"THE DEATH KNELL OF POPULAR LIBERTY."
FOUR years ago this present month the Roman Catholic Congress of Laymen was held in Baltimore, Md. That congress was a great step in Roman Catholic progress in this country. Shortly after that a prominent paper of London, England, the Christian Commonwealth, published the following editorial, portions of which we have italicized:— From across the Atlantic come many ominous warnings of a great struggle soon to come. The great republic is awaking to the prospect of a battle which can in no way be decided, for it is simply a fact of inevitable destiny that the people of America must pass through a conflict with Rome. Rome! Name of unspeakable portent! The very word calls up a whole panorama of lurid apocalyptic visions. Paganism and popery, the beast and Babylon. Antichrist and Armageddon spring up and cluster round that monosyllable, which seems to monopolize the history of the world, the flesh, and the devil, just as Jerusalem evermore suggests all that is associated with God, the truth, and the church. For ages the wave of human energy has rolled westward. And in our day the battle field where the crowning struggle of liberty is to be fought, seems likely to be found in the western hemisphere. Extraordinary theories have been suggested by a pen given to benevolent but fantastic abstractions concerning the golden age of popery. How sweet fountains for universal healing are to be distilled from deadly chalice brewed at the Vatican, there is no attempt to explain. Dreams can never be explained, and editors who dream are not very valuable guides of public opinion. We are now being told, not only that Leo XIII. is a paragon among popes, as we were told by the same revealer of secrets that the czar is the most heavenly-minded despot that ever sent his subjects to rot in Siberia, but also that the great pasture ground is to be found in America, where the papal lion will lie down with the Protestant lamb. The great Catholic conference in America may well mark an era in transatlantic history. Anyone who converses with intelligent American Protestants soon discovers that they all agree in one sentiment. They know well that the Catholic bishops and the Catholic clergy, who number in their ranks many of the godliest of citizens, are bound by the whole spirit of their creed to be Papists first and Americans afterwards. They know that their countrymen, who are of worldly mind, and care as little about religious consolation as Galileo, are decried, as many are in England. In America and in England Romanism is seen at its best, and the Catholic clergy are by necessity on their best behavior. But popery never sleeps, and its prelates are ever on the watchtower. The 8,000,000 of Papists in the United States are being drilled day and night to demand supremacy over the civil power in the all-important department of public education. Should the people of the United States yield the control of the schools to the Romish hierarchy, the death knell of popular liberty would be rung, for one demand yielded would be only a platform on which a greater clamor would be raised for other concessions to the most arrogant masters that ever put their feet on the necks of prostrate people. The above is emphatically true, with the exception of "intelligent Protestants" agreeing in one sentiment—that is, if by the term the so-called Protestant clergy and press is meant. The great majority are as blind as the masses, and are responsible for the blindness and consequent indifference of the masses. It is a well-known fact that he who, from a solemn conviction of religious duty, cries out against the great system of the mystery of iniquity which finds its center in the Vatican, is at once condemned by pulpit and press, professedly Protestant.50The simple facts are these: The great bugbear in the eyes of professed Protestants for years has been the fear that the Roman Catholics would get control of the public schools. Many have justified that church in this by demanding that Christianity or religion shall be taught in the schools supported by the public purse. Of course, to teach religion at all some particular religion must be taught, and the Roman Catholic, to be consistent, must demand that at least his children shall not be taught Protestantism and shall be taught in harmony with the principles of his church. And if the Protestant demand for religious instruction at public expense be correct, the claim of Roman Catholics is just. But at present it does not seem probable, from a modern Protestant view-point, that the Roman Catholic will obtain control of the public schools, and the Protestant apprehends no danger from another direction. (Of course we do not refer to the American Protective Association, and other kindred societies organized for the purpose of opposing papal advances. Roman Catholics call this class by the sweet name of "American Prejudiced Asses," and professed Protestants silently say, Amen.) And this blindness on the part of the great orthodox churches has permitted Rome to completely flank the Protestant Church in one great struggle, and Protestants have willingly, though perhaps unwittingly, surrendered in another. 1. Rome has surprised and beaten the Protestant sects in an open struggle with the government. The occasion was furnished for the first aggressive movement in 1885, the first year of President Cleveland's administration. Mr. Adkins, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, doubtless influenced by the "Bureau of Catholic Missions," established that very year in Washington, D. C., offered the opportunity in the following statement, which we take from the Congressional Record of July 25, 1890:— "The government should be liberal in making contracts with religious denominations to teach Indian children in schools established by those denominations. It should throw open the door and say to all denominations: 'There should be no monopoly in good works.' Enter, all of you, and do whatever your hands find of good work to do, and in your efforts the government will give you encouragement out of its liberal purse." In other words, the government, without partiality, should encourage all the churches to work in this broad field of philanthropic endeavor. Six or seven Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic entered the field. The first year (1886) the Catholic schools received $118,343 as against $109,916 for all others; in 1887 Catholic schools received $194,635 as against $168,679 for all others; in 1888, $221,169 for Catholic schools as against $155,095 for all others; in 1889, $347,672 for Catholic schools as against $183,000 for all others; in 1889-90, $356,967 for Catholic schools as against, for all other denominations and all other schools, $204,993. When President Harrison took office in 1889, Gen. Thomas J. Morgan was made Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He saw how matters were going and determined to stop it; but, according to the statement of Senator Dawes, published in the Congressional Record of July 25, 1890, the government could not do it. He said:— "The present management was in favor of divorcing the government absolutely from them all [the denominations], but found it impossible to do that. Perhaps it would have been better had the Indian education set out on this principle, but it had gone so far and got so interwoven with the whole system of Indian education, that it was utterly impossible to retrace the step, and to avoid the precipitation upon the country of such a discussion as that, which could do no good to anybody." This was a confession that the government was powerless. It then determined that the appropriations should not increase; but the Roman Church went to Congress and obtained an increase of $44,000 for 1890. The Protestant churches then raised the cry of "raid on the treasury," and "perversion of public money to sectarian uses;" but this had no effect. They had fallen into the crime, and their condemnation of Rome availed nothing. The only difference between Rome and the Protestant denominations was that Rome obtained the most. Since 1891 the Methodist and Episcopal denominations have decided to accept no more public money, but Rome has gone right on. In 1892 she received $369,535 as against $156,346 for all others. What then?—The Republican party was threatened. Mr. Harrison, to restore the confidence of Rome, induced the appointment as the chairman of the National Republican Committee a Roman Catholic, Mr. Thomas H. Carter. The corresponding office on the other side was also filled with a Catholic, Mr. William J. Harrity, of Pennsylvania. The Republicans were defeated, and the treasury doors still remain open. Roman Catholics hold the balance of power, and are able to force either great party to its terms or to defeat. 2. Protestants have willingly surrendered to Rome in the matter of an institution which is wholly Roman Catholic. They do not know that they have surrendered; but that does not alter the fact. For the last decade of years there has been a constantly growing clamor for Sunday laws, State and national. Protestants have said, "The time has come to make repeated advances, and gladly to accept coöperation [with Roman Catholics] in any form they may be willing to exhibit it."—Christian Statesman, August 31, 1884. "They [our pastors] ought to be in a position to co-operate with Roman prelates in the advocacy of such moral reforms as do not contradict Protestant principles."—Congregationalist, October 16, 1893. Many other utterances might be quoted. True it is that the Sunday Reform is wholly anti-Protestant in both the institution and methods employed, but it is one of the dearest things to the great mass of professed Protestants, and right upon the question of Sunday laws Rome, of course, will co-operate. It is hers, and she will gladly use Protestant labor to weave the snare in which she will eventually entangle them, as she has already done in the matter of the religious education of the nation's wards. The Baltimore Congress of Catholic Laymen declared that "we should seek an alliance with non-Catholics for proper Sunday observance." The nation yielded to that Sunday clamor when she decided a religious controversy and voted that the World's Fair should be closed on Sunday. The death knell of liberty is now sounding throughout the earth, but the Protestant churches and nations—so called—are so drunken with the wine of the apocalyptic harlot's fornication that they are unable to distinguish the solemn warning tones from the bells of a hilarious jubilee. Reader, where do you stand? Sunday is a Roman Catholic institution, and nothing else. Every demand for legislation for its observance is papal in principle. God's word, God's Sabbath are against it. Where do you stand? Which will you choose—the sand of tradition or the rock of God's word?