p. 12 | A BOGUS SAINT by C. E. Milton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 31, 1906

A BOGUS SAINT.

By C. E. Milton

IT is very difficult for those born and educated in Protestant countries to appreciate the importance that Catholics attach to the worship of their "saints."

We are accustomed to treat this matter lightly, and to smile at their credulity in believing such absurd teachings. But the Catholic, on the contrary, will use the argument drawn from the so-called miracles of the saints as his most powerful weapon when all other means fail.

A priest was commissioned by his bishop to go and try to win back to the Church of Rome, a professor who has been converted to the truth here at Rome. He tried the arguments based on love of family, money, and position, but these all failed of having the desired effect; then as a final master-stroke, he suggested that he would pay the professor's expenses to take a trip to Lourdes to see the famous statue of the "Madonna," which has a reputation for working miracles. He felt sure that this would do him good, and convince him that the Catholic Church is the true church, as God favors them with miracle-working power.

This belief in the efficacy of saint-worship is so deeply rooted in the Catholic breast that it is one of the last vestiges of Catholicism to disappear in the new converts to Protestantism. In fact, some members of the other churches that have been "converts" for a number of years still see no harm in conserving an image of some favorite saint with the hope that it may do them some good. Of course, with us the problem of saint-worship is very much more simple of solution. For believing as we do that all the dead lie silently in the grave until the resurrection, there is no difficulty in showing that prayers to the "saints" are of no avail, as these "saints" can neither hear us nor help us.

Then, recently an event has taken place that ought to shake the confidence even of Catholics somewhat in their "saints." There is an image of a Roman soldier that has been found until recently in a number of churches here in Rome, and elsewhere, which is worshiped under the name of "Santo Espidito." This "saint" is said to have worked many miracles, and, as a consequence, his image has a large number of silver hearts hung on its shrine as presents from its faithful devotees for favors bestowed. But now it appears that this saint never existed, but was made through a mistake.

Some French nuns about fifty years ago asked the pope that he might send them a bone from the martyrs, disinterred from the Catacombs. The pope complied with the request, and the bone was sent in a box upon which was written the Latin

word "Expedit," which means "sent," and by which expression the pope intended to indicate that the bone had been sent according to the request. But the nuns, ignorant of the meaning of the term, took it for the name of the saint, and therefore called him Saint Expedit, and as the bone was supposed to be from the Catacombs, they decided that the person to whom the bone pertained was a Roman hero and consequently made an image of a soldier to represent the saint. But now the mistake has been discovered, and the church authorities have asked that the saint be removed from the churches. But the people of Naples are so fond of the "saint," that they say they will not give him up be he true or false, and are prepared to defend him even to the using of force.

This fact in itself ought to convince one that this saint-worship is not founded on reality, but on sentiment and superstition. And if to a bogus saint so many miracles have been attributed, surely the many so-called miracles of other saints do not argue anything in favor of their being living, working agencies. O how much these Catholic idolators need to know the truth!

C. E. MILTON.

Rome, Italy.