CATHOLICISM AND PROGRESS.
Prominent upon the mountains and in the fields throughout New Mexico we see large crosses proclaiming that the lands were claimed for Christ long ago. There they stand as proof that these people have for centuries honored the King of kings. All this worship has been that inspired by the Catholic church. Everything is named for Saint Mary, or Saint Michael, or Saint Somebodyelse; and it is a very pertinent inquiry, Why have these people made no more advancement? Why do they hold on their even, ignorant way, century after century? Why do they still build with sun-dried brick, and plow with wooden plows? If Christianity is helpful to man, why has it not brought these devotees to better things? The march of the western European and American Christianity has been steadily forward, while this Catholic civilization is just what it was ages ago. The Catholic church has indeed been the repository of the literature and traditions and wealth of the ages past, and we honor her conservatism in that it has preserved to us of to-day ancient manuscripts, monuments, and customs, which are of unutterable value to modern science and religion. Yet what shackles she has not forged for the race which has been under her sway. To-day in New Mexico, the modern thought and progress, the outgrowth of general liberty and individual freedom, is putting itself alongside and in telling contrast with the superstition and abject servitude of this effete system. Put the New Mexican burro (pack donkey) beside the railway train; the Indian runner against the telegraph, or the trumpet with the telephone, and we may be able to conceive a key which will unlock the mystery of why these long inhabited plains, valleys, and healthful plateaus remain such arid wastes; why these rich mines are left undeveloped; why these towns and cities hold their same monotonous round; why there is no seeking for better things, no improvement; why these Indians under Christian tutorage so absolutely, have not outgrown their disposition to worship every image of every thing under the heavens, as they did in their untaught wildness. Perhaps it is because the Catholic system is one glorifying and imitating the fathers. The very use of the word Saint, as applied to one and another worthy, and these new churches, new places, and new enterprises of the new world being all dedicated to, and called after, some one of them, is proof that the whole system of religion is one of living in and living over the dead past. If everything pertaining to this world is treated as wholly unworthy of us, and if we think of and desire only the world to come, we dwarf this present, God-given world, and its possibilities of development of mind and soul. Such is the Catholic religion. Under such a system we might expect the heroism of the past to be magnified and the present to be regarded as of little value. If by any means one has broken through the conventionalities of his age and made his mark, he is regarded as more than human; he becomes a divine man, a saint. But the self-depreciating worshiper never conceives that what Saint So-and-so has done, he himself may do, and never applies the past as a stimulus for present or future development. Thus the base principle of the whole Catholic system of religion is opposed to all progress. But added to this, their cultivation of ignorance, (if the expression may be allowed,) their fostering of superstition, their sales of indulgences, and their acceptance of forms of worship in lieu of the spirit, all these tend directly and surely against the higher progress of the human mind, and make their believers content to live in mud houses and eke out miserable existences without hope for better things.—Golden Censer.