Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tom Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.This file was produced from images generously made available by theCanadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
The reply of Maximilian to the wealthy courtier who tendered him agoodly purse of gold for a title of nobility, was worthy of thatemperor: "I can enrich thee," he said, "but only thy own virtue canenoble thee" All true grandeur, excellence, and dignity, are theoffspring of virtue. Even the most renowned oracles of paganismproclaim this, and the very persecutors of holiness are oftenconstrained to pay homage to their victim. No wonder, then, thatwhenever we are privileged to find one of those rare mortals, whomvirtue has unmistakably marked as her own, we lovingly attach anexceptional importance to everything connected with his history. Suchassuredly was he whose "account of what befel" him during his firstten years in America, is now for the first time published in English.A brief sketch of the religious Order to which he belonged, of thelife he led, and of the Monastery he founded, may give added interestto his own simple and edifying narrative.
What Scripture terms "the world," and so emphatically denounces assuch, is the poisonous source of the mother-evils described by St.John as "the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of theeyes, and the pride of life." Flight from the contamination of thisthreefold inordinate love of pleasures, riches and honors, beingessential to salvation, is most easily, most surely and mostmeritoriously achieved by those who, in answer to a Divine call,consecrate and give themselves wholly to God, by the practice of theevangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience. Those whoembrace this angelic profession form the choice portion of the foldof Christ. They rank as His spouses, and, by the holy ambition oftheir virgin love, console Him for the craven defections or the coldindifference of so many Christians.
All Christians animated by the spirit of Jesus are religious, justas they are holy, and kings and priests (I Peter 2,9). Such is theunity of the marvellous body of Christ, the Church, whose soul isinfinite love, that her every member shares, in some sense andmeasure, all her sublime prerogatives. But as God willed that in Hisfamily some goods should be common to all, so He likewise decreedthat other goods should be reserved to comparatively few, and throughthese chosen and privileged ones benefit the rest. Hence, as besidesthis elementary royalty and priesthood conferred by baptism, thereare, according to the express order of God superior and officialroyalties and priesthoods, in like manner besides the fundamentalreligion, which is the vital breath of every soul in a state ofgrace, there is a religion more eminent, more definite, more perfect.Thus as there is here below a sacerdotal and royal state, so likewiseis there a religious state which is confined to those only who bindthemselves by vows to a monastic life. It is evident, therefore, thatwhen Catholics use the expression "religious Order," or term a monkor nun "a religi