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About The banner of the South. (Augusta, Ga.) 1868-1870 | View Entire Issue (July 2, 1870)
From the Mobile Register, June 24. “CHRISTIAN CHARITY" FATHER RYAN S LECTURE. At S o’clock last evening, the spacious Cathedral was thronged with an expec tant assemblage, called together by the announcement of the lecture lor the benefit of the Orphans, by the Rev Father A. J. Ryan. The disappoint ment of the preceding evening may have kept away a few, but very few, of those who would otherwise have been present. If it did, their places were probably filled by as many whom circumstances might have prevented from attending previous ly- Tiie hour was announced by the swell ing tones of the organ and when the last notes of the quartette had ceased to lin ger on the ear, the Very Rev. Father Pclicer came forward and expressed the pleasure he had in presenting the orator of the evening, the benefactor of the or phans, him whom they that were before him had so long wished to see, and in announcing that he now belongs to the Diocese of Mobile, and tins evening would offer the first fruits of mission to the cause of the little ones. In him would be recognized the distinguished editor of The Banner of the South —the ex quisite poet “Moina;” yet even better known, here and everywhere, as the stern, unwavering Southern patriot, the distin guished author of “Lee’s Sword,” and the “Oonquerred Banner”— FATHER RYAN. The orator of the evening having been conducted to the pulpit, aeknovv- Idged in a few preliminary words ad dressed to his dear Christian friends, the exquisite pleasure he felt in the fact that the first task imposed upon him in this Diocese by their Vicar-General, was the duty of lecturing for the cause of the orphans. On such an occasion it was not the author, but the cause which was to be regarded, and in behalf of the cause he thanked the Rev. Clergy for the sanction ot their presence, the musicians for the contribution of their services to grace the occasion, and the assembly before him tor their attendance. For what share he himself had in this, he thanked them sincerely and from his heart; the orphans would give them better thanks in their prayers. lie would preface his address by reading a portion of the Epistle of Saint Panl to the Romans: j ‘•Who then shall separate us from the 1 love of Christ ? Shall tribulation or dis-1 tress, or persecution, or famine,, or naked-! ness, or peril, or sword? As it is writ- j ten. For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we overcome through him that hath loved us. For lam persuaded that nei ther death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin cipalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.” These were not the calculating words of either human or Christian logic. Thev sprang, with the swift bound of a glorious tnought, from the faith that hears to the love that crowns; that defies everything —that looks into the face of death. They express the absolute certainly of the mind that knows where it believes, and better still, of the heart which knows where it loves. Here is no vacillation of heart, no faltering on the lips. Love lies in the deepest depth of the j human heart, and dwells in the highest ] height of the Divine nature; it is the I deepest of the mysteries of religion, and will crown us in the highest heaven, i Love is religion in its totality, in its most j intimate and intensest power. Before the coming of Christ, love de- 1 graded; but after His preaching, love exalted. In the time of paganism it de veloped itself in sensuality and idolatry; it served to make man deteriorate, and I to lead him from the path of rectitude.! Christ used the old word, but gave it a ; new meaning, and he takes the highest name which he can assume when he writes "God is Love.” What love is, neither you nor I know; what love is, both you and I feel. It is the first power exercised by the child and the last by the man. Faith is nothing unless it walks by love. The grand “I hope’’ of the Christian shall pass away, but the grand “I love” shall endure, and mingle with the songs of the saints. The words of the Apostle are the bravest words, implying the bravest truth that ever went out from the lips of man. The love of which he speaks means the going out of the heart toward every form of human misery, as the Christian Religion is the system which has loved most, and made the greatest sacrifices for the relief of human misery. Again, said the speaker, I do not say what love is, I do not know; but you— some of you—and I have seen men in the smoke and roar of war; the battle flag above them, the foe before them, the mothers that rocked their cradles be hind them: even then their swords meant love, the flag meant love, and the blood that dripped from the heart meant love still deeper; and if they fell, the last sigh and the last pang as they went down to the grave meant love—the love which in these manifestations we call patriotism, the impelling principle whereby the heart will go towards its object and battle to wards it even unto death. A mother’s love neither their thoughts nor his could sound; it wa3 deeper than the deepest sea, without a shore and without a depth. As it is reflected back to her from our hearts we dream of her in the starry nights and think of her in the wakefulness of days. It outlasts all other loves. The love of husband to wife, and of wife to husband, is conse crated by the Christian Church in one of its sacraments. There is one character who represents love in its highest and widest extent — we call him a Catholic Priest. He must break every tie of love to become a man universal ; to sound the depth of every human woe; to stand iu the shadow of sin, his hand and heart all the time un defiled. And there was an exquiste plea sure to the speaker in the thought that lie at this time was realizing the love of the Priest for the suffering children of earth, by lecturing for the orphans. Before Christ there was not only rival ry but hatred between poverty and wealth; before the great scene on Calvary there was not a single exemplification on earth of Christian charity. Thus He found poverty neglected, scorned, oppressed, and in His first sermon He stooped to compassionate, and not merely to com passionate it. He swept wealth aside and took the hand of poverty; He looked in its face and flushed its face with His own beauty ; He lifted it to His throne j with the declaration, “Blessed are the j poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom j of Heaven.” Again, He swept joy aside, j took sorrow by the hand and placed it on ! another throne, saying, “Blessed are | they that mourn, for they shall be com- j sorted.” And thus He went about among I men, saying strange words, incomprc- i hcnsible then to the ears which heard j them, but destined to become familiar to j the whole of makind. And still, as He ! went up ami down, never did he choose i to argue, to use human rhetoric or stoop | to human logic, but from the crib to the j cross lie was love; love, too, in His as cension, and the scriptures say that love is still interceding with His Father for the sins of His followers. Thus had He given “love” anew meaning; and Love, as it were, put on a royal robe ; and once, too, Love had felt the pressure of His own nailed right hand, mid thenceforth it had itself a hand to wipe away the tear of grief. Now it meets the poor, and back of their rags and their faces, it sees the face of Him who said, “Whatsoever ye do to one of these, ye do it to me.” Grand as Pagan history is, and mag jnificent as is the spectacle of Egypt with I its pyramids, Assyria with its monu ments, and imperial Rome with its thirty thousand idol gods ; however vividly the scenes are brought to our minds which might be witnessed in the streets of the famed cities of old—of Athens with her philosophers that sometimes tried to be philanthropists; in all those scenes you might meet with many great conquerors and powerful kings, but never with a Sis ter of Charity. If the infidel can use his logic against our faith, we can point him to the monuments of Christian love, and ask him whether his belief—if it can be called belief-—his not belief, can produce its monuments fit to be placed beside those of Christianity. What have the Com munists, Socialists, Fourierists done? You, with your human dream without a Christ, what have you done to take sorrow out of the world? But Christian Love is not merely a sentiment; it is essen tially active ; it “begins at home,” but stays at home never. In all Pagan history, there is not an hospital nor an orphan asylum; but the Christian Church met every human want, provided for every class of sufferers, for i orphans, for lunatics, for the sick and ! abandoned of ail kinds, even for those ; who had abandoned themselves, and, in | an evil hour, uncrowned themselves, and j ostracised themselves from human society. , But in the modern apostolate of charity : none are so distinguished as the Sisters ! of Charity—an order, which, founded by I a Saint, still prserves the spirit of that i Saint performing its errauds in hos- I pitals, facing the pestilence, and making ! itself seen and felt in still more stirring | scenes. Some of you, said he, have seen itkem, and so have I, just when the bat j tie was closing, just when, perhaps, our j poor flag was lowered a little, just when I we were beginning to retreat before supe : rior numbers—there have we seen the Sister of Charity, the Rosary by her side, the lint in her hand, the glow of love on her face, but glowing still deeper in her heart, kneeling by the side of the bleed ing sufferer for his fatherland for which he did die. and pointing him to that bet ter land where death should be no more. Os all grades of the unhappy, none is so lowly as the orphan, bereft as he is of that deepest, holiest love to which allu sion had already been made. But the history of the orphan, too, has been sane tilled by Him who experienced every form of human sorrow; first in the man ger where he lay without on earthly father, and last on the cross, when He cried, “Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me ?” Yes, He became an or phan, and led on orphan life for three years, tnus sanctifying that condition by identifying Himself therewith. The eloquent speaker then dwelt upon the labors of the Brother and Sister of Charity in behalf of the orphan, in res cuing it from the current upon which it was floating away, giving it shelter, care and education, and training it in the Christian virtues, and making it an orna ment to society and a credit to the Church, for the glory of pure religion. The imer life of the Brother or Sister of Charity the world could not understand. They lived in great seclusion, sometimes open ing the door to ask of you a little mite for sustenance, and it should be said to the honor of Christian history that they seldom or never met with a repulse. In conclusion he thanked the audience for every dollar of their offering, assuring them that it would bring them a rich in terest, and exhorting them to add to the investment every little sum habitually wasted upon superfluities, for “he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord;” and those little orphans, when they say their prayers, will think of these offer ings, and the tears which fell upon the “Our Fathers” and the “Hail Marys” will be a rich reward. Better, sometimes, than the benediction of Bishop or Pope is the little prayer lisped from an orphan’s lips. A reporter’s incoherent jottings and hints of what was an only unmetrical ode of extreme beauty, must necessarily be unsatisfactory, and to the inherent diffi culties of his task, that of unfamiliarity with the sneaker’s voice and style, must be added, not to plead the constant temp tation to follow the speaker, instead of ! stopping to pick up a dropped word. Not j that there is anything impetuous and j hurrying in Father Ryan’s style, which, \ on the contrary, is smooth, agreeable and i elegantly finished. Rut we trust that many opportunities are in the near future for all our people to hear him for them selves. LECTURE BY FATHER GARESCHE PARENTAL LOVE —ITS NATURE, DUTIES AND TRIALS. We learn from the News that Father Garesch, delivered a lecture Wednes day night, June, 22ud at Hibernian Hall, Charleston, S. C. upon ‘ Parental Love,” Its Nature Duties and Trials. The clergy and some of the most prorni nent citizens of Charleston were on the i Stage with the oloquent Father and the Hall was thronged to its utmost capacity. Shortly after 8 o’clock Father Garesche stepped to the front of the stage, and, ad | dressing the the audience, expressed his gratitude for the compliment paid him and hoped that any defects that might be observed in his lecture would be excus ed, as he had just risen from a sick bed, to which he had been confined for some days. PARENTAL LOVE. The speaker then commenced his lec ture by describing the affections of the heart, the first of which was the affection between man and man and man and wo man, which was known as friendship. This affection, which was the theme of the poet, and frequently described in both sacred and profane history, was pure and simple and constituted a tie which gave man strength of purpose and enobied his na ture. Another of the affections was love, ot which the poet treats, but the blend ing of two souls into one, the love of man and wife. Next, parental love, which was the purest, grandest and most beautiful of all the Datura! affections. The love of parents for their offspring was like that of Christ for the souls He came to redeem—like the love of God for his creatures. After dwelling at length upon the unselfishness of a parent’s love, and upon its holy nature the speaker directed the attention of his hearts to ITS DUTIES. i The first duty of a parent, said he, is love. Who could help loving the little angel which had been sent to take up its abode with them? But how little do parents realize the true love they should give their offspring. To feed, clothe and educate the child seems to be the whole extent of the love of some parents. There should always be present to the child the evidence of his parents love. Os what use is the father’s reproof or ad vice, or the frown on the mother’s brow, if the idea is not conveyed with them that it is their very love which causes the reproof or the frown? A father who does not thus show his love for his offspring at all times, does not do his dut\ T ANARUS; and the mother who does not —but such a women is no woman— she is parody, a caricature of woman. Love must be shown in the eye and on the lip. Do not say that this is unneces sary—that a child will not observe it. A child is wonderfully acute, and ob serves closelv. See how, out of a num her of strangers in a room, he will at once select the one who loves children, and go to him with all the trust and con fidence of childhood. The next duty is the education of children—-an education that has to be given before that which is acquired at the school or the college. The father and mother must study the character of the child. This study will enable them to correct the faults of the child as he grows older. The speaker then dwelt upon the de lights of home and its advantages, and denounced the hotel, club and boarding house (where it was not unavoidable) where there was no home-life, and where the paren s had no opportunity ofg udjing the character of their children. A mo ther, said he, is the first instructor. A distinguished author has said that a child is like a rough block of marble, out of which the sculptor with his chisel can fashion either a fiend or an angel. So can the mother mould out of that seem ing inert block oi marble the noblest of natures. She must not scold him from her, but must sympathize with him, lis ten patiently to all of his troubles, and thus will she learn his true character. In her w T ork, she will be assisted by the calm judgment of the father, who will thus correct the defects which the blind ness of a mother’s love may have over looked. But the good example of each will serve more than all things else to impress upon the child’s mind the truths they have taught him. If the father be not always respectful and kind to the mother, how will the child learn that re spect for the sex which a grace to the i manly and chivalrous? Unless the wife be always respectful and loving to her husband, how can she expect her child to obey, when she instructs the child to reverence and obey him. TRIALS. The delight of a man in his wife and : child, the bright picture of his babe at j home with his wife,|(which liegcarried to through, and from his work.) and of his j wife’s joy with her child, were glowing ly described by the speaker, who then proceeded to show what was one of the greatest trials of parental love, that is the maintenance of the child when poverty comes; and, without work and unable to getjit, he sees his child sinking slowly for want of the nourishment he could not give. In this connection the speaker described the strength of a mother’s love, for her child, and related an incident of a shipwreck, where a mother and a child were left abne on a rudely-constructed raft, and who, to supply her babe with nourishment, with her teeth lacerated her veins and arteries, and with her life blood the babe was kept alive, while she died from the loss of this very blood, Another trial, said the speaker, was the loss of a babe whose presence had gladdened the hearts of its parents, and iu pathectic language he portrayed their grief, especially that of the mother. At this time there was scarcely a dry eye in the hall. In concluding this recital, he said that none but a women could portray the anguish of a mother’s heart, and then red a part of the following poem by Miss Proetor, which, by request of a large number of ladies and gentle men, we publish entire: Links In Heaven. EY ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTOR. I. Oar God in heaven, from that holy place To each of us au angel guide hath given; But mothers of dead children have more grace. For tiiey give angels to their God and heaven. ii. How can a mother’s heart feel cold or weary, i Knowing her dearer self, safe, happy, warm; i How can she feel her road too dark or dreary, Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm. hi. How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding; Our God forgot; our holy saints defied; But can a mother hear her dead child pleading, And thrust those little angel hands aside ? v. Those little hands stretehed down to draw her ever Nearer to God by mother Ivoe: we all Are blind and -weak, yet surely she can never, With such a stake in heaven, fail to fall. v. She knows that when the mighty angels raise Chorn* in heaven, one little silver tone Is hers forever; that one little praise, One little happy voice, is all her own. vi. We may not see her sacred crown of honor: But all the angels, flitting to and fro, Pause smiling, as they pass—they look upon her As mother of an angel whom they know. VII. One whom they left nestled at Mary’s feet— The children's place in Heaven —who soft ly sings. A little chant to please them, slow and sweet, Or smiling, strokes tlieir little folded wings VIII. Or gives them her white lillies or her beads To play with; yet, in spite of flower or song, They often lift a wistful look that pleads A story of her Jesus as a child. IX. Ah! Saints in Heaven may with earnest will, And pity, for their weak and err ring bro thers; Yet there is prayer in Heaven more ten der stil— The little children pleading for their mo thers. But, said the speaker, the trials above: referred to —not even death—are not the greatest of trials to parents. He then pictured the agony endured by those parents whose sons and daughters, who had been carefully reared, forgot their parent’s love and strayed from the paths of virtue and rectitude into those of misery, shame and crime. All of these trials have to be endured, said the lec turer; bit there is a consolation even for such trials as these— it is the Angel of God, Religion, which will pour the balm of relief into the wounded heart. The above sketch of the lecture does, ! as we are aware, Father Gareche as much i injustice, as would even a full report. He | possesses all the elements of an orator, ! and one to appreciate his eloquence and | wondrous descriptive powers must hear ; him. Bishop Quinlan’s Lecture. —A very large and intelligent audience assembled at the Catholic Church last night to lis ten to a lecture from the Right Rev. Bishop Quinlan, on the subject of the "Council at the Vatican,’i and it is safe to say that every one went away pleased and satisfied with the matter and manner of Ids address. The Bishop is an agree able and forcible speaker, quiet and dignified, indulging in plain logic and historic facts, without any attempt at flights of oratory, yet eloquent in the simplicity and beauty of his language. He gave a very succinct and 'interesting account of the origin, object and progress of the Council now in sesion at Rome, and its importance, not only to the Catho lic, but to the entire Christian world. We have not the time nor the ability to give anythnig like a sketch of his lec ture, but the profound attention which it attracted from the large audience pre sent and the many commendations which were bestowed upon it, showed that it was highly appreciated, and that the reverend gentleman produced a good and lasting impression upon persons of all denominations. Selma Times J; Messenger, Jane 24. Foreign. Havana, June 26. —De Rodas tele graphs that he has captured the second cargo of the “Upton,” which is more va luable than the first. Moutaner’s column had killed twelve insurgents, including an American colonel. The reaction in the interior was caused by many outrages. The insurgent Ortega and family, with two other men, on their way to surrender, were caught and hanged. The women were outraged. Parties are forming in the interior who resist conscription and refuse aid to the revolution. Cork, June 26.-7Disturbanees continue though troops and police occupy the streets in force. Leipsic, June 26. —Alva Lake, of Mem phis, Tennessee, has been sentence i to imprisonment for assaulting the Ameilcaa Consul. 3
