Rome-Ward Tendencies of the Children of the Reformers.
By J. E. TITUS
WE are frequently told of the onward march of progress, and of the destruction which it is destined to work in every thing Catholic; but the observance—even the outward observance—of Christmas, and other signs, betoken something different. We are reminded now of a sermon we heard preached by a Catholic priest on Christmas day. “The world,” said the preacher, “knows how, three centuries ago, ‘reformers’ went into the churches, mutilating the statues, destroying the paintings, pulling down the altars, stripping the priests of their sacred vestments, changing the name of the Sunday and calling it the ‘Sabbath,’ the name that properly belongs to Saturday, and abolishing by force the observance of any festival that would release the mind or uplift the heart of the pilgrim, weary with the cares of the world.” “How different is it to-day! The simple meeting-house which these ‘reformers’ set up, as a protest against our magnificent churches, is passing away in fact and in name; and the descendants of the ‘reformers’ borrow the forms of our architecture from those Catholic ages that they call ‘dark’; they spend their wealth upon the construction of those churches, they embellish them with statuary and painting, and try to heighten the effect of their religious worship by elaborate music and all other sorts. They are foregoing the use of the word ‘Sabbath’ as applied to Sunday, and are re-learning to call things by their proper names.” “At the same time they are claiming our priestly privileges, they are imitating our ritualistic forms, and even adopting our titles. Let our Protestant friends take notice that all this is an acknowledgement that the work of the ‘Reformation’ was one of mad destruction, and that itself needs to be repaired.” The above, copied from the Freeman’s Journal, originally from the Boston Pilot, both Catholic papers, is a just and fair statement of facts. The Baptist minister in this place, a few Sundays since, stated, that the word “Sunday” was good enough for him, and the term “Sabbath” he freely gave to the S. D. A. friends, as he had no use for it.