Preface. F there be aught in this world which of fectually illustrates the connection between things apparently small and the largest interests of humanity, it is to be found in the lives of the Saints, and of those who most nearly resembled them,-servants, as it were, in the same family, and often less beyond the grasp of ordinary appreciation in consequence of having attained to an elevation less exalted ;-and in their lives the deepest significance will frequently be found not in those more prominent actions, which have externally most in common with actions great according to a worldly estimate, but in matters apparently of mere detail, casual incidents, and sayings recorded we hardly know why. As a man's deportment upon great occasions reveals less of his habitual character, and has less of physiognomic expression, than his ordinary bearing; so it is often from the most ordinary actions of holy persons that we can learn nature. PREFACE. most concerning the operations of that divine and inner life, of which their outward life is a manifestation. Nor are such questions interesting only in a religious point of view, or as a subject for the meditations of psychologists. They have the most important bearings on social relations. Nothing is more certain than that so long as nations continue to be formed of individuals, and the body politic to find its type in the personal being of man, so long will our political and social insight be in proportion to our insight into what is deepest and noblest in human All political science is empirical which does not look for the philosophy of society in the nature of man; and our speculations on the latter subject can never rise above materialism until we contemplate the nature of man as irradiated by the light cast down upon it from that spiritual part of his being in which he converses with God. Man was made after the divine Image: no scheme of human society can therefore be sound, unless over every portion of it the light of that Image be diffused. The aspirations and efforts of holy souls are scattered beams of that primal glory, reflected from the face of human society; and if we shut our eyes to them, we simply exclude that highest form of teaching which proceeds at once from a Divine Teacher and from human experience. Far from a philosophy unenlightened by a Christian estimate of man's condition being capable of discovering a remedy for the evils that depress our mortal lot, it is incapable of ascertaining what those evils are, and discriminating between blessings and curses. The consequence is, that false ideals respecting the nature and end of man have again and again prompted genius to waste itself upon schemes of human improvement, which, if the world were Pagan, could only be reproached with being chimerical, but which, in a Christian order of things, are absolutely self-contradictory. A few words will suffice to illustrate this. Is Subjection to rule is the common lʊt of man. that circumstance an evil or not? The answer to this question must be derived from just views not only with respect to man's destiny in this world, but to the mode in which God trains His creatures for another world in which freedom is united with absolute obedience. Poverty is often an evil: are we then to conclude, or not, that economical views are sound in proportion as they favour the largest possible acquisition of national prosperity? The answer again resolves itself into moral, and ultimately into religious views, respecting the relation in which the outward well-being of man stands to his inner well-being. Is ignorance an evil? Why is it an evil? and is the remedy to be found in such an education as most largely develops man's intellectual powers, or in that which most effectually disciplines his spiritual being? The answer depends on the estimate we form of the relations between truth and knowledge, the human will and the human mind. Bodily afflic tions-Should we seek a state of things in which these are, by any innocent means, simply reduced to a mir mum; or a state of things in which the endurance them, and the mitigation of them, are made most conducive to the glory of God? Again, the standard of right and wrong-what should that be? All virtues are, of course, to be exalted, and all vices to be con demned; but how are we to proportion our respect and our condemnation ? Many of the natura virtues, such as courage, industry, moderation, &c., contribute very strikingly to the outward greatness of communities, even when alloyed by several vices, such as pride and covetousness. On the other hand, a great deal of faith, hope, charity, humility, and patience, especially when mixed up with defects such as even saints have not been exempt from, often fail to produce any very splendid external result. What class of virtues ought we then chiefly to venerate ?-These are but a very few of the social questions upon which it is evident that the greatest light must be thrown by such views of human life as are illustrated by the records of those who have lived for God, and whose life has commonly been hidden from the world. Passing by, then, those higher considerations re specting the interior life, as to which the following biographies are far more eloquent than any comment on them could be, it may be worth while to indicate the degree in which they stand related to the questions of the day. More clearly than half the abstruse books with which the inquiring mind concerns itself, they illustrate the social problem of the age, especially as forced on the attention of the two greatest nations of the modern world, England and France. Each of these countries may be said to have taken its fortunes into its own hands in a greater degree than any other of the old countries of Europe. Both have abounded in teachers whose constant advice has been to work out new destinies, worthy of an advanced period of civilisation; but who, while they agreed in destroying the institutions of Catholic Christendom, have often agreed in little |