The Dreams of Roman Catholic Chiefs
THE dreams of our Roman Catholic chiefs in regard to America, will be seen by the following extract: "It was a policy of imperial Rome to open her gates to every form of heathenism. Every god was tolerated, every god was accepted, no matter how incongruous or contradictory its presence by the side of others. The Empire was intent upon one thing—aggrandizement—and for religion it did not care. Thoughtful men smiled or sneered at those mythologies and divinities and their forms of worship, and the people became cold and indifferent to them. They were dying of this contempt, when, behold, the newly-imported presence of the Fisherman into their midst, with his catechism of Christian doctrine, inspired one and all with a new life and energy; the gods began to speak, and the people began to hear them. It was not that a new faith had been awakened in their old idolatry, but a new hostility and hatred had been aroused against the majesty of consistent truth, which stood before them humble, yet confounding them. They began to school themselves to become devout pagans, and to prove the sincerity of their convictions by endeavoring to smite down a divine figure of the Catholic Church which claimed a universal homage and a universal power. Events strangely repeat themselves in the world. That which occurred among the sects of ancient Rome, is now taking place among the sects of America. Men smile at their pretensions; their convictions are not moulded by them, and they will not submit to their discipline, or bow to their authority. But the sects object to death, and they think to prolong the term of their existence, not by a life of faith, but by a life of sustained enmity against the religion which is strongly gaining upon them, and supplanting them in the mind and affection of the people.—Dublin Review.