ings; they also learn whether their past acts have been in harmony with the wishes of the pontiff. Scattered in almost every country of the world, the bishops are like military leaders who, having acted as their judgment prompted them, await an expression of opinion from their chief. The Encyclicals are that expression of opinion, and they are of the greatest value as evidences of the Church's views. They record definitively the present state of doctrine, and sophistry cannot alter the assertions they contain. Biblical texts may be variously interpreted, and the utterances of ecclesiastics may be, and often are questioned, but when the Pope has spoken all discussion ends.

As models of felicitous style, of smoothness and serenity of diction, the Encyclicals are beyond criticism. They are composed like the choicest mosaics, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence: first, as is well known, in Italian, from notes made by the Pope in his daily readings and musings, and then in Latin, the language of all others most apt for the majestic dignity of phraseology which is one of the traditions of the Vatican. The text itself is the work of the cardinal secretaries rather than of the pontiff, but the import and general style are his exclusively, and many beauties of expression are traceable to the delicate refinement of his taste. The final revision, also, is made by him, but, with the prudence which characterizes the methods of the Church, the imprimatur is given only after every shade of meaning has been duly considered; and not always even then, until in the Pope's opinion the fitting time has come.

The Pope's Latinity has been termed "natural" by his admirers; and without endeavoring to discuss whether a truly natural style is attainable in a dead language, there is no doubt that we have from his pen some very graceful lines, of which the following faithful expression of his feelings is a good example :

"Justiciam colui: certamina longa labores

Ludibria, insidias, aspera quæque tuli At fidei vindex non flectar: pro grege Christi Dulce pati, ipsoque in carcere dulce mori." The style of the Encyclicals (and I assume that they represent the style of the pontiff) has been compared to that of Cicero and Tacitus, but they possess a special style, half ecclesiastical, half classical, which at one moment recalls the manner of St. Augustine, and at another the concentrated periods of the introductions of Sallust or the reasonings of Seneca. Sometimes the language is but that of an ordinary sermon which points out evils, and indicates the invariable panacea for them, while it often rises to considerable heights of calm sublimity. It is needless to say, however, that in compositions which are chiefly admonitory, and in which precision is the most essential quality, there is not a very great scope for literary display. The sentences, as a rule, are long and charged with words of meaning, but they flow harmoniously, and it is clear that no pains have been spared to avoid the slightest angularity or ambiguity. The ecclesiastical Latinity of the present day, indeed, has claims to rivalry with the most elaborate compositions of the pagan masters who wrote two thousand years ago. Occasionally a confliction of antiquity and modernness is to be noticed in the Latin text, which no doubt is unavoidable when it is necessary to clothe modern ideas in the idiom of a former civilization.

The predilection of Leo XIII. for generalization was shown when he was Bishop of Perugia, and only a possible candidate for the chair of St. Peter. It was then that he made his early efforts to reconcile faith with the conditions of the times, and the origin of the dominant thoughts of the Encyclicals may easily be traced to his episcopal sermons. "Is it true," he inquired on one occasion, "that civilization cannot bear its fruits in a society which lives by the spirit of

Jesus Christ, and in which the Catholic Church speaks in the tone of a mother and a mistress?"

"Religion is sorely attacked," he said to a French Catholic writer whom he received a short time after his election; "it must be defended. Upon that everything depends. Society is to be saved by defending the principles of religion." The germ of the idea which subsequently inspired the famous Encyclical on the labor question is to be found in one of his discourses while still Bishop of Perugia, in which he argued that manual labor, which had been despised throughout antiquity, and disdained by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Terence, had always been befriended by the Church. The Church had always been the solace and the helper of the workingman. "Go to the people," he said, on a later occasion, to a bishop; and thus he has been called the workman's Pope and the great peacemaker.

A spirit of continuity is observable in all his words and acts before and after his assumption of the supreme dignity, but the ineffableness of papal honors seems to have had its effect upon his character, and to have caused the language of Leo XIII. to be still more moderate than that of Monsignore Pecci. Compared with his predecessor, the confirmator of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and promulgator of the dogma of Infallibility, Leo XIII. is a less doctrinal Pope. He has doubtless thought that Pius IX. did enough for the things of doctrine, and that the last Ecumenical Council completed the links in the chain of Catholicity. It does not seem, indeed, if we consider the mass of tenets which the Church has evolved, that future popes are likely to originate more, although in matters of faith there are few limits to inspiration or improvisation, and one of the leading characteristics of the Church has always been a gradual evolution from the teachings of the Founder of Christianity. But the

Encyclicals must be passed in review, if it is desired to form a judgment as to their bearing on the questions which most affect society in general.

a method

The first Encyclical was published two months after the Conclave had chosen its author for the pontificate (in the spring of 1878). Its title was Inscrutabili Dei, in accordance with the ancient custom which, I need hardly say, prescribes that these compositions shall be named after their initial word or words, which usually causes an eloquent commencement to be selected. In this inaugural epistle for these letters are in reality epistles after the manner of the early apostles it is evident that the mind of the Pope is troubled by the moral disintegration of the times, the falling away from faith, the callousness of some and the hostility of others, the loss of authority over the conduct of society, and the decrease of spiritual utility. He is overwhelmed with the ills of the human race, and the spectacle which meets his eyes on all sides is a subversion of truth, defiance of the laws, suicides, an insatiable desire for earthly things, and a forgetfulness of spiritual ones. He is convinced that these evils proceed from the growing disregard for the authority of the Church, of which the enemies of order take advantage. Hence the laws which shake the constitution of the Church in the majority of countries; it is thus that the episcopal authority is set at naught, that the religious orders have been dispersed, and that the temporal command is lost. If a man of sound mind, he says (and in several passages true health of intellect is exclusively associated with belief), compare the age in which we live with that in which the Church was respected as a mother by peoples, he must see that it is hurrying to its destruction.

The tone of this first Encyclical is regretful, and the same tone will be found to pervade almost the whole series. We no longer find the authoritative language

of Pius IX., who defied the liberal aspirations of Europe by an increase of dogma, but a sorrowful acknowledgment of the magnitude of the evil which confronts the Church. This strain prevails throughout, society is menaced, and society is menaced, and the Church alone can save it from ruin. The whole aim of the pontiff is to reconcile the one with the other.

At the end of 1878, the spread of socialistic doctrines, the increasing number and importance of socialistic publications, called forth the Encyclical Quod Apostolici, which is a condemnation of that lethifera pestis known, it says, under the barbarous names of Socialism, Communism, and Nihilism. It is stigmatized as a new impiety, unknown even to pagan peoples; for would not its advocates banish religion from its place in schools, and admit unbounded license in every institution? Socialism, with which unbelief is somewhat too liberally con founded in this Encyclical, is, in its political and ethical aspect, one of the most formidable of dissolvents the Church has ever met with, and therefore stress is laid upon the Church's efficacy to combat the hateful doctrines. To the argument of the division of property, which is perhaps more seriously considered than it deserves to be, the Encyclical opposes the natural necessity of inequality among men, and of an unequal division of their property, which is as natural a law as that by which the forces of the mind and body are unequally distributed. The Church does not neglect the poor, we are informed; but we know, unfortunately, that the method of alleviation it adopts is beginning to belong to another age, and that those who were once humble are so no longer.

In the bull Æterni Patris (1879) the theological attainments of the pontiff are displayed. We are told at its commencement that a fruitful cause of the evil of the times is a misconception of

166 Neque spernenda nec posthabita sunt naturalia adjumenta quæ divinæ sapientiæ be

divine and human things and of philosophic systems. From this departure we are prepared for one of those perilous arguments in favor of a reconciliation of doctrine with human reason which have always fascinated Christian thinkers, and we are told that human philosophy is beneficial when rightly used, and is by no means to be despised.1 From the time of the early Fathers the Church has claimed a right to select from pagan writers those processes of reasoning which do not come in conflict with Christian doctrine, but which, on the contrary, are capable of being brought into harmony with it. This, of course, is the principle of adaptation which has been made use of by the Church in its terminology, its language, and, to a certain extent, in its architecture. It is greatly to the praise of philosophy, says the Encyclical, that it is a protection to faith and a firm stronghold of religion. The early Fathers who examined the books of ancient philosophy accepted those which were in harmony with Christian feeling, rejecting or amending the remainder; and we are reminded of the various apologists who have carried on the succession from the celebrated academies of the Greeks, until the "Angelic Doctor" of the Middle Ages - Thomas Aquinas — is reached. It is to praise his system of philosophy, necessarily Christocentric, and to advocate its general adoption, that the Æterni Patris is composed. Its object is to restore the scholastic discipline which endeavored to place under theological subjection all human thought, which was the last great effort in the true life of faith, the strangest waste of intellect perhaps ever witnessed, and which, with vexatious sophistry, endeavored to prove the doctrines of the Christian faith; accepting revelation as the source of truth, and 'chaining reason in the bonds of Plato and Aristotle subject to the mysneficio, fortiter suaviterque omnia disponentis, hominum generi suppetunt."

Pursuing his theme of social amelioration, the pontiff issued, in 1880, the bull entitled Arcanum Divinæ Sapientiæ, which contains an historical account of the marriage rite from the constitution of society to the present day, and a condemnation of divorce. He judges the marriage system of the Jews and pagan peoples from the standpoint of Western Christianity; observing that the mar riage sacrament was established at Cana, and that the Church, having the true welfare of society at heart, has always maintained the indissolubility of the marriage tie, even when besought by kings and emperors to break it. The beauty of the state of matrimony and the position of woman in a monogamous society are shown with a profusion of argument, until the real purport of the Encyclical becomes evident, a condemnation of the divorce laws which so many European states have admitted into their code, in obedience to the doctrines of the "naturalists," says the Encyclical, but rather in deference to the consensus of public opinion, against which ecclesiastical restraint is powerless. There are many passages of great elevation and beauty in this homily, such as

1 "Etenim Episcopi, Academiæ, doctores decuriales Lyceorum atque ex omni terrarum regione cultores artium optimarum se Nobis dicto audientes et esse et futuros una pene voce et consentientibus animis testati sunt: imo velle se in tradendis philosophicis ac theologi

that in which it is claimed for marriage that its object is to render the life of the married better and happier by mutual assistance in supporting the trials of life, by constant love, by common enjoyment of all property, and by the grace which flows from the sacrament. Divorce, it says, impairs mutual affection, causing prejudice to education and to the protection of children. It is a means of dissolution of domestic society; it spreads the germs of discord in families, and lessens the dignity of woman, who finds herself exposed to abandonment after having served the passions of man. The effect of the divorce laws, the pontiff considers, has been rapidly to increase quarrels and separations, and so great has been the ignominy of life (tanta est vivenda turpitudo consecuta) that those who were at first in favor of divorce have since repented. The pontiffs have arned the gratitude of all peoples, says Leo XIII., by their constant solicitude for the sanctity of marriage; and by resist the desires of Henry VIII. and of aporeon, they served the cause not only of the Church, but of humanity. Then, in colusion, we find one of the most striking examples of the persuasive method of the pontiff in the following sentence in support of a good understanding between the civil and religious authority: "Just as the intelligence of men, when it accepts the Catholic creed, derives from it a great increase and a considerable power to repel errors, so faith receives from intelligence an important increment." The pontiff stretches out his hand to rulers (vires principes), and offers them his aid; all the more necessary, he says, in these times when the right of command, "as if it had received a wound," has lost its force in public estimation. These are the chief features cis disciplinis sancti Thomæ vestigiis penitus insistere; sibi enim non secus ac Nobis, exploratum esse affirmant, in doctrinis, Thomisticis eximiam quandam inesse præstantiam et ad sananda mala, quibus nostra premitur ætas vim virtutemque singularem.”

of the Encyclical on marriage, or rather, on divorce. It has had no visible effect on legislation, and it has estranged from the Church many Catholics for whom the marriage tie has become intolerable, but who, despairing more than ever of obtaining the Church's sanction to loosen it, have dispensed with that sanction, or, in some cases, have adopted another faith.

In 1884, the pontiff reverted to an old evil which had been pointed out by no less than seven of his predecessors, and the Encyclical Humanum Genus, on freemasonry, which ever since its origin has excited the animosity of the Church, is little more than a repetition of previous animadversions against this rival power, which claims on secular grounds what the Church claims on spiritual ones, -the subordination of individuality to the interests of an institution. The principles of freemasonry, it says, are so contrary to reason and evidence tha nothing can be more perverse (ut nihil possit esse perversius). To wish to destroy religion, and to resuscitat paran customs after a lapse of twenty-two centuries, is a mark of folly and of the most audacious impiety. The biops are exhorted to extirpate the pernicious doctrine, which is said to have many points in common with socialism and communism. It is an old quarrel, which will never, probably, be adjusted.

The Encyclical Immortale Dei (1885) has been considered the most remarkable of the present pontificate; and certainly, for elegance of expression, choiceness and sobriety of language, it has not been surpassed by any. It is a sequel to the Diuturnam, published four years previously, which upheld the principle of respect for established government. This one tells us that wherever the Church has penetrated, the face of things has been changed, public manners have been invested with a new civilization, and the nations which have accepted Catholicism have been distinguished for the amenity of their manners, the equity and

glory of their enterprises. From the earliest time, it is said, the Church has been accused unjustly of secret enmity towards the institutions of the state; and now the real enemy is the jus novum to which it has become necessary, in the opinion of the pontiff, to oppose Christian doctrine. Then we read that, as men are not born to lead solitary lives, Providence has given them civil and domestic society; but as human society has a divine origin, its master must be divine, and all power emanates from God. This divine sovereignty and here we have the first indication of the reconciliation of the Church with democracy — can make an alliance with any form of go nment, so long as it be just. It is nawful to resist a power of this nate: sedition, therefore, is a crime not only against human majesty, but against divine. Again, just as it is permitted to no one to dispense with a religious creed, and as the greatest of all duties is to embrace the faith of Catholics, political societies cannot, without sin, act as if there were no God. The chiefs of states are accordingly forced to guard religion, on which the supreme felicity of man depends. It is not difficult to perceive which is the true religion, for abundant proofs exist that the Church is the depository of the principles of Christianity. Princes and rulers have recognized its sovereignty. There should be wellorganized relations between the civil and the religious power; for the theory of Christian organization has nothing to offend susceptibilities, and all men, "in the uncertain and painful journey towards the eternal city," know that they have sure guides to lead them. Thus, the subjection of men to princes, in a Christian state, is not a subjection of man to man, but a submission to the divine will. There was once a time, says the Encyclical sorrowfully, when the philosophy of the gospel governed states, when all institutions were imbued with Christian wisdom; and this state of things