ext.

\ have no sympathy, on the other hand, with the manufacture oi pagan or Christian idols that appeal only to modern, s to ancient superstition—the relic venders and worshippers.

e world is as yet far from being redeemed; nevertheless, the eroism of Jesus is the beacon light of the universe and at once etermines the comparative magnetism and magnitude of this, beautiful, beautiful world.

William Henry Tiiorne.

RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES IN OUR DAY.

A French atheist has recently written a book in which he attempts to prove that religion is dying and that the onlv thing of which men are sure is that they are sure of nothing. He advises them to boldly live up to honest doubt and escape the thraldom of a dead faith. He further differentiates religion and morals and advocates the teaching of the latter as necessary to the preservation and progress of the race. Catholics and their church receive severe castigation at his hands (as well as misrepresentations), but Protestants will draw even less comfort from his conclusions, as he regards their religion an ad

vance merely inasmuch as it is a loosening of the bonds oi faith and a step on the road to free thought. He prophesies the near approach of a day when all men will have outworn the dogmas of the past and the world will have advanced to such perfection that humanity will have no need of religion.

This iconoclastic reasoner has read the signs of the times very poorly, indeed. He has made his wishes father to a host of conclusions argued from a false premise set up in his own imagination. The tendency of the world is toward religion, noi away from it. Even the materialism of modern thought is but a phase. The question of religion, of "whither goest thou?" is of paramount interest. The supreme question to-day—as of every day—is one of man's eternal destiny. Precisely that has made the writer of the book referred to an atheist. But it has made infinitely more thinkers into believers. We claim more than this, however; not only is the tendency of the world today toward belief, but overwhelmingly toward the Catholic Church. Let us see whether we have anything on which to base our claims.

During the past one hundred and twenty-five years Protestantism has so completely changed its character that were the old "reformers" to return they would not recognize their own. As an instance of this, let us first take England alone. England, since the Oxford movement, has changed its religion. The established church of one hundred years ago was no more like the established church of to-day than black is like white. The English Church of the last century was Protestant; to-day, it is outwardly Catholic. It would seem that the time when it will be really Catholic is not far off.

If you had gone into an English church (or its offshoot, the Episcopal Church in this country), one hundred years ago, you would have found it plain and bare, with a table for communion and a pulpit, the door locked from Sunday to Sunday, and "communion Sunday" once a month. What do we find now? An open church, an altar, sanctuary lamp burning, candles, flowers, pictures, crucifix, while the officiating "priest" celebrates daily what he calls "mass." The old Protestant word "minister" (although used in the Book of Common Prayer) is now considered almost an insult as applied to the English clergy. At some of these English churches you will see crowds

^^QV ^Ki, \Y* "K-ensit disturbances and "no popery"

f/^ ^ - ^ eornplete triumph of what is known as the

•j«A^,\TCkXt\ "^ycYi Vias for some time felt the ground slip

of Ocvwt^^^ feet. Did not the most eminent Bishops

a<5. Vc ^ ^end a commission to Rome a few years ago to

r>-»_~ \\d\ether or not the English clergy were really

-^%\js> \ K^\d d\d not this asking show that the English Church WOK. «,wre, of itself, and acknowledged authority outside of <=>e\\ greater than itself? In this country Episcopalianism is •%g th\s tendency toward Catholicity, but it draws so sharp Vine between "high" and "low" church it is hardly credible -that the adherents of the different parties can claim the same general belief. An example of this may be found in almost any ■citv boasting churches of this faith, as in one will be found close-communion Catholicity, so-called, while another will deny that the "high" church is orthodox, and affirm that the Episcopal Church is Protestant.

To turn to the evangelical denominations; in them, too, we see the tendency away from Protestantism and toward Catholicity. Within the memory of the present passing generation, the Presbyterian. Baptist, Methodist and other denominations called their places of worship "meeting houses," and repudiated the word church as "popish." Now call them anything but churches and they quickly resent it. Their houses of worship formerly had no organs, no music save psalm singing, and all the services were of the plainest, most Protestant kind. Formerly they did not celebrate Christmas, Good Friday, Easter or other days of the Christian year; that, too, was popish. Now they keep them all, and act generally as if they had discovered them. All this is an innovation of the past century. This tremendous change in observance was marked by Dr. Briggs in his book "Whither," in which he showed how all Protestantism has departed from its ancient standards. Indeed, he admitted the tendency of the world toward liturgy, form and ceremony.

Ritualism, which, as we find it in Protestantism, is a sort of game, is, after all, evidence of a real need in the hearts of men. It is an acknowledgment that Protestantism, cold and puritanical, has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The stream of conversions from Protestantism is another proof of our contention. Since Newman's conversion, this stream has become a mighty river in England alone. The flower of the English clergy have seen the light and returned to that church from which their ancestry departed.

Our French atheist doubtless voices the thought of some socalled well-educated persons when he says that science and learning are destined to take the place of religion, and he bases his argument upon the fact that many scientific investigators have thrown over religious belief. But he does not claim—nor, indeed, has any skeptic yet claimed—that science and doubt have tilled man's deepest need. "The Life and Letters of Huxley," recently published, show conclusively that to the end oi his life he remained unsatisfied. He denied dogma, but made doubt into a dogma. These destroyers of faith who pretend to see the decay of religion all about them are in reality whistling to keep up their courage. They talk learnedly about the future and the non-religion of the future. It is precisely in the future that they and their cheap philosophy will be forgotten. The sensational career of Robert G. Ingersoll is a case in point. Surely, of all dead men Ingersoll is the deadest. If the unbeliever is right and religion is a thing of the past, such men as the blatant Ingersoll would be remembered and honored when religious men are ignored. But he has met the fate of all false prophets since the world began.

Since the time of Macaulay the tendency of the religious world toward Catholicity has been more marked than ever before, but even in his day he saw that the immense progress of the world could not be laid at the door of Protestantism. In his essay on Ranke's "History of the Popes," he says: "We often hear it said that the world is constantly more and more enlightened, and that this enlightenment must be favorable to Protestantism and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this is a *^ndrecl and^ ^^t^^^^^tion. We see that during the last two J ^egTee fiFty y^ar-s the human mind has been in the high//T^'ricn 0^ ac^ive - tliat it has made great advances in every / P^ it>ve nat\ix-a.l -philosophy; that it has produced innumer* '^^cit\e lot*s tending to promote the convenience of life; that L x/^eatly •' svvt"s^x-3t, chemistry, engineering have been very ^^Ptoveci 1111 Prove<:\ - that government, police, law have been imCrices '^louSr*- not to so great an extent as the physical sci^*rote"s ^ see, during these two hundred and fifty years,

^a\ ^ v aritism Via.s made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, has ,eve tVisLti far as there has been change, that change

'0ri trie whole , been in favor of the Church of Rome. We thereiore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge necessar\\y he fatal to a system which has, to say the least, &tood vts ground in spite of the immense progress made by the "Vvrnan race vr\ "knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth." It "*» \Yve Clatholic Church alone which has survived the crash ol worlds, the wreck of systems, the upheavals of time. Old, VyvaX. evw new, it stands firm and steadfast in an age when doubt atvd xm\>e\\el have been glorified into enlightenment.

Mary Morton.

<=>\_. Yaul, Minn.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROLETARIAT.

This is a day when much is said, much is done and still more needs to be said and done in the interest of the poorer classes. But when the Washington philanthropist, Corcoran, some years ago founded and endowed the beautiful Louise Home in that city, for indigent Southern gentlewomen, he struck a new note, and one which has not called forth as many sympathetic vibrations as might have been expected.

Our compassion is easily aroused for those who have been inured to hardship and servile labor from their very birth, and perhaps have the advantage of inheriting from generations of ancestors a similarly placed special adaptation to just such a life and environment. But how much greater should be our interest in the unfortunate thousands who, by training, experi