This has long been a favorite theme with Protestants—the weapon with which they think themselves best able to do good battle in their cause; and doubtless it is employed, in most favorable circumstances, in an age like ours, in which material progress is so marked a feature that its influence may be traced in everything, and in nothing more than in the thoughts and philosophies of the men of our day. It is worthy of remark that Protestantism, professing to be a purer and more spiritual worship, should have tended to turn men’s thoughts almost exclusively to the worldly and temporal view of religion; so that it has become the fashion to praise Christianity, not because it makes men humble, pure, self-denying, content with little, but rather because its influence is supposed to be of almost an opposite nature. Much stress is laid upon the physical, social, and mental superiority of Christian nations to those that are still pagan, and the inference implied, if not always expressly stated, is that these temporal advantages are due to the influence of Christianity, and prove its truth and divine origin. Without stopping to consider the question whether the material and social superiority of Christian nations is to be attributed to their religious faith, we may ask whether, admitting that this is the case, it may with propriety be adduced in proof of the truth of the religion of Christ?
In the case of individuals no one, certainly, would think of arguing that prosperity proves a right faith, or even consistent practice. To hold that wealth and success are evidences of religious life, whatever it may be, is certainly not Christianity. Does the teaching of Christ permit the rich to lay the unction to their souls that they are God’s favored children? Were they his friends? Did they flock around him? Did they drink in his words gladly? If men who claim to be his disciples have deified worldly success, and made temporal prosperity a sufficient test of the truth of his religion, they cannot plead any word of his in excuse.
He certainly never paid court to the great, or stooped to flatter the rich. Was it not he who said, “Woe be to you rich: ye have received your reward”? and again, “It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”? Did he not take Lazarus to his bosom when Dives was in hell?
“Blessed are ye,” he said, “when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
The preaching of Christ was wholly unworldly. He sternly repressed the earthly ambitions of his disciples, and declared that, as the world hated him, it would also hate those who believed in him. They would be outcasts for his name’s sake; if this life were all, they of all men would be most miserable. Indeed, he rarely speaks of human happiness in the customary sense; he passes over what might be said in favor of this life, and brings out in bold relief its vanity and unsatisfactoriness. He draws no pictures of domestic bliss, and says but little of even innocent pleasures or those temporal blessings which are so sweet to all; and as he taught that worldly prosperity is no evidence of God’s favor, he was careful to correct the error of those who looked upon misfortune as a proof of guilt, as in the case of the man born blind and of those upon whom a tower had fallen.
Christ was poor, his apostles were poor, his disciples were poor, nearly all the Christians of the first ages were poor; and yet every day we hear men talk as though they considered poverty and Christianity incompatible. This is manifestly the opinion of M. de Laveleye. His argument may be stated in this way: England and Scotland are rich, Ireland is poor. The Protestant cantons of Switzerland are rich, the Catholic are poor. “In the United States,” says De Tocqueville, “the greater part of the Catholics are poor.” In fact, wherever the two religions exist together, the Protestants are more active, more industrious, and consequently richer than the Catholics.
This is the substance of what is spread over a dozen pages of the pamphlet. The conclusion is not difficult to draw: Protestants are richer than Catholics, and therefore better Christians.
“No man can serve two masters,” said Christ: “you cannot serve God and Mammon.” On the contrary, says M. de Laveleye, the success with which you worship Mammon is the best proof that you serve God truly. Of course it would be foreign to M. de Laveleye’s purpose to stop to inquire whether the poverty of Ireland be due to the Catholic faith of her people or to the rapacity and misgovernment of England; whether that of the Catholic cantons of Switzerland might not be accounted for by the fact that they are mountainous, with an inhospitable climate and a barren soil; and whether even M. de Tocqueville’s assertion that the greater part of the Catholics of the United States are poor might not be satisfactorily explained by stating that the greater part of them are emigrants who have recently landed upon these shores without a superabundance of this world’s goods.
He had also good reasons, while treating this part of his subject, for not looking nearer home. He had in Belgium, under his very eye, one of the most thrifty, industrious, and prosperous peoples of Europe, and at the same time one of the most Catholic. Why did he not compare the wealth of Belgium with that of Sweden or Denmark? Why did he not say a word about Catholic France, whose wealth and thrift cannot be denied. He does, indeed, make mention of two French manufacturing towns, in which, he states, on the authority of M. Audiganne, the capitalists are for the most part Protestants, whilst the operatives are Catholics; though what this has to do with any debatable question between Catholicism and Protestantism is not easily seen.
The assertion (p. 14) that “wherever the two religions co-exist in the same country the Protestants are more active, more industrious, more economical, and consequently richer than the Catholics,” is not borne out by facts. A single example will suffice to show how rash M. de Laveleye has been in making so wide an affirmation. The Catholics of the Rhine Province are universally acknowledged to be among the most thrifty and enterprising populations of Prussia, and are far richer than, for instance, the Protestants of Pomerania.