the chapel and common hall. The community, therefore, increased in numbers as it has been, is still condemned to occupy the mean and inappropriate chapel of the old college. Accordingly, as far as the opportunities of church ceremonial, nay, of the ordinary decencies of worship, are concerned, the students are at present actually at a greater disadvantage than before the enlarged endowment; nor has it been possible, even in the other parts of the college, the class-halls, study-rooms, cloisters, corridors, &c., to attempt anything of that internal decoration which adds so much to the grace and effect of the gothic collegiate buildings which have been elsewhere erected. The petty persecution of withdrawing the vote for repairs has, of course, aggravated this evil. The new building is yet almost entirely destitute even of the commonest necessaries of furniture; and the new library, a spacious and elegant room, remains with its walls still bare of shelves; while, in the expectation of a speedy removal to their new site, the books, inconveniently crowded in the old library, have fallen into a state of inextricable disorder.

The Report of the Commission makes it plain that, until the new building shall have been completed by the erection of a suitable chapel, it is idle to hope for such order as is indispensable to the decency and even to the quiet and recollection indispensable for public worship.

These, however, together with the still higher requirements to which we have been alluding, will furnish matter for much and anxious consideration to the Trustees of the College, and the ecclesiastical authorities who are responsible for its efficiency. The Report and Evidence supply ample information, collected not only from the members of the college themselves, but also from many other ecclesiastical establishments in foreign countries. Nor do we doubt that, in the wise discretion of those who are alone responsible, what was originated and designed in a spirit of hostility, will eventuate in the improvement and elevation of the tone, character, and efficiency of the Institution.

ART. IX,- The Blessed Sacrament, or the Works and Ways of God. By FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D. D., Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London, Dublin, and Derby: Richardson and Son, 1855.

FAT

ATHER Faber's new book on the Blessed Sacrament, will, we venture to predict, go through more editions, and continue to have more readers and more admirers than any work which has yet come from his gifted pen. It is a rare, beautiful, altar-flower, and will long shed a pleasant and holy fragrance to attract many a devout heart, and make it love to linger near the sanctuary. The author tells us that his own desire has been to present it at the feet of the Blessed Sacrament, as a thankoffering, for the gift of faith in that wonderful mystery. It will surely have the effect of inciting others, too, to wish to make their thank-offerings, if not for the gift of faith conferred under extraordinary circumstances, yet for the thousand times ten thousand priceless favours that have flowed to them from the Blessed Sacrament-if not in the shape of a written work requiring genius and learning to produce it, yet, at least, by prayer, and praise, and love.

It is a beautiful characteristic of the Church, that, though since her first establishment, she has been incessantly engaged in deadly warfare for the conservation of the faith, though she has never been allowed a moment's breathing time by the schismatic, or the heretic, or the infidel, yet never has she for one hour relaxed in her sweet care to promote the holiness of her individual children, to multiply among them the fruits of the Holy Spirit, to see that they should aspire to perfection and the most intimate union with God. A conflict so long sustained, so unintermitting, so violent, as that which the Church has been compelled to maintain against the countless hosts who have ever and again continued to assail the faith, would have infallibly absorbed the entire attention and engrossed the entire energies of a society which was not always aided from above. All the fortitude, and vigilance, and vigour, which such society could put forth would scarce be adequate to the work of defence. Its rulers would tell the people that in the time of hot war, with such powerful

foes ever thundering at the gates of their city, the only duty was to man the walls and keep out the invaders. And if, in such a crisis, complaint should be urged that internal improvements were less attended to than usualthat works raised in the better days of peace were suffering from neglect, and some allowed to go to ruin; that no care was taken to beautify the streets, to extend the influence of the arts, to give an air of greater splendour and majesty to the temples, to invest the administration of justice with more solemnity, to lay out gardens for the recreation of the public, to erect fountains, to open museums, to build palaces of industry, surely such complaint would be considered inopportune and even absurd.

While, however, it is the destiny of the Church to be ever engaged in combat with enemies from without, she is continually appealing to each individual within the fold,exhorting the sinner to repentance, and inviting the just to greater holiness, with as much earnestness and as much tender solicitude as if the sole object of her mission on earth had been to win each single heart and bind it more closely to God. Thus her providence for her children resembles the divine Providence which watches over all, extending from sea to sea, and not overlooking the least or the vilest. The same Blessed Will which preserves and controls the universe, disregards not the humblest and weakest thing found in it-but controls and preserves it also, guiding it with ineffable condescension to the fulfilment of the end for which it is intended. He never wearies, never relaxes in the work, but provides for each with as much solicitude as if it alone had been created. And such also, in its way, seems to be the loving economy of the Church, Christ having established her to be the symbol and instrument of divine Providence for the salva

tion of men. However arduous, however manifold, however complicated may be the general ends which she has to attain, her eye ever rests upon the individual, she is ever intent upon the formation and direction of his character, and she employs her resources in moulding his heart and uplifting it to God, as if it constituted the sole sphere of her operations. Is it not, moreover, true, that as in the natural order there are laws, ways, and means given, specially suited to each thing according to its nature and its kind, due provision being made for whatever is found in the scale of being from the insect up to

the archangel; so also the Church, under the guidance of divine wisdom, shapes and beautifully tempers her ordinances for the direction of souls, knowing well the precise words, and the tone in which she should speak, to all-to the listless wanderer, to the worldly-minded, to the obdurate, to those who have begun to seek after justice, to those who are in the state of grace, to those who would wish to follow Jesus and become perfect, to those whom God has led to sublimest sanctity.

It is extremely curious that even intelligent Protestants will sometimes form such shallow, not to say perverse views of the system adopted by the Church in bringing souls to God. They scarce ever contemplate that system, as a whole, or care to examine whether different parts of it may not be adapted to and intended for the attainment of different purposes. One man hears of the degree of virtue which the Church requires in religious, who are bound by their profession to aspire to the plenitude of Christian perfection and Christian charity, and forthwith he concludes that she will allow none of her children to enter the kingdom of heaven, except upon the same terms. Hence he puts her down for a hard, gloomy-minded, stern step-mother, the friend of a superstitious and cruel asceticism, that places salvation altogether beyond the reach of the bulk of mankind. Another hears that she draws a distinction between venial and mortal sin, and teaches that the sins, black and multiplied of an entire life, may, in an instant, be blotted out by sincere sorrow on the part of the sinner, accompanied with absolution given by a priest, having jurisdiction from the Church, and he exclaims,--they confound good with evil; they open an easy way to the commission of all crime; they recognize no real practical difference between a life of virtue and a life of guilt. "Unto whom shall I liken the men of this generation, and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the market-place, and speaking one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you and ye have not danced: we have mourned and ye have not wept.' For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a glutton and a drinker of wine, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by all her children." (Luke vii. 31.)

Protestants almost invariably judge of us from extreme

points. They are all pretty well agreed in recognizing nothing more than a human institution in the Church, but there is a great variety of theories prevalent among them to explain the secret of her long duration and extraordinary success. One class of them will maintain that her success is owing in a great measure to her disregard for moral rectitude, to a system by which sin may be cheaply committed, by which, after death, the soul may go to heaven, though through life the heart has been a stranger to God, and insensible to every generous and holy emotion. Another class insists upon solving the riddle by assuring us that it is the high spiritual tone adopted by the Church, bordering upon, if not touching the mystic, which explains the secret of her power, and they are satisfied that if she were less dexterous in finding an outlet for the enthusiasm, the fanatical aspirations of her children, she could never have attained her present position.

The most numerous as well as the most clamorous section is that, we believe, which affects to perceive in the alleged cheap terms upon which the Church allows a sinner to become reconciled with God: or in the alleged extent to which she allows a Christian to go without being guilty of a grievous violation of the divine Law, an occasion of deep scandal. They are hurried away by a noble zeal and virtuous indignation at sight of a system which they say contains so little of generosity towards God, which chaffers and peddles with conscience about the commission of sin, which teaches nothing to kindle higher aspirations after holiness, and make the Christian heart burn to give all for all. They cannot help hating such a system, they consider it a duty to denounce it, to raise against it the abhorrence of truly pious men, to make it disappear and cease to trouble the earth. With what impetuous zeal do not these men plunge into a volume of St. Liguori's Moral Theology, read there a section on equivocation, a section on oaths, and one or two other passages which they had been prepared to decry as of an equally objectionable tendency. With what avidity do they not turn over a page treating of sins of impurity, predetermined to believe that the means prescribed for avoiding them are set down not for that purpose, but simply from a morbid desire, felt by Catholic writers on morality, to brood over scenes of indelicacy and grossness. Pleased with themselves and with the result of their inquiry, they rise up from the brief