This transient reflection, ladies and gentlemen, presents itself naturally to the mind, and nothing is further from my thoughts than an attempt to enlist your hearts against your cool judgment in favor of the Roman Catholic Church. The claim which that church puts forth to your attention is based officially by her on her divine right to the reverence of mankind. She has never refused to give man the history of her origin, and to submit to his earnest scrutiny the proofs of her divine commission. She claims to be the only institution established on this earth to teach man what is necessary that he may be saved, and asks and accepts no stinted or divided allegiance. She alleges distinctly that human reason is unable without assistance to find and embrace the true, and that the human will is unable without assistance to find and embrace the good. She undertakes to impart the highest truth and the highest good to all who take her for their guide and their mother. She has been more cordially hated, and more devotedly beloved, than any object that history in all its witnessing can tell of. She claims not only to be a teacher, but a teacher endowed with unerring authority, and offers as vouchers for that claim the clear promise of her divine Founder, to abide with her until the end of time, and the lives and deaths of innumerable men and women taught by her to live perfectly upon earth. She has never disguised the greatness of that sacrifice of self which must be made by every man who would enjoy the peace here and the immortality of happiness hereafter, which she pledges to her faithful children; but she promises, in the name of God, supernatural assistance for making that sacrifice in spite of its seeming terrors. She uses no efforts to gain popularity; her system moves slowly, and rarely in such form as to take advantage of the interests or aspirations of the day. She never aims to be found on the side of human passions. She hesitates not to condemn those who differ with her authorized teachings, and she intimates to every man who sets up an altar against her altar that he does God and his fellow-mortals no good service, either temporal or eternal.
Whatever religious symbolism has been offered in the world hitherto as a substitute for her apostolic creed, has been founded on the principle that man is fit to take into his own hands the management of the affairs of his own soul; but the Catholic Church tells man that his private judgment is sure to mislead him in matters of religion, in spite of lofty aspirations and purity of intention; that he is bound not only to render obedience to his God, but in the manner God requires it; and nevertheless that religious direction need not be arbitrary; that it no more violates the freedom of man's will than the strong hand of a parent violates the freedom of the little child whom it leads lovingly onward and prevents from falling weakly to the ground.
No system which presents to man effort and self-restraint in the present, and advantage and freedom in the future only, can flatter his love of ease and selfish enjoyment. He is thus, at intervals at least, impatient of order, though it is heaven's first law; of legislation, though it has for its object the greatest good of the greatest number; of society, though its proper aim is to make each a friend and a helper to all, and all friends and helpers to each; and of science, that teaches him the laws of nature and the sad effects of their violation. By the same spirit is man urged to resent and cast off the restraints imposed upon him by religion and the church. But in this case, and in the others the opposition comes not from reason; it is the uprising of selfish interest or passion, assuming to speak out for the whole man, and for all time.
Again, that which is spoken against as the church is not the church; that which is spoken against as the belief, or practice, or requirement of the church, is hers perhaps in appearance, but in very truth it is not what she upholds, but what she reproves and opposes. There is a weird presentment bodied forth in English literature and called popery. It is certainly a figure of no amiable or attractive lineaments; it is worthy of the hatred of honest men. But it is not the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church were the same thing as this ghost which goes by the name of popery, we should hate it too; for it deserves to be hated, and we are men possessing the same faculties as our neighbors who hate it. We do not hate the Catholic Church; we love her, and honor her as our mother, and so would our neighbors, if they saw her and knew her as we do.
Let us here understand the thing plainly. I uphold the doctrine and the practice of the Catholic Church; for I believe her to be the true church that the Son of God established on this earth, and ransomed at the price of his precious blood. But I can say for myself and for every Catholic who has been properly instructed in his religion, that we do not undertake to defend what has been done weakly or wickedly by men, even though they too called themselves Catholics.
I believe that light travels from east to west, and the faith which Judea gave to Rome, and Rome to Europe, and Europe to us, is the faith by which we are to be saved, if saved at all. But while thanking Europe for the true religion, I pray to my God that all the ancient feuds and heart-burnings which have distracted older countries in the name of religion may not be transplanted to this virgin soil.
Allow me to close my remarks, ladies and gentleman, with the heart-felt wish that we may all live faithful to our honest convictions, preach our religion by word and example, and force upon each other nothing but the endearing offices of fraternal charity.
DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.
BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.