AMERICAN HOMAGE TO THE POPE.
A GOOD deal of adverse comment continues to be made upon the gift of President Cleveland to the Pope on the occasion of his jubilee, not so much in respect to the gift itself, as in respect to the significance which the friends of the Pope have attached to it in its presentation at Rome, and in the Catholic papers of this country. Archbishop Ryan, of Philadelphia, in presenting the gift, said: “It is a tribute paid to your Holiness by the ruler of sixty million of freemen.” And after stating that the Pope represents “a moral conquest over the greatest nations of the earth,” the Archbishop added: “This conquest, your Holiness, which received respectful recognition from the kings of the world, receives through the most worthy President, the tribute of a free and independent people.” This tribute is thus magnified beyond all appropriate dimensions, for about eight or nine-tenths of the American people did not unite in it. Quite in contrast with the course of our President was that of King Christian of Norway and Sweden. It was intimated to him that a present for the Pope's jubilee would prove acceptable. Whereupon the king replied that he was a Protestant prince, ruling over Protestant subjects, and neither gift nor homage was sent or rendered to the head of the Roman Church by him. In order to understand the significance of Pope Leo's efforts to secure political recognition, and to interfere in the political affairs of nations, his real character and the purpose of his policy must be taken into consideration. Dr. Miller, in the November number of A Voice from Italy, sketches his career and design as follows:— “Leo XIII. is a much shrewder and abler man than his garrulous predecessor. It is said that from the day he assumed the tiara he has been animated with the desire to establish peace between princes and peoples, and especially to place the church in Italy on a better footing relatively with the State. His ambition is to give the church greater political influence and greater spiritual power than she has ever had, and he is shrewd enough to see that he must stoop to conquer. He will study the things which make for peace, and if need be, feign the most resigned acquiescence in the altered condition of the Papacy, if by any means he can attain to uncontrolled supremacy in spiritual and ecclesiastical things, not only in Italy but throughout Christendom. This is the policy which the Jesuits have dictated, if not imposed. It was mainly due to their influence that Cardinal Pecci became Leo XIII. He has already rewarded them by revoking the Bull and Encyclicals which suppressed their order, and restoring them to all their former rights and privileges. And now it is only too evident that he has consented to personify the system they have built up. His allocution of May 23, which may be regarded as the first overt step toward conciliation, breathed the spirit of this Jesuit policy; and though that allocution aroused the wrath of the irreconcilables throughout the Papal world, Leo XIII. wants conciliation, and he will have it if he can.” It is well for Protestants to remember that the Jesuits are again in the ascendant in the Roman Church, and that all the methods they can employ to gain influence and power in Protestant countries, will be employed in the future as in the past; and there is no country in the world in which they are so free to carry out their schemes as in the United States.—Lutheran Observer.