Honor to Images by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, Cal. · Feb 24, 1909

Honor to Images.

By Editor

A Deception.

THE Catholic press are feeling sorely stirred because the Associated Press agent of Messina describes the people of Messina as being "superstitious." The Western Watchman calls him "an escaped lunatic;" and then we are told that "all the cities of Italy have a patron saint who is supposed to watch over them and protect them from evil. In southern Italy these patron saints are held in high honor, because of the prevalence of earthquakes and other ills consequent upon seismic disturbances. On certain days in the year the statues of these saints are carried through the streets, and in times of great distress they are exposed to the veneration of the people. In Naples they have St. Januarius; in Messina they have St. Agnes; in Reggio they have St. Agatha. We are told that after the late terrible earthquake in the last-named city the bishop carried the statue of the saint through the streets. This is a corollary of the honor the church pays all the saints of God. If it is right to honor them, it is proper to honor their images. If we can address them, our prayer puts on new meaning and force when we are inspired by the image of the blessed one before our eyes."

We have no ridicule to offer of our Catholic friends. We are willing to accept the declaration that the design is not the worship of the images, but the saint it represents. Yet it is true that many use the image as a native African uses his fetish. Think of it! Here is a devout Catholic in San Francisco praying before, say, an image of Saint Peter. Does the apostle Peter hear his prayer? There is at the same time another in Rome, another in St. Petersburg, another in Calcutta, another in Buenos Aires praying before similar images—not at all improbable cases. Does the apostle hear them all? If so, he is omnipresent, made equal to God. If he is not omnipresent, four of these at least are praying to dumb images. The same would be true of any other saint. It may be said that God hears these earnest prayers and He will deliver them to the saint. If so, why not pray direct to God? Why plead with the intermediary? Why not use common sense? Too, the Scriptures say, “The dead know not anything.” “Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep.”

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Back to the Land.

That country is not prosperous which is preparing for war or engaged in war and neglecting agriculture. Sometimes defeat brings blessings. Spain has been sadly and sorely defeated in her wars of the last two centuries, and her last defeat from the United States was very humiliating indeed, but she has turned from her misfortunes and is building up her home industries, with the result that Spanish stocks which sold at 60 before the Philippine war now sell at par. At all points of the peninsula land is being bought up and cultivation of ground long abandoned is resumed. We are told that the plains of Galicia and Extremadura, so long near desert, are now loaded with crops; that the plow is turning up the high plateaus of old Castile and the barren soil is being enriched with generous mold and costly fertilizers. In places where the traveler formerly saw nothing but sterile wastes, he to-day may contemplate, not without astonishment, fields of wheat, villages, and gardens. Cattle-raising in the south, especially in Andalusia, has made prodigious strides; emigration has slackened, almost ceased in fact. In 1901 17,000 emigrants left Spain; in 1907, 2,950. In the working of the mines, the same progress is manifested. What a mighty blessing it would be to the whole world if the people would turn from the arts of, and preparations for, war and give themselves to the cultivation and production of the riches which God has stored in the earth, under just and equitable laws.