p. 331The Toilers of the Pen

Leigh Hunt.

The most obstinate beliefs that men entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction—as it were, a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever.

Two armies of toilers stand before us,—mighty armies both of them,—the army of Men of Letters, and the vast hosts of Industry; the former aiming at exploring all the mysteries of knowledge, at enlightening the intelligence of men and swaying their souls; the latter, in manifold dependence of them, conquering the material world, forcing the earth and all its elements to yield up their treasures to industry, and thereby to minister to all the wants and pleasures of mankind.

We purpose to speak lovingly of these two hosts of toilers,—of men of letters in this chapter; of industry and labor in the next.

It is no exaggeration to say, that, under God, and directed aright by reason and conscience, Literature is the greatest force of the moral world,—it is not only the force which represents Mind in its conflict with rebellious Matter,—but that which enables knowledge to mold and control immortal mind itself.

Knowledge has been the mistress of the world from the beginning. Let us not be too proud of the superior enlightenment of our age. Were it ever to come into the mind of influential persons to create a Universal Exposition of the Ancient and Modern Literatures, together with the productions of high art collected from all ages and countries,—we should not be tempted to be so over-boastful as some of our writers would make us.

Are we, then, disposed to glorify the past at the expense of the present? No, assuredly. We only wish to profit by all the glories of the mighty past so as to make the present greater, more glorious still, more enlightened, more prosperous, peaceful, and heaven-like. The past, for the man who reflects, grasps the full reality of things, and expresses it to himself or others,—is the entire human family toiling through the uncounted ages to make this fair world of God’s more beautiful and blissful for us, their posterity.

A sweet modern singer¹1Adelaide Anne Procter. has painted this past as a dead king, who lies crowned, but cold, in his sepulcher, while the present, his daughter, reigns over us and claims our homage.

High Mission of Men of Letters

There, precisely, lies the difficulty, to make the present realize what the past had conceived of, and to leave no one of its glorious promises unfulfilled. The man who would do his whole duty to God and his own kind, by making the very best use he can of his gifts and his opportunities, does not stop to compare the merits of his own generation with those of the men who have gone before him. He looks up to the God who has placed him on the present point of space and time, and labors here and now with his whole heart to do all the good he can, and in the best way he can. This is what every conscientious man of letters will do.

For, writers who are worthy of their high calling know that they have a mission to fill; they feel the dignity of it. They honor the great minds in the past who have toiled to fulfill a similar duty in their own day. It is even remarkable that the writers who declaim continually against what they call “the worship of the dead past,” are, every one of them, mediocrities, whose works are foredoomed not to survive their authors. We doubt if there ever lived a man of genius who was not a most reverent worshiper of departed excellence, an ardent imitator of the deathless masterpieces bequeathed to us by the mighty dead.

Nay, they are not dead voices which speak to us in these same masterpieces of wisdom, eloquence, and poetry. They thrill every pulse of our living hearts, as they have thrilled those of a hundred generations before us. We believe in the divinity of genius. God endows a human spirit with a share of His own creative might; gives to the pen of the writer or the voice of the speaker somewhat of the power of the Almighty Word when it said, “Be light made! And light was made;” and “Let the earth bring forth!... And the earth brought forth.”

If the mighty host of the glorious toilers of the pen could only understand Who it is that sends them to cast over every region of earth the seeds of that Tree of Knowledge and Life,—TRUTH! If, going forth early to the divine work of this husbandry of souls, writers would lift their hearts to Him from whom alone all true inspiration descendeth, and then prepare their furrows beneath His eye, and cast in the immortal seed while calling upon His Name,—how rich and blessed would the harvest be! To such toilers, in every walk of the world of letters, we could lovingly say:

A Noble Literary Worker

Not without a purpose have we called up from the past the figure of this angelic woman, to utter words of cheer and exhortation that we all need,—we who labor obscurely, untiringly in the field of Truth. Her heroic example may well fire the hearts both of those who lead and of those who follow in the serried ranks of literary workers. No less a man than Charles Dickens has deemed it a privilege to sketch a life which, short as it was (she died in her thirty-ninth year), was wholly devoted to making her parents’ home delightful, and the homes of the poor bright and contented. Her beautiful poems seemed only the natural outpourings of a soul full of all the divinest harmonies of earth and heaven, and given forth while concealing her name from the public,—just as the sweetest strains of the nightingale are uttered within the darkest recesses of the grove.

“She was exceedingly humorous (Dickens tells us), and had a great delight in humor. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very ready at a sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected; as modestly silent about her productions, as she was generous with their pecuniary results. She was a friend who inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman, with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature. No claim can be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the conventional poetical qualities. She never by any means held the opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never recognized in her best friends her worst enemies; she never cultivated the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather have died without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I should have maundered about her, here, as “the Poet,” or “the Poetess.”...”

“Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favorite pursuits must be balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable in her endeavors to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her neighbor, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects. Now, it was the visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now, it was the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary teaching of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of those who had wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was the wider employment of her own sex in the general business of life; now, it was all these things at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathize and eager to relieve, she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution will commonly go down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest, yielded to the burden, and began to sink.”

“To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning that shone in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible, without changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the old way was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the restraint. And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and took to her bed.”

“All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay upon her bed through fifteen months. In all that time her old cheerfulness never quitted her. In all that time, not an impatient or querulous minute can be remembered.”

“At length, at midnight of the second of February, 1864, she turned down a leaf of a little book³3“The Imitation of Christ.” she was reading, and shut it up.”

“The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the stroke of one:”

“Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: ‘It has come at last!’ And with a bright and happy smile, looked upward and departed.”

“Well had she written:

We have given this long extract from the pen of one who liked not Catholics,—blinded as he was by the prejudices of early education and of the great English world around him,—because it is a heartfelt tribute to the worth of a Catholic lady, whose pure fame as a writer is but the least of her merits.

She had followed to the letter, from her earliest girlhood and her first contributions to literature, the lesson conveyed in her own poem, “Sowing and Reaping”:

No more pregnant lesson can be learned and practiced by every one of us, O dearest brothers of the pen!

And now what shall we say to each battalion in this vast array,—as you pass in review before our mind’s eye,—oh, you who ought to be the invincible army here below of Him who is called the Lord of Hosts, but who is the Eternal Truth, the Light Uncreated, “a God of all knowledge,”—Deus Scientiarum Dominus?

Theological Writers

At the head of the magnificent procession advance those who have devoted their lives to the study of their Divine Author Himself, and of the relations which bind Him to man and the universe,—and who consecrate their pens to setting forth and vindicating Truth in its fountain-head. Foremost among the resplendent throng is he, the great Prophet-Legislator, whose books head the divinest of all books,—the Bible. With his head encircled with the intolerable light which he drew from intimate converse with the Holy One of Israel, he passes before us, followed by Josue, Samuel, David, and the majestic figures of the Prophets. And then comes the vision of the Mount of Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias do homage to the Word Incarnate, and beneath are Peter and James and John,—the eye of faith grouping around the representatives of the Old and the New Testaments, the august succession of apostolic men, who have continued, age after age, to show forth to the nations Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Oh, what a glorious company of divine men extend their ranks from the illuminated summit of Thabor, along the pathway of humanity down to our own day! Paul and his great convert, the Areopagite, Justin-the-Martyr, Cyprian, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius and Chrysostom and Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, Gregory and Leo, Bernard and Innocent III., Anselm and Aquinas and Bonaventure, Suarez and Francis of Sales and Liguori! What names! And yet, as the ages go slowly by before us, how many others no less great in intellect and holy in life, stand forth grouped around these their illustrious contemporaries and coadjutors in the cause of sacred truth!

But from out the saintly ranks, as they pass, voices proceed full of eloquent teaching for the soldiers of Truth in our own time. Let us hearken to a few.

“The words of a priest are either true or sacrilegious: Verba sacerdotis aut vera, aut sacrilega.”⁵5Fulbert of Chartres.

Why is the Catholic priest detested? Why is he who announces truth deemed an enemy? It is—replies St. Augustine—that they love truth so well, that all who have another love wish that the object of that love should be truth; and, unwilling to be deceived, they are not willing to be convinced of their error; therefore they hate him by whom the falsehood of what they love is made manifest.⁶6“Confessions,” x. 23.

“But you, chosen generation, you weak things of the world who have forsaken all things that you might follow the Lord, go after Him, and confound the things which are mighty; go after Him, ye beautiful feet, and shine in the firmament, that the heavens may declare His glory.... Shine over all the earth, and let the day, lightened by the sun, utter unto day the word of wisdom; and let night, shining by the moon, utter unto night the word of knowledge.... Run ye to and fro everywhere, ye holy fires, ye beautiful fires; for ye are the light of the world; nor are ye put under a bushel. He to whom ye cleave is exalted, and hath exalted you. Run ye to and fro, and be known unto all nations!”⁷7Ibidem, xx. 25; translated by Dods.

How the Light and Fire from Above are Obtained

Would you learn the secret of this supernatural inspiration, the source of this all-consuming fire which burned within the Doctors of the Holy Church, and enabled them to illumine and inflame the world? Take from the hand of yonder figure⁸8Raderus, Bavaria Sancta, ii.,—quoted by Digby, “Compitum,” i., ch. x. who steps forth from the crowd, the tablet he offers you, and read:

Marianus, an Irish monk, who founded a monastery at Ratisbonne, described as surpassing most men in beauty of countenance and simplicity of manners, was so venerated in the school, that every one felt assured he was inspired in all his works by the Holy Ghost. “He was most remarkable for his diligence in writing on parchment, both for his own brethren and for others. Many large volumes were the fruit of his holy zeal and hope for an eternal recompense. Repeatedly with his own hand he wrote out the whole of the Bible, with its commentaries. He also wrote many little books and psalters and manuals for poor widows and poor clerks and scholars of the same city, for the remedy of his own soul; and these he gave them gratis.

“It is said that one night the guardian forgot to give him sufficient candles when he was writing some divine volume, and that he did not hesitate to continue writing without material light, the three fingers of his left hand, by divine mercy, appearing to serve him for lamps. The sacristan, when in bed, recollected his omission, and rose up to carry candles to his cell, when through the chinks of the door he beheld him writing with the aid of this celestial light. Aventinus styles him a poet and a theologian, second to none of his age.”

This anecdote comes to us from the mountains of Bavaria like the odor of violets culled along the head-waters of the Inn, the Isar, and the Lech long centuries ago, and serving to embalm a holy memory. One or two more fragrant flowerets from saintly hands, and we shall fix our attention on the next band in the procession.

Quid est victoria veritatis, nisi charitas? asks the same great son of Monica, as he disappears amid the starry multitude of his fellows. “For what do the soldiers of Truth do battle, if it be not to secure the triumph of Charity?” Hear you this, O brethren, who strive so heroically to make Truth victorious? And, you who are so anxious to heal the wounds of Christendom, to reunite all minds and hearts beneath the sway of the Great Mother, lay up these words in your memory, and with them treasure this saying of the latest and most loving soul among that shining galaxy of Doctors: “Truth that is not charitable, comes from a charity that is not veritable.”⁹9St. Francis of Sales: La vérité qui n’est pas charitable vient d’une charité qui n’est pas véritable.

And now comes Philosophy, the venerable parent of all true science.

We do not mean to separate true philosophy, from true science. The philosopher professes to explain all things by means of their deepest and most hidden causes. He, therefore, endeavors to push his analysis of the universe to its very center,—to pluck out the heart of Knowledge and lay its secrets bare to the eye of all. Three mighty mysteries invite his speculations,—God, man, and the material world. He would fain say on each of these all that can be said,—so that the veil should be lifted forever on the nature of the Infinite Godhead, on that of man, half-spiritual, half-animal as it is, and on that of matter in its intimate constitution, its forces, and its duration.

Thus Philosophy professes to expose to its pupils the constitutive principles or elements of all existing things, their relations toward each other, the laws which mind has to follow in acquiring this knowledge, and the tests by which it may discern certainty from uncertainty, truth from its counterfeit, error.

Before Christ the schools of Eastern Europe, of Africa, and Asia, sought, century after century, to disclose to the world the secret of the Divine Nature, its existence, and its attributes,—the nature, origin, and powers of the soul of man,—and the origin and destiny of the visible universe. They were earnest men, these seekers after the highest truth, and generation after generation of them applied themselves to their laborious quest with an ardor and a perseverance in keeping with their lofty purpose, and deserving of more satisfactory results. Like our Western miners,—they knew from the fragments of gold at the surface or those borne down from the uplands in the river courses,—that there was beneath them somewhere an exhaustless vein of the precious ore. And so, they sought, and explored, and tormented the surface of the earth on every side, by night as well as by day, band of resolute workers succeeding wearied band,—till they concluded that gold there was none.

Christian Philosophy, the Parent of True Science

We know how fragmentary were the truths discovered or held by these indefatigable investigators of old. At length Christianity arose, completing the divine knowledge contained in the books of Moses on the origin of the material universe, on man’s beginning and final destinies, and on that Eternal and Uncreated Being, the sole author of all created things.

The long-sought truth was thus disclosed in its deep native bed, and the lamp of Revelation shed a clear and steady light on the magnificent realities, so dimly perceived and obscurely spoken of by Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, and Brahmins.

In the light of the Christian Philosophy,—that is, of Reason guided and illumined by Faith,—man was told what satisfied his innate curiosity to know clearly whence he came and whither he tends, and who is the mighty First Cause of the existence of this vast universe.

Thereby was a firm basis given for all further investigation of nature and its Divine Author. To measure the immense progress made by philosophical truth since the dawn of Christianity, as compared with the most complete results reached in the pagan-world, one has only to compare Plato and Aristotle,—prodigies both of them,—with the majestic theological and philosophical edifices reared by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and by Francisco Suarez in the sixteenth.

The ripest scholar who cannot find on the lofty subjects most deserving of man’s study, knowledge enough to satisfy his understanding or to guide and help him surely toward still greater heights,—must have a mind ill-constituted or ill-disciplined. Even Leibnitz,—the greatest and most accomplished genius among Protestants,—declared at the end of his life, and after having devoted his great powers to the exhaustive study of the subject,—that he could not help considering the principles of the Mediæval Scholastics on matter, its forces, and forms, as the most satisfactory to his mind. And in our own day, scientists the most opposed not only to Catholic teaching, but even to the very existence of immaterial spirits in the universe, are forced to uphold, though in a different terminology, the once derided scholastic systems on matter and its properties.

We are in presence of these great geniuses of the Catholic, the Christian world,—men of angelic life, in whom was verified the saying of the Master: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” Men of the world immersed in the pleasures of sense, Christian men, even, who do not habituate themselves to self-denial, cannot know—though they may understand—how immensely abstinence from sensual gratification and purity of soul dispose the mind to see clearly and to see far into those luminous depths where Truth abides, and where the chaste eye of the soul is given to behold so much of the great Primal Cause and in Him, of the causal relation He holds to the entire world of mind and matter! Are we venturing too high above the common ken? Let us come back to earth, then.

Science should not play Phaeton

Only,—to writers on intellectual philosophy, almost as much as to scientists dealing with matter and its evolutions,—we would say one warning word. In metaphysical investigations, as in those of the geologist or biologist,—there are broad pathways along which all the great minds of the past have traveled, not blindly and without thoroughly exploring for themselves every stage of their progress, and accounting for all the phenomena observed at every step. There is a “common sense” which must guide the greatest genius as he advances in any field of observation or research, and which he cannot set aside without exposing himself to the risk of straying from the truth—the right direction,—and of leading others, who follow him, astray. Let us illustrate our meaning.

Philosophical Formulas, Snares for the Philosopher

We, Americans here in this New World, as Europeans in the most civilized lands of ancient Christendom,—have followed with mixed curiosity and amazement certain famous disquisitions about the origin in the mind and the real value in the world of experience of intuitive notions and primary principles of knowledge. Gioberti mixed up his metaphysics with his religion and his politics,—formulated his views in a few brief and pregnant apothegms, which, he said, contained as certainly the scientific equation of all philosophy, religion, and history,—as the algebraic formula S = gt² expresses the laws of velocity in falling bodies. His formulas, however, which were pressed for adoption upon American scholars as earnestly and persistently as if they defined unquestionable dogmas of philosophical faith, were either radically modified or altogether abandoned by the author himself in his last writing.¹⁰10See Mr. Botta’s analysis of Gioberti’s Philosophy in “Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy,” vol. ii. page 502.

Even so, the various hypotheses, which were adopted, at different successive epochs, to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies, were advocated as so many scientific truths by their authors, and successively modified or abandoned. At the present moment, science proposes, uses, adopts, or abandons many such hypotheses in stellar and physical astronomy,—showing by her cautious use of formulas and general conclusions, that in all fields of observation inductions must not be broader than the phenomena observed.

Would that our ideologists, our geologists and our evolutionists were equally cautious, reserved, and rational in the conclusions they draw from imperfectly observed phenomena, or in the hypotheses they press upon us as demonstrated certainties!

When a child follows a trusted guide away from the broad highway and the light of the sun to explore some marvelous underground cave, child though he be, his instinctive good sense warns him to go no farther, when he finds the air of the cave become unfit to breathe as they advance;—or when the lamp in the hand of his guide goes out,—both man and boy will deem it high time to retrace their steps back to God’s pure vital air and the light of day.

So it is with your theories, or your inductive systems; when you find that they lead you to results that are as dangerous to faith and morality as mephitic air is to the lungs,—then be sure you have gone too far in the wrong direction. Or when the lamp of reason and common sense refuses to shed further light on the darkness before you, go back to the broad sunlight of true science.

O most unwise Philosophy, O most unreasoning Science, why so impatient of that Revealed Truth which has been the sun of the civilized world for so many pregnant centuries, which has been the chaste light of the homes of our fathers, and warmed their hearts to deeds of divinest charity and heroic self-denial? And do you wish us to prefer the feeble, uncertain, short-lived glimmer of your two-penny candle to God’s unquenchable sun in the firmament?

Journalists

It is but truth to say that journalism is the mightiest force of the moral world,—always, of course, leaving out of comparison that Almighty Power, which allows human liberty and human intelligence free scope for their action, just as it allows the ocean currents to play within their deep and wide bed, and the winds to come and go in their courses, subject only to the Sovereign Will whose control all must obey.

We speak, in the first place, of secular journalism, compared with which, as a power, that of religious journalism is what the mass and influence of the least satellite of Saturn are to the mighty globe of the Sun.

Yes, secular journalism is the mightiest of moral forces outside of the incomparable power for good of the Church of the Living God. Compared with the attraction which she exercises, to her civilizing, sanctifying, and creative influence during her existence of more than eighteen centuries,—every moral force mentioned in the records of humanity appears trifling and short-lived.

The journalist by profession is, therefore, among the toilers of the pen, he who can do most good or most evil, according as he makes a right or a wrong use of his power and opportunities. And, assuredly, the profession is among the most laborious in the whole range of literature.

We would fain say a heartfelt word of appreciation and sympathy to those knights of the daily press, whose untiring devotion and unflagging industry are as little known to the public they serve as the results of their labor are applauded.

Need we mention the men who, single-handed, and obscure, have succeeded in founding some of our foremost daily newspapers? How many among these have been inspired by the example of Benjamin Franklin, editing, at the age of sixteen and while still an apprentice, “The New England Courant,” instead of his brother James, and founding in his own name and at his own risk the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” at the age of twenty-two! Assuredly, if it is honorable by life-long thrift, energy, honesty, and sagacity, to be able to amass a fortune counted by millions, and to establish a great commercial or industrial business that is the admiration of the whole civilized world,—it is no less so, nay, it is, in our judgment, much more so to create a great daily journal and to make it not only a pecuniary success, but a national institution, a mighty vehicle for the communication of true enlightenment.

It was deemed a gigantic and almost a visionary scheme to tunnel the Alps beneath Mount Cenis, and to attempt to open a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Suez, thus emptying the waters of the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, and opening a new, shorter, and safer highway to commerce between Europe and Farther Asia. Surely a great journal that serves as the daily vehicle of news and interchange of thought between widely separated divisions of the human family, is a something equally glorious to the man who conceived and achieved its establishment. An accident may block up to-morrow the tunnel between France and Italy, or the desert sands may render the great ship-canal unnavigable. But no earthquake, no power of wind or waves or moving sands, can mar a great and successful newspaper.

Its prosperity and ever-growing usefulness depend solely on the talent, the sagacity, the indomitable application of the little army of literary men who carry it on. And it is for the encouragement and direction of these that we are desirous of making a few timely remarks.

The Noble Aims and Uses of Journalism

We are perfectly aware that we cannot, in justice to our own definite purpose, here discuss the various classes of daily and periodical journalism. We are concerned solely with the great daily secular newspaper, which not only furnishes to its reader the most recent and trustworthy information on every possible topic of interest, but reviews all the important events in the world of politics, science, literature, art, and commerce.

The great daily newspaper, then, is in itself an abridged history of the world’s life for each day. The question, therefore, is for a true man having the control of this daily record of the world around him, whether he shall, like the conscientious painter, present to the public only such matters and aspects of real life as are calculated to instruct and to improve, or, like the worst school of Realists, depict indiscriminately the good and the evil, virtue and vice, heroism and depravity, the most ennobling deeds and recitals, or the most loathsome and defiling scenes from human nature fallen and hideous in its moral ugliness.

We suppose the ideal journalist whom we have now here before us, to have been blessed with a mother as careful of his purity of soul, while yet under her care, as of her own hopes of eternal salvation,—as watchful to keep away from the eyes and ears of her boys and girls every book, publication, picture, sight, or conversation, that could make their unsullied minds suspect the existence of moral evil,—as she would have been watchful to keep the deadliest poison from their food, or fire and flame from the white curtains of the crib or the bed in which her darlings reposed. What journalist, what noble-souled man could wish his mother to have been other than this in her loving and jealous care of his childhood and boyhood’s innocence?

We suppose, further, that this boy, so tenderly cared for, and become, perhaps, a journalist and a true man through this very nurture, has now a wife and children infinitely dear to him. He has chosen his wife because he thought he had discovered in her the living image of his mother,—who, in her turn, would be sure to do for his children what had been done for himself,—keep their souls and their lives from the thought or the approach of evil as long as they remained in her Home-Paradise.

Have you not still, after so many years of married life, so tender, so jealous a care of your wife’s innocence and of her absolute ignorance of the evil world you know of,—that nothing could induce you to break in upon her happy dream of ignorance, or to lift the veil that covers from her pure eyes the dark depths of that same outside world with their hideous forms of sin and shame? Is it not one of the deepest joys of your life to keep ever before the minds of your children that other serene, lightsome, angelic world, which is only a distant vision, beheld through the mists of sense, of that world of purity, peace, imperishable beauty, and glory unfading that we were all created for? Have you never told your own heart, or told wife and children, during your brief intervals of heart-rest at home,—that the unseen world is the only real world,—the world of unchangeable and eternal realities?

What your Wife and Children should not read

And now take up one of the great daily journals in a vast metropolis either of the Western or the Eastern hemisphere. Here is one before us,—let us look at it calmly, being both men who have had a most varied experience of human vicissitudes. Well, here, in one sheet of this morning paper, thrown into our homes before the breakfast hour, is an entire page,—containing in print matter sufficient for one hundred pages of this book,—filled, two-thirds of it, with details of the most revolting immorality, and the remainder pertaining to the drama and the stage, reciting what is scarcely, if at all, less objectionable to the pure-minded.

Would you read to your wife, at table and during the meal on which you both with your children invoked the blessing of the Most Holy God,—this dreadful tale of wife-murder and suicide committed in presence of the three hapless children of such parents, and committed through jealousy? And would you allow your innocents to hear the shocking details of the immorality with which the murderer had accused his victim, and with which she in her turn had taunted the fiend she called husband? Would you, after exhausting this dreadful tale, continue to depict murder after murder, one more odious crime succeeding another, till the very atmosphere of your breakfast-room seemed tainted with the odor of the charnel-house or the Pit, and the very bread and tea on your table seemed to savor of human blood?

You may belong to the Realistic School in art,—but such realities, you must confess, are not such as you would willingly submit to the eye of mother or sister, of wife or children;—nay, you would blush to read them to your father, your brother, or your friend.

What your Wife and Children should never see

But from this perversion of one of the most sacred offices of journalism,—turn we to the remainder of the page before us. Its matter relates to an art, scarcely less noble,—if faithful to its original destination,—than that of the journalist. See how the reviews and notices here presented of the drama and the stage, are as unfit for the eye of your wife and your daughter, as were the dark deeds of the murderer, the suicide, the highwayman, the forger, or the absconding cashier.

The dramatic art like that of the journalist aims, in its sole legitimate and praiseworthy sphere, to make men good, and to make the good better by setting forth ennobling examples and heroic deeds, by inspiring respect for religion and virtue, much more than by creating a hatred and horror of vice.

Here is a theatrical manager whose only care is to fill his house daily, and who cares nothing about the means of attraction, provided the public are enticed to fill his seats and his boxes from floor to ceiling. He finds that the latest productions of the French dramatists have for the sensualist, the pleasure-seeker, the man whose mind is skeptical and whose heart is loveless,—for the woman who is without conscience, principle, or virtue, the same flavor that highly-spiced meats have for the depraved palate;—and so, they get some venal pen,—a pen that would write for Beelzebub, if Beelzebub paid for it in gold or in honest “greenbacks,” and this pen does the devil’s work of transforming a bad French play into a worse English one. Hence your “New Magdalen’s” et toute cette inondation de fange d’outre-mer!

We must not, however, be too hard on the French. Low as French dramatic art is fallen, Satanic as its ideal seems so often to be,—there is still art in the conception and treatment of each unworthy subject, and very often exquisite art in the diction. And, besides, the French drama may be a truthful picture of French society,—though not, assuredly, of that noble French society we have known, loved, and admired; and, most assuredly, is French drama no real picture at all of any one class or phase of American or English society.

But here,—among criticisms of other dramatic patchwork,—is the elaborate review of a society-play modeled on the objectionable French pattern, which is condemned by good critics as irredeemably bad,—not pretending to any high moral purpose, but pandering to the lowest appetites of the most abandoned sight-seers, and, confessedly, without the slightest claim to artistic merit or literary excellence in plot, execution, or style,—its only charm in this respect being the incessant play of double meaning,—tickling the prurient fancy, as continual bubbles of mephitic gas from a stagnant pool offend the sense of the passers-by.

And yet this production, so devoid of every one of the qualities of true art, so contrary to all the ideals of art that is purifying and elevating,—is praised by the journalist before us and his critic, and thus recommended as a legitimate amusement to the pure-minded wives and innocent daughters of our American homes!

Which of these departures from the duty and office of the true journalist, deserves the severest animadversion,—the revealing to the mind of the sinless, unsuspecting young reader of all these horrible mysteries of crime? or the inviting (by implication) the mothers and children of our hitherto simple and pure American homes, to admire on the stage men and women belonging to the demi-monde, or to a world and a society which are not the abode of truth, purity, domestic virtue, or public worth?

Treat Religion most Reverently

Then, take the matter of Religion, so dear to all American homes, in spite of their deep differences of belief, and of the entire freedom guaranteed by law and granted by the temper of our people on religious questions. Where a secular journal speaks of such matters, one expects that it shall be done calmly and respectfully, without entering into the merits of doctrines, or pronouncing judicially on points which cannot be fully known to the writer.

It is bad policy as well as bad taste to sadden or irritate thousands upon thousands of homes, where time-honored doctrines are still held dearer than life, and where venerable religious authorities, held up by the journalist to ridicule or contempt or hatred, are still regarded with deep and conscientious reverence. It cannot be well, under plea of liberality, or freedom of opinion and judgment, to wound daily millions of your fellow-citizens in their most tender part, because the wrong done thereby to one great religious body may make your paper more acceptable to all the hostile denominations.

There is a loftier principle involved here than your pretended freedom of thought and judgment, albeit no one asks you to communicate to the world in oracular form the opinions you have formed and the judgments you have arrived at; you are perfectly free to form and entertain them, but it were wise not to be so free in giving them publicity. This sacred principle is,—not to make Religion less holy, less worshipful, less dear to your own children by placing prominently before them the dissensions that reign between churches or between the members of the same church, the failings and faults of this prominent minister of a certain church to-day, and to-morrow, as an offset, the weaknesses and guilt of ministers of a rival creed. Thereby you impress the minds of the young with the conviction that there is “no balm in Gilead,” no virtue in Religion itself to make men good and keep them good,—and so, Religion is brought into contempt. For, it is the logic of human nature to identify the minister with the creed that he expounds, and to extend to the altars at which he sacrifices the odium begotten by his own unworthiness. It is an injustice, moreover, to the majority of edifying, self-sacrificing, exemplary men who belong to the sacred ministry to cast on their unstained robes the deep soil that has fallen on the vestments of the few.

Hide your Criminals: Deify your Heroes

For the one unfortunate whose sad death and downward career you chronicled yesterday and held up as a warning,—not to his brethren, who do not need it,—but to your own children and to the entire reading public, who are disedified by it,—you might point to-day to those devoted bands of priests who replace each other near the plague-stricken citizens of New Orleans, Vicksburg, Memphis, and Grenada,—brother taking the place of dead brother in the foremost post of danger and duty. Were our own city—which God forbid—to be visited to-morrow by the dread southern scourge, you who have penned these offensive, injurious, and unjust articles, would be the first to laud to the skies the courage and heroism of the ministers of Religion in the hour of man’s sorest need. Were the Angel of Death to knock suddenly at your own door, whose hand would you grasp more lovingly and gratefully, as you felt life and this fair earth withdrawn suddenly from you, and stood on the brink of the dark abyss of eternity? Whose voice would be most welcome to your ear? or wake more surely in your soul the pulses of immortal hope in the God of your childhood?

No! You should never tolerate that any one of those who cooperate with you in your mighty labors, should directly or indirectly throw suspicion or disrespect on what is and must ever be the dearest treasure of our hearts and homes,—the Religion of our Fathers.

This may suffice. There are so many rich and vast fields of knowledge and varied interest open to journalism, such deep mines of useful and delightful information that remain to be discovered or thoroughly explored, and from which you can daily draw an exhaustless supply for your readers! To the generous enterprise of our great journals, to their splendid achievements in more than one department of science and literature, we are proud and happy to bear our humble tribute of praise and gratitude. It is marvelous to see what a feat is accomplished by the journalist in every one of his issues,—and what a boundless store of information is placed at the disposal of every reader for the merest trifle! Are we insensible to the prodigious amount of labor that the collecting of such a store required? No, indeed. Nor do we belong in mind or heart to any other world than the beautiful world which is our own, or repine for past ages because the present contains ills that we deplore. We are of our age and country. We would fain make the country the most glorious that ever the sun shone upon, and the age the most fruitful in Godlike deeds and heroic manhood.

To this result the true journalist can contribute immensely;—and, in all that we have presumed to suggest here, we have been only endeavoring to assist him to be true to his mission and his conscience.

The Religious Journalist

We would speak of the Catholic journalist with the respect, the admiration, the deep and grateful affection due to him for the life-long services done to ourselves, due still more for the priceless benefits conferred on the community at large.

Few seem to suspect how delicate, how difficult, how painful, and how ill-requited are the functions of the Catholic journalist. Fewer still, perhaps, know how much of varied learning, of abnegation, of deep humiliation, not unfrequently, and of heroic perseverance is displayed in the lowly editorial rooms of so many Catholic weeklies that we could name. There are men, whom we know and love well, who show in the disinterestedness, the single-mindedness, the absorbing devotion to their ungrateful task very much of if not all the devotion to supernatural duty shown by the lonely missionary of some obscure Rocky Mountain tribe of Indians, or by the Jesuit among the perennial plagues of French Guiana.

They do not desire or need our praise; but it is for us an imperative need and duty to send this heart-cry of ours to these noble and heroic toilers in their chosen post of labor. Are there not among them so many who have, at the sacrifice of all earthly wealth and honor, at the cost as well of health and all comfort or consolation,—toiled on uncheered, unappreciated, unrewarded by gratitude or emolument,—year after year for almost a lifetime, and who, looking back through the dismal prospect of these long years, can say, “We have labored all the night and have taken nothing”? And yet, looking up to the Master for whom they work and in Whom alone they trust, they are ready to begin again every week, every day, repeating cheerfully to Him and to their own brave heart: “But at Thy word I will let down the net.”¹³13St. Luke, v. 5.

Such men can appreciate, and more than appreciate, the lofty sentiment conveyed in the following lines of the blind poet:

But we must hasten by our own united efforts the coming of God’s good time,—of a day when religious journalism shall no longer be condemned to thrive or pine away in obscure corners, like certain illicit or unavowable trades, or to be thrust far away from the sunlight into some darksome angle of the conservatory, or neglected nook of the garden, like some plant of ill name or some flowering shrub of unpleasant odor, little beauty, and very questionable utility.

There are rumors of a convention of Catholic journalists. We hope that the rumor may be true, and pray that the proposed convention be held before the autumn of 1878 pass into winter. Nor should the promoters of this project be in the least concerned at the unkind or unjust things said of them by a small portion of the religious press, or by the illiberal innuendoes and silly sneers of a few secular journals. There are so many precious advantages to be derived from a cordial union among Catholic journalists, and by a steady cooperation toward the same grand purposes, that hasty blame from friends, or undeserved imputations from outsiders may be passed by without a word or thought, seeing how much is to be gained by coming to a definite understanding on the work to be done by our press and on the means to secure its being well and thoroughly done.

Union for Domestic Progress, not for Aggression

The Catholic Congresses held in Europe have been of immense benefit to journalism,—not only by their bringing about perfect unity of views and unanimity of action, but by elevating journalists in their own estimation, by bringing together accomplished and distinguished men enlisted in the same cause, by enabling them to count their numbers and estimate their own power, by determining the centers where Catholic journalism needs to be supported, and by giving such support liberally.... We have here no political parties to favor or to oppose; we have no crusade to make either against the secular press or against other religious denominations. We have enough to do to second by every means of publicity, by the united labors of our best literary talent, the efforts of the Hierarchy and clergy to make truth shine forth in its own native splendor, to bring truth in action,—the lives of the great and the good in every past age,—home to every family and individual in the land. We shall have glorious labor enough to do to make the House of our Great Mother known to those of the household itself in all its length and breadth and height, inside and outside, with its untold and incomparable wealth of holiness, of beauty, of loveliness. The Catholic journalist will ever find enough to do in helping to make the children of the faith worthy in every way of their birthright of grace and greatness, without exciting the groundless alarms or provoking the hostility of any portion of the press or the public.

To the noble men who fulfill this blessed mission of expounding and spreading the truth, we have only one more word to say: Let them, in all circumstances and under the most trying provocation, observe the rule of charity and moderation recommended, almost with his dying breath, by Pius IX. Therein they will also be carrying out the beautiful sentiment quoted above from St. Francis of Sales, whom the same ever dear and venerated pontiff gave to journalists as their special patron. It is well for all of us to learn and to ponder how