WHY IS THE MASS SAID IN LATIN?

 The following article is well worth reading. Although it is long, do read the description of the one great Act. ---

WHY IS THE MASS SAID IN LATIN?

BY the Rev. GEORGE BAMPFIELD.

From Our Faith and Belief, 1917

Pg 558 of 761

 

I

"And yon, an Englishman of the Nineteenth century, brought up in a Protestant school, and in a Protestant University, you boldly say that it is right and well for the Mass to be said in Latin!"

 I do. Righter and better, more reasonable, and more Scriptural —yes, you may open your eyes, more Scriptural—than to say it in English.

"Well!  If that is not wonderful! Why!  I went the other day into your church. There was bending and bowing, and standing and kneeling, boys going here, and boys going there, lighting of candles and swinging of incense, the choir singing, and the priest trying to sing, and a thundering big organ drowning everybody in the church with a deluge of sound, but what it was all about I could not for the life of me understand. The choir sang in Latin, and the priest sang in Latin—at least I suppose it was Latin, it certainly was not English.

—and when he was not singing you could not hear a word he said. Why, he had his back turned to you nearly all the time, and he spoke quite low to himself, he didn't seem to want anybody to hear; so I came out of the church quite puzzled. I had not said a single prayer, and I had not the slightest idea what it all meant."

 I fully understand you, and I thoroughly feel for you. You Protestants, when first you come into our churches, must think us the queerest of creatures. I remember how puzzled I was at the first grand Mass I ever saw, a day or two after I became a Catholic. I had never been in a Catholic church before, except to look at the architecture, and I sadly disappointed the good priests pf the church, who thought I should be delighted, by telling them honestly that the whole thing was to me a Chinese puzzle, and that I did not enjoy it a bit I can quite feel for you: it must be very, very hard for you. But now, tell me this: Did you look about you at all at the other people in the Church?

 "Well! yes; I did: there was nothing much else for me to do."

 Well, now; The poor Catholics in the church, the old applewoman, and the dirty old beggarman, and the hornyhanded labourer, did they seem puzzled like yourself, or did they look as if they were quite at home and knew all about it?

 "I must say they looked very attentive, and they seemed really to be saying prayers. There was that funny old Bridget McGrath, I could not help looking at her: she kept lifting her eyes up, and spreading her hands out, and beating her breast, and sometimes groaning a little, and really—though I did feel a trifle inclined to laugh—yet there was that look of awe and devotion about the queer old creature's face, that one could not help seeing that she was in earnest. And most of the people, even the children, seemed, I fancy, to understand.”

 Was there any part of the service at which they all seemed more devout than at another?

 "Well! yes, there was; it was when a bell tinkled two or three times, and the music stopped, and the choir did not sing, and the priest knelt just for a moment, and the people bowed down their heads, and there was such a strange hush and silence through the church that I felt half frightened, and bowed my own head, I scarcely knew why. Even poor Bridget was quieter than usual, and just whispered under her breath, 'Ah! dearest Lord/ I think it was; something of the sort."

 Were the children quiet?

 "Yes; they were quiet too."

 Well! you see; their all showing devotion at one time more than another proves that they all knew something about it. It was not all music and show. They were not staring at the organ and the singers, were they, all the time, or looking at the little boys with candles?

 "No: only the Protestants did that"

 And were there many poor in the church, or was if only poor Bridget, and a few other old things?

 "Oh! it was crammed with poor people."

 There it is: poor people would not come Sunday after Sunday  to a worship of which they could make neither head nor tail. Somehow or other this Latin, which seems to you so terrible, neither frightens the poor nor puzzles them. Really they seem to like Latin better than English, for when I go sometimes into Protestant churches, where everything is in English, I see what is called a highly respectable" congregation, but I see no dirt and rags. Now, as a matter of my own taste I don't like dirt and I don't like rags, but I do like to see the dirty and the ragged not afraid to go into the House of God. I think you will grant that our Latin Mass draws the poor more than your English prayers?

 "You do get the poor somehow, spite of the Latin."

 We do, and that is what I want you to think about It does not follow because you are puzzled when you come into our churches, that even poor and ill-taught Catholics are puzzled also. Our poor, though they know not a word of Latin, understand our Latin Mass far better than your poor understand your English prayers. That they love it better is quite clear from our crowded churches and your empty ones. A Latin Mass brings together a reverent crowd of praying poor; English prayers bring together a comfortable assembly of the well-to-do.

 "You are hard upon us; yet there is some truth in what you say. For all that you have not given us yet any reason for the Mass being in Latin!"

 No, I have not, that will come bye-and-bye. I have merely forced upon you the fact that our poor do understand their Mass, so far as outward appearances go. I have shown you that our Catholic poor are not, as a matter of fact, puzzled by the Mass being in Latin, and that, so far as we can judge from their outward conduct, they know what they are about at the Latin Mass. If we are to judge of things by their fruits, the fruit of the Latin Mass is better than the fruit of the English prayers. If this is so, the understanding of the Mass, though it be in Latin, cannot be so terribly hard a thing, and if you are puzzled by it, the fault, I fancy, must be your own. A little trouble would make it as easy to you as to them.

 Now, my next step is to show you how this comes about; it is a strange thing that the poor ignorant creatures should not be puzzled by Latin, and proves that there is something underneath, matters into which you have not yet enquired. When you see why the poor are not puzzled you will see also why there would be no earthly use in the Mass being in English. There are two things I have to prove to you: 1. That there is no use in the Mass being in English; 2. That there is much use in its being in Latin. We will take the first point to-day, that there is no earthly reason for the Mass being in English, and that so far as the devotions of the people go, they would be as earnest and warm, and devout, if the Mass was said in ancient Arabic or modern Chinese as if it was said in English. There are other good reasons why Latin should be the tongue, but so far as people's prayers go, it matters not what the tongue is which the Priest is using.

 "No matter! Why! If our clergyman was to pray in French, and read the Bible in Spanish, and preach in Italian, what would be the good of it all to us?"

 What indeed? But then, you see, your service is not our service; our Mass is a different thing from your Morning and Evening Prayers. If your clergyman read your prayers in Latin it would be very absurd, but when our clergyman reads our Mass in Latin it is not at all absurd.

 "Oh! you are always full of your puzzles. What is this mighty difference?"

 Don't lose your temper with me; but tell me quietly; at your service, what is it your clergyman and you do?

 "He prays, preaches, and reads the Bible, and there are psalms and hymns sung."

 Nothing else?

 "Nothing, except on Communion Sundays; but most people

don't stop to that."

 Then supposing it was all in Latin, or supposing you were a Frenchman and did not know one word of English, there would be nothing whatever in which you could join?

 "Nothing whatever; there's that poor girl, the French servant at Lord Strange's, who comes without any bonnet on, I believe she's some sort of a Protestant; but she does look so puzzled in church; she yawns and fidgets and makes great eyes at the clergyman, and the children declare she reads a French novel half the time."

 I don't wonder; but you see our people don't yawn and fidget and make great eyes; and I will tell you why. In the first place it sounds a queer question to ask, but I suppose you know that the Priest preaches not in Latin, but in English?

 "Does he? You surprise me. I was always told he preached in Latin."

 God forgive those who told you! It is strange indeed that such monstrous falsehoods should be spread, even by religious men. What odd consciences they must have! No: our Priest preaches in English, else where would be the good of his preaching? And though for

good reasons he reads the Bible in Latin, yet he reads it immediately afterwards to the people in English.

 "Read the Bible! The Bible! You!"

 Every Sunday in the English tongue. You've been told, of course, that we never read the Bible.

 "I have often."

 Great is Diana of the Ephesians; magnificent in its way is that unearthly power of lying which the truth-loving English enjoy on all Catholic matters.

 "Then if the Priest preaches and reads the Bible in English, why does he pray in Latin? It makes it queerer still."

 He is not only praying; he is doing a work which is greater than prayer; and the people join with him not in the words he is saying, but in the work he is doing. He does not want them to join in the words he is saying; he would rather they did not; so little does he want them to join that he says half the prayers, not only in Latin, but quite low to himself: let the people use their own words, say their own prayers, point out to God their own wants, for each heart knows its own grief, and no shoulder bears the same Cross; let many different prayers therefore arise to Heaven, so long as all join in the one great Act, the grand Work, which gives to all the different prayers their value.

 "What is that one great Act?"

 Sacrifice. Sacrifice is the worship of God. The Jews of old time had their synagogues—their chapels—all over the Holy Land, and in these synagogues they preached and read the Bible, and prayed. That was good, but it was not the worship of God. The worship of God, the true grand worship of God, was in the Temple, where daily, morning and evening, the Lamb was offered to God and died —a blameless martyr—to the honour of Him who made it. It was to this worship that three times a year the Jews were ordered, at no little cost and weariness, to travel up. It was the loss of this that made David weep when he was in exile. The Synagogue—the Bible, the Sermon, the Prayer,—was not enough: it was for sacrifice, for the worship of God, that he yearned. Now your service is the service of the Synagogue, ours is the service of the Temple. The sacrifice of the Temple is greater than the prayers of the Synagogue.

 "But were there no public prayers at the time of sacrifice?"

 If there were, they were not the great thing.  What God ordered was the sacrifice; we nowhere read that he ordered any form of prayers, what the people were to do was to be present at the sacrifice; each man said his own prayers; the Pharisee his prayer of unholy thanksgiving; this Publican his prayer of holier repentance; David his bitter prayer of sorrow for his sin, of anxiety for his dying babe, or for his sinning Absolom; Hannah, her  supplication that she might have a child; Simeon his earnest cries for the coming of his Lord; but all through the same sacrifice, as each man felt his want. It is quite curious to read what careful directions God gives to Moses for altar, and vestment, and incense, and candlestick, and every act and movement of the Priest; but of any form of public prayer no mention whatever. For sin even of ignorance, in thanksgiving for mercies, to ask for future blessings, to turn away dangers, or as an act of simple worship of the Great God, for all these things is ordered Sacrifice, for none of these things a form of prayer. And the duties of the people were two: 1. To be present in the Temple while the Priest sacrificed; 2. To feed upon certain parts of the victim. They joined with the Priest in his Act, his great Work, of sacrificing; they joined with the Priest in his feast, in feeding upon the victim; they did not join with the Priest in any public prayer or in any words said. Sometimes they could not see what he was doing, much less hear anything he said; yet they knew what he was doing, and joined in it. When the High Priest went once a year on the day of Atonement into the Holy of Holies, bearing the blood of the sacrifice, he went alone, and the people were without, not even seeing his action, certainly not joining in any words, but knowing what his action was, and knowing that it was being done, and joining in it, each offering the victim's Wood with the Priest, each with his own prayers, each for his own needs. When Zacharias, S. Luke tells us, went into the Temple of the Lord to offer incense, "all the multitude of the people were praying without," at the hour of incense; not seeing his action, but joining in it, doing it with him, offering with him the incense to God, each with his own prayers, each for his own wants.

 Clearly, therefore, whatever prayers the High Priest might say in the Holy of Holies, Zachary at the altar of incense, it could not matter to the people in what language he said them. In the synagogue it would matter, because in the synagogue there was no sacrifice, nothing being done but prayer, and therefore, if the prayers were in a foreign tongue, there would be nothing whatever in which the people could join. But in the Temple it would not matter. The people joined in the Act of the Priests, not in any words of his; and therefore, if he spoke in the ancient Hebrew, as not impossibly he did, at a time when the people only understood Syriac, they would equally be able to join in all that they joined in before. The tongue would not be understood by the people, the Act would be understood by the people. In the synagogue, the Prayers, Bible, Preaching, in Syriac; in the Temple, at the Sacrifice, any tongue under the sun might be used for anything it would matter to the people.

 So is it still with the Mass. Mass is the everlasting offering of the true Lamb of God. It is the highest Action that is done on earth. Our Blessed Lord, when he was going to Heaven to present to His Father His five wounds there, took thought for His Father's worship on earth, and left Himself on earth as the only Worship that was worthy of His Father. And the unceasing offering of the Lamb that was slain, not indeed the slaying It, for It died but once, but the one unceasing offering It, is the great work of Mass. Mark you, I am not now proving to you the truth of our doctrine about Mass; that would take me too long; what I am now doing is showing you, that with our doctrine and our worship the use of Latin is reasonable and useful, and better than the use of English. We will suppose that it is true that the Catholic Priest is not only as much a Priest as the son of Aaron, but an infinitely greater Priest; we will suppose it true that the Lamb on the Catholic altar is a sacrifice infinitely higher and greater than the Lamb in the Jewish Temple; and then I say the same rule holds good for the Catholic as held good for the Jew: let each man join in the Great Act, offer the same Sacrifice, put up to God the same Five Wounds, the same crucified Body of God, the same saving Blood, but let each man offer It up in his own prayers, and for his own wants, for each man's need is different, and no one carries the same Cross.

 Think for one moment of the great worship of God that was done on Calvary. The greatest act of worship ever done was done there by the greatest Priest, the only Priest; but it was done in silence Mary, 8. John, and the Magdalen were beneath, and knew what the great Act was, and as Abraham offered Isaac, so Mary, herself martyred, joined in the sacrifice of her Son; but seven times only amidst the thick darkness rang out the voice of the High Priest, nor always then in prayer. Not all three of those who stood beneath prayed surely the same prayer; one was the prayer of the Magdalen who saw there before her eyes the terrible work of her own sins, who crouched at her Lord's feet that those scarlet sins of hers might, as the blood dropped down, become white as wool; and another was the prayer of him, the innocent one, the Virgin friend of the Virgin Heart, who had entered by right of his innocence into all its tenderness, and understood the depths of its love; and another still the Mother's prayer, who drew from that slow dripping blood a higher, grander salvation than we all, who, saved more than we, had a work to do more than we, and a right to stand there offering the Son who saved her, the blood which she had given Him for us, who were not yet saved, who were not yet one with Him. Each his own prayer, each his own thoughts, as they stood beneath the Cross, but all joined in the one Sacrifice, and to all their prayers and thoughts that one great Act gave their value.

 So is it still. It matters not what the language be which the Priest may use at the Catholic Altar; what the people join in is the great Act of worship, not any form of prayer: as the Jew in God's Temple at Jerusalem, as Mary and John and the Magdalen at the foot of the Lamb, bleeding His life, in that Act of awful, hushed, worship, so silently away.

II

"You still have to show me, why, if it matters not much as regards the people what the language is, Latin should be the tongue actually used. You have not answered that question yet."

 No: I have not. I have put and answered a question that must go before it: Why need not the Mass be in English?

 "Because the Mass is a Sacrifice, you say."

 Yes. Prayer is something said to God; Sacrifice is something done to God. In Prayer the words are all; in Sacrifice the thing done is first, the words said are second. Sacrifice is a gift given; in a gift the grand thing is the act of giving, not the speaking of any particular word. When a multitude of people join in bringing a gift to God, each man of the multitude may have a different reason for bringing the gift. One may be in trouble and bring the gift to get out of his trouble; his neighbour may be in joy and bring the gift to thank God for his joy; a third in temptation, a fourth in sin,—all four bring the same gift, though for different reasons. The important point is that they should all join in offering the one gift, which gift is Jesus Christ: not that they should all join in the same words; joyful words could not express the sad man's sorrow, and sad words would not tell to God the happy man's joy; but both joyful and sorrowful tell their joy and their sorrow to God by the same gift, by the offering of the same Jesus Christ. The one thing required then is that all men should join in the act of Sacrifice; but a form of prayer—prayer in the vulgar tongue which would force itself upon the ear—would be in the way at the Sacrifice of the Mass. It is not the idea or wish of the Church, that her priest should pray aloud, and be heard, and take the people with him; she leaves the people each man to his own freedom of prayer. Mass is a time of silent prayers, all put up through the one great Sacrifice. Sacrifice, and prayer without Sacrifice, are in the Church's eyes different things. When in the Catholic Church we have what you would call public prayer or common prayer, then our prayers are in English. The evening service in most, or very many, Catholic churches is in English.

 "You have prayers in English!"

 Certainly: both more prayers and more beautiful prayers than any in your Common Prayer Book. There is no end to the variety of Catholic devotions. All the good parts of your Common Prayer Book are sparkles of devotion that you have stolen—and, between you and me, spoiled in the stealing—from Catholic sources. You have no devotion to our dearest Lord half so tender as our Litany of Jesus. You have no prayers about the Passion half so touching as our "Stations of the Cross." The best even of your hymns are ours. From S. Bernard down to Fr. Faber you take of our treasures and use them, and turn round upon us and tell us we do not pray. We have plenty of English prayers, plenty of English hymns, and give them to the people at our evening service. But at the Holy Sacrifice we choose to leave the people at liberty. We think, as many Protestants think, that one common form of prayer can never express the devotion of all hearts: Protestants feel this and try to escape the difficulty by extempore prayer: the Catholic Church knew it long before, and while she bids the people ever do the same act, offer the same Sacrifice, pray through the same wounded Lord, she leaves them to put up each his own extempore prayer; one day the prayer of sorrow, one day the thanksgiving of joy, and a third day the agonised cry of the tempted and failing. The Sacrifice must be the same for all, the Prayer may be different for each.

 I am dwelling on this and doing little more than repeating over again what I have already said, because it seems to me so hard for you to understand the difference between our Sacrifice and your Common Prayer. English people have quite lost the notion of Sacrifice. Among the peoples of the earth, from the Creation until now, the English stand almost alone in this. Theycannotunderstand, therefore, praying at a Sacrifice, and their notion of our Mass is a set of Latin prayers, in which the people are positively idle, doing nothing, saying nothing, because they understand nothing. Whereas in fact the people are hard at work the whole time, joining with the Priest in his great act, and praying, not indeed the same prayers as he, but each his own prayer, the whole time, as you can see for yourself if you will but enter a Catholic church and watch them.

 There is another difference between our Mass and your public prayers, a difference which makes it not untrue for me to say —though it would startle you, I know—that the Latin of the Mass is really a tongue "understood by the people."

 "Latin understood by the people? Yon do startle me indeed!"

 I did not say Latin, but the Latin of the Mass. The difference is this. The larger part of your service is every day different; there are two or three different Psalms and two different chapters of the Bible at each service, and Psalms and Scripture-reading make the largest part of your Common Prayer. People, therefore, rich or poor, can hardly get to know it by heart. But it is not so with our Mass; the larger part of our Mass, like your Communion Service, is every day the same. Day by day the same service—nay! I know what you are going to say, we do not tire of it, there is no shadow of fear that we should weary of it—day by day the same service, a short service too, is gone through. For those who read there are  translations of the Mass into English in their sixpenny prayer-books side by side with the Latin; and the dullest and poorest can pray by themselves in English if they please, the same prayers which the Priest is praying by himself in Latin. Nay! with a very little help they understand the Latin of the Mass almost as well as the Priest himself. I am sure the boys of my parish school do. Just look at that little fellow kneeling on the Altar steps while the Priest is saying Mass. He is answering the Priest at times, as the clerks answer— if Ritualism has left any clerks—in the Protestant Church; and he is answering him in Latin. He is but ten years old, and the son of a day-labourer, but I will dare to say that he not only knows what he is about, but knows the meaning of the Latin too. He has been saying it off and on these two years, and it would be odd if he did not. Just wait a while: there will be High Mass directly, and the boys will be singing, some twenty of them, and men joining in. They are singing Latin: they have been singing the same words to that grand Catholic music—the boys these five years, and the men, some of them, these twenty years. Not know the meaning of them because they are in Latin! I do not advise you to say that to the hot-tempered Irishman with the brawny chest and the big fist in the front of the choir. I fancy that he might be indignant. In truth, though it may seem so to you, it is scarcely possible that, after a short time, the Latin of the Mass should not be as familiar to a Catholic as his own tongue. More so, indeed, than the language of your Prayer Book and your Bible. Between you and me I question whether much of your Prayer Book is more "understood by the people" than Hebrew: but of that more bye-and-bye.

 "You said just now that the Mass, though always the same, does not weary. I should have thought it would."

 No: I believe this to be, not only from the awfulness of the Sacrifice, but from that very freedom of prayer of which I have spoken. Some Protestants love a form of prayer, and feel their devotion aroused and guided by that which is old and familiar: others feel that to pray according to a form is to pray in chains and to imprison their devotion. Both feelings are, no doubt, true instincts of our nature, and both are satisfied by God's true worship of the Mass, as true instincts of the nature God has made must be satisfied by God's religion. The same unchanging Sacrifice is the cause and the guide of our devotion; our liberty to pray during the Sacrifice as we will takes all chains from our devotions and makes the same worship ever new.

 "Still you have not told me why the Mass should be in Latin."

 No: we have only been carting away rubbish, before beginning to build. We have settled that no possible harm can be done to the people by the Mass being in Latin. For they can join the great Act each with his own prayers, they can. use the Priest's prayers in English, or they can even come to understand that much of Latin by constant use.

 And having settled that there is no harm done by the Mass being in Latin, if there is any good in its being in Latin, let us by all means have that good.

 "But is there any good?"

 Very decidedly yes. In the first plale, it is a proverbial saying of which you will not doubt the truth, because it is in the Gospels, that we must not cast pearls before swine. The things of God are in a world which is careless and irreverent. Even in the College of 'Apostles there was a Judas, before whom our loving Lord had bountifully thrown the pearls of His teaching, and who turned again and rent his Master. So in every congregation that kneels in a Catholic church, here and there must be a Judas—one or two who will betray, and one or two who will deny. Besides these there is the multitude without, who know not our Lord—the multitude that throngs and jostles, and knows not whom it is so rudely pressing.

 Now the Mass is the Church's pearl of great price. You do not understand that! No, you cannot till you become a Catholic. But the Mass is our pearl of great price. It is the life of the Catholic Church; the one thing for which it lives; nay, the one thing by which it lives—its food, its daily bread. Now, we give this food, this manna, to those who know it; from those who know it not we hide and protect it. Who cares to bare the secrets of a loving heart to a scoffing stranger? So we care not to put our holiest things in plain English before the common scoffer. He who comes to learn will learn easily and surely: he who comes to scoff will turn away baffled; there will be no holy words for him to carry away as a jest for his fellow-laugher. Look you how it is with the Scriptures that you have made so common, that hang upon the station walls, and lie side by side in the tap-room with the daily prints. Look you how Scripture words and sacred sayings of our dearest Lord, are flung from the mouths of infidels to point a jest, and scribbled in newspaper articles that they may spice a sentence. Truly the every-day mouthing of Scripture, and the way in which Scripture is made a jestbook, are a proof of what becomes of throwing God's pearls before the graceless.

 Therefore now see the first use of our Latin. It does not hide our Mass for one instant from the believing; it does not puzzle our own people one whit; but it screens our holiest things from the rude gaze of the infidel and the irreverent. The world cannot get easily into our secrets; cannot make a household jest of our pearl; and because it cannot, the good world is wrath, and cries out, "English prayers for English people." Yes, that English scoffers may make a mock! Here, then, you have one good. Were our Mass in English, the scoffer would scoff easily: it is in Latin, and he is baffled. This is better for him, who would sin, and for us, who would be troubled, and for God, Who would be insulted.

 III

"Latin better than English for the Mass! You are getting on. You said at first there was no harm done by its being in Latin or any other language not known to the people—now you say 'better.' "

 Better, most certainly; mark you for the Mass firstly, and for all the devotions of the Church, the devotions which She would have used by all nations alike everywhere. Each nation, or part of a nation for that matter, can have and has its own prayer books, its own hymns and the rest, in its own tongue:—English prayer books, Welsh prayer books, prayer books in the native Irish, and so on the world through, prayer books in county dialects if you like—but the Church's devotions are for all nations alike everywhere, and for them the one tongue.

 "But Latin is a dead language!"

 Exactly; that's just why it is better. Mostly living things are better than the dead. But a dead language is not as other dead things. If it rotted and fell to pieces like other dead, then indeed would it be worse than living tongues. But when its meaning, which is its life, its soul, is fully known, when it has within it authors who cannot die, when anyone studies it, whatever be his nation, can make it live again, using it for speech and for writing, then it is a dead language indeed in one sense, since no whole nation speaks it, but a living language in another sense, most living of all languages, because the best-taught in every nation, making a sort of nation among themselves, can use it, and do use it, a world-wide speech to make their thoughts known to each other. To speak or write in French is to speak and write for France, to write in English is to write for the English-speaking races, to write in Latin is to write for the world.

 "And this is why Latin is best?"

 Part of my reason only. The Church is Catholic, world-wide, and it is clearly good for a world-wide Church to have a world-wide  language. So men, gathered as on the day of Pentecost from all nations under Heaven, in one Monastery, or in one Church, can not only be present at the same Sacrifice because it is an Act in which they all join, but can join in the same Psalms and the same Prayers, in the very same tongue to which they were used each in his own land. The sailor who has heard Mass in Latin at a village church in Devonshire goes off all round the world, and wherever he puts in he hears the same Mass, takes part in the same Act, in the same tongue which he used himself when he served at Mass before he left home, and he can answer the Priest, though he were a native of Japan or China or Central Africa, as readily as he answered Father O'Brien on the coast of Devon. Clearly this is good both for layman and Priest. The Jesuit, or other Priest, who is ordered off at a moment's notice to Timbuctoo, would say his Mass just as quietly when he got there as he had done at Farm Street: but it would sadly puzzle your Church of England clergymen if he had to read prayers at a moment's notice to a congregation of Laplanders in their native tongue.

 "Then is this your chief reason?'

 No. A dead language can be made, without waking the jealousy of any living nation, a language for all men: but its deadness gives ns—in religious matters—a greater good still.

 "Greater!"

 Far greater: you will grant me, I think, that the first duty of the Society which our Lord founded must be to keep the Truth which our Lord taught: exactly the same Truth. Christianity changed is not Christianity; Christianity added to, or Christianity taken from, is not the Christianity of Christ. The care of the Truth is the great and first duty of the Society of Christ. She would be a false bride to Him if she taught what He did not teach. This is so?

 "You put it strongly; but yes, you must be right"

 Well, then, the Church must guard against anything which might in any way change that Truth, or bring wrong notions about it into people's minds.

 "Granted: but what has that to do with Latin?"

 • This to do with it:—a dead language is better for this end than a living one.

 "Why so?"

 Because the meaning of its words is fixed and cannot alter. Latin, as I said, is dead in one way, but not in another. A dead language is somewhat like those dead bodies of some Saints, which still do not corrupt and still the limbs can be bent and moved by others. It is death, but a death which lets you see the exact figure and form of the Saint in life, and the look upon her face— a form and a face and an expression in that face which does not change. As her companions saw her three centuries or more ago so we see her still. Limb will not grow nor change, and we know that our notion of her is what theirs was so long ago.

 "How do you apply this to Latin? "

The meaning of the words cannot change. What Cicero meant when first he spoke the words in the parliament of Borne—what SS. Jerome and Augustine meant, and the writers who went before, and came after, that same is meant to-day and will be meant when the world ends. And what an Englishman means by the Latin word, that the Frenchman means, and that same the Italian and the Austrian and the Hindoo student in our colleges and the Japanese who is studying Latin.

 "I think I see: but with living languages "

 It is not the same. It is hard to find in some tongues even a word that should express aright the Christian thought of God. It is impossible, as we know, to turn some French words into English, so we take the word bodily and make it our own. To translate from one tongue to another is the most difficult of tasks. The Troth then, if it was left to be tossed about by a variety of Tongues, would be in danger of taking a variety of meanings; and the One Truth of the Church of Christ would take different colours and shapes. Nor is this the only danger; there would be a like difficulty in each of all the countless Tongues in the world. For a living Tongue, like a living body, grows and changes. They tell us our living body changes once in seven years. Our dead Saint neither changes nor corrupts. Aa With the body so with the living language. It changes. Have you ever tried to read Chaucer? You will find it hard without notes. There are words which have dropped out of use and words which have changed their sense, or which are getting new senses besides their old ones. So a word which was a true word for a doctrine two centuries ago might be a very bad one now, and give us a thought almost the opposite of truth.

"Give me an instance or two."

 Well! this may do. You object to Catholics worshipping our Lady?

 "Yes; certainly. They must not treat her as God!"

 Of course they must not, and they don't. The word "worship" never meant in old times to treat as God. It mostly is taken to mean that now, though even now it is used sometimes in the old sense. When a Magistrate is addressed as "your Worship," no Divine honour is certainly intended. When a Bridegroom says to his Bride, "with my body I thee worship," he is far from saying, unless in the high-faluting language of Love, that the lady is more than human flesh and blood. And yet, so much has the meaning of the word changed, that you can accuse us to-day of Idolatry because we may still use the word "worship" of honour shown to our Lady.

 Now, this change is going on, not in English only, but in the countless languages of the world. Think what danger there might be of changing that Truth which cannot be changed if the Doctrines and Devotions of the World's Church were left to be expressed by the changing words of countless Tongues.

 By the use of Latin these Doctrines and Devotions are embalmed in one unchanging Tongue—as unchangeable as the Doctrine. And hence no wrong ideas can be brought by the growth of the language into the first Christianity: and in this we have another reason why Latin is best.

IV 

A dead tongue, then, is better than a living one—vastly better than a variety of living ones—for a world-wide Church meant equally for all nations:—

 Because in all nations equally it helps to guard holy things and holy truths from careless using:—

Because it gives a world-language—an universal language—a language such as Commerce has tried to make for itself in "Volapuk"— for all the teachers, in every nation, of the truths most important to man, and for all worshippers in the one grand Act of worship:—

Because, if any living tongue were so used to join man, the Church would seem to favour one race above the rest, and jealousy would spring up:—

 Because, above all, truths are preserved unchanging in an unchanging tongue:—you have seen flies in amber?

 "Yes."

 You can see them quite clearly, and the most delicate little bit of them is there quite perfect, and quite perfect it will remain—no change, no corruption. In a living stream, a stream that was still flowing on, larger things than flies would be in danger of destruction or of change; but the amber has ceased to flow, and the smallest atom of the fly's wing shall be as now till the world's end: and so it is with Truth, and with a worship, which is embalmed in an unchanging tongue. Its meaning can in no way alter nor be corrupted. The very same words, with the very same sense, were used in Borne and all the Roman Empire over for the very same truths well nigh 2,000 years ago, and shall be used until the death of the great world at the last day.

 "But Latin is not the only dead tongue."

 There may be many dead tongues for aught I know, tongues of races which themselves are dead or nearly so, of races that never were in any way world-wide: but there are three world-wide dead tongues, three living-dead tongues, three amber tongues preserving truths.

 "They are?"

 The Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin; the three in which the inscription was written above the thorn-crowned Head,—"Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews." Those were the languages chosen to tell the great truth to the whole world; if anything could make tongues sacred it would be this: Apostolic languages, witnessing to the Truth, and—you will think me fanciful, but if fancy can make Truth plain, it is well to use it—dying there upon the Cross with a death like the death of the Lord to Whom they witnessed: a death that yet was to live on, proclaiming truth for ever.

 "Were all three languages living then?"

 The Hebrew was already dead, used only in the services of the Church, just as Latin is now; the old Scriptures preserved in it so as not to change; read in the Synagogue and then explained in the living tongue, just as with the Latin now: our Lord Himself and His Mother using a dead language for their worship. So with the Hebrews: but the Greek and Latin were yet living—living with a strong life unlikely to die, yet both now by God's Providence dead:

the New Testament, and the Old, "ambered,"—to coin a word—in an unchanging dead tongue.

 It is God's Own Hand which has slain those tongues and left His Divine Truths guarded within t^iem. And now at last I can give full answer to your question, "Why in Latin?" Because Latin is the tongue given to the Church by God Himself. Of all the great Empires that conquered nations, joined many in a natural Oneness, Rome, as you know, was by very far the widest: and the tongue of the Roman was Latin. There were no Nations then, as there are, to-day: there was one world, clamped together by the iron arms of Force, and one Capital City of that world—Rome: and the Nations, as we know them now, were split up into tribes—each petty, and each at war with all the rest. And Rome had the great work to do, of giving law and knowledge and manners and all that is meant by Civilization to these wild tribes, and had to take their rude imperfect tongues and fashion each into a language. And so, when the Roman Empire died leaving; many peoples, its living world-wide language died also, leaving many children, so that to-day every tongue of every European Nation is formed largely out of Latin. Of the three dead tongues therefore Latin is the easiest and nearest to us—our mother tongue, out of which have sprung hosts of our own living words.

Thus, then, each Nation learned to speak its own Latin-born tongue: but the Church, which is for all Nations and for all times, kept, as the Jews kept their dead Hebrew, so She her dead Latin, the safest to preserve unchanged the truth already preached and written in it, and yet the while easiest for her many peoples to understand. How could She cast away the One Tongue through which She had converted Her peoples; the Tongue in which their laws were written; the Tongue in which their learning was preserved; the Tongue above all in which undying Truth had been taught by Her Saints, and a never-ceasing Worship had for centuries gone up to God.

 And this is "why in Latin." Because Latin was the language of Europe, and because Europe has spread itself the world over, and while, as we have said, a dead language is for many reasons the best tongue to use for world-wide and time-long truths, Latin is the best of the world-wide speeches that have died.

 So now you will be content to take the little trouble needed that yon may learn Latin enough to join in the Mass, and now and then in Vespers, and you will be content to think that the Church has done wisely to keep Her Worship in the old undying tongue by which the happy Miracle of Whitsunday, undoing the curse of Babel, is in some sense continued.

 Go, become a Catholic, and learn, like yonder little lad of ten, to serve Mass in the dear old Tongue which was writ for the world to read above the Cross.

 You are old enough to remember the guineas when they were coined? The most satisfactory of coins, a coin which at once asserted its superiority to the Sovereign; only a shilling more in value it is true, but looking massive and important enough to be worth much more.

 "Well, I think you're right But what has a guinea to do with a dead language?"

 Simply that I am going to add to the arguments and thoughts I have already given you two lighter matters which are but like the shilling in the guinea, and without some apology I do not like to offer them.

 All men say, Catholic or non-Catholic, do they not? that our Catholic worship, at least at a High Mass, is grand and impressive. If this is so there's an advantage gained at once, for the spirit of reverence and awe is a good half of worship.

 "I have heard many praise it as grand and impressive."

 Far more grand than the best service outside the Church; and this comes greatly, does it not, from two things, (1) the Ceremonies; (2) the Music.

 "That, I suppose, joined to the grandeur of the buildings."

 Ah, but, there are grand buildings enough—the more's the pity —outside the Catholic Church taken from us at the Reformation, and most men will allow that the Mass still produces a grander impression than the non-Catholic service though the buildings be equally grand. Now there almost of necessity goes with the use of a dead language the using of a certain amount of ceremonies, which seem natural, appropriate and required.

 "Why required?"

 Recall what we said at the beginning. The Mass is an act, and an act of worship, and worship is a showing forth by word or by sign united, of the glory of God and the honour due to Him. The Ceremonies which, when we first spoke together, you confessed puzzled you, all have that for their meaning, the grandeur of the God whom we are honouring. Are candles lighted, they are in honour of the great King; is incense waved, it expresses worship and prayer, curling up before God's throne; are grand dresses worn, it shows the brightness of holiness with which they should come arrayed who approach God's throne; and expresses also the awfnlness of the act which those are doing who stand before Him. Now Latin is a dead tongue, signs are never a dead tongue and mean the same whatever speech is spoken and is heard by the worshippers.

 "Explain to me by an instance."

 The Holy Scriptures are twice read in the Mass. The second time that they are read, the Church carries two lighted candles one on each side of the sacred volume; and before the deacon begins to read he incenses it; nor does he exactly read but sings to a chant, and when the chant is finished, the book is carried to the priest who is standing at the altar, that he may with reverent affection kiss it. Now all this has not been done the first time the Scriptures are read; why not?

 "Will you tell me why not?"

 Because the first portion of the Scripture was not from the Gospels, the second was from the words of God Himself or words immediately speaking of His life. You will notice that in this I have included the chanting among the Ceremonies, and S. Augustine would approve of this for he speaks of the emotion which he felt at hearing the chants of the Church; and the grandeur of the Church's singing is part of the effect which the Catholic Service has upon most men who hear it. It is, then, by the providence of God that the words of the most solemn act of worship are sung in the most musical of languages, and in the most musical pronunciation of that language to the grandest music whether we think of the old or newer music of the Church. And so, even in a matter so small, have the interests of the Church been provided for. Now, then, you have your guinea.