, distinguished alike by their infidelity and refinement, have left behind them on the page of history a trace more burning than luminous: their splendor was that of the conflagration or the lightning; not the mild and peaceful light which is shed upon the world by the Father above. What we say of ages, is applicable to men. In withholding or bestowing the gift of faith, God withholds or imparts truth: but he does not give or refuse understanding. The infidel may possess a powerful intellect, while the believer may be a man of very limited capacity but the mental greatness of the former is like the abyss; the latter like the sanctity of the tabernacle. The first is the dwelling-place of error, the second the habitation of truth. In the abyss, death is the awful consequence of error; in the tabernacle, life is the appendage of truth. Hence, that society which abandons the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the human mind, is in a hope

* De Legibus, l. x.

less condition. Sophistry leads to revolution, and the sophist is the precursor of

the executioner.

Whoever is acquainted with the laws to which governments are subject, has the knowledge of political truth. Whoever is acquainted with the laws which bind human society, has the knowledge of social truth. These laws are known to him who knows God, and God is known to him who hears what God teaches in relation to himself, and who believes this teaching. Now, theology is the science which has this teaching for its object; whence it follows, that all affirmations or questions relative to society or government, imply an affirmation relative to God; or, in other words, every political or social truth is necessarily resolvable into a theological truth. Theology, in its widest acceptation, is the science of all things. Every word that falls from the lips of man, is an affirmation of the divinity. He who blasphemes his sacred name as well as he who lifts his heart to him in humble prayer, affirms his existence. They both pronounce his incommunicable name. In the manner of pronuoncing this name we find the solution of the most enigmatical questions, as the vocation of races, the providential mission of peoples, the great vicissitudes of history, the rise and fall of empires, conquests and wars, the different characters of nations, and even their various fortunes.

THE SACRED HEART.

FROM HYMNS OF REV. F. W. FABER.

UNCHANGING and unchangeable, before angelic eyes,
The Vision of the Godhead in its tranquil beauty lies;

And like a city lighted up all gloriously within,

Its countless lustres glance and gleam, and sweetest worship win.
On the Unbegotten Father, awful well-spring of the Three,

On the Sole Begotten Son's co-equal Majesty,

On Him eternally breathed forth from Father and from Son,
The spirits gaze with fixed amaze, and unreckoned ages run.
Myriad, myriad Angels raise

Happy hymns of wondering praise,
Ever through eternal days,

Before the Holy Trinity,

One Undivided Three!

Still the fountain of the Godhead giveth forth eternal Being,
Still begetting, still begotten, still His own perfection seeing,
Still limiting His own loved Self with His dear co-equal Spirit,
No change comes o'er His blissful life, no shadow passeth near it.
And beautiful dread Attributes, all manifold and bright,
Now thousands seem, now lose themselves in one self-living light;
And far in that deep Life of God, in harmony complete,

Like crowned kings, all opposite perfections take their seat.

And in that ungrowing vision nothing deepens, nothing brightens,
But the living Life of God perpetually lightens:

And created life is nothing but a radiant shadow fleeing

From the unapproached lustres of that Unbeginning Being:

Spirits wise and deep have watched that everlasting Ocean,
And never o'er its lucid field hath rippled faintest motion;
In glory undistinguished never have the Three seemed One,
Nor ever in divided streams the Single Essence run.

There reigns the Eternal Father, in His lone prerogatives,
And in the Father's Mind the Son, all self-existing lives,
With Him, their mutual Jubilee, that deepest depth of love,
Life-giving Life of two-fold source, the many-gifted Dove!
O Bountiful! O Beautiful! can Power or Wisdom add
Fresh features to a life so munificent and glad!

Can even Uncreated Love, ye Angels! give a hue

Which can ever make the Unchanging and Unchangeable look new?

The Mercy of the Merciful is equal to Their Might,

As wondrous as Their Love, and as Their Wisdom bright!

As They, who out of nothing called creation at the first,

In everlasting purposes Their own design had nursed,

As They, who in Their solitude, Three Persons, once abode,
Vouchsafed of Their abundance to become creation's God,

What They owed not to Themselves They stooped to owe to man,
And pledged their glory to him, in an unimaginable plan.

See! deep within the glowing depth of that Eternal Light,

What change hath come, what vision new transports angelic sight?

A creature can it be, in uncreated bliss?

A novelty in God? O what nameless thing is this?

The beauty of the Father's Power is o'er it brightly shed,

The sweetness of the Spirit's Love is unction on its head;

In the wisdom of the Son it plays its wondrous part,
While it lives the loving life of a real Human Heart!

A Heart that hath a Mother, and a treasure of red Blood,
A Heart that man can pray to, and feed upon for food!
In the brightness of the Godhead is its marvellous abode,
A change in the Unchanging, Creation touching God!
Ye spirits blest in endless rest, who on that Vision gaze,
Salute the Sacred Heart with all your worshipful amaze,
And adore, while with extatic skill the Three in One ye scan,
The Mercy that hath planted there that blessed Heart of Man!

All tranquilly, all tranquilly, doth that Blissful Vision last,
And its brightness o'er immortalized creation will it cast;
Ungrowing and unfading, Its pure Essence doth it keep,
In the deepest of those depths where all are infinitely deep;
Unchanging and unchangeable, as It hath ever been,

As It was before that Human Heart was there by Angel seen,
So is it at this very hour, so will it ever be,

With that Human Heart within it, beating hot with love of me!
Myriad, myriad Angels raise

Happy hymns of wondering praise,

Ever through eternal days,

Before the Holy Trinity,

One Undivided Three!

JAPAN ITS RELIGIOUS HISTORY.

THE events that have lately transpired in the farthest East, and the expedition, which is now being fitted out for the purpose of opening to those of our countrymen who labor in the North Pacific, a secure refuge from the dangers of the seas in the ports and harbors of Japan, combine to excite an eager desire to know more of a country, that has been so long isolated from the rest of the human family. It has, indeed, been frequently visited by the ambassadors of various European nations, that desired to have a part in the advantages of its commerce; but so jealously have they been guarded, that their passage through the country has been more like that of a criminal carried to prison, than of a representative of an independent government; and their written accounts, meagre in everything else but their own personal experience, have been, to the most of English readers, almost as much a secret as the country itself, to the description of which they were dedicated. Thus, except during a period of little more than a century, Japan has been always as a sealed book to the rest of the world.. Even the Dutch, who are the only Europeans permitted to traffic, know very little more of the interior affairs and condition of the country than they did nearly two centuries ago, when they supplanted the Portuguese: and the desire of retaining for themselves the lucrative monopoly they had so basely purchased by the denial of Christianity, has been supposed (with how much justice I do not undertake to decide,) to be with them, too, a kind of lock to keep the secret still more secure. The interest that this behaviour, both on the part of Japan and of Holland, would naturally awaken in the minds of the inquisitive, is made still stronger in the Catholic, who remembers that it was to these islands that the Apostle of these later times, St. Francis Xavier, directed his steps, in the hope of extending more widely the kingdom of Christ, and where he planted so flourishing a Church, that it even vied with the primitive ages in the fervor and generosity of its martyrs, confessors and virgins. In the life of that great Apostle of the Indies, his own labors, and those of his few companions, are briefly recorded; but after they had been called to their reward, what became of the seed they planted with so much toil, and watered with so many tears and so much blood, is very little known, even to the Catholic. Other circumstances, of a more painful and personal nature, have engrossed his attention; and the sorrowful scenes enacted in Europe, since the Reformation scattered its baleful influence over the brightest portion of the Saviour's flock, have prevented him from looking to distant countries to seek for objects of admiration in their heroism, or of grief in their misfortunes. And the American Catholic, so closely linked in language and blood with his European brother, found, in the persecutions that raged in the West, objects naturally more calculated to enlist his sympathy than could be supposed to arise from the narrative of cruelties practised on the inhabitants of a country of which he seldom or never hears the name. But now their trials, their virtues, their heroic victories gained in the good fight, will, from their very similarity, win a more favorable hearing, especially as political events have forced them upon our acquaintance. These considerations have suggested the idea that a notice of a country, whose Christianity has, as far as we are able to judge, been blotted out in the blood of the last faithful, would be very acceptable to those of our western Christians, who are not so wrapped up in the pursuits of this world as to forget how much should be endured to win the next. The missionaries themselves, who labored with so persevering