The Drift Toward Rome

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 6, 1901

The Drift Toward Rome

The Roman Catholic Mirror is congratulating itself over the fact that while in the beginning of the century they were in this country but 50,000 in number, or one one-hundredth of the population, they now number 12,000,000, or one-seventh part of the population. They also say that, while much of this increase is due to emigration, “at the present time there is an unmistakable drift toward the Church of Rome, and the number of converts from the ranks of ministers of religion and from representative laymen of the denominations, was never greater.” And this we believe to be true, but it is a drift, a drift of perplexed souls, drifting because Protestantism has lost its chart and compass. But it is not progress truthward. It is but a recoil from rationalism to ritualism, from self-dependence to dependence on a mother unable to save.