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Show Q. W. BEECHERS COMPLIMENT Henry Ward Beecher Lauds Human Foresight Fore-sight of Cathoiic Church Marvel of Power, Versatility and Wisdom Abides Her Time, Works for Future Results. To the Editor, Sir: Last week you gave us Lord Macauley's magnificent mag-nificent tribute to the perpetuity of the Catholic Church. It may interest your clients to read, in association with Macauley. what that talentd but unfortunate Congregational preacher. Henry Ward Beecher. had to say of the human foresight of the Catholic Church in America. Beecher. until the day of his trial for undue intimacy with Mrs. Til-ton Til-ton was, as a free and independent churchman and politician, the greatest and most influential figure before, during and after the trying times of our Civil war. He was a' human lion, and when he shook his main, orthodox religion was said to tremj ble. Unlike Talmage. who was a preacher for revenue. rev-enue. Beecher cared nothing for money. He wa3 too great a man to make love to avarice, adulation adula-tion or praise, but. strong as was bis intellect, his animal passions conquered his discretion, and, though acquitted by the jury, while still under the spell of the great Everett's eloquence, piiblic opinion opin-ion gave its verdict against him. and a popular idol fell from its pedestal. Beecher, it is not too much to say. died of a broken heart. The second volume of his "Life of Christ" never appeared, for the revelations at the trial of Beecher made it an impossibility. Here is what he said of the Catholic Cath-olic Church when preaching to an immense congregation, congre-gation, in his church, Brooklyn. N. Y., May 15. 1871: "To all who look at it thoughtfully, the Roman Catholic Church in America must appear to be a marvel of power, versatility, wisdom and persistent aggressiveness. Vanderbilt does not manage his enormous railroad interests with more sagacity and boldness, with more subtle, trained and far-seeing faculty for getting on in the world than do the consecrated con-secrated rulers of the Catholic Church wield the vast and multifarious operations of their tremendous tremen-dous corporation. "The Catholic Church in America is the last consummate product of the genius of organization. It is conquest reduced to science and operating with the precision of a perfect machine. What , spring of individual and social influence does it ' leave untouched I What weapon of spiritual or material ma-terial has it overlooked or delayed to utilize? The pulpit, the newspaper, the platform, the caucus, the legislature, the judicial bench, the charms and graces of society, music, art, literature, the power of wealth, sacraments and sacrifice these are its instruments, and they are handled with a skill that never blunders, an energy that never slurs, or slumbers, or tires, and an audacity that is sublime, and in the presence of which the greatest secular man of the earth is but " 'A pebble, twig, or blade of grass that lies Upon the path one treads; a thing of naught; A thing unheeded, unremarked ; a thing That merely makes a part of all around. "For instance, take the Catholic Church in this country as an operator in real estate. The keenest of worldly speculators in that article could go to ' school to these churchmen, and learn how to pick out building sites, and bide their time, and to seize their opportunity and et their price. In the whole vast territory from the Bay of Fundy to San Diego, this corporation has fixed its eye and its mark on the best pieces of land; and while others are in a hurry, it can wait; and when it onoe buys it never surrenders; and it calculates values not on a scale of years or decades, but of centuries. In fifty years from now it may control more property, real and personal, than all other religious bodies put together; to-gether; and thus add to its other auxiliaries the almightiness of the American dollar." All of which, if it be true, refutes the charge that priests are not good business men. Furthermore, Further-more, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher publicly acknowledged ac-knowledged that the Irish intellect is a superior intellect in-tellect and that the training of Catholic bishop and priest is, from a secular viewpoint, immeasurably ahead of the training given to any other body of men. Mr. Beecher omitted, in his panegyric, to state that, on every piece of real estate bought by the church, there is erected a school for the education educa-tion of children a church where people may meet to worship God, a hospital where the sick and maimed are tenderly cared for, a house of refuge for the poor and for the needy old and feeble, a Magdelen asylum for fallen women who wish to reform, a convent or a college for the higher education of the boy or girl, a university for the leading of the educated edu-cated intellect to lofty ideate, an industrial school for manual training, and an orphans' home, where abandoned or parentless children of "Greeks and barbarians, of the wise and the foolish" of Catholics Cath-olics and Protestants, are fed, clothed and educated by Catholic charity. Without real estate these mir- aclcs of Catholic benevolence, of Catholic enterprise, enter-prise, of Catholic self-denial and love for human souls and human bodies could have no existence. So that it is not the number of acres owned in fee sim- ; pie by the Catholic Church, but the motive and reason for holding them, which ought to evoke our envy, admiration or astonishment. W. R. H. |