Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/179

 NUMBERS

151

NUMBERS

tion and in 1891 established in Bevington Bush a Ref- uge for Fallen Women and a Night Shelter for home- less women which (1891-1905) received 2300 poor women. In 1892 Leo XIII appointed him a domestic prelate. In memory of his golden jubilee as a priest he purchased for Temperance meetings and concerts, the Jubilee Hall in Burlington St. The citizens of Liverpool on 5 May, 1897, presented to him at an enormous public meeting his own portrait now in the Liverpool .\rt Gallery and over £1300 with which he began the House of Providence, West Dingle, for young unmarried mothers with their first babies; 200 such cases were .sheltered from 1897-1905. In 1904 at the age of eighty-two, he visited America with Abbot Gasquet but taken ill at St. Paul, Minnesota, he hur- ried home to die. On 8 December, 1906, there was erected near St. George's Hall, a bronze statue com- memorating him as: Apostle of Temperance, Protector of the Orphan Child, Consoler of tlie Prisoner, Re- former of the Criminal, Saviour of Fallen Womanhood, Friend of all in Poverty and Affliction, An Eye to the Blind, a Foot to the Lame, the Father of the Poor.

Catholic Times, Liverpool Daily Post, Catholic Family Anntial, files; London Catholic Weekly (29 June, 1906).

James Hughes.

Numbers, the name of the fourth book of the Pentateuch (q. v.).

Numbers, Use of, in the Church. — No attentive reader of the ld Testament can fail to notice that a certain sac'rcdiiess seems to attach to particular num- bers, for example, seven, forty, twelve, etc. It is not merely the frequent recurrence of these numbers, but their ritual or ceremonial use which is so significant. Take, for example, the swearing of Abraham (Gen., xxi, 28 sqq.) after setting apart (for sacrifice) seven ewe lambs, especially when we remember the etymo- logical connexion of the word nishba (i'^wJ) to take an oath, with sheba (i'2™) seven. Traces of the same mystical employment of numbers lie much upon the surface of the New Testament also, particularly in the Apocalypse. Even so early a writer as St. Irena?us (Haer., V, xxx) does not hesitate to explain the num- ber of the beast 666 (Apoc, xiii, 18) by the word AATEINOS since the numerical value of its constituent letters yields the same total (30+1+330+5+10+ 50+ 70 + 200=666) ; while sober critics of our own day are inclined to solve the mystery upon the same prin- ciples by simply substituting for Latinus the words Nero Ctesar written in Hebrew characters which give the same result. Of the ultimate origin of the mystical significance attached to numbers something will be said under Symbolism. Suffice it to note here that although the Fathers repeatedly condemned the mag- ical use of numbers which had descended from Baby- lonian sources to the Pythagoreans and Gnostics of their times, and although they denounced any system of philosophy which rested upon an exclusively nu- merical basis, still they almost unanimously regarded the numbers of Holy Writ as full of mystical meaning, and they considered the interpretation of these mysti- cal meanings as an important brancli of exegesis. To illustrate the caution with which they proceeded it will be sufficient to refer to one or two notable exam- ples. St. Irena;us (Ha;r., I, viii, 5 and 12, and II, xxxiv, 4) discusses at length the Gnostic numerical in- terpretation of the holy name Jesus as the equivalent of 888, and he claims that by writing the name in Hebrew characters an entirely different interpretation is necessitated. Again St. Ambrose commenting upon the days of creation and the Sabbath remarks: "The number seven is good, but we do not explain it after the doctrine of Pythagoras and the other philos- ophers, but rather according to the manifestation and division of the grace of the Spirit; for the propliet Isaias has enumerated the principal gifts of the Holy Spirit as seven" (Letter to Horontianus). Simi-

larly St. Augustine, replying to Tichonius the Dona- tist, observes that "if Tichonius had said that these mystical rules open out some of the hidden recesses of the law, instead of saying that they reveal all the mysteries of the law, he would have spoken truth" (De Doctrina Christiana, III, xlii,). Many passages from St. Chrysostom and other Fathers might be cited as displaying the same caution and showing the reluc- tance of the great Christian teachers of the early cen- turies to push this recognition of the mystical signifi- cance of numbers to extremes.

On the other hand there can be no doubt that in- fluenced mainly by Biblical precedents, but also in part by the prevalence of this philosophy of numbers all around them, the Fathers down to the time of Bede and even later gave much attention to the sacredness and mystical significance not only of certain numerals in themselves but also of the numerical totals given by the constituent letters with which words were written. A conspicuous example is supplied by one of the earliest of Christian documents not included in the canon of Scripture, i.e., the so-called Epistle of Barna- bas, which Lightfoot is inclined to place as early as A. D. 70-79. This document appeals to Gen., xiv, 14, and xvii, 23, as mystically pointing to the name and self-oblation of the coming Messias. "Learn, there- fore", says the writer, "that Abraham who first ap- pointed circumcision, looked forward in spirit unto Jesus when he circumcised, having received the ordi- nances of three letters. For the Scriptures saith ' And Abraham circumcised of his household eighteen males and three hundred'. What then was the knowledge given unto him? Understand ye that He saith 'the eighteen ' first, and then after an interval ' three hun- dred'. In the eighteen I stands for 10, H for 8. Here thou hast Jesus (IH20T2). And because the cross in the T was to have grace, he saith also ' three hundred'. So he revealeth Jesus in two letters and in the re- maining one the cross" (Ep. Barnabas, ix). It will, of course, be understood that the numerical value of the Greek letters i and v, the first letters of the Holy Name, is 10 and 8=18, while T, which stands for the form of the cross, represents 300. At a period, then, when the Church was forming her liturgy and when Christian teachers so readily saw mystical meanings underlying everything which had to do with numbers, it can hardly be doubted that a symbolical purpo.se must constantly have guided the repetition of acts and prayers in the ceremonial of the Holy Sacrifice and in- deed in all public worship. Even in the formula; of the prayers themselves we meet unmistakable traces of this kind of symbolism. In the Gregorian Sacra- mentary (Muratori, "Liturgia Romana Vetus", II, 364) we find a form of Benediction in some codices (it is contained also in the Leofric Missal), assigned to the Circumcision or Octave of the Nativity, which concludes with the following words: "Quo sic in senarii numeri perfectione in hoc saeculo vivatis, et in septe- nario inter beatorum spirituum aginina requiescatis quatenus in octavo resurrectione renovati; jubila;! remissione ditati, ad gaudia sine fine mansura per- veniatis. Amen".

We are fairly j ustified then when we read of the three- fold, five-fold, and seven-fold litanies, of the num- ber of the repetitions of Kyrie eleison and Christe elei- son, of the number of the crosses made over the oblata in the canon of the Mass, of the number of the unctions used in administering the last sacraments, or the prayers in the coronation of a king (in the ancient form in the so-called Egbert Pontifical these prayers have been carefully numbered), of the intervals as- signed for the saying of Masses for the dead, of the number of the lessons or the prophecies read at certain seasons of the year, or of the absolutions pronounced over the remains of bishops and prelates, or again of the number of subdeacons that accompany the pope and of the acolytes who bear candles before him — we