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Show THE VICTORIES OF- THE CHURCH AN ABLE ARTICLE ON RAPID STRIDES OF THE CHURCH. She Has Withstood tho Intrigues and Plots of the Most Powerful Potentate's Po-tentate's In the World's History. BY Hi D.. SEDGWICK, JR. An article in the Atlantic Monthly this month has attracted considerable attention. The author, H. D. Sedgwick, Sedg-wick, jr., has certainly treated the subject in" . a - novel as well as a readable . manner. Not tha least notable fact in connection with Mr. Sedgwick's subject is:the fact that it has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Month-ly. In speaking of the future relations of our cosmopolitan country with the one cosmopolitan or universal church, he says: ' "By the time the United- States shall be acknowledged to be. the,. richest and most powerful nation, in. the world the attitude, of the papacy will already have been long determined; The' church reads the' signs of the times, and will have girded herself for, the great task of controlling the religious life of the majority of the American people. "In the past the Roman church has achieved her great victories in face of the greatest powers of the world. First, she subdued the Roman empire; after its fall she met the Teutonic emperors as a rival, and now after the holy Roman Ro-man empire has passed away she still treats with the governments of the greatest nations as an equal. She is the only organization which has suc ceeded in adopting itseir to tne varying needs of men for 1.900 years. Again and again has she fallen into servitude of j German emperors, of Roman nobles, of j the kings of France; again anel again has she risen with undiminished vitality. vital-ity. It is not strange that many who think that some divine power stood behind be-hind the early Christian church "should believe that the same power guides and preserves the church of Rome. "There have been great crises in her history. She might have been destroyed when the barbarians overran Italy; she might have been wrecked by the Reformation Refor-mation in the sixteenth century; she might have been ruined in the nineteenth nine-teenth Century if the pope had been made the head of a confederated Italy, and she. may be vanquished in the twentieth by the spirit of the American democracy, but the genius and passion pas-sion of the Latin race still subsist and there are great powers on her side.. "The Roman church has always been cosmopolitan. There have been popes from England, Holland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Her churches lift their spires from Norway to Sicily, from Quebec, to Patagonia. Her missionaries mis-sionaries have sacrificed their lives over all the world. Her strength has been that she is the church universal. England recognizes the queen as the head of the Anglican church; Russia! (ho n-rcr a c tVii J-iorl !-! C.roolj- church, but the Roman Catholie'church has never been bounded by national boundary lines. She alone has been able to put before the western world the ideal of a church for humanity. This has been the source of her peculiar attraction, at-traction, and in the next century, with I national barriers broken down, her claims to universal acceptance and obedience obe-dience will be stronger than ever. Americans cannot kneel to an English king, nor prostrate themselves before a czar of Russia, but many will do both before him, who has the only claim to be considered the high priest of Christendom. Chris-tendom. "Moreover, the city of Rome is the only city in which the spiritual head of a great church could live without exciting ex-citing national jealousies elsewhere. It is the capital of a nation which no longer can rank as a great power. It is the city which holds greater traditions tradi-tions than any other. It has been the head of Europe arid ef the civilized j world so long that in the present it has all the charm of the distant past and appeals to the sentiments of all "The meeting of the great American democracy and the Roman church will not be a hostile meeting. There will be no jealousy, no rivalry. We have no national creed to oppose to the Catholic beliefs. Rome has no commercial ambition am-bition to clash with ours. She will come quietly as into a sick room. "Seventy years ago Protestants and agnostics would have banded together against the Roman church. They wpuld have felt that they must struggle side by side against gross ignorance and grosser superstition. But Protestant prejudices against the Roman church are falling off. Calvin and Knox are losing worship. Jonathan Edwards has become a signboard of obsolete nations. Our old jealousies of the Roman church were part of our inheritance from England. Eng-land. That inheritance has lost its relative rel-ative consequence and in the changing chang-ing character of the United States theise jealousies are elisappearing. . "Even the strong Frotestant sects of the Methodises and Baptists are growing grow-ing less antagonistic to the Church of Rome. The Presbyterians s.how signs of conciliation towards the Episcopali- j ans: they build churches in the likeness of Magdalene Tower; they put stained glass in their windows; they are less rigorous to heresy. "The Episcopal Church, nearer to Rome by far than t!he other Protestant sects, is constantly gaining ground. Her prelates, her hierarchy, her liturgy are continually, little by little, making the more recalcitrant Protectant sects more and more accustomed to the structure and to the rites of Rome. In the Episcopal Epis-copal Church itself, attempt has been made to bring all Christian churches into union; with the idea that the mid. die path cf tha Anglican creed and practice would be the means or reconciliation recon-ciliation and the meeting place for the dissenting churches and the Mother Church. But every idea of union prepares pre-pares the road to Rome. The great original Church may open her arms to receive, but she will never turn aside hcr feet to tread the Via. Medio. How shall we ask the Church that claima its authority from the Apostle Peter to humble itself befcv the Church which derives its. independence from Henry VIII? -$;- "The Democracy of American institutions institu-tions will be no hindrance to the Church of Rome, for that Church has been the greatest demeicratic power in the western world.- With a few excep tion?, the Popes have always been elected; and the Papacy has always been open to every Catholic regardless of his birth. "Pcpep have been chesen from all ranks of society. In the most vigorous period of the feudal cystem, the great councils of the Church were great representative assemblies; their members came together from, all Christendom. Chris-tendom. The Church has- always taught the spiritual equality of the rich and poor or has given preredenr-e to' the poor. The great Monastic orders practiced prac-ticed equality. The Order cf Jesus has always set the degree according to talents. tal-ents. I "It may still be objected that the Roman Ro-man Catholic Church is not modern, and is net adapted to the nation which more than any other lives in the present; pres-ent; it is aid that age and youth cannot can-not live tigether; that young America will find the aged Church lame and slow; that if any Church shall have influence it will be one un trammeled by tradition. The contrary may have a greater sh.-re of truth. This ancient institution has acquired a tough fibre and deep roots which give it enduring strength. Generations have grown up in it6 shine or shadow. Tt encumbers the horizon and every man has adjusted his: course by it., every younger organ has been affected by it, every nation has framed its government and laws in fondness or fear of.it. Antique custom has a thousand crutches. One may level the Alps or flood the -Desert of Sahara, but the very people who shall benefit must first be overcome. Men, will not suffer you to destroy their devils. In its long life- the Church has learned means. to supply the needs of all of the pious, the wayward, the ambitious and the meek, the skeptic and the believer, the active and these who do nothing. Those old hands have a strength and their softness a touch, beside be-side which the young are rude and .incapable. History pronounces that no man ' can safely say that the Church is unequal to the requirements re-quirements of- latter-day success. A generation ago, after. Victor Emmanuel's Emman-uel's army had marched into Rome, general belief among Protestants was confident that the Papacy had fallen; but during- the pontificate of Leo XIII it has been stronger than it had been for a hundred years. So it has been through history. Anti-popes and Baby, lonish captivity, rebellion and reformation reforma-tion have shaken the great edifice, but have left its foundations seemingly as strong r ever." These lines are only a portion of this extensive article of Mr. Sedgwick, but serve to suggest the average tenor of the whole. Mr. Sedgwick, though a non-Catholic, non-Catholic, pressnts. an impartial and intelligent in-telligent view of Che Great Universal Church, such as held probably by most men cf unbiased and scrupulous minds. His appreciation of the practical good which would come from a closer union of the Catholic Church and modern democracy, shows that Mr. Sedgwick does not participate in tne groundless fears of many people whose convictions are less the result of. knowledge than of prejudice. AH in all Mr. Sedgwick's article is a notable contribution to the literature of the month. T. H. M. |