The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Faith of the Millions (2nd series), by George Tyrrell

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Title: The Faith of the Millions (2nd series)

Author: George Tyrrell

Release Date: November 19, 2003 [eBook #10139]

Language: English

Chatacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS (2ND SERIES)***

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THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS

A SELECTION OF PAST ESSAYS

SECOND SERIES

BY

GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J.

1901

"AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES HE WAS MOVED WITH
COMPASSION ON THEM, FOR THEY WERE HARASSED AND
SCATTERED AS SHEEP HAVING NO SHEPHERD."
(Matthew ix. 36.)

  Nil Obstat:
     J. GERARD, S.J.
         CENS. THEOL. DEPUTATUS.

  Imprimatur:
     HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,
         ARCHIEP. WESTMON.

CONTENTS

   XIII.—Juliana of Norwich
    XIV.—Poet and Mystic
     XV.—Two Estimates of Catholic Life
    XVI.—A Life of De Lamennais
   XVII.—Lippo, the Man and the Artist
  XVIII.—Through Art to Faith
    XIX.—Tracts for the Million
     XX.—An Apostle of Naturalism
    XXL.—"The Making of Religion"
   XXII.—Adaptability as a Proof of Religion
  XXIII.—Idealism in Straits

XIII.

JULIANA OF NORWICH.

"One of the most remarkable books of the middle ages," writes Father Dalgairns, [1] "is the hitherto almost unknown work, titled, Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love made to a Devout Servant of God, called Mother Juliana, an Anchoress of Norwich" How "one of the most remarkable books" should be "hitherto almost unknown," may be explained partly by the fact to which the same writer draws attention, namely, that Mother Juliana lived and wrote at the time when a certain mystical movement was about to bifurcate and pursue its course of development, one branch within the Church on Catholic lines, the other outside the Church along lines whose actual issue was Wycliffism and other kindred forms of heterodoxy, and whose logical outcome was pantheism. Hence, between the language of these pseudo-mystics and that of the recluse of Norwich, "there is sometimes a coincidence … which might deceive the unwary." It is almost necessarily a feature of every heresy to begin by using the language of orthodoxy in a strained and non-natural sense, and only gradually to develop a distinctive terminology of its own; but, as often as not, certain ambiguous expressions, formerly taken in an orthodox sense, are abandoned by the faithful on account of their ambiguity and are then appropriated to the expression of heterodoxy, so that eventually by force of usage the heretical meaning comes to be the principal and natural meaning, and any other interpretation to seem violent and non-natural. "The few coincidences," continues Father Dalgairns, "between Mother Juliana and Wycliffe are among the many proofs that the same speculative view often means different things in different systems. Both St. Augustine, Calvin, and Mahomet, believe in predestination, yet an Augustinian is something utterly different from a Scotch Cameronian or a Mahometan…. The idea which runs through the whole of Mother Juliana is the very contradictory of Wycliffe's Pantheistic Necessitarianism." Yet on account of the mere similarity of expression we can well understand how in the course of time some of Mother Juliana's utterances came to be more ill-sounding to faithful ears in proportion as they came to be more exclusively appropriated by the unorthodox. It is hard to be as vigilant when danger is remote as when it is near at hand; and until heresy has actually wrested them to its purpose it is morally impossible that the words of ecclesiastical and religious writers should be so delicately balanced as to avoid all ambiguities and inaccuracies. Still less have we a right to look for such exactitude in the words of an anchoress who, if not wholly uneducated in our sense of the word, yet on her own confession "could no letter," i.e., as we should say, was no scholar, and certainly made no pretence to any skill in technical theology. But however much some of her expressions may jar with the later developments of Catholic theology, it must be remembered, as has been said, that they were current coin in her day, common to orthodox and unorthodox; and that though their restoration is by no means desirable, yet they are still susceptive of a "benignant" interpretation. "I pray Almighty God," says Mother Juliana in concluding, "that this book come not but into the hands of those that will be His faithful lovers, and that will submit them to the faith of Holy Church." [2] And indeed such can receive no possible harm from its perusal, beyond a little temporary perplexity to be dispelled by inquiry; and this only in the case of those who are sufficiently instructed and reflective to perceive the discord in question. The rest are well used in their reading to take what is familiar and to leave what is strange, so that they will find in her pages much to ponder, and but a little to pass over.

It is, however, not only to these occasional obscurities and ambiguities that we are to ascribe the comparative oblivion into which so remarkable a book has fallen; but also to the fact that its noteworthiness is perhaps more evident and relative to us than to our forefathers. It cannot but startle us to find doubts that we hastily look upon as peculiarly "modern," set forth in their full strength and wrestled with and overthrown by an unlettered recluse of the fourteenth century. In some sense they are the doubts of all time, with perhaps just that peculiar complexion which they assume in the light of Christianity. Yet, owing to the modern spread of education, or rather to the indiscriminate divulgation of ideas, these problems are now the possession of the man in the street, whereas in former days they were exclusively the property of minds capable—not indeed of answering the unanswerable, but at least of knowing their own limitations and of seeing why such problems must always exist as long as man is man. Dark as the age of Mother Juliana was as regards the light of positive knowledge and information; yet the light of wisdom burned at least as clearly and steadily then as now; and it is by that light alone that the shades of unbelief can be dispelled. Of course, wisdom without knowledge must starve or prey on its own vitals, and this was the intellectual danger of the middle ages; but knowledge without wisdom is so much food undigested and indigestible, and this is the evil of our own day, when to be passably well-informed so taxes our time and energy as to leave us no leisure for assimilating the knowledge with which we have stuffed ourselves.

We must not, however, think of Mother Juliana as shut up within four walls of a cell, evolving all her ideas straight from her own inner consciousness without any reference to