After this account of the reformers and their opinions, we have a striking account of the fruits of their doctrines in Europe and America up to this present time. It deserves to be read and reread. He calls attention to a fact of which we are all too well cognizant, the miserable religious discussions introduced and ever on the increase since the Reformation. "Until the innovating revolution of the sixteenth century, the faith of Christendom had been a unit; there were no divisions, no dissensions, no false teachers or false doctrines in the Christian household. Men, women, and children knew only one church, one faith, and one form of worship, and were contented and happy in their religious convictions. So universal was this unity, so thoroughly grounded was this faith, and so general was the practical observance of the duties of religion, that scepticism, the novelties of individuals, irreligion, and immorality were comparatively rare. The Christian church had been made up of converts from numerous nations and races, and there had been a continual struggle for more than fifteen centuries between the church on the one hand and these elements of ignorance and evil on the other; the church had finally triumphed, true Christian civilization had fairly gained the ascendency over barbarism, and a universal reign of Christian unity and concord was rapidly dawning over the whole world, when suddenly the innovations of Germany broke in upon this unity and harmony, arrested the onward progress of Christianity, and deluged the world with distracting novelties, creeds, and sects." Incessant wars and rapid deterioration of morals complete the picture, the main outlines of which we can verify from our own observation. In this connection the author has, we are glad to see, taken up the favorite argument and grand trump card of the opponents of the Catholic church, which is thus expressed: "Contrast the condition of Protestant and Catholic countries, and see how much superior in wealth, intelligence, and progress the former are to the latter." He shows that, when the facts are not carefully manipulated and prepared for the purpose, there is no very great contrast after all. He says: "Macaulay has contrasted the United States and Mexico; Italy and Scotland; Spain and Holland; Prussia and Ireland; candor should have induced this eminent writer to have made more equal and just comparisons, as France and England, Belgium and Holland, Austria and Prussia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil with the Sandwich Islands and other recently converted nations."'
Making the comparison, not merely in regard to wealth and outward show, but taking into account the statistics of crime, he shows that Catholic countries are far in advance of their Protestant rivals in virtue and morality.
It is perfectly astonishing how the current idea in Protestant society tends to deify materialism.
Worldly prosperity and accumulation of wealth we unblushingly put forward as the conclusive test of the truth or falsity of religious faith. Our Lord said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, but lay up treasures in heaven;" but a host of clerical and lay gentlemen and philosophers shout themselves hoarse with the cry; "Your Catholics have not the religion of Christ, for you do not seek after money half hard enough. You are a deal too simple in your way of living; you ought to multiply your cravings and desires more, and live a deal more artificially than you do." Listen to Lecky, one of the great modern lights; quoted by Dr. Marcy: "An accumulation of capital is therefore the first step of civilization, and this accumulation depends on the multiplication of wants. ... Hence the dreary, sterile torpor that characterized those ages in which the ascetic principle has been supreme, while the civilizations which have attained the highest perfection have been those of ancient Greece and modern Europe, which were most opposed to it." Liebig, quoted in a work of Youmans recently published, gives us this queer definition: "Man's superiority to the beast depends essentially in his faculty of discovering inventions for the gratification of his wants, and it is the sum of them among a people which embraces the conception of their 'civilization.'" We feel much ashamed of our old-fashioned ignorance, but really we used to think man's superiority over the beast consisted essentially in his possessing an immortal soul. Dr. J. W. Draper launches out in the following grandiloquent condemnation of the "Roman Church:" "How different the result had it abandoned the obsolete absurdities of patristicism"—we suppose he means the teaching of the fathers of the church handed down to them from the apostles—"and become imbued with the spirit of true philosophy—had it lifted itself to a comprehension of the awful magnificence of the heavens above and the glories of the earth beneath, had it appreciated the immeasurable vastness of the universe, its infinite multitude of worlds, its inconceivable past duration." Poor old church, why did you not abandon the consideration of the unseen world and the inconceivable duration of eternity, and confine your attention to astronomy and geology? Why teach men that God takes an interest in them personally and holds them accountable, when he has created so many worlds and rocks to take up their attention? This is philosophy with a vengeance, the philosophy which is summed up by St. Paul in the short phrase. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die."
Greece and Rome reached the acme of this material civilization before they fell. England at present seems to occupy their place. Kay, in his social history of the English people, exposes the misery and vice of the great mass the population, which, like the smothered fire of a volcano, may burst out and involve the land in a universal ruin and desolation.
It is well for us to take warning in time, for, in the headlong race after money and material enjoyment, we are getting civilized to such a degree that we seem to be in danger of outrunning all the antiquated notions of honor and honesty. Our late upheaval of society, the unsettled state of things, the insecurity of property, the enormous prices of labor and living, are beginning to make us realize that "all is not gold that glitters," and we feel confident that many a one will accept Dr. Marcy's fearless exposé of false civilization with thankfulness, and draw the logical conclusions.
In this connection is shown also the reason why our own country displays so much greater advance in material prosperity than either Mexico or the countries of South America; a reason, we are truly sorry to say, substantiated by overwhelming testimony. It is this: The native population of our own country, though a simple, innocent, warm-hearted people, who received us with open arms, were hunted down and destroyed like wild beasts in New England, Virginia, and elsewhere. In Mexico and South America they still live and occupy the country. Here we have made a blank to be filled by a full-blown European civilization of the growth of centuries; there millions of the original people have been reclaimed from barbarism, are living, increasing in number, and steadily progressing toward the mark we have attained. Dr. Marcy tells truth in eloquent but indignant forms when he says: "It is quite true that this Mexican Indian race is inferior by nature to the Anglo Saxon or the Frank. It is quite true that the children of those who were rude savages a few generations ago have not the intelligence, or the energy, or the enterprise of the shrewd, money-loving Puritan. It is quite true that the souls of these simple-minded children of Montezuma are not wholly absorbed in the love of gain and of worldly pride and ambition; but, nevertheless, they live, and can look upon the consecrated graves of their fathers back to the days of Cortez; they still live, and can worship in spirit and truth the God who created them and gave them their country; they still live, and can behold cities, towns, churches, schools, and cultivated fields, where their fathers only saw dense forests and savage wildernesses; they still live, and bless the church and the priests who have been their preservers and benefactors."
Our Lord Jesus Christ came to preach the gospel to the poor, and it is the glory of the Catholic Church that her great heart has always beat warmly and tenderly for the souls and bodies of the poor and down-trodden races of mankind. Her history on this continent is a history of a long line of true imitations of Jesus Christ, and of the peaceful triumphs of his cross. Wherever Protestantism prevailed, we have, as an unvarying result, the speedy extermination by fire and sword of the aborigines. Even this is held up by some writers as conclusive of the superior claims of Protestantism. Their argument, divested of all ambiguity, would sound thus: "The red man was in the way of our development, we shot him and cleared the track. What is the use of making a fuss about shooting Indians or other inferior races? It is a great deal better to do that than to try to keep the poor devils to be a burden to themselves and to us. We Protestants understand better than you weak-minded and superstitious Catholics how to deal with such matters, and this proves that we, and not you, have the true Christianity." We speak thus strongly because we feel strongly the impudence with which such writers attribute to Christianity itself the grossest violations of its very first principles.
Let us excuse our forefathers as much as we can, but, in the interest of the religion of Christ, let us not call their crimes virtues. There was nothing in their religion powerful enough to enlighten their ignorance or to control their passions; they had no church to lay down the stern, undeviating principles of morality, and no confessional to apply them to the individual conscience; and, therefore, as soon as an Indian stole a horse or a cow, or plundered a hen-roost, his death and the extermination of his tribe was a necessary and immediate consequence. And for the want of the same authoritative moral restraint, according to many Protestant writers who have taken the alarm, we are now on the high road to exterminate ourselves.
The Rev. J. Todd, D.D., a Congregational divine, all honor to him for his conscientious candor, says, speaking of the disparity in the natural increase of our foreign and native-born population, and of the immoral causes of it: "There is nothing in Protestantism that encourages or connives at it, but there is a vast ignorance as to the guilt of the thing. But in the Catholic Church human life is guarded at all stages by the confessional, by stern denouncement, and by fearful excommunications."