Types of Holiness
L'Abbi Tempate : Armand de Ranee. By Henri Bremond.
The Secret of the Cur# d'Ars. By Henri Ghéon. Trans. by F. A.
gheed. (Sheed and Ward. 7s. -6d.) 11- is, perhaps, in studying religious genius in relation to its historical surroundings that we receive our clearest impressions of a mysterious directive agency at work within human affairs. saints, and those vigorous spiritual teachers and reformers who yet fall short of the serene heights of holiness, seem always to appear because they are required to fill a certain place ; and against all odds—often enough against their own preferences— they somehow reach that place. Thus did a peasant's son, too dull to pass the simplest examinations, become the inspired director of thousands of souls. Thus " an ascetic High Church don" took the world for his parish ; and founded, without intending to, the greatest of dissenting sects. Thus the child pf a poor dressmaker in a North Italian village became the most saintly of modern popes. Often his very excesses and peculiarities provide the special material out of which the spiritual genius makes his success, reminding us that holiness is not a sort of whitewash, but an extra dower of vitality, which can turn to its own account the most unlikely qualities of man. Wesley, says Mr. Lunn in his vivid and interesting biographical sketch, was "a genuine eccentric" who "has no duplicate in ecclesiastical history." The same might be said in even stronger terms of the Cure d'Ars ; in whom utter simplicity and amazing spiritual transcendence are strangely combined with abnormal psychic powers. Again, in that spiritual Zoo of seventeenth -century France, which the Abbe Bremond has made peculiarly his own, we find characters of every size and kind of strangeness, from the most gentle to the most violent, and emerging from every level of society from the humblest to the most highly cultured ; each making, by means of his peculiar power and temper, his unique contri_ bution to the up-building of the supernatural life. • Among the resulting contrasts, few are more absolute, more arresting—or for the student of religion more instructive —than that which provides a chief interest of M. Bremond's new monograph : the opposition of ideals and of temperament between 11Iabillon, the saintly Benedictine scholar, and De Ranee, the tempestuous reformer of La Trappe. With an ironic wit which veils a profound earnestness, and that insight which belongs to a historian who is a phil- osopher too, the Abbe tells the astonishing story of De Rance: the child of a religious order- so corrupt, that before he was twelve years old he was titular Abbot of four mon- asteries, drawing from them a huge income for his private nse—whose relations with Madame de Montbazon are at least open to suspicion—and who yet became the most uncompromising of monastic reformers. True, as M. Bremond reminds us, De Ranee fell short of the full measure of holiness ; since " God is not in the storm." But the fury of asceticism in which he undertook to restore La Trappe to the primitive ideals of Clairvaux, the genuine horror which he felt for Mabillon's wise and genial encouragement of secular studies at Saint-Maur, are extreme instances of a Puritanic fervour which recurs in saintly temperaments of many different types. The Cure d'Ars, forbidding all flowers to the little girls at his orphanage in the interests of their souls, Wesley founding a school where there was- no provision for holidays, and arranging that any children of his own marriage should be consigned to this inhuman baby farm, manifest the same spirit. Yet this other-worldly rigourism does not exclude a deep tenderness of feeling. De Rance was the most sympathetic of fathers to his monks. Wesley, severe to his disciples, could yet preach -the very English doctrine that animals had their place in the plan of Salvation, and would enjoy in heaven "a state of exalted happiness." As for the Cure d'Ars, the secret of his power is summed up by M. Gheon in a beautiful passage :— "What was most wonderful was that neither wearineis, nor illness, nor age made the slightest alteration in the miraculous evenness of his temper. He came out of the confessional overborne by the weight of hinnan sin ; he came down from the pulpit, his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken with the force of his entreaties ; to mingle with the throng, daily larger and more pressing, which bore in upon him from all sides, in the street, in the sacristy, in the nave of the church: and crowded, jostled, pulled this way and that, he .never for an instant lost his smile, his gentleness, the perfection of his courtesy. In this you have the very heart of his sanctity ; unyielding on matters of principle, unwearied in his love for men ; pitiless to himself, full of gentleness and reverence to his neighbour."
Nevertheless, in the Cure, as in so many of the saints, this perfection of charity was consistent with a remarkably shrewd judgment of character, and an alert and ready wit. A lady of rank asked him for relics. He answered Let her make some herself ! " And to another candidate for personal attention, who wanted to know "how to go to God," lie merely replied, "Quite straight—like a cannon ball."
Perhaps this last epigram comes as near as may be to. defining • the inner secret of all sanctity. However various the ways in which it is expressed, it always manifests a certain intrepid directness, a single-minded concentration upon God ; which confers a superhuman staying-power. The saint may not abound in pious observations and special devotions, or otherwise fulfil the expectations of the world. Ile may or may not do or bear abnormal things. But all that he says and does has one intention and points one way : and perhaps because of this absence of conflicting interests he has a power of endurance, a capacity for work, unknown to other men. De Rance eliminated from his life all allevia- tions, and many things we suppose to be necessities ; and flourished none the less. The Cure d'Ars, at the height of his career, existed on a minimum of food and sleep, and often spent sixteen to twenty hours a day in the Confessional. Wesley, requiring his ministers to avoid "intemperance in sleep" and be ready to preach at 5 a.m., was only asking others to live as he did till over eighty years of age. Intensive study, ceaseless work, and self-oblivious devotion to duty, took Giuseppe Sarto all the way from the village school to the Vatican ; and thence to the tomb in St. Peter's which has already become a shrine. Such careers as these are not nourished by "spiritual feelings," but by the strong mixed diet of "love, suffering, and work" which brings the soul's
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