There are two great natural religions before the world, the Roman Catholic and the Spiritualistic; and both are adapted to the wants of the race.
Man naturally gives expression to his thoughts by external forms corresponding to his ideas.
The Roman Catholic religion is accused of being a system of forms and ceremonies, but therein lies its wonderful adaptation to humanity. Thought ever seeks expression in form, even as a mother’s love for her infant finds expression in her ardent embrace.
Love is the prevailing element of the Catholic religion, as shown by the love of the Son of God for poor, ignorant, sinful creatures.
We do not present this to the mind ideally. We call in the outcast and the beggar, and we expose to their view, in the great cathedrals, the Son of God, as he appeared in all his various experiences of human life.
The parent who can earn but a scanty pittance for his offspring, sees before him Jesus lying in the manger, equal in squalid poverty with the lowest of mankind.
The majesty and glory of the courts of Heaven are symbolized in the Roman Church. _There_ is gathered the wealth of the world! All that is yet attained in the representation of the grand, the beautiful, the majestic, the sublime, and the devotional, is collected in the Mother of Churches.
What earthly king, in his noble palace, with its costly architecture, its ornaments of silver and gold, its rare paintings and statuary, the wealth and accumulation of many sovereigns, would admit into its sacred precincts the poor and the lowly, the beggar and the thief, the Magdalen and the Lazarus to sully with their presence his royal abode?
But we erect palaces to the King of Heaven! regal in architecture, and adorned with beauty surpassing in magnificence earthly royalty, in which the lowliest may enter on an equality with the prince; his untutored mind, his uncultivated senses may listen to music of the highest order. The pealing tones of the organ resound under the touch of the highest masters of art for his simple ear. Listening to those strains, his mind forms a conception of the harmony and beatitude of Heaven!
Even death is not looked upon with horror by the Catholic. If he lose a friend in this life, unlike the Protestant, he does not abandon him in oblivion, but his sympathies still extend to him by offering masses for his soul. And it is because it is so adapted to man’s spiritual nature that the Catholic religion has withstood the shock and surge of ages!