NATURE OF THE CATHOLIC PROGRESS.
CARDINAL NEWMAN presided at a meeting of Roman Catholics at Birmingham a few days since, and addressed them on the past and present position of Roman Catholicism in England, congratulating them on the great progress which he declares the Church has made in England during the last quarter of a century. It can scarcely be denied that in externals the Roman Church has made progress there, but this is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of recruiting agents, wearing the livery and taking the money of the English Protestant Church. He also congratulated his fellow Catholics that their faith has lasted eighteen hundred years, while Protestantism has only existed three hundred years. Assuming the statement to be accurate, which, in the sense he makes it, is directly the reverse of true, Rome has this humiliating fact staring her in the face, that the three centuries of Protestantism has done more for civilization and Christianity than the previous fifteen hundred years. Better a century of Protestant light than a millennium of Romish darkness and superstition.—Christian at Work.