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Show GLADSTONE'S ELOQUENT TRIBUTE TO THE CHURCH. To the Editor, Sir: The history of Christianity since the days of the Apostles, the formidable trials the Church suffered .in the early days and her unimpaired vitality today, make us feel sure that the storms now raging around the Rock of Peter will leave it, as all others have done, boldly outlined against a clear horizon and washed clean of the seaweed and barnacles which sea of human imperfection inevitably deposits, with time, on its adamantine sides. The Church of Rome the Catholic Church-must Church-must ever triumph till time shall be no more. The Divine arm sustaining and protecting the Church is visible in Rome itself. Jerusalem, that accomplished accom-plished her destiny amid calamities and prodigious services, was, in its time, a no more striking example exam-ple of Divine guardianship than is Rome today. Her spiritual supremacy shows through all vicissitudes, vicissi-tudes, and is conclusive proof of her providential mission. Is it not the doom of everything earthlv to decay and perish-the fate of the works of man L N, ovax old and fall to pieces like a moth-eaten gar- he Church of Rome alone remains unchanged on";"; reta!-er a long existence of twenty J the cct J? rUhlS f d behind her the ccnTery of royal dynasties. carlvT tini WhCD her rbd SOns turned on her i photic civilS IWn Pontiff is t ia- the acts f The St. Peters Basilica, ur omnT" P of art and monumentf Jf tlXm" peniu., than any living mPn Tn any oorporate t If, tomorrow, some innoii- -o swoop fTOn, u ca'a6,roie - ofrt j;i o"" n; ttomIeEs 6oa; isted ; i, " , 0 art lni'H"te that -t ''Pt or that i8t. today can approach it in all that makes for the glory and pride of our race. Has the modern non-Catholic intellect so completely com-pletely lost the sense of reasoning and the appreciation apprecia-tion of great things as not to understand the weight and value of this one fact and this protection of the productions of our civilization ? Fifty years ago that great statesman and man of giant intellect, William Ewart Gladstone, waving wav-ing aside his inherited prejudices, publicly acknowledged acknowl-edged the indissoluble union of the Catholic Church and Christian civilization: "Since the days of the persecution by Pagan emperors," em-perors," writes Mr. Gladstone, "the Roman Catholic Church has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilization, and has driven, harnessed har-nessed to its chariot, as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of I the world. Its learning has been the learning of the world, its glory, grandeur and majesty have been almost, al-most, though not absolutely, all that in these respects re-spects the world has had to boast of." (Studies of Homer, vol. 11, p. 531.) To me, .dispassionately and calmly surveying the ground ,the past offers no problem more difficult of solution than the persistency in heresy of great and morally clean men like Gladstone. His sister bowed to the call, entered the Church, and died a nun at Bruges. Many of his intimate friends, Dalgairn, I Frederick Oakley, Faber, Cardinals Newman and' Manning and others, returned to the faith, but for some reason, known only to God, Gladstone died in, at least, material heresy. His persistence in error would seem incredible were we not too familiar with the subtle influence of pantheistic philosophy in perverting the vision and the will of highly educated men. Agrippa's challenge to Paul was not altogether idle or unmeaning. unmean-ing. Much learning does indeed often make men mad, and we have a deplorable example of it in the case of the former president of Harvard. Or it mo,. be that Gladstone's controversy with Cardinal Manning Man-ning on the prerogatives of the Holy See soured him. Manning was better armed for the contest, and Gladstone may have felt more keenly by reason rea-son of his European reputation the humiliation of his defeat. Many a fervent prayer has gone up to God for his soul, and, though we cannot plead "invincible "in-vincible ignorance" on his behalf, let us hope that by the operation of some mysterious law, unknown to us, he may in the end enjoy the Beatific Vision of J God. |
