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Show LOOKING BACKWARD 1 What the Outlook, a Non-Catholic Journal, I Published in Dunedin, N. Z., Has to Say of Pre-Reformation Times. , "Let us turn to those souls where the spiritual has become predominant and all-mastering; who have breathed the upper, diviner airs; who have seen God and eternity everywhere in the world and time. How significant, when we think of it, that these are a permanent feature in tho order of things; permanent, for every age producer them I Men have had to create a word to express what they stand for. The word "saint" is in our vocabulary ; the greatest, the richest that i3 there. In the darkest dark-est ages the saints shine out, exhibiting amid sur- ; e rounding barbarisms the overwhelming power of ! sheer goodness. Always in those time3 the war- J rior, the savage, bow before the saint. The wildest natures recognize in him something to reverence ', and to love. They appear in every rank. i Our good Protestants need to enlarge their I view point here, and to rid themselves of the supposition sup-position that the Christian life went underground '; ; at the close of the apostolic age, only to re-emerge 1 at the Reformation. It has, they need to reraem- j ber, been running all the time in a strong and glo- i I rious current. They ought to know about Ignatiu3 : i and Polycarp and Justin Martyr; about Origen and Clement and Cyprian; and about Bazil and Gregory Greg-ory of Nazianzen and Jerome and Augustine; about Martin of Tours and St. Patrick and Venerable Bede; about Bernard and St. Francis; about Eck-hart Eck-hart and the Brothers of the Common Life; about the Anchoress Julian of 2s orwich and St. Cath- i erine of Sienna and St. Catherine of Genoa. These. ' out of a countless multitude less known, are examples exam-ples of the saintly life, lived after the apostolic time and before the Reformation; possessed, it is true, all of them, of opinions which we no longer hold, but whose record is filled with highest inspirations, inspir-ations, of divine facts which no earnest soul can afford to lose. Why do not our pastors, in their j pulpit-teaching, deal more fully with these records i j , There is no richer vein. For are not these lives part of the Divine revelation a revelation em- j bodied in heaven's action and speech through elect j men and women of this earth? j "Why do not our pastors in their pulpit teach- ; ing deal more fully with these records ?" ask3 this ; Protestant paper. We believe the answer is sim- j - pie. They know very little if anything about them. Our good friend, the Rev. Mr. Hemmeon, a Prot- estant minister of Wolf ville, X. S., told us recently ! in a communication to this paper that students for ; the Protestant ministry learn practically nothing , : except what is censorious and severely critical about Christianity; that is, the Catholic church, between the -apostolic age and the Reformation. Hence the lives of great and heroic Christian men and women whom the Church has canonized are unknown to them. .rPotestant pastors would be doing their congregations a very good torn by tell- i ing them something about those souls "where," to ' quote the Dunedin Outlook, "the spiritual has be- j come predominant and all-mastering; who have- breathed the upper, diviner airs ; who have seen i . ) God and eternity everywhere in the world and time." ' |