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Show Uncle Sack and In last week's conversation. Uncle Jack explained to his nephew the difference dif-ference between spiritual love and sensual sen-sual love. "God is love," said Uncle Jack; "the gospel of our lord and savior sa-vior Jesus Christ is a gospel of love. Uncle Jack, returning to love and mar-; riage, said there were fewer mis-marriages mis-marriages under the custom where parents made matches than under the. .modern custom where marriages are the result of the caprice or fancy of inexperienced youth. "Now the girl," said Uncle Jack, "is hardly in her teens before her head is filled with thoughts of love and marriage, and she is on the alert to see who will love her or whom she will love. All this grows out of your low and sensual view of love, of your making it an affection of the sensitive sen-sitive nature instead of the rational, and supposing that it does in no sense depend on reason and will to love wherever it is our duty to love." Uncle Jack begins the argument this week by further elucidation of this false notion of love. Ed. I. M. C ' ' CONVERSATION IV. Continued. "You do not know, my dear boy, how much misery results from this false notion of love. You know the popular literature of our age. It breeds the tome of unsatisfied love, of strong, ardent ar-dent affections, which nothing can meet or satisfy a longing after something some-thing is not possessed, which cannot be obtained. The heart is empty. The delights de-lights of home and of domestic affections affec-tions praised, are chanted in all tones, but are not. realized. The VmaVviri.l finds it impossible to be satisfied with the wife of his bosom, and seeks to solace himself with his mistress; the wife is unfaithful in turn, or pines away in secret with an untold affection of an unsatisfied love. All your novelists novel-ists touch upon the married life only when it is criminal or miserable, and in general drop the curtain as soon as the marriage ceremony is over, as if conscious that the love which they have traced thus far will not survive the honeymoon. The reason of all this is plain. The affections of the sensitive sensi-tive nature cannot be satisfied, and the object they crave, however worthy, is loathed as soon as possessed. They are morbid and capricious. You do not feel this truth yet, because you are young, and are just now engrossed with a passion pas-sion for world reform. The gloss of novelty has not worn off, and your emotions are still fresh. You have not yet learned to exclaim from the bitterness bitter-ness of your own experience. Van itas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas (Vanity of vanities, and air is vanity). Yet you find no satisfaction; you find no repose; and you are hurried on, not so much by any real regard for the good of mankind, as by your own interior and unexplained uneasiness; yoti are moved by a craving for something you have not, for you know not what, and to be bette'than you are. You plunge into the work of political and social revolution as a dissipation. You will soon grow weary of it. Then you will seek to fill the void in your heart with woman's love, run a career of debauchery, de-bauchery, and end by attempting to drown your misery in the wine cup. Or, if you recover, you will turn Mammon, Mam-mon, and die a miser; for avarice is the only passion that is sure to retain its power to the last." "A sad picture, my dear uncle, and not very complimentary." "Nevertheless, you need not doubt its fidelity. I have lived longer than you, and have had some experience. You will not believe me now, but here-flftpr here-flftpr f ClnA in V.lo rv, -... 4 1 arter, it trod in his mercy touches your heart, you will see and own the truth of what I say. Our age is a sentimental senti-mental age, and every sentimental age runs the career I have described. Sentiment Sen-timent distinguished from duty, and placed above It, or regarded as a higher high-er principle of action, always runs into vice, and becomes the parent of a whole family of the most- degrading and loathsome vices. Your error lies not in demanding love, but in demanding demand-ing sensitive instead of rational love. Love, as an affection of the rational soul, an intelligent and voluntary affection; af-fection; is something noble, something worthy to be lauded. Love in this sense is under our control, and in this senes we can love whenever it is our duty to love., and refrain from loving where and what we ought not to love. This love, the true Eros of the Greeks as distinguished from the Anteros, is always one with duty, or rather is the full and perfect discharge of duty. It surpasses by far in sweetness and generosity your sensitive love. What you call love, the love that laughs at duty as something dry and cold, is selfish, heartless and cruel, for it seeks always its own gratification, and never anything else. But rational love, op erating from a sense of duty, has in itself no taint of selfishness; it gives itself up entirely to its object. Your sort of love seeks to unite the object to itself; this seeks to unite itself to its object. All love is unitive, but only rational ra-tional love seeks union by giving itself to the object, and making itself one with it. Sensitive love pursues its object, ob-ject, not for the sake of the object, but for itself; rational . love seeks to possess pos-sess the object for the object's sake, not for its own. The one will sacrifice itself for the object, the other will sacrifice sac-rifice the object for itself. What else is it to act from a sense of duty than to act from this love, which is the sacrifice sac-rifice of our own will, or, what is the same thing, the unification of our will with the divine will, of which law is the expression? Understand this, and you will see at once that duty and love coincide, are In fact one and the same; for to love rationally is to love what we ought to love, and because we ought to love it, and is the fulfillment of duty. There Is nothing dry, cold or forbidding in this, and it calls for and gives free scope to all the sweetest, purest, strongest, warmest and most generous affections of our nature. Pnmnarpil with the mcps rf taiti. anH duty, our ages are dry, cold and heartless. heart-less. We have nothing of that tender sensibility, nothing of those warm, gushing feelings, fresh from the heart, of that generous love of husband and wife, of parents and children or that disinterested devotion to the welfare of interests of our neighbors that we find in the old Christian romances. We have nothing of that simplicity, that freshness of feeling, that light hearted-ness, hearted-ness, that sunshine of the soul, that perpetual "youth which characterized the Christian populations of the middle mid-dle ages. Our hearts are dark and gloomy, our spirits are jaded, our faces are worn and haggard. We have no youth of -the heart. Life to us is a senseless debauch, or a heavy and hateful existence. Our affections are blighted from the cradie, and we live a burden to ourselves. O, give up back the good old times of faith and duty, when reigned the soul's iove, and the heart's joy gave you melody to the songs of bird, and new beauty and frogrance to flowers." CONVERSATION V. "It seems to me, my dear uncle, that you occasionally forget . yourself. In our last conversation you seem to regret re-gret the past, and to think that our lot is cast in peculiarly evil times. Yet you had told me previously that you considered, one generation about as good as another." "You are hypercritical, Dick, and make no allowance for the imperfection of the human mind, which ordinarily CrtTIBlrt'q thif ffp linrfa-. arn,.in 0r., Evils that we see impress us more than those we merely read of. And the virtues vir-tues of past ages loom up in our view far larger than those which are practiced prac-ticed half in secret in our own times. We forget the evils of the past in the contemplation of those of the present, and the virtues of the present in the contemplation of those of the past. What if, when considering the worth of past times and the evils of the present, pres-ent, we speak out as we feel, without stopping to see whether, if a just baW ance were struck, the two periods might not, upon the whole, appear equal? Moreover, when I contrast the nineteenth nine-teenth century with the thirteenth, I am really only contrasting your Protestantism Pro-testantism with my Catholicity. Catholicity Cath-olicity has not changed, and real Catholics Cath-olics are substantially now what they were then. Some things they have lost which I regret. Oothers they have gained, which may, perhaps, upon a general average, compensate for what they have lost. But this age, regarded as distinct from what is purely the church, is Protestant, and the literature which is its exponent is non-Catholic. It is of our age in that it is non-Cath-lic I speak, when I contrast it with past timgs. It is, in so far as it has renounced re-nounced reason for sentiment, rational for sensitive love, charity for philanthropy, philan-thropy, law for rebellion, authority for anarchy, the church for humanity. God for the devil, that I speak of. and tell you its real character and tendency. I wish to show you the shallow and destructive de-structive nature of the principles and maxims of this non-Catholic age, which young men like you mistake for truth and wisdom, and by which you are seduced se-duced from all good, and involved in misery and wretchedness." lou speak of us, uncle, as seuucea, and warn us against the fatal tendency of our principles and maxims; but you forget that the world has been governed gov-erned for six thousand years on your principles and maxims, and that during dur-ing all that period vice and crime, misery mis-ery and . wretchedness have abounded. The whole world rises up in witness against your kings, priests and nobilities. nobili-ties. You have had your day and done your best; let us now have ours. We can hardly make worse work of it than you have done." 'Spoken like a philosopher of the nineteenth century or a foolish young man, my dear Dick. If, with the principles prin-ciples and maxima which have formed the basis of moral order in the past, so much iniquity has abounded, and so much misery has been suffered, what would the world have been without them? If the priests and rulers of the world have been so wicked and wretched, wretch-ed, what would it have been if it had had none? You are mistaken that the world has been in the past really governed gov-erned by the principles and maxims I contend for. They have always beeen asserted, but they have not always been obeyed. Indeed, only a small minority mi-nority of mankind hfve been uniformly uniform-ly faithful to them. Though admitted In theory, the majority have generally violated them in practice, and yielded to the seductions of the flesh, instead of walking according to the spirit. But in i so far as mankind have been faithful to the principles you and your party reject, they have been virtuous, prosperous pros-perous and happy. The evil3 which j they have done or suffered, have uniformly uni-formly resulted from disobedience to them, not from obedience. Your objections ob-jections to the religious world is shallow, shal-low, and your excuse for yourself is of no avail." "But you ask me, Uncle Jack, to embrace em-brace your church. You tell me that she is" the divinely instituted medium for the regeneration of man and society. You claim for her a supernatural power, and hold that her omnipotent founder, her celestial bridegroom, is always with her, to aid her in accom plishing her work. And yet I find that political and social evils have always abounded in the Catholic countries. There have been in Catholic countries kings and aristocrats, tyrants and oppressors, op-pressors, the distinctions of the noUfc? and the ignoble, and of the rich and poor. The history of professedly Catholic Cath-olic nations presents the same monotonous monot-onous picture of vice and crime, violence vio-lence and bloodshed, war and rapine, public and private miseries, presented by that of heretical and infidel nations. Whence comes this, if your church be what she professes to be? Why does she not use her power to make her sovereigns sov-ereigns rule justly? Why does she not assert the equality of all men, and compel com-pel all to live together as brothers? I listen to her magnificent. promises, and my imagination, if not my heart, is captivated; cap-tivated; I turn over the records of her history in vain to find their fulfillment." fulfill-ment." (To Be Continued.) |