Chapter XIV: The Episode Explained (6)

“Not in the same way, child. You know that Protestants are not so—so obtrusive.”

“But why, John? I want to know about them.”

There was an animation in her manner which reminded him of old times; he saw that she was really in earnest, and set himself to answer her in his straightforward, kindly way, glad to notice any change for the better in her tone of mind.

“I have never thought very much about them, Rose,” he said; “but every general reader must come in contact with them somehow, even if, like me, he has not had personal acquaintance with them in society. Of course you know the distinguishing features of confession and transubstantiation, the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, prayer for the dead.”

“Are you sure they are all wrong?”

“Not at all. We were brought up to think them wrong, but I have never looked so deeply into the matter as to make such an assertion on my own judgment; it never has seemed worth while. However, if you care for my opinion, I will tell you what, from all I have read and heard, presents itself to my mind as the peculiar and fatal mark of Catholicism. It is its claim of absolute authority over the bodies and minds and souls of men—a claim which reached its height of tyranny in the declaration of the infallibility of the pope.”

“What does that mean, John?”

“Why, that whatever the pope may say—no matter who he is, remember, if he is only a pope—that thing you and I and every one must believe to be right. However, I mean to be just to all sects. If I have the idea rightly, their exact claim is this: that the pope, as pope, speaking to the whole church as the Head of the Church, cannot be mistaken, simply because God will not permit him to be. Do you understand?”

She was sitting in the full light of the lamp. He noticed the quiet, thoughtful look upon her face; it made him very happy to see it there.

“John,” she said after a minute’s pause, “why should it not be?”

“What, Rose?”

“I mean, if there is a God Almighty, why could he not keep a man from error in teaching, just as easily as he could make a man in the first place?”

“Really,” said John with an amused smile at what he thought her brightness, “I don’t see but that he could; that is, if you give up the idea that we are free agents.”

“But do they say he is not generally a free agent?” Rose asked, like one thinking out a problem. “Only, when God wants to use him to teach the church, he will not let him teach a lie. _Why_ should not an Almighty God do that? O John! look here.”

She hurried to the bookcase, brought back and opened the _Book of Common Prayer_. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,” she read. “Then there are those who do really believe it; who really think that now—to-day—there is a church where God speaks plainly and unmistakably, and always will speak so, and there can be no error?”

“Yes, Rose.”

Was it only the glow of the lamplight shining upon her face? Did his eyes deceive him, or was that creature, radiant with happiness and a bloom of beauty never witnessed there before—was this his poor and fading Rose of that very noon? Once in his life he had heard a child laugh who had been suddenly and entirely released from excruciating pain—a low, sweet laugh most exquisite to hear in the sense it gave of indescribable relief. Such a laugh he heard now from Rose’s lips, which he had almost feared would never so much as smile again.

“John,” she said exultingly, “I have it! There is a Heavenly Father—God—and he made us all. And there is Jesus Christ—God—who ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like ours, and he had a mother. And there is a Holy Ghost—God—who is with the church, and so she _cannot_ lie. And how those three are one, and how the blood of Christ saves us, we may never be able to explain; but, if there is a God, he will never let his church tell lies or err or make mistakes, and whatever his church says that we ought to believe, whether we understand it or not. And only Catholics claim an infallible voice. John, I am going to try it. I shall speak to the priest to-morrow.”

“You are your own mistress, Rose,” he said gravely. “You can do as you please. I only warn you that after that one act of your own choice, you must give up your reason and will to another.”

The color flashed more brightly in her cheeks. He was amazed as he looked at her; once again the fire was in her eyes, and the brilliant intellect shone in the face that had been dulled so long.

“I shall give up my reason and my will to God,” she said. “It is he who will speak to me, without erring and without lying. I do not expect to be as wise as my Creator, and I am sure I shall be none the worse for it when he who is wisdom itself teaches me. It is God that I am talking about, John, and not a mere man that can make mistakes. I am quite content to yield my intellect and my will to him.”

And then, as suddenly as it had come, the glow faded from her face; she was kneeling down beside him with that look of anguish in her eyes which for so many long weeks had wrung his heart with pity. “You know I have suffered,” she said, “but, John, it is only the outside you have seen; you can’t tell what it has been within. And now a great light is coming—I am sure of it. It is not the love of beauty or anything I used to crave. It is the thing I need and we all need; something stronger than we are: something that cannot by any possibility teach us a lie; something that cannot by any possibility err; something plain to hear and plain to see—infallible! I have not got it yet; I am only on my way to it. If it was in your power to stop me, would you do it?”

“I do not understand you, Rose,” he answered thoughtfully, “nor do I entirely follow your train of reasoning. Still, I grant that for a temperament such as yours has of late disclosed itself to be there is comfort in what you think you see. No, I would not say a word to stop you, my poor child! It goes against the grain to think of one of us becoming a Catholic; but if anything will help you, I shall bless the hand that brings relief.”

She looked full in his face with a look of grave surprise. “I did not think that of you,” she said; “you always have seemed so honest. Don’t you know that nothing in heaven or earth can satisfy me, unless it is the _truth_? No shams, no half-way things, but something like rock that will never fail. I did not think that of you, John!”

John sat alone and puzzled over her words that night. “I always have to puzzle things out,” he said. “They never come to me like a flash, as they do to Rose. Stop, though! I am wrong there. She has been months in getting at it, and they were months that almost killed her. Why was it?”

Plainly enough he saw at last why it was. God, the soul, eternity—those things which are invisible—were more real to Rose than the visible things. And should they not be? He knew very well that he would be stung to the quick to be told that his body—his material, tangible, lower nature—had the upper hand in his life. No, his reason, his intellect—something intangible and invisible anyhow, by whatever name you named it—was the governing power. And if so, then why should not One invisible and intangible be the ruler of that, and claim from him more than a merely blameless life and an honest fame; demand submission of his will and reason and thought? John shook his head ruefully; the idea struck home; he did not like it, but there it was.

The next day Rose quietly laid before him her little Catechism, open at the very first section, and John read this:

“_Question._ _Who made you?_

“_Answer._ GOD.

“_Q._ Why did he make you?

“_A._ That I might know him, love him, and serve him in this
world, and be happy with him for ever in the next.

“_Q._ To whose likeness did he make you?

“_A._ To his own image and likeness.

“_Q._ Is this likeness in your body or in your soul?

“_A._ In my soul.

“_Q._ In what is your soul like to God?

“_A._ Because my soul is a spirit endowed with understanding
and free will, and is immortal—that is to say, can never
die.

“_Q._ In what else is your soul like to God?

“_A._ Because as in God there are three persons and one God,
so in man there is one soul and three powers.

“_Q._ Which are the three powers?

“_A._ Will, memory, and understanding.

“_Q._ Which must we take most care of, our body or our soul?

“_A._ Of our soul.

“_Q._ Why so?

“_A._ Because, ‘What doth it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?’

“_Q._ What must we do to save our soul?

“_A._ We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity; that
is, we must believe in him, hope in him, and love him with
all our heart.

“_Q._ How shall we know the things which we are to believe?

“_A._ From the Catholic Church of God, which he has
established by innumerable miracles, and illustrated by the
lives and deaths of innumerable saints.”

“John,” said Rose steadily, “be honest with God.”

* * * * *

Professor Howson is a name which no one hears now, though it was once supposed that it would rank among those of New England’s noblest scholars. But John Howson teaches still. People had often said of him that he would never marry; that his books and his sister were enough for him. He never did marry; but it was God and the church of God that satisfied him. Once, in a great city, an old friend of his collegiate days, who had not heard of him for years, met him face to face in his dress of a religious, and stopped him in utter amazement.

“John Howson! You are unmistakable, but how is this? I was told of your change, but did not know it had gone so far. Are not your Puritan ancestors groaning in their shrouds, man, because of such doings?”

The priest returned a courteous answer, and would have turned to other themes, but his friend persisted. Then, not with the old outspoken frankness as of one who feared none, but instead, thoughtfully and humbly as in the very fear of God, there came this reply:

“Once I matched my mind with the mind of God, and judged him, and thought his will to be of no account. It was a great sin, and he saved me from it. After that I could only say, as another in like case once said, ‘I cannot give God less than all.’”

“A great sin?” his friend repeated. “I do not understand that.”

He saw a shade of peculiar awe creep over the countenance before him. “And is it no sin,” John Howson asked in a deep voice, “to hear said in the face of God that there is no God? to have counted your own judgment superior to his? to have given God the lie? One who is now of the mightiest saints thought that he did God service while he fought against him, and afterward he named himself the chief of sinners. But I did not so much as think of the service of God at all in matters of belief.”

“I can’t see the fault in that,” his friend said wonderingly. “If it was murder you had on your conscience, I might sympathize with you; but this!”

“You are fresh from Massachusetts,” said Father Howson, “and it is years since I was there. Do they still count the mind as nobler than the body, and the intellect as among their highest gifts?”

“Yes,” was the proud reply.

“Some time,” returned Father Howson with deep meaning in his tone, “we all shall have to learn that God judges sin of the mind by as terrible a judgment as sin of the body, and that he demands his gifts with usury. Believe me, it is better to forestall that judgment, and to meet that demand here than hereafter.”

And Rose? Long since she learned to say, “I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth.” Long since she learned that there is One invisible who is fairer than any child of man, and to him she gave the heart which a wealth of intellectual and earthly loveliness had failed to satisfy. She has learned that there is a nobler Blood than any that the world can boast; His place is with the nobility of an eternal kingdom, whose peculiar marks of honor are poverty, and self-renunciation, and an utter lowliness of obedience, whereby every faculty of one’s nature is brought with a glad free-will into the obedience of Christ. One day the daughter of the Puritans heard another voice than theirs call her by that tender name: “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father’s house. And the King shall greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord God.” Once before, but after sore struggle and heartrending suffering, she had heard that voice. Hearing it again, she rose up joyfully and followed it, as then, without delay.

PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.

III.

We have already alluded to that feature in the recent ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia which gives to the people the right to choose their pastors, and we have also seen how nobly the Catholics of Germany have thwarted this unholy attempt to create dissension and discord in the church. When it could no longer be doubted that the German bishops were immovable in their allegiance to the pope, Prussia sought, by holding out every possible inducement to apostasy, to create disunion between the priests and the bishops; but in this, too, she met with signal defeat. Nothing, therefore, remained to be done, but to devise measures whereby the administration of ecclesiastical affairs would be placed exclusively in the hands of the laity; since the breaking of the bonds which unite church and state would not have as a result that weakening of ecclesiastical power which is so ardently desired. This Professor Friedberg, in his _German Empire and the Catholic Church_, expressly states in the following words:

“If the government were to adhere to the plan of a total
separation of church and state, what would be the
consequence? Would the bishops lose their authority because
the state no longer recognized it? Would the parochial
system be broken up if unsupported by the state? In a word,
would the church lose any of her power? It would argue an
absolute want of perception and a total ignorance of
Catholic history to affirm that she would. The stream which
for centuries has flowed in its own channel does not run dry
because its course is obstructed. It only overflows and
floods the country. To continue the metaphor, we must first
seek with all care to draw off the waters, and to lead them
into pools and reservoirs, where what remains will readily
evaporate.”

The Protestants of Prussia are opposed to the separation of church and state, because they are well aware that in the present condition of religious opinion in Germany the rationalists and socialists would at once get control of most of the parishes of the Evangelical church, if it were deprived of the support of the government; and, on the other hand, both they and the infidels are persuaded that the Catholic Church is quite able to maintain herself, and even to wax strong, without any help from the temporal power.

“One thing,” says the _Edinburgh Review_, “the state is
quite at liberty to do. The state is not bound to pay or
maintain churches or sects which it does not approve.
Indeed, if these conditions are annexed to the acceptance of
state payment, the church herself would do well to reject
the terms. But will Prince Bismarck withdraw the stipend and
set the church free? Nothing of the kind. There is no
freedom of religious orders or communities in Prussia. The
whole spirit of these laws is to make every form of
religious belief and organization as subservient to the
state as a Prussian recruit is to the rattan of a corporal.
That we abhor and denounce as an intolerable oppression; and
it is only by the strangest perversion of judgment that any
Englishman can have imagined that the cause of true
religious liberty was identical with the policy of Prince
Bismarck.”[37]

To consent to a separation of church and state would be a recognition of the independent existence of the church, which Prussia holds to be contrary to the true theory of the constitution of human society in relation to government and religion. This theory is that man exists for the state, to which he owes his supreme and undivided allegiance; whose duty it is to train and govern him for its own service alike in peace and war. All the interests of society, therefore, material, political, educational, and religious, must be subjected to the state, independently of which no organization of any kind ought to be permitted to exist. And in fact the whole spirit of the recent ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia is in perfect consonance with this theory. The Falck Laws deny to the church the right to educate her priests, to decide as to their fitness for the care of souls, to appoint them to or remove them from office; in a word, the right to administer her own affairs, and consequently to exist at all as an organization separate from the state.

It can hardly surprise us that the attempt should have been made to prove that this is in accordance with the teachings of the New Testament.

“The New Testament,” says the _British Quarterly_, “requires
that the Christian shall be a loyal subject of the
government under which he lives. ‘Let every soul be subject
unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God;
the powers that be are ordained of God: whosoever therefore
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.’”[38]

After quoting several texts from the Epistles of St. Paul, of the same general import, the writer in the _British Quarterly_ continues:

“Now, it is impossible to find in the New Testament any
injunctions of obedience to organized ecclesiastical power,
like those here given of obedience to the civil government.
It is not ecclesiastical authority, nor a corporate
ecclesiastical institution, but the personal God, and the
individual conscience in its direct personal relations with
God, which is set over against an unrighteous demand of the
civil authority in the crucial motto of Peter, ‘We ought to
obey God rather than men,’ and in the teaching of Christ,
‘Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto
God the things which are God’s.’ Of conscience as an
ecclesiastical corporation, or of conscience as an imputed
or vicarious faculty, determined and exercised by one for
another, the ethics of the New Testament have no
knowledge.”[39]

It is hard to realize the ignorance or the bad faith of a man who is capable of making such statements as these. Let us take the last words of the gospel of St. Matthew: “And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” Here surely is an organized body of men, receiving from Christ himself the divine command to teach all the nations of the earth their religious faith and duties, which necessarily carries with it the right to exact obedience. But, lest there be any room for doubt, let us hear Christ himself: “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.”[40]

Again: “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.”[41]

When Peter and John were brought into court and “charged not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus,” they should have submitted at once, upon the theory that the state has the right to exact supreme and undivided allegiance; but they appealed to their divine commission, just as the bishops of Germany do to-day, and answered, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”[42]

And in the council at Jerusalem, “an ecclesiastical corporation” surely, the apostles say: “For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things”;[43] plainly indicating and using their right to impose commands and exact obedience. But enough of this. The persecutors of the church to-day are not at all concerned about the teachings of the New Testament. The attempt, however, to make it appear that only Catholics protest against the doctrine of absolute and undivided allegiance to the state is wholly unjustifiable. There is no Protestant sect in England or the United States which would submit to the intervention of the government in its spiritual life and internal discipline. Would the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the Presbyterians permit the state to decide what kind of education their ministers are to receive, or to determine whether they are capable of properly discharging their spiritual duties, or to keep in office by force those whom the church had cast off? They would go out to pray on the hillside and by the river banks rather than submit to such tyranny.

Is not the right of revolution, which in our day, especially outside of the Catholic Church, is held to be divine, based upon the principle of divided allegiance? Practically it is impossible to distinguish between loyalty to the government and loyalty to the state; and no man in this age thinks of questioning the right of rebellion against a tyrannical government. This divided allegiance marks the radical difference between Christian and pagan civilization. Before Christ there was no divided allegiance, because the individual was absorbed by the state, and nothing could have wrested mankind from this bondage but a great spiritual organization such as the Catholic Church; and this, we believe, is generally admitted by our adversaries. They fail to perceive, however, that there is no other institution than the Catholic Church which has the power to prevent the state from again absorbing the individual and destroying all civil and political liberty. If the church could be broken up into national establishments, and the entire control of education handed over to the state, the bringing all men to the servile temper which characterizes the Russians and Protestant Prussians would be only a question of time. Many will be inclined to hold that the general freedom, and even license, of thought of our time would be a sufficient protection against any such danger.

A little reflection, however, will suffice to dispel this illusion. No number of individuals, unless they are organized, can successfully oppose tyranny; and mere speculations or opinions as to the abstract right of resistance can not stop the march of the state toward absolutism. The most despotic states have often encouraged the most unbounded freedom of thought, and we need not go beyond Prussia for an example. In no country in the world has there been more of what is called free-thinking, nor has any government been more tolerant of wild theories and extravagant speculations; and yet the free-thinkers and _illuminati_ have done nothing to promote the growth of free institutions or to encourage civil or religious liberty. They are without unity or organization or programme. Many of them to-day are the strongest supporters of Bismarckian despotism. Even in 1848 they succeeded only in getting up a mob and evaporating in wild talk.

The divine right of resistance to tyranny would have no sanction or efficacy if it were not kept living in the hearts of men by supernatural religion.

This is thoroughly understood by the advocates of absolutism, who do not trouble themselves about doctrines of any kind, except when they are upheld by organizations, and for this reason all their efforts are directed to the destruction of the organic unity of the church. Had Prince Bismarck succeeded in his attempt to get the Catholic congregations which have been deprived of their priests to elect pastors for themselves, there would have been but another step to open schism, which would have inevitably resulted in favor of Old Catholicism. But, as we have seen, out of more than a hundred parishes, not one has lent itself to the iniquitous designs of the enemies of the church.

Another striking example of the perfect unanimity of thought and action which in Prussia exists between priests and people was given last year when the so-called State-Catholics tried to get up a protest against the encyclical letter of the Pope, in which he declared that the May Laws were not binding upon the consciences of Catholics. All the liberal papers of Germany were loud in praise of this project, which presented the fairest opportunity to Catholic government officials to curry favor by showing their acceptance of the Falck laws; and yet, in spite of every effort that was made, only about a thousand signatures were obtained, most of which were found outside of the eight millions of Prussian Catholics.

Mr. Gladstone, in his article on the “Speeches of Pope Pius IX.,”[44] says of the Catholic clergy that they “are more and more an army, a police, a caste; further and further from the Christian Commons, but nearer to one another and in closer subservience to the pope.” However near the Catholic clergy may be to one another, it certainly shows a great lack of power to see things as they are to maintain that they are losing the hold which more than any other class of men they have always had on the hearts of the people. The persecution in Germany has shown there that inseparable union of priest and people which is to-day as universal as the life of the church. Had there existed any seed of discord, it certainly would have sprung up and flourished in Prussia during the last four or five years.

What circumstances could have been more favorable to such development than those created by the Old Catholics in league with Bismarck? The unprecedented victories over Austria and France had set all Germany wild with enthusiasm. “Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt,” was the refrain of every song. On the other hand, many Catholics, especially in Germany, had been prejudiced and somewhat soured by the false interpretations which were everywhere put on the dogma of papal infallibility. Just at this moment Dr. Döllinger, whose reputation was greater than that of any other German theologian, announced his separation from the church, and at once there gathered around him a party of dissatisfied or suspended priests and rationalistic laymen. Reinkens was made bishop, and the Emperor of Germany publicly prayed that the “certainly correct conviction of the _Hochwürdiger Herr Bischof_ might win ground more and more.” Fortune smiled upon the new religion and everything seemed to promise it the brightest future. What has been the result? In a population of eight millions of Catholics this sect, with the aid of the state, German enthusiasm, and the whole liberal press, has been able to gather only about six thousand adherents; and they are without zeal, without doctrinal or moral unity, having as yet not even dared to define their position towards the Pope. Dr. Döllinger himself has lost interest in the movement, and its most sanguine friends have yielded to despondency. Old Catholicism was, in fact, impossible from the beginning. But two roads open before those who to-day go forth from the fold of the church: the one leads to the Babel and decomposition of Protestant sectarianism, the other to the unbelief of scientific naturalism.

To declare that Christianity is lying disjointed, in shattered fragments, and yet to pretend that human hands, with paste and glue, out of these broken pieces can remake the heavenly vase once filled with God’s spirit of faith, hope, and love, is an idle fancy. Into this patchwork no divine life will come; men will not believe in it, nor will it inspire enthusiasm or the heroic courage of martyrdom. Therefore they who leave the church, their native soil, have indeed all the world before them, and yet no place where they can find rest for their souls.

What the religious policy of the Prussian Liberals is, Herr von Kirchmann, to whom in a previous article we introduced our readers, informs us in the following words:

“The majority of the Liberal representatives are
highly-educated men who have fallen out with the Christian
churches, because they no longer accept their creed, and
therefore hold as a principle that freedom of conscience for
the individual is abundantly sufficient to satisfy the
religious wants of the people. At best, they would consent
to the existence of congregations; any organization beyond
this they consider not only unnecessary but hurtful.”

This, then, is the Liberal programme: the individual shall have perfect freedom to believe, as he pleases, in God or the devil; but there shall be no ecclesiastical organization, unless a kind of congregationalism, which, having neither unity nor strength, can be easily rendered harmless by being placed under police supervision. These men of culture, as Herr von Kirchmann says, have fallen out with all the churches; and they are liberal enough to be willing to do everything in their power to make it impossible that any of them should exist at all, since without organic unity of some kind there can be no church, as there can be no state.

But let us hear what Herr von Kirchmann has to remark upon this subject.

“This view,” he says, “may satisfy those who have reached
the high degree of culture of the Liberals; but those who
take it utterly ignore the religious wants of the middle and
lower classes, and fail to perceive the yearning,
inseparable from all religious feeling, for association with
persons of like sentiments, in order, through public
worship, to obtain the strength and contentment after which
this fundamental craving of the human heart longs.”

To the existence of this feeling, and its yearning for the largest possible association, the history of all Christian peoples, down even to the present day, bears witness; for this reason nowhere have men been satisfied with the freedom of the individual, but have ever demanded a church with acknowledged rights and the privilege of free intercommunion.

“To the dangers which would threaten society if religious
associations should be broken up, and faith left to the whim
of individuals, these highly cultivated men give no heed,
because they do not themselves feel the need of such
support; but they forget that their security, the very
possibility, indeed, of reaching the point at which they
stand, rests upon the power of the church over the masses;
and should they destroy this by allowing the congregations
to break up into atoms, leaving the Christian creed to be
fashioned by passion and ever-varying interests, according
to the fancy of each and every one, nothing would remain but
the brute force of the state, which, without the aid of the
internal dispositions of the people, cannot save society
from complete dissolution.”[45]

Herr von Kirchmann, then, adds his testimony to that of many other observers who, though they do not believe in the divine origin and truth of the Christian religion, yet hold that its acceptance by the masses as a system of belief, received on the authority of a church, is essential to the preservation and permanence of our civilization. This is a subject to which we Americans might with great profit give our thoughts.

As Emerson, who is probably our most characteristic thinker, has declared that he would write over the portal of the Temple of Philosophy WHIM, American Protestantism seems more and more inclined to accept this as the only satisfactory, or indeed possible, shibboleth in religion. The multiplication of sects holding conflicting creeds, while it has weakened faith in all religious doctrines, has helped on the natural tendency of Protestantism to throw men back upon their own feelings or fancies for their faith. This, of course, results in the breaking up even of congregations into atoms of individualism, and will, if not counteracted, necessarily destroy our character as a Christian people; and for us it is needless to say Christianity is the only possible religion.

Our statesmen—politicians may be the more proper word—though not irreligious, lack grasp of mind and depth of view, else they could not fail to perceive, however little they may sympathize with the doctrines or what they conceive to be the social tendencies of the Catholic Church, that just such a strong and conservative Christian organism as she is, is for us an indispensable political requirement. That none of the leading minds of the country should have taken this view is a sad evidence of want of intellectual power or of moral courage. The most that any of them feel authorized in saying in our favor is that a country which tolerates free-love, Mormonism, and the joss-house of the Chinaman ought not, if consistency be a virtue, to persecute Catholics. In spite of appearances which mislead superficial observers, we are the most secular people in the world. No other people is so ready to sacrifice religious to material interests; no other people has ever to an equal extent banished all religious instruction from its national education; no other people has ever taken such a worldly view of its religion. The supernatural in religion is lost sight of by us, and we value it chiefly for its social and æsthetic power. The popular creed is that religion is something which favors republicanism, promotes the exploitation of the material resources of the globe, softens manners, and makes life comfortable.

The proposition to tax church property shows that a large portion of the American people have ceased to believe in religion as a moral and social power. A church is like a bank or theatre or coal-mine—something which concerns only those who have stock in it, and has nothing whatever to do with the public welfare. The school-house occupies quite other ground. The country is interested in having all its citizens intelligent; this is for the general good; but whether they believe in God or the soul is a matter of profound indifference, unless, possibly, to themselves, since this can in no way affect the progress or civilization of the American people. This is evidently the only possible philosophy for those who would tax church property. The popular contempt for theology encouraged by nearly all Protestant ministers is another evidence of the tendency to religious disintegration. There is but little danger that any church will ever get a controlling influence in the national life of this country; our peril lies in the opposite direction; and that so few of those who think should see this is to us the saddest sign of the times; but those who do recognize it cannot help knowing that the Catholic Church is the strongest bulwark against this flood-tide.

The social dangers of an open persecution of the Catholic Church are most clearly seen in Prussia to-day. Since the German chancellor entered upon his present course of violence five bishops and fifteen thousand priests have been imprisoned or fined, and about the same number of laymen have suffered for daring to speak unfavorably of these proceedings. Never before, probably, have the police been so generally or constantly employed in arresting men who are loved and venerated by the people, and whose only crime is fidelity to conscience. The inevitable consequence of this is that the officers of the government come to be looked upon, not as the ministers of justice, but as the agents of tyranny and oppression, which must, of course, weaken respect for authority. These coercive measures, from the nature of things, tend only to confirm the Catholics in their conscientious convictions, and the government is thereby instigated to harsher methods of dealing with this passive resistance. The number of confessors of the faith increases, the enthusiasm and devotion of the people are heightened, and it becomes an honor and a glory to be made a victim of tyranny. The feeling of disgrace which is attached to the penalties for violation of law is more efficacious in repressing crime than the suffering which is inflicted; but this feeling is destroyed, or rather changed, into one of an opposite character in the minds of the people when they behold their venerated bishops and much-loved priests dragged to prison for saying Mass or administering the sacraments. No amount of reasoning, no refinement of logic, can ever convince them that there can be anything criminal in the performance of these sacred functions. In this way the ignominy which in the public mind follows conviction for crime is wiped away, and the sacredness of the law itself endangered.

This alone is sufficient to show how blind and thoughtless Prince Bismarck has been in making war upon the Catholic Church just at the moment when wise counsels would have led him to seek to add the strength of reverence and respect to the enthusiasm with which the creation of the new empire had been hailed. The spoilt child of success, wounded pride made him mad. How serviceable he might have found the moral support of the Catholic clergy Herr von Kirchmann has informed him.

“I myself,” he says, “from 1849 to 1866, with the exception
of some intervals, lived in Upper Silesia, a wholly Catholic
province, and, as the president of the Criminal Senate of a
Court of Appeals, had the fullest opportunity to study the
moral and religious state of the people, which in nothing is
so truly seen as in those circumstances out of which spring
offences against the law. Now, although this province of
more than a million of men was thoroughly Catholic and
entirely in the hands of the clergy; although the school
system was still very imperfect, and the population, with
the exception of the landowners and the inhabitants of the
large cities, not speaking the German language, was thereby
deprived of culture and of intercourse with the German
provinces, yet can I unhesitatingly affirm that the moral
condition of the people was in no way worse than in Saxony
or the Margravate where formerly I held similar official
positions. The number of crimes was rather less, the
security of person and of property greater, and the
relations between the different classes of society far more
peaceable and friendly than in the provinces to which I have
just made allusion. The socage and heavy taxes pressed hard
upon the peasantry; nevertheless in 1848 insurrections
against the landlords were not more frequent here than
elsewhere. It was unquestionably the powerful influence of
the clergy which, in spite of so many obstacles, gave to the
people their moral character, and produced the general
contentment and obedience which reflected the greatest honor
upon the whole population. The vice of drunkenness, through
the agency of temperance societies established solely by the
priests, had been in an almost marvellous manner rooted out
from among the people, and the general welfare made manifest
progress. By means of my official and political position I
had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of a large
number of the pastors and curates, and still to-day I recall
with pleasure my intercourse with these men, for the most
part cultivated, but above all distinguished by their
thorough gentleness of character. They were firm in
maintaining the rights of their church, they were filled
with the excellence of their mission, but they never thought
of thwarting the civil authorities; on the contrary, they
found in the clergy a great and efficacious support, so that
this province needed fewer protective and executive
officials than others.”[46]

No enlightened and fair government has anything to fear from the influence of men who are as firm in upholding the authority of the state as they are in asserting their own liberty of conscience; who will neither do wrong nor tamely submit to it. If, in the social, religious, and political crisis through which the nations of Christendom are passing, sound reason is ultimately to prevail and civilization is to be preserved, the necessity of an institution like the Catholic Church will come to be recognized by all who are capable of serious thought. The divided allegiance, the maintenance of the supremacy of conscience, is essential to the preservation of the principle of authority in society. If it were possible to nationalize religion by placing all churches under state control, the authority of the state would necessarily become that of brute force, and would in consequence be deprived of its sacredness. The respect of Christian nations for the civil power is a religious sentiment; and if the church could cease to be, there would be a radical revolution in the attitude of the people toward the state. In Europe even now, in consequence of the progress of unbelief, respect for authority and the duty of obedience have been so far destroyed in the minds and hearts of the masses that government is possible only with the support of immense standing armies, which help on the social dissolution; and with us things would be in a still worse condition, were it not that the vast undeveloped resources of the country draw off the energies which else would be fatal to public order. Our strength and security are rather in our physical surroundings than in our moral resources. Our greatest moral force, during the century of our existence, has been the universal veneration of the people for the Constitution, which was regarded with a kind of religious reverence; but this element of strength is fast wasting away and will not pass over as a vital power into the second century of our life. The criticisms, the amendments, the patchings, which the Constitution has been made to suffer, have, more than civil strife, debased it to the common level of profane parchments and robbed it of the consecration which it had received in the hearts of the people The change which has taken place, though it have something of the nature of growth and development, is yet, unquestionably, more a breaking down and dissevering. The Catholic Church, by the reverence which she inspires for institutions, is, and in the future will be yet more, the powerful ally of those who will stand by the Constitution as our fathers made it.

Our statesmen, we know, are in the habit of looking elsewhere for the means which are to give permanence to our free institutions. The theory now most in favor is that universal education is the surest safeguard of liberty, and it is upon this more than upon anything else that we, as a people, rely for the perpetuity of our form of government. This hope, we cannot but think, is based upon an erroneous opinion of the necessary tendency of intellectual culture; which is to increase the spirit of criticism, and consequently, by dissatisfying the mind with what is, to direct it continually to new experiments, with the hope of finding something better. Now, though this may be well enough in the realms of speculation, and may be a great help to the progress of science, it most assuredly does not tend either to beget or to foster reverence for existing institutions of any kind; and this same mental habit which has already made American Protestantism so fragmentary and contradictory will beyond doubt weaken and, unless counteracted, destroy the unity of our political life. This is a question which does not concern us alone; with it is bound up the future of the human race. If the American experiment of government by the people fails, all hope of such government perishes. If we allow our personal prejudices to warp our judgment in a matter so catholic and all-important, no further evidence of our unfitness for the great mission which God seems to have assigned us is needed. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of politicians for whom all other questions than the present success of party have no interest, and who therefore flatter the passions of the people instead of seeking to enlighten them; and the insane hatred and fear of the church which the Protestant masses have inherited from the Old World prevents them from seeing what a source of strength and bond of union is her strong and firmly-knit organism in a social state like ours, in which there are so many elements of dissolution and disintegration.

Herr von Kirchmann, though, as we have seen, not a Catholic nor a Christian, is yet too profound a statesman not to recognize the supreme social importance of the church to the modern world.

“Human society,” he says, “cannot do without the principle
of authority, of obedience, of respect for law, any more
than it can do without the principle of individual freedom;
and now that the family has been shoved into the background,
there remains to uphold this principle of authority only one
great institution, and that is the Christian churches, and,
above all, the Catholic Church.

“The Reformation has so filled the Evangelical Church with
the principle of self-examination and self-determination
that she cannot at all take upon herself the mission of
protectress of authority, of respect for law, as law; which
is essential to modern society. She is also too far removed
from the laity, and lacks those special institutions which
would enable her energetically to uphold this principle.

“The same is true of all reform parties within the church,
and must be applied to the Old Catholics, should they
succeed in acquiring any importance. The Roman Catholic
Church alone must be considered the true mother of respect
for authority. She does not permit the individual to decide
in matters of faith and discipline; and she most perfectly
realizes the essence of religion, which cannot proceed from
the individual, but must have its source in the commandments
of God. In the bishops, in the councils, in the pope, the
individual finds authorities who announce to him religious
truth, and by the administration of the sacraments bring him
nearer to God. Changes in faith and worship which, with the
progress of science and of general culture, become
necessary, are here withdrawn from the disputes of the
learned and the criticism of individuals; in the councils
and in their head, the pope, an institution is found by
which modifications may be permitted without shaking faith
in the teachings of the church.

“In the position of the priest toward the laity this
relation of the individual to the church becomes most
intimate, and numerous special ordinances cultivate the
spirit of obedience and respect for the commands of
ecclesiastical superiors, while they also serve the ends of
Christian charity and benevolence. It ought not, indeed, to
be denied that this repression of individual
self-determination and this fostering of obedience may be
carried too far, and to some extent has, in the Catholic
Church, been exaggerated, as in civil society the
cultivation of individual freedom and the repression of
authority have produced an opposite excess; but precisely
through the interaction of these extremes will the true mean
be obtained; and therefore ought the state to seek in the
Catholic Church that powerful institution which alone, by
virtue of her whole organization, is able to ward off the
dangers which threaten society from the exaggeration of the
principle of individual freedom. But to do this the church
must be left in the possession of her constitution as it has
hitherto existed, and the state, consequently, should not
interfere with her external power any further than its own
existence demands. In this respect the principle of
individual freedom which pervades all modern life is so
powerful an auxiliary of the state that no fear of the
influence of the church need be felt, of which a little too
much is far less dangerous to society than too little.

“These are considerations, indeed, which are not in harmony
with the programme of modern liberalism, and will therefore
have but little weight with those who swim with the current
of the time; nevertheless, if we look around us, we perceive
many evidences of the instinctive feeling of human society
that in the Catholic Church may be found a protection for
the harmony of social life which now no longer exists
elsewhere. Only in this way can we explain the rapid growth
of the Catholic Church in her strictly hierarchical
constitution in America, and the increasing Catholic
movement in England, together with the efforts of the
Established Church to draw nearer to the Catholic; and this
tendency would be far more pronounced had it not to contend
against historical reminiscences which in England are more
vivid than elsewhere. Similar reasons influence the
government of France to seek rather to strengthen than to
weaken the power of the church; and in this matter the
unbelieving Thiers has not acted otherwise than the
religious MacMahon.

“After the principle of authority had been shaken by
revolutions and an unhappy war in France more than in any
other country, the people knew not where to seek help,
except in the fostering of religion and the support of the
Catholic Church. Like grounds prevent Italy and Austria from
coming to an open rupture with the church; they prefer to
yield somewhat in the execution of the laws rather than
suffer themselves to be deprived of her indispensable aid.
Similar tendencies exist in the other German governments,
and also among the rich and powerful families of Germany and
Prussia. Everywhere, even where these families are not
adherents of the Catholic faith, they feel that this church
is a fortress against the anarchy of individual freedom
which should be defended and not destroyed. The members of
these families are not blind to the defects of the church;
but they know that in the present age these are the least to
be feared, while her power against the self-exaltation of
the individual is indispensable to modern society. It is
altogether a mistake to attribute this bearing of the
wealthy classes of all civilized nations towards the church
to selfish motives or to the cunning of priests; these
motives may, as in all great things, slip in in isolated
cases; but this whole movement in Europe and America springs
from deeper causes—from causes which lie at the very bottom
of our common nature, which can neither suffer the loss of
freedom nor yet do without order and authority.

“About every ten years we are assured that, if only this or
that is reached, the Catholic Church will of herself fall to
pieces. Never has the attempt to bring about this
consummation been made with more spirit and energy than in
the literature and political constitutions of the last
century; and yet this church lives still in our day, and
what she has lost in temporal sovereignty is doubly and
trebly made up to her in the growing number of her children
and the gradually-increasing insight into the significance
of her mission for human society.

“For this reason the present conflict with the church in
Prussia ought not to be pushed so far as to bring her power
as low as the state has brought that of the Evangelical
Church. If the Catholic Church is to fulfil the great social
mission which we have just described, and which consists
essentially in her maintaining an equilibrium between
freedom and obedience, which is indispensable to society and
the state, her external power and internal organization must
not be interfered with in a way to render the accomplishment
of this exalted mission impossible.”[47]