ventured to cope with him in argument, and the moral influence of his Review was such as no other Catholic writings had ever possessed. That it counteracted much error, and carried Catholic truth into quarters where it had never before reached, is unquestioned. Its influence is still felt, and the fact that a reprint of the most important articles is called for, shows that the essays still meet wants, and can effect good among a new generation of Americans.

As editors of our Catholic papers, many converts have rendered signal service. Foremost of all is James Augustine McMaster, whose name has for years been identified with the Freeman's Journal, of New York, a paper regarded perhaps with greater respect than any other by Protestants, as an exponent of Catholic thought.

Beckwith, Huntington, Wolff, Oertel and other converts also have, in the editorial chair, rendered good service. In the field of general literature, Dr. Ives did much, not only in his part of Maitland's Dark Ages, but in essays; Huntington, McLeod, Christian Reid, have elevated the literary standard of Catholic works, but we cannot claim any to compare with Newman, Faber, or Adelaide Procter.

The community founded by Mrs. Connolly, and which contains many, like her, converts to the faith, has, though it has acquired little extension in this country, exercised a most decided influence by the thoroughness of its system of education, full of sound practical sense and solidity. It is the very reverse of the superficial, and aims to ground the pupils thoroughly in literature, art, and a knowledge of religion, its doctrines, history, and worship, as well as in all the graces of true womanhood.

The influence of a woman like the late Mrs. Peters it would be

hard to measure. She was foremost in so many good works, projected and carried out so many that seemed hopeless, was so untiring, without presumption, humble, devoted, and faithful, that her influence was remarkable. Nor is she alone. In various parts of the country women, in and out of the cloister, in all walks of life, who have learned the beauty of Catholic truth, are exerting an influence that is not recorded, but that Catholics in every city and town will recognize and admit.

Still the position of the convert is often attended by great trials. A Protestant clergyman becoming a Catholic gives up a livelihood, and by his training and former life is unfitted for secular life; if married, he cannot ordinarily become a priest, and there is no avenue open to him. We have no college professorships to bestow, no associations for mission or benevolent work, giving offices which such gentlemen could fill, as almost all such work with us is effected through religious communities. It was once proposed to form a body of catechists, or inferior clergy, in order to employ

such converts and make their abilities effective. There is a want which we have already indicated of associations, perhaps on the plan of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, in which the main object would be to look after young men, and by the power of example keep them within the fold, obtain occasionally employment for them, where necessary, withdraw them from dangerous positions. The Catholic Union seemed at one time destined to occupy this field. The Council still exists, and labors to effect reforms, but the particular Unions, which the Council was supposed to represent, exist apparently only in name in most cities. This is the case in New York, with the exception of the Xavier Union, which has attained a solid and permanent condition, and is the instrumentality of great good. But meanwhile the young men are slipping away, and converts familiar with the working of organizations like the Young Men's Christian Associations, and aware of their defects, might be in many cases most serviceable in what might be called Catholic home mission work. The parochial clergy, with the work before them, cannot undertake this, and unemployed priests, whom our right reverend bishops might assign to such undertakings, are few. It does seem as if it were a field where experienced converts, and other laymen, might become potent auxiliaries, and thus men, whose services are now lost, might become of the utmost service in saving young men who for want of moral support and social help are shamed into neglecting their religious duties, and make shipwreck of the faith.

The question of a great Catholic university has been raised, but colleges and universities cannot thrive unless the preparatory schools exist in greater number. In our large cities, while there are many academies or high schools for girls, there are comparatively few for boys. Baltimore seems to have but one with 100 pupils; Boston one with 220 pupils; New York four with about. 1000 pupils; Philadelphia two with about 400 pupils. Evidently these figures do not approach the number of youth, sons of Catholic parents able to give them an education superior to that afforded by the parochial or the public school. To what institutions are. the rest of the Catholic boys sent? There seems to be in many parents a disinclination to send their sons to schools conducted by religious; and, on the other hand, there is a disinclination to establish secular schools with simply a clergyman as president and a spiritual director. Such institutions with salaried professors necessarily entail expense, but if they can be made effective and will draw pupils, who are not now sent to Catholic schools, and whose salvation is at stake, great sacrifices ought to be made to maintain them. The experiment in some of the large cities would not involve much risk, if prudently managed, and such an institution, if it met the public want, would soon find endowment. It is not

easy to believe that, while Protestants are constantly giving liberal donations and bequests to institutions of learning, wealthy Catholics are utterly indifferent. They cannot be so different from their Protestant neighbors that they cannot be interested in education. The subject is one beyond the limits of this paper, and it is introduced merely as noting a field in which converts of education and experience as teachers may be employed to advantage.

THE ALLEGED FALL OF POPE LIBERIUS.

De Hebræorum et Christianorum sacra monarchia et de infallibili in utraque magisterio. Per Professorem Aloisium Vincenzi. Roma

ex typographia Vaticana, 1875.

Erreurs et mensonges historiques. Par M. Ch. Barthélemy. Paris. Bleriot ed., 1875.

A

MONG the many great historical puzzles that have engaged the attention or stimulated the diligence of the learned for centuries, that furnished by the alleged fall of the saintly Liberius. stands forth prominent, almost unique. Two schools of thought have been occupied at intervals during fifteen centuries in the vain task of unravelling the threads of this provokingly entangled snare; the one to vindicate the name of a Pope whose memory has been embalmed in the eloquence of St. Ambrose, and the other to brand it with deepest infamy, to bury it beneath a mountain of malignant opprobrium. To the latter school belonged many historians, or dabblers in ancient story, of the last of the seventeenth century. For those who took their creed and inspiration from the modern Mahomet, Martin Luther, it was a labor of love to justify the rebellion of their master against what they called the dynastic despotism, which had lain like a terrible nightmare on the slumbering breast of Christendom for over a thousand years. What cared they if, in rejecting the Papacy, they would infect the religion and the order established by the man-God? They argued then that the Papacy was fallen from grace, and this as early as the fourth century. Look, say they, at Liberius! He subscribed an Arian formula, or creed, and in his delirious haste to regain his darling Roman See, delivered Christendom over to the sect which railed at the divinity of Jesus Christ! If, then, the Roman See, VOL. VIII.-34

the centre of your boasted unity, became heretic as early as the fourth century, what corruption may we not look for in more recent times?

When, through political intrigue and bad faith, the party of the "Gallican liberties" appeared in France, at its head were found some men who, like Bossuet, shone like stars of the first magnitude in the literary as well as in the ecclesiastical firmament; men who, by virtue of their own principles, were urged, perhaps unwillingly, into an attitude hostile to the indefectibility of the Holy See. In his "Defensio," as we shall see further on, the eminent Bossuet, who undoubtedly had read all that appeared in evidence for and against Liberius at his day, was betrayed into arguments and forced to conclusions from which, it is certain, his noble faith recoiled. What wonder, then, that lesser lights were bedimmed, or that scholars without the Church's pale would with impunity point their shafts against the memory of the calumniated Pontiff? But, alas for human words and human works, modern criticism has inserted a wedge into the knotty trunk of Arian forgery, and the sundered parts reveal to astonished eyes the "true inwardness" of the forgers. In this article it will be convenient, Ist. To sketch, currente calamo, the history of the times in which Liberius lived and suffered. 2d. To present the main arguments used to prove his fall; and 3d. To refute these arguments, and thereby establish his innocence. It was during the reign of Constantine that Arius, a man of stately figure and apparently ascetic habits, began to preach to the people of Alexandria that the Saviour who had redeemed them was not, as the Christian world believed, really and substantially the Son of God. The novelty of the doctrine, the eloquence of the preacher, and the disaffection of a certain number of courtiers, gave the error an impulse which not even its inventors had foreseen or expected. In vain did the patriarch, St. Alexander, endeavor to recall the ambitious and erring priest. The very patriarchal throne whence issued the fatherly invitations to retract his blasphemy was the prize coveted by the heresiarch, and the disappointment occasioned by his failure to secure it drove him to the sacrifice of his faith and his salvation. Mildness and entreaty failing, the Patriarch convened å council to pronounce upon the errors of Arius. The heresiarch refused to retract them, and was excommunicated. The secretary of the Patriarch at this council was a young deacon, famous for his prudence, piety, and learning; and for him Arius conceived a particular hatred, which he seems to have transmitted to his children in heresy. The deacon was Athanasius, in whose defence our Liberius suffered so much, forty years afterwards. Retiring into Palestine, Arius won golden opinions among the Emperor's wretched courtiers, among whom were Eusebius, a bishop in

name only, and Constantia, the Emperor's sister. Many other Eastern bishops also supported the cause of Arius. He composed verses in which he embodied the poison of his doctrines, and distributed them among the common people. Set to the airs of the obscene songs of the day, they" took," as we say nowadays, and in a few months the blasphemies of an excommunicated renegade became the faith of thousands. Nor need we be astonished at this rapid popular lapse into heresy. Only a few years had elapsed since Constantine, victorious over Maxentius and Licinius, became sole master of the Roman commonwealth and put an end to the persecutions. For three centuries, in fact, the wave of persecution had swelled high, and, therefore, religious instruction was given to the Catholic masses under very great difficulty and amid constant dangers. Even many of the clergy had not the science their state required. Since the conversion of Constantine, though no edicts were pressed against the pagans, yet these felt that favors would be best obtained by believing or affecting to believe as the Emperor. Doubtless, then, of the vast numbers who joined the Christian Church at this period, many were prompted by interest, others were allured by fashion, and comparatively few were urged by conviction. Instruction in the necessary articles of faith was all that could be dispensed—and these but superficially-at such a time; but the Christian spirit very, very few seemed to have grasped, even in a low degree. It is a miracle in the moral order that any Christianity was left at all when the persecutions temporarily ended; and if, with Gibbon and the so-called philosophic school, we reject the vision of the cross seen by Constantine in the heavens, it seems somewhat more than a prodigy that he and so many others exchanged the religion of their glorious ancestors, for that of an ignoble and crucified "Galilean." Galilean." But to return to our subject. For five long years the doctrinal war continued, the athletes on both sides deploying their utmost abilities, exerting every influence that could be brought to bear upon their adversaries, and exhausting the ammunition of the Greek tongue in subtleties and distinctions, which that elegant language, of all others, is capable of expressing. Constantine is interviewed by the friends of Arius, he is besieged by the tears and entreaties of his sister, and fawned upon by unworthy ecclesiastics. Finally, with the concurrence of Pope Sylvester and some others, he assembles the famous Council of Nice. Three hundred and eighteen bishops there assembled proclaimed the ancient belief to be a dogma of faith. Jesus is the Aoyos, the Eternal Word of God, uncreated and (otos) consubstantial with the Father. Whether we ascribe it to pure malice, or to ignorance of the binding force of a solemn decree. made by the Church in council, or in fine to a hope that the fallen might return to the fold, certain is it that many of the Eastern