JULY 5.

SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS,

BISHOPS AND CONFESSORS, APOSTLES OF THE SCLAVES.

It seems fitting that the Octave of the Princes of the Apostles should not end without the appearance on the sacred cycle of some, at least, of those brilliant satellites that borrow light from them, and continue their work throughout the course of ages. Twin stars this day arise on the heavens of holy Church, illumining by the radiant beams of their apostolate immense tracts of country. Seeing that they start from Byzantium; one is at first led to suppose that their evolution is going to be performed independently of the laws which Rome has the right to dictate for the movements of the heavens, whereof it is said, that they shall declare the glory of God and the works of his hand. But the auspicious influence of Saint Clement I, through his sacred relics, diverts their course, as we shall see, towards the Mistress of the world; and presently they can be descried gravitating with matchless splendour in Peter's orbit, manifesting once more to the whole earth, that all true light, in the order of salvation, radiates solely from the Vicar of the Man-God. Then once again is realised that word of the Psalmist, that there are no speeches nor

1 Ps. xviii. 2.

languages where the voices of the messengers of light are not heard.1

To the sudden and splendid outburst of the good tidings that marked the first centuries of our era, had succeeded the labours of the second apostolate to which the Holy Ghost entrusted the gathering in of those new nations called by Divine Wisdom to replace the ancient world. Already, under that mysterious influence of the Eternal City, whereby she assimilated to herself even her very conquerors, another Latin race had been formed out of those barbarians whose invasion seemed, like a deluge, to have submerged the whole empire. Scarce was this marvellous transformation effected by the baptism of the Franks, the conversion from Arianism of the Goths and of their variously named brethren in arms, than the Anglo-Saxons, the Germans, and lastly the Scandinavians, conducted respectively by an Augustine, a Boniface, or an Anscharius, all three monks, came in turn to knock for admission at the gates of Holy Church. At the creative voice of these new apostles, Europe appeared, issuing from the waters of the sacred font.

Meanwhile, the constant movement of the great migration of nations had, by degrees, brought as far as the banks of the Danube a people whose name began, in the ninth century, to attract universal attention. Betwixt East and West, the Sclaves, profiting on the one side of the weakness of Charlemagne's descendants, and of the revolutions of the Byzantine court on the other, were aiming at erecting their various tribes into principalities, independent alike of both empires. This was now the hour chosen by Providence to win over to Christianity and to civilisation a race hitherto without a history. The Spirit

1 Ps. xviii. 4.

of Pentecost rested on the head of the two holy Brethren whom we are to-day celebrating. Prepared by the Monastic life for every devotedness and every suffering, they brought to this people struggling to issue from the shades of ignorance the first elements of letters, and tidings of the noble destiny to which God, our Saviour, invites men and nations. Thus was the Sclavonic race fitted to complete the great European family, and God ceded thereto a larger territory than he had bestowed upon any other in this Europe of ours, so evidently the object of eternal predilection.

Happy this nation had she but continued ever attached to Rome, that had lent her such valuable assistance in the midst of the early struggles disputing her existence! Nothing, indeed, so strongly seconded her aspirations for independence as the favour of having a peculiar language in the sacred rites, a favour obtained from her, from the See of Peter, by her two Apostles. The outcries uttered, at that very time, by those who would fain hold her fast bound under their own laws, showed clearly enough, even then, the political bearing of a concession as unparalleled as it was decisive, in sealing the existence, in those regions, of a new people distinct at once both from Germans and Greeks. The future was to prove this, better still. If, now-a-days, from the Balkan to the Ural mountains, from the Greek coasts to the frozen shores of the Northern Ocean, the Sclavonic race spreads itself out, ever strong, ever indomitable to the influence of invasion, maintaining in the midst of the empires that by force of arms have at last prevailed over it, a dualism which the conquering nation must be resigned to endure, through the course of centuries, as a living menace within her, a very thorn in her side, such a phenomenon, unparalleled, to a like degree elsewhere, is but

the product of the powerful demarcation effected a thousand years ago, betwixt this race and the rest of the world, by the introduction of its national language into the Liturgy. Having, by this use, become sacred the primitive Sclavonic tongue has undergone none of those variations incident to the idiom of every other nation; whilst, at the same time, giving birth indeed to the various dialects of the different peoples issuing from the common stock, it has itself remained the same, following the most insignificant of Solavonic tribes through every phase of their history, and continuing, in the case of the greater number of them, to group them, (apart from all other nationalities) at the foot of their own altars. Beautiful indeed such unity as this, a very glory for holy Church, had but the desire, the hope of the two Saints who based it on the immutable rock, been able to keep it ever fixed thereon! But woful and terrible would such an arm become in the service of tyranny, if ever Satan should make it fall by schism, into the hands of one of hell's accursed agents!

But such considerations as these are leading us too far. It is time for us to turn to the ample narrative of the two illustrious Brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, given us by the Church, for this day.

Cyril and Methodius were own brothers, born of the same noble parents in Thessalonica, and when old enough were sent to Constantinople that they might, in the great capital of the East, learn the principles of literature and the arts. Both of them made great progress in a short time; but specially Cyril who attained such a reputation for learning, that as a

Cyrillus et Methodius fratres germani, Tessalonica amplissimo loco nati, Constantinopolim mature concesserunt, ut in ipsa urbe Orientis principe humanitatis artes addiscerent. Uterque plurimum brevi profecerunt; sed maxime Cyrillus, qui tantam scientiarum laudem adeptus est, ut singularis honoris causa