How so? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to bring there the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, lifts himself up Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, upon his throne, in order to be ready for the beck of his priests upon earth.
And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, than there Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, come down from heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, and changes, upon the words of the priest, the bread and wine into his holy flesh and blood, and permits himself then to be taken up and to lie in the hands of the priest, even though the priest is the most sinful and the most unworthy.Further, his power surpasses that of the highest archangels, and of the Queen of Heaven.Right did the holy Franciscus say, 'If I should meet a priest and an angel at the same time, I should salute the priest first, and then the angel;because the priest is possessed of far higher might and holiness than the angel.'"The radical journal calls this "ultramontane blasphemy," and, the day after quoting it, adds a charge that must be still more annoying to the Herr Kooperator Hiring than that of blasphemy: it accuses him of plagiarism; and, to substantiate the charge, quotes almost the very same language from a sermon preached in 1785--In this it is boldly claimed that "in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, there is nothing mightier than a priest, except God; and, to be exact, God himself must obey the priest in the mass." And then, in words which I do not care to translate, the priest is made greater than the Virgin Mary, because Christ was only born of the Virgin once, while the priest "with five words, as often and wherever he will," can "bring forth the Saviour of the world." So to-day keeps firm hold of the traditions of a hundred years ago, and ultramontanism wisely defends the last citadel where the Middle Age superstition makes a stand,--the popular veneration for the clergy.
And the clergy take good care to keep up the pomps and shows even here in skeptical Munich.It was my inestimable privilege the other morning--it was All-Saints' Day--to see the archbishop in the old Frauenkirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered banners that were captured from the Turks three centuries ago,--to see him seated in the choir, overlooked by saints and apostles carved in wood by some forgotten artist of the fifteenth century.I supposed he was at least an archbishop, from the retinue of priests who attended and served him, and also from his great size.When he sat down, it required a dignitary of considerable rank to put on his hat; and when he arose to speak a few precious words, the effect was visible a good many yards from where he stood.At the close of the service he went in great state down the center aisle, preceded by the gorgeous beadle--a character that is always awe-inspiring to me in these churches, being a cross between a magnificent drum-major and a verger and two persons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidly attired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of purple silk.
The whole cortege was resplendent in embroidery and ermine; and as the great man swept out of my sight, and was carried on a priestly wave into his shining carriage, and the noble footman jumped up behind, and he rolled away to his dinner, I stood leaning against a pillar, and reflected if it could be possible that that religion could be anything but genuine which had so much genuine ermine.And the organ-notes, rolling down the arches, seemed to me to have a very ultramontane sound.
CHANGING QUARTERS
Perhaps it may not interest you to know how we moved, that is, changed our apartments.I did not see it mentioned in the cable dispatches, and it may not be generally known, even in Germany; but then, the cable is so occupied with relating how his Serenity this, and his Highness that, and her Loftiness the other one, went outdoors and came in again, owing to a slight superfluity of the liquid element in the atmosphere, that it has no time to notice the real movements of the people.And yet, so dry are some of these little German newspapers of news, that it is refreshing to read, now and then, that the king, on Sunday, walked out with the Duke of Hesse after dinner (one would like to know if they also had sauerkraut and sausage), and that his prospective mother-in-law, the Empress of Russia, who was here the other day, on her way home from Como, where she was nearly drowned out by the inundation, sat for an hour on Sunday night, after the opera, in the winter garden of the palace, enjoying the most easy family intercourse.