Protestant Blood and Cardinal Gibbons
By Editor
At the celebration of the centennial of the adoption of the Constitution, at Philadelphia last month, the service was opened with a prayer by Bishop Potter, of the Episcopal Church, and closed by a prayer and the benediction by Cardinal Gibbons. Because Cardinal Gibbons was invited to, and did, perform this part of the ceremony the Presbyterian Journal says that its "Protestant blood boils." But if Cardinal Gibbons had not been chosen at all, and Bishop Potter had both opened and closed the ceremonies, then it is altogether likely that the "Protestant blood" of the Presbyterian Journal would not have been increased in temperature to any perceptible degree. While if a Presbyterian preacher had only been chosen in the place of Cardinal Gibbons it is safe to say that the "Protestant blood" of the Journal would have been so perfectly cool that we might fairly conclude that it was actually reduced below the normal temperature. But the Commission had just as much right to choose Cardinal Gibbons as it had to choose Bishop Potter, or anybody else, to pray. This was a celebration of the adoption of the Constitution. The Constitution recognizes no one profession of religion above another, therefore the Commission had perfect right to choose whom they pleased, or to choose nobody, to pray, and nobody has any business to object. The boiling of the Protestant blood of our Presbyterian contemporary is only a tempest in a teapot. But even this small tempest shows the excellent wisdom of the makers of our Constitution, in forbidding forever the application of any religious test by the nation to its employes, and in forbidding the National Legislature to make any "law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It is a happy thing for the nation that there is no constitutional channel through which the Protestant blood of the Presbyterian Journal may pour its boiling zeal. And it will be a woful day whenever such a channel shall be created.