jubilee. The most favourite patrons are St. Michael, the Blessed Virgin, John the Baptist; and among the Abyssinian saints Tekla Haimanout, and Gabra Menfos Kouddos. (The latter name signifies "Slave of the Holy Spirit.") Major Harris says, "S. Michael and the Holy Virgin are here venerated as in no other country in the world-the former as the martial leader of all the choirs of angels, the latter as chief of all saints and queen of heaven and earth, and both are considered as the great intercessors for mankind" (vol. iii. p. 151).

The fasts in the Abyssinian Church are very numerous and very severe. Their Lent lasts fifty-five days; their Advent fast the last ten days of October and the whole of November; "the fast of the Apostles," from ten to forty days; "the fast of the Holy Virgin," sixteen days; "the fast of Jonas," three days; besides the Wednesdays and Fridays. They require altogether nearly two hundred and sixty days of fasting throughout the year, and it appears that they are pretty faithfully observed. Their custom does not permit eating on fastdays till late in the afternoon, except on Saturdays and Sundays in the long fasts, and their diet is unpalatable, consisting of dried peas or spinach, with a vegetable oil of disagreeable taste. They have a very singular rule for determining the time of day when they may eat in ordinary fasting-time. It is regulated by the length of a man's shadow, measured by his own feet. Thus, in Advent, during each day, a man does not eat until his shadow measures nine and a half feet. During Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the priests and rigidly devout eat nothing whatever, but fast absolutely for forty-eight hours. As to the Lent fast, we have again to notice a Jewish practice. They scrupulously cleanse and polish all the culinary utensils, that no particle of meat or prohibited food may remain upon them.

It may be said that, on the whole, and notwithstanding the many highly interesting points of contact between it and Catholicism, the Abyssinian schism presents, in a remarkable manner, the aspect of a corrupt Church. The phrase is applied falsely by Protestants to the Catholic Church, with her majestic organization, her firm and complete possession of truth, losing nothing, adding nothing, but handing down from age to age all she has received, fortified, as may be needed, against the evervaried assaults of heresy, and only more fully and harmoniously exhibited as time proceeds. But in Abyssinia, whilst, as it were by accident, certain great truths and salutary practices have been retained, some have been placed in extravagant and disproportionate prominence, others have been lost or are denied, a whole brood of dubious or un-Christian practices have

been adopted from Judaism, and doctrine has pullulated with a sort of vermiculate growth into strange forms. Side by side with a cruel rigorism in some things, we observe elsewhere a licence which the pure morality of the Catholic Church would not tolerate for an instant.

Hence, we are not surprised that in the Abyssinian as in the Greek schism there exists a bitter hostility to the Catholic Church, that all the influence of the Abuna is exerted to keep Catholic missionaries out of the country, whilst, on the other hand, he favours and encourages the settlement of Protestants. We may be certain that his instinct does not deceive him, and that let the saint-worship of the Abyssinians be as unbounded as they please, the law laid down by De Maistre will be strictly verified-Toute église schismatique est Protestante. It is very certain, however, that there are also many in Abyssinia who desire to be united with the Holy See. For a short time, the efforts of the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century obtained a public reconciliation by the royal authority; and although this was swept away by lamentable convulsions, the seed has never been lost. It may here be interesting to place before the reader the grounds upon which the Abyssinian schismatics endeavour to justify their estrangement from the Holy See. The following abstract of them is supplied in the letter already quoted from a native Abyssinian Catholic.

says:

Among the other objections commonly alleged by the schismatical writers in their ecclesiastical history, and of which they offer solutions, are the following, literally quoted. Whether the Roman Church, the see of Peter, is greater than other churches, from the fact that Christ said to him, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church?" Again, whether Christ put forth these words because of the Roman Church alone, or rather because of the universal Church, which is from the beginning unto the end, one and not manifold? They reply, We know not how one is greater than another, one inferior and another superior. For it is not after the manner of the synagogue of Jerusalem, which was greater than other synagogues, in which they neither sacrificed nor adored; it is not so, but as Christ is one, so the Church is one, which He gained by His blood. Wherefore the fathers of the second œcumenical council taught in these words: We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,—be it observed, they did not say in two, but in one. Accordingly, if it is true that the Roman is greater than other churches, we ought to say, we believe in greater and lesser churches. God forbid. As you divide Christ into two natures, do you so divide His Church? Christ is one, and the Church is one, and we believe in one. *

*Schismatici scriptores in eorum historiâ ecclesiasticâ, inter cæteras objectiones quas passim afferre solent, atque ab ipsis solvi, ad litteram sic habent.

As if the body did not derive unity from the head, or as if the removal of the head would not at once destroy unity in the whole body, and disintegrate all its elements. It is noticeable also how their deep-rooted heresy about the divine and human natures appears where you would scarcely expect it in a dispute on the supremacy of the Chair of Peter. It is, nevertheless, very curious that one of the Abyssinian church books, called "The Court of Emperors" [so styled by our native authority above mentioned, who means, we presume, the Fathe Negest, "The King's Court, or Book of Laws," in Krapf's catalogue of Abyssinian literature], ascribed to the fathers of the Council of Nice, and said to have been given by them to the emperor Constantine, contains testimony of the strongest kind to the supremacy of the Holy See, declaring the necessity of four patriarchs from the analogy of the four Gospels, the four rivers of Paradise, the four seasons, winds and elements, and that the head and judge among those four patriarchs is the bishop of the Roman See, even as Peter, to whom was given power over all the princes and congregations of Christians. We do not refer to this by way of laying stress on the passage in itself, because the name "patriarch" shows that it must be taken from the apocryphal canons of the Council of Nice. But it is singular that it should occur in a book held in veneration by the Abyssinians, as the writer states, beyond any other book, perhaps not excepting, so to speak, the Gospel itself. He exclaims, humorously, "Woe to him that contradicts it! They would flay him alive like S. Bartholomew." When this passage is cited against the Abyssinian divines, they say, "We have been long separated, and custom has the force of law." When one goes on to question them, he says that they play with words, and talk irrelevantly, canunt cxtra chorum. A Catholic missionary, the Rev. F. Leon des Avanchers, writes, in 1850,

Utrum major sit ecclesia Romana, Petri sedes, aliis ecclesiis, ex eo quod Christus ei dixerit, Tu es Petrus, et supra hanc petram ædificabo ecclesiam meam? Rursus, num Christus protulit hæc verba propter solam ecclesiam Romanam, an vero propter universam ecclesiam, quæ est a fine usque ad finem, una et non multiplex? Respondent, Nescimus quomodo una major sit alterâ, una inferior et altera superior. Non est enim quemadmodum synagoga Jerusalem, quæ fuit major aliis synagogis, in quibus nec sacrificabant nec adorabant, non est sic, sed sicut unus est Christus, ita ecclesia una, quam acquisivit suo sanguine. Propterea patres secundi concilii cecumenici docuerunt his verbis:-Credimus in unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et apostolicam,- notandum, non dixere in duas sed in unam. Itaque, si verum est Romanam esse majorem aliis, nos dicere debemus, crcdimus in majores et minores ecclesias. Absit. Num sicut Christum in duas naturas dividitis, ita ecclesiam ejus? Unus est Christus, et una ecclesia, et nos credimus in unam.

Although the Christians of Abyssinia profess the error of Dioscorus,.... a great number of them live in utter ignorance of the matter, and think that their bishop, or the Abuna, sent to them by the schismatic patriarch of Cairo, is in communication with the pope." *

In fact, the extreme impatience shown by the Abuna of the action of Catholic missionaries in the country, their recent expulsion, and the severe persecution sustained by those who hold to them, clearly show that a powerful movement exists in that direction. We find that, in 1849, while Mgr. de Jacobis received episcopal consecration as bishop of Nilopolis, and by an extraordinary exception passed over from the Latin to the Ethiopian, Monsignor Massaia, V.A. of the Gallas, ordained at the same time twenty-five native priests. About the same time, Teclafa, the superior of one thousand monks, was converted, with his whole monastery, to the Catholic Church, and afterwards formed three congregations in the true fold. Some years previously, in 1842, Krapf, the Protestant missionary, speaks of Ubie, the chief of Tigré, as "working so strenuously in the interests of Rome, that the Abuna could not prevail upon the prince to cherish the Abyssinian Church to which he belonged." For the moment, no doubt, the prospects of Catholicism in this country are under a cloud, in spite of the truly apostolic labours and sufferings of the excellent Mgr. de Jacobis, to whose virtues the Protestant traveller Parkyns renders a generous tribute. The strong and newly constituted ruler of Abyssinia backs the Abuna in his hostility to the Catholic faith, and as the good Abyssinian priest, to whom we have been indebted for so much curious information, writes (on Oct. 8th, 1853), "they are both of the same lump (della stessa farina) and purpose, the one in religion, and the other in government, to have the world sub ditione unâ. But let us hope after the tempest will succeed a calm." In this aspiration we heartily unite; and, improbable as it is that these words will ever make their way to those distant regions, we should be glad to imagine that the Abyssinian Catholics, pining in dungeons under a rude tyranny, yet preserving the flame of pure religion burning in their bosoms, could know that they have the deep sympathy and fervent prayers of many widely removed from them in blood and in all earthly associations, yet indissolubly one with them in the faith of Christ and the communion of His vicar upon earth.

* "Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," vol. xiv. p. 370. For many interesting details relating to Catholic missions in Abyssinia, see Marshall's "Christian Missions," vol. ii. ch. vii.

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ART. III.-INTRINSIC END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

Du Spirituel et du Temporel dans l'Eglise. Lettre de Monseigneur [Parisis] l'Evêque d'Arras à Son Excellence M. Thouvenel. Paris, 1860.

"A RECIPROCAL benefit," says M. Thouvenel, as quoted in

this most telling little work-" a reciprocal benefit has irrevocably accrued to modern societies in the separation which has been accomplished in the two domains of the religious and political order." The expression, indeed, in itself is somewhat vague; but, as used by M. Thouvenel and other politicians of his school, it has a most definite and intelligible meaning. "The State, as such, has no religion; has no concern with revelation; nor any obligation of listening to the Church's voice: political science is wholly independent of theological." There is no principle which the revolutionary party throughout Europe regards as more fundamental than this; and there is none which more gives to that party its distinctive character.*

On the other hand, if we would know what judgment has been pronounced on this principle by the highest earthly authority, let us study the allocution delivered by the reigning Pontiff in June, 1862. In that allocution, the Holy Father describes at some length the tenets of those evil men who are now banded together against every high and holy interest. And what is it which he places at the very head of those errors? "They blush not," he says, "to assert that the knowledge of philosophical and moral truth, and also that the laws of a nation, may and ought to withdraw themselves from [the jurisdiction of Divine revelation and the Church's authority." + "That philosophical and moral study should be independent of the Church's authority:" here is rationalism. "That a nation's laws should be thus independent:" here is revo

* Après avoir d'âge en âge triomphé successivement des sanglantes persécutions du glaive, des sophismes acharnés de l'hérésie, et de l'effroyable dépravation de ses propres enfans, l'Eglise s'est trouvé en présence d'un ennemi nouveau qu'on peut appeller la politique des gouvernmens. Cette politique... c'était au fond la cause des intérêts matériels et de l'orgueil humain luttant contre l'intérêt des âmes et le régne de Dieu.-De l'Eglise et l'Etat, par Mgr. Parisis, p. 4.

Haud erubescunt asserere philosophicarum rerum morumque scientiam, itemque civiles leges, posse et debere à Divinâ revelatione et ecclesiæ auctoritate declinare.