Lives could say of "recorded actions of saints," that some of them "are worthy neither of admiration nor imitation, and had far better be confined to respectful oblivion." It is also a consoling proof of the growth of that purer and higher sentiment which Father Faber did so much to foster, that this objector ultimately retracted his protest, and deplored, with generous compunction, what he called "the unhappy state of feeling" which had led him to utter words by which he had "deeply offended Almighty God." The whole outcry which rose at this time against the series in question, and the repugnance manifested towards "Italian compositions" and "foreign devotions," seemed to imply a latent suspicion that as the English occupy a particular place in the scheme of redemption, they are bound to have a religion of their own. Catholic instincts triumphed, as might have been anticipated, over insular prejudice and presumption. The whole story is so well told by an American writer, that we gladly relate it in his words. They will serve to show, once more, that none have adopted more cordially Father Faber's principles, nor more zealously defend his name, than our American brethren :

But

It was not only from Protestants that Father Faber had to suffer annoyance; his worst troubles came from those of his own faith. About the time of his ordination he had made arrangements for the publication of a series of lives of the saints, translated from the Italian and other foreign languages, and afterwards so widely known as the Oratorian Lives. . . . The series began with a "Life of S. Philip Neri." It reached a large sale; but so little familiar were English readers with the supernatural manifestations which abound in biographies of the chosen servants of God, that exception was taken to the work in various quarters, and when the "Life of S. Rose of Lima" appeared, the opposition became extremely violent. It was objected that the lives of foreign saints, however edifying in their respective countries, were unsuited to England and unfit for Protestant eyes. Under the advice of Dr. Newman, who nevertheless approved the work very cordially, the series was finally suspended. But then a reaction set in; it was discovered how much practical good the publications had done; some of those who had criticised them most severely retracted and apologised; and the translations were resumed under the auspices of the Oratorians.†

How many souls have been initiated by the study of these lives into the science of the saints, how many will hereafter derive true wisdom from them, no man can tell; but whether the fruit of this wide-spreading tree be more or less abundant, the hand which planted it was Father Faber's, and the praise is also his. transient opposition to this particular work is compensated by the final result to which it conduced.

*Life of Father Faber, p. 355.

The Catholic World, p. 156, November 1869.

The

If we pass now from the consideration of particular works, of which Father Faber was either the sole author or the active originator, and of which we can estimate approximately the probable effect in the Church, to the wider subject of his general influence on the thoughts and habits of English Catholics, and especially on the tone of their theology, we can only express personal opinions, liable to correction, and of which we accept the entire responsibility. It should be observed, however, before we enter upon this subject, that the general influence of which we are about to speak cannot justly be limited to English and American Catholics, though Father Faber's writings were primarily addressed to those who spoke the language in which they were written. Of those writings, most of them contained in volumes of considerable dimensions and cost, more than one hundred thousand copies have already been sold in England and America. But their sale in other countries, where many of them have been eagerly translated, is too remarkable a fact, especially on account of the unusual proportions which that sale has attained, not to deserve special notice. In France, where the native theological and devotional literature is so rich and abundant that they might well scem able to dispense with foreign contributions, the sale of the translated works of Father Faber, including those circulated in Belgium, but not the six thousand copies published in Flemish, has reached the prodigious total of eighty-three thousand and five hundred copies. Even Bossuet might have been content with a success so astonishing. Germany has taken for her share fifty-two thousand two hundred and fifty copies of the same works. Ten thousand have been sold in Italy and Spain; while in Russia, not including Catholic Poland, we learn with surprise that the circulation has reached forty-four thousand. Up to this time, therefore, the total number of copies of Father Faber's works actually sold exceeds three hundred thousand, and the sale continues daily.

But this purely arithmetical statement, though it substantiates a fact which twenty years ago would have seemed to English Catholics beyond the range of the probable, and even of the possible, can only be duly appreciated by considering, on the one hand, all that it includes or implies; and on the other, certain phenomena which exist side by side, and, as we confidently believe, in most intimate connection with it. It is to these that we now wish to call attention.

We have said, in the beginning of this article, that our own generation inherited from an earlier one evils which demanded instant remedy. Cardinal Wiseman and Father Faber were deeply conscious of this fact. The biographer of the latter, though constrained to speak with extreme reserve, shows clearly what was his real position towards the English Catholic body. He was not

'A

a spokesman for English Catholics," he truly observes. spokesman is one who expresses the sentiments of a large body, being deputed to do so because he understands and agrees with their opinions. Such a position Father Faber never occupied he was a leader, not a spokesman; the mission he accomplished was to educate, not to represent, the Catholics of England."* And Father Faber, as his whole life proved, knew his mission, or he would never have accomplished it so effectually. "When he entered the Church," continues his biographer, some of whose words we print in italics, "his first care was to put himself in harmony with her spirit, not as he found it in a country where the remembrance of recent persecution, and of the necessity of concealment, still hampered the freedom of its operation; but as it flourishes in lands where all traditions are its own. Especially did he endeavour to study it at its fountain-head in the city of Rome, under the shadow of S. Peter's chair. Fully recognizing the claims of his own country to his labours, he made it his business to introduce into it in every possible way the devotions and practices which are consecrated by the usage of Rome."

It was impossible to express more clearly in a few words what it was Father Faber's aim to do, and next we are told how he did it. "Himself considerably in advance of his fellow-countrymen in this particular, he translated and printed the various expressions of foreign Catholic devotion, teaching and persuading all who came under his influence, first to adopt, and then to disseminate them." In one of his sermons, quoted by his biographer, he said :—“ Truth is not ours to bate and pare down; truth is God's. . . . . Beware of trying to throw aside or to pare down what seems most faithful and warm in the devotions of foreign lands; do not tell that cruel falsehood, do not tell it to those whom you love, and are longing and yearning to have within the Church, do not tell them that the faith is other here than what it is elsewhere; do not throw aside devotion and sweetness, and worship and affection, as though they were not fit for us, as though God's Church were not one; for this is nothing less in reality than to deny the unity of God's Church." We will take the liberty of adding, that if Protestants sometimes affect to be scandalized by the tone of foreign devotions, they are in truth much more scandalized, and with better reason, by the meanness and inconsistency of those Catholics who hope to prove their superior intelligence by insinuating disapproval of them.

But Father Faber did not limit himself to personal action, whether by writing or exhortation. "A new impulse was given to Catholic devotion by the hymns and popular services of the London Oratory, the one directed and the other written by Father

Faber. Here the prayers and aspirations of the Saints are brought into familiar use, to form the basis of the spiritual life of many pious souls. The plain, unadorned style wherein S. Philip directs his children to set forth the mysteries of the Faith serves the same end. Another most powerful instrument is the Confraternity_of the Precious Blood, now so well known in this country."* By these and other means, upon which we need not dwell, Father Faber "accomplished his mission," described by Cardinal Wiseman as that of "promoting and extending in the Church the spirit of holiness and of true piety." In the letter which the Cardinal addressed to him just before his death, we find this emphatic recognition of the work which he had been privileged to do. "Your exertions have been eminently blest, not only in England, but in every country, as the Holy Father himself declared to me.. . . I will not dwell on the great work which you have founded, and which will remain, not long, but for ever, to perpetuate the good you have done while living. It is not the mere edifice, however great, of the Oratory, which will do this, but the spirit of S. Philip which you have brought into London, and which will ever continue alive and active in his children."+

It may seem superfluous to add anything to the words just quoted, yet we desire to show, by a final quotation, that the peculiar mission of Father Faber is comprehended in exactly the same sense by the Catholics of the United States as by the highest ecclesiastical authority in England. Bishop Wiseman," observes the writer in the Catholic World, "was a warm supporter of the Oratorians, but many of the secular clergy looked upon them with suspicion, and complained that their peculiar services, with new prayers, hymns in the vernacular, and a new style of preaching, were Methodistical, and ought to be suppressed. Experience, however, in time showed the doubters their mistake, and the diocesan clergy became not only friends but imitators of the Oratorians."

We cannot presume to say how far our clergy would accept this American account as accurate, a point on which they alone are entitled to speak; but we may perhaps assume their general acquiescence, since it is certain that the "services" at the Oratory have long ceased to be "peculiar," and that there is now no longer a Catholic church in England on whose doors it would be possible to write no popery" with any approach to descriptive propriety. The old state of things, against which the four solemn resolutions of Cardinal Wiseman, and the life-long toils of Father Faber, have proved to be so fruitful a protest, has passed away, never to return. Italian devotions shock nobody now, for we meet them everywhere. Even images of our Lady and S. Joseph, once almost unknown

* Life, p. 472.

↑ Ibid., p. 509.

Ibid., p. 157.

amongst us, are now carried in solemn procession, with the hearty approval of devout congregations. Communions are everywhere more frequent, devotion to the Church and to her apostolic chief more ardent and tender, indifference to the world and its judgments more thorough and universal. We are all Roman now, in England, America, and everywhere else, with exceptions so few and of so little account, that murmurs against what is called Ultramontane doctrine now only excite compassion, and awake no echo. Gallicanism is as dead as Jansenism, and only a feeble and disconsolate group, who appear to be themselves in the last stage of exhaustion, follow the defunct twins to their grave. Everywhere the auspicious revival, of which Cardinal Wiseman and Father Faber were the principal agents, is complete. It has been a revival both of true doctrine and true holiness. And it is much to be noted that this revival has been accompanied, as if to attest whose work it was, by a stream of conversions so unprecedented in their number and character, that it is impossible not to regard them as one of its natural results. Fifty years ago conversions were not, indeed, wholly unknown, for there was never a time, however dark, in which predestined souls were not "added daily to the Church,"* but in England they were hardly more frequent than eclipses of the moon, and excited almost as much observation. Now the only question is, how long the classes who have become impregnated with Catholic doctrine will resist the call to enter the Church which a special grace is addressing to them, and which so many have already obeyed. In the single year 1868, and in three only of the London churches, two thousand Protestants, belonging for the most part to the ranks of the educated, abjured their errors, and made profession of the Catholic faith. And even this evidence of the mighty change which a few years have wrought in a nation once wholly abandoned to religious error, is not the most impressive, nor perhaps, except to the converts themselves, the most consoling. The Archbishop of Westminster remarked recently, in a sermon preached at the Church of Notre Dame de France, that devotion to the Immaculate Queen of Heaven and fertility in apostolic missions to the heathen always go together, and have long been the special glory of the French Church. And already, in our own land, increased confidence in the same Virgin Mother and S. Joseph, and a more universal recourse to their protection, due in so large a measure to Father Faber's teaching, have produced a similar overflow of spiritual life. They are, we feel assured, the secret springs of that new enterprise, the Foreign Missionary College of S. Joseph's, Mill Hill, of which the perpetuity is now guaranteed, though it

*Acts ii. 47.