ROMANISM HEATHENISM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 12.

ROMANISM HEATHENISM.

TRUE Romanism—salvation by works—is pure heathenism; Mariolatry—a distinctive feature of Romanism—is gross idolatry; when Romanism makes a man a "Christian," it leaves him a heathen, in a twofold sense: it causes him to become a "Christian" heathen, and willingly permits him to remain a heathen; as to the latter, the following description of the religious state of Haiti, taken from the Churchman, illustrates our meaning:—

"In that island of Haiti, after four hundred years of exclusive domination, that kind of missions to which 'his holiness' ascribes such a particular share of God's favor has left the population in heathenism to this day. A large portion of the islanders are not only heathen, but cannibals, in this year 1892. I saw the exiled President Gefrard, in Jamaica. 'I can scarcely believe, Mr. President,' said I, 'that cannibalism still exists in those mountains.' He answered me, 'Why, if it were not so, then I should not be here.' 'Cannibalism,' he continued, 'is powerful in Haiti. I publicly executed eighteen men on the Grand Place in Porto Prince because they were convicted of cannibalism; but the mountaineers arose and drove me to Jamaica.' The most enlightened man I met in Haiti, one who had for a long period been the minister of public worship, told me that even the baptized Haitians are largely heathen; that in the cathedral itself on Sunday and the feast days they still utter heathen prayers. They nominally conform to Roman rites, for they have a superstition which leads them to worship the devil; and while they imagine there is a white man's devil, they allow there is a black man's devil of the same character, but not to be served in the same way. They bring their children from the mountains for christening in the cathedral, because they suppose that pacifies the white man's devil. But then they offer human sacrifices to their own particular devil, and that saves them, as they suppose, from the special devil of their own creed. Poor souls! after four hundred years, during all which time Haiti has been almost exclusively under the charge of those to whom Leo thinks God gave the New World for the enlargement of the papal dominion, such is their condition!"

As we remarked above, a true heathen may be a good Catholic; for a good Catholic is a true heathen.—Lutheran Observer.