THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1875.
The year 1875 has not been a specially remarkable one as distinct from the years immediately preceding it. Great questions, which affect humanity at large beyond the line of nationality, and which were rife three or four years ago, are undecided still. No wars, or revolutions, or discoveries, or mighty changes have occurred during the year to alter sensibly the current of human affairs. What the world at large quarrelled and wrangled over a year, two years, three, four years ago, it wrangles over still, and may for years yet to come. Much as science and culture have done to break down the barriers that separate men and bring the human family nearer together, nations, nationally considered, stand as far apart as ever they did, and the imaginary line that divides neighboring peoples finds them wide apart as the antipodes.
To begin a rapid and necessarily incomplete review at home, the past year can scarcely be regarded as either a happy or successful one, commercially speaking, in the United States. Preliminary echoes of the Centennial year of the great republic have been heard, but amid them the crash of falling banks that had no legitimate excuse for falling, and of business firms that followed in due order. This, however, is only a repetition of the two preceding years, which it is as painful as it would be useless to dwell upon here. In a word, business at large—instead of recovering, as it was hoped it would, during the past year—if anything, fell behind, and so continues. The election did not tend to enliven it. There are hopes, however, of a real revival during the coming Centennial year, or at least of a beginning on the road of improvement. There is the more reason to hope for this that large branches of our industries, such as cereals, iron, and cotton goods, are beginning to find a good foreign market.
Looked at largely, there are some things on which Americans may congratulate themselves during the year. Chief among these are their very misfortunes. Extravagance in living, foolish and vulgar display in dress and equipage, have disappeared to a satisfactory extent. Of course where wealth abounds and fortunes are rolled up easily, there will be shoddy; but then let it be marked off, and the world will not be the loser. Again, there was a good sign on the part of the people to form opinions of their own regarding the questions up before them and the respective merits and qualifications of the various candidates for election. To be sure, many, too many, persons were elected who were a disgrace to their constituencies; and while such men are set in high and responsible positions it is vain to look for reform in the thousand abuses that afflict the conduct of public affairs. Still, there was a hopeful indication of the right feeling among the people.
Perhaps the most memorable, certainly the most significant, event to Catholics in the history of this country took place during the year. The venerable Archbishop of New York was raised by the Holy Father to the dignity of the cardinalate, and thereby set in the senate of the church of which Christ is the invisible, and the Pope, the successor of Peter, the visible, head. To speak of the fitness of the Holy Father’s choice in selecting Archbishop McCloskey for this high office and proud privilege of being the first American cardinal is not for us. It is sufficient to say that not Catholics alone, but their Protestant fellow-countrymen also, all the land over, received the news and hailed the choice with acclaim. But what moves us most is the significance of the act. In the appointment of an American cardinal in the United States the wish expressed by the Council of Trent has in this instance been realized. That great council ordained, respecting the subjects of the cardinalate, that “the Most Holy Roman Pontiff shall, as far as it can be conveniently done, select (them) out of all the nations of Christendom, as he shall find persons suitable” (Sess. 24, De Ref., c. i.) Were this recommendation completely carried out, it would probably be one of the greatest movements that have taken place in the Catholic Church for the last three centuries.
Suppose, for example, that the great Catholic interests throughout the world were represented in that body by men of intelligence, of known virtue, and large experience; suppose every nationality had there its proportionate expression—a senate thus composed would be the most august assembly that ever was brought together upon earth. It would be the only world’s senate that the world has ever witnessed. This would be giving its proper expression to the note of the universality of the church. The decisions of the Holy Father on the world-interests of the church, assisted by the deliberations of such a body, would have more power to sway the opinions and actions of the world than armies of bayonets. For, whatever may be said to the contrary in favor of needle-guns and rifled cannon, the force of public opinion through such agents as electricity and types moves the world, above all when supported by the intelligence, virtue, and experience of men who have no other interests at heart than those of God and the good of mankind.
Who knows but the time has come to give this universality of the church a fuller expression? Is not divine Providence acting through modern discoveries, rendering it possible for the human race to be not only one family in blood, but even in friendship and unity of purpose? Perhaps the present persecutions of the church in Italy are only relieving her from past geographical and national limitations, to place her more completely in relations with the faithful throughout the world. Who knows but the time is near when the Holy Father will be surrounded by representatives of all nations, tribes, and peoples, from the South as well as from the North, from the East as well as from the West; by Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen, Belgians, Portuguese, Austrians, Irishmen, Americans, Canadians, South Americans, Australians, as well as by representatives of the faithful from the empire of China? Would this new departure be anything more than the realization of the wish expressed by that great and holy council held at Trent three centuries ago?
In passing from our own to other lands, we cannot do so, at the opening of the second century of our country’s life, without a glance at something larger and wider than the mere local interests of every-day life which touch us most nearly. Beyond doubt there is much to criticise, much, perhaps, to be ashamed of, much to deplore, in the conduct of our government, local and national, and in the social state generally of our people. Still, we see nothing at present existing or threatening that is beyond the remedy of the people itself. It is a fashion among our pessimists to contrast the America of to-day with the America of a hundred years ago. Well, we believe that we can stand the contrast. The country has expanded and developed, and promises so to continue beyond all precedent in the history of this world. When the experiment of a century ago is contrasted with the established fact—the nation—of a free and prosperous people of to-day, we can only bless God. And allowing the widest margin for the evils and shortcomings in our midst, when we glance across the ocean at nations armed to the teeth, looking upon one another as foes, and either rending with internal throes or threatening to be rent, pride in this country deepens, and the heart swells with gratitude that in these days God has raised up a nation where all men may possess their souls in peace.
We have some alarmists among us who look in the near future to the occurrence of scenes in this country similar to those now being transacted in Europe, where men are persecuted for conscience’ sake. We cannot share in these alarms. As we see no evils in our midst which are beyond the remedy of the people, so we see no religious or other questions that may arise which cannot be civilly adjusted. This is not a country where the raw head and bloody bones thrive. The question of religion is decided once for all in the Constitution. Catholics, of course, have a large heritage of misrepresentation to contend against, but that is rapidly diminishing. A Bismarck may strive to introduce into our free country, through a band of fanatics and weak-minded politicians, the persecuting spirit which he has attempted to introduce into England by a Gladstone, which he has succeeded in introducing into Italy by a Minghetti, and into Switzerland by a Carteret; but before they reach the hundredth part of the influence of the disgraceful Know-Nothing party, the good sense and true spirit of our countrymen will, as it did in the case of that party, brand all who have had any prominent connection with the movement with the note of infamy. The fanatical cry of “No Popery” is evidently played out at its fountain-source in old England, while the attempt to revive its echoes will meet with still less success in new England. We see no clouds on the American horizon that should cause Catholics any grave apprehension.
The end of such attempts always is that those who strike the sparks only succeed in burning their fingers. All we have to do is to walk straight along in the path we have been following of common citizenship with those around us, in order to secure for ourselves all the rights which we are ready to concede to others.
The European situation during the past year may be summed up under two headings—the struggle between church and state, and the prospects of war. To enter at any length into the question between church and state in Germany and in other countries in Europe would be going over old ground which has been covered time and again in The Catholic World. Only such features of the contest will be touched upon as may set the present situation clearly before the mind of the reader.
The official Provincial Correspondence, at the opening of the past year, said in a retrospective article on the events of 1874: “The conviction has been forced upon the German government that the German ultramontane party are a revolutionary party, directed by foreigners and relying mainly upon the assistance of foreign powers. The German government, therefore, are under the necessity of deprecating any encouragement of the ultramontane party by foreign powers. It was for this reason that the German government last year thought it incumbent on them to use plain language in addressing the French government upon the sayings and doings of some of the French bishops. France had taken the hint, and had prevented her ultramontanes setting the world on fire merely to vent their spite against Germany.… It was, perhaps, to be expected under these circumstances that, abandoning at last all hope of foreign assistance, the German ultramontanes would make their peace with the government in Prussia, and no longer object to laws they willingly obey in Baden, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Oldenburg, not to speak of Austria and other states. At all events, it was very desirable that the ultramontanes should yield before the church was thrown into worse confusion by their malicious but impotent resistance.”
Such was the pleasant prospect held out for the Catholics by the official organ at the opening of the year. The programme sketched in it has been faithfully carried out, and Germany has taken another step in the path of freedom, internal peace, and consolidation by planting its foot nearer the throat of the church. It is useless to enter into a refutation of the falsehoods contained in the extract from the official journal. They have been refuted in the German Reichstag and all the world over. It is needless, also, to call attention to the tone of the official journal, and the manner, become a fashion of late with German statesmen and writers at large, of warning foreign powers to keep a civil tongue in their heads respecting German matters, or it may be the worse for them. How far the Catholics have yielded to the kindly invitation held out to them the world has seen. We have before this remarked on the strange anxiety manifested by a government, convinced of the justice of its cause and the means it was pursuing towards its end, to stifle the expression of public opinion, not only at home, but abroad. Moreover, the very fact of its being compelled to deprecate “any encouragement of the ultramontane party by foreign powers” says as plainly as words can say it that those powers see something in the party to encourage.
Here is a sample—one out of hundreds such—of the manner in which the members of the “revolutionary party” have been treated during the year, and of the crimes, sympathy with which on the part of foreign powers is so earnestly deprecated by the German government. That extremely active agent of Prince Bismarck, the Prussian correspondent of the London Times, tells the story of the deposition of the Bishop of Paderborn by the “Ecclesiastical” Court thus: “He has been sentenced to-day (Jan. 6) to innumerable fines, chiefly for appointing clergymen without the consent of the secular authorities. [Is this a crime, reverend and right reverend gentlemen of the Protestant churches?] Never paying any of these forfeits, he has been repeatedly imprisoned and forcibly prevented from exercising his functions. [And now for the perversity of the man, the “malicious but impotent resistance.”] Notwithstanding the measures taken against him, he has continued his opposition to the state. He would not allow his clerical training-schools to be visited by government inspectors; he has declined to reappoint a chaplain he had excommunicated without the consent of the government [What criminals SS. Peter and Paul would be were they living in Germany to-day!]; and he has continually issued pastorals and made speeches to deputations breathing the most hostile sentiments against crown and parliament [sentiments not quoted]. He has received addresses covered with more than one hundred thousand signatures, and on a single day admitted twelve thousand persons to his presence, who had come to condole with him on the martyr’s fate he was undergoing.” Let it be borne in mind that this is not our description, but that of an agent of the Prussian government. Could words establish more clearly the side on which the criminality lies?
Only passing mention can be made of events which have been already anticipated and commented on. The extension of the civil registration of births, deaths, and marriages from Prussia to the whole German Empire passed in January. Perhaps no measure yet has so aroused the indignation, not only of Catholics, but of believing Protestants also. As the correspondent already quoted tersely puts the matter: “In all Germany this law does away with the services of the clergy in celebrating the three great domestic events of life.” That is to say, there is no longer need to baptize Christian children in the name of God; there is no longer need of God in the marriage service; finally, as man comes into the world, so he may go out of it, without the name or the invocation of God, without God’s blessing over his grave or the ceremonies of religion attending the last act. Like a dog he may come, like a dog he may live, like a dog he may go. And yet this is an evangelical power! Verily, but of a strange evangel. The result of it is shown already. Since the Prussian Civil Registration Law was passed, only twenty-five per cent. of all Berlin marriages have been celebrated in churches, while only thirty per cent. of the children born in the capital have been baptized by clergymen.
The passing of the Landsturm Bill converts the whole German Empire into an armed camp. “Henceforth every German sound in wind and limb must be a soldier. From the age of seventeen to forty-two, every man not belonging to the army or the reserve is to be liable to be called out in the case of an actual or even a threatened invasion,” says the London Times. “At the word of command Germany is arming en masse, and the surrounding nations—that is, the best part of the world—cannot but do as she does.” They are doing as she does, and all the European powers to-day sleep beside their arms. In face of this fact, what comfort can men take from the meeting and hobnobbing of the crowned heads of Europe here, there, and everywhere, or of their assurances of peace? Who is strong enough to keep the peace, who too weak to enkindle war? No man and no people. It is this arming and incertitude of one another that alone prevented what locally was so insignificant an affair as the outbreak within the year of the Bosnian insurrection against Turkey from lighting a universal conflagration. The eagles of the great powers gather around the Turkish carcase. England seizes beforehand on the control of the Suez Canal by way of preparing for eventualities, and the Eastern question begins at last to resolve itself into this simple form: not, How shall we uphold the empire? but, How shall we divide the spoils?
The present rulers of Germany profess to look upon their Catholic subjects as the great foes of the German Empire. The mistake is a fatal one; for in binding the church they bind the only power that can stop the dry-rot which is slowly eating into the heart, not alone of Germany, but of all nations to-day. That dry-rot is socialism, the first-born of infidelity. That socialism prevails in Germany the rulers of that empire know, and its utterances are as dreaded as an encyclical of the Pope. Here are the elements of socialism as pictured by the Cologne Gazette at the opening of the year: “In 1874, although the great bubble schemes burst in the summer of 1873, and although last year a plentiful harvest of corn and wine came to our relief, the consequences of the crisis are still felt. Numerous undertakings are depreciated, and even more lamentable than the losses of the promoters are the mischievous results of the sudden excessive rise in wages, which could not possibly last, the luxurious habits, the strikes, and all that these involve on the laboring classes and the whole industrial life of the German nation. Habits of indolence and gluttony have been established which it will be hard to eradicate,” and much more in the same strain.
This is only a straw showing which way the wind blows. Persecution of the church has not yet exhausted itself, though, beyond the actual taking of life, it is hard to see what remains to be done. The final measure has been resorted to of abrogating the articles of the Prussian constitution of 1850, which were specially drawn up to provide freedom of religion and worship in their fullest sense. Of the attitude of the German Catholics, the prelates, the clergy, and the laity, it is needless to speak. The world has witnessed it; and the very fierceness of the persecution simply serves to show forth more gloriously the divinity of the church; for no human institution could live under it. One result of the persecution has been the return of a Catholic majority to the Bavarian Parliament. We hope for the unity of the German Empire, and its true consolidation; but it is not in our hearts to support tyranny, under whatever name, least of all when it attacks all that we hold most sacred. The German policy must be totally altered before it can command the sympathy of freemen. It must be totally altered before it can command the respect and full allegiance of its subjects, so large and important a section of whom are Catholics. The Catholic majority in Bavaria is but one sign of many of opposition to the one-sided policy of which Prince Bismarck is the author and expounder. Who knows but that the threatened dissolution of an empire erected on so false and narrow a basis has not already begun in Bavaria? All the sacrifices made to establish the empire—not the least of which were made by Bavaria—the German chancellor, by his determined and senseless religious persecution, would now seem foolishly to ignore. And these Bavarians, of all the Germans, once aroused, and their religious rights infringed upon, are not the men quietly and meekly to subside under opposition.
We have dwelt more at length upon Germany because it is the centre of the strife that convulses, and threatens to convulse, the world. Other topics must consequently be hastily dismissed.
Of France there is nothing but good to report. After a series of fiery debates in the Assembly, the constitution of a conservative republic was definitively formed and agreed upon towards the end of February. The nomination of councillors of state was given to the President, who resigned the nomination of the senators. Of course France is still open to surprises, and the various parties seem as unable to coalesce as ever. But there is no question that the government of Marshal MacMahon has deserved well of the country, and, could only a true republic be established in France, it would serve as a safe counter-check to the absolutisms that threaten the east of Europe. The commerce and industries of the country have advanced even on the preceding year, though the imports of 1874 amounted to 3,748,011,000 francs, and the exports to 3,877,753,000 francs, these figures being in excess of those of any former years. The returns for the Paris savings-banks in 1874 indicate how the poorer and lower middle classes, who chiefly patronize these establishments, are recovering from the effects of the war and the Commune. The deposits amounted to 14,500,000 francs, while in 1873 they were 13,500,000 francs, and in 1872 12,629,000 francs. There is every reason to believe that the ratio of the past year will show a corresponding increase.
While the tokens of reviving prosperity are thus encouraging, those of a revival of religious feeling and coming back to the old ways and the old faith among the people at large are not less so. A noble and patriotic work is being accomplished in the rapid formation and spread of Catholic Working-men’s Clubs—a direct offset to the socialism fostered by the spirit of irreligion in other places. The part taken by Catholic laymen of standing and ability in this work, so full of happy promise, is in itself a significant feature, and one that may well be recommended to the attention of Catholic laymen all the world over. The pilgrimages to holy shrines and to Rome have continued, spite of the laugh of the infidel and the scorn of the unbeliever. The solemn consecration of the church in Montmartre to the Sacred Heart was one in which the whole world was interested. But the most encouraging measure of all was the obtaining, after a fierce battle between religion and infidelity, of permission to found free universities in France, where students who believe in God might, if they chose, apply themselves to the study of their faith, or at least carry on their studies under the divine protection and under professors who, lacking nothing in intellect, recognize a higher than themselves, whose law they have the courage to recognize and the sense and piety to obey.
Surely, France was never so worthy of the esteem and profound respect of all the world as it is to-day. What a wonderful vitality is displayed by this Latin-Celtic race! What people could so suddenly recover from what seemed so fatal a blow? What other nation would have shown so much wisdom and self-control as these Frenchmen, whom the outside world stamped as “unstable as water”? Is France to be the leader of the Latin-Celtic races, to conform itself, consistently with its past history and traditions, after a century of throes, into a political form of society fitted to its present needs, its future prosperity, and the renewal of religion? God grant that it be so!
England, true to its peace policy, still keeps aloof from the troubled current of European affairs, beyond its recent move Eastward, which has already been noticed. It steadily refused to accept the invitation of Russia to join the International Conference on the Usages of War, which in reality resembled a consultation among surgeons before beginning to operate on an interesting subject. Mr. Disraeli’s premiership has been marked by some irritating mistakes, though the securing control of the Suez Canal was undoubtedly a move in the present critical state of Eastern affairs that compensates for many a blunder—if he can only hold the control. Mr. Gladstone finally retired from the leadership of the liberal party, and was nominally succeeded by the Marquis of Hartington. The ex-leader, abandoning a position which, take him all in all, he undoubtedly adorned, went paddling in theology and got shipwrecked. The Gladstone fulminations on “Vaticanism” are now a thing of the past, and only afforded another melancholy instance of the facility with which even great men can go beyond their depth. The portentous charges against the Pope, the Curia Romana, the rusty arsenals, and the rest of the papal “properties” were received by the English people themselves with honest laughter or with passive scorn, until finally Mr. Gladstone lost his temper, and then the world became tired both of him and his “rusty tools.”
Materialism is taking deep root in the English mind. The leading organ of English opinion, itself highly respectable, but by no means religious, complained more than once during the year of the general apathy with which the public regarded the doings of the various convocations and general assemblies of the Protestant churches in England. And the success with which the onslaught by such a man as Mr. Gladstone against the Catholic Church met with at the hands of Englishmen reveals anew the fact that religious feeling has fallen to so low an ebb in England that even the most eloquent of bigots could not arouse an anti-Popery cry. And this, for England, is the last stage of religious apathy.
Is this again the immediate precursor of a reaction in favor of the true church in that land for which so many prayers have been offered up, and the blood of so many martyrs has been shed?
Ireland has been quiet, calm, and peaceable, and though, in common with England, suffering from the commercial depression which spread from this country to them, it has shown a strong tendency to advance in prosperity. For its peace the Catholic clergy, according to the testimony of the London Times, and, as we believe, the Home-Rule party, are jointly answerable. Men who believe in God and obey the laws of the church will, with honest and able representatives, seek for no heroic measures of reform, while the legislature is fairly open to complaints. The London Times says that the peaceful record of the year reads like a fairy tale. Yet the Peace Preservation Acts were renewed, for which the same journal could find no better reason than that “you cannot break off abruptly from the past,” and goes on to say: “It is possible that, if there never had been a resolution to impose upon a conquered people a church which they rejected, and to endow it with the spoils to which they remained attached; if there never had been a neglect so little creditable to our statesmanship as the conditions under which agricultural land was held in Ireland; if laws had never been passed to deprive Roman Catholics of political privileges and the right to possess property; if the attempt had never been made to rule the inhabitants of the sister-island by a hostile garrison, that state of feeling would never have been created which imposes upon the legislature of to-day the sad necessity of maintaining an exceptional coercive legislation.” The bitterest foe of England could scarcely add one iota to the force of this terrible indictment of English legislation in Ireland.
But we look with all hope to the speedy dispersing of the clouds which so long have hovered over this real “island of saints,” which has done so much in the past and promises so much in the future for the spread of faith among the peoples of the earth. More pleasing topics to touch upon are the celebration of the centennial of Daniel O’Connell, the fiftieth anniversary of the consecration of the venerable Archbishop McHale, and, though last, far from least, the visit to Ireland of Cardinal McCloskey, and his reception by Cardinal Cullen and the Irish people. The scene was indeed a memorable one; the meeting on a soil consecrated with the blood of saints and martyrs—a soil every inch of which could tell a tale of a struggle of centuries for the faith—of two cardinals of the church that guards the representatives, in their own persons, of the newest and one of the oldest heritages of the church, and the one Irish by birth, the other Irish by blood. A meeting no less significant was that in England between the Cardinal of New York and Cardinal Manning, the first convert probably who ever wore the title: a man of indomitable activity, a fearless asserter of the rights of the church, and always foremost in every movement which aims at the amelioration of the condition of the working classes.
Russia continues her strides in the East, nearing Hindostan, and with Hindostan the sea, at every step. Despite occasional reverses, her march against the conflicting tribes and peoples that lie in her path can only be regarded as irresistible. Meanwhile, at home she is eaten up by sects and the socialistic spirit that pervades other nations, and which tyranny may stifle for a time, but cannot destroy. Again the mistake occurs of regarding the Catholic Church as her enemy, and dragooning her Catholic subjects with a creed which their consciences reject. Austria is engaged in the attempt to set her internal affairs in order, and to recover from the defeat at Sadowa. She finds time, notwithstanding, to attack the church, though without the persistent brutality of her German neighbor, whose offer to procure a joint interference among the nations in the election of the next pope was politely but firmly rejected by Austria. In this path Italy also walks. Rejecting the rough hempen cord with which Germany binds and strives to strangle the church, Italy, true to her national character, chooses one of silk, which shall do the work softly and noiselessly, but none the less securely. Sensim sine sensu. Thus the Law of Guarantees of 1871, which was founded on Cavour’s maxim of “a free church in a free state,” provided for the absolute freedom of the Pope in spirituals. This Germany resents, and early in the year made strong remonstrance with Italy, to see, in plain English, if some plan could not be devised by which the Pope might be muzzled and prevented from issuing encyclicals and bulls and so forth, save only such as might please the mind of present German statesmen. Italy refused to alter the law. But now in November we find Minghetti, the president of the Council, stating to his electors at Cologna-Veneta that there are defects in the law of papal guarantees. The church—says that excellent authority, M. Minghetti—is the congregation of all the faithful, including, of course, M. Minghetti himself. But the state, on whom with the jus protegendi devolves also the jus inspiciendi, is bound to see that the right of the laity and the interest of the lower clergy be not sacrificed to the abuse of papal and episcopal authority. Wherefore, M. Minghetti, urged solely by the desire of seeing that no injustice is done, pledges his electors that he will bring in a bill empowering the laity to reclaim the rights to which they are entitled in the government of the church. How far those rights extend, of course, remains to be seen.
The Holy Father is still spared to us in the full enjoyment of his health and powers of mind. Pilgrims flock to him in thousands, and the eyes of the world, friends and foes alike, look with sympathy upon him. Surely now is the real triumph of his reign, and in his weakness shines forth his true strength. No earthly motives, if ever they affected the allegiance of Catholics to him, could affect it now. Yet what does the world witness? As men regard things, a weak and powerless old man, ruling, from the palace that is his prison, the hearts of two hundred millions of people in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ, whose saintly vicar he is. The Pope, lifted above all entanglements by recent events with the political policy of so-called Catholic countries—his voice, as the head of the church, is heard and respected by all nations as perhaps it never was at any other period of time.
Spain opened with a new revolution—the re-entering of Alfonso, the son of the exiled queen, to the kingdom and the throne from which she was driven. This being said, the situation remains in much the same condition that it has done for the past two years; if anything, notwithstanding some defections and reverses, Don Carlos has gained in strength and boldness. The move that brought in Don Alfonso was a good one, but it came too late.
The customary chronic revolutions prevail in South America. The assassination of Garcia Moreno, the able and good President of Ecuador, by members of a secret society, added a unique chapter of horrors and dastardly cowardice to the records of these societies, showing that to accomplish their purpose they are ready to stab a nation. Garcia Mareno died a martyr to his faith. From a far different cause, though by the same means, died Sonzogno, the editor of the Capitale, the trial of whose assassins furnished food for thought as to the force at work in regenerated Italy. An event that might have been of great importance was the death of the youthful Emperor of China, which was followed by that of his wife. He was succeeded by a child five years old, and the government seems to have passed into the hands of the same men who held it before, so that a change for the better towards Christians is scarcely to be hoped for, while Christian residents are still exposed at any moment to a repetition of the Tien-Tsin massacre.
With the year closes the third quarter of the most eventful century, perhaps, which the world has yet known, the first century of the Christian era alone being excepted. It opened on what Lacordaire has well called “a wild and stormy morning,” and he would be a bold prophet who should predict a clear sky at the close. A writer of the day describes nations within the past year as engaged in “a wild war-dance.” The same is true of the century. Nations seem to have learned nothing, but forgotten much. In forgetting the faith that made them whole they have forgotten the secret of the elixir of national life. Hence, bitter as the struggle is, a Catholic cannot but hope much in the near future from the present trials of the church. The blows of Germany have crushed shams to the earth, and caused the truth to shine forth resplendent and beautiful. Whatever may be this faith that the nations have forgotten, that has been a mockery among men of the world, it is manifest, at least, that there is a profound reality in it, and a vitality that no power on earth can hope to destroy. This testimony of strength in weakness, of the purest devotion and loftiest sacrifices that this world can show, if it do nothing else, at least brings men to ponder and look back, and compare and inquire, and arrive at some conclusions. For the world cannot remain an indifferent spectator to a question that is wide as the world. The vagaries of belief, the churches with fronts of brass and feet of clay, the parasites and the flatterers who, professing to worship and believe in God alone, bow down in secret before the prince of this world, now slink away in shame or stand abashed before the unbeliever.
Again, considering the intensity of the activity of the age, induced in a great measure by the facilities of expressing and communicating our thoughts, of reaching the uttermost parts of the earth in a flash of time—all of which enhances the responsibility of our free will—religion, in view of these facts, will have to keep pace with this activity in order to perform the office for which God established it upon earth. That she will do so is as much a matter of certitude as her existence; for that same “Spirit which fills the whole earth” finds in her bosom his dwelling-place. The general tendency to material science, and the material interests of nations, which have so wonderfully increased within the century, tend all to obscure the supernatural. But there is nothing to be feared from the advocates of material science. There is no escaping from God in his creation. And these men, in their way, in common with the more open persecutors, are preparing for the triumph of the church, and in the providence of God are co-workers in the more complete demonstration of his divine truth.